The Independence Trail

by Lyle Brandt

  * * *

  * * *

  It came to Nehemiah Wolford over supper, reaching nearly four years back through time to where and when he’d seen the new man in their midst.

  It was in St. George, Utah, named for one of twelve apostles in the Mormon Church and its first counselor to “President” Brigham Young at the time. Wolford had been working on a spread outside of town, dispatched one market day to help retrieve supplies and see them safely back to what his boss called Deseret Acres. Mormons were down on alcohol, but there were still saloons around, equipped with “Zion curtains” screening bartenders from customers who ordered drinks.

  The theory, as Wolford understood it, was to cut down heavy drinking by concealing alcohol in kegs and bottles from the people who were swilling it a few feet away, bellied up against the bar. That didn’t stop them getting drunk but made church elders feel like they were “doing something” to combat the scourge of Demon Rum.

  That afternoon, a Saturday, two men had started quarreling while Wolford sipped the one whiskey per week that he allowed himself, standing some twenty feet away from them. One of the men was larger by a head or more and grabbed his adversary by the neck before he stiffened, cried aloud with pain, and slumped against the bar. That was the first time Wolford saw the other fellow’s face, a glimpse before he fled the barroom, and the main impression Nehemiah had of him was bright blood dripping from the long blade of his knife.

  He’d never learned the stabber’s name, but now, allowing for the forty-odd months lying in between that day and this, he made it sixty–forty that the stranger with the pigsticker had been none other than Jay Fielding in the flesh.

  And so what, if it was?

  The man he’d cut survived, as Wolford later heard it told, while Fielding—nameless at the time—escaped across the border to Nevada and was never seen again in Mormon Land, as far as Nehemiah knew.

  Now that he’d worked it out, or thought he had, what should he do?

  The first and likely best idea was nothing. Knifing someone in a fight four years ago, and some eleven hundred miles from where the Bar X herd was bedding down tonight, was hardly news, particularly when the fellow being sliced had seemed to start the trouble and he hadn’t even died.

  But how would Wolford’s conscience handle that, withholding it from Mr. Mossman and the rest of them?

  Or would he make things worse by spilling what Jay Fielding might prefer to keep a secret, maybe costing him his short-term job with the Bar X? In that case, would it mark him—Wolford—as a tattler, undeserving of his fellow cowhands’ trust?

  That left a third option, namely, to speak with Fielding privately, disclose his knowledge where nobody else could overhear, and tell the new man that he didn’t plan to tell tales out of school.

  On balance, that seemed best to Wolford, and he had the perfect time in mind for doing it.

  Tonight, when they shared second watch with Luis Chávez.

  That, he thought, should get it done and off his mind at last.

  * * *

  * * *

  Jed Findlay drifted past the camp’s chuck wagon on his dun, taking his time. The light from a full moon let him consult his stolen pocket watch—the one with “Happy Anniversary, David” engraved across the inside of its hinged cover—confirming that his shift still had two hours more to run.

  Tonight, he’d made his mind up as to how he’d signal Longwood’s rustling crew when it was time. Once he had worked that out, he saw no obstacles to handling it.

  Just then, he spotted Nehemiah Wolford riding toward him from the north, approaching at an angle that would briefly put them side by side.

  Speaking of obstacles, Jed thought, and plastered on a smile with just the right proportion of affability and weariness combined.

  “Slow night,” Wolford observed, when he was near enough to speak without raising his voice.

  “The way I like it,” Findlay said.

  “I hear that.” Wolford cleared his throat, then asked, “You holding up all right so far, with the Bar X?”

  “You make the second man tonight who’s asked me that. The foreman send you over here?”

  “Tippit? I lost track of him after supper.”

  “He’s around here somewhere,” Fielding answered. “Checking up.”

  “I’ll keep an eye out, then.” A moment’s hesitation, then, “There’s something that I need to ask you.”

  “Need to? That’s a cut above ‘want to,’ I guess.”

  Ignoring that, Wolford came out with it. “You ever been to Utah, Jay?”

  And there it was, the start of it at least.

  “I might have,” Findlay answered, noncommittal. “Maybe more than once.”

  “This would’ve been four years ago, the early spring. St. George, to pin it down more.”

  Nodding slowly, Findlay said, “That rings a bell.”

  “Place called the Seagull, a saloon, named for the birds some Mormons claim rescued their crops from grasshoppers in ’47, sent by God.”

  “I would’ve just turned six years old,” Findlay replied. “And I’m not Mormon.”

  Wolford swallowed. Replied, “I think you take my meaning.”

  “Do I?” Findlay eased his dun closer to Nehemiah’s grulla mare, sliding his right hand slowly toward the knife handle protruding from his boot.

  Ignoring Jed’s response, Wolford said, “I just want to tell you I remember where I saw you, four years back. It’s your business and I don’t aim to tell a soul.”

  “I can appreciate that,” said Findlay. “And you’re right.”

  “Right about what?”

  Jed knew where Chávez was, nearly a hundred yards away, and didn’t have to think about it twice. He drew his Arkansas toothpick and jammed its blade up under Wolford’s chin, keeping the pressure on until its tip butted against the inside of his fellow drover’s skull.

  One twist, and Findlay saw the light go out of Wolford’s eyes, his body going slack. He might have toppled from the saddle as Findlay withdrew his dripping blade, but Jed used his left hand to brace the corpse, keep it astride his mount.

  That wouldn’t last, but he could keep the body balanced long enough to lead the grulla mare away, trailing his dun, until they’d reached a point two hundred fifty yards beyond the nearest longhorns, say three hundred from the camp and chuck wagon. A gentle shove, then toppled Nehemiah to the ground and let his animal roam free.

  Now all Jed had to do was go about his normal rounds and wait.

  * * *

  * * *

  Art Catlin had the graveyard shift, with Job Hooper and Mike Limbaugh. That meant he’d slept the better part of six hours and would be riding herd until the first pale light of dawn before breakfast.

  Not all that bad, once you got used to it.

  Tonight, though—or call it this morning—he was looking at another problem from the start.

  Three men rode out to the relief of three coworkers, same as always, but this time, as on the night when Julius Pryor disappeared, they came up one man short.

  Art saw Hooper hook up with Jay Fielding, and Limbaugh with Chávez—but where in hell was Wolford?

  Nowhere to be seen.

  “This shit again?” Hooper called out to Art, across a group of longhorns acting grumpy as their sleep was interrupted.

  “I’ll start looking for him,” Catlin said. “You’d better tell the boss.”

  And what he thought was, Damn. At least it wasn’t on my watch this time.

  It took twenty minutes, while more drovers were turned out, before Art spotted Wolford’s grulla by moonlight. The mare was cropping grass, no rider on her back or anywhere nearby that Catlin could detect.

  A cowboy answering a midnight call of nature should be near his horse, maybe holding its reins, depending on what
kind of hurry call it was. In this case, though . . .

  His roan caught up to Nehemiah’s mount, which didn’t shy away or seem at all skittish. When he was near enough to lean across and take the grulla’s reins, Art spotted dark smears on the empty saddle, nearly black under the moon, that looked and smelled like blood.

  Catlin cursed, then put two fingers in his mouth and whistled for the other cowboys who were circling around the herd, trying to find their missing coworker. Wherever Wolford was, it looked to Art as if he was beyond saving by now.

  “Tell me,” Bliss Mossman ordered as he rode up to the scene, with Sterling Tippit trailing him a few yards back.

  With nothing much to tell, Art let the men in charge examine Wolford’s animal, circling around it slowly on their own.

  “This how you found her, then?” asked Mossman.

  “Yes, sir. Still no sign of Nehemiah but the blood. I didn’t want to leave it standing here or lead it off before you had a chance to check the ground for signs.”

  “Good thinking,” Mossman granted. Then, to Tippit, “Better fetch back Fielding and Chávez. We need to question them, first thing.”

  At least, Art thought, we know he didn’t run away.

  But this was even worse.

  Unless he missed his guess, this meant murder.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Thursday, June 5

  During the search that followed, Catlin hoped he wouldn’t be the one to find Wolford, and as it turned out, he was not.

  That fell to Jaime Reyes, whom they found sitting astride a dapple gray from the remuda rather than his own usual mare, and pointing to a body on the ground when others rallied to his shout. Bliss Mossman told the rest to stay aboard their animals while he dismounted, circling all around the corpse, making a futile search for clues.

  “Murder,” he said at last, confirming what his men could plainly see by lantern light.

  Someone had stabbed Wolford beneath his chin, a straight thrust through his soft palate into his brain, which had released the blood discovered on his grulla’s saddle and a lot more besides, turning his checkered shirt and denim pants a crusty brown from neck to thighs as it dried out.

  As Mr. Mossman straightened up from bending over Nehemiah, everyone around the ring of mounted spectators was peering at the other Bar X hands with quick, suspicious eyes. It didn’t take a genius to see that most of them wore knives sheathed on their belts or in their boot tops, where they could be reached in haste to cope with an emergency. Catlin was one of three or four who didn’t, but he kept a folder in his pocket, even its blade long enough to be responsible for Wolford’s fatal wound.

  Off to Art’s left, halfway around the circle, Mike Limbaugh muttered, “Damn! It must be one of us.”

  “Hold on, now,” Sterling Tippit interjected. “We don’t know that. There could be another explanation.”

  “So, what is it?” asked Linton McCormick.

  “Someone from outside,” Tippit answered. “It wouldn’t be the first time we were snuck up on.”

  No doubt he meant to help, calming things down, but Mr. Mossman soon established that the other men on watch admitted seeing no one, and the same was true for their replacements. Group suspicion naturally zeroed in from there on Catlin and Fielding, presumed to be the nearest hands to Wolford when he’d died.

  Art understood that natural impulse. He knew damned well that he had played no part in Nehemiah’s death, nor could he think of any reason why the new man on their team, only three nights in camp so far, would have a killing grudge against a victim he had never met before.

  “I hate this, boys,” said Mossman. “But I need to see your knives and hands. We’ll start with Art and Jay, then check the rest of you.”

  That raised a growling round of protest, most drovers insisting that they’d been asleep, but all that proved was that no individual could vouch for anybody else. Sleepers could describe whose bedrolls had been close to theirs but couldn’t swear that someone hadn’t lain and feigned snoring until he had a chance to rise and slip away.

  “Let’s get this done,” said Catlin, digging in a pocket for his folding knife, a lock-back model with a four-inch blade, and passed it down to Sterling Tippit’s waiting hand. Piney Rollins stepped up and held his lantern close while Tippit and Mossman examined it, first opening the blade, then peering closely at the wooden handle and its groove in search of bloodstains. Finally, they did the same for Catlin’s hands and gave him back the knife.

  Fielding in turn produced his wicked-looking Arkansas toothpick, provoking whispers from a couple of the other cowboys, but once again, their foreman found no telltale stains on blade or hands.

  From there, it went around the circle, no one daring to protest the search for fear of seeming guilty. Only Linton McCormick had no knife at all, claiming he’d never owned one, and none of the other Bar X men remembered seeing him with one in hand except at mealtimes. Finally, to keep things on the up-and-up, Mossman and Tippit checked each other’s hands and knives under close scrutiny from thirteen other pairs of eyes.

  “All right, now,” Mossman said, when they were done. “We found nothing, which proves nothing. I won’t be pointing any fingers, but I need to hear from anyone who wants to stop the drive here while we fetch the county sheriff to investigate.”

  “Who’d go to get him?” Guenther asked.

  “I’d pick someone,” Mossman replied, “or we could choose by casting lots.”

  “It makes no difference,” Bryce Zimmerman chimed in. “Suppose we pick the killer and he just rides off without bringing the law? We could sit here till doomsday waiting for ’em.”

  “Could happen,” Mossman granted. “The alternative is planting Wolford at first light and moving on ourselves.”

  “But what about the killer?” asked Job Hooper.

  “All that I can say is keep your eyes peeled,” Mossman answered back. “Be on your guard, but not so jumpy that you shoot whatever moves before you know what’s happening.”

  More muttering at that, but no one had a viable alternative. After he’d let a minute pass, Mossman said, “Okay, then. You men on watch, stick to your schedules for the time that’s left tonight. Wrap Wolford in a tarp for now. We’ll bury him soon as the sun comes up.”

  * * *

  * * *

  And so it was.

  Catlin managed an hour’s troubled sleep and rose weary at daybreak with the other Bar X hands. Their funeral for Nehemiah Wolford took the best part of an hour, from turning the first spade full of sod to covering the hole and tamping down the turf that covered it.

  Bliss Mossman kept his reading from the Good Book short and to the point, a verse from Genesis: “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made He man.”

  The gist of that was clear enough, but Catlin wound up wondering if that made God a murderer, Himself. In fact, according to Scripture, who else had killed as many men, women, and children throughout human history—the whole at one sitting, back in ancient times, except for Noah and his brood, who’d turned out to be sinners just like those whom the Almighty didn’t spare?

  That was too much for Art to think about with little sleep and worry on his mind. He managed to eat breakfast without really tasting it, and then got saddled up to face another day out on the trail.

  A brooding aura of suspicion hung over the drive as it proceeded, with the longhorns seeming slower than the men in charge of them had grown accustomed to over the seven weeks and counting since they’d started out from Santa Fe. It was ridiculous, Art realized, but if you watched the steers closely this morning, some of them seemed to be rolling anxious eyes to watch the mounted drovers, as if fearful one of them would snap and run amok.

  But if that feeling came directly from Catlin’s imagination, such was not the case among his fellow cowboys. Few sha
red any conversation as the day wore on, and what cross talk there was centered around who might have murdered Nehemiah Wolford, what the killer’s motive was, and if he might decide to strike again.

  Art wondered when the small cracks in their unified façade would start to widen, drovers dropping out, preferring to forgo their pay rather than be the next man on the unknown slayer’s chopping block.

  And worse yet, when would mounting fear provoke a violent outburst in their ranks?

  * * *

  * * *

  Bliss Mossman had moved on from wondering if this year’s drive was somehow jinxed. With last night’s murder added to the list of things that had gone badly wrong so far, how could he doubt it?

  In his years of herding cattle—first for other ranchers, then on his own account for the Bar X—he’d never seen or heard of anybody being murdered by a fellow ranch hand on a cattle drive. The closest he had ever come to something similar, going on sixteen years ago, had been a quarrel between drunken cowboys that ended with gunplay, both men wounded, neither of them fatally.

  But this was something else entirely, Mossman realized. Someone—more than likely one of his own men—had gotten close enough by means of guile that he could plunge a blade through Nehemiah Wolford’s throat into his skull. It was a sly and treacherous attack that reeked of enmity that Mossman couldn’t understand.

  Wolford had worked at the Bar X for going on four years. In all that time, Mossman had never seen him quarrel with anyone among the other hands or when they rode to Santa Fe. He’d made no enemies during the present drive, as far as Mossman knew, and had participated in no squabbles, even of the minor, soon forgotten kind.

  That said, his murder had been calculated, cold, deliberate. It could not have been accidental, nor an act committed in the heat of passion spawned by argument, since someone else in camp would have been roused by shouting or a cry of mortal pain.

  But, wait. Could Wolford even make a sound once his assassin plunged a blade under his chin and stilled his tongue forever? Did the killer’s method speak to a desire for secrecy? And if that were the case, why was the body dumped where anyone might find it, once they started scouring the prairie for a missing drover?