Rawhide Flat Read online

  “Nothing. Just a-sitting there, watching us.”

  A short pause, then, “What’s he doing now?”

  “Shhh,” Crane hissed, irritated.

  A slow minute ticked past, then another.

  The marshal’s patience, always a brittle and uncertain thing, finally shattered into shards of anger. “Right,” he said, “I’m done. I’m gonna put a bullet into that damned spook’s belly.”

  He raised the rifle, but Sarah, peering around his waist, whispered urgently, “Wait, Gus. Look!”

  The horseman had taken a bulging sack from his saddle horn and was holding it out from his side. As Crane watched, the man opened his fingers and let the sack thud to the ground. He waved, swung his horse around and galloped away, disappearing into the distance and dark.

  After the sound of the rider’s hoofbeats faded to nothing, Crane stepped out from the arroyo. He was tense and alert, ready for anything, including the return of the horseman.

  But the silence and emptiness of the land, illuminated by the streaming moon, mocked his caution.

  He walked to the sack, stood and looked down at it. He touched it with the toe of his boot and the sack rolled. Sarah stood next to him. Bathed in ethereal moonlight, pale, delicate and blond, to Crane the girl looked as if she were something more than human, like a wood sprite come to see what was amiss in her world.

  “What’s in the sack, Gus?” she asked. “Did he leave us supplies?”

  The marshal looked at her. “Girl, I don’t think you want to see what’s in the sack,” he said.

  “It’s a head, isn’t it? Somebody’s head.”

  “I reckon it is.”

  “Then open the sack. Let’s see who it is.”

  “If I do, you’ll go all female on me and cry for your mama.”

  Sarah’s voice sounded like smoke and steel. “Try me.”

  Crane took a knee and rolled the head out of the sack. It was a human head all right: the grinning, eye-less skull of Joe Garcia.

  Chapter 14

  Crane told Sarah about Garcia and how he’d been tracking him.

  “Well, now his tracking days are done,” he said.

  “Who would do such a thing?”

  “I don’t know.” Crane looked across the fire at Sarah. “Somebody who was mighty good with a knife. Garcia’s head was cut off clean.”

  The girl shuddered. “But why bring it here?”

  “Whoever he was, he wanted me to know he’s done me a favor.”

  “But why, Gus?”

  “Beats me. I don’t know the answer to that either.”

  The marshal had made sandwiches with the last of the bacon and bread. He passed one over to the girl. “Eat, then we saddle up. It will be light soon.”

  “I wish I had some cold buttermilk.”

  “Well, I don’t have any of that. Drink coffee.”

  Crane poured coffee into a cup and handed it to Sarah. “All milk does is rot your insides.”

  For a couple of minutes the marshal sat in deep contemplation, prompting Sarah to ask, “What are you thinking about?”

  “How I wish I’d drilled that ranny. At least I’d know who he was.”

  “But he might have been a friend.”

  “I don’t have any friends.”

  “Am I not your friend?”

  Crane sighed. “Right now all you are is a nuisance—a nuisance who talks too much.”

  The girl smiled, chewing on her sandwich. “See, I knew I was your friend.”

  There was female logic at work there someplace, and the marshal didn’t attempt to follow its twists and turns. He ate his breakfast, drained his coffee cup and said, “I’ll go saddle the horse.”

  “His name is Buck.”

  “He’s only a horse.”

  Sarah chewed thoughtfully, her small mouth working. “Someday I’m going to have my own horse.”

  Rising to his feet, Crane said, “What you gonna call it?”

  “I don’t know. When I see her she’ll tell me her name.”

  “Did the buckskin tell you his name?”

  “He sure did. He said, ‘Howdy do, Sarah. My name is Buck.’ ”

  Crane shook his head and as he walked away he muttered to himself, “Great, Augustus, as if you weren’t in enough trouble, now you got yourself a talkin’ horse.”

  Crane and Sarah rode out of the arroyo just as the night shadows were fleeing long to the west, trying to escape the rising sun.

  But they were safe as yet, for there was only the promise of sun, a band of polished gold above the mountains that was setting alight the lilac and blue night colors of the sky.

  The marshal rode with the Henry across his saddle, his restless eyes alert for any movement. Sarah seemed to be asleep, swaying to the motion of the horse, her head on his back, thin arms clasped around his waist.

  After he passed Mineral Peak, Crane swung north into rolling country under a brightening sky. Ahead of him cottonwoods lined a narrow creek and a high rock rim and talus slope on the other bank reached almost to the water’s edge.

  But what attracted the marshal’s attention was the haze of smoke hanging above the tree canopy and four picketed horses standing near a thick clump of buckhorn cholla.

  Crane drew rein and studied the creek. The only movement came from the horses, a tail swishing at a fly or the stamp of a hoof. He listened into the morning but heard only the drone of flies and the soft chuckle of the creek running over its pebble bottom.

  He turned and woke Sarah. “Camp ahead,” he said. “But I don’t see anybody.”

  The girl blinked and looked over the camp. “Horses,” she said.

  “I know. I saw that much.”

  Crane gave Sarah his arm. “Climb down, girl, I’m going to take a look.” After Sarah’s feet were on the ground he looked down at her. “If you hear shooting, run away and hide someplace. If you don’t see me again, head north for Rawhide Flat.” He leaned closer to the girl. “Is that clear?”

  Sarah nodded but said nothing.

  “Good,” Crane said, watching Sarah carefully, “then it’s clear.”

  He kneed the buckskin forward and warily approached the trees. Once again he drew rein. He slid the Henry into the boot and drew his Colt. If there was shooting to be done it would be close-in work and the revolver was handier.

  When he was twenty yards from the cottonwoods, Crane yelled, “Hello the camp!”

  The horses raised their heads and pricked their ears, but there was no answering voice.

  He rode on . . . and into a camp of the dead.

  The bodies of three men were sprawled around a smoking campfire, the wood green and as yet hardly charred. A fourth man had made it all the way to the horses before he was dropped by a bullet.

  One body lay on its back, missing its head. The man’s shirt had been torn off and his black eyes had been neatly placed on his naked chest.

  Crane hoped Garcia had been dead before his eyes were gouged out.

  The other men had not been mutilated. All three were cowboys and the Rafter-T brand on the horses confirmed that they rode for Ben Hollister. Each had been cut down by a single bullet, probably by a rifle-man hidden on the rock rim on the opposite bank of the creek.

  Four shots, four kills. It had been first-rate work by a man well practiced in arms. The only gunman of his acquaintance Crane could bring to mind who could have accomplished the feat was Paul Masterson.

  Had Masterson been the mysterious rider back at the arroyo?

  Crane considered that unlikely. Masterson was a named gunfighter who would come right at you and never let up until you or he was dead. Skulking around in the dark as a man of mystery was not his style.

  Then if Masterson hadn’t killed these men, who had? Crane hit a blank wall. He had no idea.

  Behind him, Sarah let out a startled yip of horror, her eyes fixed on the obscene thing that had once been Joe Garcia.

  “I told you to stay away,” Crane said.

  �
��You told me to stay away if I heard shooting. I didn’t hear shooting.”

  Sarah stepped closer to the creek, staring around her. “Gus, who would do something like this?”

  The marshal shook his head. “Beats me.” He nodded toward the campfire. “The killer threw green wood on the fire. He knew I’d see the smoke and come take a look-see. I guess he wanted me to admire his handiwork.”

  Crane’s voice lowered and became almost hesitant. “Well, whoever he is, he knows his craft. By any standard what he did here was excellent work.”

  “I wouldn’t call killing four men and . . . and doing what he did to one of them . . . excellent work. More like murder.”

  “They were armed. They had their chance.” Crane looked at the girl. “I guess it all depends on your perspective. Whoever he is, he’s a first-class fighting man and out here that stands for something.”

  “Why did he cut that man’s head off and take out his eyes? He had no call to do that.”

  “It’s strange all right. But who can say why a man does what he does. I’m not walking in his boots.”

  Sarah lifted her shocked eyes to Crane’s face. “How can you be so cold-blooded about it?”

  “Goes with the badge,” the marshal said.

  On his way to the campfire Crane stepped over what was left of Garcia’s body. He picked up the coffeepot from the edge of the coals. “Still hot. Want some?”

  Sarah shook her head. She detoured wide around the bodies and stepped beside the fire.

  The marshal found a cup with an inch of cold coffee in the bottom. He threw it away, then refilled the cup from the pot. Nodding toward the horses he said, “Go pick out a mount. You can ride it back to Rawhide Flat.”

  An incredulous look crossed Sarah’s face. “But there’s a dead man over there.”

  “Sure is. But the dead can’t hurt you. Only the living can do that.”

  “After you finish your coffee you can walk me to the horses. I’m not going by myself.”

  Crane looked down at the girl from his great height. “Are you going to be a trial and a tribulation to me?”

  “I sure hope so, Gus.”

  He smiled. The girl had been orphaned, then abused, beaten, starved and worked like a slave, but her spirit had not been broken. Sarah had sand, and he liked that. He tossed his coffee on the fire and threw down the cup. “Let’s get you a hoss,” he said.

  “I like that one, the black-and-white one.”

  “It’s called a paint, and it’s sure enough a mare.”

  Sarah stroked the pony’s cheek for a long while before turning to Crane, smiling. “Her name is Koda. That’s Sioux for ‘friend.’ ”

  “How do you know that?”

  “She told me. She says she was a war pony who once belonged to a great chief of the Cheyenne nation.”

  Crane grinned. “Sarah, this pony was foaled on Ben Hollister’s range and broke in his corral. That’s his brand she’s wearing.”

  “Koda wouldn’t lie to me.”

  “All right, whatever you say.”

  “What about the dead men?” Sarah asked.

  “We’ll take them to Rawhide Flat with us. They’re Hollister’s riders. He should bury his dead.”

  “Gus, I wish we didn’t have to do that.”

  “Well, that’s the way it’s going to be.”

  “There are four bodies and only three horses. You don’t want me to—”

  “The big bay over there can carry Garcia and somebody else. Now he’s lost his head, Joe don’t weigh near as much.”

  The girl looked strangely at Crane, but only to say, “Gus, sometimes you sound hard . . . way too hard and uncaring.”

  The marshal opened his mouth to speak, but Sarah held up a small, silencing hand. “I know, it goes with the badge. But it doesn’t have to.”

  Chapter 15

  The effect of last night’s windstorm on Rawhide Flat was evident everywhere.

  As he and Sarah rode into town under an unblinking sun, Crane passed a store that was canted over at an impossible angle and leaned against an adjoining building like a drunk against a wall.

  The entire roof of Paddy Sullivan’s Saloon had been blown clean off, and a squad of workmen was already cannibalizing its intact timbers to build a replacement. The rhythmic racket of their hammers sounded like a kettledrum.

  Store signs had been blown away and their orphaned chains swayed forlornly in the breeze. Windows were broken up and down the street and over by the station most of the cattle pens were a tangle of wreckage.

  The Texas Belle was untouched. An idler sitting in a rocker on the porch saw the big marshal ride in and immediately sprang to his feet and ducked inside. Ben Hollister, flanked by a couple of his men, appeared a few moments later.

  Crane sat his horse at the hitching rail and waited for whatever Hollister had to say.

  The rancher’s cold eyes swept the dead men, lingering longer on the headless body of Joe Garcia. His gaze moved to Crane. “You?”

  “Not me. I don’t know who did the killing.” He eased himself in the saddle, the leather creaking. “Whoever it was presented me with Garcia’s head in a sack.”

  “You saw him?”

  “At a distance. It was dark and he never got close.”

  Seeing the question in Hollister’s eyes, Crane briefly described the events at the arroyo and his discovery of the bodies earlier that morning.

  “I’d say you got an enemy you didn’t even know you had, Hollister,” he concluded.

  The rancher stepped off the boardwalk and walked through clouds of fat, buzzing flies and looked into the swollen blue faces of the three dead punchers. The sweet stench of death hung in the air and a thick string of coagulated blood hung from Garcia’s severed neck.

  Disgust on his face, Hollister turned to the men on the porch. “Take these men to Simeon Pearl and tell him to get them ready for burying. I’ll come later.”

  The rancher waited until the cowboys and a couple of other volunteers led away the horses and their terrible burdens. Then, as though noticing her for the first time, he said to Crane, “Who’s the girl?”

  “She’s an orphaned stray who wandered into my camp last night. Her name is Sarah and she was fostered by a couple of Reuben Stark’s followers but ran away after the old man told her he planned to jump the broom with her.”

  “Can’t say as I blame her,” Hollister said. “She’s a tad young for him.” He looked at Sarah more closely. “Skinny little thing, ain’t she?”

  “She hasn’t been eating too well in recent years,” Crane said.

  “Settin’ one of my horses, though.”

  “Her name is Koda,” Sarah said. “That means friend in Sioux. You can have her back if you promise to be kind to her.”

  “And your first name’s Sarah. What’s your last name?” Hollister asked.

  “I don’t know. I was very young when my folks died. I’ve been in foster homes since I can’t remember when.”

  “And you ended up with old Reuben’s bunch, huh?”

  “Yes. He’s an awful man. He’s mean and unkind and he beats people.”

  Hollister shrugged. “I can’t argue with that.” He looked at Crane. “You catch up with him?”

  The marshal shook his head. “No, I never did. But I will.” He turned to Sarah. “Climb off that horse and tie it to the hitching rail.”

  Hollister waved a negligent hand. “Keep the pony and welcome. It was one of John Smith’s string and he don’t have use for it anymore.”

  Crane was surprised. “That’s white of you, Hollister.”

  “Hell, it’s a twenty-dollar pony.” He shrugged. “It’s nothing. Besides, the girl gave the hoss a name and I’d never remember it.”

  The marshal made a mental note to himself that if he ever gunned Hollister he’d remember his gesture toward Sarah and shoot him where it hurt the least.

  And that time might be right now.

  “Think carefully before you answer t
his, Hollister. Is Paul Masterson alive or dead?”

  “No need to think. He’s alive.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Why, he’s in the sheriff’s office where he should be. Got his tin star pinned to his shirt, content as a coon dog lyin’ next to a warm fire.”

  “What happened?”

  “Why don’t you ask him your ownself?”

  Crane looked along the street to the jail. “I will,” he said. He turned his eyes back to the rancher. “Hollister, I told you the truth about what happened to your men. How’s that sitting with you right about now?”

  “I can tell when a man’s lying to me. You were telling it straight.”

  “Mighty strange turn of events, though, huh?”

  “Yeah, mighty strange.”

  Ben Hollister’s face was like stone.

  “Well, look what the cat drug in.”

  “I could say the same thing about you, Paul.”

  “Surprised?”

  “You could say that.” Crane looked toward the door to the cells. “Is Walsh back there?”

  “Judah Walsh is dead.”

  “I don’t understand. I mean, what happened?” Masterson smiled, sitting back, his boots on the table. “Before I answer that, shouldn’t you introduce me to your young lady friend?”

  “This is Sarah. She wandered into my camp last night.” For the second time that afternoon, Crane told what had happened at the arroyo and his run-in with the mysterious horseman.

  “For a spell there I thought he might have been you,” he said.

  Masterson shook his head. “Not me, though I would probably have ended up putting a bullet in Joe Garcia eventually. The man annoyed me.” His eyes moved to Sarah’s worn shift. “Is that rag all you’ve got to wear, girl?”

  “I don’t have any clothes, Sheriff, just this. I used to have a pretty calico dress but I outgrew it and they wouldn’t buy me another.”

  “Your foster parents you mean?”

  “They weren’t parents in any sense, just a couple of nasty people who wanted a servant girl.”

  Masterson’s eyes lifted to Crane. “Gus, look at her. The girl needs some new women’s fixin’s.”