Long Road to Cheyenne (18 page)

After what seemed a long time, he could still hear voices but felt that surely the camp must be settling down for the night, so he told himself that it was time to move. Feeling his heart pounding again, he forced himself to leave the relative safety of the swale. With his rain slicker rustling with every movement he made, he ran to the clump of shrubs, sliding to a stop on his knees in the sparse grass. The thought flashed through his mind that he had no business trying to do this, and in spite of the cool of the evening, he was perspiring heavily under his arms. He could already feel the dampness, causing his shirt to cling in that spot. He had been right about the new position, however, because he could now see the entire camp from a side perspective. The little girls were already tucked away in their blankets, and he could see their mother kneeling by the fire, tending something in a frying pan. He lifted his rifle and slid the barrel through the leaves as he sighted on the other woman who just then appeared, coming up from the water’s edge. She paused to say something to the woman by the fire, giving Foley a stationary target. His finger nervously brushed the trigger, but he hesitated, knowing that when he pulled that trigger there would be no turning back. All hell would break loose, and he’d have to finish what he started. He decided it might be unwise to take the shot until he knew where Cam was, and the broad-shouldered rifleman was nowhere in sight. It was then he felt the light tapping of a rifle barrel upon the crown of his hat.

Foley went ice cold inside, his body freezing in a helpless paralysis as Cam reached over him and grabbed his rifle barrel, forcing it upward until Foley could no longer hold on to it. “Doin’ a little huntin’, Foley?” Cam asked softly.

Terrified, the would-be assassin crumbled into a quivering mass, trying to think of some plausible excuse for his presence there, while knowing there was none. “I wasn’t gonna . . .” he started, unable to finish his explanation. “I was just gonna . . .” he tried again but could find no words that would explain what he was doing there with a rifle aimed at the camp. He quickly abandoned the notion of trying to think of a believable explanation for his presence in their camp in the middle of the night, instead made a simple but sincere plea for his life. “Please don’t kill me,” he cried. “I admit it, I thought about it, but I wouldn’t never have gone through with it. I swear.”

“I find that hard to believe, Foley,” Cam calmly replied. “It don’t take much for a man to pull a trigger.” Although there was no evidence of indecision in his tone, Cam was not sure what he wanted to do about the attempted assault on his camp. The man quivering fearfully before him was such a pitiful sight, it seemed a cruel thing to execute him. He wasn’t sure Foley would have had the nerve to do it if he had not been stopped. By this time, the altercation in the shrubs was discovered by the rest of the camp.

“Cam!” Ardella called, already moving toward the clump of bushes, her pistol drawn. “You all right?” Mary picked up her rifle and moved to stand before her children.

“Yeah,” Cam answered her. “I’m all right. We got a visitor.”

Ardella strode up to find Foley cowering at Cam’s feet. “What the hell?” she exclaimed. “Foley?” She took a quick look around then. “Anybody else with him?”

“No,” Cam said. “I don’t think so. Is that right, Foley?”

“No,” Foley sputtered. “There ain’t nobody else. I swear there ain’t, and I was fixin’ to turn around and leave. I couldn’t bring myself to do you folks no harm.” With eyes pleading for mercy, he looked up into the stoic face of the formidable man standing above him.

“You believe that, Ardella?” Cam asked.

“Shit no, I don’t believe it,” she answered at once. “The cowardly little bastard was sneakin’ up on us, fixin’ to kill us in our beds. I say let’s kill him right now.” She was struck with the same indecision that Cam felt, but she maintained the same bluster that Cam was displaying, unsure what action he had in mind.

“Maybe you’re right,” Cam said. “He was fixin’ to cut down on us.”

That brought a frantic plea for mercy from the trapped man. “Oh Lordy, please don’t kill me. I swear I’ll run from here and you won’t never see me again. I wasn’t really fixin’ to shoot anybody. Please, I got a wife that won’t have nobody to take care of her. I need to get back to her.”

Cam’s stoic expression never changed as he looked into the eyes of the desperate man. He almost wished Foley had shot at him. Then he would have felt no hesitation or conscience about reacting to the attack, returning fire, and killing him. But somehow he couldn’t bring himself to brutally execute him. “Get on your feet,” he finally ordered. Foley, convinced that he was about to meet his Maker, struggled up to stand on unsteady feet. “You got any other weapons with you?”

“No, just this rifle is all,” Foley answered, his voice quivering.

“Start walkin’,” Cam commanded, and prodded him in the back with his rifle, heading him toward the swale where he had first watched the camp. Cam handed Foley’s rifle to Ardella and walked Foley back over the rise to his horse. When they reached the horse, Cam took a quick search in his saddlebags to make sure Foley had no additional weapons. “Get on,” Cam said, motioning toward the saddle. Foley did as he was told, not sure what was about to happen. “All right, you miserable bastard,” Cam told him, “I’m lettin’ you go back to that wife of yours, but if you show up around my camp again, you’re a dead man.” Foley’s body, having been locked in rigid anticipation of the fatal bullet, almost turned to liquid in his relief. Cam, still holding the horse’s bridle, had one last thing to tell him. “Listen, Foley, somebody has been feedin’ you a big story about a lot of gold. There ain’t no gold but that in that little pouch you saw Mary pay you out of. Everything else we’re totin’ is stuff to set up house with. It ain’t worth killin’ nobody for. You understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Foley quickly replied. “You won’t never see me again.”

Cam released his bridle. “And, Foley,” Ardella said, “we don’t never sleep. One of us is always awake.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Foley said, gave his horse a sharp kick, and was off at a gallop.

“I didn’t think you was that softhearted,” Ardella said as they watched Foley disappear in the dark.

“You think he believed that story about the gold?” Cam asked.

“I don’t know, maybe, maybe not, but I don’t think we’ll see him again tonight,” she said. “He’s got too far to ride to get another gun. But we need to be gone from here in the mornin’ in case he gets his nerve up again.” She walked with him back to the camp. “That little weasel would have shot at us if you hadn’t caught him in time. How’d you know to look for him? I didn’t see you slip outta the camp.”

Cam shrugged. “I don’t know. I heard the horses makin’ some noise like they heard somethin’, so I just thought I’d go take a look around. I guess I’m just touchy when it comes to hearin’ noises that don’t belong.”

“Out here on the prairie, that’s a good way to be,” Ardella said. “Long Sam was like that. He could hear a mouse fart in a dust storm.” She paused, as if recalling something. “Except that one time on the Powder when them damn Sioux jumped us. It cost him his life.”

Cam thought about her comment for a moment, then decided to question her. “I thought you said you and your husband got jumped on the Platte by Pawnee.”

“Damn,” she replied without hesitation, “so it was. I swear, sometimes I think my mind is startin’ to rot. I guess I’m gettin’ too old to remember anythin’ the way it was.”

Foley feared his troubles were not at an end. The sun was rising behind him by the time his exhausted horse walked slowly down the path to his store. There was a horse in the small corral next to the barn, and it looked like the one Roach rode. He preferred not to arouse anyone until he had a chance to talk to his wife and find out why Roach was back. So he pulled the saddle off his horse and left it on the top rail of the corral. Then as quietly as he could manage, he opened the gate and let his horse inside. After closing the gate, he tiptoed inside the barn to peek over the side of the back stall to see if Roach was there. He was met with a Colt .44 looking at him as Roach sat up from his blanket.

“That’s a damn good way to get yourself shot,” Roach growled, “sneakin’ up on a man like that.”

“I wasn’t sure that was you in there,” Foley said, still trying to recover from the second time he had been staring into a gun barrel in the last few hours. “When did you get back?”

“Last night,” Roach answered as he released the hammer and put his gun back in the holster. “Where’s the horses?”

“How’s that?” Foley replied. “The horses?”

“Yeah, Mabel said you was out last night chasin’ some wild horses.”

“Oh,” Foley said, baffled until it occurred to him that Mabel had made up a tale for Roach. “Yeah, I’ll tell you about it over some breakfast. Let me get in the house and get Mabel up.” Then it occurred to him. “Where’s Cheney?”

“Dead,” Roach answered. “We can talk about that over breakfast, too.” He threw his blanket back. “Tell Mabel to get some coffee on the stove. I’m gonna need some this mornin’.”

“I’ll do it,” Foley said, and left immediately before Roach might decide to ask him about catchin’ wild horses again.

Mabel was already out of bed and pulling on her clothes by the time Foley rapped on the back door. “That you, Bill?” she asked before removing the bar. When he bolted into the room, she asked excitedly, “What happened? Did you do it?”

“No, dammit, they was set up in ambush,” he lied, unwilling to admit his failure. “There weren’t no way I could get to where I could take a shot at ’em.” Her face drooped immediately with her disappointment. “I was ready,” he told her, “but I just couldn’t get close enough without them seein’ me. What about Roach?” he asked, anxious to change the subject. “What’s he doin’ here?” He told her about seeing him in the barn.

She told him of Roach’s failure to catch up with Cam and the women, and of Cheney’s death from a rock slide. “Rock slide, huh?” Foley remarked. “More’n likely Roach shot him. Did you tell him that them folks was here?”

She shook her head and said, “No, I didn’t wanna tell him that you’d gone after ’em.”

“Good. I’ll build up the fire in the stove. He’s already wantin’ some coffee, and you’d best tell me what kinda story you told him about me huntin’ wild horses.”

“I expect he’s gonna want some eggs and a slice of that side meat, too, but I’m gonna have to go to the barn to get the eggs,” she said.

“Well, he looked like he was fixin’ to get up when I left,” Foley said.

“All right,” she decided, “go ahead and get that fire going and I’ll look for some eggs.” She went out the back door.

When she got to the barn, Roach was not there, so she went into the back stall where the chickens nested to look for eggs. Finding four, she held the two corners of her apron together to form a pocket to hold them.
Well, there’s enough for him,
she thought.
Bill and I will have to get by on bacon and coffee.
She was on her way out the barn door when she met Roach on his way back from answering an early call from Mother Nature. He hadn’t bothered to pull on his pants yet.

Grinning at her, he said, “I reckon you ain’t never seen a real man in his long johns before, have you?”

“I still ain’t,” she replied, and continued out the door.

•   •   •

As they had learned to expect from earlier visits, Cotton Roach made very little conversation when he sat down at the table to eat. Helping himself to several slices of salt pork, and raking all four eggs onto his plate, he dived in with both hands, either unaware or unconcerned that there were no eggs left for Foley and his wife. He finished them just as the biscuits came out of the oven, so he used one of them to sop up the remains of egg and bacon grease on his plate. Content, he pushed his plate away and held his cup up for a refill. Mabel got up and got the pot from the stove. “Now,” Roach said, “what’s this about you goin’ after some wild horses yesterday?” He sat back, sipped his coffee, and listened while Foley made up a tale about someone stopping by and telling him about a herd of mustangs on the other side of Chugwater Creek. He said he just rode over that way to see if he could find them.

Roach didn’t say anything until Foley was finished. Then he commented, “Foley, you’re about the worst liar I ever heard. What in hell would you do with a bunch of wild horses even if you was to catch any? You don’t know nothin’ about breakin’ horses. How was you gonna catch ’em? I saw your saddle settin’ on the corral rail, and you didn’t even have a rope on it.” Seeing the obvious fluster in Foley’s face in the wake of the avalanche of questions, Roach was suspicious that the simple storekeeper had been up to something he didn’t want to share with anyone. And that made Roach determined to find out what it was. “Why don’t you come on out with it and tell me what you was really up to?”

“Why, nothin’, Roach,” Foley stammered. “Ain’t nothin’ goin’ on.”

“The hell there ain’t,” Roach countered, impatient now with the charade. “Whatever you got goin’ for yourself, I want a piece of it.”

Growing impatient as well, and ready to be done with it, Mabel spoke out. “Hell, why don’t you go ahead and tell him, Bill? You found out you can’t do nothin’ about that gold, anyway. Might as well tell him.”

“Yeah, Bill, maybe you’d better tell me,” Roach said. There was a definite hint of a threat in his tone after a mention of gold in Mabel’s comment.

Foley didn’t say anything for a long moment. With his eyes on the table right in front of him, he could still feel the intimidating stare coming his way from Roach. What had possessed Mabel to put him in a spot like that? Another moment passed with Roach still staring, until Foley decided Mabel was right. He had already had his chance and he wasn’t able to cash in on it. He might as well confess and let Roach go for it.

“He was here!” Roach roared out in rage when Foley told him of their recent visitors. “The son of a bitch was here?” In his frustration to strike out at something, he raked his coffee cup off the table with his bound right hand, sending it crashing against the wall. “I’ve been chasin’ that bastard all over the Laramie Mountains, and he was here!” He turned on Foley then. “He was right here, and you let them ride out alive?”

“We didn’t know it was the same folks you’ve been trailin’,” Foley pleaded. “They were already ridin’ out of the yard when I figured it out, ’cause there was two women, and you said you was chasin’ a bunch with only one woman. There wasn’t nothin’ I could do about it by then, but I trailed ’em to their first camp last night. Like I told Mabel, though, I couldn’t get close enough to get a shot at ’em. If I coulda, we’da split whatever they had, but to tell you the truth, them folks ain’t carryin’ a big load of gold, just household goods.”

“How the hell do you know that?” Roach demanded.

Foley realized too late that maybe he shouldn’t have said that. “Uh, I heard one of ’em say that.”

“You tellin’ me you got close enough to hear them talkin’, but you was too far away to shoot?” Foley demanded, growing more irate by the moment. No longer able to control his rage, he reached over and grabbed Foley by the collar. “Which way did they go?”

“South,” Foley choked out. “They followed the Chugwater south.”

“Well, by God, that son of a bitch thinks he’s got clear of me, but he ain’t, not by a long shot!” He gave Foley a look of disgust and asked, “Where are they headin’ to? When you was close enough to hear ’em talkin’, but not close enough to shoot, did you hear where they were goin’?”

“No,” Foley said.

“Cheyenne,” Mabel said.

Roach jerked his head around to stare at her. “Cheyenne? How do you know that?”

“One of the women told me,” Mabel answered.

“Well, I’ll be . . .” Roach started, disgusted with the both of them now. “You two have cost me time, time I coulda been using to catch up with that bastard.” He paused for a moment, thinking about the things he needed to get in the saddle without delaying longer. Then he shot another question at Foley. “Red bandanna, was he wearin’ a red bandanna?”

“I don’t know,” Foley stammered, “I didn’t take no notice.”

“He was wearin’ a red bandanna,” Mabel said.

“Damn,” Roach cursed, certain without a doubt that it was the man he sought, so he brought his attention back to getting under way as soon as possible. He was low on every kind of supplies, as well as ammunition, and he wanted enough to last however long it might take him to track the rifleman down. He was also out of money. His share of the money stolen in the stage holdup at Hat Creek was all gone—a good portion of it spent right there at Foley’s. But the lack of money didn’t bother him at the moment, because he wasn’t planning to pay for anything. “What else did they tell you?” he asked Mabel.

“Nothin’,” she answered.

He nodded slowly, trying to determine if there was anything else they could tell him. When nothing came to mind, he reached over and drew his pistol. Foley watched with only a smidgen of curiosity as Roach casually pulled the hammer back. One moment later, his bored expression changed to one of stunned horror as the gun was turned on him, and he carried the shocked expression to eternity when the pistol discharged.

Mabel dropped her coffee cup and screamed, not a piercing scream, more akin to the uncontrolled yelp a dog would make, and she backed away from the smirking outlaw. He watched her, apparently in no need of haste, until her back came up against the wall. Her brain was unable to make sense of what had just happened. She could not speak as she stared down at her husband’s body, halfway expecting him to get up again. “What did you do?” she finally blurted out in horror.

He found the question somewhat amusing. “Kinda speaks for itself, don’t it?” he answered while watching her closely for any sign of retribution. When she continued to press her body against the log wall, he said, “I’m gonna need a slew of supplies and ammunition, and that horse of yours to tote it. And I’m fresh outta money right now.”

Gradually recovering her ability to speak, she cried, “You didn’t have no need to shoot Bill. You coulda just robbed us and run, like the coyote you are, instead of leavin’ me a widow out here alone.”

“You’re right. I wasn’t thinkin’ about you bein’ left here alone. You might as well go with Foley.” The pistol discharged a second time and she crumpled against the wall. He got up from the table and walked over to see if she was dead. Finding that she was still breathing, he put a bullet in her forehead. “I reckon that makes us even for you and that damn husband of yours trying to cut me outta my share of that gold.”

Aware that time was once again his enemy, he went through the shelves in the store, pulling out everything he thought he might need for an extended period of time. There was no telling how long this chase was going to take, but he was determined to hunt Red Bandanna down, if it took a lifetime. The gold would be icing on the cake. When he had a pile of goods stacked in the middle of the floor of the size he figured a horse could carry, he went down to the barn to get his and Foley’s horses. In the tack room, he found a rigging for a packsaddle that Foley had evidently used at some time to haul goods back to his store. It looked as if it had not been used recently, and it struck him that Foley had only one horse. “Maybe he
was
out chasin’ wild mustangs,” Roach said, and laughed at his joke.

•   •   •

They had gotten an early start in the morning, planning to reach Chugwater Station before noontime. “Provided Mabel Foley knew what she was talkin’ about when she told you and Ardella how far it is,” Cam had said. “We can rest the horses there, and you can spend a little of your money and eat at the inn she said was there. Course, that’s up to you. I’m gettin’ by just fine on your cookin’.”

“Is that so?” Mary replied playfully. “Well, I’d like to have someone fix me a good dinner for a change.” The thought of sleeping in a real bed again was very appealing as well. It would make for another short day if she decided to stay over for the night, but she felt like treating them all, since there seemed no longer to be a threat of being attacked at any moment. “We’ll see when we get to the stage stop,” she decided.

“Yes, ma’am, boss lady,” Cam responded, feeling the pressure of predators less as well. After sending Foley running for home without his rifle, he felt there would be no others to deal with, having apparently lost the two who had been following them back in the Laramie Mountains. There should be no threat upon them while they were resting at Chugwater Station.

Pushing on through the morning, riding through barren, treeless country littered with odd-shaped piles of earth and sandstone that resembled ruins of ancient structures, the small party of females and guide seemed to be as a small ship upon a vast sea of sand and clay. Toward midday, they sighted yellow bluffs ahead as they descended into the valley of the Chug, for which the creek was named. There was grass now, a striking contrast to the territory they had traveled since leaving Foley’s Place, and Cam remembered having been told that the valley, some one hundred miles long, was a favorite wintering place for cattle. Upon reaching Chugwater Stage Station, Mary and the girls were thrilled to see trees again. Willow, box elders, and cottonwoods grew along the creek banks, and as Mabel Foley had told them, there was a working ranch as well as what appeared to be an inn for stagecoach passengers. Mary didn’t wait for Cam to lead; she headed straight for the inn.

Ardella pulled up beside Cam, who had paused to look the place over before riding in. “I believe Mary’s had enough of the saddle,” she said with a chuckle. “Looks like we made it all right. I expect we lost our two friends for good.”