by Rusty Davis
“Sheriff!” He stifled a groan as Conroy emerged from the shop, excited.
“Forgot. Jared Wilkins had one of those, too. Those LeMats. I had one more once; somebody gave it to me in trade for something. That was a few years back.” Kane thanked Conroy. He turned the lump of metal over in his fingers after pulling it from his jacket pocket. He’d seen a few in the years after the war, but not much since. They fired a lump of lead not unlike what he held in his hand.
He ran back to the store and pulled the door open, hard. Yes, a surprised Conroy said, he could fire the one he had, but why? Was it related to Jared Wilkins’s murder? Or something else?
Conroy was put off for the moment by being told he could not share it right now, but Kane knew that soon it would be all over town within a day that the sheriff was looking for a man with a LeMat pistol.
He walked over to a tree. Loaded the cumbersome thing, wondering why anyone would use a gun that used powder and shot when there were simpler, better guns available. But they were, he thought as he looked at the intricate metalwork and wood grip, a thing of beauty. All meant to kill.
The LeMat bucked and boomed. The ball lodged in the trunk of the elm. Kane dug it out with his knife. Not exact, but close. If the ball Ferguson had set aside for safe keeping had been shot into a person, it would have different damage than the one Kane fired into a tree. He wondered what would happen if he asked to shoot a volunteer to test an idea.
He thought about Rakeheart’s LeMat owners. Noonan? Fancy man. Fancy gun. He did not look like a man who ever did his own dirty work. Brewer? Maybe. The man was pushy. Wanted to be respectable and respected and bluster his way to importance. He could probably shoot someone. Jared Wilkins? The man was still lost to Kane, but Kane had a picture of a man whose moral veneer was cracking, who was no stranger to guns, and who had started acting differently, if he was told the straight of it, when Kruger was killed.
Questions. Questions needed answers. He wondered how profound the look of disgust would be on Rachel Wilkins’s face if he asked more questions about something she truly wished to simply put behind her, regardless of what Sherman wanted.
Enoch Jeffries had dried up years back, Kane decided. The man’s skin looked like leather, and in the first five minutes of their conversation, he did not have one good word to say about anyone or anything. His entire world revolved around money, something he worked zealously to acquire and rued ever having to spend.
“Kruger? Of course. That’s why everyone pays in advance,” Jeffries said. The man was tall with a thick crop of sandy hair that had mostly turned to gray. He always wore black Eastern suits. Kane had never seen anything resembling a smile on the man’s face. Ever. He was pasty from living indoors, wrinkled and dried.
Kane wondered if there was anything Jeffries remembered about the man, or if he had left any belongings behind.
The hotel owner took his time replying and looked Kane over, as if he could discern the purpose of the questions from an inventory of Kane’s features.
“Big man. Not tall. Burly. I think he was some sort of private detective. He carried a gun but not the way cowboys do; he kept it in his jacket pocket. He asked a lot of questions about all kinds of people. Some of them were personal and offensive, about families and their children, and I recall telling him I was not at his convenience to gossip about my neighbors. He asked who was wealthy and who was not. He asked questions that I regarded as offensive.”
“Young, old?”
“Neither. Experienced. Younger than I am, older than you. He knew what he was about, which is what made him so annoying. It was as though he knew someone’s secret and was going to dig it up. But what made him so hard to fathom was that he asked questions about all sorts of people. I could never determine who he was here to investigate.”
Kane turned that tidbit over in his mind. Man comes to a small town with a target, knows that town will repeat every word if he only asks about one man. Instead, he asks about many people to mask his intentions. Clever way to operate. A man who did that had experience dealing with towns and looking for people who were trying to hide from the past.
“He only ask you?”
“I thought so at the time, but he asked everybody the same kinds of questions. I think everyone hoped he would leave, but he was never rude, never violent, only infernally and eternally asking very personal questions about the private business of families.”
“How private?”
“Which families had children, and were the parents married and living in Rakeheart when the children were born? Families that had become wealthy recently. Those kinds of things. I have no idea what he was seeking to learn, but I doubt he learned much of anything.”
“Then he was killed.”
“Correct. One day in the fall, November or December; I know it was before our first big snow, they found him. He said he was from St. Louis but gave no address. And I know we did look for one.”
“What about his belongings?”
“He must have had some belongings, but I recall he traveled light. I will look to see if they were stored, but right after he died and they buried him we had a massive, early blizzard, and he was forgotten very quickly.”
That rang false. A man who clearly kept himself a secret would have had whatever he left behind pored over to learn his secret. The lie didn’t disturb him. People lied for the same reason they breathed—because they always did. But the reason for it puzzled him.
Kane thanked the hotel owner and left. If Kruger was asking questions about children, there was one family he knew of where the kids didn’t look alike, and the boy didn’t look like anybody at all. Sooner or later, Kruger would have seen them or heard about them. More questions Rachel Wilkins would not want to hear.
Janie told him more of the same. Kruger rented a horse a few times, having come in on the train.
“No cowboy that one,” she said, adding that Kruger looked ill at ease on any horse he rode. She did not know where he went. He could guess.
“I asked him once if he was looking for someone who had been kidnapped, and he didn’t deny it, but he never said what he was doing,” she said. “Then he would ask who had big wagons like the homesteaders have. Maybe it made sense to him, but it never did to me. How about supper again with me and Pa tonight? I got a pie recipe I want to try.”
So young. So earnest. There was only one answer.
Halloran added one bit of hearsay to his picture of Kruger’s brief time in Rakeheart.
“The man was aggressive, Friend Badge. Rubbed everyone the wrong way and never seemed to care. He and Wilkins—more than everyone else. Yes, he and Wilkins, a man who seemed happy to throw away a family that he did not deserve.” Halloran seemed to want to say more, but changed tack, leaving Kane again frustrated at never getting the details he needed.
“It was around the time Wilkins was becoming important in his own mind, and it could have been just that. It could have been more. Then yon Kruger was dead, planted and buried by two feet of snow, and everyone had more important things to worry about.”
“What do you mean?”
“Wyoming is buried in snow for the winter, Friend Badge, and men prepare for it. An early blizzard means a lot of work for hands to drive the cattle or horses into safer, more sheltered places, have hay for them, and bring the young and sick ones into barns. A bad winter that kills stock would put most of the ranches out of business. The blizzard caught everyone unprepared, and by the time everyone dug out, Kruger was old news from weeks past. Yon poor army man made his trip only a day or so before the snow. That one they send to tell them when someone gets killed that it doesn’t matter much. I do not know why they send the poor man, but they do.”
Greene.
For a moment he thought about Brewer’s warning about staying close to town. He went to see Conroy, invented an excuse to see Greene about wild riders and Indians. Conroy told him to take his time. Cartwright was hauling goods. He flushed a bit when Kane saw him,
nodded, and went on with his work.
Kane could have made the ride faster, but he had come to prize his solitude riding across the landscape. In his weeks in Wyoming, he had come to understand that the roughness of the land held promise. The wind was bending the tall grasses dotted with wildflowers here and there. July would be ending soon, and then would come the time, he was told, when the creeks slowed to barely a trickle.
He rode past one of the great contradictions of the land. After riding across a table of high, rocky land, the ground then turned into hills, with some of the tallest pine trees Kane could recall seeing, before turning back into hard rock again. The only constant, he knew, was the wind. It gusted up dust devils and seemed to moan in the branches of the trees, a mournful song that understood what life was like for those trying to eke out survival.
“Closed bunch, aren’t they?” chortled Lt. August Greene as he leaned dangerously back in his chair.
As he sat in Greene’s quarters at Fort Laramie, Kane had to agree.
“Kruger was a funny situation. Late last year. November or October. Gets cold early up here, Texas.” He grinned. “Nobody likes to be out in a storm, and it was getting low and dark and cold like the first one of the early ones. Early for snow, but it starts when it does. That Conroy fellow had sent some farm kid to inform us that a man was murdered. Not shot the way those cowboys do when they get drunk. They know we don’t care about those unless it gets something started, and they sent me.”
“Was it anything?” asked Kane. “Who was he?”
“They lied about who he was. Sure of it. The man was three days dead when I saw him, but he was about frozen. Not a young rider; older. Better dressed. Nothing on him but his clothes when they found him, or so they said. Ever meet a Pinkerton?”
“The detectives? A few.”
“Figgered. He reminded me of them. Heavyset; looked like a man who could have taken care of himself. Gun was gone, but the inside holster he wore under his coat was expensive. His effects had nothing in them. No pictures. Nothing with his name. Nothing. Most folks have something with them that says who they are, even if is a lucky piece or an old picture or some letter with a name on it. This man brought nothing. His name probably wasn’t Kruger, but that’s the one they buried him with,” Greene said.
“Nobody said much?”
“You know that bunch by now. Had to say he was killed by some unknown person, but unlike your Wilkins fella there, nobody made a fuss. Nobody ever asked us or anyone else about a man like that. Like he never existed. I wondered if he was looking for someone and found him, or one of them had some shady past. But, in the end, it was clear he was dead, somebody shot him, and nobody was ever going to know. Day I got back, it snowed a foot or two, and then when spring came we had the usual round of boys going crazy after a winter. Can’t say I forgot him as much as there was too much to do.”
“You saw his body.”
“Said so.”
“Big hole in him? Bigger than most?”
The front legs of the chair crashed to the floor. “How’d you know?”
“Like one of those LeMat guns from the war?”
Silence. Greene’s voice was now heavily tinged with curiosity with more than a touch of suspicion.
“A lot like. You find somethin’?”
“Clem Ferguson, foreman at Wilkins’s ranch, had a lump of a lead shot he’d saved. ’Bout the size of a LeMat ball. Wilkins was one of three or four men with one. Makes me wonder about the connection.”
Greene chewed the information. “Not sure what it means. If it came from Kruger, might be somethin’ Ferguson held over his boss’s head. But how can anyone prove one certain bullet came out of a man? From what you say, Ferguson could have been hiding that lump of lead for Wilkins, or he tucked it away to use against somebody, which could have been Wilkins or Geronimo for all I know. If Wilkins was the only one with that kind of gun, it might mean something. Might still if you can find out which LeMat it came from, but I don’t know how you do that. Might be the others keep them as keepsakes of the war and never fired them. Not many in Rakeheart were in it, but it’s hard to know. Most men want to leave that behind. Wilkins was one of the few who never wanted to let it go.”
Greene’s mouth worked as he thought. He shook his head.
“You got something to be curious about, but neither the territory nor the army is going to get much excited over it, ’specially since it was a long time ago now.”
“That’s why I came to see you. Figgered you’d know whether anyone would care and what anyone might do.”
“It’s like having one piece of wood that you think looks like a leg, son. It’s a long way from being a chair.”
“Rakeheart got killers in it?”
Greene laughed.
“Wish I knew. All those towns fight each other, you know that. Rakeheart . . . they take it more serious than most, but those towns play hard with one another. You know about those riders?”
“Company Riders?”
“Them. Cause of all the mischief, I think, but, far as I know, you’re the only local law for fifty, sixty miles, and nobody says a word against them, because, for one, there’s more of them than there is you, and if you ain’t in Rakeheart, the law is whoever has the edge. That’s them.” He held his hands palm upward. “Army investigates complaints, not hunches. Lot of smoke about the Riders, but no fire. No complaints filed. Everybody tells tales, but nobody brings in anything solid. No reason to go off half-cocked. The citizens of Rakeheart want the army to come in, all they have to do is show up and explain themselves.”
“And what’s your hunch?”
“Rakeheart is like one big string in a huge knot, and you got pieces of that knot loose. Don’t know what pieces, but I know one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“You got those Riders, Rakeheart, even the Wilkins ranch and that woman—she don’t say much, but she’s a lot smarter than most of the men around her—don’t let her fool you. Not a lot of folks there I’d turn my back on.”
Kane rose. It was the truth. He thanked Greene, who followed him out the door.
“Not sending Sherman a note this time?”
“Way with Sherman,” replied Kane, “he don’t care about it being worked on. He cares when it’s done. Riles him when I tell him too much for his own good. Then he riles me. Wouldn’t be surprised if you hear from him real soon.”
Greene laughed and wished Kane luck. Kane guessed he would need it.
CHAPTER TEN
Kane had spent two frustrating days asking questions without getting much in the way of answers. Noonan and Brewer were each very quick to know exactly where their LeMats were kept. Both were clear they were for show; Brewer’s—polished to shine—was on the wall by his desk. Kane was sure it had not been there when they met a few days ago. Noonan’s gun was also similarly cleaned and polished as if it was an item for display. Kane was hardly surprised. He never told Conroy not to talk about what he asked, and, even if he had, the results would have been the same. A small town was a small town, even if it thought it was going to be something else one day.
Janie was now openly flirting. He wondered if he should move to that shack. She wanted to have a husband, a home, and a family. All good things. He still could not imagine a life beyond figuring out this puzzle, or abandoning the hunt, and moving on. But she was pretty and was certainly the only smiling face he could count on seeing as he wandered about the town. He set trying to tell her what he wanted in life down the road until, at least, he could figure it out well enough to say it.
Mae Cartwright’s face was healing nicely. She had done something with it—some combination of flour and some colored stuff—to mask the worst of the bruises while they were at their most livid. Her husband was working, not drinking, and maybe there was hope that one family would walk away from its brush with disaster.
For all that, he was failing at his main purpose. He had no idea who killed Jared Wilkins, Clem Ferguson,
or Frank Kruger—whatever and whoever he might have been. He had done everything he knew how to do. Wasn’t he past the time he said he was going to spend on this? Sherman couldn’t expect results every time. Only a fool stayed when it was time to go.
He was walking along the main street when he could see faces looking past him with the look that said something was coming that put fear in their hearts.
It was.
Six riders, slowly walking their horses forward, were entering the straight portion of Rakeheart’s main street, like the slow and confident way a rattler slithers up on its unsuspecting prey.
For a moment, he wondered why the Company Riders had come to him instead of waiting for him to go to them. Had he found something, said something, done something to make himself a threat? Or was this nothing more than a long-overdue visit prompted by their timetable, not his actions?
Their posture was clear. This was intimidation.
He was always bad at that. Real bad.
For a second, the thrill of doing what was downright foolish jolted up and down his spine. As his heart picked up its pace, he could feel his nerves steady. Pulling clues out of thin air was not the kind of work he knew how to do.
This was.
He moved from one side of the street to the other as though the riders were not coming closer. That these were men to be feared was clear on the faces of the women who were emphatic in their haste to get away from where he was walking.
Men who usually were prone to lounge along the street and talk endlessly about the weather or nothing at all now seemed to have urgent errands that seemed to involve moving very quickly into the relative protection of the nearest doorway or whatever shop was closest.
The riders were thirty feet away when he called to Janie, who was keeping pace with the riders as they moved. He wondered idly if one of them was also being considered as husband material. Probably. He was certain he heard a friendly tone in her voice and a man’s response in kind.
