The Desperate Deputy of Cougar Hill
Desperate
Deputy of
Cougar Hill
LOUIS TRIMBLE
a division of F+W Media, Inc.
I
D
EPUTY
M
ARSHAL
Roy Cameron rode half-standing in the saddle as he peered ahead of his shadow cast long by the slant of the late summer sun. He frowned as he counted the handful of cattle grazing on the rich valley grass.
Usually he took pleasure in the sight of these sleek cows, but today one of his prime yearlings was missing, and he was remembering the five head he had lost over the past few months. His first thought was to ride onto the benchland that lay just to the east and to challenge the Dondee brothers. But the fact that this was a prime steer missing held him in check. The Dondees, like the other so-called miners in this part of Idaho Territory, never helped themselves to any but scrub stock.
As his roan gelding topped a low hill, Cameron rose higher in the stirrups. He had caught a flash of white against the green of the grassland. From this distance, the white looked like a beef lying down and he pushed the roan to a faster pace. Abruptly, he reined in. He had located the missing steer.
Cameron was normally an easy-going man, accustomed until these past months to letting life carry him whichever way it chose. But some of this easy approach was learned rather than natural with him. Years back, he had taught himself the futility of letting the quick surges of wild anger control him, of using his gun or his fists before stopping to think.
But now he felt the almost forgotten anger rise, shaking him. Someone had wantonly and wastefully butchered the yearling steer. They had cut off a hindquarter and slashed out the tenderloin and left the rest for the buzzards wheeling overhead in the deep blue of the late afternoon sky.
Then the steer had been turned over so that the hip carrying Cameron’s R-in-C brand showed plainly. It was as if the man who had done this wanted the finder to be sure and know whose beef had been treated this way.
Cameron stared thoughtfully eastward, beyond the timbered slope that rose from the valley floor a short distance to his left. The benchlands, bare of all but scrub growth after many years of miners working on them, showed plainly. A few of those old-timers still remained, eking out a living from their claims. But most of the men who called themselves miners were drifters, and Cameron had seen little evidence of their doing much work. And among those he classed as drifters were the Dondee brothers. They had only been in this tucked away piece of central Idaho Territory a short while, but already he had had half a dozen run-ins with them — both out here and in the town of Cougar Hill. Even so, Cameron found it hard to imagine them or any other miners wantonly destroying an animal in such a way.
He sat tight to the saddle, fighting to regain control of himself. Finally he began to think more clearly, to reason the possibilities of this being deliberate. In his years as a lawman throughout a good piece of the west, Cameron had learned that many men disliked the law, but he had never known one who would have taken out that dislike in such a fashion — even when it would have been safe to do so. And, in the sense of Cameron being the law, it was safe enough here in the valley. His jurisdiction ran only as far as the edge of town. The nearest-law that counted was the sheriff in the county seat a hundred miles away, over rugged mountains.
Cameron shook his head. If this had been done to get at him for his tough rule of the town, how could the man hope to gain any satisfaction? Cameron might simply ride away, leaving the steer to the buzzards and leaving the butcher to an empty victory. No, if it had been done to hooraw him, then it obviously wasn’t a finished piece of business. There would be more to come. For the butcher to win, Cameron would have to learn who he was.
Slowly now, he rode forward, searching the lush, well-watered grass. It was too springy to show hoof marks, but a short distance from where the steer lay, a trail of drying blood began. At first Cameron thought the blood merely the drippings from the freshly killed meat, and he wondered at the butcher’s carelessness. Then he realized that this was a deliberately laid trail, that the spatters were leading him toward the wagonroad that led to the benchlands. He had been right — the killing of the steer was only the beginning of this business.
He reached the wagonroad a quarter mile east of where it crossed the stagecoach road that came into Cougar valley from the south. Now hoofprints were plain, and the blood spatters stood out against the light-colored dirt like ugly starbursts.
Two horses, Cameron read from the sign. One carried a big man, the other carried one a good deal smaller. Not the Dondee brothers then. They were twins and Hale was only a little smaller than Jupe.
The sign disappeared suddenly. Cameron reined up and looked around in surprise. The hoofprints turned toward the rank grass that grew up between worn twin ruts that took off sharply southward. And those ruts marked the road that led to Rafe Arker’s stump ranch.
But Rafe Arker was in prison, in Boise, a good three-day ride away. He had been there a year and a half, so that Cameron, who had come to the Cougar country just over fourteen months ago, had never seen him. But he had heard the name often enough. And he had heard so much about Rafe Arker that sometimes he had the feeling he knew the man.
Arker, they said, was a two-legged bull. A mountain of wild, angry muscle. He had run Marshal Balder’s last two deputies away, one leaving with a smashed face, the other with three broken bones. He was said to have once beaten a cowhand half to death for daring to ask Jenny Purcell to a dance, even though she wasn’t Rafe Arker’s woman and had never given him any encouragement.
But she was going to marry Roy Cameron. And whenever that was mentioned there was talk about what Rafe Arker would do when he came out of prison. The general opinion was that Roy Cameron, for all his quick toughness, wouldn’t get off much better than the previous deputy marshals had — if Rafe let him live.
Cameron’s eyes followed the rutted track through a stand of scrub pine and on to the mouth of a cut that wound between sloping, sage-covered hills. On the far side of the cut was Rafe Arker’s rundown stump ranch. Cameron had been there once, to talk to Joe Farley, Arker’s sidekick. Farley lived there, supposedly taking care of the place while Arker served out his term for having tried to raid a wagontrain westbound out of Boise. And, Cameron recalled, Farley was a fairly small man.
When was Rafe Arker due to be let out of prison? Cameron frowned thoughtfully, remembering the warnings he had received these past months. “Rafe won’t just try to run you out of the country,” he had been told a dozen times. “When he hears about you and Jenny Purcell, he’ll try to kill you. And if anyone in these parts can do it, Rafe’s the man.”
Men had tried to kill him before, and he had scars to show for the attempts, Cameron thought wryly. And one reason he was still alive was his way of hunting the trouble before it came up behind his back. He set the roan on the rutted trail, riding slowly in case the sign should turn off in another direction. But it kept straight on, leading him through the stand of scrub pine and into the cut. The sun was nearly set now and the sage hills blocked off its light, making the kinking trail shadowy. Brightness still touched the far end where the hills broke abruptly away, but suddenly that disappeared, blotted out by a massive man astride a big palomino.
He had guessed right, Cameron realized. This could only be Rafe Arker. And he could only have laid down his trail deliberately to bring Cameron to him.
Cameron reached for his gun. His fingers stopped inches from the worn butt. The man ahead had twisted in the saddle so that he faced Cameron even while his horse continued to block the trail. A carbine was steady in his hands, the barrel held on a line with Cameron’s middle.
“That’s far enough, deputy,” he rumbled. His voice was deep and rough and filled with obvious pleasure. “Lift your hands up where I can get a good look at them.”
Cameron obliged. The anger he had felt back in the valley was gone. His mind worked carefully, studying, weighing the situation and the man blocking the trail ahead.
Then he heard another horseman move into position behind him and stop only a few paces away. He glanced back and saw the flat, unshaven face of Joe Farley. And now there was no doubt that the man ahead was Rafe Arker.
Boxed, Cameron thought in self-disgust. He had expected to be led all the way to the ranch itself. He had not looked for a trap to be sprung so quickly, so easily. But now he had let himself be caught in a crossfire like the simplest greenhorn. Caught by the man everybody claimed wanted to kill him.
Arker was as big as he had been described. He towered a good half head over Cameron’s lean six feet. His body was heavy — his chest barrel thick, his legs in tight Levis like ax-hewn tree trunks. The pallor of his skin under a three-day growth of beard looked oddly out of place on his heavy features.
Cameron leaned forward in the saddle, but without dropping his hands. “All right,” he said with deceptive softness, “you’ve got me here, Arker. Now tell me why.”
“It’s near supper time,” Arker answered. “I figured you’d like a piece of prime beef to chew on.” He guffawed and slapped one hand heavily on his thigh. “Hear that, Joe? I’m running me a new business — a butcher shop!” He laughed harder, obviously pleased with himself.
“That steer was worth fifty dollars on the hoof,” Cameron said. “I’ll give you a week to sweat the prison stink off you and earn me that much money.”
Arker gaped at him and then laughed again. “You hear that, Joe?” he demanded. “The deputy here don’t seem to know he ain’t the law once he’s past the edge of town.”
“I know it,” Cameron said quietly. “And when I get a beef butchered, I do the same as the rest of the ranchers in the valley — I handle the problem myself. Where there is no law, every man has to be his own. It’s a fool thing, but until the valley men vote the marshal’s jurisdiction bigger than just the town, or until they’re willing to pay for a deputy sheriff out of the county seat, that’s the way it’ll stand.”
He was talking almost aimlessly, not really concerned that Rafe Arker knew his opinion of the local law problem; and while he talked, Cameron made an effort to size up the mountainous man blocking his way. He was seeking a weakness, something that would give him an opening, let him move into the position of advantage. But from where Cameron sat, Arker seemed to have control of this game — he was both banker and dealer and the cards were falling the way he wanted them to.
“All right,” Arker said with his gusty laugh, “you’re your own law here, deputy. You handle your own problems out in the valley. Start handling,” he gibed.
“I told you I’d give you a week to collect the fifty dollars,” Cameron said.
Arker snorted. “Fifty dollars! You’ll take what I choose to give you — and be glad it ain’t a bullet in the brisket. Right now I’m handing you a warning. When you get back to town, pack your warbag and ride. You been in these parts long enough.”
He aimed his voice behind Cameron. “All right, Joe, ride up and get his gun. You, lawman, keep your hands right where they are.”
Cameron heard Joe Farley start his horse forward. He knew what to expect — he could read it in Arker’s eager expression. Once Joe Farley disarmed him, he would be easy prey to all the hoorawing tricks a man like Arker would know. Perhaps lassoed and made to run behind a loping horse. And when he was exhausted, held up by Farley while Arker exercised his fists. And finally roped belly down across the saddle and sent to town like a sack of grain. That or a variation on it would be Arker’s idea of amusement.