Ralph Compton: The Alamosa Trail

SNAKE FAST, COYOTE MEAN

“You don’t want this, Shardeen,” Sheriff Martin said.

Shardeen gave him an arrogant little smile. “Yeah, I do want it,” he said.

The lawman was so nervous that he telegraphed when he was going to make his move by narrowing the corners of his eyes. The glint of light in his pupils gave way to resignation. Martin lost the contest even before it began.

The sheriff started for his gun.

The arrogant sneer never left Shardeen’s face. He was snake fast, and he had his pistol out and cocked before Martin could clear his holster. When Martin saw how badly he was beaten, he let go of his pistol and it slid back into the holster. At that moment Shardeen fired, his gun spitting out a finger of flame six inches long.

“ Bastardo! ” the deputy yelled as he pulled his own pistol.

Shardeen’s gun roared a second time. Ernesto, like Sheriff Martin, was unable to get off a shot. As the smoke drifted up to the ceiling Shardeen stood there, his gun still in hand, the arrogant smile still on his face.

THE

ALAMOSA

TRAIL

Chapter 1

It was a brisk January morning. At cock’s crow, Jim Robison came out of the bunkhouse with his ash-blond hair tousled and his blue eyes still filled with sleep. He went into the barn and came back out a moment later leading a team of horses over to a wagon. The horses, not at all happy to be taken from their warm stalls, jerked their heads up and down as Jim began slipping on their harnesses. Vapor clouds billowed from the mouths and nostrils of both horse and man.

Jim was six feet tall, a little larger than the average cowboy. He was older, too, in fact—at thirty-nine, he was the oldest cowboy on the ranch. But being a cowboy was a job he loved, and because he loved it, he never complained about any of it. Neither the blistering heat of summer nor the bitter cold of winter seemed to bother him. Hard work suited him, and he actually enjoyed the long, lonely hours of nighthawk or riding fence line.

“Be nice, horses,” Jim told the skittish team. “Stand still.”

As if understanding his words, the horses calmed down and stood quietly until he had them hitched to the wagon.

The sun, bloodred and not yet painful to the eyes, rested just on top of a hundred-foot spire of rock known as Caleb’s Needle, several miles to the east. Though there were no discernible clouds in the sky, there was a rather odd haze over everything. Between Caleb’s Needle and the bunkhouse lay the sixty-five thousand acres of Trailback Ranch. The borders of Trailback encompassed some of the best rangeland in the country. It was irrigated by the Wahite River, a stream of water that shimmered in the morning sun like a twisting strand of molten gold.

The bunkhouse was part of a compound in the middle of that ranch, which also consisted of a cookhouse, a smokehouse, a barn and corral, a granary, a machine shed, and an unpainted outhouse for the cowboys. A two-story, white-frame Gothic main house, complete with turrets, dormers, a big bay window, a screened-in porch, and a painted outhouse, sat opposite the bunkhouse, and between them was a two-and-a-half-acre garden. In the corral, a windmill pumped water into the trough for the livestock. The cookhouse and kitchen of the main house had their own hand pumps.

Finishing with the team, Jim went into the cookhouse and came back out carrying a sandwich of biscuit and bacon for his trip. Walking over to the wagon, he put the little lunch packet on the seat, then climbed aboard and picked up the reins. That was when he heard someone coming out of the bunkhouse. Looking toward the sound, he saw Cal Norton and his cousin Frankie Ford just heading for breakfast.

“Damn, Jim, you mean you ain’t left yet?” Cal asked, still tucking his shirt into his pants.

“I’m leaving right now. I’ll be back by noon.”

“Ha! That is, if you don’t get tangled up with the Dog Woman,” Cal said.

“Well, I’ll just have to do my best to resist her charms,” Jim replied, snapping the reins over the backs of the team.

“I’d like to see the day my cousin had anything to do with the Dog Woman,” Frankie said. “Why do you think Mr. Brookline sends him to town instead of one of us?”

Angus Brookline was the manager of Trailback Ranch. The owners were a group of English businessmen, none of whom had ever even been to America. For them, Trailback was just a business proposition.

“ ’Cause me ’n’ you’ve not to go out to the north range today?” Cal answered.

“Wrong,” Frankie replied. “It’s because when Jim goes to town he doesn’t get into trouble.”

Frankie was right about why Brookline chose Jim to make the supply run. Cal had gotten liquored up his last time in town. Then he picked a fight with the town constable and was thrown in jail. That little episode cost Brookline fifteen dollars, the price of Cal’s fine.

By contrast, when Jim was sent, he went straight to the store, picked up the supplies, and came straight back. Impressed by his efficiency, Brookline announced to everyone that from then on only Jim would be allowed to go into town for supplies. But since the other cowboys on the ranch assumed that Jim took no pleasure in the trip, they didn’t actually resent the fact that he could go and they couldn’t. They had had their fun, and if they were paying the price now, they figured it was worth it.

The trip into town would take about an hour and a half, but Jim didn’t mind. Like riding fence, he enjoyed the solitude. Also, the rutted road ran through some of the most spectacular scenery in the country.

As Jim sat on the wagon seat, he could almost feel the weather growing colder. He found that odd, because normally it would get warmer toward the middle of the day, and he had expected it would do so today. In fact, the morning had started warmer than usual so he left his sheepskin coat back in the bunkhouse, choosing to wear a light denim jacket instead.

Now the haze Jim had noticed earlier in the morning was beginning to build into clouds to the west. The high, puffy clouds had started out white, but were now turning gray. He wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t encounter a little snow before he got back. He wished now that he had worn his sheepskin coat.

The rutted road abruptly became the main street of the small town of Buffington. There were only nine buildings in the entire town, and Proffer’s General Store was nearly as big as the other eight structures combined. That was because Dennis Proffer kept enlarging his establishment.

Starting out with a store, Proffer had built a small addition to house a bar, another for a bar bershop, then two rooms out back to provide the only thing Buffington had in the way of a hotel. The result was a rambling, unpainted wooden building that stretched and leaned and bulged and sagged until it looked as if the slightest puff of wind might blow it down.

Proffer was sweeping the porch when Jim stopped the wagon out front. A large balding man with a graying beard, Proffer was wearing an apron that might have been white at one time. As the wagon drew to a stop, Proffer smiled broadly at Jim. A nondescript yellow dog was sleeping on the front porch. The dog was so secure in his surroundings that he did nothing more than open his eyes briefly as Jim arrived.