White Buffalo sat before the fire, and Posey filled two plates with beans, bacon, and cornbread and gave one plate to White Buffalo.
“Do you drink coffee?” Posey asked.
“Do you have sugar?”
“I do.”
“Then I drink coffee,” White Buffalo said.
Posey filled a spare cup with coffee, added some sugar, and gave the cup to White Buffalo.
“I have seen strange things today,” White Buffalo said.
“What have you seen?” Posey asked.
“Men riding west into the mountains led by a man who wears the shirt of an army scout,” White Buffalo said. “And I have seen you riding alone.”
“Those men are my friends,” Posey said. “They are also lawmen. We are tracking some very bad men into the mountains.”
“What have these men done?”
“Have you heard of the outlaw Tom Spooner?”
“I have heard of this man.”
“He has killed many innocent men, women, and children and robbed many banks and trains,” Posey said. “Now he has kidnapped a young girl, and I am trying to save her. Do you know this word, kidnapped?”
White Buffalo shook his head.
“It means stolen,” Posey said.
“To what end?” White Buffalo asked.
“He’s running from the law, and he knows we won’t do anything to risk the young girl’s life,” Posey said. “We call a person taken like that a hostage.”
“That’s why you left the others and ride alone?”
“Yes. If Spooner sees more than one rider, he has said he will kill the girl.”
“Will he?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Where is he hiding?”
“Supposedly some secret pass no one knows about,” Posey said. “I have reason to believe I can find it.”
“I have heard of this pass, but have never seen it,” White Buffalo said. “The Crow or Sioux may know where it is.”
“I haven’t got time to find some Crow or Sioux and ask them,” Posey said.
“Men can sometimes be wretched things,” White Buffalo said.
“I won’t argue that point,” Posey said.
“Have you tobacco, Jack Posey?”
“I have, but no pipe,” Posey said.
White Buffalo removed a pipe from his shirt pocket and Posey passed him the tobacco pouch. After stuffing the pipe, White Buffalo returned the pouch to Posey, who rolled a cigarette.
“I will see you again, Jack Posey,” White Buffalo said.
He stood, as did Posey, and they shook hands.
The following day, Posey rode a hard thirty miles and reached west of Buffalo just before sunset.
He made camp about a mile west of town and could see dots of lights on the horizon. After building a fire and putting on some food, he gave Bear a good brushing and fed him some grain.
Posey ate and turned in early and as he watched the stars come out and the moon rise, he thought of White Buffalo’s words.
“Men can sometimes be wretched things.”
“I’m counting on it,” Posey said aloud and closed his eyes.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
* * *
“I know I shouldn’t, but you’ll need the extra strength for today’s haul,” Posey told Bear as he fed him grain.
While Bear ate the grain, Posey had breakfast and waited for the sun to fully rise.
When day broke, he packed up, saddled Bear, and rode west into the foothills of the Bighorn Mountains.
The hills between the mountains were lush and rolling as Posey rode west toward higher ground. He rode until noon and rested Bear while he ate a cold lunch of cornbread, jerky, and water.
The afternoon was spent traveling hills closer to the mountains until, close to dusk, he found the red cliffs Evan had described.
Mountains as high as thirteen thousand feet loomed over Posey and Bear as Posey stopped to make evening camp.
Supper was beans, bacon, and cornbread with a few sticks of jerky and coffee.
After eating, when the moon was up, Posey brushed Bear while he grazed on tall sweet grass.
Bear turned his neck to nuzzle Posey.
“Yeah, I’m growing right fond of you, too,” Posey said.
Once Bear was hobbled for the night, Posey rolled a cigarette and used his saddle to lean against as he watched the stars and moon.
“All those wasted years,” he said aloud, and was surprised to hear his own voice.
At daybreak, Posey rode southwest along the red cliffs, searching for the V-notch described by Evan.
Around noon, off in the distance, he spotted a V-notch canyon in the mountains.
He rested Bear for an hour and let him graze as much as he wanted. Posey ate some cornbread with water in the shade of a tree.
He studied the mountains and shapes of the cliffs, the peaks and valleys in the distance. He calculated he would reach the V-notch by sundown.
Back in the saddle, Posey recalled many of the raids he and Spooner rode on during the war and after.
During the war, Posey and Spooner followed orders. They believed in the cause of preserving the Union and ending slavery. So when they were called upon to kill in the line of duty, Posey knew there was a greater good behind his actions.
After the war, when revenge became the motive for their actions, Posey knew what he was doing was the wrong course of action, but he was filled with hate and bitterness toward the country he fought to preserve, the country that allowed his parents and sister to be butchered and murdered.
When he and Spooner split ways, it was because Posey had enough of bloodshed in his still young life and realized that blood for blood would never return his parents and sister to life.
Seeking revenge had the opposite effect on Spooner. Rather than ease the pain, it only made it worse.
Posey had twenty-two thousand dollars in gold coins when he and Spooner went their separate ways. He managed to make it to the farm and bury the money in the field. There was nothing left of the house and barn, and the fields were untouched and overgrown with weeds.
He left with the feeling of wasted life in his gut, and that feeling had stayed with him ever since, much the way it did with Jane.
He worked as a cowboy, working ranches and cattle drives for twenty-five dollars a month as a way to lose himself. Spooner must have spent some time and money locating him and arranging for the false betrayal that had landed Posey in Yuma. He must have felt threatened that one day Posey would turn himself in and point a finger at Spooner.
He wasn’t entirely wrong in that notion. Posey was ready to turn himself in when the law caught up with him, but he would never have betrayed Spooner.
And while he rotted in Yuma, Posey feared in his gut that his wasted life would always be there, like a sickness there was no cure for. When Dale showed up and offered the pardon in exchange for his help capturing Spooner, Posey took the deal, but not because he wanted to help his brother. Rather, as he did after the war, he wanted revenge, and his heart went pitch-black.
Until he met Pilar.
And she gave him hope.
Close to sundown, Posey made camp about a mile from the V-notch canyon.
The thing to do, he told himself as he built a fire and put on some food to cook, was not to think about Pilar.
The way to survive a war was to not think about what you left behind. To not miss home and loved ones. To put it behind you and focus only on what you needed to do to stay alive.
Because if you didn’t stay alive, what was the point?
Posey ate while watching the V-notch slowly fade to darkness with the setting sun.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
* * *
The entrance to the canyon was several hundred yards across with mountains on each side that cast the canyon floor in shadow.
By noon, the canyon had started to narrow, as Evan said it would. Posey paused for an hour to rest Bear and eat a cold lunch.
Some of the peaks rose to three thousand feet or more in height.
From the top looking down, a lookout would not be able to see a rider. The angle was too steep.
For Spooner’s lookouts to be effective, they would have to be on a shorter peak, be able to have a view of the floor below, and be within a few minutes’ ride of Spooner in order to warn him.
A mile, two at most to reach Spooner.
The ideal spot for a lookout was deeper into the canyon.
Posey rode until sunset and the next day until early afternoon, when the canyon began to funnel as the boy described.
Posey dismounted and studied the cliffs and peaks on both sides of him.
Elevation of two thousand or more feet high with a narrow view of the canyon floor. Up ahead, the peaks were shorter, gentler, and a lookout would be able to see a rider coming.
“We’re close,” Posey told Bear as he rubbed his neck. “We’ll get a bit closer and go in come morning.”
After Posey had ridden several hours, the canyon narrowed to just a few hundred feet across. The cliff and peaks were a thousand feet high or less. Sunlight reached the sides of the canyon wall on Posey’s right.
He dismounted and walked Bear for a mile or more and then stopped.
The canyon floor was less than a hundred feet across. The right wall was bathed in sun, the left in shadow. Directly ahead, the canyon curved to the left and the path wasn’t visible.
He walked Bear to some tall grass, dug out the leather strips from a saddlebag, and hobbled him.
“I won’t be long,” Posey told Bear. “Eat some grass and grab a nap while I’m gone.”
Posey removed the Winchester from the saddle sleeve and walked to the shadowy cliff on his left. The climb wasn’t sheer, but was at least a thousand feet. The lookouts would be on the cliff where the sun was at their back so they could see the canyon floor without glare in their faces.
The climb was slow and somewhat cumbersome. After five hundred feet or so, Posey took a five-minute break. He checked his pocket watch. It was just short of eleven-thirty in the morning.
The next five hundred feet to the top took a bit longer, as it was sheerer with softer dirt, and he backslid a few times.
Finally, Posey reached the flat plateau and rolled onto his back to catch his breath.
He finally sat up close to the edge, looked down, and then stood up. He could see Bear eating some grass.
Posey turned away from the edge, walked about a hundred feet, and turned to his right. He went about a mile before he spotted a man standing close to the edge of the cliff. Two horses were hobbled about fifty feet to the man’s left.
He walked to within a hundred feet of the man. Behind a tree, Posey removed his boots and crept up on the man from behind.
The man was talking to another man who was prone on the ground on a blanket.
With the sun at his back, Posey stealthily moved to within six feet of the man standing near the edge.
“When we done with this lookout foolishness, we’ll ride over to Buffalo and get us a room, a bottle, and a couple of five-dollar whores and not come up for air for at least a week,” the man said.
“What about your ranch?” the man on the ground said.
“Cows is cows. They can wait,” the man said. “If a man got the need to wiggle his bean, the cows can wait.”
Posey cocked the lever of the Winchester and said, “If you ever want to wiggle your bean again, you’ll remove that Schofield from your holster nice and slow and toss it to the ground.”
The man froze in place.
The man in the blanket sat up.
“You in the bedroll, nobody said you could move. Don’t even twitch or you’ll get it first,” Posey said.
“I ain’t armed,” the man in the blanket said. “My holster is over by my saddle.”
With his back still to Posey, the other man said, “What’s this about, mister? We done no wrong. Me and my friend here are just—”
“I know what you’re doing,” Posey said. “I’m the one you’re keeping watch for. Now be smart and drop the Schofield.”
The man brought his right hand to the butt of his Schofield pistol.
“Now ease it out and toss it to the ground,” Posey said.
“You got us all wrong, mister,” the man said. “We’re cowpunchers.”
“Camping out on the edge of a cliff in the middle of nowhere?” Posey said. “Lose the Schofield, and I won’t tell you again.”
Posey watched the man’s right hand. It twitched slightly. The man’s right shoulder dipped and tightened slightly.
Posey held the Winchester high so that the stock faced the man. When the man reached for the Schofield and spun around, Posey smashed him in the face with the butt of the Winchester.
The man stumbled backward, tripped over the legs of the man in the blanket, and went over the cliff backwards. He screamed on the way down, and after a few seconds went silent.
Posey sighed.
“Well, that didn’t go as planned,” he said.
“Don’t kill me, mister,” the man in the blanket said.
“Oh, shut up,” Posey said.
“Can I put my boots on and stand up?”
“Go ahead,” Posey said.
The man grabbed his boots, put them on, and stood up.
“Gosh, mister, you killed my friend.”
“I didn’t plan on him being so stupid, and he tripped over your legs anyway,” Posey said. He looked at the man closer and realized he was a boy, not much older than Evan.
“How old are you?” Posey asked.
“Sixteen.”
“Sixteen. What’s your name, son?”
“Parker. Robert Parker.”
“Got any grub, Robert Parker?”
“Some.”
“Make a fire and cook some of it,” Posey said.
Parker went to the ashes of a previous fire and tossed in some sticks from a stacked bundle.
“Got coffee?”
“Yes, sir,” Parker said and noticed Posey’s badge. “I mean. Marshal.”
“What was his name, your misguided friend?”
“Mike Cassidy. What’s misguided mean?”
“Another way of saying foolish. I’ll note his name when I bury him later,” Posey said. “Go on and make a fire while I get my boots.”
Parker proved handy around a campfire and served up scrambled eggs with bacon and beans with coffee.
“Where’d you get the fresh eggs?” Posey asked.
“Chickens.” Parker grinned. He was a handsome kid with dark hair and eyes and a stout build.
“And the chickens?”
“There’s a mess of them at the cabin,” Parker said. “A rooster, too.”
“So what are you doing hooked up with the likes of Spooner and Broussard?” Posey asked. “You’re just a kid, for God’s sake.”
“Back home in Utah, my folks is Mormons and real poor,” Parker said. “They sent me to work on ranches in the area, and I went to work for Mister Cassidy. Course, he spent most of his time stealing other ranchers’ cattle than raise his own. We was in Miles City a while back and met Mister Spooner, and he asked us to watch his cattle at this cabin he had in the mountains. He was gone almost a month.”
“And he came back and asked you to stand watch for me?”
“He didn’t say the law,” Parker said. “He said someone he used to ride with had a grudge against him and we was to warn him right away when we saw you coming. He paid me fifty dollars in gold.”
“And when the shooting starts?” Posey asked. “What good is your fifty dollars in gold to you?”
“I got nothing to do with no shooting,” Parker said. “My gun is an old Navy Colt. Belongs to my father. It’s cap and ball, and half the time the powder’s wet.”
Posey nodded toward the hobbled horses. “They stolen?”<
br />
“Mine ain’t. Can’t speak for Mike’s.”
“Now listen to me carefully,” Posey said. “Do you want to go to jail?”
“No sir, Marshal.”
“Pack up your gear, get on your horse and find the trail out of here that leads to Casper, and then keep going,” Posey said. “You seem like a smart kid, and crime is no way to spend your life.”
“What about Mike’s horse?”
“I’ll cut him loose,” Posey said. “It’s probably stolen anyway. Take what gear of his you need and leave the rest.”
Parker nodded. “Are you going after Mr. Spooner and the other fellow?”
“I am. How far to the cabin?”
“There’s no way to get your horse up here except at the end of the canyon trail,” Parker said. “That’s about two miles from here. Then you turn to the left and ride about another mile or so. You’ll see it plain as day.”
“Okay, Robert Parker, pack up your gear and get moving,” Posey said.
Parker gathered his gear and saddled his horse. He wore a sheepish grin as he stood before Posey.
“Sorry for any trouble I caused, Marshal,” he said. “It weren’t my intent.”
Despite the fact that Parker was to warn Spooner of his coming, Posey liked the boy.
“Your friends call you Bob?” Posey asked.
“Naw. They call me Butch, on account I once worked in a butcher shop in Utah.”
“Okay, Butch, get going,” Posey said.
Posey waited until Parker was well out of view, then went to Cassidy’s horse, removed the bit, and cut him loose.
“Go on now, get going,” Posey said, and smacked him on the rump.
As the horse ran away, Posey picked up Cassidy’s saddle and gear, carried it to the cliff, and tossed it over.
“Might as well bury it with the rest of you,” he said.
Bear was asleep when Posey returned and unhobbled him.
“Come on,” Posey said and led Bear by the reins. “We have a body to bury.”
It was well after dark by the time Posey tossed the last shovelful of dirt on Cassidy’s gravesite. He had paused to build a fire and put on some food before finishing digging the grave, and when he sat against his saddle to eat, he felt exhaustion wash over him.
The Devil's Waltz Page 20
