Paper Sheriff (20 page)

“Figured it was you, Uncle Orv, but wasn't taking a chance.”

“Get me to some whisky,” Orv said, then added, “How are things?”

“Fine as silk.”

“Not any more,” Orv said grimly. “Who's night herder?” Buddy told him Big John was and Orv said, “Get him in. Where's camp?”

Buddy told him it was down the creek, and Orv rode on. Shortly through the' trees he saw June and Emmett who, probably roused by Buddy's initial call, were stoking up the fire.

“Hi, boys,” Orv greeted them, and they both answered, “Hi, Pa.”

“Get me a drink,” Orv said, even before he dismounted.

June went over to the rickety spring wagon out of the circle of firelight and returned with a jug. Orv, out of the saddle now, accepted it gratefully, removed the cob cork and drank deeply under the pleased scrutiny of his two sons.

When he had caught his breath, Orv said, “Got anything to eat?”

Emmett promptly headed for the grub box, moving with a bear-like, pigeon-toed walk that was almost muscle bound.

By the time he had finished his second drink, Emmett had retrieved a greasy skillet half-full of fried meat and put it on the fire to warm up. He shoved the coffee pot onto the bordering coals, then went back to the grub box to get a handful of tin cups. Courteously both boys waited till their father had sampled the jug again and lifted out a piece of steak from the pan to chase his drink. By that time Big John and Buddy had ridden in and dismounted. Buddy took his uncle's horse and tied it and his own back in the timber. Big John, after greeting his father, filled a cup with coffee from the black pot. It was only after he tasted the coffee and found it tepid that he poured all the coffee back into the pot and placed it again on the new fire.

Buddy returned now, picked up the jug, took a drink and passed it to Emmett. While the three brothers were having their drinks, Buddy said, “Sump'n gone wrong, Uncle Orv?”

Orv's three sons exchanged glances and then looked at their father. Orv had seated himself cross-legged before the fire, and now his three boys and Buddy stationed themselves across the fire from him so they could watch his face. Big John sat down but the others stood.

Orv's opening remark was, “Boys, I run out of whisky and that lost me my shootin' eye.” They all smiled at that, and then Orv began his story. He started it with the seeming irrelevance of his whipping of Wash Plunket, but that led on to Wash's information that Reese and the lawyer woman had ridden out of Bale three mornings ago, presumably in search of the R-Cross cattle. He told of meeting Callie and afterwards stationing himself above Copper Canyon on the hunch that Reese and the woman were headed for it. They came, saw the sign, and Orv said he saw them bed down at Armistead's last night. Reckoning that Reese would return and pick up the sign this side of the mountain, Orv said, he stationed himself at the canyon mouth, figuring Reese would come down it. However, Reese had crossed him up. Instead of traveling the canyon, Reese had dropped down the Moffitt road till it descended from the bench and then had followed the base of the bench to the canyon mouth.

“That put him a far piece away from me because I figured him for the canyon. Still, I had to take a chance.” Orv wiped his greasy hands on his pants and said, “How's that coffee, boys?”

Emmett moved to pick up the pot and Orv resumed, “Know how it is, shooting downhill? You're likely to overshoot so you're mighty careful not to. Well, I got him in the leg and killed his horse. He fell clear and then forted up behind his downed horse. We swapped shots for maybe twenty minutes but at that range, danged if I could draw down fine enough on him.”

He accepted his coffee from Emmett who then gave the others their coffee, lifted his own cup and again faced his father across the fire. Country-fashion none of the boys spoke, nor would they speak until Orv had finished his rambling account of the failed bushwhack of a kinsman.

“Who do you reckon come along then? I'll tell you. It was that lawyer woman, riding hell for leather out of the canyon. I tried to scare her off but she wouldn't scare. She seen Reese, but before she come up to him, she hid her horse in the creek brush. She come out afoot then, and I tried to scare her off again, but she never paid any attention to me. She fiddled around with Reese's leg and then, by God, you won't believe what she dare next! She stood on that dead horse with her skirts out hiding Reese from me. Then she put herself between him and me and damned if she didn't help him back into the brush. I tried to get Reese without hurting her, but I couldn't do it at that range. They made the brush. I pulled out then while they was busy hiding so they never got a look at me. That was about the middle of the afternoon.”

The boys looked at each other, and it was Buddy who spoke first. “Uncle Orv, what's Callie going to say about this?”

“Hell, she won't care. I made sure of that when I talked to her at their new line shack.”

It was June, the youngest and rashest, who said predictably, “Pa, why don't we get going now? He's hurt and they're riding double. We could finish the job easy.”

Orv looked at him almost pityingly. He reached for the jug, took a drink from it and set it down by Big John before he answered.

“Well now, June, if that was the thing to do, I could have done it myself, couldn't I?”

June said brashly, “Then why didn't you?”

Orv looked at the other boys and said, “One of you tell him.”

Big John looked at June. “You dang little fool. Reese never saw Pa and that woman lawyer never either. They don't know who shot Reese. If we tracked them down and killed him, that woman lawyer sure as hell will.”

A look of sheepishness came over June's thin face, and he smiled foolishly. It was Emmett, however, who asked the question that puzzled them all.

“Pa, why was that woman riding down the canyon while Reese come around under the bench?”

“I've been studying on that all night,” Orv answered. “Maybe them two figured that the herd might still be in the canyon and that we wouldn't hurt her.”

Now Big John spoke for the first time. “If it was me, I'd have got them both.”

“But it was me, not you,” Orv said quietly. “That woman gets hurt and who do they look for first? Why, Orville Hoad, the man she damn near got hung.”

The boys were silent now, each in his own way reviewing Orv's moves and seeing the necessity for each one. Their father and uncle had to post himself there at the canyon mouth in order to remain hidden. If he'd waited down on the flats, chances were that Reese would have spotted him and in the shoot-out, Reese would have won.

It was Big John who finally broke the silence. “What's our move now, Pa?”

Orville finished his coffee and before answering took out his plug of tobacco, cut off a chew and spooned it to his mouth atop the knife blade. He settled the chew in his cheek, then said, “Well, if I was Reese and had me a sore leg, I'd get word to the sheriff in Moffitt that there's some rustled beef in his county. Quickest way would be to tell the stage driver. So the thing to do now is head the herd south and out of the county. Two of you can do that, Emmett and June. Big John and Buddy, you come back with me, just in case.”

“You expecting trouble, Uncle Orv?”

“Can't tell yet. Reese will likely tell Jim Daley what he was looking for, if he ain't already told him. Daley will suspicion us Hoads but he can't prove anything. Buddy, you and Big John and me can beat Reese home easy. When Daley comes to see us, we ain't even been away. June and Emmett are up somewhere south in the Wheelers getting some young bear meat. They'll come back when they get it. That's our story with Callie and Minnie and Ty backing it up.”

Now he shoved himself to his feet. “Let's get some sleep, boys.”

For Jen the night had been nearly sleepless. Early in the evening a delirium came to Reese, and there was little Jen could do to help him except keep him covered and bathe his face with water from the seep. In the small hours of the morning, when the wood Jen was husbanding for the fire was almost gone, Reese's fever broke. When Jen was sure he was lucid, she stripped off his sleeveless shirt and helped him squirm into the extra shirt he had carried in his blanket roll. Kneeling beside him, she buttoned it and then settled back on her heels.

“Reese, I've got to get you to a doctor. You can't ride today, can you?”

“I don't think I could make the horse, Jen. No.”

“And I won't leave you for Orville to shoot. He may be out there in the night now.”

“He isn't here or I'd be dead long ago.”

“What do I do, Reese?” Jen asked helplessly.

Reese closed his eyes and said, “Let me think, Jen.” She watched his gaunted face which held a beard stubble that made it seem even thinner.

Presently he opened his eyes and said, “Riding is out and a ‘travois' is out, so here's what you do. Take off at daylight and head north for the Moffitt road. It's about eight miles, I'd guess.” He lifted his sweat-soaked shirt that he had just shed. “Tear this into strips, Jen. Use them for markers. Tie them to a tree branch where they'll show up to you coming back. Every time you put one up, take a look back at the country you've just travelled so you'll see how it should look coming back.”

Jen frowned. “Do I go back to Armistead's and bring a wagon?”

“No, Jen. Joe Early will be driving the stage. Flag him down and bring him here.”

“From the stage?”

“With the stage,” Reese corrected her. “This country is flat enough. It's only got a few gullies, and Joe can handle them.”

“But cross-country, Reese, with no road?”

“The Fortyniners didn't have a road, did they?”

Jen smiled faintly. “Of course not. I'm a little thickheaded at this hour of the morning, I guess.” Then she added, “I don't know, Reese. What if you go out of your head again?”

“What if I do? I can't go anywhere, and if I thrash around, that leg will pull my senses back.”

“All right.” She reached behind her for a tin cup of water and gave it to Reese, saying, “Drink this and then try to sleep, Reese.”

“I couldn't stay awake if you built a fire under me,” Reese said. He raised to one elbow, drank the water, then lay down and closed his eyes. Jen pulled the blanket up over him and kissed him on the cheek. He smiled pleasurably without opening his eyes and was immediately asleep.

When Jen awakened at daylight, Reese was again in delirium. Cool spring water didn't rouse him and Jen had deep misgivings about leaving him. Still, she couldn't help him when he was in delirium, and by far the most important thing was to get him to a doctor's care. She ate a meagre breakfast of jerky and bread and left the remainder alongside a full cup of water by Reese's head. She waited a few minutes, then ripped Reese's shirt into narrow strips which she stuffed in both pockets of her divided skirt. Afterwards she rose, went out to where her horse was picketed and brought him back to drink out of the stream. Finished, she saddled him, mounted, took a last look at Reese, who seemed to be sleeping again, and then headed north.

The country she headed into was a gently rolling grassland with occasional clumps of oak thickets and pinyons. When she put up her first marker, she looked back and in the far distance saw the thrusting pinyon where the seep was. She was surprised that it looked entirely different from what it had looked like when they approached it yesterday from the opposite direction. She saw now why Reese had told her to keep looking back for the country behind her seemed not to be the same country she had just ridden through.

There were several gullies that seemed to Jen to be dangerously steep, and at these she rode the banks until she found the shallowest portion and marked it.

It was past mid-morning when she picked up the Moffitt road. There were marks of wagon wheels in the dust of the road, and Jen could not tell if they were new or old tracks, or if they were left by the stage or passing wagons.

She dismounted in the shade of a big roadside pinyon where she tied her horse, sat down and made herself be patient. The half hour she waited seemed like two hours before she picked up the sound of jangling harness and the loud rumble of the stage teams and the stage. Rising now she saw the stage rounding a curve, the horses at a walk against the grade of the mountain. Jen stepped out into the road and the ears of the horses came forward at sight of her. Joe Early straightened up in the box as if, not believing his eyes, the craning of his neck would make the mirage vanish.

As the stage rolled toward her, Jen raised her hand to flag it down. Joe pulled the teams to a halt.

“Jen,” Joe said. “What in hell are you doing here?”

His lean, tough face was the color of leather and sixty-plus years, every one of them hard, had faded his hair to whiteness. He had a big nose, big mouth, big ears and, because his profession called for it, a very large fund of profanity. Jen couldn't remember when he hadn't driven stage teams.

“Reese sent me for you, Joe. He's hurt, a gunshot wound, and he can't ride.”

“Bushwhack?”

Jen nodded. “In the leg.”

Jen was aware that a man passenger had stuck his head out of the stage's half-door and was listening.

“Where is he?” Joe asked.

“Seven or eight miles south. He said you could make it there even without a road.”

“That I can,” Joe said easily. “He hurt bad?”

“Bad enough that he's out of his head most of the time.”

The passenger, a full-faced man wearing a Derby hat, turned to say something to someone in the stage, then returned his attention to Jen. “What's the delay, driver?” he called.

Joe ignored him. “Can you take me to him?”

“I'm sure I can.”

“Then get going,” Joe said.

The passenger had caught enough of the conversation to know that something was wrong. “Driver, what's the delay?” he called again.