Tuck just gave him a single nod. The mention of drink set his heart to racing and his thoughts to wandering. He remembered the pleasure of that warm sensation in the throat and gullet, like swallowing a lump of hot coal right out of the fire. He thought about the fogginess that came with three or four drinks—that had come, in earlier days, with one or two—the buzz that filled his mind, like there were bees under his hat, and that prevented other thoughts and memories from taking up space in his head.
He realized Turville was watching him. “Sorry,” Tuck said. “Forgot myself for a minute.”
“Reckon forgettin’s the point of it, isn’t it? The drinkin’?”
“That’s a big part of it.”
“What are you tryin’ to disremember?”
“That’s complicated, Marshal.”
“The war? A woman?”
“Those are part of it.”
“You don’t want to talk about it?”
“Not hardly,” Tuck replied. “I did, I more’n likely wouldn’t drink to keep it all away.”
“I won’t ask, then. Again. You want to tell me, though, you can.”
“Thanks,” Tuck said. The last thing he wanted to do was to talk about things he was so desperate to forget. But the marshal was the first man in a long time who had offered anything other than scorn and perhaps a kick in the rear. He couldn’t say the sensation it raised in him was unwelcome. Instead of saying anything more, he checked the trail to make sure they were still on the right path, then studied the valley ahead. “What’s that?” he said after a couple of minutes.
Turville followed Tuck’s pointing hand. “Looks like a horse. No saddle, no rider.”
“Wild, you think?”
“Can’t rightly say.”
The animal was browsing a bushy mesquite, probably picking off beans that were beginning to swell with seeds. It didn’t race off as they drew nearer, nor did there seem to be others with it. She was a skewbald mare, chestnut and white, and looked to be well cared for, her mane brushed and clipped, her coat smooth.
“No, she’s not wild,” Turville said when they were close enough to tell. “Not lookin’ like that.” He looked back over his shoulder. “Any of you men handy with a rope?” he asked. “Looks like somebody lost a horse.”
“Perhaps it belongs to your killer?” Maier said. “Perhaps he hides in the tall grass?”
“She don’t look rode too hard,” the marshal answered. “And she’s got no tack on her.”
“I don’t know as we have time to return a lost horse,” Tuck said.
“We might could happen to pass someone who knows where she belongs,” Turville said. “Hate to do that and not have tried to collect her.”
“Not much light left.”
The marshal pulled back on his reins and stopped his mount in front of Tuck’s. Tuck had to rein in quickly. “You want to say somethin’ to me, Bringloe?”
“I’m just saying, we’re trying to track a killer. You want to spend time chasing after a horse when it’s nearly dark, and you promised the men we’d take a break for the night when it was. Seems like you need to decide what you want to get done here, and do that thing.”
Turville chewed on his lower lip. “I reckon you got a point,” he said. “Might could be she’ll follow us on her own, anyhow.”
“She might,” Tuck said, without conviction.
The trail they followed veered away from the horse, but she did follow, at a distance. The posse members’ animals whickered to her, and she answered, holding some sort of equine conversation that humans could never understand. A short while later, with the men once again beginning to grouse about how late it was getting, how the sun was gone from the sky and dusk was making it hard to see, they rounded a low hill and saw a small rancho spread out before them. No pastures were fenced, but near the hacienda stood a corral and a barn and a couple of other outbuildings.
“You know whose place that is?” Tuck asked him.
“No. Don’t typically find myself in Mexico.”
The house was small, made of adobe bricks that had weathered in the harsh winters and wet summers of the high desert.
“You think that horse came from here?”
“Might could be. Nearest ranch we’ve seen.”
“No horses in the corral,” Tuck observed. “Nor any other stock I can see. No lamp burning inside the house, either.”
“Trail’s heading straight for it,” the marshal pointed out. “I got a bad feelin’ about this, Bringloe.”
Tuck had the same feeling. “Let’s go,” he said. He urged his mount on. Turville shouted something to the others, and did the same. Riding at a full gallop, they reached the ranch house in just a few minutes. The corral gate stood open, as did the barn door. Tracks from multiple horses had crisscrossed the trail they were following, obscuring it at least partway. The horse they had seen was no doubt one of these, but there was no way to tell if the others had been taken, or just allowed to wander away.
Turville reined up in the yard. “Hello in the house!” he shouted. “This is Marshal Hank Turville, from the United States! We’re on the trail of a killer! Anybody here?”
No one answered. Turville and Tuck exchanged worried looks, and Turville dropped to the ground. “Anybody home?” he called. “Hello!”
Still, the house was quiet. A gentle breeze fingered the leaves of a pair of sycamores that shaded the house’s south side. Tuck could hear the rustle and jingle of his mounted companions, but that was all.
On the wind, he thought he smelled something.
He thought he smelled death.
“I’m goin’ in,” Turville declared.
“Not alone,” Tuck said. He dismounted and drew his borrowed rifle from its saddle scabbard. “This isn’t good,” he said quietly.
“Folks who live here could be in town, mebbe. Or out on the range.”
“Can’t hurt to look.”
“Careful, though. And with iron in your hand. You men wait here,” Turville told the others. “Eyes wide. Shout or shoot if you see anything.”
“Anything like what?” Darlington asked.
“Anything at all,” the marshal answered. “We’ll be back directly.”
He and Tuck stepped lightly to the door. They had announced themselves, so if anybody was inside, lying in wait, there would be no surprising them. Just the same, neither man wanted to be the first to present a target.
The door was ajar. Turville went in first, a revolver in his fist. “Hello?” he said.
Tuck already knew what they would find inside. An empty house had a special kind of silence to it. This one held that silence inside, and something more, the odor he had tasted on the breeze. “They’re dead,” he said.
“Who?” Turville asked. Even as the word escaped his lips, he paused and his face wrinkled up. “Yeah, you’re right, Bringloe.” To the house’s dim interior, he added, “Anyone here? We’re comin’ in.”
No answer met them but the stench of death, thickening the farther they went into the house. They hurried through it, not talking now, looking for the dead.
They were in the bedroom. Three of them, all Mexicans. A man, a woman, and a boy of about ten. The man had no shirt on, and his body was thin, almost hairless. The woman wore a dress—or what was left of it—that had been patched so many times there were more patches than original fabric. They were both on the bed, though the woman’s legs dangled over the side. The boy was on the floor at the foot of the bed, whatever clothes he had been wearing reduced to ribbons.
The position of the woman, halfway off the bed, wasn’t the only thing about the tableau that reminded Tuck of Daisie’s body, back at Senora Soto’s.
All three of these people had been gutted the way Daisie had: gashes all over them, blood pooled around them, organs exposed to the air. The flies had already come and were crawling around, creating the impression of writhing patches of dark shadow. The reek made Tuck’s gorge rise, and he fought to keep from vomiting.
“This was him,” Turville said, his voice thick with anger. And something else. Disgust, and maybe fear, Tuck thought. He didn’t blame the man a bit. Terror had snaked into his soul at the smell outside, and the closer they came to this room, the deeper it had burrowed. It owned him, now. The killer they were chasing was something more than just a man—or something less. He was someone so broken, so inhuman, that he not only could do these things to other people, but he wanted to. He liked doing them. Nobody could force himself against his own will to commit such evil acts.
“We’ve got to find this bastard,” Tuck said. “Soon.”
“Won’t rest until we do, Bringloe.”
“You promised the men they could take a break. We’ll go faster in the morning if we all get some shut-eye.”
Turville sighed. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “I can’t take this a second longer.” He didn’t wait for Tuck’s answer, but stormed from the room, from the house. Outside, he took deep breaths. Tuck joined him. They were still too close to the house for the air to be pure; the reek of death hung heavy in the air, and that other scent lay underneath it, the sour stink that Tuck believed belonged to the killer. Still, it was better than the air inside.
“What’d you find, Hank?” Hendershott asked.
“Mexican couple and their boy. They’re dead. Cut all up, like Daisie was.”
“But he’s not in there? The owl hoot we’re after?”
“No sign of him. Same man, though, I’m sure.”
“So what’s next?”
“Next we get away from here and get some rest. Few hours. Then we get back on the trail, and we ride hard until we find him and put a rope around his neck. We got to assume he’s got a fresh mount and a full belly.”
“Finally,” Maier said. “I think I am three inches shorter than when we started out.”
“But just as ornery,” Turville said. “Come on, let’s find a place to camp where we can’t smell the dead.”
Chapter Twelve
They made camp on a ridge from which they could see the dim outline of the Huachucas against the marbled sky. Moonlight tinged the clouds with white, and lightning in the mountains lit them from within, like someone carrying a candle past the windows of a large house. Tuck felt exposed up on the crest of the hill, but during the summer monsoon, they didn’t dare try to sleep in low-lying areas. A storm miles away could send floodwaters rushing down a wash or even across a flat plain, and anyone caught unawares when the flood hit might never be found again.
The men wasted no time dismounting, getting a fire going and some coffee, beans, and biscuits under way, and trying to relax. Tuck shared Turville’s sense of urgency, but the men needed a break. And they really would make better time in the morning, when they could clearly follow the trail, than they would in the dark. Outside the firelight, what seemed like millions of crickets sent up a wall of noise that was almost a physical object, so pervasive was it.
Once coffee was brewed, Hendershott downed a cup in about thirty seconds and poured another one. Halfway through, he set his cup down, rose to his feet, scratched his belly, and announced his intention to piss like a tanked-up mule. He slipped from the circle of light, heading partway down the hill, and was soon lost to the darkness. Tuck could hear him, though, grumbling and scratching, and then heard his rushed stream striking the rocky slope.
When the stream ended, Tuck expected him to find his way back to the fire.
Instead, the man cried out in what sounded like pure terror.
Tuck jumped to his feet. He hadn’t taken off his boots, and he had kept his rifle close at hand. “Fill your hands, boys!” he shouted, snatching up the weapon. He pointed to the west. “Hank, Alf, Darlington, Nickles, you go around that way, see if you can head off whoever it is. Vander Tuig, Winston, you come with me, and we’ll try to flush him toward them.”
Turville was ready in seconds, but Maier insisted on pulling his boots on. The desert was full of thorns and creatures that bit, so Tuck didn’t blame him, but wished he hadn’t doffed them to begin with. Vander Tuig and Darlington followed his orders without hesitation.
Before they had left the fire’s glow, though, there was another pained cry from Hendershott, and then a sound like a sack of meat being dropped from a height, followed by silence. It was too late to help him, Tuck feared.
For a few seconds, he had wondered if Hendershott had really met the killer they were after, or had perhaps stepped on a rattlesnake or a Gila monster or something. But now he smelled a familiar stench, and knew the murderer was nearby.
“Don’t shoot if you can’t see who’s behind him!” he called. “We don’t want to plug each other! But if you get a clear shot, take it! We got to stop this hombre!”
He ran toward where Hendershott’s last sounds had come from, wishing he hadn’t been sitting so near to the fire. He didn’t have his night vision yet, and doubted if the others did. If some posse member didn’t put a round in another in the next few minutes, he’d be pleasantly surprised.
The racket of the men racing down the hill, stumbling, crashing into mesquite or yucca and yowling from the piercing of thorns and sharp-edged leaves like dagger blades, drowned out whatever sounds the killer might have made. A couple of shots were fired, but by wild, inexperienced men shooting out of fear. Then there were more screams, and a grim certainty filled Tuck. Someone else had met the killer, and had fallen, like Hendershott.
The crickets, Tuck noted, had gone silent. “Anybody see him now?” he shouted. “Anyone see the killer?”
His query was greeted by a chorus of negatives. Too many were dying; somehow the killer had an edge in the darkness. “Find the man nearest you, then, and get back to the fire!” he shouted. “If you see the killer, shoot, but don’t go looking for him!”
He headed back up himself and watched the others return in pairs. Turville and Darlington, Maier and Vander Tuig. “Where’s Winston?” Tuck asked. “And Nickles?”
“I heard at least one go down,” Turville said.
“I thought it was two,” Darlington added. “I thought sure I heard Winston start to scream. Then he choked off, like his throat was full of water.”
Or blood, Tuck thought. He didn’t say it. Instead, he walked to the fire’s edge. “Winston!” he called. “Nickles! You men out there?”
No answer came back. A minute later, one cricket started its song again, then more joined in.
“You!” Tuck called. “We’re close, now. You’d best make your peace with whoever you care to. Before another sun sets you’ll be swinging from a gallows!”
It was hard to tell over the night music of insects, but there might have been something like low, quiet laughter mixed in with them.
Before Tuck returned to the firelight, Turville came up beside him. “You did good work there, Captain Bringloe,” he said. “The men followed your orders like they had been drilled and trained.”
“We lost three of ’em,” Tuck said.
“Not your doing. I don’t know what that thing is out there, man or beast or somethin’ else. But like you said, we’re close now. Don’t appear as if we can beat him in the dark, but come daylight we’ll be on his trail.”
“We got to finish him.”
“We will,” the marshal said. “I just wanted to tell you, I was impressed.”
“Thanks.”
Turville stepped away. Tuck stood a few moments longer at the edge of night, wishing his vision could cut through the darkness. He wanted a look at his quarry. He wanted to know if his enemy was human or something else.
He appreciated Hank Turville’s words. His days of giving orders, much less expecting them to be obeyed, were long past. He had missed that, he realized. His plan had been thrown together on the spur of the moment, and it had failed, as those of men in battle often did. He would take more time to develop the next one, if it came to that.
Now he regarded the men sitting around the fire, nursing their wounds, thinking about falle
n comrades. Their eyes were hollow, in the way of men who’ve been through battle and come out of it when others haven’t. These men were merchants, cowboys, laborers, not soldiers. But they had come together for a common purpose, and there was a camaraderie born of that, of riding together and facing death, and living to see another hour or day or decade. They had a mission, and that mission joined them even when their separate lives would not have. That mission had become Tuck’s, too. It was the first time in a very long while that he’d had a goal beyond finding the next drink or a hole to sleep in out of the weather. By bringing him on this quest, Hank Turville had rekindled a sense of duty in him, one that only came, in his experience, from trying to help others without regard for what it might do for himself.
That sense of duty, that camaraderie—these were things he had lost when he’d left the army behind.
And there was something else he’d been missing, but he recognized it when he walked back into the firelight and saw how the men looked at him.
He had almost forgotten it was possible, but here it was.
These men respected him.
That, he hadn’t known for years. That had vanished from his life. Now it was back. Maybe it wouldn’t last long, but he would hold on to it for as long as he could.
It was better, he told himself, than that first splash of whiskey across the tongue and into the throat.
He took his place beside the fire, and he felt a warm glow that came only from within, and he gave it back to these men who had carried guns on his say-so, and put themselves in harm’s way, not for themselves but for a dead whore and a family they hadn’t known.
He would have to thank the marshal, when he had a chance. For making him join the posse, for trusting him with weapons and a horse, and for giving him back something he had thought was lost forever.
That would wait until morning, though. For tonight, he needed some sleep. Tomorrow would be a hard day, and there would be more dying before it was done.
Chapter Thirteen
As a soldier, Delbert Cuttrell had slept on the hard ground, on cold nights and hot, in rain and snow, with dangers human and animal alike lurking about. Now that he was older, though, and in a command position, he greatly preferred sleeping in a bed. Even better, a bed with Sadie’s lush, soft, warm body beside him. Tents and scorpions and snakes and unforgiving earth were suitable for enlisted men and junior officers, he had decided. It toughened them up. Creature comforts distracted the mind from the tasks necessary for survival. At his age, he was thoroughly educated about the threats a soldier might face, and no longer needed the reminders offered by uneasy rest and an aching back.
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