Latigo 3, page 3
Amanda Cutler stared at the dark blotches in the tracks they followed. She shivered. “It ... it reminds me of ...” She couldn’t finish it, but Cole knew she referred to the murder scene.
“You better stay back, Mrs. Cutler,” he advised grimly. “Way back. Just keep us in sight so you don’t get lost.”
“I have no intention of getting lost.”
“If there’s trouble, seek cover quickly,” he snapped, trying to hide his irritation. “You understand?”
“Why do you insist on being so formal, calling me Mrs. Cutler?”
His temper was already short because he knew a fugitive’s horse was shedding blood and the pursued would be slowed. That meant most of the burden would be on Cole Cantrell.
He said, “Because you’re here against my wishes. And endangering the lives of these men.”
“But not your own life, of course.” The steel had returned to her voice.
“I’ve been through these things more times than I can remember. I’ve had more experience than the others.”
Curly Digg suddenly spoke tensely, from a corner of his wide mouth. “See somethin’ yonderly.” And the excited man with the bony jaw gestured up a long slope crested by a heavy growth of stunted cedar.
Cole had been looking at the woman and hadn’t noticed movement ahead. “What is it, Digg?”
“Let’s go see, Curly!” Hampton shouted at Digg, around the pipestem locked in his teeth. “We’ll split it!”
At least that’s what it sounded like to Cole. With a whoop and a holler Hampton sent his horse crashing toward a spine of high ground dotted with boulders.
“One of their hosses is about done in from all the blood!” Digg was shouting as he spurred after Hampton. “Hell, yes, we’ll split it!”
Cole was taken by surprise, it had happened so fast. He yelled at them. “Come back, you damn fools!”
Neither man reined in, but both kept going, pushing their horses unmercifully on up the escarpment, where knobs of rock jutted from the snow.
Cole shot a glance at the Cutler woman. “What’d they mean? Split what?” he demanded, suddenly suspicious.
“I offered a thousand dollars to the first man who killed one of those murderers,” she said defiantly.
“And where the hell was I when you made this generous offer?”
“Dead asleep in your blanket.”
“That was a damn fool thing you did, ma’am.”
Jeff Peters shouted through his graying beard, “Them two is loco,” gesturing at the pair riding hell-bent toward the ridge. Rugger and Meagan agreed in strident voices.
Just as Cole started upslope after his men, there was a sudden crackle of rifle fire from the ridge. Hampton and Digg were so far ahead now, they were nearly thumb-size against the snow. Digg got off a shot. A cold chill raced down Cole’s spine as he saw Hampton slammed backwards off the rump of his big gray horse. Digg tried desperately to swing aside, but another shot from an unseen rifleman toppled him. By then Cole was spurring up the long slope, Amanda Cutter screaming at him to come back.
“Don’t risk your life just because they ...”
“Spread out!” he shouted back at Rugger, Peters and Meagan, gesturing to augment his orders.
Suddenly there was no more firing. Only the sounds of Trooper laboring up the grade. Cole rode with rifle at the ready, nerves taut. Nothing moved ahead. Not even a bird’s wing cleaved the chill air.
Hampton he reached first, saw the pipestem still between the teeth, but loosely now, not clenched. One of the teeth was gold, Cole noticed for the first time. Sickness in him deepened when he came to Digg, crumpled in the snow a few feet away.
Cole barely slowed Trooper, who now crested the ridge. Far ahead two riders were just hammering their way around a towering cliff draped with lichen. Even more distant in the clear air he could barely make out the notch in the mountain known as Blue Dog Pass.
And then Cole saw the third rider, lagging behind and just now appearing from behind a great slab of granite. Cole shouted at a pale and vicious face under a big hat. It was a young face. Willy Latchey tried to bring a heavy rifle to bear on Cole. His teeth gleamed. Cole fired just as Willy squeezed off a rifle shot from the uncertain seat of a nervous roan. Willy’s head jerked back, and he toppled loosely to the snowy ground.
“Don’t let the horses get away!” Cole shouted back at his three men, just coming up grade. Cole flung out an arm to indicate the two mounts Hampton and Digg had been riding. The horses were now running loose.
Then he swung down and disarmed the man he had dropped. His shirt sleeve was soaked with blood, probably from Digg’s shot. Cole’s bullet had caught him in the breastbone.
“Who the hell are you?” Cole demanded.
“Willy,” he snarled defiantly. “Latchey. Remember that name. There’s two more Latcheys ahead ... Kane an’ Elmo. An’ they’ll kill you, mister...” It ended in a groan.
“We’ll see about that,” Cole said angrily. He rode on, recklessly, trying to catch up with the two fleeing Latcheys, but gave up the chase after half a mile. In such terrain riding at full gallop was foolhardy. Trooper could easily snap a leg. And by now the two men were so far ahead he could barely make out the diminishing sounds made by their horses.
Cole knew it was as far as he could possibly go without ruining Trooper or running into an ambush. Already he’d lost two men. Hampton dead for sure, and Digg out of it even if still alive.
Then he saw the fugitives again, mere dots against a field of white, pushing their horses. He took the trail back down the slope.
Willy Latchey was still alive. Peters had dragged him to a tree and propped him against the trunk.
Cole swung down and asked Peters about Digg. Peters spread his veined hands. “Dead. Him an’ Hampton both.”
Cole hunkered beside Willy Latchey, watched blood pump in a thin stream from the bullet hole in the chest.
“You’ve got four murders hanging over your head,” Cole reminded, knowing the threat was wasted because the man was dying. “Why’d you kill Mrs. Cutler’s husband and his partner?”
Willy glanced at the woman’s handsome face, taut with strain. “Fella come prowlin’ around from the wagon. Kane figured to get shet of him, an’ he did.” Willy started to laugh but a spasm of pain twisted the lips. A trickle of pink saliva appeared at a corner of the mouth. His feverish eyes remained on the woman, who stared at him fixedly. “One of ’em was your husband, huh?”
She nodded and said coldly, “I was asleep in the wagon.”
“Holy Jeezus ...” Willy started to laugh again, but pain crimped his mouth. “Too bad we never brung you along.”
“And murdered me in time, no doubt, as you murdered my husband.”
“Murder a purty thing like you? Hell, no.”
Cole got Willy talking, bragging, really. He and the Latchey brothers had recently left Denver and moved into the mountains, where they started holding up travelers and lonely ranches. Latchey’s voice grew faint. The corners of the weak mouth drooped, and the head sagged.
“What a cozy little family of murderers, you three Latcheys. Where are your cousins heading?” Somewhere an icicle crashed, bringing a gasp from Mrs. Cutler.
“Railroad,” Willy Latchey answered. “Figure to hitch a ride where the train slows. Figure to get to New Sodom an’ then over west.” Willy’s words were slurred. He nearly fell over, but Cole propped him back against the tree.
Cole straightened up, knowing he had to make adjustments. “Jeff, you’re out of this now,” he said to Peters and noticed a flicker of relief, which the older man tried to hide.
“You’re in charge of Willy, here. You take him and our two dead friends ... and the woman ... and get back down out of these mountains.”
Peters didn’t argue. The sight of two dead posse men was sobering.
Cole looked at Meagan’s round face and then at the long-legged Sid Rugger. “You two game to go with me?” They nodded.
Cole helped them lash the dead Hampton and Digg across their own horses. Then turned his attention to the woman, who had been strangely silent. “You can help Jeff by taking a lead rope of one of the horses.” He forced a smile, hoping to make her think she was contributing to the macabre operation by doing her part. It didn’t work.
“I am not going back,” she stated flatly.
“You’ll only be in the way, Mrs. Cutler,” Cole said, trying to be patient.
“You can’t make me go back.” She tried to get the backing of Meagan and Rugger. “I’m entitled ...”
“I don’t give a damn if she wants to hand you a thousand dollars!” he shouted at the two men. “That’s up to her. But you’ll take my orders. You saw what happened to Digg and Hampton when they tried to do it on their own.”
Rugger looked grim. “That was a loco stunt,” he admitted, shifting his weight on spindly legs. “They never shoulda gone on ahead.”
“Blown outa their saddles, they was.” Meagan shivered. “That ain’t the way I figure to go.”
“Jeff, if I tie Mrs. Cutler to the saddle, you can get her ten miles or so down our back trail and then cut her loose,” Cole said.
Peters fidgeted, obviously not liking the suggestion, and glanced at the indignant woman. “Ain’t right to manhandle a lady,” he mumbled.
“Not too much of a lady, when her own foolishness helped get two good men killed!”
Suddenly her mouth was no longer tense, and she seemed humble. “It was wrong of me to offer them money ...”
He was surprised she would admit a mistake. “It’s all for the best, you going back with Jeff...”
“... but it has nothing to do with my desire ... my determination to pursue this terrible matter to its conclusion. So I must go on with you.” She met his hard gaze.
“Afraid not, ma’am …”
She appealed to Peters, but he hung his head. A breeze stirred his gray whiskers. In the relatively few hours she had known Peters he seemed to have aged. “I want to pay all of you men for the services you have rendered ...”
Cole cut her off with a hand slashing empty air. “You can’t buy back the lives of the two dead ones,” he reminded harshly.
At that moment there came a deep rattling sound from Willy Latchey, who fell over on his side, mouth open, eyes fixed, unseeing, on the morning sky.
At least one problem was solved, Cole thought. Peters wouldn’t have to cope with a wounded outlaw. His next problem was staring at him with large gray eyes. “You’ll have to listen to reason, Mrs. Cutler,” Cole tried again. “I’ve faced these things dozens of times, in the war and afterward. I know the risks. I know what I’m doing. This is all new to you, and there are things you just don’t understand. Maybe you think because you escaped death when your husband was killed, you lead a charmed life. I can tell you for sure, Mrs. Cutler, those two men I’m trying to run down would as soon put a bullet in your head as take a deep breath ...”
“I am not going back,” and the squarish chin was outthrust, the gleaming teeth clenched in defiance. “There is no way you can force me to go with Mr. Peters.”
“Don’t push me, ma’am,” Cole warned.
Her shoulders under the greatcoat stiffened. “You try and tie me to a saddle, I ... I’ll shoot you.”
She backed a few steps, right hand in the coat pocket that was weighted by her late husband’s revolver. The incongruity of his position almost produced a spate of wild laughter, which Cole choked off in time. Here he was in the wildest part of the back country with two dead posse men, a dead outlaw, an older man who would take the bodies back down the mountain and was obviously relieved to be out of the fighting. And Cole had two surviving posse men of dubious worth, plus a handsome and stubborn female. He wondered if perhaps her dead husband was enjoying some measure of tranquility missed in his marriage.
Cole sensed that Amanda Cutler wouldn’t hesitate to fire a bullet through the heavy material of the coat and into his body before he could get the weapon away from her. He had never been particularly afraid of death. But to have it all end because some hard-jawed female on a lonely mountain insisted on having her own way would be the supreme irony.
“One man has been brought to justice,” she said in her deep voice. “He’s dead. But there are two more. I want to do my share in bringing their miserable lives to an end before they can kill again.”
“You gun down those men without a chance and you could end up on the gallows.”
“That I doubt very much.”
“A woman can be sentenced to hang, here in the West. I know from personal experience.” But he might as well have saved his attempt to inject fear into her. She had built a steel wall around herself.
Peters seemed to suddenly feel the need to display valor before the woman. “Latigo, we could jest leave all three dead ’uns here in the snow an’ pick ’em up later, an’ I’d go on with you an’ ...”
“Jeff, you’re too old for this game,” Cole interrupted. “Besides, wolves would likely finish them off, and there’d be nothing left but bones.” Not that it made much difference. Dead was dead. The main thing was he no longer wanted the responsibility of Peters. He’d already seen two of his men die; whether it was their fault or the woman’s, Cole couldn’t shrug off a certain feeling of responsibility.
“This is your chance to clear out, Jeff,” Cole said, his tone harsher than intended. “Take it!”
Peters blinked, licked the under edge of the gray mustache. “But Latigo ...”
“You’ve got a bad leg. It won’t get any better the higher we climb in this cold.”
“Yeah, mebby you’re right.” Peters had made a pretense of bravery for the woman’s benefit and his own pride. And now it was time to duck his head and get down the mountain, as Cantrell had ordered.
“Know what you mean about a bad leg,” Meagan muttered to Cole. “Can feel my own stiffen up. That ol’ Yankee bullet sure gives me hell at times.”
Cole looked at him. “Maybe you should go with Jeff.”
“Naw. Didn’t mean that a-tall.”
“You sure you’re up to it? If we get in a bind and you have trouble with that leg ...”
“Shouldn’t have brung it up. I’m fine, just fine.”
As Peters got ready to pull out, Cole reached to touch Mrs. Cutler’s furred coat sleeve. She jumped back out of reach.
He shook his head. “I’m not going to try and grab your gun or force you. I’m only asking ... in a nice way. Go back with Jeff. I don’t want him on my conscience. Nor you.”
As their eyes held, a faint crinkling showed at the corners of her full mouth. “Having me on your conscience might prove interesting, Mr. Cantrell,” she said softly.
Peters mounted up. “I’m only doin’ this ’cause you ordered me to, Latigo,” he said. “Was in the war an’ I know how to take orders from a cap’n.”
“That you do, Jeff,” Cole agreed. Cole almost wished Meagan and Rugger would pull out also and take the woman with them. Let him finish the job on his own. Unless he forcibly tied Amanda Cutler to the saddle—and he couldn’t see himself doing that despite his threats—there was little he could do. And short of knocking her unconscious, there seemed to be no way he could keep her from joining in the showdown.
When Peters, leading the three burdened horses, was out of sight, Cole turned to his posse, two middle-aged men and a woman. “We’ll really have to keep our eyes open,” he said gravely. “The Latcheys pushed their horses, and they’ll be winded. We could come on them at any bend in the trail.”
Creases deepened in Meagan’s round face, and he glanced forlornly downslope to where Peters had disappeared in the trees. “I ... I’ll keep my eyes open.”
Rugger hugged the barrel of his sorrel with long legs as if the feel of a horse under him was a comfort, slight as it might be, in the dangerous pursuit they were undertaking. Not a one of them knew what lay ahead.
It was only after two miles of steady climbing through a forest of granite spires packed with snow that Meagan began complaining about the old bullet wound in his leg that dated from the battle of Chancellorsville.
“Cold is makin’ it pulse like a swole-up tooth.” Meagan screwed up his round face as if in pain and avoided Cole’s eyes. “Reckon I wouldn’t be much good to you, Cantrell. Besides, Peters likely could use help with them three hosses. Might be better if I caught up an’ give him a hand.”
Cole looked at the pale round little man and nodded. What else could he do under the circumstances? “Good idea, Meagan. Jeff might need help, at that. Some mountain lion get a whiff of those dead ones and spook the horses, Jeff could have his hands full.”
“You understand how it is, Cantrell,” Meagan muttered lamely, “the leg an’ all.”
“Sure.” Cole slanted his gaze at Rugger. “How about you?”
“I ... I’m all right,” Rugger replied with a nervous laugh. “You got a bad shoulder, Rugger? Or an arm? Or a sore throat or the grippe or anything that might disable you? Just when I need you?”
Rugger flushed, saying, “Been thinkin’. Long as the dead ’un, that Willy, said the other two Latcheys was headin’ for the railroad, mebby we oughta git back to Tracy Junction. Could send out a message on the next one of your stages leavin’ town. Have ’em drop it off at the nearest telegraph station. Could send a telegram to the sheriff at New Sodom an’ have him meet all the trains ...”
“All of a sudden that’s the way you’re thinking, Rugger?”
“Wa’al, I recollect hearin’ about them Latcheys over east of here. They got another brother besides the pair you’re after. Mebby two more brothers, for all I know. Bad ’uns ...”
“Go ahead, Rugger, you and Meagan both. Catch up to Jeff. And no hard feelings. And Mrs. Cutler will be going along with you.”
He turned, intending to impress upon her the importance of returning to Tracy Junction with the men. But while he had been talking with Rugger, she had pushed on ahead. She was over fifty yards up the mountain.
“Come back!” he yelled in exasperation.
