The Marauders Of Pitchfork Pass E-Book

Clay Houston Shivers

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

It’s 1873, only a few years after the Civil War, and the West is changing. But there is still one town where good citizens can feel safe.

When the sheriff of Silver Vein is killed, it’s up to saloon keeper Curly Barnes - an admitted coward - to see that justice is done. Along for the ride are two legendary Texas Rangers, the soon-to-be famous outlaw Johnny Ringo, and a couple of brothers who like to play with dynamite.

But after the dust settles, who will be the last man standing?

Leseprobe

THE MARAUDERS OF PITCHFORK PASS

SILVER VEIN CHRONICLES BOOK 1

CLAY HOUSTON SHIVERS

CONTENTS

A Few Words About The Account That Follows

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Epilogue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Epilogue II

Acknowledgments

Next in the Series

About the Author

Copyright (C) 2020 Clay Houston Shivers

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2022 by Next Chapter

Published 2022 by Next Chapter

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author’s permission.

This one's for Mom. And Bart the dog.

A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE ACCOUNT THAT FOLLOWS

The reason I put pen to paper even though I am of an advanced age and my hands hurt when it’s cloudy out or moisture of any sort is in the air, is because of all the accounts on what has come to be known in myth and lore as the Marauders of Pitchfork Pass or the Great Silver Vein Range War. These accounts are made up mostly of bull chips.

I know this because at one point a fella from back East hounded me for months asking all manner of questions about the goings on in Silver Vein; then, what does that fella do? He goes home back East and writes up an outrageous and highly imaginative account that at one point involved a talking bear.

This is a truthful account, which is why when you read it you won’t be reading it on no fancy paper or in a beautifully bound book, but most likely in a loose pile of papers rolled up and fastened by a rubber band. The sad truth is I have come up against great resistance in trying to set to paper what really happened. Things got so bad that on a trip to New York City I had to take a publisher by the ear and threaten to geld him in the middle of his office overlooking Times Square. This didn’t help me none and it was soon brought to my attention that it would be best if I headed out West, where my blunt ways are more accepted.

The second reason I am putting pen to paper is because I need to bring my experiences to a new and more respectful audience. More often than not these days, when I get warmed up and my lips get to flapping, some young fella rolls his eyes or wanders off or even falls asleep! Why, my own kin will on occasion flee the house when I’m feeling spry and talkative!

One last thing: This is the truth as I saw it and I saw it all. The events really happened and it happened just as you will read it.

Curly Barnes

April 19, 1926

1

I was behind the bar of my saloon (Curly’s Saloon) pouring belts of whisky to the miners and ranchers and various other thirsty folks that made up the residents of Silver Vein. Micah Poom was tickling the keys on the piano and Sally was wandering around looking for noodles to tug. Potter Ding was dealing Faro in the corner. Dexter Purdue was losing to Baxter at the poker table. And in the back, also as usual, were a couple of lowlife swine I didn’t care for at all. Black Pete and Johnny Twin Shoes sat at a table, slouched in their seats like they owned the joint. I’m a businessman, and pouring people drinks is my business. I try to be cordial to one and all, whether they deserve it or not. I might think you copulate with badgers, but I would still serve you drinks and still listen to your gripes and pissings and moanings and do it all with a smile. Besides, if I didn’t pour them vermin drinks they’d just hit me over the head and do it themselves.

I was thinking about how much I hated those two sons of bitches when a tall shadow appeared in the saloon’s doorway. It was hard to make out who it was, what with the saloon’s outside lanterns shining behind him. All I could see from back of the bar was the shadow cast against the far wall. I could see a hat. And I could see a shotgun. Whoever it was, he now had the saloon’s rapt attention. I hoped it wasn’t some drunk cowboy about to shoot up the place—a common occurrence despite my cheerful demeanor.

“I ain’t dead no more.”

There was no mistaking that voice.

The saloon doors opened slowly, its hinges creaking loudly in the tense quiet. Then I heard the sheriff’s spurs. He was thought to be dead, but clearly he wasn’t. Not anymore anyway. My mouth was hanging open in shock. For all I know, everyone in the saloon had their mouth hanging open.

Nobody was thinking straight in that moment. If you were to ask me to pour you a belt of whisky, I would have looked at you like you were from outer space. I was as slack-jawed as a confused barn cat. I was looking at a ghost. A dead man had just shown up and walked through the door.

I suppose I should explain some things. Right now some of you are thinking What the Hell Is This Guy Talking About? Well, here it is. Our sheriff, Jim Shepland, got the holy hell beaten out of him, got shot and stabbed and beaten up some more, dragged behind his own horse—which was set on fire—and finally run out of town. He was last seen hanging from the end of a rope. We’d been nine months thinking he was dead. And nine months living under the foot of the man we thought had killed him.

But now here he was, back from the dead. Johnny Twin Shoes and Black Pete were no longer looking so casual. In fact, Johnny Twin Shoes looked like he’d just swallowed his chaw. Lean Bean Tom, the third asshole in their group, was at the bar trying to shove his head into a jug of some home-made moonshine I buy from some old timer that makes it out behind his house. Most people who drink it go half crazy. Lean Bean Tom, already being out of his tree to begin with, handled the stuff better than most. But it was no shocker to see him lurch upright and suddenly scream, “Holy creeping shit!” when he saw the sheriff. He made a play for his gun—but he’d given it to me, and I had it stowed behind the bar. As I write down these words, a long time has passed since that moment. But in that moment, as I hope to make clear, I was as dumb as a mule that had just lobotomized itself.

The shotgun the sheriff held in the crook of his arm was as loud as a herd of bison in that enclosed space when he slowly pulled the hammers back and leveled it at the back table. People scattered, leaving Johnny Twin Shoes and Black Pete to fend for themselves.

“What’s the matter Johnny? Cat got your tongue?”

“We killed you,” Johnny stammered. His eyes looked hollow, the pupils were the size of quarters.

“Apparently not,” the sheriff said. “I suppose you know you’re under arrest. Among other crimes, all these people witnessed you setting my horse on fire. That and you just confessed to attempted murder.”

Black Pete, who got his name because his name was Pete and he was a black fella, said, “You ain’t the sheriff. You must be his twin. I saw the sheriff hanging myself. I tied the damn noose!” Black Pete was clearly in denial. Because the man with the shotgun was certainly the sheriff. Tall and solidly built, and fully capable of wrenching Black Pete’s head off with his bare hands were he to set his mind to it.

“I appreciate your confession, Black Pete. But what happened after you tied the noose?” the sheriff asked.

“Then you died,” Black Pete said.

“You put your hand over my nose and checked to make sure I had stopped breathing? You checked for my pulse and I didn’t have one?”

“No, we…”

“You left me swinging. You watched me piss myself and saw my tongue hanging out of my mouth and you came back to town to celebrate and get drunk.”

“How—”

“You didn’t kill me. You left me for dead. And son, there’s a big difference.”

“You was dead!” Lean Bean Tom said, coming into the conversation a bit late. When he spoke, he accidentally raised his arms off the bar, and so fell over on his face and writhed around on the floor for a spell before finally pulling himself upright again.

“No, I wasn’t dead. Not then and not now. What I am, is angry.” He took two quick steps and lashed out with the shotgun and caught Johnny Twin Shoes in the face, which twisted up on itself, and his head smacked down on the table.

“Drag your friend on out of here,” the sheriff said to Black Pete, “and be quick about it.”

“You’re letting us go?” Black Pete asked, his voice breaking.

“I’m letting you go to jail.”

2

Black Pete was no fool. He did what the sheriff asked, and he took Johnny by the boots and dragged him out of the saloon, leaving a red swipe across the wooden floor.

Lean Bean Tom probably would have gotten his head bashed in too if he didn’t beat the sheriff to it. He took a hugely irresponsible swig of that fiery moonshine, which I know for a fact had gunpowder as one of its ingredients, then he got this shocked look on his face, and like he had on so many occasions, fell on his face and set to snoring.

The sheriff turned to me and said, “Curly, take that scattergun out from behind the bar and keep a sharp eye on Tom here. If he so much as twitches wrong, shoot his goddam head off. And I’ll have my boots back, so grab them off his feet and meet me at the jail.”

I’m pretty sure I’ve been clear on the utter uselessness of my brain at the time, so it didn’t even occur to me to tell Sheriff Shepland what had befallen his jail—and the town itself—while he was off being dead. I didn’t respond to the sheriff at all, but just stared at the man stupidly. He waited a polite period of time to see if I would gather my wits, then gave up on waiting, tipped his hat at all the dumbstruck barflies, and backed out of the saloon doors and was gone.

“Well, that was certainly dramatic,” Baxter said. Baxter and Merle were brothers. Tall and lean and violent, but decent violent, if that makes sense. When they weren’t beating up on each other, they mostly beat up people who had it coming. They had matching mustaches and matching boots and walked and talked with the same Tennessee accent and inflections.

“The sheriff comes back to life and gets right back to arresting people. Me, I’d have taken a bit of a breather. Maybe gone to San Francisco and moved into a bordello for a while,” Merle said.

“I half thought he was going to shoot those fellas right out of their chairs,” Baxter said.

“It would have served them right if he did,” Merle said.

When Lean Bean Tom woke up I was sitting in a chair in front of him with the sheriff’s stolen boots slung over my shoulder and a shotgun full of buck staring down at him. The room stunk something fierce with those boots off, and that’s really saying something considering the saloon was full of miners who bathed about as often as a comet flew overhead. My eyes started watering and the back of my throat started to close up. It was a smell that could make a bird flying overhead fall to its death.

“Okay, Lean Bean, you and me are going to take a little walk. On your feet. Hope they work better than they smell. Micah, you’ve got the bar.” Micah Poom was on much firmer ground playing the piano than he was serving out drinks. He tended to drink two for every one he doled out, and talked a mile a minute while doing it. He often forgot altogether about charging the customers, and as a result, the patrons loved him and considered it a great event every time he was given barkeep duty. If I wasn’t back soon to relieve him I’d be broke.

Lean Bean, hungover and confused, looked down at his holey socks, shook his head, and stood up. He seemed to know the jig was up; there was no fight in him at all. Which was too bad, as I very much wanted to whomp him over the head. Having the sheriff back was good for my courage. We’d been through nine months of terror because of Lean Bean and Black Pete and Johnny Twin Shoes and their cronies and it was all I could do not to cause some pain in return.

The moon was bright that night as we made our way out of the saloon and down the Main Street boardwalk. The city was all hubbub. News had traveled fast. I’m guessing stoves were busy being lit so that welcoming pies could be cooked up. If ever there was cause for celebration, a resurrected sheriff in a lawless mining town was it.

As we walked down the street a dirty boy appeared on top of the courthouse and threw a rock down at us, clonking Lean Bean on the shoulder.

“You gonna hang,” the boy said.

“Fuck you, runt. I’ll see to you later,” Lean Bean hissed.

“No!” the boy screamed, then he started crying and for a good second there it looked like he might fall off the roof.

It was Tommy Yonder, the orphan boy Frank and Deedee Yonder were trying to raise. He was a like a wild dog, that one. His parents, Cyrus and May Johnson, had been killed out at their farm. (It was the raid on their farm that started this whole business, and I’ll come to that shortly.) The sheriff had found the boy hiding in a chicken coop and brought him to town. After everyone in town thought up some reason why they shouldn’t raise the boy, it came down to Frank and Deedee Yonder. Tommy Yonder was on the road to growing up to stretch a rope. He was always pelting rocks at people and calling them names and falling to pieces whenever he got his ear twisted. At first people sympathized, because of his past, and what happened to his parents, but more and more they just thought he was a little asshole.

As we marched by the bank, all blackened timbers and charred ruin, I pointed to it and said, “The sheriff ain’t going to like that none,” and pushed old Lean Bean in the back.

“Hell, you can’t hang that on me,” Lean Bean said. “I helped destroy the jail, not the bank.”

“You can clarify that with the sheriff.”

“Well, now that I think about it, I don’t know that I destroyed anything.”

I pushed him in the back again. I wanted to push him into a vat of soap; the man smelled like vulture puke.

We passed the restaurant, with its boarded up window from the time Johnny Twin Shoes rode his horse through it in a drunken midnight rage. On just about every corner of our little mining town there was some evidence of the lawlessness that had taken over the town during the sheriff’s absence.

When we got to the blown-up timber and bent bars that had once been the jail, I saw Johnny Twin Shoes and Black Pete trussed up like hogs and tied to the hitching post.

“Well, Curly, it looks like the fellas from the Triple R have been busy.” The sheriff looked unhappy not to have a jail. And I didn’t blame him. He spent more time in the jail than he ever did at home. If he wasn’t sitting outside with his feet on the rail, he was sitting inside with his feet on the desk.

“Sheriff, if my tongue worked back at the saloon, I would have told you they blew up the jail. But I was struck dumb in there. Not every day I see a ghost.”

“I ain’t a ghost, Curly.”

“I know that,” I said. Then I went and pinched his arm just to make sure.

“What are you going to do with me, Sheriff?” Lean Bean asked. “Since you don’t have no jail, I am of the opinion that you might just have to let me go.”

“You know what I think I should do?” the sheriff asked.

“What?”

The sheriff walked up and walloped Lean Bean a good one on the head and he went down like a heart-shot buffalo.

“That,” the sheriff said.

“That’s assault, right there,” Black Pete said. So the sheriff walked over and walloped him too.

3

As we stood there with those fellas all tied up, sure enough, here came Deedee Yonder with a pie in her hand. She had that same limp she always did, on account of the long knife she kept lashed to her leg.

“Sheriff! What a relief to have you back. It’s surely a miracle!”

“Not really. Just healed up is all.”

“This was the work of the Lord. You were hung, and you were dead, and yet here you are, chosen like Jesus was, chosen to protect us from that scum up at the Triple R. I imagine you’ll go up there and rain hellfire on them sons of bitches, and burn Torp Mayfair and his ranch into a pile of ashes and see to it that he spends the rest of his miserable days in hell.”

“Well now, Deedee, I just come back to town. And I don’t have no jail no more. So if you don’t mind I’ll handle this the way I see fit.”

I could tell by her sour look that she wasn’t enjoying the turn in the conversation.

“You know that boy’s family wasn’t killed by no Indians,” Deedee said.

“I know it, Deedee. You know I know it.”

“I get so frustrated taking care of that little shit that I can’t hardly keep it together. Someone should pay me for raising that rascal.”

“I aim to round up every damn one of them, Deedee. They’ll pay.”

“You’ve been blessed by the Lord and I would like to invite you to dinner. Frank is very excited about your resurrection and he would love to talk to you and maybe even have you give a speech at church on Sunday.”

“I’ll think about it,” the sheriff said. Then Deedee turned on her heel and walked away, pie and all.

“Dang,” I said. “I figured that pie was for you.”

“I figure it was right up until Deedee didn’t get the answers she wanted.” The sheriff pulled out a cigar and struck a match against his boot and lighted up.

“How come you wanted your boots back if you got boots on your feet?” I asked. “I don’t think I could put my feet in anything Lean Bean was wearing. He smells like three-week-old mule piss.”

“They’re my boots, Curly. It’s the principle of the matter.”

4

I remember when Sheriff Shepland first came to town. We asked for a replacement sheriff after Sheriff Gantry got himself killed taking a piss out behind the livery, and here comes this wiry fella mounted on a Comanche pony. Somewhere outside of Amarillo, Texas, he’d been set upon by Indians in the night and had his horse swiped. Most people would just be relieved they didn’t get their hair lifted. Not the sheriff. He tracked down the Indians, and, in the night, snuck up and stole one of their horses.

To hear the sheriff tell it, the Comanches were so impressed with his brazenness that they decided not to pursue him. So even from the very first moment we encountered our new sheriff, there was something almost mythic about him. Anyone who could steal a horse from Indians we figured was more or less invincible. Which is why it was such a shock for him to have been caught unawares and beaten and stabbed and shot and dragged and hanged from a tree like he was.

When Sheriff Gantry died the town started falling to pieces almost immediately. Fights broke out and people took to stabbing and shooting one another in the middle of the street. Claims were jumped. Horses and cows were stolen. Not having an obvious law presence in the town caused people to behave in ways they never would have otherwise. My saloon kept getting shot up, and it wasn’t just the cowhands doing it, but regular old drunk people with guns. Pico Stanton, the town’s only lawyer, who should know better, even took his derringer out of his boot one night and poked a hole in my ceiling. So did I, though I don’t have any memory of it. When I built the saloon, I specifically made it so that there was nothing above the saloon’s ceiling. I built my apartment upstairs, but away from any stray bullets.

The new sheriff set the town to rights. He expanded the jail and started up a group of volunteers to patrol the town at night, so Indians couldn’t sneak up on nobody while they were taking a piss. Deedee Yonder was the most enthusiastic of the volunteers, and even tried to arrest her own husband for laziness. She was short and lean as a piece of jerky, but if you saw Deedee walking the boardwalk at night, you’d find some other way to navigate the town. One miner, new in town, got fresh with her in the street one night. When he came tottering into the saloon, half his mustache was missing and one of his eyes was swollen about twice its normal size and the color of a cherry. When he sat down at the bar he was in tears.

Aside from volunteers patrolling the streets, the sheriff also passed a firearms ordinance, so the saloon and restaurant would stop getting all shot up. The cowboys and ranch hands didn’t like this at all, as they seemed to think drinking and shooting guns went hand in hand—but every time the sheriff asked for someone’s guns he got them. At first he had to whomp people over the head, but eventually word spread not to buck the new sheriff and people gave up their guns before getting whomped.

Word soon spread there was a safe town called Silver Vein in the middle of lawless Texas, with a decent sheriff, and the town started to grow. It’s amazing what one man with a badge and some sand can do for a town.

The west was a lawless place. And a safe town in a lawless place is a beacon to those who seek a new life for themselves but don’t cotton to danger. A lot of people who moved to Silver Vein had been witness to violence of one sort or another. When the Civil War ended, a whole bunch of disenfranchised soldiers turned to using their guns for lawless reasons, and their evil ways became more and more apparent, and innocent people had to work hard to find security. As a result of the town’s reputation, Silver Vein was made up of people with haunted pasts and jumpy temperaments. People like Deedee If she hadn’t come west and experienced violence like she did, she probably wouldn’t have felt the need to carry so many knives. So it was a true gift to have a sheriff like Jim Shepland. Just seeing him sitting outside the jail with his feet up was enough for even the most cowed of men to feel safe walking down the street.

I myself moved to Silver Vein, figuring it to be a safe place for a saloonkeeper. Saloonkeepers in the lawless west typically didn’t last long Miners were a pretty stressed out bunch, and they tended to let off steam in saloons, and more often as not it was the saloonkeeper that got caught in the crossfire. A saloonkeeper getting stabbed in the belly was so common the newspapers wouldn’t even make mention of it. I wanted to be a saloonkeeper that didn’t get stabbed in the belly. I was so against getting either stabbed or shot I had a special compartment built behind the bar I could hide in. The plan was, when trouble showed its head, I would just duck down behind the bar and disappear until the chaos was over. The other thing I did is I only pissed outside in daylight. I’m a healthy and loud pisser and it would be easy to sneak up on me in the night. The cemetery was full of people getting killed while pissing in the night and I didn’t mean to be one of them.

5

After the sheriff was run out of town and thought to be dead, the jail was pulled to pieces by men on horses wearing masks, and the men the sheriff had arrested came pouring out and ran off back to the Triple R—the place that started the whole thing and we will get to that shortly.

The sheriff decided the livery would be converted into a make-shift jail. Well, maybe converted isn’t the right word. Flody’s horse, Red, so small as to be considered a pony, was taken out of her stall and replaced with Black Pete, Johnny Twin Shoes and Lean Bean Tom. Flody was a nosy old coot, and a totally irritating person to converse with. He was never satisfied with anything. A fella could come in and drop a gold bar at his feet and tell him it was a gift and he would complain that the bar wasn’t big enough. Another thing about him was he had something wrong with his sinuses and tended to complement everything he said with an unappealing hacking noise. Women shunned him, and with good reason. Also, he had a bit of a hunch to his back from working so many years with horses, and if you saw him walking towards you out of the corner of your eye, you might think he was some sort of pale ape.

“Why don’t you just hang them?” Flody asked between hacks, hopping from foot to foot like he was standing in a fire. It was a question we all wanted to ask. If you’d taken a vote, it would have been seven hundred to three in favor of a quick hanging, and two of the other three would have voted for a slow hanging.

“I am a rare thing, Flody. I’m a lawman who respects the law. These men deserve their chance in front of a judge. That way, when they do hang it will be all the sweeter.”

“What do we do until then?”

“Well Flody, Curly, me, and whoever else I feel I can trust will watch over them until we can arrange transport to Amarillo. Curly, go rouse up the blacksmith. I want these men in leg irons.”

“Now Sheriff, I got a business to run. And now, instead of eight stalls, I only got seven,” Flody said. He was getting ready to do some complaining. If it’s one thing Flody can do, it’s grouse about something. Flody was often in the saloon making me listen to all of his many ills. How people were always cheating him. How women didn’t like him. How his childhood was taken from him and he never got a chance to be a kid. How he had gone bald at a young age. How he had once been a rich gambler with a nice horse and a fancy saddle and how he’d lost everything in a seventy-five hour run of bad luck at cards. To hear him tell it, he was the unluckiest person in the world.

“How about this, Flody. How about you come to me if these stalls fill up? Right now you’ve got seven stalls and only the one horse, which is your own damn horse. If you want, we can talk about why your establishment seems to have suffered no ills while the rest of town looks like it’s been set upon with a Gatling gun.”

Flody wrung his hands together and twisted his body back and forth and reached up and felt around with his fingers for any remaining hair to yank out. But he didn’t say anything. The truth was Flody went out of his way to toady up to the Triple R hands despite what they done to the sheriff. He kowtowed to them and gave them discounts and all but rolled over and let them scratch his belly.

"If they move too much, Tiny, you can shoot their legs," Sheriff Shepland said.

We left Tiny with a scattergun, sitting in a chair, to look over the prisoners. Tiny must have weighed four hundred pounds. A horse would swallow its tongue and commit horse suicide if it saw Tiny coming. I don’t think I’d ever seen Tiny on a horse and I can’t imagine the horse that would put up with it if he were to try such a thing. Tiny made a good guard because he was simple. He just didn’t have a lot going on in his head. You’d talk to him or say something to him and half the time you didn’t know if any of it made it into his head or not. Also, his eyes were close together, giving him a crazy look. I wouldn’t have wanted him holding a shotgun over me, that’s for sure. What his problem was, was he ate too many dessert pies. I would often see him in the restaurant, and he would invariably be eating a dessert pie.

I followed the sheriff back down the boardwalk to Kate's restaurant and he sat down at his usual table as if he’d never left. People who were eating at other tables came up and shook his hand; some did like me and pinched him on the arm. One old lady swooned rather dramatically, knocking some plates and cups to the floor.

In no time at all Kate showed up and fussed all over the sheriff, plopping down a cup of coffee and making little cooing noises like a happy bird. Every five seconds or so she would say, “Oh Jim!” and either touch the sheriff’s cheek or lay a big kiss on his forehead. The sheriff would turn red and wiggle about, but you could tell he was enjoying it. The sheriff was in pretty good shape for someone taken out of town to be hanged and stabbed and shot and kicked about as he was. I can’t say I saw any scars or anything. If he had them, and he must have had lots of them, they were politely hidden out of sight. It was some sort of miracle. Rumors being what they are, you have to take them with a grain of salt. I’d heard that the sheriff’s face had been rubbed off when he was dragged behind his horse. I’d heard people had seen the sheriff hanging from a tree, his face pecked off by birds. I’d heard all sorts of grisly stories about the sheriff over the last nine months, yet here he was, sitting in front of me, with two eyeballs set within a normal face staring right back at me.

I was worried that Micah might be seven sheets to the wind, drinking away my life savings, but being with the sheriff so soon after he quit being dead made me so happy I chose to ignore it.

“What about the rest of them?” I asked. When it came to bad guys, there were a lot more than three.

“Oh, I expect they’ll come calling sooner or later.”

“They won’t be as easy to catch as these three. They’ll be ready.”

“Curly, I’ve had plenty of time to think about all this. While I was laid up I played all of this out in my head.”

“And?”

“You’ll find out.” The sheriff wasn’t given to long speeches. His most comfortable setting was silence. The answer to my question was far from satisfying. I’m not good with not knowing things.

“Sheriff, you mind if I ask you another question?”

“Depends on what the question is.”

I was working myself up to ask it when Kate came over with two more mugs of coffee even though the sheriff had barely taken a sip out of the mug he already had.

“Jim, you want your usual?” she asked.

“You know it, Kate. And thanks for not making a fuss,” the sheriff said, even though making a fuss is exactly what she was doing.

“I’ve seen my share of people come and go,” Kate said. “You were dead and now you’re not is all. And I’m awful glad you’re back. While you were gone some drunken fool rode a horse through my window.”

I watched Kate walk away and turned my attention back to the sheriff.

“What’s your question?” the sheriff asked me.

For a couple of seconds there I had no idea what the sheriff was even referring to. Question? About five seconds after the sheriff spoke, his words made their way into my brain and I remembered my question and asked, “How did you survive?”

“I played dead.”

“You played dead.”

“When you hang a person, it’s not the rope that kills them. It’s the fall. With me they walked the horse out from under me, so I knew what was coming and I had time to tense my neck up. At the same time I pissed my pants and twitched a bunch. Those guys were drunk and looking to get more drunk and so they raced back to town to celebrate. That’s when I climbed up the rope to the branch it was tied to, loosened the noose off my neck and climbed down the tree. I was lucky they didn’t pick a taller tree and that they tied such a bad knot.”

I gawped at him in disbelief. “You must have a strong neck.”

“What I had was a strong desire not to die.”

All of what he said brought up another important question. “Was it hard for you to piss your britches? It would take some doing for me to piss my britches. A bed, sure, if I was drunk enough. If I thought about it I could probably piss myself right here in the restaurant. It wouldn’t be easy though, so I bet pissing your pants, with a noose around your neck, hanging from a tree, must have taken some doing.”

“That was involuntary I’m afraid,” the sheriff said, looking down at his coffee.

I still had more questions, of course. But that’s when Orville Benson, the town’s carpenter and all around handy man, walked up to the table.

“Sheriff, it’s good to see you back,” Orville said.

“Glad to be back. I was rather fed up with being dead,” the sheriff said, smiling. “I’m glad you walked over. I might have some work for you. It seems we need a new jail.”

“That we do, Sheriff,” Orville agreed.

“I’m going to need some place other than the livery to house bad guys.”

“Are you going to be here in the morning? Because I’m neglecting my wife over there. Ruby’s the one waving at you sitting by herself.”

The sheriff waved at Ruby and half the restaurant waved back.

“The real reason I’m over here, Sheriff is…have you been to your house yet?”

“No, I haven’t. I stopped by here after buying some new duds at the Mercantile; but then Kate told me I’d find some of them Triple R fellas over at Curly’s Saloon, and I went right on over there.”

“Well, Sheriff, the thing is,” and Orville started tugging on his beard in distress, “I might have borrowed some timber from your house.”

“Some timber you say,” the sheriff said.

“Maybe a fair chunk of timber. Could be a fair chunk. We all thought you was dead, and well, so did I, and the thing was, I needed the timber.”

“What you need lumber for? I don’t recall you needing my lumber before I got dragged off.”

“Well, that’s true. It’s as you say. But, well, Steve Pool gave me some money for timber. But, well, I was passing your house one day…”

“Passing by the house of someone who is dead and won’t miss it if you were to pocket the money for yourself and take some boards from a fella that don’t need it. Is that about the sum of things?”

“Ruby’s with child, you see, and—”

The sheriff held up his hand. He was handling the fact that his house had been pillaged surprisingly well, I thought.

“Well, Orville, I suppose I have been dead for nine months. If I were in your shoes I might have done the same thing. Talk to me in the morning about the jail.”

“Will do, Sheriff.” Orville smiled and started to turn away. Then he turned back and said, “Sheriff?”

“Let me guess. I should stay at the hotel tonight.”

“I’m afraid some of the outdoor elements might have taken advantage of the missing timber.”

“See you tomorrow, Orville.”

“I didn’t know anything about that, Sheriff,” I said. “If I did I would have put a stop to it.”

“It was never a very good house. I built it myself and I ain’t good when it comes to working with wood.”

“Still and all,” I said.

“I was dead Curly. No point in a dead man’s house going to waste.”

“I suppose you’re right. So, if you don’t mind talking about it, what happened after you got your neck out of that noose?”

“Might need some more coffee,” the sheriff said. “This could take a spell to explain.”

6

The story of what happened to the sheriff became legend. Pap Kickins did a full interview with the sheriff and ran it in the Daily Silver Vein, which in truth only came out when something actually newsworthy happened in the town, which was close on to never and certainly not every day. I’ll just summarize it here. After he climbed down out of the tree, the sheriff wandered for two days, barefoot, smack in the middle of winter and out of his head from thirst. He wandered and wandered, lost and confused, desperate for water, until finally he followed a bunch of birds and found some water and then he got lucky and found a cave out of the sun; he curled up in the cave and he killed and ate any varmints that wandered inside.

He did that for a couple of weeks, naked and surviving off wandering critters, before the bear that had been hibernating somewhere deep within the cave woke out of its slumber and chased the sheriff away. The sheriff ran from the cave and wandered through the desert, feverish and half crazy from the sun. Then he came across an old Indian sitting in front of a fire burning sage and singing. At first he thought the Indian was a figment of his imagination. But the old Indian was very real; he was also a healer, and set about mending the sheriff. He cleaned the sheriff’s wounds and gave him water and fed him soups and small pieces of game to help him get his strength back. He gave him animal skins to wear and made moccasins to protect his wounded and bloody feet. After several months of fighting his failing body, hovering between life and death, the sheriff eventually recovered and built his strength back up. His scars healed and the red burn around his neck, with the help of the Indian and his herbal potions, turned from an angry red to a somewhat angry pink to blue to yellow to finally skin colored.

In time, the old Indian had to go back to his people, and so the sheriff wandered the desert by himself, though he was no longer lost, as the Indian had shown him watering holes and places to shelter at night.

One day a couple of bushwhackers saw the sheriff and took him for an Indian and circled him with their horses and started whipping him with their quirts. So the sheriff pulled them out of their saddles and took their horses and clothes and guns and their boots and water and suggested they go looking for a cave he knew about, where they could take shelter. The way the sheriff figured it, you bushwhack someone walking in the desert, you deserve to get eaten by a bear.

I told you the sheriff was scrappy. The only varmint I ever ate was a squirrel, and that was back in Illinoiswhen I was a boy. At least it was cooked. The sheriff never went into great detail about the varmints he ate. He ate some of them raw, which I can’t even imagine. To have something furry and still wiggling in your hands and to go about biting into it with your teeth—it’s a horrible thing to even think about. Which I would do often. Every time I saw the sheriff eating dinner at the restaurant I would wonder if he was thinking about that possum or raccoon or rat he’d eaten raw.

When the story ran in the paper, the sheriff got mad and accused old Pap of having an overactive imagination. This is just one example, but Pap had the sheriff eating an entire antelope raw, which defies belief.

Pap wasn’t the only one with an active imagination. Before long the sheriff was taming bears and talking to animals and even flying through the desert on the back of an eagle. Over the next few weeks, the myth grew and grew and it like to drive the sheriff mad. If there was one thing you could say about Sheriff Jim Shepland, he was certainly an honest man. When he told you a story, you could be sure there would be no embellishments or exaggerations. The story might be dry as an old buffalo bone, but you would know for a fact all of it was true. So, for citizens to go through town telling people passing through about their sheriff, and how he talked to bears and flew on the backs of eagles…well, for the sheriff, it was like being surrounded by a swarm of stinging flies.

7

The sheriff being back gave Silver Vein a much-needed spiritual lift. People who were afraid to leave their homes were soon strolling the boardwalk and going about their daily lives. Kate got her restaurant window fixed up.

And the saloon was doing better than ever. People were lined up at the bar thick as fleas on a barn cat. Some nights there was so much cigar smoke you couldn’t see more than three feet in front of you.

One night two men on horses with bags over their heads and torches in their hands stopped at the end of town and started shooting their rifles in the air--but by the time the sheriff mounted up to investigate the men were gone. On another day the sheriff swore he saw the sun blinking off someone looking at us through a glass up on the ridge that overlooked the town. A few people reported shattered windows late in the night. Other than that, things were pretty quiet.

At one point in our town’s history, we didn’t have need to wire Amarillo for help. We used to have a judge of our own. Judge Hammond Parker was his name. He was a grumpy old man who must have been in his early fifties. He couldn’t hear very well, but it didn’t matter because he almost never cared what a fella said in his defense. He had his mind made up before he even heard a case. Sometimes he would forget to hear a case all together and just render verdict. He’d pound his gavel and say “Six months hard labor!” only to find out he was hearing a case about someone stealing a frying pan.

One day Judge Parker was found in his chambers dead from choking on a hard biscuit. They say his face was blue as the noon sky. That was it for us having a judge; and that was it for the courthouse too. The building still stood next to the saloon, but it stood empty and ignored.

News traveled fast in our little town. I bet if it came to it, our town would have held its own in a gossip competition. Between Kate at the restaurant, and Flody and Micah and old Pap Kickins, it was hard to keep up with all of it. But news traveled much slower outside of town, and it was taking a while for Amarillo to respond to our request for prisoner transport. Flody complained that Red couldn’t stand the smell of the prisoners. Said she was depressed and off her feed and he even said he saw her crying one morning, if you can believe such nonsense. I must admit, those men smelled worse than a big pile of mongoose crap. They smelled to high heaven and back twice. Especially Lean Bean Tom’s feet. Just thinking about it, all these many years later, is making my eyes just about bleed. Whenever I was on guard duty I would wear a bandanna over my nose, which didn’t keep my eyes from watering. I would toss buckets of water on them out of desperation, but it just made the stall dirty, and before long the prisoners were as brown as muddy pigs.

Things got so bad, even Tiny balked. The sheriff finally had the prisoners dragged outside, stripped naked, and doused with water. He gave them soap and made them clean themselves. Even though they had to put their old clothes on, they smelled a lot better than they used to.

The town was tense with a sense that something was coming. The relief of having the sheriff back gave way to a worry that Triple R’s hooligans—known to history and legend as The Marauders of Pitchfork Pass—would descend on the town to save their buddies. The town was therefore caught somewhere between relief and doom; it was under very similar circumstances that the sheriff was run out of town.

Okay. I can see I need to inform you on some stuff. Sometimes I forget, what with me knowing so much of the story, that not everyone does. Let’s go back to the beginning. It’s pretty simple actually. Silver Vein was a mining town. I think I’ve told you that. But it was surrounded by a bunch of ranches, a couple of which were quite large. But it was the Triple R that caused all the trouble. It was owned by Torp Mayfair, and he was a ruthless and miserable man. He chased all the sodbusters out of his way by terrorizing them. They were mostly of German descent, and wanted nothing more than a piece of land to toil over. Torp would graze his cows on their land and destroy all their crops and then menace them when they complained about it. He took other rancher’s land by either buying them off for a nickel on the dollar under duress or harassing people into giving up their land for no recompense at all. He hired a bunch of thugs as ranch hands. They rustled cows and horses and chased off farmers, and anyone who got in their way had the habit of ending up dead. People had been hating Torp for a long time, but technically he hadn’t done anything the sheriff could take action on.

Then came the Johnson raid.

8

To understand why Torp Mayfair tried to kill the sheriff, and what set all of these events into motion, I have to tell you about the Johnson raid. One day the sheriff was watching the world go by with his feet up on the rail outside the jail, as was his habit, when Horton Jennings raced up on his horse screaming the sheriff’s name.

“Sheriff! It’s the Johnson farm. They’ve been raided by Comanches!”

This caught the sheriff by surprise. “Comanches don’t raid so close to town. Not for a good long time. You sure?”

“They’re all dead, Sheriff! Even the dog got shot and kilt with an arrow. Even that sweet old dog!”