Luke's Gold

by Charles G. West

  Finally, his sense of self-preservation caused him to wonder whether it was wise to hang around to find out. Maybe he’d better get while the getting was good. Something unnatural was at work here. Once that thought took hold of him, he decided not to linger. He wasn’t sure what had happened to Cobb and Gentry, but he told himself he wasn’t fool enough to wait to find out. His decision made, he gave no more thought to the fate of his two brothers, but sprang up from the thicket he had chosen to hide in, and ran for his horse. The animal sensed his panic and sidestepped away from him, causing Dorsey to have to grab for the reins and lunge for the saddle. Getting one foot in the stirrup, he swung his other leg over, but instead of finding the other stirrup, he felt two powerful hands around his ankle. In one continuous move, Cade grabbed Dorsey’s leg and pulled the hapless man off the horse. Dorsey grunted with the pain that knocked the wind from his lungs when he collided with the ground. Terrified as if attacked by a demon, he managed to pull his pistol from his belt. Gasping for breath, he fired blindly around him, his assailant unseen in the dark. His shots scattered harmlessly through the trees, except for one. His horse screamed in pain when the bullet struck it, and it bolted, revealing the man who had been standing behind it. Seeing his target at last, Dorsey pulled the trigger, only to hear the damning click of an empty chamber. Cade unhurriedly raised his Winchester and dispatched the last of the Braxtons to join his brothers and whatever awaited them on the other side.

  Left in a state of total confusion, Levi automatically shifted his attention from the rear window back to the front when he heard the burst of gunshots from that direction. Clueless about what was going on outside the darkened cabin, he was at a loss as to what actions he could take to protect Willow and himself. The shots he had heard were not directed at them. None had hit the cabin walls. With no options available to him but one, he sat against the wall with Willow pressed close to him, waiting, his rifle aimed at the door. There was no more shooting, and in a few minutes he heard the call.

  “Levi, are you all right in there?”

  Levi sat up straight. “Cade? Is that you?” He could not mistake the familiar voice.

  “Yeah,” Cade called back. “It’s me. I’m comin’ in.”

  Still mystified over what had just happened, Levi went to the door and lifted the bar. Even though he recognized Cade’s voice, he stood to one side of the door with his rifle ready to fire. “Come on in, then,” he said. In a few moments he released a sigh of relief when the door swung open and it was indeed Cade Hunter. “Boy, am I glad to see you,” he exclaimed. “Have they gone?”

  “Well, yeah, they’re gone, and they ain’t comin’ back from where they’ve gone,” Cade replied. Then noticing the bloody shoulder, he said, “Damn, looks like you stopped a bullet. You better get that fixed up.”

  Willow hurried to light a lantern. “I fix that now,” she said, and pulled Levi toward a chair at the table.

  Impatient to hear what had gone on outside the cabin, Levi pressed Cade for details. He sat quietly and submitted to Willow’s doctoring while Cade related the events that led up to the elimination of the other two Braxton brothers. “I don’t know how long we coulda held ’em off,” Levi admitted. “I didn’t have many cartridges left.” He paused to think about it. “But where’d you come from? You were long gone.”

  “I took the short trail down, and they musta come up the way you hauled me up on the travois. I was already down the mountain when I heard the shootin’. I wish I coulda got here sooner, but that’s a steep climb back up, and I had to walk and lead my horse most of the way.”

  “Well, friend,” Levi exclaimed. “I’m mighty grateful you showed up when you did. You sure as hell saved our bacon, didn’t he, Willow?”

  The Blackfoot woman looked up from Levi’s wound and smiled at Cade. “We owe you much,” she said.

  Cade nodded and said, “I just lost one friend. I couldn’t afford to lose two more.”

  There was not much they could do about cleaning up after the attack until daylight. Levi went out with Cade while he brought his and two of the Braxtons’ horses in. One of the horses was missing, the one that Dorsey shot. “I’ll try to find him in the mornin’,” Cade said as they stood over Dorsey’s body with a lantern. “Reckon I’ll take care of him and the others in the mornin’, too.”

  “He don’t look like he’s goin’ anywhere,” Levi said.

  “Are these the men you and Willow were runnin’ from?” Cade asked.

  “Yep,” Levi replied. “They’re the ones.”

  “Well, I reckon you and Willow don’t have to run anymore.”

  “Reckon not.” The thought just then struck him that this was a fact. There was no longer a need for him and his wife to hide out in the mountains, fearful that someone might find them. “I reckon not,” he repeated, now with a different tone. A sudden feeling of freedom came upon him as he realized the significance of the night’s conflict. “Hell, let’s leave the bastards where they lay tonight. Maybe the wolves’ll eat ’em. Let’s go build up the fire and fix us somethin’ to eat. Me and Willow was about to cook some supper when they hit us.”

  All had not escaped harm, however. When they led the three horses back to the lean-to that Levi used as a stable, it was to find his horse lying dead, a victim of the barrage laid down by the three brothers. The horse had been shot several times in the head and neck, evidence of a deliberate execution of the animal. The loss of the horse lent a sad note to Levi’s feeling of celebration over his new freedom. But Cade remembered that out in the forest somewhere there was still a horse with a bullet wound. He would have to wait till morning to find out if it was dead or alive.

  There was work to be done when morning came to the little cabin high up in the mountains. Utilizing the two Braxton horses as a team, Cade dragged Levi’s horse to a cliff on the opposite side of the mountain that dropped two hundred feet to a ridge below. Dumping the carcass at the rim of the cliff, it was almost as much work to force it over the edge as it was to haul it up there. Finally, after chopping down a small tree to use as a lever, he was able to move enough of the carcass over the edge that it fell on its own. Later, Cade returned to drop three bodies to the rocky ridge below to join Levi’s horse. The last to go over was Gentry Braxton’s body with Willow’s arrow still protruding awkwardly out of his throat. His grim chore finished, Cade stood on the brink of the cliff looking down at the previous night’s carnage. Two of those men below him on the rocks had met their death at his hand. Just as there was no satisfaction in that fact, there was also no sorrow. Like the killing of mad dogs or preying wolves, it was a cold act of necessity. There was passion in his heart for only one killing, Lem Snider, and he reminded himself that it was time now to get on with it.

  Dorsey Braxton’s horse wandered back early that morning looking none the worse for its wound. The pistol bullet had struck the animal high in the left withers, where it had lodged deep in the muscle. There had been a minimal amount of blood from the hole in the horse’s hide, so Levi said he would watch it, and if it festered, he’d try to remove the bullet. All told, the Braxton brothers left Levi and Willow quite a bit better supplied, with an extra horse, saddles, tack, guns, and ammunition. There was even a sack of coffee beans in one of the saddlebags. Cade satisfied his need for a packhorse with one of the horses. He decided to take the one with a bullet in him instead of leaving it with Levi. In truth, Cade had to admit that Loco picked the horse, as it had originally picked Cade. Lucky, as Cade decided to call the sorrel gelding, was the only horse of the three that Loco had not tried to take a nip out of.

  “If I can ever help you,” Levi started as Cade tied down the pack he had fashioned on Lucky’s back.

  “Don’t mention it,” Cade interrupted. “You and Willow took real good care of me. I owed you, and I’m glad I was able to repay you in some fashion.” He turned to give Willow a smile. “Take care of him, Willow.” She nodded, smiling. Turning back to Levi, he asked, “You gonna stay up
here on this mountain?”

  “I don’t know,” Levi answered. “For a while yet, I guess. Since there ain’t no reason not to, we might decide to go down below where the winters ain’t so rough—maybe someday head north to find Willow’s folks. She don’t complain none about it, but I know she’d like to see her people again.” He looked at his wife and grinned. “I don’t know if that would be a smart thing for me to do, though. The Blackfoot ain’t really partial to white men.”

  “That’s somethin’ to think about all right,” Cade said, and stepped up in the saddle.

  “Good luck to you, Cade,” Levi said. He and Willow watched until the rider and horses disappeared below the ridge. “You know what I think?” he said to his wife. “I think the Good Lord was lookin’ to answer our prayers when he sent Cade Hunter floatin’ down that river to come back from the dead and help us.”

  Willow looked up into Levi’s homely face and smiled, nodding her agreement. She had heard of stranger tales at the feet of her grandfather when she was a small girl.

  Chapter 8

  Trying to follow tracks that had long since grown cold, Cade gave up after a while and followed the river back toward Bozeman. With nothing to go on, he decided he had no choice but to cover every town he could find, hoping to strike a trail. It was a reasonable conclusion that Snider had not tried to follow the river south through wild rocky passes that led deeper into the rugged mountains. Snider had to assume that everyone who knew about the gold was dead, so he was most likely heading for places where he could spend his fortune.

  It was just at nightfall when he rode into Bozeman. He decided the first place to get information was the small stable at the edge of town, so he pointed Loco toward the open end of the building.

  “I was just fixin’ to go get me some supper,” the owner of the stable said when Cade rode up. “If you’re wantin’ to leave your horses, you can unsaddle ’em and turn ’em out in the corral. I’ll take care of ’em when I get back.”

  “I wasn’t plannin’ on leavin’ ’em,” Cade said. “I was hopin’ you might have seen a man I’m lookin’ for.”

  “Oh . . .” the owner replied, obviously disappointed that Cade wasn’t a customer. “Who you lookin’ for?”

  “A fellow named Lem Snider—kinda tall, bushy whiskers, got a piece of his ear—” That’s as far as he got before the stable owner interrupted.

  “Oh, Lem Snider, yeah I know him. He comes through town every now and then. I bought a couple of horses offa him a week or two ago.”

  “Is he still around?” Cade asked.

  “I ain’t seen him. I doubt it, though. He seemed in kind of a hurry. Go ask Tim Hardy in the saloon yonder. That was where you’d most likely find Lem Snider and his friends if you were lookin’ for him—which most folks weren’t.” He hesitated for a moment, watching Cade’s reaction. When there was none, he squinted his eyes in an effort to scrutinize Lucky more closely. “That horse has got a bullet hole in him.”

  “Yep,” Cade replied.

  “He don’t seem to mind it much, does he?”

  “Nope.” Cade turned to look up the dusty street in the direction the man had indicated. “Much obliged,” he said, and pointed Loco toward the saloon.

  “Yeah, he was in here a week or so ago,” Tim Hardy said in answer to Cade’s inquiry. “You a friend of his?”

  “Nope, I’m just lookin’ for him,” Cade replied.

  “Well, like I said, he was in here—didn’t have his usual riffraff with him this time.” The bartender eyed the young stranger up and down, wondering what business he had with Lem Snider. “He walked in like he’d just robbed a bank or somethin’,” Hardy went on. “Bought drinks for everybody in the saloon.” He smiled and grunted when recalling it. “Damned if I’ve ever seen him do that before. I wouldn’t be surprised if he did rob a bank.” He cocked a curious eye at Cade then. “That ain’t why you’re lookin’ for him, is it?”

  “No, I’ve got some lead that belongs to him,” Cade answered, thinking of the bullet still lodged in his chest. He saw no reason to mention Luke’s murder and the stolen gold dust.

  “Well, he didn’t stay around long—left the next day, I think.”

  “Did he say where he was goin’?”

  “No.”

  “Well, much obliged,” Cade said and started for the door.

  “I don’t know why you wanna find Lem Snider, but you be careful, young feller. That man’s as liable to shoot you in the back as say good mornin’.”

  Cade acknowledged the warning with a simple wave of his hand as he walked out the door. Outside, he stopped to study the night sky for a few minutes. It was going to be a cool evening. When the sun came up in the morning, he could go east, back toward Coulson where he and Luke had run into Snider, or he could ride west. Where would a man like Snider likely gravitate? Away from law and order, Cade speculated, and decided to gamble on west. With that settled, he stepped up in the saddle and headed back to the river to make camp for the night.

  A full day’s ride brought him to Three Forks, where three rivers converged to make up the headwaters of the Missouri. There at a trading post, a man named Lewis remembered someone of Snider’s description stopping there to buy some supplies. He didn’t recall the name, but Cade felt sure it was Snider. It was enough to encourage him that he had lucked onto the right trail. Snider was definitely riding west. With no further sign of the man, Cade was forced to gamble again. He could have followed the Madison River south to Virginia City, or gone north along the Gallatin to connect with the Missouri River. From what Luke had told him about Lem Snider, Cade guessed he was the kind of man who would head for the most wide-open town he could find. Cade’s first thought was Virginia City, even though its heyday was long past. Lewis had told him that the hot spot now was Butte, a day and a half’s ride from Three Forks. Left with choices between Butte and Virginia City, Cade decided on Butte.

  Lewis had not exaggerated when he said that Butte was a bustling town. First starting as a gold mining camp in 1864, it continued to attract miners with the discovery of silver, which contributed to the town’s influx of people in the seventies. The most recent addition to Butte’s wealth was the appearance of copper. According to a bartender named Zeke in the first saloon Cade visited, some folks thought copper might be the gold of the future. Cade had little interest in prospecting for the treasure lying underneath Butte’s soil. His thoughts were on finding one man, Lem Snider. The bartender could not recall hearing of a man by that name, nor seeing a man of his description. There were many other saloons, stores, and stables in the town in which to inquire. All brought the same results. No one knew anything about Lem Snider, and Cade had to finally conclude that Snider had not come this way. After three days spent in Butte, Cade was ready to leave, after having seen enough of the rowdy boom-town and searching out every corner he could find.

  Frustrated, but still maintaining his patience, he sat by his campfire a few miles west of town trying to decide what to do. Butte was the kind of place that should attract the likes of Lem Snider. His last stop in Butte had been to pay a return visit to Zeke at the first saloon. The bartender seemed to know more about what was going on in the town than any of the others. Zeke suggested that he should try Helena, a town that four men from Georgia had struck gold in about the same time it was found in Butte. Cade thanked him and determined to set out for Helena the next day.

  Half a day out of Butte, Cade was in the process of checking his cinch after having stopped to rest the horses. Standing by a wide stream that meandered along the eastern side of a narrow valley, he was startled when suddenly a horse emerged from the thick firs that bordered the creek. Splashing through the water at a lope, it had scarcely passed by the surprised man when it was followed by two more. Their hooves spraying water almost to the toes of his boots as he stood there astonished, they loped off after the first horse. A few seconds later, another horse appeared, this one with a rider. A small fellow, Cade thought at first,
but as the rider approached, he saw that it was a boy of ten or twelve.

  Cade sized up the situation in a second, and concluded that the youngster wasn’t making much headway in turning the horses around, as it appeared he was desperately trying to do. Without giving it another thought, Cade jumped in the saddle and gave Loco his heels. Angling across the stream, Loco hit the opposite bank at a gallop. An experienced cow pony, the horse knew exactly what was required of him, and soon headed off the three fleeing horses. Cade slowed the lead horse and turned it, pulling all three back to a walk. By the time the boy caught up to them, the three horses were standing peacefully with Cade’s horses.

  There was a strained look of uncertainty on the youngster’s face as he rode up to confront the stranger who had suddenly appeared to take control of the horses. “Those are my pa’s horses,” he managed with as much authority as he could summon.

  Cade smiled at him. “And fine-lookin’ horses they are, too. It just looked like they were gettin’ a little ahead of you, so I thought I’d give you a hand.”

  Openly relieved that there was to be no dispute over ownership of the horses, the boy said, “Thanks, Mister. I’ve been chasin’ ’em for half a mile, I bet.”

  Cade looked around him. “Where’d you come from?” he asked, for there was no sign of anyone else behind the boy.

  “Yonder side of that ridge,” he replied, pointing toward the western wall of the valley. “We was drivin’ ’em down a draw on the other side, and these three slipped over the top.”