Leadville

by James D. Best

  McAllen appeared to have picked our campsite offhandedly. Four days had taught me how impressions can be wrong. Sharp had found a recess in the rocks to build his morning fires that could not be seen from above. The boulders gave us protection from attack and shelter from the chilling wind. We had climbed through some rocky shale to enter this shelflike plateau, and the horses seemed content not to challenge the loose rocks downhill as long as there was ample grass nearby. Even the little waterfall had unanticipated benefits. I could rinse my dirt-scrubbed pots and plates without sullying my handkerchief.

  In fact, I was doing just this chore when I heard Sharp say that he could see Red riding toward us. I hastily shook the water free, threw the plates into our do-everything pot, and scrambled to watch Red ride in. He looked as fresh as if he had been out on a half-hour ride, but his face told me nothing, so I checked McAllen’s expression. Nothing there either.

  Red dismounted and walked straight up to McAllen. “I found them.”

  “And?”

  “The girl is not with them.”

  Chapter 10

  Through tight lips, McAllen asked, “Where are they?”

  “Half day’s hard ride … in a small valley, a ways up Sleeping Ute Mountain.” Red pointed. “Probably went there because they feel safe. Legend says the sleeping Ute is a great warrior-god that will slay the enemies of the Ute.”

  McAllen didn’t bother to look toward the mountain. “No sign of my daughter?”

  Red uncharacteristically looked away and then met McAllen’s eyes. “They have her horse … and I saw them using her dress for a sack.”

  “A sack?”

  “They tied the neck with the arms and used it to collect berries.”

  Only McAllen’s eyes changed. “How many?”

  “Seven. One’s a young brave.”

  “Tell me the rest.”

  “After two days, I had found no tracks. I picked up the other posse on the first day, so I went back and followed them, hoping they had discovered the trail and covered it over with their own horses. They led me straight to the Utes.”

  “They have a tracker with them,” Sharp offered.

  Red nodded. “They camped two miles from the band. Only one horse went back and forth … at least twice. Looks like they powwowed.”

  McAllen paced back and forth. Finally, he stopped in front of Red. “Same rider or different riders?” McAllen seemed to think this was important. “The half-breed might have approached first and returned for instructions. Another rider might have gone in to negotiate.”

  “The tracks weren’t clear enough to be sure, but my guess is two different riders.”

  “Damn!” McAllen paced some more.

  “That posse was het up,” Sharp said. “Why would they let the Utes go free if they killed your daughter? The Utes must have turned your daughter over to them.”

  “The band was not wary,” Red offered.

  “See, they released her,” Sharp said encouragingly.

  “Naked?” McAllen spit the word with so much anger, he frightened me.

  We all stood silent until Sharp had the courage to say, “Perhaps they had other clothes for her?”

  “Less valuable than a berry sack?” McAllen’s voice showed frustration with this line of thought. “Jeff, take Steve back to Durango.”

  “You need us,” I protested.

  “This is gonna get brutal. I don’t want a do-gooder along.”

  “An odd handle for me after what we’ve been through together.”

  McAllen gave me a hard look. “I ain’t looking for a fair fight.”

  “What are ya lookin’ for?” Sharp asked with an edge. “Revenge?”

  McAllen swung around on Sharp. “Answers. This stinks. I want to know what happened and why. We’re gonna take two alive and get answers.”

  The number worried me. If McAllen wanted two, it meant he thought one might not talk before he lost the ability to talk. This was going to get brutal. It seemed that both McAllen and Sharp harbored serious doubts about this abduction, so I turned to Red. “How does this affair strike you?”

  Red took so long to answer, I thought he might refuse to respond. Finally, he said, “The Utes up north are on the warpath, but these braves probably jumped the reservation weeks or months ago. They don’t act like a war party. No other marauding. A tribe will raise whites as their own but not renegades. Renegades wage war or hide. These look to be hiding.”

  “Is it likely they would kill the girl?” I threw a sideways glance at McAllen but continued anyway. “After they were through with her.”

  Red swallowed. “They would have used her and killed her right off … or kept her for the winter.” He hesitated and then added, “I believe these Utes jumped the reservation merely to live the way of their fathers. How they got involved with the girl looks strange. I don’t understand it.”

  “Damn it, those Indians ain’t gonna stay put forever!” McAllen yelled. “I want to scout their camp before nightfall, so you two get going … or wait here. I don’t give a damn either way.”

  With that, McAllen went to his bed and began to roll it up. Sharp looked at me with a raised eyebrow. I nodded and went to pack my own gear.

  When McAllen saw we intended to go with him, he said, “No packhorses. Take food for two days in saddlebags and hide the rest. Pen the packhorses, and we’ll pick everything up on the way back. Jeff, show Steve how to collect our horses.”

  “Can I holler?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “Can I make a loud noise?”

  “Sing for all I care,” McAllen said. “That band of Indians is hours away.”

  I walked over to our food bags and rummaged around until I found a carrot. Walking a little way out of camp, I cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled, “Chestnut!”

  When my horse started walking in our direction, I snapped the carrot. Chestnut immediately trotted right over. When Sharp looked dumbfounded, I said, “So … how do you collect your horse?”

  Despite the situation, Sharp laughed. McAllen did not. He just picked up his lariat and went after his own horse.

  Chapter 11

  In five hours we were on a rise above the Ute camp, peering down at them through field glasses. We had left the horses behind a ridge and scurried low until we took shelter behind some brush overlooking a small meadow. The Utes were digging in for the winter. They had constructed shelters out of branches and covered most of them in hides. Three of the men were dressing a deer. They hung the skins to dry and carved off the meat in thin strips and hung them as well. In a few minutes, a teen Ute emerged from the woods toting the dress with something inside that weighted it down.

  “I count five,” McAllen said. “The other two are probably hunting. We wait for all seven.” McAllen handed me the field glasses. “Are you as good a shot as you said?”

  “What do you want me to hit?”

  “I want you to shoot two of the Utes in the shoulder or leg … from here.”

  I didn’t put the field glasses up to my eyes. “Tough. About two hundred yards.” I thought about it. “The shoulder’s risky, and a man hit in the leg can still have a lot of fight.”

  “Then go for the leg. They’re not carrying weapons.”

  “Have to be fast. The second man might be moving.” I was talking to myself.

  “Boy.”

  “Boy?”

  “Shoot one of the men first, and then go for that boy.”

  “I don’t know if I can shoot a boy.”

  “For God’s sake, Steve, we’re gonna kill the rest.”

  “Don’t give me that, Captain. You want the boy because you think it’ll be easier to make him talk.”

  “Damn it; just tell me … can you do it?”

  “You’re going to kill them from ambush?” I asked. “The other party talked to them.”

  “Someone in the other party was in cahoots with them.”

  “What?”
/>   “Tell ’em, Red.”

  “If they’d murdered the girl, they would kill anyone who approached and run. Probably the same if they still had the girl. And they wouldn’t parley with a white if one of their own was in the party.”

  “You don’t know that, and you aren’t even sure two different riders went into their camp.”

  “Look at them,” McAllen said. “They show no fear of reprisal. This meadow may be hidden, but it’s low. A good place to ride out a winter, but too close to travel lanes for fugitives. They’re not afraid.”

  “The posse came directly here,” Red added.

  “An’ the posse didn’t attack,” Sharp threw in. “Odd—whether they got the girl back or not. Those men tramped out here to be town heroes.”

  All of them seemed convinced. “Say you’re right. Then the real culprit is back in town, the one that wanted your daughter abducted by these Indians.”

  “Damn it, Steve. This is why I told you to go back. You’re headstrong and always go against my counsel. You did it in Nevada and now here.” McAllen turned his face to the ground and took a deep breath. “Listen, those Indians didn’t ride up and snatch her. She rode into them. Her mother told me she rode the same trail every day, through that pastureland below Mesa Verde—the main route to Colorado from the West. She was an expert rider on a good horse. A band of Indians couldn’t catch her in that open ground. Did you notice that swale close by where she got grabbed?”

  I thought back. “Yeah.”

  “They waited for her. Renegades hiding along a heavily traveled route to capture a girl when she rode into them.” McAllen pounded his fist in the earth. “They knew her routine.”

  I picked up the field glasses to examine the scene and to give myself time to think. Sharp had held reservations from the beginning. McAllen and Red were experienced with Indians, and their Pinkerton jobs forced them to think like criminals. They must be right. I had been forewarned this venture would be brutal, and there was no reason to argue further.

  I pushed the glasses away from my face. “Captain, for me to wound them, we need to exchange rifles. Mine’s designed to kill buffalo.”

  McAllen nodded and we switched rifles. I made a quick examination of his Winchester Model 1873 and then went back to watching the Indians prepare for winter.

  A sharp noise. Damn. The two absent Utes were behind us—directly behind us.

  Chapter 12

  Everybody went into action. As Sharp and McAllen rolled onto their backs, blazing away, I dropped the field glasses and picked up my rifle. I trusted the others to deal with the two behind me and pointed the rifle at the meadow. The first target that came into my sights was the boy. I shot him in the hip. I shot a second Ute in the upper leg, but he continued to limp toward some objective. I aimed to shoot him again below the waist, but just as I squeezed the trigger, his leg gave out and he fell. A spume of blood exploded from his head. I searched for any others and saw two Utes go down from a series of shots that came from Red. I spotted a lone brave racing toward one of their shelters, and when I squeezed off a single shot, a volley hit him or threw up puffs of dirt behind him. All four of us had shot at the last man. I flipped on my back to check the two who had been behind us. They were dead. All seven of the band were down. To my knowledge, no Ute had fired a shot.

  “Come on!” McAllen yelled, as he leaped to his feet and bolted down to the meadow.

  When I rose, my legs felt shaky, but I forced myself to run after the other three. Then I saw McAllen’s concern. The only moving body was the youth. He seemed determined to crawl to the same point that was the focus of the second Ute I had shot. He was going for a weapon. McAllen ran thirty yards ahead of me, but he would not reach him in time. I stopped and fired two shots into the ground ahead of the boy, but he didn’t stop. If he reached a rifle, he would be killed. I hesitated just a moment, and then shot him again in the leg. He uttered no sound that I could hear, but thankfully he quit crawling.

  When I caught up, the three men had formed a rough circle around the youth as Red talked to him in a quiet tone. I saw the knife. He may have been crippled, but he still had fight. Red said a few more words, and the youth finally flipped the knife away. McAllen and Sharp immediately left to check the other Utes. While I kept my rifle on the boy, Red picked up the knife, went over to a shelter, and cut a long strip of leather from a hide the Indians had used to cover the branch structure. He brought it back and used it as a tourniquet on the boy’s leg. The hip wound would be more difficult. Red was cutting open the dress when McAllen returned.

  “What are you doing?” McAllen demanded.

  “Making a compress,” Red said.

  “Not with my daughter’s dress. Find something else.”

  “Captain—”

  “No, goddamn it!”

  Red looked about to drop the dress on the ground, but he quickly curbed the impulse and handed it to McAllen. Then he walked off, evidently to find other material.

  McAllen turned his wrath on me. “I told you I wanted two alive.”

  “Well, you got one. Better make the most of it.” The fight had made me edgy as well.

  “Damn it. I meant to threaten to kill the boy if the brave didn’t answer my questions. Now, I gotta get my answers from that child.”

  A child he was. From a distance, I had guessed he had reached his teen years, but up close he looked as young as ten or eleven. I felt ready to explode, but suddenly fatigue, and perhaps the relief of still being alive, washed over me. “Captain, I tried.”

  McAllen’s hard face softened. “I know … sorry, Steve.” He looked at the ruined dress in his hand and sadness seemed to overwhelm him. “Things don’t always go the way you want in a fight.” If possible, his expression became even more forlorn. Before I could think of any words of comfort, he turned and walked away. As I watched him retreat, I saw McAllen smell the berry-stained dress.

  “Ya know about treatin’ wounds?” Sharp pulled me back to our situation.

  “Not much.”

  “Then I’ll help Red. Why don’t ya check those shelters for any sign of the girl?”

  I started off toward the first shelter, thankful for something to do.

  Just as I stepped away, Sharp added, “Be careful. Enter rifle first. Could be more’n we thought.”

  I found no more Utes. Of the four partially built shelters, two were living quarters, and the other two held supplies and food stores for the winter. When I returned from searching the camp, McAllen and the others stood talking about ten feet away from the wounded youth. The captain waved me over. “Find anything?”

  “I found her saddle and bridle. No personal stuff. No shoes, hat, coat.” I shrugged. “Nothing.”

  Red and McAllen looked at each other. “You look everywhere?” McAllen asked.

  I was about to give a snippy answer but caught myself. “Yeah, all four shelters. Other than her gear, no other sign of your daughter.” McAllen looked puzzled so I added, “I found some things that might be normal, but they struck me as odd.”

  “What?” McAllen demanded.

  I pointed at the two far shelters. “Inside I found canned goods, tobacco, sugar, whiskey.” I thought a second. “A couple pots, a saw, an axe … stuff I didn’t think Indians packed with them.” I glanced at Red. “At least not Indians that want to live like their forefathers.”

  “I ’xpect you paid for those supplies,” Sharp said.

  “Me?”

  “That two-hundred-dollar credit you set up at the general store.”

  “Jeff’s right,” McAllen said. “The posse probably traded those goods to the Utes.”

  “For what?” I asked.

  “That’s what Red will find out from that boy.”

  I looked at Red and then at the youth. “I’ll go get our horses.”

  “Thanks,” McAllen said. “Don’t forget to pick up the field glasses.”

  Without a word, Sharp hitched up alongside me, and we both walked to the rise
where we had first observed the Ute camp. I pulled out my watch and was startled to see that less than an hour had passed since the two returning hunters had surprised us.

  “Will it go bad for the boy?” I asked.

  “No worse than if he had been caught by Shoshone.”

  “Are you justifying what’s going on back there?”

  “Nope. Just somethin’ that’s gotta be done.”

  “Why are you with me?”

  “I’d rather not be a demon in that boy’s nightmares.”

  Chapter 13

  Sharp and I each led two horses back to the Ute camp. As we approached, McAllen marched toward us looking so grim and threatening that I had to suppress an impulse to mount up and ride away.

  When he got within earshot, he yelled, “We’re returning to Durango. Now!”

  I looked at the sky. “Captain, we can’t—”

  “Now, goddamn it!”

  Without another word, Sharp and I stepped into our saddles, and by the time we had gathered up the reins, the rushing McAllen had reached us and swung onto his horse without a moment’s hesitation.

  “Jeff, run Red’s horse down to the camp and tether him. Move it!”

  As Sharp trotted down to the camp, I asked, “Red’s not coming with us?”

  “He’s staying with the boy for a few days. He’ll catch up later.”

  I felt relief that the boy was still alive. We watched Sharp in the distance lean off his saddle and flip the reins of Red’s horse around a drying rack and then wheel his horse about and race back to us at a full gallop. I thought when Sharp reached us, we would get some explanation, but McAllen rode off before Sharp arrived. Soon, we made a single-file line and retraced our path from earlier in the day.

  We rode hard for about an hour, and then dusk slowed us down to a walk. We were not on a trail, and the mountain terrain was rough going. Without Red to guide us, I wondered how far McAllen would continue to push on in the dark. In another half hour, I got my answer.

  McAllen pulled up under some rocks in a flattish space no bigger than a one-room cabin. “We’ll wait here until light,” he said.