The door crashed against the wall as I went through it without knocking. A vase of flowers fell from a window sill and broke, water darkening the floral print carpet. An overripe blonde in a thin cotton shift threw me a startled glance from the settee. Her eyes traveled over me, and then she smiled, fingering back a stray tendril of yellow hair gray at the roots. She had freckles on her teeth like an old horse. Seated next to her, a thickset man in a prickly suit and a paper collar too small for his bull neck started to rise, then sat back down. He had a tea cup and saucer balanced on one knee and his lips were pursed under a bristling moustache. I recognized him as the town barber and a member of the city council.
“Evening, Marshal.” He transferred the crockery from his knee to the arm of the settee. It rattled slightly. “What was all the shooting about? This young lady was kind enough to invite me in out of the line of fire.”
I wasn’t paying attention to him. Martha was standing before the beaded doorway leading into the next room, all six feet of her, the good eye cocked in my direction. “Where’s Colleen?” I demanded.
She said, “This carpet was woven in Asia two hundred years before I was born. If you’ve stained it—”
I repeated the question, advancing on her. She placed a hand over the brooch at her neck. Another woman might have swooned or begun screaming. “Upstairs. First door on the left.” She moved away from the opening.
I dashed aside the beads, found the staircase, and vaulted up two steps at a time. The door was locked. It flew open on the second kick, overturning a pedestal table and an earthenware pot containing a fern whose fronds hung to the floor. My heels ground the spilled black dirt into the rug. I’d graduated from horses to plants.
“Who the hell do you think you are?”
She stood next to a vanity, wearing a thin flannel nightgown and holding a tortoiseshell brush. Her red-brown hair flowed loose over her shoulders, glowing in the lamplight from the fresh stroking.
My anger had been building from the moment I’d exposed the Six Bar Six brand on the dead horse’s flank. Face to face with its source, my rage leveled off. I closed the door almost gently and stood with my back to it.
“Nice touch, brushing your hair,” I said. “Salome danced.”
Something fluttered over her face, I couldn’t tell what. When she spoke again her voice was no longer shrill. “What are you talking about? What was happening downtown? I heard the shooting. I thought some cowhands were blowing off steam.” Fear gripped her then, draining the color from her features. “Why is your face black?” It was almost a whisper.
“Who’d you take up with?” I said calmly. “Mather or Turk? Whose idea was it to tell me that Mather was hitting Terwilliger in the morning so that I wouldn’t expect him to attack me tonight? Pick one or all three. Just give me an answer.”
Her fingers went to her mouth in admirably feigned fright. If it was feigned. I was in no condition to judge. “I didn’t know.” This time I barely heard it.
I didn’t say anything. I hadn’t the faintest notion of what to say or do. What had I been thinking all the way there? It angered me that she wasn’t a man, and it angered me that that angered me. A few years earlier I’d have shot her where she stood without regard to her sex, but that was before the dime novels came and ruined me along with every other Westerner who read one just because there was nothing else to do in the middle of all that emptiness. Life was hard enough on the frontier without having to conform to a creed. I started to leave.
“You’re not hurt.” She was barefoot and made no noise hurrying across the rug. The top of her head barely reached my chin. Her hands grasped my shoulders. Tiny hands. It was hard to imagine them palming an ace. Her hair smelled of the scented soap they used downstairs, and something else.
I might have been gnarled wood in her hands for all the response she got. “One of my deputies is down with what might be a cracked skull,” I said quietly. “The other one may lose his arm and probably his life. Me? I’m indestructible.”
Her nails dug into my skin. “It wasn’t a lie, Page. I did hear them planning to raid the Circle T. They didn’t say anything about attacking you. They didn’t. I’d have told you if they did.” The gold flecks swirled in her eyes.
I shook off her hands and grasped her wrists. I could have broken them both with little effort.
“Maybe you weren’t lying. Maybe Mather’s men knew I depended on Martha for information and spread that story knowing it would reach me sooner or later and put me off guard when they hit town. But I can’t chance it, understand? I can’t chance it.”
She grimaced. I was hurting her wrists. I slackened my hold. The smell of her made my head swim.
“I’d never be able to relax with you,” I continued. “I couldn’t hold you without wondering if you were signaling someone over my shoulder. We couldn’t go riding but that I’d think you had a sniper laying for me along the road. It wouldn’t last a week, and when it was over we’d carry away the bitter taste.”
She lowered her eyes. I released her wrists and she turned away. Then she faced me again, across a distance of four feet.
“When I was three years old my father took me from Ohio down to the Nations and married a Cherokee woman for her land,” she said huskily. “He called himself a farmer, but he spent most of his time gambling at the trading post. At night he’d teach me to play poker, and when the other players complained about his dealing he’d have me sit in for him. At thirteen I could shave an ace in full view of a roomful of people and no one would notice. A year later my father sold me to a whiskey peddler named Bower for his route and a four-horse team.
“The reason Bower got rid of his route was he was his own best customer. He went crazy when he was drunk, and since I was always close by, he’d beat me until his arms got tired. One night after he’d done an especially good job of bloodying me I waited until he was snoring face down in the back of our wagon, and then I dug his Dragoon Colt from under a feed sack and emptied it into his back. I went clear around the cylinder and squeezed the trigger three times on empty chambers.”
Lamplight haloed her head and painted shadows in the folds of her nightgown. With her hair loose and her feet bare, she looked like the thirteen-year-old girl she was talking about.
“He had three hundred dollars in gold in a strongbox,” she went on. “I grabbed it, put on his riding clothes, unhitched a horse from the team and lit out. No one ever came after me. I don’t think anyone much cared who had killed him as long as he was dead. When I got to Arkansas I invested in a new wardrobe and a finishing course in Little Rock. I was young, but I knew that without an education I’d never do better than Bower for a husband.
“I soon learned that rich husbands were out unless your family was old and established, and mine stopped at an unmarked grave outside Muskogee where they buried my father after he was murdered by a drunken Osage. So I came back to Miss Jessup’s School for Genteel Young Ladies and took a job teaching. For a year I helped mold a dozen little Colleen Bowers until I couldn’t stand it any more and left. By the time anyone missed me, I was twenty miles inside the Nations. I was seventeen years old.”
Someone was calling my name on Pawnee Street. It sounded like Cross, back from the Circle T. I heard horses outside, a lot of them. “Why tell me?” I asked her.
“Can’t you see I’m sick to death of crime and treachery? Are your instincts so deep you can’t put them behind you long enough to believe that? What else do I have to do to buy your trust?” Her hands were curled into tight little fists in front of her.
“I don’t know.” I fished for words. “I don’t know that it can be bought. If I were a bootmaker or a farmer or even a whiskey peddler in the Nations, it might be for sale. But I’m not and it’s not. The price is too high. I wish it weren’t.”
“It doesn’t have to be.” Her eyes were shining in the darkness on her face. “You don’t have to stay a lawman.”
I opened my mouth. I almost agreed. Then I
remembered the two dead half-breeds in Yankton and wondered if they’d heard this speech. I closed it. “I’m sorry it didn’t work out.” I pulled open the door.
She might have said, “So am I.” I couldn’t be sure. The door closed on whatever she did say.
CHAPTER 21
Randy Cross met me coming around the corner from Arapaho Street. Beyond him, the main four corners were a jam of men and horses. Light from the windows slid along the oily barrels of rifles and shotguns and sparkled off modest raiments. Metal rattled, leather creaked, animals snuffed and blew. Steam curled around the mounts’ fidgety legs like locomotive exhaust. Some of the men were carrying torches, and black smoke columned up from the flames and merged with the darkness above. The scene smelled of tobacco and burning pitch and sardines. A number of the volunteers had filled their pockets with stores in anticipation of a long ride.
“I been looking all over for you,” complained the deputy. The ride to the ranch and back had sobered him. “I got your posse.”
“So I see. How many?”
“Fourteen’s all I can spare.” The stout man I had seen at the Pardees’ funeral called down from his perch astride a big sorrel. The brim of his slouch hat touched the hook of his nose and he was huddled in a coarse woolen overcoat cut for a much larger man, the sleeves turned back and the tails spread to cover his saddle. His stirrups were adjusted as high as they would go to accommodate his short legs.
“Who’s running the ranch, Mr. Terwilliger?” I asked.
His fierce eyes smoldered in the shadows. “It was your business, maybe I’d say.” He had a thin voice for his build, and his tone was Midwestern flat. “You’re Murdock? You know none of this’d be necessary, you let Pardee treat with Mather when he wanted to.”
“I’m not so sure Mather was behind the raid. Or the lynching.”
“You got a dead horse with the Six Bar Six brand. What more you need?” His nervous excitement passed to his horse, which scooped its neck and danced from side to side. The rancher seemed to be holding the animal in check by no other means than sheer force of presence.
“May I speak to your men?” I asked him.
He took a beat to consider, then nodded abruptly. In my absence Cross had saddled and bridled my roan and brought it from the livery to hitch to the riddled rail in front of the Pick Handle. I slipped its tether and mounted, then trotted out in front of the others. They had been conversing among themselves in growls, but lapsed into silence when I appeared. I pinned on the star.
“This isn’t a vigilante raid,” I announced, after introducing myself to a chorus of muttered obscenities. “You’re to be sworn in as special deputies. That means you’ll take my orders and no one else’s. It doesn’t give you leave to commit murder. We’ll fire if fired upon, but if not, we’ll give the men we’re after a chance to surrender before we start busting caps. Who objects to that?”
“Me.” This from a lean horseman near the center, with cracks for eyes and a trailing moustache that completed the oriental effect. “Why should they get any more chance than they gave Dale Pardee?”
Agreement rumbled through the group.
“Ain’t you the one killed our foreman?” challenged a voice from the rear. The rumbling grew loud. I urged the roan forward into the flickering torchlight. The noise died.
I addressed myself to the oriental-looking cowhand, whom I had picked out as the spokesman for the group.
“Pardee gave me the same treatment his brother got. I’m not his brother.”
He said nothing. I raised my voice to take in the group. “I was told when I came here you wanted law. You don’t get it by trampling over it when it doesn’t suit you. Any man not in agreement with that is free to leave. If you decide to stick, I’ll make holes in the first man who goes against me.”
“Whose law is that?”
A new voice, deep in the assembly. I couldn’t locate the owner.
“Mine.” The roan started fiddle-footing. I squeezed my thighs together and it settled down. “One thing more. There’s reason to believe Abel Turk is leading these night riders, not Mather. For sure Turk’s with them. I know an experienced gunman when I see one, and it’s only safe to assume he’s surrounded himself with others as good. If that bothers you, go now. No one will think poor of you.”
I stopped talking. The riders stirred, spoke to each other in murmurs that rose and died like sounds coming from a crowded room as a door swung open and shut.
“You sure Turk’s part of it?”
The question had come from the porch of the Breen House, where a lanky figure was outlined dimly between the lighted windows. I couldn’t make him out but I knew Shedwell’s brogue.
“Fairly,” I said. “Why?”
He stepped forward. His coattails were flung back to expose his guns. “I’ll be one of your deputies. Unless you got objections.”
Some of Terwilliger’s crew recognized the mankiller. His name buzzed through the gathering.
“Get your horse,” I told him.
He struck off toward the livery, moving with an easy lope. “What about it?” I asked the others. “Any dropouts?”
Terwilliger kneed his horse into the space in front of the cowhands, facing me. “My men don’t shy from a fight, Marshal. Swear away.”
When Shedwell returned straddling a bay stallion, I had everyone raise his right hand and recite the oath I’d heard often in Judge Blackthorne’s chambers when new officers joined the fraternity. The words didn’t vary a lot between the federal and local levels and didn’t mean much of anything anyway. After the “I do’s” I said, “Kill the torches. No sense advertising,” and led the way in the direction of the night riders’ retreat. The dead raider had been removed from the street, which explained the light in Fitch’s undertaking parlor.
We made good time until we reached the point where our quarry had left the road to ride across country, after which we had to stop from time to time and dismount until someone picked up on matted grass or a similar sign of recent passage. Moonlight is deceptive. We wasted precious minutes following false trails that dead-ended where the fugitives had doubled back on themselves to throw us off. Finally we came to a spot where the tracks stopped heading north and turned east.
“That ain’t the way to Mather’s spread,” Terwilliger reported.
“Could be another sour lead,” suggested Cross.
“I doubt it.” I pointed to a spattering of dark spots on the beaten grass. “Whoever’s bleeding has been doing it for miles. They’re running out of time for clever tricks.”
“How many of them are there, you reckon?” asked the rancher.
“Shedwell got the best look at them,” I said.
“Eight.” The gunman looked thoughtful. “Nine. I was sort of preoccupied.”
I frowned. “Looked like more.”
“Could be. Like I said, I didn’t keep no tally.”
“Think Périgueux knows they’re on his land?” Terwilliger asked.
“It wouldn’t surprise me.” I clucked the roan into motion.
Half a mile farther on we came upon a bundle of clothing dumped alongside the trail. The horses were downwind of it and shied as we approached. It wasn’t a bundle of clothing. I stepped down and turned it over with my foot.
The front of his shirt was black and glistening in the pale light. An empty scabbard like the kind cavalry officers wore was hooked to his belt. I remembered Major Brody saying he’d gutshot the man who had tried to lop off his arm. He wasn’t wearing a pillowcase now. I recognized him as one of the men I had seen at the corral near Périgueux’s headquarters. I felt his neck.
“Still warm,” I said, mounting. “We’re gaining.”
An hour later we topped a rise overlooking several sections of undulating grassland. Nestled in a furrow between swells was a wooden line shack with a slant roof and a covered window with a gunport where the shutters met, left over from the Sioux wars. A brush tail flicked into view from beneath the roof of t
he lean-to stable in back and was gone. We withdrew below the ridge.
“Might be a decoy,” Cross whispered. “They got a horse to spare now.”
“If they’ve got wounded, they’ll need shelter,” I said.
“If they got wounded.”
I considered. “I’m betting on the shack, but let’s make sure. Circle around on foot. Stay low. If there’s only one horse in the stable, fire a shot in the air and wait for us. Otherwise come back and report. Just a second.”
The deputy had started off in a crouch. I clutched his sleeve. “If you start anything without orders, I’ll kill you.”
His eyes glittered in their slits but he said nothing. I let him go.
The rest of us stood around listening to each other’s breathing. The prairie wind came up at ragged intervals, humming through the grass and plucking at our hat brims so that we had to hold on to them with both hands, but for the most part nothing moved. Even the moon seemed nailed in the sky. At last we heard Cross’s heavy footsteps in the frost-brittle grass.
“There’s nine horses.” His breath came in shallow, excited bursts.
“Fan out,” I said. “Surround it. No one fires till I give the word.”
Cow horses all, the animals held their positions from the moment the reins touched earth. I kept Shedwell with me and divided the men between Cross and Terwilliger, thus balancing the command. When we were alone, the gunman and I crawled to the crest on our bellies. I had the Winchester from the office, he a Spencer repeater with a folding sight. I noted the moon’s position.
“Sun will be up in about an hour. We’ll call them out as soon as it gets light.”
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