The Hunted

by Ralph Compton

  Everett Meecher squawked and sputtered like a hen on a nest of snake eggs. He circled the halted wagons twice on foot, waving his arms and kicking at the frozen ruts of mud, at the dirty runnels of brown water beginning to form in the morning sun’s heat. He seemed oblivious of the chuckles of the slowly gathering townsfolk at his antics.

  When Meecher finally came to a stop beside Charlie’s wagon, he stood staring at the two women, his arms folded. “No, no, and again, I say no. Ain’t no way any women, least of all two of ’em, and on a half-dead horse, to boot, are coming on my freighting trip into Injun country. Rafferty, you are a jackal and a rascal and you ought to be hung high for this.”

  Jasper Rafferty responded by turning his red face away, letting go his hold on the horse’s bridle, and walking back toward his store.

  “I ain’t finished with you, Rafferty!” Meecher’s voice cut through the air like a sore-throated rooster’s too-early crow. It had no effect on the storekeep. But the marshal strode on up.

  “What on earth is the matter here, Meecher?” He looked from the women to Charlie to the scarlet-faced man.

  It took another minute for Meecher to come out with his version of the story, which involved being saddled with passengers and not being paid for such, and on and on. All the while, Charlie watched the two women and saw the larger of them, the one riding second, grow angrier. Finally she slipped to the ground, and he caught a glimpse of her bloomers as she slid off the horse. He closed his eyes and chewed the inside of his cheek, felt his face redden.

  When he opened his eyes, her gaze raked his as she strode up to the two men and folded her arms. She waited until they both stopped arguing and looked at her.

  “Fine. Now, my sister and I are bound for Gamble. I foolishly paid Mr. Rafferty good money for passage to be included as part of this freighting outfit. If there’s something about this you don’t like, I suggest, Mr. Meecher, that you take it up with him. As for my sister and me, we have our own supplies, our own horse, and will be no bother.”

  There was stillness for a moment. No one spoke; then all at once half the freighters began shouting. Meecher howled like a scalded cat, and Marshal Watt was forced to drown them all out.

  Charlie watched as the marshal led the woman and Meecher off a few yards and spoke low to them. Meecher’s outbursts became less frequent, until he merely stood there shaking his head, not looking at the woman. He threw up his hands, as if admitting defeat, and stalked past Charlie to the gaggle of freighters, and they all clucked loudly at each other about the situation.

  The marshal continued to speak with the woman, walked with her to the horse, where the other woman, a smaller thing and more frail looking—certainly paler about the face, it seemed to Charlie—sat as if it took effort.

  He could tell the thin lawman was using his sizable talking skills to convince the women that they would be in grave danger on the trip, that they’d not be welcome, that they might not be looked on well, nor for that matter treated too kindly by the freighters. That it was a long journey with angry Shoshoni running wild all throughout the hills.

  And from what Charlie could tell by the marshal’s movements, headshakes, and waving arms, none of it made any difference to the woman. He appealed to the younger woman on the horse, but she turned away, that tired, glassy look in her eyes staying with her, almost as if she hadn’t heard him.

  Marshal Watt, sagged and defeated, walked up to Meecher and the others and spent another few minutes convincing them of something that Charlie couldn’t quite hear but could guess at.

  Finally Meecher came back to Charlie. “Me and the boys have decided that since we ain’t got no choice, and since you’re a big fella to be on thin ice anyway, and since you’re riding drag here, you’ll be responsible for seeing that them two womenfolk don’t fall too far behind.”

  “Me?” Charlie stood in the wagon, fixing to climb down. “Now, see here—”

  “No, sir. You owe me, boy.” Meecher moved close to the wagon wheel, halting Charlie as he tried to step down. Meecher spoke in a lowered voice. “They got to go with us. That’s all there is to it. And you got to watch ’em, boy. Anything happens to them, I’ll never forgive myself, nor you neither.”

  Charlie held there, half down out of the wagon, traded another spitfire glance with the woman on the ground. She stood, defiant, arms folded, by their horse. She was a good-sized girl, he noted for the first time. She had long, reddish brown hair, sort of tied up in back, but much of it had come loose. It didn’t seem to bother her. Her eyes were big, green, if he had to guess at that distance, and her cheeks were red and bright with the morning air’s nip, her complexion not at all like that of the other one.

  The marshal appeared beside Charlie, laid a gloved hand on his forearm.

  “Hey!” Charlie jumped back. “Marshal Watt . . . I wish everyone would quit doing that. Scare a man half to death.”

  “What? Listen, Charlie, you have to promise me you’ll look after them. The two women.”

  “Not you too? Aww—”

  “Charlie, believe me, I’ve tried. But I can’t arrest them for something they haven’t done. If I went around telling law-abiding people what they could or couldn’t do, I wouldn’t be a marshal, I’d be a dictator.”

  “Well, go ahead and be one of them, then, whatever it is,” said Charlie, disgusted and not at all convinced he needed the responsibility. “So long as I don’t have to take charge of them two women. I have enough troubles, dang it.”

  “Look, Charlie. I’ve given Meecher money to help justify the extra food those two women are bound to need on the trip, but that alone won’t keep them safe. Make sure the other men treat them square, okay?”

  Charlie gave up, sighed, and nodded. “What’s their story, then, anyway?”

  The marshal looked back at the women, the one standing, still staring at them, her mouth set in that same hard line. “They’re sisters. The one on the horse is ill and they need to get to Gamble. Why, they wouldn’t say, but—”

  “I know, I know, you ain’t one of them dictators, so you can’t do a thing about it.”

  Marshal Watt smiled. “That’s about it, yep. You feel you can do your best?”

  “That’s all any man can do, I expect, Marshal Watt.” Charlie climbed aboard and nodded once to the lawman. Within a minute, Meecher’s reedy voice cut through the morning air once again. And this time, they headed out of town without looking back. All of them but Charlie. He looked back once to check on Mabel-Mae, and saw the two women on that tired horse, doing their best to keep up.

  Chapter 10

  Blue Dog Moon tossed the picked-clean deer rib into the flames of the small cook fire. He watched it heat, the marrow bubbling and spilling out the end of the white bone.

  “That is the best part of the bone,” said his older brother, Son of Cloud.

  Blue Dog sighed, but did not look up. He sat on his side of the fire, lazily sucking his teeth and playing at the whites’ game of cards. It was something so many whites and his people found of interest, but he could never understand it.

  Blue Dog looked at his older brother sitting beside him. “Even as I desire to kill every white I see, I spend time pursuing the ways of the whites. I do not understand that.”

  Son of Cloud smiled. “Do not forget that our mother was a white. But she is long dead. You never knew her and I barely remember her. And now that Father is dead too, we are no longer welcome among the people we thought were our own.”

  They sat quietly for a long moment, and then Son of Cloud continued. “And that is why we are here alone. We no longer have any of our own people. We”—he waved a finger back and forth between them—“are the only blooded people either of us will have. Perhaps that explains your fascination with such things as whiskey and cards.”

  The younger man said, “Bah,” but did not look up.

  “I on
ly sat down here to talk with you because you look like an old woman, alone and brooding with your thoughts.”

  Blue Dog spun, his eyes wide. How dare Son of Cloud speak to him in such a manner! But then he relaxed—his brother was laughing silently. He should know better by now. “They should have named you the ‘Trickster,’” said Blue Dog. “It is all day with you, isn’t it?” But Blue Dog too had to smile.

  Soon they fell silent, listened to the flames crackle the wood, the faint slap of the cards.

  “I have heard that the Crow accept money and trade goods with the whites at the place they call ‘Gamble.’” Son of Cloud now stared at the fire.

  “That is because the Crow are weak and will soon be fat and hairy and stink like the whites.”

  Son of Cloud nodded, then looked at his younger brother and smiled. “Again I say, do not forget that we are half white. Blood cannot be changed, even though we were raised by our father’s people. Maybe you are jealous of the Crow, eh?” He nudged the sullen young man in the arm.

  “Bah!”

  “Oh,” said Son of Cloud, his voice louder, as if addressing unseen guests across the fire. “Blue Dog, I have seen you drink the whites’ whiskey. And I think you liked it!” He nudged his younger brother again, both of them nodding at the memory of the stuff they had encountered so recently.

  It left enough of an impression on Blue Dog that he wanted more, and licked his lips at the thought of it. Son of Cloud was far less impressed with the fiery liquid.

  “Soon enough, then,” said Son of Cloud. “For that white man we stopped on his way down out of the mountains from Gamble, the one who owned those cards? He said that they expected wagons filled with food and other things the people at Gamble would need for the long winter to come.”

  Blue Dog looked at his brother, eyes wide. “They will be things, then, that the Crow might need also?”

  Son of Cloud nodded. “I think so, yes.”

  They were silent again; then Blue Dog said, “He was no man.”

  “No. He cried like a child and then died much too quickly.” Son of Cloud shook his head at the grim task they undertook. “I would prefer to fight them than to kill them outright, with so little resistance.” He looked at Blue Dog. “I am beginning to doubt that the whites have a warrior of worth among them.”

  The brothers pulled their blankets tighter over their shoulders and stared once more into the hungry flames.

  Chapter 11

  They had traveled, slow but steady, for hours. The trail had been in much better shape than Charlie guessed it would be. It was nearly a regular road with a great many trees having been chopped and sawed with a crosscut, then dragged out of the way. The recent rain and snow had softened the wheel-rutted trail in a number of low spots, and the beasts took extra urging to roll steadily onward. Charlie didn’t like to lay the lines too heavily on the backs of the oxen, but there were times when he had no choice. And the brutes took it, straining against their yokes but never breaking stride.

  A number of times, Charlie glanced back over his shoulder at Mabel-Mae, who walked on, uncomplaining as he knew she would. Not much perturbed that mule. She could carry a full load or Charlie or nothing at all and she always wore the same quiet look on her face, as if she were always thinking of something more pleasant somewhere far off. Charlie found himself envying that, particularly since he had mired himself in this latest kettle of muck and saw no way out of it but to bull on through, much as he’d always done in life.

  Always after looking at Mabel-Mae, he’d risk a peek at the women on their old horse. They were still there, closer than he expected they’d be, and it seemed that the one who’d argued and won with Meecher and the marshal was always looking right back at him, catching his eye with a gaze that bothered him something fierce. Seemed as if she wanted to stab him for checking on them. A hundred times that morning, he cursed the marshal and Meecher for saddling him with them.

  Hours into the day, they came to a low spot, wide and open alongside the Salmon River, the same flow they’d been more or less bumping up against for the past hour. The road led to the thick waterway, then out of it again on the other side. And boy, did that water look cold to Charlie! Ice had formed across much of it, the early-season scrim that thinned the farther from the banks it crept. But it grew thicker with each passing hour that the temperature stayed stubbornly low.

  Charlie guessed that in another month, that ice would have formed a solid surface clear across, each side meeting in the middle and strengthening with every freezing slap of water underneath.

  For now, it was still mostly open in the middle, but it looked colder than a grave digger’s backside. He didn’t relish the thought of having to lever a boulder-stuck wheel in the middle of it. The sooner they crossed and put the river behind them, the sooner Charlie would begin to enjoy the fine fall day again.

  Meecher halted the train with a hearty “Hoooo-yah!” and the five wagons ground to a halt. The men set the brakes, coiled the lines, and hopped down from their hard bench seats, stretching and rubbing their backsides and moaning as if they had climbed up out of the gutter after a three-day drunk. It felt good to Charlie to step down, for certain, but he wasn’t all that sore.

  He expected none of the others, save maybe for the wiry little Everett Meecher, had done much in the way of hard labor in recent days. They looked to him like soft, drinking men who worked when they had to and loafed away the rest of their time. Men like that never sat well with Charlie.

  He aimed to work hard, as much and as long as it took, to buy that quiet place in the mountains, all to himself, the little valley with plenty of game, a river for fishing, and timber enough to build a fine home. A place he could go and be alone forever and a day, and not have to work at freighting or much of anything else that didn’t suit him. He might even take up whittling. He had the urge to carve little animals now and again, a dog maybe, or a bear.

  Charlie sighed. That would have to wait now, maybe for another couple of years. He cursed himself at the thought of losing all that money at the faro table. What had he been thinking? He shook his head again, as if to shoo away a fly. In his experience, thinking never did help solve many problems. And he’d spent much of the morning wasting time thinking about his long-gone money and the faro table and Dutchy and Meecher and the rest of them. And the women too.

  He looked up to see Norbert wading out into the frigid water of the river, a long pole, riddled with spiky branches, thrust out before him, testing the depth. He had reached far into the middle of the river and nodded back to Meecher, who stood on the bank shouting orders to him, indecipherable over the rush of the river.

  “I’ll wager it’s deeper than it looks,” said Charlie to the women, who now stood beside their horse. He hadn’t necessarily been looking for conversation, and in that he wasn’t disappointed. The sickly looking one kept her sullen face pulled, while her protector, the larger girl, cut her eyes once to Charlie, then back to the river.

  He was about to tell them they ought to move around, stretch their legs, maybe visit the side of the trail while they had the chance. If he read Meecher right, that squawking old man would get across the river as fast as his beasts’ legs and the wide wheels of the wagons would carry them.

  For that matter, Charlie was mighty surprised that the old man had allowed sense to prevail and had taken the time to sound the river bottom. In Charlie’s not-insubstantial experience, these mountain rivers could be deceiving. Each spring the hard-charging freshets ran bold and cold, feeding into these flowages and carving all manner of new eddies, gullies, washes, and hidden rips. They could suck a man and horse under and hold them there, thrashing like twigs in the current long enough to break every bone and suck the air from their lungs for good.

  And that’s when they saw the tall, thin, buckskin-clad Norbert lose his footing. One second he was there, nodding and shouting something unheard to
Meecher, and the next . . . gone. Everyone onshore, even the two women, gasped as if they’d watched their favorite horse break a leg on a race course.

  They saw nothing for a long moment. Then farther toward the opposite bank than they thought possible, Norbert’s head popped up, flopping on his shoulders. Then he was gone again, back under the roiling surface.

  Charlie sliced free a spare roll of hemp rope from the side of his wagon and uncoiling it as he ran, he jammed one end into Everett Meecher’s old horned hands. “Tie this off to something stout!” he shouted as he scrabbled for the other end. He looped it about himself and snugged it around his chest, securing it with a double bowline. As he did so, he heard Meecher yell to the other men.

  “You useless bastards get over here! Rollie, back that second wagon around, get her ready to yank these boys out of there!”

  Charlie didn’t wait to see if they did as Meecher bade; he trusted that they had. And he plowed into that half-frozen river, angling downstream to where he saw Norbert’s skinny leather-clad body, hung up on a bobbing, bony deadfall tree, one arm weakly slapping at the ragged edge of ice forming from the far side. The man’s head barely bobbed above the surface of the gray-green water.

  “You hang on, Norbert! I’m comin’!” To himself he said, “Charlie’s coming, all right. Only he’s getting mighty cold and he don’t know if he can make his legs work much past the middle of this river. . . .”

  As soon as the water topped his boots, they filled, and the numbing cold sucked the breath from Charlie’s lungs. He kept slow-stepping forward, though his chest convulsed with shallow breaths. He moved as fast as he could, jamming his boots down hard with each step, bracing his legs against the current.