Backed to the Wall

by C. M. Wendelboe

  “That is of little concern to you,” Blue Boy answered. “By the time the sun sleeps this night, those fools who follow will be no more.” He motioned to Swallow’s deerskin clothes. “And I challenge you to try to tear pieces of deerskin to leave behind.”

  He watched as Lorna disappeared to the sanctuary of the cottonwoods to change into Jimmy Swallow’s clothes. “Do not worry, little one,” he whispered. “With Paints His Horses and Hawk on the trail, those who follow us will be no more.”

  CHAPTER 10

  * * *

  Tucker reined his mule beside the trickling stagnant stream that was the Bad River. In wet years, the Bad would overflow its banks on the way to joining the Missouri. In wet years, the Bad could become a deadly torrent of water overrunning anything in its path. But this was a dry year, much like the last several years in the West.

  Ben plowed the damp banks with his sharp hooves for the milky water underneath the ground, while Jack’s horse sniffed the air, unsure where to get its next drink. “This is why I ride a mule,” Tucker said.

  Jack dismounted and led his horse to the edge of the dry river bank beside Tucker’s mule. His horse bent its head and drank the water that had sprung from the hole Ben made. “Not hardly enough to fill a man’s canteen.”

  “More here than where we’re going,” Tucker said.

  “Think so?”

  “Never been to the Badlands before, have you?” Tucker took off his hat. He brushed the hair out of his eyes and let the stiff breeze cool his head.

  “Came close,” Jack said. “We started after that bunch of renegade Brules last year, but the major turned us around soon’s we crossed the White River. He said he didn’t feel like losing men to that God-forsaken ground.” He handed Tucker his canteen. “What’s it like there?”

  Tucker dropped the reins and tugged at a clump of buffalo grass. He looked to the west, trying to talk himself into going in there. If it had been anyone besides Lorna . . . “The Badlands is beautiful in its own way. The rocks—if you could call the shale and limestone rocks—seem to give off their own kind of glow when the sun sets and makes it kind of pretty. Until they start losing their heat, and then they can be as cold and barren as that dancer you’ve been seeing down at the Bucket of Blood.”

  “How’d you know—Never mind,” Jack said and took his canteen back.

  “And the wind. This time of year is the worst.” Tucker began rubbing Ben’s legs and withers with the grass. “It comes whipping off the Shining Mountains and picks up steam through the Black Hills. By the time it reaches the Badlands, the wind’s lost all its moisture. So don’t count on any rain from that wind. It gets so dry it’ll suck moisture right off your tongue.”

  Jack corked the canteen. “But it looks like we got no choice. Blue Boy’s headed there, and we got to make do. Or die. It’s the horses I fear for.”

  “Well, between your paint pony and my mule, we can go anywhere Blue Boy’s Lakota can.” He patted his mule’s rump. “And Ben will help us find water in his own kind of way.”

  They stood beside their mounts and waited for them to drink the last from the mud bog. “Figure she’s alive?” Jack asked.

  Tucker had been thinking of nothing else since he broke out of Aurand’s jail. “She’s alive. If Blue Boy wanted her dead, he would have killed her right off, and we’d have found her body as a warning. Lord knows she’s been slowing them down. Be better for them if she wasn’t with them. But no, she’s alive. That’s the one thing I am sure of.”

  “But why take Lorna?”

  “If you had a choice between Lorna and that dancer . . .”

  “Don’t say it.”

  Tucker grinned. “My guess is he’d take most any white woman. Let her live, too. Call it a soft spot for wasicu women. Might have something to do with his mother being white.”

  “Some soft spot that one has, with the killing he’s been doing these last years.”

  “You remember Bill Hickok being credited with killing a man in every gunfight you heard about?”

  “Who hasn’t?” Jack reached down and grabbed the reins of his pony. “Man’s been in so many shootouts, it’s hard to keep track of them.”

  “By my calculations—now I got no formal education like you do—Hickok’s killed upwards of sixty men.”

  “And your point?” Jack asked.

  “If you believe everything you hear about him—and halve it or quarter it—then that might be closer to the truth.”

  “So you’re sticking up for the man who stole your woman?”

  “I am not sticking up for him. I’m just getting a feeling of who Blue Boy is so I can hunt him. And Lorna’s not my woman.”

  “Yet.” Jack winked.

  Ben’s head jerked up from the ground. Mud dripped from his muzzle, and his ears twitched. Tucker followed where Ben looked up the hill. Tucker slowly walked around to get the mule between him and the hillside.

  “I smell them, too,” Jack said. He slipped the strap off his gun and untied the leather thong securing his rifle to his saddle. He squatted in the dirt and looked up at the high hills overlooking the river. “White or Indian?”

  “Could be either, if Lorna’s got a reward out for her.” Tucker strained to see through the heat shimmering off the hot rocks, which created distracting waves of air. He casually thumbed the strap off his own gun and began to ease the Sharps out of the scabbard when he slipped it back in. Whoever watched them watched them from close, and the buffalo gun would be a disadvantage. Besides, it rested in the scabbard on the far side of his saddle. If he went for it now, whoever waited above would spring the trap on his own terms.

  “What do you think, Tuck?”

  “My guess is they’re some of Blue Boy’s Lakota.” Tucker scanned the hillside as casually as he could, as if he merely stood drinking in the afternoon sun. They had let their guard down and allowed the Indians to gain the high ground. The last thing Tucker envisioned was for Blue Boy to send men back to hunt them. Tucker had been certain the raiding party would make a run for the Wall with Lorna in tow. Unless—as Jack said—white men followed Blue Boy’s Lakota looking to cash in on Lorna’s reward. Either way, it was a mistake Tucker would not make again. If he and Jack lived through this.

  CHAPTER 11

  * * *

  Aurand Forester stood on the promenade deck of the Belle of the Ball listening to the slow dips of her paddles into the water as the stern wheeler backed out of the dock. When the bow cleared the levee, the paddle wheel stopped abruptly and gave one great shudder as if dreading the journey ahead. The wheel began to dip slowly again, gaining momentum until it frothed the waters of the Missouri heading south to the next port at Crow Creek.

  The churning paddles had started lulling Aurand into complacency when he caught himself. Any other time he would welcome a river trip south, perhaps as far away as the capitol in Yankton. Or Sioux City. But this was business, and a deadly business at that.

  He lit a smoke and leaned over the railing, thankful the ship left so soon after Tucker escaped. The trip to Crow Creek would be ninety miles and would place him and his men on ground far more hospitable than the way Tucker had escaped. By Aurand’s calculations, he and his deputies would be able to get ahead of Tucker by a full day. Unless something happened on the river—raiding Indians or a submerged tree ripping a hole in the boat.

  He needed Red Sun. The old man tracked for Aurand whenever there was a trail Philo Brown could not work out. Son of a Crow mother and French trapper who breezed through Crow country one winter, Red had run away as a youngster to scout for the army against the Crows’ traditional enemy, the Lakota. And even though he acted more white than Crow, there was no mistaking his Indian parentage.

  Aurand would need Red. Tucker was savvy enough he could confuse his trail, and only the best tracker—like Red—could decipher it. Aurand had paid two Indian hangers-around-the-fort a jar of whisky each to find Red and give him a note. Philo had found Tucker’s tracks when he turn
ed away from the Missouri toward the Bad River. “Meet us at the first stop the Belle makes,” the note said. “We’ll need you.”

  As the speed of the riverboat picked up, the two great chimneys rising thirty feet in the air belched huge puffs of smoke. The twin engines connected to the pitman, which connected to the wheel, coughed again, and Aurand lurched forward. He caught himself on the railing before he tumbled over. Below, on the lower decks, the boat was loaded with furs and grain to be off-loaded at Yankton, a full crew, and more passengers than the pilot wanted. The Belle owned a shallow draft that allowed it to navigate the Missouri, with unexpected sandbars and half-buried trees jutting upward as if beckoning to passing ships it wished to ensnare. Already, the river appeared menacing to Aurand.

  He flipped his smoke into the water and turned to the walkway. He clung to the rails as he climbed the precarious ladder leading to the pilothouse. He reached the narrow walkway surrounding the wheelhouse and felt his lunch begin to come up for an encore. Captain Merriman opened the sliding window of the boxy structure. “You sure you want to be up here, Sonny?” Merriman grinned and whipped the wheel as if to punctuate his point. “Gets mighty rough up here.”

  “Wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to,” Aurand answered as he opened the door and stepped into the pilothouse.

  A sudden jarring tossed him against the hand railing next to the large wheel Merriman’s hands grasped. When Aurand regained his footing, he looked down at the river. The boat had skidded over a partially-exposed sandbar.

  “Get used to it, Sonny,” Merriman said, more cheerful than Aurand thought he should be. “We’ll be hitting many of those before reaching Crow Creek.”

  Aurand tried concentrating on the windows surrounding the pilothouse. The evasive pattern of the Belle matched the flow of the river, and Aurand felt himself getting sick again. Yet he dared not say a thing, for this was the flagship of the Coulson Line, with the right honorable Henry Merriman as captain. A former Ohio River captain who commanded the utmost respect for his knowledge and skill as a ship’s pilot, Merriman was known to take a particular disdain for landlubbers. Especially when they became sick on his ship.

  “How long’s it going to take us to get to Crow Creek?” Aurand asked to get his mind off his queasiness.

  Merriman jerked the wheel hard to avoid an old oak lurking just under the water’s surface. “You know how I knew that tree was there?” he asked, ignoring Aurand’s question.

  “All I want to know is how long—”

  “Do you—Mister Marshal—know how I knew?”

  Aurand sighed. “No. Just how did you?”

  Merriman picked dried tobacco juice out of his beard, which reached to his upper chest. “I read the river, that’s how. You’ve got to read the river when you spend as much time with the ol’ bitch as I do. You got to read the eddies swirling around old trunks like that last one. You learn to gauge the current by the feel of the water passing under the bow.”

  Aurand closed his eyes and rubbed a headache away. “Just what is your point, Captain?”

  Merriman took his gaze off the river and looked at Aurand through eyes as hardened as any he’d seen. Then the captain turned back to his wheel as he continued talking. “It’s my business to read these waters. That’s why I get paid seven hundred dollars a month. Marshal, you get paid to know men. That’s your business—men and the hunting of men.”

  Aurand began to speak, but Merriman held up his hand to silence him. “That Ashley feller didn’t murder my roustabout.”

  “Were you there, Captain?”

  Merriman shook his head. “Hell, no. I was just as drunk as the rest of my crew. It’s just that I’ve seen my share of men in my lifetime that I’d as soon not see again. Thieves. Cutthroats. Killers of every persuasion who would slit your throat for the price of a bottle of rotgut. I’ve seen that Ashley feller around. Talked to him a time or two. He’s no murderer of my roustabout, that I can tell you. And I’ll testify to that if a judge will allow me.”

  “Like you said, Captain, that’s my business.”

  The boat jerked as it skidded over another sand bar, and Aurand grabbed for the railing. “When are we going to reach Crow Creek?”

  Merriman tamped tobacco into his white clay pipe and patted his pocket for a match. Aurand took a lucifer from his watch pocket and struck it for the pilot. Merriman sucked hard until the tobacco caught, then he blew perfect smoke rings to the ceiling of the wheelhouse. “It depends,” he said at last.

  “On what?”

  “On what those woodhawkers charge us for firewood along the way. They scalped us for eight dollars a cord on the trip up to Ft. Pierre last week.”

  “So pay it.”

  “Pay it!” Merriman bellowed over the noise of the engine and paddles and people milling about on the below decks. “This old girl uses thirty cords of fuel in a day’s ride. That’s—”

  “Two-hundred-forty dollars.”

  Merriman jerked the wheel, and the bow of the Belle dipped to avoid a snag. “If they charge us that, we’ll have to slow down to conserve wood. Maybe cut our own, and that’ll slow us even more.”

  “When?” Aurand felt his patience fading, and he smoothed his pigskin vest to calm himself. “When?”

  “Three days, the way this trip’s starting out.”

  “That’s unacceptable.”

  Merriman shrugged. “It is what it is, Sonny. The river is shallow this time of year. More so with the drought. And that’s three days if we don’t hit any major sandbars or snags.”

  The boat lurched to the lee, and Aurand felt his breakfast rise dangerously close to his throat. His plan to take the paddle wheeler as far as Crow Creek and off-load there was looking dimmer with every passing sandbar. Still, even if they disembarked at Crow Creek a day later and headed straight west—over terrain far friendlier than the way Tucker rode—they would be able to get in front of him.

  Aurand descended the stairs, and his stomach felt better when he reached the boiler deck. “See my deputy?” Aurand asked a deckhand.

  The kid jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “He’s in there.”

  Aurand entered through the door the deckhand had indicated into a smoke-filled room every bit as nasty as the Bucket of Blood on a payday night. Philo Brown straddled a peach crate opposite a drummer squatting on the other side of the signboard they had placed atop a pickle barrel as a table. A third man, a skinny vaquero sporting a sombrero nearly as big around as the barrel, teetered precariously on a three-legged milking stool. He looked at Philo and tossed two bits into the center of the makeshift table.

  Aurand watched the game progress. Philo lost every hand, as he always did at first when the inevitable bait came. “Let’s up the ante,” Philo said. He fished into his pocket and came away with a half-eagle and tossed it in the kitty.

  The drummer loosened his tie that matched his gray herringbone suit and hesitated. “Oh, what the hell,” he said and dug in his pocket for a five-dollar gold piece.

  The vaquero followed suit. “Why not?” He tipped his sombrero back on his head. “It is a long trip, no?”

  Philo smiled as he shuffled the cards, the same deck he’d had when Aurand first met him in Ft. Laramie, Aurand was sure. Philo had just taken money from two cowboys and a rancher in from calving in a field adjacent to the army post. Aurand had stopped on the way to the fort to pick up a man wanted for killing a family at Ft. Thompson and stood watching the game from across the room. Aurand had seen a lot of cheats, but Philo was in a class all by himself. He commenced to win every pot until the other players went bust. When the two cowboys accused Philo of cheating, he feigned being hurt. Which lasted just long enough for him to unload his shotgun into their chests. When the rancher dropped his objections and backed out of the tent, Marshal Forester drew a bead on Philo’s noggin. Aurand demanded that Philo take off his jacket, and cards tumbled out of the false sleeve. “Since when does a deck of cards have six aces?” Aurand asked.

&nb
sp; Philo shrugged, ignoring the bleeding corpses on the other side of the card table. “A man’s got to make a livin’ somehow.”

  “Maybe there’s a better way for you to earn a living,” Aurand said. “Say a steady seventy-five a month.”

  “Who do I have to kill?”

  “Any fugitive or deserter who doesn’t come with you peaceably.”

  The boat lurched, but Philo smiled at the drummer and the vaquero while he dealt cards, that same taunting grin Aurand recognized as Philo’s dead smile.

  “Game’s over,” Aurand said abruptly. He stepped to the table and divided Philo’s winnings between the two men.

  “But we got a lot of playing left—”

  “You’re a deputy marshal, and, as such, we got official business.” Aurand tipped his hat to the other two players. “Enjoy your winnings.” He turned to Philo. “Let’s go.” When Philo didn’t budge, Aurand hoisted him erect by his shirtfront and shoved him out the door. He bounced along the railing as Aurand steered him toward his cabin. Philo stumbled and hit his head on the top of the door jamb.

  “Why’d you break up the game?” Philo rubbed the side of his head. “I was gonna’ win the next hands.”

  “You’re drunk.”

  “Of course I’m drunk.” Philo caromed off the wall of the cabin and staggered to the edge of his bunk. “But not too drunk to win some extra money.”

  Aurand glared down at Philo. “You’re a fool. We’re hunting Tucker Ashley. Not some kid deserter fresh from the farm, or some old drunk Indian. The man is dangerous. And unpredictable. I need you, but I need you clear headed. Getting drunk and caught cheating won’t help us any.”

  “I didn’t get caught.” Philo grinned. Tobacco juice trickled down his chin, and he wiped it away with the back of his hand. “You ever knowed me to get caught righteous?”

  “Simon Cady says otherwise.”

  “So one time I slipped up. Wouldn’t have happened with this bunch of yahoos . . .”