Rebel Yell (13 page)

“Mighty big of you,” Luke said.

Barton wasn't sure how to take that, so he ignored it and went on. “Harrison put the word out that they were going on routine maneuvers to avoid stampeding the townsfolk. We don't want to clear out the county if it turns out the Free Company's headed somewhere else. That's why I asked you about Heller, Johnny. He left town about the same time as Harrison moved the troops out, so I was wondering if they were working together, and if Heller had told you anything about it.”

“Here's some sure enough straight talk so there won't be any mistake between you and me, Marshal,” Johnny said, hard-nosed. “What Sam Heller does is his business. What I do is my business. I don't tell him my business and he don't tell me his. That's how we get along.”

“Sure. I just thought maybe he let slip something about his plans or what they're cooking up at the fort—”

“I'll tell you this. Heller's not the man to let anything slip that he don't want to get around. If he says something it's because he wants you to hear it or don't care if you do. He don't talk much to start with. He's a closemouthed man—which ain't such a bad thing. He's a most mysterious man, too.”

“Deep,” Luke agreed, nodding.

“Figure it out for yourself,” Johnny told Barton. “Sam Heller rode out three weeks ago and Harrison took the troops out two weeks ago, so it don't seem likely they're working together.”

“Still, Heller's done some scouting for the army before, so it could be he went out ahead of Harrison to see what he could scare up,” Barton pointed out.

“Could be, but now you're just guessing. Never mind about guessing. Let's talk about what you know. Is Hangtree in danger of being hit by Turlock?”

“There's always a chance, Johnny. I wish I knew how much of a chance.” Barton said feelingly. “Harrison told me what he wants me to know, not necessarily what
I want
to know.”

“He must have thought it was pretty serious to take most of his outfit into the field to go scouting for the Free Company.”

“That was orders from General Phil Sheridan, who's in charge of the Texas district,” Barton said. “Damn his Yankee eyes! But that's neither here nor there . . . Anyhow, he posted all forts in North Central Texas to be on the lookout for the marauders.”

“That covers a lot of territory,” Johnny said.

“I don't care where he goes as long as it ain't here,” said Luke.

“At this point, Turlock could go any number of ways,” Barton cautioned. “He could reverse direction and go back into Arkansas. There's not much north to interest him, though he might raid the railhead that's making for Abilene. Hit the camp at End of Track on a payday and it might make a worthwhile haul. He could strike deep into the Black Earth district of Dallas but lots of forts and cavalry troops are there.

“That dustup we had with Red Hand works to his advantage. The usual war parties found between the Red River and the Canadian won't be so troublesome since we cut them down to size. That gives the Free Company a pass to travel along the corridor until they hit the Llano. That'd stop them cold. The Quesadas are in full force there, full of piss and vinegar and spoiling for a fight. Or they could go west along the trail to the edge of the Uplands and strike south—which would put them on a collision course with Hangtree.”

“What are the odds they'll head this way?” Johnny asked.

“Who knows?” Barton said, perplexed. “Who knows what kind of wild hair Jimbo Turlock's got up his four quarters? From what I hear, he's more than a little bit cracked, tetched in the head. No telling what he'll do!”

“He ain't as cracked as he's made out to be. He trades on that loco thang to throw folks off their guard—especially lawmen,” Johnny said. “When it comes right down to it, Jimbo can tell a hawk from a handsaw well enough.

“Hangtree is enjoying a boom of sorts, thanks to the demand for beef. It ain't no bed of roses here, but we're doing better than some. There's a lot here worth raiding—a bank with money in it, stores full of goods, saloons awash with liquor, ranches with plenty of livestock.

“Women and girls, too,” Johnny added after a pause. “Boys, if he gets them young enough, are worth selling as slaves south of the border. Comanches'll buy or trade for them, too. To adopt the youngsters into the tribe to make up for the loss of manpower we've been hitting them with.

“Jimbo hits us, he can run south all the way to Mexico, or cross the Pecos and head west for California.”

Barton's brow was furrowed like a new-plowed field. Thinking had that effect on him. “Hell! I let you in on the secret because you two get around to places where a lawman can't go, and I figured if you dug out any information about the Free Company you could pass it along to me. Now you've got me more than half-convinced that they'll hit us for sure!”

“Not much we can do but watch and wait. See if they show,” Johnny said.

“And if they do, we'll kill them,” Luke said gleefully, bloodthirsty.

“Well, that's the situation in a nut,” Barton said. “Could be Turlock won't come within a hundred miles of Hangtree. I don't know. For now, mum's the word. Considering some of the trigger-happy characters we got in town, if they get a whiff of the Free Company in their nostrils, there won't be a stranger safe on the trail. Not a traveler, freight-hauling teamster, wagon train pilgrim, drifter. Nobody!”

“You wouldn't have told us nothing if you didn't think we can keep our traps shut,” Luke said.

“And we will,” Johnny said, “unless there's something to shout about.”

“You can do the town and yourself some good,” Barton said. “Your ranch is in the lee of the Breaks. If the Free Company comes down off the Uplands, they can hide west of the hills. It's an old outlaw trail.”

“Not to worry, Marshal, we got an old outlaw working at the ranch for us, too,” Johnny said, smiling with his lips.

“Yeah, and I hope you keep him there. I get tired of having to lock up that reprobate Coot Dooley,” Barton said sourly.

“He's on the straight and narrow now, Marshal,” Luke said, mock-solemn.

“Hmmph!”

“By the way,” Johnny said. “There must be a reward on Jimbo and friends, eh?”

“A big one!” Barton said. “Shoot first and you might live to collect it!”

Sam Heller lost two days. He also lost track of the surviving Hog Ranch gunrunners he'd been trailing. What was important was that he not lose his scalp.

In pursuit of the gunrunners, Sam Heller was riding north from the Bench of Bones in early afternoon the day after the massacre, when he caught sight of an Indian band of riders. That they were Indians could be no doubt, even at so far a distance. Something telltale about their outline on horseback said “Indian.” And being Indians, they could only be Comanches.

The eastern edge of the Llano was Comanche territory. To the west, somewhere in the heart of the empty quarter, lay the secret Quesada homeland, its location unknown to any living white man . . . except perhaps for a handful of highly trusted Comancheros who had been adopted into the tribe as blood brothers . . . and maybe not even them. No outsider knew the locale.

The band was at the edge of Sam's vision, little more than black specks under the sun. A group of a dozen or more, a long way off in the west, riding east. Too many to be the few Comanche survivors of the Boneyard unless they had added their tattered remnants to a larger group.

Sam had a pair of field glasses in one of his saddlebags, but he didn't bother to reach for them. The position of the sun in the sky ensured that highlights would be reflected off the binocular lenses. That would surely betray his position . . . if the unknowns hadn't seen him already.

It was unlikely that they
hadn't
seen him. Comanches didn't miss much.

Hunting party?
he wondered then ruled it out. Little enough game on the flat after the buffalo had run elsewhere, what was left of them. The once-expansive herds of the southwest range had been greatly thinned in recent years, a sore point with the Comanche who lived on them.

Some deer and elk roamed the prairie but not so much where water and grazing grass was sparse. No, he decided, the Comanches were sure to be raiders, maybe even fellow tribesmen of the band at the Boneyard.

“If so, they're liable to be mighty sore,” Sam mumbled. He turned Dusty's head to the right, pointing him northeast. His heels dug into the horse's flanks, urging him forward at an easy lope. Only a damned fool would urge the horse into an all-out run.

The flat vast tableland sprawled to all four quarters of the horizon. Only a handful of widely scattered low boulders, a shallow dry streambed, and a gentle hollow offered cover, but they were not places that could be held.

With adequate cover, Sam could have made a credible stand holding off the hostiles with his scoped long gun. He'd converted his mule's-leg Winchester to a long gun before riding out. It lay near at hand sheathed in its saddle scabbard. He'd be needing it soon.

Nothing to do but run for it, he decided. It would be a long run, a long chase. He was a far piece from where he had to be to stay alive.

Northeast, somewhere beyond the horizon, lay the Broken Hills—the Breaks as they were known—the mountain range running north-south to the west of the Uplands and surrounding plains.

Mountain
is a relative term. In Colorado, home of the towering Rocky Mountains, the Breaks would be considered little more than foothills and barely that. Even by comparison with the rugged ranges of the Big Bend region of the Trans-Pecos—Texas's only real mountainous area—the Breaks were held to be puny indeed. But to the folk of North Central Texas, they were something to behold.

Sam longed for the sight of them. A long hard ride lay between him and them—if he was able enough and lucky enough to keep ahead of his pursuers.

Off he went, and the chase was on!

Chase it was, for the raiding party was coming after him, as Sam saw the first time he looked over his shoulder to the west. A plume of dust rising from the antlike blur of distant riders proved they were pushing their mounts to greater speed. Maybe it was a Comanche hunting party after all, with Sam the prey. Well, it wasn't the first time. He just hoped it wouldn't be the last.

Dusty went into an easy lilting trot, gliding across the flat, making a beeline to the northeast. The landscape rolled by, unchanging. No, not exactly unchanging, for there were variants, but they were subtle—a gentle slope tilting by nearly imperceptible degrees, trending into a vast miles-long shallow basin. The colors changed from dull greens and browns, to buff and tan, to dun gray, all shot through with the first fading touch of fall. Occasional sweet scents of prairie sage struck a jarring pastoral note to the grim chase.

The seemingly endless hollow finally uptilted, spilling into a long gentle slope that delivered him out of the basin and on to the next flat.

Sam looked back rarely. He didn't have to. He knew what he would see—his pursuers crowding behind, doing their damnedest to cut the distance between them. When he did chance a look, that is what he saw.

The Comanches were closing the gap between them and their quarry. They were running their horses faster, a trick to provoke Sam into panicking and running his horse full-tilt at a grueling pace that would fatigue his mount sooner and bring the chase to an end.

Sam was not one to be panicked. “Not yet,” he told himself. Fast but not too fast would win the race.

Proving his hunch before too long, the pursuers were forced to slacken their blistering pace to spare their own mounts from playing out. They realized they were up against no greenhorn but a veteran frontiersman and were in it for the long pull.

So much the better. The greater the challenge, the greater the sport.

On they rode through the long hours of afternoon. Dusty forged ahead, black mane streaming, nostrils flaring, lungs huffing bellows-like as he coursed ahead, his Steel Dust hide glossy under a sheen of sweat.

Sam was doing some sweating himself and not just from the heat. Random breezes from the west were welcome, seeming to hurry man and mount ahead a bit faster.

Strands of scrubby mesquite trees with low-hanging boughs stretched shadows eastward, shadows that grew ever longer as the day stretched on.

The blurry haze of oncoming evening blanketed the plains when Sam first glimpsed a scrum of blue-gray shadows in the northeast quadrant.

More time passed, the scrum resolving itself into the flat outline of a low wall stretching to the north.

As if to herald the Breaks, the ground began to come apart, shot through with cracks, rills, and fissures that netted the flat in a spidery web. Sparse rock outcroppings began to thrust upward from the turf, spiking jagged fangs of gray-black stone. Lonely sentinels, they were grim mileposts on the race for survival.

Sentinels? They might be tombstones.

The farther Sam advanced the more the flat uniformity of the plain was shattered. The welcome herald of changing terrain brought with it not only the lure of safety, but also the threat of danger underfoot, for if Dusty should make a single misstep, the result could be a stumbling fall endangering horse and rider. At worst, the horse might sustain a broken leg, but even throwing a horseshoe could be fatal to Sam.

His course began to weave around the rocks, which were becoming more numerous. Northeast lay the wall of rock that was the outlying bulwark of the Breaks.

War whoops, battle cries, yips, and yaps came louder behind him as the Comanches whipped their horses to greater speed. Perhaps they sensed the possibility of Sam making good his escape.

Shots crackled, bullets whipping the air in his vicinity. The Comanches were ace marksman even on galloping horseback, but his lead was still too wide for the shots to score. The braves knew it and ceased firing, bending their energies to the chase.

Rock scallops reared up out of the landscape like petrified spines of long-dead armored dragons. Some were head-high and more. He was encountering the outliers, the ribs and spurs of the central formation. West of the hills, they ran roughly north-south for several miles, increasing in size and length the closer he got to the main range.

Sam kept a keen eye on the rocks, looking for a likely spot to rein in and make a stand. It was best done before the Comanches also had the advantage of the rocks for cover.

A long stringy chest-high scallop of rock ahead seemed to bode well. Sam leaned far forward in the saddle, so that his upper body was bent almost double over the horse's croup, his straining thighs gripping its surging flanks. His mouth near one of the horse's pinned-back ears, he urged, “Dig dirt, Dusty! Give it all you got, boy!”

Scenery flashed by in a blur of speed. The Comanches once more opened fire, a heavier volley peppering the air. A number of rounds whipped by Sam, too close for comfort.

At the near end of the outcropping he reined in the horse, sacrificing precious split seconds of speed to slow the animal to swing around a tight curve. Once behind the rock, he reined Dusty to a halt, the horse stopping wonderfully short and nimble, showing the surefootedness of his mustang blood.

Hands gripping the saddle horn, Sam alighted to the turf. The ground was not so springy as elsewhere but featured thin soil on rocky ground. The soles of his boots skidded on loose pebbles.

He shucked the rifle from out of the saddle sheath and guided Dusty to an area screened by the covering rocks and out of the line of fire. The horse had been in similar scrapes before and knew what to do, quickly following Sam's order to lie down on his side, head down.

No need to attach the rifle's telescopic sight. The Comanches were so close.

Sam pushed back his hat brim, tilting it upward out of the way. The rifle's heft, its cool machined steel and polished wooden stock, felt good in his hands. He took up a stance, positioning himself near a notch in the rock, facing southwest. That was a break. He wasn't looking directly into the orange disc of the setting sun, and the Comanches wouldn't be charging straight out of it.

The braves came on full-tilt, a furious intimidating spectacle. Their fighting blood was up. The end of the chase was at hand. Prestige for the brave who made the kill, greater prestige still for he who took the white man alive, a captive for the torture. War whoops sounded and resounded. Hoofbeats pounded, drumming hard-packed ground. They were so close that individual details could be made out—a shrieking brave in a red shirt, a lance hung with feathers, a wild-eyed charging horse.

Paradoxically, a great stillness came over Sam, a deep calm. He had done this many times before. It was what he did.

Shouldering the Winchester, he sighted on the brave in the lead. Kill the leader and sometimes it would take the heart out of a Comanche attack. Sam squeezed the trigger.

The brave went down, falling off his horse. The horse kept coming for a while before breaking off to the side.

Sam didn't pause to watch his target go down. In tight spots, it was vital not to freeze on one target but to keep in continuous motion, constantly moving to the next target. Besides, he knew that when he pointed his rifle at a target and pulled the trigger, he hit the mark in all but the most extraordinary situations.

He went for the braves at the spearhead of the charge. They were bunched up tighter and the ones farther back on the flanks could see the others going down, a demoralizing experience.

Five shots in rapid succession, five downed braves. The others knew they had a wildcat by the tail.

Their forward motion arrested, they fanned out at the wings, the right flank swinging farther right, the left flank farther left. The straight-on charge was broken for now.

Sam freed Dusty's reins, gathering them up in one fist, rifle in the other. He urged the horse up, Dusty quickly scrambling upright on all fours.

Grabbing the top of the saddle horn with his left hand, Sam boosted himself up into the saddle and rode diagonally northeast deeper into the Breaks. He slammed the still-smoking rifle home into the scabbard.

The rock wall was at his back for protection, shielding him from Comanche bullets as he rode bent low, leaning far forward. Dusty hit the gallop.

A lull developed as the surviving Comanches regrouped.

Not all the downed braves were dead, but those who weren't were mortally wounded and would not ride again, not alive. They had taken their last ride in this world. The next would be in the Invisible World of the Spirits.

Glowering and dark looks, muttering and shaking of heads occurred between the survivors. Their prey had proved a most formidable marksman, cutting their numbers almost in half in one quick exchange. Could he be
El Solitario
, The Man with the Devil Gun?

A great prize, if he could be taken. But the braves' ambition for glory was countered by the superstitious half-mystical aura that had come to envelop the shooter. A man of power, he was not to be reckoned lightly.

Meanwhile, stray riderless horses must be rounded up. Pride won out over awe and the chase resumed.

The quarry had vanished behind a curtain of brittle rock outthrusting from the earth at an angle. The broken land provided welcome cover for Sam.

The elements of the chase had changed dramatically for the hunters. Possible death lurked around every blind corner, every scrim and scrum of rock. The Comanches advanced cautiously, sending scouts ahead in places of potential ambush—and they were many. It was a landscape of heights and depths, for the broken land counterpointed needle pinnacles and rocky ridges with washes, arroyos, and man-deep cuts. The pursuers began to lose sight of Sam for long stretches at a time.

Sam was unable to shake them. His horse left tracks the trail-wise Comanches were able to follow even in the gathering gloom of oncoming night. To his right, the central range of the Breaks rose up, climbing higher into the darkling sky.

He smelled fresh water from a long way off and soon came to a trickling creek. Pausing at the thin stream, he stepped down from the saddle. The water smelled good and tasted better. He tasted first rather than the horse for fear of alkali or foulness.