Eye of the Wolf

by Theodore V. Olsen

  The feeling had made her increasingly uneasy. It got to her more than she liked to admit. It was no way for a married woman, a respectable schoolteacher, to think or feel…

  Someone tapped at the kitchen door; she opened it.

  Ulring stood on the porch, hat in hand. His white-blond mane of hair and thick spike of beard gave him the look of a Viking corsair; his teeth were big and white when he smiled.

  "Morning, Beth. May I come in?"

  "Good morning, Frank. Of course… do have some coffee."

  She went to the stove to pour it, glad she could put her back to the room a moment. Her face felt slightly flushed, as if she'd been caught with her thoughts showing. Ulring settled his bulk in a creaking chair, smiled his thanks as she set the cup before him, and glanced at Dennis.

  "How's the job sound?"

  "What's the difference?" Dennis stirred his shoulders vaguely. "I need it."

  "You don't sound so sure."

  "I'm sure. I guess you were sure too."

  Ulring nodded impersonally. He raised his cup of scalding-hot coffee, drank it off and set the cup down. "If you're ready, let's hustle."

  Bethany said: "Frank, surely you've time for some breakfast."

  "Thanks, I've eaten. I want to show Dennis what his duties are, get him broken into the paperwork, and I've other things to handle. Be a busy day."

  Dennis gulped his food, pulled on his coat and he and Ulring went out. Bethany watched them from the window, the two men side by side as they headed down the street. And watching, felt her mind draw unwilling comparisons.

  Why not? Was it wrong to feel gratified—and yes, womanly and wanted—because a handsome man had found her pleasing? Did a mere feeling or two make her an adulteress? Her puritan ancestors would have said so: her conscience couldn't help groping for vindication. Memory ran a bitter eye back over the years with Dennis McAllister: his weaknesses, his little abuses, his petty jealousies. What was there left?

  Nothing. Dennis had killed it off himself. By his own efforts —or lack of effort. It had been a long time since she'd felt anything for him put pity. She bowed her head and closed her eyes, clenching her hands on the windowsill. Even pity, she was finding, had its limits…

  Claude Warhoon emerged from the cell block behind the sheriff's office, taking a few more idle swipes at the floor with his broom. Claude was a towering young man with a long, amiable, lantern-jawed face and hair so pale as to be nearly white.

  He halted in the center of the office, leaned on the broom, thumb-snapped one of his galluses, and looked at Ulring.

  "She's all swept out, Frank. Anything else this morning?"

  Ulring was seated at his desk, reading. He glanced up. "I reckon not. You holding down another job?"

  "Well, Rodriguez over at the stable asked if I could swamp out his place." Claude snickered. "Seeing Dennis ain't got that job no more."

  Dennis, sitting at a scarred table and bent grimly over some papers spread on its top, didn't even look up.

  "All right with me," Ulring said. "Nothing else wants doing here. Just see you get back by noon to feed the prisoners."

  "Yes, sir."

  Claude put away his broom, clamped on his hat and went out. The office was silent except for the quick scratching of Dennis's pen. Ulring idly pulled out his watch and noted the time—less than two hours to twelve—and thought: old Anse ought to be barging in here directly.

  A faint impatience rose like vapor in his belly. Not the impatience of second-thought panic or even of irritation at the delay—just the cool hackle-bristling excitement he'd always felt at any job in prospect, an eagerness to get on with it.

  He dropped his gaze to the open book before him: the Institutes of Gaius. The classic handbook of Roman law was typical of the curious byways into which Ulring's questing mind led him. Difficult reading was a good thing before a job; it braced and sharpened his wits, and ordinary qualms of anticipation never distracted him because he'd never known them.

  He lost himself once more in the old Roman scholar's finespun syllogisms. It may have been five minutes or fifteen minutes later that boots scraped on the walk outside and the office door was pushed open. Anse Burris, who owned a one-loop outfit upvalley a ways, came in like a raw wind. His face was set against the pain that ravaged his wizened body as he tramped over to Ulring's desk and halted truculently.

  "I got some cattle missing, Frank." One of the few not impressed by Ulring's authority or his reputation, he stared the lawman straight in the eye. "You want to get off your big shiny badge and come look?"

  Ulring closed his book and leaned back in his chair. "Maybe you better give me the story."

  Burris eased his tortured body some by leaning both fists on the desk. His skin was the polished brown of old oak leaves; his hair and whiskers were frosted by the years and hard living. "There's a meadow on the edge of my top range, Seldon's Park they call it, you know the place."

  "I know it."

  "Yestiday I had a jag of cattle up there. This morning they're gone."

  Ulring moved his shoulders. "Cal Bender's place is just east of yours. Were the brands haired over? Cal might have pushed 'em down with his stuff by mistake."

  "Them brands was clipped smooth as a baby's ass. Sure they was pushed, but not down by Cal's. They was drove north toward Lacy."

  "You trail 'em?"

  "Hell, I ain't followed no rough trail since I taken a fall off that spooky roan last summer. I wouldn't make it acrost the first ridge."

  Ulring steepled his fingers, nodding slowly. "Lacy, hunh? That's a hardcase mining town, over the county line too. By now those cows could be butchered, the hides buried and the quarters hung up in a mineshaft somewhere."

  "Horseshit, man! I know that. Nothing to keep you from trailing 'em far as the line… could be they never got drove across."

  "Reckon I figured that for myself, Anse." Ulring rose, walked to the hatrack and took down his pearl-gray Stetson. He looked at Dennis who'd left off writing to take in the conversation. "Want to come?"

  Surprise washed over Dennis's face. "Me? Sure… but all this paperwork—"

  "Leave it today, no rush. There's more than one side to law work… you won't see much of this side, but you ought to get some idea of it."

  "Do I take along a gun?"

  Dennis couldn't keep the eager note from his voice, and Ulring almost smiled: like any bored and jaded man, McAllister was on edge for some sort of excitement, any sort. He'd expected as much—but if his new deputy had expressed disinterest, he'd have made the suggestion an order.

  "Sure," Ulring said carelessly. He took a Winchester from the gunrack and tossed it to Dennis. "Shells in my desk, top drawer. Fetch a box for me too."

  Smiling a little, he chose his own favorite rifle from the rack and rubbed his palm along its scarred stock…

  At the livery Ulring claimed his own mount and ordered a horse saddled for Dennis. They joined old Bums, waiting in his buckboard at the tie rail, and the three rode out on the north road. The spring day was warm and full of the strong resinous smell of sun-touched pines. Anse guided the buckboard carefully over the stiff mud ruts, still only half-thawed from last night's plunging cold. Dennis rode up beside the wagon; Ulring jogged about twenty feet behind, slouched easily into his horse's gait. His eyes were half-lidded, slanting against Dennis's back: the faint smile came back to his lips.

  It would work. No reason it shouldn't. It would be easy.

  In an hour they achieved the headquarters of Burris's Cross T outfit. It was a modest house with a few outbuildings set between some shouldering hills. Burris's wife invited them in for coffee, but old Anse said: "Save it till they're back, 'Manda. I want 'em to hustle on that trail."

  He got a horse from his corral, painfully mounted and led the way past the sheds and corral going up a gradual slope into deep timber. Hitting the roiling cut of Jewel Creek on its journey out of the peaks, they followed it upstream awhile. When its flow bent sharply toward hi
gher country, they left it and followed a game trail that curved down out of the shadowed timber. They came out above Seldon's Park. Off to their left, at the head of the meadow, rose a hill of crumbling granite.

  Burris pulled up his horse and pointed.

  "You see that hill. First thing I do each morning is tramp up here way we come and get up on that hill. Can see clear to two sides of my propity line from here. That's wherefrom I spotted them cows was missing."

  Ulring nodded. He knew of Anse's habit of rising with first light and making a slow circle of his place, finally coming up on this promontory. Half the country knew of it. After his crippling fall last year, for all the pain it cost him, Anse had continued this custom; nearly everyone knew that too. Anse had been bound to spot the missing cattle this morning…

  They put their horses across the meadow, Anse leading the way. New grass was poking up through last year's dead gray-buff cover. A pair of mountain jays skimmed low ahead of the riders, blue long-tailed flashes in the sun before they dipped up and away. Anse halted at the meadow's north edge where tall spruce had provided a windbreak that had caused the snow to pile in deep ridges. Here the meadow tilted, causing the melting snow to carve a gully in the soil. Where the end of the gully funneled out into the grass, a broad delta had formed. The damp clay was trampled full of cattle prints, and among them Anse pointed out the clear tracks of a single horse.

  "There was a dozen cows here. You can see for yourself they was drove off. Just to make sure, I rode over to Bender's after I left here. Cal pushed all his stuff down on the new grass two days ago, he says. He ain't got a beef on his place that come inside seventy pounds of these three-year-olds of mine. Them was my cows was taken."

  "All right," Ulring said. "You showed us. Go on home."

  "There's plenty trails he could of taken besides the one to Lacy," Burris pointed out. "Don't kite off the wrong way on a guess. See you cut their sign right."

  "Go on home, Anse. We'll cut it."

  Burris mounted again and rode back the way they'd come. Ulring walked slowly back and forth beside the wide fan of mud, pretending to scrutinize it. When he looked up again, Burris had diminished to a dot at the meadow's south edge, just disappearing in the timber. Ulring glanced at Dennis, who was sitting his horse impatiently.

  "I've got all the sign pegged in my head now. I'll know it anywhere. Let's follow it."

  "You think there'll be trouble?"

  Ulring shrugged. "Always a chance. The sign says one man, but he might have friends where he's headed for. You got second thoughts?"

  Dennis flushed. "Hell, I'm not afraid."

  "That's fine." Ulring showed his big teeth, grinning. "There'll be just you and me, fella. Just you and me…"

  On foot, Will-Joe was trailing a deer. He had come on its sign minutes ago and had tracked it to the bare crown of a hill. Keeping his eyes forward more than on the ground, he spotted the buck at once as he topped the hill. The animal was standing at the fringe of a pine belt that began halfway down the slope. He was frozen in place, head alert; he was gray-brown against the somber green and a web of morning sun sheened his antlers.

  The buck had already got his scent, Will-Joe knew, and the animal's next, almost instantaneous move was expected: he wheeled and vanished into the wall of pines.

  Moccasined and noiseless, Will-Joe went down the hillside at a sharp quick diagonal, the rifle swinging in his fist. With the wind at his back, he didn't plunge directly on the buck's trail. He hit the first pines a good hundred yards to the right of that point, then proceeded downward on a rough-guessed parallel to the deer's line of flight. He knew that the buck would watch his backtrail, probably zigzag a bit, maybe circle back into the wind before considering himself out of danger.

  It was cool in the deep shade under the tall trees; molten puddles of sunlight showered the needle floor. Will-Joe was a shadow going through the shadows; he kept on the move but always checked back to see that his direction was right. His eyes were quick for any break in the trees that might show his quarry.

  The pine belt thinned away and came to an end. The buck emerged from the trees at about the moment that Will-Joe did, both of them stepping into a wide-open alley between the pines and the scraggly overgrowth of piñon and cedar that covered the lower slope. Will-Joe's rifle was swinging up even as the deer moved into sight.

  It was a very close shot, a quick easy shot. A neck shot that neatly broke the spinal column.

  When the cloud of white powdersmoke had frayed away, the buck was down, dropped in his tracks. Mild tucks of satisfaction touched the corners of Will-Joe's mouth. He liked a clean shot, a clean kill. Usually he hunted only for the pot: rabbits and squirrels. He'd go after large game maybe twice a year, and then he scrupulously used all of the carcass—well, most of it—for one purpose or another.

  He walked down to the deer and turned it belly up, anchoring it that way with a couple of good-sized rocks. Pulling his knife, he made a three-inch cut below the short ribs, slicing through skin, fat and flesh, thrusting his fingers in to hold the intestines away from the blade. He cut down to each side of the testicles and around the rectum, then tied off the ducts leading to each with rawhide strings to keep anything from leaking out. Reaching high into the abdominal cavity, he cut the diaphragm loose all around, afterward cutting out the windpipe, gullet and large arteries. A few quick slashes along the backbone and the viscera was free; he turned the carcass on its side, spilled everything out in a lake of blood, and then, with handfuls of dry grass, wiped the inside completely dry.

  For Will-Joe, it had been a few minutes' casual work. He corner-tucked his lips, thinking of the white people he'd heard gripe about the strong gamy flavor of venison. Keeping your meat clean and avoiding spoilage was just a matter of dropping your kill first shot, then butchering promptly and properly. After he'd picked out the heart, liver and kidneys, Will-Joe slit the underside of the deer's jaw, pulled the tongue down through the opening and severed it near the base. All delicacies, they'd be quickly eaten: he tucked them away in a parfleche brought for the purpose. The gutted carcass, which didn't dress out over a hundred pounds, he slung across his shoulders and, grasping the legs, tramped back toward where he'd left his horse.

  The meat, cut into strips and jerked, would last him a long while; the hide and bones would come in handy, the abdominal fat would render good lard, even the hoofs would boil down to a very palatable grease. Of course old Adakhai would have verbally blistered him for abandoning intestines, blood, bladders, and excrement, each of which had its uses. But as he could cheaply buy in Spurlock all the accessory needs these would have filled, Will-Joe thought that observing the fine points of butchery was pretty pointless. ("There the white-eyes in you speaks," Adakhai would say scornfully.) Maybe, when the meat had cooled—hanging from a tree through a chill mountain night should do it—he might pack one of the quarters down to Miss Bethany's. Another gift—and a welcome one, he guessed, at the McAllister table.

  Just thinking of her made his young face soften a little. Miss Bethany. The name turned gently on his mind's tongue, gentle as spring rain.

  He'd never thought of her any way but respectfully. In Will-Joe's scheme of things, she was so far above him it would be worse than disrespectful to think of her in any more personal way. It would be sacrilege. He'd read about knights of old and how they gave fealty to a lady. That was how he'd felt from the first about Miss Bethany. Seeing her again yesterday after many months had brought the old feeling back as strongly as ever.

  Remembering her pleasure at the colt gave him pleasure all over again. Maybe gifting her with a quarter of venison so soon after was too much. People might talk. But then—white or Indian—they did anyway.

  By the time he'd tramped up the hill and halfway down its other side, a twisting ache had grabbed Will-Joe's shoulders; he was starting to sweat. He shifted his burden a little and tramped doggedly on. He had left his horse back of a ridge a quarter mile on, and he could carry the car
cass that far.

  He reached the bottom of the hill and, instead of going straight up over the next hill the way he'd come while tracking the deer, swung toward an east-west wash that cut through the ridges. This route would save him a little time and he needn't carry his kill up or down any more rocky slopes.

  He came to the wash, climbed down its steep cutbank and began tramping east along its sandy bottom. Almost at once, though, he slowed. Then came to a stop.

  The sign on the bed of the wash was plain. Maybe a dozen cows had been pushed along the shallow gully by a single rider. Will-Joe eased the deer carcass to the ground, then knelt and touched the recent tracks. They weren't more than ten hours old. The print of the horse's right front shoe, he noticed, was quite distinctive: the shoe had been built up with two caulks on the inside.

  In themselves, the tracks wouldn't have excited his curiosity too much. Anyone could buy a jag of cows somewhere and haze them home. What was bothersome, these particular tracks had been made last night. Around midnight or pretty close to it. And what honest cowman trailed his beeves home at night, even by a full moon?

  Will-Joe settled back on his haunches, scowling at the tracks. None of his business, was it? A half-breed learned the bitter wisdom of staying out of all white-man business, whether it was above board or underhanded.

  Just suppose, though… suppose the business happened to involve Indians? More specifically, his own people, the Navajos?

  It could be, he thought worriedly.

  This whole range of ridges made a firm division between the foothills and the mountainous back-country. A few years ago, Will-Joe remembered, some young Navajos with too much toghlepai in their bellies had run off some cows from the valley ranches and butchered them in the foothills, then packed the beef up by secret trails to the mountain plateau where Adakhai's band lived. But Tsi Tsosi—Sheriff Ulring—had managed to track the thieves to Adakhai's village where he'd uncovered the carelessly concealed hide of a freshly butchered steer.