Holt 2, page 9
“A killing crime?”
“That’s right.”
Geeson knitted his brow as if working out equations. “Why ain’t you in stir?”
Holt was in too deep now. He explained, and because Geeson was sure to ask, admitted there was a price on his head. He left Sam out of that part of the story.
Geeson was silent for some time. “I got to believe you, ’cause you don’t strike me as so stupid you’d make up something that’d put your head in the noose.” He looked at Holt as if measuring him for the rope himself. “Reckon you are worth a hell of a lot more than a pile of wolf pelts.”
“You can help me save my pelt.”
Geeson might not have heard. He cocked his head toward his gear, on which was propped a Remington 306. “All I got to do is shoot you.”
“You plan to?”
“I’m pondering on it.” Geeson rose, and Holt felt alarm. “I guess not,” Geeson said after a bit. “Never have, don’t want to start at my age.”
“Huh?”
“I’ll ask the questions,” Geeson said automatically, but his mind was elsewhere. “Never had to. I’m too big and scaly.”
“I’ll warrant,” Holt muttered.
Geeson wasn’t paying him any mind. “You’re right: I’ve got to believe that you are the victim of a miscarriage of justice.” He shook his shaggy head. “Too bad. I sort of like Gutt.”
Holt saw a glimmer of optimism. “So he is in these parts?”
“We’ve played a hand of pinochle now and then,” Geeson said. “He craved companionship.”
“And he put me in a hell of a pickle,” Holt said, trying to bring the discussion back to the topic on his mind.
“He’s up there somewhere,” Geeson said, “but that is all you will get from me.”
“What’ll he get from you? You plan to inform on me?”
“Another question. Watch yourself.” Geeson considered. “I suppose that’s something you’ll have to worry about.” Wonderful, Holt thought. Just ducky.
“Lend me some clothes,” Holt said.
“Ain’t got but what I’m wearing.”
Holt pondered. “You know these parts.”
“Better’n my own mother.” Geeson considered the metaphor. “Lots better,” he decided.
“I’ll pay you a hundred dollars to help me find my partner.”
“Okay,” Geeson said readily. “In which of your pockets will I find such geetus?”
“I’m good for it.”
Geeson used a finger to scrape the last of the gravy from the stew pot, oblivious to the heat. “That’s a gamble I won’t take. Looks like you are on your own.”
Holt started to say something, but Geeson raised a finger to silence him. “But here is some advice. You ain’t going anywhere today, not anywhere you can expect to reach. Spend the night, gather your strength, and on the morrow you are on your own. That is far as I can take it.”
The thought of a claustrophobic stay in this hole was abysmal, but the alternative, afoot in the dark and fumbling about, went beyond abysmal to insane.
“Help yourself to the amenities,” Geeson said. “Me, I’m turning in for a nap.” He went to the pallet, pushed Holt’s gun aside as if it were a sack of nails, and flopped down.
Holt stared as Geeson began to snore. He felt like an animal in a pit trap, as if the dugout were a hundred miles deep and the weight of the entire planet oppressed him.
Chapter Eleven
Sam willed herself to set aside emotion in favor of rational thought. Holt was horseless, and beyond her ability to help. The only one of them she could save was herself, and that meant riding out alone—and immediately.
She checked the rope that ran from the back strap of her saddlebags to the halter of Holt’s bay, sighed heavily, and started down trail, cursing vehemently, as she had been for most of the last several hours.
She’d gone a half mile up from the fork before realizing she’d chosen the wrong branch of Rock Creek, all the time cursing Holt’s stubbornness in lieu of acknowledging her own. By then she saw that the valley narrowed to cliff-walled canyon on both sides, enclosing roiling rapids that would not freeze even in this cold. While she could see bench land no more than fifty feet upstream, only a mountain goat could reach it. In the mental flip of a coin that had determined her pick at the forks, she’d come up tails.
The poor bet likely saved her hide.
Twice when she was growing up in Boston, hurricanes had come up the Atlantic coast to besiege the city. From her parents’ brick house near the top of Beacon Hill, she gazed out the window at the Common with a child’s fascination at nature’s power, while winds toppled massive trunked trees to expose huge circles of roots that looked like witches’ hair, and deluging rain dug runnels in the park’s sloping manicured lawns.
Compared to the whiteout blizzard, a hurricane was a summer shower.
The only forewarning was a nervous nicker from her roan. Moments later it was snowing sideways.
Her good fortune was that the storm was roaring from the west, and the niche where she was stopped from advancing upstream was alee. She got herself and the horse into it, talking in a low meaningless monotone to gentle the animal. Providentially, the roan calmed, seemed willing to wait it out.
Not that either had any choice.
She wrapped herself in the robe and pulled her neckerchief up over her nose and lips, so only her eyes were exposed. She was neither hungry nor thirsty, but chewed on jerked beef and drank from the canteen that hung by a lanyard under her shirt, so it would not freeze. Holt had showed her that trick when they broke camp that morning.
Holt was much on her mind as she huddled, feeling as if she were a hundred leagues down in a sea of white.
She had no sense of time, knew only that the tempest ended as abruptly as its onset. The wind fairly screeched to a stop, like a steam engine braking frantically for a wagon high-centered on the tracks. Snow no longer fell at all, and she could see the canyon and the creeks and the sky. In the time it took to gather herself, repack the blankets, and adjust the jumble in her saddlebags caused when she’d dug out the jerky, holes of wan blue began to break through the cloud cover. When she checked her watch, she was surprised to see that she had been holed up less than an hour.
She felt light-headed with relief and good cheer as she started back toward the forks. Of course Holt had weathered the onslaught, and likely better than she; he knew the ways of this sort of country. He’d sheltered in some cave or dugout, rolling cigarettes and admiring nature’s fury.
He’d worry about her, certainly, but that was too bad. She felt proud; she was looking forward to telling him how well she’d done, how she’d remembered all the survival lore he’d imparted to her.
Pigheaded as he was, there was not one chance in a million that he truly would ride down from this country without her. He was at the forks, waiting for her to appear. She could see the parting of the waters a hundred yards ahead. Giddily, she recalled their night together …
She spotted his horse and her heart jumped. The bay stood by the bank, below where the two streams tumbled together, drinking at the edge of an open pool. She called Holt’s name as she rode up to it.
The bay looked at her curiously and went back to drinking. No other response greeted her repeated and increasingly frantic hollers.
Logic plucked at her sleeve. It was demanding, not to be denied, and ever more irksome as the next few hours passed. It told her that Holt could not possibly have pressed on during the storm, but must have stopped and taken shelter. It said that he could not have lost his horse except sometime between the storm’s beginning and end, which in turn meant he could not have moved far. It asked why he would move in any case, when he was so close to the fork and needed only to wait for her and the use of her horse to find his own.
There was one question only to which logic did not offer answer. How could he have disappeared from the earth’s face?
She rode a couple miles up the Main Fork and uncovered not the slightest sign of him, living or dead. Now she turned downstream from the branch, with the same dismal result.
She scanned the slopes for the shelter she’d imagined; none existed. The only further explanation she could think of was chilling, figuratively and literally: in the whiteout, he’d stumbled into the creek.
She denied that awful thought as she sat her horse where she’d finished her search, but much as she dreaded the notion, she had to face the truth that he was gone.
In that case, he’d want her to see to herself.
If she left his horse, at best it would be taken by some wolfer, at worst it would die of exposure. Either fate was a distinct possibility for her as well. In the few hours of daylight left, she could make it down to prairie, from where the remaining ride to Morgan’s in the dark was far less risky.
The bay whinnied as she remounted, as if it knew something she didn’t. Sam put the mountaintops and the oncoming twilight to her back and started away from there.
The going was significantly tougher than she’d expected, and she made poor time. Despite its brevity, the blizzard’s enormous power had wrought profound changes, even breaking up the ice on stretches of the creek. It must have dumped the better part of a foot of snow, distributed by the gale in random and capricious ways. In some places the ground was scoured clear, and she stopped each time the horses wanted to take advantage and feed. In other places, in the wind shadow of trees or rocks or for no apparent reason, snow was drifted as deep as the horses’ bellies, and they plunged and snorted in great steamy gasps as they breasted it.
Darkness caught her still well within the creek valley, though the clouds had mostly swept on and there was sufficient starlight to illuminate her way. But with clearing came plunging temperature, and even draped with both of her blankets over her robe, she was cold. To add to the tenuousness of her situation, she was growing weary, for this had been a day of exertions.
An hour later she passed the painted rocks that indicated the gate of the valley was not far ahead. She was adjusting the blankets when she saw the two men riding upstream.
The narrowness of the valley here where it was bound by the painted-rock walls offered no hiding place. For a moment she considered retreating, before setting the notion aside as suicidal; she’d never survive another night, especially not alone.
She drew her Colt and hid it under the blankets’ folds, rode on as if she had as much right to be in these precincts as anyone. She’d say howdy and move on past.
That was not to be. Soon as they made her out, the men set their horses side by side and somewhat apart, effectively blocking the trail. “Who’s that?” one called.
Sam rode up and said, “Nice evening, if a tad cold.”
“What the hell?” The one on the right was burly, and his face, where it was visible before the bandanna wrapped over his ears, was bearded.
The other gaped at her through dark, deep-socketed eyes. Like his partner, he wore a buffalo robe, but within its swathing he must have been a slight being; his head was small and peeked out incongruously from the volume of the coat, like a turtle’s from its shell.
“Ain’t this the damnedest,” the big one said. “Just t’other day I was thinking about women.”
“Me, too, Farley.” The little one sounded a bit dim, as if perhaps his little apple head was too small to house much brain.
“I’ll be moving on,” Sam said.
Farley looked around elaborately. Behind the men were tethered two mules loaded down with supplies. “Not just yet,” Farley said.
Sam gestured at the pack animals. “You been down to see Quint.”
“So what?”
Sam pushed the bluff. “He mentioned me, likely.”
“No.”
“I’m under his protection,” Sam said. “He was supposed to put the word out.” She assayed a smile. “I am writing about wolfers for a magazine called Harper’s.” This worked on occasion; ruffians might back off from journalists, as from a lawman, or they might like the idea of getting their names in an article. “I expect you’ve heard of it.”
“He can’t read,” the applehead said. “Me neither.”
“Shut up, Moon.” Farley pondered on matters. “You know Quint?”
“I said I did. It wouldn’t go well for someone who mistreated me.” The cold was penetrating her blankets, and she worked on not shivering, from the chill and the situation.
“How’d he know who done it?” Farley said, smiling shrewdly.
“Done what?” Moon asked.
“What we reckon to do.” The smile broadened. “See, what I’m thinking, we take her up with us, keep her around awhile. When we got our fill, we ... well, just let’s say it’s a long ways to first thaw.”
“I don’t get it, Farley,” Moon said.
Farley was still working out his plan. “Also, we can always use extra horses.” He gestured at Holt’s bay. “Where’d you steal ’em?”
The scene, to Sam, had progressed beyond peril to what, if it hadn’t been so dire, would be something like farce. She took the Colt out from under the blanket and said, “Time for you both to give up on your nasty ideas.”
“You plan on shooting us if we don’t?” Farley was amused.
“That’s right.” Sam watched both men’s hands for any quick move. “You mean to steal my horses, abduct me, and brutalize—”
“What’s brutalize?”
“Shut up, Moon,” Farley said again.
“—and you expect I won’t use this if I have to?” Sam finished.
“You won’t.”
Sam fired, missing by a close enough margin to get his thoughtful attention.
Farley spit into the snow, stared up at the stars and shook his head. “Nope,” he decided. “I bet you can’t do it.”
He walked his horse toward her.
Sam said, “You lose,” and shot him in the thigh.
Moon yelped. Farley winced, pulled his horse up and reached under his robe. Sam fired again, cutting a furrow through the coat’s fringe without striking flesh. Farley’s hand came out, slowly and empty.
“Ride on,” Sam said. “You’ll be in my sights until you’re out of range.”
Moon licked his lips. “Guess we’re going, huh, Farley?”
Farley glared blackly at Sam. “I ain’t gonna die, not from some puny flesh wound. I ain’t gonna forget neither.” He spurred his horse cruelly enough to make the animal whinny, rode too closely by her. “When I say Hasta luego, you can depend on the luego part. You and me aren’t done.”
She could smell his rank breath. “I’ll do you,” Farley said, “down in the dirt where you and every other woman belong, and afterward—” He grinned horribly. “—afterward’ll come the real fun.”
Sam watched them until they disappeared into the night, and waited fifteen minutes more, giving in now to the urge to shudder, at what might have been and what might still come. As the time passed, she thought about what further harm might develop from this encounter, talk of a woman up this drainage, talk that might reach Gutt, obvious enough when deciphered to allow him to put one and one together and come up with her and Holt.
But then, Holt was no longer a problem, as Gutt would also come to learn.
She wallowed in that ugly thought until she was sure they weren’t planning to backtrack, then turned and continued on out of the valley, stopping every hundred yards or so to check behind anyway.
Beyond the mouth of the drainage she made faster progress, taking the trail by which they’d gone in and giving Lobo a mile’s worth of berth. But by the time she was abreast of the town, its squat buildings just visible to the south in the star shine, she knew that plans had to be revised. The odds of making Morgan’s in one piece had grown exceedingly long.
The clue was when her horse half bucked and she barely managed to catch the reins and keep her seat. She’d fallen asleep in the saddle.
The animal sensed her momentary absence of control, and cranky with hunger and thirst, tried to bolt. She got it gentled, but the experience was sobering. A number of things, none good, could happen if she got unhorsed. But making a camp, she decided, was out of the question. She didn’t have the skills or experience to do it on her own, and it would leave her exposed to peril, natural and human.
She studied the town again, sighed deeply, and without further internal debate rode in that direction.
If not for the starlight, Lobo would have been dark as a crypt. No window was lit and no person was abroad; the overall effect was so spectral it might have been a literal ghost town.
She hitched the two horses in front of the saloon and climbed down. Behind the bat-wing doors permanent shutters were bolted. Sam pounded on them with a balled fist. They bent and creaked, the noise carrying on the night air. In the desolate street behind her, the horses pawed and tossed their heads, as if remonstrating at her foolishness.
The shutters swung open. Sam recoiled, expecting to face an aggressive Quint. She reached for her Colt, but then forbore. No gun when you’re petitioning for room at the inn, she thought.
She was confabulating, and must get in out of the cold before too much time passed. She steadied herself with a hand on the doorjamb to avoid falling on her face.
Emma Franks gave her a long evaluating look before stepping aside. Sam entered past her. Quint stood behind the bar, holding a lit match to the wick of an oil lamp. He trimmed it, and the light glinted off his steel jaw. “Look what the cat drug in,” he observed.
Sam slumped into the nearest chair. She was not overly worried about Quint now; she’d already figured out that Emma kept him on a short leash, although Sam didn’t know how she managed it.
Emma sat opposite her, stared some more. After a time she said to Quint, but looking at Sam, “Bring her a drink.”
The lamp provided minimal illumination, which served to emphasize the shadowy sparseness of the room. At least it was warm; the stove still glowed faintly with the evening’s fire. Quint brought over a quarter tumbler of whiskey.
