Buck and the Widow Rancher (2006) (9 page)

While they ate a late lunch of cold beef sandwiches, Matilda told the ranch cook and Freddie she was riding out with Paul and Buck, in case Hank or any of the hands came
looking
for her. After changing into a soft leather split skirt and long sleeved man’s shirt while Buck saddled her horse, she took the lead as they galloped south-east toward the river crossing. Turning away from the road to town, Matilda dropped back to ride alongside Buck and Paul.

‘You recall it was Rocking C beeves that had been run into Cooder’s fields last time. I wonder if it was the Hightower boys who were behind that? I know Hugh has always wanted to run the farmers out of the basin, but in the past it’s always been talk. What would change his mind?’

‘Ma’am, I don’t want to talk against my pa, but he really thinks you’re going to come around and see things his way. Why, he even made Frank take his spurs off in the house. It won’t do, he said, for us to put our feet on the furniture with spurs on if you marry him and come to live at the ranch.’

‘Paul, there is no chance of my ever marrying your pa.’

‘Paul,’ Buck cut into the conversation, ‘you said that Hubbard’s shirt was scorched by the gunshot that killed him. Matilda, was your husband’s shirt scorched?’

‘Why, yes. It was one of his new flannel shirts I bought for him on our last trip to Brisby. Where the bullet had gone in,
just below his armpit, the shirt was burnt and the skin
underneath
was black, too. But not burnt, more like it had coal dust rubbed into the skin. I couldn’t clean it all. Why?’

‘Just wondering. It’d take someone both men knew and trusted to get that close to them. And the gun must have been held close, if the powder caused the shirt to be singed.’

Early dusk came quickly after the sun dropped below the far horizon as they arrived at the Cooder farmhouse; Buck dropped back a bit and looked the place over. The house and barn and the other outbuildings had all been painted recently and were in good repair. A series of small corrals were constructed of wide planks and not poles such as would be found on a cattle ranch. These, he thought, were more likely for milk cows, sheep, pigs and other farm animals. All in all, the farm indicated a lot of ownership pride.

‘What do you want?’ the old man yelled, stepping out on the porch.

‘Good evening, Mr Cooder,’ Matilda answered, pulling up in front of the house but not getting down. ‘We came over to warn you that someone is planning on running a small herd of my beef across your fields tonight.’

‘What? You expect me to believe you when you come riding in with that killer? And what’s the Hightower boy got to do with it? I don’t trust you, Miz Randle.’

‘I understand, Mr Cooder. But we have reason to know what we’re talking about. We came together because we knew there isn’t one of us you would believe.’

‘Mr Cooder,’ Buck cut in, ‘whether you believe us or not, it wouldn’t hurt for you to be ready, would it?’

The farmer stood studying the riders for a minute and then, shaking his head, agreed. ‘Yeah. But I don’t want any of your help in protecting what’s mine. I’ll send some of my crew out to patrol near the river and you can be sure, they’ll be armed. I told you once, any cattle comes trampling my crops will be shot and I mean it.’

‘It isn’t my men who’ll be behind those cattle. If you have to shoot them to protect your crop, then I’ll have to get whoever is driving them to pay.’

‘You, boy,’ he pointed to Paul. ‘What’s your take in all this?’

‘Mr Cooder, it might be that those running the livestock into your crops are my older brothers. I think they are wrong and would do the neighborly thing and offer my help, but I’m not going to shoot at my kin, so I will ride on into town.’

Again the older man didn’t move for a bit. ‘If this is a fact, then I thank you. If it’s some kind of game, then you don’t need to come riding into my yard again.’

Paul shook his head in denial. ‘No, sir, this certainly isn’t a game. And once this all gets straightened out, I would like to come calling on your daughter, Elizabeth.’

‘Well, if that don’t take the cake. You say your brothers are going to try riding over my wheat and then try to tell me you’d like to come courting? Well, I never.’

‘Standing here arguing about two young people
courting
,’ Buck smiled in the coming darkness, ‘isn’t getting anything done. We’ll be letting you get on with your work.’ Turning his black horse, he led the way out of the yard and down the road toward town.

‘I feel real bad,’ Paul said, coming up alongside. ‘If anyone is hurt or killed tonight, well, they are my brothers.’

‘Yeah, I can see how that’d be,’ Buck answered
understandably
. ‘But everyone has to make his or her own choices and often the tough part is having to live by them. Something to think about, Paul: everything has a price and the smart man figures the best he can whether he can afford to pay that price. And I don’t mean just a horse, a shirt or a pair of spurs. Your actions can be costly too.’

It was past dark when the three riders arrived in town. Dropping Matilda off at the hotel, Buck and Paul took the horses to the livery stable and bedded them down for the night. Both men decided that, rather than spend money on a hotel bed, they’d find a pile of hay to dump their bedrolls on.

They were up early the next morning and, after rolling up their bedding and tying them back on their saddles, were washing up at the water trough when the sheriff and a couple of other men came bursting in.

‘Hold it right there. Don’t you move or we’ll fill you full of lead!’ the round-faced lawman yelled excitedly. Neither Buck nor Paul had heard them coming up behind and turned around to find the sheriff and the others standing a few feet away covering them with drawn firearms. Sheriff Holt was waving a double-barreled shotgun.

‘I knew the first time I saw you, you’d be trouble. Now, I want you to slowly unbuckle your gunbelt and let it drop. You first, stranger.’ The shotgun had stopped waving and was now pointed directly at Buck.

‘What’s this all about, Sheriff?’ he asked.

‘Don’t talk, just do what I said. Drop your gunbelt,’ he yelled his answer.

Glancing at Paul, he smiled. ‘See how brave your sheriff
is? A big shotgun and a coupla friends standing a few feet away and he has to yell at me like I don’t understand a word he’s saying. He’s right, I don’t.’ Turning back to the armed men, he raised his hands chest-high. ‘But I’m not going to get my six-gun all dirty, either. Not until I know what this is all about.’

‘Oh, you are the calm one, aren’t you. Well, I’ll tell you. You are under arrest for holding up the stage. Now, are you going to drop your gun, or do I believe you’re going to try to escape. I’d like that a lot.’ The shotgun was steady as he brought the stock to his shoulder. ‘Paul Hightower, you’d better move away.’

‘Sheriff,’ Buck said, seeing that Paul didn’t move. ‘You’d better tell those fellows standing beside you to step aside. I get a notion that your finger is stroking those triggers and I’m liable to start shooting, and we all know how much of a killer I am, don’t we?’ For a heartbeat nobody moved, and then those close to Holt started inching away.

‘Say, Sheriff, where did this robbery take place?’ Buck asked, after glancing to the men now standing away from the lawman.

‘That don’t matter a lick. You were identified by the driver and I’m gonna take you in.’

Paul, still standing close to Buck’s side, shook his head. ‘When exactly did this stage hold-up take place, Sheriff? I only ask, because I know where this man has been since just after noon yesterday.’

‘You just better step away, young man. It don’t matter what you say. I tell you he was recognized. Mister, I ain’t gonna tell you again, unbuckle your gunbelt.’

‘Uh, Sheriff,’ one of the other men said softly, ‘don’t you think you’d better listen to young Hightower?’

‘No, damn it! Old Josh Sawyer said this was the man who held a gun on him and by Gawd I gonna take him in.’

‘What?’ Buck said with surprise. ‘You mean this hold-up
didn’t take place in town? Didn’t you tell us that your
jurisdiction
didn’t go past the town’s limits? Now I know I’m not going with you. You better think a bit about pointing that shotgun at me, too. I’m getting a mite concerned about that.’

‘It don’t matter! It was our bank’s money that was took!’

Slowly using his thumb, Buck slipped the thong off the hammer of his Colt. ‘Sheriff, I won’t say it again. Move that shotgun or pull the trigger, ’cause I’m about to get angry.’

For the first time, the sheriff saw that he was standing alone. Red-faced he let the shotgun barrels drop until they were pointed at the dirt. ‘Damn you! You won’t get away with this,’ he yelled in frustration.

‘That’s a lot better,’ Buck relaxed his right hand. ‘Now, when and where was the stage held up?’

‘Late last night, just before dark,’ the same man explained. ‘Sawyer got to town just before dark and said it’d happened about a mile or so out of town. He came rushing into town, yelling for the sheriff. Said it was a big man riding on a big black horse. That’s about all he could see; it was coming on to dusk and the bandit sat his horse in the shadow of a big oak tree.’

‘Well, it couldn’t have been Buck,’ Paul said. ‘He and I and Miz Randle were riding together and had left her ranch just after lunch. We left the widow Randle at the hotel after dark and bedded down here in the livery. You can ask Miz Randle and she’ll tell you.’

‘Seems there is more than one black horse in the area, Sheriff. When you find him, though, I’m sure you’ll find he isn’t as mean as my black.’

An hour or so later, Matilda joined Buck and Paul at the restaurant for breakfast. Telling her about the stage hold-up
and the charge that Buck was the crook made her decide to add her testimony to that of Paul’s before heading back to the ranch.

‘Sheriff Holt has an election coming up in the fall,’ she explained, ‘and it would help him to show how on the job he is. Actually, it’s the fact that nobody else wants the job. Having Blount back him makes it easier, I guess.’

The men didn’t offer their thoughts, being busy with
flapjacks
, fried eggs, thick slices of ham and sourdough biscuits. Matilda watched them put away their big meals after her breakfast of toast and coffee. It was while they were relaxing with coffee and a cigarette that the subject of the planned raid on the Cooder farm was brought up.

‘I surely hope my brothers stopped when they saw Elizabeth’s pa and his men were waiting for them,’ Paul said worriedly. ‘They’ve always been bullies, but I’d hate to find out they caused any harm to the farmers.’

‘Makes me wonder what your pa was thinking about, sending his sons on a raid like that.’

‘Well, one thing’s sure’ – Buck, as usual, had taken the chair that faced the front – ‘here comes the sheriff, and isn’t that Hightower right behind him?’

The three watched as Sheriff Holt came hurrying across the street and into the restaurant. Scowling he made straight for the table.

‘Mrs Randle, I suppose by now you’ve all got your stories straight. I wanted to see you before you met up with these two this morning, but I was late. Are you prepared to swear you were with him,’ he said, pointing at Buck, ‘yesterday evening?’

‘Sheriff, when you wouldn’t help me find who killed Virgil I decided I’d work to find someone to run against you in the next election. Your present attitude is not making me change my mind. Yes, the three of us were together all
afternoon
and until I left them at the hotel late last night.’

Buck smiled coldly. ‘Sheriff, you’re coming mighty close to accusing us of being liars. Now, that isn’t what you meant, is it?’ He placed both hands on the table and half rose from his chair.

‘No,’ he sputtered. ‘No, I wasn’t saying that at all.’

‘Maybe you ought to apologize to the lady, then.’ Buck glowered, letting his stance become threatening.

‘Apologize for what?’ Hightower interrupted, having come in behind the lawman. ‘Apologies be damned, Sheriff. You better have a good reason for not having that gunman in jail. From what Sawyer said, it was pretty clear that this stranger held up the stage and I want to know why he’s sitting here, free as a bird.’

‘Now, Mr Hightower, I can’t arrest him because he has these witnesses who swear he was with them while the
hold-up
was going on. All Josh saw was a big man on a black horse. That doesn’t mean it’s this fellow.’

‘What? Matilda, what were you doing with him? Didn’t I warn you that he’s a killer? And what are you doing with them, Paul? You’d better get your butt back to the ranch. This is no business of yours.’

‘Hey, Hightower.’ Buck had sat back down and now had a friendly smile on his lips. ‘Why are you so quick to point me out as a killer? If I were as bad as you’re painting me to be, wouldn’t it be dangerous for you to rile me?’

‘I told you before, I’m only thinking what’s best for Matilda, here. You can’t deny there’ve been more shootings since you came to town than ever before. I don’t suppose you have someone to tell us where you were when that gambler, Hubbard, was murdered, do you?’

‘Actually, I do. Where were you?’

‘Me? Hell, why would I shoot him? He wasn’t anything to me; I don’t gamble. Everybody here in the basin knows me; I belong in this county. Nobody knows anything about you, though, do they?’

Matilda stood up and, pulling on her gloves, looked straight into Hightower’s eyes. ‘Yes, Hugh, everybody knows you. And they know your two sons, Frank and Hughie. Where were they last night?’

‘Frank and Hughie? Why they were moving some stock into the northern pastures. That’s where Paul should be today, instead of wasting time sitting here in town. Why are you asking? You don’t think they had anything to do with the stage hold-up, do you?’

Buck looked apologetically at Paul and then shook his head. ‘Nope, we know they weren’t south of town robbing the stage. Although I imagine there’s more than one big black horse among your herds. But those boys were,
according
to what we heard, busy last night over near Cooder’s farm.’

Hightower’s face went from beet red to gray as the soft spoken words were spoken. Angrily he turned to face Paul. ‘Damn you. What’d you tell them? You get back to the ranch right now. I’ll take care of you later.’

‘I don’t think so, Pa. You sent Frank and Hughie and some others to run Rocking C cattle at the Cooders’ farm. I don’t want anything to do with that and I won’t cover for it either.’

Hightower started to lunge at his son and stopped as Matilda stepped in front of him. ‘Hugh, I don’t know what you were thinking of, but you can’t take it out on Paul.’

With both hands curled in hard fists, Hightower stared angrily. ‘No son of mine would turn against his family,’ he growled between clenched teeth. ‘Boy, don’t bother coming back to the ranch. I’ll have your stuff boxed up and sent to town.’

‘Paul,’ Matilda smiled, ‘there’s a job for you at the Rocking C, if you want.’ Stepping around Hightower she looked back at the man. ‘Honest men are always welcome at my place.’

Laughing at the look on Hightower’s face, Buck slapped Paul on the back and, as they both walked past, turned back chuckling. ‘Well, Sheriff. Once again it seems like a good idea to wire the governor for a marshal. The crime rate is pretty high, wouldn’t you say? Stage hold-up, two citizens murdered and quite possibly some farmer’s crops being destroyed. Yes, sir, I’d say there’s something very crooked going on around here.’