by Len Levinson
“I’ve been on the trail for nearly three weeks,” Stone replied. “I feel like relaxing in a saloon, and that’s what I’m gonna do.”
They walked down the street toward the saloon, passing stores closed for the night and drunks sprawled on benches, empty bottles of whiskey in their hands. As they drew closer to the saloon, one of the cowboys looked at them.
“There he is!”
He pointed at Stone and Taggart, and others looked in their direction.
“Let’s git ’em!” the cowboy said.
They spilled off the boardwalk onto the street, heading toward Stone and Taggart, and they were burly, mean-looking men wearing jeans and carrying guns.
“Hope yer satisfied,” Taggart said.
Stone looked at the cowboys approaching on the street and felt anger. He didn’t go through five years of war to be told he couldn’t go to a saloon for a drink. There were seven cowboys, and they crowded onto the boardwalk, blocking the way.
“We’re from the Circle Y!” the one in front said. His hat was low over his eyes, and he had frizzy blond sideburns. “You better get the fuck out of town.”
“Make me,” Stone said.
The cowboys looked at each other, grinned, raised their fists, and rushed toward Stone and Taggart, who lowered their heads and charged. They collided with the cowboys in the middle of the walkway, and fists flew through the air.
Stone ducked a punch, whacked a cowboy in the gut, and found himself standing in front of the blond cowboy with long frizzy sideburns. The blond cowboy threw a long, loping overhand left cross, and Stone blocked it easily. He stepped forward and rammed the blond cowboy in the mouth with his elbow. The blond cowboy’s teeth were knocked down his throat, and his lips were pulped. Stone took a step to the side and threw a sharp right hook. He connected with the cowboy’s temple, and the cowboy dropped like a hunk of lead.
Another cowboy jumped onto Stone’s back, wrapping his arm around Stone’s throat. Stone bent forward and jabbed his elbow into the cowboy’s stomach, then spun around, throwing the cowboy off him. Stone shot an uppercut to the cowboy’s chin, and it straightened him up and sent him flying through the air. Stone didn’t have time to see where he landed, because three other cowboys dived on him from front and behind, causing him to lose his balance, and he fell to the ground.
The cowboys dropped on top of him, punching and kicking, and Stone punched and kicked back. He rolled around on the ground with the three cowboys, and they became buried in a cloud of dust, arms and legs flailing, grunting and hollering. One of the cowboys tried to gouge out Stone’s eyes with his thumbs, but Stone grabbed the thumbs with his hands and bent them back until they cracked. The cowboy screamed and pulled away from the pack.
Another cowboy punched Stone in the mouth, but Stone grasped the cowboy by the throat and hurled him away. One of the cowboys standing tried to kick Stone in the head, and the pointy toe of the cowboy’s boot struck Stone on the right temple, opening a cut.
Stone roared like a lion and jumped to his feet. He saw Taggart lying on his back in the middle of the boardwalk, out cold, and four cowboys from the Circle Y advanced toward Stone.
“Get ’im, boys,” one of them said.
They charged in unison, and Stone kicked one of them in the chest, knocking the wind out of him. He punched another in the nose, flattening it like a pancake. The third cowboy punched Stone hard on the chin, but Stone counterpunched quickly with a left-right combination that sent the man reeling to the ground.
One cowboy remained on his feet, and he looked around uncertainly. He was an inch or two shorter than Stone, but wider in the waist.
“C’mon,” Stone said.
The cowboy had a round head and a grim smile on his face. He raised his fists and stepped forward, and Stone jabbed him quickly in the forehead, between his raised hands. The blow didn’t budge the heavyset cowboy, although Stone’s knuckles split the skin on the cowboy’s forehead, and a trickle of blood dropped down into his eyebrows. The cowboy feinted a left, which Stone blocked, and then the cowboy drove a right into Stone’s midsection, but it was like hitting a wall.
Stone stepped forward, and so did the cowboy. They threw punches at all angles at each other, some connecting, some missing. Stone took as much as he gave, and the crowd in front of the saloon watched noisily, cheering them on, wondering which one would fall first.
Stone tasted blood in his mouth, and spat it onto the ground. He and the cowboy circled each other then rushed at each other again. They came together in the middle of the street, hurling punches. Stone kept hitting the cowboy in the face, but the cowboy wouldn’t go down, and the cowboy managed to land a stunning punch to Stone’s forehead.
Stone decided he’d better concentrate on his defense. He stepped back, blocked a few punches, dodged a few others, and looked for openings. Whenever he saw one, he shot a hard punch through. The cowboy was a rough-and-tumble fighter but didn’t know much about boxing. Stone picked him apart with jabs, hooks, and uppercuts. Soon the cowboy’s face was a mask of blood, and he wheezed through his swollen lips. Getting tired, he lowered his left hand. Stone saw the opening and launched a measured right hook over the low left hand and connected with the cowboy’s cheek. The cowboy blinked and took a step backward. Stone went after him, throwing crunching lefts and rights. The cowboy sagged to the left and then to the right. Stone loaded up on another right hook and struck the cowboy on the ear. The cowboy’s knees gave way, and he collapsed to the ground.
Stone took a deep breath and looked around. All the cowboys from the Circle Y were lying on the ground. Stone bent over and picked up his hat, placing it squarely on his head. Then he walked toward Taggart sprawled in the middle of the walkway.
“What happened?” Taggart asked.
Stone helped Taggart rise to his feet, and Taggart looked at the men from the Circle Y lying on the boardwalk and in the street.
“We really kicked the shit out of ’em, didn’t we, boy?”
“I’ll drink to that!” Stone replied.
Together they walked toward the front door of the saloon. Townspeople stared at them, pointing and talking excitedly, while the cowboys from the Circle Y picked themselves off the ground and staggered toward their horses, their arms around each other’s shoulders, trying to hold each other up, wondering what hit them.
Stone and Taggart walked side by side toward the bar, and Amy still was on duty.
“Whiskey,” Stone said.
“You fellers look like you been in a fracas.”
Taggart placed his belly against the bar. “We just stomped the boys from the Circle Y.”
She poured two glasses of whiskey, and they raised them to their lips, gulping down every last drop. Then she filled the glasses again.
“Goddamn!” Taggart said, his left eye turning black. “I feel like a kid again! We ought to do that more often!”
Chapter Ten
Stone woke up feeling as if a stagecoach had run over him. He smelled coffee and bacon, and opened his eyes. Taggart squatted beside the fire, throwing a few more sticks on. “Mornin’,” said Taggart, his left eye a greenish shade of purple. “How’re you feelin’?”
“Terrible.”
Stone rolled away from his blankets and picked up his tin cup. He made his way to the fire and sat heavily beside Taggart. Taggart poured coffee into the cup, and Stone sipped the hot liquid. He looked around the campsite, and many of the other travelers also were awake, making breakfast, working on their wagons.
Then Stone heard a commotion on the other side of the campsite. It was Jason Fenwick screaming: “I’ve been robbed!”
Fenwick ran toward Stone and Taggart, waving his arms in the air, hollering desperately. He was followed by his wife, their two sons, and two daughters. Everyone looked at them, and Taggart got to his feet.
“My money’s gone!” Fenwick shouted.
“Maybe you’d better sit down,” Taggart said.
Fenwick was too agitated
to sit down. “I just checked to see if my money still was safe, and somebody took every penny of it! I’m ruined!”
“Where was the money?” Taggart asked.
“Beneath the floorboards of my wagon. Somebody pried them up, took the money, and returned the floorboards to where they was.”
“How much did they get?”
“Six thousand dollars!”
Taggart said to Stone, “We’d better go take a look.”
They followed the Fen wicks to their wagon, and Stone was struggling with a massive headache. He and Taggart had drunk whiskey until they could barely stand, and Stone had no idea how he’d returned to the campsite.
They came to the Fenwick wagon, and the tailgate had been let down. The floorboards were removed, revealing a false bottom. “That’s where the money was,” Fenwick said. “Now it’s gone.”
Stone wasn’t in very good condition, but he could feel the immensity of the tragedy. Fenwick had been a rich man, relative to the others on the wagon train, and now he was the poorest. He had a wife and family and was in the middle of the Great Plains without a dime to his name.
“I don’t know what to do,” Fenwick said to Taggart, wringing his hands. “Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.”
A crowd had gathered. Reverend McGhee placed his arm around Fenwick’s shoulders, and Fenwick looked as though he was going to cry.
Taggart said to Stone, “See if anybody’s missin’.”
Stone looked at the people in the crowd, checking off each face, but some faces weren’t there. He sauntered to the wagon owned by the two gamblers, Tad Holton and Sam Drake, and heard snores emanating from within. Stone looked over the tailgate and saw two figures lying on the floorboards, covered with blankets. Stone pulled the blankets away and saw Holton and Drake sleeping like babies, their mouths open, stinking of whiskey.
Next Stone made his way to the wagon owned by Mike Leary, Frank Maxsell, Homer Hodge, and Lou Tramm, the dudes from the East. He saw three of them sprawled around their wagon, their heads covered with blankets, and one lying in the back of the wagon. Stone pulled down their blankets so he could see their faces, and all four were there. They too smelled strongly of whiskey.
Stone headed for the miners’ wagon and couldn’t see anyone sleeping on the ground around the wagon. He looked in the back, and no one was inside. They hadn’t been in the crowd that’d comforted the Fenwicks. Where the hell were they?
Stone walked toward the remuda. He examined the horses, and the ones belonging to the miners were gone. Stone returned to the miners’ wagon and looked for their saddles but couldn’t find them. Their frying pan and coffee pot were missing also, along with some of their clothes.
Stone returned to the Fenwick wagon. Mary Fenwick lay on the ground in a dead faint, and the other women were attending to her. Jason Fenwick paced back and forth, muttering to himself that he was ruined, and Taggart patted him on the shoulder, trying to comfort him.
“I know it’s a bad break,” Taggart said, “but you’ll have to keep goin’. Maybe you can get a job, or maybe you can borry some money from a bank.”
Stone approached them. “The miners are missing. Their horses are gone and so are their saddles, cooking gear, and clothes.”
Jason Fenwick jumped into the air. “I knew it was them! They was always hangin’ around my wagon, actin’ suspicious! Remember I told you somebody’d been in my wagon? It must’ve been them! I’d better go into town right now and tell the sheriff!”
Taggart spat into the grass. “The sheriff ain’t gonna do nothin’.”
“He’s got to go after them crooks! They got all my money! Somebody’s got to do somethin’!”
“He won’t do nothin’ unless it happens right underneath his nose.”
Jason Fenwick sputtered impotently, balling up his fists.
Stone hitched his thumbs in his gun belts. “They couldn’t’ve gone far,” he said, “and they’re not exactly mountain men. Maybe I can pick up their trail.”
Jason Fenwick’s face brightened. “Would you go after them?” he asked. “I’ll come with you! Maybe we can track them down together.”
“I’d rather go alone.”
“If you git my money back, I’ll make it worth your while.”
Taggart said, “Don’t git yer hopes up, Mister Fenwick. There’s a lot of country out there. It won’t be easy to track them boys down.”
Fenwick looked at Stone. “I’d appreciate anything you could do.”
Stone walked back to Taggart’s wagon. He thought of Wayne Collins, Joe Doakes, and Georgie Saulnier, and he’d never liked them. If he were they, what would he do? Head for the nearest town to buy supplies.
He returned to Taggart’s wagon, took down his saddlebags and pulled out his map. Clearfield was the closest town, and the next closest was Rendale to the north.
He heard footsteps and turned around. It was Taggart, alone. “Mighty good of you to go after them miners,” Taggart said. “Why you doin’ it?”
“Hard to say.”
“Which way you think they’re headed?”
“Rendale.”
Taggart looked at the map. “Makes sense.”
Stone filled his saddlebags with canned beans and a hunk of bacon plus coffee and an old lard tin to boil the water in. Then he saddled his horse.
“How long you think you’ll be gone?” Taggart asked.
“I’ll give it a week, no more.”
“We’re movin’ out in the mornin’. You know our route. Shouldn’t be hard for you to catch up with us after yer finished chasin’ them damn miners. I’m a-gonna miss you. I’ll have to be my own scout from now on.”
They shook hands.
“Be careful,” Taggart said.
Stone climbed onto his horse. The horse pranced sideways and backward, and Stone pulled on the reins. He pointed the horse’s head toward Rendale, and touched his spurs to its flanks. Stone rode out of the campsite, and the travelers watched him go, wondering if they’d ever see him again.
His horse plodded over the prairie, and Stone thought of the three miners. Some men would rather steal than work, and that didn’t set right with him. Fenwick worked hard all his life to save his stake, and nobody had a right to take it away.
Stone saw Clearfield straight ahead and angled his horse to the west. He intended to swing wide around the town and then try to cut the trail left by the miners between Clearfield and Rendale. There’d be lots of tracks, but at one point they should thin out. Stone didn’t imagine many people traveled regularly all the way to Rendale.
He rode around Clearfield and continued in a northeasterly direction, passing herds of cattle grazing in the sun. The terrain was gently rolling hills with a few mountains in the distance. He didn’t stop for lunch because he knew he had to stay on the trail. He munched biscuits in the saddle and washed them down with water. In the afternoon, he turned east, hoping to cut the miners’ trail.
He searched the ground for hoof prints or the lay of grass that indicated that riders had passed, but all he saw was open prairie. Occasionally he came to groups of cattle, and some had the Circle Y brand.
Several times he climbed down from his horse to look at tracks, but they were always the tracks of cattle, and he was looking for horseshoes. Late in the day he came to the tracks of a solitary horseman heading north toward Rendale, but the tracks weren’t deep, and it was probably just a lone cowboy working the range.
A half-hour later he came to a substantial number of hoof prints, but the horses weren’t shod. He hoped he wouldn’t blunder into a Comanche war party. He continued his swing to the east as the sun dropped toward the horizon behind him.
It was lonely, eye-straining work. He came to a mass of buffalo tracks and searched among them for the hoof prints of horses but couldn’t find any. Then, farther along, he came to a fresh trail left by at least ten shod horses, which indicated a fairly large party traveling north to Rendale. Could the miners have joined such a pa
rty? Stone thought it over and decided the miners probably would be wary of associating with anybody.
Stone continued to move eastward and wondered if he was on a wild goose chase. How could he expect to find three men in such a big country? But horses left tracks. There was the outside chance he could pick up their trail.
He found more cattle tracks and something that looked like the tracks of a bear. In the late afternoon, he came to another trail. Climbing down from his horse, he examined it, and it looked like three shod horses had passed that way. The tracks headed north to Rendale, and Stone thought he’d found the miners.
He climbed onto his horse again and followed the trail. It continued in a northerly direction but then suddenly turned east sharply, and that baffled Stone. He stopped his horse and unfolded his map. The nearest town to the east was almost two hundred miles away. Where had those riders been headed?
Then the answer came to Stone. The riders probably were cowboys headed toward a ranch, because ranches weren’t marked on the map. He’d been led astray.
Stone decided that he’d gone far enough to the east. It was time to swing back to the west, but soon it’d be dark. His tactics hadn’t paid off.
He wondered if there wasn’t a better way. Should he head straight for Rendale and try to beat the miners there? If he rode all night, guiding himself with his compass and the stars, maybe he could do it. The miners probably would sleep that night, unaware anybody was following them.
He checked his map and compass and pointed the horse in a northerly direction. The sun sank lower on the horizon, and the sky turned a brilliant crimson. Then it grew darker and the stars came out. Stone found the North Star and placed it between his horse’s ears.
He realized now that he should have made for Rendale immediately after leaving camp instead of trying to cut the miners’ trail. That had cost him precious time, but it had seemed a reasonable idea at the time.
Night birds called to each other from the bushes. He passed piles of fresh buffalo dung and crossed an expanse of flat rock. Somewhere out there, the miners were sleeping with their stolen money.