Riders From Long Pines

by Ralph Cotton

  The sound moved closer toward them through the brush, but instead of a reply, they heard only the soft whine of a wounded animal in pain. After a second the colonel’s big cur staggered out of the brush and fell to the ground without giving them a glance. Dark blood from the gaping bullet graze on his head covered most of his face.

  “He doesn’t know we’re here,” said Maria. She took a step forward, but Sam cautioned her back with his raised hand.

  “Careful, Maria,” Sam said as the big cur struggled up onto his paws and staggered forward to where the colonel’s body lay on the ground. “He’s dazed. But it could wear off any minute. When it does, we won’t know how he’s going to act. The colonel always said he’s a one-man dog.”

  “I know,” Maria replied, stopping, letting her rifle down. The two watched the dog whine pitifully and poke the colonel with its nose as if to awaken him. “But we’ve got to do something to help him.”

  “We will,” the ranger said quietly, “just as soon as he gives us an opportunity.”

  The two watched for a moment as the dog staggered in place beside its dead master. Finally, overcome by the loss of blood and still dazed from the impact the bullet graze had had on its brain, the big animal curled down against the dead colonel, let out a deep breath and slumped in the dirt.

  “I’ll get my canteen, and my needle and thread,” Maria said almost in a whisper. “He will need many stitches to close his wound.”

  “I’ll get some rope and make a muzzle for him,” said Sam, already on his way to his horse where a coiled rope hung from his saddle horn. “We might need it if his head clears and he feels what we’re doing to him.”

  Within minutes Maria had chosen a length of heavy surgical thread and a curved surgical needle from her saddlebags. When Sam finished slipping a double loop of rope around the dog’s muzzle and looped it again around the dog’s neck, Maria washed the open wound with a clean cloth and tepid canteen water.

  Sam watched her thread the curved needle and upon seeing her signal that she was ready, he held the dog down firmly by the rope and the short length of its cut collar while she made the first stitch.

  The dog’s eyes opened, but only for a second when the needle made its way through both edges of the gaping wound and drew them together. When the dog’s eyes closed again, both Sam and Maria breathed a sigh of relief. With a nod from the ranger, Maria systematically hooked and drew stitch after stitch until the gaping wound closed and only a thin line of blood drained from one end of it.

  “You do good work,” Sam said with a slight smile, his gloved hands only resting now on the dog’s neck.

  “This is the first time I have sewn stitches in an animal,” Maria said. “I hope he will be all right.” She reached down a bloodstained hand and stroked the dog gently.

  “He’s breathing good,” Sam said reassuringly. “If this was all that’s wrong with him, he should be just fine.”

  “We will see,” Maria said. Beneath her hand the dog stirred only a little, then let out a breath and once again lay silent and still.

  Sam looked around in the growing darkness. “By the time I get the stage righted and get the dead inside it, it’s going to be dark traveling.” He stroked the dog’s neck as he spoke. “I’d hoped we could get out of this hill line before dark, but attending to Sergeant Tom Haines here changed everything.”

  “I would like to be here when he awakens, so I can see for myself that he is all right,” said Maria.

  “Okay, we’ll camp here overnight,” said Sam. “It’ll be easier tracking come daylight.”

  “Good,” said Maria, “I’ll build a fire and prepare us some food and coffee.”

  Standing and dusting his trousers, Sam said, “While you do that I’ll pull the stage back onto all fours and attend to the dead. Someone from Albertson should be heading here in another couple of hours, if the schoolmaster hurries to town.”

  Rummaging through a tool compartment beneath the driver’s seat of the stagecoach, the ranger found two more coiled ropes and an iron pry bar. While Maria boiled a pot of coffee and prepared a meal of beans, salt pork and flatbread, the ranger strung his rope around the trunk of a stout pine. He tied one end of the rope to the leaning stage and the other end to one of the coach’s ropes he’d tied between the saddle horns on both his and Maria’s horses. The third rope he tied atop the stagecoach and over to the rock wall, to keep the coach from tipping too far and falling in the other direction.

  With no more than moderate effort the two horses righted the leaning stagecoach with one long pull. As soon as the two raised wheels touched back onto the ground and the big coach rocked back and forth stiffly, the ranger halted the horses and gave them both a pat on their muzzles for their effort.

  Moments later he had checked the stage wheels over good and found no cracked or broken spokes that might prevent the big coach from carrying its grizzly cargo back to Albertson once a team of horses arrived. Then he went about the task of carrying the bodies over and stacking them inside. When Maria called out to him that the meal was ready, the ranger closed the stage door, dusted his hands together and walked over to the campfire. “All finished,” he said. He sat down and poured water over his hands from a canteen, washing them.

  “Yes, I see,” Maria said quietly, “and look who is finally waking up.”

  Sam looked over at the dog in time to see the dazed animal roll onto his belly. The animal had a strange, wild look in his eyes as if he awakened in some world he’d never seen before. He steadied himself with his forelegs spread wide on the ground, his body swaying limply for a moment.

  “Here,” Sam said quietly, “you’ve got to be hungry after all this time. Maybe this will help clear your head some.” He picked up a piece of pork from his tin plate and flung it easily over in front of the dog.

  The dog only gave the meat a glance. Then he rose and staggered over to the closed door of the stagecoach and stood staring up as if expecting the colonel to appear and let him inside.

  “The poor thing,” Maria whispered, the two of them standing and walking toward the dog. “This is heartbreaking to watch.”

  “Yes,” said Sam, “what becomes of this one-man dog now that the one man is gone?”

  Easing forward, the two had to stop in their tracks when the big cur turned, facing them, his hackles up in spite of his weak and shaky condition. A deep menacing growl resounded in his broad chest. “Easy, boy,” Sam said softly. “Nobody’s going to hurt you.”

  “I don’t think he believes you,” Maria whispered as the dog’s growl only grew more intense, his paws spreading as if going into a fighting stance.

  “I think you’re right,” Sam said, taking a slow step backward. Maria did the same.

  The dog turned away from them and stepped back to the stagecoach, its growl turning into a whimper, a plea for its master to appear and assure him that all was well.

  “What do we do for him now?” Maria asked with a quiet sigh.

  “There’s nothing we can do for him right now,” Sam replied. “He’s still a little dazed. We’ll give him some room overnight and hope he’ll settle down enough to either ride on with us a ways or go on back to Albertson with the townsmen when they get here.”

  “Sí,” Maria said, watching the poor dog whine and try to scratch its weak paw at the stagecoach door, “and if he goes back to Albertson, what will become of him?”

  Sam made no reply, which in itself was answer enough for Maria.

  “Someone will shoot him, won’t they?” she answered for herself.

  “Yes,” Sam said quietly, “I’m afraid so. That’s what usually happens to an animal like this if no one can take the place of his master. They can’t just turn him loose and let him run wild. It’s no good for him or the folks around him. A wild dog becomes dangerous real quick, especially one this big and powerful.”

  “Perhaps he will settle down and listen to you?” Maria offered.

  “I doubt it, Maria,” Sam replied, “
so let’s not get our hopes up.”

  “But if he will settle down, do you think he could stay with us? I hate to think that he must be shot simply because the man he belonged to was killed. That only compounds the injustice of what has happened here.”

  Sam listened and considered, but before he could reply he saw the big cur loop unsteadily around the coach. The dog scratched once again at the door, then turned and moved away into the brush. “Uh-oh, there he goes.” As he hurried to catch up to the big dog, he called back to Maria, “Do you know what the colonel called him? Was it ‘Sergeant,’ or ‘Tom’ or what?”

  “I don’t know,” Maria replied. “I only know his name is Sergeant Tom Haines.”

  “Nobody calls a dog by a name that long,” Sam said as he hurried to the edge of the brush. “Sergeant,” he called out, “come back here, Sergeant.” He paused for a moment, then called out, “Tom, here, Tom.”

  The two listened closely, but they heard only the sound of the dog breaking farther and farther away, deeper into the thickening brush. Finally Sam walked back to where Maria stood. “Are we going after him?” she asked.

  “No,” Sam said, “that’s too big of a dog to be tracking into brush, him in the shape he’s in. We best leave him alone. He might wear himself down and come back here, to where he left the colonel. As weak as he is he can’t go far.”

  “If he doesn’t come back, then what?” Maria asked with a concerned look on her face.

  “I don’t know,” Sam said. He did not want to talk about all of the things that could happen to a wounded dog, on his own in rugged unforgiving terrain. “I expect we’ll just have to wait and see. Things like this aren’t always in our hands.”

  “I understand,” said Maria. For a moment the two stared out into the dark hillsides in silence, and then she added, “We say things are not in our hands, yet isn’t it up to us to decide which things are, and which things are not?”

  The ranger didn’t answer. Instead he walked back to the fire and sat down. Maria watched him sit there for a long time, his hands wrapped around the tin cup, his eyes staring into it as if matters of great importance lay beneath its metal rim.

  Chapter 6

  As Maria lay wrapped in her blanket beside the fire, Sam sat for a long time, his rifle across his lap, his blanket thrown across his shoulders against the chilled night air. Finally, in the middle of the night, he stood and walked to the stagecoach at the edge of the firelight and took a folded handkerchief from the dead colonel’s tunic pocket. He unfolded the cloth enough to find four pieces of jerked elk meat inside, then refolded it and stuffed it into his trousers pocket.

  Moments later, Maria awoke to the feel of Sam’s hand on her shoulder. “Maria, wake up.”

  Her eyes blinked as she looked all around the outer edges of the shadowy campfire light. “What is it, Sam?”

  “I’m taking a torch and going after the colonel’s dog.” On the ground lay an unlit torch he’d made while he’d contemplated the task before him.

  She sat up, awake now. “But you said ‘some things are not in our hands.’ ”

  “I know what I said,” Sam replied, “and you said it’s up to us to decide which things are. I decided this one must be in my hands”—he grinned—“because here I go.” He handed her a cup of warm coffee. “I saved this for you, to help keep you awake until I get back.”

  “Sí, gracias,” she said, taking the cup. “So I will know I’m not dreaming this?”

  He reached out a hand and brushed a strand of dark hair from her face. “No, it’s not a dream, you’re hearing me right.” He stood, his duster and sombrero already on. Taking his rifle, he picked up the unlit torch in his right hand. “I figure he hasn’t gone very far. He should be worn down enough for me to get close to him.”

  “But if he is still dazed from the bullet . . .” Maria let her words trail.

  “His thinking ought to be a little clearer by now. He took a hard knock on his skull, but that’s been a good while ago.” On the ranger’s shoulder hung one of the coiled ropes.

  She nodded in agreement. “Be careful, Sam. I will call out to you if anyone arrives from Albertson.”

  Sam nodded, then said as he walked away toward the brush in the direction the dog had taken, “I won’t go too far. I just figured he might have wanted to come back but couldn’t make it. I wouldn’t feel right leaving him here thinking that was the case.”

  “I understand,” Maria said with a slight smile. She watched him walk out of sight.

  Inside the brush, with only the pale light of a half-moon overhead, the ranger followed a meandering path of brittle, parted brush as far he could. A thousand yards deep into the rocky hillside, when he reached a small clearing where the brush was replaced by scrub juniper and young pine saplings, Sam stooped down, took out a match, lit the torch and moved it back and forth near the ground, finding the dog’s paw prints.

  Seeing no blood on the dog’s path was a good sign, he thought. It meant that the big confused animal had not opened any of the stitches in the tangles of brush.

  “Sergeant . . . Sergeant,” he called out quietly as he moved along in the flickering firelight, not liking the idea of searching for a dazed and wounded animal in the dark.

  He stood in silence listening for any sort of response, a growl, a whine, a rustling on the ground, anything. But he heard nothing. Moving forward out of the clearing, he followed the paw prints for another fifty yards and stopped beside a dead standing aspen. “Tom,” he called out, trying another variation of the dog’s name. “Tom.” He stopped and listened, still hearing no response.

  He walked deeper into a taller, older stand of pine and juniper and said to the darkness before him, “Sergeant Tom Haines.”

  He waited for a moment, then started forward. But before he’d taken a step he heard a weak whimper and the thrashing of bracken and pine needles only a few feet away.

  “Sergeant Tom Haines,” he said again. This time he expected a response and got it. In the darkness beneath a large pine less than twenty feet away, he heard the dog whining and thrashing harder as it rose onto its tired paws.

  Hurrying forward, his torch high, Sam found the big dog standing shakily in a bed of dry pine needles, it paws spread for support. Sam could see that the stitches in its head were holding up well, save for a thin dry line of blood from the end Maria had left open for drainage. “Easy, Sergeant Tom Haines,” Sam said, feeling almost foolish calling a dog by such a formal-sounding name.

  The dog looked exhausted, yet much clearer in his eyes as he stared at the ranger and offered a slight but uncertain wag of his tail. “Good boy, Sergeant Tom Haines,” the ranger said softly. “If that’s what you’re used to being called, I expect that’s what I’ll call you.”

  Stepping forward slowly, giving the big dog all the time it needed to catch his scent and understand his intentions, the ranger lowered the coiled rope from his shoulder and held it low for the dog to see. “Come on, Sergeant Tom Haines, it’s about time you and I got acquainted.”

  The dog’s nose probed the air before him, his eyes glittering with curiosity in the flickering torchlight. His hackles rose only slightly as the ranger stepped closer. The big cur even took a short step forward himself, his nose going toward the ranger’s trouser pocket. “That’s it, you check me out all you need to,” Sam said in a soothing tone. “I’m known as an honest man hereabouts.”

  He eased his gloved hand close to the dog’s probing nose, holding the rope for the dog to see, smell and understand. “I’ve got no surprises here, no tricks or sudden moves,” Sam said. The dog stood still as the end of the rope slipped under his collar.

  Feeling the dog’s skin ripple a bit as he tied the rope in place, Sam rubbed his neck gently, up near the thick jaw muscles that had supported the animal while he’d hung in the air. “You’ve got a sore spot there?” Sam said, taking his hand away when the beginning of a low growl rumbled in the dog’s chest. “All right, duly noted,” Sam added q
uietly.

  Standing with the rope tied to the dog’s collar, the ranger took a step forward, giving only the faintest tug on the rope. “Come on, Sergeant Tom Haines,” he said, “let’s take you home.”

  The dog sniffed the ranger’s trouser pocket, looked up at him in the torchlight and walked along beside him as if they’d known each other for years. Sam breathed a sigh of relief. He hadn’t been afraid of the big cur, but he had dreaded what he knew he would have had to do if the dog refused his help.

  But this was good, Sam told himself as the two walked along quietly through the rocky, brushy terrain, Sam holding the torch high. Getting the dog used to him made it more likely that the animal would get used to others. He was certain someone in Albertson would want to make a home for a big strong dog like this one. Wouldn’t they?

  The two proceeded without incident until they reached a spot less than thirty yards from the campsite, where suddenly the dog stopped and gave a low growl toward the darkness lying ahead of them. So intense were the dog’s actions that the ranger took heed and crouched down beside him. “Easy, boy,” he whispered, “I got your message.”

  The dog’s growl ceased; he stood stiff and silent, his full attention riveted on something in the darkness to the right of the campsite ahead. The men from Albertson? Sam asked himself. He hoped so. But to be on the safe side, he rolled the torch back and forth in the rocky dirt until the light disappeared, replaced by a gray plume of smoke that dissipated sidelong through the brush and trees.

  Standing in a crouch, he stepped forward, the dog right beside him. “Come on, Sergeant Tom Haines,” he whispered, “let’s see how good you are at your job.”

  Peyton Quinn and Grady Black sat in the grainy darkness, awaiting the return of Antan Fellows. Fellows, a half-breed, had slipped down from his horse and scouted ahead on foot to investigate both the campsite and the torchlight that they’d seen moving across the hillside. “I figure it was just one of them had to go to the jake,” said Black. He spit a long stream of tobacco juice.