Chapter 13
Leaving town, they rode south for about a mile until they came to where the outlaws had split up.
Conn and the posse followed them across South Park basin. It was easy sticking to their trail until clouds blew in overhead, blocking the moon for lengthening stretches of time.
This slowed pursuit considerably, but neither Marshal Andrews nor any of the other volunteers caught up to them.
At one point, far in the distance, gunfire erupted in a rapid chorus of overlapping shots that echoed off the mountains and rolled faintly back to them across the broad basin.
“Trouble up there,” Conn said to Sheffield, who rode beside him.
“Yeah,” Sheffield said. “Maybe Toole and the others shot each other all to pieces. Their sort does such things.”
Conn grunted at that. It was a thing to hope for.
He and Sheffield rode at the front of the posse, moving slowly but surely across the shadowed land toward their appointment with death.
The nature of that appointment seemed to be coming clearer to a few of the men. When Conn glanced back at them, their faces looked pale and sober. He reckoned the whiskey had worn off, and they were finally understanding the reality of what they’d signed up for.
To their credit, however, none of them turned back. They swallowed their fear and kept riding through the darkness.
That’s a funny thing about men, of course. Most, once committed to action, would rather get shot than turn away and be branded a coward by their peers.
Conn hoped he could count on them when the lead started to fly. As long as they stood their ground and fired back, it would be okay. He just hoped they didn’t buckle and retreat.
Nothing invites blood madness more than a retreating enemy.
He said none of this, committed to his course of action and knowing he needed their rifles.
Clouds thickened overhead, creating longer stretches of pitch darkness, slowing them further.
When they reached the foot of the mountains, the road split. Sheffield pointed to the south, and they rode on.
A short distance later, a dark shape came into view beside a mountain stream. It was the abandoned cabin.
The men reined in, waiting for the clouds to break up and shed some light on the situation.
When shafts of moonlight broke through, they illuminated a squat, dark building with a tin roof. There were no horses hitched outside, no lights burning inside, and no smoke rising from the chimney.
Which didn’t mean much.
The outlaws could be in there, maybe sleeping, maybe lying in wait. Their horses could be hitched in the back out of sight.
Conn rode slowly forward, gripping the reins in one hand and the shotgun in the other.
Sheffield rode beside him, a lever-action rifle balanced across his lap. Moonlight hollowed his bony face and gleamed in his hard eyes.
They followed the tracks up to where a bunch of horses had approached the cabin. In the shifting moonlight, Conn saw that those tracks had, indeed, hooked around behind the building.
He stopped his horse and raised a fist in the air.
The others stopped and waited silently.
Conn swung down and landed light as a cat. Then he walked slowly forward, creeping toward the house with his shotgun at the ready.
All was silent. There was no movement anywhere. Even the wind had stopped, as if the whole world was holding its breath.
Reaching the house, Conn put his ear to the door and listened.
Nothing. Not even the scampering of mice.
From there, he went to the small side window, moving silently as a ghost.
Again, he listened. Again, silence reigned.
Walking around the back of the house, he heard nothing and saw no one, unless you counted the man lying dead upon the ground. His lifeless face gripped a shocked expression, as if the last thing he expected was to die this night.
He was a young man, maybe eighteen or nineteen, and he’d been shot in the chest. His arms were flung out. The blood glistened, black in the moonlight. There was a lot of it.
Beyond the dead man, Conn could see where the horses had ridden off.
They hadn’t all gone the same way.
One cut sharply into the trees. Two others had raced away north on a track parallel to the one Conn and the posse had just ridden.
We probably rode right past them in the dark, he thought with burgeoning frustration.
The rest of the killers, four in number, had ridden south as a pack.
This was the gunfire they’d heard, then. The outlaws had argued among themselves, fought, and left at least one man dead.
Unless this man hadn’t been one of them. Maybe he’d been an innocent victim, a man staying in the abandoned cabin when they’d shown up.
Maybe.
But Conn doubted it.
He went back around the house and kicked in the door. There was nobody inside. He felt a wave of disappointment.
“What’s the situation?” McKay asked. He looked tired but unafraid, a good man pushed to his limit.
“I’ll show you the situation,” Conn said. “Come around back, all of you.”
They followed him.
“That’s Danny Bump,” Sheffield said.
Conn glanced again at the dead man, happy to learn it was one of his brother’s killers.
Four down, seven to go.
“I always said he’d come to a bad end,” one of the other men said, looking more than a little queasy.
“Well, he’s arrived,” Conn said. “Looks like these boys argued among themselves, shot it out, and then split into three parties.”
The clouds were heavier now, and you couldn’t even see the tracks.
Conn went back to the gelding and took out his lantern and struck a match and got the lamp going and walked back around behind the cabin.
It was a risk, toting a light in all this darkness, but he didn’t reckon any of the bad men had hung around after the fight.
He figured they’d gone their separate ways at a clip.
Loud noises, like those of a gunfight, always seem louder to men doing something they don’t want to be caught at. Conn figured these men, even the victors, had run out of here as fast as their horses would carry them.
Which wasn’t all that fast, probably, given the current state of pitch blackness. But they’d still had time to put a distance between them and this place.
They were probably high up there now, riding the mountain pass.
Whatever the case, nobody took a shot at him as he walked over and swept the lantern back and forth, showing the others where the riders had split into three groups: one solo rider, a pair, and five horses, only four of them with a man in the saddle.
“I’m not surprised they fought among themselves,” Sheffield said. His face was lost in the darkness, but Conn recognized his voice by now. “They’re nothing but a pack of mad dogs.”
At that moment, a light tapping sounded on the tin roof of the cabin. The tapping grew louder and spread across the area, rain sweeping in, pattering against the men’s hats and jackets.
Rain struck the back of Conn’s neck and rolled down under the collar of his shirt, cold as melting snow.
“What do you want to do, Mr. Sullivan?” one of the men asked.
Conn swung the lantern around. In its light, their faces were obscure, almost ghostly. He saw deep fatigue and worry and detected a sagging of the general will to continue the hunt.
These men had sobered up. They had answered the call valiantly and come here through the darkness, risking life and limb to help a man they did not know avenge his brother, another stranger to them.
Some of them undoubtedly had women and children at home, waiting on them, depending on them. Now, it was well past midnight, and the men were tired and ready to head home.
They had done their duty, given it a try, and come up short.
Now, it was pitch black. Ahead, the mountains promised only danger.
And on the ground before them was a man most of them had known for years, now dead, like a scapegoat sacrifice, suggesting that they had in some way wrought at least a passing justice.
No one said these things, but Conn understood the moment all the same.
Even McKay yawned, his considerable fire dimming.
Only Sheffield looked steady.
The rain fell harder.
Conn glanced toward the southern trail and the mountains he knew awaited them there, though even their great bulk was invisible in the darkness, which was complete.
He considered the opposite direction. They wouldn’t stand a chance of finding the men who’d charged off into the woods, not in this darkness.
At the same time, he remembered what Sheffield said would happen to anyone stupid enough to try the pass at night. And that had been in moonlight. Now, with this pitch blackness and especially in the rain, riding the trail would be more akin to suicide than anything resembling a sensible manhunt.
And yet, Conn sensed that all he had to do was ask, and Sheffield would ride with him.
The others, no. But Sheffield, yes.
Wanting to spare the man that danger and spare the others the embarrassment of having to turn tail, Conn said, “Well, boys, I sure do appreciate you riding out here with me. I think we pushed it hard enough for tonight. I’ll resume my hunt tomorrow.”
Most of the men smiled, clearly relieved. McKay and a couple of the others said they’d ride with Conn the next day.
“I appreciate that,” Conn said. He thought about the night ahead and the coming morning and what needed to be done.
He needed to bury his brother. And he needed to take Mary to town. Conn hoped she’d come to her senses and let him put her up in a hotel. Or, better yet, let him put her on a train for home. She was a Colorado girl. He remembered Cole saying that. He just didn’t know which part.
In any case, he knew he’d need time in the morning, even if he didn’t sleep a wink, which wouldn’t be wise, considering the likely trail ahead.
He could see now this wasn’t going to be simple. Not that he’d ever thought it would be. Not really. But he had hoped for a quick, clean reckoning. He had hoped to slaughter his brother’s murderers.
But no. The bad men had split into three groups. This was going to take time. Perhaps days, perhaps weeks, perhaps even months.
Whatever the case, he wouldn’t stop until he’d gunned down every last one of them.
Four were already dead. Not bad for a night’s work, he supposed.
“Any man willing to ride along, meet me tomorrow at noon in front of the saloon.”
They said that sounded good, and then one of them said he’d take Danny back to town with him, and a couple of others hopped down and helped tie the dead man to the back of the volunteer’s horse.
The rain fell harder.
Sheffield walked his big bay over and spoke in a low voice to Conn. “What are you gonna do, Sullivan?”
“I’m gonna track them all down and kill them.”
Sheffield nodded. “All right. Count me in.”
“Appreciate it,” Conn said. “But first, I gotta dig a grave.”
Sheffield nodded again, his hard face unchanging in the lantern light. “You got an extra shovel?”