Contention and Other Frontier Stories

by Hazel Rumney

  The whistle over at the Lady Belle blew, signaling the shift change for the miners. Up the street somewhere, a dog started howling in protest to the shrill of the whistle, making for an eerie kind of symphony that echoed off of the mountain and disappeared down into the valley.

  Pete looked at me and I could see in his eyes that he had made up his mind. “I should have taken care of Sam months ago. I should never have let it get this far. It’s time I did the right thing.”

  He removed his hat and ran his fingers up his forehead and through his hair. Then he used his hat to brush away some of the dust that had settled on his pants. “I’ve got some goodbyes to say down to Otto’s, to Lilly and some of the girls. Then I’m gonna put on some clean duds so I’m looking my best. Why don’t you meet me out at the claim in a couple of hours?”

  He put his hand on my shoulder and smiled. “Don’t worry none about it. Things will work out. They always do for me, right?”

  Pete and I agreed to meet at the claim at a quarter of one to ride out to the peach orchard together. Then he turned on his heels and headed back to Otto’s.

  The time came and I met Pete where we had staked our claim along the river on the outskirts of town like we had agreed. I sat there on my horse and watched as he came out of the tent all bathed and clean-shaven and wearing a new suit. Where in the world he had gotten a suit I couldn’t imagine, but he did it. Around his waist he had a fancy Cheyenne styled Mexican Loop gun belt with a floral design worked into the leather. Protruding out of the holster was a pearl-handled Colt.

  He came out brushing the dust from his hat. Slicking his hair back and placing his hat on his head, he asked, “How do I look?”

  “Like the guest of honor at a funeral,” I joshed.

  In his best dramatic fashion, Pete clutched at his chest as though in pain. “Well, thank you kindly for those words of encouragement. I guess I don’t need Parker slinging lead at me with a friend like you around.”

  Untying his horse from the aspen limb he had been hitched to, he grabbed hold of the saddle horn and threw his leg up and over, landing in the saddle without touching the stirrups.

  “I am your best friend, Pete, and I’ll ride with you down to the peach orchard or up into the mountains if that is what you want. But, truth be known . . . I’m proud of you. You’re doing the right thing.”

  The two of us rode side by side on our way to the peach orchard, which grew on the southern end of town. Neither of us said anything, but we both noticed how empty and quiet the streets seemed. By this time, everyone had heard what was going to happen and folks were making their way to the orchard to see the show. I wondered what it was about a situation like this that brought out the perverse curiosity of people. The same thing would happen at a hanging. People would drive for hours and make a holiday out of watching a man get his neck stretched. We passed several people on the way who, for whatever reason, had decided to stay in town. Each one waved and shouted, “Good luck, Pete,” as we passed by. Some just laughed.

  Approaching the livery on the edge of town, we saw a man dipping his bandanna into a horse trough and washing his face. He looked our way as we rode past. It was Bass. He had a nasty black eye that was almost swollen shut, and a split lower lip. He glared at Pete. “I hope you get everything you have coming to you, you son of a bitch.” Pete rode by without acknowledging his remark or even his presence.

  We could see and hear all of the hullabaloo while we were still a ways off. Some of Lilly’s girls were decorating the little orchard with flowers and hanging streamers from the limbs of the peach trees, which were in full bloom. The saloons in town had hauled out some of their chairs in a wagon, and they were being unloaded and set up for the people who were there to witness the occasion. There were tables with food set out, and Silas Gant was tuning up his fiddle for the dance that was to follow.

  Parker stood there waiting. His coat was unbuttoned and the sides were pushed back. The sun glinted off of the cylinder of the Peacemaker that hung in the holster at his side.

  Pete and I brought our horses to a halt and dismounted. I saw Pete’s legs buckle a little when he stepped out of the stirrups. I thought about reaching out to steady him, but I didn’t want to cause him any embarrassment. I’ve got to give him credit. He composed himself, stood up tall, took a deep breath, and puffing out his chest, walked right up to Parker.

  Parker gave Pete a quick once-over, noticing the way that Pete’s gun belt was rigged for a cross draw. “Are you ready for this?”

  “I’m ready,” Pete replied. “I should have taken care of Sam months ago.”

  A smile lit the face of the Reverend Ezra Parker, as he held out his hand. “That’s what I wanted to hear, son. That’s exactly what I wanted to hear.”

  Samantha Ann Murphy stood under a little impromptu archway that someone had made and painted white and hung with wildflowers. She wore a store-bought, white chiffon dress that she must have picked up in Denver. Her red hair hung loosely over her shoulders and made me think of lava flowing down the sides of a snow-covered mountain. She was already four months along but had barely begun to show.

  Sam’s father, Thomas Murphy, owned the Lady Belle, along with two other mines between Denver and Colorado Springs. He hadn’t approved of Pete courting his little girl, but when he found out that she was with child, he changed his tune, pushing for a wedding so his grandchild wouldn’t be born a bastard. He even offered Pete a job as a foreman in the Lady Belle to make sure that he could provide for Sam and the baby. For the past three months, he had been trying to get Pete down to his mansion in Denver so he and Sam could tie the knot, all to no avail. It was actually the Methodist preacher Ezra Parker who came up with the plan to take the wedding to Nuggettown.

  “Isn’t she a sight?” Pete was transfixed.

  “That she is.” I agreed.

  “I don’t know why I dreaded this so much—even if she did goad me into proposing, calling me a coward. All I’ve ever had to worry about is me. A wife and family is a big responsibility.”

  Pete and I joined Parker and Sam beneath the little archway. Pete took Sam by the hand. “You sure are beautiful. I’m sorry that it has taken me so long to come to my senses. From this day forward, I won’t disappoint you ever again. That’s my promise.”

  Sam struggled to hold back the tears that gathered in the corners of her eyes. Smiling, she placed her hand gently on the side of Pete’s face. “I love you, Pete, but I don’t want you to have any regrets. If you are not committed to this all of the way, then walk away now. No one will stop you.”

  Pete bent down and kissed her. “My only regret is not marrying you sooner.”

  Reverend Parker opened his Bible. “Are the two of you ready?”

  Placing his hand on Sam’s stomach, Pete answered, “The three of us are ready.”

  “Let’s get started then. Dearly beloved . . .”

  The reception that followed the wedding was a real shindig. The couple was well liked in the community, and the whole town was happy to see Pete finally do the right thing by Sam. Everyone was dancing or milling around, conversing and enjoying the mountain air, the clear skies, and the June sunshine.

  I was leaning against one of the wagons with a cup of cider in my hands when Parker approached. “It was a real nice service, Reverend.”

  Parker flinched a little at the title and then chuckled.

  “I’m not quite used to that yet. I have been called ‘Captain’ for so long, this ‘Reverend’ stuff is pretty new to me.”

  “I never really thought much about it,” I said, “but I guess a lot of preachers were something else before they took up preaching.”

  “That’s true. Preaching is a calling, but not everyone gets the call at the same time in their lives. For me, it was a pretty late development . . . and an unexpected one. It might be a cliché, but it’s true that the Lord does work in mysterious ways. This was my first time officiating at a wedding.”

  “Well, I think you
did a bang-up job.”

  “Thank you, Ben. I appreciate that.”

  “I’m curious, though, if you don’t mind me asking. What would you have done if Pete hadn’t of decided to do the right thing? Suppose he had hightailed it out for the hills?”

  The Reverend Parker got thoughtful for a moment. “The Bible talks about the man of faith actually being two men. There’s the old man with the old habits and old way of doing things. Then there is the new man that is being remade into the image of Christ. I’m not sure which man would have gone after Pete, but I’m pretty sure that it wouldn’t have worked out very good for him either way.”

  The newlyweds finished greeting their other guests and made their way over to where Parker and I were talking. I shook hands with Pete and gave the bride a kiss on the cheek.

  “How’s the old married couple doing?” I asked.

  “Hell,” Pete remarked. “If I’d known that there was going to be drinking and dancing, I’d of gotten married months ago.”

  Sam gasped and gave Pete a playful pinch on the arm.

  “Ouch! What was that for?”

  “You enjoy your drinking and dancing while you can, Mr. Canfield,” Sam scolded, “because tomorrow you start your new job as a foreman at the Lady Belle. You have responsibilities now.”

  Pete answered with exaggerated seriousness. “I assure you, Mrs. Canfield, that I will execute my responsibilities with the highest degree of earnestness and industry.”

  That led us all into a round of laughter that was suddenly interrupted by a gunshot. I saw Pete spin around and fall to the ground, followed by Sam’s scream. Two more shots rang out, fired almost at the same time. The first one was fired by Parker, whose gun seemed to appear out of nowhere. The second shot was mine.

  It had all happened in a matter of seconds, as so many life-altering events do. Kenny Bassett had made his way to the wedding reception and mingled in unnoticed among the other guests. After fortifying his courage on hard cider, he waited for his chance to even the score with Pete. Now Bass lay dead on the ground with two widening circles of crimson staining his chest.

  I hurried over to Pete to see what kind of condition he was in. The bullet had spun him around so that he landed facedown. Sam was crying, trying to roll him over.

  Parker pulled her away gently. “Come on, Sam. Let Ben have a look.”

  I rolled Pete over onto his back. I could see a hole in his jacket on the left side of his chest just over his heart. I started to undo the buttons on his jacket.

  Suddenly, Pete opened his eyes and grabbed my wrist. “Careful there, partner. This suit ain’t all the way paid for yet.”

  I jumped back, shocked and not a little confused. Sam ran over and threw her arms around Pete’s neck as he sat up.

  “Careful, Pete,” I warned. “You’ve been shot.”

  Pete got to his feet, albeit slowly, brushing the dust from his new suit. “I’m fine.”

  “How is that possible?” I exclaimed. “You have a bullet hole in your chest.”

  Pete reached up to feel the breast of the suit jacket he had on and probed the bullet hole with his fingers. He then reached into the breast pocket and pulled out a deck of cards that he had stuffed inside. Embedded in, but not penetrating, the deck, was a .44 caliber slug.

  Now, I honestly don’t know what to make out of what I witnessed that afternoon in that peach orchard on the outskirts of Nuggettown. Maybe there was something in the curse of the aces and eights—the dead man’s hand—and maybe it was just superstitious nonsense like Pete said. Or maybe it was like the Indians would say; that Pete’s medicine was stronger than the curse. Reverend Parker had a different take on it. He said it was the providence of God that wouldn’t allow Pete to be taken before his time.

  One thing I do know for sure. I could go to a thousand different weddings where everything goes off without a hitch. But let my buddy, Pete, get married just one time and there’s a commotion. And where there’s a commotion, Pete Canfield is usually right in the middle of it.

  (SDG)

  Michael R. Ritt lives in a small cabin in the mountains of western Montana with his wife, Tami, their Australian shepherd, Lucky, and their nameless cat. He enjoys studying history, theology, and natural science, and has published several short stories and poems in anthologies and magazines. He is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers, Western Fictioneers, and Western Writers of America.

  JERICHO SPRINGS

  BY MAX MCCOY

  A rabbit screams when it dies rough and that sound was still in my head as I peered through the dirty windshield at the mountain of black dust. It must have scoured the topsoil from a million acres of farmland in Colorado and New Mexico and God Knows Where Else because it looked like a tumbling wall of dirt, topping out here and there like a thundercloud and elsewhere pouring down in cataracts.

  I was somewhere south of Boise City and had I been paying more attention to the road, maybe I could have seen the roller in time to pick somewhere safe to ride things out, but damned now if I can think where that might have been. There isn’t much north of Dalhart on State Highway 78, just hardpan and heartache. What the drought didn’t take from the farmers, the banks had, and the rabbits ate what was left, down to the bark on the occasional tree. I hadn’t passed a single occupied house in ten miles, and I was unsure if I was on the Oklahoma side of the line yet or still in Texas. I thought about trying to outrun the roller and make it to Boise City, but I didn’t know if I was close enough to town. Besides, the sedan tended to run hot, and in the dust, she was sure to burn up.

  So I took the first side road, a crooked and narrow scar across the barren fields leading away from the storm. A faded, hand-painted sign with red letters said Jericho Springs AME, 3 mi.

  Go to Dalhart, my editor had said while chewing on the stem of a long-cold pipe. The bank was robbed Thursday by an old cowboy who left a letter behind expressing remorse. That’s not a big story these days, I told Art. Lots of people are robbing banks, and some of them are sorry. His eyebrows semaphored behind his pop bottle specs. I asked: Remorse for what? That’s the story. The cops aren’t saying. Keep it on the downhold, but go there and find out what’s in that letter. I asked why the Dallas bureau didn’t want it. It’s about the same distance from them as it is us. Was anybody hurt? Not by the cowboy. One of the locals came out of the hardware store across the street with a bolt-action deer rifle and winged our man. There was blood on the street. I sighed. How am I supposed to get the cops to let me see the note? Use your girlish charm, Frankie. Oh, and the good people there are having one of their rabbit drives. Get me a thousand words on that, too, so we get two yarns for one trip. Why not make it three, I had quipped—the remorseful cowboy, the rabbit roundup, and the one where I’m charged with soliciting a cop.

  And that moment, with the easy joke still on my lips, was when I decided Dalhart would be my last assignment for the wire service. The Texas panhandle was 500 miles from the United Press bureau at Kansas City. I had been trying to escape to California for the past year, to leave the misery that was Kansas and Missouri behind, to not ruin another pair of shoes in the blood of another gangland killing. And Dalhart was in the right direction. I owned one thing of value in the world, and that was the old Model A, and I intended to put it to use. After filing the stories, from a booth in a hotel lobby or after slipping a few bucks to a farm family to use their phone on the kitchen wall, I would just keep going. I was starving on the pay from the United Press, the world’s second-best wire service, and we’d been on the downhold—an order to cut expenses to the bone, which had been in effect since 1921, long before I became a Unipresser—so I figured I might as well starve someplace warm and bright.

  On the road behind me, the storm was rolling down like all ten plagues. The air had a peculiar feel to it. The fine hairs on my forearms and the back of my neck stood on end and, as things grew darker, I could see wisps of lightning run from post to post along a wire fence on the north side of
the road. The wind began to pick up, pushing at the boxy rear of the sedan, and driving tumbleweeds across the road ahead.

  The dust shrouded the afternoon sun, and soon I could barely see the radiator cap at the far end of the hood—or the road beyond, for that matter. The dust and sand skittered over the car with a sound that reminded me of a boat in shallow water. Up ahead, on the south side of the road perhaps two hundred yards away, I caught a glimpse of a weather-washed steeple. A steeple meant a church, and a church meant shelter. I drove on, slowly, afraid of running into another car or perhaps into the wire fence to the north. When I finally could see no more of the road, I eased the sedan over to the right, felt the wheels cross the shallow ditch, and let it roll to a stop at the edge of the barren field. Then I grabbed my coat from the seat beside me, opened the car door, and stepped into the storm. I pulled on the coat and turned up the collar against the sand.

  It had been warm and calm earlier in the day, but now the temperature had dropped by twenty degrees. I crawled around the fender to the front of the sedan and, fighting the wind, put my hand on the canvas water bag hanging there. I unhooked the rope from the chrome. With my eyes shut tight against the wind and sand, I drew a red bandana from my pocket, uncapped the bag, and held the cloth beneath it as I spilled some water. I wiped my eyes with the dampness, tied the bandana over my nose and mouth, capped the bag, and slung it over my shoulder.

  I kept my eyes mostly shut as I made my way down the road, trusting my feet to feel the edge. Every so often I would dare a glance, but the dust stung my eyes. I could feel the grit in my ears, taste it on my tongue, and feel it grind away the enamel on my teeth.