Soon that would change. Soon she would stiffen and her complexion would become waxen and her eyes would glaze and she would begin to give off the special smell of death.
“I can’t have that,” I said aloud. “I will bury you.” The others needed to be buried, too, but someone else could take care of them. I was only interested in Daisy.
Then Jordy called my name. Reluctantly, I stood. The dead could be ignored. The living were another matter. I returned and squatted at his side. “I found her,” I announced.
“Tell me.”
“You do not want to know.” I examined him more closely and confirmed the testimony of my eyes. I sat back, tired from the exertion.
Jordy’s eyes fluttered. He was having difficulty breathing. “Damn him!” he spat. “Damn him to hell for what he did to her!”
“Don’t you mean ‘them’?” I said.
“No.” Jordy licked his lips. “The others were laughing, but it was just the one. I heard him after he was done.”
“What did he say?”
“How she fought like a wildcat.”
From somewhere deep inside me boiled a surge of red-hot lava.
“How she was the best he ever had.”
The night spun but not from my wound.
“How she was better than a whore he had down in Texas.” Jordy uttered a low moan. “Oh, God. Not to her. She was the sweetest gal ever.”
I had to force my vocal cords to work. “His name? Did you happen to catch his name?”
“No. I wish I did.”
“Anything that would help me. Anything at all.” The LT hands did not know it yet, but they were all on my list. Gertrude and Phil were near the top, one rung below whoever was to blame for Daisy.
“I’m sorry.”
Jordy was quiet so long, I figured he had died. But then he spoke again.
“One thing might help you. He called her ‘little sugar.’ ”
“Little what?”
“His exact words. The ‘little sugar’ fought like a wildcat. The ‘little sugar’ was better than a whore he had once. He kept a keepsake from the ‘little sugar.’ He never called Daisy by name. Maybe he didn’t know it.”
“Or didn’t care.” But before I was through, he would. Something else Jordy said caught my interest. “What was that about a keepsake?”
“I don’t know. It’s what I heard him say.”
Again he was still for a considerable spell. When he broke his silence, I could barely hear him.
“Will you really see that they pay, Parson?”
“Of course.” He had no idea.
“You won’t turn the other cheek? You being a man of the cloth, and all, you won’t forgive and forget, will you?”
I looked at him. He was dead anyway, so what difference did it make? “Ever heard of Lucius Stark?”
“Stark?” Jordy repeated, puzzled. “Where have I heard that name before?”
I did not give him any clues. He had to earn it.
“Wait. Now I remember. Isn’t he an assassin? Goes around the country killing folks for money?”
“I’m Lucius Stark.”
“Beg pardon?”
“You heard me.”
“But—” Jordy said, and did not say anything more for a good long while. Finally he exhaled and croaked, “I’ll be damned. Was it us you were after?”
“Yes.”
“You son of a bitch. Who hired you?”
“Gertrude Tanner.”
“But she’s the one who shot you!” Jordy chuckled, then snorted, then burst into merry laughter broken by gasps and groans. He laughed and laughed and went on laughing even as blood trickled from the corners of his mouth. I guess he couldn’t stop. He was the only man I ever saw who laughed himself to death.
I rose and would have kicked him except my legs were not steady enough. So I settled for saying, “It wasn’t that funny.”
Until that moment I never felt true hatred. The kind that causes the pulse to quicken and the head to hammer and every nerve to tingle with the throbbing urge to take life.
I fought down my rage and cast about for something to dig with. A broken tree limb was handy. It nearly killed me, and the grave was much too shallow, but I gave her a decent burial.
The coyotes and buzzards could have the rest of the Butchers.
I had work to do.
Chapter 16
Three weeks. That’s how long it took for me to mend. Three weeks, with me chafing at every minute that went by.
All I thought about was Gertrude and the LT. I lived, breathed, and ate revenge. I considered various ways to go about it. The quickest was to rig kegs of black powder under the ranch house and the cookhouse and blow the Tanners and their hired hands to hell and back when they sat down to supper. But that would be
That was fitting for the cowboys. For Gertrude and her son and the son of a bitch who murdered Daisy, I had something special in mind.
So for three weeks I hid on the Dark Sister and plotted. I did not have a horse. Brisco had disappeared the night of the attack. Either he ran off or they stole him. I did not have provisions, but I got by. Game was everywhere, and I camped in the hollow close to the stream, so I never lacked for water.
I had plenty of guns. I took every weapon the Butchers had, and their gun belts, besides. I ended up with six rifles and seven revolvers. Four of the rifles were Winchesters, the rest were older single-shot models. I chose the newest of the Winchesters and a bandolier Jordy had been wearing. Most of the revolvers were Colts. I’m partial to Remingtons, but I settled on a pair of Samuel Colt’s brain-children. They were near identical army .45s with seven- and-a-half-inch barrels. Basic wood grips, not fancy pearl or ivory. The front sights had not been filed off, as I had done with my Remingtons, and the ejector rods were still attached.
Every day I practiced handling them. Drawing, cocking, twirling, spinning until they became as much a part of me as my hands. It was important. Don’t ever let anyone tell you all pistols are the same. They are not. Each kind has its own special feel. The trick is to become so slick with whichever model you choose that you can draw and shoot straight without thinking about it. Just up and squeeze and bang!
There was another reason I took the guns and the gun belts. It was the same reason I made it a point to find and take the arrow Gertrude left.
When I wasn’t practicing or hunting, I spent a lot of time in a thicket close to the east wall of the cabin. No one showed up until the evening of the second day after the slaughter, and then it was Calista. I heard her galloping up the trail long before I saw her. I almost rose out of hiding to greet her. Almost. She reined to a stop and sprang from the saddle, horror etched in her face. She went from body to body, saying, “Oh, my God!” over and over. She cried over Hannah. Fifteen minutes she was there; then she swung on her sorrel and raced for Whiskey Flats.
I figured it would be morning before more came, and I was right. Half the town turned out. They came on horseback. They came in wagons. Some brought the kids. They gawked at the bodies, they remarked on the wounds, they allowed as how it was an outright massacre. A few commented on the absence of firearms. Several
