Colorado Clash

1

Skye Fargo might not have found the body if he hadn’t decided to stop by the creek and fill his canteen.

Late September in Colorado was a melancholy time with the thinness of the afternoon sunlight and the snow-peaked mountains looking cold and aloof.

Ground-tying his big Ovaro stallion, Fargo grabbed his canteen from his saddle and walked through buffalo grass until he came to the narrow, winding creek. The water was clean. He hunched down next to it, opening his canteen. A jay cried. Fargo looked over to see what the hell was wrong with the damned bird.

And that was when he saw, sticking out from behind a ponderosa pine to his right, a pair of boots. Easy to assume that attached to those boots was a body.

He finished filling his canteen before getting up and walking through the smoky air to stand over the remains of what appeared to be a teenager of maybe sixteen, seventeen years. From the denim shirt and Levi’s and chaps, Fargo figured that the kid had been a drover. Cattle were getting to be a big business around here.

The birds had already been at him pretty good. The cheeks reminded Fargo of a leper he’d once seen. One of the eyes had been pecked in half. Dried blood spread over the front of the kid’s shirt. Hard to tell how long the kid had been here. Fargo figured a long day at least. The three bullets had done their job.

He found papers in the kid’s back pocket identifying him as Clete Byrnes, an employee of the Bar DD and a member of the Cawthorne, Colorado, Lutheran Church. Cawthorne was a good-sized town a mile north of here. That was where Fargo had been headed.

He stood up, his knees cracking, and rolled himself a smoke. He’d seen his share of death over the years and by now he was able to see it without letting it shake him. The West was a dangerous place and if bullets weren’t killing people then diseases were. But the young ones got to him sometimes. All their lives ahead of them, cut down so soon.

The cigarette tasted good, the aroma killing some of the stench of the kid’s body.

Not far away was a soddie. He walked toward it and called out. Then he went to the door but there was no answer.

He went back to his Ovaro, untied his blanket and carried it back to the corpse. He spread the blanket out on the grass and started the process of rolling the body on it. Something sparkled in the grass. He leaned over and picked it up. A small silver button with a heart stamped on it. Something from a woman’s coat. He dropped it into his pocket.

When the blanket was wrapped tight, he hefted the body up on his shoulder and carried it over to the stallion. He slung it across the animal’s back and grabbed the rope. A few minutes later the kid was cinched tight and Fargo was swinging up in the saddle.

Two minutes later he was on his way to Cawthorne.