The Long Hitch

by Michael Zimmer

  “What are you doing out here?” he demanded, dropping beside her.

  “What’s happening?”

  “Bandits, after the mules.” Thad snapped a shot into the darkness behind Ray Jones’s trailer, then quickly chambered a fresh round into his rifle. “You can’t stay here,” he said. “It’s too dangerous.”

  Gwen eyed the mud wagon fearfully, its dark wood already splintered by bullets. “I won’t go in there,” she declared.

  “Then get inside the tent.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “Come along, Miss Haywood, we’ve got to get you out of sight.” Gwen shuddered at the implication. She tried to stand but he pushed her back. “You’ll have to crawl,” he said tersely. “Come on.”

  “I can’t crawl in skirts!”

  “Crawl, goddammit!” he shouted.

  “Thad!”

  “Move!”

  Gwen moved, crying in fear and humiliation. On hands and knees, yanking at her cumbersome skirts every few feet, she made her way to the front of the tent. Thad stayed at her side, firing whenever a target presented itself, urging her to hurry. When she’d crawled inside, he said: “Get down behind your trunks and don’t come out until you’re sure it’s safe.”

  “Won’t you come with me?”

  “I can do more good out here, especially if I don’t have to worry about you. Now get in there and get down!”

  Gwen scurried deeper into the tent’s dark interior, huddling down among the stiff leather trunks that had been stacked at the foot of her bed. There was a smaller case under her cot; she reached for it, snapping open the lid. Inside was the shotgun she’d purchased in Corinne for hunting—not nearly as fancy as her birding gun back home, but solid and of larger gauge. Laying the weapon across her lap, she broke open the twin chambers and inserted a pair of brass shells.

  A bullet ripped through the tent’s sloping roof with an angry zzzzt, and she jumped and cried out. The thunder of hoofs grew loud from the north, where the remuda had been grazing, and the ground began to tremble. She could hear Thad shouting and firing his rifle, and in the wildly dancing, dust-hazed light of the mess fires, the distorted shadows of stampeding mules flashed across the canvas walls like a flicker show. She shrank back as the images grew larger. The tent jerked violently as the rear guide rope was ripped from its peg. The mules were racing past on either side, so close she didn’t see how she could be kept from being swept away, trampled to death while Thad stood by helplessly and watched.

  Then it was past, flowing out the southern end of the caravan’s twin columns while the men of the Box K ran after it, firing recklessly at the raiders.

  Gwen slumped back against one of her trunks. The tent was twisted in the middle, almost collapsed in back, but it was still standing and she was still alive. Then the canvas door was flung open and Gwen screamed as a dark figure lumbered into the tent, coming toward her with an axe raised terrorizingly above his shoulder.

  Buck was still some eighty yards from the nearest wagon when he slowed his mad sprint through the sage. He dropped behind a waist-high boulder, tugging Dulce after him. Her breathing sounded raspy and harsh, and he thought he could hear the frightened pounding of her heart even above his own ragged breath. His eyes swept camp in an effort to make out what was going on, but there wasn’t much to see in the poor light. It appeared as if the worst of the attack was over, although there were still several raiders pouring gunfire into the wagons. Buck wasn’t aware that he was still grasping Dulce’s arm until she wrenched it away from him.

  “You’re hurting me,” she hissed.

  He grabbed her again and pulled her deeper into the boulder’s shelter. He was on his knees with only his eyes and the low crown of his hat showing above the hump-backed stone.

  Dulce drew her Smith & Wesson.

  “Put that away,” Buck snapped.

  “I won’t!”

  “Dammit, Dulce, that pistol doesn’t have the range. It would only draw their attention to you.”

  “Oh,” she said, then sank back. “What are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  Her voice calm, Dulce said: “You have to go to them, Buck. You can’t hold back because of me.”

  “I know.” He looked at her. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I’ll be fine. I’ll keep my head down and no one will know I’m even out here.”

  “Stay low and, if they find you, shoot to kill.”

  “I will. Now go. The men need you.”

  “I’ll be back,” he promised, then left the cover of the low rock in a crouching run, making his way toward the rear of the train with his Colt thrust before him.

  There was a lot of dust and smoke and a sense of chaos in all the back and forth shouting, but nothing that really told Buck what to expect. He was still forty yards away when a tall man riding a blanket-spotted Appaloosa appeared out of the smoky shadows on his left. Buck jerked to a stop, lifting his Colt and cocking it in one smooth motion. “Hold up!” he shouted.

  The raider sawed back on the Appaloosa’s reins, his head swiveling. He was dressed in buckskins and had long, dark hair, and, for a minute, Buck thought he was an Indian. Then the raider saw him and swore, and Buck knew that he wasn’t.

  Driving his heels into the Appaloosa’s sides, the raider leveled his rifle alongside the animal’s neck and snapped off a round that burrowed into the dirt at Buck’s feet. Buck flinched but held his ground. Swallowing back the brassy taste of fear, he lined his Colt on the charging outlaw and squeezed the trigger. Through the powder smoke he saw the man on the Appaloosa jerk hard, nearly dropping his rifle. Then he yanked his horse around and raced off, clutching his saddle horn like a drunkard.

  “Buck?”

  “Over here,” he replied, moving toward the low sound of her voice. He found Dulce creeping through the sage, her S&W clenched tightly in hand.

  “I…. ”

  “It’s all right,” he reassured her. “Come on, let’s get inside in case they come back.”

  They crossed the final distance to the wagons in a crouch. Buck gave a shout when they were close, not wanting to be mistaken for a bandit, and Joe Perry answered, ordering the others to hold their fire until Buck and Dulce came in.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Buck demanded as soon as he and Dulce were safely inside.

  “I’m not sure,” Joe said. “It looks like.…”

  A final shot rang out from the darkness. The bullet slammed into the iron rim of the wagon’s tall wheel less than six inches from Dulce’s head, then shrilled off into the night. Dulce screamed and clutched her cheek, and Buck grabbed her and threw her to the ground. He lifted his pistol but didn’t fire, half sick with the knowledge that this shot had come from inside the twin columns of wagons.

  “Who was that?” Joe bellowed from where he’d ducked behind the wheel. “Who fired that shot?”

  Several men were already running in the direction the shot had come from, but Buck knew they wouldn’t find anything. He’d chased that elusive form enough times himself. He pushed to his feet, then hauled Dulce to hers. “How bad is it?” he asked, gently prying her fingers away from her face.

  “I don’t know,” she replied hollowly. “Is there blood?”

  With his thumb, Buck wiped away a small red smear, dulled by dust. The wound underneath was barely visible—a scratch. “There’s some,” he told her, “but it isn’t deep enough to leave a scar.”

  Dulce’s face was ashen. Her eyes searched his face as if not trusting what she knew had to be true. Buck led her to a nearby cask and made her sit down.

  “Someone tried to kill me,” she whispered.

  “Stay here with Joe,” he said. “I’ll go take a look.”

  “I’ll watch her,” Joe promised, and Buck nodded and turned away.

  There was yelling from the east and he moved in that direction, reloading the Colt as he went. He found Peewee and Ray at Nate’s lead wagon, peering across the moonlit plain. “What’s goi
ng on?” he asked.

  “Rossy’s still out there,” Peewee said. “Nate and Chris went out to find him. Lou’s getting a lantern.”

  “Where are the mules?”

  Ray spat in disgust. “They got ’em. Took the whole damn’ cavvy.”

  Buck felt a sinking in his breast that was like a hundred pound sack of flour sitting on his chest. Numbly he holstered the Colt.

  “I figure that’s what they were after all along,” Peewee added.

  Buck stepped past them without speaking, crossing the gently sloping plain until he met Nate hurrying back to camp with a limp figure cradled in his arms.

  They lay Rossy down on a blanket and Buck dropped to his knees opposite Nate, who was hovering over his son like a mourner.

  “I’m all right, Pa. I ain’t hurt,” Rossy said weakly.

  “There’s blood,” Nate said, looking at Buck. He held out his hand, the palm slick, dark.

  “It’s my leg,” Rossy confirmed. “It stings like it’s on fire.”

  “Where’s that lantern?” Buck snapped over his shoulder, but Lou was already hurrying toward them with the same bull’s-eye lantern Ray had used the night he and Peewee smeared liniment and salve over Buck’s wounds.

  Ray plucked the light impatiently from Lou’s grasp and knelt by Rossy’s head, adjusting the small aperture in the door until he had a bright, narrow beam. He turned it on Rossy’s legs, quickly locating the wound high on his left thigh. Rossy’s trousers were torn and bloody, and he twitched in discomfort when Nate used his knife to cut the fabric away from the wound.

  Buck breathed easier when he saw the injury up close. A deep trough had been gouged across the muscle, painful but not serious.

  “Damn, boy,” Ray said. “You ain’t even gonna be limpin’ by the time you get home. Shot up in a mule raid and nothin’ to show the gals. That’s hard luck for sure.”

  “I feel like I could limp right now,” Rossy replied, bringing low, relieved laughter from the men crowded around him.

  Buck looked at Nate, still leaning over his son as if the wound had been fatal. Tears glistened like silver streams on the black man’s cheeks and his fists were clenched tightly. Pushing to his feet, Buck said: “Let’s leave ’em be for a while. We’ve got mules to round up.”

  Ray looked up, aggravated. “They ain’t no mules, dammit. Raiders got ’em all.”

  “No, not all of ’em,” Peewee said. “I saw quite a few break away from the main bunch and scatter off to the east. They’re still out there, if we can catch ’em. They’ll be spooked tonight, though.”

  “Did you see what happened?” Buck asked.

  “Some of it.”

  Buck glanced at the men gathered around Rossy. “Go see how many mules you can round up. That’s the priority right now. Chris, stay here and check around, see if anyone else is hurt. Ray, give Nate a hand dressing Rossy’s wound, then go help with the mules. Peewee, come with me.”

  “They used a cougar’s skin,” Peewee explained as he and Buck headed for the front of the train. “Fresh-skinned by the smell. I caught a whiff of it myself, just before one of them let out a wail like a cat that made the hair across the back of my neck stand out straight.”

  “Like a woman’s scream,” Buck mused, recalling the sound he’d heard back in the lava rocks.

  “Sure enough,” Peewee asserted. “That’s what caused the mules to stampede. We all went humpin’ out there, but we was too slow. Them damn’ raiders was on top of us before we even knew they was about. Up till then, I reckon I still thought it was a cougar. It all happened so fast, there weren’t but a few of us even armed. Soon as we knew what was about, we skedaddled back to the wagons and got our guns, but by then it was too late.”

  Peewee hesitated, then shook his head. “I’d call it an odd raid, Buck. They could’ve kept runnin’ … they had the stock. But five or six of ’em hung back to fight. I can’t rightly figure that out unless they was testin’ our mettle. Could be that if we’d been slow or cowardly, they’d’ve stayed to finish the job.”

  The night hawks—Rossy, Bigfoot Payne, and Manuel Varga— had seen them coming and tried without success to run the mules into camp, Peewee added, but he hadn’t seen Bigfoot or Manuel since the shooting started. Mitch Kroll confirmed the worst a few minutes later when he found Buck and Peewee at the first mess.

  “Bigfoot’s dead,” the muleskinner announced bluntly, his broad shoulders rounded forward as if in anguish. “They shot him in the back while he was runnin’ for cover.”

  “He was a good man,” Buck said cautiously.

  “The boy had a way with animals,” Mitch agreed, all the steel gone from his voice. “I’s a trait with simpletons, I’ve heard.” After a pause, he added: “I’ve never told anyone this, but the boy was kin, my sister’s son. I took him on after she died.” He looked up. “I want the bastards who did this, McCready, and I want Crowley and Luce, too. We all know they’re behind it.”

  “We ain’t making war on Crowley and Luce without proof,” Buck responded.

  “We don’t have to go after ’em that way. I say we win this race, leave those assholes so far behind, Bannock Mining’ll have half its mill put up by the time C and L gets there.”

  “Winning this race is what we’ve been tryin’ to do all along,” Peewee reminded him.

  “Yeah, but you ain’t had full support,” Mitch pointed out. “There’s been some who’ve been … a little less ambitious, but that’s gonna change. We’re gonna beat those bastards at their own game if I gotta haul these wagons to Montana myself.”

  Thad Collins came up before Buck could reply. Gwen was with him, her face a collage of emotions. “A moment, McCready?” the bodyguard asked.

  “What is it?”

  “Paddy O’Rourke is dead.”

  “God damn,” Buck breathed. “What happened?”

  “He attacked Miss Haywood with a camp axe.”

  Buck’s head jerked up. “What!”

  Gwen met Buck’s gaze. “I … killed a man, Buck,” she said simply, then looked away.

  “I knew from that first day on the trail that O’Rourke didn’t like her,” Collins admitted. “He didn’t like her money or her connections back East or her.…”

  “No,” Gwen said raggedly, “he didn’t like me. I … I’ve never experienced that kind of anger before. He came after me with an axe, fully intending to murder me. If I hadn’t purchased that shotgun in Corinne to do some birding along the way.…”

  Her words trailed off, and Buck said: “You did the right thing. Sometimes it comes down just that simple … you live or you die.”

  “It isn’t that way in Philadelphia,” she said faintly.

  “Oh, I reckon it is,” he countered. “I reckon it’s like that just about everywhere. You just haven’t had to deal with it before tonight.”

  Tears welled in her eyes. “Could you tell me where Dulce is?” she asked almost timidly.

  “She’s with Joe Perry, over by his wagons.”

  Gwen looked at Collins, still obviously shaken. “Would you accompany me there, please?”

  “Sure,” Collins said, taking her arm, “and don’t worry, no one else is going to get near you after this.”

  “Thank you,” she said, adding to Buck: “I’ll sit with Dulce and … she can sit with me.” She smiled wanly. “We’ll stay out of your way.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  So this is how it ends, Arlen thought as Bonner drew his pistol. He flinched as the weapon was cocked, then flinched again when he felt its cold muzzle press into his forehead. He didn’t plead for his life or try to run, but he did close his eyes. Death was one thing. Staring into Jim Bonner’s cold, blue gaze while waiting for it was another.

  “What the hell ya want?” Bonner demanded, and Arlen tentatively opened one eye. The question was startling. He hadn’t asked for anything.

  “Dumb-ass ain’t your’n to kill,” Henry Reese said, and Arlen opened his other eye. Henry hadn’t be
en around when Bonner drew his pistol.

  “The hell he ain’t,” Bonner growled, and Arlen felt the muzzle shift as pressure was applied to the trigger. He was nearly deafened by the blast of the gunshot and fell back screaming and kicking, rubbing frantically at his face as if to hold shattered bone together.

  “God dammit!” someone roared, and someone else bellowed: “I told ye to back off, ya son-of-a-bitch!”

  Arlen took several deep breaths before he could work up the courage to look for himself. He was lying on his back, although he didn’t remembering falling. Reese and Bonner stood over him, gesturing madly. Their words were muted by the ringing in his ears, but he didn’t think he was dead. If he was, this sure wasn’t what he’d expected.

  After a couple of minutes, Reese’s words started to come together. The mountain man was pointing at Arlen, saying: “If anybody shoots this little runt, it’s gonna be me or Gabe. We’re the ones been puttin’ up with his ignorance.”

  “Wal, he ain’t gettin’ no cut outta them mules,” Bonner declared. His right hand was still gripping his revolver, his left clamped against his side, where blood had darkened his buckskin shirt in a patch the size of a man’s head. Bonner insisted the wound wasn’t serious, but Arlen knew that it was. He’d seen it at dawn, all dark and swollen and oozing blood, surrounded by a bruise that seemed to encompass the mountain man’s entire torso.

  Lifting his pistol to point, rather than aim, at Arlen’s nose, Bonner added: “It was yer little runt here what peeled off a good-size bunch of mules last night, bein’ where he weren’t supposed ta be. I figure twenty head that sawed-off half-wit cost us.”

  “He’s still useful,” Henry argued, although without the ardor Arlen might have wished for. “He fetches wood and water right pert. We’ll keep him till we’re finished with him.”

  “When the hell’s that gonna be?”

  “When I say so, but it ain’t gonna be today.”

  Bonner holstered his pistol. “All right, but if ye don’t shoot him then, I will. That little sum-bitch cost us money.”

  Bonner walked away, weaving a little in the loose sand. Kicking Arlen lightly on the hip, Henry said: “Get up, dumb-ass. Ye ain’t dead yet.”