Last Lawman (9781101611456) (21 page)

But the sheriff’s horse continued bucking and squealing horrifically, and Mason’s shot nearly blew the hat off Magpie Quint’s head. Quint returned the shot, glaring indignantly, and the Vulture’s shot found its mark in Mason’s chest.

The sheriff heard himself groan as the bullet punched him back in his saddle. Turning his head slightly, he saw Bill Stockton on the ground, his bloody, hatless body being pummeled by his own horse’s prancing hooves. Mason grunted loudly, gritting his teeth, as he lifted himself to a sitting position once more and triggered another round at the Vultures though his crow-hopping horse made it impossible for him to see if his lead struck any of the laughing, shooting killers.

He did see Gentry standing nearly straight up in his stirrups, firing a pistol in each hand while howling like a poisoned coyote, gobbets of blood and chunks of flesh being blown out of his body by the Vultures’ fierce fusillade. Then Mason’s horse took off at a gallop through the Vultures, and all the sheriff could do was grab his saddle horn, dropping his pistol in the process, and hold on.

Hunkered low in his saddle, Spurr ground his moccasin-clad heels into Cochise’s flanks and whipped his rein ends against the horse’s right hip, urging more speed. The wind basted his hat brim against his forehead. The ground slid by in a green-tan blur though he kept his eyes straight ahead, toward the low ridge on the other side of which sat the Elkhorn Creek outpost.

The shooting had died several minutes ago.

It was a good five-mile ride to the outpost from where Spurr had first heard the shooting, and he wouldn’t have been able to keep up the hell-for-leather pace without killing his horse. He was too experienced a frontiersman not to stop the horse when he felt Cochise’s stride begin to falter.

He was just too far from the outpost to be of much help to Mason’s crew. Cursing continuously and casting his terrified gaze toward the north, he rested the horse, then walked him before running him again. Gradually, the outpost shifted into view on a distant slope. A string of riders was riding away from it to the north, angling westward.

The Vultures.

Dread grew like a grapefruit-sized tumor in the old lawman’s belly. His heart hammered, hiccupped, and hammered again. As the fort grew before him, the line of riders drifted out of sight behind a distant ridge.

Spurr drew rein suddenly. A horse stood about a hundred yards away from him as well as from the outpost beyond it. Spurr urged Cochise ahead more slowly. Gradually, the horse grew in his vision until it became obvious that the horse was not alone. A rider straddled it, the man slumped forward against the grulla’s neck.

Mason’s horse.

Spurr pulled up to the sheriff’s mount, which nickered and shied away, curveting. Mason’s head hung down along the side of the horse’s neck. The sheriff’s pin-striped shirt was pink in places, crimson with fresh, oozing blood in others. The horse continued to turn, rolling its eyes around wildly, thoroughly terrorized but also exhausted, and before it could trot away, Spurr grabbed its reins. He swung down from his saddle and walked over and looked up at Mason.

“Dusty…?”

Spurr grimaced as he placed a hand on the sheriff’s left shoulder. He was shot up bad. He might have been dead. He wasn’t moving. Spurr jerked the man’s shoulder slightly and was surprised when Mason stiffened and lifted his head a little.

The man grunted, tried straightening his back, but cursed softly and rested his chest back down against the grulla’s neck. His hat was gone, and his thin, sweat-matted hair was mussed.

“Easy, Dusty,” Spurr said. “I’ll get you down.”

Mason turned to him. Even the man’s face was splattered with blood—likely from the many wounds in his chest and belly. Blood slithered down from both nostrils, matting his mustache. He ground his jaws. His eyes were dark and flat with pain.

“Spurr…?” His voice was a wheeze that barely made it through his lips.

Spurr squeezed the man’s bloody arm, his own knees threatening to buckle. “I’m here, Dusty.” He blinked hard as tears oozed out of his eyes to roll down his cheeks.

“Spurr,” Mason said again, only slightly louder this time. His eyes bored into Spurr’s for a full ten seconds, his jaws quivering as he ground them together. And then he said between quick, shallow breaths, “Kill ’em…,” before his eyes fluttered and he rolled off the saddle toward Spurr.

Before Spurr could catch him, Mason hit the ground and expired with a sigh at the old lawman’s feet.

Spurr was tired and so was his horse. He wanted nothing more than to hightail it after the Vultures, but if he didn’t blow himself out within a few miles, he’d blow out Cochise. And then he’d have failed miserably in his endeavor, leaving the Vultures free to continue looting, raping, and killing.

With much back-and-bellying, he managed to lift Mason up onto the grulla, belly down across his saddle, arms and legs dangling. Breathless and cursing his nearly useless body, hoping he could squeeze enough juice out of it for one more job—the biggest job of his entire career—he hauled himself back into the leather and led the grulla onto the outpost.

As he’d suspected, the Vultures had killed his entire group, shot them down like coyotes in a pen. Mason’s group hadn’t had a chance. They’d been surprised, outnumbered, and burdened by their horses, two of which lay amongst the twisted dead and puddled blood. The rest had fled.

The soldiers probably hadn’t had much more of a chance than Mason had. Stanhope had the cunning of a crazy man—a crazy killer who lived to draw blood—and sane men had little chance against him. Spurr saw the buzzards circling beyond a rise to the north and knew that that was most likely where the soldiers were.

Staring down at the two old territorial marshals, Spurr’s knees turned to water. He dropped to one knee and doffed his hat, ran a gnarled hand through his thin, long, brown hair streaked with gray. Anguish gripped him as he gazed down at Gentry, who lay with his head propped on the back of one of Stockton’s boots. The Wyoming lawman’s jaws hung wide, and flies buzzed around him, flicking in and out of his mouth. Spurr waved his hat futilely over both men, trying to disperse the insects.

Finally, he gave up, dropped his hat, lowered his head, and massaged his temples. He felt old and defeated but managed to heave the heavy feeling aside by working up a furious fire within him. Lifting his head once more, he looked in the direction the Vultures had ridden off less than a half hour ago.

They’d gain another half day to a day on him, but their sign should be easy to follow. When he’d rested himself and his horse and picked out a spare horse from the outpost’s corral, he’d get back after them.

Alone?

Hell, why not alone? Ain’t that how I’ve always worked it before?

I’ll manage. At least, I’ll kill one or two, slow ’em down a mite before I can summon more lawmen onto their trail.

He considered riding south to Fort Stambaugh for help and decided against the idea. That would set him back at least a week. He could telegraph both his own boss, Chief Marshal Henry Brackett, and Fort Stambaugh from South Pass City, if there was still a working telegraph in the old mining town.

Spurr straightened, donned his hat, and led Cochise over to the holding corral. He unsaddled the horse, set his tack over the corral’s top rail, then led the horse inside amongst the wary, inquisitive others—all bays belonging to the soldiers and which the Vultures obviously hadn’t wanted to
fool with—and grained and watered him under the lean-to shelter angling off the barn.

He chose one of the bays to help him with his burial detail. When he’d saddled the mount, he used it to drag his dead partners out to the creek that wound along the south end of the fort. He’d found a spade in the barn, and, removing his sweat-soaked shirt, began digging a hole in the sandy creek bottom, where the loose sand made for fairly easy work. He’d dig only one grave and roll the bodies inside. They deserved better, even young Strang, but they’d understand that it was all he had time for.

Shadows grew long there in the creek bottom, the water trickling along the bed’s far side. A box elder growing up from a nearby island offered shade, but it was still hot, and the blackflies were biting. Spurr didn’t push himself too hard, taking a couple of smoke breaks, pausing frequently to drink water and to nip from a brandy bottle he’d brought from Humphreys’s ranch. His hair, beard, and sinewy, powder-white torso were slick with sweat.

He’d almost cleared a grave four feet deep and four feet wide when he stopped digging suddenly, dropped the shovel, and reached for the rifle he’d leaned against a boulder. Racking a round into the chamber, he brought the rifle to bear on the man sitting on the creek’s far bank, on the other side of the box elder.

“You just hold it right there, you sneaky devil!”

“I been holdin’ it right here,” the half-breed said. “For the past ten minutes.” He had his knees up near his bear claw necklace, his arms wrapped around them. He opened his hands as though to show that they were empty.

Spurr stared at him. He was the man who’d been shadowing him and the others. A half-breed, all right. Wearing buckskin breeches and a red-and-black calico shirt over his broad, hard chest and rounded shoulders. He could have been a full-blood, with that large, flat-featured face and
hawk nose, but the jade-green eyes set off vividly by the cherry color of his sun-leathered skin said he had at least a quarter white in him. He was in his early or mid-thirties.

His stygian hair tumbled straight down from his low-crowned, flat-brimmed black hat to hang loose about his shoulders. On his feet were traditional, well-worn stockmen’s boots. A horn-gripped pistol jutted from a holster thronged low, pistolero-style, on his right thigh.

A half-breed, all right. Something about the mix of white and red blood made for especially tough nuts. Spurr thought it might have been because most, straddling two worlds, belonged to no one but themselves. That, in turn, made them cold-blooded, devilish. The end of a small knife handle jutted just above his right shoulder, under his shirt, likely from a sheath strapped behind his neck.

The green eyes bored into Spurr, though a faint, casual smile had etched itself on the man’s wide, handsome mouth. Spurr couldn’t tell if it was a sneer or a real smile.

“One o’ them that pride yourself on bein’ quiet, huh?” Spurr lowered the rifle from his shoulder but kept it cocked. “So you can sneak up on white men and feel all proud about it, like an actual full-blood.”

“I don’t know too many full-bloods who can move as quiet as I can.” The half-breed hiked a shoulder. “I reckon they don’t need to.”

“Who in blazes are you and why you been followin’ us?”

“I been followin’ Mason since Willow City.”

“You the one saved his hide?”

The half-breed’s eyes moved to Mason lying with the others about ten feet from Spurr’s hole. “Wasn’t much point, I reckon. Only got him a few extra days.” He looked at Spurr. “I was tryin’ to tell you about the ambush when that one there, the younker, started throwin’ down on me.”

Spurr looked at Calico Strang lying between Gentry and Web Mitchell. Like the others, the kid lay on his back, hands crossed on his bloody belly. His half-open eyes stared at the
sky, the tip of his tongue nestled in a corner of his mouth. Spurr had the urge to go over and kick the young Pinkerton, who as much as anyone was responsible for the ambush.

But hell, he had the starch taken out of him now. For good. And there was no bringing the others back.

Spurr depressed his Winchester’s hammer. “You one o’ them shape-shiftin’ Injuns or somethin’?”

The half-breed blinked at him dully.

“Thought maybe you could change yourself into a bird—somethin’ like that. Since you seem to be keepin’ such a good scout over all of us.”

“One man alone can move quicker with less chance of bein’ seen than a posse.”

“Why you so damn secretive—keepin’ to yourself on them ridges?”

“I sort of answered that, didn’t I?”

Spurr narrowed an eye at the half-breed. “What’s your piece of this? You a bounty hunter?”

The Indian shook his head. “Nope.” He looked off. “I been a cowpuncher for the past four months for the Triple X brand outside of Willow City. I was sent to town for supplies when them Vultures busted their ramrod out of Mason’s jail. Heard the shootin’, saw the killin’.”

“I don’t get you, mister. You save Mason’s bacon but don’t show yourself till now, near a hundred and fifty miles outside of Willow City. I’ll ask ye again—what’s your stake in this?”

“I don’t have a stake in it. I reckon I wanted to see some justice for the innocent men those Vultures killed. For the women they took. But I’m only one man.”

“You coulda thrown in with us.”

“And end up like them?” The half-breed cast his gaze once more at the dead men. Then he turned his sharp, cunning, suspicious gaze back to Spurr. “Besides, how do I know you’re any more upstanding than them Vultures?” He smiled. “’Cause you wear a badge?”

He placed his big hands on his knees and straightened. He must have stood at least six foot three—an imposing figure of a green-eyed Injun. He wheeled and started walking away.