FATHER AND SON Magnusson each shot one whitetail and one mule deer respectively by ten o’clock in the morning. They left both animals to the wolves, however. It was too early to start packing meat. They wouldn’t start retrieving what they shot until they were ready to head home. Until then, they’d hone their aim on moving targets.
“Plenty of game in Dakota, Charles,” King intoned as they traversed a nearly featureless prairie. “Plenty to shoot for sport, plenty to shoot for food. Besides, what we don’t kill the damn Indians will.”
“Indians around here?” Wingate asked, glancing around cautiously and squinting his nearsighted eyes, tiny dark marbles buried in the heavy, florid flesh of his face. He sat his high-stepping Arabian stiffly, chilled to his soul in spite of the buffalo robe that reached his calves.
“Not as many as there used to be, praise the Lord. We had to run off a whole damn village when I first came. Greasy beggars kept stealing cattle. They’d shoot ‘em, butcher ’em, and devour them—all on my land! Can you believe such arrogance?”
Randall offered his two cents’ worth. “When an Indian butchers an animal, he don’t leave nothin’ but the hoofs, and sometimes he even takes those. Those people eat everything,” he added with disgust.
“Are they dangerous?” Wingate asked.
“Can be when they’re sober,” Magnusson replied.
“I’ve never see one, just read about them.”
Magnusson took several puffs from his cigar. “Well, if we see one, I’ll have Randall shoot him, and you can tell your New York friends how you got to see an Indian up close.”
“Only good Injun’s a dead Injun,” Randall said. “Ain’t that right, Pa?”
They passed a few derelict sodbuster shacks—Magnusson had had nothing to do with running the yokels off, he laughed; the weather and the tough prairie sod had done that for free!—and followed a game trail into a ravine through which a frozen creek snaked.
They followed the creek south. Randall brought down two more deer but missed two coyotes bounding up the opposite ridge. Frustrated, he shot a porcupine from a tree.
Wingate took a couple of shots, but the game was practically out of sight by the time he’d snugged the heavy gun to his cheek. The kick of the big rifle nearly threw him from his saddle. King and Randall turned away, but he could feel them grimacing.
“Where are we heading now, King?” he asked as they cantered single file along the creek. He was ready for a nap followed by a brandy and a soft chair by a hot fire.
“While we’re in the area I thought we’d pay a little visit to a … a friend of mine.”
“Wouldn’t be that greaser friend of yours, would it, Pa?” Randall asked, grinning.
“Mexican, Randall,” Magnusson corrected facetiously. “Greaser isn’t nice.”
Randall laughed. “After last night, I had a feeling we might run into that gre—I mean Mexican—today.”
Wingate had no idea what they were talking about, but he’d become so inured of their double-talk and intrigue, playing
him for the mindless dandy, that he didn’t insist on an explanation. He distracted himself with fantasies of a sparking fire, Spanish brandy, and a naked Suzanne sprawled on a damask-covered couch until a small gray shack and an outhouse appeared around a bend in the creek. A tarpaulin weather cover fronting the shack afforded shelter to a single black stallion.
Smoke lifted from the chimney, and as they rode closer, Wingate saw there was a man outside in front of the cabin, his back to the approaching visitors. He was scraping a very large hide nailed to the cabin, right of the door.
A thick, sickening odor hung in the air like an invisible curtain. It emanated from the chimney, Wingate could tell, and he found himself yearning for a strong wind to blow it all away before he puked.
They rode up to within ten feet of the man. Still he didn’t turn, but continued working on the hide, giving little grunts as he scraped.
Magnusson leaned forward, hands on his saddle horn. “Mighty trusting for a man of your profession, aren’t you Del Toro?”
The Mexican snickered and kept working. “You announced your arrival an hour ago, amigo. All your shooting. No one shoots as much as you and your boy, señor. It got so annoying I felt like doing some shooting of my own, in your direction.”
Magnusson ignored the comment, regarding the hide nailed to the cabin through its four spread paws, large as dinner plates. “What do you have there, a griz?”
“Sí—old man oso. He came calling on me last night as I slept, so I let him in.” Del Toro snickered again. There was no voice to it—just air trapped and released by his tongue. It sounded like a noise a self-satisfied reptile might make.
“Pity the bear that comes calling on you, José,” Magnusson said, impressed by the image he was conjuring.
“Or men, uh?”
Del Toro turned for the first time, giving the visitors the full impression of his lean, grinning face, small teeth glinting like nailheads within the wild mustaches drooping around his mouth, blue coyote eyes flashing. He wore his wolf coat with its big silver buttons and his black hat, snugged over a homemade wolfskin liner with ear flaps tied under his chin. The flaps were in the shape of a wolfs paws.
If it weren’t for the startling blue eyes and cold-blooded grin, he could have been a preposterously displaced hony-onker from Old Mexico, Wingate thought. He associated the sickly sweet smell with the gunman, with killing, and he had to swallow hard to keep his breakfast down.
Still grinning, Del Toro held up his wide-bladed skinning knife, examined it, then wiped the blood and tallow on his breeches and stuck the knife in his belt sheath.
Pulling a cigarillo from his coat pocket, he said, looking at Randall, “One of you gentlemen has a light?” He stuck the cigar between his teeth and grinned, his eyes on Randall.
Magnusson and Wingate turned to see how Randall was taking it. Not well. It was obvious by the lad’s flat eyes and slightly curled upper lip that he did not like Mexicans, and this one least of all. His mouse-brown gelding bobbed its head and lifted a foot, but Randall held the gunman’s gaze. His face turned slowly red.
Del Toro said, “Uh, you got light for this greaser, amigo?”
“Plum out o’ phosphors,” Randall said tightly.
“Give the man a light, Randall,” Magnusson said as though chiding an ill-mannered youngster.
“Why should I?”
“Because I told you to,” King said.
Wingate could tell he was enjoying his son’s discomfort and wondered if there was anyone’s discomfort King would not enjoy—except Suzanne’s.
Finally Randall dug around in a coat pocket for a box of matches. Del Toro stepped forward and allowed the young man to light his cigar, the gunman taking his time about it, puffing smoke.
Looking around at the stark gray cabin and outhouse fronting the creek, Magnusson said, “I sure am sorry to keep you holed up out here in this old trapper’s cabin, Del Toro, but it’s probably best for both of us if we’re not seen together.”
Still puffing, trying to get a good draw, Del Toro turned away from Randall’s match. “How good of you to be concerned for both of us. But it’s really not so lonely. You know—this may be hard to believe and you probably think José drinks too much out here by himself—but a man and a very beautiful girl pass this way on horseback just about every day.”
He pointed to the buttes behind the visitors. “They ride along the ridge there. Just riding for the thrill, I think. The girl always waves real big and smiles. Muy bonita. I think if it weren’t for the man, she would even come and visit me in my cabin.”
He took the cigar from his lips and smiled.
Magnusson did not return it. His face had grown dark. A muscle in his cheek twitched. “That’s my daughter,” he said, voice taut as razor wire.
“I thought she looked familiar.”
“She’s off-limits.”
“Sí, you told me, señor. Maybe you better tell her that. I think she finds me … curious. Your daughter looks to me like a very curious girl.”
Magnusson just stared at him, wide-eyed with outrage.
“Yes, very curious,” Del Toro prodded some more.
Randall turned to his father and said with disgust, “Pa, this man here is—”
“Shut up, Randall,” Magnusson said. To the gunman he said, “I’ve hired you to do a job. See that you do it”—his lips curled back revealing his big yellow teeth—“and get the hell out of here, you insolent bastard. Get the hell back where you came from!”
Magnusson was light-headed with fury. He was thinking, “If he so much as touches a hair on her head …” The thought was as repellent as the stench of the Mexican’s cooking.
“Easy, senor. Hey, easy. I was just making conversation. Telling you I don’t mind being housed out here like a wild dog in this goddamn gringo winter. That’s what you wanted to hear—that I am keeping warm and fed and reasonably happy while you and your friends are singing and dancing in your big house.”
Del Toro gave an exaggerated shrug. “You are worried about me. I tell you not to worry. That’s all, you see? Comprende? I am an easy man to get along with.”
Magnusson’s fury was a confused, slippery thing that threatened to get away from him, turn him into a babbling idiot. He felt as though he’d been cut down at the knees. He felt an instinctive, repulsive fear of this man. He wasn’t sure how to counter it. Nothing he could say would make him feel better, would give him back the advantage, and you didn’t try to kill a man like this without plenty of help.
He stammered, hating the hesitant trill in his voice. “Just do your job,” he finally managed, thoroughly flushed.
“Sí, senor. Is that what you rode out here to tell me?”
Magnusson had been thrown so far afield that he had to expel considerable energy in recalling the original intention of his visit. Then he remembered last night, Suzanne’s birthday
party, and the insolent white bastard who had threatened him in his own house.
All of this was getting too goddamn close to home.
To Suzanne.
“I’ve got a name to add to your list. To the top of your list. You’ll be compensated appropriately—don’t worry.”
Del Toro studied him expectantly, like a hawk perched in a dead tree waiting for another mouse to happen by.
“Mark Talbot,” Magnusson said. “You’ll find him on the Circle T ranch on Crow Creek. When you’ve killed him, dispose of the body somewhere it won’t be found.” He was thinking of Suzanne and decided right then and there to send her away again until deep summer.
Del Toro smiled with his eyes.
“The sooner the better,” Magnusson added. To the others he said, “Let’s go,” and reined his horse around.
Randall had already turned around, facing back the way they had come. “Pa,” he said with an ominous air, looking off.
Following his son’s gaze, Magnusson picked out a man in a sheepskin coat and tan hat riding furiously along the creek, giving his horse the quirt and spurs. It was Rag Donnelly on a buckskin.
“Mr. Magnusson!” he yelled as he approached the tarpaulin shelter, slowing to a canter, his exhausted mount blowing and snorting.
“Rag, what the hell?” Magnusson yelled.
When the horse came to a sloppy-gaited walk, Donnelly lowered his head to take a deep breath, then tipped his head back, his big, rugged face thoroughly flushed. He regarded Magnusson for several seconds while he caught his breath. He swallowed hard.
“W-would’ve sent a rider but I wanted to come and tell you myself.”
“Tell me what?” Magnusson said impatiently.
“It’s the men—the ones that didn’t come home last night.”
“What about them!”
“They’re dead.”
Magnusson mouthed the word silently before saying it out loud. “What are you talking about?”
Donnelly shook his head. “Every single one of ’em. Press Johnson found Gutzman’s roadhouse burned to the ground and the men along with it.”
“Burned?” Magnusson said, the force of the exclamation throwing him forward in his saddle.
As if following Magnusson’s thought process, Donnelly shook his head. “It weren’t no accident. Press said what’s left of the logs is riddled with lead, and several of our men and Gutzman are layin’ outside, shredded like they been hit by a hayrake. There’s shell casings galore.”
He paused to let this sink in. His boss watched him owl-like, blinking at regular intervals. Randall sighed and released it through his lips, whistling.
“My god,” Wingate muttered.
Magnusson swept the ground with his eyes, as though he’d lost something. “Who … who—”
A thought struck him. His eyes ceased their restless quest and rose to Donnelly’s. The foreman had a knowing look. He’d had time to put it all together, was one page ahead of his boss.
“Gibbon,” Magnusson said flintily, with a savage curl of his lip. “And Thornberg, no doubt. Hell, it was probably all the nesters on the Bench.”
“Includin’ Talbot,” Donnelly added with a growl.
“You think?”
“Sure. Hell, they prob‘ly sent him up to the house last night to keep us occupied while the others rode over to Gutzman’s.
He prob’ly joined their little ambush party after he left here.”
Magnusson’s eyes were searching the horizon now, thoughts, plans, strategies snapping this way and that. Finally, adrenaline-pumped, he swallowed hard and said to his foreman, voice shaking with controlled rage, “You and Del Toro take care of Talbot. We three will ride back to the ranch, organize the rest of the men, and head for town. We’ll see you back at the house.”
Randall said, “I’ll go with them, Pa.”
“No, you stay—”
“Come on, Pa. Please?”
Magnusson saw the kill lust in his son’s eyes. He thought a confrontation with a man like Talbot might be just what the lad needed to scrape some green off his horns, teach him that this was not just a game of cowboys and Indians. This was the real thing. This was the Magnusson name they were fighting for.
Behind him, Del Toro said calmly, “I work alone, señor.”
Magnusson turned. The Mexican had already retrieved his Big Fifty and his saddle, and stood in the cabin doorway looking rough and ready, holding the saddle by the horn in one hand, the rifle by the other.
He said, “But since I haven’t scouted this Talbot yet, your foreman and boy can be my scouts—as long as they don’t mind taking orders from a bean-eater.”
Randall’s lip curled at being called a boy.
The gunman strode past Magnusson and Donnelly, lugging his saddle and rifle and heading for the shelter and his black stallion. He shuttled Donnelly a bland glance and added, “But they stay out of my way, uh? Or I shoot their ears off.”
Donnelly snarled as Del Toro walked away, “Why, you fuckin’—”
“Easy, Rag,” Magnusson cut in. “Remember your ear, and save the hostility for Talbot.” He spurred his horse savagely and yelled, “I’m saving mine for Gibbon!”