Cutthroat Gulch

  © 2002 Richard S. Wheeler

  First Print Edition: May 2002

  2010 eBook Production by Get It Together Productions

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

  Cover design © 2010 Kae Cheatham

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  Contents

  CUTTHROAT GULCH

  About the Author

  Westerns by Richard S. Wheeler

  CUTTHROAT GULCH

  Chapter 1

  Sheriff Blue Smith’s fishing hole was one of the privileges of office. They didn’t pay him much, so he figured the fishing hole was his, and only his, and he let the world know it.

  Let some fool try to fish there, and Blue Smith growled and threatened until the wretch left. Everyone in town knew enough to steer clear of Blue’s fishing hole, but sometimes a stranger wandered in, and then Blue had to educate him. It wasn’t that Blue owned the place; it was all public land. But Blue had put his brand to it, and that was that, and if anyone horned in, Blue found good excuses to haul him before Abe Winters, the JP, on some excuse or another, or tongue-lash the trespasser until he was scared witless. So they all learned to leave the cutthroat trout to Blue.

  Blue figured he’d earned it. He had been sheriff ever since the place had become a county. He’d seen the mountains flock with gold-miners, seen wild camps spring up and die, seen crooks and road agents steal from miners when the miners weren’t stealing from each other. He had kept the lid on, and now the miners were mostly gone and it was all quiet ranching country, and some day soon the Territory would become a state.

  That earned him his fishing hole and a dozen more like it. The cutthroat trout were heavy, firm-fleshed and sweet-tasting, especially when he fried the fillets over a campfire. They swam in icy snowmelt from the high country, fed on caddis flies and lurked in the shadows. They put up a fine fight, and Blue sometimes lost one, which suited him fine. He had monopolized that fishing hole for over a quarter of a century and knew every shrub and rock. He knew all its moods, and had seen it in every hour, from the blackness of midnight to high noon. He had seen it in dawn mist, in evening dusk. He had seen it when the mountains were purple, when ice topped them, when the pine boughs bent under snow. He had seen it when magpies flocked, and wolverines tried to steal his catch.

  That’s why, this fine summer afternoon, he noticed at once when he rode down the long forest trail to his hole that he had a visitor dressed in black. This one was sleeping near the bank, exactly where Blue loved to whip his line back and forth and let sail into the quiet water just below the ripples. Probably someone drifting through. If the bum didn’t take a hint, Blue would pinch him for vagrancy; that would show the punk a thing or two.

  Blue steered his gelding, Hector, down the pine-girt trail toward the splash of meadow and stream below, in no hurry. Pushing a horse fast down a steep trail is a recipe for trouble, and he wasn’t looking for trouble on this day. The trespasser was asleep anyway, sprawled on his back and soaking up sun.

  He chose Hector for a name because not since the beginning of creation had any horse been named Hector, and that was reason enough. Some overeducated fool in Blankenship, the county seat, had told him that to hector was to swagger and berate. Blue had cussed the fellow out, but secretly was delighted to have a swaggering nag.

  He burst at last out of the woods and into the verdant meadow, warmed by a halcyon sun and cooled by a pine-scented breeze. He rode sourly toward the interloper, rehearsing what he would say to the snoring fool, and finally arrived at his favorite place in all the world.

  The trespasser was dead.

  “Well, damn it,” Blue Smith said, peering down at a male he had never set eyes on before, a man in a tidy black suit, staring open-eyed at the sun. A man with one, two, three, four, five, six bullet holes in him, variously piercing his chest, abdomen, neck and cheek. A dead trespasser.

  Sheriff Smith eased off his mount, squinted at the surrounding black forests and green meadows, eyed the blue peaks, studied the dazzle of light off the water, looked for someone, anyone, and then huddled over the stranger, reading the story. Six shots. Someone had emptied a full six-gun. He rolled the body over, looking for bullet holes in the earth, and found none. The corpse had been dragged here, killed somewhere else. He realized, even as he rolled the man over, that the body was warm. Warm! He gingerly pressed a hand to the man’s neck, cheek, hand. Warm. This man had lived and breathed within the hour. But here he was. No sign of rigor mortis. Not yet, anyway.

  Smith tugged out the pants pockets and found them empty. The suit coat yielded nothing. The black boots were scuffed but serviceable. Not even a ring on a finger. The man’s limp hands were too rough for a card shark, too smooth for a farmer or rancher. A city man. Blue felt grief, as he always did, at the sight of violent death. Pity. Some poor devil’s life was gone, and the man was not yet thirty. Some mother’s son. Maybe some woman’s husband. Maybe some child’s father. Some mean and miserable skunk had shot this man, and by God, that skunk was going to hang for it.

  Smith rose warily, suddenly aware that the killer might still lurk nearby. His revolver rested in a saddlebag. His ham and cheese sandwich, prepared by Olivia, filled the other. His bamboo fly rod rode in the rifle scabbard, as it always did. A yellow rain slicker was tied behind the cantle. He half expected a shot to rip out of the dark woods and fell him beside the dead man. He eased toward Hector, who stood obediently, and fumbled the saddle bag open. The revolver lay naked within. He had not brought his holster or belt or any spare cartridges. This was to be a trout fishing expedition, not a murder investigation. He itched to follow the clear trail of the killer; bent grasses, bits of blood, hoofprints. Jump the son of a gun, haul him in, charge him. But he knew better. Twenty-nine years of lawing had learned him a few things, and the most important was not to rush off half-cocked. He did track a few hundred yards, right to the edge of the lodgepole pines, finding nothing but a faint crush of grass, and specks of blood that were attracting moths. The trail plunged into thick forest, in the direction of Pilot Peak, or more likely the saddle between Pilot and Grant Peak. He would return later. He knew as much as he needed to know for the moment.

  He had to take this body back to Blankenship and see who could identify it. If he knew the name of the victim, the chances were very good that he would soon know the name of the killer, and save himself a long hard chase through a vast wilderness. He settled on his favorite ledge over the water, which was so crystal this day, so bright with sun, that the dazzle blinded him. But he wanted to think and watch the dark whirl of trout in the depths. He would be fishing for a killer this time.

  Six shots, five probably mortal. Angry killer, probably. Why was the victim dragged here, of all places? Who even knew of this place? Where was this man murdered? Blue rubbed his weather-worn neck, and came to no conclusions at all. Take the dead man to town, that was next. Roll the body into the yellow slicker, tie it to Hector, and walk six miles. Murder had wrecked the afternoon. Wrecked the best fishing in the world. Profaned his favorite place in all of creation. Just for that, the killer should have the privilege of hanging twice.

>   He untied his yellow poncho, spread it, lifted the victim into it, and rolled it up. He carried the dead man easily. Sheriff Blue Smith wasn’t particularly large, but he had a lumberjack’s shoulders, and many was the miner or crook who had discovered what a wallop he packed in those massive shoulders and arms. Hector shied away, wild eyed.

  “Whoa, whoa,” Blue growled as he slid the yellow-wrapped body over the side-stepping horse. It was going to be a long hike. Blue hated walking, which set his bunions to howling, and the killer was going to pay for this foot-mauler hike along with everything else, including a lost fishing trip on a perfect day.

  A two hour, aching-leg walk. Grimly, Blue led the burdened horse up to the low divide, and then down the long, shadowy woods trail to town. He held the rein in one hand, and his Peacemaker in the other, feeling foolish about it. He could just as well put the iron back into the saddlebag for all the good it did him. He had fished that hole all these years, and had never seen it profaned. He had brought his boy Absalom there, taught him to cast, brought his girl, Tamara, too, let her clean the trout and cook them for him, make herself capable. She turned out fine, married a rancher down the valley. The boy never took to the West, or fishing, or hunting, or even the Territory, and finally skipped out, wanting something Blue couldn’t give him. He wasn’t man enough for the Territory. Last Blue knew, he was an engraver for some magazine in Denver. An artist. Blue hawked up some saliva and spat.

  Blue knew exactly what he would do in town. He would leave the body with Vinegar Will, who styled himself the Maestro of Mortuary Arts, and would warn him not to touch it. Then he’d get the coroner, Doc Prentiss, and Blue’s deputy, Carl Barlow, and tell him to fetch every saloonkeeper in town. One or another of the barkeeps in the thirteen saloons of Blankenship should recognize the stranger. Get Cyrus Mack, the editor of the Blankenship Weekly Crier, too. Newspaper editors meet everyone. Then he’d get a John Doe warrant from District Judge Nils Berdinger, and see who knew the victim.

  Then he would decide whether to hunt down the killer or wait for him to return to town.

  Young Carl Barlow was a good enough man, but his experience would fit into a thimble. He’d never dealt with a dangerous man because there hadn’t been any in Blankenship for seven or eight years. Each election Barlow ran against Blue Smith and lost, which was fine with Blue. The county supervisors wanted Blue to retire, and always pushed for a Barlow victory. So did the editor of the weekly. Old Smith was too rough, too hard, too stubborn, too single-minded, and maybe he’d been around too long and the pioneer days were over, they said, but Blue had laughed at that. He was rough, all right, and he intended to stay in office until they carried him out feet first. And then some lucky cuss would get his fishing hole.

  He arrived at last in Blankenship, and led the burdened horse through back streets toward Vinegar’s Gateway to Heaven Chapel, which had the only white Corinthian columns in town. People stared, but a glower from Blue kept them at bay. “Vinegar,” he bellowed, at the rear door.

  “I wish you wouldn’t call me that,” the mortician said. “Lay this man out and don’t touch him. You’ll be having visitors in a few minutes.”

  Blue carried the stiffening yellow burden into the back door of the establishment, and laid him down on a copper-jacketed mortician’s table.

  Vinegar gave the body a clucking and sniffling professional appraisal, and slid Blue’s poncho from under it. “Who is he?” he asked.

  “We’ll find out,” Blue said.

  “Unknown male. Potter’s field,” Vinegar said, pursing his lips in the manner that won him his name.

  “Maybe not. He doesn’t look poor to me. And he’s going to be known soon.”

  Vinegar began tugging at pockets.

  “I’ve already looked,” Blue said.

  “Pity,” Vinegar said, and Blue wondered what he meant by that.

  Blue rode Hector over to his shabby office, which squatted around the back of the courthouse, hidden from public view by the county fathers, who didn’t want to admit to the existence of crime in this Eden. He wrapped Hector’s reins around the hitchrail and entered the cool gloom. Barlow was fishing something out of the brass spittoon, and sat up violently.

  “Didn’t expect you,” he muttered.

  “We’ve had a murder.”

  “A murder!” Barlow straightened up, startled. “Who?”

  “Stranger. I want you to have a look. He’s at Vinegar’s. Then round up anyone who can identify him. Saloon men.”

  “We haven’t had a murder in ten, twelve years, Blue.”

  “Six bullet holes, Carl. Five fatal wounds. I found him at the fishing hole. Fresh killed, still warm.”

  “Motive?”

  “Don’t know for sure.”

  “Robbed?”

  “Yes, not a thing on him. But why would a robber unload a whole cylinder? There’s more here.”

  Barlow grabbed a holster belt and hung it from his skinny waist. Blankenship was so peaceful that no law man bothered to wear sidearms. Billy clubs sufficed. “This’ll start an uproar, Blue.”

  Blue agreed. “It’s the first one since that drunken brawl in eighteen eighty. And the last.”

  Chapter 2

  Blue watched them file through. Saloon men like Mike Solomon and Gad York studied the dead man and shook their heads.

  “Never seen ’im before,” Dinty Jones said.

  Maybe Cyrus Mack would know. The editor peered over his spectacles, moved the lamp around to light shadowed areas, frowned, and shook his head. “Nope,” he said. And then he pulled out his notepad. “Where’d you find him?”

  “Later,” Blue snapped. “The public has a right to know.”

  “You’ll know plenty soon enough.” Blue relented. “I found an unidentified body out of town. Six bullet wounds. Male, about thirty. There’s your story.”

  “Where?”

  “I ain’t saying.”

  “You could cooperate, you know.”

  “I could but I won’t.” Blue thought maybe the place where he found the body might mean something, and he wasn’t ready to reveal it.

  “I’m hanging around here until he’s identified.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Blue had Barlow round up the three preachers in Blankenship, who nervously examined the remains and shook their heads. “Not in my congregation,” said the Reverend Mr. Albright.

  “All right, thank you,” Blue said, hustling the divine out the door.

  He was out of leads, and the trail was getting cold. If you knew who the killer was, or even why the crime happened, no trail ever grew cold. But now he faced a cold trail and the killer had a good lead.

  “You done?” asked Vinegar.

  “No, I’m not. I’m getting Bart Fly in here. You fix up the dead man.”

  “You mean, like he wasn’t shot?”

  “His face, Vinegar, his face. Open his eyes and spread some putty on that cheek. Like he’s alive.”

  Ten minutes later Fly was focusing his camera lens on the propped up remains. “Give me front and profile pictures, Bart. And then make me ten tintypes. Give them to Barlow and bill the county.”

  The photographer, whose head bobbed under the black shroud of his equipment, nodded. A blinding flash of magnesium powder blinded Blue. The shutter clicked. “I’ll have them in a week, sheriff.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  Fly sighed. “You’re the stubbornest man I ever met. I’ll be up all night. I should charge double.”

  Magnesium powder exploded again as a shutter clicked. Acrid smoke filtered past the lamp.

  “All right, Vinegar, he’s yours,” Blue said. “One more thing. Look for scars. I want a sketch of every scar and every bullet hole. I want entrance and exit holes figured out. You find anything unusual, you let Barlow know pronto.”

  “I hope I get paid.”

  “So do I.”

  Blue stood over
the dead man, and pulled his battered hat from his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “A man has a right to dignity. Man only dies once. Whoever you are, I’ll see about some justice. Notify your kin.”

  He memorized that face.

  Blue turned to Barlow. “I’m going after the killer. Ride down that trail he left. I know where it goes. It’ll take a while. The office is all yours. We’ve a few leads; put them to use while I’m gone. When you get a tintype, check with the hostlers in town. Try the hotel clerks. Try the restaurants. Send one image to the Centerville marshal and see if Zeke Dombroski knows something. Try every merchant here, grocers, feed store. Don’t forget to talk to little boys. They see stuff. Put a hundred dollar reward ad in the paper. I’ll square it with the county.”

  “You going alone?”

  “Posses are a pain in the ass.”

  Barlow grinned. “You want him for yourself.”

  “You bet I do.”

  “How long?”

  “Long as it takes.”

  “Blue, give me some idea.”

  “If it takes me the rest of my life, then that’s what I’ll spend.”

  “Why you so het up?”

  “My fishing hole, that’s why.”

  Barlow laughed, but Blue didn’t see anything funny about it.

  “I’m sending a rescue outfit after you in one week. Where are you going?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Blue, dammit.”

  “The trail leads toward that saddle between Pilot and Grant peaks.”

  Barlow nodded. “I’ll come lookin’.”

  Blue watched Vinegar Will mash the stiff body onto the copper table again and fold the hands across the man’s breast. Vinegar always hummed his way through his labors, and on this occasion it was “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” where the grapes of wrath are stored. “Carl, I want a fancy funeral for this gent. Put a notice in the paper. See who comes. Write down the names. Vinegar, you put out a guest book. I want to know who signs it.”