“I suppose you have a point, but the Pinkertons have been hired to take down Sartain, and that’s what I intend to do. “I suppose that would be a nice feather in your hat.”
Warner smiled. “I like to think it would distinguish me, Sheriff.”
“Put it how you like it.” The sheriff snapped a lucifer to life on his thumbnail and began lighting his pipe, the match flame dancing up in front of his face, smoke billowing on the wind. “I hope you got some kind of talent.”
“What’s that?”
“This Revenger fella took down these four like they was tin cans on fence posts. Him and the woman. And these four was ready for ‘em.”
“That easy, huh?”
“That easy.”
“I have my ways.”
The sheriff smiled across the leaping flame. “Bushwhacker, are ya?”
Warner’s cheeks warmed.
The sheriff laughed. “You’re too purty for a fair fight against a man such as that.”
That rankled Warner further. He said crisply, “Why don’t we end this conversation with you tellin’ me which way Sartain and the woman headed after they cleaned house here in Willoughby?”
“Took the only trail to the north there is.”
“When?”
“Crack of dawn this morning. Both of ‘em ridin’ together like two peas in a pod.”
“I see,” Warner said, reining the roan around. “Then that’s how they will die.”
“If you’re spendin’ the night here in our fair city,” the sheriff called from behind him, “may I recommend Mrs. Thompson’s place? You can’t miss it. It’s the only hotel in town!”
“Thanks,” Warner said over his shoulder. He turned forward to stare at lovely Miss Daggart’s humble house and barn on the far side of the town, and muttered, “But I’ve secured alternative accommodations.”
* * *
Sartain watched her swim across the stream with smooth, even strokes with the black water rippling silver around her.
She paused on the stream’s far side, in the shade of sprawling alders and box elders, and then swam back toward him, edging off to his right and grabbing a branch of a dead cottonwood that had fallen across the water. She held the branch in her up thrust hands and lay back against the current, letting the stream’s strong pull lift her from below, so that she was floating only a few inches beneath the surface.
She tipped her head far back, smiling at the sun that bathed her in its warm, buttery glow.
They’d come upon it by accident on their second day north out of Willoughby, the stream carving its deep bed through sand and gravel, a veritable oasis on the stark Kansas prairie, sheathed by trees, grass, wildflowers, and home to flitting songbirds. Grass grew deep and lush on both shores, splashed with the bright reds and deep purples of spring wildflowers.
Sartain stared at Olivia Rosen lying back against the current, the water caressing her, the sun glistening in her blond hair that lay sleek as a wet otter’s coat against her head. Time ran backward several years’ worth in a second or two, and he was no longer staring at Olivia but at Jewel. They’d been hunting game in the Chiricahua Mountains, and they’d come upon a cool mountain stream.
They’d swum together, paused to make love against a shelf of feathery ferns. Sartain climbed onto the bank of the stream to sit against a tree in the sun, watching Jewel play in the stream’s shallows, singing softly to herself while she plucked stones from the pebbly bottom.
As he watched her, his heart swelled with love for this sweet, tender girl, this innocent angel who wandered virtually homeless in the desert with her prospector grandfather, and who’d nursed Sartain back to health after he’d been severely wounded in an Apache attack.
As though feeling the caress of his gaze, Jewel turned toward him and smiled. Sartain smiled back.
“I love you, Mike,” Jewel had called to him above the chirping of birds and the soft gurgling of the water.
“I love you, Jewel.”
A sweet languor draped itself around him. Sartain closed his eyes to doze. Cool water sprayed him, plucking him instantly out of his nap. He opened his eyes. Jewel stood over him, wringing out her hair on him and laughing.
“Why, you little...”
He reached for one of her legs, but she sprang away from him too quickly, laughing. She glanced coquettishly over her naked shoulder at him, chuckling and shaking her wet hair out in the golden sunshine.
Sartain sat up, staring at her incredulously, the past and present comingling confusingly. When time stopped swirling and the afternoon transformed from cloudy isinglass to a clear window, Olivia Rosen was wrapping herself in a towel and walking up the grassy shore to where Sartain’s fishing pole stood, one end resting against a log.
The other end was bent slightly out over the stream. The taut line slanting into the water was shivering. Olivia picked up the pole and hauled in the fish, coiling the line around her hand until she was holding up a wriggling, foot-long trout.
She turned to Sartain in girlish delight. “Look!”
“Beautiful.”
“He is, isn’t he? And big. If we don’t catch another one—”
“I was talking about you,” Sartain said. “You’re beautiful.”
She strode toward him and stopped only a few feet away from him, looking down at him skeptically. The fish continued to writhe.
“You’re beautiful, Olivia. When this is over—when Lawton is dead—you’ll find a man. A good man this time. One who’ll stay with you. You’ll have another son.”
“I can’t have another son. Having Edgar almost killed me. Tore me up inside. The doctor said I’d never be able to get pregnant again.”
“I’m sorry.”
Olivia shook her head. “I don’t want another son. I want the one I had. I want Edgar.” She turned and slammed the fish against a rock, killing it. It dangled from the end of the line as she turned back to Sartain. “I want him back so badly. I dream about that very thing even when I’m not sleeping.”
“That’s not possible,” Sartain said.
“I know it’s not. But I can’t help wanting it with all my heart. It’s the same with you, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“That’s why you do this—help people like yourself—isn’t it? It’s the next best thing to getting your woman and child back.”
“Yes.”
Olivia set the fish in the grass. She set the pole down, as well, and sat on a rock, keeping the towel wrapped around her shoulders. She stared at the water for a time, then turned to him. “Even if I was physically capable, I could never have the kind of life you just described. I’ve killed men. People have seen me kill those men. They’ve seen me with you.”
“When Lawton is pushin’ up daisies, I’ll help you start another life...under a different name. I’ll take you somewhere far away.”
“What about you, Mister Sartain? Why don’t you start a life under a different name?”
“I’m not ready yet.” The Revenger looked around at the sunlit water and the dancing, green leaves. The breeze was a constant whisper in the tops of the trees. A fish made a dull plopping sound as it jumped. “Maybe someday. Not yet. My face has been on a lot of wanted dodgers, too. Probably too late for me at this point. That’s all right. I enjoy what I do.”
“Killing folks who need killing?”
“That’s right.”
She nodded, ran her hands down her bare arms bristling with very tiny goosebumps. “I’ll admit, it warms the soul. It’s made me feel alive again. I can’t wait to get to Lawton. I dream about killing him...and Edgar smiling down at me.”
Sartain grabbed his hat, placed it on his head. He rose with a sigh, dusting off his trousers and adjusting the LeMat thonged on his leg. “I’ll clean the fish while you get dressed. Early yet. We can get a few more miles behind us before stopping for the night.”
“All right.”
As Olivia rose from the rock, Sartain looked up suddenly. He’d h
eard something. Gradually, the noise rose above the sounds of the water and the birds and the breeze—a low rumbling. Olivia dropped her towel and stooped to retrieve her underpants.
Sartain grabbed her arm.
“Ow!” she cried, turning to him with an indignant look.
The rumbling grew quickly louder. Sartain jerked his head around to stare up the slope behind him and Olivia. His heart thudded when he saw the riders—three, four, five, at least—galloping down the steep slope, whooping loudly now, and hollering, whipping their mounts with their rein ends.
“Quick, in the river!” Sartain threw Olivia into the water, which she hit with a scream and a splash.
Chapter 15
As rifles began to crack and the rumbling of the oncoming riders grew into a thunder-like cacophony, The Revenger palmed his LeMat, dropped to a knee, and began slinging lead back up the rise. He dispatched one rider with his first shot and wounded another with his third shot.
The second man jerked back in his saddle with a shrill scream.
Sartain continued firing, emptying saddles and evoking yelps and yowls from the men and horrified whinnies from the horses.
One horse crow-hopped and twisted around in terror, falling atop the legs of its rider who’d been trying to crawl for cover after Sartain had shot him out of his saddle.
Sartain emptied the LeMat. He heard guns popping to his right.
He shoved the LeMat back into its holster, grabbed his Henry from where he’d leaned it against the tree he’d been dozing against. He rammed a cartridge into the action and, as bullets whistled through the air around him, thudding into branches and making hollow plops in the river behind him, he aimed at the two riders slanting toward him across the slope, closing on him quickly.
Both men were shooting as they rode, one triggering a Spencer carbine while another snapped shots from a pistol. A bullet nipped the edge of Sartain’s left thigh as he dropped to a knee and fired five quick rounds, jacking and levering, sending smoking shell casings flashing in the sunlight over his right shoulder.
The man with the pistol was hurled straight back off his horse, turning ass over teakettle and hitting the ground with a crunching thud while the man with the Spencer fell back and sideways against his galloping mount’s left hip.
He slid down the side of the mount, squealing. The man’s right boot remained in its stirrup. He squealed again, louder, and there was the crack of breaking bone.
The horse kept galloping toward Sartain, the rider’s head and shoulders bouncing violently along the ground beside it, the man’s boot caught snugly in the stirrup, the lower leg bent at an unnatural angle.
“Mercy sakes alive...heeellllppppp meeeeee!” the rider bellowed.
Suddenly, ten feet from Sartain, the horse wheeled sharply to its right and started galloping back up the slope.
The rider’s foot jerked free of the stirrup-trapped boot, and both gravity and momentum hurled the man sideways through the air toward Sartain. The man’s eyes grew as wide as silver dollars and his open mouth issued a horrified “Ohhh, shiiitttt!”
The scream was cut off abruptly when the man’s head smacked into a tree three feet ahead of Sartain. The head exploded like a ripe cantaloupe, blood, brains, and broken skull bone flying in all directions.
More thuds hammered toward Sartain on his right.
A rifle cracked once, twice, three times.
Sartain pumped another round into his Henry, wheeled left, aimed, and fired.
He ejected the spent cartridge and fired again.
The man galloping toward him cursed as one of The Revenger’s bullets flung his left arm back. He threw his rifle out behind him. The man cursed again as he crouched low over his saddlehorn just in time to duck Sartain’s third shot.
Horse and rider wheeled to Sartain’s left and galloped upstream.
Sartain rose, bringing the Henry to his shoulder once more. He held fire. Horse and rider were in heavy timber now, fading from sight as they followed the river’s curve.
“Goddamnit!” Sartain glanced toward the stream. Olivia lifted her face, her eyes haunted, above the grassy bank. “Stay down. I’m goin’ after that son of a buck!”
The Revenger ran upslope, toward where his horse was tied out of sight with Olivia’s. He pulled Boss’s reins free of their picket pin, swung into the leather, and galloped back down the slope and upstream. Ahead, he glimpsed the wounded rider crossing the river at a gravelly ford.
The man was still hunkered low, in obvious pain.
As the man’s horse gained the stream’s opposite side and lunged into a gallop up the eastern slope, Sartain turned Boss into the river. The stallion’s hooves clacked on rocks, occasionally slipping. When the buckskin gained the opposite bank, Sartain, touched spurs to the mount’s flanks, and horse and rider galloped up the incline, weaving through the woods.
Sartain saw his quarry gain the crest of the ridge and vanish.
Boss lunged on up the slope, leaping deadfalls. When the stallion lurched up over the ridge crest, Sartain drew back on the reins and stared across the rolling prairie.
His quarry was galloping off to the northeast, crouched low. The man turned his head to glance behind him, then turned forward again and whipped his mount with his reins. Sartain shucked his Henry from his saddle sheath, racked a round into the action, aimed carefully at the rider quickly dwindling into the distance.
Sartain squeezed the Henry’s trigger.
The report flatted out across the prairie, echoing.
The rider kept galloping away. The man twitched slightly. As the horse kept eating up the prairie, its rider slid slowly down the saddle’s left side. He hit the ground and rolled as the horse glanced behind then whinnied, bucked, and kicked as it continued running away, trailing the bridle reins.
Sartain touched spurs to Boss’s flanks. A minute later, he approached the rider, who was crawling through sage and prairie grass, heading for the cover of wild shrubs. Sartain triggered two shots into the ground around the man.
The man grunted with a start, turned his head toward Sartain, then turned onto his butt. His upper left chest was matted with blood. He was breathing hard, showing his teeth.
He looked at Sartain, the whites of his eyes bright in contrast to the dark leather of his face. Middle-aged, he wore a long drooping mustache and gray chin whiskers.
Small, round, steel-framed glasses hung down his face, hooked on one ear. A knotted scar slanted across his left cheek. His face was long and bony, his eyes wild and fearful but also stupid and mean. He’d lost his hat. His hair lay in a thin, gray-brown matt across the top of his head, back from where a sharp widow’s peak cut into it.
Sartain recognized him. Olivia had described in detail each of the three men who’d been in the car when her son had been killed. She hadn’t been able to get those details out of her tortured mind.
This middle-aged man with the glasses and the scar across the nose was one of those men...
The Revenger sheathed his Henry and swung down from his saddle.
“Herman Bundy,” Sartain said, sliding the LeMat from its holster. He crouched to remove a short-barreled Remington revolver from a shoulder holster under the man’s wool coat. He tossed the Remy into the brush.
The man stared at him, squinting near-sighted. “You go to hell, whoever you are...”
Sartain glanced back toward the river gorge marked by trees shivering in the spring breeze. “Is Lawton with you?”
“You go to hell!”
Sartain smiled coldly down at the man. Then he flipped the lever on the LeMat, engaging the stout lower barrel housing the twelve-gauge shotgun shell. He began walking slowly backward, keeping his gaze riveted on the man before him.
“Ever get shot with a twelve-gauge shotgun from, say, forty, fifty yards?”
Bundy frowned. “What?” He held up a gloved hand, palm out. “Wait, now. Hold on!”
Sartain stopped about fifteen feet away from the man on the ground.
He asked again, “Is Lawton with you?”
“No,” Bundy said through gritted teeth. He shivered miserably. Sartain had popped two pills through Bundy’s left shoulder, one from the front and one from the back. Bundy’s cheeks were mottled white. “No,” he repeated. “We was...we was down at the camp when...when we got word what happened...in Willoughby.”
By “camp,” the man probably meant an “Injun camp” or a “wolf den,” as remote outlaw hideouts were often called.
He sagged backward. “Oh, mercy, I’m in a boatload of pain here, friend!”
“Where’s Lawton?”
Anger was like a shadow passing over Herman Bundy’s squinting eyes. Then Bundy’s gaze flicked down to the big LeMat held taut in The Revenger’s gloved right fist.
Bundy winced, licked his lips. “Hell, I don’t know...I reckon he’s up at his old family spread. Holes up there...him an’ Simms. Rides over to the camp from time to time, but...”
“Simms.” Sartain remembered the name Olivia had recited, having heard it spoken over the three days she’d been forced to entertain Lawton. “Neville Simms.” The third man in the train car the day little Edgar had been killed.
“That’s right,” said Bundy, glowering up at Sartain. “Who’re you? Who’s...who’s the woman?”
“The mother of the boy you killed.”
Bundy stared at Sartain, the wheels of his mind slowly turning. His eyes darkened with the memory. They flicked back to Sartain, and he said, “Wait, now. I didn’t...I didn’t—”
“Maybe you didn’t fire the bullet, but you were there.”
“Hold on, now!”
Sartain smiled without mirth. “Why don’t we say hi to his mother?”
“Now, just hold on!” Bundy screamed as Sartain walked back to where Boss stood, patiently waiting.
Sartain slid his LeMat back into its holster and took his riata off his saddle. Walking back to Bundy, he paid out the loop at the end of the rope.
The Revenger Page 124
