I’ve got to look around a bit.” Mike studied the ground, then walked back to the last tracks he had seen, which he had taken care not to cross in the event he needed to examine them again.
He knew the stride of each horse now, and he measured the distance with his eye, knowing where each hoof must fall.
Nothing . . .
He paused, studying the ground, then the pine timber that surrounded the spot. It seemed absolutely uniform and as he would expect it to be.
Avoiding the trail ahead he went into the woods and walked a slow circle around his own horses, studying the ground, the trunks of the trees, everything.
He found no tracks.
He stopped, hands on his hips, scowling in concentration. They were gone, and seemed to have left no trail.
Dru was watching him, worried now. She started to speak but he lifted a hand. “Waitl I want to think.” He studied, inch by inch, the trail ahead and the trail on his right. Nothing offered a clue. The three horses and the two riders had vanished as if they had ridden off into space.
On the left the pine woods were thick, so dense as to offer no means of passing through. He had studied the trees and brush, and even if a horseman turned that way there was no place to go.
As the trail ahead was trackless it had to be on the right. Again he walked into the woods, and found no tracks. It was impossible, yet it had happened.
“Could they have backtracked?” Dru asked.
“There were no tracks except those going ahead.
I believe-was He stopped, swore softly.
“I’m a fool! Lend me your hat.” Puzzled, she removed her hat and handed it to him.
Using the hat as a fan he began to wave it over the pine needles, letting the wind he created move the needles. He worked for several minutes, then suddenly stopped. “Got it!” He pointed. “There they are!” Dru stepped her horse closer. With the pine needles wafted away, the tracks were plain.
“Ducrow is smart. He rode across the open space, then turned back the way he had come, riding over on the far side close to that wall of pines. Then he dismounted, and probably in his sock feet came back rind scattered pine needles over the tracks, letting the wind sift them down naturally.” Mounting again, they started back, but from time to time he dismounted to check for tracks. Suddenly the trail turned into a narrow gap in the pine forest, and they followed, winding their way through thick woods.
Once Mike indicated a scar on a tree where a stirrup had brushed. “Move as quietly as you can,” he whispered, “and don’t speak aloud. Voices carry. He may try to ambush us.” “Do you think he knows we’re following?” “I’m sure of it, and he knows I’m a tracker but not whether I am any good or not.” The trail was now no longer hard to follow and they made better time. Mike Bastian had a hard time keeping his thoughts from the girl with whom he rode.
What would she think when she discovered her father was an outlaw? And that he himself had been raised to be an outlaw? Pine trees thinned, and before them was a vast misty blue distance. Mike stepped down from the saddle and walked forward on moccasined feet. On the rim of the canyon were a few cedars and a pinyon pine or two. Scouting the rim he stopped suddenly, feeling the hair prickle on the back of his neck. Had they gone down that? He knelt on the rock. Yes, it was the scar of a horse’s shoe on the rock. He moved a little further, looking down. The cliff fell away for hundreds of feet, but the trail was there, a rock ledge scarcely three feet wide.
He walked back and explained. Dru nodded. “If you are ready, I am.” She paused.
“Mike, he may be waiting for us. We may get shot.” He shrugged. “I knew that when I started, Dru. These are rough men, and Ducrow has reason to hate me. Of course, he will try to kill me.” “But you needn’t have come, Mike.” He shrugged again. “I didn’t think much about it.
Your sister was kidnapped. I was there and knew what to do. It is as simple as that.” “Who are you, Mike? Uncle Voyle seemed to know about you, and that man, the one who tried to kill you, he knew you. And I heard you say Ben Curry sent you to stop them from raiding the ranch. Who is Ben Curry? And are you an outlaw?” For as long as a man might have counted to a slow ten Mike looked out over the canyon. “No,” he said at last, “I am not an outlaw, although I was raised to be one. Ben Curry raised me like his own son, planning that I should inherit the leadership.” “You lived with them?” “When I wasn’t out in the woods. Ben Curry taught me and had me taught. How to shoot, track, ride, even to open locks and safes.” “What is he like, this Ben Curry?” Dru asked. Mike hesitated, and then said, “In any other time he might have been considered a great man. In his own way, he is. Back in the days of robber barons he would have wound up with a title, I expect. “When he came west it was wild, there was little law and much of that was enforced by men big enough to get away with it. If they rustled cattle they were building their herds. If a cowboy did it he was rustling. He had a small outfit and he branded loose cattle like they all did, but the trouble was he wasn’t big enough. They came after him and he fought. He fought altogether too well, but that made him an outlaw. “He accepted the role, but he’s one of these men who can do nothing small. Soon he was organizing a bigger outfit, planning the jobs like a general plans a campaign, arranging getaways.
“He no longer went out himself, he was behind the scenes, planning it all. I doubt if any other man could have done it, for outlaws do not take to organization, and when they have money they want to spend it where there are bright lights.” “He has killed men?” “Two, that I know of. One was a justified killing. The second one? Well, he was in a hurry.” “Are you apologizing for him? After all, he was an outlaw and a killer of men.” “He was all of that, but I am not apologizing for him. He’s a man who always stood on his own two feet.
“He may have been wrong but he was always good to me.
He took me in when I had no place to go, and he cared for me.” “Was he a big man, Mike? A big old mane” His eyes avoided hers. So she knew, then?
“In many ways he was one of the biggest men I ever knew …. We’d better get started.” It was like stepping off into space, but the horses accepted it calmly enough. After all, they were mountainbred and would go anywhere as long as there was a foothold.
The canyon gaped to receive them, and they went down the narrow, switchback trail. Here and there Mike could see that work had been done. Somebody with a pick and perhaps high explosives of some kind had made a trail where none had been before.
It was late afternoon when they started down, and soon shadows began to creep up the canyon walls, reaching with hungry fingers for the vanishing sunlight. At a wider spot Mike dismounted and Dru did also. Mike carried his rifle in his right hand, ready for instant use. What was to happen could begin at any moment and he had not wanted to be caught in the saddle on a narrow trail where a wounded horse might rear and fall. His eyes sought the shadows, searching the canyon below for some sign of a house, for a fire, for movement. He saw nothing.
Supposing they were not here at all? That Ducrow had tricked him somehow? He shook his head. He could not accept that. He had to be right. He thought of Juliana and Ducrow. She could never cope with such a man. Dru, now- He grinned despite himself.
He had an idea Dru would have made Ducrow wish he’d never been born. She was lovely, but there was steel in her, too. They could hear the river now, not the roaring that he heard when crossing on the cable, but swift, silent, rushing water. Silent, at least, by comparison.
The tracks led back from the river and into a highwalled, almost hidden canyon. It seemed only a gap in the canyon walls, but it angled off to the east. He followed the tracks. It would soon be dark. The canyon turned a little and he glimpsed a fire reflecting from canyon walls.