Uniquely Yours Craft Journal

Note: This is a multi a chapter story. Chapter 2 will follow soon.

Deception has many faces

Jess knew he was being followed. The steps behind him were hesitant and sloppy. Sunlight flickered overhead and he glanced around searching  for a doorway. His shadow caught up with him. A hand clasped onto his shoulder. Too late. His heart hammered against his ribs.

“I need to talk with you,” the voice whispered, low and hurried.

“So talk,” Jess tried to turn but his feet froze in their tracks.

“Not here.”

There was one thing that Jess hated, well , to be honest, there were more than one thing. It was being told to wait.  

“ We need a place that’s private,” the man’s voice continued.

Jess couldn’t, for the life of himself, explain how he knew that a man was behind him.  Maybe it was instinct, maybe it was the way the hand felt. He turned slowly and faced a stranger.

“Do you know Baxter’s Ridge?”

The man stared at him for a second. He ran a gloved hand through his curly.brown hair. His brown eyes stared deep.into Jess’ blue for.a long moment as if  calculating the odds of an ambush.

“Yeah, half an hour.” He was gone and Jess gulped air in buckets.

Everyone in Laramie knew Baxter’s Ridge. Jess had come in contact with the particular piece of land twice on a fateful day back a dozen or so years ago. As he waited  for the stranger, he recalled his first acquaintance with the man who became his best friend. The man who had died mysteriously months ago.  He was robbed of a last brotherly embrace; a last goodbye; a last promise to take care of Daisy, of Mike, of the ranch they both loved. The disease had swooped in and took Slim, Doc Sam and half a dozen  leading citizens of Laramie with it. In order to.stop.the spread, the new mayor had ordered the burials be done swiftly and Jess  had heard the  dreadful news via town gossip.

At last he heard the tell tale hoof beats pounding on the packed earth  and looked up.through teary eyelashes. The stranger was clearly not a horseman as he ungainly dismounted.

“Please listen to me before you act, “ the stranger pleaded.

“Who are you and what do.you want with me?”

“My name is Timothy Johnson. I’m a doctor. I came to Laramie to study with your doctor Sam. My wife and I wanted to go  onto Denver but we were kidnapped from our home. The men who took me are ruthless. They are making me do their dirty work while they hold my darling wife captive.”

“What do they want?”

“Control of your town. They know there’s no sheriff here. They  know there’s no mayor or town council. They kill anyone in their path.  They spread lies about a disease and have everyone scared to leave their homes. They made me inoculate everyone with fake medicine.”

Jess shook his head. It was a perplexing puzzle that’s for sure. Take over Laramie? It sounded too sinister to be true. He recalled the fight in the bar when Slim had been hurt. He had raised the alarm when he found Slim in the jail cell, feverish and beat up. The replacement deputy sheriff was adamant. No doctor was needed but Jess vemently insisted  resulting in an operation to remove a bone fragment from one of Slim’s  lungs. It was the last time Jess had seen him alive.

“Mr. Harper, I haven’t got much time. I don’t think I was followed but I can’t be sure. You have to know something else.”

“What!” Jess growled.

“Your friend, Mr. Sherman, he’s not dead.”

Jess gulped. After all this man had just told him to hear about Slim seemed as likely as  thunder during a snowstorm. No, the voice of reason insisted. Slim was gone.

“Mr. Harper, please you have to believe me. “

Jess shook his head. “They said he got infected during the operation and both he and Doc Sam died.”

“They lied. Wasn’t your friend running for Mayor?”

Jess nodded miserably. “Yeah, and he was winning. He won the debate and probably would have won the election. He would have been a great mayor, he cared so much for our town.”

 Tears threatened and, embarrassed in front of the stranger, Jess turned away.

“He said to tell you that ‘the stakes ran deepest near the corral.’’

Jess was slammed with the missing piece of his heart so deep and so swiftly that he staggered and would have fallen except for the fact that his faithful mount was standing next to him. This man didn’t know Slim. He wouldn’t understand the meaning of stakes.

“He’s alive?” Jess whispered, afraid to let the words take shape.

“He is  sitting up now. Won’t be able to ride for awhile but he’s eating ok. They keep him in a locked room with sheriff Corey. “

“How do you know this?”

“They let me care for him as long as I do what they want  I wanted to let you know earlier but I too was locked up at night. “

“Can you set him free? Where is the house? Who else knows?”

Timothy Johnson put his hands out. “One question at a time,” he pleaded. “ There’s too many guards to try and escape. I can lead you there but you would be cut down before you reached the front door and as far as I know, you’re the only one who knows the truth. I have to go now, before they get suspicious. “

“How will I find you again?” Jess had no way of knowing what the truth really was. He wondered what Daisy would say.

“I’ll find you.” And with that, Johnson fled.

For a long time Jess stood rooted to the spot. The afternoon shadows grew long and stretched across the sky.  There was a chill in the air and he pulled his jacket closer. He couldn’t afford to get sick. He was the sole owner of the Sherman Harper Ranch.  He was responsible for the care of Daisy, their beloved second Ma and the raising of young Mike. He had so many questions and no answers. Should he trust Doctor Johnson? What if it was a trap? Who could he trust to.help him? How could he get to Slim? Why was Slim taken? He could almost hear his Pard’s voice in his ear ” it’s a matter of principal. It’s the right thing to do.”

As he rode home, Jess thought about the events that led him to this point. Little did they know that when Slim had read about Charles Poole and his opinions about their town in the Laramie Gazette that the drums of war drew them into battle. The battle for Laramie’s future had been fought on the pages of the newspaper. The war of words exchanged had been cordial in the very beginning. A difference of opinion, nothing more. But then everything escalated and battle lines were drawn right down the center of Front Street.

“The Town Council is an antiquated way of doing business,” the editor had quoted Poole. The town needs a Mayor. We need to charge taxes to improve our way of life.”

At first, taxes didn’t seems to bad an idea. Eceryone, shopkeepers and farmer alike traded with each other. They all had a stake in the town. But the resulting coffer was the building of a town hall and a ‘den of inniquting,” as Daisy wisely described the monstrosity being built at the edge of town. Slim had seen red and had taken pencil to.paper to demand a town meeting. “This has got to stop, Jess.” He had insisted.  The world they had known narrowed  to the tip of Slim’s spear.

“I can understand the need for a town hall,” Slim had explained his position one night after supper. They were hashing out their differences on the porch as usual.

“Poole is getting tired of his one room office and needs more room. He is a lawyer, after all. If he wins the election,  he’s going to need more space for meetings. But Laramie does not need another gambling house, especially one that river boat gamblers appreciate. Did you know he wants two levels, one for a bar and gambling and the second floor for scantily-dressed women to entertain the big spenders. I’m not a babe in the woods, Jess. I know what other saloons look like. Laramie just doesn’t need three bars.”

Jess remembered thinking that Slim was getting too rilled for this matter. But the battleground had already played itself out on the pages of the Gazette. Before he knew it, the war of words had begun and Slim spent more time in town than on the ranch. He came home after the many forays reeking of cigar smoke and whiskey and too fired up to sleep. Ranch life was becoming intollerable and something had to give. The war escalated when the council proposed a debate. Although Slim won it handidly, their luck began to wane when he was beaten up in the very bar his father had helped found. He had been arrested by the inept sheriff, A relative of Poole’s and was awaiting trial on trumped up charges. The last time Jess had seen his best friend alive was just prior to the operation.  Then he was dead, or was he?