the Shadow Riders (1982) Read online

  By the fourth day Dal was building the fire, gathering fuel for it, and moving around, taking his time.

  "Be good to be home," he said, looking off to the south, where the grass ran into the horizon.

  "Pa will be getting along," Mac said. "He'll need help runnin' the place. Of course, Jesse's there."

  "Maybe not," Dal said. "He was talkin' of war himself. You know how it is. When everybody else is going, he would want to go, too."

  Mac turned in his saddle and glanced back along the trail. If anyone was following him because of the man he killed, by staying off the trail he might have avoided them. It did not pay to take an enemy lightly.

  In any event there was much potential danger. During the War a lot of renegades had hung about the fringes of the War, using it as an excuse for looting, stealing stock, and brutalizing unprotected citizens. Now those renegades would be along the roads, robbing whomever they could.

  The country was facing a difficult period of readjustment. With the War ended the men from the South would be returning home to a largely devastated land. The slaves on whom they depended for labor would be gone, and they would have no money to hire labor. There would be a shortage of food, a shortage of farm stock, and a lack of capital with which to restock and rebuild.

  In the north the situation would be scarcely better, as munition plants would be closing down. Textile manufacturers would no longer have an army to clothe, and a lot of people were going to be out of work.

  "We're lucky, Dal," Mac said. "We've got the ranch to go to. There will at least be beef to eat, and we can start building back. Texas didn't suffer much from the War, and with all of us working it shouldn't take long."

  "Kate will be there," Dal said. "I never knew I could miss anybody so much."

  Mac glanced back again. Four Confederate soldiers had come into sight, one man riding, three walking, probably taking turns with the horse. Ahead and on the right there was a farm. Smoke rose from the chimney, but the corral was empty.

  Dal was looking better as they got further away from the low country near the river. The air was better, and if nothing happened to change things he would be himself again.

  Mac thought about Kate. Kate was quite a woman, although she and Dal had never actually become engaged. If Dal had been reported dead, what would she do? Wait a decent interval and find herself another man. Had Dal considered that?

  The trail ahead dipped into woods along the creek. Mac Traven carried two pistols, the one in his holster and a spare in his waist-band, but it was the Spencer he preferred. Army issue was .52 calibre, and it packed a wallop. He slid the Spencer from the saddle scabbard and held it in his hands as they rode into the woods.

  They were seeing fewer soldiers now. This was Indian country, and those Indians who had fought on one side or the other lived further east.

  On the next morning Mac killed a deer in the river bottom, and they held up a day to smoke the meat, eating venison steaks while waiting for the smoke to do its job. "We're gettin' close," Dal said. "I remember the time we rode north a buffalo huntin' an' camped by this same stream."

  "If we're lucky we'll make it some time tomorrow."

  Yet when afternoon came great thunderheads were piling up in the sky ahead of them, and they could hear a distant rumble of thunder.

  "Rain," Dal said irritably. "We could do without that!"

  Mac pushed on ahead. Unless they got under cover in a hurry they were in for a soaking. He topped out on a low rise and saw a roof-top ahead and off to one side of the dim track they were following.

  The clouds were over-head now, and he could see a broadening white streak along the horizon. When that reached them it would be raining. "Come on!" he yelled and charged down the slope, Dal following.

  There was a corral with the gate bars down, the corral empty. There was a small barn and a log cabin. No smoke came from the chimney, but there was a stack of cut wood against the near wall of the cabin.

  No tracks led into the place, which only meant nobody had been there since the last rain. He swung down. "Dal? You take the horses while I scout the cabin."

  Dal caught the reins of Mac's horse and started toward the barn.

  Mac hesitated, then rapped on the door. The sound echoed hollowly, but there was no response. He tried the door, and it gave under his hand. He stepped inside. "Anybody home?" he asked, but the room was empty.

  A fire-place, a bed, a bench, and one chair. Cooking pans, polished and clean but dust covered, hung in place. There was a table covered with oil-cloth and the remains of a candle that had burned down to only a pool of melted wax, and little of that except what had dripped down to the mantle.

  There was a door to another room, covered with a hanging blanket. He looked around again, listening for Dal.

  Somebody had been living here. He looked again at the curtain and spoke aloud again. "Anybody home?"

  There was a roll of thunder, closer now, and he heard running feet outside. Then the door burst open. It was Dal. He ducked inside just as the rain came, and it came with a thundering roar.

  Dal glanced around, then he glanced at the blanket-curtain. "You been in there?"

  "No ... not yet. What's in the barn?"

  "Three head of good horses, half starved. I forked some hay for them."

  Reluctantly, Mac crossed to the blanket, gathered the edge as Dal drew a pistol.

  Abruptly, he drew back the blanket.

  There was a window at the side, and there was a bed, a chair, and a large chest for storing clothes. And in the bed there was a child ... a girl.

  She was sitting up in bed, clutching a rag doll. Her hair was touseled and blond.

  "Hello! Are you my Daddy?"

  Chapter Three.

  Mac Traven was startled. "Me? No, missy, I'm afraid not. Don't you know your own father?"

  "No, sir. He went away to war when I was small. Mama said he would be coming back soon. She said the War was over now."

  "She was surely right about that. Where is your mama?"

  "She's gone. Some bad men came and took her away. I didn't think they were bad men at first because they wore those gray uniforms," she pointed at Dal, "like he does. But they took mama away. They dragged her."

  "And they just left you here? Alone?"

  "Mama didn't tell them about me. I don't think she did. She was afraid, and I think she knew they were coming, because when she came in she was all scared and everything. She said some bad men were taking women away and that if they came here I should keep very still and wait, that papa would come."

  "How've you been getting along?" Dal asked. "Have you been eating?"

  "Oh, yes! There's milk. There's some left, anyway. And there's cheese mama made, and bread she baked for papa."

  "How long have you been here alone?"

  "See?" she pointed at a calendar. "I scratch off the days. It is four days."

  Dal looked around. "Snug cabin." He glanced at the little girl. "Is it all right if we stay here tonight? We're going home."

  "You can stay. I wish you would. At night sometimes it is scary. I think about wolves an' Indians an' ghosts an' such."

  "What's your name, honey?" Mac asked.

  "I'm Susan. I am Susan Atherton."

  Dal glanced at Mac, then at her. "Jim Atherton?"

  "Yes. Did you know him?"

  Dal's face was pale and he turned toward the fireplace. "I knew him in passing, sort of. I mean I never knew him well."

  Dal started for the door. "I'll fetch some wood. Mac? You want to help me?"

  Outside, Dal said, "Mac? We've got to take her with us. We'll have to take her home. Jim Atherton's dead. He was killed by a sharpshooter, last day of the War."

  "What about this business? Men in gray uniforms carrying off women? That doesn't seem like any Southerners we know."

  "There's all kinds." Dal thought a moment. "Could be Colonel Ashford. He was headed this way, but I didn't think he'd bother women-folks. Always seemed a gentlem
an." He paused. "He wanted me to come with him and keep on fightin'. The War may be over for you an' me but it ain't over for Ashford. When Lee surrendered he was fit to be tied. Called him a traitor, a coward, whatever he could think of."

  "We'd better go back inside. She'll be afraid we left her, too."

  "Damn it, Mac! What's got into the man? Draggin' women-folks away to God knows what?"

  "Dal? There's women-folks at our place, too. And it can't be more'n thirty-five, forty miles from here."

  "I was thinkin' of that. No use to start now. We'd kill our horses before we made it. Let 'em rest, eat, an' we'll ride out in the mornin'."

  Mac went back through the door and watched the girl, finally saying, "Susan? I think when we leave in the morning we'd better take you with us. Your papa may be some time in getting here, and we'll leave a note for him. We've got some folks down south of here, and you can stay with them."

  She looked at them, round-eyed and serious. "Mama said I was to wait for papa."

  Mac squatted down beside her. "Susan, the War is over, but it may take some time for all the soldiers to come home. We don't know where your papa was, and he might have to walk all the way from Pennsylvania or Virginia. You had better come and stay with us until he can come for you."

  In a cyclone cellar near the house they found several slabs of bacon hanging, a half barrel of potatoes, and one of carrots and onions Some of the potatoes had begun to sprout. The milk was kept in a cool place, a small pit slabbed with rock. The milk was beginning to turn, but there was butter-milk and a little cheese.

  "Your mother must have been a worker," Dal commented as Mac put food on the table.

  "I helped. I can work, too."

  "How old are you, Susan?"

  "I am eight years old. I helped mama with everything. I can milk a cow, and I can churn butter, and I helped dig the vegetables."

  She ate in silence for a few minutes and then asked, "Do you have little girls where you live?"

  "Well, we have girls. We have sisters, and one of them wasn't much older than you when we left, but that was four years ago."

  After they had eaten, Mac put a hand on her shoulder. "Susan, you go along to bed now, and don't you worry about those things that go bump in the night. We'll be here."

  When she was gone they sat at the table drinking coffee, occasionally feeding the fire. "What about Ashford?" Mac asked.

  "Tough man, good soldier, and he always seemed a good man, but war changes people. He recruited a lot of bad ones to keep his strength up, and toward the end he was letting them act like bandits just to keep them with him. To be honest about it, some of the officers were beginning to avoid him, and when Lee surrendered Ashford took it almost as a personal insult. The last I heard he was headed for Mexico."

  It was bleak and cold when morning came and they saddled up, adding several slabs of bacon and some vegetables to their packs.

  "We'll take one horse with us an' turn the others loose," Mac said. "There's plenty of grass, and there's a creek down yonder. They'll make out."

  Susan came to the kitchen, dressed for travel. She had made a small bundle of her clothes, and she stood waiting, her sun-bonnet in her hand. For a moment she stood silent in the door to her room, watching them.

  "Better have something to eat," Dal said. "It is a long ride."

  "All right. I'm not very hungry." At the last, when Dal helped her into the saddle she said, "What if mama comes back?"

  "We left a note," Mac said, "and people hereabouts are kindly toward the homes of others. Sometimes travellers sleep in them, but they always leave them clean and with fuel ready for the fire."

  At the crest of a low hill Susan turned for one look back, but when they had ridden several miles and stopped atop another hill to give the horses a breather, she said, "You don't think papa is coming back, do you?"

  Dal tried to speak, swallowed a couple of times, and put a hand on her shoulder. "I'm afraid not, Susan. War is a hard time for all of us. There will be a lot who never get back."

  "Is papa gone, then?"

  "Yes, honey, I'm afraid he is. I knew Jim Atherton. He was a good man. We soldiered together."

  "Mama woke up one night, crying. I think she knew. I think she felt he was gone. She did not say it, but she told me we might have to go away."

  Dal glanced at Mac and they rode on, keeping Susan between them as they rode single file.

  The country was wide open and empty, with scattered clumps of trees on hillsides or along the ridges. Every stream was lined with trees. It was almost noon when Mac Traven pulled up sharply. "Dal? Look here ..."

  Dal rode up, and Mac indicated the trail he had just cut. It had been made by a large party of horsemen driving some cattle and with one wagon, heavily loaded.

  "Dozen at least, maybe twenty or more. Shod horses, headin' right down our way. It could be them, Mac. We'd better hurry."

  "Sundown at the earliest, and when we come up on the place we'd better ride careful."

  "Is it the men who took mama?"

  "Could be, Susan. If we run into trouble you drop off that horse and lie flat, d' you hear?"

  Mac Traven scouted back along the trail, then returned. "We'll find a camp somewhere ahead. No use wastin' time studying the back trail."

  "That trail's three, maybe four days old."

  "It is. But if we can find a camp we can get a better idea of how many there are and who they have with them."

  Dal glanced at the sky. "Looks like rain. That'll slow 'em up."

  "But not much. They've been stealin' women, and somebody will know and will start hunting them."

  Here and there they could pick out a distinctive horse-track, one that would help in the future. "Wonder they didn't loot the house and find Susan, here."

  "Mama was away from the house, looking for our cow. They looked at the house, but they didn't come near."

  "Didn't want to chance it," Dal suggested. "They had the woman, and there might be a man with a rifle at the house."

  They stopped only briefly at mid-day to rest the horses and let them graze. Dal paced impatiently, swearing under his breath. Mac lay on his back, his hat over his eyes. "Take it easy, Dal. Save your strength. We'll need all we got when we come up to them."

  "If we do. This here may be a long chase."

  "Maybe. But pa was at home, and Jesse. You know Jesse. He was always good with a gun."

  "If he was there. And if pa was there. They might have been out on the range lookin' after stock, and these people don't waste around. You saw that back there."

  Through the long, still afternoon they followed the trail, approaching every patch of brush with care, riding slowly up each slope to see over it without being seen. "Headin' right for our place," Dal said once, "almost as if they knew it was there."

  "Maybe one of them does," Mac said. "Somebody knows the country, looks like to me."

  "Let's study on that," Dal suggested. "Maybe we can figure their next camp."

  "Hell," Mac said, "we know where that'll be. We've got the best water in the country around. They will stop at our place."

  A few spattering drops of rain fell, and Dal held back, helping Susan with her slicker. It was one that had belonged to her father and covered her like a tent. "Room for two of you in there," he said, smiling. "You holdin' up all right?"

  "Yes, sir. I used to ride to town with mama, and that was thirty miles."

  "Let's go then."

  Mac had ridden on ahead, but now he had reined in and was waiting. "Look at this." He pointed at a fresh lot of tracks.

  The tracks were of five riders in a bunch, driving several head of cattle.

  "Foragers, rounding up everything they can," Dal said. "We'd best ride careful. We might come up on some of them."

  "Ain't heard any shooting," Mac added.

  The rain fell softly, but the trail ahead was broad and easy to follow. At each rise they walked their horses until they could peer over, then rode on.

 
; "How far would you say?" Dal asked.

  "Five, six miles."

  "Let's swing off to the west and come up that draw behind the barn. Give us a little cover until we're right close."

  They drew up when they reached the draw, listening. There was no sound but the rain.

  "Susan," Dal said gently, "if you see your ma, don't you yell out. There'll be maybe twenty of them and only two of us. We may have to back off and wait until night-time."

  "I used to go hunting with papa. I can be quiet."

  "Good girl. Mac, it looks like we picked a winner when we tied up with Susan."

  A trickle of water ran down the draw. The air was very still, the clouds low. Their horses' hoofs made almost no sound on the wet grass. Twice more they drew up to listen, but there was no sound.

  Suddenly, Mac drew up, pointing.

  A dead and butchered steer lay on the ground near some bushes. The best cuts of meat had been taken, the rest abandoned to the coyotes, which had already been at it.

  "At least two days. Maybe three. I think they've come and gone."

  "Careful, then, when we ride up. Pa always could shoot."

  Over the edge of the draw they could see the roof and the chimney. There was no smoke. Nor was there any sound. Suddenly, Dal put spurs to his horse. "To Hell with it!" he said, and pistol in hand he charged up the bank of the draw and into the empty yard.

  He pulled up sharply. The corral bars were down, and the door hung on its hinges, gaping wide. He swung down and ran into the house.

  Mac faced the barn. That door was open also, but there was no sign of life. Rifle up, he walked his horse toward the corral, then drew up.

  Old Shep lay there, bloody and dead, a bit of cloth still gripped in his teeth. It was a bloody cloth. Mac swore and turned away. Susan looked at him, wide-eyed and sad.

  "He was your dog?"

  "He was our dog. We all owned him, we all loved him. He'd been with us since I was a youngster, seems like."

  Dal came out of the house. "They've been here. No sign of pa, ma, or Gretchen. Jesse was here. His bed's been slept in. They must have taken him, too."