From all she had to say it was quite a book, and she was taken with this here Lancelot who went around sticking things with a spear. There wasn’t much I could say, not having read the book except to comment that it must take a mighty big horse to carry a man with all that iron on him. I don’t think she thought that comment was very much in the line of her thinking. And she kept talking about chivalry and romance and her eyes got kind of starry until I began wondering where I could buy myself one of those suits.
Anyway, we had us a nice talk and I was right sorry to finish the coffee and those little cakes, but it did look like we were going to part friendly when all of a sudden she says, “You aren’t the only pebble on the beach.”
What she meant I didn’t know for awhile, and then she said, “Mr. Huddy has been calling on me. He’s very nice.”
And before I thought what I was saying I said, “He’s the one who has been trying to kill us. He hides up in the hills and shoots at us. He killed one of our Indian boys the other day.”
Her face went kind of white and she jumped up so quick she almost upset the table, and then she said “Flagan Sackett, I never want to see you again!”
And she left out of there.
Berglund, he was polishing a glass and he said, looking at nobody, “It’s better to have them mad at you than indifferent.”
“Oh, shut up!” I said politely, and walked out of there, mad at me, mad at Berglund, and mad at Meg Rossiter.
Chapter XVI
What I said was true, but that didn’t make any difference and it was the wrong thing to say right then, and to her. Meg Rossiter was a lone girl in a country filled with men, most of them older than her. There weren’t any parties or dances or box-socials or the like to go to. She hadn’t much chance to be a girl or to flirt.
Dumb as I was about women I’d watched them enough to know they like to play one man off against another, and like to feel wanted even if they ain’t. Now Meg had set her cap or seemed to for Curly Dunn, and right away I come around saying he doesn’t amount to much, and then Curly set to to prove me right.
No matter what she said to me she must have heard talk at the store. Johnny Kyme was a married man and his wife was a friend of Meg’s and there was no nonsense about her. She knew what a skunk Curly was, but that didn’t help Meg. Then we have a nice get-together like, and then she springs this Vern Huddy on me. Maybe she wants to make me jealous, maybe she just wants to feel courted, but right away I have to go make him out as bad as Curly or worse.
Back in the woods next morning we got together for a bit. Logan was there, Parmalee, Galloway, and Nick Shadow. Charlie Farnum came up as we started to talk. Everybody knew what I was starting out to do, and everybody knew it was a life-and-death matter. I was going into the woods after a man who was a dead shot, who moved like a cat, and had the senses of a wild animal, or so we’d heard. One was going to be dead before I came out of the woods. I knew it and they knew it.
He seldom shot, almost never missed, and of the few reported to have lived after he shot them, none could say they had seen him or even knew he was about.
We talked a mite of everything else and then I got up and taken my rifle. “I’m not going to take a horse,” I said. “When you have a horse and you leave it you’ve got to come back to it and the killer knows it. I don’t want to be tied to anything.”
It was early morning and a mist lay in the valleys. All was very still. At such times every sound in the forest seems magnified if there is a sound, but I heard nothing, moving carefully, taking my time. The route I chose was roundabout. Where Vern Huddy would be I had no idea, only that he would likely not be where I would expect to find him.
My first destination was the spot from which he had fired. I wanted to see what he liked in the way of firing positions, and if possible pick up a clear track so I could recognize it at any other time. So far I was working blind.
Taking my time, I worked my way through the woods to the north, found the mouth of Little Deadwood Gulch and worked my way across it, checking for tracks. I found the tracks of elk, deer, and some smaller game, and started up the gulch, moving a few yards at a time. Part ot that was the need to study the mountain to use the best cover, and part because of the altitude.
Just short of timberline, which I figured to be about ten thousand feet up, I crossed the gulch and worked my way along the flank of the mountain. By noon I was holed up in a clump of spruce looking over at Baldy.
For over an hour I sat there with Logan’s spyglass, which I’d borrowed, studying the side of Baldy from the bottom of Deadwood up to the top. First I swept it side by side at ten-foot levels, searching for life. Twice I glimpsed deer feeding quietly. Birds occasionally flew up, but none seemed disturbed.
Then I checked for possible approaches to Baldy, found a good one and promptly discarded it. Undoubtedly he had seen it, too, and would be watching it and occasionally making a sweep of the hillside. There was nothing.
Keeping low, I worked my way down into the gulch and up the other side. It needed an hour to find his firing position. He had built up a mound of earth on which to rest his rifle and he himself had a comfortable seat while he was waiting.
He had a good field of fire with no obstructions, and the actual distance was about four hundred yards, give or take a few. He had made no effort to conceal the fact that he had been here, probably doubting anybody would ever make a hunt for him or find the place. Or he might have left it for bait.
That idea hit me as I squatted on my heels and I just let myself go and hit the ground on my shoulder and rolled over into the brush just in time to hear the echo of a shot. It wasn’t until I was thirty feet off and still moving that I remembered hearing that bullet. It had been a close thing.
He knew where I had disappeared and I had no idea where he was shooting from so I worked my way, moving swiftly but with no sound down the slope, then along the flank below his first firing position.
Was he pulling out? Or stalking me? No sooner had I asked the question than I knew the answer. He was stalking me. This Vern Huddy was confident. He might even be cocksure. He figured he was better at this game than anybody else, and maybe he was. If he was, I was a dead man.
Crouching for a moment in a sheltered place, yet one from which I could watch around me, I considered the situation. There was a good chance that after firing the shot that killed the Ute, he had pulled back to the slope above and just waited. He figured that somebody would come looking and he would get another one.
Some time passed and he had probably begun to relax. Maybe he was beginning to think nobody would come, and somehow I had slipped in and he hadn’t seen me at first … which was almighty lucky for me. Or else there’d been a branch or something in the way of his shot and he had to wait until I moved.
There was nothing about this I liked. He was hunting me and that wasn’t the way I wanted it. He’d probably had a few days to study that slope of Baldy and knew it better than me.
How about the back side? Maybe he knew nothing about that part of the mountain and mayhap I could just lead him around there and get him into country strange to both of us. To do that I had to stay alive long enough.
The worst of it was, he was above me. Like a ghost I moved along the mountainside, careful to break no stick, to let no stones rattle, to let no branch snap back. My clothes were soft, and the leaves brushing me made no sound that could be heard more than a foot away.