Wind Walker (39 page)

“Where the hell’s Frakes?” Jenks hissed.

“Likely he’s crawled under a tree, sleeping—”

“Shuddup!” the first voice snapped, then began to call in a loud whisper there beneath the slinky drip of moonlight just starting to creep over the divide. “Frakes!”

“I don’t like this none.”

“Something’s wrong. Bad wrong,” Jenks growled. “You got your pistol loaded?”

“Both of ’em,” Corrett responded.

Titus crouched in the dark, quickly sorting through the few options open to him. The darkness gave him an advantage in one respect, but it hampered him in another way too. Damn, if he only knew what Sweete was up to.

“Let’s go look for ’im,” Jenks’s voice demanded. “You go off that way—see if you can find that sleepy son of a bitch.”

Corrett grumbled a reply just before a whistle came drifting out of the gloom. The shrill mating call of a blue grouse. Both of the men froze and slowly turned. Titus knew, began to search the dark in the direction of that telltale sound.

“That you, Frakes?” Jenks questioned. “C’mon, dammit! You’re getting me riled.”

“Over here!”

Both of the men turned their backs on Bass, directing their attention at the direction of the distant voice.

Corrett whispered, “Coming from over there, that’s gotta be Napps. But where’s Frakes?”

“Show yourself!” Jenks ordered.

“Right here.”

“Shit, Frakes,” Corrett spewed with relief. “You didn’t answer us there—I was thinking you was—”

Jenks growled his interruption, “Who the hell are you?”

Not far ahead of him in the dark, Titus saw the two men bring their guns up in the starlight.

Jenks demanded again, “Who are you?”

“And what you doing out here on Hargrove’s ground?” Corrett joined in.

“Better clear out, sodbuster,” Jenks boomed his order. “You know the rules. Hargrove don’t like none of you around his stock.”

The reply came that much closer to Titus now. “It’s you niggers I come for.”

Corrett suddenly sounded brave, “You asking for trouble?”

“Two of you,” Sweete said, his big feet crunching on the hard ground, “only one of me. Sounds like fair odds to this here child.”

“Maybe we should shoot ’im,” Corrett boasted as Bass watched the big shadow take shape out of the gloom, congealing just beyond the two hired men.

“Yeah—maybe Hargrove gimme a nice bonus for taking care of this one.” Jenks cheered himself as he brought his rifle up at his hip.

“I didn’t bring my gun, fellas,” Shad confessed. “Won’t be a fair fight.”

“Don’t need to make it a fair fight,” Jenks warned. “Only need you dead.”

“Yeah,” Corrett chimed in. “You come out here to steal some stock from Hargrove an’ we shot you red-handed.”

“I’ll keep my gun on him, Corrett. You go bring him over here by the horses.”

The stocky man stomped right over to the big shadow, cocky as a young bull in spring. But the instant he was within
an arm’s length, Shad swung out with his thick leg and knocked the rifle aside, stepping in quickly to whirl the hired man around and drag him backward by the scruff of his neck. Now Sweete had his hard arm crooked around Corrett’s throat, lifting the man onto his toes as his legs flailed.

“Drop ’im!” Jenks demanded. “Drop ’im or I’ll shoot.”

“Shoot an’ you’ll hit
him
,” Sweete said.

Jenks moved three more steps, a little to the right. “Hell if I won’t shoot.”

“You don’t wanna do that,” Shad warned. “Your gunshot’ll bring folks down here, wanting to see what happened.”

“That’s right,” Jenks agreed. “So let him go and we’ll make this quick—”

The hired man heard Titus behind him at the last moment but didn’t get fully turned in time as that shadow ripped itself out of the darkness and struck out with the short-barreled prairie rifle he’d taken off Frakes. The man’s eyes were about as wide as his mouth at the instant the rifle butt slammed against the side of his jaw, catapulting him off his feet.

“Easy there,” Sweete whispered to Corrett as the man suddenly stopped struggling. “You be good, I won’t have to put you to sleep.”

Bass stood over Jenks, straddling the body, ready to drive the iron butt plate down into the man’s head again if he stirred. But the body remained limp, sprawled in the dust and sage.

“Damn if that weren’t a purty head-bang, Scratch.”

He whispered as he knelt beside Jenks, “Good of you to show up on time, Shadrach.”

“Why you growlin’ at me? Took me some doin’ to get my fella dragged off and tied up,” Sweete said. “Where you tie yours?”

“He’s dead,” Scratch admitted. “Wasn’t as clean as you was with yours.”

Corrett wheezed, “Y-you killed one of Hargrove’s—”

Shad squeezed down on the man’s throat even more. “I’ll gut you if you make me.”

“Bring him over here,” Titus commanded. “We’ll take ’em both across the crik, other side of the hill—”

“Why you gonna kill me?” Corrett whimpered.

“We ain’t gonna kill you,” Bass hissed. “Much as I wanna cut the heart outta ever’ one of you. Shad, let’s get something in his mouth to make sure he’s real quiet.”

“I won’t make a sound,” the man promised.

Scratch stepped right up to the man, sticking his nose an inch from Corrett’s face. “First whack—you better tell me who it was rode off the other mornin’ to give Burwell that beating.”

Corrett’s eyes immediately dropped to the body crumpled on the ground.

Titus asked, “Him? He was one of ’em?”

Inside the iron grip of Shadrach’s arm, Corrett nodded slightly.

“Who was the others?” Sweete growled at the man’s ear.

“F-frakes,” he whispered.

“That’s the one I killed over yonder,” Bass said. “I know there was three of ’em, who was the—”

“Benjamin,” he interrupted in a harsh whisper. “He come back bragging how his hands was so sore ’cause he was the one beat the farmer so bad while the other two held him up.”

“Benjamin,” Titus repeated the name in a whisper.

“You let me go ’cause I told you?”

“No,” Scratch said, turning back to the body on the ground. “You an’ this’un goin’ across the crik aways.”

“You don’t tussle,” Sweete advised, “you don’t have to hurt. Understand?”

Corrett nodded as Bass stepped up to him. “Put your hands out front of you.”

“Y-you tying me up?”

Shad leaned into the man’s ear again. “Be glad we don’t string you up on a tree just like your three friends crucified Roman Burwell.”

“Th-they laughed about doin’ that when they come back … but I-I didn’t have nothing to do with it!”

“Gimme your hands.”

Corrett begged, “You won’t hang me in no tree like Benjamin done to that farmer—”

Wrenching the man’s hands together, Titus snapped, “Ain’t it just like settlement folks, Shadrach? They’re all full of brag and windy big-talk when they got the bully odds on their side. Damn your kind, an’ damn what your kind’s already doin’ to my mountains.”

After the moon rose off the horizon later that night, Scratch had slapped Jenks into consciousness and dragged him to his feet. Then the two old trappers shoved their prisoners across the narrow creek and over the first hill, eventually finding a place with enough cover that the two would not be discovered right off.

“More shade than they deserve,” Titus grumped as they pushed Corrett down at the base of the first tree. “Better that the sun grows so hot it peels their eyelids back.”

“We’ll tie ’em down so they’re facing west.”

“Them others, they’ll come looking, they’ll find us,” Jenks vowed. “Hargrove an’ Benjamin, they’ll come lookin’ for us.”

“Then what?” Bass demanded, grabbing the hired one’s lower jaw in his hand.

The younger man sneered at the trapper. “Then … all of us come an’ find you.”

“Smart-assed li’l greenhorn,” Titus growled, bringing his thin-bladed skinning knife up, pressing its fine-honed edge up against the underside of the man’s nose. “Maybeso I ought’n go ahead an’ cut this’un’s tongue in two, Shadrach.”

He had to admit he liked the way the young bully’s eyes got big at that.

It wasn’t long before he and Shad were slipping back among the wagons well after the music and laughter were spent, but they did not have to wait until morning for Hargrove and the last three of his men to go stomping through
camp in search of the four missing guards, yelling, kicking over cooking tripods and trivets, spilling contents of kettles and water buckets in anger and frustration. Eventually the wagon captain and his trio tore up to Burwell’s wagon, to find the old mountain men armed for bear and not about to be blustered the way the settlement folk had been as Hargrove rudely awakened the entire camp and cowed them all.

“I know you two got something to do with this!” Hargrove roared with indignation as he stopped directly in front of Bass.

“Don’t have no idee what you’re so spittin’ mad about,” Titus remarked, his two pistols hanging in his hands at his sides, both Ghost and Digger barking loudly, barely restrained by Flea and Magpie.

Hargrove’s eyes flicked aside at some movement. Shad stood a few yards away with his two pistols drawn and pointed at the three who had come to back up their employer.

“Which of you gonna be first?” the train captain asked.

“First for what?”

“First to die!” Hargrove said. “Tell me where my men are or I’ll kill both of you. Perhaps when the first one is dead, the other will decide to talk.”

Sweete asked, “How you figger you’re gonna get away with killing us here?”

“Look at my guns. There’s four of us against the two of you!”

“Damn, Shadrach,” Titus groaned. “Appears we forgot to count. No—wait. What ’bout them two women of ours? They know how to handle guns, don’t they … right over there, Hargrove.” And he pointed at the end of the wagon where Shell Woman stood with Shad’s double-barrel smoothbore pointed at the hired men. “An’ over there too.”

This time he directed their attention to Waits standing just at the edge of the firelight behind them, holding an old trade musket, both its barrel and its stock sawed off to make it a deadly close-range weapon.

Hargrove’s eyes came back around to rest on Bass in that
dim, gray light of the coming morn. With the blackest menace, he promised, “One day, old man.”

“Yes,” Titus answered quietly. “One day you an’ me gonna dance for sure. If it ain’t Roman chews on your gizzard first … someday it’ll be me tears off a piece of you for myself.”

As soon as that bloody night had begun to gray into false dawn, Hargrove and his trio were out on horseback. It hadn’t taken them long to find Frakes tied to the tree not far from the grassy patch of ground. They brought the eviscerated body back into camp, slung over the bare back of a horse for all to see.

“Look at this—everyone!” Hargrove demanded with an indignant roar. “Look right here at the lawlessness I did everything I could to protect you people from! One man’s dead for sure. Maybe three more!”

He came to a stop near the center of that largest cluster of wagons, shouting at the settlers as they interrupted their breakfast and early-morning chores. “We’ll hold a funeral for this man in fifteen minutes. I want every one of you there to pay your respects, then I want you men, the able-bodied among you, to saddle up with me and my men. We’re going in search of the others those old fur men must have killed too. And when the dead are buried, we’re going to hold us a trial before we hang these guilty ruffians, then get on our way.”

For a moment it seemed the whole train—man, woman, and child—were staring right at Titus and Shadrach.

Hargrove started away—but suddenly stopped and
wheeled about. He glared hard at Hoyt Bingham. “You, Bingham. You’ll bring your shovel to help dig this man’s grave.”

But before the emigrant could speak, another voice boomed behind Titus.

“He ain’t digging no grave for any of your hired trouble.”

Slowly, Hargrove turned and found Roman Burwell standing as straight as he could, on his own feet beside the tailgate of his wagon.