by Paul Lederer
‘I don’t know.’
‘You know he’ll ride directly to the Shadow Riders’ camp and tell them that we’re pulling out.’
‘I know it. I have a feeling they were planning on raiding the camp again tonight anyway, Marly. Joe Duggan – and he was in a position to know – said a lot of them were army deserters. I wonder if many of them still have their old uniforms. To these tired folks already expecting an army patrol from Fort Benton … well, would there be a better way to approach the camp without stirring up alarm?’
‘We’d better get going,’ Marly said, as a sudden shiver not caused by the freezing cold of the night crept over her.
Casey Storm condensed what Genevieve had told him and Marly had overheard into a few short paragraphs. There was no time for a long-winded explanation, nor to answer the questions many of the settlers still had.
They were once again near the Landis wagon and when Casey had finished speaking, a voice, quite unlike the weak one Jason Landis had been reduced to through fever and pain, boomed out.
‘Casey!’ the colonel hollered from his bed. ‘We’re wasting time. You men get your teams harnessed and hitched, ride with your weapons at the ready. We’re going to Sundown!’
For a moment Casey thought that the old soldier was going to add, ‘and that’s an order’, and he smiled down at Marly. Looking around the circle of gathered men he told them, ‘You heard the colonel. Let’s get moving.’
It did not take as long as Casey had feared to get the wagons ready to roll. Experienced hands performed familiar work rapidly. Casey considered asking them to wrap their trace chains in cloth to prevent tell-tale jingling, but that would only waste more time. Besides, the rising half-moon would illuminate them harshly against the snowfield so that they would be seen much farther away than they could be heard.
Casey took his place on the wagon seat beside Marly. She lifted a gloved hand to pat her unruly hair and asked, ‘Aren’t you going to ride Checkers?’
‘Not unless it becomes necessary. He’s done more than his share already.’
‘You two quit chatting and get cracking!’ a roaring voice from within the wagon ordered, and Casey grinned.
‘It seems your patient is getting better.’
Disdaining the whip, Marly snapped the reins across the flanks of the four-horse team, and without enthusiasm they pulled the wagon forward on to the snow-covered prairie. There were no shouts or catcalls from the other wagons as usually occurred during this stage of a drive. A brooding silence had settled over them one and all.
As they passed the silent man with his dead daughter still held in his frail arms, he watched them from the side of the trail. Briefly, Casey instructed Marly to rein in. ‘Lester! Get in the wagon. You can do nothing for her now.’
Lester McCoy’s stared at Casey without comprehension. There was no light in his eyes. They were those of a dead man. Finally, Lester shook his head and turned away in the snow; his only destination seeming to be a distant home he could share finally with his daughter.
The wagons rolled on. Their general direction could be taken from the stars, but Casey had a surer method for finding Sundown without creeping along through the darkness. It had not snowed again since he had ridden Checkers back to the wagon train. Following the tracks in deep snow was easier than following the stars. Of course he had ridden over knolls and through stands of pine where the wagons could not travel, but they would do to set their general course, and they could always cut tracks on the other side of these obstacles. Also, Casey had traveled this trail less than twelve hours earlier. His memory was not yet that faded.
They made good time across the open land. By the time the moon was overhead, Casey figured that they were more than half way to Sundown. There was time; there was just enough time to reach the site by dawn when their claim would expire.
If only the horses held up, if none of the wagons broke an axle on an unseen boulder.…
Then they came again, once more charging down at the wagon train from a piney knoll.
The Shadow Riders were not about to give up so easily.
NINE
‘Rein up, Marly!’ Casey shouted, as he dove from the bench seat into the interior of the wagon.
The colonel, propped up on one elbow demanded, ‘Aren’t you going to make a run for it, Casey?’
‘No, sir. What kind of shooting can we do from jouncing wagons at a run?’
‘Very well,’ the colonel said, dragging himself half erect. ‘Toss me my rifle, Casey. I can’t ride, I can hardly walk, but, by God, I can still hold my sights steady!’
The first shots rang out creasing the silence of the night. The far clouds in the velvet sky drifted over peacefully, but now heavy gunsmoke rose to obscure the stars. Scattered answering shots from the wagons sounded near at hand.
‘Marly,’ the colonel shouted, ‘Get inside this wagon. Now!’
‘I’ve got to hold the team, Father.’ She called back across her shoulder.
‘Set the brake and tie those leathers. If they run, they run. I won’t have you sitting like a target up there.’
Marly quickly did as she had been ordered, slid back into the wagon and bellied back beside Casey to peer over the tailgate. Muzzle flashes stabbed at the darkness, but in the night the targets offered by the Shadow Riders were indistinct. Harnessed horses reared up and whickered in panic as the bullets continued to fly, one singing off the metalwork of the Landis wagon. Casey’s mouth was tight. Abruptly he made a decision and began to rise.
‘Where are you going?’ Marly asked fearfully.
‘Out to meet them,’ Casey answered. He stretched out a hand toward the slipknot Checkers had been fastened to the wagon with, happy that he had resaddled the Appaloosa for just such an emergency.
‘You said you wouldn’t!’ Marly reminded him, her wide eyes desperate.
‘I changed my mind,’ he answered coldly.
Slipping to the ground as the bullets continued to fly in all directions, he mounted Checkers. Bending low across the withers, he slipped the colonel’s Sharps .50 from its sheath and handed it up to Marly.
‘Your father asked for this.’
Marly was astonished to hear the slow, scrabbling sounds behind her, feel a hand brush her leg. The colonel, his face a mask of anguish, had clawed his way out of his bed and across the wagon to join her. He took the rifle from Casey’s hand and checked the loads.
‘Go get ’em, boy,’ Landis said, as he settled into a prone firing position. Marly saw Casey, his Henry repeater in his hand, whirl Checkers and start him away from the halted wagon train, disappearing in moments into the night. She thought: I am surrounded by crazy men.
Then the colonel touched off his first shot, the unmistakable roar of the buffalo gun echoing across the camp. Marly could not be sure above the tumult, but she thought that she heard one of the raiders cry out in pain on the heels of the shot.
She scooted away and seated herself in the corner of the wagon, her knees drawn up, her arms around them, watching both of her men charge defiantly into battle.
In a brief lull in the shooting, Marly heard a woman’s voice shrieking. It was Virgil Troupe’s wife, Emma, who must have been hunkered down protectively in front of her nursing infant. Emma screamed madly, although not with pain. She shouted to the skies, to the gods of this forlorn country. ‘I can’t take any more of this!’
The gunbattle continued to rage. Marly saw the off-wheel horse of one of the freight wagons sag to its knees and thrash against the snowy ground, tugging its harness mates backward, heard her father’s rifle roar again. Then Marly bowed her forehead to her knees and wondered how much more of this she herself could take.
Reaching the pines, Casey had slowed Checkers. The gunfire reached him only as muted popping, muffled by distance and by the forest. The pines were not dense enough to conceal the sky, and Casey glanced at the broken shafts of moonlight filtering through the sheer uncertain clouds above the tips of the dark trees.
Marly had been right.
It had been a mistake to let Mike Barrow ride away from the wagon train. It was certain that he had found the camp of the Shadow Riders and convinced them that there must be a new urgency in the pursuit of the settlers, since if Casey Storm had his way, the wagon train might still make it to Sundown in time to prove up their claim.
They would have listened to him. Would he even tell them that ‘Gervase McCoy’ was dead? Probably not. Let them continue to envision a big payday from the boss who had been so generous thus far. No doubt Barrow had been thinking since the boss was dead, the land and all it could promise with the construction of a riverboat port and the building of a new town, left the property in his hands, his and Joe Duggan’s.
It might have struck Barrow that it was even more important to halt the settlers than it had been before. For now he would imagine himself not simply as a hired gun, but as a soon-to-be wealthy landowner.
Checkers, slightly rested and fed now, was still not in top shape. Casey could tell by the way the Appy moved. He rode him slowly through the pines, alert for any sign of the Shadow Riders’ camp. He didn’t expect to ride across it, but it was possible. When they did return from their raid, though, he would follow them and have an unpleasant surprise waiting for them. It was time to fight a little rear-guard action.
The raiders had had it all their own way, attacking when and where they pleased. They had no fear of a counter-attack. Why would they? The group of settlers was not going to pursue the raiders leaving all their goods, their wagons, their women and children behind unprotected.
Casey considered one other matter. Who was to say that this was the last attack the Shadow Riders would risk? If they could not stop the wagon train, was it not possible that their next inspiration would be to try to drive the settlers off their landholding by brute force: sniping at men in the fields; burning any new structure almost as soon as it had been completed; killing livestock? Why would they stop now? It seemed unlikely that Barrow and Joe Duggan who had so much invested in the scheme would simply give it up and ride away. Burning their wagons had not stopped them; the death of McCoy had not.
All right! If they would not withdraw voluntarily, it was time to send them scattering with the only sort of encouragement they understood.
By the moonlight through the pines, Casey came upon the tracks of a horse in the snow and he frowned as he pulled up to examine them. Then, before he had swung down to have a look, he recognized them for his own tracks, those he had left on his way from Sundown back toward the wagon train.
All the better. After he had taken care of business, he could follow these back across the pine knoll and quickly catch up with the wagons. And they would be rolling again – of this he had no doubt. For now the colonel, if not fit, was back to being nearly himself; and he would keep them on the move, trying to outrace the dawn to claim their landhold.
Casey marked the trail mentally. There was a pile of weather-cracked granite boulders with a broken, dead pine tilting precariously from it. He would have no difficulty returning to this spot.
Assuming he was able to return at all.
He crouched waiting in the stillness of the cold night, knowing that the Shadow Riders would be coming. They would want to make their way back to their night camp after expending as much ammunition as the situation required. They wouldn’t want to risk a stand-up fight with the settlers, nor hunker down for a night battle – these were not their tactics. They struck and retreated like any other guerrilla force, wishing to inflict as many casualties as possible without risking their own necks.
The rifle fire had long since died away. The night was dead calm; no breeze swayed the pines in passing. It was a chill and stealthy night where hunting creatures stalked each other.
It was Casey’s turn to stalk. He had settled down against the base of a solitary old cedar, sitting on his bearskin robe, watching the night pass, the moon rise and pale, the constant stars twinkle, when he was aware of the sounds of movement beyond and below him. He rose stiffly. His wounds were still far from healed.
The sounds grew nearer and became recognizable. Horses moving over frozen snow, creaking saddle leather, the jingle of bridle chains and spurs. Casey stood near to Checkers, his hand on its muzzle, ready to silence the Appy should it decide to blow.
Now, a quarter of a mile off, he could make out the dark silhouettes of half-a-dozen men making their way upslope from the flats below. They rode as silently as possible, but the night was so still that any sound drifted clearly across the emptiness. Light from the moon and close stars glinted off silver trappings on some of the horses’ saddles and bridles and was reflected off the steel of rifles carried unsheathed across their saddlebows.
Casey let them file past, Shadow Riders in the forest night. He was certain they had a rough camp somewhere nearby because after all these miles, after all they had been promised by Gervase McCoy, these gunmen were not about to give up now and simply drift away. When the last man in the line had passed, Casey swung carefully aboard Checkers and walked the Appaloosa along in their wake.
It was no problem to keep up with them. These men and their horses were weary, moving slowly. He kept fifty and at times a hundred yards distance between them as he paralleled their trail. Their camp would not be far away either. Why would they choose a site far distant from their quarry?
The night continued cold and still. In the dark picket line of the pines, Casey rode from moon shadow to moon shadow. He heard nothing, no one ahead of him now. The raiders had bedded down, or were preparing to, stripping their horses of leather, grabbing a few bites of whatever they had left to eat, rolling out their ground sheets and blankets, having completed another pleasant evening of terrorizing the innocent.
Casey slowed Checkers still more. A huge horned owl swept low, startling him as it flew heavily past on broad wings. Nothing moved. He heard no one speaking in muted tones. He judged that it was time to get busy. Swinging down once again, he unbuckled a saddle-bag and removed an extra box of .44-.40 cartridges, stuffed them into the pocket of his coat and slipped into the shadows, leaving Checkers tethered to a low-growing pine bough.
He walked upslope, his boots slipping on the frozen snow underfoot. The moon beamed down like a mocking eye, watching. Perhaps, he thought as he walked on, he was half-mad to attempt this. It’s really not a good idea to walk up to the gates of Hell and start pounding on the door to challenge the Devil. But it was time. It had to be done. Dogged in his determination, he continued through the dark pines.
Something clicked to his right, downslope from his position. It was impossible to tell what the sound was. It reminded him of a whiskey bottle meeting the rim of a tin cup. It might have been; perhaps not. It made no difference; he had found the camp of the Shadow Riders.
He was now at a point where the side of the knoll had sloughed off at some time past, leaving a rocky granite ridge to overhang the valley below. There were no trees, no stunted shrubs growing on the bare ridge that he might use for cover, and so Casey went to hands and knees to ease himself along it. Peering over the rim of the tongue-shaped ledge he saw dark figures below, and he went to his belly, easing his way to the very edge of the outcropping.
By the light of the pale half-moon he could make out a string of a dozen horses, tethered together on a rope stretched between two pines. He was near enough to see one of these toss its head and stamp an impatient foot. Fifty feet this side of the ponies a jumble of men lay rolled up in their blankets, shifting positions uncomfortably, trying to sleep in the cold of the night. He could hear occasional grumbling, once a weary curse.
Where was the guard? These were not careless men. They were experienced fighters, probably ex-military. There would be a guard, or several of them, watching for intruders. Casey smiled thinly. The guards could hardly expect an attack from a ledge a hundred feet above their camp. Still, he would like to discover where the guards – the men with the ready rifles – had their pos
itions. A few more silent minutes passed before Casey noticed a moving shadow, saw a man with a rifle in his hand fidget with his trousers and lean one-handed against a broken cedar tree.
That was one guard, then. It could be that they felt secure enough in their strength to believe they needed no more. Silently Casey slightly shifted his position, removed the box of spare cartridges from his pocket, thumbed it open and placed it on the snow-streaked granite beside him.
The horses first.
The ponies, dozing themselves, would be only loosely tied to the tether line, and if he startled them awake and there was no man there to calm them, Casey had no doubt that they would scatter out of panic. Catching them again in the long forest, saddling them, would not be an easy task for the Shadow Riders. And Casey intended to keep the men pinned down long enough to give the horses time for a good long run across the woodland.
Casey found himself grinning without meaning to as he levered a round into the breech of his Henry repeater. This might be a deadly game he was playing, but it was going to be a hell of a lot of fun while it lasted.
From his prone position Casey took in a slow breath and triggered off his first round. The exploding shell was incredibly loud in tbe night, the muzzle flash flame-bright. He had aimed at the ground behind the hocks of the dozing ponies and one horse, perhaps stung on the leg by ice fragments kicked out in angry shock. A second and a third, a fourth shot twisted from the barrel of the Henry. These sang off one of the pines where the tether had been loosely tied, spraying bark. A big bay horse reared up, tossing its head wildly in surprise. It managed to tear free of the tether as another animal, a lanky roan with a blaze and one white stocking also panicked, backed away, and yanked its reins free of the line. That was all it took.
In true herd fashion, the panic spread down the line of horses and the terror spread as surely as if they had caught the scent of wolves among them. Now they reared, kicked, veered, twisted, tossed their heads, and almost as one broke free of the tethering rope to rush away from the unseen threat, weaving their panicked way through the deep, moonlit forest.
