Return of the Outlaw (20 page)

Jeff rolled over and heard the rustling of pine needles beneath him and the patter of rain drops falling on the tarp that covered him. It had rained hard all night and all the previous day, but was only coming down lightly now. He had slept warm and dry in his blankets, sandwiched between a ground sheet and a tarp, but as he poked his head out into the gloomy, gray morning, he realized he was about the only dry thing around. The trees and grass glistened all around him, and the horses tethered nearby grazed stoically in the tall grass and dripped water, not appearing to mind.

Jeff pulled himself reluctantly from the blankets. He fished his boots out from somewhere under the tarp and pulled them on, regretting, not for the first time, the decision to go
north. The rain was only part of the reason for this. Several times over the past few days he had cut trails of unshod ponies, probably Indian hunting parties. Jeff had no way of knowing if these Indians were hostile or peaceful, but either way he feared the lure of his three horses and bulging packs would be difficult to resist. His stomach craved a campfire breakfast washed down by hot coffee, but caution warned him it would be foolhardy to build a fire, so he chose to forego breakfast altogether. He would eat dried fruit and jerky on the trail.

For two hours the trail climbed
, then it leveled off. He heard the rushing water from around a bend before he saw it. The trail led into a river, swollen from the rain, its swift current promising to make any attempt at crossing a hazardous endeavor. To make matters worse, the terrain on this side of the river was rugged and steep. He would have to go back down the trail to lower ground where he had crossed a smaller trail which might lead him in a circuitous way, back to the river at a lower point where he could search for a safer place to ford. He turned the horses around, thinking of the dry desert he had so recently forsaken.

He had not traveled fifty
yards when he saw the Indians. There were five of them riding toward him, following his tracks. They were close enough for him to see the paint on their faces. Jeff’s options were few. He could face the braves or attempt to swim the river. He made his choice without hesitation—those five warriors were not trailing him so they could say howdy. Swinging his pack train back around, he spurred forward and hit the water on the run. Once in the river he became more cautious, allowing the horses to set the pace and choose their footholds carefully on the slick rock of the riverbed. Things went well until they reached the middle of the river where the water was deeper and the current swifter.

The pack horse in the middle, a balky, stubborn brute, became spooked and t
ried to turn back. Jeff gave it some slack in the lead rope, knowing what would happen if he tried to hold the animal back. Just as he did so the fractious animal lost its footing and plunged forward in a wild attempt to regain it. In so doing, it rammed into Jeff’s horse and the two animals went down together. The end horse, being tied to the one in the middle, was also jerked off its feet, and the entire pack train was swept downstream. Jeff kicked free of the stirrups when his saddle horse went down, and he was sucked into the current behind the terrified animals.

Half a mile downstream
, Jeff hauled himself, exhausted and freezing and very nearly drowned, out of the water onto a grassy bank. He crawled into the thick, snarled brush that grew at the river’s edge, and feeling drained and weak, remained there for several hours. He did not know if the Indians were searching for him, but he figured the less he moved around, the safer he was. He had shed his slicker in the water because it had impeded his efforts at swimming, and now he shivered in his wet clothes as the gray sky continued to drizzle rain, offering him no opportunity to dry out. The horses were gone, he knew, and with them all his provisions and gear. It would be pointless to head downstream to search for them because the Indians would be there and would no doubt find anything salvageable long before he could arrive. All he had left were his pistol and the cartridges in his belt.

Darkness came early beneath the overcast sky, and the night promised to be a cold one for a man with wet cl
othes and no blankets who dare not build a fire. Beneath a dead-fall of trees he found a thick layer of dry pine needles. He buried himself in them and tried to sleep. But sleep was impossible, and finally, around midnight, he decided to risk building a fire.

At a young age Jeff had acquired Amado
’s habit of always carrying with him a small bundle of waxed matches wrapped in oilcloth. There was dry wood beneath the dead-fall and soon he had a fire going. It took hours, but he managed to dry out his clothes and get an hour of sleep before dawn. The day broke bleak and gray like the previous ones, but thankfully the rain had stopped. He walked up the stream and found the trail again and resumed his northward journey, this time on foot.

Gordon Stone whistled cheerfully as he moved around the camp, performing the countless little jo
bs involved in preparing a meal. He was glad to be back in camp after a long day in the saddle. He lifted the lid on the skillet to stir the beans. They were almost ready. The smell of the meat sizzling in the skillet made his stomach growl. He was glad it was his day to cook. His partner, Billy Dell, wasn’t very good at it. In truth, Billy wasn’t very good at anything, but Gordon didn’t mind too much. In spite of his constant complaining, Billy was company, and if Gordon had learned anything in thirty years of traveling around the west, constantly moving from place to place, it was that even a partner like Billy was better than being alone in this vast and lonely country.

Billy came in from tethering the horses in the fading light. “I
’d like to take an ax handle to that jug head of yours.”

“You just don
’t know how to handle him,” said Gordon amiably. “He never gives me a lick of trouble.”

Billy muttered something unintelligible and sat down on a rock. He was a small man, short, and though not slender, not quite stocky either. The fact that he was thirty
-one years old and Gordon’s junior by fifteen years was only one of the glaring differences that made the partnership between them an odd match.

“Supper ready yet?” g
rowled Billy. “I’m gonna starve to death if you don’t hurry up.”

“Bring your plate and I
’ll load ‘er up,” said Gordon in a tone one would normally use in response to a question more politely put.

Billy handed Gordon a tin plate,
which Gordon filled and handed back. Hearing a sound, he set the spoon back in the skillet and slipped his pistol out of its holster. The sound came again, closer now and easily recognizable—someone was walking toward them. Billy put down his plate and reached for a saddle carbine which was leaning against a rock.

“Hello the camp,”
came a man’s voice from outside the radius of dim, yellow light cast by the cook-fire. A visible image began to take shape through the semi-darkness.

“Hello back,” said Gordon.

Billy levered a shell into the chamber of the carbine.

Moving in a curious, shuffling gait, the man who had hailed them a
dvanced into the yellow circle of firelight and stopped.

Gordon and Billy stared at him in shocked surprise. The newcomer wa
s tall and slim. He was hatless; his hair was long and matted, his dark beard thick and untrimmed. His ragged clothing hung loosely on his frame and his feet were wrapped in some sort of animal skin.

He
spoke first. “Can one of you gents direct me to the local Methodist church?  I’m supposed to speak to the women’s club there and afterwards have tea and cake.”

Gordon
’s face assumed an expression of mock seriousness. “I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, mister, but you arrived late and the ladies got tired of waiting. So they drank the tea, ate the cake and left. You’ll be interested to know as well, that George Washington won the war, and got hisself elected president.”

“My, my,” mused Jeff,
“one does get out of touch.”

“I admire your foot gear,” said Gordon, nodding toward Jeff
’s feet.

“Rabbit skins,” Jeff replied,
moving closer to the fire. “Picked them up on a recent trip to Paris. Everyone there is wearing them.”

“Quite fashionable,” s
aid Gordon, chuckling. He poured a cup of coffee and handed it to Jeff. “Since you missed out on the refreshments, would you care to dine with us? We ain’t the Methodist Women’s Club, as you probably deduced by now, and we can’t offer you tea and cake, but by the looks of you, I wouldn’t fear that any kind of food would cause undue strain on your shirt buttons.”

“I
’d be obliged,” said Jeff sincerely. With mincing steps he walked over to a boulder, sat on the ground in front of it and leaned back against it with a great sigh.

“Looks like you got yourself a little
tender-footed,” said Billy, between fork-fulls.

“Boots wore out about four days ago,” said Jeff. “I used
the sides and tops for a while: tied them on, but they didn’t last long. I’ve been shooting rabbits whenever I could, to eat and to use their hides to wrap my feet with, but rabbit hide is too soft and thin; doesn’t last long.”

“Four days, eh,” said Gordon, handing Jeff a heaping plate of food.

“How long you been afoot?”

“Nine days.”

“How’d you come to be afoot in such lonely country?

Jeff recounted the story of h
ow, and where, he lost his horses and gear.

“You covered a heap of miles over some rough country in nine days, stranger,” Gor
don said in frank admiration. “Particularly for a man who runs around barefoot.”

“I tried to keep moving. It was starting to get cold at night in those mountains, and I didn
’t want the snowfall to catch me there. It’s bad enough to wear off the bottoms of your feet without getting frost-bit too.”

J
eff had never tasted anything as delicious as the coffee; that was until he started eating the hot meal Gordon spooned onto his plate. It was range-cooking at its best: beans, a thick slab of beef, hot biscuits, and all the hot coffee he could swallow. The plate Gordon had handed him was heaped high with food, but Jeff took care not to eat it all, knowing his shrunken stomach would be intolerant of large amounts of food. After the meal he leaned back contentedly against the rock and closed his eyes.

He
awoke to the sound of wood cracking, and to the startled realization that he had slept all night. Instantly attuned to his surroundings, he realized it was dawn, and the sound that had awakened him was Billy, breaking wood for the fire.

The meal of the previous night was just a memory, and his growling stomach demanded more. He co
uld tell by the morning’s chill that the night had been a cool one, but someone had laid a blanket over him and he was comfortable. He sat up and stretched his stiff muscles. His long trek out of the mountains had not been easy on his body, and he knew his feet would need some attention. He carefully removed the rabbit skins, wincing in pain each time it was necessary to separate them from a spot where dried blood had glued them to his feet. 

“Look
’s pretty bad,” said Gordon, who had just returned from checking on the horses. He squatted down and carefully inspected the soles of Jeff’s unfortunate feet.

“Hmm,” he said, “looks kinda like chopped
meat. Swollen too; most likely infected. They’ll need soakin’.”

“Need more
’n that,” interjected Billy with some enthusiasm. “They’ll need some of my special salve.”

Gordon snorted in disdain
. “Special salve!”

Billy extracted a small, wide
-mouthed jar from one of the packs and offered it to Jeff.

“What
’s in it?” Jeff asked.

“It
’s a secret,” stated Billy proudly.

“Meaning
you don’t want to know,” said Gordon.

“It
’ll cure anything that can be cured from the external on man or beast, claimed Billy, sounding something like a preacher or a patent medicine drummer. “I’ll tell you somethin’ else, and you can believe it or not believe it as it suits you. I once applied this salve to a lizard that had lost its tail, and as I’m standing here and as the sun rises each morning, he grew a new tail; a complete and healthy one.”

“That
’s quite a miracle,” said Gordon. “I know a man who lost an arm at Gettysburg. Bet he’d pay handsome for some of your miracle salve.”

Jeff saw Billy
’s lips tighten as he stiffly stood up and walked away.

Gordon winked at Jeff and muttered in a low voice
. “A man ought to be able to laugh at hisself. By the way,” he added, extending his hand, “you fell asleep so quick last night we never got introduced. I’m Gordon Stone. The lizard doctor over there is Billy Dell.”

Jeff shook the proffered hand, “Bob Webb,” he said, using as an alias, the name of his old friend from the war. He disliked lying to these men who had extended their hospitality to him, but he had no way of knowing how far the notoriety of his true name had extended.