Latigo 3, page 16
“Next time I will tie up that blamed hoss,” Lars said with a troubled grin, “instead of givin’ him the run of the pasture.”
“You know you won’t,” Karen chided. “But he’ll get used to us in time.”
Lars reached across the table and gripped her hand. “If we didn’t need that hoss so much, I wouldn’t ...”
“But we do need him, Lars. You go along and don’t fret. Eric and I will make out just Fine.” Her eyes misted, and she looked quickly away. “But I hope you don’t mind if we miss you a little.”
They walked out of the house, Karen and Lars arm in arm, Eric scampering ahead to find the bridle his father would need for the long trip. Sixty miles each way to the Johnson ranch. Eric multiplied the figure in his head by two. One hundred and twenty miles. To his young mind it seemed an incredible distance. He cast his father a worried glance, but his parents were smiling, and he decided there was nothing to be upset about.
Karen had packed two sacks of food, which were stowed in the saddlebags. When that ran out, there would be fresh meat. Lars was a good hunter.
“Now, don’t you worry, honey,” Lars consoled Karen. “I will be back soon with that fool hoss. You’ll see.”
“I know you will. Just be careful.”
Lars placed both hands on his son’s sturdy shoulders. “You’ll be the man of the house, Eric. You take care of your mother.”
“I will, Dad. I sure will.”
Lars mounted up, waved a hand and started across the flatlands. Karen and Eric stood in silence, watching the figure of Lars on the bony gray horse diminish until there was only a mere dot. Karen and the boy lifted their hands in a final wave, but Lars wouldn’t be able to see them. At that distance they would be as hard to distinguish as he was to them.
“You know something, Mom,” Eric said, a catch in his voice. “I miss Dad already, and he’s hardly out of sight.”
As Lars quickened the pace of his horse, wanting to cover as many miles as possible before dark, a wolf’s head stirred a patch of winter grama on a rise of ground. But below the snout of the animal were human eyes. The eyes watched the progress of the white man. When he was out of sight a young Indian removed the animal headdress in the form of a wolfs head and bounded to his feet.
He ran down a slope, with its patches of snow, and reported to Walking Bull, leader of the Sioux war party.
“The white man rides away, my brothers,” the young Indian, Black Wolf, reported.
“Who stays?” demanded Walking Bull harshly.
“Only the woman and the boy.”
Walking Bull wore the feathered headdress of a subchief.
War paint adorned each cheekbone as well as the jutting jaw. His fierce black eyes studied the horizon as if seeking knowledge from some unknown source. They were on their way to do battle with their ancient enemy, the Crow people. As a breeze rustled the grass and stirred the feathers of his war bonnet he considered the news brought by Black Wolf. He did not like to be swayed from his original plan, so it took only a moment to render a decision.
“We will not raid the white man’s earth lodge now,” he declared. “But I, Walking Bull, carry the pipe. And if our medicine is good and we are not pursued ...” He broke off and turned to the expectant faces of his warriors. “When we return we will strike and destroy the white man’s lodge.”
This was greeted by muffled shouts which would not carry to the homestead they had been discussing.
They rode on, heading toward their destination, the Crow encampment. Black Wolf had won two coup feathers in past forays and planned on a third after they came to grips with the Crow. Where the old enmity had started, no one was quite sure, but it went back to years lost in the darkness of time, beyond the memory of living man. Perhaps it had been an ancient insult to a chief. A woman dishonored? It was enough that they knew their enemy and intended to do battle. Only by vanquishing an enemy could a warrior’s soul eventually find peace in the land beyond the shadows.
Walking Bull, at the head of his party, turned and looked at the homestead buildings, shadowy lumps against the horizon. He envisioned the land cleared of such things, returned to buffalo grass and unfenced thousands of square miles. The white man’s coming was worse than a swarm of locusts.
By the passing of another winter there would be only charred embers to mark where a white man had tried to wrest a livelihood from the soil.
Walking Bull knew in his heart that his war party would return in triumph and he would report to the old chiefs that not only were there Crow dead but also one of the newer enemies, the white man. There would be a victory feast, and the pipes would be smoked and passed.
Cole Cantrell revived and pulled himself back into the saddle. It seemed that his upper body had acquired unusual weight, for he could no longer sit erect in the saddle. He bent lower and lower, as if a giant magnet were pulling at him.
The bullet Bowden had fired into his shoulder had begun to fester. Arm and shoulder felt as if red-hot needles were being driven into the skin. His mouth was a wasteland.
“Need ... water,” he mumbled.
Trooper plodded on, stepping lightly as if to avoid jolting the wounded master on his back.
“Got to find water soon ... before ...”
Again Cole tumbled from the saddle, this time easing the fall somewhat by gripping the reins. But at the last his grip slipped and he fell. This time there was no possibility of revival. He lay on his back, reins trapped under his body. How many hours had passed since the shooting? He tried to count, but his brain ceased to function, and he lay unmoving on the hard ground.
Eric had been gathering eggs for his mother and was just striding past a rain barrel at a corner of the barn when he saw in the distance a stranger topple from the saddle.
He fled to the house, even in this emergency mindful of the fresh eggs he had gathered and which were nestled in the bottom of a gunny sack. Eggs on a high-country homestead were too precious to lose.
Karen was just emerging from the root cellar when Eric burst into the house. “Mom, Mom ...”
Karen hurried to see what was the matter, hoping that perhaps Eric had seen his father returning. Maybe the gray horse had a loose shoe or had become lame, and the long trip to the Johnson place would have to be postponed.
But her hope, faint as it was, shattered when a wide-eyed Eric told her what had happened.
“Mom, a man’s up there!” He pointed over his shoulder. “He ... he fell off his hoss.”
“Eric, please put the eggs on the workbench,” Karen said patiently. “What made him fall?”
“I dunno. I watched him ride over the top of the hill ... he was kinda weavin’ in the saddle, like old man Spriggs used to do back home on Saturday nights ...”
“You mean he’s drunk.”
“Looked more hurt than that, Mom. He just kinda fell over in the saddle. I seen him grab a holt ...”
“I saw,” she corrected automatically.
“Then he fell, his arms and legs all loose-like.”
Karen turned it over in her mind. Of all the times for Lars to be away. She ran the tip of her tongue over lips that had suddenly gone dry.
“If he’s hurt, we must help him. Come with me, Eric.”
“All right, Mom, but from the way he fell, I’m not sure if he needs help or buryin’.”
Karen took the rifle off its wall pegs and was winded by the time she reached the hill where the man lay on his back. Next to him was a black horse. Its head was lifted as if intent on protecting the man whose body anchored the reins to the ground.
“Easy, boy,” Karen soothed, and stroked the silky muzzle. At first the great horse shied and snorted, but gradually the sound of her voice had a calming effect.
Eric was crouched beside the stranger. Karen knelt, studied the man a moment. He was big, with strong dark features that made her think at first he was Indian. Then she realized he had white blood. At first glance he seemed fierce, but as she studied him she noticed a gentleness about the mouth that touched her.
“Mom, he looks awful. Is he ... he still alive?”
She nodded and wondered how she and Eric could ever manage to handle all that weight.
There was only one solution, to try and get him across his saddle. They certainly couldn’t carry him all the way back to the house. The stranger’s eyes flickered, and he seemed to sense that they were trying to help him. Somehow he roused to lever himself partway beside the barrel of his horse. Karen dropped the rifle and caught him, with Eric’s help, before he could slump back to the ground. But it took their combined muscle to hoist and slide him belly down across his saddle. “Gosh, is he heavy,” Eric gasped.
“You lead his horse,” Karen instructed, and picked up the rifle. “Slow, now, mind you. I’ll try and steady him.”
Eric found the black horse to be unusually docile. It plodded carefully over the uneven ground, the dangling arms and legs of the stranger swaying at each step.
Eric looked back at his mother. “Who you reckon he is, Mom?”
“All I know is he’s been badly hurt and needs our help.” At the house Eric tied the horse to a hitching post beside the kitchen door. This time there was no response from the stranger, and mother and son literally had to drag him, inch by agonizing inch, through the doorway.
Karen paused to get her breath. “We’ll have to put him in your room, Eric. You’ll have to sleep in the other room with me.”
“Sure, Mom, whatever you say.”
The two of them dragged his upper body onto the bed, then hoisted his legs.
“While I cut off that bloodied shirt,” Karen said, fighting for breath, “I want you to put on a kettle of water to boil.”
“Anything else, Mom?” Eric wanted to know.
“Yes, get some clean rags. And bring your father’s whiskey.” Eric looked at her in surprise. “Well, all right, but if you’ll excuse me sayin’ so, Mom, I ... well, I ...”
Karen was using a knife to cut away the stiffened shirt from the wound. “Excuse you for what, Eric?”
“Well, this doesn’t seem like the right time to start him drinkin’, is all I was tryin’ to say.”
“Whiskey is to cleanse the wound. Not for drinking.” Despite the ordeal which she knew lay ahead, her son’s remark brought a flicker of a smile to Karen’s lips. Then the lips tightened as she carefully began to pull bits of cloth from the ugly wound.
The bullet had not gone clear through the shoulder, as she had hoped, but was still buried in the festering flesh. Gritting her teeth, she used the tip of a knife that had been sterilized over open flame, and probed until she located the bullet. Fortunately it had not shattered itself against bone. When the bullet lay on a bloodied cloth on the floor beside the bed, she stared at it in awe. Such a slim piece of lead to bring down such a magnificent body.
When the wound was cleansed and bandaged and a sling made for the arm, Karen was exhausted. She sank back on her heels and stared at the big stranger, who lay with eyes closed on Eric’s bed.
“Dear God,” she prayed, moving to her knees, “let him live. Don’t let him die on me. Give me strength to see him through this crisis.”
Eric’s voice was in her ear. “That stranger, Mom, is he going to be all right?”
“I hope so.”
She got very little sleep that night, going at least once an hour to the stranger’s room. He hadn’t moved, but his pulse was reasonably strong.
In the morning, when she looked in on him, she tried to remember something from Shakespeare her father used to quote. What was it he called sleep? “Nature’s soft nurse”? Of course, that was it.
Every day she read aloud from the Bible, beside his bed. Eric’s young inquisitive mind prompted endless questions. “Who do you reckon that fella is, Mom?” he asked one morning when he was helping hang up the wash. “Do you think maybe he’s a famous outlaw?”
Karen did not like the note of excitement in her son’s voice. “Outlaws in real life are different from the ones in stories. They’re usually just very wicked men.”
“Yeah, I guess so. But the story kind sure are more fun.” One day Cole was dimly aware of voices. One cultured, soft, a woman’s voice. The other that of a young boy.
Somehow he pried open his eyes and saw the hazy outline of a pleasant face. It was a woman. He closed his eyes, tried again. This time he saw her clearly.
“If I’m dead, the preachers were right about one thing, anyhow. Angels are beautiful.”
“Thank God, thank God!” The woman began to cry, tears spilling across the curves of her cheeks. She brushed them aside, smiling her joy.
“Where am I?” Cole asked weakly. “How ... how did I get here?”
She told him he was at the Anders homestead. “My son, Eric, saw you fall from your horse. We brought you here, Eric and I.”
“Have you no husband, ma’am?”
Karen stiffened, her lips locked.
Cole finally spoke. “You looked scared, there, for a minute. I mean you no harm.”
“I know you don’t,” she said in a low voice. Then she told him about Lars and the missing horse. “He should be back any day.” Before this, she wanted to say, but didn’t.
“I’m obliged for all you and your boy did for me.” It took conscious effort for Cole to form the words. “Reckon I owe you my life.”
“Are you in much pain?”
“Yes, ma’am, it does hurt more than somewhat. But I’m grateful.”
“Grateful for pain?”
“A man has to be alive to feel it.”
With his good right hand he began fumbling in the bedclothes, then on the floor beside the bed.
“What is it?” she asked.
“A part of me is missing.” He looked into her light-blue eyes. “My gun.”
“It’s in the other room. You won’t need it while you’re under this roof.”
He hoped not, for her sake. “Having a gun is an old habit.” He lay down again, groaning. “Through four years of war and every day since, it’s never been far from my hand.”
“Perhaps that’s one reason you were shot.”
“Maybe. But I figure it’s because I wasn’t fast enough.” When she left the room he fell to thinking about the attractive young pioneer wife. How lucky this Lars was. It was embarrassing to Cole when he thought of such a lady nursing him for only God knew how long, and tending to his needs. But when he met the boy he knew she’d had help. He felt a little better.
Eric was wide-eyed with excitement to find Cole awake. But Karen quickly shut off the many questions that threatened to tumble from his boyish lips.
“Eric, our guest needs rest.”
“By the way, I’m Cole Cantrell.” And he was relieved that she seemed unfamiliar with the name. He didn’t feel like explaining, which would have meant probably dredging up old tragedies and hatreds. Even though he was weak as an emaciated cat, he enjoyed the serenity of this spare little dwelling perched on a few acres of vast frontier. He didn’t want to do anything to spoil it.
When he closed his eyes again he dreamed of a gentle wife like Karen. And a son like Eric. After the war it had been his dream to marry and have sons and daughters, grandchildren for his parents to spoil. Claudius Max had destroyed that dream.
Chapter Twenty
A SHADOW OF Indian trouble caused Claudius Max to stay in New Sodom longer than he had intended. He loathed the place, mainly because Cole Cantrell had outwitted him by pounding Al Grubb into a bloodied hulk. And he wasn’t forgetting the banquet and the strained joviality. One of his subordinates at C-P actually suggested that Python should abandon proposed new trackage. “We don’t want to stir up the Indians. It will mean trouble.”
Why not? Max thought angrily. A name popped into his head. Rego Gattling. That morning he had seen Gattling on the street with two hard-eyed, dark-skinned men. Indians, obviously, one dressed in buckskins, the other clothed in big hat and work shirt and blanket coat. Gattling had given Max a spare nod as they passed on the walk.
It was early the following day that Max found him at the Four Aces. He suggested they take a walk. Gattling was agreeable and buttoned his coat.
“I need some good men,” Max said when they were outside.
“I can do the job alone.” There was faint amusement on Gattling’s handsome face. “I figure you’re talking about Cole Cantrell.”
The name produced a sour taste in Max’s mouth. “No, I want you for something else.”
“You still banking on that killer with a trick gun?” Gattling asked with a sneer.
“I am,” Max snapped.
“You must’ve had hunches before about Cantrell. He’s still alive. And the men you sent after him are dead.”
“I see you know the story.” Memory chilled Max’s voice. It was enough to produce a chill when he catalogued the deceased who had taken Cantrell’s trail with such high hopes. All of them competent in the handling of guns. This time his hunch concerning Jud Bowden was strong, and he was determined to play it through to the end.
“What I am about to say is of a delicate nature,” Max said. “I don’t want it to get out.”
“I know how to keep my mouth shut.”
“I already know that.” Winter was losing its bite, and soon the grass would green the slopes and the trees bud.
“How do you know I keep my mouth shut?” Gattling was curious.
“Your lady friend. I danced with her. Talked with her at some length. She has no idea what you really do for a living.”
“Aspen Grove, I guess you mean.”
At that moment Roy Collins, the former C-P conductor, lurched from the doorway of a side-street saloon, smelling of stale whiskey, his eyes red-laced. When he saw Max coming along the walk, he cried, “Can I have a word with you about gettin’ my job back ...”
“Get out of my way!” Max snarled.
Gattling caught the hapless Collins at the nape of the neck, toe-walked him a dozen steps, then pitched him headfirst onto a pile of rubbish between buildings.
“You take direct action, I see,” Max said with a tight smile. Max spoke again of his needs: a tough man with brains. “Someone who knows the Indians. I hear you’ve been around them.”
