Rebellion in the Valley (24 page)

Pulling out Duffy’s pouch of smaller meat
saws, he slid them to the edge of the table and allowed them to sit
there in the silence of the room, only making Duffy more
uncomfortable.

Adding to Duffy’s irritability, every other
person in the room appeared to be quite at ease and comfortable as
they sat with their morning coffee.

He swallowed hard.

“Dang it,” he scolded himself as he drew his
lower lip in a smidgen and shook his head. “So? The meat saws are
mine and you know I lost ‘em. I already told you that much,” he
added for an instant alibi.

Tobias shrugged.

“You sure did. Lost ‘em on the way home,
ain’t that right?”

Tobias placed one finger on the pouch, tapped
it.

“Know what else I found, Duff Man?”

Growing more and more irritated each time
Tobias referred to him as him Duff Man, the upper left-hand corner
of his mouth began twitching. Who did this kid think he was,
anyhow? Other than the uncontrollable twitch, Duffy did not move.
His eyes seemed to be glued to that weathered pouch on the table
and prayed that it didn’t contain any condemning evidence.

One by one, Tobias pulled the meat saws from
the pouch, laying them side by side on the table. At the fifth and
final saw, he grinned and held it up to the sunlight.

“Huh. Well, lookie there, Hailee,” he
mentioned as he pointed to the blade. “What would you say that
is?”

She feigned a look of genuine curiosity and
leaned forward to inspect the blade closer.

“Duffy, what in the world have you been using
these for? Daddy, didn’t you buy these to cut meat with?” Hailee
asked with her attention turning toward her father.

Bruce rubbed his chin as he turned his
attention to the ceiling, as if in reflective thought about when he
made the purchase.

“Yes, I believe that was the reason I bought
them, now that you mention it. Why do you ask?”

Batting her eyelashes, she answered, “It's
probably nothing, but I just noticed some leather scrapings on the
blade, that’s all. I wonder how they might have gotten there.”

Duffy squirmed, looked around the room as if
he were hoping an escape door might appear out of nowhere.

Raising a hand to swipe the beading sheet of
perspiration from his forehead, he brought his eyebrows together
and growled out a “So what? Ain’t no crime to use a meat saw to cut
through leather strappins! I ain’t never had nobody tell me how to
use my tools, and ain’t nobody gonna start doin’ it now!”

He poked a finger at Tobias and pulled his
eyes in real tight.

“You double-crossin’ snake!”

“Me?” Tobias chuckled in his face. “You
suspected I had my heart set on Hailee, and then when you had it
all figured it out, you just had to jump in yourself, didn’t you?
You’re the double crossin’ snake, Howard! All along, there was only
one thing on that rotten heart of yours-this ranch.” he stated in a
calm tone.

He leaned back in the chair and added, “And
we both know the trouble you’d go to in order to get it.”

Duffy's cheeks burned a furious shade,
puffing his chest out in self-defense.

“I ain’t got any idea what you’re talkin’
about!”

The blatant lie caused Tobias to throw away
all willpower in remaining calm; before he found the strength to
control the rush of immediate adrenaline, the ranch hand cleared
the table and found himself on his feet and in the face of his only
enemy.

“Murder, Duffman. I’m talkin’ about cold
blooded, calculated murder.”

If it wasn’t for the fact that Tobias sure
didn’t want to share a cell with that disgusting man for any amount
of time at all, he would have killed Howard J. Duffman right on the
spot.

He wanted to; Tobias made that very clear as
he stood toe-to-toe with the piece of filth he called “a waste of
space”. Teeth grinding to hold his tongue in check, Tobias felt his
fingertips pushing into his own sweaty palms.

“I hate you, Howard, and I want you to know I
have never felt that way about any other human being in my entire
life.” In clear, deliberate tone of voice, he added, ”In time, I’m
pretty sure that hatred will fade and we’ll all forget about you,
forget we ever knew you. We’ll be here on the ranch eating fried
chicken and playing with our kids – kids who will never even hear
the mention of your name. And you, Howard? You’ll be in jail.
Eating stale bread and mushy old apples without so much as a breeze
coming in through your cell window. I sure hope it’s going to be
worth what you’re getting in return for all the work you’ve
invested in this whole plot of yours.”

Richard walked over to the back door and laid
out a tray of some breakfast leftovers for the dogs, shutting and
locking the door behind himself. He stood with his back up against
the door once he’d locked it.

Bruce cleared his throat and took a long,
slow drink out of his favorite coffee tin.

“The morning I fell to my assumed death, I
kinda wondered in the back of my head why you were all of a sudden
reverting back into the old buddy I had known as a young man. You’d
been so fired up for so many days, but now I understand full well
why you were so kind as to saddle up the horses,” he stated.

Reaching across the table, he placed one of
the meat saws into his open hand.

“This leather perfectly matches up with the
leather strappins off your horse‘s saddle and leads, wouldn‘t you
say, Tobias?”

Bruce hung his head and added in his most
sorrowful tone, “My poor, dead horse,”.

Tobias was milking this for all it was
worth.

“Well, Boss, let me take a look there.

He rolled the blade over in his hands and
inspected it carefully, holding it up higher than necessary so the
sunlight would hit it, then handed the evidence back to Bruce.

“I think so, but maybe we oughtta have
Sheriff Anderson be the judge on this one, don’t ya think so?”

Duffy’s face flushed and he began to tremble
again.

“Ain’t no reason to be callin’ the sheriff
out here all this way. You want me gone, let me go get my things
rounded up and you’ll never see the likes of me again. I know when
I ain’t wanted!” he tried to accuse.

Bruce just smiled.

“Oh, I don’t have to fetch the sheriff,
Howard. He’s already here, waiting in the parlor right now.”

As if on cue, Sheriff Anderson showed himself
in the doorway.

“Howard J. Duffman, you are under arrest for
the attempted murder of Tobias Logan and Bruce Johnson.”

Tobias swallowed hard, but he kept his eyes
locked on Duffy’s as the sheriff took a step forward.

“It’s time, Howard. Let’s get this done
without a fuss, it’s best that way.”

Wrapping a measure of braided leather roping
around the man’s wrists, the man made his reluctance to cooperate
clear, but the sheriff demonstrated he had expected no less and
gave him a shove in the direction of the door.

Richard turned and unlocked the door; with it
still in his hand, his eyes met Duffy’s. The man’s face had drawn
into a sad frown with a single tear near to dripping from his left
eye. Richard shook his head; he had nothing left to say to his
former friend.

One hand on Duffy’s back and the other
gripped around his cuffed wrists, the sheriff continued the escort
to the man’s final steps out of the Johnson home.

Bruce cleared his throat, causing Duffy to
stop. He did not turn around but instead focused his eyes on the
wooden frame around the doorway and waited for his former friend to
speak his mind before taking those last steps out of his home and
his life.

“I didn’t want to believe any of this,
Howard; I tried making excuses for you at first. How you could have
changed this much and how you could have ever had one single notion
to hurt me or my daughter runs beyond any nightmare I could have
ever had. You betrayed me.”

“He tried to kill you, is what he did,”
Tobias spit out.

“You don't know who you're messing with,”
Duffy yelled over his shoulder. “I happen to be in ownership of
stocks in the Pocahontas Mine, that's who you're messing with! One
day I'm gonna be one of the richest men in this valley, and then
you'll see what's what!”

With trails tracing their ways down Hailee’s
cheeks, the young woman closed her eyes and allowed herself to sob
openly; how could this man compare his material assets with the
literal lives of people?

The sheriff glanced over to the Johnson
family, asking if they'd finished venting their warranted disgust
on the man.

Bruce nodded and without another word, Howard
J. Duffman took his last steps out of that kitchen and within
minutes he found himself vacating the Red Bone Ranch for the rest
of his life, being paraded out the door and off the property right
in front of all the other ranch hands. Out of the corner of his
eye, he caught two of them giving one another the
elbow-to-the-ribcage move and grinning.

Several moments passed before anyone could
even move; the emotional weight of events had been heavier than
anything the Red Bone had ever experienced before.

One by one, heads began popping in through
the kitchen door, and one by one, relieved faces gave way to slaps
on the backs and shouts of welcome for the man they’d all heard was
long dead and buried.

“Well, I will be dag-nabbed,” one man
exclaimed with wide eyes. ”Boss, you are the healthiest dead man
I’ve ever seen,” the ranch hand joked.

Several men asked almost at once where he’d
been and why he’d been laying low for this whole time, so Bruce
motioned for everyone to come join him at the dining room table,
where they would all be able to sit together and hear the whole
story.

Shoving her hair back, Hailee made her way to
the cupboard and pulled a stack of bowls to serve up the Irish
oatmeal she was certain had grown cold already. She grinned as she
plopped scoopfuls into bowls; at least the coffee was still plenty
hot.

Just as she topped off the last couple of
tins of coffee, Hailee dragged the step ladder out from Richard’s
pantry and across the wooden-planked dining room floor, resting it
at the end of the table next to the youngest ranch hand; Joe
noticed she’d intended to sit down on it, and got up to offer the
girl his seat. She shook her head and gave the man a pat on his
shoulders.

“No, you go on ahead and sit down,” she
whispered back before stabbing a spoon into her bowl of cold
oatmeal.

“I want to apologize if my disappearance
caused any of you problems around here. I understand there is only
so much one can take outta this man,” he joked with a poke of his
thumb in the general direction of Tobias.

“Hey!”

Sporting a more serious look, Bruce
continued, “For those of you who went on the cat hunt, you probably
saw how ornery Duffy had gotten, right?”

The men nodded, some even rolling their eyes
at the memory.

“Well, here’s a piece of information Tobias,
thank the Lord, figured out after my little mishap up in the
canyon. In fact, Tobias, why don’t you explain it yourself?”

“To cut to the point here, after you fellas
made your way back to get the doc,” he nodded to a few of the men,
”I made my way back down to the bottom of the canyon to find the
Boss. Thought he was a goner, too, when I first saw him laying down
there. His face already blue and green from bruising, you shoulda
seen all the cuts and that tree limb clean through his leg,” he
reflected, not even thinking about Hailee being right there and
listening in on the conversation.

“Anyways, after I realized he was mighty
banged up – but still alive – I bandaged him up as much as I could
and built a fire. Which wasn’t easy, cause if you remember, it was
pouring down buckets and the hail on top of it made it pretty hard
to round up any dry wood. But I managed to pull the boss over by
the fire and sat down next to it myself once I’d found a few of his
things that scattered on the way down.” He took a long, deliberate
drink to choose his words carefully and continued. “I found the
saddle and for some reason, just sitting there, I noticed one of
the cinch straps missing. And for whatever reason, I looked at it a
little more closely. They’d been cut. With a serrated edge, from
the looks of it.”

Tobias raised his eyes to see his audience
shaking their heads.

Joe's lips were pursed and from the look on
his face, he understood where this story headed. His head bobbed up
and down as he posed the question, “And who was the only one of us
who even touched those things?”

Bruce ran a hand through his hair and
explained that at first, he had no logical reason to explain why
Duffy would have done such a thing.

Shooting a look of apology in Hailee’s
direction, Tobias apologized for the misery she’d been put through
so much agony lately.

“But at the time, your Pa was lying down
there in that canyon, we were both hungry and freezing and wet, and
we weren’t probably thinking too clear at the time. We knew,
though, that something was brewing in the man’s mind and we also
knew the sheriff would be coming soon – and we’d have to have some
plan thought up by the time he did.”

Bruce nodded in agreement. “By the time I
came to, we figured I best play possum for a while and let Duffy
believe he’d killed me off. We were near to wondering if that was
the right decision when Doc Amerley and the sheriff found us, but
when we ran our plan by them, we all made a pact to play it out and
hope for the best.”

“So only the four of you knew the secret?”
Hailee asked her father.

When the ranch hands turned their eyes toward
her, she held up both hands in front of herself and widened both
eyes. ”Hey, don’t look at me! I know as much as you do!”

“And me,” Richard confessed from the other
side of the dining room. “They told me.”