“There had been a mention of a man named Planner in ma’s last letter to me, so I came along through the country passing myself off as a mining engineer. I was warned a couple of times I’d better go somewhere else, that the area around Siwash was headed for trouble.
“Just as I was riding into town you fellows cut loose in there, and when you came out I got a good look at you in the light over the door. I could see you’d been hit and you were favoring one leg, but you were still in there with that six-shooter. Then Brewer came out and he started to pull down on you so I shot him, then flipped a quick one at that crippled man.”
“How’d you get my horse?”
“You told me where it was.”
Well, I remembered none of that. Seems I told him some other things, too.
“You’d better keep an eye on our back trail,” I warned him. “They won’t give up.”
“You forget that I grew up around here. I know hiding places in these hills they’d take years to find. I knew places that even pa never knew. Only Milo and me.”
“I put out word for him. If he hits the outlaw trail they’ll tell him.”
He looked at me. “Milo? An outlaw?”
“Not really, I guess. It’s just that they all know him. And he’s got a way with that gun of his.”
Lying there alongside the fire I told him about Em, Pennywell, and the place. I also told him about Albani Fulbric, bringing him up to date on the situation.
By the time I’d finished I was all in. I drank a swallow more of coffee and eased myself back on the blankets. It was broad daylight and I could see Barnabas was worried.
“You better mount up and head for the Empty,” I said. “They’ll know they put lead into me and they’ll try to get to the ranch.”
“I can’t leave you,” he said. He squatted on his heels. “Logan, I got to tell you. You’re hit very hard. You took three slugs. One went through the muscles on your upper leg, and you got another one in the upper arm, but the bad one is through the body. You’ve lost a lot of blood.” He paused a moment. “I am not a physician, but I do know a good deal about bullet wounds. I was an officer in the army of France for a while during the war with Prussia. I can’t leave you.”
“You’d better. Em will need you. As for me, it’s going to be a long, hard pull.”
He looked at me for a long time, then he went to his pack and got out some coffee and other grub which he stached near me. He refilled my cartridge belt, and broke out a box of forty-fours. “Lucky I had these. I bought them in case they were needed on the ranch.”
He squatted on his heels again. “You’re about six or seven miles back of the ranch, but there’s no short way across. It will take me most of the day to get there.
“Right down there is the spring. Your canteen is full and I’m leaving mine also. There’s a big pot of coffee, and I’ll try and get some help to you as soon as I see how it is on the ranch.”
I looked around at the hills. It looked like a cirque, or maybe a hanging valley. It was a great big hollow that was walled in on three sides, or seemed to be, and maybe three hundred acres in the bottom of it. There were a lot of trees, and there probably was a lake … in such formations they were frequently found.
Barnabas saddled up, looked down at me once more, then rode off. And I was alone.
For a while I just lay there. The sun was in the hollow and the shadows of the aspen leaves dappled the grass with shadow. I was weak as a cat, and I just lay there resting.
How much of a trail had Barnabas Talon left? He might be a good man on a horse and with a gun, yet he could have left sign a child could read. Covering a trail is an art, and far from a simple one. I’ve heard of folks brushing out tracks with a branch. That’s ridiculous—the marks of the branch are a sign themselves. Anything like that must be done with great care to make it seem the ground has not been disturbed by anything. A tracker rarely finds a complete track of man or beast on a trail he’s following. Only indications of passage.
The spring was all of thirty yards, off, but there was no flat ground nearer on which a man could sleep. It was all rocks down there. With my rifle close at hand and my horse nibbling grass a few yards away, I dozed the long day through. Come evening I added a few sticks to the fire, poured some water into a pot Barnabas left, shaved some jerky into it, added some odds and ends, and set it on the fire. Then I just lay back and rested.
You want to know something? I was scared. I never feared man nor beast when I was on my feet with two good hands, but now I was down, weak as could be, and my right arm was useless.
Later, I ate my stew and contemplated. I had no idea Barnabas Talon would get back. He would intend to, but there’d be need of him there and his first duty was to his ma. As for me it would be root hog or die, so I settled to figuring what I could do.
My chances were slim if Planner’s men trailed me down, as they would surely try to do. Despite what Talon said, I’d no doubt they could find this place, so I must find a better one … somewhere I could really hide.
My need for water tied me to the spring, so I commenced to study the ground, looking for someplace I could hide. There were tumbled boulders down the stream bed below the spring, and scattered branches of dead trees, piled-up rubble, and debris.
When I finished my stew, and mighty good it tasted, I took a long pull at a canteen and felt better.
Yet worry was upon me. There was weakness in me, and I’d an idea the worst was yet to come, that I might become so weak I could not move, even delirious. I’d seen men gunshot before this and knew my chances were slight if caught in a sudden shower with a fever upon me. And showers in the high peaks are a thing that happens almost every day.
I saw nothing that would help. No caves, no corners hidden from the wind … nothing.
Suppose I crawled into the saddle and made a try for the ranch? I’d never make it, of course. And my horse was not saddled now, and there was no way I could get a saddle on it. Yet there had to be a way.
Gathering my gear together, I rolled my bed, drank the last of the coffee, and using my rifle pulled and pushed myself up until I stood on one foot, clinging to an aspen. Inch by careful inch I searched the terrain. There was little I’d not seen in my few years and I knew about all that could happen to trees, brush, and rocks that would provide a place to hide, and I found none of it here.
Yet there was something nagging at me, something I should notice, something that worried at my mind like a ghost finger poking me. No way my thoughts took brought any clue to mind, and one by one I climbed the trees of my ideas and looked over the country around each of them. But I came upon nothing.
It came to me at last as I was hitching myself along from tree to tree toward the roan.
What I heard was a waterfall.
13
Em Talon peered through the slats of the shutter toward the gate. Nothing in sight.
Logan should have returned by now. It was foolish of him to ride off as he had done, yet she knew how he felt, and she also subscribed to the theory that once you have an enemy backing up you must stay on top of him. “Never let them get set,” she muttered.
The sky was overcast, the air still. Sullen clouds gave a hint of rain.
She went from window to window, checking the fastenings on the shutters. Pennywell had been up on the lookout atop the house and now she returned. “There’s nobody, Aunt Em. The road’s empty all the way to town.”
“He should be back.” She was talking half to herself. What would he have done? Riding in like that? She knew exactly, because it was what she would do. He had tackled them head on, horn to horn. Logan might not be the smartest Sackett there was but he was meaner than a cornered wolf, and he wasn’t a back-shooter.