For an hour I rested, then started down the stream. Later I found some bee weed, sometimes called stinkweed. The Navajo used it to start fires by friction as the brittle stalks, whirled between the palms, will start a fire in two minutes or less, especially if a little sand is added to increase the friction.
All the time I kept watch on the slope down which I’d come, but I saw nothing of the Apaches. Maybe the owl-hoot death signal had scared them off, or maybe it was the owl-hoot and the dead coyote together or the feeling they were getting into Ute country. Anyway, there was no sign of them.
Not that I was alone. There was something out there in the brush that was a-watching me, and it might be that wolf. A wolf has been known to stalk a man or an animal for miles, and this wolf needed nobody to tell him that I was in a bad way. He could smell the blood and the festering of some of the cuts on my feet. While I was wary of him and trusted him none at all, I still had no blame for him. He was a wild thing that had to rustle its grub as best it could, and I felt sympathy for it, which was the reason I tossed out those fragments of meat or bone.
Yet that night was the worst. The cold was cruel and my naked body could take no warmth from the remains of the elk hide. All night long I shivered, teeth chattering beside the fire that ate fuel like a famished beast so that I almost never ceased from the hunting of it.
Wild and weird were the snow-covered peaks around me, dark the gorge where I shuddered over my fire, the cold seeping through my bones, stiffening my muscles. A wind, cold and raw, came down the canyon, blowing my fire and robbing my body of the little warmth it had.
The night seemed to stretch on forever. Once I slept, awakening to find the wind gone but my fire down to a few tiny coals, and with effort I nursed it back into flame. Something padded in the brush out there so I built my fire higher and kept my club and my stone knife closer.
How many men had crouched beside such fires in the years gone by? With no more weapons than I had?
At last the dawn came, cold and bleak, and I could see where wood lay without blundering through the brush. I built up my fire, then took the hide and cut a piece big enough for fresh moccasins. I buried the piece in the ground nearby to make it soft and pliable for the work to come.
I found some duckweed tubers and ate them and ate the last of the elk meat, throwing the few bones into the brush. Hobbling up on the slope, I looked the country over with care. Now in most places a man can live if he knows something of plants and animals, and if he will take time enough to think things out. It is a man’s brain that has removed him from the animals, and it is man’s brain that will let him survive, if he takes time to think.
First, I needed a weapon. Second, I must have shelter and clothing. So I stood there, studying the land to see what it offered.
The canyon had high, rocky sides with forest climbing to the crest. There was a stream in the bottom of the gorge with willows around it, and a good bit of grass and some brush. On the ground not twenty feet away lay a well-seasoned branch fallen from a tree. By breaking off the small branches I could fix an obsidian point on it and have a lance.
The bushy-looking trees with scaly twigs and leaves, kind of silvery in the sunlight, were buffalo-berry. The Indians used to collect them to flavor buffalo or antelope meat. There were some wild roses there, too, and I could see the red of some rose hips. There was plenty of deer sign along the stream, and I might have time to make a bow and some arrows.
Limping down to the buffalo-berry bushes I started eating them, pits and all. I topped them off with some rose hips. They weren’t any banquet but they would keep me alive. If no Indians found me.
This was Ute country, but both the Navajo and the Apache came here also.
And, of course, there was the wolf.
Chapter III
There was a pole corral and two lights shining from square windows in the long, low log building. Galloway Sackett swung from the saddle and stood looking into the window for a full minute before he tied his horse.
It was little enough he could see. The window was fly-specked and dirty, but there was a bar inside, and several men. A half dozen horses stood at the hitching rail.
Four of the horses wore a brand strange to him, a Clover Three … three figure 3’s arranged like a three-leaf clover.
Galloway whipped the dust from his clothes with his hat, then started for the door. A glance at a powerful black horse stopped him. He looked at the brand and whistled softly.
Originally the brand must have been a Clover Three, but now it was a Flower. A reverse 3 had been faced to each of the other 3’s, then another set had been added, a stem and tendrils to join the petals to the stem. The job was beautifully done, obviously by a rewrite man who knew his business and enjoyed it.
“That’s a man I’ve got to see,” Galloway muttered. “He’d wear a Sherman button to a Georgia picnic!”
He pushed open the door and stepped in, then walked to the bar. As he crossed the floor he saw four men sitting at a table together, obviously the Clover Three men. In a corner not far from the bar sat another man, alone.
He wore a fringed buckskin hunting shirt, under it a blue shirt, obviously either new or fresh. He wore a low-crowned black hat, and was smooth-shaved except for a reddish mustache, neatly trimmed and waxed.
The man in the buckskin shirt wore two pistols, one butt forward, one butt to the rear … a tricky thing, for a man might draw with either hand or both guns at once. On the table were a bottle of wine, a glass, and a pack of cards.
Aside from the scruffy-looking man behind the bar there were two others in the room, a man in a dirty white shirt with sleeve garters, and a hairy old man in soiled buckskins.
Galloway Sackett, who had as much appreciation for situations as the next man, ordered rye and edged around the corner of the bar so he could watch what was happening … if anything.
The four riders from the Clover Three looked embarrassed, while the lone man in the buckskin shirt drank his wine calmly, shuffled the cards and laid them out for solitaire, seemingly unconcerned.
Finally one of the Clover Three riders cleared his throat. “Quite a brand you got there, Mister.”
Without lifting his eyes from the cards, the other man replied: “You are speaking to me, I presume? Yes, I rather fancy that brand.” He glanced up, smiling pleasantly. “Covers yours like a blanket, doesn’t it?”
Galloway was astonished, but the four riders only fidgeted, and then the same man said, “The boss wants to talk to you.”
“Does he now? Well, you tell him to ride right on in … if he has any horses left.”
“I mean … he’s got a proposition for you. After all, it wasn’t him—”
“Of course it wasn’t. How could he be expected to account for all the stock on his ranches? You tell your boss to come right on into town. Tell him that I’ll be waiting for him. Tell him I’ve been looking forward to our meeting. Tell him I’ve been wanting to say hello and goodbye.”
“Look, Shadow,” the Clover Three man protested, “the boss just doesn’t have the time—”
“That’s right, Will. Your boss doesn’t have the time. In fact he is completely out of time.” The man called Shadow placed a card, then glanced up. “You tell Fasten for me that if he will turn his remuda loose, fire his hands and ride off the range with what he can carry on his saddle he can go.
“Otherwise,” Shadow added, “I will kill him.”
Nobody said anything. Galloway Sackett tasted his rye and waited, as they all waited.
Then Will said, “Aw, give him a chance! You know he can’t do that!”
“Fasten robbed a lot of people to build his herd. Some of the cattle were my cattle, some of the cattle had belonged to friends of mine. Some of those people are no longer alive to collect what he owes them, but I intend to see that he does not profit from it. You tell him he’s got twenty-four hours … no longer.”