by Don Bendell
The two who left together were indeed two of Hartwell’s most trusted gunslingers, and he had told them privately to steal away as if leaving but to circle back and scour the land south of the camp, as that was the direction the arrow had been shot from. He reasoned that Strongheart was outside the camp somewhere in that general direction.
Joshua had been outsmarted.
14
REFUGE
Joseph “German” Dietrich and Slim Jim Selders were two of Robert Hartwell’s toughest gun hands and most trusted henchmen. They were now circling behind Joshua’s position, just hoping they would find something, anything that would give them a clue to his whereabouts. Shortly after reading Strongheart’s ultimatum, Hartwell made the plan with them, understanding human nature and knowing that some of his men would desert him.
The two came up on a small ridge and dismounted among the trees. There was a small valley next to that ridge with another heavily wooded rise just to their north. The two, as planned with Hartwell, would glass every wooded rise carefully. They lay down in the trees, and watched the ridge Strongheart was on for an hour, when they spotted some white. Watching more carefully and moving positions, they saw it was Eagle grazing among the trees.
They discussed whether to put the sneak on him, or ride around and warn Hartwell. They chose the latter. These two were the two best gunmen he had in his employ, and between them had many kills. They knew Strongheart’s skills and knew they had to be very careful. However, like most gunmen, they always felt they were faster and better than any living legends.
German Dietrich came from Germany when he was a boy. He killed his first man in New York City while he was still a young lad. There had been no shootout involved. He saw the man had money, so he stabbed him in his sleep and stole his money belt. He still had a little bit of an accent that especially came out before gunfights. By the age of eighteen, he was already working as a gun for hire.
Slim Jim Selders, like Dietrich, lived in Denver and Washington both, serving at the whim of Robert Hartwell. He truly enjoyed killing and was a rapist as well. He had to be more careful about that, because there were so few quality women in the West, there was an unspoken rule about not touching women. There were many outlaws who actually shot or even hanged men riding with them who molested women or girls.
The two men looked carefully at the rise north of them where Strongheart slept. They decided they would go up the small hill, which led to rocky ground that rose above the nearby river. The farm where Joshua was held was far to the northwest of Terre Haute. This was to the southeast of the farm.
The two killers both carried Henry repeaters and had their double dig holsters carrying .44s. German also had a .36-caliber Colt Navy as a belly gun. They spread out about thirty feet apart and slowly, very slowly started making their way up the hill, keeping to the thick woods.
Joshua Strongheart was exhausted. He had been doing a lot of fast traveling through thick trees, doing adrenaline-pumping experiences, and was going on very little sleep. He slept deeply now, soundly.
The two moved slower than they ever had when trying to be stealthy, because they both understood their adversary’s superior skills. They had seen his handiwork the past two days, and heard all the stories about his gunfights, and the survival of the grizzly mauling he endured. They were very careful and ended up seeing the sleeping man and the small fire he had going. At one point Slim Jim even spotted Strongheart rolling over under his blanket. This was going much better than they thought it would.
Both men had their pistols ready, and both had their rifles cocked and held them with both hands at the ready. The hammers were back on their repeaters. Slowly, methodically, carefully, they approached the sleeping Pinkerton.
When they were still out of sight of Joshua, the ever alert Eagle gave a slight whinny. His nostrils several times the size of a bloodhound’s, his eyes much larger than a deer’s, his ears able to twist and turn and focus on even the slightest sounds, which they were now making, Eagle saw his master’s eyes come open although Strongheart did not move his body. He looked at Eagle’s ears and could tell he was focusing on two different people or animals approaching from downhill. Joshua turned under his blankets to look like a normal man sleeping, but actually it was so he could see the two directions the ears aimed at. Keeping his eyes squinted he saw the men approaching, and he had his own Peacemaker out under the blanket and one of the belly guns he had picked up in his left hand. He would let them get even closer. Strongheart recognized the dress of both men and knew them to be two of Hartwell’s immediate bodyguards. Hence, they would be outstanding gunfighters. Because of that he also knew they would have their guns cocked and ready to simply squeeze the trigger. Strongheart knew only one way to handle that situation and that was to get and maintain superior firepower.
He aimed his guns at each man, shooting from the hips, the way he had practiced for countless hours with each hand. He would let the pair get closer and closer and then squeeze both triggers simultaneously and pray he was on target. His plan was then to start moving and rolling while continuing to shoot rapidly, keeping them off-balance and unable to make effective shots. The one drawback was that both had been in many gun battles and were very tough killers. He would watch their body language to make sure they did not shoot him first. So far they had their rifles up, ready to fire, but did not have them up to their shoulders, aiming, yet.
He saw both stop and German nod at Slim Jim, and both shootists raised their rifles. The blanket over Strongheart exploded and smoke literally came out of the two holes. One bullet slammed into German’s right shoulder, spinning him halfway around, and making him drop the rifle. His left hand immediately clawed for his left hand gun. At the same time, blood appeared in Slim Jim’s, and he dropped his rifle, a gurgling sound coming from his bloody mouth.
Strongheart immediately knew that German was the immediate threat. He rolled with a bullet kicking up dirt right next to his head, blinding him in the left eye. He kept his right eye open and fanned his Peacemaker, tucking the belly gun into his belt. His bullets hit German in the thigh, left hip, and slammed into the killer’s chest.
German tried to speak in the German language, but only blood came out of his mouth. Joshua aimed and the next bullet hit the man directly in the face, killing him instantly. He swung the gun to Slim Jim, who now had his wits about him but was in a panic, drowning in his own blood, which was frothing out his mouth and throat. Joshua drew the belly gun again, and emptied it into the torso of Slim Jim who went down in a heap, his eyes opened wide in total panic.
Strongheart walked over to the dying man and kicked his gun away a few feet.
Slim Jim tried to say, “Kill me, please?”
However, his mouth would not work and his vocal chords were gone. He just looked at his conqueror and his eyes remained open although he could see and hear no more.
Joshua quickly reloaded and walked over to Eagle, petting him and loving him.
“You save my life again, old buddy,” he said softly, then added, “We better get out of here.”
He was correct with that assumption, because Hartwell was rallying his men to charge after the gunfire and hope they would finally stop Strongheart. Joshua grabbed his telescope, ran to one of his vantage points, and saw Hartwell’s men saddling and grabbing their weapons. He ran back to his campsite, extinguished his fire, urinated on it and kicked dirt all over it. He then quickly packed up his bedroll and saddlebags, saddled Eagle, and headed southeast, angling toward the road back to the railroad many, many miles distant.
The pair were on the road within fifteen minutes. Hartwell had his men all around the rise of ground by now, and they were moving in. When they came upon the two bloody bodies, even some of the crime boss’s bodyguards were unnerved seeing both German and Slim Jim shot up so badly. Robert Hartwell was furious and could not understand why he could not outfox this man. He had al
ways outfoxed everybody before.
“All right men, gather ’round!” he commanded.
The entire gang, or what was left of it, gathered around him.
He yelled, “These two boys are gone, and we will send men to fetch them and bury them proper, but Strongheart is uncanny. We have to get after him, and we are going to put all our eggs in one basket. He has to be heading back toward the railroad, so we have to lather some horses and catch up to him.”
Robert Hartwell could have cared less how loyal these two men were. He had no intention whatsoever to waste men on burying them, so he simply lied to his men. This was something that came naturally to him, and he gave it no thought.
The gang was soon back in the saddle, heading after the fleeing Joshua Strongheart, who was pacing Eagle with his customary mile-eating fast trot. Joshua had gone fifteen miles when he noticed an almost imperceptible limp in Eagle’s front leg.
“Easy, Eagle,” Strongheart said and slowed the big horse to a stop.
He dismounted and looked at each foot. Eagle had partially thrown his shoe on his right front hoof and had a stone lodged in the frog of his hoof. Joshua immediately pulled a hoof pick from his saddlebag and worked the rock out, tossing it off to the roadside. He walked forward and turned to watch Eagle. He could still see a little bit of a limp, which most cowboys would not even notice. The pinto had just saved his life again and Strongheart was not going to injure his foot even more by pushing too hard. He had shoes in his saddlebag, but he had to file the hoof, put salve on the frog, and nail on a new shoe, before he would push his equine friend any further.
Walking in front, he led the horse down the road until he found a depression where he could take him off to his left and into some thick trees. There, he could properly take care of the horse out of sight. If the gang of outlaws came by, hopefully they would bypass him. Joshua led the horse several hundred yards before finding a small meadow with a brook running through it. He removed Eagle’s bridle and let him drink water and graze, while he jogged back to where they’d left the road. He grabbed a large maple branch, hacked the limb off with his big Bowie-like knife and went to the end of his tracks in the road. He then erased tracks in the road, going forward one hundred paces. He made a big deal of making big sweeping marks side to side with the branch.
Then he carefully returned to where he’d dismounted and led the horse into deeper greenery. He removed his boots and slung them over his neck with a leather thong from his fringe and carried them off the road and tossed them into some grass alongside Eagle’s tracks. Joshua, now in his socks, returned to the road and using road dirt he scooped up, he carefully, methodically spread dirt over each boot print and hoofprint going off the road. It was slow painstaking work, but he had to completely cover his trail and that of his horse, so he could take time to fix Eagle’s foot properly.
Doing the task of covering his trail would allow Hartwell and his gang to catch up or get closer. When he brushed the road for one hundred paces, and brushed it so demonstratively, his hope was to fool Hartwell into thinking that he was actually trying to brush out his tracks on the road for a while. Most outlaws figured that they were much smarter than people like Strongheart, so he hoped what he did was not too obvious and Hartwell might actually think he had outwitted the Pinkerton. Joshua hated doing this task, as he had to be so meticulous or he and Eagle would be found out, but he learned as a boy not to do any job unless he planned to do it right.
He obliterated all the tracks on the road, without any telltale signs of covering them. He then moved into the grass and trees where he’d led the pinto away from the road. Here, he had to dig chunks of sod in some spots to cover their tracks. He also had to bend blades of grass back until they sprang back into their original positions.
In the meantime, Robert Hartwell was almost upon him, and Joshua guessed they had to be getting close but he could not approach his task halfway, or he and Eagle would be found out. Fifteen minutes later, the detective was able to now ignore his tracks, as their path could not be detected by anybody coming down the road. No sooner had he stopped, when he heard a large group of horses trotting up the road. He ran as far as he could to judge how close the horses were, then dropped into the thick foliage.
Strongheart had wisely brought his telescope with him and pulled it out to observe the gang. He could tell Hartwell was pointing at his brush sweeps and was laughing at the amateurish attempt to cover his trail. The half-breed chuckled to himself, as he could almost imagine Hartwell’s haughty words about him and his reputation. He slithered through the foliage until he could stand without being seen at all and made his way to Eagle.
The handsome detective quickly went to his saddlebags and pulled out his nippers, file, and one of the four steel shoes he carried for Eagle. He also had a small oilskin of salve made of pine tar and several other ingredients he’d gotten from his father’s village to use on horse’s hooves. The pine tar was mainly to seal the salve in but the main ingredient was called by the Lakota śuηkhú śtipiye. Its scientific name was Hymenopappus tenuifolius but it was commonly called the chalk-hill woolly white plant. It was a plant that stood about three feet tall and the name was kind of a misnomer because the plant had small yellow flowers.
Joshua thought for a minute and made a decision. He lifted Eagle’s right front foot and pulled the shoe using his steel nippers. He then filed the heads off the nails sticking out of the hoof and pulled the shaft out with the nippers. He dabbed some of the salve into the frog of the foot and then removed the shoe on the left front hoof. Instead of filing the hooves, he would let the ground do it naturally. He pulled the left shoe, so the legs would feel equal to the horse and the hooves would be filed by the ground to the same approximate size. He would take the horse to a safer place far away from the route to the railroad and nurse his hoof.
He mounted up and leaned his body forward barely squeezing his calves together and said, “Walk.”
Eagle started at a walk in the same direction they had come to this hiding place, putting the roadway behind them with each step. Joshua rode the big horse for several miles into deep woods and made camp along a shallow stream in a thick stand of evergreen trees. He would find some very dry hardwood sticks and make an almost smokeless fire, allowing the numerous pine needles and thick branches to diffuse the smoke before it exited the emerald canopy. He could now take his time cleaning and nursing the injured hoof. He could also hammer his horseshoe nails into place without worrying about the noise carrying to his enemy’s ears.
Joshua was very attuned to the movements of the big horse, and he was very heartened to not sense a limp in the animal’s gait. Apparently, removing the shoes and dressing the wound had brought a lot of relief. Joshua cleaned the hoof very thoroughly and treated it with salve. He then got the shoe back out and, facing the horse’s rear, he pulled Eagle’s foreleg up between his two knees and held the leg up with the inside of his thighs. He lightly filed the hoof until it looked totally flat. He placed the shoe on it, and it fit like it had been filed using a level. He then pulled the nails out and put three between his lips and one on his hand. Then using the butt of his gun like a hammer he started tapping the nail into the shoe. When the point came out of the hoof one-quarter inch up, Joshua held the point in place with the handle of the steel nippers, and kept hammering. This bent the point back toward the shoe. When the horseshoe nail was all the way in, he bent the point all the way back to the hoof. Then, he snipped it off with the nippers. He did this with the three other nails. Then, he repeated the procedure on the other front hoof.
Strongheart was feeling the effect of his effort in the small of his back, but knew the soreness would go away. He made some food and let Eagle graze and rest for a while. He would eat, take a nap, and get back in the saddle. As soon as Joshua’s head hit the saddle, he was fast asleep.
The click of the rifle hammer brought him wide awake, but he did not move any
thing but his eyelids.
“Blanket nigger,” the voice said, “do not move an inch. Slowly now, very slowly move that blanket off ya using the toes of yer boots. If I see either arm movin’ under the blanket, yer gonna git opened up with this here smoke wagon.”
Joshua was wide awake now and trying to figure out where the shooter was. He voice came from above. Strongheart had wisely kept his Peacemaker and holster under the blanket, but it would do him no good right now. He moved the blanket off of him.
The voice said, “Awright, mister, real, real slow with yer arms way up above yer head, roll away from that gun belt. Roll toward me mebbe three times.”
Joshua could tell this man was not stupid, so he kept his hands away from the gun and knife. His belly guns were in the saddlebags and out of reach, too. He rolled over three times slowly and then stood. He finally saw his assailant. The man was twenty feet up in a large white oak tree, wearing coveralls, old boots, and a brown homespun shirt under the coveralls. The shirt was almost as dark as the man’s skin. In his hands was a Winchester carbine.
Joshua had made his camp right where there was a large whitetail deer scrape, and this man had been in the camouflaged tree stand waiting for the large ten-point buck that checked this scrape frequently.
Bucks, during the rut, or breeding season, in early fall, have a large territory that they patrol. Around the perimeter they make scrapes using their front hooves, and they paw the ground out. A good hunter can estimate the size of a buck by the size of the scrape. Joshua had seen the scrape and ignored it, as bucks can make them anywhere they wish. After pawing out a large area, the male deer then stands on its hindlegs under a low-hanging branch and rubs its forehead scent on it, sometimes chewing it a little for good measure. He then stands in the center of the scrape with all four hooves together and urinates, with the urine running down the inside of its hindlegs, washing across two powerful musk organs on the inside of its hind knees. This scent marks the territory, so does in estrus will come by, smell it, and urinate so he can smell it and follow her scent trail to her. It also warns smaller bucks to stay out of this territory. They are like signposts for whitetail deer bucks and does, almost like no trespassing signs for most. Successful whitetail hunters know that a buck, especially a large one, will patrol its territory smelling each scrape looking for mates and challengers as well. They also know they need only remain in a tree stand or fork of a tree, up off the ground, where their scent will not carry as well, and where deer seldom look, simply be still and wait.