As soon as Billy’s hands were free, Grayson backed away and leveled his rifle, ready to fire. “You can take a minute to take a leak,” he said, and kept the rifle on him while he emptied his bladder.
When he had finished, Billy made a show of stretching his arms and neck. “A man gets awful stiff and stove-up settin’ there huggin’ a tree all night,” he said. “Wouldn’t be no harm in lettin’ me set by the fire to warm up a little, would it?”
“It ain’t that cold this mornin’,” Grayson said. “I think it best if you sit on that log where you sat last night.” He nodded toward a fallen tree a few yards from the fire. The warmth of the fire reached that far, and he felt no need to risk having Billy grab a flaming limb and flinging it in his direction.
“Whatever you say,” Billy replied. The fire was between him and the log Grayson insisted upon, so he thought he could pass close by it without arousing Grayson’s suspicions.
Billy’s cooperation without his usual vocal rebellion should have alerted Grayson that something was wrong, but he didn’t give the matter much thought. He stood back to let Billy go before him, his rifle held waist-high before him, but not really expecting any trouble, for Billy typically was prone to cause trouble after his belly was full. As they approached the fire, Billy held his hands out, palms down, as if to warm them as he passed by. Grayson was not ready for the move that followed. Beside the fire now, Billy apparently began to stumble, and before Grayson knew what was happening, Billy suddenly reached down and drew the knife from the limb. Thinking his prisoner had put his hand down to keep from falling, Grayson was unaware of the coming attack until Billy turned back toward him with the knife in hand. Grayson’s reflexive action in that initial instant was to slap his hand against his empty knife scabbard, shocked to find he had been so careless. It was no more than an instant, however, as he braced himself to meet Billy’s charge, prepared to use his rifle in defense, and shoot only if he had to.
Billy was quick, but no quicker than the older and larger man, who stood his ground when Billy lunged, striking out with the knife. Grayson blocked Billy’s attempt to bury the blade in his chest by catching it on the barrel of his rifle, then hit him hard on the side of his neck, causing him to stagger backward in order to stay on his feet. The intense fire in the young killer’s eyes burned hotter still. Grayson tried to talk him down. “Let it go, Billy. You made your play, but now it’s over. Don’t make me have to shoot you.”
It was too late to try to talk sense to Billy. Although the advantage was Grayson’s, Billy was reluctant to surrender now that he had a weapon in hand. “You’re gonna have to shoot me, you son of a bitch,” Billy snarled, “but I’m takin’ you with me.” He flung himself recklessly at his jailor. Grayson heard the solid thud of the bullet against Billy’s back, followed a split instant after by the sound of the shot fired. There was no time for thought. The next few seconds were dependent upon instinct and reflexes. Grayson dived for the ground, rolling several times until he reached the cover of the log that Billy had been directed to. With the log to shield him, he took time to figure out what had just happened. The shot had to have come from the trees behind him. From whom and for what, he could only speculate, but he assumed the shot had been meant for him. From the end of the log, he could see Billy’s body, and from all indications, it appeared that his prisoner was dead. If he was right in his assumption, and he was the intended target, then he had better decide what he was going to do, and quickly. The shot had come from the same side of the river he was on, from a distance of at least seventy-five yards, maybe a hundred. How many was he facing? There was only one shot fired. As if his thought was intercepted, a second shot came, imbedding itself in the log. “Time to move,” he muttered and pushed his body back away from the log.
Doing his best to keep the log between himself and the spot he thought the shots probably came from, he kept as flat as he could while pulling his body back into the brush before the trees. When he reached a point where the bushes between the trees were thick enough to conceal him, he got to his feet and quickly moved deeper into the brush, hoping to gain a position to see who was shooting at him. He was safe for the moment, the fact confirmed by several more shots aimed at the log he had vacated. The possibility that it was an Indian with stealing the horses in mind had to be considered, but he still had a strong feeling that it was just one man. He would have wanted to try to work around his assailant by crossing over to the other side—especially if it was only one man—but the river was wide at this point, although not deep, and with a fairly lazy current. If the bushwhacker caught on to his intention to circle behind him, he would naturally move to cut him off. And Grayson didn’t like the prospect of being caught in the middle of the river while his assailant took potshots at him.
He finally decided the first thing to do was to get Billy and the horses and pull back away from the clearing at the river’s edge. The trouble with that was the fact that Billy was still lying in the open where he had been shot, and it was too dangerous to try to remove the body since it would expose himself as an open target. There was no problem with the horses. He could easily get to them back in the trees without exposing himself. And he would not have bothered to risk saving Billy’s body, but it was worth one thousand dollars. Council had insisted that he had to produce the body to collect the reward. “Damn,” he cursed, frustrated. He had plenty of evidence to support Billy’s death, his horse, his weapons, his personal items, but John Council was adamant—no body, no money.
* * *
“Damn the luck,” Yancey cursed under his breath. His front sight had been set squarely on Grayson’s chest, and if Billy had kept walking beside the fire, his reward money would have been as good as in his pocket. But Billy had lunged right at the point when Yancey squeezed the trigger. The bullet was already on its way when Billy’s back suddenly appeared in his sights. Yancey felt no real loss in the death of Billy Blanchard. Very few people had any use at all for the loudmouth braggart, but he was Jacob Blanchard’s favorite son, so it was going to be a difficult task to explain Billy’s death as an accident, and caused by Billy, himself. “Damn,” he swore again when picturing the old man’s reaction. He’s liable to shoot me, he thought, even if I kill Grayson. There was no decision to be made; he would tell Blanchard that Grayson shot Billy. When he returned to Black Horse Creek with Billy’s horse and possessions, as well as those of the feared bounty hunter, Blanchard might even reward him with a bonus. Without witnesses, there was no way Jacob could ever know that it was him who shot Billy. The thought brought a wicked smile to Yancey’s face, for he couldn’t help appreciating the irony of getting rid of a hated bounty hunter, along with Blanchard’s pain-in-the-ass son, and collecting double the reward for doing it. His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of horses crashing through the brush on the other side of the clearing. He’s running! he told himself, and immediately left the cover of the trees, hoping to get a shot off before Grayson was able to get away. When he reached the edge of the clearing, however, there was no sign of the fleeing man, only the sound of horses pushing through the brush-covered riverbank, growing more and more faint by the second. With his horses tied some seventy-five or eighty yards behind him, there wasn’t much chance of overtaking the bounty hunter in a flat-out race. But the day ain’t over yet, he told himself.
Unwilling to charge into the clearing, being naturally wary of an ambush, in spite of the fact that he was pretty sure he was now alone, he dropped to one knee and looked the campsite over before exposing his body. There was Billy, lying facedown next to the fire, still clutching Grayson’s skinning knife. It was a good shot, he thought, even if it was not the right target. He remained there on one knee for a few seconds, listening until he could no longer hear the sound of the horses farther down the river. He’s long gone, he decided, disappointed that he had not gotten an opportunity for one more shot. You’re running, he thought, but you’re leaving a trail easy
to follow from the sound of it. He resigned himself to more time in the saddle, tracking. He had never bumped into the man known simply as Grayson, but based upon the way he had hightailed it after a couple of gunshots, he suspected his reputation was more words than deeds.
Yancey rose to his feet again and walked over to the fire to examine Billy. He turned the body over to find Billy looking up at him with the same vacant gaze he had gotten from Lonnie Jenkins. It was not as unsettling in the light of day as it had been in the middle of night. “Don’t look at me like that, boy,” he joked and reached down to close Billy’s eyelids. Since it was still too early for rigor mortis to set in, Billy’s eyes remained closed. “That’s the first time you ever done what I told you,” Yancey couldn’t resist taunting the dead man.
Still clutching his rifle before him, ready to fire quickly, he scanned the tree line and shrubs by the river bank. Satisfied that he was indeed alone, he relaxed his vigilance and glanced around him at the abandoned camp. “Left his coffeepot,” he said with a chuckle. There was a cup lying on the ground where Grayson had dropped it, so Yancey picked it up, wiped off the dirt, and poured himself a cup of coffee. After a couple of sips, he glanced again toward the shrubs by the river. The cup dropped from his hand when he discovered the grim man standing there, where there had been no one only seconds before, a Winchester rifle pointing at his midsection.
“Who the hell are you?” Grayson asked. He had half expected to see Slate or Troy Blanchard, but he had never seen this man before. There was no answer to his question. In a panic, Yancey tried to yank his rifle up, but was immediately cut down by a slug from Grayson’s Winchester, followed in less than an instant by a second shot that slammed into his breast bone. Grayson walked up to stand over the body, stuck the toe of his boot in the chest and rolled it over. A big man, rough and dirty-looking, he was no doubt one of Blanchard’s hired guns. Grayson wondered how many more had been sent to stop him, and how far behind they were. He shook his head slowly when he thought about the time spent at Big John Polsgrove’s trading post. It had cost him his lead, but he had been given no other choice. He wondered if this man lying here had stopped at John’s store. He hoped not, since John was in no condition to deal with a hired gun, and he had no help but a young boy and his wife. “Well, there’s work to do,” he announced to the two corpses in the clearing.
The first order of business was to recover all the horses, so he started down along the river at a trot. As he expected, his gray gelding was not far away, grazing peacefully on a patch of grass near the water. “Come’ere, boy,” he called calmly, and the horse looked up, thought it over for a second or two, then walked slowly over to his master. Grayson climbed in the saddle and followed the obvious trail left by the other horses when he had chased them through the trees. Like his gray, they had not run far before settling down to graze on the water lilies at the river’s edge.
Once his horses were secured, he scouted the perimeter of the clearing until he came across Yancey’s footprints. He followed them back through the trees until he found the outlaw’s two horses tied to some tree branches. He became a little wary when he discovered that both horses carried saddles. It caused him to scout all around the area where they were tied, but he could not find any footprints other than the set he had followed. He couldn’t help wondering if maybe there had been two, and if a visit to John Polsgrove might have had something to do with the empty saddle. Whatever the reason for both horses being saddled, he felt quite certain that his assailant had acted alone on this morning. He had quite a string of horses now, more than he cared to fool with, but too valuable to cut loose. The next thing to attend to was Billy.
Returning to stand over him, he took a few minutes to think about what he should do about the corpse. He wondered how firm the governor and John Council were in their insistence that he had to bring Billy’s body to Fort Smith. It would take him at least three more days to reach Fort Smith, maybe a half a day more, and from prior experience, he knew that a man’s body would start to smell pretty high in that amount of time. He decided he’d better not waste any more time and get in the saddle right away. But first, he had to wrap Billy up the best he could, so he scratched his head for a while over that one. The solution came to him in the form of a wide piece of canvas he found rolled up and tied behind the saddle of one of the two horses acquired that morning. It appeared to have been used to make a shelter of sorts. He found it was big enough to wrap Billy’s body up fairly securely. So he rolled the corpse in the canvas and tied it together with rope. “There you go, governor,” he said when he was finished, “all wrapped up like a Christmas package.” Billy had not started to stiffen up yet when Grayson hefted him up across the saddle of the Appaloosa and tied the ends of his package under the horse’s belly. I guess you’ll ride there all right, he thought, although the Appaloosa seemed a bit skittish with the rope tied under its belly. It settled down and accepted the awkward bundle after a few minutes, however, and Grayson was able to break camp and start out for Fort Smith.
Things went well enough for the rest of the morning as he followed the river southeast, veering from the trail along the shallow banks only when approaching Fort Gibson near the confluence of the Arkansas with the Neosho River. He had no reason to stop at the fort, and he preferred to avoid the town that had grown up near it. There was no need to leave witnesses to his passing that way, in case there were still others on his trail. To make sure there was no contact with anyone, he led his horses through a range of low hills that stood between the river and the prairie to the southwest. Descending a narrow ravine to the prairie again, he felt his horse jerked up short by the string of horses behind. He looked back to find that Billy’s Appaloosa was suddenly pulling against the lead line, and trying to sidestep the awkward burden wrapped in canvas. The reason was apparent. The rough terrain of the hills had caused the package to slip upside down, with Billy’s body now hanging under the Appaloosa’s belly, the sensation of which caused the horse to try to step around it.
Grayson stopped to haul the corpse back up across the saddle where it had started out. Billy’s body had gotten quite stiff by then as rigor mortis had set in. He took an extra length of rope to loop around the saddle horn to secure the package, thinking he would improve on it when he stopped to rest the horses. It wouldn’t be long, because it was already getting along in the afternoon, but he determined to be far removed from Fort Gibson when he did stop. Another hour in the saddle and he approached the bank of the Arkansas once again, and looked for a good place to stop to let the horses drink and rest. There were any number of sites to choose from, since the river was lined with a heavy band of trees at this point, and he finally decided upon one where the river split to flow around a sandbar that formed a small island of willows with one solitary oak tree right in the middle. He led his horses across the shallow channel onto the island.
Billy’s corpse was totally stiff, and in the shape of a U. When Grayson untied it, it sat on the saddle like a great horseshoe, so he had to roll it to one side, then pull it straight off the horse from the side. He checked it to make sure the ropes he had bound it with were still tightly tied. Satisfied that Billy was wrapped as snugly as could be expected, considering the wrap available to him, Grayson dragged the body over and leaned it against the trunk of the large oak. After pulling the saddles off the horses, he left them to graze on the thin grass growing on the sandbar while he gathered some dead limbs to start a fire for coffee.
Chapter 8
“What the hell has he got leanin’ up agin that tree?” Stover asked. He crawled up closer to Rampley, who was lying on his belly, peering through an old army telescope at the camp on the willow island. “Lemme take a look.”
“Just hold your horses,” Rampley said. “I ain’t got a good look yet.” After a minute more, he commented, “Damned if I know what that thing is, but he’s sure as hell got it all tied up like it’s somethin’ he don’t want
nothin’ to get to.”
“I don’t give a damn what it is,” Iron Foot snarled impatiently. “What do them damn horses look like? They any good?” Being a half-breed Pawnee, he was naturally more interested in the horses the man had hobbled. To his naked eye, they looked like they might bring a lot of money in Muskogee, especially the Appaloosa. “Let’s go down there and get them horses.”
“Just keep your shirt on, you crazy Injun,” Rampley said. “That feller’s got a Winchester rifle settin’ close by him, and I ain’t in no big hurry to find out if he knows how to use it.” He could see the rifle through the branches, although it was more difficult to see the man.
“You talk like a woman,” Iron Foot spat. “Ain’t but one man down there. I’ll go down there and kill him, and you two stay up here and peek through your damn long-see’um.”
“What’s your hurry, Iron Foot?” Stover asked. “You afraid they’ll run outta whiskey at Tarver’s before you can get some more money?” He was answered with a sneer from Iron Foot. “Ol’ Bob Tarver ends up with every penny you come by. That watered-down rotgut he sells you ain’t fit for nobody but a damn half-breed.”
“Maybe one of these days I’ll take my knife and open a new airhole in your throat, Stover. Maybe I’ll take your scalp, too, and tie it on my rifle barrel.”
“It’d look a helluva sight better’n that stringy old gray thing you’ve got on it now. That thing looks like it came offa muskrat,” Stover replied and winked at Rampley. It wasn’t the first time he had been threatened by the shiftless half-breed, so he wasn’t really worried that Iron Foot might one day follow up on one of his threats. Without him and Rampley to tell him what to do, Iron Foot would probably starve to death. The scalp tied to Iron Foot’s rifle barrel was not a trophy from a life or death combat with a fierce enemy. Actually Rampley was the one who killed the original owner, a gray-haired old trapper whose misfortune it had been to share his camp with the three cutthroats. Iron Foot was the only one who wanted to take the scalp, and he made such a mess of it that Stover teased him for displaying the ragged piece of hair on his rifle.
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