"Well, that's good news."
"Yes, it is." Kent looked at Rowlett, who was mounting the chestnut again. "I'm very lucky your friend happened to be with you, Cole, otherwise the buggy would have slid on down into the gully and crushed me. I'm convinced of that."
"So am I," agreed Cole. He grinned at Rowlett, who reached down and took Billy Casebolt's hand, then pulled the scrawny deputy up behind him on the chestnut with seemingly no effort. "We're all lucky that Yancy decided to come to Wind River."
Chapter 6
Tommy Sutherland ran across the snow-covered ground with the dog called Buffalo bounding along beside him. The big brown dog had gotten the name because of its size; it was almost as big as the twelve-year-old boy who was its constant companion. Both of them loved it here on this isolated ranch in the middle of the Wyoming Territory.
"Tommy!" his mother called after him from the doorway of the log ranch house built into the side of a small hill. "Don't you go wandering off! There’s Indians out there, and they’ll kill you and scalp you!”
With a casual wave, Tommy acknowledged that he had heard the warning. He wasn’t worried about Indians, though. There were some Shoshones in these parts, but they were friendly most of the time. The Blackfoot usually didn’t come this far south, and the Sioux were all further east now, raising hell over in the Dakota Territory. Despite the fact that the Sutherland ranch was located in a wilderness, it was a pretty safe place. At least that was what Tommy’s pa said, and Tommy believed him.
Besides, Buffalo was with him, and nobody would bother him while the dog was around.
It was a rare day when Tommy’s hours weren’t filled with chores, but since the snowstorm had come through a few days earlier, there hadn’t been much to do around the ranch. Tommy’s pa and his older brothers had rounded up the cattle and brought them down to a pasture that was close to the house and the barn, so that they could be fed the hay that had been cut from the fields to the south last fall. Orrin Sutherland, Tommy’s father, had worked hard to make his small spread pay off. He would never be a cattle baron, Orrin sometimes said, but he and his family would never starve, either.
Today, Orrin and the four older boys were out making sure they hadn’t overlooked any of the stock when they made their gather. That left Tommy at the house with nothing much to do except help his mother, and he didn’t want to do that. Not for the first time, he hoped the baby his mother was going to have in a few months would be a girl. If it was, then she could grow up to do “all them female chores,” as Tommy called them.
He and Buffalo headed for a good-sized hill to the northwest of the ranch house. Tommy had climbed the hill plenty of times. You could see a long way from up there. He could have spent hours just peering off into the distance, turning in a slow circle that revealed to him the Wind River range to the west, the Owl Creek range and the Bighorns to the north, the seemingly endless open plains to the east, and the Rattlesnake Hills to the south. There was nowhere else in the world Tommy would have rather been.
With Buffalo beside him, he started up the hill, leaning forward occasionally to rest a hand against the slope in order to balance himself. Buffalo didn’t have any trouble; he bounded up the hill like a mountain goat with his usual canine exuberance. The dog reached the top of the rise first. Tommy was panting a little when he got there a few minutes later.
He forgot his breathlessness as he scanned the panorama surrounding him. This was beautiful country. God’s country, his pa called it. Orrin Sutherland said that God had made the rest of the world for the folks who lived there, but He had made Wyoming for Himself and was kind enough to let a few people visit for a while. Tommy could believe that.
And then he stiffened suddenly as he saw that there were intruders in God’s country.
There were men on horseback, about a dozen of them, riding toward the ranch from the north. They had just emerged from a stand of aspen that covered the side of another small hill about a quarter of a mile away from where Tommy watched. He wished he had his pa’s spyglass, the telescope that Orrin Sutherland had carried during the War Between the States, but Tommy’s eyes had the keenness of youth. He knew he didn’t recognize any of the men.
He also knew that something about them made him drop to one knee and put an arm around Buffalo to hug the big dog tightly to him.
The trees in which the men had been riding grew thickly enough to serve as concealment even though the leaves had all dropped off them back in the fall. The men didn’t seem to be worried about being seen, however. Riding through the stand of aspen had just happened to be the straightest way for them to proceed as they headed due south. That route would take them right to the Sutherland ranch.
His ma was back there alone, Tommy remembered. There was no telling when his pa and his older brothers would be back. Tommy knew he ought to run back there right away and let Ma know that riders were coming.
He hesitated a moment longer, though, allowing the strangers to come a little closer so that he could get a better look at them. They were white men, not Indians; he had known that immediately. But he became more sure of two things as he watched them approach across open ground turned muddy by melting snow. One was that he had never seen them before.
The other was that they looked like hard men, dangerous men. And as that thought went through Tommy’s head, he backed up and turned around hurriedly to start sliding down the hill. Buffalo let out a loud bark and came after him. Tommy hoped the strangers hadn’t heard the dog. He had time to get back to the ranch house first as long as the men maintained their current pace. If they urged their horses into a gallop . . .
If that happened, Tommy knew he would likely be cut off from the ranch house, and his mother would have to face these grim-faced men alone.
* * *
Phyllis Sutherland heard her son yelling when he was still a couple of hundred yards away from the house. She had stepped outside to get some more firewood from the stack beside the door when Tommy's shouts drifted to her on the chilly air.
Phyllis dropped the short piece of wood in her hands and reached back inside the door for the rifle that leaned against the wall there. It was the .52 caliber Spencer repeater that her husband had carried during the war, unloaded at the moment. But Phyllis had seven of the rimfire cartridges, a full load for the rifle, in one pocket of her apron. She took out the bullets and fed them rapidly into the loading tube in the repeater's stock. Tommy wouldn't be raising such a ruckus unless there was trouble, and since her husband and her older boys weren't at home, Phyllis would meet that trouble herself.
She prayed that Indians weren't after Tommy as she hurried around the hillside in which the log ranch house had been built. She lived in terror that someday the savages would attack the ranch. Tommy's shouts were closer now, and Phyllis could hear Buffalo barking, too. The dog sounded as excited as the boy, but there was an undercurrent of fear in Tommy's voice as he called, "Ma! Ma!"
Phyllis rounded the hill and saw him racing toward her, Buffalo running ahead of him. Thankfully, there was no horde of Indians right behind them. As Phyllis looked past her youngest child, however, she saw the men on horseback. They were still about five hundred yards away, but they were coming straight toward the ranch. They must have seen the smoke from the chimney, she thought, and they knew there was somebody living here.
Tommy came pounding up to her and skidded to a halt in the mixture of snow and mud that covered the ground. He was breathless, panting heavily as he tried to gulp down air. Phyllis asked him sharply, "Are you all right?"
"Y-yeah, Ma . . . I'm fine . . . but I . . . I saw those men . . . figured you ought to know . . . they were coming . . ."
She took one hand off the rifle to pat her son on the shoulder. "You did good. Take Buffalo and get in the house now."
"No!" exclaimed Tommy. "I want to stay out here with you."
"I said go in the house. Take the dog with you.
"At least keep Buffalo out here with you," Tommy sa
id. "He won't let anybody hurt you."
Phyllis hesitated, then nodded. "All right. But you go on like I told you."
Reluctantly, still out of breath, Tommy ducked through the door of the house. Phyllis reached down and dug her fingers into the thick hair on the back of the dog's neck to hold him. "Stay, Buffalo," she murmured. "Stay, boy." Her eyes followed the approaching riders as she spoke to the dog.
They were only a hundred yards away now. Phyllis told herself that there was no reason to be frightened. For all she knew, the men were peaceful enough. They might just be travelers on their way south. As they drew ever closer, however, she saw that they were well-armed and that their faces had a hard, grim cast to them.
Trouble on the hoof, that was what Orrin would have called them.
The man in the lead was perhaps the hardest-looking of the bunch. He was also the oldest, Phyllis judged. He wore a dark coat and a pulled-down gray Stetson. A wool scarf was tied around his neck. His face was clean-shaven and set in tight lines.
At first Phyllis thought his features were just flushed from the cold, but then she decided they were naturally florid. Wisps of graying hair stuck out underneath the man's hat. His coat was short enough so that Phyllis could also see the holstered gun snugged against his right thigh.
The other men were younger but looked much the same. Not a family resemblance, but a similarity in the way they carried themselves, as if they were always expecting trouble. Phyllis saw rifle butts protruding from saddle boots on every mount, and she was certain all of them were carrying handguns, too. Some were clean-shaven, others sported beards and mustaches.
A few were fairly well-dressed while the others wore rougher clothes like what a miner or a ranch hand would wear. All of them pulled their mounts smoothly to a halt when the man in the lead held up a hand and signaled for them to stop.
He walked his horse slowly ahead until he was only ten feet from Phyllis. She stood her ground, the Spencer in her right hand, Buffalo’s ruff in her left. As the man finally reined in, she nodded to him, keeping her face expressionless, and said, “Howdy.”
The man returned the nod. “Hello, ma’am.” His voice was deep and a little gravelly. “Sorry if we disturbed you. You won’t need that rifle. We’re not looking for trouble.”
Phyllis lifted her chin and said, “I’m glad to hear that. But I think I’ll hang on to the rifle anyway. What do you men want?” Beside her, Buffalo growled a little, deep in his throat, and pressed his considerable weight against her leg. She steadied herself against the dog.
The man leaned forward in his saddle. “We need horses,” he said. “Ours are about played out.”
Suddenly, from Phyllis’s left, Tommy shouted, “No-good horse thieves!” Phyllis’s head jerked around and she saw that her son had come out of the house in defiance of her orders.
Not only that, but the weak winter sunlight glinted and winked off the smooth metal surface of the pistol he lifted in both hands.
“Tommy, no!” Phyllis cried.
“Watch it!” one of the other men shouted. “The kid’s got a gun!” There was a flicker of movement and a loud crash.
Beside Phyllis, Buffalo snarled and jerked out of her grip. The dog lunged toward the horsemen and leaped into the air, heading straight for the man who had shouted the warning and then drawn and fired a pistol with blinding speed.
Phyllis heard growling, yelling, a heavy thump and then another shot. Buffalo yelped in pain. But Phyllis was aware of all that only dimly, because her senses were filled with the sound of Tommy’s cry and the sight of him slumping to the ground, blood on his shirt. She screamed his name and threw herself toward him.
“Hold your fire! Hold your fire, damn it!” That was the older man bellowing. “Put that gun up, Riley.”
Phyllis dropped to her knees beside Tommy. His eyes were open wide from the pain of his wound. He gasped, “I . . . I’m sorry, Ma . . . couldn’t let ‘em . . . steal our horses . . .”
“Nobody said anything about stealing any horses.” That was the spokesman for the group again. He had dismounted and walked over to the injured boy, and he dropped to one knee on the other side of Tommy. To Phyllis, he said, “I’m sorry, ma’am. I didn’t mean for this to happen—“
She jerked her head up and glared at him as she cradled her boy’s head in her lap, heedless of the mud that was getting all over her apron and dress. “Well, it did happen,” she spat at the man. “You shot him down!”
“Not me, ma’am,” the man grated. “Let me take a look at him.”
“Take your filthy hands off him!” Phyllis knew she was nearly hysterical, but she couldn’t help herself. She had lived in dread of something like this happening ever since the family had moved west. Now it had finally come to pass. The smell of powder smoke hung in the air, and there was blood on her son’s shirt . . .
She realized she had dropped the Spencer. The rifle was lying a few feet away on the ground. She wished she had it in her hands at this moment, because if she had, she would have used it on the men who had brought such trouble to her home.
The older man who seemed to be in charge was ignoring what she had told him and probing at Tommy’s wound anyway. He had pulled back the boy’s coat and shirt and was examining the bloody gash in Tommys side. He looked up at Phyllis and said, “He’s just creased. It looks a lot worse than it really is. He’s going to be fine, ma’am, just fine. Why don’t we take him inside?”
“I . . . I don’t know . . . .” She wished Orrin was here.
And then one of the riders said urgently, “Riders comin,’ Mr. Turner.”
The gray-haired man straightened, looked where the other man was pointing, and nodded. “Carlin, you and Ordway pick up this boy and take him in the house. Do whatever this lady tells you to do to help out.”
Two of the riders nodded and swung down from their saddles. Phyllis saw that arguing was going to be useless. She stepped back as they picked up Tommy and carried him carefully into the ranch house. She had to go with them, she realized. She had to get a cloth and some water and wash that blood off her son. The older man had said the wound wasn’t really that bad, and for the moment, Phyllis had only that hope to cling to.
Before she followed the men and stepped inside, she glanced at Buffalo. The dog was lying on his side, not moving except for his flanks, which heaved up and down. Numbly, Phyllis realized that Buffalo had been shot, too. She heard shouts from the riders who were rapidly approaching, and she recognized her husband. Orrin and the rest of the boys were back, and now these strangers would regret what they had done. Phyllis went inside to tend to her son.
* * *
There was a heavy, uncomfortable lump of cold fear in Orrin Sutherland's belly. He and his four older sons had heard the pair of shots as they returned to the ranch house, and Orrin had known right away they meant trouble. The shots had come from a six-gun, not the Spencer or the old shotgun he also kept in the house. He had a handgun there, too, a Colt revolver, but there was no reason Phyllis or Tommy should have been firing it. If they had been shooting at some sort of varmint, they would have used one of the other weapons.
A six-gun wasn't much good for anything except shooting at a man.
Orrin dug his heels into the flanks of his mount and sent the horse leaping forward in a gallop. The boys followed closely behind him. As he rode, Orrin pulled the new Winchester from its saddle boot. Whatever the trouble was, he wanted to be ready for it.
As the rancher and his sons drew nearer, Orrin saw the strange riders sitting their horses between the house and the shed. One of the horsebackers was on foot, seemingly waiting for Orrin to arrive. Two more horses had empty saddles, and he wondered where their riders were. There was no sign of Phyllis or Tommy. Something was wrong here, Orrin knew, bad wrong.
He glanced behind him. The other boys all carried single-shot rifles, and they were holding the weapons ready for use. They were outnumbered, though, and now that he was closer, Orrin could see that
the strangers were tough-looking and well-armed. If it came down to a shoot-out, he and his boys would likely lose.
But if anything had happened to Phyllis and Tommy, Orrin didn't care what the odds were. He intended to light into the strangers like an angry grizzly and devil take the hindmost. That attitude had gotten him through the War all right.
He hauled his horse to a stop in front of the tall, lean, gray-haired man who was on foot. "Who the hell are you?" Orrin demanded angrily. "What's going on here?"
"You own this spread?" the older man asked.
Orrin jerked his head in a nod. "That's right. Where's my wife and my boy?"
The man inclined his head toward the house and said, "Inside. I'm afraid your boy's hurt. Got a bullet crease in the side. He'll be all right, though."
Orrin fought down the impulse to empty his Winchester into the man. "You shot my son?" he asked, his voice trembling just slightly from emotion.
"One of my men did—but it was an accident," the gray-haired man went on quickly. "I was talking to your missus when your boy came running out of the house and pointed a gun at us. My man acted out of instinct and shot first. But the boy's not hurt bad."
"You son of a bitch," Orrin grated. "How dare you—"
"I've had about enough," the older man cut in. "We didn't come here to cause trouble, and by God, we didn't! It was an accident, that's all."
"Pa!" one of Orrins older sons called. "Buffalo's hurt! The bastards must've shot him, too!"
Orrin looked over at the big brown dog lying on the ground. "Tend to him, Seth," he said to the young man who had spoken. "Looks like he's still alive."
"The dog jumped my man, tried to kill him. Man's got a right to defend himself against a vicious animal."
Orrin fixed the gray-haired man with a cold stare. "Buffalo wouldn't hurt anybody unless they were threatening a member of the family. You better hope my boy's all right, and the dog, too. You already got a big score to settle."
Wolf Shadow (Wind River Book 3) Page 9