Chapter 15
Catfish and Brazos had spotted what looked like trouble from their perch on a hilltop a couple of hundred yards east of the trail where the trouble appeared to be occurring—three horseback riders appearing to block the passage of a chaise pulled by an Appaloosa that Catfish had recognized through his field glasses as one of the two fine animals owned by Miss Julia Claire.
Further scrutiny through the glasses, peering through the screen of dusty cottonwoods lining the trail, told him that Miss Claire was, indeed, in the back of the carriage, while one of her beefy bouncers /footmen was in the front seat, driving. It so much appeared that the three horsebackers were confronting Miss Claire and her driver that Catfish had unhitched the travois carrying Beth Wilkes even before one of the three horsebackers shot Miss Claire’s driver.
Beth was still in so much shock after what had happened to her that Catfish didn’t think she even knew when he and Brazos took off at dead gallops down toward the cottonwoods from which the carriage had just then bounded off behind the startled Appaloosa. The two old-timers left their prisoner, Skinny Thorson, gagged and tied to the saddle of the horse that they had appropriated from one of the three scalawags they’d shot the night before.
The three obvious owlhoots wheeled their mounts and took off after Miss Claire’s driverless carriage, throwing lead as they did.
“Brazos, you try to stop that chaise!” Catfish had shouted, crouched low in his saddle and giving Jasper his head. “I’ll try to scour them miscreants from her trail!”
That’s how Catfish found himself now galloping up and over the hogback butte, rage causing him to cuss up a storm and throw lead at the three brigands just as they’d thrown lead at a defenseless woman aboard a runaway carriage. He’d just started down the butte’s opposite side when he checked Jasper down abruptly and scowled into the canyon beyond as the three men he’d been pursuing separated and continued galloping through a broken country of scrub oaks, cedars, and cacti.
Their horses were obviously fresher than Catfish’s. Jasper had pulled Beth’s travois through the up-and-down Stalwarts for a good thirty miles. He and Brazos had taken a shortcut both Catfish and Brazos knew about from their earlier days hunting rustlers and claim jumpers out this way. That’s how they’d found themselves on Circle D graze, in the first front of the Stalwarts, just in time to interrupt the dustup on the two-track trail below.
Catfish cursed as he stared after the three cowardly devils as they disappeared in that broken country below. He flicked open his still-smoking Colt’s loading gate and began punching out the spent loads and replacing them with fresh from his cartridge belt. That’s when he heard the horse coming fast up the butte behind him.
He’d just shoved his freshly loaded hogleg back into the holster thonged on his right thigh and turned to see Brazos rein his fine chestnut to a stop at the top of the bluff a few yards up from Catfish. Dust rose high behind and around them.
Brazos scowled at Catfish, then peered into the canyon before turning his incredulous gaze on his partner again. “Where’d they go?”
“To hell, for all I care!” Catfish said. “They split up down there. Jasper’s blown.”
Sure, blame it on Jasper. As if your hairy old behind don’t feel like three layers of skin have been plumb scraped off by a rusty bowie knife!
“Recognize ’em?”
Catfish shook his head, removed his hat, brushed his right shirtsleeve across his sweaty forehead, and returned the battered topper to his grizzled head—his face and big, pitted nose red from fresh sunburn.
He looked at Brazos. “Miss Claire?”
“Spooked.”
“What’s she doin’ out here?”
“We didn’t exactly have time to sit down for a long palaver about it, Cha’les.”
Catfish chuckled. “You’re just as ornery as you ever was.”
“We’d best get back to Miss Claire and Miss Beth. We did leave Beth alone with one of the men who molested her, you know, Cha’les.”
Catfish winced. “I didn’t see no other way. But you’re right. Let’s get back.”
“Yeah,” Brazos said, poking a gloved index finger at the sky. “Before that settles in an’ we’re swimmin’ for it.”
Catfish followed the man’s troubled gaze. In all the foofaraw with the road agents or whoever they were, he hadn’t noticed big purple clouds rolling in, piling up on top of each other, looking like several castles, with ominous-looking steeples, turrets, and spires.
Cloud shadows were rolling quickly across the sage, thickening.
“Holy moly—I didn’t even notice!”
“Yeah, well, you will soon!” Brazos said as they both reined their mounts back up and over the crest of the bluff.
“You fetch Miss Claire! I’ll get back to Beth and Skinny. I got me a feelin’ we’re gonna have to hole up out here less’n we wanna get soaked to the gills and fried by that lightnin’!” Catfish said, glancing at a sharp flicker inside a particularly large, plum-colored cloud.
The flash was followed about three seconds later by an ominous rumble.
“We’ll head up that ridge,” he added, glancing at a cedar- and boulder-peppered rise on their right. “There’s a cave not too far away, if my memory isn’t as sorry as the rest of me!”
Brazos yelled above the wind and the thunder of their horses’ hooves, “We holed up there during a storm after we ran down those Cartman brothers—Billy an’ Pete!”
“Yeah, an’ left ’em feeding the worms!”
Catfish laughed as he and Brazos separated, Brazos heading toward where Miss Claire stood by her wagon, running a hand down her mare’s long snout, soothingly, while the building wind lifted the horse’s tail and the woman’s long, badly mussed hair. She stared toward the two men with a long-faced, pale, anxious expression.
Catfish couldn’t blame her a bit, but he also couldn’t help wondering what she was doing way out here on a weekend, when business at the Lone Star would be booming. As he galloped Jasper up the knoll on which he’d left Skinny tied to his horse and Beth in the travois, he saw that Beth didn’t even react to his reappearance. Poor gal was in a bad, bad way and she didn’t even have her pa, Abel, to go home to.
Skinny sat his own mount, looking indignant at having been left tied to the horse, with a storm brewing.
“Don’t even say it, Skinny,” Catfish said as he reined Jasper to a skidding halt. “Don’t give me any more reason than I already have to stick my pistol in your mouth and feed you a pill you won’t digest!”
He swung his tired, old carcass down from Jasper’s back and dropped to a knee beside Beth, who only just now turned her expressionless eyes to him. The wind was blowing her hair around her face. Catfish had wrapped her in a striped blanket he’d found in the shack the Thorson brothers had been holed up in with the rest of their motley gang.
“How you doin’, honey? I’m so sorry for leavin’ you, but I didn’t see any other way.”
Beth just turned her head away and gave a feeble nod.
It was already spitting rain.
“We’re gonna have to take cover real soon, honey,” Catfish said, tying the leather thongs he’d attached to the makeshift, quickly-knocked-together travois to Jasper’s saddle. “That storm’s movin’ in fast. I know a cave up the ridge yonder. We’ll meet Brazos and Miss Claire.”
He glanced toward where Brazos was driving the woman’s carriage toward him, Beth, and Skinny, heading for the ridge beyond.
“If you don’t hurry, you old scudder,” Skinny carped after a quick glance at the fast-building clouds, “we’re all gonna . . .” When he saw the owly look on Catfish’s craggy face, and saw the older man’s hand close down over the bone grips of his .44, he let his voice trail off and looked away with a wince, a flush rising in his pale, pimply cheeks.
“Keep it closed now,” Catfish said, “or I will make good on my promise.”
He untied Skinny’s horse from a cottonwood branch, then mounted up, saying to Beth, “Hold on now, honey. We’ll be to shelter in just a few minutes.”
Catfish just hoped the cave he had in mind wasn’t currently occupied. Rustlers had been known to hole up in the cave while bleeding off Dragoman’s herd. Also, the place had been home to wildcats . . .
Catfish was just pulling out when Brazos approached in the chaise, Miss Claire sitting beside him, her face long and paler than usual, her long hair blowing back in the wind, which was spitting cold rain now. As the carriage passed, Brazos’s chestnut tied behind, Catfish saw the body of the lady’s bouncer, George McGrath, slumped on the floor, a bloody hole in his chest. The man rocked from side to side as the chaise climbed the hill behind the still-wide-eyed mare.
“I’ll follow you,” Catfish said, and pulled in behind the chaise, trailing Skinny’s horse on a lead halter rope, the travois making a raw scraping sound as it followed along behind Jasper. He didn’t want to put Beth inside the carriage with the dead man. Besides, it was a short jaunt up to the cave.
He was mildly surprised the carriage hadn’t suffered a cracked wheel or axle, deadheading over such rough terrain, but it appeared to roll reasonably well behind the horse.
The grade was relatively gentle. Presently they followed a slanting game trail up into cedars, small pines, and boulders that had tumbled down from higher on the ridge. Catfish saw the notch cave carved into the stony ridge just ahead of them, beyond a pocket of boulders that would serve as a shelter for the horses.
Now the wind was howling and the trees were thrashing and dancing. The rain started in earnest, coming down at a hard slant, just as they reined the chaise and the horses up inside the boulders. The cave was just above them and on their right. Catfish clambered down from his saddle and made the short hike up to the cave, unsheathing his hogleg in case he saw yellow cat eyes glowing in the dark.
He did not. Just some fur-tufted rabbit bones and the tracks of coyotes. The cave smelled gamily sour, but it would serve.
He hurried back down to his horse, lifted Beth out of the travois, and carried her up the hill. As he did, Miss Claire hurried up beside him. She was carrying a blanket she’d taken out of the chaise. “My God, what did they do to that poor girl?”
“What do you think?”
“Animals! We’ll need a fire and some water for coffee. We need to get her warm.”
“I’ll find both,” Catfish said as he stepped into the cave and gentled Beth down against the right-side wall.
He hurried back down to the horses, tipping his hat down against the cold, slanting rain that was rife with the smell of desert cedars and sage. He pulled Skinny down from his saddle, led him into the cave, and pushed him down against the wall opposite where Beth was being administered to by Miss Claire, securing the kid’s hands behind his back and tying his ankles together.
When he got back down to the horses and the carriage, Brazos already had his own, Miss Claire’s, and Catfish’s horses unsaddled and was pulling hobbles out of his and Catfish’s saddlebags.
Catfish yelled above the wind and lashing rain, “I’m gonna see if I can find dry wood for a fire!”
“Good luck!”
He found some relatively dry tinder and branches on the lee sides of boulders and under an overhang of the ridge wall. He carried the wood into the cave, where Brazos was just then piling his and Catfish’s gear, all of it wet from the rain. Miss Claire sat beside Beth, holding the girl’s hand in her own. She’d draped the blanket from the chaise around the girl’s shoulders.
Beth just sat staring.
Some of the color had returned to Miss Claire’s cheeks. She’d gotten it back by caring for the girl. Catfish knew she was waiting for him to get a fire going, so he got started on it. When he’d coaxed a few small flames to life, and then had some larger ones building and feeding themselves, he filled his and Brazos’s canteens by holding them out the cave entrance and into the rain pouring down off the ridge wall. When he had a fire going, he set his coffeepot to boil on a flat rock in the smoky flames.
While the water heated, Brazos helped Miss Claire build a bed out of his and Catfish’s soogans and one of their saddles. They got her snuggled in good, near enough to the fire that the dancing flames, filling the cave with the smell of fresh coffee, kept her warm against the chill air blowing in from outside. When the coffee was done, Catfish filled four cups and passed them around.
Skinny didn’t even ask for one. He knew he’d be going without.
Catfish settled in beside Brazos, leaning back against the cave’s rear wall. He was soaked, and the fire’s warmth felt good. He just hoped he had enough wood to keep the flames built up. Otherwise, it would be a long, cool, damp night. He and Brazos were used to such nights. Miss Claire and Beth were not.
Miss Claire held Beth’s hand until the poor girl drifted asleep. Then she came over and sat down beside Catfish and Brazos. Brazos had tipped his hat down over his forehead and crossed his arms on his chest, catching a few winks. Catfish had always been amazed how his taciturn partner could sleep at will.
“How did you two get back together?” Miss Claire asked Catfish.
“Showed up out of the blue.” Catfish sipped his coffee, smacked his lips. “Ain’t that just like him? Came to go after Abel’s killers and get Beth back. Don’t know how he heard about it.”
Julia turned to Catfish and smiled. She gave his cheek a quick, affectionate peck. “And you went, too.”
Catfish sighed. “Well, there are parts of me still stuck to that saddle, so it ain’t like I ain’t worse for the wear.”
“You two must’ve cleaned up right well.” Julia looked at where Skinny sat scowling at them both, looking like a beaver caught in a trap. “Is that scrawny little devil the only one alive?”
Skinny flared a nostril at her, but kept his mouth shut. He knew Catfish was good for his word about feeding him a pill from the wheel of his trusty six-shooter.
“Yep.”
“Why?” Julia asked dryly.
“He gave himself up. Don’t worry—he’ll hang.”
“He shouldn’t be in here . . . with the girl he and his brother abused so wretchedly.”
“No, he shouldn’t. I should drill a hole through his head, but it would only disturb Beth, and she’s been through enough.”
Skinny gritted his teeth and turned to stare out into the rain that continued to pour down off the boulders and thrash the trees like scarecrows in a wind-lashed cornfield.
“Yes. You’re right,” the woman said. She turned to gaze out at the carriage in which her bouncer, George McGrath, lay dead. Catfish and Brazos had discussed hauling the man inside the cave, but decided that seeing another dead body might be too much for Beth.
Besides, McGrath was done caring about how wet he got.
“Poor George,” the woman said thinly. She sighed.
“Who were those men, ma’am?” Catfish asked her. Even though they’d once been somewhat close, or had danced around becoming close, he still felt strangely formal around her. It was the respect she commanded.
She stared out into the rain, appearing to ponder the question, her cheeks turning a little pale once more. She looked down, then turned back to Catfish and shrugged. “Just road agents, Catfish. Common road agents. Nothing more.”
“What are you doing out here?”
“I was . . . I was visiting my friend Grant Dragoman, if you must know.”
“Figured as much.” It was widely known that the rancher fawned after her, that she’d rebuffed his requests for her hand, as well as her business. That made her visit to the Circle D all the more curious. Catfish frowned. “On a weekend?”
She merely hiked her shoulder, looked down at her coffee, and stared out at the storm again.
Again, Catfish frowned, puzzled, incredulous. “Are you sure they were road agents, ma’am?”
“Of course, Catfish.” It was her turn to frown, looking a little miffed. “Who else would they be?”
Catfish supposed they could have been road agents. They might have seen her, recognized her, knew of her wealth, decided to shake her down.
Still, something seemed blamed odd about her demeanor.
Oh, well. He wasn’t going to get anything more out of her, he could tell. He sighed, doffed his hat, and rested his head back against the cave wall.
In the corner of his eye, he saw her give him a cautious look.
Mysterious woman.
“Long night ahead,” Catfish said.
“Yes,” Miss Claire said.