by Paul Bagdon
“I know that,” Ben said. “I’m doing what I can to move those types on out of Burnt Rock.”
Doc shook his head. “The festival’s gotten too big. A few years back, it was women showing their quilts and preserves and pies and men playing horseshoes to win a cake or a dance with a lady. The cowboys did some roping, and the kids ran around, and it was fun and safe and everybody went home at the end of the day tired and feeling good. Now we’ve got a horse race that’s drawing tinhorns and gunslingers and gamblers the way a magnet draws steel shavings. That cesspool across the street is already laying in an extra supply of beer and whiskey. And those booths with contests aren’t much but an outright scam. It’s no good for the town. If we’re not real careful, we’ll end up like Dodge City.”
“I’m worried too. The last thing Lee or Jonas expected was somethin’ like this. They both want to sell some horses and decided a race was a good way to get some attention for their stock. If they’d had any idea of what—”
“I know that, Ben,” Doc interrupted. “They’re both good and honest people. I’m not pointing a finger at them.”
“Well, it’s too late to stop it,” Ben said ruefully. “People who’re comin’ will come anyway, race or no race—and I’m not talkin’ about families from around here. If there’s no race, I think I’d have a riot on my hands.”
“What about shutting down the Drovers’ Inn during the festival? Seems like that would be a big help.”
“I can’t do that. I’d need a writ from the governor, and that’d take five, maybe six months to get. As the law stands now, saloons like the Drovers’ aren’t doing a thing that’s illegal.”
“It’s legal to wreck families and turn good men into stumbling drunks?” The doctor’s voice rose in volume and stridency as he spoke. “To suck the money out of the pockets of unsuspecting farmers and cowboys looking for a good time? That’s not right, Ben Flood, and you know it!”
“Yeah. I do know it. And there’s not a thing I can do about it except try to keep my town as safe as I can and rid it of the men who can hurt my people.”
When Doc spoke again, his voice was lower and more controlled. “You’re the best lawman this town has ever seen, Ben. Everyone says that. A Christian man with a star on his chest is a rare thing in the West, and we’re grateful to have you. I wasn’t attacking you, my friend.” Doc hesitated and drew a breath. “It’s just ... well ... I guess I’m as disturbed as you are, seeing these gunslingers and the other no-goods in our town. The merchants feel the same way. Most of them are closing for the festival rather than doing the land-mine business they did in the past. They’re scared.”
Ben gulped the last of his coffee. “I’ll be talkin’ to the merchants, Doc. And I’ll tell them what I’m tellin’ you right now: Nothing like this will ever happen again in Burnt Rock while I’m marshall. All I can do this year is ride it out and keep things as peaceful as possible. But that galls me like a sharp stone in my boot.” He sighed and rose to his feet, setting his empty cup on the table. “Speaking of bein’ galled, I got a stack of paperwork to do at the office.”
Doc stood too. He extended his hand to the marshall. Ben took it, and they shook, almost formally, as if they were sealing an agreement.
As Ben left O’Keefe’s and began walking toward his office, a man on a dark bay rode past him. The stranger’s Stetson was pulled down low to shade his eyes from the sun. There was a bedroll behind his saddle, but, Ben noticed, no coiled rope at his right knee. His sidearm—an army Colt with ivory or bone grips—rode in a well-oiled holster that was tied to his leg with a length of latigo. Ben watched as the man rode to the Drovers’ Inn, swung down from his saddle, tied his horse at the rail, and pushed his way through the batwings.
Pirate seemed as if he weren’t touching the ground with his hooves. He ran like a mustang, with his head held higher than many breeds would hold theirs at a hard run, perhaps because his blood was telling him that he needed to be alert as well as fast or he’d never survive.
Still, even with his head where it was, he grabbed ground as if he were starving for it and rolled ahead like a steam engine—fast, strong, an unstoppable machine.
Jonas Dwyer sat on his prized Tennessee Walker, Laddie, and watched Pirate gallop across the fairly level field of pasture adjacent to the Dwyer home. He felt like a fortunate man—a man who’d been blessed with much of what he wanted out of life. He turned in his saddle and let his gaze take in his home and the series of three barns that stood off to the side of the expansive two-story dwelling. A covered porch surrounded the house on three sides, and gliders and cane rockers and chairs were positioned so that guests could visit and talk while enjoying the beauty of the ranch and the wonders of a prairie sunset.
Pirate’s deep bay color seemed to be on fire as the early sun touched him. The broad white blaze on his muzzle and his four white stockings were hidden momentarily by the harsh glare. Pirate’s rider, Luke, a nineteen-year-old cowboy, had allowed Pirate to stretch at the gallop for a mile and was now swinging him back in a wide, easy loop to where Jonas sat on Laddie. As Luke reined down from the gallop to a lope, Pirate swept over the ground with such consummate ease that it seemed he could hold the gait forever.
Jonas believed Pirate couldn’t be beat in a flat race, nor in an endurance test. Never having owned such an athletic horse before, he hoped to pass on Pirate’s power and strength and intelligence to new generations of Dwyer stock.
But then he thought about what was going on in Burnt Rock. The possibility that he’d pushed Lee into something neither of them really understood kept him sleepless long after the lamps in his house were extinguished and the ranch was still.
Although he loved the West, despite its shortcomings and problems, he believed himself to be a realist. He understood that the end of the war had unleashed men who’d been forever changed by what they’d seen and experienced. They’d not only become inured to violence and bloodshed, but some had come to enjoy inflicting it on others. Marauding clusters of hard, cruel men gathered together as night riders or donned the cowardly hoods and robes of the Klan, attempting to satisfy what had become a lust for bloodshed. And many of these misfits had come West.
Was he responsible for unleashing such men on Burnt Rock?
Ben Flood had said no—or at least that he wasn’t completely responsible. The race, Ben had said, was a mistake, but it was too late to do anything about it. All Lee and Jonas could do was forbid their crews to wager on the race, and then make sure the race itself was run cleanly and without incident. That, Jonas believed, was the easy part. What concerned him was what the riffraff would do to the town and its people.
Luke brought Pirate to a stop a few feet from Jonas. “Sir? You OK?” he asked. “Y’all look like you’re lost or dizzy or somethin’. Want me to fetch some water for you?”
Jonas shook his head in an attempt to clear the troubled thoughts from his mind. “No, no, Luke—I’m fine.” He forced a feeble smile that he feared wasn’t convincing. “Pirate looks excellent,” he said. “You’re doing a fine job with him.”
“Mr. Dwyer,” Luke said, “you got nothin’ to worry about come the festival. That ol’ Slick don’t have a chance against our Pirate with Davey on him. An’, sir, you can bet on that!”
“That’s what bothers me,” Jonas said. “The betting part is just what bothers me.”
The rattlesnake was a large one, summer-fat from living on prairie dogs and mice it found in and around the barns. Now it was coiled in the corner of a stall, with blood and white flesh showing where the frantic hooves of the mare had kicked and stomped on it. The nonstop buzz from within the thick buttons at the end of the snake’s body seemed amplified by the midafternoon silence in the barn. Its head darted from side to side, challenging Lee, who faced it.
The gate to the stall, smashed outward by the mare, gaped wide, its splintered and broken wood telling of the violence with which the panicked horse had hit it. Struggling with the mare, Lee lock
ed her right hand into the halter, attempting to force the animal back from the stall—the one place where the irrational bay had always been safe. Even after her hysterical charge through the gate, the horse felt drawn to this symbol of security, and every time she attempted to lurch into the stall, she shoved Lee closer to the rattler.
A pair of punctures in the mare’s chest muscle, both with tiny rivulets of blood meandering down her left foreleg to her hoof, showed where she’d been struck. The other punctures, midway up her throat, bled more copiously. Lee knew the horse probably wouldn’t survive, but she wasn’t about to let the mare be struck again.
She shoved against the mare and at the same time yelled so loudly that her voice cracked and her throat constricted. “Rattler!” she bellowed. “Help—bring a gun! Carlos—anyone—help!”
The horse reared, lifting Lee as it rose, then set her down three feet closer to the corner of the stall, where she could see the reptile’s eyes glowing like burning embers in a pitch-black pool. The tempo of the buzzing increased, and Lee could hear the eerie hissing that issued from the snake’s widely spread mouth. Jamming her left arm across the mare’s eyes, she temporarily calmed the animal—in the young mare’s panicked mind, what she couldn’t see no longer existed. Then Lee turned toward the rattler.
Its head was as large as a good-sized apple, and its diameter that of Lee’s forearm. The two wounds the mare had inflicted on it were no longer bleeding. Any damage done to the snake was superficial.
Lee had encountered snakes all her life—cottonmouths and rattlesnakes, as well as harmless garter and grass snakes. She’d shot poisonous snakes to protect herself and her horses, and she’d helped her uncle dynamite a massive nest of cottonmouths in a small outcropping along the stream that had fed his farm much of its water. But she’d never been this close to a pair of fangs, and her raw fear was sending tiny sparks of shimmering light across her vision. She screamed again.
The snake’s diamond-shaped head was no longer weaving. Instead, it was directed at Lee—and Lee knew it could easily strike any part of her. She also knew that while the leather of her boots might hold up against the needle-sharp fangs, her culottes and shirt would offer no more protection than would the wing of a butterfly. Lee looked directly into the rattler’s eyes and felt bile rise in her throat.
The mare was panicking again; she squealed, and Lee felt her shift her weight to her haunches. A disjointed but fervent prayer flew about Lee’s mind like a bird trapped in a small room. She knew that if the mare reared and lunged again, the rattler would strike. Unable to tear her gaze from the snake’s head, Lee watched as a miniscule drop of amber oozed slowly from the tip of its right fang. The venom was the color of good clover honey—and a few drops of it could kill Lee as easily as a stroke of lightning.
The sudden sound of boots thumping on the raked dirt floor of the barn sounded sweeter than any choir Lee had ever heard. The sharp metallic rasp of a shell being levered into the chamber of a rifle made her weak with relief.
“Jus’ a second more, Lee,” Carlos’s voice whispered. “Stay still for jus’ a second more . . .”
The report of the 30.30 was immense, ripping the silence into shreds. Entering between the gaping jaws of the rattler, the first slug tore out the back of the snake’s head. Its immense body lashed about like a thing possessed, spewing dark streaks of blood and tissue on the stall walls. Carlos fired a second time, and then a third, the explosions pounding Lee’s ears like angry fists. The rattler, its death throes over, settled into the straw bedding of the stall.
Lee felt as if she were in a trance when she turned toward Carlos. At that moment, the mare’s front legs folded, and she dropped to the floor, taking Lee with her.
A damp, cool cloth in Maria’s hand brought Lee back to the world. She looked around, startled to find that she was stretched out on the couch of Carlos and Maria’s house. She had no recollection of how she’d gotten there.
“We carry you here,” Carlos said, anticipating his friend’s question.
As her vision cleared and the memory of what had happened a few minutes ago washed over her, Lee sat up abruptly. “The mare?” she asked.
“She ees dead. She wass heet twice by the snake—on her chest and then on her throat. There wass no way she survive. She went down after I shot the snake, an’ she never got up again.”
Lee leaned back and wiped the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. Maria moved close again, her face creased with concern.
“You know thees happen, Lee,” she said. “Ees sad, but it happen. The snake keel a good horse an’ then he die himself, with Carlos’s bullets in heem.”
Carlos crouched next to the couch. “Thees mare wass our first snakebite death thees year. Las’ year at thees time we had tres.”
Lee sat up once again, but this time she twisted her legs to the side and put her boots on the floor. The shimmering lights she’d seen in the barn returned for a heartbeat, and then were gone.
“Well,” she said. “Well. Thanks for what you did, Carlos. You saved my life.”
“De nada. I’ll have someone check the barns an’ stalls every day for snakes,” Carlos said. “An’ soon the season weel be over.”
“The men are taking care of the mare?” Lee asked.
“She weel be buried with our other dead animals. They’ve moved her, an’ they’re digging right now.”
Lee stood and wavered the slightest bit for a moment, bringing Maria rushing across the room.
“I’m fine,” Lee assured her. “A little dizzy is all.” She started toward the door, Maria at her side. “I’ll see you after dinner?”
Maria smiled and nodded.
A cloud of whitish smoke drifted from the kitchen as the two women passed its doorway. There was a rich, pleasant aroma to it—almost a nutlike scent. Lee looked at Maria.
Maria smiled. “We waste nothing on the Busted Thumb.”
Lee swallowed hard and tried to banish the image of the skinned rattler in Maria’s pot.
The evening gathering brought in more men than usual, mostly, Lee suspected, because they wanted to make sure she was all right after her run-in with the rattler. Afterward, Lee went to the corral, fetched Dixie, and walked the old horse to the barn to saddle.
Lee knew she couldn’t allow the fear she’d experienced that afternoon to affect how she acted or worked around the ranch. Still, she had to goad herself into entering the barn. The front sliding doors were wide open, and the building seemed to be a crouched animal, its gigantic mouth gaping menacingly. Silly, Lee chided herself as she lit a lantern. She frowned when she noticed her hand trembling as it brought the match to the wick.
But when Lee arrived at her favorite spot for thinking and praying, the silence and purity worked its usual magic on her. She felt the fear slough away from her, lose its grip on her mind. And the earthy perfume of the grass helped sweep away the stench of gun smoke and blood and panic.
Dixie cropped grass contentedly as Lee left the mare ground tied and continued on foot up the rise to the top of the hill. The silence was so deep that the slightest noise Lee made—her boot dislodging a stone or scuffing against an arid patch of dirt—seemed amplified by the vastness of the prairie.
The evening breeze was as light as a mother’s touch on a sleeping infant, barely disturbing Lee’s hair. She sat Indian style, looking across the land—the ranch—that she owned. The horses in the various pastures appeared as brown, black, or white irregularly shaped dots, moving about or standing still, seeming as much a part of the land as the grass they stood upon. Lee could see the light in her kitchen and in Carlos and Maria’s parlor—warm, welcoming, like the smile of a cherished friend.
The full moon rose while Lee’s eyes were closed in prayer. When she opened her eyes, she saw a ghostly, pearl-hued radiance that seemed to come from the ground and rocks rather than from a source impossibly far away in the sky. It was as if the heat and stress of the day had been chased away by a soft light com
ing from the heart of the earth.
Lee rose and brushed the dried grass from her clothing. Someone on horseback, she noticed, was on the trail from the Busted Thumb toward Burnt Rock. The animal was running hard, but the early dew kept a trail of grit from rising into the air. Even though the moonlight was bright, she couldn’t recognize the rider or even the color of the horse.
The image made Lee pause. She’d heard the rumors about the upcoming Harvest Days Festival, about the people who seemed to be descending on Burnt Rock—the type who had no more interest in a festival than they did in studying theology.
Could she and Jonas have foreseen this? No, she didn’t think so. The race was simply a device to show off their stock. Horse farms needed to sell horses to stay in business. The army and ranchers and farmers were the largest group of potential buyers, and advertising to them with a competition that matched the best with the best made good sense.
Even so, she felt she should’ve anticipated the effect the race would have on the town. She’d heard that Ben had fought with a couple of crooked gamblers and chased them out of Burnt Rock—fortunately with no guns involved. And Ben had told her that he’d wired to other jurisdictions, hoping to pick up a few deputies for the duration of the festival. Each marshall he’d contacted had replied the same way: No men available. Those law officers, Ben had told her, were faced with much the same problems he himself faced: insufficient funds to pay personnel, population growth and escalating crime, and drifters and saddle bums moving about the West, bringing bloody trouble with them.
And, of course, it was Ben who had to deal with those violent men—in the streets, in the saloon, and now at the Harvest Days. Lee knew that if Ben were hurt or killed because of what she had set in motion, the grief and the guilt would never leave her.
* * *
5
* * *
The angry crack of two pistol shots and the deep, hollow report of a heavy caliber rifle brought Ben Flood’s chin up from his chest and his heels from the edge of his desk. In an instant, he was outside his office, his eyes sweeping the length of the street.