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  JUDGMENT AT RED CREEK

  JUDGMENT AT RED CREEK

  LEE COOLEY

  M. EVANS

  Lanham · Boulder · New York · Toronto · Plymouth, UK

  Published by M. Evans

  An imprint of Rowman & Littlefield

  4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

  www.rowman.com

  10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom

  Distributed by National Book Network

  Copyright © 1992 by Leland Frederick Cooley

  First paperback edition 2014

  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 written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  The hardback edition of this book was previously cataloged by the Library of Congress as follows:

  Cooley, Leland Frederick.

  Judgment at Red Creek / Leland Frederick Cooley.

  p. cm.—(An Evans novel of the West)

  I. Title. II. Series.

  PS3553.0564J83 1992

  813’. 54—dc20

  92-2668

  CIP

  ISBN: 978-0-87131-671-4 (cloth : alk. paper)

  ISBN: 978-1-59077-339-0 (electronic)

  ISBN: 978-1-59077-338-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)

  The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

  Printed in the United States of America

  For my wife, Regina who put a burr under my saddle to get this story told.

  Special gratitude is expressed to Michael Pattison, journalist and New Mexico historian, for his maps and descriptions of the old Plaza in Las Vegas circa 1870...

  and

  ... to dear friends, Michael and Susan Robbins, for their loving support and for surrounding us with Napa Valley’s incomparable beauty while I completed the final editing on this work in the guest house at their historic Spring Mountain Winery estate, Miravalle, also known to millions around the world as television’s Falcon Crest.

  L.F.C.

  Contents

  Chapter One New Mexico Territory 1871

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter One

  New Mexico Territory 1871

  Crouched atop the stone faced earth dam spanning Red Creek, three men, more sensed than seen beneath the black shroud of the moonless night, worked with nervous caution as they placed a heavy charge of black powder in the spillway. Other than the soft chafing of their clothing and the creaking of their heavy leather gun belts, nothing was heard but the familiar medley of night sounds in Red Creek Canyon.

  The leader, a heavily built man in his mid-forties, kept a watchful eye on the two gunslinging saddle tramps he had hired in the hotel bar in the pueblo of Las Vegas.

  “Don‘t make no noise now,” he cautioned in a gruff whisper as he studied the barely visible shapes of the log and adobe dwellings placed at random along the far bank of the stream.

  Reassured when he saw no sign of light in any of the windows, he fastened a long length of fuse to the five pound can of explosive and ordered the men to go ahead of him. Following them, he paid out the fuse carefully until he reached the steep trail leading up to the rim of the broad canyon.

  When they had dropped for shelter behind some large sandstone boulders he said, “You keep your fool heads down ’cause I’m gonna light off the powder now. When she blows, them squattin’ waterhogs is gonna come a-hellin’ out with their lanterns to see what happened. I’m not pay in’ ya to miss. Drop everything that moves. When I holler, ‘Stop shootin,’ hightail it up the trail to the horses. I’ll be right behind ya. Head fur Tres Dedos like we planned.”

  When the men found their shelter, he lit a phosphorus match, held it to the fuse until it began to splutter, then scrambled after them.

  Braced for the shock, the wait seemed endless. Then, just as the leader began to worry that the fuse had failed, a blinding flash and a head splitting explosion shattered the deep silence. For an instant the afterimage of an angry red fireball lingered in their tightly shut eyes. Air compressed between the canyon’s walls surged against them and sent bits of earth and small rocks showering down on them.

  Below them, out on the dam, splintered timbers, chunks of compacted earth, and fragmented stone erupted from the structure, seemed to hang suspended for a moment, then rained into the dark torrent that had begun to boil through the breach.

  The rolling thunder of the explosion was still echoing in the upper reaches of the canyon when doors burst open. Men and women, most of them in their night clothing, poured out onto the creekside path. Immediately matches flared as lanterns were lit. Holding them high the Red Creek settlers ran toward the dam.

  From their cover the three men watched as more people appeared and more lanterns were lit. The slowest to appear were the women and the small children. The leader counted twenty lights as the stunned settlers began to congregate on the dam top. Each light made a perfect target.

  “Alright,” he barked, “start shootin’ and don’t let none of ’em git back to the houses fur their rifles!”

  The crash of the first volley was answered by open-throated screams of disbelief. A man fell and his lantern tumbled down the stone face of the dam in a cascade of smokey flame. In seconds the dam top became a bedlam as the three men pumped a slanting rain of rifle fire into the panicked settlers.

  Men who tried to get to their houses were picked off at their own doorsteps as they ran for their weapons. They fell in the flames of their shattered lanterns. Not an answering shot was directed toward the concealed killers.

  A commanding male voice reached them above the screams.

  “Put out your lights! Get off the dam! Get back to your houses, quick! Put out your lights! Put out your lights!”

  Several lanterns arced into the water. Others were extinguished where they were. Piercing screams of the wounded could be heard above the din of fast-firing rifles. As the last of the lanterns were abandoned or put out, total darkness concealed the carnage. Only the frantic appeals of those struck, and the shouts of others trying to reach them, could be heard above the rush of water and the muted rumble of tumbling cobblestones being dislodged from the stream bed by the rampaging torrent.

  No easy targets were visible now. “Lace the place with lead!” the leader shouted. “Shoot at the noise!”

  The firing resumed immediately, and new terrified voices were added to the din as random shots found unseen bodies. Moans and the appeals of wounded settlers thrashing in the water were lost as they were washed downstream.

  Asa Adams, a disillusioned Confederate captain with Sibley’s defeated forces at Glorietta Pass in March of 1862, had been the first on the dam. His had been the first shouted orders to douse the lanterns and get inside. His twenty-sixyear-old son, Clayt, still pulling on his shirt as he left his mother and sisters behind, did not hear his fat
her’s shocked gasp as he was struck.

  Unmindful of his own safety, Clayt ran out along the dam. A rifle slug struck the dirt at his feet. Seconds later he stumbled over Mark Mason. Mason also had served with his father at Glorietta Pass and Apache Canyon. He was on his knees with his face in the dirt. Clayt grasped him under the arms and dragged him off the dam. The thud of impacting lead punctuated the rising chorus of agonized voices as bullets continued to find bodies. Twice, Clayt heard the terrified screams of unseen children.

  On the dam again, he found his father’s closest friend and fellow Confederate officer, Henry Deyer, carrying his teenage son, Ned.

  “Your father’s been hit,” the older man gasped, “and your sister, Fern. Get to them, for God’s sake! I’ll help the others—soon as I can.”

  A few steps on beyond, a lantern had fallen and was still burning. Clayt hesitated, then ran toward it. An instant before he reached to douse it, a bullet smashed into it, spraying him with lamp oil and bits of glass from the shattered chimney. Just beyond he saw a dark shape. Scrambling on his hands and knees, he found Jakob Gruen trying to shield the body of his wife, Hilde, with his own.

  “Get her off the dam, Jakob!” The German pewtersmith, who had left New York’s Oneida Colony to join with his father and Henry Deyer, reached out and touched his arm. The man’s hand was sticky-warm with fresh blood.

  “She‘s gone, Clayt,” he sobbed. “She’s gone ”

  “Are you all right, Jakob?”

  “I’m alright. Oh, my God... I’m alright... but Hilde’s...”

  “Stay down!” Clayt ordered. “Stay down and keep quiet! Those murdering bastards, whoever they are, will shoot at anything, seen or unseen. I’ll get back as soon as I can.”

  The words were hardly spoken when two more slugs ploughed into the spot where the lantern had been. Wheeling, Clayt ran back to the far end of the dam. There he found Henry Deyer and his eldest son, Oss, bending over Ned. Kneeling close, he saw the wound. A rifle slug had struck Henry’s younger son in the lower left belly.

  Clayt turned when he heard his younger sister, Nelda’s relieved cry.

  “Oh, Clayt! Thank God I found you! Fern’s been killed and Father’s terribly hurt. Oh God, Clayt.. .come... now...” she pleaded, tugging at his shirt front. “Now!”

  A few yards away, just off the dam, he found his mother. She was mute with shock. Dropping beside her, he bent over his father. He was still alive. Next to him lay Fern.

  “My God, Clayt,” Mary Adams gasped in a horrified whisper, “look at your sister....”

  He dropped to his knees, turned her body toward him and bent close. The sight of the wound left him speechless for an instant, then he let out a cry of wordless rage. The bullet had torn away half of her forehead.

  In their cover above the dam, in total darkness now, the man who had hired the killers, and who had done much of the killing himself, snapped an order as he saw his men set aside their empty rifles and draw their Colts.

  “Save it!” he barked. “We’ve done good. Let’s light out’a here now.”

  Urging them up the trail ahead of him, he followed the pair to the stand of scrub piñons on the canyon rim. The horses were tethered there. “Mount up,” he ordered. “I want us to git back down to the spread before sunup.”

  “How d’ya know they ain’t gonna folia’ us?” the younger one of the pair asked.

  “Don’t you worry none, buster. They ain’t gonna be doin’ nuthin’ down there ’cept diggin’ holes fer their dead and fixin’ to pack up and git. That’s what this here’s all about.”

  He watched them mount then swung into his own saddle.

  “Git goin’ now. I’ll be right behind of ya.. .in case ” When they had moved along a few steps he called out, “Wait a second, boys!” As he moved up close behind them he added, “You done such good work, I got a real surprise fer ya.”

  The two men reined up and turned their horses to face him. In the darkness they didn’t see the Colt. An instant later they were both dead, shot through the heart.

  An ugly smile contorted the man’s face as he pulled the bodies from the saddles and dragged them in the piñon thicket. There he stripped their pockets of the gold coins he had paid them at the bar in Las Vegas, took their guns and belts, their rifles, a throwing knife, and a short-bladed Bowie. When the search revealed nothing more of value he returned to their horses, loosened the reins and prepared to lead them away.

  As he remounted he muttered, “ ‘Be careful about witnesses,’ T.K. said.” The advice amused him. “Well, I reckon this is about as careful as a feller kin git.”

  He laughed aloud at his gallows humor and began to ride south to Tres Dedos and Manuel Santos’ shabby little adobe rancho.

  It was well past midnight when he rousted Santos and his wife, Rosita. The short, squat mestizo appeared rubbing his eyes. Behind him in the doorway, holding a candle and clutching the corner of a blanket for cover, his wife peered out apprehensively.

  The man pointed to the riderless animals. “Run them in with yours, Santos, until I come back. And hide the saddles and rifles. Them horses is Kansas branded. If anybody asks ya ’bout ’em, say two strangers come by and paid ya to hold ’em fer a few days. You never seen ’em before. Unnerstan’? Comprende ?”

  Santos tied the rope belt around his pants and nodded.

  “Si, Señor. Comprendo.”

  Pointing to the frightened woman, the man said. “What about her? Kin she keep her yap shut?”

  “Si, Señor. She weel no talk. La boca estará cerrada. Por cierto.”

  The man gave them both a threatening look. “If you talk, Santos—or if she talks...” He patted the Colt on his right hip, “it’ll be the last time either of you do. Claro ?”

  “Si, Señor. Claro está. Nobody weel talk to nobody.”

  “Good!” He reached into his pocket and removed a ten dollar gold piece.

  “Put this in your mouth. It’s more’n you’ve seen in a year. It’ll help keep it closed!”

  Santos took the coin and clutched it to his bare belly.

  “Muchas gracias, Señor. En el nombre del Dios, no voy a hablar. Es la verdad,” he said as the man mounted and disappeared in the darkness.

  Chapter Two

  The first of the sun’s rays were slanting over the east wall of Red Creek Canyon when the last of the wounded had been cared for and the thirteen dead had been laid out and covered in the meeting house that now served as an improvised morgue as well as the place where community problems were discussed and Bible readings were conducted by Henry Deyer.

  In the Adams house, Mary could not bring herself to believe the horror that confronted them. Clayt and Nelda stood beside her silently praying for the miracle that could not happen.

  Henry Deyer’s weather-seamed face was a mask, the sort soldiers manage when they are steeling themselves against the sight of comrades killed or maimed in battle. Better than any of them, Henry knew that Asa had been born to inspire confidence and lead. He lifted his eyes and gazed at Clayt and saw in the tall, strong, self-possessed son, the clear reflection of the father and silently thanked God for it.

  It had been Asa, then a captain in Confederate Colonel John Baylor’s Texas Mounted Rifles, who had urged him to join. Together, they had fought under Baylor when he had routed the Union garrison at Fort Fillmore near El Paso. They had continued then, to drive north to join General Henry Hopkins Sibley’s three thousand man army. Asa’s company had fought, and how well they had fought!

  They had defeated the forces under Sibley’s brother-in-law, General Edward R. S. Canby, five miles from Fort Craig on the Rio Grande. Henry remembered the strange unease both he and Asa had felt when the battle was joined. The opposing commanders were married to sisters. There was no more obvious example of the tragedy of Lincoln’s “house divided.”

  Canby had retreated to the fort. Henry recalled the tactical mistake Sibley had made when he decided not to lay siege to his brother-in-law’s
routed men. Instead, he decided to drive on west to take Albuquerque and Santa Fe. It turned out to be a fatal blunder, largely brought about when Canby had ordered logs, realistically painted to resemble cannons, mounted on the parapets. Having successfully outfoxed his brother-in-law, Canby reinforced Fort Union. The strong point was the key to the conquest of Colorado and the Southwest.

  When Sibley heard that Canby was moving on him, he turned to confront the Union troops at Glorietta Pass. When that bloody battle ended in a Confederate rout, Henry remembered Asa’s fateful decision to lead his own men eastward to the Pecos Valley. It was on that straggling retreat to Texas that they had found Red Creek. They camped a week there before Asa revealed his proposal that they return for their families and come back to establish a community where they could live out their lives in peace.

  As he watched life ebbing from his old comrade in arms, Henry sensed they were witnessing the end of a long shared dream. Hope soared briefly when Asa made a super human effort to force his body half upright.

  In a barely audible whisper, he said, “Remember, Henry, when we found this place we swore an end to violence. Promise me, Henry—and you too, son—not to take the law into your own hands.”

  When his body sagged, both Clayt and Henry reached out to ease him down. Struggling for one more breath, he forced out the last words he would speak.

  “Without the law, there will be no peace in this land ....” His head turned slightly toward Clayt. “Promise me, son, that you’ll find the ones who did this to our people—find them, make certain of their guilt and bring in the Marshall from Las Vegas. If you don’t, there’ll be no end...no... end...”

  His eyes closed slowly. Then, suddenly, his body convulsed and a moment later they watched in horror as blood welled up in his throat and spilled from his mouth. A moment more and he was gone.

  Fighting back tears of rage and grief, Clayt rested a hand on his father’s moist forehead, then pulled the cover over his face to conceal the hemorrhage. Mary Adams sank to her knees and buried her face in the bedclothing. Nelda knelt beside her and nestled her cheek in her mother’s graying hair. Clayt’s face seemed to have turned to stone. Seething with suppressed rage, he wanted to shake his fist at Heaven, scream at a God who would let this happen. He wanted to bolt for his Winchester and his Smith and Wesson handgun, saddle up, and track down the wanton murderers, blow them to bits, slash their bellies and spill their guts as their rifle fire had done to the worst-hit of his people. Instead he lowered his head as Henry, in a strictured voice, intoned a prayer for his battle-tested companion’s peace in the Hereafter.