The Tenderfoot Trail Read online

  They made only ten miles the next day, traveling across level ground but slowed by the oxen. After clearing the lower reaches of the Teton, Garrett followed the trail to the northwest, pushing his cattle toward the great loop of the Marias River. He figured that at their present rate it would take seven or eight days to reach the Sweet Grass Hills, a prospect that brought him no joy.

  “It’s that damned cat wagon that’s slowing us, Luke,” Ready grumbled after they’d circled the herd and made camp that evening. “I say we mount the women on the spare horses and get shet of them oxen.”

  Garrett checked that Annie Spencer and the rest of the brides were talking around the wagon, out of earshot, before he said, “There’s something eating you, Zeb. You’ve been as tetchy as a teased snake all day. Out with it. Say it plain.”

  The old man nodded. “I’ll say it plain, Luke. I been seeing dust on our back trail since early this morning.”

  Alarm flared in Garrett. “You sure about that?”

  “Sure, I’m sure. My eyes are no good up close anymore, but I’m a far-seeing man.”

  “Vigilantes?”

  Ready shook his head. “A passel of riders would kick up a heap more dust. No, I reckon this was one man and he was keeping his distance.”

  “Jacob McGee maybe? Could be he’s found himself a horse.”

  Ready added a few sticks to the fire. “Not his style. McGee won’t come right at you, Luke. Too yellow for that. He’s a dark-alley killer.”

  A frown gathered on Garrett’s forehead. “Then who?”

  “Beats me.” Ready shrugged. “But it’s somebody who knows what he wants and is willing to bide his time to get it.”

  The old man’s eyes moved to the women talking by the wagon, his dislike for them obvious. He’d given them all nicknames, except for Jenny, and that only out of deference to Garrett. No matter the names they were born with, as far as Ready was concerned, Annie was Razorback Molly, and the others were Covered Wagon Liz, Rantin’ Nell and Five Ace Flora. Every time Garrett mentioned them as “the virgin brides,” the old-timer laughed.

  “Seen something else today, just afore we bedded down the herd,” Ready said in a conversational tone.

  Garrett smiled. “Zeb, you’re just a barrel of good news. What did you see this time?”

  “Injuns,” Ready said. “They’ve been out among the hills watching us for quite a spell.”

  Garrett turned his head, listening to the darkness. “You reckon they plan to attack us?”

  “Maybe, but they’ll talk first, I think.”

  Annie Spencer stepped up to the fire, her hands on her hips. “What’s for supper, gents?” she asked.

  “Bacon and beans,” Garrett said.

  “But that’s what we had yesterday.”

  “An’ that’s what you’ll have tomorrow, Molly ol’ gal, an’ the day after that,” Ready said.

  Annie gave Ready a hard look and turned to Garrett. “What did the old coot just call me?”

  “A slip of the tongue was all,” Garrett said, sliding a warning glance to the grinning Ready. “He meant ‘Annie.’ ”

  “I don’t take no funnin’,” Annie said, “especially from some broken-down old puncher who doesn’t have sense enough to—”

  The woman’s eyes suddenly moved beyond the dancing scarlet shadows of the campfire and her fingers flew to her mouth as she gave a startled yelp of alarm.

  Garrett followed Annie’s gaze and he picked up his Winchester as he rose slowly to his feet, aware that Ready was doing the same.

  Four Indians sat their ponies just beyond the circle of the firelight, tall, hard-boned men dressed in beaded hunting shirts, rifles slanted across their chests.

  “Bloods,” Ready whispered. “They’re close kin to the Blackfoot and just as ornery.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Garrett saw the women move closer, a shudder of fear rippling through them. Jenny came closest of all, standing near Garrett as though grateful for a strong masculine presence.

  The young rancher waved a hand toward the fire. “We have coffee. And bacon if the Bloods are hungry.”

  The Indians sat very still, watching the camp. Finally one swung off his horse and stepped into the firelight. The others followed.

  “You ride far?” the Indian asked. He was taller than the others and at some time in the past most of his left ear had been shot away.

  “To the land of the Great Mother,” Garrett said. “We ride for Fort Whoop-Up, and the redcoat police will very soon meet us along the way.”

  Garrett waited to see how the Indian would react, but if the man was intimidated by the threat of Mounties, he didn’t let it show. His black eyes, glittering in the firelight, moved to Ready and then to the women, where they lingered for a few moments before they turned back on Garrett.

  “Why do you travel with so many women? Are they your wives?”

  The young rancher shook his head, smiling. “No, not my wives. But they will soon become the brides of other men, miners at the fort. They are”—he didn’t know if the Blood would recognize the word “virgins” and settled for—“maidens.”

  The Indian’s face was like stone, revealing none of his thoughts. “Coffee is good, and so is bacon,” he said.

  The Bloods did not seem hungry, but an Indian would fill his belly every chance he got, knowing that his next meal was a very uncertain thing and might be a long time coming.

  As Garrett fried strips of bacon, Ready had his Henry across his knees, his finger on the trigger, the muzzle pointed at the tall Indian’s belly. The old man made it seem casual enough that offense could not be taken, but the Bloods were aware of the rifle and the coolly alert eyes of the man who held it.

  After the Indians had eaten and drunk coffee, the tall warrior wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said to Garrett, “We will ask nothing more of you, except for the wooden crate that carried the Arbuckle.”

  Puzzled, Garrett answered, “We have no crate, only the sack that held the coffee.”

  The Indian nodded, his eyes distant, looking into the darkness, perhaps recalling a memory in the night. After a while he said, “Our women make use of the crate.”

  Now Ready spoke up. “I have the peppermint candy stick that was in the sack,” he said. He reached into his saddlebags, his rifle still on the Indian, and produced the piece of red-and-white-striped candy that was packaged inside every sack of Arbuckle coffee. “For the children of the Bloods,” he said, offering the stick to the Indian.

  The man took the candy and nodded, acknowledging that Ready had performed a small act of kindness. “Better for them this sweet thing than the crate.”

  With effortless grace, the warrior rose to his feet. His eyes scanned the shadowed camp and again lingered for a long time on the women.

  “We will go now,” he said finally.

  Garrett watched the Indians fade into the night like gray ghosts, then said to Ready, “Why do the Bloods set such store by a coffee crate? Firewood, maybe?”

  The old man shook his head. “Arbuckle’s crate is just the right size to hold a dead child for burying, and Indian women have been burying a heap of them in recent years. They’ll latch on to a coffee crate every chance they get and carry it with them until the need arises, as it does all too often.”

  Jenny had been listening to Ready and her damp eyes glistened. “That’s sad. It’s so very sad.”

  Ready nodded, his face bleak. “Hunger and disease take their toll on Indian kids, to say nothing of the ones who get gunned or sabered in the fights with the cavalry.” The old man shrugged. “The Indians are living through some hard times, and that’s why we’re moving out—right now.”

  “Zeb, you think they’ll be back?” Garrett asked. “They seemed friendly enough.”

  “I know they’ll be back. Among the Bloods friendship with the white man has its limits. We’ve got women, cattle and horses, and only two guns to defend them. Luke, if you were an Indian what would you do?”r />
  Realization dawned on Garrett and he needed no further urging. He turned to the women and yelled, “Get the wagon packed and I’ll help hitch the oxen. We’re leaving this place.”

  Annie Spencer hesitated for a moment before she caught Garrett’s urgency. She turned to the women, who were standing still, staring at the young man in disbelief, and snapped, “You heard the cowboy. Load up the wagon.”

  “But why now?” a small brunette with startled brown eyes asked.

  “Because, Lynette, if you don’t leave, your hair will soon be hanging in an Indian tepee,” Annie said. She stepped closer to the girl, her cheekbones stained with red. “Now do you think that’s reason enough?”

  By the scared expression on the brunette’s face, Garrett saw that it was. The women began to hastily throw the belongings they’d strewn around the camp into the wagon while Annie and Jenny left to fetch the oxen.

  They pulled out less than ten minutes later, the wagon now in the center of Garrett’s small herd and remuda. He and Ready rode flank, rifles across their saddle horns.

  As they moved through the crowding tunnel of the darkness, the only sound was the plodding hooves of the cattle and the creak of the wagon. At Annie’s insistence, she and the other women walked to lighten the load for the oxen and hopefully increase their slow pace. The brunette was sobbing with fear, a tiny lost sound in the stillness.

  Out among the hills the coyotes were talking to the moon that was now rising high in the midnight blue sky, touching the ragged edges of a few passing clouds with silver. There was no breeze, as though the night was holding its breath, waiting for what was to happen.

  After an hour, Garrett rode closer to Ready, exchanged a few quick words, then dropped back behind the herd. He swung his horse around and cantered in the direction they’d just come, his eyes straining into the gloom ahead, looking for any sign of the Bloods.

  The lifting moon was lighting up the ribbon of the trail as Garrett slowed his buckskin to a walk and swung toward the low hills to the east. He rode up a gradual sandy rise, the horse picking its way through clumps of cactus, sagebrush and a few stunted spruce before reaching the crest.

  Garrett sat his mount and squinted into the darkness. Nothing moved, and when the buckskin tossed its head, the chime of its bit was loud in the silence.

  The moon had hidden its face behind a cloud, and when its light again spread over the surrounding land, Garrett saw a gleam of white at the base of the next hill. He leaned forward in the saddle, trying to make out what the object was, but in the darkness his eyes could not put form to it. An outcropping of rock, maybe? It was possible, though surface rock formations were more common farther to the east and a lot closer to the Missouri River.

  It was in Garrett’s mind to dismiss the thing, whatever it was, and ride on. Yet, as the moonlight glowed on it again, revealing a stark white mound almost hidden among the tall grama grass, he was intrigued.

  Kicking the buckskin forward, the young rancher rode down the slope and into the shallow arroyo between the hills. He stepped out of the saddle when he was still fifty yards from the white object and walked toward it on cat feet, his rifle held hammer back and ready across his chest.

  The moon disappeared behind a cloud and Garrett waited until light again touched the bottom of the arroyo before he walked on.

  Only when he was just a few steps away did he recognize the white object for what it was—the naked body of a man spread-eagled and staked to the ground.

  That man was Jacob McGee.

  The bullwhacker’s death had been agonizing and long drawn out. His jaws were stretched wide apart, his last terrible scream now echoing through eternity, and his eyes, when Garrett looked down at his face, still clung to his horror at the manner and the pain of his dying.

  A green sickness curling in him, Garrett saw where the man had been cut and burned, slowly and with great care, done with the purpose of inflicting the maximum amount of pain while holding back the mercy of death. But, after a few hours, his torturers had tired of his screams and, like boys who torment a kitten then kill it when they become bored, they’d finally disemboweled Jacob McGee and allowed him to shriek his way into the pit of darkness.

  Garrett gulped down his revulsion and wiped suddenly damp palms on his chaps. He looked around him, his haunted eyes staring into the night, but saw only moonlit hills and a sky ablaze with stars.

  Was this the work of the Bloods?

  Thinking it through, Garrett doubted it. The Indians who’d come into his camp had been a hunting party, and though they might casually murder a white man they happened to meet on the trail, it was unlikely they’d take the time to torture him.

  Glancing at the body again, Garrett decided this had been done by men who knew how to hate.

  And, if what Annie Spencer had told him was true, no one hated the white man more than the Crow war chief who called himself Weasel.

  The night was warm, but Garrett shivered.

  If Weasel and his young warriors were out there among the hills and coulees surrounding the trail, they had already seen the wagon, the five women and his herd.

  And they’d counted his guns.

  When he glanced down at the body again, Garrett looked into Jacob McGee’s staring eyes—and saw a warning from hell.

  Chapter 9

  When he rejoined the wagon and herd, Garrett told Ready about McGee, but he decided to keep it from the women. The sudden night dash along the trail had scared them badly enough and nothing would be served by scaring them further. They traveled through the darkness, stopping every four hours to graze the herd and to let the women rest.

  But there was no rest for Garrett. He switched his saddle to a blaze-faced black and scouted the moonlit hills and shadowed coulees on each side of the trail. He saw nothing.

  At noon Garrett led the wagon into a narrow arroyo where there was some shade and sufficient grass for the animals. The recent rains were now a distant memory and the day was hot. Jenny and the other women were soon covered by a layer of dust that worked its way inside their clothes and tangled in their hair.

  Around him, Garrett saw that only the cactus were prospering as the land surrendered to the summer drought. Finding water for the herd would soon become an urgent problem.

  After hazing the shorthorns and the remuda into the canyon, he and Ready blocked the mouth with the wagon and laid their rifles against the wheels, ready for action should the need arise.

  Annie Spencer, a glass of bourbon in her hand, stepped beside the water barrel and rapped its oak side with her knuckles. “Sounds like it’s getting low, cowboy,” she said, turning to Garrett. Then, by way of explanation: “Me and the rest of the girls need to bathe.”

  The young rancher shook his head. “As you just said, we’re running low on water. We can’t spare any for bathing.”

  Annie sipped her bourbon, her eyes on Garrett. The dust on her face had settled into every wrinkle, so that she looked years older than she was.

  “You could head east for the Marias,” she said. “Plenty of water there.”

  “Maybe so,” Garrett allowed, “but it would take us a couple of days out of our way, there and back. Zeb says if we keep heading north, we’ll catch the bend of the Marias about fifty miles south of the Sweet Grass Hills. Then we can trail along the west bank of Willow Creek all the way to the Canadian border. You women will have plenty of chances to bathe then. Zeb says the creek water is a little thick and you may have to chew it some before you swallow it, but it’s good water.”

  “That’s then, this is now,” Annie said, her anger flaring. “We’re all of us hot, gritty and tired”—she gave Garrett a sidelong look—“including Jenny. We need to wash off at least the top layer of this dust.”

  Garrett glanced up, where the sun was a molten ball of white, scorching the cloudless sky into a pale, washed-out blue. Beyond the arroyo, out on the flat, heat waves shimmered and the long grama grass seemed to twist and curl as though in a win
d.

  He thought things through. There was probably enough water in the barrel to get them to the big bend of the Marias. But even if worse came to worst and the barrel ran dry, they could always head east to the river as Annie had suggested.

  His mind made up as sweat trickled down his chest and back, Garrett nodded and said, “You can fill one bucket and share it among you. And even then we’ll be wasting too much water.”

  “Wouldn’t be a waste if you used some your ownself, cowboy,” Annie said.

  Garrett filled a water bucket for Annie and as she called the other women to her, Ready spat and said, “Nothing’s better than a cool drink of water, but too much of it can give you a bellyache, and right now seeing a bucketful go to waste is hurting my belly considerable.”

  Garrett shrugged and smiled. “Women like to bathe, I guess.”

  Ready’s eyes moved from Annie to Garrett. “You sure it was Weasel and his Crows that killed McGee?”

  “I don’t know for sure, Zeb. But I’m willing to bet it wasn’t the Bloods.”

  “Bloods will torture a man,” Ready said, “but they don’t take to it the same as the Crows. There are some who say the Crows learned how to torture from the Apaches who learned it from the Spanish.” He wiped sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his buckskin shirt. “Maybe that’s so.”

  “Whoever did it, they had a powerful hate in them,” Garrett said. “I’d say McGee screamed every foot of his way to hell.”

  Ready’s gaze shifted to the hills on either side of them. “I don’t like being penned up like this,” he said. “It’s way too close. Crow or Bloods, if them Indians come over the rises they can pin us down and pick us off at their leisure.”

  Ready grabbed his Henry and nodded to the hill behind Garrett. “I’m going up there to take a look-see.” He smiled. “Luke, if I come back down a-runnin’ an’ a-hollerin’, you’ll know we’re in a heap of trouble.”

  Garrett watched Ready climb the hill and when the old man had taken up position near a sprawl of prickly pear, he walked to where Jenny was standing in a patch of thin shade near the grazing shorthorns.