But there were no wagon tracks, no tracks of small boots for which I searched. And knowing Ange, I knew that she would somehow have contrived to leave a track. She knew me, knew my methods, knew my thoroughness when on trail … and yet, there was nothing. Wherever she was, Ange had never been in this camp.
How could a wagon loaded with more than a ton of supplies, drawn by six big Missouri mules, disappear from a mesa that offered only two or three possible ways by which a wagon might leave it?
Somehow my impression was growing that these men knew nothing of Ange or the wagon. So what then? What had happened? Where was Ange? And who had shot me, and why?
And with these questions there were the others: Why were these men hunting me to kill me? Had they gone for good? Or would they be back?
My hunch was that the search had only begun. Such a desperate search would not be ended that quickly.
I moved off through the trees, hobbling painfully, crawling over fallen logs, occasionally pausing to rest.
When I had left the wagon to scout for a route off Buckhead Mesa, a route into the Tonto Basin, I had skirted the mesa itself and had seen a deep canyon leading off to the southwest It was all of five hundred feet deep, and it appeared to be wild and impassable, but there was a creek along the bottom. There would be water there, there would be game, there would be fish.
I could no longer look to the wagon for relief. From now on I was completely on my own, alone and without any possible help. And I was surrounded by enemies unknown to me.
By nightfall of a bitterly long day I had found a cave under a natural bridge. The bridge was a tremendous arch of travertine at least a hundred and eighty feet above the waters of the creek, and the cave was a place where a man might hide and where no trouble would come to him unless from some wandering bear or mountain lion. It was a place hidden by brush and the rock slabs all about, a place littered with dead trees brought down by flash floods.
Using the bow and drill method, I started a small fire, and felt warmth working into my muscles. The warmth of the sun had brought some relief from the chill, but not very much.
Making a basin by bending together the corners of a sheet of bark, I heated some water and carefully bathed my hands, then lowered my pants and looked at my leg. It was almost black from bruising, and it was swollen to half again its natural size. For perhaps an hour I sat there, soaking my wounds with a washcloth made from the remnants of my shirt. Whether it would help I did not know, but it felt good.
Then after carefully extinguishing my tiny fire, I put together a bed of evergreen boughs and crawled onto it. I fell into a fitful, troubled sleep.
Hunger woke me from a night of tormented dreams, but first of all I heated water and bathed my leg again, and drank warm water to heat my chilled body. It began to seem as if I would never be warm again, and though I was hungry, what I longed for most was clothing-warm, soft, wonderful clothing.
Sitting there, applying hot cloths to my wounds, I got to thinking on the reason for that attack on me.
As a general run, motives weren’t hard to understand there on the frontier. Things were pretty cut and dried, and a body knew where he stood with folks. He knew what his problems were, and the problems of those about him were about the same. A man was too busy trying to stay alive and make some gain, to have time to think much about himself or get his feelings hurt. It seems to me that as soon as a man gets settled down, with meat hung out to smoke and flour in the bin, he starts looking for something to fuss about.
Well, it wasn’t that way on the frontier. A man could be just as mean as he was big enough to be; but if he started out to be bad he’d better be big enough or tough enough, if he figured to last. Such folks were usually given time to reach for a gun or they were tucked into a handy noose. I’ve noticed that the less a man has to worry about getting a living, the more time he has to worry about himself.
Folks on the frontier hadn’t any secret sins. The ones who were the kind for such things stayed close to well populated places where they could hide what they were, On the frontier the country was too wide, there was too much open space for a body to be able to cover anything up.
But now somebody wanted me dead, and it was apparently that same somebody who had taken my wagon away, and Ange with it.
I could understand a man wanting a wagon, or a man wanting Ange, and it wasn’t ungallant of me to think it was more likely to be the wagon and outfit than Ange. And there was reason for that.
One thing a man didn’t do on the frontier was molest a woman, even an all-out bad woman. Women were scarce, and were valued accordingly. Even some pretty mean outlaws had been known to kill a man for jostling a woman on the street.
Pretty soon my leg was feeling better. It was easier to handle, and some of the swelling was gone.
Toward noontime I found me a rabbit. I twisted him out of a hole with a forked stick, broiled him, and ate him. But a man can’t live on rabbits. He needs fat meat.
Several times I saw deer, and once a fat, healthy elk, a big one that would dress two hundred and fifty pounds at least. But what I hunted was something smaller. I couldn’t use that much meat, and anyway, I had nothing with which to make a kill.
The afternoon was almost gone and weariness was coming over me when I fetched up at a rocky ledge below a point of Buckhead Mesa. Pine Creek and its wild canyon lay north and west of me, the mesa at my back.
Night was a-coming on, and I wished myself back at my cave. Just as I was fixing to turn back, I smelled smoke. Rather, it was the smell of charred timber, a smell that lingers for days, sometimes for weeks after a burning. That smell can be brought alive again by dampness or rainfall. I knew that somebody had had a fire, and close by.
The ledge was behind some trees and close against the face of the cliff. At this point the cliff was not sheer, though it was very steep, and ended in a mass of rubble, fallen trees, brush, and roots.
I started working my way through the trees. The smell of charred wood grew stronger, and with it the smell of burned flesh.
For the first time I felt real fear, fear for Ange. And with the fear, came certainty. I was sure that when I found that fire, when I found that charred wood and burned flesh, I would find my wagon, and I would find Ange.
chapter three
The wire-like brush was thick, and there was no getting through it in my present condition, half naked as I was, without ripping my hide to shreds. What I had to do was seek out a way around and through, and finally I made it My heart was pounding with slow, heavy beats when at last I came in sight of the burned-out fire.
I had found my wagon, and I had found my mules. But there was no sign of Ange.
The wagon and all that was in it had been burned. The mules, I discovered, had each been shot in the head, then dumped over the cliff one by one. Afterward, somebody had come around and piled brush over the lot, then set fire to it The killing of those fine big mules hurt me … there’d been no better mules west of Missouri, if anywhere.
A fine gray ash had been left by the burning of desert brush. And it was obvious that anything that scattered when the wagon struck bottom had been carefully picked up and thrown on the heap.
Whoever had done this had made a try at wiping out all sign, just as no tracks had been left on the mesa top. Suddenly it occurred to me that whoever had done this might well come back to make sure the destruction had been complete. If they returned and found me, I would be killed, for I was in no shape to defend myself, nor had I any weapon.