Suddenly, Eagle’s clawed hand shot forward. With a deft twist of his wrist at the last possible instant, he flipped the flat rock off balance and forward and drove it down hard between the rounded stones. Something in that formerly shaded pocket thrashed and struggled wildly, kicking up plumes of dust and at the same time issuing one of the most dreaded sounds known to man—the tail buzz of a diamondback rattler!
Eagle kept slamming the edge of the flat rock down and then leaning on it, grinding the snake into the hard stone pocket. He didn’t stop grinding until the snake was still and its rattler silent.
Tossing the rock slab aside, Eagle turned and dropped back into a sitting position on the smoother rocks. He was breathing hard and dripping sweat. “I saw that rock formation and I . . . just knew . . . this time of day . . . there was bound to be a fat old rattler in there . . . catchin’ hisself some shade.”
Luke looked at him, his forehead puckering. “Okay. You obviously were right. But what was the point? You got something against rattlesnakes getting themselves some shade?”
“The point?” Eagle stood up, leaned over and reached into the stone pocket with his free hand. A moment later he lifted out the dead snake and held it up. It was long and indeed fat. Slamming it back down to the ground and nudging with his foot until it was spread out between him and Luke, he squatted down next to it and picked up a chunk of broken rock about eight inches in diameter.
“The point,” he said as he started pounding on the fat part of the snake with the rock, rupturing the outer skin and exposing the reptile’s insides, “is to get at the innards of this devil’s spawn and rub ’em all over our feet and legs. Unless those African trail sniffers are different than any other four-legged critter I ever heard tell of, the scent of this stinky old rattler is gonna make ’em want to steer as wide as they can and have nothing to do with tryin’ to follow it.”
Luke dropped to his knees beside the snake carcass and reached for a rock of his own. “You really think it will work?”
“If it don’t, we can always say it should have,” replied Eagle as he began pulling out handfuls of snake guts and smearing them on his feet and ankles. “It’s an old Injun trick I heard tell of once—from the Rattlesnake Tribe, I think it was.”
* * *
Parker Dixon snapped shut his jewel-encrusted pocket watch and then shoved it, at the end of its gold chain, back into his vest.
“It’s nearly time. Tell your boys to get ready, Ngamba,” he said to the tall African standing next to him. Ngamba snapped a quick nod and trotted off toward the dog handlers.
To Asa Patton, standing next to him on the other side, Dixon said, “Tell the other men to get ready to mount up. Also, bring my horse forward.”
“Of course,” said Patton. He started to turn away, then paused. “You realize, sir, that riders on horseback aren’t going to be able to travel through that rough country nearly as fast as those dogs.”
“Of course I realize that,” Dixon replied, mopping sweat from his face with a brilliant white handkerchief. “But Ngamba and the handlers, who’ll be on foot, can keep up with the dogs remarkably well. They run like gazelles. And they, in turn, will keep us signaled on how the hunt is progressing. We won’t be that far behind.”
“And when they catch up with Eagle and Jensen ahead of us?”
Dixon smiled. “Don’t worry, they know what to do. The dogs will keep their quarry ‘treed,’ I guess you could say, for want of a better word, until I get there. Trust me, I’ve made it very clear that I don’t want the final punishment delivered before I am on hand to see it.”
Patton’s mouth suppressed what might have been a grimace. “Right. I’ll tell the men to get ready to mount up.”
Across the way, the dog handlers had removed the hoods from the ridgebacks and unsnapped their leashes. The dogs remained sitting on their haunches but began to whimper expectantly, sensing what was soon to come. The handlers threw to the ground in front of them the boots that had been taken from Luke and Eagle. The dogs sniffed and nudged these with minimal interest at first. But then each of the handlers took from the waistbands of the loincloths they wore under their burlap shirts a pair of hollowed-out cane tubes about a foot and a half long. These they began slowly striking together in a rhythmic pattern.
Clack! Clack-clack! Clack-clack-clack!
As they continued this, the dogs began gnawing and then taking the boots in their teeth and shaking them with increasing aggression.
Roland stepped up beside his father. Frowning, he said, “What are they doing?”
“They’re stirring up the dogs,” Dixon replied, an almost mesmerized gleam in his eyes as they followed the procedure. “They’re preparing them for the hunt, working them into a frenzy and locking them onto the quarry they’ll be sent after. I watched them do this in a workout session before we left Helena. It was a fascinating thing to see. I can only imagine what it will be like when performed for real.”
Roland backed away again, staring at his father like he was someone he had never seen before.
* * *
As they continued to run, Luke began leading them more to the south and gradually angling back toward the front edge of the badlands.
“You’re actin’ like you got some place particular in mind,” chuffed Eagle beside him. “You ain’t figurin’ to work back out to the prairie, are you?”
“No, nothing like that,” Luke replied. “But I do have an idea. Just keep watching the sky up ahead.”
“Ain’t what’s ahead I’m worried about, it’s what’s behind.”
Not long after Eagle said that, they heard for the first time the distant baying of the dogs being sent after them.
“Just keep watching the sky,” Luke said again.
“What are we lookin’ for?” Eagle wanted to know.
“Buzzards,” came the answer between slaps of running feet.
“Buzzards? Ain’t that about the last thing we want to see? We don’t catch a break, we’re gonna soon enough be seein ’em circlin’ straight over our heads.”
Chapter 46
“What the hell’s going on here? Why the slowdown?” Dixon demanded, reining up his horse and scowling fiercely at the scene before him. He and the other horsemen had unexpectedly caught up with the dogs and their handlers. The latter were scrambling frantically back and forth, banging their cane sticks together loudly and shouting at the dogs as the animals circled and shied away, making guttural, moaning sounds.
Ngamba came over to Dixon, frowning, appearing perplexed and somewhat worried. “Strange juju, Bwana,” he said. “The dogs no like, no more want to make chase.”
“Well, they’d better learn to like it,” Dixon roared. “What kind of juju nonsense has gotten into them? I didn’t spend all the money and make all the shipping arrangements I did to bring those mongrels over here—not to mention you and those worthless stick beaters—just to watch them mince around in circles! Somebody had better figure out a way to get them back on the hunt again or I’ll turn the worthless curs into the most expensive barbecue ever served at the nearest Indian reservation!”
“Here’s the problem,” announced Patton, who had dismounted and was walking the ground the dogs kept skittering away from. With the barrel of his rifle, he poked down at the ground and then lifted up part of the mutilated rattlesnake skin. The ridgebacks stopped circling, locked their eyes on the gory remains, and growled menacingly. “Looks like Eagle and Jensen killed a rattler and then smeared themselves with its guts to throw the dogs off their scent. The rattler smell is new to the ridgebacks, but instinctively, they’re wary of it and don’t want anything to do with it.”
“You hear that, Ngamba? Tell your boys to figure out a way to make those stupid dogs un-wary and be blasted quick about it!” said Dixon.
Ngamba hurried toward the dog handlers, jabbering excitedly. Abruptly, one of the men darted over and took the snake remains off the snout of Patton’s rifle. With overly dramatic gestures he
hurled the remains to the ground and began jumping up and down on it. Then he leaned over and talked to it, cursing roundly in his native tongue. Next he picked it back up and flung it directly in front of the dogs. The other handler promptly joined in the elaborate selling job and he, too, cursed the snake skin and kicked at it. Then he began chanting, “Akatari! Akatari! Akatari!” as he took up banging his sticks together again.
The ridgebacks were no longer acting skittish and had started to growl with increasing volume, an ominous rumble from deep in their chests. Suddenly one of them pounced on the snake remains and the other did the same an instant later. They took it in their teeth and began shaking it furiously, growling even louder, until they ripped it into two pieces.
Both handlers were chanting and beating their sticks faster and faster.
“Akatari! Aka-akatari!”
Clack-clack! Clack-clack-clack!
Ngamba ran several feet ahead, in the direction his trained eyes had seen some ground spoor indicating where their quarry had continued on. Stopping, he swung his long arm in a sweeping gesture and then called in a high-pitched, ululating wail, “Akatariiii!”
The ridgebacks, worked once again into a fever pitch even greater than before, broke away and raced past Ngamba, convinced to no longer fear the rattler scent but rather be angry at it and want to chase it down.
Returning to his horse and swinging back up into the saddle, Patton said dryly, “Looks like no ridgeback steak for any Injuns tonight. Let’s go, we’d better get a move on if we aim to catch up with them again.”
* * *
Luke slowed his pace and between labored breaths raised an arm and pointed. “There. Those dots ahead low in the sky . . . see them?”
“Okay. Yeah, now I do,” panted Eagle.
Both men were nearly spent. Their chests were rising and falling rapidly, they were slick with sweat, their exposed backs and shoulders were bright pink from the sun.
“We’ve got to keep going. We’ve got to make it that far,” Luke rasped.
It was in that moment that full realization hit Eagle, an understanding of where Luke was heading, why he was pushing so hard to make it there. “That’s got to be close to the spot where those varmints ambushed us the other day . . . Ferris and his bunch . . . the ones you and Pettigrew stayed behind to deal with while Barlow and me made it clear. You thinkin’ the bodies of the ones you killed are still there?”
“That’s what I’m counting on, yeah,” said Luke. “Their bodies and their weapons.”
Eagle ran the back of one hand across his dry, cracked lips. “You don’t figure anybody’s gone back to retrieve ’em?”
“Don’t see where they’ve had much chance. They took the kids hostage, remember, and holed up in Hard Rock for the trade. Then we hit them there last night.”
“That seems like a year ago,” Eagle groaned.
“Today, the only ones left have been with us at the Gold Button, getting ready for Dixon to show up,” added Luke. “I figure the bodies are still out there, and those buzzards up ahead are not only the clincher for that, but they’re showing us exactly where.”
From behind, for the first time in quite a while, they heard the baying of the ridgebacks. And mingled faintly with that dreaded sound was something new. An odd, snapping noise . . . Clack-clack. Clack-clack.
“They’re coming fast. Let’s move it!” Luke urged.
* * *
Time and distance turned into one long, increasingly agonizing blur.
The rocky humps and jagged upthrusts and sudden, twisting arroyos swam before the two half-running, half-staggering men. Sometimes one of them would fall—sometimes both. They would lie there and pant for precious seconds and then drag themselves up and plunge on again. The ropes binding the strips of leather to the bottoms of their feet had begun to fray and break, causing the strips of leather to slip and flap loosely, threatening to trip them and add to the spills. Their hands were blistered from reaching out to grab bare rock surfaces for support and their chests and arms were scraped raw from times when no support was there.
The sun was sinking lower above the horizon but was still a white-hot ball of fury throwing heat and a blinding glare. Twice, Luke looked skyward and saw no sign of the buzzards. Alarm coursed through him until he realized he was looking too far ahead. He had to look up, practically straight up, and when he did he saw the usually dreaded sight of the sky scavengers circling almost directly overhead.
They were almost there. So close.
But also close, ever closer, was the baying of the ridgebacks and the strange clacking sounds and voices accompanying them.
Chapter 47
The edge of the gully was there before either man realized it.
Staggering as they were, eyes squinted against stinging sweat as well as the aches and pains that throbbed throughout their bodies, they didn’t see it until they were toppling over its rim and dropping in a tangle to the gravelly bottom. For a moment, they just lay there, fighting to regain what little wind they’d had left before the fall knocked out even most of that.
Then, abruptly, Luke sat up straighter. A shadow flicked across them, cast down momentarily from the sky. Luke twisted his head, looking to the right and left. He knew this place! They were in the gully—the twisting slash in the earth that had played an important part in the bounty hunter’s survival only the previous day. And now there was the chance for a repeat performance today.
“Eagle! Come on, we can’t let up now,” Luke urged the former sheriff on the other end of the handcuff chain. He pushed himself to his feet and tugged on the chain, dragging Eagle up as well.
Another shadow flicked over them. A buzzard circling in the sky above, the center of its pattern seemingly down the gully to their right, off to the west. Luke’s breath quickened—not from exhaustion for a change, but from excitement. If he was right, this meant that the body of the first would-be flanker he had killed yesterday, the one he’d used his Bowie knife on, was only a short distance away!
Luke threw himself in that direction, pulling Eagle after him. “Come on,” he urged again. “We’re almost there!”
The gully twisted maddeningly, running straight for only a few yards at a time before turning abruptly to the right or left, just enough to create a blind corner. Luke kept rounding these corners, his gaze probing anxiously ahead each time, hoping against hope to spot what he so desperately wanted to see. The heavy breathing of both himself and Eagle seemed amplified within the close walls of the gully, puffing like the ragged chugs of a locomotive fighting up a steep grade.
And then at last, there it was! The sprawled, bloated form of what had once been a man, now covered by a buzzing swarm of flies and riddled with gouges and gashes where eyeballs and strips of skin had been plucked and torn away by scavengers. Never had such a grisly sight looked so wonderful to the eyes of a beholder.
Five more yards. Luke took the first step to cover that distance. He could feel renewed strength, pumped from some untapped deep source, starting to course through him.
And then, half a foot ahead of his face, which was positioned at a level just below the rim of the gully, a set of slavering, fanged jaws thrust out and down over the rim. The rows of razor-sharp teeth slashed the air and at the same time the snarling ridgeback emitted a menacing growl that rolled down and rumbled the length of the gully.
Luke jerked back, nearly unbalancing both himself and Eagle. Both men managed to stay upright, though, and dropped into half crouches, swinging up their fists with the pronged belt buckles clenched in them. Half a yard behind Eagle, the second ridgeback thrust its head over the rim of the gully, baring its own slashing fangs and teeth and issuing another reverberating, nerve-freezing growl. From somewhere unseen, but close by, the jabbering, excited voices of the handlers and the rapid clacking of their cane sticks added to the sudden cacophony.
“No!” said Luke, his voice coming from a guttural place that made it a growl of its own. “We didn’t make i
t this far only to end up dog food. Hang on, we’re going for those weapons!”
“Don’t wait for me!” Eagle hollered back.
Luke charged forward in a long, lunging step. Timing it just right, he swung his buckle-reinforced fist in a hard, swooping uppercut. At the peak of the swing, his fist crashed into the underside of the first ridgeback’s jaw, the metal prong digging in and ripping a long gash as the dog’s head was knocked upward and back. The beast twisted and fell away from the edge of the gully, yelping and thrashing in pain and rage.
The rest of the way was clear. Luke bulled forward, dragging Eagle with him. As he threw himself onto the mutilated corpse and the treasure of weapons it held, the second ridgeback—goaded by the damage it had seen done to its mate and driven by the scent of fresh blood—leaped down into the gully and sprang for Eagle. The half-breed punched and kicked desperately, trying to keep the beast’s claws and gnashing teeth at bay.
Reaching blindly through the swarm of a hundred buzzing flies, Luke’s hand closed on the dead man’s gunbelt, digging and tugging to find its way to the attached holster. His grip closed on the familiar feel of a gun butt and he yanked the six-shooter free even as the wild thrashing and flailing of Eagle fighting against the attacking ridgeback tried to pull him away by virtue of the connecting handcuff chain. But then, with the gun now in hand, Luke went willingly with the pull, twisting around and thrusting his arm across Eagle’s shoulder. At point-blank range, he triggered two blasts straight into the dog’s savagely contorted face. The animal flew back in a splatter of blood and gore.
But before Luke had a chance to twist around or even pull his arm back from the way it was levered across Eagle’s shoulder, the first ridgeback—the one Luke had temporarily knocked away and wounded into an even greater rage—leaped down directly onto his back. The near hundred pounds of clawing, biting beast was a crushing, immobilizing weight. In the tight confines of the gully, Luke not only couldn’t turn back around or lift his own torso, but the way he was positioned was also pinning down Eagle.
Hired Guns Page 27