It crackled and roared and spat and smoke rolled up into the evening sky, tinged with the orange of the flames. As the night wind funneled through the fold and caught the fire, it raced like an arrow between the hills and drove directly for the bedding-down grounds of the buffalo herd. They had smelled the smoke and were already on their feet, dark nostrils quivering, wet eyes rolling and some of the animals lowing nervously. They faced into the wind, staring at the wall of fire. Then, with one accord, they turned and started to run.
Bodine grinned tightly as he put his mount across the face of one of the slopes, above the fire. He drew his six-gun and triggered until the gun was empty, shooting down into the dark, heaving mass of the herd. He didn’t care whether he hit anything or not: the slug wouldn’t kill at this distance, anyway. But the gunshots would add to the pandemonium and fear and if he wounded a couple of animals, then the scent of hot blood would drive them on, increasing their terror.
He reloaded his six-gun as he rode on, using the flickering light of the massive flames to help him. Bodine emptied the weapon again down into the herd. The buffalo were bawling and at stampede speed, heads lowered, the firelight gleaming on the curved horns and rolling, terror-filled eyes. When the flames began to die as the grass thinned, he rode down into the choking dust in the wake of the herd, kerchief pulled up over the lower half of his face, firing into the air, driving the herd on.
He kicked into his mount’s flanks, yanked the reins, and put it up and over a slope, running to outdistance the herd. Bodine hunched over his horse’s neck, tearing into the night, ten yards’ distant from the edge of the beasts now running wild.
Occasionally, he fired a shot to keep them moving, then, when they came to the flats, he pulled out his Winchester and shot at the leaders. One of his bullets struck a horn and ricocheted away. The beast’s head jerked and his off-side horn jabbed the animal next to him—which in turn cannoned into the animal beside it. The overall result was that the bunch of lead buffalo turned in towards the campfires of the distant hunters’ camp. The rest of the herd followed blindly. The thunder of the stampede shook the plains and Bodine pulled away as they bore down in a direct line with Fargo’s campsite.
They rolled in trampling the acre of drying hides, smashing down the press, thundering on into the camp proper. The hunters had heard them coming and were trying to get the horses and as much equipment as possible out of the way.
“Save yourselves!” bawled Smoky Fargo. “Forget the gear!”
Erik, leading two horses, ran to the tent of the Indian women and grabbed Blue Dove around her slim waist, literally throwing her across the saddle of the nearest mount. She screamed something at him in Paiute dialect. He pushed her head down and slapped his hat across the rump of the horse. It raced away and he knew he could count on the animal’s instinct to keep out of the way of the stampeding buffalo.
Erik turned back into the hide tent to the big Indian woman who lay on her pile of buffalo robes, staring at him in the smoky light given out by the small fire burning in the center of the shelter.
“I sure hope it won’t hurt your wound, ma’am,” Erik said as he grabbed her under the arms and heaved her to her feet. She gave a cry as he edged to the opening and saw that the horse had already run off, frightened by the closeness of the buffalo. The young Viking looked around, knowing he had only seconds to get out before the stampeding beasts flattened the tent—and anything, or anyone, inside it.
He ran for the rear wall, dragging the protesting woman with him, hit the hides and felt the sinew laces snapping one by one as their combined weight smashed through and out into the night. Dazed, his head still full of noise, choking in the pall of dust, Erik staggered up, dragging the heavy woman back away from the tent which was flaring up as the hides fell into the fire. He heaved and strained to get as much distance between him and the tent as possible.
The flaring hides drove the charging buffalo back, sending them veering sharply away in another direction. Smoke and dust mingled to blanket the camp. Men yelled. Horses shrilled. Buffalo bawled. Timbers snapped. There were a few gunshots as men fired into the herd in attempts to divert the animals away from the campsite. Wagons tilted and shattered under cloven hoofs and ton-weight bodies. Flames leapt into the night and cast amber hazy light through the smoke and dust clouds.
And over-riding all was the continual, insistent thunder of buffalo as they smashed through the camp in a seemingly endless river of horns and hides.
Finally, it was past and Erik raised his head from the ground and looked down at Woman Bear where he had unceremoniously dumped her in a hollow in the grass near the riverbank. She was holding her belly and her face had scratches and bruises, but her thick lips peeled back from her teeth in a smile, tense, but grateful.
He grinned and jumped up, calling Blue Dove’s name through the diminishing racket. She came riding out of the smoke, anxious, dirt-smeared, shaken, but safe.
“Your mother’s fine,” Erik told her and grabbed the horse’s bridle as she dismounted. He started to say more but there came three fast gunshots and they both snapped up their heads in the direction of the sounds.
“Hey! It’s Bodine!” roared Smoky Fargo. “Back there on the edge of the salt ricks. He stampeded them bufflers into us! Get after him!”
Erik vaulted into the saddle of the nervous horse and wheeled the animal past Blue Dove, kicking his heels into the flanks, racing through the wreckage of the camp and catching a glimpse of Bodine as the man wheeled his own mount and made a run back into the night.
A gun blazed out of the darkness. Erik lay low over the neck of the racing horse, leapt it over a blazing hide wagon where the wrangler was beating at the flames with a bag, and raced around the edge of the salt ricks. A gun thundered behind him. He turned his head and saw Fargo with his Sharps to his shoulder, shooting off to the left a little.
The young Viking moved his mount that way and saw Bodine skylined as he rode along the crest of the ridge. He dropped from sight as the young hunter ran his mount for the lower slope of the rise, figuring to cut around it and head Bodine off.
But when he rounded the knoll, Bodine was waiting by a rock, having heard his mount approaching. He stayed only long enough to get off one shot and Erik’s mount broke stride, gave a shrill cry, staggered drunkenly and went down in a thrashing of hoofs. Erik sailed over the horse’s head and hit hard. Stars burst in front of his eyes and he rolled violently into a log, the breath exploding from him.
He lay there dazed. Bodine, looking back, recognized him and drew rein, spun his mount and charged back, spinning his rifle around the trigger guard, using the circular motion of the weapon’s movement to lever a fresh shell into the chamber.
He fired downwards and Erik jumped as lead chewed splinters from the log, and flung the sharp wood slivers against his face. His arms and legs pressed against the earth as he leapt over the log, getting it between himself and Bodine.
The killer had a fresh shell in his rifle and threw the weapon to his shoulder. Then a Sharps roared again and Bodine jerked almost out of the saddle, dropping his rifle and clawing at the tip of his left shoulder. He didn’t wait to see who had winged him. He spun his prancing, sweating mount and leapt it over the log where Erik lay, riding for the brush and the deep shadow.
Fargo and another hunter called Shelley came running up on foot, gripping their heavy Sharps rifles. The big buffalo guns roared in twin thunder but the sound of Bodine’s mount’s racing hoofs did not diminish. Soon they faded into the night and Erik stood up, still a little shaky, his face bleeding from the splinters.
“You all right, boy?” Fargo asked.
“I am fine—was anyone hurt in the stampede?”
“Lost an Indian skinner and Mort busted a leg but that won’t do more than slow him down. He walked seventy-eight miles through the mountains with a bunch of renegade Apache after him once with a busted ankle. You did good, boy. But you went after Bodine unarmed, you know that?”
> “I had my Bowie knife,” Erik said placing his hand on the hilt of the heavy weapon that Fargo had given him.
Fargo raised his bushy eyebrows.
“You reckon you’d have gotten close enough to use it?”
Erik shrugged.
“Our young Viking’s long on guts even if he’s short on sense, Smoky,” said Shelley.
“He sure is.” Fargo clapped an arm about Erik’s shoulders. “You should’ve lived about thirty-forty years ago, boy. You’d have made a fine Tejano, eh, Shelley?”
“I reckon Smoky.”
“What is a Tejano?” Erik asked.
“They were what they called the original Texans, Erik. The fellers who thumbed their noses at the Mexican Emperor and went up against Santa Anna at the Alamo. They were the toughest, bravest hombres ever to walk God’s earth.”
Erik flushed.
“Then I am honored by your compliment, Smoky. I thank you.” He grinned suddenly to hide his embarrassment. “Or perhaps a Tejano would say—muchas gracias, amigo.”
Fargo and Shelley laughed.
“That he would, Viking. That he would.” Then Fargo sobered. “But I reckon we ain’t seen the last of Bodine. That sidewinder’s got a long memory and the way he turned back when he recognized you, Erik, I’d say you’ll especially have to watch out.”
“I will,” the Viking said grimly. “And next time I see him, I will kill him.”
Eight – Manhunt
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 c
ouple 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.
Bannerman the Enforcer 12 Page 9
