Chapter 28
The Hand of God must have struck again, Everett thought as he rode. Tillman had gotten tired of waiting for Jackson to deliver his “message,” so he had taken the initiative and dealt out more death and horror.
Everett spotted Dawson and Sheriff Brennan ahead of them. The two men were fairly easy to follow because of the dust cloud that rose from the hooves of their horses. That was how Everett and Graham knew when Dawson and Brennan veered off the main trail between Death Head Crossing and the ranch headquarters. Everett was pretty sure they were already on Winged T range, but he didn’t know the countryside as well as Jackson did. He wished the gunslinger was with them now, instead of recuperating back in the settlement.
Several minutes after leaving the main trail, Dawson and Brennan came to a stop. Everett saw them sitting on their horses next to a line of trees that he assumed marked the course of a stream. Brennan swung down from his saddle as Everett and Graham hurried to reach the scene.
Everett’s horse slowed from its gallop as the young reporter hauled back on the reins. Everett was almost thrown forward over the horse’s head as it came to a skidding halt. Graham brought his mount to a stop much more gracefully. On the way out here, Everett had noticed how well Graham rode. Graham had lived on the frontier long enough to pick up that skill.
Dawson cast a sour look in their direction as they dismounted. They followed Brennan into the trees and found the lawman standing on the bank of the creek Everett had assumed was there. Benjamin Tillman’s buggy was parked beside the stream, too. The shade under the trees was thick enough so that at first Everett could make out only a couple of vague shapes sitting in the vehicle.
Then as his eyes adjusted to the dimness he felt sick horror course through him. Beside him, Malcolm Graham muttered a shocked “Oh, my God.”
Benjamin Tillman and his cousin Deborah both sat motionless on the buggy seat. Tillman’s left arm was draped around Deborah’s shoulders as she leaned against his side. Her head rested on his shoulder. Her eyes bulged grotesquely from their sockets, and the tip of her tongue protruded a couple of inches from her mouth. The skin of her face was an unnatural blue.
She was dead. A glance was enough for anyone to see that. As Everett struggled to control the sickness inside him, he told himself that she had been strangled. The cruel marks of a madman’s fingers could be seen on her throat, above the high neck of her dress.
Tillman’s head was tipped far back. Brennan moved to one side of the buggy and leaned over to get a better look. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered. “He must’ve put the gun barrel halfway down his throat before he pulled the trigger.”
For the first time Everett noticed the revolver lying next to the buggy. Tillman’s right arm was flung out to the side, and as Everett studied the scene he had no trouble reconstructing what had happened. Tillman had put the gun in his mouth and fired the fatal shot, and the recoil had jerked his arm to the side. The gun lay where it had fallen when it slipped from Tillman’s nerveless fingers.
Graham stared to step forward, but Brennan lifted a hand to stop him. “You don’t want to look too close at this,” the sheriff warned. “The back of his head is blown clean off.”
Graham was pale and shaken, but he said, “Sheriff, I . . . I have a responsibility. When the richest man in the county commits suicide after murdering his own cousin—”
“How do you know he did that?” Brennan asked.
“Well . . . you can see for yourself! Poor Miss Tillman has been strangled, and there’s no one else out here—”
“Someone else could have done it,” Everett broke in.
“Maybe Tillman found Deborah’s body after someone else killed her.” His own voice sounded strange to him. How could he be discussing something so tragic in such a calm tone? “Mr. Tillman was quite fond of his cousin,” he went on. “Maybe he felt that he couldn’t live without her and decided to end his own life?”
Brennan chewed on his mustache and nodded slowly. “Yeah, I reckon it could’ve happened that way . . . but I think Graham’s a lot more likely to be right in this case.” He turned his head and called Dawson’s name.
The foreman entered the grove of trees on the creek bank with obvious reluctance. “What do you want, Sheriff?”
“Who found the buggy?” Brennan asked.
“One of the hands, a fella name of York. He saw the buggy parked over here and thought the horses looked like they was spooked, so he rode over to take a look. He was on his way to ride the boundary line not far from here.”
“Was that his idea?”
“Hell, no. I told him to do it. It was just a routine chore.”
“You didn’t have any idea Mr. Tillman and his cousin were out here?”
“How the hell would I have known that?” Dawson demanded. “I hadn’t even seen the boss this mornin’. Nobody had except Hiram. He said Mr. Tillman was up early, but he didn’t see either of ’em leave the house.”
“What did this fella York do when he saw what was in the buggy?”
“What do you think? He lit a shuck back to the bunkhouse and told me he’d found the boss and the gal out here dead. I stopped long enough to ask Hiram if he knew what was goin’ on; then I rode out here as fast as I could. When I’d taken a look, I headed for town to fetch you. I’d already told York to keep everybody else away from here.”
Brennan nodded. “Yeah, I reckon you handled it about right. How come you wouldn’t tell me what happened?”
“I wanted you to see it fresh, so I could tell if it looked the same to you as it does to me.”
“How else could it look? But why in blazes would Tillman do such a terrible thing?”
Everett thought he had a pretty good idea, but he didn’t want to speak up just yet.
Graham suddenly pointed into the buggy and asked, “What’s that?”
Brennan frowned. “What’s what?”
“That paper sticking up from Mr. Tillman’s vest pocket.”
Gingerly, Brennan reached up to the motionless body and slid a folded piece of paper out of Tillman’s pocket. Everett, Graham, and Dawson crowded closer as the sheriff unfolded the paper, revealing lines of cramped handwriting that filled almost the whole page.
“Good Lord,” Brennan muttered as he began to read. “He killed her, all right. This here’s the proof of it.”
Everett craned his neck in an attempt to read the lines Benjamin Tillman had written. He could only make out some of them, but those were enough.
. . . driven mad by lust for my poor, innocent cousin . . . knew I could never have her . . . seized by a frenzy of desire . . . Deborah fought back, called me awful names . . . not even sure what happened, but I found myself with my fingers locked around her sweet neck . . . no hope, no forgiveness . . . cannot live without her . . .
“Son of a bitch!” Brennan said. “He goes on to say that he was the one callin’ himself the Hand of God!”
. . . thought if I dedicated myself to the Lord’s work . . . punished the sinners . . . would give me strength to resist temptation . . . avenger of the Lord . . . kill all the evildoers . . . but the worst evil was in me . . .
. . . must be with Deborah . . . only way to see her again . . . forgive me for this terrible thing and all the other things I’ve done . . . end it all . . .
“Incredible,” Graham muttered. “So Benjamin Tillman was the Hand of God all along. He was responsible for what happened to Luther Berryhill and Harcourt and poor Mrs. Vance.”
“Yeah, this letter doesn’t leave any doubt about that,” Brennan said. “But he didn’t carry out all those killin’s by himself. Not a damn tenderfoot like him. He had to have help.” The sheriff looked pointedly at Ned Dawson.
“Damn it!” Dawson yelped. “You don’t think I had anything to do with this, do you? This is the first I’ve heard about it, I swear!”
“What about some of the other members of the Winged T crew?” Graham asked. “Could Tillman have paid them to help hi
m?”
Dawson grimaced. “Well, I reckon that’s possible. They’re a pretty salty bunch, and some of ’em ain’t been ridin’ for the Winged T all that long, so I don’t know ’em too well. If the money was right, some of the boys might’ve been willin’ to go along with the boss and help him with his mischief.”
Everett thought that the bloody depredations of the Hand of God amounted to a lot more than mischief, but he knew what Dawson meant.
“I’ll be wantin’ to talk to every damn cowboy on the place,” Brennan said. “If any of ’em take off for the tall and uncut when word of Tillman’s death gets around, I reckon we’ll know which ones were helpin’ him.”
“You’d better be careful, Sheriff,” Graham warned. “Anyone who was mixed up in this probably won’t want his part in it to get out.”
Brennan nodded grimly. “I know. I don’t intend to give any of ’em the chance to get the drop on me.”
Dawson waved a gnarled and calloused hand toward the buggy and its passengers. “What are you gonna do about this?”
“Tie your horse to the back of the buggy and climb in,” Brennan said. “You can drive it into town, to Cecil Greenwood’s undertakin’ parlor.”
Dawson shook his head. “You can go ahead and draw your Colt if you want to, Sheriff, but I warn you, you’ll have to use it. I ain’t gettin’ up there with them, even at gunpoint.”
Brennan looked over at Everett and Graham, both of whom made a point of gazing elsewhere. Everett didn’t think his stomach could stand being crowded onto that seat with the two corpses.
“Oh, hell, all right,” Brennan said to Dawson. “I don’t want to do it neither. Go get that spring wagon ol’ Hiram uses to fetch supplies from town. We’ll put the bodies in the back of it and cover ’em up. I’ll stay here with the buggy while you’re fetchin’ the wagon.”
The foreman nodded. “I reckon that’d be all right.”
“What about us, Sheriff?” Graham asked. “Do you need us anymore?”
“I don’t recollect sayin’ I needed you to start with,” Brennan snapped. “I reckon you want to get back to town and start writin’ your stories. Well, you can have at it as far as I’m concerned.”
“Thank you, Sheriff.” Still looking upset, Graham walked back to his horse. Everett followed, but he glanced back at the buggy with the grim-faced lawman standing beside it. From there, Everett couldn’t see what was inside the buggy, but that didn’t matter. He was afraid the memory of what he had witnessed today would be burned into his brain for a long time, if not forever. He was anxious to get back to Death Head Crossing.
Not to write about it, though. He wanted to tell Jackson about the tragic, unexpected turn this affair had taken. The gunslinger might even be disappointed.
Because he wouldn’t get to settle his score with the so-called Hand of God after all.
Chapter 29
One of Philomena’s friends did her shopping for her, since she was still supposed to be sick. The woman had just left after dropping off some supplies when a horse came to a fast stop outside the hut.
Jackson was seated at the table while Philomena put away the provisions. At the sound of the hoofbeats, he put his hand on the butt of the Colt lying on the table. The gun he had carried when he came to Death Head Crossing was gone, taken from him when he was captured by the Hand of God. Everett had replaced it with a new Peacemaker bought at the local mercantile, and Jackson kept the revolver close at hand at all times.
He picked it up as the door burst open, then relaxed as he saw that the visitor was just Everett. The young reporter seemed mighty upset about something, though, so Jackson hung onto the gun, just in case trouble was following hot on Everett’s heels.
“Dios mio!” Philomena said. “Señor Everett, what is wrong? You look as though you have seen el espectro. A ghost.”
“Not a ghost,” Everett said with a vehement shake of his head. “But a couple of corpses, though.”
“Who’s dead?” Jackson asked in a flat voice.
“Benjamin Tillman and his cousin.”
Jackson’s eyes narrowed, but that was his only visible reaction to the shocking news. Philomena gasped and put a hand to her mouth.
“What happened to them?”
Everett took off his derby and set it on the table. He sat down across from Jackson and distractedly raked the fingers of one hand through his red hair. “It was awful,” he said. “Truly awful. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“The Hand of God killed them?”
“You could say that. Tillman really was the Hand of God, just as we suspected, and he murdered Deborah and then killed himself because he was driven insane by lust and guilt.”
“Tell me everything you know about it,” Jackson said.
For the next few minutes, Everett filled him in on the situation, starting with Ned Dawson’s hurried ride into town. The young man had a reporter’s eye for details and flair for description, so he was able to paint a vivid picture of what had happened. Too vivid for Philomena, who sat down at the table too and wiped at the tears that welled up in her eyes.
“The poor señorita,” she said when Everett was finished. “Ah, Dios mio, the poor señorita.”
“You saw Tillman’s letter with your own eyes?” Jackson asked.
Everett nodded. “The sheriff was holding it, but I saw him take it out of Tillman’s pocket and I was able to read part of it. There’s no doubt in my mind about what happened. Tillman confessed to everything.” Everett sat back in his chair and rested his hands on the table. “That means it’s over. Really over.”
“Sounds like it,” Jackson agreed.
“It’s just a shame we couldn’t have put a stop to Tillman’s lunacy before Deborah had to die.”
“We’re not the law. Nobody appointed us to right the wrongs of the world.”
“No, of course not,” Everett said, “but she was blameless in this. It wasn’t her fault that she inflamed her cousin’s mind to the point of madness.”
Jackson grunted. “That the way he put it in his letter?”
“Pretty much.” Everett sighed. “What are we going to do now?”
“I don’t know about you,” Jackson said, “but I plan to keep on getting over that beating I took and enjoying Philomena’s company.”
“Yes, of course, but where will we be going from here, once you’re able to travel again?”
“How do you know we’ll be going anywhere?”
“Why, our agreement still holds, doesn’t it? You’re going to let me travel with you so that I can write about your adventures?”
“Maybe I plan to settle down right here in Death Head Crossing and not have any more adventures,” Jackson said with a faint smile. “How would you feel about that?”
Everett looked surprised. “But . . . but how could a man such as yourself do that? You’ve always been a drifter. Fiddle-footed, you called it. How could you trade a life of excitement for settling down in one place?”
“Most men stay in one place,” Jackson pointed out. “They might move around some, but sooner or later they put down roots. And they manage to live just fine without being shot at on a regular basis or bullwhipped by insane fanatics.”
“I just can’t accept that! Your whole history tells me—”
“Señor Everett,” Philomena broke in. “Señor Jackson is, how do you say, joshing you.” She looked at Jackson with more than a hint of sadness in her dark eyes. “He will not stay in Death Head Crossing. He is a man who could never settle down.”
“Oh,” Everett said. “Oh, I see.”
“Don’t worry about it, Everett,” Jackson drawled. “When I get ready to ride, I’ll let you know. That’ll still be a while, though, until this back of mine heals up better.”
“Yes, of course. I understand now.”
He didn’t understand everything, though, Jackson thought. Everett hadn’t seen the look in Philomena’s eyes or heard the unspoken words.
Señor Jackson
is a man who could never settle down.
As much as I might wish that he could . . .
With Tillman dead and the Hand of God mystery cleared up, there was no reason for Jackson to lie low anymore. He was able to be out and about as long as he took it easy, so the next day he put in his first public appearance since the beating he had endured, walking with Everett down to Sheriff Brennan’s office. The lawman’s bushy white eyebrows rose in surprise when Jackson walked in.
“I thought you’d left town, Jackson,” he said. “Haven’t seen you around in almost a week.”
“I’ve been laid up for a spell,” Jackson explained as he sat down carefully in front of the sheriff’s desk. “I ran into the Hand of God and his men up in the hills on the Winged T.”
Brennan’s eyebrows climbed even higher. Then he glared at Everett and asked, “How come I didn’t know about this?”
Jackson took the young reporter off the hook by explaining, “I asked Everett not to say anything to anybody. Tillman had me lashed to a tree and then had one of his men work me over with a bullwhip. Whipped me just about to within an inch of my life. I’d show you, but my back is still bandaged up.”
Brennan lifted a hand and shook his head. “I’ll take your word for it. Go on.”
“Before he had me whipped, the Hand of God talked about how he was the avenger of the Lord and how he was doing God’s work by punishing sinners and evildoers.”
Brennan nodded and tapped a blunt finger on a piece of paper on his desk. “Yeah, it’s all right here in the letter Tillman wrote after he strangled that cousin o’ his, before he blew his own brains out. The man was plumb loco.”
Jackson leaned forward. “So that’s the letter I’ve heard about?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I take a look at it?”
“I don’t see why not.” Brennan pushed the paper across the desk to him.
This was the first chance Everett had gotten to take a good look at the letter. He leaned over Jackson’s shoulder to study it as the gunslinger read Tillman’s cramped writing. The note left no doubt about the Easterner’s guilt.
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