North executed a spectacular leap, coming down on his right shoulder and rolling beyond the firelight. Lightfoot raised the Remington, but Fulwider kicked at the barrel and the blue flame spurted two feet off course, narrowly missing Fire Eye as he swung the Sharps around. Meanwhile North snatched up Jim Stemmer's venerable weapon and fired without bothering to pull it free of the bedroll. Raw flame obliterated the darkness. Bits of wool fiber swirled about like angry mosquitoes. Fulwider heard the heavy ball strike Sam Fire Eye with a hollow plop. He arched backward, but the journalist didn't see him fall, for by that time he and Lightfoot were grappling for the Remington.
Fulwider had grasped it while the other was reloading and been yanked to his feet as he attempted to wrest it away. They collided, went down in a tangle of arms and legs and rolled. A bolt of pain raked through the easterner from shoulder to ribs. He grimaced and tried to ignore it.
The half-breed worked one hand free and closed his fingers around the other's throat. Soon they became slippery with blood—Fulwider's, still leaking from the wound North had opened in his neck. But he held on. Every cell in the journalist's body screamed for oxygen. His vision retreated behind a curtain of purple. He felt his own fingers slipping from the rifle when suddenly the pressure was released.
His senses came swarming back. He was alone on the ground, still clutching the Remington. Dick Lightfoot stood in front of him in the wavering illumination of the torch, staring beyond Fulwider's shoulder. The latter swung his head in that direction and saw North crouched half in shadow pointing the long rifle, empty now, at the half-breed. That it was empty seemed to occur to Lightfoot at the same moment, for he turned and fled into the darkness.
"Shoot him!" shouted the wolfer. "Remember what happened last time!"
The luxury of deciding whether to commit murder was no longer the journalist's. Later he wouldn't remember if it even crossed his mind at the time. Automatically, as if from long practice, he snugged the butt of the big rifle against his shoulder, drew a swift bead on Lightfoot's dim back and pressed the trigger. The weapon pulsed against his shoulder and the running figure dropped from sight.
The roar echoed crackling in the distance for what seemed an impossible length of time.
"Did I hit him?" The voice was Fulwider's, and yet he listened to it as if it belonged to a third party. He staggered to his feet, the rifle drooping. He felt more drained than he had in the face of starvation.
"Dead center." A hand gripped the rifle. Tardily, for his fingers were still responding to the message to hold on at all costs, he released it to North's care.
As in the final moments of a restless dream, the images flashed past too rapidly to follow. The wolfer approached Sam Fire Eye's prostrate body, spread-eagled with one knee cocked in the air. Fulwider smelled cooking flesh and saw that the front of the half-breed's shirt was in flames from the muzzle-loader's flash. North reloaded the Remington from a handful of cartridges he had taken from the journalist's pocket without his knowledge. Muttering something about taking no chances this time, he placed the snout of the rifle against Sam's head.
The report was hard and flat, like a dog's warning bark. Without pausing he strode past his partner in the direction of Dick Lightfoot's aborted retreat, reloading as he went.
Fulwider didn't hear the second shot. As if a valve had been thrown open in his system, he felt his remaining strength rushing down the calves of his legs and he slid into a cauldron of whirling black and very bright scarlet.
Chapter Twenty-One
"Drink this"
He was lying on a bed of damp, fibrous material, and for a frightening moment he believed that he was back in the canyon, depending for his life on a fragile network of pine branches. Then the words registered and he realized that the something supporting the back of his head was the palm of a man's hand. Its mate, brown and hard and corded, with thick, square nails, held a tin cup to his lips from the depths of which warm vapor welled up into his nostrils smelling of heat and coffee and something else even more welcome. He drank. The liquid scalded his tongue and burned a raw furrow down his throat. It was sheer luxury.
As the familiar warmth spread through him his senses cleared. His mattress was a layer of pine needles, and he was being toasted on one side by a fire so hot the enameled pot from which his coffee had been poured stood steaming on a flat rock placed nearly two feet from the flames. Directly in front of him, so near it filled his vision when he looked in that direction, hovered Asa North's face, weathered beyond its years, his lupine eyes regarding Fulwider's from the shadow of his hat brim. So far as his expression could be read, he appeared concerned. There the other's gaze ceased to wander. He knew now where he was, and there were things in that clearing he didn't want to see.
North tipped the cup toward him a second time. He shook his head, only then noticing the wadded obstruction under his right ear.
"No more coffee." It came out in a hoarse whisper. He cleared his throat. "But if I tasted what I think I tasted, you might give me some more of that."
The wolfer grunted, set down the cup and picked up a flat metal flask from the ground. The strong smell of fermented grain seized Fulwider's nostrils as he pushed it near, filling his limbs with strength. He accepted it and tipped it up, letting the heady liquid slide over his tongue. The years fell away like scales. Reluctantly he handed back the vessel.
His head was lowered to an object that turned out to be Aaron Stemmer's saddle and the hand was withdrawn. He touched the lump on his neck with a tentative finger. It was a ball of fabric secured by a ragged ribbon of similar material tied around his neck. As he lowered his hand he felt a new stiffness in the opposite shoulder.
"Leave that where it is for now," North said. "I nicked the vein."
"You shaved me." His voice was coming back.
"Had to, to get at the cut. It weren't easy with just my knife. You looked like a mountain man I knowed in Montana. He lived on raw meat washed down with warm blood."
"My shoulder."
"I cleaned it good and dressed it up proper. You may not take to it, but you owe your life to a bunch of maggots. They eaten away the rotten part and kept the poison out of your blood. I suppose you got Lightfoot to thank for that."
He nodded, and noticed for the first time that the sky was growing pale. He felt that rush of panic that accompanies the fear of having slept through a large chunk of one's life. "How long have I been unconscious?"
"Couple of hours. You was pale as a gnawed bone when I drug you over here. I had you down for dead."
Something crackled when Fulwider moved. He glanced down and saw that the front of his shirt was caked with dried blood. It made him think of Sam Fire Eye and Dick Lightfoot. "Are they both dead?"
"If they get up, listen for the horn."
Nausea gripped his vitals. But for the lone wolf last month, the journalist had never before killed a living thing. He tried to convince himself that North's final bullet in Lightfoot's head had done the job, but it didn't work.
He started to climb to his feet. North made no attempt to stop him. A moment later he knew why. He fell back, feeling sapped. The strength he thought he'd regained had come directly from the flask.
"A man's like a wolf some ways," said the other placidly. "They can both get by without food nor sleep a lot longer than anyone says they can. But take away their blood and they're meat for ravens."
"Like those half-breeds?" He chafed at North's complacence. "I hardly imagine that you buried them."
His eyebrows went up slightly. "Did they bury the Stemmers?"
"Then we're no better than they were."
"Never said I was. Just different."
The journalist hadn't the energy to press the point. For a time he lay still, listening to his breathing grow steady—listening, or so he fancied, to his blood replacing itself slowly, slowly. He asked North his plans.
"To hunt wolves."
"Now?" His heart resumed racing. Like any powerful pump more
than adequate for the minimal amount of fluid it was charged to circulate, it accelerated on the least provocation. He forced himself to relax. "What about all that's happened? There must be someone to notify, some authority."
It may have been a trick played by the firelight, but in that moment it seemed that a smile touched the wolfer's features. "You mean Oscar Adamson?"
Fulwider nodded, conscious suddenly of how far he was from home. "If we're still in his jurisdiction."
"Go home, New York."
The other looked at him. He was studying his reflection in his knife's polished blade, stroking with a stiff forefinger the sandy stubble that peppered his cheeks and chin.
"You draw my origins as if they were weapons against me. A man can't help where he comes from."
"He can't help what he is, neither." The whiskers made scraping sounds under his finger.
"Why do you hunt wolves?"
"It's what I do."
"That's no answer." Fulwider paused. "Is it because of what happened to your wife and child?"
For a tense moment, the journalist thought he was going to be attacked. North's face went bone-white and his eyes smoldered in their sockets. A tendon worked along one side of his jaw. Fulwider glanced uneasily at the knife in the wolfer's fist. That seemed to break the spell.
By degrees North relaxed into his former lethargy, and the easterner felt ashamed. Infuriated by the other's manner, he had wanted to hurt him and was appalled at his success.
"Please accept my apology."
North said nothing. Fulwider retreated behind the clinical mask of the professional newspaperman.
"I'm merely curious about your motives. Are you like a wolfer I met in town, who considers the animal a menace to be eradicated?"
The knife was slid into its worn sheath. When he spoke, North's tone was as bland as his expression.
"They kill to eat, just like you and me. Or did, until we got spoilt. Before we come they kilt buffalo. Now the buffalo's gone and they kill cattle. It stumps me why everyone's so surprised."
"But they couldn't have killed as many bison as they have cattle. The statistics are appalling."
"You're right there. Back then we done all the killing. With all them buffalo carcasses left out there to rot, it ain't hard to calculate why the wolf population taken a big leap. Trouble is, folks think it's still growing. That's one of the reasons why every time a cow or a bull dies, whether it's from sickness or cold or old age, they holler wolf. Another is that you can't fight sickness or cold or old age, but you can kill a wolf on account of you can see him and hear him and he's handy. Which is why I do what I do, because the bounty's the only wages in this country that's going up."
"Is that why you do it? For the money?"
He made a face. "Put that way, it sounds mighty low. I reckon you newspaper fellows write stories for the pure hell of it."
Fulwider threw up his hands in mock surrender. The effort was almost too much for him and he let them drop. "You admire them, don't you?" he said. "Especially Black Jack."
"I know him. I know what he does and I know why he does it. I know what he's going to do next and he knows I know it. Out here he's smart as I am. Smarter." He paused. "If all that means I admire them, then I guess I do."
He was growing restless. Rosy light bled into the patch of gray sky. The journalist hastened to ask his next question while he still had the wolfer's attention.
"Why did you invite me along on this hunt? You never explained that to my satisfaction."
North rose. This placed the other at a disadvantage, for it thrust his features into the darkness and hid his expression. He was silent for so long that Fulwider was considering withdrawing the query when he answered.
"You wanted to write about wolfing," he said. "I repay my debts."
Fulwider hesitated. "After this morning, I think we can consider it repaid in full."
"Not till we get you home."
"No, I'd rather stay."
Again, seconds crawled past before North spoke. Birds greeted the dawn with cheerful, complicated little whistles that were repeated farther off without a note lost. North's horse was standing nearby, along with the bay and his pack animal and two others, one a paint, the other a sleek dun Fulwider recognized as Jim Stemmer's mount. Probably the half-breeds had confiscated it to replace the paint Fire Eye had lost last month.
"You got that kind of gumption," North said then, "you don't need me to look after you."
"Did I ask you to?"
He started saddling the roan. "You got supplies enough for a week, and I busted up enough wood for three or four fires if you don't build them too big. After that you ought to be able to do for yourself. I drug the breeds over to the edge of the mountain and tossed them over so's the stink won't trouble you. That's as much burial as they'll get from me." He yanked tight the cinch and turned to load the white-stockinged black.
"You knew I'd decide to stay, didn't you?" accused the other. "You didn't just happen to make those arrangements for my comfort."
North said nothing. The pack horse grunted as the straps were secured.
"Will you be back this way?" Fulwider asked.
"Don't worry, you'll get your cut of the bounty."
"That isn't what I was concerned about, and you know it."
He gave the tracks a trial push. The bonds held. Then he stripped the two extra horses of saddles and bridles and handed each a smart slap on the rump. They whinnied indignantly and galloped off in different directions.
"Come after me if you want, when you feel up to it," said the wolfer. "One thing. When you get close—"
"I know," said Fulwider, and grinned weakly. "Make a lot of noise."
For an hour after North disappeared into the brush higher up the mountain, the journalist lay unmoving. When it became obvious that in spite of his weakness he wouldn't fall asleep, he set about rebuilding the smoldering fire, resting after each piece of wood was in place. Another twenty minutes passed in this fashion before he laid the first of four thick slices of bacon carved off the square chunk North had left him into the cast iron skillet. The essentials had all been deposited within reach, and he was pleased to find that the coffee pot was nearly full.
He was far from hungry, but it was his studied opinion that substantial quantities of food were needed to restore what he had lost through his two wounds. The very act of chewing exhausted him. Stuffed at last, he settled back onto his bed of pine needles, and this time he slept. And dreamed.
Bizarre dreams mostly, brought on by his blood loss and featuring people he didn't know doing things he couldn't report in print. But eventually these grew less frequent, and he found himself in familiar surroundings among acquaintances he recognized.
He saw New York City and the woman who had been his wife and the city room at the World, complete with Mr. Pulitzer looking professorial in his pince-nez and severe black beard. The old man was waiting impatiently, thumbs hooked inside the lapels of his frock coat, for an item from Fulwider's typewriting machine that would rescue the newspaper from some undisclosed disaster. But when the journalist tore the last page from the cylinder and made to hand it over, the publisher had vanished, to be replaced by the shattered, leering figure of Sam Fire Eye in his tilted derby and buffalo coat. Terrified, Fulwider leaped to his feet, but he wasn't fast enough to escape the roar of the deranged wolfer's Sharps pointed straight at him.
Mercifully the scene changed, and the easterner was standing on the station platform in Rebellion, gazing for the first time upon the bleak place that was to be his new home. Dale Crippen was there, as were Nelson Meredith and Aaron and Jim Stemmer, the latter pair carrying a dead she-wolf slung upside-down from a pole. The woman with whom Fulwider had spent an hour in Aurora's place was there as well, though he didn't know why. It was a placid scene, and nothing happened in it that was worth remembering when the journalist awoke.
But he was far from waking.
From there his fevered imagination wen
t spinning down other alleys, some familiar, some fantastic, lined with wooden grave markers bearing deceptive inscriptions and strangled pups and the ravaged carcasses of animals and human corpses that swayed in the breeze or lay like bloated gray slugs in the rags of their clothing. He saw friends with knives protruding from their backs and men forced at gunpoint to eat bloody wolf meat and men slashing other men with knives in cramped barrooms and scenery hurtling past as he fell, fell for leagues through empty space and black eyes that reflected no light and broken faces behind broken spectacles and, weaving in and out among them with an effortless gait that belied the tremendous speed it was making, the fleeing form of a black-mantled wolf.
At length the images dissolved, and Fulwider was kneeling alone in a circle of firelight in the wilderness, watching a man's back retreating into the shadows. In response to a voice shouting inside of him, he lifted a heavy rifle to his shoulder, took aim at the nearly invisible target and fired. Only this time, when the figure spun and fell, a shaft of wind-whipped flame fell across the victim's face, revealing not the wooden features of Dick Lightfoot, but the cadaverous, bearded countenance of Joseph Pulitzer.
He came awake with a start to find himself drenched with sweat, his heart racing. Bewildered at first, he slowly grew aware of his surroundings, and settled back by degrees. It was some time before he realized that the shot he had heard had not been part of his dream at all.
Chapter Twenty-Two
It was the echo that alerted him, snarling among the peaks to the west, or rather the memory of it. For while it was there he had been in that twilight state in which no one can separate dream from reality. He attempted to rise, fell back when the dizziness swept over him, rested for a moment and tried again. This time he made it, only to realize that dusk was settling. Reluctantly he made sure that his bay was content with its grazing and returned to his bed to await daylight.
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