by John Benteen
“‘Don’t you rub salt on it?” Jess asked.
Cutler shook his head. “Nope. Not in a fur pelt. Dried right and kept dry, this skin’ll last at least a year. But later on, I’ll show you how to tan it, and we’ll see if we can get a pair of fur gloves for you out of it, or maybe some shoes to keep your feet warm in the house in winter. Anyhow ...” Then he broke off as he heard a horse coming fast, ridden as hard as it could travel. From the front of the house, Fair’s voice sounded. “John . . .”
Cutler stood up, laid the hide aside, strode around the house. His eyes narrowed as he recognized Tom Fellows pounding into the ranch yard. Fellows saw him, jerked up the horse and left the saddle in a leap. As he stalked toward Cutler, his face was dark with rage.
“The wolf—” he panted. “That goddam wolf! Cutler, confound you, I told you—”
Cutler’s voice sliced through his words. “All right, Tom. Calm down, get ahold of yourself. What’s happened?”
Fellows stood there, legs spraddled, chest heaving, as he sucked in breath. “It’s . . . killed,” he gasped. “Again . . . today, my place. In broad daylight. In the open . . . Right under my eyes, damn its time!”
“Go on,” Cutler said and waited.
Fellows shook his head incredulously. “I don’t believe it, I still don’t believe what I saw. East end of my range, closest to Holz’s ... I was drivin’ in six head of cattle I’d worked out of the thickets, comin’ down through a draw, heavy brush. Then—it was there—not as far as from me to you, Cutler! Came outa the brush like a damn cannon-shell, leaped straight for the throat of the old cow in the lead, pulled her down before she could even bawl. The rest stampeded, and, of course, my damn horse went wild and started buck-jumpin’ down the hill, and all the time, me tryin’ to git my rifle out of its scabbard . . . Finally I give up about the rifle, had all I could do to stay on . . . Jesus, the wolf went right under the horse’s nose!”
He shook his head again. “I never seen nothin’ with so much brass, and I’ll swear, it was as big as a bear! The cattle scattered down the slope and that wolf went after ‘em jest like I wasn’t nowhere around. Time I got that horse whipped and calmed down, that gray devil had jerked down four more cows. One bite—that’s all it took for each one—a single bite and they were dead. Right down there on the flat, not two hundred yards away, I saw him go after ‘em, one by one, run ‘em down and leap at the throat, and . . . they just fell stone dead.”
He licked his lips. “Anyhow, five cows dead and in less time than it takes to tell it, and me watchin’ it from the hurricane deck of that stampedin’ bronc . . . Then he just stood there on the flat, in the open, lookin’ at me. He seen me calm the horse, he seen my gun come out, and the minute it cleared leather he took off. He was gone before I could work the lever, vanished in that brush like a ghost. I got one shot at him before he disappeared, but it was so far behind him it wasn’t even funny!”
He spat. “And your traps, out there on my range—the traps that was supposed to stop him. He ain’t come near a single one of ‘em!”
Cutler nodded grimly. “Probably thank Gilbert for that. When he ran, which way did he go?”
“Headed for Holz’s range, of course.”
“All right,” Cutler snapped. “How bad you want him?”
Fellows stared. “How bad do I . . .?”
“I’m goin’ after him. But I can’t fight all of Holz’s riders by myself. The barkin’ of my Airedale’ll bring ‘em runnin’. You git some association men together with guns, my dog’ll pick up his trail, and Holz or no, we’ll run that lobo down to wherever he dens and fight if we have to to do it!”
“Wait a minute!” Fellows held up his hand. “You mean fight Holz?”
“If it comes to that, hell, yes. But it ought not to. It’s a matter of callin’ Holz’s bluff. He might get rough with one man, but he’s not gonna risk a mass shoot-out with half a dozen and have to account to the law and rangers for it.”
“You don’t know Holz.” Cutler caught the fear in Fellows’ voice. “He’ll do anything to break us! And listen, Cutler, we ain’t gunmen! It’s your responsibility to git that wolf and git him quick, that’s what we give you an exclusive chance at him for!”
Cutler looked at him a moment, then shrugged. “I’ll get him,” he said. “That’s what I hired out to do. Sooner or later, my traps will take him. But I’ll warn you now, he’ll do some more killin’ first.” He gestured toward the east. “He was rogue before, but now he’s turned pure crazy. He’s been layin’ over there, denned up on Holz’s land, knowin’ now that we’re at war against him. His old pattern of operations has been broken up; he’s confused, baffled, but he’s got the taste of blood, and ... He don’t give a damn any longer. All he wants to do is kill, and he don’t care what happens to him. He’ll take any chance, try anything, and there’s no predictin’ which way he’ll jump next. What he did today proves that.” He sucked in a long breath. “What’s happened is that he’s lost his fear of man completely.”
Fellows shook his head. “You make him sound more like a human bein’ than a wolf. Like . . . like some old-time outlaw, gunman . . .”
“Right now, he’s likely to be just as dangerous.”
“A wolf won’t attack a man. Everybody says that. Not unless he’s got rabies.”
Cutler’s mouth twisted. “Any animal will attack a man under the right circumstances, no matter what the so-called experts say. How many dogs have turned on their owners, gentle horses turned sour and kicked a man to death? Hell, I’ve known men to be killed by buck deer and moose . . . When an animal goes crazy, either from ruttin’ season or because its nerves snap or maybe from grief, like this one, when it’s really got the taste of blood . . . then anything that gets between it and what it wants to kill is gonna get hurt and that includes a man.” He raised his hands, dropped them. “I could lay him by the heels in forty-eight hours if you association people would ride with me. I almost had him once before. Big Red could pick up his trail and run him until he can’t run no more, and then we got him. All I need is somebody to keep Holz off my back while Red and me do that. The decision’s yours. But I’ll tell you this; if we don’t git him and git him quick, he’s gonna lay waste to this range in a way that’ll make what he’s done before look like a fleabite.”
“Tom,” Fair Randall said, “I think we ought to call a meeting. I think John’s right—Holz is bluffing. Call his bluff and he won’t fight . . .”
“And I say,” Fellows flared, a quaver of fear in his voice, “that we won’t take the chance! We’re not gunfighters! Besides, he gets us tied up in court for trespassin’, threatenin’ him, things like that . . . Don’t forget, he holds our mortgages. He could break us with lawyers’ costs and God knows what else!” Fellows turned to Cutler. “You. You get that wolf, and you do it quick, or I’ll find Gilbert or bring in another poisoner and have him do it! You got one week, no more ...” Then he turned to his horse, swung aboard. “You hear me, Cutler? Seven days!” Touching his tired animal with spurs, he shambled off.
Cutler, Fair Randall, and Jess stood wordlessly for a moment. Then Fair said, “John. What are you going to do?”
“Get the wolf,” Cutler said harshly. “Somehow. If Red and I have to hunt twenty-four hours a day between now and then to catch him short. Somehow I’m going to get him.” Instinctively, he turned, looked at the draw behind the house, thought of the wolf hunkered there at night as it had at least three times. He looked at Fair, at Jess . . . And yet, he told himself, there was no help for it. He had to withdraw Big Red’s protection from them.
“Listen,” he said. “There won’t be a dog around this place any more. You remember what I told you about stayin’ close with Jess and carryin’ a pistol?”
Fair paled. “John. You don’t think he’d . . .?”
“I said, there’s no tellin’ what he’ll do. We’ll take no chances. Me, right now, I’ve got to ride.”
He found the cattle lying where
they’d been yanked down, read the sign, saw how the wolf had lain in the brush waiting for Fellows to pass the choked draw with the gather. He wasted little time in doing that; almost immediately, Big Red, sniffing in circles, picked up the trail. Then the Airedale streaked off, eastward. Cutler’s jaw tightened. That much of the pattern held, anyhow; the wolf, blood-lust temporarily sated, was heading again for its sanctuary.
Despite everything he and Big Red could do, it had made it. Three hours later, Cutler pulled up, faced by armed men drawn to Big Red’s deep-throated bark. There were four of them, Holz not among them this time, but their boss’s absence did not weaken their iron resolve. They turned him back; and there was no way he could fight them. Again he used the steer horn to call in his dog, and once more Big Red was puzzled and distrustful.
After that, ceaselessly, Cutler and the Airedale roamed the boundary line. Night and day they explored draws and washes, cliffs and canyons, hoping to pick up the wolf’s hot trail as it came west to kill, to cut it off from Holz’s deadline. On the third day, Big Red caught such a trail, bayed exuberantly, struck out west full speed. Cutler’s pulse quickened as he followed the dog hell-bent through the lengthening shadows of late afternoon. But the wolf’s head start was too great. In a barbed wire pasture on Jud Bobbitt’s land, Cutler found a mare and colt, both freshly killed. Then Red, still roaring, swung east again; the wolf was heading home.
This time, Cutler took a shortcut. He knew the land well, knew a crossing where the wolf, on this route, might pass, yielding him a clear shot. With Red still hot on the creature’s trail, he forced Apache to give all he had to get him there before the wolf came. The big horse went gallantly over broken country, as if he too realized it was a matter of seconds. Then he stumbled, almost fell, regained his balance. He tried to pick up stride again, but Cutler cursed, reined him in. His leg was sprained, not broken. Cutler ground-reined his animal, raced ahead on foot to cover the last quarter of a mile.
The opening was in a wash, a gap between two piles of boulders. Panting, Krag in hand, Cutler came out on the hill above it, with Big Red still giving voice and coming fast, not a mile away, tight on the trail, pushing the quarry hard. Cutler flipped off the rifle’s safety, brought the gun to his shoulder. Just as its butt struck his flesh, the wolf was there, an enormous blur of gray streaking across the opening. Without time to aim, Cutler fired and knew he’d missed; he fired again, but he was too late; the wolf was gone. He cursed savagely; in that instant he was ready to believe that the spirit of the old Apache chief did inhabit that great animal and had put a curse on all who hunted it.
After that, there was nothing for it but to call Big Red in and lead Apache out of the rough country. He spent the night where darkness caught him, rolled up in blankets, and at midnight he awakened to hear that deep, weird howl, defiant, challenging, and full of grief, coming from far away—on Holz’s land.
It was late in the afternoon of the fourth day when Cutler, leading his lame horse, Red walking at heel, crested a rise, saw Fair Randall’s ranch below him. There he’d treat Apache’s leg, saddle a mule, and then take up the hunt again.
But as he topped the rise, he halted. There were mounted men down there at the ranch. Suddenly Cutler’s heart jumped with fear. If their presence meant anything had happened to Fair or Jess ... He fired his gun. They saw him, and then Cutler relaxed a little. The men rode toward him, and Fair and Jess were left standing before the house.
Fellows, Bobbitt, Kelly, all the rest—he knew them well by this time. He knew, too, the grim, furious, despairing expressions on their faces. As they reined in, Fellows exploded. “Well, dammit, he outdid himself yesterday! Killed a mare and foal on Bobbitt’s land, then swung south and brought down five cattle on Sam Kelly’s place again!”
Cutler stared at him, his knowledge of the terrain leaping completely into his mind as if he were looking at a map. “He did what?” he asked incredulously.
“You heard Tom,” Sam Kelly, slat-thin, looking tired and haunted, rasped. “On the south end of my spread. Chewed the hell out of ‘em. Tore ‘em up worse than I’ve ever seen him do before.”
“That’s impossible,” Cutler said. “Last night?”
“Last night.” Kelly’s voice was positive.
Cutler thought of that distant howl, coming from the north on Holz’s land. “I don’t see how. I ran him right after he killed Bobbitt’s horses. He headed back for Holz’s. Last night, sleepin’ out, I heard him howl near midnight. He was still on Holz’s range. Too far from Kelly’s south end to . . . what time did you find the kill?”
“About five this mornin’. I was out before daybreak, roundin’ up.”
“And they’d been dead how long?”
“They was stiffenin’ up . . .”
“An hour, then, anyhow; he’d have had to kill at four at the latest. Dammit, he couldn’t have made it, not in that short a time, no wolf could, especially after havin’ been run so hard . . . Not unless he flew.”
“Then maybe he flew,” Bobbitt said grimly. “Maybe he is a goddamned ghost.”
Cutler ignored that. “He leave tracks?”
“I reckon. What difference does it make?”
“Did you see his tracks?” Cutler snapped.
“I didn’t need to see ‘em to know what did it! Anyhow, it was jest daybreak. I took one look at what he’d done and then I rode for Tom’s place. We got the men together ...”
. “So you’re ready to ride with me against Holz while I chase the wolf after all . . .?”
“We ain’t ridin’ with you,” a rancher named Harry Dolan, solid, heavy-set, said. “Cutler, I’m sorry. I voted to give you first try but this can’t go on. We’re ridin’ to Holz’s place to see if we can get Gilbert to come.” He shook his head. “We’re at the end of our rope. You can’t run him down, and he ain’t stepped in your traps yet. So we’ve decided. We’re gonna have Gilbert, if he will, poison everything in sight. Maybe we can git out so much poison that even if the wolf don’t take it, he won’t come around.”
Cutler was silent for a moment. Then he nodded. “All right; it’s your range and your decision. But, Gilbert . . . You’re bringing in the man who tore up my traps and educated the wolf, maybe cost me the chance to get him days ago. If Gilbert hadn’t exposed my steel and alerted the wolf to the fact that there were traps out . . . But let that ride. Let ride, too, the fact that if you’d stand with me against Holz, I could have that wolf by tomorrow or the next day. Right now, all I’ll say is this: that lobo will laugh at Gilbert’s poison. Once my traps, my dog, and me are gone, the wolf’s got a free hand. He’ll kill when and where and how he wants to, and he’ll get bolder and bolder . . . And maybe ... He looked down toward the Randall ranch house. “And maybe he won’t stick to killin’ four-legged animals. You got wives, children, and you’re away from ‘em on the range all day. And ...”
“And Gilbert’s got a dog, too. He can run the wolf as good as you.”
“Gilbert’s got a mastiff. Mastiffs hunt by sight, not by trail. That dog’s as helpless as you are unless he sees the wolf or gets his hot scent above the ground ...”
“All the same,” Fellows said stubbornly, “we’re gonna try it.”
Cutler was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Not yet you aren’t.”
Fellows tensed. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning, Tom, you gave me a week to get the wolf. Seven days. Four gone, I’ve still got three left. I want those three.”
Fellows shook his head angrily. “You ain’t scratched in those four ...”
“All the same, you made me a promise, and you’re president of the association. I got three days left. I want those three days before you call in Gilbert.”
“It’ll cost us too much stock . . .”
“Wait a minute,” another rancher named Shannon said. “You made Cutler that promise?”
“I did, but ...”
“Then we keep it. Cutler came a long way, put in a lot of hard work
, and he saved us stock we’d have lost in at least two raids that I know of. I figure he’s entitled to that much.”
Harry Dolan shifted in the saddle. “Maybe you’re right.”
“I say . . .” Fellows began.
“Three days,” Jud Bobbitt put in. “That seems fair enough. Let it ride. Cutler, you got that much time. But that’s all. After that, if you ain’t had luck, we got to jump another way.”
Cutler said, “Obliged. I’ll do my best. Now. What about givin’ me a ride down? My horse is lame.”
When the association men had loped off, Jess embraced Big Red, and dog and boy rolled on the ground. Fair Randall, in sombrero, leather jacket, jeans, and boots, took Cutler’s hand. “John, you look absolutely whipped. You’re not going out again tonight?”
Cutler wanted to take her in his arms, knew that was what she wanted, too, but it was not wise with the boy around to see. “I’ve got to see to Apache first. I’ll need a box stall for him if there’s one vacant in the barn. Then . . . yeah. Yeah, I got to go out again.” His eyes flicked to the holstered Colt she wore. “Has everything been quiet here?”
She nodded. “I guess so. This is the first day Jess and I haven’t been out on the range. You know, we’ve been lucky, John. It’s strange the wolf hasn’t tried to hit us again since that first night. But there’s been no sign of him. The only excitement is that you had a coyote in a trap. I killed him and opened the trap the way you snowed me, and Jess skinned him and stretched the hide. But it’s almost as if the wolf has given up on us.”
