Blood Valley Read online

  “I sure am glad the wind’s right,” Little Jack called out. “’Cause you stink as bad as them goddamn hogs you raise. What the hell do you, sleep with ’em?”

  Little Jack was deliberately makin’ the farmer mad, and the farmer was playin’ right into his game. I could see the farmer’s hands was tremblin’ and his face was shiny with sweat.

  “Hog-turd eatin’, chicken-pickin’, two-bit nester bastard!” Little Jack told him.

  I never could figure that. Man will go into a cafe and order him bacon and eggs for breakfast, but make fun of the people who raise the chickens and the hogs. Don’t make no sense.

  “Are you gonna fight, you damn yellow nester?” Little Jack hollered, “Or run home and hide behind your wife’s petticoats?”

  The farmer’s hand dropped to the butt of his pistol. He never had a chance. Little Jack laughed at him and then drilled him twice before the farmer could clear leather. The Indiana man stumbled, and then fell forward, on his face, dyin’ in the dusty street.

  I pushed open the batwings and stepped outside. “That’s it, Jack. Get your horse and clear out of town. And I mean do it right now. I don’t want no more trouble.”

  “And if I don’t?” Little Jack turned to face me. There was a peculiar light shinin’ in his eyes, a killin’ light from within a man who enjoyed killin’ people.

  “Then make your play, Little Jack.”

  But Little Jack knew that even if he beat me to the draw—and I didn’t think he could do that—I’d still get lead in him. He smiled and the light faded from his eyes. I seen him slowly relax. The Indiana man jerked once, and then was still, blood stainin’ the dirt under and around him. “All right, Sheriff. I’m gone.”

  He got his horse from the stable and was ridin’ out in a couple of minutes. Come to think of it, anybody who knew a flip about horseflesh wouldn’t never call that pretty little paint pony ugly.

  I rode out to the Hickman place, gettin’ there about two o’clock that afternoon. It wasn’t much of a place. Sod-roof shanty and without even goin’ inside, I knew it had a dirt floor that the Missus would sweep two or three times a day. It was a two-bit operation all the way around. I had me a hunch that the Indiana man was on his way out even before Little Jack showed up in his tater patch.

  The place was rundown and just plain crummy lookin’.

  There was already a bunch of wagons and a few horses and mules around the place. And the looks I received from the men wasn’t all that friendly. I swung down off Pronto and tied him secure to the fence. One good jerk and Pronto could tear the fence down. It was a rawhide outfit all the way around. I turned to face the farmers, bein’ careful to avoid gettin’ kicked by Pronto. I knowed he liked me, but he had to show some independence every now and then.

  “We thought you was on our side, Sheriff,” a clodhopper called out from the knot of men.

  I’d seen him around, but couldn’t hang a name right on him. “I’m on the side of the law, mister. And there ain’t no law agin’ two men facin’ each other with guns.”

  “But Hickman wasn’t no gunfighter!”

  “But even knowin’ that, which he damn shore ought to have known, he still strapped on a short gun. I ain’t sayin’ it was right, ’cause it ain’t, but in the eyes of the law, there wasn’t nothin’ I could do about it. That’s something y’all gonna have to understand, damnit!”

  I shut my mouth before I lost what little temper I still had left me.

  Don’t get me wrong—I did feel sorry for these men and their families. But when you ride through Indian country, you best ride like an Indian does, and the same applies for damn near any other situation. That’s something these men had yet to learn.

  I took a deep breath and said, “Now you all just settle down.”

  They didn’t like it; they done a lot of mumblin’, but I could tell they was just lookin’ for some easy place to direct their anger, and they found it, to a degree, with me. But they also found out quick-like not to push me too much.

  Most of these men had been out here only a few years, comin’ from Ohio and Pennsylvania and such far-off places as that. Places where most people didn’t tote guns and your neighbor was just a hoot and a holler away, maybe even right next door, all cramped up like a pigeon roost. Not like out here. They come from places where if a body got into a jam, you called the organized law and they’d settle it for you. Not like out here.

  Inside, I could hear the Reverend Sam Dolittle prayin’ and comfortin’ the Widder Hickman. I looked at the men.

  Maybe half of these men would make it out here—if that many. A lot of them would give it up and head on back east, some would head for a town of some size and clerk in a store for the rest of our lives, so they could have neighbors all around them. Not like out here.

  I tried to understand their feelings, and I did, sort of. It was the sheer vastness of it all, the emptiness of it all. There is a damn good reason why it’s called the Big Lonesome, ’cause it is. And man, out here, most of the time, you are on your own.

  “All right, men, tell me what you know about this Hickman feller.”

  Well, they got to talkin’, tellin’ me what a fine feller he had been, and when they wound down, I thought they’d been talking about Jesus.

  Now, I wasn’t takin’ up for what Little Jack had done; I pretty well knew he’d been sent out on the prowl. But I told these very same men, personal told them, that to stand alone was a dumb thing to do. That they had to band together and fight.

  Reverend Dolittle, he was gettin’ all heated up inside that dirt-floor shanty, his voice boomin’ out. And he was givin’ A.J. and Matt what-for.

  When I didn’t say nothing, just stared back at them, the men, they took to shufflin’ their feet and lookin’ at the ground and starin’ at ever’thing but me. Things got real quiet, except for Dolittle’s voice ... he kept on harpin’ on A.J. and Matt. Seemed like he should have been comfortin’ the widder more than he was.

  “Now tell me the truth,” I told the group.

  One man, he spoke up. “Sonny had a bad temper. And he thought hisself to be tough and good with a pistol. He said he didn’t need no help to handle some ignorant cowboy. He said that if just one of us would stand up for our rights and kill one of these so-called gunhands, the rest of them would skedaddle out.”

  “And you all believed that crap?”

  Their silence told me they had believed it, all right. Talk about dumb. “Boys, you’re farmers, and probably good ones. But you’re not gunslicks . . . more important, you’re not western men. You don’t understand the west and the people who live here . . .”

  “Now you see here, Sheriff!” One farmer said, raisin’ his voice. “What are you tryin’ to say? That we’re cowards?”

  I wanted to reach out and grab him by his scruffy neck and slap him a time or two. But I held my temper in check. “No, I’m not sayin’ that at all. I ain’t knockin’ none of you, courage-wise. I’m sure you’re all brave men. Hell, you come out here, didn’t you? You can probably take your squirrel rifles and knock a squirrel out of a tree at two hundred yards. But you’re not fast guns. Don’t you see what I’m gettin’ at?”

  Some of them nodded. They got my drift. But a lot of them didn’t. Those would be the ones who wouldn’t make it out here. And it wasn’t because they wasn’t good solid men. It was just that they was fightin’ what they didn’t understand and wasn’t makin’ no effort to understand it. Wilderness, desert, swamp . . . if you understand it, you got a chance of survivin’ in it. You get crossways of it, and you won’t make it.

  They stood and stared at him. The Reverend Dolittle had calmed down somewhat, but he was still givin’ A.J. and Matt a bad time of it—and they deserved it, I reckon.

  I left the grim-faced, angry bunch of farmers and walked towards the shanty to pay my respects to the Widder Hickman. Seems like there was gettin’ to be a whole bunch of widder women in the valley all of a sudden. And I had me a deep-down in my guts fee
lin’ that there was gonna be a lot more before it was all over and done with.

  I didn’t like to think that Pepper might become a widder before she even got hitched.

  If that was possible.

  Chapter 13

  I got back into town just in time to see a cowhand from a small spread, the Crooked T, walkin’ towards the Wolf’s Den, and he was walkin’ and had that look about him that he was trouble-huntin’.

  I cut him off before he reached the boardwalk, me and Pronto between him and the saloon. “What’s the matter here?”

  “Git outta my way, Sheriff.” He shoved Pronto on the rump and Pronto like to have took his hand off. The cowboy got out of the way just in the nick of time.

  The cowboy, he started cussin’.

  “Whoa, partner!” I told him. “You don’t give me no orders. Now you just settle down and back off a mite.”

  De Graff picked that time to step out of the office and see us in the middle of the street. He come runnin’ our way in that funny-lookin’, bowlegged way all us have who’ve spent the biggest part of our life on the back of a horse.

  “Rick!” De Graff shouted. “You back your butt off, now. Damnit, Rick, you hear me?”

  “What the hell y’all gangin’ up on me for?” the cowboy demanded. “I ain’t done nothin’ wrong—yet,” he added.

  “That’s right, Rick. So ’fore you do something, like that ‘yet’ bit, let’s us just step over to the other side of the street and we’ll talk about who put the burr under your blanket.”

  He didn’t like it none, but he finally turned around and walked across the street.

  De Graff got all up in his face. “Now, what the hell was you goin’ to do in the Wolf’s Den? You know that’s Circle L and Rockinghorse territory.”

  “Free country,” Rick mumbled. “All right. It’s that damn Mex gunslinger, Sanchez.”

  “What about Sanchez?”

  Rick, he looked down at the dirt. “He insulted my boss lady.”

  “Pearle Druggan?” De Graff asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “How?”

  I was lettin’ De Graff handle it; he knowed most of the people in the valley. I guessed that Rusty and Burtell was still out in the county.

  “He’s been sayin’ things about her.”

  “What sort of things? Damnit, Rick, gettin’ anything out of you is worser than pullin’ a tooth from a bear!”

  Rick shuffled his feet. “It ain’t a fitten thing to say aloud.”

  “Then whisper it.”

  He whispered it. I was plumb taken aback. A body just don’t say them sorts of things about no lady, especially no good married woman.

  I finally spoke up. “Ain’t this something for Mister Druggan to handle?”

  “Yeah, Rick,” De Graff said. “What about that?”

  “He cain’t. A rattler spooked his horse last week and he got throwed. Busted his leg. We drew cards to see who was gonna handle Sanchez. I won, boys!”

  “You didn’t win nothin’,” I told him flatly. “Sanchez is pure poison with a six-gun.” I started to tell him to back off and ride out of town, but then I realized I didn’t have the right to do that. Damnit, this should be handled legal-like; I was beginnin’ to see with a wider loop than I’d seen before. A man shouldn’t be able to bad-mouth no decent person and get away with it without the law bein’ able to take part. It just wasn’t right.

  I finally had to say it. “I can’t stop you, Rick. You can go into any business in this town . . . but if I was you I’d stay out of that dress shop-pee. But I feel obliged to tell you to think about what you’re doin’ some more.”

  “What about the dress shop-pee?” De Graff asked.

  “They’s nekkid women runnin’ around in there.”

  “Have mercy! You reckon they’re still there?”

  “’Nuff talkin’!” Rick said. “I done thought on it plenty. Missus Druggan is a good woman, so it’s something I got to do.”

  Me and De Graff stepped aside and let the cowboy walk on acrost the street.

  “It ain’t right, Sheriff,” De Graff said it quietly. “What’s happenin’ in this valley. I never thought I’d hear myself say that, but it ain’t right. Rick ain’t no gunhawk.”

  “Yeah . . . but he’s got his pride.” I spoke that with a taste of bitterness on my tongue. Pride had gotten a lot of men killed down through the years, all the way back to the cave people.

  “I reckon, Sheriff.”

  We looked up and down the boardwalk. This time, we wouldn’t have to clear the streets. The word had already been spread up and down the town. The street was empty.

  Rick, he positioned hisself outside the saloon, the hitchrail to his right. I smiled grimly at that, for when Sanchez stepped out, he’d have the sun in his eyes . . . if he stepped out far enough.

  “Rick ever dragged much iron, De Graff?”

  “Not in Sanchez’s class.”

  Well, that pretty much said it all. Now it was in the hands of God.

  We waited, and I knew that Sanchez was doin’ that deliberate; let the younger, inexperienced man sweat for a time.

  “He’s workin’ on Rick’s nerves,” De Graff pegged it right.

  “Yeah.”

  The batwings pushed open, and the Sonora gunfighter stepped out, a big wide grin on his dark face. I seen Rick stiffen just a tad.

  “Ah, so,” Sanchez said. “The little boy has come to defend the older woman’s honor. How very noble! Are you certain you have no Spanish blood in you, Cowboy?”

  Rick backed up, trying to pull Sanchez off the boardwalk and into the sun. But the Sonora gunhawk was an old hand at this. He knew if he stood where he was, the awning would keep the sun out of his eyes and cause Rick to sweat.

  “Tell me something, young warrior,” Sanchez smiled with the words, his very white teeth flashing. “Was the older woman’s charms so great they are worth dying for?”

  “What the hell are you tryin’ to say, you son of a bitch?” Rick shouted.

  Sanchez just laughed at him, not takin’ no offense at the slur.

  But then, I reckon it’s hard to insult somebody by simply tellin’ the truth.

  Then Rick spoke his last. “Draw, you damned greasy bastard!”

  Sanchez drew, and brother, was he quick. His first shot hit Rick in the right shoulder, knockin’ the gun out of his hand. Then Sanchez stepped off the boardwalk and began puttin’ lead in Rick. His second shot hit the cowboy in the left elbow, shattering it. Then Sanchez shot him in both legs.

  The Sonora gunfighter then stood calmly over the badly wounded puncher and shucked out his empties, slowly reloading. He finally turned his back on the unconscious young man and walked back toward the batwings.

  Just like Little Jack Bagwell, vicious and rotten to the core.

  Sanchez was just pushin’ open the batwings when the rifle shot hit him right between the shoulder blades, knocking him forward, dead as he fell into the Wolf’s Den.

  And I knowed right then and there that the valley war was on, and it was gonna go down in western history as one of the bloodiest. Right at that time, I wished I knew where to get in touch with Smoke Jensen . . . I could sure use the fastest gun in the west right about now.

  Punchers and gunslicks began pourin’ out of the saloon. “Hold it!” I shouted, running to the street. “Get back inside the saloon. First one who drags iron, I kill! This is Sheriff’s Department business, not none of yours. Move, goddamnit, right now!”

  They moved back inside, slowly and with much cussin’ and grousin’. But they did vacate the boardwalk.

  I didn’t have no idea where the rifle shot had come from, but I wouldn’t have put it past A.J. or Matt, or Big Mike, to have one of their own backshot just to blow the lid off the pot. I sent De Graff off to check the upstairs off the buildin’ across the street. But I had serious doubts of ever findin’ out who pulled the trigger on the rifle that killed the Sonora gunfighter.

  And I knowed he
was dead. He hadn’t even twitched since the slug hit him.

  Doc Harrison, he come runnin’ up with Truby and his helper right behind him. The Doc ordered Rick to be taken to his little four-bed clinic located behind his office. He looked at Sanchez and then looked at me.

  “Dead, Sheriff. I should imagine the bullet severed the spinal cord and then struck the heart. He died almost instantly.”

  “Good. In a way.”

  “What do you mean, Sheriff?”

  “Sanchez’s got brothers and uncles and cousins and the like that’ll come up quick when they hear the news about his dyin’. Lobo, just to mention one of his kin.”

  We was standin’ by the batwings of the Wolf’s Den. The gunhawks that was gathered around smiled when I said Lobo’s name.

  The Doc, he paled. “Lobo!”

  “Yeah. The crazy one.”

  “My God. How many more are there?”

  “Hell, they’s a whole passel of ’em. But the ones who ride together the most, so I’ve heard and read on dodgers, is Lobo, Pedro, Salvador, and Fergus.”

  Doc Harrison blinked. “Fergus?”

  “Yeah, Fergus. He’s sort of a half-brother to Sanchez. And he’s crazy as a lizard—and just about as ugly.”

  Doc Harrison sighed. “You really haven’t brightened up my day very much, Sheriff Cotton.”

  “Yeah? Well, I ain’t done a whole lot for my day, either!”

  “Fergus?” Jeff Baker asked me.

  Late afternoon on the Quartermoon. Pepper and her ma was fixin’ supper . . . dinner . . . and me, Jeff and Rolf was sittin’ on the porch havin’ tea. That’s right—tea. Goddamnest-tastin’ stuff I ever tried to drink in all my life. Didn’t taste like nothin’. Weak as all get-out. But gentlemen was supposed to drink tea. I think I’d rather stay an ungentleman.

  Rolf asked, “Any clues on who killed Sanchez, Cotton?”

  “Not nary a one. De Graff found the brass, .44 round. But it ended right there.”

  “But you suspect? . . .”