CHAPTER 30
By the time Billy and Mackey woke the next morning, Wolf Child was gone. There was no sight of the old chief, and neither Billy nor Mackey intended on looking for him. He had been roaming the plains and these hills for longer than either of them had been alive. If he had decided to leave, they knew it must have been for a good reason. Mackey knew better than to question a Blackfoot’s reason for doing anything.
But their conversation about the blackness had remained with Mackey throughout his sleep and had remained with him still now that he was awake. The talk had left an impression on him like a bruise, for the wisdom had come from within him, not from anything Wolf Child told him.
He imagined that was a gift of the wise, to be able to make other men better by leading them to their own conclusions. He had not shoved Mackey in the right direction. He had not even pointed it out. He had just kept talking until Mackey decided what he had to do.
The coals from the previous night’s fire were still hot enough to warm up the coffeepot. Since neither he nor Billy was hungry, they simply finished their coffee, packed up, and rode out toward Dover Station.
Neither man had spoken a word, either, until Billy once again broke the silence. “Mind telling me what you’ve got in mind? I’d kind of like to know before we get there.”
Mackey realized he had not been very talkative since leaving Helena. He had not told Billy much of anything that was on his mind the whole way to Dover Station.
They had ridden together for so long, he always imagined his deputy knew what he was thinking. But this time was different. Everything was different about this.
“We’re going to do what we were trained to do,” Mackey said. “Observe, plan, and attack.”
“I figured that,” Billy said. “I’m just wondering about how do you want to handle the observing part. We can see some things from the ridge around town, but not everything.”
Mackey had already given that plenty of thought on the train. “We’ll set out at opposite sides of the hillside, meet up in the middle, and figure out what we need to hit and when. Freeing Jerry and taking down Grant and Rigg need to be the priority. Mad Nellie’s death won’t stop the Hancocks from coming at us, so killing her is low on the list.”
“Rescuing Jerry and killing Grant and Rigg is going to be a tall order for two men,” Billy pointed out. “Unless they’re in the same place, we’re going to have to choose which one is more important. I say rescuing Jerry’s more important.”
“It is,” Mackey agreed. “We’ll figure out who’ll be easier to kill once we look over the town. The only advantage we have is the element of surprise.”
“If you wanted the element of surprise,” Billy said, “you probably shouldn’t have left Rigg’s man in our train compartment. Even if the conductor kept his mouth shut about it, Rigg has already found him by now and knows we’re coming.”
Mackey wanted to feel some kind of emotion about what he had done. Not so much about killing him, but about how he had scalped him. How he had used the man to send a message to Rigg. He knew he should feel regret or remorse. The soldier in him should be furious how a theatrical display had cost him a tactical advantage.
But Mackey did not feel anything at all. And he had not felt anything since the moment Billy had told him his father had been murdered.
“Rigg knew we’d be coming anyway,” Mackey decided. “He had people watching us in Helena. He thought he knew when we’d get there. But now he doesn’t, and that’s going to be the difference.”
He hoped Billy was not going to ask him more about his plan because he did not have one. He knew the town had burned quite a bit and the landscape was probably much different than when they had last seen it. He had no idea where Grant or Rigg were staying. He imagined they’d spent a fair amount of time at the Municipal Building, but he did not know where either man was living. The Van Dorn house? The Ruby? He had no idea what they were riding into.
All he knew was that he regretted rejecting Sean Lynch’s offer of bringing twenty deputy marshals into Dover Station. A show of force was exactly what the Hancocks needed. A pile of Hancock dead would remind the town what happened to those who aligned themselves with Grant and Rigg.
But when Mackey returned to his senses, he knew that was the darkness talking. Since he assumed Grant had regained control of the telegraph office, he had not dared to wire ahead from Helena to ask questions. He and Billy would have to find their answers on their own.
Billy pulled him out of his own mind by asking, “What was that name Wolf Child kept calling you?”
Mackey looked at him as if he had been shaken awake. “What name?”
“It sounded like your name, but wasn’t,” Billy said. “I’ve never heard him call you that before, and I couldn’t catch the meaning.”
Mackey remembered. “Máóhk Ki’sómma. It’s as close as he can get to saying ‘Mackey.’ It’s the name he gave me when he felt I was a man. It was to honor my father, who had always been pretty fair to his people over the years.”
“What does it mean?” Billy asked.
“It means Red Sun.” Mackey thought about it as they rode. “Always thought it was a pretty silly name until now.”
“Red Sun,” Billy repeated as if he was trying it on for size. “Seems fitting, especially now.”
Adair skittered as she caught the first whiff of dead smoke on the wind from Dover Station. Mackey patted her neck as he urged her forward.
“Wolf Child always had a knack for seeing the future.”
* * *
The lawmen tied their horses to a tree and belly crawled to the rim of the ridgeline that surrounded Dover Station. Mackey realized they were doing exactly what Darabont and his men had done when he had laid siege to the town more than a year before.
Upon crawling up the rim and seeing the town, Mackey realized there was not much left of Dover Station.
“Damn,” Billy swore. “It’s worse than I thought.”
Mackey found himself unable to speak.
A thin haze still hung in the late morning air, but Mackey could still see the devastation.
Almost every wooden building in town was gone. His father’s store was a ruin of scorched wood. Not a single post remained standing.
Most of the buildings that had been left over from the original settlement were gone, as well. The stores and shops and saloons from his childhood had been erased from the townscape as if they had never been there. The upper floors of the Campbell Arms had been burned away and the roof had fallen into the building. The first floor looked untouched, but he was sure the entire hotel was a mess. He hoped all of the guests had been able to get out in time.
That made him think of Katherine and how she would take the news of her hotel being destroyed. But he quickly pushed her out of his mind. He could not afford to think of her now. He had to remember his training and remember his mission, no matter how difficult it was to look at.
The only remnants of Dover Station still standing were the buildings that James Grant had built when he had been in power. The sawmill and the Record building and The Bank of Dover Station, and the station itself had all been left untouched by flame.
And, of course, the Municipal Building was still standing, looming over the ruined town like a medieval castle. Mackey had grown to hate that building and all it represented.
But his hatred died away when he saw the old jailhouse was still standing, as if in defiance to the destruction around it. It was still as squat and ugly as ever, but its stone walls and slate roof had protected it from the flames.
He could see the door to the jail was shut. And five men were keeping an eye on it from behind an overturned wagon in front of the Municipal Building across Front Street. He knew that was where Jerry Halstead must be holed up.
Billy cleared his throat and, had Mackey not known better, would have sworn he wiped away a tear. “What do you want to do next, Captain?”
He normally hated when Billy referred to him by his old title, but under the circumstances, it seemed to fit. They were reconnoitering an enemy camp, just like they had back in their cavalry days.
“Let’s split up and look everything over on foot,” Mackey told him. “You head north toward the old Van Dorn house up on the hill while I circle back to the sawmill. We stay among the rocks and meet in the middle. We report on what we see and figure out what we do next. I think they’ve got Jerry pinned down in the jailhouse, so let’s not worry about him for now. Keep an eye out for Grant and Rigg. If we can peg down where they are, we can plan what to do next.”
“Sounds good to me,” Billy said. “Let’s meet back here in two hours.” He nodded at the clock in the tower of the Dover Station bank building. “Might as well put that thing to good use for once.”
They moved back away from the rim and set off to carry out their respective missions.