Dead Man's Trail (9781101606957) (13 page)

Chapter 17

“Someone's comin',” said a man squatting atop the cutbank, across from where Floyd Betajack, Claw Hendricks, and their near-dozen men were lounging around two small cook fires.

It was sometime in the very early morning.

Some of the men were snoring under animal skins and hats; others were playing cards. One—Miguel “Wolf” Calabasas—slowly strummed a mandolin with surprising sonorousness for a man who'd killed enough men to make him wanted in nearly every territory west of the Mississippi and in several Mexican provinces.

He was the best of Betajack's men—one of about seven he still had on his roll. An old gun hand from Santa Cruz, he was even a better killer than Albert Delmonte. Betajack was getting too old to do much bank, train, or payroll robbing or rustling anymore, so he'd been legitimizing his ranch business, actually bringing some seed bulls over from Missouri, until Dave Neumiller had arrested Betajack's oldest son, Pres, for stealing horses after the sheriff had killed two of Pres's partners. A trumped-up charge, that. Cold-blooded murder.

Now the veteran of the War of Northern Aggression needed every good gun he had left on his roll, and on Claw Hendricks's roll, too, though Betajack had grudgingly partnered up with the man. Betajack saw Hendricks as a wild grizzly, mostly rogue—one of the younger breed of outlaw with few principles. Claw hired men like himself—dull-witted, cold-steel artists—who were better at murder and rape than stealing. Send the pistoleros to Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, was how Betajack saw such nonsense.

You didn't need men who were randy as hogs and fast with a gun. You needed men who could shoot straight without hesitating when the chips were down.

The old war veteran and train robber scoffed at the whole affair, and grunted as he heaved his old, creaking bones up out of his deerskins, cursing his age. It was cold out here, and his fifty-three-year-old marrow felt frozen solid. He hitched his double-gun rig around his ever-broadening waist, under his long buffalo coat, slid his knives into the sheaths strapped to his chest, and walked over to the base of the bank.

“Who is it?” he asked the man squatting there, beside a gnarled cedar.

They had only one man on scout, because they had three more positioned closer to the stage passengers' camp. It was highly unlikely any of the passengers, including the half-breed, would try to turn the tables and bushwhack them, Betajack and Hendricks.

“Two men,” said Wiley Scroll, one of Hendricks's boys from Oklahoma. The lone scout stood and walked out a ways from the cedar and the dry wash, cradling his carbine in his crossed arms. The vapor of his breath jetted around his hatted head.

Claw Hendricks yawned and came over from his own spread gear, smoothing a lock of dark red hair back from his scarred, freckled forehead and donning his black opera hat. He thumped his rose-colored glasses up his nose, and said, “Prob'ly grub-line riders out of work since the roundup. Send 'em on their way, Scroll.”

“If it's grub-line riders,” Scroll said, “they ain't ridin'. They appear to be
walkin'
.”

Hendricks had started to turn away, but now he turned to face northwest again. He glanced at Betajack, but the old train robber squinted into the night, even his old ears now picking up the soft thumps of men walking toward him. His old eyes picked up the silhouettes of—sure enough—men
walking
toward the wash. Two men. Walking about ten feet apart. White socks shone in the darkness.

“What the hell . . . ?” said Sonny, coming up behind his father, tucking his tangled blond hair under his hat.

Sonny climbed the bank in three strides. Betajack climbed halfway up, but he lost his footing and lurched backward. Throwing an arm up, he said, “Help me here, damn it!”

Hendricks half turned and he and Sonny quickly grabbed the older man's arms and pulled the grunting, wheezing Betajack on up the side of the wash. “You all right?” Hendricks asked, chuckling wryly as the older outlaw caught his breath.

Betajack gave a caustic snort, jerked his arms out of the younger men's grips, and walked forward until he was standing left of Scroll. Hendricks walked up to stand left of Betajack, as did Sonny, all four staring at the two men now walking heavily toward them, the vapor of their strained breath visible. They were sighing and grunting and breathing hard, dragging their feet. One of the socks of the man on the right had curled down over the end of his foot, and he was half dragging it as he walked.

The two stopped about ten feet in front of Betajack, Sonny, Hendricks, and Scroll. The others were moving up out of the wash to stand around behind them, curious. Calabasas had stopped strumming the mandolin he took with him everywhere.

Hendricks placed his fists on his hips as he said, “
Simms?
Soot?
That
you
? Where's your damn
horses
?”

The beefy gent in a low-crowned sombrero merely hung his head, leaning forward, slouching wearily, thick arms hanging straight down before him.

The black man, Soot Early, said, “Got caught unawares, Mistuh Claw.”

“You got caught with your pants down, you mean!” This from Betajack, who stared at both men with his lower jaw hanging.

Sonny laughed.

“Shut up, Sonny,” said Betajack.

Sonny scowled.

“You fellas were supposed to be watching that stage so's you could let us know when they pulled out!” Hendricks had lunged forward like an angry bulldog, barking the words. “You were supposed to sit tight, keep an eye on them people!” He pointed in the general direction of the stage passengers' camp. His face was concealed by the darkness, but Betajack knew the man was embarrassed by the negligence of his crew so far, when he'd been wanting so hard to prove what a great outlaw he was. A great outlaw himself and a
leader
to others.

Simms said nothing. He stood with his chin dipped toward his chest, his broad hat covering his face. Soot Early doffed his own hat and held it over his chest as though in supplication to a couple of higher powers. “Mistuh Claw, Mistuh Betajacks, suhs, we wasn't jumped by just anybody. We was jumped by the green-eyed half-breed.”

“So?” said Betajack and Hendricks simultaneously, scowling their exasperation.

“His name's Henry, suhs,” Simms said, the whites of his eyes reflecting the light of the fire flickering behind Betajack, Sonny, Hendricks, Scroll, and the other men who'd spread out along the bank of the wash. “Yakima Henry.”

Betajack looked at Hendricks. “Mean anything to you?”

“Nah,” said the big man in the top hat, shaking his head slowly as he stared at the two men standing before him like castigated schoolboys. “Nah, I never . . .” He let his voice trail off before raking his thumb back and forth across the nub of his chin. “Wait a minute. . . . Yeah . . . yeah, I've heard of a Yakima Henry. A gun wolf. Damn near wiped out an entire gang of desperadoes down in Arizona, because they stole his horse. Did some work down in Mexico, too, against the
Rurales
, I heard. Really piled up the bodies.” Hendricks nodded slowly. “Yeah, I heard of him.”

“All right, so you heard of him. And you left him alive when you could have blown them two green eyes out of his head back in Wolfville!”

“Ah, hell, it don't matter,” said Hendricks, holding up his hands, palm out, trying to soothe the old man's ruffled feathers. “He's just one man. A man like any other. True, I made a mistake and he's caused us some problems, but I'll make it good, Floyd. I'll make it good!”

He enjoyed calling Betajack “Floyd” in front of their men, to show how close they'd become.

“Suhs,” Early said. “He told me an' Kitchen here to tell you that if you keep after that stage, he's going to see to it he kills the both of you.”

Betajack stared blankly at the black pistoleer, as did Hendricks, who gave an uncertain chuckle.

“Good to know,” Betajack said, not liking the faint note of apprehension he heard being strummed in the back of his head. Where the hell had that come from? Had he gotten so old he feared the threat of one severely outgunned half-breed? “Good to know,” he added, louder, thrusting his shoulders back. “But he's the one who's gonna die hard. No, sir, no man's ever died harder than he's gonna die, and that's
bond
!”

“Pa, that's what you done said—”

“Shut up, Sonny!” intoned both Betajack and Hendricks, making the little blond, oddly feminine coyote flush and scowl at the ground again.

“What about these two damn pullet-brained, tinhorn heel-squatters?” Betajack asked Hendricks, pointing at the two bootless men before him.

“What about them?” Hendricks said, seemingly glad to have the subject changed. “I'll tell you how I handle this sorta thing. This here is how I handle it.”

Two of his pistols were in his hands in a lightning flash. They resembled a lightning flash, too. Two lightning flashes lapping simultaneously at Early and Simms, the reports sounding like cannon fire in the quiet night.

Kitchen and Simms screamed and flew straight backward as the .45 slugs shredded their hearts. They hit the ground on their backs, side by side, groaning and kicking their stocking feet as though trying to gain their feet and run.

But they were all done running.

The men behind Betajack and Hendricks muttered and mumbled, shifting around uncomfortably. Hendricks ignored them as he turned toward his colleague and respected mentor. “That how you do it?”

Betajack looked at the two fast-dying and still-quivering men on the ground before him, and grinned. He spared a fond look at his younger partner. “You'll do, Claw. You'll do.”

Hendricks took that as a compliment. He spun his smoking pistols and dropped them into their holsters with a flourish.

“Want us to ride over and hit 'em, Pa?” asked Sonny, reclaiming his self-respect. “Hit 'em hard? Kill the half-breed and bring Mendenhour over here so we can stretch some hemp and get back home in time for Christmas?”

“What's the matter, son—you got some sparkin' to do back in Wolfville? Maybe enjoy another visit to the Silk Slipper?” Betajack grinned crookedly at his younger and, as of two days ago, his only boy. “Enjoyed that, did you?”

Betajack always swelled with pride when Sonny showed hints of genuine manliness. Sonny hesitated, shrugged. “Just see no point in draggin' things out. They're stranded over there without a wheel. Now, why don't we go over there and—”

Crack!

The sharp report of the old outlaw's open right hand slammed across his son's left cheek caused all the killers around him to take one step straight back with sudden starts. Even Hendricks reacted, arching his brows above his glasses.

“Mendenhour done hanged my older boy for no good reason, and you 'spect me to make it
easy
for him? You 'spect me to make it
quick
?
So you can get home for
Christmas
?”

Sonny held a hand to his left cheek and stared at his father, who was about three inches taller than Sonny was, and much broader, as well. Floyd Betajack was built like a bare-knuckle fighter—a lightning-fast pummeler—and he had the soul-deep reckless, unpredictable edge for it, too. Sonny knew that when you crossed him, however unwittingly, you just stood there and kept your mouth shut and hoped the storm blew itself out fast, and that you still had all your limbs, both balls, and your tongue on the other side of it.

“No, no,” Betajack said. “We're gonna make this slow. That lawyer is sweatin' salt licks over there by now, holed up out in the cold with his wife. He knows we could hit him whenever we want.” He shook his head slowly as he stepped forward and looked westward. “No, no. We ain't gonna make this easy on him at all.”

Silence except for the milling of the horses in the brush on the wash's far side. The fire snapped and sputtered. A coyote began yammering from maybe a hundred yards away, as though in eerie accompaniment to Betajack's words.

“No, this ain't gonna be easy for Mendenhour. In fact, I know a way to make it even harder.” Betajack turned to look at the men standing around behind him, including his sullen younger son and the bearded Claw Hendricks in his glasses and top hat and long horse-hair coat. “Anyone got a white flag of some kind? Part of a white sheet?”

They all just stared at him, as though he'd gone mad.

That struck him as funny. For the first time since learning that his older boy, Pres, had been hanged by Neumiller and Mendenhour, Floyd Betajack clapped his hands and laughed.

“Forget Christmas, Sonny,” he said, tugging the kid's hat brim down over his eyes. “You wasn't gettin' nothin', anyways.”

Betajack laughed again. The others laughed with him, albeit nervously. All except Sonny, that is.

Chapter 18

“Come on down here, breed,” the shotgun messenger repeated. “Come on down here. Let's chat. Men to breed.”

Someone else chuckled.

Yakima sighed, gained his feet, then leaped lithely down off the top of the scarp. He held his Yellowboy in his right hand as he walked down out of the tight corridor of rocks to where Coble and the two drummers, Kearny and Sook, stood at the scarp's edge.

Both drummers wore pistols that Yakima had provided from the Betajack-Hendricks men—the grips protruding from their coat pockets. Coble had his own pistol holstered on his right hip, and one of the new weapons wedged behind his cartridge belt, over his shaggy, molting wolf coat. He held a double-barreled sawed-off shotgun up high against his chest.

He wore a nasty glint in his little eyes as he said, “We wanna get a few things straight, breed.”

“All right, let's straighten things out.”

“What's your beef with Betajack and Hendricks?”

Yakima canted his head to one side. “What do you think it is?”

The older, fatter drummer, Kearny, said, “We'd like to hear it from you, if you don't mind.”

“We noticed you had a mighty full saddlebag pouch,” said the other, younger drummer, Kimble Sook, standing to the left of the beefy shotgunner, smiling knowingly. “We was wondering if . . .”

“Shut up, Sook,” said Coble, keeping his bright, challenging eyes on Yakima. “We wanna hear it from him.”

“All you're going to hear from me is the sound of my fist hammering your face if you don't walk away, Coble. I've had enough of your shit.” Yakima slid his hard jade gaze from one drummer to the other standing with the fur of their heavy coats and the brims of their shabby bowler hats blowing in the cold morning breeze. “You two really want in on this?”

Their faces were red from the cold, but they turned a shade darker. Hesitation touched their eyes.

“That how you want it?” asked Coble. “Bare knuckles?”

“That's how you seem to want it,” Yakima said.

“All right,” the shotgunner said, and lowered his coach gun. “I'll set this down if you set that Winchester down, and then we'll go at it like—”

“Coble!”

The shotgunner stopped and turned to his left. The old man with the tangled beard hanging to his belly, Elijah Weatherford, stood thirty yards away. He held one of the rifles Yakima had hauled in. He was scowling bright-eyed at the shotgunner, who barked, “Can't you see I'm busy over here, old man?”

Weatherford jerked his head to indicate behind him, where Adlard and Mendenhour stepped out from the mouth of a corridor in the caprock and stared toward Yakima's party.

“Adlard's headin' out to fetch the wheel. Maybe you could take up your business later?”

Adlard said something to Mendenhour, then beckoned to Coble and started down the hill toward the crease, where the horses were picketed amongst the aspens and pines.

Coble looked at Yakima. “We'll talk again”—his eyes flicked at something in the niche behind Yakima—“'bout you and the gold.”

Yakima glanced over his right shoulder. The pouch about the size of a five-pound sugar sack sat on the ground, leaning against a side of the stony niche, where Yakima had put it before he'd delivered the saddlebags to the passengers. He looked back at the shotgun messenger, who grinned foxily.

“So it is gold,” Coble said. “I figured that hump in one of your saddlebag pouches was either that or a man's head. Just a hunch, but I'm right, ain't I?”

Yakima felt his jaw harden. “You're playin' it mighty close to the edge, Coble. But, yeah, anytime you like.”

Coble turned and stomped away. The drummer glanced warily at Yakima and then hurried along behind him. Meanwhile, the old prospector walked toward Yakima, the ends of the thick green scarf tying his wool watch cap to his head blowing in the breeze.

“Don't tell me you're in with them,” Yakima said wearily.

“I ain't in with nobody. But you'd best watch your back, mister.”

“Tell me somethin' I don't already know—Weatherford, ain't it?”

He nodded. “You're Yakima Henry?”

Yakima frowned, puzzled. “That's right.”

Weatherford gave him a look of vaguely fond remembrance.

Yakima stared at him, the wind blowing the half-breed's long black hair around the scarf he had tied over his ears and knotted beneath his chin, strands touching cheeks he could no longer feel because of the cold. “You got me at a disadvantage, friend.”

“I was one of the freighters drifting through Thornton's Roadhouse now and then. Seen you workin' there. I was there, in fact, the night them fellas tried to cut that whore you saved and ended up havin' to shoot your way out of the place with, on account o' the white men you sent to Glory.” Weatherford looked around, closing his shaggy gray brows down over his liquid blue eyes, puzzled. “What was her name? Hell, some mornin's I wake up and can't remember my own till I've had a cup of whiskey.”

“Faith.”

Weatherford's eyes blazed. “That was the one! A favorite around Thornton's. Whatever happened to her?”

“Died.”

Yakima's voice was flat, dull. It betrayed little of the sorrow that had staked out a permanent claim in his heart over these three long years since he'd buried her on the ranch they'd been starting in Arizona, before Thornton's bounty hunters had taken her, and Thornton himself had killed her.

“Ah, that's too bad.” The old man studied Yakima. His eyes said he wanted to ask how it had happened, but he'd been alive long enough to know that some questions were best left unspoken. Instead, he just said with a sigh, “Well, that's the way of it. This is probably the end of us. I spent the past two years steering clear of both Claw Hendricks and Floyd Betajack while I worked my hole over on Ute Creek, and now here when I'm headin' up to Belle Fourche for my first Christmas in eight years with my only daughter, they're dustin' my trail. Thrown in together. Imagine that.”

“I don't have to,” Yakima said.

“And all because of Mendenhour.”

“That's a fact.”

“If we was smart men, Mr. Henry, we'd throw that lawyer to 'em. Let 'em feed on his uppity carcass.” Weatherford gave a foxy grin.

“I've thought about it,” Yakima said.

“Ah, hell,” the oldster said, covering a yawn with a buckskin glove through the holes of which shone another, second wool glove in nearly the same disrepair as the first. “I reckon this is the price we pay for law and order on the old frontier, ain't it?”

“I reckon.” Yakima thought about what the two cutthroats had told him about the man Mendenhour had hanged. What if what they'd said were true—that Pres Betajack had been innocent of the crimes he'd been accused of?

Weatherford turned and sauntered off along the scarp, back in the direction from which he'd come, toward where the women must be holed up. Stopping, he looked back at Yakima. “Adlard and Coble are headin' off to fetch a wheel. I reckon now is when they could hit us.”

“You know how to use that thing, Mr. Weatherford?”

“This here?” Weatherford held up the rifle and ran an appreciative hand down the barrel. “Hell, in the Little Misunderstandin' Between the States, I could knock the tail off a rabbit with what compared to this would be considered a slingshot.”

Yakima nodded. The man sauntered off along the scarp, then strode carefully, a little awkwardly down the hill and into the crease where the stage horses were tied to a long picket line.

Yakima was about to head back up to the top of the escarpment to keep watch over the area when he saw another figure move toward him from out of a niche in the rock wall capping the bluff. Glendolene walked toward him with a smoking cup in one hand, his saddlebags thrown over the opposite shoulder. The wind and the gray light of morning silvered the fur of her long bear coat that was almost the same deep, rich color of her hair.

“Thanks for your possibles,” she said as she approached, regarding him thoughtfully.

He took the bags from her, draped them over his own shoulder. Offering the cup, the steam from which drifted up like pale snakes to caress her smooth, cold-reddened cheeks, she said, “I thought you could use a hot cup of coffee. Fresh brewed.”

“Thanks.”

He stared at her through the steam of the cup. She stared back at him. Her lips quirked a wry smile, and she shook her head slowly. “Funny, isn't it . . . ?”

“I'm not laughing.”

Her eyes acquired a wistful cast as she said, “Yakima, I—”

Her husband's voice cut her off. “Glendolene?”

She swung around with a start. Mendenhour was poking his head out of the niche from which she'd come. He held the second rifle that Yakima had brought back to the group.

“I'll be right there, Lee,” she said, glancing once more at Yakima before walking back along the edge of the scarp.

Yakima watched her go. Mendenhour stood beyond her, facing Yakima, a scowl on his face as he regarded the half-breed curiously, puffing on a fat cigar. Yakima pinched his hat brim to the man, then turned and walked into his niche and picked up the sack of gold. He stuck it into his saddlebags, buckled the strap over the pouch, then walked out of the niche and down the hill to where Wolf grazed from a picket pin, about fifty yards south of the stage horses.

He saddled the horse, tossed the saddlebags onto its back, and stepped into the leather. He rode up the grade and back onto the trail where the stage sat, tongue drooping, unharassed. Looking around carefully for any sign of the stalkers, wondering how well Betajack and Claw Hendricks had received his message, he put the horse off the trail's west side and booted Wolf into a lope.

Twice, he circled the stage from about half a mile out. On the second trip, he approached the hill with its caprock from the east and reined up when he saw a figure sitting on a rock outside the escarpment, on the backside of the bluff from the crease in which the stage horses had been staked. He could see the long buffalo coat and her long hair blowing in the wind beneath her fur hat.

She turned her head toward him. Her face was a pale oval beneath her hat from this distance of seventy yards or so. He held her gaze, as she held his. Wolf snorted, stomped, lowered his head and shook it, jangling the bit chains. She continued to look toward him.

He felt a tightness in the pit of his gut.

He heard the soft chime of her laugh from one of their nights together in the line shack. He heard her groan. Saw the firelight caressing her bare breasts as they'd lain together on the floor in front of the hearth.

He reined Wolf around the north edge of the bluff, dropped into the crease between the hills. At the bottom of the crease, he stopped.

Mendenhour, Weatherford, and the two drummers were out there, standing near a small fire to keep warm while they guarded the horses, their pistols shoved into coat pockets. Mendenhour was smoking his cigar, looking awkward and out of place out there in his tailored sheepskin coat, beaver hat, new brown boots, and carefully trimmed beard. His hands were gloved in the finest leather. His hat was being dusted by a very light snowfall from a sky the color of wood smoke.

The others just looked cold and fearful and generally miserable as they awaited the new wheel for the stage.

Yakima put Wolf up the slope and back onto the trail. He looked around carefully, ready to reach for the sheathed Yellowboy at any time, but nothing moved out there amidst the bluffs and sage-stippled hogbacks rolling in nearly all directions to dark blue mountains. What were Betajack and Hendricks waiting for?

Had Yakima's promise scared them?

Doubtful. It might have given them pause, though, if one or both were aware of his history. If they came now, they'd no doubt get exactly what they wanted, but he'd be damned if they wouldn't get him at a hefty price. They probably knew that.

What was their plan?

A man shouted to the north, and Yakima cast his gaze in that direction. A buckboard wagon was coming around a bend in the trail, pulled by a big roan and trailing two fresh stage horses, all three horses galloping as the driver, Charlie Adlard, hoorawed them loudly and cracked the blacksnake over the roan's back.

Yakima turned to look into the crease beyond the sloping trees. He gave a quick whistle, and the prosecutor and the others looked at him. Yakima jerked his head and they appeared to get the message that the wheel was on its way.

Ten minutes later, Adlard and Coble had pulled the wagon to a halt near the back of the stage and were wrestling the new wheel onto the axle. Mendenhour, Elijah Weatherford, and the two drummers, Kearny and Sook, were guiding the three women up the slope toward the stage.

When Adlard and Coble had the wheel in place and the hub screwed on over it, they fetched the horses from the crease and were hitching the team to the stage when Yakima spied movement to the west. He turned to see a dozen or so riders in long dusters or fur coats and capes moving toward the stage, all strung out in a long, uneven line.

The other men from the stage saw the riders and came around to where Yakima sat on the trail beside the team.

“Well, this is it, isn't it?” said Mendenhour darkly, retrieving his rifle from where he'd leaned it against the stage's left-front wheel. “Glendolene, take the women back to the cavern!”

“Hold on.” Yakima watched the riders stop about a hundred yards out from the stage. They sat their horses about five yards apart, staring toward him and the stage passengers with menace.

Sally Rand sobbed. Her husband guided her to the other side of the stage. Glendolene and Mrs. O'Reilly stood near Mendenhour, staring in the direction of the menacing-looking riders, their shoulders set with both fear and curiosity.

The drummers stood together near the rear of the stage, looking jumpy and ready to take cover if shooting started. Coble grabbed his shotgun out of the driver's box. Then with a grunt he exchanged it for his rifle. The driver, Adlard, stood near the team, tugging at his beard and scowling toward the line of riders.