CHAPTER 10
Hunter poked his hat brim up off his forehead and stared across the fire at Powwow Billy, the kid’s round, brown-eyed face bronzed by the dancing flames over which a coffee pot hung from an iron tripod.
They were in the ravine Hunter had tried to cross. At least, he thought so. It was so dark now that everything looked different than it had earlier. Somehow the kid had managed to drag him into the draw where there was more shelter than on the bank above. He remembered the pain of being dragged; he’d regained only semi-consciousness briefly.
Now he saw that Bobby Lee lay curled beside him, looking up at him dubiously.
“What in holy blazes, Junior?” he said now as the kid used a leather swatch to remove the pot from over the flames and fill a tin cup to which he added a good splash of whiskey from Hunter’s bottle.
Powwow Billy carried the smoking cup around the fire and set it down beside Hunter. “There. Have you some of that. Make you feel better. Say, that coyote seems to really like you.”
“So much for Bobby’s taste.”
“Bobby?”
“Bobby Lee.”
“Well, I’ll be hanged. Never seen the like!”
“I get that a lot. What’re you doing here?”
Powwow hiked a shoulder. “Had a feelin’ you wouldn’t make it. Didn’t set right with me, I reckon. Lettin’ you ride out alone after that whole, nasty bunch. Thought I’d throw in. I ain’t worth much in a lead swap, but I can put in my two cents.”
“You best go back to Lusk.” Hunter picked up the cup in both hands, blew on it, sipped. “Dang. That is good.”
“I’m a pretty good trail cook, an’ you’re gonna need one. I don’t think you can do much for yourself, and I doubt Bobby Lee can cook. I know one thing for a fact.” Powwow gave Hunter a direct, dark look. “I know you can’t take down Saguaro Machado your ownself. Not in your condition.”
Hunter took another sip of the nicely spiced mud and pondered on what the kid had said. Of course, he was right. But Hunter had had no choice. He’d had to ride out after Annabelle. Obviously, the cowardly law in Lusk wasn’t going to do it.
Still, if he caught up to Machado, he’d likely die a hard death. That wouldn’t do Annabelle any good. If she was still alive, that was. The possibility that she might already be dead tied his throat in a tight knot and drove a stake through his heart. He didn’t know what he’d do without her. They were planning on someday raising a family together, complete with sons and daughters and a whole passel of grandchildren running wild on the Box Bar B. Maybe even some of Bobby’s pups if the contrary coyote could ever find him a woman.
Not a man known for crying, Hunter sucked back a sob and regarded Powwow. The kid had returned to the other side of the fire and was leaning against his saddle, sipping his own coffee and regarding Hunter with expectancy from beneath the brim of his battered hat.
How much help would he be?
Not much. But he was all Hunter had, and Hunter had no choice but to continue in his quest for the savage Machado and Annabelle. Somehow, he had to find a way to run Machado down and get his wife back. He didn’t care about the money. Only Annabelle.
“I’ll likely get you killed, Kid, but . . . I don’t know”—he offered a grim smile—“I reckon I could use a cookie.”
Powwow smiled over the smoking brim of his cup.
Bobby Lee flopped his tail.
* * *
The next morning, after a hurried breakfast of coffee and beans, Hunter and Powwow mounted their horses and they and Bobby Lee continued their long journey, following Machado’s sometimes hard-to-follow trail. The kid proved to be a pretty good tracker, which helped when Hunter was in too much pain to be much good himself. When the kid couldn’t find the trail, Bobby Lee could.
The next two days were long and painful for Hunter as they steadily followed the outlaws’ trail, camping in dry washes both nights and starting out early again the next morning. The next night they again settled into a wash. Hunter leaned back against his saddle for a post-supper cup of coffee spiced with the last of his whiskey. He hoped they came to a road ranch soon, as he needed to resupply the painkiller. It was about the only thing keeping him in the saddle. That and his need to find Annabelle, of course.
The next day they rode through open ranch country. Cattle broadly peppered the sides of low hills and cedar-stippled buttes. They appeared to be Herefords bread with longhorns. Around one o’clock that afternoon, Powwow said, “Oh-oh.”
Hunter had been resting in his saddle with his eyes closed.
Now he opened them with a start and said, “What is it?”
“Riders.”
Then Hunter saw them riding down out of cedars topping a high mesa off the trail’s right side. Three men coming fast and riding Indian file on an interception course with Hunter, Powwow, and Bobby Lee. They wore Stetsons and billowy neckerchiefs. Batwing chaps flapped around their thighs. Rifles resided in saddle scabbards.
“Ah, hell,” Hunter said.
The men came down onto the trail Hunter and Powwow were following and then they booted their mounts into trots toward the two trail pards.
“How you want to play it, Hunter?”
“How the hell should I know? Take out your repeater, lever a round into the action, and set it across your saddlebow. If it comes to a lead swap, let me make the first move . . . if I can.”
Bobby Lee sat off the side of the trail, showed the riders his teeth and growled.
Hunter knew he himself was fast. At least, he was fast when he was healthy. Now he had no idea. All he did know as these grim-faced riders drew near was that they were trouble. Their faces were drawn in hard lines, jaws hard, two sporting brushy mustaches on their copper, sun-seasoned faces while the third and smallest of the bunch was clean-shaven.
He wore a low-crowned cream hat and a green silk neckerchief. Each rode a clean-lined ranch pony, and the thuds of the horses’ hooves grew louder until the obvious cow punchers reined up ten feet in front of Hunter and Powwow and curveted their mounts, making them less easy targets than if they faced the pair head on. They shuttled their incredulous gazes from Hunter to Powwow to Bobby Lee showing them his teeth.
“How do,” Hunter said, benignly. “Just passin’ through, fellas. No need to get your necks in a hump.”
The lead rider was in his mid-forties. He had a broad face that might have been crudely chipped out of stone by a half-drunk sculptor. He wore a black hat and a black vest, and two walnut gripped Colt Lightnings bristled on his hips. “That . . . coyote . . . yours . . . ?”
“Nah. I’m his.”
The lead rider regarded Bobby with a deeply befuddled expression then turned to Hunter. “There’s no passin’ through Ironwood Creek Range. You’ll have to turn back and take another route to wherever you’re goin’.” He had a deep voice that was oddly resonate and pitched with barely restrained fury.
“Unless they’re here to throw long loops on Ironwood cattle,” said the clean-shaven young man, smartly, one hand on the grips of his Colt.
“Shut up, Junior,” Hunter snapped at the kid. He was not in the mood for these three at all.
The kid stiffened his back and tightened his grip on the .44.
“Keep it holstered, Giff,” the lead rider said, smiling shrewdly at Hunter. To Hunter, he said, “You got a smart mouth for a trespasser.”
“We ain’t trespassin’ an’ you know it. This is open range. You might call it yours, but it’s mine and my partner’s an’ my coyote’s just as much as it yours. Now, I’m in no mood, so yield the trail!”
The kid, whose face had swollen up and turned crimson, said, “Why’s he’s nothin’ but a smart-mouthed grayback!”
He started to unpouch his six-shooter. Hunter was as surprised as the kid was when he found that he’d managed to pull the LeMat before the barrel of the kid’s Bisley had cleared leather. Hunter clicked the hammer back. The other two men, including the one who Hunter assumed was the Ironwood Creek foreman, eyed him as though they’d just realized they had a wildcat in their midst.
Bobby Lee rose and gave an angry bark at the three range riders.
“Why, he’s got him a whip-hand!” exclaimed the third rider, eyes riveted on the big, wicked-looking LeMat covering all three of them.
“Stop!” came a woman’s voice amidst the distant rataplan of galloping hooves. “Stop right there. That’s enough!”
Hunter looked off the trail’s right side to see a young woman galloping a fine Palomino down the ridge toward him and his and Powwow’s sudden enemies.
“Stop!” she yelled again, long tawny hair blowing out behind her in the wind. She wore a white blouse, the sleeves rolled up to her elbows, a spruce green riding skirt, and black patent riding boots.
Bobby barked at her.
“Easy, Bob. Female.”
At first, Hunter thought his pain and all the whiskey he’d drunk to quell it was making him hallucinate. Especially the nearer she came and he saw her cameo perfect features, tanned to the texture of a half-breed Indian’s. And a beautiful one, at that. She wore no hat; the tails of her neck-knotted bandanna, the same color as her skirt, blew out behind her with her hair, which Hunter guessed likely hung down to the small of her back. She galloped up to within twenty feet of Hunter, Powwow, and the others, and drew sudden rein, the Palomino skidding to a halt, turning sightly sideways and giving a spirited whinny.
Again, Bobby Lee barked at her.
She regarded the coyote dubiously then turned to her foreman. “What’s going on here? Kendall, what is the meaning of this?”
“Think we just caught us some long-loopers, Miss McGovern. And a coyote.”
Slowly, Hunter let the LeMat sag in his hand as she turned to him and appraised him thoroughly with intelligent gray eyes, and said, “This man is injured. Can’t you see that? I could tell as much, the way he sits his saddle, through my spyglass from up on the ridge.” She snapped another angry look at Kendall and said, “And he still got the drop on you!”
There was no little jeering in her voice.
She turned back to Hunter. “Who are you, sir?”
“The name’s Hunter Buchanon, ma’am.”
She frowned, puzzled at first. Then recognition shone in those soulful gray orbs. “Ahh. The rebel freedom fighter.” Hunter just then realized she, too, spoke with a deep Southern accent. “My father used to talk about you. He was a Confederate general back during the War of Northern Aggression.”
Hunter almost smiled. She pronounced “war” as “whah” and “Northern” as “Noh-thenn.”
He hadn’t heard an accent that thick in years.
“How bad are you hurt?”
“Just some ribs. I’ll make it.”
“I trained with a doctor in Denver for two years. Ride back to the Ironwood Creek headquarters with me, and I can make you feel much better than I can tell you’re feeling now. You need salve on the ribs and a much tighter brace. Otherwise, I doubt you’ll make it another two miles . . . wherever you’re headed.”
She glanced curiously at Hunter’s trail partner.
“That’s Powwow,” Hunter said.
Quicky, Powwow fumbled his hat off his head and held it deferentially over his chest. “How do, ma’am.”
“Powwow?” she asked.
Powwow held up his right hand, thumb and index finger about a half-inch apart. “I have about that much Comanch in my veins, ma’am.”
She looked at Bobby Lee and wrinkled the skin above the bridge of her nose.
“That’s General Robert E. Lee, ma’am,” Hunter said. “You can call him Bobby. Everybody does.”
She gave a skeptical nod, then turned to her men. “Kendall, you and your men get back to work.”
Kendall sighed and, looking chagrined, said, “Yes, Miss McGovern.”
He and the other two cast Hunter one more glare, then galloped back in the direction from which they’d come.
Cynthia McCloud turned to Hunter. “Please . . . ride with me to the headquarters. I’ll have you feeling better in no time. Then you can return to the trail. Where are you headed, anyway?”
“My wife was kidnapped by cutthroats. I’m on their trail.”
She nodded again, more deeply. “Then all the more reason to help me fix those ribs for you. You’ll be delayed one way or the other, Mister Buchanon.”
“How far away?” Hunter asked.
She hiked a shoulder. “Only about a mile. I’ll fix those ribs and make you a good meal. Hospitality from one Southerner to another. And for you, of course, as well, Powwow. I’m told I have a little Cherokee to go with my own Scottish ancestry.”
“Oh, is that a fact, Miss McGovern?”
“Please, it’s Cynthia. My mother is Mrs. McGovern.”
Hunter thought it over quickly. She was right. He likely wouldn’t make it another mile. It made sense to get help.
He pinched his hat brim to her. “All right, then, ma’am . . . er, I mean Cynthia. We’ll follow your lead. And thank you in advance for your hospitality.”
He felt keenly guilty for accepting hospitality when Annabelle was in the hands of Saguaro Machado, but it made sense to get himself feeling well enough to continue on the trail to rescue her and to turn Saguaro Machado and his cohorts toe-down.