by Rusty Davis
Part of him recognized that there was some truth in what Noonan and Halloran said. He was not likely to have much in the way of support from men who hired him to make problems go away, not become one. If he could bring the Riders to heel, well and good. If not, they lost little. But there was the stubborn side that did not like to be pushed. Anyhow, he did not want to be pushed until he wanted to go, which might come out to the same thing in terms of when he left Rakeheart but did not feel the same inside.
He thought about Wilkins, whom no one liked, and realized that, although he started with the man’s death, the beginning might have come earlier, with Kruger’s murder—the one nobody seemed to want solved and that they were all very happy to forget.
That lump of metal had meaning. It also had mystery. Would Rachel Wilkins help him solve it? Or was she hiding something else?
Either way, he had to know.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Maybe you should set your office up here since you come out here so often,” Rachel Wilkins challenged as Kane sat atop Tecumseh in the ranch yard.
She was dressed for riding. Pants, boots, hair in a braid, and a flat-crowned hat, like his, atop her head. The horse she preferred was waiting by the ranch yard’s biggest oak. She was clearly impatient to be gone and annoyed with his questions. No one else was home. There was no need for company manners.
“Got questions,” replied Kane. “Need answers.”
“And I have a ranch to run with cowboys who do not seem to understand whose ranch it is and children who think their mother should be their mother and father. The sun refuses to stand still so I can get all my chores done, and now you come around asking about guns and silly things I have no time to attend to. Right now, we are driving back the stock from the west pasture that have wandered too far, and I do not have time to spend talking. The children are there, the hands are there, and there is work to be done, Mr. Kane.”
“Miz Wilkins, a man was killed with a rare kind of a gun, and I need to look here for that gun because your husband . . .”
“Then look! If you want to look for a gun, go look for it. There are enough of them thrown all over the place. You cowboys and your guns! I would not know one kind from another. Go. Look until you are done looking. Turn the place upside down until you are so convinced that you will understand I have not been on a one-Indian crime wave of killing. If you find anything, so be it. I believe Jeremiah lost a piece of an orange top. One of Libby’s shoes vanished years ago that you might find as well. The cats hide things as well. Enjoy encountering those! If you are gone when I get back, and you should be, remember to shut the door.”
She mounted her gray mare and was soon galloping away in fury, having again accomplished the task of making him feel both guilty and stupid for doing a simple thing that was only his job.
Felt odd, he thought, to prowl someone’s house alone. Wrong. She said to. He had to. This waiting had gone on long enough. He went inside.
The house was sparsely furnished, and most of it looked made by hands that did something else for a living other than build tables and chairs.
The house had two rifles he could find. A small one that looked used and a larger one with dust all over it. He had not looked to see what kind of gun Rachel had when she left. A great detective he was turning out to be.
One chest held things Rachel wore under dresses. Felt wrong to look. One small leather pouch on a loop of leather was at the bottom. A medicine bundle. Very faded. Comanche. Something else. A carved piece of wood. Rough-done. A bear. He guessed it was from her first husband. White men carved animals to look like animals. Indians carved them to depict gods and spirits they represented.
Four broken, hand-carved wooden flutes were piled with the things on Libby’s side of the tiny room she shared with her brother. Charcoal markings were here and there on Jeremiah’s side. On the floor. On the backside of tree bark. On some wood. One might have been him, or his father, or maybe it was a tree.
A small desk had a ledger. The writing was very tiny and very skewed. Had to be hers. Wilkins was a big man, or that’s how his picture made him appear. He could not have made numbers that small. That made Rachel most likely a liar when she said she didn’t know how the ranch was doing. He sighed. He could have been done and gone if everyone had told the truth.
Wilkins had hired nine men since the fall. A puzzle. The ranch didn’t appear to be growing. The ledger showed a couple of men had left around that time, but Wilkins added far more than he lost. If Kane didn’t know better, he’d think Wilkins was bracing for a fight. But who with?
He also noticed that there were some items that did not have explanations, and they all were money coming in. Every month there was something: fifty dollars, a hundred dollars, twenty . . . For a small ranch living on the edge the way they all did, that was something important.
The money started coming in the fall of ’74. Nothing recent had been added. He leafed back quickly. If there was something of interest in the items purchased at Conroy’s and the monthly payments of wages, it escaped Kane. Numbers did not tell stories; people did. He made careful note of the amounts and times, then put the ledger back, eyes sore from the strain of looking at the tiny, neat rows of numbers.
The bunkhouse had guns aplenty, but most were old Colts and rifles. There was a crate of .45 shells in a corner. A lot of shells. Gangs in Texas would steal those when they could. Odd to find so many on a ranch that was supposedly a place no one bothered, but with that and the increase in men hired, it made him wonder if either Wilkins or Ferguson knew something was coming and wanted to be prepared.
He crossed to the stable. The cow barn had been, well, a cow barn. Anything hidden there was gone for the ages, as far as he was concerned.
Last stop. He stopped as he reached the stable’s open doors. He looked out across the plains. He looked behind up the slope. He understood. The best place to shoot was not the most obvious. Anyone who had been to the Wilkins place in the daylight very much could get back there, have a horse not far, and get away. Or maybe it was all his imagination trying to make simple things hard.
He looked at the doorway again. One gouge was smaller than the rest. The wood around it was lighter, as well. Did it happen last month? How could he tell, and who would tell him if it did?
Barns were the world’s best hiding places. He found where Libby hid; it was a little spot where she could hear everything and be invisible. There were two corn dolls and a makeshift house from scrap lumber. There were some bandages just right for a very small arm. He found two hiding places where Jared Wilkins had stashed dust-covered jugs of liquor beneath the hay. Eventually, not far from the jugs, he found what he was looking for.
The LeMat had been tossed in a pile of hay. Not carefully buried; merely tossed and eventually covered. Months ago. No way to know if it was deliberate or accidental. Dirt and grime covered the weapon. The barrel smelled like old, wet powder.
Now that he had found what he was looking for, what did it mean? The wall of defiance Rachel erected to keep outsiders out was not likely to be breached by a simple question. A man like Ferguson saved a lump of metal because it meant something, or it could prove something. Or someone else thought it could prove something. Did Ferguson keep it for Wilkins or to use against Wilkins? Conroy said there was bad blood. No one else had that to say, though.
A man hid a gun because he didn’t want it found. Obvious. Why not dump it twenty miles from anywhere? Because it needed to be hidden quickly, and the person who hid it was not riding the range, but at the ranch. But if he had shot Kruger with the gun and shot him in town where the man’s body was found, he could have thrown it away anywhere between Rakeheart and the ranch, not brought it back to his own barn.
Kane was wishing one thing in all of Wyoming would start making sense as he stood outside the barn, looking idly around the Wilkins place as though something was going to jump up and solve his problems for him.
He finished searching everywhere. I
t took longer than he thought. The place was small, but there was a house, bunkhouse, barn for horses and a shed for cows, as well as some other outbuildings. For some reason the Tompkins place entered his head. That had been one shack, with no evidence of any other buildings. No working ranch, no matter how small, had only one building. It was a real ranch as much as he was a real sheriff.
It was early afternoon. If he pushed Tecumseh, they could make it to Rakeheart before dark, and he might be able to get a question answered from the one person who would know.
At least Rachel would have her wish; he would be gone when she returned.
“Of course I remember Ken Tompkins,” Tillie Witherspoon said emphatically, gesturing with scissors that came far too close to Kane’s nose for his own comfort. “He died last summer. Or vanished, really. Strange man.”
“Was his wife a customer?”
She laughed uproariously. “Wife? If there was a self-respecting woman that would have come within a mile of that filthy man I would have been surprised. Never saw him without tobacco in his mouth. Filthy habit. Mrs. Pemberthy would come in the store to avoid him if he was in town.”
No wife. Another Rakeheart lie.
“What exactly did Ken Tompkins do?” Kane asked. “I’ve seen the shack. I was looking for a place for the winter and was thinking about staying there.”
“Haunted, the fools say,” she snorted. “Lights and goings-on. Ken Tompkins was a no-good who may well have done an honest day’s work at one time, but he did not do it here. Now I am not one for gossip, Sheriff . . .”
“Perish the thought.”
She eyed him a moment for traces of sarcasm. She either found none or decided it did not matter.
“They say he was one of the men who helped move stolen goods through the valley. You know they won’t let anyone sell liquor to the Indians, or guns, but they get them anyhow. I heard he was involved. Wagons out there. Then one day he was gone. I always figured he came to a bad end. Preacher Siegel said a prayer for him one week instead of a funeral, but that was about all. One less bad apple, as far as I am concerned.”
He thanked her profusely.
“I hope I was a help, Sheriff. I was never able to understand how they got along!”
“Who, ma’am?”
“Why Tompkins and that Wilkins man. I would have thought that someone like Jared Wilkins would never have dirtied himself with that man, but perhaps he was useful for something. Far be it for me to judge. I am only a woman in a man’s world and a helpless one at that. I know once Tompkins tried to be too friendly with Rachel Wilkins, and you don’t do that to an Indian, Sheriff, without being prepared to pay the price. She left him in the street doubled over. I thought she did the right thing. I heard her husband afterward . . . well, you know how men are in private when they think their wife has made them appear ‘less of a man.’ Whatever that is supposed to mean. The poor woman. Seamus Halloran said it took weeks for her to heal. He could not abide that Wilkins man and how he neglected his family.”
He understood. At last, he understood. At least, he thought he did.
Rachel’s face changed colors because, when she knew he was there, she put some powder over a bruise her husband had given her. Mae’s face reminded him of Rachel’s because there was swelling around the eye no makeup could hide.
Kane held his tongue and offered Tillie Witherspoon his thanks. More lies. More mysteries. Maybe it was time to let the whole mess go and let Rakeheart and the Company Riders fight it out and let Rachel Wilkins deal with the ghosts haunting her family. Maybe, maybe. But first there was something he had to do. He had to know.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
There was smoke coming from the Wilkins chimney as he rode up to it in the dimming of the day. Kane took a long, deep breath and exhaled it slowly. He’d thought about turning around fifty times. It was what it was. Once he had the truth, he could ride away. This time, he told himself, he really would ride away. Really.
“Hello, the house,” he called.
The door opened, and he could see her, backlit with the shotgun by her side.
“You gonna go away if I tell you to?”
“Nope. Probably not if you shoot me, either.”
“Stable the horse and wipe your feet. I mean it about the feet. You tracked dirt all over the other day.”
The door slammed.
A place with bread and a little stew was set for him. He could smell coffee.
“Sit and eat. I feed everything that rolls up at my door, so don’t think you’re special,” she growled. “There’s always coffee. Don’t know what you cowboys see in it. Drank it once. Awful stuff, but the boys keep asking for it, so I always have a pot ready. Sometimes it sets on the fire for hours, but the boys drink it up no matter what.” She shot him a look that was a challenge. “White people have strange habits.”
He never got to reply.
“Hello, Mister Sheriff.” Sad-eyed Libby had a little smile. He had thought of her before he left Rakeheart. This visit mattered.
He gave her instructions to find his saddle and bring something in from one of the saddlebags. Rachel, although puzzled, nodded permission, and Libby set off, Jeremiah at her heels like a puppy who didn’t know what was going on but was game for it if it meant running.
The brown paper package was soft. Libby set it on the table and looked at her mother.
“Sheriff Kane brought it, Libby. Ask him.”
He nodded.
Tillie Witherspoon had clucked and clucked as she flitted from pile to pile until she made the selections. Now, Libby’s eyes popped as bright red cloth, yellow, green, and several shades of blue appeared.
She could not stifle an exclamation when a small wooden flute emerged and fell to the floor. Conroy had the toy in his shop, and Kane had seen it while pacing one day as the shopkeeper waited on a customer.
“Don’t know what girls like to make but figgered you need something to make it from,” he said. “Maybe you got a doll needs a dress. Figgered making noise is good. Bet your mom likes lots of noise.”
Libby was watching Rachel, who was not only surprised, but clearly pleased. One Wilkins was not, however.
Jeremiah looked on, unsure of what, if anything, came next.
Kane dug into his jacket pocket and handed the package to Jeremiah. The boy fumbled with the extra loops of string Conroy had used, then an object within landed with a thunk on the table. It was a small penknife—not too useful in the hands of a man, but not too dangerous, either, in the hands of a young boy.
He finished unwrapping. A few pencils and some pieces of paper emerged.
“I know you like to draw. Boys need to whittle things,” Kane said. “That’s what they tell me.”
Jeremiah squealed and held everything up for his mother’s approval.
“Not my table and chairs!” Rachel commanded before she sent the children to their room; they ran off excitedly, with the volume increasing as they left the world of adults behind.
“You are a mysterious man, Sheriff Kane.”
Kane looked into the fire, as if it would give him the courage to say what he wanted to say. He kept his voice low and then looked her full in the face.
“I know, Rachel. I know what happened.”
She was good. Her face never moved, even her hand on the table never twitched. Stray thought. Teach her poker, they could be rich in a year. Or dead. Or both.
“I know,” he repeated.
“Not here,” she said. “Give me a minute. We will talk outside, alone.” He finished his food, nodded.
“Libby! Sheriff Kane doesn’t know how to find the Protector in the sky. I have to show him. You behave with your brother.”
“Yes, Mama!”
“She’s a good girl,” Kane said. “Good mother protects her children. Never doubted you were a good mother, Rachel.”
Rachel’s eyes reminded him of a cornered animal.
“Not here.”
They were out in the night. Coo
l after the heat of the fire. Endless stars in the black and blue depth of heaven. Rachel wore her dark-brown shawl over her green dress. She blended with the night as if each were part of the other.
“Who was Frank Kruger?” he asked, not looking at her.
“Who?”
“Older man. Square set. Rough-and-tumble look. Came to see your husband right before the snow. Never came back.”
“Many people came to see Jared. He might have been one. I do not know the name.” He could hear the tension in her voice.
“Pinkerton man. Hunting something. Found it, I’d bet.”
He could hear her bare intake of breath.
“Him. Yes.”
“Somebody murdered him in Rakeheart last year. Right before the big snow. Right after he was asking about children. Somebody used an old LeMat gun like the one I have in my saddlebag that I found in your barn, where it had been tossed under the hay.”
No response. He turned. She was nodding in response to something unsaid.
“Jared stole Jeremiah. He lied to me about it at first. The parents died, he had said. There were emigrants going past our terrible farm all the time, and so many of them did die. Then I found out the truth. I did not know until after we left to come here. The boy—he was small for his age—could not go back. Jared loved him. Jared thought we were safe here. That man showed up, but only once, but he never came back. Jared said the man was hunting the child, but that he convinced the man Jeremiah was ours.”
“Would he have told you if he killed him?”
Silence.
“I do not know,” she said with regret shading her soft voice. “He spoke less as time flowed and carried him past me. Last autumn he was very silent often. I do not know why that was or how that I failed him.”
He’d save the rest. Skip to what mattered.
“But he started hitting you.”
He could see her face in the dimness, but not her expression. Just as well.
“Indian men hit their women. Not hard, not often, but it happens. When dinner gets burned. Not what I am talking about. More like a sickness that never ends.”
