Snake Eyes (9781101552469) (20 page)

“I might ask you the same thing, LouDon. You're pretty far from camp, aren't you?”

Jackson felt trapped, but what could he do?

“Me'n Sweeney, Jim, and Otto rode down here in the middle of the night. We been here all mornin'.”

Sorenson rode still closer, steady and slow.

“I don't see nobody but you here, LouDon.”

“Oh, they all headed back to camp. Left me here for a time. Did you see what we done out there on the road?”

“I sure did,” Sorenson drawled. There was no rancor in his voice, no sign that he either approved or disapproved. His voice was just flat and tinged with that Minnesota-Swedish accent.

“Hell of a mess, ain't it? But we sure taught them sheepherders a lesson, by God.”

“Yeah, looks like you did.”

“Schneck thinks them herders will pull out with their sheep as soon as word gets back to 'em what we all did.”

Sorenson rode to within ten feet of Jackson and halted his horse. He just sat there, resting both overlapped hands on his saddle horn. It was like the two of them had met out in the middle of a pasture and were just jawing with each other real friendly-like. At least that's the way LouDon pictured their meeting. Just a couple of men chewing the fat over the weather or maybe complaining about the hard life of a cowpoke. At least he hoped he could convince Sorenson that it was okay to do what they had done.

“Yeah, LouDon, could be. That's what I would do if I saw what you fellers did to all those women and kids.”

“I think one of the women got away,” LouDon said. “I seen her run off into the woods, but I didn't get a chance to pull down on her. Hell, she's probably clean gone to Texas by now.”

“Gone to Texas?”

“Oh, that's just an expression. Means she lit a shuck. Took a powder. Plumb run off somewhere.”

“She the only one who got away?”

“I reckon. Hell, things was happenin' so fast, I couldn't keep track of it all.”

“That must have been something,” Sorenson said in that smooth, even voice of his.

“You shoulda seen it, Thor. It was a sight, I tell you.”

“I'll bet it was,” Sorenson said.

“Say, who's with you? I thought I heard a couple of voices. Ned? Percy?”

“Nope,” Sorenson said. “Neither of them.”

“Who, then?”

“I don't think you know the man, LouDon. Folks hereabouts call him ‘Sidewinder.' ”

“Sidewinder? The one that killed our guys?”

“I reckon. He's a detective from Denver. Raises cattle, too.”

“A detective?”

“Yeah. He's the man who killed Grunewald. Outdrawed him and shot him plumb dead.”

Jackson's face drained all its pink and tan, as if his veins had been flushed full of white paint. He swallowed so that his Adam's apple bobbed and tautened the skin on his throat.

“What're you doin' with him, Thor?” Jackson's voice was a squeak coming out of that tight throat of his.

“Oh, I'm working for him, LouDon. He done hired me as a detective. We both work for that detective agency in Denver. We're helping out the sheepherders, trying to find Schneck and put him in jail so he can get himself hanged.”

“You sonofabitch,” LouDon said as the realization hit that he could not get away.

At the same time, LouDon grabbed for his pistol. Sorenson smiled wanly and jerked his own pistol from its holster.

He was a tad slower than LouDon, but he was more deliberate.

LouDon cleared leather and thumbed the hammer back.

Sorenson prodded his horse forward with a light tick of his spurs in both flanks.

LouDon raised his arm and took aim at Sorenson.

Sorenson's horse kept coming. He peeled back the hammer of his Colt as LouDon squeezed the trigger.

Sorenson ducked and heard the whine of the bullet as it whizzed over his head.

He brought up his pistol and squeezed the trigger within five feet of LouDon.

LouDon jerked on his reins with his left hand and tried to turn his horse and gallop away.

Sorenson's bullet struck him in his left side, just under his armpit.

LouDon felt the jolt of the impact, but he felt no pain. Instead, he felt a rush of heat and blood to his head, and a dizziness assailed him.

He half turned in the saddle and raised his arm to shoot at Sorenson again.

The trees around LouDon turned fuzzy, and Sorenson turned into a liquid shadow that shimmered like some kind of strange mirage, his body all wavery and misty, out of focus.

Then the pain hit him.

LouDon felt as if fire had entered his body, as if someone had shoved a hot, cherry-red poker into his side, and he heard something wheeze inside of him, as if one of his lungs had collapsed and spewed out part of his breath. The pain was so great that he closed his eyes.

His pistol fell from his hand, and the sound of it striking the ground was far away, muffled, as if it had fallen into a thick comforter or into another dimension. None of it made any sense to LouDon. Nothing was right. The tall pines spun around him when he opened his eyes, and the sky blurred into a gray-black smear of nothingness, emptiness.

He opened his mouth, but it was just a reflex. He could not find any air to breathe. No air came out, no oxygen came in. He felt as if he was being blotted out, smashed like a bug on a tabletop, squashed dead under Sorenson's boot.

His horse stopped, and LouDon fell to the ground.

Sorenson looked down at Jackson's body.

He felt nothing.

LouDon was just a hired hand. Schneck had put him up to the massacre of all those women and children.

Schneck was the man who should have been lying there dead on the ground.

Sorenson drew in a deep breath and turned his horse. He looked at the sky, the bulging bellies of the black clouds.

But he knew it wasn't going to rain.

The wind blew hard, and he knew that it was going to be cold.

And where, he wondered, had Schneck, Sweeney, and Wagner gone in this mountain wilderness where there were so many places to hide and so many places to kill?

“One down,” he said to himself. “And three to go.”

The three riders heard the two pistol shots as they wended their way through the timber, heading for the ford they had crossed earlier that day. All three men halted their horses and looked back toward the dying and distorted sound.

“Did you hear that, Boss?” Sweeney said to Schneck.

“Yeah, we all heard it, Sweeney,” Schneck said, a sarcastic tone to his voice. “Do you think we're deaf?”

Sweeney looked ashamed and did not answer.

“Sounded like pistol shots,” Wagner said. “Back there where we come from.”

“Listen,” Schneck said, waving the other two men to silence.

They heard the breathing of their horses and the swishing sound as they swished their tails.

The shots echoed off the rocky outcroppings and died in the hush of the forest. The low, black-bottomed clouds seemed to soak up the sounds as they drifted overhead.

“It's awful quiet,” Wagner whispered loud enough for Schneck and Sweeney to hear him.

“Yeah,” Sweeney breathed as he twisted his head as if to pick up any voice calling out for help.

“Just shut up,” Schneck said, irritated.

Several moments passed with none of the men saying anything.

“I don't hear nothin' else,” Wagner said.

“No,” Schneck agreed.

“You told LouDon to fire two shots if he got in trouble, Boss,” Sweeney ventured.

“I know what I said, Halbert, you fool,” Schneck snapped.

“We better get back there,” Wagner said.

Schneck drew in a breath. His neck began to swell with anger, and his lips twisted so that his expression took on a sour look.

“Yeah,” Schneck said, finally, “we better get back there and see what's up.”

“Those were sure as hell pistol shots,” Sweeney said.

“But who was doin' the shootin'?” Wagner asked.

“Sounded like LouDon,” Sweeney replied.

“I wish you two would just shut up,” Schneck said. “I'm trying to think. Those shots might have been fired off by Jackson, but maybe whoever came down that road was shooting at him. We just don't know.”

“No,” Wagner said, “I reckon we don't. Not for sure, anyways.”

The men turned their horses and began to pick their way back toward the place where they had left Jackson. Every so often, Schneck stopped them to listen, but they heard nothing.

Schneck was suspicious of the two shots. An uneasy feeling came over him.

There should have been more shots, he thought. After those first two. What kind of trouble was Jackson in? Had he just fired his pistols into the air, or had he shot at somebody? If he had shot at someone, then he killed either one or two men. If he had missed, then there should have been at least one answering shot. But they had heard only two shots.

If Jackson had fired his pistol because he was in trouble,  where was he? He knew where they were going, and he should be riding toward them. But there was no sound of hoofbeats, no sound of a horse running through the timber, crashing through brush.

He thought it was very strange that they had heard only those two shots.

And there was no certainty that Jackson had been the one who fired his pistol.

“Let's not be in a hurry,” Schneck said to Wagner. “We have no way of knowing what we're getting into.”

“I agree,” Wagner said.

They rode slowly and they stopped to listen every few minutes.

The silence was almost unbearable to all three men.

A half hour later, with Wagner in the lead, Sweeney right behind him, and Schneck bringing up the rear as they rode single file, they all heard sounds from somewhere ahead of them.

Voices. Men's voices.

They halted, then lined up side by side to try and decipher the voices.

They were quiet for several moments.

“Hey, ain't that the Swede's voice?” Sweeney said.

“Maybe, yeah,” Wagner said. “Sure sounds like the Swede.”

Schneck cupped a hand to his ear. He stood up in his stirrups as if to hear better.

The voices sounded closer.

“I think that might be Sorenson,” Schneck said. “What in hell is he doin' down here?”

“Who's that with him?” Sweeney asked. “That other voice don't sound familiar at all.”

“I don't like this a damned bit,” Schneck said. “Halbert, you'd better ride over yonder real slow and find out what the hell's going on. And see who in hell is with Sorenson, because that's his voice, sure as I'm sitting here.”

Sweeney looked at Schneck. “Me?” he said.

“Yeah, you, Sweeney,” Schneck said.

“We'll be right behind you,” Wagner said.

But neither he nor Schneck moved their horses as Sweeney reluctantly headed for the road.

Sweeney was shivering all over, and it wasn't from the chill wind that was blowing through the timber and pushing all the clouds toward the east. He drew his pistol and looked back at Schneck and Wagner, neither of whom had moved an inch.

Wagner moved his hand in a signal for Sweeney to keep going.

Sweeney kept going, and the wind began to keen in the treetops. He wound through the pines at a slow clip.

Ahead, he glimpsed two men on horseback. One of them he recognized as Sorenson.

There was a man he had never seen before, and he was leading a horse he had seen before and knew.

It was LouDon's horse.

And the saddle was empty.