“You sumbitch, my name is Roland Giles out of Lake Creek over in Heber Valley. You kil’t my brother Lester over in Spanish Fork.”
“Your brother robbed a bank up in Logan and he resisted capture. I’m a bounty hunter. He made the mistake of pulling down on me, and I had to kill him. But it didn’t have to be that way.”
“Lester never was that fast, and I doubt he would have been foolish enough to hook and draw against Kid Utah. So do ya know what this means?”
“Well now, you have me hanging on tenterhooks. What does this mean?” Bryan asked, widening his eyes and shaking his head in an attitude of mock suspense.
“It means ya must have shot him in the back. You’re a smart-mouthed idiot, ain’t ya?”
“This whole thing is boring me, Roland. Now let me give you a warning. If you try to draw against me, I am going to kill you, and that doesn’t have to be. Why don’t you just climb on your horse and ride out of here?”
“Can’t do it . . . you kil’t my brother. He wasn’t much, but he was my last livin’ relative. I—”
The hard case standing to his right suddenly threw in his two bits. He stepped to the side, putting some separation between them, which is a common tactic. It makes it more difficult for a single gunman to take down two men. Then he said, “I’ve got your back, Roland, put him down.”
But Ted, not wanting to be left out, put in his two bits. “You, the little squirt on the right, if you so much as lift an eyebrow, I’m gonna blow your head clean off your shoulders. I want this to be a fair fight.” He was pointing a .12 gauge Greener at the smallish hard case.
The diminutive gunman looked down the bores of that Greener and blanched. A Greener will just naturally do that to a man.
Bryan took another shot of his rye with his left hand, but his right hand was resting just above the rosewood grip of his six-shooter. “I’ve given you warning, Roland. You can ride out of here and live, or bleed out right here on this ram- packed dirt floor. But for goodness sake, do something because you really are a very tiresome fellow. Either open the ball or go sit down and shut up.”
It wasn’t going like Roland suspected. He always considered himself the fastest gun in Utah, and a lot of people agreed. He had faced up and killed eight men, and he had killed another seven by shooting them in the back. He’d never been particular, but he’d never faced anyone like Kid Utah. Maybe he had bitten off more than he could chew. He broke out in a sweat, but he knew he had to go forward with it. The Old West had no use for a coward, and even as spread out as the territory of the West was, word would get around and he would be disgraced.
Bryan stayed perfectly relaxed, and he watched Roland’s eyes. The eyes always betrayed a man’s intent. Suddenly, Roland’s eyes narrowed, and his hand streaked for his Colt Peacemaker. He was fast—very fast—but not fast enough because something slammed into his chest with unbelievable force. It was like getting hit with a sledgehammer, or worse. He had been able to clear leather, but that was as far as it had gone.
Bryan had spent two years perfecting his draw. He practiced it every day after he got done milking his father’s cows at their farm in Midway, the state of Deseret. There were possibly only a half-dozen men alive who might be able to better him with a hook and draw: John Wesley Hardin, Wild Bill Hickok, Ben Thompson, King Fisher, Kid Curry, and Lane Tandy. His draw had been smooth as silk. He had yanked up his six-shooter and pulled back the trigger with his thumb as it came up. Then it was only a matter of leveling it and firing off the deadly shot, not bothering to aim. You see, he just pointed and it hit exactly where he intended. Yanking back a trigger with a thumb during a draw is not for the uninitiated because it’s a good way to shoot oneself in the leg or blow off a chunk of one’s private parts. His bullet cut a hole through a pack of Even Change Cut-Plug chewing tobacco. It ruined the tobacco, but of even greater import, it destroyed Roland’s heart.
A look of incredulity spread across Roland’s face. He didn’t want to accept the fact that he had been shot and would soon be dead. He looked down at his chest and saw a little blood seeping out from around the little hole. He tried to lift his Peacemaker and take Bryan with him, but the weapon proved too heavy to hoist into place. He reached out for support from a nearby table, but he toppled the table and collapsed on his rear end with his left leg stretched out. “You kil’t me,” he told Bryan.
“I expect so. But I warned you, didn’t I? You could be riding out of town right now if you had listened.”
Roland looked over at his sidekick. “Jesse,” he said with a failing voice. “Shoot this sumbitch; he’s done kil’t me.”
“Sorry, pard, I can’t do it. The barkeep here has a Greener aimed at my face.”
“That’s right,” Ted said, “and I will use it, too, if ya force my hand. Now get on your horse and ride.”
“What about Roland’s horse?” Jesse asked. “Can I take his horse with me?”
“No, leave the horse. I will sell him to the livery man and use the money here to bury Roland.”
“May you rot in hell,” Jesse said, and he left the saloon on the run.
The ranchers at the rear of the saloon had gotten off to the side in order to prevent catching a stray chunk of lead. As soon as the shooting was over, though, they went back to their game of seven-card stud as if nothing had happened. After all, nothing should interrupt a good stud poker game.
“Bryan, I’m going out back to fetch my swamper. I am going to have him drag this carcass out and stash it in my shed. It should keep overnight all right until I can put him in a hole tomorrow.”
Roland toppled over on his side and went still.
“Sounds good, Ted. You can keep his weapons and also rifle his pockets for money, and you can take possession of his horse and tack. I think that is only fair. I have made quite a disturbance in your place of business, and for that, I am sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it, Bryan. This will actually help business. Men will come in from far and wide to see the exact spot Kid Utah gunned down the louse of a human, Roland. This bar will be like a historical monument.”
Suddenly, Amanda called out. She was standing at the upstairs railing with the two crib girls. “It’s hard sleeping with a gun going off,” she said angrily. Then she noticed Roland’s body stretched out on the rammed-dirt floor. “Oh my land, oh my land, who killed him? Bryan, for heaven’s sake, did you shoot this man?” Amanda asked, pointing to Roland’s body.
“I did,” Bryan admitted. “It was either him or me. He braced me and I had no choice.”
“That’s right, ma’am,” Ted said. “The man on that there floor went for his gun and Bryan kil’t him. He had no choice.”
“Oh, I imagine,” Amanda said as she stomped back to her room. The crib girls tried to pat her on the back as she departed, but she shrugged them off.
Bryan cleared his throat. “Now Ted, I want to give you the warning I have been trying to spit out for some time now, that is, unless the creek rises, we have an earthquake, or a herd of buffalo stampedes through town.”
“I’m all ears,” Ted said as he wiped the bar down with a rag that looked like it hadn’t been washed since the signing of the Magna Carta.
“Victorio and nine members of his Apache band are raiding up into Utah.”
Ted shrugged. “So? The state of Deseret is a vast chunk of real estate.”
“So he’s camped in a grove of cottonwoods just outside this here town.”
“You don’t say. I guess I’d best call a meetin’ of the town members and figure out our defenses.”
“Ted, he won’t assault the town. He’s too smart for that because the numbers aren’t right. He only attacks when he has a reasonably good chance of winning.”
“I see.”
“But you do need to alert everyone not to stray from Hanksville because, if anybody wanders out of town, they’ll lose their topknot.”
“Thank you,” Ted said, rubbing his nasty rag on the bar some more.
> “Did you ever think about washing that rag you wipe your bar with? That thing comes near to making me ill.”
“No, I haven’t considered such. Why wash the rag when it works just fine as it is?” he said as he laughed. “I look at bathin’ the same way. Why waste good water when it ain’t needed?”
“Ted, ol’ boy, you are a caution,” Bryan said. “Okay, Ted, I’m pulling out of here early in the morning. Please get that court order for adoption ready for me so I can pick it up and take Bobby with me when I come through here in about a month.”
“I’ll do ’er.”
“Oh, one last thing. Here’s another twenty dollars. See to it that Amanda gets some satisfactory transportation back to Provo. Now don’t let me down on these matters, or I might take a notion to come back through here and put some knots on that gnarly old head of yours.”
Ted laughed until he wheezed. “Now we wouldn’t want that, would we?”
CHAPTER NINE
Bryan started packing his equipment onto the mule that he had purchased from Earl the day before. There was a chill to the air, and the morning was just beginning to turn pink from an emerging sun over the eastern horizon. Bryan decided to name the mule “Mule.” Mule tried to bite Bryan while he was loading him. Bryan had to laugh because now he had two biters—Cayuse and Mule. What else could he do but laugh. At first, he thought about taking an ax handle to Mule to teach him some manners. But he knew that wasn’t an option because he wasn’t the sort to beat on animals, so all he could do was laugh.
People in Hanksville were just starting to get moving. A rooster crowed from off in the distance, and Bryan heard someone coaxing water out of a rusty, old well that squeaked. Another riser was chopping wood to get a fire going in their kitchen stove in order to fry up breakfast.
He was glad to be getting shed of Hanksville. He had not enjoyed dealing with the drunken livery stable owner, and he hadn’t particularly fancied associating with Ted. Ted stunk to beat the band. If Ted were standing near an outdoor privy, flies would settle on him rather than the privy. Then there were the crib girls Ted employed there at the Holy Moses Saloon. Truth be told, Bryan couldn’t like a man operating such a business. Then, of course, there was the gunfight in the Holy Moses.
It was never fun being forced to kill a man. Bryan had killed more men than he cared to think about, but it had never gotten easier. Once he got the reputation of being a gunslick—and once he had been named Kid Utah—it seemed like more and more gunhands wanted to take him on because it would ramp up their reputation. For that reason, he never referred to himself as Kid Utah. But even so, there was always a brother, a friend, a father, or a cousin who came after him because he had killed someone near and dear to them. There was always that. In fact, that was what happened the previous afternoon.
Bryan had decided he would haul in just two more hard cases, then he would buy that ranch in Snake Creek Canyon and hang up his gun.
While Bryan was shortloping Cayuse and Mule out of town and going over the reasons in his mind why he wasn’t particularly fond of Hanksville, his mind settled in on Amanda. He thought of her femininity, of her lovely face, of her near- perfect figure that was rounded out in just the right places. That temper of hers tickled him. Yes, she certainly was set on a short fuse. He admired her horsemanship, and he just imagined she wasn’t lying when she said she could shoot better than most men. He didn’t doubt that in the least. He felt a tugging at his heart, but he quickly got rid of it, shunting it off to the back of his brain. No, he didn’t need to burden himself with a woman; it would slow him down. Instead, he would go on as planned and head over to the Picketwire and capture—or kill—Ed Muir. That worthless piece of trash had robbed a bank and killed the clerk over in Helper. Witnesses said he had just turned and killed the clerk as he was leaving the bank, and it had been a senseless killing. Killing to some men was just a sport.
Then, of course, there were those Apaches who were raiding up into Utah. If he got a chance, he would thin them out some as well and, in so doing, save a bunch of settlers’ lives.
As Bryan rode along, he kept his eyes roving over the landscape, looking at those portions that could conceal an Apache. When there are Apaches in the area, a man can’t be too careful.
After riding for a couple hours, gazing at the terrain had gotten a little monotonous. Most everything was red. The tumbled boulders and cliffs were red, the sandy ground was red, and even the clouds had a red tint because they were backlit by the sun. Cloud shadows glided silently across the desert, creating a dappled effect. He thanked the heavens that the vegetation wasn’t red. In fact, the landscape was littered with specialized desert vegetation. Bryan marveled at how anything could grow in the red sand, but the desert was alive with plant life— specialized plants that had adapted to the mineralized soil and the sere condition of Utah’s Central Desert. The terrain was littered with sagebrush, sunflowers, creosote bushes, and varieties of cacti like the cholla and yucca. Then there were the legions of juniper and cedar trees, as well as the Joshua—a tree that looked like a man with his arms outstretched, preaching the gospel.
But overriding everything was the oppressive heat that would suck the life from a man if he were to run out of water. He carried three full canteens, and he knew where there was water in two natural tanks near La Sal. La Sal is Spanish for “the salt,” named for two nearby salt formations. These natural water tanks are hollowed out places in solid rock, and at various times during the year, they are full of fresh water. These water tanks have been the salvation of many a desert voyager. The Spanish call them tanques de agua naturales.
At around ten in the morning, Bryan rode down an alluvial fan that funneled into a tight canyon. He got into deep sand, and Cayuse and Mule struggled in it. He didn’t like the looks of the canyon. It would be a good place for the Apaches to set up an ambush. He looked to the right and the left of the canyon. Circumventing the canyon by riding around to the left or right would take many extra hours, so he decided to take a chance and ride straight through. The canyon would let out onto the desert floor and onto La Sal. He was afraid that if he took either circuitous route, he would run out of water.
He stopped partway through the canyon with hundred-foot ramparts to the right and left. He needed to give his animals a blow. He partially filled his Boss of the Plains Stetson with water and let the animals drink. If his animals died, it wouldn’t take long for him to follow suit.
A juniper was growing seemingly out of solid rock upon the canyon wall. It was huge and old, and it had gotten its start nearly 750 years ago when a sparrow had flown along the canyon wall, dropping a seed from its beak. The seed had tumbled into a crevice and germinated, using but a smattering of soil, heat, and water. In the beginning, it had emerged from the fissure horizontally, but then it had turned and grown vertically, hanging there with tenacity on that cliff face for centuries.
Suddenly, Bryan saw just the slightest movement through the branches of that ancient juniper—a movement out of place in the natural world. Then he heard a sound like a bumblebee in flight. Something sharp raked across that group of muscles that flows from the neck into the shoulder. It stung like the dickens. It didn’t take him long to recognize that it had been an arrow. He pulled his rifle from its scabbard, piled off Cayuse, and dove in behind a mound of rock and sagebrush. It wasn’t the best cover, but it was all that was available.
Three more arrows plowed into the loose sand all around him, so Bryan calculated there were at least three Apaches up on the cliff supporting that one tenacious juniper. He decided that if there were more Apaches on the cliff behind him, he was safe from them because he was tucked back under a hollowed-out section at the base of the cliff. Now, if he were out in the middle of the canyon, it would be a different matter. He would probably be full of arrows and dead or dying. His positioning happened by chance, and for that, he was thankful because in the immediate future, he need only deal with the Apaches to the front of him.
He focused on the juniper and the spot where the Apache had loosed the arrow at him. He saw just the slightest motion between the spiky leaves. It looked as if the tree had winked at him. So the Apache had arranged himself on the cliff face and up toward the middle of the ancient juniper because there wouldn’t be enough cover at the base of the tree. The Apache’s legs would be vulnerable, sticking below where the tree made the 90-degree turn and took off vertically.
Bryan put the buckhorn sights right on where he calculated the Apache was hidden, took in some air, and held his breath. Then he applied a faint amount of pressure on the trigger—not enough to cause the barrel to waver off target. Finally, the rifle bucked against his shoulder, and the Apache let out a yelp. After the smoke cleared, Bryan watched the Apache slide down the cliff, emerge below the branches of the juniper, glide another twenty feet, and then free fall to the red sand below. His body sounded like a gunnysack full of wheat being dropped on the ground.
Two more arrows plowed into the sand near Bryan’s sketchy hiding place, then two more. One arrow just missed his thigh by an inch. Bryan knew that he had to find better cover, or it wouldn’t take long before he took on the appearance of a human pincushion. There was a cow-size boulder farther up the canyon that appeared to be about fifty feet away. He waited until the Apaches loosed two more arrows, then he instantly dashed for the boulder, calculating that he could cover the distance before the Indians could nock two more arrows and let them fly. He figured wrong because an arrow burrowed into the front of his shirt and dug a ragged trench along his stomach. He went down, but managed to scramble on his hands and knees for the last ten feet to the boulder.
The wound burned like hellfire and bled profusely. He knew that he must forget about the Apaches for the time being and stop the bleeding, or he would bleed out. He pulled off his shirt and tore a strip from it. He ripped the leaves and flowers from a nearby sagebrush, packed a wad of them against the wound, and bound it all up tight with the strip of his shirt. He didn’t know of any medicinal quality of sagebrush to heal wounds, but he figured it would serve as a makeshift dressing. It didn’t stop the bleeding altogether, but it seemed to slow it down.
Murder in Mushroom Valley Page 6