Prairie Fire, page 18
The Winchester slug drove into the man’s chest. He crumpled to the ground as blood poured from his body to stain the ground. Working the lever, Luke spun back to his left.
The marshal came around the corner, hands filled with his guns. Obviously expecting Luke to still be on the roof, his eyes grew comically large in surprise. Luke felt a grim, hard smile tug at his lips as he fired.
The round struck the marshal low in the stomach, doubling him over. He fired his pistol into the ground. The rhythmic, metallic clack of the lever action working was music in Luke’s ears. The marshal stumbled back, hand going to the wound in his stomach. He looked up, hate bright in his eyes, and tried aiming his pistol.
Luke fired again.
A neat hole the size of a coin appeared in the corrupt lawman’s Adam’s apple and blood sprayed out the back of his neck in a fine mist. Crimson bubbled up and rushed out of the marshal’s mouth as he fell back. He hit the ground hard and lay still. Gunsmoke hung between the men.
Luke worked his Winchester, seating another round. He was ready to keep fighting as silence settled over the town. No one else was brave enough to try to assault his position, he realized. The diehards and drunks had been killed. Those left were taking up defensive positions and seemed willing to wait it out.
Entering the back door of the general store, he cautiously made his way forward. There were bodies piled in the back hallway, bodies littered on the street beyond the shot-out windows. The dead and wounded were strewn like playing cards and everywhere reeked of gunsmoke. Inside the building it stunk like a slaughterhouse. It reminded him of the war.
Keeping back from silhouetting himself, Luke looked outside, taking quick peeks without exposing himself too much. He saw a few armed men hiding behind wagons, store windows, and horse troughs. Most had taken off their flour-sack hoods. He didn’t see more than five. One of them was the remaining deputy.
He was crouched behind a large wooden barrel filled with ten-penny nails, according to the sign tacked on it. He took a quick peek every few moments and then ducked back.
Luke doubted the Winchester would penetrate the barrel of nails well enough to let him make the shot. Easing into a kneeling position, he lined up his sights. He rested his finger on the trigger and moved the blade of the front site just to the left of the barrel. He could just make out the deputy’s knee.
“I’m not dead yet, deputy,” Luke shouted.
“You’re sure enough going to swing for this, Jensen!” the man replied. “You’re going to hang for killing the marshal!”
“That marshal was corrupt, working with a lynch mob in extrajudicial execution.”
“Extra jew . . . what?”
“I have a legal right to defend myself against unlawful actions. The territorial judge will clear me. I know the man. I was arrested for serving a legal bounty. You had no call to throw me in jail in the first place.”
The deputy laughed. “You ain’t gonna be seeing no judge—”
Filled with false bravado, the deputy risked taking a look around the edge of the barrel. Luke squeezed the trigger. The deputy’s head jerked like a boxer taking an uppercut and a gaping cavity of a wound appeared where his right eye had been just a split-second before. The back of the man’s head exploded outward and brains splattered on the unfinished lumber of the hardware store behind him.
“He’s killed the deputy!” someone shouted.
Immediately a fresh hailstorm of bullets raged. Rounds came in from several directions at once. Tins and jars and boxes of dry goods exploded as Luke dropped to the floor. He hugged the ground waiting for his chance.
“Hold your fire!” a rough baritone yelled. “Hold your damn fire!”
Luke worked the lever on the Winchester and realized it was out of bullets. He tossed it aside and drew one of his Remingtons. Everything had grown quiet outside.
“Jensen!” the baritone called. “You in there?”
“I am until I decide to leave,” Luke shouted back.
“This is Bob Jenkins, the mayor!”
“Nice to meet you. It seems the town council is going to have to appoint some new lawmen.”
“That fact has not escaped my attention, I assure you.”
“What do you want?”
“I want the killing to stop. There’s been enough death already. There doesn’t have to be any more.”
“Bob, I’m not turning myself in to you. You want me, you best come in here and get me. I wasn’t joking about holding out until the judge gets here.” That was a bluff. He figured they didn’t need to know that.
“The marshal’s dead. You just killed the last deputy. The town’s all shot up, and there’s something like twenty men dead in the damn street!”
“What do you suggest, Bob?”
“Suggest?” The mayor laughed, but the sound was so bitter it came out in a choking hack. “I suggest you get on your horse and ride the hell out of here.”
“I have a few words for Pastor Brown. He’s a wanted man.”
“And he took off as soon as you killed the marshal. You want him? Hell, go get him!”
“I see anyone, I’m going to assume they’re part of the lynch mob.”
“Ain’t nobody going to mess with you, Jensen. Just go.”
“Where would Brown be?”
“He rode north, that’s all I know.”
Luke frowned. It would have to do. “All right!” he shouted. “Everyone stay back. I see a face, I’m blowing it off. No second chances.”
“You have my word!”
Yeah, that’s worth a whole lot, Luke thought.
Still, he had an opportunity here. He might as well play it out.
Luke left the store through the rear door and walked down the back of the buildings toward the stable. Curtains dropped over windows as he moved. No one wanted to risk drawing his ire. Looking along an alley, he checked the street. No one moved. The bodies still lay where they’d fallen. People were staying indoors.
It was a risk, but he couldn’t stay out of sight forever. Sooner or later, he was going to have to test the supposed truce. He stepped out and walked across the street toward the bordello where Misty May and Katey worked.
He came in the door and saw a cadaverous man in a bowler hat and banker’s shirt sitting by himself at a small bar. He was deathly thin, skin yellowed by what Luke guessed was consumption. He coughed into a red handkerchief and looked at Luke without fear.
“The grim reaper arrives on my door,” he said. His voice was soggy gravel. He coughed into the cloth.
“Katey, Misty May?”
“You looking to blow off a little steam after you gun down an entire town?” The man chuckled. His eyes were fever bright.
“I have to ask twice?”
“You want Misty May, look behind the bar,” the pimp shrugged. “Whores lead short, hard, and very sad lives.”
Luke’s stomach tightened. He stepped around the end of the bar. Misty May lay face up, buck teeth protruding. She’d been shot in the chest by what he thought was a .44.
“She caught a stray round?”
The pimp just looked at him. “Short. Hard. And very sad.”
“Brown,” Luke said. It wasn’t a question.
“He came in ranting about you killing the marshal. He wanted Katey. Misty May stood up to him.”
“But not you?”
He shrugged. “I’m unarmed.”
“He took Katey?”
“And left.”
“You still didn’t try and stop him.”
“I’m going to die very soon, bounty hunter. Soon enough.”
“He say where he was taking her?”
“He did not.”
Luke turned and headed for the door. Brown had ridden north, the mayor had said. The man hadn’t mentioned that Katey was with him.
Most likely, Brown was heading to wherever Goldsmith was. Luke was willing to bet that under those hoods, some of the lynchers had also been former members of Goldsmith’s prairie fire gang. By now, the colonel wouldn’t have such a formidable army at his command. Luke had whittled down the odds considerably.
He helped himself to ammunition from the dead men. He took a canteen off the wall in the deserted stable, filled it at the pump, and saddled his horse. He slung the heavy sack he had filled with extra cartridges, from the saddle horn, then led the mount from the stable to one of the general stores. When he came back out, he had enough supplies to last for a week or more.
Luke Jensen left Golgotha Rock, Wyoming, and did not look back.
CHAPTER 23
There was enough moonlight for Luke to be able to cut Brown’s trail north of town. It was easy to tell when one horse was being led by the reins by a rider on a different mount. Katey was on that second horse. Luke felt certain of that.
As he followed the outlaw into the lower Medicine Bow Mountains, he knew Brown might be leading him into a trap. The crazed preacher had taken Katey to ensure that Luke followed as quickly as possible, and he was running straight toward what the bounty hunter could only assume was Goldsmith and the rest of the gang. This forced Luke to ride slower. He had to read and anticipate the land, look for the places where Goldsmith could set up an ambush.
Overhead that harvest moon hung, fat and low and bathing the mountains in dull, red-orange light. It cast a stark, almost surrealistic illumination as he rode. The foothills grew thick with hawthorn and pine, twisting oak, and ancient alder. Night birds called from far back among the gnarled, twisting trunks. Shadows hung like black curtains, split at odd intervals by bars of hard moonlight swirling with dust motes. Small animals scurried through the tangled brush. Silence bled through like a stain as Luke made his way.
The tracks began following a road, an ancient path marked by deep ruts driven into mud by heavy cart wheels, flattened in the middle by the steps of men, horses, oxen. Luke knew there were numerous mines up here in the mountains above Golgotha Rock. It was common for bandits to haunt the roads and trails between isolated mining claims and the towns that serviced the miners.
A branch snapped in the woods.
Luke stopped his horse and peered into the trees, trying to get an idea of what was out there. After a moment, he urged his horse forward and soon came to a fork. One branch led west, the other north, farther into the mountains. He wished he’d had an opportunity to mark Brown’s horseshoes the way he had Turner’s. There was nothing he could do about it now, however. Dismounting, he knelt and studied the sign in the orange-tinted light of the moon. He walked back and forth a few paces, eyeing the strides of the horses.
North.
One horse with a heavy rider leading a second mount with a lighter load. No doubt. Brown was taking Katey north. Luke swung back into his saddle and rode on.
* * *
Luke drew up short.
The fetish hung from a rawhide thong looped around a low-hanging branch. A bundle of sticks and what he thought were bird bones. He wasn’t enough of an expert to identify the tribe, but he knew a shaman’s talisman when he saw one. Goldsmith must have led his men into an area held to be big medicine by whatever native tribes remained in these parts.
Normally, seeing something like that, Luke would have given the area a wide berth in order to avoid offending the Indians. He considered himself a Christian, even if a bit in need of redemption, but he still didn’t see the point in disrespecting the religion of others when it could be helped.
This time, it couldn’t be helped.
“Come on,” he said to the horse, and heeled him forward.
He rode at a walk, Winchester out and across his saddle. The trail led between two low, rocky outcroppings and entered a valley. He heard a stream running a short distance ahead. The trees began crowding in on the path now. The tang of pine needles hung in the air like perfume.
The path grew narrower and rockier, more of a game trail than a road. He began seeing more of the dangling fetishes. They were hanging every few yards now. The bird bones had been replaced by those of small animals and the sticks with beaded strings and bits of mirror and metal. Soft chimes tinkled in the slight breeze. In the moon-shot darkness, a sense of eeriness grew stronger and stronger.
Luke reined in his horse and dismounted to take a better look around. The twisting trail cut through a heavy thicket like the path through a labyrinth. He could see no more than a few yards ahead because the trail turned on itself.
Deeper in the thicket, something rustled through the undergrowth. Luke paused, trying to track it. A twig snapped. The wind rustled through the branches and gently shook the dangling talismans. Chimes rang softly. To the other side of him, leaves suddenly rustled.
Rapid footsteps thudded dully behind him. Luke turned, taking a knee and bringing his rifle to his shoulder. The horse blocked his view back up the trail and there was no space to turn him or pull him to one side. Frustrated, Luke flopped onto his stomach to try to spot his enemies through the horse’s legs.
He caught a flash of fleeting shadow, followed by the rattling of sticks on bone as one of the fetishes was bumped, then silence. He cursed under his breath. In his worry over Katey, he’d pushed pursuit too hard and ended up caught in a deadly ambush spot.
Then, from farther up the trail, Katey screamed.
Riding or leading the horse wasn’t an option without exposing himself to bushwhackers’ lead. Katey didn’t scream again, but once had been enough. He felt almost frantic to get to her and keep her safe. He couldn’t give in to that urge, though. That would only get him killed.
Out of time, he made his best worst choice and led the horse into the trees then draped the reins over a tree branch. The breeze that had been blowing from his right as he made his way into the valley suddenly shifted. It blew directly into his face.
Instantly he smelled the faint but undeniably distinct odor of old death. His horse whined and shifted nervously. He didn’t have time to calm the animal. Across the trail from him, deep in the brush, he heard more rustling.
Crouched, he slowly began backing out from the little thicket. He turned and froze mid-step. Directly in front of his face hung one of the stick-and-bone fetishes. Blundering through that would have been like setting off a foghorn.
He stepped carefully around the talisman, ears straining. Some distance away he heard a branch snap. He was sure he wasn’t facing Indians. The men hunting him were too loud, too clumsy. This hollow might have been medicine ground for the Cheyenne or Blackfoot, but they weren’t the ones closing in.
He moved quietly, paralleling the trail. He placed his feet down toe first so his boot would slide underneath the foliage and detritus of a forest floor. Once he was sure he wouldn’t make any noise, he carefully lowered his heel. It was painfully slow going.
Just ahead of him the orange light of the harvest moon shone down in hard, bloody tinged shafts of illumination. The trees, lodgepole pine, grew more scattered. In the light of the moon, Luke saw the first scaffolding. Five feet off the ground on a pole framework, a rectangle of deer hide formed the platform on which a body rested.
The wind had worked the burial robe loose, and a boy’s skull gleamed dully in the moonlight. Wispy strands of long black hair were lifted gently by the breeze. Luke edged forward. A shadow darted through the trees beyond the burial scaffolding.
The mounting tension pulled at Luke’s nerves. It reminded him of the war. The waiting before the battle, the building anxiety until the strain grew so intense he wanted to scream. It haunted him.
Slowly, he eased his breath out through his nostrils. The sound of the stream was closer now. If he could make it that far, the bubbling music of the running water would mask his steps, allowing him to get closer in to where Katey was held. If she was still alive.
Easing forward, he saw more scaffolding placed among the trees. A few hardwoods had been utilized as burial trees. Bodies wrapped in buffalo robes were placed at varying heights in the branches, and the trunks were decorated with red and black stripes.
Something rustled to his right and he froze.
Silence.
He studied the next burial scaffold. The person resting there had been a warrior. As was the custom, he was buried with his arsenal, including knives and tomahawks. A horn bow and quiver of arrows hung from one notch in the framework. A long lance had been laid next to the body.
Luke frowned.
Once the firing began, he’d be night blind and deaf. So would his attackers, but they were many and he was one. Perhaps he needed to hold back on firing until he had no choice. Following his impulse, he picked up the lance. It had a ragged-edged flint tip some six inches long and was strong enough to pierce buffalo hide. He hefted it.
“That’ll do,” he whispered. “That’ll do.”
Luke moved in a crouch. He kept the Winchester ready. It was light enough to fire one-handed if he needed to. He held the lance in his left hand, point forward, ready to strike. He moved slowly, pushing toward the running stream just ahead.
The sound of the water grew louder, filling his ears. Keeping his eyes fixed, he slowly turned his head and scanned the terrain. He looked once, then repeated the motion. A shadow shifted among other shadows.
There.
Luke remained still with the patience of a lifelong hunter. After a moment, the shadow moved again and he made out a figure crouched at the foot of a tree. He edged forward. The tree was right on the edge of the stream. The clouds parted and the orange-red gleam of the moon played across the rushing water.
The stream looked shallow, maybe no more than knee deep, and about five yards wide. The water flowed over a gravel bed, the surface broken with white water where it traveled over stones. The man crouched by the tree wore a cotton duster and a battered old cavalry Stetson. He was holding a repeater. Luke couldn’t tell which model.
Luke slid forward, hands tight on his weapons. The wood of the lance haft felt solid in his grip. Toe, heel, toe, heel. Closer in, Luke saw the long scraggly beard and thought he recognized the man from Goldsmith’s gang. He didn’t recall his name and it wasn’t important, he wasn’t adding up bounties quite yet.
Clearly impatient, the man rose off his knee into a half crouch and looked around the bole of the tree. Luke followed his gaze as he glided forward and saw the path was only a few feet beyond the man, screened by the low shrubbery of a juniper berry bush.
