Backed to the Wall

by C. M. Wendelboe

  “I have heard of that place.” Lorna scratched her neck under the deerskins. “Rough. Lawless, say some who have come into the mercantile. A place to be avoided. But why go there?”

  “We need supplies. We eat coyote when we can. We drink stale water when the pools we know of have not dried up. We cannot go on much longer. We need our strength if we are to reach the safety of the Wall.”

  “So an Indian is just going to stroll into a white man’s town and expect no one to kill him?”

  Swallow grinned. “He will if he’s Blue Boy.”

  Lorna sat with her back propped against a large rock. Since Black Dog and Pawnee Killer left hours ago to find whoever killed the other warriors, she had sat where she could watch Wild Wind. He kept staring at her as if expecting her to summon him over. He suddenly straightened, and Lorna followed his gaze. Blue Boy emerged from the shadows, and she jumped, startled at his transformation. The low firelight flickered off his plaid shirt and dungarees. His pistol was tucked into the tops of a set of shotgun chaps, and a Bowie knife hung from his suspenders.

  He stopped and turned as if modeling the white man’s clothing. A white cowboy hat—a Stetson Boss of the Plains like those they had just begun selling at the mercantile—sat atop his head at a rakish angle and concealed his long braids tucked inside the hat.

  She walked around Blue Boy, amazed. The hat looked like the one Tucker had just bought. Was it his? Just because the two Indian ponies came back without their owners didn’t mean they weren’t successful. Did Blue Boy know more than he let on? Or did Jimmy Swallow know more than he told her?

  She stopped in front of him as he warmed himself by the fire. “Where did you get that hat?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “There are not many like it in the territory. We have just begun selling them this summer.”

  “And if I say I bought it at a white man’s store like the one that you used to work in? Why do you wish to know?”

  “I’d say it becomes you,” she lied. She suddenly became aware that she knew—just knew—Tucker Ashley, not Aurand and his band of ruffians masquerading as lawmen, was the one who followed this raiding party. Or at least she suspected it was Tucker. “How long will you be gone?”

  Blue Boy looked suspiciously at Lorna. “Why do you ask?”

  “I am just concerned about you, is all.”

  Blue Boy nodded. “I will not be long. Time enough to steal supplies from the store. And guns.”

  “You have guns. Why risk going yourself?” She caught Wild Wind looking at her out of the corner of his eye.

  “Until Black Dog and Pawnee Killer return, we have but two guns.”

  Lorna had counted the guns they had. If Tucker and whoever followed with him were to attack right now, they would find Wild Wind with Blue Boy’s rifle, and Jimmy Swallow with his bow and quiver of arrows to fight them off with.

  “Besides,” Blue Boy said, “going into the white man’s town will allow me to count much coup. Our people will talk about this for many nights over winter fires.”

  “What then?” she asked. “Where will we go when you return?”

  “To the Badlands,” he answered. “Still we go to the Badlands. By the time I return, Black Dog and Pawnee Killer will have killed those who follow. And when I return, we will have provisions to get there.”

  “Good,” Lorna lied, sinking back onto the cool dirt.

  Blue Boy said it wouldn’t take long to rob the store in Cowtown, but then it would not take long for her to initiate her plan. She smiled as she watched Blue Boy ride away from the camp. She kept an eye on Swallow and Wild Wind as she began secretly untying her boot laces.

  CHAPTER 16

  * * *

  Aurand reined the grulla to a halt atop the hill overlooking the town below. From this distance, Cowtown appeared like any other dirt town that had sprung up in the middle of the prairie and that catered to cowmen and rustlers alike. In the darkness, he couldn’t tell if the lights from buildings were the mercantiles or the livery or the many saloons. Certainly not a church, for the town had never met a preacher it hadn’t killed or run out on a rail. Save for a small general store and livery, the town boasted half a dozen saloons, each one trying to outdo the other in wickedness and the manner in which they lifted their customers’ money.

  As a marshal he’d ridden this way only once, to arrest a fugitive from the army, and that had been enough for him. He knew the only folks who visited Cowtown were ranch hands and outlaws, gamblers and prostitutes. And those who loved to fight. Most of those were buried in a shallow paupers’ grave in back of the town where every coyote or bobcat or wolf passing through feasted on a rotting meal.

  “We going to sit here all night?” Philo asked. He swiped the back of his hand over his lips as if anticipating the whisky awaiting them. Aurand hadn’t wanted to stop at Cowtown, but his deputies were trail raw and growing meaner with every passing mile. As much as he abhorred drink, Aurand knew his deputies needed a free night. They’d go down the hill, let off a little steam, and be back on the trail in the morning. Besides, they had lost Tucker’s trail some miles back beside a sweet-water pond. And without Red Sun, they had no idea where Tucker was now.

  “I’m needing a drink myself,” Jess said

  Aurand looked to Con, but the kid had already disappeared in the night.

  Aurand motioned to Philo to step down. Philo handed Jess his reins and walked beside Aurand. “You’re responsible.” Aurand looked around Philo at Jess staring at the lights of Cowtown. “You and him go down there. Get pie-eyed and your ashes hauled. And get right back up here.”

  “You’re not coming?”

  Aurand shook his head. “Red’s overdue to meet us, so I got to stay loose. When he gets here, I figure he’ll tell me just where Tucker went.”

  Philo jerked his thumb at Jess sitting his horse. The big man smiled as he stared at the lights. “You want me to rein Jess in if he gets out of line?”

  Aurand snatched Philo by the shirtfront stained with road sweat and dirt and pulled him closer. His breath caused Aurand to turn his head to the side. “I’m not worried about Jess. It’s you that concerns me. There are boys down there that live for strangers to come riding into town just so they can plant another man in their boot hill.”

  “I can take care of myself . . .”

  Aurand slapped Philo. Not hard, but hard enough that he knew Aurand was dead serious. “We’re tracking Tucker Ashley. I need you and Jess, and we can’t afford trouble right now. Get a few drinks and visit the cribs and come back here. Understood?”

  Philo backed away and straightened his shirt.

  “Understood?” Aurand asked again.

  “All right,” Philo said. “All right. But just remember, if Jess decides he wants to do something, he does it. Nothing I can do to stop it.”

  “You’d better,” Aurand said.

  “And how about the kid?” Philo asked. “I hope you don’t expect me to go again’; him when he goes crazy. And you know he’ll go nuts down there looking for someone to shoot it out with.”

  Aurand was certain Philo was right; the kid would go into Cowtown and pick a gunfight at the first chance. “No, I don’t expect you to try to control Con. Just stay out of his way.”

  Philo mounted his horse and galloped behind Jess down the hill toward town. Within moments, the darkness had swallowed them, and all that remained was the faint noise of their horses. Soon, even that was gone, and Aurand was alone.

  He tethered his horse beside a clump of grama grass and started a small fire to take the edge off the cold. He took off his hat and sat with his back against a boulder while he looked skyward to a night devoid of clouds. A full moon shone bright, yet he wondered how Red would find him in the darkness. Aurand smiled to himself; Red had found him in less light than this. And when Red appeared, he would have word on Tucker and Worman.

  CHAPTER 17

  * * *

  Jack walked cautiously, deliberately. H
e held the lantern close to the ground while he kept his horse away from any sign the Indians might have left. He walked in front of Tucker, who hunched over looking into the shadows cast by the headlamp. “Stop,” Tucker said. Jack stopped instantly and held the light still.

  Tucker knelt and studied the ground for a moment before standing. He motioned for Jack to move the lantern right, then left. He walked to Jack and took the lantern. “Take a look-see,” he said and held the headlamp close to the ground.

  “They split up,” Jack said.

  “Looks that way.” Tucker set the lantern down. “Looks to me like the main group skirted Cowtown altogether. Look here,” Tucker said. He placed his foot alongside the large track and put all his weight on it. The man who made that footprint was larger and heavier even than Tucker. “Blue Boy.”

  “And he headed towards town.” Jack sat on the ground and fished his tobacco pouch out of his vest before passing it to Tucker. “But why would some Indian chance being seen in a white man’s town? Don’t see him lasting more than a few moments before some drunk ventilates him.”

  Tucker sat cross-legged on the ground, which felt better on his backside and feet than the saddle at this stage. Their pace had been torturous since they left the freshwater pond. The Indians had left little sign, and more than once Tucker and Jack had to work their back trail to find the Indians’ sign. They had tracked well into the night, switching between walking and holding the light as they deciphered the signs the Indians left. “What do you know about Blue Boy?”

  Jack paused before lighting his smoke. “Light skinned. Blue eyes. Bigger’n a bear they say, and a damned sight meaner. But that’s just conjecture. One thing I know from rumor is that—with the right clothes—he could pass for a white man.” He nodded toward town. “But big as he is, he’d get noticed.”

  “Size might be to his advantage,” Tucker said as he rolled a cigarette. “A man that big rarely finds much trouble.” He accepted the lucifer from Jack and lit his own smoke. “Maybe he’s going down there to count coup. He’d be an even bigger legend among his people if he waltzed right through Cowtown and lived. Lakota would tell the tale around their tipis’ smoke holes at night. He’d be another Red Cloud or Sitting Bull.”

  Jack’s hands shook as he lit his cigarette. The match cast tiny shadows on his sun-cracked face. He licked lips swollen from a week under the unforgiving sun. What would have passed for smile lines were deep, gray, festering crevices of skin at the corners of Jack’s eyes. He had not complained the entire time, yet Tucker knew he was suffering. “So we got to go into Cowtown after Blue Boy?”

  “Not we,” Tucker said. “Me. I’ll have to go it alone.”

  “The hell you will.” Jack started to stand before losing his balance and dropping back onto the ground. “You’ll find more trouble than one man can handle down there looking for Blue Boy.”

  “I got to go alone . . .”

  “I won’t be able to help you if I’m not with you.”

  “We can’t take the chance,” Tucker lied. He knew Jack was right. Cowtown averaged a killing a week during grazing season, and a shooting every night. Twice that during cattle drives. If there ever was a time Tucker needed Jack’s help, it was down in the town. But he also knew Jack was in no condition for a serious fight. He needed rest, and the other Indians would be holed up waiting for Blur Boy. That would give Jack time to recoup his strength.

  Tucker leaned over and patted Jack on the shoulder. “Blue Boy’s band has split, and we don’t know where they’ll meet up again. Lorna’s with the rest of the Indians, and I’ll need you to find them.”

  Jack feebly protested, but Tucker stopped him. “You get some shuteye, and when the sun comes up, tracking them will be easier. You find out where the other Indians go, and I’ll stay on Blue Boy. But don’t go jumping into anything. Just find out where they are and wait for me.”

  After several moments, Jack nodded and watched as Tucker stood and walked to his mule. He took the canteen off the pommel and let Jack finish the last of the brackish water. He’d fill the canteen in town.

  He swung on to Ben’s back and rode down the hill.

  Tucker pointed Ben in the direction of the town and let the mule have his head while Tucker dozed. Ben picked his way through blackness partially broken by a moon peeking out of long, trailing clouds. Ben had carried Tucker so many miles, he knew Tucker’s snoring and seemed to ease his gait. That’s what Tucker liked about Ben, the second mule he had owned since coming to the frontier from Pennsylvania after the war. Ben could eat most anything while on the trail but never overate as horses did. He had never developed colic. And as much as Ben might crave water at the end of a long, parched stalk, he never drank to excess, never developed water founder. His small, boxy feet were the mule’s secret to its surefootedness, and Tucker took advantage of that now as he caught up on his sleep.

  Piano music, sharp and off-key, woke Tucker. He jerked his head off his chest and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. A half mile distant Cowtown stood lit up like it was the Fourth of July. Except Tucker knew no one celebrated anything there unless it was successful cheating at a faro or poker game, or the celebrating of someone ventilated by another’s bullet. Still, the piano music—off-key though it might be—sounded sweet to him. His mother had played the piano for the Calvary Baptist Church north of Philadelphia. As a youth, Tucker would often close his eyes while the piano music matched the singing of the well-rehearsed choir as he strained to pick out his father’s baritone voice.

  After Sunday service, they would join others in the park along the wild, flowing Delaware for a picnic. Mothers would knit or work on a community quilt, cackling about their hardships at home, while fathers would relate tall tales of times past they swore were true—and said so because one could never lie on the Sabbath. And sometime in the afternoons, men would sneak hip flasks from their pockets and huddle together under the guise of discussing business.

  And the children. While young girls made a conspicuous effort to attract a boy’s attention by playing close to them, or ruffling their frilly dresses, the boys would do their best to bump against the girls and tousle their hair before running off to the woods for fresh mischief. It was on one of these deep-woods trips that Tucker realized his fate would somehow be linked to firearms. His father had taken in a rusty single-shot Smith and Allen spur trigger at his mercantile in partial trade for a navy Colt. When the customer left the store, his father threw the rusty gun away. Young Tucker rescued it from the scrap heap and hid it under the floorboards of his room.

  He’d cleaned the gun and waited until Wednesday evening, when he knew his folks attended evening services and the shop would be left to Reustas, their freeman darkie. Reustas had cast a handful of .30 caliber round balls, and the two of them had shot the gun behind the store, knocking peach cans from a board to Tucker’s delight.

  It was at one of the Sunday after-service picnics that Tucker and his friend Barney slipped away from the others at the park and started down the bank to the river. Tucker concealed the old pistol—cleaned and loaded—under his Sunday coat, ready for plinking. Barney skidded on the wet Pennsylvania mud and hit a large chunk of dead ash. The tree branch fell away, exposing a menacing copperhead beneath the log. Tucker was unaware he had killed the snake or that that he had even shot the tiny gun. He stood holding the smoking pistol in his trembling hand after drawing and hip-shooting the snake before it could strike Barney. Even when his father had given him a thrashing for carrying the gun, he’d been amazed at his skill. That skill would resurface later when the war broke out and he joined the Pennsylvania “Bucktails” in fighting the Confederates.

  Breaking glass interrupted Cowtown’s piano music, followed by a gun shot. And another. Through it all, the piano continued playing, as Tucker knew it would, for there was not a piano player this side of the Missouri brave enough to play to that crowd. There was, however, a beautiful player piano left abandoned some years before by settlers crossi
ng the plains. A saloon owner had rescued that piano from the prairie, and it was the favorite music in the wicked town.

  Tucker entered the outskirts of Cowtown and eased the thong off his gun. The saloons’ lights shone bright, and yelling matched the piano music and drunks’ laughter. He kept an eye on the two saloons on his left as he rode slowly past them. Across the street, a small mercantile with a livery attached to the back sat sandwiched between two more saloons. Cowtown reminded Tucker of Deadwood, without the beauty of the Black Hills surrounding it. And, like Deadwood, no lawmen had set foot inside who didn’t stay for a visit at their cemetery downwind of the town. Except Aurand. He’d had cojones enough to run an army deserter to ground inside one of these saloons last year. Rumor filtered back to Tucker that Aurand had faced down a dozen gunnies, daring them all to be the first to draw against him. One took him up on his offer, and he’d found a permanent home in Boot Hill. The rest had stood aside as Aurand sauntered out of town with the deserter draped over his government saddle.

  As Tucker rode through town, he studied the ground; it yielded nothing significant. But then he hadn’t expected to see Blue Boy’s tracks among all the others. He prayed he’d spot Blue Boy among the rowdies before Blue Boy spotted him.

  The wind shifted, and a stench blew over him. For years herds of cattle had run through the center of town, while men visited it for the sinful offerings it provided. All those critters and men with them littered the street with their decaying waste. A line of human feces and urine could be seen a few feet away from buildings where chamber pots were tossed out every morning from cribs above the saloons. Tucker had been in Cowtown in the wet season, the filth mixing with the blood, and the rain making it nearly impossible to ride through without retching.

  Ben snorted at a body lying lifeless in the street, a body large enough to be Blue Boy’s, and Tucker drew in a quick breath. He had concluded that the only thing keeping Lorna alive was Blue Boy’s interest in her. With him dead, Lorna might not live to see another sunrise.