by Cameron Judd
“As for you, Mr. Rankin, if that’s really your name, you’ve got some money to cough back up. I know that Pearl has given you gifts already, probably sizeable. I’ll have that back from you…or perhaps you’d like to make a quiet and permanent exploration of the bottom of one of my old mines, hmm?”
Peabody heard no more. He was out the door and into the yard, then out the front gate, feeling like a man just set free from a dungeon.
He realized all at once that he’d left his few possessions behind, including his Bible in its sack. Well, never mind. He’d get him a new one. He wasn’t going back into that place, not with that strange woman, not with all the unpleasant associations the place possessed. And so strange had Pearl Johansen been, talking about ghosts and souls traveling outside their bodies and so on, that he’d come to think there were some bad spirits floating around in that house.
Peabody had no use for such. He knew the kind of spirits he liked.
With the fleetness of a youth, he ran straight for the nearest saloon.
Chapter 30
Ottinger, though older and one-eyed, was the first to spot them.
“There!” he whispered sharply, pointing.
The trio of of would-be ambushers crouched, all in a similar posture.
If he hadn’t been so nervous and so intensely in concentration, the old man watching them from behind might, have found it funny. Three cowards all in a line, all ready to kill men from cover. Oliver Rush despised them.
He heard a voice out on the road. A man singing. It had to be Joe—Joe always sang while he rode, usually that song about his “sweeeeeeeet lady.”
But this was a different song, Oliver realized. And a different voice. Not Joe at all.
So it wasn’t Joe they were after! Someone else instead…
Oliver hesitated. It was one thing to shoot at men who were trying to kill his own son, another to shoot at them when he really didn’t know who they were after. The men on the road might be as bad as they were. Rats, after all, often attacked one another.
He saw one of the pair raising his rifle, aiming.
There were three men on the road, if the voices were an indication. Talking, one of them still singing, none of them with any idea they were about to be ambushed.
Unanswered questions be hanged! Oliver Rush hesitated no more. He raised his shotgun and fired.
Murph Scott, hired assassin and lifelong piece of outlaw trash, died without ever knowing he’d been shot, the pellets striking him squarely in the back of the head.
How you like that kind of dancing, friend? Oliver Rush thought.
On the road, the singing stopped, horses nickered and reared.
The two surviving ambushers rolled to one side and looked behind them to see who’d just killed their partner. But Oliver Rush was nowhere to be seen. He’d just ducked behind a cottonwood. He cracked his shotgun and removed the spent shell, replacing it with a fresh one.
The older, disfigured ambusher headed for cover. The other seemed unsure what to do. Going from being the ambusher to the one ambushed was obviously a most unexpected turn of events.
Oliver Rush peered out from behind the cottonwood just in time to see Robert Pride lift his rifle and shoot back in his general direction. The old man ducked back and the shot went wide, but he knew he’d been seen.
He wondered where the older fellow was. He’d managed to disappear.
Out on the other side of the road, Brady Kenton had his pistol out and was crouched in a shallow ravine beside Milo Buckner. Pernell Jones was off the right, hiding in some brush and at the moment out of sight.
“What’s the shooting about up there, you think?” Milo asked.
“My thought was we were being ambushed,” Kenton said. “But nobody’s shot at us yet.”
That changed an instant later. A shotgun blast ripped out of the thicket above and blasted dirt and grit off the road and into Kenton’s eyes. He yelled and dropped back, momentarily blinded.
Milo fired beside him, the roar deafening.
Milo’s shot passed above Ottinger’s head. The Colonel, surprised by the attack from behind, had managed to roll to a new and protected position, and by chance had found that from this new location he had a clear view of where Brady Kenton and that third, unidentified man, had taken cover. He’d not been able to resist trying to put some shot through Kenton’s face, and wasn’t sure he hadn’t succeeded.
Ottinger shifted position slightly, raised his shotgun, and fired again.
Milo Buckner was struck in the forehead. Blood splattered over Kenton, who screamed out, “Milo!”
Milo Buckner never heard his name called. He was dead where he lay.
In the thicket, Ottinger grinned and began to reload his shotgun.
Pernell Jones came out of his hiding place, knowing by Kenton’s yell what had happened. Fully exposed, he ran down the road toward the place Kenton was, and dropped beside Milo’s body.
“Oh, no…Milo, dear Lord, no…”
Ottinger had seen his old enemy appear, and it struck him with such a fever to shoot at him that he fumbled his reloading and lost the clear shot. Ottinger swore, but decided that maybe it didn’t matter. As he’d fantasized before, it would be far more satisfying to kill Jones with Jones knowing who was doing the killing.
Ottinger looked around for Robert Pride, hoping for help in dealing with Kenton and Jones, but Pride had left his position. Ottinger twisted his head and saw Pride creeping back toward a big cottonwood, rifle ready…
A surprisingly old man appeared from behind that cottonwood and shot Robert Pride with one barrel-load of shot through the stomach. Pride doubled over, and the old man finished him with a second blast to the top of the head.
Ottinger winced. Ugly sight. And bad news for him. He was alone now.
He’d have to run for it, and he wasn’t sure he would make it. They’d catch him, and that would be the end.
So I’d best take my opportunities while I can, he thought.
He leveled the shotgun, aimed at Pernell Jones below, and fired.
Jones grunted, spasmed, and rolled out of view in the ravine. Kenton dropped right after him, ducking for cover.
Ottinger rose and ran, angling off generally in the direction of the trading post, keeping cover between himself and Kenton while also avoiding allowing that shotgun-toting old stranger from getting a clear shot at him. He veered at the edge of the clearing where the post stood, ran toward some cabins in the rear, then lost himself among them and headed for the next stand of trees.
Ottinger could hardly believe how things had fallen out. The two men he’d hired to kill Jones and Kenton had themselves been killed—by an old man, of all people! Who the old fellow was and why he’d taken it on himself to spoil the ambush was something Ottinger couldn’t know. Right now he didn’t care.
The important thing was, he’d managed to shoot Pernell Jones. And though he couldn’t be sure, he believed he might have killed him.
The shooting had drawn the attention of the women and the boy at the trading post. Nervous as cats already because of the ordeal they’d recently gone through, they initially hid on impulse. The boy, Bart, saw an old man with a strange, half-ruined face briefly dart out of the woods and around the rear of the trading post, but the women had their heads down and didn’t see him.
They remained hidden until there was a rapping on the door. They didn’t answer it, full of terror, but the boy did.
“Please,” Brady Kenton said as he stood with Pernell Jones’s arm draped over his shoulder, keeping his limp form upright. Jones had blood on his side. “My friend’s been shot. He needs help.”
Duty overcame fear, and the women emerged from hiding. Jones was led in; one of the women quickly spread a pallet and Jones was laid down.
Oliver Rush, holding his smoking shotgun, appeared in the doorway. Even in the tumult of the moment the boy noticed something about him: he looked younger, for some reason. Stronger and more upright. Like a burd
en was gone from him.
“That’s Pernell Jones,” Rush said. “I’ve seen him before.”
“It is,” Kenton replied. “He’s been shot. And a man named Milo Buckner has been killed out there beside the road.”
“Milo Buckner!” Oliver exclaimed. “I’ve seen him before, too.”
“We were ambushed,” Kenton said, beginning to remove Jones’s coat and shirt.
“You’d have been ambushed a lot worse if I hadn’t fired first,” the old man said. He looked at the women and the boy. “The ones who made me dance…it was them. I’ve killed them both.”
“Milo’s dead,” Jones said, his voice straining. “Milo’s dead.”
“Yes,” Kenton said, exposing Jones’s wound. It was raw and bleeding, but Kenton was actually pleased to see that it didn’t appear quite as severe as he had expected. “I’m sorry about Milo, Pernell. Who do you think ambushed us?”
“Ottinger,” Jones said, grimacing as the women began to gently wash the wound. “It had to be Ottinger behind it.” He began to weep, and Kenton knew it wasn’t because of the pain of his wound, but because of the loss of his closest friend.
Joe Rush arrived at the post just before sundown, and walked into the middle of a situation he never could have expected.
In his trading post was the most famous, if seldom-seen, former Rebel in the Montana Territory, with a bandage around his chest, and with him the nation’s most famous traveling journalist. And his own father, looking back at him with pride in his eye because, this time, he’d fought like a man.
When introductions were done, stories were told. Rush was stunned to learn of the ambush—particularly stunned to learn of his father’s role in keeping the carnage in innocent blood from being even worse.
Milo’s body, meanwhile, had been moved from the roadside to a shed in the yard.
Joe Rush, himself a former Confederate soldier, knew much about Pernell Jones, and was familiar also with the name of Milo Buckner. “I’ll consider it an honor to lay him to rest here on my property, if that will be suiting to you, Mr. Jones,” he said.
“It will be suiting indeed. Thank you.”
“How bad is your wound, sir?”
“More painful than serious. Nothing vital was struck. I’ll have an ugly scar, but no more.”
“These ambushers…do you think there’s danger that the third one of them might still be lingering around?”
“I doubt it,” Jones said. “Probably just another of Ottinger’s hired assassins. With his partners dead, he’ll have fled far away by now, whoever he is.”
“My nephew over there got a look at him, sir,” Joe Rush said. “Did you know that?”
“No.”
“Bart said the man was on the older side, and had a face badly scarred up on one side.”
Jones looked at Kenton. “Ottinger himself, then. I’d have never thought it.”
When the others were not nearby to hear, Jones said quietly to Kenton: “We must get away from here as quickly as we can. If it’s Ottinger himself out there, he won’t run away like a hired assassin would. He’ll linger around, and be a danger to these good people as long as I’m here.”
“I agree,” Kenton said. “Are you fit to travel, though?”
“I can travel. If we can reach Pearl Town and my brother’s home, we’ll be safe.”
“That may be a big ‘if,’ if Ottinger is tracking us.”
Jones thought deeply, frowning. “Yes. And the fact is, I can’t lead him to my brother’s house. If he were to learn that Livesay Johansen is really the brother of Pernell Jones, and if he were to figure out that Livesay has been a crucial supporter of mine and my people’s over the years, he’ll find a way to cause him trouble. Try to portray him as a traitor or insurgent…it would be very hurtful to a man in Livesay’s position.”
“So we can’t stay, and we can’t go to your brother. What do we do, then?”
Jones clamped his mouth into a tight line for a moment, then said, “The question isn’t ‘we,’ Kenton. This is up to me. I’m going to have to face him. Alone.”
“It’s absurd,” Kenton said. “Don’t even consider it. Nothing can be put past Ottinger. The man has hired killers to go after his enemies. He’s used the United States Army as a tool for personal vengeance. He’s tried to distort the truth about a natural disaster just to discredit an old enemy and provide a pretext for what probably would have become the second massacre of his career, with the people of Confederate Ridge the victims. He’s even murdered a young journalist who dared to threaten to expose him. He’s a wicked man, not to be trusted at all. You can’t afford to face him alone. He’s far too treacherous.”
“You’re right, of course,” Jones said. “We’ll discuss it more come morning.”
Kenton looked out a window into the night. “Do you think he’s out there somewhere, Pernell?”
“I think he’s out there. Watching.”
They stood watch through the night, fearing that Ottinger might resort to such a crude crime as arson in an attempt to get at Jones. Joe Rush spelled Kenton sometime after midnight. Before Kenton went to his pallet to sleep, though, Rush told him about the earlier visit of the two now-dead ambushers to the trading post, and the way they’d made his old father dance in such a humiliating manner. But a young man had come along, he said, who’d stopped the situation at great risk to himself. He was a journalist, like Kenton, and on the trail of that preacher named Peabody everyone’s been talking about. His name was Gunnison.
It was late, and to say much would lead to long explanations that Kenton didn’t wish to indulge in at this late hour, so he did not reveal to Joe Rush that the young man who’d done so fine a thing was his own partner. But the pride Kenton felt in Gunnison right then was as deep as that a father feels for a son who has done a noble thing; and it was difficult to fight back tears.
“Where is this Gunnison now, you think?” Kenton asked.
“He was going after the preacher Peabody, and Peabody, I told him, would likely be found in Pearl Town, at the house of Livesay Johansen, for I know he was sent for by his wife. She’s a strange woman, very interested in such kinds of things as preachers and prophecies and so on.”
Amazing, Kenton thought, how sometimes divergent trails meld so unexpectedly into one. The very town, the very house, to which he and Jones were bound was the very place that Gunnison would have gone—the very place Rankin and maybe even Victoria might be!
Kenton quietly said a prayer of thanks for the way the patterns of life, usually unseen, sometimes revealed themselves in the most remarkable of ways.
He lay down and closed his eyes, listening to Joe Rush humming quietly to himself as he stood sentinel, perched on a stool and looking out the dark window.
Chapter 31
Kenton was shaken awake at dawn. He sat up stiffly, confused.
Joe Rush’s expression was serious and maybe a little afraid.
“I made a terrible mistake, Mr. Kenton. Lord forgive me, but I fell asleep at watch. And now Mr. Jones is gone.”
“Gone?”
“Yes. I don’t understand it. His pallet is empty.”
Kenton got up quickly. “I understand it,” he said. “Quickly…there’s no time to waste!”
“Where’s he gone?”
“Out to face that third ambusher, alone.”
“Why?”
“Because that ambusher is Colonel J.B. Ottinger, a man who has hated Pernell Jones ever since the war, when Pernell disfigured his face with a shotgun blast. I knew it was him when you told me your son had seen a man with scars over half his face.”
“Why in the devil is Jones facing him alone, though?”
“He feels it’s the only way. Ottinger has tormented and chased him for years, hired would-be assassins, all that sort of thing. I think he’s ready to bring it to an end.”
They dressed and armed themselves quickly. Joe Rush sent Bart out to the stable to saddle and prepare two horses for his and Ke
nton’s use.
Oliver had spent the night in the trading post with the rest of them, rather than in his cabin, and readied himself to go as well, but Joe stopped him. “Pap, we’ll need you here, to guard this place in case he shows up while we’re gone.”
“I can handle myself as good as either one of you!”
“I know. You proved that yesterday. But I want you to stay here, and keep watch. It’s important, Pap.”
The old man nodded, reluctantly, but obediently positioned himself by the window on a stool.
“A brave man, your father,” Kenton said as he and Jones loaded weapons and made their final checks.
“I’m proud of him,” Rush said. “He was bitterly ashamed at having been made to dance like he was, but after yesterday, I don’t think he has a thing left he needs to prove to anyone. That was some piece of fighting he did.”
They left the house and headed to the stables. When they got there, they found that Bart had saddled no horses for them. Bart, in fact, was not to be found.
“Where the devil is that boy?” Joe Rush said. “Bart! Show yourself—and you’d best have a good explanation as to why you ain’t…”
Rush trailed off into silence as, from behind a big feed bin, Colonel J.B. Ottinger stepped, with Bart before him, standing with a tear-stained face and a shotgun thrust against his spine.
Ottinger grinned a very ugly grin at Kenton. “Well, hello, Mr. ‘Houser.’ Fancy seeing you here!”
“Let the boy go, Ottinger,” Kenton said.
“I’ll let this shotgun go, that’s what I’ll do,” Ottinger replied. “Can you imagine how big a hole it would blow through this lad? Both of you, toss your weapons into that feed bin.”
“You won’t kill the boy. The moment you do, you’re a dead man, and you know it.”
“Yes…but he’d also be a dead boy. Can you live with that?”
Kenton and Rush glanced at one another, in silent communication. Ottinger had them. With great resentment and reluctance, they disarmed themselves and tossed the weapons into the grain-filled bin.