Longarm tried to sound suitably offended. Singh hesitated for a moment longer; then the pressure on Longarm’s throat went away entirely, along with the knife. Singh stepped back and said, “When I saw you come into the trees, I thought you might intrude on her ladyship. My apologies, Marshal.”
Longarm rubbed his throat briefly and nodded to the Sikh. “Didn’t know you spoke our lingo so good. Hell, I wasn’t even sure you could talk at all.”
“I am a half-caste. My mother was British, and I was educated at the university known as Oxford. If I say little, it is because I have little to say.”
“Most folks should be that smart,” Longarm muttered. “Apology accepted, Singh. I don’t reckon I can blame you for looking out for her ladyship. That’s part of your job, after all.”
Singh nodded curtly. “I will go back to the others.”
“I’ll be along directly,” Longarm said. “Got to finish what I came down here for.”
Singh nodded again and faded back into the trees, rapidly disappearing. He reminded Longarm once again of an Indian—the war-paint kind—just like his fellow servant Ghote. They were as lightfooted a pair as Longarm had ever run across, and he suspected that in a fight Singh would be more trouble than an armful of wildcats. He just hoped he and the Sikh wouldn’t wind up on opposite sides before this hunt was over.
Since he hadn’t picked up Rainey’s trail again, Longarm decided he might as well continue riding with Thorp’s party. Once all the fancy trappings from lunch had been stowed away, they mounted up and rode northwest, generally following the course of the Brazos. The river was about a quarter of a mile to their right most of the time. Some of the landscape began to look familiar, and Longarm realized it wasn’t far from here that he had finally met up with Rainey and Lloyd. The spot where Rainey had seen whatever spooked him so bad was also nearby. Longarm spoke up, saying as much to Thorp and Lord Beechmuir.
“Excellent!” Booth exclaimed. “I wanted to see that spot, as you know, Marshal. The tracks you saw may still be there.”
“They should be,” Longarm said. “Hasn’t been any rain since then.”
They rode on, angling more toward the river now. They were making their way through one of the many stands of oak that covered the landscape when Singh suddenly spurred ahead of the others and held up a hand.
“Halt!” Lord Beechmuir said. “The Sikh has seen something.”
So had Longarm. There was a dark shape on the ground about fifty yards ahead of them, on the edge of a small gully. At first Longarm wasn’t sure what it was, but then he realized it was a body of some sort. Not human, though; it was too big for that.
“My God,” Helene breathed. “What is it?”
“It’s dead, whatever it is,” snapped Thorp. “Come on.”
Booth turned to his wife. “My dear, you stay here with Ghote and Benjamin’s men. The Sikh will come with us.”
Helene nodded, agreeing to stay back. Longarm and Thorp were already spurring forward. Booth and Singh rapidly caught up with them.
The ground around the body was darkly stained where blood had soaked into it. That was another way they knew the corpse didn’t belong to a human being. No one had that much blood in his body. But a horse did, and as Longarm and the others drew closer to the grisly site, he could make out some dimly equine outlines. The horse had been ripped to pieces, though, so much so that it was barely recognizable.
“Good Lord!” Booth said as they reined in. A thick cloud of flies rose from the body of the horse and buzzed away angrily. “What could have done such a thing?”
“The Brazos Devil,” Thorp said grimly. “This poor beast is ripped up just like the Lavery boys were. They didn’t even look human anymore when the monster got through with them.”
Longarm swung down from his saddle and knelt beside the gruesome remains. He touched the dark pool surrounding the horse. The blood that hadn’t soaked into the ground had dried into a sticky, congealed mass. Longarm touched it with his fingertips and then rubbed them together, grimacing. “Probably happened yesterday,” he said. “The horse wandered around for a day after he ran off the second time; then this happened to him.”
“You recognize the animal?” asked Thorp.
Longarm nodded. “It’s the gelding I was riding when I caught up to Rainey and Lloyd. There’s not much hide left on the body, but what there is of it is gray. And that’s my saddle.” He sighed. The McClellan saddle had been ripped in two and was soaked in blood. He wouldn’t be using it again, nor anything in the saddlebags.
His Winchester wasn’t in the saddle boot, though, and that was curious. He stood up and began walking in ever-widening circles around the horse, ignoring the curious stares of his companions. After a few minutes, he bent over and reached into a clump of brush. When he straightened, he was holding a rifle.
“Got some blood on the stock, but I can clean it off,” he said. “The critter was curious enough to pull my rifle out of the boot, but when he realized it wasn’t anything good to eat, he threw it away.”
“He?” Thorp repeated.
Longarm shrugged. “Who knows? Those who have seen it say the thing’s half-man, so I don’t feel right calling him an it.”
Thorp shook his head and said, “Anything that could do this to a horse … I’m not sure any part of it is human.”
The man had a point, Longarm thought. He had seen horses pulled down by wolves and mountain lions that looked like this one, but he never would have dreamed that something which walked upright could do such damage with his—its—whatever—bare hands. Longarm felt a little shiver go through him.
While he searched for his rifle, he had also been looking for tracks. He resumed that search now, and several yards away from the horse’s body he found some. “Look here,” he told the others. They joined him, and he pointed out the prints. The sharp claws on the gigantic feet had really gouged out the soft loam of the ground in places. Longarm said, “Those are the same sort of tracks I found the other day after Rainey started screaming.”
All four of the men peered closely at the misshapen footprints. Singh muttered something that sounded like “Yeti.”
“What’s that?” Longarm asked.
“A legend in the part of the world Singh comes from,” Lord Beechmuir explained. “High in the Himalayan Mountains, a creature supposedly exists that is part man and part monster, dwelling in the eternal snows of those slopes. I’ve often thought about going there and attempting to bag one of the beasts.”
“Well, it doesn’t snow very often in these parts, but I reckon the Brazos Devil could be a distant relation. What do you think, Singh?”
The expression on the Sikh’s bearded face was fierce, but he shook his head. “It is not for me to say.”
“Suit yourself.” Longarm turned to Lord Beechmuir. “Think you can track the critter?”
“We shall certainly try. Are you going to continue to accompany us, Marshal?”
Longarm thought about it, then nodded. “Anytime anything’s going on around here, the Brazos Devil seems to be somewhere close by. Maybe if we find him, we’ll find Rainey too.”
“And my wife,” Thorp put in.
“Sure,” said Longarm. “Mrs. Thorp too.”
But in his heart, he no longer believed that. He had heard about what the Brazos Devil was suspected of doing to the Lavery boys and Matt Hardcastle. but hearing about those atrocities and actually seeing what had been done to this horse were two different things. He couldn’t believe that any woman unlucky enough to fall into the hands of such a savage creature would still be alive weeks later.
And even if Emmaline Thorp was still drawing breath somewhere, it was unlikely that she was sane. Some female captives who had been carried off by the Comanches had lost their minds from the brutality with which the Indians had treated them. It had to be a lot worse being held prisoner by the Brazos Devil.