Unbound by Law

by J. R. Roberts

  Scott and Duff eyed each other, then bent down and tucked in the edges of the blanket before lifting the first body and carrying it to the buckboard.

  While the doctor continued to examine the dead man, Clint lifted one of the children’s bodies and carried it to the buckboard.

  They repeated the sequence until all but the two bodies Dr. Evans was examining were left—one man, and the little girl.

  The three men watched as the soctor uncovered the little girl. He examined her closely, shaking his head.

  “What do you see, Doc?” Clint asked.

  “Just what you saw, Mr. Adams,” he replied. “Nothing. No apparent damage.”

  “Then what killed them?” the sheriff asked.

  “Or who?” Duff asked.

  The doctor stood up. “Let’s get these two on the buckboard, and when we get back to town I’ll try to find out.”

  While Clint, the doctor, and E. B. Duff loaded the bodies onto the buckboard, the sheriff went into all three wagons, searching for something that would identify the families.

  What bothered Clint was that the wagon tracks seemed to come from the direction of Hondo, yet the sheriff said the families had never stopped there.

  “Doc?” he said while the sheriff was still inside one wagon.

  “Yes, Mr. Adams?”

  “Did you ever see any of these wagons in Hondo?”

  The doctor frowned, looked around, then looked at Clint.

  “I don’t recall seeing these wagons or these people in town,” he said. “Did you ask the sheriff the same question?”

  “I did.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Same thing you did.”

  “Then perhaps you should also ask Mr. Duff the same question,” Evans said.

  “No,” Clint said, “that’s okay. I guess I can believe the two of you.”

  The sheriff walked toward them carrying a collection of papers he had gathered from all three wagons.

  “What’ve you got?” Duff asked.

  “Letters, other papers,” the sheriff said. “Might give me somebody to notify about these people. Or help me identify them.”

  Duff looked up at the buzzards, which were still circling.

  “We better get these folks back to town,” the undertaker said.

  “Yeah, sure,” the sheriff said.

  He walked to his horse, stuffed the papers into his saddlebags.

  “Got everything?” the doctor called.

  “I think so.” The sheriff mounted up.

  “I don’t think so,” Clint said, but only the doctor heard him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s a question that hasn’t been asked.”

  “And what’s that?”

  Clint waved his arm and asked, “What happened to these people’s horses?”

  FOUR

  When they brought the bodies back to town, people lined up on either side of the street to watch. They rode first to the doctor’s office, where they unloaded two of the bodies, and then to the undertaker’s, where they then unloaded the remaining nine.

  That done, Clint came together with the sheriff out front.

  “What’s next?” he asked.

  “I’ll let the undertaker do his job, the doctor do his. I’ll go to my office, look through these papers and try to do my job.”

  “I’m going to get a hotel room, a bath, and a meal,” Clint said. “You mind if I check in with you to see what you’ve found out?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  “Thanks,” Clint said. “I’d like to find out who these poor people were.”

  “I understand,” Sheriff Scott said. “After all, you’re the one who found them. If I was you, I’d get a room at the Heritage Hotel. Best in town.”

  “Thanks for the advice. I’m taking my horse to the livery. You?”

  “I got someplace else to take him,” Scott said. “See you later.”

  They walked their horses in separate directions.

  Clint got Eclipse taken care of, registered in the Heritage Hotel, then got himself a bath. He was ready for a meal afterward, but first he went over to the doctor’s office.

  “Come on in,” Evans said as Clint stuck his head in the man’s office.

  “The bodies?”

  “In the other room.” The doctor sat down at his desk and turned to rifle through some papers.

  “Did you find out what killed them?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  Evans swiveled his chair around to face Clint.

  “They didn’t have a disease, and they did not die by violence.”

  “What else does that leave?”

  The doctor studied Clint for a moment, then said, “I believe those people were poisoned.”

  FIVE

  “Poisoned?”

  Evans nodded.

  “But . . . how? Why?”

  “I can’t answer those questions,” Doc Evans said. “In fact, I can’t be sure I’m right.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “I’ll have to send some blood samples to the state capital to have them tested,” the doctor said.

  “That’ll take some time.”

  “Indeed, it will.”

  “These people need to be buried.”

  “And they will be,” Evans said. “I’ll take samples from all of them, first. Then I’ll pack them in ice, and ship some of them to the state capital. Once they arrive, my reply can come by telegraph.”

  “Santa Fe’s days away,” Clint said.

  “If I can get the samples on a stage this week, we could have a reply by the end of next week.”

  Clint frowned. Did he want to stay in Hondo that long, waiting to hear how these strangers had died?

  “Well,” Clint said, “let me know what I can do. I’m going to go and get something to eat. Interested?”

  “I think I’d better get to work collecting samples,” Doctor Evans said. “If you go to the café right around the corner, I’ll join you . . . if you’re still there when I finish.”

  “Around the corner,” Clint said. “I’ll try it. Thanks.”

  He left the doctor’s office and walked around the corner to the suggested café. As he entered and breathed in the smells, he knew the man had steered him in the right direction.

  A waiter showed him to a table away from the front windows. He ordered a steak dinner and coffee.

  The sheriff looked up as his office door slammed open and Mayor Tolbert entered.

  Fred Tolbert had been mayor for many years. Once totally absorbed with his civic duty, his resolve had waned over the years; these days, he was mostly concerned with what was right for Mayor Fred Tolbert.

  “What the hell is goin’ on, Sheriff?” he demanded. The words came out encased in a cloud of cigar smoke.

  “Whaddaya mean, Mayor?”

  “I heard you brought in three families who died of some kind of plague. Are you crazy?”

  “I don’t know where you heard that, Mayor, but it’s bad information.”

  “You didn’t bring them in?”

  “We did bring them in, but they didn’t die of any plague.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “The doctor examined the bodies on the spot, said they wasn’t sick.”

  “How can he be sure?”

  “Well, that you’re gonna have to ask him, Mayor,” the lawman said.

  The mayor filled the small office with his bulk. At sixty-five, he was the heaviest he’d ever been, and it seemed he was continuing to expand.

  “I knew we never should’ve let that German bastard set up shop here,” he muttered.

  “Town needed a doctor, Mayor.”

  “Yeah, it did,” the mayor said. “Yeah, okay, I’ll have to go and talk to him.”

  “If I was you, I’d keep that stuff about him bein’ a German bastard to myself,” Scott advised.

  The mayor ignored the comment. “Who fou
nd the bodies?”

  “A fella who just happened to be passin’ by.”

  “So? Who was it?”

  “Clint Adams.”

  “Wha—You mean, the Gunsmith?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What the hell—is he in town now?”

  “He is.”

  “Well, that’s not good,” the mayor said. “We don’t need that kind of trouble.”

  “So far all he’s done is find three families who’d somehow been killed and report it. Then he went back out there to help us bring the bodies in. Can’t say he caused all that much trouble.”

  “Why didn’t he go to Carrizozo and report it?” the mayor demanded.

  “We’re closer.”

  “They’re bigger.”

  “Too late, Mayor,” Scott said. “What’s done is done, you know?”

  “And what’s the doctor doin?”

  “Far as I know, he’s tryin’ to find out what killed them.”

  “They weren’t shot?”

  “They weren’t shot, stabbed, clubbed, or anythin’ else violent.”

  “Sounds like the plague to me.”

  “You start spreadin’ that word around, Mayor, and there will be trouble.”

  “I ain’t gonna spread it around, Carl,” the mayor responded. “Damn it, I ain’t an idiot!”

  Sheriff Scott didn’t comment on that.

  “Where’s Adams now?” Tolbert demanded.

  “Probably in the hotel.”

  “Which one?”

  “The Heritage.”

  The mayor frowned. He owned the Guest House Hotel, the only other hotel in town.

  “Why did he choose that one?”

  Scott shrugged.

  “Well, damn it, I guess I’ll have to talk to the doctor.”

  “I think so,” Scott said.

  The mayor wagged a thick index finger at the lawman. “If this turns out to be some kind of disease—”

  “I know,” the sheriff said, “it’ll mean my badge.”

  The mayor huffed out.

  SIX

  The mayor did not find the doctor in his office. Rather, he found him at the undertaker’s, taking blood samples from the dead bodies.

  “What the hell are you doin’?” he demanded when he found Evans leaning over one of the dead children.

  “I need to take blood samples and send them to Santa Fe,” the doctor said.

  “What the hell for?”

  “To prove my poison theory.”

  “You think these people were poisoned? You sure they didn’t die of some disease?”

  “I do, and no, they did not die of a disease.”

  “By who?”

  Evans straightened and looked at the mayor.

  “I have no way of knowing that, Mayor,” he said. “That will be up to the law to discover.”

  “The law? Not our sheriff. Why should he spend his time on that?”

  “He’s the one who brought them in.”

  “If you’re sending samples to the capital, then ask them to send their own investigators here to find out who poisoned those people.”

  “That’s not my job, Mayor,” Evans said. “It’s yours. Now, if you’ll leave me to it, I’ll finish what is my job.”

  He turned his back on the mayor and went back to his task.

  On his way out, the mayor stopped and wagged his big finger at E. B. Duff.

  “You get these people in the ground as soon as you can, E. B. You understand?”

  “Sure, Mayor,” Duff said. “After all, that’s my job, right?”

  “Just get it done,” Tolbert said. “This ain’t good for this town. You should have checked with me before you went out and picked up those bodies.”

  “Sheriff said I should do it, Mayor,” Duff said with a shrug. “And he’s the sheriff.”

  “Never mind!” the mayor said. “Right now just do what I tell you!”

  Duff had no chance to reply as the mayor went storming out the door.

  Clint enjoyed his steak dinner at the small café, and had a second pot of coffee to wash down a good piece of peach pie.

  He was just finishing up, having given up on the doctor, when the man walked in the door. He quickly spotted Clint and came over.

  “I ate as slow as I could,” Clint said.

  Evans sat across from Clint.

  “Well, it takes time to take blood from eleven bodies, and the mayor slowed me down.”

  “The mayor? What did he have to do with it?”

  The waiter came over and Evans ordered a piece of pie. He poured himself a cup of coffee from Clint’s second pot while he waited.

  “He came in like he usually does, all bluster and demanded to know what I was doing.”

  “He’s not happy we brought those bodies in, huh?”

  “Not at all. I just hope he doesn’t start talking about disease,” the doctor said. “He could start a panic.”

  “Isn’t he responsible enough to know that?”

  “He might have been, once,” Evans said. “I came here a few years ago. I am not impressed with him.”

  “How long has he been mayor?”

  “A long time,” Evans said. “Too long.”

  The waiter came with Evan’s apple pie and set it in front of him.

  “That’s all you’re going to eat?”

  “I’ve got to get those blood samples on ice before the heat gets to them,” he said.

  “Where are you going to get the ice?”

  “The owner of one of the saloons owes me a favor,” he said. “He has an icehouse behind the saloon with kegs of beer in it.”

  “I hope he doesn’t mind putting blood in there with his beer.”

  “I’ll assure him it’s safe.”

  “If the mayor came to see you he must have seen the sheriff already.”

  “I’d assume so.”

  “Which means he knows about me.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “No, but the sheriff would have to,” Clint said.

  “Well, then, you’ll be talking to the mayor as well,” Evans said. “You can form your own opinion.”

  “Guess I better go and talk to the mayor,” Clint said. “Right after I have another cup of coffee.”

  SEVEN

  Clint found the sheriff sitting at his desk.

  “No deputies?” he asked as he entered.

  “Town’s too cheap to pay for ’em,” Scott said. “Have a seat.”

  Clint sat in a wooden chair across from the sheriff.

  “Heard your mayor’s been going around town complaining.”

  “Yeah, I guess he thinks I shoulda just left eleven people lying out there to rot.”

  “What’s your next move?”

  “Somethin’ I shoulda done today,” the lawman said. “In the mornin’, I’m goin’ back out there to see if I can figure out what happened to their horses. And where they came from.”

  “Mind if I tag along?”

  “Don’t mind at all,” the lawman said. “You noticed those wagon tracks looked like they were comin’ from this direction?”

  “I noticed.”

  “They weren’t here, Adams,” he said. “Ask anybody.”

  “I did. I asked the doctor. He backed you.”

  “What’s the doc doin’?”

  “Getting some blood ready to send to Santa Fe to be checked,” Clint said.

  “What for?”

  The doctor had given Clint the okay to talk to the sheriff about poison.

  “He thinks they were poisoned, but he needs somebody to examine the blood to be sure.”

  “Poisoned? Who the hell would poison three families? Including children?”

  “Beats me,” Clint said. “Must have been something personal, though.”

  “Those coyotes did die,” Scott said. “And they must’ve eaten some of the food that was left on the fire.”

  “Once the fire went out.”

  “What’s the do
c doin’ with that coyote you brought in?”

  “You know, I didn’t ask. But I assume the coyote’s blood will also be going to the capital.”

  “The mayor stopped back in here again after he spoke to the doctor and the undertaker.”

  “What did he have to say then?”

  “Doesn’t want me investigatin’,” Scott said. “He says it’s not my job.”

  “Whose job does he think it is?”

  “The state,” Scott said. “He thinks a federal marshal should come in and have a look, and that I should stay out of it.”

  “What do you think about that?” Clint asked.

  “I think I kinda felt the same way he does when you first came to me,” the lawman admitted. “But since I’ve seen the bodies of those kids, I’d like to find out what sonofabitch killed them.”

  “So would I.”

  “Well, we can head out early in the mornin’,” Scott said. “You can meet me out front about eight.”

  Clint stood up. “I’ll be here.”

  “You any good at trackin’?” the lawman asked.

  “Pretty good.”

  “Good,” Scott said, “because I ain’t worth shit when it comes to readin’ signs.”

  EIGHT

  Clint met up with the sheriff in front of his office early the next morning. He’d had a quick breakfast in the Heritage Hotel’s dining room.

  The night before, he’d had a few beers at one of the saloons in town. He wondered at the time if it was the same saloon the doctor had been talking about. Then he decided, since he was drinking beer, not to think about it.

  He went to his room early, tired from the day. After an hour of reading he turned in, and woke when the sun came through his window.

  Now, after saddling Eclipse, he had walked the horse over to the sheriff’s office, where the lawman was waiting by his horse. He held up a burlap sack as Clint got closer.

  “I brought just a few supplies, in case we’re away longer than expected.”

  “Good. Shall we go?”

  They mounted up and rode out to the campsite.

  As they rode along Clint asked, “Did you find out anything from the papers you took from the wagons?”

  “Some names,” Scott said. “I came up with one last name—Anderson. I don’t know if all three families had that same name.”