Crazy Woman Creek (6 page)

As the men rested and talked, Luke looked beyond them to the creek bank, imagining again James Rose’s last minutes on
earth. With difficulty he tried to conjure a picture of Rose slipping and falling from the bank into the dark and frigid water, but he couldn’t. It was only a two-foot drop, hardly menacing by daylight or moonlight. The creek was fast and mercilessly cold, but Rose was young and strong, a man who performed by himself all the demanding physical chores of a small but thriving cattle ranch. Something wasn’t right. Luke stood up.

“I’m going to take a look around,” he said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Luke banged his hat on his thigh to smack excess water from it and then placed it on his head and approached the creek. He walked slowly up and down the flat bank, stepping on patches of snow interspersed among thickly packed, dry grasses blown nearly supine by unrelenting winter winds. He searched for anything that would put to bed his unease regarding James Rose’s accident. If his death had been anything other than accidental, surely some bit of evidence to indicate foul play would be here, where he died. Another set of footprints. A second set of horse tracks. A personal item dropped and left behind, unbeknownst to the owner. In particular he looked for any sign of struggle. He looked for blood.

For a quarter of an hour Luke walked up and down the bank on the side of the creek where they found Beauty, about three hundred feet in both directions, canvassing the ground as he went. Finding nothing, he returned to the others, who were mounted and waiting. Beauty’s lead line was tied to Sheriff Morris’ saddle horn.

“Seen enough?” said Sheriff Morris as Luke walked up to his horse to untie it.

“Enough,” lied Luke. “The Rose Ranch is that way,” he said, pointing west.

As the five horses and four riders turned toward the Rose ranch, Luke couldn’t shake an unsettling feeling that he had unfinished business here. Could someone have pushed James Rose into the water? Luke had not found a scrap of physical evidence around the death site to indicate homicide. But to voice his unfounded suspicion aloud to Cyrus, who evidently had already decided from the circumstances that James had slipped and fallen to his death, would make Luke look like an amateur. Luke’s suspicion was mostly a feeling, and how could he explain a feeling, especially to someone as cynical as Cyrus? To convince him, Luke could only put forth hard evidence, and he certainly had none of that.

But like the scratching of a hairy burdock leaf that has burrowed into his sock, a niggling thought scratched at Luke’s mind: Could Mrs. Rose have pushed her husband to his death?

Ulysses was the first to hear the sad procession, an elegy of four horsemen and a riderless horse. Perhaps it was the scent and not the sound of his master’s prized Morgan that the alert pet discerned on the late afternoon breeze, but whatever it was that aroused his canine senses, it triggered a predictable response in the most prominent part of his anatomy. His agitated barking sent Lenora scurrying from the kitchen to the front door to see what so disturbed her dog.

But before she left the house, she surreptitiously peeped through white lace curtains at the front room window into the yard. She saw nothing out of order, no four-legged critters hissing or pawing at Ulysses, no two-legged visitors either, but Ulysses’ barking was not to be ignored. Of one thing Lenora was certain: she had not imagined the stealthy steps of an intruder outside her bedroom
window the last two nights. Ulysses hadn’t imagined them either, and she was grateful that his barking had scared him off.

Had he returned?

With the ominous sound of the trespasser’s boots uppermost in her mind, Lenora was taking no chances. She wiped the bits of floury biscuit dough still clinging to her fingers onto her calico apron and then reached above the front door for James’ Sharps rifle, where it was always stored, ready for use. But now, for the first time in her married life, Lenora, not James held the Sharps in defense of their ranch. The sobering significance of this act did not escape her, but this was no time to indulge in self-pity.

Lenora acted quickly. She could tell by the change in his bark that Ulysses had run to the rear of the house. She moved to the bedroom where, from the tiny window, she could see not one but a group of men on horseback approaching from the
East. She lifted the long arm into position and cocked the trigger, never taking her eyes off the riders.

She watched, heart thumping
like a drum, every muscle taut with anxiety, finger on the trigger, as Ulysses suddenly stopped his frantic barking and bounded out of the yard toward the horsemen, who by now were only a few hundred feet away. But Ulysses’ chain stopped his escape abruptly. After a few minutes Lenora watched as one of the riders halted his horse, dismounted, and bent down to greet her dog. The tall man scratched Ulysses behind his ears, rubbed his head, and then reached into his pocket and pulled something out, evidently a treat, because Ulysses began to exhibit all the familiar signs of a tail-wagging sentry just waiting to be bribed.

Then Lenora saw the riderless horse following the mounted riders, and
as slowly and silently as the dawn rises in the eastern sky, so was the dawning of truth in her mind. She realized who the tall man was, and more important, what that riderless horse meant.

God oh God, let it not be so.

She stared, transfixed with terror, as the tall man remounted his horse and joined the rest of them as they made their way to her front yard. Finally she saw them round the corner of the house. She unhooked her finger from the trigger and eased the Sharps down to her hips.

#

Lenora did not wait for them to knock. She stepped into the doorway, Sharps still in hand, though she had the presence of mind to remove her apron, check for any stray bits of biscuit dough on her shirtwaister, and smooth her hair. A lady does not greet visitors with an apron on, even when her missing husband’s horse returns home without him.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Rose,” said Sheriff Morris, tipping his hat and dismounting from his horse. The others tipped their hats as well, but only Luke dismounted with the sheriff. Once Luke’s feet
were on the ground, Ulysses walked up next to him and parked on his haunches, panting and slobbering, hoping to be thrown another dainty by the treat man.

Lenora recognized the two men still on horseback. The elder was a local rancher she knew from church. The younger was the son of a neighboring rancher. She tried to be polite and return their greetings, but when she opened her mouth no words came out. Her breaths came in short, shallow puffs; she felt like she would faint. She reached for the door frame to steady herself. The air was fraught with the tension of the unspoken.

“We found this horse tied up by the North-East Creek,” Sheriff Morris said, motioning toward Beauty and meeting Lenora’s eyes. “We think it’s Mr. Rose’s. We found no sign of the owner.”

“It’s James’,” said Lenora, still gripping the door frame for support. 

“We searched the area where we found her,” Luke said. “She was tied a few feet from the creek. It looks as though Mr. Rose stopped there for water.”

  “And you didn’t find any sign of him?” asked Lenora. Hearing her husband’s name helped her come back to the moment. She took a few steps toward Beauty, pressed her face against the animal's head, and closed her eyes while she lovingly ran her hand down its smooth coat. The pungent smells of horse sweat and saddle leather sharpened her
memory of Beauty’s missing owner. Where was James? What happened to him?

“No ma’am. None of his clothing, no hat, no shoes. No tracks either. Saturday night’s rain washed away any tracks,” said Luke.

Lenora stopped nuzzling Beauty and stepped away to face the lawmen. “Surely he left some evidence somewhere. There must be something out there to explain what happened to him. A man doesn’t just disappear like a ghost.” She saw the two ranchers exchange furtive glances. Her heart flip flopped in her chest.

“Sheriff Morris, what happened to my husband?” Lenora’s voice took on a tinge of shrillness.

“Mrs. Rose, we believe that—”

“Wait,” said Luke. “Jed, will you and Ben take the horses to the barn? Beauty shouldn't wait any longer. There’s fodder, the water
pump’s around the side of the house, and you can let your own horses rest a bit for the ride back to town. I’m sure Mrs. Rose here will be happy to get you something to eat too before we leave.”

Jed and Ben didn’t need to be asked twice. They tipped their hats to Lenora while Sheriff Morris and Deputy Davies handed their reins to them.

Sheriff Morris and Luke watched Jed and Ben walk to the barn, and once they were inside it, both lawmen, almost in unison, removed their hats. Lenora recognized the gesture and what it meant. Her heart pounded wildly. She could hear the blood rushing past her ears.

Sheriff Morris opened his mouth to speak. “Mrs. Rose—
”

“Just tell me! Tell me what happened to my husband!” 

“No one can be sure, ma’am,” said the sheriff, flinching at her outburst, “but it looks like your husband fell into the North-East Creek. We believe he’s dead, probably downstream a good ways. We’re planning to send a search party downstream tomorrow, first thing.”

“You think my husband drowned?” Lenora's face contorted with disbelief.

“The evidence looks that way, ma’am,” said Luke.

“Evidence? What evidence? You said you had nothing! You have no evidence at all that my husband drowned.” Lenora was starting to flush red. She punctuated her angry words with her hands.

“What kind of evidence do you expect from a drowning, Mrs. Rose?” said Sheriff Morris. “He fell in three days ago. His body is long gone downstream. Finding the body is the only evidence we can hope for.”

“Sheriff Morris,” said Lenora, finding her feisty self once again, “You don’t know James Rose. My husband would never, NEVER, be so clumsy as to slip and fall into a rushing stream.”

“We searched the entire creek bank, Mrs. Rose. All four of us,” said Sheriff Morris, exaggerating the facts. “Nothing else makes sense. Your husband drowned.”

Lenora trembled with anger.
“Your investigation, sir, if you may flatter yourself by calling it that, has resulted in a conclusion that is not only faulty, it’s preposterous.”

“Listen here,” said Sheriff Morris, stepping closer and growing redder in the face than Lenora
. “We’ve been all over that area, where we found her, his horse." Sheriff Morris wagged his finger angrily toward the eastern border of the Rose ranch. "There’s no evidence that anything happened to your husband other than a drowning. You can wish it away, ma’am, but James Rose drowned in the North-East Creek.”

“That’s impossible.” Lenora’s eyes flashed wickedly with anger to match the sheriff's. These idiotic men. She’d had all she could take. Intimidation. Accusation. Exhaustion. She knew she wasn’t acting ladylike, but she didn’t care.

“What makes you so sure his body ain't in that creek? You know more about this than you been telling?” sneered the sheriff.

With that, Lenora’s temper went from simmering hot springs to volcanic eruption. “You haven’t conducted an investigation! You’ve made an assumption, that’s all. An assumption based on nothing. What can you possibly deduce from a tied-up horse and no rider? It can mean anything.”
Lenora banged the butt of her Sharps on the ground for emphasis.

“Mrs. Rose,” said Luke, stepping a little closer to her. His tone was far more entreating than the sheriff’s. “I walked all over the area where we found Beauty. There’s nothing to be found. No sign of him at all. The only logical place the body can be is in the creek.”

“I’ll thank you to cease referring to my husband as a ‘body.’”

“Please calm yourself ma'am. We’re trying to help,” said Luke.

“I will not calm myself! You call yourselves lawmen? What kind of lawmen find a horse and nothing else, and then concoct a wild story about a drowning that no one witnessed? If you would do your job and conduct a
real
investigation, my husband would be here right now.”

A little voice in the back of Lenora's mind was telling her she was out of control. She ignored it.

“Looky here young lady, we don’t have to put up with your mouth. We done our best. We rode all day, got others searching too. You couldn’t have done any better,” said Sheriff Morris.

“You mean you’re not going to search anymore?” said Lenora.
Stupid, puffed up lawmen. They think they know everything because they wear those tinhorn badges. They don’t know James.

“Only down the creek. For a
body
,” said Sheriff Morris, leaning into Lenora’s face.

“You’re wasting your time, Sheriff,” said Lenora, leaning right back into the sheriff’s face, returning his glare. She was way beyond intimidation now. “You’ll never find my husband in the creek. And since it’s quite apparent that your investigation, if you want to call it that, is complete, you leave me no choice but to find my husband myself.”

With one hand Lenora started to lift her Sharps to her waist from the ground where it had rested, determined to end the standoff with the last word followed by a huffy retreat to her biscuit baking. But before she could grip the Sharps with both hands, Luke threw his hat to the ground and reflexively lunged for the Sharps. He jerked the weapon out of her hand with one of his and with his other he grabbed her upper arm and started to drag her away from Sheriff Morris. The sheriff shouted something nasty, but Lenora was so startled by Luke’s action and Ulysses was barking so fiercely she heard only the sheriff’s angry tone and not the words. Luke didn’t release his painful grip on her arm until they had rounded the corner of the house, where he turned her about, face to face.