CHAPTER 24
“Get low, kid!” Hunter said, grabbing his Henry, then rolling to his left.
He gained his hands and knees and crabbed over to the cave entrance, doffing his hat and tossing it away, wanting to make as small a target as possible. He hunkered low on his chest and belly, keeping the rifle tight against him so no starlight would reflect off the barrel and give him away.
“Our friends from earlier, you think?” Powwow asked, tightly, quietly.
“Most likely. On the other hands, the whole damn Dakota Territory is crawling with owlhoots on the run. Good place to get lost, Dakota. They may want our horses.”
“Without our horses . . .”
“Don’t worry, they won’t get ’em.” Hunter studied the slope dropping away before him. There was enough starlight that he could see a pretty good ways, make out rocks, gnarled cedars, and boulders, which meant he should be able to see a man or men, as well.
However, he spied no movement.
He stayed there for a time, studying the slope, watching, waiting. He began to wonder if Nasty Pete—he’d recognized Pete’s whinny—had gotten jumpy over nothing. A coyote or a rabbit, say. Maybe a hunting nighthawk.
But then it came again—another shrill whinny.
Hunter could hear the grullo shake its head and paw the ground.
Still no movement.
He glanced over his shoulder where he could see Powwow’s silhouette lying belly down against the cave’s rear wall.
“You got your rifle?” Hunter said just above a whisper.
“Yep.”
“Keep it close and keep your eyes and ears skinned. I’m gonna check the horses then take a little walk around, have a look-see.”
“All right.”
Hunter gained his feet, stepped quickly out of the cave and to the left side of it, crouching, looking around, listening.
Farther off to his left, down a short, steep slope, he could hear the horses moving around nervously, whickering, blowing. They’d detected something they feared. Could be a man or men, could be a wolf or a wildcat. Hunter was exhausted from the long ride with the battered ribs and wanted nothing so much as to get some rejuvenating sleep, but he admonished himself to stay alert. He didn’t know what he might be walking into.
Slowly, he moved down the slope through large rocks and boulders. When he came to the relatively flat area where both horses were tied, he placed a soothing hand on Pete’s rump. He could feel the muscles just under the hide twitch automatically, apprehensively.
Slowly, he moved up between the horses, running his gloved left hand along Nasty Pete’s back then placing a soothing hand on Powwow’s dun.
“Easy, fellas. Easy. Just me.” Hunter paused, stared into the darkness beyond the boulders. “What’d you wind, Pete?” he asked in a soft, slow whisper. “You see somethin’ down there, did you?”
Pete jerked is head up, switched his tail and stood staring into the darkness.
Hunter sniffed the still night air. If a mountain lion was close, he’d likely be able to smell it. They had a strong, distinctive odor. He’d smelled it before and had known he was close to a den. He smelled nothing now but the mushroom smell of the spring bubbling up before him and glinting in the starlight, and the clean tang of cool stone.
“All right,” Hunter said. “I’m gonna check it out.”
He gave Pete a pat on the snout then, holding the Henry up high across his chest, his gloved hand over the brass receiver, started walking slowly down the slope, weaving through boulders. He took one step at a time, treading lightly, wanting to make as little sound as possible. He stopped suddenly beside a wagon-sized boulder on his left, squeezed the Henry tensely in his hands.
An unfelt current in the otherwise still night air had brought to his nose the rancid, sweaty smell of a man. It was laced with the smell of wool, leather, and camp smoke.
He’d learned to trust his sniffer. Several times during the war, it had saved his life.
He waited, listening.
The smell grew in intensity. Then he heard the faint crackle of a stealthy footstep on sand and gravel.
Slowly, almost soundlessly, he backed up. He stepped around the boulder and stopped at its far end, cast his gaze up alongside it. Nothing. The man he’d smelled and heard was likely working his way around the far end, heading toward where Hunter had been standing.
Hunter moved forward, stopped at the corner of the far end, peered along the backside of the boulder, on his right. A silhouette figure stood crouched before him, at the boulder’s far corner. Hunter could make out the steeple-crowned sombrero of the Mexican who was part of the five-man pack that had stalked him and Powwow earlier.
Four-man pack, that was.
About to be three-man . . .
The Mexican moved suddenly around the corner of the boulder, lowered his rifle, and fired three quick rounds toward where Hunter had been standing a minute before. Vaguely, Hunter wonder if the Mex had detected him by his own smell. It had been a long time since he’d had a bath.
The Mexican stood crouched over his smoking rifle, moving his head, looking around, likely wondering where his target had gone.
“Here, pendejo.”
The man gasped with a start and swung around sharply, bringing the smoking rifle around, as well. Hunter’s Henry barked twice, both slugs taking the Mexican in the chest, lifting him a foot up off the ground and then throwing him back into the rocks behind him. His rifle clattered as it, too, struck on the rocks.
A bullet slammed into the boulder less than a foot in front of Hunter. A rifle flashed and barked in the darkness maybe thirty feet away, on his left. Hunter whipped around and fired three more shots, triggering and pumping the cocking lever, the spent shells arcing up over his right shoulder and clinking onto the sand and gravel around him. The man screamed and dropped with a crunching thud, the rifle clattering onto the rocks around him.
The man lay groaning.
Hunter strode toward him slowly, keeping the smoking Henry aimed out from his right hip, tracking for any sign of more movement. There should be two more of these prairie parasites out here somewhere.
Ahead, he saw the man he’d shot trying to crawl away, a long lump of a man in the darkness. He was grunting and groaning. In the starlight, Hunter could see the dark blood staining the ground behind him. Likely a belly wound.
Hunter set his right foot down on the man’s back, drove him to the ground and held him there.. It was the Indian he’d seen earlier, long hair hanging in tangles down the bac of his calico shirt. His tan Stetson lay in the sand beside him. He wore buckskin breeches and high-topped moccasins decorated with beads and porcupine quilts. “What’re you after?”
The Indian groaned, glanced over his shoulder, and spat, showing his teeth briefly in the darkness. Then he smiled. “Your friend . . . he’s wounded, eh? That’s why you holed up the cave.”
Hunter just stared down at the flat-faced Indian smiling up at him, dark eyes narrowed in self-satisfaction.
“My two amigos,” he added in a lilting, flat-voweled Indian accent, “are probably carving him up right now. Those two like knife work. Consider themselves artists!”
Hunter shot him in the head then ran through the boulders and up the slope toward the cave, which he could barely make out in the darkness. Ahead, a shadow moved—a man stepping around the side of a large boulder about twenty feet down slope from the cave. Ahead of that man and to his left, another man moved across the shoulder of the slope, heading toward the cave.
Hunter ran ahead, shouting, “Powwow—on the slope beneath you!”
The man nearest Hunter swung around, his rifle lapping red-orange flames. The bullet spanged loudly off a rock to Hunter’s left. Hunter dropped to a knee, racked a fresh round in the fourteen-shot Henry’s action, and fired twice. The first bullet slammed into the rock to the right of his target. The second bullet felled the man—likely a leg shot—as he tried to run behind a rock downslope ten feet and to his right, Hunter’s left.
He squeezed off another shot at Hunter. That round whistled far over Hunter’s head. Hunter dropped to his knee again, fired three more rounds, and watched in satisfaction as the vermin—an oblong shadow—rolled over on his back with a shrill curse.
A rifle flashed from farther up the slope. The bullet curled the air off Hunter’s left ear. Hunter racked another round into the Henry’s action but held fire when yet another rifle roared and stabbed flames from even farther up the slope and to the right of the man who’d just fired. The kid’s rifle barked from the cave mouth two more times, flashing brightly.
There was a groan and a thud, the clatter of another rifle hitting the ground.
A long, ragged sigh, then silence save for the low rumble of distant thunder and a distant lightning flash.
“Kid?”
“Here,” Powwow said. Another brief silence, then: “Dang.”
His voice was clear in the heavy silence that had fallen over the slope in the wake of the lead swap. Absently, Hunter wondered why he couldn’t hear the horses, both of whom should have been kicking up a fuss at the shooting.
He walked up the slope toward the cave. “What is it?” he asked Powwow.
No response.
Hunter moved through the rocks and stood crouched at the cave entrance, peering inside. Powwow was sitting down against his saddle, resting his head against the cave’s rear wall. “You all right?”
He sat with his right knee drawn up, right arm resting over the top of it. The left, wounded leg lay straight out before him, the barrel of his Winchester resting against his knee.
“I ain’t never shot anybody before.” He gave an ironic laugh.
Now, you tell me, Hunter thought.
He was going after a gang of cutthroats who’d kidnapped his wife to sell her into slavery with a kid who’d never shot anyone before tonight.
“Well,” Hunter said, worrying his thumb over the top of the Henry’s receiver, “you did real well. If you hadn’t shot him, he might’ve shot me an’ then shot you.”
“Oh, I know, I know,” Powwow said. “I’ll build up the fire, make some more coffee.”
“I’m gonna check on the horses.”
Hunter cursed when he found that the reason the horses hadn’t been kicking up a fuss was because they’d managed to rip their halter ropes from the cedar Hunter had tied them to. They hadn’t strayed far, however, and Nasty Pete came when he whistled, so within a half hour he had both horses back tied near the spring.
When he returned to the cave, Powwow had rebuilt the fire and Hunter’s coffee pot was hanging from the tripod, hissing softly as the water heated. Hunter had been hearing more thunder as he’d run down the horses. It had gradually grown louder, the lightning brighter. He hoped it wouldn’t rain, which would likely wipe out Machado’s trail.
Hunter leaned his rifle against the cave’s rear wall. He removed his hat, tossed it down, then sat down against his saddle, knees raised, arms wrapped around them. He was beat, but he doubted he’d be able to sleep. Too tired, too enervated.
He sure hadn’t figured on trouble like this when he and Anna had left the Box Bar B, herding those ten broncs to Arapaho Creek.
He turned to Powwow absently poking a stick into the flames, letting it catch fire, blowing it out, then sticking it into the flames again.
“When we come to a settlement, and we should be comin’ to one soon—I saw one on a map in my saddlebags, a little south and east of where we are now—I’m gonna get that leg of yours checked out by a sawbones. I’m gonna leave you there an’ ride on alone, try to get back on Machado’s trail.”
Powwow whipped a sharp, surprised look at him. “Why? I can ride.” He brushed his thumb across his bandaged left thigh. “Hell, it’s just a flesh wound. You said so yourself.”
Hunter shook his head. “I’m not gonna get you killed, kid. You’re green. You’re gonna stay back. Lounge around in a hotel room for a few days, eat some good food. Get you a girl.”
“Oh, it’s on account o’ I told you I never shot nobody before.”
Hunter didn’t say anything. The water was boiling.
He got up, removed the pot with the leather swatch he used for removing hot pots and skillets from the fire, and removed the pot from the tripod.
“You said yourself I did well,” Powwow insisted.
Thunder rumbled again, louder. Lightning flashed in the cave’s entrance.
Damn.
Hunter reached into his Arbuckles pouch for a handful of the coffee Annabelle had ground before they’d left the Box Bar B and tossed it and one more into the pot. If he wasn’t going to sleep, he might as well be good and awake. He returned the pot to the fire. It took only a minute for the water to return to a boil. He let it boil a minute, then removed the pot, set it on a rock near the flames, and added some cold water to settle the grounds.
He dropped to a knee to refill Powwow’s empty cup. He added a little whiskey to it, then gave his own cup the same treatment.
“Hunter,” Powwow said, poking the stick into the fire with a frustrated air, “I have to go with you.” He gave Hunter another pointed look. “I have to help.”
Hunter sipped his coffee and returned the kid’s look with a pointed one of his own. “It would be suicide. I’m not gonna let you commit it.”
“It’s suicide for you to go alone.”
“Maybe, but we both know I have to. I have no choice.”
“I have no choice but to ride with you, Hunter. All right, we’ll get the leg checked out. If the sawbones said it’s good, I’m ridin’ along. You can’t stop me.”
Hunter scowled at him in exasperation. “Why are you so galldang intent on getting’ yourself killed, boy?”
Powwow shrugged a shoulder and resumed poking the stick into the fire. “I’ve never been good at anything in my life. I grew up on a ranch, but I’m only half a rancher. You know why I’m out of work? Because I’m no good at it. I’m lazy. My heart ain’t in ranch work, but it’s all I know, and I hardly know even that. I can’t read or write though my folks sent me to school, and . . . and . . .”
His voice broke a little as he added, “And I couldn’t even save the girl I loved. Didn’t have spine enough to stand up to her family though I knew she was waitin’ for me to do just that. She loved me. Why, I got no idea. Guess she thought she saw somethin’ in me. Some little bit of promise, maybe. Well, I reckon I fooled her. When she saw I didn’t have it in me to defy her family . . . that I had no courage . . . she turned her back on me, gave into her folks’ wishes. That’s why she died. Why our baby died with her. Shame and heartbreak.”
Powwow turned again sharply to Hunter. His eyes were bright with tears. “You know how it feels to have caused somethin’ like that?
Hunter just stared at him. He had no response.
“That’s why I have to ride,” the kid said, breaking the stick over his knee and tossing it into the flames. Staring into the fire, he nodded. “I need a shot to do somethin’ good. To try, anyway.” Again, he glanced at Hunter. “Know what I mean?”
Hunter sighed.
He nodded.
He cursed under his breath. He heard the ticks of the first raindrops.