by Dani Amore
The arrow pointed east.
When the rain abruptly ceased, Bird shook off her wet slicker and stowed it in a saddlebag. She made room for it there by taking out a whiskey bottle and raising it to her lips.
“Nothing like a drink after a rainstorm,” she said. It was a long drink and the liquor warmed her, reaching out to the parts of her body that had become wet and cold. Heat from the inside out. It was the best way to warm up.
She looked at Tower. “You’re wet on the outside, might as well be wet on the inside.” Bird held the bottle out toward him, but he declined. Her goal was to turn Tower into a drinking companion, and she had no intention of giving up just yet.
They headed directly east, and Bird was able to discern the slightest hint of a trail by the occasional hoofprint and stray wagon-wheel rut.
She felt the land begin to slightly rise, though the mountains were still distant. Tower filled Bird in on his unpleasant meeting at the boardinghouse where Egans had lived.
“That boy sure didn’t make a lot of friends while he was here,” Bird said.
“Or maybe the people he thought were friends really weren’t,” Tower said. “I find it strange that Sheriff Chesser had nothing to say about that. If Egans had committed some unspeakable crime, you would think the sheriff would mention it.”
“Or maybe not,” Bird said. “I think Chesser’s head is made of the same wood as those fish he carves.”
“You’re probably right about that,” Tower said. He lifted up in his saddle. “That must be it up there.”
Bird looked down the trail and saw in the looming darkness a white tent that looked as if a blind man had built it. The posts were crooked, the structure sagging. As they approached, she could see the remnants of a cooking circle strewn about.
“Do you think the storm did this?” Tower asked, looking at the chaotic camp.
“If anything, the storm probably improved it. Only a damn fool could have put together this fiasco.”
They pulled to a stop a dozen yards from the tent. Tower slid his rifle from its leather scabbard, and climbed off his horse.
“Well, miners aren’t exactly known for their domestic abilities,” he said.
Bird slid from her saddle, landed in mud, and drew one of her guns. She approached the tent and spotted a dozen empty whiskey jugs lined up next to the entrance.
“A man after my own heart,” she said. “Those whiskey jugs are the only things he kept organized.”
Tower held his rifle across the front of his body, his left hand on the barrel, his right sliding down to the trigger guard.
“Hello!” he called out.
There was no answer, save for the sound of Bird’s horse letting out a nervous whinny.
She glanced over, saw the horse’s ears were pointed forward, the nostrils flaring.
“Hello!” Tower called again. “Anyone home?”
He stood, arms at his side.
“My horse smells blood, just so you know,” Bird said.
“I do, too,” Tower answered.
He looked back toward the trail, then at Bird.
“If you want to go in, I don’t think you need an invitation,” she said.
Tower took a step forward and just as he did, a thunderclap exploded above their heads, a stab of lightning lit up the area, and a gunshot followed the rolling echo. It was impossible, but Bird thought she heard the sound of a horse thundering in the opposite direction.
The lightning flash briefly lit up the interior of the tent, and Bird could see the feet of a man, swaying back and forth.
Someone was inside, hanging.
Probably by his neck.
Fourteen
Bird ducked inside the tent. She had her gun in hand, ready to shoot if someone was hiding in the corner, waiting for an ambush.
But there was no one hiding.
The tent’s sole occupant, other than Bird, was a man hanging from the structure’s flimsy wood frame.
He was clearly dead.
As she took in the scene before her, the smell assaulted Bird’s senses: rotten meat, human despair, and the coppery scent of fresh blood.
She heard Tower enter behind her, and she spotted a lantern in the corner. Bird struck a match and lit the lantern. The scene inside was a desperate mess. Assorted mining tools were strewn about the interior, along with what looked like scrap wood and iron. A chain hung from another of the tent’s flimsy wooden supports, causing it to sag inward toward the center. Another whiskey jug sat on its side, next to the shattered remnants of another.
“Did you hear a horse?” Tower asked.
“Let me check,” Bird answered, stepping out the back of the tent. Immediately, she stepped away from the light thrown off by the lantern inside. She wasn’t sure if someone was out here, waiting to take a shot at either her or Tower.
But had they really heard a horse? Or had it been the faint echoes of thunder?
The rain had started again, big wet drops that struck the ground with authority. Bird searched the area behind the tent, but the ground was chewed up and the layers of overlapping mud made it impossible to tell what was fresh and what wasn’t. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, Bird could make out a path leading away from the tent, toward another, smaller structure that she assumed was the mine entrance. That could wait until first light. She had no desire to explore a mine shaft in the middle of the night.
Bird walked in a wide circle around Verhooven’s camp. She saw nothing that caught her eye, nothing that seemed out of place. Then again, it was night and the rain had been falling hard. Whatever tracks or subtle disturbances in the area were impossible to spot now.
She found their horses and brought them back to the front of the tent. Bird took a moment to retrieve the whiskey bottle from her saddlebag. She had briefly entertained the idea of helping herself to some of the whiskey from one of the jugs inside the tent, but those smells were too much even for her. She would use her own supply, for now.
Bird tied the horses outside the tent, then went back in where she found Tower standing, his rifle leaned up against the table in the corner. He was turned toward the dead man.
Bird went and stood next to him.
“Mr. Verhooven, I’m assuming,” Tower said.
The dead man wore filthy coveralls and a stained shirt. His neck was stretched, the head tilted at an unnatural angle. His eyes bulged and his tongue protruded from his mouth.
Bird studied the dead man’s face. She saw blood dripping from the corner of the man’s eyes.
“He hasn’t been dead long,” Bird said.
“Just a minute or two,” Tower said. “That ended up being the difference between murder and suicide.”
“What are you talking about?” Bird said.
“I think we really did hear someone riding away. If we hadn’t, we probably would have jumped to the wrong conclusion.”
Tower lifted his leg and used the toe of his boot to push the dead man. The effort caused the body to slowly twist, and reveal what had been pinned to the corpse’s shirt.
It was a yellowed sheet of paper with thick black words scrawled across the front.
I killed the preacher.
Bird turned to Tower and said, “Why would—”
But before she could finish, they both heard a voice that seemed to come from a distance, yet at the same time closely surrounded them both. The effect was unsettling, and Bird felt a cold breeze along her neck.
The voice was faint, and the words weren’t clear. But it was a woman’s voice.
The same one they’d heard.
At Killer’s Draw.
EPISODE TWO
Fifteen
For once, the blood was her own.
Bird stared at the back of her hand. She had just finished coughing, not an uncommon activity these days, she had to admit. But when she expected to maybe see a bit of spittle, instead, she saw blood. Not a lot. But even a little was more than she liked to see.
The bright-red
splatter ran across her hand and dripped a little onto her wrist.
Bird grabbed the whiskey bottle from her saddlebag and helped herself, swishing the amber liquid around her mouth to rinse out the metallic taste. She wiped the blood from her hand on her horse’s neck.
She straightened in the saddle and looked out over the valley in front of her. She was behind Verhooven’s mine, studying the trail of the mystery rider she was sure had been involved with the miner’s murder. Or suicide, as someone had probably been hoping to make it appear.
Tower waited until the morning to load the body onto the back of Verhooven’s horse and head back to Big River, so Bird waited with him and then set off to find out if there really had been someone else at the mine—and to see if that someone was responsible for killing Stanley Verhooven.
A hazy sun hung overhead, the deep recesses of the valley below still shrouded in early morning fog. On the ridge to her east, Bird saw a mule deer across an open meadow, startled by something or someone. It raced across the open space and in seconds was back in the tree line, deeper into safety.
Bird nudged the Appaloosa and they moved forward. The trail had already taken them at least a mile from Verhooven’s camp, but the tracks were becoming more and more difficult to find.
Of one thing Bird was sure: there was only one rider. He apparently wanted to get away from the scene as quickly as possible, but once he had, he took greater care in covering his tracks. Bird already noted how the rider had swung wide and skirted open patches of dirt on the trail, opting for sections that were covered in long grass or pine needles. Someone riding normally wouldn’t do that, unless the trail was treacherous. The rain had been prodigious, but the route was fine. There was no need to veer off unless the goal was to lead followers astray.
Bird forged ahead and moved as quickly as possible, but studying the ground made the going slow. She wasn’t a natural-born tracker. Bird had ridden with some genius trackers in her time; men, and one woman, who could read the ground like an open book and could interpret minute disturbances with confidence and clarity.
Bird had learned a few tricks from them, but she went more with instinct than any definite idea about whom she was following and where he might be going. It was nearly an additional quarter mile before she found another track. Just the edge of a hoof, barely noticeable along the crumbling path.
She dismounted and studied the edges of the track to decide how long ago it had been made, when she smelled smoke. At first, she thought it might be from a campfire. But as she stood and covered the butt of her gun with her hand, she changed her mind.
It was cigarette smoke.
Her horse smelled it, too, and snorted.
Bird slid the six-gun from its holster and climbed back on the Appaloosa. There was just the tickle of a breeze coming at them, so the smoker couldn’t be far ahead. She moved forward slowly, walking her horse ahead with caution. She had covered a lot of ground in the last hour or so, but now was not the time to race ahead blindly.
She crested a small rise in the trail and saw a man sitting on his horse, facing Bird.
He was tall and rangy, wearing a long brown duster, with a hand-rolled cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth.
His black cowboy hat was low over his eyes—two brilliant blue eyes peered out from underneath the rim at Bird.
The man exhaled, and a long stream of smoke immediately caught in the breeze and blew toward her.
“Took you long enough,” he said.
Sixteen
Big River was just rousing itself from slumber when Tower arrived, trailing behind him a horse that carried the dead body of Stanley Verhooven.
The morning sun was bright and a shaft of light that cut across the buildings illuminated the particles of dust and dirt stirred up by the never-ending motion of cattle in the stockyards. A young boy emerged from a doorway, glanced at Tower and his unfortunate companion, and ran ahead, calling out to someone.
If memory served him correctly, the undertaker was at the end of the street, just past the courthouse and tucked discreetly around the corner.
But Tower didn’t make it that far.
“Whoa, hold up there!” a voice called out.
Tower glanced over to the doorway of a law office and spotted Sheriff Chesser. Two men wearing stiff black suits and dubious expressions stood behind him. The sign above the building read THOMAS & ANDREW CONWAY, ESQUIRES.
Tower brought the horses to a stop.
“What the hell is this, preacher?” Chesser asked, as he stepped from the building’s porch onto the street and walked toward Tower.
A few more people began to appear outside the storefronts and saloons, glancing toward them. Some turned and went on to finish whatever business they were transacting; others turned and walked toward them, wanting a closer look at what was appearing to be the morning’s top attraction.
“I think that’s up to you, ultimately, sheriff,” Tower said.
“What kind of answer is that?” Chesser responded. “Are you getting smart with me?”
“Not at all, sheriff.” Tower tugged on the horse’s reins behind him and tossed them to Chesser. “I’m simply saying that you’ll need to figure out what this is. After all, you’re the highest law in this town, correct?”
The two men behind Chesser chuckled.
“Damn right I’ll decide what this is. Murder is the first thing that comes to mind.” He headed over to Verhooven’s dead body.
“Yes, it might be murder. Or suicide. Or an accident. Or something else. But I’m sure you’ll get to the bottom of it.”
By now, a small crowd had assembled around the men, forming a tight circle. Sheriff Chesser leaned down to study the face of the dead man.
“That’s Stanley Verhooven,” he said.
“See, you’re making progress on the case already, sheriff,” Tower said.
Chesser glanced at him, then turned to the crowd.
“Burt and Glen. Take ol’ Stanley down to the undertaker. You,” he said, pointing at Tower. “You need to tell me exactly what happened and why I shouldn’t arrest you right this very minute.”
“Lock him up!” someone from the crowd shouted.
“Get a rope!”
Tower glanced around. There wasn’t a friendly face to be found.
“Wouldn’t you rather question me somewhere private, sheriff? This seems like a very public forum for me to be answering questions.”
“What, you have something to hide, preacher?” Chesser asked.
“Not at all.”
“So, tell us what happened.”
“We—”
“Who’s we?”
“Bird Hitchcock and I went out to question Mr. Verhooven regarding his discovery of the body of Bertram Egans.”
A murmur spread through the crowd.
“When we got there, Mr. Verhooven was dead. He’d been strung up, and a suicide note was pinned to his clothes.”
“What note?” Chesser asked. “Burt! Bring him back here!”
The men hauling away Verhooven’s body stopped and led the horse back to the sheriff. Chesser cut the ropes holding the body in place, and Verhooven slid to the ground, landing on his back in the street.
The note was still attached to his shirt.
“I’ve got a huge problem with this, preacher,” Chesser said.
“I figured you might think it was suspicious.”
“It sure is. You see, Stanley Verhooven was illiterate. He couldn’t write a single word to save his life.”
Seventeen
“Well if it isn’t Downwind Dave,” Bird said.
The corner of his mouth not occupied with the cigarette was turned up in what Bird supposed was meant to be a sardonic smile.
She knew the man hated his nickname.
“And I’ll be goddamned if it isn’t Bird Hitchcock.” His voice was low and harsh, probably from years of what was between the man’s lips.
Bird recognized the tall, lanky man
as David Axelrod, a gunfighter from Laredo, Texas. Bird had once worked side by side with him for the same employer—a rancher determined to bluff the town council into not enforcing the laws against him. Bird had taken a week’s pay then quit. She couldn’t remember what had happened between the rancher and the town, but figured it ended badly. It usually does.
“What are you doing way up here?” Bird asked. “Thought you Texas boys liked to stay close to home.”
“Ah, we’re just like you Bird,” Axelrod said. He took one last deep drag on the cigarette, then flicked it into the middle of the trail. A thin tendril of smoke accompanied its landing. “We go where there’s money and booze.”
Bird laughed. Axelrod got the nickname “Downwind” when he’d been caught with a sheep farmer’s wife and was chased through a pasture by the wronged husband and his four full-grown sons. He’d gotten covered in shit, and although he’d escaped, he’d been unable to get rid of the stink for months.
“So what kind of money have you been finding up here, Dave?” Bird asked. “Are you freelancing, or working for Stanley Verhooven? As I recall, you weren’t exactly the type to become a miner.”
Axelrod smirked at Bird and she noticed the relaxed slump of his shoulders dissipate when her question landed.
“Oh, there’s always money to be had somewhere,” he said. “But hell no, I ain’t no miner. Only thing I like to mine is a bottle. Just like you, Bird.”
Axelrod’s horse shifted impatiently and Bird noted the way the gunfighter tried to move to position the sun shining behind him over his shoulders and into Bird’s eyes. But she wasn’t concerned. She could see him just fine.
“You have anything to do with that old man being strung up?” Bird asked. “I’ve been following the trail of the bastard who did it. Not sure why I stumbled on you.”
“Now why in the hell would you care about who killed some old man? Unless you was shacking up with him or something. But I figure even you could do better than that.”
Axelrod cackled at his own joke.