by Ralph Cotton
“I don’t know,” said Plantz, “but they both better hope to God we don’t ride in and find them drunk out of their minds.”
“Peerly has been toeing the mark pretty good ever since we started riding on our own,” said the parson.
“Yeah, but he’s still a fool,” said Plantz, looking forward, from one side of Umberton to the other. “And Reese would have been better off had his mother dropped him down a well.”
“There’s a rider,” the parson cut in, nodding toward a horseman bounding forward through the tall grass on their left. The rider joggled loosely in his saddle, one hand planted down atop his derby hat.
“It’s Wright,” said Plantz, watching the rider. “There are men who should not be allowed to ride a horse,” he mused quietly.
“I don’t like the looks of this,” said the parson.
“Neither do I,” said Plantz.
“No, I mean him showing up, and two of our men not riding out to meet us, like always.”
“Wright’s a worrier,” said Plantz. He gave the parson a sidelong glance and asked, “How’s your premonition coming along? Anything new on the woman?”
The parson gazed at him for a second, unsure if he was serious or making a mockery of him. Unable to decide, he finally said, “No, nothing new . . . but I feel just as strongly about it today as I did when I first started getting it.”
“You still don’t see the outcome?” Plantz asked.
“No, I still do not,” the parson said somberly. “But it’s not good.”
“Still think some mysterious woman is going to cause you to die?”
“I don’t know,” said the parson, clearly uncomfortable talking about it. “All I’m saying is we best all watch our step. These things are not to be taken lightly.”
Plantz turned his eyes back toward the men behind them and said, “All of you watch your steps, you hear?”
The men just looked at one another curiously, not having heard what the two were discussing. The parson looked puzzled. It was not like Plantz to treat his visions and insights so casually. He wanted to comment on it, but seeing Councilman Wright drawing closer, he decided to wait for a better time.
A moment later Wright rode in close. Slowing his horse to a jog the last fifty feet, he turned it crosswise to Plantz and the parson and said in a worried tone, “Thank God I found you!”
“All right.” Plantz shrugged. “Thank you God,” he said sarcastically toward the sky. Then he turned back to Wright. “Now what the hell is going on? You look like you’ve been caught with your hand in the till.”
Wright saw no humor in Plantz’s words. “Your man Reese has hanged himself in the livery barn!”
“Reese hanged himself?” Plantz gave the parson a disbelieving look. “Reese ain’t smart enough to tie a knot for himself.”
“Well, either he hanged himself, or somebody else hanged him!” said Wright. “I’ve been watching you ride in for the longest time. I figured when I saw nobody else ride out to you, that maybe I better . . . to let you know what’s going on.”
“Obliged, Councilman,” said Plantz, “although I know your main concern is whether or not anybody finds out that you made a little something for yourself off the money we charged to protect Umberton.”
“Okay! I admit that’s something that troubles me all the time. But the best way for me to make sure it doesn’t happen is to make sure you don’t ride into town and get caught unawares of anything.”
“Good thinking.” Plantz smiled. “Where the hell is Nez Peerly? I should have heard it from him about Reese being dead.”
“Everybody said he rode out of town last night,” said Wright. “Word has it he’s going out to the colonel’s place. He blamed the colonel’s daughter, Julie, for hanging Reese. He left town drunk and angry; hasn’t been seen since,” he concluded.
“Julie Wilder is back?” Plantz asked. As soon as he asked, his eyes went to the parson, who only gave a solemn nod.
“Then I can tell you why Peerly’s disappeared,” said Planz, getting a dark expression. “That little weasel son of a bitch knows I’ll kill him. He told me she’d never come back here after the scare him and Kid Kiley put into her.” Glancing back over his shoulder, he shouted, “Kiley, get up here!”
Kiley bolted forward on his horse and slid to a halt beside Wright. “Yeah, what’s going on?” he asked Plantz, giving Wright a look.
“The councilman here says the Wilder woman is back at the colonel’s place! Want to tell me again how bad you and Peerly scared her?” Plantz asked wryly.
Kiley tried to play it down with a shrug. “She left town at a run is what I heard. If she’s come back, maybe she forgot something.”
“Are you being funny with me?” Plantz asked, his voice becoming enraged.
“Sorry, Captain,” Kiley said quickly. “Want me to go put a bullet in her head? Get this over with?”
Wright winced and looked away. “Jesus!” he said, “I didn’t hear any of that!”
Plantz gave a half grin. “Yeah, watch what you say, Kid.” He gave Kiley a knowing look and said, “But maybe you ought to ride out to the colonel’s place, take a look around . . . make sure that young woman is safe out there all alone.” He winked. “Whatever you do, try not to scare her again.”
“Sure thing,” said Kiley, getting the message. “Then join the rest of yas in town tomorrow?”
“That’s right,” said Plantz. “I don’t want you fooling around either. Get out there this evening. Get back here by morning, no excuses. Ride all night if you have to, but get here before sunup.”
Kiley gave a sour expression at the thought of being in the saddle all night. But seeing the ugly mood Plantz had begun to fall into, he wanted to get out of his sight as quickly as he could. “I’m gone, Captain,” he said, turning his horse and nailing his spurs to its sides.
Turning to Harold Wright as Kiley rode away, Plantz said, “Councilman, unless you want to be seen riding into Umberton with us, you better cut some dust on out of here yourself.”
“I just wanted to get what information I could to you,” said Wright.
“Yeah, yeah,” said Peerly, a bit impatiently. “Now ride. I’m tired of sitting out here in the sun.”
Wright turned his horse and rode off, making it a point not to go in the same direction as Kid Kiley. Plantz said to the parson in a quiet tone, calming down, “She is the woman you’ve been seeing, ain’t she?”
“I don’t want to say just yet,” said the parson.
But judging from his tone of voice and his expression, Plantz nodded and said, “Yep, I thought so.”
“Then what’re we going to do?” the parson asked, not sounding sure of himself the way he did most times.
“Well,” Plantz sighed. “We’re going to ride in, get a meal, some whiskey to clear the dust out of our gullets, and we’re going to see who rides in come morning, either Peerly and the Kid . . . or Miss Julie by God Wilder.”
“You think she’s got something to do with all this, with Reese hanging, with Peerly not showing up?” asked the parson.
Plantz gave him a look. “Hell no. She wants no part of us. I’m just trying to humor you. Keep your mysterious vision woman from troubling you too much.”
“This is not something to joke about,” said the parson, a serious look in his eyes.
“Who said I’m joking,” Plantz replied, nudging his horse forward.
Julie saw the rider in the evening sunlight, following the trail though the tall grass toward her house. She stood on her front porch sipping coffee from a tin cup until she was certain the rider saw her. She pitched the remains of her coffee, turned and quickly went inside.
Kiley had watched her as he drew nearer. Once she disappeared inside he kicked his horse up into a quicker pace until he arrived in the front yard. Knowing the woman had run inside at just the sight of him, he trotted his horse back and forth, feeling confident. “Listen in there! If I wanted in, I’d get in!”
Seeing the shutters closed on every window, he stopped his horse and called out, “Do you think these shutters can stop me? There’s nothing you can do to stop me. Do you hear me? There’s no use in you trying to hide from me. You may just as well come out and face me!”
When no response came from the house, Kiley stepped down from his saddle and looked all around the yard. In the corral, he saw the big buckskin bay staring at him from the other side of the fence. “Ah ha! Nez Peerly’s buckskin!” he said. Turning back to the house with a bemused look he called out, “Nez, you sly sonsabitch, are you in there?”
Again there was only silence as he stood staring at the house. After a moment his expression darkened. “All right, gawddamn it! I didn’t come here to play around all evening. Whoever is in there better come on out before I lose my temper!”
He sprang up onto the porch and gave the heavy door a solid kick. But all he got for his effort was a stir of dust. “All right, that’s it!” he shouted. Losing control he began kicking and beating the door like a madman, cursing at the top of his lungs.
It wasn’t until he’d spent himself and stood panting and rubbing his knuckles that he heard Julie’s calm voice call out from the middle of the yard behind him. “Are you through roughing up my door?”
In his surprise, Kid Kiley spun around and saw her staring at him from ten yards away. For some reason he felt embarrassed, knowing she’d been watching him attack the big thick wooden door to no avail. “Damn it, woman!” he said, trying to compose himself. “You shouldn’t be sneaking up behind a man like that. You could get yourself shot!”
“What do you want here, Kid Kiley?” she said, calling him by name. He noted the way she said his name, a bit sarcastically, he thought.
“What I want, first of all, is for you to tell me where the hell Nez Peerly is!” He stepped down off the porch and stood facing her with his hand poised near his pistol butt in his tied-down holster.
“I have no idea,” Julie said.
“You’re lying,” Kiley said flatly, jerking his head toward the corral. “There’s his horse. What the hell is it doing here?”
“That’s my horse,” said Julie. “It belonged to me before it belonged to Peerly. Now it belongs to me again.”
“How the hell did that come about?” Kiley said. “I know Peerly wouldn’t give that horse to you, no matter how he got it in the first place.”
“When you see Peerly, have him explain it to you,” said Julie. “We both know how he got it.”
“Hey, don’t get sassy with me, woman,” Kiley threatened.
“I’m not getting sassy,” said Julie. “I’m telling you that’s my horse. There’s nothing more I have to say on the matter.” She stared at him with a look that somehow made him uncomfortable. “Unless you want to talk about how Peerly acquired the horse in the first place.”
He decided to drop the subject, since they both knew it had been her horse. He wasn’t about to say anything about how Peerly happened to come by the animal. Yet, as she spoke, Kiley caught a glimpse of the rose medallion hanging on the necklace around her throat, and said before he gave it any thought, “That’s his necklace you’re wearing too.”
“Oh?” Julie said. “Nez Peerly wears a silver rose on a necklace with my mother’s name engraved on it?”
“I don’t know what’s gone on here,” Kiley said, not liking the way their conversation kept leaving him short on answers. His eyes went to the gun on her hip. “I think you best drop that gun, before I get riled.”
“This gun?” Julie said, the gun coming up into her hand too slick and sudden for him to even react. She cocked it on the upswing and said calmly, “I’ve got a better idea, Kid Kiley. Drop yours.”
It took Kiley a few seconds to collect himself. But when he did, he managed a smug grin. “You must be out of your mind! I was in the barn that day, remember? The day you let your gun get taken away from you?” He stood with his feet spread shoulder width. He looked as if he might take a step forward. “Now drop that—”
Her revolver bucked in her hand, kicking up dirt between his boots. “My next shot will be three feet higher. It’ll cut your nuts off at your belly.”
The look on her face told him she would do it. This was not the same woman he and Peerly had frightened in the livery barn. “Easy now,” he said, raising his hands chest high; then slowly he eased his right hand down, lifted his Colt with two fingers and let it fall to the ground.
“Now your trousers,” Julie said quietly.
“Huh?” Kiley gave her a peculiar look.
“You heard me, Kiley,” she said. “Skin out of them. Then get on that horse and ride. Tell Plantz you didn’t scare me nearly as much as you thought you would. And tell him I said if he wants to drop this here and now, I’ll oblige him. Nobody is wearing a mask any longer. I know everybody’s name . . . I’ve seen everybody’s face.”
Kiley looked humiliated; yet, he loosened his gun belt, let it fall, then dropped his trousers and stepped out of them. Crossing his hands modestly over the blaring fly in his knee-length underwear, he gave Julie a look and said, “You don’t really mean that, do you, about wanting to drop all this?”
“Get out of here, Kiley,” Julie said. “Go tell him what I said. . . . tell him while you’re standing before him in your drawers.”
Chapter 26
In the middle of the night Herbert Wright awakened to the explosive yapping of a spotted bitch hound who maintained a litter of pups beneath the back porch. Pushing himself to his feet, Wright cursed and padded barefoot to where a shotgun leaned inside a closet door. Beside it a big Colt hung on a peg. He grabbed both guns and checked them quickly. “There better be a good reason for all this racket, or I’ll turn these guns on her flea-bitten hide!”
“She never carries on this way without cause,” said his wife, Margolin, with a concerned strain in her voice. She sat up on her side of the bed and pulled a house robe around herself. “I’m going with you,” she whispered.
“Yes, come on,” said Herbert. “Here, take this horse pistol and follow me. Lock the door behind me. Stay inside with the girls. There might be Indians prowling around out there.”
“Indians? Oh my!” said Margolin. Snatching the heavy pistol from her husband’s hand, she hurried along behind him.
Venturing out onto the porch, Wright stepped down onto the soft ground in the moonlight and squinted all around, giving a barefoot kick toward the yapping hound. But his kick only brought a renewed round of even louder barking. Walking along furtively, he stopped and raised the shotgun when he heard a horse nicker softly and saw movement at the side of a woodshed. “Who’s there?” he shouted. “Make your presence known or I’ll shoot!”
He heard a voice call out, but the constant barking of the dog kept him from understanding the words. “What? Who’s there?” he said, keeping the shotgun leveled and cocked.
“I said, it’s me, Kid Kiley, gawddamn it!” Kiley called out, at the same time trying to keep his voice level, under control. “Will you shut that damn dog up?”
Wright kicked again, only a glancing blow, but one that sent the hound racing under the porch to her pups with a growl of warning rattling in her throat. “Kiley, what are you doing out here?” Wright asked. “I don’t keep anything valuable out here. Nor do I keep any money or valuables in the house,” he added quickly.
“I’m not here to rob you, Wright!” said Kiley, stepping out into view in his underwear. “I need some trousers!”
“Trousers indeed,” said Wright. He lowered the shotgun without uncocking it. “You were wearing trousers when last I saw you. What happened?”
“It’s a long story, Wright,” said Kiley, stepping forward. “I hoped maybe you’d have overalls in the wood shed.”
“No, I don’t,” said Wright. “But I have a pair of older pinstripes in the house—if you don’t mind a hole in the knee.”
Stopping two feet away and letting out a sigh, Kiley said, “I don’t mind the hole. Just get
them on me. I’ve got to get to Umberton and tell Plantz what the Wilder woman did to me.”
Looking him up and down curiously, Wright said, “What exactly did she do?”
Sounding ashamed, Kiley told him the story he’d been practicing all the way from the Wilder farm. “She got the drop on me,” he said. “Snuck up behind me while I was on the front porch and cracked me on the back of my head. I woke up, my trousers were gone and my gun was stuck in my face.” He paused to get an idea of what Wright might think of his story.
“My!” Wright said. “How is your head? Is it bleeding?”
“Bleeding?” Kiley hadn’t thought of that. “No, it’s better now,” he said, touching his fingers to the back of his head. “The swelling’s even gone down. Now, go get those trousers.”
“Certainly,” said Wright.
But before he could turn and go inside, Kiley reached out and put a hand around the shotgun stock. “I need a gun too.”
“Not this gun,” said Wright, not wanting Kid Kiley armed under these circumstances. He wasn’t about to mention the horse pistol in the house. “This is all I have to protect my family!”
“Give me the gawddamn gun,” Kiley demanded, jerking the gun hard, tearing it from Wright’s grasp.
“Watch it! It’s got a”—Wright’s next words were lost in the sound of the shotgun blast—“hair trigger,” he concluded, amid the orange-blue explosion that fired straight up only an inch beneath Kiley’s chin.
Inside the latched door, Margolin Wright heard her husband scream for the first time in all the years she’d known the man. “I’m coming, Herbert!” she screamed in reply, throwing the latch up on the door and swinging it wide open.
In the yard, Herbert stood bowed at the waist, walking in a short aimless circle with his arms spread wide. His scream had stopped as the hound’s barking started again. Margolin’s eyes widened when they came upon the faceless body lying spread-eagle on its back in the moonlight. “Oh my God! Herbert, what happened? Are you all right?” She looked at her husband, covered with blood and bits of bone and human matter. “You’ve killed him!”