Bill kicked his horse into a run. It took only seconds to reach the body. Bill dropped the reins and flung himself out of the saddle, dropping to a knee beside Aaron.
The dark stain on the ground around the youngster’s head told Bill there wasn’t much hope, but he placed the Winchester on the ground, grasped Aaron’s shoulders, and rolled him onto his back anyway.
The sight of the gaping wound in the young man’s neck, curving up and around like a ghastly second smile, made Bill grimace and look away. He didn’t bother checking to see if Aaron’s heart was beating. No one could survive having his throat cut open like that.
Bill snatched up the rifle and pushed himself to his feet. He took a quick step back, leveled the Winchester at hip level, and turned from side to side as his eyes searched the darkness along the creek.
Whoever had killed Aaron Wetherby might still be somewhere close by. The body could have been left there on the ground as bait in a trap to lure in another of the outriders.
The night was quiet, though, except for soft snuffling sounds that came from the two horses.
Bill forced himself to take a deep breath, thinking that might slow his racing heartbeat. The thick, coppery smell that rose from that pool of blood just made things worse. With his face set in grim lines, he backed away from the corpse.
The Pawnee had done this, he thought. One or two members of the war party had snuck up and jumped Aaron as he rode his circuit.
More of them might be out there right now, stalking him and Costigan, aiming to get rid of all the outriders so they could creep up on the settlement and be in Redemption, ready to kill, before anybody knew they were there.
He needed to get back to town and sound the warning, but at the same time a part of him rebelled at the thought of leaving Aaron’s body out here.
After a moment, Bill went to his horse and slid the Winchester into the saddle boot. He caught hold of the other horse’s reins and tied them around the trunk of one of the cottonwoods to keep it from bolting.
Then he got his hands under Aaron’s arms and with a grunt of effort lifted the dead youngster. When he dragged the body over to the horse, sure enough, the smell of blood made the animal try to spook.
Bill had tied the reins securely, though, so the horse couldn’t go anywhere. Bill lifted Aaron’s limp form and draped it over the saddle. He didn’t have any way to tie it down, so he would have to just take things slow, even though the urge to hurry was strong inside him.
He swung up onto his own mount, rode close to the tree, and untied the reins of Aaron’s horse. Leading it, he started along the creek toward the settlement.
He hadn’t gone very far when he heard more hoofbeats approaching.
Bill reined in and drew the Winchester. The hoofbeats sounded like they came from just one horse, so he risked calling softly, “Costigan?”
The steady thuds stopped abruptly, followed by a few seconds of silence before the buffalo hunter asked, “Is that you, Marshal?”
“Yeah. Are you alone?”
“That’s right. Have you seen young Wetherby? I thought he and I would have crossed trails again by now.”
“I’ve got him here with me,” Bill said. “He’s dead.”
A couple of seconds of stunned silence went by. Then Costigan muttered, “Damn it. Indians?”
“Looks like it. His throat’s been cut.”
“Has he still got his scalp?”
“Yeah,” Bill said, and for the first time that struck him as odd. Aaron had a fine head of hair, just the sort of trophy some bloodthirsty savage might want.
Of course, it was possible something had happened to spook the Indian before he had a chance to lift Aaron’s scalp.
They could puzzle that out later. For now, Bill went on, “Costigan, head on back to town as fast as you can and tell folks what happened. That war party could be sneaking up on the settlement right now, so be careful.”
“What about you?”
“I’m taking Aaron’s body in.”
Costigan had brought his horse closer. Bill could see him now in the faint light from the moon and stars.
“We’ll stay together,” the buffalo hunter said. “Just in case there’s trouble between here and there.”
“Blast it, I said—”
“No offense, Marshal, but I don’t work for you.”
Anger welled up inside Bill. He forced it back down. Arguing was just wasting more time.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Aaron’s horse trailed behind them with its grisly burden as the two men rode side by side toward the settlement. The yellow glow of lamplight was visible in quite a few windows, even though the hour was long after midnight, so they had that to steer by.
Both men rode with their rifles drawn and ready, but no one tried to bother them. As they approached Redemption, a guard called from the roof of one of the buildings, “Who’s there?”
“Marshal Harvey,” Bill answered. “We’re coming in.”
Josiah Hartnett was waiting for them when they reached Main Street. The liveryman cursed when he saw the body lying across the saddle.
“Is that—”
He stopped, evidently unwilling to go on.
“Aaron Wetherby,” Bill finished for him. “Yeah. Somebody cut the boy’s throat.”
Hartnett cursed. “Had to be the Pawnee. Did you see any of them?”
Bill dismounted and looped the reins of both horses around a hitch rail.
“No, I never saw anything except Aaron’s body. Might not have found it this soon if his horse hadn’t wandered up to me, loose and confused.”
“They’ve got to be around here, though, trying to sneak into town.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Costigan said, “I’m not so sure.”
“Because he’s still got his hair?” Bill asked.
“That and the fact that nothing happened to you and me. If they were trying to get rid of us, why didn’t didn’t they send a man or two after each of us?”
“Maybe they did,” Hartnett said. “Maybe you and the marshal were just lucky and they didn’t find you in time.”
“I suppose that could be,” Costigan said.
“Let’s go get Mordecai,” Bill suggested. “He’s fought a lot more Indians than any of us have.”
“You won’t have to look for me,” the deputy’s voice said as he walked up out of the darkness. “I was takin’ a turn around town when I seen you fellas standin’ here. What’n blazes is goin’ on?”
Flint’s breath hissed between his teeth as he looked at the body draped over the horse’s back.
“Is that the Wetherby boy?”
“Yeah,” Bill said. “His throat’s cut.”
“Get him down. Lemme look at him.”
Costigan and Hartnett lifted the corpse from the saddle and placed it carefully on the boardwalk. Flint knelt beside the body and dug a lucifer from the pocket of his old buckskin shirt. He snapped the match to life with his thumbnail, putting the stink of sulphur in the air.
The glare from the lucifer washed over Aaron’s face. His features were surprisingly calm and untroubled, Bill thought. They weren’t twisted in pain at all. Instead he bore a puzzled expression, as if he had died not knowing what was going on.
Flint flicked the match into the street, where it guttered out in the dirt. “Injuns didn’t do this,” he said.
“How can you tell that?” Hartnett wanted to know.
“This boy died fast, and as dyin’ goes, it wasn’t that hard. Might’ve hurt for a second or two, but by then he would’ve lost so much blood he wouldn’t really be feelin’ it no more.” Flint lifted his head to look at Bill, Hartnett, and Costigan. “Injun would’ve made sure he died slow and painful-like. Then he would’ve taken the boy’s hair.”
“That seems pretty shaky to me,” Hartnett said.
Flint snorted. “Don’t care how it seems to you, mister. That’s what happened. A white man did t
his, and all he cared about was gettin’ it done and leavin’ a body behind.”
“You mean somebody from here in town?” Bill asked as he struggled to understand what Flint was talking about.
“Wouldn’t know about that. All I’m sayin’ is that it weren’t the Pawnee who killed the boy.”
That didn’t make sense. Who else would have any reason to cut Aaron Wetherby’s throat? Bill didn’t really know Aaron, but it seemed unlikely that such a friendly young man would have such a deadly enemy.
“We got to do somethin’ about this,” Flint went on, breaking into Bill’s confusion.
“I suppose we should carry the body down to the undertaker’s,” Hartnett said.
Flint shook his head. “That ain’t what I mean.”
“We can’t let anybody know about this,” Bill said, suddenly grasping what his deputy meant.
“That’s right,” Flint said. “We can all talk until we’re blue in the face, but if folks find out somebody jumped this boy and killed him while he was ridin’ patrol around the town, they’ll all blame the Injuns. And that’ll just make things worse.”
Costigan added, “The old-timer’s right. I just got here, but even I can tell the lid’s ready to blow right off this town.”
“We still have to handle this properly,” Hartnett insisted. “The boy deserves a decent burial.”
“We can give him one, the four of us,” Bill said.
The other three men turned to look at him.
“There’s time to dig a grave in the cemetery and cover it back up again before morning,” Bill went on.
“People will see it and want to know who’s buried there,” Hartnett said.
“Maybe not if we put it over at the side of the graveyard, and…I dunno…park a wagon on top of it or somethin’,” Flint said.
Costigan asked, “Does the boy have family here? Somebody to miss him?”
Bill looked at Hartnett, who shook his head. “Don’t ask me,” the liveryman said. “I don’t know.”
“Neither do I.” Bill took off a hat and wearily rubbed his other hand over his face. “If we’re gonna do this, we’d better get busy.”
“It’s not fittin’,” Hartnett said. “He should have a coffin, and the preacher should say words over him—”
“Dig him up later and do all that,” Flint snapped. “Unless you want panic worse’n what you seen so far.”
“We’re doing this, Josiah,” Bill said, his voice firm. “If you don’t want to go along with it, that’s fine. Same goes for you, Mr. Costigan.”
The buffalo hunter shrugged and said, “I’ll give you a hand. I don’t think it’s a good idea for the town to go crazy, either.”
Hartnett sighed. “I’ve got a wagon and a nice thick horse blanket. We can wrap him in that, I suppose. We’ll need a shovel.”
“I’ve got a key to the mercantile,” Bill said. “Mr. Monroe wouldn’t mind if we were to borrow a shovel, as long as it was for a good cause.”
“I wish I knew if it really was,” Hartnett muttered.
So did Bill, but right now, he didn’t see any other choice.
As they split up to gather what they needed for this grim chore, a thought forced itself into his mind, and it was as unwelcome as any Pawnee war party would be.
From the looks of what had happened tonight, there was a good chance another cold-blooded murderer was lurking somewhere in Redemption.
Chapter 21
Because Bill and Costigan were busy putting Aaron Wetherby in the ground, there were no outriders patrolling the area around Redemption the rest of that night. Luckily, the hours before dawn passed quietly.
With help from Mordecai Flint and Josiah Hartnett, they got the unfortunate young man buried. Hartnett stretched a tarp over the grave, then parked one of his wagons on top of it.
Come morning, they would have to let Jeffrey McKenna, the minister of the Methodist Church, know why there was a fresh burial site in the graveyard behind the whitewashed sanctuary. That way, if anyone noticed the tarp and the wagon, McKenna could pass it off as some sort of work going on.
The preacher probably wouldn’t like lying, Bill thought, but under the circumstances it was necessary.
The sun wasn’t quite up when Bill finally made it back to the Monroe house. As he hung up his hat and then stretched his back, making it pop, he heard somebody moving around in the kitchen.
Eden must have heard him come in. She stepped out of the kitchen and came up the hall toward him. She wore her robe, and her hair was still tousled from sleep.
He held out his arms and she came into them. With a sigh of relief, she rested her head against his chest.
“Thank God you’re back. I barely closed my eyes last night from worrying about you.”
“I’m fine,” he told her as he lifted a hand and stroked her hair. “Nothing happened.”
The words threatened to catch in his throat. He didn’t like lying, either, especially to his wife. Sooner or later, the truth was bound to come out, and when it did he would catch holy ned from Eden. He knew that. It was just a price he had to pay to try to keep the citizens of Redemption from going loco with fear.
“I just put the coffee on to boil,” she told him. “Why don’t you sit down and rest a few minutes while I fix breakfast?”
Bill smiled. “That sounds mighty good.” He kissed her on the forehead, then went into the parlor and sank down in an armchair.
Not surprisingly, he was sound asleep less than a minute later.
When he woke up, he didn’t know how much time had passed, but judging by how tired he still was, he didn’t think he had slept for very long.
Eden knelt beside the chair. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I hated to wake you, but I was afraid you might sleep for a long time, and I knew you wouldn’t want that.”
“You’re right,” Bill told her. “I got to get back downtown and make sure there are still guards on duty.”
“Coffee and something to eat first.” Eden stood and held out her hand. “No arguments.”
Bill smiled and took her hand. “Nope, not a one.”
Flapjacks, eggs, and bacon, washed down with three cups of strong coffee, made him feel almost human again. He wasn’t groggy and his step was steady when he reached the marshal’s office a short time later.
Mordecai Flint was dozing in the chair behind the desk. When Bill came in, he started to get up, but Bill waved the old-timer back into the chair and propped a hip on a corner of the desk instead.
“Appears the town’s pretty quiet this morning,” he commented.
Flint nodded. “Yeah, so far. Folks are tired after gettin’ rousted outta bed last night when them buffalo hunters come in.” The deputy paused and added, “It wouldn’t be near so peaceful if they knew what really happened last night.”
“You haven’t heard any more about that, have you? Nobody saw us when we brought in Aaron’s body?”
“Nope. If they did, they ain’t talkin’.”
“Where are Josiah and Costigan?”
“Hartnett headed back to his place to get some sleep. The buffalo hunter went back out to ride patrol again, just a little while ago.”
Bill frowned. “Costigan was up all night.”
“Yeah, I know, but he claimed he was fine. Even said he’d get some other fellas from his bunch to help him. I didn’t figure we was in any shape to turn down the help,” Flint added.
“No, not hardly,” Bill said. “I’ll talk to him later, let him know how much I appreciate what he’s doin’.”
“In the meantime, you might start thinkin’ about what you’ll tell folks if they ask about the Wetherby boy. Somebody’s liable to notice that he ain’t around no more.”
Bill’s mouth tightened. “I’ve already thought about that. I’ll tell them that he decided to make a run for Dodge City. Nobody will be able to prove that he didn’t.”
“Yeah, I reckon that might work,” Flint said. “I talked to the boy some. Don’t reca
ll him ever sayin’ anything about bein’ particularly close to anybody here in town. Think he said his folks lived on a farm over around Wichita somewhere, and I got the feelin’ he didn’t want to be stuck on the place the rest of his life.”
“He wasn’t,” Bill said.
The night before, the drivers had pulled the wagons into an open area at the eastern edge of the settlement, then unhitched the teams and picketed the horses.
The men who had tents gathered around the supply wagon to take them out and pitched them near the wagons. Some of the men simply spread their blankets underneath the vehicles and crawled into them to sleep on the ground.
Colonel Bledsoe had picked a couple of men to stand guard. They had done so, muttering objections all the while.
Now most of the men were awake and moving around as Costigan approached the camp, leading his own horse. He had stopped by Hartnett’s on the way here to return the liveryman’s horse and put his saddle back on his own mount.
Dave McGinty hunkered on his heels next to a campfire, sipping on a cup of coffee. He looked up at Costigan and grunted a greeting.
Costigan started to ask his friend how he’d slept, then decided that would be unnecessarily cruel. He knew from the haunted look in McGinty’s deep-set eyes that sleep had not been peaceful.
“Morning, Dave. Spare a cup of that coffee?”
“Sure,” McGinty said without looking up at him. “Help yourself.”
Costigan took his tin cup from his saddlebags and filled it. “I could use your help,” he said as he put the pot back in the embers at the edge of the fire.
That made McGinty glance at him. “Help doin’ what?”
“The marshal needs volunteers to ride patrols around the town and watch for the Pawnee.”
“Ain’t that what you did last night?”
“Yeah, but I thought I’d take another shift,” Costigan said with a shrug. He added dryly, “This place appears to be a mite short of folks willing to step up and do what needs to be done.”
“Then why should we help ’em?” McGinty asked in a surly tone.
Because we’re the biggest reason they’re in danger right now, Costigan thought. Or rather, you and the rest of the bunch are.
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