Massacre at Idyll Valley Read online

  Jackson had prepared a pot roast, a project he started in the early morning and let simmer through the day, a roast large enough for the family and the guests who came later.

  It was Hope’s turn to say grace. She, the middle daughter, chose to make it a quiet one that no one heard. This was allowed when the mood was such to want a more internal expression of gratitude, or to speak to the Lord about private matters or. . . in this case, to include sorrow, anger, or frustration.

  As she finished there was a pall of quiet over the table. Meat was served, potatoes, carrots, but no one spoke for a while.

  Faith, the eldest, broke the silence.

  “We’re none of us the same since the massacre over at Idyll Valley,” she said.

  Her mother reached over and stroked her long hair. “Tragedies like that remind us how precious life is. Did it make you afraid of dying?”

  “Not that.” she said. “It’s like evil is all around. We used to have moments of fun, moments when our nerves hung down, as grandpa Williams used to say. Now we’re tangled up in knots all the time. It’s like walking around with your hands tight to your chest.”

  Jackson nodded. “We all feel that way,” he said. “But we cannot afford to let that determine how we live, how we relate to each other as a family. Look around. We are here. We are alive. We have a house to live in and a wonderful restaurant and bar to serve the people of our community.”

  “Yes,” said Faith. “But all this makes me wonder if what we have will be taken away.”

  No one could answer that.

  And Faith was not reassured. “The whole community, Daddy, is living under a teetering boulder.” She pushed her food around with her fork but did not eat. “Sometimes I think we live in a godless country, way out here in the middle of nowhere where no God, however powerful, could reach us. Yet we are foolish enough to depend upon God to rescue us from danger.”

  “Faith!” said Jackson.

  “But look, Daddy, look what happened to the poor people of Idyll Valley. They didn’t deserve anything.”

  Missy grabbed her wrist. “We have to believe,” she said. “That’s where we get our hope.”

  “I know, I know. I know. You named me Faith,” she said, “but sometimes it’s really hard to keep it alive. That massacre was senseless and evil. If we’re supposed to have a god of love, where does that fit in?”

  “Evil is always with us,” Jackson said. “Goodness rises up and falls back. Evil

  does the same. It’s not that the evil wins in the end, it just never goes away.”

  He took out the Bible and turned to Psalm 121:

  I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.

  My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.

  He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not

  slumber.

  Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.

  The Lord is thy keeper: the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand.

  The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.

  The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul.

  The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.

  Jackson closed the book. ”Feel better?” he said.

  Faith delayed her answer. She took a breath and arched her shoulders. “No,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “It just seems so out of step with what’s happening right in front of us.”

  “Faith!” said her mother. “I’d be ashamed.”

  A tear rose to Faith’s eye. She stood, surveyed the table and the people before her, shook her head, and left.

  ****

  Galen returned and spread the word that the Dry Creek Gang was hold up in a canyon fifty miles from Possum Trot and Sabo was watching to see if they started moving and if so, would come and tell us.

  Then he went out to the farm where Crissy ran out to meet him with a giant hug. Ethan was close behind. “I was so worried,” she said.

  She made corn fritters and fried chicken while Galen told of the trip west, the interaction with the Apache and Sabo’s decision to stay behind and spy.

  “Won’t he be in danger?” said Crissy.

  “No doubt. But he knows how to dodge trouble and he’s quite at home with the tribe.”

  They concentrated on eating for a while.

  “Looks like Lily is going to keep that man of hers,” she said.

  Galen looked up. He shifted his thoughts from his trip to the new subject. An idea formed itself in his head and blurred his eyes. He snapped out of a little trance and wiped the gravy from his plate with the last bit of fritter. “Think I’ll go over to Lily’s in the morning,” he said.

  “I knew you’d be by before long,” Lily said.

  “Just a friendly visit,” said Galen, dismounting just outside her gate. “How are things here?”

  “Better, I’d say.” She looked out over the corral where Johnny was brushing horses. “He’s amazing, Galen. I mean, just look at him. A natural on a farm.” She leaned against a fence post. “He keeps trying to leave, saying he’s a marked man, doesn’t want the gang to find him here and create trouble. But I won’t let him go.”

  Galen reached down for a sprig of sour grass and clasped the end in his teeth. “That’s not the behavior of a dangerous man,” he said. “Maybe he just got caught up in a tornado that carried him way too far.”

  “He sprung loose, didn’t he?”

  Galen nodded. There was a spark of energy in Lily’s face he’d not seen for a long, long while. “Mind if I talk to him?” he said.

  She smiled. “Would anyway.” She turned back into the house.

  Galen walked up to the corral and leaned on the fence. “Fine horses,” he said.

  Johnny nodded.

  Galen removed the sour grass and spat a fragment on the ground.

  “Mind if I ask you a couple of questions?”

  “Questions been waiting a long time, I reckon.” he said.

  “Yeah. I reckon.” Galen put one boot up on the cross bar. “Mainly I’m curious about the leader of the Dry Creek Gang. Who is that guy?”

  A knowing smile curled at the edge of Johnny’s mouth. “That’s what everybody wants to know, including the members of his gang.”

  Galen flipped the remaining stub of the sour grass into the corral. “They don’t know?”

  “He goes by the name, Boss. What I can tell you is that he is bat shit crazy.”

  “How so?”

  Johnny slapped his horse on the rump and it moved away. He put the brush aside and leaned against his own piece of fence.

  “He’s smart as a whip and mostly reasonable. But mess with him, even one little bit, and he’s just as apt to shoot you as look at you.”

  “No remorse.”

  “No remorse. And if he doesn’t split your forehead, Hodge Mobson, his right hand man, will. There’s a man what loves to kill.”

  Galen turned his back to the fence and hooked one heel in the cross bar. “Hold up in Capstone Canyon?”

  “That’s their base. But they move when they need to. That they learned from the Cherokee.”

  “Stages and Banks?”

  “Stages. That’s Boss’s territory. He’d kill anyone who tried to take one of his stages.”

  Back at the house Lily stood by the window watching the two most important men in her life, looking like they were speaking as if the world had not a single trouble. They looked that way but a thousand possibilities ran through her head, most of them bad.

  Galen moved away from the fence. He nodded and looked out over the farm. “Nice place here,” he said.

  Johnny expected him to deliver the payload, the message that would determine his fate. Instead, Galen hooked one thumb in his pocket, turned sideways and said, “See ya.” Then he started walking away.

  “Thought you’d come t
o run me off,” Johnny said after him.

  Galen stopped and looked back over his shoulder. “You’ve made Lily into a new person,” he said. He put one finger to the brim of his hat then continued on to his horse.

  ****

  Galen arrived home to the news that another stage had been robbed.

  TWENTY

  Jake sat on his porch. He watched the sun come up in the morning. He watched it go down in the evening. At each hour of the day he witnessed the angle and tonality of the light as it spilled into the valley below, as it painted the aspens and the poplars and mixed with their evolving colors of autumn. He watched as it crept over the hills and disappeared behind the mountains, leaving an amber glow.

  He could see in the floor of the valley alongside the Animas river, the settlements lighting up with sunshine in the morning, and with the internal glow of kerosene lamps in the evening. If the wind was right he could hear singing from the bars or the church.

  The beauty of what he saw penetrated his bones with surges and thrills. This natural beauty was precisely what he dreamed of sitting on a different front porch, a different patch of earth, looking at a different view. What he saw here kept him in his chair, on his front porch, watching.

  Yet, as is true with beauty—once appreciated, twice set aside—so he grew a little too accustomed to the scene. This subtraction of thrill revealed to him that something was still missing from his life. His tendency to action and involvement that had been subdued by his love of the scenery now sprung out of its containment and overtook this classical urge he had to sit and absorb the world around him. It agitated deep in his bones.

  He got up and went down to town.

  As was his custom when he had nothing to do he stopped in at the general store. He liked to browse among the articles contemplating their uses, their place in his life. . . nor not. He knew it was a luxury of too much time on his hands that allowed him access to this strange business of idle moments piling up upon each other. As a result he could wander through the store for hours not buying anything. Not, that is, except for moments when his wish to bring some sense of satisfaction to the store’s proprietor, Whatshername, made him impulsively want to purchase something. It occurred to him she might even be the reason he hung out in this store in the first place.

  Uh oh. She’s spotted me.

  Whatshername tapped him on the shoulder. “You’ve been examining that lamp for half an hour now. You going to admire it all day?”

  Jake laughed. “Caught me,” he said. “Guess I was just biding my time.”

  She smiled. “I don’t mind if you ‘bide time’ in my store. Gives me a little company. It can get pretty boring around here sometimes.”

  “Yeah. I just came from boring, sitting on my front porch.”

  “Okay, then.” She took the lamp from his hands and put it back on the shelf. “I don’t think you’re interested in this lamp. Instead, why don’t we have lunch. I close the store from twelve to twelve-thirty every day. It’s getting close to that time now. And I’ve got some corn beef in the back ready for sandwiches.”

  Jake was shocked. He managed to stutter out an “Okay” but still wasn’t sure he heard straight.

  She sliced bread, made sandwiches of corn beef, tomato and lettuce, served lemon water in tall glasses. It was a small room with sunlight in the Catalpa tree outside the window.

  “Where did you come from?” she said.

  He smiled. “Possum Trot, Texas,” he said. Then he laughed.

  She smiled. “Interesting name,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “Ever think about going back?”

  “Not yet. Haven’t seen the snow.”

  She nodded.

  There was an awkward pause.

  “Did you ever settle down?” she said.

  “I was the sheriff of Clarkston County.”

  “No, I mean. . . did you marry, have kids?”

  He moved his glass from one place to another, mindlessly. “Never quite did that,” he said.

  Her eyes got that faraway look, then snapped back. “I guess it takes finding the right person?”

  “Yeah. Seems I wasted a lot of time with a woman who never wanted to settle. Don’t know why. But it worked for us just to unload our tensions from time to time.” He stopped and looked at her. Seeing no objection, he continued. “But I guess it wasn’t right enough for us to hook together for life.” He looked away, then back to her eyes. “Not right enough somehow.” He paused. Shrugged. “Guess that sounds stupid. Sounds stupid to me now that it’s out in the room.”

  She shook her head. “No.” She gazed out the window. “I understand.” She pushed her plate aside. “See, there’s nobody here I’m the least bit interested in. And I’m stuck in this store with a disabled father and a living to make.” Her face grew wistful.

  He had an urge to reach out and touch her wrist, but stopped himself. He tried to think of something reassuring to say but nothing that wasn’t stupid came to mind. He decided not to ruin things with forced platitudes.

  She stood and took his plate, stacking it on hers. She turned and placed the plates on a sideboard. She touched his shoulder.

  They walked out to the front of the store where she turned the open sign in the window facing outward. Her hand paused for a moment on the sign where it stood, facing outward. Her eyes glazed. She glanced his way.

  “My name is Emily,” she said.

  ****

  Galen rode into town. Crissy had said that Ruth Ann at The Outfitter’s Shop was the source of the rumor that there had been another stage robbery.

  He pulled up in front of her shop and hitched his horse, Major, to the post. He looked up to see a commotion across the way. A little girl who looked like Sally Swenson was hanging upside down from a railing about four feet down from the roof of The Angel Dust. Apparently, she had climbed up there hoping to spy on the activities inside, fallen, catching her foot in a wedge between railing and wall. The crowd was spellbound, watching a man with a rope coiled around his shoulder sliding out on a ledge just below her. His ledge was narrow and his foot kept slipping as he ooched closer to the girl. He had little to hold on to but worked his way using makeshift handholds in the fancifully cut frieze boards outcropping from the wall.

  As he reached her he spoke in a low voice. “I’m going to tie this rope around your waist,” he said. “Don’t grab at me or we’ll both fall.”

  She nodded.

  Carefully, he looped the rope around her waist. More than once he appeared to lose his footing and slip, grabbing for any stabilizing wood or piece or iron. He had to work with one hand to tie the knot.

  “I used to be able to tie a bowline with one hand,” he said. “Let’s see if I can still do that.”

  He held on to his perch with one hand, placed the end of the rope in his palm secured by his thumb so that the rope tip extended from the ends of his fingers three or four inches. His first two attempts failed when the rope slipped out of his hand or failed to push through the loop his circular gesture had twisted in the body of the rope around her waist. The third time he succeeded.

  He tightened the knot, asked her to hold on to the rope above the knot, threaded the other end of the rope through a slot in a wooden scroll-sawed spandrel protruding from the side of the wall and dropped the end down to the crowd below.

  “A couple of you men hold on the end of the rope to let her down slow and easy,” he said.

  When the rope was taught he reached up to release her foot from the railing. As he did so she dropped three feet. The crowd moaned.

  “Hold on!” he yelled and the men, caught unawares by the drop, leaned back against the rope, stabilized her flailing body, swinging against the side of the structure, then brought her down safely.

  The man climbed down another way. The crowd greeted him offering congratulations and gratitude.

  The man was Johnny Tallmountain.

  Galen nodded, turned, and walked into the Outfitter’s
Shop. Earned his place in this town, he was thinking.

  He was greeted by a robust, “Howdy, Sheriff,” from Ruth Ann. “What can I do you for?” She was wearing one of her large, floppy hats.

  “Just a little information, if I might,” Galen said.

  “Oh, I’m usually the one with information in this town. What kind does your appetite tell you you might be needing?”

  “The recent stage robbery. I’m curious to know what you know.”

  “Ah that. Well, I have a cousin over in Coleman. The stage runs through there and stops for supplies and a change of horses. She told me that just as the stage was leaving town a gang of about seven bandits had drug a tree trunk across the road. They stopped the stage, took the strong box and went their way.”

  “No casualties?”

  “None.”

  “That sounds unusual.”

  “Everybody thought so.”

  “Any information on the members of this gang?”

  “Pretty much what you’d expect. Scraggly sorts with lots of metal. Only they didn’t shoot much. Just made away with the goods.”

  “Are they part of the Dry Creek Gang?”

  “Nobody knows.”

  Galen stroked his chin. “They’re a long ways from Capstone Canyon. . . still.” His last word was filled with speculation and unresolved questions.

  “Something’s on your mind, Sheriff?”

  “Think I’ll have to take a little trip,” he said.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Jake strolled out of the General Store and into the middle of the street. He just stood there a while, looking up and down the town. Funny place, this was. He came here expecting a simple life—porch sitting, tobacco chewing, maybe a hike up the mountain. Watch the ground squirrels forage for winter. Things got complicated.