“What does a gunslick from clean outside the territory know about finding a missing person? We’ve had men who’ve lived around here all or most of their lives—me, Sheriff Tolliver, and more—who haven’t found a single sign of what happened to Jeff. You think a complete stranger can come along and do a better job of it?”
“That’s what I aim to find out,” Pamela told him. “I originally hired him to look into the rustling problem also, if you remember. As a further reminder, no one you just named—and that includes you—has gotten very far in that regard, either.”
“That’s a cruel thing to say, Mother!”
“I’m just stating a fact,” Pamela responded coolly. “But now that you’ve found those suspicious tracks and have gained the cooperation of Ranger Menlo, it appears you may be on the brink of making some welcome headway. I applaud you for that. And to avoid the potential complications that might come from too many fingers in the pie, you might like to know that I have asked Mr. Buckhorn to concentrate solely on Jeff’s disappearance and leave the rustling problem to you and the ranger.”
“Which means,” Buckhorn said, addressing Micah and speaking almost for the first time since they’d come inside, “that as soon as the lawmen have come and gone and we’re able to put this morning’s business behind us, I figure to be heading out for some reconnoitering that ought to steer the pair of us real wide from each other.”
“That’s the best news I’ve heard since you showed up in these parts,” Micah replied bluntly.
“Might come as a shock, but serving up good news to you hasn’t exactly been a priority of mine.”
“All right, that’s enough,” Pamela was quick to interject. “One thing for certain, you two being far enough apart that I won’t have to listen to you constantly snapping at each other’s throats will be good news to my ears.”
* * *
Although disappointing to Micah and his cronies perhaps, it came as not much of a surprise to anybody else that the inquiry by Sheriff Tolliver and Ranger Menlo into Gonzalez’s death was quickly determined to have been a clear case of self-defense.
Nevertheless, as the body was being loaded by Undertaker Schmidt and an assistant onto a wagon to be hauled back to Barkley for burial in the town cemetery, Menlo motioned Buckhorn aside and said to him, “Dead bodies seem to pile up around you like partners flock to a pretty gal at a square dance.”
“Not like I’m advertising for a turn on that particular kind of dance floor,” Buckhorn replied. “I’m not partial to music played to the tune of flying lead.”
“All the same, you seem to have learned the steps pretty well,” Menlo said. “It’s a good thing your work keeps you on the drift. You was to settle in one place for very long, you’d turn it into a ghost town. Speakin’ of which, how long you figure to be hangin’ around these parts?”
“Don’t have a very clear feel for that just yet. This is only the start of my second full day, remember.”
“I understand that with me on hand to help with the rustling situation you’re going to be concentrating on finding the missing Danvers boy.”
“That’s the way Mrs. Danvers wants it.”
“That’s kinda outside your normal range of services, ain’t it? Or have you taken up detective work of late?”
“Man’s got to change and evolve else he’s apt to go stale,” Buckhorn said. “I’ve got some ideas on how to go about getting a lead or two.”
“Anything you’d care to share?”
Buckhorn took his time responding. When he did, he told the ranger his idea about checking the surrounding area’s stage and train passenger lists for the days shortly after Jeff Danvers’s disappearance.
Menlo was pursing his lips thoughtfully by the time he’d heard him out.
“Sounds like some pretty good thinkin’,” he allowed. “Matter of fact, it sounds like something Sheriff Tolliver should already have done by now.”
“Sort of what I thought.”
As they talked, the ranger and the gunman were leaning against a hitch rail down a ways from the front of the main house. Most of the Circle D wranglers, having been kept available for questioning by the lawmen, were still milling around the front of the grub shack, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee. Up closer to the main house, Sheriff Tolliver and Pamela stood with their heads together in what appeared to be a very intense conversation.
Menlo’s gaze hung on the sheriff and the widow for a moment and then cut back to Buckhorn.
“What’s your read on the sheriff?” he asked abruptly.
That shoved Buckhorn’s eyebrows up more than a little bit.
“You’re askin’ me ?”
“You’ve got a head on your shoulders that works for more than just holdin’ up that fancy hat, don’t you?” The ranger dismissed the rhetorical question with a shrug. “Okay. I’ll give you mine first. I think the sheriff is basically a good man. Honest and well intentioned. But not overly bright and in a fog too much of the time on account of the Widow Danvers. He’s got two deputies that fall pretty much along the same lines, except maybe for bein’ in a fog over the widow. That’s my take from the short time I’ve been here. And, for what it’s worth, that was also the general impression left in his notes by Kirby Peck, the young ranger who spent some time here before me. Maybe I came into it with a bias after readin’ his words, but I don’t think so. I think I’d’ve seen it about the same regardless. Now. What say you?”
“To be honest, I don’t know that I’ve thought it through quite that far. On the other hand, I can’t say I’ve got anything to argue against those observations, either.”
“Uh-huh.” Menlo regarded Buckhorn closely for a long moment. “I took a read on you pretty quick, too. Then, since I recognized your name and description, though only vaguely, I sent out some telegrams to do a little follow-up checkin’.”
“This should be interesting.”
“No papers turned up on you.”
“There’s never been any.”
“Still and all, there was a time—and not all that long ago—when you were considered little more than a hired killer. You sold your gun to the highest bidder, and pretty soon people standin’ against your employer started turning up dead. Sometimes it was a face-on shootout like this deal here today. Other times, though there was never any way to prove for sure you were involved, it was nothing short of a gundown, flat-out murder.”
Menlo kept regarding him close. Buckhorn met his eyes, said nothing.
“Then something changed,” the ranger went on. “You kept hiring out your gun, just as you’re doing here. But random killings with your name hinted at being attached to ’em seemed to stop. The shootings and killings you’ve been associated with lately have been either acts of self-defense or as part of protecting your employer. What turned you? What’s different?”
“You’re the one telling the tale. All I can say, like I already told you, is that a man has to—”
“I know, a man’s got to change and evolve else he’s apt to turn stale.” Menlo glanced over to the wagon with Gonzalez’s body loaded on it, then back to Buckhorn again. “Five men shot and killed, all in self-defense, all in only a couple of days. I’d say you’ve got a ways to slide before you have to worry about turnin’ stale.”
“There a point to all this, Ranger?” Buckhorn wanted to know.
Menlo glanced around some more. He seemed to consider something for a long moment before saying, “We stand here palaverin’ much longer, we’re gonna draw attention and suspicion. There’s enough of that going on around here already. But I do want to go over some more things with you. You willin’ to meet up with me somewhere later on?”
Buckhorn didn’t see where he had much choice.
“Reckon so,” he said.
Menlo nodded.
“Good. They’re gonna delay movin’ that cattle herd to the meadow for another day, not until morning. How about we meet there, after I’ve gone back to town with the sheriff and the
n had a chance to slip away again. Say about an hour past noon. You know the spot I’m talkin’ about. That hogback above the meadow where somebody tried to ambush you again?”
CHAPTER 22
“Well, there goes Gonzalez, toes up,” said Dave Millard as his gaze followed the undertaker’s wagon rolling away, flanked by the sheriff and the ranger on horseback and the tarped body of Gonzalez stretched out on the wagon bed. “And, over yonder, still standin’ big as life, is that hard-to-kill damn half-breed.”
Micah Danvers didn’t bother looking after the departing wagon, but he did cut his gaze to where Buckhorn and Obie were heading into the latter’s cabin.
“Not only walkin’ around big as life,” he said bitterly, “but hardly leaned on at all by those two law dogs we just had here. What was up with that? A lowdown hired gun, and a half-breed to boot, and they treat him with kid gloves like some kind of respectable citizen. On top of that, the ranger ended up shootin’ the breeze with him for the longest spell, practically like they was the best of pals.”
“What was that all about?”
“I don’t know. But I didn’t like seeing it, I know that.”
Dave took a hard final drag on the butt of a cigarette, dropped it to the dusty ground, and mashed it under the toe of his boot.
“So where does that leave us?” he said, the words coming out in a stream of smoke. “Guess we can say plan A has officially fizzled and we’re ready to move on to plan B, right? Or is it C or D we’re up to by now?”
Micah aimed a fierce scowl in Dave’s direction and said, “What kind of snotty remark is that?”
“Calm down, calm down.” Dave was quick to try to deflect the testiness he’d poked into. “All I meant was how stubborn—or lucky—Buckhorn is about not dyin’.”
Micah gritted his teeth.
“I wish I could believe it was nothing but luck. But that heathen has got more going for him than just that. You saw—or no, you probably didn’t, since it was so damn fast—how he outdrew Gonzalez. And that Mexican was no slouch, you had to give him that. Plus, Buckhorn’s been every bit as quick and slick when it came to dodgin’ the ambushes we tried to set up for him.”
“Boy, you don’t have to tell me,” agreed Hank. “If only I hadn’t missed that first shot when I made my try. But after that, like I told you, he was like a doggone ricochetin’ bullet, bouncin’ every which direction faster than I could keep up with.”
The three of them were standing in front of the bunkhouse. There was nobody else around, the other wranglers having finally been sent off to go about their day’s chores, so they were able to talk freely.
“So what are you sayin’, Micah?” Dave asked. “You ain’t ready to give up on trying to get rid of Buckhorn, are you?”
Glaring off at nothing in particular, Micah answered, “No. We can’t do that now, even if I was of a mind to. We’ve poked at him too much. He don’t strike me as the type who’s gonna shrug it off and go away until he’s dug up some answers.”
“So what, then?”
“Like you said a minute ago—plan B. Since my mother has him zeroed strictly on trying to track down Jeff, that means he’s bound to go sniffing around the Rileys. Which means, like we talked before, he’ll also be bound to draw the attention and anger of ol’ Dan. So there’s still the chance our Injun problem might end right there. At the very least, it should keep Buckhorn out of our hair for a while.”
“And in the meantime,” said Hank, “we’ll be coming at Riley over this new rustling thing. And we’ll have both the sheriff and the ranger on our side.”
Micah nodded as his mouth curved into a thin smile.
“With a little luck of our own—something we’re by-God overdue for, says I—if Dan Riley does for Buckhorn and the ranger and Tolliver help us do for Riley, we could end up clearing the board of our two biggest problems.”
But then the smile faded as Micah thought again about how Buckhorn and the ranger had spent so much time talking together. He wished he knew what the hell that had been about . . .
* * *
Pamela Danvers stood alone in the parlor of the main house.
She often did this when stressed or deep in reflection. Above the cold fireplace she stood facing hung a large, intricately detailed painting of her and her late husband, Gus. They had originally posed as depicted there for a photographer. Later, as a surprise for Pamela on the occasion of their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, Gus had arranged for a painter out of Galveston to take a copy of the tintype and reproduce it on canvas, complete with rich colors. For Pamela, the pose and the painting represented the high point of her life. Only a couple of months after the anniversary celebration, Gus was diagnosed as having a cancer in his stomach; by the following anniversary date, he was gone.
Except for the days immediately surrounding Gus’s death and funeral, Pamela seldom wept. The hard years of forging a marriage, raising two sons, and working side by side with Gus to build the Circle D into the grand ranch it had become had steeled her into a stoicism and determination that rivaled even Gus’s.
These moments of intense solitude, when she went either far inside herself or sometimes felt transported up into that painting on the wall, where she could again draw strength from having Gus beside her, were the closest she came to giving herself over to despair. But, even then, it only lasted for a short time. Pamela would not allow it to grip her any longer.
This current set of problems was only making her so distraught because of the ways it involved her two sons—the exposure of the petty, insolent, meanspirited sides of Micah she had somehow never noticed before, and the absence of gentle, soothing Jeff.
Curiously, and troubling in its own way, was the fact that the main source of solace she found herself relying on wasn’t the fawning Thad Tolliver, or the ever-faithful old Obie, or even the crusty Texas Ranger Menlo.
It was Joe Buckhorn. A hired gun. A half-breed.
If anybody was going to find a way to bring back Jeff and sort out the rustling and all the rest . . . on some instinctive, intuitive level, Pamela knew it was going to be Buckhorn.
* * *
“That hogback above the meadow where somebody tried to ambush you again yesterday.”
Those words from Ranger Menlo kept running through Buckhorn’s head, and no matter how many times he replayed them or how many different angles he tried to consider them from, they remained just as disconcerting as when he’d first heard them.
How did the old lawman know about the incident? Had he told anyone else? Could it be that, for some crazy reason, Menlo had staged it himself? But how could he know Buckhorn was going to be there? And what reason would he have for opening fire—to try to scare him off? Surely not to actually try to kill him; if that were the case, he’d hardly forewarn Buckhorn and then invite him back for another try, would he?
On the other hand, that would make about as much sense as some of the other questions and possibilities swirling around this situation.
“What’s the matter, Powder-burner?” Obie wanted to know. “You’re pickin’ at your food and scowlin’ off into space like some lovesick schoolboy. Or is it pluggin’ that loudmouth Mexican that’s botherin’ you?”
They were seated at the table in Obie’s cabin over tin plates of scrambled eggs and bacon, their interrupted breakfast that Obie had gone back and fetched from the grub shack.
“Naw, it’s got nothing to do with the Mexican. He got what he was asking for, and that’s that,” Buckhorn answered. “I’m just rolling some things around inside my head, that’s all. I’ll be riding out of here in a little bit to try and get a line on young Jeff, and I really don’t have much to work with.”
“You don’t think you’ll get any answers out of Dan Riley?” said Obie.
Buckhorn turned it right back on him by asking, “Do you?”
Obie averted his eyes. He looked down at his plate and concentrated on stabbing a piece of bacon. After he’d popped it in his mouth and begu
n to chew, he said, “You already know how I feel about Dan. But you can’t not talk to him about it. Nobody else has yet, not directly. They’ve skulked around and spied, but nobody’s gone up to him, face to face, and flat out asked him if he knows anything about Jeff.”
“Why not?”
“Miss Pamela won’t have it. That’s how bitter she is toward Dan—she sees it that any kind of direct approach like that would amount to crawlin’ to him and askin’ for his help. I even offered to be the one to do it, but she barely let me get the offer out of my mouth.”
Buckhorn frowned.
“Well, I figured to start out by doing some skulking and spying on the Riley spread myself. Looking for some sign of either Jeff or Eve. But sooner or later I fully expected to also take a run at Riley himself. Wasn’t something we discussed in so many words, but Mrs. Danvers never told me not to try anything like that.”
“Don’t bring it up, then,” Obie advised. “Should it come up later, it sounds to me like a clear-cut case of better to ask forgiveness than permission. Or maybe Miss Pamela has finally come to her senses about it and sees that, if you’re gonna do the job she’s hired you to do, you’re gonna have to talk to Dan.”
“The other side of the coin, from what I’ve heard, is that Riley tends to make himself scarce whenever anybody does come around. Supposedly always off on some kind of business trip or some such. No reason to expect he won’t try the same thing with me. Sounds like you might be somebody he’d make an exception for, though. Comes down to it, you willing to run some interference for me?”
Obie puffed out his cheeks and released a gust of air.
“Whew. For me, that’d be goin’ direct against Miss Pamela’s wishes. But, what the hell, somebody’s got to stand up to the damn fool stubbornness bein’ showed by her and Dan both. Yeah, if you need me to, I’ll side you on that.”
“Obliged,” Buckhorn said for the second time in little more than an hour, expressing his gratitude to a man who only yesterday he’d half suspected of maybe playing a hand in the hogback ambush . . . and who he still couldn’t be certain had not.
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