Brother's Keeper (18 page)

“Sheriff, if I catch him, you won’t have to waste any good rope on a hanging,” replied Jess, the rising anger beginning to show on his face. “I know this type of man, and I know only one way to deal with him.”

“Well, I have to get back to town. Good luck in your hunt.”
“Luck doesn’t have much to do with it, but thanks anyway, Sheriff,” replied Jess.
Sheriff Mathers headed back into town. He hadn’t made ten feet when he stopped and turned around. He reached down into one of his saddlebags and pulled out what looked to be a pretty nice telescope. “These might come in handy. If he’s hiding out in these hills, you might have a better time finding him with these. He handed them to Murry who had walked over to the sheriff.
“Thanks, Sheriff. I’ll return them to you when we come back to town,” said Jess. The Sheriff nodded and again turned back to town. Murry handed the telescope to Jess. Jess pulled it open, extending it all the way and looked through them. They made quite a difference. “These work pretty good. I’m going to have to get me one of these after this is over. It brings things up a lot closer than you can see without it,” said Jess, as he handed it back to Murry.
Murry looked through them. “Yeah, these make a big difference.” Carl tried them and was just as surprised.
“Well,” Carl asked Jess, “what’s our plan?” Jess looked all around. They were in a small valley area surrounded by hills. Not giant hills or really steep hills but rather rolling hillsides.
“We have to get on high ground. We’ll stay on the top of the hills and start in a small circle and work our way out. Murry, your job will be to keep track of which hills we’ve been on. Mark each hill with a stick and a piece of white cloth so we know which ones we’ve been on. Carl, your job will be to use that telescope to see down in the valleys and the hillsides.” Carl and Murry nodded in agreement.
“What are you going to do?” asked Carl. Jess looked around at the hills again. Then he took the Sharps rifle out of its scabbard and checked it. He took out a box of cartridges and placed some cartridges into a small leather pouch he usually kept tied to the horn on his saddle. Jess had picked up some extra rounds for the Sharps while in Holten.
“I think I’ll do some target shooting with my new rifle,” replied Jess. Carl and Murry looked at each other somewhat confused.
“We are looking for a killer in these hills and you plan to go target shooting?” Carl asked.
“That’s right. Let’s start up there,” Jess said, as he headed up the first hill.
“You’re the boss, Jess. We’ll follow your lead,” replied Murry.
Jess looked at Carl and Murry and they headed up the first hill, the Sharps rifle across Jess’ lap. When they reached the top of the hill, the three of them dismounted. Both Carl and Murry were wondering exactly what Jess had in mind but they had no real idea. Jess sat down on a big rock for a moment and rechecked the rifle and made sure it was loaded. Carl looked around with the telescope and Murry found a stiff branch to tie a white cloth to.
“See anything, Carl?” asked Jess.
“Nothing yet, but what am I looking for? I know we are looking for Aker but everyone has already looked for him all over these hills. Do you think he will be sitting on a rock down in the valley sipping some coffee and waiting for us or something?”
“No, I don’t think that, but if the sheriff is right, and if everyone combed these hills since the robbery happened, how could he have gotten out?” asked Jess.
“Maybe he high-tailed out of here before anybody got here,” Carl answered.
“Let’s think about it. He had three other horses besides his. He had a partner with him. No one said that they saw Aker kill his partner so he had to do it after the train backed up into town. That had to take a little time, even if he shot his partner in the back.”
“Yeah?” replied Murry, trying to follow Jess’ thought.
“So, after he kills his partner, he still has three horses and a whole lot of gold and money,” continued Jess.
“Okay,” added Carl, “so he takes his gold and heads straight out.”
“How much do you think that gold weighed, Carl?” Jess asked.
“Hell, I don’t know. I guess it depends on just how much gold there was.”
“According to the sheriff, it was quite a lot, which is why Aker needed a partner and the extra horses. I don’t think Aker could have gotten far enough away with all those horses and extra weight. Think about the dust three horses loaded with gold makes. Someone would have spotted him before he could have gotten out of the hills and the area around the hillsides is flat land for miles. Aker also knows how Heath Connor loved his wife since he worked for him for almost a year. He knows that Connor would have him hanged for killing his wife. I might be wrong, but I think he’s still here, hiding out in these hills.”
Carl and Murry shook their heads in agreement as if what Jess had said made some sense. Then, Murry stopped pounding the branch in the ground and looked up at Jess, the big rock still in his hand. “But…even if he is somewhere in these hills, how are we going to find him? Dozens of men have already looked for him and no one had seen a trace of him except for some of his tracks he left at the railroad tracks. Those ain’t worth nothing since everyone else in the area had trodden through here looking for him.”
Jess stared down into the valley to his right. “Well, I guess we have to think a little different from all those others,” replied Jess, a smile forming on his lips. “Carl, look down in this valley and let me know if you see anything that looks out of place.”
Carl looked dumbfounded. “What the hell are you talking about? It’s all the same shit, rocks, brush and a few small trees.”
“I know that. But look for something different. Something out of the ordinary like too many brushes together or maybe trees lying sideways as if someone put them there to hide themselves.”
Carl was getting the idea now and his eyes lit up. “Oh…I get it now. Like maybe he made himself some cover that looks like everything else around him,” Carl said, as if he had came to a sudden realization. Jess smiled some more and shook his head, which was becoming an all too often occurrence lately. Murry sat on a rock and just glared at Carl.
“What? What did I say? Don’t start on me Murry, I swear.”
“Carl, just keep looking and let me know if you spot anything, anything at all,” said Jess, before the two of them could start their all too familiar banter.
Carl looked around with the telescope. He saw some clumps of brush and a few extra rocks in piles but nothing that looked suspicious. Then Carl spotted a larger brush that looked like it was two or three brushes put together.
“Jess, down to my left, just above that large boulder with the single piece of wood on top of it, is a large brushpile. It looks bigger than the other brushes in the area.”
Jess laid the rifle on a boulder that was about four feet tall and looked down the barrel in the direction Carl was pointing at. “I believe I see it.”
Jess took aim at the small piece of wood on the boulder and slowly pulled back the trigger of the Sharps. The Sharps exploded with a loud boom and the shot echoed throughout the hills. He missed the small piece of wood by only a few inches, the fifty caliber round smashing into the hillside, pieces of rocks scattering in all directions.
“See anything moving, Carl?” asked Jess.
Carl stared through the telescope. “Nothing.”
“Keep looking,” said Jess, inserting another .50 caliber round into the Sharps.
A few minutes later Carl spotted something. “Okay. I spotted an extra large shadow next to a few large boulders over that way.” Jess spotted the area and fired off another round as Carl looked through the telescope.
“Nothing Jess,” said Carl, still looking through the telescope.
Carl spotted a few other areas that might mean something and Jess threw a round at it but they came up empty. They went to the next hill and did the same. Carl looking for anything that seemed out of the ordinary and Jess firing a round from the Sharps. Jess was getting accurate with the Sharps and whenever Carl couldn’t find anything unusual to shoot at, Jess would simply fire off a half dozen rounds into the hills at nothing but rocks and shadows. That’s the way the remainder of the day went and they made camp and turned in for the night. The three of them took turns at watch from the top of the hill they planned to start at in the morning. They awoke before daylight and started the entire process again. Five different hillsides and almost a hundred rounds later, they were all getting discouraged.
“Maybe this ain’t gonna work, Jess,” said Murry.
“Besides, you’re going to be out of ammo for the Sharps soon,” added Carl. Jess looked at them and they could see that even he was getting discouraged.
“Okay, maybe you two are right, but let’s finish out the day and turn in and see how we feel in the morning.”
The three agreed and they moved on to the next hill. Carl was spotting and Jess was firing off shots at the hills. Murry was pounding a stick into the ground when he looked off into the direction of one of the hills they had started on the first day. Something was not right but he couldn’t put his finger on it immediately. Then it hit him. He couldn’t see the stick he had pounded in on the top of the hill. It was gone.
“Hey, Jess.”
“Yeah, Murry, did you see something?”
“It’s what I don’t see that’s interesting.”
“What does that mean?” asked Carl.
“The first marker I put on the first hill is missing.”
“It probably just fell over,” said Carl, dismissing it. Jess, however, did not dismiss anything that seemed out of the ordinary.
“Murry, are you sure you pounded it in far enough?” asked Jess.
“Are you kidding? I haven’t had anything to do except pound these sticks into the ground and I pounded them in good. And there hasn’t been even a hint of a breeze since we started,” replied Murry.
Jess sat down and took a few swallows of water from the canteen. “Here’s what we are going to do. Let’s act like we don’t know the stake is missing. Let’s make camp tonight and start out in the morning as if we are following our pattern like we have the last few days. When we head over the next hill, let’s backtrack back to the first hill and come at it from the south. If it’s our man and he took the stake down, he’s probably on the other side of the hill from us.”
“But why would he take the stake down?” asked Carl. How does he know we wouldn’t think that we hadn’t checked out that valley and go there later?”
“Because if it is him, he’s been watching and he figures that we would forget where the stakes were and that we didn’t even start there and probably wouldn’t go back. Maybe he’s just pissed off and ripped the stake out,” replied Jess. “We have an hour before dusk so let’s keep on like nothing has changed. That way, if it is Aker, he will think that in the morning, we’ll be one more hillside away from him.”
“You’re the boss,” replied Murry. They continued on and then made camp. Supper consisted of two rabbits that Jess had plugged with his Sharps earlier while he was pounding the hillsides with the Sharps. Jess had taken the heads clean off, leaving all the good meat. Murry was cutting up a few sticks to cook the rabbits on and Jess was cutting a large forked stick.
“What are you going to do with that?” asked Carl.
“The man at the general store back in Baxter told me the buffalo hunters use a support stick like this to balance their rifles on when they are long distance shooting.”
“After seeing you take the heads off those two rabbits, I don’t think you need it,” replied Carl.
“I’ll take any edge I can get, Carl.”
Carl smiled and the three of them ate a pretty good meal and turned in, each taking their turn at watch. At dawn, they ate a simple meal of pan bread and some bacon, along with a pot of coffee. Then, they slowly made their way atop the next hill and then they went down the hill just enough to be out of the line of sight from the first hill that they had started on. They immediately turned south and worked themselves around the area until they got to the bottom of the first hill. They made their way up to the top. They found the spot where Murry had pounded in the stake. The hole was still evident. Someone had removed it. Jess could sense the danger even though the other two men could not.
“Stay low and be careful. I think he’s watching us right now,” cautioned Jess. “Carl, take a look at that large clump of bushes where we started the other day, remember? That small stick is still sitting on the large boulder just below the clump of bushes.”
“Yeah, I see it. That little piece of wood is still there. You missed it the other day.”
“Well, let’s see if I’ve gotten better with this thing,” said Jess, as he found two bushes with an opening between them. He stuck the forked stick into the ground deeply enough to support the Sharps. He laid down flat and placed the barrel of the Sharps rifle on the forked piece of wood. Then, he found his target, the small piece of wood lying on the boulder. The piece of wood was probably a hundred and fifty yards away and there was no breeze at all.
“Carl, watch those bushes close. I’m going to fire a few shots off. Murry, let us know if you see any movement around that area.” Jess took careful aim. The Sharps barked and the piece of wood shattered into splinters.
“I guess you have gotten better with that thing,” Carl said, not taking his eyes away from the telescope, which were trained on the large clump of bushes. The Sharps barked a second time and then a third, one shot into the boulder, shattering chips of stone into the bushes and one straight into the bushes. No movement. Jess fired a fourth round into the clump of bushes. Carl leaned forward a little, as if that could somehow let him see better when a bullet ripped through his left arm, causing him to drop the telescope and scream like a cat grabbed by the tail. He spun around and hit the ground behind the large rock he had been propped up on. A volley of shots kept coming at a steady pace. Jess rolled over to the large rock he was next to and Murry laid down flat just behind the edge of the hill, out of sight of the shooter. Jess counted at least fifteen shots, all from a rifle, he was sure.
“Carl, how bad are you hit?” asked Jess.
“It hurts like hell, but it went right through the flesh and missed the bone.”
“That’s good; wrap it up tight with some cloth. Tear off your sleeve and use that.”
“Nothing good about being shot,” complained Carl, as he began to tear off his sleeve.
“Quit complaining and give me the telescope,” retorted Murry. Carl threw the telescope over to Murry. Murry rose up just slightly to catch it and when he did, a bullet smacked into his forearm.
“Goddamnit!” screamed Murry. “That son of a bitch shot me!” Murry lay back down and ripped off his sleeve and began to wrap his wound. Jess looked back and forth at the two of them and shook his head. Murry looked at him.