by Matt Cole
‘They have got a bad reputation.’
‘I hear about them in my work. Part of this reputation they have is that nobody’s ever even looked like getting the better of them. That indicates we are setting ourselves a tall order, now, doesn’t it?’
‘That is the truth,’ Frank said with a slight sigh. ‘Tall enough.’
Frank held out his clenched fist, turned it face up, uncurled his fingers. Five black stones glittered in the light of the new moon.
‘And we are goin’ to fill it,’ he said quietly.
Hugh wanted to say more about the Murdock Gang, but it did not seem like the right time. While waiting for sleep later, he found himself wondering if he was less of a man because he did not seem to hate as hard as his older brother, Frank.
As Frank predicted, the next day was rough. Real rough. It was spent combing the wetlands for a sign that they did not find. They camped on the same island that night, and first light found them leaving the lake behind and heading for the nearest town, Frank and Urban agreeing that they could not afford to waste any more time and must look for leads elsewhere.
Arnold Groves was a one-horse town where they served fine beefsteak at a sprawling eatery named The Greasy Spoon. Part Indian and a yard wide, the proprietor, Bart McNulty, proved an unexpected source of information.
‘The Murdock Gang you are after, big feller?’ he said to Frank. ‘Hell, of course I know somethin’ about ’em. They carved up half of my kin four nights back out at Caprock Ridge, didn’t they?’
‘They did?’ Frank said. ‘Are you certain?’
Bart McNulty was sure enough. The Indians had brought two dead white men to Arnold Groves, and papers they were carrying identified them as fugitives and members of the Murdock Gang. The outlaws had stolen a dozen ponies and were last seen heading for the lakes region.
That put the Daniels back where they started, but before nightfall, their relentless interrogation of the locals bore fruit. Urban encountered a wheezy old hide hunter, in town for a bender. The man revealed that he had heard a large number of riders go past his place on Sycamore Creek three nights earlier, give or take a few hours.
It was anything but a definite lead, but it was something. And it paid off.
Next day at first light, Frank Daniels was squatting on a grassy brown hill a mile or so from Sycamore Creek.
The earth all around him was churned by hoof tracks, several days old, but clear enough still for Frank to make out. The prints were from a mixture of shod horses and Indian ponies.
Frank made positive identification of some of the shod horses that had come from his mother’s place.
Having left Arnold Groves long before breakfast, the brothers stopped to fix food and coffee before taking off along the tracks which snaked northwest, towards the hill country and woods.
‘Huntin’ and trappin’ country,’ Urban announced as they put the miles behind them. ‘Out of the way, and no towns. Why would bad outlaws want to come right out here?’
‘Maybe they are just plain yellow scared of us?’ Casey joked, thumping his chest. ‘Maybe all they are thinkin’ about is losin’ us.’
‘No sign that they know we are after them yet, kid,’ Frank said.
‘How do you figure that?’ Casey wanted to know.
‘They would likely do something about it if they knew,’ Frank explained to his younger brother.
‘Well, they tried to shake us off at the marshes,’ the youngest Daniels’ brother noted.
‘That might have been to lose any Indians doggin’ them after the horse raid,’ Frank went on to clarify.
‘They sure seem hungry for horses, this outfit,’ said Virgil with a grimace. ‘Seems they don’t care how many people they kill to get what they want, either.’
His words cast a silence over the brothers. For a long time, each man was back at the family ranch, picturing their father trying to defend what was his.
Their pace picked up instinctively. The faster they rode, the sooner the day of reckoning.
CHAPTER 5
CURTAINS FOR FRANK DANIELS
Stealing the furs was the easy part: it would be keeping them that might prove testing. Henry Lowe knew all that long before he visited Boojum’s Camp deep in the wilderness. He had taken precautions, mainly in providing a remount for each of his butchers for the long run out.
Security was low at the camp where bearded Boojum and nine brawling trappers had been working for months assembling a high value stash of beaver and silver fox. The last thieves who had tried to get at those furs had been run down by the hard-riding trappers in the first hour and hanged in the second.
‘Who needs locks?’ Boojum was fond of saying. ‘The plains are the walls of my safe.’
There were howls and curses and warning shots fired in the air after the theft was discovered. Within minutes, the trappers were mounted and following the tracks of the wagon which the thieves had used to transport the pelts.
‘To steal a man’s furs and his wagon to carry ’em?’ Boojum thundered, red-faced and outraged. ‘Hangin’ will be too good for ’em.’
There was no doubt in his mind that he would run the thieves down, but when he hadn’t caught up with them by dawn, he began to have misgivings. When there was still no sign of them by noon, Boojum realized that the thieves were using remounts, and were smarter than anyone who had tried to rob him before.
Marshal John Blythe was a big, heavy-framed man of fifty with a tangled mane of shaggy hair which lay back from his sloping forehead and overflowed his collar at the back. His nose was thin and hooked sharply like an eagle’s. His mouth was a deep-lined canyon between the peak of his nose and the stubborn bulge of his jaw.
Although Marshal Blythe looked less like a lawman and more like a man from the mountains, the law was his profession and he was good at it. His reputation as a manhunter was impressive, although less so than it had been a year ago, when he was given the special task of putting paid to Murdock’s Gang.
‘This band of butchers is a scourge of the entire West and an affront and an insult to law enforcement throughout the nation,’ the chief marshal had claimed on the day they had given Blythe his roving brief. ‘And until they are brought to book, the law of the West will not be able rightly to claim to be in control.’
That was a year ago now, but the words still applied. Murdock’s Gang still thrived, and Marshal John Blythe looked about ten years older.
During the winter, Henry Lowe had mockingly printed a ‘Wanted’ dodger on the marshal, offering ten cents reward. Marshal Blythe carried a copy of that dodger in his billfold and looked at it sometimes when he was feeling exceptionally low. He felt that way now, but did not produce the dodger. Too many people about – people such as his deputy marshals and the sheriff of Blue Springs Creek, who was furnishing details of yet another crime attributed to the outlaws he had failed to catch.
Marshal Blythe sat by the jail-house door, whittling a piece of willow. He looked a dull man, but was in truth clever, intuitive and tenacious. Those qualities had not so far been enough to put paid to Henry Lowe – the Murdock Gang – and his clan of brothers, cousins and hangers-on, and sometimes the terrible thought invaded Marshal John Blythe’s mind that Henry Lowe was just too damned smart for him or anybody else to catch.
The marshal sat up and paid more attention on learning that the Daniels brothers had gone after the outlaw gang.
This was bad news: it could mean more killings were in store.
‘Oh, this is wonderful,’ he said ironically. ‘This is the kind of thing the Murdock Gang expects and waits for. They love amateurs. Henry Lowe will eat them for breakfast.’ Blythe snorted disgustedly. ‘You can say goodbye to your local heroes, Sheriff. You’ll be lucky if you see any of them alive again.’
The deputy marshals nodded in unanimous agreement. They had calluses on their hands from digging graves for victims of the Murdock Gang. But the sheriff of Blue Springs Creek did not agree.
‘I ca
n tell you I would not like to have Frank Daniels on my trail, Marshal, even if my name was Billy the Kid, Jesse James or Henry Lowe.’
‘Me neither,’ the deputy agreed. ‘Big Frank once tracked down a grizzly bear years ago, and kilt the big bastard with his Bowie knife, so he did.’
The marshal sighed. Spare him from small town heroes! They were more trouble than they were worth.
‘I guess we had best be ridin’, men,’ Marshal John Blythe said, getting up ponderously.
The deputies looked dismayed. They had been four days in the saddle to reach Blue Springs Creek and were walking on their heels. The marshal had promised them rest here, in real beds under a real roof.
‘Sorry,’ Blythe said, ‘but it is not just a matter of takin’ off after the gang now. We gotta try and save this here bunch of Daniels afore the Murdock Gang and Henry Lowe carve ’em up like so many Thanksgivin’ turkeys.’
‘It is as plain as the nose on my face that you have never met Frank Daniels,’ the sheriff said sharply. ‘Otherwise you wouldn’t talk that way about him and his brothers.’
‘He might be every bit the man you say he is, Sheriff,’ Blythe sighed. ‘I wouldn’t know. But I know the Murdock Gang and especially Henry Lowe, and it is just possible nobody can nail him, and that sure as hell must go for a bunch of small towners all steamed up over their mother getting’ done in.’
Marshal John Blythe was not aware of it, but he was starting to talk like a beaten man. That did not mean he would give up – no, not by any stretch. He did not know how to give up. And it was a strange thing that three men sharing that uncommon characteristic were involved in the very same manhunt now – the marshal, Henry Lowe himself, and Frank Daniels. It stood to reason that sooner or later, somebody would have to quit, either voluntarily or through the gates of Boothill.
The smart money said it would not be Henry Lowe.
From the heights, the landscape ahead looked like a relief map with the earth a cloudy green and brown haze under the vast vault of the sky, reaching into the infinity that no man could ever reach. Looking down, Frank Daniels saw the river gleaming like molten lead, curving slowly and gracefully across the buffalo plains towards the mountains. The sun, the hills, the plains and the sky never really changed, he was thinking. Only man changed, yet in so many ways remained the same.
Riders were reining up on the river bank now, pointing up at Frank and gesturing. Frank watched them for some time before turning the dark brown thoroughbred back to the draw where he picked up his brothers and headed down by the animal trail.
‘Could be trouble,’ he warned. ‘Looks like a bunch of trappers yonder. They seem mighty excited about something.’
‘How will we handle it, Frank?’ asked Virgil.
Frank palmed his pistol so fast that Casey gasped loud enough for all to hear.
He said, ‘Nobody is goin’ to stop us and we are not goin’ to be slowed down, either. As far as we can see, the outlaws got one hell of a head start. That does not suit me. If we don’t make up time, they are goin’ to give us the slip. It’s as simple as that.’
Riding behind him, his brothers exchanged a look. Throughout their week in his company, the Daniels had come to depend on Frank and to admire him more than ever. On the trail, he was the surest, strongest leader it was possible to find. There was the odd occasion, like now, however, when he seemed just a little too ruthless for their taste. The brothers did not want to get into a fight with a bunch of trappers over nothing.
As they cleared the timberline, they could see the trappers. The Daniels were crossing a series of shallow craters. The vitreous smoothness of the stone threw back the sunlight, causing the horsemen to squint as they watched the trappers.
Several of the trappers toted rifles, and when one angled his weapon towards the brothers, Frank hefted his .45 and called a warning.
‘Use that thing or put it down. If you elect to use it, you are all dead.’
This was confidence. There were nine trappers. Frank acted like a man with the odds all his way, and this had its effect on the nine trappers.
Following a brief confab with the others, the rifleman lowered his weapon. The trappers did not look any friendlier, though, as the Daniels came nearer. Truth to tell, they looked mean and dangerous men, so much so that Frank kept his revolver trained on them every step of the way. Frank’s brothers were jittery. Gunplay was not the familiar thing to them that it was to him.
‘Who the hell are you?’ challenged a barrel-bellied man with a greasy beard. His eyes drilled into Frank as he added, ‘Are you them dirty outlaws what stole our pelts?’
Instantly, Frank spun his Colt on his forefinger and dropped it back into its holster.
‘No, we aren’t,’ Frank said, ‘but we are huntin’ a pack of outlaws, mister. Could be the same ones.’ He tapped his chest. ‘Daniels. We are all Daniels. Who are you?’
Boojum introduced himself. He was willing to take them at their word because they did not look like outlaws and there was no sign of any furs. Besides, these five men had come straight off the heights to face him, something that not even the most addle-brained thief would do.
The Daniels listened in silence to the story of the stolen furs. The trappers had pursued the thieves across the plains until their horses gave out. The thieves had remounts, Boojum informed them, though this was something the Daniels already knew.
‘The Murdock Gang led by Henry Lowe now,’ Frank murmured when the fat man stopped for a breath.
Boojum’s eyes bulged. ‘The Murdock Gang? Henry Lowe? Are you sure?’
‘No question about it,’ Frank replied calmly. ‘Which way did they go with your furs?’
Boojum flung a hairy hand northward as he said, ‘Yonder. There’s a tradin’ post about sixty miles that far, only by the time we got back, we wouldn’t have a camp, or a trap left on account of the Utes.’ He shook his shaggy head. ‘Murdock’s Gang! Imagine! Could be just as well we didn’t catch ’em after all, huh?’
‘Just as well,’ Frank responded, deliberately misunderstanding. ‘They belong to us.’
‘Oh yeah?’ another trapper said. ‘Why, what did they do to you?’
Casey started to explain, but he wasn’t given the time.
‘Let’s go,’ Frank snapped, and heeled the big thoroughbred into a lope, leaving it to his brothers to make their hasty farewells as they followed.
Hugh twisted in his saddle as they traveled on. He was a touch saddle sore, but there didn’t seem much point in mentioning that to any of his brothers.
Sundown found them many miles along the river, where a strip of semi-arid country intruded from the east. There was a gnarled dead tree and the skeleton of a short horse at the spot Frank chose for their camp.
‘No cover and no chance of anybody sneaking up on us,’ he explained.
Urban acted surprised.
‘Are you expectin’ Lowe and the others to make a try for us, Frank?’
‘If I were him, and I knew somebody was followin’ me, I would,’ Frank answered. ‘Maybe he doesn’t know about us yet, but he will, in time. No point in waitin’ for him to make his move before we start keepin’ sharp, is there?’
Frank paused to indicate the broad furrow of hoof tracks in the sand. They had picked up the outlaw sign five miles or so downstream, and it seemed they were making for the trading post that Boojum, the trapper leader, had mentioned.
‘Did you see big Boojum when we mentioned the gang?’ Casey said wonderingly. ‘Turned white as a sheet, he did. He was sure scared.’
It was silent for a time until Hugh said, ‘Like maybe we should be. . . ?’
Frank turned sharply. ‘That will be enough of that kind of talk.’
Hugh frowned.
‘I will say what I please, Frank.’
‘No, you won’t . . .’ Frank snapped, but bit off his words.
For a moment he sat, looking down at his big brown hands. Then he glanced up and said, ‘Sorry, Hugh. As you say,
every man has a right to speak. We are all equals here.’
Those simple words went a long way. There had been a growing feeling among the brothers that maybe Frank was starting to ride them a little too hard. To act too much like the officer in charge.
The mood was more relaxed as Frank walked off to stand first watch while the others readied their bedrolls.
Casey joined Frank after a while, to share a final smoke before turning in. Frank stood on the rocky bank of the river with the rifle in the crook of his arm.
To the eyes of the kid, he looked huge and invincible.
‘Nice night, huh Frank?’
‘Yeah, but there’s a bite in the air. Winter’s drawin’ on, kid,’ Frank said.
‘Uh huh. Good cuddlin’ weather.’
Frank’s rare smile showed.
‘Thinkin’ of that skinny little girl back in Blue Springs Creek, are you?’
‘Lucy’s not so skinny. I mean, she might not be built like Marlene Welch, but she’s real pretty,’ Casey noted.
‘They are all real pretty until you tie the knot, Casey. Then they turn mean, and you get to wonder what you ever saw in them.’
‘You talk like an old married man,’ Casey grinned, relishing the closeness. ‘Where did you find out about women, Frank?’
‘Books. Where else?’
Casey looked sober.
‘Marlene seemed mighty upset to see you go, Frank.’
Frank looked away as he said, ‘Women are like that, kid.’
‘Lucy says Marlene’s still in love with you,’ Casey said.
Frank’s head angled down. He stared at the river and shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
‘Women talk too much, kid. That’s another one of their failings. See, your big brother knows all about them.’
‘What busted you two up?’ Casey asked. ‘Ma always said you should have settled down and married Marlene.’ He paused to look at his older brother. ‘Why didn’t you?’
