Aurand Forester stood on the promenade deck of the Belle of the Ball listening to the slow dips of her paddles into the water as the stern wheeler backed out of the dock. When the bow cleared the levee, the paddle wheel stopped abruptly and gave one great shudder as if dreading the journey ahead. The wheel began to dip slowly again, gaining momentum until it frothed the waters of the Missouri heading south to the next port at Crow Creek.
The churning paddles had started lulling Aurand into complacency when he caught himself. Any other time he would welcome a river trip south, perhaps as far away as the capitol in Yankton. Or Sioux City. But this was business, and a deadly business at that.
He lit a smoke and leaned over the railing, thankful the ship left so soon after Tucker escaped. The trip to Crow Creek would be ninety miles and would place him and his men on ground far more hospitable than the way Tucker had escaped. By Aurand’s calculations, he and his deputies would be able to get ahead of Tucker by a full day. Unless something happened on the river—raiding Indians or a submerged tree ripping a hole in the boat.
He needed Red Sun. The old man tracked for Aurand whenever there was a trail Philo Brown could not work out. Son of a Crow mother and French trapper who breezed through Crow country one winter, Red had run away as a youngster to scout for the army against the Crows’ traditional enemy, the Lakota. And even though he acted more white than Crow, there was no mistaking his Indian parentage.
Aurand would need Red. Tucker was savvy enough he could confuse his trail, and only the best tracker—like Red—could decipher it. Aurand had paid two Indian hangers-around-the-fort a jar of whisky each to find Red and give him a note. Philo had found Tucker’s tracks when he turned away from the Missouri toward the Bad River. “Meet us at the first stop the Belle makes,” the note said. “We’ll need you.”
As the speed of the riverboat picked up, the two great chimneys rising thirty feet in the air belched huge puffs of smoke. The twin engines connected to the pitman, which connected to the wheel, coughed again, and Aurand lurched forward. He caught himself on the railing before he tumbled over. Below, on the lower decks, the boat was loaded with furs and grain to be off-loaded at Yankton, a full crew, and more passengers than the pilot wanted. The Belle owned a shallow draft that allowed it to navigate the Missouri, with unexpected sandbars and half-buried trees jutting upward as if beckoning to passing ships it wished to ensnare. Already, the river appeared menacing to Aurand.
He flipped his smoke into the water and turned to the walkway. He clung to the rails as he climbed the precarious ladder leading to the pilothouse. He reached the narrow walkway surrounding the wheelhouse and felt his lunch begin to come up for an encore. Captain Merriman opened the sliding window of the boxy structure. “You sure you want to be up here, Sonny?” Merriman grinned and whipped the wheel as if to punctuate his point. “Gets mighty rough up here.”
“Wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to,” Aurand answered as he opened the door and stepped into the pilothouse.
A sudden jarring tossed him against the hand railing next to the large wheel Merriman’s hands grasped. When Aurand regained his footing, he looked down at the river. The boat had skidded over a partially-exposed sandbar.
“Get used to it, Sonny,” Merriman said, more cheerful than Aurand thought he should be. “We’ll be hitting many of those before reaching Crow Creek.”
Aurand tried concentrating on the windows surrounding the pilothouse. The evasive pattern of the Belle matched the flow of the river, and Aurand felt himself getting sick again. Yet he dared not say a thing, for this was the flagship of the Coulson Line, with the right honorable Henry Merriman as captain. A former Ohio River captain who commanded the utmost respect for his knowledge and skill as a ship’s pilot, Merriman was known to take a particular disdain for landlubbers. Especially when they became sick on his ship.
“How long’s it going to take us to get to Crow Creek?” Aurand asked to get his mind off his queasiness.
Merriman jerked the wheel hard to avoid an old oak lurking just under the water’s surface. “You know how I knew that tree was there?” he asked, ignoring Aurand’s question.
“All I want to know is how long—”
“Do you—Mister Marshal—know how I knew?”
Aurand sighed. “No. Just how did you?”
Merriman picked dried tobacco juice out of his beard, which reached to his upper chest. “I read the river, that’s how. You’ve got to read the river when you spend as much time with the ol’ bitch as I do. You got to read the eddies swirling around old trunks like that last one. You learn to gauge the current by the feel of the water passing under the bow.”
Aurand closed his eyes and rubbed a headache away. “Just what is your point, Captain?”
Merriman took his gaze off the river and looked at Aurand through eyes as hardened as any he’d seen. Then the captain turned back to his wheel as he continued talking. “It’s my business to read these waters. That’s why I get paid seven hundred dollars a month. Marshal, you get paid to know men. That’s your business—men and the hunting of men.”
Aurand began to speak, but Merriman held up his hand to silence him. “That Ashley feller didn’t murder my roustabout.”
“Were you there, Captain?”
Merriman shook his head. “Hell, no. I was just as drunk as the rest of my crew. It’s just that I’ve seen my share of men in my lifetime that I’d as soon not see again. Thieves. Cutthroats. Killers of every persuasion who would slit your throat for the price of a bottle of rotgut. I’ve seen that Ashley feller around. Talked to him a time or two. He’s no murderer of my roustabout, that I can tell you. And I’ll testify to that if a judge will allow me.”
“Like you said, Captain, that’s my business.”
The boat jerked as it skidded over another sand bar, and Aurand grabbed for the railing. “When are we going to reach Crow Creek?”
Merriman tamped tobacco into his white clay pipe and patted his pocket for a match. Aurand took a lucifer from his watch pocket and struck it for the pilot. Merriman sucked hard until the tobacco caught, then he blew perfect smoke rings to the ceiling of the wheelhouse. “It depends,” he said at last.
“On what?”
“On what those woodhawkers charge us for firewood along the way. They scalped us for eight dollars a cord on the trip up to Ft. Pierre last week.”
“So pay it.”
“Pay it!” Merriman bellowed over the noise of the engine and paddles and people milling about on the below decks. “This old girl uses thirty cords of fuel in a day’s ride. That’s—”
“Two-hundred-forty dollars.”
Merriman jerked the wheel, and the bow of the Belle dipped to avoid a snag. “If they charge us that, we’ll have to slow down to conserve wood. Maybe cut our own, and that’ll slow us even more.”
“When?” Aurand felt his patience fading, and he smoothed his pigskin vest to calm himself. “When?”
“Three days, the way this trip’s starting out.”
“That’s unacceptable.”
Merriman shrugged. “It is what it is, Sonny. The river is shallow this time of year. More so with the drought. And that’s three days if we don’t hit any major sandbars or snags.”
The boat lurched to the lee, and Aurand felt his breakfast rise dangerously close to his throat. His plan to take the paddle wheeler as far as Crow Creek and off-load there was looking dimmer with every passing sandbar. Still, even if they disembarked at Crow Creek a day later and headed straight west—over terrain far friendlier than the way Tucker rode—they would be able to get in front of him.
Aurand descended the stairs, and his stomach felt better when he reached the boiler deck. “See my deputy?” Aurand asked a deckhand.
The kid jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “He’s in there.”
Aurand entered through the door the deckhand had indicated into a smoke-filled room every bit as nasty as the Bucket of Blood on a payday night. Philo Brown straddled a peach crate opposite a drummer squatting on the other side of the signboard they had placed atop a pickle barrel as a table. A third man, a skinny vaquero sporting a sombrero nearly as big around as the barrel, teetered precariously on a three-legged milking stool. He looked at Philo and tossed two bits into the center of the makeshift table.
Aurand watched the game progress. Philo lost every hand, as he always did at first when the inevitable bait came. “Let’s up the ante,” Philo said. He fished into his pocket and came away with a half-eagle and tossed it in the kitty.
The drummer loosened his tie that matched his gray herringbone suit and hesitated. “Oh, what the hell,” he said and dug in his pocket for a five-dollar gold piece.
The vaquero followed suit. “Why not?” He tipped his sombrero back on his head. “It is a long trip, no?”
Philo smiled as he shuffled the cards, the same deck he’d had when Aurand first met him in Ft. Laramie, Aurand was sure. Philo had just taken money from two cowboys and a rancher in from calving in a field adjacent to the army post. Aurand had stopped on the way to the fort to pick up a man wanted for killing a family at Ft. Thompson and stood watching the game from across the room. Aurand had seen a lot of cheats, but Philo was in a class all by himself. He commenced to win every pot until the other players went bust. When the two cowboys accused Philo of cheating, he feigned being hurt. Which lasted just long enough for him to unload his shotgun into their chests. When the rancher dropped his objections and backed out of the tent, Marshal Forester drew a bead on Philo’s noggin. Aurand demanded that Philo take off his jacket, and cards tumbled out of the false sleeve. “Since when does a deck of cards have six aces?” Aurand asked.
Philo shrugged, ignoring the bleeding corpses on the other side of the card table. “A man’s got to make a livin’ somehow.”
“Maybe there’s a better way for you to earn a living,” Aurand said. “Say a steady seventy-five a month.”
“Who do I have to kill?”
“Any fugitive or deserter who doesn’t come with you peaceably.”
The boat lurched, but Philo smiled at the drummer and the vaquero while he dealt cards, that same taunting grin Aurand recognized as Philo’s dead smile.
“Game’s over,” Aurand said abruptly. He stepped to the table and divided Philo’s winnings between the two men.
“But we got a lot of playing left—”
“You’re a deputy marshal, and, as such, we got official business.” Aurand tipped his hat to the other two players. “Enjoy your winnings.” He turned to Philo. “Let’s go.” When Philo didn’t budge, Aurand hoisted him erect by his shirtfront and shoved him out the door. He bounced along the railing as Aurand steered him toward his cabin. Philo stumbled and hit his head on the top of the door jamb.
“Why’d you break up the game?” Philo rubbed the side of his head. “I was gonna’ win the next hands.”
“You’re drunk.”
“Of course I’m drunk.” Philo caromed off the wall of the cabin and staggered to the edge of his bunk. “But not too drunk to win some extra money.”
Aurand glared down at Philo. “You’re a fool. We’re hunting Tucker Ashley. Not some kid deserter fresh from the farm, or some old drunk Indian. The man is dangerous. And unpredictable. I need you, but I need you clear headed. Getting drunk and caught cheating won’t help us any.”
“I didn’t get caught.” Philo grinned. Tobacco juice trickled down his chin, and he wiped it away with the back of his hand. “You ever knowed me to get caught righteous?”
“Simon Cady says otherwise.”
“So one time I slipped up. Wouldn’t have happened with this bunch of yahoos . . .”
“You would have, and then you would have had to kill those peckerwoods. I don’t have time to smooth things out after another one of your boners. Just stay here and sleep it off. We need to keep a low profile until we can get off this thing.”
Aurand walked out the door and headed for the main deck. He took the stairs and nearly fell over when the shuddering boat hit a snag.
“Fancy seeing you here, Marshal.” The man, appearing even broader from the back in his buckskins, turned and smiled. Simon Cady brushed long, gray hair out of his face as he stepped away from the railing. “What’s the odds of you and me being on the same boat together?”
“None.” The bounty hunter caused hairs to ripple along Aurand’s neck, and he rested his hand on his pepperbox hidden inside his vest. “What are you doing here?”
“Same’s you,” Cady said. His hand went inside his buckskins, and Aurand drew his gun.
Cady came away with a lady’s paisley hairbrush and began to brush his hair. “Even you wouldn’t shoot a man for brushing his hair.”
“Why are you here?” Aurand holstered his gun.
“Like I said, same reason as you—hunting people. Except with me it’s that little lady who came up missing. You still after that Tucker Ashley feller?”
Aurand nodded. “Why do you think Lorna Moore’s to be found on this boat?”
“I don’t.” Cady pocketed his hairbrush and stepped closer to Aurand. “But the only way for a lady to leave that river town is on one of these contraptions. Surely you don’t object to me hitching a ride to the end of the line, maybe as far as Sioux City. I understand she’s from there.”
“Thought you were convinced she was travelling with Tucker Ashley.”
Cady winked. “I’ve had what’s called an epiphany. I figure she went back home. That Maynard feller at the mercantile said she probably had a belly full of her western adventure.”
“Good. Then stay away from me and my deputies.”
Cady put his hands up as if he were surrendering. “Don’t worry about me, Marshal. I make my living finding people wanted by the law.” He bent closer. “Unless there’s been a reward posted for your escapee.”
“By the time I could get the poster printed, Tucker Ashley will be leaking blood all over his mule’s saddle.”
Aurand turned on his heels, keeping Cady in his peripheral vision. He walked the row of cheaply built, thin cabins, their wicker doors flapping in time with the wind created by the paddle dipping into the water. He looked a final time down the narrow walkway. Simon Cady still leaned over the railing, and he looked upstream as he smoked his pipe.
Aurand walked into his room and froze. Jess Hammond lay on his back on the bunk. His floppy, felt hat was pulled over his eyes, and his long duster—with the Wells Fargo logo on the front showing where Jess had stolen it—brushed the floor.
“Jesus, Jess.” Aurand cracked the door and peeked out. Cady still admired the view from the railing.
Aurand shut the door and propped a chair against it. “What the hell you doing here?”
“Nice to see you, too.” Jess stood and stretched. He had Aurand by several inches and forty pounds. “I got your wire. What’s the problem?”
“Ever hear of Simon Cady?”
Jess’s face blanched. “Of course I have. Why?”
“He’s on board. Not thirty yards down that walkway.”
Jess slipped the thong from the hammer of his gun. “He here for me?”
“Why? You done something you shouldn’t have?”
Jess remained silent.
“Wanted poster says a man fitting your description killed a couple folks and robbed a stage up Montana way.”
“That your jurisdiction?”
“You know it’s not.”
“Then do like you always do and don’t worry about it.” He looked past Aurand as if expecting the door to burst open when Cady entered. “What’s he here for if not for me?”
“Lorna Moore went missing.”
“Never heard of her.”
“Runs the mercantile with her father’s partner. There’s a reward out for her. And he smells blood in the water.”
“How much blood?”
“Thousand dollars.”
Jess whistled. “Now that pisses me off.”
“How so?”
“Do you know how much the reward was for that . . . stage robber in Montana?”
“Wells Fargo put it at five hundred dollars.”
“Like I said, that’s embarrassing.”
“Not as embarrassing as riding into town dead over the saddle of your horse. To be safe, stay in here while Cady’s on board.”
“What—stay cooped in this stuffy room?”
“Remember your corpse-over-the-horse thing?”
“I’ll stay,” Jess said. “Just find me some food. I’m hungry.”
“The purser says we’re to take on wood in an hour,” Aurand said. “Figure that’ll give us time to scare up a campfire. I packed some side pork and eggs from the mercantile. I’ll bring you something then.”
“Good, ’cause I’m starved enough I could eat a horse.”
Aurand snapped his fingers. “That’s what I need to check on.”
By the time Aurand left the room, Simon Cady was gone from the railing. Aurand started aft of the boiler when the loud bell on the wheelhouse clanged. A deckhand ran to a long pole along the railing and thrust it into the water. When it hit bottom he yelled to the captain, “Three fathoms stern” and replaced the pole in its holder.
“I’m looking for my deputy, Con Leigh.”
The deckhand, a young man in his teens with a pockmarked face and one eye cocked to the side like he’d been slapped once too often, shook his head. “Don’t know him, Mister. Ask the first mate.”
Aurand walked to the stout, balding man clutching a pair of hog chains. “Looking for a deputy of mine—Con Leigh. Twenty, I think. Brown hair. Wiry.”
“He was tending those horses of yourn,” the first mate said. “But that was an hour ago.”
Aurand walked down to the cargo hatch, where their horses were tied to rings in the ceiling. “You down there, Con?”
“I’m over here.”
Aurand descended the narrow stairs to the cargo hold, the odor of wet feed and fresh horse dung pungent. It took several minutes for his eyes to adjust to the dark. When they did, he spotted Con lying atop bales of straw in a horse stall. His sweat-stained hat ringed the end of a pitchfork handle stuck in a bale beside him. Their horses had been loaded by a roustabout, and Aurand didn’t like the arrangement. Each stall contained two horses packed tighter than he liked. But at least he and his deputies weren’t alone, as the roustabout had stuffed a donkey in with a large chestnut gelding in a stall next to theirs. A horse hung its head over the stall to sniff Aurand, the white blaze looking like it winked at him. “Any sign of Red?”
“Not yet.” Con reached inside his shirt and came away with a small pouch. He opened the drawstring and began building a smoke. “We won’t see him, either, unless he wants us to. But you can bet he has Tucker’s direction pretty well worked out by now.”
“I don’t think I’d do that.”
“Do what?” Con asked.
“Light that smoke while you’re sitting on bales of straw.”
“Good point,” Con said and stowed his tobacco pouch away. He stood and put his hat on. “You always been scared of him?”
“Who?”
“Tucker Ashley,” Con answered.
“I’m not afraid of him.”
“Oh?” Con cocked his head as he looked at Aurand. “If I was a betting man, I’d say you’re frightened to death of the prospect of facing Tucker Ashley out here. In the open, where he’s got the advantage.”
Aurand felt rage rise within him. Connie, or, as he demanded to be called, Con, worked on and off for Aurand as a deputy when Aurand needed an extra gun hand. The young man had made it his mission to get into as many gun fights as he could in his short twenty years. And he’d always come out the winner. “I have half a notion—”
“Make sure it’s just half a notion.” Con grinned.
Aurand looked coldly at the smaller man and breathed deeply to still his anger. Aurand was a match for anyone in the territory, either with six-guns or rifles at long range. But even he was no match for Con Leigh. And the latter was the only man who derived more pleasure in killing than even Philo Brown or Jess Hammond. As eighteen men could attest to, if they weren’t dead and buried by Con’s gun.
At last Con’s wide smile broke the tension. “Relax. I was just breaking the monotony. I got no beef with you, as long as I collect my pay. I just want you to know that I know—everyone gets scared now and again.” He walked to Aurand and laid his hand on his shoulder. “And when the time comes, I’ll go against Ashley for you.”
Aurand slapped his hand away. “The hell you will! I’ve waited five years for a chance at Tucker Ashley, and I damned sure ain’t going to have anyone take that from me.”
Con backed away. “All right, Boss. He’s yours. But”—a dreamy look came over his ruddy face—“it would look good for the man who killed someone like Tucker Ashley.”
Aurand became aware that his hands shook. Just thinking and talking of fighting Tucker, he had become scared. For the first time, he even admitted it to himself. But his hatred would overcome his fear when the time came, and the memories of Tucker beating him nearly to death at Ft. Laramie five years ago would make up for his fear. It didn’t even matter that, in killing Tucker, Aurand’s reputation would grow into legend. He just wanted Tucker in his sights.
Aurand started out of the cargo hold for fresh air when he paused. That he wanted Tucker in front of him was a certainty. His death would make Aurand’s life complete. But what—just what—would happen if Tucker’s ride into Lakota country brought about his death at the hands of the Sioux? For Aurand that was the worst scenario, and he prayed the Indians would not find Tucker before he did.