The Blackfoot Trail

As soon as it was light enough to see, he was saddled up and back on the game trail that led up the wooded draw. The only sign he could discover were tracks he had left the night before, but he was still not ready to abandon the trail. Leaving his horses to wait for him on the game trail, he climbed up through the fir trees on the side of the draw, knowing the tracks were there—he just had to find them. About seventy-five feet up the steep slope, he came upon them. Due to the steepness of the side of the draw, Starbeau had been unsuccessful in hiding his tracks and might have found it useless to even try. For they were distinct in the soft topsoil of the fir forest floor, leaving long slashes in the steepest places as the horses slipped and stumbled. He couldn’t make any progress up here, Joe thought. He’s bound to have come back to the trail at the bottom. Without wasting any more time on the side of the draw, Joe scrambled back to the bottom to retrieve his horses. Stepping up on the paint, he followed the game trail up the draw, and eventually he came to a point where two shod horses came down from the side and struck the trail where it fanned out at the base of a mountain.

It was easy to picture the hulking fugitive as he had woven his way up through the forest of firs and lodgepole pines, riding around large outcroppings of rock, as he climbed higher and higher. The careless trail of hoofprints and broken branches testified to the reckless pace he set for his horses in an attempt to put as much distance as possible between himself and anyone following him. Once Joe reached the shoulder of the mountain, he found the trail had leveled out and led around it toward the east slope. From there, it started descending toward a narrow valley to the north. It was Joe’s guess that Starbeau had no specific direction in mind, but was simply running, hoping to disappear in the wilderness. Reaching the bottom of the mountain, Joe came upon a wide stream that had been hidden from the mountaintop by a thick canopy of trees.

Taking advantage of the opportunity to once again disguise his trail, Starbeau had ridden into the stream, causing Joe to slow down and carefully walk the paint up the stream, searching for tracks leaving the water. Already losing time due to the necessity to quit the trail the night before, he could only grumble over further delay in running Starbeau to ground. He followed the stream for over a quarter mile, scanning both banks intensely with no sign of tracks. With reluctance, and a generous portion of impatience, he turned his horse around and retraced his steps, grudgingly admitting that the belligerent bully had outsmarted him and reversed his direction in the stream. Sure enough, he had ridden no more than two hundred yards past the point where Starbeau had first entered the stream when he saw the tracks leaving the water. Starbeau had made no attempt to hide them—two sets of prints clearly led across a soft bank and across the valley toward the neighboring mountain.

Joe nudged the paint with his heels and the horse immediately reared up on his hind legs and screamed at almost the same time a shot rang out. Taken completely by surprise, Joe almost came out of the saddle. In rapid succession, two more shots ripped into the wounded horse, one in the withers, and one in the neck—both shots intended for his master. Joe just managed to pull his rifle and tumble from the saddle as the paint went down. He rolled over behind a tree, cocked his rifle and scanned the slope above him, trying to pinpoint the source of the rifle fire. There was nothing to be seen but the dense forest that covered the side of the mountain. Every sound in the valley went silent with the exception of the pitiful whimpering of the paint, causing Joe to feel sick in his gut to have ridden blindly into an ambush that took the life of his horse.

The dying horse made an attempt to get on its feet, but failed. Feeling as though he had caused the death of a close friend, Joe sadly rolled over on his side and aimed his rifle at the paint’s head. Pulling the trigger, he instantly ended the horse’s suffering. As soon as he fired, his shot was answered by a series of shots from the ridge above him, the bullets snapping through the branches of the pines and ricocheting off the rocky streambed. Dammit, he thought, still furious with himself for his carelessness, for he had assumed that Starbeau was at least a half day ahead of him. He knows where I am, but I still don’t know where he is.

He looked for his packhorse and saw the black Indian pony about twenty yards away, standing in a small opening in the trees. “Come here, boy,” he called and whistled. But the horse stood there and pawed the ground with its hoof, apparently confused. Joe tried calling it several times more with the same result. Damn hard head, he thought. I’m going to have to go to him. I wonder just how good Starbeau has me pinpointed. To test it, he slid over toward the opposite side of the tree and started to peer around the trunk. Another shot immediately rang out from above, causing him to duck back behind the tree trunk. He tried once more to call the horse and was met with the same result. His concern was that the horse was an easy target, standing in the open, and if he didn’t get it to move, he was going to be on foot. There was a lull in the shooting so he figured Starbeau was reloading. Knowing he could not afford to remain pinned down behind the tree, he didn’t take time to think about it. Leaping to his feet, he made a run for the stream behind him. Running as hard as he could go, he almost reached the edge of the stream before Starbeau peppered the ground at his heels with rifle fire. Diving the final few feet, he landed beneath the bank as .44 slugs zipped over his head. Intent upon working his way up around the deadly ambush, he crawled a dozen yards down the stream until he gained enough solid cover to make another try for the packhorse.

“Damn the stinkin’ luck,” Starbeau fumed, “Joe Fox.” How, he wondered, had the relentless tracker gotten on his trail? “Well, don’t make no difference now. This is as far as he’s goin’.” He crawled over to the other side of the boulder he had used as a shield in hopes of getting a clear shot. “The son of a bitch,” he complained, cursing Joe for his success in finding cover. He was gripped by a moment of panic when he could no longer see where he was. The son of a bitch is like a damn snake in the bushes, he thought, and he was furious for having missed his opportunity to kill him. He should have been more patient, he told himself, and waited until the relentless hunter had ridden out into the center of the clearing. But as soon as he had seen the head of the paint horse emerge from the bushes by the stream, he had pulled the trigger. And now the dangerous half-breed had escaped into the tall pines.

He strained to scan the trees below the ridge. As yet, there had been no return fire from Joe Fox, just that one shot to finish the paint, which meant he had not spotted Starbeau behind the boulder. Or did it? Starbeau had to consider the possibility that he had been spotted, and Joe Fox was stalking him, maybe making his way up the ridge even now. Let the damn half-breed come, Starbeau thought. It’ll be his day to go to hell. The thought, designed to bolster his courage, had a hollow ring, however, as he was anxiously aware of the nervous sweating in the palms of his hands. “Damn him!” he muttered, remembering the cold merciless eyes that had gazed down at him after he had shot him in the shoulder. And the thought entered his mind that running might be the wiser of his alternatives. At that moment, Joe’s black packhorse walked slowly across the clearing below, and Starbeau saw his best option. He brought his rifle up to his shoulder, took careful aim, and pumped three shots into the unfortunate horse, dropping it in the middle of the clearing.

He wasted no time after firing the shots, and ran up the ridge to where his horses were tied. Stumbling drunkenly, as if the devil himself were on his heels, he got a foot in the stirrup and swung his leg over while still fumbling to put his rifle in the saddle scabbard. Kicking the horse repeatedly, he left the ridge at a gallop, crashing through the sparse underbrush, oblivious to the pine limbs that slapped at his face and arms. Down the other side of the ridge he plunged, his horses struggling at breakneck speed to maintain their footing on the uneven slope. His rational mind tried to reason that it was impossible for the relentless hunter to have climbed the other side of the slope in the time he had taken to flee. Even so, he could feel a tingle in the center of his shoulder blades where a bullet might find him at any second.

Starbeau did not let up on his weary horses until reaching the bottom of the mountain, where he was sure he had put enough distance behind him to rest them. With his confidence partially restored, he convinced himself that he had taken the sensible route. If it was a fight in the open, he told himself, it would be a different thing. But that bastard is as much at home in the woods as a wolf. He consoled himself on his decision to run, saying it was the smart thing to do. And Max Starbeau ain’t never been no damn dummy. Another thought caused him to chuckle. He’ll play hell catching up to me on foot. His mind completely at ease now with the sure feeling that he had seen the last of Joe Fox, he climbed up in the saddle again and walked his horses toward a narrow canyon between the two mountains facing him.

Joe had never located Starbeau’s position on the ridge until after his packhorse was shot, but he managed to get a glimpse of two horses as they crashed through the pines, heading for the shoulder of the mountain. By that time, the range was too far to waste a cartridge, hoping for a lucky shot. He was certain that he was no longer in danger of getting shot himself, and to prove it, he walked out into the opening to fetch the few things from his saddlebags he would need to take with him. With a mind to travel as light as possible, he made a backpack with his blanket, and filled it with cartridges, jerky, flint and steel, and after some deliberation, his coffeepot. Pausing then to take one last sorrowful look at the faithful paint pony, he strapped his bow and quiver on his shoulder, picked up his rifle, and started up the slope of the ridge toward the spot where he had last glimpsed Starbeau.

Reaching the boulder that had been Starbeau’s shield, he paused only for a second to notice the empty .44 shells lying on the ground before proceeding on toward the spot in the trees where he thought he had seen the fleeing man’s horses. He reached the place where the bushwhacker had tied his two horses, and from that point on there was little trouble to follow the trail up toward the shoulder of the mountain.

There were no more sorrowful thoughts over the loss of his horse. His life had been in kinship with the wild creatures of the mountains, where death was but a part of living, and something to be expected, often in random acts of fate. So he was not prone to waste time regretting bad luck. He was on foot, his enemy was on horseback, and it would take a little more time to track him. But track him he would. He pulled his bow off his shoulder, and with it in one hand and his rifle in the other, he set out at a steady jog.

Like a man possessed, Starbeau drove his horses relentlessly, not certain of his way, but with the thought that the town of Helena was somewhere to his north. Finally, when he reached a river that seemed to have carved its way between two steep mountains, he was forced to rest his weary horses for fear he would otherwise be on foot. After a short rest, he started out again, following the river, for the mountains on each side of it seemed too formidable a climb. He pushed the weary mounts onward until darkness threatened to make the travel too treacherous to continue.

He was about to pick a place to camp when a flicker of light through the trees ahead caught his eye. He pulled his horse to a halt and dismounted, pulling his rifle out as he stepped down. The prospect of riding up on a party of Indians did not appeal to him at the present time. He decided to proceed on foot until he could determine just who he had happened upon. But before taking another step, he paused again when he heard a strange noise from the direction of the fire. At first he thought it the mournful buzzing of some insect, or other night creature. A few moments more of the strange twanging sound, and he realized what he was hearing. Grinning, he muttered, “It’s a Jew’s harp, by damn! And it ain’t likely no damn Injun.” His spirits lifted now with thoughts of the possibility of hot food and coffee, courtesy of a friendly stranger, he led his horses toward the sound.

Rounding a bend of the river, he saw the campfire, and stopped to assess the situation before making his presence known. It looked like two men, white men as he had figured, one of them was sitting beside the fire with the simple instrument held against his lips and proving fairly handy in stroking a lively ditty. The other was on his feet, dancing a jig to the sound of the homely rhythm. Starbeau’s grin grew wider.

Starbeau advanced a few yards closer. “Lemme tell you, I’m mighty glad to see you boys,” he exclaimed, practicing his best tone of friendliness. “I ain’t ashamed to tell you I’m as lost as a whore in church.” He kept a wide smile on his face as he glanced around the camp, noticing the packs and tools near the fire and the horses hobbled near the river. Bringing his attention back to the two men, he said, “My name’s Starbeau. I’m on my way to Helena, but I reckon I got off the trail somewhere back yonder.”

The two men exchanged glances, then relaxed. “Well, Starbeau, come on in. There’s a little coffee left in the pot. My name’s Barney Cox.” He nodded toward the other man. “He’s Will Forney.” Forney nodded, and they both looked the big man over as he led his horses into the firelight.

Barney paused to watch Starbeau for a moment. “I don’t know. I reckon he’s all right. He’s a big son of a bitch, though, ain’t he?” He picked up a slab of salt pork and sliced off several thick strips and dropped them in the pan to fry. “He sure is hard on his horses,” he commented.

The dregs of coffee in the tin cups were replaced with a generous shot of whiskey, a little more in the two partners’ cups than Starbeau poured for himself. The talk got more and more casual as the level of whiskey in the bottle dropped, until Starbeau asked what the two of them were doing camped out on the river. A slight pause in the conversation occurred then before Will answered. “Nothin’, we’re just doin’ some huntin’.”

There was a long moment of silence then as the partners looked nervously at each other. “We’re goin’ after elk,” Will said. “We always carry some tools with us just in case we need to dig a cave in the riverbank and cache the meat.” He knew it was a poor answer, but his mind wasn’t quick enough to come up with a better explanation.

Experiencing similar problems, Will struggled to his feet and stood laughing at Barney, who was listing a little to one side. “Ain’t we a fine pair?” He took a few stumbling steps out of the firelight to relieve himself. Barney stumbled after him and they stood elbow to elbow, both men rocking slowly back and forth, from one foot to the other, emptying their bladders.

Starbeau grinned approvingly and joined them after a few seconds to share their camaraderie in the sheer joy of urinating openly under a starry nighttime sky. Unlike his two hosts, he was exaggerating his state of drunkenness, however, for he had purposefully spilled a great deal of his on the ground. Finishing with a series of pulsating squirts, the three said good night and retired to their blankets, Barney and Will to surrender almost immediately to their slumber, Starbeau to lie awake, listening for the steady drone of snores that would tell him the camp was his to do with as he wished.

Before taking notice of the picks and shovels, he might have been content to pass the night with the two partners, partake of their generosity, and get directions to Helena. But in his mind, the tools meant digging in the ground for something more interesting than making a hole to cache meat. With the money he stole from Bradley Lindstrom and the thirty-five hundred he had just netted in the bank holdup, he felt he was on a definite winning streak. These boys were hiding something, he felt real sure about that. He figured it was not by chance that they were camped where a fairly busy stream emptied into the river, and he was betting a bottle of good rye whiskey that there was a sluice box not far up that stream.

When the snoring had reached a steady pitch, Starbeau crawled out of his blanket and went to the packs, pausing only a moment to peer down at the sleeping men. They ain’t going nowhere for a while, he thought, and proceeded to tear open all the packs lying off to one side of the fire. Strewing clothes and utensils about him, he emptied them, finding two small pouches of gold dust. Estimating the two were equally weighted, it was easy to assume that these pouches represented the equal split between the partners. It wasn’t much, about fifty dollars’ worth, he estimated, unless the pouches were just for show and the real haul was hidden somewhere. That made sense to Starbeau, and he was determined to find the stash.

He pulled a flaming piece of firewood from the fire to use as a torch, and looked around the camp, trying to spot something—a rock, a log, something out of place that might signal a hiding place. He gave up after a few minutes, finding it impossible in the dark. Their gold cache could be any place, in the camp, in the river, the stream. He decided to quit wasting his time. Returning to stand over the sleeping men again, he gazed down at them, making a decision. After a second, he decided that Barney would be the most likely to talk, so he straddled Will and bent low over him, tapping him lightly on his head with the barrel of his pistol. He could have done the job simply without warning, but he preferred to see Will’s face when he realized he was about to die. Will, however, was too deep in his drunken sleep to be aroused by the gentle tapping, so Starbeau took the canteen lying beside him and sloshed water on his face. Will immediately came to, sputtering and blinking until opening his eyes wide to stare in confusion at the pistol barrel almost resting on his forehead, and the grinning face of Starbeau above it. Stricken dumb with a horrible paralysis at first, Will started to react, but the pistol went off in his face before he could move.

In no particular hurry, Starbeau moved over then to straddle Barney, who was turning sleepily over on his back, shaken awake by the shot. In the next second, he exhaled forcefully as Starbeau settled his massive weight upon his chest, pushing the air from his lungs. Wheezing noisily as he gasped to get his breath again, Barney tried to rise, confused by the weight that pinned him to the ground, only then realizing what was happening to him.

“You want Will?” Starbeau mocked. He grabbed a handful of Barney’s hair and jerked his head around so he could see his partner’s corpse lying near the edge of the firelight, his lifeless eyes reflecting the flames from the campfire. “There he is. I asked him real nice where you boys hid the rest of that gold dust, but he didn’t wanna tell me.” He jerked Barney’s head back so that he could look directly into his eyes. “Now I’m gonna ask you where that dust is.”

“Now, Barney, you ain’t showin’ a helluva lot of sense. I figured you’d be smarter than your partner over there. At least he didn’t try to tell me there wasn’t no gold. I reckon he figured it’d be better to be dead than part with a little bit of dust. Is it worth it to you? I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Hell, I ain’t a greedy man. I’ll just take Will’s half of the dust, and go on my way. You’ll be just as rich as you woulda been. It’ll just be me and you partners, instead of you and Will. You do that and I won’t have no reason to kill you. Whaddaya say, partner?”

There were no options for Barney Cox to consider. He might as well have a grizzly bear seated on his chest, his arms pinned under Starbeau’s knees, his rifle out of reach of his fingertips. He was a doomed man, and smart enough to know that Starbeau was not likely to spare his life if he told him where they had hidden their take from the sluice box. But he knew for sure there was no question of it if he refused to tell. It was a straw thrown to a drowning man. He had no choice but to grasp it. “All right,” he said. “I’ll show you if you’ll promise you won’t kill me.”

“Hell, yes,” Starbeau responded, “I promise.” He released him then and picked up his rifle. “You won’t mind if I hold on to both rifles till I get my gold, will you?” he asked as if there were any question. “Why, this might be the best partnership you was ever in,” he said while cocking Barney’s rifle repeatedly until he had ejected all the cartridges and dropped the empty rifle on the ground. “We might wanna team up permanent-like,” he went on, both men knowing it was a lie.

Barney got to his feet, his mind a roaring tornado inside his skull, desperately trying to see some way out of his situation, as he dutifully led Starbeau to a boulder the size of a haystack that protruded out over the edge of the water. His hands would not stop shaking and there seemed to be no feeling at all in his legs below his knees. Though he tried as hard as he could to think of some salvation, nothing presented itself except simply running for his life after he showed Starbeau the gold. Maybe the menacing brute would be satisfied and would let him live. A cold numbness spread up his fingertips and into his arms as he pointed to a spot at the base of the boulder.

Barney’s hopes sank even deeper. Using a shovel as a weapon was the only plan he could think of in this desperate moment. With Starbeau’s rifle leveled at him, he dropped to his knees and began raking away the loose dirt with his hands, praying for God to somehow come to his aid. After only a matter of ten minutes or so, he uncovered a pouch that appeared to be considerably heavier than those found in the packs. “Hot damn!” Starbeau exclaimed when he caught sight of it. “Lemme see that!” Seeing this was his only chance to escape with his life, Barney tossed the pouch toward the edge of the bank. When Starbeau quickly reacted and jumped to keep the pouch from falling in the river, Barney scrambled up from beside the boulder and ran for the woods. Starbeau snatched the pouch from the edge of the bank, then calmly turned and cut Barney down with two shots in his back.

Without bothering to confirm Barney’s death, Starbeau went to the packs and picked up a shovel, then returned to dig in the hole Barney had already started. He immediately uncovered a pouch similar to the first and kept digging. Soon he was digging in solid dirt and roots, and he knew the two pouches were all there were. “I reckon that’s all the elk meat there is in that cache,” he said, laughing at his joke.

Since there were still several hours until sunup, he took his new treasure over by the fire to examine it. What had started out as a questionable day had turned out to be a great one. He had no idea how much his newly gained gold was worth, but he estimated that it was considerable. He was a wealthy man. In addition to this fact was the accumulation of two extra horses to sell, and the satisfaction that he had left Joe Fox far behind him. By the time the bothersome tracker reached Helena, if he followed him that far, Starbeau would be long gone—too long to leave a trail.

After retying the gold pouches, he searched the bodies, starting with that of Will Forney. He found nothing of value, and started to drag it away from the fire circle when he remembered something. Fishing around in Will’s vest pockets, he found what he was looking for, the Jew’s harp. Smiling broadly, he placed the simple instrument against his lips and with a meaty finger, flipped the spring a few times, producing a series of sharp twangs that was no kin to music of any form. But the irritating noise pleased him, and he kept it up for a while until tiring of it. Dropping the harp in his pocket, he dragged Will’s corpse away.

Unable to move, but fully aware of the pain throughout his body, the mortally wounded man begged Starbeau to finish him. “Hell,” Starbeau responded, “you’ll die before long—ain’t no sense in wastin’ another cartridge.” He pulled the Jew’s harp from his pocket. “Here, I’ll play you a little tune to cheer you up.” He taunted the dying man with a few minutes’ worth of tortured sounds from the instrument. Pleased with his new toy, he then left Barney with the comforting words that either buzzards or wolves would eventually come along and put him out of his misery. The mournful nonmusical sounds could be heard through the forest as the evil man strolled back to the campfire. He threw a few more limbs on the fire, then turned in to get a little sleep before starting out for Helena in the morning. It would take him two more days, but he was no longer in a hurry.