Day of the Wolf

by Charles G. West

  The sun rose the next day to find Buck already drinking coffee in the kitchen with Jewel while he waited for his brothers to rouse themselves. Bacon was sizzling in the Indian woman’s big iron skillet, and corn cakes were waiting to fry in the leftover grease. She was happy to arise early to cook for the three men, anxious to see them on their way, and thankful that there had been no demand for her worn-out body the night before. Clem had attempted to generate some interest in her reluctant services, but the brothers had hunting on their minds. There was no delay in their departure. They were ready to ride by the time Clem staggered out to see them off. Riding up from the bluffs, Skinner showed Buck the tracks left in the gully where Wolf had left his horses while he murdered their cousin. “If the weather holds,” Skinner predicted, “we oughta be able to follow his trail for a good while. So far, it don’t look like he’s worried about anybody followin’ him.”

  Buck nodded solemnly. He knew that no matter how plain the trail was, it was bound to disappear after a while, whenever their prey came to a river or a tree-covered mountain. So it was necessary to follow it as long as they could and hope to run him down before he had a chance to lose them—and he already had a good five-day start. “Let’s go,” Buck ordered, and the three started out on their deadly mission.

  “Skinner’s good at trackin’,” Boyd said, “but if we don’t catch up with this Wolf feller before he heads up into the Black Hills, if that’s where he’s headed, we ain’t got much of a chance to find him. What are you thinkin’ on doin’ if we don’t track him down in a week or two?” Of further concern was the fact that summer was already nearing an end, and an early snow could make tracking impossible.

  The question was not something Buck had not already given a great deal of thought. “Have you got a good reason why you wanna hang around here, or Cheyenne, or Medicine Bow, or anywhere else where we’ve been pretty busy lately?” he asked pointedly. “We might not find this son of a bitch right away, but we’re gonna keep on lookin’ till we run across him somewhere. And while we’re lookin’, it might as well be up in the Black Hills. That country has opened up to the gold prospectors. There’s gonna be more prospectors in them hills than there is pine trees, and that just means more gold for us. They dig it outta the ground and we’ll dig it outta them.”

  A wide smile of enlightenment spread across Boyd’s face. “Damn,” he remarked, “I hadn’t thought about that. All them miners workin’ their sluice boxes back up in them gulches, that’d be mighty easy pickin’s, wouldn’t it?”

  “That’s what I’m thinkin’,” Buck replied. “And sooner or later this Wolf feller is gonna show up somewhere. We might as well have ourselves a payday while we’re waitin’ for him to come out of his hole.”

  Listening to the conversation between his brothers, Skinner silently nodded his approval, and thought, That’s why Buck calls all the shots. He was probably thinking about hitting those miners up in the Black Hills all along. Our cousins getting killed just gave him an excuse to go up there right now.

  Behind them, Clem Russell stood at the edge of the clearing that surrounded his trading post, where he had been watching the outlaws as they departed. As usual, he had conflicting feelings about their visit, half of him glad to see them moving on, while the other half was wishing they had stayed long enough to spend a little more money. At least, this time they didn’t tear anything up, he thought. Then he remembered a little issue he wanted to address concerning Jewel, and her downright disobedience over the changing of her dress. He should have given her a good beating last night, but unlike his guests, he stayed with the bottle too long and passed out at the table. By the time he woke up in the middle of the night, he was too tired to think about anything beyond falling in bed. This morning, she was already up and in the kitchen before he was awake. But, by God, there ain’t nothing to save her from a whipping now, he thought, and turned back toward the store to tend to it.

  He found her in the kitchen, her back to him as she stood gazing out the back window. “Turn your sorry ass around,” he commanded. “I’ve got somethin’ to settle with you.” When she did as she was told, he took a step backward, startled when he saw his shotgun in her hands. “Whoa!” he blurted. “What the hell are you doin’?”

  “No more beatings,” she announced in her usual stoic manner. “No more whore.”

  “Gimme that damn gun,” he demanded angrily, and stepped toward her, reaching for it. With the barrel no more than six inches from his stomach, she pulled both triggers, knocking him off his feet, the recoil from both barrels firing simultaneously almost knocking her down as well. Flat on his back, the mortally wounded man lay helpless as the life drained rapidly from his mangled body. “You’ve kilt me, you damn Injun bitch,” he managed to gasp. With a savage desire to finish the job, she got her butcher knife from the table and took his scalp before leaving him to die in the middle of the kitchen floor she had come to despise.

  With no change in her dispassionate demeanor, she went about packing her things, along with all the supplies she could load on Clem’s two horses, as well as his shotgun and revolver. When she was satisfied that she had all she needed, she went out back and opened the gate to the hog pen. Taking a rope from the barn, she tied a loop around the necks of the two hogs and tied the other end to her packhorse. When all was ready, she returned to the house with one of the rails out of the hog pen. Using it as a lever, she turned the stove over, dumping flaming ashes on the floor, which she used to ignite the firewood and broken furniture she piled on top. Content with the result, she waited until the firewood was burning lustily. Then she pulled out a couple of pieces, went outside, and pitched them up on the shingle roof.

  When it was all done, she climbed up in the saddle and started up the path, never once looking back at the blazing funeral pyre she had left. At the top of the ridge, she turned the horses toward the northwest and Powder River country, walking them slowly at the pace of the two hogs following along behind. Somewhere on the Powder, or the Tongue, maybe, she would find Crazy Horse or Sitting Bull and hopefully some of the Cheyenne people who had joined with him. It was time for her to return to her people and fight the white man.

  Chapter 9

  His first confrontation with a sizable gathering of gold seekers came after a couple of weeks near the base of a mountain that stood high above the neighboring peaks. A few days earlier, he had made his camp by a wide rushing stream, close up under a steep slope with rocky outcroppings jutting out from the forest of tall pines. Game was plentiful. The spot he had picked showed signs of a favorite watering place for deer, and proved to be just that. Hunting with his bow was a great deal more difficult than using his rifle, but he felt the need to conserve his cartridges. After a couple of days of hunting, he was able to thin out the deer population a little before they moved out of the valley.

  Extending his range of hunting then, he rode to the far side of the mountain, where he found sign of elk, and immediately set in to stalk them. Their tracks led him beyond the next mountain to a narrow canyon bisected by a rapidly flowing stream. There were no elk, but it was obvious that they had been there. He had started to continue after them when he was stopped by the sudden report of a rifle. It sounded to be of small caliber, but he was at once concerned. He paused to listen, but no shots followed the first one. Although it had come from somewhere beyond the ridge west of him, and he was obviously not the target, it troubled him that he had once again come in contact with man. White or red, he could not say, but instead of retreating to his camp on the other side of the tall mountain, now to the east of him, he decided it best to find out who was crowding him.

  Making his way up the slope, he let the bay find the easiest way to the top, skirting clusters of rugged rocks to weave his way through the pines. Upon gaining the top of the ridge, he was amazed to find a sizable settlement of prospectors, working away like busy insects over a carcass. His first reaction was one of despair, for the once beautiful stream was already look
ing very much like a carcass. He could see nothing that would explain the reason for the shot he had heard. Evidently someone had decided to take a shot at something, maybe a varmint of some kind. And the realization struck him then that there was no sacred place on the earth safe from the white man’s search for gold. His sense of curiosity demanded that he take a closer look at the collection of miners, however, so he guided the bay down the east side of the slope and up to the top of a lower rise that stood between him and the settlement.

  He sat on his horse and watched the activity below him for a few minutes, noting the little city of tents with a few rough shacks scattered among them. Then he realized that not all of them were dwellings. Already, there were two tents that displayed rough signs advertising whiskey, and one of the shacks appeared to be a trading post. It was a town in the making, right in the center of ceded Indian lands. He knew at once that he would be moving his camp even farther north. He wheeled his horse to retreat, but then reconsidered. He was almost out of coffee beans, and he had become quite accustomed to drinking the black liquid, so why not see if the trading post had them? He felt in his pockets to make sure his two gold coins were still there. And some flour, too, if they don’t want too much for it, he thought.

  Reuben Little glanced up when something blocked the sunlight coming in the door of his shack. “Come in, stranger,” he greeted Wolf cordially. “I thought you were an Injun when I first looked up.”

  Puzzled, Wolf asked, “Why?” He thought it should be fairly obvious that he was not. It never occurred to him that his clothes made from animal skins, and sewn by himself, gave him a rather primitive appearance.

  “Because you look…,” Reuben started; then, aware of the expressionless eyes searching his face, he said, “No reason. What can I do for you”

  “I need some coffee beans if your price is not too high, and maybe some flour if you have some,” Wolf told him. It had been some time since he had flour to make bread.

  “My partner just brought in a wagonload of goods this week,” Reuben told him. “We got a load of both coffee and flour.”

  Wolf remarked that he was surprised to find wagons up in the hills. “Ain’t no problem,” Reuben said. “Hell, this spot is gonna be a regular city before you know it. They’ve already got a name for it, Stonewall, after that general in the War Between the States. And they’re scouting out a stage road between here and Fort Laramie—said it’ll go on down to Cheyenne when they finish.”

  None of this was welcome news to the stoic child of the mountains. He was positive now that he would move his camp again. “How much for the flour?” Wolf asked.

  “How are you thinking about paying?” Reuben wanted to know. “I don’t do any trading for pelts. This is a store, not a trading post.”

  “I’ll pay with gold,” Wolf said. “How much is the flour?”

  “Right, I didn’t mean to insult you. I do all my business with the prospectors, and they don’t have pelts to trade. Flour is hard to come by. I was damn lucky to get my hands on a barrel of it. Then you have to get it by the Injuns, and there’s a big demand for it, so that makes it kinda expensive. I have to get a dollar a pound just to break even.”

  Wolf thought that over for a few seconds and decided he could do without bread. He settled for a twenty-pound bag of coffee beans, a purchase considerably cheaper than the flour. He waited patiently while Reuben weighed out his coffee and dumped it in a sack, then surprised the storekeeper with a double eagle to pay for it. “What’s your name, mister?” Reuben asked. “You gonna try your hand at prospecting?”

  “I’m called Wolf,” he said. “I’m not a prospector.”

  “Well, if you’re gonna be staying around for a spell, I’ll be getting in a lot of supplies that you don’t see here yet, including shirts, boots, and trousers.” He couldn’t help wondering how many more double eagles Wolf had.

  “I ain’t gonna be stayin,” Wolf said, took his sack of coffee beans and his change in the form of a small sack of gold dust, then walked out the door. In the saddle once more, he never intended to visit Stonewall again unless he became desperate for supplies.

  Reuben walked to the door to watch him ride away. He ain’t the first one of his kind I’ve ever seen, he thought. But I’ll sure remember him. “Wolf,” he repeated. “I wouldn’t doubt he was born in a litter of pups by an old wolf bitch.”

  Back in his camp at the foot of the mountain, Wolf looked around at the progress he had already made to ready the camp for the winter, now rapidly approaching. He thought it over, trying to make up his mind to stay until spring or to move right away. He walked to the edge of the stream and stared at it, wondering if there was any gold in its rushing waters that might bring a storm of prospectors to search for it. In the end, he decided to move farther north. He felt crowded, and there was still time for him to build a winter camp. He could not waste any more time, however, for there was a lot of hunting and curing of meat to be done to prepare for the long months when the mountain passes would be clogged with snow. These were the only things that occupied his thoughts now, for he had no way of knowing that he himself was being hunted by three men sworn to kill him. And although they had long since lost his trail, they were in the Black Hills, searching, working their lawless way from mining camp to mining camp, sometimes leaving a trail of murdered prospectors in isolated streams and lonely gulches, knowing that inevitably they would track him down.

  Far behind them, another had joined the hunt. Nate, youngest of the Dawson brothers, was already on his way to find them and hopefully to find the man called Wolf. It had been as difficult as he had anticipated to bring his aunt Mavis the news that all three of her sons had been killed. Mavis Dawson Taggart was not a woman to accept injury to any of her family without bloody retribution. When he had ridden into the front yard of the tiny cabin on Lodgepole Creek, he had found his aunt sweeping the bare ground around the porch steps with a broom made from willow switches. As soon as she saw him, she stopped dead in her tracks, sensing bad news in some form. She propped her broom against a porch post, wiped her hands on her apron, and waited patiently for Nate to dismount.

  “Nate” was all she said as she watched him step down.

  “Howdy, Aunt Mavis,” Nate returned. “I reckon I got some bad news.” He told her then about the tragic ending of her sons. She didn’t make a sound, nor shed a single tear, as he identified their killers. A clenching of her jaw and the slight narrowing of her eyes were the only emotions registered. It was not the reaction Nate expected, and he wondered if she realized what he was telling her until she finally spoke.

  “Gimme their names,” she said, her voice steady as a rock.

  “Mace told Boyd that a marshal named Ned Bull was the one that killed Arlo, and Mace killed the marshal. But the one that shot Beau and knifed Mace got away.”

  “His name?” Mavis asked, still with no emotion evident in her weathered face.

  “I ain’t sure if it’s his real name or not, but Clem said he was called Wolf.”

  “Wolf?” Mavis questioned, not sure she had heard right.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Nate replied, still puzzled by his aunt’s lack of emotion. “But don’t you worry none. All three of my brothers are already on his trail, and I’m fixin’ to head that way myself. Me being the youngest, Buck made me come give you the news, or I’d be with ’em. Don’t you worry, we’ll get that feller.”

  “If you don’t, I will,” she promised. Then, without a change of expression, she asked, “Are you hungry? Have you had your breakfast?”

  “No, ma’am,” he replied. “I ain’t et no breakfast yet, but I expect I’d best get started after my brothers pretty quick. I ain’t even been to the house to tell Ma and Pa the bad news yet—thought you oughta been the one to hear about it first. I expect they’ll be comin’ over as soon as they find out.”

  “Can’t hardly do your best if you start out hungry,” she insisted. “Come on in the house. I’ve got biscuits I baked this morni
n’.”

  “Yessum, thank you, ma’am. I reckon I could eat a biscuit or two. Then I’ll go see Ma and Pa before I go after my brothers. That murderin’ dog ain’t gonna get away with what he done.”

  She fed him coffee and biscuits, and then he was on his way. She waited until his horse dropped below the rise that stood between her cabin and that of her brother Doc’s before she released the agony that his news had created. She raised her face to the cloudy sky and brought her grief up from deep inside her in a mournful howl, like that of a coyote. With nothing in her life that meant anything to her other than her three boys, she would have satisfaction from their killers if she had to do it herself. I may be old, she thought, but I ain’t feeble. Nobody gets away with harming my boys. But she still had her nephews. They would avenge her sons. She would see to that.

  Winter set in with bitter cold temperatures and heavy snowfalls, but Wolf’s camp was well prepared, as he had coped with wintry camps since he was first on his own in the Wind River Mountains. He had pushed on only about a day’s ride from the boomtown of Stonewall before he came upon an ideal setting for his winter home in the form of a deep gulch running back into the side of a mountain that provided cover for his two horses as well as himself. When he first discovered it, he hurried to fashion a roof over the narrow end of the gulch with a smoke hole for his fire. As soon as it was finished to suit him, he worked hard to stock up on firewood, and then he spent all his time hunting. He was content there with nothing to concern himself with except seeing that his horses were protected and fed. Though game was scarce, there would still be some to supplement his store of smoked jerky as the occasional herd of deer moved through the sheltered valleys. Of more concern was the feed for his horses, but they could make it on a great deal less, since they would be doing little more than waiting for spring.