Trackdown by Lyle Brandt

Author:Lyle Brandt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2014-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

11

“Can’t rightly say I like the look of this,” Floyd Dooley said.

“Seems awful quiet,” Jubal Leach observed.

“Be careful going in,” Mike Bowers cautioned all of them. “But don’t get trigger-happy. You don’t want to kill some farm kid coming out to feed the chickens.”

“I don’t see no chickens, Marshal,” Dooley answered.

“Just the same.”

They rode in five abreast, strung out across the plain, so anybody watching from the farmhouse could observe and count them, but without making an easy, clumped-up target. Every one of them was ready with the guns they’d brought, and Bowers desperately hoped that none would suffer an attack of nerves, start shooting at livestock—or worse, at innocent homesteaders.

Where was the livestock?

Bowers scanned the spread again, and saw a horse emerging from behind the barn. Another followed, grazing lazily. He couldn’t swear to it, but Bowers thought they looked a lot like the dray animals that had been harnessed to the prison wagon when it first rolled out of Enid, bound for Leavenworth. Which meant the fugitives had been there, and had traded mounts for any horses that the farmer had on hand.

And what else had they done?

From sixty yards, he shouted out, “Hello, the house! Is anybody home?”

No answer, and he saw the front door to the farmhouse standing open now. That had to be a bad sign, in the circumstances, and he drew his Winchester out of its saddle boot, preparing for whatever happened next. A part of him already knowing they were too damned late to do the farmer and his family any good.

They reined up in the dooryard, everyone uneasy, none adept at hiding it. No one would move, Bowers supposed, unless he set them to it.

“Floyd,” he said, “take Vance and check the barn.”

“What’re we lookin’ for?” asked Dooley.

“Anything that don’t seem right.”

“What does seem right about this place?” Ed Schultz inquired.

Bowers ignored the question. “I’ll check the house. Rest of you cover me, and make damn sure that you don’t shoot me coming out.”

A couple of them cocked their rifles, click-clack in the quiet yard. Bowers dismounted, taking his Winchester with him on his slow walk to the open farmhouse door. He paused, before stepping into the porch’s shade, and once again addressed the silent house.

“If anybody’s in there, I’m a U.S. marshal. These men are my deputies. We’re here to help you if there’s been some trouble.”

Bowers caught the smell of death before he reached the threshold, nearly turned around, but it was his job to observe, remember, and report. Whatever had been done here, by the fleeing fugitives, it must be tabulated, added to their butcher’s bill.

Inside, with daylight bright and hot behind him, Bowers had to stop and let his eyes adjust. The only sounds he heard were horses shifting nervously outside, and creaking from his own weight on the floorboards. His nose led him to turn and face a portion of the family room that had been turned into a slaughterhouse.

“Jesus!”

His own voice startled Bowers, nearly made him jump.

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