Blood of the Hunters

by Jeff Rovin

  “I wonder which of us feels worse,” Molly said.

  “You. For me, it was worth the blow to take some strut out of that man. And to put some iron into the sheriff.” He raised and shook a fist in emphasis. “This is the first ruffian in Cuthbert’s group Neal has ever arrested—and it is Cuthbert himself! Is that not delightful?”

  “It is. But I still have to go. Now.”

  “To find your knight.”

  She smiled thinly. “To do what’s right.”

  “As you say,” Nikolaev replied.

  Molly extended her right hand, and Nikolaev offered his forearm. He held it firm as she removed the quilt and slowly, very slowly eased her legs onto the floor. It was cold—everything was cold—but she stood and waited while the Russian took her robe from a hook behind the door.

  “Do you want Yi?” he asked.

  “Thank you, no. She has more work . . . because of me.”

  “You know it makes her happy to help you. How you feel about Stockbridge is how she feels about you.”

  “She is a dear.”

  That was all the conversation Molly could muster at the moment. Nikolaev left, telling her he would have Iron Jaw ready his surrey for her. He did not want her riding a saddle horse.

  With the pain in her head softened by the gratitude in her heart, Molly Henshaw went to the stool, where Yi had sweetly left her folded clothes, and began to dress. When she was finished, she pulled on her leather riding gloves and headed downstairs.

  Nikolaev was behind the counter. Cuthbert’s six-shooters were on it.

  “Do you want one of these?” the Russian asked. “Perhaps my derringer?”

  “Thank you, no,” Molly said, moving by.

  “It might be prudent.”

  The woman accepted the small gun, smiled gravely, then turned her squinting eyes from the bright day as she opened the door. She looked back at her boss.

  “Killing men is something I’d better not commence,” she said.

  With that, she left the hotel.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Down on the homestead, the sun rose on cottony clouds that held no threat of snow. They were drifting slowly east, into the dawn. Like little brushes, they painted a canopy of red, then yellow, then blue behind them.

  Stockbridge had slept well. The room and the setting turned to deep silence when the animals had fed and none of the Keelers stirred. He did not imagine that any of them had the strength to move. It had been a difficult day, physically as well as emotionally.

  Stockbridge had left the buffalo-hide shade open a slice so the first of the sun would strike him. He was on Pama’s back and riding through purple sage before the great, ruddy orb was half risen.

  The doctor’s brain picked up where it had left off the night before. He could not think of a reason for Ben Keeler’s absence, other than it having to do with the men he had met, so he planned to return to that spot. It could be that, with Grady gone, another man would be up there, perhaps the black man with the bow and arrow. Stockbridge would approach with caution, expecting that if anyone was there, he would shoot the man on sight.

  Especially if they already discovered that the one who came after us didn’t come home.

  He was hesitant to leave the Keelers unprotected, but felt that if anyone came gunning for him, they would either see him on the trail or figure out that he was not there.

  What a world it was. There was no war, yet people were still galloping hard to their deaths. Was there ever to be an end?

  The morning sun did little to kill the cold, and Stockbridge was glad Mrs. Keeler had mended his coat. There was not much wind, but the chill tried to creep under the garment as he moved rhythmically up and down in the saddle.

  Chewing jerky from a pouch Betty Newcombe had prepared for him, Stockbridge reached the trail in two hours. Peak Road was untraveled at most times, but even less so in the early morning. There wasn’t sight or sound of another rider, of cart-wheel tracks, of discarded apple cores or chicken bones or coffee grounds. He followed the trail past where they had lost the wagon, the poor conveyance sitting, a lopsided wreck, already home to small plains animals. He approached the turnoff to the watering hole. He looked south and saw buzzards coming and going from where he had left his attacker.

  The man’s comrade—or comrades—has not found him. Otherwise, he would not have been left there as carrion.

  At this distance, the dead man was indistinguishable from a bison or an elk. But that did not mean anyone looking for him would not check on it up close.

  Which gave him an idea.

  Searching for the dead man, others would spot the birds just as he had. Why ride to them when they would come to him?

  Stockbridge stopped Pama and weighed the notion of lying in wait. But then another possibility occurred to him, equally sinister.

  What if they had already found the body and left it. That would make the killer think he was safe from ambush.

  I’m expecting it in the mountains, not on the open plain.

  Stockbridge looked at the terrain ahead. There were boulders, some more than man high, on both sides of the trail. They had likely rolled there from the mountains in some distant age. The big rocks were too far apart for anyone to set up an effective cross fire. And riding forward, he would be able to see all but the eastern side. They did not present much of a hiding place for a man or, more important, his horse. He did not see one, hear one, or smell one. There were no hoofprints that he could discern.

  Stockbridge urged Pama on, his hat pulled low in the sun, his eyes on the trail immediately ahead, his ears listening everywhere else. He neared the first boulder, a shoulder-high mass that was wider than it was tall and rounded on top. There was no one up there. Possibly behind. There was enough room for a man beside a horse. He listened carefully. Pama did not seem perturbed, suggesting there was neither man nor animal out there.

  Stockbridge did not suspect the bear trap until its ragged iron teeth clamped shut on Pama. The horse simultaneously cried out and buckled forward. Stockbridge went over the animal’s long neck, dropping to the left, by the rock, and landing hard on his back. He lost his breath and his hat. The shotgun had been under his right arm; it dropped on its stock and landed between Stockbridge and the horse. To the other side of the man was the chain that had been hammered to the ground just under the boulder. The powerful links had been unearthed by the horse’s futile struggles to get away, to stand.

  Stockbridge grabbed the shotgun and immediately looked around. No one came by—not immediately. They did not have to. The doctor would not be going far.

  As Pama whinnied and fought, Stockbridge managed to push from the dirt. He sat, saw the bloody foreleg nearly torn clean and about to be ripped away by the animal’s pitiful struggles. Without hesitation, he put a single shot in the Walker’s skull. The head blew out the other side, the side to which Pama fell. The horse landed with a dusty thud, blood pouring onto the trail in a long, pumping, nasty stream.

  Stockbridge crawled to the boulder and put his back to it for protection. He did a quick self-diagnosis. No broken limbs or ribs. No bleeding. Except for bruising, he would be all right.

  He looked to the east. The point where the trail turned up into the mountains, the nearest peaks, was about a half mile distant. There was no one on the horizon, as far as he could tell. Unless they were buried like the trap had been, waiting for him to walk by, the immediate coast seemed clear. Feeling relatively safe, Stockbridge put a palm against the rock and stood. When no one fired from the other side, from the south, he moved from the rock toward the dead horse. He retrieved his deerskin water pouch and the wax paper containing the rest of the jerky.

  There’s enough food and water till you reach the foothills, he thought as he hurried back to the boulder. How are you set for patience?

  Once again, his thinking turned to
staying put. Whoever had set this so near to the remains of the dead man obviously wanted Stockbridge. Sooner or later, he would come looking. Stockbridge dismissed the idea of going back to the homestead. He did not want to put the Keelers in jeopardy.

  The buzzards migrated over almost at once. They had finished with the man lying to the south and were flocking to the horse. They were a mass of knobbed heads, wings like black pirate sails full of the wind, and big, dark, gore-streaked feathers.

  He did not bother to shoot them or shoo them. He had seen angry buzzards turn on trespassing humans. And killing a few would only attract multiples to feed on their dead flesh. To these creatures, like most of nature’s predators, meat was meat.

  After considering his options, Stockbridge decided to make for the mountains. Before nightfall, he could likely get as far as the point where he had met the Keelers. He could go back to the ledge where Grady Foxborough had lain and build a fire, secure that come nightfall anyone approaching would need a lantern. They would step on branches or leaves or rocks. He would see them, or he would hear them.

  And if someone up ahead was lying in wait to snipe at him, he would watch for flashes of light. In another couple of hours, when he reached as far as he could now see, they would be facing into the sun.

  Recovering his hat, Stockbridge tipped it to Pama.

  “I apologize most earnestly for what I am about to do,” he said, then went over and used his bread knife to saw away the tendon that barely held the animal’s rent foreleg in place. There were no branches around, and he was concerned that there might be other traps. He needed a cane of some kind to go before him, tapping the dirt. His generous mount was helping him to the last, though Stockbridge could not imagine what any travelers would think, seeing the track of a one-legged horse.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Woodrow Pound watched the trail with attention that matched any he had displayed during his daring escape from servitude. Back then, his life and freedom were at risk. Today, it was his honor as a man and a brother.

  The qualities were no less equal, in his mind. And now, as then, he was counting on his natural skill and cunning to see the matter through.

  The preferred weapons of the former slave were the knife and the bow and arrow. During his years of slavery, Pound had always been able to find sticks in the field. Secreting them in his trouser leg, he would practice thrusting and stabbing. If he ever had the opportunity to steal a knife, if one of the house slaves could slip one to him, he would not only feel safer, more able to protect his fellow slaves, but he would feel as though he had some command over his destiny. If that poor slave Freddy Hat had owned a knife, he might have been able to make good his escape that fateful, long-ago day.

  Pound had been good with a stick, then good with a sharpened stick, and when he finally secured a knife from a white Southerner who attacked him after the War, he had instantly been good with that, too.

  The bow and arrow came later. Shortly after falling in with Cuthbert, Pound had traded a bear paw to a Cheyenne with the unfitting name of Strong Elk. The Indian was something of a failure as a brave and needed a gift, powerful medicine, to present to the father of a squaw he fancied. The first thing Strong Elk did after making the trade was to have Pound rake his back with the purchase. Back at the settlement, the brave would be asked to sit at the campfire and recite the tale of his adventure. Since he could not have inflicted those scars himself, the story would seem more creditable. Pound often wondered what had become of Strong Elk and his woman.

  The bow and arrow came naturally to Pound. He made a quiver from wolfskin and filled it with arrows he cut and whittled from spruce trees. He fitted them with granite arrowheads he chipped himself. The fletching was from game birds they ate for dinner. Pound had been born on the slave ship that brought him to these shores. His father was sold elsewhere, and his mother died when he was still a young boy. He knew nothing of his tribal background. But the skill came so well and so easily, he wondered, often, if his people in Africa had known this weapon. He had seen a picture in a book, once, that suggested spears.

  “I believe they musta been good with anything that came from the treed earth of the savannah,” Freddy Hat once said. “You’ll see, little brother. One day the land will be barren ’cause we will refuse to make the cotton grow.”

  The day before, back at New Richmond, Pound had been concerned when McWilliams charged off in pursuit of a very dangerous man. Pound had not wanted to shame his friend by riding in pursuit. To begin with, McWilliams would only have turned on his brother, accused him of trying once again to turn him yellow. McWilliams would have been adamant about not listening, not even stopping. Beyond that, when a man lost the respect of his own self, the last thing he wanted was someone to help him recover it. That had to be done by the man who had been injured, or it only deepened the shame.

  Instead, Pound had taken time to eat before setting off on McWilliams’ trail. Even if he hadn’t known where the other man was going, it was not difficult to follow the hard-riding prints he left behind.

  Pound had been too far to hear more than the distant report of the shot that took down his friend. It was dark when, by the smell of the gored body and defecating animals surrounding it, he found Liam McWilliams. Pound had come as close as he dared—one did not interrupt a pack of coyotes when they were feeding or buzzards when they were circling, awaiting their turn—but a struck match confirmed that it was McWilliams being torn apart on the dry earth.

  Riding a little farther on along the trail, he came upon the abandoned Keeler wagon and the tracks leading from it. He knew that Stockbridge had gone with them, and he knew something else. Either that night or early the following morning, once he got the family safely home, the devil would return. Stockbridge knew there was at least one other man, someone he could not afford to leave alive to seek revenge.

  Pound turned around and rode dangerously up the mountain trail in the dark. He did not need to rush. He had at least all night, he reckoned. As he headed back to New Richmond, he formulated a plan to outwit and destroy John Stockbridge. Pound did not even have the time or energy to hate the man. One did not hate during War; one acted and survived. He came up with a plan that required the bear trap the Red Hunters had used so effectively just the previous night, along with other items at the cabin.

  The Red Hunter member made it to the compound and back without resting, taking the road slowly because he dared not carry a torch. Carried on a strong oak sledge, the bear trap was easy enough to transport and then to hide and set. At sunrise, Pound looked for any telltale signs of digging, then brushed them over with a bouquet made of dried grass. The wind would do the rest. It was blowing from the east, and he piled dirt high on that side, not only by the trap pit but near his footprints. It would slowly cover any sign that he had been there. The next trap was more challenging. If Stockbridge survived the bear trap, he would be looking for more of the same and might decide to walk off-trail.

  Burying the sledge behind a nearby rock, Pound set about arranging the next part of his snare. The black man had little experience with guns and was not much of a marksman. He had no intention of shooting it out with a man who toted a powerful shotgun. Fortunately, there was no need. It was called a Hó’ȯhtȯhená’e by the Cheyenne: the Cane Woman. It would seem harmless, if someone walking past noticed it at all. The Cane Woman was a cactus invisibly rigged to kill. Indians would steal kerosene from settlers or outposts, then pour it through a slit made in the highly absorptive plant. When the liquid inside was ignited with a flaming arrow, the heat caused the plant to burst in a white fireball, sending its burning meat and thistles in all directions. The Cane Woman was used to maim and frighten horses and also to temporarily blind anyone standing nearby. This allowed the targeted individuals to be captured and used for a long night of bloody entertainment. Their remains were tapestries of unimaginable suffering, left in plain view to warn others from
Indian lands.

  Pound had hitched his horse to a large cactus behind a small rise where it would not be seen. He had chosen a spot he knew well from regular visits to the Poet and Puncher, where he was allowed to sit in the small “Indians Only” section. It was a spot with a triangle of cacti—two on the north side of the trail, one well to the south. Passing anywhere nearby, Stockbridge would be struck by projectiles from one or more of the Cane Women. And Pound would make sure Stockbridge went exactly where he wanted the other man. There was a large upright rock near enough for Pound to hide behind. When the target came within view, Pound would light a fire. Stockbridge would see the smoke and approach cautiously. Hidden, Pound would nonetheless hear his steps. If Stockbridge decided to circle the boulder from the south, Pound would be ready with an arrow. Stockbridge’s left side would show first—and take a shaft. If Stockbridge came along the trail then, without being seen, Pound would launch arrows to set one, then another, then another of the cacti aflame. Within moments, on foot, Stockbridge would be injured or dead.

  Only hurt, Pound hoped. He wanted to have the satisfaction of looking down into the demon’s eyes as he put a blade into his black heart.

  Pound had prepared the firepit with grass and some meat he found clinging to the bones of an old, dead buzzard. Burning that would make the smoke dark and oily. It couldn’t fail to be seen and smelled. Then he had waited on his belly, behind the rock, until he heard the jaws of the trap close, the horse cry out, the bullet crack to end its life. Pound peered around the rock at the figure approaching in the bright morning light.

  It was Stockbridge. He was holding something—possibly a stick to check the road for traps.

  A sensible precaution, Pound thought. Devils were known to be clever.

  The black man withdrew, waited a little longer until he could hear the crunch of the man’s approach. Stockbridge was coming straight down the trail—a perfect path, from the Red Hunter’s point of view. Pound struck a match and touched flame to grass. The blaze took quickly and thick smoke billowed up, catching the wind and blowing toward Stockbridge. Squatting, Pound pulled an arrow from his quiver. He fixed the notch on the string. The shaft seemed like an extension of his arm, his hand, his fingers. It was reaching out to work his will.