Vengeance Moon

by Charles G. West

  Edging up to the front of the cabin, he took a cautious peek around the corner. As he had surmised, the assault was coming from the rocks next to the twin pines, but all he could see of his assailant was a rifle barrel continuing to spit lead at the cabin wall. Matt raised his rifle to rest in a notch of the log corner and fired at the only target he could see. His shots were immediately answered, with lead ripping into the wall above his head. He pulled back away from the corner as chunks of pine logs were chipped away and sent flying. Then, after a few moments, the shooting stopped. Matt quickly crawled back to peer around the corner, thinking his adversary was moving to a better position.

  Behind the cover of the rocks, P. D. searched her gun belt anxiously, having just realized that she had exhausted her ammunition in her manic reaction to her son’s death. The sobering discovery was enough to cool her overheated passion for revenge, and spawn thoughts of self-preservation. Damn, she thought as she cocked the rifle, exposing an empty chamber. Suddenly the roles were reversed. It would only be a matter of time before Slaughter would guess her predicament, and she would be the hunted. She could not help remembering how the man calling himself Johnson had effectively routed an entire Sioux war party.

  Her pistol was fully loaded, but she could only rely on that if Slaughter was close enough, and she didn’t fancy letting him get that close. There were more cartridges in her saddlebags, but the horses were hobbled some fifty yards or more down the mountain in a stand of spruce. With no other option, she hurriedly withdrew from the rocks and made her way quickly down the slope toward the spruce pocket where the horses were hidden. All thoughts of her slain son were effectively crowded out of her brain by a stronger sense of survival. She did not fear for her life. P. D. had never met the man she was afraid of. Her sense of survival was triggered strictly by her determination to win the game. To her, Slaughter was no longer just one more in a long list of desperadoes she had tracked down and collected on. He had killed her baby.

  As she descended the slope, moving quickly through the spruce trees that grew thick on the western side of the mountain, she wondered about the whereabouts of Arlo and Bo. If they were anywhere close by, they should have heard the shooting and come to see what it was all about. Since they had not, she assumed that they must have found sign of the girl, and were following her. “Dammit,” she swore. “I shoulda kept ’em with me, and said to hell with the girl.” She realized all too well that, had she done so, they would have been able to surround the cabin and Slaughter would not be chasing her down the mountain. And Wiley wouldn’t be lying back there dead, she thought, adding fuel to her anger once again. That son of a bitch is a dead man, she thought. I don’t give a damn about the bonus.

  Panting noisily from transporting her stocky body down through the trees, she arrived at the horses. Rushing straight to her saddlebags, she pulled a rolled-up ammunition belt from one of the pockets and hurriedly jammed cartridges into the rifle’s magazine. With a fully loaded rifle and the belt across her shoulder like a bandolier, P. D. was ready to rejoin the battle. “Now, by God,” she uttered confidently. Leaving her horse again, she started the climb back up the slope to meet her pursuer, determined that one of them would not walk down the mountain again.

  Unaware that his assailant had retreated down the mountainside, Matt decided to work his way around the other side of the cabin and attempt to approach his antagonist from the far side of the creek. Pausing at the rear corner of his cabin, he listened for sounds of movement from the twin pines. The frantic rifle fire had stopped, causing him to consider the possibility that his adversary might be moving to a new position. Without further hesitation, he moved quickly across the open area beside the cabin to the cover of the trees beside the stream. Still there were no shots fired. Thinking something strange was afoot, he continued to circle around the rocks near the two pines. His senses sharpened, he prepared to react to whatever he encountered. Just below the rocks now, he paused again to listen. There was nothing but the whisper of the wind through the pine needles. What the hell? he thought, and charged up into the rocks, his rifle ready. There was no one there. He looked down at his feet to discover a multitude of spent cartridges. This was definitely the spot. He looked all around him, expecting a barrage of shots from any direction. After a few more moments, he had to conclude that his assailant had fled the scene. Kneeling then to examine the ground, he discovered boot prints indicating the man had retreated down the slope.

  Matt’s first inclination was to follow his adversary down the slope and finish the job. But with the intruders driven from his homestead, his thoughts shifted immediately to finding Molly. There were only two bounty hunters, and even though the one who did all the talking claimed to have Molly in a “safe place,” she might be close by, bound hand and foot. Or she might have somehow escaped, and be hiding somewhere on the mountain. On impulse, he called out, “Molly!” again and again. “It’s all right now. If you can hear me, it’s all right to come out now.” He waited, but there was no response. He had to figure that, if indeed she had managed to escape, she would most likely try to make her way down to Broken Hand’s village. He would look for her there. If she was not there, he would comb every inch of the mountains to find her. He thought then of the man he had sent fleeing down the mountain. If the bounty hunter had hunted him down all this way from Virginia, he was not likely to give up after one confrontation. Even though finding Molly was foremost in his mind, he realized that the bounty hunter had to be dealt with.

  He paused a moment to go and look at the man he had killed. The body lay sprawled with arms outstretched awkwardly. A young man, it appeared, his shirt red with the blood that had seeped from two bullet holes neatly placed near his heart. A thought flashed through his mind that he might have seen the man somewhere before, but he could not be sure. He wondered if he could possibly be the one that escaped him when he cleaned out the Frenchman’s trading post. In the heat of that confrontation, there had been little time to get a good look at him.

  Matt felt no remorse for killing the young man. He had chosen a deadly business, and he had paid the price for failure. It mattered not to Matt if Zeb died at the hand of this man, or from that of his partner. They were both guilty, and should be held equally accountable for the murder. He turned away from the body and stared for a moment at the rocks by the twin pines. There was a job to be finished. The sooner he finished it, the sooner he could go in search of Molly.

  * * *

  Grunting with the effort required to climb back up the rocky slope she had just hurriedly descended, P. D. made her way toward the clearing where the cabin stood. Her breath coming in short, labored gasps, she murmured bitter threats to herself as she recalled the picture of Wiley crashing to the ground. Approximately fifty feet below the clearing, she came to a steep rise that required her to use her free hand to help pull her bulky body up. When fleeing Slaughter before, she had slid down the incline, never giving thought to the difficulty in climbing back up. Determined, and seething with anger, she pushed upward, steadying herself by grasping handholds on the rocks and the occasional scrub pine. Approaching the top of the rise, she looked up just as Matt appeared at the rim.

  Both rifles went off almost simultaneously. Due to P. D.’s lack of steady footing, her feet slid in the loose shale, causing her aim to err, her shot snapping harmlessly by Matt’s ear. Matt did not miss. However, P. D.’s slippery footing resulted in his bullet striking her in the shoulder, spinning her around to go crashing down the slope, rolling over and over all the way down to the edge of a cliff several hundred feet below the clearing. In the split second before they both fired, Matt realized he had seen the man before. There had not been time for more than a glimpse of his face, but he knew he had seen the short, stocky man, and it came to him then. It had been south of the Big Horns.

  Certain now that it was the same man, he followed P. D. down the mountain, making his way as quickly as possible while trying his best not to lose his footing and j
oin his adversary. He arrived at the bottom of the slope just in time to see P. D.’s body drop over the edge of the cliff. For one brief moment, he could see one hand grasping desperately for a small rock at the rim of the cliff. Then the rock dislodged, and both rock and hand were gone.

  On hands and knees, Matt crawled to the cliff’s edge and peered over into several hundred feet of clear space. There was no sign of a body in the tops of the tall pines thrusting up from a shelf far below. There was no way a man could survive that fall. When he had prevented Iron Claw’s Sioux warriors from killing the white men before, there had been four of them. He could only account for two. Where were the other two? It was possible they had split up after reaching Virginia City. It was troubling, but his concentration shifted to finding Molly now.

  Sidling along the face of the slope, in search of a more forgiving climb back to his cabin, he found P. D. and Wiley’s horses tethered in the trees. He took the reins of one of the horses and started leading it back up the narrow game trail Wiley had followed down when he hid them. He figured the other horse would probably follow. Back at the cabin, he turned the horses in with the other two in the corral, and then went to get the paint and packhorse at the bottom of the gully behind the cabin.

  Making his way down the gully, he paused when he came to Zeb’s body. “I’m sorry, partner,” he said softly, suddenly feeling the burden of responsibility for the death of another friend and partner. It seemed that every man who had befriended him had met with a violent death. Not all of them were his fault, but Zeb was definitely dead because of him. He reached down and patted the old scout on the shoulder. “I’ll be back for you. I ain’t gonna leave you here like this.”

  When he reached the horses, he dumped the load of elk meat over the edge of the cliff. With no time to dry it, it would only spoil. Then he led the horses back up the gully to pick up Zeb’s body. Upon reaching the cabin again, he paused to decide what to do. His first thought was to put Zeb in the cabin where his body would be safe from predators until he returned. But he was not sure when that would be. He was anxious to find Molly, but he was sure she would make her way down to Broken Hand’s camp. He told himself that, with both of the bounty hunters dead, she should be all right, and he could at least take a little time to lay Zeb in the ground. He picked a spot on the north edge of the clearing for the old scout’s final resting place.

  The grave was dug with a little more haste than he would have preferred, but he promised his old friend that he would return to improve upon it after he had gone after Molly. There was one more thing to do before going after her. He decided to turn the other horses out of the corral. He could not be sure how long he would be gone, and he wanted them to be able to get to water and grass. He figured they wouldn’t wander far from home.

  With one foot in the stirrup, he paused before climbing up in the saddle. Something had caught his eye. Withdrawing his foot, he took a few steps toward the pine trees behind the cabin before kneeling to examine the ground. Someone unaccustomed to reading sign would probably have missed the faint marks and disturbed pine needles, but he saw at once that someone had been led toward the trees. The sign told him that person had not gone willingly, for the needles had been scuffed and dragged, much more so than prints left by the mere act of walking. He felt his heart go icy cold, for he knew the tracks could only have belonged to Molly. He feared that they also answered the question as to the whereabouts of the other two of the four ambushed by Iron Claw.

  He glanced up, and peered at the stand of pine trees behind the cabin. A feeling of dread descended upon him as he stared at the dark pines. He tried to convince himself that Molly had fled the killers, and was probably on her way to Broken Hand’s village. Afraid now of what he might find, he nevertheless hurried to follow the faint trail into the forest. Just inside the tree line, he discovered unmistakable signs of a struggle. His first thoughts almost caused him to cry out in anguish, for he interpreted the disturbed patch in the forest floor as evidence of Molly’s attempts to resist an assault upon her body. Trying to force the mental image of her struggle from his mind, he studied the signs more closely. He could not help but question the apparent battle that the slight girl had managed. It looked more like a fight of some consequence had occurred. Maybe the two men had fought over Molly. The thought caused him to quickly begin a wider search around the thicket. Soon he found sign that gave him hope once again, for there was one small print in the dirt where the needles had been scraped away.

  He stood up and took a few steps back, as if taking a look at the overall picture. He decided that the two men had fought over Molly and, while they fought, she had escaped. That had to be it. She had fled up the mountain. She was alive.

  Chapter 11

  “Ma said to find the woman,” Arlo said. “Maybe we’d best get back up on that mountain and look for her.”

  “Ma said,” Bo mocked. “I swear, Arlo, sometimes I think you’re as dumb as Wiley.” He leaned back against the tree that served as his backrest, and began to gnaw on a strip of deer jerky he had found in the cabin. “We could climb all over them mountains for a week of Sundays and still not find her.” When his remark was met with a frown from his brother, he said, “The only reason Ma wants us to find the woman is so she don’t get down to that Injun camp. Ain’t that right?”

  “I reckon,” Arlo replied reluctantly. Unlike his younger brother, Arlo never questioned P. D.’s orders.

  “Well, then,” Bo went on, “as long as we’re settin’ here at the bottom of the mountain, watchin’ the trail, we’re gonna catch her when she tries to come down to the river. Ain’t that right?”

  “What if she don’t take this trail? What if she takes some other trail, and we’re settin’ here when a Crow war party shows up?”

  “Damn, brother,” Bo exclaimed. “There ain’t no other trail up to that cabin. When we were up there, did you see any other trails that led down the mountain?” Anticipating Arlo’s next question, he added, “And if she don’t take the trail, she’ll have to show up on this ridge somewhere before she can cross the river to that camp. You just keep your eye on the ridge. If she shows up, we’ll see her as soon as she comes outta the trees.”

  “Maybe so,” Arlo conceded, still thinking that, if P. D. said to search the mountain for the woman, they should be searching the mountain.

  Bo watched his brother’s obvious consternation over the issue. He shook his head contemptuously. “I swear, Arlo, if Ma told you to change the color of your shit, you’d crap a rainbow. Sometimes I think you’re dumber’n Wiley.”

  “How’d you like another whuppin’?” Arlo threatened, beginning to tire of Bo’s verbal abuse.

  “I expect last night was the last whuppin’ I’ll take from you, brother.” Bo’s frown was deadly serious. “You come at me again, and I’ll put a bullet between your eyes.”

  “Is that a fact?” Arlo responded. “I reckon I’ll kick your ass any time I think you need it. And when I’m done, I might put a bullet between your eyes. Any time I feel like it,” he repeated for emphasis.

  “You mean, like right now?” Bo replied, sitting up straight, his hand resting on the butt of his revolver.

  Arlo’s eyes narrowed under a deep frown as he stared his younger brother down. “You pull that damn pistol on me, and I’ll beat your head in with it,” he threatened.

  Sired by different fathers, the two brothers had never held any fondness for each other. Bo had always resented the fact that nature had seen fit to endow Arlo with superiority in size and strength, resulting in many beatings over the years. Consequently, the threat that Bo had just issued was no idle boast. He was determined to put an end to Arlo’s dominance. Even now, as the bigger, more powerful Arlo stood menacingly over him, Bo considered his chances of drawing his revolver before his brother had time to react. It was clear that Arlo gave little thought to the possibility that Bo would actually shoot him. Bo, on the other hand, was mulling over the consequences that might result. P.
D. would have only his word for how Arlo happened to get shot. The longer Arlo stood glaring at him, the more Bo thought about it. Finally, he made up his mind and snatched the revolver from the holster.

  Bo was quick, but Arlo was just as quick to react. Before Bo could level his weapon and pull the trigger, Arlo was on top of him, one hand clamped on Bo’s wrist. The two brothers rolled over and over in the pine thicket, each straining against the other in a desperate effort to control the weapon. Suddenly the gun went off, firing one shot up through the trees. The unexpected report of the pistol momentarily stunned both men, and the struggle ceased.

  Arlo, seated upon Bo’s chest, wrenched the pistol from his brother’s grasp. “I oughta whup you good for pullin’ this damn gun on me,” he said, “but right now we’d better get the hell outta here. Them damn Injuns across the river will hear that shot and might take a notion to come see what it’s about.” He got off Bo’s chest and hurried to the edge of the trees to peer out across the river. Bo got to his feet and moved up beside him. The fight between them was temporarily forgotten. Arlo handed Bo’s pistol back to him. “Let’s get the hell outta here,” he said.

  Bo didn’t move right away, continuing to stare at the distant tipis on the far side of the river. “I don’t see nobody gettin’ stirred up over there,” he said. “I don’t think nobody heard that shot, or if they did, they didn’t pay it no mind.” Like Arlo, Bo was not anxious to incite a reaction from the Crow camp, but he still retained thoughts of the fair-haired young woman and his intentions regarding her. This was a good spot to lie in wait for her. He didn’t want to chance missing her if she tried to make her way down to her Crow friends. He had heard P. D.’s instructions to Arlo to kill the girl immediately, but he had other plans. “Hell, we might as well stay right here until we see some sign from them Injuns. If we spot a war party ridin’ out, we’ve already got a good head start on ’em.”