Law at Angel's Landing: A Western Story Read online

  “Over ten thousand dollars,” I said. “Maybe there are a few more dollars somewhere in the world, but I don’t figure there are many.”

  “Ten thousand dollars,” she murmured. “I haven’t heard of any bank being held up around here.”

  “I haven’t, either,” I said. “Do you know what I’m going to do with it?”

  “I don’t have the slightest idea,” she said, “but I would like to know where you got it.”

  “Pa gave it to me. He told me he’d made a big strike in Montana, but he was too old to work the claim, so somebody else got rich off of it. Anyhow, he brought this much home, gave it to me, and then died.”

  “It’s incredible,” she said, still sitting there as if frozen, her eyes on the money. “Your mother used to talk to me about him. She always said he was a proud man who would never come back until he had made a strike, that he couldn’t stand failure, and would have to prove he had finally done what he set out to do. I wondered about it when I first heard he was here. Did your mother know about it?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said, “though he spent some time alone with her before she died, so he might have mentioned it. She didn’t say anything to me about it, and I think she would have if she’d known.”

  “You’ve got to admire him for bringing the money,” Abbie said thoughtfully, “and not bragging about it and telling your mother she had been wrong and hadn’t had any faith in him. He could have made her very uncomfortable.”

  I nodded. “He could have at that.”

  “Well, what are you going to do with it?”

  “I’ll go to Durango in the morning and put some of it in a bank,” I said. “I don’t trust banks after what happened in ’Ninety-Three, but I don’t like to leave it here in the house, either. I thought I’d use some of it to buy the livery stable. I sure don’t get much salary from the county for being sheriff and it doesn’t keep me busy, either. Then I thought we’d take a trip. Maybe go to California for a month or so.”

  “We?” She was shocked, then she got angry. “Will you tell me what you’re talking about? You’d better get it through your head that I have no interest whatever in taking a trip with you.”

  I was sweating then. I didn’t know how to say what I wanted to say, so I blurted: “I figured it would be our honeymoon. We don’t have to go to California . . . we can go anywhere you want to. Niagara Falls maybe.”

  She stood up, and then she sat down. Her hands were trembling and her face started getting red. I had never seen her really furious before and I didn’t know what I’d said or done that had brought this on.

  “Just like that,” she said in a low tone.

  “Well, sure,” I said. “Just like that. We’ve known each other for quite a while. We get along well. We enjoy being with each other. Leastwise I enjoy your company. It gets kind of lonesome living by myself.”

  “We get along well with each other,” she said. “We enjoy being with each other.”

  She was sure bearing down hard on the word we. By that time I was sore. I thought I’d brought this up in the right and acceptable way, and she’d be pleased by what I’d said and be more than willing to marry me, but all I’d done was to make her as sore as a stepped-on bear with a sore toe.

  “That’s right,” I said, “but maybe I was talking for myself.”

  “I suppose you get cold at night,” she said sarcastically, “and that you get tired cooking for yourself and doing your own washing and ironing and everything else.”

  “Sure I do!” I shouted.

  I aimed to say more, but I stopped, surprised that I had raised my voice to her. I never had before. Our relationship had been calm and serene and about as near perfect as it could have been, but now that I was finally asking her to be my wife, she was just plain mad.

  Sure, I hadn’t ever said it in so many words before, but I figured she understood how it was with me. Now I didn’t know what to say, so I just sat and stared at her and didn’t say anything.

  Suddenly she wasn’t angry. She asked breathlessly: “Mark, why haven’t you asked me before?”

  “I didn’t want to get married as long as Ma was alive and depended on me,” I answered, “especially after she quit teaching and you came to Angel’s Landing. I didn’t think it would be fair to you to ask you to live in Ma’s house with me and her, and I couldn’t very well leave her there at the last. Besides, I’d never been able to save much, and I didn’t think that was fair, either. Not much happens in Bremer County, but, if something did, I’d have to handle it as long as I’m sheriff. I might get killed and leave you with a family to support and no money.”

  “I see.” She sat staring down at her hands for a moment, then she rose. “I can’t marry you, Mark. Not now.”

  She started toward the door. I jumped up and grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her around to face me. “Why?” I demanded. “I’ve got a right to know why. We’ve assumed for a long time that we’d get married someday. Now that Ma’s gone and I’ve got this money and I can support you the way I want to, I don’t see any sense in putting it off.”

  She shook her head and I swear she looked as if she really felt sorry for me. “Mark, if you don’t know why I can’t marry you, I certainly can’t tell you.”

  I was so mad by that time I didn’t care whether she knocked my head off or not, so I kissed her. I mean, I really kissed her. Oh, I’d kissed her before plenty of times, and we’d held hands, and I’d put my arm around her, but I guess I’d been backward, thinking that it wasn’t the right time yet to let her know how I felt, but this time I did. I kissed her, long and hard, and I guess I must have held her so tightly that I came close to cracking one of her ribs.

  When I finally let her go, she remained close to me for a moment, her lips inches from mine. She had returned my kiss. She had in no way discouraged me, and now she said in a low tone that was filled with regret: “You almost persuade me, Mark. Almost.”

  She turned away from me then and walked out of the house. All I could do was to stare at her back and consider the perversity of women, and wonder how in the hell could any man know how to handle one of them.

  Chapter Three

  The next day I rode to Durango and deposited most of the money in a bank. When I returned, I used nearly all of the remaining cash to buy the livery stable, and then I hired an old man named Dutch Henry to stay in the stable and do as much of the work as he felt like doing.

  Dutch Henry wasn’t a Dutchman at all, but was an Irishman straight out of Cork or Killarney or wherever he came from. He got his name from a habit he had of saying: “It’s an old Dutch proverb that chickens come home to roost.” Or, if he got into a fight and was whipped, he’d say: “If I’d had my good old Dutch shillelagh, I’d have busted your skull open.”

  I’d known Henry ever since we’d moved to Angel’s Landing. He was a prospector who’d been in and out of town and all over the San Juans from the day they’d made the first strike. He’d hit it lucky twice, made fortunes, and lost both of them.

  Now he was an old man who was dead broke. He knew horses and physically he was still strong enough to do a day’s work, so when I offered him a job for $5 a month plus his meals in the hotel and a place to sleep in the stable office, he jumped at it.

  A dozen horses came with the business, but most of them were crow baits that weren’t exactly assets to any livery stable, so I began trading them off and buying younger animals. We cleaned out the stable and I hauled most of the manure to my garden patch. The corrals were in bad shape, so Henry and I spent several days rebuilding them. Rip Yager wanted to know if I expected another boom and I said a man never knew about the future.

  I had just finished plowing the garden patch one afternoon when Abbie Trevor came over. I hadn’t seen her to talk to since the evening I’d asked her to marry me and she’d walked out of the house.

  I hadn’t given up on her, but I sure wasn’t aiming to run around after her, begging her to tell me why she coul
dn’t marry me, so I’d decided to wait her out and let her make the next move. She did, which proved I was using the right tactic.

  Abbie sauntered up to the garden fence and leaned on a post as if nothing had happened between us. She asked: “How are you, Mark?”

  “Fine,” I said. “How are you?”

  “Fine,” she said amiably. “You aiming to put a garden in this summer?”

  “If I get around to it,” I said.

  “I guess it’s late enough now so we won’t have to worry about a frost.”

  “I wouldn’t bank on it,” I said. “I’ve seen it snow here on the Fourth of July.”

  “I know,” she said, “but you can’t wait any longer to plant the garden. Your mother used to say you were good at eating garden stuff, but not very good at planting and raising it.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “When I get down on my hands and knees and weed a row of carrots, I always pull more carrots than weeds.”

  “I’ll make you a proposition,” she said. “I’ll put the garden in and do the weeding if you’ll harrow the ground and do the irrigating. I’m not very good at that.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “I’ll harrow it after supper. If I forget to turn the water on from the ditch when the garden needs it, remind me.”

  “I will,” she said.

  She started back toward her house, then stopped when I called: “Abbie, I just got a new red-wheeled buggy! How about taking a ride with me tomorrow afternoon?”

  “I’d love to,” she said.

  So we were friends once more, I thought, as I watched her walk back to her house, and I wondered if she expected me to ask her to marry me again. I probably would someday, but I was sure going to let her worry a while. She was pushing thirty, an old maid by almost any standard, so she was the one who ought to do the worrying.

  I harrowed that evening after supper as I’d promised. The ground was just right for planting. It had rained a few days before and now the red soil had dried out enough so it could be worked but was moist enough to sprout the seeds.

  The next morning Abbie was putting out the garden by the time the sun was up. When I came home at noon, she’d finished. I picked her up early in the afternoon. She had taken a bath and was all bright and shiny and clean-smelling.

  “You’re a regular workhorse when you get started,” I said.

  “Oh, Mark, it was so much fun,” she said. “When I lived in Durango, I always had a garden and I’ve missed it since I came here. It isn’t often that you catch the ground just the way it was this morning, so I kept at it until I finished.”

  I drove up Banjo Creek for no particular reason except that I hadn’t been along it for a while. Old shacks and cabins lined the stream, most of them dating back to the boom days. Now only a few were still standing. During the winter the prospectors who didn’t have a home anywhere else moved into the ones that were livable, but most of them were half-rotted piles of logs and boards. The parts that were usable, such as windows and doors, had been stolen a long time ago.

  Just below the mouth of the cañon we passed what had been the red-light district in the boom days, largely double rows of shacks on opposite sides of the creek. The one exception was a large frame building, two stories, that had been known as the Pleasure Palace.

  The Palace had been run by a madam named Maggie Martin and had been a very successful business. The gossip ran that she’d operated a high-class place with pretty girls, a bar, and expensive furniture, and that she’d made more money than the miners had ever taken out of the gravel along Banjo Creek. I was only a kid when Maggie was going full blast, but I remember walking along the creek and seeing the girls drying their hair in the sun.

  I knew, or maybe sensed, that there was something evil about the girls, but somewhere along the line I got acquainted with Maggie. She was a big, red-headed woman who was as friendly as a pup. She spotted me walking past her place, so one day she called: “Bud, come over here!”

  One of the girls cried: “What are you up to, Maggie? He’s just a boy.”

  Maggie snorted. “What do you think I’m up to? I’m just going to give him a piece of cake.”

  My first impulse had been to run, but my curiosity got the best of me. I liked cake and we seldom had any. Besides, Maggie didn’t look dangerous, so I walked up the path to the porch where the girls were sitting. They all wore robes of one kind or another, but Maggie had the loudest—a red silk one that came down to her ankles.

  When I stopped and looked up at her, she asked: “What’s your name, bud?”

  “Mark Girard.”

  “Well now, that’s a fine name,” she said. “Your daddy a miner?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does he ever come here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maggie!” The same girl who had spoken up before glared at her. “You keep this up and you’ll get all of us into trouble.”

  Maggie whooped a big laugh and slapped her leg. “Naw. No man who has a fine boy like Mark here ever comes to the Pleasure Palace. Come on, Mark. We’ll go to the kitchen and see if there’s any cake left from supper last night.”

  I followed her down a long hall. I had a glimpse of the parlor with its big piano and fancy chairs with scroll backs and silk-covered seats and a couch covered by red velvet that was long enough to seat about six people. The kitchen wasn’t any different from ours except that it was a lot bigger and had a Negro woman standing beside the big range, stirring something.

  “You shouldn’t bring that boy in here, Maggie,” the Negro woman said.

  “I ain’t going to hurt him,” Maggie said. “He’s hungry like most boys.”

  She went back into the pantry and came out a moment later with a big slice of chocolate cake and a glass of milk. She had me sit down at the table and eat the cake and drink the milk. It struck me that whenever I looked up and saw her watching me, she seemed as hungry as I was, but I didn’t know then what she hungered for.

  After that Maggie asked me to come in whenever she saw me and always gave me cake or pie. After a while the girls and the Negro woman who had argued with her about asking me into the house quit fussing and sometimes even talked to me. Every time I left, Maggie would warn me about not telling my folks I’d been inside the Palace.

  One day after the boom petered out, I walked past and saw that the place was empty. Maggie hadn’t told me she was leaving. She’d just moved out, and she’d taken her girls with her. I went in and looked around. I felt funny and sad, standing there in the empty house that echoed every time I took a step.

  I never went back inside. I just didn’t feel like it. I’d liked Maggie and the Negro woman and the girls I’d talked to and I missed them. I often wondered what happened to them. I suppose they drifted on to Silverton or Rico or Ouray or any other camp that promised business.

  Another thing I’ve always wondered about was what my mother would have said if I had told her about being in the Palace, but I’m glad I didn’t. She would probably have gone to the marshal and complained about Maggie tying to corrupt her son.

  Now, driving past the dilapidated building, the windows and doors all gone so that it looked like a toothless old man, I blurted out the story to Abbie.

  When I finished, she looked at me curiously, maybe wondering if I’d told everything. She asked: “Just what was Maggie hungry for?”

  I shrugged and wished I hadn’t told her. I said: “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  Abbie sniffed. “The girl and the Negro cook were right. Maggie shouldn’t have taken you inside.”

  My mother would have said the same thing. It struck me that the good women of the world would stick together and condemn Maggie, but I didn’t see it that way. Sitting at her table and eating pie and cake were among the most pleasant memories of my childhood.

  Chapter Four

  Angel’s Landing sat in the middle of a small valley below the jaws of Banjo Cañon. Here, just above the mouth of the cañon, the cliffs
were so close that this particular spot was known as the Narrows. The stream that boiled through the opening was not more than three feet wide.

  The road followed a shelf that was twenty feet above the water and was barely wide enough for one vehicle. Traffic had been nothing but trouble here during the boom days, but in spite of all the talk about blasting a wider road out of the side of the cañon, nothing had been done.

  Abbie shut her eyes until we were out of the Narrows and had returned to the water level. She shook her head and tried to smile. She said: “I’ve been over that piece of road a dozen times since I came here to teach. I’m ashamed of myself, but I guess I’ll always be afraid of it. I don’t know how they managed when so many people lived up here in the cañon.”

  “They had trouble,” I said.

  The cañon floor widened ahead of us until it was about fifty yards across. The gravel had been panned and re-panned and panned again, and I suppose a man could still get some color here if he tried, but no one had worked the ground for years, and now brush and small cottonwoods had grown up until the bottom of the cañon was green with only a spot here and there showing the gray gravel that had been characteristic of the cañon during the mining days.

  In the Narrows the towering walls cut out the sunlight, but above it where we were now the cliffs were far enough apart and slanted back from the bottom so that normally the sunlight touched practically the entire bottom. Abbie was the first to notice that suddenly there was no sunlight.

  “Mark,” she cried, “look at the sky! What’s happening?”

  I glanced up. “I guess we’ve got a storm coming in.”

  “But it’s no common storm,” she said. “Let’s go back.”

  I didn’t say anything, and I didn’t turn back for a moment, but I’ll admit I was scared. We had heard the rumbling of thunder for quite a while, and had seen flashes of lightning, but that was nothing out of the ordinary this time of year.

  Usually from this point we could see snow-capped peaks north of us, and, if we found the exact spot, we could catch a glimpse of Engineer Mountain, but not today. Everything to the north was hidden by the clouds that were racing toward us and now had blotted out the sun.