Day of the Wolf

by Charles G. West

  It was early afternoon when Wolf reached the site of Mace’s camp on the North Platte, suggesting to him that maybe he was gradually closing the distance between himself and his prey. Taggart’s horses were tiring. Wolf was confident he would soon be forced to stop long enough to give them a good rest. Since he had bypassed Fort Fetterman, Wolf speculated that Taggart might be heading for old Platte Bridge Station, now called Fort Casper, although it was no longer an army post. Eight or nine years ago the army had pulled out of Fort Casper and sent the troops to Fort Fetterman. His Crow mentor, Big Knife, had told him that a man named Guinard had built a bridge across the river and a trading post on the spot many years before the army had established a post there. Wolf knew that there was a trading post still there, although now run by a man named Clem Russell. He had never done business with Russell, primarily because it had never been convenient, but he also had a natural tendency to avoid the trading post because it had a reputation for being a favorite hiding-out place for outlaws. It made sense that a man like Mace Taggart would be heading there. Since it was still early in the afternoon, he continued on to make camp within ten miles of Fort Casper. Looking back over the way he had come, he could see no sign of the two extra horses. It appeared that they had finally decided to accept their freedom. His packhorse would have no trouble living off the prairie grass. It was used to it. Ned’s packhorse might take some time adjusting to the diet.

  Boyd Dawson was having a drink of whiskey with Clem Russell when Mace Taggart rode down from the ridge to the log trading post perched on the edge of the bluffs. In a natural reflexive action, Boyd jumped to his feet and pulled his pistol from his belt, almost upsetting his whiskey in the process. “Who the hell is that?” he demanded, as if Clem would know. He hurried up to stand just inside the door where he could get a good look at the man approaching on horseback. “Well I’ll be…,” he said after a moment. “It’s Mace.” He dropped his revolver back in its holster and walked out on the porch to greet him. The second he stepped out of the door, the man on horseback reacted much the same way until he recognized him. Mace pulled up right in front of the porch and stepped down. “Damn, cousin,” Boyd remarked, “from the looks of them horses, you musta been doin’ some hard ridin’. Somebody chasin’ you?” He took a long look back at the trail before adding, “I hope to hell it ain’t a posse.”

  “I swear, Boyd, what are you doin’ here?” Having ridden as if the devil himself were after him, Mace was at once relieved to be greeted by a friendly face. He had no way of knowing if he had been chased or not. He had not waited around to see, but the image he had seen at the top of that ravine looked like something out of hell, and was a problem he didn’t care to deal with. Seeing his cousin here restored his courage to the point where he could regain his calm.

  In answer to Mace’s question, Boyd said, “I’m on my way to meet my brothers down near Medicine Bow. I’ve been up here to visit a little Cheyenne gal in ol’ Red Wind’s village.” He gave Mace a little wink. “But all those bucks are gettin’ stirred up and talkin’ about goin’ on the warpath. It wasn’t too healthy to stay around much longer, being the only white man there.” Clem Russell walked out on the porch then, and Boyd went on. “I had to stop by and spend a little money with ol’ Clem here. I was afraid he wasn’t stealin’ enough to get by.” He laughed at his joke.

  “How ya doin’, Mace?” Clem asked. “Ain’t seen you in a good while. Arlo was here for a day or two, till Ned Bull jumped him and dragged him off to Cheyenne. Did they lock him up?”

  “They killed him,” Mace replied, causing Clem and Boyd both to react with shock. “That marshal shot him down on the trail to Fort Laramie.” An immediate frown of anger took possession of Boyd’s face. Mace continued. “Me and Beau went after Ned Bull. He ain’t gonna be shootin’ nobody else.”

  Boyd glanced at the empty saddle on the buckskin. “Ain’t that a horse like Beau rides?”

  Mace nodded solemnly. “That’s Beau’s horse,” he answered, “but they shot Beau.”

  “Who did?” Boyd demanded. “That marshal?”

  “No. I killed Ned Bull, but he musta had a posse with him, because they got in behind us on a ridge and they hit Beau. Killed him dead. There wasn’t nothin’ I could do for him, and there was too many of ’em for me to fight, so I had to run for it.”

  “Damn,” Boyd swore, “Arlo and Beau both, I can’t hardly believe it. What’s poor Aunt Mavis gonna say when she hears that sorry news?”

  “I know,” Mace said. “It ain’t gonna be easy to tell her. She’s gonna want somebody to pay for it.”

  “Damn right,” Boyd said, “and I feel the same way. Somebody’s got to pay when it comes to family.” Working himself up to a righteous wrath over the thought, he asked, “How many was there in that posse?”

  “I can’t say for sure,” Mace replied. “They were hid back up behind the rocks at the top of a long ravine, so I couldn’t see all of ’em. But there was bullets flyin’ all around me when I made a break for it.”

  That was enough to plant a worrisome thought in Boyd’s mind. “You think they’re on your trail?”

  “Nah, I don’t think so. I’da seen somethin’ by now. I was pretty careful.”

  “Well, we ain’t takin’ this lyin’ down,” Boyd ranted. “We need to show the law it’s gonna cost ’em when they come after the Dawsons and the Taggarts. This is family business. We’ll go fetch the rest of the boys and we’ll teach that bunch of farmers to mind who they’re dealin’ with.”

  Boyd’s bravado seemed to bolster Mace’s courage. The only one not inspired was Clem Russell, already picturing a bloody war taking place in his saloon. He hesitated to make any demands on behalf of himself or his store, however, and limited his participation to no more than a suggestion that they should all have a drink. That seemed to be the obvious first step in the counterattack on the murdering “posse,” so the meeting moved inside. When Mace came back outside a couple of hours later to take his horses to Clem’s stable behind the store, the plan had been settled to ride to Medicine Bow and enlist Buck, Skinner, and Nate into the vengeance committee.

  The drinking went late into the night, which brought a fair profit to Clem. Mace even expressed intentions to avail himself of Clem’s woman’s special services, in spite of his disdain for her. But his overindulgence in Clem’s whiskey rendered him incapable of completing that quest, which brought a fair amount of relief to the Indian woman. All except the woman were reluctant to rise from their beds the next morning, leaving her to breakfast alone while Clem slept in the small room in the back of the store and Boyd snored lustily on a cot in the corner of the store. If the sullen Cheyenne woman saw the silent figure that stopped by the one window on the side to survey the scene inside, she gave no indication. Seeing no threat from those inside the trading post, the figure moved silently along the wall of the store toward the barn in back, pausing briefly at the corral to observe the buckskin and spotted gray standing with the other horses. Inside the barn, Wolf found two stalls. The man he looked for was in the second, fast asleep in the hay.

  He moved quickly to the sleeping man, knelt beside him, and shook him gently several times until he struggled to climb out of his alcohol-induced slumber. “What is it? Whaddaya want?” Mace slurred, still very much drunk. “Leave me alone.”

  “Mace,” Wolf pronounced his name. “Is that you, Mace?” He had no desire to kill the wrong man.

  “Yeah, it’s me,” Mace blurted angrily. “For Pete’s sake, leave me alone. My head’s about to bust.”

  “I can fix that,” Wolf said softly. He grabbed a handful of Mace’s hair, pulling his head sharply up. An instant later, his skinning knife opened Mace’s throat. It was only then that Mace became fully aware of what had happened to him as the sound of his breath wheezed out of his gaping throat. “You should not have killed Ned Bull” were the last words he heard on this side of hell.

  His mission done, Wolf had one more thing to check on, so he
returned to the front door of the trading post and entered. The Cheyenne woman made no move and no sound when the man in animal skins suddenly appeared in the doorway, a Winchester rifle in his hand. Wolf looked at her, then looked toward the corner where Boyd was just beginning to stir on the cot. Turning back to the woman then, he asked, “His name is Taggart?”

  She shook her head slowly, then spoke. “His name Boyd Dawson.”

  Wolf nodded solemnly. “Then I got no quarrel with him.”

  He started to turn and leave, but Clem appeared in the doorway to the back room, holding a shotgun. When he looked into the eyes of the baleful avenger, the Winchester rifle ready to speak, he dropped the shotgun at once and held up his hands. Wolf fixed his gaze upon the frightened storekeeper for a moment before taking a step toward the door. “You’re him, ain’t you?” Clem asked hesitantly. “The one they call Wolf.” Wolf didn’t answer, but Clem was sure it was the man the Indians talked about, the one some of them were convinced was a spirit and not a man at all.

  Chapter 8

  Left to stare at the open door in shocked silence, Clem Russell could not be certain if the man he had just seen was real or the remnants of a drunken dream. Looking at Jewel, he received no enlightenment until she finally spoke. “Wolf gone,” she expressed unemotionally. “You want food?”

  “Food?” Clem echoed. “Hell no. I need a drink.” He felt himself trembling, still unable to think clearly. “Yeah,” he said then, changing his mind. “I need food. Go ahead, make some coffee and cook some breakfast.” He turned, startled, when Boyd separated himself from the cot in the corner of the room and headed for the door with the intention of answering nature’s call. Clem had forgotten he was there and, seeing his hungover guest, was also reminded that there was another sleeping in the stable.

  “What the hell’s the matter with you?” Boyd asked, noticing the startled expression on Clem’s face. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Maybe I have,” Clem answered honestly.

  “No ghost—Wolf,” the Cheyenne woman offered unemotionally, causing further confusion for Boyd.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you two?” Boyd demanded, thinking them both loco.

  “We’d best go check on your cousin in the barn,” Clem replied. “We had a visitor here in the store while you was still sleepin’.” He started at once toward the door.

  “What?” Boyd exclaimed. “I didn’t hear nobody.” Still confused, he followed Clem out the door.

  “It’s a good thing for you that you didn’t,” Clem told him as he walked briskly toward the stable. “And if we find what I think we’re gonna find in the barn, you’re damn lucky your name ain’t Taggart.”

  As Clem had suspected, they found Mace Taggart’s body sprawled on the hay, a gaping slash across his throat, and a death mask of wide-eyed horror eternally fixed on his face. In a fog of confusion to that point, Boyd was staggered to see the blood-soaked body of his cousin. “What the hell…? What the hell…?” was all he could manage at first. Then he grabbed Clem by the collar and demanded to know what had happened, for his initial reaction was that Clem or his sullen woman had for some reason murdered Mace.

  “Take it easy!” Clem sputtered. “I ain’t had no part in this.” When Boyd calmed down enough to listen, Clem recounted the events of the past half hour or so.

  Still dazed by what Clem told him, Boyd found it hard to believe all this had gone on while he was sleeping right there in the corner of the store. “And you didn’t make no move to stop him?” he asked. “Let him walk right in here and kill Mace?” Recovering from his initial shock somewhat, he was now getting angry.

  “Ain’t no call to get riled at me,” Clem said. “He’d already done for Mace when he walked in here. I went for my shotgun, but he had the drop on me. And the only reason you’re still alive is that my woman told him your name wasn’t Taggart.”

  It was still a lot for Boyd’s aching head to assimilate, but he finally realized what Clem was trying to tell him. And it also registered in his mind that the “posse” that chased Mace to Clem’s place was actually one man, according to Clem’s story, and the audacity of that man riled him no end. His delayed reaction was to go after the man who had murdered his cousin, but it was delayed a few minutes more by the urgency that had caused him to wake up before. While he took care of nature’s demands in a corner of the stall, he told Clem of his intention to track down this “Wolf” spirit and avenge his cousin, knowing that was what any of his brothers or his father would do. Clem shook his head, somewhat doubtful, for he had heard the stories about the spirit that haunted the mountains. “You don’t reckon you’d best eat somethin’ first?” he asked.

  “No,” Boyd replied quickly, then reconsidered. “Maybe some coffee, if she’s got it done. The longer I lallygag around here, the farther he’s gonna get.”

  The more Boyd thought about what Clem had said, the more he wished his brothers were with him. This fellow who killed Mace might be the cougar Clem described. He saddled his horse, but then went back in the store to drink a cup of coffee and eat some pan bread the woman had made, although his stomach was not really prone to accept anything substantial yet. When Clem asked if he still intended to go after Wolf, Boyd responded, “Hell yes, I’m goin’ after the son of a bitch! Mace was family.” He admitted to himself, however, that Mace was never an especially favorite cousin. But dammit, he thought, he’s still family!

  With no knowledge that Wolf had left his horses in a gully in the ridge above Clem’s store and moved down to the bluffs on foot, Boyd spent a great deal of time scouting the clearing around the store, searching for fresh hoofprints. There were many, some he had created himself with his own horse. None looked fresher than two or three days old. “Well, what the hell?” he complained to Clem. “Did he fly in here like a damn bird?”

  Clem shrugged. “Maybe—” he started, but Boyd cut him off.

  “Don’t start up with that shit,” he warned. His warning did little to strengthen his resolve. “He had to leave some tracks on the trail in here. I’ll go up on the ridge and look there.” He got on his horse and rode up the trail leading away from the trading post. At the top of the ridge, he spent more time searching around the head of the trail. There were fresh tracks from two horses rising out of a gully some forty yards from the trailhead. Had he searched that far along the ridge, he would probably have found them. He would not admit, even to himself, that he was relieved not to have found any tracks. After two hours of wasted time, he returned to the trading post. “I don’t know how he did it,” he told Clem when he got back, “but there ain’t no tracks a’tall, and I can’t trail him if I can’t find his tracks.”

  “I reckon not,” Clem said, keeping his opinion to himself. His Cheyenne wife grunted her opinion, causing Boyd to respond.

  “Oh, he ain’t got away with this,” he insisted, “not by a long shot. He’s done signed his death sentence, and that’s a fact. I’m headin’ down to Medicine Bow to get my brothers and we’ll track him down. I don’t care how good he is at hidin’ his trail. My brother Skinner can track an owl at night.”

  Boyd didn’t hang around long after filling his belly with fried bacon, beans, and pan bread. The alcohol he had consumed the night before was not through with him yet, however, and he promptly emptied the contents of his stomach beside the trading post. Afraid to tempt it again, he settled for one more cup of coffee before he departed, heading for Medicine Bow with a queasy gut and an aching head. Clem was content to see him go, and hoped he didn’t show up at his store with the rest of his brothers. “If he knows what’s good for him,” Clem commented, “he’ll leave Wolf the hell alone and count himself lucky to have got away without gettin’ his throat cut.” He dragged out a long sigh and turned toward the barn. “He sure as hell didn’t offer to hang around to help me stick Mace’s body in the ground, did he?”

  By the time Boyd Dawson left Clem Russell’s store, Wolf was nearly fifteen miles away from the
North Platte, riding a course he thought would take him in the direction he needed to follow. He figured he had settled Ned’s account with the Taggart brothers, and that was the end of it. Heading generally northeast, he hoped to strike the Cheyenne River in a couple of days. From there, he felt he could work back to intersect his original trail into the foothills to the Black Hills, where Ned had overtaken him. He had already decided to forget thoughts of signing on as a scout at Fort Fetterman. Without Ned to vouch for him, he was not confident that the army would take a chance on him, and there was the possibility that he would be recognized as the escaped prisoner from Fort Laramie. In spite of what Ned had told him about the trouble brewing between the army and the prospectors, and the possibility that the Sioux were going to come down on both of them, he decided he would see for himself if the hills were being overrun by white prospectors.

  Visible for miles before reaching them, the odd mountain chain stood out as an island of hills and trees in the treeless prairie surrounding them. They at once looked out of place in the midst of the high prairie land, as if some spiritual hand had placed them there as a sacred refuge of tall mountains covered with pines, with clear, rushing streams. It was a place of mystery, and there was little wonder that the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho called it Paha Sapa, the center of the world. He understood their reverence for the mountains and felt that he shared it as well, feelings that were left over from his one visit a few years back. It made him wonder why he had left there.

  He reached in his pocket and pulled out the two double eagles Lorena had given him, and examined them carefully. “Maybe I can learn to find gold,” he said to Brownie, remembering that Ned used to talk to the horse all the time. He stroked the face of his horse then and said, “Maybe I need to start talkin’ to you. You don’t even have a name.” He was not a deep thinker. If he had been, he might have realized that his mind was more at ease now with the prospect of returning to his lonely existence in the mountains. It was the only life he really knew.