Absaroka Ambush

6

Sally found Jake’s body. The boy had been gut-shot and had dragged himself off in the bushes to die.

“Dear merciful God,” Sally murmured. “Fifteen years old.” She tugged the boy’s jeans off and started to cover him up, then thought better of it. That would be a sign that she sure wouldn’t want the raiders to find. “Sorry, Jake. You were a good hand.”

Unlike Smoke, she had caught a glimpse of the brand on the horses of the raiders. The Circle 45. And one had seen her looking at the brand just a second before she leaped into the darkness of the bushes, dragging Toni with her. So they had to kill her. They couldn’t afford to let her live and be a witness against them.

Circling, Sally found the body of one of the new men. Forrest. She took his gun and gun belt and hat and left him as she had found him. She made her way cautiously to the campsite and studied it for several moments before slipping up to the smoldering ruins of the wagons. All the bodies had been dragged away. She could see that sign. She grabbed up two blankets, a full canteen, a tarp, a knife still in its sheath, and a sack of canned foods. She was disappearing into the brush just as Smoke made his way up to the ruins.

Smoke had found no more bodies, and, like Sally, he read the sign where the bodies had been dragged off. He squatted, only his eyes moving, picking out the scattered articles he wanted. He moved very quickly, scooping up a blanket—there was a ground sheet and a blanket tied behind the saddle of his horse—a side of bacon that was half buried in the dust, a battered coffee pot and a sack of Arbuckles, another canteen and a loaf of bread that had been only slightly scorched by the fire. Then he was gone.

“You made a big mistake, Mr. Black,” he muttered, swinging into the saddle. “You left me alive.”

“Now listen up,” Bobby told the young cowboys. “We’re afoot, we ain’t got no weapons, and we’re in big trouble.” He looked at Louie, Dan, Sonny, and Guy. “And yeah, I’m just as scared as you are. But Mr. Smoke made me ramrod of the remuda crew, so I’m givin’ the orders. You take them. Understood?”

The quartet of very scared boys nodded their heads.

“We’re in a pretty good place here. This blowdown ain’t gonna let no horses through, and there ain’t no cowboy gonna do nothin’ much that he can’t do from the saddle. So we stay right here. There’s water to drink from that crick over yonder, and we all got a little poke of food. It ain’t much. But it’s got to do. We can’t talk above a whisper. We can’t move around. Just remember this, we seen them brands. Circle 45. So that means them thugs got to kill us all. If we keep our heads, maybe they’ll give up after a time, thinkin’ they got us all. It’s the best I can do, boys.”

Denver eased his old bones into a more comfortable position in the rocks where he lay about a mile from the ambush site. He wasn’t hurt bad, just bruised all to hell and gone. He’d managed to grab some gear just as that damn horse hit him and knocked the crap out of him. He had a canteen of water, some biscuits, and a rifle. And he was alive.

Harvey and Jeff, Smoke’s regular hands, lay in a thicket and tried to blend in with the earth. Jeff had a bullet in his leg and Harvey’s left arm was busted. But they were alive.

Tim was the only one of the new hands to make it out alive. But he was weaponless, except for the sheath knife he carried in his boot. He’d seen those dirty bastards shoot down and ride down his friends with no mercy. One thing Tim knew for a dead-bang fact was that he was going to find those responsible and make them pay a terrible price. He’d prayed to God to give him the wherewithal to do just that.

Jeanne lay behind a log and listened to the men search for her. She cringed when she heard the things they said they were going to do with her and to her when they found her. She clutched a butcher knife in her right hand. Maybe they would do those terrible things. But she’d make one of them pay a fearful price before the others got to her. Then she listened to them ride off and the silence that followed was just about as terrifying. Jeanne did not think she had ever been this frightened. She rose from her hiding place and had not walked a hundred yards before discovering the body of one of Smoke’s men. She stifled a scream and knelt down by the body, making up her mind to do what she felt she must.

She tugged off his boots and forced herself to pull off his jeans and shirt. Always keeping a wary and watchful eye, Jeanne undressed and then dressed in jeans and a men’s shirt. The cowboy’s holster was empty. She looked around frantically for his gun. No gun; she couldn’t find it.

Now she felt she had a chance of staying alive. If she could just get her fear under control.

Smoke picketed his horse near water and sat down to think matters through. Several times he’d come very close to being spotted on horseback, so he decided to stay on foot until he had scouted the valley through and arrived at a plan of action.

Clint Black had no choice but to kill them all. He could leave not one of them alive. Keeping that in mind, Smoke had ridden back to the bodies he’d found and pulled out the marking stake. That was a sign of a survivor that he just couldn’t leave behind. Then, only a short time afterwards, from where he sat on the ridges, he had watched Circle 45 riders return to the bodies and drag them off. There was to be a mass grave somewhere to the south of the ambush site.

He and Nate had scouted out the long valley and found only a few passes. Clint had planned his ambush well. But how did he know a herd was coming? How could he have known? Toni and Jeanne’s attorneys were Boston-based, and the twins had assured Smoke they had told no one locally about the herd. A puzzle.

Smoke tensed at the sound of a steel-shod hoof striking stone. He quickly shifted locations, moving into brush at the edge of the small clearing. His big hand closed around a rock about the size of an apple. His smile was hard, for Smoke had always been pretty good at chunking stones.

A Circle 45 rider, his dark duster tied behind the saddle, walked his horse slowly into the clearing. He gave the area a close once-over and then turned his horse, putting his back to Smoke. Smoke rose up, took aim, and flung the stone. The rock smacked into the rider’s head and knocked him slap out of the saddle. He hit the ground and did not move. His horse trotted off a few yards and stopped.

Smoke moved from his hiding place and walked slowly toward the seemingly lifeless form. He walked slowly so he would not alarm the horse. He wanted that canteen, rifle, and rope. And he might have a bait of food in the saddlebags.

The rider’s skull was busted open. He was alive, but just barely. Smoke looked down at the man and felt no pity, no remorse. Nothing. The man had chosen his way of life. To hell with him.

Smoke took the man’s gun belt and then dragged the raider into some bushes and dumped him. He pulled the saddle off the horse and picketed it with his own. The saddlebags contained a sack of cartridges, some dirty socks, and two biscuits and bacon wrapped in paper. Smoke ate those, drank some water, and felt better. He then wrapped the dead man’s weapons in a ground sheet and carefully hid them under a rotting log. If he found any of his own people alive, the chances were, they would need weapons.

With a grim expression on his face, Smoke picked up his rifle and started walking. He was going hunting.

Toni had not moved. But she was so relieved to see Sally that she could not contain her tears. Wiping her eyes, she whispered, “They came so close, I thought sure they would see me. I could hear them talking. They were saying vulgar, filthy things about what they would do to the women once they found us. I have never heard such disgusting things.”

“They’re not going to do anything to us,” Sally assured her. “Put these jeans on while I go through the supplies I brought back. Go on, Toni, do it.”

So they searched this area, Sally thought. Good. Maybe they won’t be back.

But deep inside, she knew they would. And the search would be much more thorough this time, probably with men on foot. But she didn’t share that with Toni.

Clint Black stood in the big family room of his house and glared at his foreman, Jud Howes. He got his temper back under control and took several deep breaths. “You’re certain that none of the bodies found were those of women?”

“Positive, boss. We checked real close. All men and boys.”

“And the bodies have been disposed of?”

“They’ll never be found.”

“What’d you do with them?”

“Put ’em in Jackson’s Cave. Way back in there. I’ll take dynamite up there later and seal the entrance.”

“That’s good. But be sure that you do that, Jud. The cattle?”

Jud shook his head. “They’re scattered from one end of that valley to the other, boss. It’ll take every hand we got a good two-three weeks to round them all up.”

“We’ll deal with that problem later. Just be sure that no one enters that area until we’re done.”

“Right, boss. I’ve got them covered.”

“Get every hand we can spare in there. Search that area, find those damn people, and kill them.”

“Right, boss. One thing puzzles me, though. Some of the guys we found didn’t have no pants on.”

“Probably didn’t have time to pull them on, don’t you imagine?”

“Yeah…we hit ’em hard and fast, for a fact.”

“Get busy, Jud. Let’s wrap this thing up and put it behind us.”

Smoke rested the rest of that day and tended to his wounds and bruises. There was a bottle of horse liniment in the dead raider’s saddlebags—the one with a busted head—and Smoke treated his bruises with that. He bathed his splinter wound and bound it with a strip of the dead man’s shirt, once it had dried after Smoke washed it in the stream. One of the night herder’s horses had found him, seeking human company, and Smoke found a pair of fresh socks and some .44 rounds in the saddlebags. As soon as the sun went down, Smoke went on the prod.

He had caught the smell of food cooking and decided he’d drop in for a bite…uninvited. He wanted a cup of coffee in the worst way.

And he wanted to spill some Circle 45 blood.

He put Sally as far out of his mind as he could. It wasn’t a heartless act on his part, it was just practical.

He could hear the lowing of cattle from various parts of the valley, some faint, some no more than two hundred yards off. The cattle were probably scattered all to hell and gone. Smoke left the timber and fell in with a small bunch of cattle, slapping a few on the rump to get them moving in the direction he wanted to go. He got in the center of the bunch and crouched low.

When he drew close to the dot of flames from the campfire, he left the cattle and moved into the timber. He began huffing and coughing like a puma. The sound was so real it scared the cattle and they ran off a few hundred yards. Smoke used their noise to work close to the camp.

“Damn painter out yonder,” a man said. “And close too.”

“He won’t come near the flames,” another said. “Turn that bacon, Wilson. I’ll give these beans a stir.”

“You hope he don’t come close,” another said.

Smoke had pinpointed the raider’s fires. The nearest one to his location was a good two miles away. Smoke moved in closer. Four men sat around the fire. A real stupid thing to do, for it destroyed their night vision. But that didn’t make any difference, for in about thirty seconds, the only thing they’d be seeing was Hell.

He lifted his rifle and let it roar, working the action as fast as he could. When the roaring was only an echo, Smoke was running toward the fire and the food and the dead and dying bodies. He stripped the bodies of weapons and ammo.

One was still alive. “Damn your eyes!” he groaned.

Smoke, normally not a profane man, told the dying raider what he thought of men who would kill boys and women. The venom in his words shocked the man. Then, as the raider lay bleeding and dying by the fire, Smoke took two thick slices of bread, made a sandwich of the bacon and dug into the beans, then calmly poured himself a cup of coffee.

“You ain’t human!” the raider managed to gasp the words.

Smoke threw back his head and howled like a great gray wolf, the howling echoing around the valley. Another wolf across the valley joined in the night’s chorus as the raider lay on the ground, his eyes wide in astonishment.

Smoke huffed and coughed like a puma and then smiled at the man. But he was smiling at a dead man. Smoke dumped the weapons on a ground sheet, bundled it up, and, taking the pot of beans and the bread, vanished into the night.

A mile away, Sally smiled. “That first call was no wolf,” she told Toni. “That was Smoke. He’s alive!”

Jud was the first to reach the death scene. He looked at the four men sprawled in their own blood and cussed.

“Jud,” a Circle 45 hand said. “They was cookin’ beans when I was over here.”

“So what?”

“The pot’s gone. Whoever done this took their guns and the bean pot.”

“I think we’re in trouble, Cleon. Big trouble. I don’t think that body Fatso thought was Jensen was really him. I think Jensen’s out yonder. I think that was Jensen howlin’ like a lobo.”

“He ain’t but one man, Jud. And we got fifty men.”

“Forty-six,” Jud quietly corrected.