“No, dear lady. Not many. Just one.” Bill scowled. “As you will soon see.”
* * *
The body lay between two rows of tents, but a blood trail indicated that the man had been stabbed elsewhere and although fatally wounded he’d crawled a fair distance before dying. Bill Cody insisted that there should be hot coffee available at all times in the dining tent, and a cup lay on the ground near the stove where the huge pot simmered day and night. The cowboy, probably unable to sleep because of the pain of his shattered forearm, had been stabbed when he’d gone in for coffee, but whether or not he’d also been scalped in the tent Bill didn’t know.
“The scalp is gone, Kate, so there’s no way of telling,” he said.
The dead man had a quirt looped around his wrist and Kate recognized him as one of the three cowboys who’d stripped her with their eyes during her last visit to the encampment and had later attacked Josiah Mosely. The other two stood near the body and were loudly demanding of the stunned onlookers that the murdering savage named Cloud Passing should be tracked down and hung from the nearest tree.
“Who found the body?” Kate said.
One of the cowboys, a redhead with wide shoulders, said, “Me and Buck Nolan did. Andy wasn’t in his bunk this morning and we went looking for him. This is how we found him.”
“What time was it?” Kate said.
The redhead grinned. “What the hell is it to you, little lady?”
“Because this is my ground and you’re on it,” Kate said, the crease appearing between her eyebrows warning that she was mad clean through. “I asked you what time it was when you found the body.”
“Answer Mrs. Kerrigan,” Bill Cody said. “And mind your manners, Davy Hoyle.”
“Just before first light,” the cowboy said. “What the hell does it matter? We all know who killed him and then took his scalp. It was that damned Indian, Cloud Passing. We had some trouble with him, and this was his way of getting back at us. With that broken arm Andy couldn’t even defend himself.”
“Yes, I heard about that trouble,” Kate said. “And besides Cloud Passing there are a lot of Indians in this camp who might carry a grudge.” The knife still protruded from the dead man’s back, and Kate asked if anyone recognized it.
“Yes, I recognize it,” Ingrid Hult said as she made her way though the crowd. “One of my bowie knives is missing.”
“Is it the murder weapon?” Kate said.
Ingrid bent over and looked closer, and after a moment she said, “Yes, that’s it. That’s my bowie. It’s a Sheffield knife with a stag and brass handle and there’s not too many of them around.”
Kate kneeled beside the body and after a while said, “Unless the murderer carried two knives, one for stabbing and another for scalping, he used the bowie twice.”
“What difference does it make?” Davy Hoyle said. “The Indian stabbed Andy Porter, scalped him, and then stabbed him again.”
“Perhaps,” Kate said. “Can one of you men get the deceased’s shirt off?”
The garment was stiff with congealed blood and there were no volunteers.
“I see,” Kate said. “Then I’ll do it myself.” She ripped open the back of the dead man’s tattered shirt and stared at not one, but many wounds.
Kate looked up at Bill Cody and said, “This man was killed in a frenzy of hate. I count eight stab wounds, and there could be more.” As though to make up for his unwillingness to help with the gory shirt, Bill took a knee beside the corpse and said, “Look at Andy’s head, Kate. Seems like the murderer tried to take his hair but couldn’t finish the job.”
A flap of scalp was peeled back from the dead cowboy’s forehead and removed but part of it was still attached to the base of the skull. “Wouldn’t a Cheyenne warrior have done it better?” Kate said.
Bill Cody nodded. “I would say. Unless Cloud Passing was interrupted.”
“You’re convinced he is the killer?” Kate said.
“The evidence points that way.”
“Yes, you’re right,” Kate said. “I’m afraid it does. It points right at Cloud Passing.”
“Didn’t I just get through telling you that?” Hoyle said, his face flushed with anger.
“Yes, you did,” Kate said. “Bill, I’d like to take a look in the dining tent.”
Davy grew even angrier. “You already know all you need to know, lady,” he said. Then, turning to the onlookers behind him, “Come on, you men, let’s get a posse together and go find that murdering savage.”
A cheer rose and a dozen men, most of them young cowboys and former cavalry troopers ready for any diversion, joined Hoyle as he stormed away, waving the others after him. A few blanket-wrapped Indians watched with stone faces and said nothing.
“Mr. Cody, aren’t you going to stop them?” Kate said.
Bill shook his head. “Kate, once them Texas boys have taken on a hanging mind-set there’s nothing on God’s green earth that can stop them, short of a company of Rangers with a howitzer. Besides, if Cloud Passing doesn’t want to be found he won’t be. Catch my drift?”
“Then let’s hope you’re right,” Kate said. “Now we’ll take a look in the dining tent.”
“Lot of blood in there, Kate,” Bill said.
“I’m aware of that,” Kate said.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Kate Kerrigan rose to her feet. “Judging by the blood, Andy was killed right here on this spot,” she said. “Then I think someone tried to scalp him, but couldn’t complete it because the act disgusted him.”
“How do you figure that?” Bill Cody said.
“Step over there to the right side of the tent opening,” Kate said.
Bill looked puzzled but he did as Kate said. He stood by the tent entrance and his nose wrinkled. “Hell, somebody puked here. In the dining tent, damn it.”
“Look down at your feet,” Kate said.
Bill did and then leaped back as though he’d stepped on hot coals. “There’s vomit all over,” he said.
“As I said, Mr. Cody, somebody tried to scalp Andy Porter but gave up because it made him sick. But he dragged the body out of the tent, and that I don’t understand. Why not just leave him here?”
“Andy might have crawled out,” Bill said.
“With a broken arm and eight knife wounds in his back?” Kate said. “I very much doubt it.”
Bill stared at Kate as though he wished to say something, but was reluctant to put voice to his thoughts.
Kate smiled. “Out with it, Mr. Cody.”
“The trouble Cloud Passing had with Andy Porter and them, I was told your houseguest was involved,” Bill said.
“Josiah Mosely? Yes. Apparently the three cowboys thought it would be fun to assault him. He was being beaten quite badly before Cloud Passing intervened and saved him.”
“What do we know about Mosely?” Bill said.
“He’s a rainmaker, but you knew that already.”
“Something strange about that feller,” Bill said. “Something hidden, and it’s dark. I saw the same thing in Hickok, a haunted, murky place within him that no one could touch.”
“This is true,” Kate said. She smiled. “Then it seems that we’ve got some sleuthing to do. We’ll turn ourselves into a regular pair of Pinkertons, get to the bottom of this mystery, and bring the guilty party to justice.”
“Perhaps . . . if Cloud Passing lives that long,” Bill said.
* * *
Kate’s carriage was close to her house when she spotted Josiah Mosely. The young man was obviously headed toward the Bill Cody encampment, and she ordered Shorty Hawkins to halt. Never the most trusting of men, the puncher pulled his Colt from the waistband and laid it on the seat beside him. He eyed Mosely with active dislike.
Mosely nodded and said, “Mrs. Kerrigan, ma’am. I heard about the murder.”
“Your name was mentioned. Mr. Mosely,” Kate said. “Bill Cody thinks you belong on the list of suspects.”
“I didn’t kill
Andy Porter,” Mosely said.
Shorty’s face, as freckled as a bird’s egg, was belligerent. “Here, how come you knew it was Porter?” he said.
“Because the news is all over the ranch,” Mosely said. “The murder is the only thing people around here want to talk about.”
“But you’re on your way to the camp,” Kate said. “Do you need to learn more?”
“I need to know if Cloud Passing is still alive,” Mosely said. “I owe him, and I haven’t been beholden to a man since Professor Purdon.”
“Purdon? Oh yes, he taught you the rainmaker’s trade, I believe,” Kate said.
“And other things, like how to be a balloonist and a gentleman,” Mosely said.
“Very commendable, I’m sure,” Kate said. Then, “Right now there’s a posse out searching for Cloud Passing.”
“I know. That’s why I want to be there when they bring him in. I won’t stand by and let him be lynched.”
“Hell, man, what are you going to do?” Shorty said. “Try to talk a hemp posse out of it? It don’t work. One time I seen a feller try to talk his way out of a hanging. The vigilantes listened to him, real polite, and then hung him anyway.”
The little puncher had spoken out of turn but his point was a valid one, and Kate let his rudeness go. “You can’t reason with a lynch mob, Mr. Mosely,” she said.
“I’ll tell them I’ll go to the law and identify every man jack of them as a murderer,” Mosely said.
“Yup, that’ll scare ’em sure enough,” Shorty said. “Mister, your guitar ain’t tuned right.”
“Shorty, that’s quite enough,” Kate said. “Mr. Mosely, you’d better come back to the ranch with me. You still haven’t recovered from the beating you took and Shorty is right, you can’t singlehandedly stop a hanging posse.”
“You heeled?” Shorty said.
Mosely shook his head. “No.”
The puncher picked up the revolver. “You used a Colt’s gun afore?”
“No,” Mosely said.
“Then get yourself one. All you have to do is walk up to a man, shove the muzzle in his belly, and pull the trigger.” Shorty looked wise. “You’ll get good results, I guarantee.”
“He’ll do no such thing,” Kate said. “Step up here beside me, Mr. Mosely. You’re going back to the ranch with me. Shouldn’t you be working on repairing your balloon thing?”
“Yes, yes, I should,” Mosely said.
“Well then, get to it,” Kate said. “There will be time enough to intervene when and if Cloud Passing is caught.”
“That might be too late,” Mosely said.
“Then if that’s the case there is nothing you or anyone else can do, Mr. Mosely,” Kate said. “You will return to the ranch with us—now.”
Josiah Mosely considered that and then seemed to realize the hopelessness of his situation. Without another word he stepped into the carriage.
“Drive on,” Kate said.
* * *
Later that day as the bright afternoon faded into evening Davy Hoyle led a tired, dispirited posse back to Bill Cody’s encampment. They had ridden far, covered a lot of ground, but had seen no sign of the renegade Cheyenne named Cloud Passing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The ruined mission lay on the bend of a creek and was surrounded by trees, mostly cottonwoods, wild oak, mesquite, and here and there an isolated juniper.
Trace Kerrigan sat his saddle and swept the area with his field glasses. Because of the trees the mission was mostly hidden but what caught and held Trace’s interest lay to the east of the ruin, an extensive campground that sprawled along the north bank of the Rio Grande. Greasy smoke columns from hundreds of mesquite fires rose into the air and joined together in a black murk that hung above the river like a fog. Trace calculated that a thousand people were living there, if living was the right word for what could only be a crowded, miserable existence. The bivouac looked like the encampment of a routed army, starving, defeated, and demoralized.
“Who the hell are those people and what are they doing there?” one of the punchers, a man named Zeke Cowley, asked, echoing Trace’s own train of thought.
“Mexican by the look of them,” Trace said. He passed the glasses to Cowley. “Here, take a look.
The puncher studied the camp for long moments and then lowered the glasses and said, “Mexicans all right, a passel of them. Looks like a Saturday night crowd at a cockfight.”
“Let me see,” the other puncher said. His name was Caleb Dowd, such a sour, stingy man that no one ever sought out his company. But he was a top hand and quick with the Colt. Dowd said, the glasses still to his eyes, “Ain’t Miz Kerrigan claimed all the land south to the river?”
“Yeah, now it’s KK range,” Trace said. “Come summer we’ll run cattle down that way.”
Dowd handed the glasses back. “Well, them Messkins are on it and they don’t look like they plan to move any time soon.”
“How we gonna play this, boss?” Cowley said to Trace. He looked worried.
“I was told to follow Slide McKenzie and check his story about the Mexicans,” Trace said. “Well, it seems like he told the truth. McKenzie has some kind of hold over those people, and I’d sure like to find out what it is.”
“I got an idea,” Dowd said, his eyes hard. “I don’t reckon Bill Cody has any love for greasers. We could ask him to jine up with the KK and together we’ll run them jumping beans back across the river.” Dowd scratched the stubble on his neck. “Gun a few if we have to so the rest get the message.”
“What do you think, boss?” Zeke Cowley said. “Is it a plan?”
“It’s nothing my mother would want the KK ranch involved in, and Bill Cody wouldn’t go for it, either,” Trace said. “Hell, he’s got vaqueros riding in his show.” He stared at the ceramic blue of the sky where a few puffy clouds drifted and after a while said, “I can’t leave it here, boys. I want to go talk to McKenzie and help him see the error of his ways.”
“Hang the son of a bitch,” Dowd said.
Trace nodded, smiling. “Caleb, now that sounds like a plan.”
* * *
“Seen you plain from a ways off,” Slide McKenzie said. “Did your mama wash your face and then set you to following me?”
Trace ignored that and studied the ruined mission. Much of the building still stood, though in a tumble-down state, and the roof had collapsed. An iron bell, much rusted, still hung in an alcove above the doorway, and it clinked softly in the prairie wind.
“We need to talk, McKenzie,” Trace said.
“Talk about what?” the man said. “I stated my business, and me and your ma discussed terms. There’s nothing more to talk about.”
“I can drill him just fine from here, boss,” Caleb Dowd said. “You just give me the nod.”
“You don’t scare me none, boy,” McKenzie said. “Now turn them horses around and get out of here before you get hurt.”
“McKenzie, the Kerrigans don’t pay tribute to anyone,” Trace said. “This is KK range, and I want you and your Mexicans off it pretty damned quick.”
“Tribute, is it?” McKenzie said. “I call it fair warning. If I lead this hungry mob north, a thousand more just like them, do you know what will happen to Mrs. Kerrigan’s precious ranch? It will mean the utter destruction of everything she holds dear.” The man grinned. “Bear in mind what I told your ma, boy . . . within a few months there won’t be a blade of grass or a cow left. Kate Kerrigan will shed salt tears and sup sorrow with the spoon of grief and wish she’d paid me my hundred thousand dollars.”
“Well, that rips it,” Caleb Dowd said, a man with a hair-trigger temper.
He went for his gun . . . but never made it.
A shotgun blast shattered Dowd’s spine and blew him out of the saddle. The puncher hit the ground just as Trace and Zeke Cowley swung their horses around to meet the threat.
“Don’t reach for the iron. We still got three barrels for the two of you.”
&n
bsp; This from a tall, hard-faced man who stood next to another who could have been his twin. Both wore canvas slickers and carried Greener scatterguns.
Trace knew it was death to draw on that pair, and Cowley was in the same frame of mind. He kept his hands on the saddle horn, well away from his holstered Colt.
McKenzie stepped to Trace’s side, a revolver in his hand. “Unbuckle the gun belt and let it fall. Then step down from there,” he said. He looked at Cowley. “You too, cowboy.” The man read something in Trace’s eyes and said, “We got the drop on you, Kerrigan. Do what I said or you’re a dead man.”
Trace was up against a stacked deck and he knew it. His gun belt thudded to the ground and so did Cowley’s.
“Now step down, real easy,” McKenzie said. He saw one of the tall men stare at him, his lean face framing a question. “He’s Kate Kerrigan’s son, Bat.”
The man nodded. “Yes, you told me about him. He ain’t so much.”
“Yeah he is,” McKenzie said. “He’s my ace in the hole. Kate Kerrigan may not pay to stop an invasion of her land, but she’ll ante up to get her son back alive.”
“You got it all figured, Slide,” Sky Boswell said. “I never took you to be that smart.”
McKenzie smiled. “Hell, I was born at night, but it wasn’t last night. Like I told you, Sky, you boys stick with me and you’ll get rich.”
Boswell pointed the shotgun muzzle at Trace. “What do you want done with them?”
“There’s an old wine cellar under the mission,” McKenzie said. “We’ll keep them there, give me some time to study on things.”
“Where’s the death angel?” Bat Boswell said.
“I got it in a safe place,” McKenzie said.
“Take no chances. Maybe these boys were coming after it.”
“They don’t know about the angel, do you Kerrigan? You’ve never met Santa Muerte.”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, McKenzie,” Trace said.
“Well, you’ll find out soon enough,” the man said.
And Bat Boswell laughed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
A flight of worn limestone steps led down to the wine cellar, a small, dark L-shaped room lit only by the oil lamp Slide McKenzie left on an upturned barrel that once held ale. Against the walls a few broken, slanted shelves showed where bottles had been stacked, and Zeke Cowley idly calculated that during its heyday a century before, the place must have held enough beer and wine to keep a man happily drunk for fifty years. Rats rustled in the cobwebbed corners where the blind, eight-eyed spiders lived, and the air smelled dry and musty like mummy dust.
Hate Thy Neighbor Page 10