Bannerman the Enforcer 11 by Kirk Hamilton

Author:Kirk Hamilton [Hamilton, Kirk]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: winchester rifle, colt 45, western series, western ebook, lawmen outlaws, kirk hamilton, yancey bannerman, bannerman the enforcer, johnny cato, keith hetherington writing as kirk hamilton
Publisher: Piccadilly Publishing
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Seven – Wolf’s Lair

Wolf Duane sat his saddle very still, head on one side, listening, his fur jacket collar pulled up around his ears. As the horse of one of his men stomped, he rounded savagely and ripped out a curse. The bunch of men listened again but there was nothing.

“That was gunfire, all right,” Duane announced. “Back down at the timberline, I reckon. What you figure, Hog? You’re a mountain man.”

The big man with the wounded foot nodded slowly.

“Sounded to me like it come from over on the west face.”

Duane arched his eyebrows. “They’ve made better time than we figured.”

“You want we should bring them hounds up again, Wolf?” Hog asked.

Duane shook his head. “They can’t smell anythin’ in this cold up this high. Send ’em back with Murdoch. Wonder what in hell Cato was shootin’ at? Sounded like a small war.”

“Wolves?”

“Yeah, mebbe. They’ve sure been howlin’ durin’ the night. I just hope they ain’t tore him and the senator apart too much. I want the pleasure of finishin’ ’em off, myself!”

He wheeled his mount, jamming in the spurs and started across the face of the mountain, Hog and the others following. The man named Murdoch, in charge of the hounds, stayed to put out the campfire and then gather his pack and head slowly back down the mountainside towards the distant Diamond-D.

Duane’s face was grim and anxious as he rode through the snow, angling downwards, towards the timberline. There was no point in staying in the high country now: those gunshots had come from lower down the slope, the west face, most likely, as Hog had said. With any luck, they would come across Cato and the senator still alive there and he would even be prepared to go in against a wolf pack to wrest the men from their snapping jaws.

As long as he had the pleasure of watching them die slowly and painfully, he would take any risk.

~*~

Except for a man feeding a pack of yapping, excited hounds in a pen, the Diamond-D seemed deserted to Yancey and the Indian girl as they watched from a screen of brush above the ranch yard. There was a thin curl of blue smoke rising from the cook shack chimney, so possibly the cook was still there.

But the corrals were almost empty and the door of the bunkhouse was open and they could see no one inside moving about. The man who was feeding the hounds had a fur jacket hung loosely about his shoulders and it dripped with melting snow. His boots were caked with mud and the horse he had tethered to the corral post was also spattered with mud and wet patches clear to the belly. They were all signs that the man had very recently come down off the peaks and the snow up there.

Yancey figured the hounds had been used to track Cato and the senator. He glanced up at the peaks. There was only a very fine mist of snow blowing off the top now, so the wind must have dropped considerably up there.

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