Charles West - Day of the Wolf

“I don’t know if he’s a wild man or not,” Clem replied. “But I saw him when he walked into the store here, and he had a look like a crazy man, just itchin’ to kill somebody. Boyd was asleep on that cot in the corner, and like I told him, he was lucky he didn’t jump up. That man woulda cut him down before he could blink an eye.”

“Is that a fact?” Buck responded. “I don’t know, Boyd ain’t exactly slow. If it’da been Nate, though, it mighta been a different story.”

Clem looked around then, just realizing that the gang was one short. “Where is Nate?” he asked. “He ain’t in no trouble, is he?”

“Nah,” Buck said. “I sent him home to tell the folks the bad news about the Taggart boys. Now, what about this wild feller?”

“Well, like I told Boyd,” Clem continued, “he wouldn’ta had much of a chance against this feller. Hell, Boyd was asleep, and still pretty drunk. He didn’t know anythin’ about it till after this Wolf feller was done and gone. He asked Jewel if Boyd was a Taggart, she told him he wasn’t, and he turned and left. I reckon he was just lookin’ to wipe out the Taggarts.”

“That’s what he did, all right,” Buck stated, “and now he’s gonna have to pay for killin’ my cousins. The Dawsons don’t take kindly to anybody bringin’ harm to our family.”

“Set down yonder at the table,” Clem said, “and I’ll go see what Jewel’s doin’ ’bout fixin’ you and your brothers somethin’ to eat.”

While Buck went to the table in the back corner of the saloon, Clem went out the back door to the kitchen, where he found the stoic Indian woman stirring a big pot of beans. She glanced up at him with weary eyes devoid of emotion. “Make sure there’s plenty of ham in them beans,” he told her, then paused to give her a closer look. “For Pete’s sake, change that rag you’re wearin’. Put on that dress you just finished makin’, so you don’t look like you been sleepin’ with the hogs.”

She turned those lifeless eyes up to him again and asked, “You stir beans?”

“No, hell no,” he replied indignantly, “I ain’t gonna stir the damn beans. I’ve got customers to attend to.” He spun around to return to the saloon. “But you get yourself outta that dirty rag and into somethin’ that might make you look a little more like a female.”

She paused to stare at his back as he went through the door. He would never know the desperate thoughts that filled her mind, for he was incapable of understanding the hell he had created for her over their years together. In the beginning, he had courted her as a man would court a wife. But the relationship soon turned into something she had not counted on, when she became a commodity to be sold in his store and used like the hogs in the pen. She had run away once in an attempt to return to her Cheyenne people, but he had caught her and dragged her back to be severely beaten and threatened with death if she tried it again. After a while she became oblivious of the rough pawing of his drunken customers, and one day realized that it was too late for her to think about escaping. So she resigned herself to her fate as a white man’s slave. Even so, she had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach when she heard Boyd and Skinner coming in the front door.

Clem, on his way to the table with a full bottle of whiskey, turned when he heard them behind him. “Come on in, boys. We’ll have somethin’ for you to eat in a minute or two.”

“Any luck?” Buck asked.

“I reckon,” Skinner said. “Didn’t need none, though. Found tracks where a couple of horses came up out of a gully ’bout thirty or forty yards the other side of that path leading down from the ridge. Boyd woulda seen ’em if he’da looked a little farther than the end of his nose.”

“I was just in too big a hurry to get after him,” Boyd attempted to alibi. “I musta missed that gully.”

Skinner gave him a knowing grin and continued. “I can track the bastard—two horses, one of ’em shod, the other’n barefoot.”

“Which way did he go?” Buck asked. “Follow the river?”

“Nah,” Skinner said. “He didn’t follow the river more’n a hundred yards before cuttin’ away to head straight north. Long as we don’t get no gully-washers or it don’t snow, I can track him.”

“Good,” Buck said. “The son of a bitch has already lived too long to suit me.”

The conversation was interrupted briefly then with the arrival of the sullen Indian woman with their food. She was still wearing the same soiled dress, but there was only one who took note of it. Clem glared angrily at her as she spooned beans out on each plate, then went back to the kitchen to get a platter of bread, baked fresh that morning.

The atmosphere around the table that night was not the usual loud and rough talking affair that the Dawsons normally indulged in. There was a fair amount of drinking, but Skinner and Boyd were both aware of their elder brother’s somber mood. It was something they had seen before, when he made up his mind that someone had to be dealt with. There was no argument from either when Buck told them to put a cork on the bottle and get to their blankets, because he was planning to go hunting early in the morning. All the Dawson brothers enjoyed hunting, and it was especially exciting when it was human prey they stalked.

The sun rose the next day to find Buck already drinking coffee in the kitchen with Jewel while he waited for his brothers to rouse themselves. Bacon was sizzling in the Indian woman’s big iron skillet, and corn cakes were waiting to fry in the leftover grease. She was happy to arise early to cook for the three men, anxious to see them on their way, and thankful that there had been no demand for her worn-out body the night before. Clem had attempted to generate some interest in her reluctant services, but the brothers had hunting on their minds. There was no delay in their departure. They were ready to ride by the time Clem staggered out to see them off. Riding up from the bluffs, Skinner showed Buck the tracks left in the gully where Wolf had left his horses while he murdered their cousin. “If the weather holds,” Skinner predicted, “we oughta be able to follow his trail for a good while. So far, it don’t look like he’s worried about anybody followin’ him.”

Buck nodded solemnly. He knew that no matter how plain the trail was, it was bound to disappear after a while, whenever their prey came to a river or a tree-covered mountain. So it was necessary to follow it as long as they could and hope to run him down before he had a chance to lose them—and he already had a good five-day start. “Let’s go,” Buck ordered, and the three started out on their deadly mission.

“Skinner’s good at trackin’,” Boyd said, “but if we don’t catch up with this Wolf feller before he heads up into the Black Hills, if that’s where he’s headed, we ain’t got much of a chance to find him. What are you thinkin’ on doin’ if we don’t track him down in a week or two?” Of further concern was the fact that summer was already nearing an end, and an early snow could make tracking impossible.

The question was not something Buck had not already given a great deal of thought. “Have you got a good reason why you wanna hang around here, or Cheyenne, or Medicine Bow, or anywhere else where we’ve been pretty busy lately?” he asked pointedly. “We might not find this son of a bitch right away, but we’re gonna keep on lookin’ till we run across him somewhere. And while we’re lookin’, it might as well be up in the Black Hills. That country has opened up to the gold prospectors. There’s gonna be more prospectors in them hills than there is pine trees, and that just means more gold for us. They dig it outta the ground and we’ll dig it outta them.”