The Wolves of Seven Pines

by E. L. Ripley

  The moment Carpenter acted, Silva was on his feet, and Murphy never even saw him. He struck the bounty hunter with his shoulder and a good bit of force, even though a light push would probably have been enough.

  Murphy went over the edge with a shout, and Carpenter didn’t hear him land, as Two-Eye had rolled out of the fire, himself ablaze. Silva hurried back and kicked him to the ground, then gave him a kick to the head that put him to sleep. He dropped to his knees, then his back, fumbling for Two-Eye’s knife. He hissed in pain, as the man’s clothes were still burning, but got it free and tossed it into the dirt.

  Yates reached it first, cutting himself in the process, but he clearly didn’t mind. He sawed himself free and sagged on the ground, chest heaving from the exertion.

  Silva was on his knees, staring at him. His eyes darted to Two-Eye’s rifle, which was still there, leaning against his pack. Yates lunged over and snatched it.

  They all flinched as the flames eating Two-Eye’s clothes reached the cartridges in his pocket. Bark flew from the tree, and blood spurted as at least one bullet fired through his body. Carpenter threw himself flat, and Silva did the same. Several more shots followed.

  “Help her,” Carpenter choked out, glaring at Yates. “Someone’s wife is down there. She could still be alive. You have to help her.”

  “Damn it, Bill,” Yates snarled. “I know that.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Face white, Yates dragged himself to the tree, seized a branch, and hauled himself upright. He kicked the knife toward Bill and limped into the underbrush, cocking the rifle.

  For the briefest moment, Carpenter had wondered what to do about Two-Eye, but the bullets he’d been carrying had taken any choice out of it. Two-Eye was lying still with at least two new holes in him, and there wasn’t anything anyone could do for him. He wouldn’t get up again.

  Carpenter sawed himself free and did the same for Silva. Having his hands unbound was enough for him to forget the pain and exhaustion.

  “What are you doing?” Silva demanded, rubbing at his wrists as Carpenter started to stagger off.

  “I have to help him,” Carpenter replied, looking back.

  The other man just stared at him in disbelief, but there wasn’t time to have a civilized conversation about it. Carpenter plunged into the brush, pushing past the leaves and branches, and searching for a way down in the fading light. Rocks slipped and creepers gave way. He made more noise than a blind steer, but that didn’t give him pause.

  You’d have to be a fool to come out to a place like this. No people meant no help to be had, though recent events had left Carpenter with a certain understanding of the desire to avoid people. But fools or not, whoever was down there didn’t deserve this. Carpenter was no lawman, and neither was Yates, not by a long shot, but they couldn’t stand by any more than the sun could stand by at dusk. And it wasn’t doing that; the light was going fast.

  Carpenter caught up with Yates, who was hobbling determinedly down.

  “Murph?” Al’s voice came from up ahead, and though there was a hint of uncertainty in it, he didn’t sound particularly alarmed. Carpenter hadn’t seen him alarmed yet, and maybe he wasn’t even capable of it, but they’d find out in a moment.

  Yates slowed, moving more gingerly as they came into view of the scene below.

  A man lay facedown in the grass of a wide clearing along the creek, and a tidy lean-to was up a few paces back in the trees. Laundry was strung up, and curling trails of blue smoke rose from what had been a modest firepit.

  Al was there, knee-deep in the grass with the woman beside him on her knees. He had her by the hair, but whatever he’d had in mind to be doing had clearly been interrupted by the shots from the cliff. He squinted upward, puzzled.

  A muffled sound of pain came from somewhere off to Carpenter’s left. That had to be Murphy; the fall hadn’t killed him, but if he wasn’t dead yet, he would be soon.

  Al heard it and looked, letting go of the woman’s hair to put both hands on the rifle. She hesitated, but only for a second before taking off running. Al looked over in surprise.

  “Don’t go, sweetheart,” he called after her. With a look of regret, he raised his rifle and fired.

  Shot through the back, the woman tumbled to the ground without a sound.

  Scowling, Al turned back toward the cliff, only to flinch as Yates’ bullet sailed past his head. Swearing, Yates got behind a tree, and Carpenter got down low as Al fired back.

  It should’ve been an easy shot, but the pain of trying to stand on his wounded leg had set Yates’ hands to shaking. Carpenter hadn’t seen that murder coming, and even Yates hadn’t been fast enough to stop it. Missing an easy shot would be a blow for a man like Yates, but it was nothing to seeing that unarmed woman killed.

  Having his hands free, seizing his moment and striking back, for a second it had given Carpenter a strength that he shouldn’t have had in the state he was in. Now it was gone, and he felt as dead as that woman with golden hair.

  “Is that you, Stanford Yates?” Al called out in the twilight.

  He stood out there with no cover to speak of in the tall grass. His rifle was at his shoulder, and his hands weren’t shaking. Al’s aim was steady, even if his brain wasn’t.

  Teeth grinding like thunder, Yates worked the rifle’s lever. He looked down at Carpenter, crouched among the ferns.

  “You see him?” he asked.

  “He’s just standing out there,” Carpenter reported. “He ain’t moving.”

  Yates closed his eyes and took a deep breath. It was a shot that he should’ve been able to make in his sleep, but there was sweat beaded on his face, far too much of it. He was feverish.

  He glanced down at the rifle. “You do it, Bill.”

  Carpenter swallowed, recalling the last time he’d held a rifle, standing over Oceana in that barn. He put his hand out, but Yates saw the uncertainty on his face and held on to it.

  “Hell,” he muttered. “I ain’t afraid of him.”

  He was afraid, though. Just not of Al.

  Carpenter opened his mouth, but Yates cut him off.

  “Throw down that rifle!” he roared.

  “What if I am disinclined to do so?” Al called back obstinately. “What’d you do to old Two-Eye, Stanford Yates? You know the man had the mind of a child. You wouldn’t hurt a child, would you? That leg ain’t giving you no trouble, is it?”

  “My bandage needs changing,” Yates shouted. “Will you do that for me, Al?”

  “Course I will. What are friends for?”

  Yates might have retorted, but they all fell silent as new voices rose up. Yates and Carpenter looked to the west. The sun was nearly down, but the howling of wolves rose up over the pines, a grand chorus.

  The howls fell away, and Al was the first to recover.

  “What do you reckon they’re saying?” he asked.

  “Telling you to throw down that rifle, I suspect,” Yates replied.

  “It’s a funny thing to hear orders from a man already more or less dead. How long you think you got, Yates?”

  “Still longer than you,” Yates snarled. He pivoted into the open, and Al shot him before he could even take aim, let alone squeeze the trigger.

  Yates pitched to the ground, and Carpenter tried to catch him, but he wasn’t fast enough.

  Al’s voice came over the air, tinged with laughter. “I suppose it ain’t a fair fight if the one’s a cripple,” he noted, chuckling. “That sits right well with me, though. A fair fight’s the last thing you want. I’d never hear the end of it.”

  Hissing, Yates clutched at his right side where the bullet had come right along his ribs. His mouth was open like he wanted to cry out in pain, but he couldn’t get the breath for it. The breaths he took were fast and shallow, and there was a glassy look of shock in his eyes. He clutched the
rifle in a death grip, and his eyes found Carpenter.

  “I’m sorry, Bill,” he said, and the words came out surprisingly conversational, considering. There was something that might have started as a laugh, but just became a fearful grimace of pain. “We ain’t as young as we used to be.”

  “I know,” Carpenter said, risking a glance at Al, who lowered his rifle.

  “Big fella,” Al called out, starting forward through the grass. “I suppose if you were armed you’d have done something. Why don’t you come on out with your hands up high?”

  Not for the first time, Carpenter hesitated.

  “I can think of several reasons,” a voice called out, but it wasn’t his.

  Silva was off to the right, at least fifty paces away, hidden behind a tree trunk. Al reacted as anyone would: he turned and took aim in a flash. Yates lunged to one knee and threw the rifle to his shoulder. His first shot missed, and Al swung back around in time for the second to take him in the belly.

  With a look of vague annoyance, he fell into the grass.

  That was all Yates had as well. The howling was rising up again as he collapsed into the dirt, letting go of the rifle and clamping his hand to his side. Al had been awfully good, but he hadn’t been the brightest. He should’ve at least taken a knee to present a smaller target, but Carpenter had the luxury of making these observations as the man watching the scene unfold.

  Footsteps crunched in the undergrowth as Silva hurried to them. He sank to a crouch beside Carpenter, and one look at his face told a great deal.

  The man bleeding in the dirt was the man who would have handed Silva to Hale.

  Carpenter had to say something, but he didn’t know what it would be.

  He would say that he wouldn’t leave Yates.

  Silva would say that Yates wasn’t going to get far regardless.

  Neither of them would have been wrong. Carpenter could see and hear it all in his head as though it had already happened, half because it was just that obvious, and half because he’d do anything not to think about that woman lying dead in the grass, or what had happened on the cliff, or any of it.

  His thoughts belonged in the future. The future was safer. It probably wouldn’t be pleasant, but there was always a chance, a reason to hope. With the past, he didn’t have that. He knew exactly what he was in for.

  The conversation wasn’t needed. Silva knew it front to back, just as Carpenter did.

  So Carpenter opened his mouth to thank Silva for what he had done. He might’ve just taken off; he had no reason to put himself at risk by coming down here to distract Al. He’d likely saved Carpenter’s life just now.

  The shot came so close to his head that Carpenter saw a few of his graying hairs float by, caught in the last of the light.

  Al was out there, still down, but not finished. Carpenter pushed Silva out of the way and ducked as another shot sailed overhead. There wouldn’t be any conversation at all, then. Silva scrambled up, and Carpenter hauled Yates to his feet.

  He felt like he’d been running for a while now, but it turned out there were still a few miles left to go. Or less, depending on how good Al’s aim was.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Whoever that man was, the one with the missing fingers, he was in luck.

  Two-Eye was certainly dead, Murphy as well by now from that fall, and it seemed unlikely that Al would make it out of the mountains. He’d been able to shoot, but could he give chase? Carpenter doubted it.

  That made three fewer bounty hunters that fellow would have to worry about. He might have been the one intended to hang, but Carpenter had liked him a good deal more than the men who’d intended to bring him to justice.

  That was where the luck ended.

  There was no moon, though that didn’t seem to bother the wolves, who were louder than ever and drawing closer. With no light to see by, it just seemed to be a matter of time before Carpenter lost an eye to an errant tree branch as they crashed through the woods. Yates clung to him, doing his best impression of limping with the rifle as his walking stick.

  Silva had already fallen once, thankfully without injury, but the night was still young.

  Carpenter stopped to look back at the sound of a particularly loud howl, as though he could possibly see anything.

  “Was it ever enough, Bill?”

  “What?” Carpenter asked, pushing through a tangle of branches, barely keeping Silva in view.

  “Your wife,” Yates gasped, clutching at Carpenter’s shirt. “When she wasn’t sure it was enough. What she’d done.”

  “I don’t know,” Carpenter replied, wincing as his foot came down on earth that was lower than he had expected. Twinges and pain shot through his leg, but he stumbled on. “She couldn’t much talk,” he managed to say, breathing raggedly. “There at the end.”

  “Was she afraid?”

  “I expect she was.”

  “But you were there,” Yates said.

  “Yes,” Carpenter replied, “I was.”

  The moon peeked out, but only for a moment. It had gotten cold enough that their breaths were clouds in the dark. Carpenter didn’t know how many miles they had gone this way. Al couldn’t possibly follow so far so quickly, even if he were so inclined, and Silva knew it, but still the other man wouldn’t slow down. He had felt Hale’s claws and known his intent. He had been no stranger to the gaze of a predator when the bounty hunters came upon them. All the same, none of it could be taken back, and Silva wouldn’t ever be the same. These three would follow him. He and Carpenter could hardly have been more different, but now they had something in common.

  “I let him down, Bill,” Yates was saying.

  “It’s all right.” Hale would understand.

  “I was meant to keep him safe.” He was talking about Rene, not Hale. Carpenter swallowed; he didn’t have a reply. “I tried to do it, Bill. I kept him from killing that man.”

  Carpenter couldn’t listen to any more. “Enough,” he gasped, then found his voice. “Silva, stop!”

  Silva did, his form turning to look back in the gloom.

  Carpenter helped Yates to sit against the nearest tree and went straight to Silva. “Enough,” he repeated, trying to get his breath. “He ain’t coming. He won’t catch us.”

  “It isn’t him that concerns me,” Silva said tightly, looking at the dark trees to the west. The wolves weren’t howling now, but they were still out there. “They aren’t far back now. We can’t stop.”

  He wasn’t wrong.

  “Where are we going?” Carpenter asked. “Where can we go?”

  Wherever it was, it couldn’t be far away. It wasn’t just Carpenter; they were both nearly done in. The exhaustion or the hunger should have been enough to stop them in their tracks, and they had both.

  Carpenter scowled. “Truth is, we haven’t covered much ground.”

  “I know,” Silva replied, sitting down and leaning back to take deep breaths.

  They had done nothing but cover ground, but not in a straight line. They’d fled Antelope Valley going west, then begun to backtrack when Yates and Rene found them. The bounty hunters had been leading them northeast. By now they were probably due north of town, and unless Carpenter had completely lost his sense of direction, Antelope Valley couldn’t be more than twenty miles away.

  Twenty miles was still a long way on foot, and there was a good-sized mountain in the way. There was also the detail that they weren’t exactly welcome there, but it would be at least twice as far to anywhere else they might be able to find supplies and horses.

  Silva sighed. “Mr. Karr,” he said finally. “His property is outside the settlement.”

  “Will he help us?”

  There was a pause, and Carpenter couldn’t even see him, but Silva’s voice came out of the dark. “Choosing not to help would be a decision that he would regret,
” he said.

  Carpenter started to reply but stopped as the howling rose up again, much closer. He and Silva leapt to their feet, and Carpenter was back with Yates in a heartbeat.

  The other man shook him off with a hiss, falling back against the tree with a gasp of pain. He looked down at his leg, then up at Carpenter and shook his head.

  “I can’t go no more,” he said.

  “It’s all right. I can carry you,” Carpenter told him. He put out his hand, but Yates didn’t take it.

  “No,” he said.

  “Yates, they’re coming.”

  “You carried me far enough, Bill.” He set his jaw and straightened his back against the tree trunk, settling the rifle on his lap.

  Carpenter kept his hand out. Silva stood a short distance off, silent. The howls died away again, but it wouldn’t be long. Each time they were closer.

  Yates produced a bag of tobacco and offered it. “I ain’t got no matches.”

  There wasn’t time. Carpenter knew it. If he hadn’t, he might have stood there forever. He took the sack. It was leather, hand sewn with colorful thread. Yates had made it himself twenty years ago from a tattered glove they’d found on the march. It was hideous to look at, appallingly made, but no one had ever told him so because they remembered how earnest he had been, sitting there with his makeshift needle and thimble, one eye shut, concentrating as he worked.

  Carpenter hadn’t understood it at the time, but he did now.

  He took the pouch, and Yates sat back.

  “Only thing scares me more than dying,” he said as the wolves started to howl again, “is going back to Rene’s ma to tell her what’s happened to her boy on my watch. I won’t do it, Bill.” He smiled. “And you’re the one called a coward.”