Blood of the Hunters

by Jeff Rovin

  His heart racing—more with anticipation than fear—the black man remained crouched, listening and waiting. . . .

  * * *

  * * *

  Making his way west along the trail, Stockbridge was still quite a distance from the cacti when he noticed that the air had a tartness to it. It smelled as if someone had slit one of the plants for water. Maybe they had, though there was no one around, and the odor—and, thus, the slice—was relatively fresh.

  Instantly on guard, Stockbridge stopped when he saw the first wisps of smoke rise from behind the rock. It appeared that he was not only expected; he was being invited in.

  Whoever had started the blaze felt damn confident. Possibly the black man who had been with the others up on the trail. He had been carrying a bow and arrow.

  He would have to step out pretty far to shoot me square, Stockbridge thought. Maybe if I talk to him—

  “Nobody has to die here!” Stockbridge shouted. “I assume you got a horse. I take him, we’re square.”

  The answer was immediate.

  “You left my friend for the buzzards. You have to die.”

  It was the same man from the high trail. He had probably ridden down the night before, looking for his companion. He would have had water with him; there was no need to carve up a cactus. Stockbridge crouched, looked at the dirt around the three plants. There were damp spots that rippled the air above them. They had more substance than water.

  An ambush, remotely triggered. Down low he could smell it now, faintly, on the wind. Something unctuous and heavy, creeping along the ground.

  “Last chance to come out before I come in,” Stockbridge said, rising. “There’s been enough killing.”

  “Not yet,” the man shouted. “Not until I see your heart.”

  The man’s voice had come from dead center behind the rock. The would-be assassin could not see Stockbridge without standing. He was depending on the sound of his boots on the stones of the trail to give Stockbridge away.

  Stockbridge was still carrying Pama’s foreleg. Laying it quietly on the ground, he raised the shotgun and aimed at the cacti that stood together on the right side of the road, farthest from him. He fired at the one nearest to him. Even as it erupted in a hissing plume of yellow, green, and red, Stockbridge was running to the left. Realizing that Stockbridge probably intended to circle the rock, Pound lit and loaded another arrow, intending either to hit the doctor or else take him down by igniting the last cactus. The black man rose and aimed where he thought Stockbridge would be. But the doctor had stopped, hard, and was aiming directly at Pound.

  “Lower it!” Stockbridge shouted.

  Pound swung the arrow toward him. Stockbridge fired.

  The discharge hit the black man hard in the upper chest, knocking him over backward. Released by a limp hand, the arrow flew a few feet up before coming down on the rock. Sparks from the burning shaft flew, one of them catching the last cactus and setting it afire with a long, sibilant cry. In fate’s last irony, the cactus spines did not spray in Stockbridge’s direction but peppered the unfeeling boulder.

  Another needless death, he thought unhappily. Another grisly find to bind to the legend of Dr. Vengeance.

  All of that was now beyond his control. He’d tried to reason with the man. With the charred and shattered cacti snapping and bursting behind him, Stockbridge made his way around the rock toward the rise. He had heard the horse neighing at the first blast and immediately took to comforting the big brown mustang. Except for riding him, there was no surer way to make friends with a horse than by calming him in a panic.

  Once the horse had settled down, Stockbridge left him tied to the cactus. He searched the saddlebag for any sign of who the man was or where he’d come from. There was nothing, not even food. That meant the dead men probably lived very close by.

  If there were others, they would probably see the smoke. They might spot a new flock of buzzards. And like this poor avenger, they would probably come looking for the man who had cut down their comrade.

  “We’d best put some height between us and them,” he said to the horse.

  Without looking back at the bloody, smoking carnage he had created, Stockbridge turned the mustang toward the trail. He rode purposefully along the trail to do what he’d set out to accomplish: to find out what had happened to Ben Keeler.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Molly was in no condition to drive the surrey, but that did not stop her determination to try.

  On her way down, Molly received a hug from Doris and another, in the main lobby, from Nikolaev. Her employer reached two fingers into his vest pocket and pressed his derringer into her palm.

  “I told Iron Jaw to ready the surrey.” He dipped his chin toward the gun. “I hope this is not needed.”

  She was as grateful for the sentiment as she was for the gun. It would have been too much effort, just then, to get up on her toes and kiss his beefy cheek. Averting her gaze from the bright light at the front of the lobby, she went next door to the Poet and Puncher and borrowed a sunbonnet from the small costume closet, something with a high ruffled front to protect her eyes. It was the same hat she wore when she read the limericks, her eyes wide and long lashes aflutter. Then the hat completed the portrait of maidenly innocence to contrast with the words she spoke. Now it was essential to ease her pulsing forehead.

  The woman was not even sure where she was going. She stopped to ask Pete—that was the entirety of his name—the white-haired bartender, if he knew the Keelers. Pete was a tireless, spindly man with the longest fingers she had ever seen. He could hold a bottle fully around the base with room left to tuck in several utensils. The man was up early, cleaning glasses. He had very few teeth and those clacked when he said he thought the Keelers were out on the range with the other homesteaders.

  “Y’know, where else would they be?” Pete asked.

  He described the horse he had seen Ben Keeler ride to town, a Palomino. Pete had a memory for such things.

  “You heard where Captain Cuthbert is?” he added.

  “I have.”

  “He won’t be happy when he gets out.”

  “I imagine not.”

  He reached for a Colt .45 single-action revolver he kept by the cash register.

  “Take this, honey.”

  “The boss gave me his derringer just now.”

  Pete pshawed. “That won’t kill a dog, just annoy him. You need something that’ll scare the heels off a man’s boots.”

  “A scared man’s likely to fire back without thinking,” she said. “I’ll stick with what I have.”

  “I see your logic, if not your sense. Good luck, muffin.”

  Molly thanked him, and wrapping her shawl around her shoulders, she went out back to the stable. The surrey was hitched and ready.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to the stable boy. “I don’t have any money—”

  “That’s all right,” Harry replied. “Yi, she gave me a penny.”

  Molly was almost overcome. She smiled, climbed in, and allowed the youth to lead the horse through the narrow alley to the street. She faced the surrey in that direction and, for the moment, let the horse have his own say in how fast they would go. She only looked up as they passed the sheriff’s office. She wanted to glimpse the place, the temporary home of Promise Cuthbert, the man whose presence and pursuit were suddenly so objectionable that she preferred alcohol, a sedative, and oblivion to his company.

  At least her plan had helped her get away. That, and her beloved allies. The question now was whether she would ever be able to go back. Promise Cuthbert was not a forgiving man.

  The clean air and sun actually had an analgesic effect. The drumming in her cranium subsided by half. For some reason, snatches of limericks she had recited at the Poet and Puncher returned unbidden.

  She actually smiled, as if she
were not the star but standing in the wings, listening. There was one that came back in full, one she had composed on the ride back from Gunnison. It came back as easily now:

  There was a physician named John

  Who loved his wife, daughter, and son.

  They were taken away

  On a tragical day.

  Now the man who had done that is gone.

  Molly was happy to be away, and the horse seemed pleased to be freed from captivity, trotting on its own. As the pain in Molly’s skull ebbed even more, she took to looking out at the countryside. She did not typically come this way. Whenever she rode out it was east, toward Gunnison and occasionally to Denver.

  She saw a ruined wagon, wondered what had become of the occupants. The west was full of unfinished stories like that. Then she saw something else, a blotch on the southern plain, black and red and torn. It looked like it might have been a man, once—and fairly recently, given the sunlight glistening in tiny shards off the ruddy patches. A little farther on, to the east, she drove past the dead horse.

  “No,” she uttered aloud.

  Molly knew that horse from Gunnison, and her heart began to ache. She was in a daze as the surrey pressed on to even greater carnage. It looked as if lightning had struck three cacti but she could not tell what had happened to the man behind the rock. He was covered with feathers, a rolling, bobbing sea of buzzards. She began to sob, fearing that Stockbridge was under that seething mob.

  Then she saw a patch of uneaten ankle and part of a foot on the corpse. The skin was that of a black man.

  Molly exhaled. At once, she turned her eyes back to the trail. The wind was not strong, but it was steady. The only tracks remaining were faint. The shape of the hooves suggested someone had ridden to this spot from the west, from the foothills. And there were fresher tracks headed the same way.

  Up to where Cuthbert and the Red Hunters had their cabin.

  Dr. Stockbridge survived and took this man’s horse, Molly concluded—more hopeful than certain.

  Taking the surrey whip in hand for the first time, Molly urged the contentedly lazy horse to greater speed and made for the lower peaks.

  * * *

  * * *

  The Red Hunters did not need a rooster. They had Franz Baker.

  Because the compound was in shadow most of the morning and the men were often up late—here, in Buzzard Gulch, or hunting—they did not rise with the sun. They rose with the smell of cooking.

  Today, Alan DeLancy rose with the distant sound of gunfire.

  After pulling on his boots and coat and using the privy, he came back and noticed that the doors to the rooms of Liam McWilliams and Woodrow Pound were open, the beds empty. DeLancy made for the kitchen.

  “That may not be hot yet,” Baker said, nodding at the coffee. “I just started the flame.”

  “Hotter than cold is fine,” DeLancy said. “Hey, you seen Liam or Woodrow?”

  Baker shook his head, then began mixing batter for flapjacks.

  Zebediah Tunney shuffled heavily into the living area from his room just then. He passed through like a winter storm in his white nightshirt and matching long johns, visited the outhouse, then returned with a look of simple contentment.

  “Others asleep?”

  “They’re not here,” DeLancy told him.

  The big, dull face showed confusion. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean they’re gone.”

  “You check the stable?”

  “Coffee first.”

  “You wouldn’t say that if the captain was here.”

  “They would be here if the captain wasn’t with Molly.”

  Not disagreeing, Tunney went back out the rear door, oblivious to the cold on his bare feet and wide body. He lumbered back less than a minute later, pounding his big feet on the floor to circulate the blood.

  “They’re gone, all right. To see the captain, you think?”

  “Why would they do that? He didn’t give no such instructions.”

  “Yeah. No,” Tunney said, pouring coffee and sitting across from DeLancy at the big oak table.

  “I’m thinking they went after that killer Stockbridge,” DeLancy said.

  Tunney laughed from his belly. “They will come back with his paws and nose.”

  DeLancy looked over at the sizzling griddle cakes as he finished his coffee. “I wonder why they didn’t ask us to come with them.”

  “That doctor hurt them, they hurt him,” Tunney said.

  “But—remember that story Liam told us, about the hens he saw gang up and kill the fox that came into their coop?”

  Tunney guffawed. “An Irish lie. Even the chickens are tough there.”

  “Sure, maybe. But the idea is sound—the more you are, the more you stand to win. The captain believes that. He said we learned it from U. S. Grant pouring men on us.”

  “You saying we should go after them?” Tunney asked. “They are probably eating his heart by now.”

  They wouldn’t be doing that, but the impressionable hulk had heard about Indians doing such a thing. He liked the idea, and it had stayed with him. DeLancy believed if the other Red Hunters ever left him alone with a kill, he would try it.

  “I am saying that,” DeLancy said. “We should eat quick and ride out, show them we got their action covered.”

  Tunney nodded as he took a hard roll from the bread box. He ripped off a piece and stuffed it in his mouth. DeLancy joined him presently, though he ate with uncommon haste as a sense of urgency warmed his part-Cajun blood more than the coffee could. . . .

  * * *

  * * *

  You’re gonna wear out your palms before you wear out my bars.”

  Tom Neal was neither sympathetic nor apologetic to the man who was winding and unwinding and turning and churning his fingers around the iron that kept him inside the cell.

  Promise Cuthbert was cold, having just his clothes and a tattered, foul-smelling wool blanket to warm him. He ignored the coffee the sheriff had offered him, preferring to grip the bars and wind his fingers around them. It kept his hands warm and his temper venting.

  “I’ll have your ears over my mantel,” Cuthbert vowed.

  Neal drank the coffee himself. “Doesn’t help your desperate situation threatening a lawman, Captain Cuthbert.”

  “A lawman. You’re a gimpy goat with a badge.”

  “Also not a help.”

  Cuthbert squeezed the bars until his fingers were white, his face nearly against the rusted iron. “I’m in jail because I hit Raspy Nikolaev. That Cossack slob tried to overthrow the federal government, and he owns two establishments. What kind of justice is that?”

  “What you did is within the jurisdiction of Buzzard Gulch. The other ain’t.”

  “All right, fine. I won’t do it again. I won’t go there again. Just let me out of here. Hell, I won’t come back to this map stain.”

  “That’s my home and bailiwick you’re insulting.”

  “Jesus, Sheriff—just open the damn door!”

  “Can’t do that, Captain. Nikolaev hasn’t finished considering whether he’ll lodge charges against you.”

  “Christ,” Cuthbert sighed, his hands once more in motion. “Jesus Christ. What does he want—an apology? He can have it. I’ll even write it out. Money? I’ll give him that, too.”

  “I’ll go find out in a bit, which I was going to do anyhow.”

  “I can’t stay here. I can’t. There’s something I have to do!”

  “Me, too, which is where I was planning to go after offering you morning coffee and victuals.”

  Neal turned back to the office, and Cuthbert rattled the bars in rage, but that did nothing but make noise. With an oath, he turned and flopped on the cot that stretched the entire length of the jail cell.

 
“Raspy Nikolaev, you’re going to get beat raw,” Cuthbert said through his teeth. “Molly Henshaw, you’re going to get it worse. I’ll take you to the cabin, where you’ll be passed around like a butter plate. And Dr. John Stockbridge—you’re still going to die, but staked cold to the ground up high where you can freeze while you’re pecked at by anything with a beak or teeth.”

  Warming himself with those thoughts, and relaxing at the same time, Cuthbert lay there and waited to do whatever he had to, say whatever was needed, to get out of here.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It seemed like more than a day since Stockbridge had passed this spot. When he considered how much had happened, it both uplifted and saddened him.

  He had killed three men. During the War, he had lost that many in surgery every quarter hour. Both were needless losses though this was the result of greed and hotheaded stupidity on the part of the dead men.

  But Stockbridge had also made new friends. He had, he believed, inspired Lenny Keeler to be his best young self in this difficult situation, and he saw what looked like increasing grit from Rachel. In just a few hours, as her mother struggled, something seemed to rise and blossom in her.

  And Mrs. Keeler was in his debt. Not just because he had helped them out of several fixes, but because the absence of her husband had weakened the woman. She had not been willing to lean on Rachel, but she had taken the doctor’s help without reserve. She was further in his debt because he had gone back out for Ben. That had given her both strength and hope. Empty hope, perhaps, but that was better than the fear she’d had when he met them.