by Ronald Kelly
That is one of Isaiah’s delusions… something his disturbed mind has conjured up to give his life a purpose. You see, my husband is… insane.”
Timber was somewhat taken aback by the woman’s bold statement. “Now, Mrs. Cook, your husband may be a little strong-headed in his beliefs, but I wouldn’t peg him as being touched in the head.”
Lenora Cook could see that her point wasn’t getting through. “The man you know is not the man I married,” she explained, keeping her voice low so Isaiah would not overhear. “When we were wed ten years ago, Isaiah was the best of providers, but he had his wild side. He wasn’t above taking a drink every now and then and cussed up a storm when angered. But he was always good to the children and I. He never raised his hand to us and gave us a good home back in Minnesota.
“Isaiah was a farmer. He raised corn and wheat mostly, some tobacco. We lived happily for eight years. Paul was born, then precious Sarah. But it all changed one morning in the spring of ’78. Isaiah was out plowing the northern pasture when one of the plowshares got caught in a tree root. Isaiah was trying to free it, when one of the mules got skittish. It kicked him squarely on the top of his head.”
Timber recalled the shoe-shaped scar he had seen on the man’s scalp. He could also tell that the memories were unpleasant, both for the woman and her children. “Ma’am, you needn’t finish if you’d prefer not to.”
“No, I want to tell you the rest… so that you’ll understand.” Lenora brushed a stray tear from one pallid cheek and continued. “For an entire week he lay in a state of unconsciousness, tossing and turning, talking out of his head. He finally came out of it on a Sunday morning and, from then on, we all knew he was not the same man. He grew brooding and despondent and took to reading the Bible. That in itself was strange, since Isaiah had never in any way been a religious man. At first I was pleased. Isaiah read the Good Book from cover to cover. But then it became an obsession. He would ride into town and preach in the square. Folks laughed at him, thought he was crazy. He even went to the saloon he once drank at and spouted sermons of hellfire and damnation. Soon, his old friends had enough and threw him out.
“That was two years ago, Mr. Gray. Since then we have been traveling constantly. Isaiah gave up farming and sold the land his father willed to him. He became a traveling preacher. It got to the point where only the most staunch of churchgoers would sit through one of his sermons. The children and I put up with it the best we could. Then he came up with this sudden exodus west to a place called North Fork. I saw no such letter inviting him to head that congregation and, in my heart, I believe there was no such invitation. I believe that my husband’s sick and disillusioned mind urged him to take on such an impossible journey, perhaps to test his faltering faith.
“This has been a terrible ordeal for us, Mr. Gray. I thought we would be lost for sure… until you came along. And I truly thank God for that piece of luck.”
The wolfer was flattered by the woman’s confidence and was set at ease by her story. There had been several unanswered questions in Timber’s mind up until that point and now, that they were out of the way, he could ride easier in the saddle, having a better idea of what to expect from this bogus reverend named Isaiah Cook.
“Don’t you worry none, ma’am,” Timber assured her. “We’ll be heading down that pass tomorrow morn. Once we make it through, it’ll be a downhill ride to the Bighorn River and Greybull. Why, I’d even lay a bet we might make it there before the worst of that snowstorm hits.”
“I certainly hope so,” Lenora said with a smile. Then her eyes turned serious again and, in a strange way, bitterly hard. “When we finally reach this town of Greybull, Mr. Gray, I shall not hesitate to take my children and leave Isaiah. Leave him to live his life and we to live ours. The further he drags us into the dangers of this hostile land, the more I realize that our lives are no longer as one, but are worlds apart.”
Timber Gray said nothing. It was no place of his to agree or disagree with her decision. In fact, he knew deep down that her reasons were well justified. Crazy or not, Isaiah Cook was a dangerous man to travel with; a man blinded by the glory of God’s word to the point of endangering his family in wilderness that was difficult for a seasoned westerner, let alone a greenhorn who absolutely refused to carry a gun.
Later on, before everyone settled in for the night, Timber went out to fetch wood for the fire, enough to keep a steady blaze going throughout the twilight hours. Young Paul tagged along, carrying a kerosene lantern to help them through the dense shadows of the winter darkness.
There was a deadfall of jagged limbs and branches near the mouth of the pass. They headed for it, hoping to find some wood underneath dry enough for burning. As they stepped high through the sloping drifts, Timber felt the boy’s eyes on him. After a few moments, the hunter decided it wasn’t him that Paul was so interested in, but the holstered Colt .45 at his hip.
“Mr. Gray,” the boy spoke up after a time. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure, son,” said Timber. He began to dig his way carefully through the skeletal remains of the deadfall. “What’s on your mind?”
“Have you ever killed anyone?”
Timber wasn’t really surprised by the question. Boys his age were usually fascinated with such things as guns and, yes, even death. The hunter had ridden through many a small town in Colorado and Arizona where the penalty for a heinous crime was public hanging. There he saw young boys standing for hours on end, watching an unfortunate outlaw dangle and swing in the breeze. He didn’t rightly see the fascination as being healthy, not for young’uns who should be shooting marbles or running barrel hoops instead. But curiosity was just a part of growing up and death was an inevitable part of that curiosity.
The hunter tossed a few jagged limbs into the snow and regarded the nine-year-old. “Now, I ain’t gonna lie to you, Paul. I have killed a few men in my time… but only when I had to.” His mind conjured up images of the men who had fallen before his gun. Two in the War Between the States and one in Abilene, Kansas a few years back. The latter had been a touchy gambler with a fancy, pearl-handled gun and mighty little luck to go with it.
Paul Cook’s eyes widened with excitement. “Did you shoot them with that gun right there?”
“No,” chuckled Timber. He tossed a few more branches onto the pile. “Ain’t had a chance to shoot much of nothing with this hogleg yet.”
The boy nodded, frowning in apparent disappointment. Then suddenly another grisly thought popped into mind. “When we passed through Deadwood in the Dakotas, there were two men laid out in the undertaker’s window. They’d faced each other in a gunfight and shot each other stone-cold dead. They got each other square through the heart. Now, ain’t that something?”
“I reckon so,” replied Timber. The boy’s enthusiasm was making him feel awkward now. “But you shouldn’t be talking over such things with a stranger, boy. Seems like your pa should tell you what you want to know about death.”
Paul frowned again. “Nah, he only talks about what it’ll be like after you die. You know, a weeping and wailing and a gnashing of teeth. Do you think that’s how it’s going to be when you die, Mr. Gray?”
The hunter didn’t know quite what to say. “I don’t rightly know how it’ll be, Paul. But I’m hoping it’ll turn out a sight better than that.”
Timber Gray walked around to the other side of the deadfall. Paul followed, holding the lantern ahead of him. As he glanced off down the pass they would be traveling the next day, Timber noticed a disturbance in the snow. “Bring the light closer,” he told the boy. Slipping the thong off the hammer of his sidearm, he and Paul walked toward the swathe of churned snow.
The dark indentations were wolf tracks. From the vast number of them, it looked to be the pack he was after. The tracks were about half a day old. The snow had hardened, leaving a crust of solid ice around each print. Timber looked down the narrow channel of BurialPass where the tracks disappeared into the night. The sudde
n realization that they were so near sent a chill down the wolfer’s spine.
“Let’s get on back to the wagon,” he told the boy. They were turning to leave, when the yellow glow of the lamp caught a separate set of tracks apart from the others. “Wait just a minute,” he said and knelt to examine them.
“Funny looking tracks,” commented Paul.
He was right. They were strangely different from the others, although they were also made by a wolf. They were slightly larger, obviously those of the white-furred leader that Gray had seen the day he had sniped the pack from the rocky ridge. But the size was not the cause of his sudden interest. It was the right front paw print -- missing all the toes and half the foot -- that brought a smile of dawning revelation.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he cursed softly. “Old Cripplefoot.”
Paul crouched beside the bearded man, providing lamplight and feeling a little scared over their sudden discovery. “Who’s Old Cripplefoot?”
Timber Gray didn’t answer. He only stared at the mismatched tracks with a sensation of excited satisfaction welling up inside him. Yes, he was sure of it. The tracks belonged to the wolf all right.
Old Cripplefoot was something of a legend in the Rockies. The renegade wolf had first been encountered back in the 1840’s, when buckskinned mountain men trapped the cold water streams for beaver. It was said that the wolf lost half his front paw to a bear trap and, ever since then, had haunted the settlers of the Continental Divide with his cunning and savagery. Over twenty-five deaths had been blamed on Old Cripplefoot and men had gone after him with a vengeance many times, determined to hunt him down and make a trophy of his hide. But no one had ever been that lucky. Dozens had claimed point-blank shots at the elusive wolf, but the animal had escaped in every instance. The Blackfoot and Sioux considered him a bad spirit, for they too had hunted him unsuccessfully, chasing him into dead-end canyons only to find their prey gone, as if his very being had been spirited away by the wind.
Timber scoffed at the tales of a ghostly wolf. He knew Old Cripplefoot was as real as any other wolf. In fact, he probably knew the wolf better than any other hunter alive. Gray had tracked the animal twice before. The first time had been in the San Juans of southern Colorado, the second in the BitterrootMountains near LochsaRiver. Both hunts had been futile, leaving Timber with a feeling of frustrated defeat and, oddly enough, a grudging respect for the old wolf. To put it simply, Cripplefoot was the cleverest and most elusive critter that Gray had ever set his sights on.
The hunter stood in the cold darkness, a frigid northerner ruffling his clothing and whipping around the crown of his silverbelly hat. His dark gray eyes were mere slits as he stared down the pass, perhaps searching for the darting shadows of wolves on the prowl. Having Old Cripplefoot as a leader made any wolf pack twice as dangerous as before, especially one as large as this one. And he would sure hate to meet up with them in the narrow confines of BurialPass, unable to fire his gun in the fear of bringing tons of snow and rock down upon their heads.
“I think it’d be best not to say anything about this to your ma and pa,” he suggested, clapping a friendly hand on the boy’s quivering shoulder. “No need to upset them none.”
“All right,” agreed Paul.
They went back to work, gathering enough dry kindling to last the night. As they headed back for camp, Paul carrying the lantern while Timber followed with an armload of branches, the wolf hunter’s thoughts were occupied with Old Cripplefoot. The wolf had always been a sore spot with him. In fact, he had even gotten into several barroom brawls because some drunken cowpoke had brought up Timber’s failure to catch him.
But now he had another chance at the ‘ghost wolf’. And he swore to God that, this time, the aim of his big Sharps 50-caliber would draw blood.
Fatal blood.
Chapter Twelve
The only wolf they found in the narrow stretch of BurialPass was a dead one.
The she-wolf had obviously crossed some of the other pack members, over food or perhaps a mate. She had fought savagely, but the sheer number of the others had proven no contest. They had left her there, eager to move onward down the pass to the far side of the mountains. The animal’s body was cold when Timber Gray came upon it a few hours later, but not frozen. He had no trouble skinning her and lashing her bloodstained hide to the pack horse along with the others.
From there on out, the riding went smoothly. There was no more sign of wolves or other dangerous game, except for the recent tracks of the marauding pack. The Reverend Cook had regained his old fire and constantly spouted scripture as they moved onward. However, the preacher’s sermons were more subdued in their fury than they had been before. Timber Gray mostly attributed it to the fear of an avalanche. The pastor was aware that his righteous bellowing could very well bring disaster crashing down upon their heads. Timber was grateful for his restraint, since any loud noise could send a deadly ricochet of echoes bouncing off the steep, snow-laden walls and bring instant, crushing death.
For a while, the wolfer actually thought they would make it through the treacherous mountain pass without incident. But as the day drew on and only a few miles lay between them and the western foothills, they began to hear the distant murmur of voices and the snow-muffled footfalls of horses. The Cook family seemed anxious to meet the approaching riders, perhaps because they had encountered so few people since leaving the Dakotas. But Timber Gray’s feelings led more to suspicion. Something told him that these men could prove to be trouble if given half the chance.
As the sounds grew nearer, Timber stopped his black gelding and motioned for Isaiah to rein the wagon’s mule team to a halt. The two pack horses did likewise, a steady drift of frozen breath wafting from their flared nostrils.
“Reverend,” Timber said in a low voice. “I’d appreciate it if you’d keep quiet and let me do the talking here. There are some mean ones in these mountains who don’t take kindly to newcomers. Don’t know if these men are like that, but I don’t aim to take any chances, not in this canyon.”
“Now, see here, Mr. Gray,” protested Isaiah Cook. “I have as much right to converse with these gentlemen as you do. What if they are in need of spiritual guidance? Should I just turn them away?”
The voices became clearer as the riders neared a bend up ahead. The snicker of dirty laughter and cussing drifted down the length of BurialPass. Timber looked the young minister squarely in the eye. “Preacher, the only spirits them fellas are interested in are what come out of a whiskey bottle. If you start shooting off your mouth and calling them a pack of no-account sinners, I’m afraid they’ll give us some real trouble.”
“Please, Isaiah,” said Lenora, putting a firm hand on her husband’s arm.
”Let Mr. Gray handle this. He knows these people better than we.” The woman sat on the seat of the wagon, while the two children napped in the rear.
“Very well,” grumbled Isaiah, but his venomous glare told Timber that he was far from being satisfied.
Timber Gray sat in the saddle and looked toward the turn in the pass. As an afterthought, he shucked his Winchester from its boot, levered a cartridge into the breech, and laid the rifle easily across his knees. Firing a shot in this canyon was the last thing in the world he wanted to do. But if these men came upon them intending to start trouble, then the only thing he could do was oblige them and hope that the walls didn’t come tumbling down around their heads.
Five men on lean mountain horses appeared around the bend and sauntered slowly toward them. Two men looked to be brothers, each wearing overcoats and gray derby hats. One carried a shotgun, the other a Winchester carbine. Another rider was a bear of a man in a tall-crowned hat, bearded and scarred deeply down one side of his ruddy face. A tarnished cavalry sword hung from his saddle horn, along with other weapons. Next to him rode a youngster of about eighteen. He was clean-shaven, all decked out in black, and wore a fancy, ivory-handled Colt tied down to his right thigh. The kid looked like hair-triggered trou
ble in a pint-sized package; someone who was just itching to show off his prowess with a shooting iron.
The fifth man, the leader of the ragged bunch, was a lean man in an old gray frockcoat and a low black hat. His ugly face was dirty and bristled, his mouth sparkling with twenty dollars worth of gold dental work, and his eyes were full of pure meanness. A sawed-off ten-gauge hung from his saddle, but that was not the weapon that caught Timber’s attention. It was a brace of pistols belted around the leader’s waist that stood out; a couple of old .44 Dragoons that had been converted to fire metallic cartridges.
Timber Gray recognized a couple of the men immediately. The leader was Elijah Cox and the bearded one was his right-hand man, Avery Gimble. He couldn’t place the two brothers, as well as the kid with the fifty dollar gun. But they were all plainly cut of the same cloth. Bounty hunters. Timber could tell one a mile away. They always exuded a somber feeling of violent death, not only to those they hunted, but to decent folks as well. From what Timber had heard, Elijah Cox was the best of his profession. He had ridden with Quantrill as a guerilla fighter back during the war and, afterwards, had found profit in hunting down outlaws for gold. Bringing them “back alive” held no meaning for Cox or the men he rode with. The fugitives Cox went after always came back tied over a saddle, a bullet hole through their head or torso and a wanted poster stuck in their mouth.
The five urged their mounts forward, spreading out as they reached the wagon. Elijah rode up to Timber Gray with Gimble and the kid to his right and left. The two brothers halted their horses on the far side of the wagon, nearly out of the wolfer’s sight. Timber didn’t like that one bit.
“Howdy,” greeted Elijah, displaying a grin of yellow gold. “You folks lost? Ain’t normal for someone to be traveling these mountains all loaded down with a wagon and all. And with heavy snow on its way, too.”
Timber Gray regarded the bounty hunter with a cool stare. “Ain’t lost. Just trying to get to Greybull before the worst of the storm hits.” The wolfer eyed each man, then returned his eyes to the leader. “Are you boys up here looking for someone?”