Hell's Jaw Pass

by Max O'Hara

  The saloon owner puffed his stogie, ruminating darkly. “Stockburn is about to die very hard and very bloody. After they see the great Wolf of the Rails lying dead on Wind River Avenue, the Stewarts will beg a buyer to take the Hell’s Jaw Line off their hands for a wink and a handshake! They’ll have no choice but to sell to me. They sell to me or they’ll get what Stockburn’s gonna get!”

  He puffed the stogie again with satisfaction.

  Cove chuckled.

  Deflated, Daniel sank back in his chair.

  He’d come here hoping to snuff the fuse before it reached the powder keg. Now he saw it wouldn’t be possible.

  What kind of crazy, bloody scheme had he fallen prey to?

  Only, he hadn’t fallen prey to it. The scheme to sabotage the rails and the work train, to run the Stewarts out of business, and to throw in with Kreg Hennessey—with Daniel’s ill father’s money, no less!—had been his from the very start.

  Why hadn’t he seen how crazy and diabolical it was? How could he have schemed against his own family?

  Why hadn’t he realized you didn’t go into business with diabolical killers like Kreg Hennessey?

  Now, because he had, all was lost. Everything his father and brothers had fought and worked so hard for would soon be gone because of one crazy, hasty decision he’d made two months ago when his heart had felt as broken as the rest of him.

  Now he had blood on his hands. In fact, he’d bathed in the stuff. The range would soon erupt in all-out war, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

  “You look like you could use a drink,” Hennessey noted, holding up the bottle. “Bracer?”

  Daniel climbed heavily from his chair, gritting his teeth. If he hadn’t seen Cove still aiming his revolver at his head, he would have drawn his .44 and blown the saloon owner’s brains all over the wall behind him.

  “Go to hell, Kreg!” he wailed, hearing his voice quavering with exploding emotion. “Just go to hell!”

  As the cripple made his tormented way to the door, the two wolves howled their mocking laughter behind him.

  CHAPTER 29

  Forty-five minutes after Stockburn had left Lori at Wrath of Jehovah Lutheran Church along the Big Sandy River, he rode through a bright-yellow aspen copse.

  Leaves rained down around him, flashing with blinding brightness in the mid-morning sunshine. The balding, pale tree crowns, a network of cream-colored branches, danced in the breeze against the faultless arch of cerulean blue.

  There wasn’t a cloud in that vast sky. The air was clean and cold. It smelled like dead leaves and aspen bark.

  To each side of Wolf, high canyon walls rose, lumpy with stone and bristling with conifers and deciduous trees whose roots somehow clung to those steep, boulder-strewn slopes though Wolf couldn’t believe there was much more than an inch of nourishing soil on those castle-like bastion walls.

  When he and Smoke rode out of the copse and into a clearing of needle grass and sage, he reined the gray to a stop. He frowned down at the ground before him.

  He nudged the horse ahead, turning his head from one side to the other, inspecting the ground around him. His gaze held on a cow pie large enough to half-bury a tuft of purple mountain sage.

  “Whoa, boy.”

  Stockburn swung down from the saddle. Holding the reins in his left hand, he removed his right-hand glove and poked his finger into the green-brown offal pile. He pulled the finger out, looked at it . . . sniffed it.

  “Two, maybe three days old.”

  He wiped his finger off on the ground, returned the glove to his hand, straightened, and continued to look around. He found more pies roughly the same age as the first one. The hooves of a large number of shod horses and cattle marked the ground. Branches of sage clumps were trampled and torn.

  Stockburn walked ahead, leading Smoke, swinging his gaze around, studying the ground closely, spying more and more indentations made by cow hooves. A herd had been moved through here, pushed from Stockburn’s left to his right.

  Possibly a couple of herds moved at different times, because he found some pies at least a day, maybe two days older than the first ones he’d discovered.

  It also appeared that a small group of riders had ridden through here after the cows had been ridden through. The horse sign—hoofprints and apples—was fresh, maybe only a few hours old. Someone had followed the tracks of the herd and the men who’d herded it east.

  Stockburn scratched his chin. “Now, what the hell does that mean?”

  He continued walking slowly across the path of the recently moved herds. He judged he’d walked maybe fifty yards when he came to the path’s far end and could see no more tracks or cow pies.

  Stockburn stopped, turned to stare back across the trail, and thumbed his hat brim back up off his forehead. “Hmmm.”

  He looked to the west, on his right. The canyon wall opened over that way. He could see the narrow gap.

  Swinging his gaze to the east, on his left, he saw another gap in the wall over there, on the far side of a narrow stream that ran through a gravelly bed between the ridge wall and the aspen copse.

  “So,” Wolf said, speaking quietly to himself, his voice pitched with incredulity, “a good-sized herd was pushed through the western gap into the eastern gap. From the direction of the McCrae and toward the direction of the Stoleberg range. Hmm. Might be interesting.”

  How so?

  He didn’t know. This time of the year, men moved cows. Maybe that’s all these tracks meant—men moving cows as part of the usual autumn gather.

  He was on his way to the sight of the rail crew massacre, though, which meant he had bigger fish to fry today than worry about men moving cattle through open range.

  Maybe things would clarify a little once he’d given the massacre sight a thorough scouring.

  Wolf swung up onto Smoke’s back and continued his journey along the canyon floor.

  * * *

  Slim Sherman stared through his Sharps sights at the buckskin-clad, black-hatted figure moving through the aspens below his perch on the canyon’s east wall.

  He slid the Sharps’ barrel slowly from left to right, tracking the horseback rider’s slow, steady movement through the aspen copse. Soon, in seconds, the man would ride out of the trees and into the open.

  Sherman’s heart thudded, hiccupping. Sweat had popped out on his forehead a minute ago, and now one of those sweat beads started to dribble down into his right eyebrow.

  Damn!

  Sherman pulled his head away from the stock of the long rifle and brushed a sleeve of his elk hide coat across his brow. He didn’t need sweat getting into his eye. Sweat stung when it hit the eye, and a stinging eye would foul his aim, sure as tootin’.

  Slim gave his brow another scrub, nudging his hat back up off his forehead, then snugged his cheek back up against the rifle’s walnut stock again. He aimed quickly, gazing through the rear sliding ladder sight and arranging the bead on the end of the barrel on his target, for he had only a few seconds left before his quarry would ride out of the trees and into the open.

  He drew his index finger back snug against the fifty-caliber rifle’s trigger, keeping the sights lined up on Stockburn’s head.

  Sherman’s heart beat even faster.

  No, no, don’t do that, he silently told the pesky organ. Damn thing’s as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs!

  As Stockburn and the smoky gray horse cleared the last aspens and rode into the clearing, Sherman lowered the Sharps’ barrel slightly, and settled the bead through the ladder sight on the man’s broad back, just below the wool-lined collar and between the man’s shoulder blades.

  Sherman held the sights steady, staring at a silver-dollar-sized area on the light tan of the man’s buckskin coat. The assassin drew another breath, held it, frustrated at his damnable racing heart, and started to squeeze the trigger.

  “Hey, Slim—how’s it hangin’?” The girl’s voice was like a punch to Sherman’s own back, r
ight between his shoulder blades.

  The killer jerked with a start, pulled his index finger off the trigger at the last tenth of a second before he would have sent a wild round into the canyon.

  He turned and looked up to see Ivy Russell squatting on the lip of the ridge eight feet above his nest. The tomboyishly pretty blonde grinned down at him, blue eyes flashing in the high-country sunlight, straight blond hair tumbling to her shoulders.

  Ivy rested her elbows on her well-turned thighs and entwined her gloved fingers, as though she was doing nothing more than squatting by a cook fire, waiting for a pot of mud to boil, not interrupting a paid killer in the discharge of his duties—namely, killing one overly snoopy Wells Fargo railroad detective named Wolf Stockburn!

  Sherman glanced into the canyon at Stockburn, then whipped his angry gaze back to Ivy. “Jumpin’ Jehosophat—what the hell are you doing up there, Ivy? You like to have taken twenty years off my life!”

  He felt cold sweat dribbling down the sides of his face.

  “I was just passin’ by and seen your horse ground-tethered on the ridge, and thought I’d stop and say hi, maybe chew the fat a little’s all.” Ivy frowned as she gazed back at him, suddenly peevish now herself. “Don’t get your drawers in such a bunch, Slim!”

  Sherman glanced into the canyon again, where Stockburn was just then dismounting his horse. Sherman looked at Ivy again and gestured urgently with his left hand. “Get down, fer chrissakes! Get down, Ivy! Get back off the ridge!”

  Ivy chuckled. “Well, which do you want me to do, Slim—get down or get back off the ridge?”

  “Both!”

  Ivy laughed.

  Infuriated, Sherman glanced back into the canyon. Stockburn was walking around, leading his horse. Slim couldn’t get a clear shot at him now, for the horse was too close, sometimes obscuring his view. The detective was a little too far up canyon now, as well.

  Besides, Slim was too damn shaken.

  Damn that girl!

  He looked up the ridge. Ivy had backed away from the lip and was out of sight from Slim’s position. He depressed the Sharps’ heavy hammer and rose from his rocky nest in the side of the ridge.

  He scrambled up the ridge wall, trying to keep the rocks between him and the canyon. He didn’t want Stockburn to see him. He hoped the detective hadn’t spied him. Everyone said he had eyes in the back of his gray head. Sherman had to try another shot at him or risk a long dark sleep with only the worms as company.

  Hennessey had already paid him half of the five hundred dollars the saloon owner had agreed to cough up for the detective’s getting fed “a pill he couldn’t digest.” If Slim failed and let Stockburn live, he not only wouldn’t get paid the second half of the agreed-upon bounty, he’d have to return the money he’d already been paid.

  That would be too humiliating, not to mention reputation ruining, to think about. Besides, knowing Hennessey as well as he did, Sherman doubted the saloon owner would let him get out of the territory alive. He’d have him killed if only to set an example to others who might fail him.

  No, you didn’t fail Kreg Hennessey. At least, you didn’t fail him and not get a lonely, unmarked grave out in the wild-and-lonely for your error.

  Slim glanced once more into the canyon then quickly hoisted himself and his rifle up onto the ridge’s lip. He dropped and rolled several feet away from the ridge before gaining his knees. Ivy sat on her butt on the ground nearby. She sat leaning forward over her bent knees, hands wrapped around the tips of her men’s pointed-toed stockman’s boots, grinning as though she hadn’t had this much fun in a month of Sundays.

  Sherman saw her horse grazing with his horse off down the slope to the east, reins hanging loose, both mounts without a care in the whole consarned world.

  Slim cuffed his hat off his head and absently fingered the bandage on his right cheek. The fast climb up the ridge and the roll had kicked up the burning pain of the wound. Trying to ignore it, he glared at the girl and said, “You know, it’s been a long damn time since I been this mad at a girl as pretty as you, Ivy!”

  “Now, Slim, you learned the other night that there is very little girl left in Ivy Russell.” She shot him a smoldering smile over her boot toes. “You said I was all woman—remember?”

  Slim’s cheeks warmed. “What’re you doing here?”

  “Like I said, I was just passin’—”

  “Oh, hog water—you weren’t just riding through the area and just happened to see my horse, Ivy. You’ve been following me when I told you to go back to town. Now will you tell me why? Why are you bedevilin’ me this way? I got a job to do, dammit!”

  Ivy frowned, sucking in her cheeks. She released her boots and sat back, stretching her nice legs out, crossing her ankles, and resting her weight on the heels of her hands. “I’m bored, Slim. This is boring country for an imaginative girl like myself.”

  “What you need is a job.”

  “Slingin’ hash in the Cosmopolitan for twenty-five cents a day and tips? No thank you!” Ladder rungs of deep wrinkles stretched across her pretty forehead as she turned her head to one side and narrowed an accusatory eye at her companion. “Or are you suggesting, like Kreg Hennessey has suggested himself a time or two, that I go to work for him? Upstairs?”

  In spite of his frustration and lingering anger at the girl, Sherman chuckled and let his eyes roam where a gentleman’s would not. “You’d be a hell of a money-maker—I’ll give you that, Ivy!”

  “You cad!” She threw a rock at him. It bounced off his shoulder.

  “Ow!” he said, making a face and rubbing his shoulder.

  “That didn’t hurt and you know it!”

  Sherman plucked a grass stem and twirled it between his fingers. He studied Ivy shrewdly. “How well do you know Hennessey, anyway?”

  As the girl stared back at him, her expression changed gradually. A faint blush rose in her suntanned cheeks that were as smooth as a peach. “Why should I tell you?”

  “I had me a feelin’!”

  “You did?”

  “I seen you in there last week. Or maybe it was the week before last. Anyway, I was leavin’ a crib—compliments of Kreg himself—and I seen you slip down the hall toward the rear stairs. It was maybe two in the mornin’. Leastways, I thought it was you. Never was sure. But . . .” Sherman studied her suspiciously. “Just got me a feelin’.’

  Ivy lifted her chin, haughtily. “A lady don’t share her secrets with just anyone, Slim.”

  “What do you see in him?”

  Ivy hiked a shoulder and looked off, her eyes growing softly speculative. “Oh, I don’t know. A girl gets bored in this country, Slim. Besides, I’m the curious sort.” She looked at Sherman over her shoulder and said with her own shrewd grin, “You’d be surprised the interesting things that go on, and that you hear about, over at Kreg’s place.”

  “Oh, ‘Kreg’, is it?”

  “Sure. Why not?” she asked, lifting her chin again and narrowing her eyes.

  “I bet you do keep yourself entertained over there.” Slim chewed the weed stem, nodding. “Bet he pays you—don’t he? That’s why you don’t seem to need a real job, got time to ride to hell an’ gone. I doubt your old man makes enough to keep his own fat gut padded.”

  “You got that right. You keep your mouth shut about what you just heard about me. If my pa ever found out . . .” Ivy shook her head. “Pa would go after Hennessey and Kreg would kill him—right then and there like that!”

  “I bet he would.”

  Slim paused, stared off, thinking, then returned his gaze again to Ivy, who was also staring into the distance, looking mildly bored again, as what seemed to be her lot in life. Her blood ran too hot for this country. But, then, maybe it ran too hot for any country.

  “Say, there, Miss Ivy—you wouldn’t be tryin’ to keep me from killin’ Wolf Stockburn, now, would you?”

  “Hell, no!” Ivy scrunched up her face in a scowl. “I don’t interfere in no one’s business. Even
blood business.” She paused briefly, then added, “I mean, it’s too bad in a way, though, isn’t it? I mean . . . a man like that . . .”

  “A man like what?”

  “You know—like Stockburn. Famous rail detective. One who’s put so many bad men and even some bad women behind bars. Do you know he even rode Pony Express? Held off a whole party of Injuns single-handed. Not even twenty years old!”

  “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “He killed Bill English in Wichita.”

  “Bill English? Stockburn killed English?”

  “Yep.”

  “Damn. No, I didn’t know that, either,” Slim lied. He did know it. He just didn’t like to reflect on the fact of Stockburn’s notoriety. Or on all the men Stockburn had killed. Deep down, Slim thought that maybe that was the reason his heart felt all fluttery every time he had the detective in his Sharps’ sights.

  “I just mean, ain’t it sorta like killin’ a rare wild animal? Sorta like killin’ a white buffalo or somesuch? Kind of a shame. Especially when he’s gettin’ it from ambush. I mean, when you get right down to it, it ain’t even a fair fight, Slim.”

  Ivy narrowed an admonishing eye at the back-shooting assassin.

  Sherman wasn’t offended. An idea had just occurred to him—a sure-fire way to be able to ride back to Wild Horse and collect the second half of that five hundred dollars from Hennessey.

  “What’re you smilin’ at?” Ivy asked, smiling now herself.

  “You wanna help?” Slim said.

  “Help?”

  “Yeah. You wanna help me kill the Wolf of the Rails? The Gray Wolf himself? The Wolf of Wichita?”

  Ivy frowned skeptically, but her eyes glittered like freshly minted pennies. “How?”