Maria eased over closer and looked down with the ranger. “This is the heelless boot print we saw back there along the trail?”
“Yep,” said Sam. He looked around, glimpsing only Kinnard's high-topped shoes. As he walked to the edge of the trail he asked the finicky schoolmaster over his shoulder, “Is there a sheriff in Albertson now?”
“No,” said Kinnard, “Peyton Quinn is acting as a temporary sheriff. If you want to consider him a sheriff, I'm certain he won't mind.” His voice carried a heavy note of unveiled sarcasm.
“Quinn the gunman?” Sam asked skeptically. “I never knew of him upholding the law.”
“Nor has anyone else,” Kinnard said in the same dry tone. “But he was appointed to office by Davin Grissin. If you know Mr. Grissin, you must realize that he is the final authority over anything that goes on in Albertson these days.”
Sam shook his head and made no comment on either Peyton Quinn, Davin Grissin or the town of Albertson itself. Instead he said, “Ride back, tell everybody what happened here. Bring back some help and a team of horses to pull the stage. I'll lay the dead inside once I pull it up onto its wheels. Tell them Maria and I might already be gone, searching for the other robber.” He noted the fading light. “But if they see a campfire, tell them to approach it wisely.”
“Yesâyes, right away, Ranger Burrack,” said Kinnard, already stepping back into his saddle, anxious to get under way.
Only when the schoolmaster was out of sight did Sam and Maria give each other a knowing look. “Please tell me I heard him wrong,” said Maria. “Davin Grissin has appointed Peyton Quinn, the
hired killer
, as temporary sheriff for the town of Albertson?”
“I'm as surprised as you are,” said Sam. “But if he shows up wearing a badge, I'm obliged to treat him the same as I would any other lawman.”
“You mean with â
respect and cooperation
'?” Maria asked, having a feeling she already knew what his answer would be.
“With
cooperation
for now,” the ranger replied, already turning away from the matter of Peyton Quinn. His eyes darted from the dead and to the debris strewn on the ground. “There's been a lot gone on here,” he added quietly. “You saw all the tracks, the overlapping, the different group of riders.”
“SÃ
, I saw them,” Maria said. “But I decided that you didn't want to say too much while the schoolmaster was here.”
“You were right.” Sam walked closer to the leaning stage and looked down at the boot prints and scrape marks in the dirt beneath the rear freight compartment.
Chapter 5
As the ranger pulled back the canvas cover and looked down at the opened secret compartment, Maria said, “I always wondered: What good is a secret hiding spot when everyone knows where it is?”
“I've often wondered that myself,” the ranger replied. He gave a thin smile and gazed off along the trail. After a pause he said, “We both know there were other folks who came along and found this stage before the schoolmaster did. Why do you suppose those folks didn't want anybody to know?”
Maria considered it. “They got spooked. They thought they would be blamed for what happened here?” She stirred the toe of her boot on the ground amid the disheveled dirt where the stack of money had fallen, as if discerning something from the earth itself. “They were not thieves, or else they would not have left the strongbox lying here unopened.”
Sam looked at the strongbox, the boot prints around it. “Sometimes folks don't start out to be thieves, but temptation falls upon them so sudden and powerfully it makes them do things they ordinarily wouldn't do.”
“SÃ
, I understand,” said Maria. She gestured a gloved hand toward the strongbox. “But here lies the sudden temptation you speak of. What would make them turn away from the money in there?”
“Maybe there was more money lying here.” Sam nodded at the dirt beneath the toe on her boot.
“Perhaps . . . ,” Maria mused, pondering the notion. She looked between the open hiding compartment lying empty and its plank panel cover lying beside it. “But why would they not take all of the moneyâthis money too?”
“Because these folks aren't thieves, remember? At least they haven't talked themselves into it yet. They're still thinking about itâflirting with the notion, so to speak.”
Maria only nodded.
As the ranger spoke he walked over to the broken-heeled boot and the ripped flour sack lying beside it in the dirt. He looked down at Moore's stockinged foot. He left the broken boot where it lay, but he picked up the flour sack and shook dust from it. “Now, the fellow who wore this,” he said, running his gloved hand inside the ripped sack and poking his fingers out the eyeholes, “is a thief to the bone.”
“Aw,” Maria said, seeing that the dusty sack was a bandit's mask and making a connection, “Stanton âBuckshot' Parks?”
“Yep, I'm betting on it,” said Sam. “He's known to be partial to these old-fashioned train robber flour sacks. Most robbers have stopped using them. Having one in his saddlebags could get a man hanged under the right circumstances. It's easier using a bandanna since everybody wears one anyway.”
“You said Buckshot Parks wouldn't be able to sit still long.” Maria gave a slight smile and shook her head. “He would stoop to riding with the likes of these two after all the big gangs he rode with?” She pointed back and forth from Moore to Carnes.
“Like I told you, he's a born thief. He's got to be up to something all the time. He can't help himself.”
“And now,” said Maria, “is he riding with whoever came along and found this stage wreck?”
“That's a good question,” said the ranger. “Is he riding with them, or he is riding after them, shadowing them?”
“How do we know these others have whatever money was in the hiding compartment instead of him?” Maria asked.
“We don't,” Sam said, considering it. “But my hunch is, if Parks had his say over things, this box would be lying here open and emptyâ”
The ranger cut his words short when he heard a sound from the brush. Together he and Maria swung their guns around at the same time. “Who's there?” Sam demanded. “Come out with your hands up and empty.”
The sound moved closer toward them through the brush, but instead of a reply, they heard only the soft whine of a wounded animal in pain. After a second the colonel's big cur staggered out of the brush and fell to the ground without giving them a glance. Dark blood from the gaping bullet graze on his head covered most of his face.
“He doesn't know we're here,” said Maria. She took a step forward, but Sam cautioned her back with his raised hand.
“Careful, Maria,” Sam said as the big cur struggled up onto his paws and staggered forward to where the colonel's body lay on the ground. “He's dazed. But it could wear off any minute. When it does, we won't know how he's going to act. The colonel always said he's a one-man dog.”
“I know,” Maria replied, stopping, letting her rifle down. The two watched the dog whine pitifully and poke the colonel with its nose as if to awaken him. “But we've got to do something to help him.”
“We will,” the ranger said quietly, “just as soon as he gives us an opportunity.”
The two watched for a moment as the dog staggered in place beside its dead master. Finally, overcome by the loss of blood and still dazed from the impact the bullet graze had had on its brain, the big animal curled down against the dead colonel, let out a deep breath and slumped in the dirt.
“I'll get my canteen, and my needle and thread,” Maria said almost in a whisper. “He will need many stitches to close his wound.”
“I'll get some rope and make a muzzle for him,” said Sam, already on his way to his horse where a coiled rope hung from his saddle horn. “We might need it if his head clears and he feels what we're doing to him.”
Within minutes Maria had chosen a length of heavy surgical thread and a curved surgical needle from her saddlebags. When Sam finished slipping a double loop of rope around the dog's muzzle and looped it again around the dog's neck, Maria washed the open wound with a clean cloth and tepid canteen water.
Sam watched her thread the curved needle and upon seeing her signal that she was ready, he held the dog down firmly by the rope and the short length of its cut collar while she made the first stitch.
The dog's eyes opened, but only for a second when the needle made its way through both edges of the gaping wound and drew them together. When the dog's eyes closed again, both Sam and Maria breathed a sigh of relief. With a nod from the ranger, Maria systematically hooked and drew stitch after stitch until the gaping wound closed and only a thin line of blood drained from one end of it.
“You do good work,” Sam said with a slight smile, his gloved hands only resting now on the dog's neck.
“This is the first time I have sewn stitches in an animal,” Maria said. “I hope he will be all right.” She reached down a bloodstained hand and stroked the dog gently.
“He's breathing good,” Sam said reassuringly. “If this was all that's wrong with him, he should be just fine.”
“We will see,” Maria said. Beneath her hand the dog stirred only a little, then let out a breath and once again lay silent and still.
Sam looked around in the growing darkness. “By the time I get the stage righted and get the dead inside it, it's going to be dark traveling.” He stroked the dog's neck as he spoke. “I'd hoped we could get out of this hill line before dark, but attending to Sergeant Tom Haines here changed everything.”
“I would like to be here when he awakens, so I can see for myself that he is all right,” said Maria.
“Okay, we'll camp here overnight,” said Sam. “It'll be easier tracking come daylight.”
“Good,” said Maria, “I'll build a fire and prepare us some food and coffee.”
Standing and dusting his trousers, Sam said, “While you do that I'll pull the stage back onto all fours and attend to the dead. Someone from Albertson should be heading here in another couple of hours, if the schoolmaster hurries to town.”
Â
Rummaging through a tool compartment beneath the driver's seat of the stagecoach, the ranger found two more coiled ropes and an iron pry bar. While Maria boiled a pot of coffee and prepared a meal of beans, salt pork and flatbread, the ranger strung his rope around the trunk of a stout pine. He tied one end of the rope to the leaning stage and the other end to one of the coach's ropes he'd tied between the saddle horns on both his and Maria's horses. The third rope he tied atop the stagecoach and over to the rock wall, to keep the coach from tipping too far and falling in the other direction.
With no more than moderate effort the two horses righted the leaning stagecoach with one long pull. As soon as the two raised wheels touched back onto the ground and the big coach rocked back and forth stiffly, the ranger halted the horses and gave them both a pat on their muzzles for their effort.
Moments later he had checked the stage wheels over good and found no cracked or broken spokes that might prevent the big coach from carrying its grizzly cargo back to Albertson once a team of horses arrived. Then he went about the task of carrying the bodies over and stacking them inside. When Maria called out to him that the meal was ready, the ranger closed the stage door, dusted his hands together and walked over to the campfire. “All finished,” he said. He sat down and poured water over his hands from a canteen, washing them.
“Yes, I see,” Maria said quietly, “and look who is finally waking up.”
Sam looked over at the dog in time to see the dazed animal roll onto his belly. The animal had a strange, wild look in his eyes as if he awakened in some world he'd never seen before. He steadied himself with his forelegs spread wide on the ground, his body swaying limply for a moment.
“Here,” Sam said quietly, “you've got to be hungry after all this time. Maybe this will help clear your head some.” He picked up a piece of pork from his tin plate and flung it easily over in front of the dog.
The dog only gave the meat a glance. Then he rose and staggered over to the closed door of the stagecoach and stood staring up as if expecting the colonel to appear and let him inside.
“The poor thing,” Maria whispered, the two of them standing and walking toward the dog. “This is heartbreaking to watch.”
“Yes,” said Sam, “what becomes of this
one-man
dog now that the one man is gone?”
Easing forward, the two had to stop in their tracks when the big cur turned, facing them, his hackles up in spite of his weak and shaky condition. A deep menacing growl resounded in his broad chest. “Easy, boy,” Sam said softly. “Nobody's going to hurt you.”
“I don't think he believes you,” Maria whispered as the dog's growl only grew more intense, his paws spreading as if going into a fighting stance.
“I think you're right,” Sam said, taking a slow step backward. Maria did the same.
The dog turned away from them and stepped back to the stagecoach, its growl turning into a whimper, a plea for its master to appear and assure him that all was well.
“What do we do for him now?” Maria asked with a quiet sigh.
“There's nothing we can do for him right now,” Sam replied. “He's still a little dazed. We'll give him some room overnight and hope he'll settle down enough to either ride on with us a ways or go on back to Albertson with the townsmen when they get here.”
“
SÃ
,” Maria said, watching the poor dog whine and try to scratch its weak paw at the stagecoach door, “and if he goes back to Albertson, what will become of him?”