No Less Than the Journey (23 page)

Tessa was delighted with her unexpected gifts, but even more pleased that Wes cared enough to buy them for her. With a squeal of delight she flung herself at him and after hugging him gave him a kiss that expressed far more than gratitude.

At least, that was how it appeared to Eli. He had just stabled his horse and was walking to the house and, unaware of Noni’s presence in the room he saw, through the open bedroom window, Wes with Tessa.

CHAPTER 4

‘I’m sorry, Wes, but I know what I saw. It’s enough that I’m willing to believe you wouldn’t have taken things any further with Tessa. If I thought different I’d be doing more than talking to you now … but I still want you out of my house tomorrow.’

Eli was taking his customary late evening walk around town and had asked Wes to accompany him. Along the way he told Wes what he had seen through the window of Tessa’s bedroom – and expressed his strong disapproval.

More than once during the Sheriff’s diatribe Wes had opened his mouth to speak, only to shut it again for fear of angering the other man. When he did finally speak, he said, ‘It’s your home, Eli, and of course I’ll leave if it’s what you want, but I don’t want to go away with you thinking ill of me or of Tessa. She was talking to me yesterday about how she wished she’d been able to get more schooling so she would know the meaning of a lot more words. On my way back to the house after leaving your office today I saw the man who owns the old schoolhouse. We got talking and he mentioned there
were still some books inside. I had a look at them and found a dictionary – the very book that Tessa wanted, so I bought it, together with some of the others, and gave it to her. She was so delighted with them that she gave me a “thank you” kiss. That’s all there was to it. If you don’t believe me ask Noni, she was in the room at the time.’

Taken by surprise, Eli exclaimed, ‘Noni was there?’

‘Of course. I certainly wouldn’t have gone to Tessa’s bedroom otherwise.’

Eli realized he had been too quick to jump to a wrong conclusion, but he was unused to admitting he was wrong – to anyone.

‘Like I told you, Wes, I’m ready to believe you wouldn’t take advantage of Tessa, but she’s a young girl with no experience of men and you’re a hero to her. She might well do something she’d regret later, especially as you’ll be out of her life for good in just a few days time. I think you should go sooner, rather than later.’

Wes was sorry to be forced to leave the Sheriff’s home in such circumstances but he told himself if he was Tessa’s father he would probably have made the same decision and in his heart Wes knew Eli was right.

Tessa had kissed him in excited gratitude, but he had been aware the gesture was intended to show him more than the innocent appreciation of a child. He said, ‘I’ll have my things packed and leave in the morning, Eli.’

‘Do you
really
need to leave today, Wes? I … me and ma, will be sorry to see you go – and I know pa enjoys having you around.’

A very unhappy Tessa was posing the question. Wes was leaving the house later than he had intended. He had waited in the hope that he could pack and go while Tessa was out of
the house, but she did not go out, so he was forced to announce his imminent departure to her and her mother.

On the verge of tears, Tessa was standing in the doorway of his room, watching as he checked the gunbelt and revolver that been a present from Emma Schuster. He did not intend wearing them but thinking about the Indians who were somewhere about, he decided to place the revolver on top of the contents of a saddle bag, where it would be close at hand should it be needed.

‘I’ve enjoyed being here with you all,’ Wes replied, ‘It’s reminded me of what life as part of a happy family is all about, but it’s time to move on. I need to find work and earn some money.’

‘Couldn’t you find something around here…?’ Even as she spoke Tessa realized there was no employment to be had in the vicinity of Lauraville.

Desperately trying to think of something, she said, ‘You could be a schoolteacher and open the schoolhouse again. You’d be a good teacher, I know you would.’

Wes smiled, ‘I don’t know enough to be a teacher, Tessa. Besides, I was talking only yesterday to the man who now owns the schoolhouse. He said there aren’t enough youngsters in Lauraville to make a school worthwhile. Even if there were, he’s got other ideas for the building.’

Tessa would have continued her pleading but at that moment they heard a boy’s voice shouting urgently ‘Mrs Wolfe … Mrs Wolfe … Come quick.’

Noni was at the back of the house and it was Tessa who ran to the door. She hardly had it open before the boy declared breathlessly, ‘My grandpa works at the Four Horseshoes saloon. He said I was to run and tell you to come quick. The Denton brothers have got the Sheriff there. He thinks they’re going to kill him …’

As Tessa screamed, Wes snatched up the gunbelt and revolver from his open saddlebag. Pushing past the near-hysterical girl, he called, ‘You and your ma stay here. I’ll deal with it.’

Wes had seen the Four Horseshoes saloon on the town’s main street but as he sprinted along an alleyway towards it, at the same time buckling on the gun-belt, he had no plan of what he would do when he reached it.

Turning on to the street, he saw a crowd of excited men on the boardwalk, milling around the doorway of the saloon, all eager to secure a place from which they could see over the shoulder-height swing doors.

Wes had almost reached the saloon when there was the sound of a shot from inside. It was immediately followed by another – and then a third.

Drawing his gun, Wes charged into the crowd of uproarious onlookers. Those who did not immediately scatter were roughly shouldered out of his path. As he hit the swing doors there was another shot from inside accompanied by raucous and drunken laughter and he heard the shouted word … ‘Dance!’

When the doors crashed open he took in the scene inside the saloon. A hatless and dishevelled Sheriff stood shakily in the centre of the saloon floor, upturned chairs and tables nearby indicating there had been a desperate fight and Sheriff Wolfe’s bloody face was grim evidence that he had taken a beating.

Three men stood around him. Two were the gunmen from whom he had rescued Tessa. The third could have been the twin of one of them and it was he who was holding a revolver.

Taken by surprise at Wes’s unexpected arrival upon the scene this man still had the presence of mind to fire a shot at him. Fortunately it went wide, punching a hole through one of the flimsy saloon doors.

The cry of pain from an onlooker on the boardwalk, hit by the bullet, went unheard inside the saloon as a second shot rang out. This one came from Wes’s gun – and it did not miss its target. The Denton brother staggered backwards dropping his six-shooter before tripping over an upturned chair and falling to the floor.

While this was happening one of the two remaining Denton brothers had drawn his own gun and fired at his brother’s killer.

Wes felt a pain in his left arm above the elbow but it did not prevent him from returning the fire and a second Denton brother fell to the floor where he lay twitching uncontrollably.

The third of the Denton’s was slower to react than his siblings and by the time he drew back the hammer of his Colt, Eli had pounced on the weapon dropped by Wes’s first victim and fired from a crouching position.

The heavy bullet shattered a bone in the remaining Denton’s shoulder and he spun around, dropping his weapon which was promptly kicked away by Wes.

‘Are you all right, Eli?’ Wes put the question as the Sheriff checked to confirm that both the fallen brothers were dead.

‘Thanks to you … yes,’ Eli confirmed.

The wounded Denton brother had dropped to one of the few chairs in the saloon that remained upright, and was bent double and moaning, either from pain, or awareness that he had just lost two brothers.

‘Do you want any help getting this one to gaol?’ Wes asked.

‘No, but send someone to find the doctor and get him down to the gaol to fix him up, I don’t want him cheating the hangman.’

‘Fine, I’ll leave you to it.’ So saying, Wes left the saloon, those crowding the doorway standing aside respectfully to allow him through.

Wes had left the saloon in what appeared to be unseemly haste. Only he knew that it was necessary if he were not to show himself up in front of Eli and the Lauraville onlookers. As it was, he barely made it to the nearest alleyway before throwing up.

When he stood upright once more, gulping air into his lungs, he tried to tell himself his reaction had nothing to do with the knowledge that he had just killed two men – although it had been far more personal than his involvement in the battle with the river pirates.

He decided it was because he had come so close to death himself – and he was far more aware now of pain not only in his arm, but in his side. The Denton brother’s bullet had grazed his ribs before passing through the fleshy part of his upper arm, and the latter wound was bleeding profusely.

Nevertheless, he succeeded in hiding his wounds from Tessa and her mother when he met them in a shadowed alleyway. They were hurrying towards Lauraville’s main street despite his instructions that they should both remain in the house.

‘Eli…?’

The agonised one word plea from Noni showed the fear she felt for her husband more eloquently than a hundred words might have done.

‘He’s all right. There’s been a gunfight, but Eli’s fine. You’ll find him in the Sheriff’s office. He’s taking a prisoner there….’

To Wes’s relief and unaware of his problems, they were running towards the lawman’s office before he had finished talking. He was able to make his way to the Wolfe home and awkwardly bind his wounded arm in an effort to stem the bleeding before saddling his horse and riding out of Lauraville.

CHAPTER 5

Wes’s gunshot wounds were worse than he had realized and the movement of his horse did not help. The ride to Trego took him three hours and by the time he arrived at the railroad town he had lost a lot of blood and the pain in his side equalled that of his arm.

Finding a hotel close to the railroad depot, he put his horse in the care of the hotel’s ostler and booked in. However, the bloodstains on his clothes did not pass unnoticed and when a concerned hotel manager commented upon them Wes said only that he had been hurt a few hours before and the ride had exascarbated his injuries.

The manager suggested Wes should have the Trego doctor look at it and try to stem the bleeding, adding that the doctor was one of the finest they had ever had in the town and would call to see Wes at the hotel if he so wished.

Wes hesitated over the suggestion for only a short time. The wound
did
hurt and he had lost so much blood that he was beginning to feel light-headed. He agreed to have the doctor sent for.

Doctor Strauss was a five-feet-nothing fussy little German
who had spent enough years as a frontier doctor to recognize bullet wounds when he saw them.

Tut-tutting over the furrow along Wes’s ribs, he used a pair of tweezers from his medicine bag to extract a fragment of bone, saying as he worked, ‘It is painful, is it not?’

‘It’s painful,’ Wes agreed.

‘Be grateful you have pain,’ said the diminutive doctor. ‘Had the bullet passed between your ribs you would be feeling nothing. You would be dead!’

‘Thank you, Doc, I’ll lie here enjoying the pain and thinking how lucky I am.’

‘Hah! You play with fire, you get burned, eh? The other man … he is hurt too?’

‘The two I shot are both dead. Another one, shot by the Lauraville sheriff, was hurt but will probably live long enough to hang.’

‘So you are a gunman who is on the side of the law, eh? It is a rare breed this far west.’

Aware that the doctor doubted the truth of his explanation, Wes said, ‘I’m not even a gunman, I’m a miner. I just stepped in to help when Sheriff Wolfe got into trouble.’

‘Admirable!’ said the doctor, with more than a hint of scepticism, ‘You are so helpful to this sheriff, he does not even call for a doctor to tend your wounds? For this you have to leave Lauraville and come all the way to Trego.’

Wes felt it unnecessary to reply and the doctor asked no more questions – but he did not keep the information he had already gained to himself.

An hour after Doctor Strauss had left the hotel there came a knock upon the door of Wes’s room. Without waiting for an invitation, a man wearing a sheriff’s star entered. Seating himself in a sprawling attitude in an armchair, he introduced himself as Sheriff Murray.

Coming straight to the point about his reason for the visit, Murray said, ‘I’ve just been talking to Doc Strauss. He told me he’d patched up a couple of bullet wounds for you and that you picked them up helping the Sheriff over at Lauraville … I’ve forgotten his name for the moment.’

Wes did not believe that Sheriff Murray had forgotten the name, but was merely testing the truth of his story.

‘It’s Wolfe, Eli Wolfe, and yes, there were three gunmen causing a bit of trouble for him. They’d managed to disarm Eli and were in a saloon trying to make him dance. They’d have killed him once they’d had their fun.’

‘Instead, you killed them, or so the doc said.’

‘I killed two of ’em, but only after they’d shot first. One missed me … the other didn’t. While this was happening, Eli picked up a gun and wounded the third. I believe all three were wanted men.’

Making no comment on Wes’s story, Sheriff Murray asked, ‘What did you say your name is?’

‘I didn’t, but it’s Wes Curnow.’

‘You figure on staying long in Trego, Curnow?’

‘Only until the line to Denver’s open again. I’ll be catching the first train out.’

Rising from his chair, Sheriff Murray said laconically, ‘Fine. I reckon we’ll be meeting again before you leave town.’ With this, he left the room.

Wes sank back on his bed aware that he had not seen the last of Trego’s Sheriff.

Wes was right. Exhausted by his long ride, the loss of blood from his wounds, and the attentions of Dr Strauss, he fell into a deep sleep only to be awakened a couple of hours later by Sheriff Murray’s robust shaking.

‘Wake up, Curnow … wake up’

‘Uh? What is it…?’ For a moment, Wes could not place where he was and, momentarily forgetting his wounds, he tried to sit up in a hurry – only to suffer for his efforts. ‘Ouch! What is it…? What’s going on?’

Seeing Sheriff Murray, with a deputy standing behind him, Wes sank back on the bed once more. ‘What is it this time, Sheriff?’

‘We’ve got a change of lodgings for you. We’re putting you behind bars in the Sheriff’s office.’

Startled, Wes demanded, ‘What for? What am I supposed to have done?’

Coming as close to a grin as he knew how, the stern-faced Sheriff said, ‘You don’t need to go reaching for your six-gun, we’ve fixed up a comfortable bed for you – and the cell door won’t be locked. It’s for your own good. I telegraphed Eli at Lauraville and asked if he knew you. He’s come back to say he owes his life to you. He also said the two men you killed were Denton brothers. Now, had you told that to me I’d have taken you to my office right away – for your own safety.’

Puzzled, Wes asked, ‘Why? I know there was a third brother, but Eli shot and wounded him. He’s got him locked up in Lauraville.’

‘Maybe so – but there’s more than three Dentons. They’re like gophers, just when you think you’ve cleared ’em out you look round and find another one behind you. There’s a fourth brother – I think his name is Gideon, who was here in Trego. He might
still
be here, although nobody’s seen him for a couple of days. He was with a couple of cousins and another man who might well be the leader of the whole bunch because one of my deputies says he seen a “wanted” notice for him. He can’t seem to find it now, but that’s hardly surprising. Back East, if a man’s wanted they reckon he’ll be heading this way sooner or later and send us a notice. If we kept ’em all we’d be
able to paper the walls of every house in Trego.’

Wes gave Sheriff Murray a weak smile. The medicine given to him by Dr Strauss had obviously been intended to help him sleep and he was feeling drowsy, nevertheless, he thought of Eli who needed to uphold the law in Lauraville without any help.

‘We ought to warn Sheriff Wolfe about him. This fourth Denton, or perhaps the leader of the gang, could show up there and try to break his brother out of gaol. Do you have a name to give him for this wanted man?’

He expected to be given a short ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer, neither of which should have meant anything to him. Instead, Sheriff’s reply caused Wes to sit bolt upright, the pain of his wounds suddenly forgotten.

‘He’s not known to any of us hereabouts. His name is Gottland … Ira Gottland.’