If that ain’t something, she thought. The ol’ bastard riding with the law.
She heard the lawman tell Beauchamp that he was going to scout around the hills surrounding the ranch house to see if there was any sign of anyone hiding out there.
“I appreciate your help, Sheriff,” Beauchamp said. “You sure you don’t want some coffee or something to eat before you ride back to town?”
“No, sir,” Toby replied. “I’ll go ahead and take a look around before it starts to get too dark.”
“You best be careful, Sheriff,” Beauchamp advised. “And you’d better shoot on sight if you do see him.”
He stood there for a few moments after Toby loped off to the low line of hills to the east of Blackjack Mountain. When he disappeared Beauchamp turned and peered toward the barn, expecting Fuzzy to come to take care of his horse. When he still did not come, Beauchamp yelled for him, his patience already taxed.
“Fuzzy!” he yelled again with the same results. Then he turned when he heard the door open behind him, and Lena walked out on the porch. “Where is he?” Beauchamp demanded.
“I don’t know,” Lena answered frankly, and waited for the explosion.
“That lazy son of a bitch!” Beauchamp roared. “I’ve got a good mind to put a bullet in his worthless hide!” Taking the reins, he stalked down to the barn, leading his horse, to search Fuzzy out. On the way, his eye caught the two rotten boards in the side of the barn. “He still hasn’t replaced those boards like I told him to,” he roared loud enough for Lena to hear it back on the porch. It brought a smile to her face that quickly left when she realized that he would probably take out his anger on her. She went back into her kitchen to put the potatoes, which she had peeled and sliced after picking them up from the floor, on the stove to fry. That thought brought back the image that had been framed in her kitchen door earlier, and she found herself wishing he would return.
After storming through the barn and the bunkhouse, yelling for Fuzzy, he finally realized what had actually happened: He had gone for good. That threatened to push his anger out of control. He stalked out of the barn, but stopped at the door when he realized that he should pull the saddle off his horse and turn it out in the corral. He couldn’t remember the last time he had taken care of his horse. He thought about sending Lena back down there to do it, but decided she might mess up his supper if he did. Mumbling profanity to himself, he went back and took care of the horse.
As he was walking back to the house, it suddenly struck him how ghostlike the place had become since it was now deserted. He blamed the fix he now found himself in on the incompetence of the men he had hired to work for him. And now, thanks to their incompetence, he was left with a ranch unattended and a gunman that might even now be coming for him.
“Well, he’ll find he’s not dealing with some brainless hired gun, if he tries to come after me,” he muttered. “I’ll shoot him as soon as he sets foot on this property.” There were any number of men working his mine who would be glad to work on top of the ground for a change, he thought. He would have a working crew inside a week. “Damn that worthless bastard,” he exclaimed when he thought of Fuzzy again.
Inside the kitchen, Lena heard him coming back, talking to himself as he stepped up on the kitchen steps. She instinctively went to the other side of the stove to keep it between them, hoping he would concentrate his anger on Fuzzy, now that he was gone, and ignore her. When he walked in the door, the look on his face told her of the rage burning inside him, and she immediately feared he might decide to release it on her.
“I’ll have you some supper in just a little while,” she said, hoping to defuse his rage, “just as soon as these potatoes are done.”
He stared at her as if he was surprised to see her there. His eyes, dark under heavy black eyebrows, seemed to lash out at her, accusingly. “Why didn’t you stop him?”
“Hell, how could I stop him?” Lena replied. “He didn’t tell me he was going. He just packed up his things and left. There was no way I coulda stopped him.”
“You should have shot him,” Beauchamp said, meaning it. “He’s left you with a lot of chores. You’re gonna have to look after the stock until I hire on some help.”
“Look after the stock?” she responded in disbelief. “Who’s gonna do the cooking and cleaning—you?”
“I expect you’ll do it, if you know what’s good for you.”
“The hell I will,” she fired back, having been pushed beyond her patience. “You’re crazy if you think I can run this whole ranch and your house, too.”
Infuriated by her gall to back-talk him, he stormed around the stove, catching her arm before she was quick enough to escape him.
“You call me crazy? You dumb Indian bitch! I bought you, just like I bought everything else on this place. If I hitch you up to a wagon, you’ll pull it and keep your mouth shut about it.”
“I’ll bet you don’t even know how to hitch up a wagon,” she replied, her anger swelling to meet his. It was the wrong thing to say. It only caused him to explode.
“Damn you!” he shouted, and struck her in the face with his fist, holding her arm as she fell to her knees. Then he struck her again. The sight of her blood oozing from her nose and lip seemed to cause him to want to see more, as he took his anger out on her. The only thing that stopped the merciless beating he was set on administering was a loud knock on the kitchen door. He paused, caught in his insane rage, confused for a moment until he realized what the sound had been. Recovering somewhat then, he dropped the helpless woman to the floor, pulled the revolver from his coat pocket, and went to the door. “Who is it?” he asked.
“It’s me, Toby Bryan,” the answer came back.
Beauchamp forced himself to recover. “Oh, Sheriff,” he managed calmly, and opened the door partially.
“I just wanted to tell you that I took a pretty good look around the place, and there ain’t no sign of anybody. You want me to stay on till mornin’?”
“No,” Beauchamp said, still with the door halfway open. “I think I’ll be all right. I want to thank you for helping me, though. I’d invite you in for supper, but my cook has taken ill, so I guess that’s all I’ll trouble you tonight.”
“All right, then, if you’re sure. I reckon I’ll ride on back to town,” Toby told him.
The door closed, but not before he got a glimpse of the woman lying on the floor by the stove. Undecided whether or not he should say anything about it, he hesitated for a few moments, but then chose to call it none of his business. Beauchamp had said she was sick. Maybe she was. He stepped up into the saddle and headed back to town, thinking he had scouted the hills around the place thoroughly. He had not thought it necessary to search the barn, since Beauchamp had been there to take care of his horse. Both men were unaware of the determined executioner who had cautiously made his way into the back of the barn a short time after Beauchamp went to the house.
Beauchamp stood at the closed door, listening for the sound of Toby’s horse departing. When he heard it, he put his pistol back in his pocket and turned in time to emit a sickening grunt as the long butcher knife plunged into his gut. Horrified, he reached instinctively for the woman glaring at him in vengeful hatred, her face a bloody mask. She backed out of his reach, watching him intently as he stared down at the knife, driven with such hateful force that it was in almost up to the handle. He reached down to pull it out, only to scream out in pain when he gripped it. His eyes wide with shock, he staggered toward her, reaching out for her. She continued backing away until she reached the corner of the stove and waited. Step by painful step, he advanced until she was almost within his reach. Just then remembering the revolver in his coat pocket, he fumbled to pull it out. Before he could free it from his pocket, she grabbed the iron skillet from the stove and slammed it against the side of his face, knocking him to the floor.
With the butcher knife
still protruding from his stomach, he struggled to get to his feet. He managed to make it to his knees before receiving another blow with the hot skillet, this time leaving him unconscious amid a scattering of half-done potatoes. Unwilling to take any chance that he might survive, Lena reached down with her left hand, her right now throbbing with the severe burn from the handle of the skillet, and pulled the knife from his stomach. Then she opened his throat with it. As an afterthought, she used the knife again to scalp him and, in a vengeful euphoria, sang out a Ute war cry.
The sounds coming from the house left Joel uncertain as to what was going on inside. The scream he had heard had come from a man. Of that, he was certain, but the high-pitched howl that followed sounded as if coming from a woman. Without knowing what he might find confronting him, he opened the door, ready to fire. What he found, he was not expecting. The woman, battered and bloody, stared at him, seeming not to see him. She still held the butcher knife in her hand. He looked from her to the body lying still on the floor. There was no need to ask what had happened.
“I guess I did the job you came to do,” she said when she finally seemed to return to the present.
“I reckon you did,” he replied. “Are you all right?”
Realizing then that she was still holding the knife, she tossed it to land beside Beauchamp’s body. “Yes,” she answered with a sigh. “I’m a lot all right now.”
“Looks like you took a pretty good whippin’. Maybe I can help you clean your face up a little.”
“First thing I wanna do is put some lard on my hand,” she said. “It burns like hell, but I didn’t have time to grab a cloth.”
“I’ll help you. Just tell me where you keep it,” he offered. It was an odd time to think of it, but her remark caused him to recall when a young Shoshoni girl warned him about picking up a hot metal cup of coffee before it cooled.
“Have you got a place to go?” he asked her as he cleaned the blood from her face, after having wrapped her burned hand. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea for you to stay here, ’cause the law’s bound to show up here sooner or later.”
“No, I don’t have any place to go,” she said, “but it doesn’t matter. I’ll make out on my own.”
“I think it would be best if you came with me. I’ll take you someplace safe while this all blows over.”
“All right,” she said, without asking where. Anywhere away from this place of long suffering was all right with her, and she sensed that she would be safe with him.
• • •
The glimpse of the Indian woman lying on the floor in Beauchamp’s kitchen had continued to work on Toby Bryan’s conscience after he returned to town. He intended to take his responsibility as sheriff seriously, even though he was only temporarily in the position. She was only an Indian, but Toby couldn’t help feeling guilty about not going inside the kitchen to see what was going on. So the next morning, he went by the post office to let Jonah Newberry know he was going to take a ride out to Blackjack Mountain to see if there was any sign of Joel McAllister. As he approached the barnyard of Ronald Beauchamp’s ranch, he saw no evidence of anyone stirring. In the smaller corral behind the barn, the milk cow stood waiting to be milked and a few beef cattle had strayed into the yard. He saw no smoke coming from the chimney at the house. The whole place seemed to still be asleep.
He pulled up to the front porch, dismounted, and knocked on the porch floor, then stood waiting, but there was no response from inside. He stepped up on the porch then and went to the front door. After knocking several times hard enough for anyone inside to hear, he tried the door and found it unbarred, so he went inside. Standing just inside the door, he called out to see if anyone was there. There was no response to his call, so he walked cautiously down the hall to the kitchen, and was stopped cold by the sight of the body lying near the stove.
Beauchamp! The discovery stunned him. McAllister had gotten to him after all. Beauchamp had not been lying when he said his life was in danger.
Feeling a sudden need for fresh air, Toby walked to the back door and opened it. His hand dropped immediately to the handle of the .44 Colt he wore when he saw a rider coming across the barnyard toward the house. He backed away from the door so he wouldn’t be seen—just a couple of steps so that he could continue to watch the rider. A little closer and he recognized the man. It wasn’t McAllister, it was Fuzzy Chapman, Beauchamp’s bunkhouse cook. Toby backed away from the door.
Fuzzy stepped up to the door and knocked on the jamb. When there was no response, he called out, “Lena, you in there? It’s me, Fuzzy.”
Toby stepped forward then. “Step inside, Fuzzy. Lena ain’t here.”
Surprised, Fuzzy nevertheless did as he was told. “I was wonderin’ whose horse that was out front,” he said when he saw Toby. He was about to say more, but he saw the body and drew back in shock. “Where’s Lena?”
“She’s gone,” Toby said. “I thought you were gone, too.”
“I was,” Fuzzy said. “But I got to thinkin’ about how I shouldn’ta run off and left that poor woman to deal with that bastard, so I turned around and came back to help her.” He walked over to take a closer look at the corpse. “He don’t look no sweeter dead than he did alive, does he?” He backed up a step then and straightened. “So she finally done it.” He looked up at a still-puzzled sheriff and chuckled. “Laid him out among the taters, didn’t she? I swear, she finally done it. Looks like she drove that knife plumb through him. Good for her! I’da done the same thing, as long as that son of a bitch beat on that poor woman.” He looked up from the corpse. “You say she’s gone? Wonder where. What are you doin’ out here, Toby?”
“I’m the new sheriff,” Toby, said, and pulled his coat aside to show his badge. “We let Jim Crowder go. Beauchamp thought Joel McAllister was out to kill him, and wanted me to look into it.”
“Ha!” Fuzzy snorted. “It’s the other way around, don’t you mean? Beauchamp’s been tryin’ to kill McAllister ever since he showed up here. Only trouble is, Joel McAllister was more bear than any of those no-good gunslingers Beauchamp kept sendin’ up on that mountain to kill him.”
Toby was dumbstruck for a few moments by Fuzzy’s accusations. “Do you know what you’re talkin’ about? You tellin’ me that McAllister wasn’t doin’ the rustlin’ and killin’—it was the other way around?”
“That’s the God’s honest truth about it. Beauchamp was out to get McAllister’s claim, and he didn’t care how he got it done. I shoulda told somebody about it before, but there weren’t nobody to tell but Jim Crowder, and that woulda been the same as tellin’ Beauchamp himself.”
“Why the hell didn’t you go tell Jonah Newberry, or Marvin Thompson, or me?” Toby asked.
“Scared,” Fuzzy replied. “My life wouldn’ta been worth spit. He’da had Mike Strong kill me in a second.”
“Ronald Beauchamp,” Toby pronounced, still astonished at this unexpected turn of events. “It’s hard to believe he could do what you’re sayin’.”
“Well, ain’t it kinda funny that there ain’t been nobody killed anywhere on Beauchamp’s property? If you go lookin’ for bodies, they’re all on McAllister property, includin’ Boone McAllister and his woman, and the woman and child that came with his brother. I swear, I can’t paint you no clearer picture than that.”
“It’s hard to argue with that,” Toby confessed. “I guess I’ll go on back to town and give the council the news. They’re gonna find it as hard to believe as I did. I don’t know if there’s anything anybody will wanna do about it—don’t know if there’s anything we can do about it.” He felt he should do something, but he didn’t know what. “I reckon we oughta bury Beauchamp. What are you gonna do now? You stayin’ here for a while?”
“Might as well,” Fuzzy said. “Ain’t got no place else to go.”
“I need to get on back to town. How ’bout you buryin’ him? Woul
d you mind?”
“It’d give me great pleasure,” Fuzzy replied grandly.
Chapter 17
Red Shirt was sitting in his tipi when he heard some young boys shouting Joel’s name. “Jo,” they called out, having shortened it. “Jo is back!” they alerted the village. Red Shirt put aside the pipe he had been making and hurried outside to greet his friend. He was surprised to see a woman following him on a second horse. Eager to hear the story, he ran to the center of the circle of lodges to meet him. When he got there, he saw that Walking Eagle and Crooked Arrow, along with many others, had come to greet Joel as well. They stood waiting while the horses walked up from the stream. As they came closer, there arose gentle murmurings among the gathering when they saw the bruised and battered face of the woman.
Walking Eagle was the first to speak. “I see the white warrior has returned,” he said in an uncertain tone. “Were you successful on the warpath?”
“You might say that,” Joel replied as he stepped down from the saddle. “But you don’t have to worry about the soldiers coming to your village. The man, Beauchamp, is dead, but not by my hand.”
“Ah,” Walking Eagle responded. “That is good news. The white man’s law is not looking for you, then?”
“They’ve got no reason to look for me,” Joel said.
Walking Eagle looked relieved. “Then welcome back, my friend.”
“Yeah, welcome,” Red Shirt said then, having politely held his tongue to let the chief speak first. “Tell us what happened. Who this woman?” He nodded toward Lena, who was still seated on Boss Beauchamp’s black Morgan gelding, hesitating to dismount before she was sure she was welcome.
“Lena Three Toe,” Joel said. “I told her she would be welcome in Walking Eagle’s village. She’s had a hard time of it, and had no place to go, so I brought her here.”
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