Chapter Eight

 

 

 

Christina had died hard. Her dress was torn across the shoulder, revealing her breasts, and her skirt was around her waist, her thighs showing the bruises and the other sickly evidence of how she'd been used. Krysty stooped and pulled down the thin gingham material, covering the woman's nakedness. She then took a cloth off the table and laid it over the woman's chest and head.

 

Her face was severely bruised, blood clotted around the mouth and nose. More blood seeped from both ears, indicative of an injury to the head. Both her wrists were badly broken. Her left eye was swollen shut, the other staring blankly up at the low ceiling of the kitchen. A crimsoned knife lay in the corner of the room, its tip snapped off.

 

"She did some damage," J.B. said quietly. "There's far more blood around than came from her. She wasn't stabbed." He bent and reached under the towel. "Looks like someone in heavy combat boots kicked in the back of her head, after they'd" The sentence trailed uneasily away into the silence.

 

"You reckon she killed some of those Navaho?" Dean asked.

 

"Likely," J.B. replied. "There's a trail of blood into the other room, soaked into the floor. Then it's smeared, like someone was dragged away."

 

Jak had said nothing since they entered the charnel house. He stood by the stove, idly brushing crumbs from its black iron top. His face was totally without emotion, drained of all life.

 

"Jenny?" Mildred queried.

 

The thought of the baby had been on everyone's mind since finding Christina's corpse.

 

Ryan coughed, clearing his throat. "Doubt she'll be too far away."

 

"Is it beyond the bounds of possibility that young Michael might have escaped with her?" Doc asked.

 

Nobody answered.

 

It was all too obvious that the killers had been in the home for some time, with the leisure to take theIR pleasure with the helpless woman.

 

So, where was Michael Brother? The only realistic answer was that he was dead, his stiffening body lying somewhere around the spread.

 

"How come they left the way they did?" Krysty asked. "They didn't break anything or start a fire or steal food. Just butchered some stock."

 

"They saw us coming," Dean said.

 

Krysty shook her head. "No, they didn't. When we first spotted the riders, they were well off the spread. It's like something interrupted them."

 

"Michael?" J.B. suggested. "Then where is he? He must be somewhere close by. He'd have seen us ride in."

 

Once again they heard the loose door on the barn banging in the light breeze.

 

"Find Jenny's body," Jak said. The first time he'd spoken.

 

 

 

THE SEARCH didn't take long. Jak himself found the pathetic bundle of crimsoned rags, lying at the base of the wall of the feed barn. At about the height of a man's shoulders, there was a dark patch on the wooden planks, dried blood and a sickening trickle of brains, with a few hairs stuck in it. Splinters of bone gleamed like metal in the late-afternoon sun.

 

He stooped over it, head bowed, saying nothing. The rest of the friends stood in a half circle. It wasn't a time for words. Dean was the only one to speak, hissing between his teeth, "Bastards! Little girl like that!"

 

Finally Jak put his hands beneath his daughter and lifted her up, tenderly arranging the sodden blanket around her.

 

"Didn't have to do that, did they?" he whispered.

 

They didn't look for Michael. Not then.

 

The important thing was to be there for Jak. They followed him slowly back into the house, into the cool, airy living room, where he sat down on the long sofa, still cradling the little corpse on his lap.

 

"Jak?" Krysty said.

 

"What is it?" The voice was like ice water over obsidian.

 

"There are things to be done for Christina and for Jenny. Will you let Mildred and me help you?"

 

"Why not? Won't make difference. Not now. Should've been here."

 

Mildred sat by him, putting a hand on his arm. "That's the road of madness, Jak," she said softly. "Blame won't bring them back. But it'll suck you into the pit of desolation. You did nothing wrong. Nobody did. Just that you can't anticipate when evil and chaos are going to slink out of their holes."

 

He nodded, his stark white hair drooping and covering his face. "Yeah," he said flatly.

 

Krysty glanced at Ryan and the other men. "Want to go look around outside?"

 

"We can wait here," J.B. replied. "No hurry. What's done's done."

 

Mildred looked at him. "John, go outside and take some time. We have things to do in here, with Jak. It wouldn't be proper for all of you to be here."

 

"Oh, yeah. Sure."

 

Led by Dean, they went out onto the porch.

 

 

 

DOC AND THE BOY sat quietly together on the swing seat, both deeply shocked by the unexpected horror of their return to the spread.

 

Ryan walked out into the crimson light of the sun, beckoning J.B. to join him.

 

"Something not right," he said.

 

"Krysty saw it," J.B. agreed. "If it was those Navaho, then I don't believe they'd have just up and ridden away like that. Not with the rest of the horses and stock still here. They'd take it all."

 

"They could have had someone on watch who saw us coming back."

 

The Armorer shook his head. "Don't think so. We would've seen him breaking to join the others. No, the timing's all wrong on this one, Ryan."

 

"We take a look around?"

 

"Sure."

 

They moved out in opposite directions, working their way toward the edge of the spread. It only took a couple of minutes to start finding tracks that told a very different story.

 

Ryan and J.B. stood together, near the main gate onto the property, looking down at the soft, churned-up earth.

 

"Unshod ponies," the one-eyed man stated. "That'll be the band of horsemen we saw."

 

"Sure. But their trail's on top of whoever came to the spread earlier. Likely the ones that did the killings and butchered the animals."

 

"Then the Navaho came along and interrupted them, and they vanished, while we were still working our way down the canyon out of sight of here."

 

J.B. stooped. "Two wags. Broad tires. Look to me like the marks of something like the old LAV-25s. Designed to carry a crew of three, but they could easily be adapted to carry a dozen or more."

 

"Definitely two?"

 

"For sure. See here." He pointed with his scatter-gun. "They overlap."

 

There were clear marks of two wags, looking like the eight-wheeler light armored vehicles that J.B. had suggested. Ryan straightened and stared around.

 

"Two wags come in. Christina sees trouble, but for some reason it's too late for her to do anything. Mebbe she was cooking and didn't hear them."

 

J.B. sighed. "They chill the baby. Rape and chill Christina. Start slaughtering some of the stock to take along for food supplies and then someone spots the horsemen coming. They would've been visible a ways off. Then, everybody leaves and we arrive. That the way you read it?"

 

"Guess so. Leaves one question without an answer."

 

"Michael?"

 

"Yeah. Where's Michael?"

 

The only answer was that the teenager was gone.

 

They both knew that there was no point in undertaking a close search of the spread and all the outbuildings. There were only three possibilities, and one of those wasn't all that likely.

 

His body lay somewhere close to the ranch. It only took Ryan and J.B. about twenty minutes to confirm that there were only the two corpses there. Christina and the little girl. A glance into each of the barns showed no sign of life.

 

Or of death.

 

The attackers could have taken him as a prisoner, bundling him into one of their vehicles.

 

"Don't reckon that," J.B. said. "Apart from the tracks of the wags there's plenty of combat boot marks around the place. Looks to me like the Navaho simply rode on by without dismounting or even hesitating. Knew who they were chasing. No other sign of bare feet or moccasins anywhere."

 

"So, we agree that he might have seen danger coming. Realized he was way, way outmatched and took a runner. Hiding in the hills."

 

The Armorer looked down at his own feet, considering what Ryan had said. "Way I see it, there's only one thing wrong with that third option."

 

"What?"

 

"By now he'd have seen us and come out to join us. He hasn't, so where the dark night is he?"

 

"I suppose that there's just an outside chance that the lad could've taken one of the horses and gone off after the killers. Before the Indians got here." Ryan shook his head. "I don't know. He's gotta be someplace."

 

 

 

WHEN THEY RETURNED from their recce, the evening sun was almost gone. The shadows of the house and the barns stretched out, stark and black against the pale earth, reaching their way toward the foothills to the east of the property.

 

Helped by Mildred and Krysty, Jak had finished the melancholy task of washing and laying out the stiffening bodies of his wife and firstborn child. They now rested together in the big double bed, covered with a faded patchwork quilt.

 

Christina's hair had been washed and brushed, and it fanned out across her shoulders. Jak had insisted that she should be dressed in her favorite nightdress.

 

"Was her gran's," he said matter-of-factly. "Goes back almost to long winters."

 

It was bleached cotton, with a high scalloped neck, embroidered around the bodice with posies of tiny flowers.

 

Her face had been cleared of the blood and the smudge of flour, but nothing could be done about the bruising on the cheek and close to the eyes.

 

Jenny lay in her arms.

 

Jak had found a lace bonnet that concealed the soft, dark dent in the tiny skull. Her eyes were closed, her cheeks and hair clean, as if she'd just come from her evening bath. Ryan thought that it looked like the baby could've woken up at any moment, demanding a feeding.

 

Krysty had pulled the curtains halfway across the windows that faced south, leaving the bedroom in a muted, dusky light, like a cavern beneath the ocean.

 

Everyone stood in a circle around the bed, nobody quite knowing what to say. It was Doc who finally, hesitantly, broke the long silence.

 

"What next?"

 

Jak turned to face him. The sun was deep crimson, and it burned into the veil of his white hair, making it look like a fall of living fire.

 

"Next, Doc? Next we bury them. Tomorrow. Dawn. In canyon where we were today. Next we go after killers. Next we chill them all. Next after that? I don't know."

 

The bedroom had become still again. The evening breeze tugged at the curtains, rattling the lock on the loose-fitting rear door to the room.

 

"Best we go out now and leave them here together, Jak," Krysty said softly.

 

He nodded. "Sure. Getting dark. Light lamps. Also, cook supper. Bad at details. Christina is so good. No. Not now. She was so good at things. Don't know how"

 

For the first time he seemed on the edge of tears and wiped angrily at his eyes, turning on his heel and leaving the bedroom and the two corpses.

 

The rest of them followed him out, Ryan last, closing the inner door gently behind him.

 

 

 

MILDRED AND J.B. cooked some eggs and beans, with a mess of pan-fried potatoes, though it turned out that nobody felt all that hungry.

 

"I'll do the washing up," Dean offered.

 

"Give a hand," Jak said. "Something to do. Put pot on for coffee as well."

 

Ryan pushed his chair back from the dining table and decided on an impulse to check the bedroom, where Jak had lit two brass oil lamps, turning both of the wicks down to leave a faint, golden glow.

 

"You going out back?" J.B. asked.

 

"No. Just sort of felt like looking in on them. Mebbe sit a while."

 

Krysty nodded her agreement. "Think I might join you in a while, lover. Just get these supper things tidied away first."

 

As he stepped into the room he saw a dim shape, making him reach instantly for the holstered SIG-Sauer.

 

Then he saw who it was Michael, kneeling silently on the floor like a man at prayer, resting his head and arms on the side of the large oak double bed.