His thoughts went back to the Indians he and McGinty had seen earlier, and to the savage he had glimpsed during the thunderstorm the night before, as well.
Were the Indians stalking them, the same way he and his companions stalked the great herds of buffalo? There was a certain similarity, after all, between the Indians taking scalps and the skinners ripping those buffalo hides from the carcasses.
To the Indians the scalps were trophies, though, symbols of their victories over their hated enemies.
Buffalo hides were…just business.
“Ward! Hey, Ward!”
Costigan raised his head. McGinty was calling him. He looked over and saw the smaller man pointing.
“Over yonder!”
One by one, all the guns fell silent. Costigan turned to look where McGinty was pointing. He saw a dark, irregular blur moving over the prairie and recognized it as men on horseback. The riders were probably a mile away, maybe more.
Bledsoe stomped up. “Is that them?” he demanded. “By God, is that the savages?”
“I’ll take a look,” Costigan said.
He lifted the Sharps down from the stand and placed it on the oilcloth he’d left lying on the ground nearby. He went to his horse and reached into the saddlebags, pulling out a telescope.
During the war, he had used the brassbound spyglass to look for Rebs, and he had carried it with him ever since. Now it served other purposes.
Costigan walked to the edge of the bluff, extended the telescope, and brought it to his right eye. He peered through the lenses and searched for the riders he had seen a moment earlier only as a vague mass.
When he found them, the figures seemed to leap into focus. Indians, all right. They wore buckskins and rode ponies with no saddles, only blankets. A few carried rifles, but most seemed to be armed only with bows and arrows.
Even with the telescope, Costigan couldn’t make out many details at this distance, but he didn’t think the Indians were painted for war.
Nor could he make a reasonable estimation of how many of them there were in the group. More than twenty, probably less than a hundred. That was as much as he could narrow it down.
One thing he felt fairly certain of, though, was that the Indians weren’t interested in him and his fellow buffalo hunters. He lowered the telescope.
“Indians, all right, Colonel,” he told Bledsoe, “but they’re not coming this direction. From the looks of it they’re circling well around the herd…and us.”
One of the other shooters, a man named Browne, spat and said, “Probably tryin’ to get behind us so they can ambush us, the filthy redskins.”
Costigan shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“How do you know what they’re thinkin’?” Browne challenged him.
“I don’t,” Costigan admitted with a shrug. “But I didn’t see any war paint on their faces.”
A dark, thin-faced man named Tolbert said, “From what I’ve heard, they only paint themselves up just before they’re about to attack.”
“That’s right,” Bledsoe agreed.
Costigan wanted to ask Bledsoe just how much experience he’d had fighting Indians. As far as Costigan was aware, the answer was none.
But arguing with a blowhard like the colonel was a waste of time and energy. He turned back toward the Indians and lifted the telescope again.
Costigan watched the distant riders through the instrument until they vanished into a fold between two small hills well off to the northwest.
“They’re gone,” he announced.
“They could come back,” Bledsoe said. “And by God, while we were talking, the herd’s started to move. Start firing again, damn it! We can down a few more before the beasts are out of range.” The colonel paused. “Except you, Costigan.”
“You don’t want me to shoot, Colonel?” Costigan asked with a puzzled frown.
“No, I want you and that spyglass of yours up on one of the wagons. You’re our lookout. Those heathens aren’t going to sneak up on us and lift our hair.”
Costigan felt like Bledsoe thought that was some sort of punishment for not agreeing with him. But whatever the colonel’s motive, posting a lookout was actually a good idea, even though Costigan didn’t think this particular bunch of Indians meant them any harm.
There might be other savages out here who did, and Costigan thought they had been putting entirely too much faith in the strength of their numbers.
He took the telescope and one of his rifles and climbed onto a wagon seat. The driver was sitting in the shade of the vehicle, so Costigan didn’t have to worry about making conversation with the man.
Costigan was thankful for that. He got along all right with Dave McGinty, but small talk wasn’t something he enjoyed. He turned his head frequently, scanning the vast, mostly flat landscape around them.
The stink that rose from the wagon bed was powerful, but he didn’t let it bother him.
The smell of death had been in Costigan’s nostrils for so long, he barely even noticed it anymore.
Chapter 7
When outlaws had attacked Redemption earlier in the summer, the town hadn’t had much warning. Because of that, there hadn’t really been time for panic to set in.
That wouldn’t be the case with this threat of Indian attack, Bill knew.
Mayor Fleming asked him to spread the word that everyone in town should assemble in the street in front of the town hall as soon as possible. He headed first for the café owned by Gunnar and Helga Nilsson.
It was a little early for the lunch rush, but the Swedish couple dished up such good food, Bill wasn’t surprised to see that the café was busy already.
“Marshal, good morning!” mustachioed Gunnar Nilsson greeted him. “Mama, a cup of coffee for the marshal.”
Bill lifted a hand to stop Helga from pouring the coffee. “There’s nothing I’d like better right now,” he said, “but I’m sort of in a hurry. You mind if I say something to your customers?”
Gunnar frowned in obvious puzzlement, but he said, “Yah, sure, go ahead.”
Bill lifted his voice. “Folks, if I could have your attention, please?” When the people sitting at the tables and the counter turned to look at him, he went on, “Mayor Fleming and the council have called an important town meeting. We need everybody to get together in front of the town hall as soon as you can. And I’d sure appreciate it if you’d pass the word to anybody you run into who’s not headed in that direction already.”
Phillip Ramsey, the editor and publisher of the Redemption Star, was one of the people eating an early lunch in the café. As soon as Bill finished with the announcement, Ramsey said, “What’s this all about, Marshal? Something to do with that cavalry troop that came through earlier, I suspect.”
Bill had figured when he saw the newspaperman that Ramsey would want to know what was going on. He said, “Sorry, Mr. Ramsey, you’ll have to wait and hear what the mayor has to say along with everybody else.”
“The people have a right to know, Marshal.”
And newspapermen had a right to be damn nosy critters, Bill thought, but he said, “They’ll know when the mayor tells ’em.”
“You’re as tight-lipped as those soldiers,” Ramsey complained. “I couldn’t get anything out of them, either.”
Bill was a little surprised none of the troopers had said anything about their mission. He supposed Captain Stone had drummed it into them to keep their mouths shut.
Another man asked, “Is it all right if we finish our meals, Marshal?”
Bill shrugged. “I reckon that’d be fine. It’s gonna take a while to round up everybody. Just don’t dawdle.” He lifted a hand in farewell to the owners as he turned toward the door. “I’ll take that cup of coffee some other time, folks.”
His next stop was Smoot’s Saloon. At this time of day, it wouldn’t be very busy, but Bill knew some people would already be there drinking and gambling.
Fred Smoot was at one of the tables entering figures i
nto a ledger. He looked up when Bill pushed through the batwings and came into the saloon.
Putting his pen aside, Smoot grasped the wheels attached to the side of his chair and pushed himself backward, away from the table. With growing skill, he was able to turn himself so he could roll toward Bill.
A badman’s bullet had wounded the saloon owner and cost him the use of his legs. Josiah Hartnett, who was handy at such things, had built him a wheelchair so Smoot could get around and continue to run his saloon once he had recuperated some.
Smoot still had the slick hair, the narrow mustache, and the fancy taste in clothes that he’d had when he was a professional gambler, before he had settled down in Redemption and opened the town’s only saloon. He gave Bill a wary nod of greeting.
“Marshal,” Smoot said. “What brings you here this morning? Official business, I suppose, since I hardly ever see you take a drink.”
As a wild young cowboy, Bill had put away plenty of who-hit-John and had helped break up a few saloons in drunken brawls.
He was still young, but since pinning on the marshal’s badge, he sort of thought he should set an example. A proper lawman didn’t go around boozing it up all the time, at least not in his experience.
“Yeah, I’m afraid so, Mr. Smoot,” he said. “I need to make an announcement.”
Smoot waved a carefully manicured hand. “The floor is yours.”
“Gents,” Bill said, since there were no women in the saloon at the moment, “there’s gonna be a meeting in front of the town hall in a little while. Mayor Fleming has something important to say, and I’m trying to let as many people know about it as I can.”
One of the men at the bar grinned and said, “I never knew a politician to have anything to say that was really important to anybody except him. And Roy Fleming’s more in love with the sound of his own voice than most of ’em.”
Bill wouldn’t disagree with that last part, but he wouldn’t agree publicly with it, either. And he happened to know that this time, the mayor did have something important to say.
“I think y’all ought to be there anyway,” Bill said. “And I’d be obliged if you’d help spread the word.”
“You expect the town’s businesses to close in the middle of the day?” Smoot asked with a frown.
“Just for a little while.”
“I’m not sure that’s a wise idea. Unless, of course, you’re ordering us to do so in your position as city marshal.”
Bill was tempted to do just that. However, he had a natural aversion to throwing his weight around, and he wasn’t going to start issuing orders unless he absolutely had to.
“It’s up to you,” he told Smoot. “I’m just spreading the word, that’s all. But for what it’s worth, I really think y’all ought to be there.”
Smoot looked at him for a second, then shrugged. “Of course. I’ve always cooperated with the local law, wherever I’ve been.”
“Appreciate that,” Bill said. He left the saloon and started up the street to Monroe Mercantile.
When he got there, he found the doors open but a big, hastily printed sign in the front window that read IMPORTANT TOWN MEETING. GATHER IN FRONT OF TOWN HALL RIGHT AWAY.
Some people were already doing that, he saw. About two dozen people were milling around in front of the town hall, talking and asking questions. Nobody had any answers yet, but they would soon.
Eden and her father came out of the store. Monroe pulled the doors closed behind them. “I told everybody about the meeting as soon as we got back here,” he said.
“You didn’t say what it was about, did you?” Bill asked.
Monroe nodded toward the knot of people in front of the town hall. “If I had, that bunch would be upset, not just puzzled.”
“I’m going to go house to house and spread the word,” Eden said.
“I’ll handle the rest of the businesses,” Bill said with a nod. He saw men leaving the saloon and heading for the town hall. “We ought to have a pretty good crowd in a little while.”
“Roy’s still over in the hall,” Monroe said. “I’ll go help him figure out what he’s going to say. It won’t be easy. We have to make people take this seriously and start getting ready for trouble, but we don’t want them running around like a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off.”
Bill could imagine that. Things in Redemption might get just that crazy if folks panicked. It wasn’t called “losing their heads” for nothing.
For the next fifteen minutes, he went up and down the street, stopping at every business to make sure the owners and customers knew about the meeting. A lot of them had heard about it already and were full of questions that Bill didn’t answer.
The crowd in front of the town hall continued to grow. Bill estimated there were a couple of hundred people in the street, and their curious murmuring created a constant buzz, like a swarm of hornets.
When he figured he had notified everybody he could, he headed for the town hall himself. His bad leg was starting to ache a little from all the hurrying around town he’d been doing for the past hour or so.
As he limped along the boardwalk toward the front doors of the hall, people in the street called questions to him, wanting to know what was going on and what the meeting was all about.
“The mayor will be out in a few minutes to talk to you,” Bill told them.
“If there’s trouble, we want to know about it now!” a man called.
“Yeah, go ahead and tell us, Marshal,” another man urged.
“The people have a right to know!”
Bill’s eyes narrowed. Phillip Ramsey might have thought he could get away with that because he was in the middle of a crowd, but Bill knew good and well the newspaperman had shouted out that last statement. He picked Ramsey out of the crowd and glared at him. Ramsey didn’t look the least bit repentant.
A big man who looked like one of the bullwhackers who passed through town with freight wagons pushed his way to the front of the crowd.
For quite a while, Redemption had banned cowboys with the herds of Texas longhorns coming up to the railhead from even setting foot in the settlement, supposedly because of all the trouble they caused. No matter what the previous marshal’s other failings had been, he had enforced that ban.
But the teamsters and bullwhackers were allowed free rein in the town, and as far as Bill was concerned, they caused just as much or even more trouble than any Texas cowhands ever had. For the most part, the freighters were tough, ornery, profane men, and they liked to drink and fight.
The ban on cowboys had been lifted earlier in the summer, but since then only a couple of herds had passed close enough to the town for some of the punchers with them to visit Redemption.
None of them had gotten too rambunctious, maybe because Bill knew the way they thought, having been one of them himself not that long before. He had been able to head off most trouble before it broke out.
Not so with the bullwhackers. He’d had to jail several of them for disturbing the peace.
But not this particular hombre, who Bill had never seen before as far as he recalled. The man had the look of a troublemaker on his beefy, sunburned face as he said in a loud, belligerent voice, “There’s somethin’ bad goin’ on here! If there wasn’t, they never would’ve called this meetin’. And now this damn tin star’s afraid to tell us what it’s all about!”
“Take it easy, mister,” Bill snapped. “I told you, the mayor’ll be out here in a few minutes.” He paused, then against his better judgment added, “Anyway, I’m not sure it’s even any of your business. You don’t live here in Redemption, do you?”
“I’m here now, and so are my men and my wagons. If there’s somethin’ wrong, I want to know about it!” The man looked around. “The last time I heard about somethin’ like this, there was an outbreak of cholera! Wiped out damn near the whole town!”
“Oh, my Lord!” a woman said in a voice shrill with terror. “Has somebody come down with cholera, Marshal? Are we a
ll going to get sick and die?”
“Blast it,” Bill muttered under his breath. He raised his hands to try to get the crowd to pay attention to him. “Nobody’s got cholera! Not that I know about, anyway. This doesn’t have anything to do with anybody bein’ sick.”
“That’s just what they’d tell you if they didn’t want to start a panic,” the bullwhacker insisted.
More people started to yell questions as the crowd continued to grow and pressed closer to the boardwalk. Bill motioned for quiet and raised his voice to call over the hubbub, “Settle down, folks! Everybody just settle down!”
The bullwhacker turned to face the crowd and bellowed, “I say we go in there and make that damn mayor tell us what’s goin’ on!”
Shouts of agreement filled the air. The crowd surged forward, only it wasn’t just a crowd anymore, thought Bill.
These folks were well on their way to becoming a mob, and a lot of it was the fault of that blasted bullwhacker.
The man turned back toward the town hall and put a booted foot on the step up to the boardwalk.
“We’re comin’ in, Marshal,” he said. “Better get the hell out of our way!”
Bill planted his feet and didn’t move…except to wrap his hand around the walnut grips of the Colt holstered at his hip.
Chapter 8
He didn’t want to shoot anybody. Yeah, the bullwhacker was acting like a jackass, but that was probably just because he was scared.
Fear was behind all the anger that now flowed from the crowd, Bill sensed. They didn’t know what was happening, but their instincts told them it was something bad, something dangerous. And not knowing was always frightening.
But that didn’t mean Bill was going to let them stampede into the town hall and start a riot. If it came to gunplay, he hoped a shot or two fired into the air would make them stop and think twice about trying to charge over him. If it didn’t…
Well, a bullet in that bullwhacker’s leg probably would. Bill just hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
Hunters Page 5