Beneath Ceaseless Skies #13 Read online

  “I want you to run to the livery stable and get my horse. Bring him back to my office.”

  “You mean Old Sheriff Cawley’s place? The one by the feed store?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Won’t take me long, Marshall. I can run a hole in the wind when I have to.”

  “Then let’s see you do it.”

  “Yes, sir!” He disappeared in the night.

  I opened up my office and got Magra up. “A man by the name of Connie Rand killed your father. He’s been at your place tonight. Burned your house to the ground and killed his two accomplices.”

  “But, what for?”

  “Covering his tracks. A dead witness can’t talk. Here’s your shotgun. I want you awake until I get back.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Out to your place. You stay here. I’m giving you the keys so you can lock yourself inside. I’ll be back soon as I can.”

  I met Piebald outside with my horse. I mounted up and kicked for Shiner Larsen’s place. When I rounded the bend I saw three men watching the night breeze scatter the remaining embers and sparks through the night. Polgar met me as I drew up, his face creased with worry.

  “I heard you brought the girl back to town. Good idea. Whoever did this was looking for her.”

  “Where are the dead men?”

  “Over in that ravine. Shot through the heart, and their throats cut.”

  “You recognize them, Frank?”

  Polgar shook his head. “People always drift through Haxan. Sometimes they don’t leave.”

  “Who found them?”

  An older man and his teenage son stepped forward. “Marshall, we were rounding up a stray calf in Gila Canyon when we saw the fire. We found the two dead men and rode in.”

  Polgar studied the smoldering embers. “They trampled the corn and shot Larsen’s pig. Why would a person do a thing like that, John?”

  I got off my horse and scraped my boot heel across the parallel lines in the dirt. “Buckboard.” I scrambled down the bank of the ravine. I turned the men over to examine their faces.

  “Frank, these men were dead long before they were shot. No blood on their shirts even though their throats are cut. Can the doctor in Haxan do an autopsy?”

  “Doc Toland? Have to sober him up first.”

  “Then sober him up,” I snapped. “I want to know what killed them.” I was standing over the bodies. There was an unusual yet familiar smell coming from them, but I couldn’t place it because the air was filled with dust and swirling wood smoke that stung my eyes. I frowned.

  “What’s wrong, John?”

  “These men aren’t hired killers.”

  Frank drew up beside me. “How do you mean?”

  I pointed to them. “They don’t look like someone who would nail a man to a tree.” My stomach filled with ice. “These men were killed to throw us off the scent, Frank. They were probably in the wrong place at the wrong time and nothing more.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I think Connie Rand has Magra.”

  * * *

  When I got to Haxan I knew the worst had happened. The street was filled with people outside my office. I rode in among them. They watched me with stoic faces.

  “What happened?” I asked them.

  A man in the crowd answered back. “They took that little boy, Piebald, and held a Barlow to his throat. Said if she didn’t come out they would kill him. She laid down her gun and they took her away.”

  “Why didn’t you stop them?” I spun on the crowd. Their bland faces stared back.

  “Why should we take a bullet for a half-breed,” someone remarked. “She ain’t kin to any of us.”

  I got off my horse and walked up on the man. The crowd pulled away to give us elbow room. He was doing his level best to hold my stare.

  “I’m not armed, Marshall.” He swallowed audibly.

  “My God,” someone whispered, “look at his eyes.”

  I turned my back in disgust. “Which way did they ride?”

  “North east, Marshall,” the first man replied, “toward Cottonwood Butte.”

  “What’s your name, mister?” He was wearing striped pants and green suspenders.

  “Jake Strop.”

  “They have a buckboard, Mr. Strop? With two men riding a three-point bay and a sorrel mare?”

  “Yes, sir. And well armed, all of them.”

  The saddle leather creaked as I mounted up. “Strop, you’ve just been deputized. You pick three men and meet Mayor Polgar. He’s riding in from Shiner Larsen’s place with two dead men. I want Doc Toland to autopsy them. I want it done before I get back.” I leaned forward in the saddle and glared at the rest of the crowd. “Don’t let me down again. Ever.”

  Several men and most of the women dropped their eyes. A couple of hard-noses mumbled under their breath, but no one bucked me outright.

  “We’ll do as you say, Marshall,” Strop promised.

  I knew I wouldn’t make much time at night, but neither would Rand. I rode out into the country and made a cold camp. By early morning I was riding hard and cut their tracks twenty miles south of Cottonwood Butte. The tracks swung north and I followed them, keeping an eye out for ambush. At the base of the butte the tracks split. The wagon and one set of horse tracks kept going northeast while a single track broke west toward White Sands.

  I followed the single track. If I could pick up his horse I would be better mounted to catch the slower buckboard.

  By midday I hit White Sands.

  It was easy following his tracks through the gypsum drifts. He wasn’t riding hard. He wanted me closing up because he thought he could take me.

  The pristine, snow-white landscape was shattered here and there by a clump of yucca or tuft of long grass. But he kept heading deeper into the interior, and before long there was nothing but the serried waves of frozen white sand marching off to eternity.

  I topped a dune. It was a bad position because I was silhouetted against the sky. The first shot creased my left shoulder. I spun off the saddle, falling in an awkward way with my gun hand caught beneath me. Before I could turn over he was on top of me and crashed his pistol across the back of my head.

  * * *

  A splash of water in my face brought me back.

  He stood with the sun behind him, holding a Barlow knife. His sorrel was standing quietly a good piece away alongside my horse.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “I drew the short straw,” he explained. “We knew you would try for the single man first. Didn’t think it would be this easy to take you, though. Maybe you’re not as good as some say.”

  I was hogtied, lying on my side. The white gypsum sand was eerily cool, and I was grateful for how it felt against the side of my face.

  He grinned at me. “I woke you up because I wanted you to feel this. Ain’t much sport skinning an unconscious man. Especially when you can’t hear him squeal and beg for you to stop the hurt.” He grinned again. “Except, I don’t ever stop cutting once I start.”

  He had done a professional job rendering me helpless. My hands were near the tops of my boots and I was immobile.

  “Can I have some water?” I asked.

  “I don’t waste water on a dead man,” he answered. The blade reflected silver as he started for me.

  I rolled over quick, kicking up a flurry of sand and looking over my shoulder for the target. The little derringer from my boot barked twice. Both slugs hit him in the stomach. He dropped his knife and crawled off somewhere to die.

  I rolled over and over toward the dropped knife. He might be made of sterner stuff and remember his pistol. He was dying, but he wasn’t dead. Not yet. I worked the blade on the knots best I could, flaying skin. When I had my hands free I loosened the rope around my ankles and got to my feet.

  He had made a big mess in the sand, crawling around a dune to hide himself and die in peace. I found my Colt Dragoon on his horse and walked around the
opposite side of the dune. He was hunched up, trying to hold his guts in.

  “I ain’t armed, mister,” he gasped. “You shoot a dying man who’s unarmed?”

  I went back to my horse and dug through the saddle bag for my hand axe. When I went back to the dune he had crawled farther away, leaving a nasty blood trail. Crimson on snow.

  My shadow drew up on him.

  When I finished I left it for carrion and put what I wanted in an old flour sack. I caught his horse and mine and started out of White Sands. His bullet had cut me, but the blood was staunched and I didn’t have to be sewn up.

  It was a long ride out of that white, featureless desert. The pain in my shoulder came in waves, like the dunes of white sand the horses kicked through. Black clouds gathered above my head, then they were behind me, towering.

  It was late afternoon when I emerged from the soundless desolation of White Sands. Looking behind me I saw the sky was black with vultures whirling over the feast I had laid out.

  * * *

  I rode his horse into the ground, then got on my blue roan and kicked hard for the horizon. I slowed around sunset to let him blow and walk off his lather. When he had cooled I drove him forward again.

  I discovered their camp fire as the moon was making its appearance like an orange lamp. It hung so close to the ground you felt you could touch the face of it.

  I let my horse stand, pulled my Sharps from its boot and marched off across the scrub waste. I was way out of Sangre County, that much I knew. It didn’t look like the hard pan and scrag around here could ever amount to anything.

  I circled their camp, coming from the east. I found a knoll two hundred yards away and set up the rifle. It was difficult to make out faces from this distance in that light. There were three figures sitting around the fire. I thought one of them might be Magra, but I couldn’t tell.

  Time was on my side. They weren’t going anywhere. My .50 caliber Sharps would see to that. I settled down and waited out the night. Before sunrise I made a breakfast of water and hard biscuit.

  When a band of red and orange colored the sky behind me I checked the Sharps and raised the sights. The day came on fast. I watched them hitch the wagon while Magra saddled the bay. I recognized her blue coat, but something was wrong. She was taller than before.

  I settled down to work. The Sharps roared and the bay dropped. I loaded the single shot action and it roared again. The outside horse on the team collapsed. Another cartridge and the last horse went down, tangled in the traces.

  I didn’t like killing the horses this way because it might mean we had to walk out. But I wanted to shock Magra’s captors beyond the ability to think. To let them know they were under the sights of a killing gun, with a merciless hunter on the other end.

  The little figures didn’t stand around when this slaughter began. The man wearing Magra’s coat grabbed her and jumped behind a raised hummock of turf. The other man tried to use the buckboard as a screen.

  I started pouring rounds through the wagon. It was no match for a .50 caliber buffalo gun at two hundred yards. Given enough time and ammunition, I could chop it into kindling.

  It takes a lot of nerve to stick under that kind of fire. My victim didn’t have that much sand. He broke cover and started running across the prairie, firing his six gun wildly in my direction. I cut him down. He was still thrashing on the ground. I put another slug into him. He stopped moving.

  There was a stand of silence. The reverberation of my big gun had stilled the land. I could put Rand under the same withering fire but I didn’t want to risk hitting Magra.

  I grabbed my flour sack and walked toward their camp, right up in the range of his six. I could see his slitted eyes under the broken brim of his hat and Magra’s cowed head under his left hand.

  “You take one more step and I put a bullet in this witch’s face,” he warned. “What happened to Tanner?”

  “Was that his name?” I flung the flour sack in Rand’s direction. When the mouth of the sack opened up, Tanner’s head rolled out and came to a stop on the incline of the hummock, staring at the blue sky.

  “What kind of man are you?” Rand asked. There was a waver in his voice. “You shot Silas when he was down. You murdered him.”

  “That’s right. I did.”

  “I don’t want to cross guns with you, Marwood. Let me walk out of here with the girl. I’ll leave her unharmed by that dry wash three miles south.”

  “No deal.”

  “We were paid one hundred dollars in gold to kidnap her. We could keep or kill her, our choice. The d–,” he stopped, “the man who bought our guns in Haxan said that was the bargain. I’ll give you all the gold double eagles I have. Just let me walk out of here with a whole skin.”

  “No.”

  He cocked his revolver. “I’ll kill this girl, Marwood. I’ve never killed a woman before, but I’ll do it. Her death will be on your conscience.”

  I put my rifle aside. “Stand up, Rand.”

  “Marwood, listen to me, I–”

  “I said stand.”

  He rose to his feet, the gun held to Magra’s head. Her face was bruised and her doeskin dress torn. She had been given an old pair of pants to wear. They hadn’t been gentle with her while they kept her. I didn’t expect they would. These kind of men never were.

  “I was doing what I was told, Marwood.” The wind blew through his white blond white hair.

  “So am I.”

  “I don’t want to pull on you.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  He watched me for a long time. His face changed in a subtle manner. He was cornered. The only way he would live was if he shot his way out. He already had his gun free while my Colt Dragoon was holstered. All the odds lay on his side.

  He was good. His expression never flickered and his eyes remained steady. He flung Magra aside and started to draw a bead on me. My first shot hit him in the head, and the second center-cut his heart.

  Magra was standing alone, trembling. Her hands were pressed over her face. I walked up to her and said soft, “It’s over, Magra.”

  She removed her grimed fingers from her face. “They said someone in town paid to kill Papa and kidnap me.”

  “I know.”

  “They never said a name.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” I already knew who’d hired them.

  “They.... I–-” She swallowed hard. “I’m glad you came, John.”

  “Can you walk? I’m camped over that next rise.”

  “Don’t you want their money? Connie kept it under the seat of that wagon.”

  I gave her a sidelong glance. “Why would I want their gold? Unless you want it.”

  She had a sick, angry look. “I don’t want anything from them, ever again.”

  I took her hand. “Then let’s go home.”

  * * *

  Two days later we were back in Haxan. We rode in slow because I thought Magra needed the time. At one point she said, “I knew you were coming for me.” The firelight from our campfire looked pretty on her broad face. “Papa came to me last night and said you were nearby, hiding in the dark.”

  “Must have been good to have that kind of comfort.”

  “It was.” She hugged her knees and rocked back and forth. “I think that’s the last time he’s going to visit me, John. I got the impression he felt, well, it was because you were here that he didn’t need to watch over me anymore.”

  “I hope that’s right, Magra.” She gave me her first smile and pulled a blanket over her shoulders. The night closed down around us.

  She turned in her blanket. “John...where are you from?”

  I smoothed back her hair. “It’s a place you’ll never have to visit, Magra.”

  “That sea of time and dust you spoke of?”

  “Mostly.”

  “He called you here, didn’t he? Papa.”

  I looked into the fire. “I never know that, Magra. Sometimes I think I can call myself and that’s why I go w
here I’m needed. I just don’t know.”

  “But you’re here now. And maybe not just for me, but for a lot of other reasons you don’t know.”

  I tucked the blanket around her shoulders. “Time to go to sleep. Let yourself heal.”

  When we finally arrived I dropped her at the Haxan Hotel and went to meet Doc Toland for the first time.

  Frank Polgar was there, waiting. Word had spread fast I had returned with Magra, and he probably figured I would want him around.

  “How’s the girl?” Polgar asked.

  “It’s going to be a long time before she’s ever right again,” I told him. “They hurt her bad.”

  He shook his head with sadness. “I’m sorry to hear that. They had no cause to treat her that way. She never hurt nobody. John, this is Dr. Rex Toland. Doc, this here is our new Marshall, John Marwood.”

  Toland was a spindly, narrow-faced man with grey mutton chops and rheumy brown eyes behind a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles. He wore a dust-laden black frock coat. “Glad to meet you, Marshall. I guess I’ll have to remit my autopsy fees through your office?”

  “That’s right. What did you find?”

  “Those men died in a bad way. Poisoned until their kidneys shut down and failed. Their stomachs were full of–”

  “Oil of cloves.” That was what I had smelled on their bodies that night. They must have been held down and forced to swallow, but some had spilled on their clothes.

  “That’s right, Marshall.” I had impressed him with my deduction. “Nasty way to die. The stuff also has a medical name. Eugenol, it’s called.”

  Polgar looked my way. “John, there’s only one man in town who uses that stuff in any kind of quantity.”

  “I’ll go pick him up, mayor.”

  “You want some help?”

  “No, I’ll take care of it. It’s my job.”

  I walked outside on the street. The morning sun was hot and there was dust in my throat. A few women and children lounged around the water well in the plaza. I hadn’t been back long, but word had gotten around fast. I wouldn’t have been surprised to meet him running out the door when I went through it.

  I slammed the door behind me. The little wooden plate, with the words “Josiah Hartleby: Dentist” burned into it, rattled against the glass pane with alarm.