The legacy, p.1
The Legacy, page 1
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The Legacy
Paul Lederer writing as Logan Winters
ONE
Numbers.
There were a lot of numbers involved in the murder. Ninety-year-old rancher J. Pierce Buchanan shot five times in his bedroom. Three heirs, none of whom lived with the old man. Thirty thousand acres of ranchland. But the number that had everyone’s attention was fifty thousand. The missing fifty thousand dollars Buchanan was supposed to have hidden somewhere in or around his Big Springs, Coloradol, home. His killer or killers had shot him dead, but there were indications that he had been tortured before his death, leading everyone to believe that J. Pierce’s assailants had been trying to pry the location of the money out of him.
J. Pierce had married late in life. His wife, Mae Buchanan had given him three daughters optimistically named Faith, Hope and Charity before life in the hard country had caused her to surrender to its rugged ways; she had died of simple exhaustion. Mae was now buried beneath an elegant stone memorial on the open prairie. J. Pierce could afford such monuments in his later years. Buchanan had wasted much of his early life studying. He had been an artist, an architect, a naturalist in turn, found none of them paid well and moved West to find that ranching on the long plains paid even less. However, simple mathematical laws eventually came into play. That is: if a good heifer can produce two offspring a year and each of these produces two, eventually a man with luck, avoiding the hardest of winters and the worst of the summer droughts, will find himself able to rise in the morning and look out across the long grass prairie and see a virtual sea of red-backed cattle.
It may take fifty years or so, however, as was the case with J. Pierce Buchanan.
In the meantime Faith, Hope and Charity had all chosen to depart for civilized lands and left the old man alone. With no one to spend his fortune on, he hoarded it. After two banks had collapsed under him, J. Pierce took to holding his assets – in gold only, no paper currency was trustworthy in J. Pierce’s mind – in a place of safekeeping known only to himself somewhere in the big house itself or on the thirty thousand acres of land he held by the time of his death.
Faith and Charity had never married, but Hope, herself wedding later in life, had conceived two boys and later still, a daughter. Hope apparently had separated from her husband, for the two boys were living in Mississippi while the daughter was somewhere in Ohio. The three had been notified of their grandfather’s death.
A reward had been posted for the capture of the killer or killers, but the tenor of the announcements that could be found tacked on trees and fence posts from Pueblo to Fort Carson seemed to emphasize that locating the fortune in gold was of more importance than punishing the evil doers. This was probably the case.
J. Pierce had been ninety years old. People figured that he had lived long and would probably have passed away of natural causes before long anyway. The gold, on the other hand, was seen to have deathless existence.
There had been only a handful of local citizens on the ranch when J. Pierce was buried without pomp beside his first wife’s marble vault on the prairie. Those who had chosen to come were mostly fellow ranchers, local tradesmen who were considering their future with their chief patron gone, and the twenty-three men who worked on the J-Bar ranch.
When these citizens had departed, the prairie held only thousands of grazing cattle too indifferent to mourn. Others would be coming soon enough, and in numbers far exceeding those present at J. Pierce Buchanan’s funeral.
Each of J. Pierce’s grandchildren was making his and her way west, seeking their fortunes in a way much different and more effortless than their grandfather had. These were only the tiniest of a fraction of those interested in J. Pierce’s gold.
The habitual residents of the ranch – housekeepers, yard men, cowhands – had begun searching for the hidden fortune before grass could sprout over Buchanan’s fresh grave. The house itself, two stories of log with a pitched green roof, was first to be combed through. Books were thrown to the floor, pantries invaded, rugs torn up, walls thumped and, where suspiciously hollow-sounding, their paneling pried free.
On the range, the cowhands, feeling shut out of the carnival, pondered matters and devised plans of their own. The most appealing notion that any of them had come up with was that J. Pierce had hidden the gold in his wife Mae’s mausoleum. Why else was that ten-foot square white marble monument with its carved cherubs located out on the open plains? And so the ranch hands voted to become grave robbers. This sinister plan was thwarted by the ranch foreman and a few loyal men. The ringleaders were fired off the ranch, the others given a scathing sermon on the sanctity of the grave.
Hardly chastened, the remaining cowboys began telling each other stories they recalled of the old man taking long solitary journeys to nowhere, or to Cripple Creek or Castle Rock – anywhere you could name – going and returning unannounced. These tales gave the treasure hunters hope and the men of the J-Bar spent as much time searching for the missing fortune as tending the cattle. Some drifted away and did not return at all. Not that the population on the land shrank with these desertions. Rather, it burgeoned wildly.
Other men drifted onto the J-Bar, inexorably drawn there by the lure of gold that did not have to be dug from the earth or fought for, but simply discovered. The fringes of the ranch and at times the ranch itself were a magnet for an assortment of drifters, ex-lawmen, soldiers on leave, citizens of Big Springs and environs and flat-out criminals all looking for J. Pierce Buchanan’s treasure. A ring of barbed wire had to be strung around J. Pierce’s grave and the nearby tomb of Mae Buchanan to keep gold-hunters away from them.
From time to time the various invading groups had run-ins between themselves or with the remaining J-Bar ranch hands who considered the ranch property their own exclusive reserve. There was so much brawling, so much shooting trouble on the J-Bar that the local sheriff Marston Fowler, had taken leave to visit his family down in Tucson, placing the enforcement of local laws in the hands of two indifferent deputies who took the opportunity to do some gold-hunting themselves, leaving the warring factions on and around the J-Bar ranch to their own devices.
Such was the situation when Glen Strange and Bobby Trapp, drifting southward to avoid another brutal Montana winter, rode onto the J-Bar looking for any available work or at least a meal for themselves and feed for their weary horses.
They didn’t get off on the right foot. In fact, their welcome bordered on hostile. Emerging from the high-country pines, they held up and paused to look down at the grassy basin below. There were hundreds of cattle visible, but someone had left them on the section for too long. The grass had been sheared off with overgrazing and was yellowing.
‘They had better move their cows,’ Bobby said, sipping from his canteen. ‘That section looks as bad as if sheep had been at it.’ That was true. The herd should have been pushed to farther graze. There were two silver ponds visible from where they sat their horses, and to Glen it was obvious that the cattle, left to their own choice, would prefer to remain near the water, feeding on their habitual pasture despite the fact that it was growing depleted and there was sweet long grass farther down the valley. Cattle could not be allowed to make their own decisions.
‘Well, maybe we showed up at the right time,’ Glen replied distractedly. His own attention had been divided. Below them, making their way up a switchback trail, three riders were approaching. ‘Maybe we can find out from these gents if J-Bar is hiring.’
‘Gents’ was not the word Bobby Trapp would have chosen. The three riders were sour-faced, ill-dressed, glowering. One of them, they saw as the trio drew nearer, wore a badge on his filthy blue shirt. All three of them were covered with dirt and one of the riders was packing a pick and shovel where his bedroll should have been riding.
‘What do you make of them?’ Bobby asked his partner, but Glen only shrugged. He was not given to making snap judgments or drawing hasty conclusions. He sat his gray horse which shifted its feet uneasily as the three riders drew nearer. They could now make out their faces. Two of them had hard, lined cheeks and prominent noses. They might have been brothers. The third, the man with the badge, had a pouty mouth and an unusually large body from the waist down. He spoke to Glen and Bobby before they had even nodded a greeting.
‘Turn your ponies around and get off this property.’
‘You have a reason for saying that?’ Bobby asked, his narrow face flushing across the cheekbones. Bobby Trapp was a fairly small man, but he did not take to being ordered around.
‘I have a reason.’ The man tapped the badge on his shirt. ‘And this gives me the right to move you off the property.’
Bobby had a heated answer ready, but Glen silenced him with a gesture and inquired patiently, ‘Is this your property, deputy? Or do you suspect us of some crime?’
‘I suspect your intentions,’ the deputy said with hostility. His hand lowered a little and settled near his holstered gun.
‘Unless you have good cause—’ Glen began. One of the others interrupted.
‘You heard Deputy Sheriff Ward! Get off the J-Bar. You’re not wanted.’
‘Are you the man who does the hiring here?’ Bobby asked, speaking through tight lips.
‘We ain’t hiring,’ the cowboy said flatly.
‘Sorry to hear that,’ Glen said. ‘In that case we’ll just need water for our horses. Maybe we could cadge a meal.’
‘Get lost,’ said the man who had not spoken before. All three scowled at Glen and Bobby.
‘Nice talking to you, gents,’ Glen said, and with a nod at Bobby he heeled his gray forward.
‘Didn’t you hear me!’ the deputy snarled, but Glen just rode past him.
‘What did you make of that?’ Bobby asked in a low tone after they had followed the trail around a switchback. Glancing back, he saw that no one had followed them. ‘I about expected them to start shooting.’
‘I got the same feeling,’ Glen said casually. ‘But I figure we have a right to go where we wish. There were no signs, no fences and that deputy knew he didn’t have the authority to turn us away. What did you want to do, Bobby, apologize to the man and ride back to Montana?’
‘You know I don’t, Glen, but I doubt this hot temper of mine will ever get us into the kind of trouble your cool disregard can.’
‘Cool disregard?’ Glen Strange repeated with amusement.
‘Whatever you might call it,’ Bobby said, removing his hat briefly to mop at his perspiring forehead with his bandana. ‘You couldn’t have known those three wouldn’t open up with their guns once we showed them our backs.’
‘No,’ Glen agreed, ‘but it wouldn’t have made a lot of sense for them to do that, would it? I only wonder what it is that caused them to bother to warn us off in the first place.’
‘I couldn’t guess,’ Bobby Trapp said, ‘but I doubt we’ve found a place to roost. We just water the ponies, see if we can beg a meal and then hit the road again. Wouldn’t you agree, Glen?’
‘Let’s see how it goes,’ Glen answered. ‘It could be that we’ve found us a home and don’t know it yet.’
They could now make out the big house below them clearly and a row of bunkhouses set farther back in a grove of ancient oak trees. Outbuildings were scattered here and there, what seemed to be a tool shed, and a smith’s shop located next to the red two-story barn, the only structure made of sawn lumber.
There seemed to be very little activity in the yard itself and none visible near the cattle herd. However, there was a bustling sort of motion nearby that was quite incomprehensible to Bobby and Glen Strange. Men with shovels were digging at the base of a granite outcropping up along the flank of a near hill. Four men were marching in a rank across the flats, searching the ground as they went. They passed two men working with pick and shovel at the base of a distinctive twin pine. These barely glanced up at them as they rode past. Both of the working men wore the yellow-striped blue trousers of cavalry soldiers.
‘What is all of this, do you think?’ Bobby Trapp wondered aloud. Glen only shrugged. Evidently, something was being searched for. Maybe, he thought, one of the cowhands had ridden into camp and spread the news after discovering a pocket of gold ore. He had witnessed a Nevada ranch nearly ruined when all hands pulled out at once to swarm toward a new gold strike.
Now, riding across the flats themselves, they passed a marble monument ornately carved, with depictions of angels on each corner. It was an oddity on the plains, to be sure, but even stranger was the fact that it had been surrounded by coils of barbed wire and there were two armed men guarding the monument.
Bobby Trapp muttered, ‘Must be a very important cadaver.’ Again Glen could only shake his head. The situation was bizarre, disturbing. It was as if they had ridden into a war zone where the troops were either arriving or withdrawing randomly with no one in command of the activity.
‘Directly to the main house, I guess,’ Glen said, nodding toward the two-story log structure. A guard with his rifle in the crook of his arm had been posted on the front porch, they noticed.
‘How about we see to the horses first?’ Bobby suggested. ‘That way we’ll know that they’re fed and watered before more people can advise us to move along.’
Glen nodded. It made no difference to him and perhaps Bobby was right. If they were to be run off the J-Bar at least they would have fresher ponies under them as they continued to drag the line looking for employment elsewhere.
Walking their horses across the yard in front of the main house, they passed only an older man with an ax across his shoulder, a mangy dog skulking after him. There was not much activity for a ranch of this size, that was for sure. Passing through the cool of the shade cast by the spreading oak trees, they came to the red barn. Its double doors stood open and after calling out, both men swung down and led their horses that way.
They were only a few paces from the entrance to the dark barn when a man with a shiny new Winchester stepped out of the shadows, threw his weapon to his shoulder and announced clearly: ‘You can get on those mounts and ride off or stand where you are and get shot down.’
TWO
Both Bobby Trapp and Glen hoisted their hands, reins wrapped around their fingers, but they made no move to mount their horses. The stranger with the rifle took one step forward and sunlight now hit him fully, forming the shadow into a man of middle years, average height and weight with a badly pocked face. The rifle he had positioned at his shoulder did not waiver.
‘Both of you hard of hearing, are you?’ he demanded.
‘Friendly sort of place, isn’t it?’ Bobby Trapp said in a low voice to Glen.
‘Mister,’ Glen Strange said carefully, ‘I don’t know who you think we are, but we’re only a pair of drifting cowhands, floated down out of Montana looking for work. Why, in this part of the country, that is a shooting offense is beyond me. Let us talk to the man who does the hiring around here, won’t you, in a civilized way. Then if we’re told to go, we’ll go – no shooting required.’
‘You’re talking to the man who does the hiring,’ the rifleman replied. ‘Turn your pony a little so that I can read his brand, will you?’
Glen shrugged and without lowering his hand, tugged the reins enough so that his gray shifted his position slightly. Burned into the horse’s left flank was the Ladder T, a well-known Montana brand, recognized even this far south.
‘I suppose you’re telling the truth,’ the pocked man said, lowering his rifle at last. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘We heard the J-Bar was along our route. We were told it was a big spread, could possibly use some help, and were told that it was a friendly place where a hungry man could at least cadge a meal,’ Glen said coolly.
‘Used to be,’ the man with the rifle said. ‘You sure that’s what you boys are looking for? A meal and maybe a job?’ He looked from Strange to Bobby Trapp, his eyes narrowing.
‘That’s it,’ Bobby answered. ‘What the hell else would we be looking for? And we noticed that you’ve a fair-sized bunch of cattle along toward those twin ponds who need to be pushed toward new graze. They’ve chewed that grass to the yellow nub. We’d be willing to do that job for you – if you haven’t got anybody else around here who knows how to get a steer to start walking.’
Bobby was a little sarcastic, but that seemed to go over the rifleman’s head. ‘We’ve got plenty of men,’ he replied, ‘just try and find them.’
Trapp and Glenn exchanged glances. Glen shrugged. ‘Mind if we pitch some hay for our ponies?’ he asked. ‘They’ve been long on the trail and on poor forage.’
‘Go ahead,’ the man said, tipping back his hat. ‘And get yourself something to eat at the cook shack. Anyone can show you where it is. Maybe I can use you two – for a while, at least.’ He paused, smiled thinly and apologized, ‘Sorry for the rough greeting. If you only knew how things have been around here. My name’s Ben Case, J-Bar foreman. You boys tend to your horses. I’ll be talking to you later about moving that bunch of cattle.’
With their horses seen to, Bobby and Glen Strange crossed beneath the oak trees again, walking toward the first of the bunkhouses they had seen on the yard perimeter. No one else was visible in the area, although once, inexplicably, a trio of horsemen came pounding past them sending up a swirl of dust.
‘Wonder where they’re going in such a hurry,’ Bobby Trapp said.
‘No telling. I think we’d better tread lightly for a while, Bobby. There’s things going on here that I don’t understand.’
