Frank Angel saw the smoke from a long way off.
He put the spurs to his horse and came over the crest of the bluff going at a flat gallop, heading down towards the burning ranch. He swung off the horse and ran towards the house, shying back from the crackling flames that blasted tangible heat at him.
‘Mr. Gibbons!’ he yelled. ‘Dave!’
Nothing moved except the lancing fingers of flame that crept greedily up the charring walls of the house. He ran towards the door and was again beaten back by the flames. He heard the fizzing hiss as his hair singed and then he ran flat out across the yard to the barn. By the door of the barn he saw the dead body of Dave Pugh lying in a sticky pool of blood covered in swarming flies.
He ran on past Pugh’s body and into the barn, grabbing a horse blanket which he dunked into the horse trough.
Wrapping it around his head and shoulders he ran back to the house and charged into the flaming doorway. The big living-room was full of smoke and he began to cough rackingly as it bit into his lungs. He felt the scorching heat of the flames as he breathed and all the oxygen went out of his chest. He stumbled and fell to the floor, and then he saw the bodies in the corner of the room, like a carelessly piled jumble of dirty laundry. The sound of the flames was a constant roar and his eyes were streaming. Lying flat on his belly he scrambled across the floor, steam billowing off the wet blanket. John Gibbons was quite dead; there was a gaping hole in his back where the bullet had exited. He could not tell if Mrs. Gibbons was dead or not. Her clothes were torn and her body was bloody but he could not find any wound. He took hold of her feet and started to drag her towards the door. His head was light and he could hear a high whining noise.
It took him a minute to realize he was making it himself.
The shirt on his back was starting to shoulder and his skin was burning off, he could feel it scorching.
Coughing, retching, blind with sticky eyes that no longer could weep, he dragged the woman’s body to the door and then across the lintel. Her hair was singed short and blackened at the ends. There were blisters on her skin and he could feel the slippery liquidity of his own burned hands as they touched the bare earth of the yard. He dragged the woman out into the open without quite knowing how he did it; pulling her unceremoniously away from the flames, out into the open.
He managed to get to his feet, his whole body heaving and retching to get oxygen into his lungs, and staggered across to the watering trough, half falling into it. The sudden biting coolness of the water shocked him back into consciousness, and he heard the hiss as the burning wool of his shirt was extinguished. He lay in the blessed chill of the water until his head began to clear and then he got up and tried to walk across to where Stella Gibbons lay. Now he saw her clearly for the first time and realized she was almost naked. He saw the bloody rags of clothing at her crotch and he saw her trying to sit up, her face contorted into a straining mask, the light of pure madness in her eyes as she screamed. Angel’s head was light and he thought he must have gone deaf because he could see her stretching her hand towards him and screaming and yet he could hear no sound coming from her. Yet he could hear the terrible crackling of the burning house and then he knew what had happened and as he realized it he started to run towards her and halfway there he slipped straight down into unconsciousness and crumpled in a heap upon the ground.
‘He’s coming round.’
No I’m not, Angel thought petulantly. No I ’m not.
But he came on up out of the darkness and felt the pain for the first time, alive and pure white and just below the threshold of unbearability all over his body: his back, his shoulders, arms and hands. He opened his eyes.
A bed. He moved his head right and left. Beds. A hospital. Then it all came back and he knew where he was and he lifted his head to look at the Army uniforms, the Post Surgeon standing at the end of the bed, the orderly with the medical chart in his hands taking notes.
‘How are you feeling, young man?’ the doctor asked.
‘All right, I guess,’ Angel said. Then he remembered more and said ‘Mrs. Gibbons! Is she — ’
The Army man shook his head. ‘You’ve been out for two days, son. Mrs. Gibbons died the night we brought her in here.’
Angel shook his head. The memory would not go away: the straining face, the empty eyes, that soundless, awful scream ...
‘Did she — ’ He stopped himself There was no way she could have talked.
He tried again.
‘Did you find out what happened?’
The Army doctor nodded. ‘Mrs. Gibbons tried to write a little of it down. We were able to piece it together from what we found out there.’
‘How did you — ’
‘Son, people in this country see smoke they know it’s trouble,’ the doctor said. ‘Al Woodward damn’ near killed a team of horses getting to the Gibbons place. Found you and the woman laying in the yard more dead than alive, and got you over here as fast as he could travel. You owe him your life: if you’d lain out there much longer you’d have died from exposure.’
‘How badly am I hurt?’ Angel asked.
‘Some bad burning on your back,’ the doctor said. ‘Nothing too serious. How old are you, son?’
‘Twenty,’ Angel said. ‘Why?’
‘You’re young,’ the soldier replied. ‘Your skin will heal fast. We’ll have you up and about in a week or so.’
‘A week or so!’ burst out Angel. ‘I want to be out of here faster than that. Whoever burned the ranch — ’
‘We know who they were, boy. I told you, Mrs. Gibbons tried to write down what she could. We’ve got patrols out now scouring the country for them. Don’t worry, they’ll not get far.’
‘You want to tell me what happened? Angel said.
The doctor nodded. ‘Don’t see why not. After what you did back there, I reckon you deserve that, if we can’t get you a medal.’
‘Skip the medal,’ Angel said.
The Army surgeon nodded. Then he outlined the meager facts that they had been able to get from Stella Gibbons before she died. She had named the men as well as she could from memory. Told how they killed her husband and Dave Pugh. Then what they had done to her.
‘Savages!’ ground out the doctor. ‘If it was Indians, I could understand it. But white men!’
‘They slit her tongue?’
‘To stop her screaming while they raped her, I suppose,’ said the doctor. ‘Then they set fire to the house and just tossed her in to burn alive.’ He shook his head again, pounding a fist into his palm. ‘Savages!’
‘They were after the horses?’
‘That’s our reading of it, son. They left behind some pretty broken-down animals — probably stolen, too. If we can get a line on them, we may know more about the men who stole them. All we got right now is some names, and we’re not altogether sure how accurate they are.’
‘I want you to write them down for me,’ Angel said.
‘Sure, I — what for?’ the doctor checked himself. ‘If you’ve got any ideas of going after those men — ’
‘Just get me the names,’ Angel said.
‘No way,’ replied the soldier. ‘The Army will handle this.’
‘Sure,’ Angel said. ‘When can I get up?’
‘Let’s wait a few more days and see, shall we?’ said the doctor, cheerfully. ‘You’ve got to get some strength back into your legs first. Now take a sip of this.’ He poured some liquid into a cup and added water. It had a violet color.
‘What’s that?’ Angel said.
‘Just drink it,’ urged the doctor, watching as Angel gulped it down. He nodded. ‘Good,’ he said, and pulled his watch from his fob pocket, watching Angel as he did so. Angel felt an undertow of tiredness. It was like mist coming up from the river bottoms on a November night.
Each time you shifted your eyes, it seemed to have come closer without moving at all. He looked at the doctor, who was smiling.
‘You bastard,’ Angel said, and slid down into sleep as the doctor put the laudanum back into his bag. He beckoned the orderly across.
‘He’ll be out until about noon tomorrow,’ he said. ‘When he comes to, don’t talk with him about — what happened.’
‘Yessir,’ said the orderly, wondering if the doctor would ever get the message that running the Post Hospital and tending to the patients and acting as assistant vet was a full time job and if anyone thought he had time to stand around chattering with fresh-faced farm kids who wouldn’t know their asses from holes in the ground then he had another think coming.
After a week, Frank Angel was fit enough to ride.
He thanked the doctor for his care, and the old man grinned the thanks away.
‘I trust you’ve gotten over that stupid idea you had of going after those bandits,’ he said. Angel nodded.
‘Hell, yes,’ he said. ‘What could I do, anyway? I don’t even own a gun.’
‘That’s the sensible way to look at it, son,’ the doctor assured him. ‘They’re bad medicine. The way we have it, they robbed the Paymaster at Fort Riley, killed five men doing it. Them horses we found at the Gibbons place were stolen from up Zanedale way. So they’re not only on the run from the local law, they’re on the run from the United States Army and the Department of Justice as well.’
‘Department of Justice?’ Angel asked, raising his eyebrows.
‘Sure, son, the Justice Department is responsible for the prosecution of all cases involving the breaking of Federal law. Robbing an Army payroll is a Federal offence. Those fellows have got every lawman in the country on their tails.’
‘They’ll be long gone out of Kansas now,’ Angel said, reflectively. ‘New Mexico, maybe, or Arizona. Who knows?’
‘Don’t you fret, boy. They’ll be caught. And hanged. John Gibbons was too good a man.’
‘I know,’ Angel said, quietly. ‘He was the nearest thing to a father I ever had.’
The doctor nodded, then harrumphed.
‘What are you going to do now, may I ask?’
Angel shook his head. ‘Find me another job someplace,’ he said. ‘There’s plenty of work around. Railroad’ll be coming through in another year or two.’
‘Well,’ said the doctor. ‘Well. If there’s anything I — ’
‘Thanks, doc, you already did plenty,’ Angel smiled.
He extended his hand and the gruff old Army man shook it.
‘Come back and see me anytime,’ he said, ‘as long as it’s on your own two feet!’ Then, almost abruptly, he turned and marched away, his spine erect and soldierly as he crossed the parade ground and went into the officers’ quarters on the west side of the Fort.
Frank Angel led his horse up the street to the sutler’s store and went inside. He found Al Woodward sitting at a table, a drink of beer in front of him.
‘Mr. Woodward,’ Angel said. ‘I wanted to thank you.’
‘You’re damned welcome, boy,’ Woodward said. ‘Glad I was able to help out.’ He shook his head. ‘Those filthy bastards!’
‘It must have been pretty bad for you, bringing Mrs. Gibbons in the way you did,’ Angel said quietly. ‘I wish I could have done it.’
‘You did more than enough, boy,’ Woodward said.
‘But I’d sure like to get my hands on that Cravetts jasper. I’d tie knots in his stinking neck!’
‘Cravetts?’ Angel said.
‘Yeah, sure,’ Woodward said. ‘He’s the one Stella — Mrs. Gibbons — said was in charge of them bravos.’
‘I never heard the name before,’ Angel said. ‘How come they’d pick on the Gibbons place?’
‘Beats me, son,’ Woodward said. ‘Way I figger her, they stopped someplace an’ asked the whereabouts of a horse ranch. Someone told ’em that Gibbons raised hosses, an’ that was that.’
‘Cravetts,’ repeated Angel. ‘Did she — Mrs. Gibbons — give any idea what he looked like?’
‘I don’t know, Frank,’ Woodward said. ‘The sojer boys took all the notes. I just heard some scuttlebutt in the store, here.’
‘What else?’ Angel insisted.
‘Nothin’ really,’ Woodward said. ‘Couple o’ names. That Cravetts. Feller named Monsher what had tow-hair an’ a Southern accent. An’ some Eye-talian name like Barelli, Tiratti, somethin’ like that.’ He swung to face the younger man, his eyes bleary with the beer. ‘You wanna beer?’ he asked. Angel shook his head. Woodward got lumberingly to his feet and said ‘I got to get another beer. Keep seein’ that girl’s face ... ’ He shook his head.
‘Mr. Woodward, I got to be going,’ Frank Angel said.
‘Sure, boy,’ Woodward said, and lurched off to the counter. Frank Angel went out into the bright sunlight and stood there for a long minute, watching the busy formalities of the military post. Fort Dodge was still quite new fort; when he had come out to this part of the country in ’66, they were still finishing it off.
Frank Angel took stock of himself. He had a horse and saddle. He had a set of hand-me-down clothes that had been found for him on the Fort. He had some money — a few dollars, no more. And three names.
It was enough to make a start on.
He climbed into the saddle and pointed the pony north.
That night he was in Fort Larned.