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Short Stories & Tall Tales
Lucifer’s Saddle
Tom Sheehan
He was not a gunfighter, not a killer, not a bank robber or prairie brigand, but he was as mean looking as a cornered peccary. When he stepped off the weekly stage in Cross Roads, Utah, the only passenger, a dozen people were waiting around to see and size up new arrivals. It was a game they played calling on insight, first impressions, internal likes and dislikes, guesswork, and open curiosity that had been engineered by the imaginative bartender at the Close Call Saloon, Shank Bellbin. None of those folks checking on the arrivals realized it, but it was Bellbin’s shot at increasing business at the saloon, drawing folks into discussions of newcomers right there in front of him as he spurred the discussions, fueled the differences, and kept pouring the drinks. A share of proceeds was his due.
From first sight, Jebediah Morgan Elmsworth was sure to increase business, the man who wore a Stetson so white it was brilliant, as if it had never collected dust, felt the ground, or knew grime. The hat, some folks offered, nearly shone.
But he had not been the only one to come into Cross Roads on this day.
There were two other known arrivals.
A stocky man, riding a paint, came to the backside of a small cabin on the outskirts of town, banged on the door, and was let in by a another man who looked like a brother would look … stocky, thick at neck and arms, eyes wide apart as though he had been frightened right from birth. Brows on them appeared as formidable ledges, shadowing those dark eyes. Over the deep-set eyes and the formidable brow, on the visitor, sat a hat looking like a left-over from a second hand sale. When either of them talked, diaphragms operated at lower levels and made note of a frightening power buried underneath all their talk. Their names were Clocksdale, Erwin and Mortimer Clocksdale; robbers, bandits, road agents, brigands, you name it and they had done it.
And not yet a day in jail for either one.
Mortimer Clocksdale was the new man in town.
The other newcomer to Cross Roads came on the distaff side.
Young, twentyish, looking like she’d been abused and left at the side of the road, she walked into the Close Call Saloon seeking work. She was dressed in near-rags, bruises on her face where the sun sat too long, knots in her brunette hair thick as barn rope. The bartender gave her short thrift, threatening to shove her out the door until Elmsworth, as chivalrous as any man could be in a saloon, and wearing the whitest hat, made way for her. He grabbed Bellbin by one arm, squeezing him until the bartender knew he was under-matched, and quickly offered to solve the problem judiciously.
“What say we settle this difference, stranger? I ain’t no hard man to get along with.” Bellbin’s sudden conciliatory maneuver made him feel off his general feed and decided he’d try to change the impression the stranger had marked of him already; get forward a bit, he would, a little pushy.
“I see you came in on the stage,” he said. “From what folks tell me, you had no saddle with you. That’s what I call real strange for a cowboy, no saddle. Did you lose your saddle in a card game or lose it to a road gang or what?” He was trying to get back the upper hand, if he ever had it, with the mean looking stranger whose hand was iron in the clutch, his height stretching into his hat’s whiteness.
“Where you from, anyway?” Bellbin shot out at him, as if some odd place would push this upstart back to unenviable roots.
He got his wish when the mouth under the white hat said, without a single qualm, “I’m from the heart of old Mexico where the gods go on their vacations.”
Bellbin, grinning widely, jumped at the response. “Ha, a Mex lover. A Spick lover. You won’t find any love around here.” His eyes bulged in his head, and his forehead came red as a flame in an instant.
“I know that,” the white hat said, “for sure, you’re not a lover … of anything.”
Without a defense of any sort, Bellbin held mute, waiting for the stranger to reply.
Elmsworth, holding lightly to the girl’s hand, giving her a sense of safety for the moment, replied to Bellbin with a voice as hard as his looks. “Lucifer took my saddle for his own, out there on the Crispin Brim. If you happen to see him, if he happens to come into town riding a saddle with JME burned onto it, I’m Jebediah Morgan Elmsworth, and that’d be my saddle.” His voice changed when he warned, “But don’t try getting it back for me; he’ll kill you soon as look at you.”
“Who’s this gent Lucifer you’re talking about?” Bellbin said, looking around the room as if he had uncovered something about the stranger. At least, he wanted to cut into the air of the saloon some kind of doubt about the man; get back at him some way.
Elmsworth looked surprised. “Don’t you know any scripture, mister? Lucifer is the Devil himself and he comes on with the Morning Star, drops in for a visit or goes on home like it’s the end of a long drive. When he wants a horse or saddle to move among people, he just takes what his hand touches, and no argument coming his way. All the kindred folk know about him up on the Crispin Brim, on the Mollycock, at Tevelas and from here back to the Big River and way off to Kentucky and other places where the Devil himself makes heavy work of fear.”
Bellbin wanted to put the stranger on the spot, and said, “No man’d take my horse or my saddle without a fight. That’s for damned sure.”
“You’re right there, mister, when you say ‘no man’ and ‘for damned sure.’ Be careful how you tread on your own words.”
It was Elmsworth’s reach for a double entendre. And he put a cushion of sorts into the situation by saying, “Now were you thinking about a job for the girl. From her looks, from her needs, and from apparently what someone has done to her, she needs a hand. Do you have such a thing? Is it in your power to do such a thing? In your control?”
Bellbin responded, “I never yet hired a newcomer to work here, a baby almost. It wouldn’t go for either of us.” He shook his head. “It just wouldn’t work. The traffic is too heavy, too rough.”
From a corner table, one older man stood up and said, “I’ll get the kid a job, mister. You bring her with you and follow me. Don’t let her work here ‘cause Bellbin’s right. It wouldn’t work out here, not with the crowd that comes in here on some days like they’re half exploded firecrackers.”
His name was Harry Butler, and he was the coffin maker, funeral director and, as he laughingly called himself, “The last man on the totem pole in Cross Roads.” He would only admit much later on that he was not so kindly an old man, but had been spurred by fate, association, or “a sudden sense of some piece of good” that overwhelmed him.
Butler qualified his lead. “I can’t think of any place in town where the kid can get a decent break in life other than where I’ll show you. At least she’ll get her chance. It’s no great shucks, but it’ll do. Maggie’s a special lot in herself. You’ll see.” He led them down the street of the town to a building with two floors and several windows on each floor.
The threesome entered Maggie Glendenning’s boarding house at the edge of town but on the main street. The sign over the front door said, “Maggie’s Place Cheap.”
The subsequent discussion took place between the two women, and when it was over, the girl, Dora Glasgow, still in her torn dress, still looking as if she had been beaten up by some animal of a man, had a job at the rooming house … and a room, small, at the back of the building, but on the second floor, away from terror, threats, or sudden intrusions in her life.
Dora thanked Elmsworth, her head hanging down, but a new light finding a place in her eyes. “Thank you for sticking up for me. I needed it and won’t forget it.” She held his hand for a long time, afraid to look at him before she went off to get cleaned up, have a dress handed to her by Maggie Glendenning, fix her hair, and go to work.
Maggie said to Elmsworth, “You got to be someone special, Jebediah. The girl told me everything, as Harry did. He’s a roomer here. And instead of you hanging your lovely Stetson in the hotel, I’ve got a room here for you. Are you staying long?” Her eyes showed some measure beyond curiosity, beyond business itself.
She was mid-thirties, clinging to good looks under blonde hair and eyes as pale green as Elmsworth had seen in a long time, and nowhere this side of the big river. He wondered if Harry Butler had seen the same things he had, the ever half-caught smile that lingered always, a shine in her hair that spoke of care, and the way her thin waist flared to an eye-catching span.
Both Maggie and Elmsworth, trail warriors in more than one aspect, were aware of the crackle in the air, the edge of hunger, and the possible resolve of interests. Each one let loose a full smile, as though a pact, unsought, unseen, had been sealed.
From the doorway, not seen, Dora Glasgow understood what she had just seen between a hard looking man in a nice hat and a soft looking woman wearing an endless smile. For a few bare moments in her recent history, she felt a small delight rushing through her veins, saying something all the way.
Elmsworth was unhurried in his response to Maggie’s question, enjoying the new sensation working him. “I’ll stay to make sure the girl gets a decent start, gets on her way. There’s something special about her. I noticed it right off in spite of her dress, her condition. Meanness, for sure, had set itself on her. I don’t take to that kind of treatment of women, no woman. The beginning here was not too good for her until things got changed. And I thank you for helping. You’re special, too.”
Maggie enjoyed his voice and his choice of words despite his hard looks. She knew what his heart was like.
Elmsworth stashed his gear in the corner room she showed him, with two windows, one at each side, a decent look out on the town from one window and from the other he could see the peaks of the High Uintas Range at attention in the distance. He knew firsthand the far places such as Red Knob and Squaw Top and the endless mystery that was No-Man’s Knob. The views charmed him with their differences.
It was a few days later when Elmsworth saw a big man, as mean looking as he himself appeared to some people, walk into the general store. From the description Dora Glasgow had given him, he knew this man was her tormentor. Black hat down over eyes that must be set so deep in his head they could touch the back of his brain; a slant to a bulging body reeking of power; and the promise of giving a good horse a hard ride every time up.
He studied the horse tethered at the store rail from the blacksmith’s shop where he had just had a shoe repaired on his horse. The roll of a whip curled black as a dead-aim bore on the pommel almost danced its flight for him. He imagined a flash of the whip, the deadly snap and curl at a target, the tearing and rending as it landed, saw sun-red blood let free. He stiffened as he pictured, with eyes closed for a fraction of a second, the girl’s red dress torn by the lashes.
A change came over him, somewhere in the order of retribution upon cruelty and evil. It built quickly.
He borrowed a pair of tongs from the blacksmith, took a small piece of formed metal from his vest pocket, heated it in the fire, walked out and put a small brand on the man’s saddle. He spit on the burn to cool it off, and walked away as the miniature brand of JME cooled on the right side of the man’s saddle, not visible from where he’d mount the horse … if he was to mount that horse again.
At the same time Dora, running errands with Maggie who had gone off to another shop, was alone and stopped dead in her tracks when the big man came out of the door directly across the street from her, the same man Elmsworth had recognized.
Dora could not move another step, feeling the welts coming down on her back, this man’s arm lashing out at her, hands tearing at her dress. A rush of the blows and anger and abuse pounded through her body. She became faint and knew she was going to the ground once more. Those pains rushed doubly back on her, the recall full and as livid as the original blows.
She felt it all again when the man looked up to see her, grinned wildly and then lasciviously, and started toward her.
In the middle of the dusty road in Cross Roads, Utah, Dora Glasgow screamed as her knees hit the ground, old pains caught up anew, both knees jabbed by hard impact, her breath stuffed up in her chest as she waited for those hands to grab her again, waited for the sound of the whip.
The man, though, did not rush at her. Instead, spinning about at the edge of the road, he yelled back into the store, “Hey, Paul, didn’t I tell you my crazy, run-off wife was around here someplace. Well, here she is, her all messed up in that crazy mind of hers, but someone’s dressed her up for me. C’mon out here, Paul, and take a look at a crazy lady in a new dress. Ain’t this just perty?”
His laughter hung in the air, the meanness and intent of it almost visible to the eye.
Paul came to the door of his establishment to answer the call, to see what was going on out there that had also been accompanied by some women screaming.
In the middle of the road, kneeling, he saw a woman in a red dress caught up in painful sobs, and another woman, Maggie Glendenning just up in front of the undertaker’s, screaming, not in pain, but calling for someone he did not know … Jeb Elmsworth. Paulie had not even heard the name before. But Maggie was screaming out the name: “Jeb, Jeb, where are you? Jeb, Jeb, where are you?”
It was as though Mortimer Clocksdale did not hear Maggie yelling, as he again yelled at the storekeeper; “Ain’t that some kind of a messy wife, half gone off somewhere and half of her screamin’ here in the middle of the street? Got to teach that woman of mine a lesson for runnin’ off on me. Got to beat her back to her own bed.”
He spun about and headed for his horse, reached up and grasped the roll of the whip and snapped it in the air. The whip slashed and cracked there loudly and he yelled out, “Nobody comes in between a man and his wife. Nobody in this town or any other town.”
The sound was deadly as the whip snapped again and again, as though the man wanted to show off his expertise with it, or his cruelty just getting up to speed.
Dora Glasgow continued to sob in the middle of the street in her new red dress, the sun lighting on her as though she was on stage.
Maggie Glendenning continued to call Jeb Elmsworth until she spotted him coming down the middle of the street, tall as any man she had ever seen in his near-pure white hat, still untrammeled. He walked slowly, steadily, guns holstered on his hips. Maggie knew she was looking at a hero, one way or the other.
Clocksdale continued to snap the whip. “You’re gettin’ on back to your proper bed, lady, and in one damned hurry or I’ll beat the skin off’n your back just like I did it last time.”
The whip snapped again. The crack of it was like a rifle shot.
Paulie looked about to see if someone had run off to get the sheriff. All he saw moving was a tall, mean looking man coming down the center of the road, in no great hurry, the sun bouncing off his Stetson.
Clocksdale took a few steps toward Dora, ready to snap the whip, when a deep voice said, “Hey, you with the whip.” He didn’t believe he was hearing those words. He turned to look where they had come from.
“Yah, you with the whip, woman beater. Put that whip down or I’ll take it to you.”
A tall man, armed, stony-faced, was coming down the street. He looked to be 7 feet tall, a white Stetson on his head making him taller than any of the horses tied at the rails along the street.
“Mind your own business,” Clocksdale said. “My woman ran off on me and I’m takin’ her home. Don’t get in my way or you’ll get what for. No man comes between a man and his wife. Cut out now.”
There came a solemn reply. “She’s not your wife. She’s not married. She never was married. She works for Maggie at her place. And she’s been beat to hell before by some wild ass animal which I now know was you. It stops here.”
Clocksdale was now facing Elmsworth straight on, the whip still in his hand. He was thinking if he had to use his gun, he’d have to let go of the whip. Else he’d have to get closer. He stepped toward the stranger who had challenged him.
Dora was still sobbing, Maggie was staring at the whip in Clocksdale’s hand, afraid of what it would snap at next. The two men were 40 or 50 feet apart, the dust from a sudden breeze was rising in small swirls from the road, the sun filtering through the dust, the grocer stock still at his door, the rest of the town stiff in its attention.
The distance had closed down, Elmsworth still estimating the variables.
“Put the whip down.” Elmsworth had stopped, figuring he was just out of whip’s reach, about 30 feet away from Clocksdale. He had included in his estimate the near three feet of Clocksdale’s arm, and had remembered the number of coils in the whip as it sat on Clocksdale’s saddle, moving numbers in his mind.
“Come take it,” Clocksdale threw back at him, burning inside to cut the man’s face, slash at his eyes, cut his hands before he could draw a weapon. The man was as tall as any man he’d ever seen, his face like it had been cut out of stone. The man’s eyes set on him like a target looking back and his hand hung below his holster on his right side like an idled oar in a boat. Could such long arm, such distant hand, be fast to his weapons?
It had come down to that: he wondered if his brother was close by.
And he’d forgotten Dora Glasgow by this time.
It was now or never. He snapped the whip out and the stranger making crazy demands on him threw up his right arm and the whip caught it as it wrapped around the forearm.
“Got ‘im now,” thought Clocksdale, as he felt the pull of the whip and let go the now cumbersome handle.
But he was surprised. At the exact moment he went for his gun, the tall stranger flashed his left hand across his waist.
“Cross draw,” Clocksdale said in amazement as his own gun hand came up and the tall stranger had his pistol leveled at him, the whip handle still flying through the air. He felt the bullet hit him in the chest, spin him sideways, and a second shot take the gun right out of his hand.
With the judge in town, plenty of witnesses on hand, Dora Glasgow making her statement in front of the judge, the jury and the prisoner, Clocksdale was sentenced to the penitentiary for a long stay. And before court was let out the sheriff made a private statement to Clocksdale’s brother who left town before sunset, not even bothering to take his brother’s horse and saddle.
Dora Glasgow eventually married a rancher and found a good life. Maggie Glendenning bought the saddle marked JME from the sheriff who never noticed the small brand on one side of the saddle, and she kept it as a token of good luck in spite of what Elmsworth had called it.
Elmsworth, for that matter, had never taken one meal at Maggie’s Place at her table, all his meals brought to his room, or left there when he was away from the place.
The one time he sat at the table was when Maggie gave a small dinner in honor of Dora’s first child, a boy named John.
That day, Elmsworth sat at the table, his hat hanging on a nail in the hallway between the dinner table and the kitchen.
Maggie took the gleaming white hat into the kitchen on one of her trips back and forth, marveled at its pure whiteness after all the time, saw the marking on the inner sweat band, where the cleanly burned letters, as if just placed there the day before yesterday, or sooner, spelled Emanymsaw Ref. She memorized it, thinking it was some kind of Mexican or Spanish saying most likely, out of his hidden past “where the gods went on vacation.” It was much later, in the dark of a long and majestic night, her heart filled with him, that she saw the white light, knowing what had been turned over in her life, as well as his.
Jebediah Morgan Elmsworth, once a stranger in town, just off the stage, had become a town man, the next sheriff, and had accepted all the favors that Maggie Glendenning sent his way, including eventual marriage a few years later, Maggie well aware all the while that he was very quick in some actions and took slightly less than forever on others, much to her endless satisfaction.
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