As he walked, he considered letting the man go. He’d either die from the wound or freeze to death. But there was always the possibility of his finding help from a fellow traveler or of retrieving his horse.
No, Del Toro needed to finish the job. There was nothing he hated more than a mess.
He wrinkled his nose to loosen the frozen nasal hairs and began moving forward, following the erratic tracks of his wounded quarry. There were occasional splotches of blood next to the boot prints, and they looked brown in the fading light. Del Toro stopped every few steps and listened before moving on.
He knew the man would stop sooner or later, since he was losing blood fast and he had a gun; he would hunker down in the brush along the trail and wait. Like a cornered lynx.
A fine goddamn mess, Del Toro thought. Shoot a man with the biggest rifle on the market and miss! Like something a damn gringo would do.
It was this hellish weather—all this snow and cold fucking wind. The conditions for killing were horrible.
Del Toro stopped. About fifteen feet away, the tracks began bearing off to the left, toward the shrubs and brush. A small wedge of red-orange flame poked through the blowing snow. A crack followed and a bullet whistled, thunking into a tree somewhere behind the gunman.
Del Toro dropped facedown in the snow and cursed. He rolled to the right and heard the pistol fire twice more. The lead thumped the snow. He unholstered one of his two pistols and fired at the place in the snow he had seen the pistol flash. The lead twanged off stone.
The man was behind a rock. Shit.
Del Toro angrily fired off four more rounds, then rolled again to his right. The pistol barked and flashed again. Two more quick bursts, then one more about five seconds later.
That was six shots. The man’s gun was out of bullets.
Quickly, Del Toro climbed to his feet and ran slipping through the snow, peering through the whiteout, trying to brush it away with his hands. Suddenly the wind settled to reveal the big stone—a flat-topped slab of granite grown up with dead weeds and moss. A stunted cedar grew out from under it at an impossible angle.
The gunman grabbed a cleft in the stone for leverage and peered around the rock, lifting his rifle to his chest with one hand.
“No!” the man screamed. “Leave me be!”
He lay on his back, chin to chest. His pistol was in his right hand, shielding his head. The pistol’s cylinder hung out, and empty cartridges lay scattered on the ground.
“Please don’t shoot me,” the man pleaded, kicking his feet and cowering like a whipped dog. Blood oozed from a hole in his dirty blanket coat. The air around had the rotten-egg odor of gunsmoke.
Del Toro said matter-of-factly, enjoying the man’s misery, “I have to shoot you, senor.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re filthy gringo scum. Because you butcher cattle that do not belong to you. Because you occupy land you do not deserve, and because you multiply like brush wolves and fill the land with more mangy scum like yourself.”
“King!” the wounded man cried. “King Magnusson! He’s the one who hired ya.”
“That is right. Allow me to introduce myself, senor.” The gunman took his rifle in his left hand and held out his right. “José Luis del Toro.”
The man stared at the hand, lips quivering, eyes bright with fear. Tears rolled down his heavy, leathery cheeks. “Please …”
When he saw that the man was not going to shake his hand, Del Toro shrugged and lifted his rifle to his shoulder, aimed at the man’s forehead. “No, I am sorry, senor. I have a job to do.”
“What about my wife? What about my kids?”
Del Toro did not reply, and there was no indication on his taut face that he’d even heard what the man had said.
The man saw this, and his breathing slowed. The fear in his eyes gave way to resignation, though a good dose of the fear remained. He dropped the empty pistol in his lap.
His head tilted to the side and his chin came up. The eyes rose to the gunman’s, sighting down the octagonal barrel.
“No,” he begged one last time.
Fire and smoke geysered from the barrel, and the big gun bucked. The man’s head snapped back from the impact of the slug destroying his forehead. The head bounced off the ground with such force that the man’s back rose nearly perpendicular to the ground. Blood and brain matter sprayed. Then the man fell back again. The man’s head turned to the side, and he lay still.
The air left his lungs with a sigh and a groan.
Del Toro stood the rifle against the rock and rummaged inside his coat, producing a pencil stub and a small leather-bound notebook. He licked the stub and scrawled something on one page of the notebook. He tore the page from the book, folded it, and stuffed it in the pocket of the man’s coat. Then he licked the stub again and scratched out the first name on his list. With a slow, satisfied nod, he replaced the pencil in the book and returned the book to his coat.
He snugged his collar against his neck, retrieved his rifle, and headed back toward the hill and the tree to which he’d tied his horse.
“This goddamn gringo weather,” he grumbled.
CHAPTER 11
TALBOT’S HORSE ASCENDED a crumbling clay bank, putting its head down and digging its front hooves into the hard ground. Beside Talbot rode Jacy, then Gordon Jenkins, the field-dressed beef lying behind the dry goods in the wagon box.
At the top of the knoll, they halted to give their horses a breather, and Gordon rolled a cigarette. Talbot swept his gaze around, reacquainting himself with the lay of the land—a rolling, sage-pocked prairie creased by ravines and coulees, capped by a low, gray sky. Bromegrass and wheatgrass shone where the wind had swept the snow away. Here and there cattle grazed.
Jacy pointed to a grove of trees marking the line of a distant creek. “That’s the Rinski place. I thought we’d take a little detour and check on Homer and Mattie.”
“I remember Homer,” Talbot said. “A God-fearin’ man, as I recall. Don’t recollect his daughter.”
“You probably never saw her,” Jacy said. “From just about the time she started walking, that girl had to take care of her father. I doubt she ever went to a dance or had a boyfriend.”
“None her father knew about, anyway,” Gordon said, letting cigarette smoke drift out with his words. “Pardon my talk, Miss Jacy, but word has it Jack Thom wasn’t the first of her daddy’s hired hands she was a mite friendly with, if you get my drift.”
Jacy grunted a laugh and grinned at the old cowboy. “If I had a life like Mattie’s, I’d probably be chasing you around the bunkhouse, Gordon.”
“Shee-it,” Gordon said, blushing and wagging his head.
Jacy clucked to her gelding, and Talbot and Gordon followed her down the knoll and across the prairie. As they rounded another knoll about twenty minutes later, the Rinski ranch appeared, fronting a creek tracing a brushy path below buttes.
Jacy halted her horse about fifty yards from the low, ramshackle cabin. “Mr. Rinski, it’s Jacy,” she called.
A tall gray-haired man appeared in the doorway holding an old-model rifle. He wore a fur coat and a round-brimmed black felt hat. He pulled the door closed behind him. Gazing at the three visitors sitting their horses at his ranchyard’s perimeter, he said nothing. He just stood there, blinking, holding his rifle low across his thighs. Hogs grunted under a thatch-roofed pole barn, giving off their distinctive smell.
Finally Jacy spurred her horse forward. Talbot and Gordon followed suit.
“Who you got with ya?” Rinski asked.
“This is Mark Talbot; remember him?”
Talbot smiled, noting how the man had aged since he’d last seen him, and recognizing the haunted cast in his eyes, due no doubt to what had happened to his daughter and hired man. “How are ya, Mr. Rinski?”
“You’re the one went off to fight the ’Paches,” the old rancher said, remembering. “Your brother bragged ya up some, he did.”
“I don’t dou
bt it,” Talbot said with a weak smile, feeling guilty all over again for having left his brother to ranch alone.
“The Lord been kind to you, young Talbot?”
“I reckon he was kind enough to keep me alive. Quite a feat when dealing with Victorio’s Mescaleros. I wish he’d been that kind to my brother.”
Rinski’s eyes seemed to focus on something beyond Talbot. He worked his lips a moment before he spoke. “The Lord works in mysterious ways.”
“I’m sorry about the trouble you’ve had here.”
Jacy inquired about Mattie.
“Nothin’ wrong with my daughter time and the Good Lord can’t heal,” Rinski said automatically. Then his conviction seemed to flounder, and his eyes flickered doubtfully. “Does seem awful … nervous, though.”
The old man’s heavy eyebrows knitted together as he dropped his chin, pondering the ground as though looking for something. It had no doubt been a nightmare for the man to reconcile his faith to what had happened in his hired hand’s shack last week.
Jacy said after an awkward silence, “How you getting along, Mr. Rinski? Do you need anything?”
“I’m fine,” he said, though his ghostly countenance indicated otherwise.
Turning to her hired man, she said, “Gordon, why don’t we leave the beef liver with Mr. Rinski? I know how he likes fresh beef liver.”
Rinski said nothing. The wind poked at his hat and at the gray hair hanging beneath it.
As Gordon dismounted and went around the wagon to retrieve the liver, Jacy said, “Do you mind if I go in and see Mattie, Homer?”
“She’d like that.”
When Jacy had gone inside, Rinski turned to Talbot again. “You come to fight a war closer to home, did ya, young man?”
Talbot shook his head. “I thought by coming home I was getting away from war.”
“Well, you weren’t.” Rinski’s voice was louder now, his gaze more certain. His eyes grew large and dark. “There’s a devil at work here now, and we’re gonna need help in fightin’ him. Verlyn Thornberg is trying to get some of us smaller outfits organized, but he don’t seem to have the leadin’ spirit. No one wants to follow him against this big outfit that’s been moved by Satan to savage our women and swallow up our land.”
Rinski spoke as though he were standing behind a pulpit. His forehead was creased and his lips were pursed, dimpling his chin. “It happened once before. With the Lord’s help we got the demon back in hell, but he’s slipped out again, sure enough. We need you on our side, young Talbot, to fight against the Beast.”
“What you need is the law,” Talbot said.
“The law is without fortitude in this matter,” Rinski said without batting an eye.
Talbot was about to respond when Rinski said, “Follow me,” and started walking east around his barn and corral, where a half-dozen winter-shaggy horses milled, manes ruffling in the wind.
Talbot tried to study him out, puzzled, then spurred his horse in Rinski’s direction. When he caught up with the old man, the rancher was standing in the doorway of an old lean-to cabin, looking in. His back was stiff and his shoulders were slumped forward.
When Talbot had dismounted and dropped his horse’s reins, Rinski turned to him. “Have you a look at the devil’s work, young Talbot,” he said, stepping aside.
Talbot ducked as he stepped through the low door. The room was small and dark. A small stove hunkered in the back right corner. The air smelled coppery.
His eyes swept the room, stopping on the back wall above a cot. The logs of the wall bore a large stain, at least three by five feet wide. Talbot moved forward and saw that the cot was covered, too. The blood had frozen on the green wool blankets, which were twisted and mussed and had turned a crusty, flaky brown. Talbot guessed that the white specks of bone in the substance were what remained of Jack Thom’s skull.
Talbot felt his stomach clench. He winced as he imagined the screams and yells and the two loud booms from the shotguns. The old rancher watched him darkly.
“Thought you should see for yourself the blood that’s been spilled here in the name of the devil,” Rinski explained.
“Do you know who did this, Mr. Rinski?”
“Magnusson’s son and Shelby Green.”
“Has your daughter named them?”
Rinski’s face was stony, his eyes hard. “She won’t talk about it, but when I asked her if it was those two mavericks—they been terrorizin’ folks for years—her eyes grew big as silver dollars.”
Talbot looked at the frozen blood drops on the wall. “What are you going to do?”
Rinski shrugged and stared at the rough wood floor. “Whatever the Good Lord tells me to do, young Talbot.”
Talbot stepped past the man and walked outside. Rinski watched as he mounted his horse and rode back to the cabin.
“Where did you go?” Jacy said. She and Gordon were standing on the porch.
“To the hired hand’s shack.”
“What did you think?”
Talbot shrugged. “Nasty business. You might stop stealing beef.”
“They steal ours—”
“So you steal theirs, I know,” Talbot said, nodding his head. “How’s the girl?”
Jacy shrugged darkly. “She won’t sit still—just keeps scrubbing and straightening, like she can’t get anything clean enough. Doesn’t talk much, either.”
As they were leaving the ranchyard, Rinski appeared, walking around the corral.
“The liver’s in your skillet,” Jacy called.
“Obliged,” Rinski called back, not looking at them.
THEY RODE THE horse trail along Haughton’s Bench to Wolf Creek, and cantered out upon the long, rolling reaches above the Little Missouri. As night came down, the rambling buildings of Jacy’s Bar MK appeared, dark and shapeless below the tip of a grassy, tongue-shaped mesa.
They unloaded the wagon, stabled their horses in the timbered barn, hung the dressed Double X beef high above the floor, and threw hay to the saddle stock. Jacy and Talbot headed for the cabin, and Gordon walked to the bunkhouse.
The cabin was a long, low, solidly built structure of saddle-notched logs and wood shingles. A peeled-log gallery ran the length of the porch, and Talbot remembered his father and Miller Kincaid sitting out here, jawing away a summer evening.
“I’ll have supper ready in half an hour, Gordon,” she called.
“No thanks, Jacy. Think I’ll mosey up to Spernig’s … you know, see about a friendly game of poker.”
“A friendly Mrs. Sanderson, more like,” Jacy said.
Gordon wagged his head and went into the bunkhouse.
“He’s got a woman who works at Spernig’s Roadhouse,” Jacy explained to Talbot as they mounted the porch steps.
The kitchen in which they gathered was built of big, square-hewn logs with plastered walls and a four-globed light hanging low over a long cottonwood table. Oval pictures hung on the walls, and several magazines were spread across the table. Coffee cans on the cupboard tops held utensils, and braided rugs fought the cold air seeping up from the floor. It was a big, homey kitchen, the kind of kitchen that took your mind off your problems. Talbot was grateful for such a kitchen just now.
“Sorry about the mess,” Jacy said as she struck a match and lit the lamp on the windowsill. “I’m afraid I’m not much of a housekeeper. Don’t really see the point, I guess … living alone.”
Talbot had picked up several pieces of kindling from the porch. He tossed the wood in the box by the range and sat in a chair by the door. “I’d have thought you’d be married by now.”
“Was,” she said, throwing paper and kindling into the big stove. “For about a week. Met him at a shindig over at Spernig’s—one of those come-one-come-all barn dances. He rode for Verlyn Thornberg. I thought he was the best thing since Winchesters and mustangs. The day after I married him, he turned shiftless and mean.” She laughed without mirth, blowing on the fledgling fire. “Guess I should have realized he was marry
ing me for my ranch, but I was young and lonesome.”
“What happened?” Talbot asked.
“I called him on it. The next morning he was gone. Took two of my best horses. Haven’t seen him since. Heard he went to Montana, the son of a bitch.”
Talbot said nothing, watching her.
She had her back to him while she worked on the fire. “What about you?”
“Well, I never married, if that’s what you mean. The last seven years have been … crazy, I guess is the word.” He didn’t want to talk about Pilar. He hadn’t spoken the girl’s name aloud since she’d died.
“So why didn’t you come home sooner?”
He shrugged. “I liked crazy for a while. You don’t get bored when you’re always on the move.”
She had turned to him now with her coat and hat still on. The cabin was cold. “So why did you come home now?”
He thought for a moment, shrugged. “There’s no place like home. Or so I thought.”
She smiled. “I’m glad you’re home.” She flushed slightly. “I … I looked up to you guys—you and Dave.”
He frowned, skeptical. “Really?”
“I didn’t have any brothers, you know.”
“We tormented you.”
“I loved it.”
He laughed. “The scars on my shins tell a different story.”
“I was only really angry when you didn’t take me serious,” she confessed, then flushed even more and turned away to the fire. It was burning well now, and the iron range was ticking as it heated.
She pumped water and heated it on the stove, insisting he wash first since he was company. He did so after he’d hung his coat and hat on pegs by the door. She was slicing potatoes into a skillet in which grease popped.
“Your turn,” he said, drying his arms and face on the towel she had draped over a chair back.
He sat at the table, feeling good to be sitting down to table again in Dakota. He reached into his shirt pocket for his tobacco pouch and started rolling a smoke. He worked on it thoughtfully and deliberately, lifting his eyes to Jacy as she washed.
She was a girl no longer, he saw as she removed her heavy wool coat and hat and swept her hair back from her neck with both hands. She was every inch a woman, with all the right curves in all the right places, though genes and hard work had streamlined them some, taken some of the female plump and turned it to muscle.
Dakota Kill Page 10
