CHAPTER 17
Walking his dun up a gentle rise through pines and aspens that were beginning to turn with the early mountain fall, following an old woodcutters’ trail, the grass and sage growing lush and green around him, Angus sniffed the breeze like a dog, snorting in large drafts of the cool, clean-scoured air.
“Smell that? That’s mule.”
“What is?” asked Jackson again riding behind Nate, all three Pinkertons surly again because of what they saw as an overly conservative pace.
“That smell. For some reason, I’ve aways been able to sniff mule from a long way off. We’re not too far off now, though. I got me a feelin’ there’s a muleskinners’ camp a little farther up the rise.”
As if to validate the old ex-rebel’s estimation, a mule’s distant bray sounded beneath the breeze rattling the aspen leaves.
Angus laughed and slapped his thigh.
“That old buzzard’s got a beak on him,” Leech Davis groused to Jackson.
The two Pinkertons rode side by side. McCrae, who’d gotten up on the wrong side of his bedroll that morning, brought up the rear. He hadn’t said two words to anyone for most of the morning nor even after they’d stopped for a quick noon lunch of bacon sandwiches and coffee. Another delay Angus had insisted on to rest themselves as well as their horses. “In the mountains, you need food an’ coffee, plenty of water, an’ fresh hosses.”
That was Angus’s motto that all three Pinkertons were getting tired of hearing.
Which was just fine with the agreeably defiant Angus. Because the old scudder knew he was right.
They followed the two track-trail through pines and when they came out into the clearing beyond, Angus saw two large lumber drays parked off to the far left, along a creek that tumbled straight down the slope from probably a spring above. He could see a good dozen or so mules tied to a long picket line on the other side of the stream. Another of the mules brayed and stomped. They all looked a might jumpy.
He stopped the dun, cupped his hand to his mouth, and yelled, “Halloo the camp!”
No response.
Angus could see no smoke rising from the large cook fire he could see between the parked wagons, each bearing the burden of a good load of long, unpeeled pine logs.
“Halloo-oo the camp!” Angus yelled again.
“Let ’em sleep,” grouched Ten Jackson.
“I don’t think they’re sleepin’.”
“What makes you say so?” asked Jackson.
“Them soogans under both wagons look empty. Besides, it’s after noon. No good muleskinner would sleep till afternoon.”
“Maybe they stop for naps.”
“They don’t stop for naps. They work.”
He could see the blanket rolls under each wagon. At least two under each. Muleskinners just naturally slept under their wagons in case it rained, which it nearly aways did up in this high country every late afternoon.
“I’m gonna check it out.” Angus glanced at Nate. “You stay here, boy.”
“All right, Angus.”
As he booted the dun into a trot toward the parked wagons, each one facing him with their tongues drooping into the sage, Leech Davis called behind him, “What business are they to you, old man?”
“Maybe none,” Angus said and checked the dun down between the wagons and near the fire ring piled with dead ashes but over which an iron tripod stood with a scorched, black, white-specked coffee hanging from its hook.
“Hmm,” he said, scratching under his chin with his gloved hand. “Damn peculiar.”
He rode back and forth between the wagons a couple of times before coming upon the tracks of what appeared four shod horses leading away from the camp. “Oh, I see,” Angus said to himself, leaning out a little from his saddle and following the tracks toward the saddle ahead. “Maybe they rode off huntin’ game.”
They probably trailed horses behind the wagons for that very purpose.
He turned the dun off the trail of the two shod horses and rode back over to where the Pinkertons waited impatiently with Nate, whose stocky pony was nibbling the green grass growing thickly along the rocky, two-track wagon trail carved by many drays pulled by mules on woodcutting expeditions. Usually, the woodcutters would haul the long chunks of wood—the stems of pines, firs, and aspens—and sell them in surrounding villages like Lead, Tigerville, Hot Springs, and Deadwood.
They’d sell the uncut logs for one price then ask a little more if the buyer wanted the sawyers to stay and cut the logs up into stove-sized chunks. They’d ask a little more if, say, the buyer wanted the wood all split and neatly stacked. Of course, they’d finagle a meal or two throw in for free . . . maybe even a place to throw down for the night in a barn or stable.
That’s how it worked. Great American capitalism at work. Albeit Yankee capitalism . . .
“They must’ve left to hunt,” Angus said, retaking his place at the head of the pack. “They’re headed back to town so they likely figure they can sell some game, too. They’re business jacks, these fellas!”
He chuckled then booted the dun ahead along the two-track trail rising gently toward the saddle maybe a hundred yards beyond.
“You’re too damn curious, Buchanon,” Leech Davis castigated behind Angus and Nate. “We got a job to do. How many times do I have to tell you that?”
“What’s the hurry?” Angus said, hipping around in his saddle to scowl incredulously at the long-haired Pinkerton, whose face had turned a deep red from the sun and wind. He had a haggard look likely from sleeping on the ground and riding too long in the saddle despite his desire for haste. There was even a sort of inexplicable desperation in the Pinkerton’s eyes. “Like I done told you, this is the only way to or from Ghost Mountain. If them three decide to come back down from their hideout, they’ll run smack into us!”
“Just the same!” Davis said in disgust.
“You never know what Avery’s gonna pull.” That was the first complete sentence Angus had heard Dutch McCrae utter all day. He’d almost said it too quietly for Angus to hear, but he’d heard it, all right.
Damn puzzling, these three . . .
“Whoah, whoah, whoah . . .” Angus said when they’d crossed the saddle and were riding through a grassy valley with scattered pines and aspens.
The trail forked ahead, the main one climbing up the distant ridge straight ahead, the left tine taking the ridge at a westward angle, off the main trail’s left side, through heavy pine forest.
“Christalmighty, Buchanon!” intoned Jackson behind him.
“Horse,” Nate said, pointing at the saddled mount Angus had spied standing at the edge of the forest sixty yards away on his left. The horse stood peering toward Angus and his trail mates, reins hanging. His saddle hung down his left side. It appeared to be nearly falling off the stocky sorrel.
“Wait here, Nate!” Angus said and booted the dun into a gallop.
As he and the dun approached the sorrel, the sorrel shied, trying to pull away, but Angus saw that its reins were not on the ground but twisted around a small pine. Wrapped tightly. Not by a man but by happenstance, most likely. The horse had been galloping past the tree when the reins had become entangled with the sapling, wrapped tightly around the main stem.
“Easy, boy. Easy fella,” Angus said, stepping slowly down from the dun’s back. “No one’s gonna hurt . . .”
He let his voice trail off when he saw the bloody gashes raked into the horse’s hide over its left hip. The gelding was sweat-lathered and blowing hard, eyes wide and white ringed. “Shhh, shhh, shhh,” Angus said, holding the sorrel’s reins tightly in his fist and stepping back to inspect the horse’s hind end. The gashes were long and deep, the blood glistening redly against the sorrel’s dark hide. They could have been made by four razor-edged Bowie knives raked simultaneously across the horse’s hip.
But no Bowie knives had made those cuts.
The only thing that could have made those cuts were the long, razor-edged claws of a grizzly. Possibly a wildcat but most likely a grizzly. A year ago, Angus had gotten way too familiar with the havoc a grizzly could make not only on stock flesh but on man flesh, as well.
He gave an involuntary shudder at the savage, atavistic terror connoted by those wounds.
“Oh, boy,” he said under his breath, those grisly wounds holding his gaze. “Oh . . . boy . . .”
He released the horse’s reins, reached under the mount’s belly, and freed the latigo with one jerk of his lone hand, which had become more powerful than the rest of his old self with the need to compensate for the one lost to a Yankee’s minié ball. The saddle dropped to the ground. There was no bedroll or saddlebags. The hunters had intended to head back to the wagons for the night. With one sweep of his lone hand, Angus slid the bridle off the sorrel’s snout. Suddenly free, the horse whinnied shrilly, swung around, and galloped off into the forest beyond Angus, quickly absorbed by the forest’s deep, early afternoon shadows.
Angus scrutinized the ground around the sapling closely. He easily picked up the sorrel’s backtrail in the thick, soft, mustily fragrant forest duff. Climbing back onto the dun’s back, he backtracked the trail along the edge of the woods and then where it angled into the forest and up to the top of the pass and down the other side. The smell of wood smoke touched his nostrils, growing in intensity as he bottomed out in the valley at the bottom of the pass.
In more woods beyond, fifty yards away, he saw a tendril of gray smoke rising through pine boughs.
He stopped, again sniffed the air.
He frowned.
Another aroma now mixed with the smell of the woodsmoke.
He didn’t like this smell at all. It was a sweet, wild smell laced with the metallic stench of—what?
He booted the dun ahead. He had to give it several kicks to get it moving. It shied, snorted, not liking the smell issuing from ahead any more than Angus did.
Haltingly, the dun lurched into a trot.
Horse and rider angled across the brushy meadow into the woods. Almost immediately, Angus checked the gelding down to a stop. The dun stood breathing heavily, its ribs expanding and contracting beneath Angus, who stared into the woods at the fire ring roughly twenty feet away from which the tendril of gray smoke rose from a pile of pale ashes. A small coffee pot lay in the fire, near a flat rock from which it must have been knocked.
Angus now realized what that third smell was.
Blood. Fresh blood. The badly scuffed forest floor beyond the fire ring was splashed with the stuff. Blood-soaked clothing and pieces of men were strewn beyond it, as well.
Hoof thuds sounded behind Angus. He was slow to register them, for his attention was riveted on the carnage before him.
He’d seen such carnage once before. The previous summer on Box Bar B Range, when the rogue grizzly had decided to prey on Box Bar B cattle and then on the men who’d gone out to kill it, nearly killing Hunter, as well. A cold sweat broke out over Angus now, basting his shirt against his back. Several beads of it, like ice water, ran down from his temples to moisten his thick, gray beard.
“No,” he muttered. “No, no, no . . . not again.”
“What’s going on, Buchanon?” came Bryce Jackson’s voice behind him as the two sets of hoof thuds grew louder.
“Best stop where you are,” Angus said, staring straight ahead. “Unless you wanna see somethin’ a might unholy. Might interrupt your sleep tonight. I know it’s gonna mine.”
Jackson stopped off the dun’s left hip. “What is—?”
Leech Davis reined up just off Angus’ right stirrup. “What in holy... blazes?”
“Griz.” Angus brushed his fist across his nose. He looked around warily. “And he ain’t far away, neither.”
“Good God,” Jackson said. “How many . . . how many . . . ?”
“Four men. Hard to tell the way they’d all been torn apart, half-eaten. But there were four sets of tracks. He . . . the griz . . . got all four, all right. They must’ve been hunting and stopped for coffee. That’s when he hit ’em.” He motioned to what appeared a horse . . . or part of a horse . . . lying a good way beyond the fire ring. “He got one of the horses, too. At least one. No tellin’ where the others are.”
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Jackson said.
Angus turned to him pointedly. “Where’s the boy? Where’s Nathan?”
“Back on the trail with Dutch.”
A rifle barked from back in the direction from which Angus had come.
“Christ!” Angus reined the dun around sharply and booted him into an instant, lunging run.