Beyond Fort North

by Peter Dawson

  Gentry dropped the reins and stepped back to loosen the cinch, not looking at Clears as he asked: “When did it happen, Mike?”

  “Along about noon.”

  “Was it...how was it for him?”

  “The way it should’ve been. He just went to sleep and didn’t wake up.”

  Gentry’s look was unmistakably relieved, and after a moment Clears asked: “How did you know about it?”

  “Saw the flag on the way down here.”

  “Then no one’s told you the rest?”

  Gentry’s glance sharpened. “Is there more?”

  Clears nodded. “Tim McCune. He....” Hesitating, not at all relishing this chore, the saloon man went on angrily: “Damn the luck, he didn’t deserve it. To cash in that way without a prayer of fighting back.”

  “Tim’s dead?” Gentry’s voice was hushed, hollow.

  Clears nodded. Over the worst of it now, he explained: “He and Ewing were camped up above in the Box last night. Holding a bunch of geldings. The Apaches caught ’em. They found Tim there this morning. There’s no trace of Ewing or the jugheads.”

  The rock-hard way Gentry’s face set made the saloon man add bitterly: “I know what you’re thinking. I called Sam Grell on it, told him it couldn’t have been Sour Eye. They’d got the same story over the wire yesterday that Ben brought us the other night. Which is why they went ahead and put the nags out. Then today they naturally talked it over with Fort Starke again. Starke claims none of those outlaws got away. But there’s the Army for you.”

  Gentry came in on the blaze now, hands thrust deep in pockets, staring down bleakly at a kettle that simmered at the fire’s edge. Yet it seemed he wasn’t seeing it. There was nothing Clears could add to what he had already said except a few unimportant details. So the saloon man stood there waiting, letting Gentry think it out.

  “I went up there this morning,” Gentry said presently, not looking up, “along the hill behind the stables. Just loafing, maybe homesick for a look at the layout. Hadn’t been there two minutes when this man busted down the trail to the east gate with his mount damned near done in. Jorgensen, I think it was. Anyway, it looked queer. So I hung around. Couldn’t have been ten minutes later when Peebles came out the gate with ten men and went back up that trail fast. It looked like trouble of some kind. So I came back here and tried to leave you word.”

  “I got it, Dan.”

  Gentry nodded. “I followed Peebles up there to the Box. Having to keep back out of sight, I couldn’t make out much except that Ash showed up after a while and....”

  “Grell sent him up there to try and follow sign. It’s a serious thing, their losing sixty-four animals.”

  Gentry looked around. “Did Caleb have any luck?”

  “None. He lost the sign along a cut ten miles or so to the north. Said it just played out over cinder rock. There were half a dozen off-shoots the jugheads could have taken, and those hills are plenty rough. It didn’t rain up there day before yesterday and the wind was blowing, sifting over the tracks.”

  Now Gentry was regarding his friend in an odd, questioning way. “Caleb lose sign on that many animals?” he drawled. “When I’ve seen him follow a track Ben Qualls had gone blind on? Uhn-uh.”

  “Don’t call me on it!” Clears said a trifle testily. “I’m only repeating what Sam Grell told me less than two hours ago. Anyway, Ash couldn’t stay away long enough to do a real job. He knew they’d be in a hurry to replace their losses. And he knew he’s the only man they can buy from. So he got back down here. He’s sending a man out tonight, across to his layout at Taos to have his crew there bring in a new string.”

  An odd half-smiling look eased the flintness from Gentry’s face. “So our friend Caleb cashes in on their hard luck a second time, eh?” he drawled musingly. “First when I ran into my trouble, now this time.”

  “Is it Ash’s fault he’s in the remount business?”

  Gentry shrugged. “Guess not.” He seemed to catch himself on the point of making some further remark, then squatted on his heels to reach over and lift the lid of the kettle. “Didn’t know you were a cook, Mike,” he said idly. “What’s this we’re eating?”

  “Something Faith cooked up when she heard I was coming up here.” Clears was eyeing his friend closely and after another moment abruptly burst out: “Go on, say what you were going to about Ash.”

  Gentry paid no attention to his words, asking: “How is Faith?”

  “Fine. This morning while I was gone, she started looking for a place to live. I’d have bet she couldn’t find one, but she did. Ralph Blake and his wife have been building a new room onto their cabin. Sarah, his wife, took a liking to Faith right off. She’s moved in with them.” Clears was silent a long moment, shortly asking: “Now what’s this you’ve got stuck in your craw about Caleb?”

  “We were talking about Faith, weren’t we?” Gentry looked up guilelessly.

  “You know damned well you were ready to say something about Caleb!”

  “Was I?” Gentry stood up now and moved on across to the edge of a thorny thicket where he had this morning cached his blanket roll and saddlebags. Although Clears’s glance followed him, he seemed unaware of it as he took tin plates, cups, forks, knives, spoons, a sack of coffee and a small fry pan from one saddle pouch and came back to the fire with them. He held the pan out to Clears then, drawling: “If we’re going to have coffee we’ll need some water.”

  Clears took the pan and let it hang at his side, asking quietly: “What about Caleb, Dan?”

  Gentry eyed him vacantly, a trace of stoniness in his dark eyes as he answered: “I wish I knew. Maybe when I’ve taken it in about the major and Tim the rest will make sense. Right now none of it makes any. Suppose you add it up and see what answer you get.”

  “Add what up?”

  “Those men that corralled Sour Eye’s bunch down at Starke should know what they’re talking about. And if....”

  “Should know is right,” Clears cut in. “Hell, I’ve seen the Army make worse mistakes than a wrong count on a bunch of shadows. How could they know how many there were? The devils could’ve had scouts out that missed the fight altogether.”

  “Then there’s the distance,” Gentry went on as though he hadn’t heard. “Apaches can cover more miles than a man would dare believe in a day’s time. But not that many, not enough to have got back up here from anywhere within fifty miles of Starke by last night. It just isn’t possible, Mike.”

  “Then how could they get down to Starke from where they hit Tipton’s wagons? And in almost exactly the same length of time?”

  “They didn’t,” Gentry said intently. “They spotted Tipton’s wagons probably the evening before, and probably too late to do anything about it. These Apaches won’t fight after dark. So my guess is they dropped off a few braves to take care of the wagons the next morning. The main band went on and traveled all night, leaving it to the ones behind to catch up later. They were putting plenty of distance between them and the reservation.”

  Clears frowned, his argument momentarily cut from under him. But then he thought of something that made him insist stubbornly: “All right, maybe some of the young bucks on the reservation got their dander up when they heard what had happened to their sidekicks down at Starke. They busted out, raised their hell up in the Box, and are probably back by now with the nags hid and no one the wiser.”

  “That’s possible.”

  “Sure it is. Anything’s possible. Which has damned little to do with Caleb. Much as I hate his gall, I won’t see you saddle him with a thing like this without rope enough to tie it on.”

  Gentry smiled tolerantly but plainly without agreement. “Guess I was looking at it the wrong way, Mike. How about the water?”

  Clears knew that nothing he’d said had changed Gentry’s opinion on Ash one iota. Yet now he could think of no other
argument. Furthermore, he was abruptly feeling he had betrayed something within himself by trying to defend Ash. So, thoroughly disgruntled, he walked off into the deepening shadows to the spring, returning with a pan filled. He set the pan at the edge of the coals, and Gentry silently poured some coffee into it, then filled the plates with the stew from the kettle.

  Neither spoke as they began eating. Not once over the next several minutes was that brooding silence broken. Time and again Clears would look at Gentry and each time read into his friend’s cold, bleak look that uncompromising certainty of Caleb Ash’s guilt.

  Gentry was the first to set his plate aside. He rolled up a smoke, scraped fresh coals around the coffee, threw more wood on the fire. Finally he looked around at Clears to drawl with a false heartiness: “Tell Faith I want her recipe. That was plenty good eating. By the way, any word for her?”

  Clears nodded glumly and matter-of-factly told of the message Grell had received from Denver. Then, matching Gentry’s attempt at levity, he forced a smile and said: “You didn’t tell me Missus Fitzhugh had gone soft on you, Dan.”

  There was no break in the look of reserve that had again settled over Gentry’s lean face. “Didn’t I?” he asked, almost without interest.

  “Ran into her up there this morning,” Clears went on, wondering why he was even bothering to pass on this information. “She wanted me to tell you she was leaving soon as she can. She wonders if you want to keep her company on the way out.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I forget,” the saloon man drawled. “Must’ve been something she didn’t like, because she went off in a huff.”

  Gentry seemed to be already thinking of something else and shortly said: “Makes it rough on Faith, doesn’t it, waiting around two or three more weeks.”

  Clears sighed and shook his head in a baffled way. “Here I try and play Cupid for you, and you don’t even listen.”

  “To what?”

  “To what I was saying about Missus Fitzhugh. Don’t you get it? She wants you to take her out. And unless my guess is way wide, it’s more than your company she wants.”

  Gentry’s glance fell away. He betrayed nothing but impatience as he drawled: “Have your fun.”

  “You’re not interested?”

  Now a faint look of embarrassment did show in Gentry’s eyes. “Hell, Mike,” he protested uncomfortably, “cook up any story you want and give it to her. Tell her I’ve already gone if you want. Tell her anything.”

  “She knows you’re still around.”

  Gentry looked across at his friend with his glance gone agate-hard once more. “But I won’t be by morning.”

  “You won’t?”

  “No.” Gentry sat straighter. And now as he spoke it was with a deliberation and a deadly seriousness that backed his cold look. “I’m going up there in the morning, soon as it’s light enough to travel. I’ll start at the Box and take out on Ash’s tracks. I’ll go on, from where he turned back. I’ll stay up there till I find something. When I get back, I’ll have enough to hang Ash.”

  Clears shook his head. “You hope.”

  “I know, Mike. I know! It’s there. Something’s got to be there. I’ll stay till I find it.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Caleb Ash stumbled out of his yard shack and across to the pump behind it that next morning just as the dawn was breaking. Bending over, he worked the pump handle for a solid minute while the cold water gushed over his head. Then, the chill shock having somewhat cleared an unaccustomed thick-headedness, the result of a nearly sleepless night, he went on back in and cooked a breakfast he didn’t particularly relish.

  He was worried this morning, his mind still tugging at the rather frightening prospect of what the outcome was to be of his ride into the hills the night before last. He knew all too well the way the Army went about things, the thoroughness with which they would investigate the death of McCune, the days they would spend looking for Ewing and accounting for the whereabouts of every suspected reservation Apache on the night of the murder. Ben Qualls was the logical man for them to pick in getting this information. And Qualls might run onto something, well as he knew the Indians and sure as they usually were of rooting out the facts on anything that concerned them so directly.

  Last night Ash’s worst scare had come in wondering if he’d left any moccasin prints up there near the fire in the Box where they’d found McCune. Pushing the geldings on down off the meadow with Ewing, he’d tried to drive them across the smoldering blaze, hoping they’d trample McCune’s body. But he could still see the way they’d fanned out around the spot, or crowded into it, jumped it, and run on. There hadn’t been a mark on McCune yesterday, nothing but the stain between his shoulders deepening the blue of his uniform and the yellow of his neckpiece.

  This was the worst mistake he’d ever made. And as he realized it, he was damning circumstance rather than feeling even the slightest trace of remorse or guilt. It seemed wrong, very unfair, that the cavalry’s encounter with the renegades down near Fort Starke had come at such a time as to put the lie to his carefully contrived theft of the geldings. McCune’s death would take some explaining in the light of that.

  Over his coffee now Ash decided what he must do. It was annoying to have to wait out another hour, until he knew men would be about their morning duties at the post, but he set about killing time. As it turned out he was early even so when he rode in the post gates. He had a twenty-minute wait at Headquarters before Sam Grell appeared.

  He didn’t waste many words coming to the point. “Now that things are squared away for me down below, I’m going back up there and have another look today, Captain,” he told the adjutant. “May be gone three or four days, dependin’ on what I run onto. But I’ll find out where them geldings went. And if Johnny Ewing’s to be found, I’ll be back with him.”

  Grell nodded pleasantly. “Good. I’ll get authorization for your extra pay from Denver this morning. What do you figure your chances are?”

  “Damned slim.”

  The adjutant’s look was an understanding one. “Well, do your best. Did you get your man off for Taos last night?”

  When Ash had nodded, Grell put another question.

  “He won’t lose his nerve, will he?”

  “What about?”

  “What happened to McCune.”

  “I told him the scare was over. He was to make tracks straight across there, fast as he could.”

  “He’s a good man?”

  “They don’t come any better.”

  “Fine. Then we ought to see our remounts first thing next week?”

  Ash again nodded. “For sure.” Hesitating then, he said awkwardly: “You tell ’em why I’m not there this mornin’ when they bury Fitzhugh, will you, Captain?”

  “They’ll understand.”

  “There went a good man. Good as they come.”

  “So we all think,” Grell said soberly.

  As he left the post, Ash was feeling slightly better for having expressed such an honest and righteous sentiment. But then as he swung on into the hills, his worry soon came back again. He soundly cursed his luck in not having heard earlier of Sour Eye’s battle with the cavalry from Starke. And he just as soundly cursed Mike Clears and Gentry for having crowded him into making his reckless play, for it had been his doubt about being able to get the wagons out of the cave in time to beat Faith Tipton’s claim on the goods that had driven him to make the gamble. It was a gamble he had reasoned would net him even more than the carefully planned steal of the hardware.

  Now, and for the first time over these past few successful years, Caleb Ash was actually questioning his motives in taking such long chances to accumulate wealth. Without quite realizing that he possessed an inordinate greed, he knew he had overplayed his hand this time. He would have gladly paid real money, a lot of it, to be able to re-live
the past two days to a different pattern. There was no remorse in him whatsoever over having killed. It was simply the fact of his killing possibly incriminating him that was the worrisome thing.

  By the time he rode his bay horse up on the rail fence in the Box, he was deciding he had still another chore to do today. He would bring Ewing’s body in, would see to it that no one with an eye like Ben Qualls found the spot where he’d left Ewing until he had taken care of obliterating all the sign there was that could point to him.

  Once he had studied the ground around the fire — and gone back down over the stretch between the fire and where he had tied his horse night before last — he saw how absurd his fears of last night had been. The black topsoil had been so severely scuffed yesterday by boot and hoof prints that hardly a track of his own made the previous night was readable. Even if they had been, he had walked around here yesterday in his moccasins, and the sign from both yesterday and the night before couldn’t be told apart now.

  Relieved on this one point, he mounted again and turned back down the cañon, cutting north at the foot of it in a short cut across the thinly timbered hills to the point where he had yesterday turned back on losing the sign. He made good time, and forty more minutes found him casting back and forth across a dry and rocky joining of several finger cañons that ran along the shoulder of a peak considerably lower than Sentinel, immediately to the south.

  There was a choice here — or would have been for anyone but Ash — for this immediate stretch of mountainside was bare and scarred blackly with cinder-hard malpais, that honeycombed volcanic rock so jagged and sharp-edged that no animal could cross more than a hundred yards of it without emerging with torn and bleeding hoofs. To any eye other than Ash’s it would have seemed impossible for a horse herd to be driven up any of the several offshoots leading to higher country.

  All at once Ash was struck by the absurdity of this wasting time, this pretending to be looking for sign when he was interested in but one thing, going straight above to get Johnny Ewing and bring him on down. No one was watching, of course; he could be absolutely sure of that. Yet even as he cut sharply left and angled in toward a hidden trail that led on up through the malpais, he scanned the ground as though looking for tracks, that furtiveness in his make-up an unconscious guard against any outright betrayal of the fact that he knew where he was going. And so he followed out the twisting course of that narrow trail up the northernmost shallow, dusty cañon, and in another five minutes was riding the edge of a broad bench that stretched for a good mile back toward an abrupt shoulder of the peak.