Outlaw Pass (9781101544785) (19 page)

His suggestion brought a frown to the otherwise bored face of Bailey Cruz. “Briscoe?” he questioned. “That man spooks me. He's such a damn loner, anyhow, I ain't sure he'll wanna ride with me and my boys. Besides, accordin' to what you're sayin', we're goin' after two men and two women. I don't see why we need no high-priced hired gun to get that job done.”

Plummer considered Cruz's remark for a moment before deciding. “Maybe you're right,” he said. Briscoe was a mysterious sort of assassin, hard to figure out, and not always easy to find. He could always call him in later if Cruz couldn't stop the fugitives. “All right, what I want you to do is take the road to Three Forks and search all up and down the Madison River in case those people cut across that way.”

Cruz looked skeptical. “That's a lot of ground to cover. It ain't gonna be easy to catch somebody cuttin' across when we don't even know where they're comin' from.”

“You might not catch them at all,” Plummer said. “You're just to make sure in case that posse Ainsworth sent after them doesn't catch up to them.”

Cruz shrugged. “You're the boss. Me and the boys'll scout out that whole country. 'Pears to me that it's gonna take a helluva lotta luck to bump into 'em, though.”

“There's enough gold with them to make us all pretty happy, so it's in everybody's interest to find them,” Plummer said, although he, like Ainsworth, had no idea how much gold Finn had amassed.

“Maybe Lady Luck will be lookin' our way,” Cruz said as he headed for the door. “I'll take John Red Blanket with us.” He wouldn't presume to tell Plummer his business, but he was still of the opinion that his was a fool's mission.
Riding out in a world of wilderness, hoping you'll bump into four people heading God knows where
, he thought.
Must be one helluva lot of gold those folks are carrying
.

After Cruz had gone, Plummer opened a cabinet behind his desk and weighed out ten dollars' worth of gold dust from a pouch kept there. He handed the dust to Joe French. “Here, take this over to Ben Caldwell's store and give it to them to fix their window. Tell 'em we investigated it and got the money from the drunk that shot it out.” It was important to retain the trust of the businesspeople of Alder Gulch, especially in recent times when Plummer had heard rumors of some dissatisfaction with the lack of curtailing outlaw activity on the trails between the claims of the miners.

 

Bailey Cruz found Tom Seeger in O'Grady's Place, where the gruff professional road agent was in the process of finishing off a breakfast of pork chops and potatoes, washed down with a mug of beer. A cheerless man of constant dyspeptic nature, Seeger dabbled with his food as if reluctant to ingest it. He glanced up to frown at Cruz when he walked in the door.

“We got a job to do,” Cruz said as he pulled a chair away from the table and sat down. Seeger's only response was a bored grunt as he continued to gnaw on the bone from his pork chop. “Where's John Red Blanket?” Cruz asked.

“Hell, I don't know,” Seeger replied. “I ain't seen him since last night. Ask O'Grady.”

O'Grady happened to come in the door from the back room in time to hear Seeger's remark. “Ask me what?” he asked.

“I'm lookin' for John Red Blanket,” Cruz said. “You seen him?”

“He's sleepin' off a drunk in my storeroom,” O'Grady answered. “And I wish to hell you'd get him outta there, before he wakes up and pukes all over the floor, like he did the last time you fellers were here.” O'Grady's Place had become the informal base of operations for Bailey Cruz's gang of cutthroats when they were in town. O'Grady was not particularly happy with the arrangement, but he had let it develop because of the amount of money they spent in his establishment. Now it had progressed to the point where he was afraid to complain about their patronage, even though it had cost him business from the peaceful citizens of Virginia City.

“I'll go drag his sorry ass outta there,” Cruz said. “We need him for a little job we've got to do for Plummer.”

Before Cruz could embellish, O'Grady turned on his heel and promptly headed for the bar. “Whatever it is, I don't wanna know about it,” he said, figuring that the less he knew about their activities, the better. This was especially important in the face of recent vigilante retaliation on some of the road agents that had been identified. It worried him that he knew as much as he did, just from conversations he had overheard in his saloon, and he wondered how long it would be before he might be visited by the vigilantes.

“What are you worried about, O'Grady?” Seeger called after him. “You ain't got no cause to fret unless you start talkin' in your sleep.”

“It ain't none of my business what my customers are doin',” O'Grady said as he walked around behind the bar.

“Long as you keep it that way,” Cruz said, “you'll be all right.” Back to the business at hand, he instructed Seeger, “We're goin' on a little huntin' trip that oughta tickle you. Plummer wants us to see if we can head off a couple of fellers that run off from Bannack with a full load of gold dust. One of 'em's supposed to be some kinda sharpshootin' hired gun, brought in by the miners up there. There's just the two of 'em, and they got two women with 'em. You know one of 'em, that ol' whore that Plummer run outta town a while back—Bonnie somebody.”

“I swear,” Seeger grunted. “Bonnie, I remember her. She's the one they said gutted Jack Chatwick, but nobody could prove it.”

“That's the one,” Cruz said. “Most folks thought the world was better off without Jack, anyway. He rode a fine horse, though—that little blue roan. Joe French didn't waste no time claimin' that horse.”

Seeger paused to suck a sizable piece of meat from his front teeth, which he took a moment to examine before popping it back in his mouth. “That hired gun,” he asked, “is he the same jasper that had a run-in with Rafe Tolbert and Frank Fancher a few days back—broke ol' Fancher's nose?”

They both paused to recall. “Mighta been. I don't know.” Then Cruz got back to business. “Get through suckin' on that bone and ride out to the camp and get Buster and Rawhide. And don't dawdle. We got to get movin'.”

“What the hell you need Buster for?” Seeger wanted to know. “He's about as useless as tits on a boar.”

“We might need some heavy liftin',” Cruz said, “just in case.” The oxlike man was not endowed with a great deal of brains, but he was as strong as a mule, and had no better sense than to do whatever he was told to do. The only person with the patience to deal with him was Rawhide, a lean, saddle-hardened man who was tough as the name he went by. The name, however, came from the rawhide whip he always carried, which he was ready to apply with the slightest provocation. He had somehow adopted the simpleminded brute over the course of a couple of years and Buster followed him around like a puppy—a puppy capable of breaking a man's back if Rawhide gave the word. It was for this reason that some of the men, like Seeger, were not always happy with Buster along on a job. But Cruz liked having the hulking man with the child's brain with him. He had laughingly commented to Joe French that it was like having a grizzly in a harness, as long as Rawhide was there to make him dance. “Meet me back at the stable,” Cruz told Seeger, “and we'll get started while there's still plenty of daylight. I'll go get John Red Blanket.”

As O'Grady had said, Red Blanket was in the storeroom. Cruz found him sprawled on his belly across a couple of flour sacks, dead to the world. O'Grady's Chinese cook had placed a bucket under the sleeping man's head. “John!” Cruz shouted loud enough to be heard in the barroom out front, but evidently not loud enough to penetrate the deep alcohol-induced slumber of the Crow Indian. “John, damn it! Get up from there!” Cruz yelled at the unresponsive body. He looked around him, searching for something to hasten the procedure, and spying a bucket with a mop standing next to the wall, he picked it up and emptied it over Red Blanket's head, mop and all. It was effective in accomplishing the awakening of the drunken Indian, and the sudden intrusion of light through the half-opened eyelids was enough to signal the same rumblings deep inside his belly as the last time. He made an attempt to get up, but was still on hands and knees atop the flour sacks when the contents of the night before rushed to evacuate his stomach, leaving a putrid waste on the storeroom floor close beside the empty bucket.

“Damn!” Red Blanket exclaimed when at last he could breathe again. “I musta been asleep.”

“Yeah, you musta been,” Cruz said with more than a hint of disgust. “Come on, let's get outta here. We got a job to do.”

“I need a drink of likker,” Red Blanket complained as he got himself together and followed Cruz, who was already heading for the door. He stumbled after him, almost bumping into O'Grady's cook, coming for something in the storeroom. They went out into the saloon, ignoring the thunderstorm of irate Chinese profanity behind them.

It was later in the morning when Seeger returned with Rawhide and Buster to find Cruz and a now sober Red Blanket waiting for them with supplies and ammunition on a packhorse. They left town immediately with Plummer's final caution. “I know how much gold that old man has,” he lied, “so all of it better damn well be there when you come back with it.”

 

The party Bailey Cruz and his four partners sought was at that moment following a narrow canyon that divided two lofty mountains that stood like giant sentinels on either side of them. There was a wide stream that ran down the middle of the canyon, and Adam continued to follow it until he found a smaller stream that fed into it from a ravine that climbed higher up into the mountain. Thinking this was what he was looking for, he herded the women, the wounded Irishman, the mules, and the extra horses up the ravine, following the smaller stream a distance of about two hundred yards until he came to a waterfall. Beyond it, the slope leveled to form a shelf with a small glen of pine trees surrounded a clearing of grass. “This'll do,” he announced, dismounted, and led his horse over to tie it to a pine limb.

“Well, thank goodness,” Bonnie said, weary of the saddle. “I thought you were gonna make us climb all the way to the top of the mountain. She slid off the horse and rubbed her sore bottom. “I ain't used to spending this much time on a horse.”

“I ain't, either,” Lacey echoed, and scrambled off the sorrel.

Adam ignored both complaining women while he looked around his choice for a campsite more closely.
Anybody looking to find us will have to come up this stream the same as we did
, he thought.
And they'll be easy to see until they get to the trees. It's a ways to the edge of the tree line, so they ain't likely to see us from above without coming out in the open
.
It might not be perfect, but it'll do us just fine for a while
. Satisfied, he went over to help Finn off his horse.

As soon as Finn was settled as comfortable as possible, Adam set about making a more permanent camp. Selecting a stand of younger pines, he picked four for the framework of his shelter and took his hatchet to the few standing in what would be the center. Once they were cleared, he bent the four remaining trees over together and bound their tops together. Using a slicker he had found rolled behind Billy Crabtree's saddle, he covered part of the shelter with it, covering the slicker and the remaining roof with pine boughs. Once he was well along in his structure, Bonnie and Lacey saw what he had in mind, so they joined in to help fashion their temporary home. There was already a good start for a floor provided by a thick layer of pine needles upon which they spread what blankets they had.

Leaving Bonnie and Lacey to finish up and start a fire, Adam left on foot to scout out the mountain above their camp to make sure he knew about anything around them that might give an enemy advantage. He was pleased to find abundant sign of deer, some of it fresh, and he knelt by the stream where they had recently crossed. Studying the hoofprints carefully, as Mose Stebbins had taught him when he was a boy, he estimated that the deer were four in number and had crossed above his campsite no more than one or two hours before, judging by the amount of water that had seeped up in the tracks at the edge of the stream. Possibly they might have been frightened off by the approaching horses.
Fresh meat
. The thought came immediately to mind, but he paused to consider whether or not it would be wise to fire a shot, not sure if anyone might be close enough to hear his rifle. He decided to see if he could track the deer while he thought about it.

After following a trail through the thick belt of pine trees for over a half hour, he discovered a high meadow, just below the tree line. Grazing in the center of the meadow were three does and one young buck. Adam knelt in the trees to watch them while he made up his mind. How much of a risk would it be if he shot one of the deer? He had no notion if there was anyone around to hear the shot or not.
Finn needs some fresh meat
, he told himself.
Hell, we all do. I'm gonna chance it.
He raised his rifle and laid the sights on one of the does. The Henry bucked once and the deer dropped heavily to the ground, shot through the lung. Seeming like the sound of a cannon, the shot reverberated off the steep mountain slope. Adam shook his head and looked around him as if expecting someone to fall upon him at any minute. But all was quiet again, and he told himself that it was highly unlikely anyone had cut their trail this soon after following the stream up from the canyon. He paused a few moments to watch the remaining deer disappear in the trees above the clearing. Then he hurried out to claim his kill.