Crow Creek Crossing (17 page)

“Maybe,” Luck said. “But Campbell don't ever use that door. It's got a padlock on it. Let's wait a minute or two and see what happens when Sam comes up from the other side of the building. “They can't hold us off in both directions. They can't stay there forever, so they're gonna have to make a run for it. And when they do, we'll cut 'em down like wheat.”

Luck was wrong in his assumption, however, for Sanchez and Slade had a clear field of fire on both corners of the building that housed Mary Lou's and Maggie's rooms. Set up behind a double bale of hay, the two outlaws could throw enough rifle shots at the two corners to effectively discourage any thoughts of a charge. When Sanchez was satisfied that Slade, although bleeding profusely, was able to continue watching the vigilantes alone, he decided it would be a lot quicker if he saddled the horses instead
of Slade. So he left him behind the bales while he went to take care of the horses.

Once he had both horses ready to go, Sanchez went to the back of the stable to confirm something he thought he remembered seeing before. His memory served him, for he found a back door to the stable. When he tried to push it open, he found that it was latched on the outside, and probably padlocked, since there were no signs on the dirt floor that indicated the door had been used recently. He studied the door for a moment before going to the tack room to look for something to use. Among a few tools in a corner of the room, he found what he was looking for and picked up an axe.

This'll do,
he thought.

When he came out of the tack room, he paused to check on Slade. “You gonna make it?”

“I'm still here,” Slade answered weakly.

“Well, you hold on. I gonna cut a way out the back,” Sanchez said, and hurried to the back door. Slade didn't sound too good, so he figured he'd better be quick. He paused again when he heard Slade's rifle open fire when Sam Vickers showed up at the corner opposite the one Gordon Luck was using for cover.

Wasting no more time, he attacked the board where the hasp was bolted. Although still green, the board from Gordon Luck's sawmill was not difficult to chop. Once he got a small hole started, it gave him more room for the axe blade's bite. Then it was just a matter of chopping away until he finally cut the board in two. Once that was accomplished, he tossed the axe aside and shoved the door open, leaving the hasp, still padlocked, hanging on the short piece of board.

Returning to the front of the stable then, Sanchez crawled up behind the hay bales beside Slade. He took a good look at his partner to decide if it was worth his time and effort to be burdened with the wounded man.

“See anybody try to get around behind us?” he asked.

“No,” Slade replied wearily. “There's about half a dozen of 'em, and they split up—half of 'em at one corner of that building, half of 'em on the other.”

“All right,” Sanchez decided. “We throw a bunch of lead at both corners. Then we gonna get the hell out of here. You ready?” Slade nodded. “You'd better be ready to ride,” Sanchez said, “because when I go out that door, I not gonna be looking back to see where you are.
Comprende?
”

“I
comprende
all right,” Slade replied, fully understanding his situation, and with the firm intention to put a bullet in his partner's back in the event he tried to leave him behind. Staying low to the floor of the stable so as not to be seen retreating, they crawled back between the stalls where the horses stood waiting. When Slade tried to step up in the saddle, his wounded leg failed him.

“Gimme a hand, damn it,” he blurted.

Sanchez boosted him up in the saddle. “You gonna be able to stay on that horse?”

“Yeah,” Slade said. “I'm all right when I'm in the saddle. My leg smarts a little when I put too much weight on it. That's all. You ain't got to worry about me. Let's go.”

It was not entirely true. He was in a great deal of pain, more so from the shotgun blast than the pistol
bullet in his leg as blood continued to seep out of the many open wounds covering his face and torso.

•   •   •

“They've stopped shootin',” Harold Chestnut said as they continued to watch for some sign of an attempt to escape. “It's been at least fifteen minutes without a shot. You reckon they got outta there some way without us seein' 'em?”

“Most likely they're just savin' their ammunition,” Gordon Luck said. He strained to see into the dark entrance to the stable. “Maybe hopin' we'll think they're gone and charge in there. But they've got to come out that front door.”

After another ten or fifteen minutes passed with still no gunfire, Sam Vickers called out from the other corner of the building, “Gordon! Whaddaya wanna do?”

“Just hold on a minute,” Gordon yelled back. “They're up to somethin'. Keep your eye on that door.” After a few minutes more, he realized that they were locked in a hopeless standoff. “We've got to make a move,” he told Chestnut. “We can't sit here till mornin', waitin' for them to come out. Maybe somebody had better go around behind the stable and try to see inside.”

“Hell, I'll go,” Chestnut volunteered. “It beats sittin' here all night.”

“All right,” Luck said, “but be careful they don't see you. There're a couple of windows in the back. Maybe you can sneak up to one of 'em and see what they're up to.”

“They won't see me,” Chestnut said.

He backed away toward the front of the building, near the dining room door. Then he made his way
around the saloon next door and followed the alley behind to the rear of the hotel stables.

Luck and the others waited and watched for what seemed like a long time, but in fact was only a few minutes before hearing Chestnut's voice calling out. It came from the inside of the stables.

“Gordon! They're gone! Come on in!”

The six-man posse stood dumbfounded in the back of the stable, gaping at the door swung wide open.

“It was locked, all right,” Sam Vickers said, looking at the padlock still in place on the short piece of board.

“Well, I reckon that's my mistake,” Gordon Luck said. He picked up the axe beside the door. “Looks like we coulda heard them choppin' away at that door.”

“I'm not surprised,” Benny Swartz said. “There was a helluva lot of shooting going on. It'da been hard to hear them chopping wood in all that.”

Gordon walked through the open door and stood peering out into the darkness beyond for a few long moments. “Well, I see it as my duty to go after 'em. Anybody gonna ride with me?”

“I'll ride with you, Reverend,” Chestnut spoke up immediately.

“Me, too,” Vickers said. He was followed by the rest of the hastily formed posse.

“Good,” Gordon said. “We'll start after 'em as soon as it's light. It ought'n be too hard a trail to follow.”

•   •   •

As she did every morning, Beulah Watts showed up at the hotel just before sunrise to build a fire in the kitchen stove. On this morning, however, she found Maggie and Mary Lou already hard at work, scrubbing the dining room floor. Surprised, she stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room to stare. “Am I late for work?” she asked.

“No, we just had a little cleanup to do before we start breakfast this morning,” Maggie told her. “You go right ahead. We're about through here.”

Since it appeared that most of the scrubbing had been in one area of the floor, Beulah walked in to take a closer look. “That looks like bloodstains,” she said. “What was it?”

“Blood,” Mary Lou answered dryly. She let Maggie tell her cook what had happened after she left for home the night before.

“My stars!” Beulah gasped when Maggie told her about the three who had lost their lives. “Alvin Tucker and Jesse Springer—and Mr. Campbell's boy, Claude! Oh, dear me, and Mr. Campbell don't even know his boy is dead.”

“And somebody's gonna have to go out to Mather's place and tell him,” Mary Lou said.

Maggie went on to tell Beulah of the reception she and Mary Lou held for Slade Corbett and his sidekick when they tried to break into her room.

“It's a wonder you both ain't dead,”
Beulah exclaimed when she saw the splintered tabletops piled over in the corner and the bullet holes in the walls.

“Hell,” Maggie boasted boldly, “it's a wonder Slade Corbett and that scum riding with him ain't dead. He'll know better than to come around here again. Right, Mary Lou?”

“I hope so,” Mary Lou replied, not so confident as her employer. She knew that she would fight to protect herself, but at the moment she was too weary to think about it. All but a couple of hours since Slade and Sanchez left had been spent putting Maggie's room and the dining room back in order after the damage the two predators had wrought.

“You want me to tote in some wood for the stove?” Beulah asked. “Are we gonna open for breakfast?”

“I reckon so,” Maggie said. “A little shootin' and murderin' ain't gonna kill any appetites in this town. When everybody finds out Slade and Sanchez are gone, they'll be back wanting breakfast. A couple of our regulars won't be here for breakfast, though, Sam Vickers and Harold Chestnut. They're riding with the posse.”

“That's about as good as we're gonna do,” Mary Lou decided, looking at the patch of stains where Tucker's body had lain. “I'm gonna throw this dirty water out. Then I'm going back to my room to try to pull myself together to work today.”

“Take a little nap if you need it,” Maggie said. “Beulah and I can handle it this morning.”

“No, I'll be back to help,” Mary Lou insisted. “I'm just gonna go splash some water on my face and freshen up a little.”

•   •   •

She stood for a few moments, holding the two halves of the basin that had sat on her dry sink before Slade Corbett raked it off onto the floor. It had been her mother's, and she pressed the two broken pieces together, trying to will them to be whole again. Over in the corner, in a dozen pieces, lay the shattered pitcher that had sat in the basin. She had very little of value: some jewelry that the two outlaws had not found; what little bit of money she had managed to save, along with the fifty dollars Cole had left for her, hidden under a board in the floor; and two nice dresses, trimmed in fine lace, that were too nice to wear for any occasion in Cheyenne.

One of them had served as her wedding dress when she was young and naive enough to marry Tyson Cagle, who had worked in his father's bank in Omaha. How dashing Tyson had seemed to the innocent girl of sixteen. And after only twelve months of marriage, when she was carrying his child, her dashing husband dashed off with a substantial sum of the bank's money and the fourteen-year-old daughter of the bank's vice president. No one knew where they had fled, and nothing had been heard of either of them ever again. She had been left three months pregnant with no place to go but back to her father's house, only to lose the baby one month later.

She sighed. She hadn't thought about that time in her life for quite a while. After all, that was over four years ago, and many things had happened in her life since then. She was a different person from that innocent girl now, with a more callous attitude toward whatever life placed in her path. She picked up the wedding dress from the floor and held it before her at arm's length. She could still wear it, she thought, but
it would now be a good deal tighter than when she had stood before the preacher.

Deep in thought, she was suddenly distracted by a soft sound behind her. She turned to discover a dark form in the dim light of the hallway, a rifle hanging casually in one hand. Startled then, she involuntarily gave a little cry of surprise.

“I didn't mean to scare you,” the man said. “The door was open. I was just fixin' to knock.”

“Cole?” Mary Lou questioned, not certain. “Cole Bonner?”

“Yes, ma'am, it's me,” he answered. “What happened to your door?” he asked, just then realizing it was open because it had been split from the jamb.

“That'll take a little time to tell if you wanna know the whole story. What are you doing here? I wasn't sure we'd ever see you again. When you and Harley left Cheyenne, I thought you were going to spend the winter with Harley's Crow friends.”

She told herself that she should have expected him, because it seemed that every time Slade Corbett showed up in town, Cole followed soon after.

“I reckon I'm not too good at lyin' around an Indian village when I have some unfinished business to tend to,” he said.

“You're supposed to be resting up, letting that wound heal,” she lectured him. “How is it? There hasn't been enough time for that wound to heal. Here, let me look at it.” She stepped forward to see for herself, causing him to step backward.

“It's all right,” he said. “It's healin' up just fine. What happened to your door?”

Instead of answering his question right away, she paused to look at him closely for a long moment, and
it occurred to her that she cared about what happened to him. In fact, she cared very much, and it contradicted her insensitive attitude toward men in general. She realized then that he was staring at her, puzzled by her failure to answer him.

“It got kicked in,” she finally answered. She went on then to tell him the whole story of Slade Corbett and Jose Sanchez's return to Cheyenne.

He listened patiently until she was finished before commenting. “So that's why there ain't anybody at the front desk. I thought that was kind of strange.” He paused to decide what he should do. “The posse left this mornin' to go after 'em?” he asked.

“About an hour before you showed up like a ghost at my door,” Mary Lou replied.

He had to stop again and think for a second. He had not expected to cross Slade's trail so soon. He was tired and hungry, but the trail was too fresh to tarry. By the look of the dark sky, it looked as if snow might fall at any minute. A six-man posse should leave an easy trail to follow, but even that could be quickly covered by a snowstorm.

“Have they got anybody that's good at trackin'?” he asked, for there was always the possibility that the posse could lose the tracks and lead him off the outlaws' trail.

“Sam Vickers calls himself a good tracker,” Mary Lou said. “I don't really know. Shorty Doyle's with them. He might be a good one. He hunts a lot.”

Cole considered that for a moment before his thoughts shifted to Joe. His horse needed to rest before he pushed him hard again. But he felt that he couldn't afford to get much farther behind the posse.
Watching him closely, Mary Lou could see the indecision in his eyes.

“Cole,” she pleaded, “you've got no business heading out after those men now. You look tired as hell to me. Why don't you give the men a chance to catch up with those two murderers? Slade Corbett is badly wounded. I know that for a fact, because Maggie and I both shot him. The hallway is covered with his blood. He might not make it very far as it is. There's no sense you killing yourself trying to catch up to a dying man. Gordon Luck is leading the posse. He's a good man. He'll catch up with them.”

“Maybe,” Cole said. “I've got to see for myself.”

His conscience, and his solemn vow over Ann's grave, gave him no choice but to verify Slade Corbett's and Sanchez's death. His thoughts turned back to Joe again. The big Morgan had traveled hard since his camp more than twenty miles north of Cheyenne. Cole had planned to buy some grain for him and figured he'd have plenty of time to rest before starting out again. It had stood to reason that it would take some time to find anyone who could give him a clue as to where to start looking for Slade Corbett. He hadn't figured on picking up a hot trail as soon as he rode into town. But his common sense told him that it would be a mistake to push Joe beyond the horse's limit at any rate. He might find himself walking across a snowy prairie if he mistreated the horse. Finally he made the decision that he knew to be the right one.

“I've gotta let my horse rest before I can start out again,” he said.

“Well, that sounds like a sensible thing to do,”
Mary Lou told him. “I'm thinking your horse isn't the only one that needs to rest.” She gave him a critical look then. “When's the last time you've had something to eat?”

He had to pause a moment to recall. “Not long ago,” he said. “Yesterday sometime.”

She shook her head, exasperated with his neglect for himself. “I was going to the pump to fill this bucket when you showed up. While I'm doing that, you can take your horse to the stable and unsaddle him. There ain't anybody in the stable, either, so go ahead and give him some grain. When you're done with that, come on in the dining room and I'll fix some breakfast for you. You can't go off to get yourself killed on an empty stomach.”

“Yes, ma'am,” he said. Something in her tone discouraged him from protesting, so he turned and walked to the outside door at the end of the hall. Mary Lou stepped out into the hallway to watch him depart.

One-track mind,
she thought, then compared him to the husband she had known briefly, and wondered how it would be to have a man so dedicated to her by her side. She cautioned herself not to become any more interested in Cole Bonner. No woman was likely to drive the memory of Ann Bonner from his mind.

It mattered little, she thought then.
He's riding a trail that will probably lead him to his death, anyway
.
Don't give him a permanent hold on your heart
.

•   •   •

As fate chose to play it, Sanchez and Corbett fled the town of Cheyenne, heading straight north for a
couple of miles. And had they continued on along that path, they might have chanced upon an encounter with the man who hunted them, for Cole had ridden that very road toward Cheyenne. It was not to be, however, because the two outlaws changed directions after riding only two miles, leaving the road to strike out on a more western course. Their trail was easily followed by the posse over the light blanket of snow that had fallen two days before. And while Cole ate the hearty breakfast Mary Lou prepared for him, Gordon Luck and his men paused to rest their horses at the two outlaws' camp of the night before.

“That son of a bitch is still bleedin' like a stuck hog,” Sam Vickers said, pointing to several spots of blood in the snow.

“Maybe we won't be chasin' but one man before we're done,” Shorty Doyle speculated. “Ol' Maggie blasted him head-on with that shotgun. Maybe he'll bleed out before much longer.”

“Maybe so,” Luck allowed as he looked over the campsite, trying to get a picture in his mind of the outlaws' desperation. “They coulda found a better place to camp. There ain't no water here, so they had to melt snow to make coffee, if they had any coffee. It wasn't much of a fire they built.” He looked around him at the barren rock formations, not surprised that wood for a fire had been pretty difficult to find. The impressions in the snow close to the ashes gave him an idea that the wounded man was literally hugging the fire in an effort to keep from freezing. “I'm thinkin' they made camp here because Corbett couldn't go any farther without stoppin' to rest. So let's get after 'em. There's a good chance they might
have to find someplace to hole up, if he can't go any farther.”

After walking and leading their horses for half an hour, they climbed aboard again and continued following the obvious trail left by the outlaws.

It was the middle of the afternoon when they approached Chugwater Creek. “We'd best rest the horses for a while,” Luck said. “We can water 'em and take time to make some coffee at the creek.”