Payback at Morning Peak (31 page)

Jubal rolled a stump used for splitting kindling up close to the door and straddled the splintered log. “No, ma’am, being forgiven is not on my list of wants.” He rustled his boots among the wood chips on the ground, trying to figure
out how to start. “In my haste and embarrassment this morning, I forgot to give you something Bob wanted you to have.”

Anne expertly peeled her potatoes while Jubal continued his halting speech.

“I don’t remember if I told you, but Bob and I did some prospecting.”

“You did?” Anne replied in a sardonic tone. “What now, Bob left me a sack of dust?”

Jubal fished into his vest pocket. “Not dust, a nugget. Bob’s last words were ‘Anne’s. Jubal, it’s Anne’s.’ Bob patted his vest close to his heart, then he… passed. I’m sorry.” Jubal handed the nugget to the woman and eased himself up from the stump.

Anne took the craggy chunk of gold in her two hands and examined it, then looked up at Jubal, her eyes wet. “Big Bob…” She paused. “The old galoot had been kind to me.”

Jubal watched as Anne fiddled with the paring knife. “We talked of getting hitched, then finally decided it was more interesting to live in sin. It were no stranger to me.”

“What was no stranger?”

“Sin.” Anne gently stabbed at the potatoes floating in the sun. “A fellow named Colonel Baker brought me and several other girls out from Philadelphia to entertain the yokels during the gold rush in California. I guess that’s finally what attracted Bob and me, we were both youngsters when our lives changed, and not necessarily for the better. Colonel Baker died on the trail down toward Santa Fe, left us stranded.” She let loose a mirthless string of
profanity. “We screwed our way north to Denver on a wagon train. Believe me, kid, that were a wake-up call. I bummed around Denver for a few years. Dance halls, colored lights—mostly red. Then married some jasper who wanted to explore the Far West.” She stopped as if overcome, then finally blurted, “I had a child. He lived for near to year two, then died of diphtheria. Guess it were payback for all my dirty deeds. Mr. Ronson, the baby’s father, blamed me. The bastard. You know what it feels like to be beaten by someone who’s twice your size?”

“No, ma’am, I don’t.” Jubal knew something about pain but decided he would keep it to himself.

“Well, saint that I was, I decided that Ronson and his bad breath, body odor, and rank personality would be better off living a separate life from yours truly.” She began once again to peel her potatoes.

“I’m sorry, Miss Anne. I don’t know what to say.”

“‘Sorry’ is good enough. Ole Ronson had a few dollars saved up. Went missing soon after he beat me. All the locals thought it a shame. Except Bob, who was the onliest one to ask me how I got the swollen face and busted lip. They found Karl Ronson out in the high desert, his dick missing along with his money and clothes, just lying there innocent-like, naked as the day he were born, staring up at the noonday sun. I built this place soon after. For a spell there, Bob were my only customer, but over the years its changed. I went from being the black widow to simply Anne.

“He was such a love, that guy, and the interesting thing is, Bob couldn’t write.…” She paused. “But he managed to scratch my name on this shiny piece of earth. Funny, isn’t it?”

Jubal realized he had made a mistake, had gone too far in his zeal to make things right.

“Misspelled and everything.” Anne traced the carved three letters in the nugget with her finger. She tossed the nugget back to Jubal. “Drag your sorry butt out of here and take your chunk of absolution with you.”

“But Bob wanted you to have—”

“I wouldn’t feel right about taking that, knowing Bob didn’t really inherit it over to me,” she said thoughtfully. “Grow up, kid. You can’t buy your way into heaven, being a polite snot-nose don’t earn you no Pearly Gate points.” Anne pushed herself up from her chore. “I loved that big slob, but no way in hell his last thoughts were on me. I’m real enough to know that. Shove off, cowboy.” She swiped her eyes quickly with her apron ends and, with the load of peeled potatoes hefted to her waist, she walked briskly into the restaurant.

Jubal made the few steps to the wagon and clicked his tongue for Frisk to resume their journey. Anne seeing through his little farce had taught him something about being truthful. Trying to solve the discomforts of life only sugarcoated disappointments.

He had carved the name
Ann
with the best of intentions.

Hope seemed to be in the air, and Jubal started to think they would reach Cerro Vista that day. He started early, just before first light. After an hour he could hear moaning from the back of the wagon. “What is it?” he called out.

“May I speak?” asked Ed in a contrived weak voice.

Jubal preferred not to spend the day angry. “I don’t want to hear any nonsense from you. Nothing about who was at fault, who did what. You’re a grown man, you know right from wrong, live with it.”

“I need coffee. I’m hurting. Ain’t there nothing to eat? Why didn’t we have breakfast?”

“Because, to use your own words, ‘there ain’t none.’”

“Why you being ‘fish-us’ again?”

“‘Cause I ‘ain’t’ got the patience to be polite, Mr. Thompson. We should be in Cerro Vista around noon. If you’re lucky, the jailer there might rustle you up some steak and beans.”

“Really?”

“No, not really. I’m just being ‘fish-us.’

“They trudged on into the rising sun. Near to noontime, old Sol was high in a bright blue sky. Jubal could see for miles as he scanned the eastern horizon. Morning Peak rose out from a thin layer of clouds, and a haze of smoke from a hundred woodstoves drifted above the town of Cerro Vista.

To his right, cutting a path nearly parallel to them and heading toward town, Jubal could just make out a lone rider leading a packhorse. He watched as the man stopped and surveyed the countryside, then changed direction and headed due south.
I suppose he figures the town isn’t worth seeing, or maybe he’s saving time, skirting the tiny burg. Well, cowboy, you’re missing a sweet little village. Come on back and give Cerro Vista a second chance.

Jubal urged Frisk across the rough earth. He was pleased to be so close to the end of his journey, but there was a nagging, just at the edge of his memory. Something about Sheriff Cox and the assayer. It had to do with what Pete Wetherford had taken from the shopkeeper’s office. Gold, money… right there on the tip of recollection.
Darn it.

The troubling thought stayed just beyond his grasp as they rode into Cerro Vista. A number of people stared at the wagon and its strange cargo.

Jubal turned onto Paseo Segundo in front of the hotel and proceeded toward the jail. “Won’t be long now, Ed. You’ll be able to talk to your former boss Billy Tauson. You two can cook up some tale of how you were pressured into raping and killing. Yeah, tell a jury about a desperado
named Pete Wetherford, how he forced all of you to travel out to the Young family property to do your deed. Maybe tell them you were simply an ‘unwilling observer.’

“Big Ed stayed silent.

“Explain how you were held at gunpoint while Petey did his rotten work.” Jubal looked back at Ed.

The man seemed crestfallen, his legs dangling lifelessly over the edge of the tailgate.

As they pulled in front of the jail, Jubal jumped off the buckboard, checking that Thompson’s chain and leg irons were still well and truly intact. “Be back in a minute, Ed. Are you comfy?”

Ed turned and sneered.

The adobe structure was just as he last remembered. Even Sheriff Morton’s memorabilia remained tacked to the wall. Jubal’s reverie was interrupted by the new peace officer, who introduced himself as Fred Dale and asked if he needed help.

“Yessir, I surely do. Name’s Jubal Young. My family was… taken.” Jubal found it hard to say the word “murdered.” “In April, at our farm, just east of town. I have one of the perpetrators in my wagon.”

“I’m aware of the event, son. Let’s go have a look.” The man took an envelope out of his desk drawer and followed Jubal into the street.

The sheriff looked at the mess of a man tethered to the back of the wagon. He gave the long chain a solid jerk.

“Damnation, that hurt. Why you have to go and do such a thing?” shrieked Ed.

“Shut your pie hole.” The sheriff looked to Ed to make sure he understood his instructions. “I’m going to
read a bunch of names. You call out when and if I come to yours. Understand?”

Ed didn’t really agree, just remained silent.

“Billy Tauson.” The sheriff looked up with a half grin, waited, then went ahead. “I didn’t think so, he’s already inside. Pete Wetherford.”

Nothing.

“Jorge Morales? You don’t look like a Jorge. Al Wetherford? No? Ty Blake—you’re a little bright around the cheeks to be the late Mr. Blake. A certain Indian, Crook Arm? Okay, how about Edward Thompson, does that ring a bell?”

Big Ed lifted his arm in a halfhearted gesture to signify that yes, indeed, he was the aforementioned Ed Thompson.

The sheriff once again rattled Ed’s chain. “Where’s the key to this medieval contraption?”

Jubal unlocked the shackle around Ed’s ankle and stepped back. The sheriff grabbed his prisoner by the scruff of the neck and marched him into the jail, Jubal following.

Ed sat across the desk from the sheriff as the lawman folded the paper he had been reading from. He placed it deliberately back into an envelope.

Jubal leaned against the rough adobe wall. “If you don’t mind my asking, where did you get the list, sir?”

The sheriff propped his legs on the desk. “Don’t mind at all. Seems our Mr. Tauson, who now makes his home in a seven-by-eight-foot cell just beyond that door, decided he wanted to unburden his heart. Signed a full confession naming all the actors in our little drama.

Excuse me, son. I don’t mean to make light of your memories. By the way, condolences on the untimely demise of your family.”

Jubal thanked him and headed for the door. “I’ll probably be at the hotel if you need me, Sheriff.”

“Probably?”

“I had a job and bed there. Whether they’re still available, I just don’t know.”

“Well, I still have two cots available in the back, if you’re interested.”

Jubal smiled as he let himself out. “I’ve done that, sir. I’d prefer open air to another night in the hoosegow.”

Jubal spoke with the manager of the hotel, who welcomed his return. They walked back to his old room.

“Yes, standing orders from Judge Wickham. ‘If that wayward scamp comes back, give him his room. Set him to work and send a messenger for me.’ I think maybe the judge likes you, son.”

Alone in his old room, Jubal sat on his bed.

It was dark but still too early to sleep. Jubal stretched out on his cot and stared up at the
latillas,
the thin poles stretching across the ceiling, looking like a virgin forest, each pole carefully selected and set into the adobe. Jubal wondered what it would be like to have a job where the most taxing part of the day hinged on deciding how much bark to skin from these
latillas
and what to leave for rustic authenticity.

Cybil would know. It was the kind of commonsense problem she’d be good at solving. Jubal swung his legs off the bed and slipped into his boots.

The walk to the Wickhams’ house took only a couple of minutes. He walked right past the huge structure, stopping near the tree stump where he had waited when Al Wetherford pounded up the street on horseback.

He kept walking, continuing down Calle Piñon. Most of the homes were lit, their warm lights washing the lawns and trees in an amber glow. At the end of the street, where he had seen the three horsemen dancing their mounts in a deadly frenzy, he turned. A hundred feet farther on, a dusty path led back parallel with Calle Piñon. It wasn’t really an alley but a well-worn dirt trail at the rear of the houses on the adjoining street, used mostly as a shortcut to Paseo Segundo, where the hotel was situated.

He walked silently back toward the Wickhams’ and heard conversation coming from one of the neighboring homes. It sounded friendly, a family together after a bountiful supper, children being wrestled and cuddled by a loving father and mother.

A soft breeze moved the evening air. He came to the garden where he and Cybil had first met. The kitchen window where Mrs. Wickham had let her presence be known was lit, but was now absent of her mother-hen awareness. A glow in the window on the second floor caught his eye. He saw a shadow move across the thin curtain and stop, a flickering light behind the image outlining a slim figure standing in the middle of the room. Jubal watched, fascinated that this could be Cybil. He stood transfixed as the form slowly began to grow in size until, outlined against the curtain, the figure parted the thin cloth and appeared to gaze into the night.

Cybil stared into the dark evening.

Jubal wanted to dive for cover, knowing if she saw him something would change in their need for each other. He stood without moving, wondering if she could feel his presence. She bent down, raising the window a foot or so, took another glance into the night, and disappeared back into the room.

He found himself holding his breath, a sudden guilt pressing through him. He questioned why he should feel that way, especially since he’d committed no offense. After all, he hadn’t shimmied up the kitchen roof’s drainpipe, nor had he crawled up the sloped shingles to her window. Neither had he peered over the sill through the open window to her bedroom. And yet the guilt persisted. The light slowly diminished and the house became dark. Jubal moved slowly up the path toward the hotel.

A man wavered over Jubal. A white mist drifted behind his head, appearing as if he were on a mountaintop. Both hands rested quietly on the butts of two .44 pistols, stuffed into twin holsters. Long black sideburns made his face appear lean; a dark mustache under his crooked nose outlined a mean mouth, curled down at the corners. He smiled sardonically.

“I told you what I was going to do to you, didn’t I?” With his right hand he swept back his long black hair. “Well, it’s time, boy.” His body shook as if he had no control. “You knocked me off that log bridge, you little bastard. I promised I would do you.” He took a long circular walk, his head still in the mist. He wept when he once again stood over Jubal. “You killed Al, my brother, and got my buddy Billy Tauson throwed in jail. You little
bastard.” He stomped both feet and raised his head to the heavens. “I’ll remember you. You hear, I’ll remember!” he shouted. The noise reverberated as if screamed into a vast canyon. “I did your mother and that brat sister of yours.” He disappeared from view, the scuffle of his boots getting louder as he made ever-tightening circles, repeated over and over.