Chapter 22
Several days later, Break o’ Day Livery Barn manager Russell McCormick said, “Here you are, Miss Claire. Best mare in my barn!”
Julia laughed and caressed the Appaloosa’s long, fine snout. “I don’t doubt it a bit,” she said, accepting the reins from the tall, lean man in pin-striped overalls, who was somewhere in his late sixties and looked every day of it. He stabled both of Julia’s prized mares and took great care of them both. “Lilly’s wonderful and so is Henrietta.” Julia planted an affectionate kiss on the Appy’s snout, which had a white blaze in the shape of Florida running down it. “Thank you so much. I hope to have Lilly back in an hour or so.”
“Takin’ a ride in the country, ma’am?”
“No, no!” Julia flushed a little at the passionate way she’d blurted that out. She had no interest in riding far from town with her ex-husband still in the area. At least she assumed he was still in the area, though she hadn’t seen him or the three reprobates in his employ since they’d accosted her and killed George McGrath on her way back from Grant Dragoman’s ranch. “No,” she said again, with less vigor this time. “I’m just going to ride out to the cemetery and place some flowers on Abel Wilkes’s and Bushwhack Aimes’s graves.”
If and when Bethany accompanied Catfish to the cemetery, Julia didn’t want the girl to see that the graves had not been decorated. Of course, Julia didn’t know if anyone had placed flowers on them, but she doubted it. Family usually did that. Bushwhack had no surviving family, and Bethany was the former town marshal’s only family, and she still hadn’t stepped foot outside of the saloon since she’d returned to town nearly two weeks ago now.
“I see—that’s nice of you, Miss Claire,” said the livery manager. “Someone should tend them. They were good men. Anyway, enjoy your ride, miss.”
“Thank you, Russell, I appreciate—” Julia cut herself off abruptly. For just then, she’d seen a tall, darkly dressed man, with one glinting monocle and holding a walking stick, standing beside a cream horse on the opposite side of the street from her. He was leaning on the walking stick, as though he had a bum leg.
Which her ex-husband certainly did, compliments of Julia herself.
Sergei Zhukovsky, sure enough!
Her heart thumped as the tall, thin, very pale man smiled at her. Then a long train of mules pulling large ore drays rocked and rattled past the Lone Star Outpost, out front of which Julia and Russell McCormick stood; the big Pittsburgh wagons obliterated Julia’s view of the man.
“What’s the matter, Miss Claire?” the liveryman said. “You see someone you know over there?” He was squinting at the passing ore train that was lifting an enormous cloud of tan dust on the other side of the newly laid train rails.
“Uh . . . no . . . no,” Julia said, heart thudding again when she thought she’d seen Zhukovsky’s three kidnapping brigands standing on the boardwalk behind him, looking as unshaven and seedy as she remembered the last time she’d seen them. She turned back to McCormick and feigned a smile as she said, “I thought so, but . . . but I was wrong, I’m sure.”
No, she wasn’t wrong. Zhukovsky and his three brigands were keeping a close eye on her.
Where is Dragoman’s assassin, anyway?
“I see, ma’am,” McCormick said. “Well, good day, then.”
The liveryman mounted his own horse and rode off.
A few seconds later, the last wagon in the ore train rumbled on past Julia, giving her another clear view of the street’s opposite side. Only, Zhukovsky and his seedy henchmen were no longer there. Julia looked around, shading her eyes with her hand, frowning nervously.
Then she saw them riding out of town to the west, two blocks away, and just then booting their horses into trots at the western edge of town. The tall Zhukovsky crouched low and pulled his bowler hat down lower on his head, his black frock winging out around him like a crow’s wings in the wind. They rounded a bend, following the curve of the rails, obscured by the dust still kicked up by the ore train.
And then they were gone.
Julia felt weak in the knees, faint.
Then another figure caught her attention on the other side of the street. He’d just walked out of the Occidental Saloon. He was very tall, broad-shouldered, and with three or four days’ worth of beard stubble. He wore a high-crowned black Stetson and a long, dark brown duster. Held a rifle on his right shoulder, gloved right hand wrapped around the neck. He stepped up to a chestnut horse tied to a hitchrack fronting the Occidental and shoved the rifle into the scabbard strapped to the chestnut’s saddle. He untied the reins from the hitchrack, swung up into the leather, and neck-reined the mount into the street.
As he did, he glanced toward Julia, gave a queer little smile, and pinched his hat brim to her.
He touched his spurs to the chestnut’s flanks and trotted off down the street to the west.
Julia frowned after him, curious.
Dragoman’s assassin ?
Julia’s fear was tempered by curiosity, a deep need to know if he was the assassin Grant Dragoman had called in. She needed to know if she would have to continue to keep looking over her shoulder or if she could rest easy in the knowledge that Zhukovsky and his henchmen were dead, rotting in a wash somewhere out in the desert. Constant worry had rendered her sleepless, so exhaustion weighed heavy on her.
She pulled her felt hat down lower on her head, stepped forward, and swung up onto the mare’s back. She booted the horse west, but held her to a walk, not wanting to get too close to the men she was pursuing. She knew what she was doing was foolish, but she couldn’t quell the impulse. She was a hunted woman, and she needed to know if she would be hunted no more.
She kept the assassin—if he was the assassin—just barely in sight ahead of her, a mere jostling speck on the horizon. Soon after leaving town, he swung to the southwest, traveling cross-country. She followed him for a good half hour. Then he disappeared. Julia reined in the mare on a low rise. Ahead, and below her, lay a rocky red canyon abutted on its south side by a tall ridge of jagged rock. She lowered her gaze to the ground and saw several sets of fresh hoofprints. The assassin and those he was pursuing had dropped down into that twisting canyon.
Julia’s heart quickened. Hope rose in her. Yes, he was Dragoman’s assassin, all right. He’d appeared a right capable man as well.
A crackle of gunfire rose from that jagged cut ahead of her.
Julia gasped.
A man shouted shrilly. There was another short crackle of gunfire, and then silence, save for the rustle of the breeze brushing against that rocky ridge.
Anxiety rose in Julia once more. Had the assassin accomplished his task?
She booted the mare down off the ridge, stopped her at the edge of the canyon, led her into the concealment of large rocks, and tied her to a small cottonwood. She found the trail the men ahead of her had taken down into the canyon and followed it on foot. She was more likely to be seen atop the mare, and she didn’t think the gunfire had come from more than maybe a hundred yards ahead.
She followed the canyon’s twisting course for half that distance and stopped suddenly. Ahead of her were rocks and willows lining yet another, smaller wash inside the larger one. A thrashing sounded. Labored breathing, faint grunting. Frozen in place, fear turning her knees to stone, Julia stared straight ahead until the willows moved and the assassin appeared, pushing through the branches and stumbling forward on the toes of his boots.
He’d lost his hat. He held his rifle in his right hand, dangling low against his leg.
His face was dirty and streaked with sweat, his eyes bright with pain.
He held his free hand against his belly. Blood oozed through his bullet-torn shirt and between his splayed fingers. His eyes found Julia and he stopped suddenly, then staggered toward her for three more steps. Then he stopped, groaned, looked down at his ruined belly, and dropped to his knees.
He dropped from his knees to the ground and lay still.
Julia closed her hands over her mouth in shock.
Distant footsteps sounded ahead of her.
Fear made her heart lurch. She swung around and ran back along the ravine. She scrambled up out of it, mounted the mare, and booted her into a ground-churning gallop back in the direction she’d come.
She’d ridden hell for leather for three hundred yards before she passed the niche in the rocks and cactus in which Catfish waited, fully concealed.
* * *
Catfish had witnessed the entire curious display in town.
He’d seen the four odd-looking strangers staring at Julia before riding west out of Wolfwater. He’d seen Julia staring back at them, obviously troubled. He’d seen the tall man with the rifle exit the Occidental, pinch his hat brim to the woman, and put his mount on the trail of the four odd-looking strangers—one impeccably dressed, very thin and pale and wearing a monocle; the other four as lowly-looking as any raggedy-heeled, southwestern-border tough.
He’d seen Julia anxiously mount her fine mare and take off after the man trailing the first four.
Catfish’s curiosity had been piqued. He’d seen the four strangers in town before, loitering around Julia’s Lone Star Outpost, as though they were keeping an eye on the place. They had the look of trouble about them. He’d seen the tall hard case, always toting the Winchester, also lingering around Julia’s.
They were trouble or had come to trouble, all right.
A few minutes ago, Catfish had heard the crackle of distant gunfire.
Now, glancing behind him to see Miss Claire galloping the mare around a high escarpment and fading from sight, Catfish booted Jasper out of the rocks and swung him southwest, heading in the direction from which the shots had been fired. One more shot gave him pause and then he continued forward until he came to a twisting arroyo with a steep red rock ridge jutting up from its southern bank.
He stopped Jasper, ground-reined him, and shucked his Yellowboy from its scabbard. He jacked a round into the action, lowered the hammer to half cock, and followed the prints of several sets of horses, as well as a lady’s riding boots, into the ravine. A few minutes later, he came to where the man with the rifle, the man who’d followed the first four out of town, lay belly-down, atop his rifle.
He’d been shot in the belly. The bullet had exited his lower back.
The last shot Catfish had heard had likely been the one that had drilled a round through the man’s head. It had likely been meant to finish him, but the way the man lay told Catfish the man had already been dead.
Catfish kicked the body over. He hadn’t gotten close enough to the man in town to recognize him. Now he saw he was the hired regulator Eldon Ring. Catfish had seen the man before, passing through Wolfwater, but he’d never had reason to arrest him. As far as he knew, the man—a known killer—had never had charges brought up against him.
Now he never would.
Catfish returned to Jasper, mounted up, and tried to follow the first four men, but lost their trail along the stone-floored ravine. He swung Jasper around and headed back in the direction of town, shaking his head in perplexity.
Just what in blue blazes kind of trouble had Miss Claire gotten herself involved in ?
He booted the steeldust into a hard run, wanting to catch up to Julia and find out why she’d followed Ring out of town, who’d obviously been following the men who’d spied him on their back trail and bushwhacked him. Judging by the tracks, the woman was riding hard, though. If she kept up that pace, he wasn’t sure he’d catch up to her. That was all right. He knew where he could find her in town.
No point in killing Jasper.
He’d just eased the gelding into a trot when something screeched through the air past his right side. The bullet spanged shrilly off a rock behind him.
Jasper whinnied, tried to pitch. Catfish drew sharply back on the reins as the crack of the rifle that had flung the bullet at him reached his ears. Another bullet came whistling eerily toward him from a red sandstone ridge ahead, and on his right. He didn’t have the luck he’d had with the first bullet. This one punched hotly across his right temple and ripped his hat off his head to send it flying into the air behind him. Catfish’s gloved hands slipped off the reins. Knowing from experience what was going to happen next—and because Jasper was already starting to buck again—Catfish kicked his feet free of the stirrups so he didn’t get caught up and dragged, turned to his right, and let himself roll gently from his saddle.
He hit the ground with a vision-blurring jar, the air punched out of him with a loud “oaff ”!
Again, the report of the rifle reached his ears from that damnable ridge.
As Jasper ran off hard, dragging the reins along the ground to either side of him, kicking dust and gravel over Catfish, the lawman scrambled to his feet and ran to a low dike off the trail’s right side, one whose ridge was spiked with rocks and prickly pear. One of those spiked pears went flying over Catfish’s head when another bullet came hurling in from that ridge, followed a few seconds later by the rifle’s bark.
“Son of a buck!” Catfish groused, brushing his fist across his temple and seeing the thick smear of blood on his glove. “Who could that be?”
Had Catfish been followed from town by someone wanting to eliminate him just as badly as Eldon Ring, and the four others preceding him, had wanted to vanquish one another?
Catfish racked a round into the Yellowboy he’d managed to hold on to in his tumble from Jasper’s back. He lifted his bloody, hatless head just enough to edge a look over the lip of the dike. He drew it down quickly when he saw the stab of flames and smoke from a niche about halfway up the red sandstone ridge. The bullet slammed into the top of the dike, and gravel and another prickly pear went flying off over Catfish’s head.
Catfish lifted his head once more, bringing the barrel of the rifle up as well, and sent two rounds of his own hurling toward that niche in the rocks. He saw a hatted head just then jerk down behind rocks, and both of Catfish’s slugs slammed into the side of the ridge where the hatted head had been a quarter second earlier.
“Damn!” Catfish said, angrily pumping another round into the Winchester’s chamber. “Does anyone fight fair in Texas anymore? Used to be when a man had it out for you, he stood before you, went ahead and said so, and unsnapped the keeper thong from over the hammer of his hogleg.”
Men in Texas used to confront each other like adults!
When another round slammed into a rock on the ridge above Catfish’s head, he jerked up quickly, scrambled up and over the ridge, and ran toward another, higher dike ahead on his left. Just before he reached cover, he sensed a bead being drawn on him. He hurled himself up and off of his spurred boots, and his aching two-hundred-plus pounds went arcing through the air before he slammed belly-down on the ground and rolled up quickly against the base of his new covering dike.
As he did, a bullet slammed into the red sand and gravel just inches off the heel of his right boot, making a cold stone of dread drop in his belly. He leaned up close against the dike and squeezed the Yellowboy in his hands, holding the rifle before him.
Galloping hoofbeats sounded behind him, growing louder.
Catfish cast an anxious look behind him. “Now who in hell could this one be? There a second man out here fixin’ to perforate my wretched hide?”
Was he being surrounded?
Another bullet caromed toward Catfish, clearing the higher crest of his current covering dike and plowing into the ground several feet behind him. The gun crash came a half second later.
The hooves’ thudding grew louder as the rider approached.
And there he . . . er, she . . . was—riding out from between two low hills roughly thirty yards behind him.
She turned her lovely, hatted head toward him and, pulling back on the mare’s reins, yelled, “Catfish?!”