Talon & Chantry 07 - North To The Rails (v5.0) (13 page)

Today he stayed with the herd, interested to see how easily his horse responded to the work, and how accustomed to it he himself had become. His hand was sure, his movements easy…he had changed.

But he must not permit the ready smile of French Williams to put him off. Why had Williams so easily accepted the idea of going north into the face of the Kiowas? Did he think Chantry would fail when he faced them and lose the herd there? Or had Williams already approached the Kiowas, perhaps on a share-and-share-alike basis? It would not be the first time Indians had raided a herd or a wagon train at the instigation of a white man.

As he rode, his thoughts returned to the girl called Sarah. Of the two, the girl had been the stronger, the most dangerous. And she was an attractive woman with a good figure, enough to take the eye of any man, east or west, but this was the West, where women were scarce.

He had been thinking there must be some connection between them and Williams, but Williams had seemed to know nothing about them.

The cattle went ahead steadily, heads swinging to the rhythm of their walk. The cowhands lounged in their saddles, thinking of the campfire ahead, the strong black coffee, and the warm food.

Tom Chantry swung out from the flank where he had been riding, and loped his horse along the slope of the low hill. Clay Creek Spring was not far ahead, hidden in a notch of hills. Below it was a holding ground, somewhat higher than the ground around it, a pleasant place for the cattle.

A bird flew up, from almost under his horse’s hoofs. The saddle creaked, his spurs jingled, and he topped out on the rise.

The three Indians came out on the ground around him without warning. They had been lying down, horses concealed beyond the rise, and their dusky bodies blended with the brown earth and the growing shadows. He heard the explosion of a gun, felt the jolt of it in his fist, then the hammer fell again and he saw an Indian spin and fall, the knife dropping from his hand.

An arm came around Chantry’s throat from behind, and he knew, instinctively, a knife would be in the other hand. He kicked his boots free of the stirrups and threw himself from his horse.

Hitting the ground with a thump, he rolled over, and jolted free of the Indian. He came to his feet quickly, just as the warrior, knife held low, sprang at him. He was a big man, tall as Chantry, and equally broad in the shoulders.

The Indian crouched, then came in. Chantry moved swiftly, and with the ease of long practice, a practice he had never used until now except in friendly wrestling matches. His left palm slapped the Indian’s knife-wrist to his right and out of line with his body, his right hand grabbed the wrist, and he stepped across in front of the Kiowa and threw him over, hard.

The Indian hit the ground, but he retained his grip on his knife, and came up fast. The man was like a big cat; his black eyes gleamed as he circled to come in again.

Chantry’s gun lay where it had fallen, several feet away. His horse, the blue roan, had trotted off to one side and stopped, the red sunset on his saddle.

The Indian’s hand was lower now…he was a wily fighter, not to be taken by the trick again.

“You are a brave man,” Tom Chantry heard himself say. “I shall hate to kill you.”

Did the man understand? Chantry heard him suck breath and then he came in swiftly, slashing right and left with the knife. Chantry side-stepped to his left to put the Indian out of position, but the warrior turned abruptly and lunged again.

Chantry sprang back, but in his boots he was not agile enough, and as he went back he tripped over the body of one of the other Indians. His opponent lunged forward, but off balance, and tripped over Chantry.

Tom sprang to his feet, more quickly this time, and kicked savagely at the Indian’s head. The boot heel glanced off the Indian’s temple and sent him rolling.

Leaping on him, Chantry slipped an arm under him and across the warrior’s throat, clapping the palm of his right hand against the Indian’s skull, his left hand grasping his own right arm in a strangle hold. He knew he could kill the Indian now, and he put on pressure, fighting for his life.

Suddenly horses were all around them, and Williams was saying, “Step back, Chantry. I’ve got a gun on him.”

Slowly Tom Chantry released his hold and stepped away from the Indian, who lay gagging and choking, and then slowly the brave got to his feet.

Rugger was there, and Helvie and McKay; there were four guns on the Indian, and Rugger eared back his hammer. “I’ll kill him!” he yelled. “I’ll—”

“No!” Chantry snapped the word. “You kill him, and you’ll have to kill me.”

He turned to face the Indian. “I am Tom Chantry,” he said. “You fought well. Go in peace.”

The Indian looked at him, then at the others.

“You going to let him go?” Helvie asked in astonishment.

Suddenly Sun Chief was there beside them. He held out Chantry’s pistol and Tom took it, dropping it into his holster.

“He goes free,” he said. “He’s too good a man to shoot down.”

Rugger swore. “He’s nothin’ but a damn redskin. He’ll kill you the first chance he gets.”

“Maybe. But in the meantime he goes free.” He spoke to Sun Chief. “Tell him he can go. Tell him I shall come to the village under the Big Timbers to see him…soon.”

“No need to tell. He knows what you say.” The Pawnee’s rifle was in his hands. “That’s He-Who-Walks-With-Wolves, but often he is called Wolf Walker. He is a big warrior.”

“Let him go.”

Wolf Walker looked at him a moment, then deliberately he turned on his heel and walked away.

French Williams looked at the two dead Indians and commented dryly to Rugger: “You’d better copper your bets, Rug. That’s as good shooting as I’ve ever seen, left and right, both dead center.”

“It was luck,” Chantry said. “They surprised me. Came right up off the ground.”

“So you just killed two of them with two shots, and then whipped Wolf Walker bare-handed—and him with a knife. Mister, you call it what you want to, only don’t call it luck.”

Sun Chief caught up the blue roan and Chantry swung into the saddle. As they started back toward the herd, Helvie rode alongside Chantry and held out his hand. “Whatever I may have thought about you back at the start, I take it back. Next time you need a hand, you just call my name and I’ll come a-runnin’…no matter where you want to go.”

“Because I was able to handle those Indians?”

“No, sir. I don’t regard that. It was the way you let Wolf Walker go. That shines, mister!”

The cattle passed over the end of the mesa in the last moments of light, all shades of hide lost in a uniform darkness. The hands circled them to a stop on the flat below Clay Creek Spring, and the chuck wagon lumbered over the rocks and swung into place. While Dutch unhitched for him, the cook lowered the back of the wagon to make his table, and began setting out the grub.

Tom Chantry gathered sticks from the remains of old campfires and, using dry grass and leaves for tinder, got a small fire started. He added buffalo chips and hunted out some dried brush.

It was a good camp—the best camp so far, Tom thought. Rugger was surly, and Kincaid still avoided him, but Dutch, Helvie, and McKay were friendly and easy. The fire burned brightly, and the food tasted good. For the first time in days, Tom was not hurting anywhere, and now he had a good feeling about the fight with Wolf Walker. He did not think about the two Indians he had killed. They had attacked him without warning, and his reaction had been immediate and instinctive.

French Williams was curious. “Now, that shootin’,” he commented, “surely didn’t look like the work of a man who never used a gun.”

“I never said I had never used a gun,” Chantry replied simply. “Pa was a good hand, as you know, and he started teaching me early. I’ve always had a knack…good coordination, I guess. I’ve hunted a good bit, and shot up a lot of ammunition at targets. Up there”—he jerked his head back toward the scene of the fight—“was the first time I’d tried to get a gun out fast in a long time.”

“We heard the shots,” McKay commented, “just
boom-boom,
almost like one sound.”

Chantry glanced over at Williams. “How far is it to Two Buttes?”

“Fourteen, fifteen miles, I’d guess. I never did ride directly from here to there. We’ll make a proper day of it.”

All the men were tired, but the last events of the day had excited them and stirred them to conversation. Chantry leaned back against his bedroll and listened to Helvie, who was telling of a famous fight back in 1867, a running battle between Indians and the riders of a stage headed for the Big Timbers station.

From that the talk continued—talk of cattle and buffalo, of the stage lines and the Santa Fe Trail. Finally Tom carried his bedroll into the shadows near the wagon, and pulling off his boots and his gun belt, he rolled in and slept.

His last memories were of the occasional crackle of the fire and the low murmur of conversation.

When he opened his eyes the fire was down to the last red coals. All the men were asleep except those with the cattle. He was about to turn over and go back to sleep when he saw Rugger slip from his bed and move off into the darkness. Something about his manner moved Chantry to watch him go—not toward the horses, but off into the darkness, obviously anxious not to be seen.

Where was he going? And for what reason?

Chapter 14

F
OR A MOMENT Chantry thought of following him, then decided the man was probably just going into the woods on some business of his own, and Chantry turned over and went to sleep again.

But in the morning he remembered this small incident, and when he had belted on his gun and stepped into his boots he glanced around.

Rugger was saddling a horse, as were Helvie, McKay, and Kincaid, getting ready to ride out and relieve the night guards. He saddled his own horse, and waited until they had gone. Then, leaving the dun at camp, he went into the woods where he had seen Rugger go.

He had no trouble in picking up a track. A heel print here, a kicked stone there…for a hundred yards he trailed him back into the brush and scattered juniper, and then across the slope of a hill. There the faint trail went down into the hollow beyond.

Here the trail ended. Near a flat rock there were two cigarette butts.

For several minutes Tom Chantry stood there, trying to puzzle it out. Rugger was not exactly a contemplative man, not the sort who would walk all this way to be alone with his thoughts. He had come for a reason.

Chantry looked around. Due east lay the trail to Two Buttes, an open stretch of valley two or three miles wide, and easy going, bordered on the south by Two Buttes Creek. About five or six miles away lay the Santa Fe Trail, or one branch of it. Two Buttes, the highest of which lifted about three hundred feet above the surrounding country, were dimly visible on the horizon.

Nothing else.…

He had turned away when he saw, in the shelter of another rock, a place where a small fire had been built. Not for warmth, for the man had not sat near it, and it was built so that it would be visible only from the valley below.

A signal then. But to whom?

There were no other tracks, so if he had expected anyone to meet him, that person had not arrived.

Had he left any word there?

Carefully, searching with this fresh idea in mind, Chantry looked around, and suddenly he saw it, near where the fire had been…a tobacco sack. Picking it up, he felt something inside and opened it…there was a page torn from a tally book, and on it, written in a clumsy hand, these words

2 Butes

Big Timbers

Kiwas at Big Timbers

He returned the note to the sack and replaced it. Then he walked back to get his horse.

The others had eaten, and the chuck wagon was packed and ready. The cook turned to glance at him, then gestured toward the seat. “I put some grub an’ coffee out for you. Figured you’d be hungry.”

“Thanks.”

The cook waited while he ate, and presently he said, “I like your style, Chantry. Can’t say I cottoned to you right off, but you’ve shaped up.”

“Thanks,” Tom said again.

“What’s goin’ on? I don’t like it a-tall, the way things are. French ain’t like himself, an’ there’s hard feelin’ among the boys…like they were up to something they didn’t care for.”

Chantry finished eating, cleaned the plate with sand, and passed it to the cook. “You can’t lose, Cookie,” he said. “Either French or I will pay you boys off if we get through with the herd.”

“They tell me you’re figurin’ to drive right through Big Timbers.”

“Why not? Look, if the Kiowas want us they can ride up on us any time. By driving in any other direction we still couldn’t get away—cattle move too slow. If they mean to attack, we can’t avoid it. So why not take the quickest way, where there’s the best water and grass? Why not drive right at them so they know we’re not afraid? We know where they are, and they know we know, so they’ll be wary of a trap. They’ll be sure we’ve got reason for being confident. Anyway, I never found that a man could avoid trouble by running away from it.”

He waited while the wagon pulled out and started over the ridge. When it was lined out on the trail, he rode south to the banks of a creek that flowed into the Two Buttes almost due south of Clay Spring.

The banks were cloaked with shrub willows, many of them growing ten to fifteen feet high. He went in among them, drew up there, and stepped down from the saddle searching for a vantage point from which he could watch the rock on the hillside where the message had been left.

From time to time he looked toward the herd, now only a dust cloud down the long valley. He drank at the stream, and let his horse browse on the rich green grass along the bank.

An hour passed. Just as he was about to step into the saddle again, he heard the beat of hoofs. From over the ridge behind him came two riders, who cantered down the slope, splashed through the shallow stream, and went up the opposite slope to where the message had been left.

They were some distance off, but he needed no closer view to know who they were. The Talrims!