He found a few tracks between the rim of Ceboletta Mesa and the lava beds, and they were fresh tracks. Some went north, some south.
Yet it was only now, seated on the rim of the mesa, studying the malpais, that he remembered the man who had disappeared from the train the night before his own arrival in Alamitos.
Of course. Kettleman — Flint. And Flint must have left the train during the long climb up the grade, and come westward across the mesa, which meant there was a horse waiting for him.
One of Nugent’s riders — Buckdun was a good listener, and he listened to all saloon conversations — had talked of the meeting with the stranger. And it had been west of the railroad. Flint had to be somewhere in this area. Buckdun knew that lava flows had their islands of enclosed grass, their pits and their peaks, their springs and streams. Leaving the train as he had, and dropping from sight so quickly, implied that Flint had proceeded to a destination already known to him.
The story that Jim Flint was actually the kid from The Crossing was too good to keep, and scarcely a person in or around Alamitos but knew of it.
Buckdun was not disturbed. Such a shooting as occurred at The Crossing, and the berserk shooting of Baldwin riders in the saloons of Alamitos following Flint’s beating implied a man who lost his head or might become reckless. And the reckless ones are soon the dead ones.
Buckdun, for example, had not a reckless bone in his body. He had refused any previous offer to kill Flint until approached by Lottie Kettleman.
He had never known anyone like her. She was so slender, so dainty, yet so completely a woman. She was breathtakingly lovely, and she knew so well how to talk to a man. She had won him over even before she casually suggested that, as he was going to do it anyway, he might as well go to Baldwin and say he had changed his mind. “After all,” she had said, “we … I mean you … can use three thousand dollars.”
There had been several of those hints. Buckdun believed he had been promised a great deal when actually he had been promised nothing. He had made no advances for the simple reason that he would not have dared. She was unlike any other woman, something very special, and Flint had made her life miserable.
Buckdun, like many of his kind, was sentimental about things other than his job. The fact that she implied a killing was necessary did not shock him. Lottie had persuaded him … or allowed him to persuade himself, and she had done it without giving anything of herself more than the aura of her presence, her lingering glances, occasional blushes, and the scent of her perfume.
Buckdun was accustomed to dealing with the roughest men, with horses and with guns. His few contacts with women had been on a pay-as-you-leave basis, and Lottie Kettleman was a woman from another world.
Like many a lesser man he was conquered by sex. The thought that he should also get the money from Baldwin struck him as eminently practical, and he was amazed that such a pretty little head could think of such a thing.
And now he was here, doing what he did best, stalking a man for the kill.
Flint returned to the hideout and remained there. He slept a lot, drank much beef broth, and cultivated his small garden. He spent a lot of time with his horses, and he broke another of them to ride with no more trouble than had been given him by the red stallion.
Doc McGinnis had told him that rest, freedom from worry, and simple food were the best things for him.
He had always liked reading, and now he had the chance. Usually he took his books to the inner pasture and read, with the horses for company. The weather had grown warmer although the nights were still cool.
On the morning of the fourth day after the shooting in the Divide Saloon he was about to venture out upon the malpais when sunlight winked in his eyes. Turning his head he caught another wink of light from the rim of the mesa. Somebody was up there, probably with field glasses.
He remained absolutely still, knowing that only movement is easily seen, and at such a distance nothing else would reveal his presence.
After several minutes he lowered himself a foot or two then, after a brief wait, dropped back into the basin. It might be that reflected light was not from a field glass, or if so the observer need not be looking for him. But that was not the way to play it. He would assume the worst.
Returning to his seat on the rock he eliminated all from his mind but the problem at hand. If he was being stalked it was because somebody wanted him dead, not an unexpected conclusion in the light of recent events.
The strongest man is he who stands alone. Flint knew he need expect no help from anyone, but then he had never expected help.
From expecting death he had come to want life, and during these past months he had come to a new appreciation of all that was about him, the vast breadth of the Western sky, the warmth of the sun, drifting clouds, the gracefulness of a moving horse.
The strong, fine feel of a gun butt in the hand, the smell of leather, the odor of sage on a hot, still day, the twittering of birds, the crunch of sand under the boots, the cold, wonderful feeling of water in the throat after a long thirst, the way a woman moves when she knows an interesting man is watching, the flight of an eagle against the sky, and storm clouds on a summer day … these were things he remembered, he felt, things that he had never appreciated until he thought they would soon be taken from him.
Life, he decided, was never a question of accumulating material things, nor in the struggle for reputation, but in the widening and deepening of perception, increasing the sensitivity of the faculties, of an awareness of the world in which one lives.
Living with this new feeling he had for the first time learned to listen. Disturbed by no people he had become aware of the smallest sound upon the lava beds. The falling of a seed pod, the rustling of a pack rat, the rustle of wind in the grass, the creak of expanding or contracting timbers subjected to heat or cold, all these he knew and his mind separated them from any unfamiliar sound.
Living with awareness had enriched his life, but it had also prepared him for the ordeal that lay before him. His eyes learned to know each natural movement, to place each shadow. If he wished to live he must live with a constant awareness of danger.
They would send Buckdun to kill him.
He must remain near the horses, for their perceptions were quicker than his, and their reactions could be a warning.
He began his arrangements at once. At a point well within the entrance passage he rigged a simple deadfall trap with a large slab of rock balanced to fall. With a thin strap of rawhide about a foot above the ground and well hidden in grass and brush, he prepared his trip and trigger.
Then he sat down in the warm sun and built a bow and an arrow, and this he rigged with the arrow directed down the passage, chest high above the ground. Due to the angle he was able to conceal the bow near one wall. Yet such traps had small chance of success against men like Buckdun, and he might decide to come across the lava itself. Making several trips, after it grew dark, he carried gravel from the stream bed and prepared a wide, apparently accidental belt of it on the sides where the hideout bowl could be approached. Anyone crossing that gravel must make a sound that could be heard below.
He did not for a minute doubt that Buckdun would find him.
From the window of the rock house he could see the bowl itself, the entrance, and part of the rim. After a small meal he lay down on his bunk and, with a carefully hooded light, read until he was sleepy.
At daylight he checked his traps, prepared a lunch, and went into the basin where the horses were kept. Lying on the rim of the lava field above the basin, he studied the terrain with care, knowing such knowledge might mean the difference between life and death. Not far away was one of those ugly pits, all of sixty feet deep, the bottom a litter of knife-edged slabs of rock that had been the roof of the blister. A fall into such a place would mean an ugly death — or eventual starvation.