The cliff where the elk had made his stand was a thirty foot dropoff at the end of a long, steep mountainside, and among the rocks at its base was all the junk that had fallen down the mountain. Plenty of dried wood, and a wide variety of rocks. What I hunted was iron pyrites, and I found several chunks and broke off two pieces to use in starting a fire.
Beside the elk I made a small pile of shredded bark, crumbled dry leaves and slivers, and then I tried striking the two chunks of iron pyrites together. The sparks came easy, but it taken nearly an hour to get one into the shredded leaves and bark. Then I coaxed it, blowing gently to get a flame going.
Once a tiny flame began I fed it carefully with more bark and then with some slivers of pitch pine until it was blazing nicely. When those flames leaped up and began to crackle I felt like morning on the first day. It was no time at all until I had a steak broiling on a stick propped over the fire. Then I went back to work on my knife.
The wolves showed no mind to leave, and I didn’t blame them, so I cut out a few chunks of meat I wasn’t going to want and threw them out. They sniffed kind of cautious, then gobbled them up, but they looked surprised, too. Nobody had ever fed them before, seemed like.
In the back of my thoughts there was knowledge of those Jicarillas. They’d be of no mind to give up, and my bloody feet had blazed a pretty easy trail for them.
Keeping my fire alive I skinned out the rest of that elk, scraped some fat off the hide, and cut out the best chunks of meat. I broke off a couple of pieces of antler because it makes a good tool for chipping stone, then I bundled those cuts of meat into the elk hide, whilst ever and anon I tossed a bone or something to those wolves whose kill I had taken.
I understood how they felt, for they had been hungry, too.
My eyes kept straying to the country south of me, but I could see no movement, nothing. With Apaches your first look is often your last one.
Putting out my fire, dropping the two pieces of iron pyrites into the hide along with the meat, I swung the hide over my shoulder and taking up my staff, I moved out. Following the face of the cliff, I started north. Behind me the wolves were snarling and tearing at the carcass.
“Flagan Sackett,” I said to myself, “you owe those wolves. You surely do.”
It was slow going. The meat and hide were a burden, and in spite of the elk skin on my feet it was all I could do to step on them. What I needed was a hideout, a place where I could rest up and let my feet heal … if they would.
The desert had run out behind me. Low green hills broken by jagged outcroppings and covered by clusters of aspens or scattered pines lay before and around me. Twice I followed the crests of ridges, hidden by the scattered trees, scouting the land as I went.
It was a wild, lonely country with occasional streamers of snow in the shadows where the sun did not reach. The wind was cold off the mountains and I was a naked man with enemies behind me and nothing before me but hope.
Once I lowered my pack to gather some snakeweed that I found in a hollow, and blessed my mountain boyhood where a body had to scrape and scrabble to live.
When I could go no further I worked my way back into a willow clump where rising smoke would be scattered by the leaves and branches. Then I built a small fire of dry wood that gave almost no smoke, and made a vessel from bark. Dipping up some water from the creek I put it to boil on a stick suspended above the fire, and put some snakeweed into it. When the snakeweed had boiled for a time I bathed my feet with it, using a few handfuls of soft sage for a cloth. Meanwhile I broiled more meat.
The day had ruined my crude moccasins so I staked out the hide, scraped it some more, and cut out another pair made a little better.
After I’d eaten, during which time I moved my fire a few feet, I worked at my knife of obsidian, chipping away to get a good edge. I was clumsy. I’d seen Indians do it in a third of the time. Then I moved my fire again, scattered pine needles over the warm ground where the fire had been, and curled up there with the elk hide over me.
Just a-wishing wouldn’t take me there, but my thoughts kept drifting back to the mountain cabin where I was born, back nigh to Denney’s Gap, in Tennessee. That old cabin had been mighty comfortable, poor as it was, but unless some squatter had moved into it the cabin was alone now, and empty.
In the cold of dawn the birds were telling stories in the brush, and that spoke well of the neighborhood. As happy as they sounded it was unlikely there was anything hateful around.
My feet were sore and the muscles of my calves ached from the awkward way I’d walked trying to spare my feet. I got up, but my first step hurt so that tears came to my eyes. I sat back down, scared to think of the trouble I was in.
This was no place to stop. I had to start on again, no matter what. Suddenly the eye caught movement on the slope, and when I turned my head I saw the wolf.
It was the one with the cropped ear, and he was watching me.
Chapter II
What had become of the others I did not know, but this one was there, and I remembered it well.
“Howdy, boy!” I said, and taking up a scrap from near the fire, I threw it out toward him. He stood up then, started forward, then stopped. Turning my back on him I shouldered my pack, and taking my club in my hand, I started along the mountain.
When I came out into the open I looked back down the mountain. Far below and far away I could see something moving … several men.
My throat kind of tightened up on me. They were still coming then, and that meant I hadn’t a chance in the world. Not one.
If they stayed on my trail they were sure to get me.
The wolf had come up to where I had thrown the scrap of meat and was sniffing it.
My trouble started when Galloway and me decided to go to ranching. We wanted to find ourselves some fresh country not all cluttered up with folks. We wanted to settle somewhere in the mountains or with mountains close by, and we wanted land where there was grass and water.
We had us a talk with Tell Sackett and old Cap Rountree, and both of them told us about the country around the Animas, Florida, and La Plata rivers. It seemed that it would be a good idea to take a ride out thataway and sort of prospect the country.
Galloway had been helping Parmalee Sackett with a herd of cattle he’d bought in Arizona awhile back, so I decided to go ahead and scout the country my own self. It was as fine a ride as ever I had until I come up on those Apaches.
They spotted me and they came in after me and I decided to show them some distance, so I swung my horse around and taken out of there. About the fourth jump my horse took, his hoof went into a gopher hole and he spilled us both. I came up with my eyes and ears full of sand, my rifle on the underside of the horse, which had a broken leg, and those Indians came sweeping down on me.
There were too many of them to fight so I decided to try to face them. Indians are notional, and it just might be that no shooting and a brave face might change their way to favor me.
So I just walked out to meet them, and when they showed up I cussed them out in Apache, as much of it as I knew, and told them that was no way to treat a friend.
Well, it didn’t work. They bound my hands and feet and taken me back to camp. They were all set to find out how tough a man I was, and they began it by stripping my clothes off and staking me out in the sun. They hung a water bag close to my head with water dripping from it drop by drop within inches of my mouth, but they’d give me none of it.