Bloody Trail (16 page)

"Your pards have gone over the Divide,
mister," Satterlee replied. "You might as well surrender if you
don't want to wind up just like them."

A moment of tense silence went by. Then the
man said, "You're a blasted lawman, aren't you? You were with that
posse from Wolf Creek."

"That's right. Sheriff G.W. Satterlee. If you
surrender—"

"Surrender, hell! So you can take me back and
hang me?" A fit of coughing came from the man before he resumed,
"Anyway, I won't live that long. So you just come on in here,
Sheriff. I got me a hankerin' to kill one more damn star packer
before I—before I die."

"Shot in the lungs, aren't you?" Satterlee
asked. "I can hear you wheezin' from out here, son. Why should I
step in there and let you shoot me when I can just wait out here
for you to die?"

Satterlee figured he knew the answer, and sure
enough, the outlaw said, "Because if you don't—I'll kill this
woman!"

A pained cry came from a female throat.
Satterlee's jaw tightened at the sound.

"Let her go," he urged. "Once she's out of
there, maybe we can help you. You might not be hurt as bad as you
think, and we've got a doctor with us."

That last was a lie, of course. By now, Doc
Munro ought to be well on his way back to Wolf Creek with the
wounded men. But this low-life owlhoot wouldn't have any way of
knowing that.

"Forget it," the man said. "You come in here
now, or I—I'll kill her, I swear it."

"Hold on, hold on," Satterlee muttered. He
looked back over his shoulder at Blackfeather and motioned for the
Seminole to stay where he was. Blackfeather shook his head
stubbornly, but Satterlee made a curt gesture to reinforce the
order.

"All right," he told the outlaw. "I'm comin'
in."

It was only about five steps to the door. Five
long steps, Satterlee thought as he started in that direction. His
heart slugged hard inside his chest. He had planned to serve as
sheriff for a while, maybe two or three more terms if he could keep
convincing the voters to elect him, then find himself some nice
widow woman to marry and retire. Maybe buy a store or something.
He'd spent too blasted long in jobs where, from time to time, he
got shot at.

Those plans might not work out. Be a shame if
they didn't. But there was nothing he could do, now, except go
ahead.

From inside the room, the woman called,
"Sheriff, I—I think he's dead!"

Satterlee started to relax and step into the
open doorway, then instinct warned him this might be a trick. The
outlaw could have whispered to the woman what he wanted her to say,
figuring it would make Satterlee drop his guard.

Instead, Satterlee went around the edge of the
door low and fast, and when a gun roared deafeningly, he wasn't
surprised. The bullet flew over his head, through the door, and
ripped a gouge in the wallpaper on the other side of the hall.
Satterlee's eyes took in the scene instantly: the bed where the
wounded outlaw lay, bloody bandages wrapped around his bare chest,
the pale-faced, terrified woman who lay next to him with his left
arm looped around her neck, choking her. The outlaw was fumbling at
his gun, trying to cock it again after missing his first
shot.

With the woman right there, Satterlee didn't
want to do any shooting of his own. Instead he leaped across the
room and struck the wrist of the man's gun hand with the barrel of
his gun. Bone snapped under the impact. The outlaw yelled in pain
as his fingers went limp and the gun butt slid out of
them.

Satterlee put the muzzle of his gun against
the man's forehead. He trembled a little from the urge to pull the
trigger. Instead of doing that, he said, "Let the lady
go—now!"

The outlaw's arm fell away from the woman's
neck. She lunged to her feet and ran from the room, crying
hysterically, as the reaction hit her now that she was safe. The
sheriff mentally heaved a sigh of relief, himself—he hadn’t failed
the Mallorys like he did the Haskins family.

Satterlee said, "Only reason I'm not blowin'
your brains out right now, mister, is because I don't want to ruin
that poor woman's sheets. I figure she's suffered enough just from
bein' around you animals."

The outlaw swallowed hard but looked up at
Satterlee with defiance in his eyes. "Do it!" he urged. "I'm gonna
die anyway!"

"Damn right you are." Satterlee drew in a deep
breath. "But not before you tell us where Jim Danby's hideout
is."

"You can go to—"

A footstep sounded at the doorway behind
Satterlee. "That you, Charley?" he asked.

"Yeah, Sheriff," Blackfeather replied,
stepping into the room.

"You see my friend here?" Satterlee asked the
outlaw. "He's half black, half Injun. That means there's nothin' he
likes better than carvin' on a white man with a knife. Am I right,
Charley?"

Blackfeather just grunted in obvious
agreement.

"So you can talk, or I'll just walk out of
here and leave you with him," Satterlee went on. "I'm bettin' he
can find out what I want to know."

Blackfeather stepped up beside Satterlee with
his razor-sharp knife in his hand.

Satterlee knew from the terror he saw in the
outlaw's eyes that he was going to get the answers he
wanted.

* * *

"First you make out that I'm simple-minded,
and then you go around tellin' folks that I'm some sort of crazy
savage," Blackfeather said with a faint smile as they rode away
from the Mallory ranch. "I'm gonna start to think you don't like
me, Sheriff."

"There's nobody I'd rather have along with me
on this hunt, Charley," Satterlee told him honestly. "Nobody at
all."

The wounded outlaw had died a short time after
babbling out the general location of Danby's hideout down in Indian
Territory—the Sans Bois Mountains, down in the Choctaw Nation. They
got nothing more specific from him. He'd been badly hurt, slowly
drowning in his own blood from the bullet he had taken during the
raid on Wolf Creek. Mallory had explained that the whole gang had
stopped to steal what money and supplies were on hand at the ranch,
along with swapping a few of their horses. The wounded man hadn't
been able to go on any farther, so Danby figured to leave him there
to die. The other two, Parker and Drake, were good friends of his,
so they'd offered to stay behind and bury him when he was gone,
then catch up to the rest of the gang.

They wouldn't be doing any catching up now.
Instead, Mallory would be burying all three of them, although
Satterlee told him it would be all right to drag the carcasses well
away from the house and leave them for the scavengers. Whichever
the rancher decided to do, Satterlee didn't care.

Now, the posse was reunited and moving fast,
following the tracks of the remaining outlaws. The odds weren't
even yet, but they were closer. Unless there were more members of
the gang waiting at the hideout, which was entirely possible,
Satterlee reminded himself.

Now that they had a pretty good idea of the
general area Danby was bound for, Satterlee was willing to risk
riding part of the night. He called a short halt at dusk to let
horses and men rest and eat a skimpy supper. When the moon rose and
spilled its silvery light across the prairie, they pushed
on.

That was the way it continued all night, until
finally everyone was too weary to keep going. They rested for
several hours then, and took up the chase again early the next
morning, as soon as there was enough gray light in the sky for them
to see where they were going.

"The tracks are fresher," Charley Blackfeather
said after the sun was up. "We made up a little ground on
‘em."

"That's good," Satterlee said, but a sinking
feeling had begun to grow stronger inside him. He had a decision
coming up, and he didn't like it.

At mid-morning, the posse came to a broad,
shallow river lined with grassy, sandy banks. Satterlee reined in,
rested his hands on the saddlehorn, and leaned forward to ease
weary muscles. There was no easing what was in his mind,
though.

"That's the Cimarron, isn't it,
Charley?"

"Yeah," Blackfeather said. "You know what that
means, Sheriff."

It wasn't really a question, but Satterlee
said, "Yeah, I do. We crossed over into Indian Territory a while
back. I'm out of my jurisdiction now, and that means we ain’t legal
anymore. I’m entitled to lead a posse through other Kansas counties
in pursuit of criminals, but not into the Nations."

"Legal or not," Billy Below said, "we ain't
turnin' back, are we, Sheriff?"

"We know where their hideout is now," Rob
Gallagher added. "At least, we have a pretty good idea."

"I don't have any choice," Satterlee said, a
harsh note of anger and frustration entering his voice. "I'm sworn
to uphold the law. I can't go any farther. This is a matter for
somebody else now."

"The Indian police don't have any authority
over white men," Blackfeather pointed out. "The only ones who do in
Indian Territory are the deputy U.S. marshals who work out of Fort
Smith, and that's a long way from here."

"I can get word to them," Satterlee said. "Let
them know where Danby's holed up."

"By that time, they may not be there anymore,"
McCain argued.

"What you’re sayin' is true," Satterlee said,
"but it doesn’t change anything. We're goin' back."

"No," Blackfeather said quietly. "I don't
think we are."

Satterlee looked around at the other men. All
five of them wore grim, determined expressions, even the normally
happy-go-lucky Billy Below.

"I can't let you—" Satterlee began.

"You can't stop us," Sweeney interrupted. "You
said it yourself, Sheriff. You don't have any jurisdiction
here."

Satterlee's mouth twisted bitterly. They were
right. He couldn't stop them from continuing to pursue the
outlaws.

And it was eating at his guts that he couldn't
join them.

"All right," he said. "But if you go on,
you'll be renegades, too, in the eyes of the law."

Blackfeather shrugged. "I reckon we'll risk
it." He lifted his reins and turned his horse. "So long,
Sheriff."

"You could wish us luck if you wanted to,
Sheriff," Gallagher said.

Satterlee just sat his horse in stolid silence
as the others fell in behind Blackfeather and headed
south.

Then he whispered, "Good luck," and turned his
own horse back to the north. He rode in that direction, shoulders
slumped.

CHAPTER NINE

The posse—some of them far too citified to
Spike’s way of thinking—had surprised him, and proven their mettle
when they came up against some of the raiders. There’d already been
plenty of blood spilled, and many would have turned tail, but these
fellas had all hung on and seemed to still have their teeth
sharp.

Since entering the Indian territories they’d
ridden hard, covering thirty miles or more while the big scout,
Blackfeather, had tracked, sometimes at a lope. They’d traded off
dragging two pack mules, each loaded with hard tack, jerky, bacon,
dried beans, and extra ammunition. Kansas grass as far as the eye
could see had become ravines flanked with red oak, post oak, white
cedar, and shortleaf and loblolly pine, with occasional thickets of
dogwood lining those cuts hiding creeks. Even with the country
getting thicker, but still hard-surfaced, Blackfeather could
conjure up more sign while mounted than most men with their nose to
the ground. It had been a hell of a lot of miles to cover,
considering the rain hadn’t blessed the country for a good long
time, and the ground was hard as the hubs of hell. But they’d
finally staked out the stock and rolled out blankets under some
post and red oaks near a trickle of muddy water, downed some jerky
and hardtack, and were now watching the moon do a slow climb to the
east, each in their own thoughts.

Blackfeather had taken the first watch, and
he’d be coming for Spike in a couple of hours, so Spike knew he
should be grabbing some shuteye rather than using up the last of
his tobacco—but it was a habit, a smoke before turning in. And,
hell, tomorrow might be his day to cross over The Divide like a few
of the posse already had, should they catch up with Danby and his
dirty dogs. Especially if they were outnumbered as much as Spike
suspicioned they might be. He was no expert tracker, but the tracks
they followed seemed to be made by the better part of a dozen
riders, and who knew how many there may be when the gang reached
their destination?

Many of the men in Wolf Creek still held
deep-seated grudges against those who’d carried the colors of Lee
and Jefferson Davis, and Spike didn’t hide the truth that he had—in
fact, he carried them as a badge of honor, still wearing a
butternut kepi to shade his eyes, a kepi with a polished brass
Davis Guard medal prominently displayed above the eye shade. The
medal was won when a small force of forty-one men turned a fleet of
five Union gunboats at Sabine Pass, and saved the day.

Spike had overheard a couple of the boys, Rob
Gallagher and Red Myers, badmouthing his kepi earlier on this trek,
before the ambush, when they’d slowed to a walk to rest the horses,
and gigged his steel gray up alongside Rob Gallagher.