“That’s what I’ve been saying. The guy rode south, out of town.”
“We should get a posse together,” the big cowboy said.
Murmurs of agreement turned into shouts as men spurred one another into enthusiasm. Tuck thought they sounded more like a lynch mob than a posse, but that was none of his concern.
“All I’m saying is you better hightail it if you mean to catch him,” Tuck said. “He was riding fast, and in that storm he’ll be hard to track.”
“Clear the way,” a new voice boomed from the staircase. “Something’s happened to Daisie?” Carmichael’s marshal came into the hallway. People parted before him, and he followed the open path to Daisie’s door. He went inside. Tuck heard him choke, and when he emerged again he had gone pale.
“I’ve never…” he began. He wiped his face with his hands. He was a tall man, lean and broad-shouldered, and his hands were huge. “How could anyone…”
“We were thinkin’ on puttin’ together a posse, Hank,” the cowboy said. “This rummy here seen the killer.”
“You did?” the marshal asked Tuck.
“I think. I saw somebody, anyway. He went down the back stairs while I was in the alley. Got on a black horse and headed south.”
“Storm’s not showin’ any sign of breakin’,” the marshal said. “Be nigh impossible to track someone in that.”
“You cannot let him get away with such a thing,” another man said. Tuck had seen him before, though it took a moment to remember where. The man was stout but sturdy, bespectacled, with thinning hair and a ruddy complexion, as if he had just run several miles. His vest was open and his shirt half-unbuttoned, so Tuck figured any exercise he’d enjoyed was of a more indoors nature. After studying him, Tuck pictured him in a shopkeeper’s apron and recalled that he ran a grocery a few doors down from the saloon.
“Look, Daisie was a nice girl,” the marshal said. “But we got plenty of whores in this town. Might be these others wouldn’t mind one less.”
“Marshal Turville!” one of the girls snapped.
Senora Soto walked up close and laid a hand gently on his arm. She barely came up to mid-chest on the marshal, but she spoke with quiet authority. “Hank,” she said. “My ladies are human beings, same as anyone else. I seem to recall that you enjoyed Daisie’s company more than a few times, and I never charged you a cent. Now, I can’t let someone come in and murder her—that would be very bad for business. And I liked Daisie. My heart is breaking.”
“I understand all that, Senora Soto. But—”
“Tch! I am not finished, Hank. I would like you to organize a posse, or do whatever it is that you have to do. I would like you to find the man who killed Daisie, and make him pay for what he did. If you refuse … well, I’m sure your wife would like to know about some of the more special activities you enjoy here, that she never does for you. Don’t you think she would?”
Those big hands went to the marshal’s face again, and this time Tuck wasn’t certain he would ever lower them. “All right, Senora,” he said after a long while. “Gentlemen, let’s us form up a posse. Who’s in?”
Some of the men, including the beefy cowboy and the grocer, stepped forward. Others made their way uneasily toward the stairs, happy to voice support for a posse when it didn’t exist, but not wanting to put themselves on the line when it did.
Tuck hadn’t spoken up in favor of it in the first place, except to point out that if they were planning to do it, they ought to be quick about it. He had sold his horse and the last of his guns long ago, and used the money for drink. He had seen for himself what guns could do, and he hadn’t regretted losing those, though he occasionally missed the mare. He didn’t even own a hat to keep the rain from his face. He had his old army coat, so ragged it barely cut the wind, and the clothes he wore underneath. He didn’t want to go chasing after that strange man with the yellow eyes and the cloying stink. He wanted a glass of whiskey or whatever else he could get his hands on, and then another, and then some more. Now he had two more sights to forget—that man, and the sight of Daisie with her torso cut open and her innards hanging out.
He tried to join those who were taking themselves out of the running, but the marshal’s voice barked out. “You! Rummy! Sounds like you’re the only one who’s seen him. You’re comin’ with us.”
There was no question about to whom Turville was talking. Tuck wanted to slip downstairs with the other men, maybe see if there had been a glass or two abandoned on a tabletop with a little something still in it.
But he heard urgency in Turville’s voice—urgency planted there by Senora Soto’s blackmail, but present just the same. He let the others flow around him like river water around a boulder. “Marshal,” he said, “I don’t have a gun or a horse or a hat. I might have been good at that sort of thing once, but now about the only skills I have left are cadging drinks and sleeping outdoors.”
“You saw the man and his horse.”
“I can tell you what he looked like.” Even as the words spilled from his mouth, Tuck realized that was a lie. He would never forget the glimpse he’d had, but he could barely convince himself that he had seen it the way he remembered, and he could never accurately describe the man. Particularly since his appearance had seemed to change in the space of a minute.
“This man butchered that girl,” Turville said. “I don’t want to hang the wrong feller. This has got to be done right, pard’. That means you’re joinin’ us. I’ll loan you a horse and some irons. You refuse, I’ll string you up as an accomplice.”
He was trapped. Anyway, he had abandoned his post before; how hard would it be to steal away from a posse? “Reckon I’m going, then,” Tuck said.
Someone grabbed his arm, surprising him. It was one of Senora Soto’s girls, a beauty with sparkling green eyes a man could sink right into. The color of her hair made Tuck think of sunshine through flowing honey. “Thank you for helping,” she said. “Daisie was my best friend here. I know you have to be on your way, but if you get the man, when you get back, I’ll buy you a hat. Does that sound fair?”
“More than, ma’am,” Tuck said.
“I’m Missy Haynes,” she said with a friendly smile. “You just ask for me downstairs.”
“Tucker Bringloe.”
“Well, Mr. Bringloe. Good luck on your hunt.”
He appreciated the offer of the hat, but he thought he appreciated the wish for luck more.
He had a feeling he would need plenty of that.
Chapter Three
“You hear something, Pinky?”
Solomon Pincus hated that name, which all the hands called him by. But in the litany of things he hated on this particular night, that one ranked fairly low. It was late July, but he was freezing. Hail was still melting outside the small circle of the fire’s warmth. The canvas lean-to had been ripped when hailstones had punched through it, and he felt like he’d been beaten with sticks. No part of him was dry, or likely would be any time soon. He could have gone to college like his brother, but the cowboy life had promised adventure and the freedom to be his own man, and until recently the reality of it had been everything he’d hoped for.
“Maybe,” he said. “Hush a minute.”
Picking out one particular sound from the midst of a herd of cattle was always a challenge. It was worse tonight. The rain had stopped, for the moment, but thunder still rattled in the Huachuca Mountains—which appropriately enough meant “Thunder Mountains” in Apache, Sol had been told—and the wind would not let up for an instant. But he had thought, right before Tom Hopkin spoke, that maybe he’d heard a high-pitched cry.
Then he heard it again, distinctly: a pained squeal that pierced the darkness. “Let’s ride,” Sol said.
They had set up camp on a rocky rise, out of the path of any flash floods. Their horses were picketed halfway down the slope, in the shelter of a couple of large pines. He and Hopkin had made torches from green branches, bark, and pine sap, and set them aside in case they need
ed them. They had one oil lantern between them. Sol grabbed the lantern, while Hopkin held one of the torches in the guttering fire until it flared to life.
The horses shied away from the flame, but the men mounted up and rode into the grass-floored valley. There they split up, guiding their mounts uneasily through already skittish stock, searching for the source of the cries while trying not to spook the big animals more than they already were. Cattle were ordinarily anxious in the dark, and with one of their own in obvious distress they were more so than usual, shifting about and lowing nervously. The smell of fresh excrement hung in the air, as fear tended to loosen their bowels.
Before Sol located the injured animal, it went silent. Cattle nearby pressed away from it, making him feel like he was urging his horse upstream, except instead of water this river was made of hide, horns, and hooves, and could easily gouge a man or knock him off his mount and trample him to death. Sol kept the horse under control, though it whickered with evident uncertainty, and he soon found what he was looking for.
The animal had been a big bull called Ol’ Jim, one of Mr. Tibbetts’s favorites. Now it was a ruined mass of torn hide and organs spilling into the blood-soaked mud. A few ribbons of flesh barely joined its head to the rest of it. Sol raised his head to the heavens, cupped a hand beside his mouth, and shouted out, “Tom!”
He waited several seconds and did it again. “Tom!”
With the wind and the thunder and the racket of the herd, he couldn’t tell if Hopkin was within earshot. Hopkin would hear a gun, though. Tibbetts had a pair of hands on another range, not too far away, and they might hear that, too. Sol tugged his from its leather and fired twice into the air. A minute later came Hopkin’s answering shot, then Sol saw a sputtering torch headed in his direction. He raised the lantern and waved it back and forth to give Hopkin a target.
“Tibbetts cain’t hardly afford no more of this,” Hopkin said when he had seen the dead bull. He held the torch high, its light falling on the remains. “Tibbetts cain’t afford us. Herd split up into chunks, two men with each one? He’s barely scrapin’ by as is.”
“He’s a good man. He’s straight with us.”
“I didn’t say he weren’t,” Hopkin countered. “Just he cain’t afford to keep payin’ us.”
Sol ached for the rancher. Tibbetts had kept him on the payroll through lean times. Now he was losing cattle—seven, so far, mutilated like this one, sliced up and worthless, and no hint as to who had done it or why. “I’d work for him for nothing if I had to.”
“I’m gonna go see Mr. Montclair,” Hopkin said. “He always pays his hands, and better than Tibbetts does. I’ll go tomorrow. You want to come with me?”
“No!” Sol snapped. “I just said I’d stay with Mr. Tibbetts.”
“Ain’t much to stay for, you ask me.”
“I didn’t.”
“Let’s get out from under these beeves,” Hopkin said. “It starts rainin’ again, I don’t want to be down here with ’em.”
Sol glanced at the pile of wasted animal on the ground, and his stomach gave a lurch. He felt the tension of the herd running through him, like he was a string on a fiddle and someone was plucking it. “Yeah,” he said. “Let’s go.”
On the way back, Sol noticed that the tempo of the cattle’s motion had picked up. They walked faster, breathed heavier, and when they lowed the sounds were higher pitched and more urgent. “I got a bad feeling about this, Tom,” he said.
“Same here,” Hopkin replied. “These critters is like to get boogered easy. Let’s get a move on.”
“No,” Sol said, fighting to keep his tone even. It wouldn’t do to lose control now.
“Hell with that!” Hopkin said. He jabbed his boot heels into his horse’s ribs and shouted, “Giddyap, you son of a bitch!”
The horse bolted. As it did, it swiped against the side of a cow. Hopkin cried out in pain, and the cow gave a terrified bleat and lurched to its left, running into the nearest animal on that side.
With that, chaos descended.
One animal slammed into another, that one into yet more, and panic gripped the herd. Sol was in a dangerous spot. His horse was weaving and prancing, trying to stay clear of the cattle. Sol was trying to head it out of the herd’s midst, to save his own skin, but he also understood the financial risk of a full-blown stampede. The cattle would take off at a sprint, running until they exhausted themselves. In the dark, in this high desert valley, some would be injured, breaking legs or worse, and have to be put down. Mr. Tibbetts’s already precarious situation would get even worse.
Sol couldn’t see Hopkin anywhere. The torch was out, probably dropped and extinguished in the mud. He might have reached safety, or he might be down somewhere in that churning sea of livestock. Quelling a stampede alone, in the dark of night, was no easy task, but Sol had to try. He knew what to do, but before he could do it he had to get out of the middle of the herd.
The earth rumbled and shook under the weight and motion of the herd. The air was thick with sound, and if the ground hadn’t been soaked, the dust would have been choking. Sol’s horse was almost panicked from the noise and the constant collisions with cattle, but she kept her head and allowed Sol to coax her, little by little, to the far right edge of the hurtling mass.
Once he had made it out of the river of beef, he breathed a little easier. He didn’t allow himself to celebrate, though. Hopkin was still missing, there was a dead, carved-up bull behind him, and that herd was going to do itself serious damage if he didn’t take action.
A little moonlight would have helped. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness as well as they could when he was still carrying around a lantern. He stopped the horse, extinguished the flame, then dashed the thing against the ground. That helped a little, but not a lot.
He couldn’t see enough of the landscape ahead to form a decent plan. He was plenty familiar with the grassy valley, but there were dips and outcroppings of rock, big mesquites he didn’t want to run into headlong, and other obstacles.
He would just have to hope for the best.
He gigged his horse and she took off at a gallop. They outpaced the cattle, the horse racing with utter disregard for the night and the dangers hidden in the moonless dark. Sol figured either he’d succeed or he’d die in the trying, and either outcome was equally acceptable at this point. When he reached the front of the racing pack, he rode as close alongside them as he dared, drew his pistol, and fired a shot into the ground. At the same time, he screamed with everything he had, meaningless sounds meant to cut through the hammering of hooves and the terrified bleats of the herd.
He fired twice more, holding the gun as close as he could to the leaders of the herd. He had one more bullet in the gun, then he’d have to reload—tricky at a full gallop, even if there weren’t the risk of falling off his mount and into the stampeding cattle. He thought he heard gunshots from behind him, but over his own noise and the pounding of his heart in his ears and the racket of the stampede, he couldn’t be sure.
His effort seemed to be working. The noise and Sol’s proximity were forcing the leaders to curve around to their left. He stayed with them, edging his horse ever nearer. The cattle turned more. Sol kept at it, and the cattle kept turning, until finally the leaders were dashing headlong into their own followers.
At that point, faced with the wall of cowhide they had been leading, they gave up. The cattle coming up behind them had no choice but to slow, and with their momentum broken, although there were collisions and complaints, the herd settled into a restless stillness.
Sol halted his horse, reloaded his Colt, and headed back to look for Hopkin. He hollered out the hand’s name, his voice seeming loud in the aftermath of the stampede.
Hearing no answer, Sol rode his back trail, peering through the night. Finally, he spotted Hopkin’s horse, standing near a mesquite bush. He dismounted, looped a rein around one of the thorny branches, and did the same with Hopkin’s horse. “Tom? You here, Tom?”
Then he saw a dark mound in the mud. Hopkin. He rushed to the man’s side, but the stink choked him and he backed away. In the dark, he couldn’t make out much detail, but he saw enough to know that Hopkin had been torn apart. His left leg was more than a foot away from his body. His face had been mostly ripped free of its moorings and the bone of his jaws and cheeks were shockingly white. His throat was slashed, his chest split wide.
Sol took one more look, afraid his imagination had run away with him. As he did, a cloud drifted from in front of the moon, and he could see the carnage more clearly. He fell to hands and knees and puked up the beans and biscuits he’d had for supper.
When his gut was empty, he wiped his mouth on his dirty sleeve. He was trying to rise, unsteady on his feet, when that same sharp, awful smell came back, a wave of it. He heard something, which he realized after a moment was the squish of mud under someone’s weight.
Sol made a dash for his horse, but the mud was too soft to get any speed. He grabbed for his gun, but his quaking, mud-slick hands couldn’t get a grip on it. The stink intensified. Whatever the source was, it was closing in.
Knowing he wouldn’t reach the horse, or be able to draw his piece, he turned to face it, and he was engulfed by the darkness and the odor and pain like he had never imagined.
Chapter Four
When they heard distant gunfire, Cale Ceniceros and Nate McHale mounted up and rode. They didn’t like leaving the herd unguarded, particularly with the mutilations that had been happening. But Jed Tibbetts had made clear that his first concern was for the men, his second for the livestock. If the men on the other range were shooting at something, they might need help.
Deadlands--Thunder Moon Rising Page 2
