Last Lawman (9781101611456) (20 page)

He leaned over, filled his cupped hands with the spring water, and washed his face and the back of his neck, then heaved himself to his feet. His ticker gave a hiccup, chugging almost audibly. He lost his breath, and black javelins swam in his eyes.

He stumbled back against the brick-like wall, fumbled a pill from the pouch in his pocket, swallowed it, and held himself steady with his hands on the wall behind him, wincing, enduring the throbbing pain in his chest while he waited for the spell to pass.

Gradually, the steel trap eased its grip on his heart. Then he just stood there, the image of Abilene fading in his head, looking around at the rocks and the sky. Hearing the wind, birds. He suddenly felt very old, looking back over all those years, all those faces and track downs, all the lonely nights in distant places, drinking whiskey and feeding brush to a fire.

Yes, he was old. Back when he was a kid, he remembered an uncle returning from the Rocky Mountains after spending nine years fur trapping, and the man had been considered an old-timer though he’d not yet turned forty. Spurr was sixty. That was as old as dirt even for these modern times. What the hell was he still doing here?

Turning down pretty women’s requests that he take them to Mexico…?

He chuckled at that. He kept the mental quip in his head as he mounted up and rode back down the ravine to the main trail, a smile lifting the corners of chapped lips inside the patchy, ginger-gray beard. He looked back up the ridge for sign of the Indian or half-breed, possibly a Mex, who’d been trailing him and the others, then booted Cochise into a lope.

A mile or so ahead, near where the trail curved to the north toward the outpost on Elkhorn Creek, the Vultures’ trail curved south. More recent tracks followed the trail toward the outpost. That would be Mason’s men.

Spurr pondered the situation, then decided he’d scout the Vultures’ trail for a mile or two. It would likely take an hour for the cavalry boys to get mounted up and on the trail with Mason, anyway. Spurr would ride back to meet them when he was sure of the direction the killers were headed.

He followed the Vultures’ trail until it curved back toward the Sweetwater River. But after the day-old trail reached the river, it swung back north, in the direction of the Wind Rivers looming huge on the northern horizon, Gannett Peak touched with the white of last winter’s snows.

From here, had Stanhope headed directly into the mountains—without outfitting himself with supplies from South Pass City?

There was a distant cracking sound, like firecrackers being ignited from a mile or two away. The dry, thin air carried it crisply.

Spurr looked across a broad sweep of tan-yellow valley to the north, rising gradually toward the apron slopes and elk parks of the mountains. He could see the brush lining the creek along which the Elkhorn Creek Cavalry Outpost lay, out of sight beyond a low, cedar-stippled, hogback ridge.

The crackling continued.

And all at once Spurr knew what it was.

“Oh, Jesus,” he said, stumbling forward, a helpless expression on his withered face. “Oh, no—
dear lord
!”

Twenty minutes before, Mason had ridden up over a low, grassy rise to spy Elkhorn Creek curling below, at the lowest point in the broad valley that rose gradually in the north to the foothills of the Wind River mountains. In the south it sloped off toward the Sweetwater River into which Elkhorn Creek flowed.

Just north of the creek, up a slight hill, lay the Elkhorn Creek Cavalry Outpost. As Mason kept his grulla and his spare mount moving down the other side of the rise toward the stream, he scanned the post that appeared little more than a ruin remaining from a long-defunct, ancient civilization—and a small ruin, at that.

The buildings appeared little more than brown dimples on the tan plain tufted with silvery green sage shrubs. A wall stretched across the front, paralelling the creek, and ran for a few dozen yards along the post’s western side. A waste of time and manpower, for in its unfinished state it offered little protection. There was even a ten-foot gap in the wall where the gates had once been.

Despite the fort’s dilapidated appearance, Mason was relieved to see horses milling in the corral off the barn that flanked the long, L-shaped, enlisted men’s quarters, which, in turn, sat to the west of the small officer’s hut. The soldiers must have brought extra mounts out from Fort Stambaugh, because there were a good twenty, twenty-five horses kicking up dust in the corral or standing statue-still in a wedge of shade angling out from the barn.

There was a line of dark blue tunics sitting low along the south wall of the enlisted men’s bunkhouse—soldiers lazing there, waiting on Mason. The sheriff could see the tan or blue kepis on their heads, the yellow neckerchiefs billowing around their necks. There was another bluecoat standing outside the gap in the crude stockade, yet another walking in a desultory fashion along the top of the creek’s far bank.

Mason frowned slightly as he ran his gaze across the outpost’s remuda once more, only vaguely conscious of a twinge of apprehension flicking around between his shoulders, as he booted his grulla on down the hill, jerking his spare mount along by its lead rope. The others followed, spaced widely out behind him, Gentry leading Spurr’s spare horse as well as his own, Calico Strang looking like a whipped schoolboy after Spurr had laid his rifle butt across the arrogant young Pinkerton’s cheek.

A purple bruise had risen around a quarter-inch cut on the kid’s cheek, and Strang kept brushing at it with his hand and spitting to one side, muttering angrily under his breath. His partner, Web Mitchell, his right arm in a sling, ignored his younger partner, as did the others.

Mason bottomed out in the creek bed, then let his horses stop to draw water from between the sandbars. The soldier who’d been walking guard along the far bank had stopped to stare toward the newcomers, holding a Spencer carbine on his right shoulder. He canted his head to one side—a big man with long black hair gathered in a ponytail, and an impatient scowl.

In a thick Texas accent, he said, “You Sheriff Mason, is ya?”

“That’s right,” Mason said, jerking his horse’s head up. The mount had had enough water until it had cooled down. “Captain Norbert over yonder?”

The big man in the corporal’s uniform, the tunic of which had a large stain over the belly, nodded. “Waitin’ on you, sir. Said we’d be foggin’ them Vultures with ya’ll.”

“That’s right. Judging by their tracks, they must have ridden right past here not a day ago—just a mile to the south.”

The corporal kept his head canted to the right and hiked a shoulder noncommittally. Then he grinned. “I sure would like to be part o’ the bunch that runs them wolves to bay. Get my name in the history books.”

“I reckon you’ll get your chance,” said Stockton as he jerked his buckskin’s head up from the trickle of water twisting between sandbars.

“Let’s go, fellas,” Mason said as he booted the grulla on across the creek and up the opposite bank. “We’ll rest our horses for an hour. By that time, Spurr will likely show, and then we’ll head out again, get a few more miles behind us before sundown.”

Strang muttered again under his breath, and Mason curled a wry smile. Spurr had a way with folks.

The soldier standing near the opening in the stockade wall was smoking a cigarette, his rifle leaning against the wall behind him. As Mason and the other men approached, the man put his head down slightly, and the shade from his kepi brim slid down over his eyes. He, too, had a stain on his uniform—on the thigh of his right, pale blue pantsleg. In the middle of the stain was a hole.

Mason was so eager to get his horses rested and to take off after the Vultures that he paid little heed to the shabby uniform. After all, this was the frontier army, and supplies as well as fresh uniforms were often few and far between.

But when he’d ridden through the gap and into the parade ground and continued on toward the small collection of rough-hewn buildings sixty yards beyond, worms of foreboding began crawling not just between his shoulders but up and down his spine.

He looked again toward the corral off the barn, and it was Ed Gentry who voiced the sheriff’s half-formed concern: “When’d the cavalry start ridin’ pintos and Appaloosies?”

Stockton, riding to Mason’s left, chuckled. “The ranchers must have run out of bays down around Fort Stambaugh.”

Mason reined up. The others walked their horses a little farther ahead and then, regarding the sheriff curiously, stopped their own mounts around him. Mason stared toward the bunkhouse.

The soldiers gathered there had all gained their feet and were now walking toward Mason and the others. A tall, broad-shouldered hombre walked in the middle of the group. He wore a uniform with captain’s bars on the shoulders and a broad-brimmed blue kepi.

Mason couldn’t see the man’s eyes because the captain was walking with his chin down, just like the guard outside the stockade had done. Something in the way the man moved looked familiar.

Just as Mason’s heart began to quicken, he saw the birds circling in the sky behind the bunkhouse.

Buzzards.

He jerked his gaze back to the big captain striding toward him, fifty yards away and closing with the others, their spurs chinging. They all had stains on their uniforms.

Dark stains. Bloodstains.

And then the two vultures tattooed on Clell Stanhope’s cheeks spread their wings as the man lifted his chin and smiled.

“Mason,” he said, “if I woulda killed you back in Willow City, like I intended, you’d have all the pain behind you now!”

“Well, I’ll be goddamned,” said Gentry, drawing the words out tensely as he dropped the ropes of his two spare horses.

“Holy shit!” said Calico Strang, his chestnut sensing his fear and leaping around beneath him.

Keeping his eyes on the hard-eyed, unshaven gun wolves forming a semicircle before him, Mason said, “Everybody take it easy.” But his calm voice belied the thundering of his pulse in his temples. Fear and shame burned through him.

He’d seen all the signs of an ambush—the non-bay horses, the stained uniforms—and still he’d ridden right into it. Worse, he’d led other men into it.

He glared at Stanhope, ran his gaze across the others all decked out in the uniforms they must have taken off the bullet-torn soldiers whom they themselves had killed. The whole gang was here—Ed Crow, Clell Stanhope, Red Ryan, Santos Estrada, Quiet Boon Coffey, with Magpie Quint and Doc Plowright, who’d been scouting the creek bank and the outside of the stockade wall, respectively, now moving up behind the lawmen.

The latter two Vultures separated, circling Mason and the others, smiling as they held their rifles across their chests.

The lawmen’s horses had all turned skittish now, sensing their riders’ anxiety as well as the killers’ antipathy.

Clell Stanhope started to laugh. Then his brother followed suit. The other killers looked at him, and his humor became infectious. They all started laughing, the guffaws rising eerily around the parade ground and rising above the nickers and whinnies and hoof thuds of the frightened horses. As he laughed, Clell Stanhope pointed at Mason, mocking the sheriff’s obvious fear and chagrin.

Mason glanced quickly at the other lawmen and the two Pinkertons. They were all swinging their heads around at the laughing cutthroats. None of Mason’s men had his hand on his gun, knowing that as soon as they reached for their
weapons, the set-to would begin. And while the Vultures had not yet drawn their own pistols or leveled their rifles, they had the lawmen outnumbered nine to five.

Not horrible odds. Mason had seen worse. But the fact that he and the others were mounted on nervous horses reduced their chances even further.

Mason heard someone laughing beside him, and turned to see that Gentry was laughing now, too. Then Bill Stockton slapped his whipcord-clad thigh and threw his gray-bearded head back, sending his own resonant guffaws careening toward the clear, blue sky.

The laughter was indeed infectious. Mason himself grew heady on the danger. He felt a chuckle roll up from his own chest as he looked around at the others and heard and saw them laughing—even Web and Calico Strang albeit with slightly less vigor than the others—and began laughing himself.

Hell was about to pop, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

Mason locked eyes with Clell Stanhope. Stanhope’s hand dropped to the pistol wedged behind his black cartridge belt, and Mason slapped leather, as well. Just as Mason triggered his Colt, the grulla pitched hard to the right, and the sheriff saw with a sinking sensation his slug puff dust far behind Stanhope and the others.

Mason felt a crushing pain in his side as the horse turned once more. All around him, guns popped and men shouted or screamed. The sheriff saw Calico Strang’s horse rear wildly and caught a brief glimpse of the young Pinkerton tumbling off the back of his mount as Strang fired his own pistol in the air.

When Mason’s horse had turned a complete circle, he felt another punch-like blow—this one to his shoulder. He cocked his pistol, extended it toward Clell Stanhope, who was down on one knee, laughing and shooting into Mason’s pitching crowd.