“An old man … old as me.”
“Did he take Suzanne?”
“No! It was another man. He come up on a black horse and shot the first man in the house. It was him … a Mexican … he took Suzanne! Just grabbed her up on his horse and rode away!”
Magnusson paused, absorbing the information.
“Please, sir, you’re hurting my arms,” the woman begged.
Magnusson swallowed. “Which way did they go?”
“That way, sir—southeast.”
Magnusson released the woman, who gave a scream, clutching her bruised arms. Magnusson turned stiffly, eyes wide and unmoving, and stared south, where the tables rolled away like a rumpled carpet, sooty now with the fading winter light.
The fire grumbled like a distant train, cracking and hissing. A timber fell with a muffled boom, geysering sparks.
The old woman stared at the conflagration, looking stricken. Mrs. Magnusson bawled, her head in her hands. Jacy stood near her horse, about twenty feet away, looking on dispassionately. She had nothing but disdain for these people, and Talbot didn’t blame her.
Turning to the rancher, Talbot said, “Who is this man, King? Where’s he headed? You have any idea?”
Magnusson started for his horse. “What do you care?”
“It’s getting too late to track him. Best to wait till morning.”
Magnusson grabbed his reins and climbed into the leather, favoring his right shoulder. “I don’t have to track him. I know where that randy son of a bitch is taking my daughter.” He looked at the maid. “Harness the sorrels to Mrs. Magnusson’s phaeton and drive her to Mr. Troutman’s in Big Draw.”
He reined his horse around, gouged it with his spurs, and circled the burning rubble of his mansion, heading southeast. Lifting her head to watch him go, Mrs. Magnusson wailed.
Talbot turned to Jacy. “I have to help him.”
Jacy laughed caustically. “Are you crazy?”
“He has a bullet in his shoulder. He won’t be able to get Suzanne back by himself.”
“That’s his problem.”
Talbot shook his head, not liking the position he was in any better than Jacy did. “I can’t just walk away. Suzanne’s out there with a lunatic.”
“It’s Magnusson’s problem. He hired the man. Besides, it’s not up to you to save the daughter of the man who murdered your brother and burned your ranch.”
“Jacy, I have to go.”
“Then go, and just keep goin’.” She turned, reaching for her saddle horn and shoving her left foot in the stirrup.
Talbot watched her canter the line-back dun down the hill in the early winter dusk. He couldn’t blame her for how she felt, not after all that King Magnusson had taken from her. A few years and battles ago, when he was her age, he would have felt the same way.
He mounted up and left the ranchyard by Magnusson’s route. There was some light left, and after a mile and a half of hard riding Talbot spotted him. The rancher had slowed to a trot.
“It’s Talbot. I’m coming up behind you.”
“Get out of here. This is my problem. I’ll solve it.”
“I’d like nothing better.”
Magnusson turned to him. “Then why are you here?”
“It’s not Suzanne’s fault she’s your daughter.”
Magnusson laughed derisively. “You fool. I sent that Mex gunman, Rag Donnelly, and my son out to kill you!”
“Well, the joke’s on you, Magnusson. Donnelly and your son are dead, and in case you forgot, that Mexican has Suzanne.”
Magnusson reined his horse to a sudden stop and looked at Talbot with fire in his eyes. Talbot stopped and faced him, reading his mind, seeing his hand edge toward the holster on his hip. He could hear the man take a slow, deep breath through his nose.
Talbot said, “Try it, Magnusson. I’d like nothing better than to settle this right here and now. But think about it—you kill me, you kill your daughter. You can’t bring her back alone. Not with that bullet in your shoulder. From the looks of your coat, you’re about to bleed dry.”
Magnusson studied him for a long moment, lips quivering with restrained emotion. “When this is over…” he said tightly, and reined his horse back along the trail.
“You got that right,” Talbot agreed.
They rode together in truculent silence. The night came down until there was only a smudge of gray in the west and the breeze had settled. It was cold, but the high, heavy clouds tempered it some.
A single wolf howled in the distance, like the savage soul of the night itself. The horses clopped on the frozen ground. Otherwise, all was silent.
When they came to a ravine, Magnusson dismounted and walked over to the edge. He stood staring down for so long that Talbot finally followed suit.
Below huddled a low-slung cabin in the brushy horseshoe of a frozen creek. The windows cast light on the barren ground, and the stovepipe emitted the tang of river willow and ash. A horse moved under a tarpaulin cover supported by willow poles.
Magnusson took a breath, hefted his rifle, and started down.
“Hold on,” Talbot whispered. “He could be layin’ for you.”
Ignoring him, Magnusson continued down the slope. Talbot cursed, turning back to his horse and shucking his Winchester, then followed the rancher down the hill to the shelter. Magnusson peered around at the cabin, cursed aloud, and jacked a shell in the chamber of his Henry.
Suddenly both hands fell to his sides, and he staggered back against the wall.
“You’re getting weak,” Talbot said. “Stay here while I take a look.”
He glanced at the cabin, then ran to its south wall. Hearing the sound of low, muffled screams, he pressed his back against the weathered cottonwood logs, sidestepped slowly to the small, sashed window, and peered in.
He had to blink several times to clarify the image—a bare-breasted Suzanne straddling the naked gunman on an enormous bear blanket spread on the packed earth floor.
A lantern burned on a table and a fire shone around the doors in the wood-burning stove. On Suzanne’s lovely head rested the gunman’s round-brimmed, black felt hat.
She was smiling … laughing.
Her raven curls bounced on her naked back as she rode the gunman like a horse, and the sounds emitting from her parted lips were combinations of screams, groans, high-pitched laughs, and giggles.
“You’re my savior, José!” she yelled. “You’ve saved me!”
The gunman’s hands kneaded her breasts. His head tipped back, revealing two rows of small white teeth beneath his brushy black mustache. He was wiggling his toes and singing.
Suddenly the door burst open and in stepped King Magnusson, rifle jutting out from his waist. Talbot froze, heart pumping.
“Daddy!” Suzanne screamed.
Silence.
King stood there staring, still as a stone.
Talbot ran around the cabin to the door yelling, “King—don’t!”
He was too late.
The rifle barked once, twice. As Talbot turned the corner it barked a third time. Following close on its heels was the crack of a pistol.
Magnusson staggered back out of the cabin. He dropped the rifle and slumped to his knees.
Talbot slammed his back up against the cabin wall and peered through the open doorway, swinging his rifle inside. Crouched low, one hand pressed against the back wall, the other clutching a silver-plated revolver, the naked gunman fired.
The bullet tore splinters from the door frame six inches from Talbot’s chin. Talbot fired his Winchester, standing the man up against the wall. The pistol shot into the ceiling. Talbot fired into the gunman three more times, the smoking rifle jumping in his arms. The man rolled along the wall and fell on his back.
Talbot ran into the cabin and knelt next to Suzanne. She lay on the rug with an arm flung across her face, as if shielding her from the light. One of Magnusson’s rifle shots had gone through her wrist, breaking it. The other two had gone through her chest.
Talbot sighed and cursed, ran his hand down his face. He hung his head and knelt there for a long time.
He’d never felt so old.
Where would it end?
When would the blood ever end?
Finally he stood and pulled King Magnusson’s lifeless body into the cabin, went out, and closed the door behind him.
CHAPTER 30
IT TOOK TALBOT a good three hours to ride to Canaan. When the town’s main street closed in around him, as dark as a graveyard, he was chilled to the bone and more tired than he’d ever felt in his life.
He woke the hostler at the livery barn. “Stable my horse and give him a good rubdown, will you?”
“At this hour?”
“You want my business or don’t you?”
“It’s gonna cost you.”
“No, it’s gonna cost you. Give me a hundred dollars, and the horse is yours.”
The old man blinked. “What? You just bought him last week for two hundred.”
“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” Talbot said. “I won’t be needing him any longer. I’m taking the train the hell out of here.”
“Thought you were from here.”
“I am.”
Muttering, the man retrieved a key from his desk and opened a small safe sitting under a pile of account books and catalogs. He counted a hundred dollars into Talbot’s outstretched hand.
“I reckon I can’t blame you,” he said. “After what happened here today, just outside those doors, I’m about to pack up and try my luck in Glendive.”
“What happened?”
“Didn’t you hear? The sheriff was killed just down the street by King Magnusson. Verlyn Thornberg, too, and a handful of his riders. Main Street was like a damn battlefield. We were all day cleaning up and carting the bodies up to the undertaker’s.”
“So that’s where Magnusson got that bullet in his shoulder,” Talbot said thoughtfully.
“Say again?”
“You know the old trapper’s cabin on Little Wibaux Creek?”
“Sure. Charlie Gallernault used to hole up out there.”
“Well, King Magnusson and his daughter are out there now. Dead. Send the undertaker out for the bodies, will you?”
The stableman stood there looking flabbergasted. “Holy shit in a handbasket!”
Talbot turned to strip his saddle from his horse. “You’ll find Mrs. Magnusson at Bernard Troutman’s in Big Draw.”
Saddle slung over his shoulder, Talbot walked over to the hotel and pounded on the door. After ten minutes the woman proprietor came to the door in an old duster and nightcap, looking haggard and worried and wielding a shotgun.
“I don’t take in customers this time of the night,” she said. “Not after what happened here yesterday.”
Talbot sighed, genuinely exhausted. “I don’t blame you, ma’am, but I’d sure appreciate an exception to the rule. Sleep is all I’m after.”
She studied him. She let the heavy gun sink toward the floor and drew the door wide. “A man out this late can be up to little good,” she admonished.
Talbot sighed. “Thank you. Much obliged.”
When he’d gotten situated in his room, he stripped down to his long johns and crawled under the covers with a groan and a sigh. As tired as he was, he thought he’d fall right to sleep. Instead he lay there, his mind whirling like a windmill in a steady gale.
Coming home to a little peace and quiet. That was a good one. Almost as good as finding his lovely Pilar stretched out in the barn with her throat cut.
Thinking of her made him think of Jacy, and his heart twisted counterclockwise and gave an additional thump. She was the only thing homey about this place, and if he stayed for anyone or anything it would be for her. But that was over now, before it had even gotten started.
It was just as well. He didn’t belong here anymore, and he knew Jacy could never belong anywhere else.
He rolled several cigarettes and smoked them down to nubs, lying there in the dark, staring up at the ceiling, his mind torturing him with all the death he’d seen over the past few hours, of Suzanne lying there on the bear rug beside the gunfighter—murdered by her own adoring father.
And it had all started with greed.
Jacy had said it best: “They all died like hell, like nothing means a goddamn thing.”
Talbot didn’t fall asleep until practically dawn. He woke four hours later to bright winter sunlight filling his room. The light was so merry golden, the sky so cold-scoured blue over the false wooden fronts across the street, he wondered for a moment if the bloody events of yesterday had been a nightmare and all was right with the world.
It was a fleeting notion, gone before he’d buckled his gun around his waist and headed out the door with his saddle on his shoulder.
“Help you, mister?” the depot agent said through the window.
“Yeah, I need a ticket for the next train, whenever that is.”
“Due in at twelve-fifteen, just like it says on the chalkboard over yonder. Where you headed?”
“What?”
“Where you headed.”
Talbot thought, looking around. “Ah … I don’t know…”
The agent planted his arms on the counter and scrutinized Talbot under his green eyeshade. “Mister, you mean to tell me you want a ticket, but you don’t where you’re goin’!”
Talbot turned sideways and looked around the station some more. “Well, I reckon that’s the long and short of it.”
“Who you runnin’ from?”
Talbot looked at the man. “What’s that?”
“Who you runnin’ from? The law?”
“No,” Talbot said thoughtfully, rubbing a hand over his chin. “No, I’m just runnin’.” Irritation creeping into his voice, he said, “Listen, mister, why don’t you just give me a ticket for as far as the train goes, and I’ll get off somewhere between here and there.”
The man raised his hands. “Don’t get mad at me. You’re the one doesn’t know where he’s goin’.” He sighed and glanced at the schedule chalked on the board. He shook his head. “Just anywhere that looks good, eh, cowboy? Doesn’t sound like much of a life to me. Well, let’s see … that’ll be twelve dollars and fifteen cents, payable in cash only.”
Talbot paid the man, took his ticket, and picked up his saddle. “Much obliged,” he said, and headed out the door.
He had an hour and a half to wait for the train, and he decided the best place to do it was at the saloon. As he stepped up on the boardwalk he saw that the big plate-glass window was gone, replaced by boards.
He shook his head and walked inside and ordered a beer and a shot. He asked the apron to keep them coming until his train left at twelve-fifteen.
“Where you headed?” the man asked him conversationally.
“None of your goddamn business!” Talbot exploded, and knocked back his shot. “Can’t a man get drunk in peace around here?”
He brooded over several drinks, then moseyed over to the train station at noon.
The train was on time. Two drummers, an old lady, and a cowboy got off, and Talbot got on, threw his saddle on one seat and sat in another across the aisle. There were only a handful of people aboard, reading illustrated newspapers and conversing in hushed tones.
Talbot rolled a cigarette and sat waiting for the train to depart. He was halfway through the quirley when something blocked the sun beating through the window to his left.
Turning, he saw Jacy sitting atop a tall brown horse. She looked in at him, squinting her eyes against the reflected light, breath puffing around her face.
Talbot got up and walked outside. Jacy rode over to meet him.
“Figured I’d find you here,” she said.
Talbot shrugged. “Yeah, well, I guess it’s time to move on.”
“What happened?”
“They’re all dead.”
Jacy nodded. “I’m sorry about Suzanne.”
Talbot nodded.
“And I’m sorry about what I said back there at Magnusson’s. I was wrong.”
Talbot shrugged. “You’d been through a lot. I’d just been through a little more.”
“I guess.” Jacy looked around. “Well…”
“Good-bye, Jacy.”
She turned her green eyes to him and nodded. “Be seein’ you.”
“You bet.”
“Good-bye.” She tried a smile, reined her horse around, and rode away.
Talbot called after her, “Throw some flowers on Dave’s grave in the spring, will you?”
She turned, gave a nod, and turned away, heading down Main.
Talbot stood there for several minutes. When the conductor yelled, “All a-board!” he got back on the train as it chuffed away from the depot.
But when the train was gone, he was standing again on the siding, in the steam the locomotive had left behind. He had his saddle on his shoulder.
He stared across the platform. Jacy sat atop her horse just beyond the station house, looking at him and grinning.
“How in the hell did you know?” Talbot said with mock severity.
Jacy shrugged. “No man in his right mind would leave a woman like me.”
Talbot laughed. Shaking his head, he moved toward her.
THE ROMANTICS
For Gena, who knows why or should.
Gold and love affairs are difficult to hide.
—Spanish proverb
CHAPTER 1
1879—Arizona Territory
THE STAGE HAD stopped at one of those storied bordercountry cantinas, a ramshackle relay station in the rocky, sunscorched bowels of the Arizona desert, where many an hombre has entered and never been heard from again.
Flies buzzed in the shade beneath the eaves. The gutted carcass of what appeared to be a wild pig turned on a rawhide rope. From the smell, it had been hanging there for days.
“Follow me,” Adrian Clark told his wife, a young Spanish beauty with raven hair and night-black eyes. Descended from Spanish kings, twenty-two years old, her name was Marina. “Stay close.”
Clark hadn’t liked any of the stations at which the dusty red Concord had stopped since leaving Tucson. All had the smell of casual death.
Dakota Kill and the Romantics Page 25