by Kurt Barker
Spotting a cluster of trees up ahead at the rim of a sharp grade, he spurred the horse onward even as another gunshot sang out behind him. Once in the relative safety of the little gully beneath the trees, Blackshot jumped from the saddle and drew his other pistol. Footsteps were padding lightly toward him, now maybe fifty yards off, crunching faintly on the crystallized crust of the snow.
Springing up suddenly, Blackshot reeled off three quick shots into the foliage in the direction of the footsteps and then ducked down below the ridge again. Even as the return shot came ripping through the bare limbs of the trees just overhead, he was stealing silently up the grade on the far side of the gully, his movements (he hoped) shielded by the trees. He slipped around the trunk of a thick oak, stepping on the tangled roots where he could to avoid any noise that might betray his movements, and waited, listening intently.
For a few moments the forest was silent, and Blackshot stood as motionless as a statue with his back pressed to the cold trunk of the tree. Then came the sound he was waiting for, so soft it might almost have been his imagination; footsteps were creeping slowly and cautiously toward the edge of the grade where he had fired the shots.
When he heard pebbles trickle down the lip of the gully, Blackshot sprang into action; lunging quickly from behind the oak with both Colts hammering. The man was little more than a blur of buckskin as he sprang behind the cover of the trees between them, but he had not been quick enough; three bullets rang out loudly as they hit the rocks that lined the slope, but the fourth gave only a dull thud as it slammed into human flesh. There was a gasp of pain from the opposite side of the trees, and then the rifle fired again, but wildly and the bullet winged harmlessly through the treetops.
Keen to press his advantage, Blackshot darted around the other side of the wide oak tree and sprinted toward the sound of the shot. Before he had even crossed half the distance, however, pistol fire erupted suddenly from the maze of trees off to his left. Slugs whistled by his side as he dove for cover behind the rotting husk of a fallen tree. A fresh volley splintered the hollow log, forcing Blackshot to roll down into the safety of the gully once again.
“Should have known there'd be two of them,” he muttered as he regained his feet. “Ass cheeks always come in pairs.”
As the report of the shots died away in the cold air, hooves thudded on the snowy forest floor. Blackshot could make out the sound of two horses, and they were riding away from him. He moved quickly but carefully across the gully, not assuming that both men were gone just because their horses were. When he reached the far side, he found nothing but a red smear on the snow where the rifleman had been.
Blackshot gathered Khamsin's reins and hoisted himself into the saddle. As he rode up the grade he stopped a moment to scan the footprints left by the gunman. The man wore moccasins, not boots, and judging from his gait he was short and light on his feet. The prints that led away from the tree and the drops of blood beside them told him that he had hit the man in the right side, badly enough to make him flee rather than continue fighting, but not badly enough to slow him down much.
As he snapped the reins and brought Khamsin to a brisk canter, Blackshot could no longer detect the sound of the horses, but he had no fear of losing his quarry. Even a child could follow the tracks of the two horses in the freshly fallen snow, and the mounts would not outrun the fleet Arabian; this he was sure. Still, as they weaved through the trees, he kept a gun drawn in one hand and his eyes open for any sign of another ambush.
Soon the cracking of branches and thumping of hooves came to Blackshot's ears above the sound of his own horse, and as he crested a rise he caught a glimpse of a galloping horse and rider through the trees ahead. Khamsin seemed to feel the thrill of the chase, and needed little encouragement from Blackshot to break into a run, eating up the distance between him and his prey in leaps and bounds.
Suddenly a brief gleam of light from the brush ahead caught Blackshot's eye; sunlight flashing on a rifle barrel! A man was crouched behind a tree by the trail that the other rider had left, hidden from view but for the nose of his rifle. The way between the trees was narrow here and Blackshot could not turn aside with risking a fall, and there was no time to stop short before reaching the gunman.
With no time to waste, Blackshot sprang up with catlike agility so that he crouched with both feet on the saddle. The tree where the ambush waited was streaking towards him, and at the last moment he hurled himself toward its broad trunk. His strong hands caught hold of it and slung him around the side, slinging him feet first into chest of the rifle-wielding man. The heavy impact threw the man like a rag doll down into the scrub brush behind the tree and ripped the rifle from his grasp. He landed face down in the snow and wallowed in the slippery mush like a fish out of water as he strained to reach his gun.
Just as his hand closed around the rifle's grip, Blackshot's hand clamped onto his, and a knee drove sharply into his back. With an angry growl Blackshot hurled the man onto his back and pressed the rifle barrel tight to his throat. To his surprise, he found himself staring into the scarred face of the gray-haired Pawnee rider he had seen on the trail earlier that day.
“Who the hell are you?” Blackshot snapped.
“Who the hell are you?!” the man wheezed, wincing at the pressure from the rifle barrel. “Let go of me!”
“I'm the one asking the questions,” Blackshot growled, “and you'd better have some damn good answers if you'd like your neck to stay in the shape it's in! Now who are you and why'd you shoot at me?!”
“I didn't shoot at anybody! See, the barrel of my rifle is cold! I haven't fired it! You can feel it for yourself!”
The barrel of the rifle was cold. Keeping the man pinned down with one hand, Blackshot pulled the pistol from the holster at the man's side. It was cold, too. There was no sign of blood on the man's clothes, either, so he wasn't the man Blackshot had shot.
“Well, are you satisfied?” the man rasped. “Now let me up!”
Blackshot did not let him up. “You still haven't answered my question.”
“And what right have you got to ask?!” Seeing that Blackshot wasn't moving, he relented. “My name is William Littlehorse! And just who do you think you are?”
“You were waiting behind that tree to ambush me.”
“I was not! You've got no right to attack me like this! I'm on common land minding my own business, hunting for food-”
“Hunting without firing your gun, eh? Who were those two men that rode by?”
William Littlehorse's face was flushed with anger now. “Just a minute here, fella!” he snapped. “I don't have to answer questions from a stranger! You're not the sheriff and you've got no authority from the tribe, either! What gives you the right to question me, huh?!”
Technically Blackshot was the sheriff, but he wasn't about to explain to the man how he was deputized by the saloon keeper's daughter in her bed, so instead he drew one of the Colts and held it up for the man to see. “This gives me the right,” he said. “Now who were those men?”
“I didn't see any men,” Littlehorse muttered.
“Are you blind as well as pigheaded?! One of them rode by not six feet from you! Now who the hell were they?!”
“I didn't see any men,” the old man repeated defiantly.
Blackshot scowled. There was nothing to gained from talking to the man any further, and he had nothing solid that could connect him to any crime other than being a cantankerous old bastard. He released his grip on the rifle and got to his feet. Littlehorse sat up, rubbing his throat and glaring angrily at him. Blackshot whistled for his horse, and shortly the black stallion pranced through the brush to him, snorting discontentedly as if to question why he had not been allowed to continue the chase.
As he swung into the saddle Blackshot turned to Littlehorse and said, “Listen and listen good; I'm going to get to the bottom of this, and when I hunt I shoot my gun and I shoot to kill, so watch your step!”
“Don't you threa
ten me, stranger!” Littlehorse shot back, “I was an army scout, and I never took any guff off 'a nobody then, and I still don't! If you think you can ride up here and act like you own the whole damn town-”
There was probably much more to what he said, but Blackshot was too far away by that time to hear the rest.
Chapter 9
By now the trail was cold, but it was the only trail there was to follow, so Blackshot followed it. The tracks of the running horses continued through the woods until they reached the open ground where the gentle slope climbed up to Dryer Hill, and here they turned away from town and continued downhill through the woods on the other side of the clearing.
The landscape was unfamiliar to Blackshot even though as near as he could figure, he had ridden up the hill somewhere nearby on the previous night when he had carried the girl into town. As he continued following the riders' tracks they turned down into a broad dry creek bed that ran along the base of the hill. This was the place; there was no doubt that this was the gully where he had found her. Sure enough, he had not gone more than a few dozen yards before he saw the giant oak where he had first seen the girl, its gnarled white roots clutching at the floor of the gully like twisted fingers.
When he reached the spot where the girl had lay, Blackshot was surprised to see that the snow had been trampled to a slushy mire by the hooves of multiple horses. The tracks of the riders that he was pursuing passed into the confusion of prints and were all but lost, but he knew he could pick them up again further down the run; for now these new tracks were what interested him.
The story that the prints told was a curious one; one rider had entered the gully alone and had ridden slowly up and down the length of the creek bed, doubling back when he reached the end where it flattened out by the hillside, and stopping once or twice along the way. The man had been searching the gully, and when he had found what he was looking for, he had dismounted. He wore boots, not moccasins, and he walked straight up to the tall oak. A bloody hand print was still visible on the trunk, and Blackshot surmised that this was what had attracted the man's attention. He had crouched by the tree and then walked a little ways up the hill beyond the oak before returning to his horse.
Muddled together with these prints were the tracks of other riders, maybe two or three; perhaps the same men that had ambushed him? The impressions of the hooves showed that the horses were unshod, like those ridden by the gunmen he pursued, but he couldn't say for sure if they were the same horses. These riders had also traveled the length of the gully, but at a quicker pace than the other man and they did not dismount at any point. Were they searching for the same thing that the other man was seeking, or rather, the same person he was seeking?
If they were all searching for the girl, they hadn't found much to go on, and for that Blackshot was glad, for he had the strong feeling that the searchers spelled trouble for her, and by extension, for him. Fortunately the snow had covered the tracks he had made the night before, and there was no indication that the girl had been found and taken to town. With any luck they would figure that her dead body was somewhere in the woods covered by snow, and wouldn't think that she could have made it to Dryer Hill. However, Blackshot knew better than to rely on having any luck! He shook the reins and started Khamsin on a trot toward the end of the creek bed where the tracks of the riders left the gully.
As he rode up onto the open hillside, he felt the icy sting of the wind in his face. The day had turned gray and overcast, and after hours out in the cold the chill seemed to cut right to the bone. Blackshot silently cussed the sheriff of Dryer Hill; the damn fool was having fun in the sun with his cronies while Blackshot was here doing his job for him.
Of course, seeing as the sheriff would return in the warmth of spring, well-rested and well-fed with only his liver having done any hard work, while Blackshot had been shot at, lied to and chilled to the bone here as acting sheriff, he might be wrong about which one of them was the fool! The more he thought about it, the more he had to admire the lazy, low-down son of a bitch; he wouldn't have to lift a finger to solve this problem, and yet it would be all over with by the time he got back.
Fighting back the urge to take off riding south and join the bandit hunt, Blackshot turned again to the trail.
Chapter 10
There were multiple sets of hoof prints leaving the gully, but some had been left by trotting horses and some by galloping horses so Blackshot followed the latter, for these were likely the men he was chasing. The tracks led into small stand of dense woods that stood on the far side of the gully, and here the riders slowed their pace to pick their way through the narrow gaps between the trees. Blackshot had to do the same, and once again drew one of his pistols and kept it ready in his hand in case the fleeing men fancied setting another ambush in the more confined space of this stretch of forest.
The riders tracks continued without stopping, however, and soon the thick woods opened up again into a sparsely covered glade where riding was easier. It was here that Blackshot saw the trail once again disappear into a snarl of hoof prints and footprints; men shod in moccasins had kept horses here by the edge of the woods, out of sight from anyone riding by on the open plains as Blackshot had done the previous night.
The footprints went to and fro from the place where the horses had stood, and Blackshot followed their path until he came to a clearing. An ancient oak had been torn asunder by some long ago lightning strike, and its rotting trunk lay across a shallow ridge between its stump and another immense oak, forming a little shelter of sorts in the hillside. Here a camp had been made; Blackshot could still see the remnants of a camp fire and scattered signs of meals eaten and other activities. There had been many more men staying here than the two he had chased; six or seven at least, maybe as many as ten.
It was clear that the camp was cleaned out and abandoned now, and Blackshot was sure that the men who had used it would not return. Still, there was plenty to be learned; he stopped Khamsin at the edge of the camp site and dropped down from the saddle for a closer look. As he scanned about the clearing for signs that might tell him more about who the campers were, something familiar on the thin trunk of a sapling caught his eye; dried blood, and plenty of it.
He crossed to the tree and knelt beside it; near the base of the trunk the snow was covering the stains. One side of the young tree's trunk was worn white in a thin patch near the ground; the chafing of a rope, a rope tied around a girl's wrists that had cut into the bark as she struggled to free herself.
This was the place where the mysterious girl had been beaten; tied to a tree at the edge of the camp and whipped within an inch of her life. Why? If she didn't come from town or tribe, then she must have traveled here with this group, and they had surely come a long way together. If they had journeyed so far in apparent harmony with one another, what caused them to turn on her now?
“Just what have we gotten ourselves into, Khamsin my boy?” Blackshot groaned as he stood up, taking off his hat and running his fingers through his matted hair. “And more importantly, how the hell do we get ourselves out of it?”
The big black horse snorted and tossed his head derisively, as if to remind Blackshot that if he had been able to resist blonde hair and a pretty freckled face, he might be relaxing by a warm fire in Jessop right now instead of tramping through the snowy woods with the girl's tin star in his pocket.
“Shut up and mind your own business,” he muttered.
As Blackshot set himself to the task of mentally unraveling the seemingly impossible knot of the mystery girl's story, he spied another curious sight. Not far off among the network of moccasin prints there was a boot print, similar to the ones he had seen in the gully. As he inspected it more closely, he found that it was more than similar, it was the same boot. He moved methodically around the campsite, finding more sign of the boot-shod man around the clearing. Had this man been with the others or had he come later? Blackshot could not find any boot prints that had been stepped on by the tracks of
the moccasin-wearing men, so perhaps he had come after the group had left, but there was too great a mishmash of prints to be certain of that.
Just then, the silence of the abandoned camp was broken by a distant shout. Another voice joined the first and then a third. They were too far away for Blackshot to make out the words that the men were saying, but the tone of their voices made it sound like an argument. Instinctively he drew a pistol as he walked to the edge of the clearing in the direction of the voices. The ground fell away in a gradual slope on this side of the camp, and the trees were more sparse, eventually opening up to the vast plain beyond. It was here by the edge of the woods that three men in long coats sat on horseback, disputing something in raised voices and pointing in different directions.
As Blackshot stepped to the top of the grade, the voices came to him more clearly.
“Ya durn idiot! We just come from that way!”
“I know that! I ain't blind! I weren't sayin' to go the whole way back!”
“It don't do no good to go any ways back! We went over every damn inch of ground from here to there, I tell ya!”
“Will you listen for a damn minute 'fore you go runnin' off at the mouth?! I ain't sayin' we go all the way back! We go just as far back as the creek and turn t'other way as we done!”
A fourth man appeared, riding across the snowy plain toward the other three. When he reached the others the argument cooled down and the four began conversing in lower voices. Blackshot could not make out the riders' faces, since their hats were pulled low to deflect the biting wind, but even so he was fairly certain that they were not the men he was pursuing. They were all wearing boots, not moccasins, and none of them showed any signs of having been shot.
As they talked, the fourth man looked up and spotted Blackshot standing on the ridge.
“Hey there, mister!” he called, waving his hand.