Book Cover  •  Table of Contents  •  < PREV Chapter  •  NEXT Chapter >

CHAPTER 10

      WHISKEY-EYES BRANDT had had a hard day, and it wasn't over yet.

      He had followed the Ottman kids out to where they found Feeney's skull, and then he'd spent the rest of the day, until it was too dark to see, trying to find the rest of Feeney and clues to his murderer.

      He located more than twenty bones, some of them in burrows where small animals had taken them. He found Feeney's rib cage, with most of the ribs gnawed off. Nothing was left of Feeney that a cougar or a coyote or a crow, or a buzzard, or an ant could eat. Except for a pound or so of bone, Feeney was all used up, now walking around in perhaps a thousand animals and insects.

      Brandt couldn't find Feeney's wallet, but he located a chewed lizard-skin boot where it had been dragged under a bush seventy feet way, there was a leather belt with belt-loops still attached to it up in a tree. Brandt boxed off an area one-hundred yards square and walked every yard of it in two crosswise directions. Nothing he saw told him anything about who killed Feeney.

      It was well after dark when he returned to his office, and set the box of bones on the bookcase by the skull. He pulled a bottle of whiskey out of his desk and took a slug. Then he turned off the light and sat in the quiet darkness, illuminated only by a splash of moonlight coming through the windows.

      Sitting in the darkness, Whiskey-eyes dreaded what he had to do nest. He admitted to himself what he would never admit to anyone else: For all his external toughness, he was softer than an old melon inside. He never killed a man, no matter how bad the man was, or how necessary it was to kill him, without somehow regretting it. He could never tell a woman she was a widow without feeling tears welling in his own eyes.

      Well, it was something that had to be done. Might as well do it tonight.

      He left the office and walked the five blocks over to Feeney's modest clapboard house. When he knocked on the door, Sarah let him in.

      Brandt was a man of few words, but he tried to soften them. "We found Ken," he said.

      Sarah was in her early thirties, still pretty, even with two children to take care of and no money and no husband to help her. During the first few months that Feeney had been missing she had cried herself dry. For a few months after that, she had denied that he was probably dead, and instead thought somebody had captured him and chained him up somewhere. There had been tales about men being held prisoner by crazed mountain men.

      For a time, she even thought he might be with another woman, but that wasn't like Ken, who had eyes only for her since they were in grade school together. At last her good sense told her to accept what she knew in her heart all along. He was dead. There could be nothing else.

      Always good with needlework, she had bought a new Singer for $75 and learned how to use it well. Now she made a decent living making fancy dresses for the important ladies of Lincoln. She had even made the inaugural dress for the Governor's wife.

      "He's dead," she said.

      "Murdered!" Whiskey-eyes' anger and sadness were evident in the sound of his voice and the way he stood, like a tired prizefighter wanting somebody to lash out at. But not Sarah. Not good Sarah. He tried to soften his voice but it still sounded harsh, even to him. "Anyway it was quick. Somebody shot him in the head. There's nothing left of him but bones."

      Now that Brandt had confirmed what she knew, she could put it away at last, Sarah thought dully. She could get on with her life. She should feel relief, she thought, but instead, she was confounded by the tears that flooded out of her. Were they tears of relief or of grief?

      She found herself weeping against Whiskey-eyes broad chest, her tears soaking his shirt. He held her tight and patted her clumsily on the back, making clucking noises like an old chicken. The toughest Marshal in the West was crying right along with her. Her children, awakened by the sounds, came into the room and, seeing them both cry, began bawling themselves.

      After the tears, while she was serving him a cup of coffee, he said the other thing he had come to say. "Sarah, I will find Ken's murderer. It may take a long time, but if there's a God, he'll help me do it. I'm gonna get him, Sarah. I swear it!"

      At 8:30 the next morning while Whiskey-eyes was staring at the box of bones, a telegram arrived for him from Central City, Colorado. After he read it he let out a whoop that brought Sheriff Beasley running from down the hall.

      When Beasley burst into his office, he saw something he would never forget: Whiskey-eyes Brandt was on his knees on the floor, lifting a bottle of whiskey toward the sky crying out, "Thank you Lord! I drink to your everlasting glory because you're gonna help me get the sonofabitch that killed Ken Feeney!"

      Ten minutes later, Whiskey-eyes was at the telegraph office sending a message to Sheriff Bolt in Central City. "Hold the man who has Deputy Marshal Feeney's papers. Feeney was brutally murdered two years ago and his papers stolen. I am departing for Central City immediately." The telegram as signed Asa Brandt, U.S. Deputy Marshal, Nebraska.

      Deputy Dipp finished a good breakfast and strode over to the telegraph office to see if there was a telegram waiting for Sheriff Bolt. The telegram was handed to him without question, and he read it, folded it carefully mounted up and rode as fast as he could to Tres Marias. He thought Brandt would have a tough time finding any Sheriff Bolt in the entire country.

Cover  •  Contents  •  < PREV Chapter  •  NEXT Chapter >  •  Page Top