Reckoning at the Broken Spur

Story So Far

James confronted Valen at a hotel in Redrock, pressing a Colt to his neck after learning Valen recognized him; Valen revealed that Voss had been at Calloway Creek canyon with four or five men and that Voss was due to meet him at the hotel by noon. James paid the clerk two silver dollars for silence, marched Valen upstairs, and ordered him to stay seated while leaving the saddlebag downstairs, warning he would hear any movement.

James retrieved the saddlebag, brought it upstairs, and found folded paper and an oilcloth-wrapped item inside; the letter instructed Valen to confirm the hotel meeting and wait, and stated Voss would come alone. James struck Valen behind the ear with the Colt grip, choked him to death, and pocketed an unsigned letter and a stack of bills from the saddlebag, then turned a chair to face the door.

James counted the recovered cash twice, finding sixty-three dollars added to his seventeen, checked the Colt's cylinder for six rounds, and confirmed the Winchester held two in the magazine while watching the street below for over an hour. A broad rider on a gray horse entered from the north, slowly scanned the storefronts, stopped at the hotel rail, and turned toward the door.

James hurried downstairs in his socks with boots in one hand and the Colt in the other, stepped from the stairwell as Voss asked the clerk for Valen's room, pressed the Colt to Voss's neck, and marched him upstairs into the room where Voss saw Valen's body and named James. Voss identified the farm outside Millhaven, did not deny the killings, said James's father owed a debt and he collected it, and noted six of his men had been killed.

James ordered Voss to draw his pistol with two fingers and drop it, then stepped in and struck him behind the ear with the Colt grip, dropping him unconscious; Voss's loaded pistol was placed on the windowsill out of reach, and the name list in James's duster pocket held six names above his father's. James bound Voss's wrists and ankles, propped him against the wall, slapped him awake, and questioned him until Voss named Edmund Crale of the Denton land office as the man above him.

James wrote Edmund Crale at the bottom of the list, bringing it to eight names including his father's, then dropped the hatchet from his belt and choked Voss until he stopped fighting; Voss sat dead and slack against the wall beside Valen, James's hands were shaking, and the roan waited at the rail below. James came downstairs to the empty lobby, told the clerk to treat the noise upstairs as unheard and say he had not seen him, paid ten dollars, and left two bodies in the room with Edmund Crale in Denton as the one remaining target.

James bought salt beef, dried corn, hardtack, and two full canteens at the general store three storefronts from the hotel, paid a dollar and four bits, and was told to go east on the main trail and bear south at the dry-wash fork by the split cottonwood, with Denton about thirty miles away. He left Redrock at dusk on the roan, found the split cottonwood, bore left, stopped once to water the horse and eat, and reached Denton at dawn with the land office still dark and locked and one name left on the list.

James tied the roan outside a saloon two doors past the land office, set a coin on the bar, got a rye, and held it without drinking while the barkeep noticed his trail dust and hollow eyes; the barkeep said the land office opened at eight and Crale was usually there before the hour. When a light came on in the land office, James drained the rye, set the glass upside down, and quietly asked about working girls; the barkeep, Hector, said Widow Pruett ran a boarding house past the livery with two or three girls and told James to knock on the red side door and mention Hector's name so Pruett would not object to the hour.

James reached Pruett's gray boarding house, knocked on the faded red side door, said Hector sent him, asked for a quiet room for a few hours or the day, and was let into the warm kitchen for coffee; Pruett assigned him the top-stairs last room on the left with a street window and said eggs would be ready in ten minutes. Over breakfast James asked Pruett about Edmund Crale, and she said Crale was the land office man who made the town think as he liked, came twice a month with a woman named Clara, paid in advance, left before midnight, and had not come in three weeks; Clara had said he seemed nervous last time and kept the lamp off.

James asked to speak with Clara, slid Pruett a coin for the eggs, and Pruett brought Clara down from upstairs; Pruett stood by the stove with the coffee pot close enough to hear a scream while Clara sat across from James with her shawl tighter and a dollar coin in her palm. James kept his voice low and told Clara to arrange a private meeting with Crale, bring him to Pruett's or another easy place, hide James's role, and say only that Clara needed to see him for something personal; Clara said she could send word by midmorning.

Clara pushed the coin back, said she did not know what Crale had done and did not want to, refused James's offer of money and a way out, and said Crale would come by midmorning; she then went upstairs while Pruett refilled James's cup. A little past nine Crale entered the kitchen with his hat in hand, looked toward the stairs, saw James, and stopped; Pruett told Crale to sit, and James quietly told him to sit down because they had something to talk about.

Crale stayed on his feet, studied James in silence, and after James asked if he knew who he was, quietly named him as the James boy from Millhaven, his color gone and jaw tight. James rose from the chair, drew the Colt, stepped around the table, and jammed the barrel under Crale's chin; Crale looked to Pruett and the door, then said the land note was forty dollars and two seasons overdue and that he only told Voss it was past due. Crale's hat lay on the floor, his hands stayed raised under the Colt, and Pruett remained very still at the stove with both hands on the counter as James demanded Crale state the exact size of his father's debt and the price put on his life.