The Jackals of Sundown (A Bear Haskell Western Book 2)

by Peter Brandvold

  “We’re not in no hotel room you can throw me out of, and there’s no one around to hear you scream rape!”

  Arliss laughed as she lay with her cheek resting against his crotch, staring up over his belly and chest at his face. “I’m do apologize for that, Bear,” she said with genuine chagrin. “I know it was rather nasty of me. But a girl on her own on the wide-open frontier can’t be too careful—especially one who is also a Pinkerton agent.”

  Reaching up to give one of his suspenders a playful tug, she said with even more chagrin, “And one with such insatiable desires as I get from time to time.”

  “There’s no shame in it.”

  “Not ladylike.”

  “That’s silly to look at it that way. We men and women were given different parts for a reason, and the feelings that make us want to use those different parts from time to time for reasons not having only to do with procreation.”

  “Oh, you’re a philosopher, now, as well as a lawman—eh, Bear Haskell?”

  Bear grinned sheepishly and shrugged. “Works for me.”

  Arliss raked her fingers slowly down his broad chest toward his belly as she frowned up at him, pensive. “I really ran into one when I ran into you—didn’t I?”

  “If that means you like me, you can go ahead and say so, Miss Arliss. I like you and there ain’t no ifs, ands, or buts about it.”

  Her mouth corners quirked a beguiling half-smile. “I like you, Bear.”

  Haskell basked in the beauty of her heart-shaped face, her eyes gazing up into his, unblinking. Her breasts sloped toward his curled manhood that swelled a little each time she lowered her head to plant a warm, wet kiss on it.

  He said, “If you’re worried I’m gonna mooncalf around after you, though, don’t waste your time. I may not go throwin’ women out of my room under threat of my screamin’ rape, but I know when it’s time to pull my picket pin.”

  “I kind of like my way,” Arliss said. “I’ve always had a flare for the dramatic.” She smiled, blinked slowly. “Maybe that’s why I became a Pinkerton in the first place ... and why I gave you my room key. I don’t do that very often, I hasten to add. Only on the rare occasion when I see a man I think can really grease my wheels, make me feel what it’s like to truly be a woman and not just an operative.”

  Haskell chuckled and smoothed a lock of hair from her cheek with his thumb. He looked outside. “Well, now that your wheels are lubed, as are my own, I think we’d best get back on the trail. The rain’s stopped. We might be able to make it to the San Rafael without drowning.”

  “I hope so,” Arliss said, arching her butt up off the ground to pull up her pants. She stood and turned to Bear, who’d pulled up his own pants and now stood beside her, tucking in his shirt. “What happens if we run up against that damn Big Fifty again?”

  “It’s just a risk we’re gonna have to take. That long gun has kept him from being run down for years now. I for one am not going to let it allow him to keep running. I want to catch that ghostly killer, slap the cuffs on him, break that cannon over my knee, and head the hell back to Denver.”

  He finished buckling his cartridge belt around his waist, grabbed his Henry, and headed over to where their horses waited patiently, occasionally stomping and flicking their ears. “Come on, Miss Arliss. Let’s see if we can’t close the file on ole Jack Hyde!”

  The big lawman stepped into his saddle.

  ~*~

  A half hour later, Haskell and Arliss splashed across another wash that had likely been dry before the storm had hit, and leaned forward in their saddles as their mounts as well the mount carrying the body of Jordan Tifflin lunged up the opposite bank. Haskell’s pinto stopped to shake the water from its coat, and then Arliss’s horse followed suit.

  Bear held his mount’s reins taut as he stared through scattered mesquites toward the yard of the Rancho San Rafael. The two-story mud-brick house sat back against more scattered desert trees against a rise. A long, low, L-shaped bunkhouse sat off to the left, fronting a tall adobe barn and several corrals and stables. A windmill with a mortared stone stock tank sat in the middle of the yard. What appeared a blacksmith shed sat off to the right, under a sprawling oak. The shed’s large doors were closed.

  The only sounds were occasional songbirds, the breeze in the brush, and the trees still dripping after the rain. The fresh air hung heavy and warm with humidity.

  Arliss glanced skeptically at Haskell. “Do you think he’s here?”

  The rain had washed out any sign that the Jackal might have left for them to follow. They’d come to the ranch because they had nowhere else to look for their quarry. Also Haskell wanted to talk with Tifflin—not to mention deliver to the man his son’s body. As always, it was hard to say where Hyde was.

  “Doubtful he’d lead us here ... to his employer ... unless he’s waitin’ for us here ... to ambush us. Again.” Haskell slid the Henry from its sheath, cocked it one-handed, off-cocked the hammer, and rested the barrel across his saddlebows. “Keep your eyes skinned and prepare to move fast.”

  “Oh, you’re giving orders again.” Arliss gave him another of her hard, castigating glances. She might have softened up some during their tussle under the overhang, but she’d grown that hard, saucy crust back again quickly.

  Haskell gave a soft snort. “Just habit, I reckon.”

  Riding side by side, they followed the trail under the wooden portal straddling the trail and into the crossbar of which the San Rafael’s Circle-R brand had been burned. A gray cat got up and padded around in the lawman’s belly. No one was out and about in the yard. True, it had rained, but the rain was over. A few dripping trees didn’t keep ranch hands from their work.

  The only movement in the ranch yard was the dozen-plus horses milling in the inter-connected corrals behind the bunkhouse. The fresh air was touched with the stench of horseshit and privies and the perfume of freshly cut hay.

  Haskell swept his gaze around, probing every nook and cranny and roofline. If the Jackal was here, he’d likely let his presence be felt soon. Haskell wanted to feel it before he heard the blast of that big rifle. If he wasn’t here, maybe Ambrose Tifflin knew where he was—if Tifflin had hired him, that was.

  If not Tifflin, who?

  Silently, Haskell cursed his misfortune at having been so close to Hyde only to have the man slip away as the storm hammered down.

  Bear and Arliss walked their horses up to the stock tank and then split up, Bear riding around the tank’s left side while Arliss rode around the right side. The bunkhouse was on Haskell’s left. The long, low, shake-shingled building with a narrow front gallery shaded by a brush awning was silent.

  But then a door latch clicked.

  Haskell pulled firmly back on his horse’s reins.

  The bunkhouse door opened. A big man stepped into the doorway. He cocked a carbine one handed as he poked his head out the half-open door. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. He had a large, hard, rounded belly. His right arm was in a bandage sling and a bloody bandage was pasted against his right shoulder.

  He looked miserable. His dark-brown eyes were shiny from drink.

  He scowled at Haskell and at Arliss coming around the far side of the stock tank. He looked at the lawman’s badge then returned his curious, wary gaze to the big man sitting the roan.

  “Lawman?” asked the man in the doorway.

  “What happened?” Haskell asked, glancing again at the bandage. Then, when no response appeared imminent, he tried another question. “Is Hyde here?”

  This question warranted a response. The heavy brow of the mustached man in the doorway furled dramatically as he said, “Was here. Ain’t here now. If he was here, you’d know about it by now!”

  “What about Ambrose Tifflin?”

  The big man looked at the packhorse and the body it was obviously carrying, wrapped in a saddle blanket. “What you got there?”

  “His son.”

  That didn’t seem to surprise the man in the doorway in the le
ast. He nodded slowly then jerked his head toward the main house, pulled his head back into the bunkhouse, and closed the door.

  Haskell and Arliss shared a glance.

  Haskell booted his horse forward, and Arliss followed suit. They reined up in front of the main, mud brick house. It, too, had a brush arbor—a very large one wrapped around at least three sides. A clay olla hung beneath the arbor, and a monarch butterfly was winging along the rim as though looking for water. A small chicken hawk was perched on the rail at the porch’s left end. As Haskell studied the house carefully, raking his gaze across every sashed front window, the hawk gave a ratcheting screech, and flew away.

  Haskell dismounted, as did Arliss. They tossed their reins over one of the two worn hitch racks fronting the steps leading up to the porch, and then started up the porch steps. They’d just gained the step when the latch of the big timbered door in front of them clicked. The door had two long loop holes carved through it—likely for holding off rampaging Indians in bygone times—and the hinges squawked as the door drew open.

  A woman in a plain, calico housedress and cream apron stood in the doorway, raising a long, double-barreled shotgun to her slender shoulder and drawing both hammers back. She was a strange visage—dark-skinned but with long, slanted green eyes and black, silver-streaked hair gathered into two tight buns atop her head.

  Haskell judged her age to be around sixty. The skin of her severely carved face was not overly wrinkled but it was drawn taut across her pointed cheekbones, which were nearly as sharp as arrowheads. The skin at the nubs of those cheeks was a shade lighter than the rest of her face—a dark yellow color.

  The hands on the shotgun looked considerably older than the rest of her. They reminded Haskell of the talons of the hawk that had just taken flight from the rail.

  Those long, green, witchlike eyes blinked once, slowly. She didn’t say anything but appeared to be waiting for her visitors to speak.

  “No need for that ... Mrs. Tifflin, I assume,” Haskell said, holding his Henry straight down at his side and trying to stand as still as possible, sensing that the woman holding the shotgun knew how to use the gut shredder and probably had on more than one occasion.

  “Who is it?” thundered a raspy male voice behind her. “Who’s there, Hillary?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” Hillary said, staring at Haskell and Arliss. Her voice was nearly as deep as that of the man behind her. “One of ’em is a split-tail. The other’s wearin’ a badge.”

  Haskell thought it odd that one woman would call another a “split-tail,” but, then, western Texas grew its denizens like their cacti—stout and thorny. The woman standing before him seemed more man than woman, anyway, despite the dress and apron.

  “I’m Deputy U.S. Marshal Bear Haskell.”

  “The split-tail is a Pinkerton Agent,” Arliss said, her voice pitched with disdain at the woman’s terminology. “Arliss Posey.”

  “Who are they?” the man behind Hillary wanted to know. “Pool? Are they Pool?”

  The woman lowered the shotgun and glanced over her shoulder. “The big drink of water is a lawman. The girl says she’s a Pinkerton.”

  “I am a Pinkerton,” Arliss said tightly, with unconcealed contempt.

  “Who?” the man’s voice boomed behind Hillary.

  Ignoring him, Hillary glanced beyond her visitors, squinting her hawkish green eyes. “Who’s that ridin’ belly down yonder?”

  Haskell glanced behind him and removed his hat. “That ... that’s your son, ma’am. I’m sorry.”

  “Jordan Tifflin is no son of mine,” Hillary snapped, turning away and yelling into the darkness behind her. “They got your boy, Ambrose. He’s dead!” She’d yelled it like an accusation.

  She stomped away, the removal of her body from the doorway revealing a man in a checked bathrobe standing on a broad stairway about twenty feet back in the house, between what appeared to be a kitchen area on the right and a parlor on the left.

  Ambrose Tifflin was tall and willowy and stooped and bald-headed, with an unkempt, ginger and gray mustache that drooped to his chest. The beard was as long and thin and tangled as the hair falling from the sides of his head. He wasn’t wearing a stitch under the robe, and his equipment was right out in the open with most of the rest of him, though thank goodness Haskell couldn’t see details because of the dense shadows cloaking the stairs.

  The rancher, in his seventies, wore a bandage around his belly, which bulged out like that of a woman nine-months pregnant. The bandage was splotched with blood over the man’s left side.

  Coming down the stairs, Tifflin closed his robe with one hand over his crotch. In his other hand he held an old-model Colt conversion .44. He hobbled down the stairs, barefoot—a mere ghost of a man, formidable at one time but used up and breathing hard, eyes set deep in doughy sockets. His face was long and bony and startlingly pale.

  His chest worked like a bellows. “What the fuck did that old bitch say?” He might have been old and broken down, but suddenly his voice was loud and resonant, abrasively nasal. “My son is dead?” He took a step through the doorway and looked out. “Jordan’s dead?”

  “That’s right, Mister Tifflin,” Arliss said.

  Tifflin looked at the Pinkerton, but instead of his eyes showing shock or sadness, they drifted over the girl favorably, vaguely amorously. His son might have been dead, but Ambrose Tifflin wasn’t a man to overlook a nicely setup young filly.

  He turned to Haskell and said not with accusing but with genuine curiosity, “Who killed him? Did you kill him?” He dropped his chin, widened his eyes, and deepened his voice with anger. “Or did the Pool kill him?”

  “Jack Hyde killed him.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Oh,” Tifflin said, as though the Jackal was the third option he just as easily could have mentioned. “So ... the Pool killed my son, too.”

  Haskell said, “Are you saying Hyde kills for the smaller ranchers?”

  “Of course, that’s what I’m saying.”

  Haskell and Arliss shared a glance.

  “What the hell happened to you, Mister Tifflin?” Haskell inquired. “What happened to the man in the bunkhouse? Where are your other men?”

  As though annoyed, the rancher beckoned to his visitors with a large hand with long, gnarled, age-spotted fingers with yellow nails as long as claws. “Come in, come in. Damp air out there. If I stand here, I’ll be coughin’ soon. Coughin’ all fuckin’ night!”

  Haskell let Arliss enter first. He walked in behind her and closed the door. Tifflin swung around and tramped barefoot toward the stairs, again beckoning. “Let’s go upstairs. I don’t want that crotchety old bitch listening to our conversation. She’s been thinkin’ for years she’s the one runnin’ this outfit, but I will tell you the only one runnin’ this outfit is me, sabe? I’m the one the limeys hired, and they hired me for a reason.”

  He turned to Haskell and fairly bellowed, “Because I can fucking run a ranch!” He rammed his thumb against his chest then continued up the stairs.

  Somewhere in the house, a door closed loudly.

  Tifflin laughed and turned around again. “Hillary’s my fourth wife. Scandinavian and Lakota Sioux.” He rolled his eyes. “Oh, lordy—for years now I been sleepin’ in a separate room and lockin’ the door!”

  He raked out another laugh and continued climbing.

  Haskell and Arliss fell into step behind him, Arliss waving her hand in front of her face. The man’s breath was sour, and, mixing with the death stench of the rest of him, it was nearly suffocating.

  “I met her up in Wyoming,” Tifflin continued about his wife as he led his guests up the stairs and then down a dim hall. “I needed a housekeeper after my third wife died. I could see Hillary wasn’t going anywhere. She’s the type to make no bones about sinking a taproot. Couldn’t get rid of her so I married her. Been ruing that bit of foolishness ever since!”

  He pushed through a half-open door and led his guests
into a small office with a large oak desk and oak cabinets, a few bookshelves and a liquor cabinet. A fireplace flanked the desk. There was a leather sofa against the wall to the right of the desk, and two leather chairs by the windows to the left.

  The air was sour with the smell of the wounded, aged, and likely diseased old rancher and cigar smoke.

  Tifflin ambled around behind the desk, muttering, “The only time I ever get any peace and quiet around here is when my cock’s in her mouth.” He wheezed a laugh then, leaning forward and planting his fists on the top of his desk, looked at Arliss. “You don’t mind talk of farm matters, do you, little girl?”

  Arliss canted her head to one side, studying the obviously stewed old rancher dubiously. “Mister Tifflin, you don’t look very distraught about your son lying dead across that horse out there.”

  “Yeah, well, he wasn’t much of a man or a son.”

  Tifflin sagged into the padded Windsor chair behind the desk. “I loved him dearly at one time, but he never took to work. After his ma died, he grew up spoiled and surly. I could never handle him though I’ll guaran-damn-tee you I did not spare the rod on that boy! Broke several of ’em over his skinny ass! He left here when he was fifteen to go make a name for himself. He only came back for money, which I gave him, thinking I could keep him out of trouble, keep my name out of the dirt.

  “Didn’t work. He was a drunk and a small-time criminal, Jordan was. A rustler and stagecoach thief. Even held up cantinas down south of the border. Ah, hell, I reckon I’m sorry he’s dead ... mostly for his ma, God rest her soul. But it’s better this way. But goddamnit”—he pounded a gnarled fist on his desk—“I got bigger troubles than Jordan!”

  He narrowed a curious eye at Haskell. “You said Hyde killed him ... ?”

  “Hyde ambushed us on our way out here,” Bear said. “What I want to know is what happened to you and your men, Mister Tifflin.”

  “Hyde was here two nights ago. Shot three of my men out in the yard yonder from that rise north of the house.” Tifflin jerked his chin to indicate the direction then fumbled a cheroot out of a wooden box on his desk. His hands shook with palsy as he struck a match and held the flame and the cigar up to his mouth. “My men and I tracked him the next day to Lloyd Silver’s place.”