by Rusty Davis
No reply. He gave it time.
“It got worse,” she said in a dull, flat monotone. “Not constant, but it never stopped. Bad this spring. Real bad. He was hurting, and that was how it came out; as though there were devils in the man.”
Kane reached out and briefly touched her right temple.
“Hurt you bad here.”
She did not push his hand away.
“You put powder over the bruise for weeks so Libby would not know. Or maybe not. But I know you had it on when you needed to hide it that first time I showed up. Didn’t have it on that night, because it was fading. You did in the morning. Didn’t catch it then, when you called me out for starin’. Figured it later.”
“Aren’t you clever?” Her self-assured tone was shaky.
“Think it scared him. Men who hit women usually hate it when they see what they did. Then something happened. Something big. Something I don’t understand with Rakeheart. Might have been the land, the Company Riders, Noonan . . . don’t know. Maybe this Kruger man. Did Jared kill him?”
“He never said. He drank instead. Darkness overcame him and owned him, Kane. The man who cared for me died, or maybe I should say he walked away day by day until at last he was too far for me to ever reach.”
“What did he use to break Libby’s left arm?”
“How did you know?”
“You wrapped it tight. I barely touched it that day she showed me the garden. It was too hard to use her arm without wrappings. Still hurt. She tried not to show it, but she could not quite hide it. Found one old wrapping in the barn the day you let me search. Animal fat on it. Lot of markings on the inside. Indian medicine. If it was an accident, she would have said something. Kids brag about injuries in an adventure. When she didn’t, I figured it was something worse.”
Her eyes looked like vast, dark pools looking up at him.
“He said it was an accident. He said she surprised him in the barn, and he thought she was an intruder. I know he was lying. He was hiding something out there,” she said.
“Liquor.”
“You found it?”
He nodded.
“You find well, Kane.”
“And that night he spotted her outside, where she saw things he didn’t want her to see, and he was going to punish her? What did she see?”
“No one will hurt her again. Ever.”
“Put the knife away. I’m not here to hurt her. You were supposed to figger that out by now.”
“How do you know I have one?”
“You killed your husband to defend your daughter. Right? Figure one more ain’t that hard.”
There was a silence. He expected a denial. It did not come.
“And why should I not do everything I am able to do to protect those who are mine to protect?”
“Not going to do anything.”
There was silence as she considered his words. Then came the verdict.
“I do not believe you,” she said. “Your general sent you to find out how he died. You are working for him. You will tell him.”
“He sent me to tell him a reason. He’ll get one. Ferguson killed him; then got killed. It ends there. Got no interest in making life worse. Daughter has enough shadows on her spirit. No more. It ends, Rachel. It ends.”
She was quiet. He could almost hear her sort risks.
“If I wanted to arrest you, Rachel, I could have brought fifty men. I am sick of it all, Rachel. All the lies of those men. All the things they do. I got sent here by Cump Sherman to do a job for him. Job’s done. You don’t like my version? Give me a better one. Enough dead men around that I can blame one of them. I only have one condition, and I let this go.”
“And what is that?” Sharp. Suspicious.
“What did Libby hear or see? She is so busy trying to lie to protect you she hides everything.”
“Clem and Jared argued. They argued often in the last few weeks. They did it when I was not around. Clem had something on Jared. Something bad Jared had done. I don’t know what it was. It could have been this Kruger man. I don’t know, Kane. Libby didn’t understand a lot of it. They talked crazy things. She said they talked about gold . . . about the Black Hills. They are days away. There was something about the Company Riders. Either one of them or both of them was dealing with those men. There was another man involved who she thought they had killed, or who had killed someone. Libby could never understand it.”
“Any names? Brewer, Noonan?” Pause. “Tompkins?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t know. The names of those Rakeheart people mean nothing to her. She knows the hands and her brother and me. She knows the names of the stars that guide the Comanche and the Sioux. No one else matters. There is sadness upon her, Kane, and one reason you will live is that you have pierced it.”
Kane sighed deeply. He had done what he came for. He’d wire Sherman something. He wondered if he’d held off reporting the foreman’s death so he could lay the blame on him. Ferguson had cared about Rachel. He wondered if the dead man would accept that taking the blame for her crime would be the final kindness he could do for her.
As for Wilkins, the man Sherman recalled died long ago, if he ever lived outside of Sherman’s fantasy that all the men on his march were somehow better than real people. Cump could keep his fantasy intact, Rachel could get on with life, and he could see if there was a place maybe up Montana way where he could live a quiet life, if such a miracle were possible. Best it was going to get.
He looked at Rachel’s shadowy figure in the dimness. Life was a fight from the start. She didn’t need any more. His conscience was clear.
“I’ll ride out after we go back,” he said.
“Afraid I may kill you in your sleep?”
“Thought crossed my mind.”
“You are right. There has been enough,” she said. “Libby says you are a good man. She may be wiser than her mother. I can only hope that she will forget. Jeremiah may learn things I do not want him to know, but the truth would hurt him, for he was proud to be the son of his father. He must be protected.”
“You are leaving.”
“This is a place I thought would be safe. It was not. There is no safe place, Kane. I do not know where we will go. I fear one day, the men of Rakeheart will come to take it, so I may as well sell it to them.”
“Where will you go?”
“North. It is wilder there, I think. I do not know. I have no people and no place. I would not be welcome with a white child on a reservation and not welcome with an Indian one in a white town. I have been waiting for a sign from the Great Spirit. I still wait. You should stay here tonight. You will be safe here—safer than riding alone. I fear you have disturbed too many people in your search for the truth, Kane. I know you do not mean harm. Yet, I still do not fully trust. I do not think you lie, but promises rarely come true with whites, even when they mean to keep them. Only when you are gone and the moon after you is gone will I not expect a man with a gun to appear.”
Staying on the ranch made no sense. It was a risk. He agreed.
“We should go back to the house,” he told her.
She was like a stone.
“He called her an Indian brat,” she said, head turned away. The hurt in her voice was as raw as though it had happened yesterday. “I will never know how long he had that bottled up in him. And still I cried when he died. I warned him. I did warn him, Kane. He told me I should know my place. I do not know what he became, but he was not the man who for so long was so kind. I try to hold that man close and never let him go. That is why I think now that we must leave. There is poison here. Those people. Rakeheart. Something from that terrible place crawled into him and infected him, and it changed him, and I am so afraid it will get Jeremiah and Libby and me.”
He understood.
He was thinking of not even going back to Rakeheart after sending a telegram to Sherman, or maybe tossing them his badge from the back of Tecumseh and riding some place where either there was a town t
hat didn’t hate, or, better yet, no town at all—if there still was such a place anywhere in the West.
Rachel had gripped his arms intensely as she spoke. She still grasped him in silence. It hurt. He disengaged his arms from hers and put his around her. She wept on his shoulder as it all broke inside of her. And the stars looked down.
After false promises he knew he would break to ride back soon to see Libby, Kane loped towards Rakeheart with the full of the morning before him.
Rachel had tried to talk more than she usually did. He could see Libby sizing up her mother, knowing something was off. They would work it out. Jeremiah gave Kane a stick with no bark on it.
“I made sure he didn’t cut his hand off,” Libby said in the time-honored denigration of a younger sibling’s accomplishment that was as much a part of life as the sky.
Rachel was quiet as he left. He was, too. Nothing was left to say.
The waving grasslands were turning brown as the August heat began to show its force. For all that Wyoming people talked about winter, Kane could not imagine it.
One lone horseman meant little to the herds of deer and the bears with young along trickling creeks. The wind blew fresh and clean.
The night had been a time of decision.
First Rakeheart, to tell them he was leaving. Then Laramie, to telegraph Sherman a lie he hoped the general would accept. He told himself he was being straight with the people of the town by going there first, but his inner self told him he was putting off that message to Sherman as long as possible.
Then Montana. Or maybe farther out in Wyoming—he had no idea where boundaries ran. Some place where there would not be a telegraph that could connect Sherman to him. Some place where the railroad did not pollute minds with ambition—if there was such a place. He doubted it, but, on a morning like this, there was always the hope that he could ride on and on and not worry about the details.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The day was more than halfway gone by the time he arrived in Rakeheart. Didn’t matter. It would be a short stay. He would find Conroy, hand back the badge with some explanation that would be all lies, then light out for Laramie, blame everything on dead men, and head out.
North. Rachel was going north. Maybe. Montana territory was a big place. Cold, too. Maybe Texas boys belonged home. Might be different without having Sherman’s work to do. Might be like having a life of his own.
Maybe he could ride herd and let all of it go by. There were ranches enough that hired without many questions other than what name to call a man. Sounded like a drunkard’s dream, but it would hold for the day.
He led Tecumseh to the stable. Didn’t unsaddle him but loosened the cinch before finding him fresh hay. They’d both gotten used to eating too much and too often, but one last good feed would be fine for the animal.
“Kane!” Janie ran to see him as he was stepping out into the street and gave him a hug.
Being hugged by a young, pretty girl was a fine thing, but it was a puzzle.
“Where have you been?”
“Business at the fort.” She seemed very intense or anxious. Something. Her pa was working in the smithy. Bang-bang. Bang-bang. Bang! Bang! Then he was quiet a while before resuming the steady rhythm of a man working.
“Come with me.” She grabbed his hand, started to lead him out behind the stable.
“Something wrong?”
“No, why? Aren’t you glad to see me? Don’t you like me?” She smiled at him and ran her hand up his arm.
“I got to go see Conroy, um, Janie.”
“Can’t it wait? Please? Please?” She was pulling him.
“Janie . . .”
She turned, wrapped her arms around him, and kissed him hard on very surprised lips—though not too surprised to respond.
“There!” she said. “Now come along. There’s no privacy here.”
He did not want to explain then and there about heading someplace. And wasn’t she keeping step with some Company Rider?
He let her lead him to the more private back side of the stable. Whatever she was up to, he could explain to her here.
The look in her eyes puzzled him. Fear? Concern? Guilt?
Then her eyes grew very wide and looked past him.
He turned.
Trap!
Wood and six men with drawn guns were walking. She had set him up.
“Git, girl,” Wood said. She stayed there, rooted.
“Wood.”
“Hello, Sheriff. Got business we didn’t finish.”
Kane was still dumbfounded he had let himself be betrayed and fooled so easily. Man deserves it when he forgets where he is.
Janie was still standing next to him as the Company Riders closed in.
“I told you to git,” Wood said to her.
“Why you need them guns?” Janie asked. “You said you needed to talk private-like when them other folks wasn’t lookin’.”
Wood laughed scornfully. “Oh, I do, girl. Got a lot to say to Mr. Sheriff here. Don’t think you want to see it, girl. Git!”
“Kane . . .” she began.
“Told you to git, you stupid girl.” Wood shoved her to the ground. Another man held her as she scrambled to her feet and tossed her like a rag doll back into the stable. Her father emerged from the smithy and grabbed her, screaming and kicking. He began yelling at her, and she was yelling back as they disappeared farther from view.
Wood was now a few feet from Kane.
“Karl.” The big man who had tossed Janie around moved closer. Other Riders moved around from the side.
Kane got in one punch that hit Wood before they pinioned his arms.
“Don’t know you, Texas. Don’t care. You landed on the wrong side. Your hard luck. This is business. It ain’t personal.”
Kane got in one kick that came close to where it hurts.
“Now it’s a little more personal.”
The first punch doubled Kane over. The next ones jarred his head. One caught his right eye. He could feel the wave of dizziness.
“Let’s go,” he heard Wood say. Something about a lesson or a show.
He was being led. Sunshine. Not dead yet. Focus on what was positive. There would be worse to come. Of that, he was certain. His sight was adapting, but there was something in his eyes. Probably blood. They were in the main street of Rakeheart. The piano was jangling. They must be near Noonan’s.
Kane all but jumped when Wood’s gun fired at his ear. The rest he started hearing as though he were far underwater and someone was yelling at him.
“Out here!” the lead Rider called. “Out here now! Every one of you.”
Hazy faces. The sun hurt when it hit his eyes. He could hear the buzz. If they wanted an audience, they were planning a show. He knew who was going to be the main attraction. He tried to struggle, but it did no good.
“Get the rest,” Wood ordered. Kane heard murmurs growing louder.
“Got a lesson you need to learn,” Wood called out after a time. “You got to know who your friends are. You got to know who you don’t never want to have as your enemies.”
Wood came nearer. He was grinning at Kane. “Karl.”
The big man came over. Kane saw the work gloves, with hard, leather seams. This was going to hurt.
It did.
When Karl paused, Kane could feel blood flowing down his face. One eye was swollen shut; the other getting there. His mouth was bleeding. If his nose wasn’t broken, it was a miracle. At least one rib had to be busted. The gut punches had him retch past what a man could hold. Kane was still alive, but nothing more than a mass of hurt. Breathing hurt. He’d have been limp on the ground if they were not holding him up.
Somebody was pulling his hair back.
“Not so tough now, are you?” It was Wood. He let go. Kane’s head lolled.
Wood’s voice pitched louder. “All of you. This is what happens when you cross anyone you ought to think of as your friend. Don’t forget it. Don’t want any of your men to end
up like this, do you?”
Maybe the show was over. The hands holding him relaxed. Kane head-butted Wood, unknowingly catching his nose. Fresh blood flowed, but for once it was not his. Wood roared anger, punching Kane hard in the ribs and the gut, bending the victim over further as Kane moaned uncontrollably.
“You might live past this day, Texas, but you ain’t never gonna forget it.” He turned to his men. “Find me a piece of lumber.”
Kane breathed and bled. Distantly there was a thought that he might die, but it had too many miles of pain to overcome to be real. He had never stopped fighting and was not going to do that now. Growing fear gave him strength, but it was not enough.
“Bring him.”
He was jerked forward. His head was dunked in a trough. The water startled him. For a moment he thought he could see. Now he was awake. Now he was scared.
“You asked for this. Hold him!”
Kane didn’t know what was coming, but he fought to avoid it to no avail. Soon he was laid on the duckboards, face up. He could feel the sun on his face. It was a hazy ball. Then a shadow. Wood.
“Remember this, because you ain’t never going for your gun with this arm ever again.”
Kane struggled.
Then all the pain of the past hours was as nothing compared to the agony that filled him as Wood brought down a piece of lumber hard on Kane’s right forearm. The crack of breaking bone was as loud as a gunshot.
Someone was screaming as he hung on to the edge of consciousness. It was him.
“You get one more for being good.”
The gunshot and the breaking of the glass in Noonan’s large window came together. Another shot. His right leg danced and stung.
Kane was aware of the noise but could do no more than listen.
Janie’s voice echoed as she strode from the crowd forward.
“You used me! You made me a Judas goat! You said . . .”
“Haliburton, get your daughter under control!” Wood called. “Janie, you drop that gun or I will slap your fool head so silly you won’t know which end is up, fool girl. You and your pa want to be part of the Company Riders, this is how we do our business. Now shut your mouth and go home, girl!”
