Double Mountain Crossing (6 page)

A drumming of hooves stole his attention from the migrating herd. In the east there was a horseman pushing hard in a straight line towards where he sat on the grass. A long plume of dust trailed the galloping pony. It was Swift-Foot, running the grey into the ground.

Suddenly astonished at himself, Short-Lance realized he was angry with Swift-Foot for wasting the pony's energy, and it occurred to him that he had placed himself in the position of leader ever since the night on the Double Mountains. On reflection, perhaps it was well to be so, for he knew the day would come when he would be a war chief and lead his people. The feeling nestled deep inside, an overwhelming emotion of pride and confidence in
his own
ability. He knew beyond certainty the night on the
Double
Mountains
had made him into a man. Nothing would be the same again.

As he waited for Swift-Foot he scratched at the itching thigh that bore the scars from the peppering of buckshot, the north wind ruffling his deerskin shirt and tugging at his braids. He sniffed at the freshening breeze, his mouth a grim line.

In a thunder of hooves, Swift-Foot hauled back on the rawhide hackamore and the little grey went down on its haunches to obey. It stood breathless, hooves stamping. With disgust, Short-Lance noted the foam at the pony's mouth and the sweat lathered across its shoulders. There was no game on the saddle.
Another hungry night.

Impervious to his friend's disapproving stare, Swift-Foot vaulted from the pony's back, waving the ancient Remington in the air.

“Our people!
They are in the canyon! I cut sign of Littleman the scout. I'd know his pony tracks anywhere. The chestnut who always leads with his left forefoot…” The words gushed. “…The sign was fresh and I tracked him to the head of the canyon. He said a hunting party is camped at Tule Creek. They are making the last buffalo hunt before winter, then they will ride to join the main village camped in the timbers on the
North Fork
of the
Red River
.”

Short-Lance came to his feet, his anger forgotten. The Great Spirit must have listened to his prayers. “They are here? Is Thunderhawk with them?”

“I did not ask. I was in a hurry to return and tell you. Now we can reach the canyon before dark. Just think,” he slapped his friend's back, “We will be back among our people again. I will be happy to see my friends. I was beginning to find this prairie a lonely place.”

Short-Lance regarded his friend, recognising they were already beginning to grow apart. The boy did not understand. “When Thunderhawk hears our story he will carry the pipe among the braves and I, Short-Lance, shall smoke with them. He will lead us back to the mountains and he will take the white man's life in exchange for that of his brother. When that grizzly old man sees Thunderhawk, his big killing gun will not do him any good. His grey hair will decorate Thunderhawk's leggings.”

“What do you mean when you say you will smoke the pipe?”

Short-Lance's steely eyes probed his friend's face. Even now, the boy could not see what was in his heart. He felt sorry for Swift-
Foot,
he was only a boy wanting to return to the safety of his, people. He had learned nothing. “I am going back with the war party.”

“But we have just escaped from there!”

Short-Lance nodded and looked away to the mountains that were invisible in the distance. “You speak the truth, but you forget one thing. The white man made a target of me too.” He absently fingered the scars on his leg then looked away, the freshening wind plucking at his raven black hair. “Like a boy I ran.” He spat it out angrily.

“But you
are
a boy,” Swift-Foot insisted.

Short-Lance shook his head slowly, his eyes taking on an intensity Swift-Foot had never seen before. “Not any more, my brother. From this day forward I am a man. I swear it by all my relatives.”

Redrock was a wide open frontier town.

Overlooking the rough and ready settlement a tall rampart of red rock gave the town its name and sheltered the one street from the winter wind that howled in from the prairie. At the foot of the gigantic rock wall was a natural spring that welled up to fill a pool where passing Apaches and Comanches had watered their ponies until the coming of the white man. An enterprising stage line manager had utilised the spring, building a relay station. As often happened, a settler passing through, tired of travelling, looked long and hard at the land and decided to go no further. He built the trading store and ran a few head of beef and chickens to help make ends meet. After that, other travellers stopped and a town had blossomed.
A saloon, a grain store, hardware store, a hotel, a barbershop.
Each day someone new was hammering up a shingle to advertise their business.

Morgan Clay rode into Redrock leading the loaded packhorse. He was hunched and tired as he walked the lineback dun along
Main Street
, hat pulled down low over his eyes, ears picking out all the different sounds of a bustling frontier town. Horses were tied in groups of two or three along the hitching rails, neighing and stamping restlessly, tails switching at bothersome flies. Wagon beds creaked as farmers set out back to their ranches, the high tinkling of a piano drifted from the saloon mixed with the rising gabble of chatter and the coarse laughs of the working girls as they touted for early afternoon business. The dun's hooves plodded mechanically, ears occasionally twitching as the odour of a strange horse reached his nostrils.

Morgan saw what he was looking for half way along the street; The Redrock Commercial Bank. Now it was flanked by two new buildings that had grown from the prairie during his four month absence. He marvelled at the way some towns seemed to spring up overnight into prosperous, bustling communities, and yet on a second visit could be a ghost town, roots pulled up, a lifetime's belongings crammed into the bed of a Conestoga wagon at almost a moment's notice. One town he'd ridden into had long been deserted, sagebrush growing in the main street, and yet in one of the houses there had been a table set for dinner, all the knives and forks neatly laid out, but the food on the plates long rotten. It was the way of the west: Sudden. He could only be glad it had not happened here. Not yet.

His journey complete, wearily he reined in and dismounted.

The bank teller was a fussy, middle-aged man dressed in a striped shirt and armbands with small wire framed glasses perched on the end of his nose. He looked up with interest when Morgan dumped two ore sacks on his polished counter. In his many years as a clerk he had come to recognise that look, confidence bolstered by whatever was presented for inspection. Sometimes it was iron pyrites, “Fool's Gold,” but more often than not, especially with older men, it was the real thing. One look at a handful of nuggets was enough to send him scurrying for the manager. With a hint of a smile, Morgan waited.

“My name, sir, is Benjamin B. Coates. I should be pleased to do business with you.” The speaker was a barrel chested, prosperous looking man with ruddy cheeks and a ready smile, whose eyes were locked on the nuggets spilling from the ore sack onto the counter. “My clerk says there's more.”

“Outside, on my horse.”

Coates's eyes flashed quickly round the few waiting customers. “Well, I think we'd better bring them inside,
then
we can continue our discussion in my office.”

Morgan nodded and led the clerk outside to help him unload the bay. Sacks in hand, they returned into the bank and crossed to the rear office where Coates had set up a pair of scales and weights on his desk. He smiled greedily at his new customer and stepped round him to close the door.

Near the street door, a wiry young man with sharp eyes and a thin face had watched the whole performance. A sly grin plucked at the corner of his mouth,
then
he unhooked his thumbs from his gun belt and sauntered out into the street. He paused for a moment on the boardwalk, inspecting the lines of the dun gelding and the bay, then stepped down between the rails and walked over the street in an easy long legged gait to take a seat on the porch outside the restaurant. He tilted the old chair back against the wall and set his gaze on the front door of the Redrock Commercial Bank.

The few men who called him friend called him Shuck, his real name Sherman Alison, but he had been called many things by many men. His pa used to say if the Good Lord made good men real good, then he also made bad men unholy bad. Shuck fell heavily into the second category.

He had been born in a log cabin near the upper reaches of the
Cape Fear River
in
North Carolina
where his pa had farmed a few acres. Josh Alison had been a hardworking, God-fearing man who had taught his son all he could to set him straight for the day when he would go out into the world. An accident felling timber had killed him, and his wife, alone in a country where a woman without a providing husband wasn't expected to last long, had remarried within the month. She had made a bad choice.

Joe Christian was nothing that the name implied. He was downright lazy, content to sit in the cabin swilling rotgut whisky and leering at his new wife's ample buttocks rather than work out a sweat tending to the crops that would feed them throughout the next winter. When his demands on his wife weren't entirely satisfied he leaned heavily on violence to chastise her.

Like most mountain boys, Shuck had been using a squirrel rifle from the moment his hands had been big enough to grasp the stock. One evening when Joe Christian beat the hell out of his mother while in a drunken stupor, the fourteen year old Shuck had seen it just one time too many. It had been the simplest thing to point the rifle and pull the trigger, and all he'd felt had been a sense of relief when Joe Christian's head splattered all over the wall. The law gunning for him, Shuck had stolen a neighbour's thoroughbred and
hightailed
it for
Tennessee
as fast as the stallion's hooves would make tracks.

He had drifted ever since. St. Louis, Fort Leavenworth, and on up the Oregon trail through Laramie and Cheyenne, then back South to cut the Spanish trail down through Colorado Territory to Santa Fe, then west again to the new boom town of Redrock. Since that first time he had used a gun on a man, the years had hardened him. His senses had been sharpened by incidents with Indians of all nations, and life in the lawless frontier towns had refined his prowess with a gun. He had soon learned the quickest way to fill his belly was by cutting himself a beef from somebody else's herd, and the easiest way to fill his pockets was by doing somebody else's dark deeds. As fast as he passed through settlements, Wanted Flyers bearing his name would appear on Sheriffs' notice boards and his freedom diminished accordingly, leaving him only the newer towns where nobody knew his name. He had become the kind of man honest men avoid looking into the eyes of, his stance too recognisable, the tools of his trade too obvious. The mannerisms; the right hand hovering near the Colt, eyes constantly shifting to study his environment, back always against the wall so he could see the door. It was all there for the eyes of the observant.

The name Shuck Alison had not yet come to rank along with those whose names were synonymous with speedy gunplay, but men who had seen him draw his Colt swore he was fast as chain lightning. Those that faced the cavern of his pistol barrel had never sworn anything.
Ever again.
He was that kind of man.
Looking for easy pickings.

As he sat on the porch of the restaurant in the late afternoon, he gazed speculatively at the doors of the bank across the street. He had the feeling he'd just caught scent of a juicy carcass, wide open for the first wise buzzard who could land the fastest. He reckoned with a little subtle planning, he would be just that buzzard to take the first big bite. Anne Marie would fix it. He'd seen her take a hundred old men like that prospector and get away with it, so why should this one be any different?

***

Morgan Clay emerged from the bank and patted the dun's neck as he scanned the street, missing nothing; the storekeeper collecting in goods that had been displayed outside his store, the trio of children rolling in the dirt, the
pistolero
sitting on the boardwalk in front of the restaurant, the ranchers talking cows as they stacked provisions into their wagons. Morgan slipped the reins of his two horses from the rail and led them down the dusty street to the livery stable.

The old
negro
ostler poked a head from a cubby-hole to watch Morgan strip off the dun's saddle and the bay's pack rig. A man of habit, Morgan waved away the old man and instead rubbed down his horses himself, running over them with a currycomb before he forked down hay from the loft. He grained them, then drew his ten
gauge
from the saddle scabbard and threw his saddlebag over his shoulder before he sauntered to the ostler's room at the rear of the barn. The white haired
negro
was stuffing wood into a pot bellied stove, coaxing the flames to heat a battered coffee-pot that stood on top.

“Mind if I set a spell?”

The
negro
looked over his shoulder in surprise. After all those years in the south he still hadn't got used to the fact a white man might actually want to speak to him. “Sure, suh. Want some coffee?”