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

  I didn’t say a word, but he rose, knocked his pipe out against his boot heel, slipped it into his pocket, and jerked his head at the house. “Let’s go talk to Sadie,” he said.

  He led the way across the barnyard to the house, opened the screen door, and bawled: “Sadie! We’ve got company.”

  She came out of the kitchen, a big, raw-boned woman who was far from being a beauty, but she was pleasant and she looked competent. I liked her, and I made a guess that she’d say she could manage here by herself. I had a hunch she could, too.

  Ralston introduced us, then said: “Fetch us some coffee. We’ve got to palaver.”

  “Why didn’t you do your palavering where you were?” she asked.

  “Because you’re part of the palavering,” he said. “Now get a move on.”

  “You married, Sheriff?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Well, when you get married, don’t start ordering your wife around the way my husband does me,” she said. “It won’t work with most women. It wouldn’t work with me if I wasn’t so easy-going.”

  Tug snorted in derision and muttered: “Easy-going, you say?”

  She winked at me and disappeared into the kitchen. I knew then that I had him. Sadie Ralston was capable and hard-working, and the feeling between them was right. I couldn’t say that about most married couples I knew, but these two people were in love, they had the same goals, and it was my guess that there was nothing they wouldn’t do for each other.

  Ralston motioned to a battered leather chair. He said: “Sit down, Mark. We may be here a while.”

  His wife returned with two cups of steaming coffee. She gave one to me and one to Ralston, and, as she turned to sit down in a rawhide-bottom chair, he gave her a slap on her behind. She ignored it and nodded at me as she sat down.

  “All right, Sheriff,” she said. “Let’s get the palavering over. I’ve got work to do.”

  I told her about Catgut’s strike and what would certainly happen, and that I needed a deputy right away, then said: “I’ve offered Tug the job.”

  “Fifty dollars a month,” he said eagerly, “and he’s guaranteed me four months’ work.”

  “You?” she demanded, as if she didn’t believe what she’d heard. “You a deputy?” She scowled at me as if she didn’t approve of the job, then added: “He’d make a good one, but it’s risky work.”

  “It is, Missus Ralston,” I said. “I sure wouldn’t lie about it to you.”

  “I’d take a chance on that,” he said, “but I reckon I can’t go off and leave you here. I guess I’d have one day a week off when I could come home, wouldn’t I?”

  “Sure, unless we get into a tight situation,” I said.

  “It’s up to you, Sadie,” Ralston said. “You’d have to take care of the ranch and the house, but I reckon there ain’t nothing outside you can’t do. I want you to say how you feel about it. If you don’t cotton to the notion, say so.”

  She was staring at Ralston, but I don’t think she was seeing him at all. “Two hundred dollars,” she said softly. “Two hundred dollars. With that much cash coming in by fall, we might stick it out for another year.” Then she sort of stiffened. “Tug Ralston, are you asking me to live here for six days straight running while you’re lollygagging in town with them outlaws and saloon girls?”

  “I thought it might work . . .” he began.

  “All right,” she interrupted, “I’ll do it. I’ll make out fine.”

  He looked at me and groaned. “That’s the way she does.” Then he grinned. “All right, Sadie. You’ve had your fun. If we can manage to hang on for another year, we’ll know.”

  They were whipped. At least that was the way I saw it, though maybe nobody was beaten until he admitted it, and they weren’t about to admit it. I finished my coffee, thinking that, if there was any justice, the Ralstons would keep their ranch, but the bank that held the mortgage would decide, and I’d never seen a bank that was overly concerned about justice.

  “Thanks for the coffee,” I said. “I’ve got to get back to town.” Mrs. Ralston rose, and for a moment my eyes locked with hers. “You’re a very unusual woman. I hope it works out for you.”

  “It will,” she said. “It’s got to. I’ll tell you one thing, Sheriff. Tug don’t know nothing about being a deputy, but he’ll learn and he’ll make you a good one.”

  “I figured he would,” I said. “Can you start at the end of the week, Tug?”

  He nodded. “I’ll be there.”

  When I got back to town, I found that the kid I’d hired to work in the stable hadn’t turned a hand. I gave him half a dollar and kicked his butt out through the archway. I went to work, and, just as I was finishing, Dutch Henry walked in.

  “Well, I didn’t figure I’d see you again,” I said.

  He looked as sheepish as hell. “There’s an old Dutch proverb,” he said, “that says a man’s belly gives the orders. Can I have my job back?”

  “You didn’t find where Catgut made his strike?”

  “No, but I reckon I didn’t look very hard. I got to thinking about how many times I’d been hungry when I was prospecting and how many nights I damned near froze to death, and I kept thinking about you saying I hadn’t been hungry since you gave me a job. Purty soon I knowed there wasn’t enough gold in the world to make me go back to the way I used to live. I was rich twice and it didn’t do me no good either time. You know, gold hunting is a fever and I’m cured.”

  I set the manure fork against the wall. “Go to the hotel and get your supper,” I said. “You’ve got your old job back and this time you’d better keep it.”

  He raised a hand in salute. “Thank you kindly, sir. There’s an old Dutch proverb that says, when you cast your bread upon the water, it comes back tenfold.”

  “Dutch proverb?” I yelled. “Get out of here before I take a pitchfork to you.”

  He disappeared. He’d get his belly full in the hotel dining room tonight, I thought, and I sure hoped this last proverb was right.

  Chapter Eight

  If Paul Kerr had heard about the strike, I figured others would have heard and they’d be along soon. I was right. For a few days we had only a trickle, mostly prospectors who had been in Durango and were wondering where to go next. In addition, a crew was sent to start working Catgut’s claim. Another crew started widening the road through the Narrows. We could hear the dynamite blasts every day.

  Dutch Henry borrowed a horse and rode up the cañon the third day. He came back, shaking his head. “Hell, I should have found it. Catgut was working behind some brush up one of the ravines and the brush was tall enough to hide what he’d been doing. He hadn’t pushed the tunnel back more’n a few feet when he hit the vein. He quit right then and headed for town.”

  Henry threw up his hands. “You know, I could have been a millionaire just as well as old Catgut. I’ve found float in that same ravine and on down the cañon, but I never found the vein. Catgut wouldn’t have, either, if that storm hadn’t cleaned off the surface dirt and showed him enough of that vein to start him digging.”

  I wasn’t so sure about Catgut being a millionaire. He hadn’t showed up in Angel’s Landing yet. I figured that, if he still owned the mine or even a part of it, he’d be out here bossing the job. Since he wasn’t around, I figured he had sold out and left the country. Or, and this possibility bothered the hell out of me, he’d sold, the buyer had got him drunk, taken the money away from him, killed him, and hid his body. I didn’t have a shred of evidence, so there wasn’t anything I could do.

  I asked Henry who was paying the miners. He gave me a questioning look, then he said: “That’s the crazy part of it, Mark. I asked one of the men and he said the Lucky Cat Mine. I asked who owned it and he said he didn’t know. Now if it was old Catgut, he’d have let everybody know who owned it.”

  * * * * *

  By the end of the week the flood hit. The news had had time by then to fan out to the other camps in the San Juans, l
ike Rico, Ouray, Telluride, and Silverton. None of them was doing much of anything, so the men who were living there were waiting to hear about the next strike. Banjo Creek was it.

  The silver mines were practically all shut down and had been for several years. Cripple Creek was mining gold, so it was about the only camp in Colorado that was going full blast, but it didn’t have enough jobs to keep every miner in the state busy.

  The miners came on foot or horseback with their burros and gear. We had the usual crowd of saloon men, whores, pimps, and con men, along with legitimate businessmen. Sometimes it was hard to tell which was which. An active camp always attracts the scum who live off the men who work, and I knew it would be that bunch that would give me trouble.

  Tug Ralston showed up on Saturday. I helped him get settled. He bought groceries, a cot, dishes, and pots and pans. We built shelves on one side of the sheriff’s office for him. By evening we had the place pretty well fixed up.

  “I’ll buy your supper in the hotel dining room,” I said, “and then we’ll look around. Chances are it’ll be a lively night for us.”

  It was. Before we finished eating, we began hearing gunshots. We were on our pie and the third cup of coffee when one of the bartenders Rip Yager had hired within the last week ran in and said there was a fight in Yager’s Bar and two men were tearing the place up.

  I never did get that last bite of pie. We left the dining room and fought our way through the mob on the street to Yager’s Bar. Every building in town was occupied, and tents had been set up at both ends of the business block. Judging from the crowd, I guessed that all the men who had gone up Banjo Creek in the last week had showed up in Angel’s Landing to turn their wolves loose.

  A couple of big bruisers who were just drunk enough to be mean were tearing up the tables and chairs in Yager’s Bar. Tug and I stopped inside the batwings for a moment and watched them. It seemed to me they were more intent on tearing up the place than on fighting.

  Rip was dancing around with a shotgun in his hands, yelling at them to stop, but they weren’t paying any attention. I had always pegged Rip for a tough hand, and maybe he had been at one time, but he sure didn’t have the guts to use his scatter-gun. If we hadn’t got there when we did, he wouldn’t have had a saloon.

  “Take the red beard, Tug,” I said. “I’ll handle the bald-headed bastard.”

  We pulled our guns and bulled our way through the ring of men who were watching the show. I didn’t try to palaver. I didn’t figure it would do any more good than Rip’s yelling. I grabbed Baldy by a shoulder, yanked him around, and cracked him on the head with my gun barrel.

  The fellow folded at knees and hip and spilled out full length on the floor. When I looked around, I saw that Tug had done the same with Redbeard. Neither man was out cold, but we had taken the fight out of them.

  I toed my man in the ribs. “On your feet, bucko,” I said. “You’re going to jail. We’ve got a couple of cells that’ll fit both of you just fine.”

  The crowd started to growl.

  I let the men see the muzzle of my Colt. “Any of you boys want to pick this up?” I asked. “We’ve got room for all of you.”

  One of them, a squat, barrel-chested man, said: “You’re damned right we’ll pick this up. Toting a star don’t make you God. I’ve seen the likes of you in every camp I’ve been in. You ain’t as big as you’re making out you are.”

  He started toward me, his big fists swinging. Some of the others fell in behind him. I didn’t have time to think what I should do, but I did know that this was the kind of situation I’d been afraid I’d fall into. I also knew that Tug and I couldn’t handle fifty men, that they’d tear us apart if we let them, and that, if I didn’t make my authority stick now, I was finished as a lawman in Angel’s Landing before I got started.

  “Don’t push it, mister,” I said, cocking my gun.

  He cursed me and said he was going to lock me up in my own jail. He kept coming, so I shot him in the foot. He screamed bloody murder and sprawled on the floor. The others dropped back in a hurry, staring at me as if they didn’t believe I’d really done it.

  I called to Yager: “Get Doc!” I kicked Baldy in the ribs again. “On your feet,” I said. “You’re going to jail.” This time he obeyed.

  Tug had Redbeard on his feet, too. We marched them out of the saloon, the crowd opening up before us. The squat man was on the floor, squirming around and yelling that I’d crippled him for life and he was bleeding to death.

  A crowd had gathered outside, but nobody tried to interfere. We took our prisoners to the county jail and locked each one in the small cells, the first time I’d used them since I’d pinned on the star. Then we stepped back into the sheriff’s office.

  Tug wiped his sweaty face with his bandanna and stared at me. He said in a low tone: “We’re still alive, but we wouldn’t be, if you hadn’t shot that son-of-a-bitch.”

  “I never shot a man before in my life,” I said. “I didn’t think I could do it.”

  “You know one thing for sure now,” he said. “You need more men.”

  I nodded. “It’ll get worse before it gets better, but knowing I need the men doesn’t give me the money to hire them. Well, we’d better stay together the rest of the night. If just one of us had walked into Yager’s Bar, it would have been a hell of a lot worse than it was.”

  * * * * *

  We patrolled the business block until midnight, then I told Tug to go to bed and that he could take Sunday off since it would be the quietest day of the week. The men who had raised hell half the night would be sleeping off their headaches most of Sunday.

  Yager’s Bar closed at 1:00 a.m. I stepped through the batwings just before Rip locked up. He was still there with his two bartenders, but the customers were gone. We had arrested several men for drunkenness, but we’d picked them up on the street. I’d made a point to stay away from Yager. I should have stayed away longer than I did. The minute he saw me, he started in on me about driving business away.

  I stood it as long as I could, then I said: “Rip, you can shut your mouth. You had a shotgun. You could have stopped the row before we got here. If you didn’t want us to stop it, why did you send for us?”

  “I didn’t want you to shoot nobody,” he said sullenly. “That’s where you made your mistake.”

  “What did you want me to do, stand there and let them beat us to death?” I demanded. “I didn’t make a mistake, Rip. That’s exactly what they would have done, and for no reason except that we were the law. Chances are they’d have turned on you. They were drunk and mean and ready to tear the town apart. That’s what we’ve got on our hands, Rip, and we’ll have it every Saturday night. We’ve got to keep the lid on.”

  “They won’t come to town on Saturday nights and spend their money if they think they’re gonna get shot,” he snapped. “Mark, we’ve got to bring in a professional. You and Tug are cowboys. You ain’t town tamers.”

  “I don’t aim to tame this town,” I said. “I just want to keep it from being destroyed.”

  I stood there, staring at him, an old man I had known since I was ten years old, a man I had always liked and respected. Now he was different. He acted as if I had injured him.

  Then I thought I understood. He was just plain greedy. If the Lucky Cat strike didn’t play out the way the gravel on Banjo Creek had in the old days, Rip had a chance to make big money for the first time in eighteen years. He’d rather have his saloon torn up than to lose business. He was being about as short-sighted as a man could be, but I’d seen plenty of such examples in other men. Rip had been satisfied with a little business all these years, but now he figured this was his last chance to make it big. In one way he was like Catgut Dolan.

  He couldn’t look at me. He muttered: “A professional. That’s what we need.”

  I thought to hell with him, wheeled around, and walked out. I should have known what he was up to, but I didn’t. Not for another week.

  Chapter Nine
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  I slept late Sunday morning. It was close to noon by the time I dressed and built a fire. When I went to the woodpile back of the house to saw enough wood to cook breakfast, I noticed that Abbie Trevor had left the teacherage and was coming toward my place.

  I laid a log on the sawhorse and sawed off a block, then straightened up and called: “Good morning, Abbie!”

  “Good morning, Mark,” she said as she came up to me. “You must have been busy last night.”

  “I was,” I said.

  “What was all the shooting about?”

  I didn’t want to tell her I’d shot a man, so I shrugged and said: “A bunch of miners letting off steam.”

  “I came over to cook breakfast for you,” she said.

  “That’s the kind of offer I never turn down,” I said. “I’ll bring some wood in for you. I’ve got to go to the jail, but I won’t be gone long.”

  She nodded and disappeared into the house. By the time I had split the wood and carried an armload into the kitchen, she had the coffee pot on the stove and was stirring up a batch of biscuits.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said, grabbing my gun belt off the antler rack near the door and buckling it around me as I hurried out of the house.

  I thought Tug Ralston would be gone and I’d have a jail full of drunks nursing king-size headaches, but I found Tug swamping out an empty cell.

  “I thought you’d be gone,” I said.

  He threw a bucket of dirty water into the yard in front of the jail and wiped a sleeve across his face. It was hot already. By late afternoon the small cells would be overheated ovens.

  “I couldn’t go off and leave that cell like it was,” he said. “Them bastards were yelling and carrying on and singing until about sunup. I didn’t sleep much.”

  I could still smell the puke and urine. I said: “It must have been a mess.”

  “I’ve got hogs at home that are better specimens of the human race than the things we locked up last night,” he said in disgust. “I didn’t turn loose the two we cracked on the head. I didn’t know if you wanted to hold ’em for the judge or not.”