What the hell was that boy doing?
Now Blue had a dead trail. He retreated to his strawberry roan and pulled himself up and into the saddle. Funny how it seemed harder every time he clambered onto a horse. He collected the halter rope for the copper bay, and pondered his next move.
But he didn’t have one.
Chapter 26
Cold trail. But maybe that didn’t matter so much. Blue didn’t need a trail. Jack Castle would have his revenge, torment Blue all he could, and that’s all Blue needed to go on.
The sheriff sat tautly on the strawberry roan, thinking that his son would be the next target. Absalom needed looking after and Blue was going to protect that boy, no matter what it cost. That boy and Tammy were all he had, all he could call his future, all that he cared about, all that he loved. By God, he’d get Jack Castle before Castle harmed any more Smiths. Quietly, Blue steered his horse in the direction that Absalom had walked away, and soon picked up faint boot prints here and there. Blue followed slowly, keeping a sharp eye on the ridges, taking his time. He would shadow the boy. He wondered where the posse was: maybe it didn’t matter. There were seven hundred square miles of territory to cover. The only good the posse might achieve would be to drive Castle toward Blue.
The sheriff found where his son had tied his horse. There were fresh green apples on the ground. Black flies hovered around the pile. He kicked one apple open and studied its texture. His son’s horse probably had good teeth and was young. Blue recognized some upland grasses in the manure, Fescue, perhaps. The nearby hoofprints were elongated. Soon he was on his son’s trail once again, praying that he could reach Castle before the killer killed one more Smith. Absalom was drifting toward Centerville; probably toward Tammy’s ranch. Plainly the boy had taken Blue’s advice after all and gone to safeguard his sister. Blue paused in deep shade, studying the silent ridges, wishing he could see better than he did. Time had blurred his vision. He used spectacles when he read, but scorned such crutches out in the open country. But he was by God just as good as ever.
Blue knew a faster way, straight down that great coulee that formed an artery into the mountains. He cut over a ridge, and another, until he found himself in that long green trough that had been Jack Castle’s lonely railroad. Blue figured that if he hurried, he could put himself ahead of Absalom, which is where he wanted to be. Damned boy. Blue was chasing the most dangerous and blood-soaked killer he had ever dealt with, and there was Absalom, mucking around the mountains.
He rode hard for an hour and then reined his horses abruptly. There in the grass was a fresh pile of manure, still green, but beginning to brown in the hot sun. Blue shot glances at the slopes, studied the coulee, and decided to have a look. He dismounted from the roan, kept the halter rope of the bay in hand, and hunkered over this pile of horse manure. He pried it open with a stick. It was hard to tell, but he thought it had dropped from another horse. Its texture was coarser, the leaves broader, probably brome grass. I’m coming, Castle.
He could find no prints nearby, but as he circled, he did pick up a faint trail, mostly fresh-crushed grass, heading toward the west ridge of the coulee. He had to hunt hard to see where it led. The rider had artfully avoided bare earth and his passage had been like a feather drifting across the land.
Blue pulled his shotgun from its sheath. Maybe this time Castle didn’t know he was being followed. Maybe. But Blue never jumped to conclusions when he was manhunting. And Castle was too wily not to watch his back trail.
Blue topped the ridge, kept low while he was skylined, and then dropped into another drainage. The faint and sinister hoof marks preceded him. This was naked grass country, except for copses of trees that grew wherever they could reach water; willows, cottonwoods, poplars, chokecherry brush. Good bear country, and Blue reminded himself to be watchful. The faint trail led across a rill and climbed another slope, heading toward another ridge. Blue felt it now, felt the evil, felt Castle’s presence, sensed that nature itself recoiled as he passed by, as if the grasses had bent, the flowers had wilted, and the animals had fled in terror. Jack Castle, born wild, would be tamed by a bullet, because nothing else would tame a man without scruple or mercy or love. Castle was cutting across giant drainages, vast creases in the land, as if heading toward a rendezvous with the devil somewhere. Blue tried to gauge the direction, which was south by southwest, and a chill caught him. The route would carry Castle straight to the Cooper ranch. Blue no longer tried to conceal himself. He finally had an advantage over Castle. He had two horses, and Castle had only a jaded one. Blue could run him down. He pushed hard, avoiding any copses that might offer ambush, driving straight along the faint trail no matter who or what saw him, for speed was the answer now.
“I’m coming, Castle,” he said to the wind.
No sooner had he said it than he heard the report of a distant shot. No bullet found him or even came close, but gunshots have a way cautioning a man, and he studied the landscape sharply, aware that his sight was blurred. Castle had fired a warning shot, just to slow him. Blue halted long enough to switch horses, throwing the saddle over the copper bay and haltering the strawberry roan. If he needed some speed, he would have it with a fresh mount under him.
Then he was off, this time at a loose jog that ate up the miles but didn’t weary the horse, and again he climbed a ridge and halted under its crest, his head barely visible to the horseman somewhere beyond. And this time, he did see a horseman, maybe two miles away, a miniature figure caught in a vast land, and he knew it was Castle at last, and he knew Castle was in bigger trouble than he had ever been in before.
Blue rode easily, light on the bay, a loose jog that ate up miles but didn’t weary an animal as fine as the bay. At the next ridge Blue discovered he had gained half a mile, but Castle was doggedly riding toward distant timber crawling up a flank of the mountains. Castle knew he couldn’t outrun Blue and was going to ground.
Blue rode artfully, his old skills taking over now. He was riding low and making himself small. He concentrated on the chase: how to keep Castle out of the timber. Plainly, the killer would reach that dense pine forest ahead of Blue and barricade himself in a hurry. Blue was already projecting ways to beat Castle at his game, and the best was to veer upslope, hit the forest well above Castle, and then work down through timber.
For an endless time, nothing changed. Castle spurred his jaded horse toward cover; Blue gained ground. Then, when Castle was scarcely half a mile from cover, he stopped suddenly. Blue mulled that in his mind, but paid it no heed. Castle’s horse was giving out, and that’s all that counted.
Blue veered slightly to gain the protection of a stand of aspen, because he was coming into range of Castle’s rifle now, and had to watch out. But his next glimpse of Castle puzzled Blue. The killer had turned his horse upslope and was not even aiming toward the timber that might have protected Blue. What the hell was happening?
Then Blue saw Absalom riding down that slope, following a grassy drainage straight toward Castle. “No!” Blue cried, but his voice wouldn’t carry that far. Blue drew his revolver and fired it into the sky. Castle gave no heed; Absalom ignored his father, and rode straight at the killer. Blue watched the distance close, yard by yard, foot by foot, and he could do nothing. Not from half a mile distant, with nothing but a shotgun.
That boy was taking on a rattler, a desperado who would stop at nothing. Blue spurred his copper bay and howled, putting the horse into an easy rocking chair lope that would let Blue drop the knotted reins, bring up his shotgun, and fire without being jarred. Castle ignored Blue. He had his quarry in sight.
Absalom fired first. He stopped his horse, and squeezed off a shot at Castle, missed, jacked another cartridge in to his lever-action rifle. Castle never slowed, but did make himself small, hunkering low over the saddle. Blue’s son steadied his rifle again, fired, and this time Blue saw Castle’s horse shudder and stumble and begin to fall. But Castle sprang off with the adroit skill of a superb horseman, landed on th
e grass with his rifle still in hand, rolled over on his belly as Absalom thundered down on him, and fired upward at the boy.
Blue watched his son catapult out of the saddle, sail backward and tumble to the ground, even as Jack Castle caught Absalom’s mount, boarded it, and beelined for the forest and cover. Blue felt as if a hammer had struck his chest. There was naught to do but watch Castle vanish into that timber a half mile distant.
The sheriff slowed, fighting his instinct to race toward his son. Castle lurked in those shadows not far off, and probably had his rifle in hand. It was a tough decision: risk a shot and get to Absalom, or wait and see. Blue decided to risk it. He spurred the copper horse toward his son, dragging the roan behind, and reached the boy without harm. Absalom lay on his belly. Blood oozed from an exit wound near the small of his back. Blue leaped off just as a shot cracked from the forest. The copper bay shuddered, sighed, squealed, and toppled to earth. Blue flattened himself in the grass. There were no more shots.
Blue wormed over to Absalom, turned him over, and found the boy alive and staring at him. His stiff new jeans and shirt were soaked in bright blood.
“I tried,” Absalom said in a voice so low Blue could scarcely hear.
“Boy, boy...”
“You ready to listen?”
Blue nodded, pushing back tears.
“Tammy and me, we tried to protect you. You’re getting old. You’re too bullheaded to get help from anyone...especially me. So we had to do it without your knowing. Come here and stop him.”
Blue started to protest, but swallowed back his words.
“We always knew Jack meant what he said...after the sentencing. That he’d get you, get us all. “I kept in touch with the warden...he told me when Jack got out. Tammy and me, we made some plans....Not Steve. We kept him out of it. Help you whether you liked it or not. Even if you didn’t want me to...”
Absalom was whispering now. Blue leaned close straining to hear.
“Almost got him,” the boy said. “Go save Tammy. She’s next.” Absalom closed his eyes and died.
Chapter 27
Breath fled from Absalom. Blue peered into his son’s quiet face and sobbed. He sat beside his son, in the waving grasses, feeling the hot tears well from his eyes. He cried for his son, for Olivia, for Steve Cooper, for lives lost because he was sheriff and bound to uphold the law against the dark spirits. It was the first time in his life that he had cried. This bitter thing in him went beyond grief. Bullheaded. He didn’t know he was bullheaded. He cried because he had failed Absalom, who didn’t want to follow in his father’s footsteps but tried when he had to. He wept because he had failed to save his son a bullet. He was too late, but he had been too late for many years.
A great quiet lay upon that sun-bright meadow. He reached out, clasped his son’s tanned face between his big rough hands.
“I gave you life and took it away, and I hope your soul forgives me. I was a poor father.”
A bright tan moth flitted by. Blue was aware of zephyrs stirring the grasses. He peered fearfully at that dark forest, its wall slicing the sunlight meadows from its shadows. Maybe Castle lurked there, waiting his chance. Maybe waiting for Blue to absorb his son’s murder before killing Blue. But no, Castle wasn’t done.
The sheriff deliberately turned his back to the forest and stood. Nothing happened. The strawberry roan cropped grass. The copper bay lay dead, with Blue’s saddle pinned under its side. Blue pitied the horse, another innocent victim of Castle’s vendetta. So much horseflesh killed.
He peered about him, at the innocent meadow, the shadowy forest, the rising snow-tipped peaks, the yellow blossoms of summer. Slowly, Blue unbuckled the cinch and tugged at the saddle. It didn’t pull free. Blue twisted it from side to side, and gained a few inches. He was sweating now, using muscles that had atrophied long ago. When he did free the saddle, he staggered backward and fell, the saddle bruising him as he landed. But he soon had the strawberry roan saddled and bridled.
Then he slipped his big gnarled hands under his son, lifted the young man, staggered under a weight too much to bear, and eased his boy over and across the saddle while the nervous horse twitched and sidestepped. Absalom’s blood stained Blue’s shirt and britches. With the saddle strings, Blue anchored his son across the saddle. There was naught to do but take his son away.
Blue stared fearfully at the dark woods but Castle left him alone. So he led the roan down the long pastures, through the golden summer day, through lime-green aspen forest, through ponderosa-dotted slopes, along a spring-fed rill, through a cottonwood grove where the silver leaves danced in the breeze, through the country his son loved to sketch, country he saw through eyes so different from Blue’s. The sheriff thought that maybe Absalom’s sight was truer than his own. Maybe it was the artists who should possess the best fishing holes in the untamed land.
Blue led the burdened horse down the slopes, out of the lonely high country, toward settlements, scarcely knowing where this passage would take him. Centerville, maybe, since he was trending west. Then, beside a laughing creek, he beheld an ancient burial scaffold. He paused beneath it, peering upward through cottonwood leaves to a platform of poles lashed between two gnarled limbs. He tied the horse, put one foot into a fork, hauled himself up to another fork, and looked over the edge of the scaffold. It was empty. Maybe that would be Absalom’s grave, there amid the land he caught so well with his sure quick hand.
Gently he untied the body of his son, lowered it to the ground, and wrapped it in his blanket, using saddle strings to knot it in place. Then he lifted it upward. It took all his strength. Absalom weighed more than Blue could ever carry. But Blue would not surrender, not now, not with his only son, and by some force of sheer will he lifted the boy up, higher, until he could roll him onto that scaffold. Blue’s arms trembled. He pulled himself up the notches again, and laid out his son, straightened his body, and lashed him to the platform, and then paused, his heart thundering in his chest. He pulled off his old hat. “Son, I will grieve the rest of my days for you. I hope your spirit will forgive me. You loved the West in a way I didn’t see. Your blind father failed you. And when I came into danger, you did not fail me. You came to protect me. You gave your life for me. Fathers should do that for sons, but you did that for your father.”
Blue, his throat parched, swallowed hard. He rested in the crook of the cottonwood, spending his last moments with Absalom, flooded with grief and remorse. He reached out and touched his son’s body, felt that lifeless form under the blanket, and then stepped down to the soft earth where the roan waited.
That was all the funeral, all the goodbye, he could muster.
He started downslope again, following the westering drainage to wherever it would take him, knowing that eventually he would arrive upon the plains surrounding Centerville. He let the horse pick its way, for he had lost all will, and sat his saddle without command or direction. And so an afternoon passed, and as evening thickened he struck a two-rut wagon road, some ranch route, and followed it. Blue scarcely remarked the passage of the hours, for he was lost to the world. But in time, just as the sun fled, he struck the Centerville Road, and knew where he was. He clasped the horn of the saddle as if it were the horn of salvation, and let the roan go at its own pace. He had a long way to ride.
He rounded a shoulder of land, and beheld a body of armed men walking their mounts his way, silhouetted by a rose-tinted sundown. They spread apart, as if to confront him, but he saw Carl Barlow raise a hand, and the posse trotted up to him.
“Blue?”
The sheriff nodded. The deputy and his men from Blankenship crowded their horses close about.
“You all right?”
Blue didn’t reply.
“Blue?”
“You catch him?” Blue asked, sharply.
“We combed a lot of territory, followed a lot of trails, but no...”
“Go on home, then.”
Barlow pushed his hat back. “Blue, dammit, you look like h
ell.”
Blue nodded. He didn’t want to talk. Not yet. He didn’t want their kindness. He didn’t want them to know about Absalom. He wanted just to be alone and track down that outlaw because this was personal, so personal he was somehow relieved the posse hadn’t found Jack Castle. Because if they had, Blue probably would have pulled out his revolver and shot the prisoner dead.
“You got blood all over you, Blue.”
“That’s right.”
His glare somehow silenced these men. “Give me a report, Carl.”
Barlow slumped in his saddle. “We did a sweep. Half these men have field glasses, several more are good trackers. All we saw was tracks. Plenty of those. We never caught sight of a live man or horse in all that wilderness. We think he’s fled the country. Did all the damage he could do and vamoosed.”
“He was there.”
“Whose tracks are all those, Blue?”
“Lot of horses up there, Carl. I’m on my third.”
“You see anything?”
Blue nodded. They crowded close, expecting Blue to relate his own story, but Blue just stared. They were all good men, volunteering their time and substance, and he should be treating them better, making them partners in all this, but all he could manage was a midnight stare that grew more and more black as the dusk caught them.
“Why don’t you come with us, Blue?” Carl asked. “We’re going to camp at Jasper Springs. You look done in.”
“I’m on my way to Tammy’s.”
Carl Barlow saw how it would be. “All right, Blue.”
“You done with us, Blue?” asked Gabe Leffwell, one of the posse men.
Blue nodded. “All done.”
They stared uneasily at him. But Barlow, who was used to Blue’s moods, motioned them on. Blue watched his posse, good men all, drift eastward toward the springs, and soon dusk swallowed them up.
Now it was between Jack Castle and himself. It had to be that way. It had been predestined from the moment that Castle whispered his threats against Blue and his family after being sentenced. Blue steered the weary roan westward into the night. He was still ten miles or so from Centerville, and wouldn’t arrive for another three hours. Then he had another twenty out to Tammy’s place. Probably wake her up. Wake her up and tell her the bad news. Her husband, her mother, and now her brother. He wondered whether she could bear it. But she was tough, like he was. Like me, he thought. Blue thought of Castle, riding through those woods, thinking of ways to torment Blue still more. What was he up to? He had a fresh horse now, Absalom’s gelding, and could move swiftly. But where? Toward Tammy? Uneasily, Blue considered it. Tammy was the girl Castle wanted and couldn’t have. But that was long ago. Now she was the mother of two small children, and running her own place. Blue suddenly felt a chill pass softly through him, and knew he should hurry. Not that Tammy was in danger; not with Cletus looking after her, a swift sure shadow who’d stop trouble before it came. Blue remembered how that hired man had put a cold steel muzzle into Blue’s back before Blue even knew Cletus was there. Tammy knew how to shoot, kept herself armed, and wouldn’t hesitate.
Cutthroat Gulch Page 15