Hart’s direction was due south, towards the Cimarron. The day was closing in about him as he rode, the wind driving into him, stronger than before. He reached round behind and loosed the knots that held the blanket in place. Twisting the reins round the saddle pommel, he threw the blanket round his body so that it hung over his right shoulder with a loose knot below his left hip.
He’d had the blanket the best part of ten years, since scouting for the army amongst the Navajo. He’d got himself working under a captain called Rodway who reckoned he knew everything in the whole damned world that’d been invented and quite a few things that hadn’t. Sure claimed to be an expert on Indians – so expert he thought it was his right to wipe them out of existence.
It wasn’t that he bore them any grudge; on the contrary, Rodway had a lot more respect for the Indian than most whites, especially those in the army. He simply thought they were in the way.
‘The Indian is a primitive,’ he’d say, holding forth to his fellow officers, ‘even one with signs of some kind of civilization like the Navajo. He has no ambition to rise beyond his gods or do more than grow corn for his family and weave blankets. This country needs land to grow and the Indian simply sits in the way.’
Hart remembered him: thin, bow-legged, body like a grayhound; dark hair flattened to his scalp, intense dark eyes that were rarely still, a beaked nose over thin, small lips.
‘I’ve got nothing against the Indian,’ he said, ‘I simply see it as my duty to eliminate him.’
Hart hadn’t seen it that way. At first he’d tried to argue, but the position of most scouts around an army troop was like that of a dog round a campfire. When Rodway wouldn’t listen, Hart had tried stronger methods; the captain had him clapped in the guardhouse. Hart had broken out and ridden off to warn the Navajo.
He Who Runs had presented him with his own chief’s blanket in thanks. Three days later the Indian had been cut down by the saber of a charging cavalry man and had died after another two days of great pain.
Hart had always kept the blanket with him; it kept him warm and it reminded him of a people he’d learned to respect. If it came to a choice between their civilization and that which produced men like Rodway, he was pretty certain where his allegiance would be.
Now he pushed his hat back on his head and felt the wind tug at his hair. The line of trees he recognized was less than a mile off. He spoke to the gray mare and touched her sides with his spurs, moving her into a canter. Soon the valley began to form to his left and Hart rode along the top of the ridge, looking for the cabin.
Some feeling gnawed at his insides, something that was close to fear yet was different. It had to do with someone other than himself and he couldn’t pin it down. Maybe he didn’t want to. He’d only seen her twice; spoken to her once. Carol. Carol Peterson. The first time she’d stepped out into strong sunlight and her fair hair had glowed like fine gold. Only closer had he seen the life in her green eyes – life and knowledge of life. At the back of the vivacity a knowledge of sorrow.
He’d stopped for less than half an hour, taken the coffee and sourdough biscuits she’d given him, all the while watching her, watching her and pretending not to.
Next time he’d ridden by she’d been out front of the place again only she’d been with her husband. Hart hadn’t bothered to stop, simply rode on.
So what was he expecting now? Why had he ridden out the way he had? Hart shook his head and slowed the mare to a walk. First time that trader had mentioned the Cheyenne he’d thought of her; thought of the feeling that batch of pine close to the back of their cabin had given him. When he’d knelt alongside the woman back in Stillwater, the one with the yellow dress, it had been Carol that he’d been thinking of, fearing for.
And now?
There was no figure outside the building; even in the thickening darkness he would have picked out her hair. The cabin seemed unreal; the barn to its left almost finished, a small corral in front of that which was empty. No smoke rose up from the chimney.
Those pines, they were too close, gave too much cover for anyone who wanted to ...
Hart pushed his tongue against the inside of his cheek and reached his right hand to his Colt .45, testing its weight and balance as it slid from the holster. He spun the chamber across his left palm before dropping it back into place.
‘Clay.’
The horse began to angle its way down the side of the valley, Hart alert to the slightest movement, the first sign of danger. Since he’d seen it last the remainder of the fresh wood of the building had been tarred, extra shutters of small, split logs fixed over the windows. The door, double thickness, was fastened close.
Hart slipped from the saddle and eased the Colt into his hand. In the silence the triple click of the hammer being worked back was oddly loud.
He walked around the cabin, searching for whatever signs he could make out. There were none: neither of attack nor anything else. It was as if no one lived there – had ever lived there.
The door was shut fast. Hart leaned his weight against it and it swung heavily back. The inside was dark and Hart went into it fast, moving the gun from left to right in an arc. No one, nothing moved.
The door grated on its hinges behind him.
Hart waited until his eyes became accustomed to the light then stepped over to the table and lifted the smoked glass from the body of a kerosene lamp. He struck a match on the end of his pistol butt and turned up the wick. Flame surged upwards with a sharp orange glow; Hart set the glass back in place and stood away.
Chairs, chest of drawers, stove; blue patterned plates, gold-rimmed cups, a picture of Carol in a carved wood frame – everything was set perfectly in place.
Hart went into the second room. The white cover had been smoothed down on the four-poster bed. Three pairs of boots, two larger than the third, were polished and standing next to one another under the shuttered window. Clothes hung neatly inside the wardrobe.
A thin film of dust had settled over everything.
When the door creaked again Hart went outside and unsaddled the mare, leading her into the barn. There was straw in one corner and an empty trough. He fetched water from the well at back of the house.
If it had been Cheyenne there would have been some sign. Maybe they’d been warned about the attack on Stillwater and cleared out fast? But that didn’t explain nothing being taken with them; the orderliness of the place.
Hart set his saddlebags on the table and took a piece of dried beef and some biscuits from his supplies. There was a jar of coffee on one of the shelves close by the stove. He went outside and fetched wood. The sky was almost totally black now and only a few stars broke its cover. When he looked behind, the pines seemed close enough to touch.
He slid the bolt across the door and pushed the solid wooden bar into place; then he made certain the windows were secured. Only after that was done did he light the stove.
When the wood had caught and Hart was staring into the flickering flames he remembered those last moments before he’d turned in his badge. He could see, clear as if it were before him, the scaffold back at Fort Smith; see the kid he’d brought in for trial and the look on his face as he swung and choked, choked and swung. As the young neck had stretched, so his face had been sent sideways and his tongue forced from his mouth, purple and swollen; his eyes had bulged until Hart had thought they’d burst from their sockets. The harsh spluttered sounds of death coming slow and the stink of excrement. Finally, two men hanging on to his boots and jerking him down.
No: there wasn’t anything you could do to a man that was worse than hanging him. Not even the treatment the Cheyenne had given back in Stillwater. At least their victims had a chance to run, to fight back. But hanging ... Hart shook his head. Any killing he had to do, he’d do himself, face to face if possible. In his own way and with his own hands.
He went to take the coffee pot from the stove. Not much later he’d pulled back the covers on the Peterson’s bed and stripped down to his long Johns. The mattress was deep and soft and he was asleep almost as soon as his head settled into the white pillow.
He was aware of dreaming and at one stage there was a woman but she wasn’t Carol Peterson.
Birdcall woke him and as he stirred his hand moved towards his gun, hanging in the holster from one post of the bed. For a moment he was unsure where he was, but as that passed he let his fingers fall away from the Colt, pushed back the sheets and swung his legs round till his feet touched the floor. He stood up, yawned, wiped the rims of his eyes and pulled on his pants. He put on his shirt but left it unbuttoned.
Water from the well.
Hart slid the bars and bolts away from the door and stepped out into the early morning. The air hit him as a kind of shock; the increased light made him blink. To his right, away from the ridge, the sun was spreading orange-gold along the horizon. He went round the cabin and filled the wooden bucket, letting it splash over his arms as he carried it back.
Three feet short of the doorway a shell tore into the wood inches to his left. The sound of a rifle was clear in his head as he dropped the bucket and dived forwards. Head going under, shoulders dipping, he rolled through a somersault that sent his legs crashing into the table, knocking it askew across the room. A second shot had sounded as he was going forward, now a third – the shell ricocheted off the edge of the doorjamb and angled through the room, smashing one of the patterned plates on the dresser.
Hart’s own rifle was nearest.
He lunged for it, working the lever, bringing the stock up against his shoulder, sliding forward to the doorway.
The ridge was lit by the sun across the valley; trees were beginning to separate out. Hart scanned the line, faded blue eyes alert and taking in every detail. Nothing, no one moved.
He sprang outside and dropped low to his left, the Henry tracing the ridge from tree to tree. No. Yet Hart was positive that was where the shots had come from. He turned and ran to the barn, talking to Clay as soon as he entered, leading the mare out and catching hold of her mane to jump on to her back.
As he rode towards the hill he heard, beneath the sound of the mare’s hoofs, another horse galloping away.
‘C’mon!’
Hart leaned forward, stroking the dapple-gray’s neck and urging her up the slope. When he reached the ridge he slowed her down, walking her along the narrow track. After a few moments he dropped down and examined the ground.
Someone had been there, waiting, kneeling there for some little time. His horse had been tied on the far edge. When he’d ridden away it had been down the opposite diagonal to the one Hart had climbed.
The sun beyond the cabin had cleared the horizon and was strong and bright, blinding him. Someone had known he was there: it had to be. Or they had thought him someone else. But why wait and try and bushwhack him like that, then ride off without getting the job done?
And who?
Hart turned his head and looked in the direction the would-be killer had taken.
Who?
Hart blinked back into the sun and climbed back on to the mare. When he’d shot Dan Halloran, Charlie Bowdre hadn’t made a play. He’d told Hart he didn’t intend to and Hart had believed him. Besides, trying to put a bullet through the back of his head wasn’t Charlie’s style – then again, Hart thought with a rueful smile, if Charlie had tried that, likely he wouldn’t have missed.
He looked at the line of pale wood gouged out of the wall close by the door; at the chunk of thick wood driven away from the jamb. Inside the cabin shattered pieces of plate were strewn over the far side of the floor.
Hart pulled the table back into place and used the side of his boot to push the broken china into a heap. There was something unsettling about the way the almost anonymous neatness of the cabin had been threatened.
The questions continued to move through Hart’s mind as he refilled the bucket from the well, washed in the bracing coldness of the water, boiled coffee on the stove. Had the bullets been meant for him and if so who wanted him dead?
Hart thought he’d ride across to Guthrie after all. He could stock up on supplies, get some more shells and maybe ask a few questions of a different kind. Now that he’d turned in his badge there was work to find – he had to let the news get out that he was for hire.
Waiting for the coffee to heat through, Hart stripped down his Colt and cleaned and oiled it thoroughly.