The Tenderfoot Trail

by Ralph Compton

  Piecing it together, Garrett figured that Yates had killed the girl’s horse but Paloma had been thrown clear. When she’d gotten up and started to run, he’d put a bullet in her back.

  Garrett’s eyes lifted to the sea of grass rolling all the way to the horizon. Now only Jenny remained, and Yates must be close on her trail.

  There had been saddlebags behind Paloma’s saddle, but these had been rifled and then thrown on the ground. Like Abbie’s, the money Paloma had been carrying was gone.

  Taking off his hat, Garrett wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. He could do nothing for Paloma now. His concern must be for the living.

  He settled his hat back on his head and stepped into the saddle.

  Somewhere out in that wilderness of grass, cactus and sun Jenny was alone and no doubt terrified of the cold, relentless killer on her trail.

  Garrett knew she needed him, more now than ever before.

  He lifted the grulla into a distance-eating lope.

  Time was not on his side.

  Chapter 27

  The morning was far advanced, but the sky was still streaked with red, band after band stretching clear to the horizon. There was blood on the sky, a bad omen, and Garrett’s lean, unshaven cheeks were touched by scarlet light.

  Ahead of him lay the Milk River, and already the West Butte of the Sweet Grass Hills stood out stark and clear in the distance. Garrett slowed the grulla to a walk for a mile or so, then again spurred the horse into a lope.

  The flat statement of a rifle shot hammered apart the silence of the morning. A moment’s pause, then a pair of shots, very close together, came from the south.

  Garrett drew rein on the grulla and stood in the stirrups, looking ahead of him. But the raw land offered nothing but distance and emptiness. Fear spiking at him, he spurred the grulla into a fast gallop, going he knew not where. Sound travels far across the flatlands, and all he could do was head in the direction of the gunfire.

  And hope he could save Jenny in time—if she wasn’t already dead.

  Garrett rode across level ground, his horse stretching its neck, eager to run. He estimated that the gunshots had originated due south of him, in the direction of the Milk, but the featureless land ahead showed no sign of horses and riders.

  He was about ten miles east of the Whoop-Up Trail, the only freight route into western Canada. As a result, the badlands he was crossing were not much traveled except by Indians. But Garrett rode past two mounded graves, one with its rough wooden cross askew but still intact, probably the last resting place of a couple of miners who had died here on their way to the gold rivers of Alberta.

  To Garrett it was yet another bad omen in a hostile land that seemed full of them.

  After several miles, the level ground began to gradually slope away from him, giving way to sandier country covered with less grass but more cactus, scattered mesquite and blackthorn bush. Over the course of the next two miles the land dropped in elevation about a hundred feet toward the U-shaped bend of a tree-lined creek running off the Marias.

  When he was a couple of hundred yards from the creek, Garrett drew rein, reluctant to ride up on any place without first trying to determine what lay before him.

  He slid his Winchester from the scabbard, his eyes carefully scanning the trees. There was no sound and nothing moved. Was Jenny down there somewhere? And was she alive or dead?

  Garrett swung out of the saddle and stepped to a jumble of rock spiked through by thickets of prickly pear. He got down on one knee, the rifle up and ready.

  A bullet whined off a rock near his left leg and another kicked up a sudden fountain of sand a few yards in front of him. Garrett saw smoke drift among the trees, but he held his fire, afraid of hitting Jenny if she was down there.

  “Garrett! Can you hear me?” Temple Yates’ voice.

  “I can hear you, Yates.”

  There was a moment’s pause, then, “I got the girl here with me. Come any closer and I’ll scatter her brains. You know me, Garrett. I’ll do as I say.”

  “Jenny!” Garrett called. “Are you all right?”

  A minute slid past with agonizing slowness, then Jenny answered, “I’m all right, Luke. He . . . he killed Abbie and Paloma.”

  “And I’ll kill this one too, Garrett, less’n you back off from here.”

  “Yates, harm Jenny and I’ll hunt you down,” Garrett yelled. “Damn you, I’ll kill you any way I can.”

  “Big talk coming from a man hiding behind a rock,” Yates hollered. “Now listen here to me, Garrett. I could have nailed you, but I just fired a couple of warning shots. See, I mean you no harm.”

  “You’re a liar, Yates. You did your best to bushwhack me. Trouble is, you may be fast with the Colt, but you’re no great shakes with a long gun.”

  “Garrett, we can talk this thing through. I’ll give you the five hundred and you and Jenny can ride away from here.”

  “Is that your deal, Yates?”

  “Sure it is. But like I said, first we talk. Just lay down your rifle and step to the creek. Hell, you can even keep your belt gun. I can’t make it any fairer than that.”

  “No deal, Yates,” Garrett yelled, knowing the man was trying to draw him into a close-range revolver fight that he’d be bound to lose. “Just let Jenny go and you can light a shuck, free and clear.”

  “Too thin, Garrett, too thin, so it ain’t going to happen that way. Listen up. Me and the gal are riding out. If I see dust on my back trail between here and Benton, I’ll scatter her brains. If I even spot your shadow in the distance, I’ll kill her and her dying won’t be easy. Do you understand me?”

  A terrible sense of defeat tugging at him, Garrett fought down his urge to charge the trees and take his hits, just so long as he got Yates in his sights. But he knew he’d be dead before he even covered half the distance, and Jenny would be in even worse trouble than before.

  “Did you hear what I said, Garrett?” Yates yelled.

  “I heard you, Yates. I won’t come after you.”

  “One false step, just one little mistake on your part and she dies. Hell, if you even blow her a kiss I’ll gun her. Remember that.”

  “Damn you, Yates, I’ll remember.”

  “Just see you do.”

  A couple minutes later Garrett watched Yates and Jenny leave the shelter of the trees lining the creek. He had his rifle cocked and ready, but Yates made sure he kept Jenny between himself and the slope. Garrett could not get a clear shot at the gunman without running the risk of hitting the girl.

  Miserably he saw them ride south, then swing west toward the Whoop-Up. He watched until they were out of sight; then he mounted the grulla.

  The situation was brutally apparent to Garrett. If he tried to rescue Jenny between where he was and Benton, Yates would shoot her without hesitation. There was a good chance he’d kill her anyway before riding into the settlement. As it stood at the moment, Jenny was a burden to Yates, but she was also insurance that he’d reach Benton without having to fight every step of the way.

  But once the Missouri came in sight and he no longer needed the girl, he’d get rid of her.

  Garrett knew he could not let that happen. There had to be a way. All he had to do was find it.

  Garrett rode to the creek, where the sandy soil gave way to good grass and a slight breeze talked among the trees. He unsaddled the grulla, propped his back against the trunk of a cottonwood and tipped his hat over his eyes. He slept soundly until the light of day began to die around him and the sky shaded from blue to pale violet and the first stars appeared.

  Rising to his feet, Garrett collected wood from among the tree roots and built a fire. He filled the coffeepot and, as the water heated, cut thick slices of bacon and skewered them on a stick to broil.

  After he’d eaten, he threw the last of the coffee on the fire, then saddled the grulla. He stepped into the leather and swung toward the trail, the darkness throwing a dusky cloak over the land.

 
; Garrett welcomed the night. Any dust thrown up by his horse would be lost in the gloom, unseen by Temple Yates. From now on he would sleep by day and ride under the canopy of the stars, and bide his time.

  He rode up on the Whoop-Up Trail and followed it south and at some point in the darkest part of the night he crossed the Milk. He paused on a wide bar to smoke a cigarette as the moonlight cast horse and rider in silver and spread their thin shadows on the sand.

  Just before dawn, Garrett rode into Montana and passed the Sweet Grass Hills. By first light he was already asleep in a coulee just south of West Butte and the long day came and went before he woke and again took to the trail.

  Under a wide moon, he splashed through Willow Creek and as he regained the opposite bank a shadowy shape emerged from the long grass under the cottonwoods and walked with him, adjusting its pace to that of the horse.

  The grulla didn’t like it much and began to act up, but Mingan kept his distance, never coming any closer than twenty yards to Garrett.

  “Wish I knew what you wanted with me, wolf,” Garrett said aloud, a habit of men who ride lost trails. He smiled. “Less’n you’re planning on eating me.”

  If the wolf heard and understood, it made no sign, slipping like a gray ghost from patches of moonlight to shadow, its burning eyes never leaving the trail ahead.

  Ten miles north of the big bend of the Marias, Garrett spotted the winking crimson light of a campfire. He drew rein and calculated the distance. A mile, no more than that.

  Mingan sat, waiting, and when Garrett kicked the grulla into motion, the wolf followed.

  Garrett rode at a walk for half a mile, then stopped to listen. Ahead of him the campfire still burned, but there was no sound. The air was close and stifling, smelling of grass and the hot earth. Heat lightning flashed gold in the sky to the west as Garrett swung out of the saddle and slid his Winchester from the scabbard.

  On cat feet he crouched low and began his walk toward the fire. He left the trail and crossed a patch of open ground, stepping around outcroppings of prickly pear. Garrett’s eyes narrowed as he stood and scanned the distance in front of him. The campfire still glowed, but as yet he could not make out the lay of the land around it. He rubbed a sweaty palm on his chaps and touched his tongue to dry lips.

  Was Yates even now watching him, sighting his rifle?

  A booted and spurred horseman, Garrett knew he wasn’t cut out to sneak across open country, but he saw no alternative. This might be his only chance to catch Yates unaware and get close enough to where the Winchester could nullify the gunman’s deadly speed and accuracy with the Colt.

  He stared gloomily into the darkness, at the fluttering light of the fire, and forced himself to move again.

  A hundred yards farther on, Garrett made out one wall of a shallow coulee, the other side eroded to a low hump rising a couple of feet above the flat. The fire burned in the shadow of the higher wall, casting a dancing circle of scarlet and yellow on the grass.

  Getting down on one knee, he studied the space around the fire. There was no coffeepot on the flames, no blankets spread, no picketed horses. The camp was deserted.

  Garrett rose to his feet. Holding the Winchester high across his chest he stepped into the firelight, the only sounds the snap of burning wood and the chime of his spurs.

  He saw the note pinned under a rock almost immediately.

  GARRETT, YOU ARE TOO CLOSE.

  IF YOU WANT TO SEE THE GIRL

  ALIVE AGAIN BACK OFF.

  Garrett read the note, then scanned it one more time, as though hoping the words would suddenly change before his eyes. But Yates’ warning was clear. He knew he was being crowded and if Garrett didn’t put some distance between them Jenny would pay the price.

  A feeling of hopelessness tugging at him, Garrett tossed the note into the fire, where it burned, curling like a black rose.

  He could only hope Temple Yates would keep Jenny alive until they reached Fort Benton. There she’d be safe, at least for a while.

  But if that happened, the solving of one problem would create another. Some overdue vigilante justice by way of a hangman’s noose was waiting for Garrett at the settlement. It would take only one idle porch percher to recognize him and his chances of rescuing Jenny and getting out in one piece could stack up to be mighty slim.

  The young rancher glanced at the sky. There was blood on the moon. It was another bad omen in a bad-luck land.

  Chapter 28

  Luke Garrett rode into Fort Benton sitting slumped in the saddle, his hat pulled low over his face. The grulla was beat from the trail. Puffs of dust lifted from its plodding hooves and its head hung, the tired horse taking no interest in what was going on around it.

  The streets of the settlement were crowded with freight wagons urged on by mule skinners and bearded, profane bullwhackers, their long whips snapping like Chinese firecrackers. Horsemen and people on foot scurried this way and that, their preoccupied eyes fixed on the way ahead of them, intent on their destinations, looking neither to the left nor the right.

  Men of uncertain character and doubtful means of support were a common sight in the town, and no one slanted a second glance to the tall, unshaven rider who swung out of the saddle at the nearest saloon and pushed his way through the batwing doors.

  Garrett’s eyes searched the room as he walked inside. A man with thin sandy hair, dressed in a collarless shirt and brocaded vest, stood behind the bar. A couple of men, teamsters by the look of them, sat at a table nursing warm beer that was growing warmer by the minute in the afternoon heat.

  The bartender wiped a rag across the rough pine bar in front of Garrett and asked, “What will it be?”

  “Rye and some information,” Garrett answered.

  “Rye I got. Information”—the man’s black eyes measured the rough-looking stranger—“well, that all depends on what a man wants to know.” He took a bottle and shot glass from behind the bar and poured the whiskey. “If it’s about women now, I can—”

  “I’m looking for a man,” Garrett said. He tossed off the rye, then extended the glass for another.

  “Last I heard, he was calling himself Charlie Cobb.”

  A guarded look crept across the bartender’s face. “Here, are you the law?”

  Garrett shook his head and pretended a cheer-fulness he did not feel. “Nah. Ol’ Charlie and me, we go way back.”

  One of the men at the table had been studying Garrett closely, his eyes moving upward from the young rancher’s big-roweled spurs to the top of his battered hat. “Mister, you got a way about you that looks familiar. Don’t I know you from somewhere?” he asked.

  “Ever been to the Pumpkin Creek country, southeast of here?”

  The mule skinner shook his head. “No, I haven’t.”

  “Then you don’t know me from somewhere.”

  “Hell, I could have sworn—”

  Garrett didn’t want the man to push it any further. Maybe the teamster was just trying to be friendly, but he might be a vigilante. He turned his head toward the man, his eyes suddenly cold, and said, “You don’t know me.”

  There was something in Garrett’s look that the man didn’t like and he let it go. “My mistake, stranger. No offense.”

  “None taken,” Garrett said. He turned to the bartender again. “We were talking about Charlie Cobb.”

  The bartender and the man at the table had just recognized a quality in Luke Garrett of which he himself was completely unaware. There had always been iron in him, but all he’d endured on the Whoop-Up Trail had tempered that metal into hard, unbending steel.

  In just a couple months he’d grown much older. His face had become taut and brown from the sun and there wasn’t an ounce of him that was not muscle and bone. He looked tough, capable, and ready for anything and there was a recklessness about him that showed in the way he held his angular body and wore his holstered Colt like it was a part of him. He had acquired the kind of challenging, steady gaze that makes lesser
men look away, and now the bartender found it difficult to meet his eyes.

  “Mister, there’s no telling where Charlie goes by day.” The bartender topped off Garrett’s glass. “No charge,” he said. He leaned closer. “But he’s here most nights.” The man turned and waved a hand to a corner table. “Sits right over there. Plays poker sometimes. Other times he doesn’t.”

  Garrett finished his drink and nodded. “I’m obliged.” He fished in his shirt pocket for one of his two remaining double eagles and laid the coin on the counter. “Take my drinks out of that.”

  “Too early in the day to make that much change,” the bartender said. He pushed the dented coin toward Garrett. “Pay me when you meet up with Charlie tonight.”

  Picking up the double eagle, Garrett nodded his thanks and turned to leave, but the man’s voice stopped him. “Young feller, I don’t know you and you don’t know me, so I’m saying this for your own good. If you’ve got a beef with Charlie, step careful. Temple Yates got into town a couple of nights ago and he’ll be with him. I don’t know if you’ve heard o’ Yates, but he’s poison mean and lightning fast with the iron.”

  At the mention of Yates, Garrett turned so fast that the bartender’s eyes widened in alarm. “Did Yates have a girl with him? Blond, real pretty”—he stretched out a hand, palm down—“about this tall?”

  The bartender nodded. “Now you mention it, Charlie Cobb and Yates had a girl like that with them last night. I hear Charlie plans to have her to work the line down by the levee. Looked like a real nice girl, though kind of pale and frightened maybe, like she’d just got in from the sticks.” He shrugged. “Takes all kinds, I suppose.”

  So Jenny was still alive. Relief flooded through Garrett. It seemed that Yates had decided it was better to make money out of the girl than kill her. And Charlie Cobb had agreed.

  From all he’d heard, the whores along the levee catered mostly to the steamboat roustabouts—and were considered only a tiny cut above the lowly soldiers’ women who plied their trade in the cow towns.