Eye of the Wolf

by Theodore V. Olsen

  "Are you so sure?" His eyes challenged her. "When I said before the white man's law is for white men, you said yes. Now you will take the chance, eh? The breed's word against the white man's. And maybe the court doesn't listen, he goes free. There's the chance, eh?"

  "Yes. I don't deny there's a chance… but can't you take it?"

  "I have a sure way, I think."

  "I hoped for so much from you." Her voice was hurt and bitter. "I tried to teach you better ways… hoping that you might teach your people."

  "Better ways? We have our ways too, Miss Bethany. But we are just savages."

  "I didn't say…"

  "Maybe that is what they do then. When the Belinkana take our lands away. When they make the treaties they never keep. When they kill the buffalo so we will starve. When they rob us and lie to us and starve us, it is all right. They are teaching us better ways."

  "Don't." She turned her face away. "I am trying to save your life. Nothing else. If you can't see that…"

  He felt a touch on his shoulder. He looked at Rainbow Girl; her eyes were shining strangely.

  "She is right, Jahzini."

  "Do you know what we said?"

  "Enough. She is not like the other Belinkana. It is not the same with her. Once you told me this, now I see. I think it is the way to do, the way she has said."

  "There it is," Billy Hosteen said. "Right above the horses."

  Ulring halted his horse and followed the Navajo's pointing arm. All he saw was a ridgeflank of tawny crumbling rock. "You sure?"

  "Sure. Like I said, you can't see nothing from down here. But it's right there, the cave."

  The soft roar of water covered their voices.

  They had followed the Winnetka downstream for some distance, riding along its shallow, roiling, boulder-strewn bed. They were now about two hundred yards from the place that Billy Hosteen had indicated. Two horses stood at the base of the ridge, ground-tied. They had spotted the animals just as they'd come around a bend in the stream.

  Ulring narrowly studied the scene. So Bethany was here. Maybe it was just as well.

  His first reaction when Billy Hosteen had come to him late yesterday had been one of suspicion. He remembered the cattle-stealing incident of a few years back; the two Navajos he had killed had been this one's brothers. If any of John Thunder's Navajos had a reason for wanting to see Yellow Hair cash in his chips, it was him. He might have set something up with Cantrell. Ulring had warned Billy that he would ride behind him all the way: at the first sign of a trap, he was a dead man.

  He was anyway, in Ulring's mind. No witnesses. Nobody to cany any more tales. Once Billy Hosteen had guided him to the places, his usefulness was ended. Two dead siwashes instead of one, that was all. The same for Bethany McAllister. He hated the idea, but Bethany knew too much: you never knew what her emancipated kind of woman might have cooking in that beautiful head.

  He had decided as much right after Billy Hosteen had told him of passing the red-haired schoolteacher on his way to Spurlock. Ulring had checked at the livery barn. Yes, Gregorio the hostler had said, Miss Bethany had rented a horse—the lineback dun—and had said she might be gone for two or three days. She had not elaborated.

  If she had been heading for the Navajo village, Ulring had guessed it was to find Cantrell. Bethany had changed her mind about leaving on the stage, that much was clear; now so was the fact that she was cooking up something with Cantrell. There was the lineback dun.

  Well, by God.

  "That other horse," Ulring said. "The paint. You know who owns him?"

  "Sure, that's one of old John's string. Rainbow Girl, she rides him sometimes."

  Her too, Ulring thought. His lips peeled off his teeth—remembering how she had spoiled his aim when Cantrell had been dead in his sights. He didn't mind the thought at all…

  "All right," he said. "Let's study what we'll do. You listening?"

  Billy didn't move.

  "What's the matter?"

  "Well, I just say I lead you here." Billy grinned with a kind of nervous swagger. "I figure now you know where he is, I go home."

  "I figure you don't," Ulring said. "Reason you don't, I need someone to pull him out of the cave. Tell you what you do—"

  "Look, please, mister. I done what I said."

  "Shut up." Ulring rubbed his chin, staring at the stony ridge face. "What you do, you ride up by those other horses and give a yell. When he comes out, your job's done."

  He reached down to the booted rifle under his knee and pulled it free. It was a Sharps Big Fifty, a buffalo gun. Billy Hosteen stared at it; oily sweat shone on his face.

  "Listen, maybe he don't come out. His leg is broke. He got this kind of crutch he use. But I think maybe one of the women come out."

  "Maybe. He trust you?"

  "I don't know. We used to be friends." There was a plea in Billy's voice. "Maybe he don't trust me no more. Maybe he think I try trap him."

  Ulring nodded thoughtfully. "That's what I figure. So he won't let either woman show herself and maybe catch a bullet."

  "He don't come out himself neither then."

  Ulring smiled and patted the rifle. "Well, boy, that's why you got to talk right up. Make big medicine, savvy? Tell him old Yellow Hair is up at the village with a bunch of white men raising six kinds of hell. Burning hogans, screwing all the squaws. You want the white schoolmarm to come see if she can call me off. I bet he comes out then. All right? Now you move along; do like I said."

  He jabbed Billy Hosteen lightly in the chest with the Sharps, his eyes hard. Billy pulled his horse back, opened his mouth as if to say something, closed it and put his horse into motion downstream.

  Ulring dismounted in the ankle-deep water, swearing as his foot slipped on the slick-pebbled bed. He gave the reins a tug, pulling the sorrel over toward a massive block-shaped boulder that had once toppled down from the ridge. It completely sheltered them both.

  Ulring pulled off his hat and leaned against the right flank of the boulder, lining his rifle barrel along the rock. Above it, only his eye and the side of his head showed. He could sight in nicely from here and the Sharps had an effective range of over five hundred yards. Fish in a barrel.

  Billy Hosteen climbed his horse out of the waters up to a low bank where the ridge began to rise. He looked back once in Wring's direction, then tipped his head up.

  "Jahzini!" he called. "Jahzini! Nishtli Narbona!"

  "It is Narbona," Will-Joe said.

  The three of them had heard the rider pull up below. For a moment they had waited tensely. Now, hearing Billy Hosteen's voice, Will-Joe reached for his crutch. Rainbow Girl laid a hand on his arm.

  "Wait. I will go out."

  "Why?" His eyes searched her face. "You do not trust Narbona?"

  She hesitated. "I don't know. It is not easy to say… he wanted to tie his ponies before Natani's lodge. He told me this."

  "What did you tell him?"

  "That there were other lodges."

  Will-Joe thought about it, remembering Narbona's bitterness. You can't be sure of anything, he thought, but it is nothing to take a chance on. Anyone who stepped on the shelving rock beyond the cave mouth would be partly exposed.

  "Don't go out," he told Rainbow Girl. And raised his voice: "Ha'at iisha?"

  "It is important," Billy Hosteen called back. "Come out… I will tell you."

  "I hear you well. Say what it is."

  "It's Yellow Hair. He came to the lodges with many white-eyes. Adakhai sent me. The white teaching woman must come and talk to Yellow Hair. Maybe he will leave us alone."

  Will-Joe lowered his body till he was stretched on his belly.

  Then he went at a slow crawl across the cave floor toward the open shelf.

  "What are you doing?" Rainbow Girl whispered.

  "Be still…wait."

  He inched across the shelf till his eyes just cleared the rim. Flat on his belly, he had a wide view up and down the river gorge without showing himself. T
here was Billy Hosteen below him. Alone. Still not satisfied, Will-Joe took in the scene piece by piece, weighing every detail.

  "I see you, Jahzini. Why do you hide on your belly?"

  That was Billy Hosteen mocking him, but the voice wore a frantic edge. Will-Joe took his time. He had been staring at this landscape for two days: if anything was awry, he would find it.

  Something was down there. Something that hadn't been. A barely discernible lump at the edge of a boulder. He gazed at it till he was sure. A man was behind that rock.

  He laughed. "Narbona. Tell Yellow Hair to go home. Then I will stand up."

  Billy Hosteen's nerve broke. He turned his horse and kicked him into a run, streaking up the gorge.

  The shot sent echoes caroming between the ridges. The bullet smashed Billy off his horse like a broken doll. He hit the rushing water face-down and was motionless, his clothes turning dark in the shallow current.

  Keeping flat down, Will-Joe slithered backward into the cave. He reached for his crutch, and Rainbow Girl helped him stand. He looped the rope over his chest to hold his leg off the ground, then looked at Miss Bethany, her white hand clasped at her throat. All the color had left her face.

  "The sheriff is here, ma'am. Billy Hosteen brought him. Now Billy is dead."

  "A… trap?"

  "It didn't work. So he shot Billy. He does not want any witnesses. Now I think he will try to get above us. We have no chance here. I will have to get up there first."

  "No, Jahzini!" Rainbow Girl picked up Bloodgood's Winchester, holding it away from him. "Your leg… I will go up."

  He took a lurching step forward, grabbed hold of the rifle and wrenched it from her hands.

  "You will stay, both of you. Here." He thrust his pistol into Rainbow Girl's hand. "Whatever happens, whatever you hear… don't come out unless I tell you."

  He crutched slowly out of the cave and stopped just outside. Hidden by a flanking wing of rock, he could still scan the gorge. The dark lump along the boulder was gone… but Ulring's big sorrel stood in the stream, reins trailing.

  He was sure he had guessed right. Ulring had fallen back behind the bend, and now he would come up on the ridge from that side.

  Unless it was a trick. Unless he was still behind the boulder.

  One way to find out. Only one, Will-Joe thought. And stepped out into view, watching the boulder. Ready to drop flat at the hint of a movement.

  Nothing happened, not right away. And he could not wait any longer: once Ulring scaled the ridge and got above them, they were trapped. He might even start rolling rocks to bury them in the cave.

  The rawhide sling was still on his rifle. He looped it around his neck and began to climb up past the cave, using his hands as much as he could. The slope was treacherously steep, a jumble of shattered rock and sliding rubble. Even a man with two good legs wouldn't scale its three hundred or so feet in a couple of minutes. It grew steeper as he went higher. He was forced to stop, hang the crutch around his neck by the attached thong, and tackle the rest of the ascent at a crawl. His useless leg bumped and jarred. He set his teeth against the pain, sweating and straining himself upward with his hands and bracing himself all he could with his good leg.

  Finally he stopped. He was sweat-drenched, fatigued, trembling all over. He still had a hundred feet to go, but he had to rest.

  He caught a sound of boots rasping across rock. Ulring was holding back off the rim out of sight as he moved this way along the ridgetop.

  Was he this close already? It hit Will-Joe with a jolting despair. He quickly unslung his rifle. Ulring would be above him in a moment. He had to find cover fast. Above him was a flat pocket grooved deep into the ridgeside; chunks of rock littered it. One might shelter him, though he doubted it. Ulring, able to shoot down, would have the advantage.

  He climbed doggedly toward the pocket. Had nearly reached it when a stone under his foot plowed away. He let go of his rifle, clawing with both hands at the slick rock. The rifle slid downward, clattering across the slanting rubble till it stopped in a crevice a hundred feet below.

  He pulled himself up to the ledge and fell exhaustedly on his face. Disarmed and helpless… he might as well wait for it. But an angry flare of desperation drove him to heave over on his belly.

  He unslung the crutch. Began to push up to his feet.

  Then he glanced downslope. His throat thickened. Rainbow Girl had left the cave. She must have heard the rifle fall. She started quickly upward, slim form dark against the crumbled yellow rock.

  "Go back!" It tore out of him in a horse yell. "Go back!"

  She ignored him. Reached the rifle and scooped it up, then continued her climb toward him. She hadn't covered a yard when the shot came.

  Will-Joe saw her spin and fall, spilling down on her face in a river of rubble till a rock stopped her. She lay unmoving.

  He twisted his head. Ulring stood atop the ridge, his grin a white smear in his hat shadow. Deliberately, taking all the time in the world, he reloaded the Sharps. He never stopped grinning. Then his head tipped, his glance going above Will-Joe.

  Miss Bethany was coming up the slope. Clutching her skirts in one hand, clutching them knee-high, stumbling, falling, getting up again, moving stubbornly upward toward the still form of the Navajo girl. She dropped on her knees and raised Rainbow Girl's head, then looked up toward Ulring.

  He threw back his head and laughed.

  "You beast! You filthy beast, Frank!"

  She clawed up the Winchester, scrambled to her feet, and began to climb toward Will-Joe. Ulring started down the slope at an easy swinging stride. Clenching his jaws, Will-Joe shifted sideways till a leaning slab of rock cut him off from Ulring. Only brief cover. And it did not really matter. He would be dead in a minute. He heard Miss Bethany's soft hard-driven sobs as she toiled upward.

  Ulring dropped into the pocket and looked at Will-Joe flattened against the slab ten yards away, just his face showing. Ulring tipped up the Sharps. A weapon, Will-Joe knew, that would tear a man open like wet paper.

  "How you doing, boy?" Ulring said lazily. And fired.

  Rock splinters exploded a foot from Will-Joe's face. Tearing pain in his flesh. He grabbed at his face with both hands; the crutch skidded away and he fell. His ears roared with Ulring's laughter. He tried to blink his eyes clear… a red fog stained them. Terror seized him. Then he realized he was only blinded by the blood streaming down from a wide shallow cut over his brows.

  He carefully wiped his eyes clean with his bandanna. Suddenly Ulring was quiet. And cautiously, very slowly, Will-Joe crutched himself upright again.

  Miss Bethany stood on the rim of the pocket. Shoulders heaving. Greenfire eyes fixed on Ulring.

  "You best drop that, Beth."

  She looked down at the rifle in her hands. And brought it up level, awkwardly working the lever. Ulring tossed the Sharps from his right hand to his left, whipped up his Colt and fired in one smooth motion.

  She screamed. Blood sprang across her torn sleeve. Her face was white with shock. She dropped the Winchester.

  "Better," Ulring smiled. "I just broke the skin… there's all kinds of time, sweetheart."

  "You're mad, Frank—"

  Still smiling, Ulring sheathed his pistol and walked over to her. His hand lashed across her face. She fell, rolling on her side. She stared up at him, drawing a hand across her broken lips.

  "You don't want to go talking like that, honey. I got a lot better in mind for us. Right after I settle things with breed boy."

  He picked up the Winchester and tossed it to the ground a few yards away, then wheeled and started toward the rock that hid Will-Joe.

  "Come on out, boy. It's all up."

  Without moving his eyes, Will-Joe saw Miss Bethany lift up on her elbow. Her hand had slipped into her jacket pocket and it came out holding a small gun. She fired. Ulring jerked in mid-stride, grunting, turning then. He stared at the little single-shot pistol, then slowly raised his right arm, peering under
the sleeve. A spreading circle of red dyed the armpit of his shirt.

  "Well, I'm a son of a bitch," he said, chuckling.

  His pistol blurred up. Four shots slammed off, kicking up dirt around the prone woman. Dirt spewed in her face; a bullet ripped her skirt. Silence. A reeking swirl of powdersmoke. She lay on her side, face buried in her arms; soft jerking sobs wracked her body.

  "You know, honey," he drawled, "I could get real upset with you."

  He walked to her, dropped the Sharps, grabbed a fistful of her jacket and yanked her up to her knees. His hand cracked across her face. It smashed her on the backswing, then struck again.

  Will-Joe, already moving, let his good leg take his weight in a long lunging step, crutch leaping out to catch another straining step. Another. Two yards from Ulring's back he stopped, balanced on his good leg and hefted the crutch by its butt end.

  Ulring grunted in the fury of a crunching blow on the woman's face. Then he let her drop and began to turn around just as Will-Joe swung the crutch in a short savage arc. The heavy forked end smashed Ulring across the face. The crutch cracked, splitting at the end. Ulring went down, rolling over in the rubble, hands to his face.

  Will-Joe, his balance gone, dropped to the ground. Ulring had rolled across the barrel of his Sharps. The stock was inside Will-Joe's reach; he grabbed at it, but Ulring's weight pinned it solidly.

  Will-Joe's glance flew to his Winchester where Ulring had thrown it. Some four yards away. He floundered toward it. Behind him, Ulring groaned, starting to move. Will-Joe clamped his hands on the Winchester and heaved up on one elbow.

  Urling was on his knees, the split skin of his forehead runneling blood; sand smeared it across half his face. He brought up his pistol, catching Will-Joe in line, and the trigger snapped. Empty chamber. Five shots.

  He let the pistol drop, grabbing up the empty Sharps, lunging onto his feet, coming after Will-Joe as he swung the Sharps back by its barrel for a crushing blow.

  No time for Will-Joe to shift his body around, much less take aim. He jammed the Winchester's butt against a rock, setting it in a blind aim backwards, right hand steadying the barrel. He gauged blindly: raising the barrel—too high—tipping it down.