Hired Guns

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  “All I know is that slippery skunk may have dodged us once, but he won’t again. He may last through the night, but come daylight we’ll run him down sure.” Ferris bared his teeth menacingly. “I’ll sic Dog DeMarist on him. Dog’s the best tracker we got.”

  “He hasn’t managed to impress me much in the past, not with his inability to ferret out that troublesome half-breed, Tom Eagle,” Roland pointed out.

  Ferris scowled. “Jensen ain’t no half-breed who grew up in this valley. He don’t know the area at all. Way I figure, his reaction to what happened today will go one of two ways: Either he’ll hightail it back to your old man to try and find out why there was an ambush waitin’ for him . . . or, bein’ a tough hombre and maybe seein’ it as more of a personal matter with the ones who actually put the heat on him, could be he’ll stick around and try to get his answers direct. No matter, we’ll be happy to accommodate him. He tries runnin’, Dog will track him and we’ll stop him short. He sticks around, we’ll stop him just as short at anything else he has in mind to try.”

  “You’d better,” Roland told him.

  Ferris shifted his weight from one foot to the other and glowered down at the glass in his hand, appearing suddenly uneasy about something.

  “What is it? What’s the matter?” Roland wanted to know.

  “Well, uh . . . I was just thinkin’ about the men I’ve got to do what needs doin’. We cut back on my crew not so long ago, remember? After we got the last of the sodbusters chased out of the valley. I sent quite a few pretty good guns packin’.” Ferris’s broad forehead filled with deep creases. “And now, with five men just took out of commission, and all of a sudden faced with runnin’ down both Tom Eagle and this Jensen varmint . . .”

  Roland glared at him. “So what do you expect me to do about it? Wave a magic wand and magically conjure you some more gun hands? It would take days to send out for more men and for them to get here.”

  Ferris’s head bobbed. “I know, I know. Unless maybe you’d let me borrow a few men from the minin’ crew. Some of those boys are pretty rough cobs. They’d do to fill in the gaps and ride with my other boys until we could get some other reinforcements.”

  “Oh, that’s a great idea. Mace Vernon is going to love letting go of some of his miners,” Roland said sarcastically. “He’s always whining for more help as it is.”

  “Never mind. It was just a thought, Boss.” Ferris squared his broad shoulders. “I’ll make do with what I got. We’ll focus on Jensen first—he’s got to be stopped. Then we’ll get back around to that pain-in-the-neck half-breed. His days are numbered, too!”

  “I sure hope so,” Roland said. “I’ll hold off contacting my father about any of this, in the hope you can make short work of catching up with Jensen. The old man will be anxious for a report, though, so I won’t be able to delay giving him one for very long. Is the telegraph still operating?”

  “It was the last I knew . . . unless that blasted half-breed cut it again,” Ferris answered.

  A corner of Roland’s mouth lifted wryly. “If nothing else, that might make a convenient excuse in case I do want to delay contacting the old man.”

  Ferris shifted his weight somewhat nervously, not knowing what to say to that.

  Roland took another drink and then said, “Best be on your way then, Hack. Be sure to get that head of yours looked at. Check on the other injured men, too, and prepare the rest for what needs to be done tomorrow.” He paused and then heaved a heavy sigh before adding, “Before you ride out in the morning, check with me at my office. In the meantime, I’ll see what I can do to convince Vernon to free up some of his men.”

  “I’d be mighty obliged, Boss. That would help a heap.”

  “It had better,” Roland said through clenched teeth. “One way or other, I expect you to run down Luke Jensen and bring him here to stand before me in chains.”

  Ferris’s eyes blazed. “I mean to make that happen, Boss. He may not be standin’ real steady, but I’ll have him here.”

  Once Ferris was gone, Roland stood looking at the closed door for several seconds. His expression appeared stern, deep in thought.

  Abruptly, he tossed back the remains of his brandy then turned his gaze to Ying-Su. Setting aside the glass, he smiled thinly, saying, “Now that I’ve given that odious creature his assignment, my dear, I have one for you. We shall retire to the other room where you will apply your considerable charm and skills toward helping me to forget, at least for a time, that I am forced to deal with such unpleasant men and related matters.”

  Ying-Su held Roland’s gaze for a long moment, her expression impassive. Then, without a word, she rose to her feet and moved obediently toward him.

  Chapter 15

  Setting a tireless, steady pace, Tom Eagle led the ascent up into the Spearpoint Mountains. The rain diminished again as they climbed, but not completely, and as they went higher, more and more wind gusts began whistling through gaps in the tall rock outcroppings. The unbroken cloud cover hurried the onset of evening and the thickening gloom of approaching night.

  At last, topping a ragged incline that flattened out onto a broad, gravelly ledge running below higher peaks, Eagle reined up twenty yards short of a narrow canyon that appeared choked by jagged pieces of landslide rubble. When Luke pulled up alongside him, the former sheriff gestured and asked, “What do you see?”

  “Looks like a dead end. Is that a recent slide?”

  Eagle grinned. “Nope. It’s not a recent slide and it’s not a dead end. But a lot of work went into makin’ it look that way.”

  “Work by you?”

  “Not by me. By a stubborn old prospector who spent most of his life diggin’ in these mountains. He always believed he was on the brink of a big strike and he always suspicioned others were watchin’ him, waitin’ to make their move on him. So when he struck some mighty promisin’ color back in that canyon, he took steps to keep it hid away from anybody else who might come sniffin’ around.”

  “He dynamited the canyon mouth,” Luke guessed.

  “That’s right. Then he spent weeks and weeks clearin’ a narrow, twisty trail through it—a maze-like path complete with a few dead ends that most folks would never spot to begin with and then likely could never follow even if they did stumble into it.”

  “Sounds like a powerful lot of precaution.” Luke lifted his eyebrows. “You called the old prospector stubborn and suspicious. Maybe a little crazy to boot?”

  “Reckon he got that way at some point durin’ all the years he spent chasin’ his lonely dream.”

  “Did it finally pay off? Did he find anything worthwhile back there in the canyon?”

  “Nothing worth even a fraction of all the work he put into it. A palmful of gold dust, a nugget or two no bigger than a teardrop. A sad deal,” Eagle summed up, with a genuine trace of the sentiment showing on his face.

  “So how do you know all of this?”

  “I happened on him one day where he lay dyin’, right over yonder”—Eagle pointed—“just outside the edge of the boulders. He’d been out huntin’ for fresh meat, as I was. He had what I guess must have been a heart attack. He was tryin’ to crawl back to his dig, back to a mule and an old dog he’d left tied up while he was away. He was worried what would happen to ’em if he didn’t make it back—that nobody’d ever find ’em and they might not be able to make it out on their own.

  “Because of that,” Eagle went on, “because of those critters—the only living things he’d had any regular contact with for years—he wouldn’t let me load him on my horse and try to get him back to the doctor in Hard Rock. Not right away. He insisted that first I let him lead me through the maze so we could see to his animals.”

  The grim expression on Eagle’s face made it plain enough to Luke what had happened next. “The old prospector never made it back out of that canyon, did he?”

  “I buried him in there. Just like he would have wanted,” Eagle replied. “He never even got the chance to
tell me his name, but I put up a decent marker for him anyway. Afterwards, I took the mule back to town and turned it over to the livery proprietor, then took the dog home to my daughter.”

  “You have a daughter?” Luke asked, surprised.

  Eagle gave him a look. “Yeah, I have a daughter. And a son and a wife. Even a half-breed can have a family, you know. Ain’t like I’ve always been a fugitive on the run from false charges against me. Not so very long ago, remember, I was a respected member of society. Until the Devil—in the form of Parker Dixon—set his horns to rip it all away from me. In case you still don’t get it, my family is the biggest part of why I’m continuin’ to fight Dixon as hard as I am.”

  “Okay. If I didn’t before, I get it now,” Luke said.

  Both men were quiet for a minute, ducking their heads and pulling their hat brims down over their faces as a sudden gust of wind whipped across the ledge, lashing them with cold rain.

  When the wind gust had passed, Eagle lifted his face and said, “Reckon that was a sign for me to quit spoutin’ ancient history and get us on in where there’s some shelter. In case you ain’t figured out the rest of it, helpin’ that old prospector all those years back came in mighty handy—the way things have a funny way of turnin’ out sometimes—when Dixon’s bunch started drivin’ decent folks away. It gave me a place to bring the handful who was willin’ to try and stick it out, even if it meant goin’ into hidin’ for a spell.”

  “Including your family?”

  “Right at the heart of it,” Eagle assured him. “It ain’t exactly paradise back in there but it’s got all the basics—helped along by what I’m able to add with my huntin’ and foragin’—to see us through. Follow me. You’ll soon find out for yourself.”

  * * *

  Once again, Eagle led the way. He rode straight up to what looked like an impenetrable wall of tumbled, broken boulders. At the last minute, he abruptly nosed his mount into a slight gap between two of the jagged pieces—a gap that even the keen eyes of Luke would have had trouble spotting on his own. From there, proceeding in single file, men and horses wound their way through what was indeed a maze-like series of cramped twists and turns. With so many switchbacks, it was hard for Luke to determine how far they were actually moving forward into the canyon. Before long, though, they received a greeting that seemed to signal they might be nearing their destination.

  The greeting came in the form of a large dog, a dripping wet yellow mongrel, who suddenly appeared on the crown of a tilted rock slab just a few yards ahead of Eagle. The half-breed checked his horse and Luke heard him call out, “Beulah, old girl. There you are! Been waitin’ for me, have you?”

  The dog yipped a response, her tail wagging happily.

  “Don’t tell me,” muttered Luke. “That must be the dog you inherited from the old prospector?”

  “Not quite,” Eagle said over his shoulder. “That was Buford. He left us a while back. This is one of his offspring, though. And that’s her brother, Beau, right behind you.”

  Luke twisted in his saddle and saw a second dog—a close twin to Beulah except for being a bit thicker through the chest and shoulders—poised only a few feet behind the dun packhorse.

  “They stand guard over the entrance,” said Eagle, confirming what Luke had begun to figure out. “Anybody but the handful they’re trained to recognize tries to pass through, they give us warning. And if nobody calls ’em off, they do more than that.”

  “In other words,” Luke said, “if I wasn’t riding along with you, old Beau back here would be fixing to take me out of this saddle about now.”

  Eagle grinned. “No. He’d have done that before you ever got this close.”

  What they were “this close” to came in sight just a few minutes later when, announced now by the freely barking dogs, Eagle led them the rest of the way out of the boulder maze and they found themselves in a widened section of the canyon. Here its sandy floor was free from any blockage except for a few heaps of broken rock that had crumbled off naturally and fallen from one of the high, steep walls that rose on either side. Also here, less than fifty yards ahead of where they emerged, lay the encampment that Eagle and other refugees from Hard Rock and the surrounding valley—people driven from their homes but not willing to run all the way—had put together as a temporary community until they could win back their rightful one.

  The heart of the camp appeared to be a timber-framed opening—the old prospector’s original dig, Luke surmised—carved into the canyon’s north wall. Extending out from this was a large canopy, approximately twelve feet square and nearly as high off the ground, made up of several stitched-together canvas tarps and suspended on rough-hewn wooden poles.

  In the center of the shelter thus provided burned a good-sized campfire with some large pots suspended over the flames on iron rods. A few smaller pots were balanced on stones that ringed the fire. Huddled under the canopy, mostly grouped close to the fire, were about twenty people, men, women, and children. Alerted by the barking dogs, the majority of their faces displayed anxious smiles at the sight of Eagle—smiles that faltered somewhat upon also noting Luke. Nevertheless, the bounty hunter suspected that, had it not been for the rain, several of the folks would have come forward to greet them.

  Advancing to the canopy, Eagle wasted no time swinging down from his saddle then stepping under the protective canvas and into the embrace of an attractive, dark-haired woman. It was clear this must be his wife and the young girl and boy—about sixteen and thirteen, respectively, Luke judged them to be—who edged closer to the pair, were their children.

  Easing out of the embrace, Eagle placed his hands on his wife’s shoulders and gently pressed her back to arm’s length. “I never want to cut short a hug from you, Janie darlin’,” he said, “but look what you’re gettin’ out of it—soaked near as bad as me.”

  “I don’t care,” Jane Eagle insisted. “I’m so glad to have you back safe that I just want to wrap you in my arms and not let you go again. That’s how much I worry when you go out on one of your escapades.”

  “Aw now,” Eagle told her, “how many times have I told you that the only frettin’ you need to do when I’m away is for any of Dixon’s thugs I happen to run across.”

  “Like I give a hoot about any of that bunch!” Jane sniffed.

  Eagle laughed. “That’s my girl. But here, let me introduce you—the rest of you listen up, too!—to somebody you ought to give a hoot about.” He motioned for Luke to come in under the canopy, and when he did, the former sheriff clapped one hand on his shoulder and said, “Folks, I want you all to meet Luke Jensen. Luke showed up in Hard Rock a little earlier today and Dixon’s gun wolves didn’t waste no time takin’ a run at him. Only trouble was, Luke didn’t hardly hold still for it. He went to work tyin’ knots in several of their tails and even chopped off a couple of ’em, permanent-like.”

  There was a general rumbling of favorable responses.

  “For that reason,” Eagle went on, “I brung him back with me. He has his own reasons for stickin’ around and buckin’ Dixon’s hardcases. But just how deep he wants to dig in his heels as far as our overall situation, remains to be seen. He might stick for a day, a week, or a month. He might be gone in the morning. He has no obligation, so that’s his call to make. But for however long he does stick, I want everybody to show him respect and make him feel welcome, you hear?”

  This drew another wave of assenting voices.

  Eagle nodded. “Okay. I’ll get to full introductions all the way around in short order. But ahead of that, it looks like our arrivin’ here came as an interruption to your supper. That means y’all are wantin’ to get on with it and, I assure you, me and Luke are wantin’ just as bad to join you. So let’s go ahead and chow down, and I can finish up introductions as we eat.

  “I see a couple of young fellas, though,” Eagle added, “who I’m nominatin’ to take care of a little chore before they join in the feed. That chore is puttin’ away the horses
me and Luke just rode in on.” He turned to the boy Luke had earlier taken to be the former sheriff’s son. “Davy, how about you and your buddy LeRoy see to that?”

  “Yessir,” the boy replied.

  Eagle looked over at Luke. “You mind the boys handlin’ your gear?”

  “Not at all.”

  Turning back to Davy, Eagle said, “You heard the man. It’s your job to live up to the trust bein’ put in you. Strip the horses down, haul the gear into the old mine shaft where it’ll be safe and dry. Those two big gunny sacks on the dun pack animal are mine—they go with the rest of our supplies. The remainder of the gear on the dun and on the paint are Mr. Jensen’s, put them together in a separate pile. After that, take the horses over to the corral. It should be okay to let ’em drink a little, but not too much. Then turn ’em loose so they can get at the hay with the others.”

  Davy trotted off to carry out his orders, a red-haired boy about the same size and age following on his heels.

  Looking after them, Luke said, “You appear to have a good boy there. The redheaded one, too. Willing workers.”

  “Everybody in this camp has to pull their share,” Eagle said sternly. “It’s a hard life for all. For a couple young lads like Davy and LeRoy, it’ll mold ’em one way or the other—either make ’em strong and able to endure, or handicap ’em into thinkin’ too deep on the hardship and feelin’ sorry for themselves for the rest of their days.”

  Luke regarded him. It felt like the half-breed was talking about something beyond the potential future of the two boys—or, possibly, not something beyond at all, but rather behind, like perhaps Eagle’s own boyhood. Luke felt the urge to ask him more, but held it in check.

  Abruptly, the stern look left Eagle’s face and he was grinning when his gaze returned to Luke. “Come on,” he said. “Those boys can handle the chore of puttin’ away the horses okay, let’s you and me go tackle the chore of puttin’ away some of the supper that’s waitin’ for us.”