The
story so far: Shorty Colson, owner of the Cartwheel Ranch was killed by a double-barreled
blast of buckshot at his kitchen door one stormy night. As the crew tries to
figure out who could have done it, new and surprising facts about the Cartwheel
and its denizens begin to surface. Last week’s segment ended with Bushy
Bushmiller turning the tables on Pencil and questioning why the old man had put
up with his shenanigans over the years. Part 3 of the story begins below.
###
WHO SHOT SHORTY (Continued)
My ears flamed. I lurched
to my feet. The old cowboy shuffled backwards. “Shorty Colson never laid a hand
on me, and if he had, I’d have knocked him clear into next year. Shorty
wasn’t—that way!”
“Then how do ya account
fer the kid there?” Bushy smirked and threw a thumb over his shoulder. Five
pairs of eyes turned to focus on Pedro, who sat staring at the ground.
I shook my head. “There’s
a better way of going about this than tearing one another apart. Shorty took
both barrels to the chest. A double blast from a twelve gauge has a hell of a
recoil. Whoever did it oughta have a bruise.”
“It might not be one of
us, Pencil,” Tex
pointed out. “And if it is, you sure you wanna know?”
“Maybe not, but I sure as
shooting want everybody to know it wasn’t me.” I stripped off my shirt.
“Well, I ain’t got
nothing to hide,” Tex
declared. There wasn’t a mark on him either.
After Red John followed
suit, Bushy exposed his scrawny chest. No bruises on either one of them. As a
man, we swung around to confront Lubell.
“Now wait a minute! I’m a
lady. You expect me to bare it all to you bozos?”
“You ain’t seen these
particular ones,” she snapped. Nonetheless, she unbuttoned the man’s shirt
stretched tight across her torso and pulled it down around her shoulders.
“Satisfied, you perverts?”
The arbor fell quiet as
we turned to Pedro. Lubell stepped over and put an arm around the slender
frame. “You leave her alone!”
After a stunned silence,
four masculine voices thundered, “Her?”
Pedro peeked up from
under Lubell’s protective arm. “You knew about me?”
“Course I knew, honey.
You tried to be almighty careful living with me in the bedroom back of the chow
hall, but you slipped up a time or two. Besides, why else would Shorty put you
up with the only other woman on the spread?”
The girl pointed at Tex.
“I afraid he figure it out. He a woman’s man.”
Lubell sniffed. “If you
mean a woman-chasing man, you’re right. But he ain’t no more sensitive than any
other male around here. Why don’t you tell us what all this is about?”
I stepped in. “Do you
have a bruise, Pedro … uh, ma’am?”
“Consuelo,” she said. “My
name, Consuelo. Yes, bruise on mi espalda…my
shoulder.” She began to shake. “Dios
help me! I…I kill my papa.” She collapsed against Lubell and sobbed.
As she told her story,
the tears dried up and a streak of steel emerged. Her mother was a Mexican Shorty
got sweet on after his wife passed. Worried about his son’s reaction to a new
woman with a baby, he sent her home to Juarez. To the old man’s credit, he
acknowledged paternity of their child—at least he sent money regularly.
After her mother died,
Consuelo made her way north to the ranch, arriving in the middle of the fall
gathering when all of us, except for Shorty, were chasing cattle out of the
bush and hazing the animals down to the loading pens.
According to Consuelo,
Shorty swore her to secrecy, dressed her up like a boy, and passed her off as a
new hand until he figured out how to tell Junior he had a half-Mexican sister.
When Consuelo overheard him talking about selling the ranch, she decided to
press him to acknowledge her as his daughter.
“I pick a bad time,” the
girl said in her soft accent. “Like Lubell say, he drinking bad. But I go
anyway. It was mistake. He drunk. Look at me with wild, crazy eyes. He grab me.
I get away, but he catch me at the door. He…he say he don’t believe I his hija. Call my mama a bad name and say
she swindle him.” The girl broke out crying. “He try to rape me!”
Another thunderbolt out
of a clear, blue sky. “Oh, Lord!” Lubell spoke for all of us.
“The dirty old
somabitch,” Bushy added. “Musta been drunk outa his skull.”
“So … so,” Consuelo
continued between sobs, “I grab big gun he keep in corner of kitchen and try to
back out door. I think he stop then, but he grab the cañón … the barrel. Gun go
off. I think you all hear and come running. I think whole world hear the big
boom, but nobody come. I get up out of the mud and go clean up in my room. Then
I cry me to sleep.”
I straightened my spine.
“Well, that solves the mystery of who shot Shorty. Somebody better go call the
sheriff.”
“The sheriff?” Everybody
looked at me as if I were loco.
“Or,” I backtracked, “we
can let him do his own sleuthing.” Then with an eye to the future, I mused out
loud. “Wonder if Junior will lease the spread to us?”
THE END
###
Well,
that’s it. Hope you enjoyed the story. Let me know if the serial thing works.
Please let me hear from you.
Don
Next week: We’re back to “who
knows” again.
New posts are published at 6:00
a.m. each Thursday.
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