Until today.
He had buried the brutalized body of Rosalee, too, covering her as best he could with his vest. He had fished the spectacles out of his vest pocket, hooking the wires behind his ears, and finding the most comfortable position on his nose, but avoided looking at his daughter. He had seen enough without the aid of eyeglasses. His wallet he had shoved into one of the deep, mule-ear pockets on his trousers. And his new watch? He slid it into his pants’ watch pocket, although he had debated simply tossing it away or burying it with Rosalee. It would just remind him of this day, he briefly thought, but almost immediately understood that no watch, nothing, would he need to remember what had happened, what he had seen.
The vest did not come close to being a shroud, but it was all he had. He had not taken a bedroll on his horse. Riding to Payson and back, he hadn’t needed one. Even if he had, McMasters did not know how far the buckskin, fearing the flames and carnage, had run.
No tools. No blankets. Nothing. Not even a funeral, for McMasters could find no words to say. He had just buried two of his children.
Buried? No. Not on that hard earth, not with no tools. He had covered their bodies. Maybe that would protect them from coyotes and wolves.
All the while, he waited for help. Surely someone in Payson or up at one of the sawmills would see the smoke. Black smoke. They had to know that meant someone’s home was burning, not pines and shrubs and underbrush. At least from town, they could tell from the distance that it had to be the McMasters place. From one of the sawmills or logging outfits up the Rim Road? Maybe they couldn’t see, half-blinded by sawdust or seeing nothing except tall trees. But in Payson? They had to see the smoke. Yet no one came.
Maybe, he thought, they knew it was his place, but also knew how much land he had cleared of timber. He remembered telling Mayor Ash Ashby, Harold Johnson, and a few others at the saloon known as The Dive about how he had cleared that land. Not to sell the timber, although he had, but to protect his place from a raging forest fire. And to clear some good pastureland for his horses, and a hayfield on the other side of the creek. He shook his head. No. He hadn’t been telling them. Hell, he had been bragging.
“Harold,” he remembered saying over a bourbon, “no forest fire, no lightning strike, or some drunk logger who can’t crush out his cigarette with his boot heel is going to burn my home down.”
Well, it hadn’t been a forest fire. It hadn’t been caused by lightning or a burning cigarette. But his home . . . his life . . . had been reduced to ash and embers.
Maybe the men in Payson saw the smoke and ignored it. Not that he could blame them. The last thing anyone who lived in those forests wanted to happen was to get caught in a fire. Be . . . burned . . .
He shook his head again, tightened his eyelids closed, and tried to forget those horrible memories of the Orange & Alexandria Railroad. And the stink of burning flesh. Tried to think of September 1862 . . . and of today . . . July—he couldn’t place the date, couldn’t even recall his birthday—1896.
As if in a trance, McMasters unfastened the knot securing his bandanna. He dipped the new piece of silk—another fiftieth birthday present—in the stream, brought it up to his neck, and felt more cold water running down his back.
Again, he looked through the woods and regretted keeping his spectacles, wishing that he had left them in the vest he had used to cover Rosalee’s body. The eye doctor in Globe had done too good a job with the latest pair. John McMasters, even with water dripping down his forehead and running between his eyes and his nose, saw everything.
Look away, he told himself.
But he couldn’t.
How long he sat in the cold stream he did not know, but at some point he understood that sitting there would solve nothing. He might even catch pneumonia. Not that he had anything to live for.
Something stepped into the water behind him, and McMasters tensed. His right hand moved down his hip, only to stop. It was 1896. A man no longer needed a six-shooter for protection. The Schofield .45 he carried at times he had left holstered on the elk horn hanging on the wall over his desk.
That thumb-busting revolver had burned in the home. Along with that old nine-gauge shotgun. Along with . . .
His head shook and his eyes tightened again as he waited for the bullet to enter his brain, but no one shot. The foot stepped into the water again. If someone came back to kill him, he was making a hell of a lot of noise. If someone came from Payson to fight the fire, he was a damned sight late.
A snort followed. Then . . . as McMasters understood. . . the sound of an animal slurping water reached his ears. It was not just any animal. He knew by the mere sound that it was no bear, no dog, no deer, no wolf.
Slowly, he rose to his feet and turned.
“Easy, fella,” he said, and made his way to the buckskin.
The horse lifted its head, water dripping from its nose and mouth, but did not step back or even try to run away. The current carried the reins downstream, toward McMasters. He waded through the water, keeping an eye on the animal’s ears—to learn what the animal was thinking. Ears flat against the head and he had a right to be nervous, for that meant the animal was feeling its oats or damned angry. Ear turned back, and the horse might just be bored, but maybe sick. Ears flopping to either side could also mean sick . . . or sleepy.
The buckskin’s ears pricked forward. That meant he was alert, but in a good mood—which made sense. He recognized McMasters, probably expected a carrot or a handful of oats. Since the wind blew in the other direction—away from McMasters, the horse, and Payson—and the smoke was dying, the buckskin wouldn’t smell anything.
Bending but never taking his eyes off the buckskin, McMasters clutched one rein and then the other, and rose again.
“You drink your fill?” he asked, surprised he could even speak.
The horse nudged him, and McMasters rubbed its neck in a circular motion. He stepped to the side, dropped one rein over the horse’s neck, and kept the other rein wrapped twice around his hand. If something spooked the buckskin, he’d be taking John McMasters with him. He opened the saddlebag with one hand, found the sack of grain, and reached inside with his free hand, drawing out enough to satisfy the buckskin.
Happily, it ate.
“You like that, eh, boy?” McMasters had always liked everything about a horse, including a coarse tongue. Maybe that’s why he raised them, trained them, and loved them.
Horses were loyal and true. Oh, they were individuals, and you might find a few bad ones, but rarely. Bad horses? Most of those came from bad owners. A good horse did what you asked it to. If it bucked in the morning after you’d just saddled it, he was just feeling his oats a bit and would settle down after a couple jumps. A horse would ride itself to death for its master. A horse did not kill men with telescope-outfitted rifles with double-set triggers from a distance of two hundred, four hundred, even six hundred yards.
“I haven’t given you a name, have I, boy?”
The horse dipped its head, drank some more water.
“Berdan.” He didn’t know why. Yes, you know exactly why.
“Come on, Berdan,” he said when the buckskin had finished drinking. Leading the horse out of the stream, McMasters knew what he had to do. He had waited too damned long already. Those nine men he had seen crossing the valley toward the Sierra Ancha Range had a damned good head start. But that valley would become rough soon, impassable at some spots, and tough at others for even a mountain goat.
Head to Payson, he told himself. Find—
He spit. Tom Billings, the county sheriff ? What the hell would that yellow-backed politician do? The town marshal?
McMasters shook his head. He had to give them a try. Tom Billings and Tony Jessop were lawmen. And John McMasters had many friends in Payson. They’d help him. They’d form a posse and light out of town, catch those bastards before they got halfway to Globe. Bring them to trial. Hang them.
That’s what John McMasters told himself, what he
kept telling himself. That’s why he did not look at the ruins of his place. He pulled the buckskin, newly christened Berdan, out of the creek and looked at the scabbard. He saw the Remington’s stock, still gleaming with its newness. The birdshot he had bought from Harold Johnson just a few hours earlier had been shoved inside the saddlebag on the other side of the horse. Birdshot he had planned on letting James and Nate shoot this afternoon.
He liked to keep his long gun—be it the old nine-gauge or that old Henry .44—in the scabbard, butt forward, angled deeply on his near side. Others did not sheath their long guns that way, but it was merely a personal preference. John McMasters liked to swing down from a horse holding his reins in his left hand and pulling rifle or shotgun out with his right. That was one reason. But not the main one.
He didn’t like to feel the weapon underneath his leg, and he didn’t like the way a long gun might rub against a horse’s leg, producing sores. He stared at the Remington’s stock. A beautiful shotgun, but he longed for that Henry. He shook his head. No, not with his eyesight. That’s why he hadn’t left the ranch with that old rimfire long gun in years. That’s why Bea had given him a shotgun for his birthday. One didn’t have to have great vision to fire a shotgun, especially one that shot as true as everyone said an 1894 Remington did.
As he stepped around to mount the buckskin on the high side, the New York accent of Colonel Hiram Berdan came to him clearly.
“You were born to fire a Sharps, young man. I would hate to compete against you in a contest of marksmanship, soldier. I would hate to come under the sights of your rifle.”
“Not anymore, Colonel,” McMasters heard himself answering as he swung into the saddle.
The old .44-caliber Henry had been burned with everything in his home. But that .52-caliber Sharps that he had carried during the War to Preserve the Union? That he had sold as soon as he had been mustered out of the Army, no longer with the First U.S. Sharpshooters or even the Second but with the Sixth Wisconsin as both of Berdan’s “snakes-in-the-grass” outfits had been disbanded by February of ’65. A Sharps, especially one used by a member of the U.S. Sharpshooters, still equipped with a long telescopic scope for added accuracy, had commanded a premium price in 1865.
It had bought John McMasters tickets as far west as he could travel. Not to Wisconsin. He could no longer see himself returning to Manitowoc, building schooners or clippers or fishing all across Lake Michigan. The money had taken him as far away from Virginia as St. Louis, Missouri, where he had drunk almost enough whiskey to forget about the men he had killed in the war. Most of those men had never even seen him taking aim, nor heard the crack of the rifle that had killed them.
He tugged the reins, and Berdan responded. The horse climbed the bank, the little hill, and McMasters leaned forward, ducking underneath the low branches until man and beast had reached the trail that led from the Rim Road to his home—what had been his home, anyway.
John McMasters did not look back.
He could still smell smoke. He did not need to look back. Never, even if he lived longer than Methuselah, would he ever forget what he had seen that afternoon. He came to the Rim Road and turned Berdan toward Payson. The sun, to his surprise, he could still see, but it would be sinking fast. Still he felt suddenly warm from the far-reaching rays, and when he kicked the buckskin into a lope, he knew the wind would dry his clothes by the time he reached Payson.
A lope, then a gallop . . . but not too hard, not too fast. McMasters had to save the buckskin.
Oh, he planned on getting the law behind him. Let Sheriff Billings or Marshal Jessop deputize a posse, do everything legal. But when that posse rode out of Payson in an hour, maybe even less, John McMasters knew that he would be riding with them.
Hell, he would be leading the damned posse.
CHAPTER 9
The first person he saw in Payson was the Swiss clockmaker and watch salesman. Noah Brandenberger was coming out of the little café on the edge of town. Reining in the buckskin, John McMasters called out to the merchant.
Brandenberger turned as he stepped off the boardwalk to cross the street. His mouth opened, and stayed open, no words coming out as his blue eyes widened.
“Have you seen Sheriff Billings?” McMasters asked.
The old Swiss gentleman must have gone into shock. Not that McMasters could blame him.
He thought I must look like Death himself.
Even that dip in the creek that ran alongside his house—or what once had been a house—had likely not removed all the grime, the soot, and all that death. Certainly, his hands had not been cleansed . . . and his shirt was ripped and peppered with holes caused by embers from the inferno.
“Billings?” McMasters repeated.
“I . . . I . . . think . . .” The old man glanced toward the center of town.
“Thanks.” McMasters guided Berdan away, trying to find his composure, steady his nerves, and control all that boiled in his stomach and chest. His heart felt as though it might explode at any second.
As he rode past Todd’s Livery, a timid voice called his name. McMasters wheeled around, hoping to find a friend, or even the fool sheriff, but let out a sigh of disappointment to see Whit Rogers standing in front of his mule.
“My . . . word . . .” Rogers stepped back toward the picket building.
“Have you seen Tom Billings?” McMasters made himself ask.
“Ummmm . . .” Rogers’s head shook.
Depending on whom you asked in Payson, Whit Rogers was either a simpleton, a tramp, or just plain lazy. He slept in the woods or inside a lean-to or in an empty stall in the livery, in exchange for mucking out stalls. He might earn a few bits sweeping out a store, but most of his money came from selling kindling, which he gathered in the mountains and led down to town on his mule. Nobody even knew if Whit Rogers actually owned that mule.
Seeing McMasters, Rogers looked about as startled, as frightened, as Noah Brandenberger had.
McMasters had no time for conversation.
“I’ll find him.” He slapped the reins to go.
“I saw . . . some . . . men.”
Turning back in his saddle, McMasters stared through the skeletal bum in the straw hat.
Rogers’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “Thought,” he managed to say, “I ought to warn . . . to . . . ummmm . . . tell you.”
McMasters tensed. “Tell me.”
The tramp gestured toward the Rim Road. “Comin’ down the hills with—” He nodded at the mule. “Had some sticks to sell.” He wet his lips, paused, fearing how much he should say.
“Tell me.” No trace of friendliness could be detected in McMasters’s voice.
“They was lookin’ fer horses. Lookin’ fer yer place.”
Blood rushed to McMasters’s head, and his heart thundered against his chest. He made himself swallow.
“When?”
“Few hours back.”
“How many?”
Rogers’s head shook. “Ain’t rightly certain.” His brow furrowed. “Can’t quite recollect. Six. Seven. Maybe a dozen.” His head shook. “Maybe not quite that many.”
“Nine.” McMasters remembered counting the men as they rode across the valley’s floor.
“Could be.” Rogers looked away, turned back.
“I . . . well . . .” He sighed and found some strength to face McMasters’s hard eyes again. “I started . . . well, I sorta tol’ ’em where yer place is . . .” Quickly, he added. “But then I tol’ ’em somethin’ dif’rent.”
“Why?” The word came out like a pistol shot. McMasters tried to steady himself. “Why? Did . . . something bother you . . . about how they . . . looked?”
Again, the tramp swallowed. “They said they rode fer the Hashknife.”
“And?”
“Didn’t look like no cowpunchers. Horses all played out. Said they’d been deputized. Was on the trail . . .”
McMasters waited.
“Of Moses Butcher.”
Butcher. Mc
Masters thought about Bloody Zeke The Younger, one of the prisoners Dan Kilpatrick and Royal Andersen were hauling to Yuma. Moses Butcher was the worst killer on the frontier.
“They said Butcher’d robbed a bank somewheres . . . ummmm . . . Holbrook, Flagstaff, Winslow . . . some place like that. And they was chasin’ him and his men.”
No. McMasters knew a posse coming from the north would have stopped in Payson for remounts. Not at Todd’s flea-bitten trap, but one of the good livery stables in town.
McMasters swung off his horse, clenching his fists.
“And?” he demanded.
Whit Rogers backed against the picket wall of Todd’s Livery, almost falling through it, but he didn’t have enough muscle or weight to even break through the flimsy walls.
“Well . . . when this feller said Butcher... well . . . well, one of ’em just looked like . . . like ’em posters I’ve seen of Butcher.”
“You”—McMasters spaced out the words carefully—“think you sent Moses Butcher and his killers to my place?”
Never a dark-skinned man, Whit Rogers turned into a ghost. “I . . . I tol’ ’em somethin’ dif’rent . . . but”—he let out a heavy sigh—“thought you oughts to know. ’Cause iffen they’s ridin’ up the Rim Road, wouldn’t be hard to . . . find yer . . . ranch.”
McMasters took two steps toward the vagrant before he stopped himself, whirled, quickly grabbed the reins to the buckskin and made himself swing into the saddle. He did not thank Whit Rogers for the information, could not even look at the man. He rode toward the town’s center, desperately trying to find the sheriff, the town marshal, or anyone, but mostly to get away from Whit Rogers.
The fool had sent Moses Butcher to McMasters’ ranch. The fool had damned his family to death. Had McMasters taken one more step toward Whit Rogers, he knew what he would have done. He would have killed the man. Beaten him to death with his hands, which began turning white from the force with which he gripped the reins.
He urged the buckskin into a lope. Mayor Ash Ashby stood next to Tom Billings on the boardwalk in front of the Hotel Payson—the owner bragged that Hotel Payson sounded classier than the Payson Hotel. They were talking to the Reverend Rutledge and even Payson’s town marshal, Tony Jessop.
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