Town Tamers (27 page)

T
he sun was golden in an azure sky, the forest alive with songbirds and the little creatures, like squirrels and chipmunks and an occasional rabbit.

It was so scenic and serene that Asa let his mind wander. He thought about how it would pierce him to the quick if anything ever did happen to Noona or Byron. He thought about the risks they took on his account, and how his wife, God rest her soul, wouldn’t have let them.

There were days when Asa missed Mary something awful. Days when her face floated in front of him and seemed so real, he wanted to reach out and touch her.

Some people liked to say that life was hell on earth, and in one respect they were right. It was hell to lose a loved one. Hell to lose someone you cared for with all your heart. Hell to suffer torment the rest of your born days.

If Asa could, he’d turn back time and relive those days with Mary. They were the happiest of his life, her love for him the sweetest savor on God’s green earth.

He never could get enough of it. He never could stop marveling that she cared so much. It was the first and only true miracle he experienced in his life. As ordinary and as plain as he was, she had loved him above all others.

Asa was thinking that when a jay squawked and the woods went completely still.

Asa drew rein. He was holding the Winchester shotgun across the pommel and firmed his grip.

“What is it, Pa?” Noona whispered from behind him.

Asa shook his head and motioned for quiet. His short hairs were prickling and he didn’t know why. On an impulse he reined to the right toward the cover of a thick stand of aspens, and no sooner did he move his head than a rifle spanged and lead buzzed within a whisker’s width of his ear. “Ambush!” he hollered, and used his spurs.

Suddenly rifles were blasting everywhere—six, seven, eight or more.

It was the entire posse, Asa realized, and bent low over his saddle horn. He glanced back and saw Byron doing the same. Noona had slipped onto the side of her mount as the Comanches were noted for doing, hanging by a forearm and an ankle and presenting no target whatsoever.

She was something, that girl of his.

A spruce loomed and Asa reined around it, putting it between him and the riflemen. Slugs tore at the branches and sent slivers and needles raining down.

A horse whinnied stridently. Asa hoped it hadn’t been hit. They couldn’t afford to lose one. Not now, of all times.

He made it to the aspens but didn’t stop. He rode on, checked to be certain Noona and Byron were still behind him, and didn’t stop until he burst out the other side.

Asa drew rein. The shooting had stopped. He swung his horse around and relief washed over him. The second miracle of his life had just taken place. Neither Noona nor Byron appeared to have been hit. “Are you all right?”

Noona nodded.

Byron said, “They shot my hat off.” Twisting, he pointed at a red furrow inches from his mount’s tail. “And nicked my animal.”

Beyond the aspens the woods exploded in crackling and crashing.

“They’re after us,” Noona said.

“Ride like the wind,” Asa told them, and suited his own actions to his words.

They were skilled riders, all of them. It was one of the things Asa had insisted on when they were small. Learn to shoot and learn to ride and don’t fully trust another living soul except your own family.

But mountain riding wasn’t prairie riding or even like hill riding. The slopes were steeper, obstacles more plentiful, low limbs a constant menace.

It took every ounce of concentration Asa possessed to hold to a gallop. He glanced back often. He wouldn’t admit it to Noona or Byron, but he was worried. Some posses couldn’t be shaken. Some stuck on your trail until they ran you into the ground or killed you, and he had no illusions about which Studevant was out to do.

They had a fair lead, though, and held to it for half a mile or more.

Asa glimpsed a few of the posse now and then. The Gray Ghosts were out in front of the rest. Which figured, given he’d heard they were Confederate cavalrymen once. They’d ridden with Jeb Stuart, or some such.

Asa grew anxious to lose them. But how, when there was nowhere to hide? He didn’t want to make a stand. Not yet. Not when there were so many of them.

Ahead, the trees thinned. Asa caught sight of a valley below. On open ground they could fly faster, but they would be riding ducks for their pursuers and their rifles.

Asa was about to veer and avoid the valley when a desperate gambit occurred to him. It was rash and might not work. They might be overwhelmed and slain. But if it did work it would buy them time.

He rode straight for the valley floor. Behind him pounded Noona and Byron, riding side by side now, brother and sister joined in spirit in this direst of perils.

With a jerk of his head and a sharp motion of an arm, Asa caught their eye. They realized he was about to do something.

The valley floor wasn’t thirty yards lower when Asa brought his mount to a sliding halt. He was out of the saddle before it stopped. Darting to a fir, he sank to one knee.

Noona and Byron were quick to follow his example. They ran to trees on either side.

“I can hear them,” Noona said. “They’ll be on us any moment.”

“We want them to,” Asa said. That was his gambit. The posse would think they were making for the valley floor, and would come on without slowing. “Wait for me. Let them get close.” Close enough for him to use the shotgun.

Byron pointed. “Here they come!”

T
he Gray Ghosts rode as one. It was uncanny how they sat their saddles the same and moved the same. They hadn’t jerked their pistols yet.

Marshal Pollard and a deputy were next, and both held rifles. Pollard narrowly missed a tree and lost a little ground.

Above them flitted the figures and silhouettes of the rest of the manhunters.

Asa looked for Arthur Studevant but didn’t see him. That was too bad. Drop Studevant, and it might break the spirit of the rest.

Noona and Byron were looking at him, waiting for his signal.

Asa rose partway and banged off a shot at one of the Gray Ghosts. Dray or Cray, he couldn’t tell. Asa thought he couldn’t miss but at the first movement on his part, both of the Ghosts swung onto the offsides of their mounts as Noona had done while simultaneously reining sharply aside, one to the right and the other to the left. The buckshot passed harmlessly over the one Ghost’s animal.

The deputy coming on hard after them hadn’t spotted Asa, and when Dray and Cray swung wide, he glanced at one and then the other in confusion. By then he was barely ten yards from the tree Asa was behind.

Asa let him have a blast of buckshot in the chest and worked the Winchester’s lever to fire again.

Byron and Asa opened up, their rifles banging in a peal of thunder.

Farther up the mountain, Marshal Pollard hastened for cover. So did those behind him.

“Damn,” Asa fumed. He’d hoped to drop more than one of them. Rising, he shouted to his son and daughter and sprinted after their horses.

The animals had gone a short way and stopped. The gunfire had made them skittish, and when Asa reached his, he had to snatch at the reins several times before he caught hold and could swing on.

“Only ten now,” Noona crowed. “And I think I winged another.”

Not enough,
Asa thought, and relied on his spurs again. He quickly gained the valley floor and reined parallel to the forest. The trees and undergrowth provided the cover they needed as they fled around the valley rather than across it.

He was surprised the posse didn’t come after them.

Midway around, Asa reined into the woods. He pushed on for another quarter of a mile, then stopped and swung his horse broadside to watch their back trail.

No one appeared.

“We shook the buzzards,” Noona crowed.

“Too easily,” Byron said. “They wouldn’t quit over losing one man.”

Asa figured the same thing. “They’re up to something.”

“What can it be?” Noona asked.

“I don’t know,” Asa said, and that troubled him.

“We shouldn’t stop,” Byron said. “They’ll be after us and we must make it as hard for them as we can.”

Another thing Asa agreed with.

For over an hour they pushed their horses to the limit and finally had to stop to let the animals rest.

A finger of rock afforded Asa a magnificent view of the country below, of slope after rolling slope heavy with timber, of the valley in the distance, of a pair of golden eagles soaring over a snow-clad peak and of several ravens lower down.

But there was no sign of the posse.

“Where can they have gotten to?” Noona wondered.

Asa tried to imagine himself in Arthur Studevant’s expensive shoes. Would he return to Ordville for someone to take the place of the man he lost? Not likely. Would he make camp and wait for Asa to come to him? Possibly, but Asa wasn’t about to ride into another ambush.

Byron joined them wearing the look he often did when he was deep in thought about poetry. “Care to hear my latest brilliant idea?”

“So long as it’s brilliant,” Noona said dryly.

“We don’t wait around for them to make their move. We make a move of our own.” Byron paused. “What is the one thing they’d least expect us to do?”

“Walk up to them with our hands in the air?”

“No, sarcastic sister. The one thing they wouldn’t expect is for us to be waiting for them when they return to Ordville.”

“You’re proposing we get there ahead of them?” Asa said. “And what? Lie in wait for Studevant in his hotel suite?”

“We wait for the posse just outside of town,” Byron said. “Their guard will be down, them being so close. We do it right and we can pick all of them off.”

Asa liked the idea. Liked it a lot. “That’s using your noggin, boy. I reckon all these years of rubbing elbows with me have paid off. You were bound to learn something.”

“I learned a lot of things from you, Pa.”

“Name one,” Asa said, not really expecting him to.

“I learned that a person should stand on their own two feet. I learned we should do what we think is right even if others think it’s wrong. I learned that we should do what we’re passionate about. Find something we believe in, and live it as truly as we know how. I learned to step aside for no man. To treat all women with respect. And I learned that when I’m beaten black and blue, to get back at the sons of bitches any way I can.”

Asa stared in amazement. “You learned all that from me?”

“That and more.”

“I learned pretty much the same,” Noona said.

Asa looked away. An odd lump in his throat was to blame. He’d never talked to them about this before, never imagined he’d had that much of an effect on their lives.

“Something wrong, Pa?” Noona asked.

“No, daughter,” Asa said. He was being honest with her. For the first time in a long time, nothing was wrong at all.

“H
is name was Hanks,” Marshal Pollard said. “He worked for me now and then when I was shorthanded. Good with his fists but slow on the brain.”

Arthur Studevant stared at the dead man they were about to wrap in a blanket with no more interest than if the man were a bug. “He’s not a gun hand, then?”

“Hanks? Hell no.” Pollard laughed. “His draw was slow as molasses.”

“If that’s the case,” Studevant said, controlling his temper, “why did you bring him?”

“You said to round up every deputy I have. And it’s not like there are gun hands on every street corner.”

“Or working for you,” Studevant said with a pointed look at Deputy Agar.

“I’ve killed a few, I’ll have you know.” Agar defended himself.

“Were they tied and helpless?” Studevant asked.

“That was uncalled for,” Agar said.

“Were they?”

“Two of the three.”

“Deputy Agar is dependable,” Pollard said. “That’s more important to me than being able to fan six shots as fast as someone can blink.” To spare Agar further embarrassment, he gazed about them and said, “Speaking of which, where did those spooky gray goblins of yours wander off to?”

“The Gray Ghosts are on a mission and will return when they’ve done my bidding.”

“You never mentioned any mission to me.”

“I saw no need.”

“I see.” Pollard wheeled and stalked off.

Studevant sighed. The more time he spent in the marshal’s company of late, the more he questioned whether he should let him go on wearing a badge. Maybe he should have one of the Gray Ghosts elected to the post. They could ride better than Pollard and shoot better than Pollard, and best of all, unlike Pollard, they never sassed him when he wanted something done.

“You’re being awful hard on Abel,” Deputy Agar grumbled.

“Eh?”

“I thought you liked him. Why do you keep treating him like he’s no-account?”

“I treat him like he deserves. And who the hell are you to question my reasons for anything I do?”

“I’m Abel’s pard,” Agar said. “I don’t like you putting on airs with him.”

“Perhaps you should talk to him, then,” Studevant said, “and get him to pull his head out of his ass.”

Now it was Agar’s turn to huff off but he stopped to glance back and say, “Just because you have money, you reckon you’re better than everyone else.”

“I am.”

Agar went after his friend.

“I swear,” Studevant said. “I’m surrounded by simpletons.” He spied a log and went over and sat and leaned on his cane.

The man who had been leading their packhorse all morning came and stood in front of him. “My handle is Carnes.”

“So?” Studevant said.

Carnes was heftily built, with a bushy walrus mustache. His clothes were cheap store-bought but there was nothing cheap about his leather gun belt or the Smith & Wesson he wore high on his left hip. “So I couldn’t help but overhear and I wanted to set you straight on a few things.”

“
You
,” Studevant said, “want to set
me
straight?”

Carnes nodded. “I’m not like Hanks or Agar. I have six notches on my pistol and it would please me mightily to add six more.”

“You’re telling me you’re a gun hand.”

“I’m telling you I’m more than that. I’ll kill anyone, and I follow orders real good.”

“I see,” Studevant said. “This is your idea of a résumé.”

“I can do everything those Gray Ghosts can do.”

“I doubt that. But I’ll take your offer into consideration. Your boldness impresses me. I’m in dire need of bold men.”

“Keep me in mind.” Carnes touched the brim of his bowler.

Studevant smirked. One of the advantages of being rich was that people were forever coming out of the woodwork to bend over backwards for him. He just might give this Carnes a try. Who knew? Carnes might be everything he claimed, and a man could never have enough killers on his payroll.