“I ain’t never shot nobody,” Everett confessed.
“Well, I’ve got to know if you’re gonna do your part or not. I ain’t havin’ this whole thing on my shoulders. If we’re partners, then we gotta be partners all the way.” When Everett still hesitated, Cecil went on. “I ain’t never shot nobody, neither. But damn it, the years are runnin’ out for me and you. And it looks like we’ve been handed the only chance we’re ever gonna get to pay us for all the nameless gulches we’ve groveled in, sweatin’ out the summers and freezin’ our behinds off in the winter.” Still Everett hesitated. “Damn it! It ain’t right! Those people don’t have no right to any of that gold, especially that hired gun she brought with her. It’s the same as if they stole it from us. I don’t know why we oughta feel bad about killin’ them. Damn it, they killed ol’ Raymond, didn’t they?” He naturally assumed that the gunshots they had heard had come from the man riding with the woman and her children.
“I don’t know,” Everett muttered with a shake of his head. “I reckon you’re right. I just don’t like the idea of shootin’ women and children.”
“Ain’t nobody gonna know about it but us,” Cecil said. “We’d be doin’ the world a favor by gettin’ rid of that gunman, and that woman don’t deserve to live after what she done to her own brother-in-law. It’s a shame about the young’uns, but they’ll be better off dead, instead of bein’ left alone in these mountains.” He waited for Everett’s response. “There’s enough gold there for me and you to live out the rest of our lives as rich men.”
“Ah, damn,” Everett finally muttered, “I’m already goin’ to hell, anyway.”
• • •
Cam awoke to a light drizzle sometime before daylight. It was not totally unexpected, for a heavy shroud of dark clouds had settled upon the mountaintops the night before. As a precaution, he had fashioned a makeshift cover over Mary and the girls, using most of the canvas that had been Raymond’s tent. For his own protection, he had spread his rain slicker over him. It had given him adequate protection until rain began to form pockets in the folds so that they began to find avenues into the blanket underneath. When it became too bothersome, he got up and put the slicker on, figuring he might as well get the horses ready to travel. When he walked by the shelter he had built for the girls, they appeared to be snug and dry, so he decided to let them sleep. They were likely to have a long, hard day ahead of them, especially if the rain continued.
He saddled the horses, but waited to load the packhorses until Mary got up. She crawled out from under the canvas just as he finished pulling Toby’s girth strap up tight. “Ugh,” Mary muttered disdainfully, reached back under the canvas, pulled her hat out, and perched it upon her head. “Looks like you were right about the rain. I hope it isn’t like this all day.” She looked up at the dark clouds, then gazed around the campsite after a quick glance at the stack of gold dust under the branches. “It’s a little early, isn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he answered. “I don’t have a watch, so I don’t know exactly what time it is, but it’s a while before sunup. I figured we’d get an early start if you want to, and we’d eat some breakfast when we stop to rest the horses. You could make some coffee to get the sleep cobwebs outta your head, though, if you want to. I’ll build you a fire in that little hollow under the side of the hill yonder.” Having found ashes there, he figured the hollow had been used for fires in rainy weather before when they didn’t want to use the stove inside the tent.
“That sounds like a good idea,” she remarked. “I think I need it this morning. I can build the fire, though, and get the coffee on. You can go ahead and load the horses. I’ll get the girls up whenever we’re ready to go.”
He hesitated briefly before Mary’s fancy suitcases. “They’re going,” she informed him. “I’m not leaving them behind.” She started to turn away, but paused. “And put some of that canvas over them.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, shaking his head as if bewildered.
By the time he had loaded the sacks of gold dust on the gray gelding, and covered them with pieces of the tent in an attempt to disguise them, a thin gleam of morning light crept under the heavy clouds that still enshrouded the mountaintops. Mary roused the girls out and Cam folded the remaining piece of canvas over the load on the sorrel packhorse, taking care that Mary’s fancy luggage was protected from the rain. Seating Grace on the bay, and Emma up behind her, he looked around the camp to make sure he had left nothing behind. Mary, not waiting to be helped up, was in the saddle waiting for him to lead them back down the trail.
Checking behind him frequently to make sure his packs were riding all right, he guided Toby down the narrow trail that held closely to the stream. He would have preferred to ride around the camp where they had met Painter and Jones on the way up, but the only usable trail was the one they were on. When he entered the narrow gulch that ran close to their camp, he kept a sharp eye, but there was apparently no one about in the camp. He looked behind him at the girls on the bay and put a finger to his lips, signaling them to be quiet. They made no sound. Just below the camp, the gulch narrowed even more with high walls on each side. The rain let up a little at that point, now becoming more of a mistlike sprinkling, and then the silent morning was shattered by a burst of rifle fire.
Cam found himself in a hailstorm of bullets, the air filled with whining rifle slugs, ripping through the drizzle of rain to bury with a thud in the wall of the gulch. “Back up!” he yelled, and pulled Toby back to try to cover them. Mary responded at once, backing her horse to force the others to back as well. “Get down behind the horses!” he yelled again while trying to spot the location of the shooters. He knew for sure that it was the two miners who were out to murder them. And so far, he knew he and the girls were still alive because the two were frantically firing, cocking, and firing again, just as fast as they could instead of taking dead aim. He knew it was just a matter of time, however, because already there were a couple of holes in the yellow rain slicker he wore as the shots began to find their marks. In the next instant, he felt the impact of a slug on his leg. It was followed by a couple of shots he heard thudding against Toby’s side, and the horse faltered as it screamed with pain. It reared up on its hind legs and back on all fours again before stumbling toward the wall of the gulch. Realizing Toby was going down, Cam snatched his rifle from the scabbard and jumped from the saddle.
On the ground, he rolled over behind a fallen tree and searched the rim of the gulch above them. The firing stopped briefly. He figured they were reloading. “Mary! Are you all right?”
“Yes!” she answered. “We’re behind a rock!”
“Well, stay there. I think I see where they are. Just sit tight. They’ll be startin’ up again.”
Above them, at the edge of the gulch, Cecil and Everett fumbled frantically to reload, both men having emptied the magazines on their rifles. “I know we hit him a couple of times,” Cecil exclaimed. “We had to, but I couldn’t see what happened to him when he came off that horse. You reckon we killed him?”
“I don’t know,” Everett came back. “We throwed an awful lotta shots at him. We killed his horse. I know that.” Neither man said anything about the woman and her daughters, and whether or not they were hit. Mary and the girls were spared in the ambush primarily because neither man wanted to carry the deed on his conscience, each hoping the other would shoot at the females.
“Well, we need to find out what’s goin’ on down there,” Cecil said.
“Let’s not get in too big a hurry. He might not be dead yet. He might be settin’ down there waitin’ for one of us to stick our head up.” He was already sorry he and Cecil had decided to go through with the ambush. It had not been a simple squeeze-of-the-trigger-and-done that he had envisioned, and he feared that they had stirred a hornet’s nest.
Below them, Everett’s analogy was very close to being accurate, for Cam’s anger was i
ncreasing with each plaintive whimper of pain from Toby, as the wounded horse leaned against the wall of the gulch. Finally, after waiting for several long minutes, with nothing from the ambush above them, Cam felt his patience run out. “You stay behind that rock,” he ordered Mary, “and keep that pistol I gave you handy in case you need it.” He rose slowly to his feet, watching the rim of the gulch intently.
“What are you going to do?” Mary asked, afraid when she saw him get up from behind the tree. “Where are you going?”
“They shot my horse,” was all he offered as he pulled his rain slicker off, furious over the needless shooting of the only real friend he’d ever had. He ran through the stream to the other side of the gulch and began to climb up the twenty-foot side. Mary pleaded for him to come back, fearing he would be shot, but Cam’s ire had been raised to a level that demanded severe retaliation.
Like an angry panther, Cam scaled the steep slope. Not sure what he would find when he reached the top, he dived over the edge, rolling over and over to come to a position on his belly with his rifle aimed at the two assailants some thirty yards away. Only then aware that the roles had been reversed and they were now under attack, both men threw a wild shot in Cam’s direction, neither shot close. Taking deliberate care in his aim, Cam returned fire, his first shot catching Cecil in the shoulder and spinning him around to drop on the ground. Seeing his partner fall, Everett turned and ran. Cam got to his feet and started after him, but stopped after a few steps, took a solid stance, and aimed at the fleeing man. His shot, intentionally aimed low, hit Everett just below his hip, and caused him to collapse to the ground.
Still fuming over the loss of his horse, Cam strode toward Cecil, who was groaning in agony as he lay on the ground. Seeing Cam approaching, he tried to pull his rifle around but had to drop it when two quick shots from Cam’s rifle hit terrifyingly close to his arm. “Don’t kill me!” he pleaded pitifully as Cam walked up, picked up his rifle, and tossed it over the rim of the gulch.
“I ought to, you miserable son of a bitch,” Cam growled. As angry as he still remained, he did not, however, have it in him to coldly execute the defenseless man. “You just sit there and don’t move, or I’ll blow your cowardly ass to hell,” he threatened, then moved to deal with Everett, who was dragging himself along on the ground, still trying to escape. Cam walked up behind him and stopped his crawling with a foot in the middle of his back. He reached down and pulled the rifle out of his hand. Everett made no effort to resist.
“I’m bad hurt,” Everett begged.
“You’ll live,” Cam said. “But you ain’t got no right to. You two are the sorriest assassins I’ve ever seen. You shoulda stuck to pannin’ for gold, instead of killin’ for it.”
“I didn’t wanna do it,” Everett whined between teeth clenched against the pain. “It was Cecil’s idea.”
“Is that a fact?” Cam replied in disgust. “Get on your feet.”
“I can’t,” Everett complained. “I’m shot.”
“You still got one good leg. Get up.” He reached down and grabbed the collar of Everett’s shirt and lifted him halfway off the ground until he could get his good leg under him. “Hold on to this tree.” He left him standing there, supported by a young pine, while he went to get Cecil on his feet.
“I’m bleedin’ like hell,” Cecil complained when Cam told him to stand up.
“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with your legs. Stand up.”
When Cecil got to his feet, Cam prodded him in the back with his rifle to get him moving to where Everett stood. “Now we’re goin’ back down by the stream to your camp,” he told them. The slope by which they had come up was not as steep as the one where Cam had ascended, so he figured the two wounded men should be able to negotiate the descent. After yelling down to Mary that everything was okay and she should bring the horses along to the miners’ camp, he gave the would-be assassins instructions. “You’ve got two good legs, so you can help your partner down the hill.” Seeing their despairing expressions, he ejected all the cartridges from Everett’s rifle and handed it to him. “Here, you can use this as a walking stick. Lean on him. Now get goin’.” He prodded them with his rifle barrel and watched as the two hobbled down the hill; one limping cautiously on one leg, his arm across the shoulders of his partner, whose arm was dangling helplessly by his side. Both worried about what he intended to do with them.
When they got back down to their camp, Mary and the girls were waiting, staring wide-eyed at Cam marching his prisoners before him. He had only one word for her, a question. “Toby?”
Mary shook her head slowly.
A spark of anger flashed briefly in his eyes, and he turned to stare at the two remorseful bandits. “I’ve a good mind to shoot you down where you stand. The two of you together ain’t worth half of that horse.” Although the two men were afraid to make a sound, their eyes nevertheless screamed out their fear. Taking a coil of rope from the bay Grace and Emma rode, Cam tied his two prisoners to a tree. When Mary, who had been speechless to that point, asked why, he explained, “I’ve got things to do right now, and I don’t wanna have to keep my eye on them.” He went back upstream then to see about his horse.
It was only then that Mary noticed the hole in Cam’s trousers, right about the thigh. Glancing down at his boots then, she saw the bloodstains on the arch and heel. “You’ve been shot!” she exclaimed.
“Yeah, but it don’t seem too bad, just stiffenin’ up a little. I’ll take care of it when we get a chance to rest. Right now I’ve got to see about Toby. We can’t waste any more time waitin’ around here.”
Toby was down. Cam counted three wounds in the unfortunate buckskin. Two of them might not have been fatal, but the other had evidently been a lung shot, and the horse was fading away fast. It was evidently in a lot of pain, so Cam knew what he had to do, and the thought of it almost made him cry. “I’m sorry, ol’ partner,” he said. “You’re the best horse I’ll ever have.” He then took out his pistol and put Toby out of his misery. He couldn’t help thinking that the buckskin was working to make his job easier right up to the end, because it had collapsed against the side of the gulch and the girth was not trapped under its weight. He pulled his saddle free with a minimum of trouble.
Back at the camp, he took one glance at his prisoners to make sure they were still secured to the tree before he walked over to a makeshift corral to look at the two horses inside. After examining both horses, he slipped his bridle on the dun and led it out. Informing Cecil and Everett, he said, “You killed my horse. This piece of dung ain’t near the horse you shot, but it’s the best you’ve got, so I’m takin’ him.” After he saddled the dun, he told Mary and the girls to get ready to ride. Turning back to the captives, he said, “I’m takin’ your other horse down the trail a ways, and then I’ll let him go. I’ll untie you so you don’t starve to death. Then I’m done with you. If I see you again, I’ll finish the job I started today.” He started to turn away but paused to say one more thing. “If you’ve got a lick of sense, you’ll move up to Raymond’s camp. If there’s any gold left on this mountain, that’s where it is.”
He climbed aboard the dun and led his little party of females down the narrow trail. They followed silently along behind him, still hardly able to believe the incident they had just been a party to. Mary was aware for the first time that her guide and protector had a temper if properly provoked. She couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or not, recalling the reckless determination he had displayed when he had charged up the side of the gulch after the men who had shot his horse. Luck had to be with him, for one of the men could easily have looked over the edge of the gulch and shot him. She knew one thing, however. When he was in a mood like this, it was best to keep your mouth shut and do what he told you to do.
He let Cecil and Everett’s other horse go after they had almost reached the foot of the mountain. There was a good chance that the horse would ma
ke its way back up to the camp. It didn’t make any difference to Cam if it did or not. He felt pretty sure that the two had no desire to come after him.
Chapter 6
The encounter with the would-be assassins caused a delay that Cam hadn’t counted on, so he figured he’d better stop before long to allow the girls to have breakfast. He had planned to circle around Custer City, thinking it wise not to give anyone ideas about the heavy packs they carried, and then stop for breakfast somewhere beyond the town. When they arrived at the foot of the mountain, he wasn’t given the opportunity to suggest a place to stop. Mary pushed her horse up beside his and informed him that she was ready to stop right where they were so the girls could have some breakfast and she could take a look at the wound in his leg. He couldn’t help smiling, for she looked as though she was not going to argue the matter. “All right,” he said. “I reckon you are the boss, but you just take care of breakfast. I’ll take care of the doctorin’ on my leg.”
“I’m not sure you’ll do a decent job of cleaning it up,” she told him. “I want to see how bad that wound is. I notice you’re limping a little bit.”
“It ain’t that bad,” he insisted. “I can take care of it.”
She had no doubt that his reluctance to have her look at it was simply because the wound was in his upper thigh, and he didn’t want to take his pants off so she could see it. “You’re just being silly,” she said. “I was married for over eight years. I’ve seen a man with his pants down before.” She had to smile then. “Besides, you’re forgetting about when you were splashing about in that stream with nothing but a towel wrapped around you.” Her smile took a wicked twist then. “That towel didn’t hide as much as you thought.” When he blushed visibly in response, she said, “We’ll eat first. Then I’ll look at that wound. I’m hiring you to take me to Fort Collins, so I want to make sure you’re gonna be up to the task,” she chided playfully. “It’s the same as if one of the horses went lame.”
Long Road to Cheyenne Page 8