Winchester 1886

by William W. Johnstone

  “Can ya pass that jug ag’in, McNally?”

  With another curse, McNally sent the jug sailing. He knew he had thrown it too hard, and too high, and when it sailed through Tyron’s fingers, and fell on the hard ground, spilling out at least a tumbler’s full of rotgut, McNally leaped from his chair.

  The fight was on.

  “Ya fool!” McNally yelled. “Ya wasted good whiskey.” He kicked his pard in the ribs, grabbed his hair, and slammed his head down onto the hard earth. “Idiot.”

  He rolled Tyron over, slapped his face, then punched him hard. Once. Twice. Three times.

  Tyron groaned.

  “Ya ain’t good fer nothin’.” McNally grabbed the beaten fool by the neck and bottom of his coat. He heaved Tyron through the entrance to the tent, hearing him crash into the snowdrift, moan, and sob. He found the hat that had been knocked off his pard’s head and threw it out into the cold, too.

  “Ya ain’t good fer nothin’. That’s how God cusses me. Gives me a fool for a pard. All ya knows how to do is p’ison dogs.”

  When he stormed back to the desk, picking up the jug, and taking a sip, he knew he had overreacted, knew he should apologize. He told himself that it wasn’t Tyron’s fault that he was a moron, an incompetent fool. He blamed that outburst on his lousy luck. Should apologize. He knew that. He also knew he couldn’t do it. Even an hour later, after Tyron had recovered enough to step back inside the tent, sniffling, his face covered with frozen blood, McNally couldn’t do it.

  They didn’t speak that night, but McNally did toss him the jug. To him, that was as good as an apology. Of course, there wasn’t but two or three swallows left, and most of that was McNally’s backwash.

  For two more days, they didn’t speak. But then they came across five poisoned wolves, killed three others they had found in their traps, and McNally even shot one dead at three hundred yards.

  He said that was cause for celebrating, and Tyron agreed to cook a supper of wolf steaks while McNally took a coyote pelt they figured they could pass off as a wolf’s to the guy who operated a hog ranch three miles south of town. He returned with a bottle of awful, but cheap, liquor.

  So they ate wolf steak fried up in wolf grease, bitter as gall, tasting like dead rats and rotting ravens, and washed it down with liquor that tasted even worse. They laughed anyway, thinking about all that money those pelts and tails would bring, how they would have enough cash to get them back to Texas and maybe even do some real drinking.

  They felt good . . . until McNally gripped his belly, slipped out of his chair onto the cold ground, and groaned.

  “I am . . . sick . . . as a . . . dog.” His face paled. He had to use his right hand and arm to keep himself sitting up. “Bad . . . likker.”

  Tyron started to come to him, started to say something, then laughed, and grabbed the bottle of forty-rod. He drank, wiped his mouth, and shook his head. “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with this stuff. I reckons I fed ya a steak from one of ’em wolves that got holt of yer strychnine.” Another pull from the bottle. “Accidental, o’ course.” He slapped his thigh and howled in delight.

  “Ya p’isoned me.” McNally shook his head. He couldn’t believe a simpleton like Tyron could have gotten the better of him. He thought about how those wolves had suffered before they died. Thought about how long it would take the poison to kill him.

  “I reckons I’ll be a-shootin’ that big ol’ rifle of yourn. Wonder how much yer pelt’ll bring me come spring.” Tyron kept laughing and drinking until McNally pushed himself up and reached for the Winchester ’86 that was leaning against the table.

  Seeing that, plus the rage in McNally’s eyes, Tyron dropped the bottle and stepped forward. “Wait a minute, pard, I’s just a-teasin’ ya . . .” He realized then that he was too late.

  The table overturned, and McNally was levering the rifle, bracing it against his roiling stomach. Tyron screamed, and reached for his skinning knife. Gripped it, charged.

  The rifle roared at point-blank range, spinning Tyron around. He landed on his knees, right beside McNally, who had to brace the gun against the hard ground, trying to work the lever again.

  Tyron stared at the bloody mess that was his shirt and had been his stomach. “Ya kilt me. I was jus’ fun—” Rage filled his eyes, and he realized he still held that curved Green River skinning knife . . . and McNally was vomiting . . . and the Winchester was falling to the ground.

  McNally looked up. “Ya son of a—” He never finished the curse.

  Tyron had just enough strength, just enough hatred, just enough life in him to bring up his arm, and slash his partner’s throat with the knife.

  McNally fell first. Then Tyron dropped on top of his partner.

  The Winchester rifle lay beside them.

  Outside, somewhere in the extreme cold, wolves, coyotes, and perhaps a few feral dogs howled.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  They had come down into Nebraska on their way to Hay Springs for—what else?—winter hay. Sergeant Jay Chase, 6th U.S. Cavalry, didn’t care much for the assignment, wet-nursing eighteen new recruits. Most of those green peas either drove or sat in the backs of big wagons. Three, though, rode half-broke, poor excuses for horses that should have been shipped to a glue factory, not an Army post in South Dakota. But orders were orders, and there he was—cold, butt hurting, thighs chapped—riding herd on those nitwits the idiotic lieutenant had saddled him with. They included some kid from the New York slums who knew nothing about horses, three fools fresh off the boat from Italy or Spain or Portugal or some such place, and two drunks who spent more time in the guardhouse than in the field. The rest were even worse.

  Then they saw the wolves.

  Snarling they were, inside and outside some ramshackle tent that the wind had half blown over. Something inside that tent sure held those big curs’ attention. A couple horses and a mule, all looking like something even the stock buyers for the 6th Cavalry would have passed over no matter how much of a kickback the mustangers offered to pay, were tethered in a miserable structure behind the tent.

  Yet, for the moment, those wolves did not pay any attention to that poor excuse for livestock. They focused on whatever lay inside the tent.

  Carcasses, some skinned, others still frozen solid, were stacked all around what remained of the tent.

  That trooper from the Fifth Ward got bucked off by the gelding. Scared senseless by the wolves, it bolted down the road toward the flea-bitten town of Hay Springs. Another trooper’s mount started sidestepping, but at least that idiot had the sense to slide off the saddle into the snow and get a good hold on the reins.

  “Halt!” Sergeant Chase yelled. He looked around at the wagons, filled with hay from the farms east of town. The drivers had set the brakes, and sat still, staring at the wolves, color draining from their faces. One dark-skinned foreigner in the back of the third wagon vomited on the hay.

  The sergeant’s horse became skittish, but it wasn’t some half-dead mount. It was a solid, smart dun—Captain Thurston’s horse—Chase had bribed the saddler back at Fort Meade to give him.

  “Easy, boy,” Chase told the horse. He reached for the Springfield sheathed in the scabbard. It was awkward pulling that heavy single-shot .45-70 carbine, his heavy woolen coat flopping in the wind, his gauntlets stiff from the freezing cold. He had considered ordering one of the recruits to do this job, but after looking at those green pups, he decided they would likely either shoot a horse or mule, or Sergeant Jay Chase.

  The wolves had not run off, had not been scared by the arrival of these noisy, lumbering wagons and horses. Of course, it had been a bitter winter, and they had found something in that tent—or what was left of a tent—that made them defiant.

  Chase’s carbine would stop that.

  He aimed at the closest wolf, squeezed the trigger, and heard the roar as the Springfield’s stock slammed against his shoulder. The dun horse, trained by Captain Thurston, barely flinched. The wolf slammed into a snow bank, s
praying the canvas of the tent crimson.

  The wolves lost their nerve and beat a hasty retreat into the frigid landscape.

  Chase shifted the Springfield into his left hand and fumbled with the leather cover that protected his Army revolver. When he had the snap released, he drew the .45 and popped three rounds into the air. Just to make sure the wolves did not return.

  It caused two more horses to buck off their troopers, and the lead wagon to run about twenty-five yards before the driver managed to stop the frightened mules.

  Chase barked a few choice curse words at the Greek driver, yelling at him for not having the brains to set the brake earlier. Then he cursed the fools who pulled themselves out of the snow, brushing off ice and shame. He shook his head, holstered the Colt, sheathed the Springfield, and brought the dun to the nearest wagon, tethering him to the rear wheel.

  “You.” He told the driver. Chase couldn’t remember the man’s name. “You and you.” He pointed to two other troopers. “Follow me.”

  Snow crunched underneath their boots as they trudged through the snow. Soon, the smell hit them, and they stopped to bring up their kerchiefs or woolen scarves to cover noses and mouths. Chase spit and stepped over the wolf he had killed. Drawing his Colt again, he used the barrel to push open the flap in the tent.

  He was the first inside. Only the driver followed him The other two recruits stood outside, shivering.

  He cursed and spit into his yellow kerchief. He pulled it down and spit again, the saliva freezing in the air. He shook his head. Behind him, the driver muttered some prayer in his native tongue and began bawling like a newborn.

  “Out,” Chase managed to tell him. “Get out.”

  The trooper did not need any further orders. He staggered through the canvas, ripping part of it as he tumbled beside the two waiting soldiers.

  Chase had read fanciful stories about wolves attacking men, but as far as he knew, all those stories were hogwash. Outside, he could hear other soldiers moving cautiously from their wagons, listening as the driver muttered what he could in English, trying to tell them that those beastly wolves had attacked and ripped apart two human beings.

  “No.” Chase told himself. He eased forward, dropped to his knees, and used the barrel of the Colt to move one of the corpse’s arms. Tried to, anyway. It wouldn’t move. Either frozen from the cold or stiff in rigor mortis.

  The man’s arm had fallen over his face, and the wolves had made a mess of things, but he could see the bloody hole in the man’s belly—at least, where the wolves hadn’t gotten to it yet—and the powder burns on the man’s coat. He had been shot at point blank range. Chase also saw the Green River skinning knife still gripped in the man’s right hand and the frozen blood on the blade.

  Chase looked at the second dead man.

  The wolves had moved the bodies around some and had gone for the fleshy parts, but if Chase read things right, these two men—skinners of some sort—had killed themselves. The camp was squalid. So were what remained of the dead men.

  Maybe the Army isn’t such a bad place to be.

  He could see the busted and broken jugs, flasks, and bottles. These two fools must have been drunk. Gotten into some quarrel. One pulled a gun. One pulled a knife. A few moments later, both were shouting at the devil.

  Well, he had seen things like that happen with his own troopers in all his years in the Army.

  He asked himself, “What were they fighting over?”

  Then he saw the rifle.

  “Wolfers,” Ferdig told Chase. “Mr. Clements hired them for the Circle C-7. They’ve been a pest of late.”

  “Wolves?” Chase asked. “Or the wolfers.”

  Ferdig smiled and sweetened the sergeant’s coffee with a little rye from his flask. “Honestly, I don’t even remember their names. Mac-something. The other, I don’t know. Figure they killed themselves?”

  Chase nodded. They were sitting in the coffeehouse, half-tent, half-soddy, but warm and cozy. The coffee tasted better than anything the chowhounds poured at Fort Meade. Of course, maybe that rye whiskey had something to do with it.

  “Don’t surprise me.” Ferdig had ridden in from someplace called Box Butte.

  Chase had sent a rider to the ranch after some girl at a bucket of blood had said she seemed to recall two sorry-looking cusses asking about bringing in wolf pelts for the bounty or reward or whatever they called it. It was a month or two back, but she remembered them asking about Mr. Clements, who owned the Circle C-7.

  “Too cold to bury them, I reckon,” Ferdig said.

  Chase wasn’t sure if that was a question or a statement or just some idle thought. He sipped more of the coffee. “You wouldn’t know if they have any kin, would you?”

  Ferdig laughed so hard he had to draw a rag out of his coat pocket to wipe his nose. “Wolfers? I don’t rightly expect their own mothers would have claimed them.” He tasted his whiskey straight from the flask. “Guess we’ll just send them off like Vikings. Burn ’em. And the wolf pelts they got. How many did you say?”

  “I didn’t,” Chase told him.

  “Well, we’ll take care of them, I guess. After all, they were working for the Circle C-7, and Mr. Clements takes care of his men. Or wolfers. Whatever the case may be. You’ve done your job, your duty, Sergeant. Might as well ride on back to your fort with your hay.”

  “Might as well.” Chase decided that he did not care much for Mr. Ferdig. He had a strong hunch that, yes, Ferdig and his cowboys would burn the remains of those two dead wolfers, but he might take the pelts for himself and collect the bounty or whatever was being done in Nebraska. But that was none of his affair. Besides, he had just learned what he needed to know.

  Those two dead men didn’t have any kin.

  Sergeant Jay Chase thanked the Circle C-7 foreman and finished his coffee. “Guess I need to get that hay back to Fort Meade before all our mounts starve to death.”

  The horses were usually half-starved anyway. But this, he did not say.

  “All right, Sergeant.” Ferdig stood. “You say wolves were eating the bodies?”

  Chase nodded.

  “Sounds sort of like justice, don’t it?”

  “I don’t know a thing about justice. I’m a career Army man.”

  They shook, and Chase left the coffeehouse, hating to be back outside, and then swung into the saddle and eased the dun down the road to where he had left his command. They had found their horses, and most had recovered from the shock of the wolves and the wolves’ meal.

  Chase knew they could have stayed in Hay Springs for a night, but he wanted to be shun of this country. He had the boys ready to ride fifteen minutes later, and they eased their way north and west toward Chadron. They would move along the White River, crossing it at Crawford and heading to Fort Robinson.

  Eat some Army chow for a change and sleep in warm bunks. Let their horses and mules rest a day or two, before moving into South Dakota, crossing the Pine Ridge Reservation and moving through the Black Hills and on to Fort Meade.

  Chase’s first thought, his first plan, was Fort Robinson.

  They made only five or six miles that day, camping along the side of the trail. The next day, after five more miles, he let them halt for a while.

  Sergeant Jay Chase tied the captain’s dun horse to the last hay wagon’s rear wheel and walked through the snow to the lead wagon. “Martin,” he told the driver as if Martin was that bloke’s real name. “I’ll take that Winchester now.”

  The trooper dumbly reached under the seat and fetched the powerful weapon.

  “Don’t hand me a gun barrel first, you bloody idiot!” Chase snapped. “That Winchester might blow me in half.” He jerked the weapon out of the green trooper’s hands, almost pulling the poor kid down from the wagon and into the snow.

  “What you gonna do with that repeater?” the recruit from New York City’s Fifth Ward asked.

  “Shoot it,” Chase answered. “What else.” He jacked the lever. Needed oil. A goo
d cleaning. No, a thorough cleaning. He doubted if those wolfers had ever rammed a greased patch down the barrel. He should clean it, but he wanted to try it first.

  “Fifty caliber.” He shook his head, grinning. “Never seen the likes of a rifle like this.” He whistled. “Fifty caliber.”

  “I thought they was only found in buffalo guns. Or mountain men’s guns.”

  Chase ignored the trooper, then turned and barked an order. “Every brake on every wagon had best be set, and every trooper on a horse better have his feet on the ground and the reins wrapped firmly around two hands.” He wasn’t about to lose any more time chasing after runaway stock. “You can walk the hundred and thirty miles to Fort Meade.”

  “Do they let sergeants carry repeaters?” another kid asked.

  “It’ll be my personal rifle”—Chase glared at those kids—“which I’ll use on any fool that asks me another fool question.”

  The rifle came up, and he smiled. That crescent stock fitted his shoulder like a glove. He drew a bead on the top center of a fence post, and sighed, remembering all those times when a soldier could have crossed this country without seeing a fence post or a cow or anything but Sioux and Pawnee.

  He drew a deep breath, held it, let it out, and squeezed the trigger.

  His shoulder throbbed, but he wouldn’t let any of the greenhorns see how much that rifle’s kick had hurt. He grinned and pointed at the post. The .50-caliber slug had blown the top of the fencepost off.

  A few of the troopers cheered. Some whistled. Most just kept their fingers in their ears.

  “That’s some good shooting, Sergeant,” the New Yorker said.

  Chase stared at the Winchester. Yeah, it was some good shooting, seeing how he had not even sighted in the weapon or cleaned the filthy rifle. He imagined what he could do once he had the ’86 Model spotless, oiled, and ready.