We did find an occasional track, but the rain was already making them shapeless. Despite the fact that the man was tired and perhaps wounded, he kept going. “He’s got sand,” Cotton said. “I’ll give him that.”
The rain became a downpour. Our horses splashed through gathering pools, and a trickle started in the stream bed. We searched the banks for any hideout, even the simplest shelter, or for anyplace where he might have climbed out of the stream. Occasionally we ourselves rode our horses up the bank and studied the country. It was gently rolling, with here and there a bluff or a somewhat steeper hill, barren of any but the simplest growth.
Ahead of us was a bank where the stream at high water had cut away the rocky edge. Somebody had rolled down slabs of rock and set up a few drift logs to make a crude shelter.
“How about some coffee?” Cotton suggested.
Our horses needed the rest more than we did, and there was room enough for them under the overhang.
“It’s a wonder he didn’t stop here,” Cotton said. “I’ll make coffee if you want to look around.”
We got down from our saddles and led the horses under the overhang. There was plenty of fuel, and Cotton built a fire. Knocking the water from my hat, I looked around me.
This was an obvious spot for our man to find shelter—that might be why he had not stopped … if he had not. He might have thought they knew of this place.
“There’s been a fire,” Cotton said. “Look at that charcoal. The edges are still sharp. Charcoal wears down mighty fast in wind and rain.”
“No rain in here but you’re right, Cotton. Still, we can’t bank on anything.”
With the rain pounding down. I prowled about. Soon I could smell the coffee, and then the bacon. I turned to start back—it was a casual glance over my shoulder that stopped me.
There was a place where a great old tree on the bank leaned far over, branches dropping down to make a sort of natural stable. The falling rain, the darkness of the rain clouds, and the shadow of the tree, all so obscured my view that I had to look again to be sure of what I saw. A horse was there, standing three-legged, head drooping.
The place was somewhat beyond the shelter where Cotton Madden was making coffee. It was just around a slight bend in the creek, and in a sort of notch just a few feet out of line with the stream bed, and the eyes just naturally carried on beyond, upstream.
Rifle ready, I walked slowly forward, studying the rocks around, the tree itself, for any possible point of concealment. But there was nothing of .the sort.
As I came close I recognized the horse—it was another of Gate’s horses. And then I saw the body.
A man in a checkered shirt lay on his face near the horse’s head. One hand gripped a half-drawn pistol. He had been shot at close range, and in the act of drawing; and he had been shot right through the skull.
There had been another horse here, and another man. Had that man killed this one? Or had there been another, unseen attacker?
I stood there for a moment, looking down at the dead man, and could not help but wonder how he had come to this. It is a question that often comes when one looks upon death, I suppose, as if one might find some common denominator. He was an ordinary-looking man, who under other conditions might have found steady employment somewhere, making a modest bit of money. No telling what this man might have been, or had been.
Who had killed him? Had it been Tarlton? Or one of our other men? After all, I knew none of them, for Tarlton would have hired them after I had started west. Only it was a cinch that any man riding a Gates horse was an outlaw, for the horses had been stolen.
One thing was certain: two men must have stopped here. One had killed the other and ridden off; or somebody else had killed this man, taken the other horse and departed, leaving this horse for the other man. Which would mean that other man was somewhere about. But the horse had been tied more than one day, which posed another question.
Taking the bridle, I led him to the stream for a drink. He drank long and thirstily, and as he drank I kept my eyes moving. If that outlaw was somewhere about I had better see him before he saw me.
Cotton came from the overhang to call me, and saw me with the strange horse. He glanced at the brand, always the first thing any cowhand would do, and when I led the horse to tie him alongside our mounts, I told Cotton what I’d found.
“You still think Tarlton’s around?” he asked.
“That could have been him who got away with the other horse.”
We considered the question while we ate and drank coffee. Tarlton must be found. “He’s a tough man, Cotton,” I said. “I can read the sign. He’s a gentleman, but there’s iron in him, and he’ll make a fight of it.”
Leaving Cotton to guard the horses, I began a careful scout through the rain-drenched trees. Every branch I brushed sent down a shower of big drops. I found the second man in a nest of boulders and brush. He was dead, sprawled over a log behind which he had taken shelter. He had been shot through the skull, evidently as he was about to fire over the log. His rifle was there, his body as it must have fallen. The leaves under the body were dry.
Standing up, I looked in the direction which he must have faced. The man at whom he was about to fire must have been among the trees not far off. I walked ahead, making no sound upon the grass.
Two brass cartridge shells marked the place from which the man—Tarlton I hoped—had fired. There were no tracks a man could see, but a quick swing through the trees behind his firing position brought me to a barely discernible boot track, and then to the tracks of a horse.
I went back to Madden, and we mounted up and took the trail. “He just backed out of the place and got away on his horse,” I said. “I doubt if he knew his man was dead. He left the other horse, in case. Or maybe he was getting away with one horse when the other man opened up on him.”
The hillside was slippery with mud. We found water standing in a well-defined track.
“He surely ain’t ridin’ for Cheyenne or Laramie,” Cotton commented.
“He lost some cows, Cotton. He’s going after them.”
“Alone?”
“He’s that kind of man. By the time he could get help those cattle might have been drifted miles away—even down into Colorado, maybe. He’s riding a hot trail.”
“How long ago, d’you figure?”
“Well, look at it. Caxton Kelsey, Queenie, and the rest were in Fort Laramie, so they must have had to leave the cattle at the Forks and drive a small bunch in to sell.”
“Then Tarlton might have reached the Forks while they were gone.”
Of course, the owner of the ranch would be there, and any riders he might have. And if it was a hideout for outlaws, some of them might be around.
We came up to the Forks at sundown. The ranch was a low-roofed log shack about thirty feet long by ten feet wide, facing three large corrals and a lean-to shed, built on the flat between two creeks. The high banks of one of the creeks formed two sides of a still larger pasture on the bench beside the creek. It had been fenced at the upper and lower sides, and in the space between were several hundred head of cattle.
In the corral were at least two dozen horses. Cotton Madden studied the scene on the lower ground, then began to build a smoke. As he rolled the cigarette, we could see a slow column of smoke rising from the chimney below. A light appeared in a window.
Hunkered down behind the crest of the hill, I sat with Cotton hiding his cigarette in his cupped palm, and watched the ranch buildings turn from gray to black, then merge into the night, leaving only the lights in the window showing. For a short time, against the red of the sky, we could see the thin gray column of smoke, but it vanished shortly after the first star appeared.
Down below us a door slammed and we heard voices, but at that distance, we could make out no words. How many were down there? There might be two, or two dozen.