by John Benteen
Now at full gallop, guns up, the association men fanned out across the valley behind him. Cutler, looking back at them, doubted that Holz’s men would try again. They were a grim and dangerous looking lot, those ranchers who had seen their cattle mangled, their wives and children, as they knew now, endangered by the sanctuary Holz had given to the Victorio Wolf. Whatever new creature threatened them, they would not allow Holz to shut them off from killing it.
They swept down the valley and into another one that joined it, following Red, and then they topped a rise, eyes sweeping the skyline, guns ready, and below them lay Holz’s ranch, its white house gleaming in the sun, its windmill turning slowly. Toward it galloped the five men who had ambushed them, riding hard and they could see others, maybe a half dozen, coming from other directions to join those. Now, Cutler thought grimly, with Holz to give them backbone, it might not be so easy . . .
His eyes went to Red. The Airedale, still giving voice, was streaking straight for the ranch house.
Holz’s riders, making for the same destination, saw the dog and one of them reined in. He swung his horse, yanked his carbine from its scabbard, lined it on Red, tracking. Cutler swore, brought up his own gun. It was a long shot, a damned long one, and there was no time to waste in making it. He deliberately held low; the rifle bucked against his shoulder. Down there in the valley, the gunman’s horse reared, pawed, went to bucking, chopped by Cutler’s bullet. The rifle flew out of its rider’s hand and he grabbed the horn as the horse went crazy. Cutler did not hesitate. He laid down a barrage of fire, aiming not to kill but to threaten, pumping slugs from the Winchester as fast as he could shoot. He saw bullets raise puffs of dust behind Holz’s men as they galloped into the yard of the ranch house, and none of them tried to turn and drop the dog.
But they would have him soon, damned soon, if he didn’t slow down. He was too far out in front, too vulnerable. Cutler unlatched the steer horn, blew a mournful blast. Red skidded to a halt just outside the ranch yard. Cutler blew again. Red pivoted, came running back. Meanwhile, Cutler put the mule into a dead run, making it give all it had, the ranchers riding with him. Meanwhile, Holz’s riders had dismounted, and down there Cutler saw the squat figure of Holz himself come outdoors. He spoke to his men; they ranged themselves around the yard, a guard around the fat figure. They lifted their guns, and they waited.
Cutler met Big Red on the valley floor. The dog halted, whined, jumped, not understanding, eager to follow the trail to its very end. A sharp word from Cutler made it stand; then Cutler unlashed the riata from his saddle. He leaned down, looped it through the ring on Red’s collar like a leash. Then he said, “Trail.”
Red understood, circled slightly, then picked up the trail again. The ranchers slowed down as Cutler followed the dog across the valley floor at the rope’s end. Now the association men were a solid phalanx, riding forward in line at a trot, rifles up, keeping pace with Cutler and the dog. Holz’s crew waited tensely. Holz himself stepped forward a few paces as Cutler rode into the yard, shortening the leash on the Airedale, which still barked thunderously.
Then they were ranged against each other, Holz and his dozen cowboys and the eight association men and Cutler. Cutler pulled Red’s head up. “Quiet,” he said. The dog’s barking faded. Cutler said, “Holz. We want him.”
Holz’s little eyes were unreadable in their beds of doughy flesh. “Vant who? Vhat’s dis all about? Vhat is the meaning of you coming on my land with so many guns? You are trespassing, all of you . . .”
“We want him,” Cutler said again. “Gilbert and his black dog.”
“I don’t know vhat you mean,” said Holz. “Gilbert is not here. Neither is his dog.” His fleshy hand dropped close to the Colt on his right flank. “Now, all of you. Turn around and get out, fast, or you’ll have more trouble than you vant.”
Fellows swung off of Bobbitt’s horse, took a pace forward, rifle lowered. “Holz, something killed four of my cattle last night.”
“Maybe it vas the Wictorio Volf.”
“No,” said Fellows. “The Victorio Wolf is dead. Cutler killed him yesterday.”
The change that came over Holz’s face was instantaneous. It went pale, his lips pursed, and now there was fear in his tiny eyes. “You lie!” he snapped.
“The carcass hangs in Fair Randall’s barn for anyone to see.” Fellows’ voice was like ice. “You overreached, didn’t you, Holz? You decided the killing should be speeded up, wanted to make absolutely sure we couldn’t meet our mortgage payments. So you made a deal with Gilbert, eh? How much did you pay him to turn that black dog of his on our cattle, figurin’ we’d all blame it on the wolf?”
Holz licked his pursy lips, looking from one of them to the other. “Fellows,” he said. “The rest of you. I better remind you of something. Those mortgage payments. I can make it hard for you, hold you to the letter, or I can make it easy. If you needed more time, maybe I could give it to you. I vill decide. But first, you ride off my range.”
“We’ll ride when we’ve got Gilbert and the dog.”
“Fellows,” Holz blustered, but Cutler did not miss how his hand inched closer to his gun, “vhat’s come over you? Vunce you were a reasonable man. Now you talk crazy—”
“No,” Fellows said. “No, I’ve just had all I can take, Holz. We all have. Give up Gilbert and the dog.”
“I tell you—” Holz began.
Bobbitt said roughly, “Save your breath. Cutler—”
“Yeah,” Cutler said. He slipped the leash. Red let out a thunderous bark, made straight for the barn behind the house. Cutler wheeled the mule and followed him.
The barn door was closed. Red flung himself against it. Roaring furiously, he threw himself again and again at the solid wood. Cutler dismounted, went to him, jerked him back.
“Stand,” he ordered. Then he yelled: “Gilbert! You’re in there, you and that cattle-killin’ mastiff. I say come out. With that dog leashed and your hands up. Otherwise, I’m comin’ in there after you.”
There was a long silence. Holz and all the others stood tensely, watching. “Gilbert!” Cutler yelled again. Red whined, fidgeted, but stayed at Cutler’s heel. “You got five seconds . . .” -
Two of them passed. Then Gilbert’s voice rang out, full of defeat. “All right, Cutler. Call off your dog. You got me. I’m coming.” Slowly the barn door began to open.
Then, all at once, it shoved wide on its rollers and Gilbert’s voice shrieked: “Black Devil! Git ‘im!” And the great mastiff launched itself from the door straight at Cutler.
Cutler had a quick glimpse of open jaws and gleaming fangs and glowing eyes in a face as black as coal. There was no time to dodge, jump back . . . Then Red came off the ground as if fired by a cannon. His wiry, rusty body slammed into the mastiff in midair. His growl was like a sound from the pit itself. The black dog’s jaws closed on nothing, and, its leap deflected, it hit the ground with Red on top. Suddenly there was the savage, hideous sound of a dog fight to the death.
And in the same instant, Gilbert was there, in the barn doorway, his voice almost drowned in the uproar. “Goddamn you, Cutler!” he yelled, face twisted with rage and hatred as he lined the double-barreled ten gauge shotgun at Cutler’s belly, the range point-blank. “Now you’ll git what I owe you—”
Cutler hurled himself aside, hand streaking down. The shotgun roared thunderously, one charge plowing into the ground as Cutler brought up his gun, fired in the one clock-tick of time he had, landing on one knee. There had been no time to think about the draw, and he himself was almost surprised to feel the gun buck in his hand and then find himself still alive as Gilbert, smashed back by the impact of the .44 slug that found his chest, tried to raise his gun. Cutler thumbed back the hammer, fired once more, and the other barrel of the ten-gauge went off wildly, and across the yard someone screamed. Then Gilbert hit the ground on his back, kicked once, lay still.
Without a pause, a second glance, Cutler was on his feet again and whirling tow
ard the sound of the dog fight. Black and red rolled over and over together in a blur, and Cutler stared, then pouched the gun he could not fire without fear of hitting Red.
Then the two dogs jumped apart, faced each other, hackles up, lips curled back, fangs gleaming. Each was bloody, and there was no way of telling whether it was the mastiff’s blood, the Airedale’s, or both that stained their fur. They poised like that for a fraction of a second, and then the mastiff leaped, outweighing Red by a good twenty-five pounds. He was longer-legged, and his great jaws aimed for the Airedale’s throat.
But Red had in his time fought bears and pumas, wolves and jaguars, as well as other dogs. He was hard as nails and fast as dry lightning, and he was under the black dog like a blur. The mastiff’s jaws chopped together, missing, and then Red’s teeth seized the mastiff’s leg and Red jerked his head. The black dog flipped over on its back. Red spun on his hind legs. As the mastiff tried to rise, he dodged another chop of jaws, slammed into its shoulder. Its wounded leg crumpled and it went down and over on its belly. Then Red had it by the throat. The big dog twisted with all the power of its body, and Red’s grip slipped off the studded collar that it wore. The mastiff rolled, and Red jumped back and gathered himself and leaped again, and this time, as the mastiff came up, Red’s grip caught it behind the ears, at the base of the skull. Red’s jaws clamped down and his teeth sank deep. The mastiff let out one choked-off howl and fell kicking, its spinal cord severed and its brain-pan pierced. Red jumped back, prepared to charge again. The dog kicked violently, and Cutler, risking a bite in the heat of battle, seized Red’s collar before he could leap and jerked him back. Then Cutler had his gun out again, and he got off one shot. The mastiff’s misery was over. It lay dead.
Cutler let go of Red. The Airedale ran to the black dog, whined around its body, almost mournfully. Cutler straightened up, his mouth a bitter line. He loved dogs as only a hunter can; and the mastiff would have been a good one, a worthy one, if Gilbert had not taught it to kill . . .
He turned away, leaving Red to savage or mourn over the body as he chose. He walked into the barn, stared down at Gilbert, who lay looking up at the rafters with sightless eyes. Three killers gone, Cutler thought, shaking a little with reaction; and of them all, the Victorio Wolf had been the cleanest and most tragic, the only one with reason for its blood-lust.
Cutler swung around suddenly remembering Holz and his gunmen. He left the barn, strode across the yard, then halted. Holz lay sprawled on his back in the dust, hand clutched to a bleeding thigh. His men stood around him, hands raised, under the threat of the association’s guns.
As Cutler came up, Fellows bent over Holz on one side, Bobbitt on the other. The fat man’s face was white, his little eyes pain-filled. “Christus, men, please ... I bleed to death . . .”
“Maybe,” Fellows said. Bobbitt looked at Cutler. “Gilbert’s second barrel,” he said. “Plowed right into Holz’s leg just as he was about to draw, give the signal for a fight. When he went down, that pulled the plug, ended it ...”
“It ain’t ended yet,” Fellows said. “On account of Holz, we lost a lot of cattle. You hired Gilbert, didn’t you, to use his dog on our stock?”
Holz gritted his teeth. “Please. My leg.”
“I want to hear it!” Fellows roared. “Before witnesses! We’re bringin’ you into court, Holz, and we’re gonna recover damages. You’re gonna pay us for every head of cattle we lost on account of you, wolf and dog and all. And that’s a promise you’re gonna make right here in front of all of us, or you can bleed to death where you lay, like you tried to bleed us to death to git our range!”
Holz closed his eyes, opened them. “All right,” he whispered finally. “I say it. Gilbert’s dog vas trained to kill. I hired him to start killing your stock, make you go broke faster; easy vhen ve could blame it on the volf. I never thought Cutler vould git him; Gilbert swore he couldn’t . . . Now, in the name of God, bandage my leg. I will pay you for your cattle, all of them, but don’t let me lie here and die!”
Cutler looked down at the agonized fat man. “Maybe they should,” he said, thinking of what the wolf might have done to Fair and Jess. “But I heard what you said and I’ll bear witness in court. Fellows, patch him up. Patch him up and then let’s ride. This damned place stinks.”
His throat full of bitter bile, he turned away and called to Red and he was examining the Airedale, finding that his cuts were not serious when Fellows called out, “That finishes it. Association, mount up! We still got a fall roundup to finish, and we’re ridin’ home!”
Chapter Ten
With Fair on one side of him, Jess on the other, Cutler came out of the courthouse, the association men trailing. There was jubilance and relief in their laughter and their voices. Inside the courtroom, the verdict had indeed gone against Holz on this day, two weeks later. And the German, under the weight of disapproval of the whole county, had written checks immediately to satisfy the judgments.
Fair stared at the check she held as they came out into the sunlight. She shook her head amazedly. “Now,” she whispered, “I’ll be able to sleep at nights again. With what we shipped and this, I can pay Holz and get through the winter in good shape.”
“Yeah,” Fellows said. “We were worried about that two thousand we promised you, Cutler. But now we can pay it without turnin’ a hair. You can cash that check of your own now: it’s good.”
“Right,” Cutler said, and he touched where it lay folded in his shirt pocket. The association men drifted off, heading for the nearest bar. Cutler, Fair and Jess stood on the sidewalk.
Fair’s eyes met his. “John,” she said. “What now? Where does it leave us?”
It was a question Cutler had been dreading and one that, until this morning, he had not known how to answer. After a moment, he reached into his other pocket, took out an envelope and gave it to her. “This was at the post office when we hit town this morning.”
She took it wordlessly, looked at the Colorado postmark. She opened it, took out the letter, looked at it, and then her hand trembled as she passed it back.
“That was the one thing Gilbert didn’t lie about,” Cutler said quietly. He thought of the bear with its blaze of silver fur, its snakelike head, its stump of a foot. “It’s up there. And it’s been killing livestock.”
Fair let out a long breath. “And so … you have to go?”
Cutler said, “There’s no help for it. I have to go.”
“Not right away,” she said. “Please.”
“Every minute counts. It’s a long way up there, and if I don’t hurry, it may be gone.” He looked at her, trying to make her understand. “I’ve got to, don’t you see? I’ve got to find it and I’ve got to kill it. If I don’t … ” He searched for words. “Then I’ll come apart. I’ll … go rogue. Like the wolf.”
She was silent for a moment. Then she said, “Yes. Yes, I guess you and it are a lot alike. In that you know how to love … maybe too well.” She swallowed hard. “But … Colorado’s not far. You’ll come back?”
Cutler looked down at her. “I intend to,” he said. “How soon I don’t know, but when I can … ”
“We’ll be waiting,” Fair whispered. “Don’t make it too long.”
She and Cutler looked at one another. Then Cutler turned away and picked up Jess.
When he had told the boy what was necessary and his tears had finally stopped flowing, Cutler put him down. “At least,” he said, tousling Jess’s hair, “you got something to remember me by. Every morning when you git out of bed. That wolfskin rug ...”
Jess only rubbed his eyes and was silent. Cutler drew in a long breath. He turned back to Fair and she came into his arms and he kissed her long and hard, there on the street of Buffalo Springs, not caring who was watching.
“John,” she whispered, “soon. You hear? Soon. Now ... go. I don’t think I can stand any more goodbyes.”
“No,” Cutler said. He touched Jess on the cheek. Then he whirled away. Across
the street, his wagon was parked, the mules in harness, Apache, saddled, standing by. Big Red got to his feet, leaped up on the seat, as Cutler mounted the wheel, settled down and took the lines.
Cutler looked at Fair and Jess and raised a hand. They raised theirs, in a last salute. Then Cutler swung forward again. “Kate,” he said. “Emma. Hiiyaaa!”
The mules fell into the traces. With a jingling of chains and traps, the wagon rolled down the street at a smart pace, the gelding trotting alongside. Cutler did not look back again.
When he was well out of town, he reached beneath the seat, took out a bottle, pulled the cork with his teeth, and drank a quarter of it at a long gulp. Then he recorked it and put it between his knees. After all, he had a long way to go and he was not working yet, and it killed the memories and made the traveling easier.
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About the Author
Ben Haas aka John Benteen was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1926. His imagination was inspired by the stories of the Civil War and Reconstruction as told by his Grandmother, who had lived through both. Ben’s father was also a pioneer operator of motion picture theatres, “…so I had free access to every theatre in Charlotte and saw countless films growing up, hooked on the lore of our own South and the Old West.”
Largely self-educated (he had to drop out of college in order to support his family), Ben wrote his first story, a pulp short for a western magazine, when he was just eighteen. But when he was drafted into the Army, his dreams of becoming a writer were put on hold. He served as a Sergeant in the U.S. Army from 1945 to 1946, and saw action in the Philippines.
