As Wolpert followed in the outlaws’ wake, he knew the vigilantes weren’t far behind. He also knew the next part of his plan was going to require a lot of good timing, some nimbleness and not a small amount of luck. The stream wasn’t much more than a glittering hint of shallow water that had been turned into ice, but he eyed it as if it were the only thing in his world. With only one more bullet left in his gun, he slipped one foot from its stirrup and eased the other out so his toe was perched on the worn leather edge.
Cade, Juan and Tom rode straight at the stream and jumped over it without the slightest bit of difficulty.
Mike and Johnny were closing in on Wolpert even quicker than he’d anticipated, which made his idea seem worse and worse by the second.
A few more steps and Wolpert’s gelding would be ready to make its jump over the crooked trail of frozen water. He could already feel the horse’s muscles tensing in anticipation of the maneuver. Wolpert was all but convinced that he’d be a fool to even consider what he had in mind, but he knew he didn’t have enough time to come up with something better. Once he tugged on the reins and eased one leg over his horse’s back, it was too late to change his mind.
The instant his gelding’s hooves touched down on the opposite side of the stream, Wolpert gave the reins another tug to slow it down and hopefully pull its head to one side. When the horse responded, the lawman pushed off using the toe that was still in its stirrup and dove to the ground. He hit the cold ground on his backside and rolled so his shoulder and leg knocked against the packed dirt. While he might have been fortunate not to have broken anything in his suicidal dive, Wolpert wasn’t safe yet.
Mike and Johnny thundered closer to him. Their horses churned through the packed snow and cracked the frozen ground beneath it.
Wolpert tried to get up, but his leg was too banged up to support his weight so soon after the fall. Flopping around to lift himself onto all fours, he found the edge of the stream with one foot and slipped onto his face while sliding a few inches along the ice. He swore under his breath, closed his eyes and prepared as best he could to be trampled.
One of the oncoming hooves dropped so close to him that Wolpert could feel the ice flecks hitting his cheek. An animal spewed its heavy breath over him and the sun was completely blotted out by its massive torso. For one silent moment, Wolpert was certain he would feel the clubbing blow of a hoof or an iron shoe knock against his skull.
When the next set of steps thumped against the ground in front of him, Wolpert was afraid to open his eyes. If a hard death was still coming for him, he didn’t want to see it. What he saw instead was the looming shape of Mike’s horse landing on the other side of the stream. Johnny followed and spared only a quick glance over his shoulder to check on the sheriff’s condition. Seeing Wolpert’s shaky wave, the vigilante nodded and shouted even louder at the outlaws’ backs.
No matter how much it hurt to do so, Wolpert pulled himself to his feet. His knees screamed for mercy and his entire left side felt as if it had been worked over with a shovel. Still, he committed himself to getting to his horse. Fortunately, the gelding had turned and was walking back to him. When he caught up to the animal, Wolpert took the rifle from the boot of the saddle, levered in a round and sighted along the top of the barrel.
“Come on,” Wolpert sighed as he steadied his aim and figured the range to his target. “I don’t care which of you does it, just one of you do it quick.”
Wolpert trusted his ability with his Winchester, but wasn’t so sure his aching arms could hold the rifle up for too much longer. Pain from his tumble seeped into his muscles and left them trembling with the strain of steadying the weapon. It reached up through his aching back, into his neck and squeezed the backs of his eyeballs like a pair of tiny fists.
Just as Wolpert’s aim began to falter, one of the outlaws fired a shot at his pursuers. Wolpert squeezed his trigger, levered in another round and fired again. His first bullet sped through the air between the vigilantes and passed close enough to whisper into Johnny’s ear. The second round went astray and cut a shallow groove through the flank of Mike’s horse, which gave Wolpert an even bigger result than he’d hoped for.
The horse that had been grazed reared up a bit and peeled off its course while Mike tried desperately to steer it back. Johnny’s horse was also spooked and followed the other animal’s lead by shaking its head and digging its hooves into the dirt. It didn’t slow to a stop, but it had lost all interest in the chase. Apparently, even their own animals were hesitant to let the overzealous vigilantes be the death of them.
Gritting his teeth, Wolpert forced himself to get back to his horse and place the rifle in the saddle boot. As much of a chore as that was, pulling himself back onto the gelding’s back was even worse. Along the way, he took stock of the injuries he’d sustained in the fall. His legs were battered and bruised. His shoulder might have been knocked out of its socket and then shoved back in. His ribs ached and his neck punished him every time he so much as thought about turning his head. If not for the heavy coat and other layers of clothing he wore, Wolpert knew he would have been a lot worse off.
Once he was in his saddle, Wolpert flicked the reins and rode over to the vigilantes. Mike and Johnny had only just regained control of their horses and were checking on each other when he approached them and asked, “What happened? Either of you men hurt?”
“We ain’t hurt, but those bastards tried to shoot my horse!” Mike replied. “What kind of scum-sucking rat does a thing like that?”
“The kind that don’t live too long afterward,” Wolpert replied. “I know where they’re headed.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. I had a word with a bunch of folks back in town and put their story together. Sounds to me like those men are part of a bunch that used to ride with Burt Sampil. They split off from Burt and struck out on their own and I know where they hole up.”
“Then let’s get ’em!” Johnny bellowed.
“That’s just what they want,” Wolpert protested. “What you two are going to do is rush back to town and round up some more men to go after them.”
Both of the vigilantes nodded enthusiastically. “I know just the boys for the job,” Mike said.
Wolpert knew about the same boys. They’d be the ones who rode with them when more than two sets of hands were needed for a hanging. The entire group of vigilantes worked well together, but they were bound to be disappointed when they followed the directions Wolpert quickly gave to Johnny and Mike.
“Maybe we should just tear after them before they get to where they’re goin’,” Johnny offered.
Wolpert shook his head. “They’ve got the whole trail scouted out and know exactly where to set an ambush. More than likely, the rest of their gang is waiting to pick off anyone who tries to come after them. You know who Jerry Treigle is?”
The vigilantes looked at each other and reluctantly admitted, “No.”
Jerry Treigle was a smart-mouthed little skunk who’d pushed Wolpert around when they went to school together back in southern Kansas. Feeling the aches in his body reminded him of a time when Jerry had shoved him down the steps leading up to the schoolhouse. To the vigilantes, however, he explained, “Treigle is the reason I came to talk some sense into you boys before those robbers led you any farther. He’s also one of the sharpest shooters I ever saw back in my army days and he’s riding with those men now. If those robbers lead us any closer to the spot they got picked out, Treigle will knock us from our saddles like he was shooting bottles off a row of fence posts. You want to try dodging bullets on a skittish horse? Be my guest.”
Mike calmed his horse down and pointed its nose toward Chimney Lake. Johnny did the same, but held off before flicking the reins. “So if we’re all on this hunt together, does that make us official?” he asked.
Nodding solemnly, Wolpert said, “You do a good enough job and it’ll make you deputies.”
Both vigilantes raced to town, smelling their goal as if
it were dangling two feet in front of them.
Wolpert still meant to turn away from his lying days, but didn’t think of the incentive he’d given as a lie. If Johnny and Mike came up empty, they wouldn’t expect an official title. And if they caught up with Wolpert and the outlaws again, a white lie would be the least of their problems.
Chapter 14
Wolpert rode until even his anxious gelding was running out of steam. Not long after that, he caught up with Juan, Cade and Tom at an old trading post run by an older German fellow who lived in the back of his own store. After watering the horses and collecting some supplies, all four men rode some more. They headed south mostly, splitting up every now and then to put down some confusing tracks, and met up a few miles later.
The sun drifted toward the horizon. The sky took on shades of purple and a few streaks of orange while the air grew teeth made of short gusts that gnawed straight through every rider’s coat and raked against his bones. Wolpert’s breath turned to steam as it left his mouth and was immediately captured by the wool scarf wrapped over his face before freezing. All too quickly, the stars appeared overhead and the dark became a treacherous thing that would cause an able horse to trip and spill its rider onto the ground.
And still, they rode.
Only when it became too treacherous to go on did they find a spot to make camp. Wolpert wanted to press on, but decided he couldn’t get much done if their horses tripped over or into something that blended in with the rest of the inky dark. Surviving one staged fall was lucky enough. Expecting to walk away from a real one was pushing his luck.
The fire they made was a sputtering flicker at best. When the wind howled, the bits of wood they’d been able to collect shielded the flame just enough for it to thrive. Cade and Tom sat close to the struggling source of warmth while Juan rubbed his hands together and paced like a caged animal.
“What was that mess back there?” Juan snarled. “You told us it would be an easy job!”
“It would have been if your idiot partner didn’t try going after the safe when I specifically told you not to bother with it.”
Tom shot an angry glance at Wolpert when he heard that, but he was too tired to do much else.
“You never said a thing about vigilantes,” Juan continued. “And don’t say you didn’t know about them. I heard how you were talking to them back at that cabin. It was like you were old friends.”
“Old friends is being awful generous,” Wolpert said. Pulling a can of beans from the bottom of his saddlebag, he wandered over to the fire. “Found us some food. That is, if we can thaw it out.”
“We could use a bigger fire,” Cade said through chattering teeth.
“Sure,” Wolpert grunted as he sat down and laid the can against one of the smoldering pieces of wood. “And those vigilantes can use our bigger fire to spot us from a mile away.”
“I thought you sent them in another direction.”
“I did, but those two are eager to prove themselves and they have good noses for hunting. That’s a bad combination for us.”
Juan stalked over to Wolpert. Keeping his arms crossed tightly over his chest, he kicked the sheriff in the back with the side of his boot. “I’m starting to think the bad combination is you working with us.”
The pain he felt wasn’t as much from the kick as from the impact that got his ribs and back aching again. He felt a jolt that was powerful enough to bring him to his feet, and that movement was enough to add even more pain to the mix. By the time he was up and facing Juan, Wolpert was ready to tear him apart with his bare hands. “You don’t like this arrangement? How about you do something about it?”
Juan stared intently at the lawman. He didn’t need to check to know the other two were watching him just as carefully. “You’re the one who sent us into that storm. What’s there for me to like about that?”
“We can go back and forth about this or we can sit and talk it over like civil men. One way will get your head cracked and the other involves getting closer to that fire. Right about now, I’m not favoring one choice over the other. How about you?”
A shrill wind raked over all of the men and nearly snuffed the fire for good. It also pushed Juan toward the possibility of warmth. As Juan picked his spot around the campfire, Wolpert collected a few more pieces of wood from the branches he’d collected earlier. After arranging the wood carefully, he stretched a tentative hand toward the can of beans. They were barely warm. “Why’d you go after the safe, Tom?”
“Because we were robbing a bank. What bank robber don’t want the safe?”
“The kind that don’t wanna get caught,” Wolpert replied.
“Then maybe you should’a done it yourself.”
“He’s got a point there,” Cade said. “Why don’t you just tell us what the whole plan is before it bites us on the ass again? Or are you still just making it up as you go?”
“I’m not making it up,” the lawman said while fighting to open the beans. “Well, not all of it.” When he heard the rustle of iron against leather, he glanced over to find Cade aiming his gun at him. One by one, the other two outlaws followed suit. “You wanna use them things to open this can?” Wolpert asked. “It might go quicker that way.”
“No. We’ll use ’em to open you. Tell us what the hell we’re out here for,” Cade snarled. “I think we earned the right to know.”
As he studied the other men, Wolpert barely took notice of the guns in their hands. What interested him more was the genuine look of concern etched onto all three of their faces. “You mean Burt didn’t tell you?”
“He said we were to keep an eye on you while you broke them other boys outta some jailhouse in Kansas,” Juan explained. “He said you used to live in them parts and knew the right men to approach and that we could walk in and out of there without a hitch. He also said to go along with what you wanted, so long as we wound up bringing them others out of jail in one piece. The rest has been you sending us into hell just so we could share a frozen can o’ beans over a sorry excuse for a fire.”
Just then, something about those men struck Wolpert as familiar. Seeing their angry, resentful glares took him back to many nights he’d spent wrapped up in army-issued wool, stretched out on hard ground when he would much rather have been in a warm bed. Back in his cavalry days, Wolpert hadn’t always known why he was forced to brave the elements or weather hailstorms of hot lead. He wasn’t about to mention these three outlaws in the same breath as the soldiers from his regiment who had died for a true cause, but he understood what was going through their minds. Like it or not, they all had their duties. They all had orders to carry out, but they just didn’t get them from the same place.
“Do you know why we’re going to free those men in the first place?” Wolpert asked.
None of the outlaws lowered their weapons, but Cade was the one to react to that question the most. “You sayin’ you don’t know?” he asked while his face pinched as if he’d just eaten something sour.
“I’m saying I don’t buy what I was told. And since Burt was the one who did the telling,” Wolpert added, “I think you can see where I may be concerned.”
“It ain’t gonna work,” Juan snarled.
Shifting his eyes toward the other man, Wolpert asked, “What won’t work?”
“You’re telling us a whole bunch of nothing, trying to get us to believe you instead of Burt. Thing is, Burt’s never tried to cheat us and he wouldn’t never have made us put up with any guff from those vigilantes.”
“What about sending men to get a job done when he knew they wouldn’t come back?” Wolpert asked. “He ever do that to anyone you know? What about sending men to a horse trader in Omaha like a bunch of sacrificial lambs?”
After all the talking they’d been doing not so long ago, the silence that followed Wolpert’s last question was striking. “You know he did that?” Tom asked.
“Didn’t you have any suspicions?”
That struck a nerve in all of the other m
en. Reluctantly, Cade said, “Even if he did, he must’ve had his reasons.”
“Maybe it was just to get rid of me.” Chuckling at the surprise he saw on the outlaws’ faces, Wolpert continued. “And since you men did such a good job of getting me out of there, I’m guessing he didn’t let you in on that plan. If being in the army taught me anything, it was that the soldiers don’t get to know much. In fact, maybe none of us knows the whole story of what’s going on here. Do you know why we’re going after these men who are locked up?”
“Sure,” Tom replied. “So they can ride with us to the job in Texas.”
“Do you know why he needs more men when he’s already got the four of us?”
“Sure we do. We’re after a lockbox loaded with gold or cash or something.”
“And it takes more than five men to carry a lockbox? You fellas haven’t wondered about all of this? Or are you just accustomed to blindly following Burt Sampil no matter what he’s doing or where he wants to go?”
“That’s some big talk,” Cade grunted. “Especially from a man who’s on a shorter length of rope than any of us.”
“That may be true, but at least I know I’m tied to something,” Wolpert pointed out. “If you men are putting your necks on the block for something that you don’t even know about, then Burt must have you trained so well that he don’t even need rope to keep you in line.”
Hunching over and grabbing the can of beans that had been opened, Juan said, “It’s cold and I wanna get to sleep. Say what you wanna say and be done with it.”
It might have taken a bit of work, but Wolpert could tell he finally had the other men’s undivided attention. “Maybe keeping us in the dark is a way to keep us from asking for our full cut of the profits.”
“We’re gettin’ a percentage,” Tom said.
Ralph Compton Rusted Tin Page 14