Magnusson kept his eyes on his boots.
Talbot said, “Someone apparently wanted him off the Bench—wanted our land for theirs—so they killed him. You have any idea who would do such a thing?”
King lifted his head slowly, arched an eyebrow. “You’ve been listening to the nesters around Canaan.”
“Who started the bloodshed?”
Magnusson shrugged. “Who fired the first shot at Fort Sumter?” He looked at Talbot as if awaiting an answer. He got none. “They were stealing cattle.”
“Before or after you started stealing their land?”
“I’m not going to argue about land rights. I have the law on my side.”
“Legally?”
“Does it matter?”
Talbot sat on the sofa and cut to the chase. “The day my brother was killed, your son and another rider were seen heading toward our headquarters.”
A muscle beneath Magnusson’s right eye twitched. “Did anyone see Randall kill your brother?”
Talbot said nothing.
“Did anyone see Randall kill your brother?” Magnusson repeated, more forcefully this time, as though reproaching a dim-witted schoolboy.
Talbot stared into Magnusson’s eyes, his own eyes dark with fury.
Satisfied he’d gotten his answer, Magnusson nodded. He struggled out of his chair and strode about the room glancing at book spines and straightening picture frames. Finally he turned on his heel, adjusted his paper collar and tie, and regarded Talbot with a look of ceremonial gravity.
“I am sorry about your brother. I offered him good money for his land and he turned me down, but I did not kill him. Nor did I order him killed.”
“Maybe your son and a Mr. Shelby Green are doing some independent work out on the range. Homer Rinski thinks it was they who killed his hired man and raped his daughter.”
“Nonsense.”
Talbot shrugged. “They have quite the reputation for shenanigans, those two.”
“An unearned reputation, I assure you. They’re … boys.” Something in his eyes told Talbot the old man wasn’t giving his son the credit he deserved.
When Talbot said nothing in reply, Magnusson went back to his chair and sat down. He planted his elbows on his knees, took his sherry in his hands, and regarded Talbot directly. “What do you say we forget about the past? Come to work for me.”
Talbot gave a caustic laugh. “What?”
“I’ll buy you out. Give you top dollar for your ranch and two hundred dollars a month for your work.”
“What kind of work?”
Magnusson sat back in his chair, eyes furtive. “I saw what you did to Donnelly. No one does that to Donnelly. Consider his job yours.”
Talbot laughed again. “What makes you think I’d accept such an offer?”
“Because you can’t run your own beef on the Bench. I won’t allow it.”
“If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em—that it?”
“Makes sense.”
“Go fuck yourself, King.”
Magnusson’s face fell like a wet sheet. His ears turned red. His voice came tight and even. “You just made the biggest mistake of your life.”
Talbot matched the rancher’s composure. “And you made the biggest mistake of yours when you declared war on the Bench and killed my brother.”
“Get out.”
“My pleasure. But we’ll meet again—you, me, and your son.”
Magnusson looked at the doors. “Rag!”
Rag Donnelly walked in carrying Talbot’s coat, hat, gun-belt, and a rifle. There was a bloodstained bandage over the ear Talbot had smashed. Donnelly studied Talbot with cool malevolence—a big, hard-looking man in an old sheepskin coat and a curled Stetson, strategically tipped away from the injured ear.
“Escort Mr. Talbot out the back,” Magnusson ordered.
“My pleasure, Mr. Magnusson.”
“I don’t want him shot—unless he provokes it, that is.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I know there’s a debt to be paid, Rag, but I don’t want any trouble tonight.”
Donnelly nodded reluctantly, his cold eyes on Talbot.
“Very well, then,” Magnusson said.
Talbot had slipped into his coat and hat, buckled the gun-belt around his waist.
“Don’t worry—there ain’t no loads in your iron,” Donnelly told him. “So don’t embarrass yourself.”
“’Preciate the advice,” Talbot said. Turning to Magnusson, he asked, “What are you going to tell your daughter?”
Glancing at Donnelly, Magnusson said with a shrug, “The truth. That you were using her to finagle a job out of me—Rag’s job. When I turned you down, you threatened to join the other small ranchers in rustling me blind.” He smiled. “So I had you thrown out.”
Talbot returned the smile, said dryly, “Thanks for the lovely evening.”
“Until we meet again, Talbot.”
Talbot nodded and walked out the door. Donnelly followed him with his Winchester aimed at his spine.
They went down the back stairs and out the back door. From the sting in his cheeks, Talbot guessed the temperature had dropped ten degrees. The sky was very clear, hard white stars scattering in all directions. A faint luminosity shone in the east, where the moon was about to rise.
“Your horse is in the corral,” Donnelly growled. He jabbed the rifle in Talbot’s back. “Get movin’, slick.”
“How’s your ear? It looks sore,” Talbot said.
“Fuck you.”
Inside the corral, Talbot untied his horse’s reins from a slat and prepared to mount up. “Well, thanks for everything, Rag.”
“Oh, there’s just one more thing,” Donnelly said.
Talbot had sensed it coming long before he saw the shadow on the snow. He ducked, heard the smack of the rifle butt against his saddle. The horse started and jumped sideways.
Before Donnelly knew what had happened, Talbot had his revolver out. He flipped it, clutched the barrel, and swung the butt hard against Donnelly’s bandaged ear.
“God-damn,” the foreman said in a pinched, breathy voice. Both legs buckled and he dropped to his knees, then to his hands. In the light cast by the distant mansion, Talbot saw the bandage turn dark.
“Fuck,” the foreman cursed again.
Talbot reached under Donnelly’s coat for his pistol and tossed it over the corral. Then he picked up the rifle and jacked it empty, tossed it down. He grabbed his reins and mounted his horse.
Surveying Donnelly, who was fighting to stay conscious, Talbot said, “Sorry again, Rag. But like you said, you’ll have another chance to even things up. Real soon.”
Then he spurred the speckled gray and galloped off into the night.
CHAPTER 20
IT WAS NEARLY midnight and spine-splitting cold, and Gibbon knew the temperature would continue dropping for several more hours. He’d had the smarts to don fur boots—he’d vowed not to wear his stovepipes again until May—but his toes still ached and he felt the cold creeping up his legs like death.
He considered halting the posse and dismounting to stomp some feeling back in his feet, but he’d ordered the last stop only half an hour ago, and he didn’t want to look like a sissy in front of Verlyn Thornberg. What he wouldn’t give for a snort to dull the pain in his battered body and to cook out the cold!
When the procession had descended a broad hogback crowned by a lightning-split cedar and a low stone pillar, Gibbon raised a hand and halted his horse. He stared ahead, listening.
“This the place?” Rinski said.
“Yes. Keep your voice down.”
“How do you know this is the place?”
Thornberg gave a dry chuckle. “If there’s one thing Jed knows, it’s where the roadhouses are, don’t you, Jed?”
“Speak up, Verlyn—they can’t hear you in Mandan,” Gibbon said.
He handed his reins to Jacy Kincaid, who’d been riding directly behind him. He was pleased now that she’
d come along; her presence seemed to keep Thornberg’s riders peaceable if not sober.
“I still say we go on to the Double X,” Thornberg said. “Deal with the head honcho right up and straight away.”
“Drag the devil from his lair,” Rinski agreed.
Gibbon shook his head. “That’s exactly what he’d want us to do. No, we’ll take out a few of his men now, a few later, and force old Magnusson to come to us shorthanded.”
“Makes sense to me,” Jacy said. “Besides, they’re probably all drunker’n skunks down there.”
“If they’re down there,” Flint Skully said. He and his hired man, a big Pole with a smallpox-ravaged face, were sitting their horses back in the pack a ways.
“They’ll be there,” one of Thornberg’s riders said, holding a flask. “There’s always a half dozen of ’em down there, poking Gutzman’s Injun whore.”
“What did I tell you boys about drinkin’ on the job?” Gibbon snarled.
The cowboy shrugged and passed the flask to the rider next to him. He gave an insolent smile. “Sorry, Sheriff.”
Gibbon snorted angrily and shucked his Winchester. He limped up the trail and stopped just below the ridge so the moon did not outline him against the sky, and cast a look at the saucer-shaped valley below.
The trail snaked down between a low-slung cabin and two hitch-and-rail corrals and a barn that leaned slightly northward. The slough flanking the roadhouse was frozen and moonlit and surrounded by marsh grass and cattails. Low buttes climbed beyond, their knobby, snowless crests showing clearly in the moonlight.
The cabin was well lit, and there were at least a dozen horses in the paddocks.
Gibbon turned and walked back to the posse and said in a low voice, “I’m gonna go down and make sure it’s only Magnusson’s men down there. I don’t want to see innocent people killed here tonight.”
“On that ankle?” Jacy said.
“I’ll make it.”
“No, you won’t. I’ll go.”
Gibbon shook his head. “Not a chance.”
Thornberg said, “She’s fleet o’ foot, Gibbon. You’re about as graceful as a bear on snowshoes.”
Gibbon thought for a moment. He nodded. To Jacy he said, “Hurry, and stay low. The moon is behind you. Whatever you do, don’t let them see you.”
“You gotta gun?” Verlyn Thornberg asked her paternally.
Jacy dismounted, handed her reins to Gibbon, and said with a grunt to Thornberg, “Do I have a gun? Do you have a gun, Verlyn?”
She shucked her Henry with a snort and started down the trail.
Behind her, one of Thornberg’s men said, chuckling, “Guess she told you, boss,” and lifted the flask to his lips.
THE HILL WAS studded with several low shrubs, rocks, and crusty snowdrifts, and Jacy wove around them carefully, keeping her eyes on the door of the roadhouse below.
Frozen grass crunched under her boots, and the smell of willow smoke issuing from the chimney was sharp in her nose.
Approaching the cabin, she held her breath and pressed her back against the west wall, then moved to a frosty window. The sound of voices grew. She could feel heat escaping through the loose chinking between the logs and around the window.
She looked inside through the frost, swept her eyes across the room. Five men sat at a table about six feet from the glass. Another six men occupied a second table on the other side of the iron stove. She could tell they were Double X men by the way they carried themselves, by the smug looks on their faces, and by the oiled holsters tied down low on their thighs.
The only one not directly associated with Magnusson was the proprietor, a big, bearded German named Gutzman who bought Indian girls for whiskey, and put them to work in the lean-to addition at the back of the roadhouse. He stood stoking the fire, swaying drunkenly, his back to the window.
He paused, laughing, and lifted a smile at the second table. “Yah, you cun bet Verna vos surprised to see him!” he yelled, his guttural voice rattling the window. “He said he vos going to shoot dem bot, so Verna skedaddled off da Mexcan, grabbed da Mexcan’s gun, and let him haf it six times tru da heart, hah, hah, hah! And dat vos de end off Dieter Ross—hah, hah, hah!”
One of the other cowboys, looking up from his cards and ignoring the German, frowned at a deer hide door at the back of the room. “Come on, Chet! Save some for me, old hoss!”
“Kiss my ass, Shorty!” came the reply.
Gutzman said to the door, “No, no hogging da girl. Your fifteen minutes is up, Chit.” Turning to the other men, he said with a big, red-faced grin, “I can’t help it if dat’s all you got up. Hah! Hah! Hah!”
Jacy crept around the corner of the cabin and peered in the window of the lean-to. A bald man and an Indian girl moved together on the bed, under a ratty buffalo blanket.
The man was on top, pumping furiously, propped on his outstretched arms. He’d arched his back and lifted his head until his face was parallel with the wall, eyes shut tight with concentration. His bald head was a mass of hideous red scar tissue, marking him as an old Indian fighter whose scalp probably decorated the mansion of some aging Sioux warrior.
The Indian girl beneath him lay with her head turned to the window; her large coffee eyes stared unseeing. Her head moved with the force of the man’s thrusting hips.
Jacy could hear the man’s frustrated grunts and groans, the singing of the bedsprings, and the scraping of the iron headboard against the wall. But it was the Indian girl’s tenantless eyes that haunted her. She’d never seen anyone look so empty.
It took Jacy several seconds to tear her eyes from the Indian girl’s. Then she moved to the other side of the cabin and peered into the one remaining room—the kitchen—and found it empty. She headed out across the front yard toward the posse on the hill. When a latch scraped and hinges squeaked, she dropped, hitting the ground on her chest.
Shit!
She jerked a look at the cabin. The front door opened, angling light across the verandah. A shadow moved and a silhouette appeared. Boots scraped.
“Shut the goddamn door!” someone yelled.
The door closed, snuffing out the light. The light from the two windows, one on each side of the door, remained.
Jacy held her breath, silently cursing herself for a fool. She should have gone back the way she’d come.
A man gave a sigh. The shadow moved out from under the awning to stand at the edge of the step.
Silence.
Oh, shit, oh, shit!
Then the man sighed again and water puddled onto the snow. Jacy tried to make herself as small as possible, hoping that if the man saw her, forty feet away, he’d mistake her for a snowdrift or a feed sack fallen from a wagon.
Either the man had a bison-sized bladder or he’d been holding his whiskey for hours; the tinny stream seemed to trickle on forever. Jacy pressed her face against the cold snow and fought the urge to lift her rifle and shoot the son of a bitch.
Finally the flow ebbed to spurts. The man grunted, shuffling his feet. When the spurts finally ceased, he gave another sigh and turned back to the roadhouse. He threw open the door.
“Shut the goddamn door!” came a yell from within.
The door closed. Jacy scrambled to her feet and hightailed it up the hill.
“You should have come back the way you went,” Verlyn Thornberg scolded when she walked up to the posse milling in the hollow.
“Shut up, Verlyn,” Gibbon snapped. “She’s no less schooled at this than you or me or any of us.” Turning his eyes to Jacy, he said, “You think that cowboy saw you?”
Jacy was standing by her horse, bent over with her hands on her knees, trying to catch her breath. It had been a hell of a run up the hill. She was as afraid as she was exhausted. This was turning out to be a bigger deal than she’d expected. Lying back there waiting for the drunk cowboy to finish draining the dragon, she’d realized she might actually get shot. Or worse … .
With a bunch of sleezy hammerheads lik
e the ones down there, she could end up like Mattie Rinski and the Indian girl.
She sucked in a deep breath, straightened, and shook her head. “If he’d seen me they’d be shooting by now.”
Thornberg said, “Or they’re playin’ dumb and waiting for us to make the first move. Hell, they could be slipping out the back and surrounding us right now—as we speak!”
“Keep your voice down,” Gibbon said.
“They didn’t see me, Verlyn,” Jacy said.
“How many are in there?” Gibbon asked her.
“Fourteen. Twelve in the main room, one in the back with an Indian girl.” Her voice was tight. “Looks like they’re taking turns.”
One of Thornberg’s men said, “That’d be Gutzman’s whore.” There was humor in his voice.
Jacy didn’t like it. She told the man so with a hard look. He stared back, but the lines in his round face flattened out.
“All right, all right,” Gibbon intervened. “We’re here to fight them, not each other.” He paused, looking around the posse.
Thornberg stood holding his reins. Homer Rinski sat his mount to Thornberg’s right and a little behind. He hadn’t moved since they’d stopped in the hollow. His face was dark under the round brim of his hat, but Gibbon sensed his eyes blazing as he looked off toward the ridge and the roadhouse below.
Two of the other ranch owners were standing and smoking cigarettes with an air of desperation, as though they’d be the last cigarettes they’d ever smoke. The rest of the men remained mounted, heads hunched and shoulders pulled in against the cold, breath jetting from their mouths and noses.
Thornberg’s five riders were the only ones who did not seem afraid. They’d had too much liquor to be afraid of anything. This was just a game. A game with higher stakes than their usual winter-evening rounds of high five or blackjack, but a game just the same.
That knowledge chilled Gibbon to his soul, but they’d come too far to turn back now.
He gave a deep sigh, let it out slow. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s assume they didn’t see Jacy and take up the positions I talked about back in the barn. Remember, no smoking once we’re off the ridge, and nobody shoots before I do.”
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