Massacre at Idyll Valley Read online

  Now this girl, Emily. And the sheriff, a screw-ball—and likely a mean son of a bitch. What is it with this town? Inhospitable/hospitable all at the same time. Maybe it’s time for a little cleaning up.

  He walked down the center of the street almost to the end of town, stopped, turned left and walked in the door facing him. The man at the desk about dropped his teeth.

  “I’m here to speak to the sheriff,” Jake said.

  “Maybe the sheriff don’t want to speak to you.”

  “Makes no difference. He can come through that door this way or I will go through it that way. Don’t matter to me.”

  The man sat frozen in indecision.

  “And don’t think I don’t recognize you.” He leaned over the desk. “My memory’s not that short. If you were on my property right now you’d have another bullet to think about.”

  The man rose slowly and shuffled through the door.

  The sheriff came back through the door, gun drawn.

  “Just the man I was looking for. You’re under arrest.”

  Jake laughed. “You’ve got no cause and you know it. Maybe you forgot that I, as sheriff of Clarkston County, could arrest you under a lot more evidence than you got on me: harassing an innocent member of your community, for example, damaging my property.”

  “Seems like I’m the one with the gun at the ready.”

  “Seems you’ve not seen how fast I draw. You might get off your shot. It’s possible. But you might not. No matter, I will guarantee you one pretty thing. I’d put at least one crack shot in that pig’s heart of yours before I hit the floor. That’s for damn sure.”

  The clock on the wall ticked.

  “Either way you’re going to die,” said the sheriff. “I’m guessing you don’t like that idea.”

  “Either way you’ll die too and one thing more. You don’t have any idea what I’d like. You don’t know me at all.”

  Jake stood back and spread his hands. “Shit or get off the pot, Sheriff,” he said.

  The sheriff clenched his jaw. A long minute ticked by. He holstered his gun.

  “Better,” said Jake. “Now I’ve got something to say concerning your welcoming committee.”

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Jake looked at him with a twisted smile. “I’ll spare you the details of my ransacked cabin, the three bullet holes in my front door that your panty waste deputy put there. . .

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Jake looked at the sheriff out of the side of his eye. He looked down at the floor, turned his back, took three steps, turned back around, drew and fired hitting the numbers 10, 2, and 6 on the sheriff’s clock.

  He waved his gun in the air. “Let me tell you something about Texas Lawmen. We’re fast, we’re accurate, and we don’t tolerate ass-hole behavior from anybody.” He holstered his gun and leaned over the desk.

  “So now we have a little understanding, eh, sheriff? Anything more happens to my house, or my property, or anybody in this town who knows me and is friendly with me, I will know that you are responsible. And this is the punch line, so pay attention. I don’t care a fig about what you call evidence. I know enough about you and how you work this town to know that you are the source of bad things around here so it’s you I’ll come after, no questions asked—not your miserable deputy, not any collaborator in your shady deeds but you, personally. And just in case you didn’t get the message the first time, that means you’re going down.”

  He straightened up and hooked one thumb in his belt. “You might want to think about that next time you send some piss-ant to mess up my house.”

  He held the sheriff in his stare for a moment during which the sheriff said nothing and did not move. Jake turned to walk away but paused at the door and turned back. “Remember those three slugs you loaned me back at the house? . .” He raised one finger at the wall. “They’re in your clock.”

  ****

  Faith drifted into the Angel Dust. Martha was just coming down the stair when she spotted her standing at the back, surveying the new look. Martha went back up to get Rosalie.

  “Surprised to see you here,” said Martha, “after what you went through with Horse attacking you and all.”

  “I’m surprised myself. But I’ve been thinking about it for a long time and I decided that thinking was not a good thing. Nothing got resolved that way.”

  “Why’d you decide to come in?” said Roaslie.

  Faith started strolling around the room, examining the art on the walls, listening to the music, observing the faces of the men at their tables watching the innocent smiles of the Waco girls.

  “I had to replace a memory,” she said.

  Rosalie and Martha stopped where they stood and let Faith go ahead, soaking up the imagery of the new Angel Dust, replacing the stank and stench, the sinister hand around her waist as she stood by the window upstairs, the smell of cigar smoke on Horse’s breath as he tried to mount her, his scream as she crashed the paperweight against the side of his head, the run that seemed to take forever downstairs and out the door into the forgiving night.

  She stood alone in the crowded room turning her body slowly around at the foot of the stairs, letting her bones and tissues have permission to feel safe in this box of wood and nails—her transition the same as its transition, a slow rising out of shame into beauty and grace.

  “Did you replace the memory?” said Martha.

  Faith didn’t speak for a moment as if lost in a trance that wouldn’t turn loose. She took a deep breath. “Partly,” she said. “It doesn’t have the sting any more.”

  They offered her a drink. She refused.

  “Thank you,” she said as she moved to the door. “I might be able to come back sometime.”

  TWENY-TWO

  Jake walked across the street to the Reverie and sat down at the bar. Rachel, the barkeep recognized him and brought whisky. “You look like you’re about to shoot someone,” she said.

  “Almost did,” said Jake.

  “Wouldn’t be that good-for-nothing sheriff of ours would it?”

  “How’d you guess?”

  “I’m psychic.”

  Jake laughed. “He that bad?”

  Rachel leaned over the bar and whispered. “He runs a little protection racket, you know, pay a little now or pay a lot later.”

  “And he’s the best excuse you got for the law around here?”

  “What there is of it.”

  Jake bottom-up’d his glass. “Worse than I thought,” he said.

  “So if you get mad enough to finish this chapter in our lives, I’m sure nobody would mind one solitary bit.”

  A man in a cowboy hat came in and sat down at the end of the bar. She brought him beer. She came back to Jake. “That man over there? He’s another Texan,” she said. “You two should get to know each other.”

  Jake walked to the end of the bar and sat down. He extended his hand. “Jake from Possum Trot,” he said.

  “Walter from Ft. Worth,” he said. He raised a curious eye. “How long you been here?”

  “’Bout three months.”

  “Did you hear what happened at Idyll Valley?”

  ****

  Galen rummaged through his possessions for the supplies he needed to make the trip back to the Apache camp. There had been a stage robbery. The Dry Creek Gang specialized in stage robberies yet there was no word from Sabo. He needed to know why.

  Several possibilities circulated through Galen’s mind. 1. It was the Dry Creek Gang that performed the robbery but they went about it undetected. That one seemed unlikely. 2. It was the Dry Creek Gang and it was detected by the Apache but something happened that prevented Sabo from notifying the Possum Trot Community. Galen didn’t like that one. Or 3. The robbery had nothing to do with the Dry Creek Gang. That meant there was someone new on the scene. He had to know what was going on.

  Ethan was waiting for him by the front gate. Galen hardly recognized him
. He was wearing a grey ten gallon hat, a plaid cowboy shirt and a Colt Army strapped to his side.

  “Where you headed all dressed up?” Galen said.

  “I’m going with you.”

  “Not likely.”

  Ethan stayed put by the gate. “You’ve been away. You don’t have any idea what I can do.”

  Galen stepped back. Here was this fourteen year-old looking like he was some kind of gunslinger. Something was wrong with this picture. “I guess I don’t,” he said, “but in any case, you’re too young.”

  “Tired of hearing that all the time,” Ethan said. “Tired, wired and all fired up.” He turned his back to Galen “I’ve been practicing,” he said. “Watch this.”

  He stepped out into the field beyond the front fence, picked up a tin can lying there, tossed it into the air, pulled and fired three times. The can jumped. He went over to where it fell, picked it up and tossed it to Galen. Two bullet holes.

  “Not bad,” Galen said.

  “I’ll get my horse,” said Ethan.

  TWENTY-THREE

  George Pickens heard shots. He went to the porch and listened. The shooting had stopped and in that moment without hearing more he wondered if he’d really heard what he thought he’d heard. Shots. If that’s what it was.

  “There’s an evil wind a-blowing,” someone said.

  George turned to see Jigsaw Higgins at his post on the front porch leaning his chair back against the wall.

  “What do you mean?” asked George.

  “It’s the kind of wind that comes downside off the mountains and brings agitation.”

  Shots were heard again.

  George looked out in the direction of the reports but saw nothing. He looked back a Jigsaw.

  “See what I mean,” Jigsaw said.

  “Yes and no,” he said. “Evil you say is coming. I get that. No, I don’t understand these shots.”

  Jigsaw walked over to the street and spit out a shaft of brown liquid into the dust. “Shots like that signal that someone’s nervous. Someone is attempting to be ready.”

  “Who’s practicing?”

  “Go see for yourself. You might not believe me if I told you.”

  George closed his store, strolled down the street and found himself standing in front of the church. The sounds seemed to be coming from out back. He went around the side.

  His first glimpse was to see what he first thought was a scarecrow, attached to a post in front of a very large haystack. The scarecrow jumped with each report of the gun someone was holding aloft. It was Parson Tull.

  “Parson?”

  The parson turned and holstered his black long-barrel Remington.

  “I’ll be needing a few boxes of shells from your store,” the parson said.

  “Sure. But what’s all the commotion?”

  Parson Tull tipped his head and with it, the wide brim of his hat so that the sun crossed half his face at a sharp angle. It made him look like one of those black and white characters that possess both good and evil.

  “No commotion,” he said. “Just a little rehearsal.”

  “Rehearsal?”

  “You know, like sermonizing a couple of times before delivering Sunday worship. Have to get my bones moving without a hitch.”

  “Okay. But why now?”

  Jebediah Tull stroked his chin. In that gesture George Pickens could see remnants of a former life, something subsurface, something at cross currents with his outward visage. “There’s a gunfight a-coming,” he said. “And the Lord doesn’t want anyone going in unprepared.”

  ****

  Galen and Ethan travelled hard all day with stops only to water the horses and rest for a few moments, then push onward. Their travels carried them along prairies covered with tall grasses, clusters of trees and patches of the Chihuahuan Desert with little growing there but Penstemon, Agave, and Ocatillo.

  By mid-afternoon they had reached the portion of the trail that rode along the edge of a narrow canyon on their right winding through a tight chink in the low hills of far west Texas with a sharp incline upwards to their left. Beyond the hilly range the terrain leveled off and the riding would be smooth again.

  The trail, following the peculiarities of the terrain, narrowed to one horse between the fall off to the right and the hillside up to the left so Galen went before. Halfway through the narrows his horse spooked, bucked and threw him over the edge of the canyon. He tumbled down the edge attempting to grab onto anything stable, trying to dig his feet into the soil. Small plants uprooted and the soil was firm enough to make footholds difficult to create on the fly.

  At the very last moment he grabbed hold of a small tree, scrawny and weathered but remarkably, rooted deep enough to hold him. His feet dangled over the edge of an almost vertical drop.

  Ethan watched every detail. He saw what startled the horse. He drew and fired, severing the head of a very large rattlesnake curled and rattling along the side of the trail. The remaining body of the snake twisted and spiraled sliding down the precipice.

  Ethan looked over the edge. “Hold still,” he said. “Don’t even speak.”

  What he saw was a second rattler not three feet from Galen, coiled and ready for attack. He took aim and missed, exploding a puff of dust just in front of the rattler. The snake shifted its attention toward the dust and Ethan fired three shots, each hitting the snake as it fell over the edge.

  He dismounted, removed a rope from the back of his saddle, tied one end to the root of a Desert Willow and tossed the other end to Galen. The first toss went wide, too far to reach. He retrieved the rope and tossed again. This time the end landed directly on his hands.

  Galen shifted his left hand to the rope just as the roots of the little tree started pulling out of the ground. He swung dangerously to one side without the stabilizing effect of the tree but held on and pulled hand over hand until his feet could reach ground then worked his way up to the trail.

  Galen stood on the trail as Ethan was retrieving the rope from the Desert Willow.

  “Nice to have you along,” he said.

  ****

  By the time the sun was about to set they’d reached the trail to the Apache camp. Galen turned off the main trail.

  “How do you know where you’re going?” Ethan said.

  He pointed at the stones on the ground, two stacked, one beside pointing the way.

  They rode on in silence headed toward the butte, then making the turn at the grass knot toward the cluster of boulders. Before they reached any of the large rocks a scout entered the trail ahead of them, facing their direction.

  Galen stopped and waited.

  The scout approached. He was difficult to see in the waning light but he was wearing full Apache regalia complete with war paint. He stopped twenty yards out and hailed the two men with hand signals.

  “He says peace,” Galen said to Ethan. Galen signaled back.

  The scout approached and spoke in clear English. “Welcome,” he said.

  “My god,” said Galen. He turned to Ethan. “It’s Sabo,” he said.

  “I knew you’d be coming,” he said.

  ****

  Sabo made camp with the two men outside the Apache Settlement as was their custom. Sabo started a campfire.

  “I need a little clarity about the situation,” said Galen.

  “We know about the stage robbery,” said Sabo.

  “Was it the Dry Creek Gang?”

  “No. Been in camp all this time. But they are preparing for something big. They will leave in a few days.”

  “What about the stage robbery. From what we heard it seemed like the work of a different gang.”

  “It was the NoMano Gang. It was a deliberate act of provocation.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They wanted to start trouble with The Dry Creek bunch.”

  “Why?”

  “Not sure. But they could have robbed stages a lot farther away and not been so clear about the challenge they raised.�
�

  Galen sat silent a moment. He watched the sparks rise in the flame’s upward surge and spiral off into the darkness.

  “Someone is asking for a fight,” said Galen.

  “That’s how we measure it.”

  Galen tossed a pebble at a tree trunk. “What should we be worried about in Possum Trot?”

  “Don’t know. Dry Creek Gang is gearing up for some kind of large activity. We see it in the increased movement in the camp, the attention they are giving to firearms. . . something is about to happen.” He paused and looked out at the last red blush of sunset. “Somebody is in their crosshairs. Only thing I can tell you is to be ready.”

  Galen nodded. He scratched the dirt with a stick. Tossing the stick in the fire he turned his head and examined Sabo. “Seems like you’ve joined the Apache.”

  “Not that easy. I’m on trial.” He poked the fire with a stick. “But it’s what I want. These are my people.”

  Galen pursed his lips. He nodded. He shifted his weight on the log he was sitting on. “You know that your people are going to continue to get pushed farther and farther away. The white man is not kind to the Indian. White men are too strong and too powerful. You won’t be able to resist.”

  “I was born into this family as Choctaw,” Sabo said. “I will live and die Apache.”

  ****

  Next morning Galen and Ethan struck out for home. Sabo stood in the trail. “Safe travels,” he said.

  “We thank you, Sabo,” said Galen. “You’ve been a good friend.” He started to ride.

  “One thing more,” Sabo called after them.

  Galen stopped.

  “I know who Boss is,” he said.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The snow had started to fall in Durango, Colorado. It was November now and though the kind of fierce blizzards that raised hard memories of danger and survival had not yet arrived, the temperature had dipped low enough for soft clouds floating by to drop some early flakes.