Bloody Trail (14 page)

“
Mary,” Derrick McCain said.
Everyone looked at him, so he explained, “He said her name was
Mary.”

It was a grim task, and covering up the bodies
using only bare hands and knives to break off pieces of the gully's
bank wasn't easy. By the time it was done, though, the smell of
coffee hung in the early morning air, and that made the men feel a
little better.

"What about the outlaws we killed?" Gallagher
asked.

"Reckon the wolves and the buzzards will take
care of them just fine," Satterlee said. "We’ll send their horses
back to town, and replace some of the ones they slaughtered in the
raid. How are the wounded men lookin', Doc?"

"Right now, I'm guardedly optimistic that
Bill—I mean, Ben—and Deputy Zachary will make it. Their chances
will improve greatly if I can get them back to Wolf Creek where I
can care for them properly."

"What about me, Doc?" Jimmy Spotted Owl asked.
A bandage was wrapped around his thigh where a bullet had
ventilated it.

"It'll take more than a wound like that to
kill you, Jimmy," Munro told him with a smile.

"Then I can go on ahead with the
posse?"

"I didn't say that. You need proper medical
care, as well."

"And I'm countin' on you to guide the doc and
the other two back to Wolf Creek, Jimmy," Satterlee put in. "You
know this area better than Doctor Munro does. Less chance of you
gettin' lost."

"I'd rather go on with you, Sheriff, and
tangle some more with those damn owlhoots," Jimmy said.

Satterlee shook his head.

"You're goin' back, and that's that." His
tone, as well as his words, made it clear that there would be no
argument.

The sun still wasn't up by the time the men
had eaten breakfast, but the band of gray in the east had turned to
a strip of red and gold, a colorful harbinger of the new day. Ben
Tolliver and Deputy Bill Zachary were lifted onto the two crude
travois Charley had rigged and tied in place. Dr. Munro would lead
the horses pulling the badly wounded men, and Jimmy Spotted Owl
would lead the string of outlaw mounts. There were no sentimental
goodbyes. The four men simply started riding back to the north at a
slow, steady pace so Tolliver and Zachary wouldn't be jolted around
too much.

The other six surviving members of the posse
mounted up, as well, and headed south toward Indian
Territory.

Danby and the rest of those bloodthirsty
butchers were up there ahead of them somewhere, Satterlee thought
as he rocked easily in the saddle. Would the posse catch up to them
today? Would any of them still be alive come sunset?

Hard to stay—but then, just getting up in the
morning under the best of circumstances was always a gamble, wasn't
it, Satterlee mused with a faint smile on his lean face.

* * *

"How many men do you reckon the gang still has
left, Sheriff?" Billy Below asked while the posse was stopped to
rest their horses, a couple of hours after sun-up.

"To answer that, I'd have to know how many of
them there were to start with, Billy, and I don't," Satterlee
replied.

"Maybe we've whittled ‘em down to where we got
‘em outnumbered."

"You can hope that if you want to, but I
wouldn't count on it."

Robert Gallagher spoke up, saying, "If you
consider how many of them there had to be in order to spread out
all over town like they did, and how many were killed in the raid
and since then, there are probably about a dozen of them still
alive."

Billy looked around at the other members of
the posse, his lips moving a little as he counted.

"And six of us," he said. "That's two-to-one
odds. How we gonna handle that, Sheriff?"

Before Satterlee could formulate a gruff
reply, Billy Below smiled and said, "It's too bad you don't have
that old Sharps of yours along, isn't it, Sheriff?"

"What good would that do?" Gallagher
asked.

"The sheriff here used to be a buffalo
hunter," Billy explained. "And like most of those fellas, he's a
good shot with a long gun. I bet if we could get within a few
hundred yards of the outlaws, Sheriff Satterlee could pick ‘em off
one at a time with his Sharps. I remember some cavalry troopers I
was drinkin’ with one time at the Wolf’s Den tellin' me about when
he used to scout for the army—"

"Don't go to tellin' tales," Satterlee
growled. "We don't have the time for it. These horses have rested
enough. Mount up."

Satterlee took the lead as the posse rode out.
He felt the eyes of the other men on him. Some of them—the younger
ones, anyway—were probably wondering about him. He wasn't
necessarily ashamed of his past, but in his time as a politician,
running for office as sheriff, he had learned to downplay certain
of the more unsavory areas of it. It was fine to say that he'd
served as a scout for the cavalry, but he'd just as soon not go
into detail about some of the things he'd done during that time of
his life.

Satterlee and Charley Blackfeather were both
good trackers, and Danby and the rest of the outlaws didn't seem to
be taking any particular pains to cover up their trail. They
followed the tracks without much difficulty. Satterlee knew they
were counting on beating any pursuit to Indian
Territory.

By midday, the posse hadn't come across any
sign of the gang except the hoofprints they were following.
Satterlee's keen eyes scanned the southern horizon for a dust cloud
or anything else that would indicate they were closing in on their
quarry. Frustration was growing stronger inside him.

He motioned Blackfeather up alongside him and
said, "How much farther you think it is to Indian Territory,
Charley?"

"If we make camp again tonight, we ought to
reach there about the middle of the day tomorrow."

Satterlee frowned and lifted a hand to scratch
his jaw.

"Danby's liable to be close enough by
nightfall that he'll push on. If he doesn't stop and we do, we'll
never catch him."

"If we keep ridin' after dark and he heads off
in another direction, we're liable to lose the trail entirely,"
Blackfeather pointed out.

Satterlee sighed and shook his head. "You're
not tellin' me anything I don't already know, Charley."

Quietly enough that the others couldn't hear,
Blackfeather said, "We ain't gonna catch them before they reach the
Nations anyways, Sheriff. I reckon you know that. What happens
then?"

"Don't say that. I don't plan to turn back
until I have to. Maybe we'll get lucky."

Blackfeather grunted. The sound was enough to
make it clear he had his doubts about that.

A short time later, Satterlee stiffened and
sat up straighter in the saddle. He had spotted a thin line of
smoke rising into the blue sky up ahead. He pointed it out to the
others and said, "Chimney smoke. Must be a ranch or some
sodbuster's shack."

"Maybe we could get fresh horses there,"
Derrick McCain suggested.

"Not likely, but you never know." Satterlee
pushed his horse to a slightly faster pace and called over his
shoulder, "Come on."

If the place was a ranch, there might be
horses they could swap for, as McCain had said, but if it was just
a small farm, the sodbuster would be lucky to have a pair of mules.
He ought to know whose spread this was, Satterlee thought. They
were in Barber County now—despite being incorporated, the county
seat of Medicine Lodge was little more than a wide place in the
road, and their lawmen were part-time farmers who rarely let go of
a plow. Even if it wasn’t his own county, with no professional
peace officers in the area he should at least be familiar with the
settlements.

But, in fact, he probably hadn't been as
diligent about such things as he should have been. If Spence were
here, he would know. He made it his business to know everything,
and that was what had made him such a good deputy.

Spence Pennycuff wasn't here, though. He was
lying back there miles behind the posse in a gully, with a pile of
dirt on top of him. The thought made a bitter taste rise in
Satterlee's throat. He hadn't allowed himself to dwell on the death
of his friend and chief deputy, concentrating instead on the job in
front of him. He pushed the thought out of his head now. He could
mourn for Spence later, after they were back in Wolf
Creek.

The posse came in sight of a good-sized house
built of lumber, which meant this was a fairly prosperous ranch
they were approaching. Having lumber freighted out here wasn't
cheap, and there sure as hell weren't enough trees on these Kansas
plains to furnish that many boards. Satterlee narrowed his eyes and
made out a sod barn and a couple of pole corrals beyond the house.
You could find enough cottonwoods along the creeks to fashion a
corral from the thicker branches, but that was about it.

The smoke rose from a chimney at one end of
the ranch house. Billy Below said, "Looks like they got dinner on
to cook. Maybe they'll share some grub with us. I could use a
home-cooked meal."

Spike Sweeney, who seldom said anything, spoke
up. "I think I know this place. The man who owns it brought in some
horses to be shod, and he talked about it. Name was—" Sweeney
paused and frowned in thought. "Mallory, Malachi, something like
that."

"You think he'd have enough horses he'd be
willin' to swap with us?" Satterlee asked.

Sweeney shook his head and said, "I couldn't
tell you, Sheriff."

They were only a few hundred yards from the
spread now. In the middle of the day like this, Satterlee expected
to see folks moving around, going about their chores. Instead he
didn't see any people or horses. The place looked deserted, which
didn't bode well for them getting any fresh horses here. But they
were this close; they would go on in anyway. Maybe get something to
eat, like Billy said.

The first sign of life was a volley of echoing
barks from a couple of big yellow curs who came bounding out from
behind the house. Dogs like that were a reassuringly commonplace
sight around a ranch.

The area in front of the house was a welter of
hoofprints, Satterlee saw, as the posse rode up. It was impossible
to tell who had come and gone, or when. He reined to a halt, rested
his hand on the butt of his gun, and called, "Hello, the
house!"

Even as he called out, he looked at the
windows, alert for any sign of movement, especially if it involved
the barrel of a gun. They had ridden into one ambush; he didn't
want to fall victim to another.

It was unlikely, though, that Danby would have
stopped here, not when the outlaws were so close to safety in
Indian Territory.

Charley Blackfeather moved his horse forward a
little and said, "It don't look like anybody's here,
Sheriff."

"But there's a fire in the fireplace," Billy
said. "You can see the smoke."

Before Satterlee could respond to either of
them, the front door opened and a man stepped out onto the small
front porch. Instinctively, Satterlee's grip on his gun tightened
for a second before he saw that the man was unarmed.

"Howdy," the man called. "What can I do for
you fellas?" Something seemed to catch his eye, and he added, "Is
that you, Sweeney?"

The blacksmith nodded. "That's right,
Mister—Mallory, is it?"

The man smiled and said, "You've got a good
memory. Yeah, it's Ezra Mallory. Are the whole bunch of you from
Wolf Creek?"

"That's right," Satterlee said. "I'm Taylor
County Sheriff G.W. Satterlee. We're on the trail of a band of
outlaws that hit Wolf Creek yesterday morning. They killed some of
our folks and looted the town. Their tracks go right past your
place here, Mallory."

"Good Lord!" the rancher exclaimed as his eyes
widened. "I'm sure sorry to hear about the trouble befallin' the
settlement, Sheriff. You're trying to chase down these
desperadoes?"

"That's right. Are you sayin' you haven't seen
them, Mr. Mallory?"

"I just got back a little while ago. My wife
and I been over to a neighbor's place, about five miles east of
here. We must've just missed those outlaws. A stroke of mighty good
luck, if you ask me."

"Yeah," Satterlee said. Something about this
situation didn't ring true to him, but he couldn't have said what
it was other than a vague stirring of unease. "What were you doin'
over at the neighbors?"

Mallory frowned. "I don't see as how that's
really any of your business, Sheriff, but as it happens, the lady
of the house was, uh, in the family way, and it was her time. My
wife's helped out at birthin's before, so we went over there to see
if she could lend a hand."

"How'd it go?" Satterlee asked in apparently
idle curiosity.

"Fine, just fine. Mother and baby both doin'
fine." Mallory seemed to be getting more nervous with each passing
second.

"Glad to hear it. This county could always use
another citizen." Satterlee changed tacks. "It'd be mighty helpful
to us if we could swap some horses with you, Mallory. Might give us
a better chance to catch those outlaws."