Bones made camp at the month of Bear Canyon. When Luther rode up in sight of the setup, he wondered how the man ever managed to get the wagon and mules in there, but he felt satisfied. The remuda was scattered down the flats and the canyon full of the echos of boys’ axes busting wood.
His visit an hour or so before with the McKean woman weighed on his mind. Attractive enough woman with a mist of freckles. He couldn’t forget Stearn’s painting when she came on the porch to speak to him. Hirk had been right—the artist knew his subject too well.
“Mr. McKean is in the Valley. But Jakes, our foreman, will be there to meet you or send someone,” she said with a certain aloofness. A distinct kind of importance in her tone, so he didn’t forget that her outfit was one of the biggest in that basin. Some women used this attitude as a disguise to appear indifferent toward a lesser visitor.
A teenage boy about the same age as his crew came out on crutches. He smiled friendly at Luther. “Wish I could ride with you and the guys, mister.”
“You can’t,” she said coldly. “Not until that leg heals.”
Settled on his crutches, he gave a disappointed head shake. “Tell Pyle and them others that I said howdy.”
“I will,” Luther promised, and prepared to mount. She’d made no offer to give him a drink of water or any hospitality. Perhaps she worried about her reputation. It wasn’t respectable to ask a strange man inside. But her son was there.
Luther tipped his hat and started to rein the horse around.
“Mr. Haskell, I realize you are working for Mr. Allen,
but be certain those cattle you round up have the proper brands on them.”
“I’ll watch, and then allow Mr. Stran to do his job, ma’am. That’s why they have brand inspectors. You’ve had some cattle stolen?”
“We’ve had several head taken.”
“Strange, ma’am,” Luther said, checking his horse, then slapping him on the poll with the flat of his hand to settle his fidgeting. “But I seem to recall hearing that your husband told the deputies, a few days ago, that he had no proof of any rustling.”
“They’ve been stealing them.”
“They?”
She blinked at him.
“Those three men that were hung?”
“Are you insinuating—”
It was the boy’s face that Luther noticed go pale as a ghost. He choked, coughed. His hands went to cover his face. Then he fell off his crutches to his knees and began to vomit. She dropped beside him, her arm protectively over his shoulder.
“Oh, Randy, are you all right?”
“I’ll—be—” He retched more sourness up in a milky flood from the depths of his stomach onto the porch steps.
“He’s been like this since a bronc threw him,” she quickly explained, as if she felt Luther needed to know the reason for his sickness. “Something must be hurt inside him. I can handle this.” She waved him away as she hovered over her coughing son. “Jakes will send you help.”
Time to ride on. Luther turned the roan and headed for the road. Why did he feel that boy’s sudden sickness had something to do with the lynching? Maybe Pyle could answer some of his questions. But as he recalled the boys talking in camp, neither McKean nor Charboneau had anything to say to the deputies about rustling, nor the three suspected rustlers. Yet, Taneal McKean had a lot to say about all the rustling going on in the basin. The year before, Matt McKean had warned all the small outfits around the
basin’s edges under the law that they couldn’t legally maverick in the basin. The boys told him that, too, but the big ranchers said they had no proof on the three dead men. Or did they have the goods and wouldn’t discuss it with the law? In the next weeks, he would see all the cattle that Burtle claimed. He’d seen enough blotched brands in his life to know one when he saw one. If they were there, he’d soon find ’em.
He short-loped Cochise for the first night’s camp. When he found the wagon tracks going into the mouth of Bear Canyon, he smiled and set the roan into an easy gait through the pines toward the sharp smell of wood smoke coming on the afternoon wind.
Ute took his horse for the herd after Luther stripped off his saddle and gear. Bones ambled over about to bust his buttons wagging a cup of steaming fresh coffee.
“How’s things going?” he asked, holding his suspenders.
“Fine. What’s for supper?”
“Beef.”
“Hope it was Burtle’s.” Luther said, and blew on the coffee.
“We ain’t rustlers—yet.” Then Bones wiped his hands on his apron and smiled sly like. “Next time we’ll eat one of theirs.”
Luther shook his head after his cook’s retreat to the cooking fire. Range land practice was not to choke eating your own beef at a neighbor’s cow camp.
“Well, we made it,” Hirk said, and jammed his hands in his pockets.
“You did good. I went by McKean’s today and he’s gone to the Valley.”
“Salt River Valley, Hayden’s Mill, and Phoenix down there?”
“I guess that’s where he went. Anyway, Mrs. McKean ain’t real hospitable, but that’s beside the point. Sending Jakes or someone up here.”
Hirk looked around to be certain they were alone. “See any resemblance?”
“Yeah, right off. She spoke about rustling and how I needed to be certain I wasn’t taking her cattle.”
“Things been touchy up here.” Hirk shook his head.
“I’m going to ask you something private. Those boys said McKean spooked them out of mavericking in the basin. He did that, then the only others that could were Dikes, Burtle, and the artist.”
Hirk nodded and looked off at the peaks. “You’ve got the answer, I figure.”
“But there’s a helluva lot of difference between rustling and mavericking.”
“Not to some folks’ way of thinking.”
“Right,” he quietly agreed. All he had to do was prove it. Whew. This job got rougher and rougher. But if you ran into a brick wall you needed to chink the mortar away to ever take it down. That McKean boy and Reed Porter looked like his best chance so far. Things sure went slow at this job, no riding up and serving a warrant or tracking down some wanted man that the grand jury had indicted.
“Supper!” Bones shouted, banging on a washtub with a wooden spoon.
Luther nodded for Hirk to go on, and remained to sip his coffee, still engrossed in his own notions about the lynching. In the absence of any other evidence, he needed solid witnesses. How many had been there that day? It took more than two men to pull it off. Had Randy McKean been there? One thing he knew, that boy didn’t get sick over a bronc wreck. The talk about that lynching sent him into a tailspin. He saw him pale at the very words. That boy needed to be questioned. Maybe a grand jury could find out from Porter and Randy who did it. Still engrossed in his figuring, Luther finished his coffee and walked toward the camp.
Bones brought him a heaping plate of food, topped with perfectly browned dutch oven biscuits. “Stop your worrying. This crew’s going to get them cow brutes out of the breaks, boss.”
He smiled in surrender. “I believe they will.”
“Stop worrying about it, boss. They’ll get it done.”
Luther considered the plate of food he handed him and nodded.
If that was all I had to worry about, Bones, I’d dance a jig tonight to that boy’s fiddle. What was the major thinking about this matter?