I skirted a low hill and drew up in the shade of a clump of mesquite to contemplate. This was another time when the maiden fair saw me only as the Norman knight.
8
So I’d been given my walking papers, and now there was nothing to keep me here. Penelope Hume had said not a word to keep me, and I was no longer responsible. Moreover, this was not the kind of country I cottoned to, wishing more for the sight of trees and real mountains right now, although I’ll say no word against the far-reaching plains, wherever they lie.
The Rabbit Ears were basaltic rock—or lava, if that comes easier. There were ancient volcanoes to the north, and much of this country has been torn and ruptured by volcanic fires long ago. Where the wind had swept the flat country clear it was sandstone.
The Rabbit Ears could scarcely be called a mountain, as I’ve said. They were more like big mounds, falling away on all sides. At their highest they stood about a thousand feet above the surrounding country.
Circling wide, I drifted on across country to the north and watered at Rabbit Ears Creek, then followed the creek toward the west. On the northwest side of the mountain I found myself a notch in the rocks screened by brush and low trees, where there was a patch of grass subirrigated by flow from the mountain.
I staked the dun out on the grass and, swapping boots for moccasins, I climbed up the mountain. It was sundown, with the last rays of the sun slanting across the land and showing all the hollows.
There was a thin line of smoke rising from the brush along Rabbit Ears Creek; more than likely this was the camp of Loomis, Penelope, and Flinch.
Over east, maybe seven or eight miles from there, I caught a suggestion of smoke, and near it a white spot. It was so far off that had the sun not picked up that white I might never have noticed it. Even the smoke might be something my expectation had put there after I glimpsed that spot of white. For that white could be nothing but a wagon top … the Karnes outfit, or somebody else.
What about Hooker? He had a bad shoulder. Tex and Charlie Hurst would have aching heads. Would they quit now? I decided it was unlikely.
William Coe would be at his Roost over on the Cimarron, not nearly as far away as I wished, for his was a tough, salty outfit, and Coe was game. He’d fight anything at the drop of a hat; he’d even drop it himself.
His outfit had raided Trinidad, had even raided as far east as Dodge, and had stolen stock from Fort Union, government stock. They had nerve. If one of those boys rode for Coe, I’d be in trouble.
On the north side of Rabbit Ears all the ravines ran down toward Cienequilla Creek. The location of the box canyon was unknown to me, and it might be anywhere between the mountain and the creek, or even over on the other side.
After I’d walked and slid back down the mountain I shifted the dun’s picket-pin to fresh gazing and made myself a pot of coffee from dry, relatively smokeless wood. In the corner where I was the fire couldn’t be seen fifteen feet away.
A man on the dodge, or in Indian country, soon learns to watch for such a place as this. His life depends on it. And if he travels very much his memory is soon filled with such places. As mine was.
Sitting beside the fire, I cleaned my pistol, my Winchester lying at hand, just in case. Then I checked both of my knives. The one I wore down the back of my neck inside my shirt collar slid easy and nice from its scabbard. A time or two in passing through brush or under low trees I’d gotten leaves or bits of them into the scabbard, and I knew that in the next few days I might need that knife almighty bad.
Later, lying on my blankets, I looked up at the stars through the leaves. My fire was down to red coals and my pot was still full of coffee. Tired as I was, I was in no mind to sleep.
My ears began making a check on all the little sounds around me. They were sounds of birds, of insects, or of night-prowling animals, and were familiar to me. But in every place some of the sounds are different. Dead branches make a rattle of their own; grass or leaves rustle in a certain way, yet in no two places are the sounds exactly the same. Always before I slept I checked the sounds in my mind. It was a trick I’d learned from an old Mexican sheepherder and mountain man.
Of course the dun was there, and as I’ve said, there’s nothing like a mustang to warn a man if he hears something strange. For that matter, I was of the same breed. I was a mustang man—a man riding the long prairie, the high mesa, the lonely ridges.
That Penelope now …
This was no time to think of her. Forcing my thoughts away from her, I considered the situation. Sylvie Karnes and her brothers wanted that gold, and they would stop at nothing to get it. I’d never come across anybody quite like them, and they worried me. I’d known plenty of folks who would kill for money, for hatred, or for a lot of reasons, but I’d met nobody so willing to kill just to be killing as they were, or appeared to be.
Sure as shootin’, that coffee she fixed for me had been poisoned. No telling how many dead lay behind them, or lay ahead, for that matter.
Loomis would be after that gold, but he wanted the girl too. He would need her until they got the gold and after that? That was when Penelope Hume would come face to face with a showdown, and all alone.
Had she really wanted to go on without me? Or had they forced her to get rid of me? She had not looked my way even once, there at the end. Maybe they had talked her into it, but it might be that Loomis had threatened her.
Law and order were made for women. They are hedged around by protection. But out in the wilderness they are only as safe as men will let them be. Penelope Hume was a long way from any law, and it was likely that nobody even knew where she was, or where she was going. Loomis would have seen to that. If she never appeared again, nobody would be asking questions; and if anyone did ask, no one would answer. Many a man and many a woman disappeared in the western lands, left in an unmarked grave, or in no grave at all.
Whatever, law there might be would be local law, administered only in the towns. Few officers ever rode out into the unsettled country unless they were Federal officers, and most of those were active only in the Indian Territory.
These were my thoughts as I mounted up and worked my way on down the mountain, keeping to whatever cover I could find. That box canyon would not be easy to find, but should be simpler for me, who knew this kind of country, than for either Loomis or the Karnes outfit.
Suppose I could get there first and get that gold out? Finders was keepers, wasn’t that so? That was how I felt, and yet the idea made me uneasy. There would be nothing for that girl, for Penelope. I wasn’t worried about Sylvie … her kind could always get along. Penelope was something else, and I couldn’t leave her without a two-bit piece to her name.
She was pretty, and she was a city girl. Both qualities put her in a bad spot. She was pretty enough to attract trouble, and had too much of the city in her to know how to cope with this kind of country.
Right beyond me was a place where the canyon down which I was riding sort of opened out. There were trees along the creek ahead, and trees and brush along the mountainside. Slowing down, I peered ahead, searching for any sign of movement. I’d slip down there, I thought, find that box canyon, find the gold if I could, and then round up Penelope and the others and get the girl out of trouble.
It seemed to me she was safe until they either found or failed to find the gold; after that she would be fair game. Only I was uneasy, leaving her at all. She needed somebody at hand to care for her.
Ahead of me was some low brush; on the side of the mountain a few pifion. I started to swing around a big boulder when the corner of my eye caught a flash of light and I ducked. Something hit me a wicked blow on the skull, and the dun shied violently. A report went racketing off down the canyon, followed closely by another, and then I was laying on the ground among some rocks, looking at a pool of red on the sand.