Murder in Mushroom Valley

by Scotty V Casper

  “Sure, feed your pigs, and then let’s get this thing over with. But let me warn you—if you try any sort of shenanigans, I will gun you down with this Winchester. Just slop those hogs and come on up here.”

  “I won’t try anything. I am a man of my word,” Muir said.

  “Oh, I’m sure you are,” Bryan said. “Now hurry up because this sun is getting to me.” While Muir slopped his hogs, Bryan took the liberty of standing up and stretching. Once he had stretched, he reached back to see how badly his rear end was shot up. It turned out not being wet and sticky, so he knew it had quit bleeding. It was only a graze, but it still stung like the devil. Then he took a few minutes to examine his Colt. He made sure there wasn’t any dirt in the barrel or cylinders, then he checked to see if the cylinder turned freely. He gave it a spin and it worked just fine. Then, of course, he confirmed that there was a bean in every hole, as Westerners are wont to say. He usually kept an open cylinder under the hammer to prevent shooting himself accidentally. But this was different. He saw to it that every cylinder was charged. Sometimes a man’s life will depend on that one last bullet.

  His moving around flushed a rabbit from a clump of sagebrush. When it exploded into action, Bryan’s gun leaped into his hand, as if by magic. His nerves were taut as it was, and it didn’t take much to set him off. He put his pistol back in the holster and left the hammer strap off because he figured before long, he would need to get it out in a hurry—or die. While he stood there with his heart pounding, he marveled at the size of the rabbit. The thing was twice the size of a Western jackrabbit.

  He knew he had seen a similar rabbit years back, and finally, the memory came back to him. He got shot up apprehending a killer up by the Green River in Southern Utah. He ended up living with a small tribe of Utes on the Seeds-Kee-Dee. That is what the Utes called the Green River. They called the rabbit a big Donavan pooch. Bryan thought the name originated in Sweden, and he didn’t know how the Utes got hold of it. This all happened before the Black Hawk War that raged across Utah for a couple years. He hoped those Indians who nursed him back to good health survived that war that was waged between the Utes and the Mormons. It was fought by the Mormons and the Utes, for the most part, but quite a few other white people got tangled in the conflict. After a while, his heart slowed back down, and he braced himself for the confrontation with Muir, scrofulous human and killer.

  After a half hour, Muir walked back to the hovel. “Come down here and I will shade you. I don’t want to hike up to where you are.” Bryan didn’t know what that was all about. He just figured Muir was too lazy to trek up to him. Bryan rambled down to the cabin. While he made the walk, Muir disappeared into the cabin and Bryan smelled a rat. Sure enough, it was a trick because a rifle barrel poked out between two gunnysacks that served as curtains. Bryan dove off to the side, and a rifle bullet cut the air where he had just been. He jerked out his Colt and fired three rounds through the curtains, raking them from left to right in hopes that one of the rounds would find the target. One of the rounds did because there came a scream—a scream that spoke of anguish and pain.

  Bryan bounded to his feet and dashed over to the corner of the hovel to get out of the field of fire in case the man wasn’t down and dying. Once he was near the building, he edged along the front of the hovel until he got up next to the door with his back. The door was hung on leather hinges. He took the barrel of his Colt, pushed the door open a ways, and then waited. Nothing happened, so after a while, he darted his head in the door opening and back out to get an idea what was going on in the hovel. Three men were stretched out on the floor, and his man was one of them. But he was still alive, so Bryan edged into the building, holding his Colt out in front of him, prepared to fill Muir full of more lead if the hard case tried to raise his pistol and take a shot at him.

  Muir had a sucking air wound in his chest, which meant he was shot through one of his lungs. Bubbles of blood would swell up from his lips and then pop.

  “You bastard, you’ve killed me,” Muir said.

  “It appears so,” Bryan replied.

  “How much is the bounty on me?”

  Bryan reached into a breast pocket and pulled out the dodger. “It says here that you are worth three thousand dollars, dead or alive. But after you robbed that bank in Helper and killed the clerk just for sport, it has probably gone up. Bryan pulled the hammer strap off Muir’s pistol, yanked it out, and slid it across the grimy floor, out of reach. Then he kicked the rifle Muir had used to try and kill him out of the way. He figured there was no use taking any chances.

  “Will you give me a proper burial?”

  “No, because I am taking you over to Trinidad to collect the bounty money. They will probably plant you in their cemetery. If it weren’t for the bounty money, I would leave you right here for the critters and worms. It’s all you deserve.” Bryan stuffed the dodger back into his breast pocket.

  “What about my pigs?”

  “What about them?”

  “Are you going to just let them die?”

  “No. I will send someone out with a big freight wagon and haul them into town.”

  The hard case suddenly didn’t seem so hard because he started crying. “It hurts, it hurts somethin’ awful.”

  “Good,” Bryan said.

  “Will you roll me a Quirly?” Muir asked. “I just want one last smoke.”

  “No. Besides, you’ll be dead before you have time to finish it.”

  “You’re a hard man,” Muir said.

  “I have to be when I deal with scum like you.”

  “Oh Lordy, it hurts.”

  “Good. Say, I will do one last thing for you. Do you have next of kin I should notify about your passing?”

  “No, we lived up near Bear Lake in Northern Utah in a little berg named Garden City. Ma died when I was ten years old, and Pa got to beating on me so often, I run off when I was just twelve. No, I don’t care if he knows about me or not.” Big tears ran down his face; then he took a couple deep gasps and died. His eyes remained open, but they weren’t seeing anything.

  Bryan walked back to a corral and brought out five horses. He went to a nearby tack shed for the three dead men’s saddles. He brushed down and tacked up three horses, then he hefted the three deceased onto the horses and tied them down. Next, he covered them in canvas and lashed it down securely. It was hot, and they would get ripe before long. The canvas would help hold down the odor.

  He whistled, and Cayuse and Mule came on the lope. “You are some good old fellows, aren’t you?” He drew water from a well, gave both animals a drink, and threw them a bale of hay. He assumed the other five horses were well fed and watered. He went into the hovel, brewed some coffee, and drank a couple cups. The coffee was strong enough to float a horseshoe. He found salt pork—what else—in a pantry and fried that up for his lunch. It was surprisingly good.

  Bryan went out holding several carrots and fed them to Cayuse and Mule. It was probably just his imagination, but it seemed like they really appreciated the treat. The other five horses appeared to be jealous, so he had no choice. Bryan went back in the hovel, brought out all the carrots, and fed them to the other five horses. Again, it might have been his imagination, but it seemed like those five horses looked on him with a little more tolerance. When he loaded the three dead outlaws on them, they didn’t like it, so they stomped around and bucked. He knew it was no way to make friends, burdening them with bloody, malodorous bodies.

  Bryan started out for Trinidad in order to offload the grizzly cargo with the town sheriff. He pulled one of the horses carrying a body with a lead rope, and all the other animals followed. When he crossed the Purgatoire River at its confluence with the Arkansas River, he found himself in a tight situation. Three Indians sat their horses at the spot he was to climb out of the river. The river was swift and his horses were struggling to keep their footing, so turning around and going back wasn’t an option. He stopped the caravan and pulled his .44/40 Winchester from its boo
t. He figured that was as good a place as any to have the fight. One of the Indians gave him the universal peace sign, so he put his rifle across the saddlebow and proceeded on.

  Two of the Indians were bleeding from wounds. One had been shot with an arrow, and he could see the shaft. The other had a broken leg.

  He spoke with the uninjured Ute, using what little Ute language he knew and by signing. The buck said they were Sahyehpeech Utes who lived near Moab, Utah, and they had been jumped by a Blackfoot war party whose homeland was up north in Cache Valley. He explained the two tribes were ancient enemies, and they were always eager to kill each other, to scalp, and count coup. He said they had been out on a hunting party—four of his comrades had been killed outright, and two had been badly injured. He said he was the only one who came out of the fray unhurt and that they had killed seven Blackfoot warriors. He showed Bryan the scalps, hanging from the mane on his horse. He said that the scalps would give the three of them strong medicine, they would be given horses, soft buckskin clothing, and that the most beautiful squaws would come to their robes during the nighttime. He said he had cut off their deceased enemies’ manhood and burned their eyes out with firebrands, and in so doing, the hated Blackfoot fighters would go to the hereafter incapable of seeing or begetting children. He laughed at the prospect.

  “I am Bryan. What are your names?” Bryan asked as he climbed down off Cayuse.

  The uninjured Ute was their spokesperson. “I am Brown Deer, this man with the arrow wound is Yellow Bird, and the one with the broken leg is Runs Fast.”

  Bryan rode a ways and set up camp in an out-of-the-way spot arranged on a bend of the Arkansas River. He hated spending the time because he knew the three hard cases loaded on horses would get really ripe. But the Sahyehpeech Utes needed medical help, and giving them aid was the right thing to do.

  “Who are these dead men?” Brown Deer asked, pointing to the three hard cases loaded on horses.

  “They are very bad men wanted by the white people.”

  Brown Deer shrugged. “If they are evil men, why don’t you leave them for the coyotes and other animals?” he asked, using some English, Ute, and sign language.

  “Because white men will pay me money for their bodies.”

  “I scalp them,” Brown Deer said, pulling a wicked-looking knife from his scabbard.

  “No, you can’t. I don’t need them disfigured so they cannot be identified.”

  Bryan went to work on Yellow Bird with the arrow in his shoulder. He put a stick in the fellow’s mouth because he knew he was going to hurt him. The flint arrowhead was pushing at the skin on the backside of the Indian’s shoulder, so he took hold of the shaft and shoved it on through. Yellow Bird gasped, and his face broke out in a sweat. Then Bryan boiled water, cleaning the entry and exit wounds thoroughly. Next, he swabbed the injuries in carbolic acid, wrapped a clean shirt around the shoulder, and tied it off nice and tight. Finally, he put birch bark on a flat rock and ground it into powder with a fist-size rock. Then he boiled it in water and forced the Indian to drink it. It was an old Indian remedy designed to stave off fever.

  Bryan looked over at Brown Deer and said, “Pull the bandages off once a day, clean the wounds, put more of this medicine on, and cover the wounds back up with unsoiled wrappings. Give him a drink of this birch bark and water each day and he will be okay.”

  “I will do it,” the spokesman said in fractured English.

  Bryan smiled and handed him a partially used bottle of carbolic acid. “Use this, and it will keep the injuries from mortifying.”

  The Indian nodded his head.

  “Now I will fix Runs Fast’s leg,” Bryan said.

  Brown Deer told Bryan what happened to Runs Fast. “The Blackfoot shot his horse with an arrow and it rolled onto his leg,” he said.

  “Go find me two tree limbs about this long,” he said, holding his hands about a foot apart, “and make sure they are straight.” It took a while to finally put the message across, but the Ute understood at last and hustled down to a grove of cottonwoods lining the riverbank.

  Bryan ran his hands up and down Runs Fast’s leg and discovered that his ankle was broken. Bryan gave him a stick to bite down on. Then he took the fellow’s heel in one hand and his toes in the other and yanked on the foot to set the ankle, all in one motion. The Indian panted and then lay there, trying to control his breathing. Bryan used the tree limbs for splints and bound it all together with piggin’ strings he kept in a pannier.

  “Runs Fast shouldn’t ride a horse for about two weeks. You need to build him a travois and pull him along behind one of your pack horses.”

  “I will build a travois,” Brown Deer said.

  “Build two of them. This fellow with the arrow wound needs one as well.”

  “I will build two of them,” the uninjured Ute said.

  “Good luck. I’ve got to get on down the trail,” Bryan said.

  “You have strong medicine, and you will always be welcome in our village,” the Sahyehpeech Ute said. “Come to visit, and I will share my food and my squaws with you.”

  Bryan laughed and said thank you. As he rode away, he wondered just what Brown Deer’s squaws looked like. He had seen a few squaws running on to three hundred pounds with no teeth. He cringed and dug his spurs gently into Cayuse’s sides to urge him into going just a mite faster. Those bodies were beginning to kick up.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Bryan rode into Trinidad the next morning at around nine. Local citizens stopped along the boardwalks to watch him ride by with the three bodies tied to their horses. He went directly to the sheriff’s office. He wanted to get rid of the three bodies as soon as possible. The sheriff stepped out of his office and shook his head in wonderment. “What do you mean by dragging these men along our streets in full view of everyone?”

  “Sheriff, I’m quite certain you stand for law and order, so I am bringing you these owl hoots for you to dispose of. How else was I going to get to your office? I had to bring them along the street.” Bryan stepped down from Cayuse.

  The sheriff smiled. “There was no other way, sorry. It’s just that I didn’t want the women and children seeing such a sight. Who are they? What happened to them anyway?”

  “All three ran against a pill.”

  Bryan grabbed Ed Muir by his hair and lifted his head so the sheriff could see his face. “This one is Ed Muir. He robbed a bank up in Helper, Utah and killed the clerk just for sport. I don’t know the other two hard cases, and I couldn’t find identification on them. Ed Muir gunned them down during our fight, fearing they would back-shoot him to share in the bounty reward with me. I sort of suggested it to them.”

  “So there’s a bounty on this one?” he asked, pointing to Ed Muir.

  Bryan fished around in his vest pocket, brought out the dodger, and handed it to the sheriff.

  “Are you a bounty hunter?” the sheriff asked.

  “I am.”

  “And who are you?”

  “They call me Kid Utah.”

  The sheriff did a double take. “So you are Kid Utah? I’ve heard of you. They say you are lightning fast with a short gun.”

  Bryan laughed. “You know how rumors can get started.”

  The sheriff walked back and checked the faces on the other two hard cases. “Come in, and let’s see if we can find some dodgers on these two. Bryan followed him into his office.

  “What’s your name, Sheriff?”

  “Luke Mendenhall.” Luke stuck his hand out and they shook.

  It took ten minutes, but they finally found dodgers on the two men. They must have been minor criminals because the bounty on them was set at five hundred dollars apiece.

  “It looks like you have four thousand dollars coming. The only problem is Trinidad doesn’t have that kind of money in their bank, so I will have to give you a voucher. You can cash it in at most any bank, providing they have the funds.”

  Bryan nodded his head that he understood. “That’s all
right. The Zions National Bank up in Salt Lake will have the money. Now I’m heading over into Texas to capture or kill Mark Rollins. He killed his wife and children up in American Fork, Utah.”

  The sheriff lit a Quirly, leaned back in a swivel chair, and blew smoke at the ceiling. “Kid Utah, the fact is, this here town doesn’t have the money to bury these three hard cases.”

  “You can have their three horses, tack, weapons, and what’s in their pockets. That should cover the expense of planting them.”

  “That’s mighty generous of you because, by all rights, that stuff belongs to you.”

  “Don’t mention it. Now I’m going for a haircut, bath, grub, and a feather bed.” When he walked out of the sheriff’s office, the undertaker was looking over the deceased, and it almost seemed like he was licking his chops in anticipation of the money he was about to make.

  “What names should I put on their headstones?” he asked Bryan.

  “Go in the sheriff’s office; he will give you their names,” Bryan said, and he headed for the barbershop. He was either going to have to get a haircut or a dog license, and the haircut seemed the avenue of least resistance.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Bryan rode for another week through dry, parched desert country, and he finally reached the Mescalero Escarpment that marked the beginning of the Llano Estacado. Then it got really bad. The Llano Estacado—or the staked plains, if you will—has also been referred to as the Great American Desert. The staked plains begin in eastern New Mexico and continue on into northwestern Texas. They are bordered by the Canadian River to the north, the Apache Escarpment (300 feet of cap rock) to the east, and the aforementioned Mescalero Escarpment to the west. There is no defining border to the south; it just sort of ends.

  It is a region roughly larger than the state of Indiana, and there are parts of it where one can look out over it for a hundred miles in any direction and not see a tree, a shrub, or a weed. No, there is nothing there, animate or inanimate. It is just mile after mile of dusty, flat, broiling hell. It has been compared to Dante’s Inferno, but that is probably taking it a bit far. And to make matters worse, the bloodthirsty Comanche and Kiowa have crowded in there to avoid being sent to reservations. It is also full of outlaws because the law dogs haven’t any authority there. If a man wants to get himself killed, the Llano Estacado is the place for it.