“No,” Kate said. “It’s just a sprain, but Dr. Farrell told me to stay off my feet for a week.”
Kate sat in a chair, her foot supported by a stool and a pile of cushions.
“Glad to hear it,” Frank said. He waited long moments before he spoke again and then he said, “You did good yesterday, Kate, showed a lot of sand.”
“I killed another man,” Kate said.
“It’s the cost of empire building, Kate. The British killed tens of thousands to build an empire on which the sun never sets, and slaughtering so many never seemed to trouble them much. Besides, those Potts boys needed killing.”
“Is that what they were called?” Kate said. “Did you know them, Frank?”
“I heard rumors that they’d left the Trinity River and were headed this way, but I never set much store by it. They say old Isaiah was a cannibal, but I never set store by that, either. No matter, the world’s a better place without his shadow falling on it.”
“The older man had surrendered when Quinn and Minor gunned him down,” Kate said. “Him and one of his sons.”
Frank shrugged. “Sometimes surrendering comes just a tad too late.”
“My empire will fall, Frank,” Kate said. “Another couple of days and it will be no more. But my son will be alive, and that’s what matters.”
“Don’t despair just yet, Kate,” Frank said. “We’ll find a way.”
“I don’t share your confidence,” Kate said. Then, “Where is Cloud Passing?”
“Locked up. Quinn says he scalped somebody else, huh? Danced around with it.”
“Yes, a man he’d killed in fair fight. Don’t all Indians do that?”
“Some of them, yes.”
“Cloud Passing didn’t murder those cowboys, Frank.”
“Most folks say he did, and the majority plans to hang him.”
“It may be the last thing I do as owner of the KK, but I won’t let them hang Cloud Passing,” Kate said.
“Kate, face it, he’s as guilty as sin,” Frank said. “You have enough problems on your plate as it is, and you don’t need another.”
“I won’t see an innocent man hang,” Kate said. “And one more thing, Frank, he fought beside me last night and probably saved my life. That’s not something I can forget. I can’t turn my back on him now.”
“Kate, there hasn’t been another killing since the Indian went on the scout,” Frank said. “Don’t you find that strange?”
“No, I don’t, because the real killer had a grudge against the three cowboys, and now his murder spree is over,” Kate said. “There will be no more killings, Frank.”
“I know there won’t, now that the Indian is chained to a post behind Bill Cody’s tent,” Frank said.
“Like a wild animal?” Kate said.
Frank said, “He’s a Cheyenne Dog Soldier, remember? He is a wild animal, and mighty dangerous.”
“See that Cloud Passing has blankets and proper food,” Kate said. “I’ll get to him as soon as I can.”
“The doc told you to stay off your feet for a week,” Frank said. “The Indian’s trial is set for three days from now. Hiram Clay will be the judge.”
Kate was surprised. “I didn’t know that.”
“Bill Cody says he won’t sit in judgment on the Indian and he passed the job to Clay,” Frank said. “From what I’ve been told Clay has no love for the red man.”
“Hiram’s oldest son was a West Pointer, an officer in the Ninth Cavalry,” Kate said. “In 1870 he was killed by Apaches in the New Mexico Territory. Hiram’s wife never got over her son’s death, and she followed him to the grave less than a year later.”
“And that’s why Clay is down on Indians,” Frank said. “Bad news for your Cheyenne, Kate.”
“There will be much happening in the next few days,” Kate said. “It’s a bad time to be laid up with a sprained ankle.”
“I’ll take care of your interests,” Frank said. “Including Slide McKenzie.”
“Frank, he gets the money and leaves,” Kate said. “There is no negotiating on that point.”
“Quinn and me have a plan,” Frank said. “We think it has a good chance of working.”
Kate frowned. “What kind of plan?”
“I can’t tell you yet, Kate,” Frank said. “Quinn wants to keep it a secret until we work out all the details.”
“Will my other son’s life be in danger?” Kate said.
“I’ll take care of Quinn,” Frank said, lowering his eye from Kate’s gaze.
And Kate knew that was no answer at all.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Dr. Zebulon Farrell gave Josiah Mosely a clean bill of health. “Apart from the broken finger and some cuts and bruises you’re fine,” he said.
“How is Mrs. Kerrigan?” Mosely said.
“And a handsome woman she is,” the physician said.
“How is her injury, Doctor?” Mosely said.
Farrell returned from a pink-tinted daydream, harrumphed, and said, “A sprained ankle. She’ll be on her feet in a week or so.”
“Is she angry?” Mosely said.
“With you?”
“Yes, me.”
“Not in the least. That fair creature has no room in her bosom to harbor anger. Hers is a most loving nature.”
“We made a hard landing,” Mosely said. “The balloon scraped some treetops, and the basket hit the ground on its side.”
“A dangerous business, Mr. Mosely.” Dr. Farrell snapped his bag shut. “Leave the splint on the finger and come and see me in two weeks.”
After the doctor left Mosely studied his injured right hand. The ring finger had fractured when he’d used his hand to break his fall, and the doctor had splinted it with a thin piece of wood and surgical tape. Farrell had left a small roll of tape as a precaution and warned, “If the existing tape gets wet from bathing and begins to fall apart, get one of the servants to put on some new strips or come see me right away.”
Josiah Mosely had no intention of doing either.
The splint made it impossible to hold a revolver, and he would very soon need his gun hand. He rose and locked his bedroom door. Sometimes Kate’s nosy maids barged right inside without even a knock. Mosely then sat on the bed and prepared himself for what had to be done. The middle joint of his finger was broken, but the whole digit was bruised and swollen and excruciatingly painful. Slowly, bit by bit, Mosely removed the tape, his tormented breath hissing through clenched teeth. At one point he thought he’d blacked out for a few moments, but he wasn’t sure. Finally, he removed all the tape and the splint . . . and now the real agony began. Using his pocketknife Mosely cut off a foot of tape at a time and began to tightly bind the broken finger to his pinkie, gasping as shrieking agony stabbed at him. It took time. Patience. Piece of tape by piece of tape, Mosely slowly, painfully, joined the fingers together and when he finished the broken finger was bound to its neighbor in an incestuous embrace.
Mosely rose from the bed, wiped tears of pain from his face, poured himself a glass of bourbon, and gulped it down. He was trembling, and the glass rattled as he laid it back on the table. For a moment he considered lying down for a while but knew he would not rest. He had to test the hand.
Unbuckling the straps of the carpetbag with his good hand was a chore, but the throbbing ache in his fingers warned him that worse was to come. He removed the British Bulldogs and laid them side by side on the bed. He picked up a revolver in his left hand and then the other in his right. Pain slammed at him and he yelped in agony.
Mother of God, this is impossible!
He dropped the revolver and it lay on the cathedral window quilt mocking him, a deadly weapon but with its graceful curves and gleaming blue metal a thing of lethal beauty.
Mosely tried again. This time he let his thumb, forefinger, and middle finger do the work. The broken finger and pinkie were not engaged, but he couldn’t shoot the hard-recoiling Bulldog like that. He grasped the gun again with all five finge
rs and almost cried out as he was hit time after time with jagged blades of pain, like being cut with a rusty razor. He pulled the trigger. Click. Again. Click. Again, the beautiful hammer rising and falling. Click. He imagined the Bulldog bucking in his hand, recoiling violently, thrashing him. But he could do it. He could use the gun. The agony would be intense, but brief, because he’d be dead very quickly.
Mosely dropped the Bulldog onto the bed and again reached for the bottle.
His right hand, his gun hand, pulsed pain and he trembled all over, like a fearful man climbing the thirteen steps to the gallows.
* * *
Before seeking the sleep that always eluded him, Josiah Mosely took solace in Mr. Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities. As he’d done often in the past few days he turned to the last chapter of the novel and Sydney Carton’s words before his terrible death: It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known.
It was a noble sentiment, one that Mosely applied to himself. But when the time came could he die as bravely as Sydney Carton? He had no answer to that question. Though his future was measured in days, in hours, it remained shuttered and dark to him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Cloud Passing dreamed of buffalo and he saw his Sioux woman, dead this seven years, follow the herd on a white pony. He called out to her in his dream, and she turned her head and smiled her beautiful smile at him. Her hair was as he remembered it, long and black as night, shiny as a raven’s wing. Her name was Anpaytoo in the Dakota tongue. That meant Radiant One. She beckoned to him to come follow the mighty herd that blotted out the sun with its dust, but he was unable to move, as though bound hand and foot, and could only watch as Anpaytoo and the buffalo rode into shimmering distance and vanished from his sight.
Cloud Passing woke with a start. For a fleeting moment he thought the buffalo herd had returned, but it was only the cough of an old bull in the enclosure. The Cheyenne angrily tugged at his bonds, but he was roped securely to a timber post driven three feet into the ground. The moon rode high in the sky, spreading its light, and somewhere beyond the compound the silvered coyotes yipped. There was no sound from the sleeping camp, but Cloud Passing heard Bill Cody mutter as he turned in his cot.
The Cheyenne closed his eyes and dozed and slowly his head sank onto his chest. His warrior awareness woke him as footsteps, light and almost silent, came toward him. Cloud Passing smiled. It was the woman Bill Cody called Little Sure Shot, but her name was Annie Oakley, and she was good with a Winchester and would keep a man’s lodge well supplied with meat. He would like her as a wife.
Annie wore a drab brown robe over her night attire, and she held a Green River thin-bladed knife in her hand. “How are you doing, Injun?” she said.
Wary now, Cloud Passing smiled and nodded.
“Ain’t one for conversation, are you?” the girl said. “You’re getting out of here. Go find your tribe or something.”
Annie slashed at the ropes, and within a couple of minutes the Cheyenne was free. He rose to his feet on stiff knees and rubbed his wrists. “Now git,” Annie said.
Cloud Passing stared at her, not quite understanding what was happening. The girl had freed him, but why?
“I go now?” he said.
“Yeah, beat it, scat, vamoose, disappear. You catch my drift?” Annie said.
Cloud Passing nodded, but stayed where he was.
“Injun, if you don’t get the hell out of here, they’ll string you up higher than an East Texas pine,” Annie said. “Now light a shuck. Wait, here, take this knife.”
The Cheyenne took the blade and nodded. “I go.”
Without another word he turned and walked into the gloom.
“And don’t ever come back, Injun,” Annie whispered.
* * *
Awakened by voices, Bill Cody tossed and turned on his cot and couldn’t get back to sleep. Finally, he rose, threw on his robe, and built a cigarette, a tobacco habit he’d picked up from his Texas cowboys who were much addicted to it. He stepped out of the tent, thumbed a match into flame, and lit his smoke. Now was a good time to check on the Indian. The post was still intact, but the ropes lay on the ground in pieces, and of Cloud Passing there was no sign.
Bill Cody shook his head, sighed deeply, and then finished his cigarette. He returned to his cot, quickly fell asleep, and didn’t raise the alarm until he woke up five hours later.
* * *
Once again search parties were organized, but a young horse wrangler summed up the feelings of the riders when he told Bill Cody, “Getting mighty tired of this, Colonel. If I catch up with the son of a bitch I’ll just put a bullet in him.”
After the surly posse rode out, everybody else in a shooting or hanging frame of mind, Bill studied the ground near the post. As he expected there were tracks of booted feet and a few of Cloud Passing’s moccasin prints, but what caught his attention and made him wonder was the fact that smaller feet had been there, a woman’s feet. She’d worn bedroom slippers with a flat sole and heel, and her prints were barely there. Whoever she was, the woman was small and light and did not tread heavily on the earth.
Several women with the show fitted that description but why would any of them free an accused murderer and a dangerous savage to boot? Bill pensively stroked his chin and decided that nothing about this affair made any sense. Maybe the woman, whoever she was, had come to visit, to say howdy. It was a great mystery and anything was possible.
Bill was about to step back into his tent to clear some paperwork when a woman’s voice stopped him. He let the tent flap drop, turned, and saw Polly Coulter. A girl saved from plainness by a mane of beautiful chestnut hair that played well in the arena, she was dressed for riding and had a revolver on her hip. Bill cut an elaborate bow and said, “May I say that you look divine this morning, Miss Polly?”
“You may say it, but you don’t mean it,” Polly said. “The only man who ever talked pretties to me and meant them was Davy Hoyle.”
“Don’t sell yourself short, dear lady,” Bill said. “Do I mean divine, as in lovely, ravishing, stunning, and alluring? Why, of course I do. And Buffalo Bill Cody has never been known to tell an untruth.”
Polly Coulter let that go and said, “Who cut the Indian loose?”
“That, I do not know,” Bill said. “But I plan to inquire into the matter.”
“The Cheyenne didn’t kill Davy or Andy Porter or Buck Nolan, either,” Polly said. She looked pale, like a woman who had been in considerable emotional pain for some time.
Surprised, Bill said, “Then who did? Do you know?”
“No, I don’t know. But I can tell you this, the day Davy signed on with the show he was a dead man, and so were the other two. Someone had seen them, someone with an ax to grind, and from that moment they were marked men.”
“And who was that someone, Polly?” Bill said. “Have you any idea at all? A woman’s intuition, perhaps?”
“I told you, I don’t know.”
“A man? A woman?”
“Either. Maybe both,” Polly said.
“Why?” Bill said. “Why kill with such savagery . . . so much blood.”
“Could be the answer lies in something Davy told me one time when he’d drank too much whiskey. He said him and Andy and Buck had done something real bad that they were ashamed of, something so low down he couldn’t tell me what it was.”
“A killing, maybe?” Bill said.
“Like I said, he wouldn’t tell me. But I’m sure whatever it was got him and the others murdered.”
“Well, where do I go from here?” Bill said. “I think this mysterious business calls for a Pinkerton.”
“Why don’t you ask Mrs. Kerrigan?” Polly said. “She seems to know all the answers.”
“Maybe so,” Bill said. “But I’m damned if I know all the questions.”
BOOK THREE
Descent into Hell
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
It was a bad day for Slide McKenzie.
Bat Boswell brought the appalling news after kicking McKenzie, none too gently, awake. The man sat up in his blankets and made angry, questioning noises through his clenched teeth.
“Prepare yourself for a shock, Slide,” he said.
McKenzie growled, untied the knotted cloth at the top of his head and said, “What?” That one word caused him considerable pain and he winced.
“The whole damned Mexican army is camped on your doorstep,” Bat said. “I think they’re looking for you.”
Sky Boswell grinned. “Infantry, cavalry, and cannons. They must reckon you’re a mighty dangerous man.”
McKenzie retied the bandage, again giving himself floppy rabbit ears. He pulled on his boots and stepped out of the mission, the Boswell brothers on his heels.
When he saw the sight that greeted him, McKenzie groaned.
Mexicans flooded across the river like Israelites crossing the Red Sea . . . and the reason was not hard to find. Wagons, piled high with round loaves of bread, burlap sacks of beans, and casks of wine were parked among soldiers who were already distributing the provisions to the starving peons.
Slide McKenzie’s eyes almost popped out of their sockets. He ran into the mission and returned holding high the statue of the Santo Muerte. McKenzie held the skull-topped effigy above his head, but handicapped by his broken jaw, he was unable to implore the Mexicans to come back to the land of milk and honey. He gestured with the effigy, holding it as high as his strength would allow, but the peons ignored him. When it comes to a choice between bread and beans or a wooden saint, starving people will choose the grub every time.
But McKenzie, frantic and looking more than ever like a deranged jackrabbit, splashed into the river, making strangled noises in his throat as he tried to wave the Mexicans back to dry land. But most of them were now being fed by the soldiers, and an officer stood on the back of a wagon and yelled a speech. McKenzie heard cheers and yelling as the Mexicans were assured that the famine in Chihuahua and Durango was over and they could return to their villages.
Hate Thy Neighbor Page 17
