Lawson said: ‘You could get yourself killed making a mistake like that.’
‘The bastard,’ Dufay said through his teeth. ‘Oh, the goddam bastard.’
Honniger ground hitched his horse and strolled easily to the cabin door, smoking gun in hand, to peer inside. He called back over his shoulder: ‘Dead as mutton.’
He stepped inside and made a closer inspection of the dead man out of professional interest. He reckoned it was his own shot which had taken the old man in the heart. It would be Lawson’s which had caught him in the head. Dom always went for the head. It was the more difficult shot and showed a wonderful confidence which aroused Honniger’s admiration and envy.
He walked back to Lawson and said: ‘You got him plumb through the head, Dom.’
‘I know,’ Lawson said. ‘That’s where I aimed.’
Together, they carried their fallen partner into the cabin, stepping over the dead man, and laid him on the only bunk in the place.
‘Jesus,’ Lawson said, ‘this place stinks.’
‘The old man stinks like a goddam polecat. I don’t much like the idea of holing up in this, Dom.’
‘Me neither, but I don’t see we have much choice.’
From the bunk, Dufay said weakly: ‘You two going to gab all day or do you fix this leg for me before I bleed to death.’
‘You made the mistake,’ said Lawson. ‘Go ahead with some self-help, man. Use your scarf for a tourniquet.’
Dufay stared at him in amazement.
‘You mean you –?’
‘That’s what I mean,’ Lawson said, no feeling one way or the other in his voice. ‘We have to fix the horses up. We’ll get around to you in good time.’ He turned and looked down at the dead man and said to Honniger. ‘Tote the old man out of here. Get him out of sight.’
While Honniger attended to the dead man, Lawson walked around the cabin, seeing how the old man’s own animals were housed. There was a shed off to one side of the place with a small corral. There was a saddle horse in the shed and some hay. There was room for one more horse in there. That would be McAllister’s stud. He took a look at the pen and saw that it backed on to a wall of almost sheer rock. He did not like the idea of the horses being thrown in there. Anybody who came here and knew the dead man would spot something was wrong. He walked along one side of the corral and saw that there was a break in the rock there. He tramped through the snow and found that the break was large enough to hold the horses. Some brush thrown across the mouth of the break would hold them.
He walked back to the cabin and bawled out for Honniger to get a move on, he needed him. From inside the cabin, Dufay called in a shaking voice for somebody to come and help him. Lawson ignored the cry for help. He had tended himself often enough when he had been hit; it would not hurt Dufay to do the same.
He started unsaddling the horses and put the canelo into the shed. When Honniger appeared from the rear of the cabin, Lawson told him to throw the remaining horses into the break and to seal off its mouth with brush. Then he was to take them some hay from the shed.
He walked into the cabin and thought now that the old man had been removed, the place smelled just one degree better. Which was not saying much. Dufay was in real pain now, because the shock of the hit was starting to wear off.
Lawson said: ‘I sure hope you don’t have a notion to lay around for too long, Vince – I was banking on you being cook. I sure hate Charlie’s cooking.
Towards dark, Dufay fell asleep and the other two thought they would enjoy some relief from his complaints, but they did not, because he continued to groan noisily. It started to snow again. This alarmed Honniger a little.
‘Snow, Dom,’ he said. ‘Our tracks’ll be covered. How does McAllister walk into our trap now?’
‘If there was tracks,’ Lawson told him, ‘he would think he was following three fools or that we’d laid a trap for him. The snow suits us fine. He’ll find us, all right. That son-of-a-bitch could find a black cat in the dark. Maybe now he won’t suspicion a trap.’
‘By God,’ Honniger said, ‘I hope you’re right.’
He had encountered McAllister some years before in Crewsville, Arizona, when McAllister was marshal there. The experience had left an indelible scar on his memory. It had also left a scar along his lower left ribs where he’d been hit by a bullet from McAllister’s gun.
Chapter Seven
When McAllister and Hickok reached the spot at the far end of the valley where the Indians had first camped, they reined in and surveyed the white scene before them. The breaks lay off to the west, the bleak walls of sheer rock showing dark against the pale snow. The snow coming down on them whispered softly. The flow of the creek had stopped and its surface was like glass. McAllister looked back and saw that their trail in was even now almost covered. Both he and his companion had the same thing in mind – if they went on, would they be able to return?
Speaking for himself, McAllister knew he would go on. Even if it had to be done on foot, he would go on. He would have done it for any horse. For Caesar he would have gone barefoot. Horse-fever is a disease that leaves you far from sane, some men said. And maybe they were not far wrong. A part of McAllister’s brain told him that he was a damn fool to do this for a horse. The world was full of horses.
But this, he told himself, was his horse.
Not only that – it was too good a horse to be in the hands of a thief. To McAllister’s mind, there was nothing lower than a horse thief. A man who stole cows was somebody who took part in a dangerous but eternal game. The man who stole a horse was a man who broke the first law. Sometimes, McAllister thought it was the only law that men in the West all took heed of. Even the men who broke it respected it in their way. They all knew the enormity of their crime. To them it was the ultimate gamble. Every horse thief expected one day to have his neck stretched ... by the law, by an owner, by any interested party who hated a horse thief more than he hated the devil. This was a land of great distances in which a horse could be a matter of life or death. Often if you took a man’s horse you condemned him to death. A man afoot was the potential victim of distance, thirst, hunger, wild beasts and wild Indians. He was not even safe from branded cattle to which a man afoot was no more than a natural target for their horns.
Hickok jerked his head at the west.
‘Them the breaks?’
‘Yes. That’s the way my horse went. If we follow, we’re sitting ducks.’
‘Is there another way in?’
‘From the west and from the north.’
‘We could be sitting ducks from any direction.’
‘True,’ McAllister agreed. ‘But we can take a look from above.’
Hickok jumped his horse nearer to McAllister. Both men were now covered with snow and looked like phantoms. Hickok said: ‘You’re hesitating, Rem. I reckon you think this is going to be a real bad business.’
‘It has to be.’
‘So you’re wondering if you should lead me into it.’ McAllister smiled. ‘That’s about the size of it.’
‘Aw, forcrissakes,’ Hickok said. ‘I’m getting rusty, sitting around. Give a man a break.’
McAllister said: ‘A few miles into the breaks, a man who worked for me called Greg Talbot has a cabin. That’s the first place the rustlers would see. They couldn’t miss it. I have a notion we should take a look at old Greg’s place.’
‘What sort of a hombre is this Greg?’
‘Salty as all get out. I was never sided by a better man. But don’t get down wind of him. He stinks worse than an old buffalo hide.’
Hickok laughed. McAllister led the way north, taking them slowly into the foothills where the drifts of snow became progressively deeper. Here there was some protection from the wind, however, and the horses were more willing to try. It was not long before the men had to dismount and McAllister broke trail. Three hours later, they were on a small plateau with the hills rearing above them on all sides except the south. Up here they suffered b
adly from the wind once more. The snow fell almost parallel to the ground. The horses hated it and wanted to drift before it.
When they halted, McAllister pointed south. Hickok found himself looking down a break which, so far as he could see, led to a large, shallow canyon. But visibility was bad and he could not be sure of what he saw.
With his mouth close to the other’s ear, McAllister said: ‘Can you see the cabin?’ Hickok stared and stared through the veil of falling snow and could make nothing out. ‘There – do you see that wisp of smoke?’
‘I’ll take your word for it,’ Hickok said.
McAllister remembered the trouble the gunfighter was having with his eyes. He said: ‘There’s some shelter north of here, Jim. I’ll lead you to it and we’ll build a fire. Nobody’s going to spot smoke in this. Then I’ll take a look-see while you make some hot coffee.’
Hickok grinned. ‘Sounds like a good idea.’
McAllister now led the way on foot slowly into the north. Both men hunched into the wind as it howled into their faces across the open ground. Inside a half-hour, however, McAllister led them into the shelter of a great cliff, the top of which went from Hickok’s poor sight. Here they came into a cave, bringing their horses into cover with them. Magically, their hearing seemed to be restored to them. McAllister found wood for fuel within a short distance. He found punk and tinder. Hickok reckoned he had been here often. Soon they had a hot blaze going and they started to steam. While McAllister worked on the fire, Hickok attended to the horses, unsaddling them and giving them a brisk rub down. When he fed them, McAllister poured a little whiskey into their oats. Then the two men each had a pull at the bottle. Hickok said: ‘I like a man who comes prepared.’ McAllister now said: ‘I won’t wait for coffee, Jim. I want to get there and back before dark.’
‘Go ahead.’
McAllister pulled his Henry rifle from its boot and filled his pockets with shells from his saddlepockets.
Hickok watched him and then said: ‘Don’t start a war without me, Rem.’
McAllister said: ‘Bank on it.’ Then he walked out into the snow.
Chapter Eight
His name was Mustang Jack Smithers and he had been hired by the army as a noted guide and Indian fighter. Nobody was too sure how noted he was or what he was supposed to be noted for. One thing was certain – he did not know one Indian from another. He could not tell a Blackfoot from a Crow, or a Sioux from a Cheyenne. He was heard frequently to say that the only good Indian was a dead Indian. That seemed, somehow, enough to prove him bona fide.
He was not too bad at tracking animals and men, but so far he seemed a little short on common sense and courage. No matter – his appointment as scout seemed fairly secure. Colonel Brevington had hired him personally and could not very well fire him for inadequacy.
Let it be said in Mustang’s favor that he was the one to first discover the house.
‘A goddam blizzard can’t stop ole Mustang finding what he has a notion to find,’ he said modestly later.
He had found the house by riding blindly into it and nearly breaking his horse’s neck. ‘Well,’ he explained to himself, ‘how’s a man to see in all this damn snow?’ Having ridden into the house, he was smart enough to right about turn and get back to the trudging column of troops before anybody else could ride into the house and nearly break their horse’s neck.
‘Colonel, sir,’ he reported to Brevington, ‘I have located a civilian dwelling. Trust ole Mustang to git you through.’
‘What kind of a dwelling?’ the colonel demanded.
The question caught Mustang by surprise.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘You’re dead right there, Colonel.’
‘Right about what?’
‘It being a dwelling, sir. A ranch house. I did not intrude on the inhabitants, sir. There was smoke coming from the chimney.’
The man’s a damn fool, the colonel admitted to himself for the first time. He had tried to deny the fact to himself for one hundred and fifty miles. It had stared him in the face and now, plumb in the middle of a blizzard he had to recognize the fact. They were lost and their only guide was a dumbhead. There was only one way to lose a man of that kind out here and that was to shoot him. The colonel thought: Oh, God, don’t tempt me.
He said: ‘Smithers, go tell the rancher the army’s here. We’ll want warm quarters and bait for the horses. Polite, now. You know what these damned civilians are. Rattle your hocks, man. Don’t just stand there.’
When the army came into the yard, Lige Copley appeared from the house, wide-eyed. He had never seen so many men in one place in his life. They did not look much like soldiers to him. They were bundled up in any kind of clothing they could find, buffalo robes, blankets, anything to protect them against the cold. When the stout gentleman with the loud voice and the hectoring manner strode into the house and took command, Lige’s self-possession nearly deserted him. He did not know what a black boy left in charge of a horse ranch did when a white man of obvious authority took over his boss’s place. He felt responsible and he felt inadequate. This was his first real job and, though tall and physically tough, he was still little more than a child.
He protested and, when he did, the chief soldier (he gathered as he went along that the man was a real live colonel) told him to behave himself or he would find himself under arrest. His men were to be quartered in the barn. He would have turned the horses out, but that was too much for Lige. Fear and respect were one thing, failing in his duty was another. He told the colonel his boss’s name and though the colonel claimed he had never heard of it, a couple of the officers with him said they knew it well. For good measure, Lige told them that Colonel James Hickok, none other than the famous Wild Bill, was working for his boss and that he knew how to look out for his employer’s interests. This stout colonel may have been impressed by this information. If he was, he did not let it show. He indicated that on the one hand Lige was a liar and, on the other, Colonel James Hickok, esquire, was not worth a heap of beans when it came to the interests of the United States government.
A half-dozen officers moved into the little house, luxuriating in the warmth from the stove. An orderly brought in wood for that same stove and it roared till it was red hot. The officers demanded food and one of them insisted that Lige break into McAllister’s winter supplies for victuals for the men. They would pay for them, they said. In government scrip. Lige had heard about government scrip and knew how long it took for actual cash to be paid over. If ever. He was not a happy boy.
Then, when it came to sleep time, one of the officers objected to having to share sleeping quarters with a black man. On this point, however, Lige would not budge. He knew his rights and stuck to them. The officers agreed to compromise when one of their number (Lige learned he was the major second-in-command) supported Lige’s claims. They agreed that he should sleep on the floor.
Lige went to sleep that night, swearing that one day he would get even with the United States army.
There was, however, one incident which somewhat compensated for Lige’s humiliation during the evening. This was when Lige asked the major why his regiment had chosen to halt at a ranch when it could have as easily stopped at the town where there would have been much accommodation and certainly more plentiful supplies.
‘Town,’ said the major, ‘what town?’
The colonel sat up abruptly in McAllister’s bunk.
‘Town?’ he cried. ‘What town?’
‘Black Horse,’ said Lige, amazed that they were surprised.
The colonel flung his short legs over the edge of the bunk.
‘Do you mean to tell me, boy,’ he said, ‘that we are in the vicinity of Black Horse?’
Lige gaped at him. ‘You mean you didn’t know? You must of come plumb past it, mister.’
The colonel was making strangled noises. His face turned a kind of dull purple. Finally he managed to say: ‘That goddam scout, that no-good, know-nothing son-of-a-bitch. I’ll have his guts for
galluses in the morning. My God, he couldn’t find the tip of his fool nose.’
Now an idea occurred to Captain Harry Brigg.
‘Boy,’ he said, ‘did you hear any talk of Indians around here?’
‘Sure,’ said Lige. ‘There was a bunch of Indians camped on the north end of the valley. They were on the crick down near the breaks. My boss talked with them.’
‘Whose band?’ said the colonel, suddenly eager. ‘Did you hear?’
‘White Bull’s.’
The colonel jumped down from the bunk.
‘By God,’ he cried, ‘we’ve got him. I knew I was headed right. You see where you get if you have faith in yourself, gentlemen? Boy, you will guide us to these Indians at first light.’
Lige looked puzzled and said: ‘I don’t have no idea where them Indians is at, Colonel, and that’s a fact.’
‘You said they were camped at the north end of this valley,’ the colonel accused.
‘So they was,’ Lige answered. ‘But they ain’t now.’
‘Where’d they go?’
‘I don’t have no notion, sir.’
The colonel looked fit to be tied.
‘So near,’ he said, ‘and yet so far. But I shall find them. When this McAllister gets home, he will lead us to them. He’ll know this country.’
Captain Brigg said: ‘He most likely knows these Indians. Well.’
The colonel swung on him. ‘You seem to be better informed than I am, Captain. What do you know of McAllister and the Cheyenne?’
Brigg said: ‘The way I heard it, McAllister was part raised by the Indians.’
‘An Indian-lover, huh?’ the colonel said, and Lige did not know that he admired the tone the soldier used when he spoke of McAllister. ‘We know how to deal with that kind, gentlemen.’
The major said: ‘So do we wait here until this McAllister returns, Colonel?’
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