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-back 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.
“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.
He was half shot and as stirred up as a Baptist preacher. Jacy had never seen the man in the Sundowner before. He was far too pious for saloons, or so Jacy had thought.
Rinski stopped a few feet away, the round brim of his black hat sliding shadows across his big, emotional face.
“Jed Gibbon is a cowardly fool,” Rinski continued. “If us ranchers are going to remain in the basin and remain alive, we must stand together and stand up for ourselves!”
The room had gone quiet. Someone yelled, “You got that right, Homer!”
Rinski paused dramatically, wide blue eyes probing Jacy’s with a rheumy, haunted cast. “That’s the only way we’ll facedown the devil. That’s the only way we can stay here and raise our families and live our lives with God’s grace, and not be run out of our homes like a bunch of weak-kneed”—he paused, searching for the right word—“pumpkin-rollers!”
“Tell her, Homer!” someone yelled from over by the door.
Rinski’s voice deepened, his face reddened, and his countenance grew more and more grave. Startled by the man, Jacy took an involuntary step backward. Rinski took two steps forward, closing the gap between them. The room was so quiet you could hear the wind breathing in the stove’s old chimney.
“King Magnusson is the devil, sure as I’m standin’ before you now,” Rinski continued. “And the Lord does not mollycoddle those who run from the devil. He grants grace to those who face him down and stare him in the eye and say, ‘No, I won’t run from you, Lucifer. I’ll die before I run from the Beast.’”
Jacy stared at the man, spellbound. She’d never seen the quiet, pious Rinski this animated. Rinski stared back at her. She was aware of the other men watching them both and
nodding. The room rumbled dully with muttered curses of agreement.
Shortly, Rinski drowned it out. “So, Miss Kincaid, will you stand with us against the Beast? Will you join our army and help us drag the devil from his lair?”
Rinski’s eyes narrowed. He slid his face toward Jacy until she could see the pores in his skin, smell the liquor on his breath. He was waiting for an answer. She looked around, not quite sure what to say.
She cleared her throat. “I … I’m not exactly sure what you’re sayin’, Homer.”
Rinski blinked, staring in silence. But for the wheezing of the big stove, the room was silent. Then Verlyn Thornberg scraped his chair back and gained his feet slowly.
Turning to Jacy, he said, “We’re gonna hunt down King Magnusson and his men like wild dogs, and make them pay for what they’re doin’. You with us?”
Held by Rinski’s gaze, Jacy felt her heart beating wildly and sweat popping out on her forehead. She swallowed and licked her lips, thinking.
They were right. Magnusson was the devil, and he deserved to die as horribly as the men he’d killed … as horribly as Gordon and Mrs. Sanderson.
Thinking of them lying out there now along the banks of the Little Missouri, their bones gnawed by wolves, Jacy turned her head to look around the room. They were all there, she saw—the six other ranchers on the Bench and their winter riders.
And they were all looking at her … waiting for her answer.
She pursed her lips and nodded her head slowly. “Okay,” she said. “I’m in.”