The Hunted

by Ralph Compton

They’d stopped to rest and he’d positioned the travois behind a mass of tumbledown boulders that provided a decent windbreak. It felt good to get out of the wind and snow. Delia had sipped a little whiskey down to dull the pain in her belly, and she’d fallen asleep. Now that he’d heard the sounds, he felt more confident with each passing second that they had been gunshots.

  But he hated to wake her, even though he was itching to investigate, and if it turned out to be nothing more than branches, ice, or a trick of the wind, they could at least put in another mile or so before they had to make camp. The going was slow enough, but the girl’s bouts of pain seemed to him to be getting worse.

  He shifted from one foot to another, the shotgun cradled in his arms. He let out a long, slow sigh as he looked uphill toward the source of the sounds.

  “I told you I’d hold you back, Charlie.”

  He turned at the sound of her quiet voice. “Delia.” He bent low over her, felt her forehead. “You okay?”

  She closed her eyes and smiled. “Charlie, I am a long distance from okay.” She looked at him. “I heard them too. Those sounded like gunshots, didn’t they?”

  He raised his eyebrows, nodded, then glanced back uphill. “Yes, they surely did. Might be them. . . .”

  “You should go ahead, see if it is.”

  “You ain’t in no fit state to do any more traveling now, Delia.”

  “I haven’t been since we started our trip, Charlie. But here I am. Look.” She struggled to prop herself up on her elbows. “You should leave me here. I’m out of the wind. I have a little whiskey left—all the comforts of home.” She smiled again, then lay back down, drained from the effort she’d expended.

  “I can’t leave you, Delia. I won’t do it.”

  She sighed, kept her eyes closed. “Charlie Chilton. Leave me alone for once. I don’t need you nursemaiding me every minute of the day. I am a married woman, after all. What would people think?”

  “I . . . I didn’t think of it that way. I thought—”

  “Well, maybe you’ve been doing too much thinking. Go on and see what’s happening up there. We may well be close to Gamble. Did you think of that?”

  He rubbed his wide, bearded jaw. Might not hurt to cross that little rise, at that. “You sure you’ll be okay here, Delia?”

  She sighed and smiled. “Yes, Mother Hen. I will be fine here. Certainly warmer and safer than on that trail.” She opened her eyes and her smile faded. “Don’t forget me. I . . . I don’t want the wolves to come, Charlie.”

  He rested a big paw on her hand. “Delia, I ain’t about to let that happen. Besides, who’d keep me awake on the trail, asking me crazy questions?”

  He fussed over her blankets, made sure her bottle was close at hand, then said, “I won’t be long. You stay put.” He tried to sound menacing, but she only smiled and nodded. He paused a few paces away from the hiding spot and was pleased to see that it was well concealed, in part because of the snow.

  He was worried about the rogue Indians, but he wouldn’t be gone long. He was probably kidding himself, but this weather didn’t seem as threatening somehow as if it were clear out.

  It didn’t take him long to top the rise ahead, only to see another one. But the tracks they’d been following on the trail were still there, cut into the older snow, but covered over with fresh layers of the fast-piling white stuff. He trudged on, mindful of the distance he was putting between himself and Delia. He would only go a bit farther, then turn around. She’d need a fire soon, especially if this storm kept up.

  As he angled off the trail and up a steep jumble of rocks, hoping to get a better view of what lay ahead, he wondered about life in the mountains. What had ever made him think that living in such rugged country was a good idea? All it brought lately had been misery and headaches.

  Charlie shifted the shotgun to the crook of his other arm and grabbed a stunted pine for support. He was about to jam a boot sideways into the hillside snowpack when he heard shouts from a gruff voice mingle with a woman’s scream. The scream seemed to last a long time, before it stopped suddenly.

  Charlie froze—had that been from back behind him? Delia? He almost bolted downslope, but something stayed his action. He felt sure it hadn’t been Delia, had been from far ahead and the sounds had carried downwind to him. Something inside told him to finish climbing to the top of the rise, that he needed to see whatever lay ahead. . . .

  Chapter 44

  A blur of grunting, kicking, buckskin-clad half Indian, thick white snow, and jagged gray boulders ranging from a person’s head to the girth of a horse in size, all rushed up to meet Hester before falling away again as quickly as it began. Over and over they fell, hitting what felt to Hester like every hard object she’d ever seen in her life. Her head, her arms, legs, chest, back, face, all slammed into things that did not move.

  And then it stopped.

  Long moments passed where nothing moved. Even the wind had stopped. Dark slate clouds blocking out the late afternoon light parted, allowing gold light to slice downward and reflect in every direction.

  If I am not dead, thought Hester, then I am surely on my way. I don’t dare move, but I don’t dare lay here for long. If I can live through such a fall, surely the Indian did as well. She opened her eyes and risked moving her head, pleasantly surprised to find she could do so.

  Her arms and legs all appeared unbroken, though she knew they would surely ache forever because of this. She didn’t care. All she needed was one more shot at Rollie Meecher before the bum expired from wounds she had not been able to deliver.

  Hester saw that she had landed at the base of a massive boulder—gray-black and jutting enough for snow to form on one long side-slope edge. She also noticed that blood had smeared against some of the snow. The sight of it made her touch her own temple. Her fingers, through the frayed end of the sock, came away red. Lucky is what I am, she thought. Then she heard a noise.

  Piled alongside the uphill edge of the rock lay the Indian. He looked to be in bad shape. One arm looked broken and his head looked to be bleeding far worse than hers. He moaned again. Hester grabbed at the big rock with shaky hands and pulled herself up, groaning and moaning in the process.

  The Indian’s eyes fluttered, opened, and he looked up at her. “Why?” he said in a small, raw whisper.

  Hester continued hauling herself up against the blood-and-snow-smeared rock. “You took the only thing that matters to me now.”

  “You . . . love that man?”

  When Hester realized what he said, she laughed and shook her head. “It is revenge, nothing more.”

  “You know . . . nothing of revenge.” He coughed, closed his eyes, and sagged, unmoving, against the rock.

  After all those tortured men and slain animals, this is how the great frightening Indian meets his end? Hester looked at him and envied him. She had nothing left to live for, and now not only was she still alive, but she was battered and alone in the wilderness. Alive . . . alive? And that’s when a thought occurred to her that kindled the flame of revenge deep within her once more.

  She barely paused to take a breath and began clawing her way back up the rocky slope, back to the clearing at the top. Back to where she knew a Colt revolver lay lost in the snow and a man who might not yet be dead soon would be.

  Chapter 45

  “Hester! No! Don’t do it!”

  She recognized the big, booming voice in an instant, but knew it had to be nothing more than a voice in her head, echoing from the past. It could be trying to change her mind, some last remnant of her conscience. Well, it wouldn’t win, not when she was so close to taking from this man the only thing he had left, the only thing he apparently ever valued anyway—his own life.

  The haggard woman, her hair caked and sopping with muddied snow, her dress a limp, torn thing, her hands begrimed and thrust through shredded socks that hung from welte
d wrists circled with raw, bleeding wounds from the rasping ropes that bound her much of the past days—this woman who had endured more hardship than most people do in half a lifetime, trembled, but only from fatigue. In her resolve she was solid as oak as she peeled back the hammer.

  “Hester! Delia needs you! Listen to me, girl—Delia’s okay!”

  That could not be—her mind was playing bad, bad tricks on her right now. But what if it wasn’t? What if . . . ?

  “Hester.”

  The voice was closer, nearly beside her. She didn’t dare take her eyes from the simpering, bloodied and snotted mess that was the crying Rollie Meecher. Oh, she wanted to end him right now, in the worst way. But she could not take her eyes from Meecher. He was that slippery. . . . But what if the voice was real? Whisper something, she told herself. Whisper his name and prove that it’s nothing more than your mind playing bad games. Hester licked her lips. She could only hear her own breathing, rasping in and out, hard, like a train that might not make the grade. “Charlie?”

  The voice drew closer. “It’s me, Hester. It really is. Look at me.” A shape appeared beside her on the right, moved slowly beyond her, drawing even with the Colt’s jittery barrel. Blood from the gash on her forehead had soaked the eyelashes on her right eye. She didn’t dare blink but slowly turned her head to see a person, a big person, a man . . . Hester jerked her eyes back to Rollie. He was still crying, nearly soundless, down on one knee, his bloodied head trembling.

  “Charlie? Is it you?” She whispered it, didn’t dare speak it louder.

  His big, dirty, bearded face bent down into view. “It’s me, Hester. It really is.”

  “Delia? Is she . . . ?”

  “She’s with me—Delia is with me. But she needs you right now, Hester.”

  She saw a big hand reach slowly for the Colt. “No!” She jerked it away, kept it pointed at the simpering wreck that was Rollie Meecher.

  “Hester, don’t do this thing. Don’t ruin your goodness on this man. Every second you waste on him is a second you ain’t helping Delia. . . .”

  “Is she really alive, Charlie?”

  “Yes, yes, she most certainly is. And she’s full of vinegar, I tell you. But she needs you now, Hester. What do you say? Let’s stop this. Look at him. Ol’ Rollie ain’t nothing to nobody right now. He’s reached the end. We got other things need tending, Hester. Like Delia.”

  He reached again for the revolver. Slower this time, and without grabbing it, he pushed it down with his palm, feeling her resistance the entire way, until it pointed at the snow-covered ground. Then he closed his hand around it and took it from her.

  Finally Hester looked up at him and it seemed to him that for the first time in a long while, she let herself truly lose control of her emotions. Her chin quivered and her eyes filled with tears. She reached up, touched her hands to Charlie’s wide face, then collapsed into his arms. He hugged her, patting her back for a few moments. Then she pushed away from him. “Delia? Is she really . . . ?”

  Charlie nodded and said, “We’ll go get her. One thing to do here first.”

  As they turned to face Rollie, they heard him moan, saw him try to raise his head. Charlie walked closer to him, bent down to his face, then looked at Hester. “He’s trying to talk.”

  Hester stepped closer, her teeth set tight, as if she had smelled something bad and wanted to get away from it right away.

  Charlie bent close to Rollie’s face. “What’s that, Rollie?”

  “All them . . .”

  “Say it again, Rollie.”

  “All them . . . golden eggs.” His eyes grew wide again and he smiled a wide, bloody smile. Then his eyes glazed and his head dropped forward and the blood slowly stopped drizzling from his mouth.

  • • •

  They were both quiet for several minutes on their way back down the trail Charlie had made a short time before.

  Then Hester said, “What did he mean by that ‘golden eggs’ comment, Charlie?”

  “Oh, I reckon it means he died greedy.”

  By the time they reached the trailside cleft in the rocks where Charlie had secured Delia, Hester was almost running. She’d stumbled in the snow several times and would not listen to Charlie’s urges that she maintain a steady pace.

  Delia was there, bundled as Charlie had left her. But she did not look good to him, paler and thinner, as if she’d lost weight in the short time he’d been gone. Still, she recognized her sister and smiled. Charlie hated to do so, but he cut short their tearful reunion. “I believe we had best make camp. It’s going to be dark and cold soon.”

  “We have, or that is to say, there’s a camp up the trail a short ways where we had stopped. It should do for the night.”

  It didn’t take the straggling trio long before they found the camp that Rollie and Hester had set up. With a roaring fire, food, and whiskey for Delia—though she barely sipped any—they settled in for an evening of slow renewal of hope and happiness tinged with the shadow of gloom that Delia’s illness brought with it.

  Hester made her sister as comfortable as she could, mothering over her for far longer than she needed to. Finally she sat back, her raw hands and feet to the fire, and accepted from Charlie a plate of food and even a small glass of whiskey. They ate in silence, and then slowly their separate ordeals unfolded and they filled each other in on all that had transpired.

  Hours later, they fell asleep leaning against each other, facing the fire, Delia bundled and sleeping a pain-free sleep.

  A dragging sound woke Charlie. His eyes snapped open to see low flames and a broad bed of pulsing coals in the fire before him. The dragging sound continued not far off in the dark, to his right. He reached for the shotgun he’d propped beside him earlier and felt its reassuring, solid heft in his big hand.

  Still, the scuffing, dragging sound approached. Charlie pushed Hester gently away from him. She roused, mumbled something that wasn’t a word, but didn’t awaken. He got to his feet as quickly and as quietly as he could. The sound Hester made had surely given away their position should it be someone or something unwanted that approached.

  He walked as quietly as he could, angling slightly away from the noise, hoping that he could come upon whatever it was from the side. In the dim glow of the firelight, a large, dark shape approached and before Charlie could raise the shotgun and thumb back the twin hammers, it pushed into him. And Charlie knew it for what it was—Mabel-Mae, nosing his torso, probing his jacket as she always had for an apple, soda crackers, anything he might have hidden in there.

  “Sweet girl.” He rubbed her head, lowering the shotgun. “Hester said you were up-trail somewheres—I figured I’d find you in the morning. I’m sure glad you came back this way, though.”

  He’d no sooner gotten the words out than another dark shape launched down on him from atop the friendly mule. But this dark shape swung a tomahawk. Charlie saw the outline of the man and weapon, as if sketched there against the clear night sky, stars winking on high, before the man, with no sound other than a grunt, dropped on Charlie.

  He batted away the fast-swinging arm, heard the man grunt, but the weapon was still there, arcing and swiping at Charlie’s head. He tried to push the struggling man away with one arm and raise the shotgun with the other, but that was his weakened side.

  He used the only thing he could, until he could get that shotgun raised up to touch it off—he drove forward with his entire formidable body, forcing the struggling man backward, away from the campfire and the women, and into the dark.

  Mabel-Mae sidestepped back into the shadows, as if knowing she must get out of the way.

  By that time, he heard Hester calling his name in desperation, heard another sound, must have been Delia, also shouting. But he couldn’t afford to think about them now. He had to defeat this fresh attacker. The near silence of the man was downright scary. Who fought li
ke a demon and barely grunted?

  “His legs, Charlie! Go for his legs!”

  Must be Hester, shouting something about legs. . . . Of course, she must guess it was the Indian, the very one she’d busted the leg of. He drove forward, snaking a boot out as he could to kick at his attacker, but it didn’t seem to help. Was it the same Indian? Was it even an Indian? Was it even a man? He didn’t believe in spooks or spirits, but this one was too odd by half.

  Hester had stoked the fire and now light from the blaze spilled onto the struggling pair.

  Without warning, the man broke off, seemed to melt away, farther into the ink black night. Not a sound rose from him. Charlie heard his own heartbeat in his head, pounding like a steel driver’s hammer. He raised the shotgun, tucked the stock under his armpit, and crouched as he swept left to right toward where he guessed the devil would be.

  “Charlie?” Hester called.

  In the next second, he heard a light whooshing sound, as if silent wings in the night, to the left, close by his head. Charlie dropped to his knees and swung the brute of a weapon upward toward the sound. The roaring fire lit the left side of the silent dropping form of an angry, bloody-faced Indian like none Charlie had ever seen, with eyes of ice and hair of flame. The man’s tomahawk whooshed as it swung down at him.

  Charlie squeezed both triggers at the same time. The Indian’s body seemed to fold over the end of the barrels as gouts of flame bloomed straight into the dropping man. Charlie tucked low and rolled onto his shoulder, kept rolling out of the way of the man. He lay still, the shotgun clutched in his left fist.

  “Charlie? Charlie Chilton?”

  “I’m okay.” He sighed and slowly got to his feet and walked to the spot where the man had fallen. He was there all right, and Charlie could see his mangled body. The firelight showed him enough to tell him that was one fella who wouldn’t be swinging any tomahawk again.

  He walked back to the fire. “I gave him a double. I reckon even that magical Injun can’t live through two barrels of this ol’ family heirloom.” He patted the big gun’s thick stock.