“I would not tell a soul. Give me three days to get that price the mine sold for. I am pleased you came along and have to thank you for taking this case on. I believe you are about to solve it. Good day, sir.”
He left the bank, met up with his men, and very quietly he told them all he heard from Worth.
“Doesn't that connect Cates to Clements?” Jesus asked.
“Strange, isn't it?”
“What comes next?” Miguel asked.
“We check on some cattle. If there was no sheriff's sale of Farrell's cattle, I want to know why. That is outright rustling even if he has no heirs.”
“I'm wondering how Cates got a five-hundred-dollar bill,” Jesus said.
Chet nodded. “We have more answers to get.”
“With that north wind blowing, those range cows not being fed hay, they will be up in those side canyons out of that gale force,” Miguel said.
“Good thinking. We ride tomorrow and check that out.”
“Did that deputy think we'd buy that drifter theory and ride on?” Jesus asked.
“Might be what he dreamed we'd do. We need to see what this other gal knows.”
After dark, they hitched their horses at a rack and went to her door. Chet knocked.
She cracked the door. “How many of you are there?”
“We just came to talk to you. We'll pay for your time. My name is Chet Byrnes and these are my men Jesus and Miguel.”
“Come in then.” She wore a black silky dress that flowed around her in the flickering candlelight as she showed them two facing couches. “Have a seat,
mis amigos
.”
She sat down, exposing lots of her stocking legs, and asked, “What do you need to know from me?”
“Was Charlie Farrell a friend of yours?”
“Oh, yes. But he is dead.”
“What did you know about him?”
“People spoke bad of him. He always came to my
casa
bathed and shaved. He really was not such an old man as people thought he was. He just looked older. I considered him a stallion when we shared bodies. What else?”
“Does the Candy Cane Mine mean anything to you?”
“He mentioned his brother owned it. His name was Howard. I met him one time when he came over here from New Mexico, and I entertained him for Charlie. Howard had more money than Charlie. He bought me a lot of roses to plant after we met.”
“Did he tell you Howard had died?”
“Yes. He even gave me more money for rose bushes because he said Howard would want me to have them. He said his brother talked about coming back to see me. But he died. That's sad, isn't it?”
“Yes, it is.” Chet leaned forward on the couch. “Did Charlie ever talk to you about his inheritance?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Did you ever hear anyone talk about it?”
“No. But I wondered how much those killers got away with?”
“You think more than one man killed him?”
“I knew how strong he was. One man, even armed, could not have subdued him.”
“I thought he was an old man?”
“I told you, only in how he looked. He was much younger than he looked.” She smiled, remembering. “He told me he was raised very, very poor and never forgot it.”
“Well, we can't get him back, but we will try to get his killers.”
“Do that for me.”
“Maybe for everyone. I am going to pay you for your time, Yolanda. You have been a big help.” He gave her ten dollars.
“I could treat all of you for such a price.”
“Buy some more roses.” He got up, hugged her, and they prepared to leave.
“
Via con Dios, hombres
, and I wish you much luck in finding those
bastardos
.”
“Same to you.”
“Now I know who you are, señor. Someone told me a story a few years back about a man named Byrnes who hung two men who had raped a woman at Sunflower, huh?”
“They also had killed two good men.”
“They deserved it, the hanging you gave them.”
He thought so, too.
They rode back and put their horses up at the livery, then walked to the hotel. The desk clerk handed him a note as he gave them their room keys.
“What does it say?”
“You are asking too many questions. Get out of Holbrook if you wish to keep breathing. You are too nosy for your own good. Or else find a burial plot and we'll plant you there.”
“Who wrote it?”
“No name.”
“Be careful,” Jesus said to him.
“I can do that. Let's get nosier and check some cows for brands.”
They laughed and went up to their rooms.
Before falling asleep, Chet spent some time thinking about the threatening note sent them. Bold enough.
He got them up early. They went by the livery, saddled their ponies, then hitched them out front of Burl's Café and went inside. The meal went fast. To be friendly, the man who owned it came by and told them to be careful, that a wild bunch was running around and anything might happen.
“I think we can handle ourselves,” Chet told the man.
“I can't afford to lose any cash customers.” He was laughing as they left for their horses.
“You think he was in on it?”
Swinging into the saddle, Chet looked through the glass at the man inside, pouring coffee for his regulars.
“I think he's clean. Let's ride.”
Two hours later they were in the Burners Canyon area. They punched up about six cows and were trailing them through some light juniper cover. Chet tried to read the brand.
Miguel said to Jesus, “Head that roan
vaca
. I can heel her.”
Both men could rope. Hardly a boy who ever traipsed over the Mexican border to work in Arizona couldn't head or heel with a
riata
. They sped after the bovine, Jesus standing in the stirrups and twirling his loop over her horns. He dallied the leather rope around his saddle horn and turned off, swinging the angry cow in an open space for Miguel to catch the back hocks with his loop. The cow was laid down on her side in the grass, and Chet dismounted to check her brand.
He could see that someone had redone the CFX brand on her side to a Kâ3. Sloppy work, but a rebrand. They needed to check others. He took the head catch loop off her horns and Miguel backed his horse to give him time to remount in case she was mad when she got up and tried to hook at him.
Jesus was rewinding his
riata
as he rode off to find another. Chet put her in his tally bookâroan cow, earmark changed, too. Then he shot his roan horse off after Jesus and Miguel. He saw that they had another one held down. Brindle cow, same brand change. Cow number three was mostly longhorn with stripes of black down her sidesâbrand changed. Six cows checked as they rode over the hill to a deserted house, corrals, and large shed.
“This his place?” Jesus asked.
“Could beâ”
Someone began shooting at them. The slap of a bullet in the juniper boughs and then a rifle report followed. It came from a long-distance shooter but missed. The three charged their mounts for the ranch quarters and made for the big shed that was open. They bailed off their saddles once inside, and guns drawn, they rushed back to the door to see if they could hold off the shooters.
Jesus had his Winchester, and when a horse and rider with a smoking pistol appeared in the junipers across the way, he shot the horse. Rider down and scrambling, he wouldn't get far running. Chet shot twice at another horseback shooter that appeared. Got him.
With a break in the action, Miguel ran back, got his and Chet's repeating rifles with a box of .44/.40 cartridges, and brought them back.
Chet holstered his six-gun and levered a fresh round into his Winchester, so when another horse appeared he took him out, too. That left two afoot.
“What next?” Jesus asked.
“I guess more horse killing.”
“Those bastards need to be stopped and taught a lessonânot to mess with U.S. marshals.”
“I hear another horse coming off the hill behind us.” Chet rushed to the back of the barn and fired five shots through a missing board and bat siding space.
“They've got three less horses now. I sure hope they don't have to walk home.”
Miguel shot. “Got another.”
“How many more are there?” Chet asked.
“They aren't showing up out there,” Jesus said.
“I figure we need to ride like hell for Clements's place. He's probably already gotten his money and split this country.”
Jesus frowned. “You know where it is?”
“Tracks, I've got a man can track them.”
Miguel jumped on his horse, laughing. “Things can sure get exciting all at once with you two.”
“Hell, this had been slow,” Chet said, charging out of the barn after Jesus, Miguel following.
The tracking was easy. Even at high-speed riding the best Chet could tell was there were either two or three of them headed southeast.
He pushed the roan horse hard, crossing the open grass country. He could make out the three riders ahead and knew they were beating on their horses hoping to escape. One of the horses went down and rolled over. The other two never stopped.
“Get that one if he's alive, then follow our tracks. Clements's place can't be far from here,” he shouted at Miguel.
“I can handle it.”
Chet nodded and turned back to the chase. When he passed the downed rider his head looked in a strange position on his shoulders. He'd broken his neck. “Forget him.”
“I saw him. He'll never ride again.”
Not long after he could see bare, gnarled cottonwood trunks and a ranch house.
Chet pushed his hard-driving roan up beside Jesus. “They may be lying in wait for us to ride in.”
“What should we do?”
“Rein up short and we can surround the place.”
His man nodded and when he turned to Miguel, he nodded he heard him, too.
Damn. This close. Now they needed to tighten the noose on Farrell's killers. Why would anyone kill for money and take the chance of being caught?
He slid the roan on his heels short of pistol range and looked at the open door of the house. Any minute he expected a rifle barrel to appear. Instead a woman rushed out with two small kids trailing her and a bundled baby in her arms.
She was screaming at the very top of her lungs. “Don't shoot! Don't shoot! I have no guns. They're crazy.”
A small child fell down and she stopped to grab his hand. Then, dragging him, she repeated her plea. With her looking, terrified, back at the house, he sent Miguel to get her to cover. His man spurred his horse to obey.
Someone came out with a six-gun looking as if he might shoot her. Chet took him down with a well-aimed .44/.40 bullet like they'd used on poor Farrell. Then a second person in the doorway shot at him. The bullet whizzed by, but Jesus, on his knee, took him out with his Winchester.
The last one came out on the porch with a moneybag in one hand and a blazing six-gun in the other. The two lawmen punched his ticket with four well-aimed rifle shots.
“That all of them?”
Chet nodded. “Unless they have another.”
They reloaded their carbines just in case and headed for the house. Miguel was off to the left beside the corrals on his knees in the dust hugging the wailing woman, trying to comfort her. Both kids were crying.
Chet's ears still rang from the shooting.
“You his wife?”
“Common law one.”
“He got another?”
“Hell, I don't know. That whole bunch's been crazy for eight weeks. Robbie wasn't any better. I don't know what they'd done but it must have been bad. You're the law, ain'cha?”
“U.S. Deputy Marshal Chet Byrnes. My deputies Miguel and Jesus. We are here to help you.”
“Ruthie Ann Spauldingâheâhe never married me. But I got rights, don't I? As Mrs. Robbie Clements?”
“I am certain you have common law wife rights.” He turned back toward his man. “Jesus, go get that sack of money on the porch. That belongs to the estate of Charlie Farrell.”
“Mrs., you want to go back to the house?” Miguel asked her.
“Not in all that gun smoke and those dead men.” She made a sour face like she was sick from it all.
“We can open the windows. These children need to get to a stove. They don't have enough clothes on for this weather. Come. I can carry those two big ones. It is cold out here.”
“Guess I ain't got any other option.”
“No.” Miguel hefted the oldest on his left hip, then picked up the smaller one. “Chet, I can get our horses after I get her settled in the house. Don't worry, they won't leave.”
Still shocked by all the bloody carnage in the past few hours, Chet's brain felt numb. Surely all that money was not worth this kind of dying.
“Do that. I better go help Jesus gather the bodies,” he said to Miguel who was already gone.
Boy, it was really too much and not over yet. Deputy Cates had lots to explain before this case was closed. Robbie Clements was dead. This woman and her children needed to be provided for in the courts. Part of the recovered money belonged to his deputies.
Liz, I am sorry but I won't be home in a week. There were still the murders south of here to investigate
. He almost laughed, but it wasn't funny. Four more unsolved killingsâthose he was sure were connected. This one separate.
Everything settled down. A neighboring rancher, Billie Ford, came by and offered to get some others to help. By sundown, they had the three corpses from the other ranch joining the dead here. Three had somehow escaped. The undertaker arrived to serve as coroner along with a justice of the peace named Wiley Ostormyer. They told him that the Yavapai County Deputy Sheriff Cates had resigned and left for parts unknown. Preskitt had been wired and another was supposed to be coming. Who knew when he'd get here?