by Cole Shelton
Shane signaled the bartender.
“Drinks on me,” the tall gunfighter said.
Jonah downed his drink in a single gulp and lined up his glass for the next round. The rangy old barkeep, wearing a spotless white apron over his pants, sidled up to them.
“Bottle of whisky,” Shane ordered. “Not the rotgut my pards have been drinking, but the best in the house.”
“Yes, sir!” the bartender grinned.
Shane turned to Huston Whittaker. “And what the heck are you doing in Conchita? We’re a long ways from Rimrock!”
“We sold up the spread,” Whittaker explained, “and bought ourselves a wagon. It’s one of those just outa town, Shane. We’re part of the wagon train heading west for Gun Creek, going there to start up fresh. Gun Creek’s a new settlement just past Fort Defiance.”
Shane stared at him in amazement. He’d known Huston Whittaker for years, and the leather-faced rancher had always seemed settled, hardly the wandering kind.
“Well,” Shane said, raising his glass, “we’ll drink to that new life you’re heading to.”
Whittaker hesitated.
“We might take some time to get there, Shane,” he said seriously.
“Yeah?”
“Huss has just been tellin’ me,” Jonah said, sipping his rye. “There’s been real trouble. His trail scout was killed just before they arrived at Conchita.”
“Indians?” Shane asked.
“He was knifed,” Huston Whittaker recalled. “Stabbed in the back right beside one of the wagons. Indians, probably, or maybe an outlaw he caught sneaking around. Fact is, the wagon train has no trail-scout, and that’s why we haven’t left Conchita. We’ve been hoping someone here will scout for us.”
“Job pay well?” the tall gunfighter said.
“I’m the wagon master, Shane,” Huston Whittaker informed him. “And last week when we arrived here, I called a meeting of all the emigrants and we decided to set aside four hundred bucks for the man—or men—who’d scout for us and bring us safe to Gun Creek.”
“Well,” Shane remarked, “you should have plenty of takers at that price.”
Whittaker shook his head. “We had one, first day, but when he heard about the Cheyennes jumping the Reservation, he resigned before we could hitch up the wagons.” Shane downed his drink and poured fresh ones. “Shane,” Huston Whittaker’s voice was soft, “Jonah told me about the man with the scar, and I heard you tell him the dead man wasn’t the one you’re looking for.”
“Correct.” Shane swirled the liquor in his glass.
“So right now you and Jonah are at a loose end,” Whittaker concluded.
“We’ll probably ride back to Blacksmith County,” Shane Preston murmured. “That’s our last forwarding address. Could be someone’s written in for our services.”
“How’d you like to ride back with four hundred bucks?” the wagon master asked him.
Shane looked at him, searching his old friend’s face. Whittaker’s craggy features were lined, betraying forty hard years, and Shane glimpsed the concern in his eyes.
“We ain’t exactly trail scouts.” Shane’s brittle reply seemed to dash Whittaker’s hopes.
“Jonah told me he used to ride civilian scout for the army,” Huston Whittaker insisted. “And he happened to mention you’ve both been to Fort Defiance several times, so you’d know the trail.”
“Maybe so,” Shane Preston conceded. “But all that doesn’t make us wagon train scouts! Look, Huss, you know damn well what we are. We’re gunslingers, hired guns.”
“Which makes you both damn good candidates for the scouting jobs,” the wagon master jumped in quickly. “With outlaws on the prairie and maybe renegade Cheyennes as well, this wagon train ain’t gonna be no Sunday School picnic.”
“We—er—need the money,” Jonah Jones reminded Shane. “We haven’t been offered a job in months.”
“Four hundred bucks, Shane,” Wagon master Whittaker said.
Shane picked up his second drink. He and Jonah had taken on a variety of chores, from taming a town to helping sodbusters against greedy ranchers, and normally their work involved siding with folks where the law had failed. He’d never pictured them as trail scouts guiding pioneers to their Promised Land. And yet, four hundred dollars would come in mighty handy right now, and in addition, he’d be helping out a friend. There was a tense silence.
“We’re gonna be a week on the trail,” Shane Preston said. “So let’s have a last whisky before we leave!”
“Folks,” Huston Whittaker raised his hands high as they gathered around the water barrel he’d mounted, “we’re ready to move out on account of we’ve hired ourselves two trail scouts!”
They stood around, hardy pioneer stock, men with long rifles standing alongside women and kids. Behind them, four wagons were motionless, and horses grazed beside goats, sheep, cows and a couple of steers. Washing hung limply on a line strung between two wagons, and when Whittaker began to make his speech, the last emigrant poked his head between a shirt and a woman’s petticoat and ambled over to join the crowd listening expectantly to the wagon master.
“Meet Shane Preston and Jonah Jones.” Whittaker indicated the two gunfighters sitting saddle. “I can vouch for them myself.”
“That’s good enough for us, Huss,” a young man with corn-colored hair spoke up in a booming voice. He turned his fierce eyes on the riders. “Welcome to the Lord’s wagon train—I’m Abel Sorenson.”
“Preacher man,” Huston Whittaker murmured, almost apologetically, as the two gunfighters fixed their eyes on the tall streak of a man with his shaggy, unkempt hair flopping about a boyish face.
“Heading west to build a House of God in Gun Creek,” Sorenson declared. “They say it’s the devil’s own town, no sheriff, no law and order, no church! And I’m riding there to see that the Lord’s will is done.”
“Actually, Abel,” a tubby man spoke up dryly, “I figure you might be exaggerating some.”
“We shall see, Brett Craig,” the preacher man proclaimed. “We shall see!”
Craig was a man in his late thirties, fluffy-haired, with wide brown eyes and a beard. He was squat, with a bull-neck and thickset shoulders. Beside him stood a demure little woman about his age, wearing steel-rimmed spectacles on the bridge of her nose. Two small lads, and a girl about seven clad in a smock, played around their parents.
“My wife, Janie,” Brett Craig introduced the woman at his side.
“Glad to know you, ma’am,” Shane smiled amicably.
“You know my wife, of course.” Whittaker grinned at the tall, stately woman in the long blue dress and sunbonnet.
“Howdy, Gloria,” Shane nodded. The Whittakers’ son, Tim, scowled at him. He’d always been a precocious child, too cheeky for his tender years.
“Like you to meet three prospectors, Shane,” Whittaker indicated a trio of men who stood together.
“Prospectors?” Jonah frowned.
“We’ve heard there’s gold west of Gun Creek,” a big, beefy man stated. “My name’s Blake.”
“Welcome to the wagons,” Blake’s bald-headed sidekick muttered. “I’m Morton.”
The third member of the trio was smoking a pipe. He was a hard-bitten, lanky pioneer with protruding ears and thick, fleshy lips. Shane saw that he was carrying the latest Winchester repeating rifle in his hairy fist.
“Eli McKay,” he introduced himself.
“Not exactly the biggest wagon train ever,” Whittaker told the gunslingers. “In fact, we started out with two other families. Both of them stopped off on the way when they heard about the Cheyennes busting out of the Reservation.”
“Reckon we’ve been waiting around here long enough, Huss,” Blake growled. “Let’s get these wagons moving!”
Whittaker turned to the gun hawks. “You ready?”
“Hitch the wagons,” Shane Preston said.
The pioneers needed no second invitation. With the kids whooping like Indians, the
wagoners stalked over to the horses which had just enjoyed a week’s respite from the dust of the trail. Shane and Jonah watched as livestock were rounded up, water barrels strapped to wagons, horses backed into harness and furniture hastily stacked under the canvas.
For fully an hour, the settlers busied themselves preparing for the trail ahead, and the two gunfighters made their own brief preparations.
“Know something?” Jonah screwed up his face. “A coupla men on this wagon train seem, well, kinda familiar.”
“Who for instance?” Shane asked him.
“I reckon I’ve seen several of those prospectors some place before,” Jonah insisted. “But I can’t remember where.”
“I don’t know any of them,” Shane Preston shook his head. “But there’s one other hombre here who’s got a reward dodger out on him.”
“What?” Jonah gaped.
Just then the sound of hoofs jerked their heads around, and the wagoners looked up from their chores as a rider surged up the grassy slope towards them. Huston Whittaker came and stood beside his scouts, waiting with them as the rider with long black hair slowed her pinto pony to a walk.
“Juanita!” Jonah exclaimed. “What the heck’s she doin’ here?”
“You know this lady?” Huston Whittaker asked them.
“You could say that,” the tall gunfighter said dryly. Juanita had obviously been on a small buying spree in Conchita. She now wore a tight-fitting check shirt and Levis. Her pretty face was flushed from hard riding, and her young, firm bosom heaved tumultuously as she reined in.
“Howdy!” she smiled breathlessly at Shane and Jonah. “I’m looking for the wagon master!”
“That’s me, Huss Whittaker,” the gaunt pioneer stated, his hollow eyes moving appreciatively over the half-breed girl. “What can I do for you?”
Encouraged by this reception, Juanita decided to come straight to the point.
“Mr. Whittaker,” she said, “I want to join your wagon train!”
Shane Preston reined in his horse.
He was on the rim of a high pumice-stone bluff that loomed over the grasslands below. Up here, the mid-afternoon sun blazed relentlessly down on him, and the hot wind whipped his rugged face. To the west, a haze obscured the distant ridges, but between the wagons and these craggy rocks lay the sprawling upland prairie, rolling grass and two deep rivers, a land with few trees. It was across this plateau that the wagons had to pass before they could cross the high country to their destination.
Shane drew on his cigarette as he turned his head eastwards. The prairie schooners were just about to round the bluff, their dusty white canvases billowing like sails in the wind. They lumbered along in line, Whittaker’s wagon at the head. Just about all the wagons had cows or goats roped along behind, and sometimes the kids would jump down and whip the animals to make them walk faster and not drag on the ropes. Shane picked out old Jonah riding ahead with Huss Whittaker, and then his eyes drifted farther east until they rested on the distant houses of Conchita. Soon the town would be left behind, and the grassy wilderness would swallow up the pioneer train. The only other community between here and Fort Defiance was a little town called Gaucho. From this small prairie town to Fort Defiance, the terrain would rise sharply and the trek over the high country would be arduous. Once at the outpost, however, the wagons would be almost at journey’s end. According to Whittaker, the primitive new settlement they were headed for was just west of the fort.
Shane surveyed the prairie trail once again, then turned the palomino down from the rim.
It was then that he glimpsed the rider.
Brett Craig had left the wagon train to climb the pumice bluff, and Shane reined in as the pioneer headed deliberately towards him. The man on the bay gelding came closer and Shane flicked the ash from his cigarette as he waited for him.
“Something wrong, Craig?” Shane Preston demanded as the rider drew alongside him.
The two riders were stark black silhouettes against the azure sky. Brett Craig’s searching eyes were fixed on Shane’s, and the scout noticed the pearl-handled .45 nestling in the man’s holster.
“Why didn’t you say something?” Brett Craig asked him.
Shane studied him for a moment, dragging on his cigarette.
“I can tell you know about me, Preston,” the wagoner said bluntly. “I could see it in your eyes when we met. And from what I’ve heard about you, you kinda make it your business to know about men like me!”
“I’m not here to take you in, Craig,” the gunfighter said.
Shane’s reassurance didn’t seem to relax the rider one bit. He fidgeted nervously.
“Then you’ve seen the ‘wanted’ dodgers?” he demanded.
“Like you said,” Shane said wryly. “I make it my business to keep my eyes open.”
“How much is on my head now?”
“Coupla hundred,” Shane informed him casually.
“Those dodgers carry lies!” the emigrant croaked. “Goddamn lies!”
“Listen,” Shane tossed away his cigarette, “just calm down, Craig. I know the story, and it’s because I know it I said nothing back at Conchita. Doesn’t it strike you that I could have talked up and earned myself a quick two hundred bucks by taking you in back there?”
Brett wiped the beads of perspiration from his brow, and his right hand drifted conspicuously away from his gun butt.
“It was a fair fight,” Craig looked him square in the face. “Sure I killed Lucas Tramner, but it was a fair fight. Howsomever, it seems I’m to be branded outlaw because Tramner had a lot of influence in Tombstone. All Tramner’s pards swore I murdered him, and I had to run from the law.”
“That’s how I heard it,” Shane said.
“Figured that Gun Creek would be far enough west for me to start a new life,” Craig said. “No one on the wagon train knows about me except you.”
“Your secret’s safe with me,” Shane assured him.
Brett Craig stared at him, recalling all the things he’d heard about Shane Preston. Some of the legends which had stuck to his name were probably true—gunfighter, bounty hawk, town-tamer—but plainly he wasn’t a man without feeling. Tentatively, Craig extended a hand which Shane gripped. Right there, on that windswept bluff, a strange bond was sealed between two men, the hunter and the hunted.
“Better head back to the wagons,” Shane directed quietly.
“Sure.”
By now the wagons had passed the bluff, and Whittaker’s prairie schooner was nosing out into the sea of yellowing grass, heading for the Promised Land beyond the far range.
“Who found the dead scout?” Shane asked suddenly.
“Whittaker,” Craig replied, flashing a swift look aside at the gunfighter. “Why?”
“Huss said he figured it was Indians,” Shane probed.
“Maybe,” Brett Craig murmured. They turned their horses down the narrow trail which dropped away from the bluff. “His name was Cutting, Jim Cutting, a damn fine scout. Whittaker found him with a knife between his shoulder blades just beyond the prospectors’ wagon. It was early one morning, and we figured Jim had been dead most of the night.”
“A Cheyenne knife?”
“Yeah,” Brett Craig recalled. “But a lot of white men carry those knives now—the Reservation Indians sell them at the trading post.”
“Just what are you trying to say?” Shane’s eyes narrowed.
There was a long pause. “Maybe nothing.”
“If Indians killed Cutting,” Shane mused. “There’s one question which comes to mind.”
“What?”
“With the scout dead, why didn’t they raid the wagon train—specially as it must have been dark, and folks inside their wagons?”
Craig appeared to want to change the subject. “You know, Preston, maybe I shouldn’t be saying this, but there’s one hombre on this wagon train who smells like trouble.”
“Who’s that?”
“Damien Blake.”
“A
nd Cutting’s body was found outside Blake’s wagon?” Shane twisted the question back to the subject.
“Jim Cutting and Blake had traded words more than once,” Brett Craig told the gunfighter.
“What are you saying?” Shane repeated his earlier question.
Brett Craig swallowed. “I reckon we oughta get back to the wagons.”
The fugitive spurred his gelding ahead, and Shane watched him thoughtfully as he headed down-trail to the grasslands. Then, slapping Snowfire with his rein, the gunfighter rode in his dusty wake.
“My child,” Pastor Abel Sorenson frowned paternally on Juanita, “I certainly won’t engage in such frivolity!”
“Oh, why not?” the half-breed girl laughed above the strains of Brett Craig’s fiddle.
“Because,” Sorenson said, “dancing is the devil’s work.”
“I see,” she said meekly but there was still laughter in her eyes.
A big campfire blazed in the center of the wagon circle, and to one side, Craig was playing his squeaky violin. Almost instinctively, Juanita had started to jump around in time with the music, and soon Whittaker and his wife were dancing. Reb Morton had then grabbed the half-breed girl, and old Jonah Jones was led protestingly onto the dance floor by Janie Craig. The oldster danced like an elephant, but he seemed to be enjoying himself all the same.
“You know, Abel,” said Juanita, breathless after her dances, “I’m so grateful to Huss Whittaker for letting me come along.”
“When you said you’d cook for us all, how could he refuse?” the preacher man grinned. “And if tonight’s chow was an example, our wagon master made a good choice.”
Juanita’s deep, flashing eyes roved over him with heightened interest. He might be a preacher, but he was a good-looking man as well. There was strength in his broad shoulders, resolution in his jutting jaw, and she liked the way his hair grew wild and free as the wind which blew through it. Abel Sorenson had a handsome face with a firm nose and full, almost sensuous lips.
“My child,” Sorenson murmured, “I presume Huss Whittaker has—ah—made proper sleeping arrangements for you tonight?”