Shotgun Charlie (15 page)

But he saw nothing. Nothing save for the slowly waving treetops, sunlight on rock, rock that shadowed other rock, longer shadows as the day wore on. Nothing moved. No birds, no squirrels, no nothing. He waited a long time, many minutes, he reckoned, but still nothing moved.

He had been giving thought to making a cold camp soon, but now that he had proof and not scared guesses that he was being followed, he had to keep pressing on. Had to find that next landmark that Grady Haskell had told them about. Even if it was a trap.

It was a trap he was willing to spring if it meant getting him to that killer. He heeled Nub into a hard walk, and though he sensed the beast's fatigue, one that he was sure surpassed his own, he knew they had to keep going. He'd hop down soon, give the horse a rest. But not yet. Not yet. They still had distance to cover.

. . .

Far below him, emerging out of the scrub and more open expanse of the semi-treed old riverbed, Marshal Wickham sat his horse confident in his camouflage, behind a stand of ponderosas clustered out of a clot of harsh rock.

His old gray face bore a tight-lipped grimace. His horse had stepped wrong and whanged a rock with a shoe. Even as he felt it happening he knew it would be but seconds before the big young man far ahead of him, but mostly within sight, would stop, would freeze, would scan his back trail. And that was what his “escaped” prisoner had done.

And Wickham knew that Charlie was now convinced he was being followed. As Wickham sat there, aching for a pull on his flask, but not daring to move and risk a shadowy movement, he thought that perhaps this wasn't such a bad turn of events after all. Maybe it was time to close in on the boy. One side of his mouth smiled and he snaked an old hand under his coat and rested it on the lip of the pocket holding the flask. Soon enough, he thought.

Wickham watched the big tired man leading his big tired horse slowly upward, angling in a zigzag route toward a sag in the trees. The marshal sighed. Another canyon. But he had to hand it to the young man; he had stuck to a course seemingly without hesitation. Wickham hoped the young man knew where in the heck he was bound, because he was placing all his eggs in the boy's basket. If he was beelining—slow as molasses—in a random direction away from Bakersfield and not toward the killers' hideout, then Wickham was going to be one surly old law dog; that much he knew about himself. But something told him to keep his revolver holstered. This fella was different, not a killer, as he'd been painted in town, and maybe even a good egg. Time would tell.

But Wickham wished the big bruiser would get a head of steam built up. He knew Charlie was aware that a posse would be on his tail, even before Wickham's mount had glanced a ringer off that rock. But the boy sure wasn't moving as quick as he should.

Wickham hadn't reckoned it would take more than a couple of days to track the thieving killers. And so, in his haste to put his quickly formed plan together, he had neglected to stock the boy up with enough food, water, and gritty sustenance for the horse too. A sack of feed corn would have gone a long way to keeping that horse's feet from slow-stepping.

Wickham cursed himself. A packet of jerky? What had he been thinking? That wasn't enough to sustain a man, and such a big one as Charlie Chilton.

He'd have to show himself soon, much as he'd intended. He'd wanted to wait until he was sure Charlie had gotten close and hadn't been playing him. Call it a lawman's prerogative, but now that he was pretty certain Charlie was dealing straight, Wickham felt sure he'd have to tighten the cinch. Convince the boy they could work together on this. After all, they both wanted the same thing, though for differing reasons.

“No,” he said to himself as they walked down the trail, well hidden, he knew, by the thicker stands of aspen and ponderosas. “That's not entirely true. I reckon we're after the killer, this Haskell, as the big young man had referred to him. We're after him for much the same reason: revenge. To even the score.”

That was the core of the reason, beyond that he knew they each had their own axes to hone. He hoped he could prevent Charlie from getting himself in too deep with the rough boys. Wickham was a lawman; he was used to dealing with hard cases. But Charlie seemed an innocent, too young to have been seriously in league with them. If he ended up fighting with this Haskell character, he might well lose his life, and too cheaply. If on the lucky chance he didn't, then he might still lose his life, perhaps by taking another life.

That sinking, gut-hollow feeling a man gets when he's killed his first man, be he desperado or demon, inebriated fool or prodding braggart, was a feeling that Wickham didn't want Charlie to experience, if he could help it.

“We'll see, horse.” The marshal patted his mount's neck and readjusted himself in the saddle. “We shall see. And sooner than later, I suspect.” He glanced up toward the far-off bank of gray-black clouds, low and unforgiving—rolling toward them—on the northeast horizon.

“Storm across that valley. Those clouds will be moving in within a few hours, horse. Might mean snow. They sure as shootin' don't mean a light summer rain. Not in autumn in the Sierras.” Many people had died horrible, needless deaths underestimating such a fast-moving blow.

Memories rushed back of that time years before when he'd been one man of two dozen sent into the Sierras to find a wagon train that had become lost. Flashes of grim memories flicked in his mind then, of seeing the tops of wagons, the sides of them where they'd tipped, or been flipped by incessant wind.

They'd had to root in the hard, wind-packed snow for survivors. All the rescuers doing the same thing—praying for survivors, shouting for help, digging down with their mittened hands, with rifle butts, boots, anything. And finding entire families huddled beneath their wagons, blankets wrapped tight around them, all blue-tinged skin, all rimed with packed snow crystals, all frozen stiff, solid as stone, clutching each other.

Wickham could never forget those looks of desperation. For weeks after, they'd haunted his dreams. He'd see them crack those films of snow, their eyelashes caked, but the eyes, frosted blue and blazing, would stare like sunlit glass right at him and he'd hear their voices as a chorus: “Why? Why? Why?”

He'd try to answer, but nothing would come out, and all the while the voices grew louder, the looks more desperate, and finally he'd awaken in a sweat, chest pounding, the woodstove long gone out, and his own breath misting in the cold cabin air.

No, sir, he'd not helped provision that boy well enough, and now it was up to him to make sure what he brought with him sustained the two of them and their mounts. For if the storm brewed up into what he suspected it would, tracking Haskell and the rest of his gang would be the least of their worries.

He sucked his teeth once, made a decision with finger-snap speed, and dug his rowels into his horse's belly. Time to stop tagging along like a wayward duckling and start playing catch-up, before it's too late.

“What do you mean, Hoy? You got to come with me.”

“Randy,” said Hoy, his eyes rimmed red as if he'd been pelted in the face with lye. He stepped out onto the porch and closed the door behind him. “I can't leave my mama and sissy all alone, not now.”

“But we got a chance—the last chance—to get the man who did this thing.”

“But my brother . . . my twin brother, Hill, he's lying in there on the dining table, dead and never coming back.” His pointing arm trembled and Randy Scoville noticed he still wore the shirt he'd cradled his brother against as the boy died.

But Deputy Scoville was not to be swayed. He leaned close, his whispered voice frenzied but not loud enough to be heard from inside—he hoped. Mrs. Tompkins was a hard woman to know. And now one of her boys was killed, a death she'd openly blamed on the deputy. He could hardly blame her, but this dilly-dallying was no way to get the job done.

“Look, Hoy, tell her you had to slip out for a bit. Or tell her the whole truth, I don't much care. What I do need is for you to join me on those two horses right over there. We're all loaded, provisioned up for the journey, and we'll trail the man who gunned down your brother. He'll be as good as dead if we get on out there right now.”

The bloody-shirted young man stood before him, a man whose twin brother was one of the victims. Hoy sighed, shook his head, and nodded slowly. “Nothing for it, then, since you put it like that. But I don't know what to tell Mama.”

“Then don't tell her anything. But show her what you are made of. Help me bring back your brother's killer. Besides, you won't be doing it to avenge your brother. You'll be doing it for everybody in this town who was affected by the mess that happened. You hearing me?”

The haggard young man nodded, looked once in through the dimly lit room containing what was left of his family. His mother and sister staring glassy-eyed at the body of his brother, Hill. He turned around, stepped down off the porch, strode to the second horse, and mounted up. Deputy Scoville was right beside him, atop his own horse.

“Where do we meet the rest of the posse?” said Hoy, toeing his boot into the right stirrup.

“I thought I made that plain, Hoy. There ain't no others. Just you and me. They all curled up like kicked kittens when I asked them. Not a one had the sand to ride with me. None but you, Hoy.”

The lone twin looked at Scoville in the near dark of the street. Presently he nodded, nudged his horse into a fast walk. He ground a thumb and knuckles into his red, tired eyes. “Getting cold, Randy. I expect it'll snow soon.”

“Already is in the mountains.”

“Where we're headed?”

“Yep,” said Deputy Scoville. “Just where we're headed.”

They rode out of town as dusk settled in. A cold wind ruffled their coats. Neither man was yet dressed for the weather they'd find in the high mountains. But neither man seemed to care. Their faces wore grim, determined looks, anger brewing below the surface, as if at any moment they might erupt in unstoppable anger.

Close to the top of the close range he'd been slowly making his way up and into, with its sawtooth jags jutting skyward near the top, Charlie paused, looking up at them. A gust caught him openmouthed and nearly froze his teeth, parted his flapping overshirt, the one missing all but a pair of buttons. It had been a waste of time to fight with the remaining two.

He'd ridden with his arms close together and his spare holey socks on his hands for mittens. They did little to keep his hands cold, but he reckoned they were better than nothing. He wished he had a wool cap with the earflaps, as he'd seen a number of men wear in various towns in the past during his travels. But he didn't. So that was that.

The gale smelled like snow, Charlie decided. And that was not a scent he'd sniffed for a while, but one that he was familiar with. One that once smelled was not easily forgotten. For it brought with it a slab of intention. It was backed by months of cold temperatures, too many clothes, worn in uncomfortable, bulky layers, and numb ears, fingers, and toes.

He'd be happy to be shed of such weather for good. And yet he did like a bit of snow, especially about the end of the year, the time when folks with families celebrated Christmas, held feasts, and prepared all manner of fancy foods and gifts for each other.

His mouth watered at the prospect of a long farm table groaning with shiny glazed hams, heaps of smoked sausages, breads steaming from the oven, their buttered tops glistening. And the vegetables and sweetmeats! Oh, he could only imagine such a feed. Mostly because the closest he'd ever come to such a thing was being invited one Thanksgiving Day to a neighboring farm three miles down the road as a boy.

His gran would never have let him go, but she was abed with the ague and must really have been feeling under the weather, because she had told him he could go, though with great reluctance. He suspected it was only because she thought she would have had to feed him, never mind that he often fed himself.

But she had only given him two hours to walk there, dine, and then return. He'd chewed up a good deal of that time in making sure she had everything she needed before he left. He'd gotten to go into the Johnstons' home, and all the smells were there, along with the entire family, and a few other neighbors. And they all had looked at him as if he had arrived from some foreign land you only read about in books.

Red-faced, Charlie had told them he walked down to wish them a happy Thanksgiving Day, but that his gran was under the weather and he had to be getting back.

Their faces had changed from looks of stern surprise to a roomful of kind smiles. Nothing they could say or do would dissuade him and force him to stay. He had known they all knew his gran, and there had been pity and amazement in their eyes when they looked at him. It made his face purple all the more. After a fashion, they had all wished him a fine holiday and bade him good-bye. He had turned to leave, sneaking a last long look at the table before closing the woodshed door on it all.

He'd about made it down the end of the barn lane when Mrs. Johnston had shouted to him, “Charles! Charles Chilton?”

He'd stopped then. Nobody who knew him, which wasn't a whole lot of folks anyway, ever called him Charles. “Ma'am?” He scooped his old brown wool flat cap off his head. It had belonged to his father and he thought it might look nice when he went visiting, though it had been savaged by a moth a time or two.

She had thrust a brimming flour sack into his arms. “You'll need to eat some of this soon, as it's still hot. And I won't take no for an answer. I only wish you could stay here and enjoy the meal with us. Won't you reconsider? Paget will drive you home in the wagon.”

“I'd like to, ma'am, but . . .” He'd turned red once more, a trait he hated.

“I understand, Charles. Believe me, I do. Now, you don't give it another thought. You run along and make sure you tuck in to these vittles right away.”

“But your sack, the other things inside . . .”

“Nothing I need back, Charles. Unless you want to stop by for a visit sometime, I suggest you use them as you see fit.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Still smiling, she had turned to go back to the house. “And, Charles.”

“Yes, ma'am?”

“Happy Thanksgiving to you. And tell your gran the same.”

“Yes, ma'am,” he'd said, “I surely will.”

“Oh, Charles, one more thing.”

“What's that, ma'am?”

“Put your hat on before you catch a chill.”

“Oh yes, ma'am.”

It had been as close as he'd ever come to sitting in on a big family meal like that. But as he had walked home, devouring every last crumb and speck of food in that flour sack, he felt himself the luckiest boy in the world, the food was that good.

Now, alone on the cold mountainside, wind whistling over, around, and through him, Charlie was grateful for only one thing—the trail before him looked as though it would once again descend between two fingers of mountain range. And with that descent would come a lessening of the wind, he hoped. He also knew, though, that mountain valleys came with a dangerous peculiarity all their own. The cold always seemed to settle in them early and deep of an autumn season. And far below he spied a treed valley that he knew he'd have to traverse the length of to get to the Needle he felt sure lorded over the far end.

As long as Haskell was somewhere up ahead, and as long as Charlie was somehow gaining on him, he didn't care what sort of weather or terrain he had to endure. He would do it, come what may.

The next few hours unfolded as he'd expected. The weather turned much colder, the bank of clouds thickened and pressed closer to the already shivering earth, and Charlie's tension increased the closer he drew to the bottom of the valley.

As he descended, a sound, faint and bland at first, then sharper, more distinct and bold—and familiar—became clear. There before him was the reason for the thickly treed valley floor. He dismounted on the banks of a gushing, roiling river, wider than most rivers he'd had to cross on horseback, and thick and deep. How deep, especially in the dark, swirling center channel, was anyone's guess.

Was this the right route to Haskell's hideout? He didn't know anymore. He didn't recall the man saying a thing about a river, let alone one so big. But he looked up at that moment, and in a cleft in the peaks across the river before him, there looked to be a stone spire. Could it be the one Haskell had told them was called the Needle? Could be the very one, he thought. Especially considering that he'd seen no other such formation in two days of searching. The thought that he might truly be on the right trail was both a relief and a worry.

He'd have to cross that river, and if there was one thing he did not go out of his way to experience, it was the bone-chilling cold of water barely frozen at the edges. The afternoon light glowed gray on the rimed, jagged edges of ice formed along the banks.

Charlie had no doubt that this river would be frozen clear across with thick ice in another month, two at the most.

“Maybe if we explore downstream for a spell, eh, Nub? Could be there's a narrower place to cross.” He tugged the reins and the horse lifted his head from cropping the tops off spindly riverbank shoots, still somewhat green. His curiosity took them another quarter mile down along the river, but the waterway itself grew more contentious-looking.

“I reckon that's the reason the trail is back up thattaway and not down here.” The horse barely acknowledged his chatter, but followed along, head bowed. They turned in the riverbank mud and made their way back to the spot they'd first come up on the river, back at the trail.

It burbled, wide and cold. Charlie readied the gear atop Nub, lashing down the bedroll and his bag with extra gear. Aside from that, Charlie had very little that he could do in preparation for the savage flow he was about to plow on into. Never, he felt sure, was a man more ill-suited to a task than was he to the notion of fording a river.

He briefly toyed with the idea of taking off his boots. But that thought passed as soon as he bent down and ran his fingers in the flowage, waggled them, then pulled them out. It would be much too cold to bear. He expected he'd still come down with chilblains, but it would be worth it if it would get him across the river and back onto Haskell's trail.

Charlie pulled in what he was sure would be his last breath on earth—and the guess was verified as soon as his stovepipe boots filled with water that seeped through the cracks in the leather between the boot and sole. He didn't think it was possible to draw in a breath on top of another breath, but he did. The frigid water felt as if it were minutes from becoming ice. The cold seized his core as if a snowy hand had wrapped itself around his insides and squeezed.

Even Nub, usually a hardy brute not inclined to utter protest no matter the circumstance, winced and whinnied at the shock the water brought. “Come on,” said Charlie, in gasps. “We can't stop now, Nub.” Charlie led the way, tugging the reins and stepping slowly.

He found that if he slid his boots along in front of him, he felt more stable. The horse, he saw, had no troubles in finding solid footing. Then again, Charlie reasoned, Nub had four feet to his two.

The current raged, pushing into him with a steady pressure that sometimes was supplemented with a slamming of whitecapped waves. They pulsed downriver from the various obstructions nature saw fit to pepper the river with, mostly in the shape of boulders, misshapen and craggy, and for the most part, unseen.

The river had a voice too, and it grew louder the farther into the river he ventured. Soon enough, though he didn't dare look behind him to see how far he'd come, the river's voice roared, a gushing, thick-throated thing full of surprise and anger. It sounded like what he imagined the chants of a thousand angry Indian warriors might sound like.

Charlie tried to keep an eye on the far shore, certain that he'd heard such advice from somewhere. Something about how it helped with dizziness when crossing a river. He didn't feel dizzy yet, so maybe it was working. Trouble was, he had to rely solely on his feet to do the close-up work of inching forward. And that was why he didn't see the cluster of boulders dead ahead of him, the tops of which jutted slightly from the roiling, boiling surface.

His left boot angled into a crevice wide enough that the toe of his boot fit perfectly between two rocks. He inched his right foot forward and it stubbed into the side of an unseen boulder. His right knee buckled slightly, and green river water splashed his pant leg halfway up his thigh. He could right himself, he knew, if he could get that left foot upstream a bit more, provide some stability. But the boot had wedged tight.

His eyes widened, Nub kept splashing forward, hooves clomping, water surging upward with each step, not daring to give up his well-earned head of steam, and definitely not stopping to worry about the beginnings of some sort of odd flailing dance that Charlie had begun.

The big man felt Nub's reins slip from his hand. He wasn't worried about the horse, knew he was better off than Charlie at this point, but he also knew that Nub wouldn't go far once he made it across. Charlie's biggest worry was whether he would make it across the river himself.

Before venturing into the river, he'd taken the old socks off his hands that he'd used as paltry mittens, so he'd have a better grip should he need his hands. He windmilled his big arms, desperately trying to dislodge his left boot and at the same time trying to gain purchase with his right, but having no luck at all. Then he went down, like a big tree felled in the forest.

As he pitched forward Charlie felt as if it were all happening in a slowed-down fashion, as if someone were holding the clock's hands. He saw the rocks before him, the water parting, spraying upward as his legs cleaved the river's flow. He felt, rather than saw, the wrenching of his right knee as it slammed into the tallest of the river boulders.

Charlie's howl of pain was cut short as icy river water filled his face, snatching away his breath and instantly numbing him. His body slammed into the river, and he scrabbled frantically with his hands, managed to paw a few slick river rocks with one, nothing but water with the other. But there, beneath his left hand, he felt the bottom.

He pushed, but something held him down. It was his left boot, still lodged in the rocks. The weight of his body hadn't quite snapped his lower leg, but it darn sure tested the bone's limits. The pain, even in the cold water, bloomed hot and angry within his leg.

But he could pay it no heed at the moment, for his biggest concern was the fact that with one foot pinned, the other was splayed, bobbing with the downstream current. He was unable to drive it back down beneath the water, where he might jam it into the riverbed to gain a foothold. But he had no luck. The leg whipped back and forth in the current like a child's toy.

All this happened in a matter of seconds, and try as he might, Charlie wasn't able to push himself up out of the current enough to grab a mouthful of air. The current thrashed him as if he were in the midst of a bar fight with a pair of twin giants. Jolts of hot pain pulsed up and down his legs.

In his right, it radiated up from his knee. In his left, it burned and snapped from his ankle to his knee. He strained against the current and the wedged boot. But with each roll and push caused by his body as it obstructed the natural flow of the raging river, new pains bloomed.

Then, as quickly as it had begun, his boot popped free of its underwater death hold. Nearly unconscious, and nearly spent physically, Charlie knew he had to somehow flip himself over, felt sure he was facing downward in the water. Air, he needed air—he wasn't a dang fish! And with that unlikely and comical thought, both of Charlie's substantial fists punched forward from his chest.

That was the direction they needed to head, for his knuckles slammed into the river bottom and pushed hard. He felt the skin splitting, felt small bones, maybe his knuckles, popping and crunching into the stony river bottom. But he didn't care. Somehow deep inside, he knew it was his last shot at life.