Blood of the Hunters

by Jeff Rovin

  Cuthbert had stood ominously still, like a Ketchum Grenade about to blow in every direction.

  “We do not wait for Stockbridge. We attack. Do you remember how that was?”

  “I do remember, sir—”

  “We seek the Yankee murderer out, and we do not allow him to set foot on the soil of New Richmond. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Get on your horse, with the boy, find the girl, and bring them back. Tie her to your horse and drag her here if you have to. If Stockbridge shows up, kill the boy if you need your arms free. Then kill him.”

  “No . . . ,” Mrs. Keeler wept. “God, no . . .”

  Both Alice and Lenny Keeler were sobbing. The woman was on the floor in a huddled mass, behind Cuthbert. She was reaching helplessly toward her son. The boy’s legs refused to support his weight, and DeLancy hooked an arm around the youngster’s throat. The boy gagged as the Southerner held him up by his head.

  The fire momentarily spent, Cuthbert settled into a state not unlike steam.

  “Is there anything else?” he whispered to his man.

  “No, sir,” DeLancy replied. “You will have them all.”

  The sergeant walked out, hauling the boy with him like he was a hog-tied calf being lead to his branding. Baker stepped aside to let them pass. There was a brief relaxing of Cuthbert’s mouth when they had gone.

  “We will see to Private Tunney later,” Cuthbert said to Baker. “For now, put the rest of him in the outhouse and close the door. I won’t have him eaten by wolves.”

  “What about our patch?” Baker asked.

  “I won’t have the red palm on a crap house. Not there. We’ll do it later.”

  When DeLancy mounted his horse and dragged the boy up in front of him, Baker went about his own grim business.

  “What a bastardly business this is,” the cook muttered as he went outside.

  * * *

  * * *

  Once before, Sergeant Alan DeLancy had been forced to face a world that had been turned on its side and emptied of everything of value. After the War, nothing seemed to matter. Nothing until Captain Promise Cuthbert had summoned and reassembled the Red Hunters. The reunion was like a returning faith. It gave every man purpose and restored his dignity. To them, as during the War, the law of the land had no influence. The honor of the South was all that mattered. That renewed heartbeat had sustained them, given meaning to their lives.

  Many of the men who were a part of that sacred mission had perished today. But, he reminded himself, as long as he and Captain Cuthbert and Cook Baker survived, so did the Confederate States of America. This boy, his mother, his sister—they were all unfortunate casualties of War, a struggle for which the South did not ask and a fate that had befallen so many mothers and children of Dixie.

  The boy had squirmed when they started out, and it was only the cutting edge of DeLancy’s knife nestled tight beneath the youngster’s Adam’s apple that quieted him. DeLancy was aware of the trickle of blood on his own hand but kept his hold steady as they rode into the darkness. The blood concerned him a little; it might make his hand slippery if he went for the old Griswold & Gunnison pistol at his side or the rifle in its saddle holster.

  “Shout your sister’s name, boy,” DeLancy said into his ear.

  “My throat—”

  “You won’t bleed out . . . yet. Now, call!”

  “Ra . . . chel!” Lenny cried, the pain and fear causing the name to catch.

  “Louder.”

  “Rachel!” Lenny screamed.

  “There ya go,” DeLancy said approvingly. “Again!”

  “Rachel! Please answer! Rachel!”

  They rode up the trail, moving slowly because of the darkness. A rain gully or mole mound could drop them, so DeLancy let the horse pick his own way. Two decades seemed to vanish as DeLancy—then himself a boy—was back on dark roads in Union-held territory, looking, smelling, listening for men or campfires or spit-roasting meat. The years fell away and defeat did not now, as then, seem like it was possible. The mind just did not accept the idea of a world without the South.

  Or the Red Hunters.

  As they rode, DeLancy also arranged a signal with the boy. When he relaxed the pressure of the blade, Lenny could go silent and save his voice, put a sleeve on the wound. When force was reapplied, the boy had to shout.

  Before long, they had entered the higher elevations. The wind was low but steady, blowing down from the peaks, and amidst the scent of pine and the rot of dead things, DeLancy picked up the faint scent of a fire. There was no glow that he could see, but it was definitely coming from ahead and higher. He knew of but had never met the Mexican hermit Juan Juarez, who lived up there—the man Grady said had shown him Eagle Lookout. If the fire belonged to the Mexican, he would show his ugly face when he heard the boy. The man reportedly did not like visitors.

  DeLancy applied pressure to the boy’s fair skin.

  “Rachel! Rachel!”

  The smell came and went as the trail wound through rock and woods, each time returning stronger. Finally, DeLancy was on the last section of trail before the old man’s cave. The smell here was powerful and of more than just fire. There were horses here.

  The sergeant stopped. Without releasing the reins, he reached his right hand to his holster, drew his gun, quietly cocked the hammer, and aimed. With his other hand, he pressed the blade to the boy’s throat.

  “Rachel!”

  A figure came from around the bend.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The cry was haunting, horrible. It briefly rooted Stockbridge and Molly where they stood. Their debate about Molly staying or going ended abruptly.

  “I know the voice,” Stockbridge said quietly. “It’s Lenny Keeler.”

  He picked up his shotgun and started toward the trail. As he reached Juan’s position, the Mexican grabbed his sleeve. He spoke, his voice an insistent whisper.

  “Señor, wait! You cannot go.”

  “I must.”

  “No, I mean—you cannot go. Whoever is here, they will expect me. Maybe they see the fire, not even sure Rachel is here.”

  Juan made several good points.

  “Is there a way to come up behind him?” Stockbridge asked.

  Juan shook his head.

  Molly came up quietly and laid a comforting hand on Stockbridge’s shoulder. Or maybe it was meant to be persuasive, to make sure he stayed. Juan was right, but Stockbridge did not like the idea of the man putting himself in danger . . . again.

  The wilderness echoed again with a plaintive cry.

  “Rachel! Please . . .”

  Stockbridge heard his own son’s voice in his head, felt his gut burn with a desire to avenge every boy who had ever been wronged by any man.

  You’re supposed to be able to look up to men. They’re who you want to grow up to be.

  Juan began to move.

  “That has to be one of the Red Hunters out there,” Stockbridge whispered. “He may shoot you out of hand.”

  Without looking back, Juan said, “Then you get to burn me again.”

  “Just hold on a second.” Stockbridge turned to Molly. “Better get Rachel out here. We may need her.”

  Molly hesitated, but only a moment. She hurried back to the cave.

  The hermit moved out then; Stockbridge had no choice but to let him go. Any struggle here, now, would be heard by whoever was around the corner.

  Juan was tired and sore, and he hobbled rather than strode forward.

  “Hola?” Juan said into the dark.

  Now he saw not just the shape of a big rider and a mount but four legs hanging down the sides. Two riders. The boy and a Red Hunter.

  “Juan Juarez?” a man’s voice asked.

  “Sí. Who is it that asks?”

  “N
ever mind. Anyone else with you up here?”

  “Who would be with me?”

  The rider held up the gun so Juan could see the familiar outline, even in the dark. “Mister, the way it works is I ask and you answer. I’m looking for a girl.”

  “The one whose name you say? Rachel?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Rachel Keeler?”

  DeLancy straightened visibly. “Yes. Is she with you?”

  “She is,” Juan said. “And caramba! What a terrible sight she is!”

  “Don’t you worry about that. You got a rope?”

  “Rope?”

  “A lasso . . . a riata?”

  “Sí.”

  “I want you to go back, put it round her neck, and bring her to me.”

  “Don’t!” Lenny whimpered, then cried out as the knife dug deeper.

  “Is that her brother with you, the one she was babbling on about?”

  DeLancy exhaled. “Stop yammering. I said bring the damn girl, dirt!”

  Juan lingered at the insult. Then, shrugging, he turned back toward the cave.

  “Hey, wait,” DeLancy yelled.

  Juan faced him.

  “How’d she come to be here?” DeLancy asked.

  “I found her at the river,” Juan replied. “I brought her.”

  “She walked?”

  “Sí.”

  “Then you stay. She can walk here,” the former sergeant said.

  “But the rope.”

  “Tell her where it is. I don’t know if I trust you.”

  “I don’t have a gun. I don’t have a fight with you.”

  “Keep it that way.”

  “Okay. But she’s hurt. She’s slow.”

  “I got time. I also got her brother. Now goddamn it, tell her where the damn rope is and to tie it around her neck!”

  Juan sighed and faced the cave. “Señorita Miss Keeler, I think you heard everything, sí?”

  “Yes, Mr. Juarez,” a voice answered faintly.

  “The rope is holding my spare blankets in a bundle—”

  “I see it.”

  There was nothing after that but silence and expectation on the narrow stretch of trail as the two men remained motionless. The boy was breathing hard but was otherwise silent. DeLancy lowered the gun to rest his arm.

  After a minute there was the faintest sound of shoes scraping on the dirt. Like a wraith risen from her tomb, a haunted figure came around the bend—still in shredded garments, her hands still bloody, her eyes wide but dead, her mouth slack. There was a rope around her neck, the end hanging down her chest almost to her knees.

  “Oh, sis,” Lenny said involuntarily.

  The Southerner did not bother applying the knife. He was distracted by a circle of light behind the girl and by his jumpy horse. There was someone following Rachel Keeler, and the gun came up again. He was half expecting John Stockbridge, ready for a showdown like the newspaper from Gunnison described. But it wasn’t Dr. Vengeance. It was someone Alan DeLancy did not expect and dared not shoot.

  “Molly?” the Southerner said.

  “Hello, Sergeant,” the woman replied. She was carrying the torch so DeLancy would see her face. She was smiling as though pleased to see him.

  “Molly, what in blazes are you doing up here?”

  The woman and Rachel stopped along the side of the cave.

  “I waited for the captain at the hotel, but I found out he was in jail,” Molly said. “No one told me that he had been released, so I came up after him.”

  “Up . . . here?” DeLancy said.

  “Mr. Nikolaev loaned me his surrey. I heard a commotion on the trail, saw a girl run off, and followed her.”

  “I didn’t see you,” DeLancy said.

  “Nor I you.”

  The gun came down. “Well, now, your friend is out of jail, and you can do him a real service. Bring that girl to me.”

  “Of course, Sergeant,” Molly said, as though she were instantly part of whatever plot the Red Hunters were working.

  “Hey, South of the Border,” DeLancy said, “stand with them so I can watch you. Keep your hands out front.”

  “Ah, he’s okay,” Molly said. “Just a little unsociable.”

  “I do not do nothing,” Juan assured him, holding up both hands to show that he was cooperating fully.

  “Sergeant, can you ease up on the boy?” Molly asked.

  “That’s not your concern.”

  “He’s bleeding on your horse. It doesn’t seem happy.”

  “Just give me the end of the rope, please, Molly. Then you can go back and get your surrey and follow me down. I know it’ll do the captain good—a lot of good—to see you.”

  Molly gave the girl a gentle push, and they walked forward, Rachel moving stiffly before her. The girl looked up at her brother as she neared, and he turned his eyes toward her.

  “Lenny, I’m so sorry,” the girl said, her lower lip trembling.

  “I love you,” he replied, tears cutting through the dirt on his cheeks.

  Reaching the horse, Molly told Rachel to stop. The woman came around, took up the end of the rope, and handed it to DeLancy. He did not see the derringer she had palmed though he simultaneously felt and heard the bullet that pierced his temple. The .22 caliber projectile was not enough to kill him, though his arms went slack. The knife and gun fell, and DeLancy listed to the right, following them to the ground.

  Startled by the shot, the horse reared. Molly dropped the derringer and grabbed the bridle while Rachel reached for her brother before he could fall. She embraced him and pulled him toward her, turning her back to shield him from the horse. The animal came back down just a foot from the two. Juan ran over and seized the other side of the bridle before the horse could go up again.

  Flat on his belly, DeLancy slurringly called Molly a name the others had never heard. Though stricken, he struggled to get to his hands and knees. The wound in the side of his head was bleeding moderately, the shot having cracked his skull without penetrating to his brain. He felt around for his gun.

  His hand landed, instead, on the boot of John Stockbridge.

  “Stay still, DeLancy,” he ordered. “Molly, leave the torch, take the Keelers to the cave. Juan, the horse.”

  The woman laid the flaming brand on the dirt. Rachel gently but firmly placed her own sleeve to her brother’s throat wound as they headed for the cave, followed by Molly, Juan, and the horse.

  When they were gone, DeLancy turned his face up. “Letting . . . a woman do your . . . bloody work . . . ?”

  “You’d be dead if I hadn’t,” Stockbridge said. “Come with me. I’ll try to patch you.”

  The sergeant sneered. “Go to the devil!”

  In the dark, unseen by Stockbridge, the man’s probing hand had found his firearm. He brought it up and aimed, the barrel glinting briefly in the torchlight. Almost at that instant, a shot exploded, and the sergeant died on the ground, cut nearly in half by the shotgun blast fired two feet above his back.

  The report echoed, causing a few rocks to lose their hold on the mountainside. They clattered beside the man’s dead body. The sound lingered as it rolled down the trail—loud enough, Stockbridge suspected, to be heard at the compound of Captain Promise Cuthbert.

  He hoped so.

  Molly came running around the corner to make sure Stockbridge was all right. She arrived to find him moving the man to the side of the road, against the cliff, and covering him with loose rocks. That would have to do for now. Before leaving, he retrieved the gun and stuck it in his belt.

  “The kids all right?” he asked.

  Molly nodded.

  Stockbridge and Molly returned to the cave to find Lenny in the back, lying beside his father, both crying urgently and clutching each other. Rachel was kneel
ing beside them, sobbing but giving them their time together. She had removed the rope and retied the furs. She was quite a girl, Stockbridge thought.

  The doctor and the woman went back outside, where Juan was finding a spot for DeLancy’s horse.

  “You can leave it, Juan,” Stockbridge said. “I’m taking him with me.”

  “To below?”

  “That’s right.” Stockbridge saw Molly give him a look that was already familiar. “This time, I’m going alone.”

  “Were you not paying attention just now?” Molly said. “The sergeant didn’t shoot because it was me. I got close because he knew me.”

  “And when he found the gun, he could just as easily have shot you.”

  “The captain won’t do that.”

  “He just lost another man. How many does that leave him with?”

  “The cook,” Molly answered.

  “The cook. His world has been burned down again, and you think he won’t shoot anyone who comes along that road?”

  “That’s right, Dr. Stockbridge. I don’t think he will shoot me or you out of hand. For one thing, he’ll assume, in the dark, on that horse, it’s the sergeant coming back. For another, he will want to make you suffer. Or me. Or anyone who may have had a part in this, including the Keelers. If you’re going to face him, you’ll need someone who knows the cabin, who can find Mrs. Keeler if he’s got her tucked away, and who has a prayer of getting her out.”

  Stockbridge stood still the whole time she was speaking. What she was suggesting was not his way. But that was not the sentiment that came from his mouth.

  “All these men who died here. It’s because twenty years later they’re still hostile toward an old foe. Is that what is going on with you, Molly? Is Cuthbert every cuss who crawled on his belly but made sounds like a man?”

  “Maybe. And if it is, I don’t care. You yourself said that men can’t tamp down their own fires. Why should it be any different for me?”

  “That man I just shot is why!” he said, gesturing back at the road. “I gave him an offer to save himself, and he voted it down. Same thing with the captain. I don’t seek his death. That’s for the sheriff, a judge, a jury to decide. All I seek is the safe return of Alice Keeler and a reunion for the family.”