Predators and Prey

by F. M. Parker

  He dressed and went out into the dark street. He felt much troubled. The days had sped past as he searched St. Joe for the river pirates. The probability that the men had left the town, if they had ever been there, was becoming almost a certainty. Trappers often went overland to St. Louis on the Mississippi, or downriver to New Orleans.

  Sam moved slowly along the street through the growing morning twilight. The brisk wind blowing over the town was chilly, for the temperature had fallen below freezing during the night. The ground was frozen as hard as stone.

  The covered wagon of an immigrant family came by, its iron wheels jolting and rattling on the hard earth. The man and woman sat bundled in heavy coats on the high seat. The woman held a crying baby in her arms. The wagon turned down Francis Street to the ferry.

  A group of men rode by on trotting horses. Sam peered intently at them. No, none of them were the men he sought.

  He scrutinized the patrons eating breakfast in a restaurant. Disappointed, he went on.

  A big brown dog came out of an alley and began to trail noiselessly behind Sam. He ignored the beast, and after half a block it loped off. The double doors of a blacksmith shop swung open, and the smithy began to rekindle the fire in his forge.

  The twilight brightened to full daylight. More wagons moved toward the waterfront. A wagon train must be forming upon the west side of the Missouri River. Pedestrians came into the streets, as well as more men on horseback. St. Joe was coming awake.

  Sam halted in front of the office of a fur buyer. Perhaps the proprietor would know the men for whom Sam searched.

  ***

  Ruth Crandall raised her gaze from her father’s business ledgers and looked across the office and out the window. She had been at the office for more than two hours, for she liked to work in the quiet morning before the town noise began. It was a safe, comforting feeling with the soft yellow light of the lamp shining on the pages of the ledgers and the black ink recording the purchases and sales, and the profits her father always made. Since the arrival of the railroad in the February just past, the profits were even greater.

  Another hour and all business transactions would be recorded. Her father would be pleased. However, there would be no more ledgers to work on. She would leave St. Joe this morning, for she had decided to go with the Mormon converts to Salt Lake City. Her father would not like that.

  Though she would miss her father terribly, and her life in St. Joe, the new religion was like a fever in her blood. She must go where it lived, where the people practiced it and thrived. Her hands trembled and her heart felt ready to burst in anticipation of joining the immigrant converts in their journey to the place called Zion.

  A gaunt man in buckskins came into sight on the street. He was bent forward as if carrying a heavy load on his back. Each one of his steps was carefully placed upon the ground, as if his legs were fragile and might break.

  He halted and looked up at the Crandall Fur & Hides sign on the face of the building. He crossed the sidewalk. The tiny bell fastened to the front door tinkled as he entered.

  Ruth watched with growing surprise as the man came closer. She had thought him an old man, ill and frail, from the manner in which he walked. However, he was not but two or three years older than she. His eyes were an intense tan color, the color of flint, and glowed with a fierce inner fire. A pistol was in a holster on his belt. It seemed to belong there. She wondered if he had killed, and sensed that he had. Yet, strangely, even with that thought, she felt no fear of him. His hand swept the new, stiff-brimmed felt hat from his head.

  “May I help you?” Ruth asked.

  “I would like to talk with the fur buyer,” Sam said. He cast a scanning look around the office. The young woman could not be the buyer. He saw a door open in the rear, exposing a huge storeroom. The storeroom was empty.

  “My father is in New York selling the furs he bought this spring.”

  “When will he return to St. Joe?”

  “In ten days to two weeks. He had no set schedule. I’m Ruth Crandall, his daughter. Is there something I can do for you?”

  “Maybe so. I’m Sam Wilde. I’m looking for three trappers who probably sold a large quantity of furs here in St. Joe in the past three or four weeks.”

  “Many trappers have sold pelts to my father. I keep the records. What are the trappers’ names? I can look and see if they traded here.”

  “That’s the problem. I don’t know their names. I was hoping the fur buyer, your father, could help me find out their names.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t deal directly with the trappers, so therefore I can’t help you.”

  The sincere kindness of the girl reached Sam. He focused his attention on her. Their eyes touched for a few seconds, and his cramped, angry heart expanded and beat pleasantly. A rare event in his murderous quest to find the fur thieves. He silently thanked her for her unintentional lessening of his misery.

  Ruth saw the change in the young man’s gaze as he looked at her, the angry fire in his eyes dying and a gentleness flooding through their depths. A most pleasing expression.

  “Is there something else I can help you with?” she asked.

  “No. But I do want to thank you,” Sam said.

  “You’re welcome.”

  As the man turned away, Ruth saw the gentle expression begin to fade from his eyes and the harsh, burning light creep in. He moved toward the door.

  Sam stopped midway across the office. God! How beautiful the girl was. He could not erase her face from his mind. It held center stage against all his images of how he would kill his enemies. Or be slain himself. The thought came that she might well be the last beautiful female he would ever see.

  He turned around and retraced his steps. He halted in front of her desk and stood staring down into her face. The lamp light and the morning light from the window seemed to compete for the most pleasing way to illuminate the planes and curves of her face and her delightful gray eyes.

  A powerful urge came over Sam to touch, to caress, the girl’s soft skin. His hand reached out part way toward her before he could stop and freeze it in midair. He allowed his eyes to do what his hand could not. To trace the contours of her face, of her lips.

  Sam knew the girl understood his emotion. Still, she did not stir but instead looked steadily back at him.

  He sighed without sound. In other times, other situations, he would have spoken to her of things other than murderous trappers.

  Sam turned once again to the door and, forgetting for the moment his illness, hastened with a quick stride from the fur buyer’s office and the girl, Ruth.

  18

  Nathan dug with the shovel at the spring on the side of the low hill ten miles north of the ranch house. An area some twenty yards across was a quagmire of mud, trampled and pawed by buffalo and wild horses in search of more water than naturally surfaced at the weak spring.

  Surrounding the muddy zone, cottonwoods, willows, and water-loving grasses covered nearly an acre of land. The fact that all of the plants liked their feet wet told Nathan a considerable quantity of water lay hidden below the surface, on top of the bedrock. He had only to dig down to it. On the side of the hill the depth to it should not be great.

  After the spring was opened and flowed freely, he would drive half a hundred cows and a couple of bulls to it. The cattle, once they had drunk the water, would remain in the vicinity to graze. The year-round water supply would open up another four to five thousand acres of new grassland for his hungry livestock.

  He ceased digging and his head lifted quickly. The rapid staccato of the hoof beats of a running horse sounded from the woods to the east. He dropped the shovel and, stepping to his gray horse, jerked the rifle from its scabbard. Leading the mount, he vanished into the nearby grove of cottonwoods.

  The Comanche warrior, Crow, riding his black mustang, broke from the woods and raced across the meadow to the spring. He dragged the mustang to a sliding halt.

  “Nathan,” Crow shouted,
“you are being robbed!”

  Crow watched Nathan come out of the cottonwoods with the rifle resting in the crook of his arm. The young white man moved swiftly, yet silently, like the mountain lion with its soft, padded feet. Like the mountain lion, his eyes were cold and observant, seeing everything. Crow had closely studied Nathan during the days they had shared the land by the spring near the ranch house. Nathan was a man beside whom Crow would fight, and have no fear he would be deserted in the battle. Perhaps one day Crow might even come to like the white man.

  “Who’s stealing what?” asked Nathan.

  “White men have killed one of your cows.”

  “Where?”

  “There.” Crow pointed to the southeast. “Five of your miles.”

  Nathan shoved his rifle into the scabbard on the gray horse. He yanked himself astride. “How many white men?”

  “Five.”

  “Let’s go and take a look at them,” Nathan said.

  The gray sprang away at Nathan’s low command and in three strides was running. Crow pressed his mustang’s ribs with his knees and the animal leapt ahead, running slightly in the lead to guide the way.

  Nathan had seen no white men since the Texas Ranger had left. Nor an Indian after Crow’s arrival. The presence of either color of men on his land most probably would mean trouble, and Nathan did not want more trouble. He wanted only to be left alone, to work and watch his herd of cattle increase.

  The running horses crossed a range of rough, steep hills capped with trees. New buds were bursting from the tips of every limb. The spring grass was half a hand tall, cloaking this southern land in a blanket of green. A startled white tailed deer burst from a clump of oak. Nathan watched after the deer as it bound away in magnificent leaps. The world was good. That could change swiftly if he had to fight the strange men who had butchered his cow.

  Crow motioned at Nathan, and both men drew their mounts down to a walk. They rode quietly on around the side of a hill. Nathan smelled wood smoke and maybe, just for a whiff or two, cooking meat. The hill fell away and the camp of the white men came into view in the edge of woods beside a small meadow.

  The five men around the fire climbed to their feet as Nathan and Crow came into sight. The men moved apart, and their hands swung to hang near the holstered pistol each carried at his side.

  Nathan noted the quick, ready way the men reacted to their sudden appearance. They were all young, but on the frontier, a man learned early in life to be wary. Or he did not live to be old.

  Nathan primed himself for battle. If one of the men reached for his pistol, Nathan would grab his rifle. At the more than one-hundred-yard distance still separating them he would have all the advantage with his long-range killing weapon.

  He glanced beyond the men to the carcass of a half-grown heifer. Its rear legs had been roped, and the animal hoisted partway up on the limb of a tree until only its head lay on the ground. The skin was peeled back from the hindquarters to the middle of the ribs.

  Nathan led on down the slope of the hill. He dismounted fifty feet back from the strange riders and let the reins fall to ground-tie his gray.

  “Stay with the horses,” Nathan said to Crow. “Be ready with your musket.”

  He angled off slightly to the left of the band of men to give Crow a clear line of fire. He halted across the fire from the strangers.

  Crow pulled his musket as he swung down. He held the weapon ready in his hands. Perhaps he would get the opportunity to kill another white man.

  Nathan nodded his head at the men. Which one of them was the leader? That important bit of information must be discovered immediately. Then he must watch the man closely for his signal to the others to draw their guns.

  “Hi,” said a thin fellow who was hardly more than a boy.

  You’re not the leader, thought Nathan as the man started to smile, then stopped, unsure of himself. You’re too young. Nathan swept his eyes over the remaining seven.

  “What can we do for you?” asked a second man, who appeared to be the oldest of the bunch. “Why is that Indian standing out there with a rifle in his hands?”

  “I expect old Crow would like to shoot another white man to add to his score,” Nathan said. “As for what you can do for me . . . well, tell me why you butchered one of my beefs.”

  The thin-faced fellow glanced worriedly around at his companions. Nathan knew what he was thinking. Where there was no law, stealing a cow was a hanging crime.

  “Drum, I told you—”

  “Shut up, Charlie,” Drum said. He spoke to Nathan. “Who said we killed one of your beefs?”

  “I’m willing to take back the words if that dead heifer hanging there in that tree doesn’t have the Double T brand on her left flank,” said Nathan.

  The group of men stirred uneasily. No one spoke.

  “From the way you fellows act, I’d guess it’s my heifer. That’ll be ten dollars. Two from each of you.” Nathan gestured down at several skillets of steak sizzling in the edge of the fire. “Looks like damn good meat and should be worth that much.”

  Nathan shifted almost imperceptibly, preparing himself to fight if it came to that. He had given the strangers a way out. Would they take it? Were they bandits, or honest cowhands passing over his range?

  An edgy moment stretched as Drum studied Nathan. One of the men on Drum’s left moved his hand.

  Nathan reacted without conscious thought. His hand swung, lifted, catching the butt of his revolver. As the gun rose, his thumb eared back the hammer and a finger tightened on the trigger. The open black bore of the gun barrel came level, pointing at the center of the man who had moved. The expression on Nathan’s face was deadly, the intent to kill plain.

  “No! No!” cried the man. He staggered backward, as if the bullet had already struck him. His hands flew into the air above his head.

  “Just getting my money.”

  Nathan halted the press of his finger on the trigger at the last possible instant. “God,” he exclaimed. His breath sucked in and he gave an involuntary start of disbelief at how near he had come to shooting the man. The hand that held the pistol shook twice before he controlled it.

  Nathan snapped his head to the side. Crow was sighting down the iron barrel of his rifle at the group.

  “Crow! Don’t shoot!” Nathan shouted.

  Crow jerked with the sudden effort to stop the action already ordered by his mind. He seemed to lose his balance for a split second and took a step forward to regain it. Then the musket lowered.

  Nathan’s eyes jumped back to the man standing with his hands thrust up. “Damn you,” he rasped. “I almost shot you. So did Crow.”

  “I only wanted to give you my two dollars,” said the man in an apologetic voice. He slowly lowered his hands and took his wallet from a rear pocket.

  Nathan held his gun as he ranged his view over the other men. “Are all of you going to pay two dollars?”

  A chorus of agreement came from the band of men. Nathan let his attention settle and focus on Drum, who had not answered. “And you?”

  “Yes, I’ll pay,” Drum said. “We’re not thieves.”

  “In that case, if you ask me to join you for dinner, I’ll give you the heifer.”

  “Eat with us,” Charlie said in a relieved voice. “You can share my steak with me. It weighs more than two pounds and is plenty for two.”

  “Crow’s hungry too. He’ll need some meat.”

  “I’ll not eat with an Indian,” Drum said in a surly tone.

  “This time, Drum, I guess the rest of us will go our own way and eat with this fellow and his Indian,” said the man Nathan had almost shot. “My name is Ash Brock.” He held out his hand to Nathan. “Crow can have half of my steak.”

  “I’m Nathan Tolliver.” He shook Ash’s hand.

  “I’m Charlie Morse,” the thin young man said. He continued on to introduce the other men. “This is Les Jamison and Jake Payne. And this is Drum Shadley, who got us to leave Austin and rid
e north.”

  Nathan acknowledged the introductions. He beckoned the Comanche. “Crow, come and eat with us.”

  Crow walked up still holding his musket. Nathan thought he appeared disappointed that there had been no battle.

  Ash and Charlie divided their meat. Crow and Nathan speared their portion from the skillets with their skinning knives. Drum squatted on the side of the fire most distant from the Comanche. His expression was dark as he watched Crow eat.

  “Good beef,” Charlie said, ceasing to chew long enough to speak. “Much better when you don’t have to pay for it.” He laughed good-naturedly.

  Nathan evaluated the saddled horses tied in the edge of the woods nearby. Every one was an excellent mount. Each saddle had a rifle in a scabbard. There were two packhorses.

  “Where are you fellows headed?” Nathan asked.

  “Up north to find us some wives,” Ash replied.

  “Wives,” Nathan said in surprise. “There are no settlements with white women to the north. Even if you rode clear to the North Pole.”

  “That’s where you are wrong,” Charlie said. “Drum, tell him what you told us.”

  “You tell him,” Drum said curtly.

  Ash spoke. “Drum just got back from St. Joe, Missouri, a few days ago. He saw hundreds of beautiful women there.”

  “Just a hundred or so,” interjected Drum.

  “Okay, Drum, you tell Nathan what you saw, and don’t be so god-awful mean,” Ash said. “We’re all friends now. What happened before was just a misunderstanding and is past.”

  “Yeah, you tell him, Drum,” Charlie added.

  “All right,” Drum said. “I was up to St. Joe just traveling around and seeing the country. I was about to leave when a Mormon missionary coming from Europe arrives in the town. He had a passel of converts with him, nearly all young women. I saw them marching through town toward a tent camp they had set up. I asked some questions about the women and learned that old Brigham Young, the polygamist in Salt Lake City, sends out hundreds of men who go all over the world turning people away from their own religion and to his. Then these missionaries bring back with them all the people who will come. This missionary in St.