The Hunted

by Ralph Compton

  The leering demon howled at him—was it speaking to him? It was all Samuel could do to keep his eyes from closing, from trying to force away the pain, the hot tears such pain pushed up and out of him.

  Crack! His head whipped to the left. Smack! To the right.

  “What . . .” He tried to speak, but his tongue felt as though it were thicker than his wool blanket rolled so tight tied behind his saddle. Yes! That brought to mind Sassy, galloping . . . he’d been shot. Oh no, no, Samuel, he told himself. This cannot be. You have too much to do yet. And the people of Gamble, your friends, those people you kept at arm’s length for so long, the only real friends you’ve had in a lifetime of roving. You have let them down. You have doomed them, the weak souls of Gamble.

  Seconds later, a great gush of water poured over his face and Samuel sputtered and coughed, jerking himself side to side, but he was held down by something. The spastic thrashing hurt, yet the water had helped clear his mind. And what he saw made him wish he’d stayed incoherent.

  Two Indians stared down at him, their decorated buckskin clothing and faces offering a confusing sight of color. The stink of them as they moved closer was the smell of animals, of raw musky rage, sweat, and anger and wood smoke and blood. How many were there? Just the two? Samuel looked about as best he could, and saw he was tied down, staked out with leather wrappings. His eyesight began to cloud, limiting what he could see. Soon he tasted a warm wetness on his lips, knew it was blood, perhaps from a wound to his head.

  The demonic Indians murmured among themselves. Samuel could see two now, both men, and their prodding, kicking, and laughing had begun to enrage him. He gathered a shout and tried, tried again, and got it half out before one of them drove a hard, tight fist into his mouth, snapping his head to the side again.

  Behind him, a cry arose and Samuel, weak as he was, tried to look in that direction. He saw one of the men standing beside a horse, his horse, Sassy. She still looked to be upright, unharmed. What would become of her? Stop thinking like that, he told himself. Figure a way out of this.

  The Indian held aloft his bottle of whiskey, still mostly full. Samuel had not allowed himself to indulge in its splendors these past nights on the trail. Now he wished he had. Or else had dumped it out.

  But the Indian hooted and gasped with the fiery rush of the rough whiskey.

  “White man, what do you want here?”

  Samuel turned his head back to face the man looking down at him. This one didn’t seem interested in the least in the whiskey shenanigans of his friend.

  “This is not your land, not your people, and yet you whites come here, take everything that we have and leave nothing for us but death and sickness. No more, white man. We will go into tomorrow without you.”

  “I . . . don’t want anything,” said Samuel, trying to shake his head. It seemed important to convince this man that he wanted nothing but to live. For that he would leave here forever, never come back, would gladly forsake the gold, all of it. He would leave here forever.

  But the man was having none of it. Even laughed at Samuel’s tearful efforts at convincing him of this.

  Soon the effects of the whiskey drove the other man to shout and snarl, to dance and sing in his native tongue. Where did this one learn his English? A missionary? For all Samuel knew, the Indian could have traveled back East for his education. Did any of it matter? Soon, as if in answer to that last question, the miner’s thoughts clouded over with pain.

  The first arrow jerked his eyes wide. Any previous pain he’d felt had been galloped over by this fresh, hot flame—a pain that ripped a scream from his throat as though a hand had reached in and dragged it up from his guts. Samuel screamed until there was no breath left in his body, and this seemed to be what the Indians wanted, for they let him fill and empty, fill and empty his lungs over and over.

  And with each cry, he jerked, pinned to the ground as before, by the staked leather thongs he had seen earlier, and now by the long shaft of the feather-topped arrow jutting from his left shoulder. He could not move that part of his body, could feel nothing of it but pain. The hot, raw stink of sweat and dirt and of his own blood filled his nostrils.

  More smacks to the face, more kicks to the chest, none of it mattered anymore. Not until the second arrow, driven deep into his right shoulder, pulled more screams from him. Then more water to revive him. He saw the same man standing over him with a long shaft—a spear, this time. He bucked as it drove into his guts, and he felt every slice and sting as the other of them, howling and mad with drink, set to work on him with a knife.

  Water and hard slapping awakened Samuel Proudhorn once again. Large, rough fingers pulled his eyes wide, forced them open.

  “What do you want here on Shoshoni land?”

  Samuel tried to think—what did he want? Nothing, he wanted nothing from him, from the land. He wanted to pass through, to be gone from here. That was all.

  Another slap and the fingers forcing his eyes wide, forcing him to watch as a knife, Samuel’s own knife, always kept keen-edged, wagged into view before the leering face.

  “Wha . . . ? What are you going to do?”

  Samuel had wondered fancifully in the past that if he were ever caught by a scalping Indian, what could they possibly do with his hair, seeing as he was nearly bald? But now he knew, for the Indian let go of Samuel’s eyes and snatched the mass of Samuel’s blood-and-spittle-soaked beard in a begrimed, bloody hand and lifted Samuel’s head off the ground.

  “No!” shouted Samuel, but his cries only seemed to goad the man on. Other shouts drowned out Samuel’s sobs. Sobs that became screams once the man began slicing at the skin beneath Samuel’s great bushy beard. The screams died in a guttural gagging sound, but not before the Indian had peeled half of Samuel’s face free.

  Chapter 5

  “Folks just call me Charlie. Big Charlie.” He tried to hide the trembling of his fingers by rebuckling the straps holding Mabel-Mae’s load in place. The animal’s girthy body swayed slightly from his efforts.

  “I wonder why that is.”

  Charlie glanced at the marshal but saw no humor in his dark, staring eyes. The man had all but sneaked up on him not but two minutes before when Charlie had been busy gathering his gear. Too busy, he guessed, to hear. That and the wind had picked up outside, rattling a loose plank and raising dust along the floor.

  “The man I hit, did he say anything?” Big Charlie looked over the mule’s back at the marshal. Even in the lamp’s dim light, he could tell the lawman’s eyes were studying him, wondering why he’d ask that.

  “Nope. I personally saw that he can’t do much more than whimper and bleed and snot himself. You broke his jaw in a hundred pieces, Big Charlie.”

  Charlie wanted to sigh and whoop, all at once. As far as he could recall, Dutchy also couldn’t write, so chances of him blathering to anyone about Charlie’s past were slim. Despite his slight renewal of hope, Charlie still wanted to drag Mabel-Mae on out of there and get gone. Instead he nodded and retied a rope he’d already dealt with twice, hoping the marshal wouldn’t stand there much longer. But in that, the lawman continued to disappoint him.

  “I reckon I’ll be on my way, then.”

  The marshal rested a hand on Mabel-Mae’s rump, patted her. “Now, see, that’s where you’re mistaken, Big Charlie.”

  “How’s that?” Charlie felt the small fist in his gorge tighten. Any warmth from the rum toddies of earlier, and the fevered flush he felt in dropping Dutchy to the floor, had left him, cold and still inside, long minutes before.

  “I got a number of folks in the Royale Gaming Hall told me they swore they heard that the man you accosted had accused you of being someone whose name might ring a bell with me. Might go so far as to say that should I care to dig through the pile on my desk, I would likely find a dodger on a man fitting such a description as you sport.” The marshal nodded slowly up
and down, taking in Charlie’s full height.

  Charlie shook his head. “No.”

  For the first time since he came into the stable, surprise raised the marshal’s eyes. “No? Uh, which part, exactly?”

  “There ain’t no dodger on me.” He tugged a rope, let his big hands drop atop the load on Mabel-Mae’s back. “Not anymore.”

  “Served your time, did you?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Then you won’t mind walking on up to my office for a spell.”

  Charlie sighed. “I told you, Marshal, I ain’t riding the owl-hoot trail.”

  The marshal shucked his sidearm as fast as Charlie had seen any man ever do the deed, and peeled back the hammer at the same time. “Oh, but I insist, Big Charlie. You see, a man can’t pop another man with a bone-breaking love tap like you did to that drunk fool back there and then ride off without so much as a by-your-leave.”

  Charlie guessed that small speech would have drained the talk out of pretty near any other man. But the marshal here was apparently made of sterner stuff, for he kept on prattling, even as he wagged his pistol at Charlie.

  “In my town, you see, we have a little something called law and order. And I like to keep them one after the other, like that. Law first, then order. I’m the law, and I do a decent job of keeping the order. Hired to, in fact.” He followed Charlie out the front door of the barn.

  “But you, Big Charlie, you took the order part to task and apparently, finding the law wanting, why, you up and popped that man.”

  “He was asking for it.”

  “Mm-hmm. And I could ask why. But I won’t. Because I like my guesses just fine. I’m afraid the truth might peel them all apart till you get to the softness in the center and find the onion’s gone bad.”

  Charlie didn’t really know what this man was going on about, but he hoped it would stop soon. Was he going to be arrested? Tried for a crime? Kept until the marshal proved to himself that Charlie was no longer a wanted man? He reckoned he’d ask a few of these questions once they got to the law dog’s office, but right now he was doing all he could to walk without knowing where he was going, somewhere on up the street. They headed toward the busy part of the main street, right up there where all the nosy folks were out on porches, watching the marshal parade him back on up there. He felt as he had when he’d walked through the bar.

  “A man’s past hangs on him like a coat he can’t shuck, Big Charlie.” The marshal’s voice was closer than he expected, and lowered. “No matter if he’s atoned or not, the public is a fickle thing. I know this for a fact, having served it in various capacities for a long damn time, Charlie Chilton. Keep going. It’s the single lit window up there on the right.”

  Men, women, even a few youngsters stared in near silence at him. The night was turning cool, crisp. It felt good on Charlie’s face, his cheeks already heating up again under the scrutiny of the townsfolk.

  • • •

  “Now, then,” said the marshal once they were inside the office. But he didn’t finish his thought. He nodded to a straight-back chair before his desk. “Have a seat. I’ll fetch us some coffee.”

  Somewhere along the walk, the lawman had holstered his Colt. Charlie looked around the small front office, taking in the usual features, the open-face gun cabinet, the desk with an identical chair behind, the desktop a layout of neat stacks of paper and orderly items looking as though they belonged where they’d been placed. Also sitting atop the desk were a tin cup with a number of writing implements poking from it, an unlit lamp on the corner, and a ring with three skeleton keys. And under it all, the dark wooden surface had been scuffed and scarred and gouged and carved and stained by who knows how many lawmen before this one.

  Behind him the marshal slid a coffeepot back onto the low sheet-steel stove’s top. “I noticed you don’t wear a gun, Charlie.”

  It wasn’t a question, but it was, just the same. He waited a moment. The marshal set a cup of steaming hot coffee on the edge of the desk before him. “No, sir. Been a long time since I . . . needed to.”

  The marshal dropped into his own chair and nodded, blew across the top of his coffee. “I looked like you, I guess I wouldn’t need anything other than those.” He jerked his chin at Charlie, indicating his big hands.

  Charlie looked at them, kept his forearms on the chair’s armrests. He flexed his big, callused paws, let them hang over his lap. “I reckon.” A moment of silence passed; then Charlie said, “Say, Marshal . . .”

  But the man held up his hand. “I am Marshal Watt, by the way. And I know what you’re about to ask me, Charlie. But I will hasten to that point before you, if I may.” He didn’t wait for permission but barreled right on ahead. “I believe we may be able to help each other.”

  Charlie’s eyebrows pulled together like two great rodents greeting each other. “I don’t see how. . . .”

  “It’s like this, Charlie Chilton.” He leaned forward, elbows on his desk, and stared right at Charlie.

  Given that the man had used his full name again, a name folks from his past would know him by, Charlie guessed it was some sort of offer he wouldn’t be able to refuse too easily. If at all.

  “I am a married man, Charlie.” He paused.

  Charlie guessed that meant he should say something. “Well, that’s nice for you, Marshal Watt, I’m sure.”

  “No, no, it isn’t, Charlie. Not in the least. It’s a venomous relationship that because of who I am and what I am, I am locked into this marriage until death do us part.” His eyebrows rose for a split second, as if he were mentally exploring the possibilities of death parting one of them from the other earlier than nature might intend. Charlie guessed it wouldn’t be the marshal from his wife, but the other way around.

  “You see, Charlie, that man you hit earlier, he was part of an outfit hired to work for Jasper Rafferty, a man who had contracted to run a freight trip soon.”

  “Who on earth would hire . . . him?” Charlie realized too late that he’d all but admitted he had known the man.

  The marshal smiled. “I like you, Charlie. You are a good judge of men. And the idiot who hired the man you punched, and a handful of others besides, is my brother-in-law, Jasper Rafferty. In fact, when Jasper showed me the crew, I asked him why he’d hired such barrel scrapes. ‘Because they came cheap,’ he told me. Can you believe the man?”

  The marshal smacked his hands on the desktop and stood, obviously disgusted by the talk of his brother-in-law. “Would that his sister, my wife, had the same cheap streak. But no, sir, not a chance.”

  “I still don’t see what this has to do with me.”

  “Charlie, I am in a position to offer you one of two things. One, you can sit in my jail for a long time waiting for a court date.”

  Charlie almost stood, but the marshal’s hand dropped with the instinct of a striking viper to his holster. “Or you can sit back down and listen to the more interesting half of my offer.”

  Charlie eased back into the chair and nodded, knowing for sure he wasn’t going to like much of anything he was about to hear.

  “The trip that is to be made on behalf of my brother-in-law and me—much to my chagrin, I am also in business with the man—has been postponed several times for want of a crew. Now that Jasper finally has arranged a crew, said crew has lost one member, a member who, if what I am told is to be believed, was a knowledgeable teamster. And if that trip does not run, Charlie, do you know what my life will be like? It will be unpleasant, to say the least. I suspect that foolish Jasper and his morbid little wife and fat children will all have to move into our very home, a small affair at the best of times that offers little respite from my wife’s constant pestering.”

  “So . . . you want me to go in . . . his place? On that trip?”

  “That is what I am on the cusp of saying, yes.”

  “Oh. Well, I’
m not so sure. . . .”

  “You don’t seem to understand, Charlie Chilton. And as much as I hate to be indelicate about it, you don’t have much of a choice, now, do you?”

  “It’s like that? Jail or some crazy freighting trip?”

  “It’s about like that, yes.”

  “But I’m a free man. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “Except for disturbing the peace in my town, laying out someone in the Royale Gaming Hall with a singularly impressive blow to the head. Stoving him in so hard that he is unable to perform the task he’s been hired for.”

  Charlie sighed. “And that puts you in a tight spot. So you put me in one, huh?” He stood, sudden decision hastening his movements, the chair stuttering on the floor. “No, sir, no, you can’t do this to me. I don’t reckon you have enough of anything to keep me here.”

  The marshal sat back and stared up at Charlie. Charlie stared down at him. In the center of the other half of the small room, a knot in a hunk of firewood popped, and the stove ticked with the heat.

  “Fine. I expect,” said Marshal Watt, “that Judge McElroy will be through sometime . . . oh . . .” He consulted the wall calendar. “Along about December.”

  “December? But that’s nearly two months away!”

  The marshal smiled. “Or January. He likes to spend Christmas in Salt Lake with his brother’s family. Oh, but don’t you worry, Charlie. The cell back there is usually empty, so you won’t have to share too often. And the wind often blows from the north, and since the cell’s barred window is on the south side, you won’t feel much of the breeze. The food? Oh, it’s downright edible. Nearly so anyway. How that woman ever convinced the town she could cook for the prisoners is beyond me.” He smiled again. “My wife. That’s why I take at least one meal a day at Hazel’s Hash House, on Sixth Street. A man has to eat. But why am I telling you that? You obviously know what I mean.” He nodded at Charlie’s robust girth.

  The big man poked the air in front of Marshal Watt with a finger like a stick of dynamite. He spoke through gritted teeth: “Dagnabbit, Marshal. I don’t like being railroaded, not one bit.”