Payback at Morning Peak (7 page)

The cowboy screamed as Jubal hoisted him into the wagon and slid the gate back into place so the lout wouldn’t fall. “Dammit, kid, do you have to be so rough?”

Jubal didn’t answer as he tied the fellow’s horse to the back of the wagon and clicked his tongue to Frisk while pulling away.

He had to take the swine into Cerro Vista. It would have been preferable to have left him for the wolves, but Jubal knew he wouldn’t sleep if he did. But he wasn’t
sleeping too well as it was, so maybe it wouldn’t have mattered.

“I didn’t harm your kinfolk back there. Nope, wasn’t me. Was Tauson, Petey, and the rest of them. There’s a pistolero for you—Pete ‘Repeat’ Wetherford. He’s another story. I tell you, you’re lucky he didn’t latch onto your butt. He’d a straightened you out, that’s for sure. Never seen anything like him. Toughest sumbitch I ever laid these weepers on, ole Pete. Can you maybe dodge a few of them potholes, pard? That little round you put into me is botherin’ my breath some, I’m gonna shut up now and rest for a bit.…”

The wheels of the wagon seemed to search out the potholes.

“Did you pick up my iron? That piece cost me a pretty penny, accurate ‘til hell wouldn’t have it. I tell you, son… no, I never touched your folks. It was the others. I kept telling them to ease up… we just came for payback. Old Billy Tauson got all embarrassed ‘cause of your pa. Tauson’s the boss of the group. The bastard said we’d just have some fun with you folks ‘cause he lost the farm to you all. Got outta hand, I reckon. But most everyone does what Billy says, even Pete Wetherford. Though in a one-on-one Petey would lick him. Except for gunplay, then it’s anybody’s guess. But old Billy Tauson is just a natural kinda leader, the devil.” He grimaced, then immediately started groaning.

They rode in silence for a few minutes before he started up again.

“I figured it were your pa who had the argument, front of the land office…” He paused. “That was him, right? He looked to be a good hand. I couldn’t hear what he told Tauson, but ole Billy was one sober sumbitch when
we all got back together. Come to think on it, so was Petey, your pa twisted his arm right smart. No wonder he was so riled up at the farm. Kept yelling, ‘Kill ‘em all, boys!’ Tauson was running ‘round like a sissy schoolteacher. But hell, he started it. In town, I remember he told Crook Arm, the Injun, to trail you back to your ranch. Betcha didn’t know that, did you? Ha, ha. I said to them, ‘Don’t bother the womenfolk, boys. That wouldn’t be good.’ I can’t honestly say whether they did or not. I drift off when things get kinda heavy—”

Jubal gave Frisk some right-hand rein so the wagon wheel would drop into a large hole. It bounced out immediately, followed by the back wheel doing the same.

“Goddammit, can’t you drive this cussed thing? If’n I didn’t know better, I’d say you were a…” He groaned, then picked up where he left off. “I heard the boys agigglin’ and carryin’ on, but as I said, that wasn’t for me. No, sir, my mama didn’t raise no rape person, huh-uhh, nosirree. I kept telling Petey, ‘Pete, it ain’t right, I tell ya.’ But nobody tells Pete nothing, uh-huh… what a guy. Makes me chuckle to think on it. We was all in Abilene, Kansas, and there was this ole gal what could do things with her private parts that would make a body tie up in fits. Well, she didn’t shine up to Petey so good—”

Jubal stopped the wagon and slapped Frisk on the rump. She snapped against her traces, shaking the buckboard with a mighty lurch.

“Dammit to hell!”

After the punishing jolt, Ty sniffled and carried on for a while, then finally drifted off to sleep.

After a mile or so, Jubal heard him stirring.

“What would you say, farmer, if I was to simply mount my horse and ride on out of here. What would you say?”

Jubal didn’t answer, just gestured with his hand as if to say,
Help yourself.

“The bed of this wagon stinks. Looks all nasty with blood and shit and stuff. Don’t you have a blanket I could put under my head, for Christ’s sake?” He snickered. “Yeah, old Petey and I’ll be friends ‘til the day we die.”

“Day before yesterday,” said Jubal.

“What’d you say? I didn’t understand. I wasn’t condoning what Petey does, I simply said we would be—”

“I heard what you said, Ty, and I said, ‘Day before yesterday.’ That’s when you and your friend Petey ceased being friends.”

“Why’s that?”

“It’s baffling. Your bosom pal, Petey, didn’t mention you the last I saw him. Oh, he talked about a lot of folks.… I could hear him bouncing down the ravine, yelling threats. Your Mexican pal Jorge, his trip was… I think the word is ‘unencumbered.’ Yeah, Petey reached deep into the darkness. Your tough friend managed to go down a list of people he wished to be damned—his mother ‘the filthy whore’, his father, I think, he described as a ‘rotten bastard’, and, ah, yes, me. A rotten pup whom his friends, guess that would include you, should castrate. Yeah, Petey might have lived for an hour, maybe. I hope so. I pray the pain enveloped him in hot misery until he breathed his last.” The dull pain in Jubal’s hip aggravated him. He shifted on the hard buckboard seat.

“I don’t believe you,” Ty finally said. “Petey dead? Nah. Huh-uh.”

“Petey didn’t die well, Ty. No, both Pete and Jorge entertained me for several long seconds while they tumbled, shouting their guts out.” Jubal tried to rein in his anger but couldn’t. “The blood and waste on the wagon floor, by the way, are from my family. If you open your mouth again before we get to town, Ty, I’ll let you hop and skip on in to Cerro Vista on your own, agreed?”

“Nobody kills Pete Wetherford.” He took an instant. “All right, agreed.”

The buckboard creaked its way toward town. Jubal dug his mother’s Bible from inside his shirt, wrapped the reins around his arm, and leafed through the worn pages. He tried to recall a quote about weakness his ma used to repeat. He couldn’t remember if it was from the Bible or not. He pictured his mother standing proud at the cabin door. “Weakness is—” No, it was “cruelty.” “All cruelty springs from weakness,” she’d said.

Cerro Vista had a welcoming feel, the locals all pleasantly busy. A man called out to Jubal, “What’s you hauling, sonny?” Main Street was lined up with mostly wood-frame buildings, each looking much like its neighbor. A few adobe-style homes dotted the street, but most of them had been converted to boardinghouses or small dry goods stores. The Wicks, a grand Victorian and Cerro Vista’s only hotel, stood at the end of the street.

Jubal made his way to the county jail. Built in the pueblo style, it consisted of four small cells constructed with crude metal poles, each area with its own bucket to serve as a privy. A short hallway and wall separated the large open room’s barred cubicles from the small office up front.

Jubal tied Frisk to the rail and stepped inside. He found two desks, each with a man behind it, asleep. “Excuse me, Sheriff?”

“What the—” The larger of the two sat up, red of face, with a heavy handlebar mustache. “Don’t you believe in knocking on a door before you enter, child?”

“Sorry, sir. The door was open. I just thought—”

The man called out to the other sleeper, “Wake up, Ron. Hell’s fire. You can’t get no help these days.” His attention came back to Jubal. “You look to be somebody what was shot at and missed, shat at and hit.” He grinned at his own joke. “What’s eatin’ at you, laddie?”

Jubal didn’t think it funny. “I’ve got a young guy in my wagon been shot in the chest.” He walked toward the door. “He’s in a bad way.”

The heavyset lawman stepped outside and yelled once again at his deputy. He looked at Jubal’s passenger, who had returned to his moaning. Deputy Ron finally came stumbling out the front door, rubbing his face.

“Ron, carry yourself down to the hotel and get Doc Brown here, quick-like.”

It wasn’t more than five minutes before a harried-looking older man in a suit vest and black string tie came hustling down the street. “Where is he?”

The sheriff pointed toward the back of the open wagon.

The older gentleman examined Ty. “Anybody know how this happened?”

Jubal looked to the sheriff, then back to the doctor. “He was shot.”

The doctor continued tending to the pale gunman. “I can readily see that, youngster.”

“By whom?” asked the sheriff.

Jubal paused. “Me.”

The sheriff watched Jubal. “Ron, climb up on that buckboard. You and Doc here, take that shot-up boy back to the doc’s office at the hotel. You hear?”

“I’m on it, Sheriff. Just you watch my smoke.”

“Mind my horse, sir.” This from Jubal.

The sheriff signaled for Jubal to follow him back into the jail, where he gestured for the young man to take a seat. They sat looking at each other far too long for Jubal’s comfort.

“I’m gonna let you think on some things for a minute or so. I’ll be tending some ‘portant business in the back.” He made this sound like a great secret between them. “Okay by you, sonny?”

Jubal looked around the sparse office. A faded picture of an older man with a badge and gun held a strong family resemblance to the sheriff who was “tending business” in the back. A shelf behind the desk held several rifles and a shotgun. Framed documents on the wall proclaimed Bufort L. Morton a stellar public servant. A newspaper article stated the sheriff had been instrumental in the capture of Harry Walls, a desperate wife-beater and chicken thief.
With credentials like that, Sheriff Morton will round up the raiders of the Young family farm in no time at all.

As Jubal waited, he relived the past two days, not really regretting anything he had done, except the way his father had died. He was caught in a trap of memory as the sheriff’s couple minutes expanded to nearly half an hour, until he heard voices coming from the back, where he thought the cells to be.

With an explosion of energy, the big man burst back
into the room. He plopped down in his swivel chair. “You want to tell me about it, son?”

Jubal let out a sigh. “I was hunting up around Morning Peak—”

“And this fellow just happened to step in front of your rifle, correct?”

“No, sir. Not exactly. I’m sorry to say I shot him on purpose.”

Morton grew a huge grin. “So you shot him for good reason, but you’re sorry you did it. By the way, I assume that’s his horse tied to the back of your buckboard, right?”

Jubal couldn’t keep up with the sheriff’s interrogation. “I was on the mountain and saw smoke rising from our place in the valley, so I ran—”

“Why’d you take his horse? By the way, what’s your name?”

“Jubal Young, sir—”

“I better write this down,” he mumbled. “Just to keep it straight.” He retrieved a sheaf of paper and pen before nodding. “You shot the fellow, then started to run home ‘cause you saw smoke, then what?”

“No, sir. I saw the smoke, then once I got down to the farm there were a whole bunch of these renegades hollering around our place.”

“Renegades. You mean deserters? Indians? That shot-up youngster don’t look to be a ‘breed. What do you mean?”

“No, sir. They weren’t Indians. Well, a couple of them might have been. The rest were just rowdies pa and I had seen here down by the land office last week sometime.”

Sheriff Morton tapped his pen against his worn desk.
“So you came upon these so-called desperadoes and shot one of them, correct?”

Jubal felt his eyes starting to well up. “No, sir. I shot several of them, because—”

“Oh.” Morton held up his hand for Jubal to stop. “So this gang of grown men were dancing and carrying on around your farm, you come home from hunting squirrels—”

“Rabbits.”

“All right, rabbits, and decide you’d wing a couple rounds at them. What did they do, son, let you take potshots? Mercy me, you’re gonna have to do better than that. Who were these terrible men, sonny?”

“I don’t know all their names. One of the Indians was Broke Arm or Crook Arm, I don’t recall.” He started to get impatient, but he wanted to get everything straight. “And another, who has gone dead now, was named Pete something. Warefort or Wetherfort.”

“You’re talking about Petey Wetherford. Know him well. What did Petey have to do with all this? By the way, where is he?”

“Like I said, sir. Dead.”

“The hell you say. Petey Wetherford dead? Who did him?”

Jubal remained silent.

“You? Bullshit, son. You killed Petey.… How?”

“I lured him onto a log stretching across a ravine. When he was halfway, I shifted the log and he fell. He and a Mexican named Jorge.”

“Let me get this right. You saw smoke, there were a bunch a ne’er-do-wells dancing about your farm. You shot
one of them—or was it several?—then coaxed the rest of them onto a tree trunk and jiggled them to death.”

“Sheriff, you can make light of this if you want, but these people—” Jubal could feel himself getting angry. “These low-life bastards killed my family, dammit.”

“So you say. Who saw any of this?”

“Me.”

“And who in hell are you?” The sheriff bolted to his feet. “Walking in here with some bullshit story, and getting uppity when questioned. You best tend your behavement. I’ll slap your ass behind bars.
Com-pren-de?
”

Jubal acknowledged that he indeed understood and held his anger. “It wasn’t all of them on the log, only two. The rest were taking the long way around.”

“I don’t understand any of that. How did you know their names? They tell you?” The sheriff seemed to be enjoying himself in a mean-spirited way.

“No, they didn’t tell me, sir. I heard them talking, and that Billy Tauson, the big gray-haired one, the leader, he’s the one my pa had trouble with here in town.”

“Damn. This is getting better and better. Why don’t you start once more at the beginning and see if you can tell it straight without any storybook? Start with the first one you shot, the feller in back of your wagon.”

Jubal closed his eyes and steeled himself to tell the truth. In for a penny, in for a pound. “He wasn’t the first one. The first one was out back of the barn where they tied my—”

Deputy Ron burst through the door. “That ole boy didn’t make it, Sheriff. Passed on to his reward with a big bubble of blood comin’ out his mouth. Nasty. He kept
talking right to the end, though.” The deputy pulled his chair up close to Jubal. “I gotta get a good look at this gunner, Sheriff. He’s a jimmy cracker, I’ll tell ya.”