Death Rides Alone (9 page)

With all the stealth he could muster, Luke moved closer to the camp. He was careful where he put his feet with every step. After the canteens bumped together once with a faint thud, he took them off and silently set them aside. The men down below didn't seem to have noticed the sound.

The Winchester was ready to fire, so he didn't have to make any racket by working its lever.

All he needed were some targets.

So far he had heard the voices of two men, but that didn't mean they were the only ones down there with Tyler. Luke had no way of knowing how many foes he was going to face until he reached a spot where he could see, hopefully without being seen.

Other thoughts were racing through his brain. Dave had called Tyler by name. The other man had mentioned Luke's last name. That meant they weren't just drifting owlhoots bent on robbery and murder, which had been Luke's first thought.

No, they were here after Tyler, and they had known that Luke would be with him.

The only explanation that made any sense was that either Sheriff Gus Axtell or Manfred Douglas—or both—had sent the men to dispose of Luke and Tyler before they reached White Fork.

Just like Tyler had been saying was going to happen all along.

They must have really fogged it down here in a hurry, or else they had been somewhere in the stretch between Bent Creek and White Fork, along the Wyoming-Montana border. Axtell might have gotten word to them some way, possibly by fast rider.

Or maybe they had been somewhere east or west of here, in a settlement with a telegraph office, and Axtell had contacted them that way and ordered them to intercept Luke and Tyler.

Those possibilities wheeled through Luke's mind, but at the same time he knew the answer didn't actually matter. What was important was that at least two ruthless killers were only a few yards away, waiting for him to show up so they could fill him full of lead.

Tyler had started singing again when Dave ordered him to, but now he made a croaking sound and stopped.

“Blast it, singing is thirsty work,” he said. “There are two of you fellas. One of you can keep an eye on me while the other fetches that canteen over there.”

A grim smile tugged at the corners of Luke's mouth. That was pretty slick work on Tyler's part, letting him know how many gunmen there were. Luke was sure now that Tyler had lied to the men and broken into song so that Luke would hear it and figure out something was wrong.

“You can have a drink once we're finished with Jensen,” Dave said. “Go ahead and sing. I reckon I can stand that godawful warblin' a little while longer.”

“Luke should be back soon,” Tyler said, then launched into a different tune. This one was about a girl some cowboy had left behind, too, but it was a lot bawdier than the first one. Tyler's voice rose even louder.

With that racket to cover up any little sounds he might make, Luke eased aside some brush and peered through the narrow gap he had created.

Tyler was still tied to the tree, right where Luke had left him. Standing beside the prisoner and holding the muzzle of a Colt mere inches from Tyler's head was a tall, gaunt, gray-faced man wearing a black vest and a high-crowned black hat.

On the other side of the camp, near the horses, was a shorter, stockier man with a shock of fair hair under his thumbed-back Stetson. His face had a brutal stamp to it, but overall he didn't look as threatening as the tall gunslinger.

Both men wore badges pinned to their shirts.

That sight made Luke grimace. Even though he had known that Sheriff Axtell's deputies were nothing more than hired killers, at least according to Tyler, those badges were going to make things more difficult for Luke. From where he was, he probably could have drilled the man holding the Colt to Tyler's head, then swung the Winchester and downed the other one before the shorter man could draw his gun.

He couldn't shoot them both down in cold blood if there was even the tiniest fraction of a chance that they were honest lawmen, though.

Tyler's voice was starting to quaver. The bawdy song trailed off. He said, “Honest, fellas, I can't keep singing like this.”

“You'll sing until Jensen shows up,” Gray Face said.

“What are you gonna do when he does?”

The other man laughed and said, “What do you think, Tyler? The sheriff's orders were pretty clear. You and Jensen both got to die.”

Well, that ended any speculation, Luke thought as he knelt in the brush. These men were killers, and so was their boss. He could forget all about those badges ... unless he wanted to use them as targets.

“You don't have to kill him,” Tyler said quickly. “There's no need for that. He doesn't know anything.”

“You expect us to believe you didn't shoot your mouth off to him about what you think happened to the preacher's girl?” Gray Face asked.

Tyler's features hardened in anger. He glared up at the man and said, “You mean what I
know
happened. And no, I didn't say anything to Luke. So if you just go ahead and kill me, then light a shuck out of here, you can forget about him.”

Tyler was either stalling for time or genuinely trying to save Luke's life, he thought. Maybe some of both. But either way, the killers weren't having any of it.

“The hell with this,” Gray Face said. “Larrabee, you get over there in those trees. I'm gonna go ahead and put a bullet in Tyler's head. If Jensen's not already on the way back here, the shot ought to be enough to bring him in a hurry. After I kill Tyler, I'll fade back into the brush on this side of the camp, and we'll have Jensen in a crossfire.”

“Sounds good to me, Dave,” Larrabee agreed with a savage grin. He turned to head for the trees.

At that moment, Luke stood up and brought the Winchester to his shoulder in a smooth motion. He knew he didn't have any margin for error. Gray Face—he was so sinister-looking Luke couldn't really think of him by such a commonplace name as Dave—had his gun pointed at Tyler's head, and it wouldn't take much pressure on the trigger to make it go off.

Luke had to keep the man from ever pulling that trigger.

The Winchester cracked. The bullet took the gunman in the side of the neck and bored on through to explode out on the other side. The way the man dropped like a puppet with its strings cut told Luke his shot had smashed Gray Face's spine, just as he had hoped it would. The gun fell unfired from the man's suddenly limp hand.

Before Gray Face even hit the ground, Luke turned toward the other would-be killer. He worked the rifle's lever with blinding speed. Larrabee tried to twist back toward him and clawed at the gun on his hip, but Luke was too fast. The Winchester blasted again. This time the slug smashed into its target's chest.

The impact knocked Larrabee back a step, but he didn't go down. As his eyes widened in shock, instinct kept him fumbling for his gun. He grasped the butt and pulled the weapon from the holster.

As the barrel started to come up, Luke fired again. This time the bullet struck Larrabee in the center of the forehead and pitched him back off his feet. Luke knew he would never get up.

As Luke stepped out of the brush, he trained the Winchester on Gray Face. He was almost positive the man was out of the fight, but almost wasn't quite good enough. Almost could get a fella killed.

“Son of a
bitch
!” Tyler said as he looked up at Luke. “That was some shooting. I was starting to think you weren't gonna get here in time to keep those varmints from killing me.”

“There were only two of them?” Luke asked.

“Yeah, as far as I know. I only saw two, and they didn't say anything about anybody else being with them.”

Luke stopped beside Gray Face and looked down at him. The crooked deputy was still alive, staring up with a horrified expression on his face.

“I . . . I can't feel anything!” he gasped.

“That's because I blew your spinal cord in two,” Luke told him. “You're pretty much a dead man. You'll suffocate in a little while because your muscles can't make you breathe anymore.”

“You . . . you can't leave me like this! You got to . . . end it. Put me out of my misery.” The man groaned. “You'd do it for a dog, or a horse.”

“I'm very fond of dogs and horses,” Luke said. “I don't really give a damn about hired killers.”

“Please, mister . . . if you want me to beg . . .”

Tyler said, “Go ahead and shoot him. His name's Dave Simms. He's one of Axtell's deputies, and there's no telling how many men he's killed because Axtell or Manfred Douglas ordered him to. He's lower than a snake's belly.”

“If that's true, maybe it would be better if I let him die slowly and painfully—”

“No!” Simms interrupted. “You can't . . . It ain't human . . .”

Luke lowered the rifle and drew one of his Remingtons instead. As he pointed it at Simms, he said, “Spence Douglas killed Rachel Montgomery, didn't he?”

“I . . . I don't know. Not for sure. I wasn't there that night. None of us who work for Axtell were. It was . . . it was Circle M riders who found Tyler . . . close to her body.”

“But I'm sure you've all talked about it. Spence was waiting in the woods for Miss Montgomery to walk by. He lured her in there somehow and then the two of them argued, probably because she told him she didn't intend to have anything to do with him. Then, like any spoiled brat who's been told he can't have what he wants, Spence threw a tantrum. He took hold of her by the neck and squeezed until she was dead.”

Sitting against the tree, Tyler closed his eyes and shuddered at the harshness of Luke's words.

“I don't know, mister . . . Truly, I don't. But I'll say anything you want . . . if you'll just end this . . .”

Luke sighed and said, “Even if you knew the truth and admitted it, I suppose it would be hearsay evidence and not admissible in court. I wouldn't have minded having the confirmation, though, just for my own peace of mind.”

He lined up the Remington, pulled back the hammer, and squeezed the trigger.

Tyler's eyes were still closed, but he jumped at the roar of the gun.

“Is it over?” he asked as the shot's echoes faded away.

“It's over. Like he said, I would have done as much for a dumb animal.”

Tyler opened his eyes and seemed to be careful not to look at the bloody corpse a few feet away.

“You can't
not
believe me now,” he said. “You've seen it with your eyes, heard it with your own ears. Axtell sent these two to kill us, and Axtell works for Manfred Douglas. Everything I told you is true.”

“Looks like it,” Luke said as he reloaded the chamber in the Remington. When he was finished, he slid the gun back into leather.

“Then you're gonna let me go now. You know I'm not a killer.”

“You still have to answer to that murder charge, whether you're guilty or not. We've talked about this, Tyler. That's the only way to get the truth out into the open and clear your name.”

“What if I don't care about the truth anymore? What if I just want to get out of here while my hide's still in one piece? That offer still stands, Jensen. Turn me loose and I'll tell you where to find that loot I hid.”

“You're going to tell me that anyway, once I've made sure you've gotten a fair trial.
That
was our deal.”

“You are the damn stubbornest—” Tyler stopped and sighed. “All right. But if we're still heading for White Fork, we'd better get started. If there are any more of Axtell's men in these parts, they might have heard those gunshots.”

“You're right about that,” Luke said. “I'll get the horses saddled.” He started to turn away, then paused and looked back at Tyler. “It sounded like you were actually trying to save my life a few minutes ago, when you were talking to these two.”

“Yeah, I guess I've kind of gotten used to you, Jensen.” Tyler hesitated, then asked, “Does that make a difference?”

Luke shook his head and said, “Nope.”

Luke found the horses the two crooked deputies had ridden. The animals were tied in the trees, out of sight. He led them back to camp, figuring that he and Tyler could ride them for a while and let the gray and the paint continue to take it easy.

The extra supplies and canteens of water the men had been carrying would come in handy, too, and Luke also took the guns and ammunition that had belonged to the dead men.

He planned to leave the bodies right where they had fallen. The wolves and the buzzards could have them.

Luke boosted Tyler into the saddle of one of the extra horses and swung up on the other one. He led the gray and the paint as they started across the basin toward the badlands.

“Did those two happen to mention how they found us so quickly?” he asked.

“They bragged on it some, in fact,” Tyler said. “Axtell sent deputies out all over Montana and Wyoming to look for me, as soon as I got away from White Fork. Those two had ridden down to Casper, southeast of here, where there's a telegraph office. Since they were the closest, Axtell told them I'd been captured in Bent Creek and was being taken back to Montana, so they hurried to catch up to us.”

“Which they probably wouldn't have been able to do if you hadn't pulled that fool stunt and lamed your horse, delaying us by a couple of days.”

“Well, I couldn't have very well predicted any of that, now could I?” Tyler asked in a testy voice. “Anyway, if it hadn't been Simms and Larrabee, it would have been somebody else, soon enough. I'm sure by now Axtell has gotten in touch with all his men, and they'll be closing in on us from all directions. He's bound to have sent men south from White Fork, too.”

“So no matter what we do, we're riding into a trap.”

Tyler blew out an exasperated breath and said, “Good Lord, Jensen. Ain't that exactly what I've been telling you, right from the first?”

“Traps can be sprung, if the quarry is wily enough.” Luke paused. “That was pretty smart, warning me the way you did and letting me know how many of them there were.”

“Well, I was hoping you'd hear me singing and catch on to what I was trying to tell you. I knew it was a long shot, but I figured it was the only one I had.” Tyler shrugged. “If it hadn't worked, I was gonna wind up dead anyway, so it didn't hurt anything to try, did it?”

They rode on and reached the badlands a short time later. The rugged terrain made for slow going. Luke didn't try to get in a hurry. Even with a couple of extra mounts, he didn't want anything to happen to any of the horses. It would be easy for an animal to stumble and hurt itself on such rough ground.

They spent most of the day carefully working their way through the badlands. Late in the afternoon they emerged into the eastern edge of the low hills that gradually rose to the west into the Bighorn Mountains. The route they were following ran more toward due north. Luke knew they would reach the Powder River soon, and he figured they would follow it all the way into Montana Territory.

He started looking for a good place to spend the night but hadn't found anything suitable by the time shadows started to creep over the landscape. Luke was about to decide they would have to camp out in the open and do without a fire, when he spotted a gleam of light up ahead in the gathering gloom.

“Do you see that?” he asked Tyler.

The young man squinted and said after a moment, “Yeah. Doesn't really look like a campfire, does it? It's too steady for that.”

“That's because it's the glow of lamplight through a window,” Luke said. “We're looking at either a homestead or one of those trading posts you mentioned.”

“Come to think of it, that might be old man Pettifer's place on the Powder River. I've heard of it, but I didn't stop there on my trip south.”

“Malachi Pettifer?” Luke asked. “He's still alive?”

“Oh, yeah. Still alive and still catering to a certain sort of trade, if you know what I mean.”

“I get your drift,” Luke said. “You're talking about outlaws. Pettifer had a reputation as a man who'd sell supplies and provide sanctuary to anybody and then forget they'd been there if the law came looking for them. That was over in Kansas a few years ago, though.”

“Reckon things might've gotten too hot for him there and he moved north and west,” Tyler said. “All I know is what I was told, which was that a fella on the dodge could stop there if he needed to.”

“But you didn't stop.”

Tyler shrugged and said, “I didn't need to. I still had enough supplies. And I figured it was best to keep moving as much as I could.”

“Well, we're going to need to keep moving, too. If we ride in there and you're handcuffed, anyone who's there will figure out pretty quick that I'm a bounty hunter. That's liable to not sit very well with Pettifer's customers.”

“You could turn me loose. You could pretend that you're on the dodge, too. Hell, it'd give us a chance to sleep in a real bed for a night and maybe pick up some extra supplies.”

“We're not running low on anything now,” Luke pointed out. “And you haven't given me a lot of reason to believe that you're trustworthy.”

“That was before this morning. You saved my life, Luke. Simms and Larrabee would have killed me.”

“They would have killed me, too. I was acting in my own best interests.”

“Yeah, but I know now that you believe me about Spence and Rachel,” Tyler said. “And
you've
convinced
me
that the only way I'm ever gonna have any sort of life again is to get up in Judge Keller's courtroom and prove that I'm innocent. I can't do that on my own. I need your help, Luke. If I double-crossed you, it'd be the same as cutting my own throat.”

What Tyler said made sense, Luke supposed, but he still wasn't ready to trust the young man. Not only that, but Pettifer's trading post was a haven for outlaws. Some people who weren't lawbreakers probably stopped there, too, but there was a good chance most of the old man's customers were on the dodge.

Which meant that if Luke walked in there, there was also a good chance he might run into somebody with a grudge against him, the way he had back in Bent Creek when that
hombre
had tried to kill him in his bath.

“Forget it,” he said. “We're going around the place.”

“But ...” Tyler let his voice trail off and then sighed. “You're not gonna change your mind, are you?”

“Not without a good reason,” Luke said.

Unfortunately, a short time later he got that good reason.

The gait of the horse he was riding suddenly changed. The horse lurched, took another few steps, and then stopped. Luke frowned and muttered a curse.

Tyler's horse had stopped, too.

“What's wrong?” the young man asked.

“I don't know.” Luke dismounted. He could tell there was something wrong with the horse's left front leg. He picked up the hoof to look at it in the rapidly fading light.

All it took was a glance to see that the iron shoe on that hoof had come loose and was barely hanging on.

Tyler had leaned over in his saddle to take a look, as well. He whistled and said, “That's gonna need some work before that horse can go much farther.”

“Yes, I know,” Luke said, not bothering to keep a tone of disgust out of his voice. “I shouldn't be surprised that a no-account gunman wouldn't take good care of his mount.”

“That horse belonged to either Simms or Larrabee. Skunks like that, if they can't eat it, take it to bed, or shoot it, they just don't give a damn about it.” Tyler paused, then went on, “You know, a while back a fella told me that Pettifer's got a forge at his place. He doesn't do any blacksmith work himself, but he's got all the tools there for somebody else to do it, if they know how. I'm guessing you know how.”

“I'm no farrier, but I can put a shoe on a horse if I have to. Fortunately, I don't have to. We started out without any extra horses. I can take the saddle off of this one and turn it loose.”

“Then we'll just have one extra mount, and since there's two of us, we might as well not have any. If it comes down to a long chase, one spare horse won't do us a damned bit of good.”

Unfortunately, Tyler was right about that, and Luke knew it. Leaving Bent Creek with only the gray and the paint was at least understandable; at the time Luke hadn't been convinced at all that Tyler was telling the truth about hired killers trying to intercept them on their way to White Fork.

Now that Luke knew the real odds facing them, the idea of having spare mounts had been comforting. He decided he wasn't ready to give it up.

“Listen to me, Tyler,” he said. The sharp tone of his voice made the young man look intently at him. “If I take those handcuffs off of you and we ride into Pettifer's place, I'm going to watch you the whole time we're there. If you show the least little sign of trying some trick, I'm going to pull a gun and kill you. No questions, no asking for explanations, no hesitation. Just a bullet and you're done.”

“Killing me won't stop Axtell and his men from coming after you.”

“Let them,” Luke said. “I won't take your body to White Fork. I'll let you lay right where you fall. Then I'll turn around and ride away from here. I don't like missing out on a reward, but there are other bounties out there. I can leave this part of the country behind before Axtell's men even have a clue I've gone. Manfred Douglas may worry about me for a while, but after enough time passes without anything happening, he'll decide that I'm no threat to his son after all and call off his gun-wolves.”

“Well, that's just about the most cold-blooded thing I've ever heard,” Tyler said, staring at Luke. “After we've ridden together all this time, you'd just shoot me and ride away?”

“Damn straight I would. Plus, it hasn't been
that
long, and we're not actually riding together. You're my prisoner, remember?”

“All right, all right,” Tyler said. “But if you kill me, then the truth about what happened to Rachel will never come out.”

“That's a good reason for you not to give me any trouble.” Luke reached in his pocket for the handcuff keys. “Twist around there and stick your hands out.” He drew one of the Remingtons. “Remember, it only takes one hand to unlock those cuffs, and one hand to blow a hole through you if you try anything.”

* * *

Full dark had fallen by the time Luke and Tyler reached the trading post. Tyler had spent the first few minutes of the ride swinging his arms around in circles.

“Man alive, that sure feels good!” he had said. “My muscles were really starting to cramp up with my arms pulled behind me that way. A fella's not meant to ride all bound up for hours at a time.”

“I think maybe I'll buy myself a wagon,” Luke had said in response to that.

“A wagon? What for?”

“I'll get some iron bars and build a cage in the back. Then when I have to deliver a prisoner like you, I'll just lock him up in there like an animal so he won't be complaining all the time about being handcuffed.”

“Won't he just complain instead about being locked up in a cage?”

“Probably.”

“I know I would, if it was me.”

“I don't doubt it for a second,” Luke had said.

He had to give Tyler a little credit, though. The ride to Malachi Pettifer's place had been about two miles, and Tyler hadn't tried anything so far. He had ridden calmly alongside Luke, who was now mounted on the gray again and leading the horse that had thrown the shoe.

As they approached the low, rambling log building that housed the trading post, Tyler reined in and said, “Wait a minute. If we ride in there with these horses that belonged to Simms and Larrabee, and any of Axtell's men are there, they're liable to recognize the horses.”

“Won't they recognize
you
?” Luke asked.

“Oh. Yeah, I guess that's true, isn't it? Well, we knew we were taking a chance by stopping here.”

“We wouldn't be if circumstances were different. You're right, though, we need to get that shoe fixed.”

“Nice to hear somebody say I was right about something. That didn't happen too often when I was growing up.”

In the light from the moon and stars, Luke spotted a small, squat building set off a short distance from the trading post. An iron pipe stuck up from its roof.

“That must be the blacksmith shop,” he said. “I'll fire up the forge first thing in the morning, get the job done, and we'll be on our way as quickly as possible.”

On the other side of the trading post was a pole corral with a long, slope-roofed shed attached to it. Luke and Tyler rode in that direction.

As they came closer, Luke saw that six horses were already in the enclosure. Pettifer was doing a pretty good business, if those mounts were any indication.

The place was quiet, that lighted window they had spotted earlier the only sign of life other than the horses in the corral. Luke could hear the chuckling of the Powder River as it flowed between its banks about fifty yards away.

“Open that gate and ride on in,” he told Tyler. The young man lifted the rope latch holding the corral gate closed and swung it back. After Tyler had ridden in, Luke followed, leading the other two horses. He nodded toward the gate, indicating that Tyler should close it.

Tyler hesitated, looking off into the darkness, and Luke wondered if he was pondering the odds of making a run for it.