“Add four Imperiales to the tally, George.”
“My gosh, Cliff, what’d you do—rob a bank?” Canfield chuckled and shook his head as he grabbed a pencil to begin figuring up the bill.
“No, I haven’t stooped to that level yet. Another hard winter and I’m liable to, though.”
Cliff pulled a thick wad of folded greenbacks out of the pocket of his deerskin, wool-lined coat, which Sonja had sewn for him after they were first married and had recently moved out to this high, cold winter country from where they’d both grown up in Missouri. He saw Canfield eyeing the roll of bills. That made him flush with pride despite his natural inclination to self-effacement.
It was just that he’d never had a roll that size, and it made him, for the first time in his life, feel special and important and like he was worth something. He knew that money shouldn’t make him feel that way, but he’d be damned if it didn’t, just the same. His had been a hard life. That glint in Irvin’s eyes as the boy limped down the center aisle toward the counter, the bulging paper sack in his hand, only made Cliff glow all the brighter.
“You got half a sack there, boy?”
Irvin held the bag up, his blue eyes round as saucers, a tentative smile on his lips, as though he wasn’t quite sure his father wasn’t funning with him, though he knew that Cliff would never have done something so cruel.
Irvin shook the sack and grinned delightedly. “Half a sack, Pa.”
“Put it up here and we’ll have Mr. Canfield weigh it.”
Irvin dragged his stiff right leg along the aisle. The metal cage shone in the sunshine angling through the front and side windows. The sight of the contraption that was supposed to keep the knee from shifting and giving the boy’s leg some strength, never failed to break Cliff’s heart. The boy tossed the bag onto the counter beside the Winchester, and ran his glove with the hole in it down the frame, caressing the varnished forestock with the finger exposed by the hole.
“Wow—she’s a beauty! Ain’t it awful expensive, Pa?”
“Oh, it’s not so bad.” Turning to Canfield, he said, glancing down at the cash in his hand, “Sold a few more cows than I figured this fall. That mining camp up the Big Thompson needed beef to get its miners through the winter.”
The lie took away some of Cliff’s pride he felt at having this much money to spend on himself and his son, but he felt compelled to explain where it had come from, even if his explanation hadn’t been the truth. Word of the thick greenback roll would likely spread, he realized with a rake of trepidation across the back of his neck. He hoped it wouldn’t get back to Sonja. That was doubtful. Their ranch was pretty remote, and Sonja was so busy around the ranch that she didn’t make it to town very often.
Besides, he’d soon tell her about the money. He’d have to. He was just biding his time, enjoying the extra load while he could.
Canfield scribbled a figure at the bottom of the notepad. “Well, if you’re going to pay off your account, Cliff, the total comes to fifty-three dollars and twenty-five cents.”
“Wow!” Irvin said, shifting his gaze from the wad of green in his father’s hand to the bag of candy, seeming certain that the candy was about to be put right back in the barrels it had come from.
Cliff counted out the cash, separated it from the rest, stuffed the rest back into his coat pocket, and then counted each of the other bills as he laid them onto Canfield’s open ledger book. He snapped down the last bill, dug into his pocket, and propped a quarter down on top of the bills, giving it a celebratory spin.
“There you go, George! Free an’ clear!”
“Yes, sir, free an’ clear, Cliff,” Canfield said, shuttling his startled gaze from the cash to Cliff’s smiling face. “Yes, sir, free an’ clear. You fellas need any help out to your wagon?”
“Nah, we got it. Irvin, there’s your new gloves, and there’s your candy. You only get two, three pieces at the most on the ride home, so don’t go sneakin’ any extra!”
“I won’t, Pa!” the boy said, glowing at the sack of candy that his father handed down to him, and dipping a hand through the top.
“And don’t eat your quota before we even get back on the trail!”
“I won’t, Pa!” the boy said around the chunk of cinnamon stick he’d just bitten off.
Cliff and Canfield laughed as Cliff hauled his gear off the counter, liking the feel of the Winchester in his hand, and crossed to the front of the store, the boy dragging his bad leg along behind him.
Cliff called, “Thanks, George. Probably won’t see you till after Thanksgivin’!”
“Have a safe trip home, fellas. Hope you like that Winchester, Cliff. Tell your ma howdy for me—will you, Irvin!”
“You got it, Mr. Canfield!” the boy said, hobbling out the front door that his father held open for him and out onto the mercantile’s broad loading dock.
Their orange-painted buckboard farm wagon sat in the street below the dock, a beefy paint horse whom Irvin had named Jabber in the traces. The horse shook its head in eager anticipation of getting back on the trail to their ranch as Cliff walked down the loading dock steps.
The rancher set the foodstuffs in the buckboard’s box with the wheel he’d had repaired, along with a bolt of muslin for Sonja. He wrapped the rifle in a blanket and stowed it beneath the wagon’s spring seat, with his hide-wrapped canteen and the old Spencer repeater he always carried in an ancient, cracked sheepskin scabbard that was worn clean through in places.
Cliff helped Irvin down the last few loading dock steps and lifted the boy up over the wagon’s right front wheel into the seat padded with a heavy striped saddle blanket. Cliff inspected Jabber’s driving bridle and harness, making sure all the straps were secure, and he climbed into the driver’s seat beside the boy, and released the brake.
“Here we go, Jabber. Let’s go home, ole son!”
The horse leaned into its hame, and the wagon rattled off down the broad main street of Longmont. At the west end of town, Cliff turned the horse onto the northern trail, pinching his hat brim to the jehu of the Golden–Camp Collins stage just entering town from the west, and put Jabber into a spanking trot.
It was a cool, clear day, the blue sky absolutely faultless. It had been a good morning for the two-hour ride to town, and it looked like the afternoon would be just as nice for the two-hour ride back to the Merriam Circle Slash M. Cliff settled back in his seat, both boots on the dashboard, and held the ribbons lightly in his gloved hands.
Irvin sat beside him, slowly chewing his candy and watching the prairie with its stirrup-high buffalo grass slide past. Out here on the prairie, with the Front Range jutting tall and dramatic and already limned with bright fields of fresh white snow jouncing around to their left, Cliff spotted several clumps of Ben Walker’s copper-colored, glossy-coated cattle, driven down out of the mountains for the winter.
Cliff couldn’t help eyeing the blooded stock with envy. Maybe someday he’d be able to afford such Durham bulls as the ones Ben Walker imported from Scotland to inject higher quality, shorthorn beef blood into Cliff’s own stock that was still mostly of Texas longhorn origin and less able than the Durhams to weather the harsh winters of these high, northern climes.
A half hour after leaving Longmont, Cliff turned the wagon onto the left tine of the fork in the trail, avoiding the right tine that swung north and east toward Camp Collins, and headed west into the foothills. Here the trail grew steeper and more rugged, with pine-stippled buttes, red stone dikes, and cedar-studded mesas rising all around. The cone-shaped sierra of Longs Peak lofted like a statue from a massive stone base, straight ahead in the west. The crown jewel of the northern Front Range, Longs poked its stony, snow-mantled thumb straight up to tickle the underbelly of the arching, cobalt sky.
Higher and higher the wagon rocked and rattled beside the flashing stream of Arapaho Creek, through autumn-yellow forests alive w
ith birds, squirrels, chipmunks, and infrequent clumps of grazing mule deer. They were almost home, Irvin sleeping with his head resting against his father’s side, when Cliff spied movement up the steep mountain slope ahead and left.
Cliff eased back on the reins. “Hoah, Jabber—hoahhh!”
As Irvin stirred beside him, Cliff frowned at the horseback riders filing down the side of the slope. One by one, they came—tall-riding men in fur coats or long dusters, horses outfitted with bedrolls and rifle scabbards. They galloped out of the yellow aspens crowning the ridge, plunging nearly straight down the mountain and into the valley in which the Circle Slash M Ranch lay.
There must have been nearly a half a dozen riders in all, heading somewhere in an awful damn hurry.
What on earth . . . ?
THIRTY-FOUR
Irvin sat up in the seat and fisted sleep from his eyes, yawning. “What is it, Pa?”
“Not sure, boy.” Cliff stared off beyond the bluff straight ahead and behind which the last of the riders had just disappeared as they’d descended the mountain. They were now in the valley in which his own spread lay and at the head of which sat his own humble headquarters.
They had to be headed to his place. There was no other ranch or farm in this canyon, and no other settler at all since Old Man Crawford had closed up his silver mine and aimed his mule and his wagon for Montrose nearly a year ago.
Suddenly a sick feeling came over Cliff. His hands inside his wool-lined leather gloves grew spongy. The crew he’d just seen descend that slope had been a good half mile away from him, but they’d a hard-bitten air about them. And they’d all been carrying rifles in their saddle scabbards. Cliff had seen a good bit of steel flashing beneath a few of the men’s coats as well.
Gunmen. Outlaws, possibly.
Absently, he lowered his right hand to his coat pocket. He shoved the pocket against his side, felt the lump of bills residing there . . .
“Hold on, Irvin!” Cliff shook the reins over Jabber’s back. “Gidyup, Jabber—let’s go, boy!”
The paint lunged up the trail, pulling the wagon around the left side of the bluff and then up and over a low hill. As the wagon lurched down the hill’s opposite side, Cliff saw the prints where the riders had entered the trail and began following the trail in the direction of his ranch headquarters.
Sonja was likely cooking supper. Cliff had cut loose both his cowhands after the fall gather. Sonja would be in the house alone.
Anxiety caused Cliff’s chest to heave as he again flipped the reins over the paint’s back, urging more speed. The riders’ dust hung in the air, churning ominously. As the wagon thundered along the trail, Cliff felt Irvin’s anxious gaze on him. He turned and placed a calming hand on the boy’s knee. “It’s all right, son. Everything’s going to be okay.”
His voice must have betrayed his hammering fear of what was happening at the ranch, for the boy’s brows beetled, a fearful cast entering his puzzled gaze, as he continued to stare up at his father.
The wagon continued to pound the trail for another mile. When they’d bounded over the second to last hill in the trail before reaching the ranch, Cliff slowed the wagon in the crease between that hill and the next. At the hill’s bottom, he swung off the trail’s right side and into the rocky dry wash that threaded the crease.
He pulled the wagon around a slight bulge in the forward hill, near some small, dead cottonwoods, and stopped and set the brake. He reached under the seat for the Winchester, set it in his lap, and peeled the blanket away.
“Irvin, I want you to stay here with the wagon, okay?”
“What’s wrong, Pa?” Irvin’s voice sounded wooden as he watched his father reach under the seat for the box of .44 shells. “Ma’s all right, isn’t she?”
“I’m sure she is, Son. I just want to make sure of it. I’m going to do that by walking into the ranch real slow-like. You know—like an Apache?”
“Like an Apache?”
Cliff was stuffing the cartridges through the Winchester’s loading gate. “That’s right. I’m probably being foolish, but I just want to check something out. You stay here with the wagon, understand?”
The boy’s voice trembled. Tears shone in his eyes. “I wanna come with you, Pa!”
Cliff stopped loading the gun and squeezed his son’s arm. “Irvin, you’re my top hand now with Luke and Thomas gone. Top hands do what the boss tells them. If I need your help, I’ll call for you later, understand?”
“Should I get out the old Spencer?”
“No, not yet,” Cliff said, continuing to punch shells through the Winchester’s receiver. “For now, you leave the Spencer under the seat. I’ll let you know if I need you and the Spencer’s help, all right?”
He looked at the boy, who was staring fearfully up the side of the gravel-strewn western bluff toward the ranch where he knew his mother was working alone.
“Understand, Irvin?” Cliff said, urgency in his voice.
Irvin nodded as he sleeved tears from his pale cheeks. “I understand, Pa.”
“Go ahead and have some extra candy,” Cliff told the boy as he leapt down from the wagon, landing with a grunt. “Remember, the canteen’s under the seat, if you get thirsty.”
Quickly, he worked the smooth cocking mechanism, seating a fresh shell in the Winchester’s chamber. He off-cocked the hammer, glanced once more at his son sitting the wagon and squinting his eyes at him, cheeks bleached with fear.
“Don’t worry—I’ll be back soon!”
Cliff turned and crossed the trail and continued along the wash on the trail’s opposite side, angling around the headquarters’ southern perimeter. He knew every rock and prickly pear lining the wash, because he and Irvin often took target practice with rifles and pistols out here, and they often hunted the wash for rabbits and sage hens. He knew without having to see the house where it would be in relation to the wash. When he reached the place he’d been heading for, where a juniper stood on the wash’s south side, he climbed the low, steep slope on his right.
Near the top, he slowed his pace until he was within two feet of the crest. He stopped, doffed his hat, and stretched a look over the brow of the slope.
The sun had gone down about a half hour ago, and blue shadows filled the yard though the sky was still filled with a slowly darkening green light. The barn and corral were straight out in front of Cliff, the rear of the barn facing him. The bunkhouse and two more corrals including the breaking corral lay to the right. To the left of the barn, on the yard’s westernmost side, fronting Thunder Creek, stood the long, low-shake-shingled log cabin that Cliff had built when he and Sonja had moved out here nearly twelve years ago.
From this angle, Cliff could see the front and south side of the cabin. Smoke unfurled from the large stone chimney on the cabin’s near side. But what Cliff was staring at as his heart tattooed a frantic rhythm in his ears were the half-dozen or more horses just now being led away from the cabin, toward a corral about fifty yards in front of Cliff.
The man leading the horses was tall, broad, and lumbering. Indian featured, he wore a bullet-crowned black hat and thigh-length fur coat with a brace of pistols and a large knife holstered on the outside. The cuffs of his black pants were shoved down into his knee-high Indian moccasins. Another knife handle jutted from the man’s left moccasin top.
A man on the cabin’s front veranda called, “Hey, Quiet Ed—bring the whiskey out of my saddlebags. Appears the woman might need her tongue loosened a little!”
Cliff dropped his head down beneath the brow of the slope. He pressed his cheek against the dirt and finely ground gravel, gritting his teeth. Fear threatened to overwhelm him. He looked at the rifle in his hands. It was shaking.
The canyon was so quiet that Cliff could hear each footfall of the horses being led to the corral. And he could hear with horrifying clarity the sharp crack of a hand meeting flesh
that vaulted out from the cabin’s open front door.
Sonja screamed shrilly. From inside the cabin rose the thump of what could only have been Cliff’s wife hitting the floor.
Cliff drew a sharp, terrified breath.
He couldn’t just lie here, his heart beating fast. He had to get to the cabin and help Sonja.
Cliff glanced over the brow of the slope. The Indian was leading the horses into the corral and beginning to unsaddle them, cursing and shaking his head, apparently not too happy with the task he’d been assigned.
Cliff pulled his head back down behind the hill, donned his hat, and quickly thought through his options. He didn’t have many. All he could do was try to sneak up behind the cabin without being seen, and . . . then what?
He’d cross that bridge when he came to it.
Cliff dropped back down into the dry wash. He continued following it west. When the wash curved off to the left, where it met the stream farther south, he climbed out of it and crawled through the sagebrush, staying low, until he’d gained the pines along the stream. Now he was about fifty yards from the cabin’s rear southwest corner.
He dropped to a knee, mopped his brow with a handkerchief. It was cool and getting colder as the sun continued to drop behind Longs Peak behind him now. He worried about Irvin. The boy was frail and didn’t do well in the cold. But mostly Cliff’s thoughts were with Sonja. There was no more noise issuing from the cabin, and that had him especially worried.
What were they doing to her? She was six months pregnant, for godsakes . . .
A couple of the windows facing him were dimly lit, and he could see occasional shadows passing in front of the lamps. He had to get to one of those windows and try to get a handle on how many, and what kind of men exactly, he was dealing with. Then, somehow, he and the Winchester would try to get the upper hand and get rid of them, hopefully without shooting.
The Old Wolves Page 26