Dakota Kill and the Romantics

by Peter Brandvold

  “I met your brother in the mercantile once or twice. Don’t believe I’ve ever seen you before.”

  “I lit a shuck out of here about seven years ago. Must have been before your time. I left the ranching up to my brother. Figured I was too good for it. Wanted to see the world.”

  “Did you see it?”

  “Enough to know if there’s such a thing as the good life, it’s here.”

  “Maybe it was here, back before I came, right before the trouble,” the man said, thoughtfully sipping his whiskey. Swallowing, he shook his head. “But it ain’t here no more. When did you find out about your brother?”

  “’Bout an hour ago.”

  “Jesus, I’m sorry. That’s tough, comin’ home after seven years to find your brother dead.”

  Talbot shook his head, scowling and staring into his whiskey. “It wasn’t exactly what I was expecting, no. You know what happened to our ranch? I was Dave’s only kin, and I was out of reach. I hope Magnusson didn’t get it.”

  The man thought for a moment. “I believe the Kincaid girl is grazing her beef on it. It abuts her land, as you know, and it’s got good winter cover.”

  Talbot lifted his head. “The Kincaid girl? Jacy Kincaid?”

  The man nodded.

  Visibly surprised, Talbot said, “Why, she can’t be but fourteen years old!”

  “I’ve seen Jacy Kincaid,” Verlyn Thornberg said with a humorous air, “and I can tell you she’s no fourteen-year-old. She fills out a cotton shirt and a pair of Levi’s ’bout as well as any girl in the territory, and she’s a better hand on roundup than half the men. Broke most of the hearts on the Bench, too, I might add.”

  Talbot did some quick math on his fingers. Sure enough, the girl he’d known on the neighboring ranch would be in her early twenties by now. But the knowledge that she’d taken over the Talbot ranch was too much to grasp.

  Talbot said, “You must mean her father assumed the Circle T.”

  Thornberg wagged his head. “Nope, Miller Kincaid died of a heart attack two springs ago.”

  Talbot remembered the towheaded little tomboy who used to ride her horse over to the Talbot ranch hot summer afternoons when he and Dave were kids. She’d played cowboys and Indians with Talbot and Dave, always accepting her role as the savage warrior good-naturedly. She snared gophers with the Talbot lads, too—as rough and tough as any boy.

  She’d had a splash of freckles on the bridge of her nose and down her cheeks, and for that reason Talbot and Dave had called her Freckles. She’d taken issue with the nickname, however, and given them each such hard kicks to their shins that they finally had to cease and desist or risk permanent hobbling.

  “Well, I’m glad Jacy’s got it,” Talbot said now. “If she turned out anything like her old man, she’ll be good to it—won’t muddy up the springs or overgraze the creeks.”

  “She’d turn it back to you,” Thornberg speculated. “Since you were neighbors and all.”

  Talbot shook his head. “Nah, it’s hers. She earned it … while I was off on my high horse.” He took a big sip of beer and threw back the last of his whiskey.

  Thornberg folded both his hands on the table and leaned toward Talbot, regarding him gravely. “Come to work for me, then.”

  Talbot laughed. “Doing what? I haven’t ridden a horse or swung a lasso in a coon’s age. I figured my brother would put up with me ’til I got the hang of it again, but I wouldn’t expect anyone else to.”

  Thornberg shook his head. “I don’t mean as a rider. I’ve seen you fight.”

  Talbot blinked. “As a fighter?”

  Thornberg nodded and smiled conspiratorily. “If it came down to a tussle between you and that Mex gunman the big outfits brought in, I’d place my money on you.”

  Talbot just stared at the man, hollowed by the thought that his home had turned into a graveyard and a battlefield, just like the rest of the world.

  “How good are you with a gun?” Thornberg continued eagerly.

  Talbot blinked and considered the proposition for a moment. He had to admit it was tempting. But the possibility of finding Dave’s killer was slim at best, and the probability of his getting enmeshed in the very life he’d finally turned away from was great. That life had cost him too much to return to it here at home.

  Talbot finished his glass of beer, stood, and reached for his war bag. “Thanks for the offer, but I don’t think so.”

  Thornberg frowned. “Where you goin’?”

  “To find a place to sleep,” Talbot replied quietly. “Thanks for the drinks.” He swung the war bag over his shoulder and headed for the door.

  “What about your brother?” Thornberg cried, incredulous.

  Talbot turned back to the man. “I expect I could spend the rest of my life seeking vengeance and end with nothing to show for it but hate. If you had known my brother, you’d know he wouldn’t have wanted that.”

  He looked at Thornberg, then at the barman and the other cowboys, who had ceased their game to see what all the commotion was about. Talbot turned away and opened the door.

  “Besides, I’m no longer in that line of work,” he mumbled, and went outside, looking for a peaceful place to light.

  He wondered if he’d ever find it.

  CHAPTER 9

  TALBOT WENT UP the street to Zimmermann’s Hotel, which had added another story and a coat of paint since he had last seen it, and asked for a room furnished with heat and extra quilts.

  In the small room consisting of a bed, a chair, a dilapidated wardrobe, and a coal-oil heater, he sat and smoked a cigarette and wished he hadn’t come home.

  The wind howled beneath the eaves and blew snow against the windows. Someone in the room above him was scuffing around in his boots and hacking phlegm from his throat. Somewhere a baby was crying. Out in the silent street a cat mewed.

  From somewhere out of the blue, Talbot remembered the old spotted horse he and Dave used to ride to their swimming hole, hot July afternoons. Then a twelve-year-old, Dave was jumping from the barn loft, tucking his knees to his chest and wrapping his arms around his legs and careening through shafts of afternoon light into a mountain of sweet-smelling hay.

  “I bet you can’t do this, Mark!”

  Talbot walked to the window and peered out without seeing anything. With Dave dead and only memories left, Talbot had no idea what to do, but he felt the need to see his old home place again and to visit Dave’s grave. He’d hang around the country for a month or so. Maybe at the end of that time he’d know whether he still belonged here or somewhere else.

  He plucked the quirley from between his lips and studied the ash grimly. He lifted his war bag onto the bed and opened it. Dipping a hand inside, he rummaged around on the bottom, then pulled out his six-shot revolver, an old model Colt he’d worn in a covered holster during the Apache campaigns. He hadn’t worn a gun since Mexico, and he’d lost his government-issue holster in a poker game aboard the Bat McCaffrey. He regretted the loss; in self-defense, he supposed he’d have to wear the hog leg on his hip.

  Welcome home, he thought, dropping the iron back in the bag and stowing the bag under the bed. He stubbed the cigarette out in an ashtray and headed for the door.

  “Where’d be the best place to find new duds around here?” he asked the old woman who ran the place. She was watering a half-dead plant hanging in the window downstairs. Talbot didn’t remember her and assumed she was a recent arrival, as were most of the people he’d seen so far.

  “Check McDonald’s up the street,” she said.

  “McDonald’s? You mean McCracken’s.”

  “McCracken’s burned two years ago. McDonald rebuilt.”

  “Much obliged,” Talbot said, feeling as though time had left him in its wake.

  Talbot found the mercantile sandwiched between a clapboard establishment advertising hardware and tinware and a wholesale tobacco shop. The proprietor stood behind the counter in a derby hat and wool vest, one fist on his hip, the other on the
countertop. He watched Talbot with silent suspicion, and Talbot found himself thinking he was liable to get shot in the back in his own hometown.

  “At ease, friend. I’m one of the good guys,” he said, resenting his outsider status among these newbies. People sure seemed quick to label and reject around here. That wasn’t how Talbot remembered this town.

  The man said nothing. His expression did not change.

  With the proprietor watching but offering no assistance, Talbot picked out a sheepskin coat, a union suit, heavy denim jeans, a flannel jersey shirt with leather ties, a black Stetson hat, wool-lined leather gloves, wool socks, and fur-lined knee-length moccasins.

  After he’d picked out a soft leather holster, a cartridge belt, and a .44-caliber lever-action Winchester, which he’d heard were all the craze among cowboys these days, and three boxes of shells, he got the grim proprietor to throw in a scarf and a sack of tobacco, and paid the man.

  “Nice doing business with you,” he said dryly, hefting the parcels onto his shoulder. “I’ll be sure and hurry back.”

  He hauled the merchandise two doors down, to Gustaffsen’s Tonsorial Parlor for a shave, a haircut, and a long, hot bath.

  When he’d finally hauled himself out of the steaming iron tub an hour and a half later, he felt like a stranger. The face that peered back at him from the proprietor’s handheld mirror bore little resemblance to his more youthful conception of himself.

  Cut to half its former length, his wavy auburn hair was combed straight back behind his ears, and his face, minus the beard, was big and hard-lined and ruddy. An Apache arrow had left a healed-over dent to the left of his right eye.

  With the beard gone, he saw age in the spokes around his eyes and in the leathery skin pulled taut over his high, chiseled cheeks. Several gray hairs appeared in the two-inch sideburns. His eyes lacked their youthful luster and his lips were sullen.

  In seven years he had grown from reckless youth to wry middle age, though he was only twenty-seven.

  “You like?” Gustaffsen asked in a Swedish accent heavy enough to sink a clipper ship. His sharp eyes glanced from the mirror to Talbot and back again.

  “No.”

  “Huh?”

  “I mean … it’s fine,” Talbot said, handing the man his glass. “What’s the charge?”

  When he’d dressed in his new duds, he buckled the six-shooter and the new holster around his waist. The gun felt so foreign and looked so malign, hanging there on his hip, that he took it off in frustration and shoved it back in the war bag.

  If they wanted to shoot him, let them shoot an unarmed man. He wasn’t ready to start killing again. Not even in self-defense.

  When he’d wrapped his old clothes in a bundle for Gustaffsen to dispose of, he went over to the town’s only café for a supper of pork chops, sauerkraut, and fried potatoes.

  He and the two drummers he’d gotten off the train with were the only customers, the cold weather apparently keeping everyone else home. The drummers’ idle banter across the room depressed him; instead of lingering over his coffee and dessert, he went back to his room and crawled into bed.

  He lay awake for a long time, listening to dogs barking in the distance, staring at the ceiling, and pondering the notion that his brother was gone and that he’d been homeless for five years without knowing it.

  Five years …

  * * *

  After breakfast early the next morning, Talbot found a feed barn and a livery stable and picked out a saddle horse and tack. An hour later he was cantering a deep-chested speckled gray gelding along the mail road east of town.

  Mid-morning, he left the road and followed a long, shallow valley between low rimrocks. He remembered the way easily, noting landmarks and pausing occasionally to study eagles’ nests and wolf prints in the snow, feeling good to be back in the saddle and back in the country.

  It was a cold, windy day, with low, fast-scudding clouds. Talbot snugged the strap under his chin to keep his hat in place.

  When he came to the canyon in which lay the valley where the Talbot Circle T ranch was located, Talbot took the first ravine to the west. He rode for another hour, following the ravine’s devious course until it rose into a bowl surrounded on three sides by hogbacks spiked with tawny grass poking through the snow. In the distance sprawled a long, wedge-shaped mesa where Talbot and his brother used to trap rattlesnakes every summer.

  Below the hogbacks, in a natural wedge that broke the wind, sat the Circle T—a two-story log cabin with a lean-to sloping off its east wall, a big gray barn with a connecting paddock, and several small corrals straggling down the ravine to a stock pond and windmill.

  The place had a forlorn, abandoned look, and Talbot’s heart ached to see it like this—the cabin dark, with no smoke lifting from its chimney; the corrals barren of saddle stock; the weathered gray blacksmith shed looking as hollow as an old tree stump.

  Three pigeons started from the barn loft. They flew around the yard, then settled again in the loft and watched between the planks of the closed doors. Behind the cabin, the outhouse door squeaked in the wind funneling through the draws. It sounded like a moan. The air was heavy with the smell of skunk.

  Entering the compound, Talbot saw that one of the pole barns had lost a pole and its roof had partially fallen in. The snow around the compound was pocked by hooves and littered with frozen discs of cow dung. A drift had formed on the cabin porch like a frozen wave. The old Talbot lease was apparently being used as winter range, and the cabin probably served as an occasional outpost for grubliners and bandits.

  Talbot spurred his horse forward and dismounted before the cabin, looping the reins over the tie rail. He turned the knob and pushed the door open. He stood in the doorway and looked around the cabin, letting his eyes adjust to the shadows within.

  When the living room swam into focus, he saw that the newspapers he and Dave had tacked to the walls had turned yellow. Torn strips curled toward the floor. Most of the furniture had been hauled off by other settlers, no doubt.

  A few stools and a homemade chair remained near the fireplace. The floor planks were floury with dust, coated in grime and mouse shit. The few remaining lamps were chipped and smoke-blackened, and cobwebs hung from the ceiling joists.

  Opening the door and walking down the short hall to the kitchen, Talbot saw that this part of the house was in the same state of disrepair. The two remaining chairs were broken, and the plank table sat askew, littered with dirty dishes, tins, cigarette stubs, and playing cards.

  There were yellowed newspapers and magazines scattered about the cupboard tops. A mouse-chewed flapjack lay on the floor by the range. Two torn gray socks hung from a rafter. This room was an add-on, and Talbot recognized his own notches in the logs. It was a bittersweet recognition, shaping his nostalgia to a sharp point.

  Talbot sucked his teeth, listening to the mice scuttling in the walls and thinking, It’s no more than a line shack.

  Outside he looked around the yard for his brother’s grave but saw no sign of it. Surely someone had buried Dave on the premises—the sheriff or one of the neighbors. The wind had blown most of the snow against the buildings and corral posts, nearly covering an old horse mower and a dump rake but clearing the open ground. A marker would have been evident.

  Puzzled, Talbot started back to his horse. A rifle cracked nearby. Talbot and the horse jumped simultaneously. While the horse kicked and pawed the ground, Talbot crouched and looked around.

  “Hold it right there, asshole!”

  It was a female voice.

  “Throw your gun down.”

  Talbot shuttled his gaze from the barn to a figure standing on the other side of the corral, hunkered behind a post from which a rifle poked.

  “I’m not wearing a gun,” he said, raising his hands to his shoulders.

  “Gordon, check the son of a bitch for a gun!” the woman yelled.

  Talbot heard boots crunching snow and turned to see a lanky, stoop-shouldered man walk ou
t from behind the pole barn, a Navy Colt held before him. Appearing to be in his fifties or early sixties, he was swarthy with a bushy gray mustache with upswept ends, patched denim breeches, and a big sugarloaf sombrero pulled low over his eyebrows. His torn mackinaw was stretched taut across his broad chest, its frayed collar raised against the cold.

  He scuttled toward Talbot sideways, his eyes wide and cautious. Chew stained the corner of his mouth.

  “Easy, now,” the man growled as he approached Talbot sideways and gave him the twice-over with his watery-blue eyes. He patted the sides of Talbot’s coat with his free hand.

  Finally he looked at him sharply and said, “Where in hell’s your gun?”

  “In my saddle boot.”

  “No hog leg?”

  “In my war bag. Wasn’t inclined to wear it today.”

  “Well … I’ll be.” Turning to the woman, he said, “He ain’t wearin’ no iron, Jacy.”

  The woman said nothing for several seconds. Then the rifle went down, and she said, “Keep your eyes on him, Gordon. I’m comin’ over.”

  She walked around the corral, and Talbot watched her, smiling, wondering if she’d recognize him. She hadn’t been more than fifteen when he’d left home—just a scrawny, freckle-faced girl. She’d turned into an attractive young woman.

  She appeared about twenty or twenty-one, and tall for a woman, maybe five-eight or -nine. A bulky green-plaid coat concealed her figure, but from her legs and hips Talbot could tell she was slender.

  Under the wide-brimmed, flat-crowned black hat, her face was fine-boned and smooth, with full lips and green eyes that slanted a little, betraying her Slavic heritage. Her skin was vanilla, like the remnant of a summer tan, reminding Talbot a little painfully of Pilar. Rabbit fur moccasins rose to the patched knees of her faded jeans, and the rifle she held was a Henry with a seasoned stock and an oiled barrel.

  As she moved closer to Talbot, she cocked her head to the side and squinted one eye. Recognition growing slowly on her face, she stopped before him but said nothing. Her eyes regarded him with frank amusement.