EIGHT

You don’t expect the food to be much in a place like Bigelow. Maybe we have the idea that good food takes an accompanying fancy decor like expensive restaurants try to convince us. The breakfast Corrine and Sandy had shared that morning was among the best either could remember. Supper the night before had been beyond delight. If the cook had been working somewhere other than Bigelow, Colorado, her fortune would have been made.

‘I’ve found a reason to live in Bigelow,’ Sandy said, as they stepped out onto the plankwalk to relish the warm morning sunlight.

‘I’d hire her,’ Corrine agreed.

‘Can’t you cook?’ Sandy asked.

‘Not like that!’ Corrine admitted.

‘Oh, well,’ Sandy said carelessly. ‘Since I have to choose between you, I’ll take the cook.’

‘Did you get a good look at her?’

‘What’s a hundred pounds or so between friends?’

‘Besides,’ Corrine said more seriously, ‘any choosing you have to do does not include me, Mr Rivers. I am not on the auction block.’

‘Well enough,’ Sandy muttered, throwing his toothpick away. ‘I couldn’t afford you anyway.’

‘No. You probably couldn’t afford the cook, either, and I doubt you could charm her into it. None of you saddle tramps is as charming as you believe yourselves to be.’

On that note they started on their way again, recovering their horses from the Portuguese’s stable, heading out with the sun on their right, the broken hills ahead and the dying little town of Bigelow behind them.

‘A puppy,’ Corrine heard Sandy say as they crested a hill rise.

‘What did you say, Mr Rivers?’

‘I said I’d like to get a puppy after we’re married – I wonder if the cook likes dogs?’

‘With onions and parsley,’ Corrine answered. She was able to control her smile long enough for Sandy’s grin to reappear.

‘You’re probably right. Let’s go bag us some coyotes instead.’ After a minute of silent riding, he asked seriously, ‘Corrine, have you given any thought as to how we’re going to pull this off? Ride right in and tell Coyne to give you your father’s money back? Is that the idea?’

‘He’ll have to give it to me,’ Corrine said definitely. ‘If he doesn’t, he’ll be ruined in these parts, branded as a thief. I’ll bring twenty-five men with me and threaten to hang Amos and all of his filthy crew. I might even do it,’ she added.

‘That’s fine – in your imagination,’ Sandy told her. ‘Except I don’t think that Amos Coyne gives a hoot about his reputation so long as he is making money. As for bringing in a gang of Sky Box riders, just how are we supposed to tell them they are needed if he doesn’t let us go once he has his hands on us?’

‘You don’t understand anything, do you, Rivers?’

‘Maybe not,’ Sandy said with a shrug. ‘I thought I did. I thought I knew what kind of man Amos Coyne is.’

‘Amos would never, ever harm me,’ Corrine said with confidence. ‘He would not dare! I’ll tell him how things must be and even allow him to keep the stolen horses and the cattle, if he truly has them, until such time as he can afford to pay me back. All on paper, of course. I will help him start his ranch, but make it clear that he must return the receipts from Sky Box’s cattle sale to me.’ She spoke this all with serious conviction. Had the girl been raised in such a sheltered environment that she actually believed her plan could succeed, that Amos Coyne, her disappointed suitor, respected, admired her enough to follow her conditions?

One of them, at least, had no understanding of what they were getting themselves into, and Sandy Rivers doubted that it was him. That didn’t make him the smarter of the two. Corrine was going to visit the killer in blissful unawareness. Sandy was riding along with her because… He glanced at her fine profile and at the splendid figure she made in the saddle.…

He continued to ride with Corrine because he was a plain fool.

Ahead the trail crested on a knoll where stacks of yellow-white boulders lined the way. Reaching the summit they were able to look down on a pretty little valley. There was a stone house and a pole corral where a dozen or so hires were penned. They could see a herd of white-faced cattle grazing their patient way across the land. Sandy noted a stack of sawn lumber with a gray tarpaulin thrown carelessly over it beside the house.

‘He’s been at this for some time,’ Sandy commented.

‘Yes, it seems to be thriving,’ Corrine answered. ‘I think we were meant to live here whether Amos took control of Sky Box or not.’ She was leaning forward in her saddle, both hands braced against the pommel as she peered downward. Perhaps sensing Sandy’s eyes on her she quickly added, ‘Not that I would have ever married Amos Coyne, of course – but I think he intended to show me what he could do.’

‘I think with enough stolen money and stock anyone could have done this,’ Sandy said, irrationally irritated by Corrine’s comments. Where was the girl’s heart at, actually? She seemed to be ready to lynch Coyne at one minute and admiring of him the next. Perhaps old bonds still held sway.

‘We should start on down,’ Corrine said.

‘Yes,’ a strange voice said from behind a low clump of rocks. ‘That is exactly what you should do, Miss Skye, but do us the favor of shedding your guns first, Rivers.’

The gravelly vice belonged to Randall Chandler. He tugged at his bushy red mustache after emerging from behind the rocks, rifle in hand, with the diminutive Jordy Cavett following. Cavett’s face, Sandy noted, was still bruised from their last encounter. His small dark eyes were fierce with hatred.

Corrine was incensed. ‘Since you know who I am, you have no cause to treat us like this. I have come to visit Amos Coyne. Mr Rivers is my escort. I won’t have my own employees acting like roughnecks!’

‘We kinda forgot to tell you that we’ve quit Sky Box,’ Chandler said, with a sly edge to his voice. ‘It don’t matter much what you think any more, Miss Skye. Shed those guns, Rivers!’

Corrine was not finished. ‘I’ll have twenty men down on you in a flash!’ she warned Chandler.

‘Yes, miss,’ Chandler drawled, looking down the slope behind them. ‘And who exactly is going to go tell them that you need help?’

Sandy had unsheathed his Winchester and handed it over gently to the scowling Jordy Cavett. Now he unholstered his Colt and reversed it to slap it into Cavett’s hand. There was no point in starting a war he could not win.

Corrine continued in an angry voice. ‘I demand to see Amos Coyne. Ruffians such as you should have no place on this ranch!’

Cavett seemed to shrink a little. Having lost his job on Sky Box, he could not afford to make his new boss angry. Randall Chandler took her words more lightly. He lowered the muzzle of his Winchester and smiled faintly.

‘Oh, you’ll be seeing Coyne all right, Miss Skye. We’ll make sure of that.’ Over his shoulder he instructed Cavett, ‘Grab our ponies, Jordy. Let’s escort these visitors to the house.’

With one of the outlaw Sky Box riders on either side of them, Corrine and Sandy made their way down the grassy slope toward the bootstrap ranch that sat on the valley floor. Corrine rode with her head held high, her eyes straight ahead. Sandy watched their guards for signs of inattention or carelessness even though it would make no difference if he could find a way to disarm one of the men or to spur his horse away from their watching eyes.

No, he decided, he would not try anything. There was nothing to be gained, no point in it. Did he want shots fired wildly with Corrine in the midst of things? What would escaping gain him? He would still have to find a way to rescue Corrine – if she even wished to be rescued.

As they approached the stone house, she still rode with apparent confidence in her own ability to handle Amos Coyne. Sandy Rivers did not share that confidence.

He noticed that the windows in the newly built house had not been fitted with glass – a hard to come by item this far out on the plains, but that wroughtiron bars bent at a ninety-degree angle at either end had been set into the mortar between the stones in the walls, making it as secure as any jail. Except that in this case the jailer had chosen to dwell within himself. Was Amos Coyne that fearful? Of what, of whom?

They came up to a white-painted hitch rail, newly put in place and, as Corrine swung nimbly down from her white mare, Randall Chandler’s rifle muzzle was kept trained on Rivers.

‘You stay where you are,’ Chandler told him. ‘She might be a guest, but you’re not. We’ve got another place for you.’

And Corrine did seem to be a welcome guest. Before they turned away, Sandy saw the heavy plank door to the stone house open and he recognized Amos Coyne with his brushed-back dark hair and emotionless black eyes standing there. He and Corrine greeted each other, not exactly with an embrace, but each took the other’s arms for a moment, and then Corrine was escorted into the house’s interior, the door closing solidly behind her.

‘Seen enough?’ Chandler asked.

‘I suppose so,’ Sandy answered in a muffled voice. Enough to cause him to think that he was among the fools of all time; even though he did not understand what game was being played, it was obvious that he was odd man out.

The outbuilding where they took Sandy, roughly dragging him from the saddle and throwing him inside, was built along lines similar to Coyne’s house. Gray stone with iron bars across the windows which were, anyway, too small for a grown man to wriggle through. The building, no more than twenty feet square, reeked of tallow, slag, oil and kerosene. There was a rusted plow in one corner, a nail keg, a set of hand tools, empty jugs and stacks of sacking. All without plan, just items variously collected and stored to be used or disposed of another time. Sandy moved about in the near-darkness, the only light in the room coming from a pair of head-high ten-inch wide windows.

In one corner he discovered three new branding irons. Their heads formed a Circle C. For Coyne, no doubt. The man was serious about starting his own ranch. He had all the necessary beginnings … thanks to Vincent Skye. Probably Coyne had developed his idea as it became obvious that Skye was no longer capable of a trail drive, of surveying his ranch to see what mischief Coyne might be up to.

Then Coyne had suddenly made a grab for a big payday, stealing the receipts from the cattle sale. Why? To accelerate his building programme, no doubt. Perhaps he still owed someone money for the land and wanted to clear the debt. Now, when Vincent Skye had become bedridden, would have been the time to take the gamble. Skye was not going to rise from his bed and track Coyne down. And Corrine? What reason did Amos Coyne have to fear her?

Sandy picked up a few of the hand tools – a saw, a claw hammer, a drill bit. None of them were of any use to a man seeking to find a way out of a stone house. There was a jug of kerosene, but nothing to burn but the heavy plank door. Even had the shed been made of wood, Sandy would not have tried that trick. He couldn’t think of a more futile way to go than to be trapped inside a burning building by a fire he had started himself.

He seated himself on the pile of sacking – burlap bags left from oats that had been delivered to the ranch. With his arms looped abound his knees he studied the room again. It had no floor. Probably it had been constructed before Coyne had come by the lumber Sandy had seen. But the earth was packed solidly. Sandy figured that with the right tools he could have dug himself out in a week or so.

He doubted he would have that long to ponder the situation.

He heard a sharp, short laugh and got to his feet. It was a woman’s laugh he had heard, and walking to one of the narrow barred windows, he saw that he had a clear view into one of the rooms inside Coyne’s house. There he saw two shadowy figures – Coyne and Corrine Skye – standing close together and discussing something. Corrine laughed again and Sandy turned away from the window feeling betrayed and a little bit sick to his stomach.

In Sunday school hadn’t there been something abut the tongue of a lying woman being sharper than a serpent’s tooth? He couldn’t remember exactly how that went, but he saw what the old-timer had been talking about.

Why him? Why had Corrine roped him into this crazy expedition? Was it because he was the only man on the Sky Box who was ignorant of her ways and was the easiest to convince? Or had she just known that he was born a fool? Why had Sandy agreed to come at all?

That was the easiest question. That fine trim figure, those brilliant blue eyes, her silken dark hair and beautiful smile could take the blame for that. He had once stumbled into a women’s meeting where the speaker was proclaiming that when they got the vote they would have some power in this country. She obviously didn’t get around much. When did women not have power over men?

Driving away the useless thoughts from his mind Sandy seated himself again and tried to think of nothing. What was there to think about? He could not plan an escape, had no idea what he would do if he could get out of the storage shack, had no idea on how he could contribute to Corrine’s plan – if she even had one – or what it was.

He wondered bitterly if Turk Bemis and Jerry Higgins hadn’t gotten the better part of the bargain they had made back in Durant.

It was in the hour before sunset that Amos Coyne appeared in the doorway, his bullwhip coiled in his hand, his dark hair brushed back, his dark eyes coldly furious. Sandy, who had been dozing in misery, immediately came to his feet. The sky beyond Coyne was faintly colored; he was a bulky dark silhouette before it. He slapped his leg with the coiled whip and took two strides into the shed.

‘I know what you’re up to, Rivers,’ Coyne said in his easy baritone voice. Many men had taken that voice to be soothing, kindly; Sandy knew that it covered a lot of venom.

‘Good. Tell me then,’ Sandy replied, ‘because I have no idea what I’m up to.’

‘So you’re a jokester,’ Coyne said.

‘That’s what I’m up to?’ Sandy asked, managing a grin. As he answered, Sandy saw the man’s fingers loosen, and the bullwhip uncoil at his feet like a dying snake. Coyne took anther step forward, leading his whip. There was no one to be seen behind him, but Sandy would have wagered that he was not alone.

‘You just can’t stay out of things, can you? I saw you with Bobo out on the desert. Now this,’ Coyne said, shaking his head as if with sadness. Sorry he had to whip his dog for getting into the garbage.

‘Now this, what?’ Sandy exclaimed. ‘What am I into now? I don’t even know why you’ve got such an itch to lash me – and that is your intent, isn’t it?’

‘It is my intent,’ Coyne answered in his nice baritone voice, as if he truly regretted it and not because he was a sadistic bastard who felt that if he let a day go by without using his whip on some animal, man, woman or child it had been a wasted day.

Sandy, half-crouched, made his plan. When he saw the muscles in Coyne’s arms flinch, he would step forward, grab the whip and yank hard. Then he would move in, going at Coyne with knees, feet, fists and skull.

It was a nice plan – in imagination. Coyne’s wrist flicked and braided black leather lashed Sandy’s arm. The bite of the whip was as heavy and brutal as being struck by a massive timber rattler.

The whip tore away flesh as Coyne yanked back. Its tip had been fitted with razor-sharp bits of metal. Stunned by the swiftness of the first lash of the bull-whip, Sandy staggered away and froze momentarily. That was long enough for Amos Coyne to strike again.

The blacksnake whip snapped again, and Sandy had enough time to turn away, shielding his face with his forearms. He had the idea that Coyne, if he had a mind to, could pluck out his eyeballs with that damnable weapon. There was no hiding from the whip – a bullet might even have been dodged, but the bullwhip did not care where it struck as it made its murderous arc, and its loop was wide.

The whip wound around Sandy’s body, the steel hooks at its tip biting into the flesh of his ribs and abdomen, unwinding with a jerk of Coyne’s arm to make its bloody way across Sandy’s back, drawing angry furrows across his flesh. Hot blood began to seep from Sandy’s torso, front and back, and there was no way to fight back. Sandy found himself slumping to his knees, his forearms still in front of his eyes.

Peering up, Sandy could see Amos Coyne’s face – it was dark and expressionless. There was nothing at all, neither hatred nor triumph in his eyes. As Sandy watched, the man recoiled the whip into neat dark loops.

‘That’ll give you something to think about,’ Coyne said, as he pushed open the plank door behind him. Then, to one of the men outside the shack, ‘Jordy, the man must be hungry. Bring him a cup of that bean soup we have on the stove.’

The door closed, leaving Sandy crouched and beaten in the near-darkness. Why hadn’t Coyne killed him if that was what he had wanted, when he had the chance? Reflecting, Sandy realized that Coyne had never actually flogged a man to death with his whip. Not Bob Bodine, and not Len Storch, who had finally been done in by a knife in the back, not the lash of Coyne’s whip.

Was that some primitive principle of Coyne’s? Maybe the fun went out of the sadism after a man was down and no longer able to register fear or feel the bite of the lash. Sandy only knew that he was alive, for now, and if he could do anything to stop it, he would never allow himself to be whipped again.

Now! he thought suddenly. Now was his best chance to escape. Jordy Cavett had been sent to the kitchen to fetch soup for Sandy – why, Sandy could not guess. Another of Coyne’s primitive rules? Perhaps the gesture was meant to be a show of civility for his guest.

What had he told Corrine as he went out with his whip? That he was just going to check to see that Sandy was comfortable, that he regretted locking the cowboy in the shed but that he mistrusted Sandy’s motives for coming here? Some such tale, Sandy decided. Coyne would have his story all worked out – he had demonstrated to be a long-time, proficient liar.

Sandy’s problem now was to get out of the shed, to escape free into the night where he would have the time to consider what was to be done about rescuing Corrine – who did not seem to feel that she needed rescuing.

He rose to his feet, his body feeling bruised. Blood continued to seep into his shirt. His head was dizzy and his vision fogged with pain. No matter. He was never going to have a better chance to escape, and he eased up beside the heavy, outward-swinging door, the bone-handled knife he had been carrying in his leather vest clenched in his bloody hand.