Shotgun (4 page)

She leapt to her bedroll, lifted the blanket, and grabbed her short bow and beaded quiver, which she slung over her shoulder. She moved along the cave wall, staying on the balls of her feet as she worked her way to a small outcropping of rock by the entrance. The quiver was tight with arrows as she pulled one, fitted it to the bow, and drew back, waiting.

She threw Bishop a nod; the look told him there was no more time for doubt.

Bishop understood. “Maybe I should forget about Beaudine, my brother, all of it.” He spoke loudly enough for his voice to echo through the cave, and to cover the sound of his dropping two shells into the Greener, locking the double barrel.

Bishop stood, bringing the weapon up. “That is the best way to find peace.”

He moved his shoulders, adjusting the strap to tighten the slack on the line to the two triggers. He started for the cave entrance, then planted his feet, with the rig waist-high. Whoever was outside was sure to see him.

White Fox approved with a blink of her eyes, keeping her bow and breathing tight.

There was more low speaking from outside, and a few heartbeats. Bow and triggers were ready, when a ragtag soldier charged the cave entrance, brandishing a torch in one hand and a Navy Six in the other.

Ragtag screamed, “Welcome to Hell!”

White Fox let go, and the arrow tore through Ragtag's jawbone, shredding his cheek. His scream choked into a gurgle.

Just ten minutes earlier, and Captain Creed brought his tall chestnut around to face the men riding with him. He threw an arm toward the cave. “Bishop's hole up with that dog-eater. I can smell 'em. Earn your pay.”

Ragtag, in Union blues, grabbed Creed's reins to lead him to a small slope, just to the side of where the cave split the mountain face. Creed kicked at Ragtag from his stirrup, keeping his voice low. “
Their
horses!”

Ragtag quick-stepped to the tree where the painted and the bay were tied, while Creed's other men cleared the snow in four small areas about ten feet from the cave entrance. They worked in joined silence, their leathered faces covered by rough wool scarves and with collars turned up. Ragtag led the painted and bay away, the horses nickering.

It was a bright, clear morning with no warmth to be felt, just bitter cold, even as the sun threw diamonds off the snow and ice. This was the kind of February that had strangled everything on Creed's place, with no hope of resurrection in the spring. But Creed didn't blame the weather or the Almighty for his plight; he blamed the man in the mountain.

Creed eased back on the cantle of his hand-tooled saddle, taking off his amber-lens glasses to rub his sightless eyes and saying to no one, “I know this country just by its feel.”

One of the men, with a Colt double-action pistol tucked in a belt loop, moved to Creed quietly. “We got her the way you wanted.”

Creed responded, “You better.”

The man with the Colt whistled a bluebird's song, and two others cut a bulging canvas sack from the back of a horse, and hauled it over. They slit the sack as they would a hog's belly, then pulled out a scorched red, white, and blue flag of the Tennessee Volunteers.

The burned tatters were held with respect, even as others were yanked from the canvas one after another: shredded sections of the Stars and Bars; the Georgia “Cummins White Cross,” with its field of red now torn in half; bloody shreds that had once been infantry banners.

Creed said, “Whatever you've got, bring it here.”

Colt unfurled a dark blue flag that had been punched with bullet holes, and held it up to Creed, who ran his fingers across the large white star in its center.

“Bonnie Blue.”

“You don't have to do this, sir. We can cut some branches.”

Creed said, “Burn them.”

His men heaped the battle colors and banners onto the cleared areas of frozen ground. Jugs of kerosene were tossed from a pack mule, and the fuel was poured over the piles of torn cloth. The air bent with the smell of the kerosene, and the men fought their hacks. A boy choked and spit. The last bit of fuel was dribbled onto the old flags, but the men said nothing as they looked to Creed for his reaction. Colt almost spoke, but held back.

Creed adjusted his glasses, pushing them up on a nose that had been deformed by frostbite, and finally said, “At your ready.” Colt lit a torch, then passed the flame to the others as they checked their weapons. A fat gut with a plaid kerchief, who'd always crowed that he was Creed's cousin, pumped a shell into the chamber of a Winchester and took position to the side of the others. Ragtag almost danced in place, ready for Creed to give the signal.

Creed waited, his blind eyes fixed on a memory, and then he ran his hand across his grey beard, lightly tugging on his chin.

That was it. A torch was put to the fuel, the flames sputtering in the chill before catching and racing along the kerosene trail to each pile of flags. They burst into flames.

Fat Gut, his stomach sucked in, shouldered his rifle while the rest of Creed's men stood as a firing squad, pistols aimed at the cave.

Creed said, “Bring him to me.”

Ragtag threw his head back with a wild howl, before charging the cave, a Navy Six in one hand and a torch in the other, screaming, “Welcome to Hell!”

Ragtag's cry was cut dead short. Then, the echo of him from the cave died, and there was no sound from anywhere except for the sizzling of the kerosene pools.

Creed backed his tall horse a few steps, which was the cue for his men to move away from the flames, but to keep their guns aimed beyond them, into the cave's mouth. Fat Gut let out his breath and then dropped to one knee, his Winchester steady on some shadowed movement.

Creed called out, “Dr. John Bishop, this is Captain Dupont Creed! Don't come out? You're going to roast alive! I don't give a rat's ass about the squaw. She can cook.”

 

 

Inside the cave, the growing flames kept John Bishop and White Fox low against the outcropping of rock that offered protection. Ragtag had hold of Bishop's ankle and tried to speak without a jaw. His words were sloppy nothing, as he swallowed hot smoke and the blood that wasn't pooling around him.

White Fox readied her second arrow.

Ragtag's fingers opened slowly around Bishop's ankle. Bishop reached down for him as if to help; it was a doctor's instinct to give aid, even as Ragtag tried to aim his Navy Six at Bishop's face, but couldn't.

White Fox said, “
Nâhtötse
.”

Bishop knew the meaning and pulled back his feelings. Ragtag made a final sound with his tongue and his eyes stilled, as Bishop stepped over him and braced himself against a small rock shelf. He extended his right-arm rig toward the growing flames blocking the cave entrance.

The heat hard-slapped Bishop, but he found his first target behind the moving curtain of fire: It was the man with the double-action Colt, his dark shirt outlining him against the hot orange-white.

Bishop took aim, bringing his shoulders together to tighten the slack on the trigger line. It was a natural movement now, and the rig was feeling right to him. He glanced back at White Fox, who lowered her bow barely a quarter inch. Smoke from the burning flags sanded her eyes, but she would not blink.

Creed shouted, “John Bishop! It's been twelve years, and you know goddamn well—”

Bishop pulled the trigger-line with his shoulders, blasting through the fire to the man with the Colt and knocking him back onto a mound of snow, where he lay holding his pouring stomach.

Creed's men opened up.

The bullets screamed into the cave, sparking off the walls, spitting rock and ice with each hit. Their echo brought each ricochet back twenty times, piercing the ears.

A slug tore by White Fox's face as she released her arrow steady, hitting one of Creed's men in the throat, sending him spinning into a fire pile. The kerosene-soaked flags pasted themselves to his flesh, instantly swallowing his head and shoulders in flames, killing his cries for help.

Bishop swung the rig to the other side of the cave opening and fired again, blowing apart the shoulder of a crouching hired gun before White Fox's arrow punctured his eye. Hired Gun flopped onto Fat Gut, who threw him aside, and racked off four rounds from his Winchester.

Fat Gut's voice was a banshee's scream, and louder than the shots he fired. A flaming arrow whipped into his leg just above the knee, opening a red geyser. His scream became a sob.

Creed shouted, “You're gonna taste hell now or later, Bishop! Your choice!”

The layer of thickening smoke tied Bishop and White Fox to the cave floor, wet with blood and melting ice, even as she let fly another arrow at Creed's men, splitting the flames.

In response, muzzle flashes could be seen through the heat and choking grey. Again, the slugs careened from stone wall to jagged ceiling, and back again. Bits of lead splintered into White Fox's back and creased Bishop's thigh. Neither cried out.

Bishop stayed on his back, cooling the shotgun barrels with a handful of snow, before breaching them. The smoke from the fires was heavier now, churning the air in the cave from grey to black, as Bishop fumbled for his twelve-gauge shells. He reloaded, his tears stinging him, then snapped the rig shut, his chest heaving. He fired both barrels toward the cave's mouth.

There was no specific target, nothing Bishop could see. Someone cried out. Bishop's eyes were lost to their whites as his throat seized, strangled by the heavy smoke.

White Fox scrambled to him, turning Bishop on his back and opening his mouth with her fingers, when the lasso dropped around her neck from behind, and was pulled tight.

White Fox spit, “
Mé'anéka'êškóne
!”

A yank on the rope silenced her.

Chaney could feel Lem Wright watching him from his spot a few paces behind him. They'd been riding all night, guided by a bright winter moon, and Lem had slowed his horse, letting Chaney get farther ahead but keeping steady behind him, like he was planning an ambush. Instead, Lem did nothing; even if he wasn't going to make a move, Chaney hated his watching.

He'd tied his gun belt together with a small piece of rope, so at least his holster was back on his hip, but it kept slipping and this compromise to his draw edged his nerves. Chaney pushed on, trying not to ponder it, but he was the one who was supposed to have the winning hand, holding all the cards. Somewhere he'd lost his advantage.

Dawn broke in streaks of orange as the horses angled down the small, snowy grade to the road that led directly to the Overland Trail. Chaney looked over his shoulder to see Lem dozing in the saddle, his curtained eye locked open as he slept. The reins were slack in Lem's hands, but his chestnut mare followed Chaney without prodding, while the eye did its job watching. Always watching.

The eye looked back at Chaney from behind its white film, darting on its own as Lem started to snore. Chaney turned away with a shudder, wishing he had a decent bottle to kill the queasy feeling. He swore like he was praying, getting up his nerve to try something, but brought his thoughts back to Major Beaudine's letter and its life-changing promise.

Chaney thought,
Hell, I know where to go; I don't need that ugly son of a bitch at all.

Suddenly, Lem was riding beside him and yawning. “You could've shot me and left me in a drift. One good snow and they wouldn't find me for three months.”

“That's not what was in my mind.”

“Sure it was, but you couldn't tell if I was sleeping. I can't see out of this damn thing, but it does have its uses.”

“You were snoring.”

“And you still didn't make a move.”

Lem's statement was just a fact, said in a flat way that hit Chaney in his guts. He was losing his bluff. Chaney brushed the snow from the rim of his bowler, and said, “I thought we were trying a partnership.”

“Oh, building trust so the other fella doesn't know he's being suckered.”

Chaney said, “I know you ain't no sucker, Mr. Wright. You made that mighty clear.”

“Glad to hear it. So who'd you sucker to get that fine Denver saddle?”

Chaney straightened. “Barbed wire salesman from Jackson Hole. It never ceases to amaze me what folks will chance when they're sure they have a winning hand.”

Lem shook the ice around in his canteen, considering something, before taking a drink to wake up. “And they never know you're beating them until it's too late?”

“That's how I eat.”

“Not lately. I know broke when I see it.”

Chaney said, “Like most of the country. So why'd you come to that dog pile? To team up with Pardee, or kill him?”

“I hadn't decided.”

“I was gonna blow his guts out, take his stake.”

“But the man with the shotgun got there first.”

Chaney tried a push, asking, “The man you know?”

Lem said, “He was just a fella Beaudine told us about.”

“Holding a chest full of Army gold?”

“You read the letter, you talked to Chester.”

Chaney said, “I surely did.”

Lem's voice dropped. “Then what the hell you asking me for?”

“To see if Pardee was bluffing; he'd always try to bullshit his way out of a hand. So he was telling the truth about the gold.”

Lem gave Chaney a dose of his eye, “None of us will know a damn thing until we get to Cheyenne; that's the point, ain't it?”

Chaney flicked his tooth with this thumb, figuring the best way for the conversation to go. “There's a pot on the table? I'll try for it, but I know the odds of catching a bullet instead. Like I said, you made that real clear.”

This was good enough for Lem, who handed Chaney his canteen. The ice-cold metal numbed Chaney's fingertips, but the water tasted good and clean going down. Chaney knew enough not to drink too much, or else he'd cramp up. He handed the canteen back to Lem, in case that was his plan.

Chaney said, “Tell me about Beaudine.”

Lem didn't respond, so Chaney tried, “Did you meet in the war? That what happened to your eye?”

“My eye was lost during a conflict. I'll let Beaudine tell ya the rest, if he's of a mind.”

“Pardee said you all came together at the territorial prison on the Wyoming border. That nobody in Beaudine's Raiders ever did no military service, 'cause you were all locked up.”

Lem pulled his horse to a near stop, and Chaney knew he'd overplayed his hand. “You ask questions you think you know the answers to; that's clever, but not too smart.”

“You said Pardee was full of shit, but maybe not this time.”

“I know what I said.”

Lem put a period at the end of his statement, allowing that they'd ride in silence for a while. Lem kept his hand on his pistol the next few miles, forcing Chaney to do the same. Chaney's fingers ached, and he jumped every time Lem made the slightest move, which is just what Deadeye wanted.

The road widened, and their horses stepped around the ruts left behind by a thousand wagons meeting the Overland. Ghosts of schooner canvas, bits of wagon tongues, and shattered wheels lay frozen in the blue-black ditch that ran beside the road these last miles into Wyoming. The pieces reminded Chaney of grave markers.

The two continued riding without speaking, although Chaney kept clearing his throat. Lem offered no more water.

After an hour, Lem noticed his first Wyoming cottonwood, standing bare against the grey sky, and said, “That man with the shotgun?”

Chaney coughed, and said, “What about him?”

“At Huckie's, he let you go. But now you're with me, so next time, he's going to cut you in half, which'll give me a chance. Thanks, partner.”

Chaney mumbled something. He'd bought into this game and now was wishing he was out of it. He should be someplace like Kansas City, holding a middling hand, bluffing his way to a small pot to cover his hotel and drinks. That was what he knew, what he liked. Not these stakes.

But there was still the chance at the treasure—more damn money than he'd ever know. Who could give that up?

Chaney couldn't help himself, and glanced over his shoulder to see who might be riding up from behind, maybe with a shotgun sling on their saddle. Lem couldn't help himself, and laughed like hell.