Buzzard Bait Read online

  BUZZARD

  BAIT

  BY JORY SHERMAN

  Buzzard Bait

  Smashwords Edition

  A Western Fictioneers Book published by arrangement with the author

  Copyright © 1978 by Jory Sherman

  Cover Design L. J. Washburn

  Image credit: shutterstock.com 2847541

  Western Fictioneers logo design by Jennifer Smith-Mayo

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used in a fictional manner. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  First Edition 1978 Major Books

  Second Edition: 2013 The Western Fictioneers Library www.westernfictioneers.com

  To Floy and Lester Balcom

  Chapter One

  The man swung in the wind.

  His neck was stretched long, his head lay on his shoulder, eyes vacant, open.

  The knot in the rope was tight, just below his ear, looking like some grisly flower placed there. The man's clothes were in tatters, caked with dust. In some places, the cloth was worn through and dried blood had filled the fibers, turned a dark brown in the sun. Flies boiled over the wounds in a frantic buzzing, their bodies blue-green, fat, hairy.

  The body was still warm, had not yet begun to bloat.

  The stench of death was in the air, however. The wind carried it over the prairie, moved the smell up into the sky where a half dozen buzzards circled. Their arcs tightened and drew closer to the tree where the dead man swayed back and forth, his booted feet pointed to the ground, inches away.

  Matt Cord looked at the dead man longer than he wanted to, fighting his stomach, biting off the bile that burned his guts and throat.

  The hanged man had been dragged first, alive.

  He had been dragged a long way, over rough ground. His limp hands were bloodied and burned from the rope. His knees and the calves of his legs were torn by sharp rocks and stiff plants. His face was bruised, scraped raw over the high cheekbones, the mouth swollen from a battering that must have been brutal.

  They did this, Matt knew, before they hanged him from this tree on the prairie. They made him suffer, made his last moments of life hell.

  He looked at the man and saw his own face. A sudden chill gripped him.

  This could have been me, he thought.

  The wind keened through the hanging tree like a question from a cave. Matt thought back a long way and tried to think of an answer.

  The buzzards dipped lower in the sky, their wings like searching fingers. A quail piped in the distance, its voice oddly like a coyote's. A lizard cocked its eye and flicked its tail before rattling over the rocks into the shade.

  The tall man moved his horse closer to the dead man. He could no longer look at the faded slack face, the broken neck.

  Matt's eyes, grey as steel, drew under their lids in a cold hatred. He reached back for the knife on his hip. He drew it from his scabbard, slowly urging his buckskin mount closer to the place where the dead man turned at the end of the creaking rope.

  He placed an arm gently around the body, wincing as his hand touched the mortifying hulk that danced so slow there in the wind.

  His other hand flashed upward and sawed at the rope. With a groaning sound, the fibers parted and he tightened his arm grip on the body. He rode away from the tree, the cut rope dangling empty, stripped of its prey.

  Matt dismounted carefully, holding the stiffening body against him so it would not fall before he could support it on the ground. He laid the dead man down on his back, still unable to look at him again.

  He tied the reins to a bush, then fished in his saddlebags for the steel tomahawk. He drew it out, its metal cold and brilliant in the sun.

  It took him a long time to hack out a shallow grave. He laid the man in the chunk of earth he had hollowed out. He had to look at him again, then. He folded the dead man's arms across his belly, straightened him as best he could. He closed the lids over the empty, glazed eyes. Matt's jaw tightened as he took one last look.

  He scooped up the dirt he had dug and threw it over the body. His eyes seemed to cloud over with more steel, more grey, and behind them, a darkness that grew. Matt forced himself to throw dirt over the dead man's face. He tried to be gentle, but an urgency was on him. He could no longer look at the frail remains of a once-alive man who was becoming part of the earth. Faster and faster he flung the dirt, listening to it spatter against parched flesh that was no longer vital, no longer carried movements, words, a smile, or a handshake.

  He took a long time gathering stones to pile up on the grave. The wolves and coyotes would not get to this. The buzzards would not feed here. The buffalo would not pound over this place with slashing hooves. No wandering brave would take this scalp.

  The wind died down and gentled to a breeze when the burial was over.

  Matt wiped his sweat-soaked brow. His clothes clung to his body, were dark from perspiration. His coppery hair was wet and fell tousled over his broad forehead.

  He looked up at the sun. It was not yet noon. He took a swig from his canteen, then took his wide-brimmed hat off and poured water into it for his horse. The animal sloshed it eagerly, while Matt rubbed its neck. The buckskin was fat and frisky, an Indian pony that had never tasted grain, could survive in country like this. He poured water over his horse's mane and then put the hat back on his head.

  Matt looked once more at the pile of rocks that was now a grave, then put the tomahawk back in his saddlebag. Its edges were dull and would have to be sharpened. He would do that tonight, when he made camp on the way to the lower fork of the Powder River. He mounted his pony and looked off to the west.

  Without a command, the horse moved in that direction.

  Matt didn't look back.

  He looked at the path through the brush that led away from the hanging tree.

  Three men had made that trail and he meant to follow it. Somebody had made a mistake—a big mistake. Somebody had killed the wrong man.

  Matt knew they had taken the woman with them, too. She had been with the man whose body twirled like a wooden marionette in the wind.

  He thought of her, then.

  He could see her blue eyes in his mind, smell the scent of her like lilacs in spring, sage wafting on an evening wind. He could hear the taffeta rustle of her skirts, hear her deep full laughter flow over the prairie: a canyon afire from its brush, harmless enough, but crackling loud.

  His stomach tightened when he thought of her; thought of her pear-shaped face and her lips pursed red in a heart's teardrop shape.

  The supply wagon was gone and so was Addie Malone who had ridden with the man she loved, the man she had been going to marry.

  Matt reached unconsciously for the pistol at his hip. His hand tightened around the butt before he came back to the moment. There was no one here to draw on, no one to shoot, no one to kill.

  He had killed before. That's why his jaw muscles tightened and he drew his hand away from the pistol butt. Some smoke, a lead ball flying into a man's flesh: these things he had known before. He had thought it was all over. Now, it came back, suddenly and without warning. A hand became gun, a gun became death, the smoke became the spirit.

  Who had told him that?

  No one. Talking Horse? Tashunka Wawogla, his friend of the Sioux, had said something like that once. An Oglala, speaking from a long pipe, sitt
ing on a buffalo robe in his tipi on the Powder. What had he said? Matt tried to remember.

  "A gun speaks," he had said, "and smoke is a river to a man's heart. The spirit is blown away with the lead ball, out of the mouth. The spirit is smoke, going high up. Into the sky. A man spits up smoke when he dies. It is his breath. It is his soul."

  Matt shook these thoughts from his mind and thought of Addie and her brother, Ted, who was waiting for him at the ranch near the Gallatin Valley.

  The dream had begun to warp. A man was dead and a woman captured. The Powder, the Yellowstone, the Three Forks all seemed very far away just then. Memories of the Sweetwater and the Little Big Horn, the great lush land teeming with game and gold, faded away as he came back to the present.

  What was once a man had dangled from a tree, his spirit gone up to the sky like thin smoke. This man had once breathed, had loved, had fought, had eaten the food from the earth that had now claimed him.

  This man was now in a rough grave in an unknown place.

  Luke Cord lay in that grave back there, not yet thirty years old. It was a grave where he, Matt Cord, should have been. He was the one they were after.

  They had just made a simple mistake.

  Luke Cord had been Matt's twin brother.

  Chapter Two

  Big John Lathrop chewed on the twist and looked at his two sons riding ahead of him. Carl, the youngest, was the wild one, a lot like himself. Ross was more like his mother, but deadly nonetheless. There was a mean streak in Ross. He liked to watch a man squirm before he killed him. Carl liked to get it over with fast.

  It was Ross's idea to hang Cord. Carl said to just shoot him and get it over with. Ross had dragged the man through the brush until he wasn't pretty to look at and then had watched him dance after he kicked his horse out from under him.

  Carl hadn't liked it much. Too much waiting around. And when the girl had gotten hysterical, Carl rode off in anger. He, Big John, had to slap her back to her senses while Ross just laughed like a drunken Cheyenne.

  Big John knew there'd be trouble between the brothers yet over that girl. She sat in the wagon straight, like she was proud. Ross wouldn't be able to take that for long. He couldn't stand an uppity woman. Carl didn't even like women, didn't trust them. But there would be trouble, sure enough.

  The woman was needed though. No more than a girl, she was the key to the Cord-Malone spread up on the Gallatin.

  "Hold up there, Carl, Ross," Big John ordered. "Time for some palaver."

  The supply wagon came to a halt, driven by the only other man in the party, Oren Garrity, a man who wore his six-gun low on his hip and carried a short-barreled shotgun just in case he had to do close work. Oren had a scar on the top of his forehead where a Cheyenne had tried to take his scalp once. The scattergun had worked then and he swore by it ever since.

  "What's up, Big John?" asked Ross, riding up. The girl in the wagon didn't lift her head. Her grief was still deep inside her, choking off her thoughts.

  "Watch the girl, Oren. We want to talk private."

  Garrity gave a leer and said, "Take yore time, Big John."

  Ross shot Garrity a look that was not exactly filled with kindness. Garrity wiped the leer from his face.

  The three Lathrops rode back down the trail out of earshot of the Malone girl.

  "Didn't want to say this, back there," Big John said, "but I done think we killed the wrong man. That girl kept a-callin' him Luke instead of Matt."

  "I wondered about that," said Carl. He had light hair and hard blue eyes. He was lean from the saddle and short rations. His skin was tanned from wind and dust and sun which made his blue eyes seem even brighter than they were. His older brother, Ross, was darker, chunkier in build. But he had the same blue eyes. All three men wore buckskins, Big John being taller and heavier than either of his sons. He was dark, with black eyes that were hard to see into, like marbles where the light never settles in one spot.

  "If that weren't Matt Cord, he sure as hell was his twin," said Ross.

  Big John gave him a long look.

  "I asked her what the feller's name was," said Big John.

  "What'd she say?" asked Ross.

  "Said his name was Luke, Luke Cord."

  "He was a twin brother?" asked Carl.

  "Maybe," said Big John.

  "You mean . . . ?" said Ross, "that guy was . . . aw, hell, I never heard of Matt Cord having no twin brother."

  "Just the same," said Big John, "you took him awful easy."

  "Yeah," said Carl, leaning over the pommel of his saddle, "he seemed pretty slow with his six-gun. I recollect seeing Matt Cord take out two men in Nebraska City once't and they started first."

  Ross reflected on this information as his father and brother stared at him. He worried the facts around in his mind like a chunk of tough meat.

  "We figured he'd be the hardest of the two—Ted Malone is just a cowpoke," said Carl. "Just a tagalong to Cord."

  "They rode together," said Big John, "and Malone stayed out of things."

  "Yeah," put in Ross, "a kid scairt of his own shadow."

  "No, we don't know that," Big John emphasized. "Malone was there—if he was needed. He wears a pistol. Mayhap he knows how to use it, too."

  "I can outdraw his likes," Carl spat. "A man don't mix it, he has his reasons."

  Big John let that one send out its ripples.

  "Cord picked his partner for a reason," Big John said a few seconds later, "and we know it isn't just because he's a fair hand with cattle. He might not need a backup man, fast as he is. I wouldn't bet that Malone was a coward, though. Cool in the heat, sure. Our big problem now is that Matt Cord probably ain't dead."

  "Them others sure run off quick enough," said Ross.

  "Hired hands," said Carl.

  The two boys worried the meat a little more. Both of them were chewing on Big John's words like pups not sure of whether they were getting fresh game or carrion.

  "If the man we rubbed out wasn't Matt Cord, what's that do to our plans?" asked Ross.

  Big John looked around at the country. Rolling hills were rising up from the trail. In the near distance, the Black Hills stood to the north east of the Bozeman. Soon, they would cross the Powder, the Little Bighorn, the Yellowstone, before reaching the Gallatin River to the west and the valley where the C Bar M lay. This was Sioux country, still, and called for careful riding. If they watched hard and didn't stumble on any hunting camps, they would be all right as they headed north. Big John didn't really expect any Sioux sign until after they crossed Crazy Woman Creek. It would be dangerous from there on, he knew, despite the presence of Fort Phil Kearney, which they'd have to skirt on their way through the Big Horns.

  "We've left heavy tracks," said the elder Lathrop. "He'll be on our trail for sure. Them others, too, don't forget about them. They got clean away, I'm thinkin'. If Matt Cord is on our behinds, he may have three others for company. The girl's our ticket to the C Bar M, but I didn't figure on fighting Malone and Cord at once't. We mayhap got one ahind and one at the ranch. We need to do some figurin'."

  Carl cocked his head and looked at his father.

  "We could like wait for Matt, if he is a-comin' on our trail," he said.

  "He's too smart for that," said Big John. "He's like a wolf, that one."

  "Hell, we could stay behind one of those hills yonder and pick him off," Ross snorted.

  Big John laughed in derision. "Cord knows these hills too well," he said. "He's practically a Sioux hisself. Stayed with 'em four years or so."

  He paused a moment to let his thoughts gather enough to say what he had on his mind. His raw face was hard. His sons waited for him to speak, their horses getting restless at standing still so long.

  "This girl's Malone's kid sister and as such she'll be good bargaining stuff for us once we get to the C Bar M. We got to beat them trail drovers we run off and keep Cord from catchin' up to us. Them thousand head at the ranch, along with these two hundred'll sell for
plenty in Alder Gulch. Bull Roumal will meet us at the Yellowstone with at least three other men. The C Bar M's just over the pass on the Gallatin River. We take the herd in, sell 'em in the Gulch and ride out with gold."

  "That should be enough men to take care of Malone," said Ross. "You sure Bull will be there?"

  "He'll be there," said Big John. "Malone won't be expecting us. He'll see the herd and figure we're Cord's drovers. He ought to lay down his cards right there, I'm thinkin'. We can hole up there and take care of Cord and the others when they come up. If the Malone girl is right, we got to expect him."

  "He can catch us for sure, him with no herd to worry about," said Carl.

  "You'll have to look back after a while and bushwhack him," Big John told his son. "I figure he'll be in a hurry, maybe even by himself."

  "I can do it," said Carl.

  "Sounds good, Big John," Ross said.

  "Let's get to it, then, boys. We got a heap of ridin' to do." He turned his horse back toward the chuck wagon where Garrity waited with the girl. His sons followed, sure that their father's plan would work.

  When they rode up to the wagon they could see that Oren had been mauling the Malone girl. She was backed up against the seat like a cornered animal, her eyes blazing with hatred and fear.

  Big John flashed a hard look at Oren.

  "We got no time for that," he said. "Rustling cattle's one thing, foolin' with a woman what don't ask for it, another."

  Garrity avoided Big John's gaze as he untied the reins from the whip post.

  "Ross'll ride point. Carl, you take the left flank and I'll take the right. Let's get these cattle movin'. Oren, you bring up the rear. Make sure none of the herd lags back. We get to the Gulch with these and the others, we can all be called mister."

  Oren said nothing as he rattled the reins. Ross galloped ahead. Big John and Carl split up to take the herd's flanks. They rode over the tracks, mixing them all up, before splitting off to the northwest, up the Powder.