by Jeff Rovin
“To what?” their point man, Grady Ambrose Foxborough, had asked the departing Colonel Moore.
“To rebuild,” the officer had replied. “There’s not much else to do. Go back to your family in Canada.”
It was good sense but spoken without conviction. When Moore had ridden off, the gaunt, narrow-faced, sandy-bearded Grady had spit at the idea of working on the family ferryboat. He had traveled south at fifteen to learn the tobacco trade. The only place he could do that now was Connecticut, and he would be damned if he would work for a Yankee.
The War had left most of their comrades tired and beaten. Like the colonel, they took Mr. Lincoln at his word, that there would be a general and kindly amnesty. Now that they had just learned he was dead, no one was particularly glad. No one knew what would happen next . . . especially with Andrew Johnson taking his place. He had been a fence-straddling Tennessee governor and senator who showed too little heartfelt affection for his native land. Less than Lincoln had, in fact.
The other reality was that four years ending in defeat had left them with humiliation and a hunger to destroy. They had talked about going north as bandits, living off the land and leading hapless Union soldiers into deadly ambushes.
But the focus of both the North and the South had shifted to the West, and the men decided to go that way. The wilderness held an appeal that the benighted North did not. So they packed their hate and gear and, unlike the James brothers, they did not strike at towns and institutions.
Instead, they withdrew. No longer guerrillas camping in the wild, they built themselves a fortress.
* * *
* * *
The six men were back at their cabin before the midnight owls had begun their nightly symphony. The meat and organs were placed, for now, in boxes that had been built and sealed with wax for that purpose, then set in the cold earth. Their cook, named Baker—Franz Baker, shortened from Diefenbach—would cut and cure the meat over the next two days, well before the snows came to their ledge and buried the crates. The bear would be for winter emergencies. Weather permitting, they would continue to kill smaller animals from squirrels to anything with feathers for food. When they needed something else, there were always settlers and frontiersmen, Indian parties and occasional military patrols, surveyors and wagons. The winter was easier on the plains below the foothills. There was never a lack of travelers.
The men did not hesitate to take what they required or just wanted—especially smoking tobacco and liquor—and, if necessary, killing to get it. Occasionally there were women with the mountain travelers. The Red Hunters did not kill them, though many died trying to get away.
The Red Hunters worked up here unmolested. The nearest law was in Buzzard Gulch, and gimpy Sheriff Tom Neal was not inclined to come after them.
Behind them, the remains of the black bear were already being scavenged by other predators—a scruffy, rogue red fox and an already emaciated raccoon, along with the insects the two mammals ignored. The feast would go on uninterrupted for days and would likely continue as wolves and foxes found and killed the family the bear had left behind.
And there was something else. Though the Red Hunters did not know it then, there was something ahead of them. Something they would not find so easy to snare as a bear.
CHAPTER TWO
There were three reasons why Dr. John Stockbridge had stuffed the newspapers against his chest, under his charcoal gray greatcoat.
One was warmth. Setting out from Gunnison three days previous—after a week of lying low, avoiding one Mr. Otis Burroughs—he found the air had turned seasonably cold. But not this cold. Folded in half, the dozen pages provided some insulation against the cold. Since it would take him a few days to make his way through the cold foothills of the Colorado Rockies, that was a major concern.
Another was sanitary. The absence of anything but brittle leaves was a reality this time of year—and those were uncomfortable against the skin of any man who intended to add to the moose chips and horse patties of the mountain pass.
The last reason was to start a fire. Dry grass was tough to bunch together; it broke easily and blew off even more easily. He couldn’t ignite particles of grass. But wrapping them in newsprint, he could place them on the ground and strike a flint, and then he’d be “off on a cloud,” as his late wife used to say.
Stockbridge tensed as her round face and loving smile appeared vividly in his memory—and then transformed into the way he found her, bloodied and torn.
Don’t! the man warned himself as his bare fingers dug into the hard earth on either side of him. “Do not!”
It took a moment for the tall, strong-jawed physician to settle back against the tree trunk. The image of Sarah Jane did not fade as quickly as the tightness in his chest or the longing in his heart. She and their children had been gone nearly ten years, but to the forty-five-year-old, the hurt was always there, always fresh.
He picked up the shotgun that lay by his side, the barrel rested on a small rock to keep it handy but off the ground. It was a customized double-barreled Parker Brothers heavyweight, loaded with buckshot called “co killer.” It stayed lethal for up to fifty yards with a swath of nearly half that. The shells were kept in a gun belt that he rarely took off. He would never again make the same mistake he had made that fateful day, entering his home unarmed.
“Never.”
The weight and feel of the gun relaxed him, and after a full minute, Stockbridge set it back down. The dry newspaper against him crinkled loudly as he eased back once again, this time to stay. A hilt poked him in the side, and he adjusted it. Stockbridge also wore a serrated bread knife in a sheath on his belt. When grasses weren’t available, like here on a ledge, he used that to cut kindling. It was easier to saw tree limbs than to hunt for patches of brush. There was a quality of self-protection to that knife as well. For one thing, the attention of his adversaries was invariably drawn to the shotgun he carried at all times. More than once he had used that distraction to reach and use his knife. For another, in close, most opponents would watch for a stabbing movement, alert for the cocking of the elbow followed by a thrust. Few would expect a lateral cut.
The fire danced fitfully at his feet, warming his toes and drying the boots that stood beside them. Stockbridge did not understand how the soles managed to suck in water even from dry ground, but they did.
“You don’t realize how much your weight squeezes it from the earth, maybe,” he muttered.
Stockbridge had managed to start a fire tonight without his paper, thanks to a piece of splintered plank he had found. The broken but dry board took the spark from the flint. He did not know how such a random item as this had made its way fifteen hundred or so feet up, but it had. Maybe it was part of a crate some settler had tossed to lighten a load to get up the mountain—or perhaps a piece of a wagon that had failed to make it up.
Beyond the blaze, his Tennessee Walker sat tethered to a tree. Behind the gray smoke curling from the fire, the horse was a vision, like something from a fable. More than twelve hands high, the white horse was an acquisition he had made before leaving Gunnison.
“New beginning, new horse,” he had said to his dear friend Dr. Nehemiah Juran and his sister, Betty Newcombe.
The horse was named Pama, which had been his son’s first word, a confusion of which parent was which. Pama had belonged to Asa Preston, aka Adam Piedmont, a monster who had mistaken his wife and children for the family of Jed Stockbridge, John’s baby brother. Jed was a Wichita assayer who had refused to falsify a claim Piedmont had made on another man’s silver mine. John Stockbridge was a Wichita doctor. The attack was Piedmont’s payback. By the time John had arrived from delivering a baby, it was too late.
And Piedmont, that fiend who walked like a man, was unrepentant.
“This is a Stockbridge’s doing however you portion it,” the creature had spoken before leaving by the back doo
r, the same through which he had snuck up on the sleeping mother and children. “You paid for him.”
John Stockbridge hadn’t been able to shoot the man, and he had not pursued him then. He was too busy trying to rescue whatever life remained in his blood-soaked family. But there was nothing his skill could accomplish, however battle-tested it had been. He buried them without a funeral, just a priest. He did not want further delay than that. Stockbridge had not even waited for his brother. He bore the man no malice, but he did not know what Jed’s eyes would look like when they met his. As a doctor who had seen accidental shootings in combat, and drunken punches that killed in peace, he knew that guilt could be more devastating than sadness.
Stockbridge had not seen his brother since, nor read the letters he sent. Jed still had a family. Stockbridge could not pretend to be unaffected by that.
During the year that Stockbridge had looked for Piedmont, his fellow War medic Juran, along with Betty, had been his only friends and confidants. He would come and see them when he needed relief from the obsession that held him and from the awful loss that haunted him—
Don’t!
The night was crisp and invigorating. Stockbridge had a high tolerance for cold and wasn’t tired to begin with; it was the darkness that had stopped him from beginning his westward ride across the mountains. Bored and a little restless, he retrieved the newspaper in the hopes of wearying his eyes. It was a yellowish rag that Dr. Juran had given to him. It was not much, but it was something to try to occupy his mind, which had had only one occupation for a year.
A year.
The quest for the last man was over. Stockbridge had no idea now what would take its place. He wondered if he would find it farther west. That was the plan, anyway, vague as it was. He was still a doctor, and people were sure to be hurting anywhere he went.
Stockbridge suddenly realized that he was holding the newspaper without seeing it. His eyes had drifted up to the campfire beyond.
“I will miss Betty,” he thought aloud.
Betty was not just Juran’s sister; she was his nurse—a gentle, attentive soul. A War widow, she had been a friend to Stockbridge after the loss of his wife. They had shared warm times and challenging times. Both had wanted to share more, but as surely as if they had been gathered around Macbeth’s feasting table, the ghost had refused to leave—
Don’t!
Sitting by the brightly glowing flames, he glanced back at the wrinkled pulp paper. Stockbridge had grown closer to those two good people as a result of the horror that had been visited upon him. It had not been enough to make him believe in God, but that—and raw red hate—had been enough to keep him from turning the shotgun on himself.
Stockbridge turned his gaze to the newspaper, to a story that began on the front page, and read the article that was the reason Nehemiah had given the paper to him. He grinned humorlessly as he read it.
“The story, Mr. Otis A. Burroughs, has been told as much as it’s going to be,” he said when he reached the conclusion. “Dr. Vengeance” was finished, done, and that was that. Stockbridge was still getting used to the fact that the year of training and tracking these men, and the effort it had taken to draw them out, were over. It was not the relief he had expected it to be. Love had been replaced by ferocious hate, which had been replaced by nothing.
Stockbridge was empty, his sense of purpose as brittle as the thing in his hand. He was lonely but he did not want to love again. Even caring about Betty had been a sweet ordeal. He was overly protective.
He tore out the article, leaned forward, and let the page catch fire. He dropped it and watched until the saga was ash. When it was gone, he stuffed the rest of the newspaper back against his chest.
A sudden sound stirred both Stockbridge and Pama. It was a muffled, echoing report that held the air too long to be thunder or a single gunshot.
“Rockslide?” he wondered aloud.
Avalanches were common out here, especially with people moving around where people had not moved around since the beginning of time. Or else sometimes such things just happened on their own.
That has to be it.
The sound had come from above, maybe a quarter mile up. He had not seen any settlers on his way up this path, the Peak Road, and had they been up there already, it was unlikely they would be hunting this late. The only Indians who raided here were war parties, and those were rare.
Nonetheless, Stockbridge rested his hand on the shotgun, in case someone had slipped by and had unwelcome designs on him or his horse.
Never again.
Pama relaxed before Stockbridge did. It was uncanny how this thing that felt so much a part of him was something he had only taken up after the attack on his home. He had carried a pistol during the War but never anything this large or powerful. Mastering it had taken some training, almost as much dedication as he had needed when he studied medicine in Cincinnati’s Medical College of Ohio.
Enough.
The man looked up through the puffs of cold breath, beyond them through the bare trees at the sky, impersonal and remote. The moon was somewhere behind a rise, but its light turned the treetops into something like a picket—
“Protecting me from heaven’s wrath?” he murmured. “Well, I leave it to God to judge whether Mr. Burroughs is right about what he calls me.”
And with the fire dancing warmly, a collection of sticks and limbs nearby to replenish it, Stockbridge fell quickly asleep.
* * *
* * *
Dawn came rudely early on the eastern slopes.
The fire was out, but the coat and the newspaper had kept Stockbridge warm, and he had not awakened.
In the year he had spent mostly outside like this, the first thing he did was listen. He could never be sure whether it was the sun or a noise that had woken him. There were only birds and hares stirring, and they would not be calmly foraging if there were danger.
The second thing he did was make coffee. The third, shave.
Stockbridge sat, picked up a stick to poke the fire. There were still some embers under the white ash, and he nursed them to life to make his morning brew. He still had half of what he had purchased in Gunnison. He would use the grounds again the next day, just to make them last.
Before the sun had risen an hour’s worth, Stockbridge had eaten a stale raisin biscuit bought three days before—the last of them—and washed it down with the hot cupful. He shaved using a folding razor that glided across canteen water and a little soap, using the canteen as a mirror. Because he was headed to the higher elevations, he slipped Pama’s Cheyenne blanket over his own shoulders for warmth, like a serape. Then he fixed a wide, flat-brimmed black Stetson on his head and, finally, retrieved the Parker Brothers shotgun and placed it under his right arm. After a year the gun not only felt like it belonged there; it felt like it was a part of him. He breathed easier when it was in place.
Finally tugging on leather gloves that Dr. Juran had made for him—being a surgeon had ancillary benefits—and mounting Pama, Stockbridge headed west along the trail. He let Pama take it easy, since they were still getting used to each other. The Walker was a little twitchy—a result, Stockbridge suspected, of Piedmont having driven him hard and sudden from place to place to place.
The rider had less than half a canteen of water left, but the owner of the Buzzard Gulch tavern where he had had his last meal—under the attentive eye of its imposing but eagerly solicitous Russian proprietor—told him that there was still running water at these low elevations if he listened for it.
Stockbridge had not gone more than a few dozen yards west and up when he heard a cry from somewhere below.
“Hold there,” he cooed, and reined to a stop. This early, there should have only been crows and a lingering coyote making noise, and this was neither.
The sound came again, definitely a shout from lower and also southeast
of him. It was a boy’s voice, and he was calling to someone about something; Stockbridge couldn’t make out exactly what. But it sounded urgent and Stockbridge was in no hurry to get wherever he was going. Turning the Walker around, he retraced his steps. He thought about removing the shotgun from under the blanket, but he did not hear any shooting below or cries of pain.
Better not to alarm whoever is there.
The sight of the grim-faced doctor and the polished weapon had been known to make the unsuspecting freeze, then thaw with a laugh with fright. How different, that, from the eager welcome he used to receive entering a place with his medical kit.
The ride down was a little faster, a little tougher than the ride up had been. With his right arm full of shotgun, Stockbridge had mastered the art of one-handed reining, with a gentle assist from his heels, but here and there along the incline, Pama’s hooves dislodged rocks, compromising his footing. Stockbridge was constantly reassuring the horse that all was well. It was a skill he had mastered during the War, when not a single horse, ever, was happy to be riding into gunfire.
Cries continued to rise from ahead—now the boy, then a female, and occasionally a loudly snorting horse. Stockbridge could not quite make out what they were shouting, but it was clear they needed help. It was several minutes before he came to a level stretch of Peak Road, turned a bend, and was within sight of their distress. Stockbridge swore, nudged his horse in the ribs, and trotted ahead.
A fuzztail Paint was hitched to a wagon that had gone rear half off a cliff. There was a woman inside the cart section, and the struggling horse was losing ground. Two children were on the outside, on the nearer, driver’s side of the wagon. Every time the woman moved forward to try to reach the outstretched hand of a boy, the wheels shifted, stones fell away, and the wagon inched back. The boy, holding the weathered boards on the side, was in danger of going over himself. The girl, a teenager, was struggling to hold the bridle by the noseband and keep the horse from panicking. She was not succeeding.