Breath left Ty’s solid frame in a quick sigh of shock, once he recognized the green worsted-wool waistcoat with its gold buttons and the outer gray wool coat over it, the entire ensemble stretched tight and fixing to grow tighter with every hour the day’s heat increased. Then he knew for certain who the dead man was. And despite how he felt, seeing the man, once so powerful, self-confident, and cocky, so full of swagger in his various local dealings, Ty felt a twinge of sadness.
That the man was dead, had been for at least a day, despite the lateness of the season and so the coolness of the air temperatures, was apparent, given the bloating and the drawn, pasty look of his face. And, reasoned Ty, anything bothered so by coyotes would surely flinch. Nonetheless as soon as he saw the ragged creatures slinking and darting in on the dead man, he slid his rifle from its boot beneath his right leg and levered a round. The smooth, clean tang sound of steel sliding over steel sliced the still air and the three curs, as one, jerked their narrow heads toward the sound. It proved all they needed to hear, and they kicked up trails of dust thinner than their own flicking feet.
Maybe it was the effect of seeing the man astride a mount, perhaps the same man who had drawn down on them in the past for chasing his calves? Ty suspected it was the critters’ deep sense of mistrust and fear of man—in them since birth—that caused them to scamper away with such vigor.
He stepped down from Stub, keeping the rifle leveled toward the direction the coyotes had scampered. If they were as hungry as they appeared, they might dart back in and lunge at him. He’d seen it happen before.
Only when he stepped cautiously around the body to the far side did he see the blackened, dried clot of bloodied hair on the back of Winstead’s head. Since he lay faceup, it almost didn’t catch Ty’s attention.
“Did you tumble from your mount, Winstead?” said Ty in a low voice, squinting and hunkering down close to the man. He’d not yet begun to smell too bad, though Ty knew that if he could detect even a slight smell, the coyotes could surely detect the scent of the body from a long way off. And if coyotes could, other critters would soon be along as well.
Ty sighed and eased the hammer back down, then laid the rifle at his side—still close at hand. “Let’s flip you over, see if I can hoist you up and take you back to . . . Mrs. Winstead.” The taste of that name on his tongue curdled and stung like flecks of salt. Through the fabric of the man’s clothes, Ty felt the stiffness of the body, the flesh flattened on the bottom. A day? More, he guessed.
Ty Farraday was a tall, lean man who looked almost as if he were hewn from a block of rocky bone. He bore a perpetual haggard but determined look about him, common to hard-laboring men—as if no matter his pursuits, he would let nothing stop him from making it a success. Sandy hair, cut short and trimmed neatly about the edges, could barely be seen from under his low-crown, funnel-brim fawn rancher’s hat, slight sweat stains ringing the leather band.
His clear green eyes had taken on a natural squint from years of range riding, and they scanned everything before him from under sun-bleached eyebrows. His angled jawline was clean-shaven, save for moderate sideburns that defined the sides of his lean face. His tall, lean frame had been bedecked in worn but well-tended rancher’s gear since after the war.
He’d seen much death in the war, on the range, and on his own small spread, the Rocking T, which lay not far to the south. But there was no way a man could ever fully grow comfortable with the presence of that one sure thing in the world, the inevitable that everyone could expect, sooner or later. He skinned his clean-shaven lips tight to his teeth, gritting them against the grisly edge of the task. As he lifted the man, he caught movement in the husky gray scrub brush off to his left. A fawn gray face peered at him, a pink-and-black mottled tongue wagging with a panting effort.
“Get outta here,” barked Ty. “Git!”
The cur retreated without sound, though not far. Not far at all. Good thing it wasn’t a big cat. Might be one along soon, though. He had to get a move on.
As he shifted his gaze back to the task at hand, he saw more of the clotted, bloodied mess the back of Winstead’s head had become. Ty glanced quickly once again at the earth around the body, saw as he had before he dismounted that there were the hoofprints of at least one horse. They were difficult to read in the graveled surface. Maybe Winstead had fallen? He’d never struck Ty as the sort of man to become unseated, but it could happen to the best of riders, especially if a horse spooked a rattler, or even its own shadow. Horses could be fickle creatures. Then again, Ty recalled that he’d rarely seen the man ride, remembering instead that Winstead often favored that fancy barouche.
Ty cursed himself for stomping all over the place with his own boots. Might be he’d have discovered more footprints than just his own. As if to verify his budding suspicion that maybe Winstead met his end by means other than a horse throwing, Ty felt, with a fingertip, beneath the man something crusty, close by a hole in the back of his dead neighbor’s coat. A bullet hole?
“Well, hellfire, Alton Winstead. You and me, we never did get along in life, but I’ll be darned if I ever wanted anything such as this to befall you.”
Ty grunted as he moved the body of the portly dead man higher onto its left side and nodded his head at what he saw—several close-bunched ragged holes punched in the gray wool fabric, an expensive coat doing its owner no good at all. And now he knew for sure this was no accidental fall from a spooked mount. This was a killing, a back-shooting, at that.
Ty shifted his weight onto his right knee, looked over the man’s right side, and glanced at the swelling belly, but there didn’t appear to be exit wounds. He didn’t think there would be. Those holes looked to be made close-in and from a small-caliber weapon, maybe a .22. But they had been close enough to have ignited the fabric, causing it to singe the puckered threads. What blood had leaked out had hardened and crusted on the surface, but Ty felt the softening wetness sticking beneath his fingertips. He lowered Winstead to his accustomed spot.
Then a sudden thought jerked his head upright, eyes wide, scanning northeastward, as if he could see through the landscape, straight to the very image in his mind’s eye. “Sue Ellen!” he said, rising to his feet and snatching up the rifle at the same time. He mounted up on Stub, then glanced back once at the dead man.
As he reined Stub northeastward he said, “Sorry, Winstead, but I’ve no time to keep those critters from gnawing your stubborn hide. I’ll do for you what I can, when I can. Right now I have to see to your widow.”
Ty set Stub off at a lope in that direction, and for the somewhat hidden spot that he knew would put him within glassing distance of the ranch house of the Double Cross, Winstead’s spread. He let Stub have his head and they thundered down the steep embankment of an arroyo, then switchbacked up the other side, equally as steep. The late-fall air marked their breaths, man and beast, as plumes of dissipating smoke as they rode.
Clumps of dried grasses, like phantom heads poking from the knobby earth, rattled and scratched as they rode by, the brown stalks slender, harmless fingers caressing Stub’s legs as he ran through. Stub only ever balked when he saw a snake, and once on a bull thistle, just about this time of year, mused Ty, scanning the terrain ahead for the hard, brown telltale sign of the sticking culprits.
One more slight valley, down, then up, and there was the Winstead spread, the Double Cross, an impressive, if hollow, set of buildings that fit in out here no better than had their owner. What exactly had Alton Winstead had in mind when he came into the region ten years before? He’d promptly bought up that land that Ty had had a handshake deal on with the previous owner, old Regis Horkins. Bad enough that Winstead had made Horkins an offer the scrimy old buzzard couldn’t refuse, but that land had been Ty’s ace in the hole.
He’d been counting on buying it and expanding his own small spread. But just like that, one day he was headed in that very direction, lifewise, with thou
ghts of marriage on his mind and a vast spread on which he could ranch right, and the next thing he knew, Alton Winstead, in his slick black barouche, rolled in and bought all manner of local land, including the very acreage that Horkins had promised to Ty.
But it had been the theft of his intended, his one and only girl, Sue Ellen, that had stung Ty the hardest. Even after all this time, the memory still set his teeth to grinding.
Ty reined up and had to jerk the reins hard once to keep Stub from fidgeting while he glassed the house. There was always something moving on that horse, an ear flicking, a swish of the tail, hooves dancing, a shake of the head. Ty had never quite gotten used to it and mostly found it annoying, but he also knew it was as much a part of Stub’s nature as was Ty’s perpetual hard stare.
He’d been told often enough that people found it off-putting, enough so that he’d been approached a time or two in the nearest town, Ripley Flats, by men who thought he’d been trying, as one scarred character had called it, to “put the fear” into them. He’d laughed then, walked away shaking his head, but he knew what they meant. And he didn’t much care what people thought.
“Why don’t you smile?” Sue Ellen had said more than once.
“Why would I?”
“You seem so serious, maybe unhappy.”
That had made him smile. “But I’m not.”
She sighed. “I know, but you . . . oh, Ty. You look as if you are always angry.”
“Nope. Just thinking. I can’t imagine anyone would make a stink about that, now, would they?”
He’d winked at her and she’d finally smiled, her eyes crinkling the way they did when she’d give in to his way of thinking, even if she didn’t buy what he was selling. That look on her face used to make it downright impossible to look away from her.
Even after all these years, he could still recall that look, and it had made it more difficult than ever to put her out of his mind. He’d thought he’d succeeded. Heck, he’d have bet that he’d succeeded, but then he’d come across old Alton Winstead dead, already savaged by critters who didn’t know any better. If they’d bothered to ask Ty his opinion, he’d have told those fool creatures that pecking and nipping flesh off that particular man would only lead to gut ache.
As he crested a rise, the last before Winstead’s Double Cross Ranch, and the one that would give him a sight line on down to the buildings, Ty reined up and rummaged in a saddlebag for his telescoping spyglass. He worked the focusing rings on it, zeroing in left, then right, on the impressive main house, and there was Sue Ellen Winstead, lugging a galvanized pail from what must have been the kitchen of the house over to the well. She looked a little tired. Wisps of hair hung in her face, her cheeks were in high color, and her dress, skirt, and work apron were wrinkled and soiled. Beyond stood and sat several men in yard, on the porch, looking to be doing little more than ogling Sue Ellen and loafing.
As Ty spied on them, one man planted in a rocking chair on the porch swung his mustached face in Ty’s direction. Ty immediately lowered his spyglass but knew the effort was too late—men had already begun bustling into action. He’d been seen, probably because of light glinting off the glass.
“Curse the sun,” he muttered, sighing. He collapsed the brass spyglass and slipped it back into his saddlebag. Then he nudged Stub higher upslope so he’d be fully skylined. In for a penny, he thought as he pulled out his makings and built himself a smoke. He’d wait them out, not run like a child since it was obvious that two riders had been dispatched to his direction.
At least Sue Ellen was alive, if haggard looking. But even at this distance and even though she looked to have been worked hard, he had to admit Sue Ellen was still a fetching woman. He was a fool for her, always had been, always would be. Even on his wildest day of imagining, Ty couldn’t conjure a time when he’d not been attracted to the woman he’d known for all those long years ago.
He finished drizzling the fine-chopped tobacco into the trough of creased paper and smoothed the thin smoke, dragging it through his lips twice to seal it. He always took his time in such matters, found that most anything in life that was rushed more often than not turned out poorly. Just a fact. He reckoned he’d learned that from his mother, bless her Irish heart. And also from good ol’ Uncle Hob. Certainly wasn’t from the old man, a rascal more concerned with his next bottle of tanglefoot than in finishing a task well, on time, and happily.
Other than to slip off the rawhide thong looped over the hammer of his Colt Navy, Ty kept still, his hands resting on the saddle horn as puffs of dust from the riders bloomed ever closer. Soon he made out the breeds they rode—a chestnut and some sort of roan. Stub had marked their progress and now nickered, tossing his head slightly at their approach.
“Okay, boy. We’ll know something soon enough.”
And within a minute more, the two thundered upslope and into sight, no weapons drawn. They reached the top of the rise at which Ty sat atop Stub. The first horse’s rider sat tall in the saddle but only because he was a tall man, his obvious height accentuated by a black felt hat with a crown that ranged skyward. The man’s rounded shoulders gave him a look of defeat that warred with a flinty look of deviltry in his reddened eyes. He also sported a long, beaklike nose, red around the nostrils with quivering drips hanging from them.
The roan’s rider, a shorter, wider man, looked solidly built. Bandoliers layered a sweat-stained peasant shirt that, from the looks of it, had ranged a far piece from its days as a white garment.
A tall-crowned, wide-brimmed woven hat with a large-curling brim adorned the man’s head, which itself was a dark-skinned affair, all snagged teeth and shocks of thick, raw hair jutting as badly as his teeth. His efforts at working up a mustache looked to have been doomed for some time, as the entire affair was little more than a haphazard series of spidery hairs that, if possible, detracted further from the man’s scant looks.
But it was the eyes under thick, beetling black eyebrows that caused Ty’s jaw muscles to bunch. They were the dark, dead eyes of a man who cared little for his own life, and so would gladly—and Ty wagered with himself that the man probably had done so, numerous times—take the lives of others as easily as a scythe lays low stalks of grain.
The two men paused, assessing him and he them, each in turn. Then they split and flanked him. Ty tightened on the Morgan’s reins and walked the horse backward briskly. “Whoa, now, gents. Hold up.” And the two riders did just that.
“You and me, we’re not getting off to a cordial start. Usually such meetings go something like ‘Hi there, I’m so-and-so and you’re riding on my home range. Who be you?’ That sort of chatter. But when you two ride up bold as brass and think to outflank me, why, a man will become suspicious, don’t you think?”
This appeared to confuse the strangers. The tall one finally spoke. “You ought to come with us.” He dragged a sleeve across his drippy nose, jerked his head back downslope, toward the Double Cross, his tall hat wagging as if it might topple from its lofty perch.
“Was that a question or an order?” said Ty, careful to keep one hand on the bunched and taut reins, one resting on his leg, poised for snatching his Colt from its holster.
“Come on, don’t want to keep the boss waiting.”
Ty wondered who that might be, and what he came up with was that these men and the others were strangers to him and carried more than a whiff of wrongness about them. But not knowing this as a certainty, Ty merely nodded at them and waited.
They regarded him, looked at each other; then the smaller, swarthy-faced man made a low growling noise deep in his throat and gave what Ty was sure was the man’s orneriest glare.
Ty pulled in a long, slow draft of air through his nostrils, keeping his hand close by the Colt. “I got to tell you, fellas, I don’t scare easy.” The entire time he spoke he eyed them, kept their hands in view, made sure any sudden movement was met with one of greater
speed and force. He would brook no foolishness from these two ill-born wastrels.
“Come on, then,” sighed the tall, slump-shouldered man. He jerked his head downslope once again and the smaller man growled once more, giving his glare a last squinty effort, then nudged his horse into a slow walk beside Ty. It was obvious they intended to keep him just ahead of them. But since he was pretty sure these two and whoever else lurked at the Winstead home place were probably responsible for Alton’s death, a back-shooting and bludgeoning, to boot—no accident there—then he was not about to let them behind him.
He held Stub to a halting slow walk, and had to admit to enjoying seeing the muscles of the smaller man’s homely face and stalky neck tense and his veins throb. It was a wonder the runty short fuse of a man had any teeth left. Under such hard treatment, Ty suspected they’d have long since powdered. Still he kept a lid on his grin; no need to push the little man over the edge. Just up to it would do nicely.
They proceeded on down the last slope, then onto the long flat that led to the ranch. The roughs flanking ahead of him gave up their flagging attempts to drop back and heeled their mounts into a jog, though were still careful to glance at Ty every few seconds. He kept up with them, though he hung back a few paces.
As they neared the ranch entrance, he glanced up at its ironwork archway. It depicted a doubled cross that looked, Ty supposed, somewhat like a fanciful letter W. To his knowledge, Winstead had never bothered to make official the mark as a brand, not at least with the local cattlemen’s association. More and more as time wore on, it became apparent to Ty and everyone else locally that Alton Winstead was anything but a rancher. And if he intended to be, as he kept on telling everyone he was, then he had sure taken his time about it. And now it looked as though he’d never get there. But maybe Sue Ellen would.
Ralph Compton The Cheyenne Trail Page 25