The Circuit Rider Read online

  Bird splashed water onto her face. Its slight chill felt fresh and soothing.

  She looked in the mirror, and was not surprised to see the dark circles under the eyes, the pale skin, the hard lines of her lips. She supposed the way she looked was a fairly accurate reflection of the way she lived.

  She got dressed, strapped on both guns, and went down to the hotel restaurant, where there was a pot of coffee and some biscuits.

  Bird filled a cup with the strong, black brew and drank the whole thing down, then did the same with another cup.

  The livery was just down the street, and Bird was on the Appaloosa heading out of town within minutes.

  It didn’t take long to find the Daniels ranch. A few miles west of town she came over a slight rise to see a lush valley anchored by a big house and several corrals, already the scene of intense activity.

  The corral seemed the most likely spot for the foreman, so Bird pointed her horse there. Two cowboys perched on the edge of a lodgepole fence, watching a wiry black man ride a bucking tan horse. The man stuck to the animal’s back with a seemingly effortless tenacity.

  One of the cowboys leaned back and looked at her.

  “Help you?” he asked.

  “I’m looking for Ike Daniels or Toby Raines,” she said.

  The cowboy snickered a little before saying, “Doubt Ike’s done sleepin’ it off yet, ma’am. But if you’re brave, and you look like you are, you can head up to the kitchen at the back of the house. Don’t know anyone by the name of Toby Raines, though.”

  Bird touched the brim of her hat and headed to the main house.

  It was a huge place. The front porch wrapped around the whole thing, and there were various sections jutting out farther than the others and several big windows. Much of the woodwork, to Bird’s eye, had clearly been done by a craftsman. She was curious about the location of the windows, though. A man who was good with a rifle could fire directly into them from some distance. Obviously, Mr. Daniels had little fear for his own safety.

  She could smell the kitchen before she got to it — the scent of frying bacon was strong.

  “Hello the house,” Bird said.

  A door opened near the back corner of the house.

  A Mexican woman in a white apron with grease stains on it looked at her.

  “Ike Daniels,” Bird said. “He around?”

  The woman glanced over her shoulder as a chair leg scraped against a wooden floor.

  A man appeared behind the Mexican woman.

  He was tall, with broad shoulders and a jaw that seemed too big for the rest of his face. Long yellow hair fanned out behind his neck.

  “Who are you?” he questioned with no attempt to hide his belligerence.

  “Name’s Bird Hitchcock.”

  He scoffed. “Bullshit,” he said.

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Know a girl named Nancy Hockings?”

  “What the hell is this?” he demanded.

  “Ike?” a deep male voice boomed from inside. “What is it?”

  The first man, who Bird now figured was Ike Daniels, didn’t answer, just glared at Bird, sizing her up.

  Another man appeared. He was taller than Ike, but had the same oversize jaw. Instead of long blond hair, though, his was gray and cut short. Bird guessed he was around sixty years old. He had on denims and a red flannel shirt that looked brand-new.

  “Name’s Garrett Daniels,” the old man said. “What’s yours?”

  “Bird Hitchcock.”

  Daniels raised an eyebrow, then glanced at the two guns she wore.

  “Get off that horse and sit down,” he said. “We’ll discuss this over a cup of coffee, like civilized folks.”

  He turned his back on Bird. She walked the Appaloosa to a hitching rail, tied her up, and walked inside the big kitchen.

  There was one long table, with several place settings, two of which looked like they had just been abandoned. On a platter next to the table was a loaf of bread, butter, and some dirty dishes.

  Bird walked away from the door, and sat sideways on the bench, so her left gun was free. After years of practice, she was just as good with her left as her right, so it didn’t matter. What did matter was having her back to the wall and at least one gun free.

  “I could’ve handled this, Pa,” Ike Daniels said.

  “Handled what?” he said, looking at Bird, not Ike.

  “Just curious if Ike here knows anything about a Nancy Hockings,” Bird said. “Or Toby Raines.”

  “Now, why in the world would you want to know what’s going on in that son of mine’s head?” Garrett Daniels said. He looked at the Mexican woman and lifted his chin toward Bird. The woman placed a cup of coffee in front of her.

  “Thank you,” Bird said to the woman.

  She took a sip, then drained half of the cup.

  “Nancy Hockings was murdered last night and before she died she might have mentioned Ike by name,” Bird said directly to Garrett Daniels, ignoring Ike in the same way his father had.

  “I . . .” Ike began to say.

  “Will not say a word,” the old man growled. He sat back and looked at her. Bird already figured Ike knew the girl, judging by his initial reaction. An eagerness to speak is either outrage, or an urgent desire to lie.

  “Bird Hitchcock, huh?” the elder Daniels said. “I thought you were dead, a drunk, or just dead drunk.”

  Ike Daniels burst out laughing.

  “Not drunk and pretty sure I’m not dead.” Bird guzzled the rest of her coffee. It was strong. Better than the stuff at the hotel.

  “Heard you were in jail, too,” old man Daniels said. “Then some kind of half-assed sharpshooting act. Killed someone in the show, I heard. ’Cuz you were drunk.”

  “You sure hear a lot out here in your little corner of the world, sir,” Bird said. “Too bad what you hear are mostly falsehoods.”

  She fixed her gaze on Ike Daniels.

  “How about Toby Raines? Ever ride with him?” she said.

  “He’s not going to answer your questions, understand?” Garrett Daniels said. “I believe my quota for hospitality has been filled. Now finish your coffee. This conversation is over.”

  Bird got to her feet.

  “Did Toby Raines kill her himself, or did you help?” she said, directly to Ike Daniels.

  Garrett Daniels shot to his feet. “Get out of my house you saddle tramp!” he barked.

  Bird smiled.

  “Thanks for the coffee.”

  Nine

  Tower sat in the sheriff’s office. He looked around. There was an empty gun rack in one corner on which Tower noticed a thick layer of dust.

  No Wanted posters. Just a few cheap dime novels whose pages were falling out of their bindings.

  “So, I’m glad we could take a minute and have a chat,” Sheriff Dundee said. He had left a message at the hotel for Tower, who had received it along with his breakfast.

  Dundee smiled at Tower’s lack of a response, revealing teeth that were crooked and a deep yellow.

  Tower waited.

  “Ordinarily, I might be suspicious of a man who brings in a dying girl,” the sheriff said. “Might even think the man had something to do with it.”

  Tower kept his face blank.

  “But seein’ as how you’re a preacher and all, and you weren’t alone, right? Well, I think you’re probably not under suspicion,” he said.

  “That’s why you wanted me to come by? To tell me I’m not under suspicion?” Tower knew there was more.

  “More or less,” the sheriff confirmed.

  “If I’m not under suspicion, then who is?” Tower said. He pictured the sheriff sitting here on hot days, his feet up on the desk, reading one of those dime novels, waiting for one of the men from the Daniels ranch to show up with his paycheck.

  “That’s a good question,” Dundee said, clearly taken aback by the query. Tower almost smiled at how easily he put the sheriff off-balance.

  “That investigatio
n is ongoing.” Dundee’s words rang with a hollow officiousness.

  “How many suspects do you have?”

  Dundee threw up his hands. “We just found her, for godsakes!”

  A horse and cart trotted by the open door of the sheriff’s office. Tower saw an older woman with a young boy driving the team. Probably in town for supplies. Though young, the boy was in firm command of the horses.

  Dundee seemed to gather himself.

  “The reason I told you you’re not under suspicion is to let you know you don’t have to stay around,” the sheriff said. “You are free to leave whenever you wish.” He attempted a smile that made Tower’s skin crawl.

  “I already knew that,” Tower said.

  “And your friend can go too. The woman.”

  Tower smiled.

  “Actually, I came to hold a few services since you don’t have a regular church here,” he said. “So I’m not quite ready to leave just yet.”

  Dundee kept his face passive, but Tower could tell the man didn’t like the answer.

  “And the woman? She staying too?”

  Tower shrugged his shoulders. “You don’t tell Bird Hitchcock what to do, or try to predict what she’ll do. Men have died attempting to do just that.”

  The sheriff ground his jaws together. This wasn’t how the conversation was supposed to go.

  “And then after your church activities are done, you’ll mosey along?” the sheriff said.

  Tower stood.

  “Never heard of a preacher being run out of town before, sheriff. At least not for no good reason.”

  Dundee held up his hands. “Now hold on, no one’s runnin’ you out of town. Simply letting you know you are not a suspect and are free to leave whenever you wish.” He paused. “Same goes for your woman.”

  Tower shook his head.

  He could see why Daniels had chosen Dundee to be his puppet sheriff.

  The man did not have a firm grasp on reality.

  Tower tipped his hat to the sheriff and walked out.

  His woman.

  Tower laughed.

  Bird Hitchcock, his woman.

  Ten

  According to the map Van Osdol had drawn for her, Bird figured the Flom hideout was only another hour northeast of the town.

  She set the Appaloosa on course and saw the storm clouds to the west. They were moving this way, great thunderhead formations with swatches of purple and sickly streaks of yellow, but she had time to get to where she needed to be before it hit. Bird hauled the whiskey bottle out of her saddlebag and took a long pull.

  “First of the day,” she said to the empty air around her.

  As the whiskey burned, its warmth always a comfort, Bird thought about what she’d learned from the Daniels men.

  One, they were as arrogant as all get-out, which she figured was a natural by-product of owning an entire town and half of the territory.

  And she figured the old man’s heart was as tough and leathery as the asses of the cows he raised. You didn’t acquire the kind of enterprise Daniels had without some steel in your spine.

  But she didn’t think Toby Raines was hiding out at the Daniels ranch. It wouldn’t be his style, and even if he had been there, the other cowboys would have known. Raines had a presence about him that demanded attention.

  Nothing the old man said bothered her, though. Calling her a drunk and a saddle tramp. She’d heard it all before and had given up caring a long time ago. Still, it would’ve been pleasurable to pull out her .45 and splatter his brains into the frying pan’s bacon grease. Listen to them sizzle.

  Bird lifted the bottle of whiskey she’d paid for last night at the saloon and took another swig.

  The taste of dark smoke and smoldering fire charred her throat, but it was a good hurt. One she embraced with all of her being.

  She goosed the Appaloosa and eventually crested a hill that, according to Van Osdol’s map, overlooked Flom’s current abode.

  The map, and Van Osdol, were right.

  A small cabin sat half-absorbed by thick brush, with a thin wisp of smoke curling out of its chimney. Two horses were in a makeshift corral to the right of the cabin, and a thin stream ran behind and through the thick brush at the rear of the place.

  Bird heard the crack of a whip and an anguished cry. The Appaloosa’s ears perked up, and she felt the horse twitch.

  With a gentle tug, Bird backed the horse up, then eased around the ridge, coming up on the house from the left side.

  She saw two men standing, looking at a third man on his knees, with his arms tied behind his back. His shirt was off.

  One of the two men standing had a whip in his hand. The other had a bottle. They were laughing, hooting and hollering as the man on his knees tipped over onto the ground. The man with the whip gave him another crack along the back.

  Bird nudged the Appaloosa forward.

  She was only thirty feet from the men when they first noticed her.

  The one with the bottle nudged the one with the whip, who had brought his arm back to unload another wallop on the kneeling man.

  “Where are your goddamn manners?” the man with the bottle yelled at her. “Supposed to always hello the camp!”

  Up close, the whip marks were visible on the kneeling man’s back. Some of the welts were bleeding, and it looked like the man had been beaten as well. His face was puffy, one eye was black, and his lips were cracked and bloody.

  “Hate to break it to you, but this doesn’t exactly look like a convention on proper manners,” Bird said. She swung down from her horse and walked toward the kneeling man.

  “What’s your name?” she said.

  “Name’s Hockings,” the man said. “These shits killed my daughter.”

  “That’s bullshit,” the one with the whip said. “He tried to rob us and we caught him. He’s a thief.”

  “How old was your daughter?” Bird said.

  “Barely eighteen,” the man spat out. “When she didn’t come home last night, I found a description of this place in her journal. Along with some stories about the disgusting things she used to do out here with Ike Daniels and his buddies.”

  The kneeling man was whimpering now.

  The other two men laughed. “Cryin’ like a baby,” the one with the bottle said. His teeth were stained black and his hair was plastered tightly to his head.

  “Looks like this bitch wants to have a little fun with us,” the one with the whip said, gesturing toward Bird. “That’s good, because all this whippin’ is makin’ me downright randy as a billy goat.”

  Bird turned to face the men. “One of you named Flom?” she said.

  The one with the whip snapped his head up to look at her. “I’m Flom. But what the hell is it any of your business . . .”

  Bird shot him dead center of the forehead. She had drawn her gun with a smooth, effortless action that seemed unhurried, but was done in an instant.

  One moment she was standing empty-handed, the next, she was firing.

  “Shit,” the second one said. He looked at his dead companion, then back at Bird. “I don’t want a fight.”

  Bird waited, the gun still in her hand. A feather of smoke rose from the muzzle.

  “Let’s have a drink and calm down,” the second man said. His voice carried a cheeriness that almost made Bird laugh. He tossed the bottle to Bird and went for his gun.

  With the bottle in the air, Bird fired right-handed, pumping two bullets into the man’s gun hand. She caught the bottle out of the air with her left.

  The man shouted, cursed, dropped the gun that hadn’t even cleared leather, and held his mangled right hand with his left.

  Bird holstered her pistol and pulled the cork out of the bottle. She wiped the mouth of the bottle clean, glanced inside the bottle, poured a little whiskey onto the ground, and took a drink.

  The man on the ground groaned.

  Bird looked at him.

  “Buy you a drink?” she said.

  Eleven


  Mike Tower knocked on the front door of the Hockings’ home. He waited and glanced across the street at the livery, where he saw a horse being groomed inside the main stable, and a boy running to fetch more water with a wooden bucket.

  The door to the house opened and Gretchen Hockings looked out at Tower. He noted the bags under her eyes, the hair carelessly hanging over her forehead, and the stooped shoulders of a woman who was clearly on the brink of giving up.

  “Mrs. Hocking, I just stopped by to let you know that if you need someone to talk to, I’m here for you,” he said.

  She looked at Tower, then stepped back.

  “Why don’t you come in, Mr. Tower,” she offered, her voice a tired monotone.

  He stepped into the small house. It smelled vaguely of boiled potatoes.

  “I’m here alone and I could use someone to talk to, I guess,” she said. “Would you like some coffee?”

  “Please,” Tower said. She poured him a cup and sat at the small wooden table in the center of the room. An empty vase stood on the tabletop between them.

  Tower pulled a Bible from his pocket and set it on the table.

  “This must be a very difficult time for you,” he said.

  A tear escaped from the woman’s eye and rolled down her cheek. Her hand twitched as if she meant to wipe it away but changed her mind, knowing there would just be more to take its place.

  “Nancy didn’t deserve this,” she said. “She’d had a rough time and we thought it was all over. We should have protected her, from herself, too.”

  Tower studied the tabletop, traced the contour of the wood’s grain.

  “Why did Nancy need protecting?” he finally said, unable to stop the question from coming out.

  Gretchen Hockings sighed. “It doesn’t matter anymore,” she said. “She used to be in love with Ike Daniels. Even when he was beating her. She still loved him, despite his countless broken promises to stop beating her. So she finally left him, told him it was over. And now look.”

  “Have you told the sheriff?” Tower said, even though he already knew the answer.

  The woman laughed.