Powder River (23 page)

There was no water in the cabin, other than the warm, stale fluid in Billy's canteen. He took it sparingly as he waited and watched by the window.
How many men am I up against
,
and when will they make their move?

He got his answer at noon. A man he well knew, a small man with a long, thin face and white-blond hair, stepped out of the tree line with his arms raised above his head.

“Billy!” he yelled, “Billy, don't shoot! It's me, Cal.”

Billy was stunned. Was Cal a captive, like Kinch, or was it something else? “State your business,” Billy shouted, careful not to show himself in the open window.

“These men are keeping me prisoner,” Cal said. “They want me to deliver a message. Can I come up?”

Billy did not respond, trying to make sense of what was going on. A nagging thought stirred in the depths of his mind. What was it? A warning? A memory? He tried to bring it forward.

“Billy, they'll kill me if you say no. They got no use for me otherwise.” Cal looked over his shoulder toward the trees where two or three men were barely visible. One was the stranger Billy had shot at earlier; the others he could not make out.

“Don't let them kill me, Billy!” Cal's voice broke.

“All right,” Billy shouted. “Come on, but come unarmed.”

Cal's body sagged with relief as he lowered his arms and started climbing the hill. The melting snow made the slope slippery, and twice he fell. Billy kept his eyes moving from Cal to the barn. He hadn't seen any motion from that direction since the urine stream, but that didn't mean someone wasn't there.

Cal was within fifty feet of the cabin when Kinch burst out of the tree line, running full out and yelling at the top of his lungs. “No, Billy, no! He's with them—he's got—” Shots rang out and Kinch fell like a stone, facedown in the snow. At the same moment, Cal dropped to a crouch and struggled to pull a six-shooter from his belt. Billy fired a shot at his feet and Cal froze.

“Put the gun down, Cal,” Billy said. Cal did as he was told.

“Who are those men? What's this about?”

An ugly smile, one Billy had not seen before, twisted Cal's features. “You know who they are,” he said. “Faucett's men. He means to kill you, you and all the range trash you ride with. Nate's dead, by the way. I finished him off myself, after my father was done with him.”

Poor Nate. Billy could only imagine the shock he must have felt when Cal attacked him. “And you're with Faucett?” he yelled. “Why? What's in it for you?”

“Money, that's in it for me. Money buys freedom from my father, from Wyoming, from this godforsaken, punishing country. This was never the life I wanted, but no one ever asked me. No one ever gave a damn about what I wanted!”

The barn door swung open and Frank Canton jumped out into the bright sunlight, his carbine at his shoulder, and fired. His shot was wide, striking the side of the cabin. As Billy returned Canton's fire, Cal dove for his gun, raising it and shooting in one motion. He was not a practiced gunman, and his bullet hit the window frame above Billy's head, driving a sliver of wood into the skin just below Billy's left eye. Still, he got a shot off. Cal clutched his stomach, dropped to his knees in the snow, and pitched over onto his side, doubled in pain. He rolled, moaning, on the ground between Canton, who had retreated to the cover of the barn, and Billy. He raised his head in Billy's direction. “Finish me, Billy,” he said. “Please!”

Neither Billy nor Canton responded. Cal continued to whimper and cry, twisting on the wet, muddy ground. He called out again. “Billy, please. Just do it!”

No matter what he had become, Cal had once been a small, lonely boy with a shy smile. Billy had taught Cal how to ride and groom a horse, how to make coffee over an open fire, how to skin a rabbit. In many ways, Billy thought, Cal had never had a chance. From the womb, his sister had dominated every aspect of his life. If his mother had lived, maybe he would have known some love and tenderness, but as it was he had been denied that.

He would expose himself to Canton's fire, but Billy owed Cal at least this. He took a deep breath, then moved to the window and aimed carefully at Cal's head. His Winchester barked once, and the boy's misery was over.

Canton and the others opened up on the cabin, pouring lead through the window and splintering the walls and the door. One bullet took Billy's hat off, but otherwise he was lucky. He fired back from alternating positions around the cabin, hoping to delude his attackers into thinking they were fighting more than one man, though he knew there was little chance of that. Kinch would have told them how many were in the cabin.

During lulls in the shooting, Billy sat on the floor by the cold fireplace, writing in his notebook.

He wet the lead of his pencil on his tongue, then continued.

Billy stared at the cold ashes. More than anything else, he wanted to write of his love for Odalie and to tell her good-bye; he wanted to tell the world she was a woman of heart and courage and not what they thought she was, for he knew the people of Johnson County did not hold her in high regard. But he could not speak of these things because the love of an Indian would not lift her in their eyes.

He tore the sheet from the notebook, folded it, and put it in his shirt pocket.

The hours passed and it grew dark. Billy ate a piece of elk jerky and washed it down with the last of his water. He stood by the window, watching the fire burning by the creek. They would come soon. He patted the paper in his shirt pocket and sent a prayer to his protector in the spirit world behind this one.
Please let her see it.

Billy heard a dull thud as something landed on the wood-shingled roof. It was starting. At first there were just a few tongues of flame, but they grew quickly, licking upward. Soon the entire roof was engulfed, and the fire spread fast, descending the walls. The heat and smoke were suffocating. Billy crouched on the floor, catching gulps of clean air where and when he could. Occasionally the thick smoke would part and he could glimpse his attackers, creeping up the hill with their long guns before them.

The killers expected him to make his run through the door, but Billy had other plans. The north wall, opposite the door, had burned first and most fully; it was partially collapsed. The roof would fall in any second. Billy's only chance, though a skeletally thin one, was to dash through the diminishing sheet of fire, like a finger through a candle flame, and make for the dry ravine north of the cabin.

The heat was becoming unbearable, and the smoke was choking him. He had to make his move. Billy raised his .45 and fired a single shot.
Let them think I've killed myself rather than burn alive
.

Billy took his Winchester in one hand and his revolver in the other and ran for his life, flying through the dying wall of flame and glowing embers of the north wall. Smoke rolled off him as he raced across the flat plain that lay between the cabin and the ravine.

“There he goes!” a man yelled, and the bullets began to fly, whizzing by his head or striking the ground around him, sending up fan-shaped sprays of dirt and rock. Billy had only fifty yards to go until he reached the ravine. There he could take shelter. There he would find a chance, his only chance, to hold them off.

Only twenty yards left. His lungs burned with effort and the effects of the smoke but he did not slow. Despite the pain, his heart soared. He was going to make it! At the same time, Even so, a question formed in his throbbing brain. Where was Frank Canton? Had he seen him with the others? He wasn't sure; he couldn't be certain . . .

Five yards to go! Billy jumped into the dark of the ravine, his Winchester over his head, feeling pure joy as his feet felt the ground.
I've made it! I have a chance!

He landed on the soft, sandy soil and crept forward toward the V bend where he could see both means of approach. There he would make his stand. He heard the Texans yelling and cursing as they ran toward him. Soon Billy would be in a good place to take care of them once and for all. He smiled as he reached the bend.

Frank Canton was down on one knee, his carbine at his shoulder. Billy tried to raise his Winchester, tried to get a hip shot off, but he was too late. Canton fired, hitting Billy square in the chest. He felt it like the kick of a mule, and fell back onto his back. There was no pain. He lay still, unable to move any part of his body except his eyes. He fixed them on the evening sky and waited, hearing Canton walk toward him. Billy Sun's last view of this world was the face of Frank Canton, gazing down on him above the barrel of his carbine.

“Good-bye, chief,” Canton said as he pulled the trigger.

Hardy stopped to rest the horses when they were within ten miles of Dixon's ranch. Odalie complained but he insisted. “We've done thirty miles in eight hours,” he said. “I don't want to kill them.”

Odalie made a sound of impatience and jumped down from the buggy, pacing on the frozen ground. The eastern sky was beginning to lighten. What if Richard and his army of assassins had beat them? What if Daniel and Billy were already dead? If that had happened, if Daniel was killed, Odalie thought she would take up a gun and shoot Richard herself, and to hell with the consequences.

They were stopped by a creek that widened to a frozen pool. Hardy broke the ice and led the horses to drink. After they had taken their fill, he gave each a nosebag of grain. When they were done eating he checked their feet. Rob was kind to animals, Odalie noticed, in this he reminded her of Billy Sun. Both men were so very different from Richard, who could not manage his mounts without the whip and the spur. She pictured her husband with his self-satisfied smile and well-tailored suits of Scottish tweed, and she hated him.

After an hour they were under way again. The horses moved with a new energy, and Odalie knew Rob had been right to rest them.

“These people mean a lot to you, don't they?” he said.

“Yes, I suppose they do. More than I realized.”

They traveled in silence until at last the Dixon ranch came into view, tranquil in the blue morning light. Odalie sighed with relief, for she had feared they would find a smoking ruin. A light burned in the kitchen of the white, two-story frame house and the rest of the outbuildings—barn and attached corral, a small wooden shed, a windmill, a pump house, and, some distance from the house, a privy tucked away in the sagebrush—appeared undisturbed. To her eyes, the modest Dixon property was more inviting by far than her own stone castle.

Hardy drove the buggy up to the front door and Lorna opened it even before Odalie could climb down. Though partially concealed in her skirts, Odalie could see a pistol in Lorna's right hand.

“Odalie!” she said, eyes widening in surprise.

“I must see your father at once.”

Even as she spoke she heard the barn door slide open. She turned to see Dixon walking toward them, cradling a rifle in his arms. Odalie realized she had never seen him with a gun before.

“Lady Faucett,” he said. “I would say I'm surprised to see you, but nothing surprises me anymore.” His eyes cut to Hardy. “Who's your friend?”

“Daniel, this is Rob Hardy, the ticket agent and telegrapher at Olympus. He's just brought me from there, we've been traveling all night. You can trust him. We've come to warn you of—oh, I hardly know how to explain it—Richard and the WSGA, including Frank Canton, they've assembled a kind of army, that's the only word for it, and they say they're going to kill all the so-called rustlers in Powder River country. You and Billy are on their list. It's true, I heard them planning it.”

When he showed no reaction, she looked pointedly at the gun in his arms. “But maybe I'm telling you something you already know? Has something happened?”

He came forward and took her by the arm. “Odalie, I could use coffee and I'm sure, if you and Mr. Hardy have been traveling all night, you could, too. Mr. Hardy, take your horses to the barn, give them whatever they need, then join us in the house. Keep your eyes and ears open and come for me at once if you see anyone coming.”

The kitchen was warm and well-lit, and for the first time Odalie could see how exhausted Dixon was. He was unshaven and his eyes were sunken. Even Lorna's lovely face was pale and drawn with fatigue.

“What is it, Daniel? What's happened?” Odalie said again.

Dixon sank down in a chair and ran a hand through his hair, making it stick out at all angles. Odalie felt a great wave of tenderness for him. She wished she take him in her arms and hold him, give him some peace and comfort. It seemed to her he had had precious little of that. He was a kind man who deserved a better hand than Lady Fortune had dealt him.

“I'm aware of Lord Faucett's expeditionary force,” he said, “and his plans for me and my family, but, unfortunately for your husband and his associates, they misjudged the good citizens of Johnson County. The people are mobilizing against them—oh, a few of the businessmen may support him, but the average man, the homesteader, the small ranchers and farmers, are coalescing in a way Richard and the WSGA did not anticipate. They'll be in for a big surprise when they reach Buffalo, if they make it that far.”

“I'm very glad to hear it,” Odalie said, sitting across the table from him. Perhaps her telegram from Olympus had been received after all.

Dixon continued. “The hell of it is my son Cal. Somehow your husband reeled him in, offered him money, five thousand dollars, if he would kill me.”

Odalie gasped. This was unspeakably vile, even for Richard.

Dixon continued. “Cal took his money, but then I guess he couldn't go through with it. He killed Nate Coday, though. Poor Nate, he'd been shot and was weak as a kitten. He couldn't possibly have defended himself.” Dixon shook his head and rubbed a hand across his eyes. “Cal, I don't know where he is now and frankly, I don't give a damn. I don't care what happens to him.”

Odalie reached across the table to take his hand when Rob Hardy threw open the door and ran into the room, flooding the kitchen with cold air and sunlight.

“Riders are coming!” he said, pointing to the north.

Dixon jumped to the window, pushing aside the curtains. Odalie followed; three wagons and a handful of riders were gathered on a hilltop about a mile distant.

“It's them.” Dixon turned back to Odalie and said, “Can you handle a gun, Lady Faucett?”

“I can. Quite well, as a matter of fact.”

Dixon smiled for the first time since they arrived. “I suspected as much. I'll take the front room, Lorna, you stay here in the kitchen. Mr. Hardy, if you'll cover the south side, that leaves the upstairs bedroom only. Odalie, will you take that window?”

She nodded.

“When they get in range, I'll give a signal and we'll open up. We'll let them know we're here and we won't go down without a fight.”