Read Online Blood Feather by Don Bendell - Free Book Online

Wiyake
’s night position and stolen the big draft horse. He had read the war party’s trail so far, found the two bodies, and knew the big man wanted to terrorize and frighten his victims. He figured he would simply turn the tables and steal his horse, too.
    Actually, Joshua would have been better off to leave the horse, as the big draft horse with the distinctive oversized tracks would have left a much easier trail to follow.
We Wiyake
was now headed due west, toward the distant big range, but he was occasionally stopping to cover his tracks. He would also start false trails in several spots.
    It took a while, but Joshua cut the trail a mile out and followed it the last mile to Gabriel. He was happy to saddle him up and thankful he had not been killed. Now he had to decide what to do with the big roan draft horse. He led the horse, which followed easily.
    Strongheart got on the trail of the war party and caught up with them several hours later. They smoked a pipe, and the men told about the killing of their leader that morning. They said they’d found
We Wiyake
’s tracks heading west toward the Big Range and that he was running.
    Joshua knew then the man’s plans must have changed; he had decided to head into the big mountain range where it would be easier to hide his trail and route of travel. Strongheart also knew that the killer would cover his trail to such an extent that at some point Joshua would lose it. He decided to head south and try to attend to his challenge with Quanah Parker, as
We Wiyake
would show up somewhere in the southern Colorado area within the next month, to kill once again in the white community.
    Joshua was going to head to the nearest location where he could send a long message to Lucky and tell him all he had learned and request that plenty of agents spread out around southern Colorado. Denver was the terminus for Western Union for the entire region and had a population of over thirteen thousand. Joshua decided he would head there to send his long telegram to Lucky.
    He took the draft horse with him, deciding it was one a rancher might need. He assumed the horse had been stolen from a ranch by Blood Feather anyway. Strongheart was outside Laramie, Wyoming Territory and decided he would find a rancher who might want the horse, and he would simply give it to him. Laramie was a small, interesting town. It had rolling mills, a tie treatment plant, a brickyard, a slaughterhouse, a brewery, a glass-blowing plant, and a plaster mill. It also contained the Union Pacific railroad yards.
    Six years earlier, three half-brothers—Town Marshal Steve Long, Con Moyer, and Ace Moyer—had opened a saloon in Laramie named the Bucket of Blood. The three would bully new townspeople and settlers, making them sign over deeds to their ranches and property. If any refused, they were challenged to gunfights by the three and killed. By October 1868, Steve Long had already killed thirteen men.
    Many citizens tired of this very quickly, so the sheriff of Albany County, N. K. Boswell, who was also a rancher himself, formed a “Vigilance Committee.” They went into the Bucket of Blood on October 28, 1868, heavily armed, and seized the three killers, marched them down the street to an empty building, and lynched them. Not long after that, the committee lynched more ne’er-do-wells and Laramie started calming down as a nasty town.
    The town became a nicer place to live, but now that a group of vigilantes had enjoyed some success, many saw such men as the solution to other problems over the following years.
    Strongheart was north of Laramie and rode over a rolling hill. Below him was a sprawling ranch, with a large house, a barn, outbuildings, several corrals, a squeeze chute, and a round training pen. He thought to himself that this would be a place that could use the large draft horse.
    Hooves thundered behind him, and he turned in the saddle to see a group of riders approaching him at a