Sartain shook off the ear-ringing blow and slammed his own right fist against Scanlon’s grinning mouth, laying open the bottom lip. Sartain, who’d learned to fight while growing up in the hurdy-gurdy houses and back alleys of New Orleans’s French Quarter, shuffled lithely forward and quickly laid his right fist against Scanlon’s right eye.
He kept moving forward, wanting to keep his opponent backpedaling and reeling, to bombard him so quickly that shock and surprise was as much a weapon as relentlessly hammering fists.
Scanlon moved forward, raising his own fists once more but Sartain snaked his own left through his opponent’s defenses and split the man’s upper lip before hammering the killer’s nose with the same fist and then bringing up a haymaker from his right knee and hammering the eye already swelling from his previous assault.
Scanlon wheezed, staggered sideways, and grimaced with the effort of remaining upright.
Sartain continued to move in on the man, faking another left jab and then burying his right fist in the man’s belly. Scanlon jackknifed as though bowing to his opponent, who rewarded the gesture with a hard blow to each of the man’s temples, violently jerking his head and hips to each side.
The solid smacks resounded in the woods otherwise silent except for the low moaning of the wind and the ticking of the snow off the tree trunks.
“Holy crap!” Scanlon screamed, shuffling backward.
Following with relentless determination, Sartain hammered the man’s face once, twice, three more times with resounding, smacking crosses. He would have delivered one more blow, but his left fist found only air as Scanlon, yowling, tripped over a log and fell hard, the snow-covered branches of a fallen tree crackling beneath him.
Scanlon lay breathing hard in the snowy brush, his chest and belly rising and falling wildly, his breath frosting in the air above his bloody, bearded face.
“Okay...all right,” he wheezed. “All right!”
Sartain rubbed a fist against his bloody lips. He felt another slight cut on his right cheek. He’d live. He walked over and picked up the Henry, racked a round into the chamber and aimed down at Scanlon.
“Hey!” the killer yelled, holding his hands up, palms out. “I give! I give! You got me, you crazy son of the devil!”
Sartain drew his index finger back against the trigger. The compulsion to kill his prey was so strong, so automatic, so habitual that he almost let the hammer drop. At the last quarter-second, he eased the tension in his finger, lowered the Henry. He, too, was breathing hard not only from the vigor of the fight but from the lust for revenge bubbling in his veins like molten steel.
Scanlon was staring up at him in horror from around his open hands.
“No, I won’t kill you,” The Revenger said. “I promised Elaine Rafferty I’d bring you back to her alive and hang you from a tree over Jim’s grave.”
“What?” the killer said, incredulous, slowly lowering his hands from his face. “Who the hell are you, anyway?”
“Mike Sartain. Some call me The Revenger.”
“The Reven...” Scanlon let his voice trail off. “Hellkatoot. I heard of you. You track folks for—”
“For other folks who can’t do it themselves,” Sartain finished for the man. “Apparently, no one around Central City wanted to tangle with you, Scanlon.” He grinned. “Ain’t so with me. Climb up outta there, now. You an’ me are gonna head back to Central City, pay a little visit to Elaine Rafferty...and the grave of the good man you killed.”
“You’re crazier’n I am.” Scanlon grunted as he struggled out of the snowy brush and branches, blood dripping from his face. He paused to pull a long, deeply embedded shard of glass from his cheek, howling.
When he’d finally gained his feet, he probed his right cheek with the first two fingers of his right hand. He held snow to the worst of the bloody wounds. “I need a sawbones. Bad.”
Sartain waved the Winchester and canted his head toward the ranch yard. “Move. We’re moseyin’ back...”
He let his voice trail off when he saw smoke rising from beyond the cottonwoods. Orange flames danced in the direction of the cabin.
“Now look what you gone and done. You went and burned them old peoples’ house down!” Scanlon chuckled.
Sartain remembered the bracket lamp.
“That’s all right,” he said. “You made sure those two old people wouldn’t be needing it any longer. Move, Scanlon, or I’ll shoot out one of your kneecaps. I promised Elaine I’d bring you back alive, not necessarily healthy.”
“Holy crap.” Scanlon studied his captor with dark speculation. “You really are crazy. Crazier’n me, even.”
Sartain grinned.
He followed his captive through the snowy brush in the direction of the burning cabin.
* * *
Sartain trailed Scanlon around the burning ranch house to the barn, where he made the killer saddle his own horse. “My coat, hat, and gloves was inside the cabin you burned,” the killer complained. “I’m gonna need warmer clothes than what I got on, or I’ll freeze to death.”
“Like I said,” Sartain said in his slow, Cajun drawl, “I told Jim’s widow I’d take you back alive, not necessarily healthy. Elaine won’t mind if you freeze your nose and ears off, maybe a few fingers and a toe or two.”
Scanlon cursed as he finished saddling his coyote dun.
“Now, what am I gonna do about a coat?”
“Take one of your dead partners’ bedrolls and drape it over your shoulders.”
Scanlon gave a disgusted chuff, then went over and pulled a tied bedroll out of a pile of tack in a barn corner. He wrapped the blanket over his shoulders and looked at Sartain, who smiled at him.
“You’re a crazy son of a buck, but then I never did know a Cajun who weren’t crazier’n a tree full of owls.”
“Mount up.”
When Scanlon had heaved himself into his saddle, Sartain led the dun out of the barn. He fished a set of handcuffs out of Boss’s saddlebags and tossed them to his prisoner.
“There you go. You’ll look nice in those.”
“I can’t ride a horse with cuffs on.”
“Sure you can.” Sartain cocked the Henry and aimed at the killer’s belly. “Now, do it.”
Scanlon gave another chuff, shook his head, and clicked the bracelets onto his wrists. Taking his own bridle reins as well as Scanlon’s, Sartain heaved himself into his saddle. He looked back at his prisoner.
“You comfortable?”
“Diddle yourself, Sartain.”
“That’s what I thought,” the Cajun said, reining Boss around behind the barn and out into the yard, angling toward where the trail jogged off to the west.
The cabin was consumed by the roaring flames that lapped like a dragon’s breath, snow melting for several feet out around it.
“Too damn stormy to be travelin’, Sartain,” Scanlon said as they left the yard, leaning forward to grip his saddle horn with both hands as the Cajun gigged the horses into a canter. “We need to get somewhere warm, hole up till the blizzard passes. No man in his right mind travels in western Nebraska with it this cold, this much snow comin’ down. Crap, you’re a Southerner, for chrissakes!”
“That I am, Scanlon. But that don’t mean I mind a few snowflakes.”
“A few snowflakes? Look at this stuff. And all I got is this bedroll. My cheeks and fingers is already numb!”
“Hope you’re tongue numbs up soon,” Sartain called back to the man, “or I’m gonna cut it out. I’m already tired of your company, and like I told Elaine Rafferty—”
“I know, I know, you’d bring me back alive but not necessarily healthy!” Scanlon threw his head back and howled like a gut-shot coyote. “Good God, you’re a crazy son of a buck!”
The man’s howl echoed.
But, no, that wasn’t an echo, The Revenger thought as he turned to stare south, the direction from which the sound he’d heard had come from. It had sounded like Scanlon’s own yell, only more distant.<
br />
But it hadn’t been an echo, because there was nothing to cause an echo out there. There was nothing around them but distant, rolling hills covered in short, blond grass spiking out of the snow.
The sound came again, reassuring Sartain that what he’d heard before had not been an echo.
Behind him, Scanlon said, “Did you hear that?”
“Yeah, I heard it.” Sartain jerked his coat collar higher against the increasing cold. “Probably a coyote, maybe a lone wolf.”
Why didn’t he think so?
Chapter 3
Sartain pushed both horses hard to the west, wanting to reach the little town of Sundance, which had a train station and a hotel. He could hole up in the hotel, near a warm fire, until the next train pulled through, heading on west to Denver before catching a spur line to Central City.
As he and Scanlon rode up and down the hills, angling toward a stage road that Sartain knew would take him to Sundance, because he’d ridden through the little jerkwater only three days ago, he didn’t hear the oddly pitched howl again. So, he tried not to think about it. It had probably only been a coyote or a wolf, anyway—what else could it have been?—though there had been a strangely human-sounding undertone to it.
All right, a strange-sounding coyote or a strange-sounding wolf. What of it?
He couldn’t deny a faint twinge of unease, however.
The snow continued, growing gradually thicker and closing his field of vision. The wind increased, pelting The Revenger’s cheeks almost painfully with the javelin-like flakes. Enough of it had fallen now that it was beginning to form drifts on the leeward sides of the hills, fashioning what appeared to be frothy crowns of frozen waves on the hilltops.
Both men hunkered low in their saddles as Sartain pushed on, holding his own reins in his right hand, the reins of his captive’s horse in his left hand.
“Come on, Sartain,” Scanlon complained when they’d ridden another mile. “What’re you tryin’ to prove? All right, you’re a tough son of a buck. But it’s getting dark and, as you can see, the storm ain’t got any let-up in it. I say we head to low ground and build a fire!”
“Shut up,” the Cajun snarled, jerking the man’s horse along behind him.
He wanted to make that train station, get Scanlon on to Elaine Rafferty, who was likely waiting for him in her parlor, clad in her widow’s weeds.
But after another half hour of tough plodding, it was too dark to see the land around him even if the snow hadn’t closed curtains down in a close circle about thirty feet in all directions. He gigged Boss down the west side of a haystack-shaped butte and into a shaggy ravine at the bottom.
He stopped the horses, and after he had Scanlon tied to a tree, his wrists and ankles secured, he tended them, dropping the tack near what he intended to be their makeshift camp. Quickly, shivering against the penetrating chill and wincing against the pelting, windblown snow, he dug a hole, formed a stone ring around it, gathered relatively dry wood, and used bark and feather sticks thinned with his ax to build a fire.
“That’s it,” said Scanlon, leaning as close to the fire as his bindings would allow, smiling luxuriously as he let the heat press against him. “That’s the way. You an’ me is amigos. Oh, Lordy, that feels good!”
“Shut up, amigo,” The Revenger said, turning away to gather more wood. The storm was likely to stick around for the night, so he’d need as much wood as he could find in the thick, snow-covered brush. “I want a nice, peaceful, quiet night out here, you understand?”
“That mean we ain’t gonna sit around the fire and tell each other our life stories? Who we stole our first kisses from, what little ladies first got our dicks wet? That sorta thing?”
“Oh, I didn’t say that,” said the Cajun as he strode off into the snowy brush. “I’m just sayin’ don’t go thinkin’ we’re friends.” He grinned over his shoulder. “Me? I’ll be slappin’ your horse out from under your ass and clappin’ while you’re dancin’ a jig in mid-air over Jim Rafferty’s grave!”
“You gotta get me there first, Sartain!” the killer shouted at The Revenger’s back, against the howling wind. “That’s a far piece, and a lot can happen between here and Rafferty’s grave!”
Ignoring the man’s threat, Sartain kicked through the brush until he’d gathered another armful of burnable wood. He dragged a large, dead cottonwood branch with many web-like secondary branches back to the camp and set it beside the crackling flames. Rummaging around in his gear, he erected an iron tripod over the flames, filled a coffee pot with water and Arbuckles, and hung it from the hook to boil.
The long, red fingers of the flames brushed the underside of the pot, which immediately started sighing.
“I’m hungry,” stated Scanlon.
“Shut up.” The Revenger said, pulling a couple chunks of deer jerky from a small burlap pouch. He’d bought the jerky from a market hunter along the trail near Busted Butte. He sat on a log beside the fire and smiled at Scanlon as he chewed the jerky. “We’ll see how you behave, and then I might cook us up some bacon and beans.”
“Oh, Lordy, that sounds good!” Scanlon said, grimacing hungrily and shifting around on his butt, staring at the jerky in the Cajun’s gloved hand.
Sartain had just filled his own coffee cup and was filling one for Scanlon when the wailing howl sounded again beneath the wind. The Cajun jerked his head up so quickly, nudging the coffee pot, that he spilled coffee over the rim of Scanlon’s cup.
“There it is again,” Scanlon said in a voice hushed with awe. “Did you hear it?”
Again, it came—a mewling, slightly ululating wail. Like some wounded beast dying painfully, slowly, somewhere off in the windy, murky, steel-gray distance.
“Yeah,” Sartain said.
After a few tense moments, Scanlon turned his head slowly to Sartain and said, “Must’ve followed us.” He paused as though considering the idea, his eyes widening as the thought grew in his head, and he didn’t like the size and shape of it. “Must be trackin’ us, whatever it is.”
“Don’t get your shorts in a twist, Scanlon—big, tough hombre like you. A man who shoots a sheriff while he’s sitting down to lunch with his wife shouldn’t get all torn up over some gut-shot coyote.”
The Revenger gave a caustic snort.
“Go to hell, Sartain. The dirty dog had it comin’.”
“Only because he arrested you for a good reason. You should still be behind bars. If you were, Jim wouldn’t be dead, and Elaine wouldn’t be a widow.”
Again, the cry came fluttering through the wind like a bizarre little bird. A strangely eerie, moaning cry, half-howl, half-mewl.
“Crap,” Scanlon said.
“Don’t soil your trousers. The poor beast probably smells us on the wind, figures where there’s men, there’s food.”
“I don’t know. Not sure that sounded like a coyote.” Scanlon turned to stare darkly off into the windy murk. “A wolf, maybe. Who knows how many are out there?”
“They’ll stay away from the fire. Sounds like only one to me, anyway. As long as I keep the fire built up, we’ll be fine.”
Sartain rose from the log and shoved one of the filled coffee cups into the prisoner’s hand. He gave him a couple of chunks of jerky. “Looks like that’ll have to do us both tonight. The smell of beans and bacon might only bring closer whatever’s out there.”
Scanlon bit off a piece of the jerky and, chewing hungrily, his eyes wide with anxiety. “Bear, you thinkin’?”
The thought had crossed Sartain’s mind. Black bears, as well as grizzlies, were known to prowl the prairie river bottoms in the summer, often heading back to the Rockies only to den up for the winter. It was getting late in the fall, but there could still be one or two bruins still lingering out here. Maybe it or they got the calendar in their heads confused.
The Cajun shrugged and sat back down on his log. He blew ripples on his coffee and sipped the hot brew.
“You can sit there all calm as you please,�
� Scanlon bit out, “but I’m cuffed, shackled, and tied to this tree! A bear comes into camp, I’m like bait in a trap!”
Again, The Revenger cast the man a devilish grin. “Don’t worry, Scanlon. I’ll take good care of you.”
“You’d better. Remember, the widder’s waitin’ for me by Rafferty’s grave!”
Sartain was about to remind the man that he’d made no promises about Scanlon’s condition but held the words in his throat when a heavy, thrashing crunch rose from the brush behind Scanlon, maybe only twenty, thirty yards away. The sounds died. Then there was only the wind, the blowing snow, and the dancing flames, but the presence of some near beast was now palpable.
Sartain felt crickets of apprehension hopscotch along his backbone.
Scanlon cursed as Sartain reached for his rifle.
The Revenger quietly pumped a cartridge into his rifle’s breach as he rose from the log and stepped slowly back away from the fire. As he turned toward where the thrashing sounds had come from, Scanlon said in a hushed but enervated voice, “You gotta cut me loose from this tree, Sartain! He’s out there, and he’s close, and whatever the hell he is, he’s a big son of a buck!”
“Shut up,” the Cajun said as he moved slowly off into the darkness, the light of the fire dancing around his boots and glinting off the feathery snow.
“He’s big, and he’s lookin’ for a meal, Sartain!”
“Shut up,” the Cajun repeated mildly as, holding the cocked Henry high across his chest, he slipped off into the brush, stopping about ten feet from the fire, and looked around.
It was nearly dark. Only faint shafts of gray light remained, but the shadows were thickening. Branches bobbed and thrashed in the wind. He could see a tangle of standing and fallen timber straight out away from him, dancing shrubs to his right and left. Beyond, he thought he could make out an opening in the woods where a creek likely meandered.
He cocked his head, frowning, listening intently.
Nothing but the natural sounds of the weather.
Sartain sniffed the breeze. He’d once smelled a bear that had been a hundred or so yards away from him, as the wind had been strong and all of his senses had become keener in the time since his lover and her grandfather had been murdered in the Arizona desert and he’d tracked the killers and executed them without mercy. The butchers had been soldiers, so now he had a federal bounty on his head. Many men—lawmen as well as bounty hunters—had come after him to their own sweet but short-lived sorrow.
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