He lay there and thought about that stark figure he had seen standing by the wagons, and a shiver went through him. He tried to tell himself it was because he was wet all over and even a summer night could be a mite chilly out here on the plains.
Morning couldn’t come soon enough to suit him.
Chapter 2
The storm moved on during the night. Rain had been rare enough lately in these parts that the streets of Redemption, Kansas, were almost dry by morning.
Only a few puddles remained as Bill walked from the Monroe house toward the marshal’s office and jail. He had a slight limp that would stay with him the rest of his life, the result of a steer goring his left leg during an actual stampede, not an imagined one like the night before.
Odd though it might seem, he couldn’t help but feel grateful to the ornery old brindle steer that had gone after him. If that injury hadn’t happened, Hob Sanders, the trail boss, never would have left Bill behind to recuperate in Redemption. Bill never would have met and fallen in love with Eden Monroe, and he never would have taken the job as the town’s marshal. It was a lot of responsibility for a young man in his early twenties, but he was learning to handle it.
No, without that old brindle steer, he’d be back in Texas by now, just another shiftless cowboy waiting until the next drive to the railhead. Broke, too, more than likely. He probably would have blown all his wages in a drunken bender once the herd reached Dodge City.
Benjy Cobb was sweeping the boardwalk in front of Monroe Mercantile when Bill got there. Cobb, who was small and shiftier-looking than he really was, worked part of the time at the store for Perry Monroe, Eden’s father, and part of the time as the swamper in Fred Smoot’s saloon.
Perry Monroe had been wounded in the same fracas that left Bill with a busted rib, and he’d had to hire someone to help out in the mercantile. So far, Cobb was staying sober and doing just fine in the job, as far as Bill knew.
Bill gave Cobb a friendly nod and said, “Mornin’, Benjy. Quite a storm last night, wasn’t it?”
Cobb leaned on his broom and returned the nod. “It sure was. When that thunder went to crashin’, it sure gave me the fantods. Sounded like the world was comin’ to an end.”
Bill didn’t mention how he had mistaken the thunder for a cattle stampede and fallen out of bed as a consequence.
“But I reckon we needed the rain,” Cobb went on. “Been mighty dry lately.”
“Yeah. How’s Perry this morning?”
Cobb lowered his voice as he answered, “Kind of crotchety, if you ask me. Said he didn’t sleep well last night. Probably because of the storm.”
Monroe had been up and gone from the house when Bill woke up this morning. That wasn’t unusual. His father-in-law liked to get to the store early and get ready for the day.
Hearing that Monroe had been awake some during the night made an uncomfortable feeling come over Bill. A young, recently married couple sharing a house with the wife’s father could be an awkward situation at times.
Because of that, Bill and Eden tried to be discreet, but it was difficult. Bill hoped Monroe hadn’t overheard anything he shouldn’t have.
What it amounted to was that he and Eden needed a place of their own. He made up his mind to talk to her about that the first chance he got.
“I’m sure Perry will be in a better mood later,” Bill said. “I’ll be seein’ you, Benjy.”
“All right, Marshal. So long.”
It still seemed odd to him when somebody called him “Marshal,” Bill thought as he moved along the boardwalk and then crossed the street toward the jail.
The badge pinned to his blue bib-front shirt was a constant reminder, of course, but it still hadn’t completely sunk in that he was the law in Redemption.
The idea that he might wind up packing a star had never even occurred to him until a few months earlier. He supposed he would get used to it sooner or later.
Redemption didn’t have a night deputy, so the office stayed locked up when Bill wasn’t there. So far that had worked out all right. People knew where to find Bill if they needed him.
He took the key from the pocket of his jeans, unlocked the door, and went inside. His flat-crowned brown hat went on a nail next to the door, which he left open because it was a little hot and stuffy in the office.
Despite the heat, he went over to the potbellied stove in the front corner of the room and started a fire so he could boil a pot of Arbuckles.
If the town continued to grow, he would have to give some thought to hiring a deputy. Mayor Roy Fleming and the rest of the town council might not be too fond of that idea, after what had happened with the last deputy, but Bill figured he could bring them around if he had to. If he was all right with hiring some help, they ought to be, too.
Once he had the coffee brewing, Bill did some sweeping of his own, like Benjy over at the mercantile. He didn’t mind the work. The townspeople had a right to expect the marshal’s office to be clean. He worked for them, after all.
He started at the back, in the empty cell block, and swept toward the front, eventually pushing the dirt and dust out the front door, onto the boardwalk, and into the street. With that chore done and the coffee still brewing, he took his hat off the nail and set out on his morning rounds.
Quite a few people were out and about by now. Bill saw Eden going into her father’s store.
She worked there part of the time, too. Later in the morning, she would go back to the house to prepare lunch for him and Perry Monroe, then deliver those meals to the mercantile and the marshal’s office.
She hadn’t appeared to notice him when she went into the store. He happened to be standing next to an empty hitch rail, so he leaned on it and contemplated things.
Eden would have to take things a mite easier once she was in the family way, he told himself. She might balk at that, because she liked to stay busy all the time.
Of course, she wasn’t expecting yet and there was no way of knowing when, or even if, she would be, but the possibility cropped up in Bill’s mind from time to time.
Growing up, he’d never given any thought at all to having kids someday. His own family life hadn’t been that good. If anybody had asked him a year earlier if he wanted children, he probably would have said not just no, but hell, no!
A lot of things had changed when he met Eden, though, and that was one of them.
Hoofbeats broke into his musing and made him look down the street. Bill straightened in surprise as he saw the riders coming toward him.
About twenty of them, he estimated, all wearing dust-covered blue uniforms with yellow stripes down the trouser legs. The man in front wore a black hat, and the rest of the men sported stiff-billed caps.
What was a cavalry patrol doing in Redemption?
The best way to find out was to ask them, Bill supposed. He moved out into the street, stepping around a couple of muddy places that couldn’t be called puddles anymore.
The officer leading the troopers held up a hand and signaled for them to halt. A grizzled sergeant riding behind him relayed that order in a bull-like voice.
Bill wasn’t all that familiar with the army’s insignia. He thought the officer was a captain, but he wasn’t sure. He nodded to the man anyway and said, “Howdy.”
The officer studied Bill, his haughty gaze lingering on the tin star. Bill felt his temper shortening. He didn’t cotton to being stared at like that.
He kept a lid on his anger, though, and waited for the officer to speak.
Finally, the man asked, “What town is this?”
“Redemption,” Bill replied. It seemed to him that even an army officer ought to be smart enough to know where he was.
“And you’re the local law, I take it?”
The officer’s voice was crisp, even curt. He was from back East somewhere, Bill decided. Folks here in Kansas talked faster than Bill did with his Texas drawl, but they were still a lot more leisurely than this fella’s clipped speech.
“That’s right,” he said in reply to the man’s question. “Marshal Bill Harvey.”
“I’m Captain Timothy Stone, in command of this patrol from Fort Hays. Could I have a word with you in your office?”
“Sure,” Bill said. He wasn’t going to turn down a request from the cavalry. He turned and gestured up the street toward the jail. “It’s right along there.”
Captain Stone nodded. He turned to the noncom and said, “Sergeant Hutton, order the men to dismount and water their horses.” Stone glanced at Bill. “I assume it’s all right for my men to use the town’s well?”
“Go right ahead.”
Stone swung down from his saddle and turned his horse over to the sergeant. He clasped his hands together behind his back and fell in step beside Bill as they started toward the jail.
“Are you injured, Marshal?”
“You mean the limp?” Bill asked. “Old injury. It’s fine, and it doesn’t slow me down much.”
“I suppose not, or the citizens wouldn’t have entrusted you with the job of maintaining law and order.”
Bill didn’t like Captain Stone very much. He tried not to jump to conclusions about folks, but Stone struck him as the sort of man who didn’t care what people thought of him, and because of that he didn’t mind rubbing them the wrong way.
Despite that, Bill wasn’t going to let the feeling get in the way of doing his job. It would be best to cooperate with the cavalry if he could, no matter what they wanted.
He ushered Stone into the office. “Coffee’s ready,” he said as he hung his hat on the nail. “Care for a cup?”
“No, I think—” Stone stopped, appeared to think it over, and said, “Why not? Thank you, Marshal.”
Maybe he wasn’t such a bad sort after all, Bill thought. He went over to the stove, used a thick piece of leather as a potholder, and filled a tin cup for each of them with the hot, black brew.
Stone took his cup, sipped, and nodded in approval.
“That’s very good.”
“An old chuckwagon cook taught me how to make it,” Bill said.
“You were a cowboy before you became a lawman?”
“For most of my life.” Bill smiled. “Becoming a star packer was next thing to an accident. I never planned on it.”
“Well, fate holds many surprises in store for all of us, I suppose.”
Bill propped a hip on the corner of his desk, blew on his coffee, and drank a little of it. “What can I do for you, Captain? By the way, feel free to take your hat off and have a seat if you want to. That old sofa’s pretty comfortable if you can avoid the busted spring.”
“No, thank you, I’m fine,” Stone said. “As I mentioned, we’re on patrol from Fort Hays. The commanding officer sent me and my men out to visit all the settlements in this part of the state and deliver the news.”
Bill frowned and gave a little shake of his head. “What news?”
“Why, that the savages have commenced another round of depredations, of course.” Stone sounded genuinely surprised that Bill hadn’t heard about it. “You need to be aware that Redemption may be attacked at any moment, and all of you may well be murdered in your beds.”
Chapter 3
The thirsty prairie had sucked up most of the water overnight, so as long as the drivers were careful, the hide wagons shouldn’t bog down, Ward Costigan thought as the group of buffalo hunters got ready to move out the next morning.
His sleep had been restless, and because of that, weariness gripped him this morning.
Dave McGinty hadn’t mentioned anything about Indians around the campfire during breakfast and neither had any of the other men, so evidently McGinty was still the only one who knew about Costigan’s nightmare and the phantom Indian he had seen.
Costigan was glad McGinty had seen fit to keep his trap shut. Some of the other men might have ridden Costigan about what happened, and that would have led to trouble.
Costigan did notice that before the wagons were hitched up, McGinty wandered over to them, apparently aimlessly, and had a good look around. Maybe McGinty was searching for moccasin tracks.
If that was the case, he was bound to be disappointed. That downpour would have wiped them out.
The Indian might have left some other sign, but Costigan knew that wasn’t true, either. He had already been over there himself and looked for anything out of the ordinary.
“Mount up, men!” Colonel Bledsoe called out.
He wasn’t a real colonel, not since the end of the war, but he’d continued using his rank and nobody had ever told him he couldn’t. He owned the outfit and hired the shooters, drivers, and skinners, and he’d been making good money selling hides for the past seven or eight years, first in Abilene and now in Dodge City.
William Bledsoe was a big man, wide through the shoulders, with a sweeping handlebar mustache and bushy eyebrows. The rest of his head was as bald as an egg. Even on a hunt, he wore a suit, tie, and derby hat.
Costigan didn’t like the colonel. Bledsoe was loud, arrogant, and a bully. He liked to tell stories about his exploits as the commander of a Union cavalry regiment during the war, and he expected the men who worked for him to listen attentively and tell him what a dashing hero he was.
Costigan felt more like spitting every time the man was around. But Bledsoe paid good wages, no doubt about that, and he cut his men in for a share of the profits when he sold the hides.
The party had eight shooters, twelve skinners, and six drivers, one for each of the five hide wagons and one man to handle the supply wagon. If need be, some of the skinners could drive, and the drivers could be pressed into service as skinners if the kill was really good. The shooters didn’t do anything but shoot.
Costigan was a shooter.
Riding snugly in sheaths strapped to his horse were a pair of Sharps .50-caliber rifles, the weapon people called the Big Fifty. They carried the thirty-inch barrel, and Costigan had modified the sights himself, adding a scale that could be raised for precise sighting.
Rifles like that weren’t cheap, but they were perfect for hunting buffalo. Costigan had two of them so that when the barrel of one got too hot during a long day of killing, he could set it aside to cool off while he used the other rifle.
Costigan had a Henry rifle, too, a repeater that he usually carried with him across the saddle when the hunting party was on the move. Some of the men had extra rifles in the supply wagon, but to Costigan’s way of thinking, those weapons wouldn’t do anybody any good if savages jumped them and the men were cut off from the wagons. It could happen. Costigan liked to plan ahead, even if he wound up never needing those plans.
Thinking like that had kept him alive through the war, after all, when a lot of other men had died.
The buffalo hunters moved out. The previous afternoon, the herd they had been following had begun shifting slowly to the west. Costigan knew he and the other men wouldn’t have any trouble catching up to the great shaggy beasts.
When they did, they would find a hillside or a bluff several hundred yards away from the herd, preferably downwind, and set up their firing stands there. The distance and the wind would keep the buffalo from noticing the shots that were killing them.
The creatures were so stupid, hundreds of them might fall before they realized anything was wrong. And although hundreds of them might have died the day before, they had no memory of that. Every day was a new day for a buffalo.
Every now and then, Costigan caught himself feeling sorry for the animals. They hadn’t done anything to deserve death except having hides that people found valuable.
But there was another way to look at it, Costigan told himself at those moments. The buffalo hadn’t done anything to deserve death except for being born.
That was enough, for them and for every other living creature.
McGinty rode up alongside Costigan. “What say we go do some scoutin’?” the shorter man suggested.
“You in a hurry to get to work?”
McGinty grinned. “The more we shoot, the more money we make.”
“Can’t argue with that,” Costigan said with a shrug. He nudged the big roan gelding he was riding into a trot.
Colonel Bledsoe was leading the way, of course. He always had to be out in front. McGinty lifted a hand and waved to the colonel as he and Costigan rode past.
“We’ll find those great hairy critters for you, Colonel!” McGinty called.
Bledsoe didn’t call them back. Costigan was grateful for that. He was glad for an excuse to get away from the wagons. They stunk, and so did the drivers and skinners.
When you were elbow deep in blood, guts, and hide so much of the time, it was pretty much impossible to get the stench off of you. The smell soaked permanently into the boards of the wagons, too. Sometimes not even all the air in the huge open skies of the plains could disperse it.
“Nobody was talking about Indians this morning,” Costigan said once they were well away from the rest of the hunting party. “What did you tell the men you rousted out to stand extra guard duty last night?”
“Told them I thought I caught a glimpse of a pack of wolves during that storm,” McGinty said.
Wolves nearly always avoided men unless they were starving, but every now and then, maddened by the smell of fresh meat, a pack would attack a hunting camp. So McGinty’s story was a reasonable excuse for waking some of the men.
“You could have told them what I saw,” Costigan said. “It would have been all right.”
“Didn’t really matter. The thought of some lobos lurkin’ around probably kept them more wide awake anyway.”
Costigan grunted. “Maybe so. But I’m not crazy, Dave. I know what I saw.”
“Sure. I never doubted it.”
McGinty might say that, but Costigan wasn’t completely convinced he was telling the truth. The two of them had been friends for several years. Of course McGinty didn’t want to believe that Costigan was seeing things.
But why would one Indian come sneaking up to the camp like that and then disappear? It didn’t make any sense.
Hunters Page 2