Purdy looked down at his scuffed boots. He ought to get away from them. He should get shut of them now and go his own way.
Ike, too. Ike was as bad as the worst of them, because Ike was mean… downright mean. Brother he might be, but he was a mean, cruel man. He felt no love for his younger brother, nor did Ike feel any for him. They’d been born to the same parents but they were far apart in everything else.
Now they were going to follow after that tenderfoot and his family. Purdy hitched up his gun. He was better with a gun than any of them, unless it was Red Hyle. He’d often wondered about that.
He had seen Hyle shoot, and he had seen only one man he thought was as good… just one. He’d seen Con Vallian down in the Bald Knob country that time, and Con was quick. He was almighty quick at a time when a man was either quick or he was dead.
Ike came up, leading their horses. “Saddled up for you.” He squinted at him. “You draggin’ your feet, Purd?”
“Lazy,” Purdy said, “lazy in the sun.”
“You think too much. Thinkin’ never got a man any place. You start to study on things and all you get is mixed up.”
“I was thinkin’ about Red Hyle.”
Ike shot him a quick look. “Wonderin’ was you as slick as him? Don’t you try it, Purd. What if you was? You’d get yourself shot up for no good reason. He gives you trouble, just shoot him… or I will. Don’t call him out.”
There were eight of them when they rode out of the settlement bound west. Doc Shabbitt, who thought he was the leader and the brains. Red Hyle, who rode with them but was not one of them, Ike and Purdy Mantle, Johnny Dobbs who was a wanted man somewhere back east, Booster McCutcheon, who was in no shape to ride but had no choice but ride or be left, Boston Pangman, and the Huron.
Nobody knew whether the Huron was really a Huron or not. Somehow or other he had drifted in with them and somebody called him Huron. He wore white man’s clothes and talked a poor white man’s tongue, but he was dark enough to be an Indian. He was a good man in the woods, and could handle a canoe or boat. What else he could do they did not know… or care.
The sun was high when they started west, but they were in no hurry. The plains were wide and long. A wagon with four mules and a heavy load does not move very fast, so they’d take their own time. Besides, the deeper into prairie country they were the less chance of their crime being discovered or revealed.
In camp the firelight flickered. Out upon the prairie the grass was a white sea under the high, pale moon. There was a smell of sun-ripened grass and cooling water. There was a smell of wood-smoke and bacon frying, and beside the fire three people bound westward.
“It has been three days,” Susanna said. “I think he has left us.”
“Well? Why not? What duty has he to us?”
He had none, of course, yet there was an empty place at coffee-time, and a voice they did not hear in their quiet talking.
“Do you think the others will come after us?”
“He thought so,” Tom said. “He told me I must listen. That I must always listen.”
Their days had been measured by creeks, some dry, some with a trickle of water, a few running strong and well. Prairie Chicken Creek, Rock Creek, Elm Creek. They had made good time, twenty miles each day, and the turf had been firm even though their wheel-tracks still cut deep.
“Pa? The mules are sure gaunt. They are not eating tonight… just standing.”
“They need rest, Tom. We should stop for a day, let them catch up.”
Susanna straightened from the fire, a fork in her hand. “Duncan? Do we dare?”
“We will have to. We can’t escape them, anyway. They can travel further in two days than we can in five if they wish to. It will serve no good purpose to kill our stock. I’d like to get further along, but maybe it is better here. This is a good spring.”
He felt better today for he had killed an antelope, their first fresh meat. They broiled some of it over the fire and ate well.
“Susanna? I saw some tracks today.”
“His?”
“No… unshod ponies. They were Indian tracks, quite a few of them. They were dragging their tent-poles like Indians do.”
Susanna took the first watch. There were only the three of them now, and her husband and her son needed all the rest they could get. At seven o’clock when the dishes were all put away and only the coffee-pot left on the fire, she took her rifle and went out to the edge of camp.
She had found a place there where some low rocks and brush covered the top of a knoll. She sat down among them and let the darkness close in around her. On her right and below she could see the faint winking eye of the campfire, and the shadow of the once-white wagon-top.
It was very still. The moon was bright, yet already it had started descending toward the horizon. Long before Duncan succeeded Tom on watch the moon would be gone. Nothing moved out there. At least, nothing she could see. She thought of home and wondered what her sisters were doing now.
It would not be late back there. Dinner would be almost over unless they had gone out or were entertaining. The lights would be bright along the streets, people would be sitting out in porch-swings and talking, while some of the young people would be gathered around a piano, singing.
Far off, a coyote howled… then another. Or was it a wolf?
Something stirred down below and a shadow moved in front of their fire. She frowned, half-rising. Duncan must be awake… she knew he never felt easy with her out alone and on watch… yet, he should be asleep. Tom certainly would be. Tom was a good sleeper, although he awakened early, as Duncan did.
“Quiet tonight.”
The voice froze her with horror. She had seen nothing, heard nothing.
She started to rise, but a hand on her shoulder held her down. “No need to get up. I just came out to keep you comp’ny.”
It was Con Vallian.
“You! Mr. Vallian, you-”
“Surprised you, huh? Figured I would, an’ good for you. Keeps you from gettin’ too sure of yourself, an’ that can be fatal out here. On’y ones who can be sure of theirselves is the dead.”
“Where have you been?”
“Missed me, did you? Well, I been circulatin’. Don’t do for a man to get in a rut, now, does it? I been seein’ some country but I figured you all’d be needin’ me.”
“We did miss you, Mr. Vallian. After all, you’ve been a big help to us.”
“I missed you, too. Missed your coffee, so I went down an’ had me a cup.”
“You were in camp?” She was horrified.
“Yes, ma’am, I surely was. But don’t you worry, I didn’t wake anybody, and didn’t bother ’em. I just had me some coffee and broiled some of that there antelope.”
“You mean you actually cooked some meat? You actually-”
“Yes’m. I actually. You folks sleep pretty good these nights. Fresh air and weariness will do it ever’ time.”
“You… you could have killed them!”
“Yes’m. I reckon so. But don’t you worry none. Shabbitt ain’t that good an Injun. About those others I’m not so sure. Ike Mantle maybe is.”
“I thought you killed him. Wasn’t he the one?”
“A man can make a mistake. I figured there wasn’t two hats like that anywhere about, so when I fetched a bullet into that one I reckoned it was Ike. Must have been Doc Shabbitt’s son though. He had him a no-account boy about nineteen or twenty.”
“That’s too young to die. I am sorry for him.”
“Too young to die? Any time is, when you think on it. Sorry for him? Well, I ain’t. He was born mean an’ he was raised mean, an’ he had his rifle pointed right at your husband’s back. He was surely plannin’ to kill him, only my bullet stopped him and I guess it jolted him off target. At that distance he wouldn’t have missed.”
“Why did you come back?”
He chuckled. “Oh, I figured I’d like to see how you folks handle Injuns. You’re about to meet up with a passel of them.”
“Indians? You mean we’ll be attacked?”
“Maybe, maybe not. You can never tell about Injuns, ma’am, they have notions of their own.”
“When?”
“They’ll come in about sun-up, I guess, to see how wide awake you are. There’ll be maybe a dozen or so.”