Rakeheart

by Rusty Davis

  “You look like a range tramp,” she challenged as Rachel tried in vain to interrupt her and Kane grinned. He guessed the girl was about twelve. The Minnesota Sioux uprising had been back in ’62. About right. That would make Rachel someplace close to his age if he was adding it right in his head. Then he wondered what was right in his head that he was thinking like that about a woman Sherman thought might have killed her husband.

  “Mommy? Mommy?” The boy spoke.

  “Mr. Kane is here to visit, Jeremiah. He is a friend of your daddy. He brought some friends to celebrate his new gun. That was the noise. They had to go, but he can stay for a very little while longer before he has to go as well.”

  The boy looked relieved. The expressionless girl knew better.

  “That was Chad,” she said. “He is disgusting.”

  “He is gone,” Rachel replied firmly.

  “So is my coffee,” Kane said mournfully, looking at the stain in the dirt.

  “You shouldn’t spill,” Libby told him.

  “But menfolk are supposed to make messes, little girl,” he said. “Otherwise the whole rest of the world wouldn’t be needed to clean up after them!”

  He got a smile from lips that moved as her large, dark, expressionless eyes beheld a world that had inflicted some hurt upon her Kane could not fathom.

  “How much of everything did you hear last night, Miss Got-to-Spy?”

  Libby looked back silently.

  “I know you was there. You still got that cobweb thing on your left ear.”

  Libby’s understanding that Kane was joking her came only after she touched her hand to her ear and saw the wide grin break across his face. She pursed her lips.

  “I heard what . . .”

  Rachel cleared her throat loudly. The let-me-show-off look on Libby’s face was replaced by one promising retribution, which Kane returned with another grin.

  “Mr. Kane, even though you have time for childish games, I have children to feed,” Rachel said. “We have chores to do and a ranch to run. You may join us if you wish. There is more coffee. There is also, if you are of a mind, plenty of work.”

  Libby looked smug to see him told off. Her eyes widened when he made a face at her as Rachel turned her back to speak to Jeremiah.

  Kane wanted more coffee and a hunk of bread but decided to ride out. The indomitable Widow Wilkins had no room in her life for mysteries or amateur detectives; she was too busy surviving.

  “This Clem fella?”

  “West pasture.” She pointed. “About five miles. Let me know what he tells you I did.” She went into the house without looking back, small in stature but large in presence. Libby and Jeremiah trooped behind. The girl gave him one last look as the door closed behind them.

  He saddled Tecumseh and walked the horse past the house. No one openly watched him leave or said good-bye. He waved anyhow.

  “Bye, Libby!”

  No response.

  He had come for answers. He left with questions.

  “You drank her coffee?” Clem Ferguson laughed from the back of his coal-black stallion. “Had it once and figured I was like to die. Everybody on the ranch tried to tell her one time or another. She ain’t the tellin’ type.”

  “Noticed.”

  Kane could not help but like the young man, not much older in years than the drunks who had marred the morning. Cattle were grazing across fields that seemed less green than varying shades of brown. There were more than Rachel had led him to believe—maybe sixty or so in sight—but they looked like small dots on the vast expanse of the flatlands. The land could have held hundreds and still seemed to go on forever under a sky that was blue as far as the eye could see.

  “They could be four good hands,” Ferguson said when Kane told him about the incident. “They are all too lazy. Chad’s old man, Link Washburn, runs the Double L on the other side of Rakeheart. Says his son has to learn ranchin’ from the ground up. Won’t let him ride for him, or so he says, but every time a spread fires Chad, he takes the boy back. That boy will be a good man someday if he don’t do something stupid to get dead. I think Chad has ridden for every ranch around here and worn out his welcome at all of them. Hear talk Rakeheart wanted a sheriff. Maybe he’ll take that on.” Ferguson clearly thought the idea of a sheriff was amusing. Kane let it lie.

  Ferguson was hesitant to talk about what mattered to Kane.

  “Boss had gotten quiet, real quiet. I have worked here three years, like to four. Man was always talking; bring the kids out to see the cows; invite the hands to eat with him and Rachel. Up until that big snow, maybe a little before, this spread was like one family. I do not know what happened, but I know everything started to change. Mostly him. A few times he was in that barn talking to himself a blue streak. Then he’d get all flustered about it. Worried we might have heard what he said, as if on a ranch this small, there’s much in the way of secrets.”

  “Money trouble?”

  “The herd keeps growing, and we all keep eating, even if none of us is ever going to be rich. Sale price goes up and down, but that’s the business. Every ranch out here is one or two bad years from going under, but it is the way we all live. Never heard him complain.”

  Kane had to ask the next question.

  “They have a problem? Jared and Rachel?”

  Clem took his hat off and scratched an imaginary itch on the back of his head. He resettled the hat.

  “Rachel’s not your usual woman. There was always food, no matter what kind of harvest was had. Never saw her anything but happy to be there. Those kids? She would talk to them all day. You might hear her say about five words a year to the rest of us unless you ask her somethin’, but she was always making a fuss over the kids. When she was around the hands, it was smiles and such polite-like, but she mostly never shows a thing. She didn’t like his drinkin’.”

  “He a drunk?”

  “He never used to drink at all, but he started drinking heavy over the last few months. He’d drink, and she’d have a look on her face that said she didn’t like it. She never spoke up, at least with us around. And he spent more time in town than he used to. Rakeheart.”

  “This Chad,” Kane began. “And her . . .”

  “Chad thinks every woman ever born is his,” Ferguson said, dismissing the idea with a wave of his hand. “Boy thinks he is irresistible to every female in Wyoming. And that’s sober. Drunk . . .” He shrugged.

  “Think she killed her husband?”

  Ferguson looked at Kane as though the man had called his mother a foul name. “Happens. Got to ask.”

  “Got work to do,” said Ferguson icily. “Nice meeting you. I’d watch who you accuse of things. Lady isn’t . . . well, like the rest of ’em, but she’s decent. You might not want to talk to my crew. They got better things to do than hear talk like that about the woman who is now their boss. Ranch don’t have a lot, but we got loyalty.”

  Ferguson rode quickly away. Never did answer, thought Kane. Never did.

  Kane took his time on the ride back to the ranch house. The sun was warm. This Wyoming land could make a man stare. He knew the land wasn’t flat, it was uneven. Rocky. Tough. But as the wind blew strong from the west, it looked free, open, and inviting—as though riding across it to some place far, far away from mysteries and murders would be the best thing a man could do with the rest of his life.

  He sighed. It was a dream disconnected from reality. If Sherman wanted to find him, Sherman would find him. Somehow.

  He looked across the landscape. An antelope emerged from a copse of trees. Three bounds and it was gone. Graceful.

  Scared.

  The rifle shot sounded as he called Tecumseh’s name and kicked the horse’s flanks. Nothing whizzed past that he could hear, and soon he and the horse were moving too fast for anyone but the best of shots to hit him.

  He rode hard back to the Wilkins ranch. Called Rachel’s name. No answer. Colt in hand he prowled. Garden behind the house. Quite a garden. He had not se
en it before. Cow barn. Bunkhouse. Stable. No one.

  Ferguson had said Wilkins was found in the doorway to the barn. He stood there. Looked out. House was likely, of course. Lot of prairie out there, too. He wondered if anyone heard the shot. Or if there were many shots and only one hit. Or if shooting at the Wilkins house in the middle of the night was common. Guess he had detective learning to do.

  There were some gouges in the wood by the stable door that looked new, one for certain he would guess was a bullet, but for all he knew they could have been from a drunk cowboy six months ago. A miss could have gone into the barn.

  He drew the hammer of the gun back as he heard the horse; then he saw it. Rachel and her kids, riding triple. She had a rifle in the scabbard of her saddle. Woman would be crazy not to have a gun on the range. Man would be crazy, also, not to wonder, even though he had no reason to believe the gun was aimed at him. Felt that way, though.

  The little boy leaped down and came running.

  “We saw a bear with babies!”

  “Where was that?”

  He looked back at Rachel.

  “Bears follow the stream,” she said. “It winds south and west, and we go there sometimes in the glade where they rest.”

  Libby, looking intense but staying quiet, came up to stand beside her mother. He was reminded of a pack closing ranks when facing a threat. What was the threat? Him? The truth? All strangers?

  “And you, Miss Libby? You get to play with the bear?”

  “You don’t play with bears.”

  “I do. Wrestled one in Texas . . .” He went on with every possible misadventure he could think of. He took a deep breath. “Then it made coffee, and I let it go.”

  “That was awful!”

  Kane bowed his head as though she had applauded.

  The boy was smiling. Rachel was not. Kane could feel it. She was on edge to guard, whether the threat was real or not. He was trying to imagine her killing her husband. Didn’t fit what he knew. Not yet. But her unease was convincing him that her fears were deeper than stray questions from a passing stranger.

  The silence became uncomfortable as the flies made more noise than the people.

  “Seen what I could see,” Kane said at last. “I will be in Rakeheart a spell. Might be back. If you think of something, send for me. Want to get to the truth. Not much I can do to change things, but you need the truth.”

  He thought again about the money Sherman sent him to give her. Another day.

  “Have a safe ride,” Rachel said flatly and without enthusiasm. An extra meaning? He wondered.

  He rode south, then doubled back to find the creek and follow it. She would have been near where those shots came from, maybe. Maybe not. She never mentioned a shot. Guns on the range weren’t unusual events. He’d see.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Afternoon was settling upon Rakeheart as he rode in. From the sign he could follow, Rachel and her children did not come home from the trees where the shot was fired. However, there had been horses everywhere, and he was not a skilled tracker.

  Janie was still at the stable. She tried to smile, but it died before it formed. Kane did what he could to put it back in place.

  “Told him he had to eat extra to make up for the last time,” he said as he led Tecumseh to the stall nearest the rear door of the stable. The joke brought no reaction.

  “Something wrong?” he asked. The transformation from happy chatterbox to sullen silence was unexpected.

  “You should have let Bud shoot him,” she said.

  “Kevin . . . um . . .”

  “Morris. He’s one of those men who gets an idea in his head and don’t let it go. He thinks I’m his property to grab at any old time he feels like, which is always. Since Bud didn’t shoot him, which is what he deserved, he keeps company with the three Colberts. They are as dumb as rocks, but rocks smell better. When they’re around, he is even worse, as though he needs to show off so they know he owns me.” She imitated a man swaggering.

  “Kick him where it hurts.”

  “Ever kick something that fat?”

  He started to laugh, but she was too intense. “How about your pa?”

  “Mister, he’s drunk when he isn’t mean. He might kill Kevin by breathin’ on him, but that’s about it. If I tell him about how Kevin treats me, he might blame me and hit me. I don’t want to be hit any more, mister, and certain sure not over Kevin.”

  Kane took a look at the girl. His first guess had been around sixteen, but maybe she was a year or so older. Brown hair and an outdoor complexion. Face strong more than cute, but he could not help but feel protective. He never had that impulse until he spent too many years trying to remake the world for those people Sherman wanted to protect. It changed a man.

  “No husband or man to put him to rights?”

  “Pa tried to shoot the last boy,” she said bitterly. “I might as well marry a horse.”

  “Least you’d get a ride to the weddin’.”

  “It’s not funny!”

  He supposed it was not. He finished removing the saddle and blankets and arranging everything in the stall. Horse needed proper care, no matter what kind of silly dramatics the human world was going through around it.

  He could go to the bank or general store to talk to the town council fellas about this sheriff idea. Or maybe not quite yet. Sheriffin’ probably had rules. Buttin’ in did not. Maybe do that first, while he could.

  The loudest noise in the corner of the Black Dog saloon came from a table of young men. Morris and three others. Almost no one else in the place. Kane ordered a beer, let it sit as he leaned back on the solid wood of the bar and watched the young men play cards. When they are young and drunk, it never takes very long.

  One of the three Colbert boys with Morris saw him. Kept staring.

  “Too good to drink with us?” called out one of the Colberts, a man with a crop of fuzz on his face and small, beady eyes.

  Kane smiled and said nothing in return. One of the other Colberts, the youngest of the three, came to the bar for more beer.

  “Oops!” The young Colbert—a smirk on a clean-shaven face—bumped into Kane hard, jostling his arm and sending the beer in Kane’s hand sloshing across his boots.

  Kane said nothing, wiped his hands, and turned to order another glass.

  “Don’t spill this one on me,” said Colbert.

  Kane didn’t acknowledge him at all. The less he said, the faster it worked.

  “Hey! I’m talkin’ to you.”

  Colbert’s hand grabbed Kane’s shoulder. Kane pulled the man to him, slammed the side of his head against the hard wood of the bar, twice, then pushed him to the floor.

  The first Colbert moved in to defend the family honor. Kane let him swing a few times, then hit him hard under the left arm. Colbert doubled over. Kane hit him alongside the temple, and there were now two Colbert boys on the floor, out cold.

  Morris and the third Colbert had started to rise but thought better of it. They sank into their chairs as Kane walked toward their table.

  “Hear you grab women in the dark of the stable,” he told Morris. “Figure you are some kind of big, important man.”

  “None of your business,” Morris replied.

  “It is now. Horse stays there. I stay there. Bad for the horse if the lady’s upset.”

  “Lady!” He spat on the floor. “You don’t tell me what to do. She likes me. Women like a man who knows what he wants and takes it.” He was trying to bluster while looking up at Kane. It failed.

  “Telling you to leave her alone. She don’t like it. She don’t like you. Neither do I, much. Do not go thinking that ’cuz I didn’t let you get murdered and because you got away with having done somethin’ stupid, that somehow you was a man who’s got privileges. You don’t.”

  Morris moved, but, before he could get up, Kane gripped the young man’s forearm. Duane Colbert’s eyes registered how much he could see Morris was in pain, and his hands went wide to make it clear
he was sitting out the dance.

  Kane didn’t say a word. With one hand on the back of Morris’s neck, he slammed the man’s head into the table. From the squealing and screaming and the blood, it was clear the young man’s nose was damaged, if not broken. Kane let go. Morris covered his nose and moaned.

  “Don’t make me tell you again. I’ll face you in the street like Bud Franklin wanted to whether you want to dance or not.”

  Kane turned to Duane Colbert. “Brothers?” Colbert nodded. “Got no grudge against you and them. Man backs his friends right or wrong. This time it was wrong. Far as I go, fella, it ends here. You don’t like that, leave a note for what to do with the body when you come up against me. Otherwise, nothing personal.” The Colbert boy nodded.

  He walked back to the bar.

  “Any problem?” he asked the bartender, who was putting a wooden club back behind the long wooden bar.

  “Nope,” said the man. A quick smile. “Sorry there wasn’t a full house for the show. Be good for business.”

  “I’ll be around,” said Kane, walking slowly out into the street.

  Jack Conroy was waiting on a customer, so Kane took his time and looked at the items cramming every inch of Conroy’s store. He had no needs, having used the money Sherman gave him to buy new clothes, but there was something about a general store with its disorderly chaos of items piled every which way that made a walk around it seem like the start of a treasure hunt.

  About a half hour later, having sold three spools of thread to the matronly woman who seemed hard-pressed to decide which shade of black was best, Conroy walked over to Kane with a face etched in relief and an outstretched hand.

  “Mrs. Peters has her ways,” he said. “Might weigh a hundred pounds, but she shot a bear last year that was threatening her grandkids. Never know out here, do you? You have some time to think about our offer?”

  “Got some thoughts.”

  Conroy watched the Colbert boys and Morris wobble down the street. Disapproval etched his features.

  “I hope you see things our way. Men like that are why we need some law here. There has to be some respect for this town, or it will die.”