by Caleb Rand
Will looked coolly out of the window. The sun had disappeared and heavy snow clouds were piling up again above the pass. ‘It’s poor weather to be on a manhunt,’ he contemplated. ‘If this blizzard caught him near the pass an’ he didn’t get holed up, your job’s done. There’s hungry wolves that’ll have found your quarry by now.’
The mountie considered what Will had said, then looked at Linny. ‘This snow’s goin’ to stop me gettin’ back to Flagstone,’ he said with anticipation.
‘Then you’ll stay with us,’ was Will’s prompt and attempted welcome. ‘Linny an me’s havin’ an early supper. It ain’t much, but you’re welcome.’
‘I got some food,’ The mountie said, and handed Linny a leather satchel. ‘It’ll help out. There’s some cheese, dried moose meat an’ some cakes in there.’
The remainder of the day dragged on interminably, it seemed, for the occupants of the cabin. Looming trouble skulked among them and hardly a pleasant word was uttered. Linny improvised with the meagre food supplies while the two men split wood. It wasn’t long after dusk that Linny said she was turning in.
‘Not much else to do,’ Will suggested, but the mountie didn’t respond.
They slept little in the night of continuing wind and storm. In the early hours it grew deep and bitterly cold and Will replenished the fire. By dawn it was snowing less wildly and Linny took a pail, said she’d find fresh water.
Will shivered and wrapped his mackinaw tight around him. ‘If this break holds, you can make it up to Flagstone,’ he commented from the window.
‘There’s one thing I got to see before I go though,’ the mountie said.
‘Yeah, I know it,’ Will accepted. He turned his left hand to reveal the distinct crescent-shaped scar. With his right he went for his gun, but the mountie was ready and his hand was already into its grip on Will’s forearm.
Will’s finger squeezed the trigger as he struggled to free himself. The bullet took out the window glass and the mountie brought Will’s wrist down hard against his knee. The gun flew across the room beneath the cot and the two men grappled desperately to get free of each other.
Will stooped, and lifting the mountie almost off his feet, he heaved him away. The man’s head struck the edge of the cot as he fell, but he was up before Will could regain his Colt. Locked together again, they brawled across the floor. They crashed into the stove, knocked out the stack pipe and the cabin immediately started to fill with choking smoke.
Will turned and made a grab for his carbine, but the mountie was his match and again they closed. Gripping with all his might, Will reached the mountie’s throat, but was kicked back. They drew apart, winded, each watching and waiting for an opening.
Then, closing his bloodshot eyes, and with his head down, Will charged. The mountie swayed to one side like a bullfighter, and Will struck the cabin wall. He went down, but straight off he got to his knees. But this time the mountie bested him. He’d found Will’s Colt and held it out steadily before him.
‘Stay down,’ he warned his half-dazed adversary. ‘I’ll shoot you rather than take any more o’ this.’
Then Linny pushed through the door. She sprang between them. ‘Stop it,’ she yelled, but the mountie warded her off.
‘He’s the man we’re after. Linny. I knew it last night,’ he said. ‘He goes to Flagstone with me. Then back to Fort Mcleod for trial.’
‘But he can’t,’ Linny protested, ‘he’s—’
‘Whoever he is, Linny, he’s not your husband,’ the mountie butted in. ‘I’d say you came up with that story just to stop him shootin’ me when I came down the trail. And for that I’m grateful.’
‘But you can’t take him Ash. He saved my life.’ Hurriedly, Linny told how the man named Will Stryker had found her in the snow and brought her to the cabin. ‘He didn’t have to. He could have gone on.’
‘I’ll remember to mention it at the trial,’ the mountie said sharply. ‘He’s a killer an’ I’m authorized to take him back. Law-abidin’ folk wouldn’t want it any other way.’
‘Yes, I know that, Ash. But do you really think he would have killed a good man? There has to be an alternative price to pay. You’re a sergeant, can’t you use initiative?’
The mountie shook his head. ‘None o’ that figures in the police manual,’ he said, standing in the open doorway, looking east where some shine was piercing grey clouds over the Flatheads. He turned around and tossed the Colt for Will to catch, then with a motion of his hand, indicated that he get to his feet and take the carbine. ‘I’m not goin’ to ask your name, mister, ’cause I never met you. But you’ll find I can be a real unforgivin’ whoreson if you ever set foot in Canada again,’ was his ultimatum.
Will was already into his mackinaw, was reaching for his beaver cap. ‘I ain’t a complete fool, Sergeant,’ he said, breathless and grateful.
On the edge of the pine belt, Will stopped and looked back to where Linny now stood in the doorway. ‘Kalispell,’ he called out. ‘Maybe we’ll meet there.’
7
DOG HOLE
At the north end of Lonepine Lake, Kalispell sat on a flat stretch of irrigable land. In the water blue of dusk, a sheltered bridge took Will Stryker across the Stillwater River to the logging camp at the outskirts of the town. Further on, two-storey buildings stood off from each other, hugger-mugger either side of a wide, dirt thoroughfare. Behind them, log on stone houses squatted next to tent frames. Five miles to the east of the town, the road met an aspen-lined gully. Then it bent around the lake, got cloaked in the foothills of the Mission Range whose deep shadows formed hard upon the town.
Will calm-talked his ten-dollar montana mule as he rode. He looked at yellow lights that bloomed in open doorways, tried to see through windows that were coated with dust. He walked on past sporadic cheering and thumping of barroom pianos, glanced down dark alleyways where fierce-eyed men wandered.
The street was still busy, and most people seemed to be on the verge of being ridden down or driven over, as they weaved among wagons and horsemen.
Halfway, at the maw of one of the shadowy side streets, Will saw an old man sitting in a rocker.
‘Good place to see a lot,’ he said, while eying the broken bottles and torn playing cards that littered the nearby ground.
‘Yep, just about everythin’. I know more’n I ever tell though. An’ I ain’t sided up, either.’
‘How do you mean?’Will asked him.
‘Sided up on one side or the other,’ said the old man crabbily. ‘I’m so old, nobody cares where I am. They reckon I’m sittin’ here waitin’ for rigor to set in. You sided up, stranger?’
‘No,’ Will said and moved off. He heard the old man’s cackle, wondered how long it would be, before he found out exactly what was meant.
He reached an intersection, where a hotel, a hardware store, and two high-fronted saloons faced each other crossways. One was the Red Pepper House, the other’s faded sign said, ‘Buckwoods’. Beyond that was a lane that led to a stable into which he turned.
The dark ground was stinking damp and covered in horse droppings.
‘Gettin’ hung in Fort Mcleod don’t seem such a bad thing,’ he muttered, patting the neck of his mule.
At the end of the rank alley, a man drifted out of the stable’s darkness and looked closely at him. ‘Second stall back,’ he said.
Will gave the mule a small drink at the yard trough, removed its gear to hang up. For a moment he stood in the stall, his hand lying on the gummy sweat of the animal’s back. He turned and looked into the blue eyes of the Overo paint mare in the next stall, then walked to the street. His mouth was parched and he leaned into the drinking trough, sucked at the water until he was near full.
Buckwoods had a swinging door with a window in it made of tinted glass. The saloon lights shone through yellow and red and blue, gave customers’ faces rainbow colours as they entered.
There was a card game going on inside. Four men sat under a deep cloud of smoke w
ith the bartender standing by. But that was all, because it was supper hour and slack time. Will stood at the bar and took his whiskey quick and returned to the street. He stopped for a smoke he had no need of, but it served to cover his inactivity as the town got primed for nightfall.
There was going to be trouble in the Red Pepper House that night. The proprietor knew it as he eyed the man who was considering his cards against the faro dealers.
For an hour, Larris Jule had played recklessly. He’d won and won again, could do no wrong. Then his luck changed and he started to lose. Each time he lost, he took huge gulps of whiskey and muttered dire threats. Eventually his anger erupted and he cursed loudly and flung his drink across the room. The shot glass bounced once then skidded along the floor before hitting the sleeping dog in its soft underbelly.
Not understanding, the dog flattened its jewels against the floor and snarled a warning.
‘Steady, Rio,’ Hyram Hollister, its owner said uneasily. ‘He didn’t mean it. He’s drunk.’
Jule’s face twisted with unpleasantness. ‘Don’t growl at me, you stinkin’ cur,’ he spluttered. He staggered towards the dog and made a threatening poke with his foot.
‘Leave him alone,’ said Hollister, ‘you’re frightenin’ him.’
The dog bared its fangs, gave a low defensive growl and stood with its hackles raised. For his answer, Jule raised his foot and kicked the dog hard in its ribs.
‘No! Rio, come back here,’ the dog’s owner called.
But Rio wasn’t going to get back unscathed. Jule’s hand moved quickly to his belt. He pulled his gun and fired a shot down into the floor. It was cruelly close to Rio and he yelped in distress.
‘Well, you won’t be aimin’ to bite no one else,’ Jule sneered. ‘The only thing wild animals understand is a length o’ rope or a bullet.’
Larris Jule’s act of congenital nastiness took Hollister’s breath away. The dog was his constant companion, had been his ‘pard’ while he’d trapped beaver and fox in the frozen waste of the Missions.
His eyes blazing, Hollister picked up a half-empty whiskey bottle from the table and flung it close to Jule’s head. ‘He weren’t goin’ to bite. You scared him,’ he said, his voice low and trembling with emotion. ‘I’ll kill you for that, you pig.’
The others in the saloon held their breath. They saw the instability in Larris Jule’s eyes, heard the tyranny in his slurred voice.
‘The hell you will, dog boy.’ Jule took a step forward with his arms outstretched. But Hollister made a fast sideways movement and Jule stumbled, went down to the floor beyond him. With a howl of rage the man regained his feet, wiped away a smudge of blood from his gashed lip.
Hollister was standing a few paces away. He was taking steady, deep breaths, waiting for Jule’s next onslaught. He was pale-faced, but reckoning, as he swayed backwards and forwards on the balls of his feet.
Jule grinned in roostered fury, feinted then rushed. But Hollister avoided him again, got home a straight left into Jule’s body. Jule gasped and doubled up, then with a roar, bored in with his head down. Hollister caught him twice on the head, but nothing was going to stop the man. Hollister stepped back while hitting out in desperation, got home another blow. But still Jule came on, racked with brutish torment.
Jule cursed, flung himself at Hollister. But the trapper evaded him and with a quick movement edged round the table.
Jule seized the table and flung it behind him. Behind Hollister now there was a wall and he had no escape. Jule gave a thin wintry smile and charged forward, closed his arms around Hollister’s upper body. Bear-like, Jule squeezed and swung Hollister off his feet, swung him violently to one side.
Hollister clattered down, threw up an arm as he cracked the side of his temple against a table leg. Then he lay unmoving, his body twisted ominously into the puncheoned floor.
Two men detached themselves from the small crowd. One of them turned Hollister’s body over so that they could see his face.
‘He ain’t breathin’. You’ve hurt him real bad, mister,’ the man said.
The others had fearful glances at the body, then slunk away when the Pepper House proprietor stepped forward.
‘I saw what happened,’ he said. ‘Poor Hyram. Who’ll take care o’ that dog now?’
Larris Jule draped his coat over his shoulders, pulled on his hat and walked over to where Hollister lay. A malicious expression cut across his face.
‘He shouldn’t have got involved, an’ I got nothin’ to answer to,’ he told the men around him.
‘Well, ain’t that neat,’ a man who was standing near the door remarked.
Jule looked at the man and sucked in air through his teeth, but said nothing.
The man moved aside. He looked into Jule’s eyes, saw the fear that bullies carry with them.
‘Who was he?’ Will Stryker asked, when Jule had gone.
‘Don’t know much about him, other than he’s a nasty piece o’ work. He mentioned Whitefish, but I don’t know if that’s where he’s from,’ the saloon owner said. ‘He told someone he’s here lookin’ for his daughter.’
‘Whitefish, eh,’ Will said half interested. Whitefish was an en-route town, east of the Flatheads, along the Stillwater. It was where he’d bought the mule, got another six inches cut from the barrel of his carbine the mountie from Fort Mcleod had returned to him.
‘I’ll wager she ain’t lookin’ for him,’ the saloon boss offered up as an afterthought.
‘About the dog,’ Will reminded him. ‘It’s a coonhound, an’ I’ll take care of it.’
8
TRESPASS
As he rode, Will thought of Linny Jule, remembered how he hadn’t had the time or inclination to tell her about Kalispell. On his way back from the cabin in the Flatheads, the town was never going to be more than a stop-over for him. His own small outfit was eighty miles further south, at the other end of Lonepine Lake.
His hundred acres were hidden in the hills, miles from any established trails. In the five years he’d owned the ranch, he’d only ever kept a small herd. He worked the land alone, but every fall, hired two or three punchers for the drive down to Missoula. He made enough to live comfortably, made extra by wolfing and washing gold in the headwaters of the Swan River.
Now, two days’ ride from Kalispell he was near froze, but nearly home. He came out from a stand of pine, watched his cabin for a full minute before he swore. He held the reins tight, told the hound to ‘stay’ and ‘keep quiet’, even though it hadn’t made a sound.
There were five horses in his corral, and smoke from the chimney of his cabin was rising grey and thick into the leaden sky. He sat the mule, watched stunned as a rider led a claybank horse across the yard in front of the cabin. Then he smiled bleakly, swore and drew the mule back towards the timber. He knew with absolute certainty that whoever was down there had spotted him.
Holding the barrel of his carbine under his mackinaw he worked his way to a new vantage point. It was off the trail, where snow-covered ridges of rock cut into the timberline. He was deeply shaded by the approaching night, and he paused for a full minute to listen before working his way forward through the trees. He ‘shushed’ the hound, indicated that it lie flat. The dog was alert, its nostrils twitching. Its senses reached into the night, tested the air for what it held.
But the soft, dark silence closed in again, and he decided to move. He walked on, cautiously rounded another ridge and saw the claybank. It was standing with its head down, partly sheltered by the rocky overhang, as it waited.
He’d been right then; somebody was coming for him, and they were close. He stood hard against a sentinel pine, his body merging with the blackness of the trunk. It was dark now and no bird or rabbit moved. They were wise, like most snowline critters, knew when to seek shelter.
Will’s fingers started to ache with the cold, and he flexed his grip on the carbine. The carpet of white sparkled under the indigo darkness, but he found it hard to keep tabs on the c
laybank as it moved against the rock face. He heard it shift its feet, and then saw the saddle as its wet leather glistened.
Then there was something else. A sharper sound as a boot scuffed on loose stone. Carefully Will lifted the carbine and crooked its short barrel in his left hand. As the man silently took up the reins of his horse, Will spoke.
‘You found me, mister, an’ you been on my land long enough.’
In one smooth movement the man went into a crouch and twisted his body. There was a stab of fire out of the blackness, and the crash smothered the sound of Will’s own carbine. He felt the smack of the bullet as it hit the tree beside him; that close he even smelled the resinous tang of wounded bark.
Realizing the other man was no regular cowpoke or horse wrangler, Will fired again, twice in quick succession. He heard an ominous dull thud, stared into the darkness at what he thought was the man’s body crumpling into the drifting snow. He edged back around the pine, took a deep breath and kept very still.
He wasn’t about to close in on a man who’d hadn’t cried out at being hit. The claybank turned to search out Will. It was spooked at the gunsmoke and blew hard from its fleshy nostrils.
A cold, curling wind stirred Will’s mackinaw and he shivered, called gently for the hound. ‘Come here, Rio,’ he said, and held down the fingers of his left hand for contact.
He was looking almost directly at the dark shape of the man when the next shot came. As the bullet tugged sharply at his coat, Will fired. He was momentarily blinded by the flash, but it was the guiding light, and all he needed was the one accurate shot.
‘Go take a look,’ he said, and the hound moved stealthily forward.
Will was in no mood to make a move, and he levered another round into the carbine. As he calmed, anger took over. Mostly because he didn’t know who he’d set about killing or why. In the years since he’d got his land, there’d been fewer than a handful of visitors. Now, all of a sudden he’d been taken over and was being shot at for speaking his mind.