by Ron Schwab
“I think it might be a Smith & Wesson .44—the new Russian model. Wouldn’t be more than half a dozen of the guns in the county. It’s not a weapon a Sioux Indian boy would be using, that’s for damn sure.”
“I wish I could tell you more, Ethan. There’s a whole new science developing on these things in the East. Terribly fascinating. Mark my word, someday they’ll be able to recreate the whole scene of a crime from autopsies. They won’t just be identifying the caliber and kind of guns used; they’ll be matching the bullet to a specific weapon. Of course, there’s no way we can do that now.”
“Not precisely,” Ethan said, “but we can sure narrow down the possibilities.” He was suddenly exhilarated by the progress they had made. “And what about Cynthia? Did you find any bullets?”
“No, she wasn’t shot.”
Ethan’s brow furrowed. “Then what?”
“The flesh about her throat was bruised. Her trachea was crushed. She died from suffocation but not because of smoke inhalation.”
“Strangled,” Ethan said, his voice a near whisper. “Was she violated?”
“I couldn’t say, not after this much time. But there’s something else; I don’t know what to make of it.”
“Henry, you have a bad habit of keeping a man in suspense.”
“She was pregnant, Ethan. The young lady was carrying a two or three month old fetus in her womb.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“I’ll show you if you like.”
Ethan backed off, waving the doctor away. “That won’t be necessary, Henry. It’s just that this was the last thing I expected. It raises all kinds of questions, and I don’t even know what they are. I’ll say this, we’ve learned plenty this morning. You’re a genius, Henry. I just wonder if your Harvard education isn’t going to waste out here in the West.”
“Is life less precious out here?” Dr. Weintraub asked.
His question did not require an answer.
25
IT WAS MID-afternoon by the time they finished burying Jake and Cynthia Harper in the Bar H family plot that was also the last resting place for Jake’s wife and infant son. The last chapter of the Harper family history, Ethan thought. There had been a lot of last chapters written in the settlement of the West, and there would be many more before the story was finally told.
Dr. Weintraub, his role in their mission concluded, had returned to Lockwood alone, leaving Ethan and Red Horse to bury the dead. Ethan turned to the venerable Pawnee now. “Well, friend, what do you say we take another look-see around this place before we head back to town?”
The sober-faced Indian nodded agreement, and the two men walked slowly down the hillside that sloped away from the tiny graveyard. Ethan and Red Horse searched the rectangular building site, working their way from opposite ends toward the debris that was framed by the foundations of the former ranch structures.
As they neared the remains of the house, Ethan’s trained eyes picked up fresh signs. Tracks. Horse and human. “Red Horse,” he called as he squatted down and bent over the tracks. They were clean and distinctly formed in the fine dust, not yet feathered out by the wind as the other shallow, fading prints were. He looked up at Red Horse, whose intense, scrutinizing eyes belied his stoic face. “This morning, don’t you think?” Ethan asked.
“Yep. Damn Sioux moccasins.”
“Only one pair though,” Ethan said. “Someone not too heavy. Small print. A woman.”
“Damn big horse,” the Indian said.
“Skye and Razorback.”
The Pawnee began combing the area like a bird dog trying to pick up a scent, while Ethan followed the incoming tracks to the limestone foundation of the house. He saw where Skye had evidently tied the horse to a fallen timber and ferreted out her moccasin prints in the ashes of the home where she had apparently made a search. Out of curiosity, he followed her course.
“Left in damn big hurry,” Red Horse remarked as he worked his way back toward Ethan.
“Maybe she found something.”
“Maybe. Or maybe damn scared. Tracks point to mountains. Maybe warrior lady goes to see damn Sioux brothers.”
Warrior lady. Red Horse had just paid Skye as great a compliment as he was probably capable of giving a woman. Ethan continued to work his way through the rubble. He tripped on a splintered, fallen timber and pitched forward before he caught his balance on another. That’s when he saw it. The charred, naked, human skull lying in a pocket formed by the crisscrossed roof timbers that had caved in during the fire and formed a mausoleum-like cavern for the poor soul who lay beneath.
“Red Horse,” Ethan said, the words almost choking in his throat. He could tell that Skye had seen it, too, for some of the debris had been cleared away. Pushing away the half-burned timbers that blocked his way, Ethan crawled in for a closer look.
Red Horse silently slipped in beside him. The skull lay near the edge of a scattering of bones, parts of which were chalky white. Ethan surmised this was where turkey vultures and other scavengers had stripped the residue of flesh from the bones.
Ethan picked up the skull and examined it. It’s size and length and the thickness of the leg and arm bones left no doubt that the body was that of a man. He was interested in a ragged hole at the rear and top of the skull. He handed it to Red Horse who gave it a quick scrutinizing and placed it in the nest of bones.
“Bullet hole?” Ethan asked.
“Maybe. Could be damn fire.”
“I think the rest of the skull would have been burned worse,” Ethan said. Henry would probably know.
“Maybe.”
Ethan stood up and scanned the ruins. He nodded toward the far end. “The fireplace was over there. From the break in foundation, I’d say the door was on the south wall.”
Red Horse got down on his hands and knees and began sifting through the cinders near the skeletal remains. Momentarily, he fished out a curved object that had the appearance of a charred fragment of china, and passed it to Ethan who evaluated it, running his fingers along its rough edges. “Porcelain,” Ethan said. “From the shape, I’d say it was part of a chamber pot, and as long as I’m guessing, I’d say this man died in a bedroom. I wish Henry hadn’t gone back to town. We have some more work for him.”
“Too damn much work,” Red Horse said.
“I won’t argue that. Anyway, we can’t leave this poor devil’s bones here. I’ll get my poncho out of the saddlebags and wrap the remains in it. You can ride back to town with them and let Will Bridges and Doc Weintraub ponder this a spell.”
“Spirits madder than damn hell if can’t find damn bones. Don’t like this.”
“The quicker you get back to town, the sooner you’ll be rid of the bones,” Ethan said. “So let’s get to work and get your package wrapped.”
“You want me to take damn bones alone? What you gonna do?”
“I’m going to try and pick up Skye’s trail. I’ve been thinking about it. . . . If she rode into the mountains, she was either looking for something or running from something. Either one could spell trouble.”
26
WHO WAS THE third victim? Why hadn’t the Harpers’ bodies perished in the fire along with the unidentified man? Could the man have killed the Harpers and been slain by Jake as his last, dying act? It was conceivable, but remotely so. Who would have set the fire then?
Ethan considered the possibility that the bones were those of the missing Grant Richards. But that didn’t explain a thing.
He slowed Patch. A short distance ahead, another trail, a deer or cow path, forked into the wider one he followed. He reined the horse to a halt and dismounted as he approached the juncture. The broken brush and the track-blotting hoof prints there told him that others besides Skye now rode ahead on the trail. As many as five riders, shod horses. He knew now why Skye had taken off from the Harper ranch in such a hurry. She was running from someone.
As he forged ahead, he observed that one of Skye’s pursuers had dropped off the
trail and was obviously trying to cut off Skye’s escape. Any lingering doubt that the men were stalking her was removed.
Icy fear chilled his spine. They had three, perhaps four hours head start on him. His chances of closing the gap in time to help Skye were slim to none. His best hope was that she could somehow elude them. Sundown was less than an hour away and darkness should work to her advantage. The mountains were her domain. That would give her an edge.
As he broke around a sharp turn in the trail, his hopes were dashed by the dead horse that blocked his passage. Razorback. The magnificent, unruly stallion that had shown respect for only one. Tears stung his eyes as he swung down from the saddle. He had cried for more horses than men in his lifetime.
Quickly, he scouted the area, putting together a sketchy story of what had happened there. Razorback had taken a bullet in the neck, and evidently floundered helplessly for some time before death ended his suffering. The bullet had struck him from the left side, so it was likely fired from higher up the mountain. That meant the rider had been successful in his effort to encircle Skye.
She had escaped for the moment, however. It appeared she had either leaped from the horse, or had been thrown free when the animal went down. Ethan picked up her trail easily enough. Wisely, she was angling toward steep, rocky mountain slopes that horses would not be able to take. If they were going to track her down, they would have to abandon their horses.
But she was not armed. Her Winchester was still in its saddle holster, pinned under the fallen horse. She would not have been able to yank it free without a struggle, and that would have made her an easy target for the bushwhacker.
Ethan knelt down by the dead horse and worked the rifle free. He then retrieved his saddlebags and his own Winchester and removed Patch’s bit and bridle, deciding the Appaloosa would be harder to capture and hold that way. Yet, if he did not fall into the wrong hands, the empty saddle would signal that the rider was in trouble.
Ethan rubbed the horse gently on his velvety muzzle. “Good boy, Patch. Run like hell, fella.” He pointed the horse back down the trail and slapped him sharply on the rump. “Go home, Patch. Git.”
The horse lurched forward, stopped and looked back at Ethan. Ethan ran up to him and slapped him again. “Go home, boy.” Then as the horse headed down the trail, Ethan disappeared into the thick aspen.
They wouldn’t catch him easily, Ethan thought as he listened to the rhythmic gait of the powerful gelding. Patch was getting older, but he was a one-man horse, and had been chased more than once under circumstances like these. The first whiff of anything human, and the horse would take off like an explosion from hell. Any other horse burdened with a rider would have a tough time making a close race of it.
Ethan looked to the north, the direction Skye was headed. He could make out the faint gray outline of Scalped Ridge in the distance. The slate-colored highland that formed a rim around a narrow grass-carpeted valley rose higher than any other rock formation in the vicinity and appeared to be skinned naked along the top where salty alkali deposits discouraged even the most hardy vegetation. Hence its name—Scalped Ridge.
If Skye knew the ridge area, she would head for it, for on the steep slopes and cliffs below its crown were numerous caves and recesses that offered shelter and hiding places.
It was an hour’s walk as the eagle flies—a good four scrambling up and down the rugged slopes and rocky escarpments that blocked his way. And he had to be wary of the unknown enemy that was stalking Skye.
Night’s blackness would drop in the mountains soon and cover Skye’s trail like a dark blanket. This fazed him not at all. Many whites knew the Sioux called him Puma; few were aware he had been so named because he preferred to move and attack at night, like his namesake, searching out and destroying his prey from the shadowy chasms of darkness.
27
ETHAN THREADED HIS way through the maze of brush and aspen and ponderosa, trading haste for silence. He had been on the move for several hours without picking up any sign of Skye or her pursuers. She was covering her trail well. He was still guessing that she was working toward Scalped Ridge, but for all he knew she could have doubled back or been pressed to another course.
The night air was damp and bone-chilling. The low growl of thunder in the west portended a storm before morning. He wished now he had not surrendered his poncho to Red Horse. Clad only in buckskin shirt and denim trousers, he was not dressed for a night in rain-soaked mountains. And to light a fire was to invite death.
No sooner had the thought passed through his mind, than he saw a sudden flash of light in a dense growth of trees not more than fifty feet ahead of him up the slope. He froze in his tracks, standing there for several minutes while he searched for the source. Then he caught movement in the trees: the arc of a man’s arm swinging upward, the gray outline of the wide-brimmed hat pulled low over his forehead. He was leaning against a tree, dragging lazily on a cigarette, indulging a habit the would shortly cost him his life. A hefty man. A fool.
The question was not whether to kill, but how. He would have to do it quietly. Ethan lay down his saddlebags and the two rifles, and his fingers closed on the cold bone handle of his Bowie knife. The gunman was looking for a woman. All of the men on this mountainside were his compadres.
Ethan started walking up the slope, noisily crunching the sticks and pebbles beneath his feet, brushing his shoulders against the low-hanging limbs. The man gave a start at the sound of Ethan’s approach and moved away from the tree. When he caught sight of Ethan, he walked toward him without hesitation, his rifle nestled casually in the crook of his arm. “Race,” he drawled, “is that you? Did you find that red bitch?”
Ethan did not reply, but walked steadily toward him. He was within twenty feet of the scraggly-bearded man before he was recognized. Ethan saw the man’s eyes widen in shock, and at the same moment, his bulky form froze. He fumbled to position his rifle as he croaked, “You’re not Race. Who are—” Before he could get off a shot, Ethan’s arm whipped back and his wrist snapped, releasing the missile in his hand with slingshot-like quickness. The long keen blade that buried itself to the hilt in the man’s throat cut off his life almost as quickly as it had cut off his words.
Ethan pulled out the knife and wiped it clean on the dead man’s trousers. Then he retrieved his rifles and saddlebags and slipped into the dense growth where he had first sighted his victim. To wait and listen.
As he stood there in the protective shadows, he appraised the situation. In a few minutes time, he had learned several things of considerable interest to him. Race Sanchez was one of the riders who had followed Skye. Her would-be killers had elected to scatter out—a sound strategy if you were chasing an unarmed woman. More risky if, in a sudden turnabout, you became the pursued. Most important, Skye was still alive—at least the last the dead man knew.
A silent, webbed bolt of lightning illuminated the sky; the rumble of thunder, sounding like the unrelenting fire of army canons moved nearer. Suddenly, an eerie calm descended upon the mountains. Not a bird called in the night. Not even the aspen whispered.
It was then that he heard it. Something, or someone, breathing. They were labored, rasping breaths, yet so light that at first he thought his ears were deceiving him. His hand inched toward his pistol and slipped it from its holster. He shifted into a crouch and spun around to face nothing but a seemingly empty forest.
He stood there, motionless as a marble statue, poised to fire. Then he heard it again from a tangle of gooseberry bushes off to his right, not more than thirty feet away. He leveled his Peacemaker at the brush and spoke evenly and softly. “I hear you there in the brush. My gun’s aimed right at you. Come on out with your hands raised high.”
No one emerged, but he got a reply. “Ethan? It cannot be,” Skye’s voice choked.
He lowered his gun and raced to the brush. Oblivious to the stinging barbs that scratched his hands, he parted the brambles and found her in a nest-like pocket in the midst of th
e dense undergrowth, curled up on the ground, one arm jammed tight against her abdomen. A wave of nausea swept through his gut, leaving him weak. Holstering his pistol, he forced his way through the brush and moved to her side.
“What is it?” he asked. “Are you hurt?”
She looked up at him, and even in the darkness, he could see that her eyes were glazed with pain.
“Ethan, it really is you. I am not dreaming.” Her voice was feeble and strained.
“Skye, are you hit?”
“It is my arm,” she said. “When Razorback went down, I was thrown. I do not remember how it happened.” She clenched her teeth and could not keep the tears from squeezing out of the corners of her eyes. “It is very bad,” she said, “very bad.”
“You’ll be all right. I’ll see what I can do now; then we’ll get out of here.”
Gingerly, he traced his fingers the length of her left arm, searching, probing. Skye gasped as he pressed the flesh midway between her wrist and elbow. Momentarily, he discovered why. Not only was the arm swollen and distended, but a shard of bone protruded like splintered wood through the flesh. The darkness hid some of the ghastliness of it, but he did not need a surgeon’s lantern to know that Skye was right. It was very bad.
Her forearm was caked with sticky, half-dried blood. She had obviously bled profusely for a time. “The bleeding,” he said. “How did you stop it?”
“A wild grape vine; it is tied about my arm.”
He located the crude tourniquet nearly hidden by the puffy flesh that ballooned beneath it. He admired her resourcefulness and was in awe of her calm demeanor. “How long has that been tied there?”
“Shortly after I was thrown. Every time I loosened it, it began to bleed again.”
He tried not to betray his anxiety. “I’ll release it now. Maybe you’ve got it stopped.” He carefully untied the cord-like tourniquet and waited. Blood oozed from the wound, but it appeared to be only a trickle. “I think we can get along without the tourniquet,” he said, “but I can’t set the bone. Not here, anyway. I’m going to see if I can splint it well enough to move you. There’s going to be a hell of a storm, and it could hit anytime. Our best bet is to head for Scalped Ridge and find shelter in one of the caves there. We can build a fire and see what else can be done about that arm. Are you strong enough to walk?”