“I don’t recall any landmarks or anything that stand out. It’s all kinda of a blur...putting one foot in front of the other until I finally reached town.”
Leading his horse, Williams climbed diagonally up the slope toward a steep walled canyon looking for tracks that lead into Dry Bone Gulch. He studied the dry, rocky soil for about two hundred yards and stopped suddenly when he spotted hoof prints going up slope. Although about three days old, the tracks were well defined and made by a recently shod horse.
Williams studied the tracks. Interesting. A single rider is heading toward the canyon. It couldn’t be Walsh because he entered from the other side, besides his horse was lame from a thrown shoe and he was leading Crawley’s horse. So, this track and the other one made by Crawley’s horse should match, he thought committing the tracks to memory.
“This is a big horse,” Walsh said outlining the track with his finger. “Crawley’s horse is a good-sized Morgan, and I’ll bet this is his track going in.”
Williams nodded and continued following the trail into the canyon mouth. As he walked across the fine gravel bottom he stumbled upon more tracks, those of two horses and a man on foot going the opposite direction. One set matched Crawley’s Morgan and the other tracks were from a horse with a missing shoe. “Walsh, come over here and see if this print matches your boot.”
It matched. “Your story pans out so far, but that still doesn’t put us a damn site closer as to why Crawley rode out here and took a shot at you,” Williams said with a puzzled expression on his face. He took off his hat and wiped his sweaty brow with a faded blue bandana.
They continued following tracks up the canyon for about half a mile when they came to an intersecting ravine with one side a vertical limestone cliff over a hundred and fifty feet high. Williams paused and gazed at the cliff savoring memories from many years ago. “Locals call this area Dry Bone Gulch because of the old buffalo bones scattered on the bottom. When I was about as tall as yonder sunflower, I remember watching Shoshone and other local tribes run buffalo over the top. They’d pile ‘em up on the bottom here sometimes two or three deep. An efficient way to get their winter food supply. And boy, could those squaws skin out a buffalo fast. And they used every bit of ‘em but the snort.”
“That must have been something seeing all those buffalo falling over the cliff like that.”
“It was. My dad used to trade the squaws old knives and cooking utensils for buffalo humps. Best eatin’ meat around, a lot better than beef. Too bad buffalo in this part of country are all gone and soon the big herds on the Great Plains will be gone too. The country’s changing so fast ten years from now ya won’t even know it. And if we don’t change with it, us lawmen and cow punchers will end up like the buffalo and free range.”
They both rode silently following the tracks into the gulch. It didn’t take long for Williams to find where Walsh’s horse had thrown him and bolted. Reading sign in the soft sand and gravel, he had little difficulty piecing together what happened. Circling around the area where Walsh fought with his attacker, he spotted a sharps rifle lying at the base of a stunted sage brush.
Williams brushed the sand off the obviously custom rifle admiring the fine-grained English walnut stock and noticed Crawley’s name inscribed on the receiver. He scanned the canyon and found Walsh about a hundred yards away and shouted, “I’ve found Crawley’s rifle.” His yell echoed and re-echoed off the cliff walls.
Walsh waved and started toward Williams. He covered about a third of the distance before he let out a startled scream. In his haste, Walsh stepped over a small bush and his boot came down next to a yard-long diamondback rattler. The coiled snake reacted instantly and struck. Its triangular shaped head backed by a heavy muscular body drove two curved venom filled fangs forward with lightening speed.
The strike hit Walsh just above the knee with bruising force. Luckily, his heavy loose chaps absorbed most of the impact and two venomous fangs barely penetrated the leather. Walsh froze in horror with the rattler hanging and writhing with its curved fangs caught in his chaps.
Williams sprinted towards him and got within 50 feet when he spotted the viper squirming to free its self from Walsh’s chaps. “Don’t move!” he yelled and in a lightning fast move drew his Colt and fired. The heavy lead bullet cut the snake in two just below the head. “Steady, don’t move, the head and fangs are still dangerous. Hold still while I grab the head and pull the fangs out of your legging. If they go in further, they may scratch your leg and infect it with venom.”
Grabbing the rattler’s head with his gloved hand, Williams pulled back and twisted slightly upward removing the fangs from the chap. Walsh glanced down and saw two neat puncture holes in the leather wet with venom.
Williams dropped the snake’s head on the ground and smashed it flat with a rock. “You can cut off a rattler’s head but it can still bite for a long time, I ain't taking any chances...”
With a slight smile, Williams pulled out his belt knife and sliced off the snake’s rattles — twelve buttons long—and offered them to Walsh. “These rattles will look dandy on a hat band.”
Walsh slumped down on a rock pale and shaken, “You keep ‘em. That’s twice I’ve nearly been killed in this canyon in two days. I’m not ready to meet Saint Peter yet so let’s get out of here...”
Williams dropped the rattles in his shirt pocket. “Well, we’re about through, but I need to find the place where Crawley laid in wait and shot at you.”
Walsh lead the way as they climbed up a less arduous route through loose shale and rocks to a natural terrace about 100 yards long and 30 yards wide overlooking the canyon bottom. While both paused to catch their breath, Williams studied the canyon bottom carefully. Obviously, Crawley knew someone was supposed to ride through this canyon on his way to the valley beyond. That meant he was going to either Henryville, one of the ranches or Crawley’s place. Crawley certainly wanted whoever was supposed to ride through here dead, that’s for sure. He couldn’t have picked a better spot for an ambush, he mused. Williams slowly worked the area reading sign. He picked up a spent .45-70 brass casing that Walsh had tossed aside earlier and found a stunted juniper where Crawley had broken branches off to make a rifle rest. “By the number of cigarette butts and tracks, I estimate Crawley waited here at least six hours,” he said to Walsh lounging on a gnarled tree stump nearby trying to stay out of the way. “That means Crawley knew the day his quarry would be riding through the area. From the lack of other tracks, that someone either didn’t make it or rode through before the last rain washed out his tracks. Either way, I need to find him,” Williams said as much to himself as Walsh who was more than ready to finish up and get out of this bad-luck canyon.
By early afternoon, Williams gleaned all the information he could from the site. It now became urgent to get out of the canyons because dark anvil shaped rain clouds were starting to boil up over the southwestern horizon. He knew these washes could quickly become a death trap for anyone caught in one with a wall of water and mud boiling down sweeping everything before it.
It was not long before a heavy gray cloud cover moved in and darkened the sky. Gusty winds kicked up fine sand and sent tumbleweeds spinning and bouncing around them while they pushed their horses at a fast trot down the for-now dry wash. They reached the mouth of the canyon and started down a long sloping ridge when the first raindrops hit, slowly at first then with increasing tempo.
Across the valley ahead the main storm, a dark gray blanket of rain swept toward them. Sheets of jagged lightning flashed from sky to ground followed a few seconds later by the crack and boom of thunder rolling across the valley and bouncing back off cliffs and rocky crags behind them.
“We’ve got to get off this high ridge with all this lightening and find some shelter,” Williams yelled to Walsh above the thunder as he spurred his horse down the hillside slipping and sliding on the loose and wet shale. A few hundred yards down the slope, Williams spotted a large rock outcropping with an ov
erhang that could shelter both horses and angled for it.
No sooner had the two men and horses crowded under the outcropping than the main storm hit with overwhelming fury. Lightning flashed followed almost immediately by merging thunder claps that bounced off cliffs and side hills. Rain poured down in grey sheets and soon water in the ravines and washes ran deep and muddy. Flash floods boiled downhill carrying large rocks, small trees and other debris.
A thunderous near miss produced a bright flash and a shower of sparks that lit up the area. The lightning bolt split a tall pinon tree so close to them that men and horses smelled the sulfur-like odor of ozone and felt the concussion wave from superheated air.
The horses panicked. With ears laid flat and eyes wild with fear, they fought to break away. It took maximum effort from both men to control them. But after a brief rodeo and some soothing cowboy talk, the horses settled down enough to stay under control.
Walsh looked over a Williams with a shaken expression. “I think that last lightning bolt had my name on it but somehow missed. Maybe my bad luck is changing.”
“I’d say if you had bad luck, Crawley wouldn’t have missed and that rattler wouldn’t have struck your chap where it did. Your number didn’t come up, that’s all. I’ve seen so many men die so many different ways that I believe if your maker deals you a joker there’s nothing much you can do about it.”
As quickly as the rain hit, it ended. The violent, but fast moving storm surged over the mountains into the valley beyond. Williams stepped from under the overhang onto a wet and soggy landscape. Small waterfalls cascaded off cliffs and rocky outcrops. Rivulets formed and ran downhill joining with others in creating new channels and overflowing existing washes. “It’s going to be slow going with all the washes in flood. We’ll have to go west out of the foothills to where it flattens out then cut southeast to make it back to town.”
Walsh nodded glad to do whatever it took to leave these canyons behind. “No argument from me. I’ve used up too many lives in that cursed canyon. After this, I’d be happy becoming a flat land sod buster and raise goats or, heaven forbid, sheep.”
Williams grinned, “You sure you’d go that far? Remember when I used up a few lives in bad situations. But I think I’d still rather go through a few bad gully washers and fight a Cheyenne war party than face Silvia when we get back to town.”
“Well, I don't exactly cotton to the idea of meeting her either...don't think she'll take too kindly to seeing me,” Walsh said with his jaw clenched and eyes looking straight ahead.
The cloud cover first broke in the west. Streaks of blue sky appeared and moments later the sun found an opening and bathed the valley below in a golden glow. Behind them, a full rainbow materialized, its colors brilliant against a backdrop of dark clouds and rocky cliffs.
“Hope that rainbow is a sign of better luck to come,” Walsh muttered as they headed back to town and for him into another more deadly gathering storm.
Chapter 5
The women tried to make Justin as comfortable as possible on a rough and jolting ride down the rocky wash. They could do little for his pain or stop the slow blood loss and mercifully he finally slipped into unconsciousness.
About a half hour later they left the wash where it fans out into a gravel and sand bar that peters out about a hundred yards into Henry valley. Jonas made good time skillfully guiding the surrey along a rough wagon track through sage and rabbit brush flats toward Henryville six miles north. Far across the valley ahead they could see low heavy black rain clouds obscuring the northern foothills. Frequent lightning flashes lit up the clouds creating a light show. But, it was too far away to hear the rolling and crashing thunder of the storm that Williams and Walsh had taken refuge from under a rock overhang.
“That’s some storm up north. Glad we’re not up on that end of the valley,” Silvia remarked.
“Luckily, it’s heading north too. If it had nailed us here, we would never have gotten through the mud and flash floods,” added Jonas grimly, well aware of what would have happened if the storm had hit while they were navigating the narrow canyon.
Hours later, a late afternoon sun gave Henryville’s buildings a reddish glow as Jonas drove the surrey with two tired horses up Main Street. He pulled up in front of the Western Star hotel, jumped from the driver’s seat and rushed to a small office next to the hotel. A few minutes later, he and Doc Thurgood returned and carried Justin through the office door into a back room.
“Silvia, you and Jenny wait in the hotel. I’ll stay with the doc and let you know...”
“I want to see Sheriff Williams now and find out what happened to my husband.” Silvia replied impatiently. She stepped off the boardwalk and headed for his office around the corner. She burst through the doorway and found three town council members sitting around a table smoking cigars and bull-shooting more than conducting town business.
“I’m looking for Sheriff Willams . Is he around?” she asked looking at all three who suddenly stood up looking sheepish.
“Well,” said one of the councilmen, “he took that fellow Walsh, I think that’s his name, and they rode up north to Dry Bone Gulch to take a look around...he hasn’t come back yet.”
Silvia stared at them her eyes red-rimmed from a dusty surrey ride and mourning. “We just got in and had a brush with some Bannock renegades, and Justin is at the doc’s...he’s hurt bad.”
All three men started for the door, but Silvia stepped in front of a short, portly man in a dirty white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. “Nathan, what do you know about my husband? You’re the undertaker around here...do you still have him?” she demanded, a tinge of anger in her voice.
“Yeh, I do. That Walsh fellow brought him in, and I need you to identify him and tell me what to do with the body. I can’t keep him much longer.”
“Take me to him now, Nathan...I want to make sure it’s really Randal.” She demanded.
Nathan nervously exhaled. He obviously didn’t relish this part of his job. “Follow me, Mrs. Crawley. Let’s get this over with.”
Crawley lay in a pine coffin resting on two sawhorses. Ice packed in layers of gunnysack surrounded his body in an attempt to keep it cool. Still an overpowering smell of chemicals and death forced Silvia to cover her nose and mouth. Nathan lifted the coffin’s lid and pulled a black cloth off Crawley’s face. Silvia gasped and turned away her body racked by sobbing and grief.
“If it’s alright with you, we’ll bury him in the morning in the city cemetery. I’ll make arrangements with the parson. Then we’ll work on getting a right nice headstone installed,” Nathan said as he nervously escorted a shaken and unsteady Silvia through the doorway.
Half hour later, Jenny and Silvia sat in the lobby consoling each other when Jonas limped in his face pale from exhaustion. “Sorry, but Doc couldn’t save Justin. The bullet caused a lot of damage, and he lost too much blood.” He slumped in a chair looking down at the wood plank floor his eyes blank, saying nothing.
For several long minutes the room was silent. No one said anything. Each was trying to get a handle on their grief and exhaustion. Silvia finally ended the silence.
“That’s two good men, that saddle tramp Walsh is responsible for getting killed. I hope the sheriff does something. If he won’t, we can and we will.” Her lips compressed and eyes hard with grief and resolve, she slumped back in the overstuffed chair and covered her face with her hands.
It was after dark when Walsh and the sheriff rode into town, their horses nearly spent. Although cold, muddy, exhausted and hungry they continued on to the livery at the south end of town. A lone kerosene lantern mounted over the entrance cast a yellow glow – the only light in this part of town.
Williams winced as he noticed Crawley’s surrey parked near the entrance and their two matched horses in the first stall. Well, there’s going to hell-to-pay soon, he thought as he led his horse into the dark barn and stripped off the saddle and blanket. Silvia is going to be ornerier th
an a treed catamount and twice as dangerous.
Both men knew from long experience that taking care of their mounts came first. That meant a rub-down with dry straw, water and couple of handfuls of oats in a nose bag. That done, they hobbled painfully up the street to the sheriff’s office.
Williams pushed open the office door and was greeted by a pungent smell of cigar smoke that still lingered in the air from the interrupted town council meeting hours earlier. He fumbled around in the dark for a match, found one and lit two lamps. Limping over to his desk, he pulled a bottle half full of brandy and two glasses from the bottom drawer.
“Too bad the Green Parrot is dark. Nellie would never forgive me if I woke her up to fix some grub. Maybe a stiff shot of brandy will keep us alive till morning. You’re welcome to bunk in that cell again...”
Walsh gulped his drink, mumbled thanks and shuffled back to the cell, glad to have a bed. Williams leaned back in his chair and propped his dusty boots up on his cluttered desk top. He sipped the amber liquid and savored its warming effect spreading throughout his exhausted body.
Tomorrow could bring some real fireworks, Williams mused. Crawleys are going to want justice and want it pronto. It’s going to be rough ride trying to get them to believe Walsh is telling the truth. And what about the man Randal was trying to kill? Where is he? Well, we’ll just have to take tomorrow as it comes and hope we eventually get a break.
Bright reds, orange and yellows flared in the eastern sky and silhouetted still-dark mountain peaks as dawn approached. Williams, up earlier than usual, took his time strolling from the boarding house to the Green Parrot for some early breakfast. He breathed in the fresh morning air tinged with a smell of sage and the pervasive odor from dozens of outhouses behind every building and home.
Right then he wished he could be out chasing cows or outlaws or anything rather than playing lawman.
Ambush at Dry Bone Gulch Page 5