“Will you be all right, Miss Mullen?” A groggy Ellenbogen, at least, had the courtesy to walk over to see her, whereas Caldwell remained near the lodge, savoring his last cigar.
“Yes.” She sighed. “My shoes were pinching my feet.” She wriggled her toes. “My socks are filthy.”
Daniel felt like he was blushing. He wasn’t comfortable holding a woman’s leg, her foot bare, bleeding. It was a nice foot, and the cut wasn’t deep, but bled profusely. He wished Grace Morning Star would hurry back with her medicine and wrappings. He stopped staring at her foot and calf, focused on the dirt around the brush arbor, found an old bone near a rock, a worn bone, with a drilled hole in one end, smooth from age and use. The bone from a buffalo’s leg. He studied it for what seemed an eternity.
“Perhaps we should give up this fool’s errand and get Miss Mullen back to Fort Sill,” Ellenbogen said. “Major Becker should attend her.”
“I’m all right,” Patty protested. “It was just a rock.”
“Not a rock, ma’am.” With a grunt, Ellenbogen squatted and found a piece of metal in the sand. He held it with his finger. “Rusty iron. It can be dangerous.”
“Lockjaw would definitely silence The National Temperance Leader.” Caldwell, who had just walked over, laughed hard. The last to arrive, Vaughan Coyne, sighed, shaking his head at the commissioner’s attempt at a joke.
Grace Morning Star returned, and took Patty’s foot from Daniel, who stared at the iron in Leviticus Ellenbogen’s fingers. His heart sank, and he whispered an oath.
“What is it?” Ellenbogen asked, but looked away when Patty cried out in pain and told Grace Morning Star: “That hurts.”
Daniel wet his lips, walked away, not answering Ellenbogen’s questions, knowing that Teepee That Stands Alone would not come. Not this day. Not tomorrow. Not with the taibos here. Maybe not even if Daniel had come here alone.
“Agent Ellenbogen’s right. Let’s quit chasing this ghost of a Comanche heathen,” Caldwell said. “Let’s get Miss Mullen back to Fort Sill to see the Army’s idiot sawbones. More importantly, let’s get back to see if the post sutler in this abysmal place has any decent cigars for sale.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Tell your husband that we are sorry we have missed him, but we cannot wait.” Daniel looked into Grace Morning Star’s old eyes. “Tell him that I have found what I sought from my vision.”
She smiled. “He will be pleased. He will be proud of you.”
He couldn’t look at the woman any more, found himself staring absently at his badge. “Tell him that I will see him.”
With a sweet nod, she stepped away from the surrey, raising her maimed hand in a farewell. “Good,” she said in guttural English. “’Bye.”
“So long, fair maiden,” Caldwell said in wretched sarcasm, and tapped Vaughan Coyne’s shoulder. “Let’s go home, good man.”
Coyne flicked the reins. The lawyer had asked to drive, privately telling Daniel that he couldn’t stand sitting in the back with that pompous deputy commissioner any more, and Daniel didn’t mind. He sat in the back beside Patty Mullen, thankful when Caldwell quickly drifted off to sleep, and pulled out his notebooks, reading again. In front of Daniel sat Ellenbogen.
* * * * *
It was, he thought when he looked up an hour later, a beautiful day. To his right rose the Wichitas against a blue sky dotted with a few white clouds low in the horizon. Wind blew the tall grass like ocean waves, and trees formed patches of rich green on the brown and tan rocks of the mountains. He wet his lips, and read some more.
“He buries his nose in those tablets like they’re Dickens.”
Daniel sighed. Jonathan Caldwell had awakened. He tried to ignore him, turned the page, spotted a note he had written back at a campsite south of the Red River.
“You have been poring over those pages,” Coyne said easily, trying to make conversation. “Find anything new?”
Daniel started to close the tablet, but looked at the words again. Don’t believe the Police Gazzette!
“I spelled Gazette wrong,” Daniel said, and Coyne, Patty, even Ellenbogen laughed.
Looking around again, Daniel frowned. “You know where you’re going?” he asked.
“East,” Coyne said. “You think I’m lost?”
Daniel shook his head, closed the tablet, and dropped it at his feet, deciding to give the Police Gazette one more try. “No, Dakota, I think you know exactly where you’re going.”
Patty’s head turned sharply. Ellenbogen seemed not to have heard. Caldwell just didn’t care, and patted his suit coat in a futile search for one more cigar. Slowly Coyne looked over his shoulder at Daniel, his eyes narrowing.
“Daniel,” he said evenly. “I’ve never been called Dakota.” He turned forward, clucking the reins, and saying: “You’re barking up the wrong tree, Daniel. Now, let’s drop it. I’m your friend. I’m not Dakota.”
“Nobody’s Dakota,” Daniel said. He wet his lips. “It’s like Frank Striker said back at the agency. When he called Miss Mullen ‘Dallas’. He said it didn’t mean anything. Blake Browne didn’t mean anything, either. Just a name. Just a place.”
Leviticus Ellenbogen turned his big head, suddenly intrigued by Daniel’s statement. Jonathan Caldwell sighed, and pulled down his tall silk hat.
“Go on,” Patty Mullen spoke in an unsure voice.
“Sure.” Coyne chuckled. “Go on. I’m a lawyer. I’ll hear your theory, but I’m starting to think you need to hire a new counselor. Your cheap accusations are annoying me.”
“First there was Blake Browne’s partner,” Daniel said. “Ted Smith, but Browne called him ‘Uvalde’. Smith came from Uvalde. At least once, Browne called Marshal Noble ‘Arkansas’. Just a point of reference. That’s all he meant when he mentioned Dakota.”
“Interesting.” Coyne shook his head. “But not evidence. It doesn’t make me this man Dakota.”
“But you told me you once worked at the Standing Rock Agency. That’s in Dakota Territory.”
“I never said I hadn’t practiced in Dakota.”
“That’s where you met Fenn O’Malley. That’s where you got O’Malley cleared of a whiskey-running charge. That’s what Brink Brinkerhoff wanted to talk to me about.” He was guessing now. “Brink recognized you. That’s your biggest mistake. A damned foolish mistake. O’Malley wasn’t the only soldier from the Seventh transferred to Fort Sill. That’s what will hang you.”
“Have you proof, Sergeant Killstraight?” Ellenbogen said gruffly.
No, he had no proof. Daniel knew he could be dead wrong. He didn’t know what Trooper Brinkerhoff wanted to talk to him about, and Blake Browne’s Dakota could very well have been Fenn O’Malley, but he was certain, dead certain, that Vaughan Coyne was not his friend, never had been.
“I have plenty,” Daniel lied.
Coyne pulled hard on the reins, stopping the surrey, prompting another curse from Caldwell. He set the brake, wrapped the reins around the lever, and turned, his eyes angry as they locked on Daniel.
“You try my patience, boy. I got you out of that hell hole they call a jail in Wichita Falls. When Blake Browne filed a charge against you, I got the charge dismissed.”
“So you could frame me for Browne’s murder. Or try to. When that didn’t work, you had to kill the other taibo, Horace Benson.”
“Your marshal pal asked me to defend you. Remember?”
“Did he? I thought so, too, but you didn’t seem to recognize Harvey’s name when you first visited me. Not that it matters. Maybe he did ask you, but you planned on defending me anyway. To find out how much I really did know about Coursey and Cox, to learn how much Blake Browne had told me. To find out if you needed to shut Blake Browne up permanently. Which you did. And then you needed to shut me up. Stop me. Somehow.”
“I stopped that lynch party,” Coyne said. “You’d be dead if not for me.”
“You started that lynch mob,” Daniel said. “Harvey Noble and Hugh Gunter st
opped them. You planted that Old Glory tablet under the body of the second whiskey runner you killed.”
“That’s an infernal lie.”
“I bought that tablet in Wichita Falls. Remember? You walked into the mercantile with me. Nobody else knows my superstition when it comes to pencil tablets.” Except Gunter and Noble, Daniel thought. And Patty Mullen. Maybe Ellenbogen. Perhaps a lot of others, but nobody in Wichita Falls. At least, the theory sounded good to him, and he must have jabbed Vaughan Coyne’s nerves.
“My God, Daniel. I’ll slap a slander suit on you. I suppose I also killed those two Creeks!”
Daniel said nothing to that. “You murdered Blake Browne,” he said. “Slashed his thigh. Made it look Injun. Or O’Malley killed him. But you helped him.”
“Daniel . . . ,” Patty began.
“Have you forgotten that I warned you about Carl Quantrell?” Coyne’s face had paled.
Daniel shook his head. “You were the only person, other than Agent Ellenbogen, who knew I was going to Dallas. You got word to Quantrell, maybe. You told those thugs . . .”
A scene from that dark night near the Trinity River popped into his head again. He shook his head. “No.” He looked at Patty, his mouth open as a new thought came to him. Laughing, he turned back to Coyne. “I’m a damned fool.”
“That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said.” Coyne pointed above his right eye. “Remember Quantrell cut me with his knife, to keep me from helping you. Threatened my life. He wounded me because I was helping you.”
“Over your right eye.” Daniel tilted his head toward the deputy commissioner. “You pointed something like this out back in Pittsfield, didn’t you, Mister Caldwell?”
“What?” Caldwell, for once, looked uncomfortable. “I am completely lost and struck dumb by this conversation.”
“You’re left-handed, Vaughan,” Daniel said. “You cut yourself. Left hand holding a knife, it’s natural to put it over your right eye. And I bet if I asked Major Becker about Blake Browne, he might agree that Browne was brained first. He wasn’t shot with those arrows. You stabbed him with them. That explains why one of those pathetically made arrows broke. No Indian would have used such arrows. Indians have pride in their work. Those arrows hadn’t been fired from a bow. They were rammed into the body like a spear. I bet the way those wounds were would suggest they came from a left-handed man.”
Another wild guess. Browne could have been shot with those arrows. Suddenly he heard the clopping of hoofs. Vaughan Coyne swung back to face the road. Daniel lifted his eyes hopefully, wanting to see Marshal Harvey Noble and Hugh Gunter riding hard to save his life, but knew . . . Cursing himself, he grabbed Patty’s hand with his left as Coyne reached inside his coat, and he dived off the surrey, pulling Patty behind him.
Nácutsi, he was thinking as he fell. Nácutsi could have fired those arrows into Browne. He has no pride.
He hit the ground with a grunt, his hat rolling over the rocky ground. Rising, Daniel jerked the Remington from its holster. “Run!” he screamed, and he was pulling Patty to her feet, searching the rocks to his right, shoving her. “Run, Mister Ellenbogen! They mean to kill us!”
Too late. He saw the gun in Vaughan Coyne’s hand. Heard the horses bringing Fenn O’Malley and Nácutsi closer.
“What is the meaning of this?” Caldwell cried out.
Standing in the surrey, Coyne thumbed back the hammer, but a giant hand swallowed both pistol and hand. “Run!” Leviticus Ellenbogen yelled. “Get out of here!” The agent shoved Coyne over the wagon’s side, turned, standing, reaching for the brake and the reins. “Get Miss Mullen out of here!”
A gunshot sounded like a cannon. Nácutsi shrieked his war cry, jacked another round into his Winchester.
Daniel pushed Patty toward the rocks. “That way!” he said. “Get over that ridge.” Not that it was much of a ridge. He looked back. Leviticus Ellenbogen desperately worked at the brake and reins. Jonathan Caldwell had leaped down off the surrey, screaming, fleeing in a wild panic. Underneath the wagon crawled Vaughan Coyne. The lawyer still had his pistol in his hand. He cocked, aimed. Daniel heard the pop, saw the smoke, but the bullet sang off a rock somewhere. He snapped a shot himself, missing, started moving back toward the rocks, toward Patty. The horses charged.
“Get out of there!” Daniel heard himself yelling at the Indian agent. “Take cover!”
Another rifle boomed. Ellenbogen jerked back, releasing the brake, dropping the reins, slamming into the seat, and slumping over, as the wagon lurched forward.
By then Daniel was running, catching up with the confused Patty Mullen, grabbing her hand, jerking her, pulling her roughly over the lichen-covered rocks. He dived, taking her with him, hearing another gunshot, yelling as the bullet tore through his left calf.
They hit the rocks on the other side of the low rise. Blood already soaked his pants, his moccasin. He crawled up, pulled the Remington’s trigger, saw Fenn O’Malley dive from the saddle, saw Nácutsi charge his pony after the screaming, terrified deputy commissioner. He saw the surrey, saw Vaughan Coyne, saw Leviticus Ellenbogen.
He closed his eyes, but only briefly, and ducked as O’Malley drew his Colt, and loosened a shot.
“Come on,” Daniel told Patty. “This is no good.”
Horses screamed. The team jerked the surrey down the road.
A bullet whined off a rock to Daniel’s left.
“Gunpowder!” Fenn O’Malley roared at the Comanche scout. “Get your ass back here! Coyne! Coyne!” No answer.
He didn’t have much time. Daniel glanced at the Remington. Three shots. If the percussion caps worked—if the cylinder hadn’t been shot loose—if the damned relic would fire. The rocky field wouldn’t offer much cover, nor could they hide in the grass. Patty Mullen couldn’t run far, not with her injured foot, and the bullet that had torn through Daniel’s leg would slow him considerably. Quickly Patty loosened a scarf, tying it around Daniel’s wound, looked left, right.
“What are we going to do?” she asked.
Daniel had no clue. The mountains were too far, but just north, maybe two hundred yards, rose a dead cottonwood. That was it. One tree, but it was better than where they were.
Crouching, he pulled himself to his feet. “Come on,” he told Patty, taking her hand again. Roughly, stumbling painfully, they darted through the grass toward the barren tree in the middle of . . . what had Caldwell called it . . . ? Perdition itself.
* * * * *
Just as the palomino mare carrying Nácutsi rounded the corner, they slid underneath the giant tree. Daniel gasped, shoved Patty hard toward the ground, lying still, watching, trying to control his savage breaths, his pounding heart. Slowly he raised his head just a bit, saw Nácutsi rein in and slide from the saddle, running in a crouch toward the rise, toward the rocks where Daniel and Patty had been hiding.
A miracle, he thought. Nácutsi hadn’t seen them. But it didn’t matter. The Army hired him as a scout for a good reason, and even a fool would be able to follow the trail through the grass, follow the blood. Nácutsi crawled the last few rods, then stopped.
“Gunpowder!” O’Malley’s voice screamed from the other side of the rise. “Where the hell are you?”
Nácutsi sat up, studying the land in silence, then Daniel thought he could see the Comanche grin. He was looking straight at the cottonwood tree, and Daniel dropped his head. A futile gesture. Hopeless. Nácutsi had found them. Again Daniel looked around, tried to find a better place. The Remington felt heavy in his hand. He turned back as Nácutsi shot to his feet, and ran to the top of the ridge, yelling in English. “Here! Here!” Waving. Then slamming backward as the rifle roared from the other side, falling hard, his head smashing on the rocks with a sickening thud Daniel and Patty could hear over the echo, over the distance. The palomino galloped across the field of grass and rocks.
“I got that son-of-a-bitch!” Fenn O’Malley’s voice.
Daniel wet his lips, cocked the Remington. “Sta
y here!” he said, and he was running the dash of a wounded animal, toward Nácutsi, crouching, his leg throbbing.
“I got him!” Fenn O’Malley yelled again. “Gunpowder. I killed the Metal Shirt! Gunpowder! Where the hell are you?”
He knew O’Malley would be running, too. Running up the rise.
They met. O’Malley’s eyes fell on Nácutsi’s body, absorbing the sight slowly, realizing he had just killed his own man, then seeing Daniel, a few rods away, saw the Remington as the hammer snapped.
Daniel cursed. Misfire. He flung the revolver at O’Malley, kept running, watched the deserter toss the single-shot Springfield rifle to the ground, jerk the Colt from his waistband. O’Malley was cocking the big .45 when Daniel slammed his shoulder into O’Malley’s stomach. They fell hard against the rocks. The pistol roared. Daniel’s ear rang painfully from the shot. He rolled off, cursing himself for throwing the Remington, realizing he should have tried the other two chambers. Tried to stand, attack, but his leg gave, and he fell, turned over, saw Fenn O’Malley standing over him, bringing the gun barrel down. Then dropping the Colt. Dropping to his knees. Holding the two quivering shafts of arrows in his stomach. O’Malley’s eyes began to glaze over, and blood poured from his mouth.
Another arrow slammed into his chest, and the soldier fell beside Nácutsi.
I’m dreaming all this, Daniel thought. I’m dead. Yet when his eyes opened, Teepee That Stands Alone was looking down on him.
“All rubbed out,” Teepee That Stands Alone said, lowering his bow, then drawing a knife. “You claimed first coup on the Long Knife. His scalp is yours to take.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
He tried to stand, couldn’t, looked at the two dead men on the rocks, then down at the road. The surrey was gone, stopping maybe a quarter mile down the path, taking Leviticus Ellenbogen with it, and Vaughan Coyne lay in the dust, not moving. It took a moment before Daniel understood what had happened. When O’Malley had shot Ellenbogen, the agent, probably already dead, had released the brake, and the horses had taken off, running over the Wichita Falls lawyer, breaking his back, or his neck. Remembering Jonathan Caldwell’s story of his famous Pittsfield murder case, Daniel shook his head as he said, in English: “There’s God’s justice for you.”
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