Cash wondered, with bitter sarcasm, if Creed had only killed and burned the whores, would he still have been sentenced to hang? Or might he instead have gotten off with mere incarceration? The justice handed out for killing the likes of whores and for killing the likes of a powerful politician's son often tended to be very different things.
Except Cash wasn't inclined to see those kinds of differences. Which was why he had a tendency for sometimes meting out his own brand of justice ... and that, in turn, was why there were those who referred to him as "the outlaw marshal".
* * *
Jack Sampson swallowed a gulp of bitter coffee and wished he had some sugar to put in it. Sampson wished for many things in his life. But, because he was lazy and shiftless (and knew it), he settled for very little.
Sampson looked about him now at the interior of the cracked, crumbling adobe shell left from what had once been a sturdy military-style blockhouse. The structure was one of the few buildings still standing within the ruins of Fort Vasquez, an old fur trading post just off the front range of the Colorado Rockies. The post had been abandoned decades ago, its walls left to collapse and become overgrown with weeds and tangled brush. Since there was nobody around to say otherwise, Sampson had moved into these ruins the previous spring. With winter coming on, he'd made a few half-hearted attempts to patch the cracks in the walls with mud and straw and some old, half-rotted planks he'd found laying around. But the place would still leak like a sieve when the cold winds came roaring down out of the mountains. And the makeshift stove in the middle of the room sure as hell wasn't going to be able to throw out enough offsetting heat ... even if he ever got around to chopping and storing enough wood to keep it fueled.
Sampson took another drink of coffee but the hot liquid wasn't enough to stop the shiver that ran through him at the thought of oncoming winter. Sampson was a slight man with quick, jerky movements, presently wrapped in a ratty old wool coat that made him appear considerably bulkier than he really was. His wiry black hair and broad, flat face, however, did nothing to mask the mixture of Negro and Sioux blood that coursed through his veins.
The rear portion of the room where Sampson sat was sectioned off by a row of buffalo hides hanging from a hemp rope stretched taut between the walls. This created a measure of privacy for the sleeping quarters located on the other side.
As Sampson poured himself more coffee, he heard the sound of a heavy body stirring behind the buffalo hide curtain. That would be Creed, Sampson told himself. Once again he shivered, and this time it had nothing to do with the thought of cold weather coming on.
A minute later, two of the buffalo hides parted and Creed emerged from the sleeping area. He was not a tall man, less than six feet in height, but possessed massive shoulders and a barrel chest. An unruly shock of straight, tar-black hair spilled over his eyes and trailed down the back of his neck. Under shaggy brows his eyes were fierce and restless and glistened with a bright, brittle blackness all their own.
With a thick-fingered hand as broad as a frying pan, Creed shoved hair back away from his eyes and said, "I thought I smelled coffee cooking." He gestured toward the pot on the makeshift stove. "You got another cup?"
Sampson reached down to rummage in a wooden box setting beside the sawed-off section of log he was seated on. He pulled out a dented tin cup and placed it on the rough-hewn, lopsided table at which he sat. Creed took the cup and poured it full of coffee from the pot on the stove.
"Stout-looking brew," Creed observed, regarding the steaming contents of the cup.
"Yeah, I guess it is. Sorry I don't have no sugar or nothing to put in it," Sampson said.
"No problem. I like my coffee straight and strong." Creed took a big gulp, seemingly oblivious to the heat of the liquid. Lowering the cup, he smacked his lips and said, "Yeah, that's more like it. In that shithole prison, they fed us watered-down coffee that wasn't even hot. More like warmed over piss."
Sampson stood up. "That pot's probably getting low, ain't it? Go ahead and refill your cup, I'll brew another."
Creed nodded. "That'd be good. I like the smell of coffee brewing almost as much as I like drinking it."
Creed topped off his cup and then found another sawed-off section of log to sit down on while Sampson went about making a fresh pot.
"The smell of that first pot cooking up before was especially welcome," Creed said, "because it helped offset the smell of your woman back there." He jabbed a thick thumb toward the sleeping area behind the buffalo hides. "Damn, man, I hate to sound ungrateful for the hospitality of letting me have a roll with her and all. But you need to drag her and a bar of soap to the nearest creek and hold her ass down until the suds quit foaming. She is some kind of ripe!"
Sampson shrugged indifferently. "I reckon ... But she don't complain much and she fetches a decent meal out of whatever vittles I manage to scrape together. Plus, with the nights getting colder, she makes a right nice belly warmer."
Creed grunted. "Yeah, I can see where that big old ass of hers would be good for keeping a fella right toasty on a cold night. Forget I said anything. She's your woman, you make do with her however you see fit. And I am grateful for you letting me roll with her last night ... Lord knows, it'd been a long damn stretch since I had me a woman."
Sampson sat back down again, across the table from Creed. "Glad I could help out. Hell, what are friends for?"
"Which is exactly why I showed up here," Creed said. "Not to roll with your woman, I don't mean. But for that other business I spoke to you about last night. You had time to think on that?"
Sampson pressed his coffee cup between his palms. "Not a whole lot to think on, really. Not for a pair of twenty-dollar gold pieces. That's how much you said, right?"
"You heard right." To emphasize the point, Creed patted a pocket of the too-small jacket he had on. A money pouch inside the pocket clinked enticingly. Creed had taken the jacket—along with the money pouch—off the body of a shopkeeper he'd killed night before last in a Denver back alley.
"For that much money, I'd ride to Hell and back," Sampson said.
"You don't have to go near that far. Like I told you," Creed reminded him, "you only have to hightail it up to the Pine Ridge rez and get word to Kicking Bear where he's holed up there with Sitting Bull. Tell him I'll have guns waiting for him in Vedauwoo. While you're doing that, I'll be making my way to get things ready for him."
"A hundred rifles, uh?"
"Springfield '73s. A little outdated, but brand new. Never fired. If Kicking Bear is serious about this Ghost Shirt stuff he's been preaching, he damn sure ought to be interested. Think how much hell he could stir up if all of a sudden if he was able to get his hands on that many guns."
"According to talk I've heard, I'd say you're right to think he'll be interested."
"Damn right I'm right."
Sampson looked thoughtful for a minute and then, somewhat cautiously, said, "If you don't mind me asking, Creed ... What's in this for you? I mean, you don't generally do nothing for nothing. You ain't offering up those guns simply for the sake of helping this whole Indian reawakening thing get off the ground, are you?"
Creed looked at him like his question was the dumbest thing he'd ever heard. "Why the hell would I care if a bunch of stupid Indians dancing around in a circle ever 're-awake' anything, or not? Me and my mixed blood have been treated as bad by the Indians as by the Whites. You know about that, too. I wouldn't lift a finger to help neither side if there wasn't something in it for me."
"So you are figuring to get some kind of payment out of Kicking Bear for those rifles."
"Damn right I am. Kicking Bear and me have had some dealings in the past. He don't like me much and he sure as hell don't claim me as kin. But he knows when I make a deal I stick to it. And I know he has ways to get his hands on money and gold still stashed away from the old Indian-raiding days. He wants these guns bad enough, he's gonna have to tap into some of that. You can tell him that for me. That'll be part of the m
essage you carry to him."
"If you say so," Sampson allowed, not sounding wholly convinced.
"I say so," Creed growled irritably. "How about you let me worry whether or not Kicking Bear has the means to pay me? All you need to worry about is if I can pay you what we agreed on." He jerked the money pouch out of his jacket pocket, shook out a pair of twenty-dollar gold pieces, slapped them down on the rough-plank tabletop. "There! Now you got no worries for your part. You just make sure you do what you need to in order to earn that, then you can forget the rest."
Sampson said nothing. He held off touching the coins, but his eyes locked on them. He licked his lips like a hungry man gazing upon a feast. "When do you want me to ride out?" he asked.
"Right away. The sooner the better. You got a decent horse?"
"Uh-huh. Got a good one."
"You get started right away and stick to it hard and steady, you ought to make it to the rez by day after tomorrow. I'll have to take it a little slower and more careful on account of being on the dodge from every law dog this side of the Rockies. Still, that'd give me time to make it to Vedauwoo, find the guns and get them ready. Then figure two to four more days for Kicking Bear to reach me after you get word to him." Creed spread his hands. "So, no more than a week from now, the whole thing can be done. I take Kicking Bear's gold and make tracks for Canada, he takes the guns and goes off to finish stirring up his uprising or whatever the hell it's supposed to be. Everybody comes out happy."
Abruptly, Sampson reached for the coins on the table. "I know I'm going to come out happy," he said, smiling.
Creed's bearlike hand slammed down, pinning Sampson's wrist to the table, his fingers stopped an inch short of touching the gold pieces.
"Just to make sure we're clear," Creed said in a low, menacing tone. "I'm paying you in advance and counting on you to hold up your end. You fail me, Jack—for any reason, no excuses—it would displease me greatly. Understood?"
Sampson's smile had quickly given way to a pained expression as Creed's grip tightened on his wrist. "Yes," he groaned. "Jesus, Creed! Of course I understand."
Creed maintained his grip another agonizing minute. "See to it you do," he said, fierce black eyes emphasizing his message. Then, finally, he let go and Sampson pulled back his hand, feeling numbness in his arm all the way up to the shoulder.
-FOUR-
"Man, oh man. That beats anything I ever did see," Milo Evert said in an awed, hushed voice. He continued looking through the long brass spyglass he was holding up to one eye. "Lookit him! That fella goes up and down and back and forth across those rocks like a doggone spider or something."
At Evert's right elbow, Flynn Remsen was also peering through a spyglass. His was aimed in the same general direction as Evert's, but at a lower level. "You go ahead and waste your time on that fool crawlin' around on the rocks if you want," muttered Remsen. "Me, I'd a whole lot rather stay tight on those two fine lookin' gals down there watchin' him—especially the blonde. Now she damn near beats anything I ever did see. Leastways not for a long, long while."
The two men were crouched in a stand of aspen on a slight rise above a weedy gully. On the other side of the gully, across a stretch of meadow grass, a high, flat-faced wall of granite cut with crooked fissures rose up well over a hundred feet. Part way up this natural wall, a man with a spool of rope draped over one shoulder and a string of what looked like sharp metal spikes dangling from his belt was making his way toward the top. He clung to hand-holds and found foot purchase in pinched cracks and on narrow ridges that seemed all but invisible to those watching.
At the base of the escarpment, necks craned back, anxious faces peering upward, two young women looked on. They were seated on a colorful picnic blanket that had been spread over the grass. A short distance off to one side of the women, a tall, slender man stood at a bulky camera mounted on a tripod, its lens tilted to capture the progress of the climber. Several yards removed from this group, seated on the dropped tailgate of a wagon hitched to a team of mules, a second man seemed to be keeping an eye on the overall proceedings.
In the aspen stand, Flynn Remsen lowered his spyglass and frowned. He was a homely, ill kempt man in his middle thirties. He'd always been slight of build and frail-looking, the latter amplified even more in recent years by a bum left hip (the result of a bone-cracking bullet) that gave him a pronounced limp when he walked. He was clad in dirty, dusty trail clothes and a slouch hat that looked as if it had been in tug of war between two wolves. The pistol riding in a holster on his right hip and the Winchester rifle resting across his thigh, however, were glisteningly clean and well cared for.
"Elmer sent us to scout the area and hunt up some fresh meat," Remsen said now. "Reckon we've scouted up something—these rock-crawling fancies, I'm saying—we ought to report back to him about before we go shootin' off our guns at some game."
Evert nodded in agreement. In sharp contrast to Remsen, Evert was a tall, hard-muscled black man who moved with the grace of a mountain lion. He also wore rugged trail clothes, but his were kept brushed as clean as possible and the hat on his head was sharply creased and always cocked at just the right angle. The only visual similarity between the two men was the way they were both heavily armed and the obvious care they gave their guns.
"Yeah. I expect that'd be best," Evert drawled. "Don't see these fancies as much of a threat, but I'm pretty sure Elmer don't want to draw any undue attention to our bein' here."
Remsen grunted as he collapsed his spyglass and stuffed it in his coat pocket. With a final longing glance back across the meadow, he muttered, "Had my way, I'd damn well like to pay some attention to that fine-lookin' blonde over there. That's what I'm pretty sure of."
* * *
At the last sliver of morning, Cash came within sight of the familiar peaks and distinctive formations of the Vedauwoo Rocks. By the middle of the afternoon, he'd reached the eastern fringe of the area and reined his horses to a halt beside a narrow stream running between banks of thick grass studded with various-sized rocks and boulders.
The day had warmed nicely, just a hint of breeze, and Cash had held a steady, distance-eating pace with only one prior stop to briefly rest and take on water. Now, having reached his destination, he felt warranted in allowing himself and the animals a lengthier break. After cooling the horses, he watered them at the stream and then staked them to forage in the rich grass while he set some coffee to brew over a small, smokeless fire and opened a can of peaches to eat along with strips of beef jerky. Once the coffee was ready, he poured himself a cup and stretched out in a patch of shade, resting on hip and elbow, to enjoy his repast.
In that relaxed moment, Cash's thoughts once again drifted to the visits he'd made here as a boy, often coming to this very stream. He lingered in the reverie for only a short time, however, before pulling his thoughts to the present and to the task that had returned him here.
Cash had his doubts that Creed was already in the vicinity, yet he'd have to proceed with caution just in case. More likely, the ruthless fugitive was still making his way here, along the way gathering necessary provisions and possibly one or two additional men for assistance. In any event, Cash's plan for finding him once he was present in the area remained unchanged.
His intent was to work his way deeper into Vedauwoo, establish a well-concealed base camp, and then begin a vigil for the purpose of spotting Creed as soon as he poked up his evil head. This vigil, he'd decided, would be conducted primarily from a high point on one of the central mounds referred to by the Arapaho as the Turtle. Cash knew a relatively easy route to the top of the Turtle and from there he would have a good view over most of Vedauwoo, able to look down on all but the higher peaks of a few other mounds.
A glimpse of movement, a flicker of light in the darkness, a wisp of campfire smoke ... it was by means such as these that Cash was counting on Creed to reveal himself. And when he did, Cash would be ready to respond.
* * *
William Hat
tner lightly dropped the final six feet to the ground. A few beads of sweat dotted his forehead, but otherwise there was no outward evidence of the exertion that had been necessary to make the climb and descent he'd just completed. He was scarcely even breathing hard. William was a tall, solidly trim young man of twenty-five and when he turned away from the granite cliff to face the others as they approached, his handsome face beamed with a bright, confident smile.
Abandoning the camera and tripod with which he'd recorded some spectacular shots of his cousin's rock climbing prowess, Jonathan Kelsey was the first to reach William. He clasped the climber's hand and pumped it eagerly, all the while wearing his own broad smile. Jonathan was a year younger than William, equally tall, skinnier and a bit gawkier in physical stature, but also quite handsome in a somewhat more boyish way.
"That was amazing! Absolutely incredible!" Jonathan fairly gushed. "I never saw anything like it—although I shouldn't be surprised that such feats of daring would be something you would pursue, cousin."
"Feats of madness, would be more like it," suggested dark-haired Alice Amberson, one of the two young women who'd been looking on from the nearby picnic blanket. The pair had risen and started over together, with Alice advancing anxiously ahead of her close friend, Melanie Parsons. Both were in their early twenties and both quite attractive, though in quite opposite ways—Alice dark and sultry; Melanie a fair-skinned, coolly challenging ice goddess.
"My heart leapt into my throat a half dozen times as you clung so precariously to the tiniest slivers of rock," Alice continued. "All I could think of was why I'd ever agreed to such reckless insanity less than a week ahead of the grand wedding we've been planning for so long."
The Guns of Vedauwoo (Cash Laramie & Gideon Miles Series Book 6) Page 3