.45-Caliber Firebrand (25 page)

Cuno groaned, pushed her back down on the blanket once more, and rolled between her knees, which she spread for him eagerly.

 

Cuno woke every two hours or so to throw more wood on the fire, keeping it built up all night while Camilla slept, curled in his blankets. To stay warm, he'd donned his clothes, and he slept with his head on his coat rolled up at the base of the cave wall, lying with his hip touching the girl's, his hat pulled down over his eyes.

When pearl light shone in the sky above the smoke hole, he put coffee on the fire to cook, then knelt down beside Camilla, asleep on her side, knees draw up, her hair fanned over her face. He was about to touch her shoulder but stopped suddenly when he heard a soft rasp as she drew a long, slow breath, then a lower-pitched sigh as she let it out. A few strands of her hair puffed slightly out from her lips then lay flat again as she breathed in.

He knelt there for nearly a minute, listening to the girl breathe in her sleep, her shoulders moving slightly with each breath. It was a peaceful, homey sound. He'd forgotten the simple, subtle joy of hearing someone breathing peacefully beside him as he'd once heard July breathing as she'd slept beside him in their little ranch cabin, their baby growing ever so slowly inside her.

Waking before his young wife in the predawn hours, when their room was all mist and blurred edges, he'd often imagined her breath becoming the baby's breath, and her exhalations the same as the baby's filling the room around him.

Cuno leaned down, slid the blanket away from Camilla's bare shoulder, and gently pressed his lips against the smooth, warm flesh. He kept his lips pressed to the girl's shoulder and squeezed his eyes closed, the keen pang of bittersweet grief swelling inside him.

Camilla's breathing changed suddenly as she drew a deep draught of air into her lungs and groaned sleepily, turning a little to look up at him, the corners of her mouth lifting as she raised her elbows above her head, stretching.

Then she gasped and her eyes snapped wide with a start as she lowered her hands to draw the blanket up to her neck, looking around the firelit cave, her dark eyes filling suddenly with the realization that the night was over and another day of peril was just beginning.

Cuno set his hand on her shoulder. “Everything's all right. Early yet. I'm gonna go out and try to find my horse.”

“I will go with you.”

Cuno shook his head. “You best stay off that ankle. I'll be back for you soon, with or without the paint.” Cuno laid his hand against her cheek. “We'll be all right. Don't leave the cave. I haven't heard the bear, but that don't mean he's not still on the lurk out there.”

As he rose and turned, she said, “Cuno, be careful.”

He nodded and ducked through the narrow passageway, then dropped to his hands and knees as he entered the small foyer-like area and continued to the oval opening. The bear had dug a sizable crater beneath the opening, and Cuno thought he could still smell the beast's fetor.

He poked his head out slowly. The sharp cold air, tinged with a piney tang, nipped his cheeks as he drew it into his lungs, and he shuddered at the sudden chill pressing against him after the fire's soothing warmth.

There was no breeze. The shrubs and rocks, coated with a ghostly white frost, stood stark against the pale gray light filtering down from the eastern sky.

A few stars still burned. Down the hill, the valley lay unmoving, black and gray and ominous. Utter silence except for the occasional, glassy murmur of the stream sliding over the ice-coated stones.

Neither seeing or hearing the bear, Cuno moved out onto the rocky slope and gained his feet. The sand and gravel in front of the cave had been torn up by the bear's claws, branches strewn as though by a wind storm.

For a time Cuno hunkered down behind a high, angling escarpment jutting from the slope just ahead and right of the cave opening, pricking his ears to listen. He raked his gaze slowly back and forth across the valley floor, squinting at the dark pines clustered on the far side and fronting the other stream angling along the base of the far wall.

No shadows moved.

No sound but the occasional distant yip of coyotes. Grass blades scratched in a vagrant breeze.

Cuno started zigzagging down the slope, one hand on his .45. When he gained the valley bottom, he crossed the stream, keeping his boots dry by negotiating the icy rocks, and headed north after his horse.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,
el oso loco
,” Cuno sang under his breath, swinging his head slowly from left to right. His boots crunched the frost-furred grass. “Do it now . . . before I get too damn far away from the cave . . .”

23

THE SUN WAS well up though hidden by low, gunmetal clouds, and Cuno had seen no sign of the bear.

A chill wind blew leaves across his path as he continued along the slowly rising, gently curving canyon floor with the stream on his left and a low rock ridge on his right, with a steep, boulder-strewn slope rolling up beyond it to stand several thousand feet above the canyon floor.

Mares' tails of dark clouds caught and tore on the bizarre stone formations jutting from the ridge crest.

Occasionally Cuno saw the mark of a shod hoof in the gravelly turf, and believed it to be one of Renegade's. They were the only prints he saw, and he'd seen Renegade hightail it in this direction. For all Cuno knew, the paint could be in Wyoming Territory by now and still heading north.

When he figured he'd walked a good two miles, taking occasional sips from the stream, he sensed another presence. The hair under his coat collar pricked, and he stopped at the edge of the trees lining the stream and, one hand on his revolver's grips, looked around at the valley stretched out before him, dun grass and gray-green sage blowing in the chill wind.

The bear could be anywhere in here. A rogue male, he'd no doubt staked out a broad territory, and woe be to interlopers.

A branch snapped behind Cuno. He jerked with a start and, whipping his Colt up and thumbing back the hammer, wheeled, crouching and aiming the gun straight out in front of him.

His heart skipped a beat and then he depressed the Colt's hammer and dropped the gun by his side. The paint clomped toward him through the trees, angling away from the stream, hooves thumping and crunching the dry brush and dead leaves, water dripping from his snout.

“Damn, boy,” Cuno said, blowing out a long, relieved breath. “Scared the hell out of me.”

Renegade stopped a few feet away, his eyes still wary, and snorted and bobbed his head and twitched his ears—as glad to see Cuno as Cuno was to see him. The young freighter moved up to the horse and, that uneasy feeling continuing to lift the hairs beneath his collar, glanced around warily as he reset the saddle on the paint's back, tightening the latigo and adjusting the breast strap, then slipping the bridle bit back into Renegade's mouth. He adjusted the boot, as well, relieved to see that the Winchester was still inside.

The horse, too, looked around, occasionally holding still and staring up canyon, ears pricked and tail slightly arched.

“What is it, boy?” One hand on the horse's neck, Cuno turned to stare in the same direction the paint was staring. The horse seemed to be holding his breath.

Cuno cast his gaze through the trees and into the open canyon beyond, angling it north. There was nothing but trees, grass, sage, rock, and the low, gray sky that seemed to grow darker by the minute.

A wooden rattle sounded, obscured by the whoosh of the wind in the treetops.

Silence.

Another wooden rattle. There was yet another sound that Cuno couldn't identify, and the amalgam of sounds seemed to be getting louder and coming out of the north, whipped and torn by the wind.

Cuno turned and placed a hand on the side of Renegade's neck. “Come on, boy.” Gently, he swung the horse around and led him back toward the stream. He continued casting wary looks over his shoulder as he led the paint across the shallow creek tumbling ice chunks over the rocks, and stopped behind a sharp-edged, slant-topped boulder as large as a cabin standing at the base of the ridge wall. He tied the horse to a cedar jutting from a fissure in the rock.

“Stay, fella.”

Cuno patted the horse's snout, the signal to keep quiet. Shucking his Winchester from the saddle boot, he quietly racked a fresh shell into the chamber, then off-cocked the hammer and stole out from around the rock to make his way back across the stream. Staring north through the trees, he left the stream and continued toward the clearing beyond, weaving around pines, scattered aspens, and brush snags.

The rattling grew steadily louder. A wagon clattering over rocks. Near the edge of the woods, Cuno hunkered down behind a large ash bole and a boulder just beyond it, and edged his gaze around the left side of the bole and peered between the tree and the boulder.

A hundred yards away, a horseback rider sat on a low rise—a bulky figure on a short-legged horse and cradling what appeared to be a rifle in his arms. Horse and rider were merely silhouettes from this distance and in this light.

The rider peered straight ahead of Cuno, unmoving, and Cuno tensed, drawing his head back closer to the tree, exposing only one eye as he continued staring northward.

His heartbeat quickened.

Had the rider seen him? He didn't want to be seen until he knew who was doing the seeing.

The man turned his head slowly from right to left, then back again. Suddenly, he swung his head sharply to one side, looking behind him as he raised the rifle high with one hand. He turned forward again, pressed his knees to his horse's sides, and horse and rider trotted off the ridge crest toward Cuno, the horse's hooves thudding dully on the grassy turf, occasionally kicking a rock.

The rider was within fifty yards of the young freighter when the clattering behind him continued and then a team of horses appeared atop the rise he'd just left. As they continued over the top of the rise and started down the other side, a wagon appeared. The man in the driver's box whipped the reins across the horses' backs, grunting and bellowing words Cuno couldn't hear above the wind and the creaking of the bending trees.

No, not horses.

The team came on, and the gray light slid across the animals to reveal four mules in collars and hames. Not just any mules.

Cuno's mules.

And they were attached to Cuno's Conestoga, which rumbled after the trotting mules, barking over rocks and crunching sage shrubs as the driver continued flicking the reins over the backs of the steaming team and grunting and spewing the guttural, consonant-hard words of an Indian tongue.

A wave of nausea washed through the young freighter as he stared in shock toward the wagon clattering down the slope and the lead rider who was also an Indian dressed in deerskins, with a deerskin hood on his head. Black hair pushed out of his hood to dangle over his shoulders.

The rifle in his arms was a Winchester carbine. His horse was a stout-legged cream painted for war. As the man passed in front of Cuno, about sixty yards out from Cuno's position, the profile of his broad, hooked nose shone, dark as tanned leather against the gray ridge on the other side of him.

His horse's hooves clomped on the cold, hard ground.

Behind him, the wagon pushed forward, and Cuno anxiously swept the green-painted box with his eyes. That's when he saw something trailing behind.

No, not something.
Someone.
Two people—one jogging along behind with a rope tied around his waist, the other end of the rope tied to the wagon box.

The dark brown hair and build of the boy bespoke Karl Lassiter. Hatless, the kid wore no gloves, and his coat flapped open at his chest, revealing his flannel work shirt and suspenders. He ran with a shambling, loose-footed gait, several times nearly falling even as Cuno watched him, the boy's face expressionless, head wobbling around on his shoulders as though his neck were broken.

Beside and slightly behind him a body was being dragged from a rope attached to the side of the wagon nearest Cuno. As the wagon rattled and squawked straight out from the tree and the covering boulder, Cuno inspected the figure quickly as it fishtailed along the ground behind the wagon, bouncing over hummocks and rocks, jerking and pitching and swaying.

He sucked a sharp breath when he saw the balding head over which thin strands of silver hair slid in the wind. The gray-bearded face turned toward him, eyes squeezed shut. Serenity's arms were thrust out in front of him, his tied hands clutching the taut rope angling forward and up toward the wagon box.

The oldster lifted his head slightly to peer up at the wagon, then bellowed something Cuno couldn't make out as he feebly tried to gain his feet, digging the toes of his high-topped boots into the ground. But it slid under him too quickly for the graybeard to gain a purchase.

He screamed again as he fell, hitting the ground and bouncing, his voice shrill with rage and misery. Then his thin, bent body fell slack once more, and his bearded cheek dropped to his shoulder. The wagon rattled on past Cuno, dragging his old friend's limp figure along behind it.

On the far side of Serenity, Karl continued to stumble along, half jogging, half falling, his lace-up boots crunching grass and sage clumps.

Cuno's heart hammered with rage. He squeezed his rifle and moved toward the other side of the tree to deliver two quick, killing shots to the wagon driver and the lead rider. Seeing something out the tail of his left eye, he stayed his attack and edged another look around the left side of the tree.

Another rider jogged his horse down the slope about fifty yards behind Serenity and Karl Lassiter. Holding his reins high against his chest, he was bundled in deerskin breeches and a buffalo coat, with elkskin moccasins rising nearly to his knees. A rifle hung down his back from a braided leather lanyard, and from the barrel dangled what looked like a tuft of feathers or maybe a light-colored human scalp.