He didn’t know if any of his shots had hit the hidden rifleman, but the sound of the Winchester being readied for another shot told Jackson the man definitely wasn’t out of the fight yet. But to continue it, the bushwhacker was going to have to come out into the open.
Jackson wondered briefly if the rustlers out on the flat had heard the shots. They must have, because such sounds traveled well at night in this thin air. They might believe that some of the Winged T cowboys were after them, in which case they would drive those stolen cows that much faster.
But the rifleman who had ambushed Jackson might be one of them, left behind solely for the purpose of cutting down anybody who tried to follow the rustlers toward the mountains. In that case, the thieves would be more likely to exchange grins in the starlight as they figured that whoever had been unlucky enough or unwise enough to trail them had just been ventilated.
Jackson’s hand tightened harder on the butt of the Colt. He had only one round left in the cylinder, but he couldn’t reload because even the tiny sounds he would make doing so might give away the fact that he was still alive.
Hoofbeats suddenly rattled not far off. As they faded, Jackson grimaced and breathed a curse. The bushwhacker was lighting a shuck out of there, rather than risking his life by checking to make sure that his quarry was dead.
Or maybe it was a trick. Maybe the rifleman was trying to lure Jackson into making a mistake, just as Jackson had done to him.
Time dragged by as the hoofbeats faded away completely and Jackson continued to lay there silent and motionless for at least a quarter of an hour. Finally, he risked taking fresh cartridges from the loops on his shell belt and thumbing them into the cylinder of his Colt. That didn’t draw any reaction from the surrounding darkness. Neither did his movements when he stood up, staying in the shadow of the mesquite tree for a few moments before venturing out in search of his horse.
He found the animal fairly quickly. The horse didn’t come when he whistled for it, but it had only gone down the ridge about a hundred yards before stopping to crop at some of the tufts of hardy bunchgrass growing out of the rocky slope. Jackson ran his hands over the horse, and found a shallow gash in its rump where one of the bushwhacker’s bullets had clipped it. The horse wasn’t hurt badly. Once they got back to town where Jackson could see what he was doing, he had some ointment in his saddlebags that would take care of the injury.
And there was no reason not to turn around and go back to town, he reflected bitterly. By now the rustlers and that stolen stock they had been driving were long gone, and Jackson wouldn’t be able to pick up their trail until morning. He wondered if it would be worth taking the time and trouble to do so even then.
He swung up into the saddle and turned the horse toward Death Head Crossing. As he rode through the night he continued to be alert for any more signs of trouble. He watched for mysterious balls of light too, but didn’t see a thing out of the ordinary. Whoever or whatever had murdered those folks wasn’t abroad in the darkness tonight.
When Jackson got back to the settlement, he put his horse in the stable behind the boardinghouse, then by the light of a lantern he lit, rubbed the animal down good and daubed ointment on the bullet gash. “Sorry I got you shot, old fella,” he said as he patted the horse’s shoulder.
He wasn’t ready to turn in, so he headed for the Big Bend Saloon. As he reached the boardwalk in front of the saloon, he saw Everett coming along the street from the other direction. The young reporter noticed Jackson too, and smiled and raised a hand in greeting.
“I figured you went back to the boardinghouse after you got tired of playing solitaire,” Everett commented as they met in front of the batwings.
“I stepped out to get some fresh air,” Jackson said. He didn’t mention his trip to the Winged T or spotting the rustlers before he was ambushed. He intended to continue making these nocturnal jaunts as he searched for the truth of what was going on around here, and he didn’t want Everett insisting on coming along. If Everett had been with him when he was bushwhacked tonight, the results could have been disastrous.
Instead, Jackson leaned his head toward the saloon’s entrance and went on. “I was thinking about having another drink. Care to join me?”
“Yes, I’d like that,” Everett said. “But I think I’d better stick to beer. I already had several glasses of brandy with Malcolm and Rosalie at dinner, and I don’t want to get too muddled.”
Jackson shouldered through the batwings. “Sounds like things went well with them.”
“They’re charming people. Very cultured really. Rather out of place in a town like this.”
Jackson looked at Everett and frowned.
“Oh, I don’t mean to insult the citizens of Death Head Crossing,” Everett went on. “I’m sure they’re all fine people. But you can’t deny that life here is rather . . . raw.”
“I’ve been to Chicago,” Jackson said. “That’s a bigger town than I ever want to visit again. Too damned many people everywhere you go. You can’t walk down the streets without bumping into folks. And the air is full of smoke from the factories all the time.” Jackson shrugged. “The lake’s nice, I reckon, but I’d rather look at the Pacific Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico.”
“To each his own, as the old saying goes.”
Jackson grunted. “Yeah.”
They stopped at the bar for beers and carried the mugs over to an empty table. Jackson took the chair that put his back toward the wall.
“Malcolm asked me about you,” Everett said. “In fact, he and Rosalie both seemed quite interested in you.”
Jackson frowned into his beer. He wasn’t sure if he liked that. “What did you tell them?”
“Just that we’ve been working together to try to find out the identity of the Hand of God and the reason behind the killings.”
“Reckon we know the reason. That fella, whoever he is, doesn’t like the way some folks live their lives. He figures that gives him the right to end those lives.”
“That’s certainly what it sounds like, from what little we actually know. And we wouldn’t know that much if Matt Harcourt hadn’t miraculously survived long enough to tell us.”
Jackson took a long swallow of the cool beer. “We would have found out soon enough,” he said.
Everett looked puzzled. “What do you mean by that?”
“The Hand of God would have found some way to let everybody know.” Jackson had been thinking quite a bit about the situation on his ride back into town. “You see, Everett, it doesn’t do any good to kill people as an example if nobody knows that’s why you’re doing it. My hunch is that if Harcourt had died on the front porch of the Vance place like he was supposed to, in a few days your friend Graham would have gotten a letter from the Hand of God, explaining why Harcourt and Mrs. Vance and that cowboy Berryhill before them all had to die, and warning that if folks didn’t straighten up and stop sinning, more of them would have the same thing happen to them. Whoever sent the letter would have demanded that Graham publish it in the paper.” Jackson shrugged. “Now that doesn’t have to happen, because everybody in town already knows about the Hand of God, and they’re scared . . . which is just what the son of a bitch wants.”
It was a long speech for Jackson, and he downed the rest of his beer when he was finished. On the other side of the table, Everett stared at him, eyes widening as he thought about what the gunslinger had said.
“You’re right,” Everett said after a moment in a hushed voice. “It doesn’t make sense any other way. But that still doesn’t tell us who the Hand of God is, or how he killed those poor people.”
“No,” Jackson agreed, “it doesn’t.”
“Maybe Sheriff Brennan should call in the Texas Rangers.”
“It may come to that.”
“In the meantime, are you going to continue to investigate?”
“I don’t see that it can hurt anything,” Jackson replied with another shrug. “I thought I might ride out to the Winged T agai
n tomorrow and have another talk with Tillman. Want to come along?”
“Of course!” Everett hesitated, then went on. “There’s one other matter I need to discuss with you.”
“Spit it out, then.”
“Malcolm Graham wants to interview you and write a story about you for his newspaper.”
Jackson’s face hardened.
“I told them a little about you,” Everett said, “but there’s a great deal I don’t know, of course. I told Mal and Rosalie that I would ask you about it.”
“Mal and Rosalie,” Jackson mused. “Sounds like you’ve gotten pretty friendly with them in a hurry.”
“As I told you, they’re fine people.”
“And this Rosalie is a good-looking woman, I’d wager.”
Everett flushed, the light scattering of freckles across his face blending in with the pinkness rising in his skin. “I just told them I would ask you about it,” he said. “The decision is entirely yours.”
“I’ll think about it,” Jackson said, more to ease Everett’s mind than anything else. “I’m not too fond of the idea, though. There’s been one or two dime novels written about me, and the varmints who wrote them didn’t get much of anything right.”
“Well, then, this could be your chance to set the record straight. You could tell people the truth about yourself.”
Jackson frowned. He hadn’t thought about it that way. Maybe Everett was right. Maybe sitting down and letting Malcolm Graham ask him a bunch of questions would be a good thing, even though the very idea of doing something like that made Jackson a mite uncomfortable. He had always been one to keep his feelings and his thoughts to himself. It wouldn’t be easy to change now.
“I’ll think about it,” he said again as he scraped his chair back and stood up. “For now, though, I’m ready to get some sleep.”
Everett yawned. “Yes, it’s been a long day.”
Thinking about the rustlers he had given chase to and the ambush attempt that had almost ended his life, Jackson told himself that the day had been even longer than Everett knew.
Chapter 19
Benjamin Tillman had never been an early riser. He’d never had to be, since he had never held an actual job in his life. Money had never been one of his worries.
But just because he didn’t have to be concerned about making a living didn’t mean that he had no problems. He had plenty of problems.
Just as he had plenty of secrets.
The sun was well up when he climbed out of bed, dressed leisurely, and went downstairs. One of the Mexican servants brought him his breakfast in the dining room. He asked the woman, “Has my cousin come down yet this morning?”
She shook her head. “No, Señor, I have not seen her. Would you like me to go upstairs and see if she is awake?”
“No . . . no, that’s all right. I’m sure Deborah will be down when she’s ready.”
He tried to concentrate on the coffee and the food in front of him, but that was difficult to do because he found himself thinking about Deborah instead. The mental image of her lying in the big, soft bed in one of the guest rooms tormented him. He could picture her long, silky brown hair spread out around her head on the pillow. Her full lips would be parted softly as she breathed. The heat had probably caused her to kick the sheet off during the night as she slept, so that she would be uncovered, her nightdress twisted around her body and hiked up over her bare legs, the soft thighs parted....
Tillman put down his fork and clenched both hands into fists as he rested them on the table. He closed his eyes and shuddered as he fought a literal, physical battle against the thoughts swirling unbidden through his head. It was a constant struggle for him not to think about being with Deborah, not to imagine the feel of her body under his hands or the taste of her lips against his mouth.
When he had received the letter from her stating her intention of coming to Texas to visit him this summer, he had been elated and terrified at the same time. More than anything else since coming out here from Philadelphia, he had missed seeing her, hearing the sound of her voice and her laughter. But he knew that if he was around her again, the same feelings that had bothered him in the past would come back. The feelings that had begun to plague him years earlier, when Deborah had just started to become a woman. Even then, he had wanted her. But she was his cousin, and even though such things were legal and in some cases not even frowned upon that much, he could not allow himself to succumb to such unnatural lust. He already knew that he had the calling to do the Lord’s work, which made this burning desire to bed down with his own cousin that much more of a sin.
So he had prayed night and day and stayed away from Deborah as much as he could, even though she looked up to her older cousin Benjamin and considered him a great friend. He knew that it must have hurt her at times, the way he went to such lengths to avoid being around her, especially when they would have been alone. But he had to, for fear he would give in to temptation and take her into his arms and tell her how he really felt about her. He knew she would hate him for all eternity if he ever did that. The struggle to prevent that consumed him so that eventually he had been forced to leave the seminary. He could no longer stand his own hypocrisy.
For all those reasons, he had considered it a boon from God when his cousin Rufus died and left this ranch to the family back in Philadelphia. Tillman had jumped at the chance to travel to Texas and take over the running of the ranch. His other cousins, canny businessmen that they were, had thought it was a bad idea, that the Winged T would be more lucrative with an experienced manager in charge of it, but Benjamin had insisted. Since then, he had refused the suggestions in their carefully worded letters that he return home. The Winged T was his salvation . . . or rather, the thousands of miles between him and Deborah was.
Then she had decided to come out here for a visit, and he couldn’t bring himself to refuse her even though he knew he should. Just as he had suspected would happen, she had tormented him unwittingly with her beauty, and the emotions he had denied for so long were back in full force.
He couldn’t send her away, but he could do penance for his sin.
A soft footstep made him look up from the table. She entered the dining room, a smile on her lovely face. She wore a silken robe belted tightly around her waist, and he knew that underneath was only her nightdress and her smooth, warm flesh. “Good morning, Benjamin,” she said. “How are you today?”
Drunk with lust for you, cousin, as always.
The thought went through his mind, but he didn’t say it, of course. Instead he told her, “I’m fine. Sit down and have some breakfast.”
“I had the oddest dream last night,” she said as she took a seat at the other end of the table.
He felt a chill go through him.
“I dreamed that someone was in my room watching me sleep,” she went on. “But it wasn’t really frightening, because I could tell that whoever it was meant me no harm. In fact, they loved me, almost like . . . like a guardian angel.”
“Did you wake up?” he asked, hoping that his voice didn’t sound as choked to her as it did to him.
She shook her head. “No. You don’t think anyone was really there, do you?”
Thank the Lord she hadn’t waked up and caught him there, staring down at her as she slept. That would have ruined everything. He said, “I’m sure it was just a dream. Nothing to be concerned about.”
Tonight he would have to make sure that other things occupied him, so that he wouldn’t have a chance to sneak into her room again. So that he wouldn’t run the risk of reaching down with a trembling hand to touch her . . .
Yes, Benjamin Tillman had secrets, all right.
Everett supposed that eventually a person got used to riding horseback, so that it didn’t make the thighs and the rear end and the family jewels ache quite so much. He wasn’t to that point yet, however, so he winced as he settled down in the saddle that morning to accompany Jackson to the Winged T.
Jackson noticed th
e reaction and chuckled. “Don’t worry, it’ll get better,” he said, as if he had just read Everett’s mind. “After you’ve been out here for a while you’ll be bowlegged and iron-butted just like the rest of us.”
“Lord help me,” Everett muttered. If Jackson heard, he didn’t say anything in response.
As they rode past the office of the Weekly Journal, Everett said, “Have you given any thought to what I asked you last night?”
“About that interview, you mean?” Jackson shrugged. “I reckon I can do it. I’ve already got you writing about me. Don’t see as how it’ll do any harm for Graham to do the same thing.”
“As a matter of fact, I wrote up a dispatch last night and left it at the stage station this morning to go out in today’s mail. Within a week or so, the readers of the New York Universe will know all about Hell Jackson and the mystery of Death Head Crossing.”
Jackson frowned at that, but again, he didn’t say anything. Everett hoped the gunslinger wasn’t having second thoughts about their arrangement. The stories he was sending back would really make his name as a reporter. If he traveled with Jackson long enough and shared enough adventures with him, he might even be able to write a book about it. People might talk about him the same way they talked about Mr. Mark Twain and Mr. Bret Harte.
Everett let himself dwell on those thoughts for a while, enjoying the possible future that played out in his head with all its attendant fame and fortune. He forced himself out of that pleasant reverie as he realized that Jackson was talking to him.
“When we get there, why don’t you talk to Tillman?” Jackson suggested. “I don’t think he likes me much, and you and him have a lot more in common.”
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