.45-Caliber Firebrand (15 page)

“I said, where's Leaping Wolf, you cow-eyed savages?” Trent quickly translated the question into Ute, or what Cuno took to be Ute, but repeated the trailing insult in English.

Trent's face and chest swelled. He adjusted his grip on the big conversion pistol in frustration as the five Indians merely stared back at him as though he weren't there.

Finally, one of the braves—a stocky Ute with high, ridged cheeks and wearing a bearskin tunic and Levis, with the cuffs stuffed down into high, brightly beaded doeskin moccasins trimmed with rabbit fur at the top—gave a grim smile. A couple of teeth appeared between his leathery lips. Then, in unison, all five swung their horses around, touched heels to flanks, and galloped west, heading back the way they'd come.

No doubt riding off to join the rest of their band hunkered down behind the near ridges, trapping the ranch hands and Trent and Cuno and Serenity at the base of Old Stone Face. With nowhere to run or hide even if they were inclined to.

The Utes' hoof clomps dwindled gradually. They rounded a second curve, about a hundred yards across the valley, and disappeared, their dust sifting behind them.

“Want we should go after them, Mr. Trent?”

It was one of the hands who, holding the reins of a dead rider's horse in one hand, his Smith & Wesson .44 in the other, narrowed a sharp eye at his employer, unshaven cheeks lifting with an oily smile.

“There's only five,” the waddie added. “We could catch 'em before they rejoin their group.”

Trent said nothing. He continued staring after the braves for a long time. Then, as though awakening from a trance, he cast his faintly chagrined, coyote-like glance at the hands staring at him expectantly.

Trent didn't look at the man who'd spoken, however. He raised his voice to the group. “Grab your rifles and spread out. Make a complete circle around the ranch yard, anywhere there's cover. Use two quick shots to signal an attack.”

“What about the dead men, Mr. Trent?” asked the ex-army surgeon, Riker. “Shouldn't we bury 'em?”

“We'll bury 'em tomorrow,” Trent growled as he wheeled awkwardly on his bad leg and started up the grade toward the lodge. He stopped so suddenly that he almost tripped over his bad leg and drilled that owly gaze at Cuno. “Massey.” He jerked his head toward the house. “We got an important matter that needs discussin'.”

He turned again and continued limping on up the grade.

Cuno glanced at Serenity, frowning.

“Now, what'd you do?” the graybeard asked.

Cuno hiked a shoulder. “Maybe he doesn't like the rifles, 'specially when they end up in the hands of the Injuns.”

As the others, including Serenity, began cutting the dead men out of their saddles, Cuno tramped to the bunkhouse for his rifle. He brushed dust and hay flecks from the '73's scratched stock and octagonal barrel, then set the rifle across his shoulder and headed back into the yard.

The magpies were winging over the dead men whom the living men were dragging into the stables as they looked edgily around for more Indians, muttering amongst themselves, snarling like coyotes starting to turn on themselves.

There would be a bloodbath soon. The Utes had gathered their cards and were waiting around, probably just out of sight in the valley, to play their final hand. No point in hurrying. Why not let the white eyes sweat a good, long time before they gave up their topknots?

Cuno walked slowly up to the house, looking around and listening, seeing nothing but sunlight and sage and occasional dust devils when the cool breeze stirred. When he got close to the house, he could hear a woman's voice upstairs—probably that of the woman who'd brought the kids in earlier.

“That's Mrs. Lassiter. She's upstairs with Michelle.”

Cuno stopped in his tracks and dropped his eyes from one of the upstairs windows to the porch. Trent sat in a deep wicker chair, skinny legs crossed, smoking a briar pipe.

He had a stone mug of coffee and a small uncorked bottle of rye whiskey on an overturned barrel beside him. Also on the barrel was his old conversion pistol. An 1860s-model single-shot buffalo rifle leaned against his chair—a long, heavy gun that probably fired a thumb-sized bullet of around seventy grains of gunpowder. Good at long range but overkill up close, and the breechloader was slow to reload.

“How is your daughter, Mr. Trent?” Cuno said, continuing onto the porch and climbing the steps.

Trent shook his head slightly, frowning and puffing his pipe. “I'm leaving her to Mrs. Lassiter. Can't bear to go up there now myself. Poor girl's never experienced such horror. Have a chair. Would you like a cup of coffee? Run done made some fresh. I like it with a jigger of rye these days. Takes the sting out of my hip, no thanks to a green-broke stallion I, at my age, never should have been trying to finish off in the first place.”

“No, thanks.” Cuno crossed in front of Trent and moved to the far west edge of the porch, from where, through some scattered cottonwoods and cedars, he could see past a hayfield to the open valley beyond. “My stomach's feeding on itself the way it is.”

Trent chuckled—a low, slow rumbling.

Cuno glanced over his shoulder at the man. “Isn't yours?”

“Of course.” Trent frowned angrily now, that knot alongside his nose swelling. “A man'd be a fool not to be afraid with them Injuns on the lurk. They're out they're waitin'. I can smell 'em. Leapin' Wolf's band and several other bands he probably called in from Wyoming. Gonna give us white eyes our just deserts.”

Trent chuffed a laugh again and he lowered his eyes bemusedly. What the hell was he laughing at? Cuno wondered. Cuno saw little to laugh at. In fact, since watching Trent's daughter mauled on Trent's own kitchen table, he'd found nothing to laugh about this morning at all.

Cuno turned his head back westward. His eyes saw Indians in every rock shadow and breeze-jostled twig. His palms were perpetually sweaty. “You said you wanted to talk to me, Trent.”

Behind him, only silence. Cuno turned to see the rancher staring solemnly west. Not like he was seeing anything except maybe a memory or two. Maybe memories of when he first came to this country and beat this ranch out of the brush.

Cuno said, “Trent?”

The rancher turned to him slowly, his gray eyes glassy. Suddenly, he blinked, and recognition returned to his gaze. He removed his pipe from his teeth, knocked the dottle onto the wide-boarded floor, and lifted the coffee mug from the table.

“What would you say to hitchin' up one of your wagons and getting my daughter and the Lassiter kids the hell out of here?”

“Out of here?” Cuno almost laughed. The man really was crazier than a tree full of owls. “You're hemmed in by Indians on three sides, might even be some behind the house. Even if you aren't totally surrounded, in case you haven't checked recently, you've got one hell of a high granite ridge behind you. The only way outta here is to fly, and my wagons haven't sprouted any wings.”

Trent sipped his coffee, then sucked the moisture off his mustache. “There's a way through the ridge about one mile north. About six years ago, an earthquake widened a natural cleft. Slid the mountain apart like Moses partin' the Red Sea. Just wide enough for a wagon and a team of mules. Once you're through the cleft, you still got a piece o' work ahead of you, climbing and windin' through the Rawhides, but you can make it with the wagons. I'll draw you a map.”

“Where might we be heading?”

“I want you to get my daughter and the Lassiter kids over to Fort Jessup on the eastern slopes of the mountains. It ain't much of a fort, just what's left of a tradin' post, but the army usually keeps about fifty men and a Gatling gun there over the winter, to monitor the gold camps as well as the Injuns in this area.”

Cuno studied the rancher. Trent stared back at him, and there was little of the folly that had been in his eyes a few moments ago. He looked clear, and he looked serious.

“I'll pay you,” the old rancher added with a faint air of desperation. “A thousand dollars in addition to that draft I already wrote you. Cash.”

“You don't think you have a chance here?”

Trent shook his head. “I know Leapin' Wolf. Made a truce with him 'bout fifteen years ago, after ten years of skirmishing with his cow-stealin' braves. He's a hard man. What my men did to his daughter . . .” Trent shook his head again, and his eyes turned dark as he cast his look westward again, across the valley toward the mesa. “. . . He hasn't even started to get even for that.

“You see,” Trent added, stifling a belch, “his son was supposed to take Michelle out of here, so Leapin' Wolf could kill her in his own creative fashion and then send the parts back to me. One at a time, most like. If he'd done that, I might have been able to hold on to the ranch. But Leapin' Wolf failed, and that means he'll be back with every man he has—maybe tonight, maybe at first light tomorrow. And he won't leave a single log unburned or a brick uncharred.”

Trent belched loudly and winced, pressing a fist to his chest.

“What he'd do to her if he got ahold of her, I don't even want to think about, young Massey. A bit ago, I almost went upstairs and put a bullet through her head to spare her the grief of what she's already been through and that which is comin'. But then, when I was talkin' with Runs-with-the-Ponies earlier, I remembered the fault in the mountain wall.”

He turned his hard, sad, desperate eyes on Cuno. “It's a long shot. But here you got no shot at all.”

14

CUNO WAS MORE than a little taken aback by the casualness with which Logan Trent spoke of putting his daughter out of her misery.

He studied the daffy old rancher as Trent splashed more whiskey into his coffee and chuckled. “Damn, if Run didn't overcook it again! This oughta thin it out.” He chuckled again and set the bottle down beside the coffee mug.

Cuno swung around and planted his hands on the porch, gazing east along the side of the house, toward the weeds, cottonwoods, and brush slowly rising to the base of Old Stone Face.

“I don't know,” he said, returning to the conversation at hand. “Trying to light out in those wagons seems mighty risky. We could get run down before we even make the cleft.” He lifted his gaze up the steep side of the mountain strewn with rocks and boulders and spindly shrubs and pines. “Even if we make the high country, it's no doubt nearly winter up there. The wagons could get bogged down in deep snow, and we'd all freeze . . . or starve. I'd say those kids and your daughter have better odds here in the lodge.”

“I disagree.” Trent stared at Cuno gravely, holding his steaming mug on one slender thigh clad in worn, baggy denims. “You don't know Leaping Wolf. I do. He'll attack, and when he does, we're all going to think hell split wide and spit out a thousand howling demons.”

Trent raised the mug at Cuno. “The Lassiter kids and Michelle have a better chance with you. As far as snow in the high country, it don't usually get socked in up there until late next month. You should be able to make the run in a week, if all goes well. If not, there's plenty of caves and abandoned trappers' cabins. You could hole up in those if you needed to wait out a squall or while you fixed a wagon wheel.”

“Both wagons?”

“You'll need both in case you lose one, and to haul supplies, foodstuffs, and ammunition.”

“Might have it easier on horseback.”

“Michelle can't ride in her condition, and neither can the Lassister girl, Margaret.” Trent shook his head. “A good mule skinner, and one who's also good with a forty-five, has a fair-to-middlin' chance of getting them through.”

Cuno had already made up his mind that Trent was probably right, but something still held him back. “Look, Mr. Trent, I've never run from a fight. You're gonna need all the help you can get here . . .”

Trent shook his head and, with a long, fateful sigh, heaved himself to his feet and stood staring off toward the western ranch yard and the peeled pine corrals and cottonwoods beyond. “No, you don't owe me your life, Cuno. I appreciate the sentiment. Damn little of it in the house of late, as you saw last night. But if you stay here—any man who stays here—is going to die here.

“My men have no choice. They signed up to ride for the Double-Horseshoe brand. You're the best of all the men here with a team of mules and a gun, and I'm begging you to at least
try
to get my daughter and the Lassiter children to safety.” Trent shook his head, and his voice suddenly sounded raspy. “Be a damn shame if they all burned up here on account of something my men did.”

“You're sure it's not over, then?”

“I'm sure. He'll attack once more. Only once more. Probably make us wait the rest of the day, hit us tonight, after sundown. Really make us soil our drawers, waiting and imagining what his braves have in store for us.”

Trent turned toward Cuno. He lifted the mug to his lips. His hand shook slightly as he sipped. “If you're of a mind, I'd like you to pull out at dusk. There'll be a moon, so you shouldn't have trouble finding the route. I'll map it out for you. Leaping Wolf will be watching the main trail out of here, and all routes through the western valley. He won't cover the cleft.”

“What if you're wrong?”

Trent snorted, but he stared at Cuno with watery gray eyes that were pink around the rims, and his Adam's apple wriggled around in his leathery neck with barely restrained emotion. “Won't really make that much difference, will it?” A single tear rolled out from the rancher's right eye, curved along the growth on his nose, and dribbled down his ragged cheek. “But if it looks like you won't make it, I'd like you to promise me you'll end it quickly for Michelle.”