“Jesus,” Dag muttered and knelt down beside the body. Something about it looked familiar. The pale blue chambray shirt, the faded duck trousers, the worn boots, heels rounded, the battered spurs with one rowel missing on the left one.
Jimmy got up, leaving Little Jake to sit there, holding his head in his hands, all slumped over, and shivering like a dog passing peach seeds.
“Do you know who it is, Dag?”
“Yeah. Luke Pettibone from the Box M, Barry Matlee’s spread. Christ.”
“Egod, Luke. Ah, boy. Barry won’t like it none. Luke had him a wife and kid.”
Jimmy was right, Dag thought. Matlee would have to provide for the widow and her little girl. It wasn’t the law, just the custom.
“Jimmy, you pull that Sharps out and keep an eye out for me,” Dag said, “ ’case they’s any redskins still lurkin’ about. I’m going to see if I can pry anything out of Little Jake.”
Jimmy mounted up and pulled his rifle from its scabbard, a Sharps carbine he’d gotten from Dag when Dagstaff returned from the war and that last battle at Palmito Hill on the Rio Grande. He rode a wide circle around the gully where they had found Little Jake and Luke, looking in all directions as mist rose from the earth like smoke lingering on a battlefield.
Dag pulled Little Jake to his feet, shook him gently to snap him out of fear and self-pity. Little Jake was sobbing, whimpering, cowering.
“Be a man, Little Jake. You got the pants scared off you, but you’re whole while Luke lies there dead. I want to know what happened here.”
“I-I c-can’t.”
“You can, son, and you will. Now damn it, pull yourself together and give me an account of all this.”
When Little Jake kept blubbering, Dag drew back his right hand, swept it back over his shoulder. Little Jake’s eyes widened, and he cowered, waiting for the blow, dropping his head down like some defeated prisoner standing on the gallows.
Dag slapped Little Jake with the back of his hand. Little Jake’s head snapped to one side as the blow took effect.
“I’ll beat it out of you, if I have to, Little Jake. Now straighten up, son, and tell me what the hell happened with you and Luke. Damn it, I haven’t got time to fool around with you.”
There were white streaks on Little Jake’s face where Dag’s fingers had landed, left an impression. The young man raised his head and looked at Dag with watery eyes, sucked in quick breaths to overcome the sobbing. Dag shook him again and Little Jake straightened his back and drew in another deep breath and held it for a moment.
“Me ’n’ Luke was out early, after a cow and calf,” Little Jake said in a string of halty words that poured from his mouth, “and we saw this cow a-runnin’, like somethin’ was a-chasin’ it. Luke thought it was a coyote or maybe a bob-cat. We took after it to see if we could spy a brand on its hide, and that’s when we saw a bunch of red Injuns with some cattle and one of ’em chasin’ after that cow. We turned tail, but the Injun follered us, and when we got here, I mean, we come here to hide from him and that Injun just rode up with a bow and slung an arrer straight at Luke. Then, before I could figure any of it out, the Injun shot another arrer and hit Luke right in the neck. I screamed bloody murder and the Injun lit out. I must’ve scared him or somethin’.”
“You made noise,” Dag said. “How many Indians were in that bunch you and Luke saw?”
“A dozen at least, maybe more.”
“You’re lucky they didn’t all jump you, damn Comanches.”
“They was Comanches all right. And fearsome as all get out.”
Dag turned away, looked upward, toward the rim of the gully.
“Jimmy, you see anything up yonder? Little Jake’s and Luke’s horses?”
There was a pause before Jimmy answered. “I see something out there. Light’s still weak. Looks like horses, maybe.”
“I’ll send Little Jake up there.”
Dag turned to the young man. “Little Jake, get on my horse and ride up to where Jimmy is. Catch up yours and Luke’s horses and I’ll stay here and get these arrows out of him.”
Little Jake was happy to go from that place. He climbed into the saddle on Dag’s horse and rode up out of the gully.
Dag squatted down next to Luke’s body. He lifted the dead man’s head and placed a rock under it to hold it up. He grabbed the front end of the arrow at the neck and clamped it with his thumb and index finger. He picked up another rock and set it against the nock, squaring it and holding it firm. He pushed from the nock end as hard as he could. The arrow slid through the wound until the feathers were buried in Luke’s neck. Dag set down the rock and scooted around, then pulled on the blood-wet shaft until it came free, sending Dag back on his haunches. The arrow was marked with symbols beneath the smears and streaks of blood.
Dag threw the arrow down and got up. He turned Luke’s body over until it lay flat on the ground, backside down. Then he lifted him by the boots and dragged him out of the gully onto level ground. He was puffing from the exertion by then, and stood hunched over as he regained his normal breathing rhythm.
He looked around and saw Jimmy and Little Jake riding toward him, leading the two horses that had wandered off during the fracas with the Comanche. Comanches down this far along the Palo Duro meant trouble. It also meant they were hungry. They must have seen the chuck wagons and the cowhands riding around and figured out that it was getting close to roundup time. Even a dozen Comanches could mess up the spring roundup, the bastards. Dag cursed them roundly in his mind while he waited for the two riders.
The three men lifted Luke’s stiffening corpse and draped him over the saddle of his horse, with some difficulty. The horse, a bay mare, rolled its eyes and sidestepped every time they hoisted the body up to the saddle. It sidled stiff-legged in a half circle trying to avoid taking on the cargo. Its ears stiffened to twin cones, and Dag could have sworn its mane bristled just like the hair on the back of an alarmed cat. Finally, they got Luke’s belly into the cradle of the saddle and both Dag and Jimmy bent him over it like a soft horseshoe, then took Luke’s rope, which was tied with leather thongs to one of the D rings on the saddle, and tied his feet and hands together underneath the belly of the skittery mare.
“Little Jake,” Dag said, “you take the reins and pull this horse. Hold on tight. Jimmy will ride drag and I’ll lead us over to the chuck wagon where y’all spent the night. Is Matlee over yonder with y’all?”
“Yes, sir, he come in last night.”
“Save you a long ride to the Box M. Barry can take care of his own. He got other hands there?”
“Yes, sir, there’s—”
“I don’t need a list, Little Jake. You still camped over to Rattlesnake Creek?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Let’s switch horses, son. You might get used to riding Nero.”
Little Jake climbed down from Dag’s horse and took up the reins of his own. The two men mounted their horses and Dag led out, with Little Jake on his own horse, Luke on his, and Jimmy following atop the buckskin pony.
“Wait a minute,” Dag said. “I better bring those arrows.”
“What for?” Jimmy asked.
“Proof, I reckon.”
There were men milling around the chuck wagon, horses snorting steam and pawing the ground, whickering at the approaching riders and whinnying like a clutch of old women at a Sunday school picnic. Some of the men held coffee cups and a couple were smoking cigarettes and stamping their boots to get their circulation up and the cold out of their toes. Two of the men were pissing into the creek and making a faint yellow steam rise from the cold waters.
Those standing around the fire went silent as Dag rode up. They shifted their gaze to Luke, astraddle his horse. Disbelief shimmered in the quivering muscles on their faces. Barry Matlee stepped forward. Behind him loomed the bulky figure of Deuce Deutsch, his forbidding scowl visible even in shadow.