Snake Eyes (9781101552469)

by Sherman, Jory

  “What did you do to try and stop the herd?” Schneck asked, his anger mounting to the boiling point.

  “Hell, we tried stampedin’ ’em back on theirselves. Shot our rifles at ’em, even killed one or two of the leaders. Nothin’ could stop ’em or turn ’em. It was like every head had gone completely loco, crazy as whorehouse bedbugs.”

  “Where in hell is the better part of my herd?” Schneck asked, his neck bulging like a bullfrog’s.

  “We got ’em stopped, finally, in them red rocks west of Denver about fifteen miles. But we got cattle scattered all through these damned foothills. I got men tryin’ to round ’em up when they find a bunch. But hell, Otto, I’m shorthanded. It’s goin’ to take a week to find ’em all. Only we ain’t goin’ to.”

  For a long time none of the men said anything. They rode along the foothills while lightning flashed in the black thunderheads, lighting up the hills and the flat like a photographer’s phosphorus powder. They began to see the silhouettes of men on horseback driving small clumps of cattle, chasing strays and yelling at the tops of their lungs. The cattle they saw were still scared and hard to handle. The three men kept riding until they came to a larger group of cattle and two men trying to bed them down in a shallow ravine between two low hills.

  “Ho, Jerry,” Loomis called to one of the men. “What you got?”

  Jerry Finnerty rode up to Loomis and pulled a ready-made out of his pocket and struck a match.

  “We got a hunnert head we’re tryin’ to box up and hold until Cal Jennings can get the main herd out of that red rock nightmare and head ’em back this way.”

  “Any cattle still loose between here and the red rocks?” Loomis asked.

  Finnerty shrugged and puffed on his cigarette. “Damned if I know,” he said. “We turned nigh a thousand head back into them red rocks and they was swallered up. We ain’t got enough men to box ’em all in, even down there. Whitsett’s got a bad leg. Smashed it against one of them big old rocks when a bunch of cows run at him.”

  “You go on back there and get them cows bedded down, Jerry,” Loomis said. “We’ll go on to the red rocks and see if we can’t give Whitsett a hand.”

  “That storm has already hit ’em all in there,” Finnerty said and tossed his burning cigarette to the ground. He looked even more haggard than Loomis, and it was plain to see that his temper bore a short fuse. “It’s goin’ to take a dozen men a week to find all them cows. Them red rocks are big and run ever’ which away like they was tossed there deliberate.”

  “Maybe we better help you, Jerry, while we’re here,” Wagner said.

  “We could use another hand or two, that’s for damn sure,” Finnerty said.

  “Boss?” Wagner said.

  “You stay here and help Finnerty, and who else is here?” Schneck said.

  “Dub Neiman,” Finnerty said. “He’s plumb tuckered, like me, but he’s a game old cowhand.”

  Schneck snorted. Dub was at least sixty years old, crippled by rheumatism, and looked a hundred. He had kept him on because he was an old hand and knew cattle like he knew the wrinkles in his withered skin.

  “Yeah, Jim,” Schneck said, finally. “You’d better help Dub and Jerry. Chet and I will ride on to those red rocks. I have to see them for myself, find out just what in hell we’re up against.”

  “All right, Otto,” Wagner said. “Jerry, let’s see what we can do with these cows you got here.”

  The two men rode off in the darkness and met up with Dub, who was zigzagging his cutting horse back and forth in front of several cows who stood there like frozen statues ready to bolt past him at the first opportunity.

  Schneck and Loomis rode on past them and into the first curtain of rain.

  Lightning bolts crashed all around them, and their horses jumped at every flash. They bent their heads down, unaware that less than a quarter mile to their rear, a lone rider was on their trail.

  Brad tucked his binoculars back inside his slicker. He had watched as Wagner left with another man, leaving Schneck and his trail boss to ride on. He saw, in the dim light, the shreds of black clouds dripping down as the thunderheads loosed their water. Soon, he thought, the rain would hit the place where Wagner was going and another man was trying to hold dozens of cattle in check or drive them into that ravine.

  Three against one, he thought, as he turned to ride close to the lone man on the cutting horse holding a dozen head in check as Wagner and the other rider rode to join him.

  “I’ll never get a better chance,” he said to himself.

  He knew where Schneck was headed with his trail boss.

  But Wagner had to pay for his part in the slaughter of the Basque women and children and the two men.

  He closed the distance between him and Wagner.

  He looked to where he had last seen Schneck and the trail boss. When the lightning struck again, the two were gone, vanished into the night and the rain. Thunder boomed, and the rain lashed down at him, pattering softly at first and then flooding from the sky in long, thick streams as if a trapdoor had opened in the belly of the clouds and released a deluge that would have scared the hell out of Noah himself.

  Brad turned his horse and headed in the direction where Wagner and the other man had gone.

  He loosened the thong around his neck but did not pull out his rattles. With the noise of the thunder he would probably not need them. But he touched the butt of his pistol and loosened it slightly in its holster.

  He would give Wagner a chance to surrender, even though he had shown no mercy toward the Basques. If he did not throw down his pistol, then Brad would call him out.

  It was not vengeance he sought, he told himself, but justice.

  Justice for all those souls lying back there dead in Poudre Canyon.

  Lightning flashed again, close. Brad saw the cows finally turn and dash into the ravine to join the others of their kind.

  Wagner’s form stood out like a man caught by light and, etched on Brad’s retinas in some bizarre tintype, his face turned toward Brad for that one instant when hunter and prey sight each other for the first and last time.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Jim Wagner squinched his eyes against the rain. He saw the approaching rider but could not identify him. The man’s yellow slicker stood out like a beacon in the rain.

  “Who’s that?” he said to Finnerty.

  Finnerty turned his head and saw the rider through a glaze of rain. He shook his head.

  “Damned if I know,” he said. “He’s too far away. Maybe one of the boys comin’ to help.”

  “Maybe,” Wagner said.

  “I got to go help Dub, Jim. You find out who it is, and we’ll put him to work right quick.”

  Wagner waited as Finnerty rode off to help Dub drive the balking cattle into the ravine.

  Brad rode up to within fifteen feet of Wagner. He stopped his horse and Wagner urged his own horse closer by a few feet.

  “You one of Loomis’s hands?” Wagner asked.

  “I just hired on,” Brad said.

  “Well, come on, then. We got work to do,” Wagner replied.

  “You bet we have work to do, Wagner.” Brad spread the flap of his slicker to one side so that he could draw his pistol. “You and I have some business to attend to.”

  “Huh?”

  “You heard me. Some unfinished business.”

  “You ain’t makin’ no sense, pard.”

  “Well, there are the dead horses,” Brad said. “And the women, two dead men, and several children.”

  “What in the hell are you talkin’ about, man?” Wagner exploded.

  “I’m here to arrest you for murder, Wagner. I’m a private detective. I’m duly sworn as an officer of the court.”

  “You go straight to hell, mister,” Wagner spat.

  “Surrender right now, or I’ll have to figure you’re a fugitive fleeing from the law.”

  “I’ll show you who’s a damned fugitive,” Wagner said and flipped his slicker o
pen to draw his sidearm.

  Brad pulled his pistol from his holster and cocked it on the rise. He leveled it at Wagner’s chest, plumb center, and squeezed the trigger. The Colt belched flame and spewed lead and sparks within ten feet of Wagner. The barrel of the foreman’s pistol was still half sheathed in the holster when the bullet struck him just left of his heart.

  He jerked to his right with the force of the bullet and gasped a dying breath. The bullet ripped through ribs, nicked a corner of his heart, and exploded the veins and arteries connected to that organ. Blood spurted from the wound and splattered his slicker with dozens of red splashes as if the raincoat had erupted with a skin rash.

  Wagner’s hand went limp, his fingers splayed away from the butt of his pistol, and the .45 slid back into its holster.

  Wagner pitched sideways out of his saddle, and he fell to the ground. Rain beat a muffled tattoo on his slicker as a thin plume of smoke spiraled upward out of the barrel of Brad’s gun.

  “Payback,” Brad murmured.

  Dub and Finnerty rode up. They both looked down at the body of Wagner.

  Then Finnerty reached for the rifle in his boot.

  “I’d think long and hard before you pull that rifle out,” Brad said. “Wagner and Schneck murdered a whole bunch of women and children, plus a couple of sheepherders, up in Poudre Canyon. I gave Wagner a chance to surrender and he went for his gun. I shot him.”

  “You a lawman?” Finnerty asked.

  “Detective,” Brad said.

  Finnerty’s hand rested on the butt of his rifle, but he made no move to jerk it from its boot.

  “This ain’t none of our business,” Dub said. “Let’s get back to them cows.”

  “Good advice,” Brad said. “Or else you can join Wagner there on the ground.”

  “Mister, I don’t know who in hell you are, but you don’t sound like no star packer to me.” Finnerty grabbed the butt of his rifle. Dub reached over and grabbed his partner’s wrist.

  “Don’t chance it,” Dub said to Finnerty.

  “I’ll give you three seconds to turn your horses around and ride back to that ravine,” Brad said. “Otherwise, I empty two saddles.” He cocked his pistol and they all heard the click as the hammer locked into place.

  “We’re goin’, mister,” Dub said. He turned his own horse and grabbed the bridle on Finnerty’s horse and turned the horse’s head.

  The two men rode off through the rain and disappeared from sight.

  Brad ejected the empty hull and replaced it with a fresh cartridge. He set the hammer down between two cylinders of the magazine and holstered his pistol.

  He rode off, heading south, as the rainfall got heavier and gusts of wind began to lash at him. He closed up his slicker and pulled his hat on tighter.

  “One down,” he said to his horse, “and one to go.”

  Ginger whickered softly, dipping his head as a foil against the wind.

  Sheets of rain staggered across the trail and washed away all the tracks.

  But Brad knew that the night was as black and wet for Schneck as it was for him. He would not seek shelter but ride through it until he caught up with Schneck and his trail boss. If they stopped to get out of the storm, that would make Brad’s journey shorter. If not, he would catch up to them eventually.

  He was certain of that. All Schneck was thinking about was his cattle.

  And when Schneck found them, Brad would find Schneck.

  That’s when he would kill a snake if the man didn’t surrender.

  Brad had a strong hunch that Schneck would not give himself up.

  And he didn’t give a damn.

  As far as he was concerned, Schneck didn’t even deserve a choice of whether to surrender or die.

  Payback was payback.

  And Schneck owed a big debt.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Vivelda and Thor rode into the lower valley late in the afternoon. The clouds had all drifted out of the mountains and were hovering over the foothills, their fluffy folds turning blacker by the minute, as if the sky itself was becoming enraged.

  Mike and Joe saw the two and walked away from the chuck wagon with coffee cups in their hands.

  Joe reached up and helped Vivelda alight from the horse she was riding.

  “I have bad news,” Sorenson said. “Vivelda here is the only one who escaped alive.”

  He dismounted and stood there before the two dumbstruck, bewildered men.

  Vivelda began to sob. Joe put his arm around her but could not speak.

  “All dead?” Mike said.

  Sorenson nodded. “Every last one. Horses, men, women, and all the little kids.”

  “Oh no,” Mike said, in disbelief.

  “It—it’s true,” Vivelda said. “It was awful. I—I ran away. Brad and Thor found me.”

  “I want to hear the whole story,” Mike said. “Did you see what happened, Sorenson?”

  “No. Brad and I got there too late to save anyone. We tracked Vivelda here and found her hiding in some rocks.”

  “Where’s Brad?” Joe asked.

  “He’s tracking Schneck and his foreman, Jim Wagner. We got two of the men who shot and killed all those people.”

  Joe crossed himself.

  “Tell me what happened, Vivelda,” Mike said. “Do you want some tea or coffee? Something to eat? You’re all cut up.”

  She shook her head. Her legs were weak, and she started to collapse, but Joe grabbed her and held her up.

  Vivelda told them all that she had seen and heard from the beginning of the attack until she ran away and was found by Sorenson and Storm. She sobbed throughout the entire account, and both of the Basque men were touched by her painful recollection.

  “You’re going to need four horses to take down there to pull those two wagons back up here,” Sorenson said. “I’ll help you gather up the dead and load them into the wagons. It’s not a pretty sight.”

  “Most of the men are in the upper valley with the sheep. Joe and I will get the horses and go with you. Vivelda, will you be all right? Renata and Nestor can look after you.”

  “I—I’ll be all right,” she stammered.

  Joe led her over to the chuck wagon where a curious Renata was standing with her husband, Nestor, wondering why Vivelda had come back with that tall blue-eyed man with the funny accent.

  Joe explained what had happened, and Renata made the sign of the cross with her shaking hand while Nestor’s eyes filled up with tears. Renata enfolded Vivelda in her arms and hugged her while they both wept.

  Joe walked back and followed Mike and Thor as they headed to the stables leading the two horses.

  “We can use this one on one of the wagons,” Mike said.

  “We might have to use a mule,” Joe said. “I got a horse and Mikel has a horse, but . . .”

  “We have enough,” Mike said, cutting his friend’s dialogue short.

  Within a half hour, the three men were ready to make the journey down Poudre Canyon. Joe rode over and said good-bye to Nestor, who told them that Renata had taken Vivelda into the cabin where she had last stayed.

  “It’ll be dark before we get back, Nestor,” Joe said. “You take good care of Vivelda.”

  “We will,” Nestor said, his eyes still brimming with tears.

  It was turning cold, and the canyon was filling with shadows by the time the three men came to the place of the slaughter. Joe and Mike were horrified at what they saw, women and children scattered, stiff and dead, around the wagons, the horses beginning to reek, the two dead men looking like wooden mannequins. Buzzards flapping up into the remaining radiant shafts of sunlight on broad black wings, coyotes skulking off into the timber. It was hard for the men to look at those bodies that had already been violated by the scavengers.

  Joe and Thor struggled with the traces on the dead horses and swung the wagon tongues back straight. They hooked up the horses and one mule to the two wagons, then helped load the dead into the passenger wagon. They did this with s
olemn reverence, their faces grim and stolid as fire-blackened iron.

  When Joe and Mike lifted the stiff corpse of Leda and carried her to the wagon, both men wept uncontrollably and without shame.

  “Such a tragedy,” Joe sobbed.

  Mike could not speak. His throat was constricted as if he had swallowed a gallon of astringent. He could not look at Leda’s pale and bloodless face, the wound in her body, the dried blood, the soiled dress.

  He thought of happier times when she and her husband were part of his family. He thought of the night before he had sent all the women and children down the mountain where he thought they would be safe. He cursed himself for that misguided deed. And his hatred of the cattlemen, especially Otto Schneck, rose black and monstrous in his mind.

  Yet he knew that such blinding hatred was dangerous. Such a rage could lead to further bloodshed that would solve nothing.

  He thought of what his father had told him once when he was a young boy living in the Pyrenees, a shepherd boy with his own little flock to tend.

  Enos Garaboxosa was then a very old man, in his sixties, and Mikel was about thirteen.

  “Guard what you think, Mikel,” he said after his son had been fighting with another shepherd boy. “If you hate, you give off hate and hate comes back to you. If you give off love, then love comes back to you and wipes out the hate.”

  “But that boy hit me,” Mikel had wailed.

  “And you hit him back. So, his hit made you hit. His anger gave you anger and you gave him back his anger. You must break such chains or you will live a sad and lonely life.”

  “I do not see how,” Mikel had said to his father.

  “That is the way of the universe, my son. There is an energy in the heavens, a force that comes in sunlight and in rain. It is a force that we cannot see, but it guides our lives here on earth. The Father of All made it so. We, like the trees and the ocean and the rivers, the grass, the sheep, are all influenced by the stars and planets high up in the sky. The moon raises the rivers and the ocean tides, and it raises our blood as well.”

  “I do not understand such things, Pap,” Mikel had said.