To Hell and Beyond Page 19

  O’Shannon’s eyes widened as the big animal came to a halt broadside to him. Hanging from the saddle horn of Ledbetter’s dun was a finely crafted leather bag with elk ivory and porcupine quillwork. Trap felt as if he’d been kicked in the stomach, and he had to steady himself to keep from dropping to his knees.

  It was Maggie’s medicine bag.

  Trap looked at it in horror and imagined all the terrible things a man like Ledbetter would do with an Indian woman if given the chance. He should never have left her—not the way things were. Not with folks feeling so worked up.

  Trap felt a sickening ache fill the void that occurred when he first saw the small leather pouch—as if all the joy had gushed from him like water from a broken pitcher. She would never have lost the bag. It held the things that were important to her, locks of her children’s hair, spiritual things she was never far from—it would have to be taken from her by force . . .

  Ledbetter mistook Trap’s unsteadiness for fear and lowered his reins to goad him a bit. “What do you think of my new saddle ornament?” He’d obviously figured out Trap was an Indian, and couldn’t seem to resist the opportunity to gloat over the fact he’d gotten the better of another redskin, even if it happened to be a woman. It was a deadly error on his part.

  “It looks right nice on my saddle. Don’t you think? I heard tell the squaw it belonged to was a witch.” Ledbetter smirked and patted the bag. “There’s all sorts of goodies in here. Maybe they’ll bring me some luck. That damn old coyote bitch don’t need it anymore.”

  Trap struck like a rattlesnake, stepping on Ledbetter’s boot toe to vault into the saddle facing him, just back of the horn. His left hand grasped the loose muslin of the bigger man’s shirt while his right drew the bone-handled knife from his belt as he moved.

  Ledbetter had time to give a startled grunt as he was joined in the saddle by 160 pounds of furious Apache. “What the . . . ?” He was able to get his revolver out of the holster, but Trap’s arm snaked around his elbow, locking the arm out straight in front of them. There was the glint of a knife blade between the two men. Ledbetter growled in surprise and pain. He struggled to turn the gun toward Trap, but the little tracker yanked up hard on the man’s elbow with a mighty heave.

  Ledbetter cried out in pain and his finger convulsed on the trigger. A horrific boom rocked the smoky glade and the poor dun horse collapsed under the two grappling men, a forty-five slug through the back of its head.

  Trap used his forehead to butt Ledbetter in the nose as they rolled off the dead horse, but kept his grip on the arm to keep from getting shot himself.

  Ledbetter was no weakling, and once the initial shock of Trap’s surprise attack passed, he wasted no time in returning Trap’s head butt with one of his own. Pulling in tight, face to sweating face, Ledbetter slowly began to wrench his gun arm free from Trap’s grip.

  “That was my horse, you stupid son of a bitch,” he grunted through clenched teeth.

  Trap could feel Ledbetter’s arm bending—slipping free. The pistol began to move across his back. The tracker drove his knee hard into the big man’s groin and sank his teeth into a bulbous nose. Before Ledbetter could recover, Trap’s knife found its way between his ribs. He worked it back and forth with two quick flicks, severing Ledbetter’s heart. He felt the man go weak beside him, heard the gun clatter to the earth.

  Trap spit out the bloody mess that had been Ledbetter’s nose and staggered slowly to his feet. Kicking the gun away, he gently lifted the medicine bag off the saddle horn atop the dead horse.

  O’Shannon stared down at the dying man and tried to catch his breath as he smelled the soft leather pouch.

  “That was my wife.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Everyone in the glade, including Ox Monroe, stood in silent wonderment at the outcome of the fight. Tom Ledbetter had been a force to be reckoned with and though Trap O’Shannon was obviously no slouch, without knowing about the medicine bag, few would have guessed he could prove to be so deadly.

  “I’ve never seen him like that,” Blake whispered. The speed with which his father had dispatched Ledbetter gave pause to everyone in the group. For a moment, even the wind seemed to lull. “It was like an execution.”

  Clay leaned in next to the boy and slowly shook his head.

  “There’s a mighty big difference in the way you and your pa view things.” The Texan chewed on the corner of his mustache in thought. “Your pa ever tell you our unit’s motto?”

  Blake nodded, unable to take his eyes off his father. “Sanguis Frigitus. He told me it means calm in the face of danger.”

  “That it does . . . in a way. But it more literally describes your pa. It means Cold Blood. You look at this little escapade as a law-enforcement matter where a civilized legal system can make everything right and proper. If you have to arrest someone or even kill them in the line of duty, then it’s well and good—but it’s always a last resort. Your pa, well, he sees this as war, a kill-or-be-killed kind of thing where the battle lines are clear as a slap in the yap.”

  “How do you see it?” Blake still watched his father as he spoke.

  “Like your pa, I reckon. Though it wasn’t always that way. Trap O’Shannon was born a warrior. I was sort of formed into one in his image.”

  Across the clearing, Trap grabbed the saddle horn with both hands and swung up on Hashkee. His chest still heaved from the battle and his eyes glowed with an intensity Blake had never seen. He dug his heels into the mule’s flanks and bolted the short yards between him and the others.

  “I’m going to check on your mother.” Trap reined up next to his son and held up the medicine bag. “You keep the trail with Clay. He’ll look out for you.”

  Madsen stepped in close to Trap and grabbed a handful of saddle string. He patted his friend on the knee in an effort to calm him.

  “I know what you’re thinkin’, Trapper, and it just ain’t so. She’s fine. I know Maggie, and it would take more than some blowhard to bring her down.”

  “That’s what I always thought about the captain.” Trap stared into the wind.

  “I hear you, but even the captain said Maggie was all right. Johannes told him so.”

  O’Shannon shook his head. “Let go of my saddle, Clay. I’ve got to go. You know it and so does my son.”

  Blake gave a somber nod. He felt the same anxiety his father did, the same hollow dread at the thought of his mother in the hands of a person who blamed every problem they had on Indians. He wanted to go check on her himself, but at the same time he’d always believed he shared a deep spiritual connection with her and his father both.

  “Pa,” Blake said, his voice halting. “I . . . I’m as scared as you are. But don’t you think we’d know—feel it if anything happened to her? When I was a little boy, she used to tell me you two were connected that way.”

  Trap didn’t speak, but looked down at Clay, who held his saddle strings. His eyes still blazed with barely controlled fury.

  Clay stepped back, holding his hat down against the rising wind. “I’ll back your play, partner, you know that—whatever you decide to do.”

  With a brisk nod, Trap wheeled his mule and trotted off to the east without another word.

  “This don’t bode well,” Clay said to no one in particular.

  “Guess we should get on the trail then,” Blake said. He felt a little dizzy after his father’s quick departure, and it took him a minute to get his feet back under him.

  Clay chewed on the curl of his mustache and gave him a wink. “A couple of sharp-eyed hunters like you and me, we’ll bring the girl back all right.” He surveyed the rest of the fire crew, who stood staring in shocked disbelief. The two Indian boys still had the rough nooses around their necks where Blake had cut them down from the snag.

  “You boys might as well take those neckties off,” Clay said. “I think enough folks have died for the time bein’. These men seem to have lost their appetite for a hangin’. Ain’t that a fact, Mr. Big
Ox Monroe?”

  Monroe nodded, his eyes still glued to Ledbetter’s body and his dead horse. “Sure thing.”

  “Good enough,” Clay groaned when he climbed aboard his bay. “Y’all behave yourselves ’cause I aim to come back and check.

  “Now, Blake, I’ve worked with your daddy on the finer points of philosophy for lo, these many years and he ain’t learned a blessed thing. Let’s see if I can do a little better with . . .”

  “You men get what food and water you can carry and follow me!” Horace Zelinski’s voice roared over the howling wind. The fire crew all looked as if the cavalry had arrived when they caught sight of their boss. They huddled around him as he strode into camp, enveloping the gaggle of wide-eyed men who accompanied him. To Blake’s surprise, his father rode slowly behind the procession, veering off to join him and Clay.

  “We’ve got about a half an hour,” the fire boss yelled over the whirling melee of dust and wind. “Maybe a little longer before this whole area is smack in the middle of a firestorm.”

  Taggart, who stood a few feet from Blake, gave the fire boss a naively mournful look. “What does he mean firestorm?”

  “The wind,” the Indian boy with the smiling eyes said solemnly. “It’s the wind blowing the fires together like a blacksmith’s forge.”

  As if Zelinski had struck a match and set them on fire himself, the entire camp became a rush of furious activity as everyone gathered canteens, blankets, and what tins of canned ham and tomatoes they could cram in their pockets and pokes. Zelinski supervised, issuing orders and keeping things running as smoothly as they could for men who were running for their very lives.

  The intensity of the wind grew with each passing minute and by the time the men were ready, the flurry of glowing needles had reached them.

  “Any minute now,” Zelinski screamed over the wind, holding his hat down with the flat of his hand. “Any minute now, we’ll see spot fires spring up from all this falling debris that’s being driven before the fire. Don’t stop to put them out, it won’t matter. Our only chance is to make it to an old mine adit I know about two miles from here.”

  Trap reined up beside Clay.

  “Fire’s got the whole landscape to the east and south cut off. I got to go around and up over the mountains to circle back down to Taft.”

  Clay smoothed his mustache and nodded. “What’s keeping you then?”

  “That fire boss said he saw some settlers headed up the mountains to the northwest between here and Avery—over Porcupine Pass. Two Indians, two white men, and a girl.”

  “You aim to tell me and Blake so we can go after them?” Clay stood in his stirrups and rocked back and forth with anticipation.

  “I’m going too,” Trap grunted. “It’s on the way.”

  CHAPTER 26

  A steady drizzle of sweat poured down Lucius Feak’s spine despite the driving wind that whipped at his loose cotton shirt. Without any hair to help keep it on, his hat had blown off miles before, and gone rolling on its side through the buck brush and dry bear grass like it wanted to flee as badly as Lucius did. Horrible luck to have hat come off in the wind.

  Webber had made him cut the gag off the girl, but she still rode along in silence with her mouth half open, looking at him with a kind of catatonic out-of-her-head stare that made his flesh crawl like it was festering. If it were up to him, he’d have killed her long ago, but he didn’t care to end up like the witless Billy Scudder.

  Even the Apaches had the jitters, and old Juan Caesar kept checking his back trail as if the devil himself was behind them. Lucius smiled at such a thought—Apaches believing in the devil, that would be something. That was like the devil believing in his own self. Feak found himself wondering if the devil might be just a little bit scared of Apaches—until Johannes Webber’s voice, flat and crisp above the wind, yanked him out of his thoughts.

  “You must leave O’Shannon alive. Kill the others. Make him watch those he cares about vanish from him. But be watchful. The Scout Trackers are nothing to be trifled with. They are excellent marksmen, and Trap is as brutal as Juan Caesar in his own way. Split them up, pick them off one by one, but leave Trap O’Shannon to me.”

  Johannes glared at Caesar, who kept looking over his shoulder.

  “This is not like you, my friend, to be so afraid of another man,” Johannes said.

  The one-eyed Apache turned to face the group and scoffed, a murderous scowl across his scarred face.

  “It is no man I fear.” He gestured over his shoulder with his chin. “It is the fire. We cannot fight against that. It’s grown too large even to outrun, I think.”

  “Focus on the task at hand,” Webber said, his face not quite concealing the utter contempt he had for anyone who might stand in the way of his planned destiny.

  “Once you have killed O’Shannon’s only son, then take from him his dearest friend.” Webber grabbed the reins of Angela’s horse and gigged his own gelding cruelly in the ribs, leading her away from the other men. “Leave Trap to me, and don’t worry, the fires will be the least of your problems.”

  * * *

  Angela couldn’t tell if it was the fever or merely the hot wind that made her feel as if her face was on fire. Her lips were badly cracked and bleeding, but any moisture in her mouth had long since dried up from breathing around the rawhide gag. Her tongue felt foreign to her own mouth, as if it she’d bitten off a piece of meat too big to swallow. Her jaw ached as bad as her injured finger, and she found it difficult to keep her eyes open. If only she could have a sip of water, that might ease the swelling in her tongue and ease the pain in her face.

  Webber slowed his horse and urged her stumbling mount up next to him with the reins. Smiling at her softly as if he were a favorite uncle, he shook his head and clucked.

  “Feak and his ilk are heathen scum, Miss Kenworth. I apologize for their rough treatment of you.” He drew a long sheath knife from his belt and used it to cut the bands that held her wrists. She saw blood on the blade, and found herself wondering if it was the same knife he’d used to cut off Billy Scudder’s head. Once her hands were free, he offered her his canteen.

  Angela drank greedily, the cool water running down both sides of her blood-encrusted lips and spilling onto the saddle horn. It cooled her throat and gave her the energy to cry.

  “Don’t fret yourself, my dear,” Webber said. He took the canteen back and hung it across his saddle horn. “They won’t harm you again. My old friends will make short work of them. I’m certain of that.”

  Angela wondered if she were hearing things.

  “I thought you wanted them to kill your old friends.” Her voice was hoarse and raw and her mouth didn’t work quite right from the long hours in the gag. But Webber understood.

  “If things go as I have planned, they will, but I’m sure some, if not all of them, will die as well.”

  “What about me?” Angela sniffed, rubbing her eyes with the heel of her good hand.

  “What about you?” Webber’s lips pulled back in a flat grin—almost a grimace. “You are the bait that brings O’Shannon to me. You will be fine, my dear. Just fine.”

  Angela slumped in the saddle. Although she was no longer tied, she was still being led just the same to a certain death, if not by the cruel men who’d had her before, then by the madman who had her now. She sniffed the air and watched a flurry of glowing sparks dance on the wind before they landed on the dry grass.

  Maybe it wouldn’t be the men who killed her at all.

  CHAPTER 27

  “Have to say, I don’t like it one bit,” Madsen said amid a cloud of whirling ash and cinders. “I feel like a goose in the middle of a cookstove.”

  The others rode along in silence, Trap watching the ground while Blake scanned the trees around them.

  “And another thing.” Clay used the tip of his reins to point at Trap. “I don’t like the way that Zelinski character said we should head toward some ‘distant valley.’ That sounds too much like the
afterlife if you ask me.”

  The wind howled through a thick stand of paper birch that had miraculously escaped a previous fire. The white-barked trees stood out in stark contrast to the surrounding black landscape.

  “I ain’t never seen anything like this in all my life.” Clay whistled above the moan of wind that surged through the gray haze of the birch forest.

  A black bear sow with two white-collared cubs the size of feeder pigs hustled past him in the trees. Scarcely half a minute behind the bruins, a small herd of whitetail deer trotted through, only a few feet away from the horses. A fresh young doe, her sides heaving from panic and exertion, froze in mid-step when she noticed the men. Snorting, she stomped a slender foreleg and blinked huge brown eyes—as if in wondering awe that anything would be so foolish as to amble before the approaching flames. She was close enough that the men could see the wind ruffle her soft brown undercoat of hair.

  Clay tipped his hat, and the doe seemed to vaporize into a flash of snow-white tail and a blur of tawny brown. When she had vanished along with her friends, Clay shook his head and stared after them.

  “It’s like the deer are chasin’ after the bear. Just don’t seem proper.”

  “They’re likely the only ones with any sense,” Trap said, chewing on the inside of his cheek. The specter of what might have happened to Maggie hung over him heavier than the thick billows of smoke and ash that swirled by with the wind. His gut told him she was all right, but he’d never rest until he was certain. If he had really believed she was dead, he would have turned around and let the fire overtake him, for without Maggie, life would be totally void of worth or flavor. He cursed himself for leaving her in the first place, with all the danger that was in the air.

  He knew better. That’s why he’d stayed alive for so many years living the kind of life he’d lived.

  The three trackers rode as quickly as they could and still keep a reasonable trail. They traveled over a fresh ground burn, and step-by-step tracking, though possible, was painfully slow. Instead, they followed the natural lines of drift. With a general direction of travel from the last known set of tracks and the description of the area where Zelinski had seen the group, Trap decided to follow the flow of the land. Unless they were pushed, people as well as animals tended to follow natural contours and drainages. In the forests there were only so many routes a horse could take with all the blowdown and tangled snags.