“We are going to ranch here.” I swept a wide gesture at the hills. “We are going to raise cattle and horses. We are going to need help. Can your young men ride?”
“Our old men can ride, too,” he said proudly.
“Suppose you bring your folks down and camp over yonder.” I indicated an area back against the mountain. “Your people can live here and your young men can ride for us.
“There’s one more thing: your people must stay close to here at first. There are some men around who will not like it that you are here. Stay close to the ranch or in the mountains until they get used to the idea.”
The old man bedded down not far from us that night, and in the morning he was gone. Galloway he looked over at me and chuckled. “You sure bought trouble,” he said. “I never seen the like.”
“What would you have done?”
He grinned at me. “The same thing. Only I’d not have asked him if his young men could ride. That was like askin’ if a fish can swim.”
“I was really asking them if they would ride,” I said. “That there is what is called a rhetorical question. At least that’s what Nick Shadow would call it.”
“What’ll he think about this?”
“He’ll buy it. Nick will buy anything that’s contrary to the prejudices of people around him. He’s just like that. He’s just naturally contrary, and he don’t give a damn whether school keeps or not.”
There was plenty to do before the cattle came. We scouted the range we figured to use, and we gathered wood. Usually we would just throw a loop around a log and drag it to where we could use it come snow tune. There were a lot of deadfalls around, and we gathered a good many knowing a long winter was ahead and there wouldn’t always be time for hunting firewood. Then we set to notching the logs for a cabin, and we built a stoneboat for hauling stones for the fireplace. In between times one or the other of us would ride out afar from home to get an elk or a deer for meat. There were a good many beaver along the branches but we didn’t figure to worry them. The pools they make back of their beaver dams help to control floodwaters and keep the water where it’s needed, right on the land.
All the time we kept an eye open for that Dunn outfit, but none of them showed.
Galloway he rode down to Shalako after some extra grub and when he came back he said, “The Dunns are bringing in a boy that Berglund was telling about. He’s a youngster, about twenty-one or twenty-two, and he’s hell on wheels with a rifle.
“Seems that Red was in and dropped us the word, to be passed on by Berglund. This youngster is a dead shot and he’s the kind that lays up in the country and watches for a good shot. He says the Dunns came into this country from a real mean fight, and this kid done half their killing for them. His name is Vern Huddy.”
Now there’s no safe way when a sharpshooter is coming against you. He’s only got to find himself a place and wait until he gets his shot and he usually needs only one. First off, all you can do is try to keep him from getting that one shot. Don’t set yourself up for him, don’t skyline yourself or stand still out in the open, and when you ride, keep your eyes open and watch your horse. He’ll usually know before you do if anybody is around. Always keep a good background for yourself, something that swallows you up, sort of.
However, we taken to scouting the country. We’d been doing that, but now we were even more careful. We skirted our area about a hundred yards around, checking for tracks, then a circle about three hundred yards out, and then out to a quarter of a mile.
And then I saw the wolf.
I had killed a deer and cut it up to take back to camp, when I saw that wolf, so I taken a piece of the fresh meat and tossed it to him. He disappeared, but a moment later when I glanced back the meat was gone.
There was something peculiar about that wolf. Why had he left the others and taken to following me? Did I have the smell of death on me?
When I was almost back to camp I happened to turn in my saddle and caught just a glimpse of the wolf as he dodged into the brush, so I fished another chunk of meat from the hide where I carried it and dropped it into the road. Why I did so I’ve no idea. Maybe I figured it was better deer meat than me meat.
Galloway had moved our camp about a hundred yards back into the brush. He was making sourdough bread when I came in and he had a pot of beans setting in the outer coals. “I don’t like it, Flagan. Our boys should be showing up by now. I don’t like it at all.”
“Come daylight I’ll cut across the hills. I’ll study the trail.”
“You ride wary. Trouble’s shaping up. I can feel it in my bones.”
The sun wasn’t up when I mounted the grulla and taken to the hills. The old Dance & Park six-shooter was shoved down in its scabbard, but I carried my Winchester in my hands. It was not yet light, so I rode right back into the trees, riding up through the timber until I struck an old bear walk.
This was no regular trail, but even so I didn’t hold to it long, suddenly starting up the hill on an angle, and so it was that I glimpsed something down below in the brush. It was that wolf, and he was keeping ahead of me. Of a sudden he brought up short. He lifted one foot, then ducked into the brush like a shot.
My feet kicked free of the stirrups and I went off that horse like I’d been shot, and I almost was. As my feet hit dirt I heard the boom of a shot and I threw myself forward in the brush, then scrambled up and ran in a short dash to where an outcropping thrust up from the mountain. I was just in time to see a man legging it for his horse and I could see the horse, so I threw up my rifle and shot at the tree it was tied to. I made a wild guess as to where the reins would be tied, and either cut one or the horse broke it with his lunge when fragments of bark stung its face. Anyway the horse broke loose and when the man lunged into view again I put a bullet where he should have been but he dove into the brush.
Taking a running jump I hit the saddle as the mustang took off and we went down that slope just a hellin’. Another shot cut close to me and I let drive with two, firing my rifle off my hip into the brush and when that mustang hit the brush it went right on through. Out in the open beyond a man was legging it down the slope. He stopped, whirled around and came up with a rifle, and I let go at him again and he spun around and dropped.
When I came up on him he was sitting there, holding his side, an ugly look in his eyes. “You played hell,” he said. “They’ll kill you for this.”
“That’s what you tried to do to me,” I replied “Are you Vern Huddy?”
“Me? No, I ain’t. Lucky for you, I ain’t. He ain’t here yet. If I’d been Vern Huddy you’d be dead. I’m Jobe Dunn, if you want to know, cousin to Curly.”
His rifle dropped when my bullet hit him, but he was still wearing a six-shooter. Either he’d forgotten it or he was hoping I had. “Take it out,” I said, “with two fingers. Throw it just as far out as you can. And don’t try anything funny unless you want to feed the buzzards right from where you’re at.”
He drew that pistol and dropped it, and I swung down and gathered up his pistol and his rifle.
“Now you get on your feet and start for home, and don’t stop this side of there.”
“Hell, that’s a good eight miles.”
“It must be,” I agreed. “Make a nice walk for you. Better not pass out along the way or you might die before somebody gets to you.”
“You just ain’t a kindly man,” he protested.
“Nope. No more kindly than I’d be if I was lyin’ up there on that slope dead from your bullet. I guess you figured you’d kill me your ownself and then go back and brag how you’d done it. How you’d beaten Vern to the punch.”