Deadlands--Thunder Moon Rising

by Jeffrey Mariotte

  “Jimmy,” Cuttrell said. “I understand your point. I do. But all I see is a series of murders. Gruesome, ghastly ones, yes. The situation with the mule train, I agree, requires military action, if we had the first clue to what we were responding. But absent a trail we can follow, absent any information at all about who might have been responsible, I’m at a loss as to exactly what to do. The inescapable conclusion was that it was not Apache predation, and our primary purpose here—besides guarding what few mule trains still follow the old Ghost Trail, now that the railroad is in business—is protecting the town and the outlying ranches from Apaches. They’ve been quiet and well behaved lately—”

  “Well behaved for Apaches, that is,” Hannigan said, to a general round of laughter.

  When it died down, Cuttrell continued. “So what is it exactly you propose we do? Someone was murdered, the killer was himself killed. Or perhaps not, since no body was presented. Cowboys died on a ranch that’s failing anyway. If there had been similar killings on the Broken M, I would agree that a response was called for, since Montclair is the most prosperous rancher in the vicinity, and we have contracted with him to supply all the fort’s beef. The new marshal has proven himself to be a poor host to his overnight guests. Do you, Lieutenant McKenna, have any specific plan of action? Do you know who the enemy is we might move against?”

  “Who the enemy is? No, sir,” McKenna replied. “Nor do I know if we’re talking about one enemy, or many. If we can find out who we’re after, I have—”

  Cuttrell cut him off. “Until we know who we’re dealing with, there’s no point in discussing specifics.” He let his gaze wander across the other officers at the table. “If there’s nothing else, gentlemen, let’s declare this meeting adjourned and get to work.”

  The other officers indicated their assent, and with much scraping of chairs and clomping of boots across the hardwood floors, they made their way back to their respective duties. Only McKenna remained behind when they were gone, standing near the door and eyeing Cuttrell.

  “Yes, Jimmy? What is it?” Cuttrell asked.

  “Sir, I’ve received a wire in response to mine. I don’t have the full manifest yet; that’s en route via the railroad. But I’m told positively that there were no girls or women traveling with that mule train. It was all men. Wherever that girl, the one Kuruk calls Little Wing, came from, she wasn’t with the train when it left California.”

  “So they found her along the way?”

  “I don’t think there’s anyone alive who can answer that, Colonel. Except perhaps the girl. Kuruk says she isn’t talking much, and what she does say is most often nonsense. I think whatever happened probably made her lose her mind. If she wasn’t already loopy to begin with.”

  Cuttrell considered the lieutenant’s words. Perhaps the girl would be able to explain her origins at some point, and perhaps not. Either way, she couldn’t remain the army’s problem indefinitely. He would give her another week, he decided, and that only because he didn’t need to assign troopers to watch over her. If she was up to it, she could work as a laundress and remain on the fort. If she hadn’t regained her senses by then, he would turn her over to one of the churches in town, or perhaps to Senora Soto or one of her competitors. “Very well, Jimmy,” he said. “Let me know if you find out any more.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  McKenna remained standing by the door, where he had been. “Is there something else?” Cuttrell asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “Then you’re free to go, Lieutenant.”

  “Yes, sir.” McKenna snapped off a crisp salute. “Thank you, sir.”

  He hurried from the room, leaving Cuttrell alone. He had dismissed Jimmy’s concerns, in the meeting. But that didn’t mean he didn’t share them, to some extent. There was something going on. Whether it was centered on Carmichael or Fort Huachuca remained unclear. But it needed watching, just the same.

  And watch, he would.

  * * *

  McKenna hustled toward the blacksmith’s shop, past the barracks. Sergeant Delahunt had promised a status report on their project today, and McKenna meant to have it, whether Cuttrell cared or not. There was something about taking orders from the colonel that grated on him. It had done so, even before he’d started sleeping with Sadie, but it got worse after. The more she told him how much better he was in bed than her husband, the less respect he had for Cuttrell. If he were any kind of commander, he would be able to satisfy his wife, wouldn’t he?

  Lost in thought, he almost didn’t see Kuruk and the girl. Little Wing, people were calling her. The Apache called his name, and McKenna blinked and stopped short. “Kuruk,” he said, touching his hat’s brim. “Ma’am. The fort treatin’ you well?”

  “Like spun sugar,” she said. McKenna had no idea what she meant by that. But from what he understood, nothing she said made a lick of sense, so he didn’t bother asking for an explanation.

  “Glad to hear it.” To Kuruk, he added, “I’m headin’ over to Delahunt’s. Want to tag along?” The Apache scout got along with the buffalo soldiers better than the white ones, most of the time. He supposed that wasn’t surprising. White men had mistreated the blacks and the Indians pretty much forever.

  “We’re heading into town,” Kuruk answered. “Little Wing needs some things from the store.”

  He didn’t volunteer what sorts of things, and McKenna, figuring they were women’s things, didn’t ask. Kuruk had just about adopted the girl, and that was all right with him. He wasn’t saddled with her, which was all he cared about. He excused himself, and hurried off to find Delahunt.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Wilson Harrell barely looked up when Jed Tibbetts approached his desk. “I’m very busy, Mr. Tibbetts,” he said. “Is there something you need?”

  “Five minutes of your time,” Tibbetts said. He doubted he would get that much, but if he didn’t ask for it he would get even less.

  Harrell stopped fiddling with papers and let his hands rest on the swell of his stomach. “As I said, I’m quite busy today. What is it?”

  “I know you turned me down for a loan,” Tibbetts said. “And I don’t expect you to reconsider. But I just lost my contract with the army, so things are bound to be tight until I can figger something out. I wanted you to know that I’ll pay what I owe. I’m a man of my word. But my payments might have to be smaller for a spell, and farther between.”

  Tibbetts wasn’t sure what to expect. The banker had already indicated his utter lack of interest in the J Cross T’s survival. Tibbetts believed, though, that he’d want to see the ranch last until the bank loan was repaid. He hoped that by coming clean with Harrell, they could work out some sort of arrangement.

  So he was surprised when Harrell waved his hand to stop him from continuing. “I’m sorry, Mr. Tibbetts,” he said. “I can’t even have this conversation with you.”

  “What does that mean, Wilson? I’ll pay it back, but I gotta—”

  “Mr. Tibbetts!” Harrell said forcefully. “I can’t talk to you about this. This bank no longer holds your note.”

  Tibbetts must not have heard him right. “I’m sorry?”

  Harrell blew out a sigh. “I’ve sold your note, Mr. Tibbetts. You no longer owe a penny to this bank.”

  “Sold it? Without asking me?”

  “It really is not within your purview. That note is a negotiable instrument, transferrable at will.”

  “First I’ve heard about that.”

  “Perhaps you didn’t read the agreement thoroughly.”

  “Sold it to who?”

  Harrell picked up a stack of papers from his desk and straightened out the edges, tapping them on the desktop until they were neatly aligned. “To Jasper Montclair,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.

  Again, Tibbetts thought he had misheard. “To who?”

  “Montclair,” Harrell said, louder this time. “I sold your note to Jasper Montclair. He made a generous offer, and frankly, I had to doubt your ab
ility ever to repay it.”

  Tibbetts felt the world drop out from under him. He was dizzy, his head spinning in fast, tight circles. “You did what? To Montclair? How could you do that?”

  “I assure you, it’s perfectly legal. It’s all spelled out in the contract you signed.”

  “Wilson, I didn’t read that. You’re a man of honor. I take you at your word. You told me that was a deal between me and your bank—you didn’t say anything about turnin’ it over to somebody else. Least of all someone like Montclair. You understand he’s my competitor, right?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Tibbetts. What’s done is done. You have no further business with this bank. You’ll have to arrange a payment plan with Mr. Montclair.”

  Tibbetts made his way to the door. He was half-blind with panic, and the world spun crazily beneath his feet. With every step he thought he might fall down and never hit bottom. Jasper Montclair? He might as well have put a bullet in his own gut after all.

  He was done. Montclair would make repayment of the loan impossible. He didn’t want the money. He wanted the J Cross T. He always had. It abutted his ranch, blocking it from spreading all the way across the valley floor to the river. He’d made several offers, and Tibbetts had always turned him down, refused to entertain the possibility of selling. In hard times, he had occasionally wished he’d made a different decision, but that never lasted for more than a day or two. He and Edith had scraped by, with the help of good grazing land and hands he could rely on.

  But he’d always counted on the bank to carry him through the leanest times. Now he didn’t even have that. Instead, he owed money to Jasper Montclair; money that, given present circumstances, he couldn’t begin to repay.

  He’d have to let Edith know to start thinking about where she wanted to go next. Now that Montclair owned his note, the J Cross T’s days were numbered.

  * * *

  Mr. Tibbetts had told Cale to stay with the wagon. Cale could tell the rancher was despondent, and had been since he had delivered the colonel’s news yesterday. Tibbetts had hardly said two words on the way into town. But his first stop had been the bank, and Cale hoped that meant he had a plan of some kind. He’d overheard Mr. and Mrs. Tibbetts talking the other day, and he knew the ranch could be in trouble if something wasn’t done. Still, he couldn’t quite conceive of anything truly disastrous occurring. Mr. Tibbetts had weathered some bad storms, but had always come out all right. He would this time, too.

  He just had to.

  Cale was trying to keep his mind off his boss’s troubles by watching the townsfolk go about their business. He had never lived in a town, and couldn’t quite imagine what everybody did all day. It looked as if they bustled around without purpose, in one door and out another, sometimes shopping for things nobody really needed, occasionally climbing on board a train or a stagecoach for a journey to some distant locale.

  Then he saw that girl, the one he’d noticed at the fort. She was walking with the same Indian, and he was carrying a package all wrapped up in paper. Cale didn’t know if that meant he had bought something, or she had and he was just toting it for her. They were the object of considerable attention from the townsfolk; people stopped in their tracks and stared, then spoke in hushed tones to one another. Cale figured she wouldn’t even notice him, with all those folks making such a fuss. But she saw him looking, and this time he didn’t turn away, although he felt his cheeks flushing under her gaze.

  She didn’t turn away, either. Instead, she smiled.

  He took that as an invitation. He’d never talked to girls much, but he’d daydreamed about them plenty. And in those imaginings, the girls had never smiled at him the way this one did. Her whole face got involved, mouth and eyes and cheeks.

  He hopped down from the wagon and walked up to her. Or near her, anyhow. He stopped about three feet away and glanced at the Indian. The Indian gave a quick nod and stepped back a pace.

  “Howdy,” Cale said. “My name’s Cale. Cale Ceniceros. That’s a Mexican name, on account of how I’m half Mexican and half white, on my momma’s side.”

  “Sunshine,” she said. “Birdsong.”

  “That’s your name?” Cale asked. “Sunshine Birdsong?”

  “Happy-making,” she said. The smile hadn’t left her face.

  “Those things make you happy? Sunshine and birdsong?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “What’s your name? If you don’t mind me askin’.”

  She touched her breast. “Little Wing.”

  “That sounds like an Indian name. You’re not Indian, are you?”

  She looked over her shoulder at the Apache. “She don’t know her name,” the man said. “We call her Little Wing. She likes it, anyhow.”

  “It’s pretty,” Cale said. He had already run out of conversation. “Pretty,” he said again. He was not just referring to her name, but couldn’t bring himself to elaborate.

  “The sky in the morning,” she said. “A flower as it opens. The first snow on a meadow.”

  Cale couldn’t follow her train of thought at first. Then he realized what she meant, or hoped he did. “Things that are pretty?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re pretty.”

  She raised a hand to her face, felt the line of her cheekbone with the backs of her fingers, then ran them down her jaw and neck. He couldn’t help wishing that was his hand. “Pretty,” she said.

  “Yep,” Cale said. Again, he felt like the conversation had run out of steam, and he wasn’t sure where to go with it. And Mr. Tibbetts could be coming out of the bank at any moment. He needed to say something, anything, that would allow for a continuance at some future time. He didn’t understand much of what she said, but he loved watching her say it. The way her face moved as she spoke, her expressions pure and unguarded, her smile so genuine it was like brightest daylight; these were things he had never seen or expected to see, but having seen them he didn’t want to stop. The sound of her voice was like birdsong, or the trickle of a cool mountain stream on a hot, thirsty day, and he didn’t want to stop hearing it. He had never felt this way before, about anything or anybody. But he didn’t want it to end.

  “Do you reckon I could call on you sometime?” he asked. That was a crazy question. He didn’t own his own horse, didn’t have but a few nickels to his name at any given time. And with the ranch problems, he doubted Mr. Tibbetts would be able to pay him, much less provide the extra it would take to buy some decent clothes and pay a visit like a real gentleman would. He would never be anything but a poor, dumb cowboy, nobody a beautiful girl like her would look at twice.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Yes?” Cale echoed. “You mean it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can call on you?”

  She grinned, then tapped her teeth with her fingertips. When she did, she wore a curious expression. That and the way she had touched her face made Cale think maybe she didn’t even know what she looked like; she was exploring herself with her hands, trying to cement her own image in her mind. Maybe she didn’t have a mirror. “Yes,” she said at last.

  He wasn’t entirely sure she had understood the question. But then, he hadn’t understood much of what she’d said, and that didn’t bother him one bit.

  “At the fort?” he asked.

  “She’ll be there,” the Indian said. “We got to go, now.”

  “My name’s Cale,” he said. “So she doesn’t forget.”

  “We’ll remember,” the Indian said.

  “Bye, Little Wing,” Cale said.

  “A lion’s teeth,” she said as the Apache led her away. “Ice on the river. Fire through the trees.”

  She was still muttering as she walked back toward the fort, but Cale couldn’t hear her anymore. “Things that are pretty,” he said to himself. But as he climbed back up onto the buckboard, another thought came to him. “No,” he corrected himself. “Things that are dangerous.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Waiting
for the undertaker to collect Calhoun’s body, Tuck studied the scene in a way he hadn’t before. What he couldn’t figure out was how it had been done. The cell door had been locked, and remained so. The key was in his pocket, though it was possible that Kanouse had one. The cell was eight feet deep, so nobody outside it could have strung Calhoun up from there, much less gutted him. Whoever had done it had to have been inside the cell. Which meant Tuck had been sleeping far more soundly than he ever had when sober.

  He unlocked the cell door and went in, shooing away flies as he did. He couldn’t tell much of anything from the wound. The edges looked fairly clean, which implied a sharp blade of some kind. But the body had been there for hours, drying out, and the wound’s sides were kind of curling up, which made even that guess suspect.

  The rope around Calhoun’s neck was thin, braided. The flesh of his neck had folded over it, or it had sliced deeply enough into the skin that Tuck couldn’t see much of it. Between there and the window was a length of about two and a half feet. It was tied to two of the bars, wrapped first around one and then the other, then knotted between them. The whole thing couldn’t have been more than about four feet long.

  And the end of the knot was on the inside of the cell, so again, it looked like it had been done from this side. That was almost a given, though—Tuck didn’t see how anybody would have been able to loop it around Calhoun’s neck from outside. They’d have to have been standing on a twelve-foot ladder, for one thing.

  All of which led to one conclusion. Somebody—probably Mo Kanouse—had slipped him something to knock him out. Probably in the coffee, he figured. Kanouse pouring him a cup should have been his first clue. The deputy would be more likely to throw a cup of scalding coffee on him than to serve him one.