Crying Blood - An Alafair Tucker Mystery Read online

Shaw gulped. “I should have… I should have…”

  Kurt put the lantern on the ground and placed a hand on Shaw’s back. “Look, Mr. Tucker, there is prints! Bare feet in such cold!”

  Shaw took himself in hand and straightened. “Whoever done this is still around. Throw a saddle on a horse and slap leather, Kurt. Get Sheriff Tucker out here as fast as you can.”

  Kurt was half-way back to the tack closet before Shaw finished speaking. Shaw picked up the lantern and searched the barn from top to bottom before going back into the stall. He leaned over the dead boy and examined the scene by the dim light.

  The boy had seen who killed him, if the wide open eyes were any indication, but he didn’t look afraid, or even surprised. There was no sign of a struggle. Shaw tried to imagine what had happened.

  The boy must have heard the wood splinter when the lock was broken. The murderer entered the stall holding a lance, but the boy didn’t cry out or try to stand up. He rolled over onto his back, threw back the blanket and looked at his killer. Did they speak?

  Crying Blood either had no time to react or he had no fear. Whichever, he had died quick. A pool of dark blood had oozed out from under the body, but there wasn’t much blood on his shirt. The lance had gone right through his heart.

  God have mercy. I should have remembered to burn a pinch of the cedar, Shaw thought. He squatted down and brought the lamp close. The light illuminated something white peeking out at the throat of Crying Blood’s tunic. Shaw should have been shocked or frightened or awed when he saw what it was, but he wasn’t feeling much of anything as he fingered the knobby protrusions on the small snake bones that made up the youngster’s necklace. It was identical to the one Shaw still carried in his pocket. The tender young skin of the boy’s throat felt supple and alive, though no pulse warmed it. Shaw touched the still face, closed the staring eyes, then lifted one out-flung arm. Crying Blood was clutching something in his hand. Shaw pried open the fingers and removed what looked at first like a dead leaf, but felt like a snatch of half-rotten, brown burlap. He stood up and cast a look around but didn’t immediately see that anything else in the stall was much disturbed. The murderer could be long gone by now. But Shaw was struck by a cold fear that he was lurking somewhere near.

  He only paused long enough to wedge the broken door shut before hurrying back to the house to guard his sleeping wife and children.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Alafair was so troubled with dreams that she hardly slept at all. It was still a long time before dawn when she finally gave it up as a bad job and rolled out of bed, careful not to wake Grace, who had taken advantage of her father’s absence to jump into her parents’ big bed. Alafair hadn’t had the will to eject her. Even if Shaw reclaimed his spot during the night, Grace didn’t take up enough room to be a bother.

  She pulled on a wool skirt and a heavy shirt and tiptoed though the parlor with her shoes in her hand. Charlie slept dead to the world on his bed in the corner. She went into the kitchen and sat down on a chair to pull on her shoes, removed her hat and coat from the coat tree by the back door. She slipped onto the back porch to light a lantern and speak to the invalid Crook.

  Charlie had made a hospital bed for Crook out of an old crate, some straw, and a blanket that had seen better days. Charlie Dog was stretched out next to his friend’s pallet, and when Alafair opened the back door both dogs raised their heads and wagged their tails at her.

  She gave both of them a head scratch and a friendly word before kneeling down to check Crook’s broken foreleg. It looked better. She had set it the night before—a traumatic procedure for all concerned. Grace had hidden under her bed rather than be present for the operation.

  The leg was splinted on two sides and tightly bound. When they first brought him home Crook kept trying to stand on it. Alafair was glad to see that he had given up that idea and was lying on his side, resigned to a period of inactivity. He was happy to see her, for the distraction from boredom if nothing else, and allowed her to gently unwrap the comfrey poultice she had bound directly over the wound.

  “There now, Crook, that’s a good boy. Have you been gnawing at your bandages, you rascal? Didn’t I tell you quite particular not to do that? Well, looks like you haven’t done any damage. Looks good!” Satisfied, Alafair wiped her hands on a towel and stood. She was informing the dogs of her intention to make a trip out to the barn to see if Shaw and his captive had fallen asleep when she heard something on the night. Both dogs snapped to attention. Alafair swallowed her comment and listened, but the sound didn’t recur. Yet she knew she wasn’t imagining things. It had sounded like a human voice. A man’s voice. She opened the screen and was just about to walk out into the yard when Shaw’s cry of “Stop!” froze her in her tracks.

  She hadn’t seen him running toward the house through the dark, rifle in hand.

  “Don’t come out!” By this time he was on her. He seized her upper arm with such force that she would sport finger-shaped bruises for days afterwards, and hustled her back inside. “Honey, I went to wake up Kurt and while I was gone somebody snuck into the barn and killed Crying Blood.” He was speaking fast, urgent. She made a squeaking noise, but his words rushed over her. “The killer had to have been watching and seen me leave the boy all trussed up alone in there. He’s like to still be around and I don’t know but what he has more evil mischief planned. Unlock the gun case and arm yourself. I sent Kurt headlong to fetch Scott.”

  They were in the kitchen now. Shaw was no longer propelling Alafair along. She was purposefully heading under her own steam toward the gun cabinet in the parlor. All she had managed to glean from what he said was that there may be danger to her children lurking about. She would take time to process the rest later.

  She ran into Charlie’s sturdy form, a long-john clad wall blocking the door between kitchen and parlor.

  “Somebody killed Crying Blood?” he asked. Horrified. He hadn’t even managed to get a good look at their intriguing captive, practically the same age as he, now murdered.

  An unstoppable tide of parental concern pushed him backwards into the parlor. “Get dressed,” his father ordered. “Fetch me a box of shells from the chifforobe and be quiet about it. Don’t wake up any of the girls.”

  Too late. Alafair caught sight of a ghostly figure standing in the bedroom door. Martha, in her white flannel nightgown, long, dark, hair spilling over her shoulders, one hand on either door jamb, the only one of the sisters to be wakened by the disturbance.

  Charlie was already struggling into his trousers. “I want to go with you, Daddy…”

  “No!” Alafair said over his request.

  Shaw put his hand on Charlie’s shoulder. “You load up Gee Dub’s Winchester, son, and stand guard over your sisters and Mama.”

  ***

  In the end, Martha and Charlie stood armed sentry as their siblings slept and Alafair went with Shaw back out to the barn. She insisted on going as much for Shaw’s sake than for Crying Blood’s. There was nothing they could do for the boy now. They couldn’t even arrange his body decently until the sheriff was able to examine the scene of the crime.

  The moment Alafair saw Crying Blood lying dead in the straw, she burst into tears. Her grief over the unjust and gruesome end to a young life almost unmanned Shaw. He held her in his arms while she sobbed, unable to keep the tears from spilling down his cheeks.

  Her storm subsided after a few minutes and she pulled back enough to look up at him. She put her hand on his face. “It wasn’t your fault, honey.”

  His eyes widened. She always knew what he was thinking. “I shouldn’t have left him alone, even for a minute.”

  “What decent man could credit that someone would do this?”

  He almost smiled at her question. She had always had a better opinion of humankind than he. “I didn’t believe him, Alafair. I didn’t believe what he said about the white-haired man.”

  She grasped his arms and gave him a shake. “Nobody can look into another’
s heart and know for sure whether they’re telling the truth or not. Except maybe the Lord Jesus himself. And the last time I looked you weren’t quite of that ilk. I’ll tell you what, and it’s the same thing you’d tell the children. The only man who’s responsible for this awful act is the man who done it.”

  “I know,” he said, but she knew he didn’t believe it.

  Well, talk never did feed the bulldog. “You’ve got to do whatever it takes to see that he pays.” Even as she said the words, she was aware that he would not take her advice the way she meant it; to help the law find the murderer. In his mind his guilt would not be expiated until he himself put things right. So be it. Men had their own ways, and she had more faith in Shaw’s abilities and good sense than any other man she knew.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  “He probably transported a mare in heat down here from Okmulgee on the train yesterday. I’m guessing that he holed up with her somewhere until the middle of the night. Then he led that mare onto my place, went into the stable bold as brass and took Red Allen out of his stall. Then he put the two of them together in the exercise corral and let nature take its course.”

  Scott listened to Peter’s rant with one ear while he scooped coffee out of a sack and into the tin pot, then placed the pot on top of the pot-bellied stove that stood in the corner of the Sheriff’s Office. He was trying to pay proper attention, he really was. But twenty minutes earlier he had been sound asleep in his warm bed next to his warm wife. That was before his young deputy, Trenton Calder, had pounded on his front door like the devil was after him. Scott had pulled on his clothes in the dark and practically run to the jailhouse after Trent told him that Peter McBride was there in a frightful state of mind, waiting to report a crime.

  The sight of his uncle’s mottled red face had alarmed Scott. It took a minute for him to understand the gist of the tale, since the old man was beside himself with fury. At first Scott thought someone had killed Peter’s valuable walker stallion. Then it seemed the horse had been stolen. Now it was becoming clear that the only thing that had been stolen was Red Allen’s vital essence, and the sudden deflation of his alarm left Scott feeling flat.

  Not that the theft of Red Allen’s vital essence was a small thing. The horse commanded impressive stud fees. But no one was harmed, and it was six o’clock in the morning, and Scott was having a bit of trouble concentrating.

  “You’re sure it was Doolan?” Scott was staring at the coffee pot as though the intensity of his gaze could make the water boil faster.

  “Of course it was Doolan! It hasn’t been a week since he was here trying to buy Red Allen’s service. And in all my life I never knew a man who so refused to be thwarted. He’ll do anything to have his way!”

  Scott gave Peter a sidelong squint. “Well, soon as the depot opens up we’ll go ask the station master if anybody got off the train recently with a mare in tow. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find Doolan and his mare waiting on the platform to catch the ten o’clock back to Okmulgee.”

  Peter didn’t think Scott was taking this as seriously as he should. “He’s smarter than that, lad. He’s likely to meet the train up or down the line somewhere. Why, I wouldn’t put it past him to walk the mare the whole twelve miles between his farm and mine!”

  Scott grabbed a cloth, opened the door of the stove’s firebox and shoved a couple more pieces of coal into the flames. Boil, damn you, coffee. “Well, the culprit wasn’t that smart, whoever he was. If he had returned Red Allen to his stall instead of leaving him in the corral after the deed was done, you might have been none the wiser.”

  “You don’t know Doolan, Scott. He wants me to know. He’s throwing it in my face. But if we don’t catch him before he gets his mare back to his place, he’ll cover his tracks and we’ll not be able to prove it was actually him who done it.” Peter was shifting from one foot to the other with frustration.

  Hopping mad, Scott thought. “Uncle Peter, the sun will rise in an hour or so. We can go hunting for him better in the light. Why don’t you sit down and have a cup of coffee? Try to calm down. I’ll telephone all the train stations between here and Okmulgee as soon as they open. Trent, walk down to the station right now and have a look for anything suspicious.”

  Trent was leaning on the wall next to the front door, watching the action with a bemused look on his face. When Scott spoke to him he nodded and pulled on his coat, though it was obvious that the errand was only to make the old fellow happy.

  Trent didn’t get the chance to leave. He had just put his hand on the doorknob when Kurt Lukenbach’s gelding pounded up Main Street and came to a skidding halt in front of the jailhouse.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Shaw Tucker’s barn was dim and chill. Both the front and back doors were wide open, but it was still some time until sunrise and the two or three kerosene lanterns hanging from hooks on the support beams provided the only light in the cavernous interior. Scott and Peter stood solitary watch, waiting for Kurt to return from town with Mr. Moore, the undertaker.

  For the present, Scott had gleaned all the information he could from the scene. He had left Trent in Boynton with instructions to assemble a posse and bring them out here as soon as they could see to make their way. There would be a manhunt this morning after all. Shaw and Alafair he had dismissed to the house with instructions to stay there until called. If he could have persuaded Shaw not to join the posse he would have. Under the circumstances he knew better than to waste his breath.

  Crying Blood still reposed in the hay, his slight body covered with a sheet that Scott had turned back from the boy’s face. The shaft that killed him had been removed from his chest and carefully wrapped for later scrutiny. His eyes had been closed and his skin had an unnatural, waxy tone. Otherwise, he didn’t look dead.

  Peter McBride said nothing for a long time, his face as still as the dead youngster’s.

  Scott wasn’t looking at Crying Blood. He was watching his uncle. When he had uncovered the boy’s face, Peter’s only reaction had been to take a single step forward. That was half an hour ago. Peter had yet to utter a sound or make another move.

  When Kurt burst into the office with his terrible tale, Peter appeared to have instantly forgotten about his intruder and insisted in coming along with Scott. He had expressed concern about Shaw’s state of mind, about Alafair and the children, worried that a murderer was on the loose.

  Natural reactions, Scott thought. But there was nothing natural about this chill, immobile silence that went on for so long.

  Scott was just taking a breath to speak when Peter finally broke the spell.

  “He’s but a child.” He uttered the words so softly that Scott barely understood.

  “He is that. He told Shaw he was fifteen.”

  Peter didn’t look up. “Shaw said he called himself Crying Blood. Where have I heard that before?”

  “Uncle Peter, you heard Shaw say that he thinks this young’un followed him home from your place near Oktaha…”

  But Peter interrupted. “You know, Scott, your daddy was my commanding officer when I was a pony soldier at Ft. Yuma.”

  Scott blinked, wondering what this had to do with anything. “So I’ve heard…”

  “He was just a shavetail, Lt. Tucker, green as grass. But he had more than his share of character. Yes, he did. Still does, too.

  “We were all three in his unit, me and Doolan and Hawkins. Quite a bunch of roaring boys, we were, and hardly worth shooting. Always on report, in the stockade or on kitchen duty. One thing about us Irishmen, we knew how to peel potatoes. Paul Tucker took a shine to me for some reason and gave me more of a chance than I deserved. It wasn’t the heat or hardship or terror of soldiering that finally made a man out of me, Scott. It was him. See, I’d never had the example of a man with character and once I’d got his measure I didn’t like to disappoint him. He invited me to look him up in Arkansas after my hitch was done. He gave me a job in the Tucker family sawmill. T’was he who introduced me to
his brother’s widow. Changed my life, he did. Made my life.”

  “Uncle Peter, why are you telling me this now?”

  Peter went on as though Scott hadn’t spoken. “Doolan and Hawkins came with me to Arkansas. They both worked at the Tucker mill for a while, too. We all ended up out here in the Indian Territory eventually. Me and Hawkins drifted apart even before he took a powder. Then it was just me and Doolan, ’til I learned my old friend hid a cruel heart.” He heaved a sigh. “Funny, I haven’t thought of Hawkins or Doolan either one in years. And all of a sudden the past looms up like a monster out of the fog.”

  Scott was feeling oddly alarmed now. “Uncle Peter, what’s going on? Do you know who this boy is?”

  Peter finally raised his head. Looked Scott in the eye. “I swear to you that I’ve never seen this child before in my life.” He put his hat on. “There’s nothing else I can do here. Scott, tell Shaw I had to leave but I’ll be back directly as I can.”

  Scott gaped at the old man’s retreating form. “Where are you going?”

  Peter didn’t look back. “I have business in Okmulgee.”

  Chapter Thirty-five

  The men spread in a line across the field, wary and still, shotguns at the ready. This time the hunt had nothing to do with birds. This time their prey was a man.

  Skimmingmoon’s bloodhounds were working the field, back and forth in a zigzag pattern, noses to the ground. They had picked up the scent the moment they had been allowed to sniff the bit of rough cloth that Crying Blood had torn from his murderer’s body. At the pale beginning of dawn they had led the posse straight through the woods that covered part of Tucker property and several acres of the Day and Eichelberger places. Shaw was impressed by the hounds’ skill. They led the hunters directly to three almost invisible campsites. If Scott hadn’t sifted through the leaf litter which covered the tiny open areas that the dogs insisted were important, they would never have found the traces of ash from the camouflaged cooking fires. Crying Blood’s camps, Shaw wondered, or his murderer’s? In whichever case, the murderer had been there as well.