Last Lawman (9781101611456)

by Brandvold, Peter

  Spurr straightened, donned his hat, and led Cochise over to the holding corral. He unsaddled the horse, set his tack over the corral’s top rail, then led the horse inside amongst the wary, inquisitive others—all bays belonging to the soldiers and which the Vultures obviously hadn’t wanted to fool with—and grained and watered him under the lean-to shelter angling off the barn.

  He chose one of the bays to help him with his burial detail. When he’d saddled the mount, he used it to drag his dead partners out to the creek that wound along the south end of the fort. He’d found a spade in the barn, and, removing his sweat-soaked shirt, began digging a hole in the sandy creek bottom, where the loose sand made for fairly easy work. He’d dig only one grave and roll the bodies inside. They deserved better, even young Strang, but they’d understand that it was all he had time for.

  Shadows grew long there in the creek bottom, the water trickling along the bed’s far side. A box elder growing up from a nearby island offered shade, but it was still hot, and the blackflies were biting. Spurr didn’t push himself too hard, taking a couple of smoke breaks, pausing frequently to drink water and to nip from a brandy bottle he’d brought from Humphreys’s ranch. His hair, beard, and sinewy, powder-white torso were slick with sweat.

  He’d almost cleared a grave four feet deep and four feet wide when he stopped digging suddenly, dropped the shovel, and reached for the rifle he’d leaned against a boulder. Racking a round into the chamber, he brought the rifle to bear on the man sitting on the creek’s far bank, on the other side of the box elder.

  “You just hold it right there, you sneaky devil!”

  “I been holdin’ it right here,” the half-breed said. “For the past ten minutes.” He had his knees up near his bear claw necklace, his arms wrapped around them. He opened his hands as though to show that they were empty.

  Spurr stared at him. He was the man who’d been shadowing him and the others. A half-breed, all right. Wearing buckskin breeches and a red-and-black calico shirt over his broad, hard chest and rounded shoulders. He could have been a full-blood, with that large, flat-featured face and hawk nose, but the jade-green eyes set off vividly by the cherry color of his sun-leathered skin said he had at least a quarter white in him. He was in his early or mid-thirties.

  His stygian hair tumbled straight down from his low-crowned, flat-brimmed black hat to hang loose about his shoulders. On his feet were traditional, well-worn stockmen’s boots. A horn-gripped pistol jutted from a holster thronged low, pistolero-style, on his right thigh.

  A half-breed, all right. Something about the mix of white and red blood made for especially tough nuts. Spurr thought it might have been because most, straddling two worlds, belonged to no one but themselves. That, in turn, made them cold-blooded, devilish. The end of a small knife handle jutted just above his right shoulder, under his shirt, likely from a sheath strapped behind his neck.

  The green eyes bored into Spurr, though a faint, casual smile had etched itself on the man’s wide, handsome mouth. Spurr couldn’t tell if it was a sneer or a real smile.

  “One o’ them that pride yourself on bein’ quiet, huh?” Spurr lowered the rifle from his shoulder but kept it cocked. “So you can sneak up on white men and feel all proud about it, like an actual full-blood.”

  “I don’t know too many full-bloods who can move as quiet as I can.” The half-breed hiked a shoulder. “I reckon they don’t need to.”

  “Who in blazes are you and why you been followin’ us?”

  “I been followin’ Mason since Willow City.”

  “You the one saved his hide?”

  The half-breed’s eyes moved to Mason lying with the others about ten feet from Spurr’s hole. “Wasn’t much point, I reckon. Only got him a few extra days.” He looked at Spurr. “I was tryin’ to tell you about the ambush when that one there, the younker, started throwin’ down on me.”

  Spurr looked at Calico Strang lying between Gentry and Web Mitchell. Like the others, the kid lay on his back, hands crossed on his bloody belly. His half-open eyes stared at the sky, the tip of his tongue nestled in a corner of his mouth. Spurr had the urge to go over and kick the young Pinkerton, who as much as anyone was responsible for the ambush.

  But hell, he had the starch taken out of him now. For good. And there was no bringing the others back.

  Spurr depressed his Winchester’s hammer. “You one o’ them shape-shiftin’ Injuns or somethin’?”

  The half-breed blinked at him dully.

  “Thought maybe you could change yourself into a bird—somethin’ like that. Since you seem to be keepin’ such a good scout over all of us.”

  “One man alone can move quicker with less chance of bein’ seen than a posse.”

  “Why you so damn secretive—keepin’ to yourself on them ridges?”

  “I sort of answered that, didn’t I?”

  Spurr narrowed an eye at the half-breed. “What’s your piece of this? You a bounty hunter?”

  The Indian shook his head. “Nope.” He looked off. “I been a cowpuncher for the past four months for the Triple X brand outside of Willow City. I was sent to town for supplies when them Vultures busted their ramrod out of Mason’s jail. Heard the shootin’, saw the killin’.”

  “I don’t get you, mister. You save Mason’s bacon but don’t show yourself till now, near a hundred and fifty miles outside of Willow City. I’ll ask ye again—what’s your stake in this?”

  “I don’t have a stake in it. I reckon I wanted to see some justice for the innocent men those Vultures killed. For the women they took. But I’m only one man.”

  “You coulda thrown in with us.”

  “And end up like them?” The half-breed cast his gaze once more at the dead men. Then he turned his sharp, cunning, suspicious gaze back to Spurr. “Besides, how do I know you’re any more upstanding than them Vultures?” He smiled. “’Cause you wear a badge?”

  He placed his big hands on his knees and straightened. He must have stood at least six foot three—an imposing figure of a green-eyed Injun. He wheeled and started walking away.

  “Hey,” Spurr yelled after him, “what the hell’s your name, friend?”

  The big Indian stopped and turned back toward Spurr. He stared hard at the old lawman for a time, shrewdly taking his measure. “Yakima Henry,” he said and walked away.

  “Yakima Henry,” Spurr muttered, chewing on the name, then shaking his head. He set the rifle aside and grabbed the spade. “Never heard of you, mister.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Spurr was beat when he’d finished burying his dead comrades. But his horse was rested, so, trailing the bay who’d helped with the burial, he pushed on. As he left the outpost, he saw the buzzards circling above the backside of a near rise.

  “Rest easy, soldiers,” he said, pinching his hat brim to the dead men.

  He booted Cochise into a lope, following the Vultures’ fresh trail up and down the hogbacks stretching like wrinkles in a paper fan from the higher, more rugged foothills of the Wind Rivers looming as though behind smoked glass in the northwest, their tips touched with white.

  It was hard to get a fix on where they were headed, as, true to habit, they stuck to no trail. Like a pack of chicken-thieving, calf-killing coyotes accustomed to being hunted, they switched direction slightly but often.

  Most likely, they were headed for South Pass City. It was the only town of any size around. Filled with rawhiders and ringtails of every brand, it was also the only town they could ride into without sticking out like pink tigers in a rodeo parade and load up with enough supplies to get them through a couple of months’ hole-up amongst the high, snowy peaks.

  Also, there was generally no law in South Pass City, as lawmen tended to simply disappear or contract lead poisoning not long after being sworn in. While there was a town marshal position in the rough-and-tumble jumble of unwashed humanity there along the old Oregon Trail, it was rarely filled by anyone but some twelve-year-old orphan or some whore having fun
. That was how Spurr remembered it from a few years ago, anyway.

  So the Vultures wouldn’t have to waste any lead there, either, unless they wanted to, of course. Which they probably would.

  Spurr holed up for the night in a wooded hollow between two hogbacks. After he’d tended Cochise and piled his tack near a run-out spring, he grabbed his rifle and headed out to look for supper. Most likely, the Vultures were well out of earshot.

  He brought down a rabbit with one try, dressed it out, and spitted it over a fire he built of pine and fir branches. He sat against his saddle smoking and drinking coffee laced with brandy, watching the flames dance around the big jack and a pot of beans, unable to rid his mind of the images of his dead brethren.

  Maybe that was why he had little wish to retire. What would he do—sit out on some flophouse porch, rocking and letting the demons dance around in his head until he became a simpering fool whizzing down his leg and flinching at the clangs of a blacksmith’s hammer?

  He’d known a lot of good men, most of them now dead. He was just sorry that Ed Gentry, Bill Stockton, and Dusty Mason were amongst them. Hell, he hadn’t known Web Mitchell all that well, but even he and Calico Strang had had a right to grow old. Maybe Strang would have even made a man.

  A soft thud rose from the darkness beyond Spurr’s fire. Or a cracking sound.

  Staring into the darkness, Spurr grabbed his rifle, rose with a grunt, wincing at his popping knees, and stepped off to the left of the fire. The noise had probably only been a curious deer, maybe a coyote—hell, maybe only a pinecone tumbling from a jack pine growing out of the far bank.

  Still, he slowly, quietly levered a shell into his Winchester’s breech, keeping his ears pricked, his eyes boring into the darkness beyond where the firelight stretched.

  The sound came again. Spurr scowled. No, not a deer. And not a coyote. The thud or crack wasn’t of the right pitch for either.

  Spurr’s eyes narrowed shrewdly. A faint smile took shape inside his gray-salted beard. “Maybe you ain’t so quiet at night, eh, Henry?”

  The sound came again, a little farther off.

  The fire cracked. Juices from the rabbit popped and sizzled. Otherwise, silence down here in the dark, secluded hollow.

  Concern poked around beneath Spurr’s collar. Maybe it wasn’t the half-breed out there. Had someone else heard the shot Spurr had used to take down the jack and been attracted by it?

  Possibly the Vultures. Or, more likely, some other wolf on the prowl. God knew there were more badmen than only Stanhope’s bunch rawhiding through Wyoming. Maybe earlier they’d seen an old man with a couple of horses that would fetch a nice price in South Pass City or Rawlins. Enough, leastways, for a tumble with a percentage gal, good whiskey, and a few games of stud.

  That finger of apprehension continued to tickle the back of the old lawman’s neck as he drifted farther left, away from the fire, then stole silently forward on his soft moccasins, heading toward the hollow’s far bank. Whoever lurked out there was likely hunkered down behind a tree or a boulder, trying to draw a bead on the old-timer so they could steal his food and his horses.

  Spurr ground his back teeth.

  Another thud—closer this time.

  Spurr whipped his head toward the left where he saw some of last year’s fallen aspen leaves ruffle—like the surface of a calm lake disturbed by a skipping rock. A footfall sounded behind him and right, and he turned around, drawing his index finger back on the Winchester’s trigger, to see someone dash toward his fire. He—no, she!—crouched over the flames, grabbed his rabbit off the spit, and bolted back in the direction from which she’d come.

  The woman gave a painful groan, likely finding the rabbit a tad hot for tender hands, as she sprinted back into the darkness on the far side of Spurr’s camp. He caught a glimpse of long, wavy, dark brown hair bouncing across narrow shoulders sheathed in a brown knit poncho, heard the legs of her baggy denim trousers scrape together as she ran.

  Spurr bolted forward. “Stop!” He raised the rifle to his shoulder but held fire. What was he going to do—shoot a woman in the back for stealing his supper?

  Knowing in the back of his mind that she could have been the bait in a deadly trap, he took off running in his shambling way. He ran along the edge of the firelight, then cut away from it and into the aspens, his way lit by starlight. Trees and rocks danced around him, black as ink.

  He couldn’t see or hear the camp-robbing woman, but the hollow’s banks formed a bottleneck just ahead. There was nowhere for the woman to go but through it and into an open area that led to a creek. As he passed through the bottleneck, keeping the Winchester aimed from his right hip, he looked around.

  Ahead, a thud sounded. The woman cried out. Spurr saw a dark shadow flailing around on the ground just in front of the creek on the surface of which starlight glistened like blue scales. A silhouetted horse stood on the far side of the creek, turned toward Spurr and the woman now, lifting its head and nickering fearfully. Spurr could see that its reins were tied to the upthrust branch of a deadfall log.

  “Hold it right there, you thieving little trollop!”

  She was trying to clamber to her feet when Spurr grabbed her arm and jerked her toward him, causing her long hair to fly around her head.

  “Please!” she cried. “I was hungry!”

  Spurr stared at her. The starlight danced in her brown eyes. He could see the pretty, heart-shaped face, the cuts and bruises on her lips and one cheek, dark against the sun-burnished skin. She had a one-inch, swollen gash above her right brow.

  “You,” he said, recalling her name. “Mrs…. Wilde…?”

  After all that had happened since his leaving Humphreys’s ranch, he’d forgotten about her, including the fact that she’d lit out early that last morning, ahead of Spurr and the others, headed west…

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was hungry. Please, let me go.”

  Spurr realized he still had a firm hold of her arm and opened his hand. Her arm dropped, and she sank back away from him. Her eyes stared back at him; they owned a wild, animal-like fear. She had one hand wrapped around the grips of a pistol wedged behind the belt securing her baggy men’s denims that she wore with the bottoms rolled.

  “Just let me go,” she whispered, scuttling slowly back away from him on her butt.

  “You have no cause to fear me, ma’am. Don’t you remember who I am?”

  He could see that she did, but she still continued to move her hands and the heels of her moccasins across the gravel, inching toward the creek and the horse flanking it.

  As he stared at her, not sure how to quell her obvious fear of him, she stopped suddenly, sank down on her rump. The starlight flashed less sharply in her eyes. “I dropped your rabbit. It was hot.”

  She turned onto her hands and knees, heaved herself to her feet, and started walking through the shallow stream.

  “Ah, that ain’t nothin’,” he said, rising to a standing position and pitching his voice a little softer. “I bet we could find it, clean it off. There’s enough for two. And a pot of beans.”

  She stopped midway through the stream. The water washed over her moccasins, making little white wavelets just above them. She turned toward him, her expression oblique there in the darkness with the nickering horse behind her pulling at his reins.

  Spurr spread his arms, shrugging. “It’s up to you.”

  He turned and started walking back toward his camp, casting a half-furtive glance over his shoulder. She remained standing there in the shallow creek, a nightbird calling from somewhere on the velvet-black escarpment beside her horse. Spurr continued walking forward, moving through the bottleneck in the rock wall. As he neared the glow of his fire, he found the rabbit lying in the brush, picked it up, and brushed it off.

  He glanced behind once more, spying no movement. Then he continued on back to his camp, washed the rabbit off with his canteen, then returned it to its spit over the flames. He added a small branch to the dwindli
ng fire, set the bean pot on a rock away from the flames, and poured himself a fresh cup of coffee.

  He’d taken only one sip when he heard the slow clomp of hooves behind him. The woman’s horse snorted. One of Spurr’s mounts, tethered off to his right about thirty feet, loosed a whinny, and the woman’s horse responded in kind as she led it into the camp.

  She stopped there at the edge of the light, looking uncertainly, almost suspiciously around. “I’m alone,” he said, setting his cup aside and climbing to his feet.

  “I figured you were.”

  “Oh?”

  “I saw what happened at the outpost.”

  She’d reported the information with an almost shocking lack of emotion, as if the carnage hadn’t surprised her at all.

  When she offered nothing more, Spurr took her steeldust’s reins from her. “I’ll tend your horse. You sit down there by the fire and dry your feet. There’s coffee and an extra cup. A bottle, too, if you’ve a mind.”

  She hadn’t looked at him since she’d entered the camp, but now she did, just brushing his face slowly with her eyes that now, in the firelight, looked vaguely haunted. Likely, she was exhausted from the long ride out from Humphreys’s place, and probably still in shock from what the Vultures had done to her. Spurr couldn’t fathom how she’d come so far, astraddle a horse, after all she’d been through.

  He glanced once more at the pistol snugged down behind her belt, then stepped behind her and led her steeldust toward the trees where he’d tied his own. When he’d unsaddled the gelding with Cochise and the cavalry horse, he checked him over carefully as he rubbed him down briskly with a scrap of burlap.

  After a few minutes, he returned to the fire, carrying the woman’s saddle and bedroll. That was all she had. No saddlebags stuffed with trail supplies. No wonder she was hungry.