Chaparral Range War (9781101619049) Page 20

  Noble went and found the two men, Julio Contras and Jim Phelps, and brought them out to the ranch. Contras was about thirty, had a dark complexion and white teeth, and looked like a vaquero. He rode a tough-looking dun mustang and carried two reatas on his big horn saddle. When he met Cally, he bowed and swept off his sombrero. His English wasn’t bad and he acted proud to have the work.

  Jim Phelps was close to Guthrey’s own age. He rode deep in the saddle, he was short and broadly built, his hair on top was thin, and he smiled big, meeting Cally. He had two well-trained stock dogs; one had a white eye, and they both minded him. Jim called the gray one Dog, and the one with more white he’d named Gyp. Easy enough to remember, and these two were no strangers to the chaparral or cactus.

  At supper, Jim asked whether they’d been lately run over by Whitmore and his outfit.

  Dan told them about the loss of their father and his near run-in with two of his gun hands. Jim nodded.

  “I’m hoping you get the job of sheriff,” he said to Guthrey. “Maybe we can go back to living like ordinary folks again.”

  “I guess Noble told you we might have trouble taking these cattle to Tucson.”

  “Bring ’em on. Right, Julio?”

  “Right, hombre. They’ve tried before.”

  “I personally hope we can go sell our cattle and come home without incident. But it’s their choice if they want to die.”

  The men all nodded in agreement as Cally jumped up and began to refill their coffee cups. Guthrey could tell she was upset as the trip drew closer but hid most of it.

  The next morning, all the hands gathered the steers and counted them in the first light. Then, planning to get the herd well on its way, all four men rode south to get them on the main road.

  Cally drove the buckboard ahead of the file. The steers, doing lots of bawling, came on behind her. The dogs nipped at the heels of a few errant ones and they soon lined out like they’d done it all their lives. Things were going all right for Guthrey’s part when Noble and Dan shook his hand and parted with them.

  They were soon over West Mountain and headed west. Conveyances, wagons, and even some people hiking on foot got back some from the main road to let the cattle go by. Their presence did not bother the herd.

  The first day they made good time. Midafternoon at the Bar 8, the foreman, Curly Bradley, let them put the herd in a large fenced pasture with graze in it and water in a tank. By dark the steers were lying down, chewing on their cud, and settled.

  Cally fixed a big meal, and Curly came down to eat with them. After the meal, he sat on his butt on the ground and hugged his knees. He wanted to know more about Guthrey’s plans when he became sheriff.

  “I have to get elected first.”

  “Aw, you’ll do that. Killion ain’t got a friend left in this county. I’ve had cattle and horses stolen from me, and he ain’t turned a tap to help me. Of course, up here on the road it’s lots worse than back in the hills. But he simply won’t do anything.”

  “I’m going to try to stop that. I’m going to get a force of good men to be my deputies and we will worry more about crime than how many cows you have.”

  “They told me that the county courthouse bunch don’t want to spend much money on deputies.”

  “They better get ready to,” Guthrey said. “I left the Texas Rangers ’cause we weren’t being paid. They’ve got money to pay him a big commission for tax collecting, we’ll use that.”

  Bradley smiled. “I’ll back you all the way.”

  After a while, Cally excused herself and went to her tent to sleep on a cot. Guthrey tossed his bedroll on the ground nearby to keep close in case anything happened. The night was uneventful. The next morning they had breakfast and headed out again.

  Bradley rode a few miles with them and quizzed Guthrey about his cattle deal.

  “I need to make some sales like this. I usually let Ike Clanton have my big steers to fill his army and Apache contracts. But I’ve never got that much for them.” Guthrey nodded and they shook hands.

  That day they passed the halfway point to Tucson, and in the afternoon Guthrey started looking for a good place to stop for the night. They found water for the herd in a wash, some good holes, and plenty of grazing. They planned on taking turns at riding herd through the night.

  When the tent was up, Cally cooked them supper. She made a big pot of coffee for the night herders and turned in. Guthrey watched her go in the tent and nodded to himself. It had been a long, hot day for her. He felt good that they were selling while the cattle had plenty of flesh. Without rain, the summer would be a tough one.

  By midafternoon of the next day, they were probably ten miles out of Tucson. They found another good camping spot and settled in for the night, the routine from the previous night running just as smoothly tonight.

  In the morning they moved on to the pasture. They reached it by the time the sun was overhead. When they reached his place, Gar came down and inspected the cattle, which were watering beside his windmill.

  “Good-looking cattle. You never lied about them. Michaels will sell lots of that kinda beef.”

  “They’ll do,” Guthrey said. “In two weeks or so I’ll be back here, or I’ll send someone, to pay you the rent and collect my money for them.”

  “Fine with me, Guthrey,” Gar said and went back to sit on his porch.

  After paying the two hands for their work, he drove Cally on to the dress shop. He noticed she wrinkled her nose a lot going into the city.

  “Sanitation isn’t too big a deal around here, is it?”

  “Whew,” she said. “I forgot how this place stinks so much. I have already seen two dead pigs lying beside the boardwalk, and one dead burro on an empty lot feeding the buzzards. And their outhouses smell like they’re cooking them.”

  He laughed. “Nice to live out in the country, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, very nice.”

  The dress took her breath away when the girls showed it to her. She looked close to tears. When she came out in the front room dressed in it to show him how well it fit, she was crying and sniffing. “Oh, Phil, you spent too much.”

  He shook his head. “You only go around once in these deals.”

  “But where will I ever wear it again?”

  “Any damn place that you want to.”

  That evening they camped on the river by themselves. She still wasn’t over the shock of the dress. In the morning, she made them breakfast and they headed home early. Halfway home, a tall bank of clouds showed on the southern horizon. They were dark, forbidding thunderstorms coming up from the Gulf of California. Monsoons were about to begin. Guthrey made the team trot and kept a wary eye on the storm.

  He decided they should stop at the next stage station and wait the weather out. The wind had picked up, and dust and sharp bits of sand were pelting them by the time they reached the outpost and he hurried her inside. The man who ran it stood on the porch and told them they were welcome. By then visibility was down to ten feet or so. Guthrey secured the horses with thunder making rapid-fire booms close by.

  The man who ran the station was a tall, thin man who wore a white shirt. He had an enlarged Adam’s apple and it bobbed up and down when he talked. “We sure needed rain, but not all this.”

  He was talking about the reddish mud that ran off the porch eaves. His short squaw wife held her hands over her ears and looked bug-eyed at him in the candlelight as heavy winds and driving rain rattled the small windows and the very building they were in. Guthrey and Cally sat in the back of the room and held hands. Hail pounded on the shake roof, and drips began to leak in the room. The woman went for empty tin cans to arrange under them. Then some men began stomping on the porch. They were cussing when they pushed open the door.

  In the dim light, Guthrey watched the big man come in first a
nd sling the water off his sodden hat. Then two more half-drowned, unshaven men followed him in, still cussing.

  “Hush up,” the big man said curtly to his companions. “There’s a white woman in here.”

  “Aw, hell, Curt, who gives a big damn? That damn rainstorm blew away my good hat that I paid ten bucks for.”

  Then Guthrey saw the ring on the leader’s left hand. A large ruby stone glinted in the candlelight when the man they called Curt sat down. Guthrey hoped that Cally had not seen it. But who were the other two? Hired guns, he guessed. But the raider and rapist was in the room not twenty feet from him. What backup would those others give him?

  “You got any whiskey?” The hatless one pounded his fist on the tabletop.

  The station man said he did.

  “By damn get us some cups. We’re thirsty, ain’t we, Curt?”

  “Yeah,” he said and turned his attention to Guthrey and Cally. “You two get caught here too?”

  Guthrey nodded. “We only beat it by a few minutes.”

  “I’ve seen her before, but I don’t know you.”

  “Guthrey’s my name.”

  The other two’s eyes flew open.

  “Why, he’s the—” Hatless said.

  “Shut up.” Curt cut him off.

  “But—”

  “I said shut up.”

  The protestor swallowed hard and nodded.

  “Get up,” Curt said to his men, holding his hands out from the table. He said something else to them. Guthrey decided it was “Keep your hands clear.” Both men took on a wide-eyed look as they obeyed the big man.

  “Go get our horses,” he ordered. His blue eyes in a hard stare never left Guthrey.

  “Aw, hell, it’s still raining out there.”

  “You heard what I said. Get them.” His voice still even, he eased himself up and slipped toward the door after the two wary men.

  He closed the door after their retreat and Guthrey heard one ask aloud, “Who was the sumbitch in there?”

  “That gawdamn Texas Ranger.”

  “Oh, hell—”

  “Oh my God, I thought we were both dead,” Cally whispered.

  “Easy. They ain’t gone yet.” Guthrey patted her leg for reassurance.

  “Mister, I don’t know who you are, but you put the God-fearing hell into them three,” the station man said, coming out of the kitchen with a shotgun in his hands. “You know them?”

  Guthrey shook his head and stood up. “I think he heard you break open that shotgun breech back there.”

  “I don’t know a thing about that. When I heard your name back there, I knew then you were the reformer, and I knew good and well them three sided with the crooked ring that runs this county.”

  “What’s Curt’s last name?”

  “Slegal.”

  “What does he do?”

  “Good question. He has a ranch south of Steward’s Crossing, but most of us think he holds up stages and burns people out for guys like Whitmore.” The man smiled, showing he was missing a tooth in the top row, and shook his head as if he still did not believe how the three men had left. “That bugger was sure not wanting any part of a shoot-out with you.”

  “That was the good part.” Guthrey worried more about how upset Cally was.

  At last he had a name for the ruby ring wearer: Curt Slegal.

  “You all right?” Guthrey asked Cally.

  “Yes, I’ll be fine.”

  But he could tell she had been taken aback by the entire episode. For his part he was glad they’d had no gunfight in the small station. A damn close call but while Slegal might rape women, he wanted no part of a gunfight in such close quarters with a man of reputation. It could have been a bloodbath. The situation had come within inches of exploding into that sort of thing.

  The sun was soon out and the storm had passed over them. Everything looked crystal clear when they came outside. The purple mountains showed every detail. Once dusty, the desert brush and cactus looked freshly washed. A pungent smell of creosote filled the cleared air. Cally dried the wagon seat with a towel while Guthrey checked the harness. Satisfied, he climbed on, winked at her, and drove off with his unsaddled horses tied on behind. She clung to his arm.

  “Now you know who he is, what will you do?” she asked.

  “I will need witnesses that will testify to a grand jury. They will not be easy to find. I am more interested in what the stage man said back there. He called these outlaws part of a crooked ring. How many others are involved?”

  “Yes, before I blamed it all on Whitmore. Now it sounds like there may be more to it.”

  “So did I. I thought Killion was out to make the most money. Use his deputies to find taxable cattle. But if all this is planned to allow the others to break the law for their purposes, then there is a ring involved. With all that talk about the county board not wanting to hire more lawmen, we are seeing others involved that run the list of the county administrators and others.”

  “I think you are getting close to exposing the whole lot of them.”

  He slapped the horses to make them hurry. “Could you quietly speak to some of his victims? I know the shock of asking an honest woman to testify about the fact they’ve been raped is going to be really hard. But we have to stop him.”

  She agreed. “I’ll try.”

  “I know someone who would not tell me his name. I’m going to confront her, find out why she wouldn’t tell it to me.”

  Cally frowned at him in disbelief. “And she knew it.”

  He nodded and still could not figure her reason. Curt might be more powerful than he thought.

  They reached the ranch long after sundown. He could see the signs that they’d had some rain there as well. Sometimes it only rained on the just and left the unjust without any. Not this time.

  Noble met them and after Guthrey and Cally had some food, the men left her to go to bed. Noble and Guthrey went down by the corral to talk more about the confrontation.

  “You know this man Slegal?” Guthrey asked him.

  “Not well.”

  “He’s the one who wears the ruby ring.”

  “I’ll be damned. I never saw him when he didn’t have gloves on.”

  “It’s damn sure chilling to see him wearing it and knowing what all the sumbitch has done.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “If I had the whole thing in my mind and knew how to stop it, I’d set out to do it. I was warned that even if we got more votes in the election they’d not count the ballots right. There’s a whole group of them that runs things around here.”

  “Whew, all this sounds damn complicated as hell to me.”

  “You ain’t alone, pard. Better get some sleep.”

  Noble agreed.

  Guthrey nodded to him as he stared at the North Star and Big Dipper. There had to be something he could do to expose the crooked ring. One big program to take over the county government and get this entire organization closed down. By himself that was impossible. He needed to talk to Judge Collier. But even he did not have the power to do all this, and if something did not happen, all this petition work would go down in flames and the so-called ring would remain in power.

  He’d also need to go talk to McCall and Brown in the morning about that very matter. Start there and work up. All the things that were happening needed to be taken in and considered. Maybe they had some ideas on handling things. In the morning he’d go down there. Knowing that Slegal was still on the loose made him more upset than all the rest of it.

  In less than two weeks, he and Cally would be married. All in the midst of this tornado of crime and underhanded activity sweeping the chaparral country. He found sleeping in his bedroll evaded him that night. Too many loose ends in his life.
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  TWENTY-ONE

  AROUND MIDMORNING, GUTHREY found Carl Brown at his farm, busy repairing a place in the corral that his Jersey bull had smashed apart. Brown was busy nailing up rough lumber. Guthrey stepped in and held up the other end of the board.

  “I can’t believe a two-year-old, seven-hundred-pound calf could do this much damage,” Brown said as he straightened to examine his work.

  “They can kill you too,” Guthrey added, recalling others’ past experiences with dairy bulls.

  “I know. They’re very dangerous. What can I do for you?”

  “Do you know a man named Slegal?”

  “He has a ranch east of here. He’s been spoken about as a troublemaker, but I know of no incidents with him in our community.”

  “The man, besides his terrorism activities, has raped a half dozen ranch wives and probably more.”

  “Oh no. How do you know that?”

  “He does it masked but wears a large ruby ring.”

  “What can we do about him?”

  “It will be hard to get many of these women to testify, but I am trying to find some who will.”

  Brown pushed his straw hat back on his head. “It will be hard to get them to do that. Testify in open court about a man raping them.”

  “In my investigating, a man who might know told me that Killion will count his votes and not our people.”

  “No, we will have plenty of witnesses there. And be sure the ballot boxes are not stuffed between the polling place and the county courthouse.”

  “It is beginning to look to me like there is a ring of officials besides Whitmore and Killion who are in on this deal.”

  “Sounds serious. Maybe we have not looked at the real depth of this?”

  “What if we interrogate some sub-officials about this business and tell them that if they don’t testify against the leaders they will be charged too?”