Predators and Prey Page 3

  “Just looking down at the corpse,” said Santell, watching through his telescope. “But he’s dug the hole deep enough to hold two men. That’s what we’ve been waiting for, so get ready to shoot.” Kunzel was the best rifle shot of the three of them. However, there must be no misses. Santell would fire also. He cocked his rifle.

  In the meadow, Tolliver sprang up out the excavation. Now for the killing, thought Santell.

  He raised his rifle and aimed with Kunzel down at the tall young man. Santell’s finger tightened on the trigger. “Shoot,” hissed the outlaw leader.

  Santell’s rifle bucked against his shoulder. Kunzel’s gun crashed at the same instant. The thunder of the double explosions roared out across the meadow.

  Santell knew his bullet had gone exactly to his point of aim. But Tolliver had abruptly stooped to reach for the shovel on the ground. Santell’s and Kunzel’s bullets had merely torn holes in the air where Tolliver had been a moment before.

  Tolliver, bent at the waist, flung a startled look up at the source of the gunshots. Then, unbelievably fast, he spun and hurled himself toward the brink of the bluff. He vanished downward, out of sight.

  “Run! Catch him! Shoot him before he can hide in the brush and escape,” shouted Santell, recalling the dense growth of vegetation on the steep slope extending down to merge with the even thicker growth along the river.

  Kunzel, shifting his empty rifle to his left hand and pulling his pistol, sprang from hiding. Cotter, trailing his rifle, rushed pell-mell beside him toward the spot where Nathan had disappeared. Santell ran close behind. The three raced past the open grave and slid to a stop on the edge of the bluff.

  ***

  Nathan heard the buzz of the bullets streaking past, like small deadly hornets, and the boom of the rifles from the woods. In a scuttling run he leapt away from the grave and over the lip of the bluff.

  The brush slowed his wild run down the steep incline. His flailing arms caught hold of a stout oak limb and stopped him. He scrambled off to the side, and then, with legs driving, fought his way back up almost to the top of the embankment. Hunkering down out of view in the concealing brush, he drew his revolver. Cocked it. He ordered his pumping lungs and pounding heart to slow. He had some killing to do.

  More than one man had fired a rifle at him. Since they outnumbered Nathan, they might think themselves safe and make a mistake. He needed an advantage if he was to live through the next few minutes of battle.

  Two men appeared sky-lined above Nathan. A second later a third came into view and stopped. Nathan felt his terrible hate boiling. These men must be responsible for Jason’s hanging. And they had tried to kill Nathan. He wanted to start shooting, to blast holes through them. But he would wait a couple of seconds. He must know how many foes he had. Then the gunfight would begin.

  “I don’t see him,” one of the men said. “Where in the hell could he have gone so fast?”

  Nathan grinned flintily. They had thought he would run. They were wrong.

  Two seconds passed . . . five. The outlaws craned their necks to spot him. Nathan made his judgment. There were only three men.

  He raised his revolver and pointed it through an opening in the brush. The feel of the iron gun in his hand was grand. The sights came into alignment on the face of the nearest outlaw. Nathan squeezed the trigger.

  The gun jumped like a live thing in his hand. The head of the outlaw was slammed backward by the punch of the bullet. His rifle fell with a clatter on the stony ground.

  Nathan swung the barrel of his pistol and found the chest of a second bandit. Killed him with a ball of lead to the heart.

  The last man threw a quick shot at the smoke of Nathan’s gun and darted out of view. Brambles shattered close beside Nathan’s head, flinging splinters into his cheek like a handful of darts. Nathan fired back but knew he had missed.

  He sprang from the protective cover of the bushes and scrambled directly up the slope. He was making the same mistake the outlaws had made, charging at an enemy whose location was unknown. But not one of the Jason’s killers must escape.

  Nathan caught himself at the last step and peered cautiously over the top of the bluff. The killer, running hard, was nearly to the woods. Nathan sprang up the last few feet.

  Racing swiftly at an angle to intercept the course of the outlaw. Nathan crossed the clearing and entered the woods. He stopped immediately, listening for some noise the man might make.

  Almost immediately the sound of a horse’s hooves sped away to the right. Nathan turned and followed at the peak of his strength. The sound of iron shod hooves striking rocks came as the rider and mount began their descent on the stony trail down to the river.

  Nathan broke free of the trees. Below him, the outlaw lashed his mount in long, splashing lunges through the shallow ford of the Red River. The horse tore up out of the water and raced due south.

  Nathan pivoted around and hastened back to the house. He filled in his brother’s grave, tamping the dirt down firmly as he did so. Nothing must be able to dig down and disturb the body. He finished the final shaping of the earth mound. When he returned after slaying the last murderer, he would prepare a fitting monument to place at Jason’s head.

  He glanced once at the bodies of the two dead men. After the buzzards and coyotes had cleaned the bones, Nathan might bury what was left. Better yet, and more fitting, he could merely throw them over the bluff into the brush. But now he must hurry, for his foe was getting farther and farther away.

  He trotted to the corrals and dropped the bars. The horses must be free to forage for themselves, because Nathan knew he might be gone for days. Perhaps he would never return, for he might be the one to die when he finally caught the last hangman.

  He glanced up at the dark gray clouds that had lowered to hang just above his head. He studied their swollen black bellies. There was cold snow in them. And a lot of it. He gathered up an armload of hay from the stack near the corral and led his saddle horse to the ranch house.

  The mustang fed on the hay by the door while Nathan prepared for the hunt. Shortly, he emerged wearing his wolfskin coat and carrying a packet of food and a second Colt revolver. The items were stored away in the saddlebag. His buffalo-hide sleeping robe and slicker were already tied behind the saddle. The Sharps rifle was in its scabbard.

  With one yank of his arms Nathan swung astride his mount. The animal went off willingly and was soon clattering down the steep trail on the front of the bluff.

  The horse forded the cold current of the Red and climbed the far bank. Nathan touched the mount with sharp spurs, and the animal broke into a ground-devouring gallop to the south, on the trail of the fleeing outlaw.

  Miles of low, choppy hills and many wooded stream channels fell away behind Nathan and the running horse. Always the tracks of the outlaw’s mount stretched ahead. The man must have ridden the land before, because he avoided the brush-choked breaks and the rimrocks that would have slowed his escape.

  As Nathan rode down into the valley of the North Fork of the Pease River, the night caught him. The norther arrived with the night, hurling diamond ice out of the darkness to sting his face like fire. He turned up the collar of his wolfskin coat and turtled his neck down into its furry depth.

  The snow quickly covered the ground and swirled around Nathan in a haze of tumbling ground currents. The tracks of the outlaw became hidden and lost beneath a blanket of white. But the loss of the sign did not slow Nathan. The knowledge the man had of the land and the frigid violence of the storm would drive him to only one destination.

  The wind would blow from the north for hours. Nathan had but to hold it on his back. When he struck the main stem of the Pease River, he would turn east. A few miles downstream he would find the man and kill him.

  The storm gathered madness as the night deepened. The black world was full of swift wind and flying currents of snow. The temperature fell hour by hour. Wind tears came, and turned to ice upon Nathan’s cheeks. He and the horse
became plastered with snow, a phantom man upon a phantom horse.

  The mustang waded the rivers of streaming ground snow, flowing so deep as to reach its chest. Now and again the beast stumbled, blinded by the snow, buffeted by the hurricane winds, and weary from the long miles its master had driven it. Nathan spoke to the valiant animal, coaxing the miles from it.

  He made the easterly turn along the heavily wooded Pease River. After a time he slowed, coming upon a bend of the river that he recognized. His frozen eyes stared hard out through the night and the blizzard.

  In a momentary break in the wall of snow he saw a small patch of pale yellow light coming from the tiny window of a log cabin squatting in the edge of a grove of trees. This was one of Satterlee’s line shacks. Nathan had once stayed there with Old Billy Valentine.

  The horse came to an exhausted halt of its own volition. Man and animal sat in the lonely gloom of the snowstorm. The feeling of anger and hate at the man within the cabin ran through Nathan’s mind, colder than the arctic storm that raged around him. He reined the horse to the left into the woods, dismounted, and tied the animal.

  He dug the pistol from the saddlebag and checked it for the set of the lead balls against the powder and the caps on their nipples. The weapon was shoved into the waistband of his trousers. The second pistol was examined. His eyes wrestling with the darkness, Nathan stole upon his foe.

  Nathan moved warily, a pistol ready in his hand. All around him the woods were full of whistling winds that made the trees buck and bow. The limbs seemed to strike at him as he crept upon the cabin.

  The outlaw had traveled many miles through a driving snowstorm. Perhaps he would not be on guard, thinking his trail could not be followed and was safe. Still, Nathan was cautious, and he veered off, swung away into the night, circling the cabin.

  He came upwind and smelled the sooty odor of wood smoke. Slowly continuing on, he found the makeshift pole corral behind the cabin. A single animal, its rump turned to the norther, stood within the enclosure.

  Nathan stole along the wall, turned the corner, and drew close to the only window in the cabin. The single pane of glass was rimmed with frost. He pressed close to see inside.

  The cabin was small, with barely enough space for two crude cots and a table. A stone fireplace was set into the end wall. A man rested on the end of one of the cots and faced the leaping flames in the fireplace. He lifted an iron pot from the fire, removed the lid to look inside, then set it back at the edge of the fire.

  Nathan recognized the bearded, hawklike face of the outlaw from the fight at Jason’s grave. The pursuit was ended.

  The man was armed with a pistol strapped to his side and a knife on his belt. His rifle leaned against the wall near the fireplace. A saddle lay on the floor by the door.

  Nathan stepped back from the window. This was the last of the men who had murdered Jason. Now it was his time to die.

  Silently Nathan moved to the door. He pulled his second Colt revolver from his belt. Both weapons were eared back to full cock. The sound was whipped away by the wind.

  Strangely, just for a short heartbeat of time as Nathan prepared to kill, he felt a tinge of sadness. Not for the man, for he deserved to die. But for himself, for what he must do. Then the anger and hate that had driven him through the snow in pursuit of the outlaw welled up like a tide that washed away all thoughts except getting the hangman in the sights of his guns and pulling the triggers.

  Nathan sucked in a deep breath of the snow-filled air. He raised his foot and kicked the door with all his strength.

  The door sprang open, half ripped from its leather hinges, and slammed back against the wall. The latch flew across the room.

  Nathan leapt into the room. His pistols swung to point directly at the outlaw.

  Santell spun off the cot and into a half-crouching position. With amazing swiftness his hand snapped his pistol from its holster. He abruptly halted, his weapon only partially lifted, pointing at the floor between Nathan and himself. Santell stared into the twin black bores of Nathan’s pistols, locked on his face.

  Santell’s eyes jumped up to look at the man holding the guns. A man he had hung stood in front of him. “But you’re dead !” Santell exclaimed.

  Santell jerked himself up short. The brothers had been twins, identical twins. Nobody had told him that.

  “Jason is dead,” said Nathan. “Why did you kill him?”

  Santell started to straighten to a standing position. The young man had not shot him at once, as he should have. There was still a chance to win this fight.

  “Back down, hangman,” Nathan snarled.

  Santell lowered himself back to his prior half-crouched stance.

  “Why did you kill my brother?” Nathan’s words hit like iron.

  “So there would be no one left alive,” said Santell.

  “And why was that so important? Why not take the cattle and go?”

  “I planned to take the land too.”

  Nathan nodded his understanding. “So that was the reason. What did my brother say before you hung him? Did he leave a message for me?”

  “There was no message for you. He told me that you would not like me if I hurt him.”

  “My brother told you the truth, for he did not know how to lie,” Nathan said.

  He pressed the triggers on both pistols. Thunder filled the confined space of the cabin. Twin plumes of flame and smoke lanced out toward Santell’s face. Two round black holes appeared in the outlaw’s forehead, one just above each eye.

  The outlaw was hurled backward against the fireplace. He crumpled slackly to the floor of the cabin.

  Nathan stood without moving, holding his pistols and watching the body of the outlaw through the tumbling gunsmoke. Then the gunsmoke was gone, sucked out the open door and between the logs of the ill-built cabin.

  The pot began to boil over the fire. At the sound Nathan stirred. He grabbed the corpse by the collar and roughly dragged it outside. Unceremoniously he dumped the loose-jointed body in the snow.

  Nathan raised his head and looked to the north in the direction of Jason’s grave on the high ground above the Red River. Jason, I ’ ve taken the full measure of revenge for your murder. Now rest in peace. Nathan knew that statement was empty. Jason would not know what revenge was. The revenge was for Nathan alone.

  Nathan walked off in the snow. He returned with his horse and put it in the corral with the mount of the dead man.

  After carrying his buffalo robe and saddle inside the cabin, he propped the door back into its frame to keep out the wind and snow. One of the bunks was dragged against the door to hold it in place.

  Nathan spread his sleeping robe on the second bunk and pulled off his boots. Placing his pistols close to his hand, he slid into his simple bed.

  As he lay listening to the cold cough of the wind around the eaves of the cabin, a sense of overwhelming emptiness and a terrible aloneness fell heavily upon him. He knew nothing of kinship other than the presence of his brother. For the twenty years of their lives, Jason had been his constant companion. In his childishness Jason saw a score of things each day that brought him to laughter. And he shared those thoughts and laughter with his brother. So different from Nathan, who seldom ever smiled. Nathan’s heart yawned empty and bare.

  The fire died. The cabin became black. The warmth of the sleeping robe, soft as heavy velvet, finally took Nathan off in sleep.

  He awoke in the early hours of the morning, shoved aside the robe, and walked to the window. He scraped the frost off the glass and looked outside. The night lay cold as iron in the woods. Overhead, a white moon, round and frozen and wintry wan, glared down from a cloudless sky.

  Nathan crawled back into his bed and again let the robe fall over his face.

  4

  Missouri River, Dakota Territory—March 6, 1859

  The noise of the rising Missouri River had grown steadily louder over the last two days. The sound was now a deep, wet rumble, like a sullen monster
awakening after a long sleep.

  In the winter flow of low water, the river had been full of large sandbars with the snags of trees partially buried in the stream bottom. Now the obstructions had been drowned by the swelling brown current, and the river ran nearly brim-full.

  In one place on a straight mile stretch of river, a finger of land extended some two hundred feet into the current. At the extreme outer end of the projecting land a huge mass of tangled tree trunks and brush was piled against a huge cottonwood, thrown there by the river in one of its wild rampages.

  DeBreen sat on the end of a log protruding from the mound of driftwood. He watched steadily upstream. The location was well suited for his need; he wanted to be as close as possible to the first rafts when they came floating down the Missouri.

  The driftwood pile served a second purpose. It hid his three men, who sat on the downstream side. Speaking in low voices, they played cards with a tattered deck on a blanket. Their rifles, together with two extras, lay ready beside them.

  DeBreen and his band had spent the long, cold winter trapping mink, marten, fox, and other fur-bearing animals, high in the Rocky Mountains. Heavy snow had fallen in mid-November and grew deeper day after day. By December, the men had been forced to start using snowshoes to cross the high drifts to run their trap lines. DeBreen’s catch of pelts had been one of the smallest in his sixteen years of trapping.

  The frigid temperatures of the winter had proven beneficial in one important way: The animals of the mountains had grown dense, luxurious coats of fur to protect themselves from the great cold. Never had DeBreen seen pelts of such excellent quality. Those they had caught would bring a premium price in St. Joe.

  DeBreen felt cheated that the rich days of the beaver trade had ended just as he had gone into the mountains and begun to trap. Those were the grand days of the mountain rendezvous, when the fur buyers—bringing everything a man needed, from lead and powder to sugar and women— came to the trappers. In those times a man could earn four, five thousand dollars in a few months of trapping. Now the trap lines were twice as long, and with several species of animals to catch, the set of each trap had to be specially designed. Still, DeBreen liked his life in the mountains. With no law west of St. Joe, the rifle and knife made it possible to take what he wanted. And DeBreen was very good with both weapons.