Trail to Cottonwood Falls

by Ralph Compton

  Even Blondie agreed from under the unblocked felt hat he wore. Malo was his word for the driving chill and there was a scowl on his face over the weather when Ed conversed with him in Spanish about finding a place to den up.

  Rocking in his saddle, Ed considered it was one of those dreary late-spring days when even the small sprays of wildflowers regretted blooming. About then Blondie pointed to some fallen-down rail fence that indicated an old homestead, and they turned off the road. The soddy was fallen down but a small shed was dry save for a few leaks in the slab board roof.

  Blondie left them to unsaddle and hobble the horses, and rode off into the dreary afternoon.

  “Guess we’re eating crackers and dry cheese,” he said, rubbing his hands together to increase the circulation.

  “What we’ve been eating on the stage—those stops are sure no fancy cafés,” she said and laughed at him.

  “If I can find some dry fuel, we can have a small fire at the doorway.”

  “Might be all right. But I’ll be fine.” She stopped and looked at him in the shadowy light. “You’d have gone with him if I hadn’t been along, right?”

  “Probably. But that Comanche can find out more than I can.”

  “You should have gone with him.”

  “Well, he’ll be back and we may know something.”

  She came over and hugged him. “Ed Wright, this has been the bleakest day in my life. I’ve worried since morning that those killers are going to get you, and I’ll be all alone up here in this winter land.”

  He hugged her tight. “Ain’t none got me yet.”

  She raised her face and the tears ran down her cheeks. “These may be the worst ones yet, too.”

  He used the side of his finger to stop the tears. “It’ll be fine.”

  Blondie returned at dark. He swung the blanket from his shoulders and sat down on the floor facing them. “There are four men at the whiskey man’s place. I see the bearded one.”

  “Two in suits?”

  “Sίί. Dos. Ono esta breed. Ono esta big belly man with black beard.”

  “That must be Gilmer,” Ed said to her. “Is the breed tough?”

  “Maybe.”

  “They well armed?”

  “Have pistolas.”

  “Can we take them?”

  Blondie nodded.

  “Sunup?”

  “Bueno.”

  “Have some crackers and cheese,” Ed offered. “We’ll find something better to eat in the morning.”

  They slept a few hours, then made their way on horseback across the ridge and down the ridgeline a ways in the darkness. Blondie signaled for them to go right and they started down a steep canyon till he held them up and they dismounted. Unita held the horses while they loaded their rifles and then picketed the mustangs. Darkness engulfed them and the cedars’ big, looming shapes rose all around them. Ed could smell sour mash and hear pigs grunting in their sleep.

  “Smells bad here,” she said, and followed on his heels with her shotgun.

  The wind was down but their breath made vapor clouds in the cold air. They rounded the pigpen and Blondie indicated for them to squat and stay. He was soon gone soundlessly into the night. Above the pigs’ nocturnal grunts, Ed heard several hard blows. Then nothing until Blondie returned.

  “Breed gone.”

  Ed nodded. “How do we take the house?”

  The dim light of dawn was coming over the ridge. The faint light was fast bringing things in focus for Ed.

  “You cover the back door,” he said to Unita. “Blondie, the window. I’ll kick in the front door and we’ll see how much fight they’ve got in them.”

  She shook her head in disapproval. “These men have killed—I know. I don’t want it to be you.”

  “I’ll remember that. Let’s go.”

  They set out for the soddy. Satisfied that his man was in place and that Unita was out back, Ed used his boot to bust open the door. Rifle in his fist, he burst in the room.

  “Hands in the air or die.”

  “What the hell—”

  Blondie broke the window out on the side and stuck his rifle inside to back Ed’s words.

  A big man dove off the bed for the floor, and another in the next bed on the right reached for a weapon in a holster hung on the poster. It was one of those moves that proved fatal as Ed’s and Blondie’s rifles poured lead into him and the room billowed with acrid, sulphur gun smoke. When the ear-ringing shots were over, he flopped on the smoking bed in the arms of death like a fish out of water. The other brother—where was he?

  “I give up! Goddamn it, don’t shoot no more!” Gilmer screamed. “I give up! I give up!”

  “Where’s the other one?” Ed demanded. The rifle in his hands was cocked and ready.

  “Must have gone to the outhouse. How should I know?”

  “Unita?” Ed called. “You all right?”

  “Sure.”

  The sound of her voice relieved him. His hands shaking from the tension he reloaded the side gate on the rifle. “Blondie, go look for any signs out there.”

  “I didn’t see anyone go out,” she said, coming around as Blondie ran off to check.

  “He may have left the house before we even got down here, and slipped away. Keep your rifle on him.” He indicated Gilmer in his underwear, sitting on the bed. “Shoot him if he moves.”

  She nodded woodenly with the right ear-hammer cocked back and the barrels pointed at the pale-faced whiskey maker. “Watch yourself.”

  “This way,” Blondie shouted from above them on the hillside.

  Outside the shack, Ed could see his man going through the cedars.

  Ed was breathless when they reached the ridge. Obviously Brady was headed away from their animals, which Ed considered lucky. He must have been outside for some activity when they moved in.

  “He’s barefooted.” Blondie pointed to his tracks as they both sucked in wind.

  “Good, he won’t go far.”

  The scout nodded and they set out along the edge between the prairie and the cedars.

  Then a bearded man stepped out of the boughs a hundred feet ahead, dressed in his pants and underwear. He held a derringer pistol pointed at them in each hand. Ed held out his rifle and stopped Blondie “Damn you, Ed Wright. I sent men to kill you, but I won’t fail this time.”

  “They were like you’re going to be. Get ready to meet your maker.”

  “Ivy was his name, wasn’t it? Tough little sumbitch. I cut his throat—he was your partner, wasn’t he—”

  Ed’s reply came from the muzzle of the .44/40 in his hand. The butt was pressed hard to his hip. He kept levering in cartridges and pulling the trigger as he advanced, the bullets thudding into Brady as he crumpled into a pile. The chamber clicked on empty and he raised the smoking barrel. “That’s for Ivy.” And he kicked him—hard.

  Ed came off the hill and Unita rushed to meet him.

  “What about Gilmer?” He looked hard toward the shack for any sight of the man.

  “He saddled a horse and left for Canada.” She fell in his arms. “I told him not to look back.”

  Ed agreed and hugged her. “Let’s get married.”

  “You sure?” She gave a toss of her hair and looked up at him.

  “I don’t say much I’m not sure about.”

  “Took you long enough.” She wet her lips and smiled at him.

  “I think I’ve got this all finally settled. Let’s head back to Newton, get your money, and head home.” He pushed his hat back and scratched his head. “Where’re we getting married?”

  “There must be a JP around here or a preacher,” she said, and leaned her face on him.

  “No big church wedding?”

  “I had one of those—make it simple this time.”

  He rubbed his palms on the sides of his pants legs. “I can do that.”

  “Good. Where we going to live?”

  “Bar U, I guess. My old place ain’t much.”

  “G
ood, I like it there.”

  She let go and looked around. “What about all these hogs?”

  “I’m going to send word to that farmer who put us up for the night to bring all his friends and have a hog killing up here in two days—”

  “And bring a preacher?”

  “Bet he can find one. A free hog killing and a wedding.” He grabbed her around the waist and swung her feet off the ground in a circle. “They’ll sure have a time.”

  Ed sent Blondie with a note, and he began to dig a single grave for the breed and the Bradys. It was the only grave he ever remembered not dreading his purpose while he spaded out the dirt. The three planted, she brought him some fresh, hot coffee and they shared it, sitting on a lumber pile.

  “You won’t regret this?” she asked.

  “What, planting them three?”

  “No—I mean about us.”

  “Lord, no. There’s over thirty fat hogs here. We’re going to have a real hog killing.”

  “What about the sows?”

  “Guess at one apiece they’ll start the homesteaders’ own bunch.”

  She leaned over and kissed him. “Gilmer sure won’t need them in Canada.” And they laughed.

  The “hog killing” was a huge success. Thirty-five families came. A boy of maybe twenty with a bobbing Adam’s apple read their vows and pronounced them man and wife. The fiddles played and, like Ed’s daddy always said about such affairs, there wasn’t one little kid didn’t have a shiny mouth from eating fresh-cooked pork. Full of food and weary to the bone, they finally took a bedroll and slipped off from the maddening crowd into the night.

  He unfurled their bed with gusto and laughed. “You ever figure it would end like this when you got me in that wheelbarrow that day?”

  “Something like this.” She nodded in the affirmative and gave him a sly smile.

  Epilogue

  Ed and Unita Wright’s union produced four children. The oldest, Ellen, became a schoolteacher and married a cowboy named Roy English in New Mexico. They later ranched above Pie Town, New Mexico. The second girl, Edie, was killed at fifteen in a runaway buggy wreck coming home from town. Jason left home at sixteen and was never heard of again. The youngest son, Lyle, ran the ranches, both the Bar U and his father’s place, after Ed was killed in a roping accident during roundup at age sixty-three. The Boss Lady, as all the hands called her, lived to be ninety and was interred at the Bandy cemetery beside her Ed.

  In the late nineteen thirties, the Daughters of the Texas Republic placed a ranger star granite monument over their grave in recognition of his service with the rangers. No known descendants operate either of the two ranch properties today.

  Note: Blondie Wright, an adopted Comanche tribal member, died at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in April, 1897. He left a full-blood wife, Minnie Lou, and several descendants.