“Hell, Mr. Beauchamp, I wouldn’t worry none about McAllister’s brother and that Injun. The way I figure it, I expect they’re still hightailin’ it as far away from Silver City as they can get. It’s been five days since that little party up on the mountain. If they were gonna do anything about it, they woulda done it by now. I figure Sartain and the two boys with him musta got a couple of shots in ’em in that little set-to at that meadow before they got killed. Them two might be dead by now. I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t run across their bodies back in the hills one day.”
Beauchamp cast a cold eye on his foreman. Strong might be right. Maybe Joel McAllister and the Indian were wounded in the confrontation with Sartain and the two with him. Maybe they were long gone from Silver City, or even dead, but Beauchamp didn’t like to deal with “maybes.” The raid on McAllister’s claim had not gone according to plan, not only with the two who got away, but also with the cost in Beauchamp’s men.
“Six men dead,” he chastised Strong, “six men, and one of them shot by one of the females at the house. If you had pulled the raid off like you should have, you shouldn’t have lost a single man.”
Beauchamp was satisfied that the attack had resulted in getting rid of Boone McAllister and his bunch, but he was not pleased with the messy way Strong and the men had accomplished it. At least it had saved him six hundred dollars in bonus money he had promised to each man.
“They put up a bigger fight than I figured they would,” Strong said, looking for an excuse for his failure. “They were ready and waitin’, but we got ’em all, just like you ordered.”
“Yeah,” Beauchamp replied sarcastically, “except the brother and the Indian. And you set fire to the house. Why in hell did you burn the house down? I could have used that house.”
“They shot Blanchard. All three of them women had guns, Sharps carbines. We brought ’em back with us—looked like they was pretty new, and plenty of cartridges to go with ’em. They weren’t hittin’ nothin’, but one of ’em got Blanchard when he rode right up next to the house. The three of ’em couldn’t watch all four sides of the house, and Slow Sam slipped in a window then on the side they weren’t watchin’. He got two of ’em with his knife and shot the other’n. I reckon it was the Injun in him that made him kick the stove over and set the place on fire. It went up pretty fast. By the time we finished scalping the women, it was blazin’ pretty good, so there wasn’t nothin’ to do but get the hell outta there.”
“Who’s up there watching the place now?” Beauchamp asked.
“Slow Sam, Pete Gentry, and Billy Garland,” Strong said.
Beauchamp snorted his impatience. “Well, maybe Gentry’s got enough sense to talk to anybody who comes snooping around up there. Sam and Billy haven’t got the sense of a billy goat. Gentry knows what to tell them?”
“Yes, sir. He knows to tell anybody askin’ questions about the place that it’s already been filed on, and they’re watchin’ it for the new owner.”
Beauchamp nodded thoughtfully. As long as no one from the territorial government came in to question the legality of his claim, there shouldn’t be any trouble from anyone in Silver City. As far as the merchants in town would know, Ronald Beauchamp was gracious enough to volunteer his men to look after McAllister’s claim until it was determined there was no heir or family to claim ownership.
Jim Crowder, in his capacity as sheriff, had ridden out to the mountain to take a look at the results of the massacre. It didn’t take much to convince him that it was the work of a maverick band of hostile Indians. Beauchamp had assured him that there was no further danger from the Indians since they were no doubt long gone, and if the army was contacted, they would surely come to the same conclusion. He reminded him that his responsibility was the town and not what took place in the mountains around it.
“Don’t concern yourself with the folks that the Indians killed,” Beauchamp had told Crowder. “I’ll have my men bury the bodies of poor Boone McAllister’s family.”
The whole affair could have come off better, but Beauchamp felt confident that the results were what counted, and he could enjoy the satisfaction of having destroyed Boone McAllister.
I’ll sit tight for a couple more days before I take over the mine, he thought. In the meantime, Mike Strong’s boys could guard the place and discourage any of the many prospectors that had flocked to Silver City after the first real strikes. It was doubtful any of them knew McAllister was pulling top-grade ore out of that mountain.
• • •
“To hell with this. I’m freezin’ my ass off,” Pete Gentry complained. “I’m goin’ back down there to that barn. If we gotta stay up here on this damn mountain, we might as well go someplace where we can build us a fire to keep warm.”
Mike Strong had told the three of them that Beauchamp wanted them to watch the mine, but there was nothing handy there to build a fire with—at least nothing smaller than the heavy timbers framing the entrance. There was a good-sized space inside the mine, where they could have found some relief from the wind, but there was no way to reach it since Strong and a couple of the men had dynamited the entrance.
“That suits me,” Billy Garland said. “At least we can get outta the wind inside the barn. And we can just take turns ridin’ back up here to check on the mine.”
“You two talk like women,” the half-breed, Slow Sam, scoffed. “This ain’t cold. Wait till winter really sets in.”
“Well, good,” Gentry came back, “since you don’t mind the cold, you can stay up here, and me and Billy will go down to the barn.”
“Ha,” Slow Sam spat, “I think we’ll take turns settin’ on this damn mine. I ain’t gonna stay here all the time while you two are takin’ it easy by the fire.”
“All right, then,” Gentry said, “that’s what we’ll do. You take it first, and me or Billy’ll spell you.”
“Too bad we burned the house down, ain’t it?” Billy laughed. “We coulda set us a pot of coffee on the stove.”
“Yeah, if ol’ Slow Sam there hadn’t kicked it over,” Gentry said.
“Go to hell,” Sam retorted.
“Most likely will,” Gentry replied with a chuckle. “Come on, Billy, let’s go to the barn.”
They left Sam sitting on a pile of dirt, cross-legged, Indian-style, both men knowing the half-breed was doing it for show, and would hurry over to the entrance of the mine to get out of the wind as soon as they were out of sight.
• • •
Joel McAllister stood amid the burned timbers of what had once been his brother’s house, his mind sickened by the charred remains of the three bodies and the hell they must have suffered before death came to take them.
I can at least bury what’s left of them, he thought. What manner of man could do this to a woman?
He made his way back out of the destroyed cabin and led his horse down to the barn to look for a shovel. He found one right where he expected to in the back corner with several other tools. The tools were all that was left since the raiders had taken the supplies he had piled there, including weapons and ammunition that he had acquired. There was a pick left there, so he took it and the shovel and started for the door.
Just about to step outside, he stopped at the door when he thought he heard something in the distance. He dropped the tools he was carrying, grabbed the gray’s reins, and led it inside the barn, then ran back to the door to see if he had really heard someone. Coming through the gap in the trees, on the trail from the mine, two riders were approaching while carrying on a loud conversation. It was too late to get out of the barn without being seen. There were two windows, but no door.
Damn it, Boone, why didn’t you put a back door on your barn?
He put the horse in one of the two stalls in the back, pulled his carbine from the saddle sling, and looked around for a place to take cover. There wasn’t much available. The best he could do was to kneel behind the wall of the stall across from the one his horse now occupied. Getting as much of his body as possible behind the stall doorpost, he waited.
In a matter of minutes, the two riders pulled up before the open barn door, the one rider still jawing away.
“It woulda been nice if ol’ Slow Sam hadn’t burned the house down,” Billy went on. “We coulda watched this place in style, sat around drinkin’ coffee while Slow Sam freezes his ass off up at the mine.” His mind wandered to other things then as he continued to talk. “You know, I’da liked it a helluva lot better if somebody had got to that young gal before that damn breed messed her up. I’da liked to had a go-round with that little filly. She looked pretty damn good even after Sam sliced her up.”
“Did you know she wasn’t but thirteen years old?”
Startled, both men were caught off guard by the solemn voice from the back of the barn. Faster than Gentry by far, Billy immediately reached for the .44 he wore at his side. The shot that knocked him from the saddle was already on the way before his pistol cleared the holster. Standing with one foot in the stirrup, the other leg about to swing over to dismount, Gentry tried to defend himself. He managed to get off a shot in the short time it took Joel to crank another cartridge in the chamber, but it was wild with his horse startled by the sharp crack of the Spencer. The bullet embedded itself in the stall post Joel knelt behind. There was no time for a second shot before Joel calmly smashed his chest with his next shot.
Joel came out of the stall to make sure they were both finished. They appeared to be, but just to make sure he wasn’t going to be shot in the back by a wounded man, he put a bullet into the brain of each one.
“That’s two of the bastards, Ruthie,” he announced solemnly. Now the question to be answered, and without delay, was whether the two were alone or there were others, maybe at the mine. If there were others, they would likely have heard the shots, and Joel did not want to get cornered in the barn again. So he led his horse to the door, tied the reins to the latch, and then walked out in the open and peered out across the clearing toward the gap in the trees. There was no one in sight, so he took advantage of the time he felt certain he could count on before anyone was able to reach the gap and caught the two horses the killers had ridden. They made no effort to escape him, standing still while he searched the saddlebags for anything he might find useful. Of particular interest were the Henry lever-action rifles both men carried, and the full gun belts of .44 cartridges.
Already carrying more on the gray than he would have desired, because of his recent visit to Horace Beecher’s trading post, he decided to take one of the horses for a packhorse. A quick decision went in favor of the sorrel that Gentry had ridden. A thought flashed through his mind then, and he recalled he had seen a rig for a packsaddle hanging on a peg in Boone’s tiny tack room. After taking another quick look toward the gap in the trees, and seeing no one, he went back and retrieved the packsaddle. There was no time to try to fit it on the sorrel now, so he left the saddle on the horse and figured he’d hang everything he took on it for the time being.
Hurrying as fast as he could, he tied the sorrel’s reins to the back of his saddle and was prepared to leave when another thought caused him to pause. He hadn’t thought about searching the two bodies, so he took a few moments more to do that. He was astounded to find that both men were carrying a large amount of cash—blood money, no doubt.
This is what they were paid to murder my brother and my friends, he thought.
He put it in his saddlebag, stepped up into the saddle, and guided the gray around the corral to ride up into the trees behind the barn. When he was well hidden in the belt of pine trees that circled half of the mountain, he dismounted and tied the horses to a low limb. Satisfied that they were out of sight from anyone riding up to the barn, he made his way back down to the edge of the trees to see if anyone came to investigate the shots that had been fired.
• • •
“What the hell?” Slow Sam muttered when he heard the shots coming from the direction of the house.
He emerged from the scant cover of the mine opening in an effort to hear better. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he had heard five shots. Only one of them sounded like a .44. The other four were from a heavier-caliber weapon, and he was sure they were not from the Henrys both Billy and Gentry carried.
“That don’t sound good,” he said, and waited to listen for additional shots, but there were none. “That don’t sound good at all.”
He hesitated for a few minutes, deciding whether he wanted to ride down there to investigate. He might find himself riding into an ambush, possibly outnumbered. His next thought was that he was glad he had stayed where he was, and that it was Billy and Gentry who had blundered into the ambush. He decided he should ride back to Blackjack Mountain and tell Strong what had happened, but the problem with that was he wasn’t really sure what had just happened.
If one of them doesn’t come back pretty soon to tell me, he thought, then I reckon I’d better go have a look.
He continued to stand there in front of the entrance to the mine, peering down the trail toward the gap in the pines and listening. After what he could only guess to be about ten or fifteen minutes, with still no sound of more gunshots, he reluctantly climbed onto his horse and headed down the trail to the house.
When he reached the point where the trail passed through the gap in the trees, he pulled up and dismounted, not willing to ride into the open meadow where the house and barn stood. Leading his horse, he walked to the edge of the trees to get a better look at what he might be riding into. At first, he saw nothing to indicate anything was wrong, but after a minute or two, he saw Billy’s horse walk out of the barn. It struck him as strange that Billy would let the horse run loose.
They got to be in the barn, he thought. But why didn’t Billy come out to keep his horse from wandering off?
“I got a bad feelin’ about this,” he muttered to himself, and decided that he wasn’t going to ride down there to present a target to whoever was doing the shooting. And he was convinced that his two companions had been the unfortunate victims of the four shots he had heard. “Damn!” he cursed softly, hesitant to get any closer, but knowing he would catch hell from Strong if he wasn’t able to tell him what had happened to Gentry and Billy.
Suppose nothing has happened to them, he thought. Then I’d play the fool back at the ranch. With that in mind, he made himself move in a little closer to try to get a better look.
He picked a pine larger than the others that was separated a few yards from the rest of the trees. After peering intently at the open barn door, he moved quickly to take cover behind the tree. There was still no sign of either of his two companions, and nothing in the barnyard except Billy’s horse, still wandering idly around. The reluctant half-breed was at the limit of the risk he was willing to take, and he couldn’t decide what to do.
Finally he decided, and yelled out, “Hey, Gentry! You in the barn?” There was no answer. He waited. Maybe they were in the barn and didn’t hear him. He edged a little farther around the tree. “Hey, Gentry, Billy, you in there?” he yelled again. This time he received an answer when a large piece of pine bark was ripped off right above his head, followed immediately by the report of the rifle.
He didn’t wait to see where the shot had come from. Running for his life, he jumped into the saddle and kicked his horse into a full gallop. It was an ambush, just as he had feared. He didn’t know how many, and at the moment, he didn’t care. But he was convinced that Gentry and Billy were dead, and he wasn’t going to be the next one.
• • •
Running down through the trees, trying to get a clear shot, Joel found that he was too late to stop the man racing away toward the mine.
“Damn it,” he cursed for missing with his one shot, not willing to excuse it even though he had not had much of a target. He knew now there had been only the three men watching the place. His regret was that Beauchamp would know that he had come back. “Well, he was gonna find out anyway,” he said aloud, knowing that he had only started seeking revenge. He figured he had a little time before any more of Beauchamp’s gunmen showed up to look for him, so he went back to the barn to complete the job he had started to do when he suddenly had company.
There was so little left of the three charred bodies that a big hole was not required, so he dug only one grave and put them all in it. Using a piece of canvas he found in the barn, he carried each body to the grave as gently as he could. When all three were resting in the bottom of the hole, he covered them with the canvas, pausing to apologize to them for not being there to help them when their murderers struck. He had not had time to know Boone’s wife, Blue Beads, but he felt the pain his brother would have suffered. Elvira and Ruthie had been his adoptive family, and the grief he felt for them was almost unbearable. Billy’s horse approached to within a few yards to watch the man suffering with his conscience and berating himself for his failure to protect. Finally Joel asked God to treat them kindly, then started shoveling the dirt back into the grave. Before leaving, he promised them that their killers would all pay for what they had done.
The question before him now was what his next move should be. He had not expected Beauchamp’s men to be on Boone’s property when he rode in that morning. His plan had been to scout out Beauchamp’s place, waiting for an opportunity to catch his prey in singles or doubles, away from the rest of the gang. After the confrontation just passed, it was likely Beauchamp would send his men to search for him, so he was convinced he was now the hunted and not the hunter.
Either way, he thought, they’ll pay.
The next thing he decided to do was to find a suitable camp, a place where he could leave his extra horse. With that in mind, he went back into the tack room to get a coil of rope hanging there. At some time or another, there was always a need for a length of rope. There was one more job he had to do before looking for a camp, so he tied his newly acquired packhorse there at the barn, took the pick and shovel, and went back to the mine to bury Boone and Riley. When he finished that soulful task, he returned to the barn.
Knowing that Beauchamp’s men would be scouring this entire mountain, he decided that he could not stay there, so he started off down the back side of the mountain, leading his packhorse. Billy’s horse watched them leave until they had gone about fifty yards; then it tossed its head a couple of times and loped after them. This was not something Joel desired, considering his current circumstances. Hiding one extra horse was going to be challenge enough. He didn’t want the bother of another horse. But the horse continued to follow some several dozen yards behind him, no matter that he tried to chase it back. He finally gave up trying, and resigned himself to the fact that he was going to have to find a place to keep both extra horses.
The mountains to the east of the one Boone had settled on looked to be much more rugged and offered a better chance to find the spot he was looking for, so this seemed the best place to go. He spent most of the day searching, but he finally found a place just made to order, where a busy stream made its way down from the mountaintop through steep rock walls to form a small waterfall at the back of a high, narrow canyon. There was only one way into it on horse or foot, and only wide enough for horses to enter single file, so he felt confident that it would be difficult for anyone to surprise him there. He led his horses into the small clearing at the bottom of the falls and proceeded to make his camp.
• • •
Boss Beauchamp was furious. He had planned to ride into town in the afternoon to spend the night in the hotel, and much of the next morning in his office at Beauchamp No. 2. His late dinner was interrupted by the arrival of Slow Sam on a thoroughly lathered horse, yelling something as he skidded to a stop in front of the barn. Knowing the half-breed was supposed to be up at McAllister’s claim, he assumed he could anticipate bad news of some kind, and he was getting sick and tired of hearing about things that had gone wrong.
“Lena!” he roared, and pulled the napkin from his neck and threw it on the table. “Lena!” he roared again when she didn’t appear in the doorway immediately. He pushed his chair back and stood up.
“What are you yelling about?” the somber Ute woman asked.
“Put my dinner in the oven to keep warm. I’m going outside to see what those damn fools have fouled up now.”
He didn’t wait for her response, but picked up his heavy coat from the hall tree and stormed out to the front porch.
“What is it, Mike?” Beauchamp called out to his foreman, who was talking to the obviously agitated half-breed.
Strong glanced up when hailed by Beauchamp, and held his hand up to signal that he had heard him. With Slow Sam in tow, he went immediately to stand at the bottom of the front porch steps.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “I was just gettin’ ready to come report to you.” He turned to point at Sam. “He says he thinks Billy Garland and Pete Gentry are dead.”
“Dead?” Beauchamp exploded. “He thinks? What does he mean, he thinks they’re dead? Doesn’t he know?” He was so angry he began to sputter. “Who killed them?” he demanded.
“Tell him, Sam,” Strong said.
Slow Sam told them what had happened to send him racing down the mountain. “I don’t know how many there was waitin’ for Billy and Pete. They wanted to go down to that homestead and get in the barn to keep warm.” He glanced at Strong. “I stayed up there at that mine, like you told us to do, Mike, keepin’ my eye out. Well, I heard the shots, and I hightailed it down there as fast as I could go. I didn’t see hide nor hair of either one of ’em, so I figured they was dead. Then somebody started shootin’ at me. Damn near got me, too.” He cocked his head to show them a couple of small scratches where pieces of the bark had hit him. “There was just too many of ’em, and they was all hid too good. Wasn’t nothin’ I could do. Wouldn’t’ve done no good if I rode down there in the open and got shot, too. So I figured the best thing for me to do was to get on back here so you’d know what was going on up there.”
Without interrupting, Beauchamp listened to Sam’s accounting of what had happened on the mountain, but he was not convinced that there was a gang of men up there. Seething with anger, he nevertheless remained calm.
“He’s back,” he said, looking at Strong accusingly. “That son of a bitch McAllister, the brother, he’s back—maybe him and the Indian, too. There’s no gang of gunmen up there.” He shifted his gaze to lock onto Sam. “You say you got shot at. How many times?”
“Well, I was too busy to count the shots,” Slow Sam claimed.
“Most likely one or two before you ran,” Beauchamp said sarcastically. “There’s only two men up there—the two you let get away. And now they’ve come back to try to sit on that claim again, and, damn it, I want this thing cleaned up. I’m tired of hearing about failures. It’s gone on too damn long. Mike, take the men we’ve got left and go up there and run that son of a bitch to ground. Finish it.”
There were cattle and horses scattered over both spreads, McAllister’s and his, and he had planned to have his crew rounding them all up by this time.
“Yes, sir,” Strong said, “but you know I’m down to five men now, if Billy and Gentry are dead.”
“Damn it,” Beauchamp exclaimed, “you’re only going after one man, maybe two. Hell, take Fuzzy with you, if the six of you can’t handle it.” Getting angrier by the minute, he added, “Maybe I should send Lena up there with you. That would give me one I might be able to count on.”
Properly chastised, Strong and Sam backed away a step.
“Yes, sir,” Strong said. “We’ll sure as hell get ’em this time. I’ll go get the boys ready to ride, and we’ll stay up there till we find McAllister.”
“Just do what I pay you to do,” Beauchamp replied in frustration. He remained there on the porch for a moment, trying to settle his anger down. The hills were being littered with the bodies of men he had hired to do his killing, and he wanted to end this war before the people of Silver City found out what was really going on.
Still irate, he charged back in the front door, in time to collide with Lena, who was coming from the front window where she had been listening to the discussion outside. It was enough to provoke his anger even more.
“Damn you, you nosy bitch!” he roared, and shoved her out of his way. “You’re worse than a damn dog, getting underfoot!”
“I not your dog,” Lena spat back.
He slapped her for her insolence. “You are if I say you are. Now get my supper out of the oven before I give you the beating you deserve.”
Her face red and stinging, she did as she was told, having no choice but to do so.