The Starshine Kid: Arroyo Grande
Part 16 of 20
Goodbye Again
“How long has the jail been empty?”
Marshal King inquired of the man in the saloon doorway.
“Ain’t sure, but the livery boy said
the horses been a missin’ pert near half the day.”
Marshal King wished he had paid more
attention to his gut feeling earlier that day, but now was not the time to
wallow in regrets, now was the time to saddle up and pursue his outlaw prey.
“I’ve got to go, Della, forgive me,”
Adam said as he stood to leave. “I’ll be back as fast as possible, believe me.
I got a real hankering to ask you somethin’... somethin’ important, but now’s
just not the time.”
With a look of immense concern
adorning her face like an expensive necklace adorns a wealthy woman’s neck,
Della responded softly, “Go with God, my love, I’ll be here waiting for your
return and that question.”
Marshal King’s horse darted out of
the livery as fast as a train carrying a politician after making campaign
rounds in an unfriendly town.
An hour’s ride from Iron Creek
Marshal King made the grisly discovery of the elderly jailhouse ranch hand’s
corpse. It appeared that Clifford Connors had managed to get the man to open
his cell’s door, or simply to step too close, and overpowered him, taking him
hostage until a time when the elderly man was no longer a necessity.
Marshal King buried the man under some
stones for the time being, “He’ll get a proper burial soon,” he mumbled to
himself with his hat removed.
Following sign along the trail
proved to be a tedious task for the Starshine Kid. Clifford Connors has taken a
horse with no distinctive characteristics to its shoe pattern, at least none visible to the trained eye from the distance atop a horse. Marshal
King found it necessary to dismount occasionally to check the small details of
the horse’s shoe pattern along the busy route that led in and out of Iron
Creek. Once the trail ranged far enough away from town the tracks became as
visible as a red coat lying on a fresh white snowscape.
Night settled in once again, but
Adam continued his pursuit as long as he could, until the darkness precluded his
reading of sign.
It’ll be daylight soon, I better get
some rest. Marshal King
dismounted and rolled out his bedding. He reflected back upon his many hunts
for the fugitives of the law and how much time he had spent riding the trails
and hills around the towns he had served as Sheriff or Marshal. Now he continued
to ride long and far in pursuit of law breakers, a never ending supply of
criminal deviants that sprouted up faster than weeds in a well-watered garden;
he had spent many a night sleeping out under the stars in lonely places, places
without one solitary soul to unburden his inner self to, except his horse, of
course.
One particular pursuit filled his
mind as he stared up at the stars overhead. That case involved a man and woman
who robbed stagecoaches periodically, just outside of a town where he was
marshal a few years earlier for a brief time. Adam was simply filling in, on
loan in a way, until a new marshal could be recruited for the town. Not one of
the investigating locals had noticed that the stage driver was always the same
man during the stagecoach robberies. Another detail overlooked was the same
lone female passenger who was aboard during every robbery. It did not take the
Starshine Kid long to arrive at the probable conclusion that these two victims
were in fact the perpetrators of the crimes they reported. After briefly
conducting surveillance on the duo, he was able to arrest the two and recover
the stolen money and property the pair had hidden in a small cave along the
stagecoach route.
Stories to remember, stories that
should be told to my own children one day!
The stars crossed the heavens and
daybreak neared. A quick fire to make some coffee and warm up some grub was all
that was needed before Marshal King mounted his horse to pursue a man that was
more annoying than a swarm of hungry desert mosquitos rising from the sagebrush
on a hot day.
Spotting some familiar unshod horse
tracks, Marshal King dismounted to inspect them closely. Looks like some familiar Indians
passed this way, he pondered, three,
four hours old… mighty interesting.
Adam scanned the horizon before
continuing his quest to recapture Clifford Connors. A quest he would not fear
to abandon should trail sign show that some renegade Indians may have beat him
to his goal.
Hearing what sounded like the echo
of rifle fire in the far distance, Marshal King checked his weapons and gave a
slight kick to his horse to speed up his trek. He could not be sure it was
rifle fire he had heard, but he knew it was not a natural sound.
The sign left by Connors’ horse
winded down through a small, narrow pass between two large boulders that jutted
out from the surrounding hills’ dark earth. The path then led to a long sandy
stretch of rolling dunes. Connors’ horse, determined by the length of its
stride, must have stood thirteen hands high. Not
such a large animal, King thought.
Progressing onward, the Starshine
Kid soon found the remnants of a smoldering campfire surrounded by numerous
footprints… Connors!
He dismounted to check the area,
keeping one eye on his surroundings at all times. Why that two-legged coyote, he
said to himself as he discovered that not all of the tracks left in the sand
belonged to Connors. Looks
like you might have met your match.
Connors had entertained some
unwanted guests that had hastened the outlaw’s own departure… the renegade
Indians that did not take kindly to thieves, the friends of thieves, or the brothers
of thieves.
Adam pulled out a shiny new silver
dollar from his shirt pocket and said, “Well, Mustang, heads I follow, tails I
don’t.” He flipped the coin high into the air and watched its fateful outcome
plunge into the sand below his feet. Brushing away the grains he gazed at the
coin for a moment before returning it to his pocket.
“Well, let’s be on our way,” he
stroked his horse’s neck, “looks like our day ain’t over any time soon.”
“Yeah, I agree,” he said after his
horse snorted softly, “I wish we were back at the livery bordin’ you for three
cents a night, but we just ain’t. It looks like Connors is in a jam and that
he’ll get no comfort from his newly acquired friends. The harshness of an
outlaw lifestyle does not feature many comforts, it only reflects its costly
toll on the faces of that lifestyle’s patrons.”
Up in his saddle and on his way,
Marshal King knew that the trail ahead was likely filled with the thorns of
uncertainty and the firebrands of danger.
*** Part
17: A Flash in the Shadows ***
________________________________
The Starshine
Kid: Arroyo Grande
By Royce A
Ratterman
© All Rights
Reserved
Cover Art &
Illustrations by Erlend Evensen
The characters,
locales, enterprises, entities, and events herein are entirely fictional and
intended for educational and entertainment purposes. Content portrayals do not
reflect any actual events, locales, entities, or any individuals living or
deceased.
Dedicated to all of those who lost their
lives establishing peace, safety, and harmony in the days of the Old West
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