CHAPTER 9
The Box Bar B hired man, Casey McQuade, lean and gray-bearded in late middle-age, handed Angus the reins of a zebra dun, glanced at the three Pinkertons sitting their horses expectantly in the middle of the Box Bar B Ranch yard, and said, “You sure you wanna do this, boss?”
Angus accepted the reins. “No, I ain’t sure I wanna to it, Casey. But for some consarned reason I sorta feel the need. Know what I mean?”
They were standing between the open stable doors.
It was dawn. The sun hadn’t even poked the top of its head above the eastern ridges.
Casey looked deeply consternated. “But . . . but . . .”
“I know, I know,” Angus said, adjusting the saddlebags on the dun’s back, as well as the war sack he’d filled with grub. “I’m old an’ stove up an’ I got only one arm. But you know what, Casey?” He grinned at his hired man, nearly as old as Angus was but still capable with a plug pony and a lariat. “I’m lookin’ forward to it.”
“You know what Hunter would say about this.”
“Oh, I know, I know.” Angus chuckled as he walked over to where young Nathan stood holding the reins of a steeldust, short and stocky as an Indian pony. “Climb up, boy.”
He held the reins while Nathan clambered up into the saddle. Nathan had been riding and roping ever since he came to the Box Bar B over a year ago.
“Saddle snug?”
“Feels snug, Angus.”
“Stirrups the right length?”
“Yep.” Nathan grinned down at the old man pridefully. He loved the notion of riding along with Angus and the three officious looking Pinkertons. “I’m ready.”
“Why you takin’ the boy?” Casey asked Angus.
“Cause his eyes are better than mine,” Angus said, walking around to the left side of his dun. “And he needs the experience. Might never get the chance again. I raised all my boys on the huntin’ trail, and they grew up tough an’ sharp. He winked at Casey, then grabbed the horn with his one hand, toed a stirrup, and swung up into the leather.
“Hey, Buchanon,” called the lead Pinkerton, Bryce Jackson. “We’re sorta burnin’ daylight here, if you know what I mean. What do you say you stop palaverin’ with that old man, and let’s get a move on?”
Casey scowled up at Angus. “Kinda peevish, ain’t they?”
Angus chuckled. “Yeah, well, they’re law and they’re goin’ after the lawless, so I reckon they got the bark on. Just gotta live with it. Look after the place, Casey. We’ll likely see you in a few days.”
Angus reined the dun around and booted it out into the yard, calling for Nathan to follow.
“I hope so,” Angus heard Casey say fatefully behind him. “I do hope so. Go with God, boss.”
Angus threw up an acknowledging arm then called to the three Pinkertons, “Come along, Pinks. Come along. We’re burnin’ daylight!”
He glanced at Nathan, winked, and said, “Come on, boy!” And he gigged the dun into a trot, crossing the yard toward the old woodcutting trail that would lead them up into the fur-carpeted ridges showing a dark, furry, purple green in the dawn light, toward the northwest and the distant bulge of Ghost Mountain.
Angus was no sooner out of the yard when he felt as though he’d shed twenty years or more. He had an important job. He was leading lawmen after the lawless. He was riding up into his old haunts, where a man felt as though he could spread his wings. Not only that, but he had his foster grandson with him. He’d teach the boy the ways of the mountains just as he’d taught Shep, Tyrell, and Hunter oh so many years ago now.
He and Nathan led the Pinkertons across a flat stretch of valley, then into a canyon that rose gradually between high, fur-carpeted ridges. At times the climb was steep, so he kept a slow, gradual pace though he knew the slow speed was graveling the Pinkertons, whom he could hear muttering peevishly behind him. When they came to a creek crossing the trail—Old Man Cranston Creek, it was called, after the old man who’d gone mad in his later years but who’d had a cabin just upstream, he reined in and swung down from the saddle. The Pinkertons were climbing the slope behind him and Nathan, grim sets to their naturally grim features.
“What’re we stopping for?” asked the tall, dark, broad-shouldered Jackson.
“What’re we stoppin’ for?” Angus asked, incredulous, as Nathan swung down from his steeldust’s back. “We been climbin’ hard for over an hour. These hosses need a rest.” He glanced at Nathan. “Come on, boy.”
He and Nathan led their horses over to the stream to let them draw water.
The Pinkertons conferred in nettled tones though Angus couldn’t hear what they said above the stream’s rush over rocks. He glanced back at them and said, “Lead ’em on over here. They’re all three hot and need water, an’ you oughta fill your canteens. Be awhile till we get to another creek.”
Impatiently, the Pinkertons dismounted, led their horses over to the stream and let them drink. Casting Angus the wooly eyeball, they knelt to fill their canteens. Angus was starting to get riled himself.
“You boys haven’t had much experience with mountain travel, have you?”
“No,” said the beefy Dutch McCrae as he sunk his canteen in the stream to fill it. “That’s why we hired you. But we need to go a little fast than what we’ve been traveling or those three are going to get away with the loot we’re being paid to retrieve.”
“You’re not gonna do that by killin’ your horses,” Nathan put in, standing and capping his canteen.
Angus glanced at the boy in surprise. Nathan was normally meek and reserved, downright shy. But he, too, had felt the impatience of the Pinkertons and, a horse lover himself, was miffed about how they were treating their mounts. Inwardly, Angus smiled at the boy’s pluck but said quietly, “Easy, boy. I’ll take care of it.”
“Didn’t realize the kid had a mouth on him,” said the lean Pinkerton with long, sandy hair tumbling down from his low-crowned cream Stetson. He had flat, colorless, washed out eyes and a long, aquiline nose. He grinned at the other two men, and they chuckled dryly, subtly mockingly.
Nathan flushed and cast Angus an indignant glance.
Angus smiled and pressed two fingers to his lips.
“All right,” said the beefy, red-bearded McCrae, capping his canteen and hooking the lanyard over his saddle horn. “Let’s get a move on before those three pull their picket pins and head down out of the mountains.”
“This is the only way up or down from Ghost Mountain,” Angus said, stepping into the leather. “We ain’t in any hurry, fellas.”
“That’s what you say,” Jackson said, stepping into his own saddle and sponging water from his thick, dragoon-style mustache.
“What I say goes, fellas,” Angus said, chuckling as he put the dun into the stream. “I’m the trail boss. What I say goes.”
He doubted he’d be able to convince these officious Pinkertons of that, but he’d give it a try, anyway. He’d put up with more difficult cases. His own, young, wild, and impatient sons, for instance. He gave another chuckle, still enjoying himself as he put the dun up the opposite bank and back onto the rocky trail, Nathan riding close behind him.
A half hour later, as they were climbing another in a series of steep ridges, Angus checked the dun down abruptly, saying “Whoa, boy. Whoah!”
Nathan almost rode up into Angus but quickly checked his own mount down, as well.
“Now what we stopping for?” asked Jackson, riding up into Nathan before jerking back on his own reins, his mount lifting its head and fighting the bit.
“Bear,” Nathan said quietly.
Angus had heard the thrashing in the brush off the trail’s right side, maybe fifty yards away. He watched as the big, lumbering beast climbed the ridge to disappear into pines and furs, snorting. He didn’t see much but its big hind end, but it was a bear, all right.
“So, it’s a bear,” McCrae said. “It’s headed away from us. Not comin’ toward us.”
“If we stop for every bear we’ll likely see in these hills,” said Jackson, “we won’t make it to Ghost Mountain until fall.”
“Like Dutch said,” said Leach Davis. “It’s headed away from us.”
“Yeah,” Angus said, putting his dun ahead once more. “For now.”
They climbed the ridge and descended into a shallow valley. The sun was sinking low in the west, and the pines carpeting a stream running through the heart of the valley were casting long shadows. The air was misty with an early mountain nightfall. Angus led his charges off the trail’s right side and toward a stone escarpment rising along the stream’s near side.
“Where we goin’?” McCrae wanted to know.
“We’re stoppin’ for the night,” Angus said. “It’ll be dark in another half hour.”
“Well, then I say we stop in a half hour,” Jackson said.
“No, no,” Angus said. “That ain’t how you do it, boys. You stop while there’s still enough light to make camp.”
Jackson angrily booted his horse up ahead of Angus, stopped, and curveted it, facing Angus with a belligerent scowl. Angus reined up and so did Nathan.
“I say we ride for another half hour. There’ll still be enough light to make camp.”
“You go ahead,” Angus said defiantly. “The boy and I are stoppin’ here because that’s the smart thing to do. These hills are honeycombed with outlaw hideouts, outlaws on the dodge from the law in Denver and Colorado Springs. Even some from New Mexico and Utah. You ride up on one of those camps in the dark and there’ll be hell to pave an’ no hot pitch!”
“Not to mention wild animals,” Nathan put in. “Remember the bear?”
Jackson jutted an angry finger at the boy. “You know, I’m gettin’ tired of that boy’s sass.”
“Then ride on.” Anger rose in Angus. “I back the boy!”
Jackson glanced at the other two Pinkertons sitting their mounts behind Nathan. Finally, he drew a deep, disgusted breath and let it out slowly, loudly. “All right, all right. Trail boss!”
He yielded the trail and Angus led them to the base of the escarpment, and they tied the horses to a picket line and set up camp between the escarpment and the stream. The scarp would offer cover from behind, the stream from in front. They’d still have to keep an eye on the pines, darkening now, lined out to either side along the water. It was the best place Angus had spied over the past hour. It would have to do.
Nathan gathered wood and Angus built a fire and cooked a pot of beans that he had soaked in his coffee pot on their way into the mountains. They hung the pot filled with water for coffee over the fire and only forty-five minutes or so after they’d stopped for the night, they were all eating the beans to which Angus had added a goodly amount of bacon, and drinking piping black coffee.
The night closed down, black as a glove save the high, arching firmament sprinkled with twinkling stars.
When the Pinkertons had finished their meals, they set their plates aside and leaned back against their saddles, ready to settle in for the night.
“Don’t get too cozy just yet,” Angus said, swirling the last of his coffee in his cup where he leaned back against his saddle abutting the scarp, Nathan on one side, Jackson on the other, the two other Pinkertons, Davis and McCrae, sitting with their backs to the stream. “One of you three has to do the dishes.”
“What?” said the beefy McCrae. “Have the boy do it.”
Angus shook his head. “He and I built the fire and cooked the meal. One of you has to do the dishes. Take ’em down to the stream and scrub ’em out with sand and water.”
To a man, they cast him withering glares.
Only, it didn’t wither Angus. He’d raised sons.
He only chuckled.