CHAPTER 20
“Well, I’ll be hanged,” said Powwow Billy. “That’s part of a boat, ain’t it?”
The day after Hunter had learned from Henrietta about Annabelle’s fate at the Cheyenne Bend Station, Hunter had stared down in horror at the prow of a wooden boat and one wood bench seat that had snagged against a cottonwood whose roots some wind had pulled up out of the ground, knocking the tree out over the river, its still-green leaves glinting in the mid-morning breeze.
The rest of the boat lay in pieces scattered across sandy shallows on the other side of the Cheyenne River, which ran slowly here, a couple of hundred yards beyond the falls.
Bobby Lee was sniffing the wreckage on this side of the river and mewling.
“That is a boat,” Hunter said, tonelessly. He poked his hat up to scratch the back of his head, darkly pensive. “Don’t look good. Not good at all.”
Bobby Lee stopped sniffing and looked up at him, tail curled up over its back.
“We’ll find her, boy. Don’t worry.” Hunter did not add aloud what he added silently to himself. If she’s alive, we’ll find her.
“I got some tracks over here.”
Powwow was riding his horse slowly beyond the fringe of willows lining the stream. As he rode, he leaned far out from his saddle, scrutinizing the ground. “Some apples, too.” Powwow stopped and stepped down from his saddle.
Hunter rode Nasty Pete through the willows and stopped where Powwow was crumbling a horse apple between his fingers and sniffing. He dropped the crushed manure and looked up at Hunter. “Two, three-days old, I’d say. Hard to tell for sure because of the humidity along the river.”
Hunter winced. If the manure was two- or three-day’s old, he and Powwow still had some riding to do before they’d catch up to Machado. Frustration was a hot tidal wave rolling through him. His damnable ribs had slowed him down, that extra night they’d taken at Cynthia McCloud’s ranch. A needless dalliance. He should have pushed on, pushed through the pain, just kept abating it with hooch.
Bobby Lee sniffed the tracks, tipped his head back with a mournful howl, looked at Hunter, and wagged his tail, giving his entire gray-brown body a quick shake.
“She with ’em, Bob?” Hunter said, hope rising in him. “Is she ridin’ with ’em, Bob?”
Bobby Lee gave a yip in the affirmative and, nose to the ground, began running downstream along the tree- and shrub-lined river.
“Let’s go,” Hunter said, and booted Pete along the game path Bobby Lee was following, stopping often to sniff the ground.
They followed the trail for several hours. Machado’s bunch had ridden along the river for several miles. Then, when thick woods and high bluffs closed down along the river, Hunter had picked out the tracks of seven shod horses angled out away from the river and into open prairie—Machado and his men and, hopefully, Annabelle. They camped that night well after dark, Hunter reluctant to give up the trail despite the danger of night travel to the horses, then headed out early again the next morning.
They pushed hard, Bobby Lee leading the way.
In the early afternoon, Hunter checked Pete down to a stop and curveted the mount, gazing straight ahead toward a fringe of cottonwoods lining what appeared a wide, narrow stream cutting through the vast prairie in this southwestern corner of Dakota Territory.
“You see somethin’?” Powwow said, reining up beside Hunter.
Hunter gestured with his chin.
Bobby Lee had seen it, too. Or them. He sat down roughly twenty feet beyond Hunter and Powwow, staring straight ahead toward the fringe of cottonwoods. Or rather at the turkey buzzards swarming in the brush beyond them, some turning slow circles twenty feet in the air, others skirmishing along the ground, squawking and barking like dogs fighting over a particularly tasty cache of meat.
Terror was a hot saber rammed through Hunter’s heart.
Buzzards meant death.
“Let’s take a look,” he said, trying to keep his tone even, himself calm while at the same time stealing himself against what he’d find in the brush on the other side of the cottonwoods.
She’d escaped once. Had she tried to escape again and pushed Machado too far?
According to Henrietta, the whore at Cheyenne Bend, the vermin outlaw leader intended to sell Anna to a Missouri River slaver named Corazon. A beautiful redhead, Annabelle was a special catch for Machado, who supplied slaves to an even bigger slaver in Corazon. Redheads were rare and big money-makers. From what Henrietta had overhead in the Cheyenne Bend’s main drinking hall, Annabelle was all the more desirable because she was married to the famous— Yankees would say infamous—ex-rebel freedom fighter, Hunter Buchanon.
A beguilingly dangerous prize, indeed.
Thinking of Annabelle being in the hands of slavers was as raw as the prospect of what Hunter would find in the brush beyond the cottonwoods.
He and Powwow galloped after Bobby Lee down the sight rise and, passing a fire ring in which several bottles and airtight tins lay in a small pile of gray ashes, through the cottonwoods and willows. They swung right, downstream, and followed Bobby Lee over to where a good dozen buzzards were squawking and barking as they skirmished over whatever lay in the tall brown brome grass.
Bobby Lee rushed the birds, barking furiously, until they’d all taken flight and, still barking and squawking defiantly, flew up into the trees and lit on branches to glare down at the interlopers, squawking and mewling and barking their disdain for the intrusion on their meal.
Hunter and Powwow swung down from their saddles, dropped the reins of the uneasily whickering horses. They didn’t like the sickly sweet smell of death any better than Hunter did. He raised his neckerchief to his nose and mouth. Still, his eyes watered as he stood gazing down at the hideous remains of a dead man—a man in buckskins and with a thick tumbleweed of coarse, gray-brown hair. His eyes were gone and his face had nearly been pecked away by the buzzards. He was bloating up and turning purple, splitting his buckskins at the seams, which meant he’d been dead at least a couple of days.
Hunter leaned down, pressing the neckerchief tighter to his mouth and nose, and canted his head to scrutinize the deep, wide gash in the side of the man’s neck.
“Anna.” Hunter gave a dry chuckle. “She’s still alive. Hah! At least two days ago. Givin’ ’em their just desserts!” His heart feeling lighter and more buoyant than it had been only a few minutes ago, he turned and grabbed Nasty Pete’s reins. “Come on, boy. Let’s get after ’em. Anna’s doin’ her part in gettin’ shed of those snakes. It’s high time I do my part!”
He and Powwow mounted up and galloped along behind Boddy Lee, who was hot on the kidnappers’ trail. They rode hard for the next hour, crossing an old military outpost showing the tracks of one horse, which soon joined the rest of the gang and continued to the northeast, around the deep canyons of the Dakota Badlands.
Later that afternoon, Hunter, Powwow, and Bobby Lee topped a low rise, and Bobby Lee stopped dead in his tracks and turned to peer off to the right, the southeast. He lifted his long, pointed snout and sniffed the air with leathery back nostrils, half-closing his eyes, concentrating his energy into his sniffer.
Hunter checked Nasty Pete down, and Powwow reined up just behind him.
“What is it, Bobby?”
The coyote gave a soft yip and a mewl and then Hunter saw what the coyote had detected with his nose.
Five riders were just then riding to the top of a low rise roughly a hundred yards away. They were climbing the rise’s opposite side, their hatted heads showing first and then the heads of their horses and then, finally, the rest of both the men and the horses as the five riders drew rein at the top of the rise. They sat their mounts spaced about seven feet apart; they just sat there, all five staring toward Hunter, Powwow, and Bobby Lee.
It was hard to tell much about them from this distance.
They were all dressed dissimilarly though they were all similarly armed. Even from this distance, Hunter could see holstered pistols bristling on their hips or thighs, rifles jutting from saddle scabbards. Two had cartridge bandoliers crisscrossed on their chests. One wore a steeple-crowned sombrero and a what appeared to be a white cotton tunic, marking him a Mex. One wore a bowler hat. The others, including one Indian wearing a calico shirt and buckskin breeches, wore weathered Stetsons.
“Who do you suppose they are?” Powwow said, thumbing his battered Stetson up on his forehead.
“Parasites,” Hunter said, knowing instinctively it was true. “Common road agents, outlaws. Rustlers, maybe. Train or stagecoach robbers on the run.”
“Don’t like the way they’re givin’ us the wooly eyeball.”
“You can’t see their eyeballs.”
“No? Well, I got a good imagination. They’re trouble or I’ve missed my guess.”
“Got me a feelin’ you’re right on both counts. They’re givin’ us the wooly eyeball, all right. Might think we’re law.”
“Well, then they just got guilty consciences an’ oughta see the error of their ways an’ change ’em!”
Hunter chuckled without mirth. “Why don’t you ride over an’ explain it to ’em, preacher?”
Powwow gazed up the rise at the five renegade riders. “Yeah . . . maybe not.”
Bobby, sitting ten feet ahead of Hunter, lifted his snout to give a brief howl. He didn’t like how those strangers looked any more than Hunter did. Even the coyote recognized the “lead swap” look.
Hunter booted Nasty Pete ahead. “Let’s just keep ridin’, see what they do.”
As he and Powwow continued following Bobby Lee to the northeast, Hunter glanced back. The five riders held their positions atop the rise.
Good. Maybe the five renegades—he had little doubt they were renegades, all right—were just curious and wanted a look-see at the two pilgrims and the coyote they were following. Bobby Lee always drew interest. And if he and Hunter weren’t careful, he’d also draw lead.
Hunter, Powwow, and Bobby Lee rode another few yards, and Hunter cast a glance over his right shoulder. His heart sank. The five riders were just then starting down from the crest of the rise, spurring their mounts into hard gallops, angling toward Hunter and his two unlikely trail pards.
“Ah, hell!”
“What is it?”
“Those sharks smell blood. Let’s ride, look for cover! High tail it, Bobby, or we’re gonna be dancin’ to those fellas six-gun serenades!”
The words had no sooner left Hunter’s lips and he’d booted Pete into a gallop than the guns began barking behind him. He could tell they were not six-guns, however, but rifles—likely various calibers of Winchesters and at least one Henry rimfire .44. Whooping and hollering followed. The renegades sounded like Indians on the warpath who’d just spied a succulent stagecoach sporting a strongbox filled with white eyes gold.
Which is exactly what they wanted to sound like to inflict fear on their intended victims. Hunter had little doubt that they assumed he and Powwow were either lawmen or bounty hunters, and they intended to scour the range of them and steal their horses. Renegades like the one galloping and shooting behind him now enjoyed the sport of hunting and killing. They were human buzzards, combing the Dakota prairie for something to eat . . . or steal. Or just for the mere satisfaction of killing and stealing and then heading for the nearest town and inflicting fear there on the citizens and law, as well.
As bullets plumed dirt and tore up sage branches just behind him, Powwow, and the full-out running Bobby Lee, Hunter glanced behind him again. The renegades were on fast horses, likely fresher than Hunter’s and Powwow’s. They were steadily closing the gap between them and their prey.
Ahead and left lay a steep, chalky ridge. Another one rose on the right, forming two long bastions of chalky, eroded soil on which pockets of buckbrush and cedars grew. As Hunter and his cohorts rode between these two escarpments, Hunter spied what appeared a notch cave atop the steep apron slope rising to the base of the greater formation on the left.
“Up there—a cave!” he shouted, pointing. “We’ll cover there!”
“The high ground—right behind ya, Hunter!” returned Powwow.
“This way, Bobby!” Hunter yelled as he angled Nasty Pete to the left.
The part of the ridge the cave was in was deeply recessed from the rest of it. The slope leading up to the cave was steep but not so steep that two good horses couldn’t take it at a fast clip and at an angle, weaving around several small boulders that had likely tumbled from the ridgecrest. The boulders offered cover, and several bullets plowed into them as Hunter, Powwow, and Bobby Lee traced a meandering course through them toward the notch cave in the ridge wall.
Bobby made the cave first and stopped and turned back to watch Hunter and Powwow approach on their blowing, sweat-lathered horses. Both men leaped from the horses while they were still moving, sliding their rifles from their saddle boots, then slapping both mounts off into the boulders at the far shoulder of the slope and out of the line of fire.
Hunter scrambled into the cave, whose ceiling was only about six-feet high. He doffed his hat, dropped to his hands and knees and, jacking a live cartridge into the Henry’s action, lay belly down, and aimed down the slope, toward where two riders were pulling away from the others as they galloped up the slope, triggering rifles, some with their reins in their teeth.
One of the two riders breaking ahead of the pack was a black man in buckskins and tan Stetson; the other appeared a half-breed with wildly flying hair behind a red bandana tied around his forehead. The black man got a shot off before Hunter did. Hunter’s aim was better. His bullet took the black man high in the chest, knocking him ass over teakettle over his mount’s arched tail. The black man’s bullet hadn’t entirely missed, however; it had carved a nasty burn across Hunter’s left cheek before plunking into the cave wall behind him and evoking a frightened mule from Bobby Lee, who’d taken refuge against the cave’s rear wall.
Powwow fired at the half-breed once, twice, three times. His first two shots missed because the breed was crafty enough to run his paint horse in a weaving fashion. He got so close that Hunter could see the white line of his gritted teeth between his thin lips, could see the pitted, copper skin of his face and his dark-brown eyes slitted angrily.
Powwow’s third shot took the breed high in his right arm just as he was about to fire the carbine in his hands from thirty feet down the slope. That made the breed reconsider. He reined his pony around sharply and high-tailed it back down the slope, weaving around boulders and avoiding both Powwow’s and Hunter’s flying lead. The other three had gone to ground behind boulders but now as the breed galloped past them, they mounted up and hightailed it after him, bottoming out on the prairie below and galloping back in the direction from which they’d come as though their horses had tin cans tied to their tails.
The black man was on his belly, crawling toward the Spencer repeater he’d dropped when Hunter had shot him off his horse.
“Don’t do it!” Hunter yelled.
To no avail.
The black man grabbed the carbine, fumbled the cocking mechanism open and closed and, gritting his teeth, frothing blood oozing from the wound in his upper chest, swung the Spencer’s barrel toward Hunter and Powwow. Powwow tried to shoot him, but his rifle hammer dropped on an empty chamber. Hunter shot the man through the forehead a half-second later, the black man rolling onto his back and triggering the Spencer skyward before arching his back in a death spasm and then relaxing as his Maker came calling.
Hunter sighed, mopped sweat from his brow with his shirtsleeve. He glanced at Powwow lying belly down beside him. “You all right?”
Powwow’s face acquired a troubled expression. “I, uh . . . I think so . . .”
He lowered his right hand to his right leg. When he brought it back up to look at it, there was blood on it.
“Oh, hell,” Hunter said. “You’re hit, kid!”