Deadlands--Thunder Moon Rising

by Jeffrey Mariotte

  “There are still a few smaller ranchers around, right?” he asked.

  “A handful, but fewer all the time. Jed Tibbetts’s land adjoins Montclair’s. He had one of the bigger outfits until Montclair came in. He’s always refused to sell.”

  “Is Montclair a good rancher, or just a rich one?”

  “His place is successful, partly just because it’s so big and he’s got so many head. I never got the impression he was really interested in ranching, though, so much as in owning land and livestock. It’s like a game for him, something fun to do with his daddy’s money.”

  “Not the type of game I’d be familiar with, I reckon,” Tuck said. “But it takes all kinds, doesn’t it?”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Missy had enjoyed talking to Tucker Bringloe. He was a handsome man, once the stink of defeat had been washed off him. For a drunk he was still in good physical condition. His blue eyes were clear and his jaw was solid and he struck her as someone not to be taken lightly. Drink had damaged him, but it hadn’t destroyed him yet, and if he could keep away from it maybe he would come back stronger than ever.

  She was, she reflected, fairly expert in the ways a person could ruin herself. She was skilled, and she made decent money, but she was under no illusions that hers was the kind of life her late mother had wanted for her, back in Missouri. Or that she had dreamed of for herself.

  Before she reached Senora Soto’s, the young woman Missy had seen talking to Tuck earlier came out of a shop. The Apache man trailed behind her, burdened with more packages than before. “You’re having a little shopping spree,” Missy said. “Are you enjoying our town?”

  “Lovely,” the young lady said.

  “It’s not bad. I like the mountains.”

  “You are lovely.”

  “Well, thank you. I’m Missy. Missy Haynes.”

  “Little Wing.”

  “Delighted to meet you, Little Wing,” Missy said.

  “She would be happy,” Little Wing said. “You are lovely and healthy and you do not let the men harm you.” She touched her own forehead, then put her hand over her heart. “Here or here.”

  “She who?” Missy asked. “Who would be happy?”

  Little Wing didn’t answer.

  “Who?” Missy asked again. Then it struck her. “My mother?”

  Little Wing’s smile never faltered. She nodded once. “You do what you must. You make the best of it. You stay strong.”

  “Who are you?” Missy demanded.

  “Little Wing.”

  “Well, Little Wing, stay…” She had been about to tell Little Wing to stay out of her head. The idea that this total stranger could have known she was thinking about her mother—and what exactly she was thinking—was disturbing. But the young woman was right. She hadn’t sought out the life she had now, but once she had realized it was the only course open to her—short of returning to Missouri and telling her mother she’d been right all along, that she couldn’t find her own way in the world—she had been determined to make the best of it. She watched her money carefully, she was careful with the clients, and all things considered, she was doing better than she’d ever expected.

  How Little Wing could have known any of that, she couldn’t say.

  But she had almost forgotten it herself. Little Wing’s unexpected reminder was welcome. “You’re quite remarkable, Little Wing,” Missy said. Then, to the Apache, she added, “Is she always like this?”

  “More and more,” he said. “I don’t understand it, either. But it’s fun to watch.”

  “She might want to be careful. Not everybody wants to know everything about themselves.”

  “I think she knows,” the man said. “She knows who’s ready to listen.”

  “You’re probably right,” Missy said. “It’s good to meet you, Little Wing. I hope we can talk again sometime.”

  Little Wing smiled and nodded her head so briskly that her long dark hair bounced around. “We will,” she said. “We will.”

  Somehow, Missy couldn’t bring herself to doubt the truth of that.

  * * *

  Montclair always felt better when he was back on his own land. He had amassed more than six thousand acres so far. That wasn’t enough, but it was a start. And as the valley floor rose and became mountain, nobody had staked any claim to the land. It was thickly wooded at the lower elevations, with oak and maple predominant. Higher still, evergreens clung to the slopes until the bare rock of the craggy peaks resisted even their hardy roots. It was no one’s land, useless for ranching, so Montclair counted it as his own.

  As he rode toward his ranch headquarters, he admired the changes being wrought around him. A rider crossing onto his spread for the first time wouldn’t notice anything at the perimeter of the property. The high desert landscape of wild grass spotted with skyward-reaching yuccas and erupting mesquites and round clumps of creosote bush seemed to last almost forever.

  But that rider would soon learn otherwise. As the valley dipped toward its center, where the San Pedro River bisected it, subtle changes would begin to be evident. Different varieties of cactus, sparse in the valley’s rich grasslands, grew bigger and closer together, creating nearly impenetrable walls of thorn that could shred the unwary traveler. If he were paying close enough attention, he might even see that the cacti edged together when some unwary soul tried to pass through.

  Creosote bush typically grew in circles, each bush propagating a new one beside it and forming a green ring that blossomed with yellow in the spring. The rider might notice that the creosote bush deep in Montclair’s property didn’t quite grow in rings, but he would have had to have the vantage point of one of the buzzards that soared overhead constantly—because there was always something dying on his land—to have seen the shapes they formed instead: symbols from ancient books never meant for human tongues to read aloud, from forbidden rites, from scratchings found inside unholy mausoleums and charnel houses. From that same vantage point, he might have seen that a deep-cut, sandy wash outside the property was transformed on the inside by red rocks and soil, until it looked like a vein carving its bloody way across the earth.

  On the Broken M, the creatures that died were predated by buzzards, coyotes, wolves, and more, but their bones were never carried away. Some parts of the property resembled ossuaries, their contents spilled across the landscape.

  Montclair rode over the land, admiring the changes that had been wrought, and were still happening—the leaves on that agave, its tip spearing the sky, for instance, had always been bladelike, sharp and serrated, but before the edges hadn’t been crimson, as if running with fresh blood.

  It was a work in progress, but that progress pleased Montclair. There was more to do, much more. But things were changing faster than they ever had, as if having reached a certain point, the changes themselves generated more. Montclair didn’t know precisely how the land would look when the process was finished—if it ever would be—but he took pride in what had been accomplished to date.

  All of it was leading toward a certain moment, and that moment came nearer every day. If he didn’t own the Tibbetts spread in time, he would have to wait another year.

  He didn’t think that would happen, though. Every portent was favorable, every indication suggested that things were falling into place.

  He was, after all, only fulfilling the role he had been born to play. By manufacturing weapons and ammunition, his father had spread death—bringing fire into the world, in a manner of speaking. Now the son was the new Prometheus, bringing light instead of heat. His gift would be knowledge, and once given the world would never be the same.

  There still might be obstacles: that new marshal, for one. He wasn’t sure how to read the man, and that rarely happened. Turville could be used, and that was often helpful. Montclair had thought Bringloe would be the same; perhaps more so, given his usual state of inebriation.

  But there was a core to the man that had started to present itself. Any trouble h
e created could be overcome; however, the idea that he could make trouble was itself disturbing.

  Montclair had already taken some steps to control Bringloe, but if the man got in the way, he would have to be dealt with in a more comprehensive fashion.

  Maybe his bones would join those already littering the desert floor.

  That thought made Montclair smile. So did the sight of his ranch house, up on the next ridge.

  Chapter Thirty

  Tired of losing hands, Jed Tibbetts had pulled in all his cowboys from the range and told them to stay together in the bunkhouse for the night. Whatever happened to the livestock would happen, but at least Tibbetts would not be responsible for more dead men.

  Cale supported the rancher’s decision. There weren’t that many hands left to begin with: himself, Marlon, Biggs, Stratford, and the two men Tibbetts had hired in town the other day, Keller and Rose, neither of whom were much good in the saddle. A few hands had up and quit over the past few days, and Tibbetts had sent the men borrowed from the Broken M back to Montclair. Cale had seen the anguish in the rancher’s face as he considered what he was doing. Tibbetts understood that the ranch was teetering on the edge of failure, but decided to place the lives of human beings above the potential profit he could make on his beeves.

  Ordinarily when there were that many men in the bunkhouse there would have been laughter, games, music. Arguments or fistfights might break out. Tonight, there was none of that. The men were quiet, still, paying one another no mind but each alone with his own thoughts and fears. The smells of tobacco and sweat filled the air. Cale was trying to read a book Mrs. Tibbetts had loaned him. It was called Roughing It, and it was by a writer named Mark Twain, who described the west that Cale knew with great humor and insight. Most times Cale had a chance to read it, he was immediately drawn into the words, but on this night he had difficulty concentrating, and found himself reading the same passage over and over without really taking it in. Finally, he closed the book and put it under his bunk. He slipped on his boots and tugged on a jacket that had become tight in the arms and shoulders and short in the sleeves over the past year or so.

  “You goin’ somewheres?” Bill Marlon asked.

  “Just over to look in on the Tibbettses,” Cale said.

  “Jed tole us to stay indoors.”

  “It ain’t but a few steps to the house, Bill.”

  Marlon shrugged. “Your neck, not mine.”

  A couple of brief downpours had slammed the ranch that afternoon, and the ground between the bunkhouse and the main house was muddy and slick. Cale slipped once, catching himself on his hands and one knee. Half covered in mud, he considered going back to the bunkhouse after all.

  Instead, he wiped the mud from his hands on trousers that were already coated with it and continued to the house. He would just stand outside the door and make sure they were safe.

  When he rapped on the door, Mr. Tibbetts opened it, looked out at him, and said, “Come on in here, boy. You’re a right mess. Edith, get Cale a towel or some such!”

  “I shouldn’t,” Cale said.

  “Nonsense,” Tibbetts said. “Scrape some of that mud off your boots and get inside.”

  Cale obeyed the man’s instructions. Soon, he’d wiped off most of the mud and was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of hot coffee. “The men gettin’ by all right?” Tibbetts asked him.

  “They’re pretty quiet,” Cale reported. “But I think they’re glad to be inside. They all seen what can happen out on the range.”

  “I’ve seen too much of it,” Tibbetts said. “I won’t see any more. I’ll let this ranch fall apart around my ears before I’ll let another man die for it.”

  “I hope it don’t come to that, Mr. Tibbetts. Working here is about the best life I can imagine.”

  Mrs. Tibbetts laughed. She was standing at a washbasin. Mr. Tibbetts sat across from Cale at the table. “You ought to imagine better than this, Cale,” she said. “Let your mind wander. You can’t do a thing in life without you can imagine it first.”

  “I reckon that’s true,” Cale said. He had been impressed, during the time he had known the Tibbettses, with how smart she was. He couldn’t figure out how she knew so much. She’d told him it came from reading books and paying attention to the world around her, but some of it just seemed to come from her own thoughts.

  Cale was sipping his coffee and trying to think of what to say next when he heard a strange noise outside, like the rush of feet across hard ground. Except there was no hard ground out there, just squishy mud. “What was that?” he asked, putting the cup down on the table so hard that some of the liquid splashed out.

  “No tellin’,” Mr. Tibbetts said.

  “I’ll take a look.”

  “No! Cale, you stay put.”

  “Jed’s right, boy,” Mrs. Tibbetts added. “It was probably just the wind blowing something around.”

  “Yeah,” Cale said. “Probably.” He didn’t believe it, though. His heart was hammering, and when he reached for the cup again, his hands were shaking so much he didn’t dare pick it up. Mr. Tibbetts went to the kitchen window and peered out into the darkness.

  Before Cale’s hands had stopped quivering, the night erupted with other sounds, these more easily identified. They were the terrified shrieks of grown men and the cracks of multiple gunshots.

  Cale knew what Tibbetts would do before the rancher even made a move. He bolted from the chair and raced to the door, throwing himself in front of it. Tibbetts spun away from the window and started for the door, but Mrs. Tibbetts threw her arms around him from behind and tried to hold him back. “No, Jed!” she cried.

  “But … those boys!”

  “They’ll fend for themselves or they won’t,” Cale said. “You can’t help ’em now!”

  Jed Tibbetts kept edging toward the door, dragging his wife behind him. “I got to try.”

  The gunfire died out, as did the screams. The silence that followed was even worse. “It’s too late,” Cale said. “They probably saw a wolf or something, and shot it.”

  Tibbetts’s shoulders slumped and his face seemed to break apart, the pieces losing all cohesion. “You know that ain’t true,” he said.

  “I don’t know a thing,” Cale argued. “Neither do you. Except I know that you going out there won’t help them, and Mrs. Tibbetts would just about die if she lost you.”

  “I would,” she agreed.

  “Anyhow, you’d have to go through me, and I ain’t moving.”

  “All right, damn it!” Tibbetts said. He shook off his wife’s arms and sat heavily at the table. “You’re right, I’m too late. Whatever’s done is done.” He lowered his head, shaking it slowly, sadly. Cale didn’t realize he was weeping until his shoulders began to hitch. “Those boys,” he said between sobs. “Those damn old boys.”

  * * *

  Jack O’Beirne carried a basin of dirty water into the alley behind Soto’s to dump it. Senora Soto would only allow him to wash glasses in the same water for so long, then she insisted it had to be changed out or the glasses wouldn’t really be clean. “Just because you can’t see the dirt,” she often said, “doesn’t mean it’s not there.”

  He liked his job and he liked his boss, so although hauling basins of water around was not a particularly pleasant task, he did his best to keep track of the water’s condition and to be quick about it when he had to pour it out.

  Anyway, it was kind of a relief to escape the noise of the saloon for a minute. He could faintly hear the roar of voices and the tinkle of the piano working through “Sweet Betsy from Pike.” Inside, the din could seem deafening. When he got home after a shift, his ears would keep ringing for hours.

  He wasn’t overly fond of the smell in the alley, primarily of urine and plugs of tobacco and other, less immediately recognizable sources. But he breathed through his mouth and took a moment, letting the tranquil night soothe his nerves.

  He was just turning to go back inside when he saw them at
the mouth of the alley: three men, coming his way. He didn’t recognize them, but it was dark back there and he couldn’t make out any detail beyond silhouettes. Even those seemed to change as he watched, as if the men’s forms weren’t fixed, and they were becoming heavier or taller or more broad-shouldered right in front of him. “E-evenin’, gents,” he croaked uneasily.

  The men didn’t answer. They didn’t say a word, even to one another. But as if they’d all had the same thought at the same instant, they charged forward. Their speed was astonishing; they hurtled down the alley as fast as Jack could grasp what they were doing. He had time to take one step back and to raise the basin to chest level, as if it might shield him from the inevitable impact. In the final instant before they reached him, he realized that they weren’t men at all, but figures as black as the deepest shadow on the darkest night, shapes with no distinguishing features. And as they reached him, he felt a chill, as if they carried the icy blast of winter with them, and he caught a foul scent that put him in mind, in the last moment of his life, of a shovelful of earth from a fresh, mass grave.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Luke Falcone wanted another drink.

  He had been in the mountains for nine days, and he had brought back a bear, four deer, and a jaguar, the carcasses strapped to the mules he’d taken with him. He had dropped them off with a man who would skin them and process the meat. A lot of people didn’t like bear meat, but Frank had no problem with it. The bears in the Huachucas didn’t eat a lot of fish, which could make the meat taste bad. He would sell the venison and keep the bear for himself. He would try to keep some of the jaguar, too—he had a fondness for big cat meat, preferring it over elk or deer—but if he got a decent price for it, he would have to let it go.

  After delivering the carcasses, he had come straight to Soto’s. Some people might complain about his aroma, but when a man came back to town after days and days alone, he needed to wash the dust off his insides first. Tomorrow would be soon enough to bathe. After that, he could come back here and have his way with one of the girls.