He reached down and righted the overturned chair, then looked at Juanita. Her face was chalk-white. But her jaw was set with resolution, her eyes glowing with the grim elation she felt at having stopped the two miners. She was dressed in a pair of Levi’s and a man’s woolen shirt, open at the neck. She did a pretty fair job at filling out both the Levi’s and the shirt.
“I fell asleep, Señor Wolf,” she said with genuine bitterness. “The board on the top step, it squeaked. I opened my eyes and see them. They are almost to me. I was so crazy with surprise, I just jump up and pull the trigger without I first aim.”
Wolf laughed. “It’s all right. Good thing you didn’t aim. Otherwise you might have killed one of them. Get in here. It’s time I got dressed anyway.”
He pulled her into his room, grinned at her for a moment, then started to get dressed. He had wanted to get an early start, but he hadn’t expected this kind of an awakening. He suggested to her that she might put the Colt down while he dressed.
She shrugged and stuck it casually into her belt.
“Tell me, Juanita. About those four men. Do you know which way they went when they left here?”
She nodded.
“South?”
“No, not south. They rode north through Devil’s Canyon.” She pointed out the window, indicating the direction they took. “I watched them ride out. Carl and I were burying the one Reno killed. They saw us as they rode by and yet they did not stop.” She shook her head at this lack of compassion. Then she looked with sudden concern into Wolf’s face. “You must be careful of these men. They are all devils, I think.”
He smiled at her concern. “You must promise, Juanita, not to tell anyone here that I’m after Reno. I’m sure he has many friends here—with all that money he threw around.”
“I will tell no one,” she said, her dark eyes cold with resolve.
“That’s good, Juanita.”
“And now I must go down and help Carl in the kitchen.” She smiled brilliantly. “And he will want to know about that shot too.”
He watched her proud figure stride out of the room, then sat back on the bed and reached for his boots. His left thigh, he noted with satisfaction, was feeling much better.
When not too long after Wolf arrived downstairs with his gear, he saw Juanita busy in the small dining room. He left his gear at the desk and entered the room. He found himself a table and beckoned Juanita over.
“You been up all night outside my door. I want you to sit down now and have breakfast with me,” he told her.
When Carl hurried out of the kitchen and over to his table, Wolf told the man the same thing. He shrugged. Wolf ordered for both of them and when the food arrived, he found she ate with a taste and a sense of manners that impressed him. There was more—much more—to this young Mexican girl than he would have guessed at first glance.
When he had finished eating, Wolf pushed aside his plate, reached for his coffee and waved the hotel owner over to him. Carl came at once, his eyes wary.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
“You can sit down first.”
The little man sat down, glancing nervously at Juanita as he did so.
“I don’t want any reprisals for what Juanita did outside my door this morning,” Wolf told the man. “Since there’s little visible law in this town, she more than likely saved my life.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out two gold ten dollar pieces onto the table. “That should take care of any damage in addition to my bill.”
Carl nodded quickly and swept up the coins. “Of course,” he said, getting to his feet. “It is all right, I promise you. Juanita is a good girl. I myself did not want her to go with those two. She is my cook and my waitress. She is not like the other girls.”
“Fine,” said Wolf, pushing his chair back and getting to his feet.
He looked down at Juanita. “Get some sleep now, Juanita. I’ll be moving on.”
“Your leg. Is it all right?”
“It feels fine.”
Impulsively she got to her feet, pulled his face down to hers and kissed him on the cheek, just under the scar. Then she turned and darted from the room. He watched her go, aware of a sharp and sudden sense of loss. Then he shrugged at his foolishness and said goodbye to the hotel owner and walked back into the lobby for his gear. Gathering it all up, he strode out into the bright morning.
He still had a long ride ahead of him. But at least he knew now where Johnny Reno was heading—not south as he would have thought, but north through Devil’s Canyon.
And they were but three days ahead of him.
Four
It was close to sunset when Wolf came up on a recent campsite; it looked to be no more than three days old. As he dismounted to inspect the area more closely, he caught the gleam of something metallic on the barren, sparsely covered ground. He bent and saw the spent copper jackets, .45 caliber. They were scattered within a relatively small circle, which indicated to Wolf that one man standing in that spot had fired the gun, nearly emptying his chamber.
A search over the rest of the campsite revealed only one more spent jacket. This one was close to where a rope tether had been sliced clean through. The horses had left in a big hurry, judging from the depth and confusion of the tracks.
Wolf eased himself back against a man-sized boulder and looked once more around the campsite. A picture was forming in his mind. The horses had been driven off. That much was certain. And whoever had discovered what was happening had fired repeatedly at the person responsible. If this fellow—Reno perhaps—had been unable to retrieve the horses, the gang would be left to hoof it. Wolf pushed himself away from the rock and started looking for footprints leaving the campsite.
He soon found them. A set of three. Though the footprints were almost obliterated by a recent set of hoof prints and the wheel tracks of a wagon, there was no mistaking their number or their direction.
They were on foot then—three of them, at least. Wolf’s luck was holding. All this had to mean delay. For a moment he considered riding on after them despite the gathering darkness. He looked up at the sky. There were no clouds and there had been no rain for weeks. He could not follow signs in the dark, and if there were no rain that night, there was a good chance the footprints would be just as easy to follow the next morning. Besides, his horse was about ready to give out—and his thigh was acting up.
He decided to make camp for the night and move out at dawn the next day.
It was late the following afternoon when Wolf rode out onto a ledge and looked down at the scruffy ranch buildings below him in the valley.
By this time he was aware that the three men on foot were following the blood spoor of a wounded rider. It seemed logical to Wolf that the wounded man would have made for this ranch below him. It would have seemed an ideal shelter for him while he nursed his wound and fought off his pursuers.
But the ranch appeared deserted. The pole corral behind the stable was empty of horses, and no smoke curled out of the single chimney. Wolf pulled his horse back off the ledge and started it down the narrow trail that led to the valley floor.
It took Wolf an hour to negotiate the steep mountain trail. After a cautious ride across the lush flats, he splashed through the shallow stream and rode into the cottonwoods.
Once through them, he sat his horse awhile and looked through the trees at the ranch beyond. The cabin sat there as still and quiet as a coffin. From somewhere in the branches above him came the hard chattering note of a bluebird. Chickens were clucking about in the thick grass around a small barn to his right. At last, when he caught sight of a covey of bobwhites feeding on a patch of clover near the chimney, he realized that, for the moment at least, the ranch was deserted.
He rode out of the cottonwoods and across the yard to the hitch rail in front of the cabin, dismounted and went inside. The signs of a recent departure were everywhere. He noted the partially consumed pieces of a chair lying coldly in the fireplace, the large
dark stain on the floor, the flyspecked dishes piled in the sink. The shelves over the sink were not empty, but anything that might be of value on the trail was missing.
From the look of the place, it had been cleaned out that morning at the latest—possibly the day before.
The sound of the bobwhites exploding in sudden panic caused Wolf to turn. A hulking shadow loomed in the doorway. Dodging to one side, Wolf threw himself to the floor as the roar of a shotgun filled the interior of the cabin. But the shot went wild and before the man could fire again, Wolf flung himself at the fellow, knocking him out of the cabin. As the man stumbled backward and fell to the ground, his shotgun exploded again, this time sending its charge harmlessly into the air. After this wild flurry of activity, the man lay on his back in the grass, the spent shotgun still clutched in his hand.
Wolf drew his six-gun, cocked it, and took careful aim at the man’s head. The fellow looked dazedly at Wolf and groaned.
“Don’t shoot,” he managed.
Holstering his forty-five, Wolf left the cabin and knelt beside the fellow. He had been wounded severely: his left shoulder looked pretty well smashed up.
“That’s a hell of a way to greet someone, mister,” Wolf told the man.
“I’m Frank Compton. You’re in my place. I live here.”
Compton was in his early forties, his hair graying. There was a softness about him that did not impress Wolf. He looked like a man who had been quite handsome at one time, but who had been letting himself go now for years.
“I ... thought you was one of them ... come back to finish me,” Compton told Wolf hoarsely.
“Them?”
“A gang ... crazy. First one ... came by wounded. He was the one shot me. Then the others came.” He reached up with his good hand and grabbed Wolf’s shirt. “Rose! ... They took my wife with them. You got to get after them—get her back!”
Wolf nodded and pulled his shirt as gently as he could out of the man’s grasp. As he did so, Compton lost consciousness. Wolf lifted the man and carried him into the cabin and put him down on the bed.
As Wolf pulled off the man’s clothes, he examined Compton’s shoulder wound. A portion of his left shoulder had been carried away by a heavy slug. Compton had been fortunate that the bullet had gone on through the shoulder. From the size of the wound, Wolf estimated the bullet to have been of at least 219 grains, possibly backed by 50 grains of powder, all of which pointed to a Walker Colt. The rancher had been lucky. A few inches lower and he would have lost the entire shoulder, including the arm.
But the wound was filthy and already festering. And something had to be done to immobilize the shoulder so the bones could knit.
Working swiftly to take advantage of the man’s lack of consciousness, Wolf found some soap, heated water on the wood stove and then cleaned out the wound with soap and water, working as thoroughly as Juanita had on his thigh. After he had scrubbed the wound out, he tore bedclothes into strips and strapped the man’s left arm to his side to immobilize the shoulder.
He was just finishing up when Compton’s eyes flickered open.
“Anything to drink in here?” Wolf asked him.
“Sink ... under the sink.”
Wolf found a half-empty jug of pale yellow moonshine. Extracting a greasy cup from the pile of dishes in the sink, Wolf filled it with moonshine and brought it over to the man. Compton lifted himself painfully and gulped down the drink, then handed the cup back to Wolf, his eyes pleading for more. Wolf brought over the jug and filled the cup a second time. He watched the man swill it down—and sat back on a wooden chair he had set down beside the bed.
Compton would be all right. But Wolf knew he would probably have to hang back and look after him—at least until Wolf was certain Compton would be able to take care of himself. “Tell me what happened,” Wolf said.
Compton told of a man calling himself Murdo Mackenzie who rode up to the cabin driving three horses before him and who was himself wounded seriously in his leg. Frank had wanted to drive the man off, but his wife would not have it and made Frank help Murdo into the cabin. She tended him—dressed his wound and gave him food. And later that night Murdo sterilized the blade of his Bowie in the coal-oil lamp’s flame and dug the bullet out of his leg.
The next morning, feeling much better, Murdo began to throw his weight around and by the end of the day he had gone after Frank’s wife. When Frank protested, the man had tried to slice him with his Bowie. Frank fled the cabin to get the shotgun he had left in the barn, but was shot by Murdo before he could reach it. When his wife attempted to go after him, she had been dragged back into the cabin—and soon after that the gang on Murdo’s trail showed up. They killed Murdo and stayed the night and most of the day, while one of them took a wagon and went back after the saddles they had cached on the trail.
“Where were you during all this time?”
“I’d lost some blood from the wound. I knew I wasn’t no match for them, so I hid near the river. They looked for me—two of them. But I kept low until they rode out the next day. When I saw they were taking Rose, I left the river and ran after them. But they didn’t even see me or hear me. I ran as far as I could. Then I just ... collapsed. I guess I lost plenty of blood by that time. When I awoke it was pretty late. I got back to the barn and passed out again. When I came to this time, I left the barn and saw your horse. Like I said, I thought one of them had come back to finish me.”
“Do you know who they were?”
Compton nodded. “Murdo mentioned a bank in Green River and a feller he called Johnny Reno. I heard of Johnny Reno before. I figure it was Reno’s gang.”
“It was. I’m a lawman, Compton—and I’m after them for the robbery of that bank Murdo mentioned. Which direction did they take when they left here?”
“Through White Horn Pass. Looked like they was heading for Montana territory.”
“They’re a full day’s ride ahead of me then.”
“No, they’re not. You can overtake them easy.”
“How?”
“Go through the mountains and meet them on the other side of the pass. Just follow the riverbed till you get to Wild Horse Canyon. There’s a trail over the canyon wall.”
“Follow the riverbed. You mean stay in the stream?”
“That’s the secret. You could never make it following the bank. But this time of the year the water’s only a couple of feet deep. It’s fast, but you can make it. There’s no other way through the mountains.”
He moved painfully and looked thirstily at the jug sitting on the floor beside Wolf’s chair. “If there was another horse on this spread, I’d go with you myself. I want Rose back.”
Wolf got up off the chair and looked down at Frank Compton. There was something about the man’s anxiety for his wife that did not ring true. There seemed more anger than real concern in his desire to have his wife returned to him. Still, Compton had been through a lot in the past few days. Wolf did not feel he should judge the man too harshly.
“Get some sleep,” he told Compton. “I’ll camp outside in the yard tonight.”
“Let me have that jug before you go,” Compton said.
Wolf shook his head. “You’ve had enough,” he said as he walked over and placed it down under the sink.
He felt a lot better when he stepped out of the cabin a moment later and looked up at the first stars. His horse whinnied and began pawing the ground. Wolf smiled and started for the black. The animal was just a mite upset for having to wait this long before being tended to, and Wolf didn’t blame him.
The next morning when Wolf returned to the cabin after seeing to a scraggly flock of chickens and milking a lone, bleating cow with painfully swollen udders, he found Compton wide awake and sitting up in bed. Setting down the bucket of warm milk on the sideboard next to the sink, he walked over to the bed to see how Compton was getting on.
“You’re still here,” Compton said.
“That’s what it looks like.”
“I don’t want you here. You’re a lawman. Go after them. I want you to get my wife back.”
“I know. You told me last night.”
“I feel like hell—but I don’t need you to stay here. I want you to leave me here and take that shortcut through the mountains.”
“I’ll leave as soon as I fix breakfast,” Wolf told Compton.
The man’s gaunt, unshaven face creased bleakly. “Good,” he said. “I don’t want no breakfast. Just hand me that jug.”
Wolf looked at the man for a moment, then shrugged and went to get the moonshine.
Slim leaned on his pommel and watched the distant horseman. It was Wolf Caulder, all right. The lawman was far ahead of them, almost out of sight by now. And he was riding close along the riverbank. Looked to Slim like Caulder was going to keep to that river until he reached the rocky escarpment that lifted out of the valley floor ahead of him.
Slim turned to Sam. “That sonofabitch Compton must have told Caulder that route over the range. They ain’t no way he’s going to miss the mine entrance now.”
“He may pay it no mind,” Sam said hopefully. “If he’s so all-fired anxious to get on after Reno and that bank money.”
“Well, it don’t make no difference. When we deliver him to Reno, we’ll maybe get a piece of that sixty thousand for ourselves in the bargain.”
“What about that gold of ours Compton’s got?”
“We get that now,” Slim said grimly.
“And his woman, Slim?”
“You mean Rose?”
“You know who I mean.”
“Why, we’ll just have to see to her, too,” Slim said, grinning at the prospect.
He roweled his fat gelding into the cottonwoods that separated them from Compton’s ranch; Sam, aboard a stringy dun, following quickly after.
“Where’s your woman?” Slim asked Compton as he burst into the cabin and strode toward the bed. Compton was sitting up in it with a pale, earthenware jug beside him on the pillow.
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