Something had alerted her, or at least pricked her interest. Dooley stared off in the direction the mare kept looking. Her front left hoof pawed the banks of the stream, and she snorted. Before the horse could whinny, however, Dooley quickly shot out his free hand and muzzled her.
“Shhhhhhh,” he whispered.
He wet his lips, which were already wet, and thought for a moment.
The wind blew toward him, and he knew the mare had caught the scent of something. But what? Wolf? Snake? Indians? General Grant? All four? Or something else?
A man can think hisself into doin’ a whole bunch of nothin’. The words of Old Man Buckshot Harrigan ran through his mind so clearly that Dooley almost thought the grizzled Texan stood right behind him, but Buckshot never whispered anything in anybody’s ear, and Dooley didn’t smell Bull Durham tobacco, just Nebraska grass and the stink of his own sweat and the pleasant odor of a fine mustang.
He swung into the Indian saddle.
“All right,” he told the mare, “let’s see what it is.”
Slowly, letting the mustang pick her own path, Dooley followed the creek, rifle across his lap, the hammer of the Henry already eared back so the .44 was ready to fire.
He felt the horse begin a climb, not that it was a climb like heading over the Sierras, but the mare left the creek, and snorted again. Dooley could hear the shouts now, the songs of Sioux warriors, and the whinnies that only a bay gelding named General Grant could make.
Dooley ran his tongue over his lips, which had quickly lost all the moisture from that creek. What rolled down his spine was not creek water, but sweat. His heart beat. He ground his teeth. And then he saw them.
Three of them. Three Sioux braves. Two had ropes over General Grant’s neck, the hemp burning the leather of their shirts as the two warriors struggled against the might of a fierce horse. General Grant reared, snorted, his eyes flashing anger, the front hooves slashing down toward the third Indian, who waved a blanket at the gelding and ducked.
One of the Indians with a rope yelled something at the blanket-shaker, who stumbled back, scrambled to his feet, and barked out something in his native tongue at the roper, who had lost his footing and was now being dragged across the ground on his knees. The other Indian with the rope pulled hard, and the one on his knees managed to regain his footing.
The blanket-shaker caught his breath and charged, waving the blanket, letting it sail, but General Grant ducked his head, and the blanket missed, landing on the other side. The ropers pulled, steering the gelding away, giving the third warrior time to gather up the blanket for another try.
Dooley knew what the Indian wanted, needed, to do. Put the blanket over the General’s head. A horse that could not see became, more or less, docile. That’s how many a bronc-buster worked. Blindfold the horse, get on the saddle, release the blindfold, and let ’er buck.
He pressed the stock of the Henry against his right shoulder and touched the trigger with his index finger as he lined up the sights. It would be easy enough, he told himself. The Indians didn’t hold any weapons. Shoot all three—just be careful you don’t hit General Grant by accident—and catch up the gelding. And put the spurs to that bay and get the hell out of Nebraska, as far away from the Dobbs-Handley Gang, and up to the Black Hills as quick as you can.
Yet he couldn’t pull that trigger.
Yes, the three Indians were unarmed—for the time being—but they were trying to steal Dooley’s horse, and the laws of white men—and, most likely, the laws of any Indian tribe—had decreed that stealing a man’s horse in the West meant a death sentence.
Dooley had seen a few horse thieves strung up.
But he had never strung any of them up. Certainly, he had never shot any of them dead.
Don’t think. React.
Dooley started to lower the rifle. He should just ride down there. He’d have the drop on them. He could get his horse, and ride off at a hard lope, leaving the Indians afoot.
Afoot?
That stopped him. Brought him back to sound reasoning. Those Indians had to have horses nearby. And he had heard singing a while back, and those Indians were too busy trying to stop General Grant from smashing their heads with hooves to be doing any singing.
Dooley swung around just in time to see one of the Sioux braves nocking an arrow on his bow. He spun the horse, brought the Henry back up, and this time had no trouble pressing down on that trigger. The Henry roared, the Indian dropped his bow and arrow, and doubled over, gut-shot.
Another arrow flashed past Dooley’s left ear, and he felt himself leaving the Indian pony. He hit the ground, rolled over, and shouldered the Henry as he worked the lever. The next brave came right at him, with another right behind him, and Dooley cut loose. Firing. Cocking. Firing. Cocking. Firing and cocking.
He forced himself to his knees, saw that he had put two more Sioux braves down, and he swung back toward General Grant and the three others. Those warriors had dropped ropes and blankets. Two were heading for their weapons, which he now saw a few yards away in the grass. The third had unsheathed a bone-handled knife and came at him, his face masked with war paint and grim determination.
Dooley aimed at the charging Indian’s chest, touched the trigger, and heard the almost deafening, heart-stopping click of the hammer striking . . . nothing.
He was empty.
Quickly, as the charging warrior shouted in triumph, Dooley brought his right hand out of the case-hardened lever, gripped the hot barrel. His left hand slid up from the walnut forestock, and he brought up the rifle, swinging it across, the stock catching the Indian’s head.
The blow brought down both Dooley and the Sioux, but only Dooley rose. He knew he had crushed that man’s skull. He did not try to pick up the rifle, but instead reached down and snatched the dead brave’s knife.
Dooley had never been in a knife fight. Oh, he had seen one or two, but that would do him no good now. Nor would the knife. Those two Indians were twenty or thirty yards away, and they were going for rifles. Dooley couldn’t throw a knife with any accuracy, and even if luck smiled on him, he would take out just one of the two men left.
He threw the knife anyway, watched it sail. It did not hit an Indian’s heart. It did not cover twenty or thirty yards. It went blade over handle a few arcs, before it landed in the dirt—maybe six feet in front of him. It didn’t even stick in the sod, but skimmed across the ground on its side.
Dooley came up to his feet, and, even though he came from a Yankee state, he let out the old Johnny Reb cry that Old Man Buckshot Harrigan screamed when he was drunk or having nightmares. He charged the two Indians with only his fists. He knew he’d be killed.
Guns roared. Dooley kept screaming, kept charging, and slowly began to stop, then hit the brakes, and felt himself tumbling.
The first brave jerked upright, turned around, and two more shots drove him to his knees, a final shot blew off the top of his head. The second warrior turned the old Sharps buffalo gun away from Dooley and roared. Then, seeing his comrade fall, understanding that he had fired his one shot, he tossed the empty rifle aside, folded his arms, and met his death like a brave Sioux warrior.
He started to sing his death chant, but he barely got out two or three words.
Bullets shattered the brave’s bone breastplate and drove him back. He tripped over the dead lookout’s body and landed on his butt, his legs out in front of him, and more bullets dropped his torso to the ground. As he rolled over onto his bloody back, maybe six or seven more bullets tore through his body.
By then, the Indian felt nothing.
Nor did Dooley as he turned around and sank to his knees.
He heard the hooves of horses, the curses and shouts of men—and one woman—and Dooley sighed, closing his eyes, sucking in air to fill his lungs.
“Hooray for ya, Dooley Monograms!” Zee Dobbs cried. “Don’t ya fret, boy, I’ll fetch yer hoss up right quick. I’m faster than lightnin’, ya know!”
Air rushed p
ast him as Zee Dobbs lived up to her word.
“By thunder!” came a man’s voice, and over the curses and jokes and the scalping of the dead warriors, Dooley almost broke into tears. He knew that voice. He knew what it meant.
“You’s the bravest cur that ever rode with me, boy!” Hubert Dobbs slapped Dooley’s back so hard, Dooley almost toppled over himself. “Do you gots any notion how many scalps we’ve done took off the bucks you left behind? Hell, Dooley, the army don’t need that pettifoggin’ blowhard Custer to kill no Sioux and send ’em bucks back to the reservation. They should hire you! You’d lick ’em all afore Independence Day!”
Dooley sighed, shook his head in defeat, and fell back on the grass.
“You see him, boys!” Dobbs bellowed. “This is the kind of men I needs to ride fer me. Brave and loyal and a deadlier shot than Doc Watson. Hooray! Hooray for Dewey Mulligans!”
Something wet and scratchy slapped his face. Dooley heard the whimper, the excited bark, and felt Blue’s tongue on his cheek again. Somehow, Dooley found the strength to lift his right arm and find the fur, to rub the dog.
Blue barked again.
At least, Dooley thought, I’ve got Blue with me. And as soon as Zerelda’s back, I’ll have General Grant, too.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Dobbs-Handley Gang celebrated that night . . . well, after they had covered a lot of ground to get as far away from any other Sioux warriors, or Cheyenne, or Pawnee, or lawmen that might be riding across Nebraska.
When the moon rose, they kept riding, but stopped around midnight and broke out the whiskey.
This wasn’t rotgut, but bona fide bourbon and rye that they had liberated from a gristmill on a river.
“That’s what kept us, boy,” Frank Handley said. “Else we woulda come ridin’ to save your hide and hair before then. Nice mill. Brick buildin’, good brush dam, a couple run of stone burrs. We even got us some grain for biscuits.”
“Dooley don’t care ’bout grain, Frank!” Hubert Dobbs said.
“Sure he do,” Handley argued. “No cowboy alive don’t care ’bout biscuits and corn bread.”
“He ain’t no cowboy,” Dobbs said. “He’s a gunfighter. A killer. A proud rider of the Dobbs-Handley Gang.”
“Well,” Handley relented, “it was as fine a mill as I’ve ever laid eyes on in this part of the country.”
“And Dooley don’t care nothin’ ’bout no gristmill, neither.”
“Neither do the owners of that mill,” Doc Watson said with a low, lifeless chuckle. “Not no more . . . since we paid ’em a visit.”
With a sigh that grew into a moan, Dooley put his right forearm over his eyes. He felt bone-tired, and did not need the rye to help him sleep, but he kept a grip on the bottle, just in case. He was riding with the worst bunch of killers in the West. Sure, he had ridden with Monty’s Raiders, but they said they were fighting for the Southern cause in the North, long before the Civil War actually broke out and even before John Brown started hacking slaveholding folks to death in Kansas and Missouri or John Reid’s Missouri bushwhackers started sacking Kansas towns like Lawrence.
Even the worst of Monty’s bunch was not a patch on the most timid killer who rode for Hubert Dobbs.
He brought the bottle to his mouth, managed to swallow some rye without drowning or coughing, and lowered his arm and the bottle. Someone took it from his grasp, and Dooley did not object. Not long after, when Zee broke out the mouth harp and her father began playing the spoons while Frank Handley sang “Old Dan Tucker,” Dooley Monahan went to sleep.
He wished those Indians had killed him. At least then he would know peace.
* * *
The boys slept in. They had had a hard day, a rough night, and a lot of good whiskey that their stomachs were not accustomed to.
Dooley’s eyes opened. His arm remained across his forehead. He realized he had slept on the ground and not in his bedroll. Not that he had been drunk. Just utterly exhausted. After wetting his lips, he looked at the sky. From the sun’s position, he guessed it to be eight or so in the morning—late for a cowboy, even later for a wanted man.
He could smell Blue’s rancid dog breath, and feel the air blowing against his ear. The loyal hound softly snored, and Dooley laughed softly, and turned around to look at the blue-eyed dog.
“Holy—” He sat bolt upright, his chest heaving, and watched as Zee Dobbs snorted, spit, and opened her eyes.
“Hey there, Dooley, my sweetheart,” Zee said, and hacked up some snot, spit it onto the spot where Dooley’s head had been resting, and pushed herself to a seated position as she farted, burped, and began to scratch one of her armpits.
I was not that drunk. I was not that drunk. I was not that drunk . . .
Dooley kept telling himself that. Hell, he had only had two or three slugs of rye. He felt better, though, realizing that his pants remained on and all of Zee’s filthy duds had not been removed.
“You sleep all right, precious?” Zee asked, and she pulled herself to her feet.
“Yeah,” Dooley answered, and looked around for his dog. Blue, whose breath did not stink as bad as Zee’s, lay curled in a ball near General Grant.
Other men began stirring, and Doc Watson started poking the embers and ashes of the fire.
“Monahan,” the gunman said as he stifled a cough. “Go fetch some dried dung. We got coffee to make before we ride.”
* * *
As they moved north, the land began to change more abruptly. You didn’t find many trees, but the land turned sandier, and hills sprang up and down, rivers flowed with grace, and they even camped ponds whose banks were green with cattails and canebrakes. The air felt cleaner here, crisper, though the wind still blew with a harshness and a raw, cutting edge that reminded Dooley of the danger around him.
It had been a long time since Dooley had ridden in the sandhill country. If he remembered right, if he could figure out his bearings, he guessed the Niobrara ran to the north, and beyond that the Missouri.
He must have guessed right, because when they settled in that afternoon to make an early camp, Hubert Dobbs made a vague gesture over his shoulder.
“Yankton’s yonder way,” he said. His head bobbed to the west. “Ogallala’s a fer piece that way. What do you boys think?”
Dooley tried to do some thinking himself. Yankton lay across the Missouri in Dakota Territory. It would have law, plenty of law, plenty of lawmen. It might be a good way for Dooley to get away from the rough crew he found himself among. Besides, Dooley remembered Ogallala all too well. Dobbs was not exaggerating by saying Ogallala was far from here. Ten days. Two weeks. But Ogallala could be wild and woolly, lawless as the Kansas City stockyards or Fort Worth, Texas, on a Saturday night. There might be a lawman in that cattle town, but probably not one with enough sand (or a lack of brains) to try to capture Frank Handley, Doc Watson, or Hubert Dobbs. On the other hand, Dooley remembered that there was an army post somewhere between here and Ogallala. Hartford? No. Hartstuff. That was it. Fort Hartstuff.
“We robbed the bank in Yankton two years ago, Hubert,” someone said.
“Yeah, but the bank would have more money by now,” another outlaw countered.
“What did the whores look like in Yankton?”
“Better’n you, Mort.”
“And cost the same as ’em wenches in Ogallala.”
“Ya see how democratics my pa is?”
Zee Dobbs had sidled up close to Dooley, who had smelled her before she got too close, but he had frozen, the way you did when you heard a rattlesnake whirling just under your boots. “Lets the boys takes part in the votin’, kinda like regular citizens does when they’s pickin’ a president or somethin’. Kinda nice, ain’t it, Doosey?”
“Uh . . . yeah. I reckon.”
“Not as nice as you is, though, love.” She giggled.
“Well,” Dobbs said. “I reckon y’all’ve decided then. Ogallala it is.”
The men cheered, although Dooley could n
ot recall anyone raising an arm or drawing lots or saying aye or nay.
He turned away from Zee and stared off to the north, toward Dakota, toward Yankton, toward possible salvation. Of course, Ogallala would be on his way to the Black Hills . . . like he had a snowball’s chance in Zee Dobbs’s hot breath of ever getting there.
“All right,” Dobbs said. “Atkinson.”
“Yeah, boss,” came a low drawl.
“You ride to Yankton. We’ll meet you on the South Fork of the Elkhorn. Take . . . um . . . take . . . er . . .”
“Let him take Doobie,” Zee said.
All chatter stopped. Everyone turned to stare at Zee Dobbs as if she had lost her mind. Then they looked at Dooley as if they were seeing a dead man. Finally, they turned to Ewing Atkinson. Dooley looked at him, too.
Six-foot-six, maybe, two hundred and fifty pounds. Dressed more like a farmer than a cutthroat, in bib overalls and a muslin shirt and two boots that did not match. His hat was straw, most of the brim ripped to shreds, and his beard was black and thick. The man’s face that was not covered with hair was free of scars. His massive fists, however, were covered with scars.
Across the denim of his overalls he wore two gun belts, and each belt held two holsters—all of them Walker Colts converted to take brass cartridges. Walkers were like cannon, in size and weight, and Dooley had seen only one of those ancient six-shooters before. And that owner had carried his in a saddle holster, not on his waist.
“You sure you want Dooley to go with Atkinson?” Hubert Dobbs asked softly, almost as if he were begging for his daughter to suggest someone else.
“Yep.” Zee placed her hands on her hips.
“But . . . well . . .”
“We’ve seen how Dewey can handle dumb red savages, Pa,” Zee said. “We’ve seen that he forks a horse right well, he ain’t afraid, and he’s got one smart dog and a real fine horse. We’ve seen he’s got the gumption to go after his horse and his dog when anybody else would find somethin’ better and safer to do. Ain’t that right?”
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