“No, leastwise, not so’s I can actual say anythin’ about it,” Sheriff Clark replied. “But some of the things that’s goin’ on around here does kinda make a man wonder.”
“Don’t wonder too much,” O’Neil warned. “It could be dangerous.”
Sheriff Clark stared at both men for a long, penetrating moment, then he nodded. “Like I said, I was just wondering.” He left without another word.
Kennedy and O’Neil remained quiet while they watched through the window and saw him mount up and ride away.
“The reason we have kept him on as sheriff is because he was dumb and a coward,” Kennedy said. “When did the applehead get smart and grow a backbone?”
“Call Boggs in here,” O’Neil said. “I think it might be time for us to benefit from what we are paying him.”
When Boggs stepped into the office a moment later, O’Neil said, “Mr. Boggs, Sheriff Clark is getting. . . tiresome.”
Boggs nodded, which was the only response needed.
* * *
Sheriff Clark was feeling pretty good about himself as he rode back to town. He had gotten lazy over the last few years, confining his police work to little more than arresting drunks for disturbing the peace, or serving warrants and court orders. He had let the Regulators take over and, though at first he had truly believed they would be honest deputies, he learned quickly that they were not.
He should have done something at the very beginning to stop them. If nothing else, revoked their appointments as deputies. In an honest self-examination, he realized that he had been too timid to do so. Well, no more. He had Matt Jensen on his side and that was all the help he needed to be a real sheriff.
Clark was halfway back to town before he noticed that someone was on the road behind him. He wasn’t all that concerned. After all, it was a public road and the route the stagecoaches took from Atlantic City to Rongis to Soda Lake. It wasn’t at all unusual to see travelers on the road.
On the other hand, it could be someone following him.
But who would be following him from the Straight Arrow? Perhaps it was someone from the ranch, some disgruntled hand who had information for him. Over the twelve years Clark had been a sheriff, he had gotten a lot of information, critical information, from people who were on the inside of whatever he was investigating. Sometimes it was because they were upset with their boss, but sometimes it was just because they wanted to do the right thing.
If this was such a person, Sheriff Clark wanted to talk with him. Perhaps if he had some real information, he and Matt Jensen could get to the bottom of what was going on around here. Sheriff Clark pulled up and waited for the rider to approach. When he recognized the man coming toward him a huge knot of fear twisted in his stomach. The approaching rider was Merlin Boggs.
“What do you want, Boggs?” he asked when the man they called the Undertaker was within a few feet of him.
“Mr. Kennedy and Mr. O’Neil were upset by your visit,” Boggs said, the words soft and raspy.
“If they are innocent, they have nothing to worry about.”
“If they were innocent, they wouldn’t have asked me to take care of you.”
“Take care of me?” Clark’s fear grew more intense. “Take care of me how? What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about killing you.” Boggs hadn’t once raised his voice.
“No, there’s not going to be any killing here,” Sheriff Clark said, holding his hand out as if pushing Boggs away. “I have no intention of drawing on you.”
“Oh, you don’t understand, I’m here to kill you, not to fight you. I don’t care whether you draw against me or not.” With those words Boggs drew his gun and pulled the trigger. Sheriff Clark felt the bullet slam into his chest, then he felt nothing else.
* * *
It was actually Frank Edmonston who discovered the sheriff’s body. He was driving a buckboard into town intending to pick up some supplies from Slusher’s Supply when he saw a horse with some sort of bundle on it just standing on the side of the road. Looking around, he didn’t see anyone who might belong to the horse.
As he got closer, he realized with a shock that the bundle was actually a body. And when he got even closer, he saw that it was Sheriff Clark.
Frank took the sheriff’s body down from the horse and laid it in the back of the buckboard, then tied the sheriff’s horse onto the back. He drove the rest of the way into town, stopping first at Prufrock’s Mortuary.
After leaving the mortuary, Frank went down to Slusher’s Supply, which was the original purpose of his visit into town. As he tied off his team, he saw Matt Jensen a few stores down talking to a couple of the citizens and walked that way.
“Hello, Mr. Edmonston.” Matt’s greeting was friendly.
“Deputy, I thought you might want to know that I just brought the sheriff in.”
“You brought the sheriff in? What do you mean?”
“I mean he’s dead. I just left him with Prufrock.”
Matt headed to the mortuary. Stepping into Prufrock’s room, he realized the mortician had not yet started the embalming, but the sheriff was lying on the embalming table, bare from the waist up. A round bullet hole was visible just to the left of center in his chest.
“It’s not hard to determine the cause of death,” Prufrock said. “It was a bullet to the heart.”
“Any powder burns on his shirt?” Matt asked.
“No, it wasn’t a point-blank shot. It was from some distance away, though I have no way of determining just how far away he was. Lucky shot, I guess.”
Matt shook his head. “Luck had nothing to do with it.”
* * *
Two days after the sheriff was killed, Travis Poindexter sent a couple of his hands out to all the other landholders in the valley, ranchers and farmers alike, asking them to come to a meeting at his ranch.
As the nearby mountains turned from red to purple in the setting sun, Poindexter’s friends and neighbors began arriving for the meeting. Wagons and buggies brought entire families across the range to gather at his house. Children who lived too far apart to play with each other on a normal basis laughed and squealed and ran from wagon to wagon to greet their friends before dashing off to a twilight game of kick the can. The women who had brought cakes and pies from home gathered in the kitchen to make coffee, thus turning the business meeting into a great social event. They visited and kept tabs on the youngest of the children while the men were conducting the meeting.
“Tell me, Hugh, where’s Jensen?” Poindexter asked. “If he’s s’posed to be helpin’ us, don’t you think he’d want to come to one of our meetings? Especially now that he’s the sheriff.”
“He’s not the real sheriff. He is the acting sheriff,” Hugh replied. “And that is only because he was Sheriff Clark’s deputy.”
“Yeah well, thank God for that. It coulda been DuPont as the acting sheriff if he hadn’t a-turned in his badge,” Kelly said.
“You got that right,” Poindexter said. “Still, it seems to me like he woulda wanted to be here for the meeting.”
“Travis, have you stopped to think that with all of us here, it might be the perfect time for rustlers to hit one of our ranches?” Poindexter asked,”
“What? Yeah. Come to think of it, this would be a good time, wouldn’t it?”
“So to answer your question, Matt is out there riding around, keeping his eyes open for any nefarious activity that might be taking place. If the rustlers have something planned, Matt will be right on top of it,” Hugh said.
Poindexter nodded. “Good, good. I hadn’t thought about that, but now that you bring it up, I’m glad Matt ain’t here. That means he’s out there doing his job.”
“Hey, Travis, when are we goin’ to get this meetin’ started?” Gary Boyer asked. Boyer was a farmer, not a rancher, but he had three sections of land he had proven up, which made him one of the bigger landholders present. The ranches themselves may have been smaller but, effectively,
the cattlemen had more property than that which was deeded to them because they allowed their cows to graze on unclaimed government land, or what was called free range. It was this, the graze on the free range, that most often brought the Straight Arrow and the smaller ranches into competition.
The sounds of the evening drifted across the backyard. From the children playing, came, “I see Charley behind that trough!”
“One, two, three for Charley!” a child called.
There was a squeal, then a child’s laughter.
A mule brayed. It was one of the team that had brought Boyer’s farm wagon to the meeting. In a nearby tree, an owl hooted.
Inside, Poindexter said, “All right, fellas, I reckon we can get it started right now.”
When all the men found someplace to sit, he stepped up before them.
“Travis,” Earl Ray Underhill asked, holding up his hand.
“Damn, Earl Ray, we ain’t even started the meetin’, ’n you’re already a-wantin’ to ask a question?”
“Yeah, well, it ain’t right a question. It’s more like what you might call a suggestion.”
Poindexter nodded. “All right. Let’s hear it.”
“I was just thinkin’ that seein’ as how the sheriff was just kilt ’n all, maybe we ought to say somethin’ about ’im.”
“Why?” Darrel Pollard asked. “He never done nothin’ for us while he was alive. ’N most of the time he done just what Kennedy or O’Neil wanted ’im to do.”
“Not toward the end there,” Earl Ray said. “Toward the end, I think he had pretty much come over to helpin’ us.”
“I think Earl Ray’s right. I think toward the end, Sheriff Clark was actually tryin’ to help us. ’N most likely he was kilt because of it. Only since we ain’t got no preacher with us, maybe you’d like to say somethin’.” Ollard said.
“I’d rather it be Hugh that says somethin’, on account of him havin’ more education than most of us has,” Earl Ray said.
“Hugh?”
“If you would all bow your heads, please, I could say a prayer,” he said.
When everyone had done as Hugh had asked, he stood up and faced them. With his head bowed, he began to pray aloud. “Lord, Sheriff Clark was a lonely man, and because he was rather taciturn, we know very little about his past life, or even if he had a family somewhere.
“If he does have a family, I regret that we can’t get word to them, so we will become his surrogate family. We will mourn for him, we will miss him, and we will remember him. Amen.”
“Amen,” some of the others repeated.
“Those were some mighty fine sentiments, Hugh,” Edmonston said. “You used a couple of words there that I don’t have no idea what they mean, but I reckon the Lord understood you, ’n that’s all that counts.”
“All right, men, now as to the meeting,” Poindexter said. “I’m thinkin’ we ought to form us up some kind of a group, something that all of us can belong to.”
“Why, Travis, we’ve already got something like that, it being the Sweetwater Ranchers’ Association,” Ernest Dean Fawcett pointed out.
“Yes, but the Sweetwater Ranchers’ Association is controlled lock, stock, and barrel by Kennedy and O’Neil,” Poindexter said. “I think we should have one of our own.”
“If it’s just a ranchers’ association, where does that leave us farmers?” Gary Boyer asked.
“It’s not the same for farmers. It’s not like you’re having cattle rustled,” Eddie Webb said.
“Ask Sylvester Malcolm if he hasn’t had some dirty business done to his wheat,” Gary replied.
“I’ve thought about that,” Poindexter said, “and I think the farmers should be welcome into our group. I want this association to include all the small landowners in the entire valley.”
“May I make a suggestion?” Art Walhausen asked. Even though he owned no land other than where his newspaper office sat, he was a good friend to the small ranchers and farmers. Because of that, he had been invited to the meeting.
“Sure, go ahead,” Poindexter invited.
“I would suggest that you call your group the Union of Landowners of Sweetwater Valley. That will include both ranchers and farmers.”
“That sounds good to me,” Poindexter said.
“Should we take some steps to make that official?” Hugh asked.
“I’ll be happy to take care of that. I’ll have a charter drawn up for you and filed at the capitol in Cheyenne,” Art said.
Poindexter smiled and addressed all who were assembled. “Gentlemen, the Union of Landowners of Sweetwater Valley is formed. Welcome to the first meeting.”
Chapter Thirty
Rocking P Ranch
Darrel Pollard, his wife Ethyl, and their two children were attending the meeting but, back at his ranch, the Rocking P, the three hands who worked for him were in the small bunkhouse, where Dusty was regaling the other two with a story of his prowess with the fairer sex.
“But even though she begged me to take her with me, I told her that I wasn’t the one for her. I am a man of adventure, and I just don’t have a place in my life for a woman. She cried, Lord you ain’t never seen no woman cryin’ like she done.”
The other two men laughed. “Dusty, you are as full of bull as a Christmas turkey,” Billy Ray said.
“Why do people always say that?” Harley Mack asked. “I mean, who stuffs a Christmas turkey with shit?”
There was more laughter.
“You think all them ranchers is goin’ to come up with anythin’ at this meetin’ they got goin’ on over to the Poindexter place?” Dusty asked.
“I don’t know. If they don’t, they might all wind up goin’ out of business ’n if that happens, me ’n you ’n Harley Mack is all goin’ to be lookin’ for jobs somewhere else,” Billy Ray suggested.
“Maybe we could wind up workin’ over to the Straight Arrow,” Harley Mack suggested. “Seems like ever’ time someone quits ranchin’, the Straight Arrow just gets bigger.”
“Yeah, but if you notice, they mostly don’t hire all the cowboys from the old ranches. Hell, they don’t even hire half of ’em. The rest of ’em is left out in the cold,” Dusty said.
“Yeah, that’s true,” Billy Ray agreed. “’N to be honest, I wouldn’t want to be doin’ no work for the Straight Arrow in the first place. I just don’t like them two sons of bitches that owns it.”
“Cooter’s all right,” Dusty said. “Me ’n him used to work together.”
“Yeah, he’s a good man for all that he works for Kennedy ’n O’Neil.”
“You know why he works there, don’t you?” Billy Ray asked. “He’s sweet on O’Neil’s daughter.”
“O’Neil’s daughter ain’t nothin’ like her ole man. She’s nice. ’N she’s pretty, too,” Harley Mack said.
“Yeah,” Dusty agreed. “But don’t forget, that’s where the Undertaker is. Why, I’d be so afraid that I might step on his toes or somethin’ that I might actual do it. Then he’d more ’n likely want to shoot me for it. No, sir, if Mr. Pollard winds up goin’ out of business, I’ll just follow him to wherever he winds up startin’ agin.”
As the three young cowboys carried on their conversation in the bunkhouse, three riders outside—Stryker, Adams, and Malone—stopped on a little hill overlooking the ranch. They were the three newest recruits for DuPont’s Regulators. They ground-tied their mounts about thirty yards behind them, then crawled down to the edge of the hill so they could look down toward the bunkhouse. Malone had a pair of field glasses, and he raised them to his eyes so he could surveil the bunkhouse below them.
“What do you see, Malone?” Stryker asked.
“Looks like they’s only three of ’em in there. I can see ’em through the window. They’re sittin’ around a table.”
“Eatin’, are they?”
“No, it don’t look to me like they’re doin’ nothin’ but talkin’.”
“Well, it don’t matter none what they’re doin’. DuP
ont said kill ever’one we find here, so let’s get a little closer,” Stryker said.
“Right down there,” Adams said, pointing to a little open area about forty yards closer to the bunkhouse. “That looks like a good place.”
They moved to the spot, and from there they had a good view of the inside of the bunkhouse. It was very dark outside, and that allowed them to come quite close without being seen, whereas the illuminated bunkhouse allowed them to see the three inside.
“Malone, you take the one on the left. Adams, you take the one on the right. I’ll get the one in the center.”
“I’m ready,” Adams said.
The three men raised their rifles and took slow, careful aim at their targets well illuminated by the lantern that burned brightly inside the bunkhouse.
“Shoot!” Stryker said, squeezing the trigger that sent out the first bullet.
Harley Mack died instantly, a bullet coming through the window to crash into the back of his head. Dusty went down with a bullet in his chest. Billy Ray felt the pop of the bullet as it passed by his ear, and seeing what had happened to the other two, he fell to the floor.
The shooting continued for another full minute, with bullets whistling through the window, slamming into the walls and careening off the unused stove. Billy Ray scooted as far up under his bunk as he could get and lay there with his arms over his head until, finally, the shooting stopped.
“Billy Ray!” Dusty called, his voice weak and strained. “Billy Ray, I’m hit. I’m hit bad!”
Billy Ray crawled across the floor littered with shattered glass from the shot-out window. When he reached Dusty, he knew it would soon be over.
“Am I goin’ to die, Billy Ray? Am I goin’ to die?” Dusty gasped.
“No, you ain’t goin’ to die, Dusty. You ain’t goin’ to die.” But even as Billy Ray was trying to comfort his friend, he knew he was talking to a dead man.
Billy Ray looked at his two dead friends, then thought to extinguish the lantern. With the lantern extinguished, he crawled over to the window and, cautiously, lifted his head to take a look outside. At first he saw nothing but darkness, then, with a gasp, he saw that flames were coming from the main house. He also saw three men silhouetted against the flames and, for just a second, he contemplated taking a shot at them.
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