He followed a shallow, curving draw along St. Mary’s Creek, steam jetting from his and his horse’s nostrils, the swaybacked roan appearing as sullen as the stoop-shouldered man astraddle it. The sharp breeze played at the floppy brim of Rinski’s black felt hat, tied down with the red wool scarf Mattie had knitted for him last Christmas.
He hadn’t had a conscious thought in weeks. It was all impulse—a single, otherworldly drive driven by holy hate.
When he came to an offshooting draw, he followed it through a scattering of burr oaks and junipers, the trail rising gradually until Rinski’s head was level with the tableland above. He halted the horse and peered north.
The corrals, hay barns, and bunkhouses of the Double X headquarters sprawled in a coulee below the back of the big house, two hundred yards away. Smoke issued from the mansion and horses milled in the corrals, but smoke curled from the chimney of only one of the outbuildings.
Rinski studied the structure for several seconds, then growled “Giddyup” to the horse.
He slipped the butt of his old bird gun under his right arm and, fingering the paper shells in his right coat pocket, moved out toward the single low-slung cabin issuing smoke from its battered tin chimney. Rinski could tell it was a summer cook shack. There was an abandoned chuckwagon parked haphazardly in front, and two sets of footprints led to the door.
Dismounting and tying his horse to the wagon, Rinski heard voices inside the cabin. He lifted the barrel of his shotgun, stepped resolutely to the plank door, and kicked it open.
“God-dang!” came a surprised yell.
Someone screamed. Rinski thought at first it was a girl’s scream. Then his eyes adjusted to the cabin’s murk. Two men lay on a single cot beneath a papered-over window.
One had a neatly trimmed, carefully waxed mustache, and he looked eastern or British. His naked, porcelain-white legs were carpeted with fine black hair. The second man was a young cowboy with a sparse, sandy mustache and a black felt farmer’s hat with a round brim and a bullet-shaped crown. A red neckerchief encircled his scrawny neck. His breeches lay on the floor and his long johns were bunched around his feet and soiled socks.
There was a long silence. The men on the cot stared at Rinski; Rinski stared back.
“Do you mind?” the dandy yelled finally.
Rinski ignored him. He stared at the cowboy, fairly shaking with rage. “Did you … did you savage my girl, Shelby Green?”
The cowboy raised his hands placatingly. “I-I didn’t harm Mattie, Mr. Rinski,” he said thinly.
Rinski appeared more taken aback by the declaration than by the boy’s exposed member or by the realization of what he’d been using it for. He growled at length, with a slow nod and a speculative squint.
“No! … it was Randall. He’s the one savaged Mattie. I only … I only …”
“It was you and Randall.”
“No! Like I said—”
“You and Randall savaged my little girl.”
The young cowboy’s voice was small and thin. “Please, Mr. Rinski. I didn’t meant to do it … It was Randall … He made me!”
“You and Randall Magnusson.”
“Not!”
“Tell the Lord about your devilish desires, Shelby Green. Maybe he’ll have mercy on your soul.”
Rinski brought the shotgun to bear. It boomed, sprouting flames. The cowboy’s head disappeared in a cloud of bone and blood, basting his hat against the log wall. Limbs akimbo, his headless body flew off the cot and hit the floor with a slap and a thud.
Rinski turned to the dandy.
“Please, no!” the man wailed, covering his head with his arms, bringing his knees to his chest. “I’m a doctor!”
“You’re filth,” Rinski intoned. “May the Lord accept you back from the Beast.”
He pressed the barrel to the man’s head and tripped the left trigger. He appraised the mess the gun had made, grimly pleased, then turned and left the bloody cabin.
He mounted his horse and rode up the tawny rise to the big house. He dismounted and tied the horse to the hitch rail at the back door.
Rinski hefted the shotgun, tightened his coat collar about his neck, and strolled up the three wooden steps to the sashed door. He was not surprised to find it unlocked—the devil was known for his arrogance—and stepped into the kitchen.
A spidery old woman in a poke bonnet and purple cotton maid’s dress and white apron turned from the range. “What in heaven’s name?”
“Get out,” Rinski ordered.
Staring at the shotgun held across Rinski’s chest, the woman stuttered and stammered, trying to speak.
“Get out!”
She gave a start, wringing her hands, and sidestepped past him on her way out the kitchen door.
Rinski saw a rose lamp on a table with carved legs. He grabbed the lamp, stepped into the dining room, and threw it against the drapes. It shattered when it hit the floor, spilling kerosene.
Rinski stepped up to the pool of the liquid and produced a match from his coat pocket. Scratching the lucifer on the polished mahogany table, which was nearly as long as Rinski’s cabin was wide and which shone like a moonlit lake at night, he dropped the flame in the kerosene. It went up with a whoosh. A toothy line of flames curled back agaist the wall, instantly igniting the heavy drapes.
“Oh, my God! Fire! Fire!”
Rinski turned to see two women descending the stairs in a hurry. One was young and pretty, with long raven hair bouncing on her shoulders. The other was older, heavy-bosomed, and made up like a nickel whore you’d find in any boom town.
“Save yourselves, charlatans!” Rinski told them, voice raised above the whooshing flames. “You’ll no longer find shelter in the devil’s lair!”
“That’s cashmere, you fool!”
“Mother!” the young woman cried in warning.
“Get the men!”
“They rode away this morning, and I haven’t seen Harrison for hours!”
The older woman ran to the drapes, screaming, looking around feebly for something with which to put out the fire. The younger woman ran up behind her, grabbed her arm, and pulled her out the front door.
Rinski found another lantern and walked down the hall on the other side of the rose-carpeted stairs. He lit the lantern and tossed it into a study with a cave-sized stone hearth and a hide-covered desk as large as a wagon bed, then proceeded upstairs—slowly, deliberately, as though walking in his sleep.
He’d just tossed a lantern on a lace-covered, four-poster bed when he heard the girl’s voice rise from the yard below. “Oh, look! Oh, Mother, it’s the man from the trapper’s shack!”
Rinski went back down the stairs several minutes later, nearly the whole second story in flames behind him. Through the eye-stinging smoke of the ground floor he saw the silhouette of a tall man in a fur coat filling the open front door, swathed in smoke. He was holding a long-barreled rifle straight up in the air.
When Rinski stopped on the stairs, the man brought the barrel down level with Rinski’s chest. The smoke parted enough for Rinski to make out the man’s blue, blue eyes and his grin, shaped around the long thin cigar clamped in his teeth.
“You have a light, gringo?” he yelled above the flames.
Rinski didn’t even have time to bring his shotgun down. Fire leapt from the barrel of the Big Fifty, blowing a four-inch hole through Rinski’s chest. He flew back against the stairs, tripping both barrels of the shotgun and sending buckshot into the flame-engulfed rafters.
He was dead on the landing before he could mutter a final prayer.
“No, I didn’t think so,” Del Toro said, turning around and heading back toward King Magnusson’s lovely daughter standing dumbly with her mother in the yard.
They were looking at him like Jesus Christ had just ridden up on a donkey.
Hee-hee.
KING MAGNUSSON TURNED from Jed Gibbon’s body and looked down the street to where all the shooting had taken place.
Dea
d men and dead horses littered the street between the Sundowner and the livery barn. Wind shepherded a bloodstained hat in Magnusson’s direction, bouncing it along the frozen ruts of the street until it caught in the legs of a feed trough before the mercantile.
The bartender poked his head through the saloon’s broken front window. Magnusson brought his pistol up reflexively, but, seeing him, the man gave a start and lurched back inside. One of the bodies in the street moved and Magnusson walked toward it.
It was Verlyn Thornberg. He lay grunting and cursing as he tried to stretch his arm out for his pistol, several feet away. There was a gaping, blood-soaked hole where his stomach had been. His coat was spilling viscera.
Magnusson stepped on the pistol and grinned down at the dying man. Thornberg turned his head up sideways, blood washing over his lower lip. He tried to say something but nothing came from his mouth but more blood, as dark and thick as molasses.
“Look what you did to yourself, Verlyn,” Magnusson sneered. “Instead of pulling up stakes and moving on, leaving the Bench to me, you’re layin’ here in the street drowning in your own guts. Tsk, tsk, tsk.”
Thornberg’s lips curled back from his teeth, and red rage shone in his face for just a second. Then the color faded and the light in his eyes dimmed. His head dipped. It fell in a puddle of quickly congealing blood. Thornberg sighed, and he was dead.
Magnusson gave a self-satisfied chuff.
He had to admit, though, the rancher and Gibbon had given him a run for his money. And they’d hurt him beyond the bullet in his shoulder.
But he’d be back in action in no time. He’d start sending notices for gun-savvy riders as far north as Calgary and as far south as Amarillo.
He’d have the Bench to himself in no time.
After all, he was almost there. He might have lost most of his men—all but Rag and Del Toro, that is (you couldn’t really call Randall a man)—but he still had his herds.
He still had his headquarters …
Thinking of that gave him a funny feeling in his gut, a bitter taste at the roof of his mouth, and he felt a sudden compulsion to get home as fast as he could. It was an irrational fear, he knew. Donnelly and Del Toro would have taken care of Talbot, and there was no one left on the Bench with balls enough to threaten the house.
Still …
He looked up and down the street for a horse to ride and didn’t see a one—standing, that is. His silver-gray, always a little gun-shy for some reason, was long gone. Turning to the livery barn, Magnusson saw that the horses in the paddock had knocked the rails down and lit a shuck out of there after the shooting had started.
Then, as if answering his silent plea, he heard a knicker behind him. Turning, he saw a horse poke its head out between the drugstore and the feed store. Its reins dangled as it turned its head and twitched its ears nervously, looking around for its rider.
Magnusson started slowly toward it, holding his hands out in a gesture of goodwill. “Whoa, boy,” he cooed. “Whoa, now. That’s it.”
The horse shook its head and backed up a few steps, but it didn’t start turning to flee until Magnusson had grabbed the reins and was halfway in the leather.
“Hah! Haaah!” he shouted, giving the horse the spurs and reining westward out of town.
He’d ridden hard for nearly an hour when he saw the smoke.
CHAPTER 29
“WELL, I’LL BE goddamned,” Talbot mumbled, bringing his horse to a sudden halt and lifting his eyes to the column of smoke rising beyond the second ridge north.
Jacy reined in, too, and looked where Talbot was looking. “What do you make of that?”
“I don’t know, but there’s only one way to find out.” He touched his spurs to his horse’s flanks and started down the slope.
Ten minutes later he and Jacy stopped their mounts on a ridge about four hundred yards from the Magnusson headquarters and watched the burning roof of the grand mansion tumble into the flame-engulfed rubble below. The dragon-like roar carried on the cold air, and the resin in the milled lumber popped like .45s.
The conflagration glowed brightly against the falling night.
Dumbfounded, Talbot and Jacy looked at each other, then at the fire. Someone had torched the house, all right, but where were the men who did it, and where were Magnusson and his riders?
Talbot got half an answer when a horseman galloped in from the west, about a hundred yards away. The man left the creek bottom below Talbot and Jacy and kicked his horse up the ridge beneath the burning house.
The man’s large frame and posture bespoke King Magnusson.
Thoroughly perplexed, Talbot told Jacy to keep her head down—he knew from the tracks they’d been following that the hombre with the Big Fifty had come this way, too—and started down the ridge toward the creek.
As they climbed the ridge below the house they spotted a saddled horse foraging in the snow with its reins dangling. Jacy recognized Homer Rinski’s brand, and said as much to Talbot.
The furrows in Talbot’s brow deepened. He shook his head and rode on, cantering, following Magnusson’s trail now and holding his Winchester up high and ready.
He and Jacy halted their horses about fifty yards from the house. Magnusson had dismounted and stood before the house with his back to Talbot and Jacy, his big hands clenched at his sides, shoulders humped, the collar of his long buffalo coat rising like the fur around a cur’s neck.
Slowly he lifted his hands to his temples, elbows straight out from his head like horns, and bellowed like a foundering bull, staggering with the force of his emotion.
Through the roar of the fire, Talbot heard him calling Suzanne’s name. The thought that she could be in there gave Talbot a jolt, and he spurred his horse forward, feeling the heat.
“Mark!” Jacy cried.
Ignoring her, Talbot brought his mount up even with Magnusson. Seeing him, the rancher’s livid eyes grew even keener.
“You!” he cried, lunging toward Talbot’s horse. “You did this!”
Talbot turned his horse away from the man, holding his rifle on him. “I didn’t burn your damn house!” he yelled. “Did all the women get out?”
Magnusson danced Talbot’s horse in a circle, trying to pull its rider out of the saddle. Jacy rode up, yelling, but kept her horse a safe distance from the melee. There was little she could do.
Talbot’s horse bucked and rose up on its hind legs, frightened by Magnusson as well as the fire. Holding the reins in one hand and the Winchester in the other, Talbot lost his balance. Magnusson reached up and grabbed him by his coat collar and pulled. Talbot dropped the rifle and came out of the saddle, cursing and hitting the ground hard on his left shoulder.
Pushing himself up on a knee while Magnusson dodged the horse, Talbot said, “You burned me out, you son of a bitch!”
“I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!” Magnusson roared. He stepped forward and kicked Talbot in the chest. Talbot hit the ground on his back.
Magnusson moved in and was about to kick again when Talbot rolled left and gained his feet, crouched and ready to spring. Sloppy with rage, Magnusson leaned in, hooking with his right fist.
Talbot ducked. He came up jabbing with both hands, pummeling Magnusson’s face with satisfying smacks. The rancher staggered back, fear and surprise flashing in his cold eyes. Talbot didn’t stop swinging until Magnusson was on the ground in a raging, frothy-lipped heap. Blood poured from the gashes in his face.
Talbot stood before him crouched and ready, his fists held high, feet spread, upper lip curled in anger. “You had enough?”
Magnusson groaned and tried to push himself to his feet, fell back down.
“Now, like I said,” Talbot snarled, “I didn’t burn your house, you bastard. Not that I wouldn’t have, but someone beat me to it.”
Rubbing a jaw, Magnusson climbed to a knee. “Who?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care.”
Magnusson’s eyes grew bright with renewed fear as he turned
them to the blaze. “Suzanne!” he cried.
“How do you know she didn’t make it out?” Talbot asked, anger turning to genuine concern.
A woman’s voice rose. “King!”
Talbot turned his gaze southward, where two women cloaked in quilts were climbing the bank from the outbuildings in the coulee below. One was Magnusson’s wife; the other was the gray-haired maid. Magnusson’s wife clung to the older woman for support, her face twisted with anguish.
Magnusson stood unsteadily. “Kendra!”
“King!”
Magnusson ran to her and grabbed her by the shoulders, shaking her. “What happened! Where’s Suzanne!”
“Oh, King!” the woman bawled. Her legs turned to jelly and she crumpled in Magnusson’s arms.
“Goddamnit, where is she!”
Releasing her, he turned to the other woman, taking Minnie’s shoulders in his big hands and nearly lifting her off the ground. “Tell me!”
“Oh, Mr. Magnusson! A man came,” she stammered in a thick Scottish accent. “He … he …”
“What!”
“He come into the house while I was cookin’ … an’ he … an’ he started throwin’ lanterns around!”
“Who?”
“An old man … old as me.”
“Did he take Suzanne?”
“No! It was another man. He come up on a black horse and shot the first man in the house. It was him … a Mexican … he took Suzanne! Just grabbed her up on his horse and rode away!”
Magnusson paused, absorbing the information.
“Please, sir, you’re hurting my arms,” the woman begged.
Magnusson swallowed. “Which way did they go?”
“That way, sir—southeast.”
Magnusson released the woman, who gave a scream, clutching her bruised arms. Magnusson turned stiffly, eyes wide and unmoving, and stared south, where the tables rolled away like a rumpled carpet, sooty now with the fading winter light.
The fire grumbled like a distant train, cracking and hissing. A timber fell with a muffled boom, geysering sparks.
The old woman stared at the conflagration, looking stricken. Mrs. Magnusson bawled, her head in her hands. Jacy stood near her horse, about twenty feet away, looking on dispassionately. She had nothing but disdain for these people, and Talbot didn’t blame her.
Dakota Kill Page 24