“They’ve chosen the place, I’m thinking,” Finney suggested. “Some special place to hole up and wait for you.”
“They’ve a full day’s start on us,” Monte added. We held to a steady pace, took a short nooning, then pushed on. The trail was rarely used, and from the top of each small rise we could see the tracks several hundred yards in advance.
Short of sundown we saw a trickle of water coming down from some rocks among the oaks and willows. There was grass for the horses and a good place to camp. Myron Brodie came over after staking his horse. He hunkered down beside the fire. “Notice the tracks back by that big lichen-covered boulder?” “They’ve got company.”
“Two more,” Brodie said. “Probably whoever was in town watching to see if we left, and when. That’ll make maybe a dozen men they’ve got.” “That figures about right.”
“And there’s five of us?” Monte lifted an eyebrow. The coffee was coming to a boil. I pushed fuel under it and glanced at him. “The way you talk, I figured you’d be good for two, anyways, and those El Monte boys-“ “No more’n five,” Hardin said, straight-faced, “an” do tell ‘em not to bunch up. I like to take ‘em single and straight up.”
There were oaks behind us with a lot of fallen branches. Some of those blue oaks, as they called them, shed branches like leaves, sometimes good-sized limbs. All of which made a place nobody could come through without making noise. Backing up against that with the stream from the spring before me and some rocks lower down, I felt good.
The others scattered out, so if the thieves came at us at night they wouldn’t get us all crowded together. Each chose his own bed in his own way and back from the small fire we’d had.
“I’m not sleepy,” Brodie suggested, “so you boys roll up and catch some shut-eye. I’m good for two, maybe four hours.”
When Monte was bedded down, he spoke out. “They don’t care about the horses, like you said. What they want is a battle. They want to kill you.” “They’ll let us catch up,” I said, “and maybe they will set up a camp that is a trap. They’ll corral the horses in plain sight, making them easy to get at, and they will bed down early, men slip off in the dark and wait for us.” “It’s better not to have any preconceived ideas,” Finney suggested. “There’s no telling what they might do.”
He was right, of course, but I was trying to foresee. There were many possibilities, and I hoped to consider them all. From now on our travel must be extremely wary, for an ambush could be mounted at any place. Each night before dropping off to sleep, I tried to work out the possibilities of the following day, but Finney had been right. We must not expect any particular course of action, but be prepared for the unexpected. Owen Hardin awakened me at what must have been about three o’clock, judging by the position of the Big Dipper, but he was in no mood to sleep. While I tugged on my boots, he sat beside me.
“Finney tells me you spent some time down in the desert with the Cahuillas. He says there’s a big pass down there opens right into the desert. How come nobody knows much about it?”
“Folks out here are just not interested. Who cares about the desert? To most people it is just a big desolate place.”
“Never figured that way myself. I’ve prospected some, never had any luck, but there’s a-plenty to keep a man interested, old riverbeds and the like. Found some old camps, too, and some Injun writing on the walls.” “Ben Wilson has been through that pass. You know, the man they call Don Benito. He chased a bunch of horse thieves through there at one time, and long ago a Spanish man named Romero went through. I suppose he was the first white man, but you never know.”
“Weird country,” Hardin said. “I was sixteen when we come through from Texas. Started with a herd of four hundred head of cattle. With the deserts and all, we got through with less’n seventy head.
“My brother Pete, he died out yonder. He was maybe seven year old. Wandered off from camp an’ we hunted for him most of two days. We’d about give up. Came back into camp all wore out.
“Ma, she was beside herself. So were the girls. We figured to start huntin’ again when morning came, but about midnight the dogs set up an awful barkin’ an’ me an’ Charlie, we rolled out, tired as we was, to see what was happenin’. “We rushed out, gun in hand, and there was Pete. He was settin’ up against a rock wrapped in a great big old coat, and it taken only a look to see he was in bad shape.
“He’d fallen and hurt himself and he’d been snake-bit into the bargain. Odd thing about that, he’d busted his wrist and that was all bound up with a splint and all, and whoever taken care of him had tried to fix that snakebite, but I reckon he was too long gone.
“We taken him into camp and we tried to do for him. He was conscious from time to time when he wasn’t delirious, and he told us about fallin’, breakin’ his wrist, and gettin’ snake-bit.
“He said he yelled for us, yelled for help like, and then his mind kind of wandered off. We never could make head or tails of what he was gettin’ at. He said he was yellin’, scared as could be, when a giant showed up.” I sat up. “A what?”
“A giant. Oh, I know! It sounds crazy. That’s what we thought, too. He said that there giant came right down into that hollow in the sand where he was lyin’ and fetched him to where there was some shade from rocks, and then the giant set his wrist and worked on that snakebite.
“Well, some little time had gone by. That poison had a chance to get through him. Wonder was he even alive. The giant picked him up an’ carried him to us, then set him down an’ left him.”
“You never saw him?”
“Never. Nor any sign of him. All we had to go on was what Pete could tell us. He said that was the biggest giant ever, that he carried Pete, a pretty solid chunk of boy, like he was a baby. To get him back to us fast, he climbed over a ridge in the dark that I wouldn’t tackle by day, an’ him carryin’ Pete.” Hardin shrugged. “I never believed in no fairy tales, no giants or the like, but Pete swore it was the truth.”
“You say Pete died?”
“Had that poison all through him. The giant or whatever had done all he could and then brought him to us, but there was mighty little left to do.” I slung on my gun belt “Is that all? Nothing more?” “One thing. Pete never lied, and he wasn’t crazy in the head when he talked of giants. When we found Pete, he was wrapped in a buckskin huntin’ coat, fringed and all? Well, that coat was larger’n Pa, who weighed about one-sixty and stood about five-nine, him an’ another man close to his size, they put that coat on. Standin’ shoulder to shoulder, that coat was a fit for the two of them across the shoulders.”
“Have you still got that coat?”
“No, sir. We surely ain’t. Ofttimes Pa wished he had it so folks wouldn’t think he was lyin’, but Ma, she said maybe that poor man needed his coat, so we taken it back and hung it over a rock near where we’d camped.” I walked down to the fire for coffee, and Owen joined me. “Where did that happen?” I asked.
“South of here. Down in the desert about a day’s travel this side of Indian Wells.”
Finney rode up beside me. We had been in the saddle for several hours, and the tracks had suddenly veered left into the hills. “I rode this way a few years back. There’s a valley off yonder, all surrounded by hills, a mighty pretty little hidden valley.”
“How little?”
“A few thousand acres, with a spring or two. I’ve had an idea of moving in there and settling. It’s a likely place to hide stolen stock, too.” “Do you suppose that’s where they are headed?”
“I’d bet on it.”
We rode off the trail and into the oaks. It was very hot. With my bandana I mopped my face and neck, squinting my eyes against the glare. When I turned in the saddle to speak to Finney, the cantie was too hot to touch. “Used trail”-I indicated it-“but they didn’t go that way.” “There’s a ranch down there. They wouldn’t go near it.” He sidled his horse into deeper shade. “They’re surely going on into the valley.” He pointed to some even deeper shade where several oaks had clustered together.