Sunset Trail (3 page)

IV

Bruce saddled the roan gelding he’d stabled in Independence before he’d gone East for the winter. The horse, Blue Thunder,
was a leggy animal with the speed and bottom that a plainsman needed. He was a buffalo horse, and, as Purdy said about his
own paint, he could “smell Injun like a beaver smells bait.”

Carrying his Hawkins rifle crosswise in front of him, Bruce left town, the uneasy feeling raveling down his spine that he
had been watched from the moment he had left Aunt Sukey’s place. But it was not till he had reached the trail that angled
along the bluffs bordering the Missouri that he looked back, and saw Mick Catherwood riding after him.

Bruce pulled up and dismounted. He could guess what was in the boy’s mind, and this was as good a time as any to have it out.
He waited, rifle in his hands, until Mick reined his lathered, mud-splattered horse to a stop.

“Climb down and get it off your chest,” Bruce said coldly.

“I aim to.” Mick stepped down, hand on his pistol. “I figured you’d try to run out. I should have killed you yesterday, but
I had to listen to Purdy and be fool enough to believe what you said about bringing in the killer.”

“I’m not running out. Glover signed me and Purdy to guide your train. I’ll meet the outfit in Council Grove as soon as I get
back.”

“You’ll never come back!” Mick cried fiercely, drawing a gun. “I aim to fix it so you won’t be able to.”

Bruce had heard about Ed Catherwood and this boy, how the mother had been killed in a Comanche attack years before when the
trader’s first caravan was bound for Santa Fé. There had been a closeness between Catherwood and Mick that had become almost
a legend on the frontier. Now the boy was out of his mind with grief, and Bruce could see how it was with him. But he couldn’t
stand here and let the kid shoot him down. Mick was slowly bringing his pistol up, steeling himself to do this killing job
that he thought had to be done.

“I think Curt Glover killed your father,” Bruce said. His words brought a shadow of indecision to Mick’s fine-featured face,
a moment of hesitation in the lift of the gun, a moment long enough for Bruce to swing the barrel of his rifle at the kid’s
head.

Mick’s pistol went off, a wild shot that sang high over Bruce’s head. Then he had the kid by the shoulder, and was swinging
him around. Immediately his hand fell away, for it had come across the boy’s chest, and surprise at his discovery paralyzed
him.

Mick Catherwood was a woman!

Bruce’s hand had knocked the coonskin cap from Mick’s head. Auburn hair cascaded down her shoulders, and fear flamed in her
blue eyes as she plunged away from him.

“I won’t hurt you.”

“I know you won’t,” she cried, a hand clutching her knife. “I’ll get more than buckskin this time if you move out of your
tracks. Or if you ever tell anybody what you’ve found out.”

“You’re saying nobody knows you’re a woman?” Bruce asked incredulously.

“Curt Glover. No one else. Dad wanted a son, so he made a boy out of me. It’s the only way I could be safe on the trail with
the kind of men we had around us.”

“You’re not going to Santa Fé?”

“Certainly,” she said, as if no other course had ever entered her mind. “Half the business is mine, and Dad would want me
to run it.”

Mick Catherwood was very much a woman with her hair shiny bright under the morning sun. She had seemed small and fine-featured
for a boy, but now she was exactly as she should be, and Bruce smiled in appreciation when he thought of her in a dress.

“What are you smirking about?” she demanded.

“I was putting a dress on you.”

“You can take it off,” she blazed. “I’ll run the Catherwood half of the business as a man would run it. Don’t think. . . .”
She paused, lips tightening as she remembered what Bruce had said. “Why did you tell me you thought Glover had killed Dad?”

“Maybe because he smokes cigars.”

“Of all the. . . .”

“Did your dad believe in separating New Mexico and making an independent republic?”

“No. He was trying to stop it. Glover was the one who was working with Wade Flint and Pancho Lopez.”

“That’s right strange,” Bruce murmured. “Glover told me and Purdy the opposite.”

“You’re lying again,” she challenged.

“Ask Purdy.” He gestured wearily. “Ma’am, this is the biggest year the United States has had since we fought the British and
signed the treaty of Ghent. Inside of a month we may be fighting both Mexico and England. The War Department knows that Catherwood
and Glover ordered a large shipment of guns and powder, and if they get to. . . .”

“That’s another lie,” she said hotly. “Dad never took any more guns than we needed to fight off Indian attacks.”

“How many wagons have you usually taken?”

“Fifteen.”

“This time there are twenty-five.”

“That’s wrong. We’re using the same. . . .” The girl paused, biting a lip as if a new thought had come to her. “Dad went to
the mule market yesterday and was going to stay all day. Then he got into an argument with Glover, and I thought they were
going to have a fight. He told me to stay and buy ten more mules. He went with Glover, and that was the last time I saw him
alive.”

“Have they had trouble?”

“They’ve quarreled from the moment Glover showed up in Independence with Flint. He was supposed to stay in Santa Fé, and Dad
didn’t know he was coming East until he rode in.”

“What about Flint?”

“He was in Santa Fé all last summer and fall trying to organize a revolution against Armijo. The only wealthy Mexican who’s
with him is Lopez, but there are a number of Americans like Glover who want it to go through.”

“Then your father and Glover may have had a ruckus over this separatist movement. Or maybe your dad wouldn’t stand for the
shipment of guns.” “Glover isn’t a murderer, Shane. He’s a smart trader, but he doesn’t like violence. He’s even afraid of
the trail.”

“Mick, I hope you’ll believe I want the man who murdered your father.”

“You haven’t proved to me you didn’t,” she flung at him.

“Then think of what four thousand guns distributed among the Comanches will do. Or among the Pueblos and renegades who are
in with Flint. Or suppose Armijo gets his hands on them for his soldiers?”

“I know,” she said tonelessly. “Before we left Santa Fé, we had reasonable proof that the Comanches had been bribed to attack
American caravans bound for Santa Fé.”

“The War Department had a high regard for your father,” he pressed. “That’s the reason for me being sent here. If it had been
a traitor or a Mexican, we would have known what to do, but it didn’t make sense for your father to be in it. Now he’s dead,
and I didn’t get a chance to talk to him about it. That puts it up to you.”

For a time she held her silence, staring westward at the rolling country over which they would soon be traveling. Then she
brought her gaze to him, and he sensed the enormous struggle that was going on within her.

“What do you want me to do?” she asked.

“Don’t tell anybody what I’ve told you. Give me your cooperation when I need it. I hope you’ll take my word that I had nothing
to do with your father’s death, and that before we get to Santa Fé I’ll have the killer.”

“I won’t tell anybody.” She picked her cap up from the muddy trail and, putting it on, worked her hair under it. “I’ll take
your word about Dad when you get the killer.”

“This will be the toughest trip a Catherwood caravan ever made. If war breaks out before we get there, it’s hard to guess
what will happen. It would be better if you stayed in Independence where things are a
little
quieter.”

“I’m going to Santa Fé,” she said flatly.

“If Glover murdered your father, he’d murder again for the other half of the business.”

She stepped into the saddle. “I can take care of myself, Shane. By all the laws of justice I should have been a man. I am
a man by instinct. I’ve lifted hair and I’ll put my shooting up against yours. If Curt Glover tries to rub me out, he’ll find
six inches of steel in his belly.”

She turned her horse, and he watched her go, knowing he could do or say nothing more. She reined up when she was a dozen paces
from him, and flung back: “If you tell anybody I’m a woman, you’ll taste that six inches of steel yourself.”

“I’ll hold my tongue if you hold yours,” he said angrily, “which is something most women can’t do.”

“Don’t call me a woman!” she cried, and rode on.

Bruce kept his eyes on her until she disappeared along the trail. She rode as if she were part of the horse, as if she belonged
there as she belonged in the sunlight with the untamed wind upon her face.

He smiled as he turned to Blue Thunder and swung into the saddle. There would come a day when Mick Catherwood would find she
had other instincts than those of a man.

V

It was late afternoon when Bruce Shane reached Fort Leavenworth. Taking from his hat the letter that Secretary of War Marcy
had given him in Washington, he handed it to Colonel Stephen Kearny.

Kearny slit the envelope open, scanned the note, and held out his hand. “I’ve heard of you, Shane.

You’re the man who was raised with brass buttons on his jacket and who could be running a bank in Richmond, but you’d rather
feel the prairie wind on your face.”

“Some call me crazy for it,” Bruce said soberly.

“It’s the way a man looks at it.” Kearny smiled.

“Now about these guns.”

Bruce told him what had happened since his return to Independence, and what he suspected about Curt Glover and Wade Flint.
“I have no way of being sure those guns are in Glover’s train,” he added, “but I don’t see how it could be any other way.
Once we roll out, it will be impossible to get word back to you. My notion was for you to stop the train on the trail and
make a search.”

“I’ll send Lieutenant Barstow in the morning. It’s my opinion we won’t find the guns in Glover’s train. I know something about
Flint. I doubt if we’ve had a smarter filibuster since the days of Aaron Burr.”

“It’s possible the guns are cached along the trail somewhere,” Bruce said thoughtfully.

“In which case I’ll give Glover a start and send Barstow down the trail after he leaves Council Grove. I advise you not to
rejoin the train, Shane. Flint won’t miss the next time he tries for your life.”

“It’s a chance I have to take, Colonel. If Barstow fails to catch the train, or runs into some Pawnees, there would be nothing
to stop the delivery of the guns. If I’m there, I’ll find some way to stop them.”

When Lieutenant Barstow returned, he could report nothing better than failure. “We stopped the train the other side of Blue
Camp. Flint wasn’t with it. Glover was hostile, but he didn’t try to keep us from going through the wagons. Just the usual
stuff . . . flour, bacon, peas, corn, and the regular merchandise they’ve hauled over the trail for years.”

Bruce gave Kearny a tight-lipped grin. “You were right, but Flint can’t hide four thousand guns and the powder and shot they’ve
got in his pocket.”

“No,” Kearny agreed. “Chances are it’s some place between Independence and Santa Fé. Flint’s a strange man, Shane. Well educated.
Has a fortune that would give him a comfortable living, but he’s got notions about being a Santa Fé Cæsar. He’ll give us more
trouble than Armijo could.”

“I’ll put out in the morning,” Bruce said. “I’ll catch the train the other side of the Oregon Junction.”

“Better stay and go with Barstow,” Kearny urged again.

Bruce shook his head. “I can’t do that.”

But Glover’s train had moved faster than Bruce had expected. He reached the trail, passed the forks with the signpost reading
Road to Oregon,
and kept on straight ahead into the land of the peaceful tribes.

He did not catch the train that day. He made camp at dusk, cooked supper, and, spreading his buffalo robe, went to sleep.
He was on the trail again with the first hint of golden dawn in the east, keeping Blue Thunder at a steady mile-eating clip,
and gave thought to his meeting with Mick Cather-wood. With her auburn hair done up and wearing a dress, instead of buckskins,
she’d find that she did something to men.

He thought, then, of Curt Glover. He remembered the girl had told him Glover knew her identity.

Anger stirred in him, for the man’s intentions were plain to read. If he had killed Catherwood, and everything Bruce had learned
pointed that way, he was spinning a web of his own scheming, working with Flint because it paid him. The Cather-wood girl
would be handled in his own way when the time was right.

The anger had not died when he sighted the dust cloud ahead. He had more respect for Wade Flint, or even Armadillo Dunn than
he did for Curt Glover.

Bruce caught the train as it was making camp. Glover rode toward him, his usually smooth face lined by the pressure of his
anger.

“So you want to go to Santa Fé, do you?” Glover raged. “Well, you sure as hell can ride alone. When I hire a man, he obeys
orders. I told you we were pulling out the next morning.”

“I had business to attend to. I told Purdy to give you a hand. Didn’t he?”

“Yeah, but. . . .”

“Then you’ve got no holler coming, Glover.”

“What business was big enough to take you out of Independence?”

“My business is my business,” Bruce said curtly.

Glover motioned on down the trail. “Keep riding.”

“We’ll keep our word, Glover, whether Shane keeps his or not.” It was Mick Catherwood.

She had ridden around a wagon, and she sat her saddle with no sign of trail weariness upon her. She did not look at Bruce.
He knew she had her own reason for interfering, the suspicion of him still an overpowering motive in her.

“I’ll run this train,” Glover said violently.

“Dad was a little lax about you,” Mick said, palming a gun. “I aim to change that. I’ve been over the trail enough times to
know that a man of Bruce Shane’s caliber is worth twenty of the desert rats you hired.”

“Purdy can guide us,” Glover said thickly. “Damn it, Mick, I didn’t want this man in the first place.”

“Purdy will quit if Shane rides on,” Mick pointed out.

“Shane set the Dragoons onto us!” Glover exploded. “He’s been to Fort Leavenworth and. . . .”

“How do you know?” Bruce asked.

“I’m guessing, and I don’t hear you denying it.”

“Have you got anything on this train you were afraid the Dragoons would find?” Mick demanded.

“No, but. . . .”

“All right. It doesn’t make any difference if he did go to Fort Leavenworth. Shane’s taking us through.”

Mick wheeled her horse and rode back around the wagon. For a moment Glover’s hazel eyes locked with Bruce’s gray ones. There
was more than anger in them, Bruce thought. Perhaps fear. Bruce was remembering Mick had said the big man was afraid of the
trail. He had tackled something too big for him, and now he felt failure closing in upon him.

“You heard the kid,” Glover muttered vehemently and he let it go at that.

Bill Purdy rode into camp an hour later and grinned broadly when he saw Bruce. “How thar, Shane!” he called. “Figgered you
rode off to the Blackfoot kentry.”

“I like my hair too well.”

The mountain man dismounted. “Glover was shore mad enough to grow ha’r on thet bald haid of his’n when the Dragoons stopped
us,” Purdy said, lowering his voice. “They didn’t find nuthin’, but he was as scairt as a jack rabbit in front of a coyote.”

“Where’s Flint?”

“Ain’t seen him since we rolled out.” Purdy tongued his quid to the other side of his mouth. “Looks like we lost hoss ’n’ beaver.”

“We’ll find them. There’s fifteen wagons here, and Glover told us we’d have twenty-five. When we find the other ten, Bill,
I’ve got a notion we’ll find the guns we’re after and Wade Flint to boot.”

They watered stock with the first hint of dawn, cooked breakfast, and harnessed up. There was unnecessary waste of time before
the train strung out, men running around hunting articles that had been scattered about, pulling balky mules into place, yelling
and cursing because their own stupidity and inexperience made things go wrong.

Agr een outfit, Bruce saw, not yet trail wise. The mules were good animals, the wagons the biggest Conestogas that could be
bought. Some of the men were experienced, but many were not-river men, Mexicans, or renegades who would have looked better
behind bars than on the trail.

“Is this the kind of men your father used?” Bruce asked Mick.

“No,” she answered. “Glover hired these. Said he had to take what he could get.” Looking back, she saw that Glover was out
of earshot. “Wade Flint and ten wagons are waiting in Council Grove. They may be the wagons your Dragoons were looking for.”

Bruce nodded gloomily. Stephen Kearny had been right. Flint was playing it the safest way he could. Once the Dragoons had
had their look, Glover had figured they were not likely to be back for another. Flint had counted on Bruce’s doing the very
thing he had.

“Glover was nearly crazy when the Dragoons were searching the wagons,” Mick went on. “I never saw him so excited. I think
he’s beginning to see what will happen if he fails. He’d like to get out, but he doesn’t know how.”

“How did he explain the ten extra wagons to you?”

“He had a little trouble.” She laughed. “I’ve learned more about Curt Glover since we left Independence than in all the time’
I’d known him before. He wants it all, but he doesn’t have enough courage to play for high stakes.” She gave Bruce a straight
look. “It takes a certain kind of person to drive a knife into a man’s back when he isn’t looking. Glover isn’t the kind.”

“You think I am?”

She looked away then, and took a moment to answer. “No,” she admitted finally, “and that leaves me hanging like a green scalp
in a Comanche lodge.”

They rolled into Council Grove late the following afternoon. Here were water and shade. Both were welcome. More than 100 wagons
were scattered in the grove, most of them belonging to emigrants who believed that Kearny would annex New Mexico when war
broke out and were anxious to get there ahead of the rush so they could have their pick of home sites.

It was a scene that never failed to amuse Bruce when he saw it. Men were mending harness, gathering firewood, chopping down
trees, greasing wheel hubs. Women were washing, bending over cook fires, sewing. This was the last jumping-off place.

Ahead was buffalo country, and, where there were buffalo, there would be Indians: Pawnees, Arapa-hoes, Kiowas, Cheyennes,
and the terror of every caravan, the Comanches.

Glover led the train on through the grove to the far end where Flint waited with the other wagons. Bruce, scanning the people
who were making their final preparations here, was sobered by what he saw. Many were woefully unprepared for what lay ahead. There
were vehicles of all sort, some of them decrepit farm wagons that would never get as far as the Little Arkansas. Many lacked
sufficient stock to replace the ones that would die in harness.

“Wolf meat they’ll be,” Purdy muttered.

Ababy tottered away from a wagon and fell and began to cry. Mick looked at the sight, her mouth twitching. “Fools,” she whispered.
“They should have stayed in town.” Turning in her saddle, she watched the baby until its mother picked it up. Again Bruce
smiled when he thought of her boast that she had a man’s instinct.

“We’ll lay over a couple of days, Shane, and see that everything is in good shape,” Glover said when Bruce swung out of the
saddle. “From here on it’s your job to keep things moving.”

“You’ve got some damned poor men,” Bruce said “You’ve got some damned poor men,” Bruce said bluntly. “Act like they don’t know
which end of a mule goes frontward.”

“You teach ’em.” Glover winked at Flint, apparently in better humor than when Bruce had caught the train. “Part of your job,
Shane.”

“I came in a day or so ago with this other bunch of wagons,” Flint said in his soft, courteous voice. “They seemed competent.”

Bruce followed Flint’s gesture with his eyes. Most of the men were playing cards on the ground. Some were working on the wagons
or repairing harness. They were veterans of the trail, tough and confident.

“They’ll do,” Bruce said, pondering this thing he’d seen.

“I believe we met in Mogan’s Saloon.” Flint’s smile went no farther than his lips. “I’m with this caravan as a passenger,
but I’ll do my share of the fighting if it comes to that. I trust there will be no ill feeling from our little disagreement
in Mogan’s Saloon.”

“Not if you follow orders.”

“Then we’ll get along.” Nodding, Flint turned away.

“Bruce, you heerd?” Purdy bawled, coming in a stiff-legged lope from the emigrants’ wagons. “We got war with Mexico jest like
I figgered. We’ll lose hoss ’n’ beaver soon as we show up in Santy Fee.”

“War?” Glover whispered the word. “How in hell do you know, Purdy?”

“Some coot jest rode in from Independence. He’s got a Saint Louis
Republican.
”

“That’s right.” Mick had come up behind Purdy, her gaze touching Bruce’s face. “It says that Captain Thornton of the Dragoons
had been attacked and his command captured.”

“And Zach Taylor’s sitsheashun is ex . . . ex . . .,”

Purdy began.

“Extremely perilous,” Mick prompted.

“And he’s in a hell of a fix,” Purdy added.

“And he’s in a hell of a fix,” Purdy added.

Glover took off his hat and wiped his baldhead. He turned to Flint who had come to stand beside him. “You hear?”

“I heard, but I doubt if it will affect us,” Flint said smoothly. “Taylor is a long ways from Santa Fé. However, it may be
well to hurry our plans.”

“We’ll roll in the morning, Shane,” Glover ordered tersely.

“You said we’d lay over,” Bruce reminded him. “Some of your greenhorns will need a few days to get acquainted with their mules.”

“They can get acquainted on the trail. I said we’d roll in the morning.”

“Then I reckon we’ll roll,” Bruce agreed mildly.

“Then I reckon we’ll roll,” Bruce agreed mildly.

Ordinarily caravans laid over in Council Grove to organize and make whatever repairs were necessary before starting into Indian
county. Kearny would figure on that, timing Barstow’s departure from the fort accordingly. If Glover kept the pace he’d set
so far-and his mules were good enough to do that-Kearny’s Dragoons would never catch the train this side of Cimarron Crossing.

There was no way to inform Kearny except to ride back to Fort Leavenworth, and he’d bring on a showdown if he tried that.
Later, when the wagoners learned what Flint was doing, they might be led against him.

Tonight they’d follow him. Even if Bruce did go back to the fort, it was not likely he could get there in time. Before he
could return to Council Grove with the Dragoons, the caravan would be miles along the trail to Santa Fe.