by John Benteen
Patiently, he went on unraveling its backtrail. This led him through the unfamiliar country of the Davis Mountains in a serpentine path. Then he saw ahead two great heaped hills, with a deep seam, a rocky draw, running between them. He felt a prickling of the short hairs on his neck as he followed the beast’s trail into that draw. He thought he knew where he was now.
And he was right. Presently, he reined in Apache over a cluster of wolf tracks and the mark of its rump in sand, and he looked down on the Randall ranch. His lips thinned. So, he thought, the son-of-a-bitch was sitting there, staring right at us, the wind blowing toward him, getting our smell, checking us out before he went to kill. He made a sound of frustration in his throat. The damned animal had been within rifle shot of his parked wagon; from where he sat Apache, he could see the whole ranch yard, see Jess down there shoving fresh wood into the fire underneath the boiling pot . . .
He swung the horse around checking the draw’s mouth. No, it was not the first time the wolf had come to this place, not by a long shot—the three piles of droppings told him that. One was old, whitened; the other a little fresher, made, maybe, the night the animal had taken Jess’s dog; the third was very fresh, left night before last. And all were full of cattle hair.
And each set, Cutler noted grimly, had been left a full twenty or thirty yards closer to the point where the draw opened out behind the ranch, as if, each night, the wolf had gained a bit more courage.
Well, Cutler told himself, the next time the beast came, there would be steel waiting for it.
He turned the horse again, kept on the animal’s back trail, followed it for two more hours, toward Holz’s range. Then he galloped back to the ranch, where Jess still conscientiously fed the fire beneath the boiling traps and Big Red lolled watchfully in the wagon’s shade.
Along with the second batch of traps, Cutler buried the yearling hide, a pair of rawhide gloves, a short shovel, a trowel, and lengths of extra chain. By then, purple shadows veiled the mountains and the air was turning nippy. Fair Randall’s husband, when he had built the ranch layout, had constructed an enclosed shower bath behind the house, fed by water from the windmill pump. Cutler scrubbed himself, put on clean clothes, and joined Fair and Jess at the kitchen table. The meal was beef, biscuits, potatoes, and canned peach pie, and Cutler ate voraciously. Afterwards, he savored a second cup of coffee and smoked a cigarette, as Fair put Jess to bed. When she’d heard his prayers, she came back into the kitchen, poured herself some coffee, sat down opposite him. “When do you put out your traps?”
“Day after tomorrow, the first batch.” Cutler ground out his cigarette. “I’ll cover your range good, protect your stock, then move on to the next ranch. It’ll take a while to get a full line strung. Did you get the information I asked for?”
“Tom Fellows brought it in this morning.” She arose, took a rolled cylinder of paper from a shelf, spread it out. When she leaned forward over it, Cutler did not miss the shadowy cleft between pendant breasts exposed as the neckline of her dress sagged. He was, too, in that moment, acutely aware of her perfume. “Here’s a map of the county,” Fair Randall went on. “Tom’s been around to all the ranches, marked every kill the wolf’s made, except, of course, whatever he’s done on Holz’s land. These,” she pointed, “are the kills he’s made here.”
Cutler bent over the map. “He’s hit you hardest. It’s the lay of the land, the way this valley feeds from Holz’s place to yours. I can almost tell how he travels from what I’ve seen today, and I’m gonna spread a band of traps all across this entrance to your range. Maybe I can hold him back from doing any more damage here, anyhow, while I get the rest of the line in place.”
Fair raised her head. “Thank you,” she said softly. “Another massive kill would ruin me.”
“I won’t . . .” Cutler found himself staring into her eyes. Their faces were not more than an inch or two apart; he felt the warmth of her breath. Words clogged up in his throat, blocked by desire, as he looked into those sea green depths. Then he did what he had wanted to do since he’d first come to this ranch, and what he knew now that she wanted, too. He leaned forward, kissed her.
Beneath his lips, hers parted slightly. Then she drew away. Her breasts rose and fell beneath the dress’s tight fabric with her heavy breathing as she stared at him, face pale. “John,” she said thickly. “John, I . . .” And then she broke off and came around the table and moved into his arms. This time the kiss was a long one and she was wholly responsive, her body tight against his, breasts flattening themselves against the banded muscles of his chest, nails digging into the nape of his neck.
When, at last, he released her mouth, she made a little gasping sound. “I guess—I knew this was bound to happen. I . . . have been alone a long time and . . . It’s been hell, but I’ll swear to you I’ve borne it . . . because no other man like you ever came along . . .”
Cutler said hoarsely, “Fair, I don’t want to . . .”
She smiled faintly, touched his cheek. “I’m a grown woman, John, and I take responsibility for my actions. I know—you’re a traveler, a rambling man. You have your hunt to make, for that grizzly. I am not asking you for any promises. Just that you’re here now—that’s enough.” Then she pulled his head down and her lips sought his again. “Only—there isn’t any place. The house is so small—with Jess asleep in there ...”
Cutler opened his mouth. But before he could speak, she added, “But there’s your wagon.”
“Yeah,” Cutler said. “There’s that.” He put his arm around her waist; they went out the back door. She clung to him as they went across the yard, her body trembling. He hoisted her over the tailgate, went up nimbly himself. In the darkness of the wagon, he heard the faint rustle of clothing. When he came to her, moved into her upreaching arms’ embrace, she was naked. “John,” she whispered. And then, save for certain formless sounds she made, there was no more talking for a very long time.
“You loved her, I suppose,” Fair Randall said. She lay cradled on Cutler’s arm. “Very much.”
“Very much,” Cutler said. Curiously, he could talk about it now. For the first time. To anybody. “She had come out from the East to teach in an Indian school on the Cherokee lands. The minute I saw her, I knew . . .”
“How long did you have together?” Fair’s voice was a whisper.
“Three years,” Cutler said hoarsely. “After we were married, I hung up my guns, turned in my badge. We went to Arizona, bought the ranch there, up in the White Mountains, outside the Apache reservation. It was—a different kind of life for her, maybe a lonesome one. But she took to it. She had guts—like you. Then, that God damned bear. It came out of nowhere, started killing stock. It was crazy, warped; something had slipped a cog in its head. It had no fear of humans at all. I think somebody shot it once, wounded it but didn’t kill it, and it killed him. After that it knew that humans were vulnerable. But I didn’t understand that at the time, you see? I thought she would be all right alone. I thought it would be like any other grizzly, shying clear of people. I set a trap for it, but I waited too long to go look at it, and by the time I got there it had gnawed its foot off. It never occurred to me that instead of holing up, it’d go hunting for the human who did that to it. While I was looking for it in the mountains, it came straight to the ranch. Doreen was hanging clothes on the line. It must have—taken her in a rush; she didn’t even have time to run. What it did to her ...” His voice trailed off, ending in a thick sound of anguish. “And yet, God damn it, when I came riding in at day’s end, she was still alive. And . . . And ...”
“Don’t talk about it,” Fair said, and her hand sought his and squeezed it.
“But it was my fault, don’t you see? One lousy day, that would have made all the difference; she would still be alive. But I skipped that one day of running my traps because I was so busy . . . Gave it time to free itself . . .”
“You couldn’t know.”
“I knew,” Cutler said bitterly. “I kn
ew that if you don’t look after your traps every day you lose the animals. The Indians taught me that and so did my grandfather, the old-time mountain man. I knew, but I just shrugged it off. And I should have known something else. Not to leave her alone when there was any danger. I underestimated an animal big enough to kill people. It’s something I’ll not do again. Since then, I’ve caught every animal I’ve gone after, just like I’ll catch the wolf. Every one but that one . . .” He paused. When he spoke again, his voice had a ring of steel. “But I’ll get it, too. Someday. If I have to travel down into hell itself to find it, I’ll get it.”
Fair lay silent for a long time. Then she said, “Three years? And there were no children.”
Cutler sucked in a breath. “There was a child. She was carrying it when the bear got to her.”
“Oh, God, no,” Fair whispered.
“Yeah,” Cutler said. “It cost me everything. Everything, you understand? Since then, I’ve had no time to bother with coyotes that take a calf or lamb, cougars that eat a sheep now and then. When I go after an animal, it’s because I know it’s mad, the way the bear was mad, the wolf is mad. I don’t mean with hydrophobia; I mean mad because it’s lost its fear of man. I go after the ones who’ve killed people—or who might do it. The ones who don’t follow all the rules.”
Again, Fair was silent for a moment. Then she said, “The wolf? You think he might . . .?”
Cutler said, “Not while Big Red is here. I aim to leave him here, all the time, while I’m setting traps. As long as he’s here, the wolf won’t come nigh. But like I said, don’t leave Jess alone here, and you . . .” He thought about what he had found in the draw. “You know how to use a pistol?”
“Damned well,” she said. “Bill taught me. I’ve still got his Colt.”
“Then wear it,” Cutler said. “Everywhere you go, even around the house, you wear it. I hope you never have to use it. But the thing about a gun is this, it ain’t worth a damn if you need it and haven’t got it on you. You wear that pistol.”
“All right,” she said. “I’ll wear it.” She was silent once more for the space of thirty seconds. Then Cutler felt her hand on his muscular, hairy belly. “John . . .”
He grinned, the tension magically falling from him. He rolled over, put his arm around her. His mouth found hers. This time it was even better.
Chapter Five
Cutler leaned out of the saddle. “You see his tracks?”
“I see ‘em,” Jess said, hanging on to the horn, also bending low.
“All right,” Cutler said. “He came down this hollow, but that little mound, that rise, over there. You see? He circled to mount that, look all around. That’s the thing about a fox, coyote, or wolf. Every now and then, when they travel along a low place, they always have to climb a high place and look around. Now I’m going to put a trap right on that rise. You keep your pony back maybe twenty feet and watch what I do.”
“Yes, sir,” Jess said.
Forty feet from the little knoll, not much more than a pimple on the grassland, Cutler swung down from Apache. He walked back to the mule he used to pack his gear and detached the rawhide gloves he had boiled, buried, hung in juniper. After working one on, he slipped on the other, never letting his naked flesh touch the outside palm. Then he loosed a trap from the string hanging down the mule’s flank and took an extra ten-foot length of chain. He knotted the chain around the ring at the end of the shorter trap chain. After that, he unrolled the yearling’s hide and laid trap, extra chain, shovel, and trowel on it. Carrying it like a bag, he went up a rise. He spread the hide flesh side and knelt upon it. Then, using shovel and trowel, he carefully removed a clump of grass from the mound’s crest. He laid it on the hide.
With jackscrews, he set the trap, twisting the long springs around to make it easier to fit into the excavation. When it was neatly settled, he sifted dirt from the removed clump of grass between its open jaws, careful not to let any fall beneath the trap’s round, broad pan. Under that he rolled a loose ball of grass to keep dirt from working in.
The trap in place, he cut a small groove down the side of the knoll, lacing the extra chain into it. At the bottom, he dug another hole, still kneeling on the yearling hide. In it, he placed a heavy rock, weighing easily twenty-five pounds, massive, long and jagged, the trap chain wrapped around and anchored to it. When he had everything the way he wanted it, he covered up what he had done. Carefully he replaced the sod over the rock and the long chain, smoothing and patting the cut seams with the trowel. “That’s the drag,” he said. “If he gets into the trap, he’ll run the minute it hits him. But the drag’ll slow him down, catch in things, hold him up, and leave a clear trail.”
“Couldn’t you just put down a stake or somethin’,” Jess asked, “and anchor him tight?”
“Wouldn’t work,” Cutler said. “He’d run against the trap with all his strength, maybe pull out. You got to have a drag; then it goes with him, but he can’t get loose from it. Gives him nothing to pull against. Only with a trap and twenty or thirty pounds on behind, he can’t make any time and he’ll be easy to trail.”
He sliced the dirt off the bottom of the clump of turf from the knoll until it was thin and light, then laid it over the trap and sifted dust into the edges of the cut. Throughout, he’d laid all excess dirt on the yearling hide; now, carefully, he carried it far away and disposed of it. Then, with a juniper bough, he erased the last traces of his presence in the dust.
“Gee,” Jess exclaimed. “You can’t tell that anything’s there at all!”
It was true; there was no evidence, visually, that the earth had ever been disturbed, nor, Cutler thought, was even the wolf’s keen nose likely to pick up any trace of human scent, especially after the set had weathered for a day or so. “That’s the idea,” he said with satisfaction, mounting Apache.
It was plain hard work, demanding an infinite capacity for taking pains, but during the rest of that day he spread a band of wolf traps across the natural entrance to Fair Randall’s ranch. The next morning early, he and Jess arose, galloped out to look at them.
As always, as he neared the trap line, Cutler felt a quickening of his pulse, the same emotion a miner might feel nearing the mother lode, or a gambler staking everything on the dice’s roll, or, for that matter, a child on Christmas morning. It was the excitement of the unexpected, although in his heart he really had no hope of catching the wolf so soon.
Jess’s face fell as they found trap after trap undisturbed. Cutler grinned. “Trapper’s luck, boy. Got to take the bitter with the sweet and have a lot of patience. Catchin’ a smart old loafer like that’s a kind of needle in a haystack proposition. Now you ride along with me and watch where I make the rest of the sets. You and your mama are gonna have to look after this line for me for the next day or so.”
Late that night, as Fair lay in his arms in the wagon, he said, “Come morning, I aim to start for Tom Fellows’ place. Likely I’ll be there a day or so. Jess knows where all the traps are, and you and him ride out and see to ‘em first thing every day. You find one of ‘em pulled loose, you send the kid high-tailin’ it to Fellows’ spread, and you follow up the trail. If it’s the wolf, don’t mess with it; shoot it without gettin’ out of the saddle. And—you keep Big Red here at the ranch. I don’t want him stepping in any trap by mistake.”
The next morning, Cutler was up before the sun, digging more seasoned traps out of the horse pen, when he heard the drum of hoof beats coming hard. He straightened, turned, then recognized Tom Fellows pounding into the ranch yard on a lathered mount.
Fellows jerked the horse up short, quit the saddle in a leap. “Cutler!” he yelled, face twisting with rage. “That damned wolf killed again last night on my range! Pulled down ten prime head of she-stock and never ate a bite of any of ‘em. What the hell you gonna do about it?”
Cutler sucked in a long breath. Then he said, quietly, “Rest your horse, Fellows. Let me get these traps up and then we’ll ride.”
It was as if a bomb or cannon shell had exploded in the little valley, Cutler thought. Ten red carcasses lay scattered far and wide. Cutler rode among them as Tom Fellows and his single hired hand worked furiously at skinning and butchering the meat, trying to save what they could. In his mind, he envisioned what had happened, the great gray beast dashing into the herd like a fox into a flock of chickens, then, almost playfully, running down the stampeding Herefords one by one, slaughtering each with a single chop of powerful jaws. Cutler’s heart sickened at the waste, and he did not blame Fellows for the fury and frustration that literally shook the man.
When he’d made his circuit, he turned Apache back to where the rancher, bloody to the shoulders, was gutting a two-year-old heifer worth easily thirty dollars. Fellows straightened up, eyes blazing. “Cutler, I can’t use or sell all this beef.” His voice choked. “Ruined, just hundreds of dollars gone down the drain. Listen, I’m gonna leave two, three carcasses. Why don’t you fill ‘em full of poison? Maybe you can get the son of a bitch that way!”
Cutler shook his head. “Would get some buzzards, eagles, a few coyotes, maybe a stray dog. Not the wolf. Damn it, Fellows, you know yourself he never comes back to anything he kills.” He fished in his saddlebag, brought out the map Fair Randall had given him, swung down and opened it. “Listen, it’s possible that this will be his last kill. I’ve worked out a pattern from the information your association gave me, and this . . .” he swept out a hand “confirms he’s still holdin’ to it. He hit Fair’s ranch a few nights ago, now yours, accordin’ to this, next time he’ll swing north, here, behind this line of hills, Jud Bobbitt’s ranch.”
Fellows unconsciously wiped bloody hands on his pants. “Meaning?”
