Gunsmoke Serenade Read online

  An hour later he heard gunfire in the distance. He could not be certain how close the shooters were, but they were quite some distance. The gunfire was faint, but plain enough. Sound echoes oddly though trees but he guessed they were several miles away. He couldn’t be certain, but it sounded like revolver fire. There was a distinct difference in sound between a .45 Colt revolver and a Winchester or Henry rifle.

  He was nestled on a cluster of trees that had fallen into the lake during a storm. The two trees had become a triangle with the center crisscrossed with small limbs. The overhanging trees made good cover for the fish that came in to feed along the shoreline. The lake was as clear as glass. He watched a school of small perch drift in and out of the rippling green shadows. The sun was hot on his back but his Stetson shaded his face. He was conscious of the weight of his holstered Colt on his right hip.

  He knew the fish would be biting later in the afternoon. He pulled in his line and returned to his camp. He had built a fire back from the lake and under a circle of pines. From any angle he was nearly invisible unless someone walked right up to his camp. He had his horse hobbled twenty feet away eating from the grass in the clearing.

  His rifle was propped against a tree. He lifted the rifle and levered the cartridges out, the brass spitting into the air and piling up on a patch of moss like glittering golden teeth. His mind was calm, although something nagged at him and soon he realized the sound of gunfire had bothered him. There were no farms nearby. There were no long stretches of pasture for cattle. Cherrywood Crossing and the surrounding area was isolated, twenty miles in any direction to another town. The land was good for farming but the railroad hadn’t found its way here. A crop farmer could make something go with a garden and goats, chickens and pigs. Maxfield Knight had once owned a farm nearby. Could have been a drifter shooting his dinner. Could be.

  He replaced the cartridges in his rifle. The breeze picked up and he smelled the pines and the clear, cold scent of a lake fed by a mountain stream. Maxfield Knight had never talked about what happened to his wife, and Tibbs had never asked. He heard the stories, but he let it go. A man’s grief was his own business. The gunfire had made Tibbs think about a lot of things, and none of it was pleasant.

  Through the trees he could see the whitecaps on the lake pick up when the breeze scuttled across the surface, the ripples flashing like small candles. He took the rifle with him when he walked away from his camp. He circled the lake on the south end, following animal trails. There was no sign of other men, not even Indian signs. He saw a groundhog and a porcupine. The birds seemed to follow him, chattering incessantly high in the branches. When he was at the halfway point he turned around and circled in the opposite direction. Satisfied that he remained isolated, he returned to camp and mused on gunfire while drinking a cup of Arbuckle’s coffee from his tin cup.

  He had lost track of the days. The mountains rose like a blue mirage above the treeline on the opposite shore. He was in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and the lake was undoubtedly stream fed, nurtured by the melting snow that slid down the rocks every spring. He had found and enjoyed two good camps and he had the benefit of a natural food supply. He understood at least something of why Maxfield Knight had settled here with his wife after the war. He decided he would ask the ornery old coot about that, but it was probably wise to get a few snorts of whiskey into him first. Max Knight never gave any outward sign of sentiment, but he could strike as swift as a rattler, and without provocation. Tibbs considered it his good fortune that Knight was his friend.

  Just before dark, when the forest was still and the fish were nipping at the insects that clustered at the water’s surface; and when the twilight was easing through the trees to instill a calmness over the land, he heard a succession of rifle fire in the distance. The gunfire came from the west, at the ridgeline of foothills.

  Although he was convinced that the gunfire had nothing to do with Max Knight, he still couldn’t shake that nagging thought. He packed up his gear. Whatever trouble was out there could best be avoided by traveling at twilight. Once he left his lakeside camp he would be on the open trail in thirty minutes.

  The ride into Cherrywood Crossing was uneventful. There was no further sound of gunfire and the trail was lonely and dark. He couldn’t help but think that he was leaving something special behind, and he vowed to find other such places. Camping, fishing and hunting suited him just fine. It was a big damn country, and the thought of his girl being with him in the future was a predominant image in his mind.

  He knew something was wrong when he turned his horse on the main street of Cherrywood Crossing. The town was too quiet. Yellow light poured from the saloon but there was no laughter. He stopped at the sheriff’s office and stared at the door. The place had been shot up. The glass was gone from the window and replaced with boards. His horse was nervous and nickered loudly and clomped a hoof. He dismounted and walked his horse to the water trough. Tying his horse to a hitching post, he walked up to the sheriff’s office and called out, ‘Hello sheriff Dobbs!’ An interminable stretch of silence followed. He was about to shout again when the bullet-shattered door opened a sliver. Dobbs peeked out and then stepped on to the boardwalk.

  Sheriff Dobbs had his arm in a sling and two days’ growth of beard on his chin. The man looked like hell. He had a shotgun in his good hand.

  ‘You took your sweet time getting back.’

  ‘I didn’t know I had to hurry.’

  Dobbs shook his head mournfully. ‘No, I guess you didn’t know. Not even a gypsy fortune teller could have seen this coming. You’d better come in. I have coffee on the stove.’

  They sat at the desk with the door latched. A solitary oil lamp bathed the room in a golden glow. There were bullet holes in the walls. The cells were empty, the cell doors leaning open. Dobbs poured coffee into tin cups.

  ‘I don’t have any sugar.’

  ‘This is fine.’

  Dobbs took a sip, taking his time. He set the shotgun on his desk.

  ‘You’ve been gone five days. They came two days ago and shot the place up. They took the prisoners and left me for dead.’ Dobbs was blinking rapidly. It was obvious the man didn’t enjoy telling it. He took another sip of coffee. ‘I’ve been waiting to see what happens next. I sent some telegrams but I haven’t had a response yet.’

  Tibbs was impatient. ‘Start at the beginning. Where’s the marshal?’

  ‘Don’t know about the marshal, but it’s a good guess he’s in a tight spot.’ Dobbs told Tibbs about the men the marshal had killed, and about Silas Manchester. ‘And then the marshal rode out that morning. I haven’t seen him since. Later that very day the men rode in and took back their own. They shot the hell out of this place. I’m lucky to be alive. I slipped out back when five of them with shotguns and rifles came through that door.’ The sheriff’s face had turned red.

  ‘And you don’t know any more about this Silas Manchester?’

  ‘Not a damn thing. But somebody wants the marshal dead. I don’t expect you’ll ever see him again. This was all planned, and they knew who they were after. The only witnesses here are buried now. They broke their own men out of jail. Kid, I can’t believe the marshal is alive.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Just don’t get your hopes up.’

  ‘I’ll tell him you said hello.’

  ‘What the hell does that mean? You got a plan?’

  ‘A plan?’

  ‘You have to have some kind of plan if you’re going after those men. You’ll need a posse.’

  ‘The only plan I have is to keep my guns loaded. There’s no other plan that works against men like that.’

  ‘Well, you better make damn sure you know how to handle those guns. And I think you might do some praying, too.’

  ‘You have any men in this town willing to ride on a posse?’

  ‘Hell no.’

  ‘So how am I supposed to get a posse together?’

  ‘I can send a telegram up to D
enver and ask the US Marshal’s office for assistance. They haven’t answered my last telegram, but I can send another.’

  ‘That will take too long. Besides, I think the wires are down. I can buy extra cartridges and ride in an hour. It could take a week or longer before any other lawmen get out this far, and there’s no guarantee on that.’

  ‘And what can you and Max Knight do against a dozen men? Hell, this Manchester fellow might have an army out there. Even the fastest gun is only fast against one opponent, not a dozen.’

  ‘Well, let’s just say that I know Max fairly well. He’s not going to roll over for these boys.’

  ‘I’ll send that telegram anyway. If you’re so damn fool stubborn to go out there then I can have some say in making sure you get buried properly.’

  ‘That’s real kind of you.’

  Tibbs left sheriff Dobbs shaking his head in disbelief. He went to the hotel and checked in. He had to wake up the disgruntled clerk, who had been sleeping behind the counter. All he needed was a few hours’ sleep himself and he could be on the trail again before sunrise.

  THREE

  Maxfield Knight knew that at some point he would have to abandon his horse. The thought irked him. He had purchased the black sorrel but a few weeks ago. He hadn’t named the horse but the previous owner had called her Mable. He thought that was a stupid name for a horse. Spinsters were called Mable, and maybe an old saloon girl, but not a horse. It was downright insulting. He decided if he gave her a name it might be Vendetta. He liked the word. Vendetta. It summed up things nicely. But now he was about to lose her. If they drove him above the treeline he would have to leave the horse behind.

  He had lost them in the trees. They had fired on him but by then he was into a grove of aspens. He moved deeper into the forest and dismounted. He wanted to check his backtrail. The sun was going down and he had to be certain he had room to maneuver when nightfall came. And so all of the sad days of his life came down to this one moment where he crouched among the whispering pines on a mountainside with a Winchester and waited for his pursuers to come so that he might kill them. Knight was a man who was constantly aware of his destiny, but on this day he felt confident that destiny was postponed. He was too angry to die. And he had questions that he wanted answered. Those men had made a mistake, although they didn’t know it yet.

  They had pursued him to the trees, but then stopped. He had a sense they were sizing him up, or testing him in some way. They had said they would kill him after he reached a certain point and that meant they were hunting him. What grudge they held against him he could not fathom, but he wasn’t going to be hunted down easily. The gold of Silas Manchester of Atlanta was motivation enough for these men. Knight would have to get to Manchester himself to get answers. He deemed that as his biggest challenge.

  He surveyed his surroundings. He was in the foothills and deep in the trees. Everything went up from this point onward. The trails and switchbacks all climbed steadily into the Rockies. A mountain man who knew the area could stay hidden a very long time. Knight could chance it, and wait them out from some hidden place, but that wasn’t his nature. And they knew that. He realized they expected him to strike back. Perhaps killing him was their only goal. The hunt was just a game to entertain them.

  He decided to abandon his horse immediately. They would expect him to stay in the saddle and work north or south to get around them. Due west took him above the treeline, where he would be the most vulnerable. In order to survive he would have to do what wasn’t expected, or at least give them that impression. He had to keep them guessing.

  He unsaddled the horse and hid the saddle in some scrub brush. He took his Winchester from the saddle boot and the extra box of cartridges from his saddlebag. He had extra matches in his saddlebag too, so he took them as well. He loaded the Winchester. He had the Colt on his hip, his rifle, a Bowie knife on his belt, and plenty of ammunition. As an afterthought he took his bedroll, which had a slicker rolled into it. The mountains got cold at night. He felt invincible with all of this gear. Those men were truly damn fools for not killing him at the start.

  He put his hand under the horse’s nose and let her sniff him, and then he scratched up by her ears. He patted her neck gently.

  ‘I expect they’ll look after you. A horse means money. I’ll come and get you later.’

  He walked away without another word. He wanted to get up higher into the rocks. He picked a trail that went straight up. He made good time, moving easily even with all of his gear. The sun was dropping fast and the long shadows soon made it difficult to see. When night came in the wilderness it was an impenetrable wall of blackness.

  He found a place on a switchback where he could see north and south and a good way down the trail that he’d followed. There was plenty of cover.

  Knight knew from experience that life in the mountains was challenging, but tranquil too. At sunset the wind brings songs to the pines and the light is everchanging. The spirits of explorers and early settlers are but a step away. The forest changes in late afternoon. The colors deepen as the shadows crawl out from beneath the underbrush. The pines and the wind are conspirators at twilight, telling stories of days past and greeting the future with a lullaby of whispers.

  Some short time later he saw smoke drift across the high trees two hundred yards down the trail. The smoke was like a gray wraith against the vibrant green of the pines, and then it dissipated. That was the first camp. Within thirty minutes he found two more. The furthest camp was probably the main camp and would be heavily guarded. The other two camps were set on either side of him. So they had formed a triangle with two front guards. Those men would be the first to hunt him come morning.

  He was besieged by mosquitoes when the sun was a red molten orb at the treeline. Glancing up at the encroaching darkness, he knew he could disappear into the forest. They knew it, too. This entire game was proceeding on the principle that he would not run. They knew this as much as he did. He would not run. The forest path and the mountains offered sanctuary for a man like Knight determined to stay alive. But they knew he wouldn’t run. So it came down to fighting and discovering why. The goal now was to stay alive and to find out what this was about, and then take as many of them down as he could manage.

  When the darkness was complete he began his descent down the trail. He aimed for the camp on his left, taking with him only his Colt and the Bowie knife. He left his rifle back up the trail hidden in a rocky crevice. He had removed his spurs and left them near his rifle. His eyes adjusted to the dark and he moved carefully to avoid making any sound.

  When he had reached a certain point, he paused. There was no sound but the whispering pines and the faraway hoot of an owl. He was alert and feeling strong. Fatigue had not struck him yet. The thought of getting tired never bothered him. He had no shortage of places to hide and rest. This, he thought, was a tactical error on their part. He would have to exploit it.

  After some time he smelled tobacco. He moved toward the smell. The sentry was smoking a cheroot and in the faint glow from the burning tobacco a clear view revealed he had placed his rifle against a tree trunk. With the Bowie knife in his hand, Knight couched in the darkness and considered his attack. There was no way to get around the man. This would have to be a frontal assault, carried out swiftly, and with minimum noise. When he had it clear in his mind he moved as close as possible.

  Twenty feet. Too long a distance, he thought. How fast could he move? The crackle of his boots in the underbrush would give him away immediately. He edged closer, stepping carefully. When the sentry took a drag on his cheroot the glow lit up his face. He was young, too young. No more than a boy. Knight had seen boys this age die before. He had killed a few of them himself.

  The lead that flew through the air at Shiloh sounded like locusts taken to wing. That had been his first taste of battle and his first taste of death. The green earth was littered with the bodies of young boys, their faces like cherubs shattered by a musket ball. He stood sil
ently and watched this young boy smoke, his skin smooth and unblemished, the glow from his cheroot catching the boyish curls that jutted out from his Stetson. What the need for money did to men was a sin in itself, he thought. Knight felt that he was caught up in circumstances beyond his control.

  Just a damn kid. How many were young like this? Knight resisted the urge to curse under his breath. Then, making his decision, he leaped forward and clubbed the kid with the butt of his knife, knocking him senseless.

  The other sentry, hearing the boy fall, said: ‘Hey Billy, did you hear that?’

  Knight was jumping into the darkness, racing at the other guard and knocking him senseless too before he could utter another word. He stripped both unconscious boys of their guns and retreated into the dark forest.

  Many men feared the darkness. To some the forest’s pitch black night was unbearable, but Knight had learned to embrace the darkness. More importantly, he had trained himself to find his way through the Stygian darkness by relying on his senses. Ignoring the mosquitoes and gnats that flicked about his head, he pressed on until he was a good distance from the camp of his pursuers.

  He also realized his tracks would be easy to find once the sun was up. His best hope now was to get into those high rocks just below the treeline and wait out the night. In the morning he would have to skedaddle until he could find a way to make sense of his predicament.

  He marked his path by the stars, working in a loose pattern to the north. Finally he came to a small section of rocks that took him up a switchback that might once have been a burro trail made by miners. He set down the holsters he had taken from the two boys. The extra guns and cartridges would be useful. He didn’t yet feel any overt sense of fear, although he was perplexed as to why he was being pursued. Everything will be made clear in due time, he thought.

  It was pitch black in the forest and he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. Then he heard a wolf howl in the distance, but close enough to be a concern. Another wolf answered the call. Maxfield Knight begrudgingly accepted that he might be pursued by more than just gunmen.