The Hunted

by Ralph Compton

  As if she’d read his thoughts, Delia shouted, “Hester! Hester? Where are you?”

  Charlie kneeled down beside her. “Everything’s gonna be all right, girly. Don’t you worry none. Ol’ Charlie’s got things all taken care of, you wait and see if he don’t.”

  He gently patted her dirty, small hand. So light and pale, how could a body be so frail seeming and still get around?

  And what was he going to tell her about Hester? What was there to tell? He didn’t know where she was. He’d stomped all over this campsite and nudged everything that made a hump under the snow, but found no bodies. Not even an ox or a mule or horse. He was relieved at that. He’d half thought that those bastards would have killed Mabel-Mae because she was his. He reasoned that if he couldn’t find her, and if they were in a killing mood, they’d kill Mabel-Mae before they’d turn a gun on Hester. So he took not finding his mule as a good sign.

  “Night’ll be coming soon,” he said in a low voice, almost a whisper, to no one. The snow still fell in slow flakes, more clumped than usual and straight down, which boded well for them. It meant no wind. Didn’t mean it wouldn’t change, but for now, he’d take whatever little help nature offered.

  He made his way slowly back to the wagon and brushing off the boards and seat, the wheels and traces, he managed to investigate much of what the freighters had left. Charlie had earlier toed what sounded like metal, and when he rediscovered it, he found it was indeed one of a number of pieces of the gear he’d tried to tell Rollie about, mining equipment that he knew the folks in Gamble would need come spring. But Rollie still hadn’t seen the use in it.

  Now it all came flooding back to Charlie’s mind. Rollie had revealed his plan to his boys, unaware that Charlie had overheard. It all seemed as if he were recalling a dream, but somehow he knew he had really heard it. Rollie’s plan called for them to draw close to the town, then set up camp and wait out the folks from Gamble, lure them out if need be, and shoot them as if they were trapped swimming in a shallow puddle. It was downright inhuman, murderous, and treacherous. And Charlie knew he couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t try to stop them.

  He looked round, aware that his chest felt tight, his throat choked with pent rage. Fight it down, Charlie, he told himself. Even if you did want to go after them, you have a sickly young woman, and your own self is wounded, who knows how bad? Judging from the pains in his side and the blurriness of his vision, he didn’t think he was in very good shape.

  He’d been hurt plenty of times before. Shot once, in the meat of the leg, though the slug passed through. That wound only ached in the cold and damp—both of which he reckoned the weather was giving him in double doses right about now.

  Charlie tried to occupy his mind with the task at hand. He kept on flipping over boards and rummaging, and soon enough he let out a yelp of joy. He’d found a few overlooked tins of milk and meat, and even one tin without markings. Could be anything. He’d save that one for last. With all those cans, plus snow, which he could melt in the can, he reckoned they’d make out, for a time anyway.

  On his way back to the fire, he passed the back of the wagon and saw the leather case, closed, with the gun inside. He’d forgotten about that.

  He grabbed and slid it back in the carpetbag. When he hefted the bag out of the wagon, it revealed the scorched bulk of the second bag. They were bound to have clothes in there for Delia to wear. Maybe if he got her to put on enough of them, she’d feel better. He also knew he had to find her medicine.

  “I was waiting for you to come back. I thought maybe you’d left me here.”

  “Are you joshing me?” Charlie tried to sound happy and carefree, not an easy task, considering their predicament. “I’m way too afraid of wolves and bears to go off on my own out there.”

  He saw the flash of worry on her face and realized he probably should not have talked about such creatures to her. “I meant—”

  “I know what you meant, Charlie. It’s fine. I’m not a baby. Just a little under the weather. You didn’t happen to find my bag in there, did you?”

  He smiled and held up a blackened bulky object. She smiled. “Oh, thank you. Could you bring it here? I’m so tired and I think I need a little of that medicine.”

  “You sure it’s still here?”

  She shook her head slowly. “No, I’m not sure. But I have to look. I saw Hester slip the last bottle in there. She’s been rationing me. It’s laudanum, you see, and she didn’t want me to make a habit of it.” Delia smiled, her eyebrows raised high. “Can you believe that? As if I have to worry—” She didn’t finish the statement, but let it hang in the air between them.

  Charlie guessed at what she meant, but hoped maybe he’d got it wrong. He set to pawing around in the other bag. “I don’t suppose there are slugs for the shotgun in this bag?”

  “Should be,” said Delia, smiling wide and pulling free a half-filled bottle. “Hester always kept charge of that. She was going to give it to Vin. Said it was a way to welcome him into the family. Which I thought was very nice of her, considering how she really felt about him. But no matter. Love is love is love, right, Charlie?”

  She’d swigged and Charlie knew very soon she would begin to feel the effects of the drug. Mild at first, but she’d soon be smiling and relaxed. For that he was glad.

  “You don’t know where my sister is, do you, Charlie?”

  He’d been afraid to bring it up. He cleared his throat. “No, ma’am, that’s a fact, I do not. But I have a feeling she’s fine.” Fine as she can be with those bums, he thought, but didn’t say anything of the sort out loud.

  “Charlie, promise me you’ll get me to Gamble. Hester will be there, I know it. She’s never let me down before. She has to be alive. I would miss her so, Charlie. She is my world, you know.” A single tear slid down her cheek.

  Charlie knew he and Hester were two peas in a pod—both caring for this girl, both stuck in situations not of their making, both determined to get to Gamble, though for entirely different reasons.

  While he still had daylight, Charlie dragged more wood over, not taking much care to keep down the noise, since the girl appeared to be sleeping soundly. He was going to heat up food for her, but she didn’t stay awake.

  As he sat down he felt another pain, one he hadn’t felt before. Down below his waist. He reached down there and felt the familiar thickness of his sheath knife beneath his swollen fingers. So they hadn’t taken that from him.

  How far did they get with three wagons and all those animals, in what would soon be a foot of snow and being led by a drunken, murdering madman?

  Charlie used the knife to pry open a tin of meat, then pawed around in the carpetbag and pulled out a couple of garments that looked as though they might be warmer than what he had on his hands, which was nothing. His feet throbbed with the cold, but he didn’t dare slip off his boots, as he suspected he’d find a swollen, black-and-blue mess, and he’d never get the blamed boot back on over it.

  Then his hand once again brushed against the leather case. He slipped it out of the bag and stared at it for a minute or so. Then shook his head. A pity, as odds of finding shells were slim to none.

  Still, there was always the possibility. He felt around in the bag, and then his hand closed around a fist-sized box of shells. He guessed that would be a box of two dozen. That made his night. With the gun and his knife, there was little they could not do.

  Then he stopped short. He’d thought “they,” and then fought down the bile rising in his throat. There was no way he could track those scoundrels with a sickly girl in tow. Heck, he was gimped up himself and the girl was in bad shape at the best of times.

  Soon sleep tugged at his eyelids. He’d worry about tomorrow tomorrow. Just now he didn’t give a fiddle about anything else but covering up the gun, slipping it back in the carpetbag, and laying more wood on the fire. It was a bold, powerful
blaze now, and as Charlie sat back to admire and enjoy it, he almost smiled. If they had died, they’d never be enjoying these splendors now, would they?

  With that bit of logic puzzled out, Charlie slipped into a deep sleep.

  Chapter 26

  The oxen’s eyes bulged wide, white and veined, as if to stand too much more torment they would pop. Their pink-black tongues, flecked with foam, stuck out rigid from their mouths as if carved of wood, and their labored exhalations drove clouds into the air. Their great tree-trunk legs strained, desperate in their efforts to move forward. The only thing they knew how to do, the only thing they had been trained to do, was to pull the mighty load. And yet, try as they might, the oxen barely budged it, the stout limbs stomping in place, snow churned into a dirt-flecked grime beginning to soften into a muddy sop, still well above their knees.

  Hester forced herself to watch, to really see the full attack on the poor beasts that Rollie laid the lash to. Raised welts and weals now running red with gore crisscrossed the panting animals’ backs. Rollie seemed to enjoy giving vent to his full rage. He barked and spittle flew out of his mouth much as it did those of his victims. By now there wasn’t a pulling beast within range of his bullwhip that had not suffered under his savage attack.

  “Pull! Pull, dang your hide!”

  Rage bubbled up in Hester until she could no longer stand it. “Stop it, you idiot! You kill those animals and we’ll never get anywhere!”

  Despite her anger at the foolish man with the whip, as soon as she said it she felt a twinge of innate regret. Something she could not prevent had welled in her like fresh blood from an unhealing wound. She didn’t want to care what he did to her, but she was ashamed to admit that she did care. He had singlehandedly taken from her the only thing that mattered anymore. He had killed Delia, left poor Big Charlie dead too. Why should she care what this jackass did to her?

  Rollie’s whip arm jerked as if convulsing. His chest rose and fell with his efforts, and he stood still, closed his eyes, the hand that gripped the whip white-knuckled and trembling.

  “Did I hear someone telling me to do something? Me? Telling me?” Rollie spun, staggered, fixed her with his red-eyed gaze. “And it darn sure couldn’t have been a woman. Someone who would be dead now if it wasn’t for me.”

  He thrust the uncoiled whip in her direction. She couldn’t help flinching, and hated that she did even as she did it again, causing him to smile at her fear.

  He reared back and made to swing it at her. Still bound at the ankles and wrists with her hands behind her back, Hester could only lie flat in the wagon and turn her head away. She curled up as small as she was able and waited for the stinging lash, knowing that in his eyes, she was no better, regarded no more highly, than the pulling animals.

  “Hold there!” Norbert shouted, standing away from the rear of the wagon.

  Rollie pivoted slightly in midstrike and with a wide smile and a hissing sound from his mouth, he unfurled the whip in a hard strike, laying it out right at Norbert. The man didn’t have time to do much more than cover his face with his hands and begin to turn away before the split-tailed, steel-studded whip lashed into him.

  It wrapped itself around his bent arms and chest like the long, slapping fingers of a demon lover. He gritted his teeth, barked an oath more animal sound than word, but didn’t cry out.

  When the whip slipped free of the stained, rank buckskins, it left behind uneven slices, blood already welling through in spots. Rollie yanked it back to him, looking at each of his four traveling companions in turn, ending with a long, sneering look at Hester. “It appears you have a champion, woman. A champion who is too stupid to keep his mouth shut, a champion who will likely end up dead if he continues on with his mouthy ways.” Rollie cut his gaze to Norbert, whose thin face under the shaggy beard had paled even more than it had been.

  Rollie rested a hand on his revolver. “Let me make this plain to each of you. This plan of mine will work, but don’t think that these here wagons”—he gestured with his whip hand, the implement still gripped firmly, the long, loose end swaying and cutting furrows in the snow—“and all the junk in them are all that important for my plan to succeed. And neither are any of you. I am the only important thing here. You got that? You are each here because you can be useful to me. But I will make you all rich only if you shut your faces and do what I say.”

  He stalked over to the wagon and stared down at Hester. “Except for you. You ain’t getting rich at all. You are along for one reason only. And we’ll get to that later.” He turned to the rest. “But you all, you will die as sure as I am standing here if you so much as try to stop me again.”

  Rollie tossed the whip under the wagon seat and reached in, rummaged for a moment, then pulled out a nearly full whiskey bottle. He grabbed the cork with his teeth, held it, and swigged, then dragged the back of one gloved hand across his stubble-bearded face. “It’s early enough in the day.” He swigged again. “The snow appears to have stopped. Heck, I don’t know what in the world these animals could want.”

  Bo cleared his throat, scuffed his boot in the snow before him.

  “You got something to add, Bo?”

  The man spread his lips wide, revealing his rotten teeth. It was an unnerving habit, not quite a smile, yet not a frown. His voice was low, with a wavery, uneven edge. “I don’t like to say so, if’n you plan on whipping on me for it.”

  Rollie sighed, shook his head. The gesture looked to Hester as if he made it to further belittle them all. It worked.

  “Go ahead, Bo.”

  Bo cleared his throat again. “It’s just that, well, them animals is all played out. We ain’t given them much of a rest since we started.”

  Rollie tilted his head to the side. “Bo, they are dumb animals born to the task of pulling these wagons. If the snow slows ’em down, it’s because they are too weak, should have been killed as babies.” He pulled again on his bottle. “Just like you, Bo.” He laughed alone. “Am I the only one thinks that’s funny?”

  “I worked for your uncle for quite a while, Rollie, and he might have been a tough nut to deal with, but he could get his animals to do most anything.”

  Rollie bent forward. “Oh, really? Tell us how that happened, Bo. I think we’d all like to hear that.”

  Though she despised Bo nearly as much as she did Rollie, Hester still wanted to warn him that he was stumbling right into a silly little trap laid by Rollie. But if he was too dumb to know it, she wasn’t about to say a thing.

  Bo pulled himself up to his full height, spat a stream of chaw juice, staining the snow by his feet. “Well, it’s simple, really, Rollie. Them animals are like people. Need rest and feed.”

  The group fell silent while they all waited for Rollie to take in this pearl of wisdom. The only sound was the continued rasping breathing of the oxen. Most of the other horses and mules of the other teams were also breathing heavily, but it had been the steady but slow-moving oxen who had attracted Meecher’s anger that morning. He’d laid into them all day until, exhausted, they finally ground to a weary halt at the base of a slight rise.

  He’d kept at them, whipping and whipping, their legs churning the snow to muck, but to no avail. And now here they were, stuck behind the front wagon, dragged by the offending oxen, the wagon he’d insisted on driving that morning. They had had a solid beginning and the oxen plodded on with impressive, steady reliability. But it had not been enough, would never be enough for a man like Rollie Meecher, and he’d driven them far too hard and fast.

  Rollie walked backward until he stood by the heads of the lead oxen. “Oh, you mean they need sleep?” He skinned his Colt and peeled the hammer back with one motion, placed it on the temple of the nearest ox, and pulled the trigger. The great beast shuddered, its eyes pulsed out even more, and then it grunted and dropped, knocking into the ox beside it.

  The three men and Hester all g
asped, their eyes wide, as Rollie repeated the treatment to each of the four great, bloody-backed beasts of burden. Each, in turn, toppled. None of them died immediately.

  This can’t be happening, thought Hester. Will he keep on doing this to . . . all of us?

  All the oxen were down, pawing at the snow with their hooves and flailing their last, hot red-black blood pooling and steaming all about them. Their grunts and breaths, wild eyes, and snotting noses crushed what was left of Hester’s ragged feelings and she closed her eyes and tried not to cry. She gritted her teeth and wished for a whip of her own to shred Rollie’s skin. She would dearly love to see how he liked it.

  “Now, anybody else wanna talk about that nasty old uncle of mine? Go right ahead.” No one said anything. “Good. Now help me sort this junk. We’re going to move even faster now with less wagons, and we’ll still have extra critters towing ’em. And before we head out, set fire to that wagon too. I’ll be hanged if I’m going to let any Injuns have anything, even if it’s junk.”

  Chapter 27

  Sheila Trudeaux poured out the last of her cornmeal and poked the little dry pile with her finger. It didn’t look like much, and in truth it wasn’t much. She doubted there was any more of it left in all of Gamble. It had been nearly two weeks since Samuel Proudhorn had left for Monkton.

  She missed his big, bearded face, his bald head, and his funny English way of talking. Everything he said sounded so elegant. Even though she made her way as a dove, Samuel always made her feel like a lady with his manners and fancy talk. And now he was probably living it up with sporting ladies back down in Monkton, raising a glass with that foul Marshal Watt.

  How she ever let herself get roped into moving up here, she didn’t know. Like with all the other falls and winters she’d spent in mountain country, at all those other mine camps, she felt the cabin fever already working at her. Always came on her faster than other folks, and it seemed to come on earlier every year. She knew the snow would be coming soon, but she didn’t think it would have happened so soon and so much all at once.