Haxan (12 page)

T
hree men carried Nichols down the steep stairs. His head was wrapped in a bloody towel. Blood rained from his body and spattered the Oriental rugs in the lobby.

“He walked right past me,” Alma Jean said, “not saying a word to my hello. He stared straight ahead. I heard the shot and was going to go call Hew when Mr. Danby came back down the stairs. His face was cold, frozen. I saw the smoking gun in his hand. I was afraid he was going to shoot me, too.”

She was trembling. Hew placed his arm around her and she laid her head on his shoulder.

“It’s all right, Alma Jean,” he said in a comforting way, his face pressed close to hers. “It’s all over now.”

Still shaking, she burst into tears.

“Alma Jean,” I asked, “did you see which way Danby went?”

“No, Marshal. He jumped on his horse and rode away in a cloud of dust.”

I turned to Jake. “Last time we saw Danby he was sitting a dun gelding. Saddle our horses while I finish questioning the witnesses. Make sure you grab my Sharps rifle from the office. Get a Winchester for yourself, too, and plenty of shells.”

“Yes, sir.”

Before long Jake and I were riding hard. It was impossible to tell which tracks were Danby’s on the main road out of town. But when we turned off the trail and struck for his place we hit a sandy stretch spotted with twisted piñon trees.

I dismounted and examined the fresh tracks. “He came and went this way. He’s not hurrying at all. Oh well, at least they’re headed in the right direction.” I swung my arm to show the way. “Off toward his place. Gotta be him.”

“I guess he shot Nichols and figures his work was finished,” Jake said. “From what Alma Jean said, he was sure workmanlike in doing it.”

That had me worried. Jake was green and untested for this kind of lawing. All he had done so far was make a couple of arrests with my assistance.

With a man like Danby on the prowl, there was only one way this was going to end.

“Jake,” I cautioned, “if it comes down to it, don’t hesitate. Shoot to kill. An angry man can sometimes be talked out of his gun. Or taken because his anger gets in the way of his ability to think. A man like Coffer Danby, cold and focused, is the most dangerous kind of all. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right, let’s ride.”

As we kicked for Danby’s place I tried to remember the lay of the land. If he kept on in this direction he would have to cross through Shadow Bend, where his sheep had been killed.

“Jake, maybe we can shortcut him if we break through that mesquite and cholla to our left. It’s worth a chance.”

“Better than riding slap into an ambush,” he agreed.

We weren’t wearing chaps. We got ourselves and our horses torn up, but we emerged on the other side to see Danby crossing the lower end of Shadow Bend a hundred yards away.

I pulled rein and drew the Sharps from its scabbard. I spurred my horse to close the distance. Jake followed, his pistol drawn.

Danby saw us topping the grass rise from his right quarter. He reined his horse around and came flying at us with his pistol drawn. He popped a shot in our direction, gun smoke torn by the wind, but there was no way he could hit anything on horseback at that distance.

I drew rein hard, jolting upright in my saddle. I sighted along the rifle and cut his horse out from under him.

Danby went down clumsy and hard, tangled in the saddle and reins. When we walked up on him he was holding a broken knee, his face yellow sick with pain.

I kicked the pistol out of his hand.

“Why’d you do it, Coffer?” I asked. “Why did you have to go and kill Pate Nichols?”

The horse screamed in pain. Thrashing the grass and soil with its hooves, it strained its head for the open sky.

“Jake.”

“Yes, sir.” He walked over and shot the dun with his Schofield pistol.

“Answer my question, Danby.”

“Couldn’t take no more of it, Marshal,” he said, squeezing tears of pain from his eyes. His lips were skinned back from his gritted teeth. “Had to finish it quick.”

“Quick? What the hell are you talking about?”

“You ain’t seen my home? You ain’t been there?”

“Of course I haven’t,” I said. “Not since yesterday.”

“Ride up, Marshal, and you’ll see. You’ll know why I had to do it quick.”

“Danby, you’re not making a lick of sense,” Jake said.

“He got them all.” Danby looked like he was about to cry. “I was out alone and they didn’t come back from breakfast. He got them all.”

Jake handcuffed Danby to a shattered mesquite stump. I left him a waterskin.

“We’ll be back to get you later, Danby.”

“You won’t be back, Marshal,” he said. “Not if he’s still there.”

We mounted up and rode off. “You think it’s all right to leave him alone, Mr. Marwood?” Jake asked.

“He’s not going anywhere with that busted leg. And between you and me, Jake, if the coyotes get him, then good riddance.”

We rode on and found the bodies lying in the tall grass and dirt. Smoke from a dying kitchen fire threaded from the pipe chimney. The late-afternoon sky was so blue it hurt my eyes.

“Mr. Marwood, those are the three guns Danby hired. Their horses are in the corral.”

“Yeah. They must have come in for breakfast and were ambushed right here.”

“Not a one has his gun drawn.” Jake’s voice was hushed. He was scared.

I was, too.

He had a deeper name than mine.

“Let’s see if we can find the others, Jake.”

We stepped out of leather and walked around the outside of the house. I found the boy lying under an empty hayrick. I stood so my shadow was on his face, thinking maybe it was only right to keep the sun off him even though he couldn’t feel it. I removed my duster and covered him. I felt empty, crouched beside his small, lifeless body.

I discovered Jake on the other side of the house. The girl was lying at his feet. She was drenched with water.

“I found her in this rain barrel, Mr. Marwood,” he said. His voice was hollow.

“It’s okay, Jake.”

We wiped his eyes on his sleeve. “I’m sorry, Mr. Marwood. I’m no good to you like this.”

I took his shoulder. In a time like this, especially as a lawman who always sees the darkest room of the human heart, it’s good to feel another live human being close by. It helps remind you you’re not alone, and if it comes to it, you won’t die that way, either.

The ground around the half-empty rain barrel was mud-socked. There was no doubting the footprints were those of a woman.

“You take your time,” I told Jake. “I’ll check inside the house.”

I went in with my gun drawn. No one was inside. I checked all four rooms. I went back outside and stood under the cruel desert sun with death all around me.

Jake came from around the side of the house. “I put the little girl with her brother,” he said. He returned my duster. “I figured it was right they be together. Was Mrs. Danby inside?”

“No. The house was empty.”

“They took her, I guess.”

“I don’t think so, Jake. You saw the footprints by the rain barrel same as I did.” My voice sounded hollow and strange, even to my own ears. I didn’t want to believe it. But there it was, and there was no escaping it.

Jake checked over his shoulder at the hayrick. “Coffer must have rode up on this scene and went plumb loco, then.”

“Yeah. I expect so.”

“We going to bury them, Mr. Marwood?”

I had picked out a single track in the dust. I followed it. Someone had ridden all around the house, looking for more victims. But when he left, another horse from the corral went with him.

“I want to find this man, Jake. I want to take him.”

I really could not recognize my own voice.

“Yes, sir,” Jake said, “I understand.”

The day was drawing to a close. We put all the bodies inside the house so the coyotes wouldn’t bother them, and locked the door.

As we were riding away Jake glanced over his shoulder one last time.

“They drowned that little girl,” he said. “My stars. Rose Danby drowned her own little girl.”

T
he sun was drawing down fast. Right on cue the coyotes in the thorn and bush howled with one voice. The whole sky, and the entire desert, echoed their mournful sound. It made me go bitter cold. Colder than I’d ever felt.

I could tell Coffer Danby was dead before we got close. You learn so you know how a dead man lies from the way his legs are twisted, his body small and deflated like.

He had worked a Barlow knife from his jeans and sliced his wrists open to white bone. I guess he figured he didn’t have anything left to live for.

After coming from his house I can’t say I blamed him for the choice he had made.

Jake’s eyes were haunted as he took in the blood-soaked ground, the man’s clothes splashed with spilled blood.

“This is a bad day, Mr. Marwood,” he said.

“We have to find the man who did this, Jake.”

“You know who it was?”

“I do.” My name carried, too. It was why I had come to Haxan, called by a dead man. Not as much as Ben’s, but it carried.

“It was Ben Tack,” I said.

“That feller Gideon Short told us about?”

“That’s right.”

“You knew him after all. I thought so.”

“I hoped I was wrong. I won’t make the same mistake twice.”

“You think it was him who shot at you from the alley?”

“No. Ben would never shoot anyone in the back. He’s good enough with a gun, he doesn’t have to.”

The sky purpled in the east. Jake didn’t say anything as we rode on, but I could tell he was getting worked up more than was good for his nerves.

Finally, he pulled his horse to a stop. I brought my horse around and reined so we were side by side, facing one another.

“Marshal,” he started, “a man like this Ben Tack, you think you can take him?”

“Have to try.”

“Do you think you can take him?”

There was no sense lying to him. Or myself.

“No,” I said.

“I don’t mind dying,” Jake said, “if it means that boy and that girl will rest easier for us trying.”

“There’s not much else we can hope for, Jake.”

“He’s that good, Mr. Marwood?”

“Ben Tack? Yes. He’s that good.”

Jake picked up the reins in his rough hands and straightened in his saddle.

“I’ll ride with you, sir,” he said.

We cut their trail on the south side of Gila Creek, where the grass was thin and brown. They had broken trail straight through and it was easy to follow.

As we rode, night came on, dropping like a blanket. The coyotes got louder the closer we got to Haxan. The ears of my horse started to flick back and forth alternately. A sure sign wolves were close about.

Soon I could see them slipping through the brush like grey smoke. Coyotes, too. Our horses were skittish and it took a strong hand to keep them under rein.

“Maybe we should shoot at them,” Jake suggested. “Or stop and build a fire.”

“There’s no way we’d hit anything in this light,” I said. “If we stop we’ll be surrounded and never get out. Remember Ambrose and his wife.”

“Guess you’re right. Look at them, Mr. Marwood. They’re herding us toward Haxan. I ain’t never seen anything like it.”

“Tracks we’re following lead the same direction, Jake. Haxan is over that next hill. Let’s whip for town.”

We did and the coyotes came on like a thundercloud. Their long, lithe shapes flowed over the ground like pale shadows. The large, dark bodies of wolves were also running with them. They leaped over rocks and slipped through clumps of high grass with deadly, liquid ease.

The eyes of our horses were round with fear. They could smell death snapping at their heels. We rode hard, raking their flanks with our spurs. Jake leaned over his horse so his body presented less of a sail to the wind. His hat blew off his head.

“They’re gaining.” He drew his gun, but common sense prevailed and he checked his fire.

If we stopped to fight we would be swarmed beneath their snapping teeth and blinding fur.

I remembered what Ambrose had said. “They’ll back off when we hit the town lights.” I hoped.

We thundered past the first ramshackle buildings on the outskirts of Haxan and jumped Potato Road. We had come a long way already and our horses were blowing hard and lathered.

“Cut this way, Jake, through this alley. It will narrow down their numbers if they choose to follow.”

We turned in, our horses rearing at the sudden change of direction. I held tight and gripped the saddle with my knees so I wouldn’t fall. We galloped through the narrow passage before coming out on the central plaza.

The coyotes remained in the mouth of the alley, boiling over themselves in a mass of flesh and fur, yipping and snarling. Their eyes glowed with red and yellow hate, but they would not enter the lighted plaza.

Two people waited at the east end of the plaza, under the cottonwood trees. The streets of Haxan were deserted. A few people left from the paseo were running indoors, slamming doors and windows behind them when they saw the coyotes.

I got off my horse and Jake followed suit. I handed him the reins.

“Take the horses away, Jake.”

“Let me stand with you, Mr. Marwood. You can’t face him alone.”

“Do as I say.”

He hesitated. At first I thought he was going to give me an argument but he relented.

“Yes, sir,” he said in a broken way. He led our horses toward the jailhouse.

I walked up alone toward the two people at the end of the plaza. “I’m here to take you, Ben.”

“You’re not going to arrest me, John?”

“No.”

He grinned. He had a good, strong face, but his eyes in this light resembled black stones pressed in putty. His manicured hands were long and brown. His .36-calibre Navy revolver was holstered with a quarter turn.

“I knew you’d see the truth sooner or later, John,” he said. “You always were one to see right to the centre of a problem. I forgot you were a good chess player.”

“Nichols hired you to push Danby, didn’t he? But you decided you wanted Rose for yourself and started running his cattle off, too. Yes, Ben, you always were one to play both ends against the middle. Just like Sand Creek. Facing Chivington down one night and then killing innocent women and children the next morning.”

“That’s right, John. Just like Sand Creek. And it usually works. Did this time, anyway.”

“Why did you come here?”

“The plaza?”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

“Oh, Haxan. Like I said before. I go where I’m sent.”

I picked out the figure standing beside him. “Mrs. Danby, your husband is dead.”

She wore a blue dress with red cuffs and a yoke collar. One side of her face was lighted from a coal oil lamp in a cantina behind her. The lamp was behind a red muslin curtain and it drowned her face in blood.

“I made the decision I had to make, Marshal,” she said.

“I saw the consequences of your decision.”

“I won’t back away from it,” she told me. “I love this man. He came to me when I needed him most. If Coffer really loved me he would have shot Pate Nichols the day he propositioned me to marry him. That’s all there is for you to know.”

“Rose, if you don’t step aside I’ll shoot you down, too, for what you did.”

“You’d kill a defenceless woman, Marshal?” she asked.

My voice sounded like flint striking sparks on stone. I didn’t recognize it. Something cold and ancient dark was coming awake inside me.

“I’d kill you and never think twice about it,” I told her.

Ben pushed her away with a stiff arm without taking his eyes off me.

“Step aside, Rose. This is between him and me. You got no part to play in this. You’re not important anymore.”

She rocked back. “Not important?” It was like a scream of outrage. “How can you say that after we—” She swallowed hard. She resembled a cold knife rising out of the white sand.

“You used me,” she hissed. Her hair was Medusa-wild around her face. Her green eyes were dark with mistrust. “You used me to get him here, didn’t you?”

“I said go.” His words dripped ice. Rose Danby looked like she’d been kicked in the stomach. She clutched both hands to her throat like she was going to be sick and drew back behind a wooden post on the sidewalk. She bent her head and began to cry. It was a wracking, forlorn sound.

The coyotes continued to yip and moil over one another at the edge of the plaza.

“I want you to leave Haxan, Ben,” I said.

“Can’t.” His iron grin deepened, pulling the lineaments of his face taut like wires. “Won’t.”

“This is my town.”

“I like what I see. Might want to put down a stake. Caught a glimpse of that little Snow Berry, too. Maybe I’ll make her my lost cause.”

I took a deep breath, let it out slow. “I’ll kill you, Ben.”

“You can’t do for me, John. You’re not fast enough and you know it.”

“I’m giving you a call.”

He stopped grinning and stepped out a pace or two. We were bathed in a circle of light. In a weird way the stars above us stopped shining.

“It’s your play,” he said. “You deal the cards, Marshal.”

I went for my gun. His first shot hit me between the ribs. His second went through my left thigh as I was going down in a helpless spin. All the breath slammed out of my body when I hit the ground.

I never cleared my holster.

He approached. I watched him come. There was nothing I could do. Gun smoke drifted across the empty plaza in a tangled cloud. I saw my hand scrabbling the plaza dirt, trying to hold onto life.

“Sorry, John. I had to do it.” Ben raised his pistol. “And this.”

“Mister, you twitch one hair and I’ll fire both barrels into your back.”

It was Jake. He had gone to the office, grabbed Magra’s old scattergun, and circled up from behind, coming onto the plaza through the cantina.

Ben never gave him a chance. He dropped and spun, firing his Navy Colt. When Jake fell, the butt of the shotgun hit the edge of a water trough. The buckshot from both barrels cut Rose Danby in half. She fell without a sound, like a marionette with the strings cut.

Ben watched it all unfold without a blink or a word. He had his back to me, admiring both his luck and his handwork at dropping Jake so neatly.

But when Rose went down his body stiffened with shock.

I knew him. Despite everything else he wasn’t without human feeling. Maybe Rose meant something to him after all.

Maybe that’s what made him forget.

He took a single step toward her body.

“Ben.”

He turned. His head was silhouetted against the red light from the cantina lamp. My Colt Dragoon kicked once in my hand.

But once was all I needed.

I let my gun hand fall. Someone ran across the plaza toward me, screaming my name. It was Magra.

The stars began to shine again.