He decided to ride another hour before stopping for the night and making a cold camp. Although about five minutes later, Dooley realized he had another concern.
No longer did he stink of turpentine.
He smelled like a wet dog.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Late the following afternoon, Dooley caught up with the buffalo herd and rode easily through that forest of great shaggies. It wasn’t as big as some herds that he had seen back in his younger days, for by now the buffalo hunters had killed off most of the beasts, especially those south in Kansas and Texas. He kept one hand on the reins, and one hand holding Blue across his thighs. The dog whimpered. General Grant didn’t seem too keen on the idea of riding through buffalo territory, either, but the animals contented themselves with grazing, and after a few tense minutes, they had cleared the gathering of buffalo.
Five miles later, Dooley stopped to remove the soft skins that had served as the gelding’s boots. He let Blue jog alongside him now, and when the dog felt like running, Dooley let his horse run, too.
He knew he could make it all the way to Fetterman City easily. After all, he was one man on horseback with a dog that could run pretty fast when he felt like it. Yet Dooley had to pace himself. A wagon train of greenhorns from Ohio would not make good time. So Dooley kept moving practically lackadaisically, and he kept his eyes often trained to the south and east. So far, everything seemed fine. No dust anywhere, not even from the herd of buffalo he had left back there. Even better, he saw no smoke blackening the sky down Julesburg way.
* * *
When he reached the North Platte River, he guessed that Scottsbluff would be to his east. He scouted the area and made camp far off the deeply rutted trails so many emigrants had taken over the years. Finding a perch on a small rise, Dooley had a view of the trail, east to west and west to east. He ran a cold camp, but cowboying had taught him to go for days on stale bread and beef jerky. Blue could fend for himself, and likely ate better than Dooley did on prairie dogs and jackrabbits, and General Grant had plenty of grass to eat, and even a handful of grain that Dooley had bought back in Julesburg.
He did find a creek on one afternoon, and manufactured a hook, used jerky for bait, and wet a line of horsehair. Not that he caught anything, but his father had always told him that you could solve a lot of the problems in the world just fishing. Dooley didn’t solve any problems, not the world’s and certainly not his, but for an hour or two, he did seem to forget about Zee Dobbs, Doc Watson, Frank Handley, and all the hell he had been forced to endure.
He went back the next day. Didn’t catch anything then, either, but on the other hand, he saw no dust rising anywhere on the horizon. Besides, the sun kept shining, he felt warm, and he bathed in the creek so he would not be so rank when the wagon train finally arrived. Naked as a jaybird, he let the sun dry him off, before he dressed and resumed his none-too-serious fishing and problem solving.
It wasn’t so bad a life. He was alive, pretty Sabrina Granby was coming his way, and he had a chance to—finally—make that fortune in gold that had eluded him for several years. As a man of independent wealth, he could hang up his guns and, with the good Lord’s blessing, that reputation as a bounty hunter and killer of outlaws would fade. People would forget all about Dooley Monahan.
* * *
When the morning started approaching the afternoon, he saw the dust, and held his breath. Wagons. Dooley could tell that much, but freighters still used this trail to haul supplies to and from western settlements. So did stagecoaches, but this dust came from no Concord or mud wagon. It moved too slowly, and too thickly, for a stage pulled by six mules. Remaining patient, Dooley kept looking at the horizon, waiting. He had to be sure. He had to be sure.
Not until the wagons came into view, not until he saw that large Conestoga wagon in the front of the train, did Dooley let out that breath of utter relief. He gathered up his belongings, rolled what he could inside his bedroll, and secured that behind the cantle on his saddle. Naturally, he had already saddled General Grant—in case he needed to run for his life.
“Come on, Blue,” Dooley said as he swung into the saddle. “Let’s join those Cincinnatians.” He gave the gelding plenty of rein and let the bay gallop off the rise, across the sage, and to the trail. When the first wagon rumbled along about a hundred yards away, Dooley reined up. He waved his hat, and waited.
The wagons came into view, and the man walking alongside the big Conestoga waved his black hat. Dooley could tell, even from that distance, that the man wore black pants and a long black coat. What’s more, he could tell that the young woman sitting in the front of the wagon did not wear black at all.
* * *
“Dooley!” Miss Sabrina Granby shouted. “Dooley. Dooley. Dooley. How I’ve missed you.” She wrapped her arms around him and gave him a wonderfully wet kiss on his cheek.
“Oh, Miss Sabrina,” he said, blushing. “It hasn’t been that long.”
He shook hands with several men from Cincinnati, and after much banter, realized that the plan had worked. As far as everyone could tell, they had made it out of Julesburg. Nobody had followed them.
“So all we have to do now,” the Reverend Granby told Dooley, “is find Rawhide Creek.”
He pulled a piece of paper from the inside of his long black coat and handed Dooley Monahan the first torn page of the map to wealth.
* * *
The parallel lines had to designate the main trail, Dooley reasoned, and looked closer at the map. Logan Kingsbury had been rushed when he had drawn the map, and his tiny but neat handwriting did not necessarily make reading the paper that the reverend had torn any easier. For all Dooley could tell, north could be in any direction, but he made a reasonable guess that north would be where the preacher had torn the map at the top.
No river that Dooley could see, but as the trail ran just north of the North Platte, all Dooley had to do was follow the trail. He saw a circle, actually more dot or lowercase o than an actual circle, and a waving line that ran from where the paper had been torn to the lines that designated, maybe, the trail.
Dooley looked. The parson and his congregation waited.
Dooley handed the paper back to Granby and pointed at the squiggly line. “Rawhide Creek?” Dooley asked.
“You tell me,” the minister said.
“That’s the rise.” Dooley pointed at the little o that ran maybe a half inch from the squiggly line. Logan Kingsbury had not drawn this to scale, but, well, a gambler and killer like the Widow’s favorite nephew had no experience as a topographer or cartographer. “I’ve been camping there, watching the trail.” He made a sweeping gesture with his arm to the northwest. The men, and a few women, including Miss Sabrina, looked.
“You can’t really see it from here,” Dooley said. “That’s the beauty of it. The land out here, the terrain, isn’t exactly as you’d think. But that’s the hill. It has to be. And that’s Rawhide Creek.”
“You know Rawhide Creek?” one of the Cincinnati men asked.
Dooley did not lie. “I’ve fished it a time or two.”
“Perch?” a woman asked. “Walleye?” asked another.
“Never caught anything,” Dooley said. “It runs into the North Platte a few miles west. We follow it?”
“We do.” The preacher smiled.
“Plenty of daylight left,” Dooley said. “We can be well up that stream long before we have to make camp. That’ll put us off this trail, so there will be less chance of any other travelers spotting us.”
* * *
It’s one thing following a wagon trail that has been used for roughly thirty years. It’s another thing to be fighting sage and sand and wallows and wind with a bunch of city folk from the Blue Chip City.
On the third day, two of the wayfaring families had had enough.
“We’re pulling out, Reverend,” Mr. Jones said, and Mr. Franco nodded his consent. Mr. Jones looked at Dooley. “How far is it to the next town?”
; “Fetterman City,” Dooley said. “Or you can try for Cheyenne.” He gave them his best guess at the distance.
“Is it all right if we wait for you there, Reverend?” Mrs. Jones said.
“Of course,” the minister said. “And, well, I wonder if you could do us a great service?”
“Anything,” Mr. Jones replied.
“Take our women and children with you. This is dangerous country we travel across, and I would feel much more at ease if only righteous men risked our lives to find the Widow Kingsbury’s missing nephew.”
A dozen wagons became seven, for the wagons belonging to the Jones and Franco families could not carry all of the children and women. The partings were sad. Women cried. Men cried. Children cried. Dooley, on the other hand, felt relief. He did not want to lead women and kids into hostile Indian country, but he felt fairly happy that Miss Sabrina Granby refused to go along with the gentler sex and the youth to Cheyenne or Fetterman City.
“We will send for you when we are settled,” the preacher said.
“You won’t send for me,” the Widow Kingsbury said. “For I am going with you.”
Two women. They wore down the men who did not want the Widow or Miss Sabrina to come along, but the Widow pointed out that it was her nephew they were rescuing and that if not for her, these fine men would be working their businesses and marveling at a sculpture in Cincinnati and not about to make a fortune at Slim Pickings.
The wagons with kids and petticoats and Mrs. Abercrombie and her wonderful pies went back toward the old trail. At least those bound for Logan Kingsbury’s mining claim would have sourdough bread.
On the following day, Dooley Monahan ran out of map.
* * *
The next torn-up paper was smaller, but Dooley guessed that the upside-down V’s off to the right had to be mountains, for he could see the bluish-grayish outline of what might be the Black Hills to the northeast. No more squiggly line could be seen, so Dooley moved the procession toward the upside-down V’s.
The land grew tougher. The oxen labored to pull the wagons up steeper inclines. They fell into a ravine that Dooley thought had to be two narrow lines that twisted and turned on its way toward the upside-down V’s. When they came out of the ravine, Dooley rode over to the preacher’s Conestoga and said, “I think it’s time for the next map.”
“All right,” the reverend said. He climbed into the back of the wagon, and Dooley waited, making small talk with Miss Sabrina. After a long while, the parson returned, and started to hand Dooley an even smaller piece of paper.
“Here,” the preacher said. A second later, he started sinking to his knees with an arrow quivering in his belly.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
There are some other sounds that, after you’ve heard them once, you never mistake them for anything but what they are. The bloodcurdling war cry of a Northern Plains Indian brave is one of them.
The war cry shouted by a Northern Cheyenne was echoed by many more, and Dooley Monahan knew that he, Miss Granby, and everyone else in the wagon train were in for a lot of trouble.
Another arrow tore off Dooley’s hat as he lunged and knocked Miss Sabrina to the ground. He came up, shocked to find the Colt already in his hand, and yelled something at the young woman as he covered her body with his. He aimed, squeezed the trigger, and saw the skewbald mare carrying one of the braves crash into a somersault, throwing the young Cheyenne who was nocking another arrow onto his bow over the tumbling horse.
Clouds of dust caused Dooley to lose sight of the thrown warrior, and Dooley grimaced, falling back on top of Miss Sabrina to protect her head as the horse Dooley had killed—although he had been aiming for the Indian—kept coming. He braced himself for the horse to roll over him, probably smash his spine, maybe kill both the woman and himself, but the only things that fell on him were sand and pebbles.
He shot back up, this time to his knees, to find the pinto pony lying dead just four feet from Miss Sabrina and him.
Out of the cloud of dust stepped the warrior, his nose twisted into some hideous contortion, blood pouring from both nostrils, his left arm hanging helplessly at his side. No longer did this Cheyenne carry his bow and arrow, but the tomahawk he wielded in his right hand would sure do a lot of damage.
Another Indian rode up, leaping off his buckskin, and ran toward Dooley and Miss Sabrina with a lance.
The injured brave would have to go around the horse, so Dooley turned, aimed, and fired at the one with the lance. This Cheyenne was old, his face scarred with pocks and various wounds from previous battles, and the hair falling in braids from underneath his buffalo headdress was silver. Old, Dooley knew, but tough. The first bullet went through one of his lungs, and the man staggered, twisted, but did not drop the lance. He brought it up to throw, when Dooley’s next bullet slammed through the center of his chest, naked except for black and yellow paint. That dropped him and the spear into a quivering heap.
Yet Dooley knew the old-timer had done his job. The Cheyenne had given the wounded young brave with the tomahawk enough time to finish the job. To count coup. To kill Dooley and Miss Sabrina.
Knowing he was dead, Dooley turned, determined to try to save Miss Sabrina for at least a few more minutes. He saw the brave, heard the gunshot, and after Dooley blinked, he watched the young, wounded warrior stagger around the dead horse. The Cheyenne tripped over one of the stallion’s broken legs. Another gunshot popped, and Dooley saw the blood spray from the Indian’s back as he fell across his dead horse.
Dooley turned. The Reverend Granby, still on his knees, held a shaking Remington derringer in his right hand. The piece of the map had blown away.
More yelps and gunshots sounded. More arrows whipped through the air.
Dooley looked at the Granbys’ Conestoga, thinking to make a last stand underneath the big conveyance. Defend themselves as long as they could, and save the last bullet for Miss Sabrina. Now, that plan had to be changed. The orange flames and horrible smoke, white, gray, black, shot from the prairie schooner, a whirling vortex of chaos. Dooley caught a glimpse of a warrior on another pinto. He hurried a shot, shoved the pistol into his holster, and pulled Miss Sabrina over to the dead horse and dead Cheyenne.
“Stay here!” he yelled, but doubted if she could understand anything he had said for the flames from the wagon, the burning, the cracking, the intensity echoed the deafening cannonade being fired by the other men who had left Cincinnati for . . . this.
Dooley caught Miss Sabrina’s uncle before he collapsed. The derringer toppled into the dust and blood, and Dooley did not reach for it. A Remington is a two-shot pistol, and the parson had fired both rounds into the brave with the tomahawk. Maybe the reverend had more .41 caliber shells, but Dooley had no time. He dragged the preacher, who now clutched the shaft and feathers of the arrow in his gut, over to the dead horse. There was not time for gentleness, though, just desperation. Dooley let the man’s head fall against the sweaty and dusty coat of the pinto, stepped over Miss Sabrina, and leaned his back against the stallion’s neck.
Quickly, he flipped open the loading gate of his Colt with his thumb, and rotated the cylinder, plunging out the empty casings. His thumb then pushed fresh loads out of his shell belt, and he filled the Colt with what cowboys called six beans in the wheel. Fully loaded. No concern for safety now. The only thing that mattered was survival.
Which seemed hopeless.
Another warrior galloped past, popped a shot with an old Dragoon .44. The bullet slammed into the dead horse’s withers, and as the warrior pulled on the hackamore to stop and turn his dun, Dooley brought up the Colt and fired. The Indian cried out and fell near one of the oxen of the flaming Conestoga.
Dead. Dooley saw the horse bolt across the sagebrush. He also saw the big Dragoon.
“Stay here!” Dooley yelled. “Use this.” He practically shoved the revolver into Miss Sabrina’s right hand, and next he was dashing, ducking, then diving as an arrow tore fabric from his vest. He hit the
ground hard, spit out dust, lunged forward, and snatched the old cap-and-ball relic.
That’s when the oxen began moving, fast for oxen, panicked by the heat of the burning wreck of a wagon the animals had been hitched to.
Dooley let loose an oath, and rolled out of the way. The oxen stampeded—at least as fast as those beasts of burden could run—and Dooley instinctively covered his bare head with his hands. Hot embers fell all around him as the flaming wagon rolled by. He cried out at the pain, felt his clothes smoldering, and rolled over, grinding his burning back in the dirt and grass.
When his eyes opened, he stared into the vermillion-painted face of another warrior.
The gun came up in Dooley’s hand, but he saw the dirt in the cylinder, and realized he could not get the weapon cocked.
That brought a smile to the Cheyenne’s frightening face. Dooley shifted the pistol, started to throw it, but before he could even rear back his arm, the Indian was turning, lowering the big Sharps buffalo gun he had in his hands, and a blue blur leaped through smoke, dust, and all the other hell.
The warrior screamed, and dropped underneath the weight of that now-vicious shepherd. Dooley came up. Blue had knocked the warrior onto his back, but the dog had rolled over, before he came up yelping from the burning patch of grass caused by the Granbys’ Conestoga.
The Indian was coming up, too, trying to raise his big buffalo rifle, but Dooley straddled him and slammed the butt of the Colt against the Cheyenne’s temple. Again. Again. Again. Blood sprayed his face, Dooley’s own war paint. Blue came to him, hair on his back and neck raised, growling fiercely at the dead Indian.
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