“How the hell do I know?” Van Arndt replied. “Knowing him, the dumb son of a bitch is probably lost. Get on with you now. Or else ride away from your share of the money.”
“No need for that. I’m goin’, I’m goin’,” Peters said. He turned and started back down the trail.
Van Arndt watched Peters for a few minutes until he was satisfied that Peters was following his orders. Then he turned to the others. “All right, let’s go,” he called out to them. “I want to be through the pass before dark.”
The little party began riding again and as before, Sally and Lucy were in the middle of the file. Only this time, with Peters gone, there were only two riders in front of them and three behind. Jeeter was just in front of her, Keno was just behind her.
Jeeter’s horse lifted its tail to defecate. Sally looked down at the horse apples and saw that they—like the droppings of the other horses—showed grass and hay. Her horse and the horse Lucy was riding were fed oats. Smoke would pick up on that.
She knew that Smoke would be coming after her, so she started making a concerted effort to slow them down. Gradually, the distance between her horse and Jeeter’s horse began widening.
Turning around, Van Arndt noticed that the distance was widening. “Keep up with us. If you don’t keep up with us, I’ll tie the both of you belly-down across the saddle and lead your horses,” Van Arndt growled.
“It’s difficult to ride with our arms tied to our sides like this,” Sally said. “We’re having to hold on with our knees.”
“Believe me, woman, it will be a hell of a lot harder if you are belly-down on your saddle, and that is exactly what I’m going to do to you if you two don’t keep it up like I said,” Van Arndt said with a snarl.
Sally had purposely dropped back, doing everything she could do to hold them up. Now she had no choice but to comply.
As they passed close to a dirt wall to the right of the trail, Sally held out her right stirrup, doing so just far enough for it to leave a long gouge in the dirt. She did it naturally and easily, without her horse losing step, so that none of the three riders who were behind her noticed anything untoward.
As the little group moved on, the trail was empty, except for horse droppings—and the gouge in the dirt wall. In the west, the sun dipped lower and the shadows lengthened.
Sally heard Lucy sniffing, and she knew that the young woman was trying hard to fight her fear.
“Lucy, it will be all right,” she said. Even as she said the words, though, they rang hollow in her ears, because she recalled having said the same thing to Carlos and Maria. But this time she meant it. Somehow, someway, she would make it be right.
Chapter Eighteen
“Smoke, there’s a rider comin’ in,” Pearlie said.
Turning away from his conversation with Juan, Smoke saw the rider passing under the arch of the gate.
“Señor Smoke!” Juan said. There was a look of fear on his face.
Smoke held his hand out soothingly. “It’s all right, Juan,” he said.
“That rider. He was one of them. One of the evil ones.”
“Yes, I figured he might be.”
The rider approached calmly, almost arrogantly. When he reached the area where Smoke and the others were standing, he dismounted, then took the makings from his pocket and started rolling a cigarette.
“Who are you, and what do you want?” Smoke asked.
“Don’t get so anxious,” the rider said as he continued to roll his cigarette. “I been a’wantin’ me one of these here smokes for the last half hour or so.”
Holding the paper up to his mouth, he licked along the edge, then pressed the cigarette together. After that, he took out a match and fired it up by popping it on his thumb. He lit the cigarette and took a long puff, then let it out with a satisfied sigh.
“Who are you?” Smoke asked again.
“The name’s Peters. But then, I reckon you know who I am,” he said. He pointed toward Juan. “Unless I miss my guess, the old Mex there has told you I am one of the men that snatched your woman.”
“He said you were one of the ones who killed Maria and her father,” Smoke said.
“Yeah, well, as far as the killin’ is concerned, it was Van Arndt that done that. He’s a pistol, he is. He said that by him killin’ the little girl like that, it would show that we are serious when we tell you we’ll kill your woman if you don’t do what we tell you to do.” Peters laughed out loud. “And I reckon he was right, ’cause here we are negotiatin’.”
“No, we aren’t,” Smoke said.
The laughter changed to a chuckle.
“We ain’t what?” Peters asked.
“We aren’t negotiating,” Smoke said.
“Well, I guess you’re right at that,” Peters said. “I mean, seein’ as there ain’t goin’ to be no palaverin’ to it. I’m just goin’ to tell you flat out what we want.”
“I don’t care what you want,” Smoke said.
“What we want is forty-five thousand dollars. Van Arndt says that you are to mail the money to Clay Thomas, general delivery in—” Peters stopped, as if not sure of what he had just heard Smoke say.
“What did you just say?”
“I said I don’t care what you want.”
“Mister, maybe you don’t understand what’s goin’ on here. We’ve got your woman. Truth to tell, we’ve got another woman besides. What do you mean, you don’t care what we want?”
“Seems like a simple enough statement,” Smoke said. “I don’t care what you want.”
“Look here, don’t you want us to give you your woman back?” Peters asked, surprised and confused by the way the conversation was going.
“You won’t be giving me anything,” Smoke said. “I intend to take her back.”
Peters shook his head. “Mister, there ain’t no way you are goin’ to get her back. Not without dealin’ with Van Arndt, you won’t,” he said.
Smoke didn’t respond.
“So, uh, what is your answer?”
Still, Smoke had said nothing, and now Peters was growing visibly confused by Smoke’s lack of communication. Clearly, this was not going the way Van Arndt told him it would go.
“Come on, Jensen, I have to tell Van Arndt something,” Peters said. “I can’t go back to him and tell him you didn’t say anything a’tall.”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” Smoke said.
“What do you mean I don’t have to worry about that?” Peters asked. His eyes narrowed as he tried hard to understand just what was going on here.
“I mean you don’t have to worry about telling Van Arndt anything, because you aren’t going back,” Smoke said.
“Damn! That is the same thing she—” Peters stopped.
Smoke laughed. “That’s what Sally told you, isn’t it?”
Peters pointed at Smoke. “See here, I ain’t goin’ to let you work on my mind like that. I damn sure am going back.”
Smoke shook his head. “No, you aren’t,” he said.
“We—we’ve got your wife! Don’t you understand that?” Peters asked. By now, there was nearly as much panic in his words as there was anger.
“And I’ve got you,” Smoke said.
“What do you mean, you have me?”
“Van Arndt has Sally, I have you,” Smoke said. “And the only way Van Arndt is going to get you back alive is by giving me Sally.”
Peters chuckled, a nervous laugh; then, seeing by the look in his eyes that Smoke was serious, he shook his head. “You’re—you’re crazy,” he said.
“What’s the matter, Peters? Are you afraid that Van Arndt won’t negotiate for you?”
A little bead of perspiration broke out on Peters’s upper lip; then, with a loud yell, he went for his pistol.
Smoke had not expected Peters to draw his pistol, certainly not here where he was facing not only Smoke, but Pearlie and Cal as well. As a result, Peters actually had his pistol out before Smoke started his own draw.
>
Seeing that he had beaten Smoke to the draw, Peters allowed a broad smile to play across his lips as he brought his pistol to bear. Then, even before he could pull the trigger, Smoke’s gun was out and firing.
The smile on Peter’s face changed to a grimace of surprise and pain as the heavy bullet plunged into his chest.
“How the hell—how the hell did you do that?” he asked in a strained voice. He fell very near his cigarette, which was still lit. Pearlie walked over to the cigarette and stepped on it, grinding it out beneath his boot.
“What a waste of good tobacco,” Pearlie said.
“It was wasted the moment someone like him started to smoke it,” Cal said.
Pearlie chuckled. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I guess you are right at that.”
“I wonder if we could have talked him into leadin’ us to Sally,” Pearlie said. “Maybe you shouldn’t have killed him, Smoke.”
“There wasn’t time not to kill him,” Smoke replied, and it was not necessary for him to explain the strange comment to his friends.
The last thought of which Peters was aware was the almost casual way everyone was treating his dying.
Cal walked over to Peters’s horse, then lifted one of its feet. Using his knife, he scraped at the ironshod hoof, then looked at the residue.
“What have you got, Cal?” Smoke asked.
“Looks like crushed yellow rock,” Cal said, holding the knife blade out for Smoke to examine.
“Yeah,” Smoke said. He examined the residue more closely. “The only place you’ll find dirt like that is Hardscrabble Saddle Pass.”
“I’ll get us some travelin’ food,” Pearlie said, starting toward the house.
“I’ll get some extra ammunition,” Cal said, following Pearlie.
“Señor,” Juan said. “About Carlos and Maria. Consuela wants to know if she can bury them here on your ranch.”
“Yes, of course she can,” Smoke said. He took some money from his billfold and handed it Juan. “Go into town and buy the caskets for both of them from Mr. Welch. Get the very best he has.”
“Gracias, señor. And this hombre, and the one in the pigpen?”
“Take these two bodies into town as well and give them to Sheriff Carson. Tell him what happened, and tell him that Pearlie, Cal, and I are going after Sally.”
“Sí, señor.”
On the trail in Hardscrabble Saddle Pass
Checking to make certain she wasn’t being seen, Sally left another long scar on the cut beside the trail. When she looked over at Lucy, she saw the young woman still fighting hard to hold back the tears, and to a degree she was succeeding.
“How are you doing, Lucy?” she asked quietly.
“I have never been so frightened in my entire life,” Lucy said.
“It is a frightening experience, I’ll grant you that,” Sally replied.
“But you aren’t afraid at all,” Lucy said. “I don’t understand. How is it that you are not afraid?”
“Oh, I’m afraid all right,” Sally said. “It’s just that I don’t intend to give these bastards the satisfaction of knowing I’m afraid.”
“What do you think they are going to do with us?”
“As long as they think they can extort money from Smoke, they won’t do anything to us,” Sally said. “That will give Smoke time to rescue us.”
“Will Smoke pay money to get us free?”
“Smoke will rescue us,” Sally repeated without being specific.
“I wish I had your courage and confidence,” Lucy said.
“Smoke will get us out of this,” Sally said. “Just hang on.”
“I’ll try,” Lucy said.
Smoke had learned his tracking skills from a master tutor. The classes began during his days of living in the mountains with the man called Preacher.
“He’s a good one to learn from,” another mountain man once said to Smoke, speaking of Preacher. “Most anyone can track a fresh trail, but Preacher can follow a trail that is a month old. In fact, I’ve heard some folks say that he can track a fish through water, or a bird through the sky. And I ain’t one to dispute ’em.”
Now, as Smoke started on the trail of Van Arndt and the others, the words of his tutor came back to him.
“Half of tracking is in knowin’ where to look,” Preacher told the young Smoke. “The other half is looking.
“Reading prints on a dirt road is easy. But if you know what you are doing, you can follow the trail no matter where it leads. Use every sense God gave you,” Preacher explained. “Listen, look, touch, smell. Taste if you have to.”
“Smoke, you been noticin’ them horse turds?” Pearlie asked. “They’s a couple of horses droppin’ oat turds, the others is grass turds.”
“Yeah, I seen that, too,” Cal said.
“You boys have good eyes,” Smoke said. “There’s also that,” he said, pointing.
“What?”
“Look at the cut alongside the trail,” Smoke said. “You see that long scar there?”
“Yeah, I see it. What about it?” Cal asked.
“Look on the trail below the scar,” Smoke said. “There is fresh dirt from the scar.”
“I’ll be damn, I do see that,” Cal said. “What do you reckon that is?”
“Well, seeing as that is the fourth one I’ve seen, I believe Sally has been leaving it for us,” Smoke said.
“Yeah,” Pearlie said. “Yeah, I think so, too. How is she doing that, do you reckon? I mean, how’s she doin’ that without bein’ seen?”
“Sally is pretty resourceful,” Smoke said. “She can find a way to do just about anything she puts her mind to.”
“She’s leavin’ us a trail so we can track her,” Pearlie said.
“Yes,” Smoke agreed. “But she’s also letting us know that she is still all right.”
“Hey,” Boswell said as they left the pass. “Where are we goin’? The mine is this way.”
“Yeah, I know,” Van Arndt said.
“Well, didn’t you tell Peters to meet us at the mine?”
“I expect Peters is dead by now,” Van Arndt said. “Same as Shardeen.”
“What do you mean you expect Peters is dead? You told him that as long as we had Jensen’s woman, nothing would happen to him.”
“Yeah, I did, didn’t I?” Van Arndt said. He chuckled.
“Are you sayin’ you know’d all along he’d more than likely get hisself kilt?” Boswell asked.
“I figured that, yeah.”
“Then why did you send him?”
“Would you rather I have sent you?” Van Arndt asked.
“What? Hell, no.”
“Then think about it, Boswell. I had to send someone,” Van Arndt replied. “Otherwise, how would Jensen know we had his woman?”
“You never had no intention of goin’ to that mine, did you?”
“Nope.”
“Then why did you tell him that?”
“Suppose Peters got a little gabby before Jensen killed him,” Van Arndt said. “Suppose he started talking—you know—to save his own hide and he told Jensen about the mine.”
“Do you think he would really do that?” Boswell asked.
“Do you think for one minute that he wouldn’t?”
“Yeah, I—I guess you are right,” Boswell said.
“Are you that dumb, Boswell?” Sally asked.
“What?”
“Don’t you see what Van Arndt has done? He has already gotten rid of two of you. There are only three of you left now. If I were one of you, I’d be worrying about which one he is going to sell out next.”
“We’d better keep an eye on this bitch, Van Arndt,” Keno said. “She’s a smart one, all right. She’s trying to get us to arguin’ amongst ourselves now. Hell, it don’t bother me none that Shardeen and Peters has got themselves kilt. It’s just more money for the rest of us.”
Sally laughed. “I thought you were smarter than that, Keno. You know Smoke pretty well. You kn
ow there isn’t going to be any money. Smoke will not pay one thin dime.”
“Is that right, Keno?” Jeeter asked. “Will Jensen really not pay anything to get his wife back?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Keno said. “Jensen sets more store by his woman than anyone I’ve ever met. I promise you, he’ll pay whatever it takes to get her back. Ain’t that right, Van Arndt?”
“It doesn’t matter whether he pays the ransom or not,” Van Arndt said.
“What? What do you mean it don’t matter?” Keno asked. “Of course it matters?”
“No, it doesn’t,” Van Arndt said.
“What the hell are you talking about? If Jensen don’t pay any ransom, then what for are we a’doin’ all this? I mean, why did we take his woman?”
“As bait.”
“Bait?”
“Yeah, as bait,” Van Arndt said. “Jensen is going to come after her, and when he does, we’re goin’ to kill him.”
“Van Arndt, I don’t like the son of a bitch any more than you do,” Keno said. “But I wouldn’t have gone into all this if I hadn’t thought we was goin’ to make some money.”
“Oh, we are goin’ to make money all right,” Van Arndt said.
“How? I mean, if he isn’t goin’ to pay us any ransom, how are we goin’ to make any money?”
“You let me worry about that,” Van Arndt said.
Just after sundown, Van Arndt called a halt in order to allow them to eat a few bites of jerky and to take a few swallows of water.
Keno chewed on the leathery jerky, then took a drink of tepid water from his canteen. He spit some out in disgust, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“This damn water tastes like horse piss,” he complained. “And the jerky tastes like dog turds. I know damn well there’s got to be a town near here. Yeah, Mitchell is near here. Listen, Van Arndt, why don’t we go into Mitchell?”
“Why would we want to do that?” Van Arndt asked.
“Well, I was just thinkin’. If we went into Mitchell, we could maybe get us somethin’ fit to eat an’ decent to drink,” Keno said.
“You was thinkin’, was you? What makes you believe you have enough brains to think?”
“You got no right to talk to me like that, Van Arndt. Who’s idea was it to snatch Jensen’s wife in the first place? I mean we didn’t do that well takin’ Jensen’s herd or stealin’ him money, did we?”
Violence of the Mountain Man Page 17
