The hunter’s camp was a shambles. Many hides in the drying ground had been destroyed. Those stacked neatly, ready-salted, awaiting pressing, had also been ruined by hundreds of cloven hoofs shredding them. Fire had destroyed one wagon; stampeding buffalo had smashed another and a third had overturned and broken an axle, at the river’s edge, slowly sinking into the ooze. The tents were useless and many camp items had been trampled into the ground.
Standing amidst the wreckage, in the gray light of early morning, Fargo’s face was grim.
“Bodine sure left his mark. We’re lucky more of us weren’t hurt.”
“What we gonna do about it?” asked Mort, the big, totally bald hunter with a broken leg. While Fargo had been out with Shelley the previous night, Mort had jammed his injured limb between two rocks and had given his body a sideways jerk, thus setting the bone, crudely, and more or less effectively. He had Blue Dove bind a series of short straight sticks all around his leg with rawhide thongs and now was hobbling about on a crude crutch. He somehow seemed impervious to pain, though there were a couple of deep-etched lines drawing down the corners of his mouth. “We ought to leave the cleaning-up to the Injuns and get after Bodine, track him down and stake him out on an anthill with his eyelids cut off so’s he can’t pull somethin’ like this again.”
“Seems like that might be a good idea,” said Fargo slowly. “He could wait till we got things set up again and then stampede another herd of buffler through it, wrecking everything. Yeah, well I reckon we got ourselves a chore to do, men. We hunt down Bodine. Reckon we can give it—say two days. If we don’t nail him in that time, then I reckon he’ll have cleared the territory. We all agreed?”
The others nodded and Erik moved across to grab his Sharps, his face grim. Blue Dove stepped forward, placed a hand on his arm. He looked up and smiled when he saw it was the Indian girl.
“Good morning. Your mother is all right?”
She nodded, made a series of signs which he interpreted as meaning that the older woman had some pain but that she was mainly quite well. Then the girl took off the twin polished black bear claws she wore on a rawhide thong around her neck and placed the talisman over Erik’s head.
“For good luck? Is that why you’re giving them to me?”
She smiled and lowered her eyes; there was a little color touching her cheeks, too. He leaned forward and his lips brushed her forehead lightly.
“Thank you, Blue Dove. It is kind of you.”
“More’n that,” Fargo said, leading his horse past at that moment. “She’s been makin’ medicine over them bear claws for a couple of nights now. She figures they’re magic: they’ll protect you from harm—and guarantee to bring you back to her.”
Erik looked sharply at the girl but she turned swiftly and ran back to the pile of damaged hides where her mother lay. Fargo laughed briefly.
“Reckon you’ve got yourself a gal, there, Erik.”
The Viking frowned slightly, his fingers lightly stroking the bear claws at his throat.
~*~
Yancey spotted Garrett in the draw in the midst of early morning, coming in over the crest of the range with Buck Richards a horse’s length behind him. The Enforcer signaled swiftly and Richards slipped out of leather, sliding his rifle from the saddle scabbard as Yancey crouched beside a rock, Colt in hand.
Garrett had made himself a small campfire and was just finishing a meal, obviously thinking himself safe. He had his back to the two men as he drank coffee. The aroma reached the lawmen on the rising breeze. Far out on the plains beyond the ranges, they could see the dark masses of browsing buffalo. Somewhere out there was the camp where Yancey hoped to find Erik Larsen. And, if the lad had really turned bad—something which he did not believe for a moment—then there would be some kind of a reckoning. But first, Garrett had to be taken care of.
Yancey jumped, spinning, as Richards’ rifle exploded almost in his ear He swiped at the gun barrel, cursing, glancing down at the outlaw’s camp. The lead sent the coffee pot jumping and Garrett was up and lunging for his saddle horse, not taking the time to look back and see who was doing the shooting, intent only on getting away.
Richards shoved Yancey aside and threw the rifle to his shoulder. He blazed two fast shots down at Garrett as the outlaw crashed his mount into the brush of the draw, raking its flanks brutally with his spurs. Richards sent four more wasted bullets after him and then ran for his mount, shouting at Yancey as he did so:
“Damn you, Bannerman! We lost him, thanks to you!”
“You lost him!” Yancey countered as he leapt into his own saddle. “And almost blew my head off! We could’ve got him if we’d gone down there quietly.”
Richards raced his mount down the slope and Yancey went after him but he knew they wouldn’t catch Garrett now. The slope was steep and they were forced to slow down and descend warily, letting the mounts pick their way. By the time they were in the draw, Garrett was lost in the thick brush.
They followed the path that had been crashed through the bushes by his racing horse, but he was far out on the plains, just dropping out of sight into some hidden hollow, by the time they came out into the foothills.
“Never catch him now,” Richards snarled.
“We know for sure where he’s headed, leastways.”
“Hell, we knew that days ago. What the blazes made you knock my gun aside like that?”
“It was instinctive. It near deafened me, you shot so close to my ear. If you hadn’t gone off half-cocked like that, we might’ve had Garrett nailed. And you could’ve been well on your way to collectin’ the bounty.”
“Aaaah!” Richards snarled.
“Well, bitchin’ won’t change things. Best thing we can do is get after him, before he finds Erik and nails him from ambush.”
Yancey set his mount forward and didn’t wait to see if the angry sheriff decided to follow. The Enforcer knew he would. Nothing would keep him from trying for that bounty.
~*~
Bodine couldn’t resist riding back in a wide circle to see just how much damage the stampede had done to the hunters’ camp. And it was that that was almost his undoing.
Fargo, Erik, Mort—riding his horse with his busted leg propped up in a forked-stick arrangement he had attached to his stirrup—and Shelley had spread out, picking up Bodine’s tracks from the area of the fallen log where the man had shot Erik’s horse from under him. It appeared that Bodine was making back towards the hills and they figured that he could even take the trail on into Bowie, hit the booze for a couple of days, and then come back after the camp was shipshape again and stampede another herd of buffalo through it. Or the man might even set up an ambush and shoot Erik from cover, as he seemed intent on killing the young Viking.
They made their way through the foothills at the northern end of the range and met in a canyon with a deep waterhole where they aimed to have some lunch while they exchanged news of what they had found.
It is debatable whether the hunters or Bodine got the bigger shock when they met at the waterhole. The killer was watering his mount on the far side of the big depression in the sandstone when the hunters began to drift in through the distant canyon mouth. He spotted them first as they worked their mounts over the rough trail, eyes looking down, moving reins right and left as the horses picked their way over the broken ground.
Bodine leapt into the saddle, startling his still-drinking mount and dragging a startled whinny from it. The sound made the hunters snap up their heads. They palmed their guns as soon as they saw Bodine. The killer blazed three fast shots with his Colt as he whirled his mount and raced it back down the canyon. The hunters’ guns roared and the canyon was filled with thunder but Bodine had the jump on them and skidded his mount around a jutting rock face. Lead screamed away into the hot canyon air.
The four buffalo hunters spread out and raced their mounts round both ends of the waterhole. By the time they had reached the jutting rock face, they had rifles in their hands. The clatter of hoofs was weakening as they raced into the narrow defile that led towards the far end of the canyon. Bodine was already out of sight as it twisted, snakelike, through the high rocks. He wasn’t wasting time shooting back it seemed.
But they were wrong. Bodine, instead of running for the far exit of the canyon, had lifted his mount up a steep, sandy slope and into a natural rock fortress. Here he laid his Colt across his forearm, beading the defile where it entered the area through a cramped passage between the rocks.
As the first rider appeared—it was Shelley—Bodine dropped hammer and the Colt bucked, the spurting cloud of gunsmoke momentarily blotting out his target. But when it cleared, he saw Shelley hanging over to one side of the saddle, clinging desperately to the horn. Bodine wished he had his rifle, but he had dropped it the previous night and his Sharps was still on his packhorse, miles away, hidden in a dry wash. He triggered again as the hunters scattered and Shelley went down. His mount turned to run and jammed the narrow passage as the rest of the hunters tried to come forward. He fired into the melee of rearing, whickering horses and cursing men. Then he spun his mount and keeping the rocky stand between himself and the others made his run for the canyon’s exit.
He thundered through the widening canyon mouth and ran his mount out onto the plains, immediately swinging to the north and back into the foothills. He climbed fast and, halfway up the rise, hipped to look back. Two riders were coming after him, hard on his trail; they looked to be Fargo and Erik Larsen.
Bodine swore. He wasn’t about to make a stand where there was so much cover offering to the hunters. They could spread out and, while one kept him busy, the other could make his way up through the brush to nail him. His horse was tiring and the only way left for him now was up. Damn! If only he had his rifle, he thought, he could at least take a couple of long shots. He would only waste lead, trying to hit them with his six-gun.
The Viking and Fargo set their mounts up the steep slope, catching glimpses of Bodine as he appeared near the crest. Fargo dismounted once, figuring where Bodine would have to appear from a clump of rocks that were fringed with brush. But it wasn’t firm enough and it quivered in the breeze just as he beaded and fired.
A fraction of an inch’s movement at the barrel end of the rifle was magnified into yards at the target; the heavy lead projectile smashed down a small sapling five feet to Bodine’s right. The man simply jumped his horse for the next thick line of bushes, lashing wildly, and disappeared from sight.
But the shot with the Sharps had frightened Bodine; he knew Fargo was a marksman and that the Viking was no slouch with one of those big guns, either. Once he cleared the hills and rode out onto the plains, they could bead him at their leisure, up to a mile away, and stand a chance of picking him off. He cursed the impulse that had made him circle back in the hope of seeing how much wreckage lay around the camp.
He spurred his tiring mount onwards, mind racing, figuring his best trails.
By sticking to the hills, he managed to stay ahead of the hunters, and he led them a long and grueling chase through the brush and timber and rocks. He was a man of the wilderness and covered his trail well. While Fargo was capable of tracking him no matter what trick he pulled, it all took time and Bodine drew slowly ahead.
The old hunter figured out his sign and direction, but the killer managed to stay out of sight—and ahead. Then, around noon on the second day, Fargo signed to Erik to rein down. The old hunter stood in his stirrups, shading his eyes, looking down from the top of the butte where he sat his mount, to the plains below.
“Will you look at that, boy!” he called, pointing.
Erik saw it: the biggest herd of buffalo he had ever seen. There must have been close to two hundred and fifty, maybe even three hundred beasts down there, browsing over belly-deep grass in a valley between the hills.
“Goddamn! I never knew this valley was here,” Fargo said. “And will you just look at them buffalo. Why, boy, I reckon we could really clean up here, make up for what we lost in the fire and the stampede. We could move camp in here and get us some real fine skins. Just look at the curl on the hair on the shoulders of the buffs. It’s mighty healthy, boy. No mange or bald patches like the plains’ beasts. We could get nearly every last one of them and come out of the season with a mighty fine profit.”
“If Bodine would let us operate,” Erik pointed out.
“Well, I figure he’s on the run now and he’ll keep on now he knows we aim to kill him if he shows his nose around our camp. Why waste time chasin’ him in these hills when we could be nailin’ them beasts down there? Shelley’s no good with that bullet that smashed up his shoulder, so I can send him in to Bowie and he can find a couple of hunters givin’-up mid-season like a lot of ’em do, who’ll mebbe be interested in workin’ for a shootin’ wage. What do you say, Erik?”
The Viking looked up the slope and then out from the butte across to the other hills and the timbered folds and knew that they could continue here for a week and still lose Bodine. Fargo was right: they should get down among that herd and grab what hides they could. They had Bodine on the run, anyway.
~*~
It was true; Bodine had only thoughts of escape and he kept his weary mount going through the ranges. He wanted to get to his pack animal and get his rifle. But when he did finally reach the hidden wash where he had left the animal, he couldn’t find it. The sign was easy enough to read: Indians. A small bunch of renegades, most likely, and they had located the animal, and had taken his supplies and heavy rifle. Bodine swore and cussed and kicked at the torn burlap bags that were all that remained of his packs.
It looked like he would have to take a trip all the way into Bowie now and get himself another rifle. Then he would come back and finish Erik Larsen.
He whirled suddenly, hand streaking to his gun butt, at a sound in the brush off to his left
“Leave it!” snapped a cold voice and Bodine eased his hand away from the six-gun. “Grab some air!”
The buffalo hunter lifted his hands shoulder-high, squinting into the brush where the voice came from. Then a man walked his horse out, sitting the saddle easily, his rifle covering Bodine.
“Best drop that gunbelt,” the rider ordered, gesturing with the rifle barrel.
But Bodine was squinting up at the tall rider.
“Matt, Matt Garrett?” he asked.
The outlaw stiffened, frowning, his mouth tightening.
“Hell, it’s me. Hank Bodine!”
Garrett looked closely, the rifle still covering the other man.
“By hell! It does look like you beneath all that hair.”
Bodine chuckled.
“Grew me a beard after that little—upset—we had with the law down in Amarillo. I hear they got a dodger still out on me for that.”
“Yeah they have. But it’s in the name you were usin’ at that time—what the hell was it again?”
Bodine grinned.
“You always was a careful cuss, Matt. You know damn well it was my own name I used.”
Garrett allowed himself a small, crooked smile.
“Just checkin’,” he said, putting up the rifle at last and dismounting. “That beard and all that wild hair sure disguises you well.”
They shook hands.
“What’re you doin’ way out here?” Bodine asked. “You still running your wild bunch?”
Garrett shook his head. “About all gone now. Things went kind of wrong on a deal at Matador.”
“Not the way I heard it. You got away with twenty thousand bucks.”
“Yeah. But we had to separate when the Rangers hit us. Steve Dann had the loot on a packhorse. We didn’t meet up till a couple of weeks later and Steve got himself killed before he could tell us where he hid it.”
“Judas! That’s lousy luck!”
“Mebbe I can put it right. Leastways, that’s what I’m doin’ out here—with a couple of lawmen on my trail, too, but I think I’ve shaken ’em for a spell. At first I thought you was one.”
Bodine laughed harshly.
“Be a cold day in hell if ever I tote a badge.”
Garrett laughed, too.
“I reckon. It’s a long story, but it all hinges around a feller named Erik Larsen havin’ picked up Steve’s hat by mistake and—what’s wrong?”
“That goddamn Viking’s one of the reasons I’m on the run in these hills! But I don’t aim to vamoose until I get another crack at the greenhorn!”
“He’s around here? You know where to locate him?”
“I reckon.”
“He still wearin’ a hat with a bunch of silver conchos on the band?” Garrett asked anxiously.
“He sure is. Leather hat that Fargo made him, but he took the band off the hat he was wearing when he first arrived.”
Garrett relaxed visibly.
“Well, now, looks like we’ll be able to help each other, Hank. You know these hills and we ought to be able to hide out a spell from the law, and we both want to get our hands on this Larsen hombre. Should work out well.”
“Won’t be easy gettin’ to Larsen. Old Smoky Fargo watches over him like a mother hen with her chicks.”
“Then all we got to do is figure out a way to separate ’em, get Larsen out on his own. Oughtn’t to be too hard.”
Bodine looked suddenly thoughtful and then a slow smile spread across his hairy face. “By Godfrey, Matt. I believe I got the answer already. I truly believe I do.”