Second, a party of miners, eighteen in number, travelling light with saddle- and pack-horses had been attacked and slaughtered to a man about six miles out of town as they crossed the creek. Some said it was Indians and the army agreed because some drunken white scout claimed that the ponies had been unshod and the feathers and whatnot that had been dropped at the place of the massacre had been plainly Indian. Others claimed that it was the same bunch of organized roughnecks who had been cutting men’s throats for a poke of gold for months past. The argument against this was that it was the general opinion that the cut-throats were not organized and this attack had been well-planned. McAllister was certain that it was the cut-throats. He said so to Sime Gregson and Joe Diblon. And it would happen again. His problem was what to do about it. How could he get knowledge of any trip made by miners from the diggings when there was nobody who could bring him the news.
A lot happened in that one week. Joe Diblon was now sitting. up and taking nourishment and McAllister was threatening to pin his badge back on him. Meanwhile McAllister had found premises for Mrs. Tyson and helped her set up her business. Already with fresh gold in town she was doing a roaring trade. McAllister saw to it that he had special treatment and made a point in dropping in on her to enjoy her excellent cooking after his night patrol. She didn’t exactly offer him a warm welcome, but she didn’t throw him out either. He reckoned that if he was to make any headway with this handsome lady, he would have to ease himself in. Jenny Mann he saw little of, though she did look in at the office to see how Diblon was getting along.
Then suddenly when he least expected it, luck came his way. Such luck that he reckoned that if it was a real paying streak it might not only lead him to the gold-takers, but to the man he had searched for the year past.
Elk Lansbury rode into town. Sometimes he was called simply Indian and that gave a clue to this man who had been up and through the Rockies in the old fur days. He was a loner and he wasn’t scared of the whole damned Dakota Nation, as he himself declared frequently. Anyway, he rode into town on his old lop-eared mule and he had tales to tell. And he had them to tell to McAllister.
He had, he said, come down from the north-west through the Black Water country where he had a squaw who belonged to a halfbreed clan of the Tetons. He had stumbled on the gulch which was being mined and there he had met up with the son of a man he used to trap with years back. Sam Lock-year, the son’s name was, same as the father. Now young Sam had introduced him to the others and as he came highly recommended they had hired him to bring a message secretly to McAllister. The message was written on the fly-leaf of a Bible. It stated that the diehards of the diggers now found that the gulch was untenable and they had decided to pull out. Word had drifted back to them that the previous party had been attacked near town and wiped out. They did not want to meet the same fate. Could McAllister therefore do something to help them?
McAllister smiled with grim pleasure. He could help them all right. He gave the old man a few hours’ rest, bought him a meal and a drink or two, then sent him and Sime off in opposite directions to scout the country. They were to search out any likely spots for an ambush. If they saw any number of armed men moving north either separately or in company, they were to report back. They talked it over together and Sime suggested that Elk and he should stick together so that one could ride back with any news, while the other kept watch. McAllister agreed and the two set out. The main worry was that the gold-lifters would move only at night.
Two weeks went by, during which time McAllister was busy with his town-duties. He went to dinner a couple of times with the mayor and his wife, took a drink with the judge and played checkers with the now fast-improving Diblon. He also began to wonder if Sime and the old man were dead.
Finally, one night after McAllister had come back to the office after a good meal at Mrs. Tyson’s place. Sime came in quietly through the rear door. He was wolf-lean, tired and pleased with himself. After he had drunk his pint of coffee, he sat behind McAllister’s desk and put his feet on it.
“Wa-al,” he said, grinning wearily, “while you two old lobos’ve been sittin’ around here on your backsides, li’l ole Sime done settled the bushwackers’ hash for ’em.”
“Do tell,” McAllister said coldly.
Sime and the old man, apparently, had circled wide north of the town for three whole days without picking up any sign at all. However, on the fourth day they came on six different tracks made by mounted men who had traveled north during the hours of darkness. Each man had led a horse. They had camped at a spot that Elk said was called Blue Willow Creek, rendezvousing in the dark and lying so low you could of ridden on top of’em without seeing ’em. That is if you weren’t as damned smart as Sime and maybe Elk.
A little later after the two of them had backed out of there pretty cautiously, they had come on two Teton halfbreed in-law’s of Elk and had learned that more armed men were moving in from the west, having circled wide from the direction of Deadwood. They also stated that they had seen the miners’ train moving slowly down from the Black Water country. So there it was, Sime finished triumphantly. The old thing was all set up for McAllister to make a mess of.
Orally, McAllister cut his deputy down to size but he did not like the problem in front of him now that it was so close. Just now it seemed that he had only wanted to know what he knew now to finish this business. Now that he had this knowledge, he didn’t know what to do with it. Hell, if he had fifty men instead of two (if you could count Elk, who might want no part of this) he could miss the ambush by a hundred miles out on that damned prairie.
He needed air, to walk and to think. Strapping on his gun, he said: “I’m goin’ out.”
“We don’t have no time to waste,” Sime told him.
Out on the street, things were simmering off a little. There was only one fight going on outside the saloon opposite and no more than twenty men watching it. McAllister looked the other way.
A flutter of light-colored cloth caught his eye. Outside the store run by Jenny Mann’s brother-in-law. At once he was alert. It was Jenny all right. He watched her run along the sidewalk, dodge around a drunken cowhand and dive into the alley by the saloon formerly owned by Paston. McAllister moved. If Paston were in town and the man and woman wanted to meet, where else than in their former meeting-place? McAllister got himself into the shadows of the alley opposite the saloon and waited. He stayed there for an hour without stirring, playing a hunch and keeping his patience like an Indian.
Rather to his disappointment, Jenny appeared at the mouth of the saloon’s alley alone, looked nervously left and right and ran back toward the store.
Suddenly McAllister realized that if she had met Paston he could have gone down the alley and reached a horse tied to the south of town that way. He started from his hiding place and quickly stepped back into cover again.
A man appeared from the alleyway, walking casually. It was Paston.
McAllister watched him.
He turned west along Main and McAllister followed, keeping to the shadows. Twice the man stopped to check if he was being followed and both times McAllister reckoned that he had not been spotted. On Fremont, Paston calmly mounted a horse and leading a second rode at an unhurried trot out of town. McAllister had to hand it to him. He was a cool sonofabitch.
McAllister thought quickly.
Cold reason told him to wait until daylight to pick up the trail. Trailing at night was nobody’s picnic. But come daylight it might be too late. Also it might rain and the tracks could be washed out. He turned and ran hard for the office, burst inside and shouted for Sime to get fresh horses. Good ones. The Texan started to complain, but McAllister cut him short.
“Can you watch the store, Joe?”
“Sure, you go ahead.”
McAllister threw a few cans into a gunny-sack as Sime legged it out the door. Next a couple of boxes of shells, then, as an afterthought, a few more to be on the safe side. He said so-long to Diblon and trotte
d down the street toward the livery and bawled Sime out when he got there because the horses weren’t ready. Within fifteen minutes of Paston leaving town, they were on his tail.
Chapter Seventeen
The lookout at Blue Willow was awake and alert. He heard Paston’s approach when he was a half-mile away and woke the man nearest him. This man turned over and shook the next. Inside a couple of minutes the whole camp was awake and every man stood to his arms as though ready to receive an approaching army. Dix was standing with his gun in hand when Paston rode in. The beefy Texan was pleased with himself at finding the spot unerringly in the dark. That took a real plainsman and no mistake.
He climbed down from his horse and said: “It worked.”
“He spotted you?”
“Sure. Right off. There’s two of them. Been on my tail all the way. I’ll say this for ’em. They’re good. But they’re there, all right.”
He walked in among the men, returned their greetings, remembering each of their names. He gave his orders clearly and briefly. He hadn’t been a major in the Texas cavalry for nothing. Half the men, toting rifles, drifted out of camp and made their way on foot into the west. The rest lay on their arms and waited. At the approach of dawn, a horseman was heard approaching from the north and after being challenged the newcomer was brought into camp by a guard and told Paston that the miners should hit this spot by noon. They’d been harried by the Sioux for a couple of days and they were not in good condition. It should be a pushover.
Dawn came up and Paston, not showing himself above the skyline, took a look around.
This was almost open prairie, deeply ridged and hollowed. The creek ran in the soft earth, so deep that the bush and stunted timber that grew along its banks was invisible from most of the open country beyond. But it was awkward country. One could be near an enemy in distance and far off in time because of the extent and height of the ridges. Which meant also that a man could be on top of you before you knew he was there. In his mind’s eye he placed McAllister and his sidekick somewhere directly south of here. If that was correct, they would be well flanked by the men Paston had sent to the west. Whatever happened, neither McAllister nor his companion must be allowed to ride ahead and warn the miners of the welcome prepared for them here.
He thought everything would go all right. But there was always an unknown factor in these affairs and he tried to think of it. But he could not.
He did not know of Elk’s existence and even if he had he would have written him off as a foolish old man.
The foolish old man woke, as was his habit, as soon as the first gray of dawn streaked the heavens. He lay in a small hollow with his horse tied to his wrist. As soon as the first distant shot came, he was on his feet, the knot had been slipped and his saddle slapped onto the back of the startled pony. Within a minute his blanket was rolled and tied behind the cantle and the old man was heaving himself into the saddle, cursing the stiffness of his ageing bones. He avoided the hollows and rode the ridges as best he could, keeping below the skyline where possible until the shooting became suddenly loud and close.
It made a coon laugh, the way he nearly rode up the butt of the ambushing party. He knew they were not on his side when he heard from a good distance away young Sime’s wild rebel cry of defiance. All Elk had to do was to slip from the saddle, lie prone and hold his old Henry firm and keep feeding in the shells. There were six men lying below him along a ridge, each one of them a plain target. Like shooting drunken Indians as he had done that time up on the Rosebud.
He took the man in the centre so that the panic could spread out on either hand. Just for the laugh he put the first round into the fellow’s left buttock. He thought he’d died laughing at the fool’s antics. Panic spread all right. One man jumped up and cast a wild look behind and Elk knocked him over. The shooting died abruptly and the old man treated them to a genuine Hunkpapa war-cry. That settled it before it started. They all got up, except the man shot in the butt and started running every-which-way. Elk hit another in the side and knocked him down, but he got up right smart and legged it away maybe faster than the others.
The old man gave them a few minutes to get clear, then mounted his horse and rode up and down behind the ridge firing his rifle and yipping and whooping in a high-pitched voice. After that he made a wide circle and came on McAllister and Sime forted up in an old buffalo-wallow. They were pretty pleased to see him and thought he was a smart old man to be able to tell them that the main part of the badmen were holed up at the Willows. At the same moment, Paston had left a rear-guard of four men and was riding north to his alternative ambush on Slow Cow Creek. He was enraged that he had been beaten once again by McAllister, but he reckoned he wouldn’t let that faze him. If he came up with the miners’ train and cleaned it out, he wouldn’t have to worry about the man again.
He was moving north at a hammering trot, his little army strung out behind him when one of his forward scouts came in to say that a small body of unidentified men had spent the night at Slow Cow and were still there. Looked like they were waiting on the miners. Paston had no choice but to curse and turn back. Back at the Willows, he found one more of his men dead and the three wounded men he had left as a rear-guard deeply puzzled by the total disappearance of the two whitemen and the party of mysterious Indians. Paston confidently placed his men to advantage among the brush and rocks. Or rather he made a show of confidence. In truth, uneasiness had started to ride him. He didn’t like the dual disappearance. If McAllister had ridden on and warned the train, Paston’s holding the Willows would be an utter waste. The gold would be lost to him. He was not sure what he should do.
Finally, in mid-morning, unable to bear the suspense any longer, he sent a couple of men out to scout around. But they returned to say that they could only find the spot where the two whitemen had forted up. There were no signs of tracks going out. But there were two dead horses out there. As for the Indians, where the attack had come from, they could see only the sign of one shod pony and one rifleman. It came to Paston that he had been duped. He didn’t think it was funny.
He would have thought the situation even less funny if he had known that McAllister was still within a half-mile of him, having moved with his two companions a short distance to the east They had put black fear into the bushwackers with old Elk’s help, but they were not too happy about the situation themselves. Both McAllister and Sime had lost their horses in the first burst of riflefire from the ridge above them. One horse between three was not much of an asset. McAllister thought gloomily that he’d be doing as much good back in town. But as noon approached and Elk sighted the miners’ train snaking its way along the ridges and dipping down toward the creek, he bucked up and led them bellying through the grass toward the water. He reckoned that the bushwackers, however strong, might be stopped by three good rifles above and behind them.
Even before they could creep up to the lip of the gully, some trigger-happy fool down below started shooting before the train was deep into the Willows.
McAllister sprang to his feet and led the way at a run. That was a mistake. None of them had guessed that the bushwackers would have been watching the east. The rifle that opened up on them took them completely by surprise. Old Elk fell with a “wagh” of surprise. Sime and McAllister swung out on either hand and dropped into the grass and opened up straight away on the hidden rifle. By the time the shooting down below became general they had blasted their interceptor from his cover and were heading for the gully again.
When they reached it, they could see little for the willow trees, but the shooting from below was deafening. They started to work their way down and quickly came on a scene of carnage and complete confusion. Men, mules and horses were dying. Not a bushwacker was in sight. From well under cover, they coldly cut down the men who possessed the gold they wanted. The screams of the dying and wounded were blood-chilling.
McAllister and Sime clambered and stumbled their way down. At once they came on a man sitting at hi
s ease firing at the train from behind a rock. Sime shot him through the back of the head. They ploughed on, ducking under willow branches and at last seeing the muddy gleam of the creek-water. They came on two of the attacks from the side and opened upon them. McAllister, finding his rifle empty, threw it down and drew his pistol. The men turned and fired back at them, but one took a little run off to one side and stepped out into the creek with a bullet through his hip. Sime knelt down and clutched at himself and McAllister ran in on the remaining man and clubbed him to the ground.
Paston was frantically at work. He was not concerned with winning a military victory here. Sure, at best he wanted the miners all dead, but his main objective was the gold. As horse-and mule-holders fell, he bawled for his men to drive the untended animals down through the willows out of the gully onto the plain below. Dix came running to him to tell him breathlessly that a quarter of the train had taken alarm at the shooting and were pulling back from the north end of the gully. Paston barked: “Let ’em go. We have enough. Pull out.”
“Christ!” Dix said. “They seen us.”
“Let ’em go. We’re all washed up in this country, any road.” He turned and roared at a man: “Get those mules yonder out of here.”
Another man ran up.
“Boss, there’s some fellers down the crick. They killed a coupla our boys.”
“My Gawd,” Dix said. “McAllister!”
Paston said: “Aaaah!” in disgust and yelled for men to come to him. He checked their weapons were loaded and led them in a rush down the creek bank, Dix close at his heels.
Immediately Paston and his followers appeared on the scene, running and shooting through the trees, McAllister knew, with Sime down, that it was time he wasn’t there. He put his gun-belt away, hefted Sime, felt the weight drag on his sore shoulder and got out of there. They followed him like baying hounds. But as soon as he made the gully wall and cover, Paston called them off. One man didn’t mean a thing to him. Dix might argue that the man had to be killed, but he was concerned only with the gold. He pulled his men out, whistled for the horse-holders and inside a few minutes was in the saddle and riding through the creek after the pack-animals.
McAllister Justice Page 12
