Eye of the Wolf

by Theodore V. Olsen

  Ulring had minced no words. He'd told Adakhai that he had until nightfall to deliver the guilty parties to his office at Spurlock. The warning was ignored. Next day Ulring had returned with a posse of twenty or so white men. They'd shot up the village, burned a score of hogans, collected the possessions of a dozen families in a pile and set fire to it.

  This was merely to serve notice, the sheriff had told Adakhai, and the old chief had taken the hint. After that, whenever any of his young men transgressed white-man law, Adakhai had cooperated with Ulring to see that justice was meted out. And Ulring's brand of justice had quickly persuaded all renegades and would-be renegades to toe a straight and narrow line; Navajo thievery and moonshining had almost ceased to be.

  Had it started up again?

  Tracks of stolen cows leading back toward the mountains pointed to that uneasy possibility. The single rider's horse had been shod white-man style, but any smart Indian cow thief might ride a shod horse. Of course there was plenty of white riffraff living back in those same peaks, but Ulring's first suspicions—knowing him—would fall on the Navajos, guilty or not.

  That, Will-Joe decided, made the business of a few stolen cows his business.

  Slinging the deer across his shoulders again, he followed the cattle trail to the end of the wash, then left it and climbed up the right-hand slope till he came to a patch of scrub oak. His paint horse was tethered there. Will-Joe laid the carcass in a stony hollow, then used sticks to prop open the body cavity so the meat would cool faster. He trimmed some leafy branches from the scrub oak and laid them over the carcass to keep off the shifting sun and any fat-hunting jays.

  With his meat safely cached, he mounted his paint and rode down to the trail. Picking up the cattle sign again, he began to follow it, riding slowly and bending sideways from his saddle.

  Hopefully he'd find where the stolen cows had been taken… and who had taken them. Afterward he could lead the sheriff straight to the place. Then, if the thief were white or Mexican, the Navajos wouldn't suffer the blame. Should the thief prove to be Navajo, it would be a good thing that another Navajo, Will-Joe, had not only discovered and reported it, but had also led the law to the criminal…

  They were crossing a shale-capped ridge when Dennis's horse slipped. Ulring had already picked his way safely across the stretch of slick and broken rock, and Dennis was following on the downslope. Abruptly his mount's hoofs skidded; the animal floundered in a stiff-legged slide for two yards before he got his foot again. A small avalanche of shale chunks and chips cascaded downward, setting up a clatter among the rocks.

  Ulring had pulled up below, waiting. Dennis swore, fighting his horse on a clumsy rein, finally kneeing him up beside the sheriff's.

  "Make lots of noise," Ulring said. "If the party we're tracking is just ahead, it ought to be dandy for alerting him."

  Dennis was flushed and furious. "It could have happened to anyone!"

  "Sure. It did to you."

  They had been on the rustler trail an hour and more, and Dennis's early enthusiasm had evaporated. He was out of condition and no horseman anyway. He was nervous about what might be ahead; you could tell by his eye movements and the way he was sweating. Both men had removed their coats against the day's rising heat, but it wasn't warm enough to justify a heavy sweat.

  "The hell with you!" Dennis said hotly. "You think I don't know why you gave me this job?"

  Easy on him, Ulring warned himself. You don't want him quitting cold and turning back, not after you got him this far. He made his tone reasonable: "Ease down there, fella."

  "It's my wife, isn't it? That's your reason, isn't it, Ulring?"

  Keep on talking, boy, Ulring thought. Keep talking while you still can. "You're imagining things," he said mildly. And chopped off the discussion by wheeling his horse and putting him away down the ridge.

  Once off the shale, the trail of the stolen cattle picked up again, as Ulring had known it would. Occasionally, for Dennis's benefit, he pretended to scan the ground. Actually—since he knew where the tracks would lead and the exact route they'd follow—he paid them almost no attention.

  The trail clung to the ridge shoulder for a ways, then dropped at a gentle angle into a timbered valley. It followed game trails across several more ridges, then dropped at a gradual pitch into the upper basin of the Winnetka River. A small ranch sprawled across the slope just below them, its log house and weathered outbuildings darkly squalid against the new pale green of spring grass. Heavy timber almost enclosed the place, rambling in wooded fingers to the base of the slope, then ending on the edge of a wet meadow where the river waters had backed up beyond a fringe of alders and willows. Grazing cattle dotted the meadow.

  "That's Sid Leggett's place," Ulring said almost idly. "Well, no surprise."

  "Who's Leggett?"

  "He's trash. A bummer and a swillhead. Now a cow thief."

  Ulring reached down for the rifle under his knee and snaked it from the scabbard. Dennis said in a startled voice: "Don't you have to turn up the cows before you arrest him?"

  "They're here, don't worry. Sid's going to show us where."

  Ulring kneed his horse forward and down the slope.

  They rode into the yard, which was littered with rusting tin cans and empty bottles. Leggett came out on the sagging porch, a wiry feist of a man who looked as if he hadn't washed or shaved in weeks. He was shirtless, his filth-stiff trousers gallused over his dirty underwear. He carried a Winchester rifle, and it was already half-raised and loosely trained on them.

  "You want something?"

  "About a dozen cows," Ulring said.

  He pulled up his horse and held his rifle balanced across his pommel, making no effort to lift it. He sat his saddle in an easy half-slouch, watching Leggett with a pleasant smile. Ulring knew the man for a loner, surly and unapproachable. He had no wife nor any family except maybe for relatives back in the Tennessee hills of his birth. Nobody, Ulring thought with satisfaction, would mourn him; none would miss him.

  "What in hell you talking about?" Leggett said.

  "A dozen cows," Ulring repeated. "Their trail leads here, Sid, straight into your place. There's no other this side of the river."

  "What cows?" Leggett's face squinted into leathery lines. "Whose?"

  "Anse Burris's cows. They were drove off last night. We followed the track here."

  "Maybe you did," Leggett said softly, "but don't you say I took 'em, mister."

  "If you didn't, you might have an idea who did."

  "Nobody took anyone's cows!" Leggett's eyes showed a jagged fray of temper. "You see any cows around here but mine, you point 'em out. Otherwise you can drag ass off my place and that goddam quick!"

  Ulring raised a hand. "Sid, simmer down now. Nobody's accusing you. All I'm saying, the trail leads here. Those cows were trailed by one rider. Maybe it was some hardcase from over Lacy way that took 'em. Maybe it was one of old John Thunder's Navajos. Whoever it was, he drove the stuff onto your range. Maybe he drove 'em clear on across it. We don't know yet."

  "Then you got your gall busting in here like God A'mighty and rough-talking a man."

  Ulring smiled. "Well now, Sid. Could be we owe you an apology. If you didn't take those cows, you won't object to us having a look at the ones grazing yonder."

  Leggett let his rifle tip slowly downward, his eyes stony. "There's no Cross T stuff in with mine."

  "If that's so, you'll want to cooperate. We'll look those cows over. If there's no Cross T brands mixed in and we're witnesses to the fact, nobody can accuse you, can they?"

  Leggett let the gun barrel settle till it was pointed groundward. He gave a grudging nod. "I guess—"

  That was as far as he got. Ulring had only waited for him to drop his aim. Now Ulring lifted his rifle off his pommel, levering it in the same motion. When the barrel stopped moving an instant later, it was centered on Leggett's chest.

  Ulring fired.

  Leggett's light body was slammed back again
st the doorframe. He hung there for a moment and then dropped on his face across the porch, his head and one arm hanging off the edge.

  Ulring turned his head. Dennis was to one side of him and a little behind him. His face was white and shocked. His starkly staring eyes moved to Ulring.

  "Why did you do that?"

  "You won't have to worry about it," Ulring said.

  He shifted the rifle to his left hand and picked up his reins with his right. He lightly, almost casually neck-reined his animal, quartering him around till he was full face to Dennis. He brought his right hand back to the lever of his rifle as he raised it, and then Dennis understood. His eyes silvered with tenor and he began to wheel his horse.

  The rifle crashed. Dennis spun sideways out of his saddle and hit the ground like a bundle of rags. He rolled over once and onto his face and was still: the empty force of momentum, for he was already dead.

  Ulring curbed his fiddlefooting horse. He was smiling as he let his rifle ease back to the pommel. Then—somewhere in the tail of his eye, far to the upper right of his vision, he felt as much as saw a flick of color or movement.

  He swung his head quickly to the side and upward, his glance running up the slope above the house and buildings.

  His smile froze. His brain blanked. The woods ended a few hundred feet above the ranchyard. And sitting his horse on the open slope just below the trees—watching him, watching everything—was that breed kid. Will-Joe Cantrell.

  Will-Joe had followed the trail as it climbed steadily through the ridges. He wasn't surprised when it dropped off toward the Winnetka basin and Leggett's ranch. He considered Leggett white-man trash on the bottom rung; the rancher had once shot at him just for crossing a corner of his land. Emerging on the ridge flank above the place, Will-Joe stayed close to the trees as he halted to study the layout below. He'd never seen Leggett's place from the rear before, nor had he ever been this close to it.

  A hog wallow of a place, it fitted its owner. But that was the least of Will-Joe's concerns. He restlessly scanned the timber, the meadow flats along the river, and the ranch headquarters again. The trail he'd been following pointed downridge and he guessed it didn't go much farther. Probably those stolen cows were down on the meadow yonder. But would Leggett be that stupid?

  He gently gigged his paint into motion, moving down the ridgeslant toward the headquarters. Then the cattle sign twisted sideways almost abruptly and headed into the deeper timber. He followed it for a couple hundred yards to an opening in the trees. A dozen cows were grazing on the sparse grass between the mossy windfalls that littered the floor of this narrow glade. Will-Joe swung in close to one; before it shied away, he saw the clean-clipped brand: Cross T. Anse Burris's outfit.

  A clumsy piece of thievery on Leggett's part, driving the stolen Cross T stuff to a hiding place in the timber this close to his headquarters. To Will-Joe, the trail in here seemed clear as glass. Maybe it wouldn't be, though, to a white tracker; a white man, even Sheriff Ulring, would be likely to miss more than he saw.

  Will-Joe had no affection for Anse Burris, whom he knew for a crusty Indian-hater. It was almost with reluctance that he turned his paint and swung him back down the trail. The sheriff should be notified right away: with the rightful thief, Leggett, pinpointed for sure, there'd be no possibility of blame touching any Navajo.

  Something, he wasn't sure what, made Will-Joe pull to a halt. He listened. Nothing but a squirrel's friskings in the limbs above broke the dappled quiet. Then he caught a distinct muffled beat of horses' hoofs on the cushiony needle turf. The sound came from about fifty yards to his left and somewhat ahead, and then he faintly heard men's voices, at least two men talking. The trees screened them from his sight, but he realized that they too must be trailing the cattle.

  He started to cut through the timber toward them, then heard them move off away from the trail, riding downslope toward Leggett's headquarters. Caution touched Will-Joe; he slowed. Maybe these men weren't on the trail of stolen cows; they might be friends of Leggett.

  By the time Will-Joe rode clear of the trees and could see the ranch headquarters again, the two men were far below, riding into Leggett's yard. Even from this far away it was easy to identify the lead rider by his tawny buckskin coat and pearl-gray Stetson. It was Sheriff Ulring.

  The house door opened now and Leggett came out, pointing a rifle at the two men. Will-Joe sat his horse at the timber's edge, watching the scene tensely. Would Leggett shoot? It wasn't like Ulring to be so slack as to let a cow thief get the drop on him. They were talking now, and Will-Joe saw Leggett gradually lower his rifle.

  It was all right then, there'd be no shooting. Leggett was giving up. Will-Joe lifted his reins and put his mount in a quick trot down the slope. Even if he hadn't been the one to lead Ulring to the thief, it wouldn't hurt to put himself (and hence his tribesmen) in Ulring's good graces by showing him where Leggett had hidden the cattle.

  Then he saw something he didn't believe. Ulring whipped up his rifle and fired. Leggett's body bounced back against the log wall, then slumped on its face. Shot echoes cascaded from the ridges.

  Will-Joe reined in his paint, staring. He saw Ulring's companion wheel his horse, or start to, as the sheriff swung his rifle around. It roared again. The man was wiped out of his saddle and hit the ground in a broken sprawl.

  Will-Joe couldn't credit his senses. A man with a sheriff's star had committed cold-blooded murder twice in the space of a few seconds. His thoughts were still hung on that incredible snag, too stunned for any further reaction, when Ulring's stare swung upward to fix on him.

  Ulring hesitated perhaps a second before bringing the rifle to his shoulder. Its barrel rose in a swift arc that, Will-Joe saw at once, would end in a bead on him.

  Whirling his horse around, he kicked him into a lunging climb of the slope. The paint had nearly reached the trees when his hoofs slipped on an outcrop of crumbling granite, making him scramble wildly for footing. He got his hind legs braced, striking for higher rock with his forehoofs. For one moment before the lunge that would have carried him clear of the crumbling rock, the animal hung sideways as a steady target. In that moment Ulring fired.

  The paint reared with a screaming whicker. Hard-hit, all his muscles collapsing in a rubbery shudder, he was falling even as he reared backward. Will-Joe left the saddle with a wiry twist of his body, throwing himself frantically sideways to avoid the sharp-edged outcrop. He slammed the ground on his side and shoulder, then had to roll hard away to escape the horse's plunging fall.

  He lay dazed on his belly, dimly aware that the paint was kicking its life away a few yards from him. With a kind of blind urgency he pushed up on his hands and knees, blinking wildly against the watery pain in his eyes. He saw that Ulring was kicking his horse forward and up the slope, roweling the animal with an angry ferocity.

  Will-Joe staggered to his feet, surging into a run almost before his feet were fully under him. He scrambled up across the outcrop and headed for the timber. Ulring fired again; Will-Joe heard the bullet spang off the outcrop. He was still dazed, wobbly and half-limping, as he crashed into a fringe of cedar scrub and plunged on into the trees. He heard the hard quick thrum of hoofs terrifyingly close. But then Ulring reached the first undergrowth and was forced almost to a stop.

  Panic and a flood of returning awareness jarred Will-Joe's brain back to chill clarity. Dropping into a half crouch now, he glided deeper into the timber, pushing instinctively into the densest thickets and going through them like a snake. He could hear Ulring wallow his horse into the brush, beating at it with his rifle.

  That noise ended: there was a lighter, swifter crackling of brush. He knew that Ulring had left his horse and was tackling the timber on foot.

  Plunging on, Will-Joe felt a dismal wrench of fear. He couldn't move quietly enough to shake Ulring. The sheriff's ears were wolf-keen; he moved less clumsily through woods than most white men.

  He should have had the presence of mind, Will-Joe t
hought bitterly, to snatch his rifle from its scabbard before taking flight. Now he was unarmed, afoot, pursued by a rifle-armed enemy he'd seen commit two murders.

  It occurred to him quite suddenly that he must be giving himself away to Ulring as much by direction as by sound. When had he seen a deer, a fox, a rabbit flee from a predator or a hunting dog in a straight line? They ran a broken course, they zigzagged, they doubled back. It gave a queer abrupt twist to the familiar patterns of his thoughts: the staggering novelty was that he was now the hunted, forced to bend all his senses, his faculties, toward escape…

  A broad clearing opened in the trees ahead. Will-Joe plowed through the last brush and broke into the open and sprinted halfway across it. For the moment he was making no sound but the light running pad of his moccasined feet: he twisted hard in his tracks and cut off at right angles from his line of flight, running noiselessly toward the forest wall a hundred feet away.

  A low deadfall lay at the clearing's edge. He stepped over it and dropped behind it, flattening himself hard against the earth. He waited like that, nothing but the narrow deadfall trunk between him and the open clearing. His heartbeats against the loam sounded like thunder in his ears: he had to fight the impulse to leap up and run again. But he couldn't without making a giveaway noise, not through the brush that hemmed this clearing on every side.

  He heard Ulring breaking brush in his easy swinging run, his spurs chinking. Now Ulring had reached the clearing, he was inside it, he paused. Not daring to raise his head, not wanting to shiver a leaf, Will-Joe hugged the ground behind his slender concealment. He knew that Ulring had stopped less than thirty yards away, listening, probing the timber with his eyes. Wondering why his quarry had ceased to crackle brush.

  Ulring couldn't have paused for more than a few seconds, but to Will-Joe the bloodbeat hammering in his temples, it seemed an eternity. Then Ulring tramped straight on across the clearing and bulled away into the brush. Its crackling diminished; he was gone.