CHAPTER 25
Robert Lagrange brought his mount to a halt and climbed down from the saddle before he fell from it.
He staggered to the closest tree and used it for support as he slid down to the ground. He opened his shirt and got a better look at his wounds. The bullet had struck him in the right side, nicked a rib on the left, and came out through the right side of his chest. He could breathe normally, so he didn’t think his lung had been hit. The wounds had even clotted some since he had cut off the sleeves of his shirt and made makeshift bandages from them. But he was still incredibly weak from the loss of blood and knew his chances of infection were high unless the wounds were treated quickly.
Fortunately, nature provided some benefits to a man in his predicament.
He took his knife from his boot and dug around the base of the tree he had chosen. He drove the blade deep onto the green moss until he cut out a wet square of dirt and slapped it on the bullet hole at his side. The cold sod on his flesh made his skin crawl, but he knew the Indians had faith in the healing properties of tree moss. And although he did not like the savages, only a fool would discount their ways. Besides, he had seen the remedy work on men who had been shot in the field and knew there was something to it. The fact that there wasn’t a doctor anywhere in sight only helped make his decisions that much easier.
He wrapped the strip of shirtsleeve to tie the mossy square to his side. Then he dug out another square and tied it to the exit wound on his chest. He hated having the unwashed earth so close to his skin, but he knew it was his best chance for survival out here. In fact, it was his only chance.
After using the second strip of shirtsleeve to tie the moss to his chest, Lagrange tucked the knife back into his boot and collapsed back against the tree to rest.
He cursed himself for the hundredth time about walking into that railcar blind and with the awkward rifle in his hand. Close-quarters action dictated a pistol, not a long gun. That small lapse in judgment had cost him a hole in his side and one in his chest. Next time, he’d be more careful, if he lived long enough for there to be a next time.
He knew he had put a hole of his own into the Hancock man who had shot him. The only question was whether or not he had killed the man. Lagrange hoped he had. He knew he had not been able to wipe out all of the Hancocks who had fled in the night, but he had killed most of them. At least four of them were still on the loose.
He had no idea about who the men were or the kind of men they might be. He did not know if they would keep riding after Van Dorn or if they would turn tail and head back home to lick their wounds the whole way.
That was the problem with the Hancock family. Other than knowing Mad Nellie was the matriarch of the clan, it was impossible to get a handle on who the other leaders were, especially now that Mackey had killed Henry Hancock. Some of them were meaner than others. Some did exactly what Nellie told them to do or died trying. Others talked big but chose to feed off the family name instead of enlarging it.
In short, Lagrange decided they were no different than any other family. Some good, some bad, and some just plain lazy.
He hoped the remaining Hancock men back at the train were the lazy type. He hoped he had killed all of the strong men and left the cowards and shiftless men behind.
Lagrange had a general idea of the location of the trail Mackey, Billy, and Halstead would use to take Van Dorn to Laramie. And while tracking was far from his strongest skill, Lagrange did not consider himself a tenderfoot, either.
He was enough of a field man to know there was no way to push past the pain or danger of a gunshot wound this early in the game. He needed to give his wounds time to heal and for the medicinal properties of the moss to do their job.
He also needed to rest, as he and the horse he had grabbed following the battle had ridden all night and needed rest. He grabbed the reins of the animal and wrapped them around his wrist just before passing out.
His last thoughts before sleep were about whether the crude hobbling would be good enough to keep the horse in place or the animal would simply drag him to death.
When sleep took him, he found himself not caring one way or the other.
* * *
Al Brenner woke with a start. The sunlight on his face felt warm before the pain from the hole in his shoulder burned through his body, causing him to collapse back on the bed.
Yet even through the pain, he wondered what he was doing in bed in the first place. Especially this bed. It was the bed on the railcar. And why did his wound feel different?
He began to paw at the hole in his shoulder, but rough hands eased his hand away. “Easy now, cousin Al,” said a voice that was unfamiliar to him. “Let that hole heal for a while longer.”
Al Brenner blinked open his eyes and found his cousin Nick’s face swim into view. Unlike Al, Nick was a Hancock in name and in the way he lived. He had ridden with both Clay and Henry for years and had lived to tell the tale. The other two cousins had a lot of newspaper ink spent on them over the years, but the one common link between the two outlaws—besides blood—was that Nick had ridden with each of them. That meant something.
“Take it easy,” Nick said as he set Al’s head back against the pillow. “You’ll be just fine as long as you take it easy.”
But Al had no intention of taking it easy. “How’d I end up in this bed?”
“Farley, John, Robert, and me doubled back after the shooting ended,” Nick told him. “We wanted to see if anyone was still alive. Glad we came along when we did or you might’ve died out there in the elements come sunrise.”
Sunrise. “What time is it?”
Nick looked around Van Dorn’s bedroom and saw a fancy wind-up desk clock. “Near as I can tell, around half past seven. Why?”
Al sat up despite Nick trying to hold him down. Al might not be a cowpuncher like the rest of his family, but he was the biggest and strongest Hancock man alive. He’d gotten that part from his daddy’s side. “We’ve got to get riding.”
“Damn it, Al. You’re in no shape to be bouncing all over God’s creation on a horse. I’ve been shot once or twice in my time. I know how much getting shot can take out of a man. You can play it risky with a posse riding down on you, but we’ve got time yet for that. Best take the rest while you can get it.”
“And rest up for what?” Al said, sharper than he would have liked. “Heading back home where Nellie will whup us for allowing one man to kill so many of us? Or are we going to take a whipping because we don’t have Van Dorn like she wanted?”
Nick stroked his craggy, gray-streaked beard. “Can’t say as I’ve thought that far in advance. We saw you out there bleeding to death and wanted to get you inside. With so many of the others dead, I didn’t think we had enough to ride up against the likes of Mackey and that colored deputy of his, assuming they’ve even got this Van Dorn fella. I’ve heard tell of those two cutting down thirty hostile Apache when they were in the army. Just the two of them. Now, we Hancock men ain’t nobody’s idea of a bargain, but we ain’t Apaches, neither. And I’ve seen what Mackey can do to a man your size. There ain’t a lick of fear in him. So, given our number, I suggest we take our chances with Nell and come at Van Dorn another way.”
Al forced himself off the bed and snatched his bloody shirt off the top of the dresser. “We’re not staying here any longer than we need to. We’re getting out of here right now.”
Nick was now up and standing with him as Al cried out as he pulled his shirt over his head. “You’re in no shape to travel, and we’re not leaving you, so we’re staying right here for a while.”
But despite the pain, Al did not see it that way. “You think those railroad men are going to let a car like this holding a man like Van Dorn just slip off the back of one of their trains? They’ve probably already sent people back to look for it and for Van Dorn, and I don’t want to be here when those hard cases show up.”
Nick didn’t argue with that. “Then we’ll get you on a horse, but set a nice easy pace back home. It’ll take a couple of days, but—”
“Days we could spend tracking down Van Dorn like Nellie told us to.” Al checked his belt and was glad to find his pistol was still in his holster. “We’ve lost a lot of our kin going after that rich old man on Nellie’s say-so. Might as well make their deaths count for something.”
Nick looked at Al as if seeing him for the first time. “All right, cousin. We’ll do it your way.”
Now that he was moving around, Al felt the fog over his mind begin to clear. “You said you rode back here with three others. Plus me means five, don’t it?”
Nick nodded.
“There’s not enough of us to bury our dead, but I don’t want to leave them here for the stragglers to pick clean. Take whatever guns or ammunition we need from the bodies and move on as soon as possible.”
“But move on to where, Al? It looks like they took Van Dorn before the train reached Chidester, but we don’t know where their trail is. Or where they’re going.”
“They’re going to Laramie,” Al said. “It’s the only place Van Dorn can catch the train to New York. So that’s where we’re headed, too.”
“But they could go to Laramie any number of ways,” Nick said. “And we could be in front of them and would never even know it. We could be out there for days and all we’d be doing is leaving a trail for them to follow and avoid.”
But Al had a little more faith than that. He inched out into the hallway and saw a bullet hole in the corridor wall. “You see that?”
Nick said he did.
“I put that there,” Al said. “But it went through the fella that gunned down our family first. The same man who was working with Mackey to get Van Dorn off this train before we hit it. I know I didn’t kill him, but I wounded him plenty. And I’d bet that if he knew enough to protect an empty car just to buy his friends time, then he probably knows where they are and how to meet up with them.”
Al rapped a knuckle on the bullet hole. “We can’t track Van Dorn or the men who have him. But we can sure as hell track a man bleeding his way clear across Montana.”
Nick bent over and took a closer look at the bullet dug into the wall. He wasn’t sure it had gone through anyone, but he appreciated his cousin’s thought just the same. “I’ll see if I can’t find a trail while the others loot our cousins for guns and ammunition. We’re going to need every bullet we can get if we go up against Mackey and his men.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Cousin Nick.” Al Brenner wiped beads of sweat from his brow. “We’re not going up against the marshal. He’s making the mistake of going up against us. And he won’t even know it ’afore it’s too late.”