Red Trail

by John Shirley

  Then, looking out that way, Mase saw something on the ground catching the light about fifty yards out. A red glimmer. He rode toward it and soon found a small pool of blood. They halted the horses, staring at it. Blood was smeared across flattened grass around it

  “Lordy,” Vinder muttered. “Cougar got one of the beeves.”

  “Maybe if you’d been awake, you’d have been able to shoot that cat.” Mase dismounted and bent to try to make out the marks on the ground in the thin bluish moonlight.

  He could see signs of a scuffle, with both hoofprints and a big cat’s paw prints. The hooves were small—it was a yearling. Dead by now certainly, for near the pool of blood were drag marks. The panther had dragged it off to some den out east.

  “Can’t have it stalking the herd,” Mase said. “Might follow the drag marks, see if we can catch him. Put a bullet in him.”

  He heard Vinder dismount, then came an intake of breath and the rush of boots. Mase spun and saw Vinder coming at him with a big hunting knife, teeth bared, eyes wild in the moonlight like some feral creature himself.

  Mase stepped to the left, barely avoiding the knife blade. It slashed so close, it cut through the fabric of his shirt just above his belt.

  He punched Vinder hard in the side of the head, and the cowboy groaned and stumbled a couple steps away. Mase reached for his pistol—then realized he’d left it at his bedroll. And his rifle was out of reach.

  He stepped in close to Vinder and caught the wrist of his knife hand with his own left, swinging an uppercut at the man’s chin. He struck solidly so that Vinder grunted and shook his head to clear it. They struggled for footing, Mase using his right to force Vinder back, trying to get him off balance. Vinder was trying to hit him and only punching Mase’s shoulder.

  “Let go of the knife, Vinder, and you can ride out of here!” Mase shouted.

  “No! I only got one chance to . . .” Suddenly Vinder hunkered down and lunged, trying to ram his head into Mase’s belly. Mase twisted Vinder’s knife hand to block him—and Vinder shrieked.

  Vinder twisted loose and stumbled away, dropping the knife and clutching at his neck. Blood spouted from a gaping slash wound in his throat; it fell to mingle with the yearling’s.

  Vinder went down on his knees; then, trying to rise, he fell over on his side.

  Mase turned, hearing Pug and East Wind riding up.

  “I heard a cougar—” Pug began. Then he broke off, cursing under his breath, seeing the dying man.

  Mase went over to kneel beside Vinder. The cowboy was shaking, weeping softly, as his lifeblood ran out past his clutching hand.

  Pug and East Wind dismounted and came to stand beside them. “He tried to stab me in the back,” Mase said hoarsely.

  “Mase . . .” Vinder choked, spitting blood. “Harning . . . hired me. Two thousand dollars. Getting old and tired . . . Sorry . . . my saddlebags . . . Mase, I’m . . .”

  Then he went into a fit of coughing, began to wheeze . . . and fell silent. Staring in death.

  The three living men looked down at the dead one for a while.

  “Harning put him up to it,” Mase said at last. He was stunned, his pulse still banging away. “Must’ve been Vinder who shot at me. And pushed that rock down my way . . .”

  “Surprised he didn’t just shoot you in the back tonight,” Pug said.

  “Wanted to make it seem like the cougar did it,” East Wind said, looking down at the tracks.

  Mase nodded. “Most like.” He waved a hand vaguely at the drag trail in the grass. “Cougar’s out there somewhere. I don’t think we’ll go after it. Let’s just put extra men on the herd. Tomorrow we’ll leave at first light.”

  “I’ll get some hands to bury him,” Pug said.

  Mase shook his head. “I killed him,” he said. “I’ll bury him myself.” It simply felt like his responsibility. “Just get me a shovel from the chuck wagon.”

  “He talked about saddlebags,” East Wind remarked.

  Mase was thinking about that, too. He went to Vinder’s horse and opened his saddlebags. Nothing special in the first one: a box of shells, string, scrap leather, a rock-hard old piece of chewing tobacco, and a bunched-up shirt. In the second bag, he found a package in oilcloth. He unwrapped it, revealing four sticks of dynamite.

  “What the hell was he going to do with that?” Pug asked, scratching his head.

  “Scatter the herd probably,” Mase said. “Harning’s idea, I reckon.” He shook his head, wrapped up the dynamite, and put it in his own saddlebags.

  * * *

  * * *

  How long will we have before the bank forecloses?” Katie asked as they waited for the stagecoach to set out. “He spoke a great deal, and I wasn’t clear on that.” She stood with Jim and Uncle Forrest in a thin rain just after breakfast, their baggage on the wooden sidewalk in front of the Butterfield stagecoach office in Fort Worth. The stagecoach and its horses stood off to her left, awaiting the driver’s return from breakfast.

  “Three months,” Forrest said, smiling. “Plenty of time for Mason to return with the money to pay off the bank.”

  Jim was watching a troop of Cavalry with their blue uniforms, yellow belts and bandannas, riding past in two lines of horses. The clean-shaven officers wore sabers and had gold braid and shiny brass buttons on their coats.

  “Aren’t they a sight!” Jim said breathlessly.

  “You were right about Judge Holloway,” Katie said. “He never smiled once, didn’t seem to approve of me—I think he figured we were trying to squirm out of a debt. But he was fair—he gave us the time to pay off the loan.”

  “He’s a decent sort, down deep,” said Forrest. “Ruled against me once and for me once. I couldn’t fault either ruling.”

  The Cavalry passed on, and now Katie could see the two men across the street. They were standing there in front of Forth Worth Fine Libations. Andy Pike and Clement Adams. Pike was leaning against a porch post. Adams had his arms crossed. Both men were staring right at Katie,

  “It’s those men, Ma!” Jim whispered, taking her hand.

  “I see them,” she said in a low voice. She felt as if her stomach had suddenly constricted to a tiny ball inside her, like an armadillo rolling itself up.

  “What’s all this?” Forrest asked, frowning.

  “Those two men across the street, Uncle Forrest—they work for Tom Harning. They’ve threatened us in the past. Adams there, the man with his arms crossed—he’s a hired gun.”

  “Can it be coincidence that they’re here?”

  “Could be. But I suspect it isn’t. I think they got word we were headed up here. I saw that man Wurreck in town when we were paying for the stagecoach. He must’ve told them.”

  “Well, by God, I’ll have none of this!” Forrest growled. “I’ll go to the constables! I’ll find the sheriff!”

  “They’re not doing anything but watching,” Katie said.

  “Clearly they’re trying to intimidate you, Katherine.”

  She nodded. “Well, I’m not intimidated.”

  “I shall seek an injunction! I shall—”

  Then the stagecoach driver came out of the café and called to them, “Let’s load up and hit the road, folks! Bring your bags over, and I’ll stow them up top!”

  “I’d rather just go, Uncle Forrest,” Katie said. “I don’t want to give them any excuses to . . .”

  “To what, Ma?” Jim asked, looking up at her.

  “I’m not sure. I don’t want to find out. But I do want to be on my way home.”

  Forrest nodded. “You’re in the right of it.” He picked up their bags, carried them over to the driver, and handed them up. “Perhaps I should come with you after all, Katie.”

  “You have law business here,” Katie said, shaking her head. “But we’ll need you soon as Mase comes home.”
/>
  “I’ll come to Fuente Verde sooner than that—in a week or two, maybe three. Goodbye, my dear.” He took hold of her shoulders and kissed her on the cheek. Then he shook Jim’s hand. “Don’t worry about anything, Jim. Those men are just trying to scare us. And we’re not going to let them, are we?”

  “No, sir!”

  “Good!” Forrest opened the stage door for them, and they got in. They were the only passengers, so they both sat at the back, each by a window.

  Forrest closed the stagecoach door and Katie wished she’d asked him to come along, after all. But he was stepping back now, waving, and the driver called out to the horses, snapped his whip. Then they were on their way, clattering down the road to the southwest.

  They rolled and bounced along for about ten miles, leaving Fort Worth behind, before Katie was ready to look. She lifted up the leather cover over the little window beside her and leaned over, craning to look down the road behind. A considerable distance back were two silhouettes against the thin gray rain. Two riders steadily following along behind the stagecoach.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  An hour past dawn, Hiram began to feel feverish.

  He had been riding all night, and both he and his horse were shaking with fatigue. Hiram’s pain was a steady dull ache that sometimes became a sharp stab of agony, and he longed to get down off the horse and ease the hurt for a spell.

  He had been trying to find water on the trail for the horse, but he’d come across none. At last he reined in near a patch of scrub brush. He dismounted, grinding his teeth at the pain, and went to his knees in the soft, thick grass. After the pain ebbed a bit, he realized he was grievously thirsty. He grabbed a stirrup and pulled himself to his feet. He had two canteens of water and suspected he should have brought two more.

  He unhooked a canteen, had a long drink, then poured some into his hat for his horse. It drank all that was there and licked the inside of his hat.

  Hiram splashed some water on his face to cool the fever, closed the canteen, and holding the reins, lay down where the scrub protected him from the wind. The horse lowered its head and cropped a little grass, then seemed to doze standing up.

  The pain surged up in Hiram all on its own, and he groaned, thinking that maybe he would die out here. Coyotes or wolves would take his body, and nobody would know what had become of him. Not Mase, not Queenie. The only two people who gave a damn . . .

  Queenie had probably been right about this. But he wasn’t going to quit. He just needed a little rest. He closed his eyes and lay very still. Before long, sleep took him into feverish dreams of shadowy gunmen and skeletons lying forgotten on the prairie. . . .

  A cold rain woke him. Hiram sat up, blinked around. The sun wasn’t very much higher in the sky. A few hours had passed. Long enough.

  He pulled his wet hat onto his head, got to his feet, slung the canteen over the saddle horn, and dug in a pocket for some jerked beef. He opened his mouth to the rain, got a little down him, and then bit off a piece of the dried beef. He started chewing very slowly. Breakfast, he thought ruefully.

  Then—gasping with pain in his chest, head throbbing—Hiram stepped into the saddle and started off again in the tracks of the herd.

  * * *

  * * *

  Boss, last night some riders passed us in the dark,” Karl Dorge said as Mase drank his morning coffee. Most of the drovers were in camp, waiting for breakfast. “I heard them clear as a bell.”

  “Didn’t get a look at them?” Mase asked, glancing around at the valley stretching out, yellow and green, to the rocky slopes lifting the granite ridges. Nothing out there but a couple of hawks circling and the shadows of clouds chasing sun over the crags.

  “Nope. Clouds were heavy. Couldn’t see much. I heard their tackle and the hooves. Sounded like shod horses.”

  “Maybe you were wrong.”

  Dorge shook his head. “Don’t think so.”

  “Perhaps,” said Dollager, stirring the Dutch oven nearby, “they were riders from Leadton going up to Morrisville. I believe it does happen.”

  “Funny time to travel,” said Dorge.

  Mase nodded. He called out to the other drovers. “Anybody else hear riders pass us last night?”

  They all shook their heads. Except East Wind. “Woke up. Thought I heard something. Too many to be our people.”

  “Might be Cavalry, might be anyone, but y’all keep your eyes peeled!” Mase called to them.

  The cold wind had abated, and it was a hot noon when Mase was satisfied that the herd was well under way. He rode north, scouting the trail and watching for signs of trouble. He cut the tracks of the riders Dorge had heard, guessed their numbers at seven or eight. The horses were shod. Could have been US Cavalry. Could have been riders from some outfit. But it could have been an outlaw gang, too. He was glad when the tracks angled off to the northwest, away from his route.

  Mase watched the ridgetops, peered into the dusty distance, saw no glint of metal, no smoke rising, no sign of people at all. It was a wild place, growing lusher as he went north. Everywhere about him were stretches of wildflowers, yellow and purple, as if the plain had been splashed with bright paint. The copses of honey mesquite were blooming, too. Small pines and junipers were growing on the slopes under the granite crags now. The air carried the perfumes of flowers and blossoming trees.

  Mase was alone in a world that might not have changed much for hundreds of thousands of years; the valley floor stretched flat all around him, but far from lifeless. He came across a prairie dog colony where small tawny heads bobbed up, regarding him gravely for a moment as he steered his horse well clear of their holes. A gray fox was easing through the grass, stalking toward the prairie dogs.

  A little farther on, Mase spotted tracks he thought were buffalo—there were still some small herds around—and the prints of pronghorn antelope.

  A couple more miles and the flowers gave way to knee-high grass. In the distance to the northeast, he made out a rock formation where the eastern granite ridge hooked to the west, like the sharp curve of a shepherd’s crook. It followed the rough shape Crane had sketched on his map. Somewhere in that crook was the spring, feeding a small pond where the cattle could be watered.

  Mase rode hard for it, and in another half hour, his stallion lifted his nose, nostrils dilating, in a way he did when there was water nigh. He eased the reins and let the stallion follow its nose, and in half an hour more, he reached a pool of green water in the shadow of the southerly curving ridgeline. The spring was a silvery line running down the black rocks to the pool. There was plenty of grass around it, too. An ideal place to camp. They’d be stopping a little earlier than usual, but he wanted to fill the herd’s bellies with water and grass before heading into the unknown between here and Morrisville.

  Mase let his horse drink and rest in the shade while he peered up at the ridges, looking for signs of trouble. Nothing moved except a vulture shifting on a high rocky nest.

  Satisfied it was safe here, he remounted and rode south to give Pug the good news.

  * * *

  * * *

  You just going to let him ride off like that?” Kelso asked.

  “Yep. For now.”

  Joe Fletcher and Rod Kelso were stationed in the boulders above and to the west of the spring, in a hollow formed by a rockfall. It was dark in there, and Fletcher didn’t allow Kelso to raise his rifle or gun. Mase Durst hadn’t been able to see them back there. But they could see him.

  “I need to kill all those men, not just Durst,” Fletcher said. “I need him to bring them down here under our guns. We’ll get the other boys into position once dark sets in. And we’ll catch ’em all down there because there’s no doubt in my mind he’ll camp near that spring. They’ll all be out there at the same time for dinner. Except a couple on the herd. Greer will get them in place for us.”

 
“You really think you can get that whole herd?”

  “Sure, and sell it, too. You, me, and Greer taking most of the money. We’ll represent ourselves as men from the Durst Ranch. Been asking around—this is the first Durst Ranch herd up this way. No one knows a damn thing about him.”

  “Suppose they find our tracks?”

  “That’s why I led us the ten miles out of our way you complained about so we could loop back from the north. They won’t live long enough to see our tracks, Rod.”

  “Greer take care of the other Durst?” Rod asked, rolling a smoke.

  “He did. Left him for dead. I saw him still lying there. Nobody’d even found his body the morning we left. Rod—don’t light that till Mase Durst down there is long gone. We’re going to have a cold camp and a long wait on that game trail up there. But it’ll be worth it. Hell, once we drag their bodies out of the way, we can take over their camp.”

  “First one to make sure of is that Denver Jimson hombre,” said Rod. “He’s a real pistolero, what I heard. And that vaquero, too. Most of them Mex cowboys can shoot.”

  “I’ll take down Jimson myself. That’ll be the signal to start the general shooting. We got to make it rain lead and use every round smart so no one gets out of that camp alive.”

  Rod nodded, watching Mase Durst ride off to the south. “I’m going to aim my Winchester for Mase Durst. Me, Rod Kelso—I’m going to be the one who makes sure he dies.”

  * * *

  * * *

  It was almost suppertime when the stagecoach arrived in Fuente Verde. Katie and Jim were tired from the long, dusty trip. There’d been only one brief stop on the way, and they were aching from hours of jostling.

  Jim jumped out of the stagecoach, and Katie climbed gratefully out behind him. It was cool, but the sky was clear of overcast, already tinted a vivid orange-red to the west. She looked down the road, half expecting to spot Clement Adams and Andy Pike. But they weren’t anywhere to be seen. They’d probably slipped off the road when she got to town.