Winifred had a plump hand to her throat, holding her nightgown close. “You’re going after him, I take it, dearest?”
“I must,” Judge Harding declared, “but I’m not going alone, so set your mind at rest.” He stabbed a finger at the butler. “Akuda, go wake Arthur and Fargo. Garvey, too, while you are at it.”
Draypool leaned over the banister to holler, “We are already up, Oliver! Give us ten minutes and we will be ready to depart.” He beamed at Fargo. “Can you believe our luck? Your first night here and you will have a crack at the Monster.”
“It’s too good to be true,” Fargo said.
13
It was called Old Woman Creek. A tributary of the Sangamon River, it was so far into the forest that few whites had ever set eyes on it. In recent months, though, a handful of hardy settlers had established homesteads on its grassy banks and were struggling to eke out an existence.
The Sweeney family had been one of them. A burly father with features as rugged as the land he cleared, a mother stout of body and given to hanging crosses on every wall, a boy of fifteen, on the verge of manhood, and a girl of twelve, sweet and innocent and dressed in white.
Their bodies had been left where they fell. As near as Fargo could reconstruct the sequence of events, the father had been chopping wood with his back to the forest and someone had slunk up behind him and caved in his skull. In falling, the man had reached for a rifle he had leaned against the woodpile, the instinctive, last act of a father wanting to protect his loved ones.
The mother must have been watching out a window and seen her husband die. Her body lay a few yards outside the cabin, a pistol only inches from her right hand. She had been shot in the chest. Fargo picked up the pistol and examined it. None of the cartridges in the cylinder had been fired.
The boy had rushed out to help them and been killed in the doorway, the top of his head blown off. Fargo had to step over the body to go inside.
In a corner near the fireplace lay the girl. She had been stabbed, not shot. Stabbed repeatedly. Scarlet stains marked her white dress in front and in back, indicating the killer had continued to stab her after she fell. From the blood on her fingers and her torn fingernails, Fargo could determine that she had fought fiercely for her life.
All the bodies had been mutilated. Their ears had been sliced off, and were missing. Trophies, apparently, as were random missing fingers and thumbs, and in the case of the mother, her nose. The father’s face had been kicked in. The son’s genitals were gone. Fargo had to turn away from the things done to the girl. Hideous things inflicted by a hideous mind.
“What did I tell you?” Arthur Draypool said as Fargo walked toward the door. “The murderer is as vile a human being as ever existed.”
Judge Harding nudged the boy’s body with his polished boot. “How can you call someone who could do this human? He’s a monster, and aptly named.”
Fargo breathed deep of the humid air. It had taken them half a day to get there; the judge, Arthur Draypool, Avril and Zeck, the overseer, Garvey, the man called Layton who had brought word of the slaughter, and four others who had not said a single word the entire ride. Fargo had ridden near the front of the group, with Draypool and Harding, and had not had much of a chance to study the four who had been at the rear. He studied them now.
They were cut from the same coarse cloth. Backwoodsmen, homespun and buckskins their attire. All but one wore badly scuffed boots or shoes. The last wore knee-high moccasins and was further different from the others in that he was completely clad in buckskins and wore a beaded buckskin bag slanted across his chest. The man had lived with Indians at one time, Fargo guessed, and had taken up some Indian ways.
They bristled with weapons: rifles, pistols, knives, tomahawks. Haughty in manner, they met his scrutiny with arrogant stares. Hard men who had lived hard lives and bowed to no one. That they had been waiting outside the judge’s house with Layton hinted to Fargo that they had arrived with him. He had assumed they were acquaintances of the slain family, but now he suspected otherwise. Backwoodsmen were a tough breed, but they were generally friendly. There was nothing friendly about these four.
“Whenever you are ready to begin tracking,” Judge Harding urged, “by all means, get to it.”
The clearing had been trampled. Someone—a lot of someones—had left a jumble of footprints, making it impossible to distinguish those of the Sangamon River Monster from the rest. Fargo mentioned as much to the judge and Draypool.
“Blame neighbors and friends and the curious from the hamlet of Carne, about four miles east of here,” Harding said. “They were unaware I wanted the scene preserved. But don’t despair. Layton tells me he has found the Monster’s trail.” The judge crooked a finger and Layton came at a run. “Show him,” Harding commanded.
The killer had headed northeast through the forest. His tracks were as plain as tracks could be, especially since he had made no effort to conceal them. That struck Fargo as peculiar. He knelt to examine a set in a patch of bare earth, reading them as other people read the print in books.
The killer had big feet. He wore shoes, not boots or moccasins, which Fargo also found peculiar. According to Draypool and Harding, the Monster lived off in the deep woods somewhere, and men who did that invariably chose moccasins or boots over common shoes. The edges of the heels and sole were clearly defined, another peculiarity. It meant the shoes were fairly new, for the heels and soles had not worn down from prolonged use.
Going by the depth of the prints, Fargo figured the killer weighed about the same as he did. The length of the killer’s stride was longer, though, which told Fargo the man had longer legs, which suggested the killer was taller than Fargo, and consequently slighter of build. Lean and lanky was how Fargo would describe him.
“Well?” Arthur prompted.
Fargo rose. Draypool and the judge and the others had come over and were waiting expectantly. “Well, what?”
“Why are you dawdling? We hired you to track him, remember? Be on your way. Precious daylight is being squandered.”
Turning toward the Ovaro, Fargo said, “When I find him I’ll take him alive. What you do after that is up to you.”
“Hold on,” the judge said. “We want someone to go with you.”
“No,” Fargo said.
“Be reasonable.” From Draypool.
“I work alone. I told you that.” Fargo rarely made exceptions. He took a step, but Arthur snagged his arm.
“Hear us out. Is that too much to ask for ten thousand dollars?”
“You’re squandering precious daylight,” Fargo reminded him.
Judge Harding clenched his fists. “Be that as it may, as your employers we have a stake in the outcome, and the right to speak our minds.” He waved a fist in the direction of the log cabin. “As God is my witness, those will be the Monster’s last victims.”
“We can’t leave anything to chance,” Draypool said. “What if something were to happen to you?” Fargo went to respond, and Draypool held up a hand. “I know, I know. You can take care of yourself. No one questions your ability. But accidents occur. Things don’t always go as we want them to go. If anything happened to you, how would we know? You might track the Monster to his lair and be unable to get word to us. Then all this will have been for naught.”
Reluctantly, Fargo had to admit he had a point.
“What we propose is this: Take one man with you. Just one.” Draypool pointed at Bill Layton. “He is to do whatever you ask of him at all times. When you find where the killer is holed up, Layton will keep watch while you hurry and fetch us.” He smiled hopefully. “Isn’t that reasonable?”