Hell's Gate (Ben Blue Book 8) Read online

  “Cooter make it back last night?” I asked.

  “I suppose… I saw his horse in the corral when I came in this morning. Banged on his door, but he must be carryin’ a load ‘cause he ain’t made a sound. You’re welcome to go check on him if you want… I’m gonna have to start sweepin’.”

  Coleman was coming down the back stairs as I approached Singleton’s door. It was a crudely framed door with no lock or even a place to put one.

  “Marshal, we talked about this yesterday… I can’t let you go in and search Cooter’s room.”

  “It’s past that, Coleman. I’ve got enough on Singleton to make an arrest… and I’ll toss you in jail with him, if you interfere.”

  He didn’t much care for that, but he backed off and let me by. I didn’t like talking to an upstanding citizen that way, but I didn’t particularly care for his attitude. He was a bit of a prig and seemed to think he was a notch above the rest of this small dusty town.

  There was a handle on the door to pull it closed from the outside. I ignored it and placed my left hand just below it, pulled and cocked my Colt with my right hand, and pushed the door open. It swung about halfway and stopped. I pushed a little harder and whatever had stopped it moved with a scraping sound.

  As my eyes adjusted to the dim light coming in through the gaps between the boards, I was able to see a boot was hindering the door. The next thing I saw was a leg stuck into that boot and a prone figure of a man attached to the leg. Stepping back, I swept my eyes across the little room to make sure there wasn’t anyone else in it… there wasn’t.

  Striking a match, I stepped inside the room. It wasn’t much of a room, in fact it wasn’t much more than a wide closet. There was a lamp on a crate which acted as a table, I lifted the blackened chimney and touched a match to it.

  With the amount of blood pooled around the body’s head, I had no doubt the man was dead. He was laying face down, so I turned him over.

  “Is that Singleton?” I asked holding the lamp where Coleman could see the man’s face.

  “Oh, God…. Yeah that’s him…was him.” He said as he turned away.

  Cooter’s throat had been cut from jaw to jaw, and from the look of it, there wasn’t much holding the head in place except the neck bones. It had been sliced with one smooth cut by a large and very sharp blade, like a Bowie Knife with a keen edge. That would narrow it down to half the men in town including me when I was on the range or trail. I told the bartender to go to the boardinghouse and get the Sheriff and Marshal Claybrook, and then get the Undertaker.

  Someone must have been waiting for him or followed him in. Chances were he never saw his killer’s face or even had time to struggle. A quick arm around the neck, lift the chin, and it would be over. It must have been someone with size and strength because Singleton looked to be about five foot ten and stout. The killer must have done this sort of thing before because he made the cut above the Adam’s apple, and took it right through the windpipe and the big veins. Singleton never had a chance.

  Copeland had disappeared somewhere. I reckoned that was a bit of a shock early in the morning. I’d need to talk to him, but it could wait. I took the lamp and looked around. It was sure enough a meager existence old Cooter had. It wasn’t much to measure a man’s life on. He had the crate he used for a table turned on its side with one end open. In the open side, he’d put some small paste board and wooden boxes. The wooden boxes contained things he may have picked up along the way. They had such things as a broken spur, a picture of a pretty young woman torn from a play bill, and other odds and ends.

  The paste board box must have told a story, but I couldn’t read it right. It was full of writing tablets and several pencils stubs. I set the paste board box aside for contemplation at a later time. I had enough to think about right then. We thought we had a fine clean trail to follow, but once again we found ourselves in a box canyon.

  Flynn and Claybrook came through the front swinging doors, and I motioned them to the back. They both looked almost defeated. We had been counting on Singleton to supply some answers to a lot of questions. From the looks of him and his fortune, he wasn’t in charge of anything. He could have made a reliable messenger and odd job master, but I doubted if he was ever even involved in anything criminal.

  “Looks like we lost our best chance of shuttin’ this business down.” Ethan growled.

  “We’re followin’ a cold trail, so we’ll just have to scout around and pick it up again… Ethan, it seemed to me that you maybe had a little history with Rose from the Lady Luck. Is she a friend, or did you burn that bridge when you crossed it.”

  “Oh… the bridge is still there, but after not using it for at least six months, I don’t know what kind of shape it’s in. A fella might fall through and wind up in the river… but I’m a pretty good swimmer.”

  “Good, I’m goin’ to go take a look at Cooter’s gear, there might be something in the saddlebags that could help.”

  “What about me, Squire?” Flynn asked.

  “Wait for the undertaker. Then go on to the jail and relieve Corbel… I’ll be there soon.” I gave him the paste board box to take along.

  Chapter 14

  Claybrook went out the front door and I went out the back. I wanted to go through Singleton’s gear, but I also wanted to talk to Jacobs, the stable owner. I found him in the tack room.

  “Mornin’.” I said. “You’re just the man I wanted to see… Got any idea what time Cooter Singleton came in last night?”

  “Sure do… It was a little after three o’clock. I heard him come in, and wus thinkin’ ‘Lord I hope I can get back to sleep’, and I was just about to drop off, when I heard a commotion in the corral… It was that crazy Johnny Speers saddlin’ up. By the time he rode off it was almost three thutty… Had one hellofa time gittin’ back to sleep…. If I can catch up with Cooter today I’ma gonna git him to spell me for a couple of hours of snoozin’.”

  “I don’t think you’re gonna get that nap today. Cooter Singleton was murdered before he ever made it to his bed.” I told him.

  “Well, damnation! Don’t that beat all…. Dad gummite. I liked that boy…. He weren’t too smart, but he worked his butt off… and I could leave him alone on the place without worryin’ ‘bout nuthin’.”

  He showed me Cooter’s gear. It was all old… probably bought used years ago. His saddle gun was an old single shot army carbine. I asked if he had a hand gun and was told that he didn’t. In his saddle bags, I found the usual stuff like, a little coffee, some jerky, rawhide strips, and chewing tobacco. But what surprised me was several tablets full of hand printed words. Some of them repeated over and over.

  “What do you make of these?” I asked.

  “Oh…. That? Ol’ Cooter was learnin’ hisself how to read and write. When he’d see a word that was wrote out in printin’, he’d copy it as good as he could. I’d tell him what it meant and how it sounded like…. and purtty soon he’d know the word when he saw it and what it meant…He was comin’ along good too…. Sure gonna miss that boy.”

  Taking the tablets out of the saddlebags, I left the rest of his gear with the owner of the stable, and I headed for the jail. I might have read Cooter Singleton all wrong. It sounded like he was just a poor dupe who knew too much, and probably didn’t even know what he knew.

  Flynn was already there, Corbel had gone back to the boardinghouse. Claybrook was only a few minutes behind me. I asked how his sweet talking the lovely Rose had gone.

  “I was close to sweet talking Burt the bartender with a pistol barrel. He wouldn’t go get Rosie for me… Said he had strict orders NEVER to wake her before ten. And he wasn’t about to budge…. I threatened to shoot him, but he said, he’d rather be shot by me than yelled at by her… Really can’t say I blame him… she can be pretty determined to having things her way.”

  “Ethan… I’m pretty much tempted to turn those boys back there loose.” His head came up and he shot me a questioning look.

 
; “We don’t have anyone in town we can trust not to let them go the first time our attention is focused somewhere else. As it is, we’re stuck here because of them. If we post a guard on them, it leaves us one or two men short, when we might need them most.”

  “If you can’t charm anything out of the lady, then we’re sittin’ here for a month or more. I liked what you had to say about blasting powder. If we can’t get a hold of some, then I have no problem climbin’ up above the cabin and rolling some boulders down on them. When they see we’re as ruthless as they are, they’ll come out with their hands up… or we’ll bring that mountain down on the lot of them.”

  “Now that’s a darlin’ of an idea comin’ from me own personal Squire.” I got a yes vote from Flynn.

  “Ben… Stewart will have both our scalps.” Claybrook was on his feet pacing back and forth. “But, Stewart doesn’t have to know about every tiny detail… does he?”

  “Trust me,” I told him, “Jasper Stewart doesn’t really want to know any of the details. If there ain’t at least two congressmen up there in that cabin… he don’t want to hear about it.”

  Chapter 15

  As it turned out there wasn’t a pound of powder or a stick of dynamite to be had in Junction City. Mr. Mason from the general store said that most of the prospectors came down from Colorado, and they brought their own explosives. Of that, he seemed to be extremely grateful. Some folks just don’t cotton to things that blow up.

  It was well past noon when Claybrook returned from the Lady Luck, but I had a suspicion that he was the lucky one.

  “I poured on all the charm I could muster, Ben, but she couldn’t say there was anything she could prove about anyone. She didn’t even have a good solid suspicion of anyone. She made it clear she didn’t like Copeland, the other saloon owner, but she admitted she was the only saloon owner she did like… In other words… I got nothing.”

  “I’d be more likely to believe that if you’d have wiped the lip rouge off your face and the smile with it.” He wiped the rouge off, but the smile wouldn’t budge.

  “Sheriff, why don’t you bring your prisoners in here?” I said.

  When he had them standing in front of me, I told them what I expected of them.

  “Gentlemen, it’s been a distinct pleasure having you as guests here at Casa del Calaboose, but all good things must come to an end. Two men you may have known have been killed here in Junction City, for no other reason than someone was afraid they’d talk. Or they suspected they had talked.”

  “Since you’ve spent a night in our fancy hotel, someone surely thinks you’ve already talked to save your own hides. And the fact we’re letting you go, would convince them that you made a deal. The rest of your pals, who will kill you on sight, are northwest of here. So to keep your bodies free of unnecessary bullet holes, I’d head southwest. There’s a new town over on the Arizona border they’re calling Gallup. You ought to gallop over to it and then keep going.”

  “Your pal Johnny Speers was told to leave town and he didn’t, so he is now wanted, Dead or Alive. With that in mind, you just keep goin’ west and when you get to that big ocean on the other side of California… keep ridin’ till your hats float, and you’ll be fine.”

  “Moreland was ready to kill old Herb yesterday, and now he’s practically clinging to him.” Claybrook said.

  “When the whole bloody world wants to kill you, any friend you got is better than not having a friend at all” Flynn philosophized.

  We watched them practically run toward the livery corral. I turned to Flynn and asked if he’d been able to make anything out of any of those scribblings in the box.

  “Some… if me eyes aren’t playin’ little tricks on me, some of this is givin’ orders to the men to go out and make trouble. Look at this scrap of paper.”

  He handed a crumpled torn scrap of paper. It read, “…nston ranch and shoot 15 cattle.” It was only a part of a message, but it told a lot.

  “Singleton wrote whole pages of those exact words. He would fill up a page with each word… And here he has written pages of these words, ‘kill… them…. all…. bring…. money…. Cooter.” Flynn told me. He was excited over his findings.

  “Blue… he had these words on pages one after another in the same tablet. He left out words like ‘the’ and ‘to’ because he already knew those words. There were a number of scraps of paper in that box, and it all looks like ‘twas from the same hand.”

  Claybrook was looking at the printed words on the scraps of paper and finally he said, “I was reading how the French, or it could be the Dutch police believe they can identify a writer by his writings. But it only works with script and not with simple print…. I know I could write the same words in simple print, and they wouldn’t look like these… interesting.”

  With getting ready for the trail and assault, we lost immediate interest in Cooter’s scribbles. Claybrook locked them in his room, and we went about cleaning weapons and getting in supplies. Since Ethan had a better expense account than I did, I let him buy the supplies. I was already paying for the food and lodging of six men. And Patty Anne would never ever let me send Charlie Clark a bill for expenses. Nor would she let me accept it if he offered.

  Mrs. Gladstone had breakfast on the table by the time we were ready to ride out. I would say that woman would make some man a good wife, but she already had a husband… somewhere.

  The morning was clear and crisp like high semi desert country can be. It would be a different story once the sun started burning out any moisture that might be in the air. Well we knew what to expect, we’d all ridden beneath it for a more than a little while. We used the same trail Flynn and I had followed a few days earlier. I was glad I’d watched my back trail because things can sure look different when you’re going the opposite direction.

  Our horses were fresh and eager for the trail, by noon they still had plenty of stuff, but their eagerness had slipped away a mite. We camped within a few miles of where we’d seen the cabin and the outlaws. We’d found a nice little meadow near the river, where there would be ample grass and cover for a fire.

  Claybrook was avoiding asking the question that neither of us wanted to talk about. So he didn’t ask if we were on the Navajo reservation, and I didn’t offer an opinion. By protocol US Marshals can pursue a fugitive onto the reservation, make the capture, and report to the Indian Agent and the Navajo Police. But if it’s not a hot pursuit, then we were to report to the agent and the Indian Police first. Then go with the police to make the capture….That just never works.

  At dawn, we had broken camp, and everyone had checked his weapons. Single file we went up the switchback to the place it joined the trail Flynn and I had used when we had first arrived. Turning onto our original trail, we noticed it had been used recently. A good deal of coming and going had taken place there.

  We found where we had left our horses and tied up at the same place. Once again, we started up the ridge, and once again it was the mother of all hill climbs. I had forgotten how steep it was. We were in the cedars mixed with some cactus and brush, so there weren’t a lot of leaves crunching under our feet, but a good number of dead limbs scattered around. As the cedars grow they will drop the lower branches because they aren’t getting any sunlight. Those branches were everywhere and made walking without looking a hazard.

  As we got closer, we started fanning out. I would go to the left and circle around through the meadow they used as a horse pasture. I had moved far to the left and Flynn had taken the right with the rest spread out below the cabin and among the trees.

  When I got to the meadow, I had the first notion that something was wrong, but I excused the idea and figured they’d made some changes… The meadow was empty, save for one sorry looking bag of bones cropping grass at the far end. At first I thought they’d gone, but where would they go? It made sense they had found a better place for the horses … maybe a small canyon they could close up with brush fence.

  Putting that thought o
ut of my mind, I moved on up the slope behind and above the cabin. I found a spot about fifty feet above the cabin with a good supply of rocks and small boulders. I had a good shot at the roof. I was hoping they’d give up rather than have me up here dropping rocks on them. A twenty or thirty pound rock thrown from this distance landing in a room full of men was a scary thought. But it would be their choice to stay inside or not.

  I stood there among my ammunition and waved my hat to let them know below that I was ready.

  “You in the cabin… this is US Marshal Claybrook. You have ten seconds to come out with your hands up or we will start destroying the cabin… the number eleven will start the destruction…. One…. Two…. Three…. Fou…” that was all he got to say before a window was broken and two shots came from it.

  Several rifles concentrated on the window. That was my cue to start the bombardment. I had picked a pair of ten pounders for the first volley. I tossed the first and had the second on the way before the first one hit a solid beam and bounced clear. The second one went through with a crash.

  I heard a voice from inside laugh and yell out, “Is that all you got?”

  I thought, You want the big guns?… well try this one. So I reached down and picked up a thirty pounder. With an underhand between the legs fling, it went out and landed at the front left corner taking logs and chinking with it. I had another of about the same size on the way. I’d adjusted my shot to the right and a little shorter. That one hit the ridge pole and took a good deal of roof down with it… along with sod, broken poles, and choking dust. Also the collapse of that section of roof brought forth some bodacious cussing. So I tossed a couple more ten pounders in the area of the damage… as close as I could. The cussing seemed to increase, if such a thing was possible.

  The door was kicked loose and crashed out into the yard. We all expected them to come out with their hands up, instead one man ran out spraying lead from two pistols. He was so crazed, he was just shooting. He had no idea where anyone was, he was just shooting. Three Winchesters spoke almost at the same time. The outlaw jerked twice losing one of his six-guns on his way down. He hit the hard packed ground and seemed to bounce before he pulled his legs up and curled into a ball.