Blood of the Hunters

by Jeff Rovin

  The men did not stop long. It was only a few minutes later that they saw what looked like another body off to the south, in the direction of the watering hole.

  “Shit no,” DeLancy said.

  “Liam or Stockbridge?” Tunney wondered.

  The men galloped over. There were no buzzards surrounding the picked-bare bones and clothes that were all that was left of Liam McWilliams. They knew it was him from the bloody fur and the gray shirt. The bloody knobs of his anklebones still stuck out from his shoes. Mice were inside, trying to work out the meat.

  DeLancy—who had witnessed horrors on the battlefield, such as maggots writhing in the eye sockets of fellow Rebels—looked away. Tunney could not turn from the sight.

  The white bones, spotted and streaked with little bits of sinew and blood, caused him to grow empty in the gut and sick in the chest. It became even clearer now, what had happened.

  McWilliams had ridden out earlier—probably the night before, which was when Pound had said he was just out for a ride, thinking. He had been killed here, possibly when he had gone to water the horse . . . or seen Stockbridge watering his. Pound had gotten concerned by his absence and ridden after him. Rather than ride after Stockbridge in the dark, he had gone back to the cabin and planned a trap.

  A good one. One that would have done the Red Hunters proud.

  It was easy to put McWilliams in a temporary tomb of rock. There was less of him to cover than with Pound. If the Red Hunters did not use this water themselves from time to time, they would have gone back and roped the horse carcass, dragged it over, and tossed it in, poisoning the water for all the wretched settlers and officers of the so-called law who came through here, through their domain, a home that seven heroes of adversity had established in this forsaken land.

  “What do we do now?” Tunney asked when they were done. “Captain’s going to be real angry.”

  DeLancy was silent as he finished a short prayer.

  “We have to go to the Gulch to tell him, let him decide,” the former sergeant said. He could not even bring himself to say the full name of the town. DeLancy had had enough of buzzards for one day.

  “Yeah, I guess that makes sense. The three of us together, we can sure take this son of a bitch.”

  “Brother, let us not underestimate that madman,” DeLancy said. He took a moment to flex his fingers, which were swollen and sore from carrying rocks. “We do not want to make the same mistake the others made.”

  Tunney grunted his agreement, and after mounting, the men turned north, headed back to the trail.

  * * *

  * * *

  Rasputin Nikolaev approached the stand-alone jail as if he owned it and the land it sat on. He often thought that if things had gone right, he would have. The tsar had not given him enough men or money to rally Indians, Mexicans, and unhappy fortune seekers against faraway Washington.

  Ah, well, he also thought often. Life in Buzzard Gulch was not a dream, but it was better than returning to frozen Moscow, where he was a respected chief of gendarmes, charged with keeping peasants and workers from expressing their grievances directly to government functionaries. Because of his family, Nikolaev was a favorite at the court of Alexander III. Because he was a favorite, he had been sent on the mission to California. Because he failed, he was no longer a favorite.

  Nikolaev was wearing a beaver hat and a matching coat, buttoned and tight around his wide girth. His shoes were polished. They had gotten a little dirty on the walk over, but he had taken time to spit on them and wipe them with his handkerchief before entering the sheriff’s office.

  Nikolaev wished to be the very image of prosperity when he faced the man who had given him a black, blue, and swollen jaw. A prisoner whose fate was now in the Russian’s fleshy, gloved hands.

  Nikolaev collected the sheriff, and they went through the back door. They approached the bars and the slightly more worn-out occupant. Cuthbert was lying in the bunk, unshaven, disheveled, obviously not having slept and out of energy.

  The Southerner rose at once and gripped the bars as though they were an adversary’s throat.

  “I’ll give you two some privacy,” Neal said.

  “Thank you, your excellency,” the Russian said. He just stared at Cuthbert, and Cuthbert at him, until the back door of the office clicked shut.

  “Caged like a mad dog,” Nikolaev said.

  Cuthbert growled and thrust a clutching hand through the bars. The ruddy-faced visitor had anticipated that and stepped back.

  “See? Mad! You would attack the only man who can get you out of here.”

  Cuthbert withdrew his arm and backed away from the bars. He drew his shoulders back.

  “I would rather stay in jail than beg you.”

  “A sentiment worthy of Dostoevsky!” the Russian said. “Have you read Crime and Punishment? You should. You may have the time.”

  “Gloat! My men will hunt you and her down if you don’t get me out of here.”

  “They may try. You forget that John Stockbridge is not in a prison. And he is not as helpless as a woman or a simple hotelier.”

  “You will all die,” Cuthbert said.

  “Eventually.” Nikolaev moved in closer. “The question here, now, is whether you go free or stand before Judge Wilson when he comes to town. You know, he was a respected judge up north before coming west. I am told, by men who drink in my establishment—men who were guests at the Colorado State Penitentiary—that it is a quite unwelcoming place.”

  Cuthbert’s jaw shifted back and forth. He said nothing. After a moment, he turned. It was not a defiant move but a grab for a moment’s privacy.

  “Despite the insult and hurt you inflicted, Mr. Cuthbert, you have been a good customer, and I would like to see you leave here.”

  The prisoner turned his head slightly. “At what price?”

  “To begin with, leave Molly alone. She is a good worker. She is liked by the customers and by the staff. You may hire her for baths if you wish, but then you leave her alone. There are women at the tavern you can . . . woo.”

  “What else?” Cuthbert asked.

  “I wish to buy more land in Buzzard Gulch. You will pay me a share of your earnings, the same as the other men.”

  “You reptile.”

  “Coming from a common highwayman, that fails to sting. Think about it, Mr. Cuthbert. The bigger our town becomes, the more people will arrive, and the richer your Red Hunters will be.”

  Cuthbert was not surprised that Nikolaev knew about that. He was observant and the other Southerners, when they drank, talked too much.

  “I don’t much like the idea of making deals with you, Raspy,” Cuthbert sneered.

  “We have that much in common.”

  “You got this foreign swagger I do not care for, something you did not earn like the rest of us.”

  “Earn?” The Russian moved closer. “My family earned their prosperity on the bent backs of serfs the way you did on the scarred backs of slaves.”

  “Don’t you dare mention my family—!”

  “Poor, wounded aristokraticheskiy!” he said, using the word mockingly. “The only things either of us ‘earned’ are what we have now. So. You’ve said what you think. I don’t care about any of it. Do we have an arrangement, or do we not? Do you get out of here or not?”

  Cuthbert took just a moment to decide. “Get the sheriff.”

  With a satisfied sigh, Nikolaev went back inside to inform the lawman that he had decided not to press charges. As he was so informing Sheriff Neal, two figures on horseback appeared through a western-facing window. The two were riding hard and thundered to a stop just outside the sheriff’s office. They threw their reins over the hitching rail and hurried inside. Nikolaev recognized big, dumb Tunney and oily little DeLancy from the Poet and Puncher.

  “Sheriff, we heard, at th
e hotel, that the captain isn’t there but here,” DeLancy said. “We need to talk to him—and to you, too, Sheriff.”

  “What’s the trouble?”

  “It’s bad. Where’s Cuthbert? He’s got to hear this.”

  Neal had never seen DeLancy so agitated, and even Tunney looked like he had run his face into a fence post. It was easier to go out back and get the captain rather than argue. The sheriff returned less than a minute later, holding the door for Cuthbert to go in first. Sheriff Neal did not bother telling the prisoner just then that there was a release paper to sign. Cuthbert’s eyes fastened on his men.

  “What is it, Sergeant?”

  “McWilliams and Pound are both dead,” DeLancy revealed. “Woody out by the trail, Liam near the watering hole. Buzzards got them good before we could.”

  It took a moment before Cuthbert had fully absorbed what they had said. “Stockbridge?”

  “Looks like he did it— We, uh . . . we found a leg of what looks like his horse nearby.”

  “A leg?” the sheriff interjected.

  “One of Woody’s bear traps did it. His horse is gone, and so’s McWilliams’ mount.” DeLancy looked at the sheriff. “Murder and horse thievery.”

  “Yeah, I heard that.”

  “Where’s Stockbridge?” Cuthbert demanded.

  “His trail leads to the mountain. Maybe he went looking for the rest of us—I don’t know.”

  “I need my guns,” Cuthbert said, glaring at nothing in particular but seeing the newspaper image of John Stockbridge—burning.

  “On the horse,” DeLancy said, jerking a thumb. He looked at Nikolaev. “I saw them at the hotel, had to threaten your bellboy a little.”

  “He is not managerial material.”

  The sheriff had limped forward and looked down at the smaller Southerners. “Gentlemen, if you go off gunning for Stockbridge, and you succeed, then you’ll be right back here.”

  “Did you not hear about my men being murdered?” Cuthbert roared.

  “Every last word, but that’s for me, not for you, to investigate.”

  “Stay out of this, Sheriff. This is a matter of honor!”

  The sheriff went to his desk. “Sign this release form, Captain. I’ll fill it in later.”

  His mind elsewhere, Cuthbert took the pen proffered by the sheriff, dipped it in the inkwell, and leaned over the desk.

  “Where is Molly?” Cuthbert asked as he signed.

  “I don’t know,” Nikolaev replied. “And that’s the truth. She rode out for some private purpose. That’s all I know.”

  “What the hell is a ‘private purpose’?”

  “Something she didn’t share,” Nikolaev answered.

  “Where can I find the Keelers?” Cuthbert asked.

  “What do you want them for?” the sheriff asked.

  “That’s who Stockbridge was with when he killed Grady Foxborough. They may know where he went.”

  “They’ve got to be out on the homestead,” DeLancy suggested.

  “How many Keelers are there?”

  “There’re a man, wife, two kids,” Neal said. “You molest any of them, I’m coming after you with a posse. Seems to me, three men down, you can’t stand up to them like you said you once could.”

  Cuthbert reacted as though a lit torch had been shoved under his face. It contorted into something feral.

  “Try me!” Cuthbert said. He tossed the pen on the floor and spit on the document.

  “I hope I won’t have to,” said Neal.

  Cuthbert turned and stalked to the door, wincing as he walked into the bright sunlight. His men followed.

  Nikolaev and Neal looked at each other.

  “Are you going to ride out to the homestead?” the Russian asked.

  “What for? There’s nothing gained by that. Those three’ll outrun and outgun me. And by the time I could assemble a posse at the homestead, it would be too late.”

  “This is not an efficient system,” Nikolaev observed.

  “No, it ain’t, which is why, speaking plain, men like Stockbridge are needed. If I could, I’d deputize him. Liam McWilliams and Woodrow Pound—they were tough, especially Pound.”

  “Well, I hope you will forgive the sentiment, Sheriff, but I hope Cuthbert and his men survive. I cannot afford to lose so many customers.”

  “There’s the contradiction, ain’t it?” Neal remarked. “I sell justice. You sell vice. One can’t survive without the other.”

  Stepping to the window, he watched as DeLancy and Tunney watered the horses while Cuthbert retrieved his from the stable.

  A few minutes later, they were headed north, for the homesteads.

  Neal shook his head. “What a stinking town this is.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The skies directly above Eagle Lookout were as cloudy as they had been the last time Juan Juarez was up here. The eagles’ nests were in the same places, the only change being more droppings near the edge of the cliff. That made walking slippery and treacherous, the rocks smelling like a mossy log.

  “No rain to clean things,” Juarez remarked.

  The three reached the ledge without difficulty, though it was late afternoon and a chill was settling aggressively on the exposed outcrop. They circled the cone of rock. There were no eagles on the other side, where the ledges were small and stubby. Only hawks circled below the clouds, looking for prey or sitting in the branches of trees just below. There were also no caves or fissures at their level, nothing suggesting an entrance. They returned to Eagle Lookout. Stockbridge heard the birds nesting above, a cacophony of sounds as the young ones were learning to hunt on their own now that they had come of age and size.

  “It seems to me the only direction Ben Keeler could have gone is up,” Molly said.

  “I agree,” Stockbridge replied. “Juan, I see what must be your tracks from the other day.”

  “Sí, those are ours, partly covered.”

  “There are no subsequent tracks in the droppings to indicate that the trapper came down.”

  “No.”

  “Then we have to go up,” Molly said.

  “You have climbed, señorita?” Juarez asked.

  “No, and I haven’t shot the derringer in my pocket either. Life is full of new challenges and we don’t appear to have other options. Not if we intend to find this man.”

  “What about him?” Juarez asked. He was pointing at Stockbridge.

  “Juan,” Stockbridge said, “the man you were with up here was a thief. I killed him. His friends may be after us.”

  “Señor, you kill and others kill. Maybe Juan should leave.”

  “Juan, it’s not like that,” Molly said. “Dr. Stockbridge was protecting a woman and her children. The other men are scoundrels. If he stays here, no one will get past him. We can’t afford to lose our horses.”

  “Molly, that’s not the only risk to consider,” Stockbridge said.

  “What else? Are you afraid I might slip? I could have gone off the road and over the cliff anywhere back there.” She moved closer. “Doctor . . . John . . . I have spent over a year in a bathroom. Before that, as a maid. I’m not ashamed, but I am more than that. I want to do this.”

  Juan bundled himself against the chill, fur fluttering against his chin. “The lady, like the country—she is free.”

  Stockbridge was not accustomed to being argued with. People rarely argue with any man holding a medical bag. Only his wife ever stood up to him, in her quiet way.

  And didn’t I usually come around to her way of thinking?

  “Dr. Stockbridge?” Molly prodded.

  He looked up along the cliff. “Those ledges . . . the droppings. There’s nothing to hold.”

  “I’ve cleaned worse off some of my clients.”

  “That dress? It’s bulky—”

/>   “If I fall, it’s a cushion.”

  “And the birds themselves? These are predators we’re talking about, protective predators with merciless talons.”

  “Again, some of the men I’ve bathed . . . ,” she began. She held up her hands. “These gloves are leather, and I’ve got good soles on these shoes. Keeps me from slipping on soapy water.”

  He looked up, then back at Molly.

  “This thing makes a lot of dangerous noise,” he said, raising the double-barreled. “You mentioned a derringer?”

  Molly went back to the surrey, reached into her bag, and retrieved the handgun Nikolaev had given her.

  “Fire it. See what scatters.”

  Molly nodded and aiming away from them, she discharged a bullet up the face of the cliff. There was a general flapping of wings above the clouds.

  “They think there is rockslide,” Juarez chuckled. “Dumb birds.”

  “I figure you’ve got about ten minutes till they settle and return,” Stockbridge said. “Keep it handy in case you need to discharge again.”

  “I will,” she said, slipping it in the pocket of her dress. “And thanks . . . John.”

  “What do we do if we find a way in?” Juan asked. “There are legends about—things.”

  “Legends get inflated,” Stockbridge said with a glance at Molly.

  She looked back at the surrey. “Maybe I should get the lantern in case there is an opening.”

  “You know what? Maybe dumb Juan, too. I’m going also.”

  Juarez walked to the surrey to get the lantern. It was small and metal and hung from a pole on the driver’s side. There were matches in a metal compartment in the bottom. Juan undid his belt and threaded it through the eye hook on top of the lantern. Stockbridge was relieved that the Mexican had offered to go. He did not know what they would find up there. But even if it were a ledge with Ben Keeler’s frozen remains, he was glad Molly would not be alone.