Before they turned him loose, the chief said something to the others that Madigan did not understand. One of the braves brought forth a small pouch and took some red powder from it. He then spit in his palm and mixed the powder to a paste. With this he then painted several red stripes across Madigan’s cheeks. This done, the Indians rode off in a thundering of hooves and war hoops.
The town was called Bonner Springs because of the springs at the edge of town. He remembered almost everyone in town had a garden behind their house, and Madigan could still taste in his memory the fresh strawberries and rhubarb pies Aunt Jane would bake every Sunday in the summer. Aunt Jane, as he called her, was the schoolteacher there at Bonner Springs. Of course, she wasn’t his real aunt. She’d taken him in the very first day he showed up in town, and she liked him to call her by that name. While Madigan lived with Aunt Jane, she instilled in him the love of reading. And to this day some twenty years later, he still carried one or two books along with him to read by the campfire at night when he was alone.
Madigan had also found out from one of the old Indian fighters in town that the paint the Indians put on his face was their way of telling others that he was a brave warrior.
A menacing growl startled Madigan back to his senses. The trail ahead wound through thick brush and fir trees, sometimes growing right up to the edge of the trail. In the middle of the path, standing on his two hind legs, was the biggest grizzly Madigan had ever seen. His right hand edged down toward the Sharps in the saddle boot by his right leg. At the same time he urged the horses back, trying not to make any quick movements that might scare the bear into action.
The bear stood there, his gray-black lips wrinkled back to display large yellow fangs that Madigan could almost feel tearing into his flesh, three-inch claws still dripping blood testifying to a fresh kill. The bear’s coat was a rich brown with tinges of gold where the sunlight fell on it, his head ten feet off the ground. The bear let out a woof from time to time while his little red eyes glared at Madigan as he backed the horses further away, his rifle at the ready. Madigan guessed the brute must weigh close to a thousand pounds, or more.
He felt no desire to kill this magnificent beast, but he was scared and would have no choice if the bear decided to charge. For several minutes Madigan and the brute faced each other. Then without warning the grizzly dropped to all fours and ambled off into the brush beside the trail. Madigan watched, relieved at the confrontation coming to an end. By watching the brush moving, he was able to tell that the bear only went in a few feet from the side of the trail and stopped.
The words of the old mountain man rang in his mind. “Never go into the brush after a bear. They may be playing you for a sucker, settin’ you up for an ambush. No animal can do it better than a big black or grizzly bear!” And from the size of this bear, Madigan thought, he must be very good at getting his food!
Not wanting to take any chances by getting too close to the thicket where the bear was, Madigan scouted his back trail looking for a spot where he could ride around the animal without spooking him into a charge. About a half-mile back, he came to a game trail going up the side of the mountain. Taking his rifle, he set out on foot to see if it would circumvent the bear’s hiding place.
After walking for about twenty minutes, he was well above the main trail and could see not only the bear hiding in the bushes below, but a good portion of the trail in either direction. The game path did indeed go well around the bear’s hiding place, coming out about a quarter-of-a-mile ahead and around a bend in the trail from the grizzly.
Madigan would have to walk the horses, but it would not be hard for them to move over the path. The hiding place of the bear was backed by a natural rock wall going up to about sixty feet, so he was not worried about the bear coming at him on the game trail.
While walking back to the horses, he chanced to see the sun flash off something metal down the trail in the distance. He stopped and waited, shielding his eyes from the sun so as to get a better view. The pure mountain air afforded him a clear picture of what was taking place further back down the trail from which he came.
Two riders and four horses were coming fast. They were wearing hats and were fully dressed, so Madigan knew they were not Indians. And he didn’t have to be told what the riders were up to. Each man would trail a horse behind him, and when his mount gave out, he would switch to the less tired horse. The Comanches had a name for it. They called it the Death Ride. It enabled a rider to run down someone that was far ahead of him.
So, they knew the lay of the land and were hoping to catch him off guard. And they would have too, if it hadn’t been for the bear blocking his path. He hurried to get back to the horses. At best he’d only have about an hour, maybe less. But if what he had in mind worked, it would be all the time he needed.
Madigan led the horses up the path, keeping to the edge of the trees and out of sight from the riders coming from below. Finding a place in the trees to hide the horses, he quickly tied them and then hurried back to cover his tracks. At the rate the gunmen were coming, he doubted whether they would see them anyway, but wanted to make sure they didn’t.
Next, he returned to the horses and led them on the path above the bear and back to the main trail. Finding a place with some grass, he tied them so they could graze a little. Then he walked back down the path to within a hundred and fifty yards of the bear and waited.
It wasn’t long before he could hear them coming. At first it sounded like rocks falling down the side of a rocky hill. Then the sound became more distinct, that of horses’ hooves pounding the ground at a fast run. Somehow the riders must have gotten a glimpse of him on the trail ahead of them earlier. The trail twisted and turned so that at times you could see far ahead while at other times you couldn’t see more than a hundred feet.
His guess was that they must have caught sight of him just before he stopped for the grizzly. He was almost certain they’d spotted him earlier or they would not be running the horses as hard as they were. Probably trying to overtake me without warning while I was off guard, he thought. They might have succeeded, too. He didn’t think he would have heard them coming if he’d not been expecting their company.
Only blind luck had betrayed them to him, and he wasn’t the kind of man to throw an advantage away once he had it. How many times did man live or die because of luck, he wondered. At least today his luck was good and he hoped it would hold for another few minutes. One thing for sure-he’d know the answer either way.
He was crouched down in the middle of the trail when the horsemen came into view. He came to his feet with the Winchester leveled at them, but he’d no intention of firing unless he was forced to. Shots might be heard by their friends. And right now he had all the company he wanted.
Seeing Madigan in front of them brought a look of shock from both men. They’d been racing along single file, and as the trail at this point was only wide enough for one horse at a time, they knew that to turn their horses around and flee would be almost certain death. There was only one option open to them.
“Look out!” the first rider yelled as he suddenly saw Madigan in the middle of the trail in front of him. “He’s got us covered!”
In less than a heartbeat, they whirled their horses to the right and spurred them into the cover of brush and trees. Madigan almost laughed at the sight of them doing exactly as he had planned. But what he had planned was no laughing matter.