It made sense to Erik but they ran for a block and a half before they clambered through a high fence with loose planks and dropped amongst the weeds of an empty lot. There were wild shouts and gunshots down by the law offices. Horses whinnied. Then a bunch of riders thundered by out in the street and the guns were hammering. Erik raised his head and saw the Garrett bunch riding hell-for-leather, hipping around in saddles, guns blazing back at the townspeople who had gathered at the jail.
Rifles whiplashed and there came two or three thunderous boomings of shotguns. One outlaw crashed sideways from the saddle and another—Steve Dann, Erik thought—reared up with a scream, hand clawing at his back a moment before he was flung violently forward across his mount’s neck. Another rider got his horse alongside and reached out to steady Dann.
Then the bunch charged on down the street and Erik dropped low again as he recognized Buck Richards’ voice yelling commands to get a posse underway.
“Ten thousand bucks’ reward for those hombres,” he yelled. urging the townsmen on. “Get after ’em—and they’ll pay the bounty for Garrett and Dann dead or alive!”
Fargo and Erik stayed where they were for several minutes while the posse organized mounts and hastily gathered supplies. Within fifteen minutes a band of almost twenty men rode fast out of town, hot on the trail of the outlaws. They waited a little longer and then stood up, dusted themselves down and made their way across the lot towards the street frontage.
They eased up to the corner of a building and Smoky made a sign for the younger man to flatten himself against the wall. Then the buffalo hunter got down onto his belly and took off his battered leather hat before looking around the building at ground level. He took his time and then eased back and sat up. Erik hunkered beside him.
“Richards is no fool,” Fargo told him quietly. “He’s left two armed guards on the livery and there ain’t a horse in sight on Main. He must’ve seen we weren’t with them outlaws when they lit out, but they’re the hombres who are worth the dinero to him so he took off after ’em.”
“Then we will have to leave on foot?” Erik asked.
“Not by a damn sight,” Fargo assured him. “The saloon’ll have a stable in its yards; likely they got stalls behind the blacksmith’s forge too. And a lot of houses’ll have their own mounts. Still a lot of men left in town, boy. They didn’t all go after the Garrett bunch.”
Erik helped the oldster to his feet as the man grunted and rammed his hat on his head again. As they started to move away slowly from the street area, Erik stared at the concho studded hat in his hand.
He suddenly realized in the confusion he had picked up Steve Dann’s hat.
Four – Pursuit
Buck Richards didn’t aim to let the outlaws get away, not when there was so much bounty to be collected. He had said there were ten thousand dollars, but he knew, with Garrett’s bunch, there would be a lot more than that: every man riding with Garrett would have a price on his head. If his posse could trap them in a dead-end canyon or somewhere and cut them down, there would be a tidy sum to share out with the posse.
So the sheriff drove the townsmen hard. They wanted to rest because it was dark and had no hope of following the outlaws’ trail. But Richards wouldn’t have it.
“Who needs a trail here?” he demanded. “Moon’ll be up in an hour, but we don’t even need that. There’s only one place they can go along this trail: into the hills, and they can’t reach them before sunup. By which time we’ll be close on their heels. We’ll have to do a mite of trackin’ then, but with that bounty money just waitin’ to be collected, it’ll be worth it.”
One or two townsmen muttered complaints but the majority agreed with Richards once the bounty was mentioned. So they pushed on into the night riding for the distant hills.
They were there an hour after sun-up and they even caught a glimpse of the weary outlaws as they skylined briefly before dropping over the crest. Richards pointed triumphantly and the posse urged their mounts on and upwards.
But the outlaws weren’t blind, nor were they fools. They knew the sheriff would use the bounty as an incentive to keep the posse on their trail for a long time. They knew they had to come to these hills, following the trail out of Seymour, and that the lawmen would know the country better than they did.
They also knew the posse men weren’t as ruthless as they were.
So when the posse reached the crest of the range where they had seen the outlaws, they rode across without hesitation, expecting the lawless bunch to have long since quit the far slope. Instead, they rode into an ambush.
Garrett had deployed his ten men among the rocks and crevices and when Richards led his men at a fast clip over the skyline ridge, the outlaw fired the first shot. He was using a rifle and his bullet took Richards’ horse squarely through the head. It went down hard and threw the sheriff.
Richards skidded and rolled against the rocks, started up instinctively, dazed, bewildered, blinking as guns roared from all over the hillside and his men began dropping. Then Garrett fired again and Buck Richards, in the process of reaching for his gun, felt the mule kick of lead striking him high up in the chest and he went down with a grunt, his gun falling from his fingers, eyes dulled and coughing. He toppled over slowly to one side and lay still.
The townsmen wheeled their mounts to ride back from the ridge but outlaws appeared from behind boulders and poured lead down at them. Caught in a cross-fire the posse had to fight or die. It looked like they might do both, though several townsmen threw down their arms and clawed at the sky, indicating that they wanted no part of it. It didn’t save them; they were cut down, mercilessly.
Then the others, guns blazing, lying across their mounts’ backs, shooting wildly and fast, made their break across the face of the mountain. One horse stumbled on the rough ground and threw its rider. The man landed on his feet and his legs began pumping madly as he used his momentum to give him impetus down the slope. He ran in a desperate zigzag, lead kicking up dust around him, but he made it to the protection of some high rocks. Three of the other riders didn’t make it across the slope, but the rest did and were soon lost among the rock-studded draws.
Garrett signaled his men to save lead and stood up, holding a smoking rifle. Dead and dying men lay all around the mountainside.
“Okay, let’s ride. Those hombres who got away will have a troop of Rangers up here in nothing flat. We want to be a long ways from here by then.” He turned to Arnie who was kneeling beside the wounded Dann. The outlaw’s back had been roughly bandaged but the cloth was all bloody and Dann’s face was grayish. “How’s he comin’?”
Arnie pursed his lips and shook his head dubiously. “He ain’t so good, Matt. He’d already lost a heap of blood from them other nicks he picked up in Matador. But this is a bad one.”
Garrett’s lips tightened.
“He’s conscious?”
“Nope.”
Garrett swore and knelt beside his wounded pard. He nudged his shoulder, then shook him roughly. He cursed again.
“Damn it, he’s the only one who knows where the loot is.”
Arnie looked at Garrett a mite suspiciously as the other outlaws gathered around.
“Didn’t he tell you where it was? You was in jail for three-four days together.”
The outlaw boss’ eyes pinched down dangerously.
“No, he didn’t tell me.” He raked his hard stare around at the others, “He was holdin’ out. I was gettin’ a mite savage about it, but he claimed he didn’t want to start givin’ me directions because the other two hombres in the cell would likely be out long before us. He figured they might take it into their heads to go look for it if they overheard.” Garrett shrugged. “It sounded okay at first. But they kept to themselves. They weren’t interested in us. Steve just wouldn’t tell me, is all. And he still ain’t.”
Arnie lifted a placating hand at Garrett’s angry voice.
“Easy, boss, easy. We better get out of here like you say f
or now. We’ll pick us up a sawbones from one of the towns and bring him to Steve. We won’t let him die till he tells us all where he put that bank loot.”
Garrett stiffened at the emphasis on ‘all’ but said nothing. He waved at the others to go get their mounts and stooped to help Arnie with Dann. Arnie picked up a hat to jam onto the wounded man’s head and it slipped down over his forehead. As he frowned, working it up and down loosely, Garrett said, casually:
“Looks like he picked up the wrong hat. I seen the Viking hombre carrying that one. It’ll do to keep the sun off Steve for now. Grab his feet and let’s get him roped into leather.”
~*~
Erik and Fargo were miles away from Seymour in the opposite direction to the outlaws. They had managed to get themselves two mounts and saddles from private yards in the town and had slipped away without arousing anyone. Once clear of the town, Fargo had taken the lead and they had made for the Brazos and crossed the river at a secret ford used by Indians when escaping from the nearby Red Cloud Reservation.
They watered both mounts and themselves here and headed out across the dark plains, gathering speed as the moon rose and washed the land with silver light.
“Next stop the Red River, boy,” Fargo told Erik. “Then you are in real buffalo country.”
“If we don’t starve before we get there,” the young Viking said, watching the red-hazed sun appear far out on the fuzzy horizon.
The buffalo hunter laughed.
“That’s all that’s botherin’ you, boy?”
“All? Well, we have no water with us, but perhaps we’ll slake our thirst when we reach this Red River. Also we have no food and no weapons to kill any game that we might come across. I do not think it was a stupid question, Smoky.”
“No one said it was. But you seemed worried about it. So quit lettin’ it bother you right now.” He reined down his mount and sat hipshot in the saddle. “You hungry right now? Thirsty?”
Erik hesitated and then nodded.
“Yes. But I can wait until we reach the river.”
Fargo swung down lithely enough for a man his age.
“No need. We can eat and drink right away, just where you’re standin’.”
He laughed at the startled look on Erik’s face and then the younger man slowly dismounted and watched the old buffalo hunter. Smoky Fargo was kneeling by a clump of plants that Erik knew were known by the crude name of pigweed. Yancey had pointed them out to him down in Texas, saying that the Indians sometimes used them for food. Now he saw Fargo pulling up the weeds by the handful and shaking them, piling up the small black seeds at his feet. Erik gathered some plants, too, and shook and pulled off the seeds until he had a small pile between his feet.
“Lucky it’s late summer up here,” Fargo said. “Makes it a lot easier to strip the seeds off. Harder in the colder weather and mid-summer. Now you can eat these seeds as they are, with the husks off, of course, or you can cook ’em, add ’em to stews, and so on. The leaves cook up pretty good into a kind of spinach. I reckon we won’t go buildin’ any fires hereabouts but we can get down a couple of handfuls of the seeds each. They ought to keep us goin’ till we get to more friendly territory and then we’ll really have ourselves some slap-up meals before we get back to my huntin’ camp out on the Red River Plains. Come on. Eat up, boy.”
Erik watched Fargo eat at first and then hesitantly, tried a few of the seeds. He bit down onto them and was surprised to find that they tasted oily and nutty. The flavor was quite pleasant and he started to eat them by the handful. Fargo grinned.
“Not too much. Or you’ll spoil your appetite for the stew I’m gonna make you tonight.”
The old man laughed aloud at the look on Erik’s face.
Before moving on, Fargo walked over to some thick grass and parted the stalks, showing Erik how there was still dew on the stalks about halfway down where the heat of the sun had not yet reached. They licked the moisture of several plants until their thirst was slaked. Then they mounted again and rode into wild and rugged country that rose gradually into barren hills that seemed to march away to the horizon. Erik wondered how Fargo was going to keep his promise of a meaty stew for such country surely could not support game.
They passed over an area of flint and Fargo dismounted without speaking and collected several large and small pieces which he placed in the pockets of his buckskin jacket. He mounted again and they rode on through the furnace-blast of the barren country. There was a line of distant green that really didn’t seem to be getting any closer, but Erik said nothing, content to ride along with an experienced wilderness man like Fargo and to learn by observation.
Come sundown, they were still in the barren country, but they had the promised stew. Fargo had killed two rattlesnakes and Erik’s gorge had risen and choked him when he thought about eating the reptiles. But Fargo made him help skin them after first cutting off the heads.
“Best to bury ’em,” he explained. “Them fangs can still poison from the venom sacs if you happen to tread on ’em or put your hand on ’em.”
He had chipped away the edges of some of the flint and made serrated, razor-like knives. He used these to skin the snakes and to gut them. They were in sandstone country and now Fargo searched among the folds in the rocks until he located a small scooped-out hole that held some brackish water scummed with dead insects. He scooped these off and they slaked their thirst. Then he gathered some dry grass, teased it out into fine fibers, and took off his belt with the square steel buckle. He struck sparks from the flint with this, angling them carefully into the teased grass until it began to smolder. Then he blew gently until the glow spread and finally burst into flame. He thrust this beneath the small pile of twigs he had had Erik gather.
In a few moments they had a fire going and Fargo started placing round, fist-sized rocks in the flames. He also held one of the snakes’ bodies over the flames on a pair of sticks.
“We don’t eat this feller,” he said. “He’s to take with us tomorrow. While them rocks are heatin’, go gather some of that pigweed over yonder and a little amaranth. Just the leaves of the amaranth, but get seeds and all of the pigweed.”
Later, when the rocks were red-hot, he picked them up with sticks and placed them in the remaining water in the small rock-hole. The water began to bubble and hiss. Then he placed the second snake, hacked up into small pieces, in the heating water and later added the seeds and leaves. In half an hour Erik felt the saliva and juices filling his mouth as he smelled the savory aroma of the stew.
While it was cooking, Fargo used his flints to peel some bark off a small bush. He fashioned this into two crude spoons and they were soon eating the thick stew.
Erik was surprised to find how much he enjoyed it—even when he consciously let himself think about the ingredients.
Fargo looked up at him, wiping juices from his beard.
“Like it?”
“It is very good.”
“Okay. You get breakfast.”
Erik looked at him, startled.
“Me, Smoky?”
“You, Viking,” Fargo laughed. “You gotta do your share. I showed you pigweed and there’s a heap growin’ hereabouts. I showed you how and where to find water in this country, so you look for some come daylight. Food, too.”
“But we have the roasted snake.”
“That’s for the trail so’s we don’t have to stop till sundown. We need somethin’ else for breakfast. Pigweed’s only part of it. There’s lizards around here. Might even find some frogs at the base of the cliffs, deep down under the brush. The ground could be marshy there. Don’t wrinkle your nose, boy. You’ll be mighty glad to eat ’em before we get to where we’re goin’. I’ll show you how to make some jerky later on, maybe pemmican, too, but you got to demonstrate that you’ve learned your lesson.”
Erik nodded.
“I understand, Smoky. I will do my part.”
“Now you got the idea, boy. I reckon we’ll get along fine.”
&
nbsp; ~*~
Garrett sent two men down into the small river hamlet known as Natoocha to get a doctor for Steve Dann. The outlaw was in fever, raving and not making any sense at all. He seemed to be dreaming about his mother a lot for he called her name and thrashed around on his bed of branches in the small cave in the rear of the canyon where the gang was hiding out.
They had been pursued by Rangers the last two days but had shaken them. Matt Garrett figured Dann wouldn’t last much longer and he needed to get the information about the Matador bank loot from him before he died.
It was just on dark when Arnie and Charlie returned with the frightened doctor from Natoocha. He was a young man, slim and effeminate-looking, and he was scared.
“Just relax, Doc,” Garrett told him, gesturing to the outlaws to put away their guns as he led the nervous medic back towards the cave. “He’s just another patient with a bullet wound. Buckshot. Oughtn’t be any trouble to you.”
The young doctor nodded jerkily, running a tongue over dry lips. When he knelt beside Dann, whose arms were held by two outlaws, and removed the blood-stained cloth that covered the wound, he paled noticeably.
“What’s wrong, Doc?” Garrett snapped.
The man wiped sweat from his forehead.
“That wound’s badly infected. He—he probably has blood poisoning already.”
“Then get him unpoisoned. I want to talk to him.”
“It—it might be too—late.”
Garrett drew his gun and rammed the muzzle under the doctor’s ear.
“It better not be. If Dann dies before he talks, he’s gonna have you for company in his grave.”
The man swallowed, trembling badly.
“I’m—I’m not a miracle worker. I—I can’t do the impossible.”
Garrett cocked back the gun hammer.
“You better learn pronto, Doc.”
The doctor fumbled in his bag and sorted some instruments, asked for some hot water and took out bottles of antiseptics and some drugs. He worked for an hour, sweating, shaking and looking sick. At the end of that time, emotionally, if not physically, exhausted, the young doctor looked up at the grim-faced Garrett.
Bannerman the Enforcer 12 Page 4
