The Revenger

by Peter Brandvold

  Sartain had a mind to drag Earl into the nearest ravine. He would have if it were later or earlier in the year. Earlier, the carcass would have decomposed quickly in the summer heat. Later, it would have frozen up solid, giving off little stench while the carrion eaters picked at it. This time of the year, late September, it wasn’t hot or cold enough to do either job. It would likely molder slowly and send the stench back to town and pester Dixie for the next several weekends.

  Of course, he could drag it a good long ways into the mountains, but it was easier to dig a shallow grave and throw some dirt and rocks over it. So that’s what the Cajun did, making short work of the job among the pines flanking the hotel, where several ancient trash heaps were gradually being overgrown with brush and saplings.

  As he worked, he thought that the fact this gent had been left in town probably meant that whoever had bushwhacked him yesterday hadn’t been one of the outlaws riding with Beacham. At least he’d learned that one thing. It wasn’t much, but it was something, though it still left the nagging question of the bushwhacker’s identity and the identity of the man or men who’d dragged him off.

  As Sartain strapped his folding shovel to his saddle and mounted up, he looked around carefully. Since the bushwhacker had had a friend or friends loyal enough to haul off his body, ostensibly for proper burial, that same friend might want to avenge his killing.

  The Cajun slid his Henry repeater from his saddle sheath, racked a round into the action, off-cocked the hammer, and rested the barrel across the pommel of his saddle. His breath frosted in the chill air. He touched spurs to Boss’s flanks, and rode off through the pines, heading straight up the gradual slope northeast of Hard Winter, where the pines, firs, and aspens gradually grew taller and thicker, the slope steeper.

  The sun took a long time to climb above the steep eastern ridges. When it did, steam rose from the cool ground still wet from last night’s rain. After another half-hour, the Cajun stopped to remove his mackinaw, which he’d donned before heading out, as he’d judged the temperature around freezing when he’d first lit out of Hard Winter.

  He bundled the coat in his hot roll and lashed it behind his saddle, then continued riding along a valley floor just over the northern ridge from the ghost town.

  It was higher here, the air thinner, the sun brighter.

  To each side, timbered slopes rolled up to high, steep, stony ridges dusted with snow that had likely fallen yesterday, when it had only rained in Hard Winter. The gauzy greens of the conifer forest were spotted here and there with the golden hues of occasional changing aspens.

  He followed a creek through a beaver meadow, the creek snaking and glinting through stirrup-high grama grass and mountain sage. He left the beaver meadow for a thick forest and then out again into rocky country, generally following the creek and continuing to climb toward a bulwark of gray granite looming high ahead. So high, in fact, that he was beginning to get a knot in his neck when he stared at the impressive formation mantled in bright, clean snow.

  The Cajun wasn’t sure where he was going. He wasn’t sure why he turned away from the main creek and followed a feeder creek up a narrower valley than the last. But that’s what he did, and found himself at a place so pretty, he decided to stop and hunt for grubs with which to bait a line.

  The creek threading this canyon was virtually a falls. It was a falls in many places, the roar of the plunging water echoing off the steep, rocky ridges spiked with hardy pines, spruce, birch, Douglas firs, and tamaracks. At the bottom of a particularly steep, narrow falls was a swirling pool with a back eddy bridged by a blowdown pine and ringed with overhanging granite outcroppings.

  Prime water for mountain cutthroat.

  Sartain tied Boss to another blowdown spiked with broken branches and then, wielding his Henry, climbed the rocks to where the heavy forest began. He took a careful look down his back trail, which he’d occasionally been doing since leaving Hard Winter. He hadn’t spied any telltale shadows on his trail so far, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been followed.

  In fact, something—maybe a special sense hunted men acquired—told him he had been shadowed. That was all right. Maybe soon he’d get some answers to a few nagging questions.

  He found some grubs under a moldering log and threaded a couple of fat ones onto a hook he carried in a leather case along with some fishing line. He tied the line to a six-foot-long aspen branch and tossed the bait into the pool.

  He rested the pole against a rock and fetched a fresh long-nine cigar from his store, recently replenished in a Denver tobacco shop, and smoked while he built a small fire. He kept an eye on his line, which didn’t move much for nearly a half-hour.

  He had a few strikes, got his grubs stolen twice by his cunning quarry, and then, just when he was beginning to think luck was not with him, he answered a quick, hard jerk on the line by pulling a fat, glistening trout out of the pool and onto the uneven surface of the mossy outcrop he’d made noon camp on.

  He fried the fish gently in lard in his cast-iron fry pan and ate it out of the pan with some wild mint he found growing around the rocks. He hadn’t tasted anything so delicate, sweet, and delicious since the last time he’d pulled a fat trout out of a near-freezing mountain stream.

  It didn’t take him long to eat the fish. He followed it up with a cup of hot coffee to which he added a shot of his favored Sam Clay bourbon and sat on a thumb of rock fifty feet above his camp, looking around. Again, he had the feeling someone had shadowed him from Hard Winter.

  He drank some more of the spiked coffee, enjoying the heat and headiness it touched him with here in the thin, cool mountain air rife with the tang of pine resin and loam and the steely smell of the cascading water.

  He stared down along the twisting canyon, back in the direction of the main valley he could not see from here because of the high, rocky, pine-studded ridges. He sipped the coffee, sliding his gaze slowly across the canyon. He sipped again and slid his gaze back to the other side of the canyon.

  Then he saw it.

  A brief flicker of movement along the canyon floor, little more than a smudge of light brown moving out from trees on his right to an escarpment on his left. The movement had covered no more than a thumbnail from this distance, but it was a rider all right. Heading slowly toward Sartain along the trail he’d taken into the canyon.

  He looked down at his camp at the rocky lip of the stream. Boss stood staring into the creek as though he were looking for fish, reins drooping toward the dead tree he was tied to. The Cajun had chosen the camp because it was pretty, but also because it offered good cover from the trail snaking up from below and beyond.

  “All right, then,” he said and threw back the last of his mud.

  He rose and made his way back down the rocks to his breakfast camp. He built up his fire, gave Boss a reassuring pat on the rump, and then crossed the roiling creek on the makeshift bridge of a fallen pine. He climbed an angling crevice up the opposite side, having to climb with one hand while holding the Henry with the other.

  It wasn’t a hard climb. There were plenty of hand- and footholds.

  When he gained the edge of the forest above the creek, he slipped in among the trees and dropped to one knee behind a wedge-shaped chunk of rock sitting precariously over the canyon, nestled in firs.

  He waited, catching glimpses of the horse and rider coming up the canyon, the man wending his way between the cliffs.

  Behind Sartain, a throaty voice pitched low with menace said, “Hold it right where you are, you son of a buck, or I’ll blast you to Kingdom Come!”

  Chapter 8

  Sartain cursed as he held himself still, as he’d been warned to do.

  The only problem with his choice of bivouac was that, while it was indeed well concealed, the creek was loud enough to cover anyone else’s stealthy advancement. That was why the man coming up behind him—he could see his shadow in the periphery of his vision—had been able to come up on him unheard.

  Only
now, when the shadow was nearly merging with his own, did he hear a branch snap under the bastard’s boot.

  The cold, round maw of a pistol was pressed against his spine. The man’s voice said, “Hand me back that purty Henry of yours real slow, and butt first.”

  Sartain reached back with the Henry. The man took it.

  Keeping his pistol pressed taut to The Revenger’s back, the man behind him said, “Now the purty LeMat, real slow and butt first.”

  Sartain slid the LeMat from its holster and handed it back.

  His assailant took that too. Then the man snatched the Bowie knife from his belt sheath.

  “Purty knife. You got all kinds of purty weapons. You got any more purty weapons?”

  “That’s it.”

  The man patted him down. When he patted the right flap of his vest, the man said, “Let’s have it.”

  Sartain removed the derringer from his watch chain and handed it over his shoulder.

  “All right, you can turn around.”

  Sartain turned around to see one of the men, Johnny, who’d been with Beacham—the only one who’d walked out of the saloon unmarred—standing before him, aiming a horn-gripped Bisley .44 at him from six feet back. He was a stocky gent with a full cinnamon beard speckled with gray and a mustache with upturned ragged ends. His face was rife with freckles, and he had a mole at the corner of his chapped mouth.

  His light-brown eyes were set too close together, and they were slightly slanted. They gave him a stupid, devilish look, but maybe he had that look because he was genuinely stupid and devilish.

  Yesterday, he’d mostly looked cowed and sheepish.

  Now he was grinning like the cat that ate the canary, showing his large, yellow-edged teeth.

  “You ain’t so tough now, are ya?” he said. “Now that I took your guns away.”

  “You just took my guns away.”

  “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means, you simple fool, that if you put your guns down and fought me with your fists, I’d still be tough enough to smash your teeth down your throat and have you whimpering like a gutshot coyote.”

  Johnny scowled and chewed his lip, his freckled cheeks turning deep pink. Taking a halting step back, he said, “You think so, do you?”

  “I think so.”

  “Well, we might just see about that. Right now, however, there’s an hombre who wants to have a talk with you.”

  Sartain chuckled. “Oh? What hombre would that be? One with a sore foot, maybe?”

  “Hah! You can laugh now, but in a few minutes, you ain’t gonna be doin’ no laughin’. Only howlin’.”

  “I reckon we’ll see about that. If you’re done blowin’ steam, you simple, ugly bastard, why don’t we go visit this poor fella with the injured foot?”

  He knew he was taking a risk by trying to get Johnny’s dander up. Johnny might just go ahead and gut-shoot him. But Johnny looked stupid enough that if he got mad enough, he might make a mistake and give Sartain an opening for making a move on him.

  Johnny lowered his head and flared his nostrils. “You got a mighty big mouth on you for a man who could die right here and now. Mighty big!”

  “Same to you, you simple fool.”

  A voice shouted from down in the canyon behind Sartain, “Johnny, what the hell you two doin’ over there? Discussin’ the price of chaw? Get him over here!”

  Sartain glanced behind him into the canyon. Two riders sat their horses near Boss, who faced them with his tail arched angrily. They were both hard-faced men like Johnny, likely two more of Beacham’s bunch assigned to bringing Sartain to the outlaw leader with the bloody boot. One was leading a riderless horse. That was likely Johnny’s mount. He must have slipped across the canyon on foot to circle around Sartain.

  “You heard him.” Johnny wagged the Bisley at the Cajun. “Get a move on, nice and slow. You try any tricks, you’ll pay hard.”

  Sartain started down the slope. When he glanced behind to see if Johnny was close enough for him to try jumping him, he gave a silent curse. Johnny stood at the lip of the canyon, aiming his pistol threateningly at Sartain.

  “Just keep goin’, mister. You head anywhere but the bottom of the canyon, I’ll drill ya, an’ so will my pards over there.” When Sartain was nearly to the floor of the canyon, Johnny started down.

  The other two were covering Sartain with their carbines.

  “Howdy fellas,” the Cajun said, grinning affably as he approached his horse.

  The man riding a claybank gelding narrowed his eyes beneath the brim of his black hat, and snarled, “Shut up and mount, you Cajun son of Satan! You killed my cousin yesterday. What Beacham don’t do to you to get even for a ruined foot, I will!”

  Sartain gave a weary sigh as he swung up into the leather. “You ain’t friendly at all.”

  * * *

  Well, he’d outsmarted himself here, the Cajun thought as he rode back down the canyon in the direction from which he’d come. He was fourth in a group of three now. His hands were tied to his saddle horn, and Johnny was leading Boss by the reins.

  Johnny had The Revenger’s LeMat and Bowie, while the man called Dominguez had cadged his Henry repeater. The third gent, Hagan, had so admired the Cajun’s gold-plated derringer that he’d slipped the little popper into the pocket of his long spruce-green duster, which he wore over deerskin breeches.

  Dominguez looked part-Mexican, while Hagan was an outlaw from Nebraska Territory. Sartain had heard his name before and had seen his visage on wanted posters a few years back after the man had killed two deputy sheriffs while escaping a county jail in Wichita.

  Of course, the three hadn’t shaken hands and introduced themselves to Sartain. The Revenger had picked up their names from general conversation, most of which hadn’t even been directed at him. Hagan was a long-nosed killer with what appeared a perpetual purple beard shadow on his fair-skinned face that didn’t take the sun well. His nose was as red as a Rocky Mountain sunset and badly peeling. As they rode, he kept looking grimly over his shoulder at Sartain, narrowing his dark eyes at the prisoner and then spitting chaw on rocks or plants along the trail. He’d look back again as he ran a grimy checked sleeve across his mouth and then turn his head forward.

  Obviously, he was in love with his reputation and aimed to prove he was worth every penny of the thousand-dollar bounty on his head. Sartain had been more impressed by dancing bears in opera houses. He was going to enjoy killing Hagan.

  If he ever got the opportunity, that was, and he hadn’t outsmarted himself into an early grave. He’d already decided these bad boys had had nothing to do with his bushwhacking, so here he was among them and likely with no better result than that he’d be eating lead for his efforts.

  To pass the time and lighten his mood, he whistled an old tune he’d learned long ago in the French Quarter, a Cajun tune about a happy young whore who became an old and lonely whore feeding her alligator friends out on the bayou...until she fell into the bayou one cold winter morn...

  “Shut up,” said Hagan.

  “You boys ain’t gonna shoot me for whistlin’,” the Cajun said and continued whistling.

  It turned out that Sartain had passed Beacham’s camp when he’d ridden up the main canyon. He hadn’t seen it because it looked like an old prospector’s or fur trapper’s shack tucked away in a fringe of yellow-leafed aspens poking out from the northern ridge.

  As they followed a well-worn path through the trees, their horses’ hooves crunching the leaves that skittered across the trail, Sartain sniffed pine smoke. Then he saw the smoke lifting from the sloping pole roof of the low-slung stone cabin that boasted two deep-set windows in the front wall and an opening for a door, although there appeared to be no actual door, just as there were no shutters on the windows. The shutters and door had likely rotted away long ago.

  Sartain stopped whistling.

  Hagan glanced back and chuckled darkly as he said, “End of the trail, amigo.”
r />   “Jump yourself, amigo.”

  As Dominguez, Hagan, and Johnny pulled their horses up to a large aspen fronting the shack, where one other horse was tied, a figure moved inside the dark shack. Chick Beacham limped up to the open doorway, using an aspen branch for a cane, and leaned against the casing. He wore a wool coat and a blanket over the coat, hanging off his shoulders.

  His left foot was wrapped in a thick makeshift bandage of old rags.

  He wasn’t wearing his hat. His dark hair stood up in spikes around his head as though he’d been lying down, which he probably had been. The bandages on his bullet-torn foot were bloody. He probably wasn’t feeling very well.

  “I’ll be damned if you didn’t find him,” Beacham said as his three partners swung down from their saddles. In his free hand, he held a bottle. He lifted the bottle and took a long pull, several bubbles plunging to the bottom.

  He lowered the bottle and smacked his lips.

  Johnny replied, “We rode into town to fetch him like you said, Chick, but then we saw him pullin’ out of town. Figured we’d follow him. You know, in case he led us to the cache. Instead, he found himself a little trout pool up Old Grand Dad Canyon and fished!”

  Johnny wagged his head and chuckled, glancing at Sartain as though they’d caught him playing with himself. He reached up and cut the ropes binding Sartain’s wrists to his saddle horn, then stepped back quickly as though he’d just opened a wildcat’s cage.

  “Caught a nice one,” Sartain said. “If you fellas would have showed up a little sooner, I’d have shared.”

  “Shut the hell up and come down off there,” Hagan said, dramatically cocking his carbine one-handed.

  “Why didn’t you say so?” Sartain swung down from the saddle.

  Beacham smiled without humor, turned sideways, and beckoned. Then he drifted off into the shack’s thick shadows.

  While the taciturn Dominguez tied the horses, Hagan and Johnny held their carbines on Sartain, keeping themselves clear of a quick, slashing assault, which is exactly what The Revenger had in mind.