Last Lawman (9781101611456) (13 page)

Just then the grulla turned sharply. She wasn’t holding on to Stanhope or his saddle. She was flung sideways off the horse’s right hip. As she piled up in the dirt before the cabin, she heard a boy cry,
“Pa! Pa!”

In the corner of her vision, she saw a figure run out of the cabin. Then Stanhope and several of the other gang members opened up with their pistols. The guns flashed like
lightning, the booms echoing loudly around the ranch yard. Erin flung her face down in the dirt and buried her head in her arms, sobbing.

“No,” she cried so softly that she could barely hear it herself. “No, no…no…”

She must have passed out for a time, hearing voices only distantly. She woke to someone prodding her belly with a boot toe.

Opening her eyes, she saw that the horses were gone. Shadows moved in the cabin windows. Men talked and laughed loudly, drunkenly. Erin could smell meat cooking and tobacco smoke wafting out the cabin’s front door.

She looked up to see Lester Stanhope, Clell’s brother, standing over her, smoking a cigarette. He blew smoke out his slender nostrils, then glanced behind him and said to someone in front of the cabin, “Get her cleaned up.”

“Why should I do it?” It was the faintly defiant voice of the whore, Trixie Tate.

“’Cause Clell says so.” Lester turned away, taking another drag from his cigarette. “She’s gonna have a job of work to do tonight.”

He drifted into the cabin, chuckling.

The next morning, as they rode along the shoulder of a formation known as Anvil Ridge, on their way to try to break the trail of the Vultures who’d likely angled through the mountains two days before slightly north of the lawmen’s position, Dusty Mason cast another wary glance over his right shoulder. He peered up the sparsely forested, tan slope that rose in the north toward the rocky, anvil-shaped crest of the mountain.

“What is it?” Spurr said, riding to his left. “That’s the third time in about fifteen minutes you looked back. You think the Vultures cut around behind us, or you got the jitters over some jealous husband?”

Mason was on edge, all right. But there was no jealous husband. He wasn’t that kind of jake, and Spurr knew it. The old federal lawman just tried to get Mason’s goat whenever he had the opportunity, which was pretty much always.

Ignoring the older man, as was Mason’s habit, he continued looking up the long, gradual slope that was the light brown of a mule deer’s coat and sparsely stippled with firs and cedars. He felt as though there were a pair of eyes up there somewhere, staring down at him.

Occasionally, in the periphery of his vision, he thought he spied movement, but when he turned to look, as he was doing now, there was nothing. Maybe a pinecone falling from a fir bough. Maybe a cedar branch bobbing lightly with a breeze. But in the corner of his eye, he’d thought he’d seen a rider—a dark figure on a dark horse—moving amongst the trees. Moving along with Mason and the other lawmen. But furtive. Very furtive.

Finally, Mason brought his gaze back down and over to Spurr riding on the opposite side of the slope from him. “You don’t feel like we’re bein’ shadowed?”

Spurr cast a cautious glance up the slope, deep grooves cutting into the leathery skin around his blue eyes. “Now that you mention it…”

“You see somethin’?”

“No. I haven’t seen nothin’. But I got a little cool feelin’ right between my shoulders, in the middle of my back. I been thinkin’ it’s just the sweat on this old shirt, but now when I dwell on it, it feels like a coin laid against my skin. And that feelin’ usually means somethin’.”

“Maybe Stanhope sent someone to double back and set up an ambush.” Mason heard the doubt in his own words. It was a reasonable concern, but he just didn’t think that the shadow he kept glimpsing—or thought he was glimpsing—had anything to do with Stanhope’s gang.

Damn annoying, though.

Spurr ordered the other lawmen riding along behind him and Mason to keep their eyes peeled for a possible ambush, and the party continued around the shoulder of the hill, until they dropped down into a narrow canyon on the northwestern edge of it. They reined their mounts down at the bottom of a sandy wash in which slightly charred stones encircled a low mound of gray ashes and a black chunk of half-burned cedar.

Spurr turned to Mason. “Climb down and see how long them ashes been there.”

Mason gave the older man an indignant look. “You’re the tracker.”

Spurr sighed. “I outrank you, Sheriff. And I’m old. Each time I swing down from ole Cochise’s back might be my last. Now, git down there and poke your finger in them ashes.”

“Ah, Christ, I’ll do it.” Calico Strang swung down from his white-dappled chestnut, cursing under his breath.

He bit off his right glove and, holding his horse’s reins in his other hand, squatted over the fire ring and poked two fingers into the ashes. “Shit!” He pulled both appendages out quickly, snarling and rubbing the tips of both fingers across his checked trousers.

The others laughed. Spurr scowled down at the young Pinkerton. “Now, that was the most cork-headed thing I seen you do yet.”

Ed Gentry, sitting his horse beside that of his fellow territorial marshal, Bill Stockton, said, “I think we oughta start callin’ him Jim Bowie.”

“
Mister
Jim Bowie,” added Stockton, shaking his head and laughing.

Strang poked both fingers in his mouth and snarled at the others.

“All right, all right—joke’s over,” Mason grouched, soberly looking around. “Judging by them apples over yonder, and them tracks around the fire ring, it wasn’t no gang
that stopped here last night. It was just one man. One man, one horse.”

Spurr said, “You act like you might know who’s makin’ you spooky.”

“Hell, I don’t know. I just know we gained a shadow somewhere along the trail. I’m thinkin’ it must be one of the Vultures.”

“What would be the point?” asked the second Pinkerton, Web Mitchell. “I mean, if he ain’t bushwhacked us yet, what’s he waitin’ for?”

“And why would ole Clell only send one man back?” added Stockton, lifting his head to look a little anxiously around at the surrounding forested ridges.

“Who knows?” Spurr, too, was looking around and working his lower lip between his teeth. “One reason I and no other lawdog been able to run that pack to ground is they always seem to do the unexpected. Clell don’t always do what you think he’s gonna do. In fact, he hardly ever does.” He hacked a wad of phlegm from his throat and spat it toward the fire ring. “I’ll be damn glad to either kill that son of a bitch once and for all, or see him in leg irons.”

Gentry removed his hat from his head and ran a red bandanna around the inside of the sweatband. “You know, fellas, if there is indeed someone shadowin’ us, it don’t have to be one of the Vultures. Could just be a line rider from one of the big ranches in these parts keepin’ an eye on us, makin’ sure we ain’t throwin’ long loops over their beeves with the intention of sellin’ ’em to a crooked Injun agent over Dakota way.”

Stockton nodded. “I’m gonna throw in with Ed on that one. He can’t play stud for shit, and the whores in Casper say he hasn’t gotten his pecker up since the end of the Civil War, but he occasionally comes up with a good idea.”

“Why, thank you, Bill.”

Web Mitchell chuckled at the two old-timers.

Spurr looked at Mason. “That’s likely the best explanation.”

“Yeah, pro’bly.” Mason wasn’t convinced.

Spurr canted his head to one side, and narrowed a shrewd eye. “You’re thinkin’ it’s the hombre who kept your oysters out of the fire back in Willow City, ain’t ya?”

“I reckon I am.”

“What’s that?” asked Web.

“Nothin’,” said Spurr.

“Let’s go.” Mason booted his horse on across the wash.

Behind him, Spurr said, “Hold on.”

Mason halted his grulla and gave the older lawman an impatient look.

Spurr canted his head up the wash, which carved a narrow gap through the northern mountains. “If memory serves, Sweetwater is on the backside of this range.”

“So it is,” said Mason.

“If the Vultures rode through where you think they rode through, they would have rode through Sweetwater.”

Mason thought about it. Spurr was right. The sheriff felt a little annoyed that the older lawman knew more about Mason’s own territory than Mason himself did.

“So?”

“If they rode through there,” said Gentry, catching Spurr’s drift, his eyes gaining a serious cast, “they might have wreaked holy havoc. They tend to do that to towns.”

“Or, hell,” said Web Mitchell, smoothing his ostentatious handlebar mustache with two black-gloved fingers. “Maybe they liked it so much they decided to stay.”

Spurr turned to Mason. “Let’s you and me head up the wash and check in on Sweetwater. If nothin’ else, we’ll pick up Stanhope’s trail there.”

Mason felt frustration tugging on him like two opposing ropes around his neck. He looked up the wash, then toward the forested ridge rising on the other side of the canyon.

A game trail angled up the ridge through the conifers and aspens, skirting a small talus slide and curving around a lightning-topped pine. It beckoned him onward, farther
west toward Utah where the Vultures were likely headed. Sidetracking to Sweetwater held little appeal for him. The Vultures had probably ridden straight on through, which meant Mason would only be wasting time, letting the outlaws who’d made a fool out of him get farther and farther way.

Farther and farther out of his jurisdiction.

Spurr was right, though. Damn the old lawdog. But that’s one reason why Mason had wanted him around. To talk sense the mossyhorned federal had acquired through long experience, to keep Mason from becoming his own worst enemy in his haste to run the Vultures to ground and assuage his badly battered pride.

He turned to the others. “You fellas keep riding west while Spurr and I head on up to Sweetwater. Stanhope just might hole up somewhere around here to rest his horses for a day or two, so you might run into him. If you do, don’t engage him till Spurr and I get there.”

Mason winced against his frustration and booted the grulla on up the wash.

Spurr glanced at the fire ring. “Keep an eye out for our friend there, boys.” He looked at Strang. “How’re your fingers, Calico? Maybe you oughta put some lard on ’em.”

“Fuck you, old man!”

“You’re purty, but you ain’t that purty,” said Spurr, booting Cochise after Mason.

The others chuckled as they started up the forested ridge.

Spurr felt a rock drop in his belly as, two hours later, he and Mason followed a winding trail northward out of the mountains and spied a black wagon driven by a black-clad gent in a high hat moving toward him from the settlement of Sweetwater.

Folks on foot appearing dressed in their Sunday best followed the wagon, singing. Spurr could hear the mournful notes on the hot, still air. While he couldn’t make out the words from this distance of a quarter mile, he recognized the melody of the old funeral song—“The Old Rugged Cross.”

“Ah, shit,” Spurr said under his breath.

Mason said nothing as he ground spurs against his grulla’s flanks and headed down a shallow slope toward the funeral procession. The cemetery was on a low, bald hill on the left side of the trail, and just as the two horses leading the hearse began turning onto the two-track trace leading up to it, Spurr and Morgan caught up to the hearse and checked their sweaty horses down.

The driver wore a black clawhammer coat, white shirt, and black cravat. His round, steel-framed glasses glinted dustily as he regarded Spurr and Mason from beneath his black bowler.

“Well, it’s about damn time, Sheriff!”

“Who you buryin’, Crawford?”

“The banker, Earl Thornberg!” said another well-dressed man walking up from the rear of the wagon. He was short and fat, and a short, fat woman with curly white hair was trailing up behind him, holding a parasol that matched her gaudy black-and-pink outfit. “Just one of the folks the Vultures killed as they stormed through our once-fine town, Sheriff Mason—looting, robbing, killing, and kidnapping our citizens!” The fat man glowered, red-jowled, up at Mason. “Didn’t you get my telegram? I sent it day before yesterday though I never got a response!”

“That’s because I’ve been on the trail of the Vultures since they rode through Willow City,” Mason said. Spurr noted the faintly sheepish tone of his voice and almost felt sorry for the sheriff, whose jurisdiction Sweetwater was in. Mason had no reason to feel as guilty as he did. The law always had an uphill battle on the frontier, especially in a place as remote as Sweetwater.

Especially when one of your own men turns on you like Mark Finn had. Spurr knew that Mason had a bullet with Finn’s name on it. He knew, because that’s what he’d do…

Another man walked up from the group behind the wagon, his face pinched with anger. He removed his beaver hat and pointed it like a finger at Mason. “Those men wiped out my gunshop of nearly every box of ammo I had on hand! Not only that, they broke out all my windows! I incurred several hundred dollars worth of damage!”

The man who was obviously the undertaker glowered down at the gunshop owner from the leather seat of his hearse. “Good lord, Dave—so you incurred a little damage!
What about that poor Wilde boy? He was gunned down right in front of his poor mother’s eyes!”