Blood Valley Read online

  That made him so mad he looked like he was fixin’ to swell up and explode.

  The little band had stopped playin’ and some fellow that I didn’t know stepped up on the raised platform and announced that the biddin’ was about to get underway, and it was all for a good cause and all that.

  I was very conscious of Big Mike’s eyes on me as the biddin’ got underway. Pepper had joined up with her pa and ma and brother. I didn’t know where Rusty had gotten hisself off to, but I figured he was close by.

  Like most of these socials I’d been to, and that wasn’t all that many, all the gents pretty well knew in advance how to identify what box they wanted to bid on, and it was almighty easy to tell who was sweet on who.

  I’d spotted Pepper’s box right off, and it was comin’ up next.

  I let Big Mike open the biddin’ with a two-dollar call. Then I upped the ante to five.

  He looked at me, and the expression on his face was anything but nice to look at.

  Big Mike went to ten and I went to fifteen. Rusty come up beside me and said, “Pepper’s daddy tole me to stand by with these in case you needed them.” He shook his fist and I heard some coins rattle.

  “I can’t figure this, Rusty.”

  “I can. You’re an honorable man. You ain’t got no sense, but I reckon Pepper can’t see that.” He grinned hugely.

  “Fifty dollars!” Big Mike squalled.

  “Sixty.” Man, that crowd was some kind of dead quiet.

  I chanced a look down and Rusty opened his fist. Close to a hundred dollars in coin.

  I shook my head.

  “Seventy-five!” Big Mike yelled, anger plain in his voice.

  I looked at him. Even across the yard I could tell his face was flushed.

  “One hundred dollars,” I called. “Ought to be a piece of apple pie in there for that bid,” I said with a grin.

  A few of the ladies laughed. I’d find out what they was laughin’ about shortly.

  Big Mike whirled around, facin’ me and glarin’ at me. “By God, I’d like to see the color of your money, Sheriff!”

  “Oh, I got it. And if you don’t believe that, then I reckon you’d be callin’ me a liar.” With my right hand, I swept back my coat, exposin’ the butt of my .44.

  Big Mike stepped away from the crowd, droppin’ his hands to his guns.

  “Sold to the sheriff!” the auctioneer screamed, puttin’ an end to what might have been a shootin’. “Next box!”

  “Goddamn you!” Big Mike hissed at me.

  “You sure are a sore loser,” I told him.

  “I’ll knock you down to size someday!” he warned.

  “Yeah? Well, you a big feller all right. I never knowed shit come stacked that high.”

  Man, he turned about five different shades of red. He took a step toward me. A.J.’s voice stopped him.

  “No trouble here, Mike. There is always another time.”

  I didn’t think Mike was gonna pay any attention to his boss’s words. He was so mad he was shakin’. Finally he turned around, shovin’ both men and women out of his way. He stomped off into the night.

  A.J. looked square at me. “You’re a fool, Sheriff.”

  “What I am, is hungry. How about you? Ya’ll gonna stick around and join in the festivities?”

  “I do not wish to associate with ruffians and common trash . . . like you!” Joy said, giving her head a toss.

  A.J. and Joy, Matt, and Wanda all trooped off, heads held high.

  I looked around. Lydell Townsend was lookin’ at me, a grin on his face. He shook his head and wandered off.

  “With them gone, now we can all have some fun!” a man shouted.

  The biddin’ started again.

  “You made a bad enemy, Sheriff,” the voice come from my left side.

  It was Pepper’s brother, Jeff, and he was smilin’ at me. “Yeah, I reckon so.”

  “I’m sorry to hear you’re hungry, Sheriff.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, let’s just say I hope you have an iron stomach. My sis can’t fry chicken worth a damn!”

  Chapter Four

  I’d et worse. Just don’t ask me where or when. It might have been that winter I got snowed in early up near the Musselshell and cooked a coyote. Up to this point, that was the awfullest food I ever tried to eat.

  Pepper was tryin’ to keep from laughin’ at the expression on my face. “You don’t have to eat it. I’m really a good cook.... I just can’t fry chicken.”

  I wanted to be real tactful, so I didn’t say nothing.

  She covered her mouth with a hand, stiflin’ her gigglin’.

  I laid that drumstick down on a napkin and half expected it to walk off. I wished it would. “Pepper, would you like to stroll down to the hotel dinin’ room and have supper?”

  She laughed, and it was a nice laugh. “I sure would. I’m hungry!”

  We walked over to her ma and pa, with her proddin’ me along, like a kid goin’ to the woodshed for a hidin’. She introduced us. They seemed like real nice people, and it was then that I knew what she had meant about old money.

  Rolf and Martha Baker had that quality that comes with breeding. Just like with cows or horses. It wasn’t nothin’ that stuck out obvious-like, but it was sure there.

  “Thank you for standing up to Big Mike, Sheriff,” Martha said. “Pepper cannot tolerate that animal and neither can we.” She indicated her husband. “You’re the first person who’s had the courage to bid against him.” She smiled—looked like she wanted to bust out laughin’. “It didn’t take you and Pepper long to finish eating.”

  I got it then. Pepper had fixed that awful chicken deliberate—for Big Mike. “No, ma’am. Not long.”

  But my mind was workin’ hard. Out here in the west is where a man saddles his own horse and kills his own snakes. Yet, this man, Rolf Baker, owner of one of the three biggest spreads in the Territory, and a wealthy man to boot, somehow lacked the sand to stomp a snake named Big Mike Romain. It just didn’t make no sense to me.

  And I knew that he knew I was wonderin’ about it.

  I looked Rolf Baker direct in the eyes. “Where’s all your gunslicks, sir?”

  He smiled thinly. “I don’t hire gunhands, Sheriff. My men can all use guns, of course, but they’re hired as cowboys.”

  “That’s good to know, sir. The only gunhawk I ain’t seen around here is Clay Allison, and he’d probably be here if he wasn’t in prison.”

  Agin, he smiled. “As is Wild Bill Longley and John Wesley Hardin, and a score of other men who fancied violence over order and decency. The West is maturing, Sheriff. Slowly.”

  Was he tryin’ to tell me somethin’? I didn’t know. But he was right. Law and order was comin’ to the woolly west . . . but it was almighty slow in gettin’ here. And when it did get here, with all the lawyers and fancy words, something big and grand and simple but workable would vanish with its comin’.

  “Does the coming of law and order make you sad, Sheriff ?” Martha asked.

  “Kind of. If the lawyers is gonna be all like Stokes.”

  “Stokes is a pompous ass!” Rolf said, with some heat in his voice.

  I agreed with that. “Law and order and gentle folks would be a grand thing. But in this part of the world, that’s gonna come only after the gunsmoke is blowed away.”

  “I fear you are correct, Sheriff. Well, anyway, you and Pepper had best go have your dinner.” Another sign of class. Out here, it’s called supper. “Pepper’s fried chicken is, at best, unpalatable.”

  I wasn’t real sure what that word meant, but if it meant that chicken couldn’t be et, I’d be the first to agree.

  Pepper could stow away the grub as good as any cowboy I’d ever seen. We’d talked on the walk to the dinin’ room, and chatted while we was waitin’ for the food to be brung us, and it was good food, but conversation while we was eatin’ was sparse. She was a rancher’s daughter all right. Eatin’ was serious business, with no time fo
r talkin’.

  With a twinkle in her blues, she looked over at me. “I told you I was hungry.”

  I showed a bit of tact by not agreein’. Hungry! She ate like a just-woke-up grizzly. “You gonna have a long ride back to the ranch tonight.”

  “No, we’re staying in town. With Doctor and Mrs. Harrison. Have you met them yet?”

  “Not yet. I hope I don’t on no professional basis.”

  Over coffee, which she loved as much as I did, she brung me up on the gossip. And she confirmed Rusty’s suspicions about a range war. Her dad and the ladies at the Arrow brand was tryin’ to stay out of it, but it didn’t look good.

  She told me about the nightriders that struck ever’ now and then, burnin’ people out and killin’. And nightriders was something that I just didn’t hold with.

  I walked her to the doctor’s house, met Doctor Harrison, and said my good nights.

  Standin’ there, alone with her on the porch, she smiled at me, and I got that gooey feelin’ agin. But I might have been comin’ down with the collywobbles, or something.

  It was Monday mornin’, ’bout an hour ’fore dawn, when the hammerin’ on the front door woke up me and Rusty. I answered the door in my long johns, my pistol in my hand.

  Couple of farmers, by the way they was dressed. And a sooty, smoky smell was lingerin’ around them.

  “Nightriders, Sheriff,” one man said, his voice filled with weariness. “They hit the Simmons place. Killed Broderick and burned him out. Can you come take a look?”

  “Rusty, you know where that is?”

  He tossed me my britches. “Yeah.” He was buttonin’ up his shirt. “ ’Bout ten miles out, to the northwest. Close to the Circle L spread.”

  Buttonin’ up my britches, I asked the men, “You wanna stay here and rest, or ride back out with us?”

  “We’ll go with you, Sheriff.”

  We could smell the charred wood long before we come up on what was left of the place, and that wasn’t much. It had been a little two-bit nester outfit. But what pissed me off was that the nightriders, and I hate them all, had shot the cows and mules and hogs.

  In the light of God’s dawn, it was pretty pathetic.

  A wore-out lookin’ woman in a wore-out dress was standin’ over the blanket-covered body of her husband. Half a dozen towheaded boys and girls gathered around the woman, the youngest clingin’ to her skirts and squallin’.

  She told me her story in a flat, tired voice.

  I just felt sick at my stomach. Glancin’ over at Rusty, I could tell the scene had touched him just as hard as it done me. It just wasn’t right; it just flat wasn’t right.

  They’d come out of the night just after midnight, she reckoned. They was about twenty or so nightriders. Big, brave men all, I thought, a sour feelin’ in my stomach. I hate all nightriders for they’re all cowards at heart. Hooded, menacing shapes that appear out of the gloom—but never alone, by themselves. That’s why any person with a lick of sense despises them.

  They almost never have the sand to face a man one on one, totally alone. They might agree to meet a man one on one, but then they’ll show up with some buddies, as witnesses, they claim. That means that if they start gettin’ the crap beat out of them, their “witnesses” will jump in and haul their ass out of the fire, so to speak.

  Her husband had grabbed up his shotgun and run out to meet them—a foolhardy thing to do, but hell, I’d have done the same.

  I lifted the scorched blanket and eyeballed the man. He was a mess. Those big, brave riders had pumped what looked to be twenty or thirty rounds into him. Then someone had leaned down and shot the man right between the eyes. The powder burns were plain on his bloody forehead.

  “They shot him down right in front of the kids, Sheriff. And then they grabbed up and tooken Marie with them.”

  “Who’s Marie?”

  “My oldest girl. She’s just turned sixteen.”

  “Can you describe any of the men? Any of their horses? Just give me something to go on—anything?”

  She didn’t know a thing. “I didn’t see no brand left or right flank, Sheriff. I’m sorry.”

  “Course, we all know who they was, Sheriff,” one of the men said.

  “Yeah. I know. But provin’ it is gonna be something else.”

  “They rode towards the northeast, Sheriff!” Rusty called, lookin’ at tracks. “Right over yonder is the edge of Circle L range. They pro’bly rode right into a herd to cover their tracks.”

  Noddin’ my head, I looked around. The damn nightriders hadn’t left nothin’. They’d deliberately trampled over the new-plowed garden, shot the animals, then torched the house and barn. It was just a miracle that none of the little kids had been killed.

  Brave men all.

  The woman touched my arm. I met her sad-lookin’ eyes. “Will you find Marie, Sheriff?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I spoke around the disgust that filled my throat. “I’ll find her.”

  I found her. Naked, raped, and dead from a broke neck. She’d been a pretty girl, even with the ravages of poverty touchin’ her young face.

  I felt like pukin’!

  I found her patched and torn nightgown, lyin’ off to one side. And from the looks of her, more than one man had taken his pleasures with her.

  Lookin’ up at the sounds of hooves, I seen two punchers ridin’ my way. Slippin’ the thong off the hammer of my .44, I waited, then relaxed when I could make out the brand. Arrow.

  “Jesus Christ!” one of the cowboys said, lookin’ at the body of Marie.

  I knew that badge or no badge hangin’ on my shirt, I’d better start talkin’ and do it swift. ’Cause messin’ with a woman in the west was the fastest way I knew of to get your neck stretched.

  One of them punchers done got his rope out.

  I told ’em who I was and what had happened, so far as I knowed. They was as disgusted as me about it.

  “I don’t like nesters and barbed wire,” one said, “but this is awful. I’ll go get Miss Maggie and Miss Jean. We’ll bring a buckboard.” He wheeled his horse and was gone.

  I took the slicker off my saddle skirt and gently covered the naked girl. I felt some better when that was done. It just wasn’t decent, her layin’ there with no clothes on.

  “Them was good folks for nesters,” the Arrow rider said, dismountin’. He plopped his hat back on his head. “I knowed them all. And that there was a good girl. The woman know who done it?”

  “She has suspicions, just like me and you. But provin’ it is something else.”

  He made a low sound in his throat. “Yeah, ain’t that the truth?”

  He introduced hisself as Ben and we shook on it.

  Both of us done our best not to look at the slicker-covered body with the bare feet stickin’ out.

  “Ben, what’s your opinion of what’s happenin’ around here? If it’s an upcomin’ range war, why? Nesters and barbed wire?”

  Barbed wire had been slowly workin’ its way west since first being introduced back in the early ’70s. Personal, even though I could see where it might serve some purpose, I didn’t like it. All kinds of barbed wire was being strung . . . and people was gettin’ killed for doin’ it.

  I still carried the scars on me from where I’d gotten all tangled up in it once. And I mean . . . once.

  “Strictly personal opinion, Sheriff?”

  “Have at it.”

  “I think Lawrence and Mills want to be kings of this area. I don’t think it’s nothin’ but greed. Pure and simple.”

  Maybe that was all there was to it. Maybe they’d just gotten so big and powerful, they believed they was kings. “I was sorta ruminatin’ about gold or maybe oil . . . ?”

  Ben shook his head. “There might be enough gold around here to fill a tooth. As for oil, I don’t think so. I ain’t never seen none of it. And I been around here a long time.”

  “It’s just hard to believe that anybody as rich and powerful as Lawrence and Mills would sink
so low as that.” I pointed to the dead girl.

  Ben spat on the ground. “It’ll get worser, Sheriff. Believe it.”

  I believed it.

  Maggie Barrett and Jean Knight come ridin’ out with the buckboard. They was gals in their mid to late forties, I’d guess, and they rode astride, just like a man. Each of ’em had a six-gun belted around their waist and a rifle in the saddle boot. They looked like they knew how to use the weapons, too. And would.

  I met them look for look. “I’m Maggie and that’s Jean.” She jerked a gloved hand toward the other woman. “And you’re the new big, bad sheriff, huh?”

  “I don’t know about the big or bad, ma’am. But I’m the sheriff.”

  “You’re mighty young,” Jean said. “But you got a hell of a reputation behind you, Sheriff Cotton.” She let her eyes drift to the slicker-covered body. “And what are you aimin’ to do with the sorry son of a bitch who done that?”

  “More than one, ma’am. I aim to find them, arrest them, try them, and then hang them.”

  “And if their names are Mills or Lawrence or Romain . . . ?” She let that trail off.

  “They pull their britches on same way anybody else does, ma’am.”

  She stared at me. She was still a handsome woman. Twenty years back, she’d been beautiful. “I think you’ll do, Sheriff Cotton. I think you’ll do to ride the river with. If,” she added drily, “you live that long.”

  Them gals personal loaded Marie into the buckboard, and none of us men standin’ around was too unhappy ’bout that. Rusty had joined me and Ben, and then some Quartermoon punchers come ridin’ up. Lookin’ them over, I seen what Rolf Baker had meant the other night. They wasn’t none of them no slick-backed gunhawks, but they was rough through and through, and I’ll take that kind of man over a gunsharp any time, hands down.

  All of ’em give me the once-over, takin’ in my butt-forward, left-hand .44.

  They done some low cussin’ and growlin’ about what had happened, and one of them said he made a damn dandy noose.

  “It’ll be done legal-like,” I heard the words come out of my mouth. “They’ll be no gawddamn vigilantes ridin’. Sometimes, they’re just as bad as nightriders.”