“We really aren’t looking to stay in a tent, sir,” Amanda said. She had left Bryan tied to his horse out at the hitching rail. “Could you kindly direct us to another motel or boarding house—one that is constructed of lumber or adobe?” Amanda asked, doing all she could to remain civil. Just the sight of the repulsive human being had set her off.
“I have the only rooms fer let in this here town,” the proprietor shrieked. “But every room has one of them new-fangled Starr Windsor stoves, and I have a girl come in oncet a month to change the bedding.”
“Oh, how nice. When did she last put on clean bedding?”
“Oh, it’s only been a couple weeks now. Them sheets should be fresh as a daisy.”
“Oh, no doubt,” Amanda said. “How much to rent a tent?”
“Two dollars a night, three if ya want a dinner catered to yer room. The food comes fresh from my kitchen.”
“Fresh from your kitchen, I imagine. Who cooks it?”
“Well, I do, of course. I attained my culnarrry skills cookin’ fer Charlie Goodnight and Oliver Loving. I was their camp cook on their first cattle drive. After the War Between the States, they gathered two thousand wild longhorns from the Texas thickets and drove them from Belknap, Texas to Fort Sumner, New Mexico. They were pioneers, and that trail became known as the famous Goodnight-Loving Trail. Them cowboys nursemaidin’ cows all day are picky ’bout their grub. I heard some cowboys shot their cook someplace out in Indian territory—his gravy was lumpy.”
“Oh, I’m sure you are skilled enough to cook for Delmonico’s in New York, but no thanks. We’ll get our food from the café here in La Sal. We will, however, take two of your tents. Don’t you think two dollars a night is a bit steep, considering you are renting out . . . tents?”
“Ma’am, I always thought the price was reasonable. But, of course, if ya don’t wanna pay it, ya could always ride over to Hite or south of here to Grayson,” the proprietor squealed.
“No, we can’t do that,” Amanda said. “My traveling companion is injured.”
“Ma’am, I’m sorry to hear that. Let’s git him settled in, and then ya can go and fetch the sawbones, ol’ Doc Mahoney. Harry’s a pretty good doc, unless a man’s miseries prove to be too complicated like cancers, heart cramps, or dizzy headaches—then he ain’t worth a damn. What’s wrong with yer companion, anyhow?”
“He got wounded by a couple Apache arrows.”
“Apaches, up here in Utah?” The proprietor’s eyes widened in fear.
“Yes.”
“Shouldn’t we alert the town and set up some defenses?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“We killed most of them, and we believe they headed back to Arizona or New Mexico.”
“Oh, good. There’s no more fierce fightin’ man than an Apache,” the proprietor squeaked.
“Even if they didn’t head back south, there are only three of them left. I hardly think they would be foolish enough to come into La Sal on one of their murderous raids. Say, I’m Amanda Remund-Bagley, and my traveling companion is named Bryan Kohler. What’s your name?”
“Elaine Blazzard.”
“Elaine?”
“Yeah, my mother, bless her sainted soul, wanted a girl, and when it didn’t happen, she stuck Elaine to me anyway. You can’t begin to imagine the fights I’ve been in over the years defendin’ my name.”
“It seems like you would have changed it to avoid a lot of grief,” Amanda said, smiling as she signed the register.
“In the beginnin’, I thought ’bout it, but then I decided I would just stick with Elaine and if them sons-a-, er, them blasted men didn’t like my name, they could git themselves a knuckle sandwich or a chunk of lead.”
“Elaine, you are a caution,” Amanda said, shaking her head in wonderment. “We’ll take two of your rooms, and we’ll probably be staying for a week while my friend recovers from his wounds. You see, we’re not married.”
“Sorry, Amanda, the other two rooms are taken.”
“But that’s unacceptable. You can’t possibly expect me to share a room with that—that beast for an entire week?”
“I’m a beast, am I?” Bryan said, leaning against the doorframe to help support himself. He had somehow untied himself from the horse and hobbled in.
“Yes, you are a beast, and you shouldn’t be walking around like this. Elaine here says if we want to rent one of his tents for a week, we’ll have to share it.”
“Elaine?” Bryan looked at the proprietor with a little smile forming on his lips. “Your name is Elaine?” He started laughing, sort of weakly, because he still hadn’t recovered his strength.
“It is, young feller. Do ya wanna make somethin’ of it?”
“No, no, if your name is Elaine, I’m fine with it. How much are you renting out these tents for?”
“Two dollars a day.”
“You ain’t nothin’ but an old crook. We’ll give you six bits a day, and we’ll want fresh bedding.”
Amanda laughed. “He says that he has a woman come in once a month to change out the bedding whether it needs it or not.”
“Elaine, we’re going over to the restaurant for some grub. Have your girl bring in a trundle bed for Amanda here, and put on some clean bedding. Then I’ll pay you for a week in advance.”
“I’m not sharing a room with you for a week,” Amanda declared.
“Fine, then you can sleep in the hayloft over at the livery stable,” Bryan said.
“Oh, all right, we can share one of these danged tents, but don’t get any bright ideas about trying to get friendly with me, if you know what I mean.”
“Perish the thought. Like I said, you’re too ganted up for my taste. Besides, I’m not healthy enough to be getting frisky with a young lady such as yourself.”
“Oh, you,” she snapped as she stamped her foot.
“Get our tent ready, Elaine, or I might take a notion to notch your danged ears with my Colt.”
“Hey, I ain’t agreed to rent one of my tents for six bits a day. Them are some mighty fine tents, and they should bring a premium price.”
“Premium price, my ass,” Bryan said. “Get a tent ready.”
“Oh, all right, I’ll git the tent ready,” Elaine squeaked.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
After Amanda and Bryan made arrangements for their sleeping quarters, they rode over to the livery stable to take care of their horses and Mule. Bryan sat his horse while Amanda went in to negotiate for their horses’ keep. The three Indian ponies had trailed along, and they stayed close to Bryan and Amanda’s horses and to Mule. Horses are very social creatures, much like people.
The proprietor at the livery stable agreed to board their animals for two bits a day per horse or mule, and he promised to feed them a bait of oats and run a curry comb over their hide. He said that if he had money, he would buy the Indian ponies for twenty dollars apiece, but unfortunately, he was broke. Amanda told him he could have the ponies on consignment, and if he sold them, he could send a bank draft for sixty dollars to Zions National Bank in Salt Lake City. She gave him the account number for her savings account, and they shook hands on the deal. Unlike Earl Widdison, the reprobate who operated the livery stable in Hanksville, the proprietor in La Sal was clean, freshly shaven, and polite. Amanda trusted him to send the money to her bank in Salt Lake, and she, in turn, would give the money to Bryan. She didn’t feel right claiming the money because Bryan had already given her a generous sum of money to help her get back to Provo after the loss of her husband. Bryan had told her he could well afford it because bounty hunting was a highly profitable profession, albeit extremely dangerous.
A lady named Midge stepped out from the kitchen at the nearby restaurant to take Bryan and Amanda’s orders. It was all Bryan could do to sit upright, so he laid his forearms on the table and cradled his head. “What’s the matter with ya, mister? Yer not gonna upchuck here in my restaurant, are ya?” Midge asked as she looke
d him over closely.
“Don’t worry, Midge,” Amanda said, “he’s not that kind of sick. He has a couple of arrow wounds, and he is weak from the loss of blood.”
“Oh, good. What can I do fer ya?”
“We’re starved. What’s on today’s menu?” Amanda asked.
“Today, I can serve ya a slab of beef, dumplings, and string beans. Oh, and the beef will be swimmin’ in red-eye gravy,” Midge said, looking apologetic. “I ain’t got a great variety of food here, but what I got is good—at least my patrons seem to like it.”
Bryan raised his head. “Okay, Midge, bring it out. I could eat most anything right now. Amanda has had me on a diet of broth for two days now, and I’m starved.”
“Young feller, Amanda is right. The best thing to restore blood is a good broth. But if it’s been a couple days now since ya were hurt, I think ya’re ready fer some solid food.” She looked over at Amanda for confirmation.
Amanda nodded her head in the affirmative. “Yes, Midge, bring it out, and would you bring us a couple cups of coffee?”
“Can do,” Midge said, spinning and heading to her kitchen.
Amanda cleared her throat. “Uh, Midge, why on earth would you name your restaurant The Hog Trough?”
“Because my customers are just a few miners and cattlemen, and they eat like hogs, thus the name. In fact, they was instrumental in the namin’ of the joint. See, in the beginnin’, I named the restaurant Midge’s, but it got back to me that my customers was callin’ my eatery The Hog Trough. So I thought, why not, so I changed the name to The Hog Trough. Everybody laughed themselves sick over it, and believe it or not, my business actually picked up after I renamed the joint.”
“Oh my land,” was all Amanda was able to say.
While Bryan and Amanda were waiting for their food, a little girl slipped in the door and took a seat at a table in the corner. She looked to be around eight years old, and she was dirty and ragged. She was wearing a light-blue pinafore dress that had seen better days. The dress was sleeveless, with buttons down the back and ruffles on the shoulders. The little girl’s eyes were red because she had been crying, and her knees were skinned from taking a recent tumble. Or perhaps some adult had knocked her down because she had a welt on the side of her face.
Bryan looked up and saw the little girl. “Come over here, honey. Me and this nice lady would like to talk to you,” he said, pointing to Amanda.
“I don’t know. My daddy told me not to talk to strangers, but he died yesterday, and . . . and. . . .” She burst into tears.
Amanda jumped up, ran over to her, threw her arm around the little girl, and marched her over to their table. “Stop crying, honey. Stop crying and tell us what happened to your daddy,” Amanda said. “Oh, first of all, what is your name?”
The little girl took a couple shuddering breaths and managed to tell them her name was Caroline.
“What happened to your daddy, Caroline?” Amanda asked, looking directly into Caroline’s eyes.
“He was killed in the Deseret Mine yesterday; there was a cave-in. Then the lady he moved into our cabin after my mommy died slapped me in my face and told me to get out. I’m hungry, and I don’t have a home anymore.” She burst into tears again, “I think I’m going to freeze to death tonight.”
Bryan raised his head. “No you’re not, Caroline. We are going to see to it that you are taken care of, don’t you worry.” He looked over at Amanda. “Amanda, go back into the kitchen and ask Midge to bring out another platter of that beef because we have a luncheon guest.”
Before long, Midge came out from the kitchen, carrying their lunch. The food was heaped high on the platters and it looked good. “Midge, how long have you lived here in La Sal?” Amanda asked.
“My husband and I moved here ’bout three years ago. We came out here from Ohio—brought everythin’ we owned in one of them Conestoga wagons. La Sal had already been settled by the Mormons. Brigham Young sent them down here from Salt Lake to settle this region and build new industries. When the Mormons came down off that rim just north of here, it was so steep they had to take their wagons apart and lower them down, piece by piece, with lariats. They must have been some tough ol’ boys. They named that place Hole in the Rock.”
Amanda looked into Midge’s eyes. “Midge, you mentioned a husband. Is he your cook back there in the kitchen?”
“No, a few years back, we built up a little ranch—a rawhide outfit—just east of here. Just when we had it up and runnin’ quite smoothly, the damned Utes came in, kil’t him, and burned us out. I was in town buyin’ supplies when it happened, or they would have kil’t me, too. I didn’t have any choice. I moved into town and started this restaurant with a little savings money we had left over from our ranchin’ operation. Then, of course, I got a fairly decent price fer our ranch, even though all the improvements had been burned to the ground.”
Amanda nodded her head to acknowledge she understood what Midge had been through. “Midge, I’m so sorry about your husband. I know how you must feel because I lost my husband a couple days ago. Indians killed him as well. We had only been married four days.”
Both ladies teared up, and Bryan pulled his head up from the table to observe this, wishing he were someplace else. He hated it when women cried. He put his head back down when the little girl started crying as well because she cried and wailed unrestrained, and it tore at his heart. He decided when all the danged shrieking was over, he would raise his head back up and attend to his lunch. It’s awful, the situations a man could get into. It just didn’t hardly seem right.
Amanda used a napkin to blow her nose, and that served as a device for them all to pull it together. Midge used that as a signal; she wiped her eyes and quit crying. “Sorry, people, I don’t know what got into me,” she said. “I ain’t cried over my Henry—that was my husband’s name—since them damned Utes kil’t him.”
Amanda managed a smile, even though her face was tear-stained and her eyes were red. “Think nothing of it, Midge. A good cry every now and then works wonders for the soul. Uh, Midge, why would you and Henry settle in this desolate outpost? Why didn’t you get established around Provo, Salt Lake, or Brigham City?”
Sitting nearby, Caroline shuddered, wiped at her eyes, and then took a big swallow of a huge glass of milk Midge had brought out for her. And since all the blasted crying had ceased—at least temporarily—Bryan lifted his head and began eating his lunch with a workmanlike efficiency.
“Ma’am, Henry and I had never liked a crowd, so we settled down here in Southern Utah, the State of Deseret. Besides, we were intrigued by La Sal’s short but colorful history.”
Amanda wiped at her eyes and sniffled. “Midge, it doesn’t look like you have any other customers at the present time, so why don’t you sit down and give us a summary of La Sal’s history. I love learning new things, but I can’t think there could be much to tell, though, since it was only settled here recently.”
Midge pulled a ladder-back chair over from another table and straddled it backwards, resting her forearms on the chair back. “Well, as ya probably know, Father Escalante named this little burg La Sal because the nearby snowcapped mountains looked like salt, and La Sal is Spanish for salt. Two of La Sal’s first settlers were Thomas and Elizabeth Roy. I think they came in and began runnin’ a few cattle. If I remember right, they hailed from Tennessee.”
“They run cattle clear down here? Where on earth could one find a market for cattle in this area?” Amanda asked.
“I don’t know, but I imagine when they had the need fer cash money, they herded them over to Denver or up to Salt Lake.”
Amanda shook her head. “If they decided to drive them up to Salt Lake, how in the world would they push them up the Hole-in-the-Wall passage? It’s too steep.”
Midge scratched her head. “Maybe they drove ’em around that area. I don’t know. But then, Brigham Young sent in three men to colonize this area and build cattle and minin’ industries. Cornelius M
axwell, William McCarty, and Neil North—all Mormon saints—settled on Coyote Creek. It was hard, though, because even before they could get a good start, they were attacked by Paiutes up on the Mule Shoe. I think one of ’em was killed. But, as ya can see, the town is quite firmly settled now and it should last, unless the ore plays out over at the Deseret Mine or we git hit with a drought and all the cattle die.”
“Well, good luck, Midge. I hope the town continues to grow so The Hog Trough stays viable,” Amanda said.
“Via—, what’s that mean?” Midge asked, looking perplexed.
“I just meant I hope your business continues to prosper and produce money.”
“Well, I wouldn’t exactly say I’m prosperin’ here, but I am managin’ to keep the wolf away from the door,” Midge said.
At that point, Bryan decided to put in his two bits. “Midge, I know Amanda is sometimes hard to understand. See, she’s college educated, and she sometimes talks funny.”
Midge laughed. “I understand her just fine, young feller, and you’d best watch yer lip ’round her or little Amanda here might bonk yer head with a fryin’ pan or somethin’, and that wouldn’t be right, considerin’ ya ain’t in really good health to begin with.” After saying that, she leaned over and whispered in Amanda’s ear, “Amanda, ya’d best hold on to this one—he’s a keeper.” Amanda’s face took on the bright-red hue of a broiled lobster.
Bryan shook his head. “You women! What in the world did you say to her that would bring on such a blush?”
Midge laughed. “Don’t ya wish ya knew, young feller? Anyway, I was tellin’ ya about La Sal. Look folks, it’s desolate all right, but I like it here. We even have a mail route now. It goes through Douglas, Pine Log, Salina, Green River, Blake, Naturates, Placerville, Telluride, and Ouray. It’s a 700-mile run, and it gits run oncet a week. So see, we ain’t so isolated here.”
A young couple walked in the front door, looking to have lunch. “Well, I’ve got to git to it,” Midge said as she stood up. “Enjoy yer lunch.”
Murder in Mushroom Valley Page 10