Chapter ELEVEN
It was nearly four in the A.M. before Willy Boy rode down the creek and found where the other men had gathered. He was the last one in. Everyone else but Eagle had rolled out blankets and gone to sleep.
Eagle showed him where they had hidden the horses in heavy brush so they couldn’t be seen from the south. They went back to the south side of the brush and stared in the direction of Dodge.
"Only one way I see that it won’t work," Willy Boy said. "That’s if this Handshoe has seen the trick before, or if he figures even with the spread out trails, everyone is going to come together somewhere in the north so he puts all of his men on the true north trail. "
"Won’t happen," Eagle said. "His tracker will talk him out of that. He’ll point out that we may have scattered for good, and be out on our own. By following just one trail, he’d lose all except one man. "
"Keep hoping. " Willy Boy said and spread his blanket,"If you can’t sleep, Eagle, stay up until dawn and then wake me. Should be a couple of hours. Then we’ll figure out our ambush and we’ll put Johnny Joe on guard. "
By seven o’clock the next morning they had cooked their breakfast and settled on the ambush positions. The smoke from the fire would be well dissipated in the four or five hours it would take anyone from the Handshoe bounty group to find them.
They spread the ambush out with all six of them on a line in the heavier brush. Each man had cut a firing zone in front of him, but it was decided that they would take the man without firing a shot, if possible.
That would allow no sound of shots to warn the others. Eagle went up a heavily leafed tree direcdy over the track that Johnny Joe used to come into the brush. If the tracker came that way, and wasn’t frightened by the brush line, there was a chance. Eagle would go up the tree at the first sight of a single rider coming toward them.
After that, everyone dozed off except Johnny Joe who kept watch. Before he slept, Willy Boy plotted it out. If Handshoe and his men had left at daylight, it might have taken them an hour to find their tracks. Then by seven they could be on the way.
He figured the first man could come up Johnny Joe’s tracks no sooner than eleven to eleven-thirty. He had instructed Johnny Joe to wake up everyone at eleven.
"We have a visitor. " Johnny Joe said when he shook Willy Boy awake at eleven o’clock. Willy Boy stood in the brush and spotted a lonesome rider coming toward them, head lowered, watching the trail Johnny Joe had made the night before.
Eagle stepped up and grinned. "Old Indian trick work pretty good on white eyes," he said.
"Get up your tree, redskin," Willy Boy said. "Use that skinning knits you keep so sharp. I don’t want to hear this bastard even give a death rattle. "
They waited. It was nearly a half hour after they saw the rider that he came near the brush. He looked around in all directions, then shrugged and walked his mount forward. He came straight down Johnny Joe’s trail, then saw an open area 50 yards downstream and angled that way.
"Damn," Willy Boy whispered. He could see Eagle in the tree. He motioned for him to come down and to ge downstream and get the man. Eagle crawled down the tree without a sound and faded into the brush and trees working his way down the creek.
For five minutes they heard nothing, then a strangled scream began and stopped quickly.
Two minutes later and Eagle stepped out from behind a large cottonwood and grinned.
"Don’t worry, white eyes, your faithful Indian friend has saved the day again for you. Subtract one bounty hunter. "
"You took care of his horse and the body?" Willy Boy asked him.
"Yes. I’m going up the tree. I can see out farther from up there. "
Ten minutes later Eagle called softly. "We’ve got a pair coming in from the right. Looks like they’re riding together. Might never have split up. "
"We’ll take out these two any way we can. Pistols if they get close enough, or rifles while .they’re not up to the brush. Let’s use the rifles. Make sure they get to within a hundred yards, then use those Henrys. I’ll give the word to fire. "
The bounty hunters came closer as they tracked the other horses now. There should be showing two or three sets of prints. They did not seem afraid of the brushline. Eagle kept watching to the left. So far nothing showed. The two riders came closer, stared for a moment at the brush and trees they were following, then rode on. A dozen strides later they were at the hundred yard mark that Willy Boy had set up by eye.
He sighted in on the rider closest to the trees. "Now!" he said firmly. He refined his sight and squeezed the trigger. The second his shot sounded three more rounds went off and both men on the horses were blown out of their saddles. One tried to crawl to the brush but Willy Boy yelled at him to stop or he’d be killed.
Willy Boy ran up to the downed man, kicked away his gun and scowled at the bounty hunter who bled from a chest wound.
"How many men does Handshoe have with him?" Willy Boy demanded.
The man shrugged. "Don’t matter to me none. Started with five and Handshoe. How many you killed?""Three, including you. You after the reward?""Yeah, just the reward. Only my second try. ""Well, better luck in hell," Willy Boy said and watched as the man gasped for breath, gushed up a mouthful of blood and his face fell forward directly into the red life fluid as it soaked into the ground. He shuddered once, then his right hand lifted and dropped as a death rattle whispered out of his lungs.
"Leave them where they lay and picket their horses here," Willy Boy ordered.
He wrote a note message on a small notebook he carried and folded the paper, then put it in the hand of the man who had just died. He changed his mind, unfolded the paper so it couldn’t be missed.
The note read:"Give it up, Handshoe, unless you want to join these three men of yours in hell. " He signed it Willy Boy and they pushed across the creek and rode. "Think he’ll still come after us?" Gunner asked. "Hell, yes," Willy Boy said. "We hurt him, but we hurt his pride more. He might slow down and hire some more men, but he’ll try for us again, you can bet on it. " Willy Boy scowled. "Bounty Hunters are the scum of the earth, the dregs of a sewer. They’re the worst human beings on the face of the earth!"
It was only four o’clock when Willy Boy called a halt along a little stream and he talked to Juan. "Cook us up a good supper, Juan, what do you have?"
"Not much, we left town too fast to buy any trail supplies. "
Eagle watched them. "Plan on a rabbit stew," he said, and took his Henry rifle and walked into the prairie.
Juan dug a hole and fixed a pot of beans to cook the way Eagle had done before, but it wouldn’t be ready until the next morning. Gunner came back from where he had been standing guard.
"Don’t see anybody coming either way. We must not be on the main trail. "
"Fact is, we aren’t," Willy Boy said. "We probably should turn off to the east and work toward one of the towns. "
"Towns mean trouble for us," Johnny Joe said. "Give me another few days and I’ll be able to do my part. ""Everybody is doing fine," Willy Boy said quickly. "Damn, we’re still free of that jail. Nobody’s got hung. Only one of us got shot up. We’re doing great. Juan,
I know you want to get down to Mexico. One of these days we’ll turn that direction. ‘Course, then we’ll probably lose you to your wife and kids. "
They heard a shot and everyone hunkered down. "Eagle," Willy Boy said. "He just shot our supper. " Eagle came back a few minutes later with an eight pound jack rabbit over his shoulder. He skinned out the rabbit, then cleaned it and cut it up in one of Romero’s cooking pots. From a pocket he pulled out eight wild onions about the size of an egg. From the other pocket he brought a dozen small apples.
"Wild onions and crab apples. Boil the apples for about twenty minutes and they’ll taste like honey. The onions can go in the pot with the rabbit stew and the potatoes. Next time we’ll raid some farmer’s garden and do better. "
Eagle hovered over where Willy Boy sat cleaning his Henry
rifle.
"Willy Boy, you went to see the army folks at Fort Dodge. What did they say about the Fourteenth?""You sure I went? We didn’t have much time there?""You went, I followed you part way. Where is the Fourteenth stationed?"
"I really didn’t want to tell you, Eagle," Willy Boy said. "I was afraid you might take off for the place and get yourself shot full of holes. "
"So you found out?"
"Yes. The Lieutenant back at the fort said that the Fourteenth Cavalry Regiment was assigned to Fort Boise, way up in Idaho. "
"How far is that?"
"How far? Halfway across the continent from here. It’s at least 1,200 miles. At 40 miles a day, it would take you 30 days just to ride that far, provided you didn’t get lost. "
"Let’s go out there," Eagle said. "I want to pay them back, but I like to have a bunch of men working with me. Let’s go. "
"Hey, hey, easy. This is my bunch. I still give the orders. Right now we’re looking for Deeds Conover, the bastard who killed my Pa. After we get him we’ll go after the bastards who murdered your family. Fair enough?"
Eagle scowled for a moment. He walked around the cooking fire and added some sticks to it. When he came back he nodded.
"Fair is fair. I’ll wait for you. "
"Good, when is that rabbit stew going to be done?" Willy Boy asked.
About an hour later as they ate the rabbit stew, chewing the cooked meat off the bones, Willy Boy asked Gunner how he came to be in jail.
Gunner shook his head. "No, I don’t tell nobody. "
Willy Boy handed him more of the stew and the big man thanked Willy Boy who had stood up for him twice in the jail at Oak Park. He couldn’t deny Willy Boy what he wanted.
"Well, I worked in a livery stable in Suttler Town. I did good on the horses. They seem to like me. I was working and the boss wasn’t around when somebody came in to rent a horse.
"He was a big man and mean and he kept yelling at me to rush, to hurry up ... I was doing it as fast as I could and I told him and he took a punch at me and knocked me down and everybody laughed at me.
"I got a good memory. Two nights later I was in the saloon watching the girls and having a beer and the same big guy came in and started drinking.
"I got madder and madder at him. I never did drink much and I bought some whiskey and next thing I knew I ran at this guy and knocked him down and kicked him. When he got up I knocked hiim down again, then I grabbed his neck and squeezed it and I guess I nearly killed him.
"Somebody hit me on the head with a bottle and I passed out. I woke up in jail and then they had a trial that lasted about ten minutes, and then I met you guys. " The Professor growled. "They had you pegged as a hardened, vicious criminal. They sentenced you to ten years for that?"
"No, fifteen years, with good behavior," Gunner said. "I... I never really meant to hurt the man. But that’s why I don’t drink at all now. No more. "
"Nobody is going to put you in jail again, Gunner," Eagle said. "All five of us will see to that. "
"So we’ll find a town over east aways, and get back to hunting Deeds Conover," Willy Boy said. "He’s got to be around here somewhere. "
"What if we don’t find him?" Johnny Joe asked. "We can’t just go wandering around here forever. "
"Two weeks," Willy Boy said. "Two more weeks we look for him, then we decide about Idaho or Mexico or whatever somebody else got to do. Agreed?"
They all nodded.
"Agreed. Now, best we get some sleep if-n we gonna do some hard riding tomorrow. We need to find that town to buy some trail food. Besides, I got to send a letter to Frank Galloway back in Oak Park, Texas. I owe that man five dollars. "
Ride Tall, Hang High Page 11