Chapter 10
Catfish rose to his knees, pulled the Yellowboy’s hammer back, aimed hastily, and blew the viper’s head off. It landed six feet beyond the leaping rest of it, mouth still opening and closing, the bloody back of its head caked with clay-colored sand.
The headless body dropped and coiled again, only three feet in front of Catfish.
In the corner of Catfish’s left eye, he saw a man step out from behind a cottonwood growing up around a high boulder forming the shape of a half-tipped-over cabin. Brazos’s Henry spoke twice quickly, each whip-cracking report preceded by the rasping of the cocking lever. The would-be shooter jerked back, dropped his rifle, slapped both hands to his chest, then stepped forward and over the edge of the boulder, turning a somersault before dropping out of sight.
A muffled thud rose as the would-be shooter struck the ground.
Catfish looked around, ready for another attack. At least he thought he was ready. He was sore as hell. He hadn’t taken a tumble like that in years. That was two tumbles within days of each other. At least this one he’d taken when sober.
When no shooters or would-be shooters appeared, he turned to Brazos, just as Brazos turned to him, a look of disgust on his old partner’s face. “You all right?”
Anger rose in Catfish. “Don’t ‘all right’ me.” He used his rifle to hoist him to his feet. “I’ve hurt myself worse fallin’ out of bed!”
“Don’t doubt that a bit,” Brazos said, brushing a gloved hand across his nose. He looked over to where the first shooter had fallen, then turned back to Catfish. “You check that one. I’ll check this one over here.”
The anger and indignation grew in Catfish. “Stop givin’ the orders!”
Brazos shook his head, then heaved himself to his feet and went running all too nimbly into the rocks and brush where the first man he’d shot lay.
“Show-off,” Catfish carped, then flexed his neck and back and hips and knees and ankles, just to make sure once more, for the second time in two days, that nothing was broken. Then he bit off a glove, stuck two fingers between his lips, and whistled.
When he’d retrieved his hat, reshaped it, and set it on his head, he ambled up into the rocks toward the boulder from which the second shooter had fallen. By the time he’d returned to the trail, Jasper was waiting for him, reins dangling, having answered the whistle, though he hadn’t answered that whistle in a while. Mostly, Catfish only rode the horse now and then—and mostly just to town for supplies—just to keep the stable green out of him.
Catfish stood in the trail, bent over, hands on his knees, huffing and puffing. The fall from Jasper’s back and the trek into the rocks had all but killed him. When he heard Brazos approach, he straightened, brushed a sleeve across his mouth, and tried to look all-business, not one bit winded, though he knew his swollen red face and rising and falling chest likely gave him away.
Brazos didn’t miss a consarned thing.
“Who was yours?” Catfish asked his old partner.
“What do you mean?” Brazos said, scowling at him incredulously. “I shot ’em both.”
“You know what I mean!”
Brazos gave a dry chuckle. “Mosby Carlisle. Yours? Er . . . I mean, the other one?” he said with a wry arch of a brow.
“ ‘Kettle’ McPherson.”
“Ah.”
Two known cattle rustlers. They’d probably glassed Catfish and Brazos on their back trail and figured they were shadowing them, likely having stayed away from Wolfwater long enough to not know the two had retired several years ago.
“Yeah, well, I figured it wasn’t Thorson’s men,” Catfish said, spatting to one side. He brushed the dust off his Yellowboy and slid it into its sheath. “They’re likely holed up in that cabin beyond that next peak, Bear Lodge Ridge. They hole up there for weeks at a time, I’ve heard. If they still have Beth with ’em, well . . .”
Brazos cast his bleak gaze up the trail to a low rocky pass. “They might be holed up a mite longer.”
Catfish reached into the saddlebag pouch on the near side of Jasper’s back and pulled out a small, flat, hide-wrapped flask. He glanced at Brazos, who drew his mouth corners down in disgust, as well as in reproof.
Catfish unscrewed the cap on the flask. “For medicinal purposes.”
He took a deep pull, then one more, and raised the flask toward Brazos. “Nip?”
Brazos shook his head as he stared toward where his chestnut was coming back from up the trail, answering its own rider’s whistle. Brazos turned back to Catfish, a forked vein in his forehead just beneath the brim of his hat—a vein that Catfish knew too well—swollen in anger. “I’m not here to drink with you, Cha’les. I’m here only to avenge Abel and get Beth back . . . if there’s anything of her to get back, that is.”
“All right, all right, you surly bluebelly cuss!” Catfish leaned against Jasper and scowled incredulously toward his partner. “How’ve you stayed in such good shape?”
“I haven’t been spendin’ these past five years drinkin’ like you obviously have! While fishin’ that backwater pond of yours, no doubt!”
“Where’ve you been?”
Brazos grabbed the chestnut’s reins. “Just mount your horse, Cha’les!”
Catfish sighed. “Wherever it’s been, it sure hasn’t done your spleen any good.” He returned the flask to his saddlebags, then grabbed Jasper’s reins and heaved himself into his saddle. By the time he got the steeldust turned around, Brazos was already trotting up the trail toward the pass. “Owly cuss,” Catfish grouched, and nudged Jasper into a lope.
* * *
Two hours later, they were both lying belly-down again, near the top of a ridge, their hats on the ground beside them. The high Bear Lodge Pass lay behind them. The valley they were now in, fed by Bear Lodge Ridge, was unusually verdant for the Stalwarts, with pines and cottonwoods all around them, and peppering the valley into which they both gazed with their field glasses.
They couldn’t see well through the pines following the ridge down toward the valley floor, but they could see the small shake-shingled shack sitting down there, on the other side of Bear Lodge Ridge, which was liberally sheathed in willows. A couple of ranchers had at one time run cattle in this neck of the range, until they realized it was too far back down the mountains to send them to market. The ranchers had gone in together and built the shack at the bottom of the valley, which they’d called the Bear Lodge Creek Cabin, of course.
Cowmen in general had very little imagination.
It had been a jointly owned line shack in which three to four cowboys from both ranches would all settle in for a few weeks at a time. Their intent had been to watch the cattle and to watch for the Bear Lodge Creek bears, after whom the creek and valley had been named, changing it from the original Comanche name meaning “cool running water.” Those grizzlies were hell on cattle, especially late in the summer when they were paunching up, so to speak.
After two groups of cowpunchers, one from each spread, had gotten into a disagreement over a poker match late one night, and shot the beans out of each other and had caused the cattle to stampede over a nearby cliff, the two ranchers decided Bear Lodge Creek was just too dang much of a nuisance to deal with anymore. So they ran their cattle back to their home ranges and left the line shack to whoever wanted to move in.
Which had been . . . and still was, mostly . . . owlhoots on the run from bank, stagecoach, train, and mine robberies.
It had been said that Frank Thorson holed up here from time to time, when he was on the run as well. Catfish had never doubted it, though by the time Frank had started his own infamous depredations around the country and farther south, Catfish had been retired. Likely, the reason Abel Wilkes hadn’t done anything about Frank Thorson was because Frank had quit the area around Wolfwater—Abel having kept the lid on the town after Catfish had left it in his former deputy’s capable hands. Besides, the so-called “line shack” was just too far away from Wolfwater to contend with, since his jurisdiction only extended as far as the Wolfwater city limits, same as Catfish’s had.
Of course, little matters like jurisdiction never kept any lawdog worth his beans from running down owlhoots who preyed on his town.
Catfish didn’t know if Frank and Skinny and the four other tough nuts were holed up there now, of course. But the cabin was a hot spot for outlaws on the run. Especially those who’d done especially dastardly deeds and likely would be chased. The Bear Lodge shack was remote and hard to get to, and there weren’t a whole lot of other places in the mostly bald, craggy Stalwarts to repair to.
Catfish was betting Frank was here.
Of course, Catfish hadn’t been in the game for a while, so whether his thinking was in any better shape than the rest of him was anyone’s guess . . .
At the moment, he was hopeful.
A good nine or ten horses were in the corral flanking the place, which meant someone was holed up here. Possibly ol’ Frank and his weasel brother, Skinny.
Yeah, he was hopeful.
And feeling a little desperate at the moment.
For he knew that his old trail partner . . . former friend . . . was doubtful and probably wishing he’d ridden up into the Stalwarts alone without his old, gone-to-seed former partner—his former friend bogging him down and dang near getting himself shot out of his saddle. That’s what would have happened if that viper hadn’t saved his bacon.
“How do you want to play it?”
Catfish turned to Brazos lying belly-down to his right, field glasses in one gloved hand, Henry repeater in the other hand.
Catfish blinked, surprised. “You askin’ me?”
“You used to know how to play it, Cha’les!”
“All right, all right, you surly cuss!” Catfish returned his gaze to the low-slung cabin on the other side of the creek at the bottom of the valley.
He stared bare-eyed, chin just above the ground, running his right index finger over his lips, making faint blubbering sounds. He ran his eyeballs across the creek and over the cabin and then back to the corral and log stable, in which the horses milled. Two ran around the others, chasing each other in play, causing dust to rise.
The others regarded them dubiously.
One of the runners was a stallion. A gray stallion with a wind-buffeted, coal-black mane.
That would be Frank Thorson’s horse.
Just then, the gray stopped suddenly and tried to mount one of the geldings standing in the middle of the corral. The gray gave a jeering whinny. The gelding, a zebra dun, jerked its head back to try and nip the gray’s left wither, but missed. It bolted away from the gray. The gray dropped back down to all fours, shook its head, gave another mocking whinny, and continued running around the outside of the group amassed in the middle.
Catfish gave a wry laugh and shook his head.
“What’s funny?”
“I do believe we tracked Frank down, Brazos.”
“How can you be sure?”
“See that gray—the rapscallion mocking the geldings?”
“Seen him. He needs a bullet.”
“So does his owner.”
Catfish chuckled, satisfied with himself. The Thorson brothers were here, by God. He crabbed down the slope, away from the crest, and set his hat back on his head. He gained his feet and cast his bright-eyed, confident gaze to his partner. “You take the front door—you bein’ the front-door sorta fella, an’ all. I’ll take the back door—me bein’ the back-door sort of fella, an’ all . . .”
“That’s a good way to shoot each other!” Brazos said, also crabbing down the slope and casting an incredulous glance over his left shoulder at his former partner, former friend.
“You don’t shoot me; I won’t shoot you.” Catfish grinned.
Brazos gained his feet. “You’re askin’ for a lot of restraint, Cha’les.”
Catfish turned to him, gave him a grave, level look. “It wasn’t me. It was Dick Gleeson. I convinced her to leave town so the fool little hellion wouldn’t break your heart. Besides, she’d come between us. The money I gave her was stage fare.”
“She was carryin’ my baby, Cha’les.”
“No, she wasn’t. It was Dick Gleeson’s child. That’s what she came to tell me that night at the hotel, when you found us together.”
Brazos stared at him darkly, his large, dark eyes growing larger. He was pondering it all; it was a lot to swallow. Especially after so many years had passed.
“For what it’s worth, she felt bad about what she did. Steppin’ out on you with that popinjay gambler, Gleeson.” Catfish shrugged. “It was just her nature. Just like some men, she couldn’t help herself.”
Brazos opened and closed his hands around the Henry. A flush rose behind the natural darkness of his cheeks.
He looked away and then he said, “What do we do once we’re in the cabin?”
“What we usually do . . . er, did. Just don’t shoot the girl.” Catfish extended his right hand. “What do you say, partner?”
Brazos gazed down at the cabin. “Lawdie, Cha’les. Two of us against nine, ten of them. And we’re gettin’ a mite long in the tooth.” He glanced at Catfish’s bulging belly, then shook the proffered hand. “Not to mention thick in the waist.”
“Yeah, well.” Catfish laughed, patted his steeldust’s rump, silently ordering the ground-reined horse to stay, and tramped off, up along the crest of the ridge to the east, with lighter feet than he’d felt for a while. It was good to be back hunting outlaws with Brazos, just like the old days.
He just wished that Abel hadn’t had to die, and Bethany kidnapped, to bring them back together.