“Why go back, then, Walter?” she asked.
“That might be something I have to think about,” he admitted.
“Look,” Clint said, pointing ahead. “Lastings and the kid.”
They reined in and waited.
“Well, they didn’t waste any time,” Lastings said.
“What happened?” Deadly asked.
“It’s bad,” Caleb said.
“You better just come and see for yourselves,” Lastings said.
THIRTY-SEVEN
When they came within sight of the carnage, they reined in and stared. They were on a rise, looking down into a valley.
“Is that a town?” Deadly asked.
“Was it a town?” Gloria asked.
“It looks more like . . . a compound.”
“Have you been down there, Lastings?” Deadly asked.
“Yeah, we rode down.”
“Any survivors?”
“None.”
“No witnesses,” Gloria said.
“All right,” Clint said, “let’s get down there and see what we can learn.”
Clint looked over at Deadly, trying to send him a message, but he needn’t have bothered. They were on the same page.
“Lastings, you and the kid keep ridin’ ahead,” Deadly said. “Clint and I will see what we can learn here.”
“Okay, Boss. Come on, kid.”
“What about Gloria?” Caleb asked.
Lastings put his arm around Caleb’s shoulders.
“Kid, forget about that girl,” he said. “She’d chew you up and spit you out.”
“She’s a nice girl,” Caleb argued.
“You got a lot to learn about women, kid,” Lastings said. He was about five years older than Caleb, but he was talking as if he was a lot older. “Mount up,” he said.
As Lastings and Caleb rode off, Clint, Deadly, and Gloria surveyed the carnage.
“What happened here?” Gloria asked. “There’s no sign of a fire.”
“It looks like there were two houses and a barn,” Clint said. “This is not a ranch, and I don’t see any sign that it’s a farm.”
“Like you said,” Deadly replied. “Looks like a compound.”
“Compound?” Gloria asked.
“Two families living on the same land, but in separate houses,” Clint said.
“Sharing everything else,” Deadly said.
Gloria looked around, saw the bodies in the rubble. “How many dead?” she asked.
“That’s what we’re going to find out,” Clint said. “Do you want to leave it to Walter and me?”
“No,” she said, “I’ll do my part.”
“Okay,” Deadly said, “let’s do it.”
What they discovered was that the buildings had been pulled down, in some cases with the people still inside. Some of the people had died that way, while others had clearly been shot.
Each house had one family in it, husband, wife, and children—one child in one house, and two in the other. A total of seven dead. The youngest of the dead children seemed to have been a three-year-old girl. She had died when a beam fell on her.
“Goddamn them,” Gloria said. “Look at the children. That poor baby . . .”
They stood there in silence, wondering what drove men to do what the Pettigrews had done here. What would ever make them think to pull people’s homes down around them? Why not just burn them down like they had the Forresters’ home? Were they out of matches?
Then they heard it, only because they had all been stunned into silence.
Crying.
Gloria turned around.
“Is that . . . a child?”
“Sounds like it,” Clint said.
“My God,” Gloria said. “Where?”
They started moving about, trying to find where the crying was coming from.
“Here!” Gloria cried out. She was standing knee-deep in the rubble of the barn.
Clint and Deadly joined her there and started digging through the debris.
“Hello! We can hear you,” Gloria shouted. “We can hear you. Don’t be frightened. Call out to us.”
Suddenly, the cry became cries of “Help! Help!” and then Clint saw it. He uncovered a trapdoor in the floor of the barn.
He opened it and saw a girl inside—not a baby, but a child of eight or nine.
“It’s okay, sweetie,” Gloria said, reaching down for her, “it’s okay.”
Gloria and Clint pulled her out of the hole, and then Gloria wrapped the child in her arms and took her away from the carnage.
They kept the child away from the other buildings, not wanting her to see the dead bodies. Gloria gave her some water, kept hugging her and talking to her.
“What should we do?” Deadly asked.
“Let Gloria deal with it,” Clint said. “She’ll have to tell the child her family is dead. We might as well bury them.”
“That’s gonna take us a while,” Deadly said. “I don’t want to fall any further behind.”
“We’ll put them in a shallow grave, just deep enough to keep critters away. We can stop at the next town and have them send out a burial detail.”
“Yeah, unless the sheriff there’s got some reason not to,” Deadly said.
Clint looked over to where Gloria was talking to the child.
“That child is not a baby,” Clint said. “She’s got to be what, eight? Nine?”
“So?”
“So don’t you see what that means?”
“No, what?
“The Pettigrews may have left behind their first witness.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
Clint walked over to where Gloria and the child were sitting. He and Deadly had finished digging the shallow graves and had used some of the wood from the rubble to cover them up. Then they used some more wood to mark the place.
“How is she?” Clint asked.
“Shh,” Gloria said. She still had her arm around the child. “She’s cried herself to sleep.”
“Can’t say I blame her,” Clint said. “Did you tell her . . . ?”
“That her whole family is dead? Yes.”
“Gloria, this is important,” Clint said. “Did she see anything?”
“I don’t know.”
“She’s the only person the Pettigrews have left behind alive,” Clint said. “We may have our only witness here.”
“She’s just a little girl.”
“All she would have to do is recognize one of them,” Clint said. “You have to ask her.”
“Not now.”
“No,” Clint said. “Not now, but when we get to the next town.”
“All right,” Gloria said. “I’ll ask her . . . soon.”
“We have to get going,” Clint said. “We want to get some men from the next town to come out here and bury these people properly.”
“Clint, we have to find these bastards,” Gloria said with feeling.
“I know.”
“We have to find them and kill them.”
“I know that, too, Gloria.”
“I mean it,” she said. “I don’t want to turn them over to the law, I want to kill them.”
“I understand, Gloria,” he said. “I’m not arguing with you.”
“And don’t let him argue with me either,” she said, indicating Walter Deadly with a jerk of her chin.
“I’m pretty sure he feels the same way, Gloria,” he said.
“Well, he better,” she said, “because I will go through anybody to see these men dead. Do you understand? Anybody!”
Clint could hear the determination in her voice, and see it in her eyes. She was more than ready to kill every member of the gang.
Clint walked around the grounds once again, trying to find something that would help them track the gang. When he thought he’d found something, he called Deadly over.
“What is it?”
“This looks like where the gang left the horses while they . . . went on a rampage.”
“I
see a bunch of hoofprints, Clint. That don’t mean a thing to me.”
They managed to wrap the survivor in a blanket. She flinched when Clint lifted her, but relaxed when he handed her up to Gloria.
“Come closer,” Clint said to Deadly.
Clint pointed to the soft ground as he explained.
“One of them is riding a smaller pony. See the difference? Front hoofs to rear? It’s a smaller, lighter animal, probably the most sure-footed of all their horses, but certainly the most readable.”
Deadly frowned.
“And you can see that in these tracks?”
“Yes.”
“And can you track them that way?”
“Yes,” Clint said, then added, “as long as they don’t get rid of this pony at some time.”
“Maybe we’ll catch up to them before that,” Deadly said hopefully.
“I think we will.”
“Think, or know?”
“Right now I’m going to stick with think,” Clint said, “but this much carnage took a while. Long enough for us to maybe close ground on them a bit.”
Suddenly, Deadly got excited. “So how far behind them do you think we are?”
“I think we’re a day behind, maybe a day and a half.”
“That’s pretty good, considering we left Cold Creek three days behind them.”
“Well, we had an advantage right from the start,” Clint pointed out.
“What’s that?”
“We’re not stopping to kill people.”
Clint mounted up and looked over at Deadly. “She hasn’t said a word yet.”
“She’s not gonna be much of a witness if she doesn’t talk,” Deadly pointed out.
“Well, she’s talked with Gloria, but she won’t say a thing to me. Obviously the result of watching a bunch of men kill her family.”
“Maybe she’ll talk by the time we get to the next town,” Deadly offered.
“I guess we’ll find that out when we get there, wherever ‘there’ is.”
THIRTY-NINE
The town was called Damnation.
“You’ve got to be kiddin’,” Sheriff Deadly said.
“What the hell,” Gloria said. “It’s the next town.”
“That’s a town called Damnation,” the sheriff said, “and my name is Deadly. You think I wanna go down there?”
Suddenly, behind him, he heard Lastings and Caleb laughing.
“This ain’t funny.”
Clint said, “Maybe we can get by without telling anybody your real name.”
“Maybe we should call him Sheriff Walter,” Lastings suggested.
“Deadly,” the sheriff said, “it’s a good name for an undertaker.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“It’s even a good name for a lawman.”
Clint didn’t respond.
“It’s just not a good name to be goin’ down there with.”
“Sheriff—” Clint said.
Deadly took a deep breath.
“We better go down,” Deadly said. “Those people need to be properly buried.”
Deadly got his horse moving, Lastings and Caleb followed. Clint stayed back until Gloria came up beside him, with the girl riding in front of her, holding onto the saddle horn.
“How is she?”
“How do you think she is?”
“She looks like she’s asleep.”
Gloria took a peek. “She has been for a while.”
“Okay,” he said, “let’s see if we can find some place for her to stay.”
“In a town called Damnation?”
“I admit,” he said, “it’s not a great name for a town.” They started riding.
“You ever hear of it before?” she asked.
“No.”
“Maybe it used to be called somethin’ else.”
“That’s true,” Clint said. “I knew a man who made the people paint their town red—literally—and rename it Hell.”
“Why does that make me want to laugh?” she asked.
“Didn’t make those townspeople laugh, that’s for sure.”
In Damnation they split up. Lastings, Caleb, and Gloria went to the hotel. Clint and Deadly rode to the sheriff’s office.
“Sheriff Carl White. What can I do for you gents?” the sheriff asked, getting to his feet.
“We’re a posse out of Cold Creek, Minnesota,” Deadly said.
“You’re a long way from home.”
“We’re hunting a gang called Pettigrew.”
“All of ’em are Pettigrews?” the man asked. “The whole gang?”
“Brothers and cousins.”
Sheriff White sat down. He was carrying too much belly to stand for too long. Had probably been carrying it for ten years or so, since he turned fifty. His chair protested.
“You think they’re comin’ here?”
“We think they’ve been here,” Clint said.
“Why?”
“There’s a family lives about twelve miles outside of town? To the east. Two homes on one plot of ground?”
“The Karch family. What about ’em?”
“They’re all dead,” Deadly said.
“What?” He sat forward.
“Except for a little girl,” Clint said, “eight or nine years old.”
“Jeez, that’ll be Sally. What happened to her?”
“She hid in a root cellar beneath the barn,” Clint said. “But she saw some of it.”
“Jesus,” White said.
“Does she have any family in town?”
“What? No, the whole family lived out on that compound. They preferred it that way. Only ever came to town for supplies. No family, and no friends, really. They were just . . . neighbors.”
“Well,” Deadly said, “now they’re dead neighbors.”
“And you think this Pettigrew gang did it?”
Deadly nodded.
“They would have needed supplies,” Clint said. “They had to have stopped here.”
“Well, we had some hard cases here, but they didn’t cause any trouble.”
“When were they here?”
“Two days ago.”
Clint and Deadly exchanged a glance.
“We thought we were only a day behind them,” Clint said.
“You are,” Sheriff White said. “They rode out yesterday.”
“Which way?”
“Don’t know for sure, but I can probably find out from Ted Lilly. He owns the livery.”
“If you don’t mind, we’ll ask him,” Deadly said.
“Which one of you is runnin’ the posse?” the man asked.
Deadly took the badge from his pocket, showed it, and returned it. “That’d be me.”
“Sure,” White said. “Tell Ted I sent you over.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ll get a burial party out to the Karch place come mornin’.”
“Thanks.”
As Clint and Deadly started to walk out, the sheriff called out, “You lookin’ to bring them in?”
“We’re lookin’ to kill them.”
“Don’t that make you a lynch mob, not a posse?” White asked.
Deadly turned to face the man. “I prefer to think of us as a posse with a lynch mob mentality.”
“That could cost you your job, you know.”
Deadly smiled. “Don’t I know it.”
“Hey,” the sheriff called when they were almost out the door. “What’s your name, Sheriff?”
“Walter Deadly.”
He and Clint left.
“Sheriff Deadly?” White said aloud.
FORTY
Clint and Deadly saw that the other horses were in front of the hotel, so they took all the animals to the livery after Clint found Caleb in the lobby and told him. The kid said that Lastings and Gloria had taken the little girl to the room she would share with Gloria. Clint told the kid to keep waiting in the lobby.
At the livery they found a fiftyish-looking, portly man who said he was Ted
Lilly.
“The sheriff said you could help us,” Deadly said. “We’re interested in four men who left town yesterday.”
“Yeah, I know who you mean,” Lilly said. “I don’t mind tellin’ you them four scared the bejesus outta me.”
“How so?” Clint asked.
“They was saddlin’ their horses to leave and one of them says to the other one, ‘I didn’t get to rape a woman here. Why do we gotta go?’
“The other one—older, I think he was his brother—says, ‘Shut up, Joe. We’re leavin’. You can have all the women you want when we get to Ludlow.’ ”
“Ludlow?” Deadly said. “They said they was goin’ to Ludlow?”
“I guess,” Lilly answered. “I don’t know if they was goin’ straight there, but Ludlow’s pretty famous around these parts.”
“Famous for what?” Clint asked.
“Whorehouses,” Lilly said. “Supposed to have more whorehouses than any other three towns around here.”
“How far is Ludlow from here?” Deadly asked excitedly.
“Sixty miles, due west,” Lilly said. “You can’t miss it. Them crazy women put out signs leadin’ you to town. You started seein’ ’em while you’re still twenty miles away.”
“Ludlow,” Deadly said, looking at Clint. “Sixty miles. We can make that tonight.”
“In the dark?” Clint asked. “That’s a good way to lose a good horse. I say we leave in the morning.”
“What if they leave Ludlow in the mornin’ as we’re leavin’ here?”
“Jesus, Walter,” Clint said, “they could’ve skipped Ludlow, or they could be there now dippin’ their wicks. Or they could’ve made another raid between here and there. We don’t know what they’re doing, but that doesn’t mean we should risk our horses—and our necks—by riding at night. Morning’s good enough.”
“Okay, if you say so.”
“You leavin’ your horses or not?” Lilly asked.
“Leaving them,” Clint said. He slapped Eclipse’s neck. “Make sure you take good care of this one.”
“Mister,” Ted Lilly said, “I know a good horse when I see one.”
“We’ll want them at first light,” Clint said.
“At first light I’ll be havin’ breakfast,” Lilly said. “That is, unless you want to pay extree for my time.”
The Dead Town Page 10
