Bounty Hunter (9781101611975) (19 page)

Chapter 24

A
BITTER COLD WIND HOWLED HAUNTINGLY THROUGH THE
trees. An hour after she ascended into the Belt Range, the reality of her situation dawned on Hannah Ransdell. The headstrong, single-minded woman remembered the impressionable young girl who had recoiled with horror at the terrible stories of “children lost in the woods” in these same mountains.

Hannah looked around at the thick forest, black and impenetrable, into which she had thrown herself. Her horse made slow progress, pausing to step over deadfalls and negotiate steep and slippery slopes. There were a few snowflakes in the air, but the only snow on the ground was in places where it had drifted deep in the storm a week ago and never melted.

With all the maneuvering and “going around” of obstacles that they had been doing, Hannah was sure that she and the mare would have gotten themselves completely and inexorably turned around if she hadn't had the presence of mind to pick up the old compass in the tarnished brass case which her father had given her so long ago.

Her father.

Her father.

Tears of anger came mixed with tears of sadness, and she wiped her cheeks on the sleeve of her riding jacket.

How could he have done this?

What would she say when she finally confronted him?

Would he say that he had done it for
her
?

Would he insist that he had done it for
her
long-term financial well-being?

Had she never known what he had done, her financial well-being would have eventually been greatly enhanced. He was far from being a poor man, but within a few years, he would be an extremely wealthy man, and she was his only heir.

Had it not been for her suspicious nature, things would be very different—and very much
easier
—at this moment.

Had she never known what she had learned in the long hours she had spent on her research, things would, indeed, be very different at this moment. She might be going home to a warm house, a warm meal, and a warm bath instead of riding though the dark forest that swallowed little children and impetuous young daughters of bankers.

What a fool she was to do this, she thought, as she listened to the moaning of the wind and the occasional whining
yip
of coyotes in the distance.

An unseen hand had snatched her and put her in this frightening place. That same hand now kept pushing her ever onward and pushing thoughts of retreat from her mind.

That hand, for better or worse, was her
own
.

Despite the leaden, overcast skies, she knew that it would soon be the hour of lengthening shadows. As it was, she knew that it would soon be the hour when darkness simply closed over these mountains like a black glove.

Part of her resolve demanded that she press on blindly. She was single-minded about following through once she had decided to do something. Her mother had called her “bullheaded.”

When she had decided that Lyle Blake and Joe Clark
must
be stopped, she had asked the question of
who
would stop them.

The answer was that she would have to do it
herself
.

This
was definitely “bullheaded.”

Now that the reality of this course of action was setting in, she wondered if she was crazy for making this impulsively imprudent decision. Before she had grown into the “bullheaded” teenager who had become the headstrong, single-minded woman, Hannah had been the impressionable young girl who recoiled with horror at those terrible stories of “children lost in the woods” in these same mountains. The dangers here were not fairy tales, though. They were real. Throughout her childhood, there
were
children who
really
never came back.

Part of her resolve demanded that she press on blindly, but another part cautioned that if she did not soon make camp, the blindness that came with night would be her undoing.

Tethering the mare to a tree in a patch of dry grass where her horse could forage, Hannah unrolled her sleeping bag on the leeward side of the root ball of a huge ponderosa, long ago toppled in a storm. She had brought a fistful of matches, wrapped in wax paper to keep them dry, but starting a fire under these circumstances took more effort—and more luck—than she had remembered, and
keeping
it going in the cold wind took even more.

The thought occurred to her that she was working up such a sweat starting the fire that she wouldn't need the extra warmth.

She thought this to be funny, and she laughed out loud.

The sound seemed so empty and so hollow when mixed with the deep baritone moan of the wind.

Her horse seemed not even to take notice.

She ate some of the bread that she had put into her saddlebags and wished she had brought more to eat. At least she had remembered the compass and the old Winchester rifle that was kept at the ranch.

As Hannah had boarded the stagecoach, she had made sure that her presence was noticed by many. If her father had inquired about her, the station agent would have confirmed her purchase of a ticket to Bozeman, and several others would confirm that they had spoken with her about the journey. Others had seen her waving as the stage pulled out of Gallatin City.

When she asked to be let out at her father's ranch, she was observed only by people who were headed to Bozeman. None would be returning to Gallatin City anytime soon. Even the stage driver would not be back for several days at the earliest.

From there, she had moved quickly, driven by adrenaline and that unseen hand. She saddled her own mare, whom she had named Hestia after the goddess of home and hearth, and who was kept at the ranch. She filled a canteen, tied a bedroll to the mare's saddle, took the compass and rifle, and headed north.

Instead of following a trail—for there was no human trail that led straight across these mountains—she had followed only the due north of her compass. She knew that this would take her to the valley of Sixteen Mile Creek, where Clark and Blake intended to intercept the bounty hunter and the Porter boys, and she hoped that the shortcut would get her there before either party.

Lying fully clothed in her sleeping bag with the Winchester beside her, she stared up at the sparks from her fire soaring upward to meet the snowflakes coming downward.

*   *   *

H
ANNAH AWOKE WITH A JUMP, HER DREAM QUICKLY
disappearing into her subconscious like a prairie dog down its hole. Hestia was snorting and sputtering and began pawing the ground nervously. Something was bothering her.

Hannah sat up and looked around. The snow had stopped falling. Here and there she could see shafts of moonlight and the moon itself through the trees. The fire had died down to embers, so she jabbed it with a stick, trying to bring it to life.

The mare was growing more agitated, and Hannah wondered what was amiss.

Suddenly, out of the corner of her eye, she caught a flicker of movement. Something was out there. She felt a nervous chill.

Hestia reared and stomped.

Then Hannah saw it, the glint of the firelight in a pair of eyes.

She pulled the Winchester from her sleeping bag and stared into the dark woods.

The pair of eyes, moving in and out among the trees, was low to the ground and about thirty feet away. It could be a coyote, or it could be a
wolf
.

Coyotes are scavengers. Wolves are predators.

Thoughts and fears cascaded through her mind.

Coyotes are skulking opportunists. Wolves are aggressors.

A wolf could attack her horse and leave her stranded on foot in the wilderness—or attack
her
and leave her dead or wounded in the wilderness. This was how people disappeared forever in these mountains.

She briefly wished that she had stayed to a more well-traveled trail. This would have defeated her desire for a direct route, but it would have greatly diminished the likelihood of her present predicament. As aggressive as wolves are, they generally shun places that are frequented by people—but she was not now in such a place. She was in the dark woods that belonged to the predator.

Hannah shouldered the Winchester. She was familiar with this rifle. She had been firing long guns since she was nine, and this very one since she was a teenager. The recoil had knocked her down the first time, but she stood up and fired again, determined not to let a piece of steel and walnut get the best of her. Over the years, she had become quite good with a rifle, and even her father had remarked about her skilled marksmanship.

Her father
.

If the wolf—if it
was
a wolf—was growling, it was not the only one that night in the woods.

Whatever it was, its eyes were no longer visible.

Maybe it was scared off by the fire being stoked.

Maybe it sensed that Hannah had upped the ante by adding a weapon to the equation. A quick kill of sleeping prey was no longer possible.

If it was a coyote, such suppositions were within the realm of the likely.

If it was a wolf, that would be an entirely different matter.

Hannah remained seated but eased herself back into the protection of the tree roots. Their snarled arms, rising eighteen feet into the air above her head, would protect her from an attack from behind.

After five minutes that felt like fifty, she suddenly saw another flicker of movement in the corner of her eye and turned. There were the eyes again. There was that cold chill on the back of her neck.

She aimed.

She squeezed.

The Winchester bucked in her hands as the .45-caliber lead ripped into the darkness.

The mare reared and whinnied.

Hannah blinked her eyes instinctively to wash away the effect of the muzzle flash on her pupils.

There had been no scream of pain or anxiety. She had not hit whatever it was.

There was a better than fifty-fifty chance that a coyote would have been scared off by the gunshot. With a wolf, the odds were much less.

Hannah took a deep breath and wiped her forehead on her sleeve.

Hestia continued to whinny and prance.

The monster of the dark was still out there, but she was no maiden in distress. She was armed with a Winchester. Of course, if she lost her horse, she would become a maiden in distress with a Winchester.

Time slipped by and Hannah felt herself relax. Gradually, she felt herself getting sleepy. Her eyelids grew tired.

Suddenly there was movement—
fast
movement.

Eyes—fierce orange eyes—eyes
coming
.

The rifle was more pointed than aimed.

The trigger was more pulled than squeezed.

The sharp
crack
of the cartridge being fired echoed into the night.

The scream was such as to curdle the blood.

Hannah felt the sharpness bite into her head.

A split second later, she realized that as she had instinctively jerked backward, a movement aided by the recoil, she had jabbed the back of her head on one of the gnarled roots.

She levered the Winchester to eject the cartridge, looked into the darkness, and exhaled held breath.

She saw movement and fired again.

Again, there was a yelp of anguish.

She had hit it twice.

Then she saw the eyes again, and a face contorted with both pain and rage.

Barely a dozen feet away, she saw an enormous wolf, which her eyes told her was the largest she had ever beheld.

Hannah felt her own eyes growing larger than they had ever been.

The thing was skulking away, but moving with great difficulty.

It turned, bared its teeth in an angry sneer, then crumpled to the ground.

Hannah just sat there, still holding the gun, breathing deeply as though she had just climbed a steep staircase.

At last, she stood, comforted Hestia, and thought about the home and hearth for which the mare had been named. Hannah bit into an apple that she had put in the saddlebags, and shared it with her steed. She wished that she had thought to bring coffee.

As Hannah waited for the light of dawn to penetrate the woods sufficiently for her to resume her journey, she tried not to think about the dead animal lying in her camp and cursed herself for initially forgetting that wolves hunt in packs. Fortunately for her, this one had come alone, or at least had come with easily frightened cohorts.

Chapter 25

F
OR
B
LADEN
C
OLE, THE THIRD DAY SINCE HE HAD LEFT
Copperopolis dawned as dark and gloomy as had the second, though the snowfall had taken a momentary hiatus.

He bade farewell to Jake Walz and his dogs, having poured the old man the first cup of coffee he'd had in months. Walz explained that his fear of claim jumpers kept him from straying far, and Cole wondered how he'd fare when he finally did leave here—
if
he ever left the side stream off Sixteen Mile Creek.

Cole hoped that the color really
would
run bright and plentiful for the man come spring—but he believed that it would not.

He could look into Walz's eyes and tell that they did not see the same world that others saw. He had seen the same look in the eyes of gamblers down on their luck. He had seen that gleam of optimistic madness that expressed their firm belief that the next hand, just
one more
hand, would make them rich.

The gaming tables were no different than Jake Walz's place, except that with the gambler, there was frequently a cardsharp to ease him onward with colorful promises. This thought made Cole think of Sally Lovelace and the look that had been put into
her
eyes by the guileful Hubbard down in Colorado. It was a disagreeable train of thought which Cole wished not to pursue, and he forced his mind back to the task at hand.

His father's watch told him that it was almost seven as they forded Sixteen Mile Creek to get back on the main trail, and the bounty hunter breathed a tentative sigh of relief. After today, only one more sleep separated them from Gallatin City.

There were tracks on the trail, laid down since the snow had ceased overnight, but they were headed the opposite direction. This, and the monotony and monochrome of the countryside were lulling. It was a landscape in black and white. The trees were black, and the thin covering of snow blanketed the hills and valley and merged into the clouds in a single shade of cold, bleak white.

Cole hated himself for having succumbed to this hypnotic dullness—the split second that the first shot was fired.

Porter and Goode, both riding ahead of him, jerked their heads up from their own respective daydreams at the sound, glancing around instinctively, looking for the origin of the shot.

The men each saw it almost immediately, a bluish puff of smoke hanging in the still air high on a hillside slightly ahead of them.

The sniper had chosen well, training his weapon at a place on the trail where the terrain offered no cover his targets might run for.

“
Hee-yaa . . . ride!
” Cole shouted, kicking the roan into a gallop and swatting the flanks of Gideon Porter's horse with his reins—though the two prisoners needed no urging to spur their horses into a run. Like Cole, they knew that the best reaction in a situation with no cover was to make themselves a
moving
target, and one that moved as fast as possible.

If the sniper had done well in choosing the place of his attack, his execution left much to be desired. Having failed to hit anyone with his first shot, he waited too long to fire his second. By this time, his quarry was in motion. Only luck would guide his bullet now.

Cole, of course, had problems of his own. He had lost effective control over two prisoners at full gallop on a snow-covered trail. If any horse stumbled and broke a leg in a snow-covered hole, it would greatly complicate matters. Meanwhile, there was the danger that Porter and Goode would escape. Though their being lashed together with forty feet of rope lessened the chances of this, it could not completely prevent it. Desperate men did desperate things, and both of these men had recently proven this axiom.

By the third shot, they were out of range, and soon they had put the shoulder of a hill between them and the shooter. Cole was about to order Porter and Goode to slow their pace, when another shot rang out from a different direction.

He heard the whiz of a near miss from a gunman who was a better marksman than his partner.

“
Dismount and take cover!
” Cole screamed with as much authority as he could muster. At least there now was cover to take. He might have been a better shot, but fortunately, this second bushwhacker had not done as good a job in picking a place to do his shooting.

Cole remained on the roan until both Porter and Goode had clumsily slid from their horses, then he grabbed his Winchester from his scabbard and leaped behind a nearby boulder, with his back to Sixteen Mile Creek.

As with the first sniper, the position of the second was revealed by bluish puffs of burnt powder and by the muzzle flashes of his rifle.

Having taken time to line up his own first shot, Cole squeezed the trigger.

The round impacted the rock behind which the second sniper was crouching, hitting close enough to spit up debris that the man no doubt felt on his face.

This apparently unnerved him somewhat, because he fired two shots in rapid succession which hit in the trees quite far from any of his targets.

Cole fired a second time but cursed when his bullet again hit the rock.

“Stay down,” Cole growled when he saw Jimmy Goode start to move.

“He's gunnin' for
you
, not for us,” Goode shouted back.

“You're wanted
dead or alive
, you idiot,” Porter shouted. “You're worth as much to him dead . . . and you'd be a
helluva
lot less trouble dead!”

The impasse had the makings of a standoff.

It had taken only a few minutes to establish that neither Cole nor the sniper could easily hit the other, but
both
were pinned down.

Over the ensuing ten minutes, each side fired only as often as he thought necessary to remind the other that he was stuck where he was until the impasse was broken.

Cole realized that this would happen as soon as the first bushwhacker appeared. If the two of them could get Cole into a cross fire, things would change abruptly in their favor.

The bounty hunter's eyes were compelled to constantly scan the hillsides all around for sign of the other gunman, while the second sniper had the good fortune of knowing where his targets were.

*   *   *

C
HANGES OF FORTUNE OFTEN COME IN UNEXPECTED FORM.

As Cole was studying the surrounding hillsides, he caught sight of a rider. What confused him was that this black horse was moving among the ponderosa on the hillside
opposite
the direction from which the other sniper was likely to come.

It was hard to get a good look in the thick trees, until the rider paused briefly in a small clearing slightly above the sniper's nest.

Cole couldn't believe what he saw.

The rider was a
woman
. By her narrow waist and the drape of her riding skirt, there was no mistaking this. She picked her way across the hillside with such ease that it made her seem to be simply taking a Sunday ride.

He was beginning to ponder the question of what a joyriding woman was doing out here when a gunshot answered his question.

She had a rifle, and she had fired on the bushwhacker.

As Cole had been watching for himself to be outflanked, it had been his opponent who was outflanked.

The sniper turned and returned fire.

As the woman was now behind the trees, Cole could not see exactly what was happening, but the gunman's attention had definitely been diverted.

Cole squeezed off another shot, coming frustratingly close without connecting.

Suddenly, the man broke from his position and started running.

Cole fired again and missed.

He heard another shot from up on the hillside, and the woman emerged from the trees. Cole watched her put her rifle to her shoulder and fire again.

The running man abruptly slowed to a limp.

One of the woman's shots had hit him.

Seconds later, though, he was on his horse and galloping away.

Cole watched as the woman squeezed off another shot and paused to study the terrain between herself and the fleeing sniper.

Cole watched her maneuver the black horse near a deep ravine and apparently decide that it could not easily be crossed in time for a her to undertake a useful pursuit.

She turned, looked down at where Cole was, and began urging her horse down the steep slope toward him.

Cole had just caught his roan and was leading the horse back to where his prisoners were standing when she rode up.

He recognized her immediately. It was Hannah Ransdell.

She wore a snug-fitting, long-sleeved jacket over her black skirt, and a stylish, narrow-brimmed hat with a floral-patterned ribbon on it. Dressed in what ladies in Virginia would have called a “riding habit,” she did, indeed, have the look of a stylish lady out for a Sunday ride. Except for the Winchester '73 which she carried in her gloved right hand.

“You're in trouble,” she said soberly. “Those men are out to
kill
you.”

“Wouldn't have guessed,” Cole said in a sarcastic tone.

“I'm serious,” she said, bristling.

“I believe you, Miss Ransdell,” he assured her. “By the way . . . you
did
arrive at a fortunate time. What brings you to these parts?”

“To stop them from killing you . . .
and
Gideon Porter.”

“So far that plan seems to have worked,” Cole nodded, looking at Porter, who for once appeared speechless. “But they are still out there.”

“I know,” she said, studying the hillside. “But at least there's two sets of eyes to keep watch . . . and two Winchesters to stop them if they show themselves again.”

“You're pretty good with that thing,” Cole said, nodding to the rifle, which she held muzzle high, the butt resting on her hip.

“You mean good for a
girl
?”

“Did I say that?”

“You thought . . .”

“What I
think
is that
you
hit a man while he was on the run,” Cole interrupted.

She said nothing more on the subject but merely looked back at the hillside.

“What have you been doing to these poor men?” Hannah asked cynically as she observed Porter's scarred face and Goode's withered hand.

“These two fared better than Enoch,” Cole said, nodding to the canvas-covered package tied to the last horse.

“I figured that was him,” she said without emotion.

“We best get moving,” Cole said as he mounted up. “Your hitting that one will not stop them, but at least it'll probably slow them down . . . and we'll want to get as far ahead of them as we can.”

“We ought to be able to keep ahead of them if we stick to this trail,” she said. “As I have learned from recent experience, riding across these mountains makes for very rough going.”

“That ought to force them onto the trail, where we might have a better chance of seeing them coming,” Cole suggested as he looked back down the trail. “But we need to get going and put some miles between us and them.”

“Then let's make some miles,” she said, touching the heels of her scuffed and muddied, though quite fashionable, riding boots to the flanks of her black mare.

*   *   *

T
HEY RODE THE FIRST OF THOSE MILES, AND MOST OF THE
second, in single file because of the narrowness of the canyon, hurrying as much as possible without allowing the horses to get winded.

As the valley broadened, Cole reined the roan alongside the mare. He was curious to know what lay behind the auspicious appearance of Hannah Ransdell, especially in light of what he had concluded about her father.

“You said that you rode out here to save my hide and that of Mr. Porter there,” Cole said without looking directly at Hannah. “How did you know that we
needed
saving? Who are those men?”

“Their names are Lyle Blake and Joe Clark,” she said. “They're part of the same cesspool of town thugs that bred the likes of the Porter boys.”

“How do you reckon that your friends were able to find us way out here?” he asked.

“They're
not
my friends,” she snapped, glancing at him. “To answer your question, I happened to overhear them talking . . . talking about
you
headed for Sixteen Mile Creek from up north.”

“How'd they know
that
?”

“They heard it from someone, who heard it from someone else, who saw you in a place called Copperopolis four days or so ago.”

“So you followed them?”

“Not exactly,” she said. “I came across the mountains. I wanted to get here first by taking a short cut. I
almost
did.”

“How did you find . . . ?”

“It does not take a genius to figure how far someone would get after three or four days of riding from up at Copperopolis.”

“Did your
father
send you?” Cole asked pointedly.

“My father certainly did
not
send me,” she answered, her simmering irritability coming to a boil.