The Crimson Trail

by Eric Red

  A half hour later, his stomach full of the good strong coffee and tasty hot food, the bounty hunter rode with the others moving out the herd.

  * * *

  The nine men and horses, their string of sixty horses, three wagons, and five hundred head of cattle crossed seven miles that morning, following the trail along the winding Snake River that their cattlewoman boss had mapped out. The weather was clear and the big sky overhead cloudless. The Snake took them due north in a near unbroken straight line, but as the map showed, on the eighth mile, the river curved sharply to their left and doubled back northwest for fifty miles. The body of water was too far to circumvent on land; to continue east they would have to ride the herd a full week north and then south again to continue to their destination. It was here at this junction where the water was widest and deepest that they would have to cross the livestock in order to continue their southeast passage toward the town of Cheyenne over two hundred and ninety miles away.

  In his saddle, on his game and vigorous golden horse Copper, Joe Noose rode toward the front of the long procession of longhorns and saw the bend of the Snake River approaching a half mile ahead. The river looked wide, and the swell of the rapids indicated certain depth. He remembered enough from his cowpunching days to know that a river-crossing with a full herd was one of the most dangerous parts of a cattle drive if the river was deep and the current fast and strong; you had to move the steers into the river fast, with as much momentum to their charge as it was possible to muster, to keep the cattle in a straight line—if the cows broke formation, it was easy for the rovers and their horses struggling in the water to be trampled and drowned. The worst possible thing that could happen was a stampede: if the longhorns panicked crossing the river, the deadly chaos of that many rampaging tons of livestock could spell catastrophe. Then the necessity of firing pistols into the air to try to scare the beasts back into formation only contributed to the danger with the risk of stray bullets falling out of the sky hitting the men.

  The short version was there was only one way to do a river crossing with a large herd of cattle . . . carefully.

  Looking over his shoulder, Noose saw Laura Holdridge climb off her covered wagon where she had been driving the team, swing over the side into the saddle of her Appaloosa mare, and gallop on ahead of the herd, whistling with her fingers in her mouth and waving her Stetson for the men to stop the steers.

  “Hi-yaaaah!” came the cries of the wranglers down the line. Joe heard his own voice joining them, louder than most. The eight wranglers all rode toward the front of the cattle drive and there the men congregated to slowly, deliberately, control the front of the herd, slowing and bringing the lead longhorns to a halt, with the rear of the herd coming to gradually stand still behind them. It was akin to stopping an avalanche, Joe thought, and avalanches were something Noose had some recent experience with.

  When it was done, the wranglers reined their horses and stood by the stationary cattle. Joe Noose was surprised to discover he had a big old grin on his face when he looked around and met the gazes of the other eight rovers, who were all grinning, too, eyes full of warm camaraderie and cowboy satisfaction, and in that moment, the bounty hunter knew how good they were at their jobs; better, he shared the sense of accomplishment and felt like he was part of a team, and that he made a contribution. It was a good feeling.

  But the good feeling was fleeting because now all the outfit’s gazes had swiveled to the distant figure of Laura Holdridge a half mile ahead of the front of the herd, sitting on her horse at the bank of the mighty Snake River. Noose tipped the brim of his Stetson down over his eyes to block out the direct sunlight so he could study her lone figure. The cattlewoman sat in the saddle, studying the breadth of the river before her, with an occasional glance west to one side and east to the other along its expanse. Joe knew what she was thinking, as sure as if he could hear her thoughts. It suddenly became very quiet, almost silent, with the cattle and wranglers motionless, just a creak of saddle and clink of bridle, all sound subsumed by the omnipresent roar of the great river.

  Laura Holdridge, Noose realized, had a decision that was hers and hers alone to make: to cross the river with the herd or not. Her other choice was to detour fifty miles, which would cost critical days. With the delays caused by the deaths of her now shorthanded crew, the cattlewoman could not afford to lose that time if she were to get her livestock to Cheyenne by auction; on the other hand, if she crossed the river and lost any of her outfit, their blood would be on her hands.

  The bounty hunter watched her small figure sitting tall on her horse, back straight in the saddle, and the slight tip in her profile told him she had come to her decision and Joe felt certain, knowing her a little and yet a lot, that he knew what that decision was.

  Noose was wrong. It wouldn’t be the last time he would misjudge this tough Wyoming woman.

  Spurring her Appaloosa, Laura swung her mare around and rode straight into the river. Horse and rider disappeared in an explosive splash of fresh clear water. The men watched as her tiny figure resurfaced, clinging to the saddle as her horse crossed the Snake River, walking part of the way and paddling the rest, until, after five minutes they finally reached the opposite shore. The drenched Laura and her Appaloosa emerged on the distant river bank, then turned around and rode right back into the river, walking and swimming the five minutes through the heavy currents until they broke onto the near shore at a staggered stride..

  Decisively, the trail boss galloped back to the front of the herd. There, soaked head to boots, she faced all the wranglers and her piercing blue-eyed gaze met theirs one by one, including Joe’s. Taking off her hat and shaking out the water, her wet golden hair fell loose around her hearty, ruddy, beautiful face. Then she spoke.

  “River’s deep, boys. Hundred yards across if it’s a foot. Half of that the horses can walk, the rest is too deep and they’ll have to swim. Saw for myself. It’s dangerous to cross the cattle, can’t tell you otherwise. Each one of us will be taking our lives in our hands. Our other options set us back days and we won’t make Cheyenne, so we got two choices—cross or turn back. Yesterday I gave this outfit the choice to turn back and I’m giving it to you again. Your lives are your own, so I’m putting it to a vote. Anyone for turning back, raise your hand.”

  Noose looked around at the other wranglers. Not one hand raised. But one by one, the rovers grinned.

  Laura Holdridge grinned right back at them, and the moisture in her eyes wasn’t from the river. “Let’s get wet.”

  “Hi-yaaaaah!” came the cry of the outfit, filling the air, as they drew their pistols and fired into the air, startling the five hundred head of cattle into sudden movement, and within seconds, two thousand hooves were pounding the earth, driving five hundred longhorn steers straight for the river, unstoppable, and building up a huge head of steam as the cattle’s speed increased with the gathering momentum of a dozen locomotives. One after the other, the three wagons pulled by their teams of horses rolled down the banks into the river with huge splashes, raining the outfit with frigid spray. Noose spurred Copper, firing his pistol with one hand and gripping his stallion’s reins with the other, riding alongside the livestock with the rest of the rovers as the wide Snake River rushed up to greet them.

  At that moment, Joe Noose understood why Laura Holdridge commanded the total respect and loyalty of an outfit of big tough men, and the bounty hunter admired her leadership right down to the ground.

  This outfit rode as one and they rode one way.

  Ride or die.

  * * *

  Five hundred cattle poured like cement into the big river under the bright hot sun, and the ten riders and their horses were soon submerged up to their saddles. The shock of the icy glacier waters made for a lot of bellowing steers, snorting steeds and cursing cowpokes, but that didn’t stop them pushing on. They were committed, and the brutal cold of the Snake River made man and beast want to get to the other side damn quick.

  The
three wagons lumbered and lurched across the river, the rapids flowing over the top of the wheels trailing churning cavitations in their wake. Laura drove her rig in the lead.

  Wylie Jeffries kept one hand on his saddle pommel, watching the mountainous undulating backs of the steers and their rows of horns in a long wet procession through the rapids. They were staying afloat. The water was icy cold, which froze the veteran wrangler to the bone but kept him clearheaded, and he knew it was damn good motivation for the cows to get to the other side. The wrangler looked up and down the herd crossing the river and saw the other rovers staying on their horses, taking it careful and slow, staying calm with cool heads shepherding the immense march of livestock. So far, so good. All Jeffries knew was what his friends did: they were earning their pay this day.

  His horse’s hooves found solid ground in a shallow section of the river, and Jeffries was able to adjust his seat in the saddle for better balance. Beside him, the gigantic soaked shoulders and skulls of several steers bumped against the side of his horse, hammering his leg painfully. Stay away from the horns! Using his reins, he eased his dun mare to his right a few feet, giving the cattle some breathing room.

  Wylie Jeffries spotted the new man, Smith or whatever his name was, giving him a watchful glance, but Smith’s gaze traveled on and the wrangler noticed that the new replacement was giving all of the rovers watchful glances, paying more attention to them than those hundreds of steers that his job was supposed to be paying attention to.

  Thing was, Curly Brubaker wasn’t paying enough attention to the herd either, because he was too busy watching Smith.

  Because he was temporarily distracted, Jeffries didn’t see who fired the shot that blew one of the horns and half the head off a nearby steer, so close it got him splattered with blood. But before any of the rovers could react, the already river-spooked herd were seized with a blind panic and many began to stampede in the water, the long single-file procession quickly breaking off into sections, the cattle dangerously heading in three directions, slowed by the currents but moving with terrifying force. The wranglers were all pulling on their reins, steering the horses out of the path of the steers. The awful look on his boss lady’s face as she witnessed what was happening put the rover’s heart in his throat.

  Thunk!

  A bowie knife buried deep in Wylie Jeffries’s back, the razor-sharp heavy blade cutting through layers of leather duster, cotton shirt, flesh, muscle and bone and lung. The wrangler stiffened, blood exploding from his mouth, his scream a wet gurgle through gritted teeth, his torso rotating as he slumped out of his saddle, bulging eyes seeing nobody around him and realizing the knife had been thrown.

  By then he was unhorsed and his whole body was submerged in the surging, splashing, spraying water and he tried to scream but all he got was a lungful of water that made him expectorate, gag, and suffocate. Grabbing helplessly for the knife in his back, his fingers couldn’t reach the haft covered by his wet clothing layers. Jeffries could swim, unlike most of the other drivers; with all his will to live he kicked and paddled and struggled as he kept his head above water. Through his river-blinded vision, all he saw was a chaotic blur of rampaging cattle and men on horses firing their guns and trying to control the herd, some of them now on the other side, while all he heard was the deafening lowing and bellowing of the steers, shouts of the men, and cracks of pistol shots over the roar of the Snake River, but somehow he got the damn knife out of his back. Wylie Jeffries was hurt bad, he knew, the blade had cut deep, but his arms and legs worked and he could swim, dammit, and he struck out for shore. Somebody was trying to kill him, and if he just could reach solid land—

  That’s when two big gloved hands grabbed him by the throat and crushed his windpipe like a vise, powerful arms too strong to fight, pushing his head under water, as in the second before his eyes sank below the surface he looked up into the face of his killer and was shocked by who he was, and his last thought before he drowned was he had to warn the outfit.

  CHAPTER 8

  When, an hour later, Wylie Jeffries’s dead body was recovered and dragged ashore by Frank Leadbetter and Curly Brubaker, Laura Holdridge broke down and cried. None of the outfit held his death against her, Joe Noose saw in their faces—this was what they signed up for—but the cattlewoman held it against herself.

  There was no knife in Wylie’s back because it had been lost in the river, so none of the outfit knew at first that he had been stabbed.

  The full herd, having been successfully rounded up, stood on the bank fifty yards away, drying off. The three wagons were parked nearby, draining water still pouring out of them.

  The wranglers, the bounty hunter, and the trail boss stood over the dead rover’s pale lifeless corpse, his face frozen in a rictus of terror. Noose thought that the expression was peculiar, like he’d seen something that scared him to death.

  “I’m sorry, men.” Laura sniffled. “Wylie’s death is on me.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Noose. She looked at Joe. They all looked at Joe.

  “What the hell are you taking about, Smith?” Curly growled.

  Noose knelt and opened Jeffries’s duster, revealing his shirt completely soaked with blood, then unbuttoned the shirt from the collar to the chest, exposing his bare torso, and seeing no wound there, roughly peeled the shirt from the corpse’s shoulders and exposed the naked back.

  Joe had a pretty good idea what he would find.

  The deep, ugly open knife wound in his upper back, along with flower-shaped bruising on the blue skin of his neck—the mark of lethal pressure made by human hands.

  “This man didn’t drown. He was stabbed, then when that failed, a pair of strong hands finished the job. Look at the marks.” Joe rose and faced Laura with a grim nod. “This man was murdered, Mrs. Holdridge. That’s a fact. And last night the boys told me he ain’t the first.” Noose turned to face the other wranglers. One of you did it. “One of you boys must have seen something.”

  One by one, gazes averted or downcast, the men shook their heads. Joe spat in the dirt in disgust. “What kind of chickenshit outfit is this? One of your men, your friends, was murdered and you expect anybody to believe not one of you saw jack shit?”

  “I believe my men.” Laura shook her head. “None of them saw anything. That was why the killer shot the steer and stampeded the herd. He knew it would keep us distracted.”

  “Well, Mrs. Holdridge, let me put it this way.” Noose looked at Laura. “You can believe your men, that’s up to you. You can believe all of your men . . .” He held up a finger and pointed it like a pistol barrel across the faces of the seven rovers. “All but one.”

  The bounty hunter stormed off toward the wagons, the cattlewoman watching him go with wounded eyes.

  “Hey, Smith, where the hell you think you’re going?” yelled Curly Brubaker to Joe’s back.

  Noose grabbed something off the hooligan wagon, two things, then walked back to Curly, shoving one shovel into his hand and keeping the other for himself.

  “Gotta bury him, don’t we?”

  * * *

  It took three hours to dig a decent grave for Wylie Jeffries, lay him to rest, cover him up, read scripture over him, and for the men who wanted to say a few words over him to get them said, and by then they had lost another half a day.

  To make matters worse, it had started to rain. By the time the cattle drive had moved out at three o’clock, the ground had turned to mud and steers’ and horses’ hooves were fetlock deep in sludge. It was slow going, but the outfit pushed stubbornly forward through the sheets of rain, the men now in raincoats with dripping Stetson hat brims pulled down over their faces.

  In Copper’s saddle, Noose closely observed the wranglers up and down the procession of cattle, saw that although every man had his hat low on his face, everybody was eyeballing everybody and watching his own back. The gray, cold, overcast light and hard-stinging drops relentlessly pelting the wranglers made the mood miserable, grim, and para
noid, the atmosphere of distrust growing with each sidelong glance among the rovers.

  The wagon train and marching cattle crossed a plain, then a hill, then a field and another plain after the Snake River crossing. Nobody said a word to anybody else, and the only voices were calls to the cattle.

  Keeping his bronze horse at a dogged trot, Noose had time to think; he wasn’t certain why these murders were taking place. Somebody was trying to stop the cattlewoman from getting her livestock to auction was the most likely reason. But there were a lot of ways to do that without killing five men, a hanging offense. This was personal. It was deliberate. Somebody in this outfit had a score to settle with others in the outfit, a graveyard grudge. Why now? These men lived and worked together, ate together, slept together every day for years at the Bar H. Noose realized he knew absolutely nothing about this outfit, had no idea at all who these men were, but he intended to get to know them fast, before there weren’t any left to know.

  Then it came back to him suddenly: Joe remembered the night a month ago at Laura Holdridge’s ranch house at the Bar H with his traveling companions, Marshal Bess Sugarland and the marshal he knew as Emmett. The three of them had accepted the cattlewoman’s hospitality to stay the night. Joe had been asleep alone in his bedroom when he felt like he was being watched. Pretending to be asleep, Noose had opened one eye and seen the silhouette of a head and face pressed against the window, backlit by stark moonlight. By the time Joe had grabbed his pistol, rushed to the window and thrown it open, the man had fled, and Noose just caught a glimpse of his fleeing figure in the moonlight. He had thought that it was The Brander, the deranged killer he and the marshals were hunting at the time, but Joe now believed it wasn’t.

  Now he reckoned whoever was spying on him was one of the crew of the Bar H Ranch, one of the same rovers in this outfit. That man was riding with him now.

  Racking his memory, the bounty hunter tried to retrieve a mental picture of the figure he saw run off that night a month ago—a sheepskin coat, chaps, a hat—but what he remembered mostly were just shadows; it had been too dark outside for Joe to see the face of the man at the window, but that man had seen Noose because there was a lamp inside the bedroom.