The Old Wolves (27 page)

Higher and higher the wagon rocked and rattled beside the flashing stream of Arapaho Creek, through autumn-yellow forests alive with birds, squirrels, chipmunks, and infrequent clumps of grazing mule deer. They were almost home, Irvin sleeping with his head resting against his father's side, when Cliff spied movement up the steep mountain slope ahead and left.

Cliff eased back on the reins. “Hoah, Jabber—hoahhh!”

As Irvin stirred beside him, Cliff frowned at the horseback riders filing down the side of the slope. One by one, they came—tall-riding men in fur coats or long dusters, horses outfitted with bedrolls and rifle scabbards. They galloped out of the yellow aspens crowning the ridge, plunging nearly straight down the mountain and into the valley in which the Circle Slash M Ranch lay.

There must have been nearly a half a dozen riders in all, heading somewhere in an awful damn hurry.

What on earth . . . ?

THIRTY-FOUR

Irvin sat up in the seat and fisted sleep from his eyes, yawning. “What is it, Pa?”

“Not sure, boy.” Cliff stared off beyond the bluff straight ahead and behind which the last of the riders had just disappeared as they'd descended the mountain. They were now in the valley in which his own spread lay and at the head of which sat his own humble headquarters.

They had to be headed to his place. There was no other ranch or farm in this canyon, and no other settler at all since Old Man Crawford had closed up his silver mine and aimed his mule and his wagon for Montrose nearly a year ago.

Suddenly a sick feeling came over Cliff. His hands inside his wool-lined leather gloves grew spongy. The crew he'd just seen descend that slope had been a good half mile away from him, but they'd a hard-bitten air about them. And they'd all been carrying rifles in their saddle scabbards. Cliff had seen a good bit of steel flashing beneath a few of the men's coats as well.

Gunmen. Outlaws, possibly.

Absently, he lowered his right hand to his coat pocket. He shoved the pocket against his side, felt the lump of bills residing there . . .

“Hold on, Irvin!” Cliff shook the reins over Jabber's back. “Gidyup, Jabber—let's go, boy!”

The paint lunged up the trail, pulling the wagon around the left side of the bluff and then up and over a low hill. As the wagon lurched down the hill's opposite side, Cliff saw the prints where the riders had entered the trail and began following the trail in the direction of his ranch headquarters.

Sonja was likely cooking supper. Cliff had cut loose both his cowhands after the fall gather. Sonja would be in the house alone.

Anxiety caused Cliff's chest to heave as he again flipped the reins over the paint's back, urging more speed. The riders' dust hung in the air, churning ominously. As the wagon thundered along the trail, Cliff felt Irvin's anxious gaze on him. He turned and placed a calming hand on the boy's knee. “It's all right, son. Everything's going to be okay.”

His voice must have betrayed his hammering fear of what was happening at the ranch, for the boy's brows beetled, a fearful cast entering his puzzled gaze, as he continued to stare up at his father.

The wagon continued to pound the trail for another mile. When they'd bounded over the second to last hill in the trail before reaching the ranch, Cliff slowed the wagon in the crease between that hill and the next. At the hill's bottom, he swung off the trail's right side and into the rocky dry wash that threaded the crease.

He pulled the wagon around a slight bulge in the forward hill, near some small, dead cottonwoods, and stopped and set the brake. He reached under the seat for the Winchester, set it in his lap, and peeled the blanket away.

“Irvin, I want you to stay here with the wagon, okay?”

“What's wrong, Pa?” Irvin's voice sounded wooden as he watched his father reach under the seat for the box of .44 shells. “Ma's all right, isn't she?”

“I'm sure she is, Son. I just want to make sure of it. I'm going to do that by walking into the ranch real slow-like. You know—like an Apache?”

“Like an Apache?”

Cliff was stuffing the cartridges through the Winchester's loading gate. “That's right. I'm probably being foolish, but I just want to check something out. You stay here with the wagon, understand?”

The boy's voice trembled. Tears shone in his eyes. “I wanna come with you, Pa!”

Cliff stopped loading the gun and squeezed his son's arm. “Irvin, you're my top hand now with Luke and Thomas gone. Top hands do what the boss tells them. If I need your help, I'll call for you later, understand?”

“Should I get out the old Spencer?”

“No, not yet,” Cliff said, continuing to punch shells through the Winchester's receiver. “For now, you leave the Spencer under the seat. I'll let you know if I need you and the Spencer's help, all right?”

He looked at the boy, who was staring fearfully up the side of the gravel-strewn western bluff toward the ranch where he knew his mother was working alone.

“Understand, Irvin?” Cliff said, urgency in his voice.

Irvin nodded as he sleeved tears from his pale cheeks. “I understand, Pa.”

“Go ahead and have some extra candy,” Cliff told the boy as he leapt down from the wagon, landing with a grunt. “Remember, the canteen's under the seat, if you get thirsty.”

Quickly, he worked the smooth cocking mechanism, seating a fresh shell in the Winchester's chamber. He off-cocked the hammer, glanced once more at his son sitting the wagon and squinting his eyes at him, cheeks bleached with fear.

“Don't worry—I'll be back soon!”

Cliff turned and crossed the trail and continued along the wash on the trail's opposite side, angling around the headquarters' southern perimeter. He knew every rock and prickly pear lining the wash, because he and Irvin often took target practice with rifles and pistols out here, and they often hunted the wash for rabbits and sage hens. He knew without having to see the house where it would be in relation to the wash. When he reached the place he'd been heading for, where a juniper stood on the wash's south side, he climbed the low, steep slope on his right.

Near the top, he slowed his pace until he was within two feet of the crest. He stopped, doffed his hat, and stretched a look over the brow of the slope.

The sun had gone down about a half hour ago, and blue shadows filled the yard though the sky was still filled with a slowly darkening green light. The barn and corral were straight out in front of Cliff, the rear of the barn facing him. The bunkhouse and two more corrals including the breaking corral lay to the right. To the left of the barn, on the yard's westernmost side, fronting Thunder Creek, stood the long, low-shake-shingled log cabin that Cliff had built when he and Sonja had moved out here nearly twelve years ago.

From this angle, Cliff could see the front and south side of the cabin. Smoke unfurled from the large stone chimney on the cabin's near side. But what Cliff was staring at as his heart tattooed a frantic rhythm in his ears were the half-dozen or more horses just now being led away from the cabin, toward a corral about fifty yards in front of Cliff.

The man leading the horses was tall, broad, and lumbering. Indian featured, he wore a bullet-crowned black hat and thigh-length fur coat with a brace of pistols and a large knife holstered on the outside. The cuffs of his black pants were shoved down into his knee-high Indian moccasins. Another knife handle jutted from the man's left moccasin top.

A man on the cabin's front veranda called, “Hey, Quiet Ed—bring the whiskey out of my saddlebags. Appears the woman might need her tongue loosened a little!”

Cliff dropped his head down beneath the brow of the slope. He pressed his cheek against the dirt and finely ground gravel, gritting his teeth. Fear threatened to overwhelm him. He looked at the rifle in his hands. It was shaking.

The canyon was so quiet that Cliff could hear each footfall of the horses being led to the corral. And he could hear with horrifying clarity the sharp crack of a hand meeting flesh that vaulted out from the cabin's open front door.

Sonja screamed shrilly. From inside the cabin rose the thump of what could only have been Cliff's wife hitting the floor.

Cliff drew a sharp, terrified breath.

He couldn't just lie here, his heart beating fast. He had to get to the cabin and help Sonja.

Cliff glanced over the brow of the slope. The Indian was leading the horses into the corral and beginning to unsaddle them, cursing and shaking his head, apparently not too happy with the task he'd been assigned.

Cliff pulled his head back down behind the hill, donned his hat, and quickly thought through his options. He didn't have many. All he could do was try to sneak up behind the cabin without being seen, and . . . then what?

He'd cross that bridge when he came to it.

Cliff dropped back down into the dry wash. He continued following it west. When the wash curved off to the left, where it met the stream farther south, he climbed out of it and crawled through the sagebrush, staying low, until he'd gained the pines along the stream. Now he was about fifty yards from the cabin's rear southwest corner.

He dropped to a knee, mopped his brow with a handkerchief. It was cool and getting colder as the sun continued to drop behind Longs Peak behind him now. He worried about Irvin. The boy was frail and didn't do well in the cold. But mostly Cliff's thoughts were with Sonja. There was no more noise issuing from the cabin, and that had him especially worried.

What were they doing to her? She was six months pregnant, for godsakes . . .

A couple of the windows facing him were dimly lit, and he could see occasional shadows passing in front of the lamps. He had to get to one of those windows and try to get a handle on how many, and what kind of men exactly, he was dealing with. Then, somehow, he and the Winchester would try to get the upper hand and get rid of them, hopefully without shooting.

Cliff surveyed the cabin once more. Then he snugged his hat down low on his forehead, wrapped both hands around the Winchester, and took off running through the brush, shrubs, and small trees that grew back here behind the house.

He ran to the privy and from there he cast another furtive look at the cabin. Seeing no one looking out the windows, he ran ahead and left to the back of the red-painted, peak-roofed woodshed that was about the size of a rich man's buggy shed.

When Cliff had caught his breath again, he sprinted the last thirty feet to the cabin's rear wall, between the back door and the window nearest the south wall. There were several corrugated tin washtubs out here that Sonja used for washing clothes, and he was careful not to kick one.

Cliff swallowed, drew a deep breath, trying to calm his nerves, and walked forward, ducking under the window. At the house's southwest corner, he paused again, looked around the corner toward the front. None of the hard cases appeared to be outside—at least not on this side of the cabin. The Indian was no longer inside the corral. The horses had gathered on the corral's east end, facing the yard, and were contentedly eating the hay in Cliff's crib. Their saddles were resting over the corral's top slap, near where the corral abutted the barn.

Cliff could hear voices behind the stout cabin wall. He could not hear Sonja's, however.

He quickly slipped around the cabin's rear corner and moved slowly along the wall. He ducked under the first window he came to. It was the window of Cliff's study and a curtain was drawn across it. He could hear no voices behind it, so he continued moving to the next window. He stopped, crouching at the edge of the window, and dropped his hat on the ground.

Staying low, he slid his head across the edge of the window frame until he could see past the curtain. A candle burned on the little table beside Cliff's rocking chair. A man sat in his chair—a rangy, blond-bearded man in a black opera hat and a long, black leather duster. He was rocking in the chair, hands on the scrolled mountain lion arms, as though it were his chair. As though it were his cabin. As though the pregnant woman working in the kitchen were his, too.

Sonja, her belly bulging behind her green-and-white-checked dress and apron, was chopping meat at the table on the other side of the cabin, beneath the light of the two lanterns hanging over the table from a stout log beam into which Cliff had scrolled his and Sonja's name after they were married, and then scrolled Irvin's name after the child was born here in the cabin, where the next one would be, as well. Two men sat at the near end of the same table that Sonja was working at, pots bubbling on the stove behind her. The two were playing two-handed poker. Another man sat in a chair beside the door. Sonja's cat, Lester, stood on the man's left thigh. Lester arched its back and curled its tail as the man patted the cat affectionately, grinning at it.

There were at least three other men scattered about the room, on the couch angled before the fireplace abutting the wall to Cliff's right, and in chairs—all lounging about, enjoying the fire and having a woman cooking for them, as though they owned the place.

Cliff had glanced over the inside of the cabin in less than five seconds, placing everyone, and now he jerked his head back and down beneath the sill. Through the wall, he could hear Sonja saying inside, “. . . Don't know where you got such a notion in the first place.”

Cliff thought it was the man rocking in the chair who said, “Who else would he send it to?”

“I saw my father only once in my life, and like I told you before, we didn't get along. He knew how I felt about him and just to prove it, I sent that old outlaw packing. Never saw him again. So why would he send such a gift, as you call it, to his daughter who wanted nothing to with him?”

Cliff's heart beat faster. Shame and dread was a heavy weight in him. Again, his hands shook. He pressed his left shoulder against the cabin wall and tried hard not to throw his guts up.