The woman nodded. “Something like that. I knew Thetas was going to kill me when all this was over, maybe even before. So I waited until there was no one around and left. That was just before sunup.”
“But why would he kill you? Weren’t you two close at one time?”
Annie laughed again. “Thetas Kane gets close to no one. He wants me dead because I walked out on him. That hurt his pride. Despite what he said back there at the arroyo, he doesn’t forgive and forget.” She studied Garrett’s face and extended the canteen. “You look all used up and you sound like a croaky old bullfrog. Here, take a drink.”
“Obliged,” the young rancher said. He tilted the canteen to his swollen lips and took a swallow. He could have drained the canteen dry, but forced himself to stop. He and Annie might need the water, depending how long it took them to reach the Marias.
As though she’d read his mind, the woman said, “Thetas will have noticed I’m gone by this time and he’ll be coming after me. About all we can do is hide in the hills and hope he doesn’t find us.”
Garrett’s smile was slight. “How much chance of that?”
“Slim to none. Thetas is a first-rate tracker.”
“Then why did you run? You must have known he’d find you.”
Annie nodded, her face somber. “Maybe so, but better a chance in hell than no chance at all.”
Garrett looked beyond Annie to the horizon. Nothing moved out there but the dancing land. The oppressive heat pounded at him and he felt sweat trickle down the small of his back.
“We have to get out of this sun,” he told the woman. “Like you said, move into the hills. I’ll do what I can to protect you, Annie.”
The woman shook her head, looking down at the toes of her dusty shoes. When she looked at Garrett again, her eyes were amused. “Luke, you’re so true-blue I’m surprised nobody stole you when you were just a pup. Listen, Thetas thinks you’re dead. It’s me he’s coming after. There’s no point in us both dying. Just head back to the trail and light a shuck for the Judith Basin country where you belong.”
“Can’t do that, Annie,” Garrett said. He took off his hat and wiped the inside band with his fingers before settling it on his head again. “I told Charlie Cobb I’d take you and the rest of the women up the trail to Fort Whoop-Up and that’s what I intend to do.” He smiled, remembering. “Well, except for Jenny. I plan on making her my wife.”
Exasperation showed on Annie’s hard face. “You owe Charlie Cobb nothing.”
“I owe him my life,” Garrett said. “That means something to me. And I also gave him my word that I’d see you and the others safe. When you think about it, Zeb Ready died helping me keep that promise.”
Annie glanced anxiously over her shoulder, then looked back to Garrett. “We don’t have much time, so here are a few quick home truths. Charlie’s plan is that me, Jenny and the other women make the trip to the fort a number of times. He says miners don’t stay in one place for long, so he can make a killing by selling the same catalog brides over and over to different men.”
“Taking a chance, aren’t you? There’s always the possibility you’ll be recognized.”
“There isn’t much chance of that. As I already told you, miners are a restless breed. They come in to the fort to blow off steam and then head back to the diggings. Besides, a woman can change her appearance, dye her hair, wear different clothes.” She smiled. “You’d be surprised how different I can look when I put my mind to it.”
Garrett decided to let that pass without comment. “Sounds like Cobb had a pat hand. Why did he need me?”
“He wanted an escort for the cat wagon and he needed somebody trustworthy to collect the money at Fort Whoop-Up. He took one look at you, figured you for a rube, and decided you’d fit the bill. That’s why he saved you from a hanging.
“As soon as the fees are collected, we’re to make our excuse to our husbands-to-be that we need to go pretty up, but we’ll head right for the livery stable. A friend of Charlie’s will supply horses. Then we’ll meet you outside the fort and light a shuck back to Fort Benton.”
“And what do you get out of all this?” Garrett asked, his mind on Jenny.
Annie looked over her shoulder again, then said, “Charlie will pay us two hundred a trip. Sure, it’s a tough way to make money, but it beats working the line. That’s where good ol’ Charlie boy found us.”
Garrett felt like he’d been punched in the gut. “Jenny—Jenny worked the line?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sakes, grow up, Garrett,” Annie snapped. “Jenny was an orphan who was shoved from one foster home to another. Most of the time she was treated as a slave, but when she was thirteen she ran away from a Kansas sodbuster who wanted to use her as another, younger wife. Pretty soon after, Jenny worked the saloons and dance halls in Dodge, Ellsworth, Wichita and half a dozen other cow towns. She was just another whore on the line in Helena when Charlie found her. He figured she was ideal material for a catalog bride because she still hadn’t lost her looks and she was used to miners and their ways. Needless to say, Jenny jumped at the chance.”
Garrett no longer felt the hot sun. He was chilled to the bone, remembering the way the sunlight tangled in Jenny’s hair, the sweet innocence of her when she showed him her sketches and talked of her dream of becoming an artist. “I—just can’t believe that,” he said. “It’s hard to take.”
“Yeah, well, things are tough all over, cowboy,” Annie said. “Now let’s get into the hills. If Thetas catches us out here in the flat we’re as good as dead.”
Garrett looked around at the low, cactus-covered rises and narrow arroyos, trying to get his numbed brain to work. It was Annie who led the way. She walked to the base of the nearest hill and began to climb its gradual slope.
Garrett followed and when he caught up with Annie, the woman turned her head and asked, “How much did Charlie say he’d pay you for getting us to the fort?”
“Five hundred,” the rancher replied. “But with Zeb dead and my herd lost, I reckon it wasn’t worth it.”
Annie laughed, this time the harsh, knowing screech of the saloon girl. “Hell, he wouldn’t have paid you anyhow. Charlie Cobb is a dark-alley tin-horn who’s cut men in half with a shotgun for fifty dollars. He never intended to give you any part of his profits.”
Garrett’s smile was stiff and grim. “If we get out of this alive—which I’ll admit is looking more and more uncertain—I’ll get my money.”
“Then good luck with that.” Annie grinned. “Charlie will kill you for sure. And if he doesn’t, Temple Yates, that fast-draw partner of his, will do it for him.”
Chapter 16
Garrett and Annie Spencer crested the hill, then dropped down into a narrow arroyo choked by clusters of prickly pear and white flowering tar-weed. They made their way across the arroyo floor, then climbed the opposite hill, this one higher than the rest, its rocky, humpbacked summit obscured by a scattering of mesquite and stunted juniper.
The sun was almost at its highest point in the sky and the late morning was already unbearably hot. Flies buzzed around the mesquite bushes and crickets made their small sound in the grass.
Garrett led Annie into the lean shade of the junipers and looked back toward the Marias. There was no sign of Thetas Kane, but from up here he could see the man coming from a distance and that might help. Just how it might help, Garrett had no idea. He had no rifle and would have to fight Kane at six-gun range. Given Kane’s speed and skill with the Colt, Garrett would be bucking a stacked deck and the outcome would be an almighty uncertain thing.
Annie was sitting with her back against the twisted trunk of a juniper, her eyes on Garrett. “See anything?” she asked.
The young rancher shook his head.
“He’ll be coming,” Annie said. “He’s out there somewhere, already planning what he’s going to do with me when he catches up to me. Savoring the moment, you might say.”
When Garrett looked at the woman, she tried t
o meet his glance with defiance, but there was something else in their black depths, a raw dread about what could soon happen to her.
“I won’t let him touch you,” Garrett said, pretending a confidence he didn’t feel.
Annie heard how hollow the young man’s assurance sounded, as it must even to him. “Thanks, cowboy, but on your best day you couldn’t match Thetas with a gun. He’s good. Maybe the best there is.”
Garrett forced a smile. “Then I’ll take my hits and outlast him.”
Annie shook her head. “When he shoots, you’ll drop.” Her eyes met Garrett’s. “Bang, bang, end of story.”
“You don’t believe in reassuring a man, do you?”
“Just stating fact, Garrett. A short while from now, when Thetas gets here, you’ll be dead. Your ranch, Jenny Canfield—nothing will matter a hill of beans.”
Garrett’s eyes wandered to the flat again. Nothing.
He squatted beside Annie and built a smoke. “Can I try one of those?” she asked.
“Sure.”
Garrett passed his cigarette to the woman and rolled another. They smoked in silence for a while; then with that sixth sense possessed by the hunted, the young rancher’s eyes fixed on the opposite hill. He had seen a blur of movement where there should have been no movement.
Holding himself very still, Garrett tensed. Then his hand dropped to his gun.
“What is it?” Annie whispered.
“Over there, on the slope. Something moving.”
A few taut seconds dragged past. Then a gray shape emerged from the shelter of a mesquite bush. The wolf stood watching them, its wild eyes green fire in the sunlight.
Annie leaned forward, her forgotten cigarette smoldering between the fingers of her right hand, curling blue smoke. She was silent for a long while, her eyes on the wolf, then she whispered, “I’d know that big lobo anywhere. It’s Mingan.”
Garrett turned his head to the woman, surprised. “I’ve met him before,” he said. Then with a hint of sarcasm edging his voice, he added, “But I never knew until right now he had a name.”
Annie dragged deeply on her cigarette. “Thetas gave him that name. It’s Cheyenne for ‘wolf.’ Thetas raised him from a pup and kept him as a pet. Then one day in the Big Sheep Mountain country he got bored with him and shot him. I saw it happen. Mingan ran away, but he was trailing blood from his head and I always figured he’d gone off and died somewhere.”
Garrett’s eyes lifted to the wolf. “Why did Kane shoot him?”
“Like I told you, he got bored having him around. Thetas is like that, he even gets tired of people, sometimes men, but more often women. Man or woman, he takes what they have to give him, then he discards them, just like he’d toss away a half-eaten apple. Thetas had been drinking and he saw Mingan nosing among the supplies and he just drew his gun and shot him. ‘I’m tired of that damn wolf skulking around the place,’ he said. Then he went back into his tent like nothing had happened.”
“I think Mingan hates him,” Garrett said.
Annie shrugged. “I don’t know if a wolf can hate, but if Mingan does, he’s just one of many, myself included. Not that it matters much. None of us give Thetas a sleepless night.”
Ten minutes later Thetas Kane rode out of the shimmering heat waves, distorted and grotesquely elongated, so that man and horse appeared to be twenty feet tall.
“He’s coming, Annie,” Garrett whispered, though there was as yet no need for quiet. He looked over at the woman and saw naked terror writ large on her face, a fear that mirrored his own.
They avoided each other’s eyes, the haunting knowledge that death was now very close lying cold and unspoken between them.
Garrett looked around him. They couldn’t stay where they were, skylined and obvious at the crest of the hill. To the east the arroyo angled slightly as it narrowed to a width of about fifteen feet. It looked to Garrett that the coulee opened up again beyond that point and gradually faded to flat where the slopes of the hills ended.
He would make his stand at the narrowest part, where a few scattered talus rocks and stands of prickly pear would give him cover. Kane could come at him from only two directions—along the arroyo or behind him. Either way, he and Annie would have the advantage of the sheltering boulders. Of course, Kane might decide to attack over the top of either of the surrounding hills. But then he’d be skylined himself where there was little cover, and he was too smart to make himself such an obvious target.
As plans went, it wasn’t much and Garrett knew it. But right then he was dog tired. His feet were sore and it seemed all his bright ideas had long since skedaddled. Thin or not, it was all he had and it would have to do.
Garrett quickly told Annie what he had in mind. Although the woman arched a slender eyebrow in surprise, she made no objection. Like himself, Annie Spencer knew time was short and she was fresh out of options.
Garrett led the way down the slope and into the boulders, pinkish chunks of sedimentary rock that had shaken loose from the surrounding hillsides during some ancient earthquake. Most were small, but a few stood as high as his waist and would offer good protection from gunfire.
After he’d gotten Annie settled in a sheltered spot, Garrett climbed the hill that they had taken into the arroyo. He crouched low as he neared the top, then crawled on his belly the remaining distance.
Thetas Kane sat his horse, Garrett’s black, just a hundred yards away. The big wolfer’s eyes were scanning the surrounding hills, and once they briefly touched the place where Garrett was hidden before moving on. Slowly, making as little movement as possible, the young rancher reached down and drew his Colt. Could he make the shot?
Garrett blinked sweat from his eyes and steadied the revolver in both hands, pushing it out in front of him. He eased back the hammer, the triple click sounding like loud drumbeats in the silence. Kane stayed right where he was. He hadn’t heard.
It was no small thing to bushwhack a man, even a cold-blooded killer like Thetas Kane. But Garrett knew he had no other recourse. His own life and the lives of five women depended on what he did next.
Sweat stung his eyes as he laid the front sight dead center on Kane’s chest. Then he raised the blade a fraction higher to allow for any possible bullet drop. A fly droned around Garrett’s head as he took up the tiny amount of slack on the trigger—and fired.
The roar of the gun echoed through the hills, scattering jays from among the juniper on the slopes. For a while it seemed that time stood still as Kane sat immobile on his horse. Then the man drew with flashing speed and hammered shot after shot in Garrett’s direction. A bullet whined off a rock close to the young man’s head and another clipped a branch off a nearby mesquite. A third kicked up a startled V of dirt in front of Garrett’s face as he ducked, driving gravel and sand into his eyes.
Half blinded, Garrett raised his head, thumbing back the hammer of his Colt. But Kane was already galloping away and by the time Garrett rose to his feet, the wolfer was riding around the hill toward the mouth of the arroyo and was soon lost from view.
Cursing under his breath, Garrett slid down the slope toward the rocks on his rump. He hit the flat on his feet and ran into the boulders, where Annie’s frightened eyes were asking an urgent question.
“I missed him,” Garrett said bitterly. “Missed him clean.”
“Where is he?” the woman asked, alarm spiking in her voice.
“If I’m not mistaken, he’s going to be right on top of us very soon.”
But minutes passed and there was no sign of Kane. Nothing moved, and now that the jays had fallen silent there was no sound but the drowsy drone of the flies.
Where was the man?
Garrett wiped the sweaty palm of his gun hand on his chaps. His mouth was dry—from thirst, he tried to tell himself, not fear. But Thetas Kane was an ominous threat, his menacing shadow falling across the bright window of the day, and he was a man to be very much feared.
Annie whispered, “Are you sure you mi
ssed him, Garrett? Maybe he’s dead.”
The young rancher shook his head. “I didn’t get him.” Then, anger and disappointment pulling at him, he added, “Hell, I can’t even bushwhack a man.”
“That’s because you’re in the wrong business, cowboy,” Annie said. “You should be home in the Judith Basin country, trying your best to outthink cows.”
Garrett nodded, his smile slight. “Seems like.”
“Where is he?” Annie asked again.
Garrett made no answer as his red-rimmed eyes scanned the arroyo. He turned and checked behind him. There was only emptiness.
The sun was directly overhead, a searing ball of fire blasting the sky and arroyo like a blast furnace.
Garrett put his tongue to his dry lips, then wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his gun hand. A rock, dislodged from higher up the slope to his right, skittered down the steep incline and bounced off a boulder next to where Annie was sitting. The woman let out a little gasp of alarm as Garrett swung his gun on the hill. But he saw nothing. A moment later a squirrel bounced into the open, loosening more rocks and gravel, and dived into a juniper, chattering its irritation.
Shaking his head at his own jumpiness, Garrett again turned his eyes to the arroyo ahead of him.
Hours slid past like snails, slow trails of time that marked the passing of the sullen afternoon.
The light was beginning to fade when Garrett decided to bring matters to a head, the waiting wearing on him. He cupped a hand to his mouth and yelled, “Kane, show yourself and fight like a man, you damned yellow dog!”
The echoing silence mocked him and only the mute hills seemed to be listening.
Garrett stood and held himself still, his gun raised in his hand. Moments slipped by, then he heard a regular, muffled sound—the soft footfalls of a horse walking slowly through the arroyo toward him.
Chapter 17
Luke Garrett tensed as he heard Annie’s sharp intake of breath. “He’s coming, Garrett,” she said.
There was no hope in the woman’s voice, no urging of the young man beside her to action. She was merely stating a fact: Thetas Kane was on his way. What she had left unsaid was that Garrett could not stop him.
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