Payback at Morning Peak (29 page)

“I don’t understand.”

“Let’s say there’s four ounces of gold here. The ounce weight would be around a hundred dollars, but this nugget could be worth four or five times that because of its rare size—and, I might add, it is truly beautiful.”

Though Jubal realized the nugget could be of great monetary value, that meant very little to him. It paled in comparison to his constant ache for retribution.

Jubal slept in the blacksmith’s barn. The rain had brought moisture into the building, making the straw damp and smelly. In the morning he rubbed Frisk down, then walked over to the jail. He waved at Sheriff Cox. “Morning, Mr. Jailer, how’s it going?”

“Passable. Yes, tolerable and passable. How’s by you?” Sheriff Cox sipped coffee from a tin cup.

“Everything you just mentioned, along with restless.”

Sheriff Cox motioned to the coffeepot on the iron stove. “Help yourself.”

Jubal took from the shelf a cup that looked as if it could stand a good washing, but, being polite, he poured the black coffee. “I’ve been thinking, Tom, about an idea I had concerning our Mr. Thompson.”

“And?”

“What would you say to my bundling him up in the bed of a buckboard and hustling him down to Cerro Vista to stand trial along with Billy Tauson?”

“You’re a persistent devil, aren’t you?” Tom paused. “I don’t have any jurisdiction over that brute. Only thing he’s done wrong, as far as I can tell, is get hisself all shot up. Yes. Take him away. Think you can handle him?”

Jubal set the vile-tasting coffee down on the stove. “How can you drink that? It tastes like—”

“Horse piss?”

“Come to think of it, yes.”

The sheriff offered no excuses other than explaining the whims of being a single man in his busy world. “What was your plan about Big Ed?’

“No real plan, just get a mattress, build a little tent of sorts over the buckboard, harness up Frisk, and light out.” Jubal hoped this was making sense. “I saw an old wagon in the corner of the blacksmith’s barn. Figured I could buy it cheap, have the smithy anchor a twenty-foot chain to the end of the side plate, then secure Big Ed with an ankle shackle from my friend Tom Cox.”

Sheriff Cox smiled. “For someone without a plan, you sound like you’ve got it pretty well figured out. Why the twenty-foot chain?”

“That way I don’t have to worry about old Ed wandering off. He can do his business along the side of the
road without me having to lock and unlock his tether constantly.”

“Sounds good. Strangely enough, I never heard back from your buddy Marshal Turner, so if anybody is going to secure your Big Ed, I guess it’s gonna have to be you. I can deputize you, but it’ll only be good in this county. I could give you a note, though, to cover yourself, explaining the situation. Might help. When did you plan on leaving?”

“Don’t know. What do you think of Thompson’s health?”

“He’s a sugar tit, the bastard. He looked fit enough now, far as I’m concerned.”

Firm in his plan, Jubal headed out for the blacksmith’s.

“What I thought might work, sir, is a bolt through the back of the sideboard near to the tailgate. The chain link could be secured by the bolt and then onto the shackle around the fellow’s leg. But first I’d need to know what you want for that buckboard in the corner of the barn.”

The smithy guffawed. “That old thing? If you pay me twenty dollars, I’ll be glad to get rid of it. I’ll even grease the axles and straighten out a few flat spots in those rims.”

“I’d need a harness for Frisk.”

“We’ll rig up something. I’ll have her done by tomorrow night ‘round five, okay?”

Jubal spent the rest of the day provisioning for the trip. He bought hardtack, a side of bacon, coffee, sugar, and, because deep down he was still a kid, several handfuls of hard candy.

He needed a mattress for the back of the wagon for
Thompson to lie on. He solved that problem by borrowing a stiff canvas mattress cover from the jail and stuffing it with straw from the blacksmith’s barn. He confiscated additional yardage of canvas from the back alley of a store that had just replaced their awning. It would suffice as shelter for him at night, as well as protection for his patient-prisoner, Mr. Ed Thompson.

The following day he got the ankle shackle from the sheriff and took it to the smithy, who welded it to the twenty-foot chain, then bolted the other end to the wagon.

He was getting close.

The smithy told him he would have the rims straightened in another hour. Jubal left the mattress and awning material in the buckboard and went back to the sheriff’s office.

“All set?” Cox asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you want me to accompany you to see Ed? That yehoo will probably kick up a fuss when he sees what’s happening.”

Jubal agreed that he would more than likely need help. After settling up with the smithy, Jubal harnessed Frisk and they all headed to visit with Ed.

“I wrote you this letter, put it on official county stationery.”

To Whom It May Concern—

This letter is to inform all, that the holder of this document, a certain Mr. Jubal Young, is a deputy of Teller County, in and around the
town of Cripple Creek, Colorado. This deputy is authorized to transport one Mr. Ed Thompson to the environs of Cerro Vista, New Mexico, where Mr. Ed Thompson is wanted for multiple counts of murder.

Sheriff Tom Cox of Teller County, Colorado.

“Of course, the crux of it is that it isn’t worth much once you get outside the county. But it might help.”

They pulled up outside the house.

“Raise your right hand.”

“What? Oh, yes, the deputizing.” Jubal dutifully raised his right hand while the sheriff read over him. He felt he was now a deputy in Teller and Cerro Vista counties. All he would have to worry about now was the half dozen or so counties in between.

Sheriff Cox stopped Jubal at the door. “We need to make this short and to the point. No explanations or bullshit. Is the ankle shackle open?”

Jubal nodded.

“All right, here’s the key. Don’t lose it. You snap the shackle closed as we load our Mr. Thompson on board. The folks inside won’t know what’s going on—and don’t tell them. They’ll recognize my badge and will damn well stand off. If we have to carry the bastard, we’ll do that. Remember, no explanations. Just ‘This is official business,’ right?”

“Right.” Jubal admired Sheriff Cox’s tough approach.

A matronly woman greeted them at the house. The sheriff looked down at a piece of paper he’d retrieved from his pocket as if it were official business. “Where is a… Mr. Ed Thompson?”

“Mr. Thompson is still feeling poorly. Can’t stand proper. He’s in the kitchen having supper.”

They shouldered their way into the country kitchen, where six people sat around a large wood table. Sheriff Cox looked at Jubal. “Chair and all, okay?” Jubal agreed as they each sidled next to Thompson and picked up his chair.

Ed, with a large hunk of cornbread in his mouth, gripped both sides of his chair arms and protested. “What in the name of God are you doing?”

They didn’t answer, but turned sideways to get through the kitchen entry. Hustling across the parlor, they kicked the front door open and stopped on the porch to catch their breath.

“I’ll have you prosecuted,” Ed squealed, and looked closely at the sheriff. “Why you doing this? Tell me, am I arrested? For what?”

“A number of things, namely being a sloppy eater.” Ed’s front was covered with soup stains and cornbread crumbs.

They took their burden down the short flight of steps and next to the tailgate of the wagon. Jubal snapped the shackle around Ed’s right ankle, then closed the padlock. Accompanied by Ed’s howling, they lifted him off his chair and into the buckboard. Sheriff Cox took the seat next to Jubal as they headed for the jail.

“Jubal, once you let me off, don’t stop ‘til you’re well out of town, you hear?”

“Yes, sir.” Jubal urged Frisk on. She seemed to be at home with the wagon harness buckled around her.

They paused in front of the jail. “I’ll say adios, amigo.

You got your letter. Let me know how things turn out, will you?”

“Yes, sir, I certainly will. And thank you for being a friend.”

Sheriff Cox looked back down the street where they’d just come from. A group of four people were heading their way. Two men, a woman dressed as a nurse, and the matronly gal from the home. “Better scoot, son. It looks like I’ve got some explaining to do.”

“Come on, girl. We’ve got a long ride ahead.” Jubal clicked his tongue at Frisk and snapped the reins on her broad back.

Wetherford had intended to head more directly south, keeping just west of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, but instead, after leaving Alamosa, he veered by chance southwest and found himself in the San Juan Mountains. He began following the railroad tracks and ended up in the small community of Chama, New Mexico.

He provisioned, spent the night in a small boarding house, and, after getting specific directions to Cerro Vista, set out once again. The land flattened, and though ranges of tall, difficult alpine masses still endured, they were mostly surrounded by flat plains that seemed to link to one another.

He enjoyed his days, not in a hurry to get anyplace in particular. He’d been ruminating lately about a plan for a holdup, maybe the First National in Cerro Vista. He figured the town deserved it. Although other than Judge
Wickham, none of the locals had done him dirt, that didn’t mean they wouldn’t if given the chance.

Revenge. It reminded Wetherford of the man his drunken mother said was his father. Although, to be fair, she did always preface her exhortations of the brothers’ lineage with the apologetic “That’s your father … I think.” She had named the children “Wetherford” but never bothered to marry the fellow, and by the time the youngsters asked about him, he was long dead of mysterious causes. One day Al had asked his mom about “Mr. Wetherford.”

“What about him?”

“Ah, nothing, Ma. I just wondered when he was coming back. He seemed kind of nice.”

“Nice? Are you funning me, boy?”

“He gave Petey and me those toy guns. He seemed sorta okay.”

“Listen to me, son. Just because some overnight stayer gives you some half-assed toy don’t make him nice.” She went to the door of their one-room shack and gazed out at the yard strewn with debris. “He were a regular. Just rode up one day an entire stranger, paid me well, and came and went without a fuss. But that don’t make him no saint. You hear?”

The boys nodded but didn’t understand what their mother was going on about.

“He’s actually closer than you think. You boys take a walk with me, come on.”

They each took a hand as they walked with their mother across a dark open field into a wooded area sloping down to the Rio Grande.

“Your Mr. Wetherford and me got to fussing one night. Not in the cabin but out here in the field. He could get full of the devil ‘cause he were a morphine-eater. He’d also been drinking right smart for the better part of the day and was talking rough.”

She stopped and shook her fist at the dark sky.

“Told me about a wife he had, and a couple little rotters running about. Said it like he were proud he had the obligation of a real marriage and the runabout freedom to come over here from Farmington and play around like it made no never mind to me.” She paused, as if trying to hold in her anger, then made a show of spitting with gusto. “Not saying the bastard owed me anything, and I ain’t making no apologies about who I am and what I do to feed you little shits, but the man done me dirt.… Drunk always, he was. Slapped the shit out of me, then said, ‘I’d apologize, but you probably wouldn’t understand.’ Why wouldn’t I know when a grown man knocks me about? Then he says I ‘wouldn’t get it’ if he was to say he was sorry. Would you explain me that? Would you?”

Al moved behind his brother for shelter. “I’m scared, Ma, when you talk like that. All I said were that Mr. Wetherford was ‘kind of nice,’ is all.”

“He’s right yonder a-moldering away. Why don’t you go over there and tell him how much you miss him? Go on, in a nice loud voice tell him. You’ll have to speak up, though, ‘cause Mr. Lucas Wetherford is a couple feet under God’s green earth and he don’t hear so well these days.”

The brothers huddled closely together as their mother
walked over to a mound of unusually long grass and once again spit heavily.

In the years since, Pete could recall a half dozen times when he and Al had talked about that night. The peculiar thing was they both remembered it the exact same way, Al always describing their mother as “crazy as a March hare barking at the moon.”

She had stood in that vast field, carrying on as if her anger alone could bring back her man Wetherford. Her silhouette dancing over the uneven earth, her fists raised to the skies in mad defiance.

Revenge. It seemed to work for his mother.

Wetherford crossed forty miles of flat, mesa-dotted land, skirted the end of the San Juans, and headed east toward Cerro Vista. He held a huge stash of bullion and cash from the prospectors and the fool at the assayer’s office. He toyed with several ideas of what to do with it—principally thoughts of women, booze, and unmentionable pursuits.

But beyond that he knew he should consider land. That one valuable item that everyone wanted to possess. The dream of vast chunks of grazing land for herds of cattle, verdant fields of maize and hay, and him all wrapped in the comfort of a cozy farmhouse.

He chuckled out loud. He’d have a harem, maybe half a dozen floozies doing their salaams for him while he ate an onion-covered steak and drank imported wine from somewhere in Europe. He liked the layout of the farm that Tauson’s group had attacked. Once he found that little shit who’d unbalanced him off the log at Morning Peak, he’d do him in, then show up at the land office to
plead his case for recovery.
I’m really too upset about losing my relatives, sir, to go into it in detail, but what would be the procedure to gain title of my old uncle Jubal’s place, the Youngs’ farm?
Maybe it would be ridiculous, but stranger things had happened.