Gunsmoke Serenade Page 11

  Knight lowered his rifle and appeared to scowl. ‘I was wondering when you’d show up. I expected you a day or two ago.’

  ‘Well, Max, I was a tad busy. You know how it is. Fishing can tire a man out.’

  ‘I’ll show you a good place to fish after this is over.’

  ‘I’ll take you up on that. Meanwhile, you’ve got a small damn army down in that valley looking to string you up. Do you have any idea what this is all about?’

  ‘That I do,’ Knight told him what he had learned about Silas Manchester’s motivation, and about Lacroix. In turn, Tibbs filled in Knight about his own activities, which elicited a grunt from the beleaguered marshal.

  ‘Where’s Lacroix now?’ Tibbs asked.

  ‘Probably at his cave, but we’re not going that way.’

  ‘And where are we going?’

  ‘We’re going after Manchester.’

  ‘Have you prepared your last will and testament?’

  ‘You can stay here, do some fishing.’

  ‘You know I won’t do that. But let me ask you this, do you have a plan?’

  ‘We kill everybody in our way. Manchester wants me and I’ll give myself to him. Once that happens I’ll find a way to kill him.’

  ‘We’ll be surrounded by fifty men.’

  ‘Not quite that many. You and Lacroix both helped even the odds up a bit.’

  ‘Even the odds? There’s nothing even about these odds. I guess it’s a good thing we have the law on our side, being duly appointed federal lawman and all of that.’

  Knight gave a snort. ‘Take some guns and make certain they’re loaded. Now follow me. I have a canoe.’

  ‘You have damn near everything we need except a side of beef. I’m downright starved.’

  ‘We’ll eat Manchester’s food after I kill him.’

  ‘Nothing like being confident.’

  The climbed into the canoe and set off downstream. The creek ran at criss-crossing angles like a series of switchbacks, slowly winding through the hills and into the lowlands. Because of the ongoing thaw high up in the mountains, there was a steady current that made their descent rapid. Tibbs already knew how cold that mountain stream was and he had no desire to get drenched again. Several times they came precariously close to capsizing when they hit the rapids or rocky sections where maneuvering was difficult, but Knight managed to keep them afloat.

  Under other circumstances, the canoe trip might have been a pleasant diversion from their duties as lawmen. Tibbs marveled at the wild country. This was a land that seldom had witness; none but the lonely trapper or wandering Indian knew these trails, and the mountain creek swept them through a paradise as beautiful and as uncaring as a harlot’s tin heart.

  They saw no other sign of Manchester’s men. This fact bothered Knight somewhat. He speculated that something had happened they had yet to discover; some change in tactic had occurred that had vacated Manchester’s men, at least temporarily, from their search.

  There was also no reason to cease in their venture to attack Manchester straight on, as Knight had devised, and so they proceeded cautiously and observant of their surroundings.

  Eventually the creek leveled out and Knight recognized the familiar lowlands. They were not far from the lake. Pulling the canoe ashore, they made their way onward, sidetracking to a nearby hill, which offered a better view of the lake and the valley. They saw nothing. There were no men, no sign of a camp.

  ‘This will be a good lake to fish,’ Knight said, ‘providing you don’t get killed.’

  ‘I’ll try not to.’

  They settled into the hills across from the lake and decided to wait and see if they could see any sign of hunters. An hour later Tibbs said, ‘There’s not a damn thing happening down here. Do you think they left?’

  ‘No, but they pulled back. When it gets dark we’ll mosey down and see what’s happening.’

  ‘That’s a good idea, ‘Tibbs said sarcastically, ‘We can mosey down there and ask them why they stopped chasing you.’

  ‘It’s better than sitting up in a tree,’ Knight said.

  ‘I knew I shouldn’t have told you about that.’

  ‘I just hope you didn’t spend all that time up in that tree just to get yourself killed down here on the ground.’

  Tibbs noticed that Knight had a twinkle in his eyes and a slight frown on his lips. Hell, if it made the old bastard happy then that was fine.

  Three miles away, Lacroix was having a grand time. The mountain man was ambling along a deer path and whistling. He had a new Winchester rifle he’d taken off one of the bodies, and a leather satchel full of ammunition. He had to admit, the Winchester rifle was a dramatic improvement over his old flintlock rifle. Still, he wasn’t quite prepared to give away his tried and true flintlock, but under the circumstances the Winchester offered the better chance for survival. He could fire more rounds faster, and reloading was easy.

  The Colt revolver offered similar benefits, but he still had his cap and ball 1851 Navy revolver stuck in his holster. Some habits are hard to break. Lacroix decided he couldn’t own too many guns, and now that he had extra he would keep them all.

  Whistling a merry tune, he wondered how long before he’d meet up with the marshal again. There was plenty of evidence that Knight had passed through the area. Lacroix found several bodies, including two that had been partially eaten by a grizzly. He had no doubt that Max Knight had somehow been responsible for their fates. The man was resourceful.

  Lacroix decided the best approach now was to see what tactic Knight favored, although he suspected the lawman would favor a direct approach. That is to say, Knight would take the fight to Manchester.

  That was when he found sign of another man. The boot prints in the mud were of a solitary man being pursued and heading toward the creek. The boots were smaller than Knight’s. Someone else was now being pursued, but friend or foe he could not tell. In the end it didn’t matter much. If he was an enemy he’d end up dead; if he was friendly he’d probably end up dead anyway. Manchester had set the stage for a bloody showdown and Lacroix sensed that events were in motion that would make that showdown happen sooner than later.

  It wasn’t long before he determined that Knight and the other man had met and were heading down toward the lake. If Knight remembered it he would take the canoe. It was late afternoon when he uncovered the spot where the canoe had been hidden and saw that it was gone. Good. Knight was using his head, and Lacroix knew precisely where to find him. Of course, without the canoe it would take him a few hours to make it downhill, and by then it would be dark.

  No sense worrying about it, he thought.

  Lacroix knew the trails by heart and could find his way along through the forest in any type of weather. Being blessed with a stretch of sunny days made his progress all the more enjoyable. At least in that regard they had been fortunate. Some time later, and right about the time his moccasined feet were getting sore, he spotted the camp where Knight and another man were hiding. The sun hadn’t quite dropped below the treeline, for Lacroix had made good time. Still, he approached cautiously and surveyed the surrounding area before calling out to the camp. They were in the lower hills overlooking the lake.

  ‘Hello the camp!’

  Knight’s harsh voice called back. ‘Come on in, Lacroix!’

  Lacroix ambled into camp grinning. The man with Knight was much younger than he expected, but his eyes told him that he possessed the same ferocity and intelligence that made Knight such a formidable man.

  ‘This is Cole Tibbs. He’s finally shown up to lend a hand.’

  ‘Well, it looks like he’s just in time.’

  ‘He would have been here sooner,’ Knight said, ‘but he was up in a tree.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Lacroix stared quizzically at Tibbs, who had grown red in the face. ‘You’ll have to tell me about that sometime.’

  ‘Meanwhile,’ Knight continued, ‘Manchester’s men have all drawn back. They’re down in camp and look
s like they’ll spend the night down there.’

  ‘You reckon they’ll come hunting in the morning?’

  ‘Maybe. I’m not really sure what their plan is, but I’m taking the fight to them before sunrise.’

  Lacroix whistled between his teeth. ‘Well, that’s a plan of some kind, and it’s better than no plan.’

  ‘You don’t have to feel obligated. You’ve done enough for me already.’ Knight looked at Tibbs. ‘Like I was telling you, Lacroix here saved my bacon more than once.’

  ‘I seem to remember saving your bacon a time or two myself.’

  Knight grunted. ‘Hell, this is about to get ugly. You two had best mosey on. I don’t want to feel guilty if you two get yourselves killed.’

  ‘Let us worry about that,’ Lacroix said, ‘Now if you don’t mind I’ll sit a spell and maybe get some sleep. I had a long day walking. By the way, I saw plenty of your handiwork. The grizzlies and wolves are eating well tonight.’

  ‘More of that to come,’ Knight said.

  ‘I’ll stick around, too,’ Tibbs added. ‘I wouldn’t want all of that time I spent in the tree to go to waste.’

  Lacroix laughed loudly. ‘I am curious about that! I do hope to hear about it before too long!’

  The three of them settled down around the small fire Tibbs had built. The three men made small talk about horses, some card games and hunting stories. By a silent but mutual agreement they avoided any discussion of the problem they were facing. Knight had offered up a brief explanation of Silas Manchester’s motivation, and then changed the subject. Lacroix didn’t push the issue. He appeared content to be with them, and his contribution to the campfire talk was to tell them humorous stories about his life as a mountain man.

  They slept in shifts after letting the fire burn down, but the mountains were unusually quiet. There was no sign of pursuit from Manchester’s men. When it came time for Lacroix’s watch he ventured out and saw from afar the fires burning in Manchester’s main camp. All the men appeared to have returned to camp.

  All three of them, however, were awake before sun-up.

  The sky had turned pale, although the sun had yet to crack the horizon.

  Moving out of the hills, they began to wander toward the lake with the intention of crossing the marsh and approaching Manchester’s camp from the north-west. They had not gone two hundred yards when they saw a brigade of men on horseback circling the lake. There were also men on foot trailing behind them. The remaining group of Manchester’s men was heading toward Knight, Tibbs and Lacroix.

  Knight said, ‘We’d better spread out.’

  A few moments later the gunfight began.

  FOURTEEN

  Knight moved with greater speed than Lacroix expected. In seconds he had separated himself from the two men and disappeared into a strand of brush. The aches and pains that had plagued him vanished as his adrenalin kicked in and his mind focused on the task at hand. His senses were sharpened instinctively and the world around him seemed to slow down.

  The Winchester was at his shoulder in a flash, his finger on the trigger as he sighted down the barrel. He leveled the buckhorn sight on a distant figure on horseback, and fired. The man on horseback, having galloped ahead of the main body of men, had only just come into range. Knight, being highly skilled with a rifle, dropped the man from his horse at two hundred and fifty yards. The man may not have been killed, but he was seriously injured. Knight saw him flopping around in the grass. The other paused, and then rushed forward.

  Knight had a fleeting glimpse of a large man on horseback, set back from the group. It had to be Manchester, but he would need to get closer to be certain.

  Changing his direction, Knight wanted to avoid being closer to the lake, where the shoreline would serve as a natural barrier and hence trap a solitary man. He wanted open spaces and the woodland’s natural habitat around him for cover.

  Lacroix and Tibbs were no longer in view. Glancing over his shoulder, Knight was satisfied they had found cover or were moving in another direction. Knight couldn’t help them, but he admired their grit. He couldn’t ask for two better companions, and he hoped they lived through this battle.

  Three additional men had come into range, all still on horseback. Knight was astonished at their stupidity. Being on horseback made them better targets. He lifted his rifle again and opened fire just as they came into range and two of his shots struck bodies while the third man reared his horse and loped into a strand of trees for cover. Knight calmly reloaded, thumbing cartridges from his holster into his Winchester.

  Suddenly a flurry of bullets was ripping apart the foliage near Knight. He dodged, crouched-crawled his way backwards and flattened himself behind a moldy birch tree. A smaller group of about five men had snuck up on his far right. They were on foot and fewer than fifty yards away. Knight was in danger of being pinned down as the main body of men spread out and moved closer. Bullets were now winging his way with regularity. They had all spotted him, knew who he was, and were ignoring Lacroix and Tibbs and concentrating on running Knight to the ground.

  These men may not have been the smartest but their numbers made them dangerous. Anger flared in Knight’s belly. He wouldn’t be taken down that soon, and not that easily.

  In his mind’s eye he pinpointed the positions of the five men on his right. Then he stepped out from behind the birch tree and took aim, firing rapidly, his rifle smoking hot. Squeezing the trigger, he put two bullets in one man and clipped another in the jaw, which sent a geyser of blood into the air as the man screamed and went down. Another shot staggered a man backwards, his shirt stained crimson as he bellowed in agony. The man’s wailing must have frightened one of the other men, who turned and ran. Knight shot him in the leg anyway.

  Turning sideways, Knight emptied his Winchester in a sweeping motion toward the main group. It was just enough to stop their advance and give Knight enough time to dash away. The sound of gunfire echoed across the hills. Nearby, he heard the boom of two guns – Lacroix and Tibbs had engaged the enemy from a hillock three hundred yards away. Knight couldn’t see them but his instincts told him who it was. He also guessed that Manchester had wisely sent another group to advance from the opposite side, and that was the group that Lacroix and Tibbs were shooting at.

  Knight had to admit it was a good plan. Manchester had thought this through and put together a practical strategy. They were attempting to box him in. But Knight wasn’t going to allow that strategy to work.

  A burst of gunfire tore at the trees and Knight rolled and slid into a thicket that included small trees and a fallen pine. He hoped the pine trunk was thick enough and not rotten so that it stopped the bullets from penetrating.

  Crawling the length of the fallen tree, he emerged in a grassy swell and immediately saw two men approaching. They were directly in front of him and partially obscured by underbrush. They hadn’t seen him. Knight reloaded the Winchester. He thought with steely determination that if he got low on ammunition he would take cartridges from the gunbelts of the corpses he left behind.

  Holding his position, he took aim at one of the men and tracked his movement down the barrel of the Winchester. There was no hesitation on his part when he felt the man was at the right point. The rifle roared and the man’s head exploded. He heard the other man curse fearfully as he scampered for cover. Knight didn’t have another clear view, so he held his fire. He didn’t think the man had seen him and probably only had a general idea as to his location.

  Knight crept forward. The man was hunkered down and looking off to his left. There was a moment when everything was still and nothing moved. It was then that Knight lifted his rifle and took aim at the man. When the buckhorn sight rested on the man’s chest he pulled the trigger. The rifle bumped back on his shoulder as the .45 slug spun along its trajectory before slamming into the man’s shoulder, ricocheting off bone and exiting down through his lungs and out his back. The shot had landed high on his shoulder but the ricochet into his lungs had d
oomed him.

  A gunsmoke serenade proceeded to thunder across the valley. With the hot flame of anger burning in his cold eyes, Maxfield Knight began to meticulously destroy the adversaries he encountered and thereby push himself closer to Silas Manchester. Knight’s serenade was a song of death that rang out and echoed across the summer wind.

  When a man came crashing from the underbrush, Knight shattered his skull by swinging the rifle like a club. They had come across each other without realizing it, and they were too close to each other to make a rifle shot possible. Knight destroyed yet another rifle with his ferocity, but rather than be bothered by it, he simply tossed the broken rifle aside and picked up the dead man’s Winchester.

  A crawling sensation prickled across his neck. Turning instinctively, he was able to sidestep slightly as a wounded man lunged toward him, slashing with a Bowie knife. The knife nicked his shoulder. The man bulled into him before Knight could raise his rifle and shoot. The Winchester he’d picked up was torn from his hands.

  Everything that Knight did from this moment forward was pure instinct and due to reflexes honed in countless fights.

  His elbow blocked a punch as he kicked the man with the toe of his right boot. The man grunted but continued to attempt to pummel Knight. A fist caught his ribs. Not enough to crack a rib but enough to send a signal to his brain that he was in trouble. He took a breath, exhaled, put a right fist into the man’s face with his shoulder behind the punch. Knuckles tore skin. The man staggered.

  There was no time for anything else. There was a buzzing in the air. Knight realized the buzzing was the sound of gunfire coming perilously close to the two combatants. In his peripheral vision he saw a group of men down the trail firing at them.

  Knight’s gun came up in a flash and thundered. The man was blown backward, a lifeless and bloody husk for the wolves to feed on.

  Then he was diving for cover as a swarm of bullets whipped past him, tearing up rocks and trees. A few bullets even thunked harmlessly into the body of the man Knight had just killed.