Chapter 20 #2
The door swung open, and Sheriff Merl Dean walked in with no color in his face and a bandage on his forehead. “I need a posse.”
“We already tried to track them.” Red stood and guided Merl, still pale and shaky, to the seat Red had just vacated. “We lost them in the foothills just west of town. Nowhere for a posse to go.”
“I want to check myself. Can you three help?”
“Wade can’t,” Tom said with his usual cocky smirk, his only real expression except for anger. “He’s still doing roundup.”
“You’re not done with roundup yet?” The sheriff’s brows disappeared into the bandage on his forehead.
“No.” Wade’s stony expression didn’t encourage further comment.
Red changed the subject. “Did you question the prisoner any more last night after I left?”
“No. I think I got hit minutes after you left. I don’t remember anything past you saying goodbye. Figured I’d have another crack at him this morning. Are you sure you didn’t find anyone in that stack of wanted posters we thumbed through?”
Shaking his head, Red said, “The man had no scars or anything else that would identify him. That cut on his chin is too new.”
Abby turned on the sheriff like a hungry cougar who’d just spotted a three-legged buffalo. “Cut on his chin?”
“Right here?” Wade asked as he sat up straight and ran a finger along his jawline on the right side. Then he rose and stood behind Abby, resting his hands on her shoulders.
“Yep.”
“Get your hands off my sister.” Tom half rose from his seat.
Wade’s hands stayed where they were. “Long beard, dark hair?”
Sheriff Dean shook his head. “His hair was dark, but short, looked like he’d hacked it off with a knife to me. And no beard.”
“He could have done all that to change his appearance.” Red looked at Wade and Abby. “Probably had to if his face needed stitches. What’s going on?”
“I told you about the man who tried to take Abby after the massacre.”
“Massacre?” Tom slammed his coffee cup on the table. “My sister was in the middle of a massacre?” He jabbed a finger at Wade’s nose. “You didn’t say anything about a massacre.”
“I told Red.” Wade dismissed Tom, which struck Red as very brave or very foolish. Tom Linscott was notorious for his bad temper and quick fists. A match in every way for that famous black stallion.
“He did tell me.” Red felt the need to back his friend.
“And where exactly were you when my sister was in the middle of a massacre?” Linscott rounded the table as if to put himself between Wade and Abby, as if it were Wade’s fault the girl had been in a massacre and she was still in danger. And just maybe Tom had some massacre plans of his own.
Wade, rather than backing down, which most sensible people learned to do when Linscott’s temper flamed, took a step forward, lifting his chin as if daring Tom to land a fist on it.
“Shut up, both of you.” Abby stood and, as if this was nothing new, shoved her way between the two men. “Red may have captured a murderer. You fight like squabbling children. We don’t have time for your foolishness.”
Tom jerked back as if Abby had cut him. Which she probably would, given time.
Wade smiled and moved out of Tom’s reach. “Yes, Abby fought back and managed to cut her attacker with her knife. She got in several good slashes. I think his clothing was cut up. His face she laid open bad. He let her go and ran. She saved herself. I only came along afterward.”
“That’s not true. You put a bullet into one of them.”
“One of them? How many men had their hands on my sister?” Tom’s face turned beet red.
“There were four,” Abby said.
“You shot a man?” The sheriff’s brows lowered, and he glared at Wade. “You should have reported it.”
Wade shrugged. “He rode off. He couldn’t have been too badly hurt.”
“Which means you took a shot at him and missed, of course.” Tom sneered.
“This rustler I brought in could be the same man.” Red ignored Linscott. Everyone was used to his cranky ways. He pulled up a chair from another table and sat by the sheriff. “And if he had four men at the village, then there are more rustlers around than we figured.”
“What village?” The sheriff was looking irritated. Red couldn’t blame him. The man was finding too many things out by chance that they should have reported to him from the start. And all while nursing one beauty of a headache.
“Abby was living with the Flathead in a high valley past the Tanner ranch.” Wade settled back in his chair.
“It’s the Harden ranch,” Cassie said as she poured more coffee for them all.
All the men grunted.
“Oh, only Indians.” The sheriff turned to his coffee.
“‘Only’?” Abby turned on the man. Was her hand going for her knife? “‘Only Indians’?”
Wade grabbed her arm. “Don’t pull a knife on the sheriff, Ab. He can arrest you for it.”
“He’d have to be alive to arrest me, now, wouldn’t he?”
The sheriff was concentrating on his coffee and missed the ensuing struggle.
“Abby really liked her Flathead family,” Red told the sheriff, hoping to avert yet another massacre. “They saved her life. Found her when her family was dead from the fever and took her in. They treated her far better than many whites have.”
“Sorry for the insult, miss.” The sheriff rubbed his bandaged head. “I’m sorry about your village too. I’d pick your village over the scum that are running these hills any day. And I’ll help you catch them, too, and see them hanged for what they did to your people.”
Abby quit trying to arm herself and sank with a disgusted snort into her chair. “Your prisoner destroyed my village, he and his three friends. And now he rides away from your jail cell free as a bird.”
Merl lifted the coffee cup and took a long sip. “I thought I could handle him. Red stayed for most of the night, but I should have brought my deputy in too. We’ve never had a jailbreak before.”
Abby’s eyes softened as she looked at the battered man. It reassured Red some to note that the woman wasn’t always bloodthirsty.
“Maybe you oughta go on home, Merl.” Red studied the man’s ashen face. “You look white. You couldn’t stick your horse even if we did know which way to ride.”
Merl sighed. “No one reported this massacre to me. Where’d this happen?”
Red, Wade, and Abby took turns filling the sheriff in. Tom seemed bent on yelling every time one of them added a new detail.
“Try and describe these men more carefully.” The sheriff looked between Wade and Abby.
“Do better than heavyset, thin, masks. Think hard. Picture them. You’ve left a scar on my prisoner and a bullet wound in another one of them.
Did they have any other marks, scars, anything we could use to identify them?
Did you notice their horses? Were they branded? ”
Wade considered things quietly for a time.
“One of them had a funny way of holding a gun. I can’t put my finger on just…
Wait! His fingers, that was it. He held his six-shooter in a stiff way.
” Wade pulled his own Colt and checked the load to make sure the hammer was on an empty chamber.
He pointed the gun at the ceiling and stared at his hands.
“Two fingers on his left hand stuck out.” He demonstrated.
“Usually, they’d be curled around the gun butt, like this. ”
Wade seemed to be looking into the past, trying to picture the scene.
He closed his fist, his index finger on the trigger, the next three fingers wrapped around the gun handle to meet his thumb.
The normal way to hold a gun. “But instead, his little finger and the one next to it stuck out straight. He had leather gloves on, tight, not like the buckskin gloves you see. Normally, a man would take his gloves off to handle a gun, but this one didn’t.
Of course, it all happened so fast, and the massacre was over.
Maybe he was leaving and it was a cold morning.
He didn’t have time to remove his glove when they came upon me. ”
As they finished the telling, Abby added, “I smelled the stink of a white man in the woods this morning. I believe there were three of them, certainly more than one. Maybe it was the escaped prisoner heading north.”
“You smelled a man?” Tom looked at her as if she’d sprouted elk antlers.
Red would have looked at Abby strangely, too, except clearly, Tom’s comment made Abby mad. So Tom’s big mouth saved Red from making himself a target.
“What did you learn living with those savages all these years?” Tom asked. “It’ll take me forever to teach you better.”
“Teach me better?” Abby’s voice got so high, it threatened to shatter glass. “A white man teach me? I will fight learning the white ways to my death.”
Cassie reached for Michael, probably to save the little tyke’s hearing. Red helped tuck the boy into the carrier on his wife’s back, then kissed the child on his cheek and spared a quick kiss for Cassie too. She smiled, ran one finger down Red’s nose, and then went back to waiting tables.
Wade’s gaze had followed the exchange between Red and Cassie.
Likely, Wade envied their happy marriage.
There’d been a time when Wade’s interest in Cassie was an obsession.
Wade had gotten past that when he’d put his faith in God.
But the man was lonely. He’d told Red he wanted a family, a wife like Cassie who would be gentle and funny and sweet.
Then Wade’s eyes went to Abby. Maybe Red’s friend had finally found himself a woman.