Rita regained consciousness the following day. She told her father that she never saw her attackers’ faces. They kept masks and hoods on the entire time she was being assaulted.
Cord McCorkle sent word that Dooley was welcome to come help search his spread from top to bottom to find the attackers.
Dooley sent word that Cord could go to hell. That he believed Cord knew who raped and beat his daughter and was hiding them, protecting them.
“I tried,” Cord said to Smoke. “I don’t know what else I can do.”
The men were in town, having coffee in Hans’s cafe.
Parnell had wanted to pack up and go back east immediately. Fae had told him, in quite blunt language, that anytime he wanted to haul his ashes, to go right ahead. She was staying.
Beans and Charlie Starr had stood openmouthed, listening to Fae vent her spleen. They had never heard such language from the mouth of a woman.
Parnell had packed his bags and left the ranch in a huff, vowing never to return until his sister apologized for such unseemly behavior and such vile language.
That set Fae off again. She stood by the hitchrail and cussed her brother until his buggy was out of sight.
Lujan and Spring walked up.
“They do this about once a month,” Spring said. “He’ll be back in a couple of days. I tell you boys what, workin’ for that woman has done give me an education I could do without. Someone needs to sit on her and wash her mouth out with soap.”
“Don’t look at me!” Lujan said, rolling his dark eyes. “I’d rather crawl up in a nest of rattlesnakes. ”
“Get back to work!” Fae squalled from the porch, sending the men scrambling for their horses.
“There they are,” Smoke said quietly, his eyes on three men riding abreast up the street.
“Who?” Cord asked.
“The Sabler Brothers. Ben, Carl, and Delmar. They’ll be gunning for Lujan. He killed two of their brothers some years back.”
“Be interesting to see which saloon they go in.”
“You takin’ bets?”
“Not me. I damn sure didn’t send for them.”
The Sabler boys reined up in front of the Hangout.
“It’s like they was told not to come to the Pussycat,” Cord reflected.
“They probably were. No chipped shoes on any of your horses, huh?”
“No. But several were reshod that day; started before you came over with the news. It’s odd, Smoke. Del is as square as they come; hates the gunfighters. But he says he can account for every one of them the morningRita was raped. He says he’ll swear in a court of law that none of them left the bunkhouse-main house area. I believe him.”
“It could have been some drifters.”
“You believe that?”
“No. I don’t know what to believe, really.”
“I better tell you: talk among the D-H bunch—the gunslicks—is that it was Silver Jim and Lujan and the Hatfield
Smoke lifted his eyes to meet Cord’s gaze. Cord had to struggle to keep from recoiling back. The eyes were ice-house cold and rattler deadly. “Silver Jim is one of the most honorable men I have ever met. Lujan was with me all that morning. Both Hatfield and Bobby are of the age where neither one of them can even talk when they get around women; besides he was within a mile of me and Lujan all morning. Whoever started that rumor is about to walk into a load of grief. If you know who it is, Cord, I’d appreciate you telling me.”
“It was that new bunch that came in on the stage the day after it happened. They come up from Butte at Hanks’s wire.”
“Names?”
“All I know is they call one of them Rose.”
Lujan came galloping up, off his horse before the animal even stopped. He ran into the cafe. “Smoke! Hardrock found Young Hatfield about an hour ago. He’d been tortured with a running iron and then dragged. He ain’t got long.”
Nine
Doc Adair, now sober for several days, looked up as Smoke and Cord entered the bedroom of the main ranch house. He shook his head. “Driftin’ in and out of consciousness. I’ve got him full of laudanum to ease the pain. They burned him all over his body with a hot iron, then they dragged him. He isn’t going to make it. He wouldn’t be a whole man even if he did.”
No one needed to ask what he meant by that. Those who did this to the boy had been more cruel than mean.
Bobby was fighting back tears. “Me and him growed up together. We was neighbors. More like brothers than friends. ”
Fae put her arm around the young man and held him, then, at a signal from Smoke, led him out of the bedroom. Smoke knelt down beside the bed.
“Can you hear me, Hatfield?”
The boy groaned and opened his one good eye. “Yes, sir, Mister Smoke.” His voice was barely a whisper, and filled with pain.
“Who did this to you?”
“One of them was called ... Rose. They called another one Cliff. I ain’t gonna make it, am I, Mister Smoke?”
Smoke sighed.
“Tell me ... the truth.”
“The doc says no. But doctors have been wrong before.”
“When they burned my privates ... I screamed and passed out. I come to and they ... was draggin’ me.”
His words were becoming hard to understand and his breathing was very ragged. Smoke could see one empty eye socket. “Send any money due me to ... my ma. Tell her to buy something pretty ... with it. Watch out for Bobby. He’s ... He don’t look it, but he’s ... cat quick with a short gun. Been ... practicin’ since we was about ... six years old. Gettin’ dark. See you, boys.”
The young man closed his good eye and spoke no more. Doc Adair pushed his way through to the bed. After a few seconds, he said, “He’s still alive, but just. A few more minutes and he’ll be out of his pain.”
Smoke glanced at Lujan. “Lujan, go sit on Bobby. Hogtie him if you have to. We’ll avenge Hatfield, but it’ll be after the boy’s been given a proper burial.”
Grim-faced, and feeling a great deal more emotion than showed on his face, the Mexican gunfighter nodded and left the room.
Hatfield groaned in his unconsciousness. He sighed and his chest moved up and down, as if struggling for breath. Then he lay still. Doc Adair held a small pocket mirror up to the boy’s mouth. No breath clouded the mirror. The doctor pulled the sheet over Hatfield’s face.
“I’ll start putting a box together,” Spring spoke from the doorway. “Damn, but I liked that boy!”
The funeral was at ten o’clock the following morning. Mr. and Mrs. Cord McCorkle came, accompanied by Sandi and a few of their hands. Doc Adair was there, as was Hans and Hilda and Olga. Olga went straight to Ring’s side and stood there during the services.
No one had seen Bobby that morning. He showed up at the last moment, wearing a black suit—Fae had pressed it for him—with a white shirt and black string tie. He wore a Remington Frontier .44, low and tied down. He did not strut and swagger. He wore it like he had been born with it. He walked up to Smoke and Lujan and the others, standing in a group.
“Bobby just died with Hatfield,” he told them. “My last name is Johnson. Turkey Creek Jack Johnson is my uncle. My name is Bob Johnson. And I’ll be goin’ into town when my friend is in the ground proper and the words said over him. ”
“We’ll all go in, Bob,” Smoke told him.
The preacher spoke his piece and the dirt was shoveled over Hatfield’s fresh-made coffin.
“Cord, I’d appreciate it if you and yours would stay here with Fae and Parnell until we get back.”
“We’ll sure do it, Smoke. Take your time. And shoot straight,” he added.
The men headed out. Four aging gunfighters with a string of kills behind them so long history has still not counted them. One gunfighter from south of the border. Smoke Jensen, from north of the border. The Moab Kid and a boy/man who rode with destiny on his shoulders.