But he would do it, and he wanted her to know that.
So he was glad she had refused his offer. It was a settled matter, now.
Unless it appeared that whatever it was, whatever evil force was out there, was coming close to her.
Then, he would either fight it and kill it, or walk away from the ranch and the livestock and everything else that made him want to get up in the morning, in order to keep her safe.
He walked over to the chair and gave her a kiss on the cheek. She twitched her head away from him, and wiped at it with her hand as soon as he was done.
But when he glanced back at her, he saw that she was beaming.
* * *
Cale had been in the kitchen of the little ranch house, finishing the lunch that Mrs. Tibbetts had made for him, when he overheard some of their conversation from the other room. What he heard, he didn’t like. Sell the ranch? They owned it, and could do what they liked with it. A cowboy was always aware that his employment could be cut short at any time, by money troubles or injury or illness, or simply because a ranch owner or foreman decided he didn’t like your face.
But he couldn’t imagine a place he could ever like working more than here, or an employer he would be more comfortable with. If they did sell, he would lose what few roots he had in the world.
He didn’t know what he might be able to do against whoever was murdering on Tibbetts land. But if it would keep his only family here and safe, he would try to come up with something. He had to.
He didn’t think he could take losing another home.
Chapter Fifteen
When the posse came upon the dusty little village, they weren’t sure which side of the border it was on. There wasn’t much to it: a few low buildings, including one that had obviously been a church, hunkered around a central plaza. Beyond the far side of the plaza was a big barn or livery stable. All the structures except the barn were built from adobe, from which any paint had long since faded, and sharp corners had been rounded by rain and sun and wind. Many of the walls were pockmarked, and Tuck realized what had happened—Apache depredation, no doubt. The pocks were bullet holes, and the townsfolk had either been slaughtered, or given up fighting and moved to someplace where the government could offer better protection. No sign announced the place, and none of the men had ever seen it before; they had simply come up out of a depression in a valley and there it was, baking in the midafternoon sun.
It was a forgotten hamlet. Weeds grew along what had once been roads. Windows were broken or missing altogether; doorways were gaping entries into shadow. No one had lived in this town for years, Tuck was sure.
But between the church and the little building beside it was a hitching rail with a horse tied to it. The animal had its head down, munching at the weeds, and barely bothered to look up when the posse stopped at the edge of the town.
“What do you figger, Bringloe?” Marshal Turville asked. “That his?”
“Only one set of tracks leads here,” Tuck pointed out. “Pretty much has to be.”
“He is tired of running,” Maier suggested.
“Or he means to kill us all here,” Tuck said.
“He can try,” Turville said.
“So far he’s been damn good at it.”
“There’s five of us and one of him,” Darlington said.
“Hasn’t bothered him so far,” Tuck reminded him.
“If he’s here, he’s dead,” Turville said. He dismounted, and bade the other men do the same. They looped their reins around a post at the town’s edge.
“Spread out,” Turville ordered, quickly gauging the width of the road. “Four feet between each man. He wants to shoot us, make him show what he’s got.”
The men did as the marshal said. Turville took the center position, Tuck to his right, Darlington right of him. Maier and Vander Tuig were on Turville’s left. Each carried a rifle and wore a pistol. Turville wore two.
Tuck had his doubts about the whole idea. The killer hadn’t shot anybody yet, to his knowledge. He couldn’t swear the man he’d seen had a gun at all. But he’d attacked them in the dark, moving without being seen, and had killed multiple armed men. Maybe he had a reason for making a stand here, in daylight. If he did, Tuck didn’t think he wanted to know what it was.
By now, the killer surely knew they were here. They hadn’t taken any pains to hide their approach, and they’d been speaking in normal tones since then. The town was small and silent. He was inside one of those dozen or so buildings, watching from a window or doorway. Tuck tried to check each in turn, but there were too many, and the darkness inside them was impenetrable from this distance. As soon as he looked away from one, the guy might be there, or there might be a gun barrel poking through.
They were almost to the plaza when the first shot rang out. Piet Vander Tuig took a step back, as if he had been pushed in the chest. But when he took another halting half step, Tuck looked and saw blood running down his face from a hole in his forehead. “He’s shot!” Tuck cried as the man sank to the ground. “Find cover!”
Darlington dropped to a crouch and raised his rifle. He fired two shots toward the stable at the end of the street. Tuck was racing for the shelter of a recessed doorway, but he saw Darlington jerk twice, and heard shots at the same moment. Darlington started to rise to his feet when he jerked again. This time his knees crumpled and he pitched forward, blood running into the road.
“The stable!” Turville shouted. “He’s in the loft!”
The marshal and Maier had taken cover behind the corner of a building. As long as they stayed where they were, and Tuck remained in the doorway, the killer couldn’t get to them.
But they couldn’t get to him, either.
He did have a gun, after all, and he was pretty handy with it. All the horses, including his own, were in clear view, and in range if the man had a rifle. If he had another way out, maybe a horse hidden in the livery, or behind it, he could strand them here. Or he could wait until they showed themselves, and kill them one by one.
Or they could try to outwait him.
Tuck wasn’t very confident of that option. They didn’t know what he had in terms of supplies. They didn’t know if there was another horse, though there had been no tracks visible from the other end of town. He might have met allies here who could, even now, be sneaking around the posse.
Eventually, the sun would set. The man was better in the dark than they were, by a clear margin. Even if it didn’t rain—and clouds were building up in the south, headed their way—if they were still here when night fell, they were all dead. Tuck was as sure of that as he had ever been of anything.
“Hank!” he called. “We got to get in there! We let it wait till dark, we’re goners!”
“I was just thinkin’ that!” Turville replied. “Got any ideas?”
“I was hoping you did!” Tuck readied his Winchester and leaned out of the doorway. He saw movement in the loft, and fired a shot. It went high. He ducked back in as two return shots chipped the adobe beside him.
He’d only had a glimpse of the man in the loft, at a distance, and the man had been in shadow.
But it was the same one he had seen outside Senora Soto’s that night, coming down the stairs. He was certain of it. He couldn’t have said why—something about his presence, more than any specific visual similarity.
Didn’t matter.
“That’s him,” he said.
“The feller you saw?” Turville asked.
“Yep. Same man.”
“We got to go around,” Turville said.
“Around, how?”
“We go up this main road, he’ll kill us. But Alf and me can go around this building, up the back side of the next couple. He shouldn’t be able to see us until we’re almost there.”
“Could be,” Tuck said. Their presence wouldn’t come as a surprise—he doubted if much could surprise the man in the loft—but they’d be closer, anyway.
He tried the door next to him, which
was solid, and closed, unlike most he’d seen in this little town. Nothing barred it on the other side. He pushed it and looked in.
A few pieces of furniture had been left behind when the place had been abandoned. Sand and sticks and other desert detritus had blown in through a window, and spider webs were everywhere. If there was an opening on the other side, a window or another door, then he could loop around the church and come at the stable from the opposite angle as Turville and Maier.
He waved the rifle ahead of him to clear away the webbing. A spider bigger than his palm scurried onto a wall when its web was disturbed. A doorway, thickly webbed, led into a dark inner room. Tuck swept away as much of the webbing as he could and stepped through. Tendrils clung to his face and neck, and he tried to wipe them away, hoping there were no snakes or spiders bigger than the one he’d just seen, lurking inside.
Across the room a thin line of light indicated an opening of some kind. He made for it, found a shutter over a window, its hinges frozen by dirt or rust. He pounded at it with the flat of his hand, then the butt of his rifle, aware that the noise he was making could be heard throughout the town. That might, he decided, impact the effectiveness of their plan.
But it worked. The shutter opened enough for him to grab it and wrench it from the window—again, not soundlessly. Broken glass faced him. As long as he was making a racket anyway, he smashed out the rest of it with the rifle.
Then he hurried back through the house, ignoring the webbing that he picked up on the way. At the doorway again, he saw Turville staring his way. “You knockin’ the place down?” the marshal asked.
“Just opening up a passageway. I can get out the far side, go around the church, and come up on the other side of the stable from you two.”
“Sounds good,” Turville said. “Let’s go now. When we get there, we try to get inside. He’ll have the high ground, but there’s three of us.”
“Leave Alf outside the back door,” Tuck suggested. “If he tries to go out the back, from either level, someone’s got to be there to shoot him.”
“I will try,” Maier said. “I have never shot someone before.”
Tuck wished he had brought that fact up sooner, but this wasn’t the time to discuss it. “Just point at his chest and pull the trigger. Don’t stop until he’s dead.”
Maier looked uncertain. But there wasn’t much choice. They were the only ones left. He knew Turville would fight on until he dropped. He had started the posse under duress, but now that so many of his own townsfolk had died, and done so because they rode with him, he was determined to put an end to it. And Tuck felt the same way. If Maier needed to shoot, he’d better be able to do it.
If he didn’t, he would die, too.
“Let’s move,” Turville said. “We’ll try to get to the front door unseen, and we’ll go in once Alf is around the rear.”
Tuck nodded his assent and went back into the darkened house once more. This time, he kept going, through the far window. Behind the house was what might once have been a garden patch, but the desert reclaimed all things, he was learning, and it was doing the same here.
He couldn’t see the plaza or the livery, which meant the killer couldn’t see him. He started toward that end of town, past a couple more small adobe structures. Then he had to dash across an open space to reach the cover of the church. As he rounded its bulk, he came into view of the stable. Once he moved again, depending on which way the killer was looking, he could easily be seen until he was hugging the stable’s wall.
Easily seen, and easily shot.
Chapter Sixteen
Still, there was nothing else for it. He paused at the corner, eyed the loft. He saw no movement, no trace of the killer.
He bolted from cover and raced across the open stretch. As he ran, he spotted Turville and Maier doing the same. Tuck and the marshal both stopped on this side, pressing themselves flat against the wall. Maier kept going.
Turville gave Tuck a little nod. So far, so good, Tuck figured it meant. No shots had come from above, no sign indicated that they’d been spotted. The man hadn’t fired a round in some time. There was a chance, however slight, that one of their bullets had found him, or that he had simply hightailed it out of there. Cautiously, they made their way toward each other, toward the stable door. Each watched the loft opening, his rifle pointed in that direction in case of any motion.
Soon they had reached the door, which stood partly open. To show themselves at that gap could mean catching a bullet, but it had to be done.
Turville took the chance. He peered in. No bullet came. After almost a minute, he waved, turned back to Tuck. “Maier’s there,” he whispered. “I’m goin’ in.”
“Watch yourself,” Tuck replied. “I’m right behind.”
Turville slipped inside. Tuck followed. Dust motes danced in the slivers of light falling through the open doors on either side. Here and there, hay spilled out of stalls that hadn’t known horses in years. The place still smelled like the animals that had once inhabited it, but with an overlying stink of rodents, bats, and more.
And one more thing: the sickening, sour scent that Tuck had become all too familiar with. The stink of the killer.
He eyed the ladder up to the loft, and the opening there, and the gaps in the floor that would allow the killer to see them, though they couldn’t see him. He would fire at the first hint of motion from up there. But he couldn’t discount the possibility that the man had come down, either. There were too many places to watch; he couldn’t possibly keep his eyes on them all at once. He and the marshal moved carefully, checking each stall they passed. They worked toward the ladder, knowing death could visit at any moment.
Even so, when it came, it was a shock.
Tuck’s eyes were becoming accustomed to the dim light. He checked the stalls to the right of the central passage, while Turville watched the other side. He had just passed one, empty but for the wisps of straw and rat droppings left behind, when Turville cried out.
Tuck spun around, holding the Winchester at waist level and ready to shoot. Turville blocked his shot, though, and for a moment, his view. But the marshal dropped back a step, bringing up his own gun, and what Tuck saw then made no sense.
A plank was missing at the back of the stall, creating a space a few inches across and nearly two feet high.
Something squeezed through that space, like a rat slipping through an opening that seemed hardly large enough for a tiny mouse. This something was dark, like a shadow unmoored from its source. On this side of the gap, it was becoming solid again and taking on its full size.
Turville fired, levered, fired again. The bullets had little visible effect. The black shape drew back momentarily, but then kept coming, coalescing into something vaguely human-shaped. But not human. Its hiss was an awful noise, loud enough to hurt Tuck’s ears. Details were hard to make out in the half dark, but it seemed to be all gnashing teeth and claws and burning yellow eyes, and despite the marshal’s rounds, it set upon him, slashing and tearing. Turville started screaming.
Tuck sidestepped to get a better angle and opened fire. He was screaming himself by then, from horror and rage. He put one bullet after another into the thing. Finally, it released Turville. The marshal dropped to the ground, limp, and the creature turned to Tuck.
Tuck kept firing. His bullets had an impact—he saw the thing jerk in evident pain when each one struck—but they didn’t stop it altogether. When the rifle was empty, he whisked it around and swung it like a club. It smashed into the dark shape, and Tuck was relieved to feel the shock in his arms and shoulders, testifying to the thing’s physical mass.
If it was alive, if it had shape and weight, it could be killed.
It charged at Tuck. When it came, cold air surrounded him, as if he had opened an icebox freshly filled. That horrific smell nearly made him gag. He reached for the knife he wore, and freed it from its scabbard as the creature got a claw into his left arm.
Tuck slashed out with the knif
e, felt it cut solid flesh. The creature’s hiss changed to a cry of alarm. It kept coming, claws gripping Tuck’s shoulders, tearing through clothes and skin, trying to get close enough to use those vicious teeth. He stabbed upward with the knife, catching the thing under the chin. He drove the point home and yanked it toward him.
The claws fell away. Tuck wrenched the knife free and stabbed again, in the middle of the dark mass. When he felt the resistance of solid flesh he pushed harder, breaking past it. Again and again, he pierced the thing’s outer skin. It tried to come at him, but it was weakening. Tuck didn’t stop. He raised the knife and drove it home over and over, until finally the thing lay lifeless on the stable floor.
When it did, he drew the knife from it again, tossed it aside, and went to Turville. “Hank,” he said. “Are you—”
The marshal didn’t let him finish the sentence. “I’m done, Bringloe,” he said. His voice trembled, barely audible even in the fresh silence. “So cold.”
Tuck was amazed Turville was speaking at all. His chest had been torn open. Blood slicked him and the ground and gushed from the wound like a creek through a ruptured dam. “Maier!” Tuck cried. “Get in here and help me with Hank!”
The back door opened with a squeal and Maier rushed in. “Is he hurt?”
“He’s dying,” Tuck said. His first words to Maier had been a lie—there was no helping Turville now, except to offer comfort until death took away his pain. “He beat the thing, most of the way, but it got him.”
“Ach, Hank,” Maier said. “You’re…”
He didn’t finish the thought. There was really nothing to say.
But Turville wasn’t finished yet. His right hand flopped to his breast. Tuck thought at first he meant to close the wound, though it was too late for that. Instead, the marshal’s hand closed around his badge and yanked it from his vest. “Your … hand, Bringloe,” Turville said.
Tuck offered his right hand, not sure what the marshal wanted with it. Turville pressed the badge into it, the points of the star biting into Tuck’s palm. “You got to be the … law, now, Tuck,” he said. “Br … bravest man I ever knowed. Carmichael … needs your kind. Needs you.”
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