“Damn right we do. And this whole business with Lute gettin’ killed don’t help matters.” Dawson puffed on his cigarette and shook his head. “The boys who saw him have talked about what he looked like with his face gone. Word’s got around. Nobody can figure it out, but it sure makes a man uneasy to think about it.” He glanced at Everett. “You’re awful quiet today, boy.”
“I don’t like funerals,” Everett said. “They remind me of my own mortality.”
Dawson grunted. “How old are you, twenty-three, twenty-four, something like that?”
“I’m twenty-four,” Everett said.
“You got a ways to go yet before you have to worry about your own funeral. Hell, wait until you get to be fifty, like me.” Dawson took another drag on the quirly, then dropped the butt and ground it out like he had the match. “I got to go to the buryin’.” He stalked off.
Jackson and Everett walked after him, toward the cemetery where the mourners were congregating around the open grave that had been dug that morning. “He’s wrong, you know,” Everett said.
“Wrong about what?” Jackson asked.
“Not having to worry about death. No one knows when it’s going to come calling for them. I would think that out here on the frontier, where daily life is more dangerous, that the uncertainty would be even worse.”
A grim smile tugged at the corners of Jackson’s mouth. “You’re a smart young fella, Everett,” he said. “I reckon that’s one reason I like you.”
When the graveside service—thankfully shorter than the funeral inside the church—was over and the sound of shovels biting into dirt and showering the clods down on the coffin lid filled the air, Benjamin Tillman came over to Jackson and Everett and shook hands with both of them.
“A sad day,” he said, solemnly shaking his head. “A very sad day.”
“Most funerals are,” Jackson said.
“Well, we’ll just have to put this behind us now and move on with our lives. We can’t bring poor Luther back.”
“And you’ve got other troubles to worry about, don’t you?”
Tillman frowned. “What do you mean by that, Mr. Jackson?”
“I’ve heard talk around town that you’ve been having a problem with rustlers.”
Tillman looked surprised. He said, “I’m sure it’s nothing out of the ordinary. All ranches lose some cattle, don’t they?”
“Sometimes. Whether or not it’s a problem depends on how often and how many head you’re losing.”
“We’ll take care of it,” Tillman said. He didn’t seem to want to discuss the subject. “Excuse me, I have to get back to my cousin. I’m sure she’s ready to leave.”
“Say hello to her for me,” Everett put in.
Tillman smiled for a second and nodded before he turned and walked toward the buggy. Deborah had already gotten into the vehicle, assisted by one of the ranch hands.
“It bothered him that we knew the Winged T is losing stock,” Jackson mused.
“Is that why you didn’t tell him that it was Mr. Dawson who mentioned it?”
Jackson nodded. “Yeah. Dawson’s not very friendly, but there wasn’t any point in getting him in trouble with his boss. I get the feeling that Tillman is a proud man. Maybe too proud. He doesn’t want to admit that running a ranch like the Winged T may be more than he can handle.” Jackson straightened from his casual pose. “There’s the sheriff. Let’s have a word with him.”
They moved to intercept Ward Brennan as he walked toward the main part of the settlement. Everett took the lead this time, asking, “Have you discovered any new information pertaining to the death of Luther Berryhill, Sheriff?”
“You mean have I found out who killed the poor bastard, and how?” Brennan grunted. “Hell, no. I don’t know any more’n I did yesterday.”
“Have you investigated the possibility that he may have had trouble with someone while he was in town the night before last?”
“He didn’t get into any kind of ruckus, if that’s what you’re talkin’ about. He drank some in the Big Bend, played a little poker, joked around with one of the gals, but didn’t take her upstairs. He didn’t have enough money for that. That’s why he got in the card game, hopin’ to win enough to buy himself a good time. Didn’t work out that way, though. He lost what little dinero he had left.”
“Did he get angry about it, or threaten anyone?”
Brennan shook his head. “Nope. Berryhill was a good-natured cuss. Everybody who knew him agrees on that. Even when he got cleaned out, he just laughed about it.”
“So, you see, you have discovered something, Sheriff,” Everett said. “You’ve established one more reason that didn’t cause Mr. Berryhill’s death.”
Brennan tugged at his mustache. “Yeah, I reckon you could look at it that way,” he admitted. “But what good does that do?”
“You’ve narrowed the field of suspects. Eventually, that should make it easier to discover who the real culprit is.”
“Maybe.” Brennan didn’t sound convinced. “But that still leaves another question.... How the hell do you do something like that to a man’s face anyway?”
“Figure out that part,” Jackson said, “and the answer is liable to lead you straight to the killer.”
Chapter 10
Matt Harcourt rode easily through the night, unbothered by the darkness. He knew where he was going.
And he knew what would be waiting for him when he got there, too.
Or rather, who would be waiting for him.
He had first seen Lucy Vance six months earlier, at one of the dances held occasionally in Death Head Crossing. He’d looked across the floor and there she was, laughing and spinning around the floor in the arms of a lucky partner. His eyes were drawn irresistibly to her dark hair and her sparkling eyes and her slender, graceful figure in the blue gingham dress. She was without a doubt the prettiest girl he had ever seen, and he had known right then and there that he had to have her.
The only problem with that resolve was the fact that she was already married.
Harcourt had ridden back to the Winged T that night with the rest of the hands who had come to town for the dance, and as his horse plodded through the night he was torn by two contrasting emotions, desire for Lucy and hatred for Fowler Vance, her husband.
Vance was a rancher, but not much of one. He had a little spread east of the Winged T, in a part of the range where the graze wasn’t as good and the water was limited. Not surprisingly, his cows seldom brought as much from the cattle buyers as those of his neighbors, but Vance scratched along and made ends meet somehow. He’d even saved up enough money for a trip to San Antonio a while back.
When he returned to Death Head Crossing on the stage, he had Lucy with him. They had met and married in San Antonio. There was some speculation around town that she had been a soiled dove and had married Fowler Vance to escape from that life, but nobody knew for sure, and since she was sweet and friendly and definitely nice to look at, folks accepted her pretty quickly.
Then Matt Harcourt had laid eyes on her at that dance, and everything had changed.
But not right away. Harcourt managed to get one dance with her that night, and he introduced himself as they swung around to the strains of a waltz, hating his awkwardness as he stumbled over his words, wishing he could be as nimble-tongued as some fellas were. Lucy was polite and smiled at him, but then, she was polite and smiled at all the eager cowboys who managed to snag dances with her that night. Her feet must have ached some before the festivities were over. She was the most popular girl there, bar none.
Harcourt was a little surprised, a week later, when he ran into her again in town and she remembered who he was. They were both in the general mercantile, picking up supplies. Old Hiram, the Winged T cook, had sent Harcourt on that errand, and as soon as he saw Lucy in the aisles of Bender’s Emporium, he could have kissed the old-timer on top of his bald, ugly head for putting him in position to talk to the gal again. Lucy smiled at him and
said, “Oh, hello, Matt. It’s good to see you again,” and if Harcourt hadn’t been lost before, he sure was then.
He helped her load her purchases in the back of the buckboard she had driven into town, then was bold enough to say, “If you want, I’ll ride out to your place with you and unload those things for you.”
“Oh, no, Fowler can do that,” she replied.
His heart sank at the reminder that she already had a husband. Even though Fowler Vance wasn’t much, he owned a ranch. He wasn’t some scruffy cowpoke who had never earned better than forty a month and found. Lucy was a smart girl. She wasn’t going to abandon her husband for him.
But then she’d said, “If you’ll come by tomorrow evening, though, I’ll fix supper for you, to repay you for your help today.”
He had accepted, even though it meant he’d probably have to sit down at the supper table with her husband too. He was at the point where he would put up with just about anything in order to spend more time around her. He just hoped he didn’t look too eager as he said, “Sure, I can do that. Much obliged, Miz Vance.”
“Please,” she’d said with a laugh that tugged at his heartstrings. “Call me Lucy.”
Looking back on it now, he knew he shouldn’t have been surprised when he rode up to the little ranch house the next evening and found her there alone. Fowler Vance was miles away, combing some breaks on the northern reaches of his range with the two Mexicans who worked for him. One of the vaqueros had spotted some strays up that way, and the men were going after them. They would be gone until the next day.
Lucy had never looked more beautiful than she did that night, in the soft lamplight. She’d had supper ready for Harcourt, and the food was delicious, but he barely tasted it. As he ate, he kept staring at the soft curve of her cheeks and the way the dark wings of hair brushed over them, and the smooth expanse of skin at her throat, and on down lower to the shadowy valley at the top of her breasts.
He might be a damned fool, he told himself later, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew what Lucy had in mind. And husband or no husband, once she had led him into the bedroom and untied the belt around her waist and shrugged out of the dress she wore so that the fabric slid down whisperingly over her bare shoulders, there was no way he was riding off and leaving her there. No way in hell.
So in one way it started at the dance, and in another it started when they ran into each other in the store, and in yet another it began that night in her bed, the bed she usually shared with Fowler Vance.
Harcourt had been back since then, of course. He’d been back a whole heap of nights, every time Vance was gone and Lucy could get word to him. From the top of a hill on Winged T range, he could see the Vance place. When Lucy hung a particular bright yellow tablecloth on the clothesline behind the ranch house, that meant it would be safe for Harcourt to ride over that night. He rode up to the top of that hill every chance he could to check, and this morning the yellow tablecloth had been flapping in the breeze.
After that, his impatience to be with her had made the day’s work seem even longer, harder, and more tedious than ever. But the sun finally went down, and as soon as Harcourt had cleaned up a mite, he saddled one of the horses from his string and started toward the Vance place. Nobody asked him where he was going. Ned Dawson was a hard man, a real taskmaster when it came to the chores on the Winged T, but he didn’t care what the boys did on their own time. That attitude was common among all the hands.
He topped the hill where he rode to look for their signal. Now that night had fallen over the landscape, he couldn’t see the ranch house itself, but he spotted the soft yellow glow of lamplight in one of its windows. A couple of miles beyond the house loomed the dark bulk of a long, rugged ridge. As Harcourt started down the hill, he thought he caught a glimpse of something on that ridge. Another light, he thought. Maybe several of them. But they had winked in the darkness for a second or two and then were gone, and their appearance had been so fleeting he wasn’t even sure if he had really seen anything or just imagined them.
He forgot all about that as he neared the house. Lucy must have heard his horse, because the front door swung open as he reined to a stop in front of the building. The lamp in that room was out, but one burned further back in the house, in the bedroom. It cast enough light so that he could see her standing there, nude, silhouetted beautifully against the glow. His breath caught in his throat and his heart began to pound like a trip-hammer in his chest. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on, and she held out her arms to welcome him into her embrace.
In the next half hour, he didn’t think once about the fact that she was married, and judging by the way she cried out and clutched at him, neither did she.
In the time he had left to live, Matt Harcourt couldn’t have said what alerted him that something was wrong. It was an instinct as much as anything else. But something caused him to lift his head off the pillow and reach for the gun on the chair beside the bed. No matter how drunk with desire he was for Lucy Vance, he always paused to coil his shell belt around the holstered Colt and place it on the chair where he could get it in a hurry if he needed to.
It was just common sense, after all, when you were sleeping with another man’s wife.
Lucy stirred sleepily beside him. “What is it?” she asked in a voice dulled with satisfaction.
“I thought I heard something.”
“Don’t worry about Fowler, honey. He won’t be back from Fort Stockton until tomorrow.”
“Don’t you ever worry that he might suspect something and try to cross you up?”
“Fowler? Suspect something?” She laughed softly. “Matt, darlin’, that man doesn’t have any idea what goes on between us. He doesn’t even know what I’m thinking most of the time. Hell, he thinks I actually love him.”
An unpleasant twitching went along Harcourt’s spine at the coldness in Lucy’s voice. He forgot about whatever had disturbed him and said, “You didn’t love him even when you married him?”
“Good Lord, no. I just wanted to be somewhere else, and Fowler was somebody to take me. Don’t get me wrong. He’s not a bad sort, I suppose, and he honestly cares for me. But he can’t do for me what you do, honey.”
Harcourt sat up and raked his fingers through his tangled hair. For the first time, he felt sort of bad about what he was doing with her. She’d said that Vance wasn’t a bad sort, and Harcourt knew that to be true. Sort of dull, yeah, but he was a decent hombre. Maybe I ought to give her up, he thought. It would be the right thing to do.
But he knew he wouldn’t do it. He couldn’t. He still wanted her too bad.
A soft thud sounded outside, followed by another and another. Hoofbeats. More than one horse. Harcourt’s breath hissed between his teeth as he jerked the Colt from its holster and bolted out of bed.
“Somebody’s out there!” He kept his voice pitched low, so whoever was outside wouldn’t hear him.
“It can’t be Fowler!” Lucy said as she struggled out of bed, wrapping the sheet around her nudity. “It just can’t be!”
Harcourt darted to the window and moved the flour-sack curtain aside just enough to peek out. He expected to see riders, since he had heard the hoofbeats of several horses.
But instead, what he saw were large, glowing balls of light surrounding the house.
The sight startled a shocked cry out of him. Lucy came to his side and grabbed his arm, digging her fingers into his flesh. Harcourt didn’t even notice the pain of her grip.
“Come out!” a voice boomed. “Come out, ye sinners and fornicators! Come out and face the judgment of the Lord! I am the Hand of God on Earth, and I shall deliver His vengeance!”
“Matt, what—”
He pushed her aside, more angry now than frightened. Despite the eeriness of those mysterious lights, those were men out there, and from the sound of what the one who had spoken had said, they were Bible-thumpers like that preacher in town. Matt had always hated being preached at, and he wasn’t sca
red anymore. Hombres like that were all talk. He wasn’t afraid of them. As he reached for his pants and pulled them on hurriedly, the voice outside continued its harangue.
“Adulterers! Fornicators! See what your sin has wrought!”
Pistol in hand, too mad to be thinking straight, Matt stalked out of the bedroom, through the front room, and flung the door open. As he stepped out on the porch, he lifted the gun and said, “Wrought this, you meddlin’ son of a—”
The brightest light he had ever seen exploded in his face, throwing him backward and filling his entire being with pain. The last thing he heard was Lucy Vance screaming.
Chapter 11
Carl Gafford thought sometimes that he wasn’t cut out to be a farmer. He had failed at it in Arkansas, so he had packed up his wife Nora and come to Texas for a fresh start. They had settled in Comanche County and struggled along for a few years. Carl might not be much good with crops, but he was handy at sowing his seed in other ways, and more often than not Nora’s belly was swollen with child. That was why, when the bank finally got the place in Comanche County and Carl had to hitch up the mules, pile all of his and Nora’s belongings on the old wagon, and head out in search of greener pastures, they had four young’uns with them too. Four hungry mouths to feed.
He’d heard that there was good land to be had along the Rio Grande, near El Paso. All that stood between him and that land were several hundred miles of hot, rugged country and the possibility of bandits and savages. He and his family would have to live off the land along the way too, but Carl liked to think he was a decent shot with the old rifle he had toted ever since he’d left Arkansas. They’d make do.
And so far they had. They had covered more than half the distance, in fact. The farther west they went, the more inhospitable the terrain became. A man might run cattle in country like this, but he’d be wasting his time if he tried to till that thin, rocky soil and grow anything worth harvesting. Carl sure hoped he hadn’t heard wrong about that land along the Rio Grande.
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