Dart nodded. “You know how ’tis, Logan. He’s a fast-ridin’ man, and he may be a thousand mile from here. I’ll get word to him.”
I gathered my reins. “You’d better hole up for a while your ownself. Brannenburg is huntin’ rustlers.”
“I never been in his neck o’ the woods.”
“Don’t make no difrence. Dutch thinks he’s godawmighty these days. If you ain’t a banker or a big cattleman you’re a cow thief.”
No man in his right mind rides the same trail going back, not if he has enemies or it’s Injun country. After leaving Dart I taken to the water, swam the Green and edged along through the brush, weaving a fancy trail for anybody wishful of hunting me. I backtracked several times, rode over my own trail, swam the Green again, and stayed in the water close to the bank for a ways.
When I did come out of the water I was in a thick stand of cedar and I worked my way east toward the Limestone Ridge. Turning, I walked my horse toward the gap that led to Irish Canyon, then turned east again and crossed Vermilion Creek and proceeded on east to West Boone Draw.
Most of the time I was riding in cedar or brush or following draws so that I could keep out of sight. I saw nobody, heard nothing, yet I had a spooky feeling.
There are times riding in the hills when you know you are alone and yet you are sure you are watched. Sometimes I think the ghosts of the old ones, the ones who came before the Indians, sometimes I think they still follow the old trails, sit under the ancient trees, or listen to the wind in the high places, for surely not even paradise could be more lonely, more beautiful, more grand than the high peaks of the San Juans or the Tetons or this land through which I rode.
There’s more of me in the granite shoulders of the mountain or in the trunks of the gnarled cedars than there is in other men. Ma always said I was made to be a loner, and Nolan like me. We were twins, him and me, but once we moved we rode our separate ways and never seemed to come together again, nor want to. There’d been no bad feeling between us, it was as if we sensed that one of us was enough at one time in one place.
Riding out of the brush I looked across the country toward East Boone Draw. I just sat there for a while, feeling the country and not liking what I felt.
There was something spooky about Brown’s Hole. Maybe it was that I couldn’t get Brannenburg out of my mind. The Dutchman was hard … he was stone. His brain was eroded granite where the few ideas he had carved deep their ruts of opinion. There was no way for another idea to seep in, no place for imagination, no place for dreams, none for compassion or mercy or even fear.
He knew no shadings of emotion, he knew no half-rights or half-wrongs or pity or excuse, nor had he any sense of pardon. The more I thought of him the more I knew he was not evil in himself, and he would have been shocked that anybody thought of him as evil. Shocked for a moment only, then he’d have shut the idea from his mind as nonsense. For the deepest groove worn into that granite brain was the one of his own rightness.
And that scared me.
A man like that can be dangerous, and it made me uneasy to be riding in the same country with him. Maybe it was that I’d a sense of guilt around him and he smelled it.
Here and there I’d run off a few cattle from the big outfits. They branded anything they found running free without a brand, but let a nester or cowhand do the same and he was a rustler.
I’d never blotted any brands. I’d never used a cinch ring or a coiled wire or anything to rewrite a brand. Here and there I’d slapped my brand on mavericks I’d come across on the plains. By now there must be several thousand head of stock running loose on the plains that I’d branded.
Suddenly I’d had enough of Brown’s Hole. I was going to get out and get out fast.
And that was when I realized somebody was coming down my back trail, somebody hunting me.
7
When I was a small boy I often went to the woods to lie on the grass in the shade. Somehow I had come to believe the earth could give me wisdom, but it did not. Yet I learned a little about animals and learned it is not always brave to make a stand. It is often foolish. There is a time for courage and a time for flight.
There is no man more dangerous than one who does not doubt his own tightness. Long ago I heard a man in the country store near my home say that a just man always had doubts. Dutch Brannenburg had no doubts. And he had gathered about him men who had no doubts. They were not outlaws, they were just hard, cold men who rode for the brand and believed every nester or drifting cowhand if not a thief was at least a potential thief.
They had decided, when they lost the trail of the men they followed, that I must have aided them, and so intended to hang me in their place.
Had I remained on the trail they would have had me now, and as it was they were coming.
Nine hard men with a noose ready for hanging, and me alone with womenfolks over the mountain who waited for my coming.
A draw opened through brush head-high to a horseman, and I turned into it, praying to God that it was not a dead end. My horse was a fast walker, and I walked him now, saving what he had for a time of need.
No more than a quarter of a mile behind, they were working out my trail, and they’d do it, too. I hadn’t an idea they would not. I was a good man at hiding a trail, but these were man hunters, cow trackers, Injun fighters. Every man-jack of them was good at reading sign.
Suddenly the canyon branched; I went up the smaller canyon, followed it a couple of hundred yards, and then went to the bank and off through the cedars.
The ridge lay a half mile beyond, and I took off for it, angling up and using all the cover I could find, holding myself on a low angle to keep from their eyes as long as possible. My horse was in fine shape, and it would need to be, for I’m a big man and the trail would be long.
This was no time to lead trouble to Em Talon, so I headed off into broken country. A man who has been riding the wild trails as long as me gets a feel for them and for mountain country. Beyond that ridge up ahead were other ridges, canyons, buttes—a maze of rough country. The last fifty yards lay ahead of me and I glanced back. They were topping out at the canyon’s edge, and a far-off shout told me I’d been seen.
They done a foolish thing. They started to run at me.
Being too anxious sometimes can deal a man a hard blow. They rode fast up that slope and there’s not much that can take more out of a horse than that. I’d purposely walked my horse, taking it easy. I kept on walking, wanting both to save my mount and give them the idea I did not realize I was being pursued.
Then I topped out on the ridge and went over, onto a long shelf of above-timber line rock. I followed it for fifty yards, then doubled back and rode back on the far side of a V where the ridge had been the point. As they came up one side of the V, I was riding along the other side just over the ridge from them.
Then I trotted my horse. I taken our time, but I pushed just enough to get out of sight in the spruce trees before they topped the ridge. Once in the spruce trees I followed along as I was going, weaving among the trees for a quarter of a mile or so, turning downhill a few yards, then up, riding between trees so close together I had to pull one leg out of a stirrup to get through, crossing bare rock and changing direction as I crossed, or doubling back.
If those boys fitted my neck into their noose they were going to have some riding to do first.