“Coffee?” Gibbon offered, gesturing to it.
Frowning, Talbot absently shook his head. Gibbon found a tin cup and emptied its dregs into a wastebasket. He filled the cup three-quarters full of hot coffee and topped it off from a flat bottle he produced from a desk drawer. Indicating the chair before his desk, he said, “Have a seat,” then collapsed with a sigh into his own swivel rocker, which squeaked with his weight.
“Come on, Sheriff, spit it out,” Talbot said impatiently.
Gibbon took a deep breath, sat grimly back in the chair, and stared at his coffee. His face was pale. “Your brother’s dead.”
Talbot gazed into the sheriff’s eyes, absorbing the information, feeling his stomach flip-flop and his heart wrench. After several seconds he squeezed his eyes closed and leaned forward in his chair. Slowly he rested his elbows on his knees and laced his hands together.
“How?” he asked quietly.
“He was shot.”
Talbot lifted his head sharply. He’d expected to hear that Dave had had an accident or fallen ill with such common killers as influenza or pneumonia or smallpox. He’d never expected to hear that his brother, an eminently peaceful man, had been shot.
Not here … not at home!
“Did I hear you right?”
Gibbon had folded his hands over his hard, prominent belly. He was staring at the scarred desktop littered with pencil stubs, scrawled notes, and cigarette makings. He nodded slowly.
“Who?” Talbot asked, feeling anger grow heavy in his loins.
“Don’t know for sure.”
“When?”
“’Bout five years ago.”
Feeling sick, Talbot rested his head in his hands, trying to work his mind around the idea of his brother being dead for five years.
Five years …
Talbot stood and walked to the window, gazed out at the street. Horsemen passed. Lumber drays and buckboards rattled over the icy ruts. There was a sleigh parked before the mercantile; a small dog sat on the seat, gazing at the store for its owner.
“Tell me about it,” Talbot said.
Gibbon sighed again and leaned forward. He rested his elbows on the desk and started building a cigarette.
“We had some trouble here about five years ago,” he began slowly. “Your brother was one of the first ones killed.”
Talbot turned sharply away from the window. Sweat beaded on his forehead. “First ones?”
Gibbon nodded as he shook tobacco from his pouch. “We ended up with about seven dead altogether. It all started when a new outfit moved in. It had more cattle than its government allotments provided grass and water for. Instead of culling its herds, it tried culling the smaller ranchers around it.”
A grim cast to his eyes, Gibbon twisted the ends of his cigarette and scraped a match along a drawer bottom. “Your brother included.”
Talbot gritted his teeth. “Who runs this outfit?”
Gibbon touched the flame to the end of his cigarette. Blowing smoke, he said, “King Magnusson. He’s from Missouri.”
“Magnusson,” Talbot repeated, frowning. “Where have I heard that name?” Then it dawned on him, and he pictured the lovely dark-eyed Suzanne. How could the father of such a delicate, beautiful creature have killed his brother?
He tried working his mind around the question as Gibbon continued his story. “Several of the smaller ranchers got together to stand against this Magnusson,” the sheriff said. “But it’s harder than hell to fight against guerrilla tactics. And that’s what these guys were using. They’d strike at night or first light, kill a man or two, burn a cabin, steal a few cows, and disappear before anyone knew what happened.”
“Figured they could squeeze the others out without actually having to kill everybody, that it?” Talbot said.
“That’s it,” Gibbon said, sitting back in his chair and crossing a leg over a knee. The cigarette smoldered in his right hand.
“I’m assuming you did something to stop it.”
Gibbon flushed and inspected his quirley. “Well,” he said tentatively, “the army had somethin’ to do with that.”
“You called the army in?”
Gibbon nodded. “The smaller ranchers put together a small army of their own, and were about to raid the compound of this outfit.” His tone grew defensive. As he spoke, he stared at the floor.
“They … they wouldn’t listen to me. Not that I had that much to say. I was new then, you understand, and someone had shot my deputy. Blew his head clean off his shoulders.” Gibbon wagged his head and snapped his jaw at the memory. “Christ.” He looked at Talbot as if for understanding.
Talbot frowned. “You arrest anybody?”
Gibbon lowered his gaze once more. “No. The army came in, Magnusson hemmed and hawed and denied everything he’d done, said it was the small outfits stealin’ from him that started the whole mess in the first place. Which it probably was—who knows? It helped, of course, that one of Magnusson’s main investors was in the territorial legislature. He’s governor now.”
“Christ,” Talbot sighed, shaking his head. “So they got off scot-free.”
“What the hell was the army gonna do? They’re soldiers, not judges and juries. Besides, they had the Injuns to worry about. They weren’t about to waste their time out here in the middle of nowhere. When everyone went home and things looked settled, they went back after Sitting Bull.”
“You arrested no one for killing my brother, then,” Talbot said. His tone was accusatory.
Gibbon raised his shoulders and spread his hands defensively. “Who was I going to arrest, for Christ’s sake? Your brother was found out by one of his stock wells with two bullets in the back of his head—at least a week after he’d been killed.”
He looked at Talbot and blinked nervously, licked his lips. He seemed to wait for a reaction. Receiving none, he said, “There’d been a good rain, so by the time I got out there, there were no tracks to speak of. No shell casings. Nothing. Period. I had nothing to go on. And that’s the way it was with all the other killin’s. It was one godawful mess around here!”
“So you called the army and they called it a draw and everyone went home,” Talbot said tightly. “Except my brother and the six other dead.”
Gibbon swallowed. His eyes retreated to his desktop. “That’s right.”
“Then the men who killed my brother are still out there.” Talbot felt as though a saber had laid open his chest, exposing his beating heart.
“I reckon that’s right,” Gibbon allowed, nodding. He took a long drink of his toddy. After several seconds he mustered the courage to raise his gaze to Talbot, whose face was ashen with befuddlement and rage.
“I hope you’re not thinking of getting even with the Double X,” he said, his voice gaining an authoritative tone. “King Magnusson will screw your horns backward and twist your tail but good. Besides, your brother was killed five years ago. It’s been quiet around here now … mostly. I don’t need any trouble.”
Talbot looked at him. “What do you mean, mostly?”
“It’s still the frontier,” Gibbon said defensively. “Things are bound to happen now and then.” He inspected the coal of his cigarette and lifted it to his lips, taking a long, contemplative drag. Around the smoke issuing from his lips, he said directly, “The best thing for you to do is go get yourself a hot bath and hop the next train out of here.”
Talbot walked over to the stove and stared at the glowing iron. His mind was numb, his body sick. A blade-like chill caressed his spine. He crossed his arms against it, vaguely aware of the cold sweat on his forehead and above his lip.
Dave has been dead for five years.
Talbot knew enough about land disputes to know how messy they were. The men who pulled the triggers were often not the only ones responsible for the killings. They were just your average soldiers riding for whoever was paying the wages and giving the orders.
But the man who’d hired Dave’s killer was still around, smug in h
is certainty he’d gotten away with murder. And that man was lovely Suzanne Magnusson’s father.
No matter where you were, it seemed, life was one war after another.
Watching him struggling with the news, Gibbon said, “It’s a terrible tragedy, but your brother’s dead, and nothin’s gonna bring him back. If you try to get even with Magnusson, you’ll not only be instigatin’ another war, but committin’ suicide. You’ll be compoundin’ the tragedy, understand?”
“I understand,” Talbot said absently, knowing the man was right but feeling the urge for vengeance just the same.
“Good,” Gibbon said, brightening. He scrutinized his blotter. “Now there’s another train due in at four-ten tomorrow.”
Talbot opened the door and said, “Maybe I’ll be on it, maybe I won’t.”
He closed the door behind him and squinted against the cold wind, not sure of anything anymore.
CHAPTER 8
HEAD REELING FROM the news of his brother’s death, Mark Talbot walked across the street in a daze. It wasn’t until ten minutes later that he finally stopped walking and realized he’d been drifting aimlessly up one side of the street and down the other. His toes and face were nearly frozen.
Seeing the sign for the Sundowner Saloon, he headed that way.
“Help you, mister?” the barkeep asked. A stout man in a crisp white shirt and armbands was standing behind the bar reading the newspaper spread open upon the polished mahogany.
Talbot walked as far as the roaring cast-iron stove in the middle of the room. “Give me a boilermaker, will ya?” His voice was low and taut, and he did not look at the apron as he spoke. His mind was on his brother and on the man or men who had killed him.
He set his war bag on one chair and himself in another, only a few feet from the stove. He looked briefly around and saw that the two cowboys on the other side of the stove, nursing whiskeys and playing a friendly game of cards, were the only other patrons.
The cowboys’ good-natured banter was an irritating contrast to Talbot’s dark mood. Still, the tavern was as good a place as any to get warm and to digest the news of Dave’s death, to try and get a handle on what he was going to do now.
The barkeep came with the beer and whiskey, and Talbot paid him. Obviously curious about the bearded, shaggy-headed stranger, the man lingered, attempting small talk. Discouraging it, Talbot offered only curt replies to the man’s questions, and soon the apron drifted back behind the bar.
Talbot warmed his cold feet by the stove, nursed his beer, and sipped his whiskey, which soothed his chill body but did nothing to quell the torment of his soul.
Lost in his own brooding, he did not see one of the cowboys stand and walk slowly past him, regarding him warily until he’d made the door and stepped outside. Neither did Talbot notice the other cowboy get up and move to the bar. The man turned to Talbot and tucked his coat behind his gun.
It wasn’t until Talbot had finished his whiskey and turned to the bar to ask for another that he realized the barman had disappeared. Only the cowboy stood there, a lean man with a hawkish face, regarding him darkly. Talbot’s gaze dropped to the man’s gun, prominently displayed.
The front door opened. Boots thundered across the floor, on a wave of chill air. Talbot twisted around to see three red-faced men approach. Their spurs beat a raucous rhythm on the rough pine boards. All wore blanket coats and hats snugged under knit scarves. The tips of their greased holsters showed beneath their coats.
Talbot saw the other man who’d been playing cards earlier. He walked past Talbot to rejoin the cowboy standing with his back to the bar. Both stared at Talbot as though he were something a dog had left on the floor.
One of the other two men stopped directly behind Talbot and about five feet away. His anger growing at the obvious confrontation, Talbot was craning his head to regard the man when the other moved around the table, pulled out a chair, threw his gloves down, and started unbuttoning his coat.
Talbot nearly laughed at the man’s arrogance. “Sit down and make yourself at home.”
As though he hadn’t heard, the man—a slender individual in his fifties, with reddish-brown hair flecked with gray and a close-cropped mustache—regarded the bar. “Bring over a couple of whiskeys, boys.”
“Thanks, but I’ll drink alone,” Talbot said.
Again the man did not respond. He regarded Talbot blankly and sat down, throwing his coat out from his gun. It was an obvious threat. He sat staring at Talbot until the whiskeys came. He threw the drink back and slammed the empty glass on the table.
Talbot felt rage burn up from the base of his spine. His heart beat erratically. A muscle twitched in his cheek. He was in no mood for indulging the insolence of strangers.
The sandy-haired man calmly wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Suddenly his right arm jerked, and he lifted a revolver above the table, aimed at Talbot’s heart. “All right, who are you and who you workin’ for?” he said, red-faced and nearly shouting.
Talbot let two seconds pass. He set both hands on the table’s edge and leaned forward, staring into the stranger’s eyes. He said through gritted teeth, “None of your goddamn business!”
Then, springing to a crouch, he gave the table a violent shove forward, thrusting it into the man’s chest, knocking his pistol up and sending him over backward with a startled yell. The pistol cracked, sending the slug into the rafters.
A half-second later Talbot was on his feet and wheeling toward the man behind him. The man had been pulling his .44, and as Talbot lunged for him, he brought the butt of the gun down hard against Talbot’s head. Talbot dropped to a knee, shaken.
The cowboy stepped forward and was about to bring the gun down on his head again when Talbot heaved himself forward and bulled the man over backward. They both hit the floor. The man punched Talbot in the jaw and rolled aside. When Talbot looked up, all the cowboys stood around him, guns drawn and aimed at his face.
Behind the cowboys, the older man had risen to a knee and was regarding Talbot with wide-eyed anger. He was breathing heavily, and his hair was awry. His crushed Stetson lay several feet away.
“You had enough, Slick, or should I have my boys ventilate you now?”
Talbot breathed heavily. Blood dripped from his swelling lower lip. He felt a goose egg growing on his temple. “This the kind of homecoming you’re offering these days?”
“Homecoming?” the man said with a skeptical grunt.
“That’s right.”
“Who are you?”
“Who’d you think I was?”
The man blinked. “I don’t know, but you got trouble written all over you, and we’ve had our fill of trouble around here.”
“Looks can be deceptive,” Talbot growled.
“When you’re dealin’ with killers, you can’t be too careful.”
“I’m no gunman. If you’d taken the time to look, you’d have seen I’m not even armed.”
The man nodded and shot a sharp look at the man who’d summoned him. “I see that now,” he said to the sheepish-looking cowboy.
The cowboy said, “Y-you said to let ya know if we seen any strangers, boss, and this man here … well, he sure looks like a tough, he acts like a tough, and he sure ain’t from around here.”
“Shut up, Virgil,” the man snapped. To Talbot he said, “The cowboy’s right. A cowboy was murdered by two toughs a few days ago. If you’re not a tough, what are ya, then?”
“I’m Mark Talbot. Owen Talbot’s son.”
The man cocked an eyebrow. “Owen’s boy?”
Talbot nodded. “Been away for a while.” Talbot climbed to his feet and wiped the blood from his lip. “Now I have a question for you. Who poked that burr up your ass?”
One of the cowboys laughed, then covered it with a cough. The older man’s face turned a deeper shade of red. He cowed his men with a look and said gruffly, “All right … holster those irons and get yourselves a drink. We’ll be heading back to the ranch soon.”
<
br /> When the men had returned to the bar, where the bartender furnished drinks, the rancher said to Talbot, “You’d be suspicious, too, if you been through what I been through around here.”
“Are you talking about the same trouble that killed my brother?”
“One and the same.”
“The sheriff told me the army came in and settled that mess five years ago.”
The man nodded, his jaw tightening. “That’s what I thought. But a week ago a man was shotgunned out east of here. Two days ago a Mex gunman shows up, slinks around town, and disappears into the countryside. We thought maybe you were another gunman Magnusson was bringing in.”
“So you think it’s starting all over again,” Talbot said.
“Hell, it never really stopped. There were always killin’s … hangin’s and such. But when Rinski’s hired man was killed by two masked men with shotguns—before a witness!—well, that told me all bets were off. Suzy, bar the door.”
Talbot searched the man’s face gravely. “Who killed my brother?” he said tightly.
Shrugging and shaking his head, the man picked up a chair and sat down on it. “Who knows?”
There was a pause as the man looked around the room, his eyes thoughtful and afraid. Finally his gaze returned to Talbot and his features softened. He said, “I apologize for the trouble. Can I buy you a drink?”
Talbot nodded and sat down across from the man.
“Monty, bring a bottle,” the man called.
“And a beer,” Talbot added.
When the barman had brought the bottle and a beer, and two fresh shotglasses, he filled the glasses, set the bottle on the table, and returned to the bar. At a table on the other side of the room, the other cowboys had started a new game of five-card stud.
The older man shoved his open hand toward Talbot. “Name’s Thornberg,” he said. “Verlyn Thornberg. I ranch south of here, along the Little Missouri.”
Talbot shook the man’s hand. “Mark Talbot.”
Dakota Kill and the Romantics Page 7
