Bowdrie's Law (Ss) (1983) (21 page)

He glanced from the man to Lucy. "This time it just sort of fell open to the part about Alcibiades. Now, there was a nice-seeming young fellow who came from a good family, had good education, :just about everything.

But he turned out to be a traitor and worse.

"Just goes to show you. A man may be good in some respects, no good in others."

Lucy Taylor flashed her eyes at him, then glanced away. Chick Bowdrie picked up his hat and turned to go. "Reckon I better be gettin' on. I don't want Charlie to get too much lead on me."

"What?" Lucy turned swiftly. "What do you mean?"

. Bowdrie's slow smile gathelred around the corners of his eyes and then he spoke in French. "I heard what your father said, and your reply, so I know that Clarlie saw me and has gone. I know he was hidden not far away when I arrived. And you knew it."

"'You speak French! You told me you had not been to school!" "Ma'am, I grew up down Castroville way, around there an' D'Hanis. Now, when I was a youngster most folks around there spoke both French and German. I learned to speak those languages as soon as I did English.

"You should take no more for granted from an officer of the law than from a horse thief. Both parties might conceal more than they tell."

Charlie Venk had ridden west, then north. Bowdrie knew a showdown was approaching and he was almost sorry. Trailing Venk had been a rare experience. In a time when many men lived by the gun, some of them were men of education and background. John Ringo and Elza Lay, for example, were men of considerable reputation. Charlie Venk was another, yet whatever else he was, he was a killer and a thief.

All that day and much of the next he followed Venk through a maze of tracks. He lost the trail, then found it again. It led across bare hillsides where Venk could proceed swiftly but Bowdrie, for fear of an ambush, must move slowly. He had to ride with extreme care for he was sure that Venk had made up his mind. He was through running.

Venk knew every trick, and he tried them all. Then Bowdrie came on a wagon loaded with household goods. The driver and a woman sat on the wagon seat; a small child peered between their shoulders.

"Hi!" The driver drew up. "You're ridin' the wrong way! Apaches raidin'! Killed a couple of prospectors night before last and burned some folks out! Better head back t'other way!"

Bowdrie smiled. "Thanks. Have you seen a big man? Ridin' a sorrel horse? Nice-lookin' man, headed the same way I am?"

"Sure did! He he'ped me fix a busted wheel. Bought some ca'tridges from me. You a friend o' his'n?"

"You might put it that way."

"He said he had a friend foller'n him an' he aimed to take that friend right through the middle of Apache country. Said he'd take him right back to Texas if he had the nerve to foiler!"

Chick Bowdrie looked south and west. "I imagine he expected you'd tell me that. See you."

He continued north, but now he rode with greater caution, avoiding skylines and studying country before trusting himself to cross open places. Off to the northwest there was a thin column of smoke. It was not a signal. Something was burning.

Bowdrie turned the roan toward it.

Venk, Bowdrie reflected, was a strange combination. He had rustled cattle, stolen horses, robbed banks, and had killed several men, most of them in gun battles. As to the killing that started Bowdrie on his trail when he shot the man off the horse, all the evidence was not in. There might be more to it than the coldblooded killing it seemed to be.

He was shrewd and intelligent. He could be friendly, and he could be dangerous. He could smile right into your eyes and shoot you dead in your tracks. Whatever else he was, to ride into Apache country meant he had to be either a very brave man or a fool. Or both.

For Bowdrie to follow him was equally foolish. Yet Charlie thought he was playing his ace in taking the risk. Desperate the man might be, but he also knew something about Chick Bowdrie by now.

He could not shake Bowdrie from his trail. Venk had tried every ruse used in wild country. This would be his last attempt.

They were now in northern Arizona. It was the home country of the Mogollon and White Mountain Apache, a rough, broken country of mountains, cliffs, and canyons. Not many miles from here was a pine forest of considerable extent. Bowdrie would have to think and move carefully, for the Apaches were more to be feared than Venk.

Venk was no fool, and in saying he was returning to Texas, he might do just that.

He might also weave a trail through raiding Apache bands, then circle back to pay another visit to Lucy Taylor. Lingering in this country was a foolhardy matter, but better to linger than to act and blunder.

Ten miles ahead of Bowdrie was Charlie Venk. Always before he had been able to talk or laugh himself out of a situation or his skills had been great enoughto elude pursuit.

He now knew the identity of his pursuer, and the could not have missed knowing something about Bowdrie.

He could find no way of eluding his pursuer, and good with a gun as he was, he knew that in any gun battle many things might happen, and Bowdrie would not die easily.

He might kill Bowdrie, but he might also be killed. And Charlie Venk loved life.

He was fresh out of tricks. Several times he believed he had lost the Ranger, but always Bowdrie worked out the trail and kept coming. It was getting on Venk's nerves.

He no longer felt like laughing. Twice lately he had awakened in a cold sweat, and he found himself looking over his shoulder constantly. Once he even shot into a shadow.

He had not had a good night's sleep in weeks.

Now he was riding into Apache country. There was no mercy in Charlie Venk. He was a good fellow as long as it cost him nothing.

Could he have killed Bowdrie without danger to himself, he would have done it.

Nowhere in sight was there movement. Hot sun lay down the valley, but it was cool in the shade and the trail was visible for miles. Cicadas sang in the brush, and somewhere not far off a magpie fussed and worried over something. Charlie Venk needed rest, and this was as good a place as he was apt to find. He would just---

A brown arm slipped from behind and across his throat. Hands seized his arms and he was thrown to the ground. Other Apaches moved in, and he was a prisoner. His arms were bound, his guns taken away.

Blankly he stared into the cruel dark faces around him. He could talk, but his words would fall on unheeding ears. He could laugh, but they would not comprehend. His guns were gone, his muscles bound, his gift of tongue useless.

Charlie Venk stared into the sunlit afternoon realizing the heart-wrenching truth that he was through. He, the handsome, the strong, the ruthless, the untouchable.

He who had ridden wild and free was trapped.

He was too wise in the ways of his country not to know what awaited him. Fiendish torture, burning, shot full of arrows or staked to an anthill.

Chick Bowdrie found the spot where the capture took place, not two hours after Venk was taken. He found the stubs of three cigarettes, a confusion of track; mingled moccasins and boots. He found the trail that led away, several unshod horses and one shod. There was no blood on the ground. No stripped and mutilated body. Charlie Venk had been taken alive.

It was after nightfall when he found the Apache camp. His horse was tied in a thicket a half-mile away, and Bowdrie had changed to the moccasins he carried in his saddlebags.

He was among the rocks overlooking the Apache camp.

Below him a fire blazed and he could see Venk tied to a tree whose top had been lopped off. As Chick watched, an Apache leaped up and rushed at Venk, striking him with a burning stick. Another followed, then another. This was preliminary; the really rough stuff was still to come. There were at least twenty Apaches down there, some of them women and children.

Bowdrie inched forward, measuring the risk against the possibilities. Coolly he lifted his Winchester. His mouth was dry, his stomach hollow with fear. Within seconds he would be in an all-out fight with the deadliest fighters known to warfare.

His greatest asset aside from his marksmanship was surprise. What he must do must be done within less than a minute.

He fired three times as fast as he could lever the shots. The range was point-blank.

The first bullet was for a huge warrior who had jumped up and grabbed a stub of blazing wood and started for Venk. The bullet caught the Indian in mid-stride.

Bowdrie swung his rifle and another Apache dropped, a third staggered, then vanished into the darkness.

Instantly he was on his feet. If he was to free Venk, it must be done now! Once the panic inspired by the sudden attack was over, he would have no chance at all.

A move in the shadows warned him, and he fired. Venk was fighting desperately at the ropes that bound him. Behind the tree, Bowdrie could see the knot. He lifted the rifle and fired, heard the solid thunk of the bullet into the tree, and then, as he was cursing himself for his miss, he saw Venk spring away from the tree, fall, then roll into the shadows.

His bullet, aimed at the knot, had cut a strand of the rope! The Apaches had believed themselves attacked by a number of men but would recover swiftly, realizing it could not be so. Warned by the fact that nobody had rushed the camp, they would be returning.

Bowdrie worked his way to,where the horses were. He heard a sliding sound and a muffled gasp of pain.

"Venk?"

"Yeah." The whisper was so soft he scarcely heard it. "And I got my guns!"

A bullet smashed a tree near them, but neither wasted a shot in reply. They were thinking only of the horses now. The Apaches would think of them also. Suddenly Venk lifted his pistol and shot in the direction of the horses. Bowdrie swore, but the shot struck an Indian reaching for the rope that tied them. Startled by the firing, the horses broke free and charged in a body.

Bowdrie had an instant to slip his arm and shoulder through the sling on his rifle, and then the horses were on them.

He sprang at the nearest horse. One hand gripped the mane and a leg went over the back. Outside camp they let the horses run, a few wild shots missing them by a distance. They circled until they could come to where Bowdrie's horse was tied.

Daybreak found them miles away. Bowdrie glanced over at the big, powerfully muscled man lying on the ground near the gray horse. That it had once been a cavalry horse was obvious by the "US" stamped on the hip.

Naked to the waist, Venk's body was covered by burns. There was one livid burn across his jaw.

Venk looked over at him. "If anybody had told me that could be done, I'd have said he was a liar!"

Venk had two guns belted on, and in his wild escape from camp he had grabbed up either his own or an Indian's rifle.

"That was a tough one," Bowdrie admitted.

"You Rangers always go that far to take a prisoner?"

"Of course," Bowdrie said cheerfully, "I could have saved Texas a trial and a hanging or a long term in prison by just letting them have you."

"I guess," Venk suggested, "we'd better call it quits until we get back among folks.

No use us fightin' out here."

Bowdrie shrugged. "What have we got to fight about? You're my prisoner."

"Determined cuss, aren't you?" He put a cigarette in his mouth. "Oh, well! Have it your own way!" He took a twig from the fire to light his smoke; then he said, holding the twig in his fingers, "I might as well go back with you. You saved my life. Anyway--" he grinned--"I'd like to stop by and see that Lucy gal! Say, wasn't she the---!"

He jumped and cried out as the twig burned down to his fingers, but as he jumped his hand dropped for his gun in a flashing draw!

The gun came up and Bowdrie shot him through the arm. Charlie Venk dropped his gun and sprang back, gripping his bloody arm. He stared unbelieving at Bowdrie.

"You beat me! You beat me!"

"I was all set for you, Charlie. I've used that trick myself." "Why didn't you kill me? You could have."

"You said you wanted to see Lucy again. Well, so do I. I'd hate to have to go back and tell her I buried you out here, Charlie.

"Now, you just unbuckle that belt and I'll fix up that arm before you bleed to death.

We've a long ride ahead of us."