The Revenger

by Peter Brandvold

  Fifteen feet above Sartain, he turned again and rolled to within six feet of the Cajun’s boots.

  Amos McCluskey lay on his back, groaning and wagging his head slowly as blood pumped out of his chest. More blood oozed thickly from both corners of his mouth. His gold front teeth glistened in the sunlight.

  Sartain walked up to him and stared down at the fast-dying deputy.

  “Chaney send you?”

  McCluskey’s eyelids fluttered. Then they stopped fluttering, and he stared up at Sartain. Slowly, a smile twisted his thin, cruel mouth. “Yeah,” he said.

  “You damn fool.”

  McCluskey blinked once. “No more than you are.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’ll know soon enough,” the deputy spat out, blood dribbling down his chin.

  He smiled again, and then his fleshy, bloody chest fell still, and his eyes turned opaque but just as mocking as before.

  Chapter 13

  Sartain found Amos McCluskey’s horse tethered to some brush in a notch canyon not far from where the man had died. The Revenger tied McCluskey’s corpse belly down across his saddle, tied the mount’s reins to the saddle horn, and fired his LeMat over the beast’s head.

  The copper-bottom dun lunged down the canyon floor, heading in the general direction of Bittersweet. It would likely be back in town within the hour, and Chaney or someone else could see to the bushwhacker’s disposal. Sartain hoped the body would send a message to Chaney and others who thought bushwhacking him was a good idea.

  Boss had returned to his rider’s side when Sartain had whistled for him, and now the Revenger and the big stallion continued to walk along the floor of Cobalt Canyon, looking for the spot where Waylon Chaney had been shot in the back. That’s what Sartain had been doing when McCluskey had thrown that first slug at him—looking for blood.

  He’d been looking around for over an hour, and he’d found nothing—no blood, no scuffmarks, no cartridge casings, nothing.

  Now, after another hour of searching, he still found no sign to indicate where Waylon Chaney had been shot.

  He’d thought there might be a chance he could track the killer from the spot of the shooting. But while Cobalt Canyon was not an overly large piece of ground, it was a rugged one. His chances had been slim, and now he realized the only way he’d be able to find the spot would be to ask Chaney’s daughter. He hadn’t wanted to involve the grief-stricken girl, but if he was going to find out for Celeste who had killed her brother, the girl’s father, there was no other way.

  He’d learned in town that Waylon Chaney’s small ranch was less than two miles north of Cobalt Canyon. Sartain followed the snaking trail through more rugged country—low buttes tufted with sage and cactus and sparse clumps of fescue—and up a gradual rise toward a steep ridgeline. A few longhorn cattle grazed here and there around him in the distance, most clinging to the sparse shade of lone post oaks or rock outcroppings.

  Sartain had also learned in town that the ridgeline he was heading for was known as Owl Mountain. Now the mountain was catching low, dark, fast-scudding clouds as a storm moved in from the west. As Sartain continued along the trail, he occasionally heard the rumbling of distant thunder. Cloud shadows swept the country around him, and a fresh breeze was rising.

  He topped a plateau and saw the ranch straight ahead of him, dwarfed by the tan, rocky bluffs around it and the ridge looming behind it. If he hadn’t known it was out here, he wouldn’t have seen it yet, for it was just a single mud cabin and mud barn flanking what appeared to be a rickety windmill.

  There were a couple of connected rail corrals and an orchard fence, and that was all. The entire place looked the size of a postage stamp amidst the rugged country stretching all around it and the cobalt sky arching over it.

  There was a low rise to the right of the ranch yard, and, as Sartain and Boss kept moving toward the cabin, he saw a wagon parked at the bottom of the rise. A saddled horse stood behind the wagon, its head down. A few minutes later he saw two figures atop the rise, under a couple of mesquites and post oaks whose branches nodded in the rising breeze.

  Sartain turned Boss toward the rise, and soon he saw the girl, Chaney’s black-haired daughter, sitting on a rock on the rise.

  She watched the stocky Mexican, whom she’d called Vicente in town the day before, shovel dirt onto what was most likely a grave—her father, Waylon Chaney’s, grave. The girl rose from the rock and adjusted a makeshift cross poking out of the ground at the head of the mound.

  Vicente stopped shoveling and stood leaning on his shovel, staring down at the grave. The girl did, as well, the rising wind blowing her black hair around her head.

  Vicente turned his head toward Sartain. Then the girl did, as well. Sartain stopped Boss near the wagon and stared up the rise at the girl and Vicente, who stared down at him. They were a somber looking pair, and Sartain wished he hadn’t come here now, when they were just finishing burying the girl’s father. He wished he had waited until later.

  But he was here now, so he might as well stay and find out what he could as delicately as he could.

  The beefy sorrel tied to the wagon gave a whinny at the newcomers, and Boss returned the greeting in kind. The horse in the wagon’s traces nodded its head and switched its tail.

  The girl and the stocky Mexican set rocks from a pile they’d gathered over the grave, to keep predators away. The girl slapped her hands together, dusting them off, and smacked dust from the thighs of her denim pants. She started down the hill toward the wagon, the stocky Mexican following, the shovel resting on his shoulder.

  “I’m sorry,” Sartain said as she neared the bottom of the hill. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”

  “You’re not intruding, Mr. Sartain. We were just finishing up.” Carleen Chaney stopped to lean against the side of the wagon and glanced at the Mexican walking up behind her. “Neither one of us are much good at funerals, I’m afraid. Vicente knows the Lord’s Prayer, so he said it, and that’s that.”

  She brushed tears from her cheeks with the backs of her hands and shook her head, trying to be tough.

  Vicente set his shovel in the wagon and looked at the sky, over which dark clouds were sliding quickly, catching and tearing at each other. “I’d best be getting back to town,” he told the girl, placing his hands on her shoulders and giving her a sympathetic squeeze.

  “You’re gonna get caught in it,” she warned.

  “If so, I’ll hole up. Gotta get back to town. Work to do. I’ll be out to check on you again in a couple of days.” Vicente pulled his straw sombrero up from where it had been hanging down his back, set it on his head, and heaved his heavy bulk into the sorrel’s saddle, the leather squawking beneath his weight. He gigged the horse ahead and glanced once more at the girl. “You sure you want to stay out here all by yourself, Carleen?”

  “Where else would I go?”

  “You could come and stay with me.”

  “In that bear den you call a cabin?” She dipped her chin and smiled wryly.

  Vicente chuckled. “Invitation’s open.” He looked at Sartain. “You the Revenger?”

  “That’s what they call me.”

  The Mexican pondered this, and then he nodded and canted his head toward Carleen. “If anyone needs revenge now, it’s her. That bastard killed her pa.”

  His fleshy, mustached face turned ruddy with anger. Vicente turned the sorrel around and batted his mule-eared boots against its sides, heading for the trail.

  Somberly, Carleen watched him go. “My pa’s best friend,” she said, the first raindrops falling, her black hair snaking around both sides of her face in the wind. “They knew each other since they were just boys . . . ridin’ roughshod around these parts. They both settled down at about the same time. After Ma died, Vicente helped raise me.” She chuckled. “If you could call it ‘raising.’”

  She looked at Sartain. “Would you like a drink, Mr. Sartain? My Pa always kept a few jugs of mescal arou
nd. Set store by it, in fact. Called it his ‘medicine.’”

  Sartain winced and reached around to the small of his back. “I do feel a mite on the creaky side.”

  “Follow me. You can stable your horse yonder. There’s parched corn. Then we’ll go on over to the cabin, and I’ll fix you up.” She gave him a warm smile and then climbed into the wagon, her taut denims caressing her firm rump and well-turned thighs.

  * * *

  When he’d tended Boss and turned the stallion into Carleen’s corral, Sartain followed her back to the cabin and sat on the porch while she went inside to fix a couple of drinks.

  She came out a few minutes later no longer wearing her man’s checked wool shirt and skintight denims and stockmen’s boots. She wore instead a plain but nicely formfitting cambric frock—cream with pale-blue flowers that matched the deep blue of her eyes. Her hair was freshly brushed to a high shine as it flowed across her shoulders and hung down to the small of her back.

  Beneath the hem of her dress, Sartain could see that she was wearing low-heeled black shoes and frilly stockings.

  Sartain stared up at her in surprise as she handed him a tumbler half-filled with the colorless mescal. She did not return his gaze, but he could tell by the flush sitting high in her perfect cheeks that she was aware of his scrutiny.

  She sat in the string-bottom chair to the left of his own. He assumed she and her father had sat out here in these very chairs, probably to watch the late-summer afternoon rain come down as it was falling now, the small drops tossed by the fresh breeze that smelled of sage and brimstone.

  It was not as violent a storm as the one a few days ago. The thunder merely rumbled and lightning flashed in the northwestern distance as the bulk of the storm bypassed the ranch. The droplets fell to curl the dust of the hard-packed yard.

  Carleen sipped her drink and shook her hair back from her cheeks. “So, tell me, Mr. Sartain: what brings you out here? Not that I mind, of course. At such a time it’s nice to have company, though I can’t say I was expecting a man of your fame.”

  “Or infame, as the case might be,” he corrected her.

  “Possibly to some. But not to folks like myself who’ve been wronged.” She took another sip of the mescal and turned to him. “Are you here to look into my father’s murder?”

  “That’s right, Miss Carleen. I am.” Sartain frowned. “How did you know who I am?”

  “Oh, it didn’t take long for word to spread around Bittersweet. I stayed in town last night with Vicente. I just drove in to give Warren a good look at his brother’s body, and to let him know that I know he killed my pa in cold blood. Backshot him in Cobalt Canyon, the bastard!”

  Sartain sipped the mescal, which was so strong it instantly made his eyes water. But it was good stuff, and he knew mescal. It both tasted and smelled like the southwestern desert in full spring blossom.

  “Are you sure it was the sheriff who killed your pa?”

  “Of course I’m sure.” Carleen’s voice had turned bitter, and her cheeks were now red with anger as she glared at the light rain thumping into the yard. “Of course, I didn’t see it. I can’t prove it. But I know. He’s the only man who’d have the nerve to back-shoot Waylon Chaney. It was either him or he sent his deputy, that fat moron, Amos McCluskey.”

  “Well, that would fit. McCluskey tried to trim my wick out in the same canyon less than an hour ago.”

  She jerked a startled look at him. “Really?”

  “He’s dead.” Sartain took another sip of the potent liquor and let it loll on his tongue for a time before he swallowed it. It tasted especially good with the desert rain falling, the fresh air tanged with sage easing up under the porch roof.

  “Whoa.” Carleen sat back in her chair. “He must’ve followed you out to Cobalt Canyon and wanted to make sure you didn’t find anything.”

  “If that’s true, he gave up his ghost for nothin’. I didn’t find anything. In fact, that’s why I decided to pay you a visit at this delicate time, Miss Carleen. I’m wondering where you found your father. I’d like to see if I can track the killer or killers away from the area.”

  “I’ll show you tomorrow. Storm doesn’t look like it’s gonna stay long, but by the time it’s done rainin’, it’ll likely be too late to get started and back before dark.” Carleen frowned curiously. “Who sent you out here, Mr. Sartain? You just come to help a girl in need?”

  Sartain shrugged, threw the last of the mescal back, and smacked his lips. “I don’t reckon there’s any reason to keep it a secret. Your aunt, Miss Celeste, sent me.”

  “Celeste?”

  “She said she wanted to get to the bottom of your father’s murder.”

  “That’s odd.”

  “How’s it odd?”

  Carleen shrugged a shoulder. “She an’ my pa were never very close.”

  “She said as much. But she also said she wants to know if Warren murdered him. If he did . . .”

  Carleen arched a brow.

  “She’d like me to handle it.”

  “Would you kill him, Mr. Sartain?”

  “If I find out he killed your pa, I would.”

  She gave him a pensive smile, probing him with her gaze. “Because that’s what you do for folks, isn’t it? Avenge them who can’t avenge themselves.”

  “I figure your aunt fits into that category.” The Cajun smiled. “I got a feelin’ you can take care of yourself, however.”

  Carleen pursed her lips, nodding. “Poor Celeste. Cooped up in that house all alone with that crazy old man. Catatonic, the doctor calls him. Just sits in his chair all day, messin’ himself.”

  “That’s a terrible way to live. For both of ’em.”

  “Hell, that old man don’t even know what’s goin’ on. It’s Celeste who had it hard. And then”—Carleen’s voice hardened with anger as she stared down at her near-empty glass—“Warren got the old man to change his will just before he went totally crazy. Convinced him that . . .”

  The girl shook her head and let her voice trail off.

  “Convinced him of what?” Sartain gently prodded.

  Carleen sighed. “Let’s just say that once the old man’s dead, Celeste ain’t gonna be taken care of nearly well enough for all that old man has put her through for the past five, six years. Most of the money—hell, all of the money and property and business interests—will go to Warren.”

  “And your father wouldn’t have gotten any of it, either . . . had he lived, I mean?”

  “Nope. There’s been no chance of that since Pa got wild. Never mind that he came back and walked the straight and narrow. Even went to work for Warren, gettin’ paid next to nothin’, though he did all the heavy liftin’.”

  “Why do you suppose the old man’s bein’ so hard on his daughter?”

  “Well, because Celeste is just a silly young woman, ya see, and wouldn’t have sense enough to spend the money wisely. So Warren will have to see to her, and— Oh, don’t get me goin’!”

  Carleen rose and turned to Sartain. “Do you think I’m pretty, Mr. Sartain?”

  Sartain looked up at her. She filled her dress out in all the right places. The frock was high necked, but it was drawn taut against the full swell of her bosom.

  “Indeed, I do, Miss Carleen.”

  She smiled. “I like the way you talk. You talk like a real southern gentleman.”

  “I like to think of myself as a gentleman.”

  “Does that mean you wouldn’t frolic with a girl you just met?”

  Sartain hesitated. He wasn’t sure he’d heard her right. As he pondered it, Carleen crossed her arms, grabbed the dress beneath her bosom, and lifted it up and over her head.

  Her long, beautiful hair floated messily back to her shoulders as she dropped the dress to the floor and stood before him—willowy, pink, and perfect.

  Chapter 14

  Sartain silently opined that there must be something in the water around the Davis Mountains that made all the women hotter than Colt
.45s on Saturday nights in Abilene. Or maybe the Chaney women were all so repressed that their carnal desires came out in craven spurts, with nary a nod to the niceties of their female station.

  “Well, I’ll be jiggered three ways from sundown, Miss Celeste, but ain’t you a forward little thing.”

  “I’m a lonely little thing, Mr. Sartain. Lonely as these mountains, but a whole lot younger.” She reached behind her neck and lifted her hair in a messy ball above her head. “So when I see an opportunity to be not quite so lonely for a time, I leap on it. Besides, my daddy’s gone now, and I’m tired of grievin’ already. And”—she let her hair tumble down around her shoulders and bosom—“I don’t wanna think about the heartache anymore today or tonight. Besides, the weather’s good for snugglin’ by a mesquite fire—don’t you think?”

  “You don’t give a man much choice.”

  Sartain rose from his chair. He felt a little wobbly. He’d been desiring this girl even before she’d taken her dress off and he’d seen that she was wearing nothing more underneath it than her aunt had been wearing under her own burgundy frock.

  He doffed his hat, wrapped his arms around her shoulders, and kissed her.

  She fairly melted in his arms, returning his kiss as hungrily as he was giving it.

  Pulling away suddenly, she said, “Do you think me terrible? Carrying on like this after . . . after . . . ?” She turned to stare up the rise upon which she’d buried her father.

  “Ah, hell,” Sartain said. “You’re alive. Might as well enjoy it. He’s not gonna know.”

  She smiled up at him, pressed her breasts against his chest, and wrapped her arms around his neck. She kissed him, and he returned it, and later, when they were both exhausted, they shared a bottle of mescal.