Spirit Valley (Ben Blue Book 7)

by Lou Bradshaw

  He hesitated, and I told Flynn to cut him loose. Then I told Raphael to mount up and give Bailey about a two hundred yard start and then ride him down and rope him, drag him back, and then do it again. The young vaquero started for his horse, and Bailey started talking.

  “The boss on this end is Rivera, he’s a high toned Spanish man from down in Mexico or California. I suppose they went to talk things over with his partner in Taos, Cope.”

  There was that name again, Cope… Dan Cope. Who the devil was he? Chances are, he walks around town and mixes with folks every day, and no one knows him as Cope. He was someone living the kind of life that no one would ever suspect…. I could think of a dozen men… no, at least two dozen men in Taos County who could fit the description. And all were leading normal work a day lives. It was enough to drive a fella mad.

  Well, I wasn’t going to let it drive me mad. There was nothing I could do about it here, so I would just have to wait till I got back. I couldn’t afford to waste my time and energy on an answer that was over a hundred miles away. Thinking that way and making myself stick to it were two widely separated things.

  Chapter 19

  I sent eight men out to make a wide sweep of the valley and bring in all the horses they could find, even those wearing Henry Benches brand. We’d cull those out here at the ranch headquarters. While two men guarded the prisoners, three of us went through the bunk house and cleared out anything that could have been used as a weapon. With that done, the prisoners were ushered inside, and the doors and windows were barred from the outside. The log walls, which had made a strong fortress earlier, also made a strong prison. There wasn’t a lot of laughter coming from within.

  The riders started bringing in the horses about mid afternoon. When the sweep was finished there were forty seven fine looking animals. Mostly, they were mares with a few stallions. A half a dozen geldings were in the mix, which were average at best. Those were probably saddle stock for the KW riders, or they could have been caught up with the better horses. No matter how they got here, we’d never be able to find their owners. We took a couple of the lesser ones for pack animals and left the rest for Henry.

  We cleaned out the well stocked larder to feed the extra men on the road back to Taos. The next morning we made quite a sight going up the chute, with forty one horses and ten prisoners. Among the mares, I found a number of brands which were familiar to me including the one on Frank Peabody’s Morgan. He’d be a happy man when he saw her again.

  We were able to push it all day and made Ulla Mae before sundown, where I picked up my packhorse. The few stallions were hobbled and the mares were left to graze under the watchful eyes of the night guard. The prisoners weren’t hobbled, but they were tied and guarded. I might add, they were kept barefoot when they weren’t riding. A man who never walks any more than he absolutely has to, generally has some delicate feet.

  When morning came we were strung out on the trail headed for New Mexico. We must have looked like an invading army with twenty two riders and forty plus horses counting the pack animals. The fact that ten of those riders had their hands tied wasn’t obvious to the casual observer. We didn’t seem to meet many folks on the trail. We’d see them far off, but then they seemed to be gone. Can’t say I blamed them.

  On the second day out, we met up with four more of Don Carlos’ men on their way to lend us a hand. We really didn’t need any more help, but that was enough for me to make the decision to go ahead of the rest and start some investigating.

  With bold frankness, I went to Angel Baca and asked, “Are you wanted for anything in New Mexico… specifically in Taos County?”

  “Perhaps my picture is hanging somewhere in the border country, but I have been a perfect Angel north of Santa Fe…. At least, as far as anyone knows…. No, my friend, I could go have a tequila with the sheriff. Why do you ask?”

  “That’s good because I’m going to have to go on ahead and try to round up the bosses and their top men. If you would, just drive these horses onto the MB range. My foreman will take them if I’m not there. I’ve got enough range for them, and it’s gonna take some sorting to get them all home… Then take the prisoners on in to the sheriff…. Oh, the sheriff drinks beer, and I’ll buy the first round.”

  “Adios, my friend… worry not.”

  I gave Flynn the word to help Baca out if he needed any help. I had enough jerky, bacon, and coffee in my pack to get me to the MB, so I put Dusty in lope. We soon left the cavalcade behind and moved on at a good pace.

  ~~~~~ 0 ~~~~~

  About suppertime, the following day, I rode into the ranch yard and home. Delgado had just brought in fresh saddle stock for the next day’s work. He took Dusty, and I asked him to give him a little extra… he’d certainly earned his grain over the past week.

  Patty Anne was the first to come out the back door, but little Andy passed her like she was standing still. Maria came out next with the baby. I scooped Andy up, just as Patty Anne wrapped an arm around my waist, and Maria handed Elizabeth to me… I was a man, much loved.

  When the young ones were tucked in and fast asleep, Patty Anne, her grandpa Sam Stellars, and I sat in the courtyard with our coffee. It was one of the few places, in Casa del Blu where Sam was allowed to fire up his “smelly” old pipe. I told them all about the chase and retrieval of the horses… Sam would get the story of the night spent on that ledge with nothing but the light of a few stars, but Patty Anne wouldn’t. She’d not let me go out and play with the other fellas if she knew.

  “Patty Anne, you buy cloth and such from the dry goods store, don’t you?” I asked out of the blue.

  “Why of course I do, most of the women in the county do… You should know that, or is that just another one of those things you never paid any attention to?”

  I humbly took my scolding, but followed my question with another. “Who owns it?”

  “I suppose Martha Pitts does. She runs it and it has her name on the sign…”Martha’s Fabrics”. Why… Are you thinking of taking up sewing?”

  I had to laugh as she had intended. She knew, that sewing would be one of the last things I’d attempt with those over sized paws of mine.

  “No,” I told her, “I was planning to go by and pick out some material for you to make a party dress out of.”

  “Don’t you dare, you big red headed heathen…. Don’t you even go near the place, Mister.” I held up both hands in surrender. But I had scored a few points.

  In the morning I would ride in and have a council of war with Sheriff Nelson. I’d give him a fair warning that some prisoners were coming in. I didn’t know if I should tell him how many or let that be a surprise.

  Nelson was happy to see me. Most folks in the county didn’t know the difference between a citizens’ posse and a Sheriff’s posse. All they knew, was the Don’s horses were returned and they hadn’t been asked to join any kind of posse. Nels was basking in the glow of a job well done by some kind of law enforcement. With an election coming in the fall, he’d take anything he could get, even though there wasn’t likely to be much opposition.

  Over coffee at the Wooden Spoon Café, I gave him the rundown on what had happened up north and the part Battles had played in it.

  “Yeah, Battles came through lookin’ almighty beat down. He said he wanted to sell his place, but there were no takers. I heard that Paul Cravins gave him two hundred dollars for a quit claim deed. But that was what I heard…I didn’t see it. I was just happy to get him out of town and out of my hair.”

  When I told him he could expect ten prisoners tomorrow or the next day, his reaction stopped all conversation in the Wooden Spoon.

  “Ben, I can’t handle ten prisoners. I can’t even send any of them over to the City Marshal’s Office… he’s only got one small drunk tank cell. They’d be crammed in there like fish in a can… And furthermore, you caught them boys up in Colorado…. Send ‘em to a Colorado jail.”

  “But, Nels, they stole those horses in New Mexico, and some
of them right here in Taos County. We tracked them to Colorado. They killed two New Mexican citizens in Taos County. You can claim them as Federal prisoners and the government will pay for their keep…. Sooner or later.”

  “I don’t much care if they have to sleep three to a cot, they gotta be locked up. And look at it this way, the voters are gonna be impressed with your managing to collect ten horse thieves and killers… Oh, it’ll be as little crowded and might start to smell to high heaven, but the voters will be stuffing the ballot box with your name.”

  “The town’s gonna be full of the Don’s riders probably until the big Fourth of July blow out. If we turn any of those men loose, they won’t live ten minutes. It’ll be a blood bath, and who’s gonna get blamed for that? You, the Town Marshal, and me, but mostly you because you’re the most visible. And it will set back relations fifty years.”

  “It don’t sound like I got much of a choice, if I want to keep wearin’ this badge…Damnation!” he grumbled.

  We walked back to the office, and as I looked over the three cell area, I had to sympathize with Nels and his deputies. It was going to be an unholy mess, with three and four to a cell. It wasn’t going to any bed of roses either.

  When I left, I walked over to the courthouse to see if I could find out who owned Martha’s Fabrics, where Glenn Battles would pick up his monthly pay. The clerk in charge of records told me she couldn’t let me see those records just because I wanted to.

  “Sure you can… those are public records, and I’m one of the public. I don’t even care if you show my public records to some other member of the public.”

  She said, “Excuse me for a moment… but don’t look at anything till I get back.” and she disappeared into an office.

  About a half a minute later, Bob Teagarden, the county clerk came out with the young lady behind him. “Oh, Howdy, Ben. It’s all right Clara… These are all open to anyone, but they can’t take them out of the office…. Sorry, Ben, Clara is new and is still learning”

  She wrote down the name of the business, and she disappeared again, but this time into a row of shelves. In a few minutes, she returned with a large ledger book. She opened it and found the right page. Running her finger down the page she stopped and turned the book around so I could read it. The perfectly formed letters said: Martha’s Fabrics…. 107 North St….. Owner…..D.C. Enterprises, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

  I asked if there was a local contact, and she disappeared again into Teagarden’s office. Bob came out and said, “I think, Paul Cravins is an agent for DC. He’s registered several properties for them… a few rundown ranches and such. But he does that sort of thing for other companies too…. Is there a problem?”

  “No, I had some bad information I reckon. I’d heard it was for sale, and I was looking at an investment opportunity…. Guess I’ll stick with cows and horses. I know how to run that business.”

  “I suppose that’d be a good investment, but I sure wouldn’t want to be spendin’ my days in a ladies store.” He said as I walked out the door.

  Chapter 20

  I stood on the boardwalk for a few minutes pondering what I’d just heard, before I headed back to the Sheriff’s office. But as I was passing Paul Cravin’s office, I made a right turn and walked through his door.

  He looked up from his desk in the back of the room, as the bell tinkled from its perch on the top of the door. Standing up he turned to me and said to the lady at the front desk, “It’s all right Elsie, I’ll help Mister Blue.”

  “Welcome, Ben, what brings you to the town? I dabble in this and that, but I’m not in the ranch business… yet.”

  “That’s sorta what I wanted to talk to you about, Paul… I understand you did a quit claim deal with Glenn Battles for the old Granger ranch.”

  He shifted his weight as he settled back to his chair and motioned a one nearby for me and said, “Yeah, Battles was in a bad way… I’d never seen him looking like that. You’d have thought he’d been in a train wreck. I’d have offered a little more, but he gave me his rock bottom price…. You interested in the place?”

  I chuckled and said, “No thanks, I got all I can take care of now. Actually, I had the opportunity to have a long talk with Battles out on the trail, and it seems he was into something he shouldn’t have been messin’ with. But that’s another story. He mentioned that he would pick up some sort of retainer payment from Martha’s Fabric Shop once a month…. I see the Martha’s is actually owned by a company in Santa Fe, and that you handled the purchase. I believe it was D.C. Enterprises.”

  Cravens, sat there looking at something on the wall behind me, and then he looked at something I couldn’t see on his desk. The whole time he tapped a pencil on a small stack of papers. Then for the first time he made eye contact.

  “I’m sorry, Ben, but I don’t see how my out of town clients are any of your concern… No offense, but I have to protect the privacy of those customers.”

  I reached into the inside pocket of my vest and produced the US Deputy Marshal’s badge and told him, “I understand your need for privacy, but the people Battles was involved with, have spread their criminal business across two states and that makes it my concern… And besides that they stole eight of my horses, so that made it personal. I’d have tracked them down anyway.”

  He looked at the badge and then at me. He cleared his throat and said, “Uh… well that does make a difference, Ben… uhm, Marshal. Uh… I really don’t know what I can tell you.”

  “Ben will do… What can you tell me about this D.C. Enterprise… The D.C. wouldn’t by chance stand for Dan Cope, would it?”

  His eyes looked up and held mine for a few seconds, then they seemed to find my forehead more interesting.

  “No, The primary at D.C. is a man named David Crabtree…. I’ve only met him once. We do most of our business by mail. I deduct my commission and send him a bank draft once a month… If I see a business opportunity, I’ll send him a fact sheet and a proposal. If he likes it, I’ll make the deal in his name for a commission… So I’m not too involved in the day to day operations of any of the businesses or properties my clients own.”

  We talked for a few more minutes, and I left. Walking on to the Sheriff’s office, I thought about what I’d learned, and it wasn’t much. Cravens had one bad habit, and that was not making eye contact. But some people just naturally don’t, and that doesn’t make them bad. It makes them weak somewhere and it may not have anything to do with telling the truth. I had the feeling that Cravens was telling the truth about how he ran his business, but he wasn’t telling me anymore than I asked for. I was afraid I didn’t have all the right questions ready when I went in. After all I only had about three seconds to prepare my questions.

  When I walked through the office door, I found Nels walking back and forth reading something from a sheath of disreputable looking papers. I’d never seen a bunch of paper with so many things marked out and things written all higgledy piggledy in the margins…. He was reading a campaign speech for the Independence Day hoo-raw.

  I listened to him for a few minutes before he realized I was there, then he started blustering in his embarrassment.

  “Oh, don’t get your hackles up, Nels, I think you were doing great…In fact I might just vote for you this time.”

  “Whada you mean… this time….”

  Luckily for me the door flew open and the stage agent came busting in. “Sheriff, the stage just came in and it’s got a body draped over a saddle.”

  We were both out the door before the stage agent had a chance to turn around and leave. He just stepped back and got out of our way. The stage station was only a block and half away, so we ran the distance rather than mount up. As we got closer I could see the horse with the body laying across the saddle. I knew the horse. It wasn’t a thoroughbred, but it was the horse Glenn Battles was riding the last time I saw him.

  Nelson recognized it also, and he slowed down to a fast walk. “Looks like he didn’t get too far on his n
ew found wealth.”

  “I guess he didn’t… Kinda feel for the guy… Always lookin’ for the easy way.”

  When we reached the stage, I just took the reins and walked him and his burden over to the undertaker, While Nels, took all the information from the driver. He’d get all the particulars as to where and anything else they had noticed.

  Tom Pickens, the undertaker helped me get him inside and on the work table. He was already stiff as a board, so he’d been dead a while. When he was laid out on the table, I counted seven bullet holes; four of them came from the back.

  “Looks like somebody wanted that money he was carryin’ pretty bad.” I said.

  “I don’t think so, Ben.” Tom said as he pulled a wad of money from Battles’ shirt pocket. He counted out a hundred and eighty eight dollars and a few coins from his pants pocket.

  The sheriff came through the door about then, and I told him to forget thinking this was a robbery. Battles was an annoying person, but he wasn’t near as annoying as many around here who live to ripe old ages. Someone wanted him dead and they wanted it bad. He knew Cope by sight if not by his assumed name… that was too much of a risk for Cope to take.

  “Nels, I meant to tell you, Collins and a fella named Kade, may either be in town or headed this way. They’ll be travelin’ with a man named Rivera. He’s from an old Spanish family that ain’t got any money… just an old name. They’re all tied into this horse stealin’ business. I strongly suspect Collins and Kade did the shooting of those two vaqueros and stole the Don’s horses. They took off when we took the horses back.”

  “They been here.” He said. “They came in about three days ago with a fancy lookin’ Mexican… They spent the night drinkin’ and whorin’ at the Wagon Wheel, and they were gone the next day. Wish I’d known, I could have locked ‘em up. They could be anywhere now, nobody saw them leave… they were just gone.”

  “You say they stayed at the Wagon Wheel till they left?”