Shooting For Justice by G. Tilman (top 100 novels txt) 📗

history. Removing the man who was the hope of America. One day, they’ll find his corpse in an alley. Knifed by a thug who wanted his wallet. I doubt he will be identified. He will just be stuck away in a pauper’s grave until hell freezes over.

“He is meeting his reckoning now. This will be his hell. And he deserves every suffering minute of it.”

“I agree, Michael. Will you ever see him again?” Pope asked.

“Hard to tell. I told him to never contact me again. He’s crazy. He may or may not. I’ll probably kill him next time.”

“I’m sure it will be self-defense,” Pope said.

Kane just gave Pope a smile which made even the tough sheriff’s blood run cold. They rode back to town and had a whiskey at the local saloon. Kane and Rita left for the train depot shortly after. Pope knew he would see his friend again soon. He had an ominous feeling when he did, it would be to ride against an enemy. An as yet unknown enemy. He did not think it would be Booth. Despite Booth’s notoriety, he was not a worthy enough adversary for the two of them.

Pope went by the Wells Fargo office. Sarah had already ridden home, so he followed.

8

The judge heard testimony carefully guided by a high dollar San Francisco defense attorney. He found Mattie Lane’s former suitor guilty of aggravated assault. It was his first criminal offense. He had rounded his age up a few months during questioning. Maupin was still seventeen, so he could not be tried as an adult. The case would be sealed, and he would not carry a criminal record into adulthood.

Pope was fine with the results. A hefty fine was paid by his father. The man gave every indication of planning some serious corporal punishment of his own. Justice would be served, if not even-handed, then hard-handed.

Lane brought both daughters for the trial. Despite Lane’s earlier words, Pope was not surprised. He knew the girls would convince him. Mattie was on good behavior, partially because Sarah stayed close during their entire visit.

Martha still wanted to go into law enforcement. Her father still wanted her to go to college, a rare but not unheard of thing in 1883.

Pope, with Sarah close at hand, guided a trail ride on Saturday. They urged the senior Lane to accompany them, and he did. It was the first time the Wells Fargo executive had traveled on a horse instead of behind one for years.

Israel Pope led the procession on a ride through the hills. Then, they headed to the Pacific beaches. Millie did not go, but she saw them off and her picnic lunch accompanied them.

Israel taught the girls how to cut sign. Pope and Sarah rode ahead and out of sight. His grandfather showed them how to recognize broken horse-high twigs and to see hoofprints. He pointed out a slight irregularity in one of Caesar’s horseshoes. Israel explained how such details allowed a tracker to differentiate among prints when the trail got “busy”, as he called it.

He asked the girls if they smelled anything. Neither did until they concentrated. Both picked up a faint hint of wood smoke in the air.

Israel let them lead the way tracking. Soon, they came to a steep bank, leading down to the ocean. They smelled the smoke stronger, then saw Pope and Sarah below sitting at a fire. Millie’s picnic was laid out and the faint whiff of coffee was added to the smoke, beached seaweed and salt air.

The four riders picked their way carefully down the slope to the beach. They dismounted and Pope complimented them on identifying smoke smell.

“Why, John? It’s just smoke,” Mattie wondered aloud.

“It is just smoke. The key is it’s just not a strong smoke smell you were following. We built a Dakota fire pit in the sand. It has a small hole connected by a tunnel to a larger hole with fuel. The fire sucks air through the tunnel from the small hole.

“The air feeds and superheats the fire. The resultant efficiency makes the fire burn with less smoke. It not only makes for a better fire, but one with less giveaway smoke for predators to smell. Especially, two-legged predators,” Pope explained.

“Notice John could not dig a tunnel connecting the two pits. So, he dug a trench and covered it with driftwood branches and covered them with seaweed. He accomplished building what the sand would not let him. A tunnel,” Israel explained.

“I learned about them early as a trapper. I was trapping in Indian country. Most were my friends, but not all. A small, efficient fire without a lot of telltale smoke saved me many a time, I ’spect,” the former mountain man said.

“Did you ever have to fight Indians?” Martha asked, not knowing much about the famous mountain man’s history.

“Ha! I did, lass. When they killed my wife. When they attacked me on the beaver trapline. And, when my boy here,” nodding to Pope, “and I rode the retribution trail after the ones who killed his ma and pa and baby sister.”

“How old were you, John?” Mattie asked.

“Ten,” he answered simply, not wanting to intercede in the master storyteller’s yarn.

“John and I tracked a party of about twenty. We knew they were the ones from watching the tribe for a while. We set up an ambush and killed them all. Split pretty evenly between the boy and me. We scalped them and took the scalps back to the tribe. We presented them to the chief.

“I watched my boy. He was looking at the scalps hanging on the tent. One was reddish. It was his ma’s. He couldn’t tell his pa’s. Then, I saw a change come over his face as he spotted a small, long blonde haired one. His little sister. He looked at me.

“I didn’t have to nod. We already developed a way to communicate with looks and nothing more. You might have noticed we still do it.

“My boy raised his Henry rifle