Revenge on the Mongollon Rim: A Peter Ott Western

Revenge on

the Mogollon Rim

A Peter Ott Western

Taylor Jones

Writers Club Press

San Jose New York Lincoln Shanghai

Revenge on the Mogollon Rim

A Peter Ott Western

All Rights Reserved © 2000 by Taylor Jones

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanica l, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.

Published by Writers Club Press an imprint of iUniverse.com, Inc.

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ISBN: 0-595-09279-9

ISBN 978-1-469-76455-9 (ebook)

Contents

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Dedication

This novel is dedicated to the memory of Lieutenant Keith Abbot of Bellingham, Washington who fought in the Pacific during World War II only to be called up with the Army Reserves during the Korean War. Despite fears that his time was running out, he trained us to exhaustion so that we could endure the fighting in the frigid mountains of Korea. May he rest in eternal peace with his kindred dead of the 17th Infantry Regimental Combat team.

Revenge can be a heartless killer, plaguing the innocent along with the guilty and not satisfying her victims—leaving a bad taste in the mouths of avengers.

Chapter One

I was riding to Durango because I had to, not that I wanted to.

Me and Pa was branding a bull calf when I saw our neighbor, George McFarlane, riding that little paint of his up the trail to our ranch. I kept on watching. When George got too close, I said, I got to leave home, Pa.

Pa was pushing the branding iron into the calf ’s hide, with the steam and the smoke from the burning hair stinking up the good mountain air, and the calf squirming and all. He said, You can mark his ears and cut ’im now.

Did you hear me, Dad? I’m leaving.

He looked up at me with those steel eyes, his big boot on the calf ’s rump and said, Would you nip his ears, Pete? We ain’t got all day.

Dad finally looked up the trail while I was cutting out the oysters. He said, Who’s that ridin’?

I said, It’s George McFarlane and I don’t want to shoot him and leave his wife a widow lady with two kids to take care of.

Pa pushed that old black hat of his back on his head, his pale blue eyes peering out at me. Sarah ain’t got two kids, Pete, just Billy.

I said, Well, she’s going to have another and it ain’t going to have red hair and look like George. I got to be riding.

Pa’s face got as red as a ripe chili pepper. So that’s were you been gallivantin’ around. Well, you better be doing what you said, Son. I’ll try to cool ’im off.

Your chances of cooling that Scot are about as much as cooling the sun by throwing a bucket of water at it. Be a seeing you, Pa.

As an afterthought, I said, Tell George I rode off to Denver and that I didn’t do nothin’. Tell him it was Dan Rhodes over at the Triple F that knocked up his wife.

I didn’t like that look Pa gave me.

I swung into the saddle. With a touch of the spurs, my blooded bay stallion, Ute Chief, took off like a jackrabbit with a wolf pack on his tail, the cow dogs a following in the dust behind me, until Dad called ’em back. I held Chief back some, because I wasn’t sure what George would do, but one thing was for sure, and George knew it; that paint of his had no bottom and could never stay with Ute Chief.

That’s the way it was. I had to leave Pa with the work, and he only had a couple of Utes and Mexicans helping him. I hated to leave him that way, but it was better than me shooting an innocent man that couldn’t out draw one of those fat priests you see shuffling down the street in Santa Fe with the beads and cross dangling from his neck.

When I saw that George wasn’t following, I gave Chief a pat on the neck and told him to take it easy. Pa probably had George McFarlane tied to a tree anyway so that he could calm down some. Pa had a way of a talking to people like that. I rode over Wolf Creek Pass and west toward Durango.

The sun grew warm and I took my neckerchief and wiped the brim of my hat. It wasn’t all my fault. Dad sent me to the McFarlane place to pick up a saddle George McFarlane needed to sell for some cash money. It was on a Sunday, and George never did one lick of work on Sundays. That was the day he went to meetings and visited ranchers and town folks to see if they wouldn’t become as stout a Mormon as he was. But George had only that one wife, Sarah, so maybe he wasn’t all that stout.

Sarah wasn’t no Mormon, being a local that went to school with my older sister, Rachel, before Rachel died of the diphtheria, joining my ma where the dead folks go. One thing in George’s craw was that he couldn’t convert his own wife. But nobody out our way ever thought Sarah was the religious type, in face, quite the opposite, and wondered how the two ever got together.

Anyway, George wasn’t there when I rode up to the ranch house. I knocked and Sarah yelled, Come on in! I did and she was nursing the baby who was about old enough to ride the chuck line. Billy was a cute little tike, past being a yearling, and smiled at me with his big blue eyes without stopping the suckin’ on Sarah’s ample breast. He had red hair like his dad all right.

I wasn’t blushing or nothing. The Indian squaws were often bare chested and the ranch ladies around those parts were apt to flip out a you-know-what at any time or place if a kid needed a feeding. I don’t think it would have been the same if George was there, but we were alone, and I hadn’t been with one of those whore squaws yet like the other boys, and Sarah gave me a pretty smile, those crescent-moon dimples a flashing at me and all.

I took off my hat, being in the presence of a lady, and said, Still a nursing that little fellow, huh?

George wants me to nurse as long as I can, she said.

She put the baby on the floor, and he tottered over to me. I picked him up and gave him a horsey ride on my knee, startin’ him a giggling and all. I said, So that he’s fed good?

She blushed, Para que no llegaré a ser embarazada.

I was surprised she said that, being a woman and all, but Sarah always was frank about things. I guess saying in Spanish that George wanted her to keep on nursing so she wouldn’t get pregnant made it easier to say. Still, in English or Spanish, I never done heard of no such thing.

She wiped her nipple with a cloth and some things started stirring inside me and I said, Where’s George?

She didn’t say where. She just said, He won’t be back until candle lighting.

She put Billy down for his nap, and fed me a good dinner of deer stew with vegetables from her garden. After that, I felt I needed a snooze. What I wanted was a snooze with her so I said, I better get going. Here’s the money for the saddle.

She took the money, put it in a jar on the kitchen table, and said, The saddle’s in the barn. I’ll help you get it. And when we was in the barn I kissed her and she kissed back real hard.

I once rode a bucking bronc that squealed and bit.

We waited a while and I was thinking about that bronc again. I decided that I loved Sarah. I wanted to steal her from Gordon McFarlane and take her to Santa Fe, or even Mexico if he was chasin’ after us.

I went home that Sunday drained and feeling warm. I passed McFarlane on the trail and he said, I see you got the saddle, son.

I nodded and said nothing that I remember, just knowing I would be back at the McFarlane place, and me feeling darned guilty about the whole thing wouldn’t make a drab of difference.

I went back when she had told me to, and we were in the bedroom, and there was perfume, and we were buck naked, and Billy watched the fun. And things were going good until she said without bothering about Spanish, I’m pregnant!

I said, I thought you were not supposed to get pregnant while you’re nursing.

George thought that more than me.

We’re leaving here together, Sarah.

To where. You can’t take care of me and Billy.

We can live with Pa.

I’m not leaving my husband, Peter. I love him, not you.

I felt really sad about what she said. I said, Well, he’ll think the baby is his.

I was putting on my boots so that I could ride out of there when she said, He’ll know it’s not his.

Why not?

Because that’s why I’ve been loving you. He thinks that he should do it only for procreation. We haven’t made love since I got pregnant with Billy.

I said, I thought he was having you nurse because—

She interrupted me and said, That was just in case he weakened from his thinking.

I cussed my bad luck and George’s stupid thinking, and I watched the trail to our ranch everyday, trying to figure out what procreation was—without asking Dad—clean up until that June day when Dad and I and the Mexicans and the Utes were branding cattle. And that’s the day I lit out.

I stayed at a ranch house on the chuck line that night and rode into Durango the next day. Sheriff Kramer hired me as a deputy and I spent the evenings putting mean drunks into the cooler and shooting the bull with the whores at Hank’s Saloon. Saturday nights were the worst and most exciting when the cowboys rode into town, shot up the place, drank the town dry of booze, got into gunfights, and pissed off the whores and the dogs and the good people of Durango.

It was on a Saturday night when Sheriff Kramer and I was doing our duties when a bad-ass gambler named Schwartz and two of his cronies cheated some cowboys out of their earnings at the poker tables in Hank’s place. The cowboys complained and Schwartz and his two friends shot it out with the cowboys, gut shooting one of them and clipping off the ear of another, and then moving into the street where me and the sheriff had come running. Crammer told them to put up their hands and to drop their gun belts one at a time when he told them to, but they just turned and fired, but not quite as fast as me and the sheriff.

Well, I felt pretty damned proud and waved and talked to the crowd not noting that Sheriff Kramer was a getting away from the smoke from the black powder so that he could see good and wisely spending his time watching the hombres on the ground. That’s when Schwartz came up with a gun and Sheriff Kramer shot him dead in the forehead, but not before Schwartz fired and hit me in the right thigh. It knocked me a swirling to the ground. When I got my senses back, I saw that I was bleeding real good. I felt right stupid, not tending my duties, but trying to be the big shot with the crowd. I paid for it.

Dr. Evans hustled down the street as soon as he heard the shots, not being particularly afraid of anything in this here world. I guess a pitiful gunfight in Durango didn’t compare with charging the Federal lines at Gettysburg. Dr. Evans tied a tourniquet around my leg, then had a couple of guys take me to the sheriff ’s house up the street. The guys heckled me as they carried me down the street, and one that I knew well, because we went to school together, Hank Phelps, said, You’ll learn to mess around with a rancher’s wife and have to leave home.

I told him to not let my whereabouts get out. He said he could hardly wait to tell George McFarlane where I was, and that I was all shot up so that George could get to me.

I was cringing with pain now and I said, Hank, tell Paw that I’m okay, will you?

He said that he would.

He didn’t hang around Dr. Evans’ office while I was getting treated. He went back to the fun he was having before I got shot. I knew he wouldn’t tell George where I was, because folks up my way don’t tell anybody nothing they don’t have no business in knowing. But just as a caution, I asked him to tell the newspaper editor not to put my name in the paper, to just say a deputy got shot.

The sheriff ’s wife cooked me chicken and dumplin’s and peach cobbler made from the peaches she canned the year before, and she dressed my wounds and called me, Son, and I called her Ma because I never had one that I could remember.

The sheriff told me that I was a fast draw but a stupid gun fighter. He was blunt like that. He told me about Slim Hartley in Santa Fe and that I could learn to fight from Slim if I had the aptitude and could listen good.

When I recovered from my gunshot wound enough to hobble over to Chief, mount, and ride to Santa Fe, I told the sheriff I’d me back when I could shoot good.

He said, I’ll wire Slim so he’ll know you’re not gunning for him.

Good idea, Sheriff, I said. I was getting smarter all the time.

Santa Fe is at a high elevation, but southerly, and the weather is good there all year around, including July and August. I rode into town on the Fourth of July and there was a big celebration going on including a parade and a Mexican bull fight. I couldn’t find a place to stay, so I slept under the stars in the Plaza. The marachi bands tooted their horns into the wee hours of the morning and my leg hurt, laying on the ground like I was, and so I didn’t sleep all that much that night.

In the morning, I bought tortillas with beans from the street venders and then rode to the adobe house where the sheriff in Santa Fe told me Slim Perkins lived. I was greeted by a small Mexican boy, not over nine years old, who said, ¿Quién es, Señor?

I told him who I was and that his father should be expecting me. He said, No tengo a padre, Señor. ¿Quiere ver Señor Slim?

I told him I was sorry he had no father and, yes, I wanted to see Slim. He told me to come back at noon, because Slim was with his mother and didn’t want to be disturbed. He said, Sería una idea muy mala perturbar Señor Slim. I decided not to disturb Slim, since the boy said it was a bad idea. I laid in a hammock on the veranda and took a snooze in the morning sun.

A splash of water hit my face. Wake up Rip Van Winkle! He was about six-feet-two, thin as a whisper and he had a bodacious grin on his leathery face. He pulled on his handlebar mustache and said, Had breakfast?

I got out of the hammock, Slim giving me a hand because of the leg. He said, ¡Maria! Tome un mira su pierna.

She had me sit down and she pulled off my boots and my pants and there I was as bare as a newborn. She pointed where she had no business pointing and said, Ése es un muy bueno.

Slim laughed and said, Where’s your long johns?

I took them off for the winter. They’re a nuisance when trying to treat the leg, But I wished I had them last night, sleeping in the Plaza.

He twisted his mustache. You could have stayed here with us.

Everybody was too drunk to tell me how to get here, I answered.

He laughed a chuckle. Maria will dress your wound. Have the boy bring you to Carlos’ Saloon when she’s got you fixed up.

I thought he would mount up and ride out of there, but he strolled to the gate and disappeared. To me, that was an unnatural way to get from one place to another, walking.

Maria gently dressed the wound, and even helped me pull up my pants, help I didn’t need. She was not yet thirty and her Indian heritage tempered her Spanish blood. Slim had his choice in that town and she had to be a hot one. I let it go at that.

I found Slim in the saloon where he was playing faro. When I got there, we went to the poker tables and we played stud with a couple of troopers, a rancher and a wagon driver. Slim skinned all of us in short time, but returned my money later. The day went on from one game to another. Slim won. I lost, but he gave me my money back so that I could play again.

In the afternoon, we went to his place and Maria fed us beans and meat and eggs and tortillas. Slim went in with Maria for his siesta and I threw my Bowie knife into an old board about a hundred times. The boy was interested, so I told him to get a smaller knife from the house. I showed him how to throw the knife if he ever wanted to. We got bored with that, so we found an old tree and I threw my hand axe about a dozen times before the boy wanted to try it. He was small and tough for a kid his age, but he just couldn’t get the knack of it.

I wanted to practice my draw, but I knew it wouldn’t be appreciated during the siesta time, and I might end up with real live action that I wasn’t looking for. I practiced the draw without firing. The boy wanted to learn too, so I took from my saddle bag my granddad’s old Colt Navy .36 caliber revolver that my dad gave me, removed the