“It’s all right, Dan.” McMasters made himself smile. “But the offer still stands. Three hundred miles to Yuma—”
“Closer to two hundred and seventy-five.”
McMasters laughed genuinely, even if Royal Andersen swore underneath his breath.
“John.” Daniel Kilpatrick swallowed, likely wondering if he could get away with addressing Rosalee’s father with such familiarity. When McMasters failed to react, one way or the other, the deputy marshal explained, “I don’t have the authority to deputize you. Only Marshal Meade could do that, and he’s in Phoenix.”
“Phoenix is on the way,” McMasters tried again.
“Thanks, sir. I appreciate it. But—” Kilpatrick let out a sigh. “Royal and I can handle these men . . . and the woman. Tell Rosalee that I’ll see her in a month at the most.” He held out his hand.
“Good luck, Dan,” McMasters said, and walked to his horse before remembering just what had brought him into town. Johnson’s gun shop stood just a block away and across the street. McMasters left his horse in front of the Sawmill Saloon and walked there, glancing just once to watch the tumbleweed wagon and Daniel Kilpatrick head south on the trail to Phoenix. Then he stepped inside Johnson’s store.
“What’ll you need?” Johnson called out.
McMasters remembered. If James and Nate wanted to test out that Remington shotgun, he should start them out with something that wouldn’t knock them on their buttocks.
“Birdshot.”
* * *
“From what I heard, I took that horseman to be some old coot,” Ben Butcher said. He pointed at the girl hauling the bucket of water from the stream. “She looks mighty ripe.”
“I like the littler one.” Greaser Gomez, grinning broadly, pointed the barrel of his carbine at another girl, maybe in her teens, who appeared to be gathering eggs beside the barn.
Moses Butcher spit tobacco onto an anthill.
“We’re here,” he reminded the boys, “for horses.”
Most of his gang giggled.
“Remember, that square-head with the mule is likely yellin’ at the law in Payson. Horses,” he insisted, and spurred his horse down the ridge, out of the woods, and onto the path that ran alongside the creek.
The outlaws followed him.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the girl with the bucket of water stop what she’d been doing. As he drew nearer, he had to agree with his kid brother that she looked ripe and fine. Likewise, the one hunting eggs stopped to stare. Moses Butcher tried to focus on the horses. He saw one colt and plenty of good horseflesh. Whoever had bragged about this McMasters knew about horses. Any of these animals would do for the journey south to Mexico.
Grinning despite his weariness and hunger, Butcher managed to remove his stolen cavalry hat as he reined in in front of the girl with the water.
“Howdy,” he said, but could not take his eyes off the girl’s perky breasts. She blushed, lowered the bucket to the ground, and crossed her arms.
A tough cookie, Butcher thought as he returned his hat.
“Saul Gray from Holbrook bragged that McMasters has the best horses for sale in all of the territory.” Straightening in the saddle, he pointed at the nearest round pen. “From how I see things, Saul understated things.” He had made up the name Saul Gray on the spot. Well, he had thought of it in a hurry. Saul Gray had been a drummer who stopped by the place back home. He had been the first man Auntie Faye had murdered, a long, long time ago.
Looking back at the girl with the firm breasts, Butcher frowned. The girl had not lowered her arms, nor that intense stare.
He cleared his throat. “Your pa around, ma’am? We’d like to do some horse trading.”
That’s when the door to the two-story home opened, and a woman in a yellow dress and nice apron stepped onto the porch. Hell, she looked better than this prim little bitch. Maybe the boys were right. Maybe there was a little time to kill . . . if McMasters and no other men were around.
The saddle leather squeaked as Moses Butcher dismounted. It was rude, he knew, to get off his horse before being invited, but he did not give a damn.
CHAPTER 7
He had wasted most of the late morning, chatting with Royal Andersen, sipping a beer at the Sawmill—a rarity for him—and then buying the birdshot at Johnson’s gun shop. Bea probably would not believe him, but he had not gone into Brandenberger’s Clocks and Watches to see exactly how much that Waltham repeater had set his wife, maybe even himself, back. At least he would have the afternoon to work that colt . . . unless it had escaped again.
John McMasters rode easily up the Rim Road. He didn’t feel fifty years old, not today, not after last night, not even after seeing a cutthroat like Bloody Zeke The Younger and hearing about the killer’s father. Andersen had been known to tell a windy or few in his time, but that story—hanging a man from a saguaro’s arms—struck him as too gory, too real to have been conjured up from a rye- and beer-soaked morning.
Dust caught his eye, and he reined in the buckskin and looked down into the valley that had been cleared of forest not far from his home. A lot of dust. Standing in the stirrups, he studied the scene. More than a half-dozen men were working their horses into a frenzy . . . and the afternoon had turned far too hot to be riding horses that hard. They moved more south than west, probably toward Tonto Creek and the Sierra Ancha range. If John McMasters had to guess, he would have to figure they were making a beeline for the road to Globe. Only it would be a lot easier for anyone to ride into Payson and pick up the southern road there. Nobody would want to cut through that country. Unless—
Even if McMasters saw through the eyes he had thirty years ago, he would not have been able to identify the men or their horses. Not from that distance. Not through that much dust. Not as fast as they rode. He counted them, though, now that they had spread out. Loosely speaking, they formed a column of threes. Nine men.
Riders from the Hashknife Outfit? He shook his head. No. The Aztec Land and Cattle Company did not always hire cowhands of savory character, but surely wouldn’t pay anyone who treated horses that hard. Besides, Commodore Perry Owens had been elected sheriff up in Navajo County a year ago, and he ran a tight, tight ship. Even the Hashknife boys knew better than to get on Perry’s bad side.
You’re thinking too much, McMasters told himself. Settling back into the saddle, he shot one final glance at the hard-riding nine just before the last of the riders disappeared behind boulders and trees. Kicking the buckskin back into a walk, he spotted something else . . . and it was far more terrifying than a bunch of galloping horsemen.
Swearing, he reined in again. Smoke.
Sure, July was monsoon season, but those thunderstorms brought lightning with it, and no matter how wet the showers wet the ground, it was still Arizona Territory. The ground soaked up moisture like a bartender’s towel, often leaving the country dry as a regular tinderbox. Forest fires struck fear into anyone and everyone who called the Mogollon Rim home.
“Oh, God,” McMasters said, realizing the smoke wasn’t gray or white. Black plumes rose above the tree line, and that meant more than wood burned. It also was coming from where his ranch lay.
“Come on, boy!” Whipping off his eyeglasses and shoving them inside a vest pocket for protection, he raked the spurs across the buckskin’s side. The horse exploded beneath him as McMasters leaned in the saddle, giving the animal he had trained as much rein as he dared. Wind blasted his face, and he whipped the buckskin’s sides with the ends of his reins.
“Come on!” he cried.
Then he began saying something else.
“No . . . no . . . please, God, no . . .”
He could smell smoke and began to pray.
* * *
The smoke stung his eyes, and the smell left him gagging. He dropped to his knees, trying to hold on to the reins and calm the buckskin, but the smoke, the intensity of the flames, and that awful stench prevented it. Even a horse trained by the legendary John McMaste
rs couldn’t be calmed. The reins slipped through his gloved fingers, and the buckskin bolted down the pathway, splashed across the creek, and kept running toward the Rim Road.
“Bea!” he screamed, unable to hear his own voice, only the hideous roar of flames, the crackling of timbers, the shattering of glass inside what once had been his home. He moved to the inferno, shielding his face with his arms, already burning.
“Bea! Rosalee!” The heat, the smoke, the fury drove him back. He coughed, tried again, only to retreat toward the well. He tripped over a bucket, which smoked from the heat. McMasters kicked it away. “Nate! James!”
No answer. Flames engulfed the barn, too. And the lean-to. The summer kitchen. Even his toolshed. McMasters shook his head. No lightning strike had done this. “Eugénia!”
The fire mocked him.
“God!” He saw the colt, the one that had come close to pulling him over the edge of the rim a day earlier. The rails to the corral had been knocked to the ground, and the two other horses that McMasters had put in the pen that morning were gone. Only the bay colt remained. In a pool of blood. Its throat had been slit.
McMasters staggered to it. The animal was dead, of course. Closer, he saw the bullet some bastard had put in the colt’s head. Behind the animal, however, lay the source of the ungodly amount of blood, and then he understood that the blood did not come from that colt.
He fell on his knees and vomited.
“God.” Somehow, he summoned the strength to move closer, to make himself see. He wished to God he hadn’t. His voice became weak, hollow. “Ro . . . Rose . . .” Tears and sobs took over, and he fell away. “No. No. Not . . . Rosalee.”
A new thought struck terror into him. He shot to his feet. “Bea! Bea!” He dashed to the house. Again, the fire beat him back. He looked to the other pens. Empty. Gates open. Rails knocked aside, strewn this way and that. All the horses gone.
He stumbled back and fell beside the bucket. His fingers clawed the ground, and he noticed something else. Tracks. The tracks of shod horses. Many horses.
McMasters remembered the men he had seen. Riding south toward the road to Globe. Riding hard. Something else caught his eye, and he stared to the hill east of his house . . . or what once had been his home. A bear? Fleeing the fire. No, not a bear. He blinked, strained to see. A horse, head down, played out, was making its way up the incline away from the hell that had become McMasters’ ranch. He blinked again. No. Two horses. Make that three. Not saddled. Played out. Trying to get away from the raging torrent of flame and smoke.
He understood.
Those weren’t his horses. Even at that distance, even with his eyeglasses still in his vest pocket, he wouldn’t have traded a wooden nickel for any of those mounts.
Suddenly he figured it out. The men he had seen riding across the valley had been there. They had stolen his animals, left theirs behind, killed the colt for no good reason and run the rest of his stock away. Why? He shook his head. You damned fool. They drove the horses they didn’t need off so no one could follow them. They had . . .
He came up, vomited again, fell, and saw something else. Boots. Sticking from the other side of the woodpile. He ran, tripped, and crashed against the cord of pine, leaving splinters in his hand. “God!” Tears blinded him.
McMasters sank to his knees, steeled himself, made his right hand move, and slowly turn the body over. Again, he choked, sobbed, vomited until he had no breakfast, no beer, nothing inside, yet he couldn’t stop dry-heaving until he collapsed. When he could breathe, he pushed himself up, but made the mistake of looking at the corpse again.
If not for the boots the figure wore, McMasters never would have recognized the body of what once had been his youngest son. The murderers had shot him in the back of the head with a large-caliber rifle, maybe a Sharps. The exit wound had blown apart the poor kid’s face.
“No!” He pushed away, crawled toward the overturned bucket, and stood. Weaving like a drunkard, he made his way to the well and leaned against the stone side. He needed water. Water to think, to survive, but lacked the strength to do anything. He stared at the fire, not seeing it anymore, seeing nothing clearly. His glasses wouldn’t help. He smelled the stink again, and wished he were dead.
He remembered.
* * *
“War’s a hell of a thing.”
Colonel Hiram Berdan removed his hat and ran a hand across his hair, curly, but thin and gray on top, then brought it to his sweat-soaked mustache and Dundreary whiskers.
Early September, 1862, it was a few days after the Second Battle of Bull Run. Assigned to detached skirmish duty, Berdan’s U.S. Sharpshooters had been pursuing a ragtag group of Rebs. Cut off from any hope of catching the victorious army that had whipped the Federals at Manassas Junction, the six or seven graycoats had taken shelter in an abandoned boxcar on the Orange & Alexandria Railroad tracks.
Trapped like rats, Berdan called out for the Rebs to surrender. They answered with sporadic musket and revolver fire.
“Show those secesh what a Sharps can do,” Berdan ordered.
So McMasters and six others each sent a round through the thin wood of the boxcar.
One of those rounds must have shattered a lantern or something. No one ever knew. But seconds later, they smelled smoke, and saw it—and flame—shooting through the cracks.
“That’ll drive those boys out,” Berdan said.
But it didn’t.
They watched in horror as the flames engulfed the entire car. They heard a few screams, and then nothing but the roar of flames.
But there was a smell of more than pitch wood and scorching iron.
“Damn, McMasters,” Corporal Warren Long said as he turned away and hurried to the nearby stream, “I won’t ever eat fried beefsteak again.”
* * *
Pulling himself up, McMasters turned away from the carnage. He found the crank to the well, saw a jug—not his—on the edge. It had to belong to one of the killers, he thought, and must be empty or they would never have left it behind. He reached for it, not to drink, but with hopes that it might offer him some clue, speak to him of its owner, give him someone to tell the law about. But he was clumsy, half-mad with grief, and his hand slammed against the pottery. It went over the edge and fell into the well. He waited for the splash.
Clunk.
He heard that clearly. Confused, he leaned over the stones and peered inside. Wells ran deep in that country, but at that time of day, and with all the flames, he could see the outline, see the reflection of fire in the water. He could see the figure floating in the well.
“Bea?” he called out, wiping away the tears.
No. Not his wife. James. James . . . poor James.
Gagging again, McMasters stumbled away, moving to the fire-ravaged barn. A basket lay near the flames, also smoking, and he saw the dead chickens, the busted eggs. He tried to think. What day was it? Who had egg patrol that morning?
He gasped.
“Eugénia!”
He ran.
The basket burst into flames, almost disintegrating before his eyes. Beside it, however, he saw the shoe, also smoldering. And more tracks—boot prints and the little ditches carved by someone being dragged inside the barn.
“Eugénia.” That came out as a whisper.
He knew what burning hay smelled like, and the logs of cedar and pine and other woods. Of burning tack. Burning oats. Burning hell. And he knew the smell that came from the barn, too, for it was the same stench that had sickened him all those years ago after Second Bull Run. It was the same smell that came from what once had been John McMasters’s house.
He looked at the carnage. A rafter crashed, sending out a shower of sparks that forced him to cover his face with his arms, driving him backwards.
Last night, on his fiftieth birthday he had made love to his wife in the bedroom. This morning, he had laughed with his two sons and two daughters as they ate hotcakes, bacon, and eggs.
Now . . . all he felt inside wa
s death. He was dead. His family dead. Butchered. Murdered.
Bea, his beloved wife, so radiant, so wonderful, inside that house. As hot as those flames felt, he did not think he would ever find bones. Eugénia? Burned . . . By God, please, God, please have spared her. Please, tell me that those vermin killed her before . . .
The screams of the men inside that boxcar in 1862 echoed in his memories.
He moved to the woodpile, but couldn’t go there. Not see Nate, not see that face. He wanted to remember that young, loving boy playing the flute. He heard his son’s voice, heard him saying You never talk about it. He saw him staring at that Medal of Honor, which was now ash . . . now nothing. Like Bea. Like Eugénia.
He looked at the dead colt. Dead. That would have been a fine animal. He looked at the well, where James lay floating.
He had no rope. No shovels. No pickaxes. He couldn’t get James from the well. He couldn’t bury Nate or—His eyes found the blood and Rosalee.
John McMasters turned toward the sky. He prayed for God to kill him. Just send one bolt of lightning and end his torment.
The sky showed nothing except eternal blue.
CHAPTER 8
Soot, dirt, and grime blackened his face and hands. He staggered through the middle of the creek, fell to his knees, bent, made himself clean his hands as best as he could. Then made himself drink. He gagged and vomited again, but forced more water down. He had to drink.
With a sigh, he fell onto his buttocks, feeling the coolness of the creek, and looked back through the trees. He saw the ruins, mostly smoke although the flames had not flickered out by any stretch of one’s imagination. His hands felt raw, and the water burned.
John McMasters had not burned himself. But he had managed to bury, as best as he could, poor Nate. The boy’s young voice had sung out to him clearly. Can I eat the rest of the cake? McMasters wanted to smile at that memory, the youthful innocence of his son, but couldn’t. All he could see were the mutilated head of his youngest child and the flames and smoke of what had been, for him, paradise.
Remington 1894 Page 6