The Savage Trail

by Jory Sherman

  Mitchell Dooley, on the top step, his lanky frame sprawled there with legs outstretched, looked up from the stick he was whittling on and squinted into the glare.

  “Yeah, it looks like Bender.”

  "Bender? The damned mole who never sees the light of day?”

  “It’s Bender, all right. Seldom seen in sunlight.”

  Roy Kerrigan laughed and swatted at a bluebottle fly that buzzed around his face, attracted by the dried remnants of eggs and biscuits clinging to his chin. He was a redheaded string bean of a man, with blue eyes so pale they looked as if they were coated with whitewash. With his hat pushed to the back of his head, the scars on his face stood out in stark relief, blanched serpentine scrawls on weathered, suntanned skin.

  “He must have something pretty big in his craw,” Dooley said, drawing one leg up and putting a boot on the bottom step. He set the stick down on the edge of the porch and closed the blade of his barlow pocketknife. The bluebottle sizzled around his face and he waved it off with a tanned, leathery hand.

  The two men waited for Bender to ride in close enough for positive identification. Dooley turned his head to look at Kerriganand nodded.

  “Yep, it’s Roscoe hisself,” Roy said. “In full daylight. If that don’t beat all.”

  Mitch chuckled. They had never seen Bender except at night and seldom away from the Frontier. They often joked about Bender being a mole who stayed underground all of his life.

  “Glad I found you boys to home,” Roscoe said as he rode up.

  “Light down, Roscoe,” Mitch said. “Get out of the sun beforeyou shrivel up and melt down like a damned candle.”

  “Don’t have time, Mitch, and neither do you two. Roy, you and Mitch want to make a little quick money?”

  “How much money?” Dooley asked before Kerrigan could answer.

  “A double sawbuck in it for each of you,” Bender said.

  “Who we got to kill?” Kerrigan said, a flicker of a smile on his lips.

  The two crows took flight when one of the horses rushed the fence to scare them off. Their caws filled the air as they flapped away like two scraps of black crepe caught up in a whirling dust-devil spout.

  “A couple of cockleburs under Hobart’s saddle.”

  “Ollie in town?” Dooley asked.

  “He’s leavin’, and he doesn’t want to look over his shoulder.These jaspers will be ridin’ in from Denver.”

  “When?” Kerrigan asked.

  “Sometime today or by mornin’, I reckon. Ollie didn’t reallyknow. He wants me to go with you two.”

  “We get to keep any money they got on ’em?” Kerrigan asked. “Rifles, saddles, pistols, horses?”

  “Yep. One’s an old coot, the other a young pecker. Ollie wants his pistol. I got to take that, is all.”

  Dooley slid down the steps, stood up on the ground.

  “Just the young feller’s pistol?”

  “That’s right, Mitch.”

  “How come?”

  “Proof we kilt ’em both, I reckon.” Bender brushed a fly away from his face. The fly shone blue and green, like a tiny jewel, in the sun. His horse shook its head as the fly dove past its eyes with an angry buzz of its wings.

  Kerrigan rose from his chair and stepped to the edge of the porch.

  “Kinda peculiar way of showin’ proof, ain’t it, Roscoe?”

  “I don’t know,” Bender said.

  Kerrigan pulled a ready-made from his shirt pocket, fished out a box of matches, struck one, and lit the cigarette.

  “Why not both pistols? How’s Ollie to know we kilt both of ’em?”

  “I guess he figures if we get the kid’s pistol, we’d have to kill the old man, too.”

  “That’s a lot of shit,” Kerrigan said.

  “Look, if you don’t want the job, say so,” Bender said. “We ain’t got a whole lot of time here. I got grub in my saddlebags, a bottle of whiskey for when the job’s finished, and money to pay you boys. Hell, I don’t know how long we’re going to have to wait. These two jaspers could be ridin’ into town right this minute.”

  “Let’s do it, Roy,” Dooley said. “Hell, we’re turnin’ to rust a-settin’ here on the porch.”

  “I’m game,” Kerrigan said. “It just sounds like a funny deal to me.”

  “You got the money on you, Roscoe?” Dooley said.

  “I got it on me and I’ll pay you when those two are laid out on the ground.”

  “Give us fifteen minutes or so to saddle up,” Dooley said.

  Twenty minutes later, the three men rode off across the railroad tracks and took to the Denver road. Kerrigan and Dooley were reading tracks, mostly carts and wagons, one or two single horse prints, some going south, a few north into town.

  “Don’t look like they come this way yet,” Kerrigan said afteran hour’s ride.

  “Let’s find a good place to wait in ambush,” Dooley said. “Want to flank the road?”

  “If we can find a good spot.”

  “Got to be close enough to see them in the dark,” Bender said. “Might have to wait that long.”

  “I don’t see too good in the dark,” Dooley said.

  “You don’t see too good in the daytime, Mitch,” Kerrigan cracked.

  “I see enough of you to make me plumb sick to my stomach,Roy.”

  Bender scanned both sides of the road. There was plenty of cover, most of it some distance from the road. He ignored the banter between Kerrigan and Dooley. His nerves were stretched taut as skin on a drumhead.

  “Moon’ll be up tonight,” Kerrigan said, pointing to some rocky spires and jumbled rocks standing on broken ground some thirty yards from the road. “That looks to be a likely place. What do you think, Mitch?”

  “Might be good if all three of us can take cover there. Have to hobble the horses some ways away, though.”

  Bender breathed a sigh of relief.

  “You boys have done this more’n once,” he said.

  “You’re lookin’ at the Drygulch Twins, Roscoe,” Dooley said.

  “The Bushwhacker Boys,” piped up Kerrigan.

  Bender didn’t laugh as they rode toward the rock outcrop-pings,the wind-sculpted spires.

  “Not a bit of shade,” Kerrigan said as they rode up.

  “That’s what your damned hat’s for, Roy,” Dooley said.

  “Roscoe, you should have brought some shade with you, a tarp or somethin’,” Kerrigan said.

  Bender looked up at the sky. The sun was at its zenith, straight overhead. High noon.

  “Maybe we won’t have to wait all that long, Roy.”

  “Well, you cast enough shadow, Roscoe. I’ll just hunker up under your fat old butt.”

  Dooley laughed.

  Kerrigan led the horses some distance away, until he could no longer see the hiding place. He hobbled each of them and walked back, carrying his rifle and an extra bandanna.

  They sweated and waited for several hours, watching the road. Few people passed. Those who did never noticed them, and none from the south fit the description Ollie had given Roscoe.

  The sun fell away in the sky and finally began to paint shadows that pointed east. The shadows grew long and the last of the heat shimmers faded away. The western sky was ablaze with a fiery sunset that hung there beyond the MedicineBows like some brilliant painting fashioned from iron and smoke.

  “Where in hell are them two?” Kerrigan said as he lit another cigarette. “All the shade’s on the other side of these damned rocks.”

  “You’ll be freezin’ your balls off, Roy, in another half hour,” Dooley said.

  Kerrigan wiped the sweat off his rifle with one of his bandannas.He blew smoke into the still, dry air.

  Bender chewed on a dry biscuit and swallowed water from his canteen.

  Dooley kept putting his ear to the ground, listening for hoofbeats.

  The silence and the dark overcame the three men and still they waited. It was cool and the stars winked and blinked from far out in spa
ce. The moon rose, ever so slowly, and the men flexed their toes inside their boots to get their blood working.

  They kept waiting. And watching. And listening.

  Mitch and Roy were ready to kill and have that drink of whiskey that Roscoe had promised them.

  13

  BEN HELD ON TO HIS SADDLE HORN WITH BOTH HANDS. HE swayed in the saddle, half asleep, nodding, then jerking back awake as Dynamite plodded on under a canopy of stars and a bright sailing moon.

  “Ben, you’re going to fall if you don’t stay awake,” John said.

  “Why in hell can’t we stop and get some damned sleep, Johnny?”

  “We can’t stop because Hobart didn’t stop.”

  “There’s no need for this.”

  “I’m not going to be bested by that bastard, Ben, so stay awake.”

  “I’m tryin’, John. How come you’re not sleepy?”

  “I am sleepy, but here, bite on one of these.”

  John reached into his pocket. Ben heard some clicking sounds. A moment later, John handed him something.

  “What is it?” Ben asked.

  “A coffee bean. I got some out of my saddlebag about two hours ago. I didn’t know if it would work or not, but I’ve eaten three or four and I don’t feel as sleepy. I’ve got more if that one doesn’t work.”

  Ben put the bean in his mouth, worried it around. He bit down on it. The bean was hard as a rock. John heard the sound of Ben’s teeth trying to crack the bean.

  “It’ll take a while, Ben. Just keep it wet and keep crunching.”

  “Are you foolin’ me, John?”

  “Try it, Ben.”

  “Where’d you learn about this little trick, Johnny?”

  “Ma told me not to drink coffee at night. She said it would keep me awake. I tried it once, drinking coffee after supper. And she was right. I couldn’t get to sleep. So I thought if we couldn’t boil coffee from horseback, maybe there was somethingin those beans that sparked a man’s blood or brain and would keep me awake.”

  “If that don’t beat all,” Ben said and crunched down on the bean again.

  After a while, Ben asked for another bean. John gave him two.

  “It works, I think,” Ben said. “Or maybe just tryin’ to soften that bean enough to chew it is what’s keepin’ me awake.”

  John said nothing, but smiled in the darkness. He was thinking about his mother and the smell of coffee in the morningwhen he was a small boy. She would have the pot boiling before either he or his father was awake and the aroma was pleasant. It wafted through the house and both father and son knew that breakfast would be on the table before sunup.

  There would be toasted bread and marmalade, fresh buttermilkchilled in the springhouse, and sometimes bacon and griddle cakes and sorghum, churned butter and soft-boiled eggs, prunes or persimmons, ripe plums or blueberries, all laid out on their table like a king’s feast.

  Unbidden tears stung John’s eyes as he thought about his mother and his father. All he had now were memories and each recollection of bygone days pulled him deeper into a well of sadness, a consciousness of how much he had lost. Hobart had taken his mother and father away from him and there was no getting them back. There were just these empty holes in his life, an empty house, an empty room. An empty heart.

  “That helps, for sure,” Ben said.

  “Huh? What helps?” John pulled himself out of his reverie with a jolt, oddly disoriented. He had forgotten all about Ben and where they were, where they were going.

  “Them coffee beans. Almost like drinkin’ white lightnin’.”

  “Good. I’d hate like hell if you fell out of the saddle and broke your bones.”

  Ben chuckled.

  “The way I was, wouldn’t have broke nothin’, Johnny. I was limp as a wet bar rag.”

  “Stay with me, Ben. It’s only a while until daybreak.”

  “Yeah, I must have dozed pretty deep. I was dreamin’, dreamin’ of my brother, Leland. Poor Lee.”

  Suddenly, John felt very selfish. He had hardly thought of Leland, or his own sister, Alice, but only of his mother and father,murdered on that same day when Hobart and his savage minions attacked their mining camp. And he had hardly thought of his uncle Don. Donald French was his mother’s brother and had always been kind of like a big brother to him.

  “We . . . we lost some good people that day, Ben,” John said, realizing how awkward that sounded as soon as he had said it. “Damned good people.”

  “Lee had his best years ahead of him. And little Alice, your kid sister. I can’t think of her without chokin’ up and tears comin’ to my eyes.”

  “We better not talk about this, Ben, or we’ll never get to Cheyenne. We’ll have to stop and pray for all those folks we lost, all those now dead and gone.”

  “Yeah, Johnny, I know. Hard to forget, though.”

  “We won’t ever forget, Ben. Ever.”

  They were silent for a time, the horses rolling along in an easy walking gait under a star-filled sky that seemed even more immense and mysterious now that their thoughts had turned to their dead kin. Way off in the distance, a pack of coyotes started yipping and trilling, their chromatic cries risingand falling like some surreal chorus in an outdoor cathedral,their eerie calls sounding like lost souls in both men’s tortured hearts. The belling continued for several moments and then faded away, leaving only the overtones humming in their minds along that desolate road. Shadows loomed up and vanished, pewter landscapes appeared, so silent and bleak it felt as if the earth had swallowed up all hope, all goodness, all clear light, leaving only sheets of hammered iron lying in the bare stretches, dead plants and ghostly shapes in between, like small islands on a vast, empty sea.

  John knew that the closer they got to dawn, the more dangeroustheir journey would be. Not only were he and Ben tired, but the light would become trickier just before the sun came up, when the stars began to fade and the moon was setting. He did not know how far they were from Cheyenne, but he knew the horses were eating up the miles at a steady pace.

  Ahead, he thought, Hobart and Rosa Delgado could be waiting in ambush, ready to pick them off with rifles. Or Hobartcould have met up with cronies in Cheyenne and returned to bushwhack them before they even got to the settlement. These were worries he kept to himself because he didn’t want to alarm Ben. But his senses were prickling as the night began to age and he could feel changes in the temperature.

  “I wonder if we might not want to get off this road until we get to Cheyenne,” Ben said an hour later.

  “Have you been reading my thoughts?” John asked.

  “You got that same feeling, Johnny?”

  “What feeling?”

  “About bein’ the onliest ones on this road and it bein’ dark as pitch. Hobart could be waiting in the brush for us, him and that Mexican gal.”

  “It occurred to me. The closer we get to dawn, the harder it’s going to be to see ahead of us.”

  “Yeah, and might not see nothin’ until it’s too late,” Ben said.

  “Wouldn’t hurt to ride over some rough country until sunup. Keep us awake.”

  “Yeah. Might just save our lives, too,” Ben said.

  The two men turned their horses to the east and got off the road.

  “Just let the horses pick their way through this brush,” Ben said. “Take it slow.”

  “Good idea,” John said.

  AFTER A TIME, THE SKY IN THE EAST BEGAN TO PALE. JOHN RUBBED his eyes as his vision shifted. Clumps of grass and brush changed shape, lost all definition. He could no longer see the ribbon of road off to the west and the mountains seemed to move toward them, then retreat, each time he looked in that direction.

  Light spilled over the eastern horizon like cream rising in a bowl. Suddenly rocks and brush began to take shape and cast shadows. The mountains seemed to be etched out of darkness, and John could see the folds and contours of the foothills, the faint bristle of trees on the slopes. The dawn light moved slowly across the land, b
ringing nearby objects into sharp relief as if created on the spot by a master sculptor. He stretched in the saddle, yawned, and in his mind, he could hear a rooster crow, as if he had been transported back home to the family farm.

  “Gettin’ light,” Ben said, as if he had just now noticed it.

  “No,” John cracked. “I thought it was getting darker.”

  “Aw, Johnny. I guess I deserved that. But after all that dark, mornin’s like a miracle to me.”

  He, too, stretched in the saddle as if just awakening in his bed and John laughed at the mirror image of himself.

  “Keep a sharp eye out, Ben.”

  “Can’t make out much now.”

  “Just watch for anything out of place along that road yonder.”

  “Like what?” Ben asked.

  “Hell, I don’t know. Anything. Hobart. The Mexican woman. Somebody standing on a rock with spyglasses up to his eyes.”

  “A mite testy ain’t ye, Johnny? Like your nerves was rubbed raw with sandpaper.”

  “I’m tired, Ben. Bone tired.”

  “Hell, who ain’t? Horses, too. Look at ’em, all bleary-eyed and droopy. I was just wonderin’ what you expect me to see, that’s all.”

  “I’m not expecting you to see a damned thing, Ben. Just keep your eyes peeled, that’s all. I don’t trust Hobart.”

  “Me, neither,” Ben said and shot John a sullen glance. He made a show of looking ahead, over toward the road. He stood up in the stirrups, then sank back down in the saddle.

  John wanted to swat him.

  White streamers of clouds in the northern sky turned salmon, the air chilled a few degrees as the sun sucked up the cold from the ground, the scent of sagebrush and buffalo grass wafted to their nostrils. John scanned the horizon ahead, edged his horse toward the road for a better look at the way ahead.

  There were no wagons, no riders, no carts at that hour. Ben followed him and they rode parallel to the road.

  “Clean as a billiard ball,” Ben said after a time.

  “What?”

  “That road’s empty as a pauper’s pocket.”

  “Yeah. He won’t be on the road, Ben.”

  “Oh, where will he be? A-floatin’ like a hawk in that blue sky? Crawlin’ through the brush like a lizard?”