Aaron saw a hole blossom in the middle of Maude’s forehead, saw her head snap and the back of her skull burst with hair and bone and gore. He saw the life fade from her eyes and he screamed at his loss and grabbed for her to catch her before she fell. He was thinking only of her. Too late, he glanced at the four monsters who had invaded his life. All four held revolvers. He opened his mouth to curse them and his world crashed with noise that nearly deafened him. Then he was on the ground with no sense of having fallen. A dark figure blotted out the sun and he heard the last words he would ever hear.
“Let’s kill the chickens and cows, too.”
15
Roy and his two friends and the Southerner were on their way home from Teton.
A cute puppy lay in Moses’s lap. Thanks to a tip from a bartender, they’d found an old woman whose dog had a litter about a month ago, and she was giving them away.
Tom had made a deal with the owner of the general store to buy four hogs from him just as soon as they were weaned from their mother.
“Yes, sir,” Tom was saying. “Irene will be tickled as can be.”
“So will Tilda,” Moses said, rubbing the pup.
Roy glanced at Rondo James. “We could have gotten a pup for you, too.”
“First you want me hitched and now you want to saddle me with a dog?” Rondo shook his head. “Next you’ll be sayin’ I should have kids.”
“They make a difference in a man’s life,” Roy said. “They bring out the best in us.”
“If he has any best to bring out,” Rondo said.
“All men have some good in them.”
Rondo peered up from under the hat brim. “No,” he said. “Some don’t.”
“My Martha likes to say that every barrel has its bad apples but the bad spots can be cut out and the apple made good again.”
“With all respect, suh,” Rondo James said, lapsing into his most pronounced drawl yet, “your missus is mixin’ apples and people. Some people are as evil as can be.”
“I’ve yet to meet one,” Roy said.
“I pray to God you don’t.”
Roy figured that was the end of it and swiveled in his seat but he was mistaken.
“The life I’ve led,” Rondo said, “I’ve spent most of it on what folks would call the wrong side of the tracks. I’ve seen men, I’ve killed men, who’d think no more of guttin’ you than they would squishin’ a fly.”
“We’ve lived in whole different worlds, then,” Roy said. He’d lived his on the right side of the tracks. His family had a lot to do with it, but then again, he didn’t have it in him to kill or spend all his nights drinking and carousing.
“I reckon,” Rondo said.
They were past the forest and the lake and nearing the first of the farms.
Tom sat up and said, “What’s that all about?”
The farm belonged to Frank Jackson and his wife Beth. They owned a buckboard, and they were barreling down the rutted track from the farmhouse to the road as if the hounds of Hades nipped at the rear wheels.
“Look! They have a lot of their belongings in the back,” Moses observed. “Where could they be going?”
Roy wondered the same thing. He didn’t know the Jacksons all that well. He’d socialized with them a few times but he wasn’t as close to Frank as he was to Tom and Moses.
Tom brought the buckboard to a stop.
The Jacksons barreled toward them and for a few moments it appeared that Frank Jackson might not stop and would smash into them. Then, hauling back, Jackson brought his buckboard to a stop in a swirl of dust. “Out of our way.”
“Howdy, Frank,” Tom said. “And how are you, Mrs. Jackson?”
The woman didn’t answer. Her head was bowed and her fingers were entwined in her lap. She was wearing a bonnet and shawl; the bonnet wasn’t tied and the shawl hung unevenly.
Frank motioned and said, “Didn’t you hear me, Kline? Move. We need to get by.”
“What’s your hurry, Frank?” Moses asked. “You keep going like you are, you’re apt to roll.”
Frank Jackson glanced over his shoulder at his farm. “That’s the least of our worries.”
“Is something wrong?” Roy asked. He thought he saw tears glistening on Beth’s cheeks.
“We’re leaving,” Frank said.
“To Teton?” Tom asked.
“For good.”
Roy looked at Tom and at Moses and they all looked at the Jacksons.
“Kind of sudden, isn’t it?”
“Not sudden enough,” Frank Jackson said.
“When did you sell your place?” Moses asked. “I didn’t know it was for sale.”
“We didn’t sell—” Jackson said, and stopped. “Listen, will you get out of my road? We have a lot of miles to cover before dark.”
“Hold on,” Roy said. This made no sense. “If something’s wrong, we’d like to help. We’re your neighbors.”
“If you’re smart you’ll leave too.”
“Leave Thunder Valley?” Tom laughed. “That’ll be the day. Irene loves it here more than she’s ever loved anything. Including me.”
The humor was wasted on Frank Jackson. “By God, if you won’t move, I’ll go around you.” He slapped the reins and bumped over the corner of a tilled field to reach the road. With another slap and a shout, the buckboard rumbled off to the east.
“What in God’s name was that all about?” Tom said.
“She was crying,” Roy said.
“Who?”
“Beth. Didn’t you see her face?”
“We should catch up to them and make him tell us what’s going on,” Moses proposed.
“I can try,” Tom said.
Roy clung to the seat as it bounced under him. For a while it appeared they were gaining. Then Frank Jackson looked back and said something to his wife and went faster.
Finally Tom slowed and said, “It’s hopeless.”
Roy let go of the seat.
After a while the next farmhouse appeared, set a quarter mile back from the road.
The McWhirtle place. Roy liked Aaron and Maude. They had kindly natures, maybe because they were older than the rest of the farmers in the valley.
In the glare of the afternoon sun Roy almost missed the black specks in the sky. Shielding his eyes, he saw the specks more clearly. After what just happened with the Jacksons, they filled him with alarm.
The specks were vultures.
“Stop the buckboard,” Roy said.
Tom didn’t ask why. He brought it to a halt and joked, “Is that beer catching up with you?”
Roy pointed. “What do you make of that?”
Moses leaned over the side for a better look. “Good God. Are those buzzards?”
“They are,” Roy said.
“There must be seven or eight,” Moses said. “Why are they circling over Frank’s place?”
“Maybe a cow is down,” Tom said.
“Aaron wouldn’t leave it lying there,” Roy said. Farm animals that died were nearly always buried as soon as possible.
“Let’s have a look-see,” Tom said.
“Go slow,” Rondo James cautioned.
Once again Roy had almost forgotten the pistoleer was there. The Southerner was so quiet, it was easy to do. “Do you know something we don’t?”
“Slow keeps a man alive longer than reckless,” Rondo said.
More vultures were winging in from various points of the compass. From the size of the gathering, whatever drew them must be a virtual feast.
“Stop,” Rondo James commanded when they came within hailing distance of the house. Lithely swinging up and over, he landed lightly on the balls of his boots. Sweeping his slicker aside to reveal his pearl-handled Navies, he hollered, “Hallo the house.”
No one came to the front door or poked a head out a window or came from the barn.
Rondo crossed to the front porch and knocked loudly. As before, no one appeared. He came down the steps and on around the side, gesturi
ng for them to stay where they were.
Roy lost sight of him.
“You see how he moves?” Tom said. “He reminds me of a panther on the prowl.”
“It reminds me not to provoke him,” Moses said.
“He wouldn’t hurt us,” Roy said.
“He’s a killer,” Moses said. “Give him an excuse and he’d shoot any of us.”
Roy might have believed that, once. Now that he’d gotten to know the Southerner, he’d discovered a core of integrity that ran bone deep.
Rondo James reappeared, making for the chicken coop. Once more he was lost to sight. This time when he reappeared he moved slowly and his body was slumped as if in great sadness. He beckoned.
It wasn’t until they passed the house that Roy saw dead chickens everywhere. From the manner in which their heads were bent, someone had caught chicken after chicken and wrung their necks.
“What in the world?” Moses blurted.
Over by the barn a calf was on its side in a pool of blood.
Just inside the barn lay a cow.
Tom was aghast. “It’s my hogs all over again.”
A new fence was being strung to keep the now-dead chickens in, and just beyond, Rondo James stood over two still forms.
Roy was off the buckboard before it stopped. He ran over and was horror-struck by the bullet holes and expressions on Aaron and Maude. They had died ugly, violent deaths. “It can’t be.”
“Did you know them well?” Rondo James asked.
“Well enough.” Roy scanned the farm and the fields. “Who could have done this?”
“I can track them if you’d like.”
“You do, and I’ll go with you.”
Tom and Moses would only come so close.
“Awful, just awful,” the latter said.
“It’s indecent, them lying there like that,” Tom said. “I’ll fetch a blanket to cover them with.”
“How long do you figure they’ve been dead?” Moses said.
Rondo James squatted and put his hand on Aaron’s neck and his forehead, then gripped a wrist and flexed the fingers. “About two hours, give or take.”
“We can catch them if we hurry,” Roy said. “Aaron has some good horses we can use.” He ran to the barn, giving the dead cows a wide berth, only to be brought up short by the grisly spectacle inside.
The horses were dead in their stalls. Cows had been brought out and slaughtered. A pigpen contained only dead pigs. A rooster with a broken neck was under the ladder to the hayloft.
Roy was dumdfounded. The carnage was beyond comprehension. To murder Aaron and Maude was bad enough—but to kill cows and pigs and horses. What had they ever done to hurt anyone?
“The hombres who did this did it for the fun of it,” Rondo James said behind him.
Roy hadn’t realized he’d asked the question out loud. “All the horses have their throats slit. We can’t go after whoever did this.”
“We can if we hurry to your place,” Rondo said.
“Then let’s go,” Roy replied. “Tom and Moses can stay and tend to the bodies.”
“It’s best if I go alone,” Rondo said. “There might be gunplay.”
“I hope there is,” Roy said.
16
It surprised Roy, this sudden and unexpected urge to kill. He’d never had an urge to harm a human being in his life. He didn’t have much of a temper and tended to take what life dished out in stride. Martha once said that it was one of the traits that attracted her to him. He wasn’t like a lot of men who got angry at every little provocation.
But Roy was angry now. He was more than angry. Aaron and Maude McWhirtle had been good people. They didn’t deserve to die so brutally, so coldly. To him it was inconceivable that men could be so vile.
His rage must have showed on his face when he brought the buckboard racing up to the farmhouse and sprang down and rushed onto the porch.
Martha and the children had heard him coming and hurried out to meet him, and the shock on their faces gave him pause.
Roy stopped and said simply, “Aaron and Maude have been shot dead.”
“Dear Lord, no,” Martha breathed, a hand to her throat.
“There’s more but I don’t have time,” Roy said, opening the door. “We’re going after the killers.”
“We?” Martha said.
“Rondo and me.” Roy ran down the hall to the parlor. He’d left his Winchester propped against the china cabinet. The ammunition was in a drawer in the kitchen. He took the box out and shoved it into a pocket.
His family had followed him. Fear was writ on Martha’s features and anxiety on the children’s.
“Why must you do this?” Martha asked in that quiet way she had when she was extremely upset.
“Someone has to.”
“But why you?”
“They were our friends.”
“Granted. But you’re not a lawman. You’ve never shot anyone.”
“Rondo has.”
“He’s a man-killer. He’s used to it. You’re not. Please forgive me, but you might be getting in over your head.”
“We have to stand up for our own. That includes our friends. The nearest law isn’t near at all. When something like this happens, we have to deal with it. No one else will.”
“Then round up some of the other men to go with you.”
“There’s no time. It’s late in the day. I take the time to go to the other farms, dark will fall, and we won’t be able to head out until morning. By then the killers will be long gone.”
“Killers,” Martha said. “Plural. How many are we talking about?”
“Rondo says there are four.”
“You’re relying on him a lot.”
“It’s a stroke of luck he’s here. He can track, he can shoot better than most anyone. You won’t have to worry when I’m with him.”
“In point of fact I will,” Martha said. “Four against your two. What if they see you are after them and lie in ambush?”
Roy started to go.
“Didn’t you hear me?”
“I can’t predict what will happen,” Roy said. “I’m going and that’s final.”
“Oh, Royden.”
“Can I come, Pa?” Andy asked.
“No.”
“I’m old enough. And I can shoot.”
“You’re to stay with your mother and keep watch.” Roy stopped again. “Whoever these men are, they might have done something to the Jacksons, too. I’ll explain later. But it could be they haven’t left. It could be they’re still in Thunder Valley. So I want you, Andy, to load your rifle and sit out on the front porch and keep watch. Stay alert. Matt, you can help by looking out the upstairs windows. Go from room to room so you can see in all directions. Sally, you stay at your mother’s side.”
“Is all that really necessary?” Martha asked.
“If you’d seen what I’ve seen,” Roy said, “you would know it is.”
“What if they come here, Pa?” Sally asked. “What should we do?”
“Any riders come, anyone you don’t know, you bolt the doors and fire a warning shot out the window.”
“I don’t like you leaving us at a time like this,” Martha said.
Roy didn’t, either. But if he had a chance to catch the killers, he had to take it. He told himself his family would be all right. It occurred to him that Tilda Beard and Irene Kline were alone at their farms, and he thought about sending Andy to warn them. But he didn’t. And felt bad for not doing so.
He hurried upstairs for his coat. He figured to be out all night. When he came back down, Sally was waiting at the bottom of the stairs.
“Ma is fixing food for you to take.”
Roy went to the kitchen.
Martha was briskly going about from cupboard to cupboard.
“It won’t be much but it will keep you from going hungry. Some bread and dried beef and a couple of apples.”
“It’s thoughtful of you.”
“I’m scared,
Roy,” Martha said as she got twine from the pantry to wrap the bundle. “I’m terribly scared.”
“You should be all right.”
“Should be?”
Roy leaned the Winchester against the kitchen table and walked over. She turned and he enfolded her in his arms. He was startled to feel her tremble. “I wish there was another way.”
“Why can’t …” Martha stopped, then took a deep breath. “Why can’t Rondo go by himself?”
“That wouldn’t be right. They weren’t his neighbors. They were ours.”
“I bet he would if you asked him.”
“I bet he would, too. But I can’t do that, Martha. I’d never live the shame down.”
“There’s no shame in putting your family first.”
“There’s shame in being a coward. And that’s what it would amount to.”
Martha hugged him fiercely and astonished him by passionately kissing him full on the mouth. She rarely did that unless it was night and they were in the bedroom with the door closed and the kids were all asleep.
“Be careful,” she breathed into his ear.
“Rondo will be with me.”
Martha drew back. “You think too much of that man. Will he take a bullet for you, too?”
Roy took the bundle and got his rifle. He could feel her eyes bore into his back.
The kids were on the porch. Andy had his rifle. Sally looked ready to cry. Matt was grinning excitedly.
“Listen to your mother,” Roy instructed them.
Andy and Sally nodded and Matt said, “We’ll do every-thing she says to, Pa.”
“I don’t expect to be gone more than a day or two,” Roy said.
“That long?” Martha said.
Just then Rondo James came around the house leading two of Roy’s horses. Roy’s saddle was on one and Rondo’s on the other.
“I wish General Lee was fit to ride.”
“These are good animals,” Roy said. “They have a lot of stamina.”
“They’ll need it.” Rondo swung up. “We’d better light a shuck. We’re losin’ daylight.”
Roy turned and touched Martha’s cheek and got out of there while he still could. Guilt burned his gut like red-hot coals. Since he didn’t have a scabbard for his rifle, he had to hold on to it as he climbed on and raised the reins. “I’ll be back,” he promised.
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