The Vengeance Seeker 2

by Will C. Knott

  Since midnight they had been waiting for the kid’s attack. Steele was positioned with his men at the entrance to the valley, Olsen and McCracken with a sizable crew in the flat just north of the creek, Wolf with his men in the cottonwoods. Any that got through either force and tried to make it back out of the valley would run into Steele’s men. Already the kid had entered the trap, the gate dropped firmly behind him.

  The one they all wanted was the kid. Blackmann would come later.

  When Wolf got to the creek, he held up, looking for the fellow he had stationed by it. Then he caught sight of him concealed behind the bank of the creek and decided to wait there for the kid’s riders. Wolf looked over at the house and the bunkhouse. The candles were still sitting in the windows, luring the kid and his men on. Satisfied, Wolf started across the open strip of meadowland toward the creek bank.

  As Wolf flung himself down beside him, Brock Kingman looked over at him. “I thought I heard them coming,” he said.

  “You heard them all right. They split up like we figured they would. Jenks won’t fire until the last of them are well into the cottonwoods.”

  “Good,” Brock said with a grin. “We won’t have no trouble hearing that cannon.”

  “I only hope it doesn’t blow itself apart and Jenks with it.”

  “Listen,” said Brock.

  Wolf listened and heard it too: the sound of hooves on well-packed ground and the constant jingle of bits. Suddenly the eerie silence of the night was shattered by the sound of a shot far to the rear of the cottonwoods: Jenks’ old Walker Colt had just been fired.

  At once a fusillade of shots came from all quarters of the cottonwoods and with it the shouts of angry, wounded men. And then came the cries of pain. Suddenly, out of the gloom of the cottonwoods a rider emerged, head bent low over his mount’s neck, his quirt flailing.

  “I’ll take him,” Brock said.

  Brock raised his rifle, sighted quickly and fired. The rider’s hands went up in the air. He twisted to his right and flew backward off his horse, striking the ground with an enormous thud. As Brock levered another cartridge into the firing chamber, the riderless horse leaped over both their heads and plunged through the creek.

  Another rider emerged. “Mine,” Wolf said. He lifted his Winchester to his left shoulder, sighted, fired. This rider, too, found a place on the turf beside the first one. He lay without moving as his horse swerved violently and then galloped off down the creek.

  At that moment Wolf heard a sudden fusillade of shots coming from the flat on the other side of the creek. McCracken and Olsen had closed their wing of the trap as well.

  Levering another shell into firing position, Wolf raised himself a foot or so to peer into the gloom of the cottonwoods. The sound of gunfire had become sporadic. Abruptly—just as a crowd of four or five horsemen galloped out of the cottonwoods—the moon vanished behind a thick rack of clouds.

  “Down!” cried Wolf as the horsemen thundered toward their position.

  Lying flat, Wolf aimed quickly and fired at the foremost rider. He was not sure, but it appeared the man was wearing a bowler hat. The shot seemed to have no effect, however, and the rider spurred his horse immediately to Wolf’s right at sight of the rifle’s flash, pulling the other riders after him.

  Levering quickly, Wolf stood up and flung another shot at him, but in the darkness the shot went wild. Beside him Brock was standing also, two six-shooters in his hands, throwing lead with wild abandon after the riders.

  The two of them were so busy trying to bring these riders down they did not see the other Snake Bar horseman galloping out of the cottonwoods toward them. But Wolf heard him and swung his rifle around, levering swiftly. He was not quick enough, however, as the horseman, firing from the hip, blasted Wolf’s Winchester from his hands; then with a magnificent leap the man’s horse carried him over their heads and across the narrow creek.

  As Wolf spun about to watch, he saw the rider clattering doggedly toward the main cabin. But from the now darkened windows a single shot lanced out. The rider pulled up abruptly, then slid from his horse. He did not lie still and tried to make cover. As he staggered to his feet, a second shot from the cabin window cut him down. This time the man lay where he had fallen.

  Wolf turned back to the cottonwoods. The sound of firing from within had ceased. A moment later men on foot came running out—his own men, their smoking guns held ready. Wolf rushed toward them.

  “We got them!” one of the men cried as Wolf neared him. “Jesus, we really caught them with their pants down!”

  “The place stinks of blood in there,” another said wearily. Sweat was running down his face and there was an angry crease already scabbing across his right temple. His face shone a deathly white in the darkness.

  “What about the kid?” Wolf asked. “Did you get him?”

  “I don’t know,” another of the men said. “It was too dark in there to tell. It was pretty damn confusing, I can tell you.”

  The first one spoke up. “I think I saw him. He was with four others. Seems like they broke out of the woods without getting touched.”

  Wolf nodded grimly and turned to look in the direction of the pass entrance, where Steele and his men were waiting. Pretty soon they would have the kid in their sights. Hopefully, they would not miss.

  The kid pulled up in a draw within sight of the canyon walls. The moon was high and bright in a clear night sky and he could see the pines on the slopes, pale puffs of green behind which, he knew, were waiting still other bushwhackers, their guns as ready as they were.

  “How many we got left?” the kid asked the rider beside him.

  “Eight all told. Finner is hit pretty bad though.”

  The kid turned around in his saddle and glanced back at the rider. Finner was slumped forward over the horse’s neck and looked ready to peel off any minute.

  “Leave the son of a bitch,” the kid said. “He’ll slow us up.”

  “The bastards were waiting for us!”

  “I know that!”

  “But how? How did they know we were coming tonight?”

  The kid had a vague idea, but it was not something he could be absolutely sure about. And right now he had other matters to consider. Chief among them how to get back out of this God-damn valley.

  He guided his horse out of the draw and looked down the length of the valley to the White Horn peaks shouldering into the night sky well beyond. Then he looked back at the narrow pass through which they had ridden not long before. No. That way was suicide.

  He sidled his horse back down the slope to his men. “We’re going the other way, south into the White Horns, through Wild Horse Pass, then back around to the Snake Bar.”

  “That’ll take a full day at least!”

  “Sure. But that way we’ll make it back without a belly full of lead to cough up. You can go back the way we came if you want. But don’t you think those sonsofbitches thought to have that pass covered—as long as they thought of everything else?”

  The man nodded. The kid looked around him at his frightened, beaten riders. He wondered what luck Blackmann had had. If it was as bad as his, Snake Bar was finished.

  “Any more arguments?” he demanded.

  There were none.

  “Then let’s get the hell out of here before they come after us!”

  He spurred his horse up out of the draw and headed south, his right hand holding onto the brim of his bowler, his long buffalo coat billowing out behind him as he rode, his beaten riders trailing him.

  Less than a mile further on Finner slipped silently off his horse and struck the thick turf and lay still. His horse pulled up and began cropping the rich grass. The last rider in the kid’s string looked back just once, then spurred his horse on without a word to the kid.

  Thirteen

  Blackmann had begun to suspect something the moment his riders swept into the nester’s front yard and found the place empty. He had hauled up in front of the man’s door and yelle
d to him to get out while he could, that he and his wife and brood would have safe passage through his men. There had been no answer. When the firebrands had been tossed onto the roof and half the building was ablaze, still without response from within, he had kicked open the door and found the place not only empty of people, but of those things a woman wants to save when disaster threatens; there was no crockery, cooking utensils, linen. The place had been hastily but thoroughly cleaned out.

  A moment later as he ducked out of the collapsing building, one of his men ran over with the news that the horses and all other livestock was missing, that not a single cow or calf had been left in the nester’s dairy barn.

  Blackmann had to content himself with burning the sodbuster’s stores of grain and hay. Riding out, he had felt let-down. He had hurt Jenks, but not nearly bad enough—certainly not fatally. And the man had not been on hand to witness the destruction with his wife and children standing by to see his powerlessness. That was how you rendered these nesters impotent—you shamed them in front of their wives and children.

  But Jenks had not been shamed; and this rankled.

  And then, even with daybreak, the kid had not returned to Snake Bar. Blackmann waited until ten that morning, then napped fitfully in his study as an ugly suspicion grew relentlessly in his soul—like some terrible malignancy whose presence he wanted only to deny. At last, around mid-afternoon he heard the weary clop of horses entering the yard, hurried to the window and looked down.

  The kid was in the lead, slumped wearily forward over his horse’s neck, six riders just as beaten strung out behind him. Blackmann hurried downstairs and emerged onto the verandah as the kid was dismounting in front of the tie rail.

  “What happened?” Blackmann demanded. “Did you finish Steele?”

  “We never saw the son of a bitch.” The kid looked closely at Blackmann. “You got a place I can sit down? My backside’s blistered.”

  “Come inside,” Blackmann snapped.

  The kid turned to the other riders straggling up. “Get some grub and some shut-eye,” he told them. “We won’t be going out for a while I’m guessing.”

  Blackmann strode ahead of the kid into the downstairs living room, a massive place with a fireplace on one wall. A sofa facing it was huge and covered with bear rugs. The size of the room immediately appeared to intimidate the kid. He took off his bowler and seemed about to unpeel his buffalo coat until Blackmann—in a silent rage at the kid’s bedraggled appearance and what it implied about the success of their assault on D Cross—spun on the kid.

  “Out with it! What the hell happened? I sent twenty men with you. Where are the rest?”

  “Back at D Cross—dead and wounded, mostly dead.”

  Blackmann looked at the kid, incredulous. He had assumed more riders were behind those few he had seen come in with the kid. When he saw the kid was serious, dead serious, he asked in a voice suddenly hushed, “All those men? What the hell happened?”

  The kid sat down on the sofa and leaned back wearily. “They were waiting for us, Mr. Blackmann. Neatest mouse trap you ever saw. They let us in without a whisper. When we went for the cabin and the rest of the ranch, they cut us down. We were in a cottonwood grove when they opened up on us. Petey must have got his the same way. We got out of the valley by going through the White Horns. It was the long way around, but the safest.”

  “Wiped out. You were wiped out.”

  “Just about, Mr. Blackmann. How’d you do?”

  Standing with his back to the fireplace, Blackmann frowned. “We lost no one. There was no fighting. The nester’s place was cleaned out before we got there.” He looked sharply at the kid. “They weren’t waiting for us—but they knew we were coming.”

  “That’s what I figured, Mr. Blackmann.”

  Blackmann nodded. There was no longer any way to deny it. Someone at Snake Bar had gone over to the other side—and irrationally, unwilling to fasten his mind to the idea, he found himself thinking of Josh.

  “Someone told them everything,” the kid said. Blackmann looked at him. Yes, the kid knew who it was.

  “It was Josh, Mr. Blackmann,” the kid went on. “He was outside when the men were talking it up, and he was in here when I spoke to you—before we buried Lassiter.”

  “I remember,” Blackmann said. He turned and looked desolately into the fireplace. He felt sick all over. It was like that night with the boy’s mother when his limbs had seemed to fill with a kind of poison. Blackmann took a deep breath and turned back to the kid.

  “We’re not through yet, kid.”

  The kid waited.

  “We’ve still got eighteen riders,” Blackmann went on grimly. “And each one with a score to settle.”

  “Yes, Mr. Blackmann.”

  Blackmann looked closely at the kid. “It’s you now, Kid. You’re my right arm. Stick with me in this—and you’ll be set at Snake Bar.”

  The kid’s pallid face brightened. “Yessir, Mr. Blackmann.”

  “Go to the cook shack. Get some food, then get some sleep. We’ll be moving out again as soon as you’re ready.”

  As the kid left, Juanita hustled into the room, her expansive bosom heaving with excitement under her heavy black dress.

  “What is it, Juanita?”

  “It is Eduardo,” she replied, wringing her hands. “He is back already. But he has not brought nothing back with him.”

  Blackmann nodded wearily and followed his stout housekeeper out of the living room. He was profoundly depressed, unable to shake an aching sense of loss. After Josh had ridden off the day before, he had found the open box on his desk, the letter gone. There was no further explanation needed for his son’s bitter parting words.

  Yet he had been unwilling to admit that this meant a complete break with his son. A part of him simply would not let himself despair of someday seeing his son return to Snake Bar, even now as he strove to convince himself that Joshua had just been revealed as a traitor to Snake Bar—and that good men had died for less.

  Eduardo was Juanita’s husband. He was standing unhappily just inside the kitchen doorway.

  “What happened?” Blackmann asked him. “The cart break down?”

  “No, sir, Mr. Blackmann. The cart, it is still very fine.”

  “Then why didn’t you bring back what you were sent for?”

  “They wouldn’t let me, Mr. Blackmann. And they would not let me stay in Willow Bend. They said Snake Bar people, they cannot go to Willow Bend no more.”

  Blackmann took a sudden step toward Eduardo. “What is that—what are you saying?”

  Eduardo almost fell back out through the kitchen doorway and had to grab hold of the doorjamb to keep himself in the kitchen, “It is true, Mr. Blackmann! The Vigilantes, they run the town now. And they say no more Snake Bar riders to enter the town limits.”

  Blackmann calmed himself down and pulled Eduardo out of the doorway and into the kitchen. Leading him over to the kitchen table, he told him to sit down and tell him everything. Juanita gave her husband a cup of coffee and when he had regained his composure, he repeated what he had told Blackmann.

  Blackmann sat at the table across from him and with some care began questioning the man.

  “Now, think, Eduardo. What can you tell me? Were you able to get inside the town at all?”

  The man nodded. “It was not until I was recognized by Mr. Stavrogis, the butcher man. Then I had to leave.”

  “Did you recognize who was in charge of the Vigilantes?”

  “Mr. Steele, sir—and another man. The one they talk about. The one with only one eye.”

  Blackmann nodded.

  “And Mr. Blackmann, I recognized Snake Bar people too. They were wounded, but they all leave on the stagecoach while I watched them.”

  “The stage?”

  The man nodded unhappily. “Mr. Stavrogis, he told me they were shipping Snake Bar riders who could walk to Butte City, sir. If they come back, they will be shot. That is what he said. He said he want
ed to put me on the stagecoach with the others, but I protested, sir.”

  Blackmann sat back and looked at Eduardo for a moment. Then he got up, told the man to tell the cook to make do with what he had on hand—until a day or so. After that, he’d have all the supplies he needed.

  As Eduardo hurried out, Blackmann left the kitchen and went back through the house and up to his study. He paced the full length of the room for some time before getting his thoughts in order. At last he slumped behind his desk, his moves clear in his mind.

  They were holding Willow Bend to draw him out, obviously hoping he would lead a frontal attack on the town. Fine. Let them think that. Let them hold the town against him. And while they did, he would lay waste each of their ranches in turn. He would strike always at night. Without warning. Stealthily. In this fashion he would cut them to pieces. Then at last, in desperation, when Steele and the others rode out to save what little was left of their property, he would be waiting.

  And the first place he would hit—the ranch he and the kid would see to personally—would be Double B. He would raze it to the ground, ridding himself of Caulder and old Hanson with his first stroke.

  But he did not smile at the thought. For some reason it gave him little pleasure to contemplate—only a deep sense of its justice. He reached for his Bible.

  The D Cross rider’s name was Frank Weathers. He had been given Steele’s prize binoculars and sent to keep an eye on the Snake Bar. It had been almost two days since the abortive raid on D Cross and Caulder had suggested the tactic: Blackmann was not going to let Snake Bar take a drubbing like that without retaliating.

  Weathers was positioned on the crest of a knoll, the highest point around the Snake Bar compound, one which gave him a clear, unobstructed view of the house and surrounding outbuildings. The only problem was a thick clump of willows that obscured the cook shack and part of the blacksmith’s shed. Since there was a gathering of men in front of the blacksmith’s shed at that moment, Weathers began to squirm forward on his stomach through the sun-warmed brown grass until he reached a position that gave him a better view of the fresh activity he had spotted below him.