From the distance the two garishly painted wagons with their teams seemed grotesquely out of place in this vast wilderness. Barker was restless and increasingly brusque. Only the fact that they were miles from anywhere and completely in Barker’s hands kept Healy from a showdown with him. Several times during halts he found Barker in lowvoiced conversation with Wycoff and Boyle, conversations that ceased abruptly when Healy appeared.
More and more Barker’s unwillingness to have Mabry along occupied Healy’s thoughts. In a country where every pair of hands was a help, Barker had been unwilling to let anyone else accompany them.
Once, stuck in deep snowrin a bottom, they were hours getting out, and made it only with- everyone, the girls included, pushing. Twice they had to hitch both teams to a wagon to draw them up steep hills. He found himself watching the backtrail, almost hoping Mabry would appear. Yet there was no reason he should join them, and no reason they should expect him. The identity of the rider of the shod horse puled him. He gathered from comments he heard and from campfire talk that there was nothing off to the north for more than a hundred miles. Yet that was the direction the rider had taken.
Once, off to one side, he found the remains of a small fire and boot tracks around it. He did not mention his discovery when he returned. Another time he found where someone had watched them from a distance, but the man wore square-toed boots, not at all like Mabry’s.
Returning to the wagon, he found Doe Guilford on the edge of his bunk playing solitaire.
“How’s it look?” Healy glanced at him. Doe was a wise old man. “Not grood. Something about Barker I don’t like.” “Reminds me of a con man I knew once,” Guilford mused, “only this one is tougher and meaner.” Healy watched Doc’s game. He was himself changing, and the country was doing it. He was wary in a way he had never been before. “Got a gun?” Doc did not seem surprised. “Uh-huh.” “Keep it handy.” “I do.” Doc placed a red card carefully.
“Lately.” The mountains loomed nearer now. A long red wall of sandstorm shut them off from the west, disappearing to the north, farther than they could see. The going was slower as they crossed more and more streams. They followed no trail, for there was none. Perhaps a horse trail, but even this they could not see under the snow.
Barker explained during a halt. “Passes north are all closed by now. We’ll use the Hole-in-the-Wall. Only opening in nearly forty miles. Place where the Cheyennes under Dull Knife came after the Custer fight.” “We can get through?” “Uh-huh. Little stream flows through. A fork of the Powder. Wild country beyond, but I know my way through.” There were no more tracks, yet Barker kept looking for them and he was uneasy. When they camped again it was in a bend of the stream in the wide gap of the red wall. All around them was hard-packed snow. The wagons formed a V against the wind.
Boyle put sticks together and made a fire while Wycoff led the horses to the stream, breaking the ice so they could drink.
Healy gathered fuel, ranging along the stream’s bank for driftwood. Janice came out of the wagon and joined him, her cheeks flushed with cold, eyes sparkling.
“Like it?” he asked appreciatively.
“Love it!” She gathered sticks and threw them into a pile.
Seeing a large deadfall, a cottonwood blown down in some storm and floated here by some flood, she pushed thro iga the brush to get the bark. Then she stood very still. After a moment she walked ahead, then paused again. She turned and called softly, “Tom!” He came quickly, clutching a heavy stick. When he saw her alone and unharmed he lowered the stick and walked up. “What’s the matter?” “I heard something. Someone was moving in the brush over there.” Behind them there was a sudden crunching of footsteps. Art Boyle pushed through the brush and stopped. There was a knowing leer in his eyes. “Sorry.” He grinned.
“Huntin’ wood?” “I piled some back there.” Janice pointed.
When he had gone, she turned to Healy. “Tom, what does it mean?” “I don’t know,” he admitted reluctantly, “only the more I think about it, the less I like-it. They never want any of us out of their sight, and for some reason Barker doesn’t want to see anybody and doesn’t want anybody to see us.” “Why?” “I wish I knew.” “Tom, do you suppose… I mean, could they be planning to rob us?” He considered that. Certainly they gave no evidence of being supplied with more than barely sufficient funds. The outfit would be worth something… and they could not know about the money concealed in the wagon. Or could they?
And if they were robbed and murdered, who would know? In more than a week they had seen nobody, and only the tracks of two riders, neither of whom would approach them.
Tom Healy looked at the wide gate of the Hole-in-theWall. Far behind them were Cheyenne and Deadwood. To the west, through that gate, lay endless miles of wilderness before they would come to Salt Lake. Western Wyoming was almost empty of white men, a wild and broken land where their two wagons would be lost in a vast white world of snow, mountains, and rivers. Nobody expected them in Alder Gulch. There was Maguire in Butte, but he was expecting to hear from them in Salt Lake, where the money was to be deposited for him. If anything happened out here it would be months before they were missed.
Healy’s face was drawn with worry. “Maybe we’re imagining things,” he said. “Nothing’s gone wrong yet.” “Tom, who could have made those tracks?” “No idea.” “King Mabry?” “Could be.” He looked at her thoughtfully. “Like him?” “I don’t know. I don’t know at all.
I feel I shouldn’t like him, yet… well, there’s something about him.” “I know.” He sighed. “Well, we’d best get back. It’s almost dark.” As they walked they picked up what dry wood they saw. “I don’t like him,” Healy admitted, “because he likes you.” She laughed. “Why, Toml” “All right, so I’m stupid.” “Anyway, I’m sure he doesn’t like me.
He thinks I’m a nuisance.” “Maybe.” Healy looked at the wall of sandstone, etched hard against the gray sky of coming night. “Like him or not, I’d give the proceeds of our next ten weeks to know he was close by. This place is beyond me, much as I behate to admit it. I’m out of my depth.” She said nothing, for there was nothing to say. Tom Healy, a quiet Irish singer, accustomed until now to the life of the Eastern theatres and cities, was out of his depth. Yet other than Tom there was only an old man who bragged of bygone days and played solitaire.
Barker was a big man, a powerful man. Then there were the sly, sneering Art Boyle and the dull, animallike Wycoff. It was not pretty to think of.
But was today a deadline? Because tomorrow they would be beyond the Wall? Because it was a dividing line?
They dumped their wood beside the fire. Boyle had water on and was cooking. The fire was sheltered and the food smelled good. Wycoff came into the circle of light wiping his hands on his buckskins. He looked across the fire at Dodie, his deep-set eyes invisible in the shadows under his brows.
Barker seemed restless, and only after a long time would he sit down. There was a subtle change in the atmosphere, something in the manner of Wycoff and Boyle that had not been present before. When Wycoff shouldered past Maggie, he almost pushed her. Healy started to protest, then held his peace.
Doc Guilford sat back from the fire with his shoulders against a wheel. His shrewd eyes were curiously alive, and they rarely left Barker.
There was no talk during supper and Maggie was the first to go to the wagon. She was not well, she said. Yet nobody paid much attention.
Dodie got up to leave, and Boyle, who was relaxed on one elbow, looked around. “Stick around, honey. Night’s young.” She merely looked at him and walked on to the wagon. He sat up, staring after her, his face sullen.
Janice got up and scoured her cup with snow.
Guilford had not moved. He sat by the wagon wheel, warming his hands inside his coat. Healy’s scalp began to tighten. Maybe it was Boyle’s surly attitude, or something in Wycoff’s careless brutality. Suddenly Healy knew the warning had come too late. The time was now.
Tom Healy got up and stretched. There was a shotgun in the wagon. It was hidden beneath his blankets. There were shells there, too, but the shotgun was already loaded. He had to have that shotgun and have it now. He started for the wagon.