by Jory Sherman
“What?”
“There’s more that happened after they killed our pa,” Earl said.
Then he bent over in a desolate crumple and began to sob. Tears streamed from his eyes and drenched his cheeks.
Cord gripped him hard and felt the pang of Earl’s grief in his innards. It was as if he had been punched in the gut.
“Maybe you better get it all out, Earl,” Cord said. “What else is there to tell me?”
Earl straightened up and wiped his cheeks with the back of his hand. He still sobbed, but the tears had lessened.
“While I was gettin’ down my rifle to chase after Abner and the others, Ma was draggin’ Pa into the house and screamin’ at the top of her lungs. ‘You go after those murderers, Earl,’ she yelled. ‘You kill ever’ damned one of ’em.’ I told her I was goin’ after them. She kept screamin’ and yellin’ and I run out and got to my horse.”
“Was Pa dead when Ma dragged him into the house?”
“Yeah. He wasn’t breathin’ and his face was all mashed up by rocks and such. His clothes were shredded and bloody. He was plumb dead, all right.”
“So, then what?” Cord asked.
“I was gettin’ on my horse when I heard Ma scream again. Real loud this time. I looked back at the house and I seen smoke pourin’ out of the front door.”
“What?” Cord exclaimed.
“I seen Ma a-huggin’ Pa on the floor and the front room was blazin’ with fire. I jumped off my horse and ran up to the house. I figgered to go in and drag Ma and Pa out of that room. But I saw Ma catch fire and then she sort of crumpled up and stopped screamin’. The flames by then was roarin’ through the front door, the roof was smokin’, and I couldn’t do nothin’. I stood there, helpless as a drawnded cat, and watched the whole house burn clear to the ground.”
Cord choked on something in his throat. His eyes widened in disbelief as he tried to picture the gruesome scene in his mind. It was hard to imagine his mother’s last moments, consumed by fire as she embraced their dead father’s body.
Yet such a scene became vivid in his mind. He knew how much their mother loved their father. She was completely devoted to him, as he was to her. She never complained, never tried to boss her husband around. She was no church mouse; she was a strong woman with strong feelings and was not afraid to speak her mind. But the love she had for their father was deep and everlasting.
Overcome by grief, she had not wanted to live without Lucas and had set the room on fire so that she could join her husband in death.
So much for his mother’s strength. She obviously had not wanted to face life without Lucas and had taken her own life.
“I—I’m so sorry, Cord. It was horrible and I just couldn’t tell you what happened right off. It don’t seem real, even now. But it happened.”
“I know, I know,” Cord said. He put his arms around Earl and hugged him tight.
“I just couldn’t save Ma,” Earl said, snuffling the dregs of his tears through his nose.
“No. It all happened so fast, there was no chance to save her. And she did it to herself.”
“Why? Why?” Earl asked.
Cord shook his head.
“Who can explain such things? Who can say how each one of us deals with such grief? Ma didn’t want to live without our pa. That’s all there is to it.”
“But there’s nothing left. Ma and Pa are just ashes, and our house, our home, is gone.”
“There’s always the land, Earl. You can rebuild.”
“I never want to go back there, Cord. Not with the awful memories I have of that day.”
Cord stepped back and patted Earl on the shoulder.
“No, I don’t imagine you would want to go back there, brother. You can just bunk with me until you finish growin’ up and go out on your own.”
“I need to go with you to hunt down that Weatherall bunch,” Earl said. “You got to take me with you.”
Cord thought about it.
His look at his brother was long and searching. He saw a very young man, still in his teens, who was broken inside, but made of sterner stuff than Cord would have imagined.
He knew that Earl came from good pioneer stock. He had all the makings of a soon-to-be man. He had already shown that he had grit and determination, that he wasn’t afraid to chase after a bad man, a killer.
Maybe, Cord thought, now was the time for Earl to take the first steps into manhood. Lord knows, Cord had started his jump at about the same age, trading horses and chasing after horse thieves when he wasn’t much older.
“Can you follow orders?” Cord asked.
Earl nodded. His eyes lit up with an eagerness that came from deep inside his being.
“Do whatever I say, whenever I say it?”
“Oh, yes, yes, Cord. I’ll be like a slave to whatever you tell me to do.”
“We’ll pack you some grub and such. I got a black slicker just like mine that you can wear when it rains. Saddle your horse.”
“Oh boy,” Earl exclaimed. “Thank you, thank you, Cord.”
“You won’t thank me when you have to lie stock-still for hours under the beating sun and have to sleep on a cold bed of rocks for a night.”
“Like hell I won’t,” Earl said with a wide grin exposing all his front teeth.
“Get to it, then, while I go in the cabin and rustle up some more supplies. Take along plenty of ammunition for your pistol and rifle. You might have to do a passel of shooting.”
Earl dashed toward his horse while Cord went back inside the cabin to gather the necessary supplies to sustain his brother on what might prove to be a long trail.
Cord hoped he was making the right decision. Earl would be exposed to much danger and might have to face more experienced men, killers who were also keen marksmen.
But if there was ever a time for Earl to grow up, now seemed that time.
Cord just hoped they would both survive, though they were outnumbered and outgunned by men just as desperate as they were.
THIRTEEN
While Cord and Earl partook of troubled sleep at Cord’s cabin, Rowan and Corwin rode through the driving rain, the wind at their backs, toward the JB Ranch.
They carried freshly fashioned lariats and a solid plan to capture Barnes’s best horses and lead him on a path to his death.
Horace watched the two men disappear into the veils of cascading rain and smiled with satisfaction, his face contorting through the window that coursed with streams of rainwater. A glowing oil lamp exaggerated his demonic features had anyone looked at him during those moments.
He saw his ranch expanding and the pastures filled with horses that he had not paid for. That was a satisfying thought and gave him a sense of immense power. He saw himself as some kind of monarch of the plains, commanding large numbers of men who did his bidding and eliminated all competitors.
This was a dream he had held ever since leaving Missouri and coming to the Great Plains. And now his brother, Abner, was driving more horses to his ranch, which would add to his wealth at no cost to him.
By morning, he hoped, Barnes would be dead and he would leave behind a daughter and a widow. Horace could easily drive the widow away and take over the JB Ranch.
He pulled a cigar from his vest pocket, bit off the end, and lit it. He blew smoke against the windowpane and turned away, the sound of the rain on the roof both soothing and full of promise, as if the gods were on his side and giving him the advantage he needed to move up in the world.
Rowan and Corwin rode slowly through the rain. There was no need to hurry. They would stake out the horses they would steal and wait for the rain to stop. That was their plan. If they moved fast, all of Barnes’s hands would be inside, out of the rain, and they would encounter no resistance.
As it turned out, their assumptions were correct.
When the two thieves reached the JB Ranch, the rain was already beginning to lessen in intensity. They rode around checking the various corrals. They spotted three horses in a pen, mares, and knew why they were there. In another pen, some distance from that one, there was a lone horse—a stud.
“Them mares are in heat,” Rowan whispered to Corwin. “Look at that there stud. He’s pawin’ the ground to dig a hole to get at them. Those mares are mighty valuable to Barnes.”
“You bet.”
“Then them’s the ones we’ll take. That stud horse will screech and holler, but that will bring Barnes out and he’ll find the mares gone.”
“Damned good idea, Jimmy,” Corwin said in a soft undertone.
When the rain became a drizzle, the two men went about their task.
They rode up to the breeding pen and Will swung open the gate just wide enough to let Jimmy ride in and rope one of the mares. Then Will entered right behind and roped another one. The third mare danced away from them and they let her go out of the gate.
That way, they had to lead only two mares, but all three would be missing.
They moved fast and silently as they led the two mares away from the breeding pen and out into open pasture. They tromped through wet mud and knew the wind would blow off the water and leave deep impressions around the corrals and the breeding pen.
The stud whinnied loud and long as the mares disappeared.
Lamps came on inside the house and bunkhouse. Doors swung open. Men in slickers emerged into the darkness and ran toward the sound of the agitated stallion. Voices rose up as men made startling discoveries.
There was confusion and bewilderment among the hands on the JB.
It took more than an hour for Jesse Barnes to fully assess what had happened.
Three of his mares were missing. With a torch, he saw that they had not just escaped when the gate came open by accident.
The horses had been stolen.
And he knew in his heart who had stolen them.
Anger boiled up in him as he held the torch over the muddy tracks as his men strode back and forth between corrals and the barn. He heard their voices as each called out the status of other horses and searched for any more missing livestock.
Finally, as he turned to go back to the house where his daughter and wife were anxiously awaiting news of what had happened, he saw two men with a horse between them.
“We found one of the mares,” one of the men shouted. Jesse recognized the voice of Ned Parsons.
“We got Bessie May,” the other man said. “She was behind the barn.”
The two men came close with the mare, and Jesse saw that the other hand was Ernesto Rojas, a Mexican wrangler who had been with him since he’d started building his ranch.
Jesse patted Bessie May’s withers. “Good job,” he said. “They didn’t get all three of those mares in heat.”
“Looks like they just let Bessie May run free,” Ned said. “Should we put her back in her pen so Big Karl can mount her today?”
“Yeah, put her back,” Jesse said. “And I’m going to need two men to help me track those other two mares. Any suggestions?”
Ernesto stepped away from the mare.
“I’ll go with you. And Danny is the best tracker on the ranch. A good shot, too.”
“Good suggestion,” Jesse said. “We’ll start out at daybreak. Ernesto, go find Danny and tell him to saddle up and bring his rifle. Far as I know, only two men stole those horses and they should be easy to track on this wet ground.”
“Sure thing, Jess,” Ernesto said as Ned Parsons led Bessie May back into the breeding pen. She pranced and flicked her tail as she romped back into the pen. The stud snorted and whinnied in approval, his muscles flashing velvet in the firelight from Jesse’s torch.
Rowan and Corwin did not linger.
They headed straight for the gully with the two stolen mares, still dripping from the rain, which had now stopped. It was still dark as pitch, but they knew the way to their destination.
They did not look back as the voices from the ranch died away in the distance.
“Old Jesse Barnes won’t try and foller us until it gets light,” Will Corwin said. “Right, Jimmy?”
“Nope, I reckon not. By the time the sun comes up, we’ll have these mares in that gully.”
“Barnes don’t stand a chance,” Corwin said.
“Not with men up on that long mesa,” Rowan said. “I can’t wait to see old Barnes dance under a hail of rifle bullets.”
“It’ll be a sight for sure,” Corwin said.
They rode on, with the horses sloshing through small pools of rainwater, leaving tracks on the flat ground.
The wind was up on the tail of the storm and blew ripples in the standing water. The two men spoke no more as they ate up ground, moving ever farther from the JB Ranch and onto Weatherall’s spread.
The wind turned chill, and the two men felt the brunt of it from the north. Fingers of wind reached into their slickers and they shivered some until they squeezed the sides of their raincoats with arms and elbows.
Black clouds blew over them and wafted away to reveal shining stars and a bulbous moon shrouded by thin scarves of dark clouds that lingered high above the earth.
There was no sign of the men up on the tabletop as the sun arose in the east and brightened the landscape with its brilliant rays. It rose beneath the black clouds and turned the lowest ones into smoky streamers that soon dissipated. The prairie seemed to glow golden in the piercing sunlight, and the gully emerged with its tangle of vegetation while the oblong mesa stood like a minor fortress above the rolling terrain.
“There she is,” Will said. “Just like always.”
“What in hell did you expect? That it would have washed away in last night’s rain?”
“Just glad to see it is all. No need to get yourself in a hissy over it.”
“I ain’t in no hissy,” Rowan said. “Wimmen get in hissies, not men.”
Will chuckled as they led the two mares into the gully and slipped the lariats off their necks. They chased them deep into the shallow ravine and turned their horses back when the mares had disappeared.
“That ought to hold ’em,” Rowan said.
“Now what? Do we ride back to the ranch or go up on the mesa?”
“We get the hell away from here, that’s what we do. Horace will see to the rest of it.”
“I’d still like to see old Barnes shot clean out of his saddle.”
“The others can tell you about it, Will. Just tend to your own damned business.”
“No need to get in a huff about it, Jimmy.”
The two rode off toward the Weatherall ranch. Above them, on the mesa, men lay flat in wait, rifles at their sides, their slickers shining as they gave off steam from the rain. They were invisible from down below, shielded by rocks and brush that stippled the flat ground.
Soon, Jesse Barnes and two men appeared as tiny dots on the horizon.
Jimmy could see them coming without rising from the ground. Just on the edge of his peripheral vision. His heart quickened and he said in a loud whisper: “Here they come, boys.”
“Shut up,” one of the men said, and Jimmy clamped his mouth shut.
“It’s like they wanted us to track them,” Danny said to Barnes. “Them horse tracks just go in a straight line right toward that gully yonder.”
“Maybe they’ll turn directly,” Barnes said.
Ernesto stood up in the saddle to peer ahead. In the far distance he could see the entrance to the gully. His eyes scanned both sides and he tried to see if there was any movement atop the low mesa that formed one wall of the ravine.
He saw nothing.
“I do not like this,” Ernesto said. “It is too quiet and I do not see nobody.”
“They wouldn’t run th
em mares into that gully, would they?” Barnes asked.
“Not unless they wanted to fool us,” Danny said.
“Keep your eyes peeled,” Barnes said, but he was not very suspicious right then. “Just see where the tracks go.”
The three men rode up to the gully. Danny’s gaze traversed the entrance. He saw where the two men had driven the mares into the wash and then, as he rode a few yards to the side, he saw that there were only two sets of tracks.
Both men on horseback had left the mares and had ridden off toward Horace Weatherall’s ranch.
“There’s something wrong here,” Danny said. “It don’t make no sense.”
Barnes sat his horse and gazed into the brush-choked ravine, a look of puzzlement on his face.
“We got to go in there and get them mares out,” he said.
Those were his last words.
The snouts of rifles suddenly appeared atop the mesa. There were loud explosions as each man up there fired down at Barnes.
The bullets ripped into his chest and he writhed in the saddle with the force of the lead that tore through his body. A shot to his neck brought an eruption of blood and a last throaty gasp of air.
Barnes toppled from the saddle as Danny turned his horse and headed back the way he had come.
Ernesto wheeled his horse and drew his pistol.
But he could see no target. He saw only flashes of flame and puffs of white smoke from atop the mesa.
He dashed away from the hail of lead and knew that the only man meant to die that day was his boss, Jesse Barnes.
He knew he was outnumbered and outgunned, and he jammed his spurs into his horse’s flanks. The only way to survive was to put distance between him and the riflemen above him.
Danny reined up when he was well out of rifle range and waited for Ernesto to catch up to him.
“Well, that’s it for Jesse,” Ernesto said when he rode up. “What are we goin’ to tell Abigail and Lelia?”
“You know ’em better’n I do. You tell ’em what happened.”
Ernesto’s face contorted into a sad bronze mask.
“It will be hard,” he said. “We should have done something.”
