plains as the buffalo.”
Sometimes all the words Hagen used to describe one simple thing gave him a headache. “Did you always talk this way or did you learn it?”
Hagen smiled. “Why use three words when ten will do? I find language to be a poor enough form of communication, so I try to make the best of it whenever possible. Besides, it’s not like there’s a better way to pass the time, is there?”
Trammel saw something in the distance that made him bring his horse up short.
Hagen followed suit. “What’s wrong?”
Trammel pointed to the sky over the slight rise in front of them. “See for yourself.”
Both men saw a flock of buzzards circling high overhead in the near distance.
“Good eyes, Trammel,” Hagen said. “I hadn’t seen that.”
“Too busy talking, I suppose.”
“Shut up.”
Trammel looked around them to see if anyone might be hiding nearby or if there was any sign that might tell them what had attracted the buzzards to whatever was just over that rise. There were no obvious clues.
“Wonder what they’re circling,” Trammel asked.
“Something big to attract a flock that large,” Hagen explained. “Maybe a couple of buffalo carcasses left by skinners. No way of knowing until we see for ourselves. Let’s hobble the horses and make our approach on foot. Safer that way.”
Both men dismounted and hobbled their horses where they stood. They removed the Winchesters from their respective saddles and approached the rise at a crouch. When they got near the top, Hagen dropped to his belly and used his elbows to propel himself the rest of the way. Trammel did likewise, though far less gracefully than his companion.
When they saw what had attracted the buzzards, both men spoke at the same time.
“Good God.”
* * *
With the stocks of their Winchesters on their hips, Trammel and Hagen rode their horses into the charred remains of what had once been a wagon train.
By Trammel’s count, five wagons had been burned where they had formed a semicircle in an attempt to ward off some kind of an attack.
“Think it was Indians?” Trammel asked Hagen.
“Can’t tell as of yet.” Hagen dismounted and tied his mount off on a burned wagon wheel. “You stay mounted and keep watch. Everything’s still smoldering, so whoever did this might still be close by.”
Trammel figured Hagen was right. The smell of burnt wood was too strong to have been there for long.
Rather than stand stock-still in one place, he rode the horse around the wagons to get a better look at the surrounding area and the wagons themselves.
The outward sides of the charred buckboards were peppered with bullet holes. From atop his horse, Trammel could see the burnt bodies of men who had taken cover inside the wagons. Their dead hands were curled around rifles that were no longer there.
“Whoever it was took their rifles,” Trammel called out. “Horses, too. Looks like they burned whatever they couldn’t take.”
Hagen was moving among the bodies lying inside the wagon circle. “See any women in the wagons?”
Trammel picked up his pace, fighting his horse to keep moving despite the stench of burnt flesh that hung heavy in the air. “Not a one. Think whoever did this took them?”
“Most assuredly,” Hagen said, then called out. “Buck, one’s still alive! Keep an eye out for anything coming our way!”
Trammel jerked his horse around to go back the way he had come. Even he knew a man on horseback was an inviting target. He didn’t want to make himself any easier to hit by riding around in a predictable circle.
He saw Hagen cradle a man’s head in his hands. Trammel could see the bullet wounds in his legs and arms were still bleeding. His skin had been burned, but he managed to somehow move his hand as he talked into Hagen’s ear.
That same hand trembled, its fingers becoming rigid, before they went limp. Hagen slowly lowered the man’s head back to the burnt ground and laid the dead man’s blackened hands across his chest. Trammel couldn’t swear to it, but he thought he heard the gambler praying.
“Better get in here,” Hagen called out to him, “and bring the horses with you. Theys who did this hit the train only a few minutes ago and they’re still around.”
Trammel changed direction again and doubled back the way he’d just ridden. “You sure about that? Maybe we should just get the hell out of here?”
A rifle shot echoed as a bullet struck the ground about ten yards in front of Trammel’s horse.
“You were saying?” Hagen said.
Trammel rode his own horse through the narrow gap between two burnt wagons and ran to bring the rest of the animals into the makeshift fort. Sometimes, he hated it when Hagen was right.
* * *
Trammel tossed Hagen his Winchester and a box of cartridges from the pack mule. He took his own Winchester and coach shotgun from the saddle and laid them against a wagon on the other side of the circle. Hagen would guard the eastern side and Trammel would take the west. Since they had come from the south, he figured that side was clear.
“How many are we looking at?” Trammel asked as he made sure there were two cartridges in the shotgun.
“The dead man told me ten or so.” Hagen already had his Winchester at his shoulder, scanning the horizon for anything to shoot at. “Said they rode off when one of their lookouts spotted us. Five of them took the women in a wagon they’d brought with them. A couple stayed behind to scalp the survivors.”
“Scalpers?” Trammel aimed the Winchester at a copse of trees in front of him. If an attack came, he figured it would come from there. “So it’s Indians, then.”
“No,” Hagen said. “White men. That makes it worse.”
Trammel gagged on the odor of charred death all around him. “Can’t see as how it could be any worse.”
“Indians would most likely ride on after they got what they were after,” Hagen explained. “White men who’d do this will double back for our supplies, figuring there’s more to be had. That shot they took at you was to find their range, probably hoping they’d hit you or the horse and cut down the odds even further in their favor.”
Trammel scanned the horizon nervously. “Maybe if we ride like hell, we could get clear of them.”
“They’d only run us down on the trail eventually, probably before nightfall. And in open country no less. No, there’s a fight coming regardless, and I’d rather it happen here where we have cover.”
