William W. Johnstone (22 page)
Read William W. Johnstone Online
Authors: Massacre Mountain
Tags: #Murder, #Western Stories, #Wyoming, #Westerns, #Fiction, #Sheriffs - Wyoming, #General, #Mountain Life
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HIRTY-SEVEN
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HIRTY-SEVEN
I headed for Turk’s, lit a lamp, and eyed that greenbroke beast in the stall, the one that might earn himself the name of Critter. This was going to be an entertainment. I eased into the stall, avoided a hoof aimed at my groin, pushed his head back when he tried to bite, and finally got a bridle over him and stuffed the bit into his miserable mouth.
He sawed his head up and down trying to spit it out.
Greenbroke was not exactly accurate. He wasn’t hardly broke at all. But I got a saddle blanket on him and managed to avoid getting killed when he reared up and planned to pound me into the straw. But he was acting like a Critter all right, so I just saddled him up and drew the girth strap tight and led him out into the aisle to look him over. He clacked his big teeth at me.
“You’re getting there,” I said.
I led him into the yard, blew out the light, and stepped aboard. He stood real still. I nudged him with my boots. He refused to move. I slapped his croup, and he took one step.
“You ain’t gonna ever be Critter if you quit before you start,” I said. “You got a lot to live up to, and if you don’t live up to your name, then you’ll be stuck with Skunk. I’ll name you Skunk, and you’ll regret it the rest of your miserable life.”
He turned his head clear back and eyed me, and sniffed, and then took a few tentative steps. We sawed around a little, but he was going the direction I aimed. I tried the brakes, and they worked. Maybe he was greenbroke after all. I’d see. Maybe he’d end up named Critter after all.
I was pretty tense. I headed for the lockup, loaded the double-barreled short scatter-gun into my saddle-sheath, checked on the Butcher, who was staring at me, and headed out. Rusty would feed him in the morning. I was a posse of one again.
I rode into a burst of moonlight. Behind me the wounded town of Doubtful slumbered. A light was lit at Maxwell’s and the rest of the town was bleak and quiet—and dying. I didn’t feel up to the task of rescuing a whole town, but sometimes we are given tasks that are bigger than we know how to do, and we’ve got to try.
I rode over to Sanders’s place first, hoping to get a glimpse of the buggy tracks, but I couldn’t make any sense of anything even with some moonlight. The only thing I had going for me was a hunch or two. Heading for the railroad was too easy. Iceberg wouldn’t risk it. Getting on a train was too easy. Once telegrams got shuffled around, he and his partner in crime would get caught, somewhere, somehow. Where, then?
I turned Skunk north, and he didn’t get the message and was inclined to head for Turk’s, so I warned him again. “You better behave or you’re Skunk, not Critter.”
He rotated an ear back to catch all that, and then stepped smartly toward the north, where I wished to go. Maybe him and me would get along. I started thinking what a feller like Iceberg and a gal like Delphinium would do. I thought maybe they’d go wreck Casper. I could never figure out why Casper existed, and what anyone saw in the town, but there it was in all its plainness, finding some excuse to grow. Yes, that’s where they would go. They’d set up shop in Casper and wreck it real good. Or maybe Douglas. That was a little better place than Casper, but you couldn’t pay me enough to live in either one. Them two, Iceberg and Delphinium, they’d like a miserable town to ruin, and both fit the bill.
It proved to be a real nice July night, with lots of stars and a half-moon. I couldn’t hardly get lost, and the night was so pleasant I didn’t even feel real tired. Once in awhile I stopped Skunk—he didn’t want to stop but I have my ways—and climbed down and looked for iron tire-tracks. I couldn’t see any, but that didn’t mean much. There had been a fair amount of traffic on that dirt road, and there were hoofprints, wagon tracks, footprints, and a lot of cowpies too.
This whole thing was probably futile, but at least I felt like I was accomplishing something. Sometimes you got to start a trip without knowing where it will end. My ma, she called that faith. She was usually right about things. Me, I was inclined to call it a wild-goose chase.
Skunk was settling into the trip, walking real pleasant. I think maybe he was liking this. It beat chewing creosoted posts in Turk’s rear left-hand stall. Once I saw something bound across the road, and it looked like a wolf or a coyote, but it was gone in an instant. There was a whole life lived at night in the animal world, lots of critters that got their dinner while the moon was shining. After a couple of hours I was getting lonely, and unhappy because I hadn’t packed anything to eat, and Casper was a long ways away. I was getting to the north end of Puma County, and soon enough my badge wouldn’t be worth a damn, but that wasn’t going to stop me. It might not have been hot pursuit, but it was pursuit, and I’d lasso that pair if I could.
A creek blocked the way, so I dismounted and added a little to the flow, while Skunk took a drink, and then we forded it and kept on riding north by west. That there creek flowed into the North Platte. So we were moving along toward Casper.
The moon was clear over to the east by the time I got to the abandoned ranch on Little Gopher Creek. I knew about that place. It was a little north of the Puma County line. Bayer, its owner, tried raising crossbred cattle there in what looked to be a splendid grassy range, but it was loaded with jimson weed and the cattle kept sickening and aborting and failing to grow, and nothing he could do helped much. He finally quit the place, but only after he’d built a substantial log home and barn and pens. Even now, travelers sometimes made themselves comfortable there, but there was no glass in the windows and pack rats pretty much owned it all.
I headed up that road, thinking to rest a bit myself. I’d been awake for pretty much a full day, and needed a little shut-eye. It didn’t take long for the old log buildings to rise up in the moonlight. July night wind eddied the air around, and that’s when Skunk rotated his ears and shivered. I was real glad he kept quiet. I stopped him at once, and stood there, looking at the slumbering and silent old place, trying to get a sense of what had alerted the horse. Then I saw a horse in the pens. It was staring my way and might whinny at any moment. I slowly turned Skunk around and retreated into a cottonwood grove, and tied Skunk up. For good measure I collected the scatter-gun and edged toward the Bayer homestead. It sure was one of the pleasantest nights of the summer, with soft air and a deep peace pervading the whole country.
Sanders’s ebony buggy gleamed in the moonlight. I’d seen it often enough.
A breeze made the leaves dance, dappling the ground with dancing shadows. It was all too peaceful there. I circled around, choosing a blind kitchen side of the old house to make my approach. The other sides had a wide veranda and a porch deep in moon shadow. That dray stared at me, but didn’t whicker, and I thought I’d be all right. I began to figure out ways to make the pinch. I had one wrist manacle, and that was about it. But nothing is ever easy. I edged around real careful, testing boards that might creak, and studying on everything. It sure had been a nice place once. I could live there in the white moonlight.
I finally got around to the west side, and edged toward an open window. Moonlight streamed into the room and there they were, asleep. He’d made a bed of straw with a blanket over it. She had undone her hair, and now it fell loose over her white shoulders. The moonlight seemed to erase years from her body, making her smooth and young and maidenly. He lay beside her in the white light, looking younger himself. Her arm fell loosely over his back.
Their clothes were stacked off to one side, and his holster lay nearby, but not within easy reach. Now all this was the most astonishing thing I ever did see in all my life, and I wasn’t ready for it. These two were a thousand miles from where they were before, and in a different world from the one they had inhabited. They looked so young, like they were in their twenties, and newly wed. In their sleep, they seemed utterly at peace.
Instead of enjoying this capture of a pair of killers I found myself dreading it. I stood there stupidly, wondering what to do next. Them two and the Butcher had done a world of harm to Doubtful, and the town would die most likely because of it. But there they were. I never dreamed that Delphinium Sanders could be beautiful, but in that soft, ethereal light she was prettier than any woman I’d ever seen, even more than Ambrosia.
The thought of her, and how she’d almost lost her head just to keep her silent, finally galvanized me. I slipped back from the window and worked around to the door frame, which now lacked a door. I readied my scatter-gun and then raced into that room. I’d get there before Iceberg could get himself together and reach for the holster.
And it was easier than that. They had awakened, but neither had moved.
They saw me, saw my scatter-gun.
“I knew it would come to this,” Iceberg said.
She didn’t say anything. Neither did she try to cover up. She just lay there looking up at me, from eyes that had seen a whole new world.
“I’ve got to take you in,” I said. I reached over and collected his holster and the revolver in it.
That sure was an awkward moment. They were my prisoners. so I couldn’t give them privacy, but they didn’t seem to mind. They slowly got up and dressed, even as the eastern heavens began to lighten. It was just before dawn. Then, after she had laced her shoes and stood, he kissed her, and they turned to face me.
“It was worth it,” she said. “Whatever happens to me, it was worth it for this one night of joy.”
What was likely to happen to her was a hanging, but I didn’t say so. It might depend on who shot her husband, and whether she had been a part of it. That would be for the court to sort out.
I motioned them outside and into a serene dawn, one of those summer dawns when the whole world is hushed and waiting to leap into splendor. We headed out to the buggy.
“Harness the dray,” I said.
Iceberg nodded. He eyed my shotgun briefly, knew I was well aware of possibilities, and set to work. I eyed the buggy briefly. As I expected, there were some canvas sacks in the box behind the seat. I lifted one and found it heavy, and peered in. A mess of gold coins glinted up at me.
Iceberg slid a bridle onto the draft horse, and then a collar, and then he tightened a surcingle and ran the lines back. It took a few minutes for him to finish the task and back the horse to the buggy and hook him up. Delphinium watched quietly. I wished she had pinned her hair up, but she let it flow loosely about her shoulders, and that unnerved me. I wanted her to return to her old ways, but she had no intention of it.
Iceberg finished and awaited instructions. I thought maybe to manacle his right wrist to her left one, but I saw no need. If they tried anything at all, I’d do it.
“Get in and drive to Doubtful,” I said. “I’ll be following along.
There were a bunch of birds trilling their hymns to the newborn day. A red-winged blackbird cheered. A dove cooed. Iceberg snapped the lines over the croup of the dray, and it started obediently, picking up a brisk pace while I rode beside. I didn’t expect trouble. This pair, which had imposed their own sullen hurt upon the world around them, even to the point of death and mayhem, had been transformed. Yesterday Iceberg would have tried to kill me. Today Ike Berg was resigned to his fate, and oddly at peace. Whatever had happened, it was too late to save them. There would be a reckoning back in Doubtful. They knew that, and somehow accepted it, or at least were resigned to it.
I was tired and that was a long, long drive, but we kept on going. We watered at creeks, but I had no food for any of us, and except to rest the horses we kept right on, past the county line, through basins and ranges, around lonely highlands, past a few two-rut ranch roads, like ants crawling across the universe.
They didn’t talk much, but sometimes they held hands, and I had nothing to say to them. I had all three now: Butcher, who’d killed two people and my horse and robbed me; Iceberg, who’d wanted to be sheriff and strangle Doubtful to death the way he’d strangled other towns; and Delphinium, who’d set it all in motion with her loathing of what she secretly yearned for. When I thought about what they’d done I quit feeling a little tender toward them.
That was just about the longest ride I’d ever had. I felt Skunk grow real weary under me, but he kept on going, like Critter. The dray pulling the buggy was wearing out, too, partly because that buggy was loaded with a lot of gold.
“Skunk,” I said, “you’ve passed the test. From now on, you’re Critter.”
The horse didn’t object. In fact he just continued to be annoyed by all the work I was putting him to, and dropped a few apples.
We got into Doubtful late in the afternoon, and I steered them toward my sheriff office. Rusty, he saw us coming and rushed outside.
“Get them explosives out of the other cell, and if you blow yourself up do a good job of it,” I said.
He rushed in, and I watched while Berg helped Delphinium out and helped her walk into my lair. I put down a carriage weight and hefted some gold and brought that in. Rusty, he had parked the guncotton and nitro on my desk, and was taking them two prisoners down to the other cell, while the Butcher watched, amazed. I watched Rusty lock up the lovers and then he helped me haul all that back-busting gold inside.
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