Crow Creek Crossing (23 page)

“If I do,” the marshal said, “I'll shoot you on sight.” The threat was met with an insolent grin. “I'll give you tonight and tomorrow to get your belongin's outta the Pickens place. After then, it's open season on your ass.”

“Why,
gracias
, Marshal. That's mighty kind of you. I'll be sure and be gone by tomorrow night.” As cautious as he would be backing away from a rattlesnake, Sanchez moved out the door before holstering his Colt. Wasting as little time as possible, he climbed aboard the dun gelding and loped up the muddy street, fully aware that his former boss was now his enemy.

The marshal stepped outside the door to watch Sanchez depart. He had no intention of letting the sneering gunman ride away with the hundred dollars, and he watched him until he reached the far end of the street, then took the trail that followed the river. Long was satisfied then that Sanchez was
heading toward the Pickens place, about a mile and a half from town. He pulled the door to his office closed and headed across the street to the Bucket of Blood, where he found Ace Moyer seated at his usual table.

Ace looked up when he saw his half brother approaching. “Did Sanchez come to see you?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Long replied. “That son of a bitch pulled a gun on me.”

“You give him his money?”

“Yeah, he got his money, but he damn sure ain't gonna keep it,” Long said. “Where's Con?”

“Upstairs with Lulu Belle, where he usually is this time of day,” Ace said with a grin when he thought about his brother and his favorite among the whores that worked the saloon.

“Well, let's go get him. Sanchez thinks he's got till tomorrow night to get outta that cabin, and I plan to pay him a little visit tonight.”

•   •   •

As cunning as a fox, Sanchez knew that he must prepare to have visitors sometime during the night. Big Steve Long had too willingly paid him the hundred dollars. He was not likely to let the money go if he thought he might have a chance to trade a bullet in the back for the return of the cash. The simple fact that he gave Sanchez the night and the following day to get out of the cabin told him that they hoped to make him think he had nothing to worry about tonight.

Well, I like to have company,
he thought.
I'll have a welcome party for him
.

It would have been a much simpler plan to pack his possibles and keep going while he had a head start. But Sanchez wanted the satisfaction of showing
the arrogant marshal what it cost anyone who tried to cheat him.

Darkness had fully set in by the time Sanchez completed the mile-and-a-half ride to the Pickens place. It was helped along by the heavy snow clouds that had settled over the river valley. He peered up at the sky. There looked to be a good possibility that there would be another of the early-spring snow showers that had drifted over the prairie during the past week. He might miss the warm little cabin before the night was over, if those clouds decided to drop their load.

Not worth risking a bullet in the back of the head,
he quickly decided.

He left the saddle on his horse and went inside the cabin to roll up a few things in his bedroll. Most of his possessions were already in his saddlebags, so there wasn't much time required to pack up. When that was done, he led his horse down to the lean-to that had served Pickens as a barn and tied the dun behind it.

Back at the cabin, he carried in a couple of armloads of firewood that the late Mr. Pickens had piled near the door. In a few minutes, he had a roaring fire going in the stone fireplace. When he was satisfied that it was stoked to burn for a good while, he left the warm cabin and went back to the lean-to, where his horse was tied, and stacked two hay bales to use as a firing position. With a pitchfork that was kept in the lean-to, he forked off one end of one of the bales and tossed it to his horse to feed on. Satisfied that the horse would be fed and ready to ride in a hurry if need be, he pulled his Spencer carbine, checked the
load, and waited. He grinned when he anticipated the reception Steve Long was going to get.

The reception was not to be held for quite some time, at least not as soon as he had expected. Long was evidently waiting to make sure he was asleep. Sanchez had to go back to the cabin twice to keep the fire going in the fireplace. The clouds that had threatened all day finally decided to deliver on their promise, and released a gentle shower of large, soft snowflakes. It was tempting to think of the warm cabin and the hearty fire in the fireplace.

He had almost decided that the marshal was not coming after all when in the early-morning hours, he heard the questioning whinny of a horse. It brought a smile of satisfaction to his face.

He had company.

He rose higher behind his barricade of hay bales and squinted to see in the dark shadows around the cabin. In a few moments, he saw a figure move up beside the single window on the side.

“Buenos días,”
he whispered softy as he raised his carbine to his shoulder. Squinting to see through the falling snow, he couldn't tell which one of the three brothers it was. A split second before he pulled the trigger, he was startled by the sudden explosion of gunfire as Big Steve kicked the cabin door open, followed by simultaneous shotgun blasts through the single window on each side of the cabin. There were three assassins, just as he had anticipated. They had elected to use shotguns, no doubt thinking to fill the tiny cabin with buckshot. Had he been inside, it was unlikely that he would have escaped injury.

While the man he could see paused to reload his shotgun, Sanchez squeezed the trigger on his
carbine. The Spencer bucked and Con Moyer sank to his knees, a bullet in his shoulder. Sanchez tried to quickly fire again, but he missed when the wounded man crawled around the corner of the cabin.

“Damn!” Sanchez swore for missing a kill shot. A few seconds later, he found himself under fire from two shooters at the back corner of the cabin, this time using rifles. They had evidently seen his muzzle flash and were concentrating their fire on his position behind the barn. He returned their fire until his barricade of hay began to come apart from the slugs ripping into it, and he was forced to retreat.

Deciding it in his best interest to run, he rose to fire three shots at the corner of the cabin. He hoped that would force the two men to duck back for cover and give him a few seconds to run to his horse. The distraction almost worked, but he was struck in the back of his thigh just as he jumped up into the saddle. Grimacing in pain, he nevertheless galloped away through the cottonwoods on the riverbank.

Behind him, Big Steve exclaimed, “Get after the son of a bitch!” He and Ace ran back to the front of the cabin where their horses were tied. “How bad are you hurt?” he asked, upon seeing his brother sitting on the ground with his back against the log wall.

“I got hit in the shoulder,” Con groaned, “but it ain't too bad, I reckon.”

“You stay here,” Big Steve said. “Me and Ace will chase the bastard down, and we'll come back to get you.” He didn't wait for Con's reply but ran for his horse. In a matter of seconds, he and Ace were charging recklessly through the dark trees guarding the river, unmindful of the danger to their horses.

Already a mile ahead of them, Sanchez veered
away from the river and headed out across the dark prairie, reining his horse back to a safer pace, lest he risk breaking a leg on the uneven ground. His intent now was to find a suitable place to set up another ambush for his pursuers, and he had his eye on a low ridge ahead of him that looked as though it would fill the bill. As he neared the ridge, he became more aware of the bullet in his right thigh, cursing his luck when he knew that it had to have been a lucky shot. He would see how bad it was after he found a spot to wait for Big Steve and Ace. At present, it was painful, and there was a growing patch of blood on his trousers, but he didn't feel incapacitated.

When he reached the ridge, he found a deep ravine that led to the top. It looked to be an ideal place to get his horse out of sight and lie in wait for anyone fool enough to ride across the open prairie leading up to the ridge. It would be as easy as the ambush he had set up for the posse that chased him and Slade to the Chugwater. He smiled smugly when he thought about that, in spite of the pain in his leg. Moments before, he was happy to see the snow still falling. Now, thinking about the ambush, he almost wished it would stop, so as not to cover his trail.

There was nothing to do now but wait for them to show up. While he waited, he tried to see how bad his wound looked but found it difficult because it was in the back of his thigh and almost impossible for him to get a close look at it.

“Damn the luck,” he cursed, knowing that he was going to need someone to help him, possibly to remove the .44 slug he was now carrying. “Where the hell I gonna find anybody out here?” he asked aloud.

The closest town with a doctor was probably
Cheyenne, and he sure as hell couldn't go back there. And the way he was heading now would only lead him farther across the lifeless prairie or into the rugged line of mountains. The only place he could likely get help, he decided, was Lem Dawson's place, Buzzard's Roost. He wasn't sure exactly where he was in respect to the trading post on the North Laramie, but he knew he could find it by going back to strike the Laramie River. If he followed it north, he would eventually come to country he was familiar with.

“First, I'll take care of Big Steve Long and his brothers,” he said.

•   •   •

First light found Big Steve and Ace Moyer almost six miles up the Laramie River with still no sign of the man they chased, and no trail in the fresh white snow before them. They had continued following the river because, if Sanchez had turned away from it, there was no way they could tell where he did it. It had been too dark to have seen his tracks leaving the river when they first started after him. And by the time it was light enough to see, the snow had covered any tracks he left.

“It don't make no sense to keep ridin' up this river,” Ace finally said. “We lost him and that's all there is to it.” Cold and tired, he was thinking of Con, six miles back in that warm cabin.

“One hundred dollars,” Big Steve fumed. “The sneaky bastard got away with one hundred dollars of my money.”

“Well, I reckon it was worth it. He cleaned out the Anderson place for us.”

Laramie City was a dreary-looking little frontier town on the cold spring morning that Cole Bonner rode up the one short street. The big Morgan gelding plodded along at a slow walk through the mixture of snow and mud that had been churned up to become almost liquid. Stephen Manning had been accurate in his description of the forlorn collection of tents, shacks, and a few permanent buildings. One of these stood out as the center of activity on the street, as evidenced by the half dozen horses tied at the hitching rail out front. It was easy to assume that this was the Bucket of Blood Saloon, and if he was to find the man he searched for, it would most likely be there.

He tied Joe at the end of the hitching rail and paused to take a look around him before stepping up on the short length of boardwalk. He could not afford to be careless, for Jose Sanchez could recognize him, just as he could recognize Sanchez. And the man who came out on top in this lethal game might very
well be the man who saw the other one first. Seeing no one else on the street, Cole opened the door and peered into the smoky saloon, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dim light. The noisy room suddenly became quiet as every eye turned to see who had walked in, but none of the faces looked familiar to him, so he entered. Conversation began to pick up again a few moments later, when no one recognized the stranger, assuming him to be just another drifter who had stumbled upon the town.

Cole walked over to the bar. “What's your pleasure, young feller?” the bartender asked.

“To tell you the truth, it's a little too early for me to want any strong spirits,” Cole replied. “I've been ridin' since sunup, and I could really use a cup of hot coffee right now. You wouldn't know where I could get one, would you?”

“Coffee?” the bartender huffed, obviously amused but not unfriendly. “I don't get many requests for coffee, even this early in the mornin'. If you're lookin' for some breakfast, you can find somethin' to eat at the hotel. I ain't recommendin' it, mind you.” Cole nodded slowly as if giving it serious thought. The bartender waited for a moment before deciding. “If it's just coffee you want, I've got a pot on the stove I made for myself. I'll give you a cup of that.”

“I'd appreciate that,” Cole said. “Course I'd pay you for it.”

Surprised by the offer, for he assumed Cole was another penniless drifter down on his luck, the bartender said, “Hell, I won't charge you for it. I'll have a cup with you.”

“Much obliged,” Cole said. He considered himself lucky to find the bartender a friendly sort. It increased
his odds of getting the information he needed, instead of a tendency to clam up when strangers asked questions about men on the run.

“Here you go,” the bartender said when he set a stained coffee cup, filled to the brim, on the bar before Cole. “What brings you to Laramie? You lookin' to stay for a spell, or just passin' through?”

“Just passin' through,” Cole replied.

“Where you headed?”

“Don't know,” Cole answered, thinking he needed to be asking the questions. “Are you one of the owners of this place?”

“No, I just tend bar.” He paused to introduce himself. “My name's Al. Big Steve Long and the Moyer brothers own the saloon.” He paused again, then said, “And just about everythin' else in town.”

“Cole Bonner,” Cole said. “Pleased to meet you.” He took another swallow of the bitter black coffee, trying not to make a face when he did. It had the taste of coffee that had been overboiled a couple of times.

“You say you don't know where you're goin'?” Al asked. “How you gonna know when you get there?” He laughed at his joke.

Cole chuckled to show his appreciation of the joke. “Tell you the truth, I'm lookin' for a fellow, a Mexican named Sanchez.”

His comment immediately caused a reaction in Al's eyes, and the jovial expression turned to one of serious concern. “Whaddaya lookin' for him for?”

“He stole a horse from me,” Cole told him.

“That bay he was ridin'?”

“That's the one,” Cole said, continuing the story he was making up. “That bay was one of my best horses.”

“Well, I ain't surprised,” Al said. “But I'm afraid
you're too late to catch that feller Sanchez. He hung around here for a while. I don't know why Big Steve put up with him, but he got fed up with him when he shot a feller in here a few nights ago. Steve, he's the marshal, too. He went after Sanchez—him and his brothers. But Sanchez got away.”

That was beginning to become a familiar story to Cole. “Which way did he run?” he asked. “Did they say?”

“Well, Ace said he was runnin' right along the river, headin' north, when they finally gave up on him. They mighta kept after him, but Con got shot in the shoulder, so they had to come back to get him. Ace said he was pretty sure he hit Sanchez with one shot, but it didn't slow him down any.” Al paused then, noticing Cole's intent expression as he talked. “They mighta been lucky they didn't find him. They mighta had another one of 'em get shot. Sanchez was in here a few times, and I'll tell you there's somethin' downright scary about that man. You might wanna think twice before you head off after him again. It might be best to just figure you lost a good horse and let it go at that.”

“Maybe so,” Cole said, and forced the last gulp of coffee down. “I expect I'd best be gettin' along now. I thank you again for the coffee.”

“Don't mention it,” Al said. “You take care of yourself,” he called after him as Cole went out the door.

Outside, Cole stood beside his horse for a few minutes while he thought about what he had just learned. Thanks to Al's friendly reception, he was on Sanchez's trail again, even though it was a stone-cold trail, and he could only speculate where he might be heading. But it was better than nothing, he told
himself, and tried to speculate on where Sanchez might be heading. Based on what Al had just told him, Sanchez was now hampered by a bullet wound. Surely that would slow him down.

With nothing more to go on, he would have to head up the Laramie River and hope that Sanchez might have to stop somewhere to tend to his wound. Then it occurred to him that Lem Dawson's place was up that way on the North Laramie. Sanchez might be heading there. He had been there before. Committed to that presumption, he climbed up into the saddle and turned Joe's head toward the river. He was not at all disappointed to leave Laramie City without the opportunity to meet Big Steve Long and his half brothers.

•   •   •

He had no way to be sure, but he guessed that it was probably a three-day ride to the North Laramie and Lem Dawson's trading post. When he left Laramie City, he rode until darkness forced him to stop for the night. He was grateful for a letup in the snow clouds and the lack of additional precipitation during the rest of that day as he followed the river on its winding journey into the mountains. Sitting by the fire at the end of the day, he decided that because of the winding course of the river, it was going to take him longer than the time he originally estimated to get to the North Laramie. He was afraid he had made a mistake in leaving his packhorse in Cheyenne. But he had his rifle and plenty of cartridges, so he could hunt when his supplies ran out, and he had seen plenty of signs of game along the river. He could go on indefinitely—and he would, if that's what it took.

On the second day, he came across hoofprints
coming from a ravine to intercept the path he was riding. When he dismounted to study them, he found they were unshod—Indian ponies. They continued along in the same direction he was riding. He was forced to be even more cautious now. Maybe, he thought, if he was lucky, they would turn away from the river somewhere up ahead. But they held to the same course. When he stopped in the middle of the day to rest Joe, he took the opportunity to study the tracks again, this time more closely. Suddenly he realized that one of the prints he found was from a shod horse, and he went back along the trail searching more closely still. There was another shod print, then another. He stood up and stared up the river before him while he considered the possibilities. There were only two: The Indians had one shod horse, or the tracks were not made at the same time, which meant the Indians were following a rider on a shod horse.

It made sense! He constructed the picture in his mind. A party of Indians, four by his estimation, had spotted one lone rider from the hills above the river. They came down the ravine he had passed to get on the rider's trail. How could he explain the fact that there were no tracks of any horses before the ravine? He thought back, trying to remember the scene. There was a small island in the middle of the river just before he reached the ravine—a good place to ford the river. It was Sanchez the Indians were following—he was sure of it—and he had been on the other side of the river to that point. Then he crossed over to this side, and that was why tracks suddenly appeared where there were no tracks before.

What he did not know was how far behind them
he trailed. When his horse was rested, he started out again but suddenly heard gunshots some distance up ahead of him. They were rifle shots by the sound of them and there was an initial burst of three shots, followed shortly after by three more. It was hard to say how far ahead. He looked up at the sky. The sun was already settling down upon the mountaintops. It would be dark in a couple of hours. He urged Joe onward at a faster but cautious pace, afraid to push him too hard for the roughness of the trail.

He became more anxious as he continued along the narrow path by the river and the sun dropped lower, casting long shadows across the water from the ridges on the western side. He had to become concerned now about riding into an ambush. There had been no more rifle shots, so there was no way to judge if he was getting closer or not. Suddenly Joe reared as a horse loped down the path toward them. Cole grabbed his rifle from the saddle sling, ready to fire, but discovered the horse was riderless. It was an Indian pony, and it slowed only slightly as it ran on past them. Cole, fully alert now, urged Joe forward again, searching the trail before him. Approaching a sharp bend in the river, he came upon another Indian pony standing a short distance from the trail. It was also without a rider.

Feeling that he must be getting close, he dismounted, realizing he might be an inviting target sitting high in the saddle, even though the light was rapidly fading. Moving cautiously around the bend of the river, he came upon the bodies. Reacting immediately, he dropped to one knee, quickly scanning each bank of the river and the narrow canyon ahead, ready to shoot at the first sign of movement. There
was no one in sight other than the dead. Four bodies lay in the snow, and the picture of what had occurred was not difficult to imagine. Sanchez must have been aware that the Indians were stalking him, so he led them into an ambush, and the hunted became the hunter. He led them across a treeless opening, waiting for them in a gully or ravine. When they were halfway across the open space, he laid down a blanket of fire, killing two of them before they knew they were walking into a trap. This seemed likely judging by where two of the bodies lay. The other two Indians looked as if they had been shot as they attempted to run away, for they were some distance from the other warriors, probably shot in the back, Cole surmised. It appeared that the Indians were armed only with bows.

He scanned the walls of the canyon before him in an effort to guess exactly where Sanchez had lain in wait for his latest victims. It was difficult to guess, for there looked to be many suitable places in the high rock walls and narrow gullies. Four more bodies to be attributed to the brutal murderer, Cole thought, and knew that he had to be stopped. Not sure if Sanchez was still watching the clearing, he decided it too dangerous to enter it to pick up the outlaw's trail. So he decided to backtrack a short distance and ride down along the bank of the river where the bushes were thick until he was past the far edge of the clearing.

Coming up on the other side of the killing field, he waited until the last rays of the sun had shrouded the valley in a dusky twilight before climbing up to the path again. There was still enough light to see the single set of tracks, left by a shod horse, and they
continued on toward the steep walls of the canyon. Cole paused to look beyond him, his eyes following the trail into the darkness of the canyon where the steep walls blocked out the last fading rays of daylight. He could almost feel the evil butcher's presence permeating the narrow river valley, and he sensed a fatal reckoning after so long a search.

Even in the dying light, the tracks he saw were sharp and perfectly shaped in the snow, telling him that they were recently formed. Sanchez was near. He was sure of it. As he continued to stare at the canyon passage, he had to question the sanity of following the tracks into that dark void. It was a perfect spot for an ambush. But he told himself that it was very unlikely Sanchez had any notion that he was being tracked by anyone after he had dealt with the Indians.

The odds were in his favor, he reasoned, knowing that even if they weren't, he was still going into the canyon. He would not permit Sanchez to get away, now that he was so close to finishing the job he had sworn to do. Although five of the six men who had raped and murdered his wife and her family were dead, the one surviving savage had grown to symbolize the entire evil deed. And the deaths of the five before him would not pay for the tragedy as long as one remained alive. He took Joe's reins in his hand and started walking into the canyon.

Halfway through the dark passage, he realized more than ever that he was at the mercy of anyone waiting to ambush him. But so far, he was still on his feet as the canyon turned abruptly, revealing the end of the narrow gorge. Anxious to escape the confines of the steep walls, he increased his pace to a trot,
leading his horse to the open end, where he stopped as soon as he found light enough to examine the tracks again. There were now boot prints along with the hoofprints. Sanchez had dismounted for some reason and from that point was evidently leading his horse. Cole didn't trouble himself with the reason, but it would seem likely that Sanchez would be making camp sometime soon. Cole looked at the terrain ahead and guessed that the site he would pick would be somewhere in the trees that covered the foot of a slope that led down to the river. Taking up the trail again, he had started to climb back up into the saddle when a glimmer of something shiny caught his eye. He stopped to examine it more closely. It was blood.