dehydrated horse could cause founder or twisted gut. If Will’s old man had taught him anything, it was this: “Ya take care of yer horse ’fore ya look after yerself.”
The smith was a barrel of a man with forearms like hams, a full beard, and the chest of a bull buffalo. His hair, twisted and greasy, hung well below his shoulders. He came out to meet Will as he dismounted.
“Nice animal,” he commented in a deep, hoarse voice, “ ’cept the poor fella’s dryer’n a dust storm in hell. You oughta know better’n to—”
“That horse an’ me just crossed that goddamn desert out there,” Will snarled. “I gave him the last of my canteen an’ both of us come close to croakin’. You got a problem with me, do somethin’ about it. If not, shut your yap an’ listen. You water this boy every twenty minutes, maybe a quarter bucket. I want shoes all around—not keg shoes, neither. I want you to turn them outta good bar stock and bang in an extra nail at each toe. Give him small rations of molasses an’ oats, maybe some corn, a few times a day, an’ all the good hay he wants—not this burned- out shit you got stacked up here, the trefoil an’ clover I see there in the back. Got it?”
The smith grinned. His teeth were an almost startling white. “Feisty, ain’t you? Now look—all that’s gonna cost you some money,” he said.
Will flipped a double eagle to the big man. “You need more, let me know.”
The blacksmith raised the coin to his mouth and bit down on it—hard. Will saw the muscles at the man’s jaw flex and harden.
The smith wiped the coin on his muleskin apron and dropped it into the pocket of his denim pants. “Look here,” he said, “we got off to a bad start. I had no way of knowin’ you crossed the sand. I figgered you was another twenty-five-a-month-an’-chow cowpuncher who’d run a good horse to death. I was wrong.” He extended his right hand. “Lucas Toole,” he said.
Will took the hand. It was like grasping a brick that had grown fingers. “Lewis,” he said, “Will Lewis.”
Lucas grinned again. “I got me a bottle out back—real whiskey, not ’shine. I was wonderin’ maybe you’d like a little taste after drinkin’ some of that good water outta the barrel there with the scoop hangin’ on it. Pure deep well water it is, cold ’nuff to crack yer teeth.”
“No more’n I want to wake up tomorrow morning.” Will grinned, heading to the barrel. “But maybe first, my horse . . .”
“I was hopin’ you’d say that,” Lucas said, stepping ahead of Will with a bucket, filling it a quarter full, and holding it to Slick’s muzzle.
It was good whiskey, just as Lucas said: the label was real, not a sloppy counterfeit, and the booze tasted of woodsmoke and fresh prairie grass. Will took three long sucks. “Damn,” he said almost reverently, handing the bottle back.
Lucas lowered the level of the bottle a good two inches and wiped his mouth with his arm. “Done some time, Will?” he asked.
Will’s eyes showed nothing. “Time? What makes you think that?”
“Well, hell,” Lucas said, “there’s jus’ somethin’ about a man who been inside for a good bit—his eyes ain’t never still, and he don’t seem to ever relax. He’s always tight, like he’s waitin’ for a punch he knows is comin’ but he don’t know exactly when.”
After a long moment, Will said, “I done four. I was movin’ some beef that maybe had the wrong brand on ’em. An’ I lost the bill of sale, too. Musta flew right outta my pocket with the wind. The fact I was movin’ ’em at night toward Mexico didn’t impress the law positive.”
“That’ll happen to a man,” Lucas said. “Where they lock you up?”
“Folsom.”
“Damn. Hard time.”
“Yeah.”
“My younger brother done three in Folsom,” Lucas said. “That’s how I knew about how a fella looks when he first comes out.”
There was a long and somewhat uncomfortable silence. Lucas broke it by asking, “So—what’re you gonna do now?”
“My brother, Hiram, has a cattle spread not far from here. I’ve got some money I hid out before I went to prison. Me an’ Hiram are gonna expand his place a lot—more land an’ more beef. Hiram, he’s a hell of a hand with . . .”
Lucas’s grin dropped as suddenly as it would have if someone had sucker punched him. “Hiram Lewis, that’d be?”
“Well, yeah. But what . . . what . . . ?”
“Take this,” Lucas said, handing back the bottle. “Have a good belt an’ then sit you down on a bale of hay.”
“Why? What’s . . . ?”
“Jus’ do it, OK?”
Will, confused, did it, eyes locked with those of the smith.
“Ain’t no good way to say this,” Lucas said. “I knew Hiram real good—done business with him, drank with him, played cards, broke bread with him an’ his family. Good man. Sarah, his wife, was sweet as August honey, and their two daughters—why, you couldn’t find better kids. Twins, they was, musta been born ’bout the time you went inside.”
Will didn’t realize it, but he was holding his breath.
“Was renegade Injuns and crazies from the war,” Lucas said, each word straining his voice. “Killed ’em all, burned the house an’ barn, made off with the cattle. I went out an’ put them in the ground nice an’ proper, Will.”
“What about the law? The sherrif?”
“A Mex gunfighter killed him about three, four months ago. Nobody wants the job.”
“The place—was it bad?” Will asked in a monotone.
“You don’t want to know, Will.”
“Tell me,” Will said in the same flat, emotionless tone.
Lucas took the bottle back and sucked a deep swallow. “I . . . I guess you got a right to know,” he said. He paused for a moment, avoiding Will’s eyes. “You know how them renegade Apaches treat women, right? An’ this One Dog, the leader, is worse ’n most.”
“The twins, too?”
Lucas nodded. “Killed ’em, Will. Bullets, not arrows. Leastwise, it was fast.”
“How’d they do Hiram in?”
“Nailed him to a fence post, scalped him, shot him fulla arrows, an’ burned him.”
Neither man said anything for what seemed like a long time. Finally, Will rose from the hay bale and walked out of the barn. It was twenty minutes before he walked back in, and his eyes were red rimmed and his nose running. “How many head was Hiram running?” he asked, his voice on the cusp of cracking.
“Maybe a hunnerd or so branded, an’ maybe twenny youngsters, more or less. Couple of good horses. Sarah, she had some goats, a slew of chickens. There was three dogs. They was fine cattle dogs—friendly cusses, too. They . . . well . . . gutted the poor critters. I put them in the ground, too, off ta Hiram’s side. Like I said, they was right good dogs.”
Will was silent for a moment.
“I’m purely awful sorry I was the one to tell you, Will.”
“Don’t matter none who tells it—the facts don’t change,” Will said.
“No—I don’t guess they do.”
“How many renegades?” Will asked.
“Maybe twenty-five or thirty all tol’, from the tracks. Only eight or ten horses was shod. See, Hiram an’ Sarah had ’vited me out for dinner. That’s how I found what happened.”
Will remained as still as a statue, staring out of the barn into the sunbaked street, seeing nothing.
“What’re you gonna do, Will? I s’pose you own the land now. It’s all registered with the property office, an’ you bein’ blood kin an’ all—”
“What I’m gonna do,” Will interrupted, “is take a few days to get Slick back in trim, then go out to the ranch.”
