Firestick, p.14
Firestick, page 14
“Now . . . real, real slow, keeping those hands where I can see ’em at all times . . . unbuckle your gun belt and toss it over here toward me,” Brody instructed. “After that, the knife . . . I’ve heard all the stories about how good you’re supposed to be with that thing.”
Slowly, grudgingly, his mind racing with thoughts of trying something reckless while better sense restrained him in the face of the unwavering gun muzzle, Beartooth complied with the instructions. Once his gun belt and bowie knife had been discarded, he grated, “Now what?”
Reaching into his hip pocket with his free hand, Brody withdrew a set of handcuffs and held them out for Beartooth to see. “Now these. I saw them lying in your washroom earlier, then helped myself to ’em when I went back saying I forgot something. Once you invited yourself to take this ride with me, I figured they’d come in handy.” He gave the cuffs a toss so that they hit the ground and skidded close to Beartooth’s knee. “I expect you know how they work. So stand up and clamp one bracelet around the bay’s front rigging dee and the other one on your right wrist. Reckon you won’t be making no sudden moves after that, not if you gotta drag along a horse in order to do it.”
“You go to hell, you snot-nosed pup! I ain’t gonna put those irons on for nobody,” snarled Beartooth.
“Your choice,” Brody said coldly. “If you don’t cooperate, I’ll have to shoot you, then go back to the ranch and put the cuffs on that pretty Miss Victoria instead. That was my original plan, to take her hostage for what I got in mind. But then, like I said before, when you insisted on riding out here with me, I decided you would work just as well.”
“You’re a cold-blooded little bastard, ain’t you?”
“You can call me names all you want, but it don’t change nothing,” Brody said in a flat tone. “I’m really not out to hurt anybody. But if you force me to, I will.”
More than the threat of being shot himself, the potential for harm coming to Victoria drove Beartooth to once again comply with what he was told to do. He rose to his feet and fastened one of the handcuff bracelets around the saddle’s front rigging dee and then, grimacing almost as if in physical pain, he clamped the other tight around his right wrist.
Brody’s shoulders appeared to sag a bit, as some of the tension eased out of him. But the gun remained steady. “I’m glad you had the good sense not to make me shoot you,” he said.
“Don’t expect me to return the favor if I ever get the chance,” Beartooth responded. “Now, what the hell is this all about?”
“Money. Like I told you right from the get-go. And I don’t mean the piddly wage you offered to pay me. I mean more than that—a lot more.”
Beartooth continued to glare at him, but said nothing.
“What I’ve got in mind is simple,” Brody went on. “When I ducked back into that washroom before we left, I did something else besides grab those handcuffs. I left a note where one of your vaqueros or somebody will be sure to find it. It’s a ransom note with demands for your safe return. I already had it written and in my pocket, I just had to scratch out Miss Victoria’s name and replace it with yours. Like I said a minute ago, my original plan was to kidnap her for the ransom. I figured after I’d worked for you for a couple of days and nobody was paying much attention to me, it’d be easy to find a chance to grab her and do what I’m doing now. You sticking your nose in and insisting on riding out with me today just gave me a chance to set things in motion a little quicker.”
“Does your ma know about this? Is she part of it?”
“She’s part of it. But not in the way you mean—not no part of planning this or knowing anything about what I’m up to.” Brody’s mouth pulled briefly into a tight, straight line before he continued. “She never did care much about what I was thinking or what my plans might be. Owen was always her favorite. Since he’s been gone, everything I told you about how she’s been acting all dull and not giving a rip about anything was true. But I aim to make her take notice of me and my plans and end up proud of me.”
“Yeah, I can see where turnin’ outlaw will make her take notice of you,” Beartooth said dryly. “But unless she’s got the same twisted way of lookin’ at things as you seem to, I don’t see how she’ll find much pride in it.”
“Don’t you worry about that,” Brody snapped. “My ransom demands, see, ain’t about money for me. Before I turn you loose, I’m gonna want to be shown papers, all legal and binding, that say Ma’s farm is paid off clean, with taxes covered for the next five years. And I’ll also make sure there’s a statement swearing she’ll get no blame on account of what I’ve done.”
Beartooth could see a new burst of intensity flaring in the lad’s eyes now, but couldn’t decide if it was a touch of madness or just desperation to try and please his mother. “Then what?” he demanded. “Even if you get all those things, after this kind of stunt, there’s no way in hell anybody’s gonna let you just walk away free.”
Brody shook his head. “Don’t expect ’em to. I’ll ride off and see to my own freedom.”
“They’ll hunt you down. I’ll hunt you down.”
“You can try. There’s hundreds of young fellas drifting across the Southwest. I’m betting I got a good chance of blending in somewhere and settling where you or nobody else will ever catch up with me.”
“And what about your ma? You’re ready to never see her again?” Beartooth asked, trying a different angle.
Brody’s gaze turned flinty. “I’ll have done right by her. That’ll have to do. She never cared that much about me anyway. And I sure ain’t gonna miss workin’ that blamed farm . . . So, leaving things the way I figure to leave ’em will have to do.”
A sudden lifting of wind—dry and warm, like a last gasp of the day coming ahead of the evening coolness that would soon be upon them—swept over the rolling, grassy hills on all sides. It stirred Beartooth’s thoughts, made him consider something that, for the past tense moments, had been shoved aside in his mind.
“Now, looky here, boy,” he said earnestly. “I’m fixin’ to tell you something that you’ll likely take as hogwash, some kind of trick I’m lookin’ to pull on you. But I’m serious as a gravestone, and you need to pay close attention.”
Brody gave him a look. “All that talk leading up to it only makes me more suspicious about whatever it is you’re gonna say.”
“Reckon in your place, I’d think the same,” Beartooth admitted. “But I’m gonna lay it on you anyway. Think about why I was so pushy about ridin’ out with you when you were ready to leave the Double M a little while ago. Didn’t really make much sense no matter what I claimed, did it? So, here’s a reason that does make sense, even though I didn’t want to say it flat-out on account of I couldn’t then—and still can’t—be sure.”
“Whatever you got to say, I wish you’d just spit it out. We got ground we need to cover before nightfall.”
“Okay, here it is: I got reason to suspect that a pack of Apache raiders has showed up in our valley. My two partners went out checkin’ for signs, to make sure, before we spread the word and riled everybody up. Since I hadn’t heard anything back from ’em yet by the time you were ready to head out, I was concerned about you ridin’ alone and maybe fallin’ prey to ’em. I was thinkin’ about your ma bein’ alone at the farm, too. I wanted the chance to get out and look things over, do the best I could to satisfy myself that you two would be safe in case there was something stirrin’.”
The flintiness came back into Brody’s eyes. “Mister, when you started out by saying I was gonna think you was spewing hogwash, you said it all. Ain’t no Apaches around here for a hunnerd miles, ain’t been for years.”
“Don’t be so sure about that, boy. Was a fella saw some things last night that—”
“Enough!” Brody cut him off. “I ain’t got time to waste on no more hogwash. Like I said, we got ground to cover.”
“That’s the point I’m tryin’ to make,” Beartooth told him. “Dusk is one of the favorite times for an Apache to prowl and strike. If we’re gallopin’ around out here in the wide open and there are any bucks in the area, they could swarm us like flies to a spilled jelly jar.”
“That’s a mighty big ‘if’ and an even bigger lie you’re trying to cloud my thinking with.” Brody made a thrusting motion with his Colt. “You’re gonna be riding my bay since you’re already chained to the saddle, so climb on up. It’ll be a mite awkward for you, cuffed the way you are, but you’re supposed to be a horseman so you’ll manage. Once you’re mounted, you’ll be bent over kinda uncomfortable-like, but you’ll still be able to ride. And the first sign of you trying to take off or pull some other kind of trick, I’ll shoot you out of the saddle and you’ll be drug by the chain. Keep that in mind.”
CHAPTER 24
Sylvester Krause’s announcement that his boss had been “murdered dead” sent an excited ripple through all those gathered in the Lone Star Palace Saloon. Before Firestick was able to say anything, somebody else in the crowd hollered, “Was it Indians?”
Krause’s already frantic expression twisted with confusion. “Indians? What the hell are you talking about?”
Several of the men closest to Krause all started trying to answer at once, and the result became an indecipherable babble. Firestick bounded from the stage and, with Moosejaw bulling a path ahead of him, quickly closed the distance to Krause. Waving his arms and raising his voice to a level that cut through the babble, the marshal said, “Hold it down! Everybody shut up, damn it, so we can make some sense out of this!”
The other voices dropped to an anxious murmur.
Firestick fixed his attention strictly on Krause, a wiry man of average size, fortyish, with a sun- and wind-reddened face built around a somewhat bulbous nose and wide mouth. “Start from the beginnin’. What do you mean, Gus Wingate has been murdered?”
The distraught hired man gazed up at him with deep anguish in his eyes. “I don’t know how else to say it. He was shot in the head. Killed.”
“When?”
“Earlier this afternoon. Maybe about three hours ago. Me and Marsh, that’s the other hired man works for Mr. Gus, we was down by the creek clearing and burning brush when we heard a shot up by the house where the boss was working. We didn’t think too much of it at the time, though. We figured he was probably plunkin’ at some varmint that had come around, a snake or a rat maybe. Or maybe he was tryin’ to bag a deer or rabbit for the stew pot.”
“You heard just one shot?”
“Uh-huh.”
“But you didn’t see anything or anybody who might have had something to do with it?”
“No. We was too far away.” Krause’s expression turned mournful. “Lord, if we’d had any idea it meant something was wrong . . . especially anything so bad . . .”
“When did you find out what actually happened—what the shot did mean?”
“About an hour or so after it happened. We’d finished our burnin’ and made sure the fire was stomped out good and cold, then rode on back to the ranch house . . . And there Gus was, layin’ in plain sight over by where he’d been digging some postholes for an add-on to one of our cattle pens.”
“You said he’d been shot in the head.” Firestick frowned. “Was anything . . . else done to him?”
“What kind of question is that? Ain’t havin’ his brains blowed out bad enough?”
“If it was the work of Apaches, they’d have for sure done some hackin’ on the body,” said Moosejaw. Then he added, “Of course, they likely wouldn’t have killed him so clean to begin with. And they wouldn’t have ignored Krause and the other fella, either.”
“Apaches!” echoed Krause stridently. “What’s with all the Injun talk? What’s going on around here?”
“We’ve got an Apache raidin’ party in our valley,” Firestick told him. He made a gesture with one hand, adding, “That’s what this whole powwow is about.”
“Jesus! Why didn’t we hear about a thing like that?” Krause wanted to know.
“We were plannin’ on sendin’ out riders to spread the warning right as you showed up.”
Krause wagged his head. “Apaches . . . Lord Almighty. How much bad news can be heaped into one day?”
“The day ain’t over yet,” muttered Moosejaw.
“And the more time we spend makin’ plans and not startin’ to set some of ’em in motion, the more we risk lettin’ more bad things happen.” Firestick took a deep breath, puffed out his cheeks, and expelled it. “Look,” he said, addressing mainly his big deputy, “we’ve decided several of the right steps to take as far as the Apaches. But that don’t mean we can let Gus Wingate’s killing go without givin’ it some attention, too. So I want you to take over here, Moosejaw. Get those riders and wagons sent out. Make sure whoever goes is well armed with plenty of cartridges. Then go to work on fortifyin’ some of those weaker spots on the town’s perimeter. I shouldn’t be gone too long. I’ll take Krause with me and give things out at the ranch a good lookin’ over, see if I can make any sense out of what happened. Then I’ll be back.”
“Sounds reasonable,” agreed Moosejaw. He looked as if he wanted to say more, but held off even as his wide brow furrowed with deep creases.
“What is it?” said Firestick, knowing his big friend too well to miss or ignore the signs. “What ain’t you sayin’?”
“It’s Beartooth,” Moosejaw replied. “He’s out at the Double M with just Miguel and Jesus to side him in case any Apaches pop up out that way. And he ain’t even got word yet that me and Boynton turned up certain signs that there are Apaches on the prowl.”
“You think that ain’t weighin’ on my mind, too?” Firestick’s question was sharp, testy. “But Beartooth knows how to take care of himself—and those around him, too. And he had warnin’ about there bein’ suspicions of Injuns in the area. That’s more than most of the rest of the farmers and ranchers in the valley know right now, and it’ll be enough for Beartooth to stay sharp. It’ll have to be, until the warning riders get word to him just like everybody else. You think it would be fair for us to single him out for a special warning?”
Moosejaw shook his head. “No, I don’t reckon.”
“He’d be the first one not to want it that way. In fact, he’d be damned mad if he found out we gave him any special treatment . . . So the best thing for it is to get started with those things we’ve discussed so’s he does get word as soon as possible.”
Moosejaw squared his massive shoulders. “You’re right. But will you at least consider takin’ more than just Krause with you back to the Wingate place? You could run into trouble, too, you know. And we can’t afford for anything to happen to you.”
Firestick grinned wryly. “Trust me, I have my own interest in protectin’ my ol’ hide. But me and Krause will stay sharp. We’ll be okay.”
Krause failed to look quite so confident.
Cleve Boynton edged forward out of the crowd. “How about I go along? I won’t crowd you none, and one extra gun, one extra set of eyes, could come in handy.”
“I appreciate the offer, Boynton,” Firestick said. “But you need to carry word back to the Box T that what you saw was for certain Indians. And you heard Tolsvord, he’ll want every gun he can get to cover his spread.”
“The Dunlap brothers and Newt Woolsey can take care of getting word to Boss Tolsvord about the Apaches,” Boynton replied. “And, once they get there, the spread will be armed plenty strong. Bein’ minus my gun for another night won’t hurt ’em that bad. I can always make it out there tomorrow.”
“Sounds like a good idea to me,” Moosejaw said.
Firestick gave in. “All right. Obliged, Boynton. Go on over to Roeback’s livery and saddle yourself a fresh horse. Me and Krause will meet you there.”
CHAPTER 25
“I don’t know if this is a good idea or not,” Greely Dunlap mumbled uneasily, casting his gaze around the nearly emptied interior of the Lone Star Palace.
Everybody else had boiled out of the place several minutes before, off on some piece of business or other, all related to the news of Apaches in the valley. Greely, his brother Grady, and Newt Woolsey had lagged behind. They’d seated themselves at one of the round-topped card tables in the middle of the room and ordered up the bottle of whiskey, glasses, and three foamy mugs of beer that now sat before them. Gunther, the bald, slow-moving, tight-lipped bartender who’d remained behind to man the stick after Earl Sterling left with the others, had served them with his usual silent efficiency before retreating to a spot behind the far end of the bar.
“It tastes to me like a damn good idea,” responded his brother, Grady, after taking a big gulp from his mug of beer.
“I’ll second that,” agreed Woolsey as he raised a shot of red-eye, then tossed it down and reached for his own beer to chase it with.
But Greely didn’t look convinced. “Oh, of course the drinks taste good. No argument there. But I’m thinkin’ we might better have taken a bottle with us and done some nippin’ on the trail as we went back to the ranch.”
“The ranch will still be there even if we take time to do a little nippin’ here before we ride out. And we’ll get back to it, don’t you worry,” Grady assured him. “But sittin’ here comfortable-like to do our drinkin’ first is a helluva better than doin’ it from the back of a horse, you can’t deny that.”
“Besides,” said Woolsey as he poured himself another jolt of whiskey, “everybody and his cousin—the men who are goin’ out in wagons, the riders who are gonna spread the warnings, even our pal Boynton—went tearin’ out of here, most of ’em to claim horses at the livery. That’s where the law put our horses, too, remember. So, if we went rushin’ over there right away, we probably couldn’t get close to our nags anyway.”
“Stinkin’ law dogs,” grumbled Grady bitterly. “Something else I’d like to take time to do before we leave town is pay me a visit to that hornin’-in damn Firestick.” He absently rubbed his badly bruised jaw and swept a thumb gently over the stitches under one eye. “I owe that sumbitch a big dose of payback, and that’s for sure.”
