Death Rides Alone (14 page)

By the time several hours had gone by, Luke had figured out what the Cheyenne were doing. He went looking for Jonathan Howard, and when he found the wagon train captain, he said, “The Indians aren't going to launch another full-scale attack until dawn.”

“You're sure about that?” Howard asked.

“Like I said before, you can never be completely sure what Indians will do, but I think that's likely their plan. They're going to sit out there all night, firing an arrow into the camp from time to time or taking the occasional potshot, just to keep you on edge and wear you out. They'll wait until the strain has you exhausted, and then they'll attack when they believe their enemy is at his lowest ebb.”

Howard rubbed his jaw and frowned in thought.

“What you say makes a lot of sense, Mr. Jensen. But won't they be worn out by then, too?”

Luke shook his head and said, “No, they're out there right now taking turns sleeping. They're not nervous. They know they have the upper hand.”

“So what should we do?”

“Spread the word that your folks should get some shut-eye as well. They can sleep in hourlong shifts, so you'll still have plenty of defenders awake all the time. I know it won't be easy for them to relax, and an hour or two of sleep won't do them
that
much good, but it's better than nothing.”

“You seem to have a lot of experience at this sort of thing, like you've been an Indian fighter for a long time.”

Luke shook his head again and said, “No, not really. I've been in more than my share of bad scrapes, with white men and Indians alike, but mostly it's just common sense.”

“All right. I'm not too proud to take advice from a man who knows what he's talking about, that's for sure.”

Luke might have some words of advice for him about how to deal with potential trouble once they got to White Fork, too, but that could wait until after they had survived this particular peril.

Howard hurried off to tell the defenders to get some rest if they could. Deborah, who had been standing nearby while Luke was talking to her father, came over to Luke and said, “What about you, Mr. Jensen? Are you going to try to sleep?”

“No, I reckon I'll stay awake and keep an eye on the situation,” Luke said with a faint smile. “I might be wrong about what the Cheyenne are planning, you know, and I wouldn't want to be taken by surprise.”

“The Cheyenne,” she repeated. She cast a glance toward the other side of the camp, where the corpses of the dead warriors were lying, and shuddered. “Is that the tribe they belong to?”

“That's right. I can tell by their war paint and the decorations on their clothes and the way they wear their hair.”

“They're all savages to me.”

Luke shrugged and said, “They have a different way of life from you and me, there's no doubt about that. Whether it's good or bad depends entirely on a person's perspective. I've never been able to hate the Indians for doing what they see as defending their homeland . . . but I can certainly hate them for some of the atrocities they've carried out in that effort.”

“I don't see why they can't just leave us alone. There's plenty of room for everybody.”

“You'd think so,” Luke said. “But history teaches us that civilization always expands to fill the available space . . . and often space that
isn't
available until it's taken away from whoever has it. Did you ever know the government to give anything back once it's taken whatever it is away from the people?”

“Well . . . no.”

“There's the history of the world in a nutshell. Civilization seizes more and more power for itself until it's too fat and bloated to move . . . then the barbarians come in, cleanse everything in blood, and the whole process starts over.”

She frowned at him and asked, “If that's true, then what's the point in trying to make things better?”

“Hope,” Luke said. “The only thing that keeps the world in balance.”

Deborah sighed and said, “Well, I just hope we make it out of this alive, and somebody else can write the history later on.”

“That's the only sensible course,” Luke agreed.

“And I hope we find out what happened to your young friend,” she added.

“So do I,” Luke said. “If we get out of here, that's the first chore on my list.”

* * *

Luke remained alert for the rest of the night, fortified by the bourbon-laced cups of coffee that Deborah Howard brought to him from time to time. As expected, the Cheyenne didn't launch another attack. They taunted the immigrants just enough to keep them nervous and on edge. Luke wasn't sure how many of the would-be homesteaders were able to follow his counsel and get some sleep.

But as a gray tinge appeared in the eastern sky to herald the approach of dawn, he knew the time for sleep was over. He found Jonathan Howard again and told the man to pass the word that everyone should be ready for trouble.

The men stood tensely behind the wagons, opening and closing their hands on the rifles they gripped. Some of the women and older children stood with them, ready to reload or if necessary take up arms themselves. The rest of the women and children were huddled under a large sheet of canvas that had been stretched on poles to serve as protection from the arrows dropping out of the sky.

Luke's Remingtons were fully loaded, as was the borrowed Winchester he held. He watched the sky grow lighter and lighter, shading from black to gray. When the first streaks of rose and pale blue and gold began to appear, he leaned forward and rested the rifle barrel across the driver's seat of the wagon as he aimed at the trees.

Like fiery stars ascending to the heavens instead of falling, flaming arrows suddenly streaked upward and then arced down, more than a dozen of them this time.

Mounted warriors burst from the trees right behind them.

The Cheyenne weren't taking the defenders by surprise as they had hoped, however. A volley of rifle fire rang out, sweeping several of the Indians from their ponies. Some of the mounts were hit, too, and went down, throwing their riders. The warriors fell in a welter of flailing hooves, and some of them didn't get back up again.

But there were too many of the Cheyenne raiders, and once again they were moving too fast for the immigrants to blunt their charge. Luke's repeater cracked again and again with deadly accuracy, but there were only so many of the attackers he could bring down before they reached the wagons.

Screams and shouts filled the camp. Some of the flaming arrows had struck the canvas protecting the women and children and set it on fire, so they had to scramble out from underneath it. More wagons began to burn as well. The women and older children tried to put out those fires, throwing buckets of dirt that had been prepared earlier onto the flames. That worked for the most part, but a couple of the blazes got out of control and began to consume those two wagons.

Luke emptied the Winchester, spraying lead through the ranks of the Indians as quickly as he could work the rifle's lever. Then he threw it down, yanked out the revolvers, and went to work with them. He shot a couple of the warriors off their horses as they leaped into the camp.

This time they weren't going to be able to repel the attack, he sensed. The odds were too high against him and his fellow defenders.

But they would fight to the end, knowing they could expect no mercy from the savages.

In the pale light of dawn, Luke spotted more of the Indians charging out of the trees all around the camp, most of these on foot. But with warriors already inside the circle of wagons and the desperate struggle going on there, no one had a chance to shoot at these war-painted reinforcements. In moments they would swarm in, adding to the already overwhelming odds, and the battle would be almost over.

That was when Luke heard more hoofbeats and the swift rataplan of gunfire growing louder and louder. He jerked his head around and saw another group of riders entering the fray, this one composed of white men with blazing guns in their hands.

The newcomers swept through the Indians on foot like a wildfire racing across the prairie, gunning down some of the attackers and trampling others with steel-shod hooves. They pounded around the wagons, wiping out the warriors caught in front of them.

Then the two men leading them angled their horses through one of the gaps where a burned-out wagon had stood and the rescuers smashed into the Indians who had penetrated the circle. Guns flashed in the dawn. Men shouted and died.

Luke stalked through the chaos like an avenging angel, flame spouting from the muzzles of his revolvers as he fired, right, left, right, left. He battled his way toward the two men who had led the newcomers into the wagon camp. One of them was a tall, dark-haired young man in a buckskin shirt and flat-crowned hat.

The other was Judd Tyler.

Luke had never expected to see Tyler again, but here the fugitive was, fighting side by side with the other young man as they drove the Cheyenne out of the camp. The unexpected arrival of help for the immigrants had turned the tide of battle and swung the odds toward the white men. The Indians were just trying to fight their way out of what had become a trap for them.

A few of them made it. Most didn't.

No defiant yips came from the ones who escaped this time. They ran and galloped for their lives without looking back. As Luke watched them go, he thought that they wouldn't be back. They would return to their village, lick their wounds, and decide that maybe preying on wagon trains wasn't a good idea after all. Better to go off to Canada or else make peace.

Tyler was riding an Indian pony, one of the possibilities that Luke had considered earlier. As he approached, Tyler slid down from the horse and greeted him with a grin and an exuberant whoop.

“Luke! Damn it, I was hoping you could hold out until I got back with these fellas! I knew if anybody could rally those folks to hold on, it'd be you.”

Deborah Howard was embracing the other young man while her father slapped him on the back. Luke nodded toward them and said to Tyler, “That's Nolan Howard?”

“Yeah, and the rest of the hunting party from the wagon train,” Tyler said. “I heard what Mr. Howard told you about where they'd gone, and I thought maybe if I could find them, I could get back here with them by daybreak.”

“You weren't trying to escape?”

Tyler's eyes widened. He said, “Escape? Hell, no! I had to make it out through those Indians, and let me tell you, that was no picnic.” He held up his arm, showing a rip in the shirt sleeve, and then pointed to a couple of similar rips on the shirt's sides. “Arrows did that. That's how close they came to me. Luckily, I'm one hell of a rider and managed to grab a fast pony—again—so I was able to get out and go looking for Nolan and those other fellas.”

“He saved our lives, too,” Jonathan Howard said as he came up to Luke and Tyler. “Nolan just told me about your courageous effort, young man.” He grabbed Tyler's hand and pumped it. “We owe you a debt we'll never be able to repay.”

“No, sir, you don't owe me a thing,” Tyler said, with what Luke suspected was a display of false modesty. “I just did what anybody else would have done.”

“Anybody with more guts than common sense,” Nolan Howard said as he came up with an arm around his sister's shoulders. “I reckon that describes you pretty good, Judd.”

Tyler chuckled and said, “Sometimes, maybe.”

It looked like he and Nolan Howard were friends already, Luke thought.

Deborah had something like that in mind, too. She stepped forward and said, “We never got introduced earlier, Mr. Tyler, but I'm Deborah Howard.”

“Why, sure you are,” Tyler said. “Nolan told me all about his sister. Said she was the prettiest gal in camp, so I knew as soon as I laid eyes on you, that had to be you.”

“Oh.” Deborah's face turned as rosy as the dawn, but she forged on. “I want to thank you for saving us, too.”

“It was my pleasure, ma'am.”

“You should call me Deborah.”

Nolan said, “Yeah, because you're going to be traveling with us the rest of the way to White Fork, aren't you?”

Deborah looked at Tyler in surprise and said, “You're going to White Fork?”

Luke was the one who answered, saying, “We sure are.” He paused, then added, more for Tyler's benefit than anyone else's, “This doesn't change a thing.”

Three more wagons had been lost to fire. Four men had died in the attack, as well as one woman and two children. At least a dozen of the immigrants were wounded, some seriously.

So it was a very sober, even sorrowful group of pilgrims that started north along the Powder River later that day, after those who had been killed were given proper burials. Everyone who had survived was glad to be alive, but they felt their losses keenly.

Luke and Tyler returned to their camp to pick up the two extra horses they had left there, with Tyler promising that they would catch up to the wagons later.

However, Luke had been thinking about that, and as they switched their saddles from the gray and the paint to the other two mounts, he said, “We're going to swing wide around that wagon train and get ahead of them.”

“So that we can do some scouting for them?” Tyler said as he tightened one of his cinches.

“So that we can avoid bringing more trouble down on their heads.”

Tyler frowned as he shook his head and said, “I don't understand.”

“Think about it. How many deputies does Axtell have?”

“Close to a dozen.”

“And there's no telling how many men Manfred Douglas may have hired on his own. That's a lot of guns out there, Tyler . . . all of them looking for you.”

“What are you saying? That it's too dangerous for those folks from the wagon train if we travel with them?”

“That's exactly what I'm saying. Let's say half a dozen of those hired killers ride in some night. They'll want to take you with them, and me, too. Do you believe the Howards and the rest of those pilgrims will just stand aside and let them take us?” Luke didn't wait for Tyler's answer. He went on, “No, they won't, and you know it.”

“Yeah, they'd probably try to put up a fight to protect us, wouldn't they?” Tyler looked like he didn't care for the conclusion, but it was obvious.

“And when that happens . . . when the bullets start flying around . . . innocent people will be killed,” Luke said. “I'd just as soon avoid that if possible. You remember what happened to Millie.”

Tyler sighed and said, “Yeah, I remember. I'm not likely to forget any time soon. Damn it, there's been too many graves had to be dug since all this mess started!”

“So let's not cause any more to be dug if we can help it. We can move a lot faster than that wagon train. We'll ride around it and go on to White Fork.”

“I'm sure gonna miss getting to know that gal Deborah better. I think she might've been a little sweet on me.”

“Maybe by the time the wagons reach White Fork, the trial will be over and your name will be cleared,” Luke said. “Then you can explain the whole thing to her. I'm sure she'll forgive you for not rejoining the wagon train like you promised.”

“I hope so. But we've still got to make it to White Fork and get the truth about Rachel's murder out there, don't we?”

“Yes, there is still that little detail to take care of,” Luke said.

* * *

They rode into a line of small hills that ran parallel to the river on its east side. Keeping to that higher ground, Luke and Tyler maintained a brisk pace.

Around the middle of the morning, Luke reined in and motioned for Tyler to follow suit. He leveled an arm and pointed west.

“Down there,” he said. “You can see where the river is because of the trees.”

“I know,” Tyler said. “But I'm not sure what you're—Oh. I reckon I see them now. Those are the wagons, aren't they?”

The white canvas covers on the backs of the wagons were visible as the vehicles rolled slowly but steadily along the trail that followed the river. At this distance they weren't much more than white specks, but they were there.

Luke knew he could have made out a lot more detail if he'd used the pair of field glasses in his saddlebags, but there was really no need.

“Reckon they've started to wonder by now why we haven't caught up?” Tyler asked.

“Probably.”

“They're gonna worry about us.” Tyler frowned. “What if Mr. Howard sends Nolan or somebody else back to look for us? That's liable to slow 'em down. The longer they're out here, the more dangerous it is for them, isn't that right?”

“Not necessarily. You heard what Howard said. They hadn't run into any trouble at all on the journey until that Cheyenne war party attacked them. I think those Indians were so soundly defeated that they won't come back, and as for any other threats . . . well, a trip by wagon train is not without its risks to start with. Those people had to know that when they started out.”

“I suppose you're right. But I still wish there had been some way to let them know what we were doing.”

“If we had gone back to the wagons and told them we were heading on alone, Howard and the others would have argued with us and tried to change our minds.” Luke chuckled. “What do you think you would have done, Tyler, if Deborah Howard had begged you to stay with her?”

“Yeah, yeah, you're right. Let's just go on. The sooner we get to White Fork and put all this behind us, the better.”

“My sentiments exactly,” Luke said.

* * *

They camped the next three nights in the hills without any trouble. Luke knew the wagon train was well behind them by now. The immigrants would have figured out that Luke and Tyler weren't coming back.

He estimated that two more days would put them across the border into Montana Territory. Another day after that ought to bring them to White Fork. Considering everything that had happened, actually they had made pretty good time.

He was ready for the journey to be over, too. The lingering doubts he'd had about Judd Tyler had been dispelled by what had happened at the wagon camp beside the Powder River. In the past, Tyler had fought and risked his life for himself, but back there he had fought to save others, and that counted for quite a bit in Luke's book.

Not only that, once he had made his escape from the camp, he could have just kept going instead of searching for the hunting party, finding them, and bringing them back in time to save the rest of the immigrants.

So Luke was confident that Tyler had told him the truth about what happened to Rachel Montgomery. It would be nice if the young man shared the evidence in his possession that pointed to Spence Douglas as the girl's killer, but Luke supposed he couldn't blame Tyler for wanting to play everything close to the vest.

Because of all that, Luke was eager to reach White Fork and contact Judge Clarence Keller. His plan was to stash Tyler somewhere nearby, out of sight, while he slipped into town and hunted up the judge. Axtell's deputies and Douglas's other hired guns knew to kill anybody they found with Tyler, but it was likely none of them would recognize Luke if they saw him without Tyler being around.

That was the general plan Luke had formulated. He knew there was no point in trying to figure out all the details, because unforeseen circumstances nearly always caused plans to change. There came a point in any dangerous scheme when a man had to be quick to adapt and just do the best he could.

The next morning they put their saddles on the gray and the paint. Having the extra mounts had helped them cover the ground a little faster than Luke had anticipated.

An hour after riding out, they reached the end of the hills and went down a long, gentle slope into another broad basin. Tyler pointed to a blue line along the horizon to the northwest and said, “See those mountains up yonder? They're over the border in Montana. White Fork lies at the base of them. The town gets its name from a creek that flows out of the mountains there.”

“So there actually is a creek, unlike Bent Creek.”

Tyler chuckled.

“Yeah. It runs east and joins the Powder several miles away. Manfred Douglas's range lies along both sides of the Powder for more than fifty miles.”

“A big spread.”

“From what I've heard, he came to Montana without much to his name except a powerful hunger for land and power. He's got plenty of both now.”

Luke wasn't surprised that they could see the mountains marking White Fork's location, even though that destination was still almost three days away. He was well aware that distances were very deceptive, especially in this dry, clear air. Even though he knew they still had a long way to go, he was starting to feel better about the situation.

That was before the horse whose shoe he had replaced back at Pettifer's trading post began limping again that afternoon.

“Damn it!” Luke said after he had swung down from the saddle and examined the animal's hooves.

“He throw that same shoe?” Tyler asked.

“No, the other one on the front. Whoever shod this horse did a mighty poor job of it.”

“Maybe you can whack it back into place with a gun butt.”

“Maybe . . . but I don't think it's going to stay. Not unless we take it really slow and easy, anyway.”

“And the longer we're out here, the more time that gives Douglas's gun-wolves to find us.”

“That's right,” Luke said. “They probably cast the net pretty far and wide, but by now, since they haven't found us, they will have started working their way back in this direction, thinking that we must have slipped past them. Which, of course, is what we did.”

“Maybe we need to leave the extra horses here and make a run for it, get to White Fork just as fast as we can.”

Luke considered the idea for a moment, then shook his head.

“We're still too far away for that. We'd run our mounts into the ground if we tried, and then we'd really be in trouble. No, the best we can do is for me to repair this shoe as well as I can, and then we'll keep going. Maybe we'll be lucky and none of those killers will come across us.”

“And if we're not?”

“
Then
we make a run for it,” Luke said.