By sundown, he was thoroughly frustrated, weary, and lost. He continued heading west down a broad valley spotted with large tracts of pine and aspen woods, and lined with steep limestone formations, like dinosaur teeth jutting straight up from the ridges to his right and left. Nearby, a creek curled, murmuring softly and filling the juniper-tanged air with a mineral scent. Mule deer grazed or lounged along the green apron slopes rising to the base of the limestone cliffs.
Hawks screeched as they hunted the rocky heights for gophers and rattlers. A lone wolf howled forlornly.
As the last light retreated before him, Cuno stopped suddenly. Ahead and slightly left, a gray skein of smoke rose from the trees to curl against the distant blackening ridge.
He bolted left from his course and dropped to a knee behind a scraggly cedar, looking around the shrub toward the trees from where the smoke rose. When he heard nothing and spied no movement except for the smoke, he rose and jogged quietly into the aspen woods, crouching, heading toward the smoke.
His heart hammered his breastbone.
Could he have stumbled onto the cutthroats? The fact that he had no weapon didn’t bother him. Somehow, he’d get his hands on one.
Ahead, through the dark columns of the trees, the burned orange of a campfire shone. Cuno slowed, suppressing his urge to hurry, setting each tender foot down carefully. At the edge of the woods, he knelt and stared out into the slight clearing in the trees—not really a clearing but merely a thinning—where several hatted silhouettes were hunkered around the fire.
It was hard to tell in the dark, but Cuno figured there were eight or nine men out there.
A couple sat on rocks, a couple more on saddles. One tipped a coffeepot over a tin cup. The crimson light shone on leathery, bearded faces.
Cuno’s heart sank. He hadn’t stumbled onto the cutthroats, after all. Probably waddies from a nearby ranch gathering cattle from the surrounding canyons.
The men sat close together, turning their heads this way and that, their mouths opening and closing, deep in discussion. Cuno studied the group from beneath mantled brows.
Cow waddies would be lounging around more sedately, wouldn’t they? With maybe one man strumming a guitar while the others laughed, played cards, and passed a bottle?
These men looked grim, serious, and they kept their voices low and grave.
Deciding to get close enough for a better assessment—if they were, indeed, cattlemen, they might spare him a horse and a six-shooter—he retreated back the way he’d come, then turned sharply right. He walked slowly, quietly for a couple hundred paces, then turned right again, tracing a broad half circle around the faintly glowing, flickering light of the cook fire.
Cuno crawled on hands and knees through the short grass, meandering around the slender trunks of aspens. Before him, the fire grew as did the silhouettes of the men gathered around it.
As he set each hand and knee down softly, the low voices grew louder. He began to hear the snaps and cracks of the flames, the occasional pop of pine sap and to see the flickering sparks rise.
A few minutes later, as he approached a fallen log, he caught a whiff of coffee on the cooling air and the smell of cooked beans and side pork. He was only half aware of his rumbling stomach. There was a long stretch of muttered conversation, which Cuno didn’t dare crab any closer to eavesdrop on.
One of the men leaned back against a large log angled near the fire—a blocky gent in a fringed elk-skin jacket, with long hair, muttonchops, and a goatee—and crossed his stout arms on his broad chest. “I don’t know,” he said with a heavy sigh, just loudly enough for Cuno to clearly hear. “I can’t believe ole Bob would do me that way.”
Another man belched.
“Hard to believe,” said a dark-haired man over the coffee cup raised to his mustached mouth. He had a twisted, knobby scar on his chin, and a Winchester leaned near his knee. “After all you done fer him, Karl. Sort of restarting his career for him, an’ all. But it looks to me like they’re headed west fer Alfred. If they was headed fer Helldorado, they’d have taken Sandy Draw.”
“I’m pretty damn sure it was him.” A tall, long-limbed man with a rifle across his knees tugged on his bib beard as he stared into the fire, his black eyes reflecting the dancing flames. “Like I said, they was a fair stretch away, but I glassed ’em with them good German binocs I took off an army lieutenant who tried doublin’ me in a card game, and I’d swear on my pap’s grave that was Bob, Frank Blackburn, and Simms—with a girl that looked a lot like Joe Pepper’s little gal and some big, dark-skinned son of a bitch.”
“Why the hell would he be goin’ to Alfred?” inquired another member of the group.
The tall gent said, “Maybe he went stir-crazy in that jail wagon, decided to go get him some cooch before headin’ back to Helldorado.”
“He could get him cooch in Helldorado.”
“Yeah, but it’s a hundred miles farther—a day and a half longer. To red-blooded men, Dean, that’s a hell of a long . . .”
He let his voice trail off as a Mexican in a bear coat and leather hat trimmed with silver conchos said between puffs on a briar pipe, “Maybe that’s where he hid the payroll money. Maybe he intends to bring the money with him back to Helldorado.”
The bulky gent with the long hair and goatee shook his head as he tugged at his beard. “The agreement was that if we had to ditch the money, we’d all go back for it.
Together
.” Karl Oldenberg looked at the others around the fire. “It ain’t that I don’t trust you boys. You all took a blood oath to the clan. We’re good as kin. But money has a way of workin’ on a fella . . . ’specially a cached fortune like the one waitin’ in the strongbox.”
Cuno dropped his head and pressed his shoulder against the fallen log. He dug his fingers into the pine needles and rotting leaves, feeling his pulse in his fingertips.
He’d heard enough. Oldenberg’s boys had spied the five Cuno was after. He’d never heard of a place called Alfred. In this country, looking for even a good-sized town could be like looking for a needle in a haystack. He had no choice but to follow the Oldenberg bunch.
But to keep up he’d need a horse.
As the gang continued to discuss the situation darkly, Cuno backed away from the fire and forted up behind another log, looking around. He’d spied no horses east or south of the fire. They had to be west or north.
Pausing to scoop up a barkless branch about four feet long and as big around as his upper arm—it would have to do for a weapon until he could get his hands on a gun—he scuttled west of the fire, stealing amongst the trees and looking around for horses while keeping one eye skinned on the camp.
Ten minutes later, after hearing a horselike snort, he found himself crawling up behind nine mounts tied to a long picket line between two tall pines. They were about fifty yards northwest of the fire, near the murmuring creek.
Cuno eased up left of the remuda, the nine mounts standing still as statues in the darkness, tails hanging straight down. A couple had their heads up, as though listening. Gritting his teeth, Cuno prayed that none loosed a warning whinny.
When he was wide of the group, he moved in slowly, holding out his hands placatingly and making low shushing sounds, setting each foot down softly. At the same time, he swung his head around, keeping an eye out for a night guard.
He moved in on a lineback buckskin tied at the left edge of the group. The horse gave him a wary, sidelong glance, its dark eyes reflecting starlight. The musk of the horses was sharp in Cuno’s nostrils—a familiar, welcoming, hopeful smell.
Soon he’d be on the trail toward Renegade and the cutthroats for whom a reckoning was due.
“Easy, fella,” Cuno said, reaching toward the horse’s long neck. “Easy, now . . . easy . . .”
He’d no sooner stepped up beside the buckskin and set a hand down on its long, coarse mane than the horse lifted its head sharply and, glaring at Cuno indignantly, loosed a shrill, bugling whinny.
23
CUNO PULLED THE buckskin’s snout down and snapped his head toward the camp. The silhouetted gang members jerked toward him, one dropping a coffee cup and cursing loudly.
Uttering shocked exclamations, several men heaved to their feet and stepped out away from the fire to peer into the darkness.
“Mountain lion, you think?” a man asked.
Cuno didn’t hear the reply. His blood was rushing loudly in his ears as he grabbed a bridle from a branch jutting up from a nearby log. More voices and foot thuds rose from the direction of the fire. He wasted no time untying the buckskin from its picket line and slipping the bit between its teeth. The horse jerked its head up and whinnied once more, throwing the bit free.
Cuno glanced toward the fire. Several men were jogging this way, the firelight behind them reflecting off gun metal.
“Might be a bobcat,” one of the gang members called.
“Might be a Crow, too! Or a Ute. Mind your hair, fellas!”
Cuno backed the buckskin away from the other jittery horses, wrestling its head down, and rammed the bit between its teeth. The horse fought the bit but Cuno, an old hand at harnessing stubborn mules, quickly slipped the bridle straps over its ears.
A man’s indignant cry sounded above the loudening foot thuds and breath rasps. “Someone’s got my buckskin! Son of a
bitch
!”
Cuno didn’t look again over his shoulder. Holding the buckskin’s reins in one hand, he swung up onto the horse’s back.
“Get the bastard!”
A gun roared. The slug whistled about six inches off Cuno’s right ear. Ducking, he reined the nickering, prancing horse around and ground his boots into its flanks. The buckskin whinnied again as it lunged with a start off its rear hooves. It bolted forward so suddenly that Cuno, accustomed to a saddle, nearly flew straight back over its ass.
“Yeah, that’s right,” he grumbled. “Steal a horse and let it throw you!”
Regaining his balance, he ducked low and continued batting his heels against the buckskin’s ribs, urging more speed. Pistols cracked behind him, the slugs humming around him, a couple barking into trees or spanging off rocks.
The shouting continued behind Cuno, dwindling gradually beneath the thunder of the buckskin’s hammering hooves. He didn’t like running a horse in the dark. The dangers were obvious. Besides, he needed the Oldenberg bunch to lead him to Colorado Bob, Blackburn, Simms, Fuego, and the girl. He also needed a gun.
After a half a mile, he checked the buckskin down, and turned him back the way he’d come, listening and staring into the inky darkness. He was out of sight of the fire, and he could neither see nor hear anything of the gang. Surely, they’d send men after him. But it was doubtful the entire gang would come and risk their other horses or get caught in an ambush. They had no idea how many men were out here, and Cuno didn’t think they’d gotten a good enough look at him to tell if he was white or Indian.
For all they knew, he was Colorado Bob King trying to lure them into a trap, or renegade Indians with a taste for white-man blood.
But they wouldn’t let someone run off with one of their horses without protest, either.
Cuno sat the nervous horse tensely, holding the reins taut against his chest, watching and listening. Finally, the thud of hooves rose in the direction of the camp, growing louder beneath the chitter of crickets and the gurgling of the nearby creek. One of the riders said something, but they were still too far away for Cuno to make it out.
He counted to ten slowly, hearing the hoof clomps grow. When he hit ten, he’d begun hearing the squawk and rattle of tack and seeing the jostling, dark figures behind him. Two, maybe three riders were closing.
He swung the buckskin around, gave a loud, mocking whoop, and ground his heels into the mount’s flanks, grabbing a handful of mane as the horse bolted forward, stretching its stride into a ground-eating gallop.
Behind Cuno, a pistol cracked, barely audible beneath the thunder of his own hooves and those of the oncoming riders. He gave another whoop as he crossed a low saddle. About twenty strides down the other side of the saddle, he turned the buckskin right up a shallow rise amongst jutting rock outcroppings and pinyon pines.
He drew up beside a knob, slipped straight back off the horse’s rump, and smacked the buckskin’s right hip. The horse whinnied again and bounded up the slope, kicking rocks and gravel out behind him.
A yell rose above the sound of pounding hooves at the bottom of the slope. “Up there!”
Cuno stepped back behind the knob and looked around for a heavy branch as one of his pursuers—there were two, he saw now—ordered the other to spread out across the slope. Not finding any near branches, Cuno settled for a stone that fit easily in the palm of his hand. He pressed his back to the knob and squeezed the rock, his chest rising and falling heavily.
The hoof thuds rose, and he could hear the grunts and rasps of his pursers, the rattle of the bit in his horse’s teeth. If the rider hadn’t seen Cuno dismount, he’d follow the buckskin on up the slope. Or he’d try to . . .
Cuno edged a peek around the knob. The rider was within ten feet and closing, his horse lunging straight up the slope, bounding off its back hooves, spraying gravel in the starlight.
The man’s carbine winked, jutting up from the boot on the horse’s right side. The man himself was crouched forward, holding the saddle horn with both hands to keep from being spilled, and his legs scissored back and forth across the horse’s ribs.
When the horse was at about the same place Cuno had been when he’d slipped off the buckskin, he sprang out from behind the knob. He flung the rock aside as he saw his opportunity for a riskier but more resolute move. Bounding forward, he slammed his 180 muscular pounds against the side of the horse, putting his head down and bulling off his heels.
The horse whinnied. The rider loosed a shocked
“Oh!”