Roy hadn’t taken his eyes off Rondo. “Have you found out anything? Anything at all?”
“I wish I had.”
Roy didn’t hide his disappointment. “You’re our best hope. There’s another meeting tonight of everyone in the valley. I’d be grateful if you could attend.”
“I’ll stay as long as you like,” Rondo said.
Martha dabbed at the corners of her eyes. “Myrtle Olander was a dear. She liked to get together with us ladies. I can’t hardly believe she’s gone.”
Tilda nodded. “I remember how much fun we had at her quilting bees.”
“Was anything taken?” Rondo asked.
“Sorry?” Roy said.
“Did the killers steal money or take Mrs. Olander’s jewelry or did they just kill?”
“Isn’t the killing enough?” Moses Beard said.
“So far as we know,” Roy said, “they didn’t rob the Olanders of a cent.”
“The same as the McWhirtles.”
“Is that important?” Tom asked. “Does it give you a clue to what these outlaws are up to?”
“They aren’t outlaws,” Rondo said. “They’re exterminators.”
“They didn’t exterminate the Jacksons,” Roy said. “They drove them off.”
“The Jacksons were the first place they struck.”
“You’re forgetting my hogs,” Tom said.
Irene said, “Each place they hit, it gets worse. What will they do next? Hang women and children?”
“Don’t talk like that,” Tom said.
“I’m right, aren’t I?” Irene said. “Whoever these men are, they won’t stop until they’ve killed or driven everyone from Thunder Valley.”
An atmosphere of dread filled the parlor. Martha sniffled. Irene and Tilda were pale. The men looked at one another in confusion.
Rondo James smiled and said, “I’d be obliged for a cup of coffee. I haven’t eaten all mornin’ and my stomach is complainin’.”
Martha rose. “Where are my manners? I should have thought to offer you something when you came in.”
“I’ll go with you,” Roy said.
As he went down the hall, Rondo noticed the three kids crouched at the top of the stairs. They had been eavesdropping. If the parents noticed, they didn’t say anything. He walked to his usual chair and sat and tilted it back so his shoulders were against the wall. “Are you two all right?”
“I’m terribly upset,” Martha admitted as she lifted the lid of the coffeepot. “I’m worried for my family.”
“Olander and five of his punchers,” Roy said, staring bleakly at the floor. “I wouldn’t stand a prayer.”
Rondo hated to see them so distraught. These people had been kind to him, and he never forgot a kindness. “I reckon I’ll stick around here a spell.”
“No,” Roy said. “That wouldn’t be fair. The other farmers don’t have a shooter to protect them.”
“The others didn’t take me and my horse in.”
“They would have, though.”
“Maybe a few,” Rondo said. “But not all of them. They’re not you, Roy.”
Martha turned. “I hope you stay. That’s selfish, I suppose, but I have my children to think of, and they mean more to me than anything.”
“Here’s a notion,” Rondo said. “How about the families move in together until this is over?”
“And leave their farms?” Roy said. “I can’t see anyone doing that.”
“Cows and chickens and dirt aren’t worth dyin’ over.”
“To a farmer they are.”
Martha stepped to the counter and took down the coffee. “What I don’t get,” she remarked, “is how the killers got into the Olander house. You’d think the punchers would have seen them.”
“They must have struck in the dark,” Roy said.
“No,” Martha said. “A cowboy had come in from the range before the sun went down, remember? He was the one found the bodies.”
Roy took a seat across from Rondo. “There’s something else we need to talk to you about. You might not want to stay after you hear it, and I’d understand.”
Martha nodded. “You have your own troubles. They come before ours.”
“There’s nothin’ you could say that would make me desert you when you need help.”
“How about the names Shotgun Anderson and Kid Slade?” Roy said. “I didn’t know who they were when they paid us a visit so I asked Tom. He’s heard of them.”
So had Rondo. “They were here?”
“Looking for you.”
“Hell,” Rondo said.
“Anderson told me there’s a bounty on your head but he wouldn’t say who put it there.”
“I can guess.”
“They might be watching our house right this minute,” Martha said.
“Maybe you should wait for dark and saddle General Lee and go for good,” Roy suggested. “He’s healed enough.”
Rondo thought about the kindness the family had shown him.
“I’m stayin’.”
“We don’t want you dead on our account,” Martha said.
Rondo James smiled. “I’ll try not to inconvenience you.”
29
Ritlin was fit to kill something. He sat with his body tense at a corner table in the Grand Lady saloon. His right hand was on the chair arm, above the ivory grips to his Colt. “Tell me again how it happened,” he growled.
Axel sat across from him, sipping a beer. “I’ve told you ten times already.”
“Tell me eleven,” Ritlin said. He didn’t like the little man’s attitude.
Axel sighed. “We went into the kitchen. I was goin’ to shoot them but you know how Brule was. He loved to hear himself talk. He told Olander how his foreman and his punchers were dead, and soon him and his wife would be.”
“And the rancher didn’t have a gun, you say?”
“Neither him nor his old woman,” Axel said. “Maybe that’s why Brule was careless. He went over to Olander, who was standin’ by the counter. The next thing I knew, Olander pulled a big knife from behind his back and stabbed Brule, and that was that.”
Ritlin could see it happening that way but he still wasn’t convinced. “Brule was quick and strong. I can’t see Olander getting the better of him.”
“It can happen to anyone.”
“Not Brule,” Ritlin stubbornly insisted.
Axel set down his glass. “What do you want me to say? You were on me about it the whole ride here. And since we got back it’s all you talk about.”
“Brule was my friend.”
“I’m sorry for you,” Axel said. “But if you need to be mad about it, be mad at yourself.”
“Eh?”
“You were the one who started the ball rollin’,” Axel said. “And us without our six-shooters.”
“I had my spare—” Ritlin said, and stopped.
“Good for you,” Axel said. “But what about the rest of us? I took the foreman’s. Poor Brule didn’t have one. If he had, maybe he would have shot the rancher before the rancher stabbed him.”
“You’re saying it’s my fault?”
“Bingo.”
Ritlin glowered.
“You should have waited for them to return our six-shooters.”
“I didn’t think—”
“No, you didn’t. And now there’s just the two of us. I grant you that we’re not in a line of work that lends itself to us livin’ to a ripe old age, but Brule might still be breathin’ if not for you.”
“Go to hell.” Ritlin picked up his whiskey and swallowed. He’d been through half a bottle but it hadn’t helped.
“I think we need some time to ourselves.” Axel pushed back his chair. “See you later.”
“Make sure you do,” Ritlin said. “We still have a job to do.”
“At twice the money,” Axel said.
“Eh?”
“With One Eye and Brule gone, we’re entitled to their shares. You can have Brule’s and I’ll take
One Eye’s.”
“Charlton Rank might not see it that way,” Ritlin said. “The agreement was for five thousand each.”
“He’d better see it that way,” Axel said. Wheeling on a heel, he jangled away.
Ritlin glumly refilled his glass. He hadn’t been this upset about anyone dying since he was twelve and his grandmother passed on. She was the only human being who had ever truly been kind to him. Not his pa, who ran out on his drunk of a mother when he was seven. Not his mother, who liked to slap him around when she was mad, and she was always mad about something or other.
Ritlin drank and sulked and lost track of time. When a dove sashayed over and asked if he’d like company, he told her to get lost. He was in no mood for company. At least Axel got that right.
The truth be told, Ritlin never had liked the cowboy. Axel was the last to join them. One day when Brule, One Eye and he were in a saloon in Casper, Axel showed up out of the blue and said that seeing as how they all hired their guns out for a price, they should work together. He was against it but Brule said that four guns were better than three. One Eye went along with Brule.
Ritlin had demanded to know how Axel knew who they were, and Axel said a former client told him about them.
For five years now they’d been riding together, and Ritlin never once warmed to him. He didn’t get along all that well with One Eye, either, but then One Eye was an irritable cuss who didn’t get along well with anyone.
Axel was different. He hardly talked. He kept to himself so much that sometimes Ritlin forgot he was there. And he hardly ever talked about his past.
Axel was part of them but he was apart from them.
Ritlin had mentioned it a few times to Brule. He said he didn’t like how Axel stayed so aloof. Brule replied that Axel was a loner and that’s how loners behaved.
The man was as cold a fish as Ritlin ever came across, and now he was the only partner he had left.
“Hell,” Ritlin said, and tilted the bottle to his mouth.
He downed every drop, let the bottle clatter to the floor, and stood. He wasn’t drunk but he wasn’t sober, either, and he could feel the effects of the whiskey in him as he moved. His arms and legs were sluggish, and his brain, as well. It would slow his reflexes.
“Shouldn’t have done that,” Ritlin said. He hardly ever drank so much.
The night air helped some. He strolled down Main Street, his thumb wedged in his belt close to his Colt. He figured to walk a while, get the liquor out of his system, and be his usual self again. With his black clothes he blended into the dark so well that hardly anyone noticed him.
Ritlin drifted on tides of memory. He recollected the first man he’d killed, when he was fourteen. He did it for money. He was in Saint Louis, living in an abandoned shack, skin and bones from hardly ever eating, and one night he had to have food so he went out and snuck up behind an old coot and bashed him over the head with a rock. He got three dollars and twenty-seven cents.
He’d headed west, killing now and then, sometimes with a knife but usually with a derringer he’d taken from a victim. He’d shove it into their sides and squeeze and delight in the surprised looks on their faces.
Then came the fateful day when he stabbed a man wearing a Colt. It was the spare he kept in his saddlebags. He’d practiced with it and discovered a remarkable ability he would never have guessed he possessed. He was lightning quick, and got quicker, until there were few men alive who could match him. He thought so. Brule thought so. One Eye thought so.
Finally, Ritlin had been good at something. Finally, he could earn a better-than-most living. He’d met Brule in Kansas, in Topeka of all places, and the funny thing was, he wasn’t there to kill anybody. He was passing through. So was Brule. They were standing at a bar and struck up a conversation, Brule doing most of the striking. And then a drunk had bumped into Brule and said it was Brule’s fault and threatened to shoot him, and just like that, Ritlin drew and jammed his six-shooter into the drunk’s cheek and told him to make himself scarce, or else. Brule had whistled and said he’d never seen anyone so fast, and since they were both heading west, would Ritlin mind if they rode together?
That was how it started, the best and only friendship Ritlin ever had.
Now here he was, alone again. All because of the damn rancher. If Olander wasn’t already dead, he’d ride out there and take an ax to him and chop him to pieces while he screamed and pleaded.
Ritlin snapped back to the present. Somehow he’d drifted down a side street. It was nearly pitch black. Off a ways a dog was barking and in a cabin a child squalled.
Ritlin turned and saw the lights of Main Street and cursed himself for being so stupid.
“It’s the liquor,” he said. But it was more than that. He missed Brule. They’d argued now and again but generally they got along as well as two pards could.
Ritlin had half a mind to ride to the Olander spread and burn the ranch house to the ground. Hell, and the barn and the outhouse, too. He started to laugh, and doubled over slightly, and the night flared with fireflies and thunder boomed and he heard the sizzle of lead over his head.
Instantly, the Colt was in his hand. Ritlin fanned off three shots swifter than most men could blink, and then he moved, hurtling at a short fence and vaulting over it. He misjudged and hooked a stirrup, and crashed down hard on his elbows and his knees.
The dog and the child had gone quiet and the night was as still as death.
Ritlin reloaded. He could do it by feel, he’d practiced it so much. Sometimes he’d practice with his eyes closed in case he had to do it in the dark, like now.
His blood was pumping fast and furious and his brain began to clear.
He couldn’t stay there. The shooter might have glimpsed him going over the fence. He ran in a crouch across a weed-choked yard to a pine. Slowly rising, he scanned the side street. He didn’t spy movement. The shooter might be gone but his gut hunch was that the man was still there, waiting for him to give himself away.
Ritlin waited. He’d let the shooter come to him.
None of the cabin doors opened. No one called out, demanding to know what was going on.
Ritlin wasn’t surprised. Most people cared more about their own hides than anyone else’s and kept their noses out of business that didn’t concern them.
There! A hint of motion. Ritlin fanned twice and was answered by three shots as swift as his own. He heard the lead smack the trunk, and dropped into a crouch.
Again that terrible silence.
Ritlin replaced the spent cartridges. He had to get out of there. He wouldn’t put it past the other shooter to circle around.
Like a racehorse out of a gate, Ritlin flew. He leaped the fence, cut around a woodshed, ran past a dark cabin, and made for Main Street. It occurred to him that he was silhouetted by the distant light, and he veered into the dark a fraction before a pistol cracked behind him. Again he heard the air sizzle to hot lead.
Ritlin stopped and turned and squatted. He thought the shooter might come after him but minutes went by, and nothing.
Keeping low and using every bit of cover, he reached Main Street. Darting around the corner of a feed store, he stood with his back to the wall.
Five minutes passed. Ten minutes. No one appeared. Ritlin moved to the recessed doorway of a haberdashery. After another wait he warily crossed the street and entered the first saloon he came to. It was called the Blue Spruce and catered mainly to the timber crowd.
Ritlin went to the bar and ordered a drink. Now that his head was clear, one more wouldn’t hurt. And he needed it. He raised the glass and looked in the mirror and saw a familiar face staring back at him from a table.
Axel raised a glass, and beckoned.
Ritlin swallowed and went over and pulled out a chair.
“Did you come lookin’ for me?” Axel asked. He had a bottle of his own, a third empty, and his face was flushed.
“I was takin’ a stroll and stopped in,” Ritlin said. “How long have
you been here?”
Axel tapped the bottle. “Since I left you.”
“Did you hear shots a while ago?”
“Some,” Axel said. “I didn’t pay much attention. Why?”
“Nothin’,” Ritlin said. Now that he had a moment to think, it struck him that the shooter had been almost as good as he was. And in the entire territory, there weren’t more than a handful who could make that claim.
One who could was sitting across from him.
30
It was about two in the afternoon when Marshal Tyrell Gibson rode into Teton. He drew a lot of stares, as he always did, and his badge wasn’t even showing. He drew rein at the hitch rail in front of the Timberland, dismounted, and stretched. He slapped dust from his coat and his hat and went in and crossed to the front desk.
The clerk wore spectacles and a bow tie. The corners of his mouth curled down but he forced a smile and said, “May I help you, sir?”
“You can,” Tyrell said.
“If you’re looking for accommodations, there’s a boardinghouse down the street.”
“What’s wrong with the rooms here?”
“We’re full up.”
Tyrell glanced at the two dozen slots, many with keys in them. “Looks to me as if more than half your rooms are empty.”
“Be that as it may—”
“You don’t want me to take one because of my color.”
“That’s not true, sir,” the clerk said with shammed indignity.
Tyrell did something he rarely let himself do—he lost his temper. He moved his coat to show his badge. “Lie to me again, you peckerwood.”
The clerk blanched. “I assure you that no offense was intended, Marshal.”
“Does this town have its own tin star?”
“No, sir.”
“A telegraph office?”
“No sir.”
“A newspaper office?”
“No, sir.”
“How in hell does it keep in touch with the rest of the world?”
“Well, there’s the stage. It comes in three times a week. Due in today, in fact, and will head out again tomorrow morning.”
“That doesn’t help me much,” Tyrell said.
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