The Violent Land

by William W. Johnstone

  The riders were headed east. According to what Wynn Courtland and the other cowboys had told them, that was where Jethro Kane’s Boxed JK spread was located.

  “Reckon there ain’t no doubt about it now,” Preacher said as the hoofbeats faded. “They’re headin’ for Kane’s place. Got to be his men.”

  “More than likely, but I’d rather get a look at them and be sure,” Matt said. “Come on.”

  He turned his horse and started back the direction they had come. They followed the ridge until it petered out. Matt reined in and swung down from the saddle. Leaving his horse ground-hitched, he edged forward until he could see around a slab of rock that shouldered out from the place where the ridge started.

  “Can you see ’em?” Preacher asked quietly.

  “Yeah. Three riders about a hundred yards away, still heading east. I can’t get a good look at them from here, though. Hell, one bunch of hired guns looks pretty much like another.”

  “But none of ’em got long white hair like Berger, do they?”

  “No, that much I can tell,” Matt said. “Berger’s not with them. But they might be some gunnies he hired. Or they might be Kane’s men. We’re just going to have to follow them—”

  He stopped as a bullet suddenly chipped rock from the big slab just above his head, followed instantly by the whipcrack of a shot.

  Chapter Thirty

  Matt crouched as he twisted in the direction the shot had come from. About a hundred yards away rose a small knob covered with scrub brush and aspen. Matt knew that was where the bushwhacker had to be hidden even before he spotted a puff of powder smoke and heard a second shot rip out.

  “Son of a buck!” Preacher exclaimed. “I felt the heat o’ that one!”

  The old mountain man jerked his Winchester from the saddle boot and wheeled his horse toward the knob.

  “I’ll cover you, Matt!” he called as he started firing toward the hidden rifleman as fast as he could work the Winchester’s lever.

  Matt grabbed his horse’s reins and leaped into the saddle. He and Preacher were out in the open here, with no cover nearby. Moving fast was their best chance of surviving this ambush.

  “You go left, I’ll go right!” he told Preacher as both of them kicked their horses into swift gallops. They split up, angling away from each other as they rode toward the knob. That way the rifleman had to choose to target one or the other of them. He couldn’t shoot at both of them.

  Unless there was more than one bushwhacker up there, Matt reminded himself grimly.

  But so far there was no sign of that. He had heard only one rifle, and now, as bullets kicked up dust around him, he looked over at Preacher and didn’t see anything similar happening in the vicinity of the old mountain man. Matt supposed the bushwhacker figured he was the bigger threat.

  The man might have made a mistake about that.

  It took Matt less than a minute to reach a spot near the base of the knob where the hidden rifleman no longer had a good angle for a shot at him. He dropped from the saddle and left the reins hanging, knowing that the well-trained horse wouldn’t stray very far. He pulled his own rifle from its sheath and started working his way through the brush.

  That ambusher really should have made at least one of his shots count, Matt thought. Now the varmint was caught between him and Preacher, and that was a bad place to be.

  Matt had a pretty good idea what had happened. The men who’d been watching the Rafter 9 had posted a man on the knob to make sure nobody was watching them. The bushwhacker probably had orders not to open fire unless someone was following the other men.

  But that was exactly what had happened, and when it became obvious that Matt and Preacher were going to trail the spies, they had made themselves targets.

  That theory worked whether the watchers were Berger’s men or Kane’s. Matt wished he could have gotten closer to them. He might have recognized someone from the encounter at Hawk Creek Station. As it was, the men would probably get away while he and Preacher were forced to deal with this bushwhacker.

  He heard crackling and rustling in the brush somewhere above him. Someone was moving around, but he couldn’t just open fire because it could be Preacher up there. Also, the sun was behind the mountains to the west now, and dusky shadows were starting to gather.

  Suddenly, shots blasted out. Preacher yelled, “Comin’ your way, Matt!”

  Matt barely had time to swing his rifle up before a man crashed through the brush about twenty feet away from him and slightly up-slope. The man had a rifle, too, and he fired it as Matt dropped to one knee. The slug whipped over his head.

  Matt wanted to place his shot carefully if he could. He brought the Winchester to his shoulder and squeezed the trigger as soon as the sights settled on his target.

  The .44-40 round drilled through the meaty part of the man’s right thigh. He let out a howl as that leg folded up underneath him.

  The bushwhacker wound up on his belly, but he didn’t drop his rifle or surrender. Instead, he thrust the weapon toward Matt and fired it one-handed. Matt rolled to the side as the bullet tore through the brush near his head.

  Preacher appeared behind the man. The old mountain man leveled both his pistols and said, “Drop it, mister, or I’ll take plumb pleasure in blowin’ your dang fool head off.”

  Matt could tell that the bushwhacker thought about rolling over and trying to get off a shot at Preacher. He could see the desperate urge on the man’s face.

  But reason prevailed. The man placed the Winchester on the ground in front of him and lifted his hands well away from it.

  “I can’t stand up,” he said in a voice wracked with pain. “My leg’s shot out from under me.”

  “Reckon you must’ve done that, Matt,” Preacher said as the younger man got to his feet. “You can get his gun.”

  Matt came forward and picked up the rifle. He tossed it out of reach, then did the same with the man’s handgun, pulling it from the holster and tossing it after the Winchester.

  Then he backed off and covered the man with his rifle.

  “Damn it, ain’t you gonna help me?” the bushwhacker burst out. “You shot me, and now I’m fixin’ to bleed to death!”

  Matt had already seen how slowly the bloodstain on the man’s trouser leg was spreading. He knew the man was in no danger of bleeding to death any time soon, or even at all, more than likely.

  But the bushwhacker didn’t have to know that, and the wound probably hurt like blazes.

  Matt said, “Yeah, you look like you don’t have much time left, mister. If you want to make your peace with the Good Lord, you’d better go ahead and do it.”

  “I might not die if you’d help me!” the man said. “Bind up this hole in my leg, for God’s sake!”

  “I don’t know why I should,” Matt said, “since you were doing your best to kill us.”

  “I didn’t have any choice!” The man’s voice was getting more strident and frantic. “Dick Yancy would’ve killed me if I hadn’t done what he told me!”

  “Yancy, eh? That means you ride for the Boxed JK.”

  “Yeah, yeah, so what? Damn it, mister, you and your friend killed two of our boys! Did you think Kane was gonna let you get away with that?”

  “Would you be willing to testify to that in a court of law?” Matt asked.

  Preacher’s snort made it perfectly clear how he felt about that, but he added scathingly, “Court of law!”

  The bushwhacker hesitated, obviously worried about what might happen to him if he testified against Kane and Yancy. But then Matt said, “Did you ever see so much blood, Preacher?”

  “Not since the last time I was around for a hog-slaughterin’,” the old-timer replied.

  The bushwhacker said, “All right, all right, blast it! I’ll say anything you want in court, Jensen. Just tie up this leg of mine before I ... before I pass out... . Ohhh ...”

  As the man’s head slumped to the ground, Matt leaned his rifle against a tree and strode
forward.

  “Keep him covered, Preacher,” he said. “But if he tries anything, don’t kill him. Just shoot him in the other leg. I don’t care if he’s ever able to walk again, do you?”

  “Nary a bit,” Preacher said.

  Matt used his Bowie knife to cut away the leg of the man’s jeans and expose the wound. The blood flowing from both bullet holes had slowed to a trickle. Matt sliced strips from the tail of the man’s shirt and used them to bind up the wound, tying them tightly around the injured thigh.

  “He’s still pretty groggy. Let’s get him on his feet.”

  Matt wasn’t convinced that the bushwhacker was in as bad a shape as he was acting like, so he and Preacher were careful as they took hold of the man’s arms and lifted him. The man didn’t try any tricks, though.

  “We’ll have to find his horse,” Matt said. “Set him on that stump, and then you can keep an eye on him.”

  “Don’t take too long,” Preacher warned. “My trigger fingers get mighty itchy whenever I’m around sneak-shootin’ polecats like this.”

  It didn’t take Matt long to find a saddled horse tied in some trees behind the knob. He led it back to where he’d left Preacher and the bushwhacker, and they lifted the man into the saddle with Matt doing most of the work.

  “You’d better be able to stay on that horse,” Matt warned him. “You fall off and you’re liable to start those wounds bleeding again. I’m not sure we could save your life a second time.”

  He cocked his head so that the bushwhacker couldn’t see him and closed one eye in an elaborate wink at Preacher.

  “Don’t worry,” the man said. “I’m feelin’ better now—”

  His head exploded.

  That was the way it seemed, anyway, as a high-powered bullet blew away part of his skull and sent blood, brain matter, and shards of bone spraying everywhere.

  The distant boom of the shot sounded as the man’s body toppled out of the saddle and fell to the ground. The spooked horse leaped away from the limp, gruesome figure, but the bushwhacker’s right foot had caught in the stirrup. The horse dragged him through the trees and across the rough ground, slamming the body against tree trunks and making it flop and bounce grotesquely.

  Matt and Preacher had gone diving for cover before the bushwhacker’s body hit the ground, too. They could estimate the direction the shot came from, and they put some trees between themselves and the marksman. The slender-trunked aspens didn’t provide much cover, but it was better than nothing.

  “That was a Sharps like mine!” Preacher said as he knelt behind a tree. “Sounded like it was three, four hundred yards away, too. The varmint’s got a good eye. That’s some fine shootin’ with the light fadin’ like this.”

  “At least one of the men we saw earlier must have heard the shots and doubled back,” Matt said. “But why shoot their own partner first?”

  “To keep him from talkin’,” Preacher said. “We know they got a spyglass of some sort. They must’ve looked through it, seen we had the hombre prisoner, and figured there was a chance he’d tell us who was behind it, just like he did. If they only got one shot, they wanted to make sure they got the fella who could testify against their boss.”

  Matt nodded and said, “That makes sense. They haven’t fired again since we went to ground.”

  “No, they’re probably headed back to Kane’s ranch to tell him they got another score to settle with us. That makes three of ’em they’ll hold against us, even though we didn’t blow out this one’s lights ourselves.”

  “Speaking of lights, in another ten minutes or so it’ll be too dark to see us anymore, if they’re even still out there. We can head back to the Rafter Nine headquarters then. At least we learned who was spying on us.”

  “And that fella we caught backed up what Wynn Courtland said about Kane wantin’ us dead. Of course, we already had a pretty good feelin’ about that bein’ right.”

  A grim chuckle came from Matt.

  “That’s nothing unusual for us and Smoke, is it, Preacher? Somebody wanting us dead, I mean.”

  “Boy, varmints have been gunnin’ for me a whole hell of a lot longer than you been alive,” Preacher said with a grin of his own, “and I’m still here!”

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Smoke was about to put his saddle back on his horse and go looking for Matt and Preacher when they rode in, leading a horse with a dead man draped over its saddle.

  Earlier, Smoke had heard some shots from the hills to the north, and he had almost gone after them then, stopping only when the shots died out quickly. If there was anybody he trusted completely to take care of themselves, it was Matt and Preacher. Whatever the problem was, Smoke was confident they had dealt with it.

  Then, awhile after that, he’d heard the faint, echoing boom of a heavy caliber rifle, probably a Sharps from the sound of it. But again, there was only one shot, so Smoke didn’t know what to make of it.

  Meanwhile, the business of setting up camp went on. Baron von Hoffman decided that it would be better to wait for morning to start trying to put things in order around the ranch, a decision that Smoke agreed with. Instead of arranging the wagons in a circle as they had been doing every night for weeks, this evening they were just parked here and there around the ranch buildings, and the oxen were led into the corral.

  Fixing those fences was the only repair work that went on today. Smoke supervised that, and since there were plenty of willing workers among the immigrants, it didn’t take long to make the corral sturdy enough to hold the massive, stoic creatures.

  Other men gathered wood and built a large, roaring campfire. The circle of light reached out a long way from it once full dark had fallen, and that was why Smoke was able to see Matt and Preacher as they approached. Matt was leading the extra horse with its grisly burden.

  Smoke had seen enough dead men that he didn’t have to ask any questions about the blanket-wrapped figure draped over the saddle and lashed into place, other than who it was.

  “One of Kane’s men,” Matt replied once he and Preacher had dismounted. He turned to the horse and started untying the rawhide strips that held the corpse. “He was bird-dogging those hombres who were spying on us. Best we can figure, they worked for Kane, too.”

  Von Hoffman had come up to listen, bringing several of his men with him. He motioned for them to unload the body. As they did so, the baron asked, “I take it you were forced to kill this man?”

  Matt shook his head.

  “No, we just wounded him and took him prisoner. His own compadres blew most of his head off with a long-distance shot from a Sharps.”

  Von Hoffman looked shocked. He asked, “Why in heaven’s name would they do that?”

  “To keep him from talking, would be my guess,” Smoke said.

  “That’s right,” Matt said. “We’d already gotten him to admit that he rode for the Boxed JK and that Kane wants our hides. He even said he’d testify to it in court. But then his pards double-crossed him.”

  Smoke ran a thumbnail along his jaw and frowned in thought.

  “They’ll go back to Kane’s ranch and tell everybody that the two of you killed him,” he said.

  “Sure they will,” Preacher agreed. “But they was already gunnin’ for us, so it don’t make much difference, does it?”

  “Not much,” Smoke admitted.

  “I suppose we might as well see to it that this man is buried,” von Hoffman said. “Although I doubt that he deserves such consideration.” He turned his head to peer out at the darkness beyond the firelight. “It seems that we are surrounded by enemies. Klaus Berger is still out there somewhere, too.”

  Smoke didn’t doubt that for a second.

  He made sure the guards were just as diligent as ever, but nothing unusual happened that night ... or for the next week after that. Smoke, Matt, and Preacher all kept their eyes on the hills, but no one seemed to be spying on them. Matt and Preacher scouted on horseback in all four directions and found nothing suspici
ous.

  Smoke stayed close to the Rafter 9 and used all the knowledge and expertise he had gained in building the Sugarloaf into a successful ranch to try to get the baron’s people off to a good start. He showed them the repairs that needed to be made and explained how to go about them. He put men to work cutting down trees and building a smokehouse, something the ranch was in need of. He oiled the windmill, helped Rudolph Wolff put the blacksmith shop in order, even toted furniture and supplies into the ranch house once Erica and a number of the women had cleaned it from top to bottom.

  Once she had gotten over her initial shock at the state of the ranch, Erica had stiffened her spine and gotten to work with surprising diligence and toughness. Smoke was impressed with her. It was like she had realized that she had no choice now but to grow up. She was no longer a pampered aristocrat and never would be again.

  That was a good first step to becoming an actual frontier woman, Smoke thought.

  Dieter continued to improve, and while he wasn’t in good enough shape yet to handle any of the heavy work, he was willing to take on some of the smaller tasks and proved to be a good hand when it came to carpentry. There were plenty of minor repair jobs that needed to be done around the place.

  And since that kept him around Erica a lot of the time, that was an added bonus for him. Smoke had a feeling that Matt had lost out on that short-lived competition for the girl’s affections. Matt had never been one to take his romances all that seriously. Every time some gal started thinking about settling down with him, his fiddlefooted nature had him rattling his hocks for parts unknown pretty quickly.

  Yes, the work was going well and there had been no trouble with either Klaus Berger or Jethro Kane, but a shadow still loomed over the Rafter 9.

  No matter what the baron and his people did, the ranch would never be successful without more water.

  So after a week had passed, Smoke, Matt, and von Hoffman headed into the hills to take a look at the waterholes, leaving Preacher in charge at the ranch headquarters.