He didn’t explain it was a common enough symptom in response to heights. He doubted Will Beatty had ever experienced it. “I don’t recognize this route we’re taking. I had a map the sheriff drew for me the last time I attempted this.”
“Oh, Wyatt wouldn’t have sent you this way. Not on your own. There’s another trail we could have followed, but that would have taken longer. I figured you were anxious to make the acquaintance of the Abbots and get back to town straightaway.”
Cole would not let himself dwell on what route the deputy meant for them to take on their return. It would be a true measure of Will Beatty’s compassion if he elected to follow the trail first suggested by the sheriff.
The deputy and his mount crested the ridge first, and Dolly dutifully followed. It took Cole a moment to realize they had ceased to climb. His grip on the mare’s mane eased, and he sat up straight, shrugging the knots out of his shoulders and between his blades. Will slowed and allowed him to draw close.
“Not bad for a greenhorn,” Will said. “You did all right,
Doc.”
Cole’s tight smile was more in the way of grimace.
“Thanks. I think.”
“No, I mean it. You spooked me a little back there. Dolly, too. Thought you might slide right out of your saddle, but you held fast. I don’t tell everyone this, but I had some of that vertigo once watching ol’ Doc Diggins take a slug out of Wyatt’s chest. Had to hold a bucket in my lap and my head over the bucket. I reckon that’s the kind of thing that doesn’t bother you at all.”
Coleridge Monroe regarded the deputy a long moment, this time with appreciation for the man’s forthrightness. “Was that the last time someone was shot in town?”
Will thought about it, then nodded. “Yeah, that’d be right. Guess that’d be a year and a bit now. We had a hangin’ since then, but that was after a regular trial. Judge Wentworth saw that everything was done proper. Anyway, Wyatt and me don’t hold with lynchin’, though Lord knows, it’s tempting when you gotta wait a stretch for the judge to make his rounds.”
Cole wasn’t certain how he should respond. He elected to offer up a noise from the back of his throat that could be interpreted as the deputy saw fit. It turned out to be enough encouragement for Will Beatty to continue in the same vein.
“Now, outside of the town proper we had a couple of miscreants–that’s the sheriff’s word for them, and he does set store by a particular word now and again. You know what that means, don’t you, Doc?”
“I do.”
“Figured you did, you being an educated man and all. Columbia, is that right?”
“Yes. How did you know? You weren’t on the search committee.”
“No, but my wife was. Still is, matter of fact, if you don’t work out like they hope. Contract’s for a year, ain’t it?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, don’t you worry. I’ll put in a good word for you now and again. I can see you got grit, comin’ up here the way you are, ‘specially after being shot at on your last trip.”
Cole was fairly certain he didn’t want to think about that. The bullet had shaved the bark off an aspen only a foot away. His mount, demonstrating more skittishness than the stalwart Dolly, unseated and abandoned him. He’d walked most of a mile before he caught up with the horse, wondering a good part of the way if he could expect a bullet in his back. “What about the miscreants?”
“Uh? Oh, those poor bastards. Forgot all about them.” Will saw that the doctor was handling the pace he’d set well enough, so he increased it slightly as they rode the ridgeline. The goal he’d set for himself was to get where they were going and get home again with some daylight to spare. He didn’t think Monroe or Dolly would do nearly as well after dark. “Let’s see,” he went on. “That was about four or five months ago. They say trouble comes in threes, but these two didn’t need help. They rode out this way from Denver after getting drunked up and shootin’ off their guns in a fancy house. Killed one of the girls, though no one’s sure they meant to. Seems they were out of sorts with someone at their card table, and she happened to be sittin’ in the fellow’s lap. What I heard is that they finally got him and then they ran.”
Cole glanced around. The landscape was as rugged and harsh as it was breath-stealing. Much higher up, snowcapped peaks glinted in the bright sunlight. Rocky crags made the climb to their summits appear unforgiving if not impossible. Around him, aspens shivered one after the other as the air stirred, their timing and execution as exquisite as a corps of ballerinas. Cocking his head to one side, Cole sought out the sound of a mountain stream. The swift rush of water made its own music, a steady percussive accompaniment to the occasional cries of birds and the murmur of the wind through the trees.
There was a terrible beauty to the vista that could make a man admire it and be cautious at the same time.
“Why did they come this way?” he asked, though he suspected he knew Will’s answer. A man could get lost here.
“Lots of hidey-holes,” the deputy told him.
That was another way of saying it, Cole supposed. In aid of suppressing a wry smile, he raised his gloved fist to his mouth and cleared his throat. “You found them, though, didn’t you?”
“That’s a fact. Sheriff’s a member of the Rocky Mountain Detective Association. We went out as soon as we got the wire up from the Denver marshal, though I recollect now that there was a delay at the Denver end, and that gave them a good jump on us and every other lawman in these parts. Sheriff and I were out the better part of three days before we caught their trail. It wasn’t hard after that, what with them circling back on themselves. When it was all said and done, Wyatt thought we could have saved ourselves a heap of trouble if we’d stayed in one place and just let them come to us. O’course, that wouldn’t have really worked since they were dead when we found ‘em.”
“Dead,” Cole repeated. “Shot?”
“Hell, yes. That’s why I’m telling you this story, ain’t it? You asked about shootings, remember?”
Reflecting on their conversation, Cole thought he probably had. There was a lesson in this, he decided, one of many he was likely to learn if he stayed in Reidsville: don’t ask that no-account Beatty boy a question if you didn’t have time for the answer.
“One in the face, the other in the crotch,” Will said. “Wyatt thinks they had a falling out and turned on each other. Guns were right there beside them. The one shot in the face still had a cold grip on his. The one that took it in the privates dropped his Colt and was curled up like a baby, still clutchin’ his balls when he died. Guess that comforted him some, knowin’ he was leaving this world with his parts attached–even if he knew he was going to hell, which I think he must have suspicioned.”
“I’m sure he did.”
Will simply nodded. He pointed off to the right, indicating to Cole that he should start moving in that direction. “I guess it’s not all that odd that it should come back to me so clear now.”
“What do you mean?” asked Cole, ducking under the low spiny branch of a pine.
The
