I had been thinking of that. “Tough,” I said. “It leaves us wide open to anybody up on those slopes with a rifle. They can get us going and coming.” “We can wait,” Monte said. “We can just set an’ make them come to us. We can outwait them.”
The coffee tasted good. I chewed on a piece of jerky. The morning was bright and clear. The sun was not up yet, but the bits of mist were fading away under the trees. A tuft of redbud pushed its way out of the brush near the creek. Finishing my coffee, I stood up and threw the dregs on the ground. “Take your time,” I said. “I’m going to shave.”
“Shave?” Brodie asked, swinging down from his horse. “I like Monte’s idea. Let’s let them wonder what we’re going to do. You boys do what you want, just stay close. They are expecting us, so let’s give them a chance to worry about us.”
There was a clump of willows and several large cottonwoods on the creek, and I went down to them with my rifle, scouted the patch thoroughly, then leaned my rifle against a tree and propped a small mirror in the fork of the tree. The water was not warm, but I’d shaved under worse conditions. As I shaved, I listened, but could detect none but the usual, natural sounds. It was quiet but for an occasional gurgle from the stream or bird sounds in the willows. Squatting by the stream to rinse off my razor, I considered what lay ahead. I wanted my horses. I had worked hard to get them, as had a lot of others, and we had worked to break them. Given a chance, many of them would go back to the wild, and this was their country, and this was, if he had the chance, where my stallion would come.
Finding a fallen log from which there was a good view of the canyon slopes ahead of us, I sat down with my rifle beside me and watched the hills, studying them with care. There was, or seemed to be, a dim trail along the side of the ridge above the canyon. I looked away, then looked again. Yes … it was a trail. A game trail or an Indian trail. Did the horse thieves know of it? Carefully I studied the ridge for landmarks, knowing that from different angles the view can be very different. When I returned to camp I studied the ridge. The trail was no longer visible.
Finney had made coffee, and I collected a cup of it and sat down on a log.
“Maybe,” I said to him, “just maybe…”
As they gathered around, I explained what I’d found. “In another light or from another angle, I’d never have seen it. My guess is that it’s an old Indian trail, and I’m also guessing they don’t know about it.” “Where does it go? Maybe it angles away from where they are?” “Look, Indians liked to travel high country when they could, but they also needed water. I figure that outfit have camped on water, and I’d make a small bet that trail branches off to water. It’s a chance, a wild chance.” “Suits me,” McCalla said. “I sure don’t like riding up the bottom of that canyon with them settin’ there waitin’ for us.”
Monte and Owen Hardin went back down to the creek with me and I found the exact spot where I’d been sitting when I spotted that trail. It took some time for them to locate it.
“Then it won’t be today, like I promised,” I said. “We’ll try it at daylight.” Owen Hardin studied the trail. “I’ve an idea,” he said, “and I think I’ll scout the country to see where that trail starts. At least, where we can find it.” When he was gone, we napped, drank coffee, and loafed the sultry, lazy afternoon through. Each of us knew what was coming tomorrow, each of us was aware that when the shooting starts all men are vulnerable. Bullets are not selective, but we were hard men, reared to a hard school.
Owen came in just before dark. “Found it!” He stepped down from his horse, smiling. “Those Injuns, they always knew what they were doin’! That trail takes off from a bit of a branch canyon back yonder where there’s trees an’ brush. Doesn’t look like anybody has been there in years! If I hadn’t known about where to look, I’d never have found it, takes off from behind a tree, like.” He squatted on his heels by the dying fire and filled a cup from the blackened pot. His shirt was sweat-stained and had a fresh tear from the brush. “Thanks, Owen. You’ve saved us a lot of hunting.”
“You’d never find it in the dark,” he agreed, “but we’ll have to ride easy. Somebody has been comin’ down the canyon tryin’ to throw a loop on what we’re about.”
He drank his coffee, then stretched out under his tree and was asleep in minutes. Moving over to the fire, I dowsed the coals with dust and the last of the coffee and set the pot in the shade to cool off. Then I backed up to my own tree and checked both pistols and my rifle.
Brodie was on watch, shaded by a low-growing juniper that had an enormous trunk and a wide spread of branches. It was deep shade and he had a view for a half-mile of the canyon.
Owen was dozing, but suddenly his eyes opened. “Forgot to tell you. I seen some tracks down yonder.”
Jacob Finney opened his eyes, listening. I spun the cylinder on my gun and then reloaded it “Tracks?”
“Well, I can’t be sure. I only seen them a couple of times, and these weren’t complete tracks. I mean, I saw only a piece of them, here and there.” “Well?”
“Looked to me like that black stallion’s tracks. The one that got away.”
Here … But why not? This was home to him, this was part of his old range. Finney sat up. “I’d of bet on it. Given a chance, a horse will always go back to where he comes from. They are homebodies, horses are.” He looked over at me. “I never told you what Ramon said. He said that black was a ghost horse, whatever that means. Kind of a ha’nt, like. He warned me nobody could ride him ‘less he wants to be ridden.
“Sounded like some of the stories I’ve heard of that pacing white stallion from the Plains country. He told me never to try to ride him, that the stallion would kill anybody he didn’t want on his back.”
“Superstition,” Hardin said. “Injuns got stories about everything. Up where I come from in the Nova Scotia country, their stories are all about somebody or something called Glooscap.”
“Did Ramon say anything about me riding him?” I asked. Finney took up his hat and wiped the sweatband. He put it on his head and tugged it into place.
“He surely did. He said he thought that horse wanted you to ride him. He said he thought that horse wanted to take you somewhere.”
Forty-seven
Under a starlit sky we rode to find our trail. The air was cool, a hoof clicked on stone, saddles creaked, brush fingered our clothing. It was a steep scramble along a bare slope after we escaped the brush of the river bottom. Single file we rode along a vague whitish streak through sparse grass still gray with night No horse had been here, nor did we see track of any other animal. Haunted by a warning from our senses, we paused to listen, heard nothing, and rode on.
Scattered oaks were islands of blackness on the rolling gray sea of the hills. At last we topped out on a narrow ridge, and on my left there was a loose pile of stones. Swinging down, I picked a fist-sized stone from the earth nearby and threw it on the pile.
“What’s that for?” Hardin asked.
“The Old Ones did it. Offering to the god of the trail.”
“D’you believe in that stuff?”
“I like doing it.” For a moment I stood beside my horse, my hands on the saddle. “I have a feeling for them. The old gods, I mean. It must be hard for them, with no worshipers left, their lands invaded by strangers who don’t know their ways, or care.”
“Throw one on for me,” Hardin suggested. “We’ll need all the help we can get.” We would be five against at least twelve, going against them on ground of their own choosing. I thought of them then, those four young men who rode with me, four young men carved from the same oak of trouble seasoned by the same winds, yet each as different as could be. They rode forth to battle without a flag except that flown by their own courage, loyal to the last fiber of their being, and strong with the knowledge that if men are to survive upon the earth there must be law, and there must be justice, and all men must stand together against those who would strike at the roots of what men have so carefully built. It is all very well to say that man is only a casual whim in a mindless universe, that he, too, will pass. We understand that, but disregard it, as we must. Man to himself is the All, the sum and the total. However much he may seem a fragment, a chance object, a bit of flotsam on the waves of time, he is to himself the beginning and the end. And this is just. This is how it must be for him to survive.