Hank gritted his teeth. “We’ve got a lot of fixin’ to do in a day’s time.” Now, for some reason, the captain started chuckling.
“What’s funny?”
“I’ve got half a mind to ride back to the jail room and peek in through a knothole, just to see the look on Kenyon’s face when he finds us gone.”
Ahead, on the near side of the ford, Jay Blue saw the Broken Arrow ranch hands waiting at the banks of the Pedernales. It was a welcome sight, but still it broke his heart to see no sign of Poli or Skeeter among the men.
The Original Wolf strolled along the river with Birdsong at his side, the warm sun and the cool breeze invigorating his flesh in a most pleasant way.
“The spirits are with me,” he said. “The pain of my wound is nothing now. It is less than nothing. The rains have made the earth soft, so our ponies can run far on sound feet. Farther than far. My raiding party has grown to almost ten times ten. Our revenge will be swift and sure. I have smoked and prayed. I have rested and feasted on good food. And . . .”
“Yes?” she said.
“I have loved a beautiful girl, and it was good.”
“Better than good,” she said.
“Better than any good thing I have ever known.” He strolled a while, glanced around for onlookers, then pulled Birdsong behind the trunk of a big cottonwood and penned her between his body and the tree. “How many horses must I bring to be sure your grandfather will give you up to be my bride?”
She smiled and pulled him close. “How many am I worth?”
“All the horses in the world. I had better capture many on this raid.”
“You had better come back well. That is all.”
He scoffed. “It is up to the spirits. You know that.”
Just then some children ran by, spotted them in their hidden embrace, and made loud noises about their lewd conduct.
Birdsong threw a rock at them and giggled. “Come,” she said to the Wolf. “We have a great war dance to prepare.”
37
REST A SPELL, SON,” Hank said. He reached down into the hole, some five feet deep now, and helped Jay Blue climb out.
“My turn,” said a solemn George Powers. He dropped down into what would soon serve as Policarpo Losoya’s grave, and began chipping away at a slab of limestone with a pickax.
The men had arrived at the ranch last night and posted guards. Hank had ordered everyone besides the guards to get some rest. “Unless he’s a complete fool, Kenyon won’t try to take me here,” he reasoned. “He’ll ride back to Austin and gather up a posse. We’ll be safe here for a few days.”
At dawn, they had risen, eaten Beto’s breakfast, and rotated between the gravesite and guard duty. Beto Canales and Americo Limón had wept while digging. Knowing how sensitive Skeeter was, Hank figured he’d be blubbering right now, too, if he were here. It didn’t seem right that he wasn’t.
The rains had softened the earth, which facilitated the digging of soil with a spade or a shovel. But this bluff over the Pedernales harbored much rock beneath the surface, and there was no easy way through that. Accordingly, the deepening of the grave had progressed by inches.
Jay Blue dusted his hands as he caught his breath. He had gone at the task of digging the grave like he did everything else—all out. With dirty fingers, he reached into his pocket and produced the report from Jane that he had begun studying last night.
Hank had been too distracted to pore over the letter as of yet. He knew he had bought himself some time. Flora would send word once Kenyon had left town, and then he could collect Poli’s coffin and have him buried here. After that he could concentrate on the hunt for Black Cloud. Besides, Jay Blue was working on the case as if his life depended on it, which it might well have. Hank had come to trust his son’s hunches on this case and figured his fresh look at the evidence might be just what was needed.
He looked away from Poli’s grave, only to see Emilie’s headstone. He sank deeper into grief, remembering the sad day he had put her to rest. He wished he had some fresh flowers to place on her grave right now.
“Daddy,” Jay Blue said.
“Yeah?”
“The ladies mention a brand. A ‘Rafter T’ brand.”
He looked at his son. “And?” He could tell that Jay Blue was uneasy.
“Well, what is it? The rafter, I mean.”
Hank smirked. “Son, there’s no shame in askin’ a simple question. Nobody expects you to know everything at birth. The rafter is like an upside-down V. It usually goes over a letter, like a rocker goes under a W on a Rockin’ W brand. The rafter always goes over something else, like the rafter in a barn.”
Jay Blue’s eyes lit up. “Oh, it goes over the T.” He smoothed some fresh dirt with his boot and began making marks in it with the blade of a shovel.
Hank let the words sink in. “Did you say ‘Rafter T’?”
“Yes, sir,” Jay Blue muttered as he continued to draw brands in the mud.
“Rafter T sounds a lot like Rafferty. That was Black Cloud’s white name. John Rafferty.”
Briefly, Jay Blue looked up from his mud scrawlings, then went back to work. About that time, Hank noticed Americo Limón trudging from his guard post to the ranch’s cemetery plot for his turn at digging.
“It’s your shift on guard duty, son,” Hank ordered.
Jay Blue threw the shovel down. “Yes, sir.”
“Jay Blue, let me see that letter.”
“Yes, sir. I’ve got it memorized anyway.” He handed his father the folded paper.
As Jay Blue took Americo’s rifle and walked away, Hank tried to read the letter. He found concentration hard to come by. He looked at the moist dirt where his son had been making shapes with the shovel blade. For some reason, the boy had drawn Wes James’s brand in the mud.
Beto had cleared the table and lit another lantern in the cook shack. All the boys save Long Tom Merrick, who was on guard duty, were gathered around the long dining table, having feasted on beef, beans, pickled okra, corn tortillas, and peach cobbler. Now they were slurping black coffee and listening to the Tomlinsons trying to solve the mystery of Wes James’s murder.
“Go over that again, son. I don’t follow,” Hank picked his teeth with a splinter he had pulled from the rough-sawn tabletop.
“Look,” Jay Blue said. He pulled a knife from a belt scabbard. “You start with our brand, the Broken Arrow.” He used the sharp point of his blade to carve the brand in the pine plank upon which he had just dined.
“It’s a good brand,” Hank boasted. “If you don’t have a Broken Arrow branding iron with you, you can burn it into the hide with two touches of a simple bar brand. Hell, you can even use a runnin’ iron or a hot saddle buckle held between two green tree branches if you have to.”
“Yes, sir, it’s a fine brand,” Jay Blue agreed, having heard the merits of the Broken Arrow many times before. “But here’s my theory. John Rafferty . . . Black Cloud—whoever he is—starts rustlin’ your stock. You’ve said yourself for years that you suspected somebody was thinnin’ your herd. If Rafferty is the owner of the Rafter T brand, he could easily change the Broken Arrow to a Rafter T using a bar brand, a runnin’ iron, or a buckle, like you just said.”
With his knife tip, Jay Blue joined the upper tips of the Broken Arrow, creating a rafter. Then he added a T below.
“The son of a bitch!” Hank said. One thing he could not abide was a stock thief.
“So, let’s assume that Rafferty’s been doctorin’ our brand to a Rafter T, holdin’ the rustled cattle on the free range up around Brown County, and then trailin’ ’em north to sell at the railheads in Kansas.”
“The bastard!”
“Wait,” Jay Blue said. “You’ll like this part even better. John Rafferty hires some saddle bum to help him with the rustlin’. But this saddle bum is thinking way ahead of Rafferty. Before he moves onto our ranges, he assumes an alias—Wes James. There’s a good reason for the alias. Before he even comes to work for Ra
fferty, he registers his own brand way up in Jack County—the WJ.”
“This is where you lost me last time,” Hank said. “But I think I follow so far.”
“I’ll go slow. After workin’ for Rafferty for a while, doctorin’ our brand to a Rafter T, this so-called Wes James decides it’s time for him to have a bigger slice of the pie. So, he starts doctorin’ the Rafter T to his WJ.”
Again, Jay Blue illustrated with cold steel on soft pine, changing the rafter to a W, and the T to a J.
“I’ll be damned,” Hank said. “He’s doctorin’ a doctored brand.”
“Rustlin’ from the rustlers,” said Tonk.
“No wonder he wound up dead,” Americo Limón observed.
Jay Blue was getting excited about the acceptance of his breakthrough. “With his WJ brand, Wes can rustle Broken Arrow and Rafter T beeves. But now Rafferty sees his profits drop off and gets suspicious. He trails Wes, catches him in the act, and shoots him full of Black Cloud arrows. Maybe as a warning to you that you’re next, Daddy. Or maybe to pin it on you if folks still believe you were Black Cloud all along. Or maybe to pin it on the Indians so the army will run them clean out of Texas.”
“Maybe all three. But where do you reckon Policarpo figured into it?”
“Maybe Poli saw something he wasn’t supposed to see. Maybe Black Cloud just wanted to make you hurt, and knew killin’ Poli would do it. Hell, maybe I’m his next target. Or Skeeter! Or any of us.”
Hank nodded grimly and tapped the brand on the table with his trigger finger. “That’s good work, son. It all makes sense. Except for one thing. Just who the hell is John Rafferty? Where is he? Do we even know him?”
“I think it’s Jack Brennan.”
Hank shook his head. “No, son, it can’t be him.”
“But everything points to him, Daddy. He conveniently found Wes’s body. He started the trouble with the Comanches at Flat Rock Creek. He busted your nose so Kenyon could arrest you. And, worst of all, he’s got Skeeter workin’ for him and against us now. Why can’t you see he’s the prime suspect?”
“Simple. He’s been our neighbor for almost twenty years. I can’t say he’s been the best neighbor, but he hasn’t killed me, has he? If he came here for revenge on me, he’s had plenty of opportunities. Why would he wait till now?”
“It’s because of me.”
The voice had come from the only door to the cook shack. Every man at the table flinched at the intrusion, and every eye swept up from the brand carved into the tabletop to the armed cowboy standing in the doorway, pointing two cocked Colt revolvers at the whole Broken Arrow crew.
“Skeeter!” Jay Blue said. “What are you doin’ now?”
“Just shut up, Jay Blue. For once in your life, just shut up and listen.”
“Easy, Skeeter,” said Hank. “Why would any of this be because of you?”
Skeeter stepped inside the doorway, and a second armed man emerged from the dark. It was Matt Kenyon, and he had a sawed-off double-barrel shotgun covering the table, with both hammers pinned back like the ears of an angry horse. “Nobody move,” he said. “Just listen to young Mr. Rodriguez here.”
“How the hell did you get past my guard?” Hank demanded. “Where’s Long Tom?”
“Don’t fly off the handle, Captain.” Long Tom Merrick followed his own drawl into the cook shack. “I’ve got a surprise for you.” He stepped out of the doorway to allow Flora and Jane to follow him in.
“Hank, you’ve got to listen,” Flora said.
Jay Blue could not contain himself. “Skeeter, what the hell is this? First you join the Double Horn bunch, now you bring him here?” He pointed a damning finger at the State Policeman.
“I didn’t join the Double Horn bunch,” Skeeter said, a knowing sneer on his face. “It’s called infiltrating the outlaw gang. Ain’t that right, Mr. Kenyon?”
“That’s precisely what it’s called, Skeeter.” Now Kenyon pointed the muzzles of the scatter gun at the ceiling to ease the tension in the shack. “Everybody just stay calm and listen to Mr. Skeeter Rodriguez and you’ll all understand.”
Skeeter let his pistols point at the floor as if they were the heaviest things he had ever held in his life. “It’s because of me that Jack Brennan hasn’t killed you yet, Captain Tomlinson.”
“What are you sayin’, Skeeter?”
“He offered me a job. He told me to meet him at his ranch, and said he knew who my daddy was. I got mad at Jay Blue, so I went to talk to Brennan. He told me he was my father. He is my father. That’s why he’s waited to kill you. He wanted you to raise me first, Captain. He knew you’d do a better job than he would. Now that I’m grown, he’s ready to get his revenge on you.”
“He told you all that?”
“No! I figured it out myself! He only told me that he was my daddy. He said he had taken up with a Mexican woman, and they had me. But she died, along with the rest of my family—I guess they took sick. He didn’t say what happened, only said he didn’t know how I survived when no one else did. I guess he didn’t want to raise me, so he left me with an old man he knew to raise—the man I thought was my grandfather. Then my abuelo died, and you took me in, Captain. Now Brennan says he wants me back.”
Jay Blue shook his head. “Skeeter, Jack Brennan is likely to tell you all kinds of bunk.”
“Can’t you see, hermano? All these years, you told me he’s always asking, ‘How’s that kid, Skinner?’ or ‘How’s Skipper doin’?’ or ‘Where the hell is Scooter?’ You thought it was funny because he never got my name right. Don’t you get it? Where do you think I got these blue eyes!”
“Skeeter,” Jay Blue implored. “Have you joined his outfit or not?”
“I thought about it. I thought—I could be a rancher’s son, just like you, Jay Blue. I could be somebody. But then I noticed some things.”
“What things?” Hank said.
“Go ahead, tell ’em.” Matt Kenyon put his hand on Skeeter’s shoulder, urging him to continue.
“He was showing me around the Double Horn Ranch headquarters, telling me it could all be mine someday. But, in the barn, I saw a big roll of wire. It looked like that wire they use on the telegraph poles. So, I got a hunch. I didn’t say nothin’, but I thought maybe he was the one who tore the wire down so you couldn’t investigate the Wes James murder, Capitán.”
“That’s shapin’ up to be a pretty good hunch,” Hank said.
“There’s more,” Kenyon said. “Go ahead, Skeeter.”
“After I saw the wire, I started paying real close attention. In the old adobe house, Brennan showed me his deed to the Double Horn Ranch. Then he showed me his will. He’s got me down as the one to inherit the ranch when he’s gone. It was signed by witnesses and notarized, and everything. He was really trying to smooth-talk me into joining his outfit.”
“Well, did he succeed, or not?” Jay Blue demanded.
“Patience, hermano.”
“Just tell me you’re still one of us, Skeeter. Please tell me you’re back.”
“Just listen.” He uncocked his weapons, put one Colt revolver in his holster, and shoved the spare under his gun belt. “While I was pretending to look over the deed and the will, I was really looking at all the other papers scattered around on his desk. He doesn’t have a nice, neat desk like you, Capitán. It’s a mess. But I was looking for anything I might see, like that wire in the barn. I saw a bill of sale for some cattle, handwritten from a Dodge City buyer. I couldn’t see the whole piece of paper because it was sticking out from under some other junk, but I saw the brand drawn on the bill of sale. It was a little peak over a T. That seemed funny to me, because that ain’t the Double Horn brand. So, I remembered the brand. I told Brennan that I would accept his offer, but I had to go tell Captain Tomlinson and Jay Blue first that I wasn’t going to work at the Broken Arrow no more.”
“Were you going to tell us?” Hank asked. “Can’t say that I’d blame you for making that decision, the way we’ve treated yo
u around here.”
“I didn’t know what to do. But all day yesterday, after we found Poli, I thought about that brand in my head. I figured out it was halfway between a Broken Arrow brand and Wes James’s WJ. I didn’t know what that meant yet, but then all hell broke loose in the saloon, and I had to make a decision. I didn’t really want to join the Double Horn outfit, but I decided I’d . . . Well, Mr. Kenyon says I infiltrated the outlaw gang. There was no way to tell you what I was doin’, Jay Blue. I just had to do it.”
“You were a step ahead of us all along,” Jay Blue admitted.
“I went back to the Double Horn and spent the night with those thugs. That’s a sorry bunch of bastards out there. Anyway, this morning, when Brennan—my long-lost daddy—went to the outhouse to take a crap, I got a look at that bill of sale with the funny brand on it and I saw that it was made out to a John Rafferty. That name shocked the hell out of me, because the captain told us that was Black Cloud’s name before he went Indian. So I stole that bill of sale with the Rafter T brand on it.”
“He secured the evidence,” Kenyon said, rather editorially.
“I secured the hell out of it,” Skeeter agreed. “I didn’t even know it was called a rafter at the time. I thought it was a tepee. Anyway, I told Brennan I wanted to start working some of the green-broke colts, since I was taking over the ranch, so I roped one out of the corral, saddled him up, and went for a ride.”
Matt Kenyon eased the hammers to the safety position on the double-barrel. “Skeeter rode straight to Luck and caught me before I left for Austin to gather my posse. He showed me the bill of sale. By that time, the ladies had received some telegrams describing the owner of the Rafter T brand as John Rafferty, six-foot-six, two-twenty, with a prominent scar on his left cheek. We put it all together and rode out here to set the record straight. All charges against you have been dropped, Captain Tomlinson. I, personally, along with some help from Max Cooper down at the Austin Daily Statesman, will see to it that your name will forever be cleared of any suspicion of past killings attributed to Black Cloud. Including the killing of my father, Jim Kenyon.”
A Tale Out of Luck Page 22