Cottonwood (19 page)

I walked my chestnut mare alongside the others, handed the reins to Herbert, and then outflanked the shrubbery and drew the Colt, halfway hoping the movement was that of a beaver or a bobcat.

I crept on the ground to the bush and passed behind it; between it and the riverbank I found a grizzled character of indeterminable age, somewhere between thirty and seventy and none too hale looking even at the high end of that scale, seated upon the grass with his back leaning against a tree, oblivious to our presence. His trousers were about his ankles, and he pulled at his swollen organ, moaning dementedly. I cocked the Dragoon, and only then did he stop the rhythmic stroking of his prick. His gun sat just out of reach, atop a hat, and I told him to sit still. I grabbed the gun and pulled back.

The others approached, and I told him to step out slow. He did so, arms upraised and beaming at us like we were his long-lost cousins. His pants remained at his feet and he shuffled forward as though that were his usual way of dressing and getting around. His cock did not deflate; it swung back and forth with each step he took, and I thought Tim Niedel might shoot him just to make that boner go away.

“Any of you looking to acquire some jewelry?” he asked in a croak like that of a man who’s just been throttled. At that Herbert took the poker from his saddle bag and once again started smacking it into his palm, and the stranger looked still less certain of himself. That he might be a legitimate dealer in jewels seemed unlikely; open sores ate at his face, and he wore no shirt under his faded union army jacket.

Finally Tim could stand no more, and he faced the fellow square on. “You goddamned dirty pervert, you get that prick of yours back down limp and get your drawers back up or I’ll by God shoot it off, you hear me?”

The man covered his cock with his hands but was unable to calm the thing down. He did pull his trousers up, and that soothed Tim somewhat.

“Let’s see ’em,” Marc said, and the man scampered back into the brush from which, after a moment’s rustling, he emerged holding a burning lantern and a finely-wrought ebony jewel box. He opened it and held it up for Marc to see, and then moved it to where Herbert and Tim and I could each in turn have a look.

“How’s about that signet, there?” I asked.

“Which one’s that?” he asked.

“That one,” I said, leaning down and pointing to the ring Juno had died wearing.

The wretch plucked it from the box and handed it to me. “One dollar,” he said.

“And why should I pay you a dollar for something that’s already mine?” I asked, and the bedraggled jewel dealer looked confused and frightened; he suspected he was about to be robbed. I ignored him and addressed Marc. “This is a ring my hired hand stole when he left, the one we pulled out of the orchard.”

“Where’d you get that ring?” Marc asked, drawing his revolver and pointing it straight at the man’s forehead.

“Found it. Found some other things, too, next to a dead horse. It was still warm when I come acrost it, if you’re wanting something to fill your bellies. I can’t eat the whole thing by myself.”

“Where’d you find it and when?”

“Around nightfall. Only et a little piece of the haunch.”

“Where, I said?”

He pointed upriver, anxious to please. “Little bit up that way. We could build us a bonfire and roast us a whole hindquarter.”

Marc holstered his gun, dismounted and took the jewel box. “There are some fine pieces in here.”

“They must have a hell of a lot of cash, then, if they’re down to dumping gold.”

“There was more things,” the man said. “In the saddle bags. Hell of a nice saddle, too, nice as that one there.” He indicated Marc’s saddle.

“If they’re down to one horse, we still have a shot at stopping them before they get to Toronto,” Tim said.

“That’s if we get going now,” I said to Marc, who was standing there looking thoughtfully at the man.

Marc handed me the jewel box and climbed back onto the saddle. “All right, let’s get a move on, then.”

“Hold on,” the man on the ground said, his eyes full of hurt and injustice. “You got to pay for them rings and things, they’re mine fair and square.”

Marc reached into his vest with perfect calm, looking for all the world as if he were going to withdraw a sheaf of bills and pay the man for his trouble. Instead he drew again, and in what seemed like a single, deft motion brought the weapon up, pulled back the hammer and blew a hole in the man’s forehead, sending back a spray of gore onto the soft grass. Above it the poor devil collapsed, bitter for a second about his fate but dead before his knees gave up their burden. The three of us looked at Marc, who replaced his pistol and stared back at us, daring us to find fault with his action.

Herbert spoke up first. “That weren’t strictly necessary, Mr. Leval.”

“He was their confederate,” Marc said. “Let’s ride.”

“Confederate, hell,” Tim yelled. “That was just a poor river rat scrounging for food, thought he’d gotten lucky for once in his sorry-assed life.”

“Think about it, Mr. Niedel. They killed at least, what? Fourteen men we know of. Then there are those that were found earlier downstream in the Verdigris, and then there are all those unaccounted for. How many of those have there been in the last two or three years? Thirty? Fifty?”

“That don’t make this dead man lying here their helper.”

“Goddamn it, think. Where are the horses the dead men rode? Their saddles? Where did the Benders sell all those stolen goods? Those men in the orchard had been stripped right down to their skins. Multipy them by five or ten and you’ve got a lot to dispose of in a place as desolate as this.”

Tim thought about it for a minute. “Maybe that’s so, maybe they did have confederates, but that don’t make him one of them.”

“The hell with you, then,” Marc said, kicking his horse’s flank. “He was carrying stolen goods, and to my mind that makes him one of them. They’re five minutes closer to Toronto and the railroad right now.”

He started along the bank, and after a moment’s hesitation Herbert and Tim went, too. I waited a moment longer and slipped the signet ring onto the little finger of my left hand and followed.

A mile upriver we found the horse, its saddlebags picked clean by the man Marc had killed, and possibly by others. The cause of the beast’s death was immediately apparent: the haunch from which the jeweler had sliced a chunk of meat stank, and shortly below the fresh cut an old and festering wound still glistened in the light of the moon, hours after its putrescent fluids had ceased to flow.

“Bet you two dollars that’s Mr. Sheale’s mount,” Tim said as the stink receded at our backs, and that was the last thing that was said for a long time.

After that it was hard to judge the passage of time. We spread out, riding twenty feet abreast and approached every bush and shade tree as if it might contain a nest of vipers. We were all testy from the ride and the lack of sleep, and we debated whether to take the Benders back with us. Herbert still intended to hang them all on the spot, and Marc indicated again that he would make no move to stop it, though without indicating whether he’d sully his own hands in the process. Tim insisted we take them back to stand trial; how, though, if they only possessed one horse and no wagon, were we to return all four of them? In the meantime the tracks of that remaining horse had disappeared again, and I suggested to Tim that Katie might have summoned the powers of darkness to make the horse levitate. He didn’t think that was funny.

We had quieted down again, hunkering down in our saddles, wrapped in blankets and all of us wishing we’d brought warmer clothes. I particularly missed the fine fur coat Marc and Maggie had presented me with for Christmas and my old buffalo robe. A few miles south of Middletown we came to a fork in the river, one of many we had encountered since we began heading north, and Marc stopped to point out a spot on the riverbank just short of the fork. There were hoofprints in the mud, but only those closest to the waterline remained muddy.

“Those look like hoofprints to you?”

“Sure, but old ones, and they’re leading in from the north.”

“They may have backtracked,” Marc said.

“And there’s three, maybe four horses there.”

“They stole some horses, then. Herbert, you and Tim follow this fork. Bill and I’ll go on up to Toronto.”

Herbert scowled. “What the hell for?”

I imagined some variation of the phrase “because I said so” about to form on Marc’s lips, but he remained civil. “If they’re headed west they’ll catch the train at Neal, not Toronto.”

“I still don’t think that’s any kind of tracks from them. I say we stick together.” I looked at the three of them as I said it, but it was Tim and Herbert I was trying to win over. I was sure Marc was wrong, but I’d never convince him of it.

Tim and Herbert shifted their gazes from each other to me and finally to Marc. “I say we split up like Mr. Leval says,” Herbert said, and Tim nodded.

“You want to catch up to the whole four of them when it’s just the two of you?” I asked.

“We got guns, and two of ’em’s women. They killed all those men from behind, unawares. Face to face I ain’t scared.” Herbert looked over at Tim. “You?”

“Nope.”

“Let’s get moving, then,” Marc said, and Tim and Herbert forded the river there. It was a good spot for crossing, and they managed to get the horses to the other side without much drama. They hurried up the narrow tributary’s banks at a trot, and we followed suit along the east bank of the Verdigris.

We hadn’t spoken for at least half an hour when the wind began to pick up and slow down and pick up again like the movements of a symphony; when it blew hard it was loud, whistling through the trees along the riverbank and inspiring the animals and birds to call back to it in a cacaphony from which it was possible to distinguish among others the cries of the loon, the bobcat, the whip-poor-will and the coyote.

Amidst all these sounds came, without warning, the sound of a gunshot at close range. It came so close to my shoulder that I felt the breeze as it went by, and I turned my mount around and drew my weapon. Since we were being fired upon by an unknown assailant I couldn’t understand why Marc hadn’t turned to face them. Only when he lowered his revolver and fired at me did I understand that he’d fired the first shot, but as this one hit my nag in the throat I hadn’t the leisure to contemplate it. The horse shrieked and reared, and while she was still aloft I dismounted to her right, landing hard on my shoulder. Had I done so on the customary left flank I’d likely have been crushed, because she went down with the sound of bone breaking, and let loose another horrifying whinny; after that the loudest sound was the painful, rhythmic wheezing of her failing respiration.

Hiding behind the horse’s prone body I called out to him. “What the hell, Marc,” I said, though I knew perfectly well what the hell.

Another slug hit the nag, and she shuddered and the sound of her breathing ceased, and though I didn’t want to fire I thought I’d better, in case his aim or his luck improved. I got off but one shot from my old Colt; it hit him square in the chest and knocked him right off his mount. He hit the grass beside the trail, and I came up slow, hammer pulled back. His eyes were shut but he was breathing, and the revolver was still in his hand, his fingers limp. Then his breath got ragged, until a minute or so later I couldn’t make it out any more at all.

Nausea overcame me then, and I leaned over against a tree and vomited. I had no way to get back to Cottonwood without giving Marc’s horse a good long rest, and I didn’t know where to find another.

To the northwest I heard more gunfire, maybe a dozen shots in total. I wondered if Tim and Herbert hadn’t encountered the Benders after all, and I was about to mount Marc’s horse when I heard a voice calling me from the east.

“You hold on right there, you hear me?” The voice was raucous and full of phlegm, and I turned to face a man on horseback holding what looked to me like a single-shot Springfield rifle. He was squinting as if he couldn’t quite make me out in the dark. He was fifty or so, with a drooping moustache that along with that squint made his exact expression hard to read. He was fully dressed, with a broad-brimmed white hat, and seemed wide awake despite the absurdly late—or early—hour. The barrel of his rifle was pointed at my head.

“Is that fellow lying there dead?”

“He took a shot at me,” I said.

“I don’t give a goddamn who shot at you. Now put that iron down and raise your hands where I can see ’em.” His voice was hoarser with every word, and he swallowed painfully. “You just made the mistake of killing a man on the property of a deputy sheriff.” He moved his head from side to side like a cat judging the distance to a mouse, and I deduced that his night vision was poor. “Unheel yourself or I’ll fire.”

I took off running to the south, and then turned and ran north. He fired and missed by a good ten feet, and then I charged him. “All right, mister. Don’t try and reload. Now you get down off of that beast.”

He got down off of it and I tied his wrists behind him with a length of wire to a hickory tree. He didn’t say anything until the sound of two more gunshots came from the northwest.

“You part of a posse after them killers?” he said.

“Never you mind,” I said, without thinking to ask him how he’d heard about that. “What county is this, anyway?”