Mankillers

The i

Buck took his hand from inside his coat. “As soon as your dear wife has the table set.”

The man started unhitching the horses. Buck considered reminding him of his wife’s offer for him to help with the luggage but winked at Tracker instead and picked up the nearest suitcase.

“I wonder, doctor,” Tracker commented as he hefted the other portmanteau, “if Mr. Hopkins realizes his wife just saved his hide.”

“What can you tell me about the plowboy you encountered this afternoon?” Buck asked.

“He’s not Rufus Snead, if that’s what you’re worried about. This guy had dark hair. Real, not dyed. He was more like thirty than twenty, and he had two good eyes, very blue eyes.”

“That’s a relief,” Buck responded. “He looked so much like Snead from a distance that—”

“One thing I can tell you about him,” Tracker added, “is that he was no plowboy. His hands were too soft and clean.”

So who was he?

#

“Good work,” Rufus told Mundo. So the coach had been stuck on the road because of a bad hub. They’d been sitting ducks, except Rufus didn’t know that then. He expected Mundo to pass by the moving coach. By the time he was able to work his way back to the gang, the coach had already arrived in St Matthews.

“I swan, those women are bodacious fine,” Mundo added. “The white woman is pretty as a turtle dove, and that dusky gal makes a man feel right pert.”

A one-track mind, Rufus thought, emphasis on the one track, not the mind.

“You’re randy for anything in a skirt,” Clem commented a few feet down the bar. He tipped his mug and gulped foamy beer, let out a belch and turned to Rufus. “Why didn’t we hit ‘em today, boss? I don’t understand why we’re waiting.”

“You don’t have to. We hit ‘em when I tell you to.”

In fact, knowing now the pickle they’d been in when they stopped to repair the wheel, he probably should have attacked them. A lost opportunity. But he didn’t know then what he knew now. Besides, there’d be other chances to exfluncticate Doc Thomson and his friends. After all, coaches broke down all the time.

Zeke came bounding into the long barroom. “Hey, boss, I found it.”

“Found what? Your ass or your elbow?”

“The perfect spot for your ambush tomorrow.”

“Where?” Rufus asked. “And what makes it so damn perfect?”

Suppressing a grin of pleasure at being one up on the one-eyed runt, Zeke told him. “On the road to Holly Hill. A long narrow bridge through the swamp. We’ll be able to hear ‘em when they get on it. There’s woods on both sides. I know how you like being up in trees, boss. They can’t turn the coach around on that bridge, so they’ll be sitting ducks.”

Rufus smiled. It did sound perfect. “Get some sleep,” he ordered. “We’re go

“He’s all yours, boss,” Mundo said. “I prefers women.”

Chapter SIXTEEN

The sun was pinking the eastern sky when Buck tapped on Tracker’s door. Hardly a moment elapsed before it opened and the man stood in front of him fully dressed.

“I’m riding out to see what there is to be seen,” Buck told him. “I expect to be back by the time y’all have finished breakfast, but don’t leave until I do. I want to make sure the road’s clear and check out any bad spots.”

“We’ll be waiting for you.”

Buck started to walk away.

“I’ll have Mr. Hopkins pack some biscuits for you,” Tracker added, “to eat at your leisure.”

“Uh, thanks.”

Buck found the road out of the compound ran straight for two miles, then curved around a series of small hills. From there it descended into swampland that buzzed with mosquitoes, stinging flies and black gnats. Another mile on and Buck came to a long wooden causeway, barely wide enough for the coach. Cypress trees crowded both sides of the shaky structure. Once on the bridge the coach would be committed to moving forward.

“If ever there was an ambush waiting to happen,” Buck muttered to himself, “this is it.”

Before crossing, he removed the binoculars from his saddle bag and sca

A mile farther along, the road widened and the opportunities for maneuver improved. Buck also discovered what appeared to be a little-used by-road that swept to the south, presumably to farms. Dead ends, probably.

He turned around and retraced his way to the stage depot. But, before he reached the causeway, he stopped to use his binoculars once more. The tall cypress trees growing so close to the road bothered him.

There. Someone was sitting on a thick bough less than fifty feet from the middle of the wooden structure.

How did he get there so fast, or had he been there earlier and Buck hadn’t seen him? The thought wasn’t encouraging. He continued to scan other trees and other branches, this time catching glimpses of at least five other men straddling limbs, holding rifles.

Had they all been there all along?

Was one of them Rufus Snead?

Buck didn’t see him, but he knew the sneaky coward was there. Somewhere.

He also realized he was now cut off from the people he was trying to protect. If he continued down the road and across the causeway, he’d be killed outright. Another fifty yards, and Rufus Snead would surely have him in his sights—if he didn’t already.

He remembered the farm road he’d seen and hoped it would take him to St Matthews.

Reining in Gypsy, he reversed course and rode quietly away from the assassins. At the intersection with the by-road, he checked behind him one last time and set his horse into an easy trot.

The sun was fully up now, warming the damp air. At least he was moving away from the swamp. Insects chased him but not in the numbers he’d previously encountered. Only three or four had so far drawn blood.

As expected, the dirt road brought him to a small once-white farmhouse with an unpainted cypress barn behind it. A bent old man in bib overalls was carrying a tin bucket from the house, presumably to empty in the privy several yards beyond.

Buck could feel the man’s anxiety build at his approach. “Hello, old-timer. Is this the road to St. Matthews?”

“Well, it ain’t the main one no more, but it’ll get you there.”

“Does it get any better?”

“It don’t get no worse.”

“That’s small consolation.”

An hour later, Buck pulled into the stage compound. The traveling party was outside, no doubt to enjoy the fresh air. The ladies were sitting in wicker chairs on the porch of the building, fa

“Is everything all right?” Sarah came to meet him. She was clearly apprehensive. “You were gone so long, I . . . we were worried.”