Six Days to Sundown Read online

  He was still watching her, sipping at the rapidly cooling coffee in his tin cup when her father came striding into view from around the back of a second wagon. The old man with the big .50 caliber buffalo gun wore a flop hat, half-boots, jeans and a fleece-lined leather jacket. He was quite tall, and though the strands of gray hair that had slipped from under his hat showed him to be of middle years, he was confident in his stride, erect and even rigid in his mannerisms. A former military man? Casey guessed so.

  A few men had gathered around father and daughter and, as Casey finished his coffee, he heard a few words: ‘No, haven’t seen them yet.’ ‘We’d better get moving soon.’ ‘Damn this snow …’ And then the group divided, each man going about his business. Casey stood uneasily near the dead fire, wondering what his next move should be. Unexpectedly Marly’s father turned, looked Casey’s way and marched directly toward him.

  ‘Jason Landis,’ the formerly hostile man said, extending a bony hand which Casey took. ‘Sorry about last night, but we’ve all been a little jittery with what’s been going on, and there’s my daughter of course. Did I catch your name?’

  ‘Casey Storm,’ he was told. The old man’s eyes searched Casey’s sun-tanned face and quiet pale eyes and nodded.

  ‘I was up and riding with the sunrise, Casey,’ Jason Landis told him. ‘Checking the backtrail. Never know what McCoy’ll do next.’ Landis spoke – habitually it seemed – in short, concentrated sentences which strengthened Casey’s impression that Landis had once been a soldier, accustomed to snapping out orders rather than holding discussions.

  ‘No sign of them?’ Casey asked. Meaning the men he had come to think of as the Shadow Riders.

  ‘Nothing. I rode back as far as the coulée. Didn’t cross it, of course. Saw your horse down. A buckskin, wasn’t it? Substantiates your story. Sorry I couldn’t expend the time to try retrieving your saddle and goods. We’ll have to make do with what we have.’

  We? Casey felt like a man who had just been impressd into service. No questions asked. No permission given. Still he felt a wave of relief pass through him. Alone, afoot in this country he would have had no chance of survival. None at all.

  ‘What can I do?’ Casey asked, noting that the other settlers were in motion all around him.

  ‘Help Marly hitch the team,’ Landis said, still authoritative. Casey smiled inwardly. He was willing to take orders.

  The new inductee started back toward the front of the wagon where Marly, practiced in the skill, seemed in little need of his assistance. Four mismatched horses, breathing steam, stamped impatiently, eager, it seemed, to resume their trek.

  ‘Did Father draft you?’ she asked, without looking up as she fastened the trace chains.

  ‘So it seems,’ Casey answered with a grin.

  Marly paused for a moment, straightened up and turned her huge dark eyes on him, measuring Casey Storm. It was difficult to read her expression. She shrugged, wiped her small hands on her jeans and said, ‘Well, it beats a firing squad.’

  The joke – if that was what it was intended to be – was darkly prophetic, for no sooner had Marly finished speaking than the roar of the guns began.

  One of the first bullets slammed into the side of the Landis wagon, gouging out a spray of long splinters. Marly swung around, her large eyes wider than usual. Gaping at him, she said, ‘I’ll hold the team!’

  She started for the wagon box, but before she could reach it, Casey grabbed her arm and pulled her roughly back to the ground. He forced her ahead of him, crawling under the shelter of the wagon bed to the rear. Bellied down in the cold mud, he fixed his sights on the first raider he saw. The inrider rode a roan horse and wore a black slicker as they all did. He had a bandanna worn as a mask, so Casey didn’t see his face as he shot him from his pony’s back. He lay still when he hit the snow-streaked earth.

  The camp was in chaos. The men, preparing to pack up and start along the trail, were not carrying their rifles; only a few wore handguns. The roar of gunfire was, nevertheless, fierce and deadly from both sides. Casey heard a settler not fifty feet away scream and, glancing through the spokes of the wagon wheel, saw him throw his arms high, perform a grotesque pirouette and fall dead.

  The Shadow Riders circled the camp like Indians and then charged directly through its ranks, guns blazing. Casey knew he had only two loads left in his Henry repeater, and cursed grimly when he wasted one of them with an ill-timed shot at a hard-galloping gunman. His third shot was more effective, but only marginally so.

  The .44-.40 slug from his long gun tagged one of the raiders high on the shoulder and he rocked in his saddle but did not go down. Casey threw his rifle aside and drew his Colt. Angry now, he crawled from under the wagon, feeling Marly’s restraining hand claw at the fabric of his sleeve. He saw another of the settlers curled up against the snow and mud of the campsite, heard a woman scream.

  On his feet, Casey braced himself and began firing with deliberation. He managed to tag at least one more of the onrushing raiders. Casey watched him double up and saw the rifle drop from his hand. He managed, nevertheless, to swing his horse away from the battle. A bullet flew past Casey’s head and passed through the wagon’s interior and he was relieved that he had not let Marly clamber up into the box.

  From within the camp perimeter now, the guns of the settlers began to fire with more rapidity and authority. Some of the men had managed to reach their weapons and take up positions of defense. The raiders touched spurs to their horses’ flanks and beat a hasty retreat, shots following them until they were out of sight. The gunfire slowed to an intermittent crackle and then fell silent. Powder-smoke drifted through the encampment still, acrid in the nostrils. Casey reloaded his Colt with his belt shells and finally, almost with regret, holstered it.

  ‘Dad!’ It was Marly who had cried out. She crawled from under the wagon, sprang to her feet and rushed across the encampment. Looking that way Casey could see that Jason Landis had been hit, though how badly he could not tell. He started that way at a jog-trot.

  A small boy sat lugging a yellow dog with floppy ears next to a wagon wheel. His eyes were bleak. Beyond him Casey saw four or five men, one woman, huddled around the still form of a man. When the woman rose, she turned away, hands to her mouth and rushed off, leaving her shawl behind her as she ran. Moments later a keening sound, a sorrowful wailing could be heard. The young boy hugged his dog more tightly.

  ‘Nicked at least three of them myself,’ an angular, dark-eyed man was saying to a group of settlers. Casey had seen only two raiders down against the cold earth, and he knew that he was responsible for at least one of them, but maybe a little braggadocio was necessary to keep up his courage. It made no difference anyway.

  What mattered was the sight of Marly in her over-sized coat, on her knees, hovering over Jason Landis. Two other people were there when Casey approached. Marly turned haunted eyes toward Casey. ‘He’s badly wounded,’ the girl said.

  ‘It’s his leg,’ a stout man Casey had never met, told him confidentially. ‘Shattered bad.’

  ‘Doc!’ someone else called out to a gaunt man with a haunted expression. ‘Come over here. It’s Landis!’

  The man in the threadbare suit – ‘Doc’ – approached as if against his will. He seemed to be tugging the chains of his memories after him. They let him through to examine Jason Landis whose face was tight with the anguish of pain.

  ‘Can you patch him up?’ the stout man enquired eagerly. Doc looked at him as if he were a fool.

  ‘I haven’t practiced medicine since the war, Bailey. I have no surgical tools, nor even a medical bag. In the war,’ Doc continued, rising from his inspection of Landis’s wound, ‘we were compelled to perform certain kinds of surgery. Sometimes twenty … fifty operations a day. Without morphine or any other deadening substance, I simply used what I had: a sharp saw and four good men to hold the patient down.’

  ‘You won’t!’ Marly shouted. She had taken off her buffalo coat to place it und
er her father’s head as a pillow. Her eyes were imploring and defiant at once.

  ‘No, young lady,’ Doc replied hollowly. ‘I won’t. It’s the reason I quit practicing medicine after Appomattox.’ He ran an unsteady hand over his gaunt, gray face. ‘Let’s splint the leg the best we can and hope Jason can make it to Sundown.’

  One younger man sprinted off to try to find laths or similar strips of wood to make a splint. Jason’s face was spasming as he tried to contain the pain. His teeth were tightly clenched, his face colorless. There was no more blood in Marly’s face. She looked around helplessly from one man to the other. Almost shame-faced, though none of this had been their doing, the settlers began to wander away.

  ‘Wait!’ Jason Landis shouted out, his voice surprising in its strength, and the settlers halted in their tracks and turned back toward Landis. The youngster who had gone to find wood for a splint was back and as Doc, muttering to himself, crouched over Jason Landis working on his broken limb, Landis continued to speak through obvious pain.

  ‘What is it, Jason?’ a burly man with a two-inch long red heard asked. He had his rifle cradled in the crook of his arm. His small eyes were dark and emotionless.

  ‘Casey Storm is taking over for me,’ Landis said, surprising no one so much as Casey.

  ‘Who the hell is—?’

  ‘That’s him,’ Landis said, pointing out Casey. The other men shifted hostile eyes in Casey’s direction.

  ‘We don’t even know who he is!’ the big man exploded.

  ‘Don’t argue with me, Barrow,’ Landis said, wincing as Doc tightened a bandage around his shattered leg. ‘You all elected me as wagon-master. Obviously I can’t fulfill my duties just now, but I figure you gave me the authority to do what must be done. Casey Storm is my man. He’s a soldier.…’

  Landis gasped and closed his eyes tightly. He seemed on the verge of passing out. He managed to sit up halfway and with his right hand he passed his .50 Sharps rifle to Casey as if he were passing the scepter of command.

  ‘Look, Colonel,’ Barrow said, using Landis’s military title for the first time, confirming Casey’s suspicions. ‘I thought we had all agreed that Joe Duggan is second-in-command.’

  ‘He still is,’ Landis said, sitting up with a groan. Marly and Doc helped the wagon-master to his feet. ‘Now he’s second to Storm here. That shouldn’t be too difficult to understand.’

  ‘We don’t even know this man,’ Barrow said, tugging angrily at his growth of red beard. ‘Where’s he come from? What is he doing here! We’ll have to hold a meeting about this, Landis.’

  ‘Hold your meeting, then,’ Landis said, balancing unsteadily on one leg. ‘But hold it tonight. We have to reach Pocotillo Creek today, and you know that. Let’s get these wagons moving and save the bickering until we have time for it.’

  ‘Doc let Casey take his position under Landis’s right arm and with Marly on the left they began to make their unsteady way back toward the wagon. They hadn’t gone ten yards before a well-built man with a bullish face stormed up to them, his face a mask of fury. On his heels a svelte daisy of a woman with long blonde hair worn loose in the morning trailed after him with the supremely confident bearing of one who knows her beauty and trusts it as free passage through life.

  ‘Hold up there, Landis!’ the scowling man called out sharply. ‘What’s this that Barrow is telling me – that this stranger is taking command of the wagon train?’

  Joe Duggan was a long-striding, angry man wide through the shoulders, darkly handsome, and just now in a fury. Jason Landis was unsteady on his feet, his weight bearing down on Casey Storm and that of his small daughter as they paused to await Duggan’s arrival.

  ‘I said that,’ Landis answered heavily. His chin was nearly resting on his chest. He needed sleep and a lot of it.

  ‘You must be out of your mind!’ Duggan bellowed. The blonde girl, far too pretty to be out here on the long Montana plains, moved up beside Duggan, her smile flirting, knowing, deep at once. If a kitten could smile, it would have looked like hers. Duggan placed a proprietary hand on her arm and had it gently, deftly brushed away.

  ‘Barrow is planning a meeting tonight,’ Landis said through his obvious pain. ‘For now, let’s work together to reach the Pocotillo. We haven’t had water for our stock for two days, and my horses won’t eat snow to survive.’

  Duggan wouldn’t let it go. ‘Who the hell are you?’ he demanded of Casey. ‘Where’d you pop up from? You could be a McCoy man for all we know. Have you got a horse, a destination?’

  ‘Only of the most nebulous sort,’ Casey Storm answered frankly. Duggan looked puzzled by the reply.

  ‘He means “no”,’ the blonde lady said, with a smile that seemed directed only at Casey Storm.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ Duggan said, shaking his head. ‘I don’t like it at all.’ He glanced at the sky. ‘You’re right, though, Landis. We have to keep moving if we’re going to reach Pocotillo Creek by nightfall. For now we’ll let this slide, but we will have that meeting tonight and see how things stand after that.’

  ‘Puny little pup. Insolent to the point of offensiveness,’ Landis muttered, as Duggan and the blonde ambled away.

  ‘However, he does have a point, you know,’ Casey said, as he and Marly helped Landis back to the covered wagon. ‘I don’t know you people. I have no idea of the situation. I’m totally unqualified to take command of a group like this.’

  ‘You’re qualified,’ Landis said, as they helped him up on to the tailgate and from there into the bed that had been Marly’s the night before, and covered him with a buffalo robe and three tightly woven, colorful Indian blankets.

  ‘Take charge for me, Casey,’ the old man said and then closed his eyes. Casey felt like a foot-soldier given a battlefield commission, but he also felt more than uncomfortable. He did not want the obligation, the mantle of responsibility. No one in the camp wanted him to assume it. ‘You can use my mount of course.…’ Landis murmured. ‘Marly can.…’

  Then the old soldier could withstand the pain from his wounds and the trials of the morning no longer and he fell into a deep, troubled sleep. Marly and Casey slipped from the wagon and stood watching as the caravan began to trundle its way westward across the slush left behind by the brief snowstorm. It was Casey’s first real look at the cavalcade. Six covered wagons with a husband and wife on the bench seats, children peering out from under the canvas, or briefly running alongside with exuberant abandon until they were scolded to clamber aboard. The single yellow dog with its folded ears and feathery tail, tongue lolling happily. Then the business portion of the troupe. Four heavy freight wagons, three of them loaded with stacked sawn lumber, drawn by six-mule teams, their five-foot high wheels churning up the mud and snow in their passing. These were flanked by outriders, the red-bearded Barrow and the dark-eyed Duggan among them. The latter carried a heavy scowl which he fixed on Casey as he trailed past, rifle across his saddlebow.

  Behind these rumbling conveyances came a light wagon driven by a thin man so pale as to be almost albino. Beside him sat the blonde woman in a yellow dress and wide yellow bonnet. A long, yellow, sheepskin-lined coat covered her shoulders and legs. She waved a cheerful hand at Casey as they passed.

  At Casey’s shoulder, Marly said, ‘We’re last.’

  ‘Looks that way,’ Casey agreed. He glanced down at Marly, saw her wide dark eyes lost in consideration, and he asked, ‘What is it?’

  ‘I was just wondering if you were in love with her yet’

  ‘In love with …?’

  ‘With Holly,’ Marly said, lifting her chin in the direction of the light wagon where the blonde woman rode. ‘All of the men fall in love with her. I just wondered if you were yet.’

  ‘At this time, in this temperature,’ Casey said, drawing his buffalo coat more lightly around him, ‘I haven’t given it a thought. Where’s your father’s horse?’

  ‘He’s ground-hitched beside the team. Checkers – that’s his name – is sadd
led and ready. Will you be riding out?’ Marly asked with a sort of sad expectation in her voice. Casey glanced again at the tiny, big-eyed girl. The wind shifted her dark, loosely contained hair. What was it she thought? That he would steal Landis’s horse and simply ride away? Did she fear being alone so much, or had she had other men just ride away from her? Casey looked at the long Montana plains, streaked with snow-melt, studied the high-blossoming clouds in the pale blue sky. Before he had fallen into this confusion, he had been riding from nowhere, going nowhere. He smiled dimly, trying to comfort the girl as he told the truth to himself.

  ‘Hell, where would I go?’

  Casey retrieved the high-shouldered, sturdy Appaloosa gelding – Checkers – from its ground-hitch, carried the iron to the back of the wagon, flung it aboard and tied Checkers with thirty feet of tethering rope to the tailgate.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be on the flank?’ Marly asked, as he clambered up into the box beside her, fitted his gloves and took the reins. ‘That’s what Father always does – checking the trail, watching for breakdowns, and for the McCoy men.’

  ‘That’s what I should be doing, yes,’ Casey said, releasing the brake and snapping the reins to put the mismatched team into motion. ‘But I need to know a little more – no, a lot more – about what I’ve gotten myself into and what sort of hell might lie ahead. I’m riding blind and I don’t like it. It’s time you told me what this is all about, Marly.’