The Wild Gun Read online

  This part of the Medicine Bows was unknown country to Cord. It was wild and rugged, with jumbled hills all around him that seemed to have sprung up in the canyon. Steep bluffs loomed in the distance, their bases piled high with talus rubble, as if stones had been dislodged in some ancient earthquake.

  The tracks told a different story. Dolan was not headed for the flat, but followed the stream. Cord came upon another crossing and the tracks showed that Dolan had gone back to the other side. Why? Cord was puzzled. The man he trailed defied all logic. He should have lit a shuck for the 2Bar2, but instead, he seemed to be headed for even more rugged country in the opposite direction.

  Dolan had something up his sleeve, that was certain, Cord thought as he recrossed the creek and followed the tracks until they faded out on rocky ground. He traversed a wide moraine. Cracked, broken, scrambled rocks bore the traces of sprinkled water from the horses’ hooves and legs. He followed that track until there wasn’t a trace of spoor. The water droplets had disappeared.

  This made the tracking even more of a challenge, since he had to strain his eyes to look for overturned rocks where a hoof had dislodged a stone. He looked for those rocks that had dark undersides, signs that they had been settled in dirt and had been rolled over.

  One thing was in Cord’s favor. Dolan knew where he was headed, and so far, he was traveling in a more or less straight line toward what looked to be a veritable hall of mirrors. Only there were no mirrors, just a series of arroyos that jutted onto the moraine like island peninsulas.

  The terrain bore strong evidence of former flash floods and violent cataclysms. Farther along, he encountered shale with flint and sandstone slabs that made the tracking even more difficult. He had to lean over so that he was close to the ground to find any chunk of shale or flint that had been disturbed or overturned. And there were not many since the stones were mostly flat and only the thinnest would break under the pressure of a horse’s hoof.

  Cord stopped and gazed ahead.

  There were all those small breaks in the hills, each one a small canyon. Dolan could be hiding in any one of them. A queasy feeling roiled Cord’s stomach as he looked over the landscape in front of him. He scanned the tops of the hills but saw only scrub pine and thick brush. He felt exposed, vulnerable to a rifle shot from any one of the small trees or bushes as he passed through them.

  He rode to one side of the road, no longer looking down for tracks.

  Wherever Dolan was headed, it was straight through that eerie canyon to a place he knew about. A safe haven, perhaps, a place suitable for putting up the horses and lying in ambush.

  Cord was even more wary now as he ventured on. He wondered what kind of place Dolan had chosen to either make a stand or shake off any pursuit.

  Earthquakes must have created this canyon of small hills, shallow arroyos, and rock-strewn gullies. It was unlike any place in the mountains Cord had ever been.

  He reined Windmill to a halt.

  He looked long and hard in the direction he was heading. He looked around at the small hills that jutted out from the higher mountains, the bluffs. A thought came to him as he sat there in the silence of early afternoon.

  An old Cheyenne he had met said something to him once that stuck with him. The man was called Silver Wolf in the English tongue. He was a wise old bird whom Cord had met at Fort Laramie a few years ago.

  “The wandering hills,” Silver Wolf had said one day when they were riding through some foothills.

  “What do you mean?” Cord had asked.

  “The hills, the mountains. They are alive. They move.”

  “They don’t move,” Cord had said.

  “Yes, they move. They wander. When you live in the mountains, you know this. Everything is alive. Rocks, trees, grass. They think. They grow. They move.”

  Cord could not shake Silver Wolf from his beliefs. Now, in this strange place, he knew that Silver Wolf had spoken the truth. Perhaps not in the way a white man could understand it, but these rocks, the shale, the small hills—over time, they had moved. They had wandered from their original places.

  Ahead of him was more evidence of that movement. And beyond this place? What lay ahead? Nothing but trouble was his guess. An ambush. Someplace where a man could hide horses and himself. A trap.

  And Cord was riding straight into it.

  He gazed up beyond the small hills. There must be a way to ride above them and look down at the valley, this strange canyon.

  He began to scout out a place where he could ride above the flat he was on and look both down and ahead. He rode to the nearest hill on his left and spurred Windmill to climb the slope. The hill was thick with scrub pine, scrawny juniper, and dozens of other plants and bushes. There was no path or trail through it. He gave Windmill his head and they slowly rose along the narrow ridge until they emerged on another ridge that seemed to be a spine that traversed all of the hills projecting into the canyon.

  Cord breathed a small sigh of relief. Windmill shook his head. His mane flapped against his neck like some errant feathered fan. He snorted as if to clear his nostrils of dust and the memory of the climb.

  Cord patted Windmill’s neck and let the horse rest a few moments. Then he followed the narrow ridgeline. Every so often he looked down at the little rows of hills jutting into the canyon.

  Then he saw something that seemed out of place and even stranger than the terrain he had abandoned.

  There, four or five hundred yards ahead, was what appeared to be another canyon. Sunlight striped its walls with light and the fissures were strips of shadows parallel to each other.

  He rode on a little farther, hunched over the saddle horn to present a smaller silhouette. He saw the back wall of the canyon and knew that it ended there.

  A box canyon.

  On either side were more hills, large round hills, thick with trees. The one on his right was higher than the other, and more thickly forested.

  A good place for a man to hide and have an uncluttered view of the entrance to the box canyon.

  The hill on the left was not high enough or close enough for Cord to look down into the box canyon.

  He cursed under his breath. But, he thought, there was another way. He knew, however, that he had ridden far enough along that narrow spine above the little hills.

  He looked down to his left where the ridge dropped off. Ahead, he saw a depression below the ridgeline. It was surrounded by small pines, blue spruce, and a fir tree or two. A perfect place to harbor Windmill while Cord walked ahead on foot.

  He rode the side hill down to the small gully and dismounted when he was at its center. He ground-tied Windmill to a stunted juniper bush and slipped his rifle from its sheath.

  Then he climbed back up to the ridge and, hunched over, walked along it at a slow pace. He watched where he stepped and made no sound.

  He reached a point where the box canyon began and saw that there was grass growing high in it. He lowered himself to the ground and crawled to the edge of the ridge. He set his rifle alongside him and looked at the opposite hill. He saw no movement, no sign of life. Mountain breezes rustled the limbs of the trees, and they were thick atop its rounded top.

  He drew a breath and held it.

  Then, on a hunch, he put two fingers in his mouth and blew a long, loud whistle. He waited as the seconds ticked by.

  A horse nickered from somewhere in the box canyon.

  One of Jesse Barnes’s stolen horses, no doubt, he thought.

  He listened hard and heard the sounds of horses moving around. They were faint sounds, but unmistakable.

  The horses were down in that box canyon. He knew it for sure now.

  But where was Dolan?

  He looked long at the entrance to the canyon. Was he expecting Dolan to walk out in full view and look around? No, not really. He just wanted to make sure Dolan was not with t
he horses. He imagined that the horses were either tied up or in some kind of corral.

  The entrance was empty. Nothing and no one came out.

  Then, as if in answer to an unspoken prayer, Cord saw something on the opposite hill. It was just a fleeting thing, something he might have only imagined.

  A faint and fleeting glint of sunlight. Not on rock or bark, but on metal.

  Someone, probably Dolan, was on that hill, hiding in the trees. He had not imagined it. The sun had struck the blued barrel of a rifle when the man in hiding had moved it.

  Cord held his breath and stared hard at the spot where he had seen that glint of sunlight.

  A man could only stay in one position for so long. Then he would have to shift his weight and change his position slightly.

  Cord waited, snug against the ground.

  Move, you sonofabitch, he said silently to himself.

  His hand slid to the stock of his rifle and he laid his arm up the length of the barrel so that sunlight would not strike it.

  The noises in the canyon faded away and it was quiet. The silence of the mountains rose up around Cord.

  The seconds dragged into minutes, the minutes into a slice of eternity that was almost beyond mortal comprehension.

  SIX

  The piercing whistle startled Dolan. Then the neighing of one of the stolen horses froze his blood.

  What was that? he wondered. A marmot? Some kind of bird?

  Or a man?

  His bones stiffened and the hairs on the back of his neck vibrated and rose from his skin. He looked down at the entrance to the box canyon. There was nobody there. No sign of anyone nearby.

  Just one whistle, but it was so unexpected that he had not marked its source. He looked over at the hill on the other side of the canyon, scanned it slowly for any sign of movement.

  Prairie dog? Not likely, he thought. Not this high. Not in these foothills.

  Something had whistled, though. Or someone.

  He cursed under his breath and stared around in a 180-degree arc. Nothing moved. Nothing made a sound. His palms began to sweat. He wiped one hand on his trousers. He could hear the skin rubbing against the cloth.

  Nothing wrong with his ears. He had heard that sharp, short whistle and it had unnerved him.

  Where in hell was that Wild Gun?

  Dolan shifted his weight on the rock. His buttocks were going numb. His rifle moved slightly, away from him, and he eased it back closer to his body, behind the branches that concealed him.

  He listened intently for any sound, animal or human. He listened for a hoofbeat, a branch rustling against another, a scratch, a clink of stone, a cough, a grunt, or an animal scurrying among the pinecones and needles.

  Nothing but silence. An eerie, unnatural silence at that.

  • • •

  Across the way, on the other hill, Cord continued to stare at that same spot where he had seen a glint of sunlight. He knew that there was someone there, sitting or standing, amid the copse of trees. Sooner or later, he reasoned, whoever was there would have to move. Bones and flesh tired after a time of immobility.

  Cord waited, his arm still covering his rifle, his chin hugging the ground. It would take only a second to slide his rifle into position for a shot.

  He was ready. Every fiber in his body was ready. And he was comfortable lying flat on the ground behind some bushes that did not block his view of the other hill.

  He might get off only one shot. And it had to count.

  He gauged the distance, thought about the trajectory of the bullet from his rifle. The empty space between the hills made a difference. The pull of gravity was farther away from most of the distance the bullet would travel. Yet his sights were dead-on. He had sighted his rifle at twenty-five yards, then tested it at one hundred yards. Dead-on.

  He figured the distance from his hill to the other to be less than two hundred yards. Closer to a hundred and fifty. He looked at the entrance to the box canyon, judged the distance between the foot of each hill. Then back to the spot on the other hill. He judged his estimate to be pretty close to being accurate.

  Finally, Cord’s patience paid off.

  He saw a single spruce branch move. The branch was low to the ground and it was the only one that swayed and bent before it sprung back to its original position.

  He slid his rifle toward him and slipped the butt in the crook of his shoulder. He sighted down the barrel, straining to see what, or who, had caused that single branch to move. As he waited, and watched, more branches moved and he saw a shadowy figure of a man stand up with a rifle in his hands. The man stayed in the shelter of the spruce, but his legs, torso, and arms were visible.

  The man lifted one boot and stomped the ground in front of him. That action exposed more of his body. He continued to stamp at something on the ground, and that’s when Cord saw a flat rock where the man had been seated.

  Cord curled his finger around the trigger of his rifle and lined up his sights. He aimed for the man’s midsection and held his breath. He squeezed the trigger and the rifle bucked against his shoulder as the .30-caliber cartridge exploded in the firing chamber.

  The boom and crack of the rifle split the silence wide open and the sound echoed in the surrounding hills.

  The man turned slightly as Cord fired his Winchester, and the bullet slammed into his hip. Dolan spun around and crashed backward into the trunk of the spruce. Blood sprayed from the wound and he let out a loud cry of pain.

  Then Cord saw Dolan hunch over into a crouch and bring his rifle to bear on him. Smoke from Cord’s rifle hung in the air for a few seconds, then began to disappear as the breeze shattered it into a white wisp.

  Dolan fired his rifle.

  Cord saw the spurt of orange sparks and puff of smoke before the bullet whistled over his head, clipping branches from the bushes before it landed in the dirt behind him.

  Dolan was in plain sight, but he was hunched over so that he did not present a clear target.

  Cord saw him lever another cartridge into his rifle’s firing chamber. That’s when Cord took the second shot. He aimed, once again, toward the largest part of Dolan’s body and squeezed the trigger. Then he rolled to his left and jacked another bullet into the chamber of his rifle.

  Dolan screamed in pain as the bullet seared his right thigh and crunched through spruce branches. It was a shallow wound but gouged out a chunk of flesh, and the wound spewed blood onto the spruce branches and the ground.

  Dolan recovered and stood up as blood seeped down his right leg and into his boot.

  SEVEN

  Abigail Barnes stood at the front window of the ranch house. She watched as her daughter, Lelia, shooed chickens out of the front yard with a straw broom. The chickens squawked and ran from her. Others took flight and cleared the picket fence. Feathers floated in the air. The chickens continued to squawk in protest. Abigail frowned.

  “Chickens loose again,” Abigail’s husband, Jesse, said from his place at the dining room table. He sipped the last of his coffee, his plate marked with the tracings of fried eggs, ham rinds, and hominy grits.

  Abigail didn’t answer right away. She stared at the foothills where she saw movement beyond the hayfield that bordered the grassy pastures.

  She was a corpulent woman with pudgy lips, a large button nose with a mole on its tip, close-set porcine eyes, and a neck that was encircled with excess flab. She had sturdy legs and muscular arms and wore her gray-streaked hair in a bun.

  “Somebody’s comin’,” she said to Jesse. “Out of the hills, I reckon.”

  “Who?” Jesse asked.

  “Dunno. But looks like maybe one man and a bunch of horses.”

  “Cord Wild,” he said.

  “Can’t tell.”

  Lelia opened the gate and chased some of the chickens around the side of the house to
ward the chicken coop out back. But she stopped and looked toward the hills herself and shaded her eyes for a better view.

  It was still early morning and the sun was just edging up over the horizon. The pastures were tinged with pink and the mountains were still shadowy monuments with only their snowcapped peaks shining brilliant under long gray clouds that were slowly turning to gold.

  Lelia’s fair skin was berry brown from the sun. She had long black hair that shone even in that hazy morning light with the sheen of a crow’s wing. Her black eyes were almond shaped, almost Asian, and her lips were voluptuous, as if she had dipped them in some acidic wine. Her patrician nose gave her face a look of Grecian symmetry and her lithe body was as finely curved and contoured as a Venetian vase. Her faded dress clung to her body like a furled sail. She clutched the broom with dainty, delicate hands that matched her small feet and trim ankles.

  In a word, she was a beauty.

  Her heart began to beat as she saw the lone rider leading six horses. The other horses were fanned out behind him, but he was unmistakable.

  It was Cordwainer Wild.

  “Ma,” she called as she turned to the window.

  Her mother nodded in acknowledgment and turned away from the window, a silent growl on the puffy face.

  “Unless I’m mistaken, that is your wild man a-comin’,” she said. “I s’pose he’ll want me to fix him some breakfast this time of day.”

  “Likely he’s been chewin’ on rhubarb.” Jesse stood up and carried his cup to the window.

  “I see six horses,” he said, “’sides his own Windmill.”

  “Them the horses what was stolen?” Abigail said in a snorting tone.

  “Yep, maybe. Three mares and my best stud, Gladiator.”

  “Why you’d hire a lout like that to go after them horse thieves is beyond me,” Abigail said.

  “He ain’t no lout, Abbie,” Jesse said.

  “He ain’t nothin’ but a drifter with a gun. You should hear what they say about him in Cheyenne, Jess.”