The roan I was riding had been showing me something more than I’d expected. Talon was a horse breeder as well as a builder, and if this horse was any example he was a man with talent. Judging by what Em had said during one of our sort of rambling talks, Talon had bred Morgan stallions to the best of the mustang mares he could find, and the roan seemed to have the brains of the Morgan and the all-around wild animal savvy of the mustang. Since Talon died, most of his stock had been running wild in the mountains, and this roan took to high country like it had known nothing else.
What was important now was that that horse would go just about anywhere I asked it to, and it had been teaching me that most of the horses I’d known up to now were something not to be considered in the same rank with this one.
Riding up through a bunch of cedars, I turned in my saddle and glanced back. They were maybe a thousand feet lower down, and by the way they’d have to ride, a half mile behind. Suddenly I saw a huge boulder—it must’ve weighed half a ton—balanced beside the game trail I’d come out on as I topped the ridge.
The boulder had tumbled down from a shoulder of higher rock and was held in place by a couple of rocks no bigger than my fist. It had probably been there no longer than since the last windstorm and maybe less. If it started to roll it was going to roll right down on them as they came out of the woods.
Stepping down from the saddle I taken a long pole, the broken trunk of a young spruce, and I jammed the end of it against one of those small rocks. It came loose and the boulder teetered. I smacked it again and that boulder crunched down on what lay ahead and beneath it.
It turned over slowly, majestically, then rolled over again, a bit faster. Right below it was a drop of about six feet and then the steep hillside. It rolled over that drop, hit hard, and then started down the slope followed by an army of smaller stuff, rocks from the size of a man’s head to fist-size.
Down below Brannenburg and his men, bunched pretty well, came out of the woods. For a moment there I didn’t think they’d see it, then Dutch looked up. As he looked that huge boulder hit a jump off place and must have bounded thirty feet out into the air.
Dutch cut loose with a yell that I heard faintly, and then the bunch scattered … only just in time.
One horse hit on a side slope and went rolling, rider and all, another went to pitching as the boulder lit with the shower of rocks coming with it, then rolled off down the slope to lodge in the trees.
I hadn’t wanted to kill nobody. I just wanted to slow them up, make them cautious, but they were some shook up, I could see that.
One man had been bucked off and he was getting up, limping. A horse was running away, stirrups slopping. The others were fighting their horses, trying to get them calmed down, and they were having troubles. I just rode off around the knoll and cantered across a long green meadow toward the lip of a basin.
Before reaching it I rode across a great shelving ledge of tilted rock, knowing my horse might leave some hoof scars, but they would be few and the trackers would have to ride slow to read the sign.
There was a steep, winding trail down from the shelf into a basin that lay partly below timberline. A scattering of spruce and foxtail pine had crept up the south-facing slope, and I let the roan pick its way down through the trees.
High on a slope opposite I saw a half dozen bighorn sheep watching me. Their eyes are sharp, and they miss mighty little. A camp-robber jay picked up my trail and followed me along, hoping for some food I might drop, but he was backing the wrong card. I’d no time to stop and dig something out of my outfit.
There are folks who can’t abide camp-robber jays, but I take to them. Often enough they’ve been my only company for days at a time, and they surely do get friendly. They’ll steal your grub right from under your nose, but who am I to criticize the life style of a bird? He has his ways, I have mine. Like I say, I take to them.
This was my kind of country. I’m a high-line man. I like the country up yonder where the trees are flagged by the wind, where there’s sedge and wild flowers under foot and where the mountains gnaw the sky with gray hard teeth, flecked with a foam of snow gathered in their hollows.
All the time I was working my way east, trying to wear them out or lose them, but drawing closer and closer to the MT ranch and Em Talon.
That night I made no fire. I chewed on some jerky and some rose hips I’d picked from time to time, finished the last small chunk of bread I’d brought, and ate a half dozen wild onions.
Once I’d stripped the gear from the roan I scouted the country around, rifle in hand. There was no way a body could see my camp until they were right up close, and no way anybody could approach without making some noise. I was backed up against the edge of a grove of aspen and I’d picked about the only level spot on a steep hillside.
Before daybreak I was off and riding, heading right off down the valley and paying no mind to my trail. It was rolling up clouds for a heavy rain and whatever tracks I made would soon be gone.
My grub was gone and I was dearly wanting a cup of coffee when I sighted a ranch house trailing smoke into the rain. First off I pulled up near some trees and gave study to the place. I was a half mile off and five hundred feet higher, and the place lay in a meadow with a trail running past the gate and aspen spilling down the mountainside opposite. Circling around, I came up through the aspen and sat there five minutes or so, studying the house. Finally I decided whoever was there it certainly wasn’t the posse. So I rode on in.
I walked my horse up to the house and gave a call and after a bit a door opened. The man in the door had a gun on, and he yelled, “Put up your horse and come in.”
I took my horse to the stables and stepped inside. There were four horses there, three of them dry, one wet. I took the roan to a stall and rubbed him down with a handful of hay, then forked some hay into the manger for him. Prying around with a lighted lantern, I found a sack of oats and put a good bait of that in the bin for my horse.
Studying on the situation, I commenced to feel uneasy, but my roan surely needed the grub, and so did I. Slipping the thong from my pistol butt, I went inside the house. The door opened as I walked up.
There was a red-haired girl there, of maybe seventeen years. She had a sprinkling of freckles over her nose and I grinned at her. She looked shy, but she smiled back.
There were three men in the place, all of them armed. One of them, a tall, thin galoot, stooped in the shoulders, had wet boots and the knees of his pants above the boots were wet. He’d been riding in the rain under a slicker.
“Travelin’,” I said. “I ran short of grub.”
“Set up to the table. There’s beef and there’s coffee.”
The other men bobbed their heads at me, the man with the wet boots slowest of all.
Now excepting that red-headed girl there was nothing about this here setup that I liked. Of course, any man might have been riding this day, but it was uncommon for men to be wearin’ guns in the house with a woman—I mean, unless they were fixing to go out again.
The man who seemed to own the place was a stocky gent with rusty hair, darker than the girl’s, but they favored and were likely some kin. There was that tall galoot with the wet boots whom the others called Jerk-Line.
“I’m Will Scanlan,” the rusty-haired one said. “This here’s Jerk-Line Miller and that gent over yonder with the seegar is Benton Hayes.”
Scanlan nor Miller I’d not heard tell of. Benton Hayes a man in my line of business would know. He was a scalp-hunter … a bounty hunter, if you will. He had a reputation for being good with a gun and not being very particular on how he used it. “And the lady?” I asked.