The Wolf Pack (Cutler #1) Read online

  Cutler’s tactic worked. Suddenly Big Red’s furious barking split the night: game in sight. Cutler jerked up Apache and the horse skidded to a halt. Red streaked on, splitting the night with his deep-throated growling, a bounding streak across the silvered open flat at the canyon’s entrance. Then he changed course so swiftly he almost fell and streaked off toward the right. All at once Cutler saw the wolf.

  It broke from the shadow of a clump of juniper, running full into the moonlight, and, for a moment, even with his gun in hand, Cutler froze. The sight of the animal awed him. Never had he seen a lobo so immense. Bigger than a yearling calf, it shot across the flat at incredible speed, almost as silver itself as the moonlight, belly low, tail streaming. Its head was huge, its muzzle long, and it seemed to float across the earth. Cutler had that one glimpse of it, that one fair shot, and then, before he recovered from surprise or could line his gun, it was gone into the shadows once again, with Red barking hard after it.

  Cutler cursed himself for a fool. Damn it, if he hadn’t been so shaken by the beast’s tremendous size, he might have laid it low then and there. Now there was nothing for it but a wild ride through the night. Red would keep after the wolf for as long as it could run, and if it bayed, he’d do his best to hold it, though Cutler wondered if even the Airedale could stand against the mighty jaws hinged on that great skull. Again, he put Apache into a run, guiding on the diminishing sound of Red’s trail-barking. He closed the gap a little and then slowed the gelding. This was going to be a long chase, and Apache would need all the strength and endurance he could muster.

  Cutler’s ride was a nightmare. The wolf headed for broken country with Red hot on its heels. The gelding did its best, and his best was better than that of any other horse John Cutler had ever owned or seen, but he was not made of steel. Clambering up boulder-strewn hills, whipping through thickets of juniper and buckhorn cholla, skidding down treacherous slopes, threading washes and gullies, he carried Cutler deeper and deeper into the mountains. There was nothing for him to do but to let the horse choose the route; the bay knew that he was supposed to stay after Red, and his sense of direction was as good as the Airedale’s bark, now loud, now almost out of earshot, through that hell’s labyrinth of country. Feeling the horse’s flanks pump beneath him, listening to his laboring breath, wet now with his own lather, pausing more often to let him blow, Cutler knew one consolation. The wolf was not made of steel either. Red would push it as far as it could run; sooner or later, it must give out and bay or go to earth; then he’d have his chance at it.

  By now, the moon had long since gone down, the eastern sky was paling with the first light of dawn. Ahead loomed the walls of a narrow canyon, and from beyond, far past its other end, the sound of Big Red’s voice floated back, muted, now with distance and exhaustion. Cutler put the horse into the canyon; then he cursed. Its floor was a boulder-strewn jumble of rock and cactus, with no visible path across it in the tricky light. He swung down, took Apache’s hackamore, and, leading the gelding, he scrambled through the gorge on foot, tripping, falling, circling as he hit barricades of rocks no horse could surmount. He picked up a painful collection of cholla thorns and there were blisters on his feet when full daylight came. But as darkness lifted, so did Cutler’s heart. Not much farther; ahead, he could see where the canyon opened into the rolling, easy country of another basin.

  Apache made it over the last hundred feet of big, jagged rocks, stumbling no oftener than his master, and then they were in the clear. Cutler halted, panting. When he had some wind again, he held his breath and listened. But now all he could hear was the pumping of his heart and the hammering of blood in his ears. Big Red and the wolf both had long since outdistanced him.

  He looked at Apache’s ears, saw them prick forward. The horse’s hearing was keener than his own. Cutler grinned. Apache would pick up the trail. Cutler gave the horse another minute to rest. Then, as much hunter as the dog or himself, the gelding was obviously impatient for the chase again. Cutler swung up in the saddle, let the rein go slack, and Apache broke into a lope across the rolling, open country. This was a gait he could keep up for a long time, and he covered ground with deceptive, magical swiftness.

  Sunrise was a glorious burst of color in the east. The morning wind was sweet and cool. The horse ran steadily and rhythmically; the land was green and wild with mountains all around streaked with bright wine-colored light and bluish shadow. John Cutler drew in a great breath and felt like shouting. He was, for the moment, completely happy, asking nothing more of life than this: a fine horse, a dog, a gun, and an animal that was worthy of his steel to chase through the mountain sunrise. Now, he knew the wolf was tiring, because he could hear Red’s voice again and it was getting closer with every stride of the gelding’s long legs. Hunter and quarry both were reaching the limits of their endurance, and soon the wolf must turn at bay, buying time, or else go to ground in some secret den that Red would mark until Cutler came.

  A mile, at the most two miles more, and now Big Red’s hoarse barking was very close indeed. Cutler topped a rise, reined in the gelding, scanned the sweeping valley that stretched endlessly before him to a distant mountain wall. Then he grinned. Down there he could see them, two moving specks, red and gray. Neither was making speed anymore; the distance between them was constant. Cutler grinned tightly. If Apache had one last burst of speed left in him, five minutes more should put the Victorio Wolf in rifle-range. He touched the gelding with his spurs, and it broke into a run.

  Then Cutler pulled it up so hard it reared, as suddenly as the whole morning seemed to explode in gunfire, and he heard the ugly rip of bullets around his head.

  Chapter Four

  They came out of a patch of timber to his right, nearly a half mile away, five men, riding hard; and they fired another half dozen rounds. Cutler stared, holding the bay tight-gathered, knowing now that they were warning shots. Then he looked despairingly at far gray dot that was the Victorio Wolf. The sound of shooting had urged it to greater speed; Red was giving his all, striving not to let the gap between them widen. Then Cutler cursed. Even as he watched, the wolf made the shelter of the juniper. Damn, Cutler thought, if he turns at bay in there . . .

  Almost, then, he broke; another warning shot kept him back. He swung the horse, raising the Winchester. Holz’s riders, they had to be. Likely his wild chase in darkness had taken him onto Holz’s range. He could not kill men over a wolf, nor did he want to be killed himself, and five against one was sour odds. He waited for them to come up.

  Cradling rifles across their saddles, they reined in, trotted forward. The man in their lead was moonfaced and heavy-jowled, a big pot belly sagging out of a corduroy coat. His horse was huge, had to be to carry that great bulk, a dappled gray with a strain of Percheron. The rider’s eyes, buried deep in rolls of fat, were like chips of granite; his mouth, a pursy redness. The four men who flanked him were working cowhands, but, carrying side arms as well as rifles, they were as tough a crew as Cutler had seen since leaving Oklahoma. Spreading out behind their boss, they formed a half circle around Cutler.

  “You,” the fat man said. “You’re trespassing on my range.” His voice was deep, faintly accented. “Call in your dog.”

  Cutler drew in a deep breath. “You’re Gustav Holz?”

  “I am Holz. You would be the volfer, Cutler, eh?”

  “God damn it,” Cutler said, and he flung out an arm, “let’s talk later. My dog’s after that wolf. Now’s the chance to get him!”

  “I said, call in your dog.” Holz’s voice was as hard as his eyes. “I said you’re trespassing.”

  “But the wolf . . . What kind of cattleman are you?”

  “The volf I will attend to. My range is posted. Get off, now. Take your dog with you. Else, I vill have him shot.”

  Cutler smiled faintly, and something in that smile made Holz blink. “Mister,” Cutler said quietly, “you hurt that dog and that carcass of yours is mine for whatever your hide and all that tallow�
�ll bring.” And he tipped the Winchester forward.

  Holz sat heavily, unmoving, in the saddle, staring at the rifle. “Heh,” he laughed. “Heh, heh.” It was a strange, rattling sound. “You think you’re bulletproof?”

  “I know damn well you ain’t,” Cutler said. “But let’s make a deal, okay? That wolf’s dead beat, my dog will make him go to ground or bay in ten, fifteen minutes more. We’ll all ride down, and I’ll give you the honor of making the kill. Give me the head and you can have the hide. And everybody in the Davis Mountains will be grateful to you.”

  Holz only spat. “I do not care vhat everybody in the Davis Mountains thinks of me. I vill attend to the volf vhen I am ready. I have hired my own volfer to bring him in. He vill vork my range and stay off the land of the others. You vill do the same. If you and your dog come on my land again, you vill both be shot. Now call him in and go.”

  He and Cutler looked at one another for a long, taut moment. Cutler could have dropped him with a shot, but the others in that same instant would have blasted Cutler from every side. Even so, Cutler had to struggle mightily to contain his rage, frustration, and contempt. You didn’t kill or be killed over a lousy wolf, and Holz had a right to post his range and . . . There was nothing he could do. “You know something?” Cutler said. “You’re about as lowdown a thing as I’ve ever met. And I expect you’ve hired the kind of wolfer you deserve. I thought he’d gone to New Mexico, but he always was a liar. Gilbert?”

  “Gilbert,” said Holz impassively.

  “All right,” Cutler said. “Now I’ll tell you something. You make damned sure Gilbert keeps his poison on your range. The first poisoned bait I find outside your line, I’m coming after Gilbert. You tell him that. Now, have your men rest easy. I’m just reaching for my horn . . .”

  Slung on his saddle, it was a great steer horn trumpet with a silver mouthpiece. He put it to his lips, blew a slow, mournful blast that would carry for miles. Then he blew again and, after a long wait, one more time.

  “It’ll take a while,” he said. “He’s a long way off, and he’s tired.”

  “We’ve got time,” Holz said.

  Cutler sat there, helpless, raging inwardly. Nothing would confuse and ruin even the best of dogs more quickly than being called in off a hot trail just at the moment of victory. Red would hear and obey, but he would feel betrayed, his confidence in his master subtly undermined. And the next time there was a chase, he might hold back just a little, remembering and wondering if it would happen again.

  Meanwhile, Cutler thought, the Victorio Wolf, reprieved, went scot-free.

  He longed to smash Holz’s face. Maybe someday, he promised himself, he would. But meanwhile he could not fight them all. And certainly he would not risk Big Red’s life—not this way. Against the wolf, yes. But uselessly? No.

  For a full two minutes, they sat there wordlessly, Cutler and the five surrounding him. Red had disappeared into the juniper after his quarry, and despite Cutler’s horn, he had not come out again. Cutler’s hand tightened on his Winchester. Even now, Red might be locked in combat with that gray giant down there in the thicket ... He raised his horn and blew again.

  Thirty seconds passed. Then Holz said, almost with approval, “That is a good dog. He comes vhen he is called.”

  Cutler let out a long breath. The rust-colored fleck in the distance paused on the thicket’s rim. Cutler blew the horn again. Wearily, the dog began to trot toward them.

  Cutler looked at Holz. “Always,” he said harshly. “Everywhere I’ve ever worked or been, there’s been this. When it comes down to a cattle killer like that wolf, cowmen forget their differences. They may hate each other’s guts, but they’ll join hands to protect the stock.”

  Holz just spat again.

  Cutler slung the horn. Then he said, “The dog’s tired. I’m going down and pick him up.”

  “Ve’ll ride vith you,” Holz said.

  They swung in behind him as Cutler loped the gelding down the slope. When they came up to Big Red, the dog, sore-footed, quilled with cactus thorns, squatted on his haunches, tongue lolling, looking at Cutler with questioning eyes. Cutler swung down, picked up the exhausted animal, put him on the saddle, then mounted behind the cantle.

  “All right,” Holz said. “You have your dog. Go. And don’t come back.”

  Cutler did not answer. He rode in silence, holding the tired gelding to a walk. Holz and his men followed him a long way before they halted. And then they sat there on a ridge, the five of them like ravens on a roost, watching him until he was out of sight.

  “And in ten more minutes,” Cutler said savagely, “I would have had him! Ten lousy minutes!”

  Trembling with weariness, he slumped at the kitchen table in the Randall ranch house, hands clasped around a cup of strong, black coffee. Across from him, Fair Randall shook her head despairingly. “You see? That’s what we’ve been up against all along. And—what can you do?”

  Cutler drained his cup and set it down. In the living room, Big Red slept soundly. Cutler stood up. “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,” he said harshly. “I’m going to catch that wolf. On your land, not on his.” He swayed slightly. “But first I’m going to sleep.”

  Fair arose. “John,” she said softly, “use my bed. You’re worn out.”

  “No. No, I’m used to sleeping in the wagon. Thanks for the supper.” He lurched out, climbed wearily over the tailgate, and sprawled on his bedroll. Anyhow, he thought, he had bought a little time. The wolf would be exhausted, too. And, maybe, for the first time, a little worried; likely it had never met anything like Big Red before. It would hold off a day or two until it had scouted the situation . . .

  Then Cutler slept, for fifteen hours . . .

  The big traps clanked together and made a heavy load as Cutler carried them to the big iron wash pot boiling over a blazing fire behind the ranch house the next morning. Jess stood back, watching, as Cutler dropped the Newhouses in the seething water. “What’s that for?”

  “Kills human scent. They’ve been hanging in my wagon for a spell. A wolf’s nose is mighty keen.” He threw some juniper boughs in the pot with them. “Takes a lot of work to get a trap clean enough to catch an animal smart as this. Where’s the shovel?”

  Jess ran and got it. When he came back, he asked: “Can I watch you set the traps?”

  “The first one or two so you can see how it’s done. If you’ll stay on horseback and not come near. But it’ll be a while yet.” Cutler took the shovel, went to the horse corral, and, in its hard-packed center, he began to dig. As he finished excavating a sizeable hole, hoof beats drummed, and Fair Randall rode into the yard. “I checked the herd in Buckhorn Canyon,” she said, swinging down. “He managed to kill a yearling before Big Red put him on the run. I had to leave it. We’ve got more beef than we can eat from his last kill.”

  “That’s all right,” Cutler said. “I’ve got a use for the hide. I’ll ride out and skin it after I bury the traps.”

  “Bury them?”

  “After they’ve boiled. I’ll put ‘em in the ground overnight, next day hang ‘em in a juniper thicket for a few hours. That ought to take care of the human scent and the scent of steel—as good, anyhow, as you can do it.”

  He laid the shovel aside, went back to the pot. With a backward forking stick, he fished the traps from the pot, very carefully, hooking them by the rings at the ends of their heavy chains. Careful not to let them swing against his body, he carried them to the corral at the stick’s end and put them in the hole. Then he covered them with dirt. He put another batch of traps in water, then saddled Apache. This time he did not take the Winchester carbine but rather the Krag; if he’d had it before, he might have been able to use its extra reach to drop the wolf before Holz had come up. From now on, he would take no chances, give himself every edge against the beast. “You stay here,” he told Jess, “and keep Big Red company. From now on, he’s not to run loose until I need him.”

  In Buckhorn Cany
on, Cutler deftly skinned the yearling after coating his hands with blood and dust. Rolling the rawhide into a bundle, he lashed it with a strip cut from it and tied it behind Apache’s cantle. Then, leading the horse, he began to read sign, and when he found the first clear wolf track, he let out a long, low whistle. It was as big as the palm of his hand.

  He found the trail the animal had made going out, overlapped by Big Red’s tracks. That was not the one he wanted; what he looked for was the spoor it had laid down coming in. Eventually, he found that and backtrailed it, riding now, but bent low out of the saddle. Presently he grinned. Monster that it was, it was still a wolf, and it obeyed certain laws of behavior. Each breed of animal, including man, had certain instinctive patterns it followed subconsciously, could not help adhering to. The Victorio Wolf was no exception. Here it had sniffed a high tuft of grass and then had urinated, there it had mounted a small rise of ground to reconnoiter before traveling on; elsewhere it had scratched with hind feet to mark its range. Cutler filed all the places where these things had taken place accurately in his mind, and, sticking tightly to the backtrail, seeing things that no one not Indian-trained would have noticed, he began to understand how the wolf moved. Overlaid on that instinctive pattern were the animal’s individual habits, and to the experienced tracker they gave an insight into the working of the wolf’s mind. The beast did not, for instance, allow itself to be diverted by small game: not gophers or jackrabbits or even a covey of quail, whose nesting place and droppings Cutler found not far away from the animal’s track. It knew what it wanted: cattle. And it had gone straight to them.

  He found the height from which, surely, it had done its howling, and remembering that eerie sound, he felt a touch of sadness. He knew every call in a wolf’s repertoire and its meaning, and though he’d not had time to reflect on it night before last, the cry the Victorio Wolf had given had been a call for its mate, begging her to come from wherever she was hiding to join him. Pleading with her, hope against hope, to throw off the shackles of death and come back from the grave to run beside him. Cutler swallowed hard. He knew how the wolf had felt . . .