“Howdy, Deke,” I said. “Heard you ride in.”
The man nodded. “Getting wet out there.”
“I’d say so.” I waited a spell, then asked: “See any Apache sign?”
Deke shook his head. “Like I told Miz Prather, I rode as far as Cottonwood Creek, then doubled back to the Deepwater and saw nary a thing. After that, I made a wide loop around the ranch. Apart from an old bull elk I surprised up in the hills north of here, I saw nothing.”
“Think Victorio has pulled his freight?” I asked.
Deke shrugged. “Who can tell? You know how it is with Apaches. I could have rode right past a passel of them and never even knowed it.” He looked up at me. “Hear tell you had a brush or two with Apaches your ownself.”
“Sure did,” I said. “And all I want now is to stay well away from them.”
Deke rose stiffly to his feet and ground out his cigarette under his heel. “Seems to me that around these parts, that’s getting mighty hard to do.”
The puncher stepped to the door and opened it wide, looking out morosely at the slanting rain. “I got to see to my horse,” he said. “Mind if I borry your slicker?”
“Go right ahead,” I said. “I reckon I’ll turn in.”
I watched Deke shrug into my coat, then step outside.
A few moments later a single rifle shot shattered the evening quiet, its ringing racket clamoring around the corrals and buildings of the SP like the hammer of an angry god on an anvil.
Chapter 20
I grabbed my rifle and rushed outside. Jim Meldrum was running from the barn, a Colt in each hand.
“What happened?” he yelled.
But I made no answer, because Deke Stockton was lying facedown on the ground a few yards away, his hat tumbling past the corral, blown by the wind.
I ran to Deke and turned the man over. His eyes were wide-open, but he was beyond seeing anything. A bullet had crashed into his forehead, about where his hatband began. He must have been dead when he hit the ground.
Meldrum stood beside me, looking down at the dead man. “Apaches?”
I shook my head at him. “Jim, Deke was wearing my slicker.”
I rose to my feet in time to see the dawning realization on Meldrum’s face. “Lafe Wingo,” he whispered.
“And he’s still out there,” I said.
Ma and Lila were standing on the porch of the house, looking over at us, their faces pale, bodies stiff with shock.
I turned and stepped quickly toward the barn. “Where are you going?” Meldrum called out after me.
“After Wingo.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No,” I threw over my shoulder. “You stay close to Lila and Ma.”
I figured the paint was still worn-out, so I threw my saddle on a lineback dun and left the barn at a lope. Tired as I was, weak as I felt, I had to go after Wingo. He’d killed once and he could already be setting up to kill again.
In the first hour, I rode around the ranch, each time widening my loop across that dark, open country. There were a few cottonwoods growing along the streambeds and a scattering of post oak, mesquite, pinon and some juniper on the slopes of the low hills, but little else by way of trees,
I passed a couple of small herds of bunched cows, all of them wearing the SP Connected brand, and they seemed to be in good shape. A few already had calves on the ground and the range grass itself looked fair to middling for this early in the summer.
As the rain lessened, I rode under a solitary mountain mahogany on the slope of a shallow saddleback and rolled a cigarette. I looked around, but all I saw was darkness. The night was very quiet and now the rain had gentled, its small sound lost as it fell on the grass.
Cupping my hands to avoid the flare of the match being seen by watchful eyes, I lit the cigarette and sat the dun, smoking for a while.
Nothing stirred.
After five minutes, I stubbed out the cigarette on the side of my bootheel and tossed the dead butt into the wet grass. Then I spurred the dun and once again took to the flat.
I spent another hour backtracking the way I’d come earlier, and finally I doubled back and rode to the rise where Lila had gotten her first glimpse of the ranch.
Swinging out of the saddle, I eased the girth on the dun and let him graze. Below me, I saw only darkness. Meldrum, being no pilgrim in such matters, must have ordered Ma and Lila to douse the house oil lamps.
Finally, as a weird and lonesome coyote called, cursing his endless hunger and his harsh fate, I tightened the girth again and stepped back into the saddle.
A few minutes later I rode into the ranch, wet, tired and mighty dispirited. If it had been Wingo who’d shot Deke Stockton, he’d gotten away clean.
And now the gunman presented a danger more immediate and more deadly than even that of Victorio and his Apaches. Come daylight, Wingo could lie hidden with his sharpshooter’s rifle and pick us off one by one, then ride in and take the money—and Lila.
I put up the dun, rubbed him down with a piece of sacking and threw him a handful of oats, then returned to the bunkhouse.
Jim Meldrum was waiting up for me, still wearing his guns. “See anything?”
Too tired and too upset to reply, I just shook my head at him.
Meldrum took it in stride. “Miz Lila stopped by, wanted to know if you’d come back. She’s some worried.”
Exhausted and out of sorts as I was, foolish thoughts of Lila crowded into my numb brain and I figured I wouldn’t be able to sleep until I saw her.
I settled my gun belt around my hips and left the bunkhouse and walked over to the house. Lila was sitting on a rocker on the porch when I got there. She was dressed in a blue robe and the bluer shadows of the night.
When I stepped up onto the porch, she stood and fell into my arms. “Dusty, I was so worried about you.”
I held Lila close and kissed her. “I scouted the whole area and saw nothing,” I said, after reluctantly taking my lips from hers. Then, to ease her mind: “If it was Wingo, he’s long gone.”
The rain had stopped and I looked up at a tattered sky, where the moon was rounding up the last straggling clouds. “It’s getting late, Lila,” I said. “Best you get to bed.”
Lila nodded, but her eyes were guarded.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
The girl put her arms around my waist and turned up her face to mine. “Ma and Mr. Fullerton have Deke Stockton laid out in the kitchen. They’re washing his body because Ma says a man should be clean when he goes to meet his Maker.”
Lila held me closer as though I might push her away. “Dusty, please don’t ask me to go in there. Not yet.”
I smiled at her, trying to calm her fears with whatever small wisdom I possessed. “Lila, just remember that the body in there isn’t Deke Stockton, and it never was. What was Deke Stockton can’t die. It still lives, and it will go on living forever.” I shrugged. “At least, that’s what I believe.”
“Maybe so,” Lila said, “but I still don’t want to see a dead man lying like that, looking like a column of white-and-blue marble, all covered with soap and water.”
I realized further argument was useless. And so it was that Lila and me sat side by side on rockers, holding hands, dozing off and on as the long night gathered around us. Then morning came at last and chased away the shadows and over to the chicken coop Ma’s gaudy rooster paused in his proud strutting to get up on his tiptoes and crow a welcome to the reborn day.
Before breakfast we buried Deke Stockton, and Ma said the words, reading from Simon Prather’s well-worn Bible.
Deke was laid to rest like many a puncher before him, with little talk and a minimum of ceremony in a six-by-three grave well away from the house.