Lynch (9 page)

Once, not that long ago, Johnny Pearl and Katie Small Dove had danced before its fire, made love before its warmth. Now it jutted from the jumble of charred timber like a skeletal finger, pointing at the bleak winter sky. If it had not remained standing, Lynch would have ridden past without realizing it, since what few landmarks that existed were otherwise shrouded in snow and ice.

Once he spotted it, he used the landmark to triangulate the location of the stand of cottonwood trees. When he found the one they had used to hang him, he stood for a moment, staring up at the six-inch length of frayed rope still flapping from the branch.

It took him somewhat longer to find what was left of Katie's body. As he swept the snow away from her, he was struck by how perfectly preserved she appeared to be—like one of those ice princesses in the fairy tales his mama used to read to him as a child. She was lying on her side, much like the last time he remembered seeing her before he died. The scavengers hadn't done much to the carcass, possibly because she froze to the ground quickly, which made the mutilations done to her appear even more bestial.

It took Lynch two days to build the cairn using the natural stone from the chimney. He used a rusty shovel he found amid the ruins of the shed and, summoning the fearsome strength that was his new birthright, single-handedly demolished the fireplace.

He worked day and night without respite, oblivious to the damage he was doing to himself. When the blisters burst, a yellowish green ichor streamed forth across his palms instead of blood.

Once he had built the cairn over his wife's body, Lynch turned his attention to the flagstone that ringed the hearth. When the shovel's blade shattered, he tossed it aside and continued digging at the frozen ground with his bare hands until he succeeded in finally unearthing a package wrapped in oil cloth, inside of which was a bundle of neatly folded black clothes and a pearl-handled revolver.

He lifted the killing piece and pressed the length of its cold muzzle against his cheek, stroking his face with it as if it were made of the finest silk.

I knew you would not forsake me
, whispered the gun.

Lynch closed his eyes and said nothing.The dying man crawled on his hands and knees, dragging a lap of gut in his wake. The dying man's name was Polk and, up until an hour ago, he'd been out on a toot with a couple of his desperado buddies in some piss-ant cow town.

Polk knew O'Donoghue and Wagner from when they used to ride with Drake. But, unlike them, Polk did not consider himself a gunslinger. And since someone had been making a point of going after men from Drake's regiment the last few months, he was quick to remind folks that he was just a scout who kept colorful company, nothing more. O'Donoghue was of the opinion the killings were done by vigilantes who'd gotten brave now that Drake was officially declared a renegade Back East. It wasn't surprising, given the red-headed bastard's proclivities.

Wagner and O'Donoghue had deserted a while back, but whoever was gunning for Drake probably wasn't one for splitting hairs. It was Wagner's idea that they hit the saloon as a team, just to be on the safe side Wagner had said there was safety in numbers, and this way they could drink, gamble and whore while watching one another's backs, which had made sense to Polk at the time.

But that was before the man in black showed up.

Polk had figured the stranger for trouble when he first entered the saloon. He was tall, dressed in a tattered black duster that had blotches of graveyard mold on the sleeves. He wore a pearl-handled revolver low on his hip. The stranger walked real stiff, like that steam-operated mechanical man Polk saw at the circus once. But the strangest thing about the man in black was his eyes—they didn't match.

The stranger walked right up to their table and opened fire without so much as a “howdy doo.” Wagner and O'Donoghue were dead before they could put down their cards—and Polk would have met the exact same fate if that fancy pearl-handled gun hadn't misfired.

He didn't know what the stranger's quarrel was with Wagner and O'Donoghue, and he wasn't about to waste time asking. Polk jumped to his feet and fired point-blank into the other man's chest. The man in black staggered but did not go down.

As he tried to flee past the man he'd just shot, the stranger lashed out with a knife, catching him across the gut. Polk had been so frightened that he was on his horse and a mile out of town before he realized the seriousness of his wound. Once the adrenaline wore off, the pain took over, and he looked down to see his lower intestine hanging out of his belly. He fell off his horse not long after that.

Still, even though he was in more pain than he'd ever know again—Polk continued to crawl. Some long-buried sixth sense told him that he had not escaped the man who had tried to kill him. Indeed, it was as if the stranger's mismatched eyes were staring down at him from a great height, watching as he dragged his guts behind him like the losing cur in a dog fight.

It wasn't until he heard the stranger's horse whinny that Polk realized he was lying on his back like a tipped turtle, staring up at a dark figure framed against the hard blue sky.

Lynch carefully dismounted and knelt beside Polk without looking down. As he leaned across the dying man to relieve him of his weapons, Polk glimpsed a metal and leather neck brace underneath the long woolen muffler wrapped around the stranger's throat.

“Where the hell do you think you're runnin' to, you damn fool idjit—?” Lynch snarled. “You think Drake can protect you?”

“Fuck Drake!” Polk spat. “Mister—I don't know what you're talkin' about or why you come after me like you did—I ain't never done nothin' to you—!”

“Like fuck you're innocent!” Lynch growled. “I know you got it on you—that drinkin' buddy of yours in Caspar said so. So where is it?”

“Where's what—?!?” Polk moaned, licking his lips. He was so thirsty he could almost forget the pain in his belly. “Please, Mister … I'll be more than happy to tell you whatever it is you want to hear, if you just gimme a drink of water … I need a drink real bad.…”

Lynch snorted in disgust and began to search the dying man's pockets. As his fingers closed on what lay coiled in Polk's breast pocket, he gave voice to a groan as pained as Polk's own. He lurched stiffly to his feet, pulling the braid from its hiding place like a conjurer producing a scarf.

Lynch ran Katie's hair between his fingers, marveling over how the months since her death had done nothing to diminish its luster or texture. Lynch closed his eyes as he stroked the braid against his cheek. It even smelled of her. The only thing different from when it was still on her head was that Polk had bound the end that had attached to the scalp with a piece of rawhide, so it would not unravel.

“Mister …” Polk rasped. “Please … I gotta have some water.”

Lynch pocketed the length of hair and turned to remove the canteen from his saddle horn. Alastor pawed the ground, tossing his ebony mane.

“I don't like how your hoss is lookin' at me,” Polk said.

“What you gonna do about it?” Lynch said, throwing the canteen on the ground. “You know—drinkin' with a belly wound will kill you,” he commented laconically as he watched Polk eagerly slurp down the water.

“What do I care—I'm dyin' anyway, ain't I?” rasped Polk, wiping his lips with a trembling hand.

“Reckon so,” Lynch replied, studying the length of intestine hanging out of Polk. It oozed blood and less identifiable matter, and had little pieces of gravel stuck to it. It looked bad and smelled worse.

“Tell me one thing before I die, mister,” Polk whispered. “Why'd you come gunnin' for me? It weren't just for some squaw braid, was it?”

“You don't recognize me,” Lynch sighed. “I don't blame you for that, really. I reckon you never expected to see me again—so why bother commitin' th' face to memory?”

Polk squinted at his killer with rapidly failing eyesight. “Hold on …
now
I remember you … You're that squaw man that was squattin' on Myerling's old homestead. But—I saw you
hang.
”

“Lynched, to be exact.”

“That ain't possible!” Polk shook his head, trying to fight the swell of fear rising within him. Dying was one thing, but talking to a man he knew to be dead was another. “You
can't
be him!”

“But I am. Or at least I
was
. I ain't exactly the man I used t'be—but then, who amongst us is? Don't worry, you haven't gone crazy. You remembered correctly. You did see me hang. Just as I saw you desecrate my wife's body. I made a promise over her grave that I would hunt you down, you son of a bitch, and take back what you took from her. I've got her braid—now tell me what you did with the baby.”

“B-baby?” The fear in Polk's eyes was replaced by bafflement. “W-what baby?”

“Don't play dumb!” Lynch growled through gritted teeth. “Tell me what you did with the child she was carryin'!”

“I swear as I'm dyin', mister—I took your woman's scalp, but I didn't touch nothin' else on her! What kind of man do you take me for—?!?”

Lynch stared down at the dying man and shook his head. Without saying anything else, he turned his back on Polk and removed the bit from Alastor's mouth. He patted the beast's velvety black neck, and then motioned to the mortally wounded human sprawled on the ground. Alastor tossed his mane in excitement.

Polk struggled to lift his head, squinting up at the dark blur looming over him. “Mister—is that you?”

He only managed to scream once before the horse sank its teeth into his Adam's apple.

Chapter Thirteen

Antioch Drake ruled all he surveyed.

This meant, at that particular moment, he was the lord and master of twelve houses, a general store, a livery barn, a church, a saloon, nineteen men, twenty-three women and twelve children—not counting the ones he'd left lying dead in the street.

It was the third day of Drake's reign over what once had been the frontier settlement of Newtonville. Now, after seventy-two hours of near-continuous rapine, it bore a closer resemblance to Hell than anywhere else.

During the fifteen years he'd spent dealing with Indians, Drake had become an expert on overcoming small communities of civilians. The techniques he had used to place Newtonville under his control were no different from those he once utilized against Cheyenne and Sioux villages: He came in fast and early, striking while his opponents were still in their beds.

While Drake no longer had a battalion at his command, those who remained loyal and followed him into the wilderness were more than a match for sleepy-eyed settlers in their long johns. His first order was the systematic slaughter of all males young enough and healthy enough to prove troublesome. Their bodies now lay side by side in the street as both a warning and reminder to the others as to what to expect should they step out of line.

His second order was the culling of those women who could pass muster as whores. The third order was to lock up all those who remained in the town church—mostly older men, grannies, and young'uns—until he was ready to give his fourth and final order. And when that order came—it would be heard as far away as Washington.

He had been betrayed by his government—and now he was going to make his former employer pay by taking out his revenge on the people it held so dear. For fifteen years, Washington had turned a blind eye to how he handled the “Indian problem.” Hell, he had even been given medals and commendations for treating Cheyenne camps the exact same way he was handling Newtonville. Drake knew what his role was in the Manifest Destiny of his country: Exterminator. It was his job to see that all the pesky, potentially dangerous vermin that infested the plains would not interfere with the settlement of the Wyoming and Montana territories, or the conversion of the buffalo hunting grounds into cattle ranches. And he had been very good at his job. Very good indeed.

But now his rank, his medals, his career had been stripped away from him, just as vultures tear at the flesh of a fallen lion. And for what? All because some whey-faced city slicker Back East decided he didn't like how Drake was handling the relocation of Injuns to the reservations—as if what had happened at Little Big Horn wasn't proof enough that the red-skinned devils were dangerous savages.

So what if he burned down a few farmhouses and lynched some settlers along the way? This was a war! There could be no middle ground for those who were sympathetic to the enemy—or refused to take sides. And no matter how they might deny it, there was no trusting half-breeds, either—their red blood would always turn against the white. It was a scientific fact. Better to eradicate them entirely than to suffer the indignity of betrayal later on.

When the dispatch came, ordering his return to Washington to answer questions concerning his actions, Drake knew what he had to do. That night he called on those who were loyal to follow him—and rode off with close to twenty men at his side. Thus began the legend of Drake's Devils.

That was six months ago. He had less than half that number still riding with him. Some had deserted, some had died in action, others he'd killed himself. Still, as brigand gangs go, his had proven extremely successful in eluding capture. For all their bluster about being ready to apply for statehood, the Wyoming territory was an isolated, thinly populated place. It was easy for even a larger number of men to evade the authorities—especially if they were lead by someone who knew all their pursuers' tactics by heart. Unless the territorial governor was willing to bring in Texas Rangers to deal with the problem,

Drake and his Devils were free to plunder the countryside with impunity. Drake glanced out the window of his new house. A week ago, it had belonged to the mayor of Newtonville. But Drake had commandeered it solely because he wanted an unobstructed view of the church across the street. He wanted to make sure the guards didn't slack off and let any of the captives escape. Ferguson and Powell were seated on the wooden steps leading to the doors of the church, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes. Each man had a loaded shotgun resting across his knees. The moment the front door of Drake's house opened, they snapped to attention. Drake stalked past them without so much as a sidelong look.