“What is the truth?” June Lacour said.
“That there is no truth, only falsehoods and deceit. Our entire lives are a lie, a wheel within a wheel of fabrication. Ha, now you understand, straw man. Is that not so?”
“Mister,” Lacour said, “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Where is Pete Caradas?”
“Is that who he was? He killed one of my followers and escaped. He is mad, like you. Mad as a hatter.”
“What are you going to do with us?” Little Face Denton said.
Clouston shrugged. “As madmen you are both worthless, but I will use you to carry a message to Burt Becker, that vile cretin, that criminal lunatic.”
A rising prairie wind flapped the canvas roof of the ruined cabin that lay between two hogback bluffs, well hidden from anyone entering the Rattlesnake Hills or riding the few thin trails that lay to the east.
The tents of Clouston’s men were scattered around the cabin, earth-colored and almost invisible to the naked eye at a distance.
The doctor had chosen his hiding place well. This was wild, desolate country, some of it still known only to God. If the Cheyenne had once hunted here they had left no scars on the land.
The abandoned cabin retained three walls, and canvas substituted for the fourth. But somehow after his disgrace and his demented flight west, Clouston had managed to hold on to some of his furniture. A huge oak bed stood against one wall, a dresser against another, and a fine Persian rug covered the flagstone floor. A crystal chandelier hung from one of the few roof beams, and in the evenings its oil lamps would cast a splendid light for a reader sitting in the overstuffed leather chair by the still intact fireplace.
“You’re letting us go?” Denton said. Bound hand and foot and badly beaten, he was scared.
“In a manner of speaking, yes,” Clouston said. “But you’ll save your worthless skin, don’t worry.”
One of the two stocky gunmen standing guard sniggered.
Clouston looked at him and smiled slightly, as though at a private joke.
June Lacour, in terrible pain from a smashed cheekbone, had sand enough to ask, “What’s in all this for you, Clouston?”
The doctor, sitting in the leather chair, reached inside his coat and took time to light a large, elaborate pipe before answering.
“Doctor Clouston, if you please.” He grinned at Lacour. “Here is a riddle: Why is a raven like a writing desk?”
The gunman’s face was blank, his eyes puzzled.
“Ha, I made a jest,” Clouston said. “That is not the riddle at all. But you may answer this one: Why are the Chinese the key that unlocks the riches that make weak men mad?”
“I don’t know,” Lacour said, shaking his head.
“Come now, fellow. Think. Use what little brain you possess.”
Lacour wanted to get out of this alive and he humored the crazy man.
“They build the railroads?”
“Fool. Madman. Straw man. That is not the correct answer. Mr. Stockman, punish him for being such an imbecile.”
One of the guards backhanded Lacour across the face, drawing blood from the gunman’s mouth.
“Enough, Mr. Stockman,” Clouston said. Then to Lacour, “Do you wish to know the answer?”
Lacour, bleeding from broken lips, said nothing.
“Well, I’m not going to tell you the answer, so there,” Clouston said. “If I liked you I’d tell you, but I don’t, so I won’t. Yah!”
He waved his pipe and blue smoke spiraled from the glowing bowl.
“Mr. Stockman, behold, if you will, the obstinacy of the insane,” he said. “When I was in practice, I’d beat such stubbornness out of my patients with a dog whip.” He looked into the guard’s grinning face. “Alas, for every five patients I treated I’d cure one and kill four. Still, many mental institutions envied my twenty percent cure rate and that’s why they took a set against me.”
Little Face Denton had been in seven gunfights, killed three men and shared another. He was not a coward, but he was up against something he’d never encountered before . . . something so evil that, being a man of limited intelligence, he could not comprehend.
He glanced at Lacour’s battered face, then said, “Will you release us now . . . Doctor?”
“Yes, if you solve the riddle: Why are the Chinese the key?”
“I don’t know,” Denton said. He hoped his honesty would prevail.
“Numbskull! Straw man!” Clouston yelled. “You don’t know the answer because you’re psychotic. The mad lose all powers of reason. Mr. Stockman!”
“Yeah, Doc?” the guard said.
“Take them away. I’ve diagnosed both and they are clinically insane, and it’s beyond my power to cure them.”
“What do I do with them, Doc?” Stockman said.
Clouston smiled and motioned with his pipe. “Why, turn them into straw men, of course.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Judy Campbell knew why Jane Collins was missing. But she had no idea where the girl was being held captive.
Sheriff Jeremiah Purdy had been of little help. “Leave well enough alone, Judy,” he’d warned her. “I don’t want to put Jane’s life in more danger than it already is.”
She believed him when he said that he had no idea where Jane was, and Burt Becker might intimidate Purdy by claiming he had a gun to Jane’s head, but that threat didn’t cut any ice with Judy Campbell.
If her best friend wasn’t in Broken Bridle, then she must be somewhere close to town. The question was, where?
Now, as she’d done several times in the past month, Judy scouted the rugged country around Broken Bridle. Riding a mountain-bred cow pony, a Winchester in the boot under her knee, she was a dozen miles due north of the old Oregon Trail when she swung toward Saddle Rock, riding across rocky, broken country.
After fetching through a shallow canyon Judy picked up a wisp of a game trail and followed it past Sagehen Hill. A mile to her west lay the eastern slopes of the Rattlesnake Hills, ahead of her Eagles Canyon, where she planned to stop and eat the lunch the ranch cook had packed for her.
She’d left the Four Ace just after sunup and now the sun was almost directly overhead, but she’d seen nothing, no cave, arroyo, or abandoned cabin that could be used to hide a captive.
Judy pulled into the shade of the timber, removed her hat, and with the back of her hand wiped beads of perspiration from her forehead. She decided to ride as far as Eagles Canyon and then call it a day.
The sun was already almost unbearable and would only get hotter.
In the meantime . . .
She untied the lunch sack hanging from the saddle horn, chose an egg salad sandwich, and held it to her nose. Good. It was still fresh. She was chewing on the first bite when she saw a rider come through a rippling heat haze to the north.
At first man and horse seemed elongated, like the tall, angular image of Don Quixote in the yellowed page of an ancient book, but as they emerged from the haze the rider shrank to normal size.
The man came on steadily at a walk, and Judy had no doubt that he’d seen her. Her first instinct was to turn around and head back to the ranch. But Judy Campbell had a streak of Scottish stubbornness that would not allow her to turn tail and run from a stranger who probably meant her no harm.
A few moments later she regretted that decision.
The man who approached her rode a mouse-colored mustang, and despite the stifling heat he wore a bearskin coat that Judy fancied she smelled when the rider was still yards away.
The man drew rein, lifted his sweat-stained plug hat, and grinned. “Howdy, little lady. All by yourself?” He carried a Henry rifle across his saddle.
“No,” Judy said. “My father and brothers are just behind me.”
The man’s mud-colored eyes flicked to the girl’s back trail and his grin widened. “Now what’s a pretty little filly like you doing in this wilderness, and riding a five-hunnerd-dollar cuttin’ hoss to boot?”
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p; “I told you, I’m riding with my father and brothers,” Judy said. “Now please be on your way.”
“An’ that’s a damned lie,” the man said. He swung up the muzzle of his rifle, then, “Git off that pony. Go on now, or I’ll blow you off’n it.”
“I have money,” Judy said. Her brain busily calculated how fast she could shuck her rifle. Not fast enough. “You can have it.”
“What I want from you ain’t money, little gal,” the man said. “After you get a taste of me you’ll beg to become my woman, lay to that.”
“I swear, my father will hang you,” Judy said.
“I’ll take my chances.”
The man’s lips peeled back from a few black teeth. He had the eyes of a reptile. “Now git off that hoss, girlie. Do it!”
Judy had a Barlow folding knife in the pocket of her canvas riding skirt.
She pinned her hope on its carbon steel blade . . . if she could get to it.
After Judy stepped out of the saddle the bearded rider motioned to a grassy narrow bank wedged between two huge boulders.
“Git over there and lie down,” he said. He grinned. “Smell the flowers.”
Blue and white wildflowers peeped shyly through the grass. It was a shady, peaceful spot where something unspeakable was about to take place.
Judy lay on her back and reached into her pocket. She retrieved the knife but had no way of opening the blade without being seen.
Her heart thumped in her breast and her mouth was dry with fear as the man, massive in the bear fur, swung from the saddle and stepped toward her.
“Git them duds off, little lady,” he said. “And I mean all of them.”
Playing for time, Judy fumbled with the top buttons of her shirt. She smelled the man’s rank stench, the animal stink of him.
He shrugged out of the fur coat and let it fall to his feet. “Now it’s fun time,” he said. He started to unbutton his pants.
At exactly the same moment Judy Campbell lost all hope, the rapist and murderer named Sam Ball lost a large chunk of his head.
The heavy caliber bullet hit the back of Ball’s skull and exited an inch above his right eye, taking with it a great mass of bone and brain. When he dropped at Judy Campbell’s feet her would-be rapist was still unbuttoning his pants in hell.
The girl sat up as a handsome, white-haired man on a great dappled gray rode at a walk toward her. He held an elegant English hunting rifle upright on his thigh, and a black cloak hung from his shoulders and draped over the hindquarters of his horse. A steel ax hung from his saddle.
Dr. Thomas Clouston drew rein, a look of concern on his face.
“Are you all right, my dear?” he asked.
Judy nodded. Then, “He was going to—”
“Yes, I know. He was obviously criminally insane and that’s why I destroyed him. It is all you can do in cases like his.”
Clouston stared at the girl. She thought his burning eyes strange and intrusive.
“Why are you here?” he said. He nodded in the direction of the dead man. “Step away from that, please. I’ll deal with it later.”
“My friend is . . . missing and I’m trying to find her,” Judy said, walking to her horse.
“You won’t find her here.”
Judy looked up at the man. A tall man on a tall horse was an impressive combination. “No. I think not,” she said.
“There are many ways a person can disappear in this country, and it has a thousand ways to kill a man, or a woman.”
“I want to thank you for saving my—”
“Think nothing of it, child. I was only doing my duty as a gentleman.”
“I’m so glad you were near.”
“And so am I.”
Clouston pointed behind him. “Stay away from the Rattlesnake Hills,” he said. “There are many perils there to beset the unwary.”
“I doubt my friend is there,” Judy said.
“I know she is not there. It’s time for you to go home. Where is your home?”
“My father owns the Four Ace ranch southwest of here.” Judy stepped into the saddle, and then said, “Jane Collins, my friend, was kidnapped by Burt Becker. Do you know him?”
Clouston rubbed his temples with the thumb and fingers of his left hand.
“That name . . . that awful name. It makes my head reel,” he said, his eyes squeezed tight shut. “He wants to take what’s rightfully mine.”
Alarmed by the man’s evident agitation, Judy said, “Because he has Jane, Becker rules Broken Bridle. I don’t think he has anything else in mind.”
“Oh, but he does,” Clouston said. “And it will be his undoing. Unfortunately, the town will also suffer for Becker’s ambition, except for the Chinese. They are the key to everything.”
He pointed at Judy. “You are not psychotic. Now there is good news.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” the girl said. She had no idea what psychotic meant.
“Your father owns the Four Ace ranch you said.”
“Yes, he does.”
“Perhaps at a later date I can call on you.”
Without a moment’s hesitation the girl said, “You would be most welcome.” She didn’t mean a word of it.
“My name is Dr. Thomas Clouston,” the tall rider said. “Have you heard of me?”
“I’m afraid I haven’t.”
“No matter, you soon will. Leave now.”
Judy needed no second invitation. She swung her horse around and rode away at a smart trot.
When the girl glanced behind her she saw Clouston staring at her, and she was relieved when she was veiled by dust and distance.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Folks on the street smiled at Shawn O’Brien as he and Hamp Sedley walked along the boardwalk toward Sheriff Purdy’s office.
“Seems like Broken Bridle approves of what you done to Becker,” the gambler said. “You’re a local hero.”
“I guess he was strong-arming a lot of people,” Shawn said.
“I got a feeling he won’t do it again,” Sedley said, smiling.
Shawn nodded, his battered face grim. “Next time, if there is a next time, my gun will do the talking,” he said. “Becker’s the kind of man who takes a hell of convincing.”
“Hey, look at that,” Sedley said.
A little calico kitten rushed out of a general store and hid between Shawn’s feet. The angry proprietor suddenly loomed in the doorway.
“Damned cat was into my butter again,” he said. “Is she yours?”
“No,” Shawn said.
“Well, looks like she is now,” the man said. He stepped back inside, muttering.
Shawn picked up the kitten. “She’s purring,” he said.
“Maybe it’s a he,” Sedley said.
“No, calicoes are nearly always female. We always had a few of them at Dromore. Good mousers.”
Shawn made cooing noises that Sedley thought him incapable of producing, tipped back his hat, and rubbed foreheads with the kitten.
“Pretty kittlin’ that,” Sedley said.
“Do you want her?” Shawn said.
“Hell no. Cats make me sneeze.”
“Ow!” Shawn said. “She scratched me.”
Suddenly the purring bundle of fur was transformed into a roll of barbed wire, and he looked for a way to put her down without being mauled.
“What are you doing to my Annabelle?”
Sunny Swanson, in a pink silk dress and large, shady hat, snapped shut her parasol and used it to thwack Shawn across the shoulder.
“Give me my kitten!” she yelled, her face furious. “You . . . you animal abuser.”
“Take her!” Shawn said. “She’s scratching the hell out of me.”
“Come here, Annabelle,” Sunny said. She took the calico and cradled her in her arm. “What did the bad man do to you, snookums?” she cooed. “Did he hurt you?”
The cat snuggled into the woman’s arm and purred.
Shawn was outraged at Sunny’s
accusation. “Madam, I assure you—”
“Don’t sorry me, Shawn O’Brien,” the woman said. “Maybe you can bully poor Burt Becker, but you can’t bully me or my cat.”
Sunny swung her parasol like a club.
“And don’t”—thwack—“try”—thwack—“to”—thwack—“kidnap”—thwack—“my”—thwack—“kitty cat”—thwack—“again!”
The woman lifted her head, sniffed, and stalked away in a snowy flurry of laced petticoats and the drum of high-heeled ankle boots.
Shawn looked after Sunny as he rubbed his tormented left arm and shoulder. “I bullied poor Burt Becker?” he asked.
“I told you not to touch the lady’s cat,” Sedley said, looking smug.
Irritated, Shawn said, “You didn’t tell me that.”
“But if I’d known it was hers, I would have.”
Before Shawn could utter the sharp retort at the tip of his tongue, a plump matron bustled between him and Sedley.
“I saw what happened, Mr. O’Brien,” the woman said. She had a large head, a plump body, and the alabaster fingers she laid on Shawn’s shoulder were adorned with marcasite rings. “I have a good mind to slap that hussy’s face.”
“It’s quite all right, dear lady,” Shawn said. “It was all an unfortunate misunderstanding. I’m really quite fond of kittens.”
“To be assaulted like that and after what you’ve done for this town,” the matron said as though she hadn’t heard. She leaned closer to Shawn and dropped her voice to a whisper. “Now see what you can do about those infernal drums.”
“I certainly will,” Shawn said. “I’ll study on it right away.”
“And the Chinese over at the rail depot. Born troublemakers the lot of them.”
“I’ll talk to them, too,” Shawn said.
“Give them harsh words, Mr. O’Brien, harsh words. Show them heathens what it means to be a Christian white man around here.”
“Depend on it, ma’am,” Shawn said.
“You got a laundry list of stuff to do, huh, Shawn?” Sedley said.
And Shawn angled him a look.
“Well, it’s been nice talking with you, Mr. O’Brien,” the woman said. “And don’t forget, harsh words, a white man’s words.”
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