CHAPTER SEVEN

 

G.W. Satterlee stretched, yawned, and then wearily scrubbed a hand over his face. He was getting too old for this. He had a comfortable bed in his house back in Wolf Creek, and yet he'd spent the night sleeping on the hard ground, just like in the days when he'd been hunting buffalo or scouting for the army.

But, at least he'd woken up this morning, he reminded himself. That was something four of the men who'd ridden out with him would never do again, and the same was true for a number of people back in the settlement. Not to mention Mack Haskins, the grief-stricken farmer.

The hour was well before dawn. A faint band of gray tinged the eastern horizon. A few yards away from the spot where Satterlee had spread his bedroll, Charley Blackfeather was poking the embers of the fire to life.

"I'll have some coffee boiling soon, Sheriff," the Seminole said.

"And I'll be more'n happy to drink some of it," Satterlee replied. "Obliged to you, Charley. Quiet night, wasn't it?"

"Real quiet," Blackfeather said. "Except for the wounded men moanin' now and again. But in war, that qualifies as quiet, I reckon."

"I didn't know we were at war," Satterlee said as he hunkered on his heels and held out his hands to warm them in the glow of the flames that had sprung up. It got chilly at night, out here on the plains. "I thought we were just chasin' down a band of murderin' outlaws."

"Same thing. It's all killin'."

Satterlee shrugged and said, "You may be right about that."

He straightened. A few more of the sleeping men were starting to stir. Satterlee walked over to where Dr. Logan Munro had propped himself up on an elbow.

"Mornin', Doc."

Munro pushed his blankets aside. He sat up and said, "I need to check on my patients."

Munro climbed to his feet. Like Satterlee, he moved with the creaky stiffness of a man who might not be old, but was certainly no longer young.

While Munro was making sure that Tolliver and Zachary had lived through the night, Satterlee walked around the camp, rousing the other men.

"Reckon there's a good chance Danby and the rest of his bunch made camp last night, so they shouldn't have gotten too much farther ahead of us," Satterlee said. "But they'll be pullin' out early this morning, so we'd better do that, too."

"What about the men we lost, Sheriff?" Rob Gallagher asked. "Are we going to bury them?"

"Not unless you've got a shovel tucked away in your back pocket, son. None of the rest of us brought one."

Derrick McCain said, "There's a little draw over yonder. Maybe we could put them in it and cave the bank down over them. It's better than nothing. Somebody could come out from town later and retrieve the bodies."

"That's not a job I'd want," Billy Below said.

"I could help with that," Sweeney put in. "Assuming I make it back alive."

"So could I," Blackfeather added without looking up. He set the coffeepot at the edge of the flames. “We got another body, though, tucked behind that rise back yonder.”

“Another outlaw?” Satterlee asked, and Charley shook his head.

“The farmer’s wife,” the Seminole answered. “I found her out a ways, when I was scoutin’ up makin’s for the travois. I reckon they was done with her, and didn’t want her makin’ noise or slowin’ ‘em down. So they throwed her away.”

“Lord have mercy,” Rob Gallagher said.

Charley grunted. “I reckon He was runnin’ short on mercy yesterday. And so was they. I didn’t bring her body on into camp because I didn’t have nothin’ to cover her with, and it didn’t seem right. She’s been shamed enough as it is.”

Spike scowled. “So the whole time they was taunting Haskins, braggin’ on what they was gonna do to her—they had already done it, and she was dead. Sons of bitches.”

Satterlee nodded his agreement and then said, "All right, let's get to work while Charley's rustlin' up some grub. We can strip some clothes off these outlaw sons of bitches and cover the Haskins woman, then I reckon we can put her with her husband."

“Mary,” Derrick McCain said. Everyone looked at him, so he explained, “He said her name was Mary.”

It was a grim task, and covering up the bodies using only bare hands and knives to break off pieces of the gully's bank wasn't easy. By the time it was done, though, the smell of coffee hung in the early morning air, and that made the men feel a little better.

"What about the outlaws we killed?" Gallagher asked.

"Reckon the wolves and the buzzards will take care of them just fine," Satterlee said. "We’ll send their horses back to town, and replace some of the ones they slaughtered in the raid. How are the wounded men lookin', Doc?"

"Right now, I'm guardedly optimistic that Bill—I mean, Ben—and Deputy Zachary will make it. Their chances will improve greatly if I can get them back to Wolf Creek where I can care for them properly."

"What about me, Doc?" Jimmy Spotted Owl asked. A bandage was wrapped around his thigh where a bullet had ventilated it.

"It'll take more than a wound like that to kill you, Jimmy," Munro told him with a smile.

"Then I can go on ahead with the posse?"

"I didn't say that. You need proper medical care, as well."

"And I'm countin' on you to guide the doc and the other two back to Wolf Creek, Jimmy," Satterlee put in. "You know this area better than Doctor Munro does. Less chance of you gettin' lost."

"I'd rather go on with you, Sheriff, and tangle some more with those damn owlhoots," Jimmy said.

Satterlee shook his head.

"You're goin' back, and that's that." His tone, as well as his words, made it clear that there would be no argument.

The sun still wasn't up by the time the men had eaten breakfast, but the band of gray in the east had turned to a strip of red and gold, a colorful harbinger of the new day. Ben Tolliver and Deputy Bill Zachary were lifted onto the two crude travois Charley had rigged and tied in place. Dr. Munro would lead the horses pulling the badly wounded men, and Jimmy Spotted Owl would lead the string of outlaw mounts. There were no sentimental goodbyes. The four men simply started riding back to the north at a slow, steady pace so Tolliver and Zachary wouldn't be jolted around too much.

The other six surviving members of the posse mounted up, as well, and headed south toward Indian Territory.

Danby and the rest of those bloodthirsty butchers were up there ahead of them somewhere, Satterlee thought as he rocked easily in the saddle. Would the posse catch up to them today? Would any of them still be alive come sunset?

Hard to stay—but then, just getting up in the morning under the best of circumstances was always a gamble, wasn't it, Satterlee mused with a faint smile on his lean face.

* * *

"How many men do you reckon the gang still has left, Sheriff?" Billy Below asked while the posse was stopped to rest their horses, a couple of hours after sun-up.

"To answer that, I'd have to know how many of them there were to start with, Billy, and I don't," Satterlee replied.

"Maybe we've whittled ‘em down to where we got ‘em outnumbered."

"You can hope that if you want to, but I wouldn't count on it."

Robert Gallagher spoke up, saying, "If you consider how many of them there had to be in order to spread out all over town like they did, and how many were killed in the raid and since then, there are probably about a dozen of them still alive."

Billy looked around at the other members of the posse, his lips moving a little as he counted.

"And six of us," he said. "That's two-to-one odds. How we gonna handle that, Sheriff?"

Before Satterlee could formulate a gruff reply, Billy Below smiled and said, "It's too bad you don't have that old Sharps of yours along, isn't it, Sheriff?"

"What good would that do?" Gallagher asked.

"The sheriff here used to be a buffalo hunter," Billy explained. "And like most of those fellas, he's a good shot with a long gun. I bet if we could get within a few hundred yards of the outlaws, Sheriff Satterlee could pick ‘em off one at a time with his Sharps. I remember some cavalry troopers I was drinkin’ with one time at the Wolf’s Den tellin' me about when he used to scout for the army—"

"Don't go to tellin' tales," Satterlee growled. "We don't have the time for it. These horses have rested enough. Mount up."

Satterlee took the lead as the posse rode out. He felt the eyes of the other men on him. Some of them—the younger ones, anyway—were probably wondering about him. He wasn't necessarily ashamed of his past, but in his time as a politician, running for office as sheriff, he had learned to downplay certain of the more unsavory areas of it. It was fine to say that he'd served as a scout for the cavalry, but he'd just as soon not go into detail about some of the things he'd done during that time of his life.

Satterlee and Charley Blackfeather were both good trackers, and Danby and the rest of the outlaws didn't seem to be taking any particular pains to cover up their trail. They followed the tracks without much difficulty. Satterlee knew they were counting on beating any pursuit to Indian Territory.

By midday, the posse hadn't come across any sign of the gang except the hoofprints they were following. Satterlee's keen eyes scanned the southern horizon for a dust cloud or anything else that would indicate they were closing in on their quarry. Frustration was growing stronger inside him.

He motioned Blackfeather up alongside him and said, "How much farther you think it is to Indian Territory, Charley?"

"If we make camp again tonight, we ought to reach there about the middle of the day tomorrow."

Satterlee frowned and lifted a hand to scratch his jaw.

"Danby's liable to be close enough by nightfall that he'll push on. If he doesn't stop and we do, we'll never catch him."

"If we keep ridin' after dark and he heads off in another direction, we're liable to lose the trail entirely," Blackfeather pointed out.

Satterlee sighed and shook his head. "You're not tellin' me anything I don't already know, Charley."

Quietly enough that the others couldn't hear, Blackfeather said, "We ain't gonna catch them before they reach the Nations anyways, Sheriff. I reckon you know that. What happens then?"

"Don't say that. I don't plan to turn back until I have to. Maybe we'll get lucky."

Blackfeather grunted. The sound was enough to make it clear he had his doubts about that.

A short time later, Satterlee stiffened and sat up straighter in the saddle. He had spotted a thin line of smoke rising into the blue sky up ahead. He pointed it out to the others and said, "Chimney smoke. Must be a ranch or some sodbuster's shack."

"Maybe we could get fresh horses there," Derrick McCain suggested.

"Not likely, but you never know." Satterlee pushed his horse to a slightly faster pace and called over his shoulder, "Come on."

If the place was a ranch, there might be horses they could swap for, as McCain had said, but if it was just a small farm, the sodbuster would be lucky to have a pair of mules. He ought to know whose spread this was, Satterlee thought. They were in Barber County now—despite being incorporated, the county seat of Medicine Lodge was little more than a wide place in the road, and their lawmen were part-time farmers who rarely let go of a plow. Even if it wasn’t his own county, with no professional peace officers in the area he should at least be familiar with the settlements.

But, in fact, he probably hadn't been as diligent about such things as he should have been. If Spence were here, he would know. He made it his business to know everything, and that was what had made him such a good deputy.

Spence Pennycuff wasn't here, though. He was lying back there miles behind the posse in a gully, with a pile of dirt on top of him. The thought made a bitter taste rise in Satterlee's throat. He hadn't allowed himself to dwell on the death of his friend and chief deputy, concentrating instead on the job in front of him. He pushed the thought out of his head now. He could mourn for Spence later, after they were back in Wolf Creek.

The posse came in sight of a good-sized house built of lumber, which meant this was a fairly prosperous ranch they were approaching. Having lumber freighted out here wasn't cheap, and there sure as hell weren't enough trees on these Kansas plains to furnish that many boards. Satterlee narrowed his eyes and made out a sod barn and a couple of pole corrals beyond the house. You could find enough cottonwoods along the creeks to fashion a corral from the thicker branches, but that was about it.

The smoke rose from a chimney at one end of the ranch house. Billy Below said, "Looks like they got dinner on to cook. Maybe they'll share some grub with us. I could use a home-cooked meal."

Spike Sweeney, who seldom said anything, spoke up. "I think I know this place. The man who owns it brought in some horses to be shod, and he talked about it. Name was—" Sweeney paused and frowned in thought. "Mallory, Malachi, something like that."

"You think he'd have enough horses he'd be willin' to swap with us?" Satterlee asked.

Sweeney shook his head and said, "I couldn't tell you, Sheriff."

They were only a few hundred yards from the spread now. In the middle of the day like this, Satterlee expected to see folks moving around, going about their chores. Instead he didn't see any people or horses. The place looked deserted, which didn't bode well for them getting any fresh horses here. But they were this close; they would go on in anyway. Maybe get something to eat, like Billy said.

The first sign of life was a volley of echoing barks from a couple of big yellow curs who came bounding out from behind the house. Dogs like that were a reassuringly commonplace sight around a ranch.

The area in front of the house was a welter of hoofprints, Satterlee saw, as the posse rode up. It was impossible to tell who had come and gone, or when. He reined to a halt, rested his hand on the butt of his gun, and called, "Hello, the house!"

Even as he called out, he looked at the windows, alert for any sign of movement, especially if it involved the barrel of a gun. They had ridden into one ambush; he didn't want to fall victim to another.

It was unlikely, though, that Danby would have stopped here, not when the outlaws were so close to safety in Indian Territory.

Charley Blackfeather moved his horse forward a little and said, "It don't look like anybody's here, Sheriff."

"But there's a fire in the fireplace," Billy said. "You can see the smoke."

Before Satterlee could respond to either of them, the front door opened and a man stepped out onto the small front porch. Instinctively, Satterlee's grip on his gun tightened for a second before he saw that the man was unarmed.

"Howdy," the man called. "What can I do for you fellas?" Something seemed to catch his eye, and he added, "Is that you, Sweeney?"

The blacksmith nodded. "That's right, Mister—Mallory, is it?"

The man smiled and said, "You've got a good memory. Yeah, it's Ezra Mallory. Are the whole bunch of you from Wolf Creek?"

"That's right," Satterlee said. "I'm Taylor County Sheriff G.W. Satterlee. We're on the trail of a band of outlaws that hit Wolf Creek yesterday morning. They killed some of our folks and looted the town. Their tracks go right past your place here, Mallory."

"Good Lord!" the rancher exclaimed as his eyes widened. "I'm sure sorry to hear about the trouble befallin' the settlement, Sheriff. You're trying to chase down these desperadoes?"

"That's right. Are you sayin' you haven't seen them, Mr. Mallory?"

"I just got back a little while ago. My wife and I been over to a neighbor's place, about five miles east of here. We must've just missed those outlaws. A stroke of mighty good luck, if you ask me."

"Yeah," Satterlee said. Something about this situation didn't ring true to him, but he couldn't have said what it was other than a vague stirring of unease. "What were you doin' over at the neighbors?"

Mallory frowned. "I don't see as how that's really any of your business, Sheriff, but as it happens, the lady of the house was, uh, in the family way, and it was her time. My wife's helped out at birthin's before, so we went over there to see if she could lend a hand."

"How'd it go?" Satterlee asked in apparently idle curiosity.

"Fine, just fine. Mother and baby both doin' fine." Mallory seemed to be getting more nervous with each passing second.

"Glad to hear it. This county could always use another citizen." Satterlee changed tacks. "It'd be mighty helpful to us if we could swap some horses with you, Mallory. Might give us a better chance to catch those outlaws."

The rancher swallowed and shook his head.

"Sorry, Sheriff. I've got a couple of saddle mounts and some draft horses, but that's all. Not enough to do you any good. You're welcome to water your horses from my well, though."

Billy Below leaned forward in his saddle and said boldly, "We'd plumb admire to have a home-cooked meal, too."

"There's no time for that, Billy," Satterlee snapped. "Besides, Miz Mallory's probably tired out after that birthin' chore. She won't be wantin' any company."

"That's true, Sheriff," Mallory said. "I'm obliged to you for understanding."

Charley Blackfeather turned his horse and rode slowly to the left, so that he could see past the house and get a better look at the barn. At least, that's what Satterlee figured the scout was doing. He wouldn't have minded taking a look in that barn himself.

"What's that Injun doin'?" Mallory asked sharply.

"Oh, don't mind him," Satterlee said. "He's sort of simple-minded. He's half black, half Seminole. You know how those people are. Can't keep their minds on anything, and he's got it on both sides." He put a sharp note in his own voice as he went on, "Charley! You get back here now. Don't go wanderin' off."

"Sorry, Sheriff," Blackfeather said. "Jus' wanted to look at the pretty horses."

"Never mind the pretty horses," Satterlee said. He looked around at the others and pointed to the covered well. "Haul some water up and let your horses drink, and then we got to get back on the trail."

Gallagher, Sweeney, and McCain were all looking at him a little oddly. Billy Below was the only one who didn't seem to have noticed anything odd about the behavior of the sheriff and Charley Blackfeather over the past couple of minutes. He was still chagrined over the fact that he wasn't going to get a home-cooked meal out of the deal.

The posse members watered their horses while Mallory stood tensely on the porch, his hands gripping the railing. Satterlee took note of how white the rancher's knuckles were.

When they were finished at the well, Satterlee lifted a hand in farewell and called to Mallory, "Much obliged for the water."

"Good luck runnin' down those owlhoots," Mallory replied.

When they were out of earshot of the man, Satterlee said to Blackfeather, "How many horses did you see in the barn?"

"At least four," the scout replied. "Even if two of ‘em belong to Mallory, that still leaves two extra. You reckon some of Danby's bunch was back there, inside the house?"

"I'd bet a hat on it. That's what had Mallory so spooked. They were probably in there with a gun on his wife. Might be some kids in there, too."