|
Short Stories & Tall Tales
Pike
Tom Sheehan
Pike rode into Shirley’s Glow almost silently, hoof beats muffled by road dust a month old without rain. The town was dark all over and then a light went on in one building. It was the sheriff’s office and the jail. He saw the bars lined on the windows when the lamp was lit, and knew he had one of the killers, a deputy or the sheriff himself. The late rider’s horse, in the light of one window, was tied off on the side of the jail. The bay snickered once, snorted, and drank from a trough after the hard ride from the Cosgrove settlement in the hills, where all the miners and their families had been killed.
Even before all of this happened, Shattuck wanted answers, action, about all the troubles taking place around Shirley’s Glow, at its end of the Rocky Mountains. The sooner Pike got to all of it, the better off everybody would be … except the dead back there at the mining settlement.
The other killers would become known, probably in quick time. They’d be exposed or allowed to expose themselves. Pike was sure of that, could see it coming. Reining his mount around, he went down between two buildings, came out on the back side of town and then set the spurs. He headed back to where he had come from, from where he had trailed the four riders. He had stayed with this one man in the dark who appeared to be heading to town, the others drifting off to ranches, or unknown sites along the way. In town he’d be able to mark the man a lot easier than out on the trail or on a ranch with many hands. Now it was partly done. The others would rejoin somewhere along the line, but he thought it would be in town. Town was a draw for anyone riding a horse, curing a thirst.
The anger still boiled in him. As marshal of the territory, Pike had seen some horrific scenes of death, the pure indecency of them staying with him for weeks on end, until another case, another chase, drew on all his energies. He had not been to this end of the state in a couple of years.
Getting back to the site of the latest crime before dawn was important to him, before strangers, or even friends of the dead, would come on the scene and mess it up. He needed to see what the four riders he had followed had left behind, what they had taken if it could be determined.
It was not the first of such crimes locally and, unless he put a stop to it, there’d be more. The note, all the way from the governor, his former commander in the Great War, simply said: “Pike, Get to Shirley’s Glow area and stop the murders. They bother me heavily. Shattuck.”
The note, tightly wrapped and sealed with wax, was placed directly in his hands by a rider who looked exhausted and whose horse looked like it’d been on a 3-day sprint. Pike, at the hitch rail in front of The Dutchman’s Saloon in Foster City, opened the note on the spot after he asked the rider who it was from, but the rider shook his head that he didn’t know or wouldn’t say and tossed his reins to a stable boy and leaned into the saloon.
Pike determined, from that reaction, that the note was from Shattuck. Once before he had received a note from the governor, with no details attached, no strings either. Shattuck, he knew, trusted him. And he trusted Shattuck. Where they had been together gave them a connection few men could match. And then they’d have to have been comrades in arms, under flag, under fire, and surviving to remember. Pike was enriched by all his memories, and associations. He had brought them to his appointment as marshal, that too coming out of the dark as he worked as foreman at a ranch in Wyoming.
The note from the original assignment was also simple: “By appointment from this office and of this date, Trenton George Pike is chief marshal of the state reporting to me. Owen Shattuck, Governor.”
The signature was Shattuck’s no-nonsense straight-out script, a simple, hard-signed name, almost printed, the way a school child’s hand might have scribed it, but no childish play was intended, not for the warrior. Nor were there any special provisions added or any notes of qualification. Pike was it. They both knew it, the man up top and the man here below. Pike remembered that Shattuck signed his name the same, simple way when signing a campaign move, sending hundreds of men into battle. No flourish. No pausing. No holding back. From the simplest of actions the two had profound respect for each other.
Pike had not seen Shattuck for a dozen years, separate journeys taking them after the war, first the hospitals, then the trails leading elsewhere: politics and the wide open range, marriage and bachelorhood, acclaim and near anonymity. Where Shattuck dined on fancy prepared meals in fine restaurants and hotels in his political climb, Pike ate sourdough bullets, chuckwagon chicken, beef and bison steaks, stews made from calf parts, Pecos strawberries and coffee that was bred on lead it seemed. They were two men whose paths would only meet in the Great Beyond, or so it seemed.
For those three years of the war, Pike had been with heroes. He knew their cut and the swagger when things were quiet, their swagger and guts when it was not quiet and life was on the line. Shattuck he knew, from too many combat sites, too many casualties, was one of them, and they leaned totally on each other. Then. Now. Forever. It was the unsaid code that bound them.
Once, just before battle, Shattuck had said, “Pike, when Hell comes, we’ll know our way around.”
Pike never forgot those words of his commander, or the scenes of Pickett’s Charge at Cemetery Hill and the carnage that Gettysburg carried ever after, the lines of wounded and maimed men afterward going for miles in both directions. On a number of daring assignments from Shattuck, Pike had gone into enemy territory to get a true picture of results, possible new logistics, and future plans.
Thinking back over the last few days, Pike figured he had seen Hell again.
The scene at the settlement was almost as bad as any he had seen in the war. This time children were victims, along with their parents, and their grandparents, too, it looked, as he saw the old and the young just before the vultures sighted down on them, sliding across the sky as though an aerial road sign had been put out. Every living person in the small settlement had been killed. Assassinated. Shot in the back. In the head. Directly in the heart as they knelt on the ground.
Pike had thrown up his meager breakfast at the sight of murdered children. Mounted, he kept shivering. His horse sensed the difference, he was sure, the bond strong enough to do so as he trailed obvious tracks leading away from the mining settlement. Providence and Shattuck had sent him on this assignment.
He spurred his mount along the trail away from the mining settlement, remembering all he had seen, the sights he realized would follow him until the atrocities were resolved, justice enacted … or revenge, if it came to Hell abiding again.
The small semi-official assay office, in the cabin of one of the folk, had been wrecked. All records destroyed by fire. To Pike it pointed to a monumental find of ore from one of the local mines. Avaricious and deadly men had banded for gain and used terror to forge their ways. Shattuck’s reserve within the note had said it all.
Pike had just happened on the scene on his way to Shirley’s Glow. Other situations had spurred the governor. They may not have been as bad as the one Pike found by chance. But Shattuck had sent him, instead of a troop of soldiers who’d get lost among themselves and necessary logistics control, and the constraints of divided command decisions. No matter the war or the battle, actions were created by human decisions. If one side was caught in tactical error, the other side would gain. Here, near Shirley’s Glow, if Pike made tactical errors, innocent people would suffer.
And Shattuck had made a command decision, as the governor of the state newly admitted to the Union, formerly the Territory of Colorado.
Back at the mining settlement, Pike halted two teamsters from touching anything. They had arrived just before Pike and were aghast at the sight.
Pike said, “You are now working for me, as a burial crew. We have to get these people into the ground, keep them away from the animals, and say some words over them. The state will pay you for your efforts.”
The teamsters had no problem with Pike’s directions. And a lone passing rider, on his way to Shirley’s Glow, was told by Pike to telegraph the governor, advising him of the newest situation, and informing him that Pike had a good idea about the identity of one of the killers.
Pike would hold that partial identity in his kit bag until the right time.
With the burials completed, Pike rode back to Shirley’s Glow to see what would play out in the aftermath of the murders and the destruction of the assay office and all records therein. He was curious as to how the sheriff or the deputy he had tracked the night before would move with information obtained in the raid.
To wet his throat after a quick ride, and to touch the tempo of Shirley’s Glow, Pike sauntered into the lone saloon in town, The Prairie Dog Saloon. More than a dozen men of thirst were in the bar, gathered in three distinct cocoons of sorts, those leaning heavily on the bar, and two groups clustered at tables at opposite ends of the room, as if the division was more than social, more than caste.
At one table, to Pike’s right, sat four men, one of them wearing the badge of a deputy, and three ordinary cowpokes by their looks. Their talk was low and inaudible to others in the room, and to Pike who strained to catch a few key phrases if he could. The badge wearer had looked at Pike as he entered, found him interesting and leaned in to say something to his tablemates.
At the other end of the room, three men were loud and noisy, showing their drink, not at all careful of who heard what from them. Pike discounted them as of no interest as well as five men leaning on the bar, presenting themselves as too heavy for action, too steeped in the drink for reaction, too separate for being organized.
Pike ordered a beer and a shot at the right hand end on the bar, The bartender set him up and said, “Best of the day to you, and enjoy. The beer’s cool for a change. Do you a world of good after a long ride. You new in town?” He smiled a smile of welcome, a decent enough smile, and Pike relaxed with him at his back as he swung around to view the room, and the table of men near him.
They were very interesting. Especially the one wearing the badge. Pike wished he could see him riding his horse, and then he’d have him pegged. The bay that he’d recognize was not at the saloon hitch rail. Then it hit Pike that the jail was so close, the man could have walked over if his horse wasn’t at the rail. If any horse at the rail was his, the sheriff had to be Pike’s man.
He’d find out in due time.
Pike turned around and said to the bartender, “New in town is right. Never been here before.” He was watching the room in the mirror behind the bar. The barkeep noted his eyes, smiled again, and said, “It’s generally been a nice little town, but some action going on local that’s stirring up some people.” His stressed word was “some.”
“Like what kind of action?”
“Been some murders lately, and pretty bad for some folks. Hate that kind of stuff. A new town has a hard time getting settled good and proper.” He sounded like a recruiter when he added, “You want to drop roots?” He looked at the table behind Pike and then back at Pike. In his eyes was a kind of recognition that Pike found interesting, somewhat familiar.
Pike smiled at him, and the man said, “I read military with you, my man. Your cut makes it. I’ve seen it before.” His hand touched his left ear and Pike saw the scar where a minie ball must have done some damage, but not deep enough to kill.
“Where at?” Pike said. “What’s your name?”
“Ben Smalley, used to be Sergeant. I walked away from Cemetery Ridge, luck on my side, heading south, heading home.” Scenes must have filled space behind his eyes, faces of lost comrades, vistas wide as life, as if memory was triggered back through the years. He stood a big man, wide across the shoulders, a rugged jaw, and he shivered at some piece of memory his customer had loosened.
Pike felt the kinship in the air. He said, “I probably saw you on the way. I was watching for a while. From a road that was split three ways by two barns. I was on the hill to the left watching the evacuation.” His gaze was level, even, touched by no malice, and his voice was soft with age and consideration.
The barkeep smiled at the use of the word “evacuation.” He poured another beer for Pike, who nodded in salute. Pike knew he had an ally, even from the other side of the war.
So he leaned over and said, “Who’s wearing the badge.” He twisted his head lightly, all the time looking in the mirror behind the bar, seeing the badge wearer looking at him, trying to decide who he was, what he was doing here in Shirley’s Glow.
“That’s Jack Stringer, deputy to Sheriff Amos Folstead. Don’t give him any edges. I don’t much cotton to bullies or overstuffed animals.” His eyes carried a sense of honesty coupled with mild alarm, like an alert sentry of human conditions.
“Not my intention,” Pike replied, still looking in the mirror under the brim of his gray Stetson. His gray eyes melded with the brim. “Thanks for the heads up.”
A voice from the other table, not where the deputy Jack Stringer sat, said, “I don’t think he found gold. Not at all, but I’m mighty suspicious it was silver, and a big strike. It was Choker’s kid said to my nephew his pa had found somethin’ shiny up there. That was near a week past and we ain’t heard nothin’ yet. I’m bettin’ my last coin he hit somethin’ good. Choker’s luck’s due for changin’.”
The men at that table had obviously not heard the late news about the Cosgrove settlement and were waiting for other news. In the mirror Pike saw Jack Stringer lean in over the table and talk to the three men sitting with him.
Pike leaned in to Ben Smalley and said, “Who’re the others with him? Where do they work, if they do?” He looked up at the big clock mounted on the wall behind the bar, its hands like door hinges.
Smalley, smiling again, said, “I see the outline in your shirt pocket. You’re a lawman, ain’t cha?” The smile was wider.
“All the way from Shattuck’s office,” Pike said, as low as possible, as he now had his own confidante too.
Smalley said, “The gray hat’s Paul Stivers, a ranch hand on T-Bar-L, north of here. Black hat’s Barnaby Rusk, southwest of here is his own small place. The other gent has no name I’ve heard, but works south also somewhere I’d guess. Spends little time in town but comes to see Stringer much as once a week. Sometimes don’t even stop in for a drink, which makes him a messenger if you were to ask me.”
Pike thought that the trails that lead to those places could well have been taken by the others the night he followed Stringer into town. They matched up with his trail calculations. He decided he had to talk to the sheriff.
“What’s your take on the sheriff, Ben? He up straight?”
“Good as gold, but long in the tooth. Was a hustler at it in the good old days. Carries a few bad memories in scars, but no doubts in his kit bag. He’s straight as a Sharps all oiled and spit up.” He wet his thumb like he was a sniper on a ridge.
“I’ll go see him,” Pike said.
“I’ll see who follows you out of here.” Ben Smalley’s eyes carried his intrigue, and his thanks. “Shattuck’s a good man. I heard stories at Cemetery Ridge.”
“They’re all true if you heard the good stuff. I worked for him then. Saw him first hand.”
Pike turned and walked out of The Prairie Dog Saloon the way he came in, easy, eyes straight ahead, a stranger in a strange town minding his own business lest he upset the natives.
Smalley wiped down the bar, reset the bottle on a shelf, carried on, as Stivers sauntered out of the saloon, Smalley’s eyes following him in the mirror.
At the sheriff’s office, Amos Folstead looked up from gun-cleaning as Pike walked in. “Good day, sir,” he said, “help you with something?” He was older than Pike, had been handsome one time before work and worry had taken a toll on him. Now the shadows of age had begun to set on him. Pike figured he was a man who did not want to ever let go.
Pike, to the point, pulled his badge from his shirt pocket. “I’m the state marshal, directed here by the governor. My name’s Pike, and there’s been murder and mayhem done on all the people at the Cosgrove settlement.”
Folstead stood up, shaken. “You sayin’ all of ‘em?”
“Every last one of them, kids included. I came on the scene a few nights ago. It’d make the devil sick to his stomach. I got them all buried, and the assay office was burned down and all records destroyed. We’re going to have to keep our eyes on four suspicious characters that are right here in town this minute. One of them’s your deputy, Stringer. I followed him and three others away from the mining camp when I came up on it, all that stuff had been done, the assay office still burning, bodies all over the place.”
“Stringer?” Folstead said. “Stringer,” he said again, the question alive on his face in his voice. His hand was squeezing the pistol grip of his weapon being worked on.
“How much do you trust him? Pike said straight out.
“Well, we’ve never been down in a draw yet, shooting it out with anybody. Don’t know how good he’d be, but I needed a man and the council dropped him on me. Couldn’t say no to the hand that was feedin’ me.” He paused as his eyes lit up. “Know the others. They’re his pals. Stiver. Rusk. Some other gent who runs around here and there.”
“That’s the four of them,” Pike said. “They’re at the saloon now. You want to take them now, ask questions, get anyone to bubble up on another. They’re facing the rope sure as hell from where I sit.”
“Let’s do it, Folstead said, as he wiped down his weapon, placed it in his holster, stood at attention. The amazement of sudden knowledge spread across his face, the way doubts are arrested or erased.
Shattuck sent a wire to Pike when he heard how some things went down in Shirley’s Glow. It was sealed in wax, delivered by a strange rider who disappeared as fast as he had come to town.
The wire said, “Job done. You have delivered again. I need you in the capital too soon. Shattuck.”
In the capital, in a small saloon sitting right near Shattuck’s office, in a private corner as if it were an extension of his office, the two old comrades greeted each other and sat down to close up the years.
“Tell me first about Shirley’s Glow,” Shattuck said. He was a handsome man, chiseled out of stone, eyes as blue as an excellent sky over the mountains, and a firmness of purpose having encompassed him long in his past.
“You heard who was involved, a deputy being one of the killers, one of the claim jumpers. Jack Stringer was his name and he was hung first. The sheriff insisted on that.”
“The scene in the saloon, Pike, and the other guy. That’s what I’d like to hear about,”
“The sheriff and I walked into the saloon together. I was going to play it cool, but the sheriff, most likely deeply burned by having a murderer as a deputy, jumped at him right away. “Stringer, you get on your feet like a man. You and your pals are being arrested for the murders at Cosgrove settlement.”
Pike did not want to rush the ending, so he paused, nodded at empty air, but Shattuck knew it was a salute to something, someone. The two of them had shared too much to miss an obvious commendation.
“Stringer the deputy didn’t flinch a bit,” Pike continued. “He stood tall, loose, at ease and simply said, cool as you can imagine, ‘We got four guns here to your two, so it’d be foolish for you to draw down on us, Sheriff. We have the edge here no matter how you look at it. You gotta admit that. Any sane man can see that. I’m quicker than you any day of the week, you’ve seen it, and probably faster than your new friend here. We can drop you and your stranger pard there with no trouble.’ His voice was as haughty and sure as it could be. Then, before he heard another voice, he heard a click from the bar, and the barkeep Ben Smalley had leveled a two-barrel shotgun right at Stringer. ‘You’re the first one down, Stringer. The others will go right after you. That stranger there, that’s Pike, the marshal, sent by the governor just to catch you and your pals. I was you I wouldn’t play any more games.’ With those words, his attention gone full up on me, Stringer was a sucker for the sheriff clubbing him aside the head with a pistol and he was plopping down at the sheriff’s feet like a dead tree falls. The other three folded like saplings.”
Shattuck said, “Who’s Ben Smalley. What’s he in this?”
“Just an old comrade of ours,” Pike explained. “He walked away from Cemetery Ridge the day we were there. Can’t forget it either, but he checked in on our side this time.”
Shattuck, too, remembered some scenes from Cemetery Ridge.
The two comrades nodded in concert, aware of where they had been, what they had shared, and Ben Smalley back in the ranks again.
Shattuck clapped Pike on the back as they stood to leave the saloon. The admiration for an old and loyal comrade, a tested man, was more than evident on his face, in his stance, and in his voice as he said, “Pike, there’s been some noise up near Hahn’s Peak needs looking at, if you could oblige me.”
Trenton George Pike, old soldier, new marshal, knew right where he was headed, into more trouble. As long as it was this side of Hell, he’d handle it. There were no doubts in his mind.
|
|
|
|
|
Send this story to a friend
|
|
|
|
|
