Charles West - Day of the Wolf

The realization that he managed to stagger back by the fire was further encouragement that his wound was not debilitating and that if the bullet was removed, he might heal more quickly. “I’m gonna cut that bullet outta me,” he told her.

Regaining her resolve, she bravely insisted, “I can do it, but I don’t have anything to kill the pain. I didn’t even see any whiskey in your packs.”

“We don’t need anythin’. It’s bleedin’ enough to clean the wound. There’s a whetstone in one of the packs. Take my knife and put a keen edge on it. Then I’ll dig around and see if I can work that bullet loose.” He grunted in pain when he tried to shift his body to make it easier for her to draw his skinning knife from his belt.

Pulling the knife free, she looked at it with apparent disdain. The long, cruel blade had been used to skin and gut animals of all kinds as well as any number of other tasks calling for a sharp tool. Reading her thoughts, he said, “After you put a good edge on it, you can hold it over the fire till it kills whatever’s on it.”

The surgery was not without difficulty. Wolf insisted upon doing the probing for the bullet himself, but because of the flooding of the wound with blood, he could not really see what he was doing, so Rose took over the job. With his encouragement, she overcame her reluctance to hurt him and began to dig deeper until she was finally successful in feeling the tick of the metal slug with the tip of her blade. During the entire procedure, he made no sound with the exception of a grunt and a deep drawing of breath when she cauterized the wound with the red-hot knife blade. When it was over, however, she saw that he was exhausted. As he lay back on his blanket, she watched him until he closed his eyes to sleep, and she prayed to God that she had not killed him.

“Dammit!” Skinner cursed. “If you think you can do any better, you can do the damn trackin’. There ain’t no way I can pick out their tracks from anybody else’s on this trail. I ain’t got no way of knowin’ what tracks to look for.”

Buck Dawson made no response to his brother’s outburst, knowing it was useless complaining on his part to expect Skinner to know one horse’s hoofprint from another. It was the utter frustration of being so close to his prey, yet with no notion where he might have gone, that drove him to complain. With nothing more to go on than reports from those at the saloon that Wolf and the woman had ridden a common trail out of the gulch, he and Skinner could only surmise that they were heading toward Spearfish. The rapidly approaching darkness of the night before had caused them to decide it best to wait for morning before trying to overtake Wolf and Rose.

At a point now where the trail veered from a heading due north to turn more to the west toward the little settlement of Spearfish, the two brothers paused to consider the state of the man they pursued. “You know,” Skinner suggested, “if that bastard is hurt as bad as they said he was, he might be too bad off to try to get to that little town this trail is leadin’ to. He mighta crawled off in one of these canyons to try to lie up for a spell till he heals up some.” The thought was inspired by a distinct set of fresh tracks left by two horses leading away from the trail, one shod and one not. The fact that there were no tracks of other horses made it even more easily followed.

“He might have at that,” Buck allowed. In fact, it seemed more logical the more thought he gave it. He dismounted to give the tracks a closer look, as if they might tell him something to confirm the idea. His trigger finger began to itch as he continued to stare at the two distinct sets of hoofprints, and he decided they had to be the same tracks they had started out following before losing them at the onset of winter.

“Course, it could be some damn Injun that crossed over here,” Skinner suggested. “Might just be an Injun with a horse he stole.”

Buck considered that possibility before commenting, “They keep sayin’ that feller is wild as an Injun, and he’s ridin’ an Injun pony. We’ll follow ’em,” he decided. “They’d better be the tracks of that murderin’ son of a bitch, because I’m gonna shoot whoever’s at the other end of ’em.”

Skinner rose to his feet and looked toward a narrow ravine leading down to a canyon formed by two steep slopes. “They look to be headin’ down to that bottom yonder,” he declared.

“Well, let’s get after ’em,” Buck said, and they mounted up. He held back to let Skinner take the lead, knowing he had the sharper eyes.

The trail proved easy enough to follow for the first mile or so, but after coming to a series of small streams, it appeared that the man they followed had begun to take some measures to cover his tracks. Skinner lost them altogether a couple of times when the tracks entered a stream and failed to come out on the other side. Both times they spent some time scouting up and down the streams until finding the exit tracks, which led them back to the general path first started upon. “He knows we’re on his trail,” Buck said. “He’s wantin’ us to think he’s changin’ directions, but he keeps comin’ back to the same line down the middle of this canyon.” It only made him more anxious to track him down. They continued on until losing the trail again after crossing a sizable stream.

“Dammit!” Skinner swore. “There he goes again. You go upstream. I’ll go downstream.” They parted then and rode up and down the stream, moving slowly, studying the banks carefully for signs of tracks leaving the water. Skinner continued following the stream as it led him higher up the mountainside. He stopped after going approximately one hundred yards, and paused to listen for any signal from Buck, but there was none. “I mighta missed it, but I don’t see how I coulda,” he mumbled, and decided to keep going. Remaining in the stream, he pushed on until he stopped abruptly at a small clearing in the pines. He cupped his hands around his mouth and turned to call out, “Buck,” repeating it several times until he heard a response from his brother, who had already reversed his search and was on his way to join him.

After a few moments passed, Buck appeared, walking his horse up the middle of the stream to find Skinner on one knee, examining a patch of grass near the bank. “Take a look at this,” Skinner said. Buck stepped down and knelt beside his brother. “It’s him, all right,” Skinner went on, “and it looks like he might be hurtin’ pretty bad. Lotta blood on the grass.” He nodded toward the remains of a small fire. “They spent the night here, ain’t no doubt about that.” He rose to his feet then and walked over to some berry bushes a short distance away. “Had the horses tied here,” he observed aloud.

“Question is, which way’d they head out?” Buck said. “And how long ago?” He was hoping that Wolf was hurt so bad that he wasn’t able to get an early start.

“Hard to say,” Skinner answered, looking around him on the bank for some sign that might enable him to make a guess. “His damn horses ain’t et enough to make a turd.”

“Dammit!” Buck swore, his impatience growing by the second. “That boy is hurtin’. They can’t be makin’ much time. We need to get movin’.” He led his horse in a circle around the camp and it didn’t take long before he found what he was looking for. “Ha, I thought so,” he crowed. “He didn’t go back down that stream. He cut across and headed right back to the bottom of this canyon. He ain’t just lookin’ for a place to hide. He’s got a permanent camp someplace and that’s what he’s tryin’ to get to.” He peered down the slope, following the direction of the tracks and the occasional broken branch through a thick pine belt. He had a feeling the man they tracked was close, even though there was no physical evidence to substantiate it.