“Cole?” he called again. “Mary?”
Silence.
He didn’t bother calling again. Something was wrong here. Maybe very wrong.
He swung down from the saddle and ground hitched the gelding and unfastened the hammer loop to his Remington.
He rested one hand on the butt of the revolver as he approached the smoldering ruin, ready to draw.
But there was no one, nothing, only destruction.
He might have suspected the house had burned by accident, as houses sometimes do, if it hadn’t been for all those hoofprints.
Of course, those could be the tracks of neighbors who’d come to help.
Could be. But he doubted it.
Seemed more likely that somebody had burned Cole and Mary out.
Who would do such a thing? And why?
These questions whipped through his mind. He didn’t try to answer them.
By the ghastly moonlight, he walked away from the house, scanning the darkness.
“Cole?” he called. “Mary?”
Silence again.
There was enough moonlight to see by, especially once his eyes adjusted again, which was good because he didn’t want to have to light a lantern and investigate with it in front of his chest.
That was a good way to get shot. Maybe even by his own brother, who didn’t know he was coming.
But after hollering for Cole several more times, he didn’t figure his brother was out there with a rifle.
Maybe Cole had lit out for a neighbor’s or town. Or maybe he was hurt, too hurt to answer Conn’s call.
What about Mary?
That’s when he spotted the makeshift stable and corral.
The horsemen had broken down the fence. There was no stock to be seen.
Filled with dread, Conn went back to the gelding and got back into the saddle and rode the property close to the house, looking for any signs of what might have happened here or where his brother and his wife might be.
The riders had come up to the house then gone back a short distance toward that big cottonwood.
Conn followed their tracks in that direction, dread swelling in his chest.
And then, when he got up close to the tree, the ghastly scene awaiting him there hardened that dread into a knife of terror and revulsion that plunged straight into Conn’s heart.
7
Conn cut and lowered his brother into his arms.
Cole was dead.
Conn knew it as soon as he saw his brother’s face. But now he felt it, too, sensed the absence of life in Cole’s cold and silent rigidity as he draped him across the gelding’s back then climbed down and lowered his poor, dead brother to the ground.
