The Hunted

by Ralph Compton

  “I already am,” she said, not breaking eye contact with the reprehensible man. He squinted at her, clearly not understanding what she meant. She sighed and pushed herself up to her knees. Before she rose into the open and headed down the slope to the wagon, she said, “I’m not comin’ down there unless you untie me and do not tie me again.”

  “We’ll see,” he said.

  “No, that’s not a deal. I have no problem with staying here alone. And you can rearrange your precious loads of junk yourselves.”

  “Fine, fine,” he said. “But no tricky business.”

  Who does he think he is? she thought. He killed my sister, killed Charlie, whipped others, drove his own uncle to death. Of course I’m going to resort to tricky business. In my own good time. After all, I have nothing to lose. Hester suppressed a smile and, crouching low, made her way back to the wagon, half sliding in the deep snow.

  It took the three of them most of an hour of hard work to get what goods Rollie selected transferred to the wagon. Not surprisingly to Hester, he made sure plenty of liquor made the grade, along with most of the flour, sides of bacon, coffee, beans, and tobacco. The wagon wasn’t exactly light, and the snowfall so far had been significant, so she was curious to see how far the poor remaining pulling animals would be able to go. Hester guessed that another storm would make the going nigh on impossible.

  That very thought must have niggled at Rollie too. “Shiner, and you, woman!” he yelled when they all but had the load covered. “Both of you, out front, busting trail.”

  “What? I didn’t hire on—”

  “What about Bo?” said Hester, despite the fact that she hadn’t liked the dead man.

  “What about him?” said Rollie, climbing up into the wagon seat.

  “You can’t leave him there.”

  “Watch me.”

  Hester didn’t move. Rollie sighed and drew his Colt. “Now, look, that old boy’s dead. And that’s an affliction he ain’t never going to recover from. Unless you want to come down with the same creeping sickness, you’ll shut your mouth and get on up that trail and start a-stomping.”

  Any sense of rebellion she’d felt seconds before fluttered then died in her breast. There would be no escape today, she thought. But she would continue to keep her eyes scanning the trees, her ears perked for sounds that might mean danger, and her mouth shut—any other way and it would only land her in hot water.

  He’d had her tie Mabel-Mae to the back of the wagon once again. “If it really was Injuns on our trail and not ol’ Norbert all pissed off, then that soap sack of a mule will be the first thing to get it.”

  “Why you keeping that mule anyway, Rollie?” asked Shiner.

  “Because, fool, it’s in decent shape and we might have need of another one for the traces.” Hester suspected that Rollie’s real motive where Mabel-Mae was concerned was that if the Indian attackers continued nibbling away at his wagon train, his animals, and his men, he would eventually need a reliable animal to make his escape on. Hester vowed to make sure that didn’t happen. She’d kill the mule herself if she had to before she’d let Rollie escape the fate she craved to dole out to him.

  “One more thing, woman.” Rollie chucked a couple of straggly lengths of hemp rope to Shiner. “Tie her hands again.”

  “No! I will not have my hands tied again. I cannot walk properly in the snow with my hands tied! Besides, you gave your word.”

  Rollie slapped his knee as he swigged his liquor bottle. “You honestly think I’d give such a thing? Or that if I did, it would be worth something? Lady, have I once given you cause to trust me?” He didn’t wait for her to respond. “Shiner, tie her hands, will you?”

  “Boss, it ain’t necessary. There ain’t nowhere for her—”

  Rollie peeled back the Colt’s hammer, waved the sidearm in Shiner’s general direction, and sighed. The bald underling retrieved the rope from the snow where Rollie had tossed it.

  “I am feeling generous,” said Rollie. “So you can keep your hands in front, but tied. That way if you fall you’ll be able to catch yourself before you break your nose.” His chortles echoed through the stark landscape. Rollie seemed to have forgotten the Indians completely, but Hester kept her eyes looking between the trees.

  “If it’s true that God does protect fools and drunks,” said Hester to herself, “then that idiot is doubly safe.”

  They headed on out, the two sullen figures in front, stamping halfheartedly in the snow, making slight trails for the pulling animals. Rollie hunched below the humped bulk of the covered load, the snapping whip all but frothing the chill air above the beasts’ backs. He stroked it snakelike, made it sing a vicious cracking note, over and over. The wagon lurched in fits and starts, never quite reaching a steady, rolling pace.

  What would Rollie do when he could no longer move forward? Surely this was not working out as he had hoped. Hester guessed she would find out soon enough what his plans were, probably within hours. She doubted they would be able to go on much farther. And especially if the snow began again. The weather felt as though it was growing grim once more, the sky darkening all around, pressing down at them. Even the air felt close, tighter somehow.

  She reached up with her bound hands and tried to pull the old saddle blanket she’d managed to keep around her shoulders. But her feet were so cold, it felt as though she were walking on wooden stumps. She felt sure she would lose toes, maybe worse. Maybe death at the hands of the Indians wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe it would be quick, painless. She hoped Delia hadn’t suffered in the fire. Hoped the laudanum had kept her all but unconscious during it. . . .

  Unbidden, tears built up in her eyes. She closed her eyes tight and squashed them away. It wouldn’t do to give over to emotion now. Now that it no longer mattered, now that nothing really mattered except somehow getting revenge on these remaining two killers. Then the Indians could have at her; she didn’t care. So long as she was able to do for Rollie what he had done to so many others, but mostly to dear Delia.

  Chapter 34

  Norbert swallowed and considered what the man had asked him. Liked to swim? What did that mean? And then a cold feeling seeped through him.

  “Yes, I believe this is true, brother.” The Indian—he looked strong—bent low and studied Norbert’s face up close. The freighter tried not to look away. He had to show him he wasn’t afraid. But what was that remark about swimming?

  “Now, fella,” said Norbert. “I don’t rightly know what you think you know, and I’m all for kiddin’, believe me. But I’ve had a rough time of it lately. You might have noticed I was whupped by my boss. Wasn’t nothing I did wrong, on account of him being ornery, especially if he has been drinking. And then if he ain’t, oh boy, look out. I reckon I look stronger than I am. I been in the water recently and it took a mighty toll on me. I—”

  But the Indian wasn’t even listening to him. He was busy at some task, gabbling on as if he were having a conversation with someone else right in front of him, but Norbert never heard more than the one voice. Must be an Injun thing, thought Norbert, to talk to yourself. Maybe to Injuns it ain’t a sign of crazy.

  Suddenly the Indian jerked Norbert to his feet with no warning and dragged him down to the stream. A sudden bad feeling—a very bad feeling—gripped Norbert inside by the throat and he started scrambling his legs, pawing them backward, doing anything he could think of to keep the Indian from doing what Norbert hoped wasn’t going to happen.

  “You ain’t gonna put me in that water. No, sir, I been in freezing water and I ain’t over it yet!”

  “You will be warm, trust me.” The Indian stepped in close, at the riverbank and, with his face an inch from Norbert’s, he whispered, “Blood is warm, very warm.”

  Norbert couldn’t seem to look away from those eyes. Even when he felt a strange feeling of stinging, almost like whiskey poured in a cut. It flowered up slowl
y from his belly on up to his chest. He jerked away from the Indian and took a half step backward. Norbert looked down at his gut and couldn’t believe what he saw.

  The greasy smock front of his buckskin overshirt had been sliced open from side to side, it looked like a big gaping fish mouth. But it was what wagged out of it, like a big bloody red tongue, that stopped Norbert from screaming, thinking, or crying out at all. But only for a moment. He was staring down at his own guts, slowly becoming a gut pile as they tumbled out of him and slipped down his leg fronts to land on his feet. Steaming in the cold air.

  Norbert recovered his ability to scream, but only for a few seconds, because a gush of something warm, so warm, pulsed up and out of his mouth.

  The Indian leaned close and said, “You will not die right away. This is so you can feel the good warmth I told you of. It is cold out here. We are doing you a fine favor.” Then the Indian smiled and dragged the stunned, wobbling Norbert, whose mouth had filled with his own blood, down the riverbank.

  At the water’s edge, the Indian stomped through the ice. Then he lowered Norbert’s bottom half, up to his gut, into the swift-flowing stream.

  Norbert felt the constant, hurrying tug-and-push of the freezing water. But the Indian was right, he only felt warm, not cold.

  Then he jerked Norbert’s arms forward, retied the leather strapping, and staked him facedown, his arms apart on the bank.

  The man appeared beside him again. Norbert felt very fuzzy headed, as if he’d got hold of a bad bottle. The Indian had a long pole in his hands. No, no . . . it was a bow, an Injun bow. No, maybe a lance, he wasn’t sure. Then it went up in the air, came down, and Norbert felt another hot flash of pain, then a long stinging feeling.

  He managed to look over his shoulder, saw something protruding from his side. Then the warm feeling started to go away. He couldn’t understand it. The Indian had said he’d be warm. But he had lied—the warmth was going away, being chewed up, like a rat on a soda cracker. It left Norbert with a creeping cold, the like of which he’d not felt since falling in the river.

  And then the cold became freezing cold. Hot blue stabs of pain lanced up his body, jerked him stiff, pulled any fuzziness that had been clouding his mind clear away. He knew exactly what was happening. Oh no, he was being tortured to death by an Indian, staked out on a freezing-cold riverbank and there was nothing he could do. He could maybe scream. . . . Norbert tried, but only managed to cough as blood backed up inside his mouth, flooded out his nose.

  He finally pulled in long, gagging draughts of air and wished for death. He watched the Indian walk away from him and he couldn’t even curse him, beg him for mercy, nothing. Could only watch as he walked away, not even once looking back at him.

  And the entire time, Norbert stayed awake and the stabbing cold grew worse and worse with each passing second. And still he was awake, staked half in, half out of the rushing, icy mountain flow.

  Chapter 35

  “We all of us are, eh, how you say . . . waiting for something, no?”

  Rogers, a burly man half a head taller than most of the other men in Gamble, scratched his ample mustaches and cocked his head to the side. “What are you talking about now, Vinny?”

  Before the surly young Italian could respond, Clayton Eldridge said, “That’s the problem, ain’t it? We’re all waiting. Setting up here in the hills with blizzard weather coming square at us, waiting for supplies that will help us wait some more, and make the time we spend waiting more tolerable.”

  “So?”

  “So . . . it isn’t right, is it?” Eldridge shook his head as if what he had been explaining had been so very simple.

  “You make it sound as if there isn’t a payoff at the end of it all,” said Rogers. “You seem to be forgetting that come spring we’re all going to be rich as . . . well, darn rich!” Judging from the looks he received from the rest of the folks in the room, they remained unconvinced. Ah well, thought Rogers. Their loss. He swallowed another mouthful of tepid water. The tea floating in the bottom of the cup had been used so many times it looked like a clot of something a cat had hacked up.

  “Rich isn’t worth spit if you’re dead,” said Eldridge.

  Rogers didn’t want to rise to the bait. He pushed away from the table. “I’m going hunting. Anyone care to join me?”

  Eldridge cleared his throat. “Be sure to use your shells judiciously. There are only so many of them in camp and we can’t afford—”

  “By Golly,” said Rogers, shaking his head and pulling a wide, grimacing smile. “If I needed another mother, I reckon I’d knock on your door, Clayton Eldridge. Thankfully I had one and that one was enough. She was also polite enough to never tell me what to do with my life. Or my bullets.”

  He bent close and pointed a thick, bent finger in the air before the man’s face. “You may have elected yourself mayor, but there ain’t nobody in Gamble or on the rest of God’s snow-covered earth who is going to tell me when and where to shoot my gun.” He strode to the door, paused to take down his hat and coat from a wooden peg.

  “I only meant—” said Eldridge, beginning to redden. He thrust his jaw out.

  “Let it go,” said Sheila Trudeaux. She poured more hot water all around. The door closed and she said, “He’s right, you know. We’re going to make it through, we have to hunt. And there isn’t a better shot in Gamble than Rogers.”

  “But we need all our ammunition for fighting off the Indians.”

  “Who we haven’t seen in quite some time, as I recall. What’s more important? Starving or fighting?”

  “It seems as if we are doing both.”

  Everybody looked at the Italian, surprised to hear from him. No one quite knew what to say. Finally he pushed away from the table. “Maybe I will go hunting with Rogers. It would not do to have our best shot lose himself in the coming storm, no?” He winked at them as he left, a mirthless smile on his face.

  Chapter 36

  “Pawnee’s at my office, Jasper. Like I said, I gave him a bottle. He’s no fool, though,” said Marshal Watt, stopping in the street. “So don’t you talk down to him as if he were a simple child.”

  “Whatever do you mean, Marshal?” Rafferty’s eyebrows met in the middle.

  It seemed to Watt that Jasper truly didn’t know what he was getting at. The marshal sighed. “Look, Jasper, you have a tendency to act like your visits to the outhouse are holy affairs. You understand me? By and large, people aren’t dumb, but you do your darnedest each day to make ’em feel as if they are. Not sure if you know this, but you only end up with a whole lot of people who aren’t fond of you.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Watt. The entire town passes through my doors in a week’s time, and I manage to elicit smiles from most of them, talk with each of them as if we were old friends.”

  The marshal began walking toward his office. “The townsfolk all come through your store because it’s the only one in town, Jasper. Believe me, if they didn’t have to, they might not.” He stopped and turned to the puzzled merchant again. “You ever wonder why no one asks you over to supper? Or out for a glass of beer?”

  “You do.”

  “Yeah, but I have to. I’m married to his sister. That makes us kin, of a sort. You see?”

  “You . . . you don’t like me?”

  Marshal Watt sighed again and closed his eyes. “That isn’t what I’m talking about, Jasper. You’re fine, you’re my brother-in-law. Of course I like you. Look, don’t get all fancy and highfalutin with Pawnee Joe, okay?”

  They reached the edge of the street and climbed up onto the sagging sidewalk. The marshal made a point of banging the snow off his boots outside the door to his office, then rattling the latch a couple of extra shakes longer than was necessary.

  He leaned into the room. “You in here, Pawnee? Ah, there you are. Keeping warm, I see.”

 
; Jasper followed him in. The marshal could tell by the tight look on Rafferty’s face that he hated the very idea of pandering to the raggedy mountain man.

  “Yeah, I’m here, Marshal. I heard you clunking outside the door, figuring to wake me up, let me know you’re here, is that it?”

  “Something like that, Joe. Something like that. I see the bottle helped keep you company while I tracked down my associate, Jasper Rafferty.” Marshal Watt turned to the merchant, his eyes forced wide. “Jasper, I daresay you know Mr., uh, Pawnee Joe, isn’t that right?”

  Before he could respond, Pawnee splashed another glug into a tin cup. “I know that one all right. Gouging bastard, got a stranglehold on the town being the only store with any amount of stock in these parts. And his prices show it.” Pawnee smiled, leaned back in his chair by the stove, the wood creaking under his middling weight.

  “Now, Mr. Pawnee. I guess we all have a right to a fair profit on our goods,” said Jasper through a tight-set smile.

  “Fair, sure thing, fella. But every time I reprovision there, I leave bleeding and dizzy! It’s almost as if I been scalped, but—”

  “Okay, then, gents. I think we all understand each other here.” Marshal Watt sat down heavily behind his desk. “Thing I want to know, and I’m sure you do too, is how we’re going to deal with this . . . situation that has come up.”

  The bearded man chuckled and poured himself another splash of whiskey, then touched a finger to the side of his nose. “Now we’re getting to it.”

  Jasper sighed, rolled his eyes at the marshal, who did his best to ignore him.

  “Way I figure it, you two men have a valuable thing going on up in the hills. But it’s at a precious spot now.” He bucked the chair forward and it landed with a thud on the worn planks. “Might say it’s a bit of a gamble, huh?” But he wasn’t smiling.