Johnnie’s party came to the Big Sandy Creek in the early evening, just after the sun had disappeared behind Pike’s Peak. For the last couple of miles they had been riding through a lush growth of early summer grass, the best they had seen in many a long day. There were also trees and scrub along the river, box elders, willows, and oaks of various kinds. Antelope sprang away at their approach, and though there had been a time when the meat would have been welcome, they left them be, for they had no wish to advertise their presence with gunfire.
Near the stream a beaten trail showed that there had been a considerable traffic of cattle and horses along the banks.
‘They’re not trying to hide their tracks in the water,’ one of the cowhands observed.
‘They don’t need to any more,’ Johnnie replied. ‘They must know that if we start looking for them along here, we’re going to find them anyhow.’
It was apparent from the tracks that at different times small mobs of ten or a dozen cattle had been driven up the river by three or four riders, who had returned alone a day or two later. These signs had to have been left when drafts of cattle were taken out for sale to the gold prospectors. The main herd, therefore, had to be somewhere downstream.
Darkness fell while they were still making their way in that direction. They kept on, and after several miles began to find dark bulks scattered in the grass ahead of them. Small mobs of cattle were bedded down wherever there were trees or a growth of scrub to shelter them from the wind.
Crooning softly, so as not to startle the animals, Johnnie and Bobcat approached several of them one after the other. After all the weeks they had been on the trail, the cattle were well accustomed to having men around them at night. By taking their time, Johnnie and Bobcat were able to go right up to them, and feel along their flanks for the scar tissue left by their branding. In many cases they could recognize no pattern in the ridges and bumps they felt in the darkness, but in two cases their gently probing fingers were able to make out the familiar shape of a winged spur, and in another case the sunburst of Mary-Lou’s JQE brand.
‘Those are our cattle all right,’ Johnnie told the other men.
‘I don’t see no night guards around ’em,’ Cab Phillips observed.
‘Too short-handed,’ somebody else commented.
‘These couldn’t be cattle that’s already been sold to the gold prospectors?’ another man asked.
‘Not out here,’ Johnnie replied. ‘We’re too far out from the mountains for that. Anybody we find with these cattle will be part of the gang that stole them. I don’t think we need to worry about shooting some innocent gold prospector by mistake.’
For a while they pushed on, looking for some sign of a camp. It was Bobcat, naturally, who found it, he being the first to detect the smell of a doused campfire on the wind.
‘You fellers wait,’ he said. ‘Johnnie and me, we go look.’
Leaving their horses, and Dusky, Johnnie and Bobcat slipped away through the night, tracing back the smell of burnt wood. Before long they caught the pale loom of tents set back by a copse of tall trees, hickory by the smell of them. Somewhere behind them a horse whickered softly.
Both knew that Mary-Lou could be in one of the tents, but the question was which?
Slowly they eased up to the nearest tent. Breathing could be heard inside, heavy, deep breathing; certainly not hers. The soft sounds of Mary-Lou asleep were very well-known to them after all the campfires they’d shared. Two men were in that tent.
The next was empty. They checked inside, feeling around with their hands, but found only flattened grass and leafage that had been gathered for sleeping on. As they left again, they heard a movement by the front of the next tent in line.
Bobcat touched Johnnie’s shoulder, and pressed him to the ground.
After that the Indian seemed to simply disappear. The movement stopped suddenly a moment or two later. There was a splashing sound, a soft gurgling, and the scent of blood on the air.
‘Lofty?’ a voice queried from inside the next tent.
‘Yeah,’ Bobcat grunted, deep voiced, muffled.
From inside the tent came a stirring, followed by a metallic click, and then a rustling by the front flap.
Again the movement stopped suddenly, and there was a splashing sound.
Then a gun went off, startlingly loud in the night. The flash from the muzzle was low down, ground level, but it was directed at the stars... a dropped gun firing accidentally.
The whole camp came awake like a stirred-up hornets’ nest. Cursing men were calling out to see what had happened.
‘Come,’ Bobcat’s whisper came from right next to Johnnie’s ear.
They eased back into the gloom under the trees, both trying to work out where Mary-Lou might be. They wanted no accidents where she was concerned.
‘Somebody here’s had their damned throat cut!’ a voice snarled from the blackness.
Another gun went off. Flame belched out, giving away the firer’s position.
‘Hell!’ somebody screamed. ‘I’m shot. You bloody fool, you’ve shot me.’
‘Anybody else comes near me gets shot too!’ was all the answer he got.
From the noises being made, it seemed that the rustlers were anxious to get clear of the tents, where it was impossible for them to tell friend from foe. They were spreading out in several directions.
One came blundering in under the trees, and tripped over Johnnie’s legs. Almost before he hit the ground, Johnnie was feeling for his head, reaching over his left shoulder for a grip under his chin, and prodding with his Bowie knife over the other shoulder, searching for the throat. The knife was the only way. By shooting, he’d reveal his own position.
Before Johnnie could get a firm grip, the man screamed. All secrecy evaporated with the terrified shrilling, but by then Johnnie was committed to the knife. Hands came up, trying to pull the knife away, but Johnnie had found the place, and forced the tip home. Hot blood gushed over his left hand, still not firmly clamped over the fellow’s jaw. The screaming went on, louder than ever, until Johnnie turned the knife in the wound, and levered it outward. Then the sound dropped away, gurgling, bubbling, dying as the man died.
Blessed silence returned.
Nobody came to the man’s aid.
Nobody dared get involved.
Johnnie swallowed the bile burning in his throat, and wondered at his own new-found readiness to kill.
As his ears readjusted to the quietness, he picked up the sounds of movement in several directions. Out on the river flats disturbed cattle were lumbering away. Somewhere among the trees a small twig was crushed under a careless foot. In another place somebody brushed against leafage. Neither of those would be Bobcat. Nor would those men have Mary-Lou with them.
If she was anywhere nearby, she’d probably still be in one of the tents. Why was she not making some sort of noise then? She’d have to know that rescuers had come for her.
Cautiously, Johnnie eased back towards the tents again. Just because the first had been found empty once, didn’t mean that it was still empty. Anything could have happened under the cover of the shooting and screaming. He checked carefully, listening outside first, and then entering each of the first three tents. All empty, deserted.
Approaching the fourth on hands and knees, his cocked revolver thrust out before him, he sensed a warmth in the pitch black right in front of him. He paused, flattened himself to the earth, and listened. He could smell somebody’s dried sweat. There was somebody lying on the ground immediately in front of him. There was no smell of blood, so it wasn’t one of the corpses.
Who but Bobcat would lie still like that beside one of the tents? It had to be him.
Gingerly, Johnnie explored with his left hand. Cloth, clothing, a woollen shirt. A hand came down on his own, gripped, held his still. Bobcat.
The Indian was lying with his head pressed to the side of that fourth tent. Johnnie edged in alongside him and listened too. Breathing. Somebody inside was trying
to breathe quiedy, and not making a very good job of it.
Why was Bobcat waiting?
Johnnie listened some more. Under that first heard breathing, was a second... very quiet. He’d have missed it, had he not spent that extra time listening.
Still Bobcat waited. Still Johnnie listened.
That quieter breathing wasn’t regular. Every now and again there was a catch in the rhythm.
Bobcat’s hand slid down Johnnie’s back, and stopped at the knife sheathed at his waist. He tapped the sheath.
Bobcat wanted Johnnie to use the knife?
No, he was still waiting for something.
Knife?
Somebody was doing something with a knife. There was irregular breathing, and there was a knife involved.
Realization hit him.
The second breathing was Mary-Lou, and somebody was holding a knife at her throat.
Suddenly gunfire erupted again about a quarter of a mile upstream. One gun fired, was answered by a second, and then came a crash of several weapons firing together. A rustler had run into Cab Phillips and the rest of Johnnie’s party.
‘Hold still!’ a whispered snarl came from the tent.
‘You’re hurting.’ Mary-Lou’s voice.
Johnnie was ready to rush in there, but Bobcat continued to hold him still.
Somebody was coming along the tent lines from the other direction. A dark shape blotted out some of the stars.
Bobcat pressed Johnnie to the earth once more, and then was gone, headed around the back of the tent.
‘Bert, are you still there?’ the newcomer whispered.
‘Who’s that?’ came from inside the tent.
‘Me, Vince.’
From his prone position Johnnie saw a second shadow rise up beside Vince. The shadows blended. There was a soft grunt.
Immediately Johnnie moved, reaching for the tent flap, grunting himself as he bent to enter, masking the sounds of what Bobcat was doing to the unfortunate Vince behind him.
‘Keep the noise down!’ Bert, the man in the tent whispered hoarsely, letting Johnnie place him in the pitch blackness.
Johnnie reached for him, felt the arm with the elbow lifted toward him, and knew that that had to be the one with the knife.
‘Watch it,’ Bert complained. ‘What are you doing?’
What Johnnie was doing was feeling for the wrist, and once he had it, wrenching the arm, knife and all, away from Mary-Lou’s throat.
Bert gasped, and thumped at Johnnie with his free hand. Together, they rolled over, with Johnnie hanging on desperately to the knife arm. Johnnie tried to turn his face in under his opponent’s body to avoid further blows, and then realized that none were coming. Bert would be using that hand to reach for his gun.
‘Ah, shit!’ Bert yelped, and began thrashing about. Unbeknown to Johnnie, Mary-Lou, tied hand and foot, had found Bert’s other hand, and had her teeth clamped firmly into it.
Then Johnnie had Bert’s knife pried away, his two hands to Bert’s one. It took only a moment to turn the knife over, feel down the length of Bert’s straining arm, and drive the blade home between his ribs. Blood gushed, warm and sticky, soaking Johnnie in gore. He twisted the blade, and worked it back and forth. Bert groaned, kicked out with his legs, and shuddered. Gradually he became still.
‘Mary-Lou?’ Johnnie whispered, despite all the noise his latest victim had made.
‘All right,’ she answered, finally unclamping her teeth from the dead hand. ‘I’m tied up.’
He felt for her, found an arm, and traced it down. ‘We’ll soon have you out of here,’ he promised, cutting into her bindings with the bloody knife.
‘The gang leader was here when the shooting started,’ Mary-Lou said. ‘He’ll be close by somewhere. His name’s Dismal... Dismal Dacre.’
‘Yes, I know,’ Johnnie replied, slicing away the ropes from her ankles. Quickly he told her of his father’s arrival on the scene, and of the citizens’ band he had with him.
‘That’s why most of the outlaws have gone off down the river then,’ Mary-Lou said.
‘Yes, Dad was expecting to meet them,’ Johnnie told her. ‘He’ll deal with them, while we get you out of here.’
‘There’s still several of them here, including Dacre,’ Mary-Lou answered. ‘It won’t be too easy.’
‘Come,’ Bobcat’s voice came from the flap of the tent. ‘Men coming back.’
The night’s work was still a long way from being finished.
NINETEEN