by Rusty Davis
“Maybe I’m just like ’em.”
She looked at him with what for her was a long time of quietness. “No,” she said softly. “You might do hard things, but you’re somebody else under. There are things a woman knows that a man never sees.”
Whatever it might be that he was, it was not for her to know. In fact, that was a question he was not sure even he could answer very well.
“Got to get me some food,” he said.
“Already made it,” she said. “Bacon got done a few minutes ago. Coffee’s hot.”
She took his arm, taking the lead. “Pa won’t eat it all, and it would be a waste.” She smiled.
He let her lead him to their kitchen. She smiled again. His need for sleep, and the larger question of worrying about the Company Riders, became unimportant for at least a small span of time.
Maybe this sheriffing wasn’t so bad after all.
While Janie went to help her pa run the stable, Kane turned over what she had said: A woman knows.
He had avoided Tillie Witherspoon’s dress shop for the very good reason that no man goes in a dress shop unless he had to. Kane figured he had to, if he wanted to know the real story of Rakeheart.
Tillie Witherspoon was about four feet ten inches tall, at best, weighed next to nothing, and probably had more energy than any train. She spoke rapid-fire with pins in her mouth as she worked on a dress for Brewer’s wife. Kane kept expecting her to spit one across the room at him.
“Hmmph,” she snorted. “Jared Wilkins. Men do change when they want to be important. I was planning to give her some nice tea when she came to town next, but now, with all of that, I suppose we won’t ever see her. Not that we did much. Cat’s eyes. That’s what she has. I would think of her as a cat that saw everything, said nothing, judged everything, and no one was ever the wiser about where they stood. Can’t say I like her. Not that I couldn’t; never talked to her enough to know her. Him? Well. At first, he seemed like a good man. Every one of us wondered, of course, with those children, but he put a good face on it. He changed like the weather in the fall. It was not a woman. Certainly not. They always call it business. Was it him you wanted to know about or her? I do not dislike her, but she is very distant. She watched more than she talked. It can’t be easy being an Indian with the way people talk in a town like this.”
For the sake of filling out his knowledge, he threw out some other names.
“Oh, that Kruger man. He was so rude and always interrupted me. Don’t you believe it is a shame when a body can’t get in a word edgewise because someone will not let her speak? I am certain you do. Rude, he was, although that does not justify being shot that way . . .”
“What way?”
“I heard he was shot in the back, but I did not go to see because I have my work. I am not one of those who talks and talks endlessly as if I were idle. Talk. Talk. Talk. I mind my business. I talk to my customers for their comfort. You should understand, sheriff, that there are very few places in a town out here a woman can talk without men around. We have our secrets.”
Her peppery summations of the town’s leaders were uniformly scanty about good qualities and laden with commentary about their deficiencies in manners, morals, and clothing, although she admitted they “tried.”
“They stopped this from being a wide-open town and changed its name to something more proper than Rake—Well, I cannot say the word. You are at the stable. Is that Haliburton girl still flitting about from man to man? Shameless. One of these days . . .”
The only man who came in for praise was Halloran.
“Seamus loves children; shame it is that he never had any. He can play the fiddle, Sheriff. Of course, I do not look kindly upon some things that go on when they have these dances—and I hope you will be vigilant when they have one at the harvest time—but I go to hear Seamus play. Sometimes those young men think they can keep up, but he can play faster than their feet can move. He is the only person I have known to make the Wilkins girl smile. Poor thing always looks lost. No . . . that is not the right word at all. Miserable. No; that’s the poor Brewer woman, and I do not know how she tolerates that, but I cannot talk about that. Brute of a man. Yes. The Wilkins girl. Sad. That is what she is—sad!”
She also decided Kane needed advice.
“You don’t dress like a sheriff, Mr. Kane. You always wear those dark things, and you look more like an outlaw than those rude Company Riders,” she said. “Buy one of those horrible checked shirts the cowboys buy at Mr. Conroy’s store if you want anyone to ever look at you and smile. Are you really a sheriff? From the way you act, when you walk through town, you seem more worried about someone following you than whatever might be taking place in the town. You look more ready to shoot someone than talk to them.”
He told her he would consider buying a shirt after she told him she would be more than willing to make one. Before he could escape, having received far more information than he wanted, she had more to say.
“You know I hate gossips. Terrible the way folks talk. You know he’s not hers?”
“Ma’am?”
“That little Jeremiah Wilkins boy. She’s dark, and he was . . . well, not really dark like Indian dark but sort of with his dark hair, and that boy is as light as the sunshine. Everybody in town agrees that two parents with dark skin and dark hair cannot have a fair-skinned, blond child like that. There are things you learn breeding horses that are the same as in people, Sheriff. My uncle bred stallions in Kansas before the war. I wanted to tell her we understood, of course, because she must have felt terrible about it, but I don’t really know her well enough. The whole town knew the moment we saw them all, but she tried. Very brave in that way, even if she is odd. And Apache.”
“Comanche.”
“Pardon me?”
“Rachel Wilkins is a Comanche, ma’am.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Knew them from Texas, ma’am. Know a Comanche when I see one.”
“Oh, Texas. Well, I am sure you do know them. Well, we had a few Texas cowboys come through a few years ago when they misread the trail to the fort. I thought Wyoming cowboys were wild.”
Some time later, after a discussion about Texans that was amusing for its inaccuracies and with injunctions to avoid ever drinking at the Lucky Dollar, commentary about the boring nature of Preacher Siegel’s sermons and the need to find a wife if he wanted to remain free of gossip, coupled with a vivid determination that most of the marriageable females were not worth his time because one smoked a pipe and three had chewed tobacco to her very certain knowledge, he emerged with a vastly more vivid picture of the residents of Rakeheart and a slight ringing in his ears.
Conroy came out of his shop to grab Kane’s hand and pump it vigorously.
“I heard about it. Wished I’d’a seen it! Thought for a while we were like that man in the story with a tiger by the tail but you showed ’em. ’Bout time those Riders learned they don’t run everything and everyone around here.”
“Is that what you really wanted?” asked Kane. “Because if it is, the way I see it, there is one of me and a lot of them, and, when one man goes up against a lot of men, that one man usually loses. I think they might come back.”
“No, my lad,” chortled Conroy. “Tails between their legs. That’s how I heard they left. We can’t have folks thinking they can ride in and do anything they please while they are here. Got to have law for Rakeheart to grow. Law is more than guns. Been wild out here so long people forget there’s another way. Well done, Sheriff. Well done.”
He returned to his shop as Kane made his rounds to find that, if anything had happened overnight while he was being foolish, it did not leave any evidence visible in the light of day. That, he knew, meant that a certain sheriff could take a nap in a certain spot.
It was not to be.
“Sheriff!”
Preacher Siegel was moving quickly. “May I speak to you in confidence?”
Having barely finished a session with Tillie Wilke
rson, he wondered whether she already knew what Siegel was about to say. He decided it would be wrong to tell the preacher to wait a minute so he could ask, but he wanted to.
There was, of course, only one answer. They walked to the small church and sat on the last row of its rough-hewn benches.
“If somebody broke a law or killed somebody, I can’t make promises,” Kane said.
“No. Well, not yet,” Siegel said. “It’s about Pete Haliburton.”
Janie’s pa. Wonderful sober; Kane had seen that. Dangerous drunk; Kane had heard that more than once.
“What did he do?”
“The talk is he plans to join the Company Riders.”
“Little old, isn’t he?”
“They’ve been down in Bear Canyon for the summer, now that there are so many of them, but I think they want some place closer. I think Haliburton wants to get out of his business, and there is talk that his daughter is keeping very close company with some Rider who comes to see her at night.”
Kane had seen Janie talk to about every man who came by, but he’d never noticed anyone who seemed special. Folks were usually good at sneaking around when they figured there was something worth sneaking for. He felt a slight twinge, because he had thought Janie was interested in him, but he knew that was not rational. Although she cooked great meals and had a great smile, he had no thoughts of settling down. He still wondered why he had stayed as long as he had.
“Pete is not a bad man, Sheriff, but if he does this, he won’t last long. He thinks the riders will be his protection, but they will only use him and throw him away. Can you talk to him? Maybe he will listen to you.”
“I thought he hated the Riders. Thought I heard him say so.”
“Pete Haliburton hates almost everyone, Sheriff. Sometimes, I think he hates himself, too. Can you talk to him?”
“I’ll talk, but if a man wants to do something stupid, Preacher, there’s usually not much a man can say to stop it.”
“Well, it is my duty, Sheriff Kane. It may not be much of a flock, but it is mine. There are times when I think that their reaction is to tell me no even before I get the words out. I left the East because I thought I could bring God’s word to this wild country. I wonder sometimes if I was wrong. Death is so common, almost casual, that the way I looked at the world in the East seems like the outlook of a stranger to me now.”
“Preacher, it ain’t never a waste of time to remind folks that there’s wrong and there’s right, and a man has the power to choose. That don’t change, whether it’s Texas or that New York City place or out here in Wyoming.”
“No, it does not. Thank you, Sheriff.”
“Don’t thank me; didn’t do anything yet.”
He heard the church doors open right after they shut behind him.
“Sheriff?”
There was always one more thing.
“Whatever Tillie might say, my sermons are hardly dry. Come by this Sunday and see for yourself.” Siegel was smiling as he turned back into the church.
As he left, Kane caught sight of a figure moving by the graves. Halloran. The man started moving away, but Kane called his name.
“Come often?”
“No, Friend Badge, not often. There are days the world is full of her and days when she is very far. Think ye the dead walk where they will and stop by now and then for a whiskey?”
For once, Halloran seemed to be without his veneer. Kane pressed.
“The living occupy my time, Halloran. Straight answer. You play at being a drunk. Am I right? Haliburton is a drunk. You are a man who does what you please to get by, nothing more, and it is easier to let the world see you as a man poured in a bottle than one who simply gave up on living because it all seems pointless.”
“ ’Tis a poet ye are, Friend Badge. A philosopher.”
“What I am is a sheriff waiting for an answer.”
“And why does it matter? A criminal do I seem to be, Friend Badge? A dangerous desperado feared for his savage ways?”
“You know a lot, Halloran.”
“I see a lot, Friend Badge. I hear a lot. If I were to work at it, I might know a lot, but I came to a point several years ago where I was trapped, Friend Badge. For suicide is a mortal sin, Friend Badge, and a waste of the life God gives us. But if live I must, care I need not.” He held up a hand. “Better with words than you have given pretty speeches. I stay because I have no reason to go, for life will not be infused with meaning because of where I am. If meaning is sent to me, it will be sent. Until that day, I will eat when I am hungry, stay warm in the cold, and drink when I am dry. I ask for nothing more and want nothing more.”
Kane could feel the frustration within him. If he could know all Halloran saw and heard, Rakeheart would be as plain as a mapped valley. So close, and so far.
“But, Friend Badge, if it be a bit of balm to your soul, the world is no worse for the loss of Wilkins and Kruger. Ferguson I saw so little I knew not, but when no one speaks ill of a man, one does wonder what he did when none were looking.”
Kane muttered something.
“I shall further share that nothing foul happens in and around Rakeheart but Silas Noonan is at the bottom of it, and that the poor Wilkins family has suffered enough for the sins of others and should not be disturbed even if there are sins to be laid at their door, and that any soul who should disturb them should face a deserved punishment.”
“That a threat?”
“A pledge, if you will, Friend Badge. And, Friend Badge, best of all, since I am no longer a man who cares, there is no one with whom I will share my very sincere and heartfelt certainty that you are as much a sheriff by trade as I am an eagle.” Halloran bowed. “Until we meet again, Friend Badge.”
Kane wanted that nap, but he had a duty. He wanted to know why Halloran was in a cemetery when he knew there was no wife of his buried there. Halloran was playing some deep game, but Kane could not imagine what it was. He caught himself talking to the air as he walked to the stable. Maybe Rakeheart was getting the better of him.
Pete Haliburton was alone in the smithy. Janie was wherever she often went during the day. He had promised. He also had a vision of Janie as one of the women he saw at the Riders’ camp. Every woman who rode that hard trail knew it was going to be something different. Every woman was wrong.
“Hear you’re throwin’ in with those Company Riders,” Kane said without preamble.
Haliburton’s head snapped as though Kane had struck him.
“Sez who?”
“Don’t matter. That the right of it?”
“Riders protect this town, Kane. Ought to be heroes here, not treated the way those uppity friends of yours like Brewer want them treated.”
“Not about the town, Haliburton. What about your daughter? Want her to have that kind of life? Those boys might not have crossed the line yet, or maybe nobody was looking when they did, or maybe everybody is too scared to talk, but when they cross that line and someone has to make ’em pay, it’s the women who pay the hardest.”
“Jealous are you? Janie likes one of them better’n you?”
“Tryin’ to save you a world of hurt and her a life of misery,” Kane said. “Known men like the Riders before. It always ends bad, Pete.”
“High and mighty because you think you faced them down the other night,” Haliburton retorted. “You don’t know nothin’. Once they get the word . . .”
“The word from who?” Kane pounced. He knew someone else was the brains of the Company Riders, and this was his chance to find out.
“Said too much,” grumbled Haliburton. “Horseshoes don’t grow on trees. Got work to do. Maybe you better find yourself a place to stay, Kane. Hear there’s a place you were lookin’ at. Not sure you’re welcome under my roof. Gone by tomorrow would be good.” Haliburton walked away towards his tools.
There would be no nap now. Kane had the frustrating feeling that he had the chance to grab hold of whatever was going on in Rakeheart, but that, in the end,
he was chasing smoke. Going in circles. One man left he’d never really spoken to, because who and what he was appeared to be so obvious.
Silas Noonan laughed aside Kane’s questions. Patience exhausted, he put Kane in his place.
“Sheriff, the Riders are the only way Rakeheart protects itself from the toughs that other towns hire. Ask anyone and you will hear the same story over and over. I would not suggest they are men of great worth or that anyone should hold them in high esteem, but they are a necessity out here on the frontier. You have been here a month or so, Sheriff. Mind your business and keep the wild and stupid from shooting holes in one another and ruining the work of those of us who have built businesses, and you will be doing your job. Now run along and do that,” he said dismissively.
He had one more twist to drive home.
“If I am correct, you have been trying to solve the murders of three men and have absolutely no understanding of what happened. Given that success, Sheriff, perhaps you might want to think of considering a different line of work or moving to some other part of Wyoming. Being a sheriff is a dangerous and thankless job in a town like Rakeheart where you do not know whom you can trust.”
Noonan palmed the silver-headed cane he was holding as he sat behind his desk.
“Rakeheart neither needs nor really wants you, Sheriff Kane, as much as those who hired you think you can save them from themselves. Do you really think that, when the day comes, there will be anyone at your back? Good day, Sheriff.”
Black rage accompanied Kane to the stable. The worst of it was that Noonan was right. He had been worrying away at three murders and accomplished nothing. He also knew that with maybe thirty men, if it was a showdown between him and the Riders, he would be joining Jared Wilkins in the graveyard. As Haliburton pounded a horseshoe on his anvil, Kane saddled Tecumseh and thundered out of town.
The old Tompkins place was before him. He had never filed whatever paper was needed to legally move in and wanted to give it one last look before he did so.
His past impression was confirmed. Not badly built but neglected. His eyes inspected what needed to be repaired as his head argued over whether to even bother.
