Blood of Eagles (18 page)

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Authors: William W. Johnstone

BOOK: Blood of Eagles
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“Lord have mercy!” Kurt said.
“We been seen,” a rider said, pointing. A mile away, there were riders on a hill, bunched and lookingtheir way. Out across the sagebrush lands beyond,other riders were appearing, coming to face the intruders.
“I thought we had this whole valley cleaned out, just a month ago,” Tad Sands blustered. “All but them Barlows.”
“They want to play games?” Obermire muttered. “I'll show ‘em games.” He waved a man forward. “Colby, take ten men and hit that nearest squat. Hit 'em hard and fast, then circle back here.”
As the vigilantes galloped away, yellow bandanas flapping like signals, Kurt pointed at another of his men. “You!” he ordered. “Take the rest of these boys and swing around. You see that claim yonder, where the burned barn is? You hit that, and shoot anythin' that moves. Then head back here. Those riders out there will be followin' you or Colby ... maybe both. I'll be waitin' under that bluff yonder. When you get back here, pile off an' take cover. We'll catch ‘em in a crossfire. They won't know what hit 'em!”
NINETEEN
For a few moments, Obermire watched his gunmenmaking for the settlements. Sure enough, as he had figured, when the first bunch lit out the distantriders moved to intercept them. Then, when the second wave thundered south, the defenders milled in confusion, finally breaking into two groups, one after each vigilante band.
Obermire grinned in evil satisfaction. This was goingto be easy. His men might make it to the claims and do some killing, or they might not. It would be a close thing. Either way, they would draw in those squatters out there and then head back here with angry settlers hot on their tails.
He had chosen his ground well. To his right was a hill eroded deep by a washout bluff. To the left were thickets of scrub cedar, crowding the crests of a dozen gullies that twisted and turned along the east side of a rising flat.
It was a fine place for an ambush. Plenty of cover for them that got here first, and a crossfire field to catch whoever followed.
He walked his horse into the cover of a cedar screen and dismounted. Up there, under that bluff, would be the best spot. From there he could direct his vigilantes' fire, and pick off anybody who tried to stray west from the pursuit.
Carrying his rifle, Kurt worked his way up the clay bank slope and climbed the hill above the bluff. Shading his eyes, he squinted out across the hazed distance. His first group hadn't made it to the exposedsettlement. A gang of fifteen or twenty riders had cut them off short of the watercourse and turned them back.
Dust hid the scene out there from view, but he knew what was happening when he heard the distant ragged crackle of gunfire. The boys were throwing some lead, to get the defenders involved. They would hold there a minute or two, then feign retreat and lead their opponents right back here.
There would be plenty of time to dig in. The defenderswere split and confused. They would hesitate to follow. Then they would see the pursuit of the second band off to their left, and they would join in. It was working perfectly.
For long minutes, Kurt Obermire stood on the hill and watched his plan unfold. Then he headed down to the edge of the bluff. It was time to lay his trap.
Glancing back toward the cedar brake, he saw his horse grazing contentedly on new spring grass. It was well-hidden there, except from above. Looking beyond, he caught his breath. Just beyond a scrub thicket, there was a second horse—a short-coupled paint barely discernible through the brush.
With a whispered oath, the big man crouched and raised his rifle, his eyes scanning the terrain all around. He saw nothing, and when he looked back, the paint was gone, too. It was higher up, and in thick cover, and when it moved it faded from sight as though it had never been there.
A stray,
he told himself.
It's wandered into deeper cover.
Again he surveyed the area, more carefully this time, letting his eyes rest on every feature, every clump and thicket, every clay bank and patch.
Nothing.
Satisfied that he was alone, he returned his attentionto the distant rolling hills, where dust feathers rose on the wind. From there he could see nothing, but he could guess what was happening. His first group was on its way back now, riding hard. But nobody was pursuing them. The squatters had brokenoff to go after the second bunch.
It was ideal. Colby and his ten men would arrive minutes before the rest. He would have a dozen men already in place here by the time the other twenty arrived, with squatters hard on their tails.
“Perfect,” Kurt muttered. “That's just fine.”
Off to the right, down below the lip of the bluff, was a washout area where the loam and clay had been scoured away by some ancient flood. A tapered,almost vertical clay bank shouldered a cut in the hillside, with scrub brush above it and a talus fall below, offering a clear view to the south. From there he would be able to see and direct the killing.
He worked his way around a shoulder and found a path to climb down to the vantage point under the bluff.
He thought again of the paint horse he had glimpsed, just a hundred yards up from his own in the brushy draw, but put it from his mind as Colby's riders appeared around a rise a quarter-mile away. They had already seen what was happening behind them, and were working their way northward, stayingoff the skyline.
Obermire took a hard look around him. Then he set his rifle down to wrestle a fallen cottonwood log around for cover. Powerful shoulders hunched, he half-lifted the heavy trunk and trundled it around.
A few yards away something buzzed angrily.
He dropped the tree and stepped back, but the rattlesnake slithered off into the sparse grass, headingaway. He stomped and trod the length of his little fort, from downslope to clay bank, and stirred up no more snakes.
He was just reaching for his rifle when something moved. From the corner of his eye he saw the facelessclay bank shift and separate, as though one small section of it had slid slightly to the side. He looked up, and that little section was a person—a small intensepresence so smeared with dry mud and dusty clay that even as it moved it was hard to see! Ten feet from Kurt Obermire, the clay-daubed figure crouched, raised a rifle, and fired.
The first shot shattered Obermire's larynx, silencinghis cry in a spray of gore. The rifle's action chattered,and a second shot rode the echoes of the first. The big man's kneecap exploded, and he fell, still scrambling for his rifle. A third rapid shot punched into his shoulder, and his clawing hand went dead.
Helpless and bleeding, Obermire lay on the talus slope and watched in horror as the muddy figure methodically chambered another round in its dainty little rifle and fired again. Wave after wave of pain seared through the outlaw and convulsed in a scream that became only a gurgle through the blood pulsing from his ruined throat.
“Big
yoneg,
” the clay-smeared figure scoffed. “Big
an‘da'tsi.
” Obermire squirmed, lashed out with his good hand. A rifle butt knocked it aside.
Through misted eyes, Kurt squinted up at the small figure. A kid! Just a grubby half-grown Indian kid. Even standing over him, despising him, the boy was hard to see. He was smeared head to toe with mud—stripes and swatches of dark mud, drying dust, and reddish bank clay. Even in motion, the kid seemed part of the terrain.
“You beat my father to death,
an'da'tsi,
”the figure said. “Do you remember?”
On the talus slope, the outlaw writhed and gurgled,his life pulsing from him with each spurt of dark blood.
“I am the rattlesnake,” the kid said. “Remember that. When the worms ask who gave them your rot, you tell them it was a Cherokee rattler.”
The final shot from the small, high-powered rifle was the last sound Kurt Obermire ever heard.
 
Colby's vigilantes found what was left of the big man. They had heard the shooting moments before as they came up the draw, and now they stared down at the mutilated corpse of their leader and cast wary glances at the shrubbery all around. There was no one there. Whoever had killed Kurt Obermire was gone, leaving no more trace than a spring breeze leaves in passing.
“Look at them holes,” they muttered among themselves. “It's like Folly Downs was. Just shot to hell with little holes. It's devil work, is what it is.”
They found Obermire's horse and hoisted the dead man across its saddle. By then the rest of the vigilantes were there. The settlers behind them had veered off, alerted by the whiplash echoes of gunfire.
Colby and some others circled around for a time, searching for sign. Then a few of them headed back toward Paradise, taking Obermire's body with them.
Most of them, though, decided to go with Colby and Tad Sands, who were itching now to get at those squatters down along the creeks and draws. These were hired guns, most of them wanted men with nowhere else to go and little to lose. There was little loyalty among them, and less friendship, but they rode for the wages and would go on doing that until the wages ran out.
Colby had been put in charge. Now he stayed in charge, and the killing fever ran high in him. He had seen the money that came from the big overlandwagon, and he knew what it meant. There were high stakes here, and a railroad coming. Obermire had failed to dominate the land, and the man who succeeded would stand to share in the profits.
Not all of the Vigilance Committee would take ordersfrom Colby, but some would.
Off in the sloping hills, the little army of settlers that had outguessed Kurt Obermire and somehow avoided his trap began to disperse. There was work to do, and most of those squatters were farmers beforethey were fighters. They had families to see to, game to shoot, sheds to build, and cabins to begin.
By the time the sun was quartering in the west, there was no sign of the mounted men who had been patrolling from stead to stead. Colby and his yellow-bands made a cold meal, saddled their mounts, and headed out, but not for Paradise. Colby had read the taunting signs about horses for sale posted by an A&M Land and Cattle Company, at Haymeadows Ranch. He didn't know where that was, but if it was in No Man's Land it shouldn't be too hard to find.
Vincent Colby had been willing to ride for the colonel as long as the money was good and prospectsbright. But He had seen the vigilantes thrown back twice now, and he didn't have a good feeling about that. Jackson was dead, and Obermire was dead. If the colonel had his way, Colby might wind up dead, too, for nothing but wages.
So he would do things his own way, now. First there were horses to be taken, and maybe other livestock,too. Colby knew people across the line who paid good money for critters, and no questions asked.
He was tired of working for wages. It was the leaderswho got rich, not the hired gunnies. Maybe when the vigilantes were through, Colby could be calling the shots. And maybe that wagonful of money and the railroad profits it represented would be as much his as the colonel's.
Colby was no fool. He knew the odds in going up against any of Asa Parker's bunch. Each one of them—Casper Wilkerson with his shotgun, and the rest with their handguns—was sudden enough to make any man back off, if he could.
Folly Downs and Kurt Obermire were dead now, but it was from a rifle. No man had ever stood up to either of them with a revolver and lived.
Colby had wondered from time to time whether he might beat Tuck Kelly to the draw if it ever came to that. But even if he could—and somehow escape Casper Wilkerson's greener—there was still that crazy deadly Billy Challis out there somewhere.
And there was the only man Billy was afraid of—Asa Parker himself.
Still, he looked at the men around him while Tad Sands whispered ideas to him. “We're doin' things my way now,” he told his vigilantes. “Obermire's gone. You take your orders from me.”
Drifters and hard cases, most of them wanted somewhere, the night riders shrugged and accepted. One leader was no worse than another.
A few, though, were gone from the gang. Two yellow-ragshad gone down in the aborted attack on the settlers' digs, when sharpshooters opened up on them. Some others had returned to Paradise. And there were some who decided that they had seen enough of this part of the country. Discarded yellow cloths marked where they had gone.
 
Billy Challis and Tuck Kelly didn't go directly to town. They started that way when Asa sent for them, but Billy veered off toward the east when they saw the smoke of cookfires. From a caprock bluff above Rabbit Creek they watched as distant bands of horsemenconverged in the hazy reaches beyond a settlementof squatter camps.
They couldn't see much. Whatever was happening was miles away. But Tuck had an itchy feeling, like spiders crawling up his neck. There was somebody a whole lot closer, he felt ... somebody who was looking at them.
He scanned the terrain all around and saw nothing.“You think maybe there's somebody followin' us, Billy?”
Billy ignored him. He didn't even glance around. He held a tight rein and studied the lower lands ahead with slow feral eyes. There were three, distinct,little valleys out there, between low crests of prairie and gentle rolling hills. The valleys all funneleddown toward Rabbit Creek. And all along the valleys, spaced out at intervals of a few hundred yards to half a mile, were new claims—little squalid camps where land settlers were digging in.
“Look at that,” Billy rasped.
“Like fleas on a hound dog,” Tuck said. “Where in hell do they all come from?”
Tuck started to ride away, but Billy cursed and sat there, just watching.
“Let's go,” Tuck grumbled. “Nothin' here worth seein'.” He started to flip his reins again, then hesitated.Billy had a look on his face that he had seen before—like that of a cat hunkered on a rock, twitching its tail and watching ground squirrels play.
Tuck didn't like to rile Billy when he got that look. There was something really wrong with Billy, and it made Tuck nervous. Billy was crazy as a jimsoned cow at the best of times, but when he started grinningthat way and licking his lips, it meant killing. Tuck had seen it before.

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