The High Rocks

by Loren D. Estleman

  “Do your people enjoy seeing suffering that much?”

  “We enjoy it no more than the whites. When a man commits a crime among your people, he is usually compelled to hang from a rope by his neck until he chokes his last. Our punishments are neither worse nor better. They are just different.” He finished eating and rolled himself up in the buffalo robe he used for a blanket. “Sleep,” he said. “We will move again at dawn.”

  I sat there a moment longer, gazing at the uneaten slice of bacon. In the firelight it took on a reddish glow, as though it were dripping with fresh blood. I thrust it inside my coat and made ready for bed.

  Staying awake was harder than I’d anticipated. In many ways, riding a horse all day long is more exhausting than walking for the same length of time, and in spite of the cold and the hardness of the ground I had all I could do to keep my eyelids from falling shut of their own weight. I stuck it out for the better part of an hour, and then I got quietly to my feet and picked up my saddle, holding onto the cinch lest the buckle jingle. Rocking Wolf lay motionless beneath his buffalo robe on the other side of the guttering fire. With the saddle under my arm and the blanket and saddlebags slung over my shoulder I stepped cautiously through the wet snow to where our horses were standing in the shelter of the pines, mine tethered, the Indian’s hobbled. I gazed longingly at the painted stallion for a moment, but I was no bareback rider, and saddling it was out of the question as it was unfamiliar with the procedure and would undoubtedly have balked and alerted its master. Besides, I was getting used to the chestnut, which says something for the adaptability of human nature. I saddled the mare.

  I had my foot in the stirrup and was about to swing my right leg over when something piled into me from behind and carried me with it to the ground, emptying my lungs upon impact and clapping my jaws shut with a jarring snap. The mare whinnied and tried to rear, pulling taut the reins that held it. Snow sifted down from the pine’s shivering boughs. My skull rang. Dazed, I lay on my face in the snow for a long moment, grinding pieces of what had been a perfectly good molar between my teeth. Then I scrambled to my feet and swung around, fists clenched. I stopped when Rocking Wolf placed the muzzle of the Colt I had borrowed from Henry Goodnight against my forehead and drew the hammer back with a sound like a walnut being crushed.

  “I wondered what had happened to that,” I said finally. I let my hands drop to my sides.

  Moonlight drenched the Indian in silver, but it might just as well have been dark for all the expression he wore. His bearskin and leggings were covered with snow from his tackle. “You might have died, white skin,” he said. “I would not like to see that happen. Not until we have found Mountain That Walks.”

  He held the gun on me while I unsaddled the chestnut, and kept me covered all the way back to camp. Then he put the weapon away inside his bearskin and settled down on his side of the glowing ashes as if nothing had happened to disturb him. His seeming carelessness didn’t tempt me. It would have pleased him to shoot me in the leg during an escape attempt; I would still be alive to lead him to his quarry and would give him less trouble. Wrapped in my blanket, I lay back and stared at the sky. The moon, shot with clouds like black arteries in a blind man’s eye, was full. Tomorrow it would begin to wane, eventually to be replaced by a new moon.

  “Don’t remind me,” I muttered, and drew the blanket over my head. But that was too much like what they do to corpses, so I pulled it down and turned over onto my left side.

  When day broke, crisp and cold as the leftover slice of bacon I had for breakfast, we had left the camp far behind and were starting up the grade that wound into the mountains. The wind had died down, but that was only temporary, the lull before the big blow. The air stung my nostrils and the sun was so bright coming off the clean surface of the snow that I was forced to ride with my eyes squeezed shut most of the time to keep from going snowblind. It was because of this that I failed to see the tracks on the northern slope until my horse was right on top of them.

  I turned to the Indian, but he had already noticed them. He nodded once, curtly. I obeyed his unspoken command and dismounted for a closer look.

  Four horses had trampled the snow into a trail of slush that girded the mountain from east to west.

  “Have you ever known Mountain That Walks to travel with companions?” I asked Rocking Wolf.

  “Never.” He bounded to the ground and squatted for a moment beside the trail. “Nor have I known him to ride a shod horse. You have laid a poor trap, white skin.” He drew out the revolver and pointed it at me.

  “Put it away,” I said, wearily. “I thought you Indians were supposed to have such good eyesight Can’t you see that one of these men is wounded?” I pointed out the spots of blood that peppered the snow.

  He spent a long time studying the crimson specks. Finally he returned the gun to the inside of his bearskin and stood up. “We will follow them,” he said. “If it is a trick, you are the one who will pay.”

  We didn’t have far to go. Two miles later the Indian reined in and signaled for me to do the same. He sniffed the air. I followed his lead.

  “Wood smoke,” I said.

  He didn’t reply, but kicked his horse gently and together we rode forward at a walk around the bend of the mountain. We halted at the top of a rise that fell away before us into a fan-shaped hollow, at the bottom of which three men sat huddled around a fire at the base of a lone pine. A fourth lay wrapped in blankets nearby. Their horses, tethered to the tree, craned their necks to nibble at the needles on the lower branches above their heads.

  “White men do not belong in the wilderness,” observed Rocking Wolf in a low murmur. “It is a foolish camper who kindles his fire beneath a tree heavy with snow.”

  “Not if he doesn’t want anyone to know he’s there,” I said. “Those branches do a pretty good job of breaking up the smoke so that it can’t be seen from a distance.”

  “You know them?”

  I nodded. “It’s Church and his bunch, the Strakeys and Ira Longbow. That’s Church, the small one with his back to us. They’re the party Two Sisters′ scouts reported seeing a few days back.”

  “Will they give us trouble?”

  “They want what we want. Of course they’ll give us trouble.”

  We were picking our way down the slope when one of the tethered horses spotted us and began snorting. Church, who had been facing away from the rise, sprang up and spun on his heel, drawing his gun as he did so. On the other side of the fire, Ira Longbow rose slowly with his Dance in his hand. He wore the black Spanish hat I’d seen earlier, low over his eyes in the manner of a caballero, but it didn’t help; he still looked like a half-breed. The third man, Homer Strakey, Sr., watched us from a kneeling position beside his son’s prostrate form. As before, I was unable to tell if he was wearing any weapon at all. Which made him the one to watch.

  We stopped five yards from camp, and for a space the horses’ fidgeting was the only sound for miles. Then Strakey, Jr., began moaning in a low voice and broke the tension.

  “Page Murdock.” A grin flickered across Church’s face, but it was just his peculiar tick manifesting itself once again. He made no move to holster the gun. He had a gray woolen scarf pulled down over his hat and knotted beneath his chin, and he had discarded his duster in favor of a hip-length sheepskin coat that looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned since it was removed from the sheep. “You turn renegade?” His crossed eyes took in the Indian mounted beside me.

  I assured him that I hadn’t, and introduced Rocking Wolf. The bounty hunter laughed shortly and spoke over his shoulder to the half-breed. “Two Sisters’ nephew, Longbow,” he said. “I reckon that makes him your cousin. Ain’t you going to say howdy?”

  Longbow said nothing. He eyed the Indian from beneath the brim of his hat, the whites glistening against the dusky hue of his face.

  A gray enamel coffee pot gurgled atop the fire behind Church. “Coffee smells good,” I said. “Mind if I have a cup?” I place
d my hands on the pommel of my saddle, preparing to dismount. Church raised the gun.

  “I’d rather you didn’t,” he said.

  I relaxed my grip on the pommel. On the other side of the fire, Junior gasped and arched his back beneath the blankets that enveloped him, cursing rapidly in a breathless voice. His father placed a gnarled hand against his chest when he tried to sit up and eased him back down. The young man’s face shone with sweat in spite of the near-zero weather. There was pink froth on his lips.

  I watched him until the convulsions subsided, then returned my attention to the bounty hunter. “Like to tell me what happened?”

  “Not especially.”

  “I’ll tell you what happened.” The old man spoke without looking up. He was supporting his son’s head with his right hand and massaging his chest with the left. His voice was shrill and cracked. “That injun-scalpin’ bastard kilt my boy.”

  “You found him?” Rocking Wolf leaned forward eagerly.

  “We found him,” said Church, loosening a little. “He was gutting a buck in a stand of pine eight, ten miles east of here.” He snorted. “They told me he was big; they didn’t say he was huge. His hand just about swallowed up the bowie knife he was using. We rode right up to him, got the drop on him. I told him to stand up. At first he acted like he didn’t hear me. I said it again, and that’s when he cut loose.

  “He had a rifle inside that carcass. He fired twice, blasting a hole through the back and hitting Junior in the belly with the first shot. There was so much blood and meat splattered over him you couldn’t tell which was his and which was the deer’s. The second shot went wide. I fired back and so did the breed. I think one of us hit him, because he staggered, but in the confusion he got to his horse and hightailed it east.”

  “You didn’t follow him?” I prodded.

  “Hell, no. He knows this country better’n anybody. We’d of rid straight into an ambush. Longbow says he’ll return to the trail on the other side of the mountain. We’ll head him off from this direction after we break camp. We been riding most of the night.”

  “What about young Strakey?”

  “He’s done for. I’d of put him out of his misery hours ago, but the old man won’t let me.” He grinned spasmodically. “I care about the men I ride with.”

  “Christ, that’s touching.”

  The mirth fled Church’s face. “What’s your business here, anyway? Sheriff Goodnight said you was taking a prisoner up to the capital. That him?” He flicked his gun barrel toward the Indian.

  I told him about Brainard and about how I came to be riding with Rocking Wolf, including the deal I’d made with his uncle. It was surprising how little time it took to recount the story.

  “I don’t believe it.” This time it was Longbow who spoke. “Two Sisters hates the white man. He wouldn’t drink out of the same lake.” The way he said it left me with few illusions regarding his own sympathies in that direction.

  “That sounds strange coming from a half-breed who claims to be his son,” I retorted.

  “Son of a bitch!” he spat, and fired the Dance straight at my head. But by that time I was already moving, flinging myself sideways off the saddle just as the bullet clipped the brim of my hat. I hit the ground, rolled, and came up on the other side of my horse. Longbow drew down on me again.

  “Stop.”

  Rocking Wolf′s command, delivered in a dry monotone, made the half-breed pause. He looked up at the Indian. I did too, turning my head just enough to keep both of them in sight.

  The Indian had unslung his Winchester, and now he sat with it trained squarely in the center of Ira Longbow’s narrow chest. No one, not even Church, had seen him move.

  “Ira, you are so damned dumb.” The bounty hunter spoke like a father who had caught his son behind the barn with his neighbor’s daughter. “Put the gun away before somebody gets killed.”

  “Tell that to the Indian. My business is with Murdock.” He steadied his revolver at my head. I ducked. To hell with my reputation:

  “Homer.” Church pronounced the name flatly. It was answered by a metallic click from beyond the fire.

  The half-breed cast a wary eye in that direction, where the old man, still crouching over his son, had slid the latter’s percussion cap pistol from his belt and was pointing it at Longbow. Strakey′s white-stubbled jaws worked ruminatively at a plug of tobacco the size of a crabapple.

  “I don’t like to get mixed up in family quarrels, Ira,” said Church, “but if you don’t put that gun where it belongs, I′ll have Homer splatter your brains all over this side of the mountain.”

  Not too far away, a squirrel leaped down from a tree and thumped through the snow to another, stopping once to chatter angrily at the intruders in its midst. It might have been the most important thing there, the way all of us appeared to be listening to it. Finally, Longbow eased the Dance’s hammer back into place and returned it to its holster with a brutal thrust.

  “Good boy,” said Church. He returned his attention to Rocking Wolf. “Your turn, injun.”

  The nephew of the chief of the Flathead nation didn’t have to be told that two guns were better than one. Without removing his eyes from the half-breed, he uncocked the rifle and slung it back over his shoulder. His face remained impassive as ever. I exhaled, only then realizing that I’d been holding my breath.

  “I just give you your life, Murdock,” said the bounty hunter. “I hope you remember that.”

  “What makes you so generous?” I reached up and took hold of the chestnut’s bridle, stroking its neck with the other hand to calm it down. Unarmed as I was, it seemed a good idea to keep the animal between me and the half-breed as much as possible.

  Church holstered his weapon with a dime-novel flourish, proving that there’s a little Henry Goodnight in all of us. “I got one rule,” he replied. “I never kill law. Not unless it gets in my way so bad I can’t go around it.”

  “I’d say I’m in your way right now. We’re both after Bear Anderson. We can’t both have him.”

  “You ain’t in my way. Not yet.”

  “But if I should be later?”

  “Like I said, I hope you remember that I give you your life once.” He shot a glance over his shoulder at Longbow, who stood glaring at us from his side of the fire. “You’d best ride. I don’t know how long I can hold back the breed. If you get kilt, I’ll have to kill the injun too, and I’d rather not make an enemy of the Flatheads this early in the hunt.”

  “I guess that means we don’t get any coffee.”

  “You wouldn’t appreciate it anyway. Old Man Strakey can read sign like a Blackfoot, but one thing he can’t do is make coffee.”

  “One warning.” I mounted the mare and looked down at him. The scarf gave his narrow face an animal cast, like a cross-eyed fox. “The Flatheads have been trying to get the drop on Anderson for fifteen years, and all they’ve gotten for their trouble is the biggest burial ground in the Northwest. He didn’t get his reputation by running away.”

  “He ain’t been wounded before.”

  “Ever hunt a wounded bear?”

  He shrugged. “I ain’t taking no more unnecessary chances. Warrant says dead or alive. I tried it one way. There ain’t but one way left.”

  “Good luck.” I gathered up the reins and began backing the horse down the trail. Rocking Wolf followed suit.

  “Which way you headed?” called Church.

  “East.”

  “You’re the one needs the luck.”

  Once we were out of effective pistol range we turned around and headed back the way we had come. After we had gone a mile, I cast a sidelong glance at the chief’s nephew. “You risked a lot back there,” I said.

  “I had little to lose.” He kept his eyes on the trail.

  “All the same, I suppose I should thank you. I can’t think why it sticks in my throat.”

  He met my gaze. “I said before that I am not yet prepared to see you die.”

  Parallel
ing the trail left by Church and his men, we reached the point around nightfall where they had shot it out with Anderson. The buck carcass was gone—dragged, judging by the marks in the snow, into a thicker grove of trees a hundred yards to the north. In its place lay a shaggy gray hulk stretched on its side, the hole where its throat had been now empty and black with frozen blood. Its fangs were bared in a death’s-head grin. “A pack,” observed Rocking Wolf, indicating the paw-prints that overlapped each other and obliterated the tracks left by the bounty hunters’ horses. “Fifty, perhaps more. They fought over the kill once and will again. By morning the sound of their further fighting will attract more wolves from the lowlands.” He scanned the snow-swept countryside as if searching for the beasts. “Tonight one of us will sleep and the other will stand guard.”

  “Are you volunteering?”

  He looked at me, reading my thoughts. “Not necessarily,” he said. “You will remember that I sleep lightly.”

  The tracks of an unshod horse, a big one, led east around the base of the mountain. Rocking Wolf dismounted to inspect one of the dark spots that mottled the snow around them. They were so similar to those that had marked the bounty hunters’ trail that I had paid them little attention, assuming them to have been left by young Strakey. But now I noticed that there were more of them farther on, beyond the point where the opponents had separated. They showed black in the light of the rising moon.

  “He has been hit,” confirmed the Indian, standing. “Much blood has been lost. He is in trouble.”

  “More than you think.” I pointed to the snow at Rocking Wolf’s feet, where the track of a large wolf overlapped one of the big horse’s hoofprints.

  “Perhaps they have grown tired of venison.” He mounted and waved me ahead of him down the trail. “There is much moonlight. We will follow for one hour.”