CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
To say that Buttons Muldoon was as frustrated as a woodpecker in a petrified forest is an understatement. He’d found the trail of the two fleeing killers and then lost it again. Found it a second time and again lost it. Red Ryan could follow tracks like an Indian, but Buttons could not. Give him a wagon road stretching into infinity and he was in his element. But trying to spot a bent-over blade of grass or a partial hoof print in a rolling wilderness of pastureland was beyond him. And none of the dozen rubes riding with him were any better.
And to make matters worse there was . . . Sniffles.
His name was Elijah Blake, a small, frail, insignificant man who worked as a part-time bookkeeper and was quite a celebrity in Fredericksburg because of his wife, who tipped the scales at three hundred and fifty pounds. Unfortunately, Blake suffered from hay fever and was horribly allergic to ragweed and grass, and he sneezed and sniffed incessantly and drove Buttons Muldoon crazy.
“If grass makes you sneeze, why the heck are you out here on the damned prairie?” Buttons asked, irritated.
Blake, riding a pony-sized, mouse-colored mustang he’d rented for the day, wiped his nose with a large blue bandana, sniffed, and said, “It was my lady wife’s idea. She said I must ride out and capture the fugitives and cover myself in glory.” He sneezed several times, then added, “Oh, dear.” The tip of his nose was wet and red.
“We ain’t gonna cover ourselves in glory on this hunt,” Hans Schmidt the blacksmith said. “Those boys are long gone.”
“We’ll find them,” Buttons said, without much conviction.
“When?” Schmidt, a surly man, said.
“Soon,” Buttons said. His horse shook its head at a fly, and its bridle chimed.
Blake sneezed.
“Seems to me we’ll run out of daylight soon,” Anton Bauer, the baker said.
“At least six hours left,” Buttons said.
Blake sniffed.
Annoyed, Buttons said, “This damned posse wasn’t my idea, you know.”
“You’re the deputy sheriff,” a man toward the rear of the column said. “You’re in charge.”
“Acting, unpaid,” Buttons said. Blake sniffed again, and Buttons called out, “Can any of you square-heads pick up a trail?”
“No,” Bauer said. “Can you?”
“I’m trying,” Buttons said,
“Then try harder,” Bauer said.
“Well, we ain’t making much dust,” Buttons said. Again, an attempt at being optimistic.
“And neither are the men we’re chasing,” somebody said.
“We’re not chasing anybody,” Schmidt said, his joyless face grim. “I think we’re going around in circles. See that lightning-struck oak over there by the gulch? I think this is the third time we passed it.”
“The two murderers are headed east and so are we,” Buttons said. “I may not be Dan’l Boone, but I know in what direction we’re going. Blake! Stop that damned sniffing!”
“I can’t help it,” the little man said, his whiny voice plaintive and penitent. “I’ll have some harsh words to say to my lady wife when I get home.”
“She’ll sit on you, Blake,” Bauer said. “Squash you like a bug.”
The men laughed, and Buttons Muldoon took that as a good sign. They were still in fairly good spirits and not quite ready to give up the chase . . . at least for the time being.
The sun was high, and the day was hot and sultry. Men and horses sweated, and out in a nearby grove of wild oak a quail called. Buttons, as used to heat as he was to snow and rain, held up well, but some of the posse members showed signs of suffering, using their canteens often, especially those that worked indoors.
Buttons had the advantage of numbers, but he worried over how his men would perform against a couple of professional gunmen. Experience told him that the outcome of this pursuit was far from certain. The only even half-capable gun handler was himself, but he didn’t rate very highly in the shootist hierarchy . . . he figured somewhere near the bottom where mediocrity reigned. But this would probably end up as a long-range rifle duel anyway, and most of the men with him had cut their teeth on squirrel rifles. That gave him hope.
* * *
An hour passed. The land held a solemn silence, the only sounds the steady plodding of the horses and the creak of saddle leather. Blake sneezed and sniffled constantly, and the bandana he used had become a damp rag. Buttons considered shooting him.
Ahead of them stretched an endless sea of rolling hills, mile after mile falling away until blue sky met green grass where the horizon shimmered.
The biggest and the strongest of them was the first to give up.
The blacksmith Hans Schmidt, a morose, unpleasant man, said. “That’s it, I quit.” He pulled his horse out of the column. “Anybody else tired of this wild-goose chase?”
“Schmidt, get back in line.” Buttons said. “I’ll tell you when it’s time to quit.”
“You tell me nothing, stagecoach driver,” Schmidt said. He looked around at the others. “So, who’s coming with me?”
Buttons knew he had to save the situation or lose the posse. The men were listening to Schmidt, thinking things through. The big blacksmith was heavily muscled, enormous in the shoulders and arms, and he’d be a handful. But right then Buttons had no alternative, aside from shooting the man . . . and that would cause too many complications, a whole lot of questions asked.
“These men are going nowhere, and neither are you, Schmidt,” Buttons said.
Schmidt’s gaze measured Buttons from the toes of his boots to the top of his hat, seeing a solidly built man with some fat on him, especially around the middle. “And you’re going to stop me, I suppose?”
“If I have to,” Buttons said.
“Schmidt, get back in line,” Anton Bauer said, coming to Buttons’s rescue. “Deputy Muldoon is in charge here.”
“The hell he is,” the big man said. Menacing, with a reputation as a dangerous fighter, he swung out of the saddle and stepped toward Buttons. “I don’t like you, driving man, never did,” Schmidt said. “And I plan to ride out of here and take the posse with me. So try and stop me.” His fists hung at his side, as big and as hard as anvils. “I’m waiting,” he said.
Hans Schmidt didn’t have to wait long. Buttons was not a man to be intimidated.
He threw a straight left that Schmidt knocked aside with his right, but, as Buttons, a wily old street and saloon fighter, had anticipated, the block left his chin open. Buttons followed up instantly with a wicked right hook that slammed into the blacksmith’s chin and sounded like a sledgehammer striking a tree trunk. The punch staggered Schmidt, and Buttons went after him. The man’s hands were hanging loose by his sides when Buttons hit with a left hook and followed up with a smashing right to the jaw. The right dropped the blacksmith, and, stunned, he went down on all fours, spitting blood. Now, under normal circumstances Buttons would have followed up with a boot to the man’s ribs, but since the entire posse was watching with fascinated interest, he decided to do the decent thing. Very much against his better judgment, he took a step back and let the man get to his feet.
Schmidt, aware that he was getting pounded by someone who knew how to scrap, came off the ground snarling, his massive arms spread wide for a backbreaking bearhug. As the man lunged at him, for an instant Buttons let him come. Then he quickly stepped inside and cut loose with a mighty right uppercut that snapped Schmidt’s head back and sent the man reeling, his arms and legs cartwheeling. Buttons had enough of playing nice since it very much went against his nature. Riled now, he went after the blacksmith and slammed a left and then a right to his mouth, splitting the man’s lip. Schmidt, his fists flailing ineffectively, stumbled toward Buttons and ran into a straight right for his trouble. This time the blow felled the blacksmith, and he went down, gasping for breath, his face a bloody mess.
“My advice is for you not to get up again,” Buttons said, head bent as he looked at Schmidt. “I can take you apart piece by piece, and I can keep it up all day.” He shook his head. “What a slaughter that would be. Now state your intentions. Will you quit the chase or soldier on?”
But Schmidt was through.
He got slowly to his feet, picked up his hat, and lurched to his horse. One of the other riders had to help him mount. Without a word, the battered blacksmith headed west at a walk, toward Fredericksburg, and Buttons let him go. The man was all used up, and it would be quite a spell before he felt like himself again.
Buttons swung into the saddle and said, “Blake, you should go with him.”
The little man looked frightened. “I’ll stick, if you don’t mind,” he said.
“Suit yourself,” Buttons said. “Anyone else want to leave with Schmidt?”
A few men muttered under their breath, but one man with a loud voice yelled, “No, sir,” and none disagreed with him.
“I’m proud of you boys,” Buttons said, smiling. “And from now on we’ll keep it civil, huh?”
“Anything you say, boss,” the loud man said.
“Good,” Buttons said. “Now let’s go find those two murdering scoundrels and bring them in to face justice.”
Caught up in the moment, Elijah Blake yelled, “Huzzah!” And Buttons gave the little man a mental pat on the back.
Fifteen minutes later, the posse heard the sound of gunshots.
* * *
“Where away?” Buttons said, one of the nautical terms he used from time to time.
A babble of voices and eleven fingers pointing in eleven different directions.
“Keep quiet, everybody,” Buttons said. He stood in the stirrups and held himself very still, listening.
There it was again, a flurry of shots and then silence. But this time Buttons got a fix on the direction.
“The firing is to the southeast of us,” he said. “Forward, men, at the gallop. We’ve got them now.”