Killer's Draw: The Circuit Rider (13 page)

Tower went back to the hotel and debated about opening the
envelope from Martha Jeffire. But instead, he collected the papers that Silas
had given him regarding Bertram Egans and set out for Mrs. Wolfe’s
Boardinghouse. Now that he was done with them, he wanted to return the letters
to Evelyn Egans as soon as possible. Maybe they would help bring some sort of
closure for the woman until the murderer of her son was brought to justice.

He crossed the street, passed the Conway brothers’ law
office, when just ahead of him a door opened. Tower stepped aside as Evelyn
Egans emerged from the Big River Land Office. She seemed startled by the sight
of him.

“Oh!” she said. “Sorry for almost hitting you with the
door.”

“Actually, it was a stroke of luck. I was looking for you,”
he said.

“I was heading back to my room …”

“This won’t take more than a minute or two,” he said.

They sat down on a bench near the door, and Tower handed the
thick bundle of paper to her.

“This is what Silas gave me when he asked me to look into
the murder of your son,” Tower said. “It’s a collection of papers that includes
letters from you to Silas, as well as some of the original documents Bertram
supplied upon his application to the church. I think you should have them.”

“Oh, dear,” she said. Tower watched as she held the papers,
running a hand over the surface with reverence and glancing at the first few
pages inside.

“They were fairly informative to me,” Tower said, “and helped
me get off to a quick start in the investigation. But obviously, I’ve still got
a lot of work to do in finding out what happened.”

“Are you sure you don’t need them anymore?” Mrs. Egans asked.
“I mean, I’m not sure if they will bring me any comfort. In fact, they might do
just the opposite.” Her shoulders sagged and she looked away from Tower.  

“No, I’ve gleaned everything I can. And any information that
I for certain wanted to remember I copied down. These are yours. I think
Bertram would have wanted you to have them.”

She nodded, lifted the papers in her arm, and held them
against her chest. She then stood and turned directly to Tower.

“Thank you for these,” she said. “Now I will—”

“Rose Sutton! I’ll be damned!”

Tower and Evelyn Egans both turned to see a cowboy, older in
years but wearing the chaps and spurs of a working drover, standing in the
street looking at them with a huge grin on his face.

“Rosie! It’s me! Hank Durfen from Dodge City!”

Tower turned to Mrs. Egans. Her face was rigid.

“I’m sorry but you have me confused with someone else,” she
said.

The drover looked at her out of the corner of his eye.

“I don’t think so, ma’am. Your cabaret show last year was
the highlight of my life!” he practically guffawed. “Especially, when you
personally thanked me for tossing out some unruly fans. I’d recognize that
pretty face of yours anywhere!”

“I’m sorry, sir, but you are mistaken,” she said, then
turned to Tower.

“I’m afraid I’m very uncomfortable and will be going now.”

She walked away, her heels banging so hard on the wooden boards
they sounded like rifle shots.

The old cowboy looked at Tower.

“I’ll be damned! And I haven’t even started drinking yet!”

Bird stood in front of the pictures of Big River Club
members and shook her head. What was it with men needing to endlessly honor
each other? Why couldn’t they just do what had to be done and leave it at that?
Deeds done throughout your life earned their own honor, good or bad. Take Bird,
for instance. She’d never once sought out fortune or fame but it—or maybe it
was infamy—had found her.

Another tintype caught her eye. Among a group of about a
dozen men—all armed to the teeth—was Ronald Hale, or as she now knew him to be,
Martin Branson. What had they been, a posse? Bird recognized Mr. Parker, and
the two attorney brothers Tower had pointed out. She looked for any more
information, but it was a display of bravado and weaponry, not much else.

Bird went back to the bar and ordered another whiskey and a
beer from the young bartender.

“Did you like our picture gallery?” the bartender asked. “The
club is very proud of it. It’s the biggest collection of those newfangled
things in the whole state.”

Bird could tell he liked her and was trying to impress her,
and not just because of her reputation. She decided to use his obvious interest
to her advantage.

“Very impressive,” she said. “What’s the story behind everyone carrying five or six guns
apiece, posing like they’d just captured a passel of outlaws?”

“Oh, that one,” the bartender said. Bird noticed a slight
change in his demeanor. He suddenly seemed unsure of himself. “They were just
having fun in that one. You know, dressing up for the camera, that kind of
thing.”

Bird knew a lie when she heard it, but she moved on.

“I had no idea my old friend Martin Branson lived here in
Big River,” she said. “We punched cows together one summer back in Texas. He’s
as tough as old saddle leather.”

“You know Branson?” the bartender asked. His friendly demeanor
was back and he sounded slightly relieved now that she’d steered the
conversation away from the picture. “He was one of the founders of this club. Wish
he’d stop in more often. He’s always got a few tall tales to tell.”

“I miss those stories,” Bird said. “He always said he wanted
to start breeding horses. Did he ever make that dream come true?”

“Horses?” the bartender asked. “No, he never said anything
about horses. He had a ranch but he sold it to Mr. Parker for a lot of money. He
negotiated a small cabin at the western end of the range where he runs a few
head, mostly for beef and spending money. Mr. Parker really made it worth his
while to sell. He’s a lucky man, really carved out a nice life for himself.”

Bird drank the whiskey and then chugged the beer.

“Thank you for the conversation,” she said.

“I’ll tell Branson you said hello,” the bartender offered.

“I appreciate it, but I expect he and I will be crossing
paths sooner than later.”

“Absolutely,” Morrison said. “My space is yours.”

Tower stood with the church secretary in the narrowly
confined but functional church office. For some reason, his instinct had told
him not to study Jeffire’s information in his hotel room. And the only office
he knew of where he would be welcomed was Walter Morrison’s.

“Thank you, I appreciate it,” he said.

“Does this have to do with your investigation?”

“Maybe, maybe not.” Tower saw no reason in getting anyone’s
hopes up, least of all his own.

Morrison provided Tower with paper and writing implements, then
showed him where a small coffee pot was located should he need something to
help him with his analysis.

He sat down, opened the folder, and pulled out the sheaf of
papers.

It was much thinner than he thought it would be. Apparently,
some of the thickness had been the envelope, not the contents inside.

The first sheet contained about a page full of neat, tight script
that appeared masculine to his eye. Tower figured it was Jeffire’s own hand.

The entire thing was in quotations, with a heading that read
“Parker speech.”

Tower read the undated transcript. It had to do with the
threat of cattle rustling on the future prosperity of Big River.

The main thrust of Parker’s speech seemed to Tower to be a
call for ordinary citizens to share in the responsibility of the town’s future.
One sentence in particular had been underlined:  “I hereby establish a
community protocol; that being the absolute necessity of every individual to
do whatever is necessary, to take whatever action the situation calls for,
whether it’s peaceful or violent, to protect each other’s lives, businesses,
and property.”

Tower finished reading the rest of the speech, which
amounted to a long, highly optimistic vision for the future of Big River.

The second paper was a newspaper clipping from the
Pennsylvania
Inquirer
. The brief article described the arrest of a prostitute named
Francine Pascal who had been running a house of ill repute. Local authorities were
reported to have shut down the business and arrested her.

The third piece was another, shorter article that simply
stated Francine Pascal had been released from prison and her whereabouts were
unknown.

That was it. Tower picked up the thick envelope and shook it
to make sure there was nothing else inside.

There wasn’t.

Tower shook his head.

As had been the case all along, his investigation was
raising more questions than it was providing answers.

He hoped that trend would reverse.

And soon.

The western edge of the Parker ranch would not be a particularly
small chunk of real estate, Bird knew. People in town deferred to him as if he
owned most of Big River. She wondered how Sheriff Chesser was doing with the
investigation into Mrs. Parker’s murder. Not very well, she guessed. Something
told her, though, that the entire town was looking for the woman’s killer,
while she and Tower were the sole investigators of Bertram Egans’ killing.

The Appaloosa picked her way up a rocky incline and they
topped out on a rise overlooking an immense valley. Word was the Parker Ranch
comprised some twenty-thousand head of cattle and well more than quintuple that
in acreage.

She knew that the south end of his ranch was established by
a thin ridgeline called Bison Ridge that funneled down to the western edge
where it met Sweetwater Creek. It took her most of the morning to find where
the two landforms met, and then she turned north, ranging back and forth as she
made her way up the edge of the ranch.

Several hours later, she heard screams.

Bird brought her horse to a stop, and together they waited. She
could tell the sounds weren’t human and since they were in the middle of cattle
country, she assumed they were cows. But she’d occasionally worked as a ranch
hand and knew how everything worked, from branding to castrating to birthing,
and she could tell that these weren’t the normal bawling of cattle. This was
something much more painful.

She nudged the Appaloosa ahead. They climbed a low hill and crossed
the summit, from where Bird spotted a weathered log cabin sitting in a lonesome
canyon. A few hundred yards from the cabin, a man had a roaring fire going, and
Bird could see the branding irons being heated in the center of the flames. Beyond
the fire, a holding corral with driftwood logs serving as fence railings penned
in a few dozen cattle.

A cow was on the ground, with the man leaning over its
haunch, burning a brand into its side.

But the way he was doing it told Bird a different story. As
she watched, he got off the cow, undid the rope, and kicked the cow repeatedly until
it got to its feet. As the cow stood, its legs shaking, the man kicked it
again.

Bird ground her teeth together. The West had never been a
place that held humane treatment of animals to a high standard. The fact was,
cowboys were some of the cruelest men she’d ever met when it came to animals.

She rode down to the fire, making no pretense as to her
intentions. The man turned upon her approach and Bird recognized the man who
had called himself Ronald Hale, but whose name was most likely Martin Branson.

Bird saw him glance over to the log cabin where a Winchester
leaned near the door.

Too far away now.

“Well hello, Mr. Hale. Or should I say, Mr. Branson?”

“I suggest you leave my property right now if you know
what’s good for you,” he said. He looked Bird directly in the eye, then glanced
away at the rifle.

“Awfully far away, isn’t it?” Bird asked.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“You can start by telling me why you’re torturing these
cattle.”

“It’s called branding, you stupid bitch,” he said.

A coolness filled Bird’s belly. She had clearly
underestimated the creature standing before her and she now looked at Martin
Branson in a new light.

She swung down from the Appaloosa and approached him. Behind
him, the cattle stood nervously, perturbed by the smell of the fire and the
screams. Most of them pressed against the opposite side of the fence, as far
away as they could get from Branson and the smell of smoke.

“Branding, huh?” she asked. “That’s what you call it?”

A sneer crossed Branson’s face. “What, is the famous Bird Hitchcock
going to shoot me because I lied to her?”

“Why did you go through that whole charade?” she asked. “I’m
curious. And you did it with such gusto—you really got into the part, didn’t
you?”

Branson sighed like he was tired of the conversation.

Bird drew her gun and shot him in the foot.

Branson screamed, toppled onto his back, and writhed on the
ground. Bird walked past him, found the rope he’d used to tie up the cow, picked
it up, went back to Branson, and kicked him in the ribs.

He howled, one hand on his ribs, the other trying to reach
his bloody foot.

Bird used her boot to roll him onto his stomach and then put
a knee in his back and tied his arms behind him. He struggled against her, but
she ground her knee directly into his spine, then stepped back and kicked him
in the ribs again, this time hard enough to flop him onto his back.

“He’s going to kill you, you dirty whore!” Branson yelled. Flecks
of foam were on his lips, and his face was red. The leg with the damaged foot
was twitching.

“Dirty whore?” Bird asked. “I resent that as I bathe
regularly and take pride in my appearance.”

Bird went to the fire, pulled out one of the branding irons,
studied the glowing red tip, and walked back to Martin Branson.

“No!” he shouted.

“It’s called branding, you stupid bitch,” she said and then jammed
the tip of the brand into the side of Branson’s face.

He screamed again, and struggled to get to his feet. Bird
stepped back and kicked him in the face, her boot catching the tip of his jaw
and snapping his head back.

Branson plopped back onto the ground.

He was whimpering.

“Who hired you to come to the hotel and tell me that Bertram
Egans killed your daughter? You know, the daughter that doesn’t actually exist.”

Branson let out an incoherent string of words that may or
may not have included curse words.

Bird stepped around him, spotted the burn wound on his face,
and kicked him square on the damaged flesh. The toe of her boot caught and
pulled a chunk of charred meat out of his cheek.

“It’s called telling the truth, you dirty whore,” Bird said.

“You’re going to kill me anyway,” he said. Tears streamed
down his face and gobs of spit hung from his lips.

“You’re a real mess, Mr. Branson. But I’m probably not going
to kill you, even though you deserve it. I may just spare your life, on one
condition,” Bird said. “As long as you tell me the name. I just want one name.”

Branson stopped squirming, went still, and finally gave her
the name.

Bird walked to the cabin, took the Winchester, then went to
the makeshift corral and freed all of the animals. Then she kicked dirt over
the fire and heaved the branding irons into the trees behind the cabin.

She walked back to Branson, jacked a shell into the
Winchester’s chamber, and put the muzzle next to his temple.

“You know how I said I wouldn’t kill you?”

He didn’t answer.

She pulled the trigger.

“You’re not the only one who can act.”