Aces went around the fire to Marshal Hitch, who was complimenting one of the wives on her tasty soup, saying how he hadn’t had soup this good in ages. Hunkering, Aces nudged him. “Since you like these folks so much, you might want to help them some more.”
“They’re decent people,” Fred said. Nice people. The kind he liked. The kind who never caused trouble for anyone. The kind who made his job as a marshal easier. He’d often thought it was a shame that more people weren’t as nice as he was. “How can I help them?”
Careful not to be overheard, Aces shared his suspicion.
“How will you go about provin’ it?” Fred asked.
“By seizin’ the bull by the horns,” Aces said. “Be ready.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Standing, Aces went over to Luther Hays and the so-called guides and interrupted them with “I have a question for Mr. Creech and Mr. Sterns.”
Hays turned. “I have one for you too. Mr. Creech here says I shouldn’t be so willing to trust you. He thinks it’s strange a marshal from Sweetwater is wandering around these parts.”
“It’s no stranger than their valley that isn’t,” Aces said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Their valley that’s supposed to be ten miles long and five miles wide and perfect for growin’ crops,” Aces said. “There ain’t one.”
Creech and Sterns both scowled, Creech with his Sharps cradled, Sterns with his Spencer pointing at the ground.
“What’s that you’re sayin’?” Creech said.
“Are you callin’ us liars?” Sterns demanded.
“Poor ones, at that,” Aces said. “How much are Mr. Hays and his people payin’ you to lead them to your make-believe valley?”
A smug smile spread Creech’s stubble. “Nary a cent,” he said. “We’re doing it for free.”
Sterns nodded. “We’re only tryin’ to help these folks.”
Aces had been certain the unsavory pair was out to fleece the farmers. Now another, more sinister, notion occurred to him, sparked by a discussion in the Circle H bunkhouse nearly a year ago. “Into an early grave, most likely,” he said.
“What are you on about?” Hays wanted to know. “We’ve only just met you and you accuse these men we’ve been traveling with for better than a week of being out to kill us?”
“You’re new to these parts, Mr. Hays.” Aces was patient with him. “It could be you haven’t heard about the outlaws hereabouts. There are some, I’ve been told, that like to waylay emigrants like yourselves. Rumor has it these outlaws trick pilgrims into going off into the mountains and no one ever hears from them again.”
“I never heard any such rumor,” Creech declared.
“Me either,” Sterns echoed angrily.
“What are you up to, Mr. Connor?” Luther Hays said. “If this is your idea of humor, it’s in poor taste.”
Aces realized he should have let the farmers get to know him a little better before he made his accusation. But now that he had jumped in with both feet, it was sink or swim. Raising his voice so everyone in the circle would hear, he said, “I’m tryin’ to spare you from harm, or worse. I’ve been in Wyoming for years and I’ve never heard tell of this valley these two vultures claim you should go to.”
“What did you call us?” Sterns said.
“Don’t let him rile you,” Creech said.
“What is this, Luther?” the woman who had passed out the soup asked. “What is it this man is saying?”
“I think,” Hays answered, “that Mr. Connor believes our guides are up to no good.”
Sterns was glaring at Aces. He was the one Aces watched, the one who would lose his temper. Creech was more crafty, and more wary.
“To what end, Mr. Hays?” the latter now asked the farmer. “Why would we lead you and your families off into the middle of nowhere?”
“That’s easy,” Aces said. “To rob them and put windows in their skulls.”
“The women and children too?” Hays said in disbelief.
“You’re not in Pennsylvania anymore.” Aces sought to enlighten him. “Out here there are vermin who will murder anybody. Take young Tyree over there. His ma and pa were killed when he was a baby by two polecats who happen to be up in the Tetons right this minute. Their handles are Dunn and Lute, and they are scum. Just like anyone who’d ride with them.” Aces said that last to get a reaction; he got more than he bargained for.
Sterns turned red in the face and blurted to Creech, “Did you hear what he just called them?”
“Hush, damn you,” Creech said.
“No, Mr. Hays,” Aces said. “If I were you, I’d turn around and head for the Oregon Trail and be shed of these guides of yours. They are curly wolves, and you and yours are the sheep they aim to shear.”
“I won’t be talked to like that, you son of a bitch,” Sterns growled.
“Mr. Sterns, please, your language,” Hays said.
“I won’t, I tell you.” Sterns took a step back, his body coiled. “I have half a mind to blow him in two.”
“Calm down, you jackass,” Creech said. “He can’t prove that we haven’t been honest with these folks.”
“Sure I can,” Aces said.
“How?” Creech demanded.
“All Mr. Hays has to do is look at your pard’s ugly face. It’s as plain as his big nose that he’s lyin’ through his teeth.”
Sterns let out a howl of fury. Jerking his Spencer up, he worked the lever to feed a cartridge into the chamber.
Aces shot him. He drew and fanned a single shot that slammed into Sterns’s sternum and knocked him back a step. Sterns stayed on his feet, though, and gamely brought his Spencer to bear. He’d have been wiser to fire from the hip. That was what Aces did, fanning the Colt’s hammer, two swift shots that crumpled Sterns where he stood and caused one of the women to scream and a little girl to wail at the top of her lungs.
In the aftermath, none of the emigrants moved. They were in shock.
Aces pointed his Colt at Creech. “How about you, buckskin?”
“No, you don’t,” Creech said, not making any move to use his Sharps. “You gun me, you’re the murderer. These folks are witnesses.”
Luther Hays found his voice. “Enough, I say. There will be no more shooting.” He stepped over to Sterns and felt for a pulse. “He’s dead,” he said to the woman who had addressed him and must be his wife. “He’s really dead.”
The other farmers picked up the rifles they had set down, and one cocked his, the click unnaturally loud.
Tyree moved over beside Aces, ready to resort to his pistols should it prove necessary.
Fred Hitch stayed where he was. “This is good soup,” he exclaimed loudly. “Everyone should help themselves while it’s hot.”
The emigrants regarded him as if he were insane.
“How can you sit there eating?” Luther Hays said. “A man has just been killed right in front of your eyes.”
“That happens a lot out here,” Fred said, and tapped his badge. “I’m used to it.” Which was a bald-faced lie. “Mr. Connor was only tryin’ to protect you. I’d trust him with my life, and I agree with him that your guides were plumb suspicious.”
“Here, now,” Creech said. “Don’t be makin’ wild accusations.”
“If I could prove you are in cahoots with Dunn and Lute, I’d let Mr. Connor do the same to you,” Fred said.
“You call that law?” Hays said.
“I call it justice,” Fred said.
Creech was remarkably composed, given his situation. “Don’t worry, Mr. Hays. He can’t prove a thing. But I’ll be damned if I’m stickin’ around. I’m going to take my friend and go.”
“Where to?” another farmer asked.
“Away from here,” was all Creech would say. Handing his Sharps to Hays, he
proceeded to saddle two horses and brought them over. The farmers offered to help lift Sterns, but Creech refused their aid and did it himself, placing Sterns belly down and tying Sterns’s wrists to his ankles so the body wouldn’t slide off. Reclaiming his Sharps, Creech climbed onto his mount, glared at Aces and Tyree, and jabbed his heels. In no time the night swallowed him and presently the hoofbeats faded.
“We should have done something,” a woman said.
“He wouldn’t let us,” Hays said.
While all that was going on, Fred finished his first bowl and started in on a second. He was content to stay with the emigrants until morning and maybe prevail on them for breakfast as well. Aces dashed his hopes.
“At first light we’ll head out and follow him.”
“We will?” Tyree said.
“Whatever for?” Fred asked. “You saved these good folks. Let him go his way and good riddance.”
“Use your noggin,” Aces said, and touched a finger to his. “Didn’t you see Creech’s face when I mentioned Dunn and Lute? Where do you reckon he’ll head from here?”
“By golly,” Fred said. “He’ll light a shuck for Robbers Roost.”
“And we’ll be right behind him,” Aces said, “trackin’ him the whole way.”
“You planned that?” Fred said in amazement. Killing one man to track the other? He would never have thought of such a ruse.
“Let’s just say it worked out well,” Aces said.
Tyree was enormously pleased. They could have spent a month of Sundays scouring the Tetons for the outlaw sanctuary. Few knew exactly where it was, and the Tetons covered a lot of territory, five or six hundred square miles, Fred had told him.
“How can you sit there eating soup when a man has just been killed?” Hays said to Fred.
“I’m hungry.”
“But a man has died,” a woman said.
“People do it all the time,” Fred replied. “It’s not worth losin’ your appetite over.”
Hays’s wife stepped to his side and took his hand. “I wouldn’t stay here now even if there is a valley. Wyoming isn’t for us, Luther. It’s too violent. Take us on to Oregon as we intended. We never should have let those two change our minds.”
“No,” Hays said, “we shouldn’t.”
It was a subdued bunch of farmers who sat down to supper. The small children clung to their mothers; the women were anxious and troubled, the men uncommonly quiet.
Fred felt guilty imposing on their good graces. Finishing his second bowl, he set it aside and stood. “I think we have worn out our welcome,” he said to Aces.
Aces nodded. “I reckon so.”
Turning to the farmers, Fred smiled and said, “We’ll be partin’ company with you folks. We thank you for your kindness, but we must be going.”
That was fine by Tyree. He’d never wanted to spend time with them anyway. “We’re grateful for the food,” he said to be polite.
Aces hadn’t bothered to help himself and none of the ladies had offered him a bowl—or venture anywhere near him. Without a word, he touched his hat brim, climbed onto the palomino, and rode off.
“That was a shame,” Fred said when he caught up. “I heard one of the kids say their mother had made dumplings.”
“Liquor and food, that’s all you think of,” Tyree said.
“You’re a fine one to criticize,” Fred said. “All you think of is revenge.”
“Speakin’ of which,” Aces said, “we need to be clear on how we deal with Creech. With any luck, he’ll lead us right where we want to go.”
“What’s to deal with?” Tyree asked.
“We can’t let him talk to Dunn and Lute,” Aces said. “When they ask how Sterns died, Creech will tell them about us, and how I mentioned their names.”
“Oh, hell no,” Fred said.
“We’ll let him lead us there and stop him before he can ride in,” Aces said. He wasn’t as confident as he sounded, but he always had been one to take potential disasters lightly.
“I don’t care if they know we’re comin’,” Tyree said. “I aim to walk right up to Dunn and Lute and start shootin’.”
“Wow,” Fred said. “That’s dumb.”
“Is it ever?” Aces said. “How many times do I have to say that we must do this smart?”
“I want them dead,” Tyree said petulantly.
“It won’t be just them,” Fred said. “There’s the not-so-little matter of the ten to twenty outlaws who might be there with them.”
“The lead will fly fast and furious,” Aces predicted.
“I hope so,” Tyree said.
Chapter 33
Tyree had every confidence their plan would work. Luck was on their side. It was luck that he’d met Moses, luck that Moses led them to Tucker, luck that brought them to the Tetons at the same time as the emigrants were being led to the slaughter by Creech and Sterns.
Although, after he thought about it awhile, he realized that the years of effort and sweat on his part had a lot to do with it too. There had been days when it seemed as if he had been hunting for his parents’ killers forever. So maybe it wasn’t just luck. Maybe all his hunting had simply finally paid off.
Creech headed north into the Tetons, and they followed. Aces did most of the tracking. Tyree could track if the prints were fresh enough. Fred wasn’t much good at it at all. Too much “desk-ridin’,” Tyree joked.
Aces figured Creech would bury Sterns since it would take days to penetrate into the dark heart of the Tetons where Robbers Roost was supposed to be, and by then the body would be awfully ripe. But Creech surprised him.
Creech dumped the body over a cliff.
They were staying well back to keep Creech from discovering he was being trailed. They spotted several buzzards circling over a ridge they were climbing but didn’t think much of it.
At the crest, a cliff yawned, a sheer drop of hundreds of feet. Creech had skirted the top and ridden on up into heavy timber.
Midway, Tyree happened to look down and gave a start. “Is that what I think it is?”
Shifting in his saddle, Aces peered over the edge. “I’ll be damned.”
Fred risked a peek. He didn’t like heights. Never had. Just climbing a tall ladder made him queasy. But he peeked and beheld a smashed body lying on jagged boulders far below. The head had burst like a melon, decorating a boulder with brains and hair, and one of the arms wasn’t attached.
Vultures were pecking and tearing at the remains. One was perched on Sterns’s chest and was prying at an eye with its beak. Suddenly the eye popped free and the vulture raised its ugly head and gulped the eyeball down its gullet.
Fred thought he’d be sick.
“Did you see that?” Tyree said, and laughed. Buzzards had always struck him as comical.
“I thought those two were pards, but Creech just dumped him there,” Fred said, looking away.
“Anything ever happens to me,” Aces said to Tyree, “I’d appreciate better treatment. Bury me if you can take the time.”
“I don’t care what happens to me,” Tyree said. “You can feed me to hogs for all I care.”
“How hideous,” Fred said, imagining a hog tearing at human flesh and gulping it as the vulture had done.
“Dead is dead,” Tyree said. “It’s not like you feel anything.”
The tracks told them that Creech was in a hurry to get where he was going. He trotted when he could. And since he had two horses, he switched mounts whenever one became tired.
By the end of the day they were farther behind than Aces liked. Fortunately the sky showed no sign of thunderheads. A heavy rain would erase the sign.
That night they camped in a clearing under a host of sparkling stars. Wolves howled and a mountain lion screamed. The Tetons were largely untouched by man, and predators and prey thrived in
great numbers.
The next day they came on sign of a different kind, tracks of an enormous beast that crossed Creech’s trail and went off to the west.
Tyree whistled in astonishment.
“Will you look at the size of those?” Fred marveled. “The thing must be a monster.”
The “thing” had been a roving grizzly. The clearest prints were almost a foot long and half again as wide.
“It’s a big one—that’s for sure,” Aces said. He’d encountered a few grizzlies while working the range. The bears, thank goodness, always took one whiff and went the other way. They weren’t as numerous as they’d been, and it was generally believed that it wouldn’t be long before the only grizzlies left were those that lived deep in the mountains, like this one.
“And you poke fun at me for likin’ to sit at my desk?” Fred said to Tyree. “The most fearsome critters I have to deal with are flies and mice. They beat grizzlies all hollow.”
Aces regretted that they didn’t have a spyglass so they could keep better track of Creech. He hoped Creech didn’t have one or Creech might know they were after him. But the outlaw never once tried to hide his trail. That told Aces that they were safe enough, provided they continued to be cautious.
Several days passed. The daytime temperature became cooler at the higher elevation, giving them a welcome respite from the summer heat. The hard travel wore at them, though. And at their horses. Their mounts weren’t accustomed to mountain riding; the steep slopes and switchbacks took a toll.
One afternoon they crested a spiny ridge and drew rein in surprise. Below lay a narrow valley bisected by a stream.
“Lookee there,” Fred said.
Smoke from a campfire coiled into the air.
“Quick,” Aces said. “Back into the trees.” He had seen figures moving about, and horses.
Climbing down, they shucked their rifles and crawled to where they had a clear view.
Fred counted seven men. Two appeared to be Indians, or partly so.
Creech stood out, as he was the only one dressed entirely in buckskins. He was seated at their fire, drinking coffee and talking.
Ralph Compton the Evil Men Do Page 24