Wild to the Bone

by Peter Brandvold

  The windmill’s wooden blades spun wildly, lifting a low clatter. Tumbleweeds blew across the broad, hard-packed yard, shepherded along by thin curtains of blowing grit.

  Behind Haskell and the buckskin, the grulla whickered nervously. Bear and Raven both looked back at the animal, who held its head up despite the wind. The mount’s copper eyes were bright with anxiety as it stared toward the swing station yard, its nose working as though it were scenting something it didn’t like.

  Raven glanced at Bear. “What do you suppose has him riled?”

  Haskell tossed her the grulla’s reins and touched spurs to the buckskin’s flanks. “Stay here. I’ll check it out.”

  He walked the buckskin the last few yards ahead and into the yard, which was surrounded by the low, pale buttes stippled with prickly pear and sage that were part and parcel of this parched, short-grass prairie. Just inside the yard, he stopped the buckskin and reached forward to slide his Winchester from its scabbard. He cocked the weapon one-handed, holding his reins in his left.

  Straight ahead, in front of the cabin, a man lay belly-down on the ground, arms and legs spread. Ahead of Haskell and to the right, the corral’s unlatched gate was blowing back and forth in the wind, its hinges squawking raucously. Near the gate, another man sat on the ground, sagging back against the corral’s peeled cottonwood poles, his shoulders tilted to the left.

  The wind blew the gate back against him and then blew it out into the yard again.

  Haskell held his right thumb on the Winchester’s cocked hammer as he clucked to the horse, urging it slowly ahead, his eyes scrutinizing every nook and cranny of the station yard, including the cabin’s open front door beyond the other dead man.

  At least, Haskell assumed he was dead. He and the one by the corral sure looked dead from here.

  Between the two men, Bear stopped the buckskin and swung down from the saddle. Continuing to look around anxiously, he stepped over to the man sagging against the corral.

  He was middle-aged and stocky, with a thick soup-strainer mustache and a three-piece suit. His face was puffy from bloating. He wore no hat, and his thin sandy-blond hair blew around in the wind, revealing warts and moles on his pale scalp. His string tie danced around the bloody hole in the dead center of his chest, just left of the moon-and-star deputy U.S. Marshal’s badge pinned to the left lapel of his brown tweed jacket.

  Haskell walked slowly over to the man lying in front of the cabin, used his boot toe to turn the man onto his back. Bear winced as another moon-and-star copper badge winked up at him. This man was tall and slender, with a black mustache and two bullet holes in his chest. His blue eyes were half-open, lips stretched back from tobacco-brown teeth. His pallor was blue, and his lean face looked weird, swollen as it was from putrefaction.

  Haskell took his rifle in both hands as he moved toward the cabin. The door was sliding back and forth across the narrow, sagging stoop whose floor was missing as many boards as remained.

  As he gained the bottom of the three stone steps rising to the porch, Bear stopped and cast another cautious look across the yard behind him, narrowing his eyes against the blowing sand. Relatively sure no one was drawing a bead on him, he gave his back to the yard and stepped onto the porch.

  He crossed it in one stride, pressed his left shoulder to the wall left of the door, and glanced inside. He couldn’t see much amid the dingy shadows, but he could smell the sweetness of death. Using his rifle barrel to shove the door wide, he stepped into the cabin and leveled the Winchester, swinging it right to left and back again.

  He doubted the killer or killers remained, but he hadn’t gotten this deep into his thirties by taking stupid chances.

  The cabin was earthen-floored, with a long table running left to right between the door and the tall black range. The windows had no glass in them, and tattered flour-sack curtains blew in the wind.

  A man sat at the far right end of the table, on the opposite side from the door. He sat straight back in his chair, head tilted up, spade-shaped chin tufted with brown whiskers aimed at the ceiling.

  As Haskell moved down the table, holding the Winchester straight out from his right hip, he saw that the man had a neat, round, dark hole in his forehead. His eyes were open, staring at the low ceiling crusted with grease and soot from the stove.

  He wore a suit with a gold vest, and playing cards had been laid out on the table before him. A county sheriff ’s five-pointed nickel-plated star was pinned to his shirt. The game he’d been playing was probably solitaire, but the wind had scattered most of the pasteboards except the dozen or so that remained clutched in his knobby, blue-veined right hand resting on the table.

  A gold pinkie ring reflected sunlight washing through the open door and the kitchen’s two small windows. The other hand had fallen down beneath the table.

  Haskell moved through a curtained doorway to check out the rest of the cabin. There wasn’t much, just a storage room and a sleeping area for stage passengers. Lots of mouse shit and even some coyote droppings.

  When he pushed back through the curtain, a figure stood in the open doorway. He stopped and jerked the Winchester up, heart thudding. Then, seeing the curvy figure and long hair against the harsh light of the yard, he scowled at his comely partner and said, “God damn it, I thought I told you to wait out by the wash!”

  Blandly ignoring him, Agent York jerked her chin at the dead man at the table. “Another dead federal?”

  “No.” Haskell rested the rifle on his shoulder and looked at the dead man. “Keenan Price. County sheriff. My guess is them two deputy Marshals out yonder—one by the fence is Dave Huston, one near the cabin is Bladen Willis—was meetin’ the sheriff here.”

  “Spotted Horse is in Price’s county?”

  “Yep.”

  “Whoever did this took these men by surprise,” Raven said, turning sideways to stare out into the yard. “The one by the corral was shot from a distance, and both his pistols are still in their holsters. Same for the one by the cabin, who was shot in the back while he was walking toward the cabin.”

  “Yeah, there was more than one shooter, and said shooters must have somehow fooled these men into believing they weren’t trouble.”

  “What about this fellow?” Raven asked, looking at Price.

  Haskell nodded his head to indicate the wall across from the dead sheriff. “I’d say his killer was standin’ about there. Near the window. They might’ve even been havin’ a conversation before the killer pulled a gun. Took Price by surprise about the same time the shooter or shooters outside took the other two men by surprise.”

  Bear paused to walk around behind Huston, whose right hand dangled down beyond the Colt jutting from the holster on his right hip. “Must have just started reaching for it before the killer drilled him that third eye he can’t see out of.”

  Raven made a face. “Stinks in here. How long do you think they’ve been dead?”

  “Two, three days. The grulla must belong to one of them. He and the other horses must’ve hightailed it out of the corral. Maybe they were let out by whoever did the killin’.”

  “Nice of the killers to turn the horses loose,” Raven said ironically. And then she said, “Oh!” as something ping ed loudly against the iron range, sparking.

  A half a second later, the flat crack of a rifle sounded above the wind moaning under the eaves.

  14

  Raven!” Bear shouted, lurching toward the girl, whose hat dangled down her back as she dropped to her knees beside the table.

  There was another loud thud as wood slivers spewed from the door casing. The rifle’s crack followed a quarter-second later. Out in the yard, the horses whinnied and stumbled around, startled. Haskell wrapped an arm around Raven’s shoulders and whipped her behind the cabin wall, left of the door.

  “You all right?” he asked her.

  “I’m all right!
” she yelled, glancing down at the torn upper left sleeve of her blouse.

  At the same time, another bullet hurled through the open door and chewed a divot of wood from the top of the table. Another bullet slammed into the range again, clanging and sparking.

  “Son of a bitch!” Haskell grated out, edging a look around the left side of the door.

  Smoke puffed near the dead federal lawman lying against the corral, and Bear jerked his head back behind the doorframe as a bullet slammed into the frame’s opposite side, spitting more slivers in all directions.

  Haskell twisted around to squat in the middle of the door opening, slammed the Winchester’s butt to his right shoulder, and fired two quick shots at the figure hunkered down inside the corral, two feet to the right of the dead man.

  Haskell’s bullets hammered into one of the corral rails and puffed dirt in the corral. But they were enough to knock the dry-gulcher back with a start, lowering his own rifle. As Haskell pumped a fresh cartridge into the Yellowboy’s action, the bushwhacker, who was dressed in a light tan hat, red plaid shirt, and batwing chaps, turned and ran back toward the lean-to on the corral’s far side.

  Haskell aimed carefully and fired two more rounds, purposely missing the fleeing dry-gulcher and hoping the bullets kicking up dirt at his spurred boots would run him to ground.

  He was wrong.

  The man jerked a sharp glance back over his right shoulder and then ran faster, scissoring his arms and legs. He darted around behind the lean-to, out of sight.

  Haskell levered a fresh round and, raking out an angry curse—he hated nothing worse than a cowardly dry-gulching son of a bitch—heaved himself to his feet. He leaped across the porch and down the steps to hit the yard running. By the time he’d crouched through the corral fence and gained the lean-to, he saw the dry-gulcher hot-footing it into a crease between two buttes fifty yards behind the corral, on the other side of a wash lined with dusty, wind-jostled cottonwoods.

  Haskell ran forward, ducked through the corral, and sprinted down the sandy slope and across the wash. He ran up the opposite side of the wash and into the mouth of the gap between the buttes, dropping behind a boulder near the rise on his left.

  Down the crease but above the ground, smoke puffed.

  The bullet slammed wickedly into the opposite side of the boulder shielding Bear, a wink before the rifle’s ripping report was swallowed by the wind. Haskell dropped his head lower as the dry-gulcher’s rifle spoke twice more, both bullets hammering the boulder, making it shake.

  Haskell lifted his head.

  The ambusher was running at a slant up the side of the bluff on Haskell’s right, about forty yards down the crease. Puffs of dust rose behind his scissoring boots and his spurs winking in the washed-out sunlight. A green bandana flopped around his neck.

  Haskell slammed his Winchester to his shoulder, shouting, “Stop or take it in the back, you son of a bitch!”

  The ambusher stopped. He swung around awkwardly, falling back against the slope and raising his rifle. Haskell wasn’t about to let him get off another shot.

  The Winchester fired twice. The ambusher jerked back against the slope. His hands opened, and his rifle dropped to the slope and slid down toward the crease. The ambusher leaned out away from the bluff, losing his sand-colored hat. He fell forward to hit the slope on his face and belly and then rolled wildly, flopping his arms and legs, to the bottom of the crease.

  He piled up in a nest of Spanish bayonet and rocks and lay there, unmoving.

  Haskell ejected his last, smoking cartridge casing. It clinked off a rock behind him. Seating another shell in the chamber, he looked around carefully for another shooter. Spying no one else, he walked down the crease, the wind blowing down the cut from ahead and raking his hat off his head. It flopped down his back, hanging by the braided thong.

  He stopped over the bushwhacker’s body, and grimaced. The shooter was not much more than a kid. A lanky kid with sandy-red hair, a pug nose, and a slight scar, like that from a cow’s hoof, beneath his lower lip. His hazel, half-open eyes stared accusingly up at Haskell. His upper lip was curled back a little, showing a chipped, discolored front tooth.

  Both of Haskell’s shots had struck the kid in the chest, and his red plaid shirt glistened from the heavy, dark red blood covering the upper part of it.

  Footsteps sounded behind him. Haskell wheeled to see his partner walking down the crease, a Winchester carbine in her hands.

  “You ever get tired of sneaking up on me?”

  “Nope,” she said snootily as she approached.

  She stopped to stand beside Haskell, staring down at the shooter. Haskell cursed and sat on a rock. He leaned the rifle against the rock by his side and ran his hands through his hair in frustration.

  Raven turned to him, frowning. “He shot at us, Bear. Damn near blew my head off. He didn’t give you a chance to learn how young he was.”

  “Ah, Christ, I know that.” Haskell felt sick inside, his guts tied in a knot. He didn’t like killing anyone, but kids least of all. Even when they’d gotten the drop on him. “But you weren’t the one who shot him, now, were you?”

  “No, I wasn’t,” she allowed. “But the real question is, why was he shooting at us? And the most likely answer is that he had something to do with killing those three lawmen at the station.”

  Haskell stared down at the kid. Visions of old battlefields flashed behind his eyes—fields awash with blood and the torn and dismembered bodies of men even younger than the one who lay before him now. But his partner was right. Just because the shooter was young, probably not more than sixteen, didn’t mean he wasn’t a killer.

  That reminded Bear of the bullets the kid had hammered at the cabin. He looked at Raven, saw a light smear of blood along the tear in her right sleeve. “How’s your arm?”

  On one knee, searching the kid’s pockets, she shook her head. “Just a scratch.” She turned to Bear and held up a flat brown leather wallet and a scrap of paper. “This is all that was on him.”

  She looked into the wallet. “Two paper dollars and a few coins.” Setting the wallet on her knee, she opened the folded slip of paper and stared down at it. “And a receipt from Duke Shirley’s Mercantile Company in Spotted Horse.”

  “Nothing with his name on it?”

  “Nothing.”

  Haskell rose and handed his rifle to Raven. “All right, then. Someone in Spotted Horse likely knows him. Let’s get them lawmen in the ground before the mountain lions get ’em, and then we’ll haul the kid into town.”

  Bear found a couple of shovels in the barn, and he and Raven spent the better part of two hours digging three graves behind the cabin.

  He saw no point in hauling the moldering bodies into Spotted Horse and stinking the place up. None of the citizens would appreciate that. The dead deputy Marshals certainly couldn’t be shipped all the way home to Denver. The sheriff had probably come from Gillette, but fifty or sixty miles in the summer heat was still a long way to freight a body that had already been dead for two days, possibly three.

  So Haskell and Raven merely removed the men’s weapons and all other personal valuables, stowing them in their saddlebags, laid the men in their graves, and covered them with dirt, gravel, and rocks.

  It was a nasty job, and about all Haskell could say about the wind was that even as hot as it was, it helped to disperse the stench.

  When they were through with the grisly burial, Haskell strapped the dead kid over the grulla’s saddle, and he and Raven mounted up and headed back out to the main trail. It was still mid-afternoon, so by the time they reined up beside the wooden sign announcing Spotted Horse an hour later, it was still relatively early.

  The wind was still blowing, obscuring their view of the little town lying in the broad hollow before them. Through the blowing grit, Spotted Horse looked like a small, shabby place—a short,
broad length of main street sheathed in false-fronted business buildings, with small cabins, shanties, other living quarters, privies, stock pens, and barns squatting at both sides and ends of the business district, arranged seemingly willy-nilly.

  Low, sandy buttes ringed the town, and a dry wash ran in a long curve along its northern and eastern edge.

  As Bear and Raven walked their horses into Spotted Horse’s ragged outskirts, off-key piano music reached Bear’s ears. It was swirled and occasionally drowned by the howling wind.

  A black-and-white spotted dog came out from beneath the porch of a log shack on the right side of the street and barked at the horses before turning tail and slinking back to the hollow beneath the porch, out of the wind.

  As he and Raven gained the town’s heart, which appeared to be only about two blocks long, Haskell looked around. The street was broad. It was lined on the right by about six business buildings, including a large, sprawling mercantile painted spruce green. “DUKE SHIRLEY’S MERCANTILE COMPANY” was painted in large letters across the second story, above the sloping, shake-shingled porch roof.

  A saloon called the Spotted Horse Watering Trough sat just beyond the mercantile. On the left side of the street were a bathhouse, a Chinese laundry, a drugstore, a grocery store, and a town marshal’s office. Beyond the marshal’s office was a livery barn. Beyond that, the street became a trail again, rising and falling across the rolling, windy prairie, foreshortening toward pale buttes sitting along the horizon like an old man’s worn-down teeth.

  The marshal’s office was a squat stone structure with a wooden front stoop badly in need of fresh paint. Long pine planks extended from the porch steps and into the street, forming a ramp of sorts all the way across the street to the porch of the Spotted Horse Watering Trough. It was from the saloon, Haskell could now tell, that the off-key piano music was emanating, as though someone very angry or tired or both were trying to hammer out “The Rose of Allendale” against their will.