“I didn’t take their leader for being a robber, either,” Mackey admitted, “but it looks like today’s my day for being surprised.”
Lagrange tied a third napkin tight over the man’s ruined face. “Let’s hope we get to the doctor in Olivette in time for this one to tell us anything.”
Chapter 18
Knowing the train would be delayed for a couple of hours before it resumed its trip to Olivette, Billy wanted to track the horses as quickly as possible. After the chaos with the madman on the train, Mackey ordered him to go on with his original plan, claiming tracking the horses was now more important than ever.
He got a day’s worth of provisions from the train’s cook and headed out immediately. The mystery of where the horses were headed and if they were headed back home had only doubled after the events on the train. How big was Tom Macum’s gang? How many people had he brought in to help him? It seemed like it had to be more than the five other men who they had found with him.
With the surviving members of the gang either dead or unable to talk, Billy knew tracking the horses gave him the best possibility of getting some answers.
Based on the small amount of provisions he had found at the gang’s campsite, he knew they had to live close by. They hadn’t brought enough with them for more than one night in the field, certainly not enough for a long ride back. They had to live close by. He hoped the dead men’s horses would be able to show him the way.
Horses were smart animals, much smarter than the dime novels from back east or most people gave them credit for. After fleeing the gunfire, the four horses that had escaped reverted back to nature and formed a small herd. He could tell by their hoofprints in the dirt that one had assumed the leadership role and had led them in a relatively straight line through a small stand of trees, then a deeper forest. Most of the land was flat and, given that it was so close to winter, there was little grazing available. The animals were not wandering in search of food. They were heading for the one place they knew the food would be plentiful. Home.
Billy Sunday had no trouble following their tracks and droppings on the packed dirt of the forest floor. He could tell by the length of their respective gaits that they moved with purpose and speed. They knew where they were going.
Billy knew it, too, when he broke through the trees and found himself at the edge of a snow-covered clearing at the foot of a mountain range. A ranch house with a decent-sized barn to the right sat in the distance. A thin wisp of smoke trailing up from the chimney told him someone was home. And, judging by the way the horse tracks fell, they had headed straight for the warmth of the barn.
Billy decided he could still learn something from the horses, so he moved his mount back into the tree line and rode the long way around toward the barn. When he drew next to it, he broke cover of the trees and tied his horse to a fallen log at the edge of the tree line. Given that the house was occupied, he knew a man on foot was less threatening than a man on horseback. And if it came down to shooting, he’d still be able to get to his horse and ride into the cover of the forest before they got close.
The corral was empty, and all of the hitching posts in front of the house were unoccupied. That meant the horses were in the barn, probably unsaddled. He’d be a mile or so away before anyone came after him.
Billy pulled his Sharps from his saddle and began walking toward the barn. He stepped as lightly as he could through the snow, but it was impossible to be totally quiet. He rounded the front of the barn and found one of the doors was open. He looked inside and saw the horses he had been tracking were in their stalls, unsaddled and munching away at hay.
Someone had removed their saddles and fed them before Billy had gotten there. The horses had made better time than he’d thought. Someone was home. Time to ease out of here, ride back to the train, and get Aaron and the others to come with him.
As he turned around, he heard the sound that could only be hammers of a shotgun being thumbed back. A woman’s voice said, “Don’t move, you black son of a bitch.”
* * *
Billy slowly set his Sharps against the barn and raised his hands. He could tell from the thickness in the woman’s voice that she had been crying and recently.
“My rifle’s against the barn and my hands are nowhere near the pistol on my leg,” he said. “I’m going to turn around real slow so you can see I’m not trying to steal anything.”
Billy began turning slowly to his left, so the woman would see the star pinned to that side of his coat. “You’ll see I’m no threat to you or anyone else.”
He saw the woman lower the shotgun the more he turned. She was a plump woman, in her late forties, with grayish hair and puffy red eyes. “You’re a sheriff?” Her voice finally cracking.
“Deputy Sheriff Billy Sunday, ma’am. From up in Dover Station.”
“I’ve heard of you. But you’re from Dover Station?” She lowered the shotgun completely. “That’s more than a day’s ride away. What the hell are you doing all the way down here?”
Billy had no intention of telling her anything until she was away from that shotgun. “I’d be a mite more comfortable if you’d put that shotgun down and let me lower my hands, ma’am. It’s a damned cold day for standing still, if you’ll pardon my language.”
She lowered the shotgun and Billy picked up his Sharps. “I think it’s best if I close the barn door so the horses stay warm. Don’t want them catching pneumonia, now do we?”
“No, we don’t,” she said. “I probably should’ve done that myself, but I was too surprised by seeing them all come back like that without Tom or the others.”
Billy shouldered the barn door closed and threw the latch that would keep them shut. “I hate to be a bother, ma’am, but could we go inside for a spell? I’d like to warm up before I head back.”
She began heading back inside and left the shotgun next to the door. “Got stew on, so you can help yourself. Was expecting Tom and the others to come back for lunch, not just their horses.”
Billy left the shotgun outside and shut the door behind him. The farther away she was from the weapon, the better.
She stopped short just inside the doorway. It was a large kitchen with the kind of open fireplaces that served to heat the rest of the house and heated food, too. She looked up at him with swollen, reddened eyes. “You know, they say strange things happen in threes and today’s no exception.”
She seemed to be in an awkward state of mind, which suited Billy just fine. If she was Tom Macum’s wife, she knew all about the hardship of living out in this part of the world. She knew death was always just out of reach and ready to move in at the slightest opportunity.
She knew her husband must be dead, but had not gotten around to believing it just yet. Billy was happy to let her ease into the idea rather than allow it to land on her all at once.
He decided to keep her talking. “What would those three things be, ma’am?”
“The first is that those horses came back on their own.” She handed him a plate from the wooden table and sat down in a rocking chair next to the roaring fire. “The second is that you’re down here all the way from Dover Station. The third, I suppose, is that you’re a, well, a Negro I guess is the proper term. Never had one of your kind in my house before.”
“Honored to be the first one, ma’am, and I appreciate your hospitality.”
But the woman did not seem to hear him as the tears began to flow. “Why did those horses come back by themselves, deputy? You had something to do with that, didn’t you?”
He set his plate back on the table. “You’ve lived out here a long time, ma’am?”
“Over thirty years,” she said. “Ma and Pa brought us out here when I was a little girl.”
“So you know how things are out here,” he told her. “How unkind it can be.”
She looked down at her apron and used it to wipe away her tears. “Why did them horses come back from the west? Tom and the others were supposed to be tending to our herd to the north. We
ain’t got nothing in the west. Why would he and the others be over there?”
“What others, ma’am?”
“Tom, Joe, Johnny, Sam, and Cus,” she told him. “Been with us ever since we managed a stagecoach stop and telegraph office before Tom got into ranching a few years back.”
Billy had not known much about Tom Macum’s life before ranching. And he had no idea the man had managed a stagecoach stop or a telegraph office. “So Tom’s your husband?”
“He was.” The woman began to weep heavily. “Because he’s dead now, ain’t he?”
Experience kept Billy from trying to console her. He had learned that, in times like these, the harder and sooner the reality hit, the better everyone was. Death was as final as it got and there was no way to sugarcoat it. No sense in trying, either.
“I’m sorry for your loss, ma’am.” He checked around for other pistols or rifles nearby. He did not see any, not even hanging on the wall above the door or the fireplace. “I truly am.”
“Were you there when it happened?” She looked up at him without anger in her eyes, only questions. “Can you tell me why it happened?”
Like grief, Billy believed truth was better when it was learned, not told. “Tom and the others weren’t tending to the herd in the north. Where do you think they were?”
She ran her finger along a seam of her apron. “Why do men lie to their wives, deputy? They depend on us for so damned much. They ask us to be so strong for them, but they think we’re too weak to stand the truth, so they lie to us, thinking we’re too stupid to know the difference.”
“What lies, Mrs. Macum?”
“About where all the money was coming from,” she said. “About that new barn out there going up three months ago. And another one just like it at our place in Stansfield. Didn’t he think I’d know he didn’t get all of that money just from selling horses and cattle? Tom had never been poor, thank God, but he’d never had enough money to throw around like that. Not until that snake crawled back into our lives.”
Billy felt sweat begin to break out all over his back, the way it always did when he was close to something that was about to happen. And he was very close now. “What snake, Mrs. Macum?”
She looked up at him with a mixture of sadness and rage in her eyes. “The same one who’s changing your town for you. That bastard James Grant, that’s who.”
Billy leaned against the wall. There it was. The link Aaron had been looking for. The link Mr. Rice would want to hear. A direct link between the train robberies and James Grant. “He the one who started giving your husband all of this extra money?”
“Five hundred dollars a month, near as I can figure,” she told him. “Not that I ever saw it, but I knew how much it was on account of him taking less from the till than he used to. Never added to it, though, not even after he built them new barns. I imagine he was spending the money on something else, though I don’t know what.”
But Billy knew what. Paying for a cadre of men to rob the train wouldn’t be cheap. It would take money to keep them ready for him whenever they got the call. A call Tom Macum could hear since he had once run a telegraph office.
Billy felt like he needed to sit down but wanted to keep her talking. He had to get her to come back to the train with him so she could tell Aaron all of this herself. Otherwise, it was just supposition on his part. “What do you think he was doing, Mrs. Macum?”
“Robbing trains, most likely,” she said. “Not that he had any damned business doing that. I read the papers, deputy. I knew when those attacks happened and where. I knew Tom and his men weren’t here when those robberies happened, so I had my suspicions. And when his telegraph equipment disappeared one day, I knew something was going on. Tom changed, too. He had never been a jolly man, but he’d been affable enough. He changed once news of the robberies started appearing in the papers a few months ago.”
She looked away, toward the window and the snow-covered meadow Billy had just ridden through. “I even asked him about it once. He stopped talking to me for a week after that. Can you believe that? His own wife. Way out here, just the two of us. Not a word for a week.” Her eyes narrowed. “That’s when I knew something had happened and I knew James Grant was a part of it. We’d known him years ago, back when we both ran stations for the stagecoach. Train lines only made business better for us, and James Grant was attracted to money the way bees are to honey. Nobody likes being poor, but Grant made a business of being wealthy. Even though there wasn’t much money to be had in that business, it didn’t matter. He just needed to have more than the rest of us. The biggest stop. The most amount of liquor. Even women, believe it or not. Got to be so that people stayed on at his place so long, they had to make up time. Drivers often skipped our station altogether, or only stayed long enough to water their horses and use the privy. People suffering poorly from a night of drinking usually don’t have appetites for apple pie and home-cooked meals, deputy.”
She kept talking and Billy kept listening. “So Grant bought out our share in the coach stop, which we used to set up our ranch. We hadn’t heard from him until about six months ago while we were in Stansfield. He came by and told us how prosperous he was. Said he’d been hired by Silas Van Dorn to be his personal manager, though neither Tom nor I knew how that could’ve happened. Grant had always been an ambitious man, but working for a man like Van Dorn didn’t make much sense. Then I was asked to leave the room while Tom and James huddled around the fire, whispering to each other like a couple of old washwomen across a fence. Things changed after that.”
Her eyes got that faraway look again. “I guess you could say that was the day Tom and the others began to die. It wasn’t today. It was six months ago. They were already dead and didn’t even know it yet. Nothing I could’ve done about it, either. Could I?”
Billy was not sure if she was talking to him or to God or to herself. He answered anyway. “Ma’am, was there anyone else Tom used to work with? Any other men who used to . . . help him other than the men who were with him today?”
“Out here?” She winced, though it looked like it was meant to be a smile. “There’s always someone out here looking to make some money. Problem is finding the men, not getting them to do what you need. Tom used to take different men with him to tend to the herd, he said, but I guess I knew it meant train robbing. I know there was one man in particular he liked to work with. Dave Aderson. Big bastard with scars on his face. I never liked him much and told Tom to never let him in the house. Always got the worst feeling from him, though I can’t say why. You ever get a feeling off a person like that, mister?”
Billy followed her gaze out the window. “This Aderson ride a big black paint and wear a brown slouch hat?”
Mrs. Macum became more aware of herself. “I don’t remember the kind of hat he wore, but I remember his horse. And yes, I believe it was a black paint. A beautiful animal for such an ugly man. Big, too, which a man his size would require. Why do you ask? Do you know Dave?”
“No, ma’am. But he’s riding this way right now. And, things being what they are between you two, it’s probably best you get to your bedroom and find a place to hide.”
* * *
Billy watched Aderson approach from the front window. It was difficult for the rider to see him in the shade of the house, especially on horseback. Billy intended on allowing the man to get even closer before he stepped out onto the porch. The black paint was breathing heavy, a clear indication that Aderson had pushed the animal hard for quite a distance.
Billy had no way of knowing Aderson’s intentions in advance. He may have heard what had happened at the train and was riding to see if Tom had made it. He also may have just been stopping by to see if Macum had any work for him.
Or he had been an outlier at the robbery, the way the man in the train had been a member of Macum’s gang, too. He could be here to silence Tom’s wife because she was the only other person who knew James Grant was behind the robberies.
Given Mrs. Ma
cum’s descriptions of Aderson’s disposition, Billy was betting it was the third option.
Rider and horse had been well within the range of his Sharps since they’d broken through the clearing, but Billy decided against opening fire until he knew why Aderson was there. He had his suspicions and instinct, but he did not know for certain. He had promised Mackey he would avoid a confrontation if at all possible. And if at all possible, Billy Sunday would do just that.
He waited until Aderson was within less than fifty yards of the house before he opened the door and stepped out onto the porch. He stepped out slowly and shut the door behind him. He kept the Sharps visible, but the butt of the rifle high on his hip and aimed to the sky. He wanted Aderson to see it, but not think it was pointed at him. No sense in provoking something if he did not have to.
Aderson brought the paint up short, about thirty yards away from the Macum house. He was as big as Mrs. Macum had said he was and just as ugly, too. A thick brown beard did little to hide the scars that crisscrossed the left side of his face. They were of varying depth and length and had probably been received at different times. Billy had no idea how a man could get scars like that, except that he was fairly certain they had not happened during choir practice.
The rider brought his tired horse under control. “The hell are you doing here, buck?”
Billy thumbed the tin star on his jacket. “Name’s not Buck. I’m Deputy Billy Sunday from Dover Station.”
Aderson’s scowl changed, as if the name meant something to him. “Dover Station’s a long way from here, boy.”
“That’s what everyone keeps telling me. And the name’s Deputy Billy Sunday, mister. Not boy.”
Aderson looked around the area before saying, “What brings you to the Macum spread?”
“I was going to ask you the exact same thing.”
“Good thing I asked first, then.”
“I’m law, remember? My questions take priority. Tell me why you’re here.”
“I’m here to see Tom about a job,” Aderson said. “Told me to come by after breakfast, so that’s what I’ve done.”
Dark Territory Page 15
