Dead Man's Trail (9781101606957)

by Leslie, Frank

  “Ah, hell—this is it, ain’t it?” the jehu said, grabbing Yakima’s Winchester off the table, taking his own rifle in his other hand.

  “I reckon it is.”

  “Why you gonna take Betajack out there?” Mendenhour wanted to know.

  Yakima turned from the door, the big outlaw hanging off his shoulder and down his back. “There’s a chance, probably a slight one, that they won’t fight so hard when they realize they got nothin’ to fight for now—this bein’ Betajack’s shindig an’ all.”

  He nodded at Adlard, who opened the door for him. On his way out, Yakima said, “And, hell, maybe they’ll wanna say a few words over him.”

  Yakima stepped around Adlard. He inadvertently banged Betajack’s head on the doorframe as he went out. It made a dull thud. As Adlard came out behind him, drawing the door closed, Yakima walked down off the porch steps and into the yard. Hendricks glowered at him curiously as he approached and then stopped and dropped his cargo on the ground before Hendricks’s cream stallion.

  The horse pitched slightly, nickering. Yakima had hoped it would.

  “Turns out he expired on me last night,” Yakima said matter-of-factly. “I do apologize. Old ticker couldn’t take all this, I reckon.”

  “Christ, you son of a bitch!” Hendricks shouted, staring down at Betajack as though he’d never seen a dead man before, and fumbling to get his rifle aimed.

  Yakima turned to Adlard, who tossed him the Yellowboy. Yakima swung back toward Hendricks, pumping a fresh round into the chamber, and aimed at Hendricks’s bespectacled face just as the horse curveted on its rear hooves.

  Yakima’s Winchester thundered, shattering the still morning silence. His bullet merely clipped the narrow brim of Hendricks’s opera hat, flipping it off his head just as his horse dropped back down to all four feet. Hendricks gave an angry bellow that turned shrill when Adlard triggered his carbine, punching dust from the upper right arm of Hendricks’s coat. Yakima fired again as the horse pitched like a rodeo bronc, and the outlaw leader snarled through gritted teeth and clamped a hand over his upper-left thigh.

  At the same time, the other riders began opening up and galloping toward the bunkhouse. Bullets plowed into the ground around Yakima and Adlard, and the jehu yelped and leaped off his left foot as though the limb had been pinked. More bullets hammered the porch support posts and the adobe brick front of the bunkhouse and cracked through the windows.

  “Take cover!” Yakima shouted at Adlard, and the man started hopping toward a rain barrel standing off the bunkhouse’s north front corner.

  Yakima felt a bullet clip his left calf as he ran, legs and arms pumping, toward the bunkhouse. Two more tore up dead grass at his heels just before he launched himself into the air, careened over the top of the stock trough left of the front steps, and hit the ground behind it and rolled against the stone base of the porch.

  There was the screech of more breaking glass, and a quick glance told him the other stage passengers were doing as he’d told them, hammering out the glass to return fire. As a couple of rifles opened up in the bunkhouse behind him, he racked a fresh round in the Yellowboy’s beech, snaked the barrel over the top of the stock trough, squinting down the barrel. Hendricks’s horse was buck-kicking wildly in the middle of the yard, about forty yards from Yakima, while the man himself, hatless, rose-colored glasses hanging from one ear, ran toward the cover of the stone well, limping on his left leg.

  As the other riders were galloping in a shaggy, spread-out line toward the bunkhouse, shooting pistols or rifles—some with guns popping and smoking in both fists—Yakima fired twice more at Hendricks, wanting to cut the head off the gang’s second snake. One bullet tore up dust and snow off Hendricks’s heels as he dove behind the well coping, while the second drilled the coping itself, ricocheting loudly.

  Bullets hammered the far side of the stock trough, flinging wood slivers in all directions. The riders were within twenty yards now, and Yakima started firing. He knocked one straight back off his saddle, drilled a round through the left cheek of another. Just then, pistols and rifles began blasting behind him, and the entire gang, to a man, hung their lower jaws in shock while jerking back hard on their horses’ reins. They hadn’t been expecting resistance from any more of the stage’s party outside of Yakima himself.

  The horse of one stopped so suddenly that the coyote dun flew forward, knees buckling. It hit the ground on its right wither and flung its rider over its head. The man landed hard and rolled, throwing his arms up, amazingly still holding his carbine. As he staggered backward, getting his land legs, he swung his rifle toward Yakima, who drilled him through the dead center of his quilted elk-skin coat half a second before a shot from the cabin snapped his head back sharply. Bright red blood oozed out from where his left eye had been.

  The guns in the cabin erupted in a cannonade. Ejecting his last spent cartridge, which bounced off the porch behind him, Yakima smiled. Two more of Hendricks’s killers were blown off their mounts, spewing blood and screaming. Their horses screamed, as well, and trampled their fallen riders as they wheeled and headed back in the opposite direction, buck-kicking angrily.

  One of the few remaining killers galloped toward Yakima. The half-breed aimed and fired, but his Winchester pinged on an empty chamber. Half a second later, the rider’s own carbine clicked empty, and then he hurled himself off the side of his desperately, dustily curveting horse. He slammed into Yakima with a wild yell, the eagle tattoo on his cheek fairly glowing now in the growing morning light.

  He threw Yakima onto his back and raised a big Green River knife with a carved horn handle. Screaming like a gut-shot coyote, he thrust the knife toward Yakima’s neck. The half-breed released his empty rifle and shoved his left hand up, wrapping it around the killer’s wrist when the point of the long knife was six inches from his throat. He gave a grunt and, gritting his teeth and hardening his jaw, tossed the lighter, weaker man over onto his back.

  The attacker screamed again, widening his mouth and his dark eyes and nostrils, as Yakima twisted his wrist until it broke with a grinding crack. He gave another grunt as he shoved the man’s own knife up through the underside of his chin, hammering the end of the knife with the heel of his hand until the blade ground into his brain.

  Blood rushed from the gaping wound like hot water from a gut flask, sopping the front of his heavy, quilted blanket coat.

  Yakima pulled his hand away, let the man drop dead to the ground.

  He jerked his head toward the open yard, not startled by sound and movement but by its sudden lack. The only ones standing out there were the few horses that hadn’t run off. All the killers were down—a few lying still in bloody piles. A few writhing and groaning.

  The shooting had stopped.

  Yakima glanced behind him. Sally and Percy Rand stood in the broken-out window left of the door. They each held a rifle or smoking pistol and they were looking around cautiously. Mendenhour and Weatherford stood in the window on the door’s other side, old Elijah holding a bloody white handkerchief to his forehead.

  “Everybody all right?” Yakima called.

  Weatherford nodded. “I took a ricochet. Don’t think anyone else in here’s hit.” He darted a bright glance past Yakima. “Look there!”

  A man was on a knee about halfway down the side of a burned-out shed ahead and right of Yakima. A gun flashed and barked, the bullet hammering the porch behind the half-breed. The man rose heavily, awkwardly, and ran limping toward a horse standing nearby, reins dangling straight down to the ground.

  Yakima recognized Claw Hendricks’s long horse-hair coat. He palmed his Colt and, rising to a crouch, fired twice. Both shots blew up dust and gravel just behind the outlaw leader. And then he was in the saddle and ramming his heels against the pinto’s flanks, galloping south toward the canyon. His image in the still dull light grew quickly smaller.
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br />   He was out of range for Yakima’s Colt.

  The half-breed cursed. He picked up his rifle and walked out from behind the stock trough, looking around carefully. All the downed men lay still except for one about twenty yards straight ahead. He lay on his back, grinding his spurs into the ground. Blood poured from a hole in his neck and several more in his wolf coat. He was speaking in oddly dulcet tones as though to his Maker in the sky.

  Yakima heard the thumps of boots behind him. The others were filing through the bunkhouse door while Adlard limped out from behind his rain barrel. They all held pistols and rifles and they were glassy-eyed, cautious, a little amazed by what they had done and, likely, that they were all still alive to tell about it.

  Yakima continued walking slowly forward, looking around at the dead and dying around him, and then he stared off toward Hendricks’s dwindling figure. Mendenhour came down the porch steps and walked into the clearing. Glendolene walked out of the bunkhouse with the others, and they all spread out in the yard in front of the porch. Mendenhour continued toward Yakima.

  “They all dead?” he asked.

  “Pretty much. Hendricks is lightin’ a shuck.”

  “Likely bleed to death—won’t he?”

  “Probably.”

  Yakima stared toward Hendricks’s jouncing figure just now heading into the canyon. In the corner of his eye, he saw Mendenhour raise his rifle, heard the nasty scrape of a cartridge being levered into the chamber. He wheeled to see the man aiming the rifle at him from his shoulder.

  “Thanks for the help, Henry. But I understand you’re wanted dead or alive.” The prosecutor smiled grimly as he squinted down the Winchester’s barrel.

  Behind him, Lori O’Reilly gasped.

  A gun blasted. Mendenhour’s head jerked forward.

  He staggered toward Yakima, lowering his rifle and triggering it into the ground near his feet. He stopped, looked at Yakima with a dazed look, blood pumping from the back of his neck. As though drunk, he pivoted, stumbling again, and saw his wife standing six feet behind him, aiming a smoking Remington .44 at him in both her gloved hands.

  Her eyes were hard, her mouth straight.

  “You son of a bitch,” she said softly. “Why did you have to go and make me do that?”

  A single tear rolled out from the corner of her right eye and started dropping down her cheek. She lowered the pistol slowly.

  “Ah, hell,” the prosecutor said through a long, weary sigh.

  He dropped to his knees and then to his side, his hands and his brown leather half boots quivering slightly as he died.

  Chapter 32

  The hovel sat at the edge of Belle Fourche, along the steep, narrow bank of Hay Creek.

  Yakima couldn’t see the place very well until Wolf had clomped across the creek via a plank bridge buried in new-fallen snow. The wind blew snow through the gauzy twilight, obscuring what appeared to be a very small ranch-stead with a log barn little larger than most cabins, a single corral, and a shack that was little more than vertical boards over which tar paper had been tacked. It had a second story with a steeply slanting east-side roof and a single unlit window. The roof did not appear to be shingled under the snow mantling it.

  The torn edges of the tar paper rattled in the strong wind that blew the snow against the house and the barn, causing the hovel’s rickety frame to creak precariously. There was a small lean-to stable off the cabin’s right side and what appeared to be a chicken coop behind that. The door was on the stable side of the cabin.

  Yakima urged Wolf up to the shack. Its windows were lit with flickering candles, and they laid a vague yellow light on the snowy ground before it. A pine Christmas wreath was nailed to the front door, and it flipped and flapped in the wind.

  Yakima swung heavily down from the saddle, wincing against the snow and the wind blasting him. He walked back to his saddlebags and pulled the gold sack out of the left pouch. He hefted the pouch and looked at the cabin. His heart felt heavier in his chest than the gold felt in his hands.

  Letting Wolf’s reins droop to the ground, the wind jostling them, Yakima walked up to the front door. It consisted of five six-foot-long vertical pine boards and a wooden handle. He knocked on the door. He had to knock once more; a few minutes later, a woman’s silhouetted head appeared in the window right of the door, looking out.

  She pulled her head back. Yakima thought that, seeing a big half-breed out here in this weather, she’d likely shotgun him through the door. But then the door scraped open a few inches, and the woman’s chocolate-colored face appeared in the crack.

  “I have something for you, Mrs. Clifton,” he said loudly so she could hear him above the wind. He bounced the gold lightly in his hands. “It’s from your husband.”

  She stared at him. He saw her eyes widen slightly. Slowly, she opened the door and stepped back, drawing the door half-open, beckoning with one hand. Yakima stepped into the cabin, and she closed the door quickly, having to ram a shoulder against it to latch it. Then she stepped back away from him, staring up at him warily, spreading a dark hand against her chest.

  She was a slight black woman in a relatively clean gray dress that was older than the decorative green and red stitching she’d added to the high-buttoned neck and the sleeves. Her kinky hair was pulled straight back and secured behind her head. A fine-boned, handsome woman of around thirty, Yakima thought.

  “From . . . Delbert . . . ?” she said, dropping her eyes to the sack in the half-breed’s hands.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said grimly.

  They were in the kitchen crudely furnished with pine shelves, a small black range, and a square eating table that had turned silver from scrubbing. The table was set with simple tin plates, cups, and wooden-handled forks and knives. A large iron pot bubbled on the stove, filling the room with the smell of rabbit stew. Behind a wall partition to his left, hushed voices rose. A pair of dark eyes appeared around the edge of the wall. They widened when they found Yakima, and the boy drew his head back, muttering to someone else in that part of the shack with him.

  “And Delbert . . . ?” The corner of the woman’s eyes were wrinkled with trepidation.

  She knew even before Yakima said it in the best way he could—simply and clearly. “He’s dead, ma’am.”

  Those eyes held his as though beseeching and at the same time defying him to continue. They turned golden with a thin sheen of tears.

  “He died saving my life and the life of my partner. He was on his way home . . . with this.” Yakima walked over and placed the sack on the table. “That’s when he died. This here is yours. Probably more money than you’ll know what to do with at first, but”—he glanced around the humble dwelling, feeling the cold air seeping through cracks between the vertical wall boards—“you’ll figure it out.”

  Mrs. Clifton stood staring at him, silently sobbing.

  Yakima walked over and wrapped his arms around her. He held her tightly for several minutes. Her silent crying racked her. When he pulled away from her, she sniffed, wiped tears from her cheeks with the backs of her hands, and said, “Can you stay for supper, sir?”

  “No.” Yakima squeezed her arms reassuringly. He glanced behind him, saw a little boy around ten and a girl of about twelve, both dressed in ragged dungarees and patched socks, staring at him from the entrance to the shack’s little parlor area. Behind them was a tree only slightly taller and fuller than a sage shrub. It held three candles and a short string of popcorn.

  “Your daddy saved my life. Don’t ever forget him.”

  He pinched his hat brim to the children and walked to the door. As he opened it and started out, Mrs. Clifton said, “Sir?”

  Yakima stopped.

  She frowned, tears still streaming down her cheeks from her glistening eyes, lips trembling. “What’s your name?”

 
“I’m Yakima Henry.”

  He went out, mounted up, and rode back across the bridge. He rode back through Belle Fourche, through the chill wind pelting him with snow. His heart still felt heavy, but it was getting lighter. He wished the same for the Cliftons, but that might take months, maybe years.

  He rode down the little settlement’s main street, heading south. The Butte County Hotel was on his right. It was the only business establishment in town with lit windows. A decorated Christmas tree stood inside the large front window of the three-story flophouse. Shadows moved around it. He could hear the jubilant strains of a fiddle and a banjo.

  Pausing in the street, staring into the hotel, he could see the Rands dancing in front of the tree, near a popping fire in the hotel dining room’s massive stone hearth. Mrs. O’Reilly was dancing with Elijah Weatherford. Charlie Adlard sat on a deep leather sofa, his injured ankle propped on a stool. Adlard had his hair greased and combed, and he wore a string tie over a checked shirt, and a corduroy jacket.

  Yakima thought he looked fine. He thought they all looked fine. Vaguely, he wondered where Glendolene was. He hadn’t said anything to her after he’d driven the stage into town, trailing his horse. He’d helped them all inside out of the building storm, and then he’d mounted Wolf and ridden over to the Clifton place, completing his mission.

  He turned forward and started to boot Wolf again, but looked back at the hotel when he saw the front door open. Glendolene stepped out. She wore a red silk dress. The wind tossed it richly against her long legs. Around her slim neck was a bejeweled choker. Her hair was down, blowing in the wind. It shone in the light from the windows flanking her.

  “Yakima?” she said, crossing her arms as she stopped at the edge of the broad front veranda. “Aren’t you coming in?”