Deadly Trail Read online

  “Good morning, Mrs. Foley,” the teller said. “What brings you out on a cold, dreary day like this?”

  “Good morning, Mr. Meade. I got a letter from my son yesterday, and he sent me a draft drawn on a bank in San Francisco,” Mrs. Foley said, taking the document from her handbag. “I’m just wondering if there will be any difficulty in depositing it.”

  “I’m sure there will be no problem at all,” Meade replied. “I’ll be glad to take care of that for you,” Meade walked over to the teller’s cage. “How are you getting along?”

  “Just fine, thank you,” Mrs. Foley replied. “I have a wonderful group of people staying with me now. They keep me from being lonely, now that Mr. Foley is gone.”

  “I don’t believe you’ll ever have to worry about being lonely, Mrs. Foley. Not in this town anyway. Why, you’ve got dozens of friends all over,” Meade said as he accepted the draft from her and started filling out a deposit slip. “I suppose you heard about the little fracas in the saloon last night involving one of your guests.”

  “Yes, you are talking about Mr. Jensen,” Mrs. Foley said. “He came to tell me about it himself last night. He said he wanted me to hear it from him before I heard it from anyone else. It was self-defense.”

  “Oh, yes, it was that, all right,” Meade said. “There’s nobody questioning that. Matt Jensen had no choice, the other fella drew on him.”

  “Poor Mr. Jensen feels terrible about it,” Mrs. Foley said.

  “No need for him to feel bad about it,” Meade said. “He was in the right. Will you be wanting any cash back?”

  “No, just deposit it all to my account,” Mrs. Foley said.

  “Very good,” Meade replied.

  Suddenly, the front door of the bank was thrown open and three men, all wearing masks and carrying pistols, rushed into the room.

  “Get your hands up!” one of the men shouted. “This is a holdup.”

  “Oh! Oh, my!” Meade said in a frightened tone of voice.

  “You!” the robber ordered, pointing to Meade and throwing him a cloth bag. “Fill this bag with money.”

  As a nervous Meade began complying with the bank robber’s request, Mrs. Foley stared at the three robbers.

  “What are you lookin’ at, old woman?” one of the obbers asked gruffly.

  “I know you,” Mrs. Foley said.

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Yes, I do. And I know you too,” she said, pointing to one of the others. “The two of you worked for my husband one summer. You are Boone Parker and you are Al Hennessey.”

  “Damn you!” Boone said. He shot her, the sound of the gunshot sudden and unexpected. Mrs. Foley’s eyes grew large as she realized she had just been shot. She fell back against the front of the counter, then slid down into a sitting position on the floor.

  “What did you do? Are you crazy? You shot that old woman!” one of the other robbers said.

  “She recognized us. We couldn’t let her live, she would tell everyone.”

  “What about him? He heard her,” the robber said, pointing to Meade.

  “No, I’ve never seen you before!” Meade said, his voice rising to a high pitch in fright. He handed a full bag of money to Boone. “Here, take your money! I filled it up! I won’t say a word, I promise.”

  Boone took the money bag, then raised his pistol. “I’m sure you won’t,” he said as he pulled the trigger.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Hennessey said.

  The three men ran out of the bank, then leaped up onto horses that were being held by a fourth man. They galloped out of town.

  Matt Jensen, totally unaware of the tragic events that had just taken place in town, was in the nearby hills setting up for his deer hunt. Matt knew how sensitive a deer was to a strange scent, and that a male deer would always go downwind to check for danger, so he was positioned crosswind of the buck’s line of travel in order to avoid detection.

  Matt knew also that the buck would try to stay in cover as much as possible, so he found an area that he felt sure the buck would use. Then, leaving that area for the deer, he got out of sight and waited.

  Matt was confident enough of the game that he allowed the first two deer to pass undisturbed. Then he heard a soft, nearly inaudible tapping sound. Most men would not have heard it at all, and most of those who might hear it would have no idea what it was.

  Matt knew exactly what it was, and he gripped his rifle and stared at the place where he knew the deer would make its appearance. The leaves and branches of the low-limbed trees at edge of the forest across from where Matt had set up were waving gently in the wind. But buried within that sea-wave of vegetation was a movement in the opposite direction—a movement against the wind.

  Even though Matt could not see the deer, he knew where it was, tracking him by the gentle movement of the branches as surely as if the deer were in plain view.

  Then the deer appeared, at first only his nose sticking out from the bushes, nearly invisible as it sniffed for any sign of danger. Then the head stuck out and the deer looked all around it. Finally, the entire deer stepped out into the open, sniffing the wind, assessing the danger by smell and sight. It was a magnificent eight-point buck and Matt lifted the rifle to his shoulder, aimed, and fired.

  It was several hours after the robbery when Matt Jensen rode into town with the deer slung across his horse in front of him. He headed straight for the Mountain View Café, where he had an agreement with the owner to store and cook for him any game he brought in. There seemed to be a lot of activity in the town, and Matt wondered what had everyone so agitated, but he didn’t ask. Instead, he rode around to the back of the café, dismounted, and was pulling the deer off when Jason Cumbee stepped outside.

  “That’s a nice one,” Jason said.

  “He is a pretty good one,” Matt replied as he hung the deer’s back two feet up on a hook so that it could be dressed.

  “Did you hear?” Jason asked.

  “Hear what?” Matt replied as he pulled his knife to start to work on the deer.

  “The bank was robbed. The robbers killed Frank Meade and Mrs. Foley.”

  Matt looked up sharply.

  “Did you say they killed Mrs. Foley?”

  “Yes. She was in the bank at the time of the robbery. Apparently there were only two there, Mrs. Foley and poor Frank Meade.”

  “Why would they shoot a helpless old woman?”

  “Seems she recognized two of them, so they shot her to keep her quiet. Only, she didn’t die right away. She lived long enough to tell the sheriff who did it.”

  “Who was it?”

  “There were four of them, but she only named two. Boone Parker and Al Hennessey.”

  Matt shook his head. “I don’t know either one of them.”

  “You wouldn’t. They cleared out of here a couple of years ago. They did odd jobs, worked for Mr. Foley for a while, but they was always in trouble, what with fightin’, gettin’ drunk, destroying public property, and the like. Sheriff had them in jail about as much as out.”

  “Is he going after them?”

  “Yes.”

  “I want to go too.”

  Cumbee smiled. “He figured you would. He asked me to send you down to see him soon as you got back in town.”

  Matt made a gesture toward the deer.

  “Leave the deer, I’ll take care of it for you,” Jason said. “I want those sons of bitches caught too.”

  “Thanks,” Matt said, sheathing his knife.

  “There were four of them,” Sheriff Craig said to Matt. “There would’ve been five, but you killed one of them.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “More than half-a-dozen men have told me that Boone Parker come into the saloon with Rufus Clay yesterday. I figure Clay pushed you into that fight to get you out of the way so they could rob the bank today.”

  Matt nodded. “Could be,” he said. “Since I had never met the man, I couldn’t figure out what put the burr under his saddl
e.”

  “I’m hoping that you will take a hand in finding them,” Craig said.

  “Absolutely,” Matt said. “They killed Mrs. Foley. I definitely want to find them.”

  “Good, I was hoping you would feel like that. I’ve got more than a dozen men volunteering to be in the posse,” Sheriff Craig said. “But I want you to lead it, if you will.”

  “No posse,” Matt said, shaking his head.

  “What?”

  “I’ll go after the men for you, but I don’t want anything to do with a posse,” Matt repeated. “If I’m going, I want to go alone.”

  “There are four of them, Matt,” Sheriff Craig said. “Why on earth would you want to go alone?”

  “Because if I go alone, I can find them,” Matt said. “Stick a big posse behind me and I might as well be followed by a brass band. I can track, and I can move quietly if I’m by myself. But if there is a posse involved, we might never find them.”

  Sheriff Craig let out a long sigh and ran his hand through his hair. “I’ve heard you can track a fish through water,” he said. “Is that true?”

  Matt smiled. “Sometimes,” he said. “It depends on the fish and it depends on the water.”

  “Yeah, well, you may have to track these guys through water if this storm moves in.”

  “I’ll find them.”

  “All right, let’s say you do find them. How will you get them back if you are by yourself?”

  “I’ll get them back,” Matt promised.

  “I do want them back, Matt. Alive. I want them to stand trial and hang legally.”

  “I’ll get them back,” Matt repeated.

  Craig shook his head. “Damn if I don’t think you can,” he said. “I may be crazy for doing this, but I hereby deputize you, and I’ll let you go out on your own.”

  “Thanks,” Matt said. “I’ll have them back by tomorrow afternoon.”

  Craig chuckled. “Whoa, now, that’s biting off quite a load, isn’t it? Tomorrow afternoon?”

  “You’re right, that might be a little early. I’ll have them back by tomorrow night,” Matt corrected.

  Craig chuckled. “I’ll keep the office open late,” he said.

  Fifteen minutes later, Matt rode out of town on the trail of the robbers. He had a week’s supply of jerky, an extra box of .44 cartridges, and a rain slicker worn over his coat. In the mountains, there was a distant rumble of thunder, suggesting that the storm to come would more likely be rain than snow. Matt was grateful for that. It would be hard enough to track them in the rain, but practically impossible to track them under a mantle of new-fallen snow.

  Just after dark, the rain started. It was a cold, driving rain, laced with little pellets of ice. Matt found a rock overhang that was large enough to give both him and Spirit a degree of shelter, and he prepared to wait through the night.

  The one-room cabin that clung to the side of a mountain was built from logs and chinked with mud. Carved into a log just over the door was a message left by the original owner:

  THIS HEER HOUS WAS BILT BY

  JED. MORTON IN 1839.

  Boone Parker had found the cabin, long deserted, about three months earlier. He laid in a supply of food, candles, and wood, specifically making this a place to go after the bank robbery. He even built a lean-to behind the cabin so the horses would have a place to stay.

  It was morning of the next day and the four men had spent the night in the relative comfort of the cabin. The room was permeated by the smell of brewing coffee and frying bacon.

  “Damn, Taylor, that smells pretty good,” Hennessey teased. “You’d make someone a pretty good wife.”

  The others laughed.

  Coleman, did you check the horses?” Boone asked.

  “Yeah, I checked ’em while ago,” Coleman answered. He was lying on one of the bunks with his hands laced behind his head. “Boone, how long we goin’ to have to stay in this place?” he asked.

  “Prob’ly till about spring,” Boone answered.

  “Till spring? Son of a bitch! Are you tellin’ me we have to stay in this cabin till spring?”

  “We’ve got food, coffee, wood, a place to stay out of the weather. What’s wrong with staying here?”

  “I just hate the thought of being stuck here when we have all that money to spend,” Coleman said. “I mean, what good does that money do us if we are goin’ to stay here?”

  “Tell you what, Coleman. Why don’t you just go back into Cuchara and spend it?” Taylor asked.

  “Hell, Taylor, I ain’t askin’ to start spendin’ it today,” Coleman said. “I was just wonderin’ how long we’re goin’ to have to stay here, that’s all. Besides which, what if someone tracked us here?”

  “That’s not very likely,” Boone said. “It’s for sure that the rain last night wiped out our tracks so’s no one could trail us. We’ll just winter here, and by springtime, things will have died down a bit and we can go on our separate ways.”

  “If we hadn’t killed that woman and the banker, the whole damn state wouldn’t be lookin’ for us,” Taylor suggested.

  “If you think robbin’ a bank wouldn’t have the whole state lookin’ for us, you are crazy,” Boone said. “Anyhow, she recognized us, I didn’t have no choice.”

  “She didn’t recognize all of us. She just recognized you and Hennessey.”

  “Recognizing one of us is like recognizing all of us,” Boone said. He walked over and picked up a piece of bacon. “You want to go on, do it,” he said as he took a bite of the bacon. “Only, the money stays here till we can all divide it.”

  “No, no, I ain’t wantin’ to go on by myself,” Coleman answered. “I was just curious, that’s all.”

  The rain had washed out much of the trail, but there were still little puddles of water that indicated hoof indentations, here and there a broken twig, and a few horse droppings. Much of it would have gone completely unnoticed by the average person, but Matt Jensen wasn’t the average person, and to him the trail was as clearly defined as if there were a series of road signs directing him to his destination.

  He smelled the cabin before he saw it, the aroma of wood smoke drifting from at least a mile away. As he got closer, he could also smell the bacon and coffee. He dismounted, tied off his horse, took four sets of handcuffs from his saddlebag, then moved, unobserved, to the front door. He stood just outside the door for a moment, listening to the conversation from within.

  “If you hadn’t killed that woman and the banker, the whole damn state wouldn’t be lookin’ for us.”

  “If you think robbin’ a bank wouldn’t have the whole state lookin’ for us, you are crazy. Anyhow, she recognized us, I didn’t have no choice.”

  “She didn’t recognize all of us. She just recognized you and Hennessey.”

  “Recognizing one of us is like recognizing all of us. You want to go on, do it. Only, the money stays here till we can all divide it.”

  “No, no, I ain’t wantin’ to go on by myself. I was just curious, that’s all.”

  Matt smiled. What he heard was as good as a confession. There was no question but that these were the men he had been trailing. Pulling his pistol, he kicked open the door and rushed inside.

  Boone let out a shout of fear and alarm and jumped back from the stove. Hennessey started toward his pistol belt, which was hanging from the head of the bed. Matt fired at the belt, the bullet hitting just in front of Hennessey’s reaching hand.

  “I could’ve killed you just as easily,” Matt said.

  “What the hell? Who are you, mister?” Hennessey asked.

  “It’s Matt Jensen,” Boone said. “The one who killed Clay. What the hell are you doin’ after us? Is there a reward already?”

  “I’m Sheriff Craig’s deputy.”

  “Deputy, huh? I don’t see no badge,” Boone said.

  “I didn’t take the time to pick one up,” Matt said. “Get down on your belly, all four of you.”

  “What? What do you want us to do
that for?” Coleman asked.

  Matt shot at the floor between Coleman’s legs, the bullet poking a hole in the wide, unpainted planks and sending up a puff of dust.

  “Do it,” Matt repeated. “Or my next shot will take off one of your balls.”

  Coleman did as ordered, immediately followed by the others. Matt reached back outside the door, then picked up the four sets of handcuffs. He tossed all four to Boone.

  “Cuff their hands behind their back,” he ordered.

  Boone did so, then Matt cuffed him. After that, he marched them out to his horse, where he took his rope and made four nooses. He put the nooses around the necks of each of his prisoners, then led them back to their own horses and ordered them to get mounted. As Taylor started to get on his horse he slipped, causing a pull against the neck of the other three men.

  “Careful there, you dumb bastard!” Boone growled. “You want to break all our necks?”

  Once all four prisoners were mounted, Matt tied the end of the rope to his saddle, then swung up onto his horse.

  “Okay, gents,” he said easily. “Let’s head for Cuchara.”

  “It’s a two-day ride to Cuchara,” Hennessey protested.

  “Then we better get going, hadn’t we?”

  “Hey, mister, when are you going to give us a chance to rest up a bit?” Boone asked late that afternoon. “We’ve been ridin’ all day long without a break.”

  “You can rest when we get there,” Matt replied.

  “It’ll be night soon. You plannin’ on pushin’ us through the night?”

  “If need be.”

  “We ain’t had nothin’ to eat since breakfast.”

  “You can rest and eat when we get there.”

  “I’m so tired now, I’m about to fall out of the saddle,” Boone said.

  “I wouldn’t recommend that,” Matt said. “You could wind up breaking your neck. Fact is, you could break everyone’s neck.”

  “Don’t you be fallin’ out of no saddle, Boone,” Hennessey said. “We wouldn’t be in this fix if you hadn’t shot that old woman and the bank teller.”