The Wolfer

by Loren D. Estleman

  Suddenly he was seized with violent cramps. Before he could move from the spot he doubled over and threw up every bite. Later, when his stomach was feeling better, he got out two more tins and ate the contents more slowly, and those he kept down. Afterward he built a fire, finished unloading the horse and lay down on his good side for a restful night scant yards away from the corpse of his former companion.

  In the morning he buried Aaron in a shallow grave scratched out of the ground with a knife from the packs and fixed himself a breakfast of hot, spitting bacon over the fire. He tried not to think about the things crawling under the bandage on his shoulder, for to examine the wound under those circumstances might shock him into giving up. Upon inspecting the rest of the bundles he was delighted to find a chamois leather sack containing five leaden balls, a leathern square perforated to hold three rows of brass caps and a smaller sack of the same tough material full of black powder.

  Fulwider had served with the Army of the Potomac. Though the only action he saw as a company clerk in Rhode Island had to do with a heated correspondence between himself and a quartermaster sergeant at Fort Leavenworth over a shipment of flannel underwear issued in response to a requisition for twelve cases of new Springfield rifles, he had been trained in the use of muzzle-loading firearms. Making use of this fading knowledge, he loaded the rifle with a ball and probably too much powder (which he regarded as preferable to too little), wadded it with a piece of shirttail, tamped it all down with a stick and finally fitted a cap to the steel nipple under the hammer.

  He stashed the rest of the equipment in a coat pocket, threw Aaron's saddle onto the gelding, filled the pouches with provisions and mounted, cradling the rifle across the worn pommel.

  He now had supplies, transportation and a weapon, and for the first time in days he was once again a hunter.

  The approach to the mountain, while steep, offered little difficulty as it wound laterally through the thickening cover along an old game trail worn six inches deep by the tread of thousands of hoofs. The weather was far less cooperative. Metal-colored clouds rolled in shortly after noon, and long before dusk the sky grew dark while an unseasonable gale blasted down from the peak, squeezing drops of icy rain from the overcast and dashing them like iron pellets against the journalist's face. It was as if he were being warned to stay away.

  But Fulwider read a different meaning into it. In spite of his discomfort he welcomed the wind and rain, as it drowned out whatever noise he made and decreased his chances of detection by the dangerous men he was following. A lifelong believer in fate, he read the inclement weather as an omen of encouragement.

  Unfortunately, his abilities did not match his optimism. No tracker, he had not the eye to study broken twigs or bent blades of grass and learn from them what direction his quarry had gone and how long ago. As for those tracks that were visible, he was at a loss to know which belonged to North's roan and which to his pack animal or the mounts of his pursuers. Though he was canny enough to distinguish an old track from a fresh one by the extent to which weather had softened the edges, the art of breaking down that erosion into terms of hours remained a mystery. He resolved to proceed with caution and play the cards as they were dealt.

  With the approach of darkness he began looking for a place to camp. Just as he found a good spot he glimpsed a bright splash of yellow farther up the mountain. He was moving at the time and it vanished quickly. Uncertain that he had seen anything at all, he urged his exhausted mount ahead until it came back into view. He drew rein and sat watching it. It wavered slightly. A flame, then.

  His first chilling thought was that it was a torch, with which the half-breeds proposed to continue their grim hunt throughout the night. But soon he realized that it was stationary. Whether the campfire belonged to friend or foe was the crux.

  Not trusting his horsemanship, he swung down and approached the beacon on foot, leading the bay. His ankle still slowed him down, but by placing the foot firmly and carefully he could depend on its support. Still, the journey was all uphill, and he paused frequently to catch his breath and to slow his racing pulse. Despite the cold, his clothes were soon soaked through with sweat.

  The horse smelled wood smoke and snorted. Quickly Fulwider cupped a hand over its nostrils. He heard camp sounds close by: A pot clanking against a tin cup, coffee hissing on the edge of the fire, wood splitting from the heat in the center. When it became evident that no one was coming to investigate the noise his horse had made, he tethered it upwind of the fire, stepped through a tangle of brush and found himself without warning in the enemy camp.

  Chapter Nineteen

  He cringed. He hadn't thought he was that close. One moment he was sliding through thick undergrowth, one elbow cocked in front of his face to protect his eyes from thorns, and the next he was standing in a narrow alley that swooped down between stands of birch and pine to a level spot in which two men, one seated, one standing, faced each other across a banked fire. For a terrifying moment he was transfixed to the spot. Then he found his legs and drew back into the protection of the brush.

  No shouts arose from camp, or if they did they were muffled by Fulwider's own heartbeat and the wind that buffeted his ears. Deprived of his night vision by the firelight, he staggered groping for his mount.

  The sight was emblazoned on his memory. The seated man, wrapped in a blanket, had appeared asleep with his back propped against a tree and a rifle across his lap. The other, unmistakeably Dick Lightfoot, had been standing on the very edge of the firelight and staring, or so it seemed, straight at the intruder.

  He didn't wait to find out for sure, but straddled his horse and quit the scene as fast as he dared in the darkness.

  After he had gone some three hundred yards he stopped and listened, but was unable because of the wind to hear if anyone was following. Nevertheless he didn't press on. Clouds obscured the moon, and though he had heard remarkable things about Indians, the ability to see in the dark wasn't among them. In any case he was unwilling to risk his horse stepping in a hole and killing both of them. He sat and listened and thought.

  If he hadn't been seen, he had a rare opportunity to dispose of the killers. In the firelight, Dick Lightfoot had offered a tempting target for his newly acquired rifle, and although he was rusty at it, he was fairly certain that if prepared he could reload and shoot Sam Fire Eye before he had wits enough about him to fight back or flee. If the situation were reversed, neither would show him any more consideration. And yet he didn't follow up his plan.

  Fulwider was no murderer. He felt justified now, but knew that when the time came he wouldn't find it in him to slay two men in cold blood. That his would-be victims labored under no such restrictions was beside the point.

  His one recourse was to warn North. But where was he? If he had indeed left camp before the half-breeds struck, he could be wandering anywhere about the mountain, unaware that he was being followed. If he was aware, he'd be even harder to find, but in that case there would hardly be reason to inform him of his predicament. Mulling over the paradox, Fulwider decided that he still wasn't thinking straight and wondered if his wound had mortified and the poison was fouling his brain.

  Whatever his situation, it would be foolhardy to attempt to locate North's camp in this blackness. He planned instead to circle around the killers and make his own camp farther up the mountainside, where he would wait for first light and with luck be moving again before they resumed tracking. That meant staying awake all night long, but a man who had survived a plunge of two hundred feet was capable of anything.

  Half a mile above the killers' berth he selected a shallow grade that rose gently through a copse of birch far enough off the game trail, he hoped, to conceal him in the event they arose first. He climbed down to unsaddle the bay.

  In a fraction of a second he was torn off his feet and hurled like an enemy banner to the ground, his lungs emptying on impact with a tremendous woof. Fiery pain seized his injured shoulder. Fighting back unconsciousn
ess, with the lightning reflex of blind panic he immediately rolled over onto his back, and was immediately pinned between two powerful thighs. A callused fist grasped his hair, forced his head backward until his spine creaked and a point of cold fire bit into the tender flesh of his jaw.

  He felt warm mist on his face, smelled the stale odor of spent breath.

  "Now I reckon we'll see what color you breeds bleed," panted a familiar voice.

  Recognizing it, Fulwider gathered all his strength for a terrific shout, but when North's name came out it was in a hoarse croak, barely audible. The blade was already sliding down toward his throat. Something warm and wet trickled down the side of his neck into his collar. Suddenly the point was withdrawn, accompanied by a whispered oath.

  "What the hell you doing alive?" demanded the wolfer then. He was straddling the journalist on his knees, a solid presence in the blackness. "I figured them breeds done for you like they done for Aaron."

  Fulwider propped himself up on one shaky elbow and massaged his neck with his free hand, smearing the blood. His shoulder felt sticky under the bandage. The activity had torn the wound open. It throbbed like a toothache. "You know about him?" A whisper was as much as he could manage.

  Something stirred the bushes nearby. North was silent for a moment, listening. When no more sounds followed he resumed, keeping his voice low.

  "I heard a shot. I didn't think it was Aaron potting at a squirrel in the middle of the night. When I spotted them breeds dogging my trail yesterday, I knowed what had happened right enough."

  "Jim's dead too." The journalist described the scene over the river. North grunted.

  "I always knowed them boys wasn't born to die in bed."

  The blood on Fulwider's neck continued running, more profusely than seemed possible from so tiny a hole. He untied his kerchief and held it against the cut. "May I get up?"

  "I like you right where you are."

  North stiffened audibly. This was a new voice. He twisted around and half rose, clothes rustling as he reached back with one hand for the knife he had returned to its sheath. He froze when something that shone dully in the starlight breaking through the cloud cover touched his chest with a firm thump. Fulwider sensed rather than saw that there was another man standing next to the one with the gun.

  "Well, Dick," said the voice, "I guess you wasn't seeing things after all." It was the man with the gun who spoke, in a high-pitched drawl the journalist would have recognized anywhere. "Give us some light and let's see what we got here."

  Chapter Twenty

  A match was struck, and flame spread with a sucking sound over the head of a torch in the second man's hand to cast a ghostly, wildly flickering glow over the tiny clearing. Dick Lightfoot's grave features sprang into view dominated by the black, non-reflecting eyes Fulwider had first taken note of weeks ago in Rebellion.

  He wore the black hat down to his eyes, a ragged hole showing in its crown where North's bullet had passed through it the month before. A fur vest hung over a patched and faded calico shirt, the latter's tail thrust carelessly inside the band of his breechclout and buckskin leggings. He had Fulwider's Remington rifle in one hand and Aaron Stemmer's Winchester in the other.

  Unwillingly, the journalist swung his gaze from Lightfoot to his companion, and recoiled from the sight.

  Sam Fire Eye had survived his multiple wounds at a fearsome cost. A bullet had smashed into his left cheek, pulverizing the bone and caving in that side of his face. His left eye was glazed over white behind the shattered lens of his spectacles. He wore his greasy derby tipped far over on that side, as if to conceal it or to protect the damaged eye from the light.

  He balanced his Sharps' carbine on his left forearm. His right hung limp and evidently useless below his thin waist, the sleeve of his buffalo coat stained brown in places where the blood had soaked through long ago, as it had through the front of his shirt.

  "Pretty, ain't I?" He leered lopsidedly, showing his iron teeth. "I might could get a job modeling long johns for Sears and Roebuck."

  He spoke slowly, with many pauses to catch his breath. Fulwider was aware of a whistling, sucking noise increasing and diminishing, increasing and diminishing, as of the pumping of a broken bellows. It reminded him of the breathing of the mother wolf North had put out of its misery at the den, and he wondered how the half-breed had managed to live this long with a collapsed lung.

  The torch was thrust butt-first into the ground, where the flame danced crazily in the gusty wind, illuminating first this face, then that as another long silence stretched to the bursting point. Once again, it was Fire Eye who pricked it.

  "Where is that son-of-a-bitch cowboy? Tell me he ain't dead. Please tell me that." His tone was thin with hatred.

  North didn't reply. Fulwider said, "He is. Lightfoot's knife killed him."

  There was another pause, after which the half-breed released a string of curses lasting a full minute. Dizzy for want of breath, he staggered and clutched at the torch for support. His narrow face was slick with sweat. He filled his good lung and seemed about to continue when he let it out slowly.

  "That's too bad," he said quietly. "For you. I can't figure why you ain't stone dead after that fall you took, tenderfoot, and I don't much care. But you'll pray to God that you was soon enough."

  "I can't imagine why you're not dead yourself." Fulwider spoke to conceal his fear.

  "Who made the headboard?"

  North's question was so irrelevant that for a moment no one moved or spoke.

  Fire Eye obliged him. "Made it myself, couple of weeks back. I figured someone would be suspicious if they didn't find no bones. Dick can't write so I done the carving. Did you like that part about not being able to find the skull? I figured that would sound real. I seen a marker like it once outside Billings."

  While the other was holding forth, Fulwider cast a furtive glance about the circle of torchlight and noticed his bedroll lying where it had come loose when North knocked him down. From time to time as the wind rose and fell, the flame painted a pale stripe along the oiled stock of Jim Stemmer's long rifle protruding from the blanket in which he had wrapped it when the rain started. If either of the half-breeds had noticed it, maybe he considered the weapon harmless after having fired it and threw away what he thought was Jim's entire supply of powder and shot. It was just beyond the journalist's reach.

  He played for time. "How did you survive? We left you for dead."

  "Which is what I would of been except for Dick, here." Fire Eye nudged his silent companion. "That Cheyenne medicine ain't half bad when you can't get no real doctor. He says I hollered blue hell when he dug out what bullets he could with his spare knife. I don't rightly recollect. He tells me I was dead out and raving crazy mad for full ten days. I disremember that too. But I remember every step I taken since, and every time I suck wind I remember. I figure the reason I'm still breathing is I kept hoping on doing the same for Crippen's memory." Air squealed in and out of his sunken chest. "Now I guess I got to be content with you two."

  The raw emotion in his labored words made the flesh crawl along Fulwider's spine. He fought to keep his gaze from returning to the bedroll and rifle for fear of drawing their attention to it. But it wandered there against all his efforts, and on the way back his eyes met North's.

  The wolfer knew. Instantly they broke contact, but not before Fulwider caught the other's unspoken message: Delay.

  "He must value your partnership, to take so much trouble," he told Fire Eye.

  The half-breed laughed, a short, harsh bark, distinctly unpleasant. "Dick? Hell, he would have me skinned and cured by sunup if it would bring a bounty and he didn't need me. Look at him. See how my saying it makes his eyes light up?"

  Fulwider looked. The Cheyenne-reared killer's expression was stony as ever, the eyes murky and bottomless. But he could sense a savage mind working behind the stoic façade.

  "He saved your life."

  "Like I said, he needs me. He can track
a silverback across a clean sheet and he can skin a carcass in less time than it takes to tell him to, but he can't do figures. Wasn't for me, them bastards in the Stockmen's Association would take his skins and leave him with ten cents on the dollar. I ain't the only wolfer around can cipher, but no one else will ride with him. He kilt his last two partners."

  Lightfoot made a noise that was very nearly a growl. Fire Eye giggled.

  "All right, just the first one. The other fell off a cliff. He says. Anyway, none of the money Dick got for the hides went to his widow."

  "I don't imagine we have much more to look forward to than that." The journalist was running out of conversation.

  "We might," said Fire Eye. "Then again we might not. Not till you help us find Black Jack, anyway."

  Fulwider stared. "You can't still be thinking about him!"

  "How come?" North asked the half-breed. "You said yourself Lightfoot can track."

  "If he was half the wolfer they claim you are, we would of took that bounty months ago. You got interrupted last time, but there ain't a tinhorn in Idaho would give me odds against you running him to ground this trip. I'd sort of like to be around when that happens."

  "What good would it do?" pressed Fulwider. "You're both wanted for murder. Who would collect on the hide?"

  The malicious gleam sharpened in Sam's good eye. "That's one more good reason to keep you kicking, ain't it? We hold onto your friend whilst you go after the money."

  "Don't see much percentage in it." North retained the ready crouch he had assumed upon first hearing Fire Eye's voice, his moccasined feet planted far apart. "Since you'll just kill us as soon as he brings it back, why don't we just save time and get it all done here and now?"

  "You'll help, all right. As long as we decide to let you live you'll do what we say. I might not be in your class as a wolfer, but I been one long enough to know there's one thing men and animals will do anything to hold on to, and that's their skins. Let's go, Dick. Get his knife and gun and bring them along." He turned.