Wind Walker

by Terry C. Johnston

  “We hadn’t come on him when we did, Roman be dead.”

  “He feels the same way about this as I do,” Amanda had explained after a long and heavy silence. “He doesn’t want to spill any blood. Just stay out of their way till we get to Fort Hall and see ’em gone.”

  “Then you don’t wanna know what I’m gonna do,” Titus said.

  “I don’t,” she admitted quickly. “All I know is that blood begets blood.”

  “Roman don’t want a piece of these niggers?”

  “No,” and she had shaken her head. “Says he just wants to get us to the Willamette River, where we can put everything that happened behind us.”

  Titus had sighed. “And start a new life.”

  “Yes, Pa. Row and me don’t think we could start a new life by shedding blood.”

  It hadn’t been that way for Scratch. Not years ago, not out here in this same country. This harsh wilderness had required a squaring of accounts from those who believed they had what it took to stand tall and bold against the wind. And that payment was often made in blood—either their own, or in the blood they were forced to take in order to survive. How he wished his life had been different, somehow. But this wilderness had to be accepted on its own terms. Maybeso things were far softer back east, the way these settlement and farmer folks hoped things would be once they made it all the way to Oregon. Perhaps the reason these sodbusters were on their way west was because they figured that far country would be as easy a land as the East had been to them. Otherwise, why would a man risk everything on staking a claim in a place that would demand a payment in blood?

  But to get from that soft country back east to that gentle country called Oregon, these settlement folk had to pass through an unforgiving gauntlet—a long, wide strip of harsh territory, a land that demanded a man must become about as brutal and unforgiving as that wilderness itself.

  “This here’s my country, Amanda,” he had quietly explained to her at the rear of the wagon just as the music started and the joyful voices were raised to the starry sky. “Out here folks like you an’ Roman don’t set the rules. That’s what sticks in my craw ’bout your sort on your way to a new life. You’re gonna come through here an’ do what you can to make this place fit for all of you what are running somewhere else. Don’t you see the reason I lasted so long out here is I took this land on its terms?”

  She had stared down at her scuffed boots for a long time before she finally looked into his face again and said, “I always thought that folks had a say in how they lived, no matter where they were, east or west, Pa.”

  “Maybeso that goes for back there where we both come from, daughter,” he sighed. “But, out here in this country, the wilderness got the last say. What you an’ the rest of these folks think should be don’t matter a red piss. An’ that even goes for oily men like Phineas Hargrove too.”

  “Because he struggles to make it all turn out for his good?”

  “No, just because life in this country has a way of balancing things out in the long run,” he explained. “What he takes from others will one day be took from him. And that day has come, Amanda.”

  She gripped his arm as he leaned forward to kiss her on the forehead, stopping him from immediately pulling away. “Pa, I’d like to tell you there’s no need to put yourself in danger—but I know I’d be wasting my breath.”

  He had squeezed her hand. “You take the risk and the danger out of my life, that’d be like taking the breath outta my body.”

  Titus had heard her scrambling back up the rungs of the short ladder, over the tailgate, and into the back of the wagon as he moved around the fire to that spot where Shadrach stood waiting. Both of them bristled with weapons—not firearms but the sort of sharp-edged weapons that called for close and dirty work, knives and tomahawks. Along with the short sections of rope each man carried inside his shirt where they would not swing loose, making noise or getting in the way of what was to come.

  His nose picked up the smell of fresh dung before Scratch even made out the clot of shapes before him, as he neared the patch of dried, sun-cured grass where he knew Hargrove’s men kept the moneyed man’s stock grazing through the night. They worked in watches, he had been told, those hired men. Two of them spelling the last pair for a few hours, until the last three men would fire the four-o’clock gun to rouse the whole camp. This early in the night, he and Shad would be catching the first watch—meaning there would still be some time before the relief arrived to discover what had been done to their friends.

  Into his nostrils the westerly breeze brought that strong perfume of sweaty animals and the clumps of green manure dropped when the horses had finished digesting the brittle plateau grasses. He stopped and smelled deeply, wondering if either of the guards were smokers. Looking into the dark, Titus figured he might see the glowing ember of a pipebowl even if he weren’t downwind of their burning tobacco. But the only thing his nose could make out was pony droppings and the sharp tang of the breeze cutting through the sagebrush and bitter alkali flat. He’d hear the man soon enough, maybe see the guard move against the horizon, if the man wasn’t squatting under some bush—

  Bass heard that stream of water hitting the hard, dry, flaky ground with a hiss. But it wasn’t the loud and powerful gush of a horse taking a piss. No, that was a man sprinkling the ground. At his most vulnerable, with his pecker in his hand and his mind on the relief he was experiencing. He moved forward, his nose alive and drawing him onward, his ears pricking as his senses led him toward the guard. There!

  Titus saw him. The dark, the shadows, the hat—Scratch wasn’t sure which one it was. But the guard stood there with his left hand propping up his short prairie rifle while his right hand was busy at his groin, shaking free those last few drops—

  Surprised, the guard was barely able to start his turn when Scratch kicked the rifle out from under his left arm, then drove in another step, swinging his arm with all the power his old shoulder and hip could put behind the blow. His hard-boned fist connected under the taller man’s jaw, staggering the guard back a step, then delivered a second crack as the guard’s arms wheeled in an attempt to regain his balance.

  The instant he started to cry out, his brief warning muffled with the suddenness of the attack, Bass was already on him like a calico sack full of mountain cats. Scratch struck with the left fist this time, causing the guard to go rigid for a heartbeat.

  But somehow the man managed to growl, “Napps!”

  The guard was shaking his head violently as he scrunched his neck down into his shoulders and hunched over, starting toward the old trapper—pulling out his belt pistol. Scratch desperately lunged to the side as he dragged free one of the knives at the back of his hip with his left hand, immediately passing the blade of the skinner into his right palm and flicking it forward as the guard cleared the pistol from his belt. The knife’s impact froze everything for a moment in the black of that night. The guard stood in place, shock registering on his face as he slowly peered down at the bone handle sticking out of his lower chest.

  “N-napps!” he gurgled, much weaker this time as he struggled to screw up the strength to raise the pistol.

  As the weapon floated up, Titus was already lunging forward, quickly knocking the pistol hand aside before he seized the handle of the embedded knife with his right hand, clenching his left around the back of the young man’s neck like talons. Grunting with pain and fear, the guard flailed away with his arms, pounding Bass with one while the other struggled to jam the pistol’s muzzle against the old trapper’s belly. Just as Titus was twisting away, his right hand dragging down on the knife’s handle through flesh and sinew, he heard the click of the hammer spring, felt the hammer fall against his arm at the same moment his sleeve was trapped beneath the frizzen, preventing flint from striking steel and igniting power in the pan.

  As Bass landed on his hip, the man went limp, crumpling atop dead legs. The guard hit his knees, staring down at the long, jagged gash high in his abd
omen where a dark and shiny gush spilled over the front of his britches. Rocking for a heartbeat, the man tumbled backward.

  As Scratch wrenched the tomahawk from the back of his belt and rolled onto his knees, he watched the guard arch his back in a brief leg-twitching spasm, yanking the knife free of his chest before he collapsed and moved no more. Bass got to his feet, took a single step, and laid one of his moccasins on the man’s wrist, pinning the hand against the ground. Bending over, he pried open the guard’s sticky fingers and reclaimed his knife. After wiping it on the man’s gingham shirt, he stuffed it back into the empty scabbard.

  For a few moments he crouched there among the stunted jack pine, listening, his good eye searching the darkness. Maybe no one had heard the man’s call for help. Perhaps Sweete had already seen to the only aid the guard could have summoned. He waited a few heartbeats more while the animals stopped snorting at the scent of fresh blood on the breeze, then knelt over the guard.

  “You stupid idjit,” Bass whispered as he leaned over and seized the back of the man’s collar, dragging the body around in a half circle, then starting for a nearby clump of trees.

  It was there he propped the body against the narrow branches, then reached inside his shirt for a short coil of rope. Titus looped it around the dead man’s chest and tree twice, then tied it off in a knot before he pulled his knife again to cut off what rope he hadn’t used.

  “Frakes!”

  A voice cut the night behind him.

  His senses on fire, Bass whirled in a crouch, finding the nearly full moon’s brightness already raising some light behind the ridge they had spent three days trudging to get around. In a matter of minutes that moon would poke its head over the bluff and illuminate the valley.

  “Where you, Frakes?”

  Concentrating on the sound of that voice, Titus spotted the dark form punching a sliver out of the starry sky as the man stomped closer and closer. Then that shadow split in two and there were suddenly four legs coming his way.

  A new voice growled, “I bet that bastard’s catchin’ a nap.”

  “You can whup his ass tomorrow, Jenks,” the first one said. “But we got our watch to cover, you an’ me.”

  “Shit, Corrett—you buckin’ for a raise in pay from that rich man?”

  “I oughtta get a good bonus from that high-toned bastard by the time we get to California,” Corrett declared. “Hargrove promised us all some good money if we took good care of that farmer an’ left him behind like he wanted.”

  “Lotta good we done whipping him an’ stringing him to that tree,” Jenks grumped. “Them old skinners saved that farmer’s worthless life.”

  “Maybeso like Hargrove promised, he’ll give us a chance to dance with them two skinners once we divide off at Fort Hall.”

  Jenks laughed with Corrett, then said, “That farmer was big and hard, but he sure was a stupid sort.”

  The other shifted the rifle across his arm and said, “The real fun’s gonna be watching them skinners bleed when we hang them both upside down in a tree like a gutted hog—”

  Suddenly Jenks halted in his tracks, throwing out his arm to stop Corrett. Their leather boot soles slid on the hard ground with a crunch.

  “Where the hell’s Frakes?” Jenks hissed.

  “Likely he’s crawled under a tree, sleeping—”

  “Shuddup!” the first voice snapped, then began to call in a loud whisper there beneath the slinky drip of moonlight just starting to creep over the divide. “Frakes!”

  “I don’t like this none.”

  “Something’s wrong. Bad wrong,” Jenks growled. “You got your pistol loaded?”

  “Both of ’em,” Corrett responded.

  Titus crouched in the dark, quickly sorting through the few options open to him. The darkness gave him an advantage in one respect, but it hampered him in another way too. Damn, if he only knew what Sweete was up to.

  “Let’s go look for ’im,” Jenks’s voice demanded. “You go off that way—see if you can find that sleepy son of a bitch.”

  Corrett grumbled a reply just before a whistle came drifting out of the gloom. The shrill mating call of a blue grouse. Both of the men froze and slowly turned. Titus knew, began to search the dark in the direction of that telltale sound.

  “That you, Frakes?” Jenks questioned. “C’mon, dammit! You’re getting me riled.”

  “Over here!”

  Both of the men turned their backs on Bass, directing their attention at the direction of the distant voice.

  Corrett whispered, “Coming from over there, that’s gotta be Napps. But where’s Frakes?”

  “Show yourself!” Jenks ordered.

  “Right here.”

  “Shit, Frakes,” Corrett spewed with relief. “You didn’t answer us there—I was thinking you was—”

  Jenks growled his interruption, “Who the hell are you?”

  Not far ahead of him in the dark, Titus saw the two men bring their guns up in the starlight.

  Jenks demanded again, “Who are you?”

  “And what you doing out here on Hargrove’s ground?” Corrett joined in.

  “Better clear out, sodbuster,” Jenks boomed his order. “You know the rules. Hargrove don’t like none of you around his stock.”

  The reply came that much closer to Titus now. “It’s you niggers I come for.”

  Corrett suddenly sounded brave, “You asking for trouble?”

  “Two of you,” Sweete said, his big feet crunching on the hard ground, “only one of me. Sounds like fair odds to this here child.”

  “Maybe we should shoot ’im,” Corrett boasted as Bass watched the big shadow take shape out of the gloom, congealing just beyond the two hired men.

  “Yeah—maybe Hargrove gimme a nice bonus for taking care of this one.” Jenks cheered himself as he brought his rifle up at his hip.

  “I didn’t bring my gun, fellas,” Shad confessed. “Won’t be a fair fight.”

  “Don’t need to make it a fair fight,” Jenks warned. “Only need you dead.”

  “Yeah,” Corrett chimed in. “You come out here to steal some stock from Hargrove an’ we shot you red-handed.”

  “I’ll keep my gun on him, Corrett. You go bring him over here by the horses.”

  The stocky man stomped right over to the big shadow, cocky as a young bull in spring. But the instant he was within an arm’s length, Shad swung out with his thick leg and knocked the rifle aside, stepping in quickly to whirl the hired man around and drag him backward by the scruff of his neck. Now Sweete had his hard arm crooked around Corrett’s throat, lifting the man onto his toes as his legs flailed.

  “Drop ’im!” Jenks demanded. “Drop ’im or I’ll shoot.”

  “Shoot an’ you’ll hit him,” Sweete said.

  Jenks moved three more steps, a little to the right. “Hell if I won’t shoot.”

  “You don’t wanna do that,” Shad warned. “Your gunshot’ll bring folks down here, wanting to see what happened.”

  “That’s right,” Jenks agreed. “So let him go and we’ll make this quick—”

  The hired man heard Titus behind him at the last moment but didn’t get fully turned in time as that shadow ripped itself out of the darkness and struck out with the short-barreled prairie rifle he’d taken off Frakes. The man’s eyes were about as wide as his mouth at the instant the rifle butt slammed against the side of his jaw, catapulting him off his feet.

  “Easy there,” Sweete whispered to Corrett as the man suddenly stopped struggling. “You be good, I won’t have to put you to sleep.”

  Bass stood over Jenks, straddling the body, ready to drive the iron butt plate down into the man’s head again if he stirred. But the body remained limp, sprawled in the dust and sage.

  “Damn if that weren’t a purty head-bang, Scratch.”

  He whispered as he knelt beside Jenks, “Good of you to show up on time, Shadrach.”

  “Why you growlin’ at me? Took me some doin’ to get my fella d
ragged off and tied up,” Sweete said. “Where you tie yours?”

  “He’s dead,” Scratch admitted. “Wasn’t as clean as you was with yours.”

  Corrett wheezed, “Y-you killed one of Hargrove’s—”

  Shad squeezed down on the man’s throat even more. “I’ll gut you if you make me.”

  “Bring him over here,” Titus commanded. “We’ll take ’em both across the crik, other side of the hill—”

  “Why you gonna kill me?” Corrett whimpered.

  “We ain’t gonna kill you,” Bass hissed. “Much as I wanna cut the heart outta ever’ one of you. Shad, let’s get something in his mouth to make sure he’s real quiet.”

  “I won’t make a sound,” the man promised.

  Scratch stepped right up to the man, sticking his nose an inch from Corrett’s face. “First whack—you better tell me who it was rode off the other mornin’ to give Burwell that beating.”

  Corrett’s eyes immediately dropped to the body crumpled on the ground.

  Titus asked, “Him? He was one of ’em?”

  Inside the iron grip of Shadrach’s arm, Corrett nodded slightly.

  “Who was the others?” Sweete growled at the man’s ear.

  “F-frakes,” he whispered.

  “That’s the one I killed over yonder,” Bass said. “I know there was three of ’em, who was the—”

  “Benjamin,” he interrupted in a harsh whisper. “He come back bragging how his hands was so sore ’cause he was the one beat the farmer so bad while the other two held him up.”

  “Benjamin,” Titus repeated the name in a whisper.

  “You let me go ’cause I told you?”

  “No,” Scratch said, turning back to the body on the ground. “You an’ this’un goin’ across the crik aways.”

  “You don’t tussle,” Sweete advised, “you don’t have to hurt. Understand?”

  Corrett nodded as Bass stepped up to him. “Put your hands out front of you.”

  “Y-you tying me up?”

  Shad leaned into the man’s ear again. “Be glad we don’t string you up on a tree just like your three friends crucified Roman Burwell.”