by SA Sidor
I walked on, ignoring McTroy’s command.
“Shouldn’t there be nail prints on the toes? Are you sure it’s a kitty? Cats have claws. I don’t detect any claw marks in the snowpack,” I said.
McTroy did not answer. I straightened up and turned to see if he was still behind me.
Quick as a thunderstorm bolt McTroy wrapped his fingers around my windpipe.
“You don’t see the cat’s claws,” he said. “You feel them. They hook you like steel. Snap! Your neck’s broke! Cat drags you off by the face. When she drops you, maybe you’re breathing.” He shook his head. “Don’t matter. Puss lies there licking in the grass. Pretty sunset colors hit the treetops. Birds start singing. You are praying to God please, let me please make it out of this here mess alive. But, sorry son, it’s over. You’re ending up a stinky cat shit in them red pine needles.”
He released me. Gasping, I leaned against a tree trunk. My temples pounded with the sudden rush of blood. I saw stars and flashing inky blots. I was dizzy, my vision blurred.
McTroy said, “Learn to pay attention. When I say hold off – hold off.”
“You choked me,” I said.
“To improve your outlook,” he said.
“You are a tonic against optimism,” I rasped as I massaged my tender voice box.
“The cat hides its claws until it needs them. Remember that, Doc. These aren’t the freshest prints I’ve seen, but they’re new. A day at most,” he said. “Eyes open now. You hear?”
I nodded, wanting to batter him with my walking stick.
Wu appeared between us. I motioned for the boy to follow McTroy as he shadowed the cougar’s trail deeper into the woods. “Do as he says. Be careful,” I told him. Wu fell in line behind McTroy, who held his rifle at his hip as he moved slowly toward the boulder pile.
“Are you recovered?” Evangeline said.
She was looking down on me from Neptune’s back.
“I will be fit to walk again shortly.” I leaned heavily onto my cane. My head ached.
“He doesn’t mean to hurt you. When he’s been drinking he acts without thought.”
“You shouldn’t apologize for him.”
“He wants to warn you of the danger. It’s what he knows.”
“It’s what he is,” I said. “I was being foolish, of course. But he needn’t throttle me.”
From the direction of the pink boulders I saw Wu running toward us.
“What is it?” Evangeline said.
“Come quick, McTroy found something. He said to leave the horses here.”
We three traced our way back over the puma tracks to find McTroy.
He waited under a medium-sized tree in a small stand of aspens. The golden leaves lit a fiery wall against the slabs of tombstone grays and evergreens dominating the scenery.
It was snowing.
“How beautiful,” Evangeline said. In her long black sheepskin coat, she whirled around like an artist’s model populating a Christmas painting. Ever at home, whether navigating in the Gila Desert or the manmade canyons of Manhattan, the woman managed to thrive. I felt the thinness of my city wools and wished I fit in better into this rustic scene. But, alas, I did not.
“The cat went up this tree. See the scratch marks,” McTroy said.
Our eyes followed the torn bark scraped orange as if a hatchet had been applied.
“How high did it climb?” she asked. Looking up, she held her floppy-brimmed hat to keep it from falling off backwards; her hair spilled out like champagne.
“Can’t tell without going the same way, but looky here. That’s blood dripped onto this tree trunk. There’s more spilled here and here on the ground. The trail leads toward Nightfall.”
“Was the cougar injured?” I asked.
“That’s the strangeness, Doc. I’m not sure who the injured party was here.”
“Is there more than one party who’s been up the aspen?”
McTroy indicated with his rifle the tracks going to and from the aspen in question.
I saw distinct boot prints. They led away from the tree. No paw prints followed. When I looked back at McTroy he had a black mark on his shirt.
“You’ve got dirt on you,” I said.
He pulled out the material and stared down like he was locating a spider.
“I see nothing,” he said.
I shrugged. He brushed at his chest anyway, and his hand came away blacker than his shirt had been. I chuckled. My head was ringing from his throttling me, and to be honest I was still fuming and glad to see him in such a messy state. For some reason, my heart was pounding. I was hearing echoes coming at me from far off, not from any one direction I could point to but from all over at once. McTroy didn’t seem to hear them. Evangeline had her arm draped over Wu’s shoulders and was lending him a spyglass to see the farthest whitest peaks to our north. I thought maybe the altitude was doing something to my ears. It sounded like voices talking low, like I was eavesdropping on a private party. One voice might’ve been Gustav’s from the saloon. A second sounded like the old-timer Billy had gunned down. I even heard a laugh, very faint like it was down in a canyon somewhere, that I could’ve sworn was Amun Odji-Kek, the ancient sorcerer I had resurrected from the sands of Egypt and pursued in the sands of Mexico.
I tilted my head and tapped each side like I was shaking out water from a lake swim. My head was on a merry-go-round when I put it straight again. At least the echoes had stopped. But I felt a slight buzzing in my extremities as if weak electrical currents were passing through me. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant. Closing my eyes, I mistook myself for old New Yorker Rom Hardy sipping spirits at the Delmonicos’. But when I opened my eyes I was under-dressed Rom whose hind end was going numb in the Sangre de Cristos. I pumped my legs to improve circulation as I studied the cat’s blood on the tree. I don’t know why I cared one whit if McTroy had black stains on him. He looked like an ink bottle exploded in his pocket and he’d wiped it with his fingers.
“You’ve got the filth on your hand now… but it’s your concern,” I said.
“Doc, I’m clean as an angel here. You feeling put together right?” McTroy said.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Do you suppose this is the tree Claude climbed last night?”
He went walking around the aspen saying, “To the back side of the tree is clean rock shielded by the branches. It won’t hold a print. Our man in boots goes up from there, I reckon. The cat pursues. Starting where you’re at. Then the boot man shimmies down, or falls… these ridges here, that was a hard landing. He walks away in the snow.” McTroy squatted and pointed inside a footprint. “He’s got a pebble caught in his left boot. See how the heel marks look different. His trail lines straight up to the lodge. The blood drops are on the same side as Claude’s cut arm. It must be Claude going home.”
“Where goes our cat?” I looked around, spotting no more prints.
“She flees by the rocky path whence the boot man cometh. Or she disappears.”
“Could she be up there now?” Wu asked, craning for a view of the highest branches.
“How’d he get down? Did he slide past her?” McTroy said. “I don’t see it.”
He tipped his hat back. He fished in his coat pocket for a piece of jerky. He handed one to Wu. Evangeline and I declined. He started chewing loudly and shaking his head.
“It’s an enigma,” I said.
McTroy tore a strip with his teeth. It dangled from his lip. “It was a good headscratcher until your dictionary word went and ruined it. Still… two go up the tree, only one comes–”
McTroy did not finish his sentence. The crack of a gunshot sliced the air. The piece of dried meat flew spinning from his mouth. He dropped to the snow – his lip bloodied. We lay flat.
“Are you hit?” I asked.
“No, bit my damn tongue. But he nipped my venison, the bastard,” he said.
A second shot knocked a chunk from the tree. Bar
k shreds ticked off my bowler hat.
“Crawl!” McTroy said. “Get behind the boulders. Fast now. Go!”
The third shot anticipated our move, chipping away rock and spraying Wu with dust. Wu froze, knitting his hands over his head. McTroy crabbed over the boy and dragged him along by his jacket collar. Evangeline made the slenderest target, but I put myself between the shooter and her prone body. We squirmed into the shelter together. No other shots were fired. We sat there getting covered by the snow and listening. Finally, McTroy made a scouting trip.
He came back.
“They’re gone,” he said.
13
Licorice & Kerosene
“What do we do now?” I asked.
“Ride back to the lodge and explain what happened,” McTroy said.
“Explain it to whom?”
“Oscar, I guess. It’s his venture, his property and rules.”
“He won’t be there. He’s out hunting the Beast like we are,” Evangeline said.
“He’ll be there. Three shots blasted in quick succession. That’s the signal for cornering the Beast. He’ll think we hit lucky paydirt. We’ll have to tell him we didn’t find squat and that the Silvers were sniping at us. Maybe he’ll get the law involved.” McTroy headed through the aspens to where our horses were tied.
“Do you really think so?” I said.
“No,” he said.
“But there is a sheriff in Raton? If we needed to call upon the law for our protection?”
“There’s always a sheriff. Citizens like a sense of order and civil society. I doubt Oscar cares much for town laws. He’s his own king up here on the mountaintop. He thinks he is, anyhow. Probably owns the sheriff. I expect any protection we have lies here with our irons.” McTroy jiggled the Marlin rifle and dropped a hand to one of his two Colt Peacemakers.
I carried no irons as a matter of principle. I preferred logic, science, and laws. In my ape-head walking stick was a concealed blade for self-defense. I knew Wu had his own pistol now, a short-barrel version of McTroy’s cavalry sidearm, which the boy wore tucked into a blue sash around his waist. Evangeline chose for herself a California-bought, shiny, hammerless Smith & Wesson Safety .32, carrying the pearly toy-size shooter in her pocket. “I have a new lemon squeezer in case we find ourselves baking a cake,” she’d said, patting her thigh. Her comment had stirred me in confusing ways while also putting me in the mood for sweet treats. Thusly, I was the only member of our ragtag posse unencumbered by manufactured firepower.
A thought suddenly entered my head.
“No one was hurt today. What crime did the Silvers commit?”
“Endangering the public. Shooting at folks is unlawful even in New Mexico Territory,” McTroy said.
McTroy’s reply assured me. I often wondered if there truly were laws in the West, or if they were rumors carried by strangers from town to town, like gossip, and worth about as much.
“Do you know for certain they were the ones who did it? The Silver team? I saw no shooter.” Evangeline’s eyes glinted teasingly. “Might you have a prejudice against them?”
She made an excellent point. This topic of the lack of ocular proof irked McTroy. His stride widened and he sighed. “No, I don’t have evidence. But they’re the likeliest,” he said.
We walked in silence a few yards, everyone trying to think of a good reason for someone other than the Silvers to shoot jerky out of McTroy’s mouth and bully us into a rockpile.
“You figure it was Billy who did the deed?” I started speculating. “He has a quick temper. He already shot one man dead in town. Recklessness is his trademark. He lacks restraint.”
“Might be the Kid. That was accurate shooting, and I don’t know if he’s capable. Trick shooting and people shooting are different. If my chin came away, I would say it was the Kid.”
Evangeline stopped walking. “If, as you say, Gavin Earl shot at us, then two teams are heading back – Oscar’s team and us. The Silvers get extra time on the mountain working their way closer to the Beast. That’s exactly what they want. Why stand around for hours at the lodge complaining about them?” she said. “Instead, let’s stay out here and keep to our plan. Search for signs of unusual activity. Build a hunter’s blind. Lay bait… whatever. If we go now, treachery wins. I vote for not returning.”
An excellent point countering McTroy’s suggestion, I thought.
“Oscar should know who he invited to his mountain. If he wants, he can send Gavin’s team home on the next train. This whole contest is a bad idea. Somebody’s going to get killed,” McTroy said, walking on.
We were almost back to where we left the horses when he broke into a run.
“Oh, shit. Them sons of bitches!” he shouted.
Wu went after him. His young legs surpassed his bounty-hunting mentor.
Evangeline had the disadvantage of her long skirts and tight coat, and I… well, I am not made for speed. I took her hand and together we climbed the final hill to the Copper Trail. When we arrived, red-faced and out of breath, Wu had his hat off and crumpled in his hand. He threw it down and stomped it into the ground. Tears brimmed in his eyes.
“They stole Magpie,” Wu said. “All our horses… gone. I tied them to this spruce with the big gap in the branches. There’s a bird’s nest inside. I saw it when I put the rope around.”
“Well, they’re gone now,” I said. “The horses, not the birds.”
Wu looked in the gap and said the birds were gone too. This made him madder still.
“Everything’s gone!” Wu threw fistfuls of crusty snow as far as he could into the woods just to watch them hit the trees and break apart. He grunted as he reached back and whipped his arm forward. His black hair fell into his eyes and his cheeks grew red and shiny as apples.
“Wu, we will get them back,” Evangeline said.
“What if they kill them?”
“There’s no reason to kill good horses. You know that,” Evangeline said, combing his hair back from his face. Wu had little he could call his own. Losing anything pained him. I lifted his hat from the trail of dead needles, re-shaped it, and handed it to him. He put it on.
McTroy said, “We can follow them. Looks like they’re keeping to the trail. One man snuck up alone. He’s walking them in a line. Can’t be the fat one with the bear. Dirty Dan had snowshoes on. If he smelled like bear, Moonlight would kick him in the equipment straight off. Pops isn’t the creeping type. Besides he’s too bow-legged to match these boots. Likely it was the Kid or Gavin. I’d put money on Gavin being the rifleman by the cat-scratched tree and the Kid swiping our ponies. They put thought into this. Jerking us around like dogs on a chain.”
We walked in the snow following the hoofprints, but horses and people don’t walk the same and our boots were wet and sliding on the round patches of ice or churning in the ankle-deep slush. The sun’s glare cut through the pine tops and melted the horse tracks. We had a slippery muddy slog ahead. Walking was an effort. As the crow flies we were less than half a mile from Nightfall, but the Copper Trail meandered through the woods like a lazy prairie stream. We faced more than double that distance by backtracking. It was uphill too. I felt my legs burning. I was thirsty but my canteen was still attached to Jingle. Despite the cool breezy air I was working up a sweat. I wiped my brow with my sleeve, turning it dark. Then heavy clouds hid the sun like it was caught in a bag, but I was glad for the dimness. My hard squint loosened.
McTroy had grown silent and his jaws twitched every few steps like he was trying to crush a stone between his molars. He tipped his Marlin back against his shoulder, pointing the rifle at the sky with his hand still inside the lever. He retrieved another jerky strip from his pocket to replace the one he’d lost in the sniping incident. He offered it around again. This time Wu and Evangeline joined him. I was too thirsty to eat salted meat. I carried my pipe and tobacco pouch on me. I filled my bowl and had a smoke. I have found throughout life that the inabi
lity to quench one appetite is often soothed by indulgence in another. I expelled a sizable fog in my wake. Wu and Evangeline moved to the other side of the trail to avoid my pungent airy residues. McTroy maintained his pace, chewing and striding, checking our rear for creepers.
Smoking stimulates me; I quickly took over the lead. “They might just leave our horses someplace tied off,” I said, encouragingly.
“If they’re smart they would,” McTroy said.
I heard my foot crunching snow before it touched the ground, then realized it wasn’t my boot making the noise.
“Hold it right there, Doc Hardy, or your next step will be your last.”
It was Billy. He’d leaned out of the pines and raised his gun hand, so I was staring down his Colt Thunderer, and it appeared like a war cannon. He was near enough I saw the inner details of the oiled barrel – a big steel zero – and imagined a bullet loaded snugly in its chamber. He’d shaken snow loose from the boughs when he shoved off his tree and a measure of white landed upon on his stooped shoulders and topped the Thunderer like sugar icing.
I puffed my pipe. I had nowhere to go where his shot wouldn’t get there first.
“What is your intention, Kid?” I asked, though his intention seemed rather clear.
“I aim to plug your hole with lead.”
“Ah, you say you are no fan of discussion. Yet you choose to engage me in conversation rather than simply shooting me straight away. That is contradictory.” I wagged a finger at my would-be assassin, hoping to distract him. “Perhaps you actually wish to talk with me, but you lack a strategy for initiating encounters which are not predicated on violence and the establishment of your dominating nature. Your gun is a crude tool for opening up a dialogue with those whom you find interesting and yet intellectually intimidating. Is this behavior sounding a bit familiar, Billy? Come now. Surely you see the irony of what’s happening here.”
Billy squirted tobacco juice on both of my boots. “Shee-it!” he cried. “You never quit talking. I swear it’s a disease. You got it worse than ladies do when it’s morning and you already paid and there’s nothing left that hasn’t been done twice or three times from the night before and your head hurts, but here, have some more they say as they dump words on you so you’re a drowning man and their mouth is an endless bucket… No offense, Miss.” He inclined his head in sincere apology.
