by Evans, Tabor
“Has the rail line been cleared between here and Snow Mound yet, Jenkins?”
The constable shook his head. “It’s been cleared, but they’re repairing track. Up on that high pass, it takes a while. The last cable we got from Snow Mound said the line wouldn’t be open for several days, yet.” He pointed at the headless corpse. “Who shot that feller? I don’t see a gun on you big enough to have blown his punkin clean off his shoulders like that!”
Longarm didn’t want the Andersons held up by local red tape, especially after Hansel had gone to the trouble of saving his life. “Just a passing benefactor, Jenkins,” Longarm said with a grin. “Didn’t catch his name. Long gone, now. You’ll probably find enough jingle in the kid’s pockets to have him properly buried.” He shifted his gear on his shoulders. “His horse is over at the Federated, you say?”
The lawman nodded. “It’s right next door to the James Peak Saloon.”
“How far is it by horse to Snow Mound, Mr. Jenkins?” Longarm asked as he headed toward the depot house.
“It’ll take you a good day. Say, this ain’t anything about that lady who went up there to testify against that Younger jasper, is it?”
“What part of it?”
“Hell, all of it!” the lawman intoned with exasperation.
“I don’t know,” Longarm said as he ducked through the station house door. “I’ll let you know on my way back through your quiet little town.”
Longarm hadn’t merely been being coy with Constable Jenkins. He really did not know if the dead younker’s attempt at cleaning Longarm’s clock had had anything to do with the Younger gang.
Longarm had plenty of enemies, and the kid might have been one of them. Spying Longarm hop down from the train, the kid might have decided to take this opportunity to burn him down for having had his pa or brother or maybe a cousin hauled away to a federal pen or a gallows.
On the other hand, the gang holed up around Snow Mound, waiting to perforate the stringy old hide of the wooden-legged Josephine Pritchard for testifying against their fearless leader and thus causing him to stretch hemp on the main street of Snow Mound, could very easily have learned that a federal lawman had been sent for.
The gang might have sent the kid down to waylay him with a bullet to his ticker. That’s likely what would have happened, too, if Hansel Anderson hadn’t been there with his barn blaster. Longarm chuckled at his bacon having been saved by a hooplehead from Dakota Territory, though he felt a chill at the back of his neck, as well—close one!—as he tramped on out the front door of the depot building.
He angled toward the right side of the broad street facing him. The high-altitude sun reflected off the finely churned dust and horse shit and the dusty shop windows, and smacked his face like a splash of warm tequila thrown by a truculent sporting girl. There were only about five or six false-fronted business establishments on either side of the street, with cabins hunkering in the sage and cedars behind the shops.
Stock pens and chicken coops sent up their expected aromas, as did a burning rubbish pile behind a hardware store. Somewhere, a rooster crowed and there were the intermittent brays of a typically cantankerous mule, probably voicing its irritation at a wind-blown tumbleweed or some such.
Longarm found Greeley’s Federated Feed and Livery Barn. He saw no point in renting a horse when the young man who’d tried to perforate his hide had so recently orphaned a broad-barreled, stout-legged blue roan with clear eyes, good teeth, and four shod hooves in good repair. The horse looked mountain bred, judging by the thickness of its cannons and the heavy muscling of its haunches, and could handle the thin air of the rugged ride up to Snow Mound, which, the liveryman informed Longarm, was nearly ten thousand feet above sea level.
Longarm’s federal marshal’s badge was all he needed to spring the roan. The liveryman informed him of a shortcut trail to Snow Mound, one that was steep but would cut at least one hour off the usual route that followed the narrow-gauge rails along a switchbacking, time-consuming trace graded for the trains as well as wagons. Bidding the liveryman good day, the lawman led the saddled horse out of the barn, slid his Winchester into the dead kid’s saddle boot, and stepped into the saddle.
It was nearly three o’clock in the afternoon. The western ridges were pocking with purple shadows beneath the low-angling sun, but he’d get a few hours’ ride in, just the same. He’d hole up along the trail overnight, and get an early start the next morning. According to Mr. Greeley, that should bring him into Snow Mound around ten a.m.
He picked up the trail along the Colorado River that was a roiling tumult this time of year. He felt the spray from a near rapids as he put the big roan up a steep hill, and it was as cold as stardust. The water roared and chugged and dug up rocks from its bed and threw them, flinging chunks of driftwood this way and that. Longarm followed the trail off away from the stream and climbed through aromatic woods, following a switchbacking trail through fragrant spruce and balsam that offered welcome shade from the hammering, high-altitude sun.
He crested the ridge and rode out into a lush meadow perfumed by columbine and bright with wildflowers of all colors and designs. An hour later, he crossed a windy pass still crusted with snow patches that were littered with pine needles and cones and squirrel and rabbit shit. It was cold up here, though the sun still threatened to sear through several layers of skin despite his hat. He was glad to get back down the pass’s other side and into a sheltering forest of aspens that were fresh smelling and vibrantly jade with new green.
As he rode through the trees, following the faint horse trace that was likely an old Indian hunting trail and which he occasionally lost sight of amidst new growth or deep forest duff, he kept an eye skinned on the terrain all around him. There was no telling when another grinning killer would try to drill him with an unwanted third eye, to keep him out of Snow Mound.
If that was the first would-be assassin’s intention, that was. He thought it was.
When the sun had been down behind the forested western ridges at least an hour, he stopped and set up camp in an old burn amidst fire-blackened lodgepole trunks. The fire had occurred a few years ago; new growth had sprung up in the form of shrubs and fetlock-high grass though here and there the blackened ash could still be seen, making the ground spongy. The dead trees offered seasoned wood for burning.
After Longarm had tended the big blue roan and spread his gear in a hollow amongst the skeleton-like trunks, he started a fire. It was getting cold, and he donned the heavy buckskin coat he’d wrapped around his bedroll. In spite of the fire, his breath frosted in the fast-darkening air around him.
To the north of his campsite, a rock wall offered cover. To the south, and down a gentle incline, lay a narrow valley through which a creek gurgled along the base of a steep, fir-carpeted ridge. The early night was so quiet that the creek sounded like chimes. Occasionally, a squirrel chattered, and chipmunks scuttled, striped tails arched, through the grass.
Later, Longarm had finished a spare supper of jerky and hardtack and was sitting back against a log, sipping coffee laced with rye, when his muscles tensed suddenly. He looked around. Men’s distance-muffled voices rose from out in the thick, chilly darkness, down the incline and near the creek.
The big roan whinnied shrilly, pricking the hair under Longarm’s collar. Instantly, his Winchester was in his hands, and he was cocking it and rolling away from the fire.
Chapter 5
Longarm rose to his haunches just beyond the pulsing sphere of light from his cook fire. He waited, expecting a gunshot.
He listened, his keen ears picking out every sound in the hushed mountain night—the crackling of his own fire to his left and which was sending up glowing cinders toward the blackened bows overhead. The tinny murmur of the stream down the grade ahead of him. The occasional, soft thud of a cone tumbling from a living pine, and the brief, fleeting rustle of an almost imperceptible breeze.
Very slowly, he straightened. Quietly, he racked a cartridge
into his Winchester’s breech and moved up to a charred tree bole straight ahead of him, pressing a shoulder to the scorched, barkless tree while staring off to his right, waiting to see if the rasp of his cocking lever would draw gunfire.
Nothing.
Longarm stepped out from around the tree and strode slowly down the incline, his jaws and his back drawn taut with tension. He set each boot down carefully, not liking the unavoidable crunching of the deep ash beneath the layer of new grass and pine needles. Weaving around the trees, he stopped after he’d walked about seventy yards.
From here he could see the flashing of the stream along the base of the steep ridge. Amidst the water’s trickling and gurgling, he heard a branch that had likely gotten hung up in a riffle and was scraping against a rock.
He stood pressing the brass butt plate of his Winchester against his right hip, gloved thumb caressing the cocked hammer. Had men passed this way? He could see no signs of horses, though the night was so dark they’d be hard to pick out. On the other hand, the voices might have come from the opposite ridge. The incline there was too steep for horses, but not too steep for men working their way down from the ridge crest, intending to steal up on Longarm’s camp.
He glanced over his shoulder to look back up the slope. His fire made a low, flickering glow in the darkness, not much brighter than a lamp from this distance and vantage.
A sound from across the creek made him swing his head forward again. A rock or something tumbled down the ridge and plopped into the water. Directly across from Longarm, two copper lights no bigger than his thumbnails glowed with primal menace. A cat’s shrill cry assaulted his ears.
He stumbled back with a start, raising his Winchester. As his eyes lowered and he could see the silhouette of the cat’s square head with the triangular ears sticking up—the wildcat appeared to be crouching, preparing for a leap from the ridge—Longarm squeezed the rifle’s trigger.
The gun’s roar slashed across the silent night, drowning out the stream. At the same time, Longarm’s right boot heel rolled over a rock. The lawman lost his balance. He tore his left hand from the rifle, throwing it out for balance a half second before his ass hit the ground hard, cracking a branch. He grunted against the jarring reaching up through his hip and prickling his ribs.
Quickly, sitting there on the soft earth with the branch prodding his rump, he spread his legs slightly, lifting his knees, and levered a fresh round into the Winchester’s breech. He raised the rifle to his shoulder and aimed at the spot between rocks where he’d seen the glowing copper eyes.
They were gone.
More stones tumbled down the ridge to plop into the water. He glimpsed a shadow moving out from behind a rock farther up the ridge and to his left, and then there was the crack of a branch snapping, and the shadow, too, was gone.
Again, except for the stream’s murmur, silence.
Longarm ejected the hot shell from the Winchester’s breech, saw it flash in the starlight as it arced out over his left shoulder to hit the ground with a soft snick, then racked a fresh round and waited.
Had it been the hunting cat’s mewling he’d heard, mistaking it for men’s voices? He could have sworn that what he’d heard had been human murmurings, but it might have only been his imagination playing tricks on him. He knew from experience that nights in the mountains were weird times. The air was so light and dry that you’d swear you could hear the stars crackling overhead, from billions of miles away. The trickling of the river could build in a man’s imagination until it wasn’t moving water at all but a whole cavvy of rampaging Utes.
Longarm heaved himself to his feet. He looked around and listened for another five minutes. When he heard nothing more but that which he’d heard before, in addition to a wolf expressing his loneliness from a faraway ridge to the north, he dropped down and took a long drink from the stream.
The water was so cold he thought his molars would splinter, but it tasted good and refreshing. When he’d had his fill, he shouldered the Winchester, tramped back up the incline to where his fire had burned down to a low glow, poured a fresh cup of coffee, and laced it from his bottle of Maryland rye.
He left the fire low, and sat away from it for a time, sipping his coffee and whiskey and staring out across the starry valley. The wolf continued to howl, stopped, and then two from separate ridges resumed the dirge.
The night settled cold as a Dakota winter, the coffee smoking like a wildfire in Longarm’s hands. Finally, he threw back the last of the bracing, satisfying brew, and relieved his bladder, his pee steaming amongst the pine needles.
He set his cup on a rock, built up his fire from the dry wood he’d gathered, and pulled his saddle and bedroll up close to the flames. He figured it was down around forty degrees or so. It would get down below freezing by midnight.
He removed his gun belt, coiled it around his holster, and set the rig within easy reach beside his saddle. He leaned his cocked Winchester nearby, then dug a hole under him for his hip, rolled up in his blankets, enjoying the heat of the snapping, crackling blaze. Folding his arms on his chest and rolling onto one hip, facing away from the fire, he willed himself into a shallow but badly needed sleep.
He started hearing rifle fire late the next morning, as he climbed a slope through blowdown spruce and aspen, heading toward a sun-splashed saddleback ridge. The pops and cracks were too distant for the shooting to be meant for him, but he reined the roan to a halt, just the same, and slipped his rifle from the saddle boot.
The shots were muffled by distance and seemed to be rising from the other side of the ridge looming ahead and above him. He cocked the Winchester, set the hammer to half cock, and rested the rifle across his saddlebows as he batted his heels against the roan’s flanks, and the big horse lunged off its rear hooves.
The sporadic fire continued as Longarm and the stalwart horse climbed the ridge along the narrow trail slanting through stands of stunted spruce and Douglas fir. Near the crest, Longarm dismounted, grabbed his field glasses out of his saddlebags, ground-reined the roan, and tramped to the crest, negotiating a talus slide still patched with dirty winter snow.
He hunkered down behind a boulder. Up here, the cold wind bit him, threatened to rip his hat from his head. He raised his coat collar, pulled his hat down tighter, and peered down the other side of the ridge.
Snow Mound sat in a roughly triangular valley below him. It wasn’t much of a town, but he could see several large stores—probably hardware shops or mining suppliers and saloons—and the narrow-gauge railroad crawling into the valley from a canyon mouth to Longarm’s left. Near the tracks were stock pens, a large, wooden water tower on stilts, and several mountains of split firewood.
The town was set at an angle before him. In the bright, cool sunlight, he could see the smoke puffs of blasting rifles or pistols around one of the large buildings on the other side of the main street from him. Answering shots sounded from a large, three-story, white-frame structure on the side of the street nearest Longarm.
The cracks and pops of the gunfire reached Longarm’s ears about half a second after each smoke puff. Men’s shouts rose, as well. Aside from the shooters, Longarm saw no other movement anywhere in the town, as though the place were under siege and all citizens were cowering inside their hovels.
He rose from behind the boulder and ran across the slippery, clacking talus to the roan, gathered up the reins, stepped into the saddle, and urged the horse up and over the ridge and down the side facing the town. Halfway to the bottom of the slope that dropped toward the shaggy northeastern fringe of the village, he swung the roan left, continuing on down the steep hill but now heading toward the settlement’s other side.
Instinct told him that the instigators of the gun battle were those shooting from the far side of the main street. He intended to work around behind them.
He was glad he hadn’t misjudged the roan. The horse was as good at moving down a steep slope as it was at climbing one, picking its footing carefully but a
ble to continue moving quickly, leaning deep on its stout forequarters and stumbling little.
Leaping occasional slash and weaving around stunt pine and shrubs, the horse gained the bottom of the slope, leaped a narrow creek, and galloped around to the town’s southern end, in the direction of the narrow-gauge rails and depot building.
Still, Longarm saw no one except the shooters out and about. Obviously, the shacks weren’t abandoned, as smoke twisted from chimney pipes and horses and other stock milled in pens and corrals.
Longarm urged the horse around privies and pens and finally pulled up near the rear of the large, unpainted frame building he’d figured to be a saloon and from the front of which the brunt of the gunfire issued, echoing around the near ridges. Behind a two-hole privy, he leaped down from the roan’s back. As he made his way toward the main drag, he saw three brightly dressed and feathered girls crouching behind the unpainted building fronting the privy.
A man stood near the girls—a short gent in a pinstriped shirt, sleeve garters, and a green apron. He was casually smoking a cigar while the girls crouched anxiously, one sneaking a look around the rear of the building toward the front, where the guns were popping.
Longarm approached the group. The man narrowed a skeptical gaze at him, puffing smoke around his stogie. One of the girls turned toward Longarm, then gasped and fell back against the building with a start. The other girls saw him, then, too, and they nearly leaped out of their high-heeled shoes and low-cut gowns and corsets as they cast fearful gazes at the imposing figure in the snuff-brown hat and three-piece suit, and holding the Winchester on his shoulder.
Longarm touched two fingers to his mustached mouth, and dug his moon-and-star federal badge out of his vest pocket, holding it up for all to see. Keeping his voice low, he said, “Who’s flingin’ lead at who?”