Sunset Trail Read online

  “Did so.”

  “But if Catherwood knew the trail, why would Glover want you?”

  “Thet’s hit!” Purdy bellowed excitedly. “The varmint asked me ’cause he knowed Catherwood warn’t gonna be ’round to do no guidin’. But eff we go with ’em, we won’t git to Santy Fee.”

  “That doesn’t count, Bill.” Bruce picked up a coal and lighted his pipe. “We’ve got to keep those guns from going through.”

  “What’s hit to us eff they bust off from Mexico?”

  “It’s my guess Kearny will be in Santa Fé before winter. Armijo can be bought, but a republic with some Americans running it would be tough to handle, and Kearny’s force is small. Besides, some of those guns may be headed for the Comanches.”

  Purdy swore. “Thet’d be hell for sartain.”

  “I’ve got to go to Fort Leavenworth today. I’ll meet you at Council Grove, or on the trail between here and there. You help Glover get started. Tell him I had business that took me out of town, but don’t tell him where I’m going.”

  “I’ll tell him,” Purdy promised, “but eff thet varmint calls me a liar ag’in, I’ll make wolf meat out o’ him afore he ever gits out clear o’ Independence.”

  IV

  Bruce saddled the roan gelding he’d stabled in Independence before he’d gone East for the winter. The horse, Blue Thunder, was a leggy animal with the speed and bottom that a plainsman needed. He was a buffalo horse, and, as Purdy said about his own paint, he could “smell Injun like a beaver smells bait.”

  Carrying his Hawkins rifle crosswise in front of him, Bruce left town, the uneasy feeling raveling down his spine that he had been watched from the moment he had left Aunt Sukey’s place. But it was not till he had reached the trail that angled along the bluffs bordering the Missouri that he looked back, and saw Mick Catherwood riding after him.

  Bruce pulled up and dismounted. He could guess what was in the boy’s mind, and this was as good a time as any to have it out. He waited, rifle in his hands, until Mick reined his lathered, mud-splattered horse to a stop.

  “Climb down and get it off your chest,” Bruce said coldly.

  “I aim to.” Mick stepped down, hand on his pistol. “I figured you’d try to run out. I should have killed you yesterday, but I had to listen to Purdy and be fool enough to believe what you said about bringing in the killer.”

  “I’m not running out. Glover signed me and Purdy to guide your train. I’ll meet the outfit in Council Grove as soon as I get back.”

  “You’ll never come back!” Mick cried fiercely, drawing a gun. “I aim to fix it so you won’t be able to.”

  Bruce had heard about Ed Catherwood and this boy, how the mother had been killed in a Comanche attack years before when the trader’s first caravan was bound for Santa Fé. There had been a closeness between Catherwood and Mick that had become almost a legend on the frontier. Now the boy was out of his mind with grief, and Bruce could see how it was with him. But he couldn’t stand here and let the kid shoot him down. Mick was slowly bringing his pistol up, steeling himself to do this killing job that he thought had to be done.

  “I think Curt Glover killed your father,” Bruce said. His words brought a shadow of indecision to Mick’s fine-featured face, a moment of hesitation in the lift of the gun, a moment long enough for Bruce to swing the barrel of his rifle at the kid’s head.

  Mick’s pistol went off, a wild shot that sang high over Bruce’s head. Then he had the kid by the shoulder, and was swinging him around. Immediately his hand fell away, for it had come across the boy’s chest, and surprise at his discovery paralyzed him.

  Mick Catherwood was a woman!

  Bruce’s hand had knocked the coonskin cap from Mick’s head. Auburn hair cascaded down her shoulders, and fear flamed in her blue eyes as she plunged away from him.

  “I won’t hurt you.”

  “I know you won’t,” she cried, a hand clutching her knife. “I’ll get more than buckskin this time if you move out of your tracks. Or if you ever tell anybody what you’ve found out.”

  “You’re saying nobody knows you’re a woman?” Bruce asked incredulously.

  “Curt Glover. No one else. Dad wanted a son, so he made a boy out of me. It’s the only way I could be safe on the trail with the kind of men we had around us.”

  “You’re not going to Santa Fé?”

  “Certainly,” she said, as if no other course had ever entered her mind. “Half the business is mine, and Dad would want me to run it.”

  Mick Catherwood was very much a woman with her hair shiny bright under the morning sun. She had seemed small and fine-featured for a boy, but now she was exactly as she should be, and Bruce smiled in appreciation when he thought of her in a dress.

  “What are you smirking about?” she demanded.

  “I was putting a dress on you.”

  “You can take it off,” she blazed. “I’ll run the Catherwood half of the business as a man would run it. Don’t think. . . .” She paused, lips tightening as she remembered what Bruce had said. “Why did you tell me you thought Glover had killed Dad?”

  “Maybe because he smokes cigars.”

  “Of all the. . . .”

  “Did your dad believe in separating New Mexico and making an independent republic?”

  “No. He was trying to stop it. Glover was the one who was working with Wade Flint and Pancho Lopez.”

  “That’s right strange,” Bruce murmured. “Glover told me and Purdy the opposite.”

  “You’re lying again,” she challenged.

  “Ask Purdy.” He gestured wearily. “Ma’am, this is the biggest year the United States has had since we fought the British and signed the treaty of Ghent. Inside of a month we may be fighting both Mexico and England. The War Department knows that Catherwood and Glover ordered a large shipment of guns and powder, and if they get to. . . .”

  “That’s another lie,” she said hotly. “Dad never took any more guns than we needed to fight off Indian attacks.”

  “How many wagons have you usually taken?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “This time there are twenty-five.”

  “That’s wrong. We’re using the same. . . .” The girl paused, biting a lip as if a new thought had come to her. “Dad went to the mule market yesterday and was going to stay all day. Then he got into an argument with Glover, and I thought they were going to have a fight. He told me to stay and buy ten more mules. He went with Glover, and that was the last time I saw him alive.”

  “Have they had trouble?”

  “They’ve quarreled from the moment Glover showed up in Independence with Flint. He was supposed to stay in Santa Fé, and Dad didn’t know he was coming East until he rode in.”

  “What about Flint?”

  “He was in Santa Fé all last summer and fall trying to organize a revolution against Armijo. The only wealthy Mexican who’s with him is Lopez, but there are a number of Americans like Glover who want it to go through.”

  “Then your father and Glover may have had a ruckus over this separatist movement. Or maybe your dad wouldn’t stand for the shipment of guns.” “Glover isn’t a murderer, Shane. He’s a smart trader, but he doesn’t like violence. He’s even afraid of the trail.”

  “Mick, I hope you’ll believe I want the man who murdered your father.”

  “You haven’t proved to me you didn’t,” she flung at him.

  “Then think of what four thousand guns distributed among the Comanches will do. Or among the Pueblos and renegades who are in with Flint. Or suppose Armijo gets his hands on them for his soldiers?”

  “I know,” she said tonelessly. “Before we left Santa Fé, we had reasonable proof that the Comanches had been bribed to attack American caravans bound for Santa Fé.”

  “The War Department had a high regard for your father,” he pressed. “That’s the reason for me being sent here. If it had been a traitor or a Mexican, we would have known what to do, but it didn’t make sense for y
our father to be in it. Now he’s dead, and I didn’t get a chance to talk to him about it. That puts it up to you.”

  For a time she held her silence, staring westward at the rolling country over which they would soon be traveling. Then she brought her gaze to him, and he sensed the enormous struggle that was going on within her.

  “What do you want me to do?” she asked.

  “Don’t tell anybody what I’ve told you. Give me your cooperation when I need it. I hope you’ll take my word that I had nothing to do with your father’s death, and that before we get to Santa Fé I’ll have the killer.”

  “I won’t tell anybody.” She picked her cap up from the muddy trail and, putting it on, worked her hair under it. “I’ll take your word about Dad when you get the killer.”

  “This will be the toughest trip a Catherwood caravan ever made. If war breaks out before we get there, it’s hard to guess what will happen. It would be better if you stayed in Independence where things are a little quieter.”

  “I’m going to Santa Fé,” she said flatly.

  “If Glover murdered your father, he’d murder again for the other half of the business.”

  She stepped into the saddle. “I can take care of myself, Shane. By all the laws of justice I should have been a man. I am a man by instinct. I’ve lifted hair and I’ll put my shooting up against yours. If Curt Glover tries to rub me out, he’ll find six inches of steel in his belly.”

  She turned her horse, and he watched her go, knowing he could do or say nothing more. She reined up when she was a dozen paces from him, and flung back: “If you tell anybody I’m a woman, you’ll taste that six inches of steel yourself.”

  “I’ll hold my tongue if you hold yours,” he said angrily, “which is something most women can’t do.”

  “Don’t call me a woman!” she cried, and rode on.

  Bruce kept his eyes on her until she disappeared along the trail. She rode as if she were part of the horse, as if she belonged there as she belonged in the sunlight with the untamed wind upon her face.

  He smiled as he turned to Blue Thunder and swung into the saddle. There would come a day when Mick Catherwood would find she had other instincts than those of a man.

  V

  It was late afternoon when Bruce Shane reached Fort Leavenworth. Taking from his hat the letter that Secretary of War Marcy had given him in Washington, he handed it to Colonel Stephen Kearny.

  Kearny slit the envelope open, scanned the note, and held out his hand. “I’ve heard of you, Shane.

  You’re the man who was raised with brass buttons on his jacket and who could be running a bank in Richmond, but you’d rather feel the prairie wind on your face.”

  “Some call me crazy for it,” Bruce said soberly.

  “It’s the way a man looks at it.” Kearny smiled.

  “Now about these guns.”

  Bruce told him what had happened since his return to Independence, and what he suspected about Curt Glover and Wade Flint. “I have no way of being sure those guns are in Glover’s train,” he added, “but I don’t see how it could be any other way. Once we roll out, it will be impossible to get word back to you. My notion was for you to stop the train on the trail and make a search.”

  “I’ll send Lieutenant Barstow in the morning. It’s my opinion we won’t find the guns in Glover’s train. I know something about Flint. I doubt if we’ve had a smarter filibuster since the days of Aaron Burr.”

  “It’s possible the guns are cached along the trail somewhere,” Bruce said thoughtfully.

  “In which case I’ll give Glover a start and send Barstow down the trail after he leaves Council Grove. I advise you not to rejoin the train, Shane. Flint won’t miss the next time he tries for your life.”

  “It’s a chance I have to take, Colonel. If Barstow fails to catch the train, or runs into some Pawnees, there would be nothing to stop the delivery of the guns. If I’m there, I’ll find some way to stop them.”

  When Lieutenant Barstow returned, he could report nothing better than failure. “We stopped the train the other side of Blue Camp. Flint wasn’t with it. Glover was hostile, but he didn’t try to keep us from going through the wagons. Just the usual stuff . . . flour, bacon, peas, corn, and the regular merchandise they’ve hauled over the trail for years.”

  Bruce gave Kearny a tight-lipped grin. “You were right, but Flint can’t hide four thousand guns and the powder and shot they’ve got in his pocket.”

  “No,” Kearny agreed. “Chances are it’s some place between Independence and Santa Fé. Flint’s a strange man, Shane. Well educated. Has a fortune that would give him a comfortable living, but he’s got notions about being a Santa Fé Cæsar. He’ll give us more trouble than Armijo could.”

  “I’ll put out in the morning,” Bruce said. “I’ll catch the train the other side of the Oregon Junction.”

  “Better stay and go with Barstow,” Kearny urged again.

  Bruce shook his head. “I can’t do that.”

  But Glover’s train had moved faster than Bruce had expected. He reached the trail, passed the forks with the signpost reading Road to Oregon, and kept on straight ahead into the land of the peaceful tribes.

  He did not catch the train that day. He made camp at dusk, cooked supper, and, spreading his buffalo robe, went to sleep. He was on the trail again with the first hint of golden dawn in the east, keeping Blue Thunder at a steady mile-eating clip, and gave thought to his meeting with Mick Cather-wood. With her auburn hair done up and wearing a dress, instead of buckskins, she’d find that she did something to men.

  He thought, then, of Curt Glover. He remembered the girl had told him Glover knew her identity.

  Anger stirred in him, for the man’s intentions were plain to read. If he had killed Catherwood, and everything Bruce had learned pointed that way, he was spinning a web of his own scheming, working with Flint because it paid him. The Cather-wood girl would be handled in his own way when the time was right.

  The anger had not died when he sighted the dust cloud ahead. He had more respect for Wade Flint, or even Armadillo Dunn than he did for Curt Glover.

  Bruce caught the train as it was making camp. Glover rode toward him, his usually smooth face lined by the pressure of his anger.

  “So you want to go to Santa Fé, do you?” Glover raged. “Well, you sure as hell can ride alone. When I hire a man, he obeys orders. I told you we were pulling out the next morning.”

  “I had business to attend to. I told Purdy to give you a hand. Didn’t he?”

  “Yeah, but. . . .”

  “Then you’ve got no holler coming, Glover.”

  “What business was big enough to take you out of Independence?”

  “My business is my business,” Bruce said curtly.

  Glover motioned on down the trail. “Keep riding.”

  “We’ll keep our word, Glover, whether Shane keeps his or not.” It was Mick Catherwood.

  She had ridden around a wagon, and she sat her saddle with no sign of trail weariness upon her. She did not look at Bruce. He knew she had her own reason for interfering, the suspicion of him still an overpowering motive in her.

  “I’ll run this train,” Glover said violently.

  “Dad was a little lax about you,” Mick said, palming a gun. “I aim to change that. I’ve been over the trail enough times to know that a man of Bruce Shane’s caliber is worth twenty of the desert rats you hired.”

  “Purdy can guide us,” Glover said thickly. “Damn it, Mick, I didn’t want this man in the first place.”

  “Purdy will quit if Shane rides on,” Mick pointed out.

  “Shane set the Dragoons onto us!” Glover exploded. “He’s been to Fort Leavenworth and. . . .”

  “How do you know?” Bruce asked.

  “I’m guessing, and I don’t hear you denying it.”

  “Have you got anything on this train you were afraid the Dragoons would find?” Mick demanded.

  “No, but. . . .”
/>   “All right. It doesn’t make any difference if he did go to Fort Leavenworth. Shane’s taking us through.”

  Mick wheeled her horse and rode back around the wagon. For a moment Glover’s hazel eyes locked with Bruce’s gray ones. There was more than anger in them, Bruce thought. Perhaps fear. Bruce was remembering Mick had said the big man was afraid of the trail. He had tackled something too big for him, and now he felt failure closing in upon him.

  “You heard the kid,” Glover muttered vehemently and he let it go at that.

  Bill Purdy rode into camp an hour later and grinned broadly when he saw Bruce. “How thar, Shane!” he called. “Figgered you rode off to the Blackfoot kentry.”

  “I like my hair too well.”

  The mountain man dismounted. “Glover was shore mad enough to grow ha’r on thet bald haid of his’n when the Dragoons stopped us,” Purdy said, lowering his voice. “They didn’t find nuthin’, but he was as scairt as a jack rabbit in front of a coyote.”

  “Where’s Flint?”

  “Ain’t seen him since we rolled out.” Purdy tongued his quid to the other side of his mouth. “Looks like we lost hoss ’n’ beaver.”

  “We’ll find them. There’s fifteen wagons here, and Glover told us we’d have twenty-five. When we find the other ten, Bill, I’ve got a notion we’ll find the guns we’re after and Wade Flint to boot.”

  They watered stock with the first hint of dawn, cooked breakfast, and harnessed up. There was unnecessary waste of time before the train strung out, men running around hunting articles that had been scattered about, pulling balky mules into place, yelling and cursing because their own stupidity and inexperience made things go wrong.

  Agr een outfit, Bruce saw, not yet trail wise. The mules were good animals, the wagons the biggest Conestogas that could be bought. Some of the men were experienced, but many were not-river men, Mexicans, or renegades who would have looked better behind bars than on the trail.

  “Is this the kind of men your father used?” Bruce asked Mick.