Charles West - Day of the Wolf

“Yeah, it’s me,” Mace blurted angrily. “For Pete’s sake, leave me alone. My head’s about to bust.”

“I can fix that,” Wolf said softly. He grabbed a handful of Mace’s hair, pulling his head sharply up. An instant later, his skinning knife opened Mace’s throat. It was only then that Mace became fully aware of what had happened to him as the sound of his breath wheezed out of his gaping throat. “You should not have killed Ned Bull” were the last words he heard on this side of hell.

His mission done, Wolf had one more thing to check on, so he returned to the front door of the trading post and entered. The Cheyenne woman made no move and no sound when the man in animal skins suddenly appeared in the doorway, a Winchester rifle in his hand. Wolf looked at her, then looked toward the corner where Boyd was just beginning to stir on the cot. Turning back to the woman then, he asked, “His name is Taggart?”

She shook her head slowly, then spoke. “His name Boyd Dawson.”

Wolf nodded solemnly. “Then I got no quarrel with him.”

He started to turn and leave, but Clem appeared in the doorway to the back room, holding a shotgun. When he looked into the eyes of the baleful avenger, the Winchester rifle ready to speak, he dropped the shotgun at once and held up his hands. Wolf fixed his gaze upon the frightened storekeeper for a moment before taking a step toward the door. “You’re him, ain’t you?” Clem asked hesitantly. “The one they call Wolf.” Wolf didn’t answer, but Clem was sure it was the man the Indians talked about, the one some of them were convinced was a spirit and not a man at all.

Chapter 8

Left to stare at the open door in shocked silence, Clem Russell could not be certain if the man he had just seen was real or the remnants of a drunken dream. Looking at Jewel, he received no enlightenment until she finally spoke. “Wolf gone,” she expressed unemotionally. “You want food?”

“Food?” Clem echoed. “Hell no. I need a drink.” He felt himself trembling, still unable to think clearly. “Yeah,” he said then, changing his mind. “I need food. Go ahead, make some coffee and cook some breakfast.” He turned, startled, when Boyd separated himself from the cot in the corner of the room and headed for the door with the intention of answering nature’s call. Clem had forgotten he was there and, seeing his hungover guest, was also reminded that there was another sleeping in the stable.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” Boyd asked, noticing the startled expression on Clem’s face. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Maybe I have,” Clem answered honestly.

“No ghost—Wolf,” the Cheyenne woman offered unemotionally, causing further confusion for Boyd.

“What the hell’s wrong with you two?” Boyd demanded, thinking them both loco.

“We’d best go check on your cousin in the barn,” Clem replied. “We had a visitor here in the store while you was still sleepin’.” He started at once toward the door.

“What?” Boyd exclaimed. “I didn’t hear nobody.” Still confused, he followed Clem out the door.

“It’s a good thing for you that you didn’t,” Clem told him as he walked briskly toward the stable. “And if we find what I think we’re gonna find in the barn, you’re damn lucky your name ain’t Taggart.”

As Clem had suspected, they found Mace Taggart’s body sprawled on the hay, a gaping slash across his throat, and a death mask of wide-eyed horror eternally fixed on his face. In a fog of confusion to that point, Boyd was staggered to see the blood-soaked body of his cousin. “What the hell…? What the hell…?” was all he could manage at first. Then he grabbed Clem by the collar and demanded to know what had happened, for his initial reaction was that Clem or his sullen woman had for some reason murdered Mace.

“Take it easy!” Clem sputtered. “I ain’t had no part in this.” When Boyd calmed down enough to listen, Clem recounted the events of the past half hour or so.

Still dazed by what Clem told him, Boyd found it hard to believe all this had gone on while he was sleeping right there in the corner of the store. “And you didn’t make no move to stop him?” he asked. “Let him walk right in here and kill Mace?” Recovering from his initial shock somewhat, he was now getting angry.

“Ain’t no call to get riled at me,” Clem said. “He’d already done for Mace when he walked in here. I went for my shotgun, but he had the drop on me. And the only reason you’re still alive is that my woman told him your name wasn’t Taggart.”

It was still a lot for Boyd’s aching head to assimilate, but he finally realized what Clem was trying to tell him. And it also registered in his mind that the “posse” that chased Mace to Clem’s place was actually one man, according to Clem’s story, and the audacity of that man riled him no end. His delayed reaction was to go after the man who had murdered his cousin, but it was delayed a few minutes more by the urgency that had caused him to wake up before. While he took care of nature’s demands in a corner of the stall, he told Clem of his intention to track down this “Wolf” spirit and avenge his cousin, knowing that was what any of his brothers or his father would do. Clem shook his head, somewhat doubtful, for he had heard the stories about the spirit that haunted the mountains. “You don’t reckon you’d best eat somethin’ first?” he asked.

“No,” Boyd replied quickly, then reconsidered. “Maybe some coffee, if she’s got it done. The longer I lallygag around here, the farther he’s gonna get.”

The more Boyd thought about what Clem had said, the more he wished his brothers were with him. This fellow who killed Mace might be the cougar Clem described. He saddled his horse, but then went back in the store to drink a cup of coffee and eat some pan bread the woman had made, although his stomach was not really prone to accept anything substantial yet. When Clem asked if he still intended to go after Wolf, Boyd responded, “Hell yes, I’m goin’ after the son of a bitch! Mace was family.” He admitted to himself, however, that Mace was never an especially favorite cousin. But dammit, he thought, he’s still family!

With no knowledge that Wolf had left his horses in a gully in the ridge above Clem’s store and moved down to the bluffs on foot, Boyd spent a great deal of time scouting the clearing around the store, searching for fresh hoofprints. There were many, some he had created himself with his own horse. None looked fresher than two or three days old. “Well, what the hell?” he complained to Clem. “Did he fly in here like a damn bird?”

Clem shrugged. “Maybe—” he started, but Boyd cut him off.

“Don’t start up with that shit,” he warned. His warning did little to strengthen his resolve. “He had to leave some tracks on the trail in here. I’ll go up on the ridge and look there.” He got on his horse and rode up the trail leading away from the trading post. At the top of the ridge, he spent more time searching around the head of the trail. There were fresh tracks from two horses rising out of a gully some forty yards from the trailhead. Had he searched that far along the ridge, he would probably have found them. He would not admit, even to himself, that he was relieved not to have found any tracks. After two hours of wasted time, he returned to the trading post. “I don’t know how he did it,” he told Clem when he got back, “but there ain’t no tracks a’tall, and I can’t trail him if I can’t find his tracks.”

“I reckon not,” Clem said, keeping his opinion to himself. His Cheyenne wife grunted her opinion, causing Boyd to respond.

“Oh, he ain’t got away with this,” he insisted, “not by a long shot. He’s done signed his death sentence, and that’s a fact. I’m headin’ down to Medicine Bow to get my brothers and we’ll track him down. I don’t care how good he is at hidin’ his trail. My brother Skinner can track an owl at night.”