Slocum smelled something burning and frowned. “You smelling that smoke?”
“Yes. I wondered what was burning.” She put her horse in close to his and twisted around in the saddle, looking for a streak of smoke in the sky.
“North of us.” He pointed it out to her. A thin thread stood out against the azure sky.
“Wonder what's making it.”
“Probably nothing good.” He could read the day or so old tracks of the men they were following. Tracks he'd had his eye on since they left Red Canyon and had been on them since they rode away from the last outpost. One of their horses had thrown a shoe. He imagined it was one of their pack animals, and he'd been watching to see it standing lame near the road.
An hour later, they were looking down from the crest at a burned-out homestead.
“You see anyone?” she asked.
“No one living,” he said and booted Red off the ridge. He licked his lower lip. It was slightly crusted from the hot, dry air. What had happened? In this kind of warm weather, homesteads usually didn't burn accidentally.
“You might stay back. This could be grim,” he warned her. Those two were no good and might have done something awful to the residents they came across.
“Honey, I've been through enough hell now to make me immune.”
“Have it your way.” He shrugged. The tracks led right toward the place. He was now even more certain that nothing good had come of the killers' visit to this place.
When he was close enough, he dismounted and handed her the reins to Red. “I'll look around.”
She nodded and then dismounted.
Log walls were still smoldering. The roof, which looked to have been once covered in sod, had caved in. He noted a few articles of small children's clothing on the ground. The smoke was so bad he didn't dare try to enter the fallen-in cabin. Circling the structure, he saw nobody. But the smoky interior worried him more than anything else. The copper smell of blood and a body burning filled his nose at times. Better not tell her.
A few chickens came to see if he had grain for them. She called to him, “Two dogs out here. They've been shot.”
“I don't doubt it.” He hurried around and saw the two animals lying a few feet apart. One was a shaggy stock dog, the other a hound. They'd been shot several times.
“They do that?” she asked.
“I guess. Those two are the chief suspects. I'm going to the shed over there and see what's inside it.”
“I'm coming,” she said and hitched the horses to the yard fence.
He was ten feet ahead of her. When he opened the latch and swung open the door on leather hinges, he saw the naked body of a small boy childâlikely the one who had worn the clothesâlying on the ground. He turned and caught her before she could see it. “Hold up. You don't want to go in there.”
“What's in there?”
“A dead child.”
“Those cold-blooded bastards! Why, they're savages.”
He hugged her and agreed. The sourness of bile kept rising behind his tongue and he hoped to keep it down. There would be some grisly work for them to do before this day was over.
“How old is that baby?”
“Maybe two or three.” He could only guess by its size.
“Then there is probably a baby too. Young wives out here usually have them that close together or closer.”
“We need to get hold of ourselves. I wasn't going to tell you, but I am certain now at least another human body is burning up in that cabin.”
She hugged him, on the verge of crying. “That is plumb terrible.”
“We have a grim day ahead,” he said. “Let's bury the child and then maybe the fire will have burned down enough that we can find the other body or bodies inside the cabin.”
She used her hand to shade her eyes some and checked the sun time. “Close to midday. Is there a shovel around somewhere?”
“There should be. I'll unsaddle the horses while you look around for one.”
She nodded and chewed on her lower lip before she finally spoke again. “I'll look for a blanket or something to wrap the child up in too. This is going to be a tough day. I'm glad you're here and it ain't me alone.”
“We can do it.” He headed for the horses,
Â
Two hours later, the child was laid to rest. The sandy soil wasn't hard to dig in, and Slocum hoped the boy's body was too deep for the wolves to dig him up. Wilma fixed some food. He tied a wet kerchief over his mouth so he could get close enough to toss water on the smoking logs and find the half-burned corpse of a man in the house. With no way to recognize him, Slocum wrapped his remains in one of his own blankets and dreaded the work still ahead.
“We better eat something,” Wilma said, bringing him some fresh coffee.
He sat cross-legged on the ground and tried to get the dead stench out of his nose and the taste of smoke out of his mouth. The coffee made him salivate, which was better tasting anyway. He needed to apprehend those two killers before they slaughtered any more innocent people. Madmen. Had there been a woman here? He thought there probably had been. What had happened to that poor soul? He really didn't want to know.
After sundown, he finished covering up the man's corpse with dirt in the second grave he'd dug. His hands ached and his back felt the same, but the job was done. He went down to the small river and tried to wash away the remains of the distasteful duty he'd just performed that saturated his very body. Wilma dried him off when he came out.
“I have some supper ready, if you can eat.”
“I'll try.” He really felt as done in physically and mentally as he could ever recall. Even his shoulder wound complained. At times while he was fighting in the Civil War, he could recall being so exhausted that he couldn't even sleep when he did get a chance. His skin crawled under his shirt.
The next morning, they left the homestead and traveled on northwest. Days dragged out into longer hot ones. Their water sources became poorer and alkali-bitter tasting. They reached the Gray Horn Riverâor at least he thought that was the name of the one that flowed out of the mountains coming from the still-distant Yellowstone.
He dropped out of the saddle and discovered that the river tasted much better than the springs and streams they'd been coming across. Wiping his mouth on his sleeve, he nodded at her. “We're still days from Yellowstone, but at least the water's better.”
She smiled, weary-looking, and dismounted. Then she laughed. “It may be a long way yet to hell, but we now have good drinking water, huh?”
He laughed too. “Right on, gal. Hell, I may stop and take a bath. The water looks so damn inviting.”
“That might not be a bad diversion.” She went to unbuttoning her shirt.
“You better rebutton that shirt. We're getting company.”
She started to do so and frowned. “Who's coming?”
“A passel of Injuns.” He stepped over to Red and jerked out his Winchester. By then they could hear them ki-yacking like coyotes as they short loped toward them.
“I'll be gawdamned. Rode this far and going to be scalped by some bucks.” She shook her head in dismay.
His eyes narrowed. His hands tightened on the stock and forearm of the rifle. That wouldn't happen before he took a few of them with him.
9
The leader wore a long-tailed, feathered war bonnet. He held up his rifle and the whole war party shut down, and then they spread out in a line. The war-painted bucks with rifles across their laps, some armed with bows, sat their multicolored ponies; all stared at Slocum and Wilma with the hard eyes of hawks. If Slocum was going to die beside this sweet water stream, it was better than being beside an alkali pothole.
He held up his right hand in peace. Then whispered to her, “Here goes.”
She nodded, obviously thinking, as he did, that this meeting could turn fatal. The chief said something to a young man, who rode forward from the line until he was just a few feet from Slocum and Wilma.
“My name is Blue Horse.”
“Slocum is mine, and this is Wilma.”
“We are looking for two white men and a woman. The men raped a teenager and left her for dead.”
“Did one have a wolf skin cape?”
The boy nodded and some surprise showed in his dark eyes, then they leveled out. “You know them?”
“They were headed for Yellowstone, last we heard. If they didn't go there, they are circling back. I think the woman with them is the wife of a homesteader that they killed.”
He nodded. “I will go tell my chief.”
With his pony whirled around, he raced back and began speaking to the one under the war bonnet. The man nodded as he talked. Blue Horse charged back and slid his horse to a stop. “You are certain about them?”
“Yes. They killed a woman in the Bighorns. We're on their trail too.”
“We thought we'd find their camp by backtracking them.”
Slocum shook his head. “The hot springs they once had back there went dry. They are going to Yellowstone to be treated.”
“I will tell my chief.” He rode back and conversed again with his leader.
“They don't want us, then, do they?” she whispered.
“Hell if I know, but I think we can breathe easier for now.”
“Good. Where are they from?”
“I think they're Wind River people. They ain't Sioux or Cheyenne. They'd already have killed us if they were on the war path.”
“Good to know.”
The boy came back. “My chief thanks you and your wife. Go in peace, we will follow them that way.”
“Be best,” he said and then waved to the chief. The leader waved back and turned his string of bucks, and they left in a loud chorus of war cries.
“Wait a minute,” she said. “I have to pee. That was too close for my comfort.”
He agreed and looked to the sky to thank his maker. Way too close. Now those worthless ones had more enemies. Who was the woman with them? He'd been reading her barefoot tracks since they'd left the site of the fire. Was she the dead man's wife and mother of the baby? In time he might learnâsad deal piled on more sad deals. He'd be glad when this entire situation was settled.
They came across some white settlers as they drew closer to the gates of Yellowstone. Not exactly gatesâthere was a single-way path that scaled the eastern wall and led over the top and eventually to the great falls on the Yellowstone River. Midday, a rider on horseback met them.
He was a man in his thirties, bearded, wore a threadbare suit coat and flat-brim black hat, and looked like a preacher. “Good morning, ma'am, and to you too, sir.”
“Same to you,” Slocum said.
“Heading to hell, I guess?”
“We're going west. Is it that bad?” Slocum asked.
“Oh, yes, that settlement back there is full of fornicators, loose-moraled women, drunken louts, and blasphemous individualsâexcuse me, ma'am. But it surely is a place that should be avoided should God desire to turn them into salt like the Bible said.”
“We're tracking two killers. So are the Indians.”
“I talked to those savages. They are not doing God's will either, though they profess to be Christian converts. May thunder strike all the fake Christians dead who wander upon this earth. Is this woman your married wife?”
Slocum shook his head.
“Then when you hear the thunder on the mountains, you will know it is God seeking to kill you for your blasphemy, sir. Good day, I can only pray for your redemption.” He booted his horse and left them.
“Why did you tell him we weren't married? It would have saved him the pain of having to pray for us too.” She bent over in laughter, about to fall out of the saddle.
“I hate those âwe're all going to hell' preachers. I have a different concept of who my Maker is.” He shook his head. “I bet we're alive today because some godly messenger showed them Wind River people who we were as people.”
She agreed and they rode on. No sign of the Indians; they must have avoided the small settlement they found at the foot of the mountain. One man called it Hooter, but Slocum was never certain of the real name and didn't care. They added some more supplies to their panniers at a log-cabin general store before riding on. He also bought some catgut line and iron hooks to add to his things, promising Wilma some fresh trout.
No one in that village had seen the two men pass by, or so they said when he asked about themâobviously they'd avoided leaving any sign at the settlement. But several miles up in the canyon in a broad valley they met a whiskered man on the road. He said his name was John Jeffers, and after Slocum talked to him about the two killers and the woman with them he nodded.
“That woman is with Martha, my wife, right now. Her name is Gina, and she's near out of her mind.”
“You left them at your place. The woman?”
“Yes, why?”
“They are ruthless men, and if this Gina ran away from them and they're looking for her, they may kill your wife.”
“I never thought about that.”
“Here, Wilma, you bring the packhorse and come slower. We're going fast right back to his place. You can follow us.”
She nodded grimly. “Go do what you must do. I'll be a-coming.”
“My heavens, I never thought of that,” Jeffers said again as they galloped their horses westward.
When Slocum and Jeffers arrived at the man's claim, his prematurely gray-headed wife came rushing out of the front door. “John, oh, John, those grubby men kidnapped Gina again and left not fifteen minutes after you left here. They caught that poor woman bringing me a pail of water to the house. There was nothing I could do.”