The Hanging of Charlie Darke Page 6

  Wade Barton lifted his head and looked me in the eye. There was anger in his gaze, worry about his brother, I guessed, but I didn’t think that now was the best time for him to be interrupting what was happening inside.

  ‘They’re trying to get the bullet out, ‘I said. ‘Best if you wait here until they’re done.’

  I couldn’t see the expression on his face, the veranda was in darkness and his wide-brimmed hat was low over his eyes, but he stopped and turned to me. ‘Cartwright’s in there?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Doc’s dead. I found his body and the man called Arnie’s up in the high ground where the trail splits north to Blackwater. They were shot from ambush.’

  ‘You found them! How do I know you ain’t the one that did the killing?’

  I don’t take well to accusations like that. My hand moved over the butt of my Colt Peacemaker.

  ‘You killed two men in Beecher’s Gulch tonight,’ he said.

  ‘And that gives you reason to suppose I killed the doctor?’

  ‘I got no reason to suppose you didn’t. You’re a stranger and a troublemaker. Both make you favourite.’

  ‘So guilt and innocence are just based on who you know, are they?’

  ‘Don’t know no better rule.’

  I was beginning to dislike Wade Barton, but I checked myself, his brother was hurt bad in the room behind me and his pa had saved me from a probable lynching. ‘Still best if you wait out here until they’re done fixing up Chet.’

  ‘Well if Cartwright ain’t here just who is it that’s digging the bullet out of my brother’s back?’

  Hawk emerged from the shadow, but his body seemed so still and erect that there was no suggestion of motion. ‘My son. Strong Bull.’

  The silence hung heavy. Then a sound reached us from inside the house. It was Strong Bull singing a medicine chant. That was too much for Wade. He drew his revolver and made a lunge for the door. ‘No stinkin’ Indian’s touching my brother.’

  I made a grab for his gun arm. He swung it in a vicious arc and though I almost got all the way under it his loaded fist struck me across the top of the head and tumbled me against the veranda rail. I heard him swear at Hawk and threaten to kill him if he tried to bar his way. The blow I’d taken hadn’t done any damage and I got back at him, grasping and twisting his wrist so that the gun pointed to the sky. Pivoting on my right foot I smacked my left shoulder into his back with enough force to lift him off his feet. The gun discharged and I flung him off the porch on to the hard earth near where his horse stood. As I jumped on him and aimed a punch at his jaw I was aware of noises from the bunkhouse.

  My punch landed on the left side of Wade’s jaw and his head banged against the ground. Hawk stepped on his gun hand to eliminate any further risk of being shot while from the veranda Duke Wade’s voice cut through the night air.

  ‘What’s going on out here?’

  ‘It’s your son,’ I said. ‘He doesn’t seem keen on the idea of Strong Bull saving Chet’s life.’

  ‘An Indian, Pa. You letting an Indian stick his knife in Chet?’

  ‘He’s doing his best to save your brother’s life. Same as all these people here.’ The cowhands had gathered round us, eager, as ever, to watch a fistfight. ‘If you ain’t got the sense to understand that,’ continued Duke, ‘then git yourself back to our own spread. I’ll be home when Chet’s out of danger.’

  ‘Or dead,’ shouted Wade. He fixed Hawk with a deadly look. ‘Chet dies and there’s no way you’re leaving this valley.’ He turned his attention to me. ‘And it ain’t over between us, either.’ His father yelled another warning at him and he climbed on his horse and rode away.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The stench of the medication hit me as soon as I opened the door. Strong Bull sat cross-legged in the far corner and his sister stood beside the table on which Chet was still outstretched. His face was white, as though all the blood had drained from his head, but his chest rose and fell in a strong, steady rhythm. High on the left side of his chest I was surprised to see a dressing which consisted of river-plant leaves smeared with the green unguent that Hawk’s daughter had blended. My surprise was due to the fact that the bullet wound was in Chet’s back. My expression must have asked the question because the Cheyenne girl picked up something from beside her bundle of herbs and held it in her open palm. It was the small lump of lead that had been inside Chet.

  ‘Pushed it right through him.’ There was a note of awe in Duke Barton’s voice. ‘Strong Bull opened Chet’s chest and pushed the bullet out. Must have suspected it was almost through him.’

  ‘He’s breathing easier,’ I said.

  Annie was leaning against the wall near the bedroom door. She looked bemused, holding a bowl in her hands as though unsure what to do with the contents. Her sleeves were rolled up above her elbows and a thick strand of hair hung over her face.

  ‘Let me take that,’ I said, crossing to her and taking the bowl from her hands. The water was clean and cold. I put the bowl on the floor and guided Annie outside. The night air was probably all she needed to regain her composure. I walked with her across the compound to the fence line. There was a big tree-stump not far from the gate and that was where she sat, making a beeline for it as though it were the most natural thing in the world. No doubt she’d sat there a lot. We didn’t speak. I stood by the fence with my back to her, looking off to the ridge and the trail into town. From time to time I could hear soft sounds coming from her, sobs that she was stifling with her hands. I didn’t interfere. Whatever was troubling her would be resolved more quickly without words from me.

  Eventually she called me, her voice soft but with a controlled determination. ‘Will he make it, Mr Gray?’

  ‘I can’t rightly answer that, ma’am, not being a doctor, but what I can tell you is that that Cheyenne in there, Strong Bull, owes his life to Duke Barton, so if anyone’s going to do the best they can to save Chet then I’d say it’s him.’

  A smile touched Annie’s face. Hope brightened her eyes. Then she turned her head away from me, her fingers entwining in her lap. ‘I’ve made a mistake,’ she said.

  ‘We’ve all made mistakes.’

  ‘This is a big one. I don’t think I can fix it.’ It didn’t need a Pinkerton detective to figure out she’d married the wrong man. My attitude to marriage didn’t make me the right person to talk to about such matters. If she’d been a Sioux squaw she could have thrown Charlie Darke’s belongings out of the house and taken Chet in without anyone batting an eyelid. But she didn’t let me off the hook. ‘I shouldn’t have married Charlie,’ she said.

  To my way of thinking neither Charlie nor Chet was currently in a position to offer a secure future. What I’d said about Strong Bull doing all he could to save Chet’s life was true enough but it wasn’t a guarantee of success. Perhaps daylight would give us a better clue as to his chances of survival. And Charlie hadn’t returned from town. If his alibi didn’t hold water his chances of swinging for cattle rustling were pretty high. Of course these weren’t thoughts that Annie wanted to hear. ‘Things have a habit of working out,’ I said. ‘For the moment you’ve got a ranch to run. Best concentrate on that.’

  She looked up at me, her chin tilted in defiant attitude as though she would bravely do battle with all of life’s adversaries. ‘If Charlie hasn’t returned by daylight I’ll go into Beecher’s Gulch. Will you come with me, Mr Gray?’

  I told her I would. She stood, rested a hand on my arm and gave me one of those quiet smiles that seem to bestow on a man an honour that he knows he doesn’t deserve. ‘I’m pleased Uncle Caleb sent you,’ she said, and headed for the house.

  I let her go, unsure of what she thought I’d done for her, unsure what I was going to do myself come daylight. I went back to the veranda, sat in the shadows in the furthest corner from the door and went to sleep.

  I awoke to the smell of cooked bacon and hot coffee and the sound of voices, all coming from the bunkhouse. The house was a have
n of silence. When I looked in the Cheyenne girl stood near Chet’s head, watching him, holding a damp cloth that I think she’d used on his brow. I mixed a few Sioux words in with my hand-signs to find out the condition of the patient. She told me he would live, her voice light, her eyes never lifting to look at my face, her shyness a contradiction to the role she’d undertaken during the night. But Indian maidens were like that, ready to do whatever task needed doing no matter how gory or violent, yet reluctant to look into the eyes of a warrior lest there was an exchange of pleasure in each other’s company. Sometimes I wondered how any of them got married, but it was a ritual, their mode of behaviour, they got their message across one way or another. Despite the fact that this girl wouldn’t look at me I knew she wasn’t afraid of me or reluctant to have me near.

  Hawk lay under the window. I thought him asleep but he rose to his feet in a sudden, fluid movement. ‘We go now. Strong Bull can do no more,’ he said to me.

  The girl turned away and left the house, gone to prepare their ponies for the journey back to camp. For a moment I wondered if his abrupt decision was simply a means of separating me from his daughter, but he gestured with his head, wanting to speak to me outside. We wandered over to the tree-stump where, a few hours earlier, I had spoken with Annie.

  ‘Charlie Darke killed Top Man,’ he said. ‘I saw it.’

  ‘You mean he murdered him?’

  Hawk nodded. ‘I was in the corral. There were horses for sale. I look at them for Bar-Ton. I heard Top Man in alley. His step I know. Perhaps he looked for me to return to the ranch. Before he reached the stable I heard someone call his name. It was Charlie Darke. He had his gun in his hand. When Top Man turned around Charlie shot him. Then he took Top Man’s gun and dropped it near his body.’

  ‘Made it look like they’d both drawn. Why didn’t you tell the sheriff?’ I knew the answer to that one, so asked, ‘Did you tell Duke?’

  ‘Bar-Ton had travelled East with Ice Eyes. They were gone many moons. Other things happened before they returned.’

  ‘What other things?’

  ‘The killing of Annie’s people.’

  ‘Her parents?’

  Hawk nodded. ‘Charlie Darke killed them.’

  I was stunned. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘He beat them with his gun then stampeded the horses that pulled their buggy. When it overturned he checked that they were dead then rode away.’

  ‘You saw this?’

  ‘I watched from the high ground. It was done before I could help them.’

  ‘Have you told anyone?’

  ‘Bar-Ton,’ he said.

  ‘But nothing’s been done.’

  He looked past my shoulder toward the house. Strong Bull was jumping on to his pony’s back, his sister already sat astride hers and held the lead rein of another. Hawk waited for them. ‘My daughter, Calf Woman, travels far to look at you.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘The stories of Medicine Feather are well known in Cheyenne lodges. But I tell her Arapaho heroes still bleed on Cheyenne lances.’ For Hawk that passed as humour. He stepped on to the tree-stump, grabbed a fistful of mane and swung himself on to the spare horse’s back. I walked around the horses and stopped beside Calf Woman. Part of my survival policy says don’t spurn a possible friend. Who knew when a Cheyenne ally would be needed. I removed my hat and plucked from it the short, white eagle-feather that I keep in the band. I had nothing else to offer. Only the feather. I put it into her hand. Calf Woman hardly raised her eyes from her pony’s neck, but she held tightly to the feather. Her father spoke a word, a command, and the three moved forward in stately fashion, like the centre-piece of a royal procession. Before they’d gone six horse-lengths from me Calf Woman turned and smiled. It was the sort of smile that demolished the illusion of shyness that had been prevalent earlier; the sort of smile that made me feel that, in a unique way, I could be the means of uniting all the tribes of the Plains.

  Chet Barton’s eyes were open when I returned to the house, although they were drained of their colour as his body was drained of strength and his mind, it seemed, drained of awareness. He was looking at Annie, who had taken over Calf Woman’s position at the top of the table, but was unable to maintain focus on her when she moved. She was talking to him, gently, insisting that he would soon be back on his feet. She caught me watching her and gave me an uncertain smile.

  Duke Barton didn’t look a lot better than his son. A near sleepless night had been rougher on him than I’d expected. He was perched on a chair, unsure of his next move. I figured getting him on his feet would bring out the boss in him. The hired hands weren’t likely to take orders from me, a stranger, but they’d have some sort of respect for Duke Barton. ‘Someone’s making breakfast over in the bunkhouse,’ I told him. ‘Perhaps you can get them to make some for us. And get a couple of the men to cross the river and bring back those bodies from the high country.’ It took him a moment to act, but he got unsurely to his feet and went outside.

  ‘Still no sign of Charlie,’ I said to Annie. ‘When we’ve had breakfast we’ll find someone to stay with Chet then head into town.’ She nodded, then, with a critical glance, examined her hands and clothes for the suitability for a ride into town. I left the house and crossed to the water-trough to scoop water over my head and arms. Refreshed and part-ways cleansed, I caught Duke Barton on his way back from the bunkhouse.

  ‘Hawk told me about Charlie Darke,’ I said. ‘Why didn’t you tell the sheriff he’d killed your man Straker and Annie’s folk?’

  ‘Wouldn’t have done no good. Not a jury in the country that would have convicted him on the word of an Indian. You know that.’

  ‘Could’ve tried,’ I said. ‘Besides which Annie needs to know about the man she married.’

  ‘Yeah. Well, there you got us. Everything seemed set for Annie to marry Chet before him and I had to go East for awhile. When we come back she’s married to Darke. Wouldn’t have looked good if we’d proclaimed her husband a murderer. People would have said we were riled up because he’d pinched her from Chet. Nobody has any suspicion that her parents’ deaths were anything other than accidental.’

  ‘So you were just going to let him get away with it?’

  ‘Difficult to know what to do. Hawk tried to scare him away. Burnt down their barn and procured some poison plants that he fed to a couple of their beeves. I stopped him when I found out about it. Scaring them was just fuelling Darke’s reason to sell the ranch.’

  ‘Hawk did those things?’

  ‘You knew about them?’

  ‘They’re what got me here.’

  ‘Hawk just thought to scare Charlie away. Didn’t think he was the kind to hang around if there was trouble. So we set to watching him, had to in case he tried to harm Annie. He’d have slipped up sometime. We were sure we’d get something on him.’

  ‘Like over branding his neighbour’s steers?’

  The anger in his retort was genuine. ‘That weren’t nothing to do with the Silver Star ranch.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ I said, ‘but if you’ve had men watching him then you had to know he didn’t do it. But it was Silver Star men who tried to have him lynched.’

  ‘You’re wrong. Sure there were some of my men in town when the cry went up but they weren’t the ones who started it. Heck, they don’t know what he did any more than Dan Bayles does.’

  ‘Still,’ I said, ‘it would have been a handy way of disposing of him.’

  ‘And it would have saved my boy from taking a bullet in the back.’

  ‘Tell me, apart from you and Hawk, who knows about Charlie Darke?’

  ‘Just my boys. Chet and Wade.’

  ‘What do you plan to do about Charlie now?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  I thought a moment. ‘Any ideas why he killed Annie’s folk?’

  ‘For the ranch’

  ‘He doesn’t look like he’s done too much wrangling to me,’ I said.

  ‘No. But it has a
nother value. A large cash value. There’s a valley to the north that has good pasture land with plenty of water for the cattle. The railroad want to buy it. Joe Brookes, Annie’s pa, wouldn’t sell it despite what was on offer. The alternative for the railroad means bridge-building, blasting through mountains and delays of one kind or another. Some people thought Joe was mad not to take the money but he said the ranch was near worthless without that valley and he didn’t want to start settling land again someplace else.’

  ‘The railroad’s offer is common knowledge?’

  ‘Sure it is.’

  ‘Is it still on the table.’

  ‘As far as I know. But Annie ain’t going to sell up either.’

  ‘How d’you know that?’

  A sudden glint of embarrassment reached his eyes. ‘Chet and her spoke about it.’

  ‘You mean they talked about what they’d do with the valley if she married Chet.’

  ‘Sure. But it was only talk. Joe and Louisa were still alive. It was still Joe’s ranch. But Annie said she was ranching stock and if the ranch was hers she would do exactly the same as her pa.’

  ‘Do you think that’s Charlie Darke’s plan? Get control of the ranch and sell it off to the railroad?’

  ‘Seems probable, don’t it?’

  I had to agree it did. Hawk wouldn’t lie about Charlie murdering Straker and Joe and Louisa Brookes. He’d killed Straker because he’d accused him of cheating, probably with justification, so the lure of a huge sum of money would certainly make him kill again. I went into the barn to harness up the rig for Annie. I almost hoped that when we got to town Dan Bayles would have found some evidence to prove Charlie Darke’s guilt.