Escape and Pursuit

  A Balum Series Western no. 5

  A novel by

  Orrin Russell

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 by Orrin Russell

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  Cover design and illustration by

  Mike Pritchett

  1

  Halfway between Denver and Cheyenne, where the plains spread out in deceptive flatness under a shaved sliver of a moon, a rut of ground had been washed away by decades of rain and lay hollowed out from the land around it. From the depression grew dogbane and milkweed. Their great stalks swayed slightly in the night breeze, weakened and bent, their seed long since having fallen to the earth. Brittle canes stretched up from the hollow like some dying effigy meant to commemorate a forgotten and unappreciated glory of which not even the stars floating above could be bothered to admire. Winter had come. To the earth they would return.

  At their base, where roots clawed into dirt in search of water that had not fallen for weeks, Balum spread his blanket roll and threw down his saddle. He gathered kindling, out of which he built a cone, and lit a match at its base. The flame licked the dry grass and swirled up to where it caught the twigs above. As the fire grew, its light revealed its maker’s hands to the night. Large, toughened by a lifetime of hardship, Balum held them out to the crackling warmth.

  Blood covered them. Blood dried by the sun, caked and cracking on the skin. Dark, blackened, and bearing evidence of violence. The flames took hold of the larger branches and as the light grew it illuminated a man covered head to toe in sun-blacked blood. Mixed with dirt it was, soaked through his clothing, and smeared in great swaths across his stubbled face.

  From the saddlebag he drew a bit of salt pork with his bloodied fingers and brought it to his mouth. He ate, then drew the blanket over his body and slept with his head on the saddle.

  When morning came he rolled his blanket and walked out of the hollow to where his horse stood grazing in the vastness of an empty prairie, and rode north. The skies had clouded over and a cold wind that smelled of fallen leaves bit into him. He pulled the soiled jacket tight across his shoulders and bent his head low. The wind pushed into his hat and whipped the roan’s mane back and forth over its crest. With his head bent as it was, he stared at the dying grass underfoot and thought only of Angelique.

  He covered over forty miles, stopping only once to refill his canteen and to let the roan drink from the remnants of a twisting stream. He passed no one. Were some traveler to come upon him, they surely would have ridden wide, for his apparition on the featureless plain was like some creature risen up from hell; war-torn and ragged, an image of death and violence and blood, bent in the saddle atop his great beast, his face set hard and painted in the blood of his enemies. A gunbelt rested over his hips. From the holster protruded the butt of a Colt Dragoon revolver, polished from years of heavy use and it too freshly stained with blood.

  Such was his appearance when he rode through the gates of the CW Ranch, just as the last rays of the sun had relented to the dark body of night. A young vaquero grabbed up a rifle when he saw Balum enter atop the roan and felt a chill overtake him, certain that what had ridden into the ranch yard was not a living thing, but rather a ghost from some distant place.

  Balum held up a hand and spoke to the young man, and when the vaquero had regained his nerve and realized who the rider was, he offered a hand to Balum and took the roan by the bridle and led it to the stables.

  Charles was the first out of the ranch house. He took three steps out the front door and jerked back in reflex at the sight of the figure standing before him caked in gore and haggard, like the cadaver of some ancient beast come back to life. Angelique followed after. She brushed past Charles and ran forward, and when she reached Balum she took him in her arms as if he were dressed in his tailored broadcloth suit and smelling of scented soap. They held each other with their arms wrapped in a tight embrace that brought a smile to Charles’ face.

  ‘If that don’t tell you she loves you,’ said Charles, ‘I don’t know what will. I worry that if I so much as shake your hand, my own will rot right up and fall off. You look like you’re bringing the plague to us. Fancy a bath?’

  ‘A bath, a meal, and a bed,’ said Balum.

  ‘And a whiskey.’

  ‘That too.’

  Once inside, with the gore and grime washed from Balum’s body and a new kit of clothing encasing his frame, they sat together at the table to share yet another meal in one another’s company. Juanita cooked. Tessa and Angelique helped, and Will and Charles poured out a round of whiskeys and sipped the stinging drams in somber, silent swallows, while the candle flames twisted and squirmed in the draft sneaking through the cracks of a window sill.

  ‘Ok, Balum,’ said Charles, once all were seated with bowls of birria before them. ‘Let’s have it.’

  Between mouthfuls, Balum recounted the events of the previous five days. The story began at that very ranch, at the very table at which they sat, all six of them. Each knew the backstory. Five days ago they had sat and listened while Balum told them of the outcome of Frederick Nelson’s trial, Balum’s kidnapping, and his forced robbery of the train. Sara Sanderson had sat tied to a chair in that very room while her accomplices bivouacked on the hillside to the west and plotted Balum’s death. He had ridden out from the CW ranch with Sara, her hands tied, and a rifle at the ready. The three men camped on the hillside had fallen in line well behind him and had disappeared over the southern horizon with the premonition of death heavy in the air.

  The five remaining; Charles, Juanita, Will, Tessa, and Angelique, had stayed put at the CW Ranch, not risking leaving until they could be certain of their safety.

  What followed was the story Balum told them there at the table in the soft glow of candlelight. He did not elaborate in the finer details. He gave the facts; the first day’s ride, the night in the forest, the knife fights in the dark. It explained the carpet of blood on his clothing. He told them of his ride into Denver with three dead men draped over their horses, and how he had turned Sara Sanderson over to Ross Buckling, Denver’s Sheriff.

  The entire narration of the facts, which could have been drawn out over the course of half an hour, Balum summarized in under two minutes. When he was done he threw back the last of the whiskey and poured another glass.

  ‘What did that kid Marshal have to say?’ asked Charles. ‘Johnny Freed.’

  ‘Plenty,’ said Balum. ‘But I wasn’t of a mind to hear it. I gave him a taste of my knuckles and it shut him up.’

  Charles and Will both stifled a laugh while the women shook their heads.

  ‘People say there’s something wrong with that Marshal,’ said Charles.

  ‘I’d agree with that. He reminds me of Billy Gunter.’

  ‘The boy on the Oregon Expedition?’

  ‘That’s the one. He’s sitting somewhere in the woods with his head split open from Joe’s hatchet. Freed is asking for the same.’

  ‘Joe,’ mused Charles. ‘We ever going to see him again?’

  Balum shrugged. ‘He’ll be in Oregon by now. After that he’s headed south to the desert lands where his people are. Pete Cafferty made him a deal. Supposed to push money into the reservations. Increase their land holdings.’

  A silence fell over the table. The men sipped whiskey until Angelique pulled them back to the subject they all wished to avoid.

  ‘They made no attempt to detain you?’ she asked.

  ‘Ross didn’t. He’s got no itch to arrest me. Johnny Freed though, if I hadn’t busted his mouth open, he would have tried. I told him he could find me in Cheyenne.’

  ‘And he will, won’t he,’ said Angelique.

  ‘I expect he will.’

  ‘What will you do when he does?’

  ‘I’ll go. There’s no sense fighting it. I’m innocent, despite what it looks like.’

  ‘As long as it’s a fair trial,’ said Angelique. ‘You can be sure I’ll testify. Someone on the train must have seen what you did to Saul Farro. They’ll know you weren’t part of it.’

  ‘What about that whiskey distributor?’ asked Will. ‘He’s the only one of them left alive aside from Sara, isn’t that right?’

  ‘Shane Carly? I expect he’ll end up confessing. He’s weak. His buddies are dead, and he’s got no conviction of his own.’

  ‘Let’s hope it all happens smoothly,’ said Charles. ‘When they come for you, let them take you in peacefully. Get it over with and come back up here. We’ve got ranching to do.’

  ‘What’ll you do till then, Balum?’ asked Will.

  Balum set his whiskey down and looked across the table at his woman. A smile crossed his face, and a mirrored expression followed on hers.

  ‘I’m sure he’ll find a way to pass the time,’ said Angelique.

  2

  They rode out in the morning, Balum on his roan and Angelique atop her sorrel. The cold from the evening held rigid in the dawn and refused to cave to the day. Clouds had gathered. As the two crossed the few miles of grasslands, rain began to fall. It began with a sprinkle and as the wind churned overhead it brought with it thunderclouds that clapped out in angry barks and threw jagged bolts of lightn