by Rusty Davis
It was over.
By Noonan’s he came to the form of Conroy, lying face up in the street with a Colt in his hand.
“He got away from me,” said Zeke Hughes, one of the hands who rode in with Rachel. “Yelled something about redemption, and he was out that door. Think he got one of them before they got him. Not sure; it was all noise, and then it was over.”
Hughes cleared his throat and said a stray shot finished Jeffries. Kane did not ask. He did not care.
“Just bury them. Families want them, they can have them.”
The wind gusted; smoke billowed and swirled. Kane moved down the street.
“Haliburton! You know the town and the men. Fire brigade before the whole place goes up,” Kane called out. “Got to be somebody left to save the place for.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
By dawn, Rakeheart was a sight to behold. What used to be Conroy’s store was a skeleton of blackened wood, where anything stood at all. The bank remained standing, but its windows were shattered, and much of the wood inside was damaged. Gallagher’s saddle shop, which had been across the alley from the store, was a complete loss. Scorch marks from windblown flames marked a few other buildings, but everything else had been saved.
The smells of the charred wood, wet from the water that had been thrown upon it, and the burned leather from the saddle shop made the town smell of death.
As the sun replaced the moon’s glow along Rakeheart’s main street, dead men still lay in the dirt next to jaded men and women who had thrown buckets of water at the flames all night until their arms could move no more.
Rakeheart was scarred, but it was alive.
Soon, Tom and Mary Ellen Pierce, who had spent the night fighting Riders and fires, were walking through the knots of survivors, doling out coffee, bread, and whatever was left over from the day before. Others were soon helping.
Siegel, who confessed to Kane that he had killed a man in Chicago and let it slip once to Halloran, was contrite.
“No time for that,” said Kane. “Got people to feed, dead to bury. Past don’t matter no more, Preacher. Not nobody’s past. Too much work to waste the time looking back. Everybody out there, Preacher, their real lives begin today.”
Wood and Karl were both pulled from the wreckage of Conroy’s store, along with six others. Kane had wanted them dead. Now they were. He felt nothing. It was long over, and all he wanted was to rest. Soon.
Kane talked to the assembled Riders who had survived.
“You are done riding rough over the law. Wood and Halloran hired you to steal whatever you were told, whenever you were told, as though the law did not apply to you. That’s over. I want answers, or none of you get out of here alive. Who killed Clem Ferguson?”
“None of us,” called out one voice. “Someone from the town hired Clem to watch ol’ Wilkins ’cuz they didn’t trust him. We’d act in town like we wasn’t friends, because it was supposed to be a secret or somethin’. One of them town people—that town council.”
“I think Wood did it,” Rachel whispered. “He gave himself away at the ranch.”
“Who ordered it?” Kane called.
“Wood talked with them folks,” the man said. “The town council. Never wanted to kill nobody, Sheriff. Idea was always to scare people but not kill ’em. That night he went crazy was nothin’ any of us signed on for. Wood liked killin’. He liked hurtin’. Some of us was plannin’ on pullin’ out come the snow because he was gettin’ worse.”
“Who killed that Kruger man last fall?”
“Wilkins,” the man replied. “Don’t know more, but Wood said that he had to test him, had to be sure of him. Might have been something else. Dunno. They didn’t tell us everything, Sheriff.”
Kane was certain Conroy had been lying. Perhaps not about this.
“Who took potshots at me?”
“We got told to see if we could scare you off,” the Rider said. “Wood didn’t want no sheriff here. Nobody hit you. If they’d’a said to kill you we’d’a done it, but they never did. Didn’t mean no harm . . .”
“Just business,” Kane snapped.
Kane wanted to argue and claim the Riders knew more than the man was letting on. He wanted answers. But the man had the ring of truth in his voice. At least more truth than was common in Rakeheart. Kane could keep it going. He could end it. No choice.
“She’s dead!”
Chad Washburn emerged, wet-faced and bareheaded, from Tillie Witherspoon’s store.
“She gasped once deep, and I thought she was coming back, and then she went,” he told Kane. He looked at the Riders huddled together. “And one of them did it!”
He drew his gun and was in the act of aiming it when Kane shoved the boy hard with his left arm, his right by now having screamed at him that he had gone beyond its limits.
Chad stumbled and then looked down the barrel of Kane’s Remington as Kane moved between Chad and the Riders.
“Can’t let you kill them, boy,” he said. “They might deserve it. Might be the best thing you ever did, but it ain’t right. You can’t kill a man who gave himself up, no matter how much you want to.”
“They killed her!”
“Never gonna know who did, Chad. Might have been them. Maybe the ones that are dead done it. Wood was a killer, Chad. You kill a man without a gun in front of all these people, and it is murder, Chad. Throwin’ your life away.”
Tillie Witherspoon had been trying to catch Chad. She now came next to him and touched the arm that held the gun.
“Chad? I need you to help me prepare her. I can’t do it alone.”
Chad wavered.
“I’m sorry, Chad.”
Rachel Wilkins walked into the circle of spectators. She put a hand on Chad’s right shoulder.
“Too many people are already dead, Chad. You cannot bring her back. Please?”
Chad looked daggers at the Riders, spared a glance of disgust at Kane, jammed the gun hard into its holster, and went with Tillie as she took him by the arm and led him to her shop, holding him firmly, Kane noted.
He told the Riders they could ride out with one pistol each and some food. No rifles, nothing else.
“I see any one of you back here, I will kill you without asking,” he said, ordering Rachel’s cowhands to be sure the men left one by one to avoid any of them thinking they could return as a group.
Racing horses sparked a panic, but it was two children who did not seem to know the meaning of obedience, flanked by every Wilkins ranch hand that wasn’t already in town.
“I told you to stay!” Rachel scolded as Libby and Jeremiah eventually managed to stop after scattering more than a few townspeople.
“Mama, there was all this smoke in the sky, and we had to come,” said Jeremiah.
“It was his idea,” Libby agreed. “I came along to keep him out of trouble, because I am a good big sister.”
She grinned at Kane, who grinned back.
Lefty Sullivan, whom Rachel had put in charge at the ranch when the rest rode into town, explained the situation.
“You want them critters not to run off, we got to get back out there. Those kids were either gonna ride here with us or without us, Miz Rachel. Got sand, them two. Figgered it was safer this way, even if it left the ranch open. Had to watch ’em every minute last night to keep ’em from coming here in the dark. Could not hold them off no longer once the sun came up. Pistols, both of ’em. Rather watch cows, ma’am.”
“You ‘figgered’ right,” she said. “But don’t tell them. It might make them more headstrong than they already are.”
“Not my place to say, Miz Rachel, but I don’t think that can be did.”
Rachel laughed as she watched Libby happily jabbering at Kane. Jeremiah looked around at the burned buildings, holding Kane’s hand. Kane dropped his hat on the boy’s head, making him laugh. She smiled at Sullivan.
“I think, Lefty, there might be someone who will give that a try!”
Rakeheart was
quiet. The army, stung by the fact that someone within Fort Laramie had been working with the thieves to frustrate its efforts to prevent robberies or catch the thieves, had descended upon the town in reprisal, but there was nothing left for the army to do.
Kane felt a twinge of pity for Conroy, whom he knew was less evil than some of them, but even good men pay the price when they build their dreams on the bones of the innocent, he mused. The rest, he would have gladly shot.
Janie was buried in the churchyard. The stone gave her last name as Washburn. Kane doubted there was much of a legal wedding, but if it helped Chad survive, it was fine with him. Most of the town turned out, although Eloise Brewer had managed to disappear without anyone noticing.
Tom Pierce, a quiet man who left the talking to others, was trying to help the town survive. He hung the Last Chance sign on Noonan’s, which still gave cowboys a place to be young and stupid, but the food was much better. Townspeople admitted one by one to Kane that the town’s leaders had insisted that the Riders were important, but since they never asked for money from the citizens to support them and paid the bill for the Riders themselves as the leading town citizens, it did not really matter much.
Tillie Witherspoon’s name was tossed about as the person who ought to be the town mayor. She blushed, giggled, and said it was about time someone with sense was in charge. No one bothered with an election. There was no time for such things when there was work to be done.
Bill Cartwright had started working on a new building for a general store. The army had agreed to share some of its stocks of food and clothes with the town. Since Cartwright was building the new place, everybody figured he might as well run it. Kane liked the way Mae Cartwright smiled when she heard.
But laying ghosts to rest would only go so far.
“No,” Rachel hissed at Kane as they sat on the stone fence watching the sun dip down toward the distant hills. They had returned to the ranch earlier that day.
“Rachel, you heard what Halloran said. If we tell Libby that Halloran shot Jared, she can stop thinking she did it.”
“Kane, you don’t understand.”
“I don’t want Libby living her life under that shadow,” Kane insisted. “She ought to know she might not have done it!”
“Is it better to have her know she told the man who killed her father, if he was telling the truth, how to find him? Is that better? Do you even believe him? Kane, that was a horrible, terrible night. You were not here. You cannot understand.” Rachel’s voice began to rise as she recalled the anguish of the boiled-over emotions that raged on the night Jared was killed. She balled her hands into fists.
“Libby is just starting to come back to life. Do you really want to keep her trapped in that night and have her picture what happened over and over again by telling her something that could be a lie? You do not know what happened—truly know. We never will! What do you want to do? Dig up Jared to find out which gun killed him? Think! This is her life we are talking about!” she exclaimed heatedly.
“Are you two fighting?” Libby’s face and tone reflected her fears. She had lived through one family where fights took place every day. She knew how that ended.
“No,” said Rachel, at the same time Kane said, “Yes.”
Kane was quiet a moment as Rachel glared, and Libby turned perplexed, fearful eyes upon him. Life and death. Today and tomorrow. Guilt and feeling guilty. He realized as something like an answer came into his head at last that Libby would shake her feelings over the past about the same day he would convince himself that he bore no share of blame for getting Janie into the predicament that got her killed.
“Folks say to forget the past, Libby. All the bad things. Doesn’t work. You can pretend it’s gone, but one day it all comes back. We all got to live with it. Ain’t always easy. But justice comes around. Them that deserve it get punished. The Riders. The rest of ’em that got dead. They got retribution for what they done.” Kane was sweating trying to make himself clear, aware how much he was failing. “When bad men start doing bad things, even good people get caught up in it all, and bad things happen.”
Libby looked puzzled more than comforted.
“Mr. Kane is trying to say that we need to look ahead, Libby. The bad times are over.”
“Then why didn’t you say so?” Libby asked Kane.
Kane struggled with an answer until Rachel rescued him again.
“Come here, child,” she said as she patted the still-warm stones from where the sun had shone upon them. “We can watch the sun set, and Mr. Kane can talk more sense by keeping his mouth shut than he ever does when he speaks.”
Libby looked from one adult to the other, laughed, and hopped up between Rachel and Kane as the day drew to a close, and the Wyoming prairie slowly wrapped itself in the velvet darkness of night.
The September wind had veered and was now strong from the north, Kane noted, as he looked at the weathervane on the barn. These past days, the wind and Rachel had much in common. Some days she wanted to live on the ranch forever. Other days she wanted to leave it far behind.
Kane tried to talk about Wilkins. Once. After days of finding the right words. He explained that what pushed Wilkins over his own edge was killing a man just to get into the town’s inner circle. It was not Rachel’s fault that he changed.
Rachel had let her hair blow loose in the wind that day. They were sitting on the fence by the horse barn, and the fading sun was in her face.
“Kane, anybody ever tell you that you handle words about as well as Jeremiah does an axe?” She did not give him time to respond. “Perhaps someday, Jared will not be a raw, hurting hole in me. It may be then that I can understand what you are saying. That day is not now, and it may not be ever. You mean well, Kane, but do not speak to me about him again.” She got down from the fence. “Ever.” She walked back to the house alone.
Halloran’s Denver bank account amounted to more profits than the ranch could have made in ten years. As the sheriff of Rakeheart, with the weight of the army at his back, Kane ordered the bank to pay her. Rachel at first said it was evil money, but then she decided to keep it. She had no idea how to give back what was stolen to the rightful owners. She made a gift to Tillie Witherspoon and the town to buy some lumber to help repair the damage she and Kane caused, but the rest she set aside because, sooner or later, her family would need it. Kane had buried the money Sherman wanted him to give Rachel under a floorboard of the Tompkins shack. He gave it to her, entertaining Libby along the way with a stammering explanation of why it was not delivered immediately in the days when he suspected Rachel of killing Wilkins. With that and Halloran’s money, they could mismanage the ranch and still eat.
Kane found out the depth of Halloran’s game when he visited Frost Springs and Gray Flats. Each of them had been visited by toughs allegedly from Rakeheart. Each knew Wood as the leader of a group one town knew as the Protectors and another as the Regulators. Each knew Halloran as a man who helped them arrange for their protection. Kane made sure they understood it was all over.
Kane had been fired but put the badge back on to help give the town some sense of order. He had wanted to toss the badge back at Rakeheart and leave it far behind but now felt an odd reluctance to leave the place to itself now that there was even less need of a sheriff than there was before. Ranch chores kept his hands distracted, but there was no sense of purpose in his movements. He figured one day he might turn over the badge to Chad Washburn, who had grown into a man. Maybe soon.
Then the rider came.
Kane lived in the bunkhouse at the Wilkins ranch. There was room, with the hands out. He liked it there, but he knew that the day would come when the crew would return. He would have to decide if he stayed or if he left.
He was gazing south across the flat lands. He saw the man while the rider was a ways off. The rider was not hurried and seemed stiff in his movements. Kane did not perceive a threat. Still, he picked up a rifle. He could shoot one now. Hitting what he shot at was a
nother story. His arm was healing, and he could more than not hit what he aimed at with a pistol, but with a rifle, his shooting might never be what it was.
“Rachel. Company.”
She emerged from the house with her shotgun. Kane was as unclear about his future as she was about hers. There were thoughts that made him wonder if he could handle responsibility; there were days he knew he could not. There were days when he knew there was no other place he belonged. That Libby had very clear opinions on his future was easy to see; to Jeremiah he was a cross between father and big brother. He wished his life was as clear to him as it was to them.
The rider was taking his time. The man had lots of gold braid, even on the coat he wore over his uniform. He was not young and looked fatigued from travel. He announced his intentions from about as far away as a man could yell.
“Got a letter for a man named Kane they told me in town was staying here.”
“Who from?” Rachel called.
“General William Sherman, U.S. Army headquarters in St. Louis,” the man called back. “I’m only delivering it.”
Kane set the gun by the fence. Rachel kept hers ready.
“What’s Sherman want?” Kane called out to the man, who said his name was Col. Roland Jones, that he had come from Denver and then to the ranch by way of Fort Laramie.
“Never open the general’s mail, myself,” said the man with a grin. He stood expectantly. “I have to wait for a reply.”
“Come in then,” Rachel called.
The letter was in fact a telegram to Kane: “Coming Rakeheart 12th. Special train. Meet me.”
“He always like that?” Rachel asked.
“This is him being polite,” Kane replied.
Kane looked at the messenger.
“You don’t know anything about this?”
“I know the fur has been flying since the men from Fort Laramie came to get what they could of that nest of snakes you cleaned out of Rakeheart,” the man said. “General was a mite angry that his soldiers were outsmarted. Some folks got sent other places they will regret ever seeing. He sent this to me because I don’t think he trusts them to do anything right.”
