Hard Twisted (20 page)

What I don't understand is you trustin these people with your sheep.

Mike rose and lifted the coffeepot from the fire and topped the mugs all around.

Come on, Johnny Rae. Let's us girls powder our noses.

Lottie followed the slender woman into the bullpen, then through a back passage to the wareroom, then up the narrow stairs. A kerosene lantern burned in the kitchen, and Mike filled the coffeepot from a pitcher.

I've been wanting to thank you for all your help today. It's been nice having a woman around the place.

Yes, ma'am.

Mike turned to face her. You're not much of a talker, are you?

Lottie shrugged.

That's all right. I'm not either. Not really, anyway. It's been my experience that the more a woman talks, the less she seems to say.

Lottie smiled. Yes, ma'am.

How long have you and Jimmy been married?

I don't know. A few months, I reckon. Seems like longer.

Mike nodded. Not that it's any of my business, but isn't he a little old for you? Harry and I thought you two were Mormons at first, but...

Lottie looked at her with no expression at all.

Like I said. None of my business.

Mike wiped her hands on the apron that hung by the basin, and she lifted the pot by its handle.

We'd best be getting back.

Twenty-three years.

The woman stopped.

That's how much older. I figured it from papers I seen.

Mike set down the kettle.

Are you happy, Johnny Rae? That's the only thing that matters. When I followed Harry out here, my family all said I was crazy. But they didn't know Harry, and they didn't know how I felt about him. She touched the girl's cheek with her long and slender fingers. Does Jimmy make you happy?

Lottie turned to the window. To the scissored cameo of two men paired by a fire, black shapes brightly haloed against a larger backdrop of nothingness.

He may not always act like it, but Jimmy needs me.

That may be, but you didn't answer my question.

Lottie faced the woman. Yes, ma'am. She nodded once. I guess he makes me happy. Some of the time, anyways.

Lottie woke to the creak of a buckboard wagon.

She slid from her cot and crossed the empty tent to the door in time to see a gray-haired Indian seated high on the springseat behind one of the Appaloosa horses. In the bed behind him was a canvas tarp lashed to the gunwales with lengths of baling twine, and behind that stood the second Appaloosa haltered and half-hitched to the back of the rig, all of them standing in near relief in the cool light of dawn.

The Indian sat with his head turned toward the trading post. He raised a hand, and Goulding in the doorway responded in kind. Palmer stood beside the taller man, and when the wagon
rolled and tilted forth into the crossroads, the two men turned and disappeared inside.

They were seated at the upstairs table when Lottie entered from the stairwell. Mike rose and smiled and crossed to the kitchen to fetch a plate from the warmer.

Morning, honey. I hope you like pancakes.

Goulding watched the girl eat. Palmer smoked, his eyes out the window. When Mike returned, Palmer stubbed his cigarette onto his breakfast plate and pushed it away.

Well. We could look in on 'em at least. If that would ease your mind any.

Goulding nodded, still watching the girl. I'd be obliged.

If this Oliver is as hard as you make him out, there could be trouble.

Goulding frowned. I don't mean to give the wrong impression. Bill Oliver is a fair man. A tough man, but fair. If they find water, and if they stay out of John's Canyon, there shouldn't be cause for trouble.

And if there's no water?

Goulding sipped his coffee and set the mug down on the table.

Let me tell you a story about Bill Oliver. He must be pushing seventy-five now, but he was sheriff in these parts for a good many years.

Wait a minute. His wife name of Mary Jane?

You know her?

Palmer glanced at Lottie. We met her one time in Blanding.

Goulding nodded. Well, back in nineteen and twenty-three, they had a spot of Indian trouble hereabouts. The Posey War, some call it now. The last Indian war in the West.

War, Mike snorted, clearing Palmer's plate. Foolishness is what I call it.

It all got started when a couple of Ute kids name of Sanup's boy and Joe Bishop's little boy got into a fracas at a sheep camp. Killed some sheep, set a bridge on fire. That sort of thing.

Mike returned and took her seat at the table as Lottie chewed and listened.

Anyways, Oliver arrested both boys and brought 'em to stand trial up in Blanding. And old Posey, he come into town with some of his braves to keep an eye on the proceedings, him being head troublemaker and all. There weren't no love lost between Posey and them Mormons, I can tell you that. It was a powder keg is what it was.

Mike snorted again.

The trial was held in the basement of the old schoolhouse there. Then, at the lunchtime recess, all the good Mormons went home to break bread with their families, leaving Oliver in charge of the two prisoners and a crowd of hostile Indians. Which, if you'd ever met Bill Oliver, you'd have to say was about a fair fight.

If he's seventy-five now, he couldn't have been no spring chicken in '23.

Goulding grunted. Like I said, a fair fight. Anyways, Joe Bishop's boy had him some kind of wooden crutch, and just as Oliver was mounting up outside the schoolhouse, why, he went ahead and bashed Oliver with the crutch and grabbed for Oliver's gun.

Palmer grinned and leaned back in his seat. No shit.

One of two things happened next, depending on who's doing the telling. Either Joe's boy got the gun and pulled the trigger on
Oliver, or Oliver squeezed on the prisoner before losing his gun. Whichever it was, the gun jammed. So Joe's boy hopped onto a little racing pony that Posey's boy Jess just happened to have saddled up and waiting, and off he went with Oliver in pursuit. Only now Joe's boy got the gun to working again, and he turned and shot Oliver's horse out from under him.

What about that other boy?

Sanup's boy, he took off with Posey. They run straight to Westwater and warned the other Utes to get ready for a shooting match. Well, sir, that started a stampede for high ground, with a posse on their tail and old Posey fighting a rearguard with his thirty-aught-six Springfield rifle.

Palmer shook his head. Sounds like a goddamn jackpot.

That night in Blanding, all the good Mormons turned out with their torches and pitchforks. Then the next day, while another posse set out to scout for Posey, Bill Oliver had the bright idea of rounding up every Ute man, woman, and child he could find and holding them hostage until Posey surrendered. And that's what he done. First in the schoolhouse, then they built a big stockade out of barbwire, smack in the middle of town. He held over eighty prisoners under armed guard for nearly a month.

I guess he didn't take kindly to havin his horse shot.

Goulding sipped his coffee. By now the whole area was crawling with Mormon rifles. Not to mention U.S. marshals, and newspapermen, and every crackpot vigilante in riding distance of the Four Corners. Hell, there was even talk of bringing in airplanes with machine guns.

Mike took her husband's plate and carried it to the kitchen. Like I said, plain foolishness.

So what all finally happened?

Well, let's see. Joe Bishop's boy got shot dead. Some say it was the posse, and some say it was Posey himself, upset over him starting all the ruckus. The rest of the Utes eventually surrendered and went into the stockade. It wasn't for a month or so that they finally found old Posey's body, hid up in a cave. Turns out he'd been shot on day one, only nobody knew it until a federal marshal discovered the body. Only then did they let them other ones loose.

Palmer lit another smoke. And what about Oliver?

Oh, he retired, eventually. Went back to his cattle. Him and his boy Harrison run their herd out there in John's Canyon. Near as I can tell, the years haven't mellowed him one bit. He sees sheep in that canyon, someone's liable to get himself ass-kicked. Or worse. He's not a small man.

Them Injuns of yours know to give him a wide berth?

Goulding grunted. They been warned. There ought not be a problem this time of year, since that there is winter range for cattle. He sighed, pushing away from the table. But come September, things could get mighty interesting.

They set out after breakfast, riding double and following the sheep track northbound out of the valley. In late afternoon they met the Knee brothers south of the Mexican Hat bridge. Paul, the younger, reined his horse and crossed his hands on the pommel.

We miss any horse racin yesterday?

Afraid you did. Palmer nodded toward the distant monuments. And a chicken slaughter to boot.

The boy turned to his brother. You hear that? Shit.

Harry said to say if you really want beer with your pie, then you'd best pick it up at Spencer's.

The boy again looked to his brother, and his brother looked over his shoulder to the little mud trading post, small across the river.

Up to you.

Shit, the boy said. I ain't about to start goin backwards.

The next rider they met, miles beyond the river, was the old Indian drayman on the Appaloosa saddle horse. They saw him from afar, where a wagon track split off from the Bluff road. Palmer stopped and nodded at his approach, and the old man nodded in reply but did not stop and continued clopping down the road toward Mexican Hat without ever once looking back.

The track from which he'd come was narrow and rutted by rains long past, and it meandered for miles through a surreal landscape of jagged spires and sandstone buttes. They could tell where the flock had bedded by the buckbrush and black sage, stripped and trampled, and by the telltale remnants of wool clinging like Spanish moss to the bare and broken branches.

Not until dusk did they finally catch sight of the sheep. Palmer walked the bay horse onto a rise and studied the spectacle of the whole flock fanned and tinted pink by the churning dust that hung roseate in the fading sunset.

The buckboard was nowhere in sight. The drovers were a man and woman afoot, moving the flock westward with a dog zigging and heeling the wandering bunchquitters.

Palmer leaned and spat. I reckon Shitface got enough exercise for today.

Lottie rested her head on the flat between Palmer's shoulders. What're we doin out here, anyways?

He fished a smoke from his shirt pocket and cupped it and
bent into the flame. When he'd straightened again, the flock had faded farther into the distance.

I don't know about you, but I ain't seen grass enough to feed a milk cow in these parts, let alone a sign of water.

So?

So I got me a feelin them dumb sonsobitches is already headed for that canyon.

Palmer lifted his leg over the pommel and dropped lightly to the ground. He mouthed the smoke and reached for Lottie to ease her off the bedrolls. They stood together and stretched beside the streaked and breathing horse.

I think it's best we stick around awhile. Ain't no tellin what harm might come to them poor souls in country such as this. He slapped the horse's flank. And if somethin did happen, who would there be to look after all them hungry sheep?

On the night of the following day Palmer rose from their fire and crossed to his soogan and felt there for something unseen. They had spent the day mounted, trailing the flock westward at a distance in the shadow of Cedar Mesa through shad scale and beaten greasewood, then along a narrow roadway that wound through boulders big as houses, and then through a gated bottleneck where the trailside fell away to the dizzying cliffs of the San Juan River gorge. Farther on, the canyon had opened onto a sea of summer grasses—grama and galetta, Indian ricegrass and Western wheatgrass—newly parted by the trampled path that led them, in the cool of late afternoon, to the waters of a caprock pool.

Now, some six hours later, Palmer's shadow passed across the
rockface as he moved to where the horse was hobbled, and Lottie heard beyond the firelight the creak and clink of the saddle.

Clint?

He didn't answer. She stood and moved into the blackness and there was startled by the sudden advent of horse and rider stepping toward her as from some darker place beyond.

What're you doin at this hour?

He stopped the horse in a stance defined by the play of firelight on spur and buckled bridle.

I'll be a whet. You go on to bed.

You'll break your neck in this pitch, she told him, but he was already moving, down the clattering scree to the canyon floor below.

She retired to the fire, and long after the embers had died, to her bedroll. She listened, wide-eyed at first, to the faint bleating of sheep and the soft tinkle of distant bellwethers giving way to the closer nightsounds of coyote and owl. She closed her eyes to listen, and then, after a time, to sleep.

At the sound of the first gunshot, she sat upright. The moon was newly risen, and it bathed the canyon floor in a wan and bone-colored light. She stood. From the edge of the escarpment she could make out the shape of an old line shack, but nothing else beyond. Not horseman nor buckboard wagon nor the night camp of the Indian drovers.

The second gunshot was met by the barking of the sheepdog, and at the third gunshot, the barking stopped.

BY MR. PHARR
: You were how old when you learned you were pregnant?

A
: Thirteen.

Q
: Your mother had died when you were three years old?

A
: Yes, sir.

Q
: You were raised by men? No women with whom to discuss matters such as pregnancy or childbirth?

BY MR. HARTWELL
: Leading.

THE COURT
: Overruled.