Horner’s exasperated sigh was like the cough of a bull elk. “How?” he demanded.
“Apparently the man impersonating the real Pasco was a former employee of his agency, from St. Louis. They may all have been former employees. I don’t know. But we’re fairly sure of the ringleader. His real name is Asa Parker. He was dismissed by the security company four years ago, and there are warrants out for him in at least seven states, from Missouri to Ohio.”
“Nine thousand dollars!” Horner muttered. “And I suppose that explains why Brockman had to concludethe deal on site, instead of here in Denver?”
“Exactly.” Wylie nodded. “Pasco ... or rather, the fake Pasco—Asa Parker—set it all up. As I said, it was a trap from the very beginning.”
“This Asa Parker ... you say he’s a wanted man, though he was at one time an employee of a respectedarmed escort service. What’s he wanted for?”
Wylie leaned forward to thumb through some of the files in the open valise. He removed a document and squinted through his glasses. “He was dismissed for misconduct, it says. That could mean anything from petty theft to raping a client’s wife. Usually it means embezzlement. Since then, though, he’s gone renegade. He’s implicated in half a dozen murders, some of them quite brutal. Then there’s fraud, forgery... Mr. Parker is a busy man. And this wasn’t his first impersonation. He’s been several different people at various times.”
Wylie paused, reading through the list of charges while Horner waited impatiently.
“This is odd.” Wylie looked up. “In some of these cases, involving railroads, the investigating officers concluded that Asa Parker and his gang were workingwith—or for—someone else. An inside man, so to speak, calling the shots. But there isn’t a clue who that might have been.”
“Get on with it,” Horner growled.
Wylie returned to his list. “There are several robberieslisted here,” he said, “the first with one accomplice,the latest with five. That was in Wyoming, just last year. Another railroad job, where Parker and his thugs robbed a courier for the Union Pacific. Very similar to what happened here. Parker and his gang dropped out of sight just after that.”
“Well, we know where they went, don’t we?” Hornerglared at the valise as though it were full of snakes. “They came here and wound up working for us. You’ve gone to the authorities with this, I assume”.
“Of course I have, sir. Local, state, and federal. They’ll do what they can to apprehend the culprits. I’ve also taken the liberty of sending for a ... well, a gentleman who might be a lot more effective. He’s a known tracker and a highly competent expeditor.”
“You’ve hired a gunman?”
“Not just a gunman, sir. Far more than that. I haven’t exactly hired him, but I’ve sent out messages to various places where he might receive them. I issued a general notice to every Western Union of fice, marshal’s office, and army post in the territories.I expect he’ll show up.”
“You notified army posts?”
“He was recently employed by the army, as a scout in the Apache campaigns down in Arizona. He’s no longer there, but I have word that he might be on his way back to Colorado. He’s from here, originally. His home is west of Snow Mountain Pass. Place called Valley.”
“Will he take this job for us?”
“I made a good offer, sir. He’s a free agent, though. He goes where he pleases. We’ll know when we hear from him, I suppose.”
“Very well,” Horner said. “Keep me posted, Wylie. By the way, who is this man you’ve sent for? Do I know him?”
“I’m sure you’ve heard of him, sir. Everyone has, I guess. His father was quite a legend in these parts some years back, and from what I hear the son is everything the father ever was. George Crook told the Rocky Mountain News that he’d rather have this jasper at his back than field artillery. His name is MacCallister. Falcon MacCallister.”
Falcon didn’t see the smoke again, but late that afternoon he found where it had come from.
For the past hundred miles, the grass plains had rolled out like a flung carpet of mighty swells and ripples, declining from the foothills of the Rockies. Here, though, in the trailing edges of that realm between mountain plains and great plains, the surgingswells became more pronounced. The rises were higher, longer to cross, the ever present buffalo grass was mixed with taller bluestem, and a man could see abundant life everywhere he looked.
Little herds of pronghorn antelope flowed on the horizon, swift phantoms racing across the grass. There were jackrabbits, ground squirrels, and great flocks of game fowl, and hardly a mile passed withoutsigns of wolves. Early spring had arrived in full here, and birds of a hundred kinds rose and descended,spiraled and wheeled, while searching hawks and striking falcons darted among them. High above, eagles soared.
Diablo paced the miles nervously, skittish and shyingnow and then, and MacCallister knew why. The warming winds had brought the rattlers out. Big diamondbackshuddled here and there, almost invisible beneath the clumps of grass. The smell of snake was in the wind, and man and horse could both hear them buzzing.
Somewhere ahead, Falcon mused, there must be a denning region—a place where the rattlers wintered.The snakes were coming out of winter cover now, ravenous, and feasting where they could. Those that had satisfied their winter hunger were beginningto shed their skins. Some of them, the larger ones, would be blind during this process, and that only made them more dangerous. Unable to see, they would strike at anything.
“Watch your step, boy,” Falcon muttered as Diabloshied from a clump of sage. “Big diamondback can kill a man, and it could sure lame a horse.”
Eyes to the ground, he walked the horse for the next two miles, then swung down and led it on tether, using his rifle as a stick to beat the trail ahead. He saw dozens of snakes, and avoided them.
The sun was quartering in the west when he came to a break. A long, washed-out gully cut across the downward side of a swell, an ugly scar on the endless face of the grasslands. It was an erosion channel, created by countless seasons of runoff from the higher slopes. It ran generally west to east, heading toward some creek or river far away. Its entire south face was a mask of dirty white, the remaining crust of a winter drift not yet melted away by spring temperatures.
Moving carefully, Falcon led the big black into the gully and across it, climbing out through a rime of ice on the far side. A few hundred yards along that bank, and he knew he had made the right choice. There wasn’t a rattlesnake to be found.
“Their nest is north of here,” he told the horse as he swung into his saddle. “They’ve just come out, and they don’t like crossing that ice.”
He put three more miles behind him, then reined in at a low crest. Half a mile ahead, something odd lay on the prairie. Easing back from the skyline he dismounted, got out his telescoping glass and crawled forward. When his view was clear he extendedthe glass and scanned the distance, slowly.
In the middle of a swath of blackened charred grass, an old two-wheel cart sat broken and burned. It lay aslant on a wheel and a hub, amidst a scatteringof what appeared to be buffalo bones. A dead horse and at least two human bodies sprawled around it, singed by grass fire. Two more horses grazed free in the distance beyond, one still wearing a saddle and headstall but no hobbles or tether.
There was no sign of life.
Falcon put his glass away, swung aboard Diablo, and headed for the scene. He was halfway there when he found his lost trail again—those same wagon tracks he had followed, and the imprints of riders escorting it.
The prints led down to the burnt grass, then disappearedthere. The wagon had passed before the grass was fired.
He circled halfway around the blackened expanse—thefire hadn’t spread far in the recently wet grass—and found the prints again, still rolling eastward.
The old cart had a broken wheel, and the bodies sprawled beside it were Indians—a man and a woman. They were badly burned, and both had been brutalized. The woman’s clothi
ng was torn away, and her breasts removed. The man had been hacked randomly with a knife.
Falcon could not identify their tribe, if any, but it was obvious they had been poor scavengers collectingbuffalo bones to sell to white traders. Since Sand Creek, and the deprivations that followed the MedicineLodge treaty, a lot of the scattered plains people had been reduced to such lives.
Squatting beside the bodies, he found what had killed them. The man had been shot, and the woman appeared to have been beaten to death. Then the bodies were mutilated, and they and their broken wagon doused with kerosene and set afire.
He was just turning away, looking for something to dig with, when a bullet whined past his ear, followeda second later by the sharp report of a rifle. He dived, rolled, and came up behind the burned cart with a handful of Colt .44. Echoes still resoundedwhen a second shot ripped through the cart’s timbers, showering him with splinters and ash.
FOUR
Whoever was shooting, he was good. His aim was fair, considering that he had to be at least two hundredyards away, and he knew how to be invisible. Few men could have hidden from Falcon MacCallisterin such wide-open country.
Falcon didn’t wait for a third shot. In that instant’s pause between impact of the second round and the crack of its report, he was up and sprinting, zigzaggingacross the scorched grass in the direction of the shots.
There was no cover at all—just the bald prairie, scorched and leveled, with grass and a few scrubby stands of sage lining the burnout, and wisps of ash and dust drifting on the fitful wind. Flat prairie, with nothing on it more than a foot tall. Nothing that could hide a man.
Falcon ran as a spooked turkey runs—crouched and spread, dodging and cutting back each two or three steps but covering ground toward the north perimeter where the gunshots had sounded. Fifty yards from the fringe of cover another bullet whisked past him, whining into the distance behind, and now he knew where the shooter was. Where no man could hide, the rifleman was so well hidden that even now Falcon couldn’t see him—only the flicker of movement in the grass as the rifle bucked.
He sprinted, straight ahead now toward the place where the shot came from, and the .44 bucked and thundered, a drumroll of fury as he spaced five shots into the grass, spreading them out. He heard a shrill shriek, and the grass seemed to explode. A figure emerged, came bolt upright, then turned to run and stumbled, falling flat. Falcon switched hands and came up with a fresh Colt in his right.
Before the fallen shooter could recover, Falcon was on him, standing over him, twin hammers cocked full back. He froze, a hair from firing, and stared.
A kid! The shooter was just a dirty faced Indian kid, maybe twelve or thirteen years old, gawking up at him with agate eyes the size of dollars.
The boy twisted, tried to bring up his old rifle—a battered Winchester .32-20—and Falcon wrenched it from his grasp. He jacked it open a couple of times, then tossed it aside. It was empty. Those three bullets were all the kid had owned. The boy scurried backward, rolled over, and came up with a rusty, worn-out skinning knife.
With a sigh, MacCallister put away his guns, grabbed the skinny arm that stabbed at him, and plucked the knife away. Then he crouched, hoisted the kid by collar and britches, and carried him—flailing and struggling—out of the grass to where Diablo stood ground-reined at the west edge of the burn.
He stood the kid on the ground there, then kicked his feet out from under him with a swipe of his boot. The boy sat down hard, and Falcon squattedbefore him. “Who are you?” he demanded.
The boy just stared, and Falcon repeated the question in Spanish, then in French, bastard Apache, and finally Shawnee. None of these got him any response.The boy simply stared at him stubbornly with frightened hooded eyes. He was a scrawny kid, raven-haired and dark-eyed but not brown-skinned like most Indians. His sun-darkened features were copper and apple-red. He was lean and tapered in build, not stocky. His features were angular, and his face and skull more oval than round.
“Maybe you’re a Cheyenne,” Falcon suggested. He pointed at the kid. “Cheyenne? Sha-he-ena? Tisi-tsi-ista?”
The kid stared at him blankly.
“Okay,” Falcon nodded. “So you’re not a Cheyenne.”He tapped himself on the chest. “MacCallister,”he said. “I’m MacCallister.” He pointed at the boy. “Who are you?”
The boy hesitated, then pointed at himself. “Woha’li,” he said thinly.
“Well, we’re getting somewhere, I guess.” Falcon nodded. “You’re Woha’li. That probably means sixteendifferent things in sixteen Indian tongues. Wonder which kind you are.” He stood, and the boy started to edge away. “Stay!” he commanded, and his tone was translation enough.
He unslung his canteen and dug a wrap of pemmicanfrom his saddlebag, and handed them to the kid. Woha’li accepted them suspiciously, took a long pull from the canteen, and sniffed at the pemmican—amix of shredded jerky, suet, cornmeal and dried fruit. He tasted it, tasted it again, then went to work on it as though famished.
“Half-starved,” Falcon muttered. “Prob’ly been hanging around here, saving his bullets in case those killers came back. Guess he thought I was one of them.”
While the boy wolfed down pemmican, Falcon scraped away a space, made a little fire, and put on some bacon and coffee. Then, taking his rifle and a US Army Issue short spade, he walked off to completethe task he had set himself. Those people with the cart might have been only Indians, but they deserveda decent burial.
He wasn’t concerned about the boy. If he wanted to run away, that was up to him. And as for Diablo—and the supplies in the saddlebags—he wasn’t going anywhere. And Lord help anyone but MacCallister who tried to lay a hand on that big mean son of a bitch.
The boy apparently knew what to do with bacon and coffee. While he worked, MacCallister saw him at the fire, helping himself. Then, when the grave was dug and he eased the two tarp-wrapped bodies into it, the boy was there beside him. The kid didn’t cry or sniffle, the way a white boy might. He just stood there, watching, and his dark eyes were unreadable.
“These were your folks, weren’t they?” Falcon asked gently, spading dark soil over the still forms. “Well, I know it sure hurts, Woha’li. But it’s the best I can do.”
It was twilight when he finished filling the grave and patted it down. He removed his hat, but didn’t bow his head. Instead he looked upward, in the Indianway, so that Man Above could see his face and know that he was sincere. “I never knew these people,”he said, “nor what they did in life, good or bad. But I see how poor they were, and how they were treated, and I see this boy’s grief that they’re gone. Smooth their path to the seventh sky, Lord, and treat them right when they get there.”
“Do‘da-dagohu’i,” the boy whispered beside him. ‘Edo‘da ... E’tsi ... do’di.”
When Falcon turned away, the kid followed. He went to the north grass and picked up the old 32-20 where he had dropped it. He handed it to the boy, then headed for his little fire. It was as good a place as any to camp. The wind was from the west, and would carry away the stench of death.
He built up the coals, put on a pot and a griddle, and left the kid in charge while he rode out and brought in the two strayed horses. The one wearing the saddle was galled and skittish, the other had a bullet welt on its rump, and both of them were shy. It was no wonder Woha’li hadn’t been able to round them up.
With Diablo’s help he brought them in, then gentledthem down and treated their sores with bacon grease and sage. There was an old wallow nearby with snow-melt pooled in the bottom, and plenty of winter grass. Diablo wouldn’t stray, and Falcon knew the other horses would stay with the big black.
As stars brightened above they ate some biscuits and drank some stiff coffee. Then Falcon unrolled his soogans and divided up the blankets. It was a mild night, and the kid stank to high heaven. He could share the bedding, but not a bed.
As he rolled in, using his saddle as a pillow, Falcon MacCallister thought about the words Woha‘
li had said, there at the grave. “Do’da-dagohu’i.” It was an Indian farewell, and now he knew what kind of Indianthe kid was. The word—or phrase—was Cherokee.It meant, simply, good-bye.
Billy Challis wasn’t happy. All through supper he kept jumping up and walking to the top of the west rise, to peer beyond it. “There’s somebody back there, I tell you!” he repeated, coming in this latest time. “Somebody’s picked up our trail, an’ they’re out there followin’ us! I saw a fire back there, sure as hell!”
“You saw that stinkin’ cart you and Folly burned,” Asa Parker growled. “Damn grass fire’s probably flared up again. Now shut up about it and let me think! ”
Billy was quiet for a little while, but pretty soon he was up and stomping around the camp again, cursing under his breath.
“You’d better put a rein on it for tonight, Billy,” Tuck Kelly warned. “Asa’s gettin’ mad.”
“I don’t give a damn!” Billy spat. “I’m tryin’ to tell him somebody’s out there, on our back trail!” Still, he glanced around, lowering his voice. The gunman might push his luck now and again, but he wasn’t quite ready to take on Asa Parker. “I know a campfire when I see one, Tuck,” he told the big man seriously. “I don’t like it! We didn’t leave any witnesses, but there’s somebody out there. I got a feelin’!”
Tuck stood, squinting. “Damn it, Billy,” he muttered.“You’d drive a fencepost crazy.”
“What?”
“I said I’ll go up and look one more time,” Tuck grumbled. “But then I don’t want to hear no more about it.”
Atop the rise, Tuck scanned the backtrail methodically.The immense distances rolled out and away under a starry sky, but he saw no small spark that might indicate a fire.
“You’re imaginin’ things, Billy,” he said finally. “Asa’s right. Maybe that grass burn flared up again. But it’s gone now. Wouldn’t have been there at all if you an’ Folly coulda just left them Injuns alone. Now just settle down. Our trail’s been cold for a week. Who’d be followin’ us now?”
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