Old Tin Sorrows Part 8

'Show me where it happened before the rain wipes out the sign.'

I got to ride. Lucky me. The horse was hospitable all the way out, but I knew it had heard of me through the grapevine those monsters have. It grinned when it heard my name. It was waiting for a chance.

It was a good ride out. The Stantnors had a lot of land. We didn't talk much. I took in the countryside, getting the lay, the landmarks. I might need to know them.

I'd developed the habit young. It was my apparent knack for knowing my way around that got me volunteered as a scout when the real s.e.xton vanished.

'Looks like Snake came back out,' Peters said as we crossed a rise and came to the scene.

I saw a man under an oak near a hanging animal carca.s.s. 'Sarge, I never knew any of these guys when I was in. Did any of them know s.e.xton?'

He looked at me funny. 'I don't think so.'

I dismounted, tied the reins to an oak sapling. My mount got a forlorn look. 'Thought I'd just drop them and you'd scurry when I turned my back, didn't you?'

'What?' Peters asked.

'Talking to the horse. I talk to horses. They make more sense than people.'

'Snake, this is Mike s.e.xton. Scouted for me in the islands. You probably heard he's here.'

Snake grunted. He looked me over. I returned the favor.

If Chain had gone to seed, this one had gone a step beyond. His hair hadn't been cut since he'd gotten out. His beard was a bramble patch. He didn't change clothes or bathe very often. His pants were covered with curious colored stains. He said, 'I heard.'

'You found anything?'

Snake grunted. It sounded negative.

I looked at the carca.s.s. Wasn't much to it. 'Kind of puny, isn't it?'

'Fawn,' Snake said. 'Just lost its spots.'

Yes. A little rusty, Garrett. Why would a poacher take a fawn? If he was after the meat and the herd wasn't spooky, he'd go for a bigger kill. I gave the carca.s.s a closer look.

It was ten years since I'd done my own butchering, but this job looked amateurish. Like it had been done by someone who'd seen animals butchered but who hadn't ever done it himself.

'This patrol this morning. Was there a set plan? Specific a.s.signments?'

Peters said, 'We had a routine, if that's what you mean. Routes we'd figured so four men could cover everything.'

Not exactly what I wanted to know. I couldn't be more specific without giving away more than I wanted. 'Where was Hawke when he was. .h.i.t?'

'Up here.'

I followed Peters. The spot was obvious once you got there. Hawkes had thrashed around after he'd fallen. He'd lost enough blood to draw flies too stupid to go for the bonanza in the tree. The spot was fifty feet from the deer. A blind archer could have made the shot.

I picked out what I thought was Hawkes' back trail. I followed it, found a place where he'd stopped. 'I'd guess this is where he sounded the horn. Then he went down and stopped again there.'

'And the poacher let him have it.'

Somebody did. 'What time did it happen?'

'About nine.'

'Uhm.' That fawn had been dead a lot longer than that.

I walked back down. Snake still stood staring at the carca.s.s. I asked, 'You look around some?'

He grunted. 'Why'd anybody want to do that to a little fawn?' An old buddy getting an arrow through the brisket didn't bother him. The fawn did.

I took another look at the carca.s.s. I couldn't find its death wound. 'Was there an arrow in it?'

'No.'

Snake wasn't going to be much good for anything.

The tree where the fawn hung was a loner ten yards from the edge of a wood that followed a creek. That wood was only a hundred yards across. I headed downhill, swinging back and forth, looking for the poacher's trail I found it. Somebody in a big hurry had charged straight through the underbrush. Understandable, if you've just plinked some guy and you know he has friends coming.

Peters followed me. I asked, 'Was there a set pattern to who rode where on these patrols?'

No way to keep him from wondering why I asked. He frowned. 'No. We mixed it up so we wouldn't see the same ground every time.'

Then the sniper hadn't been after somebody in particular, just somebody. a.s.suming the arrow hadn't come from the bow of a panicky poacher but someone who had laid a trap.

I was sure that when Hawkes stopped the second time, he'd seen whoever let him have it. That he'd been startled into halting. Otherwise, he'd have kept moving.

How much of that was Peters figuring out? The man wasn't stupid.

'How do you get along with your neighbors?'

'We ignore them. They ignore us. Most of them are scared of us.'

I'd be scared if I had neighbors like them.

The sniper had become less panicky after fifty yards of flight. He'd turned onto an old game trail. There were too many leaves down for the ground to take good tracks but I could tell which way he had gone by the way they were disturbed. 'Got any dogs? Or know where we could get some?'

'To track with? No.'

The game trail went down to the creek, split. One fork crossed over, the other ran along the bank. My quarry had taken the latter.

A hundred fifty yards along, that path dipped into a wide, shallow, sandy-bottomed section of creek. And didn't come out the other side. I looked around. 'I've lost it.'

'G.o.d d.a.m.n it, look again.'

I looked, satisfied that he hadn't noticed the horse apples in the shallow water. Whoever had come down here had ridden away, down the streambed. No big deal, since the water was never more than a foot deep.

How many peasants forced to poach deer could afford to keep a horse?

'Sorry. There's nothing.'

'Then I'll find some d.a.m.ned dogs.'

As we walked back uphill I asked, 'Who takes care of the stables here?'

'Mostly Snake, with help from Hawkes and Tyler. I don't get Snake. Takes care of the animals. Likes to. But you can't get him on a horse to save his life.'

That made sense to me, though it was a little extreme.

I asked questions that got me curious looks but no answers. Unless they were liars and fast to boot-or in cahoots-none of the men on patrol could have dropped Hawkes. And Hawkes didn't do it to himself. That narrowed the field of suspects, but not enough. I wanted rid of Snake and Peters so I could prowl down that creek to wherever the sniper had left it.

's.h.i.+t!' Black Pete exploded. 'We've got our heads up our a.s.ses.'

'What?'

'What did we do every time we hit the Venageti on the d.a.m.ned island? What did I pound into you guys every d.a.m.ned day we were there?'

He'd gotten it. 'Yeah. You don't leave tracks on water.' Before a raid we'd always made sure we had an escape route crossed by a lot of water.

'The b.a.s.t.a.r.d walked down the creek. That's why you couldn't find anything.'

'Yeah.'

'Let's go.'

'I'll check it out. No need you taking any more time off.'

He looked at me hard, checked to see where Snake was. 'What're you thinking, Garrett? I've seen you like this before. I haven't forgotten the stuff you pulled.'

'I'm doing my job the best way I know. Nothing personal, but everybody's a suspect till I prove otherwise. No matter how well I think I know them.'

He started getting angry.

'Can it. You wanted me to find out who's killing the old man, right? Which one of you guys would do that? None of you. Right? But one of you is. Till I nail it down you get treated like everybody else. If only because I'm supposedly looking for a thief. Get me?'

'You want to play a lone hand. You're the professional. I'll put up with it. For a while.'

'Good. You don't have a choice, anyway. And that's nothing to get mad about.'

He got mad anyway. They always do. They all think they ought to be the exception to the rule.

He rode off in a huff.

I didn't care, so long as he rode off.

13.

My horse looked forlorn. I got it and led it down along the edge of the wood, looking for tracks. If I didn't find anything before I reached the property line, I'd work my way back up the far side of the woods.

Our villain had cunning in limited amounts. The stunt would have been sufficient if there'd been no cause for suspicion. But there was.

I found where a horseman had come out of the wood barely far enough away to be out of sight of the place where Hawkes had gotten it. The s.p.a.cing of hoofmarks said he'd been in no real hurry once he'd gotten away from the woods. Meaning he hadn't been worried about explaining his presence.

That put Tyler and Chain back on the suspect list. They wouldn't have been questioned because they belonged out here.

I'd have to question the survivors, find out who said and did what before they set out. Might be some subtle indicator there.

Whoever the killer was, he'd been bold. He'd ridden around behind the rise you crossed to reach the ambush, then had headed home. At least, I presumed that was what he'd done while the poacher-hunters were fussing over Hawkes. I lost the trail.

I circled and circled, quartered this way and that, and couldn't find it again.The drizzle and the chill breeze overcame my devotion to my craft. I headed for the house.

I was stomping through that museum of a central hall, headed for a change of clothes, when Jennifer fluttered out of nowhere. She looked more feminine and frail and vulnerable than she had. She was fl.u.s.tered and frightened. I waited, though I had no urge to see her.

'Sergeant Hawkes died,' she blurted. 'Right there in front of me. He just shook all over and made this funny sound and he wasn't alive anymore.'

'When?'

'Just a few minutes ago. I was looking for Dellwood when I saw you. I need somebody to tell me what to do.'

If she was looking for comfort she'd come to the wrong man. I didn't feel like comforting anybody. Not even a gorgeous brunette who had all the right stuff in all the right places, put together to make a dead bishop howl. My late night and early morning had me feeling like I was carrying an extra fifty pounds. Worse, I'd missed lunch.

I'd already determined that Cook was immune to my golden tongue. She didn't even know what was happening. It went right past her. 'Dellwood would be the best man to tell you. And speak of the devil.'

Here he came, moving without the usual sedate deliberation. 'Miss Jennifer, you were supposed to stay with Hawkes.'

'He doesn't need me anymore.'

Dellwood's eyes got big. 'He...He...'

'Yes. What do we do now?'

I said, 'Dellwood, I need to see the General. At his earliest convenience. I'll be in my quarters.'

I was going to take a nap. I expected I'd have another long night. I'd better rest while I could.

I glanced back at Jennifer and Dellwood. Maybe they were good actors. Maybe they were genuinely frazzled and upset. Whatever, they had exaggerated just that little bit that told me they wanted me to see them in a favorable light.

I didn't care if they cried or danced with joy. As far as I was concerned there was only one good guy in the house and his name was Garrett.