“And you are . . .?”
“Jed Breen.”
“The jackal?”
“I’ve been called worse.”
The constable rose and rolled up the wanted poster. “Well, sir, what is it you want from me?”
Breen made himself drink what some idiot might call coffee and tossed the empty tin mug onto the counter. “Well, sir, I’d like for you to identify this man, then go over to the bank, and bring me back my five hundred dollars. Just like that reward poster says. The great state of Texas and the territories of Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado will pay you and the bank back. That’s what it says on that dodger, doesn’t it?”
“Bank’s closed,” the constable said.
“No, it’s not. They’re busy trying to figure out how much money Hans Kruger got away with.”
“If it was the Kruger brothers, they likely cleaned out everything,” the constable said, choking out the words.
“No. I saw Hans Kruger drop a sack in the dirt while he was trying to get his horse to giddyap.”
The constable frowned, looked at Otto Kruger, and shook his head. “And then what?”
“Then you lock this low-down dog up, and the Texas Rangers will ride over in a day or so and haul his sorry ass off to wherever they want to hang him.”
The constable straightened, smiling as he shook his head. “Well, we can’t do that, Mr. Breen.” He made a lazy gesture toward the backdoor. “Jail only has room for one prisoner, and that’d be Orrin, our local drunk. Besides, you don’t want to keep a villain like Otto Kruger.” He looked down at the man’s ugly, swollen face, and shook his head before looking again into Breen’s cold eyes. “There’s no lock on the door, Mr. Breen. This is Deep Flood. It ain’t Purgatory City.”
“Son of a gun,” Breen said, which wasn’t what he wanted to say. He moved to the constable’s desk and sat on the top, glancing at the wanted posters, then at the door that led to the backyard where he might find a one-room jail that currently housed a drunk named Orrin behind a door that didn’t lock.
“You’ll need to haul him off to Purgatory City,” the constable said. “They have a good jail.”
“I know,” Breen said. “I just delivered it a customer a week or so ago.” He looked up at the lawman. “Tom Benteen.”
The constable straightened in appreciation. “Well, that’s fine, just fine. You got one of the Benteen boys and now you got one of the Krugers.” He looked at the unconscious German. “If it is Hans Kruger.”
“It’s not Hans Kruger,” Breen told him. “It’s Otto Kruger.”
“Yes, sir. If you say so, Mr. Breen.”
“Well, hell.” Breen slid off the desk and walked to the line of posters. His head shook. “That means I have to rent a horse to carry this sorry heap all the way to the county seat.”
“Jarvis won’t rent you no horse to go that far,” the constable said. “In a town like Purgatory City, that horse would be likely to get up and stole.”
Breen stared hard at the idiot with a badge and kept talking. “And if I’m splitting the reward with that redhead from your eating house . . .”
“But you said she said she don’t want no reward,” the constable said.
“I know what she said. And I know what’s right. Even a jackal knows what’s right some of the times. She’ll get two hundred and fifty dollars . . . once I get my five hundred.” He smiled at the young idiot and tried another attack. “You know, if she were to get her reward now, before I left, all that money would stay in your good town. You might see the economy grow. All you have to do is—”
“You need to take that prisoner to Purgatory City, Mr. Breen. Get your reward there.”
“Hell.” Breen turned back to the wall and stared at the wanted posters. Suddenly, he smiled. “How much do you think it would cost me to buy a wagon and a team of mules?”
* * *
Breen strode easily into the one place a body could eat in Deep Flood, looked around, and asked the man holding the pitcher of water, “Where’s the redhead?”
“You mean . . . Constance?”
Breen smiled. “If that’s what she’s calling herself.”
“She went home. Had a rough day, you—”
“Where’s home?”
The man hesitated, but Breen looked out the window and shook his head. “Never mind,” he said, and walked outside.
He found the redhead at the Wells Fargo office, though why a town like Deep Flood had a Wells Fargo office was beyond him, and she turned, holding the ticket in her hand.
The clerk looked up and said, “May I help you, sir?”
“No, thanks.” Breen walked over and plucked the ticket from the redhead’s hand. He looked at it and shook his head. “El Paso.” He stared at her. “You know, two hundred and fifty dollars could help you out in Mexico, which I figured is where you’d be going as soon as you got off the El Paso stage. You should have accepted my generosity, Charlotte.”
“My name,” she said, “Is Constance.”
“Is this man bothering you, Miss Pettigrew?”
“No,” Breen answered. “I’m not.” He withdrew the wanted poster from his back pocket, unfolded it, and held it up for her inspection. “Miss Charlotte Platte.” He laughed, shook his head, and showed the Wells Fargo agent the dodger.
“If you took your supper at the place here in town, you might want to see a doctor,” Breen said. “I feel lucky I didn’t eat.”
He stepped back and motioned to the door. “Come along, Charlotte Platte. The law wants you in Precious Metal, Arizona Territory, for poisoning fifteen miners, but killing only eight of them. Five thousand dollars, but that reward will go all to me. I’m still splitting the reward with you for Otto Kruger, though. You can use it for your lawyer or your coffin. Come along, darling. I have a wagon with two mules waiting for us at the constable’s office. I know it’s getting late, but I’d like to get you and Otto in a jail as quickly as I can. It’s supposed to be a full moon, clear skies, and we can be in Purgatory City before daybreak.”
He stepped aside and motioned to the door. “After you, Miss Platte. Or would you rather be called by that other handle they’ve put on you . . . Poison Platte?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
McCulloch looked at the Indian boy, unconscious, and at the dead scalp hunter whose job was to shoot McCulloch in the back. He probably would have succeeded had the Comanche kid not sprung into action. McCulloch’s black danced approximately thirty feet from him, but didn’t seem inclined to run anymore, and the Mexican’s horse had loped after the other scalp hunters. He wouldn’t be able to catch it. The Mexican looked dead, probably was.
McCulloch still had to figure out what to do with the Indian boy. The dead men he’d leave for the vultures and other varmints. But he figured, most likely, this old white-bearded scalp hunter had a horse, probably had hobbled it somewhere behind him.
To let the blood flow a little, McCulloch first loosened the tourniquet he had fashioned around the boy’s arm. After retying the bandana, he rose, walked past the Mexican—indeed, the man was dead, likely burning in hell at that very moment—and eased his way to his skittish horse. Once he had the reins, he cut a wide loop around the dead and the blood, and hobbled his mount in a spot with plenty of grass and no dead bear, dead bandit, scents from the other now-gone scalp hunters and horses, and one badly injured Comanche boy.
The black lifted its head and whinnied. Almost instantly, a answer came from up the hill.
After a quick glance at the kid, still out of this world for the time being, McCulloch figured his best plan was to find that dead man’s horse before his colleagues went after it—if they had such an intention. He found a deer trail and followed it up the hill before the trail slipped through some rocks a man of McCulloch’s size would find a tight squeeze. He took a firm grip on a juniper branch and pulled himself up the steep slope, sending gravel and larger stones rolling down. and inching his way till he made it to the other side of a rock.
He rested for a moment, then climbed up the slope. Often, he had to crawl his way on all fours. That told McCulloch there had to be an easier path down than the one he was taking up.
Fifteen minutes later, he found the horse tied to a dead piñon on the other side of the slope. McCulloch admired the view and the horse, a blood bay with an army McClellan saddle. A sash hung around the horse’s neck, and from it hung a few scalps the dead man must have found too important or too pretty to sell for whatever the Mexicans were paying for scalps.
He ripped that off, dug a hole with the heel of his boot, and buried those disgusting trophies.
Matt McCulloch had done a lot of things that disgusted him over his years in the wilds, but he didn’t care much for scalping. In that regard, he had a bit of respect for the Apaches. They didn’t scalp, either. But the Apaches had killed his family, and the Apaches had taken his daughter. Comanches had tried to kill him over the years, but he still had his topknot.
He grabbed the reins to the bay, rubbed his hand over the neck, and started studying the ground until he found the prints of the dead man the Comanche boy had killed. He followed that trail, pulling the horse behind him, and—as he had expected—it was a much easier climb down than it had been up. At least until he reached the end and saw he had a ten foot jump down. Easy for a scalp hunter. That killer had likely just grabbed hold of a juniper root, held on to it as he lowered himself, let go, and dropped silently to the soft grass below.
Getting a horse down might prove harder. McCulloch looked at the bay and decided this stallion could handle ten feet. He went back up to the horse, took the reins, and swung into the saddle. The stirrups were too short for him and McCulloch had never understood why those damned fool Yankee horse soldiers survived riding on something as backbreaking and huevos-pounding torture contraptions like a McClellan. The horse showed a moment of anxiety, dancing around, but McCulloch eased it down to the edge, let the blood bay measure the distance, then rode it back up as far as he could. Turning the horse around underneath the piñons, he spurred it, and the horse showed no fear, no doubt. A moment later Matt McCulloch felt the wind, the freedom, the wonders of flying, and the horse landed, jarring him, but not spilling him. McCulloch laughed as he righted himself in the saddle and gave the stallion its head, letting him run by the bear and the dead Mexican and a hundred and fifty yards up the valley, before he turned the horse around and galloped back, slowing down about thirty yards from his black and trotting the rest of the way.
He swung down, tied the horse up a few feet from his black—so they could get to know one another—loosened the cinch and found the dead scalp hunter’s canteen. He sniffed. Yes, it was water, not whiskey. You couldn’t be sure about scalp hunters. He filled his hat with the lukewarm liquid and let the bay drink. Then he did the same for his black. Keeping the canteen, he went back to the unconscious Comanche.
And McCulloch went to work.
He jerked out the Comanche’s homemade knife from the white-bearded scalp hunter and went to the bear. For a rusted blade, the knife cut well. The Indian boy had honed a sharp edge on that old saber, and McCulloch carved up some fat and a little bit of meat. A few minutes later, he had a fire going. Then came the hard part. Using his own knife, he heated the blade, then removed his blood-soaked bandana, and placed the white-hot blade on the savage cut.
Flesh sizzled. The Indian boy screamed and tried to rise, but McCulloch’s knee had been placed on the boy’s chest. The pain quickly sent the kid back into deep unconsciousness. McCulloch heat-sealed the other serious wounds, found a needle in his saddlebags, plucked some hairs from the tail of his black, and stitched up the smaller cuts that weren’t so deep. The bear fat he placed on all the wounds, hoping that would suck out some of the infection, and he slipped a couple of small cubes of meat into the boy’s mouth.
After wiping his own brow and finding his own canteen to slake his thirst, McCulloch walked to the edge of the wooded hills and began searching until he found a piece of wood that would work all right—at least until he found a doctor, one who would actually treat an Indian boy.
McCulloch stopped. “What are the chances of that?” he said aloud, and looked at the small branch he held. None, he answered in his mind. A Comanche boy? Forget it.
After tossing that pathetic substitute for a splint, McCulloch went back into the woods and finally found something that would eventually do the job. He used the Indian kid’s knife to clear off the bark, and then his own to carve, cut, and whittle until he had what he needed. Satisfied, he took the branch back to the Comanche kid, measured it for length, nodded at how well he had guessed, and snapped the branch in half over his left thigh. After that, he shaved off the sharp edges with his knife and pounded down the ends against a lava rock. Finished with that part of the job, McCulloch stripped buckskin from white-bearded man’s leather britches, soaked the strips in the last of the water from the scalp hunter’s canteen, and returned to the still unconscious boy.
You break horses for a living, you know a few things about broken bones.
McCulloch steeled himself, hoped the boy was too out of it to feel what he was about to do, and tried to set the broken arm. It took a while, and the boy screamed after the first jerk, then shuddered, wet himself, and groaned. Rubbing his hand over the thin, bony, copper-skinned arm, McCulloch felt satisfied. He used a silk bandana he had found in the saddlebags of the blood bay, wrapped it over the arm, then placed the first of his whittled-down branches onto the upper arm and secured it with the strips from the dead man’s pants. The next branch went lower, also secured with buckskin leggings.
The boy looked like hell. No, McCulloch figured, he looked damned ridiculous. But by the Grace of God and if the kid’s puha—his Comanche power—was with him, he might live. McCulloch laughed. When a Comanche boy went out on his vision quest, he came back with a new name. So McCulloch decided it was time to give this kid a new name, too. Instead of Bear Killer, from how on he would be called Wooden Arm.
Suddenly, McCulloch felt hungry. He returned to the bear, cut off some more meat, grabbed his skillet from the saddlebag, and fixed himself some grub. After eating, he dragged the dead men to the edge of the hills, searched them, and lifted from their pockets anything he might need. Then he hauled some dead branches and left those covering the bodies. Another bear, or wolves, or coyotes would eventually find them, but McCulloch wasn’t going to waste his energy trying to dig a grave for two pieces of dirt who would not have even bothered covering him with branches had they won that fight.
Finally, McCulloch went back to what was passing for his camp. He threw some more wood—which would not send too much smoke into the sky—onto the fire, leaned back in the grass, adjusted his hat over his eyes, and slept.
* * *
He sat up with the Colt in his hand and saw the boy. The Indian boy had rolled over and gasped at the arm splinted in two places—forearm and upper arm—with tree branches.
The kid saw McCulloch, who holstered his gun and slid the plate of bear meat and fried fat over to the kid, along with his canteen.
The boy stared.
“I am called Matt,” he said, making the sign for everything but Matt. He signed Eat.
Eventually, the boy sat up and used his good hand, fingering bits of bear meat and fat into his mouth. He chewed, but rarely blinked, and his eyes never left McCulloch.
Night came. McCulloch built up the fire, found the bedroll on the blood bay, and spread that over the boy, who still stared. They supped on bear meat and McCulloch’s coffee, and slept, though only after McCulloch used some of the Mexican scalp hunter’s whiskey as painkiller for Wooden Arm.
The next morning, as the boy watched in silence and with cold black eyes, McCulloch checked the arm, nodded at his skills as a sawbones, and brought Wooden Arm coffee doctored with a shot of whiskey, and more bear meat. After what passed for breakfast, McCulloch busied himself the rest of the morning by rubbing down the horses, keeping a lookout for any riders—e
specially scalp hunters—and nodding at Wooden Arm every now and then.
It was after noon before the kid spoke.
Not that McCulloch understood more than a handful of Comanche words, but he stopped what he was doing and squatted in front of the kid.
He signed, How are you called?
The boy answered, but hell, McCulloch wouldn’t remember that if he heard it ten thousand and ten times. He said, “I will call you Wooden Arm.” Again he signed, I am called, then said, “Matt.”
“Watt,” the boy said.
“Good enough.” McCulloch smiled, then checked the boy’s wounds and arm.
The boy turned downright conversational.
In Comanche, “Why did you not kill me or at least count coup?”
McCulloch thought he got all of that. He answered with his hands and fingers, speaking as he signed, You saved my life.
The boy’s head shook. No, I protected me, he signed.
“You were hurt,” McCulloch said, and tried his best to sign, There is no glory in counting coup or taking the scalp of someone injured. He smiled and tried to add, But I would have had women singing in my camp had they learned that I counted coup on a Comanche brave enough to fight and kill an angry black bear.
He must have done a good job there. The hardness left the boy’s eyes and he smiled, then nodded, and muttered something in that rough tongue. He grinned at Matt and said, “Watt.”
Matt laughed. “Wooden Arm,” he said, and added with his hands, is my friend.
The boy straightened. He looked lost in thought, maybe confused. Comanches did not care much for white men and hated white Texas men.
McCulloch went back to work.
That night, eating more bear meat, what looked to be old juniper berries, and chased down with McCulloch’s coffee and the last of the Mexican’s whiskey, McCulloch was trying to figure out what to do with this kid. He couldn’t keep hanging out there forever. If he took the boy to a Comanche camp, he figured the Comanches would kill any white man foolish enough to enter a Comanche camp before anyone had a chance to explain.
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