Death Rides Alone (6 page)

“It's a funny thing,” Tyler said as he sat with his back leaned against a cottonwood trunk. “I don't recall seeing an actual creek anywhere around Bent Creek.”

“You're right about that,” Luke said. He was hunkered next to the stream, which was five feet wide and a foot deep. If this creek had a name, he had no idea what it was.

As he continued washing the mud from his spare shirt, he went on, “But that's not unusual. I recall visiting a settlement down in Texas called Shady Hill. The country there was flat as a table, and there wasn't a tree in sight to provide shade.”

“Chasing after some
bandido
, were you?”

“That's right. A man named Enrique . . . something or other. Don't recall the last name.”

“Do you remember what happened to him?”

“They hanged him in Del Rio.”

Tyler clucked his tongue and said, “Bad luck for Enrique. He was probably guilty, though.”

“Of half a dozen brutal murders. Beyond the shadow of a doubt.”

“See, that's the difference between him and me,” Tyler said. “I'm innocent. Of murder, anyway.”

“You were telling me about that,” Luke said as he straightened from kneeling on the creek bank and hung the wet shirt on a tree branch next to the trousers he had already washed. “About Spence Douglas.”

“Yeah.” Tyler sighed. “I don't suppose you'd take these handcuffs off?”

Luke shook his head and said, “I don't suppose.”

“Well, I guess I'll just have to put up with 'em, then, although it's a mite hard for me to talk without using my hands. I'm the naturally expressive sort, I reckon.”

“Just get on with it,” Luke said. A few yards away, the two horses continued cropping peacefully at the grass growing along the creek bank.

“Spence and I grew up together, in a way,” Tyler began. “We're about the same age. He's less than a year younger than me, I think. We both went to the little schoolhouse there in White Fork, for a while, anyway. So we knew each other, but we were never really friends. You see, even though the Circle M wasn't as big and successful back in those days, it was still a nice operation, so Spence was the son of a respected rancher. And me? I was just the saloonkeeper's boy.”

“Wait a minute,” Luke said. “You just referred to Manfred Douglas as a respected rancher. I thought most of the folks around there either feared or hated him . . . or both.”

“Things were a little different then,” Tyler said with a shrug. “But I'm gettin' to that.”

“Go ahead.”

“Spence was a hellion, right from the start, before he was even out of knee pants. He was always getting into fights and stealing. If he saw something he wanted, it didn't matter to him that it might belong to somebody else.”

“Sort of like a man who rustles cattle and holds up stagecoaches,” Luke pointed out.

Tyler made a face and said, “Yeah, yeah, I'm a fine one to be talking, I know. But I was never as downright
mean
about it as Spence always was. Anyway, every time Spence got into some sort of trouble, his pa came into town to straighten it out, usually with half a dozen men from his ranch crew with him. They were a pretty salty bunch. People got used to overlooking all of Spence's little scrapes because they didn't want to make trouble for themselves. And Manfred Douglas got used to people doing whatever he wanted.”

“Power corrupts,” Luke muttered. “And absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

“Yeah. Over time, Douglas started figuring his word was law. From there, it was a pretty short step to making sure his own personal pick wound up as sheriff. Gus Axtell used to work for him, before he pinned on a star.”

“I assume we'll be getting to the part about the young lady soon?”

“Rachel,” Tyler said, and there was a little catch in his voice as he spoke the name. “Prettiest, sweetest girl you ever saw. A couple of years younger than Spence and me. Her pa answered the call and came to preach in White Fork when she was about twelve. I reckon I fell in love with her the first time I laid eyes on her.”

Tyler jerked a little, shook his head, and looked like he couldn't believe he had just said that. He went on quickly, “Listen, Jensen, don't get the idea that I've been pinin' away for her all these years. I had a crush on her, sure, but I got over it. A girl like her, a preacher's daughter, never would have thought of a boy raised in a saloon as anything but a friend, if that much. I knew that and didn't waste my time chasing after her.” He paused. “She
was
a pretty good friend, though, to just about everybody who knew her, including me. The only one she couldn't stand—”

“Was Spence Douglas,” Luke finished for him, confident that the guess was correct.

“You're damn right. Spence rubbed Rachel the wrong way. She hated his arrogance and meanness, but there was nothing he could do about that. It was just part of him. An ugly part.”

“But that didn't make Spence want her any less, did it?”

Tyler frowned at him and asked, “How'd you know that?”

“It seems rather obvious. I've read the Bard, and this story has definite overtones of Shakespearean tragedy.”

“I wouldn't know about that,” Tyler said, “but yeah, Spence wanted her, sure enough. And she didn't want to have anything to do with him. Then Manfred decided it was time to send Spence back east to school. He wanted his son to be a college man. I don't think Spence wanted to go, but he couldn't stand up to Manfred any more than the other folks around there. He went.”

“It seems to me that Miss Montgomery should have married someone else while Spence was back east,” Luke said. “That would have solved her problem. I'm surprised it didn't occur to you to suggest that.”

“I told you, she and I were just friends,” Tyler snapped. “By that time, my pa had lost his saloon in a poker game and crawled into the bottom of a bottle, and I was doin' whatever I had to, to take care of myself, whether it was legal or not. Even if I'd thought Rachel would give me the time of day, I didn't have a damn thing to offer her. I thought too much of her to ever do anything like that. And even though she had plenty of suitors, she didn't like any of them enough to get hitched up with them.”

“So she was still single when Spence Douglas came back from college, and he immediately started pursuing her again.”

“Say, you
are
good at figuring these things out, Jensen. Spence wasn't gone all that long. He got in some sort of trouble at that college and got booted out, which didn't surprise anybody. This was one time his pa couldn't do anything about it, either. So when Spence got back, he went after Rachel again, but she didn't like him any better than she did the first time around. And Spence . . . well, he just couldn't stand that.”

Luke had been prepared to scoff at whatever wild yarn Judd Tyler tried to spin to justify his crimes, but instead he found himself genuinely interested in the young man's story. He wasn't sure he was prepared to
believe
it just yet, but so far the tale had the ring of truth about it.

Certainly, during his years on the frontier Luke had run across numerous cattle barons like Manfred Douglas, ruthless and full of themselves, willing to use any means necessary to destroy anyone who dared to oppose them. Usually Luke tried to steer well clear of that sort, but he knew his brother Smoke had clashed violently with them many, many times.

“What happened?” Luke heard himself asking when Tyler paused again.

“Spence tried to court Rachel. He put the word out to all the other young fellas in the area that they'd better stay away from her if they knew what was good for them. Some of the ones who didn't take that advice wound up getting the stuffing beat out of them by Sheriff Axtell's deputies. Rachel heard about that and it made her plenty mad. When Spence showed up at her pa's house to call on her, she told him he was wasting his time and he might as well go away. He stomped around and told her she'd change her tune soon enough.”

“I didn't even know the young woman, and I could have told Spence a heavy-handed approach like that wasn't going to work,” Luke said.

“It sure didn't. But that didn't stop him from being more determined than ever.”

Luke frowned and rubbed his chin.

“How do you know what Miss Montgomery told young Douglas? You weren't there, were you?”

Tyler looked a little uncomfortable—and not from the handcuffs—as he said, “Rachel told me about it. Like I said before, the two of us were friends.”

“The minister's daughter and the young rustler and bandit?” Luke arched a skeptical eyebrow.

“Rachel didn't care about any of that! She knew me from back when we were all kids and always tried to tell me that I had a good heart, I'd just made some bad decisions. She said it was never too late to turn back to the straight and narrow.”

“An admirable sentiment, but I've known men who couldn't find the straight and narrow if they searched for it for the next hundred years.”

“Yeah, and Spence Douglas is one of 'em,” Tyler agreed. “Anyway, the next big thing that happened was the church social. Rachel's pa isn't one of those preachers who's against dancing, so they had some fiddle players there and there was plenty of do-si-doin' going on. Spence showed up with a few of the Circle M crew, and he was dressed to beat the band, wearing one of those fancy shirts he likes. This one was decorated with silver conchos and fringe. Looked downright silly to me. He was bound and determined to dance with Rachel, too. He wouldn't take no for an answer, and she wound up slapping his face in front of everybody to make him back off.”

“Was his father there at the social?” Luke asked.

“No, Manfred doesn't go in for things like that. Probably would have made things worse if he had been . . . although the way it turned out, I don't guess it could have been any worse.” Tyler took a deep breath and went on, “Spence flew off the handle. No telling what he might've done if his pa's men hadn't been there. They dragged him out, but not before he did a bunch of yelling and cussing, right there in the church.

“That sort of put a damper on the evening. Folks tried to carry on, but their hearts weren't in it anymore. The social broke up after a while and everybody went home. Rachel stayed behind to clean up, though, and I . . . well, I stayed to help her.”

Tyler had said twice that there was nothing romantic between him and Rachel Montgomery, but even if the rest of his story was true, Luke wasn't sure he believed that part of it. It seemed to him, judging by Tyler's voice and the look in his eyes when he talked about Rachel, that he'd been in love with her, even if nothing had ever come of it. Even if he never would admit it to himself.

But after listening to him, Luke was finding it more and more difficult to accept the idea that Tyler would have harmed the young woman.

“When we were finished, I would have walked her home,” Tyler went on, his tone becoming bleak now. “I told her I wanted to. But she said there wasn't any need for that, since her pa's house was close by, just a couple of hundred yards away on the other side of some trees. Anyway, nobody would ever bother her. Everybody in town loved her.” Grim lines appeared on Tyler's face as he continued, “So I let her talk me out of it. If I'd insisted . . . Ah, hell! If I'd done a lot of things different in life, everything would change, wouldn't it?”

“A dilemma that nags at the mind of almost everyone, I expect,” Luke said. “Not very many people are able to live without regrets.”

“I damn sure can't, and what happened that night . . . that's the worst of 'em.” Tyler took another deep breath, as if he were having to force himself to go on. “Rachel went one way and I went the other, but I hadn't gone very far when I heard a horse moving around in that grove of trees between the church and the parsonage. I told myself it wasn't anything to worry about and went on, but it nagged at me enough that I stopped again, and that's when I heard Rachel cry out.

“Well, I was on foot, but I ran as hard as I could to get back there. I didn't see her on the road, but I remembered that horse I'd heard and went into the trees to look for her. About that time I heard hoofbeats again. Somebody was riding off in a hurry. And then I . . . I practically tripped over Rachel's body. I dropped to my knees beside her. She wasn't moving or making any sounds, so I got a match out and lit it, and I saw that somebody had choked her . . . choked her to death.”

Tyler was choked as well, so wrought up with emotion that he could barely get the words out. If this was all some elaborate lie, Luke thought, just an act that Tyler was putting on, he was doing a fine job of it. Every word had the deep ring of truth to it.

“I reckon I knew in my heart she was dead, but I felt like I ought to try to get help anyway,” Tyler continued. “I got up, and then I heard horses again, more than one this time, so I went toward them and realized too late it was some of those Circle M boys. I thought they must have come back to look for Spence. They spotted me, and one of them yelled, ‘It's that bastard Tyler! He killed the preacher's girl!'”

“Wait a minute,” Luke said. “How did they know—” He stopped as realization soaked in on his brain. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Tyler said. “The only way they could have known that Rachel was dead was if Spence told them . . . and he wouldn't have known if he wasn't the one who killed her.”

“That's entirely logical,” Luke said, “but it's not exactly proof, not without some testimony to back it up. And from everything you've said, it's not very likely any of Douglas's men would be willing to testify against his son.”