Wang didn’t reply.
“How come it is that you don’t hardly never talk?” Dobbins asked. “Don’t you know our lingo?”
“He talked some, Dobbins, don’t you remember?” Malcolm said. “He called you a fool, as I recall.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“Didn’t you fellers get enough of my friend, here, when you was in town?” Elmer asked. He chuckled. “Actually, I’d say you got more ’n enough.”
“Just how good are you with all them tricks ’n such?” Malcolm asked. “S’pose we was to get us three, maybe four more friends? You think you could do them tricks on all of us?”
Turley came back out then, and seeing Malcolm and Dobbins harassing Wang, hurried over to them.
“Malcolm, what makes you think you ’n Dobbins even have three or four friends?” Turley asked.
“What the hell, Turley? You takin’ up for the Chinaman now?”
“Mr. Houser wants you two to take these ten cows ’n put ’em back out in the pasture where they belong.”
“Where’d these cows come from?” Malcolm asked, looking at them very closely.
“It don’t matter where they come from,” Turley said. “Point is, they’re back.”
“Come on, cows,” Malcolm said. “Why didn’t you stay where you was took?”
The two men didn’t bother to get mounted. Instead they pushed the ten cows before them, moving them toward the nearest pasture.
Turley watched them leave, then he turned his attention back to Elmer and Wang, who had remained mounted for the entire visit.
“Mr. Houser wanted me to tell you thank you, for bringin’ ’em back,” Turley said.
“You’re welcome,” Elmer said. Clicking to his horse, he and Wang turned and started riding away.
“Wang,” Elmer asked after they were out of earshot from the others. “Did you hear what that Malcolm feller said, when he was talkin’ to the cows?”
“Yes. He said ‘Why didn’t you stay where you was took?’”
“What do you think he meant by that?”
“It is a puzzle,” Wang replied, without a specific answer.
“It’s a puzzle, all right. What do you say we drop back by The Queen ’n tell Keegan that we got all the cows delivered? Most likely he’ll still have a pot of coffee on, ’n I’d pure dee like to have another cup afore we get on back to Sky Meadow.”
Wang saw them first, half a dozen buzzards making circles in the sky. He pointed them out to Elmer.
“Hmm, wonder what that is?” Elmer asked. “You reckon Percy’s got ’em a cow down? More ’n likely a cat got one, or wolves maybe, or it could be one of his cows stepped in a prairie hole and broke his leg. That’s goin’ to be hard on Percy. A small rancher like him, who ain’t got that many cows in the first place, why anytime one is took from him, that can be hard.”
“Not a cow,” Wang said quietly, and resolutely. “It is a man.”
“A man? How do you know?”
Wang pointed to the circling buzzards. “See how the birds are slow to descend? They fear men, even if a man is dead, and are slow to approach.”
“Come on, let’s go!” Elmer called, and, slapping his legs against the side of his horse, his mount leaped forward with a sudden, cannonball-like burst of speed. Wang was right behind him.
When they got close enough to Percy’s house, they saw a rope suspended from the large tree that provided shade for the house. And dangling from that rope was a man.
“What the hell?” Elmer said. “Wang, I think that might be Keegan!”
The two riders galloped into the yard and right up to the tree. Keegan, with his arms hanging by his sides, was suspended about six feet from the ground by a noose. His head was bent to one side, his face was blue, his mouth was open, and his tongue extended.
“Who the hell would do something like this?” Elmer yelled in anguished rage. “And why?”
Wang rode all the way up to Keegan, cut the rope, then lowered his dead friend gently to the ground.
* * *
In Chugwater, Sheriff Sharpie came out of his office to examine Ollie Keegan’s body. No longer draped across a horse, Duff had brought his young cowboy into town lying under a tarpaulin in the back of a buckboard.
“And you say they found him hangin’ from a tree in Gaines’s backyard?”
“Aye.”
“Where’s Gaines? What does he have to say about it?”
“Gaines is in Kansas City. I had sent Keegan out to Percy’s ranch to look after it for him until he got back,” Duff said.
“What kind of man was Keegan?” Sheriff Sharpie asked. “What I mean is, could it be possible that he got into a fight in town ’n made somebody mad enough that they might have gone out there to kill ’im? Maybe a fight over a woman or somethin’?”
Duff shook his head. “I would nae think such a thing. Keegan was a good lad and a friend to all. And he dinnae have a woman friend, or ’tis thinking I am that I would know.”
“A whore, maybe?”
“Keegan was nae the sporting type.”
“Well, this is quite the mystery then,” Sheriff Sharpie said. “I’m sure you know, Duff, that a murder without a known motive is the hardest to solve.”
“Aye, but I’ve nae intention of allowing the cateran who did this go unpunished.”
“Cateran?”
“Aye, cateran, ’tis what we call a brigand, in Scotland.”
“An outlaw,” Sheriff Sharpie said. He pulled the tarp back over Keegan’s head. “Will you be burying him here?”
“Aye. I’ll be takin’ the lad down to Mr. Welsh, now.”
* * *
“You might want to have a closed casket,” Gene Welsh said as he examined the body. “There’s no way I can get rid of the discoloration in his face.”
“Aye, a closed casket then, but make it one o’ your finest. We can have the buryin’ on Saturday.”
Duff drove from the funeral home down to Fiddler’s Green and parked the buckboard out front. He angled it in, then tied his team off at the end so that he didn’t deny space for other customers who might want to use the hitching rail.
“I heard about
