Brian Coyle was not unaware, however, of the growing strain among the people of the wagon train. He had observed the tightening of discipline in Massey’s company with approval, but now he thought of it with misgiving.
If Sperry was right and Elam Brooks had been murdered, the situation was indeed serious. It was characteristic that Coyle did not even consider calling upon Colonel Pearson, for in the days on the march, he had come to recognize the notable inefficiency that characterized Pearson. He was one of those men who mean well but have small intelligence, and no ability to cope with the unexpected. His entire life had been lived to a series of set rules, according to a program, and any deviation upset him severely. He was by no means typical of his profession, yet there were many like him, Coyle knew.
As he walked toward the wagons of C Company, Coyle’s footsteps slowed. The first break had been the presence of Abel Bain and his attempted attack on Sarah Stark. The attempted killing of Bardoul had been the natural outcome of that, yet it had a place in the larger scheme, too. The personnel of the law enforcement group, the attempt to collect all the guns in the train, the searching of Sperry’s wagon and then the killing of Elam Brooks. All these had been signs of something. Yet, Coyle realized that without Bardoul’s suspicions, he might have considered them isolated instances bearing no relation to anything, past or future.
Herman Reutz was sitting on a box near a dying fire. He smiled at Coyle. “Sit down, Brian. I’m helping my fire die.” Then he saw Coyle’s face. “What’s wrong?” he asked quickly.
Brian Coyle sat down and drew out his pipe. Then, in as few words as possible, he explained.
At once, Reutz got up and went to his wagon, then to a second wagon. He walked back and sat down. “Gone!” he said. “Every last bit of it! And I all but emptied my rifle at a herd of antelope today!”
“We’ve got to do something, Herman. We’ve got to think fast and act faster.”
“We can be wrong about this,” Reutz said, “we can be wrong. Bardoul warned us, but this story about him being Boyne upset us all. It threw me off, I know.”
Coyle nodded. “Nonsense, of course. I checked with both Phillips and Pearson. He could not have been Sim Boyne. He suggested that Massey was Boyne.”
“Well,” Reutz said, “the description would fit. They are both big men. We’d best work out a plan of action, but we’re going to be handicapped by the fact that we don’t know how much time we have.”
“You think they would actually try to take over the wagon train? They would have to kill us all!”
Reutz nodded. “The only way for them. If Massey is Sim Boyne we could expect nothing else, anyway. The man is a brute. Worse, he’s a fiend. Not just a killer, he’s a sadistic murderer. I know something about him.”
“We outnumber them, and most of us have some ammunition left. If we moved now, we might swing it.”
“Nothing we can do, actually,” Reutz protested. “We don’t have any evidence, nothing but suspicion and the fact that our ammunition has been stolen. It might be Hammer. That ammunition would sell to the Indians, you know. We’re going to have to move carefully. As far as that goes, they probably have spies in our own companies.”
“Bardoul was of the opinion, you told me several days ago, that if they struck it would not be until we reached the basin or at least got around the tip of the Big Horns. That would give us some time.”
“A little.” Reutz knocked out his pipe. “Coyle, we’d better talk to the few men we know we can trust. We’d better make a careful check and see that each man has some ammunition, and we had better have a talk with Bardoul.”
Matt Bardoul flexed his fingers and palmed his gun. He was fast but not fast enough. He turned and started back to camp. He was almost there when he heard a woman scream and a sudden rattle of shots.
The sounds came from somewhere off in the darkness away from the wagon train, and instantly, he thought of the wagon. He ran for his horse, and swung into the saddle. He glimpsed Tolliver buckling on a gun belt and running for his own horse. From all over the camp, other men gathered. When Bardoul raced out across the prairie toward the sound of the shots, at least twenty mounted men rode after him.
There was a shot … another shot, and then silence. The pound of their horses’ hooves was the only sound.
Matt was first to reach the small fire by the wagon. If Indians they had been, they were gone now. At first he saw nothing but spilled flour and beans, but then he saw Joe Rucker, sprawled on his face, a bullet through his arm, and another through his head.
Under the wagon, lying on her back, was Joe’s brother … no longer a brother even in name, for her shirt was torn, and there could be no doubt that Abel Bain had been right. Matt, knelt beside her, and immediately realized that she at least was alive.
Matt glanced around at the crowding men. “Stark, you an’ Lute rig up a stretcher, will you? We’ll take her back where the girls can lend a hand.”
Clive Massey shoved through the crowd. Stahl and Hammer were with him, and the first thing Bardoul saw as he straightened up was a livid scratch across Stahl’s cheek. The man was still panting, and his pupils were dilated.
“We’ll take her to my company!” Massey said. “One of the girls will come there to care for her.”
Bardoul looked at him, the firelight on their faces. This could be it, he thought, and swollen hands or not, he was ready. “No,” he said, “the arrangements have already been made. The Stark girls can care for her, and they need not leave their own wagons. That would be much better.”
“Who’s running this wagon train?” Massey demanded. Matt noticed how his right hand was held and a curious light came into his eyes.
“Pearson, supposedly,” Matt said, “but this girl goes to the Stark wagon.”
“I think, maybe,” Massey said coldly, “we’d better settle this question of authority right now!”
“Sure,” Bardoul was relaxed and easy. “Any time you like. Let’s get Coyle and Pearson here first, and Reutz.”
“I’m here,” Herman Reutz said quickly.
“So am I.” Coyle stepped forward and Colonel Pearson was behind him.
Bardoul gave Massey no chance to speak. “This girl,” he said quietly, “goes to the Stark wagon. Clive Massey has made it a question of authority.” He drew his commission from his pocket and handed it to Colonel Pearson. “Tell them what that says.”
Pearson started to read, then he looked up, blank astonishment written on his usually composed features. “Why, this says he is a Deputy United States Marshal!”
“What?” Clive Massey leaped forward and ripped the paper from Pearson’s hand.
As he read, his face slowly paled and his nostrils dilated. When he looked up, a living hatred blazed in his eyes. “So?” he said. “A deputy marshal? I reckon that authority exceeds mine.”
He started to turn away, as all eyes stared at Bardoul, but then he turned and walked back, coming close. “Just what would a deputy marshal be doing on this wagon train?”
Matt Bardoul met his gaze with a taunting smile. “Why, Massey, I’m here to preserve the law, first an’ foremost. With a gun if need be. Also, I’m on a special sort of mission. It seems there’s a crazy killer loose in the northwest, two of them, in fact, and I’m to find them and bring them in. I’m talkin’,” he added, “about Dick Ryder and Sim Boyne!”
He turned suddenly. “Stahl, how did you get that scratch on your cheek?”
All eyes swung to the burly renegade. He started, then glared left and right. “Runnin’ through the brush. Didn’t I, Hammer?”
Hammer grinned at Bardoul. “He sure did, Marshal. He sure did.”
Brian Coyle was looking thoughtfully at Bardoul. The crowd started to break up and drift back toward the wagon train. Coyle walked over to Matt. “Why didn’t you tell us you were a marshal?”
“The appointment only reached me at Fort Reno,” he said. “It was following me. I didn’t even know it was going through.”
Coyle started to speak, but Massey was still standing there, watching him, so he turned away. This would change everything. It would simplify things. If they could get together under a marshal, and then … he walked to his horse and mounting, started for camp.
Clive Massey looked after him, then followed Stahl and Hammer to their own horses.
Matt Bardoul was the last to go, yet when he reached his horse he saw there were two horses, and beside his stood a big man who waited with his thumbs tucked in his belt. Who waited for him alone and in the darkness.
10
Matt walked up to the horses moving quickly, his hands ready. The dark figure moved and Bardoul’s guns were in his hands. Then he relaxed, for the waiting man was Bill Shedd.
“That was fast,” Shedd admitted, “but you’ll have to be faster. Them swole hands won’t help much!”
“What’s on your mind, Bill?”
“Plenty.” Shedd put a hand on the pommel of his saddle. “Bardoul, I wanted to tell you that you won’t have to look any further for Dick Ryder.”
“You mean, you … ?”
“No,” Shedd replied, “I’m not him. Dick Ryder is dead. He was murdered, shot in the back with a shot gun, by Sim Boyne. I’m Dick’s half brother.
“He was a bad man, Dick was. He was a mean one. Away from home, that is. My Ma married Dick’s old man, an’ we growed up alongside one another. Dick, he was always mighty fine around home, done his work, an’ treated Ma swell, but he got to trailin’ with a bad crowd an’ he got meaner an’ meaner. Killed folks, robbed them, and done a lot of mighty bad things. Like I said before, he deserved killin’, but he didn’t deserve gettin’ shot in the back by a man worse than him.”
“You’re looking for Sim Boyne?”
“Yes, I am. I’m killin’ him when I find him.”
“You said you’d know him?”
“That’s right. He’s got a couple of bullet scars. One under his belt just over the hip bone, an’ one where a bullet went through the muscles of his neck on the right side, just where the neck joins the shoulder.”
Matt nodded. “That will help.” He swung into the saddle. “Bill, do you think Clive Massey is Sim Boyne?”
Shedd spat. “I don’t know,” he said thoughtfully, “I don’t know. He’s a smooth one, that Massey, smooth an’ hard to figure.”
“Did you know anything about their plans out here?”
“Not much. Only they had an idea of locatin’ someplace in the Big Horn country an’ raidin’ wagon trains and the minin’ towns. I can tell you something else, too. They were making a rendezvous with some other men from the bad crowd out here, somewheres. I don’t know just where.”
Morning found Matt Bardoul riding off on the flank once more. If there had been a rendezvous arranged with other bad men it might well be that within a few days they would come up with this group and the honest men of the wagon train would be outnumbered. As things stood, in a prolonged battle, all the advantage lay with the renegades due to their stealing of ammunition. In a sudden strike, the advantage of numbers might make the need for ammunition almost nil. If they waited, however, until they met this group that waited some place ahead, the doubtful advantage of numbers would be lost.
There could be little time now. Tonight they would bed down on Clear Creek, and the next day would bring them up to the ruins of Fort Kearney, destroyed by Red Cloud’s Sioux some years before. They would be entering a wilder and lonelier country where the prospects of a successful attack by the renegades would be vastly improved.
Emerging from some trees along the river, he started back toward the wagon train and saw Jacquine Coyle riding along a ridge. He touched a spur to the dun and raced to catch up with her. She turned as he galloped up, and for an instant he was afraid she was going to ride away.
“Jacquine …”
She interrupted. “Has Father talked to you? He wants to, I’m sure.”
He stopped, cut off in what he had started to say. She kept her face averted. “It’s something about the wagon train, I don’t know what. He talked with Ben Sperry last night.”
The wind played lights and shadows with the grass. Matt put a hand on the dun’s neck. He knew how imperative it was to talk to Brian Coyle, and to Herman Reutz, but he wanted nothing so much as to talk to Jacquine now, to tell her what he felt, what he really thought. There was something in him that demanded to be said, that needed to come out of him. For a fleeting moment behind the wagon on that other evening, he had felt that she was with him, that she felt as he did, that she responded to him.
Curiously, he was tied up inside. Words did not come easily to him when he felt most deeply, and somehow he always found himself saying the things that meant nothing, and leaving all the things in his heart unsaid and alone there. There was that in him that would not allow him to speak what he felt unless he was sure that this girl felt the same. There were so many words, and all of them futile. Yet women put much faith in words, and the things that were said to them.
He wanted to speak his mind now, but he found himself wordless when he rode beside her. Yet there was something fine about her, some little thing in the way she carried herself, the lift of her chin, her lips… .
“Matt,” she said suddenly, incongruously, “we know so little about each other although we have talked a good deal. I don’t know what you think, what you believe, I know almost nothing about you.”
Suddenly, he felt better. He grinned. “Why, what is there to know about any man? And how can a man tell you what he is? Words usually just serve to cover up what a man thinks, or maybe they just antagonize him and make him defend ideas he never gave a thought to. I reckon it’s hard to know what to believe. A man hears so many things, and he reads so many things.
“If there is something, though, if there is … well, I believe in the things I love … the feel of a good horse under me, the blue along those mountains over yonder, the firm, confident feel of a good gunbutt in my hand, the way the red gold of your hair looks against your throat.
“The creak of a saddle in the hot sun and long riding, the way you feel when you come to the top of a ridge and look down across miles and miles of land you have never seen, or maybe no man has ever seen. I believe in the pleasant sound of running water, the way the leaves turn red in the fall. I believe in the smell of autumn leaves burning, and the crackle of a burning log. Sort of sounds like it was chuckling over the memories of a time when it was a tree.
“I like the sound of rain on a roof, and the look of a fire in a fireplace, and the embers of a campfire and coffee in the morning. I believe in the solid, hearty, healthy feel of a fist landing, the feel of a girl in my arms, warm and close. Those are the things that matter.
“Sure, I’d like to have a place of my own, and some kids. I remember one day I was walking through the streets back in Dodge and a little boy asked me if I was Howard’s father.
“Well, now. I hadn’t any idea who Howard was, but I looked down at that kid and told him, ‘Son, I’m not Howard’s father, I’m not anybody’s father!’ But you know, I felt bad about that all day! It kind of got to me. Maybe I’m too sentimental.”
“No, Matt,” Jacquine said softly, “I don’t think you are.”
They rode on, and the dry grass whispered to their horses’ hooves, and the tall peaks of the Big Horns gathered cotton blossoms of cloud. The mountains were nearer now, a bold rampart dividing the valley of the Powder from the basin of the Big Horn.
He stared down at his hands, still swollen from the hammering he had given them. He flexed and unflexed his fingers, trying to work the stiffness out of them and regain the speed and dexterity he might need at any moment. His side still bothered him, but his face felt better. Remembering Massey’s broken nose, he smiled grimly. That broken nose would be with him for awhile, and there would be a scar on his cheekbone.
They halted on the crest of a hill and glanced back along the long, winding column of the wagons. Matt studied them
thoughtfully. Tomorrow Massey’s company would be taking the lead, and his own would be last. An idea was born, and he turned it over thoughtfully, planning ahead.
Whatever was to be done must be done soon. The people of the wagon train could be endangered no longer, and there was a surly aggressiveness showing itself more and more from the renegades that made up Massey’s company. He had held off this long because of Jacquine, but he could do so no longer. If there was a rendezvous ahead, as Bill Shedd believed, they might soon be seriously outnumbered.
There was a fort at the junction of the Big Horn and the Little Horn. They might strike out for there and replenish their ammunition, and then go on. It was a question of how much time they had, or how successful a break they could manage.
The difficulty now was that the fort lay due north of them, and the route of the wagon train lay in the same direction for at least three days longer. To break away from the train now would only mean to separate themselves at a distance of a few miles, and to follow a parallel course. The fact that he was a Deputy United States Marshal was of no advantage for the moment. He was aware, however, that if Clive Massey was Sim Boyne, that the man would now be out to kill him as quickly as possible.
Tonight they would bed down on Clear Creek. The following day, with rougher travel, they should make the site of ruined Fort Phil Kearney. A day’s travel beyond was Goose Creek, and beyond that, the Tongue. If they were to make a break, the Tongue would be the logical place, for it would be about there that the wagon train would begin to trend further and further west.
Matt scowled at the sunlit plains. If only he knew where the rendezvous with the other outlaws was to be! If it came sooner than the Tongue, it could mean a surprise or a pitched battle. Yet knowing, as Massey now must know, that the honest men of the train were alerted, would he try an attack when there was such great danger of encountering a patrol from the fort? From Fort No. 1?
Novel 1950 - Westward The Tide (v5.0) Page 17