by Will Keen
‘They went back, two of them. I guess they found some blood in the dirt, maybe a couple of your teeth’ – this said with quirky smile – ‘but you’d gone, of course you had. Rankin and his pals saw to that. But in their haste, they were careless: the tracks they left taking you for help gave the game away, heading in the wrong direction for your continued good health.’
‘Back to Lo Tranquilo.’ McClain nodded. ‘I vaguely remember the doc leaning over me. Bit blurred.’
‘Him or you? That was Wilson. Invariably drunk, but always capable.’
‘And then it wound its way up to here, that giveaway trail?’
‘Hasty, careless, but not fools. When you were fixed up, they had more time. From town they moved you through the dark hours, the wee small ones, wiping all tracks with leafy branches like Indian youngsters taking some kind of initiation test.’
McClain grinned. A first, he realized. Didn’t do his split lip much good. The coffee was hot, black and sweet. He was dressed, sitting uncomfortably on a chair by the bed. Liz was over by the window, back to it, her face in shadow.
‘If they can’t find you,’ she said after a while, ‘it’s up to you and Carter to find them.’
‘The Skeltons are a big family, I hear. Ruled with a rod of iron by Grandpa Joel. They won’t be hiding. A brave man could ride in, beard them in their den.’
‘Waste of time. Probably fatal. Anyway, you know the two I’m talking about, and the Skeltons protect their own. A lesson you’ve learned the hard way.’
‘Yeah, this is all about Hedrick and Marty. And if they’ve got any sense, or listen to advice, those two killers will go to ground and hole up somewhere.’ McClain nodded to himself. ‘Sure, they’ll do that. But the location will be known to all their kin, and men can be made to talk.’
‘You call that a plan?’ Liz’s tone was scathing. ‘If that’s the best you can do, you’ll have me believing they’ve got you outclassed in the brains department.’
‘Make allowances, Liz. I rode nigh on a thousand miles and finished up getting beaten to a pulp.’
And now it was her turn to grin.
‘I think Carter will come up with ideas that might work.’
‘You’ve seen him?’
She nodded. ‘Sitting where you are now. Me standing here. You in bed dead to the world, mouth open and dribbling like a babe.’
‘So. . . ?’
She came away from the window and made for the door. ‘The plan? You can ask him yourself, McClain: he and Rankin are coming up for dinner.’
It was only then, as she opened the door and the rich aroma drifted in, that McClain realized there was something cooking in the kitchen.
Cooking might have been done in the kitchen, but the meal was eaten on a rear gallery completely enclosed in nets to keep out the mosquitoes. Liz did the serving with an expertise that suggested previous work in a hotel of some kind, or training in a college for young ladies of breeding. No prizes for a correct guess, McClain thought ruefully. Light from a moon veiled by high, thin cloud and filtering through the gallery’s palm-leaf roof transformed her into a drifting ghost. The sounds in the outside world that seemed as remote as a waking dream were mysterious: night creatures called in the scrub, birds’ wings fluttered as they roosted in the surrounding trees.
Carter had ridden up with the bruised saloon owner, Rankin, and another man whose clothing suggested he’d fallen off his horse and been dragged. The man gave his name as Ike. That was all McClain learned, other than that Ike was willing to do almost anything to see the Skeltons brought down a peg or two.
They were sitting smoking and drinking, the meal long finished and cleared away, with Liz somewhere inside the house talking to a woman whose accented voice McClain had heard from time to time while recovering. An oil lamp on the small round table added warmth to the moon’s cool light, glinting on the rims of glasses and colouring the swirls of cigarette smoke.
‘They killed my brother,’ Ike drawled. ‘I’ve been waiting a while for the chance.’
‘Could come with a rush,’ McClain said, ‘but precisely where or when is in the lap of the Gods.’ He looked at Carter. ‘According to Liz, the Skeltons will be riled enough to spit when they know I’m still around.’
‘And they will know, that’s certain,’ Carter said. ‘Bringing you into town at dusk got lamps lit and people talking.’
‘My current painful condition makes me wish you’d got to me sooner.’
‘I got out from under Rankin’s place quicker than I went in, believe me, then ran half a mile in a panic to have a drunken doctor lance a snake bite.’
‘He should put the bottle to one side for a spell,’ McClain said. ‘There’ll be more work coming his way.’
He realized the house behind them was silent. He looked enquiringly at Carter. The marshal shrugged.
‘This place looks good from inside, but it’s a one-bedroom shack that gets lost in the natural landscape, riddled with termites and held up by weeds and vines threading through the old boards. It’s rarely used, once a year, maybe, just to make sure it doesn’t fall down. Her home’s a fine antebellum tucked away in a glade a mile back from the sea, a couple of miles to the west.’ He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘Liz has gone home and taken her maid with her, a pretty Mex girl.’
‘Taken her how?’
‘Liz used to ride everywhere; she was a sight to see with her long dresses, her wide-brimmed hats. But not anymore. Now she uses a double buggy, four wheels, got a fine harness horse. It’ll be an easy ride home.’
‘But about this place,’ McClain said. ‘In towns of this size, there can’t be many secrets. This place must be known to the Skeltons and they’ll know it’s Liz’s. There’ll be no need for sniffing around, but if they did that they wouldn’t need the nose of a hunting dog. A man with a heavy cold would smell this food a mile off, and if this place isn’t often used that’s sure to make them suspicious. So where are they? Why aren’t they making their move, using force and numbers to finish the job?’
Ike’s grey eyes were animated in his deeply lined face, his scrawny frame twitching.
‘They’ll know Rankin’s spoke to me, know I helped bring you in, and gettin’ on the wrong side of me’s like lighting a powder keg’s fuse and forgetting to step clear.’
‘One man.’ McClain shook his head. ‘No disrespect, but would one wild man stop them?’
‘Maybe they’re wary of Rankin there. He’s sure to make someone pay for what got done to him.’ Ike grinned. ‘Ain’t that right, old friend? Or maybe it’s Carter they don’t want to cross. He’s got a long memory, has Carter, and a big score to settle.’
‘Or maybe it’s none of those things,’ Rankin said.
Carter dropped his cigarette butt, ground it out under his boot and finished his drink. McClain was watching Rankin, waiting the man out, wondering where his thoughts were heading. If Ike was a loose cannon, Rankin was the man who’d always look before leaping, the man who stood behind his saloon’s bar nightly, watching and listening. He was touching his bruised face with a fingertip, lips pursed as he pondered. His gaze lifted. He looked at McClain.
‘You’ve proved yourself a tough nut to crack,’ he said. ‘I don’t think they’ll try again.’
‘I just said that fear of one man, any one man, won’t stop them,’ McClain said. ‘They will try again, because if they don’t finish me they know I’ll go after Hedrick and Marty.’
‘Both of us will,’ Carter said. ‘That means they have to finish two men, not one, both wearing badges. Maybe they will think twice.’
‘Maybe,’ Rankin said. ‘But there’s always more than one way of skinnin’ a cat.’
‘I know what he’s suggesting,’ Ike said at once, and he shook his head emphatically. ‘The Skeltons are dirt, every damn one of them – but they would never harm a woman.’
Carter frowned. ‘You saying they’ll go after Liz?’
‘That’s what he’s suggestin’,
’ Ike said, jerking his chin at Rankin, ‘but he’s dead wrong.’
‘Listen,’ McClain said, and he silenced Ike’s instinctive reaction with a hard glare. ‘I’m here in Lo Tranquilo because my wife was murdered. A knife was used. The sight of her body tore me apart. Soon after, I came across evidence that makes me damn sure the guilt lies with those two Skeltons – Hedrick and Marty. So, moving on. Not too long after that – but enough time for them to shoot down in cold blood an innocent nester – they lodged at an old lady’s rooming house in Red Creek and left her with her throat cut and her blood soaking into her bedroom floor.’
There was a soft sound: it was Ike either expressing horror or continued disbelief.
‘That last explains why Carter’s ridden a thousand miles to his home, with me tagging along. To say Rankin’s dead wrong, that they won’t go after a woman, probably ties in with what you’ve come to know of the Skeltons over the years,’ McClain said. ‘But from what I just told you, you know it’s going against hard evidence where the two we’re discussing are concerned.’ He switched his gaze to Rankin. ‘They were in my hometown, Macedo’s Flat, Arizona, close to the Mex border. That’s a long way from the Gulf Coast. D’you know what was going on?’
Rankin shrugged. ‘From talk I picked up while serving drinks I got the bare bones. Marty was ridiculed for his manner, his dress, his obvious lack of intelligence. I knew that, knew Hedrick got into the habit of standing up for his brother. It was Hedrick figured a spell away might be a good idea. Salt water’s in their blood. I heard California mentioned.’
‘How long away?’
‘A year, maybe more.’
‘So then they got homesick. Or Hedrick got tired of standing up for his brother against strangers even less likely to be tolerant. Maybe there was trouble, someone died.’ McClain shrugged. ‘Either way, they left a bloody trail on the way back – both of them, because if Marty was handy with a knife it was Hedrick gunned down that homesteader.’
‘Always did fancy his chances with a six-gun,’ Ike said, ‘but always against equals, against men,’ he added stubbornly.
‘We’ll never know what went on in California,’ Don Carter said, ‘but in a year away from home, cut loose from a pa or grandpa strong enough to hold tight to the reins. . . .’ He stopped, looked around and let the listeners follow his thinking. He saw the slow nods of understanding and said, ‘A man among strangers can gain wisdom, or go clean off the rails. What happened in Macedo’s Flat, on their way down from the hills, then in Red Creek – hell, I hope and pray their Skelton kinfolk have got them holed up in a shed with no windows, a strong door with a timber baulk set in iron brackets—’
He was stopped short by the faint rattle of rifle fire. Cutting through the talk, the noise of distant shooting was shocking. It had come, McClain reckoned, from somewhere away to the west. In the sudden silence he looked at Don Carter.
The marshal nodded. ‘Just about now,’ he said softly, his face drawn, ‘Liz Kent and her maid will have reached home. I could be wrong, but it sounds like they’ve ridden into a whole mess of trouble.’
Chapter Fourteen
The bright moonlight gave them hope. The old house where McClain had been restored to health was surrounded by trees, but most of the land for miles around was relatively flat. It was dotted with prickly pear and Spanish daggers, and in parts covered with low-lying scrub, mostly chaparral.
They had a clear run across country. They would surely see riders coming away from Liz Kent’s house, no matter which direction they took. Rankin was of the opinion that, if they had taken Liz Kent as a hostage to put pressure on McClain, they would head for the coastal strip and use one of the many ramshackle buildings in and around Lo Tranquilo as a temporary holding cell. Then they wouldn’t waste time. Early morning, they would come to Rankin’s place – he insisted they would do that, no matter where they had taken Liz.
His place, he said with a breathless grin as they piled off the gallery and ran to their horses, was church, jail, community centre and, as of a couple of nights ago, the place where small town marshals lay doggo beneath the board floor or came limping in after a beating to lick their wounds.
Ike led the way on a piebald pony that set off like a racehorse bounding from the Saratoga Springs traps. As they broke clear of the trees the moonlight came full and clear, bathing an undulating landscape with cold light. They were flanked a mile away to their left by the impossibly narrow strip of glittering water that was Laguna Madre. Beyond that the darker shape of Padre Island separated the Laguna from the open sea. Rankin brought his horse storming past McClain and pulled level with Ike’s piebald, close enough to reach out and touch Ike’s shoulder to say something. The words were lost to McClain, but he saw Ike look at Rankin and nod.
‘That woman’s made a lot of friends,’ Carter called, riding alongside McClain. ‘I think they just swore allegiance.’
‘Maybe so, but we came south after two killers. You get the sense things are running out of control? We’re getting outwitted?’
Carter’s answering grin didn’t reach his cold eyes. ‘Nobody’s ever been able to control the Skeltons, but if they’ve taken Liz they’ve made a big mistake.’
‘How far?’ McClain flapped a hand, pointed ahead.
‘The string of lights you see away to your left, oil lamps in back rooms, street lights here and there – well, you know that’s Lo Tranquilo, and while moonlight on the Laguna looks pretty, we’ve no time for gazing. But the next light you see will be ahead and it’s the only one you’ll see, because Liz has got no close neighbours. How far to go? A mile, maybe less.’
Talk ceased. They rode hard, allowing their mounts to pick their way over ground that looked like a level plain in the flattening moonlight but was treacherous, with ruts, holes and rocks that could snap a horse’s foreleg. They had a choice of tracks, mostly age-old animal trails. Rankin and Ike were still together, ahead of McClain and Carter, and kicking up enough dust to choke a mule train.
Then, without warning, with Liz Kent’s house now no more than a couple of hundred yards away, those two front riders slowed to let the others catch up.
‘Smell it?’ Ike was sniffing the air, his nose up like a hound trembling at the scent of game. ‘We got it right, those shots were fired here, or close, that’s the stink of gunpowder.’
Only half listening, his eyes searching, Carter said, ‘There’s no light in the house.’
Rankin had walked his horse on and was leaning out of the saddle, scanning the ground.
‘Too hard,’ he said, stating the obvious and coming back. ‘No tracks, no possibility. If riders have been here. . . .’ He let his voice trail off and lifted his head to look towards the house.
‘What about wheel ruts?’ McClain said. ‘Liz is driving a buggy.’
Again Rankin shook his head. ‘I’m not sayin’ there’s none. Liz is in and out of town most days, so what I’m saying is there’s too many in dry ground to say which are recent.’
‘We didn’t waste time,’ McClain said. ‘Shots were fired, we moved fast. You say there’s no tracks, too many tracks,’ he shrugged, ‘but what I say is that if the Skeltons had been here—’
‘Who the hell else would it be?’ Carter snapped.
‘—we would have seen them,’ McClain finished, ignoring the anger and impatience. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, back the way they had come. ‘We’d have seen them, heard them. Hell, if they took Liz Kent they’d have been struggling—’
‘An unconscious old lady,’ Ike said, ‘no, too damn easy; they’d have her thrown across a horse—’
‘But first there would have been a struggle when she resisted, then with everything settled they’d still be slowed down,’ McClain insisted.’ He shook his head. ‘But what I’m pointing out is there was nothing, not a sight or sound, and there’s nothing now.’
‘So we go take a look at the house,’ Carter said, and he kicked his horse into a run towards the fine antebellum
mansion.
‘I’ll look around outside,’ Ike said, and he rode his piebald off at an angle that would take him to the side of the house where the shadows were deepest.
McClain rode slowly after Carter and heard Rankin tag on behind. At the house he swung down and left his horse alongside Carter’s, reins trailing. Carter had crossed the wide balustrade gallery and was trying the door. It swung open at his touch.
McClain stared, frowning. ‘Is that unusual, an open door?’
‘Not around here,’ Rankin said. ‘Most folk are poor, why bother with locks or bolts?’
A light flared as Carter struck a match. Seconds later there was a warmer glow spilling out of the door as he lit an oil lamp; he picked it up and held it high. McClain was inside by then. He moved silently and saw a comfortable living room; old chairs stuffed, split, bursting; dark oak cabinets and tables; walls hung with faded pictures in gilt frames.
‘Nothing disturbed,’ he said. He kept his voice low.
Carter shot him a glance. ‘She’s not here,’ he said, ‘if that’s why you’re whispering. Her and her maid, Maria, they’re not upstairs sleeping. They’ve been away for days, the place closed up, airless. I know Liz. If she’d been back, the perfume she wears would be a giveaway.’
‘Lavender,’ McClain said. ‘But shouldn’t you look around anyway, the kitchen out back, go upstairs and make sure? Make sure she hasn’t been finished off in her bed, both of them, like that old girl, Ma Thom, back in Red Creek?’
‘There’s no buggy.’
‘You don’t know that. It could be out back.’
‘No.’ Carter was shaking his head, refusing to listen. He blew out the lamp and put it down, pushed past McClain and went outside. He walked a few paces, stood, legs spread and hands on hips.
‘We heard shots,’ he said, and looked at McClain and at Rankin, who had now come up onto the gallery. ‘Ike was right, there was gunsmoke here – we all smelt it – so this is where those shots were fired. And you were right, McClain, if anyone had been here, they rode away in a hurry—’