Lonnie Gentry

by Peter Brandvold

  Lonnie kept his face plain as he held out the spyglass to her. “Have a look for yourself.”

  “At what?”

  “The clearing down there beyond the ridge in front of us.”

  Casey narrowed a skeptical eye at the boy. She took the spyglass and lay belly-down again, propped on her elbows, and lifted the glass to her right eye. She twisted the canister to bring the clearing into focus.

  “There’s a cabin down there.”

  “Right. The abandoned one. See the stable beside it, the privy behind it?”

  Casey lowered the glass and turned to him in disgust. “You mean we’ve been riding in circles?”

  “One big circle.”

  Casey gave a slow blink. “Why have we been riding in one big circle, Lonnie? It’s the pass we should be headed for. Remember, we’re trying to get that money to the deputy marshal in Camp Collins.”

  Lonnie took the spyglass back from her and leaned on his elbows again, raising the glass to his eyes to examine the clearing in which the cabin hunched. “First, I wanna see if Dupree is on our trail. If he is, he should be heading for the cabin soon. He should also pick up our tracks there and head into the trees east of it, the way we went. Then he’ll likely swing south.”

  “And then what?”

  “He’ll lose our trail.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I fixed it so he would.”

  Lonnie lowered the spyglass. “He’ll lose our tracks in the creek we followed upstream. The current has likely washed the hoofprints away by now. It would take a darn good tracker— probably no one but a good Injun tracker—to pick them up again where we left the water. Not the way we went. I picked the hardest ground for leavin’ a print. Even if he picked up our trail where we left that first creek, it ain’t likely he’ll pick it up where we left the second creek … over them rocks. No one except maybe an Injun can track a horse over rocks.”

  “Okay,” Casey said, nodding slowly, thoughtfully, “that was pretty smart.”

  Lonnie grinned as he continued appraising the clearing through the spyglass.

  “I said ‘pretty smart,’ ” Casey said. “Maybe you forgot one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He likely knows where we’re headed. Most folks around know about the marshal stationed in Camp Collins.”

  “He’s figured out where we’re headed, all right,” Lonnie said. “Dupree’s dumb and mean, but he ain’t that stupid. But I figure as long as he ain’t dodgin’ our every step, he’ll keep wonderin’ if he’s figured us right, and he won’t catch up to us. Especially if we don’t stick to the pass trail long but skirt the edges of it where we have to.”

  “How long we gonna wait for ’em?”

  Lonnie shrugged. “If they’re not to the cabin in an hour, I’d say they’re far enough behind us we won’t have to worry about ’em. They’ll never catch up to us before we make Camp Collins.”

  “And if they reach the cabin inside of an hour?” Casey asked.

  “Then we’d best pull our picket pins, and ride. I still don’t think they’ll catch up to us, because they’ll lose our trail, but there’s no point in taking any chances.”

  Lonnie returned the spyglass to its pouch and rose to his knees. “Any way you figure it, we’ll get to Camp Collins ahead of Dupree, and deliver the money to the marshal before them cutthroats can get their hands on it.”

  He removed the spyglass pouch from around his neck and gave it to Casey. “Keep an eye on the clearing. I’ll be right back.”

  “You’re orderin’ me around again like we were married or something!”

  “Don’t get your hopes up.” Lonnie rose and began walking back down the slope toward the horses. “Town girls are too snooty for this cowboy.” He winked and pinched his hat brim to her.

  Casey snorted.

  “Where you goin’?” she called after him.

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry.”

  Lonnie returned to the hill clutching the three airtight tins to his chest. Casey, who’d been watching the clearing for Dupree, lowered the spyglass and grinned. “You might just do yet, kid.”

  “See anything over there?” Lonnie asked as he sat down beside Casey and pulled his folding Barlow knife out of his jeans pocket. Just as he rarely strayed very far from his horse, he never went anywhere without his knife.

  “Nothing.”

  Lonnie indicated the cans spread out between him and Casey. “Which do you want first?”

  “All of ’em!”

  Lonnie chuckled. “Boy, you’re hungrier’n a blue-ribbon bull!

  I better stay back a ways so you don’t eat my arm off!”

  He set the point of his knife against the top of one of the tins, and punched the end of the knife with the heel of his hand. The blade ground through the lid, and Lonnie sawed it along the edge of the top of the can until he was able to pry up the lid, leaving only a small portion of it attached.

  He held up the bean can to Casey. “Girls first. I didn’t bring up my spoon, so I hope you’re not squeamish.”

  “Not when I’m this hungry.”

  Casey scooped out a handful of beans, shoved them in a most unladylike fashion into her mouth, and chewed. Lonnie did the same and passed the can back to Casey. In a little over a minute they’d emptied the can of every last bean, and the bean juice was running down the corners of their mouths.

  They shared a look and laughed at each other.

  Lonnie set the point of his knife against the top of the tomato tin. “How ’bout we save the apricots for dessert?”

  “Well, ain’t you civilized?”

  Lonnie punched the blade into the tomato can and then he and Casey were shoving the juicy, red, delicious tomatoes into their mouths like little kids going to work on a frosting bowl. They devoured the tomatoes inside of another minute, and Lonnie opened the apricot tin.

  The apricots were sweet, the sugary syrup sliding down Lonnie’s throat like an elixir. Suddenly, his aches and pains didn’t ache half as much as they had only moments before.

  He and Casey had eaten half the sugary fruit slices before Casey said, “Uh-oh.”

  She was staring over the next ridge and into the clearing to the west.

  CHAPTER 35

  Spying movement over the next ridge, Lonnie pressed the spyglass to his right eye and adjusted the focus. In the single sphere of magnified vision, he watched three horseback riders trot their horses from left to right, heading for the cabin.

  He continued to adjust the glass’s focus until he could more clearly see that the lead rider was Shannon Dupree, by the blond hair hanging down beneath the brim of the lead cutthroat’s brown Stetson, and by the blond, brushy mustache residing above his mouth.

  Dupree rode standing up in his stirrups and staring toward the cabin. The hard set of his shoulders told Lonnie the man was wary, cautious. Dupree cast several quick glances at the ground beside his horse, obviously following Lonnie and Casey’s tracks, which they’d made about two hours earlier.

  The blond outlaw rode with his right hand on the butt of his Colt revolver positioned for the cross draw on his left hip.

  Behind Dupree rode Fuego with Childress bringing up the rear. Both men held rifles across their saddlebows.

  Lonnie’s heart thudded as he watched the three stop their horses in front of the cabin, Fuego swinging his head from left to right as he inspected the ground where Casey had led the chestnut, trying to confuse the sign a little, make it look as though Lonnie and Casey had spent more time there than they actually had and were not very far ahead of their stalkers.

  Anything they could do to confuse the outlaws was in their best interest, Lonnie thought.

  “Let me see,” Casey said, holding out her hand for the glass.

  Lonnie gave it to her. She trained it on the clearing, then lowered it, and looked at Lonnie. Her eyes were wide, her face a little pale.

  “Well, now we know,” she said. “They’re
on our trail.”

  “I didn’t doubt it much. At least we know for sure. Let’s finish these apricots.”

  Lonnie pinched out one of the dark-yellow chunks of fruit, and dropped it into his mouth.

  “You go ahead,” Casey said, lifting the spyglass once more. “I’m not so hungry anymore.”

  Lonnie said, “Yeah, me, neither.”

  Not wanting to waste the food, Lonnie ate the last two apricots and gathered up the cans. The mountains didn’t need his trash.

  He and Casey rose carefully. There was no way they could be seen up here without Dupree training a spyglass or pair of binoculars on them, but Lonnie felt a cold rush of fear return to his veins. He sensed the same thing in Casey as they slipped and slid back down the hill to their horses.

  Lonnie dropped the empty tins into his cavvy sack, tightened and rearranged the General’s rigging, and swung up into the saddle. He looked at Casey as she did the same, limping only slightly now on her ankle.

  “Don’t worry, Casey,” he said. “They won’t be able to track us. I made sure of that.”

  “Maybe not, kid, but they’re still behind us, and that makes me not to want to waste a whole lot of time if you get my drift …” She looked around at the maze of pines and mountains rising around them. “My gosh—awfully big country out here. I think I just realized that.” She looked at Lonnie. “I’m startin’ to feel a little queasy. Which way?”

  “The pass trail’s northeast, so I reckon we’ll head northeast,” Lonnie said, reining the General to the left and into a stand of pines covering the downslope of the mountain shoulder they were on.

  They rode down the mountain to the bottom and then climbed the mountain beyond it. This mountain was higher but the climb was more gradual, and they crossed a creek and a clearing to a windy, treeless knob. Here they rested the horses as well as themselves, and Lonnie couldn’t resist casting another look through his spyglass along their back trail.

  He wasn’t surprised to see no sign of Dupree. Even if Dupree was able to find the tracks Lonnie had tried so hard to hide from the outlaws, the outlaws would still be a long ways behind their quarry.

  The fact that Dupree was still after him, however, caused Lonnie’s chest to tighten and his breath to grow shallow. Just knowing a man who wanted him dead was following him, maybe only a mile away as the crow flies, with Lonnie’s blood on his mind …

  He and Casey continued riding, crossing one more steep, windy ridge and dropping down the other side as the giant, golden ball of the sun tumbled behind western ridges. They set up camp along another creek that wended along the bottom of the narrow valley that formed a trough between pine-studded ridges.

  Lonnie used the twine he kept in his saddlebags along with a hook he’d fashioned from a baling needle that he kept in a sewing kit, also stowed in his saddlebags, to rig a fishing line. He’d attached a small red button to the hook, to attract trout whenever he was out on the range and felt like a meal of fresh fish.

  He found some grubs under a rotten log, and impaled a couple of these on the end of the hook and dropped the hook into the creek that was about two feet deep and so clear it didn’t even return his reflection but magnified the small rocks forming a bed on the sandy bottom. He tossed the baited hook out several times, and watched it ride along the current before dragging it back and tossing it out again, hoping a fish happened by and saw the flash of the red button.

  Meanwhile, Lonnie could smell the smoke from the fire that Casey was building from the wood that Lonnie had scrounged while the girl had bathed her tender ankle in the cool stream water. He glanced back to see Casey on her knees, fanning the growing flames. Blue smoke rose and glinted in the last, orange light angling into the canyon from the west.

  His and the girl’s gear was piled around the camp. Fortunately, since he’d figured on spending some time at the line shack on Eagle Ridge, Lonnie had packed his camping gear. His fry pan and coffeepot would come in handy for preparing a tasty, fortifying meal for him and Casey.

  If any fish took his bait, that was …

  While he tossed the bait and retrieved it, he glanced back several times at Casey tending the fire. Her long, wavy blonde hair glowed like sunlit honey in the last light. She’d tucked it out of the way behind her ears. She had a line of ash across her right, lightly tanned cheek. Somehow, that line of ash accentuated how pretty she was. And while Lonnie didn’t like her sometimes when she seemed to have a secret that she was holding over him, the girl made his heart ache a little almost all of the time.

  He couldn’t deny the fact that he was taken with her. She was the only thing that made this current trouble tolerable—the fact that she was in it with him, and they were riding together, supporting each other.

  Almost like they were married or something …

  That thought made him wince with embarrassment, and he tried to turn his mind back to his fishing, but not two minutes later he found himself casting another look back over his shoulder toward the camp.

  Casey was sitting on a rock on the other side of the fire from Lonnie, facing him. She was leaning forward, elbows on her knees, and she was looking toward him. Immediately, she jerked her head back to the fire and began prodding the flames with the long, forked stick in her hand.

  Lonnie turned quickly back to the stream, his heart thudding.

  Could she be thinking the same sort of things that he was thinking? That it might be kind of nice to stay together even after all this trouble was over … ?

  Then he cursed under his breath. He was only thirteen. She was fifteen. At their ages, two years were as long as a whole century. Besides, she’d made it clear she wasn’t interested in a country boy.

  His heart ached harder. It was a dull ache, like two of his ribs were pushing against his ticker from opposite sides.

  The fishing line tightened in Lonnie’s fingers. It jerked slightly, suddenly. Lonnie jerked back on the line and then it fell slack against the water.

  The fish had gotten away. But only a minute or so later a second one did not. The ten-inch red-throated trout was flopping around on the grassy bank when Lonnie caught another, much smaller trout which he threw back to let grow another year, replacing it with another one about ten minutes later that was almost a foot long.

  He dressed out the fish with his Barlow knife, tossing the guts into the stream, and carried his two trophies on a single stick proudly back to the camp. Casey was tending the coffeepot, which had come to a boil on the hot coals, and when she saw the fish she arched her brows, impressed.

  “Never figured you for a fisherman, Lonnie.”

  “A fella gets tired of beef now an’ then,” was all he said, and pulled his frying pan out of his cavvy sack.

  He’d set both fish, still cold from the creek, into the pan, which he’d greased with lard, when General Sherman gave a testy whicker and turned to look behind him. The chestnut shook her head and stomped.

  Casey gasped as she looked toward the horses.

  Lonnie grabbed his rifle from where it leaned against a log, and pumped a cartridge into the chamber.

  CHAPTER 36

  “What are they acting so skittish about?” Casey asked, standing tensely by the fire and staring toward the horses.

  Lonnie held his Winchester up high across his chest and licked his lips as he stared past the horses tied to a single rope strung between two pines. “Heard somethin’. I’m gonna check it out. You stay here.”

  “You think it’s Dupree?”

  “I reckon I’ll know soon enough.”

  Lonnie walked out around the horses, running a hand along the General’s side as he did. He walked through the forest, pine needles and bits of cones crunching softly beneath his boots. The forest floor was soft, almost like walking on a rug.

  It was also eerily quiet now at twilight.

  A couple of small birds flitted here and there amongst the branches. Farther off, a squirrel chittered.

  Suddenly, that silence was broken
by a long, mewling, bugling sound. It sounded like someone blowing a massive bullhorn. The cry rolled up sharply and ended in a high-pitched wail that echoed. The echoes died above the top of a stony ridge looming on the valley’s far side, maybe a hundred yards away.

  Lonnie stared at the ridge. The short hairs pricked along the back of his neck at the eerie sound. Then relief somewhat eased the tension between his shoulders. The bugling had likely been made by an elk. Possibly a bear, which wouldn’t have been good—especially if it were a grizzly bear—but most likely an elk. Lonnie had heard the calls before though they usually came much later in the year, when elk bugled to define their territory and to call in mates.

  But sometimes, like humans, animals got confused.

  The cry came again, not as loud this time. Whatever the beast was—Lonnie was almost certain it was an elk, which posed no threat to him and Casey—it seemed to be on the other side of the dark-brown sandstone ridge that he could see through the pines and up a slight rise. And, judging by the diminishing sound, the beast seemed to be moving away from the ridge.

  Behind Lonnie, the General gave another low whicker.

  Lonnie turned. The General was looking back past Lonnie, twitching his ears and switching his tail. The chestnut stared ahead, seemingly no longer bothered.

  “It’s all right, General,” Lonnie said as he walked past the horse, patting the General’s rump. “Just an elk who forgot what time of year it is.”

  Casey looked relieved. She still stood by the fire, the orange flames dancing and the smoke rising behind her. “You’re sure it’s not a bear? I’ve heard grizzlies calling from the ridges around Arapaho Creek.” She shuddered and crossed her arms on her chest. “I sure wouldn’t wanna come face-to-face with a big grizzly bear out here, Lonnie.”

  Lonnie leaned his rifle against the log. “I’m pretty sure it’s an elk,” he said. “Besides, it’s in the next valley over. A big ridge between us and him.”

  “If you say so.”

  Lonnie glanced once more toward the ridge. He wished he could be absolutely certain that what he’d heard hadn’t been a grizzly, but he wasn’t. As he set to work looking for mushrooms to slice into the frying pan with his fish, however, he forgot about the bugling.