The Curse of Jacob Tracy: A Novel Page 27

  “Is that how you caught Droopy asleep on his watch last week?”

  “Yup,” Trace said, smugly.

  “Hunh. So how come you ain’t seen this thing killin the horses? Or if it’s a man, why ain’t you noticed somebody where they ain’t supposed to be?”

  “Don’t know. Maybe didn’t look in the right place. Maybe happened while I was asleep and not payin attention. I ain’t God, you know.”

  “I was wonderin when you’d notice,” Boz said amiably.

  They dismounted in the remuda corral and stripped down Nate and Blackjack to turn them loose for the day. The ranch was beginning to bustle with early-morning activities—cows lowing in the dairy barn, hands rattling milk pails and crooning to their charges. Chickens clucking over their feed, and Mrs. Miller clucking right back at them. Trace and Boz said, “Ma’am,” to her as they passed by, and she smiled and asked Trace how he was enjoying that volume of Shakespeare she had loaned him; Trace said he was enjoying it mightily. Mrs. Miller had been a schoolteacher for twenty years before she’d married Miller. She liked children, but she had none of her own, so she mothered the ranch hands as best she could.

  Meals, during the summer months, were cooked in an open-sided shack outside of the main bunk-house. The hands had constructed a fire-pit there, surrounded by rough benches, and during all but the wettest weather this was the hub of ranch social life. Hanky was there now, with his regular posse. By the sound of things, he had already spilled the beans about the savage horse-killer in their midst, and in typical cowboy fashion, his audience was raking him over the coals as a liar, a fool, and a tenderfoot.

  “No, no!” Hanky insisted, pointing an accusing finger at Red. “You’re the one who don’t know from bears. What about that night you fell outta the saddle cuz you rode up on that tree stump and thought it was a bear?”

  “That wasn’t me,” Red countered. “Hey Droopy! ’Member that time you fell asleep in the saddle and rode up on that old stump afore you knew what it was?”

  “I didn’t fall asleep,” Droopy protested, and the boys all laughed, because Droopy was named for his ability to catch a nap wherever he sat. “Least I make it into the saddle. Unlike some people.”

  There was a brief, accusatory silence, such that even Trace looked up from pouring his coffee to see who they were staring at.

  The Kid, as usual, sat a little away from the others, head down over his Bible—the Book of Mormon, to be strictly accurate—and it took a few seconds for the stares to penetrate his isolated attention. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Surprised you didn’t come runnin when I shot at that critter last night,” Hanky said.

  “I didn’t hear any shot,” the Kid said.

  “Where was you?”

  “I was out on the east boundary, where I was supposed to be.” The Kid looked at Hanky coolly through his spectacles. “How do I know you fired a shot? How do we even know you rode your shift last night? Maybe you got up at dawn and used your story of finding the horse to cover your sloth.”

  Hanky was not a stupid young man, but to call him sophisticated would be a stretch. He might not completely understand the challenge that had been levied at him, but he knew it required answering, and he let the Kid have it with both barrels. “You sure talk fancy for one o’ them inbreds, four-eyes. How many Prophets did your momma marry, to make you so high-and-mighty?”

  Trace was aware of glances darting his direction, wondering if the top screw was going to wade in before fists were thrown, but Trace knew better than to interfere in the pecking order, and he was curious to see how the Kid would handle himself. At sixteen, the Mormon kid was the youngest hand on the ranch, and the least experienced. He could ride well enough, and was neat about handling the horses and their tack, but he couldn’t herd worth a damn and he knew next to nothing about roping, doctoring, fence-building, or any of the myriad other skills a cowboy needed. He obviously had been raised to a different kind of life, and Trace wondered what had driven the boy to abandon Salt Lake in favor of this roughneck outfit that he clearly despised.

  Beyond that, there was something about the Kid that nagged Trace’s psychic sense. It wasn’t the nerve-jangling alarm he got from demons, nor the sense of familiarity he’d felt from Ferris. The feeling was faint but off-putting, like a rank odor. The Kid just plain rubbed everybody the wrong way, with his watchful attitude and his scorn. And there was a streak of disquiet in him, which Trace and Boz had marked but the younger cowboys had not the experience to recognize: one of them was going to push the Kid too far one day, and end up with a broken nose or worse.

  For a moment Trace thought today would be the day. The Kid’s head went down and his eyes were cold murder behind the spectacles. But he said flatly, “There’s only one Prophet, you ignorant Gentile.”

  Hanky laughed. They all laughed, with varying degrees of meanness and sympathy. But the taunting had run into a box canyon—it was no fun tormenting a victim who didn’t fight back—so the boys returned to their grub, turning their backs on the Kid, who got to his feet and made as if to head for the bunks.

  “Hanky,” Trace said, before the Kid was out of earshot, “you and Red drag that horse off like I told you?”

  “You said after breakfast, Preacher,” Hanky said, holding his tin cup aloft.

  “From the way you were jawin I figured you were done chewin,” Trace said. “The rest of y’all can move the chicken coop and the pens to a new patch of grass. And make sure you clean out all the boxes and put in new straw.”

  Groans all around. Herding chickens was no one’s favorite chore.

  “And after that,” Trace said, adding the coup de grace, “you can help Missus Miller with the weeding.”

  Shrieks of agony this time. Protestations of unfairness. Negotiations of souls, future prospects, and firstborn sons.

  Trace raised his voice. “Kid!”

  The youngster stood poised on one foot. “Sir?”

  “After you get your morning chores squared away come see me in the office.”

  Voices dropped to a speculative murmur. Being called to the office, when it wasn’t payday, usually meant dismissal. The last time it had happened, Miller had called down his old foreman and told him to get his drunken ass off the property before noon.

  The Kid’s jaw clenched, but he said, “Yes, sir,” before continuing on his way.

  Trace took his plate of bacon and biscuits and seated himself across from Boz. The cowboys scarfed down their food, shooting wary glances in Trace’s direction, before scattering to the day’s work.

  “You gonna fire him?” Boz asked, when they were alone.

  “Prob’ly not today,” Trace said.

  * * *

  “COME IN,” TRACE said, when the Kid appeared on his doorstep an hour later. “Sit down.”

  The Kid sat. He was a good-looking boy—a tad on the short side but stocky, with broad, rosy cheeks and a shock of straw hair. Trace looked for a glare of defiance in him but couldn’t find it; just a wary control in his face and posture. The Mormon boy showed more respect to Trace than he did anyone else, and Trace guessed it was because of the moniker “Preacher” that Miller had laid on him, fourteen years ago when he was a greenhorn himself.

  “Are you really a preacher?” the Kid had asked once.

  “I was readin to be, when I was your age,” Trace told him.

  “Why didn’t you finish?”

  “Guess the Lord had other plans for me,” Trace answered, and the Kid had looked thoughtful at that, but said no more.

  “Is there any truth to what Hanky said this mornin?” Trace asked the boy now. “About you skippin your turn on the watch last night?”

  “No, sir,” the Kid said stoutly. “I mounted up the same time he did, four o’clock. He saw me do it.”

  “What horse did you take?”

  “Buttercup, sir.”

  Trace made a mental note to ask Old Walt, who minded the remuda horses, whether Buttercup had been back in
the corral that morning at dawn. “Did you or did you not hear gunfire last night?”

  “I did not, sir.” The Kid’s eyes were guarded.

  “Why not? Where were you?”

  “Well I don’t know, do I? Somewhere along the east boundary. I guess I maybe heard a crack during the round, but I didn’t know what it was. Could’ve been a branch breaking.”

  Trace wasn’t sure he believed that. The east boundary was full of pines and scrub, but a breaking branch made a much sharper sound than the pop of gunfire, and a gun report would have echoed like the dickens, back by the waterfall where Hanky had seen his monster.

  “I want you,” Trace took a clean sheet of paper and turned it toward the Kid, “to write for me,” he passed over the ledger pen, “‘I, Karl Oscarson Smith, do solemnly avow that I rode my watch last night.’”

  The Kid glanced at him mistrustfully, dipped the pen and wrote, with only a slight hesitation over the last part. He signed it with a flourish.

  As Trace had suspected, the boy had a fine hand, regular and highly legible. “You like book-work, son?”

  “I took the Prophet’s dictation at the Temple for two years,” the Kid said, with a hint of pride. “I wrote all his letters and declarations.”

  “I thought the Prophet passed on some years ago.”

  “Prophet Joseph Smith was martyred thirty-six years ago. Prophet Taylor is the President of the Quorum of Apostles.”

  “My mistake,” Trace said. “Your pa must’ve been pretty close to the Prophet, then, if he saw your writing and offered you the job.”

  That seemed to touch a nerve. The Kid’s poker face was smooth, but not that smooth. “Yes, sir,” he said, without elaborating.

  “Fine. You like hand work, you can help me out here, mornings.” Trace pulled out a bill of sale and slapped it down on the blotter. “I need twenty-five of these copied out. Leave blank lines where it says the date, the name of the buyer, and the animal’s description. You do those right and maybe I’ll find somethin else for you to do.”

  The Kid looked stunned, but recovered quickly. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  Trace got up, taking the boy’s affidavit with him. “I’ll be at the smithy, if anybody asks.”

  “Yes, sir.” The Kid rearranged the inkwell and the blotter to suit him, and fell to.

  Once out on the porch, Trace glanced at the paper in his hand. I, Karl Oscarson Smith, do solemnly avow I was in the east pasture last night.

  A subtle distinction. Signifying what, Trace didn’t know. But the Kid was lying about something more important to him than missing his turn on watch. Trace had done enough prevaricating of his own to recognize the signs.

  * * *

  THE REST OF the day was uneventful. There were only two branding accidents, and one broken finger, when Sam’s grip slipped on a buggy-axle while Davy was putting a new wheel on. A horse stepped on Old Walt’s foot, but it was only bruised, not broken. While Trace bound up the foot, Walt confirmed that Buttercup had been taken out last night; he’d saddled her after supper, and she’d been stripped and her tack stowed before six, when he’d arrived at the corral. The Kid’s bunk mates also confirmed that he had been up and gone when they awoke at dawn.

  Boz spent the day in the training paddock, putting the four-year-olds through their paces. He gave particular attention to his favorite pinto mare—too gaudy for a driving horse, but the animal had sense and fire, a deep chest and massive hindquarters that promised a hell of a jumper. There was a crowd of Englishmen up in Denver who organized fox-hunting clubs, just as if they were back on their country estates in Surrey. They were some of Miller’s best customers.

  Trace never tired of watching Boz work with a horse. The paint darted from one end of the barrel-lane to the other, stopping and backing on a dime, putting down every foot as pretty as a dance. Boz had acquired a certain prestige during their brief time here; the other trainers accepted him and even consulted him occasionally. Miller trusted him with the best of the stock.

  “Put that one down for the market,” Miller said, when Trace met up with him outside the paddock. Trace made a note of it, and then told the rancher he’d put the Kid to work in the office.

  “Just as well,” the old rancher said. “He’s useless with the cattle.”

  “You hire him?” Trace asked.

  “Sullivan did,” Miller said, naming Trace’s predecessor. “Found him in Evanston back in May. I think he just wanted somebody to record sales cause he was too drunk to do it.”

  That explained the strangely neat handwriting in the books. Trace knew Sullivan had stepped into the foreman’s role when his predecessor had gotten married and pulled up stakes for San Francisco. Sullivan had been a good cowboy and popular with the men, but the higher foreman’s pay had let him overindulge his fondness for whiskey.

  “Kid causing trouble again?” Miller asked. “Martha overheard some of the boys saying they were going to ‘fix’ him.”

  “They’re rough,” Trace said. “He’s not. He lets ’em know it. Have to wonder why he came up here, if he hates it so much.”

  “Prob’ly got nowhere else to go. The Elders tend to run off the young men—not enough women to go around, you know.”

  Trace nodded. He’d heard the stories about Mormons taking multiple wives. He’d always wondered how they meant to make that work in future generations.

  “If a boy takes a shine to a girl his own age, but her pa wants to wed her to one of the church Elders, well, the boy’s got to go. They tell him he’s a wicked sinner and run him out of town. I get one or two of ’em every year. They all work hard, but some of ’em don’t rest easy among the low-down sinner crowd.” Miller gave a brief, mocking smile. “Seems I remember another young missionating-type who got his flint fixed for passing judgment.”

  “So do I,” Trace said, “and he was a mush-headed young gull.”

  “Aw, you were young, that’s all. Younger than your years, I used to think.” Miller gave him the critical once-over he used to gauge horseflesh. “You grew into your legs all right.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  It got dark early in the valley, shadows drawing long across the ranch even while the western sky was still amber with sunset. The evening milking was done by lantern light, and the hands built a fire in the center of their outdoor dining hall, to linger and socialize after dinner. Faint laughter and conversation carried across the yard to the porch of the foreman’s house, where Trace and Boz were having a nip of whiskey before bed.

  “You’re quiet tonight,” Boz said, tucking tobacco into a fresh rolling paper.

  Trace contemplated the ash on the end of his own smoke. “You know what today is?”

  “Twentieth, ain’t it?”

  “That’s right. I marked it down in the ledger this morning, but it wasn’t til after noon … Miller said somethin about the old days, and that made me remember, today’s the day my wife and folks died.” The breeze fanned a spark in his cigarette and he turned his hand to protect it. His mind had done the same thing when the memory came, curled around to shield his heart, but the expected flare of guilt and grief had not come. “Almost got past without me noticin.”

  Boz’s profile was illuminated briefly by matchlight. He shook the match out and settled his head back against the chair. “S’cause you ain’t beatin yourself up about it no more.”

  That was true. In fact, before Boz had spoken, he’d been sitting there in a kind of peace—melancholy, but accepting. Of course he had to wonder, in light of new knowledge, whether there’d been any sign of demon activity in the house before they all took sick, but if there had been, he hadn’t marked it. Mostly he remembered feeling relief, that he could let go his constant vigilance. And that had been his mistake—if, in fact, his family had been felled by malicious spirits, and not simple hateful cholera.

  There was no way of knowing. Trace thought he would rather not know for sure. But he couldn’t help thinking, if Aloysius hadn’t been so insis
tent that everything strange was the work of the Devil, the younger Jacob might might’ve grasped Hardinger’s lesson sooner. He might’ve broken the power to harness so it hadn’t run away from him that time—if, in fact, it had.

  He couldn’t despise his father for doing what he’d believed to be right. For all his faults, the old man had never been a hypocrite. But there was a certain satisfaction in redistributing the blame.

  Laughter carried over from the fire-pit, and Trace remembered the other matter that had dogged his thoughts all day. “Miller told me the Kid’s been here since May. Also said the first of the horses slaughtered was around that time. And you remember that tin-peddler came through here last month, up from Salt Lake?”

  “Yeah?”

  “He said there was sheep getting tore up, south of here, earlier this spring.”

  “An’ you suspect the Kid?” Boz sounded dubious.

  “There’s somethin bout him ain’t natural. Somethin my power picks up on, but I don’t know what, I never seen it before. And between what you said, about somethin man-sized cuttin down that horse, and him hedgin about ridin his shift last night, I got to wonder.”

  Boz thought for a while. “Still, that’s a awful lot of damage for some boy to do with a knife. He’d need … a curved blade. Like a farrier’s knife, but pointed. And there ain’t no way to do it without gettin blood all over him.”

  “He could wash up in the creek.”

  “Blood don’t wash out of clothes.”

  “Maybe he did it naked,” Trace said, half-serious.

  Boz chuckled. “As neat as that boy is? You see him runnin round buck-naked in the dark with a knife?”

  The image was more chilling than humorous, in Trace’s opinion. “I knew a man in the hospital, after the war … sweetest fella you ever did see, until the moon came full. Then they had to put him in restraints and throw him in a cell, or he’d chew your leg off. He did bite the ear off an orderly who got too close.” He cocked a wry smile. “Thought he was a wolf, see?”