Dakota Kill and the Romantics

by Peter Brandvold

  She squeezed his arm. “Mr. Jenkins, you certainly know how to make a woman feel secure.”

  “Well, thank you, Mrs. Sanderson.”

  They were riding around a bend when another howl rended the quiet night. Gordon jumped this time, as well as Doreen, who cried, “Oh!” The harnessed sorrel started, ruffling its mane, and Gordon could feel the resistance when his own horse, tied behind, paused briefly to snort and look around.

  “It’s okay, Earl,” he told the horse. “Keep on, now.”

  “Such a noise,” Doreen said, huddled close to Gordon. “I’ve never heard one that close. He must be stalking us!”

  “They don’t stalk people,” Gordon said.

  “Well, apparently this one hasn’t been told that.”

  The wolf howled again. The bewitching noise lifted from somewhere ahead, just beyond their range of vision. Gordon let the sorrel come to a halt, then draped the reins across his knee and picked up his Winchester. He stared ahead, squinting, trying to pick the critter out of the darkness. Behind him, his horse whinnied and shook its head, jarring the buggy.

  “Come on, you,” he growled. “Show yourself.”

  Doreen squeezed his arm. “Let’s turn around, Gordon. I got a funny feelin’ about this.”

  “It’s just a wolf,” Gordon said, but his voice was tense.

  “Just a wolf!” Doreen cried.

  “He’s just tryin’ to scare us,” Gordon said. “He’s out havin’ fun.”

  “Maybe he’s after the horses.”

  “Well, he ain’t gonna get ’em.” He tossed the reins. “Giddyup, horse.”

  They continued on for another mile and were beginning to feel less fearful, starting to chat again, when the wolf howled again—this time from behind them. It sounded as though the animal were only a few feet away. Gordon’s horse plunged forward and around the buggy, jerking its right wheels several inches off the ground.

  Doreen screamed as she bounced from side to side, flailing for Gordon’s arm. Gordon yelled, “Hey, hey, horse! Whoah! Whoah!… Eeeeasy.”

  Then it was over and the sorrel was pulling the buggy again, shaking its head from side to side, agitated, and Gordon’s horse was following along behind—tensely snorting and jerking its head around to see behind it.

  “Gordon, please, let’s go back!” Doreen yelled.

  “Hell, the goddamn thing is behind us now!”

  “Oh, Gordon … I’m scared!”

  “Don’t be scared. I’ll get you home.” He pulled back on the reins, slowing the sorrel to a halt. “But first I better loosen the lead so old Earl can’t topple us.”

  Doreen grabbed his arm as he prepared to leave the buggy. “Gordon, don’t leave me!”

  “Just for a second, Doreen. I’ve got to loosen that lead.”

  “Oh, Gordon, hurry. I have such a bad feeling…” She turned to stare ahead, her eyes wide and brimming with animal fear. “There’s something awful out there.”

  Gordon wanted to assure her that it wasn’t something so awful, but he wasn’t sure himself anymore. He, too, had a bad feeling. About as bad a feeling as he’d ever had—and he’d ridden herd through Blackfeet country!

  He handed the reins to Doreen. “Hold on to these real tight now. Don’t let go.”

  “Just hurry, please, Gordon.”

  He crawled down from the buggy and patted his horse to settle him, then went to work untying the lead. He tried to hurry, but the horse’s commotion had twisted the leather into one hell of a tight knot. He cursed as he tried to work it apart with his bare, cold hands, nearly prying his fingernails off. The cold air burned and ached in his fingertips.

  “Holy shit in a sandstorm,” he muttered.

  “Gordon,” Doreen said quietly. Too quietly.

  He looked at her. “What?”

  “Someone’s coming.”

  “Huh?”

  She did not reply. Gordon followed her gaze around behind him. Sure enough, a rider was approaching. Gordon could make out only a silhouette, but that was enough to make his heart lighten. It was probably one of the men from the roadhouse heading home. He’d ride with Gordon and Doreen, and they’d be all right. There was safety in numbers.

  “Hello, there,” Gordon called, holding his horse by the bridle.

  The rider came on but said nothing.

  “Gordon,” Doreen said thinly.

  Gordon ignored her. “We sure are glad to see you,” he said, grinning, staring off down the trail. The horse and rider took shape as they approached.

  “The lady got a little scared,” Gordon said. “We’ve been hearing wolves.”

  Doreen gave a breathy, frightened sound that seemed to crawl up slowly from deep in her chest. “G-Gordon.”

  Gordon turned to her, frowning. “What is it?”

  “He … he’s got a gun.”

  Gordon turned back to the rider again. Sure enough, the man was holding a rifle out from his belly. The barrel was pointed at Gordon’s head. It was a big gun, bigger than most of the guns used around here for ranchwork. It looked like a hide hunter’s Big Fifty.

  Gordon regarded the man’s gray-black coat and dark, featureless face, from which a cigar glowed beneath the round brim of a black hat with a brown leather band. He did not recognize the man. His fear returned, stronger. His tongue swelled and his heart began to pound. Cold as he was, sweat popped out on his back. He caught the smell of the man’s cigar.

  He stood there frozen, smile fading, holding his horse’s bridle.

  “Gordon,” Doreen cried softly.

  “Who … who are you?” Gordon said.

  The man halted his horse about ten feet in front of him. The horse tossed its head. The man steadied it with an iron grip on the reins. Smoke puffed from around the cigar protruding from his dark face.

  Gordon wanted to reach for the pistol on his right hip, but his right hand held fast to the bridle.

  “Oh, Gordon,” Doreen cried again, in a high voice broken by sobs. “I knew it … I knew it … was something … awful.”

  Gordon watched as the man lifted his left hand to his face and removed the cigar. Then the man slowly tipped back his head and howled. There was nothing at all human in the howl. It was not a man’s howl.

  It was a wolf’s howl.

  It lifted to the sky and set the night alive with its evil …

  And it was the last sound Gordon Jenkins ever heard.

  CHAPTER 13

  “I JUST WANT you to know I wouldn’t have touched your dick if I hadn’t been drunk.”

  Talbot opened his eyes. Jacy was leaning over the bed, gazing into his face. She was dressed and washed and ready to go. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail.

  “Huh?”

  “I was drunk, or I wouldn’t have touched your dick last night,” she repeated.

  “You flatter me. What time is it?”

  “Nearly seven o’clock. What’s with the men around here? Gordon’s not up yet, either.” She moved to the door, picked up his clothes from the chair, and tossed them on the bed. “Rise and shine. I don’t serve chuck all morning.”

  She walked out the door, and a moment later Talbot heard her knocking pans around in the kitchen and whistling while she worked. His mouth watered at the smell of frying bacon and freshly brewed coffee. Wondering how he could have slept until seven o’clock in the morning, he threw the covers back, hauled his saddle-sore ass out of bed, and dressed.

  “You didn’t have to wait breakfast for me,” he said, entering the kitchen and buckling his belt.

  Jacy was standing at the range, stirring eggs in a cast-iron skillet. “It’s nothing,” she said, “just the usual—bacon and eggs. Help yourself to coffee. There’s a mug on the table. How did you sleep?”

  “Like a dead dog,” he said. “You?”

  “Good.”

  Talbot filled a mug, returned the pot to the warming rack on the range, and sat down at the table. He sipped his coffee and noticed that she had recovered from last ni
ght’s melancholy and was her old self again—a real Toledo blade, Dakota style. Tough and tomboyishly pretty.

  As she lifted the pan from the range and shoveled eggs onto a plate, he realized he’d been staring at her, and turned and looked out the window. Gray light angled in and shone like quicksilver on the worn floor.

  “Looks like we got some snow, huh?” he said conversationally.

  “Looks like.”

  She grabbed a couple of pot holders and opened the oven door. Smoke wafted. “Shit!” she cried. “Goddamn it, anyway—I burned the biscuits!”

  She dropped the pan on the range top and slammed the door, throwing the pot holders on the cupboard.

  “They don’t look burned to me,” Talbot said, politely ignoring the smoke.

  “They’re burned on the bottoms.”

  “Throw one on my plate; I’ll give it a shot.”

  “I’ll scrape the bottom first,” she said, waving at the smoke clouds webbing toward the rafters.

  After scraping the burnt crust off one of the biscuits, she set it on the plate, then set the plate before Talbot. “Here you go,” she said fatefully. “Nothing fancy, but this isn’t the Hotel Deluxe and I’m no French chef.”

  “Looks good,” he said, studying his plate with a wooden smile.

  The charred biscuit was nearly raw in the center, and the underdone eggs looked like marmalade preserves that hadn’t jelled. But Talbot maintained the smile and gave his head an appreciative wag. “Now there’s a breakfast! How did you know I like my eggs runny?”

  Jacy shrugged, smiling. “Just had you pegged for a runny-eggs guy, I guess.”

  She poured herself a cup of coffee, then sat across from him and watched him eat. After several minutes a cloud passed over her face. “I wonder what’s keeping Gordon this morning.”

  “Must have had a hell of a time last night.”

  She shook her head. “It’s not like him to sleep this late, no matter how much fun he had the night before.”

  “I’ll check on him as soon as I’m through here.”

  “Would you? If I go pounding on his door, and he’s drunk, I’ll just embarrass him.”

  “No problem.”

  When he’d finished the massive pile of scrambled eggs, and sopped up the bacon grease with a biscuit, Talbot tipped back the last of his coffee, dressed in his new winter garb, and headed outside. He could tell from the fresh snow limning the corrals and water troughs that they’d gotten a good three or four inches last night.

  The sky was as gray as an old coin; it hunkered so low that the top of the box elder behind the bunkhouse was nearly indiscernible. A couple of fat crows lit out from a hay rack, cawing, and winged out over the corrals toward the mesa.

  Talbot walked across the yard and around the corrals, noting the lack of smoke puffing from the bunkhouse chimney, and knocked on the door.

  “Gordon?”

  No answer.

  Talbot opened the door and stepped inside. The long, low room, provisioned with an eating table and several cots, was dark and empty. The air was stale and tinged with the smell of old sweat and tobacco. Talbot touched the big iron stove in the room’s center: cold as ice. It hadn’t been fired for at least eight hours.

  Thoughtfully, Talbot walked out behind the bunkhouse and looked around, wondering if Gordon was in the habit of staying out all night. Something told him he wasn’t.

  As he stared out across the gray prairie, he heard sleigh bells and voices. The sounds seemed to be coming from the cabin’s direction. He wheeled and headed back across the yard, then stopped dead in his tracks.

  Sitting before the cabin was a sleigh drawn by a stout silver-gray gelding wearing a halter and bells. Inside the sleigh were two fur-clad people—a woman and a man—looking like Russian royalty out for a winter romp with the Cossacks. The man puffed a pipe. The horse bobbed its head and stomped a front hoof, eager to get moving again.

  Then Talbot heard the unmistakable voice of Suzanne Magnusson, smelled the distinctive aroma of the doctor’s pipe. They had stopped before the cabin and were talking with Jacy, who spied Talbot now, walking toward the sleigh.

  “There he is,” she said. “Mr. Talbot, you have a couple visitors from the Double X ranch,” she called, her voice taut and sarcastic, brimming with unconcealed hatred. “You know Miss Suzanne and…”

  “Dr. Long,” the doctor said thickly, giving a gentlemanly bow. Rheumy-eyed, he appeared half drunk.

  Suzanne had turned to Talbot. Shock and surprise brightened her exquisite face, her cheeks flushed from the cold. “Mark, it’s you! Hello!”

  Talbot smiled tightly, aware of Jacy’s caustic glare. “Suzanne. Harrison. What are you two doing here?”

  Suddenly petulant, Suzanne said, “You were supposed to call on me, Mr. Talbot.”

  Talbot slid a look at Jacy, who stood glaring at him across the sleigh. “Well, I’ve only been here two days, Suzanne.”

  “When you didn’t come to me, Harrison and I decided to come to you. We stopped here to ask directions, and learned from Miss Kincaid that you were here!” Suzanne was smiling beautifully, eyes flashing, but there was a question there as well.

  Talbot said, “Jacy and I are old friends. My cabin needs a little work, so she offered me a bed.”

  “How nice of her,” Suzanne said, her smile losing its luster as she shuttled it to Jacy.

  Changing the subject, Talbot said, “How are you, Harrison?”

  The easterner had produced a leather-sheathed traveling flask from his coat and was unscrewing the top. He raised it to Talbot and said with dramatic flair, “Out here on these magnificent Great Plains to which Miss Magnusson was kind enough to drag me? Where there are as many trees as balmy days, and the air is absolutely frigid? Never better!” He tipped back the flask for several good-sized swallows.

  Suzanne gave the man a playful poke. “I keep telling him to think of it as an adventure.”

  “No, Crete was an adventure,” Harrison retorted, offering the flask to Talbot, who waved it off. “How is your back, Mr. Talbot?”

  “Good as new,” Talbot replied, noticing Jacy’s questioning glance. “I had a little accident before I left San Francisco,” he explained.

  “Some accident!” Suzanne said admiringly. To Jacy she gave a short, dramatic account of Talbot’s adventure. “It’s like something you read in novels,” she said when she’d finished the story.

  “Did all that really happen?” Jacy asked Talbot.

  Talbot shrugged modestly. He hadn’t felt this uncomfortable with his clothes on.

  “Thanks again for the patch job,” he told Harrison, who grunted and shook his head. “I’d ask you both to light and sit a spell, but it’s not my cabin, and…” He stopped, deferring to Jacy.

  She only sneered. “I haven’t straightened up,” she said dryly. Then she wheeled around and went into the cabin, slamming the door behind her.

  “I sense a distinct hostility in that girl,” said Harrison facetiously.

  “Well, with the tension between the small ranchers in the area, and Suzanne’s father, I guess there’s bound to be some hard feelings,” Talbot said, thinking of Dave.

  Suzanne turned a cold eye to the cabin door. “I guess they’re supposed to be able to steal as much of my father’s beef as they want, and not get called on it,” she said.

  Talbot grew testy. “They claim your father’s been handing out death warrants, that he killed people five years ago and that he’s starting again now.” He debated telling her about Dave’s murder, and decided to wait for a better time. The information might make her even more defensive.

  Suzanne looked hurt. “Mark, if you knew my father, you’d know how ridiculous that is. Papa is the gentlest man alive. I know he’s been trying to buy the nesters out. They’ve been stealing our cattle and overgrazing the range, not to mention destroying all the water holes and befouling the bloodlines. But he would never kill anyone … for any reason.”

  She shook her h
ead sincerely, firmly believing what she’d professed.

  She almost had Talbot believing—at least questioning what he’d been hearing from Jacy and the others. He shrugged and forced a smile. “Maybe you’re right, Suzanne. I haven’t been here long enough to find out the whole story.”

  “Well, let me help you get the whole story, Mr. Talbot,” she said, brightening. “What we came out here for was to invite you to a birthday and pre-Christmas celebration at the Double X tomorrow night. Won’t you come?”

  “Whose birthday?”

  “Mine, of course.”

  Talbot frowned and looked off, thoughtful.

  “Oh, please, Mark,” Suzanne begged. “I want you to meet my father and see what a fine man he is. Of course, there will be plenty of food and drink and”—she grew subtly flirtatious—“I’ll be there.” She arched a delicate eyebrow and smiled brightly.

  Talbot felt himself softening. He had no solid proof that King Magnusson had killed his brother, and Suzanne certainly wasn’t involved. A visit to the Double X might even prove helpful in sorting through this mess. He found himself ignoring the small voice in the back of his head reminding him it was not his mess to sort through.

  “All right,” he said. “What time?”

  “Six o’clock.”

  “What should I wear?”

  “Come as you are. You’ll feel right at home.”

  Doubting that, Talbot said with a nod, “Six it is.”

  “Okay, then,” Suzanne said, pinning him with a smoldering gaze. “See you there.”

  Harrison flicked the reins along the silver gray’s back, and said, “Cheers!” as the sleigh started off with a celebratory jingle of the bells.

  Talbot stood watching them as they made a large circle in the yard, and headed back the way they had come. Suzanne looked back and waved, and Talbot returned it. Then he walked to the cabin door and turned the knob. It was locked.

  He knocked once. “Jacy?”

  The silence that answered was answer enough, and he knew it was all the answer he was going to get. Jacy had heard everything, and she wasn’t about to let him explain.