Joe Kettle handed out tepid canteen water to the prisoners. None of them said a word, except Red Mayhill.
‘What you aimin’ to do with us?’ he asked.
‘You were goin’ to burn Mr McGovren’s house when we caught you,’ Joe answered. ‘Don’t that tell you snmethin’?’
‘Yeah, tells us we should’ve got our work orders a mite sooner.’
‘You weren’t workin’, you brainless scum,’ Joe rapped back. ‘You was helpin’ to slaughter innocent folk in their beds.’
‘I ain’t sayin’ any more.’
Hector walked up to Mayhill. ‘Tell us whose orders they were,’ he said. ‘Try lessenin’ your guilt by spreadin’ the blame around.’
‘You won’t do anythin’ to us, ’cause if you do, Broome will string all o’ you across the same tree,’ Mayhill sneered.
‘Now there’s an idea,’ Hector threatened, then indicated that they should bind the prisoners up again. ‘An’ wring the knots an inch,’ he added irritably.
An hour before dusk, the prisoners were forced to mount their horses. Ben McGovren went over to where his daughter still lay quietly on her blankets.
‘Megan, we got to ride out, but we won’t be gone long,’ he said. ‘Get your horse saddled up, an’ be ready to move out when we come back. Are you all right?’
‘If I didn’t have a heart or a brain, I might be. Where are you goin’?’
‘I told you, a short ride, an’ that’s all you need to know. Now shake yourself.’
Wilshaw Broome and Duff Handy were riding back to the ranch. It was nearly dusk when they reached the Rio Bonito, half a mile from the house. At that point the trail passed through a grove of live oaks. It was an eerie place in the flat dark, and Handy’s nerves were already taut. He yelled a curse when Broome’s horse suddenly snorted its displeasure and pulled up sharply.
‘Jesus, boss,’ he croaked in alarm. ‘What the hell’s happened here?’
Broome had already gulped in a great draught of air at seeing two figures in front of them. The bodies were hanging, strung across the trail with their feet barely clearing the ground. One of them was his straw boss, Red Mayhill, the other looked like one of the men who’d been paid to ambush Ben McGovren. From where their earlobes had been neatly cut off, blood had trickled to the necks of their stained hickory shirts.
‘Whoever done this, knew I’d be comin’ through here.’ Broome felt the cold run of sweat between his shoulder blades. ‘By the look of ’em, they ain’t been here long,’ he said hoarsely. Then he knew for sure who the perpetrators were, and a sudden dread gripped at his vitals. ‘Let’s get out o’ here,’ he gasped and stared guardedly into the oaks. ‘They’ll be found come mornin’.’
Handy had had enough of dead men for one day, so, with only a grunted response, he spurred his horse away from the oak towards the river.
*
Night settled over the gloomy Standing K ranch. Wilshaw Broome sat in his high, beam-ceilinged den, and Handy sat the other side of the broad hearth. Handy hadn’t been out of Broome’s sight since making his report that morning. Now, as the firelight flickered across Broome’s downcast features, he assumed a nervy companionship. But he knew different. His boss wanted him there because he didn’t want him talking to anyone else.
Broome sat in wretched silence, He knew the rough country as few others knew it, yet he knew there were places he’d never seen, perhaps where his enemies were now hiding. To Felix and a few others, he’d passed the word to bring down Ben McGovren. Instead, Felix was dead, and there were others who still hadn’t showed at the ranch. Maybe they were all somewhere out in the brush, the vultures and coyotes taking turns to tear the bodies apart. He felt almost overpowered by anguish as he summed up his situation. And it couldn’t go on. The overall price was now too high, he had to finish it once and for all. Come morning, when the bodies were found, he’d have one hell of an excuse to hunt down the killers of his men. ‘Why the hell didn’t you stay away?’ he yelled.
Throughout the night, Broome went on with his scheming, his avenging. From time to time he tossed a log to the fire, while an emotionally exhausted Handy took a fitful sleep. He was also mindful of keeping watch with the dead, so he made a few lone visits to the two coffins that were in another room. The troubled man could still go for many nights with little rest, but the irony was that now he couldn’t sleep even if he wanted too, his mind churning with ifs and buts, maybes and certainties.
It was first light when Broome heard a commotion from the ranch-house’s yard. He called for Handy to rouse himself, grabbed a shotgun from a rack and went outside. The line rider who had gone out early to check on the remuda had come storming in. He was sitting his horse making garbled noises in an effort to say something.
‘Christ, feller, you look like you got the hounds o’ hell behind you,’ Broome rasped, although he knew the cause of the rider’s distress, or thought he did.
‘They’re out there somewhere, boss,’ the man said, catching his breath. ‘I went out after the broncs at first light … found ’em on the other side of the creek. They struck the trail an’ run towards the ranch, but when they reached the crossin’, they bolted … turned away from the timber.’
Broome stared hard at his rider. ‘Why? What happened? he said, now convinced of the answer.
‘It was Red an’ the others. If it weren’t for their shirts an’ pants, I wouldn’ta recognized ’em. I think one of ’em was the Mex, Buscar.’ The man looked at Broome horrified. ‘I’m tellin’ you, boss, they was hangin’ there in the oaks like fat catkins, an’ they’d all got one eat half hacked away.’
But what the rider said wasn’t quite what Broome expected, and he held up his hand. ‘Hold it. What do you mean, “the others”? How many of ’em were there?’ he demanded.
‘Four. There was four of ’em. Their mounts were line-hobbled back in the thickets.’
Broome had agreed with Handy that they should be surprised and shocked. Suddenly he had no difficulty in showing that. There were two men hanging when he and Handy came to the timber. That meant the hangmen must have been there at the time, in hiding until they’d passed by. Now, with his worst suspicions come true, his excuse for hunting them down, for giving no quarter was that much greater.
Instead of two, six men were buried that day on Standing K land, although some burials were a short distance from close friends and family members. After a terse ceremony, Broome gave his orders for the day. His story was that a gang of violent, determined rustlers had re-emerged, that it was no doubt they who had hanged and killed Felix and the others. It was obvious their intention was to terrorize Rio Bonito country, make a fast sweep of the range and its cattle. It was up to Broome’s remaining men to find and punish them. There’d be no reprieve or stays of execution, just a big dollar bounty for the man or men who destroyed them.
In less than an hour after the last shovelful of earth topped out the graves, a dozen men rode to different stations of the ranch. But Duff Handy wasn’t with them. He was the sole survivor of those who’d been delegated to burn the McGovren house, and. Broome wanted him within range, not adding mud to the already very dangerous waters. Thinking on Brent Perser’s claim about Aileen McGovren being in town, Broome got to wondering just who had burned in the cabin. ‘We know who it wasn’t, eh, McGovren?’ he muttered.