The Circuit Rider (19 page)

T
he
lead tracker for the Paiutes was an older man who wore a U.S. Army jacket and a
black railroad worker’s cap. He rode several hundred yards ahead of the main
group.

Tower
rode behind him, fascinated by the man’s ability to spot the slightest
unnatural scrape on a piece of lava rock, the kind that would most likely have
come from a horse’s hoof. The man had an uncanny stillness about him, an
ability to focus on many things at once and seemingly always, unerringly, find
the next track.

He
glanced over and saw Bird riding next to the Paiute leader. They were passing
the whiskey bottle back and forth between them.

By
the late afternoon, they had covered several miles by Tower’s guess, going much
faster than Bird and Tower had traveled on their own.

The
Paiute tracker seemed to have a knack for finding the quickest way through the
lava fields while simultaneously checking for sign.

Tower
thought about his own history of tracking men. After the war, he had gotten
very good at it. Almost too good.

He
thought back to his last case in Saint Louis. He’d been assigned the job of
tracking down a con man named Theo McCray, who had bilked a half-dozen
investors out of a lot of money. The investment group had hired the detective
agency to find McCray and bring back their money.

The
case had been assigned to Tower.

It
had taken him the better part of two months, but he’d found McCray, and about
half of the money, holed up in a dive hotel on the outskirts of Saint Louis.

McCray
hadn’t gone quietly. A gunfight had taken place, and McCray was shot —

Tower
stopped himself.

That
was all in the past. He felt the cold chills the memory of that night always
gave him. His mind went black, and he shut it down. Turned it off. Focused on
the here and now.

During
his reverie, the Paiute tracker pulled up short.

He
was looking at the latest track. It was the edge of a man’s boot, clearly
ground into a thick bank of lava dust.

The
Paiute tracker said something unintelligible to Tower, then swung his horse
around and rode back to the chief. Eventually, Tower rode back and waited near
the meeting of the Paiute leaders.

Bird
rode over to Tower, and he could smell the whiskey from five feet away.

“What
the hell did you do now?” she said.

Tower
watched the Paiutes discussing what the tracker had found, and then Yenata, the
translator, approached Bird and Tower.

 “We
are stopping here for tonight,” he said. “We will catch up with them tomorrow.”

A
small fire was built at the center of the Indians’ small camp. Bird and Tower
set up their bedrolls near Yenata, which turned out to be quite a ways from the
heat of the fire.
It’s going to be a cold night
, Bird thought.

Flames
from the small fire reflected in the whiskey bottle Bird brought to her lips. The
liquor’s warmth cascaded through her body.

“Aren’t
you done with that yet?” Tower asked. “I thought between you and the chief that
thing would be empty by now.”

Bird
glanced over at him. “This isn’t mine. We polished mine off hours ago. This is
from the chief’s personal stock.”

“I
see,” Tower said.

“Whiskey
is the universal language of friendship, Mr. Tower. It’s probably why you don’t
have any friends,” Bird offered.

“Could
be,” Tower said. “What do you think the odds are that Toby Raines is one of the
men who abducted these Indians’ girls?” he asked her.

“I
don’t know, Mr. Tower. What I do know is that whenever you find horrible things
being done to women, you usually find Toby Raines.”

There
was a pause as the fire popped.

At
the same time, a wizened Paiute Indian approached them and sat down across from
Tower.

He
wore an array of animal skins around his neck, and he had a pipe in his hand,
which he puffed on.

He
said something to them and passed the pipe. Tower took it from him, inhaled
deeply, then passed it to Bird. She did the same, then handed it back to the
Indian.

The
old man got to his feet and began to chant in a low, cracked voice. His feet
shuffled, scratching the lava rock with a muted, muffled sound.

He
puffed on the pipe, and soon a small cloud of smoke hovered around him. The
chanting increased in speed and rhythm, then began to slow back down. The other
Paiute in the war party had formed a circle around them, and, as the old man
slowed his dance down, then stopped, they looked for him to speak.

Tower
spotted Yenata and waved him over, and the old man began to speak.

“He
says the spirits have talked to him about you two,” the young Paiute said.

“I
wonder if any of them are people I killed,” Bird said. She chuckled, took
another drink from the whiskey bottle, and looked at Tower, but he was focused
on the old man.

“What
did the spirits say about us?” Tower said.

The
old man spoke at length, then pointed at Bird.

The
translator spoke to Tower. “They said nothing about you. But her.” He pointed
at Bird.

“They
say evil surrounds her. And that she is already dead.”

Bird
looked up.

“Now,
that’s a hell of a thing to say to a lady.”

T
he
tracker had been wrong.

They
didn’t catch up with the men in the morning. It wasn’t until the early
afternoon that the tracker came back and the Paiute spread out along the crest
of a narrow canyon.

A
wind had kicked up from the northwest, and bits of lava dust stung Bird’s face.

The
black rock ran in ridges around a circular opening in which sat a narrow swath
of scrub brush and a silty creek bed devoid of water. From her vantage point,
Bird could see that someone had dug a trench in the deepest part of the run,
and the result was a darker shade of sand. There was water beneath that gravel,
and someone had found it.

There
was an eerie silence as they waited. A snake slithered by, and Bird resisted
the urge to use it as target practice.

As
two of the Paiute began to circle farther to the west around the lip of the
lava ravine, Bird saw movement below. Next to her, Tower rose from a crouch and
stared intently at the action below.

A
man had emerged from beneath the overhanging ledge of rock. He was a white man,
and he held a young Indian woman in front of him, his forearm around her
throat, a gun pointed at her head.

“I
need a horse!” the man yelled out. “Get me a horse and she lives. I’ll let her
go!”

Bird
got to her feet.

“Bird,”
Tower said.

“I
don’t know if the Paiute care if she lives one way or the other,” she said.

He
glanced down at the man. Yenata came running over to them.

“Where’s
the other girl?” Tower yelled down to the man.

“She’s
dead!”

“What
about your partner? There’s more than one of you!” Tower yelled back. Bird had
turned and was running toward the narrow trail down into the ravine. She had
grabbed an Indian pony.

“He’s
dead, too. There were three of us. The bastard shot Kurt and both our horses
and took off!”

By
now Bird had made it down to the floor of the ravine. She glanced back up at
the ledge, saw Tower watching her and the Paiutes lined up in a semicircle
around the lava floor below.

She
walked toward the man.

Off
to her right, she saw a cluster of rock slabs. At its base was a body, facedown
on the gravel. It looked to her like another young Indian woman.

She
saw no signs of any other men, and there didn’t appear to be any horses.

Bird
walked closer to the man.

“You
said you wanted a horse and you’d let the girl go. Well, here’s your horse,”
she said.

The
man looked wild-eyed at Bird. Up close, she could see his lips. They were
white, parched, and cracked. The girl looked even worse. Her face was slack,
her eyes staring off into the distance. Bird could tell that if it wasn’t for
the man’s arm around her throat, she probably wouldn’t be able to stand.

“I
know what the hell I said!” the man shouted. His eyes flicked toward Bird, then
at the trail out of the ravine behind her, then up at the Paiutes lining the
ledge.

Bird
knew what he was thinking.

Unless
there was another way out, he would have to ride right past a Paiute war party.
No way he would survive that. Which meant he couldn’t let the girl go.

Bird
knew what she would have to do, but it was a bad plan. She needed him alive. Her
only hope was that they were planning an ambush. As if to answer her question,
the man’s eyes flicked over to the slabs of rock, and Bird knew.

She
drew casually and fired once, aiming for the man’s right eye, on the far side
away from the Indian girl’s head.

Her
shot found its mark, and the back of the man’s head exploded in a spray of
blood and brain matter.

He
fell backward, and, without the support he had been providing, the Paiute woman
collapsed to the ground.

Bird
heard a war whoop, and then the Indians were storming down the trail behind
her.

A
figure raced from the protection of the lava slabs and tried to run toward the
other end of the ravine.

The
first Paiute down the trail easily caught up to him and, with a short, brutal
swing, bashed the man on the top of his head with a war club.

The
man fell flat on his face.

Bird
ran toward them. “Don’t kill him!” she shouted.

The
Paiute slid from his horse with a knife in his hand.

Bird
had her gun in her hand. As she drew near, she felt a slight stabbing in the
middle of her back.

She
stopped running and glanced over her shoulder. Yenata was on his pony, his
lance held tightly against Bird’s back.

“Do
not worry. We will not kill him. Not yet.”

T
he
ravine was a terrible place to defend against an ambush, so the always-strategic
Paiute warriors took the man and the two young women back to the oasis where
Bird and Tower had originally stumbled upon the settlers.

The
Paiute female who was still alive was placed in the care of the medicine man. Tower
and Bird went to him to see what kind of help they could offer.

The
Paiute doctor had the girl placed on a blanket and was forcing her to drink a
mixture that was dark green in color; it smelled to Bird like sulfur.

The
young woman’s eyes were closed, and there were cuts and scrapes all over her
face. Her nose was swollen, probably broken, and there were deep bruises around
both of her eyes.

The
medicine man was chanting in a low, soft voice.

Tower
went to reach for the girl’s wrist to check her pulse, but the Paiute doctor
shot his hand out and caught Tower by the wrist, then gently pushed his hand
away.

Bird
pulled Tower to the body of the other Paiute girl. She had been placed next to
a small fissure in the rock, and the Paiute warriors had gathered a large
collection of stones to cover her corpse with.

Among
the group of warriors, Bird spotted Yenata. She beckoned him over and said to
him, “Can I look?” Bird then pointed at her own chest.

“It
is not good to touch the dead,” Yenata said. Bird had seen the braves carrying
the body with a makeshift travois. “A Paiute will not do it. Then you be
purified. Take long time.”

“I
haven’t been pure in a long time,” Bird said. She reached for the blanket
covering the girl’s body. Yenata backed away.

“This
might not be a good idea,” Tower said, glancing at the Paiute braves.

But
Bird was determined. She lifted the blanket and pulled away the heavy shirt
covering the girl’s body. There was no pentagram among the scrapes and bruises.