by Ronald Kelly
The other wolf had Todd on the ground now. Jefferson could hear the ripping of his son’s clothing and the sickening tear of his flesh. Throwing the useless weapon away. Gray drew a hunting knife from his belt and leapt forward onto the third wolf’s back. He plunged the blade into the thick gray fur, withdrew it, plunged again. The wolf rolled over, taking the man with him. Jefferson continued to slash and stab. Blood coated his hands and splattered the front of his buckskin shirt. Finally, he reached around the wolf’s thrashing head and cut his throat. The creature thudded into the loose rocks at the edge of Chestnut Creek and died.
“Todd!” rasped Gray, staggering toward his son. But he was too late. The amount of blood and the glassy stare of little Todd’s eyes told him that the boy was already beyond hope.
He knelt there, cradling his son in his arms. Angry tears rolled down his whiskered cheeks. “Oh, Todd! Dear God, no! Not both of them!”
So grieved was the man, that he failed to hear the growl of a fourth wolf as it came out of the woods. He didn’t even know it was there until the animal knocked him sprawling into the stream. The cold water jolted the mountaineer out of his numbing grief and he found himself once again face to face with a slavering beast. He brought his hand up, but the knife was gone, lost from his fall into the creek. The wolf snapped and snarled, looking more mad than wild with bloodlust. Jefferson felt a searing pain as the canine’s fangs bore down on his left forearm, tearing into muscle and bringing a gorge of warm blood.
The sight of his own blood dispelled the man’s panic for an instant. He felt around in the water beneath him, perhaps searching for the knife. Instead, his hand closed around a large stone. With the scream of a madman, he lunged with all his might, bringing the rock down forcefully upon the wolf’s head. The blow seemed to do no harm to the crazed animal. He pounded again and again. Still the wolf refused to let go.
“You filthy beast!” screamed Jefferson Gray as he reared back and struck again. “Why don’t you die? Why don’t you die… you… dirty… filthy… beast!”
After a dozen devastating blows, the wolf’s hold loosened. After five more, it fell backwards into the branch, its skull no longer resembling the head of a wolf, but an ugly mass of blood and battered brain. With the beast dead, the man dropped his stone back into the churning waters and staggered to his feet.
Jefferson Gray stared down at his arm. The wound was deep, reaching clear down to the bone. But something else disturbed him more than the extent of the fang marks. The blood of the wound was flecked with slaver; a thick coating of saliva that had not washed away in the stream. His dark gray eyes darted to the dead wolf. The animal’s snout protruded from the ripples of the creek and, from it, thick foam tinged with blood settled upon the water. In sudden horror, he was hit with the awful reality of what had truly compelled them to act so savagely toward him and his family.
Timber Gray lurched from his fitful sleep, a scream trapped behind clenched teeth. As the remnants of the nightmare began to fade, he breathed deeply and shook off the feeling of near hysteria that had gripped him. He ran his hands over his whiskered face. A cold film of sweat covered his features and he trembled with a palsy of raw nerves.
He turned down the patchwork quilt that covered him and sat on the edge of his bed, feeling his heartbeat slow from its rapid pace. “Damn!” he growled bitterly beneath his breath.
He was no longer in the mountainous Tennessee of 1865, but in a hotel room in Miles City, Montana in the year 1880. Fifteen long years had passed since that horrible incident at Chestnut Creek. Many miles had been traveled since then. Time had passed, but still he had the nightmares. They had come every night the first few years, then became less frequent when he left Tennessee and headed west. But still they resurfaced every now and then, tormenting him, reminding him of Rebecca and Todd… and the wolves.
It was morning. Pale gray light filtered through the single curtained window, casting a murky gloom over the room’s interior. Wind whistled around the eaves of the two story hotel. With a groan, he got up, dressed only in faded red longjohns, and padded barefoot across the hardwood floor. He opened the drapes.
Miles City was quiet at six o’clock. The cattle town consisted of a single main street with one and two story false-fronted buildings facing on either side. He saw the faint glow of kerosene lamps in a few windows and there was a sooty billow of woodsmoke coming from the kitchen of O’Brien’s Restaurant across the street. Cassie O’Brien would be there now, rolling out some of her famous cathead biscuits for the crowd who would soon appear at her doorstep.
He had almost expected to see snow on the ground. It was surely cold enough and the clouds that rolled over the prairie were dark and oppressive. Not that he cared much either way. He had just come off the trail after spending four months in the Dakotas. His last paying job had been near FortBuford on the Missouri River. A little place called Hendrich had been having trouble with a feisty mountain lion that had killed several dogs and a small child who had wondered from the safety of town. Gray had brought back the cougar’s hide after two day’s tracking and was paid half the bounty that was originally promised. For now, he was content to stay put in MilesCity for a few weeks, waiting out the storm that was sure to come. There was strong drink, whores, and card games over at the Steerhead Saloon and food a-plenty at O’Brien’s to fatten him up before spring thaw.
The prospect of ham and eggs and strong, black coffee brightened his outlook a little and he walked to the bureau across the room. He poured water into the wash basin from a porcelain pitcher and commenced to washing away the clammy sweat of his troubled sleep. Toweling off, he caught his reflection in the oval mirror. He grimaced at the sorry fellow that stared back at him.
Timber Gray was a man of medium height, but stocky in build. His hair was dark, but in more recent years showed an increasing iron grayness around the temples and the scraggly growth of his beard. The skin of his face and hands were deeply lined and dyed a leathery brown from years in the harsh elements of the West. His eyes were dark slate-gray. They were hard eyes, ones that suggested a great deal of hardship and suffering. Eyes that contained the wisdom and frontier savvy of a man much older than his forty-two years.
He dressed, pulled on a pair of scuffed riding boots, and slung a worn gunbelt with a holstered Colt .45 around his waist. Then he donned a heavy sheepskin coat. As he tugged a silverbelly Stetson over his head, a hearty breakfast foremost in his mind, he thought again of the nightmare that had plagued his sleep. From past experience he knew that he only had the dream when something peculiar was about to happen. The dream was an omen of sorts, a premonition of bad times ahead.
With a sigh, Timber Gray started down the stairway to the hotel lobby. He couldn’t help but wonder exactly what kind of mess that damned nightmare was going to get him into this time.
Chapter Four
Timber Gray was finishing up his breakfast when two men walked into O’Brien’s restaurant. He had noticed them only a few moments before as they rode into town, followed by another cowhand in a wagon. The two had hitched their mounts in front of the Miles City Hotel and gone inside, while the buckboard had continued on up the street to where the town’s only church and its graveyard stood on a lonely, treeless hill.
The two were cattlemen. Timber could tell that by the look and smell of them. One was a big man in his early thirties, bearded, wearing a buffalo coat and a gray Montana peak hat. The other was just a boy, no more than eighteen. His youthful face seemed strained and somewhat troubled, as if he’d had a bad scare lately. Both brought the familiar rancher’s smell of old leather, cattle, and dried manure through the café door with them.
The big man’s brooding eyes studied the room until they finally settled on Gray. As the warmth of the woodstove dispelled the chill of their entrance, he led the way through the maze of crowded eating tables. The young cowboy followed close behind. Timber Gray sopped up the remainder of his meal with a biscuit, looking up only when the two ap
proached his table.
“Pardon me, mister,” began the bearded man. “But would you be the wolf hunter… Timber Gray?”
Timber nodded. “I reckon so. And who are you?”
“I’m Bill Brighton, foreman of a ranch southwest of here, and this is Seth Adams. We’ve come to talk some business with you.”
The wolf hunter had ridden into MilesCity hoping for a rest from his grueling line of work, but he knew there would be no harm in listening to what these men had to say. “Please, sit down.”
As the cattlemen pulled up a couple of chairs and made themselves to home, Timber caught the proprietor’s attention. “Mrs. O’Brien, how about bringing these boys a pot of coffee? Looks like they need something strong and hot to take the morning chill outta their bones.”
“Right away, Mr. Gray,” smiled the Irish woman. She took a stack of empty dishes from a neighboring table and disappeared into the kitchen.
“Well, now, what seems to be your trouble?” he asked, turning his eyes from the young cowpoke to the older veteran.
“Wolves, Mr. Gray,” replied Bill Brighton. “Timber wolves.”
“My specialty.” The hunter was well known for his proficiency at tracking the wood-born animals, and therefore had rightly earned his nickname from it. “They’ve been after your cattle?”
Bill nodded grimly. “Taken sixteen head in the last month. But that ain’t the worst of it. Last night they set upon one of our men. He and his horse were both torn to shreds. Killed.”
Timber was not surprised by the wolves’ killing of a human being. Though the incidents were few and far between, wolves had been known to turn from their normal prey of deer, to attack cattle and, sometimes, man. Usually it had to do with hunger, anger, or cornered desperation. Many times the killings had no justification whatsoever. Sometimes the animal just felt the bloodthirsty urge to kill. Timber knew that fact better than most men, for he had seen the ugly sight of needless death in the past, both in Tennessee and the hostile country west of the Mississippi River.
Cassie O’Brien appeared at their table, setting a coffee pot and two porcelain cups before them. She frowned in disapproval at the two cowhands. “I’d surely appreciate it if ye’d remove yer hats, gentlemen. This is a respectable eating establishment, not some cattle drive chuckwagon.”
“Pardon us, ma’am.” Bill nudged Seth and they both hurriedly removed their headgear. Soon the coffee was poured and the hot brew worked to settle their nerves and warm their chilled bodies.
Timber sipped a couple of swallows of tar black coffee from his refilled cup and returned to the matter at hand. “Exactly how large is this pack? How many wolves are we talking about?”
The foreman hesitated. He traded a worried glance with Seth, then answered. “Well, from the tracks and the few times we’ve actually seen the critters, I’d have to be fair in saying there’s close to fifty.”
The number surprised the wolfer. Sure, he had tracked dozens of packs before, but none of them had numbered more than twenty-five or thirty. A pack of fifty was indeed a number to be reckoned with. To most men, a lone hunter going after such a pack would be suicidal. Better for a posse of an armed dozen to go after them. But Timber Gray did not think much of hunting parties. He worked as a loner and, despite the odds, always tracked and found the prey he had set out for. But, fifty timber wolves! The sheer weight of that number both frightened and intrigued the seasoned hunter.
And there was something else, something in the back of his mind that troubled Timber. He thought of the nightmare and of the trouble it always seemed to bring in its wake. That, the number of the marauding pack, and the approaching blizzard made him increasingly apprehensive about accepting the job.
“You’re awful quiet, son,” he said, looking at Seth. The boy met his questioning gaze and the wolfer saw that there was fire hidden in those saddened eyes.
“Yes, sir, I surely am,” said the cowboy. “You see, I found a man murdered this morning… a man I bunked and ate with for nearly two years. I found him in a lonesome cow pasture with his gullet torn open and his innards drug plumb outta his belly. It sickened me, mister, and most of all, it angered me. That’s why I rode into town with Bill. We were hoping you’d help us get those damned wolves, on account Mr. Whittaker can’t spare us to do the job.”
Suddenly, Timber Gray’s eyes brightened with fresh interest. “Whittaker? You fellas wouldn’t happen to work for Louis B. Whittaker, would you?”
“Yes, we do,” said Brighton. “He sent us into town to get you. Said he’d talk money as soon as you got out to the ranch.”
The hunter settled back in his chair and ran a hand thoughtfully over the coarse bristles of his gray-streaked beard. “Lou Whittaker… that old son of a pistol!” he said, his eyes full of remembrance. He grinned and found himself chuckling in spite of himself.
“Know Mr. Whittaker, do you?”
Timber nodded. “From way back.” At the two men’s curious stares, he elaborated. “Let’s just say that we fought for the same cause at one time.”
The Whittaker hands nodded. They both knew of their boss’s involvement in the War Between the States. “Does that mean you’ll take the job?” asked Seth hopefully.
“It means I’m willing to listen to what the Colonel has to say,” replied Timber Gray. He pushed himself up from the table, shrugged on his sheepskin coat, and tugged the silverbelly hat over his head. “And if I remember Lou Whittaker right, he’ll more than likely be able to talk me into it.”
Chapter Five
Louis Whittaker watched from the window as three riders rode onto the ranch from the direction of town. Two of them were Brighton and Adams , while the third was a stranger on a black gelding with three white stockings. It was nearing noon, but the sun had not yet made its appearance and wouldn’t until the boiling clouds overhead dumped their frozen load across the grassy Montana plains.
The cattleman watched as the three tied their mounts to the hitching post outside the bunkhouse and then started across the frozen yard toward the two-story plantation-style house. Whittaker recognized the man immediately. True, it had been nearly seventeen years, but the one he had known as Captain Jefferson Gray confirmed the old memories never the less. He remembered him being a little too rawboned and reckless for one befitting a proper officer of the Confederacy, but, otherwise, he was one hell of a fighting man. It had been Jefferson Gray who had continued the cavalry charge when Whittaker had fallen at Murfreesboro.
The cattle baron turned from the window and crossed the room to a bookcase packed with classic novels and manuals on stock breeding. The center shelf held a locked, glass door. Whittaker took a key from his vest pocket and unlocked the cabinet, revealing a small bar stocked with the finest liquors. He adjusted his string tie and the black jacket over the stump of his lost arm as the sound of men entering the house reached the front parlor.
Brighton appeared at the door first, then Adams and the wolf hunter. “We’re back, Mr. Whittaker, and we brought along the wolfer, Timber Gray.”
“Thank you, Bill,” said Whittaker. “Could you two please leave me and Mr. Gray alone for a while? We have some pressing business to discuss.”
The foreman nodded and closed the door behind him as they left. The two men stood there in the parlor and looked each other over for a long moment. Then, Timber walked across the room, his hat off and his hand extended.
“It’s good to see you again, Colonel,” he said with a grin, shaking the only good hand the elderly man possessed. “Why, the last time I laid eyes on you, you’d been hit by a cannonball at StonesRiver. Me and the boys fought those Yanks, but by the time we got back, the medics had taken you off. We didn’t hear a thing concerning you after that. I reckon we figured you for dead… until now.”
“It takes more than Union shot to drop a tough, old bird like me, Captain.”
He laughed and flapped the armless sleeve of his coat. “Just winged me, that’s all.” Whittaker walked over to the b
ar and brought out a crystal decanter and two shotglasses. “How about a drink? I received a bottle of French cognac as a Christmas gift. I was saving it for a special occasion, but I suppose this reunion qualifies as such.”
“Should be quite a treat for an old whiskey-guzzler like myself,” said Timber.
The cattleman poured the brandy, then the two men raised their glasses. “A toast,” offered Whittaker. “To our glorious and rightful Cause. Let us never forget the brave men who fought and died for it.”
“Amen to that,” agreed Timber. The cognac tasted strange and didn’t pack the wallop that good ol’ Redeye did. He reckoned he’d rather have had a stiff shot of Tennessee sourmash in his glass than that fancy foreign stuff any old day.
The hunter sat on a red velvet sofa, while Whittaker took a leather armchair. All remembrances of the past were put aside. The grisly matter at hand filled the room with an awkward silence.
“I hear you have wolf trouble, Colonel.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” said Whittaker. “There is a pack of nearly fifty timber wolves traveling across my land. They kill in excess, eat their fill, then move onward. They keep to the woods and appear only when easy prey presents itself. What I need from you, Jefferson, is your help and your expertise. I want you to hunt the pack down and kill every last one of those murdering scoundrels.”
Timber Gray took out the makings and began to roll himself a cigarette. “Your foreman, Brighton, told me that the wolves have hamstrung close to sixteen head.”
“That’s true. But that’s not the reason I’m hiring you to go after them. Sixteen head isn’t even considered a loss in my tally book. I’ll have close to seventy thousand head by spring roundup. What really sticks in my craw is that they killed one of my finest hands. Charlie Piper was a good man and I’ll be damned if I’ll let those bloodthirsty beasts escape, just to kill someone else.”