A Man Called Sunday (24 page)

* * *

George Wylie was suffering. Sitting in the stable with his back up against the wall of a stall and one of Vienna Pitts's blouses wrapped around his head, he waited for Doc Gunderson to return from an overnight visit upriver.
And he ain't even a real doctor,
he thought.
He's a damn horse doctor.
But Gunderson was all Coulson had to offer for folks in need of a doctor. While Wylie sat there trying not to think of the pain that encircled his head, he was deep in regret for ever having joined up with Bill Bogart. Sleep had been out of the question, so he had been forced to sit up all night, enduring the pain. Being in poor condition to defend himself should there be a call for it, he placed his rifle across his lap, cocked and ready to fire. Next to him lay his saddlebags. He had been in too much pain to unsaddle his horse, but he was not willing to risk leaving the saddlebags with two hundred dollars in gold coins inside.

Bogart had left him at the crossroad, left him to seek help on his own. Wylie would have shot him if he had possessed the strength, even knowing Bogart probably hoped he would try. At least he had the money. The thought created a desire to feel the weight of the gold coins in his hand and maybe take his mind off his wound for a few minutes. Fumbling with the left-side pocket flap, where Bogart had dropped the two small bags, he thrust his hand inside. The bags were not there. In a panic, he pulled the saddlebag across his legs to get to the other pocket, thinking he must have remembered incorrectly. As before, he found no gold coins in the pocket. Bogart had cheated him! But how? Wylie had seen Bogart drop the two bags in the saddlebag with his own eyes. He was sure the money was in his saddlebag. Then he remembered. At the crossroad, where he had left him, Bogart dismounted to talk to him, standing next to his horse. Bogart had to have taken the bags then when he had been hurting too badly to know he was being robbed. The realization of it caused his wounds to scream out in agony, and he leaned his head back against the board partition and silently pleaded for the strength to heal enough to track Bogart down and kill him. His fear returned then that he was not going to make it if the doctor didn't get there soon. Silently, he implored,
God! How much longer?
In immediate response to his plea, he heard a horse enter the stable, and a voice say, “Back yonder in the third stall.”

“Buster said you're waitin' to see me,” Doc Gunderson said upon entering the stall to find Wylie sitting there with what once was a woman's blouse wrapped around his head, now so blood-soaked as to be unrecognizable.

“I need doctorin',” Wylie said, his words garbled and almost incoherent, from his effort to talk with the teeth remaining on the other side of his mouth clenched against the pain.

“Well, let's take a look and see if I can help you,” Gunderson said, and knelt down before him. Very carefully, he unwound the clumsy bandage to reveal the ghastly destruction of Wylie's mouth and jaw. “Good God, man!” Doc Gunderson exclaimed. “What the hell happened to you?”

Wylie painfully replied, “I was cleanin' my pistol, and it went off.”

“That's as good a story as any, I reckon,” Doc said, not wishing to know any further details. He remained kneeling before Wylie for several minutes while he studied the wounds and tried to decide what he could possibly do to treat them. “I'll be honest with you, mister,” he finally said. “I don't rightly know if I can help you or not. That's a helluva hole in your cheek, and it looks like your jawbone is smashed. Tell you the truth, I'm tryin' to find somethin' to sew together.” He shook his head apologetically. “You know, I ain't no physician. I'm a veterinarian.”

The prognosis was not what Wylie had hoped to hear. “What would you do if I was a horse?” he sputtered.

“Shoot you,” Doc answered.

“Damn you . . . ,” Wylie started and clutched his rifle.

“Hold on!” Gunderson quickly interrupted. “I ain't said I wasn't gonna try to help you. Don't get all riled up. That sure ain't gonna help none. From the looks of it, you've already lost more blood than you needed to. There's some things I can do to make it easier on you, some medicine to help with the pain for one thing. Just sit tight, and I'll be back in a minute.” He got to his feet and left the stall to retrieve a bottle of laudanum from his medicine cabinet in the tack room at the back of the stable.

Left to fret over the desperate situation he found himself in, Wylie groaned with the discomfort. Angered over Doc Gunderson's inability to fix his problem, he promised himself that he was going to shoot him if he didn't give him adequate treatment. Then the thought of Bogart riding away free and easy while he suffered almost gave him the strength to overcome his wounds. Lost in thoughts of a showdown with his ex-partner, he wasn't certain the voice was real when he heard it.

“You ain't lookin' too good, Wylie.” Wylie jerked his head up, looking for the source, and finally located it at the door of the stall in the lethal form of Luke Sunday. “I've come to settle with you for those folks you killed back at that farmhouse.”

“Sunday!” Wylie blurted, jerked his rifle up, and fired. His hurried shot missed wide, burying itself in a post by the door. Before he could cock the rifle again, Luke's patiently aimed shot hit him square in the chest, and he slumped over, fatally wounded. Luke chambered another cartridge and walked into the stall to make sure there was no more danger from Wylie. He picked up the saddlebags draped across Wylie's legs, turned them upside down, and raked out the contents on the floor of the stall. There were no little cloth bags with double eagles, so he did a quick check of Wylie's pockets and came up empty again.
Bogart's got Mary Beth's money,
he thought, and turned to face the door of the stall again, in case there was something to anticipate from Wylie's doctor. When no one came, he calmly walked out of the stable, climbed into the saddle, and rode out the front door.

Doc Gunderson, being a practical man, had quickly closed the tack room door behind him at the sound of the first gunshot. It was fully fifteen minutes after the second shot before he heard Buster Carter knock on the tack room door and tell him that it was safe to come out. Still a little leery, afraid that someone might be holding a gun on Buster, Doc cautiously pushed the door ajar. “He's gone,” Buster exclaimed as he and Doc hurried to the stall. “I saw the whole thing. I was up in the hayloft when that feller came in. I was climbing down the ladder to see what he wanted when I heard the first shot. Then I heard the second shot. I was scared to death. I was still hangin' on to the ladder, halfway down, when he walked out—calm as you please—wild-lookin' feller, like one of them trappers that live up in the mountains. He looked at me and just nodded, like ‘howdy-do.' I near fell off the ladder.”

They stood looking at the late George Wylie, slumped against the wall of the stall. “Wasn't nothin' I could do for him, anyway,” Doc said. “I was gonna try to dose him up on laudanum, but I doubt if he was able to swallow anythin'. I'da most likely had to pour it down him to get any in him. I'da been surprised if he coulda et anythin', either, the way his teeth and mouth was tore up. He mighta starved to death before he got well enough to eat.”

“Wonder if that was the feller that shot him in the mouth,” Buster speculated.

“Wouldn'ta surprised me none,” Doc said. “Well, let's drag his carcass outta here and plant him in the ground. Right nice-lookin' rifle there. Winchester, ain't it?”

“Looks like we got us a couple of horses,” Buster said, “and one of 'em's carrying packs.”

* * *

Back at the fork on the river road, Luke knelt to carefully study the tracks of the two horses that had continued on after Wylie turned off to Coulson. He wanted to become as familiar with them as possible, noticing any small nicks or rough edges that would set them apart from others. There was no telling where Bogart might be heading, and Luke hoped not to lose the tracks if they became mixed in with any other recent travelers on the road. No marks were outstanding except for a small V, cut with a file on one shoe of one of the horses.
It might be like looking for a needle in a haystack,
he thought,
but at least it's something
. His scouting skills, honed in his years with the Crows and Cheyenne, would be put to the test. With confidence that those skills would not fail him, he climbed aboard the paint and headed west, following the common trail along the Yellowstone.

He knew it would be difficult to track a horse, even one with a V-notch in its shoe, for any great distance on a frequently traveled trail. So he was counting on luck and hoping he could overtake Bogart before the tracks became too old. He kept the paint at a steady pace, reasoning that Bogart was heading to Bozeman or Helena, someplace where he could spend the money he stole. He was also counting heavily on the assumption that Bogart wouldn't know he was being tracked. Solely to reassure himself, he stopped at every stream or creek that emptied into the river to check the hoofprints left in the soft sand and soil of the banks.

He came upon Bogart's first camp about a half day's ride from the Coulson fork. With plenty of daylight left, he continued on until darkness forced him to stop. At the end of the second day, when he'd found Bogart's second camp, there was little daylight left. It told him that the bloody killer had pushed his horses harder than the day before. Why, he wondered, was he now in a hurry to get somewhere? It meant that Luke was going to push the paint even harder, so he made his camp near the bank of a wide stream to rest the horse and wait for morning light to search for the V-notched horseshoe.

It had been a long time since he had been in this part of the country. It was a country of sweet grass valleys, formed by the Yellowstone and Boulder rivers, a land where he had hunted and trapped. He did not doubt that he might have remained there had not the cattlemen and the sheepherders discovered it. The thought brought a moment of regret when he remembered the beauty of the mountains on three sides of the rich grass prairie. He had considered making his life in the mountains: the Absarokas or the Beartooths. If he had done so, he now reminded himself, he would never have known Bogart or Wylie—or Sonny Pickens. And it would have been a happier world. But he would not have known Mary Beth Freeman, either. That thought caused him to frown, for it always troubled his mind, and he didn't know why.
Best to clear my head and get some sleep
.

At first light, he prepared to ride again, planning to wait for coffee and something to eat until he stopped to rest his horse. As before, Bogart's tracks were more easily read at the stream crossing, but this time there were many other tracks to add to the puzzle, some that even looked to be cow tracks. It called for a much closer inspection to distinguish Bogart's tracks from the others. All of the prints were recent, and all led to the north following the stream away from the river. Thinking that maybe he had picked someone else's trail by mistake, he made a more thorough search until he found the V-notched hoofprint among those that had deviated from the original trail. Still on one knee, he traced the imprint of the hoofprint with his finger while he considered the possible reasons for Bogart to change his mind. He looked up then, staring as far along the course of the stream as he could see. From memory, he knew there was nothing but grassland prairie between the Yellowstone and the Crazy Mountains, a distance of only about a half day's ride. What a man like Bogart would be looking for in those rugged mountains was impossible to guess. It occurred to him then that Bogart might have suspected he was being followed, and might have left the trail to see if anyone showed up.
If that's the game,
he thought,
then the sooner we get to it, the better
. He stepped up into the saddle and continued on, a bit warier now.

Chapter 14

Fred Gentry sat on his horse at the crest of a low rise in the prairie. On the other side, at the base of the slope, his partner was finishing packing up their camp in preparation to drive a group of twenty-three stray cattle back to join the main herd. “Somebody's comin',” Fred called down to Pete Scoggins. “Looks like an Injun, but he's all by himself. I don't see no others.”

Pete climbed onto his horse and rode up to join his partner. In a few minutes, as the rider came closer, he stopped, obviously looking the two of them over. Then after a short pause, he continued toward them. “I ain't so sure it's an Injun,” Pete said. “Might be just a drifter.”

“Maybe you're right,” Fred conceded. “The second one this week. I swear, it's gettin' downright crowded around here.”

It was obvious to Luke that neither of the two he saw on the rise was Bill Bogart, but since his tracks led this way, they might have seen him, so he guided the paint toward them. When they cautiously parted a few yards as he approached, he couldn't blame them for being wary. They watched silently, each with a rifle now cradled in his arms. “Mornin',” Luke called out as he rode up before them. “I'm lookin' to catch up with a feller. Any chance you mighta seen him?”

“Don't know,” Fred answered. “We ain't seen but one feller, and that was back by the river yesterday. Was he a friend of yours?”

Luke was a little confused by the response. “You say back by the river? Was he a big man with a big bush of whiskers?”

“That sounds like him, all right,” Pete said. “How come you're lookin' for him?”

“He killed some folks back in Coulson and stole their money,” Luke replied.

“Damn,” Fred muttered incredulously. He shot a glance of relief in Pete's direction. “It's a good thing we kept an eye on that feller.” Looking back at Luke then, he said, “Hell, we ate breakfast with that feller. I'm settin' on his horse right now.” Judging by the expression on Luke's face, Fred guessed his confusion. “He wanted to trade horses. This one had a loose shoe. He offered me forty dollars cash to trade with him. Hell, mine was a good horse, but it wasn't worth forty dollars' difference. I'da traded for twenty. Pete fixed the shoe twenty minutes after he left.”

Immediately taken aback, Luke felt his mind racing with the thought that Bogart had fooled him. He had wasted time following the wrong horse—even more annoying to realize he no longer had a way to identify Bogart's horse. Maybe luck would favor him, and the V-notched shoe would be on Bogart's packhorse. “Mind if I take a look at that horse's hooves?” Luke asked.

Pete and Fred exchanged puzzled glances. “I reckon not,” Fred said, “but I traded a good horse for this one, and if you're gonna try to tell me he stole this horse, well, that's just tough luck for the owner, 'cause it belongs to me now.”

“I don't want the horse,” Luke said. “I just wanna look at his hooves.”

Still suspicious, but figuring Luke couldn't pull any tricks with the two of them watching him, Fred told him to go ahead and look. He lifted only two of the horse's hooves before he found what he hoped he wouldn't, the shoe with the V notched in the front. There was no longer any way to pick Bogart's tracks out from all the others. Suddenly he was struck with a feeling of dire urgency. “Which way was he headin' when he left you back by the river?”

“East,” Pete answered.

“East?” Luke questioned. “Back the way he came from?” He didn't like the picture that was forming in his mind.

“I don't know which direction he came from,” Pete replied. “But when he left us, he was headin' east.”

“What color is the horse you traded?” Luke asked.

“Red roan,” Fred replied, “a workin' horse, built more for endurance than speed.”

Luke's mind was racing now as something Vienna had said returned to haunt him.
“It's a good thing those two didn't get a look at Mary Beth,”
she had said.
“A pretty young thing like her is liable to start men like that to thinkin' bad things.”
Bogart
had
gotten a look at Mary Beth, back at Fort Fetterman, and Luke could not help the sudden notion that the murderer was heading back to finish the evil business he had started. All at once, Luke was overwhelmed by a feeling that he had to get back to Coulson. If his gut feeling was wrong, then so much for the better. He had to know that Mary Beth and Vienna were safe. Nothing else mattered.

Without another word to either of the two men, Luke climbed back in the saddle and wheeled the paint back the way he had come, leaving Pete and Fred to stare incredulously at each other. “If that don't beat all,” Fred remarked. “He's a sociable cuss, ain't he?”

“I'm tickled he ain't after me,” Pete responded.

* * *

It was difficult to hold his horse to a comfortable lope, but he knew if he asked the paint for more speed, the horse would willingly oblige, and he would run the risk of breaking its wind. So he held him in the same rapid lope, pulling him back to a fast walk periodically until he thought he had to stop and rest him. The fact that he and Bogart had evidently passed each other, riding in opposite directions without either man realizing it, could only have been bad luck on his part. There were many long stretches where the trail that followed the Yellowstone was more closely akin to a common road, used by many travelers—settlers, Indians, gold miners, soldiers. But there were also many miles where there was more than one trail through thickly wooded patches and broken bluffs, and one of these patches was undoubtedly where they had passed, probably at a distance of less than a quarter mile. It only added to his anxiety to think about how close they had come.

According to what he had been told by the two drovers, he was starting out a full day behind Bogart. He hoped, by riding day and night, he could catch up to him before Bogart got back to Coulson. Since the ride west had taken two days, he thought his chances were good, even allowing time to rest his horse. On through the day he rode, stopping at dusk to give the paint a longer rest. When the moon rose high above the Yellowstone, he saddled up and headed out again, pushing on at a more cautious pace, leery of holes and gullies hidden in the shadows, knowing that if the paint broke a leg, they were both finished. By the time the moon sat down behind the hills to the west, both horse and rider were showing signs of weariness. So when he came to a suitable campsite, he stopped, unsaddled the paint, and built a small fire. After a meal of coffee and deer jerky, he closed his eyes for a few minutes' rest, confident that sleep was impossible even had he wanted to. It was daylight when he opened his eyes again. Scrambling to his feet, he cursed his squandering of precious time. Hastily packing up his camp, he was soon under way once more.

* * *

“I sure as hell miss that boy Jack,” Vienna lamented, standing in the backyard by the pump and gazing out across the cornfield. “He used to keep that corn free of weeds. Now it looks like the weeds are catchin' up.” She looked at Mary Beth and uttered a long sigh. “That ain't the only reason I miss the boy, but we're gonna have to do the work he and his daddy did—as soon as we get the houses fixed up again. It'll help a helluva lot when Luke gets back.”

“If he comes back,” Mary Beth responded. “You know my only agreement with Luke was for him to take David and me to Coulson, so he's fulfilled his part of the bargain.” She laughed. “Besides, can you see Luke Sunday working a farm? You might as well hitch an antelope to the plow. I'd be surprised if he came back here again.”

Vienna did not miss the faraway look in Mary Beth's eyes when the young woman made the comment. “He'll be back,” Vienna insisted. “He left that spotted gray packhorse he thinks so much of.” She studied her younger friend's face for a moment, a tight little smile upon her face. “You know, it wouldn't be a bad idea for the two of you to pair up. We need a good, strong man around here if we're gonna make it.”

The suggestion made Mary Beth blush. “Why, Vienna Pitts, bite your tongue. What a ridiculous thing to say, and me widowed for only a little over a month.”

“Out here in this country, there ain't no time for proper doin's,” Vienna scoffed. “A body can go under waitin' for the proper time to pass.”

“Well, I think we have to plan on something besides the taming of Luke Sunday,” Mary Beth declared.

“Well, if you ain't gonna do nothin' about it, can I have him?”

“Vienna Pitts!” Mary Beth exclaimed again in mock alarm. “Don't you have any shame?”

“I reckon not,” Vienna said with a laugh. “Never had time for it.”

“You know, there's such a thing as two people being in love before there should be any talk about getting married,” Mary Beth lectured.

“Horse dung!” Vienna responded. “More folks have gotten themselves in trouble because of thinkin' they're in love. These young girls think they're miserable without some handsome fellow they're stuck on. They're miserable until they can tie the knot. Then after a month or two when the honeymoon's over, they're miserable for the rest of their lives.”

Mary Beth shook her head, exasperated. “You can't make me believe you and your husband were miserable all your married life.”

“Oh, hell no,” Vienna quickly countered. “Not me and Vern, 'cause we weren't in love when we decided to get married. We talked it over and decided we could make a go of it as a team. And we did, till he up and got himself killed.”

Mary Beth shook her head impatiently. “This is all the nonsense I've got time for. I'm going back in the house to finish nailing that table leg back on, then see if I can fix some of the other things those animals wrecked.”

* * *

One of the
animals
Mary Beth referred to was at that moment kneeling just fifty yards away, watching the two women from a stand of cottonwoods on the creek bank. He was in no hurry to make his presence known, instead enjoying the opportunity to observe them as they went about their chores, unaware of the evil awaiting them. His memory had served him well, for the young one was a pretty little slip of a woman, and now with the chance to get a better look at her, his desire was stronger than ever. The only intimate relations he had ever experienced with women were all the same—give them the money first, keep your shirt and your boots on, and get it over with fast. And they usually complained the whole time about him being too rough and too in need of a bath, as if they were some kind of princess, instead of the painted-up hussies they were.
Well, it ain't gonna be like that this time,
he thought. A grin formed slowly across his whiskered face as he imagined the pleasure he anticipated. The older one would have suffered the same fate if the young one was not there, but he had already learned that she could be trouble—she of the sassy mouth and the Winchester rifle. So he planned to put a bullet in her brain first thing, and that would eliminate her as a problem.

Deciding he had waited long enough, Bogart rose to his feet. If Luke Sunday was still around, it didn't appear that he was going to show up before sundown. He felt certain that the two women were alone there, and he could deny his lust for Mary Beth no longer. About to fetch his horses, he stopped to listen. It was the sound of a horse's hooves pounding on the hard dirt of the path from the river road. A rider was coming in, and from the sound of the hoofbeats, he was in a hurry. Bogart moved up closer to the trunk of a large cottonwood to get a better look. As the rider charged into the yard between the barn and the house, Bogart peered around the tree. At once he froze, all the blood in his body seemed to drain to his boots.
Luke Sunday!
Bogart pressed hard against the tree, his mouth having gone completely dry, and his heart pounding as if about to burst out of his chest. He had boasted to George Wylie about his desire to find Luke Sunday, and what he would do when he did. But now that he had suddenly appeared, he rapidly lost his nerve. The thought of facing him was paralyzing, for he could not forget his prior encounters with the white Indian.

He pressed even closer to the tree, inching around the trunk to keep it between him and the somber Indian scout as Luke rode down the path toward the house. And then it struck Bogart that Luke did not know he was there, and the opportunity he hoped for had presented itself. Sunday's back was an inviting target, and Bogart told himself he must act while the target was in short range. To get a clear shot, he had to come out from behind the tree. To steady himself, he dropped to one knee, but he was still trembling so much that he found it difficult to hold his front sight on the broad back riding comfortably on the paint pony. This feeling of uncertainty when about to back-shoot an unsuspecting victim had never occurred to him before, and he tried to tell himself to just calm down and pull the trigger.

Inside the house, Mary Beth glanced out the front door to see a rider coming down the path that led from the river road. She immediately recognized the familiar figure on the paint pony, and with a thankful smile of excitement, went out to meet him. “Luke!” she called out to him. At the same moment, she saw Bogart step out from behind a tree and kneel to take aim at him. “Luke!” This time she screamed his name in horror at the scene before her eyes. Luke reacted at once, but it was not soon enough, for Bogart's bullet was already on its way.

Almost beside himself with joyous excitement, Bogart realized he had won the final contest with the dangerous Indian scout as he watched Luke fall out of the saddle to land heavily on the ground. Unaware of the triumphant roar that burst forth from his mouth, he leaped to his feet. Still, ever cautious of the scout the Indians called Dead Man, Bogart warned himself to be wary of the man, although he had not moved since he had hit the ground. With his rifle still aimed at the body, he advanced slowly, alert to the possibility that Luke might be playing possum. There was no doubt that his bullet had hit Luke in the back, for he saw it tear into his shirt, but he wasn't sure whether Luke carried a pistol in his belt or not.
I'm gonna figure that you're lying there with your hand on a pistol,
he thought as he moved closer, planning to put another bullet into the fallen man.