Curtis Wells: Chapter 1

by Bud Maloney

Chapter 1

            Whit Nelson cradled his Winchester across the crook of his left elbow as the lone horseman, a half mile away, approached. Whit was well concealed above the opening in the hills, comfortably settled among the lodgepole pines as he had several times in the past two weeks.

            A raw-boned, slender blond, he had been a man-hunter for hire for more than three years now, and and the man he was preparing to kill meant nothing to him except the chance to earn $800. Neilsen showed no more emotion about his task that he would if he were sweeping out a stable, yet he was as assiduous in his approach as a cabinet maker he had watched at work a few months back in Kansas City.

            Whit had killed eleven men in the past three years, always from concealment after carefully studying his prey, and always with a single shot from the Winchester with which he was a master. The killing had become such an ordinary job for him that he could no longer tell

the exact number of men who had died as a result of his precise shooting.

            “This un’s eleven – or twelve,” he mused as he waited, “The little feller outside Mesilla was nine, I think, and then there was the marshal in Texas. Dun’t make no difference anyways – long as I gets paid.”

            This man’s name was Ferguson, Whit remembered, and he’d stalked Ferguson’s every move long in advance of being given the signal to make his kill. He knew all the patterns in Ferguson’s life now and he had been told not to let the man come to town again.

            This was the third morning he’d been ready to intercept his quarry, knowing that Ferguson would come through the hills toward town when he was ready to mail those letters. It was the mention of the letters that had touched the match to the fuse, had sent Fenton Callahan into a wild rage that culminated in his snarling, “Kill him if he heads for town and get me those letters.”

            Whit hadn’t been too fond of the order to go near a corpse of his own making, but the price had been jacked up when he protested, making this the most lucrative job of his macabre career.

            He could see Ferguson now, maybe a quarter mile away, knew he would disappear for a moment, then come through the hills no more than a hundred and fifty yards from the muzzle of the Winchester. This was one of his

simplest ambushes. He could kill with ease at a far greater range than this.

            Ferguson, astride a big buckskin, disappeared behind a cluster of rocks for a moment, then came around a boulder into the open as Nielson had know he must. The Winchester’s sights swung smoothly to the breastpocket of the man’s vest.

            Whit held the rifle on target as the rider jogged along, letting him live a few seconds more, then abruptly, the buckskin was pulled up short and the horseman glanced quickly upward, toward the trees when the killer lay concealed.

            In that instant, Whit’s brain made its decision, his finger tightened on the trigger and the Winchester’s boom reverberated through the hills as the human target tumbled from its saddle.

            There was silence again as neither Whit nor his victim moved, the killer because of his long-bred caution, and the rider because he would never stir again under his own power.

            Nielsen remained where he was for more than half an hour. Nothing moved and there was no unusual sound. He came slowly out of concealment and started down the slope toward the body. This was the part he didn’t like, he would much rather have melted back into the trees,

retrieved his horse and gotten on his way out of the country. He had half of the money and the rest was to be sent to a hotel in Kansas City.

            Whit had never before gone near one of his killings, but the job called for getting those letters and seeing that they eventually got back to Callahan. He planned to get a big envelope in Denver and mail them to the rancher from there.

            He had a moment of fear as he broke his own well-established pattern, then brushed the thought aside as foolishness. “Hell, I’ve checked everything. There’s been nobody around here before and there’s nobody around here now. That shot woulda brought ‘em long afore now if they was a’coming.”

            The body was sprawled awkwardly on its back, and it made it easy for Whit to make his search. The letters, three of them, were in the left breastpocket of the vest and Whit’s bullet had clipped the lower, inside corner of each in its passing. Death had come so quickly that there was almost no blood around the wound and the letters were left unblemished.

            Nielsen wasn’t even interested in the addresses. He had the letters in his right hand, still crouched over the body, and was about to put them in his own vest pocket when he sensed rather than heard, the movement behind him.

            There was no hesitation. The letters went flying, he made a twisting lunge to his left, snatched the Colt .44

from his gunbelt and fired from beneath his body despite the panic that was welling up into his throat.

            His flashing move gave him a glimpse of the form behind him and he knew that he had missed. Then in the same instant, the Colt’s bark was drowned by the familiar boom of a Winchester and Nielsen was slammed back onto the ground, his chest smashed by a crushing blow.

            He tried to aim the Colt for another shot, but his arm wouldn’t come up and the pistol seemed to be slipping from his fingers. The realization was suddenly there that he had been hit flush with the blast of a Winchester, that his strength was ebbing as he had seen it ebb in others, that he might be dying, that he was dying!

            A kaleidoscope of memories rushed through his mind. He had never known his parents… only a meager orphaned existence as a boy along the Mississippi river… rough and brutal treatment in his early years… the fights… the beatings… the always being hungry until he was big enough to do the beating and take for himself what he needed. A trace of a smile came to his lips. Things had been different lately. The women. He’d lived well as a professional killer.

            Whitney Nielsen died within thirty seconds of firing his last shot, his lifeblood draining out of the gaping wound in his chest. His life had been nothing, his sense of values having been muted almost since birth, and he was still four months shy of his 21st birthday.

            The morning air in Wyoming was cool and crisp, and the date was Nov. 3, 1886.

Curtis Wells by Bud Maloney: Prologue

My dad was a journalist. Actually no, he wasn’t. My dad was a newspaper man.

What's the difference? If I have to explain it to you it will only give me a headache. So if you don't know the difference please trust me. There's a big difference.

As a sports writer he watched thousands of games and conducted hundreds of interviews with athletes and coaches from the preps to the pros. Rarely did he need a notepad. He always remembered what happened, what questions he wanted to ask and what the answers were. If there were unusual spellings he'd verify. But for he most part he just watched, talked, and wrote.

Dad loved a good game, well matched and well played, and was okay with a loss if the other team played better that night. He also didn't believe in crushing an opponent.

There was a horribly mismatched baseball game he covered. He recounted to me a final score of something like 21-0, this with all the bench warmers playing for the winning team. I don't remember what level these teams were playing at or where. Dad was assigned to report on this game and so that what he did. Only thing is he changed the final score. With permission from both coaches he lowered the spread from 21-0 to something more dignified like 9-0. Now I'm making these numbers up, but not the story. No one involved saw the point in demoralizing the losing team.

There were other things Dad loved besides sports. He felt fortunate to make his living being paid to watch sporting events but one of his other passions was the Western. John Wayne movies? Check. Louis L'Amore novels? Check. Clint Eastwood. Cattle drives. Rifles. Cowboys. Indians. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. For a man who would not go camping to save his life he loved a tale of the old west, unfurling a bedroll, sleeping under the stars.

So what's a writer to do when he loves something he can't have and, in reality, probably doesn't even want? That's right. You live it on the page.

As far as I know Curtis Wells is Dad's first attempt at fiction. It's certainly the earliest surviving work. While his reporting voice was informed by Grantland Rice, the guy who gave Dad's beloved Notre Dame quartet from the 1920's the moniker, The Four Horsemen, this didn't seep properly into his fiction. He romanticized the gridiron and the court and the diamond but he didn't quite know how to capture a world he'd never seen or experienced. I find this so interesting because I'm sort of the opposite. Give me a seed of truth and I'll run the story wild in my mind. A reporter I am not.

At least as far as I've read, Dad wasn't going to write the next great American novel. He didn't have those skills and techniques. It wasn't his strength. Other projects, brilliant. Not these Westerns. There are two of them.

The first, the one I'm going to start publishing here, is called Curtis Wells. It was hammered out on his faithful Smith Corona in the basement at 1553 S Locust Street in Denver where we lived in the 1970's. I've scanned his typed and hand edited pages for all to see. I find the process as interesting as the story. I've retyped his edits to make it easier to read, should you be so inclined. I've not changed any of his words or altered his style. This is all dear old Dad.

The second he never finished. It was written throughout the 1990's and 2000's. He'd asked for my help with this story, finishing this work. It's fascinating. The idea of it is wonderful following generations from the old west into the 20th century. This will come later. It is, as yet, untitled.

Just for giggles, here is Grantland Rice's most famous lead, published in the New York Herald Tribune on October 18, 1925, reporting on Notre Dame's upset of Army at the Polo Grounds:

Outlined against a blue-gray October sky the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as famine, pestilence, destruction and death. These are only aliases. Their real names are: Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army team was swept over the precipice at the Polo Grounds this afternoon as 55,000 spectators peered down upon the bewildering panorama spread out upon the green plain below.

Love you, Daddio!