Dead Man's Trail (9781101606957) (19 page)

“Get up!” Sook snarled. “Get your ass up and get out there. The way we see it, we got nothin' to lose. Betajack might just be so happy to get you he'll leave me an' Kearny alone, since we're feedin' you to him, an' all.”

Numb with trepidation, Mendenhour climbed to his feet. Tears dribbled down his cheeks. He stared straight off at the horizon that was a purple-black robe threaded with the violently tumbling snowflakes. Somewhere off to his right, a loose shutter hammered against one of the outbuildings. One of the horses stabled in the barn, afraid of the storm, gave a shrill whinny that the prosecutor barely heard beneath the wind.

Sook gave him a violent shove, and he stumbled forward with another groan. He started walking. His legs felt as though two-by-fours had been shoved up his thighs. His calf muscles ached. His heart raced. Sweat broke out on every inch of him beneath his thin layer of clothes.

What was worse than the fear was his sudden awareness of what he thought he'd probably always known about himself—he was a coward. He could afford to act brave because he'd been raised by a tough man who'd loved him and would back him in anything he did. But one thing Wild Bill Mendenhour had not done for his son was allow him to stand independently against adversity, and thus nurture his own courage.

So easy, he vaguely thought now, as he walked stiffly toward that dark horizon, like a man walking a ship's plank to the cold waters of a stormy sea roiling with sharks. So damn easy to harbor the ideals he'd harbored. Not so easy to stand behind them when it was only himself standing there.

And he'd allowed himself the even worse conceit of alienating the one man who might have saved him. Who might have saved them all. Why? Because he, Mendenhour, had taken offense at the way the man had regarded his wife, and how she, quite understandably, had regarded him in return.

When they'd walked out through a crease between the low hills, Kearny said, “That's far enough.” Then he walked around Mendenhour, keeping his pistol trained on him, and shouted into the wind: “Beta-jaaaack! Got your man here, Betajack! Hendricks! Got the lawyer here!
Come an' get him!
”

Chapter 25

“Ah, God . . .
please
!” Mendenhour's knees buckled; he dropped to the ground, hanging his head and his shoulders in defeat. “Don't do this. Oh, Christ, don't do this.”

Both Kearny and Sook walked around, yelling up and down the wind, yelling for Betajack and Hendricks.

“Please, don't let them take me,” Mendenhour said, sobbing, icy tears dribbling down his cheeks to freeze in his beard. “They'll . . . they'll
hang
me!”

“Hold it!” A woman's yell barely audible above the wind.

A vaguely familiar voice though oddly pitched. Mendenhour lifted his head.

“Told you to stay back in the cabin!” Kearny shouted behind Mendenhour, who turned now to see whom he'd shouted at.

“Drop those guns, both of you,” Glendolene said, holding her own pistol—Mendenhour's Colt .45—in both hands straight out in front of her.

Mendenhour stared at her, only half able to comprehend his pretty young wife standing before him, wielding a pistol, trying to save his life. For her part, Glendolene didn't comprehend it, either. She merely gave free rein to her impulses as she repeated the order, trying to quell the shaking of her hands holding the gun.

“We're just tryin' to save all our lives,” Kearny yelled above the moaning wind and ticking snow at the woman. “Don't be a fool, Mrs. Mendenhour. Put the pistol down.”

Glendolene shook her head. “I mean it.” She gritted her teeth as she clicked the revolver's hammer back.

“Look at him!” shouted Sook, pointing at Mendenhour. “He ain't worth it. Why, he's been crying like a little girl, beggin' for his life! He's a simpering fool who don't give a damn if he gets us all killed.”

Kearny shook his head angrily, desperately, holding his own pistol out to his right side. “Hell, it even sounds like he mighta hanged the
wrong man
!”

“That was just Betajack talking,” Glendolene said, shivering, shaking her head. “Lee, get up. Get back to the cabin. I'll cover you!”

Mendenhour just knelt there, looking half dead, his head hanging, shoulders slumped. His lips moved as though he were talking to himself.

Glendolene screamed shrilly, “
Lee!
”

Just then Kearny swung his gun toward her. Glendolene glanced up as she edged the Colt toward him and jerked the trigger. Their guns exploded simultaneously, Kearny's slug screeching past her right ear so closely that she could feel the heat of its passing.

Glendolene gave another shrill scream as the kick of the big Colt sent her stumbling backward at the same time that Kearny staggered back two steps and sat down hard on his butt. Glendolene's right heel kicked a stone, and she twisted around and fell on her right side, dropping the gun.

“Christ!” Sook cried, staring down at Kearny sitting there with a large wet spot growing on the front of his ragged coat, just left of his heart.

Kearny stared expressionlessly at Glendolene, his features slack. He looked down at the hole in his coat through which blood was beginning to dribble, and then he looked at Glendolene again, eyes widening his shock.

“She . . . killed me.”

His eyes rolled back in his head. He sagged backward, hitting the ground with a thump, and lay with his legs bent in front of him, his knees quivering. Glendolene stared at him, her ears ringing with a shock similar to Kearny's own. Mendenhour stared dumbly at the dead man, too. Sook stumbled backward, as though from a coiled rattler, then turned toward Glendolene, his face a mask of horror and fury in the darkness.

“You stupid bitch! Now see what you done?”

He swung his pistol toward Glendolene. She screamed, lifted an arm to shield her face, and threw herself belly-down on the ground. At the same time, a gun blasted. The wind tore at it, muffled it. Glendolene jerked, feeling as though a pin had poked her left side.

She lay tense, the shock of her imminent death numbing her. Only half-consciously she was aware of the thud of a body hitting the ground nearby. Several windy seconds passed, and then she realized that the pain in her side wasn't getting any worse. In fact, it was fading. She'd imagined it. She lifted her head and looked to her left.

Sook lay on his back, his head turned toward Glendolene. His lower jaw hung slack. His vacant eyes blinked rapidly, lips moving quickly, as though he were muttering. His shoulders twitched out of sync with each other. Glendolene frowned when she saw the round hole in his right temple. Something dark stained the snow-dusted ground around his head.

Glendolene stared at the dead Sook. He was just another part of the recent happenings that merely confused her shocked brain. Something moved in the darkness beyond her and Mendenhour, who knelt as before, his head and shoulders down, wind whipping his auburn hair about his head.

The large shadow moved again in the west. It grew larger. Glendolene stared at it, trying to comprehend at least this aspect of the improbable chain of recent events, until her brain told her that several horses were moving toward her.

“Oh, no,” she heard herself whisper, another wave of dread washing over her. “Oh, God, no. Here they come.”

But then she saw that there were three horses but only one rider. The rider continued riding toward her on a black, blaze-faced horse. The two other horses trailed along behind him. He wore a black hat tied to his head with a gray scarf, and a buckskin mackinaw. He held a rifle straight out from his right hip.

“What the hell?” shouted Yakima Henry as he pulled back on the several sets of reins in his left hand.

He looked around, then dropped the reins, lifted his right boot over his saddle horn, and leaped to the ground. He ran past Mendenhour to Glendolene, squatted beside her.

“You all right?”

She nodded dumbly, glanced from Sook to her husband and then to Kearny. “I . . . don't . . . know. . . .”

“What the hell happened?”

She was deeply confused, but when she finally managed to start speaking, he said, “Never mind. Let's get you inside. Christ, with all that racket I don't doubt Betajack and Hendricks are headed this way!”

He had her on her feet before he'd finished the sentence, quickly looked her over apparently to see if she'd taken a bullet, then ran over to Mendenhour.

“Mendenhour!” he shouted above the wind, holding his rifle in one hand and jerking cautious looks all around them, the wind bending his hat brim and pulling at the ends of the scarf knotted beneath his chin.

Someone shouted to the east, and Yakima swung in that direction, loudly racking a fresh round in his Winchester's breech, holding the rifle up high across his chest. But then he saw a badge flash in the darkness, and Deputy U.S. Marshal Raoul Arenas took shape before him, his long wool coat jostling around his fur-lined, stovepipe boots.

“What the hell's goin' on?” the lawman shouted. “I heard shooting!”

He looked at the two dead men and Mendenhour and the prosecutor's wife, his mustached face a mask of confusion.

“Get 'em inside!” Yakima shouted. “How'd they get out here without you knowin' about it, anyways?”

Arenas gave him an indignant look but, deciding to save the argument for later, lurched forward, grabbed the lawyer's left arm, and jerked the man to his feet. Mendenhour moved stiffly, wobbly-footed, like a man sleepwalking. Arenas scowled at him incredulously, then took Glendolene's arm and began leading her back in the direction of the station house.

Yakima glanced at the two dead men. He'd just been riding over the top of a low hill to the west when he'd seen Sook aiming the pistol at Glendolene. He'd raised his rifle, aimed, and fired without even thinking about it as his instincts had kicked in. He was glad they had.

He crouched to grab Sook's arm with the intention of throwing him over Wolf's back, but he froze when the horse raised a shrill whinny. He straightened, looking around.

The horse stomped and bobbed its head. Wolf didn't like the smell of blood, but Yakima had a feeling the black had his neck up over something else.

Betajack and Hendricks.

No point in getting bushwhacked out here helping dead men.

He looked around, unable to see much but the gauzy darkness and the tangled brush and sage shrubs blowing in the wind for a distance of about thirty yards in every direction. The hills were faint, cream-limned shadows a little farther away.

Continuing to look around warily, he picked up the reins of the two mounts carrying the dead Kelsey and Demarest, as well as Wolf's reins. He toed a stirrup and swung into the saddle. Holding the Yellowboy straight up from his right thigh, he booted the mount after the others. At the edge of the yard, as he watched Arenas lead the Mendenhours into the station house, he cut away and headed north to the barn, casting one more glance to the west.

* * *

Two minutes before, lying near the top of a low hill from where he'd had a good view of the stage passengers' skirmish, Floyd Betajack reached over and shoved Sonny's rifle down. His younger and sole remaining son looked at him, furling his snow-peppered brows. Betajack looked at the half-breed's broad back as the black stallion carried the man off toward the station house.

Betajack shook his head.

“Why not, Pa? Christ, I had him in my sights. Shit, I had 'em all in my sights!”

Claw Hendricks lay on the other side of Sonny. All the men of both gangs, including the two leaders and Sonny Betajack, were spread out shoulder to shoulder along the top of the knoll. Hendricks laughed, knowingly, wagging his head.

“It's too easy, kid,” he told Sonny. “Your old man wants 'em all to sweat a little longer.”

“They're all shittin' wheel hubs—Mendenhour most of all,” Betajack said with satisfaction, hardening his jaw and jutting his chin toward the station house that he could only dimly see through the curtains of light, blowing snow. “Why put 'im out of his misery? I like him miserable. Fact, I wanna keep him miserable for at least another twenty-four hours.”

“You got him in a bad place,” Hendricks said with satisfaction, wagging his head in appreciation of the older outlaw's tactics. “You got 'em all in a bad place.”

“Soon, more'll turn on Mendenhour. Hell, soon they'll likely be turnin' on each other. That breed fella, Henry, he keeps hope alive. And that's just fine with me.” Betajack spat a wad of chew to one side. “'Cause when I'm good an' ready, I'm gonna take it away. And then that'll be the end of Mendenhour and every last one of them people, includin' Yakima Henry.”

“Except the woman,” Hendricks said. “No point in killin' a nice little piece of work like that, Betajack.”

Betajack looked at him from beneath the bending brim of his hat. “You want her?”

“Yeah, I'd like to have her. Of course.” Hendricks grinned devilishly. The man beyond him was grinning over his shoulder, showing white teeth in the darkness. “Why not?”

Sonny snickered.

“All right, then.” Betajack gave a grunt and heaved himself to his feet. “You want her so goddamn bad, she's yours. Come on, fellas. Let's get back to camp and get some sleep. Big day tomorrow!”

Chapter 26

Yakima opened the barn doors and led the three horses inside. He found a lantern, lit it, hung it from the post he'd found it on, then went back and closed the doors, having to pull hard against the wind.

When he got the doors latched, he went over and began unsaddling the black that stood tossing his head as though still bedeviled by something he'd seen or smelled outside in the hills. Yakima had just removed the saddle and set it over a stall partition when he heard the scrape of the barn doors opening.

He whipped around, the Colt in his fist instantly. The hammer clicked back as he aimed the piece at the three-foot gap between the doors.

“Hold on,” said the lawman, Arenas, stopping and glowering through the lamp's amber, flickering light at the half-breed.

Yakima depressed the Colt's hammer, holstered the piece, then walked over to remove his saddlebags from Wolf's back. Arenas closed the barn doors, and then, turning toward Yakima, he said, “What in the hell happened out there?”

“Hell, you got there about one minute after I did.”

“Well, what did you see in that minute?” Arenas said, scowling belligerently.

“I saw them two drummers trying to throw Mendenhour to the wolves. His wife took offense, apparently, and Sook turned a gun on her. That's when I rode in and gave him an extra ear hole.”

Arenas stared at Yakima, who draped his saddlebags over the stall partition with his saddle and then removed Wolf's bridle and started rubbing the stallion down with a scrap of burlap. Meanwhile, Arenas snorted and walked over to the other two horses. While Yakima worked on the black, giving him a good rubdown, tending the horse with his usual care, Arenas squatted to get a good look at his partner, Kelsey.

He gave a disgusted chuff and then he looked over at the other man whose red hair pegged him as Major Demarest. Arenas whipped his hard gaze back to Yakima, tightening his hand around the neck of his Winchester's rear stock.

Yakima glanced at him. “Yeah, I killed 'em and hauled 'em back here because I got nothin' better to do with my time.” He gave a caustic snort as he continued rubbing the burlap across Wolf's hindquarters and left rear leg.

He could feel Arenas's eyes on him. Finally, the lawman lowered the rifle. He leaned it against a stall partition and began lifting Kelsey off his horse. When he had both dead men lying side by side in a pile of straw, he doffed his hat, ran a hand through his wavy black hair streaked with gray.

“What the hell's goin' on here?” he said, pondering the dead men before turning his befuddled gaze to Yakima.

“Didn't you get it explained to you clear enough?”

“Mendenhour told me Betajack and Hendricks were after him for hangin' Betajack's boy.”

“There you have it.”

“But”—Arenas returned his perplexed brown eyes back to the dead men staring up at him dumbly—“this. . . .”

“It's a bitch on high red wheels, ain't it?”

Arenas walked over to Kelsey's horse, reached under its belly, and unbuckled the latigo straps. “What's your piece of this, breed? Why're you here?”

“Because I'm a damn fool.”

“Where you headed?”

“Same place the Mendenhours are headed.”

“Belle Fourche?”

Yakima tossed the burlap onto his saddle and then walked toward a water barrel near the front doors.

“What you got in Belle Fourche?”

Yakima pulled a hatchet off a nail in the wall and used it to break the ice off the top of the water barrel. “Private business.” He dunked a wooden pale in the barrel and set it down in front of Wolf, who lowered his head to suspiciously sniff the rim before loudly drawing water.

“Look,” Arenas said as he unsaddled Demarest's horse, “I was out of line.”

Yakima glanced at him, a brow arched in surprise.

Arenas looked at him as he set the second saddle over a stall partition, and canted his head toward the two dead men. “About those two.”

“How so? I am a killer, ain't I? I mean, you've seen paper on me.”

“What I'm tryin' to say,” the lawman said, squaring his shoulders as he faced Yakima and hooking his thumbs in the pockets of his fleece-lined wool coat, “is it looks like we're ridin' together. With the stage. If you're still headin' to Belle Fourche, that is.”

Yakima studied him. He had an instinctive dislike for men of authority. Lawmen, most of all. Arenas had moderated his tone only because he needed his help, but that didn't mean Yakima liked the man any better than he had a few hours ago. Or that he trusted him.

But he supposed he needed the lawmen's help getting the stage to Belle Fourche as much as Arenas needed him.

“I reckon that's where I'm headed, all right.”

“I reckon we'd best figure out a plan to get there alive, then. The way I see it, we can't stay here.”

“No,” Yakima said, shaking his head as he edged a cautious look through a crack in the barn doors, “they could burn us out.”

“We might be able to get help in Broken Jaw. They got a new sheriff, Brian McAllister. A good man. Not a drunkard like Hal Dempsey was. McAllister's got two good deputies he recruited off one of the big ranches. Damn tough, fair men. One's my cousin, Hector.”

“Well, that's three.”

“Must be a few more we can recruit to ride along with the stage. Hell, winter's coming on. Lots of out-of-work punchers around.”

“All right, that'll be the plan,” Yakima said, grabbing his rifle from where he'd leaned it against the stall partition. “Now, I reckon we'd best both keep watch tonight. My horse was skittish as hell in them buttes just west. I have a feeling Betajack and Hendricks are near.”

He started through the doors.

Behind him, Arenas said, “I'll tend these horses and be out in a few minutes.”

Yakima looked around the windy, snow-murky night and then turned to close the doors. Arenas looked at him, his face only partly lit by the lantern hanging on the ceiling joist. “Mendenhour—he didn't look too good.”

“I reckon he met someone he wasn't expecting to meet tonight.”

The lawman frowned. “Who's that?”

“Himself.”

Yakima closed the doors.

* * *

The wind blew, the snow fell, and the night passed.

Yakima and Arenas took turns walking the perimeter of the station yard. Neither man saw the slightest sign of the stalkers. While that was a relief, it was also perplexing, nerve-racking. They had to be out there somewhere. As long as Mendenhour was alive, they'd be stalking the stage.

At dawn, the station's two hostlers—twin Norwegians named Olaf and Oscar—headed out to the barn to prepare the horses. Oscar's woman, a stove-up but still-able Lakota named Wilomena Fire Stick, made breakfast while the passengers roused from their beds, none looking as though they'd slept much after the skirmish in the buttes and the deaths of the two drummers.

Yakima stood outside near the stage horses, cradling the Yellowboy, as the passengers filed out of the station. The prosecutor, ushering his wife off the veranda and into the waiting coach, looked especially pale and drawn. He said nothing to Glendolene or to anyone, and his face was as expressionless as stone.

They rode out at what Yakima assumed was sunrise, though it was hard to tell because a heavy ceiling of low clouds completely closed off the sky from horizon to horizon. It was a gray, wintry world. As he trotted Wolf ahead of the stage while Adlard drove and Arenas rode shotgun, Yakima raked his gaze all around and from far to near.

Still, there was no sign of the stalkers. Not even any tracks in the thin layer of fresh snow along the trail, though if they'd been made overnight, the wind likely would have obscured them.

Now the air was still but cold. A few flakes fell, but they drifted like goose down, swirling slightly before settling on the sage, piñons, bunchgrass, and frequent granite escarpments thrusting up along both sides of the trail. The only movement was an occasional rabbit venturing out of its burrow, twitching its ears and working its nose and then scrambling back to its hole when it heard or saw the lurching, clamoring stage.

Yakima stayed ahead of the stage, scouting the trail, stopping when Adlard stopped the coach, usually at the top of steep grades, to rest and water the horses. Between the Hawk's Bluff Station and Broken Jaw was only twenty miles, so there were no relay stations between. They were on their own.

The country was all buttes and mesas, with the Big Horns rising beyond the gauzy screen of falling snow in the north. The graded stage trail rose and fell over mostly low hills and around butte shoulders. Escarpments and thickets and clusters of pines and firs provided ample cover for any possible ambush, and Yakima scouted these carefully, well ahead of the stage.

Occasionally, he rode to the crest of a bluff and scrutinized the surrounding country through his field glasses. There was no movement out there anywhere except a small herd of elk heading from the high country to the low country for winter. Once, he spied a few cattle grazing between snow-mantled hogbacks, but there were no punchers with them. No other men out here whatsoever.

At least, that was how it appeared.

He knew better. The knowledge kept the hair under the collar of his buckskin shirt standing on end.

During one short stop to rest the horses, Mendenhour suggested they build a fire. “The women are cold,” he told Arenas.

It was the first time that Yakima had heard the man speak since his embarrassing show of cowardice the night before. He looked better than he'd looked that morning, as though he'd somehow come to terms with his actions. Or inactions, as the case were. Still, he spoke in a wooden, peculiarly emotionless tone.

“Best not,” Arenas said, glancing at Yakima sitting the black stallion on a small rise just ahead of the stage. “Best not stay anywhere very long. Besides, Broken Jaw should be just over that next rise.”

“Broken Jaw, yes,” the prosecutor said, nodding once, grimly. “I'll be getting off there.” He looked at Glendolene. “Permanently.”

The other passengers—the Rands, Lori O'Reilly, and old Elijah Weatherford, who was smoking his ubiquitous quirley—all glanced around at each other. The Rands looked relieved. The others merely looked puzzled.

Glendolene, who'd been standing near a fir tree with her hands stuffed into a fox-fur muffler in front of her, said softly, “But . . . how will we get back to Wolfville?”

“Not we,” he told his wife, taking her arm in one of his hands. “Just me. I'm sending you along with the others. When it's safe to come home, I'll send for you.”

The Mendenhours stared at each other. The others stared at them, including Yakima. So Mendenhour had had enough of his own cowardice. The half-breed approved of his decision; it would likely save the others besides making his own trip a hell of a lot easier. But part of him hated that Betajack and Hendricks would win their grisly game.

Most likely, despite the best efforts of the Broken Jaw lawmen, they'd find a way to follow through with their intentions. Unless Mendenhour wanted to remain in protective custody, locked in a jail cell, till Betajack died of old age and Hendricks lost interest.

But it was better they got him alone than with his wife and the other innocent stage passengers.

“We'll stop for an hour or so in Broken Jaw,” Charlie Adlard said, standing with the horses, running a mittened hand down the neck of the near wheeler but looking wearily, warily off toward the west. “The station there'll be warm, and they'll have a good lunch with plenty of coffee. And”—he gave Arenas a wry look—“I hope something stronger.”

Arenas said, “We'll get help from the new sheriff there, as well. Best climb aboard, folks.”

Lori O'Reilly looked at Yakima. “Any sign of them, Mr. Henry?”

“Nope, all clear,” he said, offering what he hoped was a hopeful smile.

He glanced at Glendolene. She returned the look. The prosecutor looked at him then, too. Mendenhour turned abruptly away, as though he could read the unspoken words in the gaze his wife shared with the half-breed, and guided her over to the waiting coach.

He knew, Yakima thought. Somehow, the man's instinct had told him what had happened between Yakima and his wife. Yakima made a mental note to watch his back. Cuckolded men—even cowardly cuckolded men—could be every bit as dangerous as the killers trailing them.