The Daughter by C.B. Cooper (best value ebook reader .txt) 📕

the first place?" he groused. Without giving Sam a chance to answer, he continued, "Wall, I aint got much, but I got me enough."
Sam chuckled at his friends odd, round-about answer. "Okay… Well, I guess we better head out then."
"Yeah, I reckon we better, if'n we ever plan on getting there."
Sam reigned his horse to side to keep Zeb from seeing his smile.
A good four hours and some twenty miles later, they finally rode into the Fort. As they made their way up the street, a huge commotion outside of the jail drew their attention.
Twenty horse stood saddled, with riders on their backs. Men in the back were yelling for the people into the front speak up.
It looked like a fairly controlled mob.
Sliding up to a horseman in the back, Sam asked the man what all the fuss was about.
The man wore baggy, thread-bare, overall's and a floppy farmer's hat. Before he spoke, he spit out a long stream of brown tobacco juice. "We got us a killer on the loose, and we aim to track the bitch down and bring her to justice."
Sam heart sped up. "Her? As in, a woman killer? Are you sure?"
"Oh, it was a woman all right," the man nodded. "They got a witness."
Frowning, his mind racing, Sam asked, "Who was it that got killed?"
But the man didn’t answer, he just shushed him, "Here comes the Sheriff."
Sam and Zeb watched as a man wearing a sheriff's badge walked out from the doorway, crossed the boardwalk, then jumped up into the back of a wagon that was parked in the street.
"Listen up!" the man shouted, getting everyone's attention. "As you all know, Isaiah Fisher and his lovely wife, Maurine, were murdered last night. The ranch hands out there found their daughter this morning in the barn. After talking to her, the men went into the house and discovered the dead bodies of her parents, upstairs in their bedroom. Now, according to the daughter, we're looking for a female. She's dressed all in black, and she's riding a tall black horse. Now, I need to tell you, by the condition the bodies were found in, we're dealing with a real stone cold killer."
The sheriff looked around crowd, his expression conveying the seriousness nature of the matter at hand. "Nobody rides alone! You need to team up, preferably in groups of five, and if you come across a woman traveling alone that fits that description— your orders are to shoot her on sight."
Worried grumbles went up around the crowd. Shooting, killing a woman, was simply unheard of.
Waving his arms in the air, he silenced the crowd before speaking again. "We're not dealing with an ordinary female here, gentlemen. I wont go into detail, because there's women folk present," he said, glancing at a group of women who had gathered together on the boardwalk, "But, whoever this woman is… she's obviously insane. The Fisher's suffered un-godly torture, before they finally bled out— their bodies were completely mutilated."
Audible gasps went up around the crowd, and one rather portly woman on the boardwalk, swooned, then fainted dead away. Her friends tried desperately to keep her upright, but they lost that battle, and her body hit the boardwalk with a resounding thud.
Looking rather sheepish, the sheriff cut his speech short, "Just be careful out there. And, for the love of God, do not approach this woman. Kill her and bring the body back to me to collect your reward."
Someone from the crowd shouted, "How much is the reward?"
All of the men gathered about, held their breath, each waiting to hear the sheriff's response.
The sheriff walked to the end of the wagon bed and shouted quickly before he jumped down, "Fifty dollars to any man-jack that brings me her corpse!"
The posse erupted in chaotic excitement. Hoo-rah's went up around the crowd, then as one, the riders all reigned their horses north and took off in a collected gallop.
Only Sam and Zeb were left sitting on horseback in the middle of the street. Zeb wore a thoughtful look as he watched the riders disappear.
"You don’t suppose…"
Sam sighed as he swiped a hand down his face, "I have a bad feeling about this."
"Let's have us a little palaver with that sheriff."
After the crowd had dispersed, they had watched him walk back into the sheriff's office, and as they gigged their horses toward the building, they watched him re-emerge, and head back toward the wagon.
Seeing the two strangers approaching, he stopped and waited for them, a curious expression lining his face.
"Howdy, Sheriff." Zeb greeted the man as they pulled up. "We was wonderin' if'n we might have a word with ya."
The sheriff, upon closer inspection, must have come to the conclusion that they looked harmless. He cinched his hat down tighter on his head and started climbing up onto the deck. "I'm afraid I'm busy right now. In case you hadn't heard, we got a killer running around, and I got missing body parts I need to find before I box the bodies up."
"Missing body parts?" Sam asked, a knot already forming in his throat.
"Yeah, " the sheriff said as he settled into the wooden seat. "Isaiah Fisher's missing both of his eyeballs and his hands were cut off at the wrist. His poor wife had her tongue cut out and her chest ripped open. Doc said her heart was removed."
Sam wiped the sweat from his brow, his stomach pitching, "And you think that a woman did all that?"
"According to their daughter it was a woman. I know— it's hard to believe isn't it." The sheriff sighed as he remembered the gruesome scene back at the ranch, "As far as I can tell, they were whipped to death before their bodies were mutilated. Those folks' bedroom looks like the inside of a goddamn slaughterhouse."
Zeb whistled softly, "Jesus H. Christ." Then, realizing what he had said, he immediately apologized, "Sorry, Sam. I probly shouldn’t say that."
The sheriff eyed Sam carefully. "You a preacher or something?"
"Or something, is more like it." he answered, shooting Zeb a scowl.
Zeb, however, had seen the opportunity. "Wall, hell— I mean, heck, yeah he is. This here's Reverend Sharp, from down out'a Texas."
The sheriff looked at him skeptically. "Your from Texas?"
"Yes, sir."
"And you’re a reverend?"
Sam met the mans eye, but he couldn’t lie. "Was a reverend."
The sheriff nodded thoughtfully, "Well, you'll do. Could I get you two to ride on out to the Fisher ranch with me? I could use someone of your profession to say a few words over the deceased and perhaps have a word with their girl. We got us a preacher, but he only comes through town once a month or so."
Sam didn’t know what to say at first, but he did need more time with the man so he could figure out if the woman the posse went after could possibly be his Gracie. When he finally answered, he felt like a low-down, dirty fraud.
"Sure, Sheriff," he smiled weakly. "I would be honored to."

Sam left the upstairs room, choking down the taste of his own vomit. He took the stairs two at time and made a mad dash for the sweet smell of fresh air outside.
Staggering against the rail of the wrap-around porch, he inhaled huge gulps of air, trying to settle his queasy stomach.
"That bad, huh?"
"Oh yeah, it's that bad, Zeb."
Zeb whistled slowly again, "Jesu— I mean… Shit."
Sam watched the ranch hands mill about the yard like stray cattle. He could tell they were unsure about what to do with their boss gone. Most of them were huddled in small groups, their hands stuffed in their pockets, as they spoke quietly amongst themselves, occasionally eyeing the big house where the gruesome murders took place.
"Why wouldn’t those men be out looking for the person that killed their boss?" Sam mused. "You'd think they'd at least do it for the reward."
Zeb chose to ignore his friends ramblings, instead asking the more important question, "You think it was your girl, what done that to those folks?"
Sam, leaning against the rail for support, shook his head, trying to clear the garish images from it. "Zeb, I don’t know how any man could have stomached doing that. There was a rope that was thrown around an exposed timber beam in their room. The ends were noosed around each of their necks, then they were whipped, probably until one of them fell, in effect, strangling themselves and the other."
"Sweet Jesus."
"The room looked like some mad painter with a penchant for red, just splashed big buckets of crimson paint everywhere. Only, it wasn’t paint, it was blood. God, there was so much blood." He straightened, meeting the old man's eye, "Inside, my head is screaming, 'No', she couldn’t have done that— not my sweet Gracie. But in my heart… I'm afraid that she did."
Zeb, feeling a bit ill himself now, waved his hand, "Alright, I think I git the idea. Lord, what would cause a person to do something like that? You think these people had anything to do with what happened to her and her daddy?"
Sam frowned, "I don’t think so. I was able to ask the sheriff a few questions on our way upstairs. According to him, Mr. Fisher has lived here for years, and as far he knows, he never had anything to do with the war… Maybe we should talk to a few of his men."
"Sounds like a good idea to me, Sam. They'd know better than anyone, if'n Fisher had any skeletons hiding in his closet…"

Mack Clark wiped the sweat from the back of his neck with a dirty handkerchief. He was the ranch foreman, and probably knew old man Fisher better than any of the others.
"No, I don’t recollect him having anything to do with the War. Besides raising beeves to sell to the Fort, that is. He never mentioned having any kin, or the like, in the War between the States… Maybe the missus did, but I wouldn’t know anything about that. None of us ever talked to her."
Sharp frowned. "You've worked here for 13 years and you never talked to her?"
"Nope. Old man Fisher didn’t allowed that. He liked to keep his women on a pretty short leash, if you know what I mean."
"His women?" Zeb asked curiously. "You mean, he had more than one?"
Mack shook his head, "I meant her and her daughter, Betsy. That was a strict rule around here. We weren't never supposed to talk to the woman folk. Ever."
"That ever cause any problems that you know of?" Sam asked.
The cowboy studied the mountains far off into the distance while he chewed on the question. "Well, it hasn’t since I've been workin' here. But I believe something might of happened right before I hired on here."
"Like?" Sharp pressed.
The cowboy shrugged his shoulders, "I'm not rightly sure, but whatever it was, it caused Fisher to fire all the men in his outfit."
"All of them?"
"Yep. Every single one."
Sam was still having a hard time pinning Gracie as the killer. He had to find out for sure. "Did you or any of the men see anybody here last night?"
"Nope. We've all talked, and not a one of us seen anything out of the ordinary. And we definitely wouldn’t have heard anything with that crazy storm we had."
Sam could see how that would be possible, especially if the storm here had been as bad here as it had been once it had reached them out on the prairie.
"The sheriff