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Short Stories & Tall Tales
Tracking in Chimney Hills
Tom Sheehan
From a long way out on the trail he saw the tell-tale landmarks he’d been told about; “They’ll stand out not like mountains but like a row of chimneys back in Chicago or New York or Boston, or so they tell me, some other gents. You can’t miss ‘em, so head straight for ‘em. If Shady John Bigelow stole your woman, she’ll most likely be up that way.” Noel Scott-Northing, born in Boston as a result of a seduction at sea, aboard a ship out of an English seaport on the first night of its journey, now a full-blown land traveler on horseback, stared into the eyes of the old man giving him directions.
“So you, Mr. Randall, as I’ve been told by the locals here in Fitzroy, are a man very familiar with the territory. Would you care to take that trip with me? Provide intricate directions? I’ll pay well.”
Scott-Northing, to be 23 on his next birthday, was a rugged-looking young man who spoke good English, had hair as thick and as black as Pennsylvania coal, high cheekbones perhaps chiseled out of the Scottish Highlands, and the curious habit of continually flexing his fingers on both hands. They appeared to belong to the twin pistols on his gun belt.
The old man, Dexter Randall, British-born almost 70 years earlier, in America for 65 of those years, and a gold prospector for 50 years, displayed a grimace that came right up off his boots. “No siree, Sonny, I had my setback with Shady John and I wouldn’t look forward to ‘nother. Him and his cutthroats watched me work my claim for prob’ly two months and the day I packed up to go cash-in and catch up to things, they shot my mule, drove me into a cave they thought had no exit, and went off the next mornin’ with every ounce I had. They didn’t know where I kept my stuff hidden ‘cause I’d go out at night and hide it in the rocks. They’d a looked for 100 years to find it all, I put it in so many places.”
Scott-Northing said, “You got out of the cave, I see. Was there any doubt about that?”
“Only ‘cause he had his boys shove down some rocks from above and block it off, but I knew my way around them caves, and that one too.” He too flexed his hands and fingers, but in apparent anger. “I’ll catch ‘em on my own ground in my own time.”
Randall looked off the way he had pointed to Chimney Hills. “You say the fella that prob’ly took her was tall and skinny and wore a hat couldn’t hold water for his horse? And she’s a good looking woman, pretty as a new-made filly?”
Scott-Northing offered an explanation; “You’re right on with each one, Mister Randall. Her and him. Wanda-Lou’s about the most beautiful woman I ever met. I said that to myself the very first time I saw her. I don’t know why I let her go behind the bar that day. The saloon wasn’t busy at all, but I had some work I had to do. This tall, skinny gent came in with two others and he was wearing this useless-looking hat, like the one you talked on. Wando-Lou was about to pour some drinks for them and I turned my back and was knocked into darkness. When I recovered the sheriff was standing over me saying some unknown men had carried her to a horse and rode off with her. Folks that saw them think she was unconscious and tied to the horse.”
“Sounds like Shady John right from the first word and right to the last. If you catch him, give him a due for me, right where it counts on that kinda gent. But don’t kill him. Leave that for me.” He flexed his hands and anybody watching the pair of them, the young one and the old one flexing their fingers, might say they were playing some child’s game.
Randall repeated his words, but they were loaded with serious conviction. “On my own ground. In my own time.”
“You’re pretty sure they have a hideout up there, Mr. Randall?”
“Son, they don’t want nothin’ to do with mountains and hard work. They stay in the lower hills. That’s what Chimney Hills is, lower hills, easy to get to for lazy gents, but plenty of places to have a hideaway. There’s prob’ly half a dozen trails up in there, but easy for a determined man to find his way on the first look-see.”
He looked into the young man’s eyes and said, with a bit of reluctance, “Tell me if you was to, is that story true I hear around town about your mother out on the ocean?”
Scott-Northing filled him in right away. “She told it to me a 100 times, and I have repeated it 100 times, how she always wanted to have a child, but she had to pick out the man. That’s a promise she made to herself. Swore to it as a young girl. And the first day aboard the ship leaving England when she was 20 and unmarried, she saw him, studied him the whole day, and that night seduced him. Outright seduced him, she admitted. I was born in Boston about 7 months after the ship landed. His name was Benjamin Northing and she wanted me to know that for sure. When the ship landed, she went ashore with others and intended to see him in the morning. But in the morning the ship was gone, bound for the port of Baltimore and then headed for Brazil with goods for a coffee run out of there and back to England. She never saw him again, married a man named Trewton, moved to Pennsylvania, then out here to Idaho. She became a widow with no more children and fell from a horse and died two days later, but the last words she said to me were ‘Benjamin Northing.’”
“Son, I don’t got to tell you, you got a passel of baggage to carry and I ain’t envyin’ any of it. Just this, when you go up in there, keep your eyes and ears open, your head down and don’t make no sillyetts on the skylines like them chimneys do. Dead shots is what them boys of his are, like dead is dead.”
Early the following morning, from the livery at Fitzroy, riding a big gray and leading a pack horse of the same gray shade, Scott-Northing set his sights for the tall silhouettes that Dexter Randall had called “sillyetts.” He smiled thinking about the old prospector and the advice he had so freely given him. He thought it very admirable that Randall had taken the time to do so and also inquire, somewhat hesitatingly, about his mother and the “sea story” of his birth. The more people knew about the story, the better became his chances to find, one fine day, his father. There was but one other challenge in his life, and Wanda-Lou, beautiful Wanda-Lou, was up there somewhere beneath the slim spires the old man had acknowledged as the most likely place to find her, and most likely in the hands of Shady John Bigelow, tall and skinny and wearing a hat useless to his horse, which told more about the man with little regard for others, horses included.
Thoughts of both of them, Wanda-Lou and Dexter Randall, filled him with a sudden richness, as well as an instant sense of separation. Both feelings came presented with the jab of a spur, the lock of a noose. He realized they would set in place until resolve came about. As a result, he did not weigh his chances, but kept straight-out on the trail.
During his 4-hour ride toward the spires of Chimney Hills, Scott-Northing never once looked back down the trail he had traveled; and never had the slightest idea that old Dexter Randall, bent on his own idea of reparation, was following him to “the chosen land,” to find his “dug up” gold and the young man’s woman.
It was more than 6 hours later that Scott-Northing, after several attempts, found a place to tie off both of his horses, sit for a spell to fix his surroundings, and devise a plan of search. He had seen no smoke from a cooking fire, no sign of a guard or sentinel on any high rise, and heard nothing but the natural world making its way about him, a coyote in a distant canyon, a cat of some type not purring but at a territorial claim, and a wind at a higher loft whistling its way between tight spaces in the rocky walls. Yet he would have to move with all caution, perhaps with a single chance to free Wand-Lou from Shady John’s clutches.
He worked on his search until the sun alerted him to its next move, which was to go behind a range of mountains, so he retreated to the site where his horses and gear were tethered, ate a cold meal of dried meat and biscuits and cold coffee, slipped onto a blanket, and went to sleep. Several images came to him and departed just as sleep came; those images were of Wanda-Lou in all her glories, his mother telling him again about his father, and an indistinct, formless figure of a man without a face that he presumed to be his father. In one group setting they came and carried him off to his sleep. He did not see any image of Shady John Bigelow before that deep sleep took him off on its slow journey into night.
From a break between two boulders Mother Nature had tossed together many millenniums ago, giving him room to watch the progress of Scott-Northing, and to get some rest himself, Dexter Randall began to build up his admiration for the intelligence and trail ethics of the young man searching for his woman.
In the pre-dawn push of day, Scott-Nothing was up from a good sleep and took care of the two horses, listened to his surroundings, caught the odor’s drift of a morning fire under a coming breakfast, marked the wind direction, and ate his own quick breakfast.
In a reaction that had become part of his nature, he began to talk to himself, spelling out his thoughts and subsequent plans for a new day of searching. “If that’s them cooking, then most likely they have a guard posted. I’ll have to watch for him, and it’s sure to be on an upper level, but one they can climb up to. If I spot him, I’ll have to get above him.”
He left all doubts behind him as he set off with his rifle fully loaded, his pistols in place on his gun belt, and loaded also. He had taken a few steps away, returned to the pack animal and retrieved a bandolier of ammunition, slipped it across his chest, and set out again. “Might as well be prepared for war if it’s necessary,” he said to himself, and heard his own echo.
It was heard also by Dexter Randall who, in Scott-Nothing’s deep sleep, had managed to get closer to him without even disturbing the horses set off on the other side of the small clearing. His admiration for the younger man had leaped appreciably with each move undertaken by the searcher. “Boy speaks of smarts in his noggin’” he said to himself, but more silently than Scott-Northing had spoken.
Both men, in their forward movements along the canyon, kept to the thick shadows still holding forth in the rocky walls, Randall watching the younger man scan with great patience every secret-looking place in front of him, and his continued scanning of upper regions.
“That young un,” he offered to himself, “is sure takin’ good care to look for a look-out. That boy’s smarter than the damned whip I once owned.”
At that instance Randall saw Scott-Northing come to attention as he spotted a man smoking on a slightly higher rise. And he saw him, with admirable dexterity, and utter silence, get above the man intent on smoking and not at watching for movement of any threat. The look-out, too busy on his own account, never saw the sizeable rock falling on his head, and crumpled to the ledge without a sound.
Randall smiled and licked his chops. “Damned boy’s more man and smarter than I thought. Maybe we’ll get even with Shady John ‘fore this day is over.” He observed Scott-Northing tie the fallen guard up, unload the rifle and the man’s pistol and hide them in a crevice, and then tend to the man’s wound and, finally, bind his mouth to prevent any shout of alarm once he recovered consciousness.
“Shady John’s hide-out’s got to be in the next bend,” was likely surmised by both men on the search, and Randall said again his appreciation for Scott-Northing, “Shady John sure don’t know what’s comin’ his way. This boy has a heart as well as brains and courage. I hope his woman knows what I know, what I’m lookin’ at right now, this instance.” He checked his rifle for a ready round, “In case this boy needs a bit of help, which I seriously have doubts about,” and his words again floated off unheard by anybody but him.
Randall, behind Scott-Northing, the sun making deeper inroads on the landscape, morning coming more fully to life in the maize of rocky walls, saw him make a slow turn at ground level of the canyon, stop, and then obviously appraise what he saw around that turn.
“It has to be Shady John’s hide-out,” Randall said into the morning breeze, keeping his distance from the younger searcher. “No celebratin’ yet on this mission,” he expressed more to himself than ever. “Maybe this due is getting’ done from a pair of hands ain’t done half the work I been through in this run for gold things.”
Scott-Northing was studying the lay of the land, how the rocks crept up to a sudden rise that became one of the chimneys of Chimney Hills, and he saw the small cabin built under a single tree that perhaps 40 years earlier had gotten a grip in a small parcel of soil and grew itself into wide shade and perfect cover from sun and unwary eyes. He felt Wanda-Lou almost as close as she had been on some of their nights on the prairie, the campfire dwindling, the stars popping open all across the wide sky that Wanda-Lou kept calling “The Crystal Lamps of Deep Romance and Long Love.” And she’d hug him every time she said it. It sat in his mind as clear as the first time she’d said it, drawing the beauty right up to his heart, like he was the luckiest man in the whole west.
“I hope my luck holds up,” he whispered as the rifle found firmness in his hands.
He did not see, across the clearing, a man in a funny hat, thin of face, in a still-shaded area, take careful and deliberate aim at him with his rifle.
But Dexter Randall saw the figure raise his rifle, so he did the same, without a rush, with all emotion left in him under control, and also took aim. He fired a bare second before the rifleman fired, the one with the sad face and the funny and useless hat.
Both weapons exploded almost at once, the echoes pounding along the canyon walls. One shot landed inches above Scott-Northing’s head, which also made him fire across the clearing. And then a second and third round, all exploding just above the other shooter, ricocheting off the rock wall.
Behind him Scott-Northing heard the voice of the old prospector shouting out, “We got the whole damned posse taking aim at you, Shady John, and you and your pals down there better drop their guns or we’ll fill that place full of lead, and you’ll hang by the neck for anybody we find dead down there.”
In the silence after the echoes were drawn off by canyon air, came the sound of a rifle falling down the slope of a rocky wall. Another round broke loose by the bouncing of the weapon went harmlessly into the air. Then was heard a gasp of pain from across the way, as much whimper as could be imagined, and then a voice from the cabin saying, “How many men you got out there, Sheriff? We got the girl in here.”
“I don’t know who you got in there with you,” Scott-Northing yelled in reply. “We’re not here on any murder charge, not yet, but that depends on you gents. What happens next. It’s just like I said, anybody dies down there because we have to fill that place with hot lead, you’ll have to answer for, not us. We are a posse bent on capturing you folks for other crimes. Be advised of that outcome. We are ready to start firing. What you do is up to you all the way.” He put an added ring into the final word: “It’s up to you all the way.”
Then, as if calling on posse members all over the higher rises of Chimney Hills, he yelled loudly, “You gents ready to start shooting?”
The same voice came back from the cabin. “Hold it. Don’t fire. The girl’s comin’ out.”
The door of the cabin opened and Wanda-Lou, beautiful Wanda-Lou, bound at her wrists with rope, came out the door and started to run out into the canyon.
Scott-Northing said, in his unmistakable voice, “Hey there, Miss, better come this way.”
The most beautiful smile ever passed on her face as she recognized the voice and ran toward Scott-Northing, her trussed wrists out in front, as if still praying for rescue, but the smile still in place.
Dexter Randall shouted, “Hey, Sheriff, better send a man down there to fetch the stole gold dust ‘fore that place gets burnt up by some of these folks we drug outta their homes to come up here in these damned hills with us.”
Scott-Northing was busy hugging his lovely woman, but managed to answer. “Go on down in there, Dex. Just you. Send whoever is in there up this way. We will take care of them. Then fetch that gold dust for safekeeping.”
Little talk followed from the “posse” as two men came out of the cabin, their arms in the air after tossing their weapons aside. They were ordered by Dexter Randall to retrieve Shady John Bigelow from hiding, his wound still bleeding, but he was alive. Then the old prospector, the other part of the posse, recovered the workings from his claim with a firm idea of who he was going to share it with.
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