Treasure Mountain (1972) (9 page)

They've been sort of hangin' around as if on the lookout for somebody."

The Tinker looked at me, and me at him. Then we sprinted for the buckboard.

Chapter
IX

Orrin didn't make it sound like much when he told us of it after. He was in that there store, and it was like most country stores, smelling of everything that was in it--good, rich, wonderful smells of new leather, fresh-ground coffee, cured hams and bacon, spices, and the like.

He knew where we were going and how we'd have to live. We'd have fresh meat from the country around us, and we'd have what we could gather in the way of roots and such, only that wouldn't amount to much unless we happened on it.

A man traveling doesn't have much time for stopping off to look or pick, so Orrin was buying sides of bacon, flour, meal, coffee, dried fruit, and whatever figured to be handy.

He also was buying some .44's for our Winchesters and pistols, and the man who owned the store took down a spanking new Smith and Wesson .44 and was showing it to Orrin.

Orrin had just put it down when those hard cases walked in. Now they weren't from the western lands, they were river men, mean as all get-out, but they didn't know Orrin. They'd been told they were to kill a lawyer ... now there's lawyers and there's lawyers.

Just like there was a dentist named Doc Holiday.

They came in the store at the front, and Orrin was back yonder at the counter.

He must have turned to look, as he would, but likely he was expecting the Tinker an' me.

Now those three spread out a little after they got through the door, and they were all looking at him. It was three to one, and Orrin spoke to the storekeeper out of the corner of his mouth. "You better get out. This appears to be a shooting matter."

"You know those men?"

"No, but they look like they're hunting."

One of them, who wore a tall beaver hat, noticed the gun on the counter. He had his in his hand. He smiled past some broken, yellowed teeth and a straggly mustache.

"There it is, mister lawyer. You better try for it."

Now that gun was brand new and empty. Orrin knew that, even if they didn't. He could also see these were river men, and while there'd been a sight of shooting and killing alonf the Mississippi, very little of it was based on fast drawing.

"If I reached for that gun, you'd kill me."

The man with the beaver hat gave him a wolfish grin. "I reckon."

"But if I don't reach for it, you'll kill me anyway?"

"I reckon we'll do that, too." He was enjoying himself.

"Then I haven't much choice, have I?"

"Nope. You sure ain't."

The other two men were shifting, one to get far over on his left. One of them was momentarily behind some bib overalls hung from a rafter.

"But if I don't want to reach for that gun, how about this?"

As Orrin spoke, he drew and fired.

Reaction time was important. The three would-be killers were sure that he was frightened, that being a lawyer he would not be a gunfighter, and that if he reached it would be for the gun on the counter.

Orrin had always been quick. And he was a dead shot. He fired and turned sharply to bring the second man in line, when there was the bellow of a shotgun behind him. The man farthest right cried out and ran for the door. He blundered into the doorpost and then almost fell through the screen door in getting out, a growing circle of blood on his back and shoulder.

The third man, who had been moving toward the left, dropped his gun and lifted his hands. "Don't shoot! For God's sake, don't shoot!"

Orrin held his gun ready. "All right," he said quietly, "move toward the door.

Your friend out there may need some help."

The man gestured toward the one with the beaver hat, who had a blue hole between his eyes. "What about him?"

"Take him out and bury him. Then if you want to kill somebody, go get the man who set you up for this."

"They said you was a lawyer!"

"I am. But out where I come from every butcher, baker, and candlestick maker has used a gun. Besides, haven't you ever heard of Temple Houston? He is old Sam Houston's boy, and a lawyer, too, but a dead shot. It doesn't pay to take anything for granted."

The man left, and Orrin turned to the storekeeper. "Thanks, friend. Thanks, indeed."

The old man was brusque. "Don't thank me, young man. I can't have folks comin' in here shootin' at my customers. It's bad for business."

That was the way it set when our buckboard came a hellin' down the street from Doc Halloran's place. We saw a man lyin' bloody on the boardwalk and another kneelin' by him.

The Tinker and me unlimbered from that buckboard and the kneeling man looked up.

"Don't go in there, fellers. That lawyer in there's hell on wheels."

"It'll be all right," I said. "I'm his brother."

"Who put you up to it?" the Tinker asked.

"A couple of dudes. We was to get fifty dollars a piece for you two. That's a sight of money, mister."

Orrin came through the door. "How much is it to your dead friend inside?" he asked.

The man stared from him to me.

"What about those dudes who hired you?" I said. "Two young men?"

"No, sir. A young man and a woman. Looked to be brother and sister."

"In New Orleans?"

"No, sir. In Natchez-under-the-Hill."

Orrin looked at me. "They are following us, then."

The man looked up. "Mister, would you help me get this man to a doctor?"

A bystander said, "We've no doctor here. The storekeeper usually fixes folks up when they're hurt."

"Him?" The man on his knees looked bleak. "He already done fixed him once."

Orrin spoke more quietly. "My friend, I am sorry for you. You were just in the wrong line of work, but if you'll take a closer look, your friend has just run out of time."

And it was so. The man on the ground was dead.

Slowly, the man got up. He wiped his palms on his pants. He was young, not more than twenty-two, but at the moment he was drawn and old. "What happens now? Does the law want me?"

Someone standing there said, "You just leave town, mister. We don't have any law here. Just a graveyard."

Judas came along when the shooting was all over, and we stayed the night at Halloran's. In the morning, once more in the saddle, we started west.

Four of us riding west, two from Tennessee, a gypsy, and a black man, under the same sun, feeling the same wind. We rode through Indian territory, avoiding villages, avoiding the occasional cattle herds, wanting only to move west toward the mountains.

We cut over the Rabbit Ear Creek country toward Fort Arbuckle. This was Creek Indian country. The land was mostly grass with some patches of timber here and there, mostly blackjack of white oak with redbud growing in thick clumps along the creeks.

We had grub enough, so we fought shy of folks, watched our back trail, and moved along about thirty miles or so each day. Arbuckle had been deserted by the army, but there were a few Indians camped there, trading horses and such. They were a mixed lot, Seminoles, Choctaws, and Creeks mostly, with a few Pottawattomies. We bought some coffee from them, and I traded for a beaded hunting shirt tanned almost white, a beautiful job.

"Be careful," a Creek warned us, "the Comanches have been raiding south and west of here. They ran off some horses only a few miles west."

Glancing around at Judas, I asked, "Can you shoot?"

"I can, suh."

Well, that, was enough for me. He was no spring chicken but the first time I seen him top off a bronc I knew he'd been there before. He told me he could ride and he could, so when he told me he could shoot, I believed him.

As we rode out of Arbuckle and headed west up the Washita, I dropped back beside him. "Do you know any more about what happened than we do?"

"I doubt it, suh. Angus was slave to Mr. Pierre. Angus liked him, and Mr. Pierre was both a gentleman and a kind man. Angus was of an adventurous spirit, suh. He was a fine hunter and a man who liked the wilderness."

"Did you talk to him after plans were made to go west?"

"Once, only. He had met Mr. Sackett, your father, and liked him. Your father had very kindly advised him as to what he might encounter, the best clothing, and as to caution in all things.

"May I also say, suh, that he did not like Mr. Swan, and none of us cared for Andre Baston. Do not mistake it, suh, Mr. Baston is a very dangerous man."

We saw occasional antelope, and twice we encountered small herds of buffalo, but we did not hunt. This was Indian country and for the moment we did not need meat. We neither wanted to shoot their game, for this was on land allotted to them, nor to attract attention to us from wild Indians.

Several times we cut their sign. Comanches ... at least a dozen riding together.

"Raiders," Orrin said, and I agreed. Only warriors, no women, no travois.

This was all Indian country, about half wild and half friendly, and the friendly Indians suffered as much from the wild ones as the white men would. It was the old story of nomadic peoples raiding the settlements, and it has happened the world over.

Our camps at night were hidden, meals hastily prepared, and the fires kept to coals or to nothing at all. Judas proved an excellent camp cook, which pleased me. I could cook but didn't favor it much, and Orrin was no better than me. As for the Tinker, he kept silent on the subject.

We were coming up to the site of old Fort Cobb when Orrin, who was riding point, suddenly pulled up. A horse nickered, and then a dozen Indians rode over the crest of the hill.

Sighting us they pulled up sharp, but I held my hand up, palm out, as a signal we were peaceful, and they rode up. They were Cheyennes, and they had been hunting along Cache Creek. By the look of things they had been successful, for they were loaded down with meat.

They warned us of a war party of Kiowas over west and south and swapped some meat with us for some sugar. We sat our horses and watched them go, and I suggested we swing north.

For the next few days we switched directions four or five times, riding north to Pond Creek, following it for a day or so, then a little south to confuse anybody following us, and finally north toward the Antelope Hills and the Texas Panhandle.

This was open grass country with a few trees along the water courses, but little enough timber even there. We picked up fuel where we could find it during the day, and at night gathered buffalo chips. We were heading into empty country where there would be almost no water.

We came suddenly upon a group of some twenty horses, all unshod, traveling northwest by north. I pulled rein.

"Indians," I said.

The Tinker glanced at me. "Might they not be wild horses?"

"Uh-uh. If they were wild horses, you'd find a pile of dung, but you see it's scattered along and that means the Indians kept their horses in motion.

"The tracks are two days old," I added, "and were made early in the morning."

The Tinker was amused, but curious, too. "How do you figure that?"

"Look," I said, "there's sand stuck to those blades of grass that were packed down by the horses' hooves--over there, too. See? There hasn't been any dew for the past two mornings, but three days ago there was a heavy dew. That's when they passed by here."

"Then we don't have to worry," he suggested.

I chuckled. "Suppose we meet them coming back?"

We rode on, holding to shallow ground when we could find it. We were now coming into an area that undoubtedly has some of the flattest land on earth--land cut by several major canyons. However, those canyons were, I believed, much to the south of us.

I was pretty sure we were following much the same route pa would have taken in coming west. We'd switched around here and there, but nonetheless I believed our general route to be the one he would have followed twenty years before.

Their needs for water and fuel would have been the same as ours, and their fears of Indians even greater since this had been entirely Indian country in their time. The times when I'd traveled wilderness country with pa had been few, mostly in the mountains, when I was a very young boy. Yet I knew how his thinking went, for he had given us much of our early education, either by the fireside or out in the hills. He was a thinking man, and he had little enough to leave us aside from the almost uncanny knowledge of wilderness living that he had picked up over the years.

No man likes to think of all he has learned going up like the smoke of a fire, to be lost in the vastness of sky and cloud. Pa wanted to share it with us, to give us what he learned, and I listened well, them days, and I learned a sight more than I guessed.

So when we saw that knoll with the flat rocks atop it and the creek with trees growing along it, I said to Orrin, "About there, Orrin. I'd say about there."

"I'll bet," he agreed.

"What is it?" Judas inquired.