CHAPTER 14
The three Pinkertons stared at Angus in pugnacious silence.
“You heard me,” Angus said. “The boy and I cooked. One of you fellas does the dishes. That’s how it works in hunt camp. Since you’re havin’ such a gallbasted time decidin’ on your own, why don’t you draw straws? Want me to cut one for you?”
He gave a dry chuckle.
The three exchanged dark, frustrated glances.
“Oh, hell,” said Leech Davis, running a hand through his long, sandy hair. He set his hat on his head, rose, and began gathering up the dishes until he had an armful. Then he stomped over to the stream and dropped the whole mess into the water before coming back and, huffing and puffing his exasperation, gathered up another armful.
Jackson sipped his coffee, then turned a knowing grin on Angus. “You’re loving this, aren’t you, Buchanon?”
“What’s that?”
“Bein’ out here . . . deep in the hills . . . bein’ trail boss. This is your element.”
Angus sipped his own brew, holding the warm tin cup in his gnarled hand. He chuckled. “Yes, yes, I reckon I do. Reminds me of the old days.”
“What old days?”
“When my boys an’ me moved up here from the South. After the War of Northern Aggression. We all four had a lotta forgettin’ to do. The war. The boys’ mother dyin’ while Hunter and I were off fightin’ the bloody fight.” Angus shook his head. “Bad days down there. We came up here to start over. That includin’ regular hunts up in these mountains. Elk, griz, deer, wild turkeys, pheasants, partridge. Yessir, after the work was done at home, we’d take a week or so off in the spring or fall and come up here and live free and shoot an’ bring our kill home an’ fill the larder an’ the keeper shed.”
Jackson glanced at Nathan poking at the fire with a stick. “That why you brought him?”
“That an’ because his eyes are better’n mine. He’s been up here before. Not this high or very often—there’s been little time—but he knows his way around a Winchester. But, yeah, I wanted him to have more experience and a chance to fall in love with these hills just like my other boys did.”
“Where’d he come from?”
Nathan looked at Angus.
“Hell,” Angus said. “Ain’t that right, boy? He was raised by outlaws.”
Nathan pulled his mouth corners down, nodded, and continued poking a stick at the fire. “I like it at the Box Bar B a whole lot better.”
Jackson looked at Angus sidelong. “You do realize we’re hunting men—right, Buchanon? Two nasty hardtails and a crazy woman.”
Angus returned the look. “They’re up to you. Gettin’ you fellas up to Ghost Mountain is our job, and when we get you there, our job is over.”
Jackson nodded.
Angus said, “Keep in mind, we’re your trail guides. Not your hosts. We’ll pull our weight—Nate an’ me. You fellas pull yours, an’ we’ll get along just fine.”
With that, Angus tossed the dregs of his coffee into the fire. He set his cup aside, picked up his canteen, then rose with a grunt, and pushed through some pine boughs as he walked over to the river, around a bend from where Davis was busily, disgustedly cleaning the dishes with sand and water. He dropped to an arthritic knee, uncapped his flask, and submerged it in the stream.
Footsteps sounded behind him, and he turned to see Nate pushing through the shrubs, carrying his own canteen. The boy looked tired, drawn, sun- and wind-burned.
Nate dropped to a knee beside Angus and submerged his own canteen in the river.
“How you holdin’ up, son?”
“I’m all right. How you holdin’ up, Angus?”
“When you get to be my age, and you’re still on this side of the sod, you’re holdin’ up all right.” Angus chuckled as he pulled his canteen out of the river and capped it.
“Those men back there,” Nate said, tossing his head to indicate the fire’s glow in the camp beyond the shrubs, “I don’t like them much. Do you?”
“Nah, nah, I don’t like them all that much. Then again, there’s not a whole lotta men I do like, so . . .”
“They’re the law, you say?”
“Yeah, I reckon they’re Pinkertons. That’s law, so . . .”
“I don’t know. They just seem kinda strange.”
“They may be law, but they’re pilgrims. They’re not used to the life up here, an’ I reckon they have a lot on their minds. When we catch up to them owlhoots, they’ll have to take them down while we just fall back and keep our heads down.”
“I reckon.”
“They’re kinda rough—I’ll admit. But you get to meet all kinds in this life, boy. It’s a good experience—you an’ me leading such men into the mountains. They don’t have much experience in the high an’ rocky. We best watch out for ’em, no matter how sharp-tongued they can be. How impatient they can be.” Angus gave another dry chuckle. “They’re pilgrims, all right. We’ll just keep to our own pace, an’ they’ll have to hold it, or they can ride on alone. And believe you me, they do not want to do that. But you an’ me, we know how to make a trek like this.”
Nate smiled up at the older man. “You really like this.”
“I reckon I do. I reckon I do. Without them”—Angus tossed his head to indicate the glowing camp in the dark pines—“I reckon I’d be stuck back at the ranch. Never woulda made a trek like this alone. Even with Hunter. Never woulda occurred to me I could still make a ride like this. I just hope . . . well, I just hope . . .” He cast his gaze to the northwest where Ghost Mountain humped up unseen in the darkness.
“Hope what?”
Angus smiled a little sheepishly at the boy. “Well, that I can make it without embarrassin’ myself, that’s all.”
“You’re not gonna embarrass yourself, Angus. Like Hunter says, you got the bark on.” Nate grinned.
“The bark on. Yeah, I reckon I used to think so. Now, you know, I think I’m comin’ around again.” Angus pushed to his feet. “But we still have two hard days left. The hardest days. The apron slopes around Ghost Mountain is rough country. Outlaws up thataway. So we both gotta keep our eyes skinned. The terrain is tough enough. But then when you throw in desperadoes from bank and train robberies around Denver an’ Manitou an’ Colorado Springs—well, then you gotta really ride careful. I sorta wish I hadn’t brought you now, thinkin’ more clearly on it.”
“I’ll be all right.”
“You an’ Hunter been practice shooting with that Winchester?”
“Yes. I’m a good shot. Of course, I’ve only been shooting rabbits an’ gophers . . .”
Angus squeezed the boy’s shoulder. “Let’s hope that’s all you have to shoot. Come on, boy. Let’s head back to camp an’ get some shuteye. Mornin’ will be here before we know it.”
“I’m already hungry for pancakes.”
“Of course, you are!” Angus laughed.
* * *
Flies buzzed around the dead man’s lips, the mouth twisted into a grimace, probably the last, agonized grimace before his demise.
Birds had been pecking at him.
He twisted sightly on the rope wrapped around his neck, thrown up over a branch above him and then tied off near the bottom of the tree. He’d kicked out of one of his boots. It lay on the ground beneath him. The toe of his sock flopped like a dirty cream tongue in the mid-morning breeze.
He’d been shot before he’d been hanged. Blood crusted the moon-and-star badge pinned to the lapel of his frock coat.
“U.S. Marshal,” Jackson observed.
“This is a hard place for lawmen,” Angus said.
“Wow,” murmured Nate, who’d been strangely quiet ever since they’d first spied the dead man hanging from a branch of the aspen in this narrow valley along a slender stream between high, craggy ridges.
“Look away if you need to, son,” Angus said. “No shame in lookin’ away. Death is nothin’ nobody needs to look at.”
“Who do you suppose killed him?” Nate asked.
“Maybe those he was after. Can’t believe he was out here alone. There’s likely at least one more lawdog out here. Likely dead, too.”
Angus said, “We should probably bury him.”
“No time,” Davis said. “His misfortune an’ none of our own.”
“I agree,” said Dutch McCrae, packing chewing tobacco between his cheek and gum. “Time to ride on. We got a timetable to keep.”
Jackson said, “If we stop to bury every dead man we’ll likely find out here, we won’t make it to Ghost Mountain—”
“I know, I know,” Angus said. “We won’t make it to Ghost Mountain till fall.”
He gigged his dun forward and they set out again, heading west up the valley, the valley floor rising gradually until they rode up and over another pass. At the bottom of the pass was another stream. On the far side of the stream, off the left side of the trail, and up a slight rise, lay a small, weathered gray log cabin.
“Whoa, whoa,” Angus said, checking down the dun.
Jackson rode up beside him. “Now, what the hell is . . .”
He let his voice trail off when his gaze had followed Angus’s gaze to the cabin and the two bearded men milling out in front of it. One sat in a chair in front of the cabin, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, twirling a revolver on his finger. The other was carving up a puma hanging upside down from the bough of a pine tree fronting the cabin. Both were bearded, badly disheveled, clad in denims or buckskins. At least, partly clad. The man doing the carving was bare-chested, his skin as dark as an Indian’s. Both wore long, tangle beards.
The man twirling the gun on his finger had looked up to see Angus and his trail partners sitting just down from the top of the pass. He said something to the other man, who stopped carving to turn his own attention on the newcomers. Angus could see smoke rising from behind the cabin. He sniffed the air.
Mmhmm.
Angus glanced behind him. “Let’s ride in slow, gents. No sudden moves.”
“Hell,” McCrae said. “Just look like a couple old mountain men to me.”
“Mebbe so, mebbe so.”
Angus booted the dun on down the ridge. As he did, he turned to Nate riding just off the dun’s right hip. “Stay close to me, boy.”
Nate nodded.
Angus bottomed out in the valley, crossed the creek, and reined up near the cabin, giving an affable smile and saying, “How-do, gents.”
The man in the chair rose, reached into the cabin, and pulled out an old Sharps .56, which must have been leaning against the wall beside the door. He sat down in the chair again and rested the Sharps across his denim-clad thighs. He was barefoot and wore a ratty underwear top under a smoke-stained buckskin vest. His tangled, gray-brown beard hung halfway down his bony chest. Both men were scrawny, deeply tanned, and they both had feral, paranoid looks in their eyes.
Behind all that grime and those beards, Angus saw a family resemblance.
“No need for that, now!” Jackson told the man with the Sharps. “We’re just passin’ through.”
“Easy,” Angus said out the side of his mouth.
The man who’d been carving the wildcat stood with his bloody knife hanging straight down at his side. Blood stained his chest and the front of his buckskin trousers. It stained his beard, as well. Angus wrinkled his nose at the smell of the dead cat. It might have been hanging there in the sun a little too long. But then, there was nothing as foul as the smell of dead, butchered wildcat, no matter how long they’d been dead. It was, however, somewhat of a delicacy to the old mountain men and fur trappers, who called them “painters.” He had no idea why it was so special to them, but it was. Dead and butchered, they smelled like skunks. At least, to Angus’s nose.
“Who’re you?” said the man with the knife, giving Angus and his trail partners the woolly eyeball.
Paranoia hung over this place, as thick as mountain fog in the morning.
“No one special,” Angus said. “We’re just passin’—”
Jackson put his horse two steps forward and in his best official voice said, “Pinkerton agents out of Denver. I’m Jackson. That’s Davis, the big fella’s McCrae. We’re looking for two men riding with a woman. They robbed a train. You happen to see ’em? Might’ve passed through here a week or so ago.”
Angus winced, giving the head Pinkerton the stink-eye of his own.
The man with the knife turned his head to share an inscrutable look with his brother or cousin with the Sharps. The man with the Sharps only blinked. No expression at all. Not on either face as the man with the knife turned back to regard the obviously unwanted strangers.
“Is that a yes or a no?” Jackson persisted.
Behind him, McCrae gave a wry snort.
Peeved, Jackson raised his voice. “Look, like I said, we’re Pinkertons out of—”
“That’ll be enough,” Angus said with fake congeniality. “Sorry to bother you fellas. We’ll be on our way. Sorry to bother you. Enjoy the painter.”
He was about to gig the dun forward when the man with the Sharps suddenly rose from his chair and started walking forward. As he did, the man with the knife dropped the knife and reached for an old double-barrel shotgun leaning against the tree from which the wildcat hung.
Angus had anticipated the moves.
He pulled his old Colt poking up from behind his belt, over his belly, and clicked the hammer back.
“No, no, no,” he said, startling the Pinkertons as well as Nate, all of whom had also turned away from the mountain salts and gigged their horses forward. “There ain’t no need for that. We’re not here for you. Yeah, I know you got a still behind the cabin. Can smell it from here. You’d best clean out your copper cables, ’cause you got a skunky batch brewin’ back there. We seen the dead marshal. The way I see it, he had him a run of bad luck, as do most lawmen in these mountains. They know that ridin’ in. But neither he nor you are any of our business. So don’t make it so!”
Both men had frozen in place.
They both regarded Angus with dull incredulity.
They exchanged a look and then the man with the Sharps returned to his chair and sat down, resting the rifle across his thighs once more. The other man left his shotgun leaning against the tree, picked up his knife, and resumed carving the wildcat.
Angus cast a disgusted look back at Jackson, then depressed his Colt’s hammer and returned the old popper to its place behind his belt, angled slightly over his belly.
Jackson and the others shared sheepish looks.
Angus spat in disgust then booted the dun on ahead along the trail toward Ghost Mountain.