Marshal and the Moonshiner
Page 22
“And you wanted to kill Selly ever since.”
She turned and smiled. “I wanted to. But Dutch beat me to it that morning.”
“So you said.” I spat my plug onto the ground. What I was about to do would leave a bad enough taste in my mouth. “But Dutch didn’t kill Selly. You did.”
Her smile faded, and she took out her tobacco pouch. She began rolling a smoke again. Stalling. “You can’t prove that. I say Dutch killed Selly, and I’m the only one left alive who can say what happened that day.”
“There’s always Dutch.” I hadn’t told Yancy that we’d killed him in a shootout, and that about now the army was finding his body in that manure pile at Ft. Reno. As far as Cat was concerned, Dutch might still surface. “He can testify what happened that day.”
“He’s a deserter. Even if the army finds him, who is to believe a man like that with no honor?”
“Maybe I can prove it without Dutch’s statement.”
She stopped just as she was about to light up. “How?”
“That day Yancy and I came here, you were rubbing your left shoulder. It hurt something awful by the look on your face that day.”
“I told you I fell onto a fence post.”
“I say it’s from shooting that ass-kicking buffalo gun Selly carried. A leftie shoulders the gun on his left shoulder. Or, in your case, her left shoulder.”
“What makes you think I’m left handed?”
“You wear your watch on your right hand, and the way you belt-up like a leftie.”
She shrugged. “I’ll still say Dutch killed Selly. You can prove nothing.”
I nodded. Cat was no dummy. She knew that with Amos dead, she and Dutch were the only ones who could tell what happened that day. And word of Dutch’s death would eventually reach here. “I have to admit, your logic is flawless. I won’t be able to prove you killed Selly.” I knocked on Amos’s casket. “But for putting me through hell, and causing me to kill your man, the least you can do is come clean.” I motioned to the ranch house. “Yancy’s still making coffee, so the only ones here are you and me.”
She leaned against the casket once more, and struck her match on the lid. She flicked it down into the hole Yancy dug. Finally, she looked up and an expression of equanimity crossed her face. “I was able to handle the rapes. I didn’t want bad blood between the Antelopes and my father. But putting my child up for adoption was more than I could bear. I wanted them both dead: Amos dead for hating Jessica and making me put her up for adoption; Selly for raping me. I kept it bottled up inside at first, but it kept working on me until I hatched my plan to rid the world of them both.
“After I married Amos, I found out about his temper and his jealousy. He was overbearing. Hated me to talk to another man, and I knew he could be pushed to his limit. Though it wouldn’t take much pushing on Selly’s part to make Amos killing mad.”
“But Amos didn’t rile like you figured he would.”
“I couldn’t understand it. Amos wanted to make the ranch work more than he wanted to give Selly his due. Then Dutch cut the fence one morning and blamed it on the Antelopes. That was all it took. After that, I cut the fence now and again. Ran to Amos each time to get our cows back. And each time made him angrier and harder for him to control his temper.”
“Did Amos see you shoot Selly?”
Cat looked to the ranch house. Yancy walked out the door carrying cups and a coffee pot. “I cut the fence that day when I saw Selly riding his pasture. I followed the heifers, and Selly saw me. When Amos came up on us, I convinced him Selly wanted to take me that morning. Selly stepped off his horse to fight Amos, and laid his rifle down. Bad move for him. That’s when I shot Selly.”
“Then shot that heifer.”
Cat nodded. “Poor creature. But it had to be done, even though she didn’t deserve it. Unlike Selly. He deserved whatever he got.”
Yancy was still out of hearing range, yet I whispered as I bent to Cat. “You figured Selly and Amos would kill each other, didn’t you?”
She grinned. “That was my plan. Little did I know Amos had gotten some control of his temper.”
“And when Amos didn’t get homicidal, you shot Selly yourself, and convinced Amos the law would pin it on him. And you knew he’d never allow himself to be arrested by me. You even made it a point to tell Yancy Amos would kill me if he got the chance. Put me in the proper frame of mind for when I finally confronted him.”
Cat winked at me. “It all worked out for the best, don’t you think?”
I’d think on that when I had the time, I told her. Perhaps I’d get hold of an out-of-work philosophy professor and discuss it with him.
Yancy walked up and handed us coffee cups. Cat sat on the casket while he poured. Over the hill, dust billowed around the preacher’s Chevy coupe fast approaching. Cat looked up at me, and I caught a gleam in her eye. “Would you stay for the service, Marshal? Amos didn’t have many friends hereabouts.”
“What the hell,” I said as I sipped Yancy’s bitter coffee. “I got nothing else to do today. If I died and there was no one attending my service, I’d be glad for any mourners. Even the man who killed me.”
EPILOGUE
* * *
After I read the letter Byron sent me, I wanted even more to talk with him. The word around El Reno was that an Indian was running against Tobias Stauffer for sheriff, and a woman, to boot! Folks weren’t sure they wanted either, but after the scandal with Dale Goar and Jimmy Wells and Johnny Notchetti broke, the voters didn’t want any more of Stauffer either. Maris had been out campaigning, Byron said, until all hours of the night, and he was convinced she was campaigning under the covers. It threatened to be an interesting election.
Byron recovered from Johnny Notch’s beating in time to greet the Leonards when they returned early from their sabbatical. They decided they’d had their belly full of ministering to heathens, and some down-home time would help them recover spiritually. They decided to stick around and work the diner for a while, leaving Byron to cook part time. The rest of the time, he said, he sat reading or twiddling his thumbs. So with nothing to do, he planned to start a group for boozers like him and me. He figured that if folks could meet and talk over their troubles now and again, it would help them. “With the stigma of being an alkie,” he wrote, “everyone in the group would have to remain anonymous.” Just like I had been.
And Cat had been right. Even before she learned Dutch’s corpse had been discovered, there was no way to prove she set up Amos and killed Selly. The only thing that worried me was that Yancy would get too attached to Cat, and that someday she’d turn on him. I figured if Yancy could get next to someone with like interests, he’d forget about Cat. That’s why I invited Maris to come up to visit for a couple weeks after the election. And to bring her Uncle Byron along for conversation.
As for me, I miss Helen more each day. I finally realized that by living the life she would have wanted for me—keeping my nose to the whetstone of sobriety—I could try to make up for putting her through hell. So every day I wake up knowing I could relapse at any time, and I fight the urge.
One day at a time.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
* * *
C. M. Wendelboe entered the law enforcement profession when he was discharged from the marines as the Vietnam War was winding down.
In the 1970s he worked in South Dakota. He moved to Gillette, Wyoming, and found his niche, where he remained a sheriff’s deputy for over twenty-five years. In addition, he was a longtime firearms instructor at the local college and within the community.
During his thirty-eight-year career in law enforcement he had served successful stints as police chief, policy adviser, and other supervisory roles for several agencies. Yet he always has felt most proud of “working the street” in the Wild West. He was a patrol supervisor when he retired to pursue his true vocation as a fiction writer.
He now lives and writes in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
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