Payback at Morning Peak (3 page)

It had gone all wrong. Instead of hollering and frightening the folks when they arrived, the first thing rowdy Pete Wetherford did was ride down the older man of the farm as he came out of the barn. As the fellow lay on the ground trying to catch his breath, Wetherford tied the man’s arms above his head, tossing the end of his lariat over the corbel above the hayloft door. Laughing, he passed the rope around his saddle horn and spurred his horse forward, sending the farmer into the air, kicking and thrashing.

Billy Tauson tried to settle everyone down, but Wetherford’s actions had driven the mob wild, and they soon lit the farmhouse ablaze. The woman, Bea, was trapped in a small outbuilding, where Wetherford raped and beat her, then left her begging on hands and knees for mercy as she succumbed to the pleasure of his friends.

Then the shooting from the forest. Tauson had ducked behind a fallen oak. “Whoever that bastard is, he’s gotta be stopped. Wetherford, you and your brother Al circle ‘round to that fellow’s left flank.”

Pete looked over his shoulder at Billy. “How’s about you and your shot-to-hell cousin Ty kiss my skinny behind?” He snorted at his own remark. “It’s that brat bastard son of the farmer. I’m fixing to just lie here and wait the little prick out. Okay, Mr. Boss Man?”

Billy Tauson sucked on his teeth, wishing he had the huevos to call Pete Wetherford out. But for now, he’d wait.

A few random shots came from the woods, and then nothing for nearly an hour.

When Tauson had finally called out that “the little shit skedaddled,” there began an onslaught of arguing back and forth on whether to pursue him, but when things finally settled, the men broke out their jugs of rotgut whiskey and began to get even more drunk.

“Who was that damn billy goat?” one of the men called out. “He sure as hell knew how to handle that rifle.”

“Never mind about that little bastard,” Tauson said, “where’s that varmint Wetherford?”

“I’m a Wetherford,” said Pete’s brother Al, “and I resent your talking like that, Billy.”

“Sorry, Al, but what in God’s name gets into that brother of yours?”

Al Wetherford was the oldest in the group, which consisted of two Hispanics, Jorge and Oscar, a Ute Indian with a shriveled arm, the two drunks Ed and Robert, the brothers Wetherford, and leader Billy Tauson, along with the wounded young man, Ty Blake.

Tauson shuffled around the devastated farmyard, taking a long pull from one of the jugs. “I told all of you people we were just going to put a scare into these folks, didn’t I say that? Didn’t I?”

The Ute looked at Tauson. “Crook Arm keeps weapon in rawhides.” The tall bronzed Indian grasped his crotch with one hand, the other gripping a jug. “Save child-maker for squaw women.” He giggled and did a little dance in a tight circle, still holding himself while he took a deep slug of whiskey. The men stood around with half-smiles, enjoying Crook Arm’s dance.

“Well, hell’s fire,” came a voice from behind him. “That farmer came at us like the clappers from hell. I
never seen such a determined bastard.” Pete Wetherford walked up behind the tall Billy Tauson.

“Where the hell you been, Petey?” Tauson was careful with him. It wasn’t that Pete looked formidable, it was more a sense of compressed energy that you didn’t want to mess with.

Pete took in the assembled group. “I been behind your old farmhouse, Billy. Heard everything you said. You got a burr in your saddle about me, boss?” He gave Tauson a mocking smile. “Truth be told, I been washing up. Seem to have gotten a little blood on me.” He winked at his brother Al.

Tauson stomped around the sad little vegetable garden. “Why’d you have to do that pile-o’-rags woman out there that way? All crumbled and nasty, lying dead. Why’d you do her like that? We didn’t come out here to rape and kill, dammit. I told you that on the way, didn’t I?”

“You said a lot of stuff, Billy. Mostly horseshit. You wanted us to be your strong right arm while you poked around like a rooster in heat, lording it over those sodbusters.” Pete looked for help from his buddies. “Would you all agree, fellers?”

Most of them kicked the dirt and shrugged their shoulders.

“Now,” Pete continued, “who was that little yellowbelly with the .22 rifle? I’d like to do some serious work on that youngster.”

The wounded Ty Blake called out to his cousin Tauson, “Billy, get me to a doctor, would you? I’m hurting real bad.”

Tauson turned toward him. “We got to scamper into the woods and find that kid with the rifle. Then we’ll
come back and take care of you, Ty.” He called to the men, “Mount up. Let’s find that shooter before he takes off and spins a tale to the law.”

Al Wetherford spoke up. “Before, you told us we had to split up and hightail it out of here.”

“I know what I said, but now it’s better if we all hunt out that little rotter so there’s no witness to talk about all this.”

Pete looked at brother Al and rolled his eyes. His smile toward his boss Billy Tauson was not a warm, agreeable treat. An average-sized man, Pete made up for his lack of height with a wicked sense of self.

Tauson called out for Crook Arm to take the lead. They trailed out of the little valley, heading up toward the towering peak that looked down onto the formerly tranquil meadow.

Pete sidled up next to Al. “This jackanapes needs to be taken down a notch. Always ordering people around, it boils me.”

“You signed on for it. What did you expect? By the way, I saw you ride off with that bundled-up flower girl. What happened?”

“We had a quiet wedding in the glade back yonder.” Pete grinned. “She professed her undying love and insisted on anointing me with the flower of her virginity.”

“Oh, ain’t you the elegant talker.”

Pete grinned even more.

“Where is she?”

Pete gestured with his thumb. “I suspect she’s still lying in that pleasant grassy clearing, gazing at the setting sun, not thinking about a solitary thing.”

The group rode on for ten minutes, then dismounted, tied their horses to a fallen tree, and headed on foot up the far ridge of a steep canyon in search of that little bastard.

Stretched out in the dark cave, Jubal tried to sort his thoughts.

What had he done to merit this?

What had his innocent family done?

If he lived through this day, he would seek out answers to avenge his family.

What would his father do?

Be the man he’d taught him to be.

“Yes, Pa, but I can’t. I’m scared and hurting. Pru and ma are dead.”

Then think on it like this, son. If those varmints catch you, you’ll be hurting until hell wouldn’t have it.

An image floated across his memory, of his father trussed up outside the barn looking down at him. Jubal tried pulling his knees tight to his chest. The left leg wouldn’t go, too stiff.

He had to move, take care of the arrow, make some decisions, rest a bit. He closed his eyes, trailing off. He thought of his mother. What was it she had said? “If literature is to be your guide, Jubal, you could do worse than follow the lead of Cervantes’ Don Quixote or Dumas’s Edmond Dantès.” Together, they had read both classics, his mother constructing a tutorial on character and ethics from
The Count of Monte Cristo. If only I had Edmond Dantès’s perseverance.
He dreamt on, envisioning wreaking vengeance on the band of miscreants invading the farm.

He awakened almost immediately. Knowing he would have to do the deed. To suffer the discomfort now instead of the big pain later. He tried not to think on it.

Jubal sat up, running his fingers carefully around the skin of his waist, loosening his belt, remembering again.

Jube, you best inherit this belt now, no sense of me kidding myself any longer, it just doesn’t fit.

Moving the long arrow carefully, he searched for the jagged steel head embedded beneath his skin. Each tiny motion brought more pain. Jubal teared up, hearing his father’s voice.

You’re feeling sorry for yourself, son. Break that damn thing and push the rest of it on through the backside of the soft part of your waist… grab up that stick on the ground and bite down hard on it while you do it, so you don’t snip off your tongue.

Jubal raised himself to his knees, placing the feathered end of the arrow against the rock wall of the cave. He tried not to think on his mom’s suffering, what it must have been like to endure the savage assault, and once again saw his father swinging grotesquely from his tether outside the barn. He deserved this pain. He rested his head against the cool stone. Experimenting with a gentle push against the wall, he was rewarded with an avalanche of sensation.
Deserve it or not, this is hellfire.

Jubal’s willful mind whisked him back to the street in front of the land office, remembering a man’s mean-spirited taunting of his father. It came back to him, the ride into town on the buckboard. The family together, Pru asking for soda pop. His mother eyeing a colorful scarf as they passed the general store. He recalled when the tall,
gray-haired fellow in front of the land office looked back at his group of friends, the meanest-looking desperadoes Jubal had ever seen.

Now, in the cave, he began, his hands resting on the damp stone. He centered the feathered end of the arrow in a crevice in the wall. Whispering a short prayer, he pushed his body hard against the stone bulkhead, feeling the arrow thrust its way through the skin and out the back side of his waist. He reached down and snapped off the shaft six inches below the feathers, jamming the remains of the stick as far as he could, then reached back and pulled the remaining stem out of his body.

The stone walls blurred. The devil had started a massive fire, and it was licking at his guts. He heard screaming in the cave. It sounded like someone he knew.

Pete Wetherford was tired, which made him angry. He’d expended all his energy on the raid and his conquest, as he thought of it, of the two women. He trailed behind Indian tracker Crook Arm. “Hey, Chief, how much higher we gonna go? It’s dark. A feller could plunge off this damn canyon wall and bust a gut.”

Tauson replied for the Indian, “If you don’t shut your trap, Mr. Pete, you’re gonna get your ass shot off.”

“Not by you, boss. Yeah, that would be the day.”

“That little cocker kid would have to be deaf and blind not to hear us coming. So let’s all shut it down, okay?”

Pete was not only worn-out but had had a snootful of his leader, Billy Tauson. He slowed his pace to let Al catch up. “How you making it, Albert the mountain climber?”

Al leaned against a piñon. “I’ve either gotta stop smoking or playing with my pud. I can’t catch my damn breath.”

Pete smiled. Al had never been very fit.

They moved on, the light from Crook Arm’s torch flickering through the filigreed pines.

A dark shadow lay across the canyon. Pete could still smell on his clothes the remnants of the girl he’d had in the woods. She’d begged him to stop, which had only heightened his pleasure. Something had come over him as his body pounded against hers. She seemed to symbolize everything he both hated and desired. Maybe he should be feeling bad about what he’d done, but it didn’t seem to bother him. He thought if he’d hung around a bit he could have pleasured himself again with her. It tickled him that he was insatiable. It amused him when he remembered the other men in the gang, depleted and slack-jawed, coming from the outbuilding where the old gal lay. Hell’s fire, it made him warm just thinking on it.

Perhaps that little missy in the woods was still there pining away for him, wanting him to come back and fulfill her dreams.

“What in the hell are you thinking about, Pete?” Al poked him in the ribs.

“Why you ask?”

“‘Cause you’re giggling away something fierce. Like a kiddie at a birthday party.”

Pete continued to thread his way up the steep trail. “I didn’t realize I was laughing out loud. Just having pleasant daydreams on this starlit night. I guess the beast is hungry tonight.” He threw back his head and howled.

Jubal shivered on the cave floor. He caught himself starting each new thought with,
If only I had. Where would it have led?

He looked once again at the lifeless form of his sister and eased his own pain-wracked body to the mouth of the cave. He gazed at a dark sky. The moon had yet to rise, with heavy clouds building in the west.

Jubal realized he still held the remaining few inches of the arrow’s shaft and steel head. He forced the rod from his hand, his fingers and arms flaked with dried blood. In the distance on the valley floor below, a tiny light wavered like a firefly, dipping but always moving steadily up the far side of the canyon.

Finally, they were coming for him.

The renegades were on the rim of the vast trench opposite him. Once they reached the crest of the mountain, they would come back down and search his side.
The cave entrance was hard to see in the best of light, so their pitch-soaked torch might not catch his hiding place.

But he decided he wouldn’t take that chance. The men were at least the better part of an hour before making the turn at the top and starting back down. Jubal had surprise on his side.

His body resisted the movement, but he forced himself to roll back, get his rifle, and slide carefully from the rock-strewn entrance.

Checking that the flickering torch’s progress had not increased too much, he started up the canyon rim, not sure just what he would do. The renegade men outnumbered him, but it didn’t matter.

The earth had split, creating a hollow angling up the mountain. A number of smaller diagonal ravines on both sides would have a man detour for as much as a hundred yards before snaking back to the rim and continuing upward.

Jubal thought he could entice them to take a shortcut. The men’s torches across the canyon disappeared and reappeared as they passed steadily through the trees. They were a determined lot.

Good, let them come.

As Jubal continued up the mountain, he began to devise a trap. A large tree had fallen, bridging a gap at a small ravine. Bare of branches nearly all the way, it would make for a fairly smooth walk, saving time and distance if you had the courage, but a long drop if you slipped.