by Lou Bradshaw
There was no way of identifying the prints and matching them to a particular horse, but there were enough of them to tell me that there was more than one horse. The trail led north at that point but like any riverbed it wandered. There was sporadic streams of water running into the bed, most of which came from little feeder branches or springs. There weren’t any of them that lasted very long. They would either disappear into the rocky bottom and go underground, or pool up in some deep spot.
The shadows were starting to gather and deepen down in that river bottom. I was considering finding a place to make camp rather than take a chance on missing something in the gloom. That’s when I spotted where they climbed out of the old riverbed.
They’d gone to the left, and I wasn’t about to follow them up into the darkening forest. So I took my little cavalcade across to the other bank and found a spot with plenty of grass and shelter for my fire. After staking my horses and making sure they were watered, Dog and I went to the fire. I had my beef and beans and I shared the beef with Dog. He normally fended for himself, but that’s hard to do when you are constantly on the move like we’d been.
When the coals were only a warm glow, and I’d had all the coffee I could hold, I crawled into my blankets and said good night to the stars. As usual, I had pulled my bed well back from the fire. The fire would keep most of the critters away, and just the smell of it would keep the lobos from getting too close.
I know they say that there has never been a wolf attack on a man in North America. But I figure there are gnawed bones scattered around all over North America that just never got into those statistics. Furthermore, you never know when some South American wolves might start migrating up this way.
Besides the wolves, you got to contend with bears, and a big he grizzly will go where he wants to… fire or no fire. Mainly, I get back away from the fire because of men… red or white. When you get one of those critters approaching your camp, I’d just as soon be a little harder to locate.
Sure enough, somewhere in the middle of the night, I heard something causing a disturbance near the horses. It sure as hell wasn’t no Injun, unless he was out there stomping on red ants or something. Whatever was out there was making more noise than a brass band with six snare drummers.
I already had my six-gun in my hand and had just thrown the blankets back, when I heard Dog go into action. He made more noise than the “whatever”, and it wasn’t of the pleasant and comfortable kind. There was some God awful growling, snarling, and barking going on and a good deal of cussing coming from that other critter. Something went crashing through the brush with that big ugly mongrel snapping at his heels.
Dog came into the newly revived firelight proudly showing off a torn piece of homespun fabric with blood on it. Somewhere out there in the damp darkness, was a fella walking or limping around with a hole in his britches. I praised Dog with a scratching of his ears and went to make sure the horses hadn’t suffered any during the short lived ruckus. They hadn’t, and the trouble maker wouldn’t be back.
As soon as there was enough light, I was checking signs that our late night visitor had left. It was obviously a man on foot who wanted a horse enough to risk being shot, trampled, or chewed on to get it. I followed his tracks to the riverbed and assumed that he crossed over.
I wasn’t anxious to cross over and ride into a well setup trap along the trail I’d be following. So I left the horses and the fire, and I took myself and Dog to the other side. Dog had the scent and was sniffing along nicely, while I moved into the brush and went from tree to tree. Fortunately, I had changed into moccasins before I started out, so I could move with little noise. There was enough wind in the pines to cover any noise I happened to create.
Keeping my eye on Dog, I stayed pretty even with him, but I was well off to the right. That trail wasn’t any kind of highroad, and it was seldom used, so my friend out there sniffing had to move around boulders, brush, and some saplings that were springing up. After a couple hundred yards, Dog came to a stop just before the trail took a hard bend to the left.
He sniffed in a circle for a minute or two, and then he came to the right near where I was. Walking up to intercept him, I saw a boot track in the damp earth. I reckoned that our night visitor was setting up a little surprise up around the bend. It had been done before, and I was still breathing.
We circled a little wider to the right to keep completely invisible from anywhere a man might hide and still have a shot at the trail. We circled out about fifty yards and cautiously moved ahead. Dog stayed right beside me, knowing that at this point in the hunt, it was my job to take care of business.
From where I stood, deep in the trees, I could see a perfect spot for an ambush. I would have never used it but many would have. On the right side of the trail, there was a brush choked pile of boulders, just before the trail zigged back to the right. When a horseman came around the left turning zigg he would be facing that cluster of rocks. I would never have gone around that corner without crouching low on my horse and ready to shoot anything that moved.
Working my way through the pines, I moved to where I had a shot at anywhere near those rocks. Then I waited. Now I’m a patient man, not because I was raised that way, but because impatience can get you killed in wild country.
My patience paid off in a hurry because that gent wasn’t blessed with any. He treated himself to making himself a little more comfortable, which was his undoing. There was a little movement caused by him probably getting cramps in his legs. His head came into view and then dropped below the boulders but came up again.
“Pete!” I called, remembering the names of those left. I’d seen Jesse and I didn’t figure Frank would let himself get into this fix… And he sure wasn’t Rita.
“You best come on out, Pete. I’ll get you to a judge and you may not hang… but you waste my time here in these damp woods, and I’m sending the dog in and I’ll be right behind him.”
“How you know my name… we ain’t never met?”
“That’s because I done some deducin’. You see, I’m a whole lot smarter than most people (I lied). Why I could have been a perfesser or somethin’…. I know that Frank left you here without a horse, so he could keep your share. I know it was Frank because Rita would have killed you.”
“Well you ain’t all that smart… I’m expectin’ some of the other boys to be coming up that trail anytime now.”
“If you mean Fargo and Barney… yeah they’ll be here as soon as the buzzards and coyotes get their bones picked clean…. And Willis, well I turned simple little Willis loose… he should be somewhere near the Mogollon Rim by now… on his way to California.” There was silence coming from that jumble of rocks… Pete was giving it some thought.
“Well, Pete. What’s it gonna be? You can sit there till you rot or until it’s dark… whichever comes first. When the sun goes down, I’m sendin’ this big homely hound in there to flush you out… His mama was a timber wolf and his daddy was a puma, and I ain’t let him feed for a couple of days now….. Hell, I won’t even have to bury you when he gets finished.”
“You can just go to hell, I ain’t comin’ out and that mangy mutt ain’t gettin’ close because I blow his damned head off. So if you want to keep that dog you just keep him right where he is.”
“Too late for that, Pete. He walked off a bit ago droolin’… he got a taste of you last night and he’s plenty hungry… the worst part of it is when he finishes with your carcass, he won’t be able to keep up with the horses… he’ll sure slow us down.”
“Shut up!… just shut up!”
“You’re gettin’ awful touchy, Pete. You need to take a few deep breaths, and get yourself under control. I sure don’t want to have you dyin’ of apoplexy or catchin’ a stroke. Old Dog likes to kill his own meat.”
About that time, he heard something in the brush behind him. He jumped up, spun around and sent three bullets at some unseen and barely heard varmint. Spinning back around, he sent a couple of bullet
s in my general direction. His head was bent forward and made a poor target. I figured he was reloading, so I took the opportunity to move up another twenty feet.
I was getting a little weary of messing with him. It was time to do a bit of Injun business. He was popping his head up for a second or two and then back down. I was getting his timing down, so I waited till he popped up again to look around and back down. When his head disappeared, I scooted to a tree about five feet closer. Pete was a might slow getting his rifle up and ready to fire. When he did, he tattooed the tree I was behind with some serious lead. About the third time he done that, he left his rifle on top of the rock he was behind.
By that time I had gained a lot of territory on him. I figured to cut down on his artillery, so I took a real fine sight on the brass cover plate of his Winchester and squeezed off a round… just as he was coming up again. That chunk of lead hit where it was supposed to, knocking his rifle flying. He stood there for a second or two with a look of total disbelief. He looked down at himself, and then he looked at me and sat down hard.
I approached those rocks with a bit of hesitation. I wasn’t sure what shape he was in. He could have been dead, but I don’t take much for granted, unless I see it with my own eyes. I didn’t expect to see him sitting there grinning, but I didn’t expect to see him sitting there glassy eyed holding his belly either… a ricochet is a fearsome thing.
That ragged piece of hot mangled lead had caught him right below the breast plate. It must have opened his innards like a busted melon. That wasn’t what I’d planned, and I couldn’t undo it. All I wanted to do was wreck that rifle, but when a man takes up the outlaw trade; his chances of ever spending his old age in a rocker with grandkids all around him are slim at best. Same goes for those who go into the mountain man business.
I worked my way around the boulders so I could get to him. He wasn’t going to last long, but it wasn’t in me to just ride away and leave him dying. I’d sooner put a bullet in his brain than that. He was bleeding pretty heavy and hopefully he’d bleed out before the pain set in too bad.
“Take my word for it, Pete; I was just tryin’ ruin your rifle… Oh, I’d have shot you clean to kill you at anytime, but not this way.”
He choked a little and grimaced, and then said, “Yeah, I reckon I know that… at least you didn’t leave me out here afoot like that bastard Frank did… This whole thing was messed up from the start… but Rita figured how to break out of jail with that mushroom concoction…so we just kinda follered along.”
He didn’t say anything for a while and then he went on, “She got herself hooked up with that rancher and his family…. She said they was rich and would pay plenty to get their kid back…. Doubt she was ever gonna send him back alive… him being the one what put Frank in jail to begin with.”
“You got any notion where they’re headin’… Frank and Rita? I don’t reckon Jesse’s likely to live long either.” I asked.
“Rita was set on going to Denver City and becoming a lady… Frank, he wanted to go up to Cheyenne and open a saloon… They argued about that… nothin’ ever got settled… We did good at Cimarron… maybe four or five thousand… then… that Creede job was a lot more.” He kinda drifted off a little. He was bleeding bad.
“We was gonna split it up… soon as we shook the posse… then we all go separate ways… guess I won’t get mine.”
He coughed and grabbed my hand. His eyes were closed tight and from his face, I could see that he was in real pain. Gradually, he let up on my hand and asked if I would roll him a smoke. I took his tobacco and papers and fixed him a cigarette, stuck in his lips, and lit it. He took one draw from it and it fell from his lips. All I could do was pile some of those rocks on top of him and get out of there.
Pete had cost me an hour and a half of daylight that I had to make up. Well I had two good horses and a clear trail ahead.
Chapter 14
The trail was clear because Frank wasted no time looking over his shoulder. I had him pegged as full speed ahead at all times kinda fella. The only planning he seems to have done was plant Rita in Casa del Blue, where she could be getting information to him. I pretty much think the whole thing may have been her idea anyway. Whoever came up with it was having a bad thinking day.
Everything else they had done was just to barge in and start shooting, so I didn’t figure they’d be changing methods at this late date. I had the saddle on the roan with the extra horse following along behind, so we traveled as fast as the terrain would allow. I was able to pick up Frank’s trail without much problem. He was flat flying up that little hint of a trail, riding one horse and leading the other.
I didn’t think it was prudent to go ripping and tearing around in these mountains and hills. A trail going up a hill can be just as deadly as one going up a mountain. A fella who rides his horse over the edge of a hundred foot bluff, is gonna be just as dead as a fella who rides off a thousand foot cliff. The only difference is, he’ll have a few more seconds to enjoy the ride coming off the higher one.
The trail was, as I’d said before, rarely used, overgrown, and mostly uphill. To say it was steep would be an understatement, since it started down in that riverbed five hundred feet below. It was full of twists and turns, but I had no trouble following the trail of two horses of which, Frank Dooly was hell bent on breaking legs or necks. With all the roots, rocks and brush that had taken over the old trail, I expected to find a dead horse at any time… Frank was in a hurry.
I found where he had spent the night. You can tell a lot about a man from his habits, and from the look of the camp, Frank had some mighty poor habits. He was one to just throw a camp together. His fire was over sized for his need. The cooking was done in the cans. I found burnt out bean and beef cans. Cigarette butts were everywhere, and I found a broken bottle of Old Skull Buster near the fire.
More importantly, I found no indication that he had unsaddled the horses. He had left them saddled and tied to trees. Whether they got water or not, I had no way of knowing. Man treats his animals like that won’t have them ready when he needs them.
It was mid afternoon before I reached the main trail again. I figured, I’d moved up trail about twelve or more miles, and maybe twice that much the way I went. The trail was pretty well chewed up by the posse, but I was able to pick out the fresh tracks left by Frank’s horses heading north. He’d be likely to run into that posse on their return, so I wouldn’t worry about him getting away.
What I didn’t see was any sign of Ben or Rita… or Jesse. Since it didn’t look like Ben had come through, I headed south to see if I could pick up where he left the trail.
I’d only gone about three miles when I saw his blaze on a pine. It told me that Rita and Jesse had peeled off to the west, and Ben had followed. So the first two had gone east and these two had gone west. I expected to find Ben up there somewhere burying Jesse. I’m not a great thinker, and I ain’t read too many books, but I can read folks pretty darned good.
If they’d got twelve thousand from the Creede bank and four thousand from the Cimarron bank… well that added up to a fair week’s wage. That’d be too much money to be sharing with the likes of Pete and Jesse. It would be enough to set Rita up in a fancy house in Denver and Frank could build him a saloon there. I was just about to convince myself to cut across country and head for Denver, when I remembered that I wasn’t running this operation… the US Marshal’s office was.
The trail they had chosen was a far cry from the spooky damp riverbed that Frank and Pete had taken. This one was higher and dryer. It seemed to want to cling to the side of a mountain and ignore the valleys below. I spotted several side trails shooting off to the left. I figured leading off to someone’s diggings, or maybe some fella had him a cabin up there without neighbors. That sounded good to me.
Coming over the shoulder of a mountain, the trail dipped into a wooded valley. The trail wandered through a cluster of mighty big hills. They couldn’t be called mountains, but towering five or si
x hundred feet above the valley, over two miles in length… they were mighty big hills.
I rode with my rifle at the ready because this looked to me like ambush country. Of course, I wasn’t figuring on Ben to be ambushing me, and he was the one up ahead of me. But something sure had the hairs on the back of my neck standing at attention. Dog didn’t like it anymore than I did, and he’s always had a pretty good sense for that sort of thing.
He was sniffin’ and snuffin’ the air like he had picked up a vagrant sent and was trying to find the source. The hair on the back of his neck was standing stiff as a wire brush. He took off running and I put the spurs to the roan. It was fairly open where we were, but I could see where the trail took a dip and a turn into a thick stand of pine.
I came over the lip of a washed out gully then down and to the right. The trail went up the other side a short distance down stream. There wasn’t any water in it, but had there been it would have been down stream. Up and over the top I went, with Dog leading the way and that extra horse bringing up the rear.
Up ahead I could see a clearing just beyond that stand of pines. At the edge of the clearing, Dog came to an abrupt stop and again raised his hackles. He hunched his shoulders and lowered his head but did not sniff the ground like he normally would when tracking.
He started a low rumble deep in his throat, which let me know he didn’t like the place one little bit. I dismounted and ground hitched the roan. Jacking a shell into the chamber, I took cover behind a tree and took a long and thorough look. The clearing took up about a half acre, and it was on two levels. For all practical purposes, it looked like someone had cleared it to build a cabin.