Vengeance on Althouse Creek
by Kerby Jackson

(Novel Excerpt)
 

      Chance took the stolen mare from the livery stable and pushed her toward the old homestead on Althouse Creek. His uncle owned one of the largest stockyards in California and Chance had developed a good eye for horses living with him. He could pick a good one. The buckskin made fast time over the old wagon road going south out of Kerbyville. Even in the dark and through the driving rain, she ran with her head down at a break-neck pace, her hooves sounding with a dull thud in the places where the ground still remained hard next to the wagon ruts. As the scenery shot by, even in the dark and between the flashes of fork lightning overhead, Chance could occasionally make out a few familiar landmarks from his childhood. A giant tree on the edge of where the road went into a turn, a big rock here and there, a large stump where he once sat as his father fixed a broken axle on the wagon on the way into town. All in all, the scenery hadn’t changed much in the sixteen years since Old Man Taylor had put him on the stagecoach for San Francisco. There was a new patch of blackberry briars, the odd stretch of madrone and many new small trees here and there, but for the most part, the landscape was familiar to Chance’s memory.

 Up around the bend, even over the sound of the heavy rain slapping the earth, Chance could hear the fast waters of Althouse Creek tumbling over the rocks. Chance reined the mare to the narrow road at his left. The road was overgrown with small Douglas Fir trees and wind-bent clumps of Yellow Foxtails that had sprung up next to the shallow wagon ruts. Due to its lack of use, nature had been slowly claiming the trail back. Off to his left, the banks of the brook came into view; the fast moving water layered in bubbling white foam as it spilled over large rocks. As he went further on, Chance maneuvered the horse in and out of the obstructions of small trees and dislodged rocks for over an hour. 

 The rain slowly began to let up. The night sky was clearing and slowing giving way to the nearly full moon that began to peek out from the edge of the passing bank of black clouds that were moving away fast to the east. Chance slowed the horse to a slow trot and patted her on the neck with his right hand.

 “You’re a hell of a horse,” he told her out loud. “It's too bad you're not mine fair and square. Every man ought to have one like you to rely on when the going gets tough.”
 

 After another hours ride following Althouse Creek upstream, the old homestead came into view far across the brook over a low grassy hill. Chance veered the mare to the left, off the old wagon road and through the shallow creek bottom at the base of the knoll where the homestead vanished from view. As he came to the incline, he gave the mare a small kick with his spurs to put her into high gear for the climb. She went into a full gallop and charged effortlessly up the hillside at full speed, tearing clumps of grass loose with her rear hooves as she went up. As he reached the crest of the knoll, the old farm came back into his field of vision.

 It still looked much the same as the way he had left it that day sixteen years earlier. 

 The small stock barn he and his father had built together was still standing, along with the old hen house. Off the one side of the barn, the old split rail corral where he and his father had spent many an evening looking over the small herd, was still intact save a large gap where the raiders had pulled part of the railing away that day. The old cabin looked like a broken skeleton in the moonlight, its blackened roof timbers jutting to and fro like a shattered rib cage.

 Chance urged the mare down into the gully and up the other side. Once he reached the next hilltop, he proceeded cautiously at a walking pace and looked around the place. Although the homestead was rightfully his, Chance was cautious in case someone was squatting on the place. Peering through the moonlight, he checked the ground for the telltale signs of tracks that would indicate a squatter's presence, but he was quickly convinced that no one had been on this ground for ages.

 Chance stepped down out of the saddle and took the horse's reins in his hand and led the mare over to a tall patch of grass by the broken down corral where he tethered her to the top rung of the fence. The mare immediately dipped her head down to the grass and began to eat lazily. Chance patted her on the neck and then turned away to explore the remnants of the homestead starting with the small barn.

 Chance instinctively opened the big barn door slowly and peered inside through the small crack of the exposed doorway. Although he was certain that no one was around, he remained cautious. A sliver of moonlight spilled through the crack and shone against the floor, the illuminated area growing larger as he opened the door wider. Once he was convinced that nobody was inside, Chance allowed the door to open in its entirety. Its old rusted hinges creaked eerily as it opened and finally settled against the front wall of the barn.

 Chance stepped over the threshold of the doorway, the heels his boots sounding against the old floorboards as he walked. Once inside, he pulled a match from his pocket and struck the white tipped head of it against the edge of his thumbnail. A large flame quickly jumped to life at its end and shone on the interior of the barn. Bits of old straw that had fallen away from a loose stack of decaying hay against the back wall littered the floor, along with hunks of shingles from the ceiling that had begun to fall in from neglect. Beams of moonlight poured through small holes in the roof, glinting off the spider webs that had been strung by numerous Black Widows over the years. To the left, the old feed trough for the cows stood empty, reminding Chance of the family herd that the raiders had butchered along the roadside. Up above him, along the edges of the hayloft, Chance could see the ends of old weathered trunks still in the same places where they had been when he left. His parents had brought those trunks to Oregon from Kansas by wagon before he had been born and still seemed intact and untouched after all these years. He could only guess at what sort of family treasures might lay safe inside of them. Maybe come daybreak, when there was more light, Chance would climb up the rickety old ladder up the loft to find out.

 Chance made his way to the remnants of the cabin. As he stood at the threshold, he remembered his mother's violated corpse lying on the exact spot, a deep red mark on her forehead where one of the raider's bullets had hit to execute her. At his feet, a black stain still marred the weathered gray wood of the steps. Anger rose in Chance’s body, bringing his blood nearly to the boiling point as he clenched his fists until his knuckles shone white through his skin. As if drunk on the building rage, he stumbled through the doorway and into the charcoal strewn cabin where he went to his knees on the dirt floor in its center. Then he screamed at the top of his lungs at the moon that streamed down at him through the broken half burnt timbers, not caring if anyone miles away heard him or not.

 As he screamed, the images of that day sixteen years ago came back into his throbbing head in vivid colors. His father's stern mouth and defiant eyes stared right at him. His mother lying there dead on the steps, her pretty blonde hair blowing gently in the breeze. Then there was a memory he hadn’t recalled before, that of his twelve year old sister screaming at the top of her lungs as he ran away from the house. It suddenly dawned on him that he had never known what had actually happened to Elizabeth beyond the fact that she was dead. The riders had probably had their way with her, just as they had his mother. More anger built up in him.

 Chance screamed again, at the moon, at the stars, at God and at no one in particular. With his fists still clenched, he smashed the blackened timbers. They busted into small pieces that caked his hands with thick black dust as they fell around him and sent bits of charcoal and ash into the air that lit up like fireflies in the moon glow.

 “It's a hell of a thing,” said a voice from behind him.

 Chance went for the gun on his right hip and pulled it clear of the leather holster as he went down to his right knee. He quickly pivoted around to face the direction from where the voice originated. As he turned, he leveled the barrel at the outline of a man standing beyond the doorway in the shadow of the front of the cabin. Whoever it was, Chance had never so much as heard a breath from him. That alone, put a streak of fear through him.

 “Put the gun away, son,” the voice said. “It ain't necessary.”

 The voice was familiar.

 Digger stepped out of the darkness of the shadows and into the moonlight. The half empty bottle of whisky from the saloon was in his hand. 

 Chance blew a breath of relief, lowered the gun and rose to his feet.

 “Digger.”

 “I reckoned I’d find you here.”
 
 

 Digger tossed the bottle of whisky to Chance, who promptly caught it and drank greedily enough from it that a stream of the liquid escaped his lips and trickled down his chin to his duster.

 “How did you know where to find me?” Chance finally asked him.

 “All in due time,” Digger told him. “But first, grab a load of that old firewood on the side of the cabin and help me build a fire.”

 Digger walked toward the barn, stopped about ten feet in front of the wide open door and proceeded to drag his boot through the wet dirt until he had made a bowl shape in the damp earth.

 Chance just stood there by the cabin, half confused.

 “C’mon, son! Bring me over some of that wood!”

 Chance promptly slipped the bottle into the pocket of his duster and went around to the side of the cabin. A long tier of firewood that he'd cut and stacked there as a kid still stood in a nearly neat stack. Chance lifted off the first few layers which were waterlogged and tossed them to the ground, revealing some split pine underneath that was nearly bone dry despite the recent rains. Chance filled one arm up full of the wood and took it to Digger.

 By time Chance had gotten the wood, the old man was kneeling down on the ground and had a small fire burning made from a few handfuls of straw and bits of old shingles that had fallen to the barn floor.

 “Just set it down right here, son. How ‘bout you makin’ us a couple of them cigarettes?”

 Chance promptly sat down next to the little fire, set the bottle next to him and got out his cigarette makings. As Digger built up the fire with the wood he brought, Chance rolled a pair of cigarettes. As he finished making up the second one, he started to feel the heat coming off the campfire that was now glowing a bright red orange.

 Digger pivoted himself around, moving from his knees into a sitting position.

 “How you comin’ on them cigarettes?”

 “All done.”

 Chance handed Digger one of them and he promptly stuck one end in between his lips and lowered the other end into the edge of the campfire until it lit.

 Chance followed his lead and did the same, then leaned back and relaxed as he took a big drag off the cigarette. 

 Digger just puffed away on his own and stared into the fire as it cast his shadow onto the upper part of the barn.

 “So how did you know where to find me?”

 “I knew you’d come out this way, even before you asked me which road to take. Where else would you go ‘cept out here?”

 Chance was confused. The old miner really hadn’t answered the question. He got the impression that Digger knew more about him than he let on. He wondered just how much the old man really knew.

 “How’d you know?”

 Digger shook his head.

 "C'mon son, don't be askin' no more dumb questions.  You're smarter than that," he scolded. "I can tell you this much, I know your name sure as hell ain't Frank Hart."

 "Sure it is. Named for my grandfather; Francis Hart of Abilene, Kansas," Chance lied, trying to keep up the charade.

 "Christ, your Pa named you after his first horse!"

 "Ah, how would you know, anyway?" 

 It came out the way a snot nosed kid might have said it.

 "Hell, son, I know who you are! You ain't got to sit there and play games with me! I know full well who you are and why you came back to these parts."

 Chance sat there quietly and stared into the fire, watching the way the flames licked over the wood.

 "You knew my father, then?" he finally asked softly.

 “You tell me one thing, first. Did you shoot that fella over in Grants Pass three nights ago? Was you the one who shot him in the back and stole a horse?”

 Chance’s face nearly went scarlet in the firelight.

 “What if I am? You here to take me back, Digger?”

 “If you’re him, I ain’t here to take you back. But I wanted to tell you that the law is in Kerbyville right now and they’re lookin’ for you. If you is him.”

 “What sort of law?”

 “County Sheriff, two deputies and a half dozen extra men with long rifles. That’s Sheriff Brackett, by the way. You don’t want him standin’ on your tail feathers. He knows these hills real well. Lloyd Brackett always gets his man and he don’t answer to no one. You get caught by him and there ain’t no judge or no jury. No trial for that matter. He’ll just drag your ass into town and string you up before god and all creation. That’s if you’re lucky, son.”

 Chance gulped.

 “What do you reckon I should do if I was that fella who shot that man, Digger? Not sayin’ I am him, but if I was, what would you do?”

 “I’d hightail it out of these parts.”

 “You’d run?”

 “Better runnin’ than dyin’.”

 “You said you knew my father?” Chance asked, changing the subject.

 Chance waited for him to answer; hoping that some kernel of new knowledge of his roots might come from it. In a way he hoped that his father could reach him through the old miner.

 "You was too little to remember, but when your father first came to this country out here, we had a claim together out by where All Hours is now. We didn’t make a penny on the place, but I think it both made us rich in another way.”

 “How’s that? How could you get rich if you made squat?”

 “Well, it ain’t about the money, son. It’s about the companionship. Your father was a hell of a guy. He was young and full of hope. He came out to this country with nothin’ but the skin on his back and no matter how bad things got, he was always ... What’s the word for it? Enthusiastic! He was always workin’ like the big mother-lode was right there under his shovel. And he was fearless. He wasn't afraid to take a risk, even though he knew his limits. He wasn't afraid to look to the future. Even at my age, I kinda liked that. There’s nothin’ better for a tired old man down on his luck than to be around a young fella who thinks there is gold under every rock. Some of it just kind of rubs off on you. And I like to think that some of me rubbed off on him too!”

 Digger grinned for a moment, then as he recollected more on the past, his smile slowly faded and he turned and looked away into the fire.

 “Why didn’t they do nothin’? Why didn’t the law hunt them killers down and hang ‘em?”

 “A fella by the name of Floyd was sheriff back in them days and he was pals with one of them men who killed your ma and pa. Holt, that was his name. He later got his-self killed by the law over in Jacksonville. He used to raise all kinds of holy hell over in Jackson County, but see, cause he and Floyd grew up together, he just kind of turned a blind eye to everything he did, just so long as Holt kept his nose clean over this way. So in any event, though Floyd was none too happy about your parents bein’ killed, and he and Holt ceased bein’ pals, he just sort of looked the other way about it. They blamed it on renegade injuns, even though every damn fool knows that they sent all the wild ones way up north years ago. Besides, some people say that our good sheriff was sort of skimmin’ the cream off the top of the milk bucket in that them boys were kind of givin’ Mister Floyd some of the spoils. You know, a stolen beef here, a horse there and so on. Some of them thought that Ol’ Floyd was even the brains behind it all, but the way I see it he was too god damn thick to have been much of an organizer. He was about as useful as teats on a boar.”

 “In any event, some of the folks around here knew damn full well what happened, but they just couldn't do nothin’ about it save making Floyd’s job difficult. Eventually, he took the hint, pulled up his stakes and cleared out. Later on, word came around that he got himself punctured full of holes over in Idaho territory. After that, I guess the locals just sort of forgot what happened. Either that or they had too much on their own plates to worry about other folk’s problems.”

 “I ain’t forgot it happened.“ Chance said.

 “I know son, I know.”

 Chance stared into the fire for a moment. A vision of him shooting Charlie Moore flooding back into his head. It was as if he was looking at himself from the view of a bystander. He could see himself pull the big iron from the holster; see himself jab it into Moore’s spine and pull the trigger. The near deafening roar of the .45 Dance echoed in his ears along with the distinct sound of the shattering bone. A mist of gore erupted around Moore; bits of broken bones and the gushing of blood.

 Chance didn’t feel any remorse for killing the man, but deep down in his gut he could feel a knot. It gnawed away at him that maybe he’d went about it all wrong. He felt like he had been a coward about it, the way he hadn’t faced Moore head on. That his victim was a stone cold killer who may not have given Chance the same opportunity didn’t really matter. He should have faced him man to man, head on.

 He wouldn’t make that mistake again.
 

 “If I was the one who shot that man, what do you think my father would say?”

 “Depends.”

 “On what?”

 “On why you done it. And I know you done it, son, so let’s stop it with the games.”

 “Yessum,” Chance said, sounding almost like a little boy.

 “I reckon your father would understand. I’m not sure he’d condone the fact that you just gunned the man down and shot him in the back. I bet he’d think that was a bit under-handed, but I reckon he’d understand a bit. Your ma on the other hand, she’d never have understood. She was too honest and too god fearin’ a woman to have ever understood the likes of a shooting. I sure do miss that gal, too. She could cook up some great grub and she was the prettiest thing I ever set eyes on.”
 

 “You think I’m doing right by them, Digger?”

 “You want the truth?”

 “Yes, the truth.”

 Digger took a drink from the bottle before answering.

 “I reckon that dyin’ is the least that those fellas deserve.”

****

Copyright 2006 by Kerby Jackson. Work archived by WorldWideOCR.com
www.western-stories.com
 
 

Get the latest news about Kerby Jackson's western fiction and upcoming western books on his Myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/western_fiction