“Yeah, you,” Hiram sad. “Shoot him.”
Willie had looked at the boy, at that point still sitting in the back of the buckboard.
“I ain’t killin’ no kid.”
“You raped and killed the girl.”
“She wasn’t no kid,” Willie said. “That’s a . . . a baby. I ain’t killin’ no baby.”
“So what do we do?” Hiram had asked. “We gotta collect our pay.”
They stared at the boy in the buckboard, who stared back at them calmly, despite the fact that his family was lying on the ground, dead.
“I got it,” Hiram had said.
“What?”
“We leave ’im.”
“What?”
“Just leave ’im,” Hiram said. “Let ’im go.”
“Out here?”
“Why not?”
“He’ll . . . he’ll die,” Willie said. “Some animal will get ’im, or he’ll just . . . die.”
“So?”
“What will you tell Mr. Perryman?”
“I’ll tell him the job’s done,” Hiram had said. “And I’ll bring back our money.”
“Ya don’t want me to go with you?”
“Naw,” Hiram said, “I’ll collect the money and meet you in town.”
Now that Hiram wasn’t back with the money, Willie knew it was bad news. If Mr. Perryman had found out that the boy was alive—and Willie had heard the talk in town—then he’d probably had Hiram killed.
Or . . . Hiram had gotten paid, and had left town with all the money.
Either way, Willie was nervous, and scared.
FOURTEEN
Clint was having a beer in the No. 8 saloon when Sheriff Murphy walked in.
“Have a beer?” Clint asked.
“You buyin’?”
“Naturally.”
“Then yeah.”
Clint waved to the bartender, who brought over two full mugs and set them down.
“What are you doin’ here?” the sheriff asked after a sip. “I thought you’d be gettin’ ready to leave town.”
“Not just yet,” Clint said.
“Then what’s your plan?”
“The best thing for me to do,” Clint said, “is find out who killed the boy’s family.”
“You got any ideas at this point?” Murphy said.
“There are two possibilities,” Clint said. “They were killed randomly by outlaws, or they were killed for personal reasons.”
“Personal . . . you think somebody knew who they were and had them killed?”
“I said it was one possibility,” Clint reminded him, “but it’s the one I’m going to pursue for now.”
“And how will you start?”
“That track I told you about?” Clint said. “The horse with the chipped shoe?”
“You gonna look at all the shoes in town?”
“Not exactly,” Clint said, “but I can start with the liveries here in town, see if anyone has had a shoe changed. Or if the track is visible around them. I find that horse, I find the killers.”
Murphy suddenly acquired a brooding look on his face.
“What is it?” Clint asked.
“I think I may have made a mistake,” he said. “Maybe because I’m impatient, or maybe because I don’t suffer fools.”
“What’d you do?”
“Fella named Willie Delvin came into my office a little while ago,” Murphy said. “He’s kinda an odd-job man in town, will do anything for money.”
“Including murder?”
“Well, I wouldn’t have thought so, but today he was telling me he done something terrible, and he wanted to talk to me about it.”
“And?”
“He wanted to talk to me about it without tellin’ me that it was.”
“You couldn’t get it out of him?”
“I didn’t try,” Murphy said. “That’s what my mistake was. What if he was talking about killin’ that family?”
“Well, can’t we find him and ask him?”
“We can try,” Murphy said. “The shape he was in, I’m sure he was either going to head for the nearest saloon, or go into hidin’.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Not even an hour.”
Clint put his beer down.
“What are we waiting for?”
“Like I said,” Murphy replied, “I don’t think Willie is up to murder, but—”
“It’s a place to start,” Clint said, heading for the door.
Murphy drank down half his beer, set the mug back on the bar, and followed.
* * *
There were three livery stables in town. Clint decided to leave the one he’d put Eclipse in for last.
But the first two liveries proved to be no help, so in the end he pinned his hopes on the third.
“You’re not back to take him out again, are you?” the hostler asked. He looked at Murphy. “Sheriff.”
“Andy.” Clint hadn’t known his name before that.
“Andy, we’re looking for a horse,” he said.
“What? Another horse? This one ain’t good enough for you?”
“I’m looking for a man,” Clint said. “If I find his horse, I find the man.”
“Ah, I understand,” Andy said. “What kind of horse?”
“One with a chipped shoe on its left forefoot.”
“Oh, I see,” Andy said. “We don’t know the man or the horse, just the hoof.”
“Exactly.”
“Have you replaced such a shoe lately, Andy?” Murphy asked.
“No, Sheriff, I ain’t.”
“Have you seen one?” Clint asked.
“No.”
“What about tracks?” Clint asked.
“You can look around at the tracks here,” Andy said. “And you can look at the horses in the stalls, and in the corral out back.”
Clint looked at Sheriff Murphy, who nodded. “I’ll take the corral.”
Clint nodded. He went from stall to stall, lifting the horses’ legs and examining the shoes. He did not find the one that was chipped.
After that he and the sheriff walked about, examining the ground for the chipped track. So many horses had gone through the livery, though, that it was difficult to tell one track from the other. But Clint was stubborn, and relentless, and finally he pointed and said, “Sheriff, here.”
Sheriff Murphy rushed over. They were outside, by the corral.
“Is that it?” he asked.
Clint, who was crouched down on a single knee, pointed again and the sheriff leaned over.
“That’s the one?”
Clint stood.
“Then where’s the damn horse?” Murphy asked, straightening. “In the corral?”
“Maybe.”
“I couldn’t have missed it.”
“Then it’s not in the corral.”
The sheriff seemed upset.
“Do you want to check for yourself?”
“No,” Clint said, shaking his head. “If you didn’t find it, then it’s not there.”
“Can you tell how fresh the track is?”
“It’s overlayed by others,” Clint told him, “so it’s not very fresh.”
“Can you follow it?”
“It’s one hoofprint right now, Sheriff,” Clint said. “I’ll have to keep looking to see if I can pick up a trail.”
“I’ll help.”
“You might as well go back to your work,” Clint said. “If I find it, I’ll let you know. Also, you can keep looking for your friend Willie.”
“He’s no friend of mine,” Murphy said. “But I’ll keep lookin’, and see you later.”
The sheriff went off to do his part, and Clint once again aimed his gaze
downward.
FIFTEEN
Clint was not an expert tracker.
He was a good tracker, and didn’t usually need help, but there were times when he needed to recruit an expert to help him. This might have been one of those times—except that he got lucky.
He walked about a hundred yards from the barn, studying the ground, and came upon a set of tracks that contained the chipped horseshoe. It looked like the rider of that horse was with at least one other rider.
He returned to the stable to saddle Eclipse.
* * *
Before leaving town, he rode back to the sheriff’s office, found Murphy on the street out front.
“You look like you found something.”
“I did,” Clint said. “Tracks. Two horses, one of them with the chipped horseshoe.”
“Let me saddle up—”
“No, I’ll do it alone,” Clint said. “You stay here and find Willie, if you can.”
“I’m waitin’ here for word from somebody who might know where he is.”
“Good,” Clint said. “Maybe one of us will find out something today.”
* * *
Clint rode back the way he had come, circled the livery stable, then continued on a hundred yards or so to find the tracks again. From there he simply followed them . . .
. . . to the body.
* * *
The trail led him about a mile out of town, where the tracks split. He dismounted, studied the ground, made sure he was following the right set of tracks before remounting and starting off again. he could always come back to this point and pick up the other trail if he had to.
He kept his eyes down, following the tracks, but when he lifted his head, he saw the horse in the distance. Abandoning the tracks, he rode directly for the horse. As he approached, he slowed, so as not to spook the steeldust.
“Easy, fella,” Clint said, dismounting slowly himself. Luckily, it seemed as if Eclipse was having a calming effect on the other animal. Clint reached him, patted his neck, and lifted his hoof. He had the chipped horseshoe.
“Well, okay,” he said, stroking the animal’s neck again, “you’re the horse I was looking for. Now where’s the rider?”
He wondered how far this horse had wandered. Looking around, there was nothing immediately in sight to help him.
“I guess I’ll have to go back to the tracks,” he said. “And you’re coming with me.”
He mounted Eclipse again, and keeping hold of the other horse’s reins, he rode back to where he had left the trail. Finding it again, he resumed following it.
* * *
He rode for another half hour before he saw the tree on top of a hill. It was a good landmark, a fine place to meet someone, like somebody who was supposed to pay you. Clint had a feeling he knew what had happened, and when he reached the tree, he saw that he was right.
He dismounted, secured the steeldust’s reins to his saddle, so that Eclipse would hold the animal steady.
He walked to the tree, leaned over the body that was lying beneath it. He’d been shot twice.
“You thought you were getting paid, didn’t you, pal?” he asked the body.
He searched his pockets, didn’t find anything—no money, no identification. Maybe there’d be something on the horse. He checked the saddlebags, and came up with a few items. Whoever had killed the man had stripped him of everything in his pockets—one pocket had been turned inside out—but maybe the horse had spooked when they shot the man, and run off and then returned.
He found a dirty shirt, some extra shells, an extra gun—an old Navy Colt—some dried beef jerky, a wad of tobacco, and a letter addressed to someone named Hiram Anderson.
“Hello, Mr. Anderson,” he said to the body. “Let’s go for a ride.”
SIXTEEN
“That’s Willie’s partner,” Sheriff Murphy said.
They were standing in front of his office, examining the body Clint had brought in slung over the saddle.
“Who is he?” Clint asked.
“His name’s Hiram Anderson.”
“What does he do?”
“The same as Willie,” Murphy said, “anything he gets paid to do, but the difference is, I can see Hiram killing that family.”
“And the rapes?”
“Oh, that I can see them both doin’,” Murphy said. “I think Willie would stand by and watch Hiram do the killin’, and then join in the fun.”
“Fun,” Clint said.
“Sorry,” Murphy said. “I used the wrong word. I didn’t mean—”
“That’s okay,” Clint said. “I know what you meant.”
“Thanks,” Murphy said. He examined the body further. “Looks like whoever he did the job for paid him off in a way he wasn’t ready for.”
“Maybe,” Clint said, “they weren’t happy with the way it came out.”
“The boy, you mean?”
Clint nodded.
“His employer may have hired him to kill the whole family, and he didn’t.”
“Good point.”
“Who has that much power and wealth around here?” Clint asked. “Who uses killers for hire?”
“Well,” Murphy said, “that’s hard to say. There are quite a few rich ranchers in the county.”
“I want all their names and I’d like to know where to find them.”
“What are you gonna do?” Murphy asked. “Ride up to them and ask them if they had a whole family killed?”
“You know,” Clint said, “I might just do exactly that.”
* * *
Clint left it to Murphy to take Anderson’s body over to the undertaker’s office. He rode back out to where the trail broke off into two, and started following the other one. Assuming that this trail was left by Willie Delvin, he hoped to find the man at the end of it. Wherever it led.
But he never got there.
He was following the tracks, eyes fixed on the ground, when he heard several horses approaching him. He lifted his eyed and saw five riders, reined Eclipse in to wait for them.
They didn’t look like they were there to greet him.
“You’re on Perryman land,” one of them said when they’d reined in their horses in front of him.
“So?”
The speaker was older than the other four, so Clint assumed he was the leader, possibly the foreman. They were all cowboys, but they all wore guns.
“I didn’t see any signs posted,” he went on.
“Don’t need any,” the man said. “Everybody knows you don’t ride across Perryman land.”
“Really?” Clint asked. “Then how am I supposed to go from one point to another?”
The man grinned at him without humor and said, “You go around.”
“Well now,” Clint said, “that would just take entirely too long.”
“That’s too bad,” the man said, “because you’re gonna turn around right now and go back the way you came.”
“What’s your name?” Clint asked.
“Kane,” the man said. “Harry Kane. I’m the foreman of the Perryman ranch.”
“Well, Mr. Kane,” Clint said, “I’m tracking somebody and the trail leads right through here. So if you and your men would move aside, I’ll get back to it, and I’ll be off Perryman land in no time at all.”
“Mister,” Kane said, “you ain’t hearin’ me. Turn around and go back the way you come.”
“You’re not hearing me, Kane,” Clint said. “I said no.”
“You’re makin’ this harder than it should be, friend,” Kane said. “We don’t wanna kill you just because you rode onto our land. So I’m gonna have my boys drag you off your horse and teach you a little lesson.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Clint said with finality.
“Oh? And who’s gonna stop them?”
>
“I am,” Clint said. “I’ll kill the first man who dismounts. I won’t have hands laid on me.”
“Then you don’t leave us any choice but to shoot you out of your saddle,” Kane said.
“Same difference,” Clint said. “I’ll kill the first man who touches his gun.”
“You’ll get one man,” Kane said, “and the rest of us will get you.”
“I’ll get more than one, friend,” Clint said, “but suppose I do only get one? Who wants to be that man?”
He watched as the ranch hands exchanged looks. They were hired to work as cowboys, not as gunmen.
“Look at your men, Mr. Kane,” Clint said. “They’re a little nervous.”
Kane looked around. None of his men were able to look him in the eye.
“It don’t matter,” Kane said. “I’ll kill you myself.”
“You better think twice,” Clint said.
“The thinkin’s been done—” Kane started, but before he finished his statement, he went for his gun.
Clint drew cleanly and shot Kane right from his saddle. Then he holstered his gun.
“Who’s next?” he asked.
The other men were stunned at the speed with which Clint had dispatched their foreman. None of them moved; they just stared at Clint, and at their dead boss.
“Pick him up and take him back to your ranch,” Clint said. “Tell your boss you need a new ramrod.”
Three of the men dismounted, picked up their fallen foreman, and tossed him over his saddle.
“And you better tell the story the way it happened,” Clint told them. “That he gave me no choice.”
The man who had not dismounted—now the oldest of the four remaining men—asked, “Mister . . . who are you?”
“My name’s Clint Adams,” Clint said. “Tell your boss if he wants to take this up with me, he can find me in Chester.”
“C-Clint Adams?” the man asked, after swallowing. The other men all stopped what they were doing and stared at Clint, wide-eyed.
“That’s right.”
“Jesus, you’re—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Clint said. “I know who I am. Now take your foreman and get going.”
The three men recovered from their shock and mounted their horses. One of then leaned down to grab the reins of the dead foreman’s horse.
Death in the Family Page 5