Deadlands--Thunder Moon Rising

by Jeffrey Mariotte

  Enrique had been a natural horseman, a master horse trainer who used a jáquima—what Americans called a hackamore—to break wild horses so they had a soft mouth and responded to a rider like an extension of his legs. Cale had adopted American styles of dress, used short-roweled, blunted spurs, and even rode with an American saddle instead of a Mexican one covered with a mochila, but he had learned horsemanship at his father’s side.

  Cale’s father had been shot through the ribs during an argument at an Hermosillo cantina, and shot again, in the hip, during a running fight with cattle rustlers. But it had been another man’s sloppy rope work that had finally killed him, when a cow had broken free, mid-branding, and kicked Enrique in the face.

  Cale’s mother had died two years later, during an influenza epidemic. Unknown to him, his mother and Edith Tibbetts had been friends, and after her funeral, Mrs. Tibbetts had written to Cale, offering employment. The couple had practically adopted him, and he loved the ranch family like they were flesh and blood. Anything that hurt the ranch hurt them, and anything that hurt them hurt him.

  As they neared the spot, his stomach roiled with tension. For most of an hour he hadn’t been able to talk, but now he couldn’t even spit. When he saw three horses standing together near the big mesquite that marked the place of the dead, tears rushed into his eyes. He wiped at them with the back of one gloved hand and fought back more. Bad enough that if Nate had died, that would be on him, but he didn’t want to humiliate himself further by weeping in front of the men.

  It wasn’t until Nate started waving and calling out that Cale’s stomach unclenched and he allowed himself a moment’s relaxation. He was happy that Nate lived, but it was relief tempered by the knowledge that two men were still dead.

  Mr. Tibbetts urged his horse on faster when he saw Nate. By the time Cale got there, the rancher had dismounted and Nate was showing him the bodies. Tears glistened on the rancher’s weathered cheeks. He pawed at his right eye. He tried to say something, but the words caught in his throat.

  Cale brought his mount to a stop. “Everything all right, Nate?” he asked as he stepped to the ground.

  “Good enough,” Nate said. “Considerin’.”

  “Yeah.” Cale glanced at the bodies, and at Nate and Mr. Tibbetts, then studied the distant horizon as if something of great import were written there.

  “Get those spades,” Tibbetts said. “We got us some holes to dig.”

  * * *

  When the bodies were in the ground and Tibbetts had said a few words over them, the rancher beckoned to Cale. “Marlon, ride up to Tombstone and tell Sheriff Behan what’s happened. You other men, stay with the beeves. Cale, you come with me.”

  “Where to?” Cale asked.

  “Town,” Tibbetts said. “We got to get some more guns. If it takes every dollar I have, we got to keep the stock safe, and our men, both. We can’t get those animals to market, we’re done.”

  “Makes sense to me.”

  Tibbetts shot him an open-mouthed scowl. Cale didn’t think it was directed at him, but at the circumstances surrounding them, and he tried not to take it to heart. He was only so successful. The man’s pain was evident, and Cale felt it, too. The loss of his fellow hands was his loss, and so was Mr. Tibbetts’s loss. He didn’t pretend to think that he grieved more strongly than the rancher did. But maybe because the man was older, he had known more pain and knew better how to bottle it up, or swallow it down. He had shed some tears, but the sole emotion Cale could read in his eyes now was a grim determination to put things right. Tibbetts’s eyes were a pale blue that edged toward gray sometimes, depending on the light. Just now, they reminded Cale of polished steel.

  Chapter Six

  Jasper Montclair came from someplace back east, and he came from money. Tibbetts didn’t know where he hailed from, precisely, or what exactly the source of the money was. It was family money, he’d heard, but beyond that there were more rumors than known facts. Asking was out of the question—you didn’t ask a rancher how many head of cattle he had, because that was like asking him what was in his pockets. His vast Broken M, which lay between Tibbetts’s J Cross T and the mountains was, by all accounts, a successful ranch, and beyond that Tibbetts didn’t know much.

  But those things about Montclair were common knowledge around town. And they were apparent in the man’s voice, his patterns of speech, and the words he chose. There was also something about the way he dressed. He wore more or less the same style of clothing as any other rancher, but he didn’t wear it quite the same way. He had on boots and dungarees and a shirt and a kerchief around his neck, nothing fancy, not a silk wild rag like some of the boys wore on a night out. He had a leather vest that had probably cost more than all the clothes in Mrs. Tibbetts’s wardrobe. His hat was black and dusty, but not too dusty, and there was no visible sweatband ringing it like on most working men’s hats. He wore his brown hair long in back, where it fell limply past his collar.

  That was the thing about Montclair’s clothes, Tibbetts decided. They were too clean, too new. No wear on the knees of his pants or the cuffs of his shirt. Tibbetts owned three shirts at any given time, including the bib-fronted one he wore today. When he had worn one too long and hard to be patched anymore, he broke down and got a new one. His Sunday church shirt had lasted him for eleven years now, and had a good while to go yet.

  Tibbetts and Cale had ridden straight into town and tied their horses near the bank. Montclair had stepped out through the bank’s door at just that moment, and greeted Tibbetts, and Tibbetts decided to take a chance. “Montclair, you havin’ any troubles with beeves gettin’ all cut up?”

  “I have no earthly idea what you mean, sir,” Montclair said. His voice was a deep baritone, with just a hint of gravel in it. “Cut up in what manner?”

  “In the manner that leaves ’em dead on the ground,” Tibbetts replied. He had thought it was a pretty straightforward question. “Lookin’ like somebody with a bad grudge took an ax to ’em.”

  Montclair’s thin lips pursed like he was offended by the description. “I’m sure I would have been notified, if that had been the case. I haven’t heard of any such thing.”

  The rumors around town were that Montclair’s men didn’t tell him much about what happened on his own land. Montclair, folks said, was only a rancher in the sense that he owned a lot of property and ran livestock on it. But he didn’t seem to know what to do with it beyond that, and his hired men had to make all the decisions. “Well, you might want to keep an eye out. It’s been happenin’ to me, and last night I lost a couple hands, too.”

  “And you haven’t a clue who’s behind it?” Montclair asked.

  “No idea. Not even if it’s man or beast. I thought Apaches at first, but it don’t seem like them, really.”

  “Hardly.”

  Tibbetts was already tired of the conversation, and he could see Montclair was, too. The man’s gaze wouldn’t settle on anything. His deep-set eyes were an odd color, somewhere between green and brown, and his right one shifted around in his head like it had lost its moorings, never looking at the same thing as his left. Above them, bushy eyebrows reached out in every direction, as if desperately clinging to the bony ridge that shadowed those eyes. “Listen, I gotta get to the—” Tibbetts began.

  “Is there anything I might do to help?” Montclair asked him.

  “Such as?”

  “It sounds as if you’re down a couple of men. I could loan you some of mine.”

  “Loan?”

  “I would keep them on my payroll, of course. But I could spare some, if it would be of any assistance.”

  Tibbetts considered the offer briefly. He didn’t want to feel beholden to Jasper Montclair. And the offer struck him like an insult, or a slap in the face. Montclair would pay men who were doing him no service at all, so that Tibbetts could put them to work. In three sentences Montclair had made the points that he was far wealthier than Tibbetts—as if the fact that he was working hard at buyi
ng up every ranch in the area didn’t make that clear enough—that Tibbetts was struggling, and that whatever ill fate had struck the J Cross T had singled that ranch out and was not widespread. His cheeks burned, as if the slap had been real.

  “Must be nice to have everything you’ll ever need,” he said.

  “Excuse me, sir?” Montclair said.

  “Forget it.” Tibbetts took his leave of the man. Cale had been standing nearby, utterly ignored by Montclair, and probably, Tibbetts thought, the better off for it. As he reached the bank door, he turned and said, “Stay here, Cale. Mind the horses. I’ll be back pretty quick.”

  “Yes, sir,” Cale said. He was a good boy. Good young man, more accurately. He was seventeen now, full-grown and on his own.

  Stepping inside, Tibbetts realized he was still fuming. Montclair had land and wealth, and in Carmichael, those things gave him power. But none of that made him a better man. His offer seemed generous on the surface, but Tibbetts thought the intent had been to belittle him. By emphasizing Montclair’s generosity, he was drawing attention to the fact that even if Tibbetts had been similarly inclined, he couldn’t afford to make the offer.

  He had never accepted charity before, and he didn’t intend to start now.

  Inside, a handful of folks were lined up at the teller window. Tibbetts had lived close by long enough that he knew just about everyone in Carmichael, so he greeted them by name as he walked to the ornate desk belonging to Wilson Harrell.

  Harrell rose at Tibbetts’s approach. He was a stout man with a ruddy face that seemed out of place between his shock of white hair and small white goatee. His expensive suit had been custom-tailored, but fifteen or twenty pounds ago, so it clung here and there, emphasizing the added weight instead of hiding it. Tibbetts had never been to a big-city brothel, but he suspected that if he ever did, he would encounter curtains or wallpaper that reminded him of the pattern on the suit’s fabric.

  “Mr. Tibbetts,” Harrell said with a grin exactly as sincere as his handshake. He gripped Tibbetts’s right hand, gave it a hurried squeeze, and then released it as if afraid of catching some fatal disease. “What brings you in today?” He nodded toward a straight-backed chair next to the desk. “Please, take a load off.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Harrell,” Tibbetts said. He didn’t figure there was anything to gain from dodging the question. “I could use a loan.”

  “A loan?” Harrell looked away from him, pawed around his desk until he found his spectacles, then put them on. They perched near the bulbous tip of his nose, and he tilted his head back to regard Tibbetts through the lenses. “For what purpose, might I ask?”

  “On account of something’s been killin’ my cattle. And now some of my men. I need to add on some hands, gunnies, mebbe. To find out who or what it is and stop it.”

  “Because if you can’t, your stock will lose its value.”

  “Seein’ as how these animals’re bleedin’ themselves dry out on the range, what’s left of ’em, yeah. I’m losin’ value all over the place.”

  Harrell opened a ledger book on his desk, licked his thumb, and rifled through the pages. He stopped on one and ran his fingers along a few of the lines. “Hmmm,” he said as he perused the book. After another moment, he closed it. “You’re already quite extended, Mr. Tibbetts.”

  “I reckon I owe some. But if I lose many more beeves I’ll never be able to pay it back. You know I’m good for it, if I can keep enough alive to sell.”

  “That is, of course, one consideration,” Harrell said. “I would be remiss, however, if I didn’t point out that the total of your current debt is more than you’ve ever cleared from the sale of your livestock, even in your best years. If your stock is already depleted by this … this attrition you’ve described, then I don’t see that there’s any chance you could pay back the current debt this year, much less any new debt you might take on.”

  “This year, next, one after that. You know I’ll pay it, Wilson. Always have before, haven’t I?”

  Harrell studied him through those spectacles, like he was a scientist examining a new type of insect. “You’ve made regular payments, that much is true. But if you had actually paid it down, then it wouldn’t be so high, would it?”

  There was a tone of finality in his statement that Tibbetts didn’t like. He felt the flush coming back, same as when he’d been jawing with Montclair. “What are you saying, exactly, Mr. Harrell?”

  The banker took off the spectacles, setting them gingerly on the desktop. His expression was neutral, eyes blank. “I’m saying, sir, that I cannot loan you another nickel until I see some significant reduction in your principal. And if you don’t make some serious headway, I’m afraid you’ll lose your ranch.”

  “So no? Nothing at all?”

  “Nothing at all, sir.”

  The fact that Harrell had started calling him “sir” was all Tibbetts needed to hear. “Good to know where I stand, I reckon. After all these years.”

  “It’s nothing personal, I assure you.”

  “To you, mebbe. To me, it’s personal as all hell.” Tibbetts stood up so fast the chair rocked back, and he barely caught it before it crashed to the floor.

  “Mr. Tibbetts!” Harrell called. But Tibbetts was already stalking toward the door, aware that everyone in the bank was watching him. His boots were loud on the tiles, like handclaps in an empty church.

  * * *

  He and Cale went into Soto’s. At midday, the place was reasonably crowded, but nothing like it would be come nightfall. Tibbetts snatched up an empty glass from an unoccupied table and rapped it on the tabletop three times. The room quieted.

  “Most of you know me,” he said. “I’m Jed Tibbetts of the J Cross T. I need a few men. Ones who aren’t easily scared. If you got your own rifle, so much the better.”

  “What’re ya payin’?” someone shouted from the back.

  “A fair wage,” Tibbetts answered. “But I’ll be straight, it’ll mebbe take a while before you get paid. In the meantime you’ll get grub and a bed and a roof over you.”

  He heard laughter that made his cheeks burn with shame. A couple of men sitting together at a table stood up. They didn’t look like they’d had a decent meal in a long time, or a bath, either. They were so dirty it was hard to tell where their clothes ended and they began. “We could work,” one said. He was young, but when he opened his mouth it was nearly toothless. The other man was older, scrawny, with greasy gray hair plastered to his head. A patchwork of scars on that cheek offered mute testimony to some past catastrophe. Neither man looked like they were good for much, and Tibbetts wondered how they came up with the price of a drink between them.

  But beggars couldn’t be choosers—if they could, these two would have clothes that fit and boots that didn’t show their feet through the gaps—and nobody else was volunteering to work for the promise of some unspecified payment at some uncertain future time. “All right, you’re hired,” Tibbetts said. “Anybody else?”

  He was met by silence. Somebody scooted a chair on the plank floor. Someone else coughed twice. Behind him, he heard the scuff of boots, followed by the clearing of a throat. He turned and saw Jasper Montclair in the doorway. “Mr. Tibbetts,” he said. “A word?”

  Shame and humiliation started to rise again in Tibbetts’s throat, but he was running out of places to turn. “Sure,” he said. Montclair ticked his eyes toward the door, and Tibbetts left Cale to talk to the pair of volunteers while he went outside with the other rancher.

  “We had some miscommunication earlier. I am sorry if I offended you in any way. I noticed you weren’t having a great deal of success in there,” Montclair said.

  “Not so much, no.”

  “I wanted to reiterate my offer, then. I’ll need my whole crew soon enough, to round up my stock and get them to market. But until then, I can let you have four men, with horses. There would be no cost to you, beyond food and shelter. Please don’t think of it as charity, sir. If there is someone prey
ing on your herd, they might come for mine next. Even if not, sometime when I need extra hands for a limited time, you can repay the favor.”

  Tibbetts appreciated the effort Montclair had gone to, trying to make him feel better about accepting the handout. He still hated to do it. But four seasoned hands would do him more good than twenty of the kind he had found inside. You couldn’t always judge a man by how he looked, but there were instances where that was a decent indicator. He needed men who could keep their heads, and shoot straight if it came to that. Those two inside appeared as likely to shoot each other as anything else.

  “Fair enough,” he said after considering for a few moments. He forced himself to add, “Thank you, Mr. Montclair.”

  “Think nothing of it,” Montclair said, with a dismissive tone that made the rest of his comments into a lie. “I’ll send them over directly.” He turned and walked away without another word.

  Tibbetts watched him go, then stuck his head back into the saloon. “Cale,” he said. “Bring them two fellers and let’s light a shuck out of here.”

  Chapter Seven

  Sadie Cuttrell waited on the wagon seat for Jimmy McKenna to get down, walk around to her side, and offer his gauntleted hand. She took it, and he helped her down. She gathered up her skirts so they wouldn’t brush against the packed dirt of Main Street, releasing them only when she was on the boardwalk. She had not been born into her current station in life, and there were times she thought her grip on it was tenuous at best. As a result, she clung to the physical trappings of it—the clothing, the fine things she was able to afford—and the mannerisms she had adopted, and was determined never to let those things slip away.

  Appearances mattered. Jimmy was her husband’s aide-de-camp, but because he was also the commanding officer to the Buffalo Soldiers, if they were left behind, he stayed back, too. The arrangement was convenient for her. And because his position with Delbert was well known, it was perfectly legitimate for him to bring her into town on a shopping expedition. She wanted to prepare a fine meal to mark her husband’s return, so she needed provisions. But when she reached the door of Maier’s, the town’s sole grocer, there was a CLOSED sign hanging in the window.