The Circuit Rider (5 page)

T
he minute she peeked into the cabin, a chill
shot through Bird’s body.

Without a thought, both guns were in her hands.

The place stank of filthy men, rotting food, and
smoke.

Her eyes quickly adjusted to the dim light and she ducked
in through the doorway.

The cabin was empty. She holstered her left gun,
but kept the other in her right.

A long narrow table, poorly built and sagging,
dominated the room. On it was a picked-over rabbit carcass, along with several
empty whiskey bottles. Three bedrolls took up one side of the cabin, a rusty,
sagging potbellied stove the other.

None of the furnishings held any interest for Bird,
though.

What caught her eye were the walls.

More accurately, what was
on
the walls.

Drawings.

Sketches.

Ripped-out pages from a book tacked on to the wall.

Most of the imagery seemed to be of the Devil in
all of his various incarnations. Some of them were animal in form, others more
human, albeit with horns.

There were also crude sexual drawings.

And pentagrams.

Lots and lots of upside-down pentagrams.

“You bastard!” a voice shouted behind her, and then
Bird heard the sound of wood smacking flesh.

She walked back outside and saw Hockings, holding a
long piece of firewood, standing over the man Bird had shot. A fresh blood
smear streaked the length of the wood.

“Let me ask you a question,” she said to the man on
the ground, now sporting a huge gash along his forehead.

“What’s your name?” Bird asked.

“Paulson.”

“Well, Paulson, you’ve got a choice. I can let Mr.
Hockings here beat you to death, or you can tell me exactly what happened
between you, Flom, Ike Daniels, and Toby Raines.”

Paulson shook his head. “I’m dead either way. Raines
will kill me.”

“That’s right, so you’ve got nothing to gain by
keeping secrets from us. Just spill your guts, or we’ll spill them for you.”

Paulson blinked, and Bird worried he might pass out.
The man wiped away the blood seeping into his eyes. His chin sank to his
chest.

“Ike and Nancy liked to come out here and get drunk
and do it, you know?” he said.

Bird heard Hockings gasp behind her.

“Sometimes, she’d let us join in.”

“Bullshit!” Hockings said and lunged at Paulson. Bird
held the man back.

“Then one night, this Raines shows up out of the
blue. Things got really weird then. He had these crazy potions that made you
see weird things, and he said he was in contact with the Devil.”

Paulson licked his lips. “Nancy fell in love with
him, which pissed Ike off. Then Raines said rather than fighting over her, they
should just kill her. So that’s what they did.”

“Any idea where Raines went?” she said.

“No, he just disappeared after we . . . after they
killed the girl.”

Bird stepped back and turned to Hockings.

“He’s all yours.”

P
rescott’s General Store was at the end of Green
Spring’s Main Street. By Mike Tower’s estimation it was a humble enterprise as
far as most general stores went.

He had gone in to talk to the owner about setting
up a Mass for the town. A vigil of sorts for the slain Nancy Hockings. But
while he waited in line behind two women ahead of him talking at great length
about fabric, a voice rose from the street.

“The preacher in there?” someone shouted.

Tower left his place in line and stepped outside.

Ike Daniels stood in the street, with two other men
who hung far back.

“Need to talk to you for a minute,” Daniels said.

Tower looked at the men behind Daniels, then finally
let his gaze rest on Ike.

“And who are you?”

“Ike Daniels,” he said with a laugh. “Not sure I
ever had to tell anyone my name before!”

Tower ignored the joke. He studied Daniels, saw the
arrogance in his stance, the cocksure confidence in his eyes. He also saw the
man’s inner doubt. Tower had spent years perfecting his ability to judge other
men. He was pretty sure he knew what Ike Daniels was made of.

“Why don’t we take a walk,” Daniels said, his voice
a little less certain. Tower could see his silence was bothering Daniels.

Tower stepped down into the street and met Daniels
face to face.

“Not much in the mood for a walk, to be honest,”
Tower said. “What is it you need?”

Daniels laughed. “Not very accommodatin’ for a
preacher, got to say,” he said.

Tower didn’t laugh. Or smile. He read the lack of
character in the face of Ike Daniels. Tower had met many, many men like this
one. Weak, except when it comes to people who are even weaker.

“Fine, we’ll talk right here,” Daniels said, as if
the decision was solely his. “So, I know you’re busy spreadin’ the Word of God and
all that good stuff, but I prayed to the Lord and asked him when you might be
leavin’ town.”

The men behind Daniels were close enough to hear,
and they snickered.

“And you know what? The Good Lord actually spoke to
me! He said you’d be dragging your sorry hide and that drunken whore of yours
out of town tonight!” Daniels said, a big smile on his face. “Yes, sir. Straight
from the Lord’s lips. What’s that make me, some kinda angel? Or a prophet? Ooh,
I like that. The book of Ike Daniels, man of the cloth!”

Daniels was playing to his little crowd, and Tower
was running out of patience.

“Did He tell you to beat Nancy Hockings, too?”
Tower said.

He watched the smiles fall from the faces of Daniels’
men. Ike himself seemed to take a step back.

“What was that, Preacher? Not sure I heard you
right,” Daniels said, the bravado now gone from his voice.

Tower stepped closer to Daniels so they were inches
apart.

“I think you heard me just fine,” Tower said. He
felt the old anger rise inside him and he tried to tamp it down, but the heat
was radiating through his body.

“I asked you, Did God tell you to smack around Nancy
Hockings? Or was that something you just felt entitled to do?”

Daniels glanced down at Tower’s hips.

“You’re lucky you ain’t carryin’ a gun, otherwise
you’d be meeting your precious Maker right about now,” Daniels said. His face
was flushed with the knowledge he was being humiliated in front of his men.

“You’re lucky you’re carrying yours right now,”
Tower said. “Otherwise I’d give you a taste of what you’ve given Nancy, and who
knows how many other young women?”

Daniels’s face went rigid.

“Yeah, I figured that would scare you,” Tower said.
“I’m a man. Fighting girls is more your style.”

Daniels fumbled at the buckle of his gun belt,
unhooked it, and let it fall to the ground.

He swung from the hip. It was meant to be a surprise
punch, but Tower saw it coming.

He caught the punch under his left arm and threw
his own right, not from the hip. Instead, it was a short, brutal punch that
Tower added leverage to by redirecting the force of Daniels’ own strike.

Tower’s fist connected with the chin of Ike Daniels,
and Tower saw the man’s eyes roll back into his head and he went limp.

Tower let him sink to his knees, then, with Daniels’s
arm still trapped, he corkscrewed his body and felt Daniels’s arm break.

The snap was audible and the pain briefly brought
Ike Daniels around, long enough for him to moan.

His men surged forward to help their boss, and Mike
Tower turned his back on them.

And then he walked away.

A
dust devil welcomed Bird Hitchcock back into the
small town of Green Spring. The miniature cyclone seemed to come out to greet
her, Clyde Hockings, and the two horses, each carrying a dead man.

A few people came out of the saloons and stores to
watch the procession as it made its way to the sheriff’s office.

Hockings, by prior agreement with Bird, left the
group and headed home.

Dundee wasn’t at the sheriff’s office, so she tied
the two horses with the dead men to the nearest rail and headed to the saloon
for a drink.

There were more people in the place this time, Bird
noted, as she walked to the bar.

“Give me some of that good stuff . . . the whiskey
Van Osdol drinks,” she said to the bartender.

She took out some of the money the lawyer had paid
her in advance and set it on the bar.

When the bottle came, she drank three straight
shots in a row, each filled to the brim. The scalding welcome of the booze
filled her stomach and she felt an eerie calm seep through her body.

She was reaching for the bottle again when a hand
tried to cover hers. Instantly the muzzle of her gun was firmly planted beneath
the chin of the man who had suddenly appeared behind her.

“Easy now,” Van Osdol said.

Bird holstered her gun. “Does your brain realize
how close it came to becoming a part of the chandelier?” she said.

The attorney laughed.

“Pretty close, I believe,” he said.

He filled Bird’s glass, signaled the bartender to
bring another, and then filled his own. He raised his glass in a toast.

“To the end of Corey Flom,” he said. “Your little
parade couldn’t be missed.”

She raised her glass. “And to the prompt payment of
my remaining fifty dollars,” Bird added.

They each tossed back their drink.

“A job well done,” Van Osdol said, handing Bird the
second fifty dollars.

Bird nodded and tucked the money into her pocket. “How
about a bonus for his buddy? Do you know if he helped kill that little girl? You
know, the five-year-old you said Flom murdered?”

Van Osdol shook his head.

“No, I’m positive that was Corey Flom all by
himself.”

Attorneys are the best liars, Bird knew. And Van
Osdol was lying through his perfect teeth. The cabin had been a setup, she knew
that. Raines had wanted Bird out there, and hoped that Flom and Paulson would
kill her.

“Hey,” Bird said. “They find her body yet? That
little girl’s? Five years old, you said?”

A look of grief came across the attorney’s face. “No
such luck. And I get the feeling the authorities aren’t looking all that hard,”
he said. His voice filled with sadness and disgust. “She was the child of a
whore, and the whore is gone. No one cares.”

“Except you,” Bird said.

Van Osdol shrugged his shoulders. “Only me.”

Bird glanced around the saloon. Everyone seemed
intent on what they were doing; drinking, playing cards, or negotiating with a prostitute.

She stepped away from the bar, made a cross-hand draw,
and smashed the gun into the side of Van Osdol’s temple.

He sank to the floor.

Bird hopped over Van Osdol’s body so she faced the
room and the bartender, who had moved to the end of the bar.

She slapped Van Osdol until his eyes opened.

Bird put the muzzle of the gun against the man’s
temple and cocked the hammer.

It was the only sound in the entire saloon.

“Listen you filthy sonofabitch, I know there was no
girl,” Bird said, her voice calm and measured. “There is no body, and there is
no whore that left town. Toby Raines paid you to hire me to go out to Flom’s
place, foolishly hoping those two jackasses would take care of me. I want to
know where he is, and I want to know now.”

Van Osdol made some dry clicking sounds in his
mouth before he was finally able to speak.

“He . . . he didn’t, he didn’t tell me where he was
going,” he gasped. “But he may have mentioned to someone else that he was possibly
heading toward Lincoln. Nebraska.”

Blood ran down the side of the attorney’s face, and
the eye nearest the point of impact with Bird’s gun began to cloud with pink
fluid.

She slid the muzzle of the gun to the lawyer’s
injured eye. She pushed it underneath the eyelid he tried to clench together,
then ground it firmly against his bare eyeball.

Van Osdol squirmed.

“Always a pleasure doing business with an officer
of the courts,” Bird said. She stood and hauled Van Osdol to his feet.

“Please,” he said.

Bird pistol-whipped him again.

He dropped to the floor, out cold.

Bird snatched the bottle of whiskey from the bar,
tipped her hat to the bartender, and left.