Finish the Western III: A Murder in the Gulch

[Skywatcher]

Judge Cotton introduced the officer to Percival, Zeke, and Mose as Colonel Frederick Morse. Zeke could barely believe his ears! The few letters he has from his father mentioned an officer by that name. While Percival and Mose went over the papers, Zeke had a question for Col. Morse. “Did you know a…colored…soldier by the name of George Washington Clayton?”

“Lt. Clayton? I sure do.”

“Lieutenant!? No, he was a sergeant when he died in Andersonville.”

“Yes, that’s him. He’s with the 10th Cavalry in Fort Leavenworth.”

Zeke had to grab onto the Judge’s desk in order to keep from falling over. Mose and Percival looked up at the sound of flesh hitting wood.“Zeke?” asked Mose. “What’s wrong?”

“He’s alive! Pop’s alive!”

[ivylass]

Belle kept an eye on Tessie as she and Mose ran around all over the place. At first she couldn’t tell who was chasing whom, but she stood up in concern as Tessie tripped over a satchel at the Colonel’s feet. Belle glanced at the baby, but he was sleeping soundly on the blanket, so she hurried over to make sure her daughter was okay.

Before she could reach Tessie, the little girl had already bounded up. She had lifted her skirt up, and Mose was squatted in front of her, poking at the oozing blood on her knees.

“Owie,” was Moses’ diagnosis.

“Owie,” Tessie agreed. She looked rather puzzled. “Stingie owie.”

“Like a bee?” Mose had been stung by a bee earlier that summer, and it had left an indelible impression.

“Not that stingie!” Tessie replied with scorn. “I not crying!”

Belle stifled a giggle, and patted at her daughter’s knee with a handkerchief. “All better?” she asked.

Tessie nodded. “All better!” She and Mose ran off again, and then something that had fallen out of the Colonel’s satchel caught Belle’s eye. She looked at it, confused, then motioned Big Mose over.

“What do you think that could be?” she asked.

[Baker]

Out of one corner of his eye Col. Morse watched as Tuttle and Nichols were loaded into the wagon. He meant to see justice done, and didn’t appreciate his authority being challenged. Morse noted that Capt. Brown, who’d brought the orders to him, spoke to the shackled pair in low tones before herding them onto the wagon. “Hmm, now what was that all about?” he wondered to himself. Capt. Brown was not known to him before he’d couried the documents to Morse.

But for now his more immediate attention was taken up by the shock written large on the face of the gasping sheriff. “George is your* father*?” Morse took another look at Zeke, his face, eyes, and so on. “Good Lord, now that you say that I can see the resemblance.”

Zeke choked out “You said he was at Ft. Leavenworth? He’s still in the Army? Pop would be pretty old to be a lieutenant, wouldn’t he?”

Col. Morse took a quick look at his feet, then up at Zeke again. “Well, he’s a Leavenworth, but he’s out of the service now. He got a courtesy promotion to lieutenant when he mustered out, not long after the war.”

“But I thought you said he was with the 10th Cavalry!”

“Oh, he’ll always be ‘one of the 10th’, but after that hell hole he was so sick and hurt he couldn’t serve actively anymore.” Morse stopped at the appalled look on Zeke’s face. “You didn’t know this, did you?”

“No!” Zeke took a few deep breaths to calm himself. “I was still a kid, mom and I both thought he was dead when the letters stopped and we couldn’t find his name on the survivors lists.” A pleading look came into the man’s eyes. “What else haven’t you told me?”

“Well, considering his race I suppose it’s a miracle he survived at all. You wouldn’t believe how some of those prisoners looked. Did you hear they hanged the commandant of the camp? Only Confederate officer executed, for war crimes no less! Well, George was sick in the belly, from bad food and being kicked around. Lost a lot of teeth too. And one of his hands was bunged up when a Confederate guard smashed it with a rifle butt.” He looked into Zeke’s staring eyes. “Um, well, he also went mad for a while, he was in a lot a pain for so long. Kind of got over that though. He’s in a soldiers home now, this couple takes care of some older veterans.”

Zeke closed his eyes, trying to blot out the image of what had happened to his father. But it didn’t help, so he opened them again. “Can you tell me how to get in touch with him?”

“I’d be happy to. But first I have to go into town with these prisoners and Mr. Knight. I don’t know what his problem is, but hopefully a telegram or two will straighten things out.”

As the wagon pulled away, with it’s escort, Zeke decided to follow it into town. Somthing was wrong but he didn’t know what. However, he first wanted to greet Will Santini, and whoever the visitor was he had with him.

[Baker]

“Will!” Zeke hailed as he strode over “Good to see you back!” He looked around at the variety of odd expressions that folks had on their faces. “Shoot, it looks like you all have had the same kind of shock I just did” Zeke’s lighter tone belied his own inner feelings, and he let the others think he was talking about trial developments.

Will Santini took a close look at the sheriff. An astute observer of human nature, he wasn’t fooled but decided to leave it for now. “It is good to be back!” he replied, taking Zeke’s hand. “Got someone here I want you to meet. Zeke Clayton, meet Billy Sullivan” The two men, much of an age, shook hands, mentally assessing each other, and Santini got an impish look on his face.

“By the way, you two are related” He glanced at Will Anderson, who gave a little nod, as the two very different looking men took another look at each other. "If I have it figured right, you are what they call ‘first cousins once removed.’ " The baffled expressions led him to “have mercy” and he explained. “Zeke here, his grandfather was Gus Anderson, and Billy is the son of Will Anderson.”

Zeke took a closer look at this Billy, wondering what the man, who had something of a dude about him, thought of being related to* him*. At least there seemed to be no *open * derision in his face. “I see Will Santini found what he was looking for” he began “you just paying a visit?”

Billy glanced at the others. “That was the original plan. Now, things might have changed.” Zeke was filled in on Billy’s professional status, and he’d just begun to tell them about what he’d learned from Morse, when Belle Parker, holding George, and accompanied by Big Mose, who had Tessie hanging on him, interrupted things.

“Sheriff,” she began “I just saw that Col. Morse take off for the Gulch. Tessie here, she was horsing around and ran into his bag. But he took off before I could give him back this.” She handed over a small booklet, with a couple of closely handwritten papers folded up inside of it. “Sheriff Zeke, honestly, I didn’t mean to read his personal material, but the title caught my eye. I, well us, I asked Mose here to look too, after seeing it. Mose” and here she looked at him with a questioning air, “after what you said about what you saw in town, maybe you better explain.”

[ivylass]

May was ecstatic. A chance meeting with Sheriff MacTavish, some polite conversation, and she had a job! Sheriff MacTavish, (who’d asked her to call him James, reddening in the face a bit) was bluff and hearty, and she knew that she’d have to pass an examination with the Solace school board, but at least she knew what she was going to do after this mess was over. It would be lovely to teach again.

So, when a rider appeared over the ridge, galloping toward the gathering, May was in such a good mood that she felt surprise rather than anger when she recognized who was on the horse.

Dex slid off the heaving nag, gasping for breath and looking around frantically. The townsfolk near him whispered among themselves, and with a quick, “Excuse me,” to James MacTavish, May hurried toward her erstwhile employer.

“Dex, what in the world are you doing here?” she asked, grabbing his sleeve. “I thought you took off?”

Dex nodded. “I did. But I realized that I was still doing what I’ve been doing half my life. Running. And I wasn’t going to do it anymore.” He saw Nichols and Tuttle in the wagon and began to head toward them with a purpose that scared May.

“Dex? Dex! Stop! What are you doing?” She cried, running after him. “They’ve been taken into custody! They won’t bother anyone anymore!”

Dex stopped at the side of the wagon. Tuttle and Nichols stared at him, smirking. Captain Brown jumped down, as he was just getting ready to leave with his “prisoners.” He was so close to getting his stupid colleagues away, and he wasn’t going to have his plans unravel so close to escape.

“What’s all this?” he blustered. “What do you want, man?”

Dex turned to Brown, his face white. “I know you,” he whispered. “You’re Alexander Brown.”

The captain edged nervously back. "Do I know you, sir?’

Dex laughed, a short ugly sound. “Not now. Considering I was a boy when I met you.” He reached under his holster and pulled out his gun.

May screamed, and on reflex, Zeke and MacTavish spun and headed toward them.

[Baker]

McTavish was closer than Zeke. To those around them he seemed to teleport into their midst, shouting “What the* hell* is going on here?” He’d always found that a loud roar, from a man of his size, froze people for a second, and gave him time to get on top of a situation.

It worked again, allowing Zeke time to pull up by Dex. “I wouldn’t try anything, you stupid drunk! Not in my territory you don’t!”

Dex numbly shoved his pistol back into the holster, his mouth agape. “But, but Sheriff, you don’t understand! That man…” and he pointed to Brown, but Zeke shut him up.

“You’re right, I don’t understand” he snapped. “Let’s just everyone cool down and let justice work like it’s supposed to, so Knight can get what he needs at the telegraph office.”

Poor Dex seemed to shrivel in front of their eyes, and May almost felt sorry for him. Col. Brown breathed an inner sigh of relief, “this is going to work after all” he thought “thanks to sheriff boy here. I wonder what he would think if he realized what I told him about his pa is all a pack of lies?” He spoke out loud.

“Sheriff Clayton, I don’t know what this man’s problem is, but he seems to be mistaking me for someone else. Now, can I please get this show on the road, so matters of jurisdiction can be cleared up?” He looked with contempt at Prairie Dexter, who had tears running silently down his face, while May patted him on the shoulder.

But before the little caravan of wagons could start off once again, Belle and Mose Doubletree came striding quickly up.

“Zeke, you dropped these before you could take a proper look, but Mose here took a look too. You* have* to see this now!” she commanded, in a ‘do not trifle with me’ sort of voice. She shoved the booklet and papers at Zeke, not hearing the tiny sounds Tuttle and Brown made when they caught sight of what she held out.

The well-worn little booklet was a sort of scholarly monograph, impressively titled “A Comparitive Study of Symbolism in Pre-literate Cultures, From Ancient Times to the Modern Era.” Mose stepped up to Zeke, speaking urgently.

“Remember what I said when we found those two killed at Goldstone’s place? That it had to be a white man who made them, not one of our people? Well, look at these”, and he stabbed a finger at a set of markings on a page Zeke held open. “Those are markings one of the peoples would make, after a revenge killing. But* these*” and he flipped two pages over, “look almost the same, but they come from somewhere in Australia, and don’t mean the same thing at all.”

“Too bad we don’t have Rev. Gray here” muttered Belle.

“So what are you getting at?” barked Col. Brown, “and what has somebody been doing rummaging in my pack? That belongs to me!” and he grabbed at the items Zeke was holding. Zeke snatched them out of reach.

“Not so fast there” he warned. “Mose, he is right about one thing. What’s your point?”

“That is was the foreign marks we saw around those dead men. Someone thought he was pinning murder on an “Injun”( and here he spat in distate) when really the killer was showing he misremembered something he’d read about.”

McTavish spoke up again “but as I understand it, Brown here wasn’t arrived until just today, so he couldn’t have planted the wrong symbols. So who was it?”

Brown looked like he was getting edgy and nervous, so Mose spoke quickly. “Those other papers in the book are letters from Tuttle, writing about plans they were making, and Tuttle one time asked about the pamphlet. So my guess is that Tuttle here…” Mose was stopped by the raging of Tuttle from the wagon, “you motherless idiot” he screamed “you were supposed to burn those papers after reading them. How many times did I tell you to? Well I’m not going to swing alone you moron!”

“Speaking of fools” Brown raged back “I told you that hiring that con was a bad idea!” Suddenly both men stopped, realizing that their own mouths were condemning them. Belle leaned over to Mose and whispered quickly “How did you read those pages so fast?” and was startled to see Big Mose start laughing.

“I didn’t” and he choked a little, getting himself under control “but I made some good guesses didn’t I?” While the McReynolds deputies came up and sort of covered the others, he motioned Knight, the sheriffs, and the judge over. “What I did was get one of them mad enough, with lies, to be sure, but believable. lies, to get them to provide their own admittance to law-breaking.”

Dave McReynold’s gun spoke at Col Brown broke from the group, heading for his horse.

[Baker]

Ok, I royally screwed up my latest post, getting Capt Brown and Co. Morse way mixed up. I’ve gone over it and made some revisions, managing to save most of it I think. The following revised post should take the place of my previous one, which should be considered null and void. If I’ve messed this one up, I hope it can be pointed out ASAP.

---

McTavish was closer than Zeke. To those around them he seemed to teleport into their midst, shouting “What the hell is going on here?” He’d always found that a loud roar, from a man of his size, froze people for a second, and gave him time to get on top of a situation.

It worked again, allowing Zeke time to pull up by Dex. “I wouldn’t try anything, you stupid drunk! Not in my territory you don’t!”

Dex numbly shoved his pistol back into the holster, his mouth agape. “But, but Sheriff, you don’t understand! That man…” and he pointed to Brown, but Zeke shut him up.

“You’re right, I don’t understand” he snapped. “Let’s just everyone cool down and let justice work like it’s supposed to, so Knight can get what he needs at the telegraph office.”

Poor Dex seemed to shrivel in front of their eyes, and May almost felt sorry for him. Capt. Brown breathed an inner sigh of relief, “this is going to work after all” he thought.

“Sheriff Clayton, I don’t know what this man’s problem is, but he seems to be mistaking me for someone else. Now, can we please get this show on the road, so matters of jurisdiction can be cleared up?” He looked with contempt at Prairie Dexter, who had tears running silently down his face, while May patted him on the shoulder. “Col. Morse, sir, shall I take the prisoners?”

Col. Morse was getting a bad feeling about this expedition, but gave a nod to start out.

But before the little caravan of wagons could start off once again, Belle and Mose Doubletree came striding quickly up.

“Zeke, you dropped these before you could take a proper look, but Mose here took a look too. You have to see this now!” she commanded, in a ‘do not trifle with me’ sort of voice. She shoved the booklet and papers at Zeke, not hearing the tiny sounds Tuttle and Brown made when they caught sight of what she held out.

The well-worn little booklet was a sort of scholarly monograph, impressively titled “A Comparitive Study of Symbolism in Pre-literate Cultures, From Ancient Times to the Modern Era.” Mose stepped up to Zeke, speaking urgently.

“Remember what I said when we found those two killed at Goldstone’s place? That it had to be a white man who made them, not one of our people? Well, look at these”, and he stabbed a finger at a set of markings on a page Zeke held open. “Those are markings one of the peoples would make, after a revenge killing. But these” and he flipped two pages over, “look almost the same, but they come from somewhere in Australia, and don’t mean the same thing at all.”

“Too bad we don’t have Rev. Gray here” muttered Belle.

Col. Morse was startled to see papers of his in the hand of strangers, for he recognized the monograph at once. “What the hell has someone been doing rummaging in my pack? Where did you get those?”

Belle explained how Tessie had been playing. “I’m sorry she took something belonging to you. But Mose here recognized something he saw in there, and says it’s important.”

Morse looked at Mose Doubletree, who asked him “these other papers folded up in here, who wrote them?” Morse took a look, and got a puzzled look on his face. “where did these come from?” he wondered. “It’s not my handwriting.” As he examined them he asked Mose, “what was it about the symbols that got you worked up?”

Mose explained the deaths to Col Morse. “That were the foreign marks we saw around those dead men. Someone thought he was pinning murder on an “Injun”( and here he spat in distaste) when really the killer was showing he misremembered something he’d read about.”

McTavish spoke up again “but as I understand it, Col. Morse and his entourage here arrived just today, so he couldn’t have planted the wrong symbols. So who was it?”

Morse took a closer look at the handwritten pages and noticed the signature. Looking up at Capt. Brown he asked “Capt., what are letters of yours doing in my book?” His voice was cold. “Why the hell have you been messing in my personal gear?”

Brown looked like he was getting edgy and nervous, so Mose spoke quickly. “I had a quick look at the letters, and I caught one part. Tuttle here and Capt. Brown seem to have been writing about plans they were making, and Tuttle one time asked about the pamphlet. So my guess is that Tuttle here…" Mose was stopped by the raging of Tuttle from the wagon, “you motherless idiot” he screamed “you were supposed to burn those papers after reading them. How many times did I tell you to? Well I’m not going to swing alone you moron!”

“Speaking of fools” Brown raged back “I told you that hiring that con was a bad idea!” Suddenly both men stopped, realizing that their own mouths were condemning them. Belle leaned over to Mose and asked him quickly “How did you read those pages so fast?” and both she and Morse were startled to see Big Mose start laughing.

“I didn’t” and he choked a little, getting himself under control “but I made some good guesses didn’t I?” While the McReynolds deputies came up and sort of covered the others, he motioned Knight, the sheriffs, and the judge over. “What I did do was get one of them mad enough, with lies, to be sure, but believable. lies, to get them to provide their own admittance to law-breaking.”

Dave McReynold’s gun spoke at Cpt. Brown broke from the group, heading for his horse.

[Baker]

Brown grunted in pain as he sprawled in the dirt, and clutched at the calf of his left leg. “Ah, damn it to hell!” he shouted. Others were on him in a flash, and Dave looked at Zeke apologetically.

“I know a leg shot’s chancier” he said “but I figured you might want him to talk.”

Dr. Sullivan hurried over. He had a doctor’s kit with him, and went to work on the bullet wound, ignoring the glares and curses from Capt. Brown. Col. Morse stood over him now, his gaze like thunder. Percival Knight tapped him on the shoulder.

“Looks like your questions about jurisdiction might have an answer here Colonel. Sounds like this whole mess was a lot broader plot than we ever thought it might be.”

Morse glanced at the Pinkerton man, over his shoulder, not wanting to take all his attention away from the treacherous officer who was now being bandaged up. “There’s one part I don’t understand though” and he looked around for Prairie Dexter. He saw him sitting on a blanket, his head hanging, with a glass of water, or maybe lemonade, being handed to him by May Fenno. Morse caught Fenno’s eye, and, looking at Dex, gave a little jerk of his head. She understood, and got Dex up, walking him over to Col. Morse, and Knight.

Dex had been feeling a new strength when he came riding back, but it had burst when it looked like, once again, nobody was going to listen to* him*. He looked at Morse with dull, uninterested eyes.

“Mr., uh, Dexter, is it? Can you explain to me why you reacted to Brown here the way you did? I guess I should have paid you more heed back then, and I’m sorry.”

An odd look crept into Dex’s eyes, and he hesitated before he began to speak. “I suppose he could say I was just a kid, that I don’t remember true. But I met Alex Brown here a long time ago. He was young, but had two older friends he said, that would hurt me if I ever talked. It sounds stupid now, but I was made to believe they could watch me wherever I went. Never even met 'em, but I swear, he called them Sammy and Al.” Eyes went over to Tuttle and Nichols, who faced them down. Nichols sneered “Speaking as a lawyer, I can thell you that a judge would laugh at that type of so-called evidence.”

Dex plowed on, his voice getting thicker, and the words coming more quickly, as if he wanted to get them out before he lost his nerve. “So I did what Alex wanted me too.” His face turned crimson and May gave him another cool drink. “Later on he let me go, but said never to tell, nobody would believe me or care, and they could kill me anytime. I started to grow up, made my own way, thought I was free, but then Nichols came around and told me who he was. Started blackmailing me.” He looked at May, who was white around the lips by now. “You can fill in the rest, you know, why I gave you the job, and you knew Nichols too.”

“I certainly did” she said, in a small voice, then shook herself all over, as if to rid herself of bad memories or thoughts. She looked at her erstwhile employer. “but I’ve got a new future, and you can too Dex. Seems to me it took more guts to tell about this whole thing, than it would have to just shoot someone.”

Judge Cotton had quietly approached the group, and now he spoke up. “Sorry to break in here but I have to agree with Miss Fenno here. As an administrator of the law I would have had to deal harshly with someone who’d assault anyone, even if they deserved it. You did the right thing.”

Dex’s back started to straighten a little, some life coming back into him. “You really think so, don’t you? But not everyone is going to be so broadminded at you Judge.”

“No, they won’t” was the blunt, honest answer. “But I figure there’s going to be new trials for these yahoos anyways. and with all the stuff they’ll spew on each other, trying to get special treatment for themselves, the next judge will have enough to work on without even needing what you’ve told us. Can’t promise of course, but it seems likely.”

“Next judge?” blurted Zeke, “What do you mean by that?”

“Oh, there’s going to have to be a change of venue, as it’s called. And there’s a lot of new charges to be filed, statements to be taken, and so on. Anderson’s Gulch is in too much of a flux for now to handle it, so I’m going to recommend to the circuit judiciary that the whole mess be moved to another county, at least. Otherwise the accused might try to claim they couldn’t get a fair trial here.” He shot a glance at Nichols, saw an angry look on his face, and was gratified to realize his own reasoning had been spot on.

"And there will have to be a couple of courts-martial too, for Tuttle and Brown, " Col. Morse said. The others noticed he wasn’t using their rank. “We’ll have to be careful there’s no double jeopardy involved.”

Dr. Sullivan was done with Brown now. “Whoever wants him can have him” he said, and the man was taken away, limping. Morse himself supported him, but warned him, in a low tone, not to try anything. Finally, the prisoners, including the new one, set off for Anderson’s Gulch. Morse leaned over from the back of his horse, speaking to Knight, who rode beside him. “Well, I figure we’ll still have to send a few telegrams, but not the ones we thought. Damn, I don’t know how I could have not seen Brown for what he was!” Before night could reply Zeke came up, riding quickly “Col. Morse” he said, in a flustered tone, “I didn’t get that Leavenworth address from you!”

It’s hard to write while riding horseback, but Morse managed to scribble out a couple of lines. “Here it is, but don’t worry, I’ll be around for at least another day, I’ll try and get a chance to talk if I can.” Zeke turned back.

The crowd that had gathered for the trial was starting to break up. Judge Cotton banged his gavel to get their attention and explained what had happened. There was a murmur of disappointment at the anticlimactic ending to the whole affair, but still, it had been a nice two days off from the labor of rebuilding. Kids were running around playing, and Zeke noticed Belle Parker and Caroline Charging Bear laughing as they had to pull Tessie and Little Mose off of something messy and disgusting they had found in a scrubby stand of bushes. That newspaper man Hawkins was flitting around, talking to everyone, with a notepand and pencil, too.

He could see May standing with Sheriff McTavish, and several folks from Solace that had come for the trial. Zeke could also see where Danny was sitting with Sally, their heads very close together, and Charlie looking at them too. Somehow he managed to look both thunderous and resigned at the same time. Hmm, that boy Danny was really about ready to start out on his own. Maybe he ought to sell the blacksmithing business to him. The loan Danny would need to swing it would tie him down, settle him.

Sullivan had gone back to talk to Will and Martha again. Now wasn’t that something? He had an almost cousin who looked like a dude, and was a doctor. Anderson’s Gulch needed a doctor, now that McCaulley was dead, and if he could be persuaded Sullivan looked like he would do. Be interesting to see if Will and his son really hit it off. No telling what might happen then.

“Sheriff Zeke, you look so tired” a soft voice murmured at his side. He turned to see Graziella. “Here, I have a cool water for you” and she held out a cup that was sweating slightly on the sides. It went down wonderfully.

“I am tired” he said “guess all this excitement is finally catching up to me. And I still have a lot of work to do in the Gulch. There’s going to be a lot of rebuilding to oversee and…”

“But that is not the work of a sheriff is it?” she inquired “that is the work of an alcalde, or how you say it, a mayor.”

“But Anderson’s Gulch doesn’t have a mayor” he told her " so it will have to be me." His voice trailed off as he caught what she was getting at. “Now wait a darned minute there! This town may have taken to me well enough as a sheriff, but they’d never stand for that!”

Graziella Marquez just stood there patiently, a smile on her face.

THE END