Day of the Wolf

by Charles G. West

  As he had estimated, he struck the Cheyenne River after riding two full days. He decided to make camp there while he investigated some fresh deer sign on the riverbank. With no particular need to hurry, he also took some time to reconsider his planned route into the mountains. After some thought, he decided not to return to the fork with the Beaver River, instead continuing farther north, paralleling the mountain range for another day’s ride before entering the foothills. There was no practical basis for his change of mind; it just struck his fancy at the moment. With his campsite selected, he took care of his horses. Once he was sure they were able to get to grass and water, he hobbled Brownie, but not his horse, satisfied that the bay would not stray from where he left him. Then he trotted off through the cottonwoods that lined the river in search of the deer that had recently passed that way, and eager to try his newly acquired Winchester. He had had no occasion to fire it before.

  The hunting was successful, producing a fine young doe for butchering, killed with one well-placed shot behind the deer’s front leg. He was pleased with the accuracy of the Winchester, and the balance of the weapon felt just right. He had expected as much, confident that Ned Bull would have settled for nothing less. Aware of a feeling of peace within himself, he remained at his camp on the river for two days, taking his time to prepare the meat for packing. With his horses well rested, and a good supply of meat, he departed from the Cheyenne River and headed north, thinking to see a part of Paha Sapa he had never seen before.

  His feeling of serene contentment did not last, for on the second day after leaving the river, he encountered the first of several trails leading into the mountains. They were made by shod horses, and in a couple of cases, there were wagon tracks as well. Ned had been right and the knowledge of that had a devastating effect on Wolf, for he envisioned the sacred hills alive with activity, like ants swarming over an anthill. That was not the case, however, as he rode deeper into the mountains, looking for a campsite that suited him. He moved several times over the next couple of weeks when he discovered neighbors too close for his liking. The first of these sightings—they were not really encounters, for he felt sure the occupants of the camps never saw him—occurred after hearing a gunshot echoing across the valley below him. Knowing that it had to have come from the neighboring mountain, he left his horse at his camp and crossed over to investigate on foot.

  A strong stream made its way down to the valley floor and offered the best route up the steep slope, so he started climbing. He had made his way not quite fifty yards up the stream when he was met by half a dozen deer that scattered when they saw him. His guess was that the gunshot he had heard was the cause of their flight down the mountain. Judging by the time it had taken for him to reach that point on the mountain, he assumed the shot had been fired a good bit farther up the slope. As he continued to climb, he cautioned himself to make sure he wasn’t mistaken for a deer.

  He heard their voices before he actually saw them. There was the sound of laughter, and as he drew closer, he identified them as white men. There were three of them, and one of them was being good-naturedly chastised for shooting at a deer and missing. “I reckon we ain’t gonna be dinin’ on fresh venison tonight after all,” one of them said.

  “Well, they come up on us so quick, I didn’t have time to aim,” the butt of the joke replied.

  Wolf left the stream and circled up above them, where he knelt among the pines to observe their camp. They looked to be building a sluice box out of what appeared to be parts of a wagon bed that they had evidently packed in on a couple of mules that were tied on a rope line between two trees next to their horses. Wolf slowly shook his head when he thought how easily a Sioux war party could surround the three men. And he had no doubt that the Sioux would not tolerate the intrusion upon their sacred mountains. If the army could not keep the prospectors out, then men like these three were sure to die. He would not have believed it if someone had told him that the army had already given up on enforcing the treaty with the Indians, and that there were already small towns forming in other parts of the mountains. Feeling crowded, he withdrew quietly and made his way back down the mountain to return to his camp. The next day, he packed up his camp and moved farther north.

  Boyd Dawson rode into the town of Medicine Bow on a late summer day. He knew where to find his three brothers, so he went straight to the Cattleman’s Saloon. Operated by Barney Grimes, it was the usual hangout for the Dawson boys whenever they were in this part of the territory. Barney was well aware of the Dawson gang’s real line of business, which was far from the cattle business they claimed to anyone who happened to inquire. He was a direct beneficiary of their “business trips” along the railroad towns of the Union Pacific, and knew the name of Smith they used when occupying his two back rooms was an alias. In fact, it was a standing joke between the saloon owner and the gang that they holed up right there under the noses of the soldiers stationed in Medicine Bow.

  Boyd walked into the saloon to find two of his brothers sitting at a table in the back corner of the room, talking with Barney Grimes. “Well, lookee here what just blowed in off the prairie,” Buck Dawson remarked, causing his brother Skinner and Barney Grimes to turn in their chairs to see. “We didn’t expect to see you for a while. What happened? Did that little ol’ Cheyenne gal wear your ass out?” His comments brought a chuckle from the other two seated at the table.

  Boyd didn’t bother to respond to the ribbing. Instead, he got right to the reason for his unexpected arrival. “I got some bad news for Aunt Mavis,” he replied.

  “What might that be?” Skinner asked.

  “Mace, Arlo, and Beau Taggart are all dead, gunned down by a U.S. marshal and some half-wild gunman. There ain’t no menfolk left of the Taggarts.”

  This gained the immediate attention of the three at the table. “What the hell are you talkin’ about, Boyd?” Buck demanded.

  “Ned Bull brought Arlo right here in Medicine Bow to put him in jail,” Boyd told them.

  “Arlo was here?” Skinner responded in honest surprise. “In jail here?”

  “That’s right,” Boyd replied, “but only for one night. That marshal took him out the next mornin’, headin’ to Fort Laramie, only I reckon Ned Bull didn’t wanna bother with cousin Arlo, ’cause he shot him before they ever got to Laramie. He rode into Fort Laramie with poor Arlo’s body a-layin’ across his saddle.”

  “I swear,” Buck gasped, finding it hard to believe, “Arlo dead?”

  Immediately riled, Skinner blurted, “We need to pay Ned Bull a little visit.” He paused then, remembering what Boyd had said when he came in. “But you said Mace and Beau, too.”

  “That’s right,” Boyd said, “but there ain’t no need to go lookin’ for Ned Bull, ’cause Mace took care of him. He’s dead.” He went on then to tell them of Mace’s arrival at Clem Russell’s trading post with some wild man chasing him after he’d already done for Beau. “He walked right in there and slit Mace’s throat while I was asleep in the store.” Both of his brothers looked at him expectantly. “He was gone before I woke up,” Boyd exclaimed in his defense. “I was goin’ after him, but I couldn’t find hide nor hair of which way he went, so I had to give up on it. I don’t know how he did it, but he didn’t leave no tracks.”

  Both men were properly incensed to hear that their three cousins had been slain and nobody had answered for the foul deed. “I bet I’ll find his trail,” Skinner claimed, “long as there ain’t been no rain or nothin’ to wipe it out.”

  “What was you talkin’ about when you said a ‘wild man’ killed Beau and Mace?” Buck wanted to know.

  “I don’t know for sure,” Boyd said. “He might be an Injun. Clem and his woman said his name was Wolf. She thinks he’s some kinda spirit or somethin’.”

  “Huh,” Buck scoffed. “Spirit—I’ll make him a spirit if I catch up with him.”

  “We’re goin’ after him, ain’t we, Buck?” Boyd asked anxiously. “I mean, them Taggarts was just cousin
s, but that’s the same as family, ain’t it?”

  “Hell yeah, they’re family,” Skinner said, “and Pa always said you got to take care of family. Ain’t that right, Buck?”

  “That’s right,” Buck answered. “We’ll get the son of a bitch. I’m tired of lyin’ around here, anyway. I’m gettin’ downright rusty, and we ain’t doin’ nothin’ but makin’ Barney here rich.”

  “Where’s Nate?” Boyd asked.

  “Lyin’ up in the room,” Buck said, “sleepin’ off a drunk.” He paused to think a moment. “We’ll head out to Clem’s place first thing in the mornin’ and see if Skinner can pick up the trail. Somebody needs to ride down and let Aunt Mavis—and Ma and Pa—know that her three sons are dead, but we’ll do the reckonin’ for her. Nate can do that.”

  “He ain’t gonna like that,” Boyd said. “He thinks he’s a wagonload of hell with that six-gun of his.”

  “He’s the youngest,” Buck said. “He might complain, but he’ll be the best to do it.”

  Buck was right: Nate did complain when told of the brothers’ plan to seek vengeance for a sin against the family. “Why do I have to ride back home?” he asked. “Why can’t Boyd do it? He’s the next youngest, and I can outshoot him.”

  “The hell you say,” Boyd retorted. “I’ll outshoot you any day of the week, and twice on Sunday.”

  “Ain’t no use in arguin’,” Buck told him. “You go on back and tell the folks what happened. Besides, Boyd’s the one that knows where to start lookin’ for this feller’s tracks.” He looked at Boyd then. “What did you say his name was? Wolf?”

  “That’s right, Wolf is what Clem said his name was,” Boyd replied.

  “Well, now,” Skinner crowed, “he sounds like a real hellion, don’t he? Let’s see what he looks like on the inside when I open him up with my skinnin’ knife.” His comment brought an amused grin to Buck’s face. Skinner had come by his nickname when little more than a toddler, because he took his father’s knife and tried to skin a two-week-old puppy the family dog had given birth to.

  They were in the saddle early the next morning, heading for Clem Russell’s trading post on the North Platte, while a still-unhappy Nate rode in the opposite direction to take the news of the three Taggart brothers’ demise to their mother on Lodgepole Creek. He would have complained more, but Buck was the eldest, and he was the boss when his pa wasn’t around.

  Clem Russell was slopping the hogs when the Dawson boys rode down the trail from the ridge above his store. He prodded the boar with a stout pole designed for that purpose to nudge the big hog to the side so that the old sow could get to the trough. When he stood back to watch them eat, he caught sight of the visitors. Shaking his head slowly, he mumbled, “Here comes a heap of trouble for somebody.” He started for the store then, yelling as he walked, “Jewel, company’s a-comin’, and they’ll sure as hell want somethin’ to eat!” It was with mixed emotions that he greeted the gang’s visit. It always meant extra money in his pocket for the grub and whiskey they consumed, plus some extra if some of the boys were a little bit rutty. So he shouldn’t complain, but the Dawsons were as mean a bunch of conscienceless miscreants as he had ever met up with. The Taggarts were evil, too, but he had never feared them as much as the Dawsons. Sometimes he asked himself how he happened to be on their list of hideouts, and the only reason he could come up with was that the gang needed places where they could get supplies and ammunition without a lot of questions. Clem was smart enough to figure out that the only reason they didn’t kill him and clean him out was simply that they would need him again. Consequently, they paid for everything they took, so he couldn’t complain—at least, not too loudly.

  Clem stood by the front porch of his store, waiting to greet his customers as they rode up and dismounted. “Howdy, boys,” he said, trying to sound as gracious as he possibly could. “I see Boyd brung you back, like he said he would. I expect you’re hungry. My woman’s cookin’.”

  “Clem,” Buck acknowledged. “Some decent grub would be welcome right now.” He stepped up on the porch and stuck his head inside the door to look around, making sure there was no one else in the saloon. Satisfied, he turned back to his brothers. “Boyd, take Skinner up on that ridge and find me a trail to follow. I wanna leave out of here in the mornin’.” His two brothers got back in the saddle and did as he said. Then he laid his big arm on Clem’s shoulders and walked with him to the bar. “Tell me about this feller that had Boyd talkin’ crazy stuff about a wild man or somethin’.”

  “I don’t know if he’s a wild man or not,” Clem replied. “But I saw him when he walked into the store here, and he had a look like a crazy man, just itchin’ to kill somebody. Boyd was asleep on that cot in the corner, and like I told him, he was lucky he didn’t jump up. That man woulda cut him down before he could blink an eye.”

  “Is that a fact?” Buck responded. “I don’t know, Boyd ain’t exactly slow. If it’da been Nate, though, it mighta been a different story.”

  Clem looked around then, just realizing that the gang was one short. “Where is Nate?” he asked. “He ain’t in no trouble, is he?”

  “Nah,” Buck said. “I sent him home to tell the folks the bad news about the Taggart boys. Now, what about this wild feller?”

  “Well, like I told Boyd,” Clem continued, “he wouldn’ta had much of a chance against this feller. Hell, Boyd was asleep, and still pretty drunk. He didn’t know anythin’ about it till after this Wolf feller was done and gone. He asked Jewel if Boyd was a Taggart, she told him he wasn’t, and he turned and left. I reckon he was just lookin’ to wipe out the Taggarts.”

  “That’s what he did, all right,” Buck stated, “and now he’s gonna have to pay for killin’ my cousins. The Dawsons don’t take kindly to anybody bringin’ harm to our family.”

  “Set down yonder at the table,” Clem said, “and I’ll go see what Jewel’s doin’ ’bout fixin’ you and your brothers somethin’ to eat.”

  While Buck went to the table in the back corner of the saloon, Clem went out the back door to the kitchen, where he found the stoic Indian woman stirring a big pot of beans. She glanced up at him with weary eyes devoid of emotion. “Make sure there’s plenty of ham in them beans,” he told her, then paused to give her a closer look. “For Pete’s sake, change that rag you’re wearin’. Put on that dress you just finished makin’, so you don’t look like you been sleepin’ with the hogs.”

  She turned those lifeless eyes up to him again and asked, “You stir beans?”

  “No, hell no,” he replied indignantly, “I ain’t gonna stir the damn beans. I’ve got customers to attend to.” He spun around to return to the saloon. “But you get yourself outta that dirty rag and into somethin’ that might make you look a little more like a female.”

  She paused to stare at his back as he went through the door. He would never know the desperate thoughts that filled her mind, for he was incapable of understanding the hell he had created for her over their years together. In the beginning, he had courted her as a man would court a wife. But the relationship soon turned into something she had not counted on, when she became a commodity to be sold in his store and used like the hogs in the pen. She had run away once in an attempt to return to her Cheyenne people, but he had caught her and dragged her back to be severely beaten and threatened with death if she tried it again. After a while she became oblivious of the rough pawing of his drunken customers, and one day realized that it was too late for her to think about escaping. So she resigned herself to her fate as a white man’s slave. Even so, she had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach when she heard Boyd and Skinner coming in the front door.

  Clem, on his way to the table with a full bottle of whiskey, turned when he heard them behind him. “Come on in, boys. We’ll have somethin’ for you to eat in a minute or two.”

  “Any luck?” Buck asked.

  “I reckon,” Skinner said. “Didn’t need none, though. Found tracks where a couple of horses came up o
ut of a gully ’bout thirty or forty yards the other side of that path leading down from the ridge. Boyd woulda seen ’em if he’da looked a little farther than the end of his nose.”

  “I was just in too big a hurry to get after him,” Boyd attempted to alibi. “I musta missed that gully.”

  Skinner gave him a knowing grin and continued. “I can track the bastard—two horses, one of ’em shod, the other’n barefoot.”

  “Which way did he go?” Buck asked. “Follow the river?”

  “Nah,” Skinner said. “He didn’t follow the river more’n a hundred yards before cuttin’ away to head straight north. Long as we don’t get no gully-washers or it don’t snow, I can track him.”

  “Good,” Buck said. “The son of a bitch has already lived too long to suit me.”

  The conversation was interrupted briefly then with the arrival of the sullen Indian woman with their food. She was still wearing the same soiled dress, but there was only one who took note of it. Clem glared angrily at her as she spooned beans out on each plate, then went back to the kitchen to get a platter of bread, baked fresh that morning.

  The atmosphere around the table that night was not the usual loud and rough talking affair that the Dawsons normally indulged in. There was a fair amount of drinking, but Skinner and Boyd were both aware of their elder brother’s somber mood. It was something they had seen before, when he made up his mind that someone had to be dealt with. There was no argument from either when Buck told them to put a cork on the bottle and get to their blankets, because he was planning to go hunting early in the morning. All the Dawson brothers enjoyed hunting, and it was especially exciting when it was human prey they stalked.