by Don Bendell
Zack replied, “Wal, I reckon it was acause a old Robin.”
“Robin?” Joshua said, “Robin who?”
Zack said, “Robin, my friend. Tells me a lot a things afore others find out. Robin Redbreast.”
He walked outside while Joshua just shook his head. A few minutes later, Zack walked back into the store. The old man hooked his finger at Strongheart and summoned him out the door. Joshua was puzzled.
He walked outside and spotted Zack standing by the barn and corral, where Gabe was eating hay and enjoying the morning sun. Joshua was once again puzzled by the old man. He walked over to him.
Zack pointed toward Joshua’s knife and said, “Don’t reckon ya ever learnt how ta use thet thing, did ya?”
Joshua chuckled, saying, “Yes, sir. Why?”
Zack pointed at a target he had just nailed to a pole about twenty feet away, near the front of the barn.
“Kin ya throw from here and stick the target?”
Zachariah was very amazed, but would never let on, as the warrior’s arm extended and the knife suddenly seemed to fly from his side and sail quickly through the air, spinning twice and sticking right into the bull’s-eye.
Zack said, “Wal, reckon ya kin. I’m gittin’ me some more coffee. You kin stand out here whittling if ya want.”
He walked quickly back to the store. Joshua again shook his head, laughing, and walked over to pull the knife out of the target. He looked up at the pole above him and noticed the telegraph wire. This was a telegraph pole. Then it hit him. He had asked Zack how he had learned so quickly about his gunfight in Villa Grove. Strongheart was embarrassed and thought about how much he had to learn as a detective. He laughed heartily at himself and at Banta’s antics.
Returning to the store, Joshua poured himself a fresh cup and sat down. “Who knows how to use a key here, Zack?”
Zack took a spoon and tapped two slower hits and one fast one, then said, “Dah, dah. Dit.”
“What’s that spell?” Strongheart said.
“Me.”
They both chuckled and finished their coffee.
Banta got serious, saying, “Heared twicet now thet McMahon put hisself together a ganga young Injun bucks what was slaves with Mexican rancher families down south near New Mexico Territory. These boys banded together and started stealin’, robbin’, and sech as thet. Think they are holed up in Hardscrabble, down southa Florence a few miles, up against the range.”
“You think he put them together to fight me?”
Banta laughed.
Zack said, “Sonny Boy, ole Harlance shore don’t bring no Gatlin’ gun when he comes ta visit mah store, ’cause a fearin’ me. Ya have kilt every one a his gang, which does include his brother. I guarantee ya, they’re aimin’ ta dry-gulch ya.”
“Well, sir,” Joshua said, heading toward the door, “thanks for the coffee, but if they want to dance, I better go and open up the ball.”
Zack’s shouting stopped him. “Son!”
Joshua turned and Zack said, “Reckon ya better keep a good eye ta yer back trail.”
Strongheart winked and went out the door. He brushed Gabriel, saddled up, and headed toward Westcliffe.
A few hours later, Strongheart was having coffee and a sandwich with his new friend Jerome Guy.
“Zachariah Banta is probably the best and most accurate source of information in this whole area, and he was correct,” Jerome said. “Harlance was in here buying drinks for his young gunfighters. I speak Spanish and could overhear what they were saying, yet they had no idea I could understand them. I also heard him say things which I combined with their words. He definitely was taking them to Hardscrabble to train them and prepare them for a big fight with you. I know he bought a lot of ammunition, so they were going to be doing a lot of shooting, presumably to practice. You need to get with the Fremont County sheriff, Frank Bengley, and maybe form a posse. He is a good man.”
Strongheart said, “The sheriff has to have evidence to justify forming a posse. Although you and a few others are credible, he is not going to do anything.”
Guy replied, “Good point. Nonetheless, he needs to know what is going on anyway. That covers you if there is a shooting. My wife Jan is good friends with the sheriff’s wife. She is going to Canon City today, and I will have her carry him a message.”
“Thanks,” Joshua said. “Now I need to know all you can tell me about Hardscrabble, Florence, and the whole area.”
From Jerome Guy, Strongheart learned that when Hardscrabble was originally settled as a trading post by traders from Pueblo in 1844, it was not called Hardscabble. It was originally named San Buenaventura de los Tres Arrollos, which meant “St. Bonaventure of the three windings.” Jerome figured that was because of the winding rocky canyon that Joshua would be riding down toward Hardscrabble, which the locals referred to as Hardscrabble Canyon. The whole area had been inhabited by Kiowa, Cheyenne, and Utes, as well as many French traders, Americans trappers, mountain men, settlers, and Mexican farmers and their families. The local farmers said they changed the name because of all the “hard scrabbling to get in a crop” in the very rocky soil.
Later, after oil was discovered in Florence, and it was such a big find, many oil people came to the town and the surrounding area, including prospectors who figured there might be yellow gold there, too, and not just liquid “black gold.” Since the oil field turned into the second largest and most productive in the United States, the word quickly spread, which brought more people into the area. But Hardscrabble remained pretty much of a shambles of a ghost town.
Joshua wondered if Florence was named for Florence, Italy, as several residents had told him. He found out from Jerome, though, that the little berg, just downstream on the Arkansas River from Canon City, was actually named for the daughter of a local pioneer, James McCandless.
With the information Jerome Guy had given him, Joshua set off east toward distant Pueblo and traveled down the high-cliffed, winding Hardscabble Canyon. Armed with his new facts about the Hardscrabble area, first he would go onto the high ground protected by trees and locate and reconnoiter the gang’s hideout area. Then, he would formulate a plan. He was thinking that maybe, with the sheriff having read the letter Jerome sent with his wife, he might be able to present the lawman with some evidence that would at least get him to thoroughly investigate Harlance and his gang. Joshua was a warrior, and mighty in a stand-up brawl, with a knife, bow, pistol, and long gun, but the last thing he wanted to do was tangle with a gang of seven in a gunfight.
As he rode through the beautiful foothill country east of Westcliffe, the Sangre de Cristos falling away behind him, Joshua wondered what lay before him and what was happening with the beautiful young widow he had made his promise to.
9
The Widow
Annabelle Ebert had been keeping herself busy. Every single day she was hearing about the latest exploits of the tall, handsome half-Sioux, half-white hero who had been championing the cause of finding and returning her ring. When she visualized him riding up and handing her the ring, she would picture being swept into his powerful arms and them kissing. It took her breath away, but she wondered if she was wrong thinking about such a thing.
When she had first arrived in Canon City, she had gotten a room in a small mansion on Macon Avenue, surrounded by high oaks and maples. Needing money, Annabelle went to work in the mansion as a live-in housekeeper and nanny for a very wealthy family who owned oil in Florence and several businesses in downtown Canon City. That became her goal, to eventually open her own business in Canon City, but first she would remember the constant admonition of her father, “Crawl before you walk,” when she would get overly enthused about any new idea or project she was ready to undertake.
For right now, she was working hard and taking other jobs as well to earn as much as she could.
Annabelle had grown up in the Finger Lakes region of New York. Her father had been an industrialist in New York City, made a fortune, and moved
to Canandaigua, New York. It was a beautiful area, with tough winters and magnificent woods and waters. The town actually had been the primary residence of the Seneca when the white men came and started settling the East. The Finger Lakes were several very large wooded lakes in upper west-central New York State, the home of hardy people. In fact, at the same time Annabelle was cleaning the mansion in Canon City, suffragist Susan B. Anthony was in the Ontario County courthouse in Canandaigua being ordered to pay a $100 fine, which the women’s rights advocate refused to pay and never would.
Annabelle was a very tough-minded person herself. When Joshua Strongheart saw the tear in her eye on the stage, it was very unusual, but she had been at the end of her rope. After moving, her father had made several large investments in the area and lost heavily. Then he started making more risky investments, trying to recoup or make up for his previous losses, which only made matters worse.
The long and the short of it was that Annabelle’s family had gone from being wealthy to struggling for every penny by the time she fell in love and got married. Then, when her husband died, she was left with nothing but a very small amount of money.
Annabelle, however, viewed all this as in part good fortune, as she had developed a real toughness emotionally and physically, as well as an incredible work ethic growing up. She knew she would be successful someday, another husband or not, and she had now made her mind up that with God’s help, she would do it on her own. In short, she was a survivor. On the other hand, she did not like being alone, and a part of her hoped she would fall in love again and marry someone whom she could spend out her days with.
A good example of her survivor skills came shortly after she moved to Canon City and started working at the mansion. She had gone into town for supplies, and her long black hair and piercing blue eyes made many men take notice, but one day she caught the eye of a beast who had come to town to trade some furs and buy supplies.
Bear Borgadine was quite simply a man of enormous dimension. He could move any rock that was not larger than himself, and reach tree branches that others could not even touch, and break off most of those with his cantaloupe-sized hands. Garbed in a massive suit of animal armor, the fur-clad mountain man spent all his time in the Sangre de Cristo, Collegiate, and San Juan Mountains, always out of sight from man. Each fall, though, he would end his trapping and start looking for winter quarters, and every fall he would find some prospector high up in the mountains and kill the man for his cabin. In the springtime, Bear was on his way.
It was such a fall day, after dispatching a longtime hermit, that he went down below to prepare for a long winter and spotted Trish Garman, a beautiful blond young woman who was the youngest offspring of the Garman clan, with nine older brothers, each a cold-blooded hard-core outlaw. If not a killer yet, each of the brothers was galloping in that direction.
Bear had made his once-in-a-year trip for supplies to the small town of Poncha Springs and was returning to the Big Range, when he happened on the beautiful Trish. He decided he wanted her as a prize to have during his long winter stay, knowing he would get rid of her once the snows were gone and he was ready to start traveling and trapping again.
He laid a trap for her on the river road, along the churning Arkansas River, west of Cotopaxi, as she returned home from a shopping trip at Colorado City. Having captured the beauty, Bear took her with him to his cabin high up in the Collegiate range, where she became his virtual slave.
This man was half-animal in his thinking and instincts anyway and did not care that she was the sister of outlaws, or that she was innocent herself. She was simply a new object he wanted, and he had gotten everything he wanted by sheer force and intimidation his whole life. Much as Big Scars Cullen had, except Cullen needed to be led. Bear Borgadine was a loner and did whatever he wanted.
The outlaw family searched high and low for Trish, but because of their high-profile status, they did not want to enlist the aid of others, especially the law. They figured they were so dominant in numbers and toughness that they would be able to find their sister and string up the hombre that took her. But they finally had to give up their search.
Bear did not get his nickname for no reason. Every winter he almost went into hibernation. He spent a good deal of time in the summer and late fall preparing his alpine cabin for this winter seclusion. He jerked meat, shot game, cut firewood, took in supplies, set up his winter trapline, and usually kidnapped one or two tribal women to spend the winter with him. Then in the spring he would kill them and get rid of the body, usually just stuffing it under rocks. That is what he did with Trish Garman. He liked having a white woman so he could have some conversations over the winter.
When he spotted the ravishing, raven-haired, blue-eyed Annabelle, he knew he had his target for the upcoming winter.
Annabelle went to several different stores that day, thinking often about Strongheart, who was at that time on his way to Oregon. She, as mentioned, was indeed a survivor, so she was very aware of her surroundings, especially people. Annabelle was used to men staring at her and took that in stride, never taking herself too seriously, but the giant of a man following her around downtown Canon City was very obvious. Her mind started working on how to handle the situation.
Walking quickly down toward Old Max, the territorial prison that could be found at the west end of Main Street, Annabelle checked behind her occasionally. She saw that the big fur-covered man was still following her. She concluded that if he did not have evil plans, he would simply have approached her. So, she reasoned, he must be up to no good.
Going into the livery stable and blacksmith shop, she wanted to try to solve this on her own if she could, without enlisting the aid of any men. It was not defensiveness or an overinflated ego on the part of the young lady. She was actually being thoughtful and considerate. Annabelle knew the farrier, also a large and muscular man, but very kind and a true gentleman, seemingly very devoted to his wife, who ran a laundry down the street. She figured if she talked to him, then the beast following her would maybe stay back when he saw the size of the blacksmith. The other possibility would be the blacksmith or another man getting into a fight on her behalf. She did not want that.
Annabelle greeted the blacksmith and started asking him questions about shoeing her horse, which she already knew the answers to. She was killing time, so she could think.
She had already decided that she was not going back to the mansion that day, which was a quarter mile away anyway, with several alleyways and empty lots in between. She did not want the behemoth to know where she lived. Further, Annabelle did not want to needlessly expose any innocent man to danger, such as the blacksmith, who would surely go confront the large mountain man on her behalf. Annabelle could sense that the stranger following her was pure evil.
She asked the blacksmith if he would rent her a horse, and he said absolutely. He saddled it while they spoke, and she noticed that the big bear of a man remained across the street lounging in a rocking chair a business owner had set out for his own comfort. The merchant certainly saw the big man through his shop window, but he was not going to approach such a rough-looking monster of a man. This intimidation factor had allowed Bear to function for decades in any manner he chose, but it was not going to work with Annabelle, especially after what had happened on the stage.
When the horse was saddled, she asked if the blacksmith could let her borrow some saddlebags as well. He did so, and she put her shopping items inside them, letting him think she was tired, had more errands to run, and did not want to walk her legs into the ground. In actuality, she normally loved walking into and around town. There was a lot of traffic, especially horse traffic, in Canon City, and there was a bridge not too far away, called simply the Fourth Street Bridge.
She had also noticed earlier that the big bear man had a large draft horse, a Percheron, that he rode, and it was tied at a hitching rail in front of a tavern. Further she knew that he would be able to see her from many spots on Main Street ri
ding across the Fourth Street Bridge, which she wanted to do.
She mounted up and almost trotted out of the livery stable, turning and heading toward Fourth Street, where she turned toward the river. She carefully looked back and saw her husky pursuer scrambling down the street toward his own horse. As she crossed the bridge, one glance back told her that the man was almost to his horse. When she got to the other side of the bridge and was now out of sight of downtown, she put the horse into a fast trot. She knew that if she galloped, her horse would leave obvious tracks mixed with all the other horses that had passed that way. But if she trotted, the tracks her horse left would not be as obvious. There was a lot more vegetation closer to the river, and at one point where there were a lot of bushes and trees, she carefully picked a spot, put her arm across her face, and turned her horse into the foliage. Once out of sight, she dismounted, walked him a short distance in the woods, and tied him to a tree. She then made her way back to Fourth Street and crawled forward to where she was well hidden but could see the hard-packed road heading south of town.
Annabelle waited anxious minutes until she heard the big horse approaching. She almost held her breath, as the big man and his draft horse rode by. After he passed, she crawled forward and watched until he rode to the hill a quarter mile south and the road then turned to the left and up onto a hill above town called Prospect Heights. Once he was out of sight, she returned to her horse, led him out of the undergrowth, and galloped back to town, constantly checking behind her. She galloped and trotted the horse all the way to the mansion, which was north and east of where she’d been at Fourth Street. Once there, she walked the horse around outside the stable, letting him cool down and constantly watching to the south to insure that the hairy giant did not reappear. Bear did not. He was already well south of town, trying to pick up her trail.