Last Lawman (9781101611456) (17 page)

They were both smiling greasily.

As Norbert heard the chinging spurs of the men walking toward the bunkhouse, he shared a horrified glance with Pennyman. And knew then that Pennyman knew what had suddenly dawned on him, as well.

That Lawton, Burns, and the girl were merely a distraction—a mighty effective one, too—so that the other Vultures could steal into the outpost from the open country to the north.

At the same time, Norbert and Pennyman reached for their sidearms.

Too late.

Burns and Lawton had already drawn theirs. They shot the captain and Pennyman twice each before swinging their pistols toward Donner, who screamed as he backed toward the small sheet-iron stove behind him. Three bullets plunked through his chest and sent him howling over the stove to pile up at the base of the wall, where a rat watched him hungrily from a ragged hole in the disintegrating bricks.

The other soldiers had stood frozen in shock at the mind-numbing vision of the feral gang of unshaven gun wolves strolling toward them, the pistols in their fists glinting redly in the light from the bunkhouse. Just as the privates and one corporal started yelling and slapping leather, the Vultures opened fire.

Their pistols flashed, flames lapping toward the jerking soldiers. The young men were blown into the open doorway or back against the bunkhouse’s front wall. A few were merely wounded during the first barrage and tried to make a run in several opposite directions only to be cut down, howling, before any had made it more than a few hobbling strides.

Aside from a couple of soldiers groaning as they died, silence descended. Gunsmoke wafted on the still, cool air of the Wyoming night.

The Vultures stopped to peer down at their handiwork. Hector Debo stepped in front of one near-dead soldier who was trying to crawl away and rammed his spur down on the soldier’s left hand, grinding the rowel deep into the knuckle. The soldier stopped crawling and, lifting his head and arching his back, loosed one last scream until Lester shot him
through the eye. Debo laughed as the man’s brains spurted out the back of his head, toward the hole the bullet had made in the dirt beneath him after it had missiled through his skull.

Chuckling, Clell Stanhope stepped over a couple of dead soldiers clogging the doorway and entered the bunkhouse. Doc Plowright, aka Lawton, and Magpie Quint, aka Burns, stood grinning with satisfaction as they plucked empty shells from their pistols to refill the empty cylinders from their cartridge belts.

Stanhope looked down at the soldier with the captain’s bars on the shoulders of his dark blue tunic. The man sat against the wall near the door, head canted to one shoulder, eyes open. A thick mustache mantled his mouth. Dark muttonchops framed his cheeks. Blood dribbled from a bullet hole one inch in front of his left ear, and continued making a red line down his unshaven neck. There was another hole in his high, dome-like forehead, which was white down to the edge of his hat line. The wound oozed blood down his thick nose and into his mustache.

The bigger man with sergeant’s chevrons on his sleeves lay twisted facedown on the bunkhouse floor. His legs jerked. He farted loudly, and Stanhope, Magpie Quint, and Doc Plowright laughed.

Then Stanhope turned to the naked blonde on the table.

“Ah, dear Trixie,” he said, raising his sawed-off shotgun and ratcheting one of its two hammers back. The girl’s eyes opened halfway.

They were pain-racked, terrified. “No,” she begged, tears streaming down her pale cheeks. “Please, don’t kill me.”

“You finally did earn your keep, after all,” Stanhope said, aiming the savage popper at the girl’s head. “For that, I thank ye.”

Spurr set one bucket of steaming water and one bucket of cold water down in front of the closed bedroom door.

Hesitating, he wiped his hands on his buckskin breeches, then lightly rapped the knuckles of his right hand against the halved-log door.

He turned an ear to the door, listened for a moment, then cleared his throat. “Uh…uh, ma’am…I set some water down here outside the door. Some hot, some cold.”

Spurr paused, stared in consternation at the door, trying to think of something else to say. On the other side of the door rose no sound whatever. Finally, the old lawman ran a hand down his patch-bearded jaw, turned away, and walked back across the living area that he and the other men had straightened as best as they could.

Mason was the last one at the eating table in the kitchen section of the house. The others had eaten and were now sitting outside in chairs they’d hauled out from the cabin. They weren’t saying anything though above the crackling of the fire in the kitchen range Spurr could hear the occasional
gurgling of a bottle being tipped back, the wooden squawk of the chairs as the men shifted around.

None of the others had said much of anything since they’d found the woman. They’d gone about their chores of straightening the cabin to make it liveable for themselves for one night, and out of respect for Mrs. Wilde. They’d buried Waylon Humphreys and his son, Paul. Then Spurr had cut some steaks off the side of beef he’d found in the root cellar outside and fried them up along with some potatoes.

This, despite the fact no one was really hungry. Finding the dead rancher and his boy, and the woman, had hit them all hard. It had cast a dark pall over the dark mountain night.

Mostly, they’d all just wanted to drink. But they knew they had to eat.

Spurr looked from Mason to the raw chunk of steak he’d left in a pan on the plank cupboard near the dry sink. He’d fetched it for Mrs. Wilde, in case she wanted to eat something. But they hadn’t heard a peep out of her since Spurr and Mason had left her in the room they’d found her in.

Spurr sat down in the chair he’d vacated when he’d fetched the water for Mrs. Wilde and leaned forward on his arms. He stared down at his quirley smoldering on his plate on which only his steak bone and a smear of grease remained. A bottle stood on the table between him and Mason—one of the bottles of brandy they’d found in Humphreys’s cellar, which had been overlooked by the Vultures. Mason grabbed the bottle, plucked the cork from its lip, and dumped a goodly portion into his coffee cup.

There was no coffee in the cup. Spurr had noticed that the sheriff had only drunk about half a cup of coffee before switching solely to brandy, which wasn’t like him. Spurr had never known the man to be much of a drinker. Tonight, however, he had that cockeyed, slightly wild look of a man who wanted to get good and drunk. Spurr thought that maybe Mason wasn’t such a soulless devil, after all.

Mason slid the bottle toward Spurr, inviting the old lawman to overindulge with him, then lifted his cup in both his hands. His dark, moody eyes were already a little red-rimmed. They seemed to stare off behind Spurr at nothing.

“Gotta run ’em down fast, Spurr. They’re crazy—the lot of ’em. Devils straight out of a hell, with the devil’s own blessing. They know they’re tougher and meaner than any son of a blue-eyed bitch within a thousand square miles, and they can do whatever they damn well please. That means they’ll rape and murder at every ranch or settlement they come to until we bring ’em to bay.”

“Humphreys has some extra horses out in his paddock. We’ll each take us a spare saddle horse when we light out of here tomorrow. Switchin’ horses regular’ll buy us extra time.”

“Funny Stanhope didn’t take ’em.”

“Hell, he’s in no hurry,” Spurr said with a scoff, splashing brandy into his own empty coffee cup. “He’s havin’ fun. He don’t care if the law catches up to him. He’s no more afraid of us than a yard full of schoolchildren. He knows the kind of holy terror he puts in the hearts of most folks.” The lawman sipped the brandy, plucked his quirley off his plate, and took a long puff, sucking the rich smoke deep into his withered lungs. “He’d probably like it if we did catch up to him. So he can drive his point home.”

“What point’s that?”

“That no one can stop him from raping and killing to his heart’s content,” Spurr said, blowing a wobbly smoke ring over Mason’s right shoulder. “From wreaking just as much havoc as he feels like wreaking.”

“Yeah, well he’s got that wrong!”

“Yes, he does.”

“Looks likes he’s headin’ along the old Oregon Trail.” Mason dug a half-smoked black cigar out of his shirt pocket. “You reckon he’ll follow it all the way to Oregon?”

“No.” Spurr shook his head as he stared into his brandy.

“You sound mighty sure.”

“After all these years, when I’m trackin’ a man I find I get a handle on his notions. Stanhope’s a big fish in a little pond here in Wyoming. He’ll stay here. Maybe even for the winter or at least
until
the winter. Then, who knows? Maybe he’ll split his gang up and whatever loot they have, and they’ll head south by separate routes.”

Mason touched a lit match to his cigar and squinted through the billowing smoke at Spurr. “What do you mean—here?”

“Like you said, he’s generally headed along the old Oregon Trail. I’m guessin’ he’ll continue on to South Pass City where he’ll load up on supplies, then swing north into the Wind Rivers.”

“You think that’s where his hideout is?”

“I do.”

Mason smiled with a wry curve of his mouth. “Again, you’re just so damn certain. Don’t you ever think you might be wrong?”

“I was wrong once.”

“No shit? About what?”

“Thinkin’ I was wrong.” Spurr curled his own wry smile as he lifted his brandy cup to his lips.

Mason snorted. “Why the Wind Rivers?”

“’Cause they’re the biggest range around. Ten men could get lost in ’em easy-like. There’s a chance they might swing south into Colorado, but I got a big-bosomed witch whisperin’ in my ear they’ll swing into the Wind Rivers.”

Mason nodded. He and Spurr sat and drank and thought for a time, listening to the dwindling fire snap occasionally in Humphreys’s range.

Mason looked at Spurr again. “We’re gonna need help with ’em.”

“Most likely help would be wise.”

“We should hook up with the soldiers at Elkhorn Creek
just after midday tomorrow. I requested a man I know, a good soldier named Captain Norbert. He’s a crack tracker and fighter—cut his teeth during the Little Misunderstanding and then up on the Bozeman against Red Cloud.”

Spurr winkled a brow. “What side did you fight on, Dusty?”

Mason studied the old lawman for a moment and acquired a guarded look. “What about you?”

“None of your damn business,” Spurr said.

Mason gave a wry chuff, then puffed his cigar for a time before sliding his eyes toward the closed bedroom door. “What about Mrs. Wilde?”

“We’d best send her back to Sweetwater with Mitchell. Soon as she’s ready to ride.”

“Helluva thing to go back to, after all she’s been through herself…her boy’s funeral.”

“How well do you know her?”

Mason shrugged. “She’s a looksome woman. A widow. And she lives in my jurisdiction.”

“I see,” Spurr said, nodding knowingly.

Obviously uncomfortable by the personal turn the conversation had suddenly taken, Mason splashed more brandy into Spurr’s cup, then rose from his chair, hefting the bottle against his chest. “I do believe I’ll get some air.”

When Mason had tramped on outside with the others, Spurr dug his makings sack out of his shirt pocket and glanced toward the closed door. He frowned. The water buckets he’d set in front of the door were gone. She must have quietly opened the door and hauled both buckets into her room while Spurr and Mason were jawing.

Spurr felt a little guilty. He should have noticed and offered to haul them into the room for her. But likely, she wanted to be alone after what the Vultures had done to her.

Spurr dropped his makings sack on the table, rose, and went over to where he’d left the raw chunk of meat near the dry sink. He glanced once more at the woman’s closed door,
brushed his fist against his nose in speculation, then grabbed the big pan he’d fried the other steaks in. He levered up one of the stove lids, shoved a couple of chunks of pine through it, then set the pan on the lid. He smeared some butter around in it. When the butter was bubbling along with the grease from the previous steaks, he forked the raw steak into the pan.

He didn’t know how the woman liked her steak, so he cooked it the way he liked it—charred on both sides, half raw in the middle. He plopped it onto a clean plate, smeared a little butter around on it, then poured a fresh cup of coffee. He grabbed the salt and pepper and a fork and a knife and carried it all over to the closed door.

Again, he hemmed and hawed outside the door. He could hear no sounds on the other side of it. Finally, he cleared his throat. “Ma’am…I’ve got a steak out here for you…”

He waited.

Nothing. The silence was a slap. He winced. Christ, she probably just wanted to be left alone. You think’s she
hungry
?

“I’ll just sit it right down here on the floor, Mrs. Wilde.”

He waited another few moments, then set the plate and tin cup of coffee on the floor with the fork and knife. He set the salt and pepper canisters down, as well. Then he returned to the kitchen, picked up his makings pouch, and turned to the cabin’s front door that stood half open to relieve the heat from the cooking range. He stopped at the door, glanced once more toward the woman’s room and the steak resting on the plate in front of it.