Rakeheart was in sight. If anything had changed in the weeks he had been away, it was not visible at a distance.
Not wanting to ride in to Rakeheart at night, he had ridden to the shack he was now calling home after riding furiously away from the Wilkins ranch. He was spending a sleepless night until he gave it up altogether.
They lied to him. It was that simple. He kept repeating that as his anger ebbed away like flour spilling out of a hole in a sack.
Libby’s tear-streaked face appeared in his mind. Did it matter if their reasons were good, and he would probably do the same thing if he had a child? He told himself it did not. He was not very convincing.
He could leave. Maybe he should leave. Rakeheart meant nothing to him. He had ridden away from the only thing that meant much in all of Hall County, and he had no idea how to go back.
He had told himself he had three things to do—make the Riders pay; find out who killed Clem Ferguson and Frank Kruger; and cut the head off whoever was pulling the Riders’ strings. Then he would leave and never look back.
Wood was a brute. Someone else was the brains. Noonan? Made sense to start there.
The first bird’s song was starting in the pre-dawn dimness when he eventually nodded off. The sun was full up when he woke, and he was stiff and sore. The landscape eased some of the anger in his head as he took his time. Time was all he had.
The horse had wandered a bit in the night to where the grass was tall but came when he saw Kane stagger out of the shack. Kane felt guilty for not tying him to the tree. He stroked the animal’s long face as he turned his own battered one to the sun to let it warm him. Once again, he thought of riding on. Once again, he rejected common sense.
He flexed his right hand. Not good for much. He could pretend to use it when he dismounted, but if he put any real weight on it, the game was over.
He took the gun out of the jury-rigged holster on his left hip. Set it back in loose. It was about fifty-fifty he would hit what he aimed at. He didn’t think that would stay a secret very long unless he was a whole lot smarter than he felt. There was always someone who wanted to find out. Always.
Preacher Siegel was slack-jawed as Kane looped Tecumseh’s reins around the rail.
“Sheriff . . . I thought . . . we heard . . .”
Kane forced his arm up to touch his hat with his right hand. A thousand times in practice made him expect the way it would hurt. It didn’t disappoint.
“Riders in town?”
“No . . . um . . . no, Sheriff. They came by last week for some provisions, and they went to Noonan’s, but there was no trouble.”
Big surprise. No one would dare. That was the point. He could feel hot anger welling up.
“Pete Haliburton still around?”
Siegel looked in the dirt. “Pete drank too much before. I don’t think he even tries to work now. I went to see him on account of his wound, and he threw a bottle at me with the arm he was supposedly wounded in.”
“I’ll talk to him. What about Janie?”
“She is still alive, Kane. Mrs. Witherspoon has refused to let anyone in to see her and made a very un-Christian remark when I said that my attendance could only but help her, but she said the girl was alive. She has not moved since she was shot, Tillie said, but she has not died, either. I do not know what that means.”
“I’ll see them both.”
“Are you . . . I mean . . . how are you?”
“Oh, fine, Preacher. You tell everyone you meet that I am. Hear, Preacher?”
The menace and meaning were clear.
“Yes, sir. I mean, yes, Sheriff.”
Kane stopped at the Cartwright house. Mae had no bruises, was looking happy, and made him coffee. She had heard that he was beaten but said as little as possible. Bill was working with Conroy. Their world was so focused on getting through every day, everything else seemed remote. She kept most of her questions to herself and answered all of his. The town had carried on as normal, she said.
“One of the people told Bill, and he told me, but it was all jumbled. Some people said you were dead and others that you only got a little hurt in some fight.” She paused. “I am glad you are alive, Sheriff. You were good to Bill and me.”
“Glad things are better.”
“Some people were nice. Eloise Brewer came by one day with some food. I really could not imagine why.”
“I never told her a thing.”
“In a town this small, Sheriff, people always talk. The neighbors told their neighbors, and probably everyone knows by now, but no one will say anything. She was so sympathetic and kind. You know, when you see her she is always so quiet and almost aloof, but the way she talked, you would think that she lived through what I had—and worse. It was nice of her to be concerned.”
Kane wondered about that. Brewer was the bullying kind of man who pushed everyone around. Was he also a man who used his fists on his wife? Not something he could ask.
He had put it off long enough. He downed the rest of the coffee and walked as slowly as he had ever walked down the main street of Rakeheart.
Soon he was there. Where it happened. No marks. No stain where Janie had bled; where he had bled. Trampled away, washed away. Forgotten.
No.
He took a long look at the doorway of Noonan’s. He was aware people were talking. He didn’t much care.
He pushed the doors open wide as he entered, letting them bang to announce his entrance.
He walked slowly to the bar, taking his time to look here and there, from side to side—the sheriff way to tell everyone he was watching. There were more than a few stares back, and a lot of buzz as voices began to fill in the gap of noise his entrance had created.
“Beer.”
He had put the nickel in his right hand when he entered and tossed it on the bar with his right hand. He used the hand to raise the glass and hold it as he sipped the watery mix, wishing from the taste he could spit it on the floor. But it had to be done. Folks needed to see and spread the word.
Noonan would either be watching or be told every detail. It needed to be a very convincing show.
“Later.” He nodded at the bartender and sauntered away as though it were nothing more than another day.
It was not.
“Didn’t think you would show your face.”
Kane was fully of the opinion that had he let Bud Franklin shoot Kevin Morris the world would have been a better place and his life a simpler life. Most young men outgrew adolescent meanness. Some, like Morris, embraced it their whole lives.
“Kevin. Had to come back, see if you might amount to anything.”
Morris, who had been drinking again with a different crowd of hangers-on, rose unsteadily. Kane had been told the young man’s father had run a ranch and died, leaving the boy too much money and too much time on his hands.
“Town needs a real man for sheriff,” Morris said, puffing up.
“This your interview for the job?”
Morris moved away from the table, becoming briefly entangled in his chair. When he looked up, Kane had the Colt pointed at him in a rock-steady left hand.
“First, Kevin, set the gun on the table so it don’t go off and hurt someone.”
The young man looked around. No one who had been telling him great things only a moment ago was there now. He did as he was told.
“Outside.”
They were at the trough where Wood had dunked Kane. The onlookers were inside, waiting for their entertainment.
“Kevin, I can probably make you dunk your own head in there. Pretty sure I can. What do you think?”
“I . . . I guess so.”
“Got no call to humiliate anyone. Know how it feels. You got a ranch, fella, and you got a life, and you been lettin’ ’em both slip through your fingers. Look at that doorway. Look!”
Morris shifted his attention from Kane to the crowded doorway of the salon, and the windows packed with customers.
“Nobody there to help, Kevin. Way of the world. On the day you need them, there’s nobody to help.” Kane stepped closer. “I can kill you easy enough. Strong is not about killin’, Kevin. It’s about doin’ the right thing. Won’t tell you that you can’t come to town. Hope you figger that maybe there’s more to life than what you been doin’ with it. If not, fella, we are gonna do this dance again, and it won’t be fun for either of us, because I know how it ends.
“Get me the man’s gun,” Kane called. When someone said they had it, Kane told whoever the man was to toss it to Morris. He did.
“All of you,” Kane said. “Go about your business. Kevin, go about yours. No hard feelin’s. Way I see it, you’ve about used up all the warnings you get in this world. Learn from them, or you will wish you did. The rest of you, how many times you got to see a man humiliated before it is enough entertainment?”
The stable door was open. Haliburton was sprawled on the dirt. The man stank. Bottles littered the hay. Whatever wound he had received, if he had been wounded at all, there was no evidence of a bandage. Kane figured this time he might as well act, since words would be pointless.
The water in the trough looked disgusting, but Kane plunged the man’s head in anyhow after dragging him one-handed across the stable.
Haliburton came up, sputtering. Down. Up. Down. Up.
After his arm started to hurt, Kane let go.
“What . . . what . . .”
“Tell me what happened the night she got shot.”
“Kane? You were dead.”
“Tell me.” Implacable.
Haliburton told. The Riders always kept their horses at this stable and paid him for information about the town and what it was up to.
“You told them about me.”
“They were bound to hear it sooner or later.”
“What about that night?”
“You had braced them, and they was fuming about it. I told them that night maybe I could work something out . . . um, so’s you and they could talk this out.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“Didn’t know what they planned!”
“You knew enough!”
Haliburton wailed. He had told the Riders Janie was sweet on Kane, and she could get Kane alone in a place he would not expect a trap. Wood told her they wanted Kane to ask about a job. She did not know something else had been in the plan until after Kane was dragged away to his humiliation. He admitted he figured there might be more than talk, but he didn’t expect what happened.
“Never seem any of ’em so angry with any one man,” he said.
“At least your daughter knew enough to do something about it!”
“She called me names . . . no daughter should call a father that . . . after they took you; she called me Judas and smashed things, and then she went off with my gun. She didn’t understand! All I ever did was try to make enough to provide for her . . . she couldn’t see that there was no way to fight these people. Thought that Rider Wood she was sweet on would want her, but he didn’t, and she never told me.”
“Which people, Haliburton?”
“All of ’em. Town created the Riders; now the Riders own the town.” His head weaved and sagged and lolled, then came up sharply. “Where is she?”
“A good place. A safe place.”
“I want to see her.”
“Maybe when you deserve it and climb out of your bottle. Quit faking and start being a man.” Kane spun on his heel and left the pitiful wreck of a man behind. Not evil, but weak, broken, and now shattered.
He turned back. “You want redemption? Go find Halloran. You do whatever that man says. He’ll know when it is time to fight back.”
“He’s a drunk!”
“So are you!”
He left. Stopped cold.
Rachel’s wagon was hitched in the street by Conroy’s store. He stared at it. He did not plan to walk towards it, but his feet kept moving. He reminded himself to walk there slowly, in the pose of a man with not a care in the world and endless time on his hands. He told himself there was no reason to enter the store.
None at all.
Conroy’s smile seemed unaffected.
“They told me you were back,” he said, nervous eyes betraying his thoughts. “How . . .”
“Wyoming beatings don’t hold a candle to the ones down in Texas,” Kane said with a grin he did not feel. He had a sudden inspiration. “Had to go to Fort Laramie a spell. Army business I can’t talk about.”
He could see Rachel frown as she looked his way. They had politely greeted each other in passing when he entered. He wondered how much his face told her. Hers said nothing to the world, as always.
“You work with the army?”
Kane wondered if it would be one hour or two before the whole town knew the sheriff none of them bothered to help might be working for the army now.
“About what happened . . . I’m not young, Kane . . .”
Kane held up his good hand to stop the words. He didn’t want to hear it. Being afraid of men with guns who could use them wasn’t fear—it was also a thing called common sense, which he did not possess. Anyhow, he still had a question to ask and did not want Conroy to have his guard up when it was asked.
“Need a couple things. Still got that Remington? Need a good holster, too, for the other hip. Gonna carry two guns.”
“I have just the thing in the back, and, yes, the gun is still here. Oh, I am glad to see it go to good hands!” Conroy bustled, stopping to ask Rachel if she needed assistance as she took an extraordinary amount of time looking at some blue cloth. She smiled politely and silently shook her head.
Kane walked near her and looked at what seemed to be fifty identical shirts.
“Why are you here?”
“Have I broken the law, Sheriff?”
“Rachel, this is no place . . .”
“. . . for a woman whose men keep getting shot dead? I think it is exactly the place. And for your understanding, Kane, the lecture I got from my daughter for letting you leave the ranch was worse than any I ever gave her. My choices were very clear—either I could come here and try to knock sense into your head, or she would do it for me.”
“Libby?”
“Good. You remember her name. Do not forget it when you are tempted to do something stupid.”
“Mr. Conroy?” she called in dulcet tones Kane had never heard before. “I have to see Mr. Brewer at the bank. I will be back in a few minutes when that is over. I want to browse a little more, but I made an appointment when I stopped there first thing this morning, and I dare not be late.”
Conroy was bustling and nodding as he emerged.
“Yes, Mrs. Wilkins, I’ll be here. Take all the time you want. Sheriff, give me one minute. I know that gun is there. My new assistant puts everything in order, and now I don’t know where anything is,” he said as he returned to the back room.
“Frank Brewer has asked me to stop to see him,” Rachel said softly. “He seemed very anxious and oily when he saw us drive in this morning. I believe from the way he said it, he wants to make an offer for the ranch.”
“You should . . .”
“Tell him what I wish,” she finished, giving him a look he had come to recognize.
Kane swallowed. “ ’Zackly.”
For a second, he was sure Rachel’s stern façade registered a smile, but it was gone before he could be sure.
“Rachel, I . . .”
She talked as though what he was saying did not matter. Perhaps it didn’t.
“I will have tea with Mrs. Jeffries later. In that time, I shall learn everything I wish to know about everyone since my last trip here and far more I do not wish to know. As a widow, I am watched for any least politeness with a man because you white people are like that—as if I am supposed to live alone forever—so please do not approach me out there. I do not mean to be rude. I assume you are as clueless about gossip as everything else. If there is something I wish to speak to you about, you will find out.”
He nodded. “Libby? Where is she?”
“The people who run the Last Chance are fond of her and Jeremiah, and they are there eating far too much.”
“Rachel, I . . .” There was an apology somewhere that had unexpectedly demanded to rise to the surface, but she moved to the door before it emerged.
“Do not get shot in front of her, Kane.”
Rachel left the shop.