The Wolf Pack (Cutler #1)

by John Benteen

  “You damned fool,” rasped Cutler. “What made you think I wouldn’t guess? I never met a wolf in my whole life that could smell out every set I made, let alone thirty in one night! All the same, I might have puzzled a day or so longer if you hadn’t overreached yourself. But you had to try to poison my dog, too, didn’t you, scatter your damned poison bait where you hoped he’d find it. Well, he’s been taught a long time ago not to take baits like that, but a coyote got it, and then I knew . . .” He stepped forward, rammed the gun out until it was centered on Gilbert’s head. “You watched me set the traps, made a note of every one, includin’ these here on the Fellows range. And then you come along behind at night—early mornin’, rather, when the moon was down—and sprung ‘em all. What’d you have, a wolf paw on a stick to scratch with, make it look real? Only it was too small for you to dare to leave a full track with it ...” He laughed harshly. “And you didn’t count on my catchin’ on quick enough to ride back here and set some man-traps where you’d have to step into ‘em to ruin my wolf sets ...”

  “Cutler, I swear, I just rode across this land, found where the wolf had dug up traps, stepped down to take a look, and ...”

  “Sure. Sure, Gilbert, you stick to that story. You tell it to the wind and sun, the day and night; you tell it to the gangrene in your leg and to the wolf, if the wolf comes, or the coyotes if it don’t. You’ll have lots of time to tell it while you lay out here and rot.” He pointed at the trap. “It takes jackscrews, you know, to open that thing, big ones. I got ‘em. You ain’t. But in about two minutes, I’m ridin’ off with mine.”

  “Cutler, for God’s sake. This trap hurts so bad . . .”

  “Not near as bad as being poisoned,” Cutler said. “So long, Gilbert . . .” He turned.

  “Cutler!” Gilbert howled. “Wait, I’ll tell you . . .”

  Cutler turned. “All right,” he said. “Sing.”

  “Holz . . .” Gilbert licked his lips. “Holz promised me fifty a week for every week you didn’t catch the wolf. That’s all. He didn’t tell me what to do or how, said he didn’t want to know. I knew you’d be stringin’ steel, and I watched you make your sets and, yeah, I went along behind and ruined ‘em ... I didn’t count on you catchin’ on so quick, settin’ bear traps around your wolf traps when I wasn’t watchin’ you. Cutler, for God’s sake, before my leg goes bad . . .”

  Cutler stared at him. Then he nodded slowly. “All right,” he said. The two jackscrews, like huge C-clamps, dangled from his belt. He took them off, and then he laid his rifle aside, the pistol with it, well away from Gilbert. He had no intention of letting Gilbert snatch them up while he worked on the trap.

  He knelt by Gilbert’s swollen foot, clamped a screw on the right-hand spring of the huge trap, slowly jacked the strong metal down on that side, then used the other clamp on the opposite spring. When that was down, he carefully pulled the jaws apart, and Gilbert groaned as the long teeth that had slammed through the leather of his boot came out of flesh.

  Cutler lifted Gilbert’s numbed foot free. “Now,” he said, and then two things happened. Gilbert’s other foot lashed out and kicked Cutler in the face, hard, and Gilbert pulled another skinning knife from his boot.

  Cutler went over backwards, tasting salt blood in his mouth. He blinked, then looked up to see Gilbert launched in a dive, face contorted, his knife blade flashing down. Cutler rolled, and Gilbert landed heavily across him and the long, slim blade buried itself in dirt an inch from Cutler’s shoulder. Cutler seized Gilbert’s wrist, and as he clamped shut his hand, strong itself as a trap, he felt bones move and grate beneath his grip and then Gilbert screamed. Cutler chopped him hard beside the ear with his other fist and Gilbert went limp.

  Cutler rolled out from underneath, panting, pulled free Gilbert’s knife, thrust it in his belt, swung, seized his Colt from where he’d laid it down. As he eased back the hammer, Gilbert was sitting up, shaking his head groggily. Then he saw Cutler standing over him, gun pointed at his head, and his jaw sagged and his eyes filled with terror. He tried to hitch away, hands scrabbling in the juniper needles.

  “Hold it!” Cutler roared and lined the gun.

  Gilbert froze.

  “You son of a bitch,” Cutler rasped. “You’ve ruined my trap line on the Randall ranch, and part of it on this one. The wolf would have to be deaf and blind and without a nose not to know now that a trapper’s after him and how that trapper works; you’ve educated him to my style so it may be impossible for me to catch him. You may have cost the ranchers here enough cattle to bankrupt all of them. And then you try to kill me with a hideout knife . . . On your feet, Gilbert.”

  “I—can’t stand up.”

  “You did well enough a minute ago.” Cutler jerked the gun. “I said, on your feet!”

  Slowly, painfully, Gilbert inched himself erect, grimacing as weight fell on his crippled ankle, in which, now, the numbness was wearing off. He licked his lips. “Cutler . . .”

  Cutler’s smashed lips pulled back in a ghastly grin. “Don’t worry, Gilbert. I’m not gonna shoot you. I’m just gonna give you the worst gun whippin’ of your life and dump you in Holz’s lap. When I get through with you, it’ll be a long time before you mess with anybody’s trap line again.” Then he moved forward in a long, smooth stride; the gun barrel rose and fell and Gilbert howled.

  He went on howling for a long time, as Cutler used the gun barrel, holding Gilbert tightly by the slack of his corduroy coat. Gilbert threw up his hands and Cutler battered them down. Slowly, brutally, methodically, the gun barrel slashed back and forth. In that moment, Cutler was without mercy, a red mist swirling through his brain. It did not clear until Gilbert’s body was dead weight against his arm. Then rationality returned, and Cutler let out a breath and opened his hand and what was left of Gilbert dropped limply at his feet.

  Cutler stared down at the huddled body. He shook his head, drew his hand across his eyes. He knelt by Gilbert, felt Gilbert’s pulse. Relief flooded through him; the man was still alive; there had been a moment, caught up in rage, when the barrel had swung more heavily than he meant it to. Not that he cared about Gilbert; but he had no time to explain to a marshal or a sheriff how he had come to kill the man, and maybe have to stand trial.

  Cutler knelt, bound Gilbert’s hands and feet with piggin strings, then retrieved all weapons. He walked stiffly down the slope through the juniper to the canyon floor and back to where Apache stood, still ground-hitched. Then he mounted and rode to Tom Fellows’ ranch to get a mule.

  The lavishness and prosperity of Holz’s Lazy H seemed to underline the shabby poverty of the other ranches belonging to the association people that Cutler had seen in these mountains. A big, white, freshly-painted house gleamed in the sun; the scattering of corrals were strongly built and tight, every outbuilding sound and well-cared for. That was a German for you, Cutler thought. He’d known many of them, and they took care of their property and were careful about their nickels. But Holz was the only one he’d ever met this crassly underhanded and greedy. A grim satisfaction filled Cutler as he put Apache down the slope toward the layout—Kate, the mule, following on a lead rope, Gilbert’s body lashed across her like a sack of meal. Likely this was the first check to his ambitions Holz had encountered in a long time; and he was pleased to be the one responsible.

  When he was a full two hundred yards from the ranch house, the late afternoon silence was suddenly ripped apart by deep-throated, thunderous barking. Cutler’s eyes narrowed as he spotted the big black mastiff, Gilbert’s, lunging at the end of its chain, having caught his scent.

  The roaring of the dog brought men around to the front, half a dozen lean, gun-hung cowhands striding from the corrals and outbuildings; then the ranch house door opened and a bulky figure appeared. Holz stood there for a moment, staring at the man on the tall bay loping toward him, the mule keeping pace with its burden, and then he snapped an order Cutler could not hear. But Cutler saw the cowhands fan out across the yard as he rod
e into it and Holz came to meet him, waddling, as awkward on foot as in the saddle.

  Then Holz stopped, waiting, within the circle of his men. The dog kept on barking, hurling himself against its tether.

  “You,” Holz said, yelling to be heard above the mastiff’s racket. His tiny eyes raked over Gilbert, just now stirring slightly, letting out a faint, whispering moan. “You’re trespassing on my land. How did you get past my outriders?”

  Cutler grinned. “No dog to call me to their attention this time, Holz. Easy, dead easy, for a man that can still-hunt a grizzly or a puma. You better tighten your guard. Else, somebody might come in and cut your fat throat before you have a chance to squawk. That’s something for you to remember.” Then his face went hard. “I got some carrion that belongs to you.” Before Holz could answer, he pulled a skinning knife, slashed the ropes that bound Gilbert to the mule. Gilbert’s body sagged to the dust, fell sprawling. Gilbert groaned faintly once more.

  Holz stared at Gilbert’s face and at Gilbert’s swollen foot. “Christus! Vhat have you done to him?”

  “The same thing I’ll do to any other man that messes with my trap line, tries to poison my dog, and then comes at me with a knife when my back’s turned.” His eyes met Holz’s, and the German’s face paled at what he saw in them. “Or the man who hires him to do it. That’s something for you to remember, Holz. I aim to catch the wolf. You’d better not try to stop me again. You do, you ain’t got men enough to keep me from coming after you.”

  “You’re threatening me,” Holz said. “I don’t stand for threats.”

  “Not a threat,” Cutler said quietly. “Just a promise.”

  Holz said thickly, “No one talks to me like that. Not on my own property. I can have you horse-vhipped . . .”

  Cutler’s temper snapped. Holz gasped. Cutler’s hand had not appeared to move. But suddenly his Colt was in it, with its barrel lined on Holz’s face. “You try that,” Cutler said thinly. “You go ahead and try.”

  Holz licked his lips. His face was like a bowl of half-risen dough, but the hatred in his tiny eyes flared.

  Cutler said harshly, “Now. You call off your men. They all move up behind you. If one of ‘em makes a play behind my back, you’re done for.”

  Holz hesitated. Then he said, commandingly, “All right, poys. Hands off your guns and come behind me like he says.”

  Cutler waited until the full count of punchers had ranged themselves behind the German. ‘I’m riding out, now, Holz. You give me no more reason, I won’t cross your deadline again. But that same boundary now is a deadline for your outfit, too. Don’t let me find you or any of your men across it on association range.” With gentle pressure on the hackamore, he backed his superbly trained gelding and the mule kept pace. Holz stood there, frozen.

  Cutler backed the horse all the way like that, while the great dog’s clamorous howling went on, until he was out of six-gun range. Then he holstered the Colt as quickly as he’d drawn it, jerked his saddle gun. He circled toward the hills, expecting Holz’s men to make a break and come after him now; he saw one raise a pistol, running forward, but Holz spoke sharply and the man pouched the gun. When Cutler spurred Apache and put him into a run, the mule following, Holz was gesturing angrily and two men picked up Gilbert and carried him inside.

  Now, Cutler thought, as he pounded toward the boundary line, with Gilbert out of the way, it’ll be me and the wolf, one against the other. A duel, alone.

  Chapter Seven

  A week later, John Cutler pulled up the gelding on the crest of a high ridge and looked out at the vast reach of the Davis Mountains. Despite the heat, the air was clear and crisp, and details stood out in sharp relief: the wooded slopes and towering rock faces and great valleys and well-watered pastures. It was, he thought, a fine country; and by now he knew it intimately. There was not a part of it he had not probed on the trail of the wolf, seeking out the limits of its range, blocking the paths it traveled with hidden steel. He knew the country and, too, he thought he knew, by now, the Victorio Wolf. It was not a spirit or a ghost, it was flesh and blood and fur and fangs and a brain warped as much by grief at the loss of its mate as, perhaps, his own was in a different way. For seven days after he’d dumped Gilbert in Holz’s dooryard, he had thought like a wolf himself, like that wolf. And now, after all that time, the duel was really beginning. His last trap was in place, including the resetting of the lines Gilbert had dug up; he’d even placed snares in certain narrow runways where the beast traveled. And, more importantly, he had blocked it from killing again—at least on association range. What it had done on Holz’s place, he did not know.

  But, he thought, staring out at the darkness of the juniper and the brightness of the willows along the streams and washes, all beneath a cloudless, sun shot sky of breathtaking blue, the first round was his. The calculations on his map had been valid, pegging the wolf’s habits. That had not surprised him, for all animals, even those with warped brains, were creatures of habit. The trick was in learning what their habits were. Anyhow, the wolf had struck at Bobbitt’s place and then at Sam Kelly’s, and each time it had been turned back before it could kill beef, spooked by the unexpected presence of armed men and barking dogs. But not before, at each ranch, it had killed one of the mongrel pack, waiting for the dog courageous and witless enough to charge it, then breaking its neck with a single chop of giant jaws. After which, it had filled the night with its deep-throated howls of defiance and disappeared. For two days now, Cutler had seen no fresh wolf tracks on the range as he had gone about placing the last of his web of steel.

  But he was under no illusions that he had driven it off, that, frightened, it might leave the country. No, it would not leave the range where its mate had died. It understood death in some flickering way, but it did not understand that death was final, that she would not return from where she had gone. It would stay here, waiting for her, and it was not through killing yet. Likely it would be several more days before it ventured out of the sanctuary Holz had given it, a badly needed respite in which the ranchers could go about their neglected work, begin their fall gather for shipping. But, Cutler was certain, that was only the lull before the storm.

  From this high point, Cutler could see through a notch to a line of hills in the distance that marked Holz’s boundary. Beyond or in that broken country, the wolf would be lying low, marking time.

  It knew now that an alien presence had entered its kingdom. It had been chased by the red dog, chased all night long in maybe the hardest race it had ever run, and it had come close to being caught. The wolf had, probably, though it had seen no firm sign of it, run across at least some of the traps Gilbert had dug out; and the critter knew traps and was aware that hidden danger menaced it at every step. Twice, the wolf had followed its accustomed route to play its game of slaughter, and twice it had met opposition. And so it would seek its covert and lie there quietly while it thought about all that. The tormented animal would turn everything that had happened over in its cunning brain, and when it left the place where it had denned again, it would be ready for the duel to which John Cutler was challenging it, maybe even delighting in the contest as much as the man. And whatever its habits had been before, they would be different now. Since the old pattern it had followed had been broken, the wolf would devise a new one. What that would be, Cutler could not guess; his job was to keep constant vigilance and learn the shape of it as soon as possible.

  But for the time being, he had done all possible. Now he would enjoy a brief respite, too. He looped his leg around the saddle horn, lit a cigarette, and thought of Fair, waiting for him down there in the valley.

  She was a lot of woman, he told himself. The most woman he had met since Doreen. A fine wife for a rancher, level-headed, courageous, hard-working—and beautiful, as well as being endowed with a lusty desire that matched his own. A first-class rancher’s wife, all right. But—his jaw tightened—he was not a rancher. He was a trapper, and a hunter, and he would be until eith
er he had taken that damned grizzly or until he died.

  He blew smoke out his nostrils. And yet, he thought, she had opened up a new world to him. She had reminded him that there could be a future. Until now, as racked in his own way by his grief as was the wolf, he had thought ahead no farther than the next chance at the bear. Someday, though, he would take that grizzly. Maybe this year, maybe next, maybe five years hence. He would find it somehow, and somehow he would kill it. But what would happen to him then without that hatred to build his life around and give it form? When the bear was dead, he would need something else, a new pattern for himself. Maybe then, he thought, if Fair would wait for him, he could build a pattern around her. Meanwhile ... He thrust his foot back in the stirrup, touched Apache with his spurs and galloped down the hill.

  Four days later, the wolf came back, and when it did, it came hard and fast and with a vengeance, in broad daylight.

  Cutler was skinning a coyote behind the Randall house with Jess watching keenly. The little animals were a constant problem; with habits much like a wolf’s, they kept blundering into Cutler’s traps. He had adjusted the trap pans so the Newhouses would not spring under the weight of an ordinary coyote, but occasionally a heavy one came along and became a victim. Cutler would kill them quickly, cleanly, and then carefully reset the trap.

  Now he ran the skinning knife down the backs of the hind legs. “At this time of year,” he told Jess, “this hide ain’t much good, because the fur’s not prime; but you might as well learn the right way to handle a skin. You start trapping for money, you’ll lose half the value of your catch if you don’t treat the hides right. And that’s just waste . . .”

  He cut off the back paws, leaving them dangling from the hide, slit the tail slightly and pulled out the bone. Then he began to peel the skin from the carcass as if he were taking off a glove. “You skin a coyote ‘cased’, without cuttin’ him down the belly. Work close around the eyes and mouth and don’t ruin the fur. Same way for a wolf or fox. There ...” He deftly pulled the hide free, threw the carcass aside. The skin was inside out, and he left it like that as he slipped it on a board a half-inch thick and curved roughly to the shape of the glove like hide. Stretching it, tacking it around the edges, pulling legs and tail taut, he went on: “Now, you let it dry like that, inside out, but you turn it right side out before you ship it. While it’s drying, you want to take your knife and work all the extra fat and meat off the skin. You don’t, it’ll rot, or anyhow, it won’t have as high a value as one that’s ‘fleshed’ right.”