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Authors: Loren D. Estleman

BOOK: The High Rocks
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You had to hand it to the Flatheads for efficiency. Within ten minutes they had the plateau stripped of any evidence that their camp had ever existed, and were mounted and lined up along the northern edge waiting for the order to move. Beyond them, Black Kettle rode restlessly back and forth, a gray presence behind the driving sheets of snow.
For a moment Two Sisters appeared to hesitate, which was understandable. If Bear's assumption was correct, the chief had not heard from Rocking Wolf for days, and like any other uncle he was loath to depart without knowing his nephew's fate. Finally, however, he made his decision; without a word he kneed his mount forward and led the way north—around the mountain.
We watched in silence as the column of Flatheads paraded past the opening. Last to leave was the medicine man, who spent some time trotting about the deserted camp as if to blow off steam, casting frustrated glances in the direction of the cleft. The squaw and I flattened ourselves against the icecovered rock wall and listened to the beating of our own hearts, louder at this point than the shrieking wind. Minutes crept by, or maybe they were just seconds; it was impossible to judge. At last Black Kettle spun the horse about and, with an angry whoop, galloped off in the others' wake.
I let out my breath and lowered the rifle, the sights of which I'd had lined up on the black man's broad chest. Beside me, Little Tree replaced the Dance's hammer with a sigh of sliding metal. For a stretch neither of us spoke.
“Hitch up the litter,” I said at last. I was surprised at the steadiness of my own voice.
We took our time crossing the plateau, to avoid being spotted by stragglers as much as to ensure the scalp-hunter a comfortable ride, and reached the cover of the woods after an hour. From there we descended to the edge of a river some forty feet wide at its broadest point, where we stopped. It was one of those countless tributaries that take so many twists and turns on their way through the mountains that they wind up with either a dozen names or none at all. The wind had swept this one clean of snow, leaving the silvery surface of the ice bare but for serpentine ribbons of powder writhing across it in the wind. Its banks were lined with pine and cattails, the latter bowed beneath the weight of clinging frost and so deceptively fragile in appearance that they seemed ready to fall apart at the touch of a finger. Ice-laden hulks of fallen trees formed natural bridges across the water where they had been torn out of the ground in past storms.
“We cross?” asked Little Tree.
“I don't know,” I replied. “It took a lot of punishment when the Flatheads crossed. Let me have the mare.” I dismounted.
“What you do?” She got down off the chestnut and handed me the reins.
“I'll have a better idea of how much this ice can hold once I cross over.” I swung into the mare's saddle. “Wait for the high sign before you start across with Bear. Lead, don't ride. If you hear it start to crack, get the hell off fast.”
Out in the open, the wind was ruthless. It plucked at the brim of my hat and found its way inside my coat, billowing it out behind me. My breath froze in my nostrils and clung in crystals to the stubble on my cheeks and chin. Updrafts snatched my pants legs out of my boots, exposing bare skin to blasts of peppery snow.
Suddenly, something hard struck the ice at the mare's feet, sending up a geyser of splinters and shooting cracks out in all directions. Coming upon its heels, the sound of the shot was an anticlimax.
I
left the saddle just as the mare reared, striking the ice hard on my right shoulder and rolling. The horse fled slipping and sliding in the direction from which we had come. I clawed my gun out of its holster and lay on my stomach gripping the weapon in both hands, my elbows propped up on the ice.
There was nothing to shoot at. An unbroken line of brush and pine formed a barrier along the opposite bank, behind which an army could have hidden. Even the cloud of metallic gray gunsmoke drifting across the scene had been snatched away by the wind so fast that it was impossible to tell where it had originated. In a game of snipers, I was the only visible target for miles.
“Get up, white skin!”
Nearly drowned out as it was by the wailing gale, there was still no mistaking that voice. I remained prone.
Another bullet spanged off the ice near my left elbow, spitting bits of crystal into my face. The shot echoed growlingly into the distance. I got up.
“I would have bet money you'd lost your rifle back at Devil's Crack,” I told Rocking Wolf. I held the gun against my right hip.
“You would have lost.”
I tried to place where the voice was coming from, but the wind roaring in my ears made that impossible.
“You did well, white skin,” it continued. “I have the use of only one leg. When last we spoke the pain was too great for me to take aim. Since then I have grown used to it. Had I not, I would never have been able to come this far, where I knew you would one day pass.” He snapped off another shot, which whizzed past my ear and struck the ice ten feet behind me. Hairline cracks leaped out across the surface.
“Where is Mountain That Walks?”
I hesitated a beat before answering. It had just dawned on me that from where Rocking Wolf was—wherever he was—Bear and his squaw were invisible. “He's dead,” I said.
“You lie.” A fourth bullet pierced the ice directly in front of me. Water splattered over my boots. I leaped backward.
“It's the truth.” I spread my legs to distribute my weight; the surface was growing spongy. “He had a bullet in his back, put there by the bounty hunters
we met west of the Crack. The bullet finally moved. I buried him twenty miles back.”
There was no reply. I began to feel cold where my body had come into contact with the clammy surface of the ice. Finally the voice called out again.
“Surrender your gun, white skin. Slide it across the ice. The one in your belt as well.”
I obeyed. The revolver skidded ten feet and came to a stop just past the halfway point. The Colt followed, sliding beyond that and losing itself in the cattails on the other side. At that moment Rocking Wolf stepped out from behind a tangle of brambles and began hobbling toward me.
Purple bruises had swollen his face into a caricature; his left eye was a crescent glittering between folds of puffy flesh and his lips were thick and torn. His bearskin hung in tatters from his thickset frame. He held the Winchester cradled in his left arm, the right supporting his weight upon a forked limb thrust beneath the armpit. The leg on that side—shattered, most likely, in his fall—dragged uselessly behind him. Any pretense he had made previously of masking his emotions had been abandoned, for the face that confronted me was twisted with hatred beyond even its physical mutilation.
He stopped with his feet planted on either side of the abandoned Deane-Adams and raised the rifle to the level of my chest. “Do not turn away,” he barked. His swollen lips got in the way of his consonants,
slurring them. “You should be prepared to face your handiwork.”
“I don't suppose it would do any good to deny I had anything to do with it,” I said.
“Do not waste my time. I am through listening.” He shifted the makeshift crutch a little so that he could steady the rifle with his other hand. Not that he really had to, at that range, but he wanted to prolong the moment.
I decided that if Little Tree were going to make a move from the cover of the brush behind me, she would have done so by now. Stooping suddenly, I scooped the bowie knife out of my right boot and followed through in an underhand fling, sending the blade whistling in the general direction of the Indian's squat torso.
It didn't land point first, of course; that was too much to hope for under the circumstances. What mattered was that Rocking Wolf thought it would. He moved to dodge it even as the leather-bound handle swung around and bounced harmlessly off his chest; in so doing, he threw too much weight onto the crutch and it slipped out from under him. By that time I was in motion, charging head down like a maddened bull. He fired. Something hot seared my right cheek, too late. I struck him head first in the midsection, and we went down together. The rifle spun from his grip and clattered away out of reach.
A town-bred white man is no match for a wild Indian at the best of times, but I'd counted on Rocking Wolf′s injury giving me an edge. What I hadn't counted on was my own injury. Mountain air goes no further toward healing a fractured skull than that at sea level, and in any case it isn't advisable to use the damaged instrument as a weapon. My vision blurred, doubled. I saw two Deane-Adams revolvers lying side by side on the ice and grabbed for the wrong one, coming up with a handful of empty air. By that time the Indian had found his wind; cocking his good leg, he planted his foot against my chest and pushed hard. I reeled backward and was forced to execute a fancy roll to avoid splitting my head open all over again when I struck the ice.
The Indian reached out blindly and closed his fingers over the bowie knife. Rolling over onto his stomach, he pulled himself toward me frantically, dragging his useless right leg behind him, one hand clutching the knife like an ice pick. When he was close enough, he raised the weapon high over his head and stabbed downward. I rolled again, just as the blade shattered the ice where my head had been, and before he could react, I straddled his back, locking my arms around his throat from behind.
It was no good; though my vision had corrected itself, my head was pounding and I was weak as a baby. He stabbed back and up with the knife, forcing me to break my grip to keep the blade from
slashing open my ribcage. At the same time he hooked my ankle with his good left leg and arched his back, flipping me off. The impact of my fall blinded me for an instant. The first thing I saw when my senses returned was Rocking Wolf on his knees before me, the hand holding the knife poised over his head in striking position.
He had started the downward swing when a shot rang out and his forehead exploded. Blood and bits of bone spattered my face. The knife dropped from his hand and clattered to the ice. Slowly, as if he had changed his mind, he sank back onto his heels and just as slowly toppled over sideways. His body jerked spasmodically for a moment, then lay still.
I didn't waste any time after that. When you hear a shot you weren't expecting, the first rule is that you look around for a weapon. I wasn't about to throw away my cards without knowing for sure whether it was Little Tree who had fired. I flopped over onto my stomach and began crawling toward my gun.
I was within reach of it when there was another explosion and the revolver spun away from me, arcing across the now-wet surface of the ice. Immediately I rolled in the opposite direction and came to rest on my stomach behind Rocking Wolf′s still form. Once there I risked a quick glance toward the bank where I had left my companions, for it was there that the shots had originated.
Church was standing on the edge of the ice holding Bear's Spencer in both hands. His under-size frame was impossible to mistake even in that driving snow. The butt of what I took to be Ira Longbow's Dance protruded above his holster. Behind him, Homer Strakey's equally recognizable bulk stood in a position where he could keep an eye on both Bear and Little Tree. His stance told me he was armed. Although I couldn't see it, I knew he had his dead son's old-fashioned percussion cap pistol in one hand. What with the blizzard and the drama that had been taking place on the ice, it had been no feat for the two to sneak up on my companions and relieve them of their weapons. Now I knew why Little Tree hadn't fired at the Indian when it seemed she'd had the chance.
“Looks like you owe me again, Murdock!” cried Church. His scarf was tied loosely around his scrawny neck, the ends flapping in the wind. “I can't abide watching no injun kill no white man.”
“So you'll do it instead,” I finished.
“Got to. You got so's I can't go around you no more, and I'm tired of dogging you. Now, get up from behind that dead injun.”
“I'd rather not.”
His sloping shoulders heaved in a mighty sigh. “We got to go through this all over again? Homer!”
On cue, Strakey stepped forward and stretched out his right arm, placing the muzzle of the pistol
against the squaw's right temple. She stood still as the tree for which she was named.
“Why don't you just move on?” I demanded, stalling for time. “You've got Anderson.”
“I do for a fact—all wrapped up like Christmas morning. How'd he get that way?”
I told him.
“Well, well.” He sounded pleased. “So one of us did hit him, after all. The offer's tempting, Murdock, but it ain't enough.”
“Why not?”
“There's a good day's ride between here and Staghorn; I think me and the old man would enjoy it more if we didn't have to spend all our time looking over our shoulders. I'll take my chances on the squaw, but you're another brand of bacon. Now, are you going to get up from behind that stiff or am I going to have to ask Homer to put a ball through the squaw's head? He's been itching to use that thing ever since you turned him into a candle back at Anderson's cabin.”
“What makes you think that'll work with me?” I asked. “Maybe I don't care what happens to her.”
“All right, Homer, blow her brains out.”
“Hold it! I'll get up.”
Still I hesitated, but not just because I didn't want to get killed, which of course I didn't. In stepping forward to put the pistol against Little Tree's head, Strakey had turned his back on Bear's litter. That was evidently the opportunity for which the
scalp-hunter had been waiting. Awkwardly and with great effort—he was, after all, shaking off the paralysis of days—he swung his legs out from under the covers and rose like a gigantic specter behind the old man's tensed form.
“Come on!” To show he meant business, Church slapped a bullet from the Spencer into Rocking Wolf′s body. The corpse jerked like a kicked sandbag. Another cartridge was racked into place. I climbed to my feet.
“Step clear of the stiff,” ordered the bounty hunter.
I took my time obeying. He grew impatient.
“Homer!”
But Homer wasn't listening. At that moment, the scalp-hunter threw his massive arms around the big old man and squeezed, lifting him up in the air as he did so to throw the pistol off target. The ball was released with a snap, missing Little Tree by a least a foot. Simultaneously I heard the crackling noise of ribs giving away beneath the pressure. Strakey screamed through his teeth, a high, chuckling wail that put me in mind of his dead son's nervous giggle.
Church's reaction was not immediate; he had called to his partner and had heard the expected shot. But at the sound of the scream he took a step backward and turned his head. It was just what I needed.
He realized his mistake almost in the next instant, but by then it was too late. I had already dived and come up on my knees with the Deane-Adams gripped in both hands, and when he snapped his head back in my direction I pumped all five bullets into his chest.
For a space I regretted that it wasn't a six-shooter, as the bounty hunter hovered there seemingly unaffected by his wounds, the rifle firmly in his grip. But then his knees buckled and he folded to the ground. The Spencer flopped free.
Homer Strakey's spine snapped with a report like a pistol shot. Bear, who had lifted the old man's body high over his head to deliver the final blow, flung it, rag-doll fashion, to the earth. Clad in skins as he was, his features blurred by the swirling snow, the mountaineer might have been one of those legendary manlike beasts the Indians of the North call the Sasquatch. Then his knees began to shake and the image was dispelled.
I made my way over to the bank, but not before reloading my revolver from the dwindling supply of cartridges on my belt, on the off chance that one of the bounty hunters might still be alive. I needn't have bothered; neither of them was about to get up this side of Judgment Day. I picked up the Spencer and freed Church's body of his gun belt and the Dance he had taken from Little Tree. Strakey's cap-and-ball I left to the elements like the useless toy it was once its load had been fired.
“Anybody hurt?” I inquired.
Little Tree shook her head. She had gone to her mate's side and had an arm around him; he cast it off and stood there swaying. “Let's ride,” he said. “Likely them Flatheads heard all that shooting and are on their way here already.”

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