“Uh . . .”
“Go on,” Ludlow insisted. “Is what true and who’s sayin’ it?”
“I just meant—”
“Is what true and who’s saying it?”
“Never mind, Mr. Ludlow—I spoke outta turn!”
“Yes, you did, and make sure you don’t do it again, George. Here or in town. Understand? If I get word you’re spreading nasty rumors about me and my children, I will send a man to town to cut your ears off. Do I make myself clear?”
“More than clear, sir!” Andrews backed the frightened mare away from the hitchrack.
“Hold on, George.”
Reluctantly, Andrews stopped and turned back to the rancher. “Yes, s-sir?”
Ludlow glared up at him with seething menace, his cigar smoldering in the right hand he held down low by his side. Andrews stared down at him, mouth open, waiting in dread. Slowly, Ludlow shifted his cigar to his left hand and dipped his right hand into a shallow vest pocket.
“Oh, please now, Mr. Ludlow—!”
Ludlow pulled a coin from the vest pocket and flipped it into the air. Andrews squealed, recoiling as though from the derringer blast he’d expected, then caught the coin awkwardly against his chest, nearly unseating himself from the mare in the process.
The mare turned a full circle before Andrews got it back under control.
“What’s the matter, George?” Ludlow said through a caustic laugh. “You don’t like my money?”
Andrews stared at the coin in his hand, drew a deep, relieved breath. “Oh, uh . . . thank you, Mr. Ludlow! No, I like it just fine! Well, I’d best get back to town, sir! Good night, sir!”
Andrews turned the rattled mare and booted her back in the direction from which he’d come.
“Don’t forget about our little talk, George!” Ludlow called after him.
“No, sir!” came the shuddering reply just before the mare galloped under the ranch portal and thudded off into the darkness.
Ludlow stood staring off after the man, puffing his stogie. A man cleared his throat behind him. Ludlow gave a start and wheeled to see the doctor, Norton Dahl, standing just up the hill from him, holding his medical kit, the lenses of his glasses glinting in the starlight.
“Jesus, Dahl! What the hell are you doing sneaking up on a man in the dark?”
“I wasn’t sneaking,” the doctor said. “I was taking my leave. You were talking with George.”
Ludlow gave a wry chuff. “You’re lucky I’m not armed. I might have shot you.”
“I don’t doubt it a bit.”
Ignoring the sawbones’ sarcastic tone, Ludlow said, “Well, how is he?”
“How did he sound?”
Ludlow just now realized that Cass’s screams had died. “Christ, what were you doing to him up there?”
“I was changing his bandages, redressing the wound. I’m too busy in town now to ride out here every day, and I have a feeling business is going to do nothing but improve, what with those Chaney brothers leading another gang out just as I was leaving town.”
Dahl’s tone was crisp, not so vaguely accusing. “I left carbolic acid, salve, and a week’s worth of bandages for Chang. He’s going to have to tend your son for the foreseeable future. I’m going to send a man out with more medicine. Something stronger to kill the pain, though I warned Cass it’s highly addictive.”
“What is it?”
“Night oil. Dragon wind. Hair of the spider.” The doctor paused, blinked. “Opium.”
“Christ, he’s in that much pain?”
Dahl brushed past the rancher as he continued toward his horse and buggy. “You heard him.”
Ludlow grabbed Dahl’s arm. “Hold on, Doc!”
When the sawbones had turned back to face him, the rancher said, “How is he? I mean, is he going to . . . is he going to look like that . . . forever?”
“He was badly burned, Mr. Ludlow. She badly burned him, though I hear she was merely defending herself. That said, I’m afraid he’s never going to be much to look at. If he lives through the infection, that is. The burn will heal to an extent, but there will be much scarring. His hair will not grow back, and neither will his ear.”
Dahl started to walk away again but turned back once more when Ludlow said, “So . . . you heard, eh?”
“What’s that?”
“You heard that it was Annabelle.”
Dahl averted his gaze, looking a little incredulous. “Yes. I heard. It’s a small town, Mr. Ludlow. Everyone in town seems to be very interested in you people out here.”
Ludlow drew a deep breath, pensively puffed the stogie. Aware of the doctor’s coldly incriminating gaze on him, the rancher’s thoughts took an even darker turn.
He took another puff from the stogie, and said, “Doc, about what occurred in the Purple Garter . . .”
“What about it?”
“I don’t know what you think you saw, but—”
“What I saw was that I left Chaney alive in that room, and when I returned, he was dead. And you were standing over him. A bottle that had been nearly full only a few minutes before was empty, and Chaney’s lungs were filled with whiskey.”
Ludlow stared at the man, narrowing his eyes as he took another puff of the stogie. “Best keep that under your hat, Doc. No real loss to civilization, do you think?”
“No. Chaney was a bully. He was a bully before you came along and went into business with him, and all the more after you got here and legitimatized him.”
“Well, ain’t I just the devil!”
“And then you killed him. Which is fine. We don’t have a sheriff in this county. We never have and it will likely be a long time before we do. Not a real one, anyway—one that isn’t here merely to watch over your and Chaney’s interests, to keep peace in the town so you can make money here.”
“Like I said,” Ludlow repeated, quieter, “ain’t I the devil?”
“The problem is, Mr. Ludlow, the Chaney brothers think their father died from the wound he suffered at the hands of Hunter Buchanon. That’s why they rode out there—a good twenty or more Southern-hating Yankees. Most are from the mine. Some are relatives of those who were killed earlier at the 4-Box-B. They’re all liquored up, most wanting to get in good with the Chaney boys. And the Chaney boys are riding out there to settle up for what they believe is the killing of their father.”
“They would have ridden out there, anyway. You saw what Buchanon did to Max.”
“I saw what you did to him too.”
“You’d best keep that under your hat, Doc.”
“Or what? You’ll kill me, I suppose. Have one of your men do it. Have Stillwell do it. Shoot me in the back.”
“However it gets done, it will get done. You best be mighty good at keeping secrets.”
Dahl glared up at the taller, broader man, his spectacles glinting now as though from a fire burning in his eyes. “How long is this going to continue, Ludlow? All this killing?”
“’Til justice is served.”
“Justice, my kidney plaster! Justice for whom? Luke Chaney? Max Chaney? Stillwell’s men? You, maybe, because your daughter happened to fall in love with the wrong man, and you feel betrayed?”
Dahl shook his head, gritting his teeth. “This is all nonsense, Ludlow. This is all about revenge. Nothing more, nothing less. Revenge for you, revenge for the Chaneys, revenge for the men killed out there for very justifiable reasons on Buchanon’s part, I might add.”
“Revenge is a valid reason, Dr. Dahl. Get down off your high horse. This isn’t Philadelphia or Boston or New York, or wherever in hell you come from.”
The doctor chuckled. “Boston, my ass. I was born and raised on a little farm in Iowa. Went to medical school in St. Paul, Minnesota. I’m from here. You’re not. This is just your playground where, because you have money, you get to make the rules. And when those rules get broken, you exact revenge because revenge is all part of the game. Just don’t ever call it justice, Ludlow.”
�
�That’s fine, Doctor. Revenge then. I’m fine with the term.”
“Yeah, well, you know what they say about revenge, Mr. Ludlow.”
“What’s that?”
“When a man sets out for revenge, he’d best dig two graves.”
Ludlow scowled at the insolent sawbones. “You’ve worn out your welcome here, Doctor.”
“I was just going.”
Dahl swung around, removed his horse’s hitching strap from the hitchrack, then climbed into the buggy. As he released the brake, Ludlow said in a threatening tone, “You just remember to keep our secret, Dahl. Don’t make me lose any more patience with you than I already have.”
Dahl glared at him, then swung the dun around, shook his reins over the horse’s back, and spun out of the yard, the wheels clattering softly along with the clomping of the horse’s hooves.
Ludlow took another pensive puff from his stogie, following the doctor’s retreat with his gaze. “Dig two graves, my ass.”
CHAPTER 27
Hunter’s heart was on fire.
It burned as hotly in his chest as did the blaze causing the red glow in the sky to his left as he rode cross-country in the direction of the main trail to Tigerville.
He’d tried to prepare himself for the burning of the 4-Box-B headquarters. He’d known there was nothing he could do to stop the Tigerville men from burning it. There’d be too many of them and they would have come expecting a fight. As much as he’d wanted to try to hold them off, he’d forced himself to face facts.
He was only one man, after all. He couldn’t do Angus or Annabelle any good dead. He couldn’t exact revenge for his dead brothers and wounded father if he was dead.
Still, seeing that pulsating glow in the sky off his left shoulder now, roughly a mile and a half away, his heart burned and his blood boiled in his veins. Hatred and rage seethed inside him more strongly and more poisonous than it ever had during the war. Somehow, the war hadn’t felt personal. This, however, was personal. Very personal, indeed.
He sucked back his rage, his fury, knowing he had to keep it down where he could control it so he could think clearly and use it to his best advantage. He ducked under an aspen branch hanging low over the slender, pale ribbon of trail he was following.
He intended to cut the marauders off on their way back to Tigerville, when their defenses would be down. He knew a shortcut that meandered around through the bluffs east of the headquarters and then followed a dry wash north, toward a spot where the main trail on which the Tigerville men were riding cut sharply south—toward him.
It should bring them nearly right up to him.
It was a mild night without a breath of breeze. Hardly any night birds murmured in the pine-clad bluffs around him. The moon, a slender sickle dipped in lemon yellow paint, peeked through a thin cloud above a stony ridge to the southeast, ahead of him now and to his right.
Nasty Pete’s hooves clomped softly on the slender trail, and the bridle chain jangled. He was making too much noise. During the war, he often ran barefoot behind enemy lines, with only a knife and a rifle, drinking water where he found it. If he rode, he straddled a horse wearing only a rope halter, its unshod hooves padded with burlap.
Those precautions would be lost on the buffoons who’d burned the ranch. They’d likely left town drunk, galloping hard. Their horses would be tired by now, and they’d likely be riding slowly, talking loudly, maybe bragging about their handiwork, and passing bottles. A raw recruit could ride up on that bunch unawares.
Or so Hunter confidently opined.
He learned only a few minutes later that he’d been right. Lying belly-down atop a low butte beside the trail, he heard them coming. First he heard the slurred voices of several drunken men. Then he heard the thuds of slow-moving horses, the squawk of saddle leather, and the jangle of bit chains.
One man laughed, mockingly. Then another.
A horse whinnied.
Presently, Hunter saw the shifting, bobbing, man-shaped shadows coming along the broad trail through the buttes on his left. Slowly, they passed before and below him. He could hear their voices, smell their unwashed, sweaty bodies, and the whiskey on their breath and oozing out of their pores. By the time the last man had passed, moving from his left to his right along the trail before him, he’d counted twenty-two.
As a large mass of riders often did, they were riding in separate groups of various sizes, separated by at least twenty yards. The last group that had passed was a pack of six led by, Hunter thought, none other than Pee-Wee Chaney. He thought he’d recognized Pee-Wee’s drunken voice.
Now he turned his head to the right and watched Chaney and the five other men at the end of the pack disappear around a bend in the trail.
Hunter’s heart was racing.
His surging blood sang in his ears.
Quickly, he scampered down the butte and ran over to where he’d left Nasty Pete silently grazing in the shallow wash. He removed his boots and socks, grabbed the Henry repeater, and dashed off afoot, following a course parallel with the trail.
* * *
“Hey, Pee-Wee,” one of the pack members called. “When we gonna go back and look for that Buchanon? He killed my cousin, Earl, an’ that means he bought and paid for a bullet from me.”
Pee-Wee heard the slosh of beer as Leo Turner, riding abreast with two other men behind him, hoisted one of the crocks they’d found in the Buchanon house before they’d burned it.
Pee-Wee said, “We’re gonna sober up in town tonight and then we’re gonna ride out on fresh horses tomorrow and track him from the ranch. Him, that old Rebel devil of a father, and that Ludlow girl who thought she was too good for my poor dead brother, Luke—dead on account of her!”
Pee-Wee sobbed. It was like an injured coyote’s gurgling cry. He lifted the bottle he was carrying in his left hand, tipped it back. Only a single drop dribbled onto his tongue. He cursed and threw the bottle down hard, shattering it on a rock beside the trail.
“Leo, get up here with that jug—I’m outta whiskey!”
Leo chuckled, then booted his horse up close beside Pee-Wee’s mount, on Pee-Wee’s left side. “That old mutt might be useless in most ways, but he does make good ale. I’m gonna miss his ale . . . when I’m through killin’ both him an’ his boy real slow. Once that’s done, I’m gonna drag Ludlow’s ripe an’ sassy daughter into the brush. I’m gonna make her moan like a ten-cent whore!”
Pee-Wee hoisted the jug high and threw back a big drink of the dark, malty Scottish ale. Lowering the jug, he laughed and said, “When I’m done givin’ it to her, she’s prob’ly gonna wanna marry up with this Chaney anyway! Maybe her an’ me—Ludlow’s high-and-mighty woman—will marry up an’ move to San Francisco or some such.”
He laughed again and turned to glance at the men riding behind him. “What do you think o’ that, boys?”
They all laughed and said they wanted a turn with her too.
Laughing, Pee-Wee turned his head back forward and raised the jug again. He frowned as the thick, tepid brew washed over his tongue. He’d spied movement out the corner of his right eye.
It was a pale, ghost-like figure moving fast, dropping down from a high point above him and onto the trail before him.
His heart quickened. He’d just started to lower the crock before his horse jerked with a start, and then something unforgivingly hard and fast-moving slammed into the crock. The big jug was smashed savagely against Pee-Wee’s face, his mouth taking the brunt of the blow, pulverizing every tooth in the front of his jaws and hurling him backward off his horse in a rain of beer and flying stone shards from the crock.
He hit the trail hard on his belly, spitting teeth and crock shards from between his bloody lips, hearing himself moan . . . though he was so stunned that the moans might have been coming from some wounded animal beside the trail.
Lifting his head from the blood-muddy dirt, he saw who he thought was Leo writhing on the trail to his left just as Leo’s horse—a large dark bulk
in the darkness—ran buck-kicking forward, screaming shrilly.
The ghostly pale figure was hunkered low in the middle of the trail, about ten yards ahead of Pee-Wee and Leo. Just as the men behind Pee-Wee began shouting, one man yelling, “What in the hell was that?” a bright orange flash of flames lanced over Pee-Wee’s head.
It was followed by the explosive report of a rifle and the instant fetor of rotten eggs. The rifle roared again, again, and again, setting up a loud ringing in Pee-Wee’s ears. The bright flashes were blinding.
The men behind Pee-Wee screamed, their horses whinnying shrilly. There were several hard thuds of bodies smacking the trail. The men ahead were shouting now, as well, as the rifle continued its everlasting thunder over Pee-Wee.
When it stopped, and there was only the din of screaming men and horses, Pee-Wee found himself lying belly-down on the trail, his face in the dirt, arms drawn up over his head. His bloody mouth was on fire. He wasn’t sure if he’d taken a bullet from the attacker’s rifle. If he hadn’t been hit, he was sure the situation would change in a second . . .
He lay there, moaning, feeling more bits of tooth and crock jug slither out of his mouth on a continuous stream of blood.
Suddenly, a foot was thrust against his left side. A bare foot? He grunted sharply as he was kicked onto his back. He howled and lay staring up at a pale face hovering over him. He held his crossed arms in front of his face, as though they could shield him from a bullet.
Moon- and starlight glinted off the barrel of a rifle. The end of the barrel was shoved into Pee-Wee’s mouth, between his raw, bloody lips.
Pee-Wee gurgled against the metallic taste of the hot iron in his mouth. He stared up in horror at a shadowy, gray-hatted head and two eyes blazing down at him from the side of the rifle. White teeth shone as the shooter stretched his lips back from his teeth.
“I ain’t gonna kill you, Pee-Wee. Not yet. It’s too damn easy. But soon, Pee-Wee. Soon.”
The rifle barrel was thrust back out of Pee-Wee’s mouth, and then, just like that, the shooter was gone.
The men who’d been riding ahead of Pee-Wee’s group were galloping back toward him now, several shouting at once, one man sawing back on his horse’s reins and yelling, “Pee-Wee—where is he? Where the hell is he?”
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