Bounty Hunter (9781101611975) Page 19

“Since its gotten too dark to travel, and since I’ve helped you out here, I was wondering if we could make camp up yonder in that clearing above your house?” Cole asked.

  “Well . . .” Walz said thoughtfully as he stood on the shore shivering in his wet clothes.

  He obviously prided himself on living alone. Most men in his profession tended to become hermits over time, regardless of whether they had any proclivity in that direction before taking up backwoods prospecting,

  “Well . . . I reckon that would be all right . . . but I don’t have no grub to offer.”

  “That’s fine,” Cole said. “We got our own . . . probably even extra that we can share with you.”

  The man smiled at that possibility and scurried up the hill to his hovel to dry himself.

  Cole was pleased at the bartering he had done. The dried meat was easily worth a campsite off the main trail along Sixteen Mile Creek, guarded by two dogs. However lazy they were, they were unafraid to bark at strangers.

  Having set up camp in a place sheltered by a dense stand of tall cottonwoods, Cole took his prisoners down to Walz’s house, carrying some dried buffalo meat that had been part of Cole’s gift from O-mis-tai-po-kah and his people.

  Walz welcomed them into his home, which was warmed by a fire in an ancient stove as potbellied as its owner. The house had the strong odor of having long been shared with the dogs, but at least it was dry.

  “Nice place you got here,” Cole lied. “How long you been out here?”

  “Since ’69 . . . I came up from Confederate Gulch in ’69,” he said. “Mighty nice of you to share provisions with me.”

  “Mighty obliged for a place to camp.”

  “I ain’t had buffalo jerky in years. There used to be an Indian fella came through trading it, but I haven’t seen him in . . . I can’t remember when. I get me a couple deer every now and then . . . an elk maybe . . . put in a patch of onions and taters every year.”

  “You got a regular farm up here,” Cole observed.

  “Where’d you get this meat?” Walz asked.

  “From the Blackfeet.”

  “Whatcha doin’ up in Blackfeet country?”

  “Doin’ a little hunting.”

  “Get anything?”

  “Yup.”

  “What’s it like up there? I’ve heard tell those redskins up there are truly untamed creatures.”

  “Depends on who’s writing the definition of ‘tame.’”

  “Well, I reckon if you can come back with your scalp intact, that’s sayin’ a lot.”

  “Reckon.”

  “He had him a little squaw up there,” Gideon Porter interjected. “Didn’t you, bounty hunter?”

  “You didn’t say you was a ‘squaw man.’” Walz smiled lasciviously.

  “Ain’t a squaw man,” Cole corrected, scowling at Porter. “I was takin’ her back to her place after roundin’ up some horses.”

  “How are their squaws?” Walz queried.

  “Wouldn’t know,” Cole said.

  “He shot my little brother for wantin’ to find out,” Porter said.

  “Your brother got himself shot for tryin’ to cut up her face.”

  Walz looked at Porter in disgust. Even to a recluse who had lived beyond the edge of civilization for a decade, the deliberate disfigurement of a woman’s face was viewed with revulsion.

  “The placers are still pretty active up this way,” Cole said, changing the subject.

  “People do all right.” Walz nodded.

  “That’s good to hear.”

  “You thinkin’ about it, Mr. Cole?”

  “I don’t have the patience,” Cole said with a smile. “I don’t like to be too long in any one place. That takes a special kind of man to put in all the years required.”

  “I don’t reckon to be here forever, myself,” said the man who had worked this obviously marginal claim for a decade. “I fancy myself as kind of a wanderer.”

  “I see,” Cole said, wanting to laugh at the irony.

  “I’ve got my sights set on some place warmer . . . like down in Arizona Territory.”

  “I’ve heard of some pretty good strikes down there all right. How long you reckon you got on this claim?”

  “Are you sure you ain’t lookin’ to nose in here?” Walz asked suspiciously.

  “Absolutely not,” Cole assured him. “I like it warmer myself.”

  “Ain’t in my nature to pry into somebody else’s business . . . but I suspect you do move around a lot in your line of work,” the prospector observed.

  “Yep . . . Colorado . . . Wyoming . . . Like I said, I’ve developed a way of livin’ that doesn’t allow for staying around one place too long. I tried it down in Colorado and found out it didn’t suit me.”

  “That’s me too,” the old man said thoughtfully. “I’m sure lookin’ forward to gettin’ a move-on myself.”

  “So long as you don’t nose in on the bounty huntin’ business.”

  “What?”

  “That was a joke,” Cole said. “I was just funnin’ y’all . . . I would no more expect you to get into my line of work than I would expect me to get into yours.”

  “I see,” the prospector said tentatively, before breaking into a broad smile. “Listen . . . can I let you in on something?” Walz asked in a hushed voice, dramatically leaning close so that Porter and Goode could not hear his words.

  “Shoot,” Cole whispered back.

  “I’m gonna be outta here by fall.”

  “Fall’s just past.”

  “I mean next fall.”

  “Oh.”

  “One more spring,” Walz said confidently. “One more spring is all it’s gonna take. You know how a placer works, Mr. Cole?”

  “Well, I guess not exactly,” he replied, sensing that a good story was about to unfold.

  “A placer gets its gold from the mother lode.”

  “Like the one out in California?”

  “Yep. It’s the mother that keeps the placers populated . . . year after year after year. Every spring there’s more color . . . new gold in the placer. Next spring is gonna be the one . . . The mother is gonna give up so much of her color that it will put the Gulch to shame. I can feel it in my bones. I know it. I can see all the signs . . .”

  Chapter 24

  A BITTER COLD WIND HOWLED HAUNTINGLY THROUGH THE trees. An hour after she ascended into the Belt Range, the reality of her situation dawned on Hannah Ransdell. The headstrong, single-minded woman remembered the impressionable young girl who had recoiled with horror at the terrible stories of “children lost in the woods” in these same mountains.

  Hannah looked around at the thick forest, black and impenetrable, into which she had thrown herself. Her horse made slow progress, pausing to step over deadfalls and negotiate steep and slippery slopes. There were a few snowflakes in the air, but the only snow on the ground was in places where it had drifted deep in the storm a week ago and never melted.

  With all the maneuvering and “going around” of obstacles that they had been doing, Hannah was sure that she and the mare would have gotten themselves completely and inexorably turned around if she hadn’t had the presence of mind to pick up the old compass in the tarnished brass case which her father had given her so long ago.

  Her father.

  Her father.

  Tears of anger came mixed with tears of sadness, and she wiped her cheeks on the sleeve of her riding jacket.

  How could he have done this?

  What would she say when she finally confronted him?

  Would he say that he had done it for her?

  Would he insist that he had done it for her long-term financial well-being?

  Had she never known what he had done, her financial
well-being would have eventually been greatly enhanced. He was far from being a poor man, but within a few years, he would be an extremely wealthy man, and she was his only heir.

  Had it not been for her suspicious nature, things would be very different—and very much easier—at this moment.

  Had she never known what she had learned in the long hours she had spent on her research, things would, indeed, be very different at this moment. She might be going home to a warm house, a warm meal, and a warm bath instead of riding though the dark forest that swallowed little children and impetuous young daughters of bankers.

  What a fool she was to do this, she thought, as she listened to the moaning of the wind and the occasional whining yip of coyotes in the distance.

  An unseen hand had snatched her and put her in this frightening place. That same hand now kept pushing her ever onward and pushing thoughts of retreat from her mind.

  That hand, for better or worse, was her own.

  Despite the leaden, overcast skies, she knew that it would soon be the hour of lengthening shadows. As it was, she knew that it would soon be the hour when darkness simply closed over these mountains like a black glove.

  Part of her resolve demanded that she press on blindly. She was single-minded about following through once she had decided to do something. Her mother had called her “bullheaded.”

  When she had decided that Lyle Blake and Joe Clark must be stopped, she had asked the question of who would stop them.

  The answer was that she would have to do it herself.

  This was definitely “bullheaded.”

  Now that the reality of this course of action was setting in, she wondered if she was crazy for making this impulsively imprudent decision. Before she had grown into the “bullheaded” teenager who had become the headstrong, single-minded woman, Hannah had been the impressionable young girl who recoiled with horror at those terrible stories of “children lost in the woods” in these same mountains. The dangers here were not fairy tales, though. They were real. Throughout her childhood, there were children who really never came back.

  Part of her resolve demanded that she press on blindly, but another part cautioned that if she did not soon make camp, the blindness that came with night would be her undoing.

  Tethering the mare to a tree in a patch of dry grass where her horse could forage, Hannah unrolled her sleeping bag on the leeward side of the root ball of a huge ponderosa, long ago toppled in a storm. She had brought a fistful of matches, wrapped in wax paper to keep them dry, but starting a fire under these circumstances took more effort—and more luck—than she had remembered, and keeping it going in the cold wind took even more.

  The thought occurred to her that she was working up such a sweat starting the fire that she wouldn’t need the extra warmth.

  She thought this to be funny, and she laughed out loud.

  The sound seemed so empty and so hollow when mixed with the deep baritone moan of the wind.

  Her horse seemed not even to take notice.

  She ate some of the bread that she had put into her saddlebags and wished she had brought more to eat. At least she had remembered the compass and the old Winchester rifle that was kept at the ranch.

  As Hannah had boarded the stagecoach, she had made sure that her presence was noticed by many. If her father had inquired about her, the station agent would have confirmed her purchase of a ticket to Bozeman, and several others would confirm that they had spoken with her about the journey. Others had seen her waving as the stage pulled out of Gallatin City.

  When she asked to be let out at her father’s ranch, she was observed only by people who were headed to Bozeman. None would be returning to Gallatin City anytime soon. Even the stage driver would not be back for several days at the earliest.

  From there, she had moved quickly, driven by adrenaline and that unseen hand. She saddled her own mare, whom she had named Hestia after the goddess of home and hearth, and who was kept at the ranch. She filled a canteen, tied a bedroll to the mare’s saddle, took the compass and rifle, and headed north.

  Instead of following a trail—for there was no human trail that led straight across these mountains—she had followed only the due north of her compass. She knew that this would take her to the valley of Sixteen Mile Creek, where Clark and Blake intended to intercept the bounty hunter and the Porter boys, and she hoped that the shortcut would get her there before either party.

  Lying fully clothed in her sleeping bag with the Winchester beside her, she stared up at the sparks from her fire soaring upward to meet the snowflakes coming downward.

  * * *

  HANNAH AWOKE WITH A JUMP, HER DREAM QUICKLY disappearing into her subconscious like a prairie dog down its hole. Hestia was snorting and sputtering and began pawing the ground nervously. Something was bothering her.

  Hannah sat up and looked around. The snow had stopped falling. Here and there she could see shafts of moonlight and the moon itself through the trees. The fire had died down to embers, so she jabbed it with a stick, trying to bring it to life.

  The mare was growing more agitated, and Hannah wondered what was amiss.

  Suddenly, out of the corner of her eye, she caught a flicker of movement. Something was out there. She felt a nervous chill.

  Hestia reared and stomped.

  Then Hannah saw it, the glint of the firelight in a pair of eyes.

  She pulled the Winchester from her sleeping bag and stared into the dark woods.

  The pair of eyes, moving in and out among the trees, was low to the ground and about thirty feet away. It could be a coyote, or it could be a wolf.

  Coyotes are scavengers. Wolves are predators.

  Thoughts and fears cascaded through her mind.

  Coyotes are skulking opportunists. Wolves are aggressors.

  A wolf could attack her horse and leave her stranded on foot in the wilderness—or attack her and leave her dead or wounded in the wilderness. This was how people disappeared forever in these mountains.

  She briefly wished that she had stayed to a more well-traveled trail. This would have defeated her desire for a direct route, but it would have greatly diminished the likelihood of her present predicament. As aggressive as wolves are, they generally shun places that are frequented by people—but she was not now in such a place. She was in the dark woods that belonged to the predator.

  Hannah shouldered the Winchester. She was familiar with this rifle. She had been firing long guns since she was nine, and this very one since she was a teenager. The recoil had knocked her down the first time, but she stood up and fired again, determined not to let a piece of steel and walnut get the best of her. Over the years, she had become quite good with a rifle, and even her father had remarked about her skilled marksmanship.

  Her father.

  If the wolf—if it was a wolf—was growling, it was not the only one that night in the woods.

  Whatever it was, its eyes were no longer visible.

  Maybe it was scared off by the fire being stoked.

  Maybe it sensed that Hannah had upped the ante by adding a weapon to the equation. A quick kill of sleeping prey was no longer possible.

  If it was a coyote, such suppositions were within the realm of the likely.

  If it was a wolf, that would be an entirely different matter.

  Hannah remained seated but eased herself back into the protection of the tree roots. Their snarled arms, rising eighteen feet into the air above her head, would protect her from an attack from behind.

  After five minutes that felt like fifty, she suddenly saw another flicker of movement in the corner of her eye and turned. There were the eyes again. There was that cold chill on the back of her neck.

  She aimed.

  She squeezed.

  The Winchester bucked in her hands as the .45-calib
er lead ripped into the darkness.

  The mare reared and whinnied.

  Hannah blinked her eyes instinctively to wash away the effect of the muzzle flash on her pupils.

  There had been no scream of pain or anxiety. She had not hit whatever it was.

  There was a better than fifty-fifty chance that a coyote would have been scared off by the gunshot. With a wolf, the odds were much less.

  Hannah took a deep breath and wiped her forehead on her sleeve.

  Hestia continued to whinny and prance.

  The monster of the dark was still out there, but she was no maiden in distress. She was armed with a Winchester. Of course, if she lost her horse, she would become a maiden in distress with a Winchester.

  Time slipped by and Hannah felt herself relax. Gradually, she felt herself getting sleepy. Her eyelids grew tired.

  Suddenly there was movement—fast movement.

  Eyes—fierce orange eyes—eyes coming.

  The rifle was more pointed than aimed.

  The trigger was more pulled than squeezed.

  The sharp crack of the cartridge being fired echoed into the night.

  The scream was such as to curdle the blood.

  Hannah felt the sharpness bite into her head.

  A split second later, she realized that as she had instinctively jerked backward, a movement aided by the recoil, she had jabbed the back of her head on one of the gnarled roots.

  She levered the Winchester to eject the cartridge, looked into the darkness, and exhaled held breath.

  She saw movement and fired again.

  Again, there was a yelp of anguish.

  She had hit it twice.

  Then she saw the eyes again, and a face contorted with both pain and rage.

  Barely a dozen feet away, she saw an enormous wolf, which her eyes told her was the largest she had ever beheld.

  Hannah felt her own eyes growing larger than they had ever been.

  The thing was skulking away, but moving with great difficulty.

  It turned, bared its teeth in an angry sneer, then crumpled to the ground.

  Hannah just sat there, still holding the gun, breathing deeply as though she had just climbed a steep staircase.