Read Crazy Woman Creek for Free Online Page B

James Rose always had to have the best of everything,” said Cyrus.
    And that’s why he had the prettiest wife in the Territory. The memory of Lenora, waiting alone at the ranch for her James to come home, pained him. Someone would have to tell her. “Sad to see such a beautiful animal go three days without water,” said Luke, steering the conversation away from his true thoughts.
    After the search team’s horses had drank all the water they wanted, the four men sat on the ground, their horses and the Morgan tethered nearby, munching quietly what little spring grass they could forage. The men needed to rest a while before handling the depressing tasks ahead of them. Most urgent, James Rose’s body must be found and returned to his widow. His horse must be returned too.
    “His body is probably mighty far downstream by now,” said Sheriff Morris, reaching into his pocket for his tobacco pouch. “We got more searching to do, but at least now we won’t waste time looking where he ain’t.”
    “Wherever his body is, it’s well preserved,” said one of the volunteers with a grin. Ben Slocomb was a slender young man, hardly out of his teens, with sandy hair and eyes that twinkled with mischief. His attempt at humor in this dark circumstance provoked chuckles.
    But Luke barely nodded in agreement. He was thinking. “How do you suppose he fell in?” he said.
    None of the men answered.
    “Even in the dark the creek wouldn’t surprise him,” Luke surmised aloud. “He’d hear it before he saw it, and it’s his land. A man knows his own land.”
    “I was wondering the same thing,” said Sheriff Morris, gazing downstream, his chewing tobacco temporarily forgotten.
    “And he tied up his horse,” said Luke, motioning toward the red ash, “as if he had stopped for a drink. He didn’t stumble onto the creek in the dark. He came here on purpose.”
    “Maybe he leaned over too far.” Jed Whitehall, a plainspoken, plain-faced rancher of about thirty, idly tugged at a dry bit of straw still clinging to the soil since fall. He put the clean part of the creamy-white reed in his mouth and started to chew. “Accidents happen. People lose their footing. It happens to the best of us one time or another. It probably happened very fast.”
    The others nodded in silence, humor forgotten while each searched up and down the water for answers. As he searched Luke imagined the terror of James Rose as he slipped and fell into the icy water, all alone under the cloudy black darkness of a late spring rain. Luke studied every bush, every spindly, leafless sapling that rooted along the bank, but the creek wasn’t revealing its secret. James Rose may have called for help, panicked and frightened, but his cries would have been swallowed by the night. The knowledge that a man died on this spot seemed to hallow it for Luke.
    “Maybe he killed hisself,” said Ben. The other three stopped their search and looked at him.
    “Son, you’re too young to know how it was with James Rose,” said Sheriff Morris. “Suicide is for losers. James Rose wouldn’t take his own life. That’s not the way winners do. He had too much pride in him to just give up.”
    The older men nodded in sober agreement.
    “Besides, he had everything going for him,” said the sheriff. “Best piece of land in the county, prosperous ranch, pretty wife. No, James Rose didn’t take his life.”
    Luke and Jed nodded silently in agreement. Ben looked chastened and said no more.
    The men agreed they should notify Mrs. Rose of the loss of her husband as soon as possible, return Beauty to her stall on the Rose ranch, and then go back to town to assemble a new search party for the next day to retrieve the body. This second group of searchers would focus on the banks of the North-East Creek that marked the eastern edge of the Rose property, downstream from where they’d found Beauty.
    As the men rested and talked, Luke looked beyond them to the creek bank, imagining again