Later, standing outside his office and listening to the relative calm of a Sunday evening, Lauters kept drinking. He didn't even feel the cold that swept down from the mountains. In his mind he saw only blood, death, and a forecast of more dying.
Wolf Creek was almost peaceful this night.
The ranch hands had stayed home. The miners had stayed up at the silver camps. Few people ventured out of doors. Maybe it was the frigid temperatures or the blowing snow. But maybe it was something else. Something that killed people for sport as well as food. Maybe this is what kept people behind locked doors.
Lauters took another pull from his silver flask.
Even the old Blackfeet beggars were nowhere to be seen. Come to think of it, he hadn't seen any injuns around for some time. Since the killings began, it seemed. This stopped the flask at his lips.
Was that worth considering? he wondered.
Could the Indians have something to do with the murders? Maybe. Maybe not. The local Blackfeet tended to steer clear of town for the most part, being that a lot of folks tended to harass them for no good reason. And when a major crime like a murder or robbery came down, they were nowhere to be found. Again, because if a scapegoat was needed, an injun was always a good bet.
Thinking of this, made the sheriff remember the time that Blackfoot was hanged.
He scowled and took another drink.
The Blackfoot's name was Red Elk. He was being held in connection with the rape and murder of a local white girl, name of Carpenter. The girl had no family. She was new to Wolf Creek. Red Elk had supposedly surprised her one night as she left the dry goods store she worked at, forced himself on her and then cut her throat.
The second night the injun was in jail, the vigilantes came. They wore black hoods with eye and mouth slits. Nine of them pushed their way into the jailhouse.
"We want the injun," the leader said. "And we plan to have him."
"You boys better clear out of here," Lauters had told them.
The vigilantes all carried guns and they were all on the sheriff.
"You don't understand," the leader said. "We want that murdering redskin and we'll kill you if need be to get 'em."
Lauters had gone for his gun, but the men were already on him. They knocked him senseless with the butts of their rifles and tied him to his chair. When he came to later, it was all done with. His deputy-Alden Bowes-had returned from delivering a prisoner to Virginia City and untied him.
Red Elk was hanged from an oak in the square across the street.
There were a few questions after that, but none Lauters couldn't answer. The men had worn masks, he couldn't identify them. They had overpowered him and he had the bruises to show for it. And why had he sent his deputy away to deliver a prisoner to Virginia City with a volatile situation brewing and anti-Indian sentiment running high? He'd thought no one would try such a thing.
The questions were answered to everyone's satisfaction.
Besides, the man they'd strung up was just an Indian, a Blackfoot. And he'd killed a white. Case closed. The only ones really concerned were the Blackfeet people and they didn't count.
Everyone else believed Lauters.
They never guessed he was lying about it all.
Knowing this, Lauters drank more. It was a year ago this week that the injun had been lynched and duly swung. In his mind, he could hear the creaking of that limb the noose was strung over.
It made him shiver.