He took off his hat. “I have other news. May I come in? Might there be coffee?”
Hesitating only a moment, she nodded assent to both, and soon the three were seated at one end of the big carved Spanish table.
Before even taking a sip of the steaming black liquid, the stranger asked, “How far is the Swenson spread from here?”
She said, perhaps a tad snippy, “There is no Swenson spread anymore. It’s all Harry Gauge’s land now.”
Her father said, “About twelve miles.”
The stranger asked, “Your herd—it’s separated from his?”
Willa, frowning in curiosity now, said, “A draw divides the area. Why?”
He looked from father to daughter and back. “His cattle ever mix with yours?”
Papa shook his head. “We’re barbwired in. Most of our herd stays on the north section, where the water is. The Swenson water is on the other side of what was his spread. What’s this about, friend?”
Ignoring that, their guest asked, “What about the other spreads?”
Willa laughed hollowly. “What other spreads? Harry Gauge has most of them now. Only four independents left, counting us. As my father said—what’s this all about... ‘friend’?”
That he ignored, as well, asking, “Does Gauge mix his herds?”
“I understand so,” her father said. “Tore out the wire, I’m told, to make a single spread out of all of those he latched onto.”
The stranger’s eyebrows went quickly up and down. “Then just maybe . . . maybe you’re lucky.”
Finally he took a sip of coffee while Willa, infuriated by his obtuse manner, sat forward and demanded, “What in blazes is this about?”
He met her eyes. “Somebody murdered old Swenson last night.”
“No!” her father blurted.
She sucked in a breath. “Murdered . . . ”
He nodded. “Pistol-whipped to death. Found out near the relay station. Been camped out there awhile.”
Papa was shaking his head, dumbfounded. “Murdered, why? He’s long since sold out to Gauge.”
“That old man dying like that,” she said, squinting at their guest as if that might bring things into focus, “that’s sad . . . awful . . . but if it’s murder? Well, I guess we all know who likely did it, or at least had it done. But like Papa says . . . why?”
“To cover something up,” the stranger said, and let them mull that while he drank more coffee.
“There’s more,” her father said, “isn’t there?”
He nodded reluctantly. “Here’s where it gets hard for you. Before he was killed, Old Swenson contracted cowpox.”
Willa’s hand flew to her mouth, stifling a gasp.
Papa took it more stoically, his milky eyes narrowing, tightening. “We should be fine. I’m sure we’ll be fine. I’ll have Whit check the main herd.”
“Critical you do that, sir,” the stranger said.
The old man reached over and found his daughter’s hand and patted it. “We keep our cows nicely separate from the others, daughter. It’s an awful thing, the pox, and I hate to say it . . . but maybe this is God raining down his judgment on Harry Gauge.”
If so, she thought, at least the Almighty hadn’t charged them ten thousand dollars.
Hoofbeats sounded again, moving fast, then abruptly ceasing. They all looked in that direction as, within seconds, Whit Murphy, not bothering to knock, stormed in, dusty and bedraggled.
The foreman whipped off his hat and rushed into the dining area, where he nodded to Willa, ignoring the stranger and going over to stand near her father.
“Sir . . . excuse me, but . . .” He gulped for air, panting ; he had obviously been riding hard and fast.
“Whit,” Papa said, sitting up straight, not waiting for his man to catch his breath, “there’s an outbreak of cowpox at the Swenson spread, and it’s probably contaminating all the cattle on Gauge land. You need to check our main herd. Get the men out and look for strays. Might find some near the fence line.”
Still grabbing his breath, Whit managed, “There ain’t no main herd, Mr. Cullen.”
“What?” Her father gaped blindly at his foreman. “What the hell are you talking about, man?”
Hat in hands, with a shamed look as if what he were about to report were his fault, the foreman said, “They hit our line camp last night, Mr. Cullen, sir, and run ’em off. Every damn head.”
Papa sat stunned for a moment, his mouth hanging open. Then he said, “ ‘They,’ you say . . . ? Who . . . who did this?”
The stranger got up, vacating the chair next to her father, motioning for Whit to sit there. Whit nodded thanks, came over, and took the chair as the stranger moved down one.
Then the foreman leaned in closer to the rancher.
“Mr. Cullen, I can’t say who done it. I wasn’t there. But my ramrod, Carl, filled me in. Said these marauders wore masks. Nobody got a good look at ’em. Came in heavy and took the guns off everybody and tossed ’em, then ran our boys off. Most of the line hands, but for Carl and two others, ain’t been seen since. My guess is they ain’t comin’ back.”
Willa said, “But what about the cattle . . . ?”
The hardened foreman looked across at her as if on the verge of tears. “Miss Cullen, Carl says this bunch was movin’ ’em out toward the foothills. It’ll take a week to round ’em up. Maybe more, without the boys of ours who scurried off, like frightened rabbits.”
Papa slammed a fist into the table. “Damn that Harry Gauge!”
Then all the air seemed to go out of George Cullen, and he slumped back in the ornately carved chair. When his voice came back, it was soft and weak, a tone she’d never heard from him before.
“We’ll never make market in time.” He shook his head, squeezed shut his eyes. “This finishes us.”
The stranger said, “You can try.”
Willa let out a bitter laugh. “What do you suggest? You heard Whit—we don’t have enough hands to fill a poker game. What, you think anybody in Trinidad is going to help us? They won’t lift a finger as long as Harry Gauge and his scum can gun anybody down at will, and get away with it.”
“That’s a bad choice on their part.”
She drew in a breath, let it out; her voice was trembling with frustration and rage. “Harry Gauge set out to own this territory, and now he’s going to get away with it.”
The stranger, betraying no shred of emotion, said, “There’s a way to get the townspeople in this with you.”
She arched a skeptical eyebrow. “Really? And what would that be?”
He shrugged. “Well, if they knew how close they were to dying? I believe they’d take an interest.”
Whit frowned and said, “What are you on about, mister?”
The stranger’s expression was impassive, but his eyes were hard. “Doc Miller says this is as virulent a strain of pox as is out there.”
“What about it?” Whit snapped, clearly irritated.
“This old boy Swenson had the sores all over him. Belly, legs, arms.” He gestured with an open hand. “By now, Swenson’s herd has probably infected the rest of Gauge’s cattle.”
“Likely,” Whit admitted.
“And,” the stranger continued, “if our good sheriff wants to keep this quiet, he may well bury his dead cows and try to take to market what he has left.”
Willa frowned. “That . . . that could spread an epidemic all across the country. Would he do such a thing?”
The stranger grunted a laugh. “What do you think?”
“But . . . could he get away with it?”
Again the stranger shrugged, giving her a disconcerting smile.
“Why not?” he asked. “Who could prove it? Once the buyers mix those cattle in the pens, they’ll never be able to pin down where it started. Gauge will come away clean. Of course, you can bet he won’t be eating beef for a while.”
“We can’t let this happen!” she said, distress pushing out all other emotions. “This is m
ore than just our ranch, it’s . . . it’s . . .”
“This whole part of the country,” the stranger said. “And maybe beyond.”
They sat in silence for several endless seconds.
Then the stranger turned to the foreman. “Mr. Murphy . . . Whit . . . how many men do you have left?”
The foreman thought briefly, then said, “Eight, countin’ myself.”
The stranger nodded, his eyes slitted. “Then get those men out on the Swenson range looking for fresh-dug graves. And if you can get inside the herd itself, try to spot any sick steers. So we can show the buyers what Guage has pulled.”
Whit’s eyebrows went up. “Boys may spook at doin’ work like this.”
“Tell them they’re fighting for their lives on this one.”
Whit nodded.
Papa, whose spirit seemed back, said confidently, “Any man still with us will stay with us.”
Willa asked, “What about our cattle?”
The stranger said, “If they’re not infected, they’ll keep. Better send somebody around to the other independent ranches, still fenced off, and quietly spread the word. We don’t want a panic. But I wager you’ll get some willing hands in a hurry.”
Her father said, “You’re sure this is the way to go about this?”
“You care to bet against it?”
“That’s a lot of talk, mister,” Whit said. “And it sounds good, I admit. So you probably deserve our thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I said ‘probably.’ But besides tellin’ everybody else what to do . . . just what are you going to do in all this?”
“Take a real personal interest,” he said.
Her father asked, “In what way?”
“By talking to a few people in town. I already know a few to approach. Sir, can you give me the names of citizens who you consider allies?”
Her father did so, beginning with the members of the Citizens Committee.
“Thanks,” he said, rising. He hadn’t written them down. “I’ll start there.”
Half-rising herself, Willa said, “Would you like to catch a few hours of sleep first? We have plenty of room in our bunkhouse now, I’m afraid.”
He gave her a smile. “No. Sleep is a luxury none of us can afford right now. Whit . . . I’m hoping to join you on the range with some volunteers. Can you give me directions to somewhere we might meet around . . . eleven, say?”
“I can do that,” Whit said, just a touch grudging.
A few minutes later, Willa walked their guest out. The sun was climbing and the morning promised to be as beautiful as the problems they faced weren’t. Still chilly, though. The sun would be working on that.
At the bottom of the porch steps, she stopped him with a hand on a sleeve and said with concern, “If this cowpox is a reality . . .”
“It is.”
“. . . and we don’t make it to market, that means . . . well, it means the Bar-O will be wiped out, doesn’t it?”
They were facing each other, perhaps two feet away. Morning sun was at his back and he was bathed in cool blue shadow.
“Possibly,” he said. “Not for me to say, really. I don’t know how exactly your business affairs stand.”
She gave him a sharp look. “Well, that ten thousand dollars my father promised to pay you—”
He cut her off with a raised hand, then said, “It had a catch in it, as I recall. I had to kill Harry Gauge first, right?”
“Right.” She let him see a smirk that stopped just short of insulting. “Of course, you got half that much just by showing up.”
He smiled wearily, then said, “Miss Cullen, something you should know about me. . . .”
“Yes?”
“I don’t take money for killing people.”
She shaded her eyes with a hand. “Then . . . who are you, anyway?”
“Not some hired killer. Did it never occur to you that I might really just be somebody passing through, who got caught up in things?”
“No, it didn’t. It still hasn’t.”
He sighed through his nose, a hint of disgust in it. “Well, your father can keep his money.”
She kissed him.
It was sudden, and sweet, then grew forceful on both their parts, as he held her to him, her arms going around him as she stood on tiptoes to meet the big man. Then, looking at each other, noses almost touching, he brushed the side of her face and her hair, and gazed at her with a tenderness that did not fit a man who had gunned down four men yesterday.
She asked, “Why . . . why do you kill, then?”
“Not for pleasure.”
He touched her face again, unhitched the gelding, and rode off toward town.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Stripes of mid-morning sun cut through barred windows, as Sheriff Harry Gauge entertained a guest in his office—Dr. Albert Miller, who right now looked like he could use a sawbones himself.
In the open area between Gauge’s desk and an old, small deputy’s table sat the lawman’s distinguished guest. The doc’s eyes were swollen, his nose trailing blood from its nostrils, skin along cheekbones ragged and red, lips puffy, discolored and bleeding. The plump little physician’s brown suit was rumpled and torn in front from where it had been grabbed repeatedly to shake him or to hold him for a slap, his white shirt splotched with crimson. Thin white hair mussed, he looked dazed, barely awake.
But he was.
Painfully so.
At that small table, two deputies were seated in hardback chairs, grinning, watching, smoking rolled cigarettes, sharing some morning whiskey, and playing two-handed poker for matchsticks. To their one side was a wood-burning stove, unlit, and looming over them was the wall of wanted posters from which stared faces almost as unpleasant as theirs. The presence of these deputies was not really necessary to this interrogation—the sheriff was plenty good enough at this sort of thing on his own steam.
Brown-haired and shaggy-mustached, bug-eyed Clovis Maxwell was the bigger of the two watchers, a cowboy who’d been among those who shoveled dirt over cattle carcasses last night, his filthy low-crowned plainsman hat and heavy leather chaps attesting his profession.
Across the small, scarred table was towheaded Cole Colton, small, even skinny, with close-set brown eyes, a trimmed gambler’s mustache and a sugar-loaf sombrero that seemed to dwarf him. He was no cowboy, just another former outlaw turned deputy in jeans and dark blue twill military shirt. He drank too much and was rattlesnake mean, but as a conscienceless killer, he had value to the sheriff.
These were the two men who had handled the dispatching of Old Man Swenson out near the stage relay station—Colton swinging the gun butt. They’d been invited to this questioning less to back up their boss than because they had a stake in what their guest had to say.
Both men carried .44’s, the weapons on the table as if serving as ante, though really to avoid falling out of their tied-down holsters.
They seemed to be enjoying the show.
Gauge slapped the doctor viciously on his right cheek and, when the man’s face turned to one side with the blow, bloody spittle flying, the sheriff slapped him again on the other cheek, just as hard, returning it to the other side.
“You’re a damn good Christian, Doc,” the sheriff said with a grin. “Turnin’ the other cheek like that.”
Maxwell guffawed at that; Colton didn’t get it.
Dr. Miller, breathing hard, did not seem to find any humor in the remark, either. How much he was seeing out of those swollen eyes was up for conjecture. His reddened ears had been cuffed enough to be ringing, so how well he was hearing was questionable, too.
“Maybe you’ll notice, Doc,” the sheriff said, eyes half-lidded, smile easygoing, “that I got a real touch for this kind of thing. Touch a medic like you might covet. See, I know just how far I can go without gettin’ to where there ain’t no comin’ back.”
He swung a sudden fist deep into the older man’s stomach. Wind whooshed out, accompa
nied by an anguished cry that was a mix of pain and exhaustion.
And the sheriff had only been at this twenty or so minutes.
Gauge placed both hands on the round man’s shoulders and leaned in, his seeming good humor gone.
“No more lies, Doc . . . and don’t hold out on me, no, sir. Good as I am at this, I can only hold back so long . . . and you’re too damn old and weak to take much more.”
His breath heavy and ragged, the doc said, “This . . . this is one thing . . . you won’t . . . won’t live down . . . Sheriff.”
That last word was uttered with unmistakable contempt.
Gauge let out some air, backed away, then began walking slowly around the seated man, like a stubborn loser at musical chairs.
“Touches my heart, Doc,” Gauge said gently. “That you’re so concerned about me, and my standin’ in the community. But, hell—you don’t need to worry yourself about Harry Gauge.”
Right behind him now, Gauge looped an arm around the doctor’s neck and pulled back, hard, as if flexing a muscle for an admiring female, forcing him back with the front chair feet off the floor, choking off the prisoner’s air, summoning a terrible gargling sound.
Then Gauge let go, chair legs finding the wooden floor with a jostle, and the sheriff again began walking slowly around the seated man.
“Just worry about yourself, Doc,” he advised.
When Gauge came around again, the doctor looked up at him, pleadingly. “I . . . I told you I didn’t bury anybody last night. Your man . . . who says . . . says he saw me . . . must have been drunk.”
Gauge’s eyebrows went up and down. “Well, good chance that he was. But that don’t change what he saw. Simple question, Doc. Who did you bury?”
“No . . . nobody.”
Gauge grabbed him by his suitcoat and shook him like the least obedient child on earth. Over at the table, Maxwell and Colton were smiling at each other, the smaller man giggling to himself.
“It was Old Swenson, wasn’t it?” Gauge demanded. “Don’t bother lying.”
His breathing ragged, the doc managed, “If . . . if you know . . . why ask?”
Gauge backed off, nodded slowly, hands on hips, appraising his bloodied interview subject. “Then we agree. It was Old Swenson you buried.”
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