Outlaw Pass (9781101544785)

by West, Charles G.

  Finn could see there was no room for discussion on the issue. “Well, I guess my choices are down to one, since I don’t know where the hell I’m goin’ without you to lead me, now, do I?” He didn’t have to mention the primary reason for riding with Adam, for protection for him and his gold.

  “I reckon that is a minor detail,” Adam replied, almost smiling. Finn had never expressed what his plans were, if any, beyond making it to the Triple-B. For that matter, neither had Bonnie. “That shoulder could stand another day or so of rest, anyway,” Adam said.

  “Maybe you’re right about that, although I can feel I’m gettin’ my strength back. Bonnie and I will take care of Lacey while you’re gone.”

  Moving to join them by the fire, Bonnie was in time to hear Finn’s comment. “I guess you’re going to chase after those two murderers now.”

  “I am,” Adam answered emphatically, expecting some objection from the crusty prostitute.

  “I expected as much,” she said, to his surprise. “Don’t take too long doing it. Finn and I will take care of things here till you get back.” She glanced at Black Otter, who had stood silently, listening to their discussion. “If that’s all right with Black Otter and Little Flower.”

  “You are welcome here,” Black Otter said. Then with a smile, he added, “Woman shoot gun good.”

  It was settled, then. Both Finn and Bonnie were smart enough to know that they were extremely vulnerable if they tried to go on without Adam. Not only was he their primary protection, but he was their guide to his father’s ranch in the Gallatin Valley. Neither of the two had made any plans beyond that, but to both it seemed to mean their safety.

  Chapter 12

  The morning was chilly with a light frost that caused the valley to glisten when the sun found its way down between the towering mountains on either side of him. Earlier Adam had returned to the gap in the firs where he had found Red Blanket’s body the night before, so he could track the other two outlaws from that starting point. In the light of day, the Crow Indian’s face retained the startled expression of shock the man had experienced at the moment of impact. Hardened by the morning frost on skin and whiskers, the face looked unreal, more like that of a replica of a once living person.

  Their trail was not hard to find, leading across the stream and heading straight down the canyon. The swath of broken berry bushes on the opposite bank bore testimony to their panic to escape. Holding the bay to a brisk walk, he kept his eyes trained on the tracks left by the two horses until he felt certain they would not stray from the direction first started toward the far end of the canyon. Then he let the bay settle into a lope for a while until the horse showed signs of needing rest. The routine was repeated over and over as he followed the clear tracks.

  “You ain’t lookin’ any too good,” Cruz commented to his wounded partner. Seeger opened his eyes to find the gruff outlaw standing over him. “Weren’t sure you wasn’t dead.”

  “Well, I ain’t,” Seeger replied, cranky from the short fits of sleep he had managed to snatch from the seemingly endless night. He winced with pain when he rolled over on his side. “I ain’t feelin’ too good,” he said. “That damn bullet musta left some poison in there. You reckon you oughta take a look at it?”

  “What for?” Cruz replied. “I ain’t no doctor. Wouldn’t be much use for me to look at it.” He studied his partner’s face for a long moment before asking, “Can you stay on a horse?”

  “Oh, hell yeah,” Seeger said. “Ain’t nowhere near that bad. I can ride. Don’t you worry none about that.”

  Cruz continued to study the wounded man while he made judgment on whether Seeger believed what he said, or was just reacting out of fear that Cruz might run off and leave him. “You sure as hell don’t look like you’re ready to ride,” he said. “Lemme take a look at that wound.” He stooped down and tore Seeger’s shirt where the bullet had entered behind his shoulder, exposing the red swollen bullet hole. “Damn,” he exhaled, “it’s all puffy and tender lookin’.” He poked a finger on the skin of the shoulder, swollen tight as a drum. Seeger winced with pain at the touch. Cruz stood up again. “Like I said, I ain’t no doctor, but that wound looks pretty damn bad. You can rest here for a couple more hours and then we’ll take a look at it.”

  “And then what?” Seeger demanded. “What if it ain’t no better? What if it’s worse?”

  “We’ll just see then,” Cruz replied. “You just lie back and rest it up some. I’d make us some coffee if we hadn’t run off and left the damn packhorse back yonder.”

  “I can ride,” Seeger insisted. “If we had to go right now, I could ride, so don’t go gettin’ no notions about running off and leavin’ me.”

  “Why, hell, I wouldn’t have no reason to do that,” Cruz assured him. “No, sir-ree, I ain’t gonna leave you.” He had already made up his mind that he would, however, if Seeger didn’t show enough improvement to carry on. There was no guarantee that the sinister rifleman would not come after them, so Cruz wasn’t willing to stay in the area for long. Besides that, they were without even basic supplies, not even a coffeepot, and he didn’t care much for living off what he could hunt. He would make his decision in a couple of hours, he decided. However, the time came sooner than he expected.

  At first it was just a small dot in the distance, at the far end of the long canyon. Cruz caught a glimpse of it and started to look away, but something drew his eye back to look at it again. He realized then that it was moving, so he kept his gaze focused upon it to see if it was a deer, or an elk maybe. As it continued to grow, he realized it was coming toward them. “What the hell . . . ?” he murmured, and picked up his rifle.

  “What is it?” Seeger wanted to know.

  “Can’t tell yet,” Cruz answered as he stepped up on a rock ledge to try to get a better look. “Might be supper comin’ to us, if it keeps comin’ this way,” he said, although the object was moving at a rate too steady to be a casually grazing animal. He continued to watch until the object began to take form as the distance decreased. “Oh, shit!” he exclaimed when he realized that what he had hoped was an elk was a man on a horse, and there was no doubt in his mind what man it had to be.

  “What?” Seeger demanded. “Cruz, whaddaya see?” But Cruz’s mind was too busy to answer Seeger’s questions. He continued to stare down the narrow valley, hoping that the rider might pass them by, hoping it was not who it had to be.

  Impatient for an answer, Seeger struggled to his knees, using his good arm for support, in an effort to get a look at whatever had left Cruz speechless. “It’s that son of a bitch that shot Red Blanket,” he blurted when he sighted the rider. “He’s comin’ after us!”

  “He’s got a ways to go before he comes to that crook where we left the stream and cut up this way to this ridge,” Cruz said hopefully. “He’ll most likely keep right on goin’ out in the river valley.”

  Seeger was not that optimistic about their chances. “Even if he does see where we turned up to this ridge, we got the high ground. Ain’t that right, Cruz? And there’s two of us.” He was talking faster and faster, his fear showing through no matter how he tried to hide it. “I mean, hell, he ain’t but one man. Right, Cruz?”

  Cruz didn’t answer. His attention was wholly on the rider sitting tall in the saddle, riding steadily along the bank of the stream. “Damn,” he finally uttered when, approaching the crook in the stream, the rider reined his horse back and studied the tracks left there. Then he turned and looked toward the ridge. “Damn!” This time it was an involuntary exclamation, for even though the rider was over a quarter of a mile away, it seemed to Cruz that he had looked straight at him. He jerked back from the ledge and knelt once more, continuing to stare, when without hesitation, the rider turned his horse toward the ridge. “Damn,” Cruz uttered for the third time, “he’s comin’ right at us.”

  In a panic to stop the relentless hunter, Cruz cocked his rifle and aimed a shot at the rider. The range was too much for the accuracy of
the Spencer carbine, and the shot kicked up dirt far wide of the target. The grim stalker never flinched, even after a second and third shot, but continued to ride directly toward the ridge. The seeming indifference of the man to his shots served to unnerve Cruz to the point of outright terror. It was as if the man was a ghost rider from the supernatural world, for he showed no fear of Cruz’s rifle. He became convinced that to stay there and continue to shoot at the grim avenger would profit him nothing but his own demise.

  Locked in a moment of frightened confusion, he had to decide what to do. Flight was the only option his mind could entertain, and he acted quickly to put it into action. “He’s comin’ our way!” he yelled to Seeger. “We need to move offa this ridge!” He ran to his horse while his confused partner sat stunned and helpless. “I’ll saddle the horses,” Cruz said. “You just sit tight.”

  There was little choice for Seeger but to trust Cruz to take care of him. So while Cruz threw the saddle on his horse, Seeger tried to have a closer look at the approaching avenger for himself. Like Cruz, he didn’t like the look of it. He looked back at his partner in time to see him step up in the saddle as soon as it was strapped on his horse. With no hesitation, not even a look in Seeger’s direction, Cruz kicked his horse hard and charged over the back side of the ridge. “Cruz!” Seeger yelled, realizing that he had been left as a sacrifice, so that Cruz could save his skin. He snatched his pistol from his belt and shot at the yellow coward, but there was no real target as Cruz disappeared over the side of the ridge.

  Faced with two choices, a showdown with the man reported to be a professional assassin, or a desperate attempt to escape, Seeger chose the latter. Forced to answer the command to save himself by the fear that raced through his veins, he willed his weakened body to get to his horse. And with a scream of pain, he picked up his saddle and threw it on the animal. Gritting his teeth against the searing agony, he tightened the cinch strap, causing a new trickle of blood to run down his arm to drip on the grass. With one final act of desperation, he lifted himself onto the stirrup and threw a leg over. Once over the side, he turned his horse away from the path Cruz had descended, in hopes that the assassin would choose to follow Cruz.

  Keeping a wary eye on the rock ledge near the top of the ridge where the shots had come from, Adam became more cautious as he approached what he estimated to be reasonable range. The three wild shots told him that the shooter must have been firing to scare him away. By the sound, the weapon was a carbine, and surely the man using it knew the range was too far for the accuracy of that weapon. The lower part of the ridge wore a spotted apron of pines, and Adam figured if he could reach their cover, he could dismount and work his way up to the top on foot. He assumed the outlaws were waiting in ambush, to catch him in the open when he left the cover of the trees to climb to the top. For that reason, he was not surprised that there were no more shots when he galloped into the pines. So far, so good, he thought as he quickly drew his rifle from the saddle sling and dismounted. Then, to avoid the ambush he felt surely awaited him, he ran along the base of the ridge until coming to a narrow ravine some one hundred yards distant.

  With his rifle held ready to fire, he climbed up the ravine, leaving the cover of the trees as he moved cautiously over the rocky upper third of the defile to a large boulder at the top. From there, he could sight along the crest of the ridge, but he could not spot his adversaries. Moving carefully a few yards at a time, he continued to stalk the rock ledge from which the shots had been fired. Still there were no more shots. Finally, after advancing to the ledge itself, he realized that he had been stalking an empty ridge. They were gone.

  Angry to have wasted so much time, while the outlaws were putting distance between him and themselves, he began a search of the grassy meadow just below the ledge. From the look of it, the outlaws had camped there overnight. Judging by the tracks, the two horses had been tied to the limbs of a couple of stunted pines. Looking farther, he found tracks where the two had fled down the back side of the ridge, but if he could believe those tracks, they had gone in opposite directions. He puzzled over the fact for a few moments, because it would have made more sense to retain their two-to-one advantage. He went back to the place where the horses had been tied to have another look before he decided which of the two trails he was going to follow. “I’m wasting time,” he decided aloud, and was about to start back down to fetch his horse, when he happened to notice a spotting of color on the grass blades at his feet. He paused and knelt to look closer. Blood, he thought. So I did hit one of them last night! And he’s still bleeding. This didn’t explain why the two men had obviously split up when they left the ridge, however. One thing seemed evident to him now: they were gambling on the fact that he could not chase both of them.

  He faced several problems at this point. He had never seen either man close enough to be able to identify him, so he was dependent upon the tracks they left behind. If he could choose between them, he would follow the trail of the one who was not wounded, since the man with the wound might be easier to find later on. The problem with that, however—there was no way to tell which set of hoof tracks belonged to the wounded man. Undecided, he turned to look out over the back of the ridge in the directions each trail indicated. One would seem headed south, toward the broad river valley, the way they had originally come several days before. The other led straight down the backside of the ridge toward the mountain beyond. He stood there, unable to decide for a moment. Then he reached in his pocket and pulled out the one remaining twenty-dollar gold piece and flipped it up in the air. “Heads, it’s the mountain—tails, it’s the valley.” It was heads. He went to get his horse.

  “That son of a bitch,” Seeger whined as he strained to stay in the saddle. The thought of the cowardly abandonment by his partner was the only thing keeping him upright in the saddle as his horse followed an old game trail up the mountain. He could feel the back of his shirt getting more and more soaked from the blood that had started to flow again. He needed a doctor, for he feared he might bleed to death before he had a chance to recover, and he desperately needed to recover so he could seek his revenge on Cruz. Knowing he was too weak to try to follow the double-crosser now, he had chosen to try to find a place to hide and heal. Now he began to fear that he was going to fall off his horse, so he knew he had to pick a place to rest soon.

  He was suffering so much pain from his shoulder that he forgot that he had not eaten since the day before. Even as weak as he now was, food was not a priority at this moment in his life. If I could just rest, he thought, then maybe the shoulder will begin to heal on its own. I could make it then. It was the last thought he had before passing out and falling from his saddle. The jolt when he hit the ground was enough to jar him awake, but he knew he could not get himself back on his horse again. There was no other option open for him, so he crawled painfully over against a pine tree and sat waiting for whatever his fate might be. The foremost regret he had was not being able to settle the score with Cruz.

  The trail Adam had selected to follow was not a difficult one. The outlaw had not taken pains to hide his flight. When he reached the foot of the mountain, he had taken a game trail that appeared to wind its way through the pines before gradually ascending toward the top. Upon coming to a sharp turn where the trail became quite steep and appeared to double back, he was stopped short by the discovery of a riderless horse standing on the narrow trail. His reaction was immediate as he slid quickly from the saddle, expecting gunshots coming his way. But there was nothing except the greeting nicker of the horse. Kneeling on one knee, he scanned the trees from left to right and back again, seeing no one. When he rose to his feet again, the snap of a .44 slug whistled a few inches from his ear, and he dived for cover beside the trail. It was not until two more shots were fired that he located the shooter. With his back propped against a tree at the turn of the narrow trail, a man sat slumped, his pistol in hand. Adam, astonished that his assailant had taken no pains to protect himself, immediately l
ifted his rifle and drove a slug into the bushwhacker’s chest. The revolver fell from the man’s hand.

  It was obvious that the outlaw was finished, but Adam approached him with caution, lest he suddenly pick up his pistol and fire again. As before, when ending the life of one of the murderous outlaws who had killed his brother and the girl, Lacey, and sought to kill him, Adam felt no pity for the man now dying before him. He kicked the pistol lying on the ground out of reach, then stood gazing at the figure sprawled against the tree.

  Seeger’s eyes fluttered, then opened halfway. “I reckon my luck ran out,” he uttered, his speech slurred and slow. “Why the hell didn’t you go after Cruz instead of me? The son of a bitch deserves to die.”

  “Like you said, your luck ran out,” Adam said somberly, then waited for a few moments when Seeger began to cough up the blood that was congesting his chest. “The other one’s name is Cruz?” he asked.

  Content to send death’s messenger to even the score with the man who had left him to be killed, Seeger nodded, then said, “Bailey Cruz, heavyset feller, long hair down to his shoulders.” The talking seemed to exhaust him, and his eyelids began to flutter again.

  Adam could see that the man was taking his last breath. “Where can I find him?”

  “O’Grady’s maybe. Kill the son of a bitch.” Those were his last words.

  Adam stood over him a few moments longer. Seeger’s eyes had suddenly opened wide just before he exhaled his last breath, causing Adam to wonder what the poor wretch saw at the moment of death. Whatever it was must not have been very pleasant, he decided, for it had left his face twisted into a mask of terror. Reminding himself then that he had no time to linger there, he took Seeger’s guns and ammunition and put them on the horse still standing patiently in the path. Leading the dead man’s horse, he rode back to pick up Cruz’s trail, leaving Seeger to await the buzzards.