Herman Reutz was sitting on a box near a dying fire. He smiled at Coyle. “Sit down, Brian. I’m helping my fire die.” Then he saw Coyle’s face. “What’s wrong?” he asked quickly.
Brian Coyle sat down and drew out his pipe. Then, in as few words as possible, he explained.
At once, Reutz got up and went to his wagon, then to a second wagon. He walked back and sat down. “Gone!” he said. “Every last bit of it! And I all but emptied my rifle at a herd of antelope today!”
“We’ve got to do something, Herman. We’ve got to think fast and act faster.”
“We can be wrong about this,” Reutz said, “we can be wrong. Bardoul warned us, but this story about him being Boyne upset us all. It threw me off, I know.” Coyle nodded. “Nonsense, of course. I checked with both Phillips and Pearson. He could not have been Sun Boyne. He suggested that Massey was Boyne.”
“Well,” Reutz said, “the description would fit. They are both big men. We’d best work out a plan of action, but we’re going to be handicapped by the fact that we don’t know how much time we have.”
“You think they would actually try to take over the wagon train? They would have to kill us all!”
Reutz nodded. “The only way for them. If Massey is Sun Boyne we could expect nothing else, anyway. The man is a brute. Worse, he’s a fiend. Not just a killer, he’s a sadistic murderer. I know something about him.”
“We outnumber them, and most of us have some ammunition left. If we moved now, we might swing it.”
“Nothing we can do, actually,” Reutz protested. “We don’t have any evidence, nothing but suspicion and the fact that our ammunition has been stolen. It might be Hammer. That ammunition would sell to the Indians, you know. We’re going to have to move carefully. As far as that goes, they probably have spies in our own companies.”
“Bardoul was of the opinion, you told me several days ago, that if they struck it would not be until we reached the basin or at least got around the tip of the Big Horns. That would give us some time.”
“A little.” Reutz knocked out his pipe. “Coyle, we’d better talk to the few men we know we can trust. We’d better make a careful check and see that each man has some ammunition, and we had better have a talk with Bardoul.”
Matt Bardoul flexed his fingers and palmed his gun. He was fast but not fast enough. He turned and started back to camp. He was almost there when he heard a woman scream and a sudden rattle of shots.
The sounds came from somewhere off in the darkness away from the wagon train, and instantly, he thought of the wagon. He ran for his horse, and swung into the saddle. He glimpsed Tolliver buckling on a gunbelt and running for his own horse. From all over the camp, other men gathered. When Bardoul raced out across the prairie toward the sound of the shots, at least twenty mounted men rode after him.
There was a shot … another shot, and then silence. The pound of their horses’ hooves was the only sound.
Matt was first to reach the small fire by the wagon. If Indians they had been, they were gone now. At first he saw nothing but spilled flour and beans, but then he saw Joe Rucker, sprawled on his face, a bullet through his arm, and another through his head.
Under the wagon, lying on her back, was Joe’s brother … no longer a brother even in name, for her shirt was torn, and there could be no doubt that Abel Bain had been right. Matt, knelt beside her, and immediately realized that she at least was alive.
Matt glanced around at the crowding men. “Stark, you an’ Lute rig up a stretcher, will you? We’ll take her back where the girls can lend a hand.”
Clive Massey shoved through the crowd. Stahl and Hammer were with him, and the first thing Bardoul saw as he straightened up was a livid scratch across Stahl’s cheek. The man was still panting, and his pupils were dilated.
“We’ll take her to my company!” Massey said. “One of the girls will come there to care for her.”
Bardoul looked at him, the firelight on their faces. This could be it, he thought, and swollen hands or not, he was ready. “No,” he said, “the arrangements have already been made. The Stark girls can care for her, and they need not leave their own wagons. That would be much better.”
“Who’s running this wagon train?” Massey demanded. Matt noticed how his right hand was held and a curious light came into his eyes.
“Pearson, supposedly,” Matt said, “but this girl goes to the Stark wagon.”
“I think, maybe,” Massey said coldly, “we’d better settle this question of authority right now!”
“Sure,” Bardoul was relaxed and easy. “Any time you like. Let’s get Coyle and Pearson here first, and Reutz.”
“I’m here,” Herman Reutz said quickly.
“So am I.” Coyle stepped forward and Colonel Pearson was behind him.
Bardoul gave Massey no chance to speak. “This girl,” he said quietly, “goes to the Stark wagon. Clive Massey has made it a question of authority.” He drew his commission from his pocket and handed it to Colonel Pearson. “Tell them what that says.”
Pearson started to read, then he looked up, blank astonishment written on his usually composed features. “Why, this says he is a Deputy United States Marshal!”
“What?” Clive Massey leaped forward and ripped the paper from Pearson’s hand.
As he read, his face slowly paled and his nostrils dilated. When he looked up, a living hatred blazed in his eyes. “So?” he said. “A deputy marshal? I reckon that authority exceeds mine.”
He started to turn away, as all eyes stared at Bardoul, but then he turned and walked back, coming close. “Just what would a deputy marshal be doing on this wagon train?”
Matt Bardoul met his gaze with a taunting smile. “Why, Massey, I’m here to preserve the law, first an’ foremost. With a gun if need be. Also, I’m on a special sort of mission. It seems there’s a crazy killer loose in the northwest, two of them, in fact, and I’m to find them and bring them in. I’m talkin’,” he added, “about Dick Ryder and Sun Boyne!”
He turned suddenly. “Stahl, how did you get that scratch on your cheek?”
All eyes swung to the burly renegade. He started, then glared left and right. “Runnin’ through the brush. Didn’t I, Hammer?”
Hammer grinned at Bardoul. “He sure did, Marshal. He sure did.”
Brian Coyle was looking thoughtfully at Bardoul. The crowd started to break up and drift back toward the wagon tram. Coyle walked over to Matt. “Why didn’t you tell us you were a marshal?”
“The appointment only reached me at Fort Reno,” he said. “It was following me. I didn’t even know it was going through.”
Coyle started to speak, but Massey was still standing there, watching him, so he turned away. This would change everything. It would simplify things. If they could get together under a marshal, and then … he walked to his horse and mounting, started for camp.
Clive Massey looked after him, then followed Stahl and Hammer to their own horses.
Matt Bardoul was the last to go, yet when he reached his horse he saw there were two horses, and beside his stood a big man who waited with his thumbs tucked in his belt. Who waited for him alone and in the darkness.
CHAPTER X
Matt walked up to the horses moving quickly, his hands ready. The dark figure moved and Bardoul’s guns were in his hands. Then he relaxed, for the waiting man was Bill Shedd.
“That was fast,” Shedd admitted, “but you’ll have to be faster. Them swole hands won’t help much!”
“What’s on your mind, Bill?”
“Plenty.” Shedd put a hand on the pommel of his saddle. “Bardoul, I wanted to tell you that you won’t have to look any further for Dick Ryder.”
“You mean, you … ?”
“No,” Shedd replied, “I’m not him. Dick Ryder is dead. He was murdered, shot in the back with a shot gun, by Sun Boyne. I’m Dick’s half brother.
“He was a bad man, Dick was. He was a mean one. Away from home, that is. My Ma married Dick’s old man, an’ we growed up alongside one another. Dick, he was always mighty fine around home, done his work, an’ treated Ma swell, but he got to trailin’ with a bad crowd an’ he got meaner an’ meaner. Killed folks, robbed them, and done a lot of mighty bad things. Like I said before, he deserved killin’, but he didn’t deserve gettin’ shot in the back by a man worse than him.”