Right then I pushed my luck. I knew I had them off balance and trying to figure it out, so I just naturally got up, put on my hat, and then reached for my gun belt.
“Lay off that!” It was that blocky-built puncher again, but I just paid him no mind.
“Go ahead,” I said. “A shot at an unarmed man is just what I’d expect of a woman-killer’s outfit.”
He was white-mad, but like I figured, these men were decent enough. I’d punched cows with a lot like them – good, hard-working men ready for a wild time in town or a shooting fight, but decent men. He didn’t shoot, and I slung that belt around me and stood there an armed man, prepared to take my chances with whatever happened.
I’d pushed my luck right out of a corner and into a place where I had a break, anyway. But I wasn’t about to stand back and wait.
“You boys were set on me, and you been hunting me high and low. Up to now I don’t hold it against you, because you were told some tale to start you. Now you know the truth, and if you keep on a-chasing me, I’m going to start chasing back.”
They weren’t even listening to what I was saying. One of them turned right around on me. “Was what you said about your wife true?”
“I raised a marker over her grave, and if we were to hunt long enough we could find pieces of that wagon. And I can take you to folks in Globe and away east who knew us and saw us headed west.”
“You were in Globe?”
“My wife and me, we spent two days and nights in that town just three weeks ago come Sunday.”
They swapped looks, and I could see that meant something to them, but I wasn’t sure what. That tough young puncher, he all of a sudden stood his rifle down and dug into his shirt pocket for the makings. “I don’t know about you fellers,” he said, “but I’ve got a feelin’ I’d be better off in Texas.”
A thought came to me. “About Globe, now. Were you boys in that town three weeks ago?”
“Yeah … the whole shootin’ outfit. We spent several days there. Fact is, we were supposed to stay longer, but then we got orders to move out, sudden-like, on Monday morning.”
That had been the morning we left . . . Suddenly I was remembering three men who had ridden past our wagon, and one of them had turned to look back at Ange.
The same man had been buying supplies at the same time we were. I tried to place him, but all I could remember was that he was a big man.
Well, I was hungry, and a man isn’t going to go far on an empty stomach. Not that I hadn’t put miles behind me without food, but right now I had it with me to cook, and I was hungry as a Panhandle coyote. So I put coffee water on the fire and said, “You boys might as well set up. You got something to think about, and this here’s as good a place as any.”
They moved up to the fire, and I went rousting through my duffle, getting out the bacon and the rest. Then I looked around at them and asked, innocent-like, “Who d’ you boys ride for?”
They just looked at me. They might not like what I’d told them, but they weren’t going to sell out their boss. They were good men. Only they didn’t need to tell me, and maybe they thought of that, too. All I had to do was look past them at the brands on their horses-a capital A lying on its side… Lazy A.
There had been cattle with that brand in some of the country I’d ridden through, and there had been a horse of that brand at the hitch rail of the saloon when I first rode up to Globe after leaving Camp Verde.
A cattleman or any rider in range country just naturally notices any brand he sees on the stock along the way. He has cattle on his mind, and brands are one of the biggest parts of his job.
Over coffee one of these gents suddenly said, “We got no call to believe what you said, only something about this here has a smell we don’t like. You don’t size up like any dry-gulching killer. I got a feelin’ you been talking truth.”
“All I ask,” I said, “is not to stand in my way.”
“There’s some that will.”
Evidently they had no news from Globe, so I decided to let them have it, and now. “One tried,” I said, “last night down to Globe.”
I told them about it, and when I finished they sat still for a moment or two, and then one of them said, “I mind that gully.”
“Andersen,” another said, “Curley Andersen.”
“He was close on to bald.”
“I know. That’s why we called him Curly. Well, maybe he would try it that way. You beat him to the draw?”
“Mister,” I said, “when it comes to fighting, a body makes up his own rules with me. I’ll fight him fair as long as he shows himself of a like mind. This Curly Andersen tried to ambush me, so he laid out the rules and I played according.”
Reaching for the pot, I filled my cup, then the cups of the others.
“Only maybe he figured I’d made the rules. He said I’d tried to ambush his boss back in the Mogollons. Anyway, he drew cards in a tough game.”
When they had gone, I saddled up and rode out of there, making it a policy never to stay too long in one place when I knew I had enemies, and especially when they had me located.
All the time I was keeping my thoughts away from Ange. Whenever she came to mind I felt a vast, aching emptiness inside me, and a loneliness such as not even I had ever known.
Three days passed, three days of riding and resting, three days of prowling like a lonely wolf, pushing my horse down old trails and finding new ones through rock and brush and butte. And all the while I was working out the trails of those who hunted me, and of the Lazy A cattle, slowly tracing out the maze they made to find my way to their headquarters.
It was a high and lovely country. I rode through broken land crested and ridged with pines, with beautiful meadows and streams that rushed along over stones with a happy chuckling sound. Cold water it was, from fresh-melted snow.
My strength was building back, and I took good care to give my horses rest and to stake them each night on good grass. Each time I made myself a fire I ate at that spot, and then moved on for a mile or two, camping in some unlikely place, and wiping away all traces of my camp when I left. And every day I varied my way of going, wanting to weave no pattern they could read.
More and more I was finding horse tracks, and I knew I was getting closer. My enemy had men beside him, and I rode alone. My enemy had spare horses, and many eyes with which to seek me out, and I had only two. But there was Indian in my nature if not in my blood, and I hunted my way across country like a ghost, only the butt of that Colt was near my hand, and my rifle ready for use. Sometimes I made dry camp, chewing on jerky or a crust of bread, and always I avoided human beings.
It was a month to the day of the time Ange had been killed when I saw the strange rider.
The weather had turned bad, and I had found a deep hollow under an overhang near the top of the ridge that divided Cibecue Creek from Carrizo Creek. It was wild and lonely here, with only the ghost of an old trail along the ridge that showed no signs of travel, none at all. The trail might have been made a hundred years ago, judging by its vagueness. But in arid country, or even on the lonely ridges in forested country, such trails, used long ago by Indians, seem to last forever.
Thunder rumbled above the rim, dark now with forest and with the impending storm, and a few scattering drops of cold rain fell. The shelter I had was good, although higher on the ridge than I liked, even though the rim towered almost a thousand feet higher three or four miles to the north.
A man riding wild country never stops looking for camping spots. If he doesn’t use them at the time, he may next week or next year, or five years later. It is one of those unconscious things a body takes to when riding free of towns and ranches.