High and Wild (26 page)

“Why?”

Potter pumped a fresh cartridge into his Winchester's breech. “I got a feelin' he started to get rattled after you two came to town, put him in a frenzy. Or maybe he thought we were close to pickin' up his trail. Me an' Goodthunder.”

Haskell said, “You were workin' with the sheriff?”

“Shit, yeah. Uh, pardon my French, Miss York.”

“Not at all, Mr. Potter.”

“Ol' Goodthunder didn't mind much who he mixed with, then, did he?” Haskell said with a hard look at the regulator. He didn't wait for a response but turned to Raven once more. “Who is this bastard with the Big Fifty? Did you get a look at him?”

“I'm not sure,” she said, looking pensive. “Let's try to take him alive, Bear. I have some questions I'd like answered . . . and so does Malcolm Briar's family.”

Another bullet blew up a chunk of sod on the downslope behind Haskell. The blast resounded.

Haskell spit out through gritted teeth, “Easier said than done, my sweet!”

28

H
askell looked at Potter.
“Hey, asshole, quit wastin' ammo. Cover me while I run up and get my rifle. When I got it, you run up, and I'll cover you. We'll keep goin' like that, coverin' each other every thirty yards or so, and meet up at that bastard with the big gun.”

Potter flared a nostril at him. “Bear, if you try to backshoot me, you big son of a bitch, I'll—”

“Fellas, stay focused!” Raven yelled. “You've a common enemy, and until that man up there has been apprehended—
alive
—that enemy is not each other!”

“You're just so damn smart, ain't ya?” Haskell grumbled, sheathing his LeMat, which would be of little help from this distance of two hundred yards. To Potter, he said, “You ready?”

The regulator had just finished shoving fresh cartridges through the rifle's loading gate.

“Ready!”

Haskell ducked when the shooter threw another slug at him, and then he peered up over the hill. When he'd spotted the Yellowboy about thirty yards away and to his right, he yelled, “All right!”

Potter triggered two quick rounds, then waited as Haskell ran like hell up the slope, angling toward his rifle. Bear didn't look up at the rock nest—he had to trust that Potter was keeping an eye on the sharpshooter's lair. When he heard the regulator's Winchester belch, he figured the man had spied the shooter and was trying to pin him down.

Haskell stopped and picked up the Winchester. He knew he had a full load, so he didn't bother with fresh cartridges but merely dropped to a knee and aimed up at the notch in which he'd last spied the Sharps-wielding bastard.

Potter was running now, pushing off the ground with one hand and angling far to Haskell's left, making for the cover of several boulders and stunted spruce trees. In the notch, the shooter's hatted head appeared. It was ominously dark. So was the rifle whose rear stock he brought to his shoulder.

Haskell triggered the Yellowboy. It was a tough shot from this distance and shooting uphill, and with his hands shaking from lack of oxygen, he didn't make it. His slug must have sailed over the shooter's head, because the man ducked suddenly, jerking the rifle down.

He disappeared amid the rocks.

Haskell racked a fresh cartridge. Across the slope and up thirty yards or so, Potter whistled and beckoned him up the hill. Bear lowered the Yellowboy, and with the rifle in one hand, he took off running hard, angling toward the right and toward several small shrubs.

Potter kept the shooter pinned down with two more blasts of his Winchester, and then Haskell was off again. His feet were sore, as his boots were not made for running. Neither were his lungs. At least, not running uphill at this altitude. His chest felt cold; his tongue tasted coppery.

His knees ached. His heart hammered.

His lungs chuffed like a blacksmith's bellows.

He covered Potter, and then Potter covered him, and just as Potter was about to gain a boulder about twenty yards from the shooter's nest, Potter dropped to one knee. Haskell heard what he thought was a groan.

Potter dropped his Winchester and slapped both hands to his chest. He turned toward Haskell. Bear could see the white line of his teeth between his stretched lips. Potter twisted around and dropped to his butt, one leg bent beneath him.

Haskell winced as Potter fell back, one hand now desperately tugging on the neck of his coat. His heart was seizing up on him.

Haskell jerked the Yellowboy to his shoulder. He was sure that the shooter had spied Potter's trouble and was about to take advantage of Haskell's distraction, but the notch was empty.

He glanced at Potter. The regulator was on his back, one leg still curled beneath his butt. One hand remained at his throat. The man wasn't moving.

Haskell glanced down the slope. Raven was staring over the lip of the bowl. Her black hair blew around her pale, oval face beneath the fur hat.

Haskell aimed the rifle straight up and out from his right shoulder as he continued up the slope. He headed for the gap in the rocks, moving slowly now but his breath still coming hard. He slid his eyes around, ready for the shooter to appear at any second, bearing down on him with that Sharps.

As he continued up the slope, he looked around the strewn rocks and boulders. There was a level place behind the gap through which the killer had been firing. Nothing there, either. Nothing but the rifle, that is.

The octagonal-barreled Big Fifty was lying across a flat rock near the gap. There must have been twenty or thirty empty brass cartridge casings scattered around the stock, lying amid the gray bits of volcanic gravel and pine needles. There were boot prints but no other sign of the man who'd been firing the heavy rifle.

Must have run out of shells.

Haskell stepped through the gap in the rocks, keeping the Yellowboy's butt plate pressed against his shoulder. He continued to shuttle his gaze around. Before him was a jumble of black rock that had likely dropped there as liquid several eons ago and solidified, creating what looked like a giant, ragged stack of dominoes. Tough Ponderosa pines and spruces were trying to grow out of the cracks between the boulders.

There were several corridors inside the escarpment. Haskell, sensing the killer was still there, waiting, lowered the Yellowboy slightly. He chose one corridor and stepped into the gap, which was about five feet wide and carpeted in gravel and pine needles, which chirped beneath his boots as he moved slowly through the gap. He squeezed the Yellowboy in both hands. His heart beat heavily. He could still taste copper on his tongue.

When he reached the end of the gap, he stared off over a four-foot-wide ledge and into the forest dropping about thirty feet below the snag of volcanic rock. The wind brushed the pillar-like tamaracks and firs. A squirrel chittered raucously, angrily.

Haskell turned to his left and began walking along the backside of the scarp. A shadow slid out from the scarp to angle off over the slope to his right. Bear wheeled to his left and had just started to raise the Yellowboy when the burly figure was on top of him.

Haskell dropped the Yellowboy and raised his left hand in time to grab the killer's right fist. As his big attacker—nearly as large as Bear himself—slammed him backward and down onto the gravel-strewn stone ledge over the forested slope below, Haskell stopped the thrust of the savage bowie knife and stared at the nastily up-curved point that hovered no more than six inches from his neck.

Bear's beard tingled.

He lifted his gaze from the jerking blade point to the ginger-bearded face of Emil Schwartz. The man's broad, round face was swollen red as he shuttled all his might into the hand wielding the knife, trying to shove the point into Bear's neck. The man wasn't wearing his eye patch. The eye that the patch had covered glittered as savagely as the other one, as the man bunched his lips and grunted and continued to slide the bowie's point toward Bear's neck.

Bear raised his right fist, slammed it against Schwartz's jaw. He couldn't get enough momentum, enough force. Schwartz's head jerked slightly, and blood oozed from the fresh cut on his lower lip, but he continued bunching his lips inside his ginger beard and grinning and groaning as he thrust the knifepoint toward Haskell's bearded neck.

Vaguely, Haskell heard a cat's meow. In the periphery of his vision, he saw the dark yellow fur and arched tail of a tabby cat padding around the escarpment.

Haskell stared up into the insane blue eyes glittering down at him, and he said as the puzzle sort of half-pieced itself together in his head, “Malcolm Briar, I presume?”

The man grunted. “Howdy-do.”

Bear glanced down at the knife. He could no longer see the point. It was too close to him, beneath his jaw. Then he felt the beelike sting of the point poking through his skin.

On the other side of the scarp, Raven called, “Bear?”

“Ah, hell,” Haskell said, panting and groaning and pushing back as hard as he could against Briar's right fist. “If I let her save my ass again, I'll never live it down!”

With that, he siphoned every ounce of his strength into his right fist, which he slammed three times—hard, smacking, thudding blows—against Briar's jaw. Haskell didn't think he'd hit anyone that hard since the war. The lights in Briar's eyes dimmed. The strength in his right fist dwindled.

“Bear!” Raven called.

Haskell gave a loud growl as his left hand swept Briar's knife hand aside and he hammered the man's face twice more with his right fist. Briar was thrown to Haskell's right and gave a scream as he rolled over the ledge.

For two seconds, silence.

Then there was a heavy, crunching
thud
as the killer piled up on the slope at the base of the scarp.

The cat meowed.

Raven called from nearer, “Bear?”

Haskell lay on his side, staring over the ledge at Malcolm Briar, a.k.a. Emil Schwartz. The man was writhing, moaning.

“Over here.”

Haskell gained his feet heavily and found a way down the side of the scarp. He stood over the writhing figure before him. Briar glared up at him, lips stretched back from his teeth.

Bear heard the scraping thumps of boots moving down through the funnel in the side of the scarp and turned to see Raven heading toward him, one of her pearl-gripped Colts in her gloved right hand. Her hair jostled as she moved.

She leaped the last two feet to the ground and stood staring at Briar. She walked forward, stopping beside Bear.

“You all right?” she asked.

“Better'n him. Raven York, meet Malcolm Briar.”

The woman nodded.

Haskell frowned at her, incredulous.

Raven said, “You should have read the file more thoroughly, fool. It mentions that he'd been a sharpshooter during the war. Highly decorated. A weakness, however, was drinking.”

Up on the scarp, the tabby, Gustav, gave another meow as it stared down at its fallen master.

“And he loved cats,” Raven added. “A solitary man who loved cats more than people. A man who likely had few friends. A man who'd been raised with a German mother who taught all her children to speak her native tongue fluently. By adopting that accent, growing a beard, and wearing an eye patch—he probably incurred that scar on his cheek in the wreck—he could fairly easily walk unnoticed around Wendigo.”

Haskell silently reprimanded himself for not reading the file more thoroughly. Usually, there wasn't much in them that his own brute strength and trail savvy couldn't compensate for not bothering with.

Haskell dropped to a knee beside the shooter. “Why?”

Briar looked at him and sneered. Blood slithered out of the corner of his mouth and dribbled down over his jaw. He was all broken up inside, dying hard.

“That bitch,” the killer spit. “That bitch . . . wanted me to go into business with her. Squeeze out Geist. She said . . . she said she loved me. Lyin' bitch. When I realized she didn't love anyone, least of all me, but only wanted a big man she could order around . . . I pulled out. She sic'd Goodthunder on me.”

Briar groaned and stretched his lips back from his teeth. When the paroxysm passed, he said, “The sheriff . . . he was another of her . . . little boys. That's what she called us.” He chuckled without mirth. “Her little boys.” He winced at Haskell. “You know what I'm talking about.”

Bear flushed. He glanced at Raven. Her eyes were on him, the skin above the bridge of her nose wrinkled. Haskell nudged up a shoulder.

Briar coughed up more blood, convulsing.

Nearly a minute elapsed before he could speak again. “Goodthunder . . . he started it. Took that shot at me. I saw him hunkered in the brush . . . up the mountain a ways. The shot ran my mules off the trail. Goodthunder was no marksman. The fool's bullet . . . just cut across my cheek.

“I fell out of the wagon before it went over the cliff . . . dropped into some rocks and bushes where my men couldn't find me. When I woke up from that braining . . . it was dark. I realized my skinners probably thought I'd gone over with the wagon. That I was dead. So I”—he swallowed, winced again—“I decided to let 'em all go on thinkin' it.”

Briar lifted his head and ground his jaws at Haskell and Raven. “And to
get even
 . . . with Judith. Rattle her good, keep her wonderin' who was doin' the killin', an' . . . an' would
she
be next?” He laughed, coughed. “Figured I'd kill 'em all slow . . . make 'em all squirm good and plenty. Kill Judith last!” He winked devilishly and spit blood as he added, “Drive
all
the other freighters out. When they were gone . . . I'd wait a while . . . and then I'd start runnin' my wagons again. Have all the mine business to myself!”

Bear and Raven shared a glance. The man was obviously several cards short of a deck. Maybe he'd been born nuts, maybe the war had turned him loony. Whatever the cause, he was crazy.