Gibbon yanked his arm free and fell into a hard patch of dirty snow. The cowboys gathered around, cheering their boss. Gibbon caught a glimpse of their grinning, tobacco-chewing faces as he got his hands beneath himself and tried to gain his feet.
He’d gotten only as far as his knees when the tall, iron-bodied rancher—grinning now, showing off for his men—delivered another stovepipe boot to the sheriff’s round paunch.
Gibbon groaned as the air exploded from his lungs.
The kick propelled him backward, and his head hit the hard ground, sending lightning bolts beneath his closed eyelids. The blow made him sick to his stomach. It dawned on him that, coming here alone, he’d made a mistake. Probably the biggest mistake of his life …
The thought was still resonating when he felt himself being drawn up by two hands pulling at his coat. The ascent took several seconds, for Gibbon was a big man, and his legs would not cooperate. He wasn’t quite sure what was happening—his head hitting the ground had fogged his brain.
When he was half standing, balancing there with the rancher’s help and still trying to coax air into his lungs, Magnusson drew his arm back like a bowstring and let it go. His fist slammed into Gibbon’s face once, twice, three times.
The powerful right jabs propelled Gibbon into a straight-backed stance for half a second before he collapsed again on his back. His eyes watered from the pain daggering through his nose and deep into his skull. Blood gushed from his lips and nose, flooding his face. He felt his eyes swell.
“If I’d known you were having this much fun out here, King, I would come a long time ago!” he heard the well-dressed gent say around a deep-throated laugh.
Standing over him, his chest rising and falling, Magnusson said tightly, “Some lawman, Gibbon. I’ve never seen a sorrier excuse for a man, much less a sheriff!”
Gibbon heard men laughing just below the high-pitched whistling in his ears.
Magnusson said to Donnelly standing beside him, “What do you think, Rag? Should we kill the sorry bastard or send him home to his mother?”
“Well …” Donnelly said, scratching his head and playing along, “I’d say his mother’s dead. Dead of a broken heart, no doubt. Might as well kill him and put him out of his misery.”
Magnusson faked a grimace and shook his head. “I don’t know, Rag. Those sorry ten-cow ranchers are gonna need someone on their side. At least he’s a figurehead for ’em. Seems like it wouldn’t be fair to take their general so early in the battle—sorry as their general is.”
“I know,” Rag said. “Why don’t we tie him to his saddle and send him back to his troops? Sort of like a message from us to them.”
“A little frontier justice!” the well-dressed gent bellowed, as though he were attending a staged spectacle. “I love it!”
“Grand idea, Rag! Grand idea,” Magnusson agreed.
Turning to the other men, who’d formed a half circle around him, Donnelly, and Gibbon, the rancher said, “Now that’s the kind of creative thinking I like to see in my men. Boys, let Mr. Donnelly here be an example to all of you.”
Picking his son out of the crowd, he said, “Randall, you and Shelby toss our conquering hero over his horse and send him home. I’m sure the good citizens of Canaan will want to give him a hero’s welcome.”
Donnelly chuckled and shook his head.
Randall said, “What if the horse can’t find his way home, Pa?”
“I’m sure that horse has had plenty of practice finding his way home without the good sheriff’s assistance,” Magnusson said, cutting his eyes to the passed-out Gibbon with a sneer.
Ten minutes later, Magnusson had retired to his den with the well-dressed gentleman and Rag Donnelly. Most of the cowboys had gone back to their work around the compound.
Randall Magnusson and Shelby Green draped the big unconscious lawman over his saddle and used the reins to tie him to the horn.
“I say he shoulda shot the son of a bitch,” Randall said as he gave the horse a resolute slap to its backside.
The horse bounded off, whipping its head around at the oddly mounted burden on its back. Gibbon cried out in his stupor, his old bones creaking against the saddle. The horse galloped through the gate and out of the yard, descending the gradual grade toward St. Mary’s Creek and the purpling flats beyond.
“But I have to admit, it’s a pretty damn good joke!” Randall laughed as he and Shelby Green turned around and started toward the barn.
“Yeah, your pa has quite a sense of humor,” Shelby agreed.
Above their retreating backs, Randall’s sister, Suzanne, stood in one of the mansion’s upstair’s windows, staring out at the horse and its bound rider dwindling in the wintery distance.
CHAPTER 15
JACY SPENT THE rest of the day pulling firewood out of a draw with the two Percheron crosses her father had added to their remuda the year before he died. She had decided that Mark Talbot was a lecherous dope for having accepted Suzanne’s invitation. Although she had never known Gordon to act so irresponsibly, it was apparent that the old cowboy had either eloped or gotten involved in a marathon poker game.
Jacy saw now that she had grossly overestimated each man’s character. Like the rest of their lot, they were fools and would always forsake their responsibilities for big-breasted women and the quest for fun and money.
Early the next morning she continued her work, trying hard not to think about either man. Around noon she was leading the horses back to the yard, towing a heavy box elder trunk, when she stopped suddenly by the corral.
Something at the cabin had caught her eye, and she stared at it, trying to make it out. It was a piece of paper attached to the cabin door. It fluttered and rattled in the breeze.
She tied the horses’ lead to the corral, then walked to the cabin, mounted the steps, and plucked the sheet from the rusty nail. Having to steady it with both heavy-mittened hands, she squinted her eyes at the penciled words: CLEER OUT.
That’s all it said.
Jacy stuffed the note in her coat and looked around the yard, drawing the heavy Colt pistol she had taken to wearing around her waist. Her jaw was set tight and her eyes were cool; only her ashen features betrayed the storm within.
Concluding that the yard was dear, she turned back to the cabin and pushed open the door, letting it swing back against the wall. She knew that the men who’d left the note were probably gone—for now—but she entered stiffly and looked around, extending the pistol before her.
Thumbing back the hammer, she started moving through the kitchen, checking every nook and cranny, looking behind every chair and cupboard. Then she proceeded through the rest of the house in the same way—slowly, tensing herself for sudden violence, ready to shoot at anything that moved.
When she was sure the cabin was safe, she returned to the kitchen, holstered her pistol, and picked up the Winchester standing by the door. Retrieving a shell box from a cupboard, she set the rifle on the table and began feeding ammo into the breech. It was clumsy maneuver; her hands were shaking.
“Goddamnit anyway—go in there!” she screamed, nudging the box and spewing shells on the floor. Knowing that Magnusson’s men had been here made her feel violated, and she couldn’t have felt much more incensed if they’d ransacked the place.
When she’d slid the last bullet into the receiver, she jacked a shell in the chamber and lifted the rifle to her cheek, aiming at a pan on the wall, trying to steady herself, to even out her breath, and to hold the tears of fear and outrage at bay.
It didn’t work. She jerked back the trigger. The rifle barked loudly in the close quarters, nearly deafening her. The room filled with so much smoke she was barely able to make out the neat round hole she had blown through the pan.
“You goddamn bastard son of a bitch!” she screamed, then wheeled around and headed out the door.
When she’d unhitched the draft horses from the tree trunk and turned them out in the paddock behind the barn, she saddled her line-b
ack dun and started cross-country for Spernig’s Roadhouse. If Gordon wasn’t there, someone there probably knew where he’d gone. She needed the old cowboy’s help; what’s more, she needed to know that he was alive.
Having galloped along the snowless ridges most of the way, she came out on the lip over Spernig’s half an hour later, then spurred the dun down the canyon, along an old eroded horse trail cowboys had been carving since Spernig’s was just a shanty.
She found Nils in his office at the far back of the building, crouched over his books, a twisted cigarette drooping from his mouth. “Nils, you know where Gordon is?”
He’d heard her boots on the wood floor and was turned to the doorway, his long face with its heavy black brows obscured by a smoke veil. “How in hell would I know where Gordon is?”
“He was in here night before last, wasn’t he?”
“I reckon, but—”
“But he hasn’t been home since,” Jacy finished for him. “You know where he went?”
Nils shrugged and lifted his eyebrows, removing the quirley with the thumb and index finger of his right hand. “Well, he took Mrs. Sanderson home, you know, like he usually does.”
Jacy’s voice was urgent. “That’s all you know? They didn’t go off to get hitched or nothin’?”
The barman shrugged again, dropping his jaw. “Well, not that I know …”
Jacy slapped the door frame. “Shit!”
“Well, you know, maybe they did go off to get hitched. I reckon if Doreen can find a man who likes her piano playin’ as much as Gordon, well, hell—”
“Thanks, Nils.”
Jacy turned around and walked back toward the door, wondering what she should do. Her heart drummed irregularly and her breath was short. A voice in the back of her head told her that Gordon was dead, shotgunned by Double X men.
Trying to ignore it, she mounted the dun and started at a gallop toward Big Draw, along the riverside route Gordon would have taken. The recent snow had covered his tracks, so all Jacy could do was head for Big Draw and hope she found nothing amiss along the way.
It was cold and edging on toward late in the afternoon, and the gray clouds turned the color of dirty rags as the sun waned. Crows cawed in the weeds along the river, and chickadees peeped. Jacy paid little attention. Her mind was on Gordon, but she flashed frequently, with a shudder, on Jack Thom and the thick brown stain on his cabin wall.
When she was about three miles from the roadhouse she saw something lying in the weeds and stones left of the trail. Riding up she found a red wagon wheel with several missing spokes and a badly twisted rim. It did not look like it had been there more than two or three days.
Full of dark thoughts, Jacy dismounted and tied her horse to a plum bush, and looked around. Moving farther off the trail and thrashing around in the snowy brush, she came upon an undercarriage to which two more damaged wheels were connected.
She’d been pushing through the hawthorns for only another two or three minutes when she caught up short and squelched a scream. The body of a woman in a green dress and a long fur coat lay before her, its head resting on a deadfall log, face aimed at Jacy with open, staring eyes.
Taking pains to keep her breath steady and even, Jacy pulled her pistol and looked around. Then she took several slow steps, rustling brush and snapping branches, until she stood about ten feet from the body.
She did not have to get any closer to see that it was Mrs. Sanderson and that wolves had been working on her. Gagging, Jacy stepped around the body, making a wide arc, and continued through the brush.
She came upon the rest of the buggy about fifty yards downstream. The horse that had pulled it was nowhere around. Jacy peered at the wreckage, wondering what had spooked the horse so badly that it had left the road and tore though the brush, throwing Mrs. Sanderson and pulverizing the carriage.
She spent the next half hour scouring the brush for Gordon, finding him nowhere near the buggy or Mrs. Sanderson. Finally she turned and walked upstream along a game trail switchbacking through sawgrass and cattails.
She’d walked a half-mile when she stopped to consider turning back. Letting her eyes wander along the river, she saw something lying next to a clump of cattails and several beaver-gnawed saplings.
Walking slowly over, she saw it was a man. Coming within ten feet of him, she saw through the frozen blood, mauled flesh, and torn clothes that it was Gordon—what the wolves had left of Gordon.
She stared numbly for several seconds. Then her breath came short, her heart hammered, her head grew light, and her knees buckled. She dropped to her knees, twisting her torso so that she faced away from the hideous sight. When she could retch no more she dropped her face to the ground and cried.
Finally she lifted her head and straightened her back, forced herself to look at the body. She wanted to know how they’d killed him.
It wasn’t hard to see. There was a big round hole through his forehead, as though from a hide hunter’s gun, and half the back of his skull was missing. A wedge of tightly folded paper shone between his teeth.
After several moments of deliberation, Jacy steeled herself and crawled over on hands and knees. She pinched the paper between her thumb and index finger and withdrew it quickly.
Standing, she unfolded the sheet to a childishly scrawled “Hasta Luego.” The paper was the same kind of small notebook leaf that had been nailed to her door.
“Those sons o’ bitches,” she breathed. She glanced once more at Gordon lying there, disemboweled by wolves, half his head gone, old eyes still glazed with the horror of his killer’s face.
“Those rotten sons o’ bitches.”
Now she knew what had happened. When they’d shot Gordon, they’d spooked the buggy horse, which fled off the trail, throwing Mrs. Sanderson and destroying the buggy. That’s why there was such a gap between the bodies. The wolves had no doubt dragged Gordon into the brush by the river.
Wiping the freezing tears from her face with the backs of her mittened hands, Jacy wondered what she should do with the bodies.
The ground was frozen, so burying them was out of the question. If she had time, she could rig a travois and carry them home, but it was getting late. Soon it would be full dark. Besides, she did not have the stomach for retrieving what was left of the wolf-mangled corpses.
That’s all they were, anyway, she told herself. Corpses. Gordon and Mrs. Sanderson were gone. They were in a far better place, and Jacy found part of herself yearning for that place herself.
Another part yearned for justice. So she walked stiffly back to the trail, found her horse, mounted up, and headed for Canaan.
NEARLY TWO HOURS later she was walking her horse, half dead from hard riding, down the main street of the little town on the bone-cold fiats above the Little Missouri. The night was pitch-black and starless, and a biting wind was blowing.
Jacy took the horse to the livery and told the night hostler to give the gelding all the oats he wanted, to rub him down good and slow, toss a warm blanket over his back, and put him in a stall with plenty of fresh hay.
She didn’t have the money for it, but she’d work out something, if she had to clean stalls in the morning. Nothing was too good for her saddlestock.
Weary and so cold her teeth chattered, she walked up the street to the Sundowner. She hadn’t even considered looking elsewhere for the sheriff. She figured he’d be half tight by now, but she had to find him, tell him about Gordon and about the note on her door.
Still angry about Mark Talbot’s acceptance of Suzanne Magnusson’s invitation yesterday, she hadn’t even considered going to him for help. In her eyes Talbot was a traitor, and she wouldn’t have asked his assistance had he been the last man on the Bench.
Jacy ignored the men turning to look at her as she entered the saloon. She pointed her eyes straight ahead and made for the bar before she collapsed from exhaustion.
“Good Lord, Jacy, what brings you out in weather like this?” Monty Fisk asked.
&nbs
p; “The sheriff here?”
The bartender shook his head. He had a dark look. “Nope. He’s over to his house. Ain’t feelin’ too well. What you need him for, Jacy?”
She removed her hat with both hands and set it on the bar. Staring at it, she said stiffly, “Someone killed Gordon and Mrs. Sanderson on their way home from Spernig’s.”
Someone close to her shushed the others in the bar, and the room quieted.
“Jesus Christ,” Fisk said, looking at Jacy searchingly.
One of the men behind her said, “What’s going on, Monty?”
“Shut up, Duke,” Fisk said, turning his look back to Jacy. “You look about froze. Your eyebrows are white as the ground outside. Why don’t you go sit down by the fire and I’ll bring you a cup of coffee?”
“Give me a shot of whiskey right here,” Jacy said. “Then I’m gonna go find the sheriff.”
“The sheriff ain’t in any condition to help you tonight, Jacy.” Fisk planted a shot glass on the bar and filled it. “He rode out to Magnusson’s and got the hell beat out of him. They tied him to his horse and slapped him home. Couple o’ the boys found him out here in front of the hitch rack last night.”
Someone grunted a laugh.
Jacy slammed back the whiskey and Fisk refilled the glass. “Why in hell did he ride out there alone?” It contradicted everything she knew about the man.
Fisk shook his head and stepped away to pour refills for a couple of cowpokes.
The cowboy standing next to Jacy said, “That’s what we’re all tryin’ to figure out. First he ain’t got no balls at all, then he’s got ’em big as a—”
“Al!” Fisk scolded the man.
“Sorry,” the cowboy said to Jacy.
Someone behind her said loudly, “Jed Gibbon is a drunken fool. He won’t be any help to you, Miss Kincaid.”
Jacy turned. Before her, unbelievably, Homer Rinski was coming up from a table circled by Verlyn Thornberg and three of Thornberg’s drovers. Rinski blinked his eyes intensely and stared right through her.
Dakota Kill Page 14