The Long Hitch

by Michael Zimmer

  Peewee had dismounted but was keeping a firm grip on his jerkline as he attempted to soothe his nerve-rattled wheelers. When Buck got there, he ordered Nate, Joe, and Lou to help with the rest of the hitch, then continued on to the lead wagon, swearing under his breath when he saw the left front wheel rammed solidly into a boulder. Three of its spokes were destroyed; two others were badly splintered.

  At the rear of the lead wagon, Milo and Charlie Bigelow were squatted half under the bed. Charlie rose when Buck came up, his face a mask of rage. Lifting a length of heavy chain for Buck to see, he said: “It’s been tampered with, Buck. Some dirty, rotten son-of-a-bitch loosened it right out from under the frame.”

  Buck gritted his teeth as he accepted the chain from Charlie, but as he examined the eyebolt, he knew the muleskinner was right. The final few threads of bolt had been stripped clean, but the rest of the shaft—nearly four inches of new steel—was undamaged.

  “That ain’t no accident, by God,” Charlie fumed.

  “Not by a long shot,” Milo agreed, staring at Buck. “Somebody loosened it on purpose … ran that nut out until it was barely holding.”

  “I checked that brake last night,” Peewee said, and Buck turned to find the muleskinner standing behind him, his gaze riveted on the end of the chain, his face pale. “That bolt was tight when I went to bed.”

  “I ain’t arguing with you,” Buck said wearily.

  “Whoever did this knew what was gonna happen.” Peewee looked up, meeting Buck’s eyes. “They had to.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Arlen Fleck was no frontiersman. It was a shortfall of character he would have cheerfully admitted to. He preferred cities, the bigger the better, and saloons that stayed open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Lights and noise and the comforting cloak of humanity where he could fade into the background was his idea of a home range. He didn’t even care for horses, although he would have denied his fear of them to anyone, including Nick Kelso, whose fault it was that he was out here now, tramping miserably across the middle of nowhere, as lost as a body was ever likely to be.

  No doubt about it, Arlen thought, he’d let Nick down badly by allowing the kid to get away, and Nick was making damned sure he paid for it. Right now, Arlen was somewhere north of the Snake River, so deep into Idaho Territory he might just as well have been on the moon. He was riding with a couple of men he’d never met until the day before yesterday, but who carried themselves with the same go-to-hell confidence that marked Nick’s swagger, the same hard-edged glint in their eyes that said they’d as soon kill a man as look at him.

  The leader of this duo of bearded savages was Gabe Carville, a lanky, stoop-shouldered man who sat his saddle like a vulture waiting for its next meal. The other hombre went by the name of Henry Reese, a shorter, stockier version of his partner, solid as a chunk of seasoned oak, prickly as a cactus pad. Ex-trappers, they wore grease-blackened buckskins and floppy-brimmed hats that looked like they’d been hooked out of a muddy river after having been flushed through a steamboat’s privy chute. Their faces were crevassed by long years in the wilderness and their hair hung over their shoulders in stringy locks. They carried heavy-barreled rifles across their saddlebows and wore a brace of pistols each, in addition to huge hunting knives that looked like they could cut a man in half with one swipe.

  Arlen’s jaw had nearly bounced off the floor when Nick told him to saddle up, that he was going to accompany the two barbarians on a little task he wanted done, then report back to Nick when the mission was completed. It was one of the few times Arlen had argued with Kelso. Afterward, he remembered why he didn’t challenge the frost-veined gunman more often.

  Arlen and Nick had run across the two old mountain men at a relay station called King’s, north of the Malad Divide. Arlen could tell that Nick hadn’t expected to run into them there, but that he was glad he did. He’d pulled the two aside almost immediately and, over a bottle of whiskey they passed back and forth without the use of glasses or wiping the bottle’s mouth between swigs, they had schemed well into the night. Before dawn, Nick came into the room where Arlen was sleeping and roughly smacked the bottom of his bare feet, telling him what he wanted while Arlen searched for his socks.

  That had been two days ago, and except for swimming their horses across the Snake River, somewhere west of the Montana Road, Arlen hadn’t a clue where they were now. Not that he didn’t already have enough to worry about. Although Carville and Reese were concern aplenty, there were also bears and catamounts in the hills, and rattlesnakes so thick in the sage and rocks that he nearly smothered himself at night, wrapping up in his blankets. He tried to do it on the sly, figuring there would be no end to the hell his companions could cause him if they ever discovered his fear of reptiles. They were hard enough to tolerate as it was, barely acknowledging him through the long, dusty days other than to make fun of the way he rode—his butt cheeks were already so galled he could barely force himself into the saddle in the morning—or his ignorance of the terrain and the fauna that inhabited it.

  They worked him like a woman in the evenings, ordering him to collect firewood and tend their suppers like they were lords, which in a way, they were, at least out here where he was such a foreigner.

  The only chore they wouldn’t let him do was care for the horses. Not even his own, which would have been humiliating had he not been so weighed down with everything else that had happened to him since leaving Ogden.

  It was late into their second day since leaving King’s, and the afternoon sun was blazing into their eyes when they topped a low rise, woolly with sage and rabbitbrush. Henry said something that Arlen didn’t catch and Gabe grunted what might have been agreement. Then Henry said: “Looks like the men be back, too.”

  “I hope they found buffler,” Gabe grumbled. “This child’s near starved fer some good hump meat.”

  Coming up behind the shaggy outcasts, Arlen didn’t see anything other than what he’d been looking at for the past two days. “Who’s back?” he asked, his voice croaky with dust.

  “Let’s get on down there, ’fore Runs-His-Ponies thinks we’re lookin’ fer a fight,” Henry said, and Arlen’s heart went thump-thump, real fast.

  “Runs-His-Ponies? That sounds.…” He held his right hand palm flat along the narrow brim of his porkpie hat and squinted into the sun, while the rest of what he was going to say stumbled and fell on his tongue. Through the late afternoon light he could just make out a hazy cloud of smoke, hanging above a grove of trees about a mile away. Below it, he could see numerous brown, conical tents, a horse herd grazing not too far beyond them. “Indians,” he breathed.

  Henry, making a gagging sound that Arlen had come to understand was a chuckle, said to Gabe: “I believe the pilgrim’s finally gettin’ some mountain smarts about him.”

  “Are they … Sioux?” Arlen asked with an involuntary shudder.

  At his question, Henry gave him the same withering look Nick sometimes did, when Arlen said something the gunman considered too ignorant to respond to. Seeing it, Arlen suddenly recalled that the Sioux lived east of the Rocky Mountains, a long way from Idaho. “Blackfoot,” he second guessed.

  “He ain’t soundin’ so smart no more,” Gabe observed without looking around. “How ya figure he survived this long, Henry?”

  The old trapper’s remark sparked a flash of resentment in Arlen. “I get along just fine in my own place,” he retorted. “Probably in a city like Ogden, you two would be as lost as I am out here.”

  The grubby frontiersmen laughed, and Gabe added: “I doubts it, boy, I shorely do.”

  Sadly Arlen figured he was probably right. “What are we going to do?” he asked, changing the subject. He’d hoped they might by-pass the village so that he wouldn’t have to deal with this new experience, but it was becoming apparent that the ragged collection of hide tents had been their destination all along.

  This time it was Gabe who looked back, gracing him with a yellow-fanged grin th
at reminded Arlen of the dog that had cornered him in Corinne. “Why, boy, we’s gonna start us a little Injun war, and, if ye ain’t keerful, it’ll be yore scalp we lift first.”

  Arlen just nodded and said—“Oh.”—and let it drop, deciding right then and there that he didn’t really want to know what they were going to do here, and that taking care of the fire and the food was just fine.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  They pulled the front wheel off the trailer to replace the broken wheel on Peewee’s lead wagon, so that he could drive it another half mile down the mountain to a small cove along the road. Then they returned with the good wheel to bring the trailer down, the rest of the caravan following without incident.

  Buck sent Rossy and Manuel up the mountain to cut a suitable pole from the taller pines near the top, while he, Peewee, and Milo pulled the larger right rear wheel off Peewee’s trailer and returned it to the front of the lead wagon. When Rossy and Manuel got back, they trimmed the thigh-thick trunk to shape, then rigged it to the trailer’s rear axle to create a makeshift skid that held the hub about a foot off the ground. When they’d finished, Buck stepped back to view the result. With its odd-size wheels up front and the drag on the trailer, the whole outfit looked mismatched and slightly ludicrous, but he figured it would hold together long enough to get them to King’s.

  King’s was an old Oliver and Company relay station, sitting just off the Malad’s northern foothills, where the Marsh Valley Road from Franklin merged with the Montana Road. The last time Buck had been there, there had been a blacksmith, a wheelwright, and a carpenter on duty. It was the wheelwright Buck was hoping to find today.

  He had Paddy O’Rourke bring up his off-leader, a big-boned sorrel with a gentle disposition. While Buck and Peewee lashed the broken wheel to the mule’s back, O’Rourke stood off to one side and grumbled about the unfairness of losing half his team to a Box K chore. Buck ignored him and swung into his saddle, telling Milo, loudly enough for rest of the men to hear: “Keep this train moving. You should reach King’s by midmorning tomorrow. With any luck, I’ll have this wheel fixed by the time you pull in.” His gaze swept the crew. “We all know this wasn’t an accident,” he said bluntly. “From here on, everybody keeps their eyes peeled. Anything suspicious, you come to me, Milo, or Peewee. I don’t want something like this happening again.”

  An uneasy murmuring rippled through the crowd, but Buck was relieved that no one demanded further explanation.

  It was still light when Buck reached King’s. He reined into the shade of the stable and stepped down just as John King emerged from the building’s interior with a welcoming smile.

  “Hello, Buck,” the station manager said, reaching out to shake the younger man’s hand. Nodding to the pack mule with a wry grin, he added: “Lose your wagon?”

  “Just about.” Buck related the incident that had nearly sent Peewee to the bottom of the Malad gorge. When he finished, neither man was smiling.

  “Any ideas who your traitor is?” John asked.

  Buck shook his head. “Not a one.”

  “Word I ’ve heard is that half your crew is new, and that you’ve got a new ramrod to boot.”

  Buck’s lips twitched in a smile as he turned to the sorrel. “I ain’t seen a telegraph line yet that can deliver news faster than a teamster.”

  “This came from a Gilmer and Salisbury man,” John confessed, moving around to the other side of the mule to help Buck lift the awkward load from its back. “They’re faster than freighters but generally won’t take time for details.”

  “Is that what you’re fishing for, details?”

  “No, I got the details from a Salt Lake Freight outfit that passed through here a couple of days ago. I’s the talk of the road, Buck, this race between the Box K and C and L.” They wrestled the heavy wheel to the grounds then rolled it over to lean against the stable wall. “Folks are talking about Mase’s death, too,” John added solemnly. “There’s some who wonder if maybe Crowley and Luce aren’t behind it.”

  “I’ve heard that,” Buck said vaguely. “Where is the Crowley and Luce train, anyway?”

  “It hasn’t come through yet.”

  Buck nodded but didn’t grim, even though he wanted to.

  “Lot of the boys, independents especially, are watching this race close. Some of them are saying that if C and L wins, Corinne will be a ghost town by the end of the season.”

  “I’ve heard that, too,” Buck said, glancing at the twin wagon tracks of the Franklin Road that came in arrow-straight from the southeast.

  “Traffic out of Franklin has been slow so far,” John said, noticing the direction of Buck’s gaze. “Some light farm wagons hauling their own harvests from last fall, but nothing heavier than a half ton. It’s that damn’ Marsh Valley stretch that’s got them stopped, but that should be drying out pretty quick now. Was a prospector through here yesterday saying the Franklin outfits are gearing up for a big push. Said the whole town is getting behind Crowley and Luce. Going to let them have first whack at the road, then stay out of their way until they get a good start.” He paused briefly. “If he’s right, C and L could be here as early as tomorrow.”

  And to the Eastern speculators, insulated by twenty-five hundred miles of easy rail and reams of false paperwork from Utah Northern’s agents, it probably wouldn’t matter a whit that Lew Walker already had a train in Montana, a good two weeks ahead of the earliest Franklin outfit.

  “Whatcha got for me?” called a voice from the darkness of the stable, and Buck turned as King’s wheelwright. Les Turner, strode into view.

  “I’ve got some spokes that need replacing,” Buck said, shaking the wright’s hand. “How have you been. Les?”

  “Right pert, other than my feet.”

  “He’s been soaking his feet down at the spring every day since the weather turned warm,” John added. “It’s gotten so bad the cattle won’t drink.”

  “Them cows’ll drink when they get thirsty,” Les replied peevishly to the laughter of the two men. “ ’Sides, it ain’t gonna be long and I’ll be humpin’ it sunup to sundown keepin’ them big rigs rollin’. Come fall, my feet’s gonna be so swollen I’ll be hobblin’ around like some gray-muzzled old ox.”

  John chuckled and slapped the wheelwright’s stomach lightly with the back of his hand. “That won’t be because of the work, Les, that’ll be because you’re already an old, gray-muzzled ox. Haven’t you looked in a mirror lately?”

  “There ain’t nothin’ in a mirror I got a hankerin’ to see,” Les shot back, walking over to examine the wheel. “Yeah, we can fix this,” he told Buck after a couple of minutes. “How far back is your wagon?”

  “It ought to be here tomorrow morning.”

  “Sure, we’ll be ready by then,” Les promised, then started the damaged wheel rolling toward his shop behind the stable.

  Gathering Zeke’s reins and the pack mule’s lead rope, Buck led them to a nearby corral. He piled their tack beside the gate, then made sure they had feed and water. Afterward, he walked over to watch Les repair the wheel, pitching in whenever the wright asked for assistance.

  It was no small task to change out the broken spokes. The wheel’s iron rim had to be pulled first, then the fellies pried gently apart so that the spokes could be removed and replaced, sort of like an intricate Chinese puzzle. Done wrong and the wheel wouldn’t last a hundred miles. Done right and it would last a hundred years—barring any further collisions with mountainside boulders.

  By the time the light was starting to fade in the west, the two men were fitting the forge-heated rim back over the wheel, dousing it with buckets of cold water that drew the iron strap tight as a weld.

  Jerking his face away from the billowing steam that rose off the hot iron, Buck leaned one of the long-handled tongs he and Les had used to lower the rim over the fellies against the wall. Arching his back against the knot of muscles that had knuckled up along his spine, he said: “I don’t know why you’re complaining about
your feet. My back’s so kinked up I don’t know if I’ll ever walk straight again.”

  Les laughed as he circled the horizontal wheel, giving the rim a few experimental taps along the way with a steel-headed mallet to satisfy himself that the job had been done right. “You ought to grab yourself something to eat, Buck,” he said without looking up. “Cookie’ll keep the bar open till bedtime, but he runs a tight kitchen.”

  “Are you eating?”

  The wheelwright looked up, smiling. “Sure, I’m gonna eat with my wife and kids. John’ll eat with his brood. You’re gonna have to share grub with Cookie and some jasper been hangin’ around the last couple days like a snake in a hen house.”

  News of a stranger piqued Buck’s interest. “What jasper is that?” he asked.

  Les shrugged as he continued his slow tramp around the wheel, keeping watch for uneven cooling. “He won’t give up his name or even the time of day. Just sits there sippin’ beer and starin’ down the road.”

  “Which road?”

  “The Franklin Road.” Les glanced at Buck. “I ain’t sure that means anything, you understand?”

  “No, but I appreciate the warning.”

  “Hell, if it’s a warning you want, shy away from Cookie’s oatmeal. Stick to the venison. I’s tough as leather, but it won’t ferment in your belly overnight like them oats.”

  Buck chuckled politely and promised to do just that, but, as he left the wheelwright’s shop, his thoughts immediately skipped back to the stranger hanging out at the bar. Standing in the gathering darkness outside, Buck could make out the glow of evening fires at the Box K camp, less than ten miles away. Farther up the mountain, near its summit, was a second small globe of light that he knew was the fire of another freighters’ camp, capping the shallow pass like a rising moon. Although the Franklin Road was still dark, Buck knew that would soon change. If what John King’s prospector had said was true, in another few days their back trail at night would be lit by a string of distant cook fires from rival firms.