West of the Big River: The Sheriff Read online

  West of the Big River

  The Sheriff

  by

  Chuck Tyrell

  Also in the Series

  WEST OF THE BIG RIVER:

  THE LAWMAN by James Reasoner

  THE AVENGING ANGEL by Michael Newton

  THE ARTIST by Jackson Lowry

  THE RANGER by James J. Griffin

  THE FORTY-NINERS by Charlie Steel

  THE BANDIT by Jerry Guin

  THE DOCTOR by Clay More

  Western Fictioneers Presents

  West of the Big River

  The Sheriff

  A Novel Based on the

  Life of Commodore Perry Owens

  Chuck Tyrell

  West of the Big River:

  The Sheriff by Chuck Tyrell

  Copyright © 2014 Chuck Tyrell and

  Western Fictioneers

  Cover Design L. J. Washburn

  Western Fictioneers logo design by Jennifer Smith-Mayo

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used in a fictional manner. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  November 2014

  Foreword

  Commodore Perry Owens

  I’d seen the Albuquerque tintype and I’d read the newspaper account of the Blevins-Cooper shootout, but I still wasn’t ready for the cold hard stare and careful stance that met me when I pushed through the batwings of the Bucket of Blood.

  I took off my hat and approached the bar. The man with the stare and the stance moved three steps down the bar, keeping a ten-foot space between he and myself. “I’m Alexander Evanston,” I said, “from the Phoenix Sun.”

  “You the reporter?” said the man at the corner of the bar. He wore a gray handlebar and a white apron wrapped around his more than ample girth.

  “I am,” I said. “I sent a letter some weeks ago, asking for an opportunity to interview Commodore Perry Owens.”

  The man with the hard stare spoke. “Got anything that says you’re what you say you are?” he said.

  “I do. Mr. Robinson, our publisher, supplies us with business cards for just such occasions.” I fished one from my vest pocket and placed it on the bar. The man with the hard eyes extended his hand. The barman pulled the card to the edge of the bar with his index finger, caught it with his thumb as it hit the edge, and with it pinched between finger and thumb, handed it to the hard man.

  “Phoenix Sun, eh? All the news that is news, without fear or favor, eh?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “How come you to work for the Phoenix Sun?”

  “I graduated from Stanford with a degree in education,” I said, “but what I really like to do is write. Mr. Robinson is an old friend of my father’s, and he offered me a job on the paper. Now I am here, sir.”

  “School larned, eh?”

  “Yes, sir. But now I’m learning the real world, and letting our readers know exactly what I find out.”

  The hard man may have smiled, but it looked like a smirk. “Three years, all told,” he said.

  “Three years, sir?”

  “Yeah. Three years of schooling. That’s all I ever got.”

  “Times are changing, sir. A man best get an education, if he can.”

  The hard man glanced down at the toes of his boots, then watched a wagon rattle by the saloon toward main street. He flinched at a backfire and cast a baleful eye on the passing the Model T Ford. “Damn horseless carriages,” he said. “Near as bad as telephones. And you’re right, shaver. Times are changing, for a fact. Today ain’t nothing like what used to be.”

  A man burst through the batwings and clomped to the bar. “Usual,” he said.

  The barman drew him a beer and slid it across the bar. Some of the foam sloshed out and left a streak on the shiny bar.

  “Hey. Careful. Don’ waste m’beer.”

  The barman grinned. “You know I fill it extra full for you, Dave. Don’t bitch so much.”

  “So what if I bitch. C.P. gonna fill me up with lead if I do?”

  “He might just do that. Never can tell.”

  Dave lifted his beer mug to the hard-eyed man. “C.P.,” he said, “you reckon I’ve got the right to bitch in the golmighty Bucket of Blood?”

  My eyes whipped from Dave to the hard man. So this was the famous Commodore Perry Owens. Said to have killed fourteen men and wounded half a hundred more. He nodded in my direction and motioned toward a table in the back. “We’ll talk over there,” he said, shutting beer-drinker Dave out of the conversation.

  “Fine,” I said, and moved over to the table Owens had indicated. He strode to the far end of the bar, and arrived at the table with a sawed-off shotgun in his right hand. He sat opposite me and put the shotgun on the seat of the chair next to him.

  “Why the scattergun?” I said.

  “How many people over sixty do you know, son?”

  I thought. “Not all that many.”

  “Well, I’m a year past sixty, and part of the reason is that I’m careful. Always careful.”

  The barman brought a sudsy glass of something for Owens. “What’ll you have?” he said to me.

  “Beer?”

  The barman gave me a curt nod, and went back to the bar.

  “Now what is it you want to talk to me about, Evanston?”

  “Well, sir . . .”

  “I ain’t no sir, son. Just C.P., or Commodore, as you please.”

  “Commodore, then?”

  “That’d be fine. Now, what was it you wanted to talk about?”

  “Well. These days it seems that Wyatt Earp, that Tombstone lawman, is getting all the attention. I looked at Arizona lawmen when I was at Stanford,” I said. “I read about Bob Paul and Burton Mossman, some about Texas John Slaughter, too. But you, sir, I mean Commodore, seemed to me to have done more than just about any other lawman in Arizona history to turn this wild territory into one ready to be a state.”

  “We’re a state, son, without no help from me.” Owens took a sip from his glass, and I from mine.

  “Could I hear about you, Commodore, from your very own lips?”

  “Dunno that I have any kind of a story to tell, son, not much of one, anyway.”

  “I heard you were born in Tennessee. Is that right?”

  “That’s right. But we moved to Indiana right after. My folks were Quakers. They didn’t take to slaveholding. I always thought they moved north to get out of slave country, the war coming on and all.”

  “How long did you live in Indiana?”

  Owens rubbed his hand across his mouth, smoothing his moustache down with his index finger. “Some still live there,” he said.

  “But you came west.”

  “Things wasn’t good after the war. Back then, a boy of twelve or thirteen was a man growed. I left home when I was thirteen.”

  I scribbled shorthand in my notebook.

  Owens watched. “Funny writing,” he said. “But then, I don’t write so good, so what can I say?”

  “It’s called shorthand, Commodore. Faster than regular writing. I don’t want to miss anything you say.” I steered the conversation back to where we left off. “You left home at thirteen, then.”

  “Yes.”

  Silence. Somewh
ere outside the damned Model T was backfiring again. Owens must have been used to the sound because he didn’t flinch or move his hand toward the shotgun. He just sat there like he’d answered my question in full.

  “Right,” I said. “Where did you go? Wasn’t the war in full swing about then?”

  “No. Just over.”

  I watched him. He looked at the edge of the table. Then he inspected the chandeliers hanging in the Bucket of Blood. He leaned over to check the shotgun. He laced his fingers together and put the backs of his hands against his chest. He frowned. I wondered if the interview was over.

  “Just over,” he said again, “and river boats needed boys to fire their boilers. A man can stay out of sight for a long time in riverboats. Nobody knows any different. No one knows if I was there or not. I was, but nobody knows, and neither do you.”

  I wrote a line.

  “I didn’t like boats,” he said. “I left when it was safe. Went to the Nations. Learned how to cowboy. Learned about horses. Learned how to shoot.”

  “May I ask where in the Nations?”

  “Here’n there. Did some trailing on the Goodnight. Hunted some buffalo for the Atchison Topeka. Cowboyed on the Rogers spread. Cherokees’re good cowmen. Good riflemen, too. Yeah. Learned a lot in the Nations. Hil Rogers died in ’71, but Will—that’s his boy—Will kept me on.”

  “Sounds exciting,” I said, hoping that Owens would tell me some exciting experiences.

  “Things people call exciting happen when a man drinks or gambles, usually. I don’t drink, and I don’t gamble. A man gets ahead if he works hard, that’s what I say.”

  “Cowboying’s hard work, I’d say. Does it get a man ahead?”

  “We didn’t think so in the Nations. We truly did not. Lots of people was making extra money hauling spirits into the Nation, mostly from Texas. We figured we was tough customers. Yeah, there was a law against taking booze into the Nations, but it happened every day. The Cherokees knew it. The Choctaw knew it. The Kiowa knew it. Well, we got caught. Twice. That put me up before Judge Isaac Parker. I wasn’t gonna lie. He said I was accused of hauling spirits into the Nations, how did I plead. I said, ‘Guilty.’

  “Judge Parker’s known as a hanging judge. He don’t go lenient. And he weren’t lenient on me. I got caught twice, and he sentenced me to three months in jail for each offense, and he fined me a hundred dollars twice. Cowboying don’t make a man rich, but neither does shipping whiskey into the Indian Nations.” Owens looked like he’d eaten something bitter and sour.

  I didn’t say anything after I’d written down what he’d said. Owens wasn’t a talker and certainly wasn’t a braggart. At least as far as I could see.

  “Pays not to break the law,” Owens said.

  “But you’ve never been an outlaw, have you?”

  Owens snorted. “Bunch of us young’uns figured we was hot back in the ‘70s. We done a lot of talking, mostly amongst ourselves. We talked about hawking whiskey. Talked about making off with some good horses. Even talked about holding up trains. Talk. Talk. Talk. Maybe if I’d not been sent up by Judge Parker. Maybe if we’d done what we talked about. Then maybe I’d have rode the Outlaw Trail. Who knows?”

  “But you didn’t.”

  Owens cracked a slight grin. “No, I didn’t. Soon as I got out, I left. Never talked to the old gang again. Weren’t worth it.”

  “Where’d you go then?”

  “West.”

  “West from Oklahoma?”

  “Straight west. Clipped Colorado on the corner and dropped straight into New Mexico. Spent a little time in Santa Fe, but the beaver days and the trade with Mexico was gone, so I drifted south to Albuquerque. That’s where I met Houck.”

  “Do you mean James Houck, the man who was your deputy?”

  “That’s him. Hadn’t I of met Jim Houck, I’d never of come to Arizona in the first place. But he kept going on about belly-high grass on the Colorado Plateau and how the Apaches never raided and the Navajos could be taken care of. He painted such a good picture, and me wanting to homestead a place to raise horses, him and I decided to ride west towards Apache County in Arizona.”

  “I heard that Commodore Perry Owens horses were something to be sought. Is that right?”

  “I tried. Kept some good stock. Rode the best I had. Rode one to death, in fact. Not supposed to do that to blooded horses, you know. Grass up around Navajo and Commodore Springs was right good for my horses.”

  A group of men pushed into the Bucket of Blood. They lined the bar and started trading stabs with the barman. Commodore kept his attention on the men until they had their drinks and had settled down a bit. “Where were we?” he asked as he turned back to me.

  “I think we were talking about James Houck and blooded horses, Commodore,” I said. “What kind of horses did you raise?”

  “Well, I was lucky enough to get me a half thoroughbred half Arabian mare that was from Keene Richard’s stock. I rode her into Arizona from Albuquerque, me and Jim together. He said Apache County was booming and that it was the place a man could make something of himself. Convinced me. I was happy to ride along. Happy to get a cowboying and remuda guard job with Jim’s pa. A man’s nothing without work, ya know.”

  “When did you arrive in Arizona, if I may ask?”

  “Let me think. I reckon it was the spring of ’81. Yeah. Wells Fargo ran a stage up from Tucson and over to Diablo and they held a herd of nags at Navajo Springs. They called it Navajo Springs, but it’s just a seep. Dug a ditch into the bog so water could seep in and clear up for the horses. Worked good, and there was always plenty of graze.”

  “Navajo Springs is not all that far from Carrizo Creek, is it?”

  “I know what you’re getting at, boy. Navajos. Well, they figured all the country south of Lithodendron Wash and the Painted Desert all the way to the Zuni River was theirs, and maybe it was at one time. But you know Colonel Carson took the Navajo Indians to Redondo in ’64. They wasn’t never the same after that. J.L. Hubbell had him a trading post up north of Window Rock. Still, them Navajos liked to get away with a horse whenever they could. We just had to go on after ‘em and take ‘em back.”

  Part I

  Of horses and Navajos

  C.P. Owens was a careful man, but a man willing to talk as well. It seemed somehow that he wanted to set the record straight rather that have it overblown, or underblown, as the case might be. He spoke well, though without a lawyer’s learning, and I have decided to use my volumes of notes from those few days in Seligman, Arizona, to allow C.P. (I ended up calling him C.P., like everyone else) to tell his own story.

  1

  The days before I got to Arizona don’t mean a lot. What I’m saying is, well, I learned cowboying at the Rogers Ranch in Oklahoma, and I came near to becoming an outlaw while I was in the Nations, too. Those days are not important to the real Commodore Perry Owens. I reckon my life began the day I crossed the line from New Mexico into Arizona. Me and Jim Houck rode all the way from Albuquerque where I first made his acquaintance. Jim had a temper and sometimes he had a short trigger, but he was straight as an arrow, and when he gave his word, it was good to the grave. Anyhow, Jim was always raving on about how good the country in Arizona was, with grama grass up to a horse’s belly and land easy to get from the A&P railroad. I had no ties where I come from, Judge Parker’d caught me to rights on the whiskey to the Indians thing, and I was shy of breaking any kind of law any where—another reason it was easy for Jim Houck to talk me into riding to Arizona.

  The good thing about riding into Arizona from the east is the weather. I was on my dappled gray, leading a bay Morgan. Jim had a short-coupled lineback dun and black-pointed buckskin. We rode through the gap between Mount Powell and Castle Rock to the north and the Zuni Mountains to the south. We spent a night at Gallup, a new town astraddle the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad. Jim got rousing drunk at the Pine Picket saloon and I had to just about carry him back to the horses. Me, I don’t drink none. Never have
, even though I was jailed for selling liquor to Indians in the Nations.

  Hung over as Jim was, dawn still saw us out of our soogans and huddled over a hatful of fire, frying sowbelly and making a bit of frybread. The sun was just coming up when we stomped the fire out, rolled up our soogans and tarps, saddled up, tied our rolls behind the cantles, and pointed the noses of our mounts toward Navajo Springs, riding west on the Beale Wagon Road. We didn’t worry about Indians at the time, and made it to Navajo Springs stage station with no trouble.

  Fred Adams came out of the stage station just as me and Jim rode up. “Howdy,” he said. “See any Navajos on your way in?”

  “Nope,” Jim said. “All right to use the water?”

  “Damned Navajos run off with three head of Fargo horses,” Fred said. “Hep yourself.”

  He walked along as we went to the pond for water. Navajo Springs is rightly a seep. Water comes up in a little swale and makes a pond about fifty feet across. Funny thing is, that water never gets stagnant so there’s probably some kind of underground stream beneath the pond. “No Navajos, eh?” Fred was almighty set on us having noticed Indian sign or something.

  “Nary a one,” I said, “but we wasn’t particular looking out for Indians. Easy riding along that Beale Wagon Road. Near snoozed all the way over from Gallup.”

  Fred snorted. “I’ll bet,” he said. “I’ve known Jim Houck since he was knee high to a grasshopper, but I don’t recollect you.” He squatted at the edge of the pond and pulled a grass stem to chew on.

  “He’s a top hand,” Jim said, nodding his head at me. “Worked some years on that big Rogers ranch in Oklahoma. Name’s Commodore. Commodore Perry Owens.”

  “Hell of a name,” Fred said.

  “It’s the one my ma and pa saddled me with,” I said. “I reckon it will have to do. You can call me C.P. if that makes things easier.”