Free Turnback Creek (Widowmaker) by Robert J. Randisi

“Tombstone and Ellsworth are in our past. We should just keep moving forward.”
    “I don’t know that I have much of a future left to me, John,” Cooper said. “The West I knew is all but gone. Progress is not something I’m real comfortable with.”
    “Can’t say I’m crazy about it, either,” Locke said, “but what other choices do we have?”
    Cooper hesitated, then said, “Maybe we can talk about that up on the mountain, too.”

TWENTY-ONE
     
    L ocke and Cooper decided to put off eating. Cooper wanted to go back to his room for a while, and Locke had a sneaking suspicion the man wanted to see his landlady. Remembering that he still had to check out of the hotel and move his things to Mrs. Helms’s rooming house, Locke told Cooper he’d be right along.
    When Locke reached the rooming house and Mrs. Helms let him in, she said, “The marshal is having a nap.”
    “I’ll be very quiet,” he told her.
    He took his things and put them in the room next to Cooper’s, then found her waiting for him when he came back down.
    “How did you do it?” she asked him.
    “Do what?”
    “How did you get him to stop drinking?” she asked. “I haven’t known him very long, but I was so afraid that he was going to end up drinking himself to death.”
    “He simply told me he doesn’t drink when he’s working, ma’am,” Locke said. “And now he’s working.”
    “Taking that woman’s payroll to her mine?”
    “That’s right.” Locke wondered about the tone Ingrid Helms used when she said “that woman.” “That’s the job.”
    “And you’re helping him?”
    “Yes.”
    “Why?”
    “Because he’s my friend.”
    “If he’s your friend, you should take him away from here.”
    “Why?”
    “It doesn’t matter how much that woman pays you,” Ingrid said. “You’re not doing the right thing.”
    “It’s just a job, Mrs. Helms.”
    “For money?”
    “Yes,” he said. “But for Coop it’s more. It’s for self-respect.”
    “Foolish male pride,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ve seen it so many times.”
    She turned and walked away from Locke without further word. Locke wondered what else she might have told him if he’d pushed her a bit further.
    He turned and went out the front door. It was time for that one beer of the day.

    Locke nursed his beer for a long time. He thought about Cooper and the change that had seemed to come over him in one day. He thought about Ingrid Helms and what she might have been wanting to tell him. And he thought about Molly Shillstone.
    By far, the thing that occupied his mind the most was his friend, Dale Cooper. As dissatisfied as the old lawman had been with his own performance that day, Locke was amazed by it. How could there have been such a change in just one day?
    He looked down at the remnants of his drink. He knew how long it had taken him to recover from his own drinking binges. Never had he undergone such a change in just one day.
    Maybe up on the mountain, Cooper would tell him how he did it.

TWENTY-TWO
     
    I n the morning, Locke and Cooper found Molly Shill-stone waiting for them in the café.
    “Good morning,” she said. “I ordered steak and eggs for all of us. I hope that’s all right.”
    “It’s fine,” Cooper said. “I’m starving.”
    If Cooper had looked better after one day, he looked ten times better after two.
    Locke maneuvered himself around the table so he could sit facing the front door. “How did you know when we’d be here?” he asked. “Breakfast might have gotten cold.”
    “You said you’d be up at first light,” she said. “I simply took you at your word.”
    The waiter came out, balancing three plates on his arm. He set them on the table, paused to fill three cups with coffee, and then withdrew.
    “Are you gentlemen all ready?” Molly asked.
    “We have to pick up some things at the general store,” Cooper said, concentrating heavily on getting eggs and steak on his fork at the same time, “but