Dead Man's Trail (9781101606957) (8 page)

And how was it that Yakima had gotten himself situated right at the top of the blade?

Chapter 10

“Go to hell, Betajack!” Neumiller raked out, then spat in the old man's face. He added just loudly enough for Yakima to hear, “Your boy's waitin' for you. . . .”

Claw Hendricks threw his head back and laughed, rose-colored spectacles flashing in the light from the broken window over the sheriff's rolltop desk. The old man smashed the back of his hand against the sheriff's face, then hauled one of his knives out and poked the upturned tip into the wound oozing blood from Neumiller's chest.

Neumiller scrunched his face up and howled. A girl had been screaming on the far side of the street while an older woman wailed, and the sheriff's agonized cry drowned the girl's screams for a good ten seconds. Old Betajack scowled down at Neumiller as he turned the knife handle this way and that, screwing the tip into the wound. He pulled out the dripping knife tip and held the blade up in front of Neumiller's face.

“Tell me where the prosecutor is. I know he didn't go back to his ranch, 'cause we was watchin' the road. Where'd he go, Neumiller? You tell me, we'll let you live. You don't tell me in the next ten seconds, you're gonna go out howlin' like a gut-shot lobo!”

The coyote-like kid called Sonny hooted and laughed as he puffed his cigarette.

Neumiller grunted and panted, squeezing his eyes shut as though to clear them. Blood dribbled down over his right arm to puddle thickly on the floor beneath his writhing frame. “Go to hell, you old—!”

He screamed as Betajack shoved the tip into the wound again, scrunching his own face up, eyes flashing wolfishly as he ground the knife a good couple of inches into the tender open wound. Again, Neumiller's howls drowned out the girl's squeals sounding from the far side of the street.

Yakima stood behind the closed door of his cell, staring at the grisly happenings, though his green-eyed face betrayed no emotion whatever. He'd seen too much in his thirty-some years for this post-bloodbath torture to bother him overmuch. His only concern was for himself and the gold that caused one of his saddlebag pouches to bulge on the floor not five feet beyond Neumiller's kicking legs but which none of the killers had apparently seen yet.

He wasn't sure why he was thinking about the gold, because he'd already decided quite calmly that he'd come to the end of his trail. All he could really hope for was a faster end than the one Neumiller was currently experiencing.

“Stage!” the sheriff screamed so shrilly that Yakima didn't understand him at first. “He's . . . he's on the stage!” The man was panting, sweat glistening on his face, sopping his mustache.

The coyote-like boy with a strangely feminine face laughed in the office's open door, one hip cocked as he leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed on his chest, smoking. He seemed to enjoy the grisly display to no end.

“What stage?” he called.

“Shut up, Sonny!” the old man said without looking at him. Staring down at Neumiller, keeping his knifepoint ground into the man's bullet wound, he said, “What stage, Neumiller?”

Out the window behind Claw Hendricks, Yakima could see several men with rifles milling around. A couple were looking in the windows.

Neumiller screamed, panted, kicking his boots loudly against the floor, and said through a long, harrowing squeal, “Belle
Foooooooosh
, you son . . . son . . . son of a
bitchhhhhh!
”

“Belle Foooosh!” mocked Claw Hendricks, lifting his chin and howling the town's name. “Belle Foosh! Belle Foosh! You got it, Floyd!”

Sonny clapped his gloved hands in the doorway. “Good goin', Pa! Must be the stage we seen pull out just a few minutes ago!”

“Yep.” Betajack wiped the blood off his bowie knife on Neumiller's wool coat, sheathed the knife under his left arm, and planted both his hands on a knee to hoist himself to his feet. “Must be the one, sure 'nough.”

Yakima was not surprised when the man pulled out one of his pistols and shot Neumiller in the head. The half-breed didn't even blink. He merely stepped back away from the door and sat down on the creaky wooden cot to calmly await his fate. He looked at the saddlebags. He felt no particular emotion at the prospect of Betajack and his wild boy, Sonny, and Claw Hendricks running off with the gold. Maybe a touch of disappointment at his not being able to accomplish what he'd set out to do. But there was no emotion involved other than having to leave Wolf behind.

He'd die now, and that would be the end of it.

“Come on, Pa!” Sonny said, beckoning to the old man who stared down in satisfaction at Neumiller as he holstered his hog leg. “Looks like the boys is headed on over to the Silk Slipper. I'll race ya there!”

Yakima could see a vague family resemblance in Betajack and the boy. They both looked hard and wild, as if they lived in a den and only came out to hunt.

Betajack turned around without so much as another glance at Yakima and followed his fidgety blond son out of the sheriff's office and into the street. Claw Hendricks stared at Yakima, who sat on his cot with his elbows on his knees, stoic-faced.

“Well, well, mister.” Hendricks pushed himself out of the chair and hooked his thumbs behind his cartridge belt. “What you in for?”

Yakima said, “I'm told I stole from my ranching partner and raped a white girl.”

“You don't say!”

Hendricks moved to stand only a few inches from the cell door. “Good on ya, old son!” He laughed. And then, to Yakima's jaw-dropping surprise, the outlaw leader stepped over the still, bloody form of Dave Neumiller and went out. The half-breed thought the big killer had glanced down at the saddlebags, but he hadn't done any more than that before he'd walked on out of the sheriff's office and into the street, where it appeared that his and Betajack's men were drifting off toward the whorehouse, in no hurry to get after the stage, it appeared.

The stage and the prosecutor, apparently, could wait. They could enjoy themselves for an hour or two and still have no problem running the Concord down.

Yakima straightened, slow to comprehend that he was still alive. Damn, it felt good!

He glanced down at the sheriff staring at the ceiling through half-closed lids. “Sorry, Neumiller.” He half meant it.

Quickly, he went to work stripping the single, moth-eaten army blanket off the cot and using it to snag the key ring and drag it over to the door. A few seconds later, he holstered his Colt, draped his saddlebags over his shoulder, and walked out of the jailhouse, drawing a deep draft of steely-cool air into his lungs and not minding the stench of horse shit and privies. All three deputies lay around him.

So did Lewis, who must have taken a bullet soon after the first deputy had gone down.

Lewis was still alive, piled up in front of the boardwalk fronting the jailhouse, clutching his wounded upper right leg and breathing hard, wheezing. He was facing away from Yakima as he said, “Help . . . help me, gall blast it . . . will you, buddy?” Then he turned his head toward Yakima, and a stricken look fell over his wizened, hawkish features, angular jaws clad in a few scattered, dirt-colored bristles.

Yakima walked over to him, stared down. Lewis sort of cowered, like a dog about to be whipped, but then Yakima continued on past him and walked up the street to Bart English's Livery & Feed Barn. Bart stood behind one of his thrown-open doors, staring around it and down the main street in the direction the cutthroats had disappeared.

“You got my horse shod?” Yakima asked him.

English shuttled his stricken eyes to the half-breed. His big face was nearly as pale as Lewis's. “They gone?”

“Took their business over to the Silk Slipper.”

Yakima looked up and down the street once more. C
LOSED
signs hung in most of the doors, and curtains were drawn across windows. The good citizens of Wolfville were staying indoors until the cutthroat storm had passed. He couldn't blame them. They were a bad lot.

He looked again at English. “Well?”

The big liveryman/blacksmith scowled. “Well what?”

“What about the black?”

“What about him? In case you didn't notice, this town was just raided, a girl raped over yonder at the Drug Emporium, and every star packer shot to shit!”

“I noticed.”

“And now who knows what kinda trouble they're causin' over to the Silk Slipper?”

“I got an idea.”

“And you're worried about your
horse
?”

“I'm burnin' daylight here.”

“Well, ain't that convenient!”

“You got that part right.”

Yakima brushed past English as he walked into the blacksmith part of his shop, the forge and anvil and corrugated tin water barrel occupying a lean-to side shed. He dropped his saddlebags against the wall near the water barrel. “Now get to it, Bart. I got a trail to fog.”

Yakima removed his buckskin mackinaw and his hat and rolled up his shirtsleeves. He dunked his head in the water barrel, the water smelling like hot iron but refreshing and cleansing just the same. When he pulled his head up, shaking the water from his long coal black hair, English was still looking warily around his open barn door, his bulky body tense, as though he expected the gang to head this way and do to him what they'd done to the star packers.

Yakima sighed.

He donned his hat, then went over and used a tongs to pull down a raw horseshoe from a nail hanging from a ceiling beam and commenced to shaping his own shoe, pumping the bellows methodically as he did. The work was no problem. He'd forged many of Wolf's shoes himself using far less than English's shop had to offer.

When he'd finished hammering the glowing shoe on the anvil—he knew the shape of Wolf's hooves as well as he knew his own hands—he dunked the iron in the water barrel, making it hiss, then took it and a hammer and four nails over to where Wolf stood in the barn's shadows, tied to the wheel of a parked buggy.

“What the hell are you doin'?” English said, just now looking at him, his lower jaw hanging.

“What's it look like?”

Yakima led Wolf out into the light near where English still stood, looking dazed, and commenced hammering the shoe to the black's right front hoof. “Since when did Claw Hendricks start ridin' this far east?” he asked English.

“Since today, I reckon.”

“Why's he ridin' with old Betajack?”

“Who the hell knows? Maybe they both had the same beef with Neumiller.” English turned to direct his gaze down the street again as Yakima continued hammering nails through the shoe. “The sheriff hanged Preston Betajack just yesterday. Last night, somebody—Betajack, I figure—hanged one of Neumiller's deputies. The prosecutor's wife was the one who found him.”

Yakima looked up from his work. “Prosecutor's wife?”

“Yeah, Mrs. Mendenhour.”

Yakima considered that a moment while holding Wolf's hoof between his knees. Then he looked at English's broad back once more. “She the woman I saw in the stage earlier, when they was just pullin' out?”

“If she was just about the purtiest creature you ever laid eyes on,” English said, “then it was her, all right.”

“And they're after her husband,” Yakima said, half to himself.

“I'm sure they are.” English shook his head darkly. “What those men do when they run down that stage is anyone's guess.” He looked at Yakima, narrowing one bushy-browed eye. “But I don't have to guess what they'll do to the man's purty wife.”

Yakima felt that stone drop in his belly again. Inwardly, he cursed. He cursed the killers and the sheriff and the prosecutor and even the prosecutor's wife. He cursed them all for the fix they were in. Most of all he cursed himself for being here in the middle of it.

And for not mounting up and taking the gold and riding south to Texas. Maybe Mexico. All the gold he was carrying would take him a long ways, for many years, in Old Mexico.

The good feeling he'd felt only a few minutes ago was gone.

When he'd finished hammering the shoe onto Wolf's hoof, he tossed the hammer to English, slung the saddlebags over Wolf's back, and stepped into the leather. He stiffened when he saw Lewis still writhing on the ground in front of the sheriff's office. The double-crossing rancher was the only living person on the street. All the rest of the town appeared to still be cowering behind closed doors and shuttered windows.

Yakima looked at English and said tightly, “Find Shackleford's horse. Get him on it and slap him home!”

Then he rammed his moccasin heels against Wolf's flanks and loped along the street, taking the left tine at the edge of town and following after the stage toward the northeast.

Chapter 11

She'd ridden her sleek palomino, Taos, through the notch in the rocky bluffs and come up through the aspens to see him working in the corral of the old line shack.

He was repairing the corral, with several slender logs lying around him and the white-socked, coal black stallion standing nearby, always close at hand. The two seemed part of each other. He'd taken his shirt off because of the heat; it hung over a corral slat. One log rested across two sawhorses on the corral's left side, away from the cabin. A tendril of white smoke rose from the cabin's chimney, unspooling amongst the pines jutting around the scarp to the right of the shack.

The sun made a shimmering gold line along the stallion's broad back.

Even as he sawed the slender log stretched across the sawhorses, he was looking toward her, for he'd obviously heard her and Taos riding toward him. He had a shell belt and a holstered revolver slung over the corral, near his buckskin shirt, and a rifle with a brass receiver leaned against a post, below the pistol.

His black, sweat-damp hair dangled to his broad, muscular shoulders, his skin the color of varnished cherry. Sweat glistened on his bulging arms and on the heavy slabs of his thick chest that formed a mantle beneath his stout brown neck. He'd been quite a vision working and sweating there in the midafternoon, high-country sunshine. He paused in his sawing to watch her and then, as she came on, feeling apprehensive but also curious, he resumed sawing the log, causing the ridged muscles of his shoulders, arms, and chest to ripple like sun-gilded waves, until the cut log tumbled off the sawhorse to lie at his moccasin-clad feet.

She stopped Taos a ways from the corral and canted her head to one side, studying him, feeling miffed at first to find someone here, for she'd considered the cabin her own sacred refuge. But her annoyance disappeared beneath her fascination for the man, obviously a mixed breed, whom she was surprised to find here at work on the dilapidated corral.

“Have you moved in?” she called.

He'd picked up the cut log and was placing it between two corral posts, sliding it into two notches he'd made in the posts. He shook his head. “Buildin' up the corral so we can corral some horses here next week.” His voice was deep, but it had the light ring of a white man, not the harsh tones of an Indian speaking English.

He hammered one end of the new rail into the old post with the heel of his hand.

“I usually stop here for water,” she said.

The black stallion, turned sideways to her, was watching her and Taos obliquely, its ears twitching, its shaggy tail arched.

“Help yourself,” the black-haired man said. “But you'd best let that palo cool off first.”

“I know to do that,” she said defensively, stepping down from her saddle.

She walked Taos in several broad circles in front of the cabin, watching as the big red black-haired man continued working, placing the one rail and then cutting another slender pine pole to replace another one that had rotted out. He didn't look at her as she walked and he continued working. His black hair danced about his broad shoulders, and the banded muscles in his stomach expanded and contracted as he bent and stretched and squatted and sawed another length of log—a man at home in his own fine body, a man both accustomed to and adept at hard labor.

Finally, when Taos had warmed down, she led the gelding into the corral. The two horses nickered curiously, a little warningly, and then Taos took his eyes off the arch-tailed black and dipped his snout in the rain barrel abutting the side of the cabin, in the swatch of purple shade there, and drew water.

The man glanced at her, and she noted the sunlight glinting off his eyes like chips of jade embedded in a dark granite mountain wall. The stallion whinnied and came prancing aggressively over to the palomino. The palo lifted its snout from the water with a start, sidestepping and ramming Glendolene back against the corner of the cabin. She gave a groan as something cut into her arm, and she pushed the palo's hindquarters back away from her with an angry grunt.

“Easy, easy, boy!” the man said.

The black shuffled around, bobbing its head half playfully, half territorially, and the palo lifted its own head and backed away, eyes nervous, fearful. The man stepped between them, rammed his left shoulder against the black, and turned the stallion away to go prancing, mane buffeting, around the corral, swinging and bobbing his fine head.

“Don't mind him—he's just showing off.” The man moved to her, grabbed her arm. “Are you hurt?”

She looked down at the large red-brown hand wrapped around her forearm as he canted his head to look at where a nail had scraped against her upper arm, tearing her white cotton blouse above her elbow.

“Are you all right, Glendolene?”

Her husband's voice nudged her from the reverie and she found herself staring at the man sitting across from her in the lurching coach—a bearded prospector in a scruffy watch cap and muffler heading back to his home in Dakota for Christmas. The miner slept with his head tipped forward, snoring. Glendolene realized she was sort of half smiling, and an embarrassed flush rose in her cheeks.

She glanced at Lee riding to her right, another married couple riding to her left, the four of them facing forward while four other travelers, including the prospector, faced them.

“I'm fine,” she said, vaguely wondering why a smile would have Lee so concerned.

Did she smile so seldom?

She remembered that what had spawned the reverie was seeing the man who'd taken center stage in it as the coach had pulled out of Wolfville—the man whose name she'd never learned, and had never wanted to learn—and now a hollow feeling swept over her. The hollowness became a lonely ache, and suddenly she felt as though she was about to cry.

She tried to suppress the feeling, but then it was aggravated by a feeling she'd woken up to several mornings in a row, terrifying her. It terrified her now.

She squeezed her hands around the small leather traveling purse she held on her lap, fighting it, staring out the window. It wouldn't leave her. In fact, she felt sweat breaking out on her forehead, and then her upper lip trembled until she felt as though she was about to convulse with a sob.

She turned to Lee and tried hard to pitch her voice evenly as she said, “In fact, I do feel a little under the weather. Do you think you could have the driver stop so I could get some air?”

The other passengers looked at her concernedly—all except the still-dozing prospector—as Lee said, “Certainly.”

Lee removed his bowler hat and tilted his head out the window to yell up at the driver, “Mr. Adlard, can you halt the team? Mrs. Mendenhour is needing a break.”

He had to yell several times before he could make the jehu understand him. When the stage had lurched to a stop, dust rising outside the windows, Lee opened the door and stepped out quickly, his eyes concerned. He took Glendolene's arm as she rose a little unsteadily from the hide-covered seat and ducked through the door. She waved him off and did not look at the shotgun messenger, who said, “Everything all right, ma'am?” but merely nodded her head and hurried off through the boulders and shrubs lining the trail.

Glendolene felt foolish, but she also felt genuinely sick. When the stage was out of sight behind her, she dropped to her knees, felt the nausea rise out of her belly, and retched in the rocks and gravel before her. When she finished, she opened her leather traveling purse, extracted a handkerchief, and wiped her lips with it.

A woman's voice said behind her, “Does he know?”

Glendolene jerked her head around, saw one of the other two women from the stage standing behind her—a plain-faced, red-haired woman with expressive blue eyes and a long, thin mouth that smiled understandingly. A mole adorned her chin, a little off center. She wore a man's striped blanket coat over a brown wool dress and short fur boots. She wore a green knitted scarp over her head, covering her ears against the wintry cold that had finally descended on the northern Rockies.

“Does who know what?”

“Does your husband know about your condition?” the woman said. She stepped forward and continued to smile kindly down at Glendolene. “Believe me, miss, I know the symptoms of pregnancy. You couldn't have been regular sick, because it all happened so fast, and I'd say the morning sickness was brought on by a mood as much as all the bouncing around.”

She hitched her skirts up her thighs, beneath the heavy coat, and dropped to a knee beside Glendolene. “I'm from Whitfield, over yonder. I helped Doc O'Reilly out for years with his female patients. Had a few babes myself, though they all died.”

Glendolene looked at her, feeling stricken. She'd figured she was pregnant, but this woman seemed to validate her fears, caused her now to stare at the cold, hard fact of her condition.

“Oh,” the woman said understandingly. “It's not as happy a time as it might be, is it?”

Glendolene looked away as she dabbed at her lips, felt tears dribble down her cheeks. She felt lonely and hollow, and the breadth and starkness of the country around her—the rolling, sage-covered hills with occasional rust-colored rimrocks rising here and there seemed to intensify the emotion. Guilt racked her, as well, because the realization that she was undeniably pregnant also made her realize how much she didn't want the child.

Her unexpected confidante said, “I'm sure, once you tell him, he'll be thrilled. All the men are!”

“Yes,” Glendolene said, feigning an optimistic smile. “Yes, I suppose he will. . . .” And he would be, she knew, and that also made her feel guilty, because she herself was not.

“Where are my manners?” the blond woman said. “I'm Lori. Lori O'Reilly. Dr. O'Reilly's wife. His widow. Heart attack took him last spring, and I'm moving up to Montana now. One of my nephews is up there, offered to take me in. And you're . . . ?”

“Glendolene Mendenhour.”

Lori O'Reilly frowned curiously.

“Prosecutor Mendenhour is my husband.”

“Oh . . . ,” Lori said, obviously impressed. “You live out at the . . . ?”

“The Chain Link, yes.”

“Nice place, I hear.”

“It's not bad,” Glendolene said, unable not to add, “A little isolated.”

“I suppose it is. Especially for one in your condition.” Mrs. O'Reilly pulled a small flask out of her coat pocket and popped the cork. “Here, take some of this. Don't worry. It's just water, though it probably has a brandy taste to it. It's the doc's.” She smiled, and her smile contributed to Glendolene's sadness because it told her how much the woman missed the doctor, whom she'd never see again.

“Thank you.” She accepted the flask and took a sip. The water was still cold. It refreshed her, took some of the heat out of the uncomfortable flush she still felt in her face, and some of the pain from the dull ache in her head.

She handed the flask back to Mrs. O'Reilly, who corked it and slipped it back into her coat. “I'm better now.” Mrs. O'Reilly took her arm and helped her rise from her knees. “I'm ready to ride, though the thought of it still makes me a little queasy, I'm afraid.”

“We'll be stopping again soon, Mrs. Mendenhour. The Eagle Butte Station is just a few more miles up the trail. They'll have food there. That'll put some color back into your cheeks.”

Glendolene liked the woman's open, almost salty demeanor. She didn't seem like many doctors' wives she'd known. Most of them were persnickety.

“Please call me Glendolene.”

“Only if you call me Lori.”

The two women walked back through the rocks to the stage. Of the passengers, only Lee and the bearded prospector had destaged. The young married couple and two men who appeared to be traveling drummers were still on board, conversing in a desultory way. The driver and the shotgun messenger were standing up in front of the team, glancing down at one of the lead horses' hooves and conversing, while the prospector stood near the stage's front wheel, smoking a loosely rolled quirley and staring obliquely at Glendolene and Mrs. O'Reilly.

“Feeling better, Glen?” Lee said, stepping forward.

“Much better,” Glendolene said. She had turned to Mrs. O'Reilly to thank the woman for the water and the encouragement when a strained look crumpled the woman's face and she lurched straight back with a scream. A quarter second later, before Glendolene had time to react, a rifle cracked hollowly.

“Injuns!”
the old prospector screamed, pointing along their back trail. “Oh, Lordy, it's
Injuns
!”