Max Collins - The Legend of Caleb York

That was the mountain range that expanded northward to become the Rockies.

“Ought to,” Tenny said with a nod. “We hid out there enough times.”

Gauge put a hand on his old accomplice’s shoulder. “I want the Bar-O cattle driven into those canyons. Every damn cow. Main herd’s in the valley now, and you can get them over the foothills before daylight.”

Tenny raised his shaggy eyebrows. “That’ll take a heap of men.”

“Not so many,” Gauge said, shaking his head. “Those Bar-O boys won’t be expectin’ us to hit their camp. Anyway, they’re spread thin over there. Hell, you won’t even have to waste bullets killin’ ’em.”

Tenny frowned. “You know, Harry, I ain’t real big on leavin’ witnesses...”

Gauge patted the man’s shoulder. “Joe, in this case it’ll be better if you do. Wear masks or somethin’. But leave them breathe so they can spread word that the Bar-O is finished. What hands Cullen does have left’ll leave like rats off a sinkin’ ship.”

Tenny was thinking that over, his battered hat pushed back on his head. “There’s no water in them draws, y’know.”

“Those cows’ll get by till I need ’em.”

“What do you need ’em for?”

Gauge gave his old friend a big, beautiful grin. “Why, Joe, we’re gonna kill off the rest of our sickly beeves and restock with Bar-O cows.”

Tenny gave up his lazy smile of approval. “I like it. Damn, if I don’t like it a bunch. Always figured offerin’ money to that blind old coot was a waste when we could just take what he had.”

Gauge glanced again at the moon-swept, remains-strewn terrain, where cowhands were dragging dead cattle off through grass riffling with the breeze. “All right, Joe. Get the men you need and move out.”

Tenny nodded and went off to do that while his boss stayed back to watch cowhands haul dead cattle by their hooves to the nearby ravine. It was a bizarre-looking process and it took a while. Gauge didn’t supervise — he left that to foreman Willart.

They were just starting to get a slide going, to cover up the dead cows, when Gauge collected his horse and started back to town, as his underlings continued his dirty work. He felt very much a cattle baron in the making.

Never realizing that even after all he’d accomplished, he was still no more than the leader of an outlaw gang.

On the Cullen range, a camp of sleeping cowhands were kicked awake by armed, masked gunmen. Without a word, in the glow of a small fire, the invaders gestured with weapons toward the small remuda, and without having to be told, the cowhands walked to their horses and rode off into night, heads hanging, while behind them the herd that had been their responsibility was being driven off by more armed men on horseback.

Two of the Cullen cowhands paused atop a bluff, reins pulled back, and looked down as their herd disappeared off toward Gauge range.

“I guess that’s the end of the Bar-O,” one said.

“I guess so,” the other said. “Never had a chance, did we?”

“Never a chance in hell.”

And they rode away — away from the herd, away from Cullen land, on their way to somewhere else.

Dr. Miller had his latest patient — the corpse of Cyrus Swenson — on his examination table in his simple surgery. His office and living quarters were on the second floor of the brick building that housed the bank.

The stubby, rotund physician — his rumpled suit looking as exhausted as he felt — had just gotten back to town after delivering the latest Haywood baby when rancher Burl Owen rolled up in a wagon with Swenson laid out in back of it.

Sometimes it seemed those were his only patients here in Trinidad — newborn babies and freshly-made corpses.

Burl had been irritable as hell, after being shuffled around from some deputies at the jailhouse who didn’t want anything to do with the corpse, and undertaker Perkins who had insisted that the first stop for the deceased be the doctor’s office for a death’s certificate.

Luckily, somebody had come along to help the doctor cart the body up to his office by way of the outside wooden stairway in the alley. The volunteer was, of all people, the stranger who’d shot four of his other most recent patients.

Now the late Swenson was on the table, on his side, so that the doctor could get a look at what appeared to be the fatal wound.

“You figure this is a murder,” the doc said to his new helper.

“That’s how I figure it.”

Everybody thought they knew better than their doctor.

“Mister,” Doc Miller said, “nobody in this town or anywhere else would be bothered murdering Old Swenson.”

“So I hear. But wasn’t there bad blood between him and the sheriff?”

The doctor nodded. “Bad blood that got resolved by Swenson selling Harry Gauge that little spread of his, finally.”

The doc leaned in for a closer look at the wound, black and clotted now. Deep. Oval-shaped. Hard damn blow.

The stranger said, “I imagine you’ve seen your share of wounds like that before.”

“Quite often. Some were caused accidentally.”

“Not most?”

The doc shrugged, raised both white eyebrows. “Most were from a gun-butt blow from behind.”

“This could be that?”

“That, or he fell on some farm implement.”

“Out by the relay station?”

“Or an odd-shaped rock. Still. That indentation does look like a gun butt...”

“Enough for you to change your diagnosis?”

“This could be murder, yes... but... hell.”

“What is it, Doctor?”

“Stand back a bit, would you, son?”

The corpse’s shirt had got untucked near the bottom, giving the doctor a troubling glimpse of something. He moved the body onto its back. Pulled up the shirt. Took a close look at the man’s belly, where it was broken out in red pustules.

The doc said, “Help me with his trousers... but don’t touch him.”

The stranger did as he was told.

The doctor had a look at the man’s legs, which bore the same red blisters. Quickly he took a sheet and covered up the body.

More to himself than his guest, the doc said, “This corpse needs to be buried immediately.” Then meeting the stranger’s eyes, he said, “Perhaps you might help. You’d be performing a service. You could help avoid a panic.”

“What kind of panic?”

“You ever see these signs before, son?” The doctor lifted the sheet, indicated the stomach. “Step closer. Don’t touch.”

“Don’t worry.” The stranger’s eyes widened. “My God — is that... cowpox?”

The doctor covered his patient up again. “Exactly right. And it can wipe out a town like this and leave nothing but the grass... and I’m guessing that’s why Old Swenson here got himself killed. Somebody didn’t want him spreading this foul thing.”

But the stranger was shaking his head. “That’s not why, Doc.”

Almost amused, the doctor said, “You have your own diagnosis, do you?”

“Not exactly. And my suggested treatment is the same as yours — bury him.”

“You’re willing to help? Not afraid of infection?”

“I’ll follow your lead, Doc, as to precautions.” The stranger’s expression was grave. “But the reason Old Swenson was killed is even worse than you think.”

It was going on three in the morning when Harry Gauge rode back into Trinidad.

He could have bedded down under cool sheets to rest his head on down-stuffed pillows at any of the ranch houses on the spreads he owned; but with what he had sent his bunch off doing right now, Gauge figured being seen — and thought of — as the sheriff made better sense.