A God of Many Tears (Hawker's Drift Book 4) Read online

  The chances were he’d kill the fella if he tried. He’d had his fair share of wounds tended to over the years, but he’d never had a bullet dug out of him. Seen it done to others a few times, but he didn’t consider that made him qualified to do it. Still…

  “We need to get the bullet out of you.”

  Joshua’s eyes slowly focused on him and he eventually managed a smile of sorts.

  “How long you reckon I got if you don’t?”

  He puckered his lips and shook his head, “I ain’t a doctor, maybe you’ll live if we can keep the wound from going bad, though don’t think your arm will be good for much. Bullet’s shattered your shoulder.”

  “Does hurt a little…”

  He held up the flask.

  “Ain’t touched a drop in fifteen years.”

  “Won’t kill you.”

  Joshua grunted and winced with the effort.

  “If you don’t want to drink it, use it to clean the wound.”

  “Will do.”

  He put it by the bed and pulled up a chair, “How’d you catch the bullet?”

  “Bastards blew the damn door off with dynamite, as you’ve seen. I was upstairs firing at the assholes, when I heard the bang I rushed out to the top of the stairs, Dorry was laid out at the bottom and a couple of em were coming through the smoke. I got one, the other one got me. They rushed up the stairs before I could get my gun back up. Thought they were gonna do for me there and then. But the fat fella in charge, Henderson, stopped his man slitting my throat. Said he wanted me to see… Dorry… wanted to make me watch…”

  He reached over and rested his hand on the old man’s. Joshua pulled it away after a second and wiped his eyes.

  “Obliged to you,” he said.

  “We need to do something about-”

  The old man shook his head, “No. You’re right, we need to get her out of here.”

  “Gonna be hard riding for you…”

  “Not me. Just Dorry. Even if I wanted to leave, I couldn’t… too much pain. Too many memories as well…”

  His eyes drifted to the window. You couldn’t see the barns from that direction, but the smell of burning wood was strong enough.

  “My granddaddy built the middle barn. I was just a lil’ snot nose then, can remember it though. The family and some of the neighbours working on it, had this big ol’ celebration when it was finished. Think the drinking carried on all night, but I fell asleep on my mamma’s knee…”

  He drifted off, his eyes closing, but they flickered back open after a second or two.

  “They’re all gone now. Just me and Dorry left. She’s the last of the Coll family. Can you look after her?”

  He shuffled in his seat, “I can get her to Hawker’s Drift.”

  “She be safe there?”

  “That’s where the Scourge are heading, that’s where I’m heading. I can’t promise anything, but she’ll be safer on the move.”

  “What you want me to do?”

  “Go find her for me and send her back. Give me an hour to talk some sense into the girl. If I can’t persuade her... well I guess we shouldn’t be detaining you any longer. Can you give me an hour son?”

  “Of course.”

  “You got family in town?”

  “No family.”

  “A woman then?”

  After a moment’s hesitation, he nodded.

  “Love her?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “It always is with the best ones…”

  *

  He spent the hour he’d promised Joshua with the raiders’ horses. He eventually picked a young dun mare and a beautiful palomino gelding with a pure white mane. There was also a fine powerful looking grey, with bright eyes that kept itself apart from the others, but he avoided grey horses now. Whenever he saw one he half-expected a thin rider in a long soiled coat and a shit-brown hat to be close by.

  He reckoned he could dodge the Scourge raiding parties with two extra horses and get back to Hawker’s Drift by tomorrow. Once he’d packed the provisions he’d taken from the dead raiders onto the horses he waited out front to see if Dorry would be riding one of them or not.

  After leaving Joshua he’d found her watching the smoke from the burning barns billowing into the sky.

  He’d told her that her grandfather had wanted her to go back and talk to him.

  “I know what he’s got to say,” she’d sniffed, “and none of it is going to change my mind.”

  “Dorry-”

  “Nothin’ you can damn well say gonna change my mind either! This is my home and I ain’t leaving Gramps here alone.”

  Her pain and anger were hotter than the burning barns so he’d left her to it. Five minutes later he saw her go back into the main house, wiping her eyes and her jaw set firm.

  He didn’t think she’d be coming with him, but he’d given the old man an hour to persuade her otherwise and that was a promise he could keep.

  He introduced Silver to his two new companions. He didn’t seem overly impressed though he was sure Amelia would like them both just fine. He’d never been one for naming horses so he’d leave it to her, for now they were Dun and White-Mane. He was sure the little girl would come up with better ones.

  He smiled as he thought of Amelia, he kind of missed her too. Strange that he could miss anyone after so many years alone.

  Dorry was back out of the house before the hour was up, stomping through the shattered and blackened remnants of the doorway. She’d need to get it boarded up as best she could if she was staying.

  “You going?” she demanded.

  “Need to get back to Hawker’s Drift and warn them,” he nodded, “You staying?”

  He knew the answer already.

  “Old fool thinks he’s dying and I’m better off running away…”

  Catherine Coll didn’t birth no quitters…

  The thought came ringing out through the noise of her emotions. Nothing was going to persuade her to leave. Maybe he should have ridden on by after all. He’d only delayed the inevitable.

  “Good luck then,” he nodded again and boosted himself into the saddle.

  “That it?” Dorry squinted up at him, “You just riding off?”

  “Yep,” he didn’t think he owed her any more of an explanation.

  Instead, he looked to the east. The horizon was still clear, though he could make out distant hazy columns of smoke, there were some in the west as well now.

  “Get the hole where your door used to be boarded up,” he said looking back, then jerked his head towards the east, “the main body of the Scourge will be passing by tomorrow, maybe the day after unless they’ve decided to make camp for a while. They should pass to the south of you, probably too far to get sight of you, but they’ll have scouts out. Think about firing the grass out past your wind pump, it’ll put some smoke between you and them. Maybe they’ll miss you…”

  Dorry nodded, though he wasn’t sure how much heed she was taking. She was thinking of rough-handed men, stinking of dirt and dust and death ripping at her clothes and forcing her down.

  He tried to close his mind to her memories and her fears. He felt it was just one more abuse of the girl, but there had never been a door he could open and close between his mind and other peoples. Like Coll Ranch’s front door, bad men had destroyed it.

  He tried to think of something that could change her mind, that he could do to keep her safe, could keep her alive, that could stop what had happened to Megan from happening to her. He didn’t know if he could do any of those things, but he knew, as much as he’d ever known anything, that if she stayed here she’d end up like Megan and the grey-haired woman he'd found yesterday; used, abused and left for the crows and buzzards.

  Nothing would come, and nothing ever would, so he touched his hat and was about to turn Silver towards the west when he found there was something that would change her mind after all.

  “Gramps!” Dorry screamed, running back towards the house while the
echo of a single gunshot still echoed through the smoke-filled air.

  The Widow

  “Where is everyone?”

  Amelia looked up from her drawing. Unsurprisingly it was a horse. Though not one generally known to science.

  “Guess they’re all busy.”

  Amelia didn’t look convinced and, frankly, neither was she.

  She’d heard from no one. Even Mr Wizzle hadn’t shown up for a while. It came to something when she was starting to miss that mad old fool.

  She left Amelia to work on improving God’s idea of a horse and paced around the house. In the drawing room she pulled out the Mayor’s Promissory Note she’d pinned beneath the clock on the mantelpiece.

  She half expected it to have vanished, or the words to have disappeared or been replaced with the missive Ha Ha! But it was still the same.

  Was she supposed to do something with it? Her only experience of debts from her life with Tom had been building them. When it came to getting rid of them, she was clueless. Did she have to take it to the Mayor to claim her prize of him clearing her dead husband’s debt now Amos had left town? Or had her debt automatically discharged as soon as he’d crossed the town limits bound for fuck knew where?

  Stuffing the note back into its envelope she busied herself repeatedly checking each window, but no one was hanging around. No strange dark-haired woman, no glassy-eyed dickhounds, no members of the Choral Society.

  If she didn’t know better she might think everyone in town had completely forgotten about her.

  And that wasn’t going to wash at all.

  *

  The only thing she wanted to do less than seeing the Mayor was to see him with Amelia in tow. There was no way she was going to leave the girl alone in the house, or anywhere else. However, her list of prospective babysitters wasn’t a long one.

  Still, as she’d seen none of the Choral Society for days she could kill the two birds of finding a babysitter and making sure they weren’t all dead with one convenient stone.

  The town seemed much as it always did, which meant people stared at her and whispered in their friend’s ears as she walked down the street.

  “Why do people keep looking at us?” Amelia asked.

  “It’s what happens when you’re beautiful. It’s something you’ll have to get used to.”

  The little girl giggled and she was grateful a couple of guys chose that moment to ride down the street, ensuring everything else left Amelia’s head faster than her own good sense in a saloon.

  She tried John first, not that she thought he had any affinity with kids or would appreciate spending time with one, but he had the advantage of living in a house that didn’t sell booze and women. The guns she could live with.

  Despite it being mid-afternoon his shop was shut and no amount of banging on the door elicited a response. With Amelia in tow she couldn’t throw any cussing in, but she suspected it wouldn’t have helped.

  She didn’t know Ash as well as John and Cece, but he was the only one of the group of random people in the town she couldn’t yet quite think of as friends who knew one end of a child from the other. So she tried him next.

  The barber’s shop was closed too.

  Molly stared past the closed sign in the window and rattled the door. The shop was deserted, though there was what appeared to be a broken mug on the floor.

  She bit her lip and squeezed Amelia’s hand a little tighter. Ash had always seemed an organised guy. She didn’t have much cause to go into the town’s only gentleman’s barbers, but whenever she’d walked by it had always looked spotlessly clean. Was Ash the kind of guy who would leave a broken mug scattered all over his shop floor?

  “Are you having a haircut?”

  She smiled at Amelia to cover her unease.

  “No, hun, just looking for people.”

  “Maybe they’re at the stables?”

  “Nice try kiddo…”

  Next stop, the town saloon and whorehouse.

  *

  Amelia tugged Molly’s hand.

  “Why are those ladies dressed like that?”

  A couple of the saloon girls were trying to drum up some interest from men hunched around a card table, leaning over and flirting while their low-cut dresses showed off the available goods for hire.

  “They work here hun, they have to dress like that.”

  “You get a feather in your hair if you work here?” Amelia looked impressed, “Can I have a feather in my hair?”

  She scratched her head, smiled and continued to try and attract Sonny’s attention. She’d known this was a bad idea.

  “What kind of work do they do?”

  A really bad idea.

  “The just kind of help out… with the entertaining.”

  Sonny was busy serving drinks. She could have headed up to Cece’s room, but she didn’t want to have to explain to Amelia what the strange noises coming out of the rooms were.

  “Do they sing?”

  “Kind of…”

  She waved at Sonny and gave him a get-your-ass-over-here-now smile. He turned his back and poured some more beers.

  “Molly…?” Another tug on her hand.

  “Yes hun?”

  “She’s sitting in the man’s lap now. Is he her boyfriend?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Then why is she kissing him?”

  “It’s… erm… her job… Sonny!”

  “Oh…” Amelia’s eyes widened, before she added in a lower voice “...do you mean she’s a hooker?”

  “I don’t know what that means…”

  “It’s a lady who a man pays to be nice to him. My mom told me all about hookers.”

  “She did?”

  Amelia nodded.

  “She says our neighbour Davina is a hooker. She’s always calling her a dirty fat hooker, though not to her face. I don’t know why she says that because Davina isn’t as fat as Mom and she has lots of baths.”

  “How’d you know she has lots of baths?”

  “Because I can smell her perfume even when she’s on the other side of the street…”

  “What can I get you?”

  “Sonny!” she smiled and leant on the bar, “Never let me bring a child in here again.”

  “It is kinda against the rules,” Sonny peered over the bar at Amelia and smiled down at her, “but Monty’s out, so I guess it’s alright.”

  “Can I have a feather in my hair like the hooker ladies?”

  “Ssssh hun, we’ll go to the stables in a bit.”

  Amelia looked pleased with herself.

  “I’m looking for Cece?” she asked, pulling Amelia closer, though resisting the urge to try and bury the inquisitive girl in her skirt.

  “Ain’t been around much, saw her go out first thing,” Sonny rubbed his hands dry on his grubby apron before leaning on the bar and giving a knowing nod, “looked like she’d been crying…”

  “Say where she was going?”

  “I keep clear of crying women.”

  “Next time you see her… tell her I was looking for her.”

  “Sure thing.”

  Molly thanked the barman and hurried Amelia out of the saloon before the girl could ask him for a job.

  Standing in the bright sunshine she fought down both her growing sense of unease that everybody who’d sat around her kitchen table to discuss the Mayor and the strange shit that went on this town were suddenly not around and the insistent tugging on her arm in the direction of the stables.

  Given she had no idea where Mr Wizzle lived she had only one more person to try before she’d exhausted the list of people she trusted in Hawker’s Drift.

  *

  “Do I look like a damn nursemaid?”

  There was more bemusement in Sam Shenan’s voice than annoyance, so she took it as a yes.

  “Thanks Sam, I really appreciate it,” she flashed him the kind of warm winning smile that could easily give a man the wrong idea.

  The Sheriff eased himself fu
rther back into his chair and gave her a look. He was probably trying to say something, but she didn’t have the time. Or the inclination. They were in his office and she’d left Amelia outside on the basis she couldn’t get into any trouble with a couple of town deputies to keep an eye on her.

  “I wouldn’t ask unless I needed to, it won’t be for long,” she leant over the desk a little further. Her dress was a lot more conservatively cut than the girl’s in the saloon, but it was a trick she knew just as well as they did.

  The Sheriff let out the long heartfelt sigh of a man who couldn’t figure out how to avoid a pretty woman taking advantage of both his good nature and wandering eye.

  “Why?”

  “I need to see the Mayor and I don’t wanna take Amelia anywhere near that fucker.”

  “Why?”

  She left her hands on the desk, but straightened up.

  “It’s about the money Tom owed him.”

  “Amos going with you?”

  “No, he’s gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “The Mayor promised to clear my debt if Amos left town. I didn’t want him to, but…”

  Sam chewed on his bottom lip for a bit, “Amos leaving didn’t have anything to do with Stodder Hope, did it?”

  “Who?”

  “Works gun for the carney, caught him and Amos squaring up to each other a couple of times, once outside your house, the second time out at the Old Geady place where he killed those drifters. Looked they were getting ready to dance to me.”

  “Dance?”

  “A two-step to the tune of gunfire.”

  She blinked and found she’d wrapped her arms around herself, chilled despite the warmth of the afternoon, “No… I know he went to see someone at the carney about… that stuff, but nothing else.”

  “Wouldn’t tell me what it was about, but he had a whole lot of hate in his eye for that fella. The kind that only comes with history.”

  “He has a lot of history…”

  “I’d imagine.”

  The look Amos had given her that last time… She’d suspected he wouldn’t be there when she got back, that he would take himself off in return for the Mayor’s promise regardless of her wishes. But had that been it? Had he really gone off to settle scores with this man Hope.