“Hell, no, it won’t,” Dill told him. “I know who you are.”
“What if you’re gone under before I am?”
Dill frowned. “Hell, I hadn’t thought about that. Sorta wish you hadn’t mentioned it.”
Still muttering among themselves, the two punchers went to their horses, mounted up, and started to ride out of Carterville. At the edge of the settlement, Dill began singing, “Oh, bury me not, on the lone prairieeeee . . . where the coyotes howl . . . and the wind blows freeeee . . .”
Denny shivered a little, then went back to the stable to pay Thad Carter for the dead man’s horse.
* * *
She rode out of Carterville with more supplies, a bedroll, and the knowledge that she had killed a man. Bringing his horse with her probably wasn’t a very good idea, she reflected as she followed the trail north. The paint would be a constant reminder of what she had done.
On the other hand, maybe it was better that she remember. How much worse would it be if she could end a man’s existence and then just forget about it . . . as if it had had no meaning at all? She didn’t want to ever be that callous. It ought to be possible to acknowledge the gravity of what she had done without actually losing any sleep over it, she thought.
She supposed she would find out when she crawled into that bedroll later on.
It was almost dark by the time she found a suitable place to camp next to a tiny creek that would provide water for her and the horses and allow her to fill up her canteens before she departed in the morning. She built a small fire, glad for all the times she had gone hunting and camping with Smoke, Cal, and Pearlie during her visits to the Sugarloaf. She knew it had bothered Sally to have her adolescent daughter out there in the wilderness with a group of men, but they’d always been careful to act properly around her. With Smoke there, nobody would have dared to do otherwise. And of the things Denny had learned, how to make a fire had already turned out to be valuable. Having learned how to skin and dress game might turn out to be invaluable.
She had gone along on those trips simply because she enjoyed them, but she realized they had been part of her education, just as much as any of those fancy schools in England and France and Switzerland were.
She put coffee on to boil and made batter for biscuits that she could cook for breakfast in the morning, after they’d had a chance to rise. She fried bacon and ate it with some crackers she had bought back in George Carter’s store before leaving the settlement. It was sparse, plain fare, but the Arbuckles’ made all the difference. As the fire burned down after she had eaten, she sat and sipped a second cup and listened to the little sounds around there—the horses cropping at grass; the stream bubbling through its rocky bed; small animals rustling in the brush, going about their nocturnal business again now that they had figured out she wasn’t a threat. Somewhere far off a coyote howled, and that put her in mind of the song Dill had been singing as he and Stovall rode out of Carterville.
The man in the derby hat wouldn’t be buried on the lone prairie, but he would lie in an unmarked grave in a cheap pine coffin, unknown and unmourned. If the few brief sentences he had gasped out as he was dying were true, he had been married once. Denny supposed the man and his wife had loved each other, at least some. She had left him, though, which meant that even if she knew he was dead, she probably wouldn’t care anymore. Denny wondered if they’d ever had children. And what had become of the woman and the man from Elkhorn she had run off with?
Maybe none of it was real. Maybe that sordid history was just the fevered imaginings of a whiskey-addled brain. Denny had heard it said that the human mind sometimes made up stories to help it cope with things that were just too painful to face head-on, to the point that a person might not be able to tell the difference between what was real and what wasn’t. Louis had told her about some doctor in Vienna who studied things like that.
She had no answers, she thought as she threw the dregs of the coffee into the fire and listened to the drops sizzle. What she had was a job to do, a gang of rustlers to find, a threat to her family that needed to be eliminated. She spread out the bedroll, wrapped herself in the blankets, and listened to the faint crackle of the flames.
Sleep came swiftly, and the dreams of blood and death she had halfway expected stayed far away.
CHAPTER 27
Brice Rogers had seen a few hellholes in his time, but he wasn’t sure any of them had been as bad as Elkhorn.
Some decent folks probably lived here, but if that was the case, none of them seemed to be out and about in the settlement. As he rode slowly along the main street, everybody he saw in the light spilling through the doors and windows of the buildings he passed was either a beard-stubbled hardcase, a slinking gambler, a sloppy, stumbling drunk, or a garishly painted lady of the evening.
Raucous music and bursts of laughter came from the saloons. Seemed to be more of them than anything else, at least a dozen in a town that boasted only a three-block business district along its lone street. The other establishments included several cheap hash houses, a couple livery stables, a Chinese laundry, and a pair of general stores.
Elkhorn was off the beaten path. That was, in fact, the reason for its existence. In the old days, a settlement like this sprang to life because of the wagon trains and the other immigrants on their way west. With railroads reaching just about everywhere and civilization advancing across the country at a breakneck pace, a town like Elkhorn had to cater to another element—the breed of men who still rode dim trails, who skirted the border of lawlessness and often barreled right over it.
Theoretically, the county sheriff had jurisdiction over the settlement, but the county seat was sixty miles away and no deputy had set foot in Elkhorn for several years. If one had tried to, it would have cost him his life. There was no city marshal, either. The men who ran things didn’t want one, wouldn’t have stood for one. If a fellow had a problem, he had to handle it himself. If that meant killing—or getting killed—then so it went, to the way of thinking of those who lived there.
No, Rogers mused, if there were decent folks in Elkhorn, they shut themselves up in their houses when the sun went down and didn’t come out until the next morning, when the other denizens of the town crawled into their holes to sleep off the night’s debauchery.
He seemed to feel that deputy marshal’s badge burning like fire in its hidden pocket. If the men he was riding past ever caught a glimpse of it, his life would be immediately forfeit.
As long as the badge stayed concealed, he appeared to fit right in. He hadn’t shaved since leaving Big Rock several days earlier, and he had deliberately kept his rations short enough that a hungry cast had settled over his features. He looked like he’d been riding the owlhoot trail for months.
One place was as good as another to get started on the job that had brought him there, he thought as he reined to a stop in front of a saloon called the Silver Slipper. That was a pretty gaudy name, considering the saloon’s squalid appearance.
As he tied his horse at a rather crowded hitch rack, he wondered just how safe the animal would be. Probably fairly safe. He didn’t really believe in the concept of honor among thieves, but the hardcases who drifted into Elkhorn had to have some sort of code of behavior. If they stole freely from each other, the resulting shoot-outs would plunge the settlement into bloody chaos overnight. For their own benefit, they were better off keeping any larcenous impulses in check.
He stepped up onto the boardwalk, pushed the batwings aside, and walked into the saloon. The atmosphere inside the Silver Slipper was thick with heat and unpleasant odors. The smells of unwashed human flesh, spilled beer and whiskey, vomit, and piss vied with the blue-gray clouds of tobacco smoke that hung in the air. He had to make an effort not to grimace at the stench. Most of the people in the saloon spent so much time in places like that they didn’t even notice the smell anymore.
Nobody paid much attention to his entrance—or at least they pretended not to. He saw eyes flicking un
obtrusively in his direction, though. Wherever they were, men on the dodge had to check out everybody who walked in, just in case the newcomer was an old enemy . . . or a lawman who was braver than he was smart, looking to get himself ventilated.
The gamblers and the soiled doves assessed him as a potential source of income. Rogers ignored them as he walked to the bar, found an empty space, and eased himself into it.
A craggy-faced bartender in vest, string tie, and boiled white shirt came down the hardwood to stand across from him. “What’ll it be, mister?”
“Whiskey and then a beer.” Rogers wasn’t a big hombre, but he had a considerable capacity for liquor and knew that much wouldn’t muddle his thinking or slow down his reflexes.
Of course, that was probably what all drunks believed, he thought wryly.
The whiskey was raw enough to make him cough a little, despite his best effort not to.
The bartender chuckled. “Don’t worry, mister. It affects most fellas the same way. I reckon it’s all the gunpowder and strychnine we put in it for flavoring.”
“That’s a good joke,” Rogers said hoarsely.
“Yeah, a joke, that’s what it is,” the bartender said. “Want another?”
“Not just yet.” Rogers picked up the mug of beer the man had set in front of him. “I’ll chase it with this.” He took a swallow.
The beer actually wasn’t bad. It was cool enough to soothe his whiskey-tortured throat.
He downed another swallow and said, “What’s going on around here?”
“What do you mean?” the bartender asked with a frown.
“Well, there’s got to be some kind of action—”
“We got poker and faro games going, and of course there’s always women.”
Rogers shook his head. “I don’t see any profit in that. I’m looking to make some money, not spend it.”
The bartender leaned both hands on the bar. “You’ve come to the wrong place, then. Elkhorn’s a plumb peaceable settlement. It welcomes all sorts, as long as they’re not looking to cause trouble.”
That went along with what Rogers had thought earlier about the settlement. There was an unspoken truce. The men who drifted through wanted to be able to ride in again the next time they needed supplies or a drink or a card game or some female companionship.
“Fair enough. Trouble’s sure not what I’m looking for. Some job that might be worth doing, though . . . that’s a different story.”
“Well, if you’re looking for work, there’s a fella you might want to talk to. He’s sitting back there in the corner. You better tell me your name first, though.”
“That seems a mite on the nosy side.”
The bartender shrugged. “Seems more like just being careful to me.”
Rogers had known that was likely to happen. His reluctance to provide a name was more for show than anything else. After a moment, he said in a slightly surly tone, “My name’s Lon Williams.”
“Whereabouts are you from?”
He stiffened. “Hell, that’s going too far!”
The bartender chuckled again. “Take it easy, Williams. I was just funnin’ with you. See that brown-haired hombre back yonder in the corner?”
Rogers turned his head to look, then asked, “You mean the fella with the pug nose and the freckles? Looks like he ought to be on a farm somewhere?”
“That’s no farm boy,” the bartender said. “You go on back and talk to him. I’ll give him the high sign so he’ll know you strike me as the right sort of gent.”
“Obliged to you,” Rogers said with a curt nod.
“Take your beer with you.”
Rogers picked up the mug with his left hand and walked toward the table in the back corner where the pug-nosed man sat alone. He wore a denim jacket and flannel shirt, and had a bottle and an empty glass on the table. His black hat was thumbed back on thick, tousled brown hair.
Rogers saw the man’s eyes dart past him and figured the bartender was giving the signal. He stopped at the table. “Howdy. The drink juggler says you’re the man I need to talk to about hunting some work.”
“He does, does he?” the man asked in a mild voice.
“That’s right. Mind if I sit?”
“It’s a free country, amigo. Last time I checked, anyway.”
Rogers set his beer down, pulled out a chair, and eased into it. “I expect you’ll want my name.”
The man held up a hand, barely lifting it from the table. “Names are like shirts. You can change ’em when you need to. I’m more interested in where you’ve been and who you might know.”
Brice was prepared for that. “You want to know my bona fides. I drifted this way from Kansas. Rode with Edgar Bell and his cousin Jim Poole for a while.”
The brown-haired man squinted at him. “Bell’s in jail and Poole’s dead. The rest of their bunch is behind bars, too. Seems I recall they tried to rob a bank and found themselves in the middle of a hornet’s nest instead.”
“That’s right. I pulled my freight a couple weeks before that happened, or else I’d be looking out through some gray bars, too—or holding up six feet worth of dirt.”
“Not many people knew that Bell and Poole were cousins,” the man mused. “They sorta kept that quiet.”
Rogers nodded. “I know.”
“What about before that?”
“I grew up in Missouri. Too civilized back there, though. Me and another fella got into a scrape over a girl. He figured he could get away with pulling a knife on me. I blew his lights out and had to leave those parts in a hurry.”
“Where was this?”
“Little place called Twitchell. It’s not much more than a wide place in the trail.” It was the hometown of the real Lon Williams, who at the moment was locked up in the Colorado state penitentiary at Cañon City. Rogers had arrested him four months earlier for stagecoach robbery, and Williams had volunteered the information about the shooting back in Missouri. Some telegraphs back and forth had established that the hombre Williams had shot hadn’t died after all, so he could serve out his sentence for the robberies before being sent back to face attempted murder charges. The real Lon Williams had never ridden with the Bell-Poole gang, but he could have; the timing fit. Rogers knew about Bell and Poole being cousins because it had come out while Bell was being questioned after he’d been placed under arrest. Both those elements of Rogers’s story would check out if anybody went to the trouble of looking into it.
So would the details about other crimes Williams had been involved with that Rogers added, including being part of a rustling ring that had operated in western Kansas. He didn’t elaborate too much, just enough to make it clear that he was a wanted man with a history of crime and violence and not much in the way of scruples.
The man on the other side of the table smiled. “You’re a real bad man, aren’t you?”
“I’m a man who plays the hand he’s been dealt,” Rogers snapped. “I never figured it made sense to be any other way.”
“How come you split from Bell and Poole when you did?”
Rogers shrugged. “I had a bad feeling about that bank they were planning to hit. That settlement was a pretty rough cow town back in the trail drive days. I figured there might still be quite a few folks around there familiar with which end of the barrel the bullet comes out of, if you know what I mean. Turns out I was right . . . but I didn’t take no pleasure in it when I heard about what had happened.”
“Well, all that sounds reasonable enough, I reckon.”
“So, are you hiring?” Rogers hoped he wasn’t pushing too hard, too fast.
“Me?” The man smiled and shook his head. “No, I’m not hirin’. All I’m doin’ is roundin’ up strays, I guess you could call it. I’m puttin’ together a group of men to ride with me back to where they’ll meet the man who is doin’ the hirin’. You interested in bein’ one of that bunch, Williams?”
“Is there money to be made?”
“You don’t want to know wha
t the job is?”
“I already asked the question I want an answer to.”
That brought a laugh from the man. “Then yeah, there’s money to be made. One of the biggest ranches in Colorado to be looted, before we’re done.” He extended his hand across the table. “They call me Muddy Malone.”
Rogers gripped the outlaw’s hand. “Pleased to meet you, Muddy.”
CHAPTER 28
Two more days of riding had Denny as stiff and sore as she had ever been. She had thought of herself as an excellent, experienced rider, and she had worked together with the crew on the Sugarloaf enough so that long hours in the saddle didn’t bother her. Or so she had thought.
Putting in those long hours day after day was different, she had discovered on her way north. Riding the buckskin and leading the paint wore down a person and put a deep ache in the muscles and bones.
It was with a sense of relief that she rode into the settlement that had to be Elkhorn. Sure enough, she spotted a sign over a business’s door that read ELKHORN GENERAL MERCHANDISE, V. TRAMMELL, PROP.
It was late afternoon. The streets were starting to empty out. As Denny slouched along, she saw men and women dressed like townies hurrying here and there. They cast nervous glances around them and over their shoulders, almost like they were afraid and wanted to get wherever they were going before the sun went down and night settled over the town.
She wasn’t sure where somebody who was looking to recruit rustlers would set up shop, so to speak. Probably in one or more of the saloons. Certainly not in a general store. But a store was a good place to pick up information about a town, as she had discovered back in Carterville.
That thought brought a brief frown to her face. She hadn’t been dogged by a guilty conscience about the man she’d been forced to kill. Her sleep since then had been untroubled by anything except sore muscles. But the memory of that moment was still with her and probably always would be. She was sure her father didn’t remember all the men he had ever shot. Such a feat would be impossible. She didn’t expect to have to kill that many men in her life. It would be all right with her if she never had to kill another one.
The Jensen Brand Page 19