Such a trail as there was petered out less than a mile from Rakeheart. If anyone ever moved across the rough, rocky ground, it was not evident. Janie’s landmarks were a good map, though. He took his time. Working for Sherman, he infiltrated gangs, rode down outlaw groups, and became whoever he needed to be so often he sometimes forgot who he was. He knew there was work to do, but it still felt like a vacation. No one hunting him.
Yet.
He thought about the stack of clippings Sherman’s clerk had thoughtfully prepared about how detectives in London worked. Some of it had been amusing to read on the train. Mostly it helped stoke the stove that cold day in Nebraska. He had no idea how to do what he was supposed to do.
It had been about a month. Sherman wanted him to try. He’d try.
Sheriff. He laughed out loud. It intrigued him. He’d already become too noticed to be unseen. Might be the way to stay on. Couldn’t be much need for one, if one gunfight drew a crowd like that. Down Texas way, folks would hardly leave the street when two fools wanted to shoot each other.
The tree that looked like proof lightning struck the same place pretty often was now in front of him. Good directions, girl. A mile to go. He hated meeting people. A widow no less.
“Give me a gunfight any day,” he said to the horse as the late-afternoon sun began to stream in his eyes while it hovered over a series of stubby, rock-topped hills where the sky-lined trees were the exception. Hard land. Uncompromising.
People the same? He’d find out.
The Wilkins place was small. Long and low. Surer hands built the white-painted center section than the unpainted wings. A knee-high rock fence framed a gateway.
Shadows from the nearest butte covered the place. He didn’t like coming in with the sun in his eyes, and now that he was in the shade with the sky above the butte still bright, he could barely see at all. Man could be an easy target this time of day.
Shutters were open. He could see that. He’d smelled smoke for a while, so they had to be home. Too dark to know if anyone was looking back.
“Hello the Wilkins house,” he called. “Like to come in.”
No answer. Feet moved. They stopped.
“I know you don’t know me, but I got sent here by Cump Sherman, General Sherman that is. Here to help.”
Silence. The door opened. A short, thin woman came out. Two long, black braids framed her dark-complexioned face. She held a shotgun across her chest. She wore a dark dress and was coatless in the early evening dimness of the shadow that now covered her house. She still did not speak.
“Name’s Kane. General Sherman sent me.”
“You said that. Any proof?” Her challenging voice was low. The threat was padded, but it was still there.
“None I can show you from the back of a horse.” This did not seem the moment to mention the money he carried. He was trying to get a good look. She walked a few steps closer. Gave her a better angle; him a worse one from the dimness where she had the advantage. He could not make out her features, see what was in her eyes.
“I know your name’s Rachel,” he said as he turned in the saddle to follow her as she inspected him from the side. “Got kids. A boy and girl. Husband served with Sherman on the March to the Sea, stayed in the army a while after the war. Minnesota if I recollect right. Sherman heard about your husband, ma’am, with what happened and all, ma’am, and wanted me to stop by on my way special to see if I could help you, ma’am.”
With soldiers, if you said “sir,” enough they came ’round. Not sure substituting “ma’am” worked with women. If anything did. He could feel a wall of skepticism. He could feel more than see watchers from the windows.
On impulse, he grinned and waved toward the house. He was rewarded with a noise.
“Enough,” she said sharply to the unseen figures. Feet thudded as children ran to prove they had never looked out the window.
“Get down slow. I’ll shoot if you touch that gun.” She moved to a better spot to watch him, stepping carefully, precisely. Something . . . something familiar in the way she moved . . . toes almost dancing the way they pointed down as she stepped . . . some memory with a pile of Texas dust strewn across it. She was walking barefoot.
He did as he was told. His eyes had adjusted to the dimness as he walked slowly towards her, hands out from his sides.
“You’re a long way from Texas.” Another challenge. A deliberate warning. She wasn’t stupid and wanted him to know it.
“Fact.”
He could see her inspection take in everything, from the worn boots to the new everything else. He could see the fireplace behind her. He was sure a small head darted back to the window. Small voices whispered as loudly as only small voices can. He took a step.
“I said slow.”
He put his hands wide out as he moved closer but could not hide the grin as he looked for his unseen inspectors. Rachel took a slow, methodical, detailed look. The gun motioned him inside. He passed. For now.
“Can’t be too careful. Come in.” Then, “Nothing sudden.”
There was still a little fire burning, and a candle lit. He tried not to stare as he struggled to sort this out. His eyes were adjusting from riding into the sunset to the shadows outside to the darker shadows inside.
“Sit,” she said and moved to the table.
They were good. Kids who could spy and get away with it were better than he ever was.
She set some bread on the table. He took the end of one bench; she sat across. He broke off a piece, offered it to her. She shook her head. He saw some kind of white circle on the end of her braids. It had a decoration on it. Very familiar.
“What does General Sherman want that he sends someone from his very special army all the way out here to Wyoming?” Sarcasm and wariness blended in her tone.
He’d been smiling since she reached across the table and set the bread down, recalling a little bit of a place a long time ago and now a long ways away. Sherman’s questions could wait a minute. He had his own investigation to do first.
“You’re Comanche.” He pointed at her left arm, where the frayed sleeve of her deep-green dress was rolled partway up her left forearm. A tiny bit of ink showed.
A wry smile and a deprecating alto laugh. Her eyes crinkled. The snapping black eyes that watched him turned warm, but no surprise showed.
“Sherman sent you to tell me that?”
“Don’t think he knows.”
Snort.
“No, I am certain Jared never shared that with him. Wisely. Your general has fixed views on the subject of Indians.”
“He does.”
“And Jared had very fixed views on telling his hero only what he wanted him to know.” The word hero had a bit of a sneer that made Kane wonder if Sherman knew more than he was letting on when he cautioned him about the widow.
“Only way to handle the man. Kinda like new powder ready to go off, and you never know in which direction to run.”
He waited.
“How did you know a Comanche tattoo? A man came here once who boasted he could smell an Indian at a hundred yards, and he never suspected I was Comanche.”
“Like you said. Texas. Ain’t seen a tattoo like that in a while since I rode up near to Indian territory. Spent some years as a kid on the Panhandle and all the places kids ain’t supposed to go. Some of the Indian kids curious about whites and the white kids curious about Indians had a place we’d all meet and do stuff that probably should have gotten the pack of us killed. Good thing no one told us we was s’posed to be killin’ each other, or those rock fights would have turned out a lot worse than I recall. Figgered it out when we got older, more or less. Drifted away and apart by then. Can I see the whole thing?”
She pushed her sleeve up past her elbow and showed him the design. It was a classic Comanche pattern. Wild and free. For a moment he could almost feel that Panhandle wind in his face when he looked at the swirls. He could feel himself relax as if he were there. Men far from home are twice the fools they usually are. And she was pretty. No. Striking. Dark eyes, high cheekbones in a thin face. She was also a member of the broken nose club. A ripped earlobe from earrings or something. No guess on age. Not a kid. Not old. He should not be staring. He had work. He should ask something like whatever a good detective-type fella would ask. Should not have burned those notes!
“How does a Comanche get to Wyoming?”
“Kiowa raid when I was ten or so. They sold me to the Arapaho. They sold me to the Cheyenne. I don’t think they thought I would be the calm and quiet slave they wanted.”
“Were they right?”
“They were. Kiowa could not get rid of me fast enough. Arapaho man learned Comanches don’t like being beaten and know how to get even. Cheyenne weren’t bad, but eventually the man who bought me sold me to the Sioux in a trade for horses. I was almost twelve. By then I stopped fighting.”
He doubted that.
“You live with Red Cloud or Sitting Bull?”
She shook her head.
“Neither. You hear about the fighting in Minnesota while your war was going on?” He nodded. “My band of Sioux lived there. It was ugly. My—They killed a lot of people. Afterward they sent soldiers to watch us when your war was over. Jared was there, guarding us. He was kind, which was very unusual for soldiers. He had decided to quit the army once all the excitement was over. He took uh . . . me. We moved. First Kansas. Nebraska. Then Dakota. Then here.”
“You think that’s why your husband was killed? Somebody not approve because you’re an Indian?”
She snorted again.
“No one approved. You might ask if I care about that, Kane. Approved! You men say things in funny ways. You want to know if the nice white people got offended by having an Indian in their little town?”
Kane fidgeted and looked at the floor.
“Don’t know I ever got invited to make quilts or any of that, but I never really learned how to gossip white woman style, so I never objected. No, no one approved, but no one cared that much, either. Most of the time. Red Cloud spits or Crazy Horse shoots a bear, and they get all het up and Jared would worry, but we lived here six years without anyone getting scalped, so they pretty much forget I am who I am, or even that I am here. I’m that quiet lady who never speaks much. Uppity, someone will call me. I know life can be much worse, Kane, and I do not ask for more than what is due me.”
She paused a moment.
“The Black Hills are not all that far, but still it is far enough from the gold and the raids and the robberies and the fighting that it isn’t a big fuss. When it explodes, which I know it will from the way that Custer man said there was gold everywhere, and now there are men in the Paha Sapa, they will remember I am Indian, but mostly they forget. I make it easy for them to do so. I go into Rakeheart about twice a year. Nothing there I want. Jared can buy supplies. I mean he did. Jeremiah liked to go along. Libby would go, but she did not really enjoy the town. She thought they looked down on her, the other children. Some of the people in the town are nice to children, but she always felt she did not belong.”
“No threats?”
“I don’t know what anyone said to Jared, but he never shared anything with me. No one was ever mean to my face. I know that is not the way of white women. The Sioux were more direct.”
She paused, going somewhere in her mind.
“I heard what you said about how you felt when you were a boy, but that was a long time ago; I want to know something. Are you one of those men who thinks Indians are guilty of something merely by being Indians? Jared kept me pretty much a secret to protect me as well as curry favor with his hero. I want to know who is under this roof with my children.”
Kane shrugged. “Good and bad in everybody. Every race. Every tribe. Don’t spend much time condemning folks because they ain’t me. Figger it’s their bad luck.” He looked her in the eye and let her read what she would.
She gave him a very faint smile. The eyes said he passed a test.
“Do you mind if I ask a question?”
“After so many others, why does it matter now?” Her glare was intimidating. Her tone, ice. He now felt awkward, but it was too late to retreat.
“You speak better English than half the people I know . . .”
“White people, you mean?”
“Well, yes.”
“Squaw no use dumb Injun-talk?”
“I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“You did. Again.”
She glared some more as he squirmed.
“Oh, why should you be any better than the rest of them? Jared taught me from the time he met me. He was a good teacher; maybe if he had done that instead of trying to be a rancher and farmer he would have been happier. He would be . . .” She obviously fought down her rising emotion.
“I think it started because he was so awkward with me he did not know what else to do. It was how he showed he cared. He taught me; he taught Libby. Of course he taught Jeremiah but that came later. Libby and I can both speak better than most people. Libby can write well. I can understand numbers, but writing is a chore.” She paused. “Jared thought people would treat me as their equal if I talked like one. I don’t think he was right about that, but I do like seeing their surprise when I don’t live down to their expectations.”
For a second, he lost track again. Focus.
“Sherman sent me to find out who killed your husband. Guess they were close. Kept in touch a lot.”
“Like brothers. Jared was a lot older than me. He turned forty-four last year. He was an only child. He didn’t have any family anywhere. It was him and me and that general from day one. He looked up to Sherman like a big brother, a father, and God all rolled into one. Never wrote a letter but to that man. When Sherman wrote back he looked like a little boy, so excited. There’s a box in the bedroom with everything Sherman ever wrote back to him. He saved every last one.”
“Went both ways, I guess. Sherman takes it personal when things happen to people he likes. I do work for Sherman. Stray things the army needs done that it can’t do on its own ’cuz them rules and the gold braid and the pompous folks get in the way. Never one like this. I need your help to find out who killed your husband. Got any ideas who might have hated him enough to kill him? Range war? That town? Something?”
An indefinable shadow crossed her face. She silently looked into the fire. Maybe you don’t ask widows questions like that, he told himself. Maybe livin’ way out here she’s afraid.
Then he recalled Sherman’s caution. Maybe, he realized, she knows something she doesn’t want to tell.
The silence lengthened. It dawned upon him that she did not plan to answer.
“Maybe come morning I can look where it happened, maybe you can think of someone he didn’t like or some place I can start tryin’ to figure all this out to tell Sherman?”
“They all want the land.”
“Why? Lot of land out here. All looks the same to me.”
“We came here in ’69. Got the best water. Never come close to running dry. Jared said we’d be sheltered here from northers. He always figured winter would kill off everyone’s herds one year, and he wanted to be the one that survived when it happened. It never did, and now he’s gone. Eighty acres isn’t much, but it is enough. Everybody wants to get bigger. A couple of them said they would come around to talk when my mourning was over. The rest didn’t say it, but they looked around a lot when they came to say they were sorry. Guessing what it would cost to be rid of me.”
“Think one of them got impatient?”
“Men are always impatient,” she said. “You ask a Comanche woman about white men and land?”
She had been looking away from him and then came back with a sharp-eyed glance.
“You knew before you saw the tattoo. I could see it in your eyes. How? Did someone tell you? You never said. It was more than a childhood memory.”
“Nobody said nothing. Spent a lot of years along the Yellow River. Traded with a lot of Comanches. Never had a problem with ’em any more’n with anyone else. Prob’ly don’t know a Sioux from a Cheyenne, but there’s somethin’ in the face with a Comanche.”
He moved his right hand toward her face, drawing in the air as he traced her narrow face from her cheeks to her jaw. She pushed the arm down firmly and moved away from the table before turning to sit in a different spot. Her face was now deeper in shadow.
“No offense,” he said. “Somethin’ in the walk as well. Your voice got Texas in it somewhere same as mine. You was barefoot; never seen white women do that outside of Louisiana by the swamps. The white beads at the end of your braids. I can see the blessings drawn on them now that we are in here. Put it all together, it said Comanche.”
“You are more observant than you appear to be,” her voice had a bit of an edge. He had clearly crossed a line.
He wanted to tell her that being underestimated was the way he worked. He left that unsaid.
“I do not think there is much to observe. The barn has been cleaned since it happened,” she said. “Kids know he’s gone, but they don’t know a lot, so don’t talk about it in front of them. Clem Ferguson—guess he’s the foreman now, since we have about two dozen hands left—he can tell you more. He talked to the soldier who came. The territory sent a solider to investigate the death of a white man with an Indian wife. No, it was the army. He came and looked and left. He talked to Clem, but not much to me. I guess they thought I scalped him. They—”
The flow of bitterness stopped as if a tap was shut off.
“I don’t—” She stopped and looked at him. “I’m an Injun woman in a white world who doesn’t know a thing about cattle. To my face they call me ‘Mrs. Wilkins,’ and behind my back I am a ‘filthy squaw.’ That is how life is in your world.” She accented all the words she found hateful.
“Want to know what they call me? Not a lot of folks offering sugar and sympathy out there for anybody, ma’am.”
“You live in a hard world, Mr. Kane.”
“Only one there is, ma’am. At least you got the ranch. Your men will adjust. Folks usually do.”
“For now. Clem told me things weren’t good, but they weren’t bad yet. Whatever that means. Calves are born. They eat. We sell them. I don’t know what can go wrong unless they get sick. I have done the ledgers for Jared because he did not like to do things with writing that were indoors, but I don’t know what was behind those numbers. I know that the numbers say we are making money, but there are times it does not feel that way. One day maybe it folds; it ends. I don’t know that I care about the ranch enough to run it.”
“You got your kids.”
“I should tell you now so you will not stare the way most white people do when they try to puzzle out the ancestry of a non-white child. Libby’s father was Sioux. She is not Jared’s. The soldiers shot her father about a month after I was married. I was barely old enough to have children, and he never got to be a man. He never saw her.” Wistful, but not for long. No time for that on the high plains.
“She was Topsannah. That was her name. It means—”
“Prairie flower.”
Her eyes met his a long moment. “Very good, Kane.”
For a moment, the past claimed her. Then it faded away.
“Jared never cared, though. He was unusual for a white man. The only thing he asked was that Libby have a white name, so I let him pick it. I did not know then it was the same as the Custer man’s wife, but by the time I learned that, it no longer mattered.”
Kane had a revelation.
“Not the only thing. Your name was not always Rachel. That’s Sherman’s daughter’s name. He made you change your own name?”
“It seemed little enough,” she replied.
Seeing no reaction in his eyes, she spoke again, this time with more passion. “Kane, can you imagine being so alone, so desperate, and so frightened that it does not matter to you what someone calls you as long as you can be safe and your child can eat and maybe someone will actually care whether you are even alive?”
Kane shifted from foot to foot. Awkward. There had to be something to say.
“What was your name? Your real one?”
“It does not matter.” Her tone said the subject was closed. She compressed her lips as her eyes swept the room. “I have told you what you need to know. Jeremiah is his. All his.” The words were stressed. “He wants to be a cowboy. Or a soldier.” Bitterness dripped from her words. He wondered why. Little boys want to be what their fathers were until they get old enough to know better. Way of the world.
“Maybe you can hold the ranch for him.”
“Maybe.”
Then it hit.
“What about Sherman?”
“What about him? Never met him. Jared worshipped him. I suppose he meant well staying in touch with Jared, but that’s over now.”
“Not him. Your son.”
The look she gave him would have frozen a fire.
“You ain’t got a son you named after the general?”
Now she was puzzled. She shook her head, braids dancing with the Comanche designs at their tips, and glared back fiercely. “I think I would know that.”
“General thinks you got a son named Sherman. Very pale. Very light hair.”
“That’s Jeremiah.”
“Says your husband wrote that he named his son after the general. Boy maybe eight or so now if I recall it right. Pretty sure ol’ Uncle Billy mailed your husband money to help his namesake get brought up eatin’ regular.”
Understanding flared at the word “money.” He could see the rage build even as it was contained.
“Jeremiah is nine. And that is his name. Every now and then there were letters Jared brought from Rakeheart that I was never allowed to see. I never saw anything he mailed except for once he was hurt, and I had to write for him. He told this general he named Jeremiah after him? He said we had a son named Sherman?”
“General said so. He don’t make up things like that.”
She put her face in her hands a moment. Then glared at Kane.
“When I met Jared, he would never have done that. He changed. That place. Rakeheart. It changed him. It drew him and changed him. It was as though he drank from a poison well. The longer we were here, the more he was doing things that were no longer good for him. He wanted to be important. He wanted approval.” She paused. “Perhaps in the end, Kane, he wanted more than an Indian wife could give him.”
She rose, tight-faced and angry. She had clearly had enough for one night.
“Dawn comes early here. Chores never stop. The barn is yours. Everyone in the crew is out, so no one will disturb you, but I don’t know who might ride in. I don’t know whose things are where in the bunkhouse, and I know what happens when you cowboys fight over someone moving things that you have not moved in months, so I would prefer to avoid a gunfight by having you sleep in the barn.”
He stood also. “Barn’s fine. Goodnight, Mrs. Wilkins.”
The fire caught a wetness in her eyes.
“Good night, Mr. Kane. Next time we meet, call me Rachel. It is the name I will prefer to hear.”
She turned and moved to the wing of the house where he could see a room had been added. A blanket blocked the doorway. He let himself outside. Stabled Tecumseh.
The cool night air was refreshing. Rachel Wilkins was a puzzle. Comanches could bury emotions as deep as a well, but whatever she was burying in relation to Wilkins, it was gone without a trace. It didn’t add. There was something off.
Sherman told him that Wilkins doted on the woman. But Sherman had suspicions that sprang from something, and, in a place like this, the most likely people to shoot someone were people already here, not middle-of-the-night riders. Rustlers might use the darkness to steal, but this was different. What had Sherman gotten him into?
Wilkins had lied to Sherman about his son’s name. That was clear. Was there a whole different version to the truth beyond that one fact? Rachel seemed surprised. Maybe he was easy to fool. If there was a truth out there, how would he find it?
Doubts and darkness surrounded him, with the light very far away.
There was the smell of coffee when he awoke. She was waiting with a steaming cup as she watched him kick off the blanket and dust off the hay from his clothes. Her hair was loose. She had on a light-brown dress. She looked more like a rancher’s wife and less a Comanche. He glanced down. No shoes.
“I do not handle company very well,” she said, handing up the cup to his outstretched hands. “I will not live up to your standards for widows, Kane. I have lived life with loss since I was a girl. I was fourteen when I was married, and I was a widow before I was fifteen. I know white women weep and wear black and carry on. This is not my way. If I had done so, there might not be a ranch today. For the children to survive, I must survive.”
He could see her better in the light. Her face looked different. Lighter? He did not know he was staring until she spoke with some irritation in her voice.
“I was told my mother’s grandfather was part Spanish, so, yes, Kane, I am lighter than many Comanches. Now can you tell me why the exact color of an Indian’s skin makes you white men so fascinated?”
Any further conversation was—fortunately for Kane—interrupted by yelling voices. Rachel strode purposefully to the house. Kane gulped down a deep swallow and felt a wave of relief. A man never knows how much trouble he can find simply by being there.
Kane emerged from the barn to see Rachel moving fast out of the house, with her shotgun cradled and ready.
Four young men had reached the gate of the ranch house.
“Hello, Rachel,” called one, laughing at his wit as only drunks and the young can do. He leaned severely from side to side as he waved, a sloppy grin on his face.
“Go away, Chad,” she called back. “You and your friends are drunk. Again. That’s why you got fired.”
“You need protection,” he said. “We’re here to protect you against . . .”
“Against all comers,” said a dark-haired young man flashing a sloppy grin.
“Them Injuns might steal you back, missus,” said a third young man, as the fourth kept silent, his posture showing he had misgivings about his adventure.
The one called Chad started to dismount.
“Don’t,” she called out. “You got fired for being drunk, and you and your drunken friends should all go away. You spent the night drinking in Rakeheart, you can spend the morning sobering up there, too. Go. Now!”
Chad continued navigating his way off the horse as though she had not spoken, completing the task with difficulty.
“But you need to be protected,” he said with his grin sharp. Then a shadow crossed his face, and he frowned. “Let me show you. I have a gun, and I know how to use it. See?” He started to reach for the weapon.
The bark of a rifle set the young men still mounted back in their saddles as Chad tumbled into the dirt.
Rachel turned on Kane.
The Winchester cocked as Kane walked to the sprawled youth, who was sadly contemplating his right boot, now missing the heel Kane had shot off. He’d been aiming at the dirt by the other foot. Oh well. Ought to shoot the new gun more if he wanted to hit what he aimed at.
“Shouldna done that,” Chad scolded.
“Sleep it off, sonny,” Kane said. He motioned to the others. “One of you get him on his horse. Then git.”
The two who had spoken to Rachel dismounted. One side glance. Two.
Three.
As they neared Chad, they clumsily reached for their own guns. Before they could fumble them free, Kane had moved the ten feet separating him from them to knock the weapons from their hands and shove the youths hard. They rocked into their horses. One struck out with a hoof, catching the dark-haired one in the left thigh. The other looked on uncertainly, dimly understanding that this lark had gone sour.
“Edward.” Rachel spoke sharply to the fourth youth. “Your friends appear to have had an accident. Help Mr. Kane get them mounted and then get out. When they sober up, tell them I will shoot first the next time I see any of them. I hope you learn to choose better company.”
“Yes, Miz Wilkins. Sorry.”
It was not the first time Kane had piled a drunk atop a horse. Soon, with Edward leading the rest, the young men were heading down the path back from a misadventure gone wrong.
Rachel turned. Kane was gone.
“No man lets good coffee go to waste,” he said, beaming with the cup in his hand as she approached him.
“Did you think an Indian woman could not handle four drunk white cowboys who are about as mature as you?” she asked. “I tell Jeremiah that when guns are shot, people can get hurt, and you have to show him the exact opposite. Of course he saw every bit of that. Do you think this is the first time some silly boy drunk out of his mind wanted to protect me?”
“Sensible woman never leaves a loaded gun around little kids,” he said. “Noticed it was unloaded last night. Empty barrel got backlit when you cocked it. Thought I’d help. You know how we men are. Got to show off in front of a lady.”
“I keep the shells by the door,” she said, opening the gun and showing him it was loaded, as she dumped the shells into her hand. “I cannot shoot like you cowboys, but when I am close enough, it does not matter.”
Kane, again feeling shallow and stupid, wisely said nothing.
A young boy was in the doorway, as fair of hair and skin as the older girl behind him was dark. The sun was full on their faces, allowing him to pick out the details. The boy looked excited at the commotion. The girl scanned the scene with eyes that knew more, stopping to examine Kane before she focused on her mother, then back to the stranger who had come out of their barn.
“Good morning, Miss Window Spy,” Kane said to her, tipping his hat. “I’m Kane.”
“You look like a range tramp,” she challenged as Rachel tried in vain to interrupt her and Kane grinned. He guessed the girl was about twelve. The Minnesota Sioux uprising had been back in ’62. About right. That would make Rachel someplace close to his age if he was adding it right in his head. Then he wondered what was right in his head that he was thinking like that about a woman Sherman thought might have killed her husband.
“Mommy? Mommy?” The boy spoke.
“Mr. Kane is here to visit, Jeremiah. He is a friend of your daddy. He brought some friends to celebrate his new gun. That was the noise. They had to go, but he can stay for a very little while longer before he has to go as well.”
The boy looked relieved. The expressionless girl knew better.
“That was Chad,” she said. “He is disgusting.”
“He is gone,” Rachel replied firmly.
“So is my coffee,” Kane said mournfully, looking at the stain in the dirt.
“You shouldn’t spill,” Libby told him.
“But menfolk are supposed to make messes, little girl,” he said. “Otherwise the whole rest of the world wouldn’t be needed to clean up after them!”
He got a smile from lips that moved as her large, dark, expressionless eyes beheld a world that had inflicted some hurt upon her Kane could not fathom.
“How much of everything did you hear last night, Miss Got-to-Spy?”
Libby looked back silently.
“I know you was there. You still got that cobweb thing on your left ear.”
Libby’s understanding that Kane was joking her came only after she touched her hand to her ear and saw the wide grin break across his face. She pursed her lips.
“I heard what . . .”
Rachel cleared her throat loudly. The let-me-show-off look on Libby’s face was replaced by one promising retribution, which Kane returned with another grin.
“Mr. Kane, even though you have time for childish games, I have children to feed,” Rachel said. “We have chores to do and a ranch to run. You may join us if you wish. There is more coffee. There is also, if you are of a mind, plenty of work.”
Libby looked smug to see him told off. Her eyes widened when he made a face at her as Rachel turned her back to speak to Jeremiah.
Kane wanted more coffee and a hunk of bread but decided to ride out. The indomitable Widow Wilkins had no room in her life for mysteries or amateur detectives; she was too busy surviving.
“This Clem fella?”
“West pasture.” She pointed. “About five miles. Let me know what he tells you I did.” She went into the house without looking back, small in stature but large in presence. Libby and Jeremiah trooped behind. The girl gave him one last look as the door closed behind them.
He saddled Tecumseh and walked the horse past the house. No one openly watched him leave or said good-bye. He waved anyhow.
“Bye, Libby!”
No response.
He had come for answers. He left with questions.
“You drank her coffee?” Clem Ferguson laughed from the back of his coal-black stallion. “Had it once and figured I was like to die. Everybody on the ranch tried to tell her one time or another. She ain’t the tellin’ type.”
“Noticed.”
Kane could not help but like the young man, not much older in years than the drunks who had marred the morning. Cattle were grazing across fields that seemed less green than varying shades of brown. There were more than Rachel had led him to believe—maybe sixty or so in sight—but they looked like small dots on the vast expanse of the flatlands. The land could have held hundreds and still seemed to go on forever under a sky that was blue as far as the eye could see.
“They could be four good hands,” Ferguson said when Kane told him about the incident. “They are all too lazy. Chad’s old man, Link Washburn, runs the Double L on the other side of Rakeheart. Says his son has to learn ranchin’ from the ground up. Won’t let him ride for him, or so he says, but every time a spread fires Chad, he takes the boy back. That boy will be a good man someday if he don’t do something stupid to get dead. I think Chad has ridden for every ranch around here and worn out his welcome at all of them. Hear talk Rakeheart wanted a sheriff. Maybe he’ll take that on.” Ferguson clearly thought the idea of a sheriff was amusing. Kane let it lie.
Ferguson was hesitant to talk about what mattered to Kane.
“Boss had gotten quiet, real quiet. I have worked here three years, like to four. Man was always talking; bring the kids out to see the cows; invite the hands to eat with him and Rachel. Up until that big snow, maybe a little before, this spread was like one family. I do not know what happened, but I know everything started to change. Mostly him. A few times he was in that barn talking to himself a blue streak. Then he’d get all flustered about it. Worried we might have heard what he said, as if on a ranch this small, there’s much in the way of secrets.”
“Money trouble?”
“The herd keeps growing, and we all keep eating, even if none of us is ever going to be rich. Sale price goes up and down, but that’s the business. Every ranch out here is one or two bad years from going under, but it is the way we all live. Never heard him complain.”
Kane had to ask the next question.
“They have a problem? Jared and Rachel?”
Clem took his hat off and scratched an imaginary itch on the back of his head. He resettled the hat.
“Rachel’s not your usual woman. There was always food, no matter what kind of harvest was had. Never saw her anything but happy to be there. Those kids? She would talk to them all day. You might hear her say about five words a year to the rest of us unless you ask her somethin’, but she was always making a fuss over the kids. When she was around the hands, it was smiles and such polite-like, but she mostly never shows a thing. She didn’t like his drinkin’.”
“He a drunk?”
“He never used to drink at all, but he started drinking heavy over the last few months. He’d drink, and she’d have a look on her face that said she didn’t like it. She never spoke up, at least with us around. And he spent more time in town than he used to. Rakeheart.”
“This Chad,” Kane began. “And her . . .”
“Chad thinks every woman ever born is his,” Ferguson said, dismissing the idea with a wave of his hand. “Boy thinks he is irresistible to every female in Wyoming. And that’s sober. Drunk . . .” He shrugged.
“Think she killed her husband?”
Ferguson looked at Kane as though the man had called his mother a foul name. “Happens. Got to ask.”
“Got work to do,” said Ferguson icily. “Nice meeting you. I’d watch who you accuse of things. Lady isn’t . . . well, like the rest of ’em, but she’s decent. You might not want to talk to my crew. They got better things to do than hear talk like that about the woman who is now their boss. Ranch don’t have a lot, but we got loyalty.”
Ferguson rode quickly away. Never did answer, thought Kane. Never did.
Kane took his time on the ride back to the ranch house. The sun was warm. This Wyoming land could make a man stare. He knew the land wasn’t flat, it was uneven. Rocky. Tough. But as the wind blew strong from the west, it looked free, open, and inviting—as though riding across it to some place far, far away from mysteries and murders would be the best thing a man could do with the rest of his life.
He sighed. It was a dream disconnected from reality. If Sherman wanted to find him, Sherman would find him. Somehow.
He looked across the landscape. An antelope emerged from a copse of trees. Three bounds and it was gone. Graceful.
Scared.
The rifle shot sounded as he called Tecumseh’s name and kicked the horse’s flanks. Nothing whizzed past that he could hear, and soon he and the horse were moving too fast for anyone but the best of shots to hit him.
He rode hard back to the Wilkins ranch. Called Rachel’s name. No answer. Colt in hand he prowled. Garden behind the house. Quite a garden. He had not seen it before. Cow barn. Bunkhouse. Stable. No one.
Ferguson had said Wilkins was found in the doorway to the barn. He stood there. Looked out. House was likely, of course. Lot of prairie out there, too. He wondered if anyone heard the shot. Or if there were many shots and only one hit. Or if shooting at the Wilkins house in the middle of the night was common. Guess he had detective learning to do.
There were some gouges in the wood by the stable door that looked new, one for certain he would guess was a bullet, but for all he knew they could have been from a drunk cowboy six months ago. A miss could have gone into the barn.
He drew the hammer of the gun back as he heard the horse; then he saw it. Rachel and her kids, riding triple. She had a rifle in the scabbard of her saddle. Woman would be crazy not to have a gun on the range. Man would be crazy, also, not to wonder, even though he had no reason to believe the gun was aimed at him. Felt that way, though.
The little boy leaped down and came running.
“We saw a bear with babies!”
“Where was that?”
He looked back at Rachel.
“Bears follow the stream,” she said. “It winds south and west, and we go there sometimes in the glade where they rest.”
Libby, looking intense but staying quiet, came up to stand beside her mother. He was reminded of a pack closing ranks when facing a threat. What was the threat? Him? The truth? All strangers?
“And you, Miss Libby? You get to play with the bear?”
“You don’t play with bears.”
“I do. Wrestled one in Texas . . .” He went on with every possible misadventure he could think of. He took a deep breath. “Then it made coffee, and I let it go.”
“That was awful!”
Kane bowed his head as though she had applauded.
The boy was smiling. Rachel was not. Kane could feel it. She was on edge to guard, whether the threat was real or not. He was trying to imagine her killing her husband. Didn’t fit what he knew. Not yet. But her unease was convincing him that her fears were deeper than stray questions from a passing stranger.
The silence became uncomfortable as the flies made more noise than the people.
“Seen what I could see,” Kane said at last. “I will be in Rakeheart a spell. Might be back. If you think of something, send for me. Want to get to the truth. Not much I can do to change things, but you need the truth.”
He thought again about the money Sherman sent him to give her. Another day.
“Have a safe ride,” Rachel said flatly and without enthusiasm. An extra meaning? He wondered.
He rode south, then doubled back to find the creek and follow it. She would have been near where those shots came from, maybe. Maybe not. She never mentioned a shot. Guns on the range weren’t unusual events. He’d see.