.45-Caliber Firebrand (4 page)

No movement out there. But that didn't mean more Utes weren't near.

Cuno gigged Renegade forward, ahead of the wagons, and Serenity and Snowberger whipped up their teams, and they started east once more, the wagons thundering along the rutted trail. The pale, two-track trace wound into the Rawhide Range hulking blue-green in the distance, more green than blue now with the sun angling down in the west.

The fir-clad slopes were mottled here and there with thick groves of aspen, their leaves a rich October gold. The lower slopes were rusty with wild mahogany, chokecherry, and rabbit brush. The air cooled gradually and acquired a cinnamon tang touched with juniper and running pine sap.

Cuno scouted the slopes on either side of the trail, ahead of and behind the rattling wagons and the chuffing, braying teams. He was glad to see mule deer and a few elk grazing the high parks between sprawling forests. That meant no Indians were skulking about, preparing another ambush. He even spotted a brown bear rambling across a slope, stopping every now and then to grab a snootful of gooseberries before continuing his lazy, uncaring stroll toward a bowl-shaped beaver meadow.

He'd spied a few cattle here and there over the last two days of travel, but as he and the wagons continued deeper into the shelving slopes and shallow valleys along the western Rawhides, small, scattered herds appeared. Cuno didn't know much about cattle, but those he saw appeared to have been bred up from longhorns. Big, rangy beasts with red-and-white coats shagging up for winter and wearing plenty of tallow.

The sun had just fallen when they dropped into a broad valley of breeze-brushed buffalo grass and sage, pooling with cool, blue shadows. A couple of riders appeared on their right—white men in cowhide vests and Ute chaps. They jogged down out of the pines of the higher slopes, six-shooters jutting from soft, worn holsters on their hips.

Cuno, riding ahead of the wagons now, as he figured they were close to the Trent headquarters, held up his hand for Serenity and Snowberger to halt their teams. He watched the armed riders come on across the valley bottom on their deep-barreled, stout-legged cow ponies.

“Freight for the Trent ranch?” one of them asked as they checked their horses down along the trail. He was a stone-faced hombre with gray eyes beneath the funneled brim of his weather-stained Stetson. A matchstick poked out from one corner of his mouth. He and the other man both carried Spencer repeaters in saddle boots.

“That's right.”

“Thought there were supposed to be three wagons.”

“There were . . . until about two hours ago.”

The gray-eyed hombre glanced at his partner, a blue-eyed, dark-haired man with a jagged scar across his nose. “Follow us.”

The riders spurred their ponies onto the trail ahead of Cuno and followed the bending trail along the valley's broad bottom, heading northeast. The caravan traveled for fifteen more minutes before the trail curved more east than north, and there, straight ahead, hunkered at the base of a hulking, gray ridge, lay a collection of log and adobe-brick dwellings, a couple of big hay barns, and several hitch-and-rail corrals amidst scattered cottonwoods and sycamores.

The Trent headquarters looked stark and insignificant at the side of that broad valley, under that hogback mountain. The kind of man who'd carved a home for himself here—just himself, God, and the coyotes—was a man born with the bark on.

Either that or he was as crazy as a tree full of owls.

Cuno had never met Trent, only his foreman. Whoever the man was, and however tough or crazy he was, he had some questions to answer about those rifles and about the Indians Cuno should have been told about. The young freighter had been hornswoggled crossways, and Trent had cost him a good man, a wagon, and five hundred dollars worth of freight.

Followed by the rattling wagons, Renegade clomped under the Trent Double-Horseshoe portal and over split pine logs bridging a broad, stony stream curving through yellow-leafed cottonwoods and aspens. The water, sprinkled with fallen leaves and pine needles, was rolling fast out of the mountains, which were no doubt getting hammered every afternoon with chill autumn rains.

In a few weeks, the rains would become snow. Soon, this ranchstead would be socked in tight as a drum. Cuno was glad he, Serenity, and Snowberger would be heading back out to Crow Feather after a two-day layover to rest the mules. He'd already decided to spend the winter in southern New Mexico, where he'd rustle up another freighting contract in warm-weather country.

As Cuno jogged past a couple of corrals and cattle chutes, he saw a small fire in the middle of one corral, and a half dozen men gathered around a bawling calf. Fall branding, no doubt, in the wake of the autumn gather. Most of the cows would have been brought down from the summer pastures by now.

A springhouse and windmill angled past on Cuno's left, and then the two lead drovers swung right around an adobe-brick, brush-roofed toolshed and blacksmith shop, heading toward a long, low bunkhouse at the south end of the hard-packed yard.

As they did, Cuno looked up the 5 percent grade, toward the main lodge standing a hundred yards away. Flanked with cottonwoods and ash buffering it from the steep mountain wall behind, it was a big, sprawling, two-and-a-half-story barrack with smoke churning from a large fieldstone chimney. The first story was constructed of gray rock with deep-set shuttered windows. The second and third stories were all lodgepole pine, with sashed windows under the broad eaves staring grimly down on the yard. These, too, were outfitted with swung-back shutters notched with rifle slits.

A broad gallery sloped off the house's front wall. From the posts hung at least two dozen deer, elk, and moose antlers, with skulls of the same as well as bears, horses, cows, and a few other animals Cuno couldn't identify. Three shaggy, ash-colored wolf pelts hung from a rope stretched between two front gallery posts, ruffling in the crisp breeze and ever darkening as the light bled from the vast, empty sky.

Bringing his eyes back forward as he approached the bunkhouse, Cuno turned them sharply left again, to where a slender figure in a buffalo robe stood outside a horse stable. It was a girl, he realized after closer inspection, with long, silky blond hair falling from under a low-crowned sombrero.

The girl was holding a charcoal-colored kitten on her shoulder. She and the kitten were both staring warily toward Cuno and the wagons. The kitten dug its claws into the girl's shoulder, humping its back and curling its tail angrily at the rattling wagons and the clomping, blowing mules.

The girl was backing toward the house flanking her, the wind blowing her hair as she tried pulling the kitten down off her shoulder and into her arms. She stumbled slightly on a rock, and Cuno saw tan, doeskin moccasins beneath her ankle-length robe. As she wrestled the kitten into her arms, she turned her back to the yard and continued up the grade toward the house, lowering her head to the cat, her silky hair blowing out behind her in the wind.

Cuno turned to the bunkhouse, where three men in heavy coats milled, smoking coffee mugs in their hands. As the two lead drovers swung down from their saddles, one said, “Freight from Crow Feather, Boss.”

One of the men leaning against the bunkhouse wall straightened slowly and moved forward, scowling up at Cuno and the wagons. He was a slightly built man with big, round blue eyes under a single, black brow and longish, dark brown hair curling over his ears. Something in his face—the perpetually belligerent eyes, the big, white front teeth and flared nostrils—reminded Cuno of a badger.

“Thought there was s'posed to be three wagons.”

“There were!” Serenity and Snowberger barked at the same time, beating Cuno to the punch.

Badger looked over the wagons.

The gray-eyed gent who'd let the caravan into the yard growled, “Injuns, Quirt.”

Quirt settled his malevolent gaze on Cuno, tossing his head toward a large, windowless log building mounted on six-foot stilts beyond the cookhouse, the area beneath the floor jammed tight with unsplit pine logs. A block and tackle rigged with a stout iron hook hung down over the raised loading dock. “Take it on over to the supply shed. I'll send a couple men over to help you unload. Coulda gotten here sooner. It's almost chow time.”

Cuno nodded to Serenity and Snowberger, and as the men hoorahed the teams into motion once more, Cuno put his horse up to the bunkhouse's raised porch. Quirt had just tossed his coffee over the rail and had turned to enter the bunkhouse.

“I wanna talk to Trent,” Cuno said, sitting straight-backed in his saddle. “He up at the main house?”

Quirt turned, a frown wrinkling his single black brow. “You don't talk to Trent. Only Kuttner talks to Trent. Kuttner's the ramrod.”

Quirt thumbed his chest clad in a collarless, black-and-white calico shirt under a fringed, deerskin jacket. “I'm the
segundo
. Freighters deal with me. When I've checked off your freight, made sure everything's here we ordered and paid for—minus, of course, what you lost to the Injuns—then I send up to the house fer a check. And Kuttner brings it down.”

Cuno saw no reason to waste time on this badger-faced lackey. He reined Renegade around and nudged the horse with his knees, heading toward the house.

“Hey!” Quirt cried. “Don't you understand
English
?”

Cuno kept going. A big man in soiled buckskins, a long rat-hair coat, and a wool cap had led a tall, black horse from the stable on the right.

Behind Cuno, Quirt shouted, “Hahnsbach, stop that son of a bitch!”

The big man dropped the black's reins and, as Cuno was about to round the stable's front corner, bolted out in front of Renegade and grabbed the skewbald's bridle. He wore a thick, curly brown beard and a patch over one eye.

“Where you think you're going, amigo?” he said in a faint German accent.

“Let go my horse, friend,” Cuno said mildly, concentrating on not letting his right hand slide toward the grips of his ivory-gripped .45. He wanted an explanation from the head honcho, not a lead swap with the man's cow nurses.

The man held Renegade's bit firm in his big hand as Quirt came stomping across the yard toward Cuno, spurs chinging angrily, batwing chaps whipping back against his legs. “I don't like it when folks don't listen to me, see? Now, I told you, no one talks to Trent but Kuttner. If you got a burr under your tail—”

Quirt cut himself off as Cuno, unable to control his fury anymore, removed his boot from his right stirrup, set the sole of the same boot flat against Hahnsbach's chest, and kicked it forward hard. The assault took the big German by surprise, and he jerked straight backward, releasing Renegade's bridle bit and, with an indignant grunt, fell on his broad ass in the dirt.

“Goddamnit!” Quirt cried.

The badger-faced
segundo
bounded forward and grabbed Cuno's right arm. Cuno tried to jerk himself free, but the ramrod was stronger than he looked.

Growling and mewling with exasperation, he ground his fingers into Cuno's arms as he flung his other hand toward the reins held taut in Cuno's left fist. Accidentally, Cuno gouged Renegade's ribs with his spurs, and the horse pitched suddenly, loosing a shrill whinny.

Cuno tried to grab the horn, but Quirt's own flailing hand was in the way. Before he knew it, the burly young freighter was tumbling off Renegade's side and barreling into Quirt.

Ah shit, Cuno thought.
Here we go . . .

4

QUIRT SCREAMED WITH fury as he and Cuno piled up in the dirt together.

Through the wafting dust, Cuno saw the other two, eager-eyed waddies leaping over the bunkhouse's porch rail, while a stocky Chinaman in a long white apron and a wolf hat with earflaps came running out of the cookhouse wielding a spatula in one hand, a cast-iron skillet in the other.

“It's a fight, boys!” the Chinaman bellowed.

Cuno pushed up on his knees. Rage surged in him. As Quirt lifted his head from the dirt, Cuno rammed his right fist into the
segundo
's broad cheek. Quirt's head snapped back, and he cursed shrilly, spittle frothing on his lips.

Cuno gained his feet and stepped back, realizing his mistake when he saw the other two drovers closing on him, grinning malevolently, crouching and balling their hands at their sides. He'd forgotten about the German until he backed into a stout, yielding object that smelled like rancid sweat and chewing tobacco.

Hahnsbach grabbed him with a savage grunt and pinned his arms behind his back.

Quirt grinned as he pushed off his knees, his longish brown hair blowing around his head, his leather hat having piled up against the horse stables. “Hold him, Fred.”

Quirt moved toward Cuno. Behind the ramrod, Serenity and Snowberger, having scrambled down from their wagons at the first sign of trouble, were jogging toward the melee in front of the stables, Serenity flanking the Chinaman, and Snowberger moving up behind the two grinning waddies from the bunkhouse porch.

Cuno tried jerking his arms free of the German's grip, but there was no doing. The big man had him firm.

Quirt strode up with a wolfish grin on his thick lips and buried his right fist in Cuno's solar plexus. Cuno's knees buckled and he went down, the German still holding his arms behind his back.

Sucking air into his lungs, he heard Serenity Parker give a shrill, Indian-like war cry, and in the upper periphery of his vision he saw the bandy-legged graybeard, minus his bandoliers now, leap onto the squat Chinaman's back and snake his mule-eared boots around the stout man's waist. The Chinaman bellowed furiously as the two went down in a limb-flinging pile, the Chinaman trying to brain the old graybeard with his spatula and Serenity howling like a trapped lobo.