Dead Man's Trail (9781101606957)

by Leslie, Frank

  She got to work at the cupboard and chugging range behind the plank-board bar. The young couple who appeared to be married sat at their own table, talking in hushed tones. They were dressed like a young farm couple in mismatched, heavy clothes. The old prospector sat at the same table as the two middle-aged men who looked like drummers. He was smoking a quirley and not taking part in the heated conversation the drummers were having. He was staring oddly at Yakima, almost as though he had a secret he was thinking about sharing with the half-breed. Or maybe he’d just been in similar situations, and he wasn’t surprised by any of this at all.

  Mendenhour continued to sit sideways at the table, one elbow propped on it as he stared anxiously at the floor, ankles crossed beneath his chair. “I thought for sure Neumiller knew what he was doing. Thought for sure . . . he could hold Betajack off.”

  “I reckon he didn’t figure on Betajack throwin’ in with Claw Hendricks.”

  “No,” Mendenhour said, shaking his head, trying to puzzle it through as he continued staring at the floor, “I never would have figured on that, either.” He looked at Yakima, his eyes sharp, fervent. “How many . . . ?”

  “I counted a dozen. Managed to whittle ’em down by four, maybe five.”

  “Well, maybe you’ve discouraged them.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it, neither,” said the driver, who’d just pushed through the blanketed doorway at the back of the room.

  The bearded jehu, in a long wool-lined sheepskin coat and with a thin salt-and-pepper beard carpeting jaws so sun-seared that they looked like beef charred on a hot spit, came over to Yakima’s table. He was trailed by the younger shotgun messenger, who held a Winchester repeater on his shoulder and had a snide, peeved look on his rugged face.

  The driver looked at Yakima. “I heard you mention the names Betajack and Hendricks. That who’s behind us?”

  “That’s who.”

  The driver and the shotgun messenger both looked down at Mendenhour with concern. They didn’t say anything. Their looks said it all. The prosecutor raked his gaze across both anxious men, then looked uncomfortably over his shoulder and through the thin scraped-hide window to the front yard lit by weak, gold-hued winter light.

  There was a rustling behind Yakima. In the periphery of his vision he saw the prosecutor’s wife step through the blanketed doorway. She stopped just inside the main room. Yakima glanced at her. She did not look at him but held her gaze on her husband.

  “I reckon you fellas best think through your options,” Yakima said, scraping his chair back, rising, and picking up his Yellowboy. He donned his hat. He set the rifle on his right shoulder and slung his saddlebags containing the gold over his left shoulder, pinched his hat brim to Mrs. Mendenhour, and sauntered past the others, who’d stopped talking to watch him gravely, curiously.

  He moved on outside and down the porch steps, past the kid he’d seen earlier and two other ones of different ages—all under eighteen—leading the fresh team of six horses toward the stage.

  The young men looked at him with wary suspicion.

  Yakima ignored them. He walked over to where Wolf stood in the corral with the blown stage horses, facing Yakima and flicking his ears curiously. His bridle was slipped and his latigo hung loose beneath his belly.

  Yakima draped the saddlebags over the top of the corral, then reached over and ran his hand absently down the black’s long snout that wore a white blaze in the shape of Florida. The horse stared at Yakima, as though eager to light a shuck.

  “Yeah, I’d like to,” the half-breed grumbled, staring past the black and the other horses that were still cooling down, steam rising from their backs, and waiting for the young hostlers’ tending.

  No sign of Betajack and Claw Hendricks. They were back there, though. They might even be nearer than they appeared. He could imagine them breaking up and circling the relay station. That’s how he’d do it, if he wanted to kill Mendenhour badly enough. He’d circle around and maybe take a shot at him from one of those brushy knolls.

  Would they settle for only the prosecutor? Or did they want his wife, too? Did they want her dead or did they just want her? They were men, after all, and they likely knew what the prosecutor’s wife—was her name Glendolene?—looked like. How much woman she was.

  Most likely, the killers intended to shoot everyone who saw them, eliminating all the witnesses.

  Yakima drew a long, ragged breath and looked at the black still watching him with his tobacco brown eyes. The horse was wondering what they were doing here when they had a mission to bring the gold back to Delbert Clifton’s family and then, as they did or tried to do most years, head south to warmer weather.

  Or, hell, maybe Yakima just imagined that was what Wolf was thinking, because he was thinking the same thing himself.

  Behind him, the cabin door scraped open, hinges squawking softly. Men’s voices sounded. Boots thumped on the porch. Yakima turned to see Mendenhour and the driver and shotgun messenger stepping down off the porch steps and, looking around cautiously, walking across the yard toward Yakima.

  “Any sign of them?” the prosecutor asked as he approached.

  “Not yet.”

  “Damn,” said the driver, Adlard, tugging worriedly at his beard. “Floyd Betajack and Claw Hendricks? You sure that’s who’s trailin’ us, Mr. Mendenhour?”

  “That’s who this man said he saw in Wolfville.” The attorney scowled at Yakima. “You never told me who you were.”

  “Said his name was Henry,” the shotgun messenger said, the brim of his weathered cream Stetson bending in the chill breeze. Coble’s eyes were faintly jeering. “What was it—Yakima Henry? Injun name, I’d say.”

  Adlard raked his eyes up and down Yakima with faint distaste, then said, “His pa musta been a white man.”

  “My family history is the least of your worries, you mossy-balled son of a bitch.” Yakima smiled to cover the angry burn that had so suddenly wrapped itself around his heart.

  “Say,” said the stocky shotgun messenger, swaggering forward, “you got no call to talk to Charlie like—”

  “That’s enough, Coble,” intervened the prosecutor, giving the man a commanding look, then turning back to Yakima. “What’s your piece of this, Henry?”

  The burn stayed with Yakima, and tightly he said, “You mean—why did I save your bacon back there? Well, now, I don’t rightly—”

  He was cut off by the scrape of the cabin door again. Looking past the three men standing before him, he watched her move on out of the cabin to stand over the porch steps. She placed a hand on the roof support post beside her, staring toward him.

  Chapter 14

  She wore an ankle-length black bear coat over her purple velvet traveling dress and a marten fur hat that complemented the rich chestnut of her hair, which was gathered into a ponytail by a wide gold clip. The clipped queue hung forward across her left shoulder. It glistened in the coppery sunlight angling through the high, thin clouds.

  Yakima had a memory flash of the ponytail curling down over the alabaster skin of her bare back. . . .

  The prosecutor and the other men glanced at her, as well, and then they turned to Yakima once more. “My wife,” Mendenhour said with a proprietary air. He was obviously well aware of her attractiveness, her desirableness.

  “That’s what I understand.”

  “I hate that she’s a part of all this.”

  “I reckon she’s just one of several,” Yakima said, sliding his eyes away from her to the driver. “I reckon your responsibility is to all your passengers. How are you going to handle this?”

  “Don’t try to tell me my business, half-breed!”

  “Will you help?” This from Mendenhour. His eyes were no longer as haughty as before. They were faintly beseeching, in
fact.

  Yakima disliked the man instinctively. He didn’t know how much that was the result of his experience with other privileged men like him, and how much his wife.

  “I’ll pay you,” the prosecutor said. “Five hundred dollars if you get us through to Belle Fourche in the Dakota Territory.”

  “The other passengers want to continue?”

  “I’ve told them how it is,” Mendenhour said. “About who those men are out there and what they did to the lawmen in Wolfville. What they want with me. I told them they could stay here, but then they’d of course have to find another way to their destinations. And the stage won’t be making its last return trip for the season until after New Year’s, so they’ll be stuck here for at least three weeks.”

  “What about you, Mendenhour?” Yakima asked the man. “Did you consider staying here?”

  “That’s Mister Mendenhour,” snapped Coble.

  Ignoring the shotgun messenger, Yakima held his implacable gaze on the prosecutor.

  Mendenhour studied him, tensing his jaw. The nubs of his cheeks flushed. “Why not turn myself over to them?”

  “Somethin’ like that.”

  “That would be suicide, Mr. Henry.”

  The shotgun messenger gritted his teeth as he stared pugnaciously at Yakima. “No need to call this half-breed ‘mister,’ Mr. Mendenhour. We don’t need him. We can get you through to Belle Fourche just fine.”

  The old driver glanced at his younger partner uncertainly.

  “Maybe so,” Mendenhour said, “but Mister Henry is obviously good with that Winchester. He’s already killed four, possibly five of them. I’m right handy with a long gun myself. I have one in the rear luggage boot, and I’m certainly not afraid to use it. I was born and raised out here, and I’ve fought all manner of hard cases. The four of us aboard a fast stage might just have a chance to save ourselves and keep all innocent bystanders from harm, as well.”

  Yakima looked at the prosecutor’s wife, who had descended the porch steps and was walking toward them. The others turned to watch her, as well. She was like a queen to whom everyone administered and deferred, protected. A beautiful queen who put all the men on edge.

  As she approached, Mendenhour said, “Glendolene, you’d best wait in the station house where it’s warm.”

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said, glancing only fleetingly, with vague shyness, at Yakima. “But what’s this about?”

  Mendenhour spoke to Yakima. “I’ve offered Mr. Henry here the job of escorting us to Belle Fourche. There are few lawmen between here and there, and the only real town we’ll be passing through is Jawbone. The sheriff there is no good. A drunkard. We won’t be able to depend on him for help.”

  Glendolene lifted her eyes to Yakima. “What do you say . . . uh . . . Mr. Henry, was it?”

  “I say keep your money. Just so happens I’m headin’ the same direction.” Yakima turned to Glendolene. “How is Mrs. O’Reilly?”

  “We’ve seared the wound closed and bandaged her arm. She says she’s ready for travel. She’s very strong. I think she is ready.”

  “Well,” Mendenhour said eagerly, “let’s go, then!”

  He and the driver and shotgun messenger started walking toward the coach. The hostlers were finished hitching the team to the doubletree and were checking the snaps and buckles.

  Glendolene stared at Yakima for another second. then lowered her eyes, turned, and walked back toward the station house.

  * * *

  Yakima rode out ahead of the stage and scouted his back trail from the top of a haystack butte. When the stage had passed safely along the trail that angled around the butte’s base, he followed from a distance of about a hundred yards.

  He saw no sign that the cutthroats had circled around them and gotten ahead, so he paid close attention to the country flanking him, spying nothing but deer grazing sunny slopes carpeted in grass the same color as their winter coats, and a couple of coyotes meandering along a shallow wash.

  It was nearly thirty miles to the next station, and by the time they reached it three and a half hours later, the sky had cleared but the temperature had dropped below freezing. He did not venture into the yard of the station that sat in a hollow amongst rocky escarpments, but kept watch on a high stone shelf on the yard’s southern edge.

  While Wolf cropped grass behind and below him, he sat in the shelf in the rocks, perusing the country to the southwest through his spyglass. It was all rolling sage- and cedar-stippled hogbacks, dusty green in the winter light. The Snowy and Wind River ranges beyond them formed broad, dark lumps in the south and west. Low hills, box-shaped bluffs, and small mesas swelled against the eastern horizon. The Big Horns loomed like near storm clouds in the north, though they were still about seventy miles away. Yakima knew that the stage trail skirted their southeastern-most slopes around the town of Jawbone.

  He glanced at the cabin. The passengers were emerging after a fifteen-minute layover, Glendolene walking beside Mrs. O’Reilly, whose right arm was hooked through a makeshift sling. The air was so quiet he could hear Glendolene’s voice tinkling like chimes.

  After their first day together, coupling on the big cot in the line shack, they’d dressed together slowly in the sunlight pushing through the two front windows from which he’d thrown back the shutters. They were lethargic from exertion and slumber, and they dressed without speaking, though they exchanged long, admiring glances.

  When they’d gone out and saddled their horses, he lifted her up onto her palo’s back and said, “You don’t want to know my name?”

  She shook her head. Her slightly tangled hair danced about her smooth ivory cheeks and shoulders. “Nope!” She laughed and reined the palo away.

  “You could tell me yours!” he called after her.

  She glanced back, smiling, over her shoulder. “Same time, next week?”

  He shrugged.

  She turned her head forward and galloped down the long hill and swung right to disappear amongst the stone escarpments. He stood there, still feeling the texture of her ripe body in his hands. . . .

  Now he waited until the stage had lurched away from the relay station behind the lunging team, then mounted Wolf and rode down to the trail. He skirted the yard and the two hostlers—a couple of Indians and a black man—tending the sweaty team in the corral—and headed out after the stage. He kept it just within sight as he rode, casting frequent looks behind.

  Still, the cutthroats were staying out of sight. They’d wait and try to catch him and the others off guard. Maybe attack them tonight when they were overnighting at the Hamburg Station on Seven-Mile Creek.

  Ten minutes later, he topped a hill to see the stage stopped between two piles of glacial rubble at the hill’s bottom. The passengers had climbed out to stand in a semicircle around the driver and the shotgun messenger, the driver on his knees to inspect the right rear wheel.

  “What happened?” Yakima said as he rode up.

  Charlie Adlard looked up at him, scowling. “Broke the felloe again.” He glanced at a rock leaning out from the side of the trail. “The horses swerved to miss that rock there and swung the back end right into it. It wasn’t there last week—I’ll damn sure tell you that.”

  He glanced at the three women in the bunch and added sheepishly, “Pardon my tongue, ladies.”

  Yakima dismounted and led Wolf up along the opposite side of the coach from the group gathered around the driver. A few yards ahead of the team, he found the imprints of one shod horse that had entered the trail from the west. He stared in that direction, saw a jostling brown speck climbing a distant hill.

  He cursed under his breath. One man had gotten around him and kicked the rock into the trail.

  Yakima tied Wolf to a cedar and walked back up to where Adlard was talking to Coble and Mendenhour. “One got a
round me.”

  “One what?” said Mendenhour.

  “Who do you think?”

  The men looked at each other. The three women looked at Yakima, fear in their eyes. Then the third woman, the wife of the young, roughly clad young man, turned to Mendenhour. Tears streamed down her flushed cheeks beneath the frayed wool scarf she wore over her head. “It’s because of you, isn’t it? They’re going to kill us all because of you!” She sobbed and turned to her gangling, rawboned husband standing beside her.

  “Now, Sally!” the young man said.

  “We should have stayed at the last relay station, Percy! But he made it sound like we’d seen the last of those killers!”

  “I didn’t say that,” Mendenhour said defensively.

  Mrs. O’Reilly took Sally’s arm and led her away from the group and the coach. The young woman—round-faced, snub-nosed, with curly blond hair frizzing out around the scarf—glanced back worriedly at the young man, who stood with the other men, though he looked nearly as frightened as his young wife.

  Yakima turned to the driver. “Can you fix the wheel?”

  “No, we was just talkin’ about that,” Adlard said, looking down at the cracked wheel, the iron rim half off, several spokes hanging toward the ground with splintered ends. “I’ll have to ride on to the next station and bring one back. Hamburg’ll have a spare.”

  “Too late to go now,” Yakima said, staring west. “The sun’ll be down long before you get back.”

  “What do you suggest, Mr. Half-Breed Know-It-All?” said the beefy shotgun messenger, fire in his small light brown eyes set too close to his wedge-shaped nose. “You think we oughta just camp out here with them cutthroats on the prod? One of which, I might add, slipped around your eagle eyes and wrecked the wheel!”

  “I say we take the horses and ride to the next station.” This from one of the two drummers sitting off away from the larger crowd of drivers and passengers and Yakima.

  They were standing together, smoking and holding their own council, regarding the others soberly. The man who’d spoken wore a spruce green bowler with a frayed brim, and a pair of cheap metal spectacles sat atop his nose. His eyes were rheumy, his voice slightly slurred. Yakima had seen him and his friend passing a small, hide-covered traveling flask.