Several times during the night I awakened, and each time I lay listening into the night. Finally, near daybreak, I decided not to go back to sleep. Many a night before this I had stayed awake for hours, for in my kind of life a man never knew when he would have to come up shooting.
A long time I lay there thinking of other nights in other places when I had stayed awake listening to the night sounds. It wasn’t much of a life, being on the dodge all the time.
After a while I began to hear something. At first it wasn’t really a clear sound, only of a sudden my ears seemed to sharpen, for something was moving out there, something that made no sound I could rightly make out.
I looked toward the fire … a few red coals still glowed there, and Harry Mims, wrapped in two blankets and a ground sheet, lay dark and silent beside the fire. I could hear his faint breathing.
I reached out with my left hand and took up the edge of the blanket that covered me and put it back carefully. The moccasins I always had with me were close by. Holding my pistol in my right hand, I picked up the moccasins with my left and eased my feet into them.
Picking up a small stone, I tossed it at Mims. It struck his shoulder and his breathing seemed to stop, then it went on again. Was he awake? I had a hunch he was, awake and as ready as a body in his shape could be.
All was quiet, yet with a different sort of quiet now. In the area north of our camp even the night sounds had stopped. Then I heard a faint whisper—the sort of sound a branch can make scraping the side of a man’s jeans. Somebody was approaching—perhaps more than one.
I came smoothly and silently to my feet and took a careful step backward, where I was nearer the tree and partly shielded by its branches. Now, even if my bed was seen, I myself was blended into the darkness of the tree.
That gun felt good in my hand, but suddenly I put it back in its holster and drew my knife. A knife was better for quiet work, in close.
10
I waited there in the darkness, knife in hand, thankful its edge was razor-sharp. I held it low, cutting edge up.
Down in the creek there was a rustle of water. Cottonwood leaves whispered softly to the breath of wind. I could smell the wood smoke from the fire, the faint aromatic scent of crushed leaves. Whoever was approaching moved with great skill, for there was not another whisper of sound.
My leg muscles grew tired, but I did not want to shift my feet in a movement that might make even the slightest sound. Anyone who moved as silently as this unknown one would also listen well, for the two are one, to listen and to be conscious of others listening.
Then I saw a shadow where no shadow had been before. I had to look a second time to be sure my eyes were not tricking me into believing something had changed. But the shadow was there. I made a slight move forward, and then my name was breathed. “Mr. Sackett?”
It was Penelope.
My relief was so great that all I could say was, “Where have you been?”
She did not answer, but came swiftly toward me. “Who is that by the fire?”
“Harry Mims. Have you heard of him?”
“I know of him. You’d best awaken him. We must go quickly, before it is light.”
“What’s happened?”
“Have you ever heard of a man called Tom Fryer? Or Noble Bishop?”
“Are they in this now?”
“Sylvie brought them in. I don’t know where she found them, but from all I hear, this only makes things worse.”
“Is Ferrara with them?”
“There’s a slim, dark man. I didn’t hear his name. They came into camp tonight, and they seemed to know you.”
They knew me all right—it could not have been worse. There were not three more dangerous men west of the Mississippi than those three.
“You are right,” I said. “We’d better move.”
Mims was sitting up. As we neared the fire he used his good hand to help himself up. “I heard. Let’s get out of here. Let’s get the gold and run.”
It took only a few minutes to roll up our beds and to bring up the horses. Penelope would ride Mims’s extra horse, for she didn’t have one of her own.
We led our horses to the stream, then mounted and crossed. Mims took the lead, for he was sure he knew where the box canyon lay. I didn’t like the sound of a box canyon, for that meant a trap—a canyon with only one entrance, and the chances were it had steep sides. It smelled like trouble—but then, everything smelled like trouble. I wished again that I had had sense enough to ride out of here before this.
Penelope was close beside me. “You’re no tenderfoot,” I said. “You couldn’t move like that if you were.”
“I grew up in the woods in Virginia. I was stalking deer before I was ten.”
She’d had no right to make me feel she was helpless, I told myself. It was downright dishonest. Why, she was as good in the woods as I was myself. And she had saved my bacon.
“You pulled me out of trouble.” I said it a little grudgingly, for I wasn’t used to being bested by a woman. “Thanks.”
“That’s all right,” she said.
“Where’s Loomis?” I asked.
“Somewhere around. I lost track of him.”
It seemed to me she was neither worried nor sorry. Maybe she already had him figured out. But how about me? How did she know I wouldn’t take all that gold and run? I gave her an uneasy look. Could be I was guessing wrong all the way around. But one thing I felt pretty sure of—she wasn’t anything like Sylvie Karnes.
When my thoughts turned to Ferrara, Fryer, and Noble Bishop, I felt a chill. Any one of them was bad enough. All three at once I wanted no part of.
Noble Bishop was a gunman. They told it around that he’d killed twenty men. Cut that by half and it might be true—at least, those killed in known gun battles. Whoever he might have dry-gulched I’d never be knowing, although that sort of thing was more to the taste of Fryer than of Bishop. As for Ferrara, he was a knife man.
All three were known men, hired killers, men for whatever was needed when there was violence to be done. No doubt Sylvie had gotten wind of them through Hooker or one of the others, and she had wasted no time in hiring them.
Harry Mims was old, and he might be crippled now, but he led us as swiftly through the trees as though he could see in the dark. We followed, and when he brought up at the canyon’s mouth we came up close to him.
“I don’t like it,” he said. “The place worries me.”
“You’re scared?” I was surprised, for that old man was tough. At any other time he might have gone for his gun at the very question.
“Call it what you like. Maybe the Indians know what they’re talking about. I don’t like that canyon, and never did.”
“You’ve been here before?”
“Yes … It’s a litter of bones in there. More than one man has died in that place.”
“Sure. Nathan Hume’s pack train died there, or most of them. Their bones will be there—what else would you expect?”
“There’s others,” he said soberly. “I tell you, I don’t like the place.”
“Let’s get the gold then, and get out. If we don’t do that, we might as well leave right now, because they’ll be coming and I’m not one to fight without cause.”
The dun didn’t like the canyon either. He tried to turn away, fought the bit, and did all he could to avoid entering. The other horses were nervous, but none of them behaved as badly as the dun.
We rode in, darkness closed around us. Up ahead of us, Harry Mims coughed, and then drew up. “Like it or not, we’ll have to wait until daylight. There’s a pool covered with green scum, and there’s some holes around here too. God knows what’s in them, but I’d not like to be.”
We sat out horses then, no one of us wanting to get down from the saddle, though no one of us could have said why. It was simply an uneasy feeling we had, and the way the horses acted. I know I had no wish to trust the dun with me out of the saddle, unless he was strongly tied.