“Beginner’s luck,” I said. I looked over to where Miller and Clint were saddling Stan’s horse. “OK to walk him now?” I asked.
“Yeah, he looks to be settled a bit,” Miller said, still grinning.
I pulled Ned in beside Jack’s horse, and the two of us rode on back down the road.
“You looked pretty fancy there, little brother,” he said.
“I picked the wrong horse,” I told him. “That little exhibition back there was all his idea.”
“How the hell’d you manage to stay on?”
“Clint warned me about this knothead in the truck on the way up. I was ready for him. You might not have noticed, but I had a pretty firm grip on this saddlehorn.”
Jack laughed. “You two didn’t slow down long enough for me to see that part of it.”
I gingerly felt my rump. “I sure hope he doesn’t feel he has to go through this every time we start out.”
Jack laughed again, and we plodded down the road.
“How’s this Miller strike you?” I asked him.
“I don’t think I’d want to cross him.”
“Amen to mat, buddy,” I agreed.
“‘He sure as hell acts like he knows what he’s doin’,” my brother said.
“He’s an old-time Marine,” I said. “Him and Clint both.”
“McKlearey’ll cash in on that,” Jack said, unbuttoning his quilted hunting vest.
“Wouldn’t doubt it.”
“How’s Clint? He seemed pretty grouchy back at the house.”
“That’s mostly bark,” I said. “We talked quite a bit on the way up. Like I told you, he was the one that warned me about this horse and his little habits.”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “I noticed that he was callin’ you by name when you guys got down from the truck.”
We turned around and rode back on up to the others. Stan and Sloane were mounted now and were starting off down the road. Sloane seemed to be puffing pretty hard. Maybe his horse had him a little spooked, or maybe his down-filled parka was a little too warm.
Jack and I got down and helped Miller and Clint load up the packhorses. Then Miller called in the others.
“Now here’s how we’ll go,” he said after they had dismounted. “I’ll lead out and Clint’ll bring up the rear with the packhorses. Don’t try nothin’ fancy along the trail. Let the horse do all the work and most of the thinkin’. Just set easy and watch the scenery go by. The horses know what they’re doin’, so trust ’em.”
He showed us how to tie our rifles to the saddle where they’d be out of the way. His own gun case was lashed to the back of one of the packhorses, and Clint’s .30-30 was tucked in beside it.
I think we all saw the quick glance that passed between Miller and Clint when we hauled our pistol belts out of McKlearey’s car.
“Bears,” Sloane explained, almost apologetically.
“Bears!” Clint snorted. “Ain’t no damn bears up that high.”
“Oh,” Sloane said meekly. “We thought there might be.”
Miller scratched his mustache dubiously. “Can’t leave ’em here,” he said finally. “Somebody might come along and steal ’em. I guess you’ll have to bring the damn things along. They might be some good for signalin’ and the like.” He shook his head and walked off a ways by himself, his fists jammed down into the pockets of his sheepskin coat and that big hat pulled down low over his eyes.
We all looked at each other shamefacedly and slowly strapped on our hardware.
“Looks like the goddamn Tijuana National Guard,” Clint muttered in disgust.
We stood around like a bunch of kids who’d been caught stealing apples until Miller came back.
“All right,” he said shortly, “get on your horses and let’s get goin’.”
We climbed on our horses — Ned didn’t even twitch this time — and followed Miller on up to the end of the road and onto the saddle trail that took off from there. The trail moved up along the side of a ridge. Once we got up a ways, the pines thinned out and we could see out for miles across the heavily timbered foothills. The horizon ahead of us was a ragged line of snow-covered peaks; to the east, behind us, it faded off into blue, hazy distance. The grass up here was yellow and knee-high, waving gently in the slight wind that followed us up the ridge. I could see little swirls and patterns on top of the grass as gusts brushed here and there.
It was absolutely quiet, except for the horses and the sound of the wind. I felt good — I felt damned good.
At the top of the ridge we stopped.
“Better let the horses blow a bit,” Miller said. “Always a good idea to let ’em settle into it easy.” He seemed to have gotten his temper back.
“Do we have quite a bit farther to go?” Sloane asked, breathing deeply. He looked pretty rough. I guessed that he was feeling the lack of sleep.
“We’re just gettin’ started,” Miller said. “We’ll cut on up across that saddleback there and then down into the next valley. We stay to the valley a piece and then go up to the top of the other ridge. Then on into the next hollow. ‘Bout another twelve miles or so.”
Sloane shook his head and took another deep breath. “I think I’ve got this damned belt too tight,” he said. He opened the parka, undid his gun belt, looped it a couple times around the saddle horn and buckled it. He eased off on his pants belt a couple notches. “That’s better,” he said.
“I told you your beer-drinkin’ habit would catch up to you someday, Calvin,” Jack said laughing.
“Doe!” Miller said suddenly, pointing up the ridge at a deer that had stopped about a quarter of a mile away and was watching us nervously.
Sloane pulled a pair of small binoculars out of his coat pocket and glassed the ridge. “Where?” he demanded.
“See that big pine off to the left of that patch of gray rock?”
“Back in the shade a bit,” I said.
“I don’t — oh, yeah, now I see her.”
We watched the doe step delicately on over the ridge and go down into the brush on the other side.
“There’s a big game trail up there,” Miller said. “I followed it down last winter during the big snow. It was the only place I could be sure of the footing.”
“On horseback?” Stan asked.
“I was leadin’ ‘im,” Miller said. “He’d gone lame on me up the ridge a ways. I had to hunker down under a ledge for two days till the snow eased up.”
Stan shook his head. “That would scare me into convulsions,” he admitted. “Did you ever think you weren’t going to make it?”
“Oh, it give me a few nervous minutes,” Miller said. A stray gust of wind ruffled that white mustache of his. He squinted up the ridge, his face more like rock than ever.
McKlearey came up. He’d been hanging back, riding about halfway between the rest of us and Clint, who was a ways back with the packhorses. Maybe he was ashamed of himself because Miller’d had to speak to him about running the horse. He reined in a little way from the rest of us and sat waiting, watching us and rubbing at his bandaged hand.
“It’s good country up here,” Miller was saying. “Ain’t nobody around, and things are nice and simple. Air’s clean, and a man can see a ways. Good country.”
I reached out and scratched Ned’s ears. He seemed to like it. My eyes were a little sandy from lack of sleep, but Miller was right — you could see a ways up here — a long ways.
17
About three thirty that afternoon we crossed the second ridge and dropped down into a little basin on the far side. There were several small springs in the bottom, all feeding into a little creek that had been dammed a couple times by beavers. There were several old corrals down there — poles lashed to trees with baling wire — and a half dozen or so tent frames back under the trees. You wouldn’t have expected to find a place like this up on the mountainside.
“Old sheep camp,” Miller said as we rode down into the basin. “Herders are all down now, so I figured it’d be about right.”
“Looks good,” Jack said.
“Got water, shelter, and firewood — and the corrals, of course,” Miller said. “And the deer huntin’ up on that ridge is about as good as any you’ll find.” He nodded to a ridge that swelled on up out of the scrubby timber into the open meadows between us and the rockfalls just below the snow line.
We reined up in the camp area and climbed down off the horses. My legs ached, and I was a little unsteady on my feet. We tied our horses to the top rail on one of the corrals and walked around a bit, looking it over.