Heads bobbed. Dooley only saw that in the corner of his eye. His focus trained on Ewing Atkinson, whose black eyes—even the one that was always wandering—locked dead on Dooley’s nose. It was Dooley who finally had to look away. He turned to stare at Zee.
“If we really want to see if we can trust this gent,” Zee said, “and I mean trust him with our lives, see if he’s one of us or just some yellow-livered chicken turd who wants our heads . . . well . . .” She tilted her head toward the massive bull of a brute named Ewing Atkinson. “Then I figure we find out exactly what he’s got in his craw. Don’t you, Pa?”
Hubert Dobbs frowned for the longest while. At length, he lifted his head and turned toward Frank Handley, who rubbed his chin as he considered Zee’s reasoning. Dooley looked back at Ewing Atkinson, a quiet cuss who Dooley had paid scant attention to before now. He had seen buffalo smaller than this man. He had seen a herd of buffalo smaller than this man.
Some sort of fringe fluttered from the braces of his overalls.
When Dooley looked away from the behemoth, his stomach knotted. Handley’s head nodded in agreement, while Doc Watson merely chuckled, coughed, and squatted again by the fire to pick up the coffeepot.
“Then it’s settled.” Hubert Dobbs strode toward Dooley, but barked his orders at the towering giant. “Steal a wagon, Atkinson, but don’t kill nobody. Unless you ain’t got a choice. But see Zee for the money. You’re buyin’ supplies. Buyin’. Not stealin’.” The leader stopped in front of Dooley and lowered his voice.
“Atkinson’s loyal as a coonhound, but he ain’t got the sense God gave a turnip. Make sure he don’t kill nobody in Yankton. Don’t want no posse raisin’ dust after us all the way to Ogallala. You understand that, Dooney?”
Dooley didn’t understand a damned thing, but he said in a dry voice, “I reckon I do.”
The outlaw reached over and his big hand gripped Dooley’s shoulder, giving it a firm, almost collarbone-crushing squeeze.
“Zee’s got her notions. Up to me, I wouldn’t have done this to you, pard, but . . . I reckon it’s fer the best. South Fork of the Elkhorn. I’ll see you there in three days.”
What struck Dooley was how Hubert Dobbs said that, and how he could not look Dooley in the eye.
I’ll see you there in three days.
Hubert Dobbs didn’t mean it. He acted and sounded as if he were speaking to a dead man.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
To Dooley Monahan’s way of thinking, everything started off well enough. After all, Ewing Atkinson did not kill anyone when they stole the farm wagon.
Oh, sure, Dooley had heard Hubert Dobbs bark, preach, and order that no one was to be killed to get the wagon, but Dooley didn’t believe that Ewing Atkinson would obey any orders. All the big man did as they rode east and then north toward the Missouri River was hone the edge of the biggest bowie knife Dooley had ever seen against the whetstone he kept in one of the pockets of his overalls. The knife, of course, did not look that big in Atkinson’s enormous hands.
First, that wasn’t fringe stitched into the braces on the killer’s overalls. They were scalp locks, and not just scalps from those recently killed Sioux warriors. Sure, most of the scalps on the front of the giant’s denim duds were black, as though lifted from Indians, or Mexicans, or maybe even Dooley’s great-uncle Joseph, whose oil-black hair was one thing Dooley’s mother always bragged about, how it glistened like a crow’s wing, and how she sure hoped Joseph had made it to California and the goldfields all those years ago. He had never written. Then again, Joseph had never learned his letters. The back of Ewing Atkinson’s clothes were decorated with scalps of all colors: auburns and carrottops and blonds, brunettes and sandy browns and dirty blonds, grays and silvers and salt-and-peppers.
Dooley knew that the silent leviathan planned to add Dooley’s own hair to his grotesque collection.
But not the farmers from Rose Creek. That’s because Dooley had heard the singing and commotion and preaching and all those amens when they rode past the creek near the turn of the Missouri.
“Camp meeting,” Dooley told Atkinson, who did not blink, did not nod, did not even part his lips. The man did not even glance at the gathering of farmers and homesteaders and one fire-and-brimstone preacher dressed in black broadcloth and a straw hat that was not well chewed and practically falling apart like Ewing Atkinson’s.
Dooley felt better after seeing practically every family this side of the big river listening to the Word of God. So they had ridden to a nice-looking farm about two miles due east. The house wasn’t much—though a mansion compared to the sod hut of the late Ole Something-another-dorf—but the corrals were well built, the privy a two-seater, and two other wagons parked near the barn.
Atkinson took the largest wagon, and Dooley harnessed the sorriest pair of mules he could find. Maybe the farmer wouldn’t miss those animals too much. Perhaps, Dooley tried to tell himself, he was even doing those folks a favor.
“Well,” he said out loud but in a whisper, “I am saving their lives.”
“You,” Ewing Atkinson said when the wagon and team were ready to ride. “Drive that.” The man’s huge head nodded at the farm wagon.
Up until then, Dooley half thought that big Ewing Atkinson was a deaf-mute. For a moment, Dooley thought about arguing, but decided against it. He surprised himself by even considering drawing his Colt and filling Ewing Atkinson’s overalls full of bullet holes. But that would be murder. If the bullets somehow managed to put a dent in the giant’s chest.
“All right,” Dooley said, and gathered the reins to General Grant. He led the gelding to the rear of the wagon and tethered the bay to the wagon. He thought Atkinson would want to ride the General—and that likely would have led Dooley to palm his Colt—but the killer merely nodded, waited for Dooley to climb into the driver’s seat, gather the lines, and release the brake. Atkinson grunted, kicked his big horse’s sides, and rode alongside the wagon as Dooley whistled nervously.
When they had made it about two or three hundred yards from the farm, the huge man unsheathed his bowie, brought out his whetstone, and resumed his sharpening.
Keep that up, Dooley told himself, and he won’t have any blade left to sharpen.
Which, he thought a mile later, would not be a bad thing . . . not in the least.
* * *
Mosquitoes buzzed, bit, and whined, and gnats tried to fly into Dooley’s mouth, nose, ears, and eyes, as they waited for the ferry to arrive on the Nebraska side of the Missouri. The owner of the ferry considered Dooley with skepticism but Ewing Atkinson with fear. He took the fifteen cents Dooley offered him, pocketed the coins, and went back to his spot in the shade, near the smoking fire that would keep the insects away, and much, much closer to the double-barreled shotgun that leaned against the outer picket wall of his shack.
A salesman in a light-colored suit and gray derby, and a woman carrying a parasol and wearing a blue-and-white-checked dress rode up together a few minutes after Dooley and Atkinson had arrived. The ferry docked a few minutes later. The man and the lady decided they would wait a while, take in the sights, and admire the lovely river. They weren’t very convincing liars. They just didn’t want to cross the ferry with Ewing Atkinson. Dooley Monahan didn’t want to, either.
The Missouri ran wide and swift, but the ferry did not capsize, and it did not sink. Eventually, it bumped onto the landing in Dakota Territory, and Dooley climbed back into the stolen farm wagon and followed the giant on the big dun horse onto the road to Yankton. At least the mosquitoes and gnats had stayed on the Nebraska side of the river.
They rode to Yankton.
* * *
E-Hank-Ton-Wan. That’s what the Nakota Sioux Indians called the place. It meant “People of the End Village,” or something like that. Translating Indian words into English didn’t always turn out right.
Anyway, that’s what the clerk at the general store in Yankton told Dooley. The man kept right on talking, telling Dooley abo
ut the Yankton Treaty of 1858, and how that gold strike in the Black Hills was making Yankton, the territorial capital since President Buchanan had created Dakota Territory back in 1861, boom like it had never boomed before.
Dooley had known that long before they had forded Rhine Creek and driven into Yankton. Steamboats and every other kind of ship or boat that Dooley had ever seen lay moored or anchored along the northern banks of the Missouri. Black smoke belched out of some of the smokestacks, and men and women, of all sizes, shapes, and skin colors, lined the wharves, the levees, and the boardwalks. Music belched. Men hawked their goods and commodities. Horses, donkeys, mules, pedestrians, and wagons churned the muddy streets into a quagmire.
Yankton was a lot larger than Dooley had expected.
The store sprawled across several lots on Fourth Street, down from the two-story wooden capitol. Burly men carried the sacks and crates from the back of the store to Dooley’s stolen wagon parked out front, while Dooley let the clerk clip off the end of the cigar and fire it up with a long-stemmed match.
“I saw some saloons down—what was that—Broadway?” Dooley said, dreaming of the time when he could have gone to one of those places, sipped on a beer or a whiskey, and played a friendly game of poker. Of course, Dobbs and Handley had not given Dooley enough money to gamble with—just enough to buy plenty of grub and grain for the horses.
And ammunition.
“You sure carry a lot of guns,” the clerk said as he brought out the last four boxes of .44-40 cartridges. “Must be a whole army you’re outfitting.”
Dooley removed the cigar, blew smoke, and grinned his fakest grin. “Bunch of my neighbors from Des Moines,” he lied, “decided we’d light out for the Black Hills.”
“You and everybody else in the United States and her territories,” the clerk called out. Then yelled, “Gomer, see if we have any more boxes of .45-60s and .50-95s in the back room!” He glanced back at Dooley. “I know we’ve got the .45-70s and plenty of. 38s, .44s, and .45s—and all the shotgun loads you asked for.” He checked the list Dooley had given him, the one Doc Watson—whose handwriting was the most legible of anyone who rode with Dobbs and Handley—had written out for Dooley. “You wouldn’t think a bunch of farmers from Iowa would carry so many different calibers of bullets.”
Dooley returned the cigar to his mouth. “You should see the size of the mercantile in Des Moines,” he said.
Down the counter, Ewing Atkinson looked at a bolt of calico as his teeth smashed a peppermint stick into oblivion.
“I wish I could get to Deadwood in the Black Hills,” the clerk said.
Dooley sighed. “How is that gold strike going?”
“Wouldn’t know firsthand,” the clerk lamented, “but I’ve seen hundreds of people coming through here, bound for Deadwood, and nary a one to come back. At least, not yet.”
Dooley shook his head. “How far are the Black Hills goldfields from here?”
“Depends on how you get there. I hear a lot of folks are going to Cheyenne down there in Wyoming Territory. Taking wagon trains or stagecoaches there. That is, if the Sioux don’t jump you and lift your hair. From here, best way is to take a packet upriver to Fort Pierre Chouteau. That’s the trading post and stronghold old Pierre Chouteau’s boy founded on the north side of the river’s mouth back in ’32. You remember Chouteau, don’t you?”
“Sure,” Dooley lied. He wouldn’t know Pierre Chouteau—junior or senior—from Hubert Dobbs’s wife and mother of Zerelda.
“Then you just head west to the Black Hills. If the Sioux don’t jump you and lift your hair.”
The clerk barked out a few more orders. “Or you just head upstream to the confluence with the White, cross the river, follow the White into the Badlands and then make your way into the Black Hills. That is . . .”
Dooley joined him: “. . . if the Sioux don’t jump you and lift your hair.”
The two men laughed, and the clerk handed Dooley the bill. Dooley pulled out the stolen greenbacks and stolen gold pieces that Dobbs had given him, counted out enough money to foot the bill, and dropped what little money he had left into his vest pocket.
“If you want a good place to eat,” the clerk said, “Ma Vérendrye puts on a good feed at her place over on Sixth Street.”
“Thanks,” Dooley told him, and they shook hands. “But I reckon my pard and me should get back to our outfit on the other side of the bluff. Enjoyed talking to you.”
The man leaned over the counter and whispered in a conspiratorial voice as he tilted his head toward Ewing Atkinson. “That’s your pard? I thought that was your woolly mammoth.”
Dooley laughed, though he found nothing amusing about the joke, shook hands with the clerk, and walked toward the stolen farm wagon parked outside and now loaded with supplies.
He climbed into the wagon, released the brake, and flicked the lines. The mules struggled with the weight and mud, and people cursed Dooley and the big brute called Atkinson as Dooley tried to turn the wagon around in the wide street.
Atkinson reached for his large bowie knife, but Dooley told him, “Remember what Hubert told you.”
Reluctantly, the giant shoved the knife back into the sheath.
Dooley wondered if he could somehow elude Atkinson, take the wagon, follow one of the trails the clerk had suggested, and finally make his way to the Black Hills . . . without being jumped and having his hair lifted by the Sioux.
Instead, he signed and guided the wagon and mules back toward the ferry on the Missouri River. They were crossing the little creek again when the big man rode up alongside the wagon.
“What is it?” Dooley asked.
Ewing Atkinson did not answer. He merely thrust out his right hand, grabbed Dooley by the shirtfront, pulled him off the driver’s seat, and slammed him hard into Rhine Creek.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The water was shallow, and Dooley hit a rock at the bottom that smashed his nose. He rolled over, coughing and spitting out blood and water, blinking the murky water out of his eyes, and came up quickly. The leviathan killer had surprised him, but Dooley knew he had to react quickly. For some reason, Ewing Atkinson wanted to kill him.
“Are you crazy?” Dooley shouted, backing up in the little creek, reaching for his Colt only to discover that it had fallen out of his holster. He saw the gun on a rock that wasn’t completely submerged in the water. Then the revolver disappeared underneath Ewing Atkinson’s massive boot—the tan one, not the black one with the mule-ear pulls.
The big man had taken his time getting off his horse, but men that size usually did not move—as Zee Dobbs kept saying—“quicker than lightnin’,” although the big galoot had moved fast when he had jerked Dooley off the wagon.
Remember that, Dooley told himself as he wiped his bloody nose with the soaking sleeve of his left arm. He can be fast when he needs to be.
The mules had stopped on the other side of the creek, the wagon’s rear wheels still in the shallow water, with General Grant tethered to the back of the Studebaker, looking curiously at Dooley and the giant. Atkinson’s horse had not budged from where the big cuss had stopped, and now lowered its head to start slurping up the muddy water.
Dooley looked down the road that led to the ferry, but saw no one. He didn’t dare take a chance to glance down the road that led to town. He knew better than to take his eyes off Ewing Atkinson, for the big man had pulled that razor-sharp bowie knife that looked more like a cavalry saber.
Atkinson grinned.
Dooley stepped back a little more and spread his arms out.
“I must kill you,” the giant said.
“Why?” Dooley asked.
“You know why.”
“If I knew why—” He had to jump back as the man swung the knife blade toward Dooley. Dooley kept his feet. The water was soaking his socks. The big killer laughed, for the knife had not even come close to Dooley.
“If I knew why,” Dooley repeated, “I wouldn’t ask.”
The
big man stepped forward, and Dooley looked but no longer saw the rock, and no longer saw his Colt.
He gestured wildly toward the wagon. “We need to get those supplies to Hubert Dobbs and the boys.”
The blade slashed again, but this time it came a little closer.
The two men circled, dangerous, sizing each other up. Dooley came out of the water and onto the grassy, slippery bank. Run? Take a chance and make a mad dash for the ferry? He remembered the ferryman’s large shotgun. But if he turned his back on Atkinson, that knife blade might find its way in Dooley’s liver, lungs, or heart. And he didn’t want any innocent bystander killed, although he certainly would not begrudge one who happened along right now, especially if he carried a .50 caliber Sharps rifle or maybe a mountain howitzer with him.
That got Dooley thinking some more as he stepped back in the water. The back of the wagon didn’t just carry food and supplies and a few hundred pounds of ammunition in various calibers and makes. Two kegs of gunpowder for the boys who still used cap-and-ball muzzleloaders, and maybe to blow up the vaults in a bank or Wells Fargo office, along with six sticks of dynamite. The clerk at the general store had not questioned such purchases. After all, he was selling to an outfit bound for the Black Hills gold camps, where dynamite and gunpowder were needed for tunneling through hard granite. And a new-model Winchester repeating rifle in a caliber meant for killing buffalo.
So all Dooley had to do was make it to the wagon, jump into the back, rip off the canvas, find the Winchester Centennial, find the box of shells that fit the Winchester lever-action rifle, load the rifle, cock it, aim it, and shoot Ewing Atkinson between the eyes. Or find the dynamite, cap it, find a match, light the fuse, hurl the stick underneath the huge killer’s legs—and duck. He patted his vest pocket and felt the wetness. His matches would be worthless now—not that he would even consider such a foolish idea.
“You got designs,” Atkinson said as he taunted Dooley with the big knife. “. . . on Miss Zerelda.”
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