One Man Standing (Ben Blue Book 6) Read online

  One Man Standing

  By Lou Bradshaw

  Copyright © 2014 by L E Bradshaw

  Cover Art © 2014 by L E Bradshaw

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced by any means without written permission from the author or his representatives, except for excerpts used for review purposes.

  This book is dedicated to all Veterans and active members of our Armed Forces, who have defended this country and kept it safe. I would extend this dedication back to the creation of the Continental Army in 1775.

  Books by Lou Bradshaw

  A Fine Kettle of Fish… Humor

  The Ben Blue Series

  (In order of publication)

  Hickory Jack

  Blue

  Ace High

  Blue Norther

  Cain – A Ben Blue Companion

  One Man Standing

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  We both smelled the smoke at the same time. I motioned JL to go left, and I went right. I could see the smoke before I’d gone twenty yards, and it was coming from behind that brush covered outcropping of rock just ahead. I dismounted and moved in on foot. Might I add, very carefully. Unless some puncher had chosen this spot to fix him some coffee, there was no rhyme or reason for anyone to be making a fire here.

  I figured JL Tate, one of the MB hands, should’ve been about opposite me by then, so I was ready to move in closer to see what was going on. That’s when I heard the unmistakable bawling of some cow critter having red hot iron pressed to its hind quarter. Using that critter’s discomfort to mask any noise I’d make going through the brush, I barged ahead.

  What I saw next nearly scared the hell out of me. Two men were standing with their backs to me with their hands poised above their guns. They were both fixated on JL, who was standing in front of them with his hands on his hips. He seemed to be waiting for them to make their moves. They had no idea that I was behind them, and I wasn’t completely sure he did either. I did the only thing I could do to stop bloodshed.

  I jacked a cartridge into the chamber of that Winchester, and let a perfectly good one fly out into the brush. I wanted to let them know I was there….They froze.

  “You two… now you stick those hands up in the air… just like you was wavin’ at the Angels. Because if you make one sudden move, you’re both gonna be goin’ someplace where there ain’t no Angels.” Very carefully, they both started their hands moving toward the heavens.

  “JL, you mount up and go fetch that steer they just turned loose.”

  “Aw, Boss, you spoiled all the fun… I had ‘em cold.” He grumbled.

  “Git!” I snapped and he got. That boy still had some seasoning to do, and I just hoped he’d live long enough to do it.

  “Now, you boys, slowly turn around and let me take a look at you. We had the spring roundup a couple of months back, and the fall roundup ain’t for some time yet. I’d like to see what two fellas, who are so stupid, they don’t know their summers from their springs or their falls.”

  They slowly turned and glared at me. The smaller of the two, was sandy haired and had the look of someone who had been in one too many head butting contests and had his brains all scrambled.

  The other one was a familiar face to me, but one I hadn’t seen in these parts for four or five years. He was taller and meaner than his partner. As I remembered, he wore a permanent scowl, so his expression wasn’t just for this occasion. “You remember me, Turkey?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I remember you.” He growled. “Every day I cuss the name of Ben Blue…. I ain’t likely to ever fergit.”

  As I walked around them, I flipped their pistols out of their holsters and tossed them beyond the fire. “I see you got yourself a new pardner. What happened to Gus?”

  He thought the question over for a few seconds and said, “Somebody shot him.”

  “Why would anybody shoot a sweet little fella like Gus?” I asked.

  “Because he got on my nerves.”

  Remembering Gus, I could easily imagine that. He was like a yappy little dog, always bouncing around and sayin’ nothing but running his mouth just the same. Even I had to smack the snot out of him once, just to shut him up.

  “You still got my hat?” Turkey asked.

  “No I don’t,” I told him, “it came off in the middle of a stampede, there wasn’t anything left of it.”

  “Wisht you’d a still had it on when that happened.” He said and had himself a good laugh at that thought.

  Tate brought the steer back with its hide burnt and blistered, wearing a triple eight (888) brand, which would fit nicely over an S-S (the Esses) brand. We got Turkey and his partner Franklin Mills tied to their saddles and took off for the Esses, with JL bringing up the rear leading the steer.

  As we got closer to the ranch house, I could see people standing on the porch watching us approach. Charlie Clark, the ranch manager, was easy to spot; you just look for a flagpole wearing a ten gallon hat. Sam Stellars the owner, who was also my wife’s grandpa, was easy to spot as well. But there were others there too. There were several other men, and there were two women on that porch. I saw Patty Anne’s buggy and knew one of those women was my woman.

  I told JL to bring them on in and I nudged my gray into a lope. With the prisoners and that steer, he’d have to come on slower. I didn’t like the looks of all this. There were too many people there, and by then, I could see that one of them was Sheriff Nelson. I nudged that big horse a little harder. I could see Patty Anne taking the other woman into the house.

  I was well out of the saddle and running to the porch, by the time that big smoke colored horse quit sliding. Nels, the sheriff, was down off the porch by the time I reached it. I was asking a thousand questions and he was trying to shut me up, so he could tell me what was going on.

  With his hand on my chest, and me ignoring him trying to see through the door, he finally shouted, “Ben! She’s alright! It’s Maggie Tucker that has the troubles.”

  “Maggie can’t have trouble.” I shot back. “Why she’s just a youngen… just a girl kid.” And then it dawned on me that Maggie or Margaret would be seventeen or eighteen years old by now. She hadn’t been a girl kid for some time. “What happened?” I asked. “If someone’s been trifling with that girl, I’ll be right behind Joe Tucker with my own horse whip…”

  “Ben,” he said, “it’s Joe. Buck found him in the barn this morning with a knife in his back. He sent Baldy in to get me, and we brought her here. I sent Buck on to your place to get you and your misses. I left the crew there to make sure nobody messes anything up.”

  “This is the third knife killing in the last two months.” He continued. “I think they’re all connected in some way. And I’d like for you to go back up there with me to look things over. We just can’t overlook any kind of clue. Somethin’s goin’ on and we got to find out who’s doin’ it.”

  “I’ll just run inside and see Patty Anne and Margaret before I go… Oh by the way, Tate’s bringing in a pair of rustlers and a steer with fresh altered brand.” I didn’t wait for his answer; I took those steps
two at a time and through the door.

  Patty Anne met me inside the door and brought me to a stop. “Ben, she’s upstairs in my old bedroom lying down… this was such a shock… both she and Linda were so close to their pa… I sent Antonio to the Pueblo school with a message for Linda. I told him to give it to the Padre and he can break the news to her.”

  “That’s good,” I told her, “he can get there in half the time going through the hills.”

  “Oh, Ben, Maggie wants to see you. You’ve become her hero since you helped Linda and the others; she thinks you can do anything.”

  We went upstairs to where Margaret was sitting on the edge of the bed with her face in her hands sobbing. Patty Anne sat beside her and did her best to give her some comfort. Turning her tear streaked and red eyed face up to me, she begged me to find who did it and see them hanged. I made her a promise, I hoped I could keep, that I was going to find him and make him pay the maximum penalty.

  On the way out, Patty Anne told me that she would take her back to the ranch, and that she had told Antonio to bring Linda there.

  JL was just getting there when we came out of the house. Charlie took control of the steer and had it put in a pen for the time being. Nelson sent a deputy back to town with the two prisoners. I told JL to wait for the women and make sure they got home safely. I pulled him aside and told him to stick like glue to Sam. Joe Tucker was one of Sam’s oldest and best friends. And until I knew more, I wasn’t taking any chances.

  He started to complain, until I told him that Maggie Tucker had just lost her father and I wanted to make sure nothing happened to her. The name, Maggie Tucker put a smile on his face and produced a scowl on mine. He straightened right up.

  As I was getting ready to put a foot in the stirrup, Patty Anne came to me and said, “Ben, you be careful… I’m not quite finished with you yet… Here, you might need this.” And she handed me a small leather case containing my badge. We looked at each other, and there was nothing to say. It had all been said years ago, When US Marshal Stewart gave me that Special Deputy badge; it was for just this kind of situation. He knew I would get in the middle of things and wanted me to have the protection and authority to do it. I have one case to work on and will put it away when it’s done.

  Chapter 2

  Sheriff Nelson and I rode on to the Rocking J with Buck Blaylock following behind in the Tucker’s buckboard. Buck was the Rocking J foreman and a solid man. I had a feeling the ranch was going to need him before this mess was cleared up.

  The Tucker girls had seen their share of trouble in the last year. Their mother, Ellen had died last winter of pneumonia, and now their pa had been murdered in his own barn.

  While riding, it occurred to me how fast things can change in a person’s life. It was just a week ago, when Sam came to me while I was neck deep in invoices and bank balance sheets. That was some mighty hateful work for a cowman, but it had to be done. Sam had retired several years back and had moved in with Patty Anne and me. He kept the Esses and appointed Charlie Clark as his manager. I guess he just didn’t want to let go.

  “Ben,” he said from the doorway, “Charlie’s got a suspicion that there may be some problems on the range.”

  I looked up from my papers and was glad for any kind of interruption, but I’d have been gladder if he was bringing me a slab of apple pie and a big cup of coffee. But I’ll take what I can get.

  “Well, Charlie’s about as good a cowman as you’re gonna find in New Mexico, so if he’s downwind of somethin’, then I’d pay attention to it.” I replied, stating something that we both knew as a fact. “What’s got him on the prod?”

  “The boys have found a couple of campfires out on the range that ain’t exactly campfires. When Charlie went out to look ‘em over, he found where a steer had been on the ground and marks where an iron had been laid.”

  “Tell you what, Sam, I’ll take Tate over with me, and we’ll kinda snoop around. What part of the range is he talkin’ about?” He told me it had been on the northwest corner, which was about as far away from people as you could get.

  *

  Now, here I was riding onto something much worse, and so serious than the two rustlers were almost forgotten…. But not completely.

  When we rode into the ranch yard, I told Buck to keep the buckboard back for a while because I didn’t want it messing up any tracks that might be there. The sheriff and I dismounted and tied our horses to the porch rail. He waited on the porch while I went into the barn lot.

  I had taken an interest in tracking when I was about fourteen, and having that old Apache fighter, Rubio for my closest neighbor didn’t slow down my thirst for that kind of knowledge. Rubio and I had been on any number of trails, he never quit teaching, and I never quit learning.

  The first thing I did was start casting about in the barn lot, trying to throw out the tracks that belonged and find things that shouldn’t be there. I couldn’t find anything that didn’t belong. Motioning to Buck, I had him join me. I showed him a set of prints that seemed to have worn a path from repeated trips from the house to the barn.

  “Could these be Joe’s tracks?” I asked. “What was he doing in the barn that early in the morning?”

  “Oh, those are hisn’ alright.” Buck told me. “He comes out here every morning to fetch eggs. He knew just where them hens hid ‘em… That’s why I come a lookin’ for him. The cook said that the bacon was about to fry to crisps, an there warn’t no eggs a goin’.”

  I called Nelson over and we went on in the barn. There he lay, sprawled face down in the middle of the runway. His basket of eggs was some six feet off to his right, where he must have flung it when he fell. It was a wreck, and the eggs were all crushed. Being thrown wouldn’t have wrecked that basket that way. The eggs could have been broken by being thrown, but that basket was stomped on… Someone had a good deal of anger.

  I asked Buck if anyone had been in the barn since he found Joe Tucker. He said the cook had been here earlier to milk the cow, but that was before Joe came out.

  “I tried to turn him over, but he was already dead, so I just pulled out the knife, kinda outta respect. I didn’t pack him back into the house, because I didn’t want Miss Maggie to see him that way. I went in and told her and got Baldy ridin’ to town.” Buck told us.

  I told him, he’d done the right thing, and asked him to get the knife for me. He went to get it and came right back. It was the damndest thing I’d yet seen. The whole thing was no more than ten inches long including both blade and handle. The blade was shaped like a flat spear head, and it went right into the handle with no hilt or handle wrappings. I’ve seen some fine knives, but I’d never seen one sharper. The whole thing was one piece of steel, some of the best steel I’d ever seen.

  I laid that knife across my finger and found a new high water mark in balance. Running my thumb across that blade would have drawn blood, had it not been for the calluses. Taking it by the center of the blade, I gave it a flip. It went right where I was looking and sunk into that barn wood like it was one of Mr. Thompson’s watermelons back home.

  Pulling it out, I took a good look at it and said to the sheriff, “Nels, I’ve never seen a knife like this. I think this thing was made to be thrown instead of to cut or stab with. Are the other two like it?

  “Like peas in a pod.” He replied. “I ain’t never seen anything like ‘em…. You reckon someone threw ‘em then instead of stabbin’?”

  That was the only reason, I could think of for using a knife like that, and I told him so. “Someone must have stood back there out of the light and threw it. They could have sent that thing from twenty or twenty five feet. I’d say with a little bit of practice, this thing would be as deadly as a sixgun, and a whole lot quieter.”

  I walked farther back into the barn and made my way to the rear door, which was to the right of where the body lay. The door was buttoned from the outside, but that button was there to keep the door from flying open not to keep anyone in or out. I just
slipped my knife between the door and the frame and lifted. The outside was grown up with brush and weeds, but there was a path leading down to the creek a short distance away. Several times a day, someone would take a couple of buckets down there for the water trough.

  Walking on down to the creek, it was difficult to pick up many individual tracks because of the amount of traffic on that path. When I came to the creek, I just stepped on across it, thanks to a few well positioned stones.

  On the far side of the creek, it was a different story. I could make out the prints plain as day. To my mild surprise I found low heeled shoe prints, instead of the high heeled boots most men wore in this part of the country. I was having a hard time picturing a town person skulking around in those bushes and weeds before dawn. But it could have been a miner or someone who was still wearing old cavalry boots. The tracks were sharp and no nail prints, so that left out cavalry boots.

  The tracks led into the brush and weeds. It was no real trick following them, which I did for about fifty more yards. There in a little tree lined clearing, I found where his horse had been tied. And from the look of the ground it had been tied there more than a few times.

  I went back for Smoke, my big grey gelding. I was going to pick up the sheriff and follow the trail. I was a might curious to see where it took us. When I got back to the barn, the undertaker was there and wanted to take Joe’s body. I took another look around and told him to go ahead… and to do a good job for him. It had been several years since I’d stood and looked down on the body of a good friend, and I was hoping that it would be many more before I did it again.

  Buck was at a loss as to what they should do. I told him to go ahead and do their jobs, just like Joe would have wanted. If there was anything they weren’t sure of, to go see Charlie over at the Esses. I also told them that I’d make sure they got paid till everything was settled, and I’d settle up with the estate.