War Rider Read online

  “I’m here, Leroy.”

  There was a rustle of bushes and a man exited the woods. He was dressed in a buckskin shirt and denim pants, with a low crowned hat over his brow and another Winchester held firmly in his grip.

  “You want to go find that redskin?” said Leroy, more a directive than query.

  “Sure thing,” said his companion, slipping with equal dexterity into the path that Jodie had taken.

  “Sheriff, huh?” said Leroy making his way down the path towards Ahlen. “Yeah, Mister Fells told us about you. Seems like he’s putting up prize money for all your heads, you and your deputies. What d’you think about that, lawman?”

  “Don’t sound too neighborly,” said Ahlen, lowering his hands.

  “You just keep grabbing air, sheriff,” ordered Leroy, coming to a halt ten feet in front of Ahlen. “Let’s see you drop that leg iron too,” he pointed the rifle barrel in the direction of Ahlen’s holster.

  Obediently, Ahlen unflapped the pistol and holding it by the butt laid the heavy weapon gingerly down on the pathway.

  “Like that thing, do you?” said Leroy, noticing the care.

  “Stood me in good stead for a lot of years,” Ahlen answered.

  “Soldier boy, huh?” The mountain man said, chewing his lip thoughtfully. “Well, we all done out bit in that particular fracas. Now what you up to out here, sheriff?”

  “Me?” shrugged Ahlen. “Just checking out the locality. New in office, you see. Like to know how the land lies. How about you, what’re you doing out here in the wild woods?”

  “We’re paid employees of Mister Fells, “ Leroy answered. “We got every right to be here.”

  “You caring for his road? Getting it ready for the next herd coming across?”

  “Something like that, I guess,” sniffed the mountain man. “But it needn’t worry you none. Soon as Josh gets back we’ll be collecting on that reward for your hide.” He took one hand from the rifle and patted the tomahawk, “Like to put this little thing here to work now and again.” He looked over at the two ponies, “Be interestin’ to see what you got in them saddlebags too –”

  He stopped abruptly as a rifle shot echoed hollowly through the forest.

  “Hah!” grinned Leroy. “That’ll be Josh. He’s nailed your Indian for sure.”

  The next few seconds seemed compressed in time for Ahlen. A whirl of action and sudden movement.

  There was an ear-piercing scream from the roadside and a flash of buckskin as Josh burst from the bushes. Leroy spun around and fired without hesitation, his jaw dropping as he saw who he was shooting at. It meant little though, as Josh was dead already. That much was obvious from the copious amounts of blood running down his shirtfront from the knife gash around his throat. Behind the sagging Josh, Ahlen could see Jodie holding the body up by the scruff of its buckskin shirt. A quick look passed between them and Ahlen was on the move.

  Two long strides and he had covered the ten feet between them but as he barreled into Leroy, the old man belied his age and spun swiftly, catching Ahlen a blow on the head with the edge of his rifle butt. Ahlen’s hat saved him from the worst effects of the impact but still he was thrown aside and dropped to his knees.

  Leroy turned to face him, levering another shell into the breech of the Winchester. Swiftly, Ahlen swung his long legs hard and swept the mountain man’s boots from under him. The elderly man tumbled and landed heavily, to lie on his side on the sloping road. Ahlen launched himself at the fallen man. Leroy raised the Winchester in both hands as a barrier to the attack and Ahlen was pushed away.

  They lay on their backs, side by side for a moment, then Ahlen swung out his arm and back-fisted Leroy a hefty blow on the nose. The mountain man squealed and snorted as blood pumped from his nostrils.

  “Damn you!” he cursed, struggling to bring the Winchester to bear. Ahlen grasped the barrel in his left hand and pointed it away, wrestling to bring it from Leroy’s limpet grip. Then, with his free right hand Ahlen punched Leroy a hefty blow in the stomach, but the mountain man was tough and Ahlen felt like he was striking a wooden board.

  Rolling into a ball, Leroy curled his buckskinned legs up and booted Ahlen in the midriff, driving him away. As he fell back, Ahlen’s outstretched fingers quickly grasped at the tomahawk blade, pulling it free of Leroy’s belt. Diving back on top, Ahlen used his large frame and heavier weight to press Leroy back down to the ground by squeezing the rifle barrel across his throat. Ahlen tossed the tomahawk up and caught its long wooden grip one-handed. Whilst his arm was still raised, he swung the hatchet down in a long driving curve.

  There was a sickening thud as the sharp blade sunk into the skull between Leroy’s eyebrows. Ahlen watched the man twitch and judder in shock as his eyes crossed, then rolled to white. The mountain man sighed a final ragged gasp of air and expired as the tomahawk split his forebrain and drove life from him.

  Panting, Ahlen climbed to his feet, levering the hatchet out as if the dead man’s head was a fresh cut bole of winter firewood.

  “Took your time,” said a grinning Jodie, who had been standing watching all along, Josh’s Winchester rifle couched in the crook of his arm.

  “You might have stepped in,” gasped Ahlen, out of breath from the struggle.

  “What for? I already took care of the other one. Besides you need the exercise. Look at you, blowing wind like an old plough horse.”

  Ahlen looked down at the corpse, “Never would have thought an old fella would have had that much gristle in him,” he said.

  “He’s been living in these woods a long time. Lived a hard life, by the look of it.”

  “He told me Ty’s put a price on our heads.”

  Jodie passive expression remained unchanged. “Maybe we should take these two back and show him what a bad investment he made.”

  “No, I don’t think so, best leave them here out of sight.” Ahlen looked up the road that disappeared over a mound above them. “I’d like to take a look up there, see where this goes.”

  After dragging the bodies into cover, the two began to climb, leading their ponies by the reins.

  “What do you think those two were up to?” asked Jodie.

  “Not sure. The old one hinted at preparing the road, I guess they were seeing if it was still intact if you had a lot of rain last fall.”

  “Could be,” agreed Jodie.

  They reached the crest and as they approached, it seemed as if a man rose out of the ground to meet them. He was an old Indian who had been standing just below the rise and out of their sight. Wrapped in a grubby pale-blue Reservation blanket with grey hair hanging down in twin braids, the locks bound in strips of rabbit fur, he watched them passively as they approached. Ahlen reached down and unlatched his pistol flap.

  “It’s okay, he’s Ojibwe,” said Jodie. “We have no trouble with them.”

  “Where the hell did he come from?”

  “Probably been watching us all along,” said Jodie.

  “You speak their tongue?” asked Ahlen.

  “Just a few words, my people are Sioux, it ain’t the same.”

  The old man raised an open palm in greeting. “Aaniin,” he said, his voice rusty with age.

  “Who are you?’ asked Ahlen. “You speak any English?”

  “Speak little,” said the Indian. “I am name Little Six.”

  “You know those men back there?” asked Ahlen, pointing down towards where the two bodies were hidden.

  “I know,” Little Six curled his lip in distaste. “Bagwajiwinini!”

  Jodie chuckled. “He calls them little wild men, it means, like pygmies.”

  “You don’t like them, huh?’ asked Ahlen.

  “Zhaagode’e, they are coward.”

  Little Six hawked and spat to one side before looking back at them. “White men,” he asked. “You have tobacco?”

  Ahlen shook his head, “Sorry, don’t use it. You see what these men were doing here?”

  “Enh, Sure,” said the
old man, scratching at himself under his blanket. “You have whisky?”

  Ahlen shook his head again. “What did they do?” he asked.

  Little Six shrugged and looked away as if the subject no longer interested him. His lidded eyes and wrinkled features displaying nothing but bland indifference.

  “He wants something,” said Jodie. “It’s polite, you make him a little present and he’ll be friendly as you like.”

  “I don’t have anything,” said Ahlen, as he fumbled in his pant’s pocket. “I got a dollar bill and a few cents, is all.”

  “That’ll do, it don’t matter what it is. It’s the principle,” smiled Jodie,

  Ahlen pressed the crumpled note and few coins into the old man’s hand. He closed claw-like fingers over the money and his milky eyes rotated back to the two men.

  “They make with wood,” he said. “Bring here for walk,” he pointed a boney finger at the corduroy road beneath his feet.

  “So they were repairing the road,” said Ahlen.

  “Enh,” said Little Six. “Bring many cow here.”

  “You’ve seen these cows?”

  “I see. Many, many, like buffalo when I was boy. It is good you kill those,” he jerked his chin sharply down below. “Them zhaagode’e come my wigwam. Steal my pemmican, leave Little Six hungry.”

  “You got anything in your saddlebags?” Ahlen asked Jodie,

  “Yeah,” he answered, digging into the bag. “Here, old man. Bread and a morsel of cheese. That’s my lunch you’re getting there.”

  The Indian grunted and accepted the lunch pack without hesitation, as if by magic it swiftly disappeared under his blanket.

  “Come,” he said. “I show.”

  He turned his back on them and plodded off along the road.

  “You think this is okay?” asked Ahlen.

  Jodie shrugged. “I don’t know. Let’s go see.”

  “Very reassuring,” Ahlen quipped, tugging at his pony’s rein.

  The old man walked on tirelessly. Not quick nor slow, he maintained a steady pace for over an hour along the road, which dipped and rose through the woods once they were away from the old log run that had once run directly down to the river. Trees on each side of the track had been felled to reinforce the road and amongst the stumps, undergrowth grew wild and rampant along the margins.

  Finally the Indian stopped. They were approaching a deep cleft in the forests where a turn in the road led into a wooded valley opening. Little Six turned and looked at them once, nodded, then he slipped from the road and disappeared into the undergrowth.

  Ahlen turned to Jodie. “Wha...” he started to say. Then they both heard it. The sound of a lone voice singing, accompanied by the sweet chords of a guitar. It was a good voice, mellow and tuneful.

  “Oh freedom, oh freedom,

  Oh freedom over me.

  And before I’ll be a slave,

  I’ll be buried in my grave.

  And go home to my Lord

  and be free ....”

  They approached the bend cautiously, Jodie raised the Winchester he had lifted from the dead mountain man and Ahlen unlatched his holster.

  The singing stopped abruptly and both men halted, stepping carefully apart.

  “Far enough, boys,” came a call, followed by the click of a weapon being cocked.

  “I seen a man of color one time with a guitar and a gun. Would you be that fellow?” answered Ahlen.

  “It would be, sheriff. Keb Hawkins, and I’m right here.”

  The black man stomped out onto the path before them, skipping a little with his wooden leg over the tangle of undergrowth. He held a single shot Springfield rifle pointed at them.

  “Have to stop you here, I’m afraid, gentlemen,” he said.

  “How so?” asked Ahlen.

  Keb drew a deep breath. “Well, my employer wants it so, and that’s a fact. I just do as I’m told here. You fellows can turn around and go back the way you came and everything will be fine.”

  “If we don’t?” asked Jodie, his eyes keenly fixed on Keb.

  “Then we might have a spot of bother,” said Keb.

  “Mister Hawkins –,” Ahlen began.

  “You can call me Keb,” interrupted Hawkins, raising the rifle to rest the butt end on his hip.

  “Okay. Keb. This amounts to a highway stand off, you got no legal right to hold us up from free passage.”

  “Well, sir,” said Keb. “You’re off your jurisdiction just now, this is Canadian soil you’re standing on. So, I guess, I can do just about anything I want here. Even to an officer of the law, long as he’s a Yankee.”

  “What you got around that corner?” Ahlen asked.

  “You listen, you’ll hear it but I ain’t about to show you.”

  They could too; in the stillness of the forest where even the birdcall had ceased they could hear the distant shuffling sound of many heavy hoof beats as they rumbled over the corduroy road.

  “It’s cattle,” said Jodie. “Ty’s got his first herd of the season coming through.”

  “These beeves are rustled, ain’t they?” Ahlen asked Keb.

  “That I couldn’t say, sheriff. Best speak with Mister Fells on that score; he’s the man with the paper. I’m just here to see they arrive safely.”

  “I want them held up here on this side of the water until the Canadian authorities can come look at them.”

  Keb shook his head. “Won’t happen, sheriff. No way we can hold them up in these woods. They has to come on through.”

  “We’ll see about that,” said Ahlen as he mounted his pony.

  “Sheriff,” said Keb. “I don’t want to stand against you in this but I’m paid to do a job and I intend to do it.”

  “That’s your choice, mister.”

  Ahlen drew fast. He cocked the hammer as the gun came out of the holster and fired as the pistol came in line. He had aimed intuitively and before Keb could lower his rifle from his hip, the Colt’s slug splintered his wooden leg, shattering it and taking the lower part away in a burst of wooden fragments. Keb lurched off balance and fell sideways to the ground.

  Jodie moved fast, running forward and kicking the Springfield away before Keb could bring it to bear. Ahlen covered the fallen gunman who was already going for his own pistol.

  “I’d hate to do it, Keb,” he said. “Don’t do that.”

  “Hell! Sheriff. You shot my damned leg. You know how long that took me to make? I had to chip the whole blasted thing with a pocket knife whilst they had me in Andersonville.”

  “I’ll get you another,” said Ahlen, reaching down and pulling the pistol free of the gunman’s holster. “Better that than your head though, ain’t it?”

  “That’s for sure,” agreed Keb sullenly. “You’re fast, sheriff. Fast for a man with nailed up hands. Sorry, to hear about that, by the way. I had no truck with it. That’s not my way of doing things, not my style at all.”

  “You got a horse?” asked Jodie, collecting up the fallen Springfield.

  “I do, over in them bushes. And fetch my guitar, I ain’t going nowhere without that.”

  Jodie looked a question at Ahlen and the sheriff nodded his ascent.

  “You taking me in, Ahlen?” asked Keb.

  “That I am.”

  “T’ain’t legal, you know that, don’t you? This here is foreign soil. You got no right.”

  Ahlen nodded. “True,” he said with a wry smile. “Pissant shame, ain’t it?”

  Keb laughed as he propped himself up on one elbow. “Ahlen Best, “ he chuckled. “You are one hell of a character?”

  “So they tell me.”

  Chapter Ten

  Ahlen found Len waiting for them at the jailhouse and he had him help a hopping Keb into one of the cells.

  “What charge we holding him on?” Len asked.

  Ahlen shrugged indifferently. “I don’t know, whatever you like. Disturbing the peace, something like that.”

  “Give me my guitar!” called Keb. �
��I’ll show you boys how I can disturb the peace.”

  Laughing, Len passed him the instrument between the bars. “You just keep it down in there, fella,” he admonished, “I’ve got to be out here listening to it all.”

  “You let me go free of here and you won’t hear a sound,” Keb promised.

  “In good time, partner,” said Ahlen. “In good time.”

  “Len,” he called, pushing shut the heavy dividing door. “You know where you can lay your hands on some explosive?”

  “I guess,” said Len with a frown. “There’s still some old nitro stored away from the lumber camp days but I wouldn’t go near that stuff. It’ll be too volatile by now, best use black powder. They’ve got plenty up at the store. Why, what’s happened?”

  “Ty’s bringing in his herd and we’re going to stop him.”

  Len pushed past in the little room, heading for his hat and gun belt. “How you aim to do that?” he asked.

  “We’re going to blow that damned bridge of his. Now, go get me three barrels of powder and a long roll of fuse.”

  Len shook his head. “There’ll be hell to pay.”

  Ahlen nodded. “We’ve got to start somewhere. Where’s Pres?”

  “Out patrolling the town, like you said.”

  “Okay, get him to help. Tell him to find a flat bed wagon, hire one from the livery if he has to.”

  Len buckled on his gun belt and made for the door.

  “And, Len,” Ahlen called after him. “Not a word to anyone, y’hear? If anybody asks, it’s for removing old tree stumps, some phony reason like that.”

  Len nodded understanding and hurried out.

  “Jodie,” Ahlen said to the Indian, who was propping Keb’s Springfield up in the gun rack. “Can you ride on back to the bridge? Hold up any of Ty’s roustabouts that come on down in advance of the herd.”

  Jodie nodded and followed Len out without saying a word.

  Ahlen plumped down in the office chair and threw his hat on the desk. He rubbed at the lump where the mountain man had caught him with his rifle butt and frowning, considered whether he had thought of everything.

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