Blood of the Hunters

by Jeff Rovin

  It was necessary to lay Keeler down from time to time as the men followed Molly up the big steps of the broken slope. They had an easier time going down the stacked boulders outside into the fast-fading sunlight.

  Ben Keeler raised a bony arm to protect his eyes from the setting sun.

  “Oh, glorious day!” he cried, and again began to weep.

  With slow and patient effort, they finally got the man to the surrey. Molly took care to wrap the blanket around him before they tucked him into the backseat.

  “We can at least make it to Juan’s cave before sunset,” Stockbridge said. “I think we should stay until morning, give everyone a chance to heal.”

  Juan beamed in the dying sun. “After so many years, you will be my first guests.”

  Stockbridge paused and examined the man’s cut. “I’m going to have to cauterize the wound, Juan.”

  “What is that?”

  “I heat a stick in fire and use that to stop the bleeding.”

  “I really must travel with needle and thread,” Molly said, climbing into her seat.

  Juan snorted. “You will hurt me to make me better. Are you really a doctor?”

  Stockbridge smiled. “I swear by Apollo physician I am.”

  Juan made a confused face as he climbed into the surrey beside Molly. There was not nearly as much room on Eagle Lookout as there had been before, and it took some jockeying before they were able to turn the carriage around. That done, Molly waited while Stockbridge mounted his own steed and led the way down the mountain.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  During the four-hour ride, Cuthbert found himself ranging between seething fury and quiet determination. Every time he seemed to settle, his mind would think of the blow the Red Hunters and New Richmond had received, and he would be in a storm all over again.

  The man will die. He will die slowly. He will die soon. He will die by my hand.

  There was no thought beyond that, not even how the Red Hunters would go on with just four members. But those concerns were foremost in DeLancy’s mind, especially what they would do after they killed their quarry. Word would get out that the Red Hunters had stopped one of the most suddenly famed gunslingers in the West. Other gunslingers would come looking for them to prove their own mettle. Without Grady Foxborough on point, without Woodrow Pound for silent kills, without Liam McWilliams for sheer brass, the unit was greatly compromised. It wasn’t a matter of recruiting more men. You had to have been a Red Hunter to understand the mission, the fealty, the old South built fresh in the new West.

  The dark shadows of late afternoon had already fallen on the cabin when the men and their prisoners arrived. The proud sign announcing New Richmond was in shadow, the burned-in letters dark, almost mournful, and disapproving.

  The Keelers had not spoken during the trip, not because they had been instructed to by Cuthbert but because they were praying, pensive, or angry. Even Lenny realized that the last might get them killed. They said nothing when the men stopped to water the horses and relieve themselves, Rachel making a point of ignoring the looks of Zebediah Tunney when he flashed a crooked, partly toothless smile at her. She did not know, or care, whether it was an oafish effort to show kindness or a prelude to something awful.

  She had ignored DeLancy, too, when he had noticed Tunney noticing her and used his head to motion him elsewhere. If that was an effort to earn her respect or admiration, she rejected it.

  Rachel’s real concern was not what could happen to her but what was happening to her mother. As the trip wore on, the woman seemed to crumple inside. She had held up for so long during the long summer and fall, always in anticipation of her husband returning, that there was nothing left. When she had finally put them all on their expedition, it was not so much a journey of hope but of desperation. Rachel feared that if they did not succeed, Alice Keeler would not survive this ordeal.

  And then there was the strong, proud Dr. Stockbridge. Alice Keeler’s expression seemed to become more and more lost as she wondered where he was. She had transferred her flagging energies to him, held his strong arm to support herself, put her dying faith in his uncanny, almost supernatural stature. Since he had ridden out that morning, Alice Keeler had seemed alive for the first time in weeks.

  Then this.

  That lunatic Promise Cuthbert had rudely kicked dirt on Alice’s spiritual campfire. Even if the man with the shotgun was near, there were three men with guns holding the three Keelers captive. Rachel herself did not believe that Dr. Stockbridge would risk cutting their captors down if it would endanger any of them, and her own hope of rescue had faltered with that. She began to feel that their only chance of surviving lay with her or Lenny.

  Rachel did not have a gun. But she did have something she had tucked into her apron back at the kitchen table and transferred to her coat before they had departed. The long, slender, newly stropped knife that she had been using to cut carrots. She did not know what she could do with it, or when, or how. What she did know was out here on the plains, there were still too much sun and too few hiding places to afford her any chance of getting away. Perhaps that would come later, at their destination. From what she had seen of the mountains, the woods, Rachel felt there might be an opportunity to escape. So the young woman waited. She had the stout heart of her mother, but she was also the same determined dreamer as her father.

  The Cuthbert party reached its destination by late afternoon.

  The captain had half hoped, half expected, but mostly begged the Lord God Almighty that they would encounter Stockbridge along the way. It would have been like that one rare, wonderful occurrence when the men, returning from Buzzard Gulch or Gunnison, had run into a stag watching out for the herd and cut it down. That was one reason they always rode out with rope. With the rope tied to the antlers, two horses could drag the carcass back, urged on by heroic coaxing from the riders.

  Hope, like that rope, was something Cuthbert just carried.

  Rachel’s spirits drooped when she laid eyes on what Cuthbert had referred to as “the cabin.” It was a fortress, awesome in its natural majesty. She understood almost immediately why these men had chosen the location. She had heard her father tell about the Confederacy and its plantations, and seen pictures in books. The South had been a land of plenty, just as this was a land of great timber and rivers and mountains. Men who had irretrievably lost one would naturally seek the other. Seek it and hold it with the kind of unyielding ferocity of Captain Cuthbert.

  Alice Keeler was unstirred and probably unaware of the place, but Lenny looked in open awe from the cabin—whose likes he had never beheld in his short life—to Rachel to the mountains to Rachel as though seeking her approval, his big eyes asking, Is it all right to be overwhelmed by all this?

  She gave him a little nod, though she was unsure whether he could see it as they passed beyond the sign. There were unlit lanterns outside the main cabin, making it seem even more majestic, as though it were hewn from the very rock that rose behind it.

  Still as agitated and restless as when the caravan had left the homestead, Promise Cuthbert dismounted and ordered everyone off their horses. Rachel slid from hers so swiftly that the Confederates feared she might make a break for the mountains. Instead, she walked briskly to her mother, who remained slumped in the saddle. Rachel helped her off by supporting her under the arms.

  “I’m all right,” the woman soughed in a soft, beaten voice.

  Lenny ran over next. Ahead, a dark figure struck a match and ignited a lantern. He wore a bloody apron, and Rachel suddenly saw her own future in servitude here. These men had been slaveholders. She feared that the fate of the Keeler family was to never leave this place. No one on the homestead would know where to find them, even if they troubled to look; every family had their own worries. And from what she had heard, Sheriff Tom Neal did not do anything unless it had to do with the nine structures that stoo
d on the one wide, empty street that was Buzzard Gulch.

  “Move!” Cuthbert urged, his voice like a whip as he came forward.

  The Keelers started walking, Rachel helping her mother, pretending to look at her but actually taking in the immediate property.

  Her brother was on their mother’s left, Rachel on the right.

  “Lenny, will you give Ma your shoulder?”

  “Sure, sis,” he said with characteristic pluck.

  Rachel stepped from under her own burden. She turned to Cuthbert.

  “I would like to use the privy, please,” she said.

  Her unexpectedly conciliatory tone seemed to sit well with the former captain.

  “Private Tunney?” Cuthbert said.

  “Yessir!”

  “Escort the lady to the necessary. Sergeant DeLancy, Franz, and I will settle the other two inside. Tunney can see to the horses when he’s brought Miss Keeler back.”

  An orange glow from the lantern had suffused the grounds around the cabin, and Rachel could see the giant’s pleased smile.

  “Yessir.” Tunney broke from the ranks and reached for the girl’s arm.

  Cuthbert stopped him. “No. You do not touch. Do you hear me?”

  Tunney hesitated. If he was considering disputing the order, Cuthbert’s thumb went to the hammer of his Colt, discouraging that.

  “I hear you, sir,” the man replied.

  Cuthbert’s eyes lingered on the girl for a moment. “Only don’t let her out of your sight. She’s got mettle, this one.”

  Tunney nodded at the captain and threw a beefy arm ahead. “That way, girl.”

  Shivering from the cold and thrusting her hands into her pockets, Rachel needed to feel the knife handle as she trudged across the hard earth in the direction Tunney had pointed, the big man padding after her.

  The girl’s heart began to drum hard as she considered, fresh, what she was contemplating: running. Getting away would be a problem on its own, and then there were potential reprisals. She had to believe that Cuthbert would want to hold on to his remaining hostages rather than harm them from spite.

  Rachel and Tunney reached the structure, which was larger and sturdier than their own windy shack at home. She opened the door, expecting to be submerged in the odor—but found it not as acrid as expected, no doubt because of underground runoff from the mountains. She went to shut the door, only to have the man’s big paw block it.

  “Captain said to watch you.”

  “He didn’t mean that, I think.”

  “I think he did.”

  Rachel’s heart thumped faster. She lowered her shoulders, which shoved her hands deeper into her pockets. But she did not lower her face. Her eyes were locked on those of the Confederate.

  “Please close the door.”

  “You do what you come to do, or I’m taking you back. I won’t say it again.”

  There was no condition in this hard, cruel land under which Rachel had imagined she would take the advice of any of these men. Yet the man was right. She would do exactly what she came to do.

  Tunney loomed very close, his arms out around the sides of the structure to keep her from running. Blood was rushing so fast and hard that Rachel was afraid of passing out. Holding the blade cutting side up, she simultaneously stepped forward and ripped through the pocket with a determined thrust. The carrot knife plunged deep into the man’s wool coat and into his belly. He seemed more surprised than hurt as he looked down.

  “What is this?” he muttered.

  It was a moment, a distraction Rachel needed. She pulled her arm back and drew the blade from her pocket. Using the man’s chest as a guide, she pushed the blade into the bottom of his jaw. He had just started to reach for her throat or shoulders—she did not know which—when the tip pierced the soft tissue and entered his mouth and stuck hard in the palate. The man tried to cry out, but the sound was trapped behind his closed mouth. Rachel withdrew the knife, turned it lower, and pushed it into the man’s throat. She heard herself snarling and could not imagine those sounds were coming from her.

  Blood gushed over her hand and down the front of her coat, which was pressed close to his. It coated the man’s trousers on its way down, splashed over her old shoes, dripped onto the dry earth, and ran down the hole in the ground—all the way to hell, she hoped.

  Rachel released the knife and left the blade where it was. She stepped to one side. Tunney breathed hard, the wound burbling. He wobbled for a moment, his thick fingers rising, trembling, trying to find the hilt. They froze below his neck, his eyes rolled back showing white, and he dropped to his knees before flopping forward. His head landed facedown on the hole.

  The girl’s hands were open claws at her side, bloody as a hawk’s talons. She was breathing hard through her nose, afraid to release her lips lest she scream. Except for the trickling of blood into the water below, she heard only the shuffling of the horses outside. She realized that someone would come out in a moment, wonder why they were there, and look for Tunney.

  There was no time to think or plan. For a logical girl like Rachel, that was a bigger hurdle than putting a carrot knife in the throat of a man who had abused her family and wanted to watch her urinate.

  Reaching down to recover the knife, she stepped over the body and leaned from the outhouse. The horses—her horse—were where they had been left. Slipping the knife in the pocket that wasn’t torn, she ran as hard as she had ever done toward her father’s horse. Almost without stopping, she pushed her foot into the stirrup, swung into the saddle, and reined around hard.

  The horse whinnied. There was a shout from the house. It was DeLancy.

  “Tunney?”

  The sky was nearly dark, the ground even darker. It would be difficult to see, but it would be impossible to stay. Kicking the horse, Rachel sped toward the sign that boasted the name of this place to the uncaring mountains. She thundered below it, waiting to hear a gunshot that might take her or the horse down. But she had enough of a head start, and the report never came. There were only shouts and oaths, especially when someone saw Tunney lying on the ground.

  Please, God, do not let them hurt my family, Rachel thought as she raced up the trail. That was where she hoped to find John Stockbridge, where her father’s map indicated he might have been headed.

  Tearing along the trail to the higher elevations, Rachel thought she heard the clop of hooves behind her. She was not surprised. She had been considering what to do. Get as high as she could, first of all, where thick trees and blackening skies would help conceal her.

  She galloped until the wind blew spittle from the horse into her face. Stopping hard, she swung to the ground and dismounted. The ground sloped down toward her left, the west, and up toward her right. Reaching her bloodstained hands toward the trees that lined the hill, she pulled herself along. Without support, she would have slipped back along the slanting terrain. Grab and release, grab and release. Moving from tree to tree, she was able to draw herself along the hill like a monkey she had seen climb its cage in a traveling carnival. Her knees scraped bark, her dress tore each time she stepped on it, and low thistles raked her flesh. She grunted, she inhaled hard, and she cried in the brief moments that fear took hold. But she never stopped. Even though it was now fast-fallen night around her, the trees were near enough that she could proceed by feel.

  She heard two riders somewhere below. Cuthbert and DeLancy, no doubt. She blew out her cheeks and pulled even harder, more mountain cat than monkey now.

  They will not get me.

  Rachel did not know how far she had gone when the land suddenly became level. The trees were no longer slanted but upright, and she started running between them, unaided, her hands out, making sure she did not crash into any of them. She did not want to render herself unconscious and wake back at New Richmond. She would rather fall from a cliff and die.

&nb
sp; The flat plateau was soon relatively grassy and the trees grew sparse, and she found herself running in a clearing. She was fading, wheezing through her dry mouth, stumbling ahead until her legs finally crumpled beneath her.

  “No!”

  The girl raised herself to her hands and knees and began crawling. She continued to scrabble along the hard earth until she got some of her breath back. That was when she heard something that made her heart soar. A sound she did not hear often, below. A sound that spoke of help and salvation.

  The rush of a nearby river.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The weary rescuers reached Juan’s cave shortly after nightfall.

  They made a very slow, careful trek down the mountain. The collapse of the cone had weakened cliff walls up and down the trail, and the path was littered with stones of varying sizes. The lantern provided limited illumination, and to negotiate the last half mile, Stockbridge was forced to fashion a torch. He would have preferred not to. There were people hunting them, and the two lights, moving behind the trees, created flickering that could not be missed.

  But there was no choice. The only good thing was that the Red Hunters would need a light, too. The advantage was Stockbridge’s. He could rain scattershot down on them more effectively than they could pick him off in the dark.

  Upon reaching the Mexican’s home, they carried Ben inside. While Molly made him warm and comfortable on Juan’s fur bed, the Mexican brought the horses into the cave, where they would be safe from mountain lions. Juan left them saddled for now and went back out with the lantern to find a place for the surrey on the north side of the cave. Inside, Stockbridge tended to Ben’s bruised, torn feet while Molly held the torch. He used what was left of the water to wash the cuts and then tore strips from the blanket to bind them. He used the rest of the fabric to fashion a pillow.