Rider on the Buckskin

by Peter Dawson

  Perhaps the sharing of Fred’s and Kate’s worries had given him a new perspective on his own. But the fact remained that from this day onward he would never be so unalterably convinced that he must keep on with his hunt and somehow track down the lame carpenter and the man who had sided him on the road below Peak City that night almost five years ago.

  Thinking back on all that had happened to him since coming here, he found much that was puzzling, inexplicable. The shot from the rim the other night was most confounding of all because he couldn’t tie it in with anything that had happened beforehand. The more he thought about it, the more incongruous it became that anyone in this country would have knowingly picked him as a target. It even seemed quite likely that the ambusher had mistaken him for someone else.

  For the past quarter hour he had been working the meadow’s edge. And just now Wade Collins rode across and hailed him to interrupt his futile speculation. The old man’s eyes were bloodshot from an almost sleepless night and his tone was barbed as he nodded toward the ranch buildings below, saying: “Jim Echols rode in ten minutes ago. What’s Kate going to tell him about what we’re doing?”

  “Probably the truth. We’re cutting the shipping herd.” Frank looked below, shortly saying: “Maybe I ought to get down there and see what he has to say. Can you spare me?”

  Collins at once nodded. “Sure. Will and me can manage. The main thing is to get Echols out of here.”

  Frank swung the buckskin away and started down across the meadow at an easy lope. He was still something like a quarter mile short of the ranch buildings when he saw two riders, Kate and Jim Echols, round the spur of spruce concealing the house and come toward him. He pulled in on the buckskin and went on at a walk to meet them.

  As he joined them, Jim Echols surprisingly was cordial as he announced: “Kate’s taking me up for a look at that dam. Want to come along?”

  “Better not. Too much to do here.” Frank turned the buckskin and fell in alongside them, next to Kate. “How’s Fred doing?”

  “He’s turned ornery.” Kate gave him a smile that let him know she was glad to be with him. “He’s up and dressed and sitting in a chair.”

  “And talkin’ about workin’ tomorrow,” the lawman added.

  Frank grinned broadly, somehow pleased at hearing this last. “You Bonds are tough as Cheyennes. Let him do what he wants.”

  “But that arm’s useless,” Kate protested worriedly. “If he does try and ride, he’s liable to hurt himself.”

  “Then keep him hog-tied,” Echols suggested.

  The remark didn’t seem to satisfy Kate, and they rode on back up the meadow without speaking for a good two minutes, until Frank finally said: “Here’s where I leave you.” He nodded toward Collins and Hepple, who were some three hundred yards away, steadily pushing a bunch of white-faces southward.

  Echols reined in, looked at Frank. “When we get back, I’m goin’ across to Summit to try and throw a scare into Crowe. I’ll lay you a dollar to a dime he doesn’t know anything about what they did to Fred.”

  “Probably not.” Frank had a thought then that made him ask: “Mind if I side you part of the way?”

  They had reined in, their horses at a stand, and now Echols’s expression turned quizzical. “Sure, come along. But why?”

  “I thought I might look over the spot where that shot came from the other night.”

  The lawman’s glance sharpened with quick interest. “Now that’s a good notion. We’ll make short work of this other.” He led the way on then, Kate lifting a hand to Frank as she left him.

  It was nearly two hours before they rode back down from the head of the meadow, by which time Frank, Collins, and Will Hepple were pushing the animals they had cut from the main herd on past the ranch buildings. Frank had half an hour ago ridden in to see Fred, had found him almost cheerful, and also very inquisitive about plans for getting the shipping herd out. Frank answered his questions evasively, knowing that, if he told him of what he and Kate had talked about last night, there would be no keeping him in the house for the rest of the day.

  Jim Echols was much impressed, even awed, by what he had seen up along the rim above the Porcupine, though Frank didn’t discover that until some ten minutes after they left Kate and, following the twin tracks of the Summit road, reached the roaring creek at a spot where they had to wade a long stretch that was flooded from the stream’s overflow.

  Looking out across the acre or more of ground covered by the water, Echols soberly said: “Pleasants’ll play hell ever bustin’ that slide clear. It must’ve been a sight when it cut loose.”

  “So it was.”

  The lawman glanced around, dryly drawling: “It’d take someone like you to make Pleasants eat this kind of crow. What’ll Kate and Fred do with all this water?”

  “Maybe the same as Pleasants planned … dig ditches and double their hay crop.”

  “Wish Amy and John could have lived to see it.” There was an undiluted quality of wistfulness in Echols’s tone. “That’s all John ever wanted beyond what he had. More water, so he could grow enough feed to carry him over the winters.”

  “Well, Anchor’s got it now.”

  “And Pleasants hasn’t.” The sheriff laughed softly and apparently in genuine merriment. “Wonder how long it’ll take him to come to me and raise a howl?”

  “If he does, take him up there and show him what’s left of his dam.”

  “I’ll do that and don’t think I won’t.” Seriously the sheriff went on: “Things have switched around some. He’ll have some water from a few springs that feed the Porcupine above his place. But he’ll never be able to run those feeders now. Ten to one he’ll have to trim down his herd from lack of grass.”

  As they went on, Frank was finding it hard to understand the change in Jim Echols. The man had shed the last trace of that caustic, truculent manner that had been so typical of him even as late as their talk at the hotel last night. Today he seemed genuinely friendly, almost easy-going.

  In ten more minutes Frank was suggesting that they begin a circle to the south that would take them onto Crowe’s range well below the fence camp and the point where the road crossed from Anchor.

  “You’re duckin’ those three hardcases?” the lawman wanted to know. “Why?”

  “One thing at a time.”

  This somewhat cryptic answer prompted Echols to study Frank over a deliberate interval, which ended by his shrewdly commenting: “I’d give a lot to know what’s goin’ on in that think tank of yours. But if you say so, we don’t let ’em see us.”

  Frank right then had to hold in check the foolhardy urge to tell him that he wanted the three Beavertail men to believe that the beating they had given Fred had disheartened everyone at Anchor. Only by remembering that Echols was not only a friend of Kate’s and Fred’s, but also a peace officer, was he able to put down the rash impulse.

  It took them another twenty minutes to ride the circle, meet the road again, and finally reach the open stretch footing the rim that Frank remembered so well. After he had pointed out the spot where he had seen the rifle’s flash, Echols seemed to want to take charge.

  And oddly enough, he also seemed to want to put last things first. For after asking several questions and listening closely to Frank’s answers, he suggested: “First off, let’s find the place where you took out after this jasper. Up there in the trees.”

  Puzzled, Frank nonetheless led the way across from the road to the margin of the pines, shortly coming onto the line of the buckskin’s tracks striking upward across the shaded, unmelted snow.

  The lawman got down to look at the tracks, then followed them all the way to the bare crest of the rim. There, he turned right and finally sloped down the far side along the line the ambusher had taken in making his getaway. Down in the shelter of the pines he came across more tracks and once again swung aground, kneeling to examine them.

  When he straightened, he looked up at the tall man who had been observing
all this with such bridled impatience. “Different,” he said.

  Frank didn’t catch his meaning. “Different from what?”

  “From that sign down below.”

  Suddenly Frank understood. Jim Echols had come up here purposely to prove to himself that more than one rider, someone other than Frank, had been on the rim that night.

  Frank’s instant reaction was one of high indignation over the man’s unbreakable mistrust of him. For a moment he groped for something to say, for some scalding, biting remark that would really sting the sheriff. But then all at once it didn’t matter, and, when he spoke, his tone was only faintly disdainful.

  “Well, now you’ve seen it.”

  Echols looked across at him soberly to say, with surprising candor: “Give a man time, will you, Rivers? After all, Bill Echols is still in that wheel chair.”

  “And I’m still hunting the men that put him there.”

  The sheriff’s head tilted in a slow nod. “I’m beginnin’ to think maybe you are. For the first time.”

  This unlooked-for admission at another time would have meant a lot to Frank. Now it didn’t. All that mattered at the moment was to finish what he had come for, and to part company with Echols as soon as possible. “Do we go back down there now and have a look at where he was when he threw his shot?”

  “We do.”

  It took them nearly twenty minutes, ten to find the tracks of the ambusher’s horse close to the spot where Frank thought he had seen the rifle’s flash, another ten of searching the ground nearby, which was at the very margin of the pines and now only lightly covered with melting snow.

  Jim Echols was the one who made the find. Caught in the thorny and interlaced stems of a wild rose bush he spotted a dull brass shell case and called Frank across to see where it had wedged itself before he leaned down to retrieve it.

  Holding it in his palm and looking at it, he remarked: “You said it sounded like a heavy rifle. Here, take a look.”

  He tossed the hollow brass cylinder across to Frank. The shell appeared familiar at first glance, seeming to be exactly like the .44-40s Frank used in his Winchester. But then Frank noticed the shallow shoulder a third of the way down from the neck of the shell. He didn’t have to inspect the numbers stamped on its bottom to say positively: “Forty-Five-Seventy-Five.” He eyed the lawman speculatively. “Can’t be too many of these around, can there?”

  “No. Amos Bent ought to be able to help us. He’s the man in town that fixes guns.”

  “Then this may prove something?”

  “It may,” was all Echols would say.

  “It would if you could find another one like it, wouldn’t it?” Frank drawled.

  As the sheriff frowned in puzzlement, Frank added: “Another one up where Cauble was killed.”

  Jim Echols’s eyes came wider open. He let his breath go in a soft whistle. “Why didn’t I think of that? Can you take me up there? Now?”

  Frank was at first tempted to make the ride. But when he realized that they could easily spend the rest of the day finding the place where he had camped above Pleasants’s fence and searching the slope above it—when he remembered what he and Kate had planned for this evening—he shook his head.

  “Can’t do it now. Too much going on back at the layout.”

  “Tomorrow then? Early?”

  Frank nodded. “Tomorrow.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Fred Bond was completely winded by the time he got the saddle on the claybank and pulled himself astride the animal. He sat with head hanging for all of a minute until the pounding of his heart and the aching of his shoulder and side had eased off.

  Then, very gingerly, he lifted reins and took the claybank away from the corral at a walk, heading down across the meadow in the gathering darkness, guided by the pinpoint winking of a fire from far below.

  That blaze marked the near end of the pocket into which he had all afternoon watched Collins, Will Hepple, and Kate—and finally Frank—drive small bunches of steers and heifers that were to make up the shipping herd. And as he let the claybank hurry its stride to a jog, finding his aching body could stand the jolting of the saddle, he was smiling crookedly at recalling the seeming innocence with which Kate had come up to the house an hour ago, fixing him his supper, and then given him the excuse of having to ride back down the meadow again to see when the men, who were working late, planned to eat.

  Presently he was close enough to make out their shapes around the fire, Frank Rivers’s rangy outline towering over the others. He laughed aloud then, thinking of the surprise he had in store for them.

  Frank was the first to hear him coming, and swung away, stepping into the shadows as he rode into the circle of firelight. He reined in and sat, grinning down at Kate, who stared at him as though not believing what her eyes were showing her.

  “Thought you were all going to eat at the house,” he said, nodding down to the tin plates, the Dutch oven, and the cups sitting near the blaze.

  The next moment Frank reappeared and strode over alongside the claybank, asking sharply: “What’s this, Fred?”

  “Right on time, aren’t I?” Fred peered down at the tall man with that grin still patterning his swollen and scarred face. He lifted his bad arm in its sling. “I’m all right, so don’t start reading me the gospel, Frank. I was awake last night while you and Kate were gabbing out there on the porch. So try to get rid of me.”

  Kate managed to find her voice now and said hollowly: “Fred, you’ve lost your mind. Get back.…”

  “Save your breath, girl. I’m coming with you.”

  Kate gave Frank a look that begged him to help her talk Fred out of this insane notion. Yet there had been a quality of iron in Fred’s tone that wasn’t to be argued, and now Frank only shook his head sparely and turned away, not wanting to interfere.

  The argument began in earnest then, Collins heatedly joining Kate to persuade Fred he was playing the fool. But all Fred did was sit there, leaning on his good arm and shaking his head, until finally he told them: “Give up, will you? I’ve come this far and I’m in better shape than when I started. So I tag along.”

  “Frank, can’t you do something about this?” Kate was really angry now, seeming to resent Frank’s holding himself aloof from the argument.

  Realizing this, Frank was nonetheless able to put himself in Fred’s place and halfway feel a measure of the bitterness and the longing for revenge he knew must be gripping the man. Fred deserved the chance he was asking for tonight.

  “No, Kate,” Frank at length told her. “After last night he can do anything he wants. It’s up to him.”

  “But think of.…”

  “It’s no go, Sis. I’m in on this. More than that, I’m siding Frank.”

  The words came as a shock to Frank, whose head jerked around so that he could meet the man’s glance. “No you don’t, friend. That part I do on my own.”

  “Think again,” Fred came back at him. “You need help and you know it.” He reached down and slapped the stock of the rifle he had tied to his saddle. “You do the leg work, I furnish the fireworks.”

  Miserably Kate put in: “Let’s give the whole thing up. Will can go home. We’ll wait till another day.”

  “No.” Frank, oddly enough, was suddenly beginning to believe that Fred just might mean the difference between things working smoothly tonight or possibly not at all, short-handed as they were. And he looked at Kate to say seriously: “His being along could make my end of it twice as easy. But there’s one thing that’s got to be understood.” He glanced up at Fred once again, a flintiness in his blue eyes as he drawled: “We’re not collecting any scalps tonight.”

  Fred nodded readily enough. “No scalps. But someone’s going to be feeling a hell of a sight older when this is finished. And it won’t be you and me.”

  That was the end of it. Even Kate didn’t argue now, Frank’s words having made her resignedly accept the risk Fred was running in going with them. Perhaps she eve
n began to understand this in the same way Frank did, for she shortly brought a cup of coffee across and handed it up to her brother, giving him a smile, saying: “You always were a brat. But a nice one.”

  Ten minutes later the work started for everyone but Fred, who sat his horse watching the bawling heifers and steers being pushed out from the holding ground onto the meadow. Full darkness was on them now, yet the starlight was bright enough to let them see individual animals at some distance as the herd strung out and swung south across the lower end of the meadow.

  There were upward of two hundred head in the herd. Collins and Frank worked the drag, Will Hepple and Kate rode the swings, Fred the point. For something like forty minutes they drove steadily southward, reaching the end of the meadow and then moving along behind a series of ridges showing their shadowed outlines to the west, until finally Frank swung over to Collins and said briefly—“Here’s where I leave you.”—and rode on ahead in the darkness.

  At the head of the strung-out line of animals he angled over until he made out Fred’s shape. “Let’s be at it!” he called, and they pulled on ahead, striking west of the line they had been following.

  Presently Fred pulled close alongside Frank. “Get me planted up there above the tent and I won’t budge.”

  “You’re going to have to move around some.” Frank went on talking, explaining, finally asking: “How gun-shy is that claybank?”

  “He isn’t. Which is why I picked him.”

  “Good. Be sure you tie him where you can get to him fast if you have to.”

  They rode steadily on for the better part of another quarter hour, until abruptly Frank pulled in and pointed ahead, saying tersely: “There’s the line. Which way now?”

  “Right a little.”

  They crossed the line dividing Anchor from Crowe’s land, the mounds of dirt around several post holes showing plainly in the starlight. And shortly Frank was seeing the glow of a fire’s light reflected against a thick stand of aspen climbing the far side of a draw five or six hundred yards ahead. This was Crowe’s fence camp.