There was so little left of the three charred bodies that a big hole was not required, so he dug only one grave and put them all in it. Using a piece of canvas he found in the barn, he carried each body to the grave as gently as he could. When all three were resting in the bottom of the hole, he covered them with the canvas, pausing to apologize to them for not being there to help them when their murderers struck. He had not had time to know Boone’s wife, Blue Beads, but he felt the pain his brother would have suffered. Elvira and Ruthie had been his adoptive family, and the grief he felt for them was almost unbearable. Billy’s horse approached to within a few yards to watch the man suffering with his conscience and berating himself for his failure to protect. Finally Joel asked God to treat them kindly, then started shoveling the dirt back into the grave. Before leaving, he promised them that their killers would all pay for what they had done.
The question before him now was what his next move should be. He had not expected Beauchamp’s men to be on Boone’s property when he rode in that morning. His plan had been to scout out Beauchamp’s place, waiting for an opportunity to catch his prey in singles or doubles, away from the rest of the gang. After the confrontation just passed, it was likely Beauchamp would send his men to search for him, so he was convinced he was now the hunted and not the hunter.
Either way, he thought, they’ll pay.
The next thing he decided to do was to find a suitable camp, a place where he could leave his extra horse. With that in mind, he went back into the tack room to get a coil of rope hanging there. At some time or another, there was always a need for a length of rope. There was one more job he had to do before looking for a camp, so he tied his newly acquired packhorse there at the barn, took the pick and shovel, and went back to the mine to bury Boone and Riley. When he finished that soulful task, he returned to the barn.
Knowing that Beauchamp’s men would be scouring this entire mountain, he decided that he could not stay there, so he started off down the back side of the mountain, leading his packhorse. Billy’s horse watched them leave until they had gone about fifty yards; then it tossed its head a couple of times and loped after them. This was not something Joel desired, considering his current circumstances. Hiding one extra horse was going to be challenge enough. He didn’t want the bother of another horse. But the horse continued to follow some several dozen yards behind him, no matter that he tried to chase it back. He finally gave up trying, and resigned himself to the fact that he was going to have to find a place to keep both extra horses.
The mountains to the east of the one Boone had settled on looked to be much more rugged and offered a better chance to find the spot he was looking for, so this seemed the best place to go. He spent most of the day searching, but he finally found a place just made to order, where a busy stream made its way down from the mountaintop through steep rock walls to form a small waterfall at the back of a high, narrow canyon. There was only one way into it on horse or foot, and only wide enough for horses to enter single file, so he felt confident that it would be difficult for anyone to surprise him there. He led his horses into the small clearing at the bottom of the falls and proceeded to make his camp.
• • •
Boss Beauchamp was furious. He had planned to ride into town in the afternoon to spend the night in the hotel, and much of the next morning in his office at Beauchamp No. 2. His late dinner was interrupted by the arrival of Slow Sam on a thoroughly lathered horse, yelling something as he skidded to a stop in front of the barn. Knowing the half-breed was supposed to be up at McAllister’s claim, he assumed he could anticipate bad news of some kind, and he was getting sick and tired of hearing about things that had gone wrong.
“Lena!” he roared, and pulled the napkin from his neck and threw it on the table. “Lena!” he roared again when she didn’t appear in the doorway immediately. He pushed his chair back and stood up.
“What are you yelling about?” the somber Ute woman asked.
“Put my dinner in the oven to keep warm. I’m going outside to see what those damn fools have fouled up now.”
He didn’t wait for her response, but picked up his heavy coat from the hall tree and stormed out to the front porch.
“What is it, Mike?” Beauchamp called out to his foreman, who was talking to the obviously agitated half-breed.
Strong glanced up when hailed by Beauchamp, and held his hand up to signal that he had heard him. With Slow Sam in tow, he went immediately to stand at the bottom of the front porch steps.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “I was just gettin’ ready to come report to you.” He turned to point at Sam. “He says he thinks Billy Garland and Pete Gentry are dead.”
“Dead?” Beauchamp exploded. “He thinks? What does he mean, he thinks they’re dead? Doesn’t he know?” He was so angry he began to sputter. “Who killed them?” he demanded.
“Tell him, Sam,” Strong said.
Slow Sam told them what had happened to send him racing down the mountain. “I don’t know how many there was waitin’ for Billy and Pete. They wanted to go down to that homestead and get in the barn to keep warm.” He glanced at Strong. “I stayed up there at that mine, like you told us to do, Mike, keepin’ my eye out. Well, I heard the shots, and I hightailed it down there as fast as I could go. I didn’t see hide nor hair of either one of ’em, so I figured they was dead. Then somebody started shootin’ at me. Damn near got me, too.” He cocked his head to show them a couple of small scratches where pieces of the bark had hit him. “There was just too many of ’em, and they was all hid too good. Wasn’t nothin’ I could do. Wouldn’t’ve done no good if I rode down there in the open and got shot, too. So I figured the best thing for me to do was to get on back here so you’d know what was going on up there.”
Without interrupting, Beauchamp listened to Sam’s accounting of what had happened on the mountain, but he was not convinced that there was a gang of men up there. Seething with anger, he nevertheless remained calm.
“He’s back,” he said, looking at Strong accusingly. “That son of a bitch McAllister, the brother, he’s back—maybe him and the Indian, too. There’s no gang of gunmen up there.” He shifted his gaze to lock onto Sam. “You say you got shot at. How many times?”
“Well, I was too busy to count the shots,” Slow Sam claimed.
“Most likely one or two before you ran,” Beauchamp said sarcastically. “There’s only two men up there—the two you let get away. And now they’ve come back to try to sit on that claim again, and, damn it, I want this thing cleaned up. I’m tired of hearing about failures. It’s gone on too damn long. Mike, take the men we’ve got left and go up there and run that son of a bitch to ground. Finish it.”
There were cattle and horses scattered over both spreads, McAllister’s and his, and he had planned to have his crew rounding them all up by this time.
“Yes, sir,” Strong said, “but you know I’m down to five men now, if Billy and Gentry are dead.”
“Damn it,” Beauchamp exclaimed, “you’re only going after one man, maybe two. Hell, take Fuzzy with you, if the six of you can’t handle it.” Getting angrier by the minute, he added, “Maybe I should send Lena up there with you. That would give me one I might be able to count on.”
Properly chastised, Strong and Sam backed away a step.
“Yes, sir,” Strong said. “We’ll sure as hell get ’em this time. I’ll go get the boys ready to ride, and we’ll stay up there till we find McAllister.”
“Just do what I pay you to do,” Beauchamp replied in frustration. He remained there on the porch for a moment, trying to settle his anger down. The hills were being littered with the bodies of men he had hired to do his killing, and he wanted to end this war before the people of Silver City found out what was really going on.
Still irate, he charged back in the front door, in time to collide with Lena, who was coming from the front window where she had been
listening to the discussion outside. It was enough to provoke his anger even more.
“Damn you, you nosy bitch!” he roared, and shoved her out of his way. “You’re worse than a damn dog, getting underfoot!”
“I not your dog,” Lena spat back.
He slapped her for her insolence. “You are if I say you are. Now get my supper out of the oven before I give you the beating you deserve.”
Her face red and stinging, she did as she was told, having no choice but to do so.
Chapter 12
They didn’t wait long, Joel thought as he lay at the base of a pine tree, watching the trail Beauchamp’s men had always used when making their raids on Boone’s property. There were six of them, riding two abreast up the steep path. It was obvious they intended to flush him out of the barn, if he was still there, using the advantage of numbers.
He planned to methodically reduce their number advantage, and this was the reason he had positioned himself over the trail halfway up to the mine, before they were in sight of it. He had no intention of shooting it out with six men. He preferred to take his time and reduce the odds, thinking he had a better chance of completing the mission he had set for himself.
He cocked the Spencer and steadied it upon a small mound of dirt, snow, and pine needles that he had raked up by the base of the tree, and waited. It would be better, he thought, to let them get a little farther up the trail, close enough to make sure he hit his mark, but not so close as to be upon him right away.
When he decided it was time, he laid the front sight of the carbine on one of the riders at the head of the column, hoping it was the leader of the bunch. Very slowly, he squeezed the trigger until the weapon finally spoke. As quickly as he could, he ejected the spent cartridge and fired again. His initial target fell from the saddle, but his second shot missed when the rider beside him jerked away. He made no attempt to fire a third shot.
That will do for now, he thought, as he pushed his body back away from the base of the tree, satisfied that he had reduced the number of his hunters to five.
When back far enough to get to his feet without being seen from below, he hurried back up the slope to his horse and retreated up toward the top of the mountain. He knew he was leaving a trail in the snow, but he planned on ending it when he reached the stream at the foot of the mountain on the other side. Behind him, there was momentary chaos.
• • •
“Behind those rocks!” somebody yelled needlessly, for there was already a frantic rush by all of them to seek cover behind an overhanging rock shelf, with the exception of Bris Snyder, who was lying in the trail. He had been the unfortunate one riding beside Mike Strong at the head of the column.
“Where is he?” Strong shouted. “Anybody see where those shots came from?”
“I did!” Zach Turner answered excitedly. “Up yonder, in them pines, near that big one on the right edge.” As soon as he said it, two of the men started shooting at the tree Turner had pointed out.
“You see him?” Strong demanded.
“No, but we might as well make it hot for him,” one of them replied.
“Quit wastin’ cartridges,” Strong told him. “He’s pretty much got us pinned down here. We’ve got to circle around these rocks and come at him from above.”
“What about Bris?” Tom Larkin asked. “Is he dead? Can anybody see him?”
“He don’t look like he’s movin’.”
“We oughta make sure he ain’t dead.”
“I ain’t goin’ out there to find out, and get my ass shot,” Slow Sam said. No one volunteered to risk it.
“Hell,” Strong said, “throw a rope out there to him. If he ain’t dead, he can grab hold of the rope and we’ll pull him in behind the rocks.”
That seemed like the perfect solution to them all, so Steve Tatum, who was closest to the path, uncoiled a length of rope, tied a big double knot in the end, and tossed it out toward Bris. His aim wasn’t very accurate, leaving the rope several feet from Bris, but he left it there for a minute or two to see if he would try to reach for it. When he didn’t, Tatum drew the rope back and tried a couple more times, the final try coming to rest across Bris’s shoulders with no response from the body.
“He’s dead,” Strong pronounced. “Let’s get goin’. We’ve got to get around behind that bastard and smoke him outta there.”
“There might be two of ’em up there,” someone reminded him. “There were two shots.”
“They weren’t that close together,” Strong said. “I think he’s all by his lonesome.”
• • •
The time spent trying to determine Bris Snyder’s status was enough to afford Joel a good head start down the other side of the mountain, where he rode his horse into the shallow stream and followed it at a lope through the narrow valley beyond, remaining in the water all the way through the valley.
Having already selected an exit point the day before when he was looking for a place to make his camp, he guided the gray out of the stream when he came to a rock shelf that extended down into the water. Being careful to walk his horse on the dry areas where the sun had melted the snow on the shelf, he rode the gray across it to a grassy area between the rock and the edge of a stand of pine trees.
Once in the trees, he dismounted and left the horse to stand there while he picked up a dead branch and went back to try to disguise his footprints. Deciding it was the best he could do, he climbed into the saddle and guided the gray through the thick stand of pines, the floor of which was thick with pine needles that would make it hard for a tracker to follow.
Satisfied that he had struck a telling blow in his war against Boss Beauchamp, he proceeded to his camp by the waterfall to await the night. Then he would see if the five remaining gunmen would return to Blackjack Mountain or set up camp on McAllister property.
• • •
Two mountains to the west of the narrow canyon that held Joel’s camp, Mike Strong knelt at the center point of a half-circle line of attack, two of his men on each side of him. On his signal, with rifles ready, they began to slowly converge on the one pine that towered above the rest. Within twenty yards of the spot from which the sniper’s bullet had come, they suddenly stopped when a laurel bush beside the tree moved. Not waiting for a signal, all five opened up with their rifles, spraying the tree and the area around it with a devastating rain of hot lead. When it was over, they stormed down upon the hapless victim of their assault, a thoroughly dead marmot that had been attracted to the little mound of dirt and snow.
“He’s gone.” Tatum stated the obvious.
“What did you expect?” Slow Sam replied sarcastically. “I coulda told you he wouldn’t be here. Hell, it took us about thirty minutes to get around behind this spot.”
“All right, you damn half-breed,” Strong said. “You’re always braggin’ about how you can track anybody. There’s still a little bit of snow on the ground. Let’s see if you’re worth what Boss is payin’ you.”
Sam looked around the tree for only a minute, then said what all of them could see for themselves, “It’s just one feller. See by his tracks? He left his horse up there in them trees and walked down here.” He followed the obvious footprints, and the other four men came along behind him, all with cautious eyes scanning back and forth, leery of another ambush. Sam found the place he figured the horse had been tied, because the pine needles had been pawed up. It was not so easy after that until they found tracks leading out of the belt of trees, heading toward the top of the mountain.
“Looks like he took off,” he said, gazing up at the crown. “Ought not to be too hard to follow his trail, now that he’s out in the open.”
Sam’s assumption proved to be accurate, for they easily followed the tracks over the top of the mountain and down the other side until they reached the stream at the bottom. “I’m good, but damned if I can track him in wate
r,” he said.
“Well, he had to go upstream or downstream,” Strong said, “’cause it don’t look like he crossed. He was headin’ east, so he most likely went upstream.” So they rode up the stream, looking for a place where he might have come out of the water. There was nothing to indicate he ever did.
“Take a look at that rock shelf there,” Strong told Tatum. “That looks like a good place to get out without leavin’ tracks.”
Tatum guided his horse up on the shelf and walked him across it to the other edge. Taking a quick look beyond the rock, he said, “He didn’t come out here. There’s still a right good cover of snow on the grass and there ain’t a track in it.”
They continued on up the stream until they came to a place where it was underground, gushing forth from a large hole in the side of the mountain. After scouting the ground around the opening, they could find no tracks indicating that Joel had left the water there.
“Well, what did the son of a bitch do, fly outta here?” Larkin asked.
“No,” Strong said. “He just outsmarted us this time. He musta gone downstream. It’s gettin’ too late to be stompin’ around in these valleys now. The sun’ll be gone in about an hour. We’ll go on back and set up camp in McAllister’s barn for the night. Then we’ll comb these damn hills in the mornin’ till we route his ass outta wherever he’s hidin’.”
“That might take some doin’,” Zach Turner said. “He could be hidin’ out anywhere in these mountains.”
“That may be so,” Strong argued, “but he’s actin’ like he’s still got some idea that this place is his. At least, he’s hangin’ pretty close. We’ll just camp back there at that barn, so if he shows up again before mornin’, we’ll be waitin’ for him. If he doesn’t, we’ll start lookin’ for his camp.”
• • •
With a sizable fire built in the open doorway of the barn, so as not to fill their sleeping place with smoke, Strong’s men cooked some bacon they had brought with them and boiled some coffee. As a precaution, Strong assigned his four remaining men to a guard watch, each man to stand a two-hour watch. Zach drew the first two hours. When darkness descended upon the mountainside, the horses were unsaddled and led into the corral, and the hunters settled in for the night—all except Zach. With his blanket wrapped around his shoulders, he took a position up across the yard, against a piece of the outside wall of the house. It was the only section left standing after the house was burned down.
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