A Tale Out of Luck (16 page)

“So . . .” Cooper said, the wind whipping his long brown hair over his shoulder as he tucked his notepad into his vest pocket. And then, as if he had been reading Hank’s mind, he asked the obvious question: “What do you think became of the long yearling poor ol’ Wes James was branding when he suddenly began looking like a human pincushion?”

22

T
HAT’S A GOOD QUESTION
,” Hank said. “Can’t say that I know the answer.”

“Well, I’ve seen enough. I’d better get back to the city and pen my story.”

“You’ll have to go alone. I’m not quite finished here.”

“I can find my way, Captain. I paid close attention on the ride out here.”

Hank shrugged at the unexpected haste of his riding companion. “Very well, sir. I look forward to reading the article.”

Cooper smiled as he mounted the bald-faced sorrel. “I think you’ll find that you’ll be featured in it quite prominently. You’ve been a great help.” He turned and rode away, his mount switching its flaxen tail.

In reality, Hank was relieved that Cooper had left. He slipped the running iron from his left shirt sleeve, put it in his saddlebag, and turned back to the evidence at the murder site. Cooper’s question had been on his mind, too. What had become of the branded yearling?

The animal had left some tracks hightailing it off the flat summit of Shovel Mountain. The critter had not been killed and butchered—at least not at the scene of the murder. The remains of a carcass in the area would have attracted buzzards galore by now. Hank didn’t bother to trail the beef far. Those tracks were almost two days old by now. A scared yearling would find some other bovines to herd up with, and its tracks would just get mixed in with theirs until it became impossible to find.

The tracks of Wes James’s claybank horse seemed of greater importance, but Jack Brennan’s cow-hunting crew had trampled the area so thoroughly while loading the corpse in their buckboard that the claybank’s hoofprints were going to be very difficult to differentiate from the general traffic, particularly after forty-some-odd hours.

Right now, daylight was slipping away, and evidence was getting colder over on Flat Rock Creek where Major Quitman’s party had attacked the Comanches led by old Crazy Bear. Hank decided to ride straight over and have a look around, even though he knew the souvenir hunters had beaten him to the site of the skirmish.

Once he got down the rough slopes of Shovel Mountain, the way leveled off and he did some pretty tall galloping over the four miles to Flat Rock Creek. He already knew exactly where the Comanches had camped because Tonk had been keeping an eye on them before the corpse of Wes James turned up and created all the fuss.

When he got to the site of the battle, he quickly saw that artifact seekers had robbed the camp of any souvenirs that might have been left. Still, there were some pieces of evidence that collectors cared nothing for. One such exhibit, should Hank happen to discover it, could strengthen the case against the Indians when it came to the murder of Wes James. That would be the skeletal remains of a freshly butchered long yearling.

The fact that the claybank gelding had been found among the Indians was damning enough. But the remains of a dead yearling that could be back-trailed in the direction of Shovel Mountain would prove much harder to explain away.

So, Hank rode over the blood-stained and cartridge-strewn ground, looking for beef bones, a piece of cowhide, a hoof, a horn, or anything else that could help him place the yearling here—the long yearling that Wes James had been branding just before the first of several razor-sharp arrow points ruined his evening. Hank circled out some distance and looked in hidden places, in case the Indians had tried to get away with the butchering in secret. He didn’t find so much as a spare rib.

He did find a possum tail, a jackrabbit’s ear, and a roasted turtle shell. The turtle especially was way down the list of palatable fare in Comanche culture, while possums and jackrabbits were not exactly delicacies to a people who prayed to the spirits to bring buffalo, deer, antelope, and black bear to their meat poles. It seemed to Hank that this hunting trip of Crazy Bear’s had not been a very successful one, and that the Indians had been reduced to near-starvation conditions.

If they had caught a white man branding a steer, and killed him, they would have killed the steer, too, and eaten it.

There was enough daylight left to trot over to Fort Jennings, so Hank took advantage of it. After checking in with the perimeter guard, he rode past the sutler’s store, which doubled as a saloon. Hank recognized First Sergeant July Polk relaxing in a chair outside of the store. He angled toward the store and stepped down.

“Evenin’, First Sergeant,” he said politely.

“Captain Tomlinson.” Polk rose from his chair, which had been leaning against the log wall, and stepped away from some other soldiers to shake the former Ranger’s hand. “Did you find your boys?”

“Alive and well. Thanks for your concern. Has the army sent you an officer yet?”

“No, sir. I’m still the ranking soldier for now. Can you believe that? An enlisted man, the commander of an army post?”

Hank looked around. “No wonder things are running so smoothly.”

Polk chuckled. “What brings you back here?”

“Just a hunch. What became of the claybank horse and the saddle found at Flat Rock Creek?”

“They’re in the stables.”

“Would you mind if I had a look?”

Polk smiled. “Not unless you ride off with ’em. That’s a fine hoss, and a pretty saddle.”

Hank turned away and mounted. “Obliged. Keep up the good work.” He trotted to the stables, dismounted, and took Wes James’s running iron out of his saddlebag. He slipped the iron rod up his sleeve so it wouldn’t look like a gun barrel jutting from his fist, and entered the stables on foot. He found two privates mucking out stalls under the glare of a corporal. The privates were probably being punished for fighting, for one of them had a busted lip and the other had one eye swollen shut.

“What do you want?” the corporal said as he stepped into Hank’s path.

“Captain Hank Tomlinson, Texas Rangers,” he replied, offering his hand as he almost unintelligibly coughed out the word “retired!”

The corporal refused the handshake and stood fast. “I ain’t got no orders to let nobody in here.”

Hank pulled a cheap cigar from the pocket of his jacket and almost put it to his lips, then offered it to the corporal instead. “I just need a quick look at the murder evidence—the claybank horse and the saddle. First Sergeant Polk said it was okay.”

The corporal accepted the cigar, shrugged, and stepped aside. He pocketed the stogie to smoke later and said, “The hoss is in that third stall on the right. The saddle is in the tack room past that.”

“Thanks.”

Hank looked over the stall door at the claybank first. A fine mount, indeed—tall and stout, with plenty of muscle in his hindquarters. He patted the claybank on the neck and went next door to the tack room.

The tooled cowman’s saddle was easy to pick out among the uniform McClellans of the cavalry service. It was well made, with plenty of artistic leatherwork. The saddle maker was out of Omaha, Nebraska, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. Wes could have bought this rig secondhand from any odd saddle tramp.

The buckles to the flaps of the saddlebags were undone, and both pockets were empty. He assumed the Indians or the soldiers had rifled through the pockets, taking whatever they wanted. These were not store-bought saddlebags. They were custom jobs not made by whomever had crafted the saddle, for the scrolled tooling on the bags was different from that of the saddle. There was no maker’s stamp on the saddlebags. They were slightly oversized, and Hank could just bet that he knew why.

He took the running iron from his sleeve and dropped it into the nearside saddle pocket. Sure enough, it fit perfectly. However, he didn’t see or feel any indentions that the iron rod should have made in either saddle pocket had it ridden there mile after jolting mile as its weight settled it into a low spot to which it would naturally gravitate. But this didn’t necessarily mean that the running iron and the rig didn’t go together. He lifted the saddle pocket nearest to him and inspected the stitching along the back leather panel. There was a spot where the saddle maker seemed to have missed a stitch or two. Prodding at the spot with the running iron, he found that the rustler’s branding tool slipped right into a secret sleeve formed between two layers of leather.

Now Hank knew that if he wanted to prove that Wes James was a cattle rustler, he could point to that hiding place for the running iron and convince anybody in the great state of Texas. He wasn’t sure that meant a whole lot to his investigation. But he was starting to get a clearer picture of what had happened three evenings ago up on Shovel Mountain, and it didn’t involve poor old Crazy Bear, or any of his warriors.

One thing was becoming obvious: Jack Brennan had flown way off the handle when he launched the attack on Crazy Bear’s camp. The survivors of the attack would remember him. Hank mused that he wouldn’t want to be in Jack Brennan’s boots should the Comanches recruit a revenge party and raid the Double Horn Ranch.

23

J
UST AFTER SUNDOWN
, Jay Blue and Tonk came within earshot of the camp where the Wolf lay wounded. Jay Blue made the bobwhite quail whistle known to all Broken Arrow ranch hands. Hearing the whistle answered, Jay Blue and Tonk rode into the open. Jay Blue saw Poli stand from a clump of bushes and wave the two new arrivals over.

“How did my bobwhite sound?” he asked Tonk.

“Like a white man.”

They found Skeeter cooking the last of the beans. Jay Blue tossed him a can of peaches that made him as happy as a kid on Christmas morning. The Wolf was still lying on the ground, covered to his chin, exactly where Jay Blue had last seen him.

“Well, he ain’t dead yet,” Jay Blue said.

Skeeter shook his head as he used a rock to hammer his knife blade through the top of the peach can. “He groaned in pain all last night. Then he started sweatin’ like a whore in church. He won’t wake up to eat anything, but we got him to swallow a little water.”

Jay Blue took the bottle of laudanum out of his saddlebag. “The doc said to give him some of this stuff. Help me prop him up.”

Skeeter pried open half the top of the peach can, but only had time to spear and eat one of the peach quarters from within before he put the can down on the ground to help Jay Blue. “Jesus Cristo, that’s good! I’m gonna sit down and eat that whole can this very night, and ain’t nobody gonna stop me.”

The four men gathered around the Wolf, elevated his torso, cradled his head, opened his mouth, and poured the medicine in. He spit some of it out, so Jay Blue poured in more until they were sure he had swallowed at least some of it.

“That ought to kill the pain or kill the patient.”

Suddenly the warrior coughed. His eyes fluttered and opened.

“I brought you medicine,” Jay Blue said, speaking slowly, holding the bottle in front of him. “And a horse.” He pointed at the extra mount.

The Wolf’s eyes followed his finger to the horse, but he only frowned, and groaned, and closed his eyes again.

“You’re welcome,” Jay Blue said sarcastically. He shoved the stopper back into the bottle neck, and the men let the Wolf lie back down.

The four men held a quick council, and decided there was no reason for Tonk and Poli to stick around when there was work to do back on the ranch. The two older men gathered their few things, wished the boys good luck, and left for the long night ride to the Broken Arrow Ranch.

“Let’s get that pack saddle off that mule and cook us up something better than beans,” Jay Blue suggested.

Skeeter looked longingly back at the can of peaches he had left on the ground, but decided they could wait a little longer to slide into his stomach.

The cowhands tied the horses at a picket line and led the mule closer to the small fire so they could see to unpack and sort through the provender Jay Blue had brought from the store. He presented Skeeter with some new clothes so he could get out of the grimy duds he wore, and they commenced to discuss the ghost arrows and the murder of Wes James, and Captain Tomlinson’s promise to find out who had really killed the drifter.

“Hey, guess who’s helping me?” Jay Blue asked.

“That’s easy. Me.”

“No, I mean back in town.”

“I don’t know.”

“Guess.”

“Hell, I don’t know. Mr. Collins?”

Jay Blue looked puzzled. “How could he help?”

“He’s the undertaker, ain’t he? He could be buildin’ us coffins.”

“No! Jane.”

Skeeter seemed disgusted. “How’s she gonna help?”

“People talk in a saloon. She listens.”

“You should have got one of the ugly girls to help. That pretty one ain’t got a brain in her head.”

“What makes you say that?”

“She’s helpin’ you, ain’t she?”

“What does that say about you?”

“Shut up.”

Distracted by their talk and their camp chores, they were suddenly alarmed to hear hoofbeats. They reached for weapons as they located the source of the noise. The Wolf, more dead than alive, had slipped out of his blankets, crawled onto the spare horse brought for him, and was already fading into the dark, so weak that he could ride only by lying facedown along the horse’s neck.

“Shit!” Jay Blue shouted.

“I guess that medicine kicked in. Should we go after him?”

Jay Blue slipped his Colt back into the holster. “Chase a chestnut horse in the dark?”

“Should we fire our pistols and get Poli and Tonk to come back?”

“You want to look like that much of an idiot? We’d never hear the end of it. Anyway, he’s already gone.”

“At least he didn’t steal
our
horses.”

“Only because he was too weak to lead ’em, more than likely.” Jay Blue shook his head and couldn’t help but chuckle. “I thought I was a pretty tough hombre, Skeeter. But that rascal—the Wolf—brother, he takes the prize.”

Skeeter seemed strangely distracted. “Wait a minute. Oh, wait just a
pinche minuto
!”