no sign of pa, so they’d followed, found Pierre’s grave, and knew pa was alive.
Pa might return to New Orleans and tell Philip what happened in the mountains.
Or he might come back and get more gold. It must have been obvious from the
tracks that pa’s horses were carrying heavy. What they carried had to be gold.
Pa knew this country, and he knew old Powder-Face. He knew he could stay with
him until he was rested and strong again, and he could hide the gold close by
and Powder-Face would not disturb it. So he had come west, and he had been
followed.
Lying there looking up at the clouds, I considered. I’d take my appaloosa, I’d
take that buckskin pack-horse, and enough grub for two weeks, and I’d plan to
stay in the mountains until I found what I was hunting or ran out of grub.
It began to spatter rain so I tugged my tarp over my head and just let her
spatter. It was a good sound, that rain. Tyrel would be coming along from New
Mexico soon and he would be bringing ma. They would bring cattle and take up
land at the foot of the mountains somewhere. We were mountain folk, and we
cottoned to the high-up hills.
There’d be Tyrel and me, Flagan and Galloway, and maybe Orrin would hang out his
shingle down in Animas City or even in Shalako, although there was mighty little
for a lawyer to do there. But just give folks time. You can’t get two people
together without soon or late they’re lawin’ at each other.
Far up there on the cold, gray rocks of the peaks where the last streaks of snow
were melting off, up there would be strong, fierce winds blowing, weeping over
the high plateaus, trimming the spruce to one level, driving the freezing rain
into every crevice in the rock.
How could I find anything up there? If pa had died, what would be left of him
now? Some scattered bones, his boot heels, maybe, and part of his holster and
belt, chewed by wolves or other varmints.
It would be a lonely place to die, but maybe such a place as he’d want, for he
was no stay-a-bed man. He’d always been up and doing, and when it came to that,
what better way to go than on the trail somewhere, packing a gun and riding the
high country?
The spattering rain made me think of Powder-Face. I raised up my head to look,
but the old one was gone, vanished into the night and the rain as if he had
never been.
For a moment he held in my thoughts, and I wondered how many times he or his
kind had sat staring into the flames and feeling the rain fall and the wind
blow?
Man had enemies, that was in the nature of things, but when it comes right down
to it his battle to live is with that world out there, the cold, the rain, the
wind, the heat, the drought, and the sun-parched pools where water had been.
Hunger, thirst, and cold—man’s first enemies, and no doubt his last.
CHAPTER XXI
That appaloosa and me had reached a kind of understanding. On a chilly morning
he liked to buck the frost out of his system, so whenever I put a foot in the
stirrup around daybreak I knew he was going to unwind.
Naturally, I wasted no time getting into the saddle. If I put a foot in the
stirrup and swung my leg over real fast, me and the saddle would come together
on the rise.
Of course, I always managed to mount a little away from camp so’s I wouldn’t
buck right through breakfast. That’s the sort of thing can make a man right
unpopular in any kind of outfit.
This morning that appaloosa really unwound. He was feelin’ good and it done me
no harm to just sit up there and let him have at it. Ridin’ easy in the saddle
all the time can make a man downright lazy, so when they feel like buckin’, I
say let ’em buck. I don’t care which nor whether. When Ap had bucked himself
into good nature and an appetite, I took him back to the fire and lit down from
the saddle.
Judas had put together some grub and like always when he done the cookin’ it
tasted mighty fine. He was spoilin’ me for my own cookin’, and soon I’d be out
yonder on the trail with nobody but myself to cook.
I told them all about the visit from Powder-Face and about my plan.
“You sure you don’t want me to ride along?” Orrin asked.
“I would prefer to ride with you, suh,” Judas said. “It might be that I could be
of service.”
The Tinker said nothing. He was ready to go if I wanted him, and well he knew it
and I knew it.
“It would be pleasurable,” I said. “I could do with the comp’ny and the cookin’,
but a man listens better when he’s alone, and he hears better.”
When we’d finished breakfast, and I’d lingered as long as I could afford over my
coffee, I went to my horses. “You ride loose, Tell,” Orrin advised. “This isn’t
any western outfit. They’re a murderin’ lot.”
I stepped into the saddle. Ap had finished with bucking during our little set-to
of the morning, and he made no fuss. Besides, he knew I was now in no mood for
catywampusing around.
“The way I’m riding is round about,” I said, “but I want to come into the
mountains the way pa did. If I see the country the way he saw it maybe I can
catch his frame of mind.
“By the time he started up that trail, June must have been pretty well gone, and
we know the snow was light that year and had mostly gone off. He wouldn’t find
much snow except where the shadows gathered and in deep hollows. The trail
Powder-Face speaks of might be the one he took.”
“I was talking to one of the young braves,” said Orrin. “Some call it the Ghost
Trail. They say it was made by The People. Who Went Before …”
“Well,” I gathered the reins, “you know me, Orrin. I’m going to ride easy into
the hills and sort of let it come to me.”
When I rode down what you could call the street of Shalako, Nell was standing
out before a new-built house. I drew up and took off my hat. “Howdy, ma’am,” I
said, “I’m off for a ride.”
She looked at me, serious-like and tender. It kind of worried me, that look did,
but then I figured it was just that we’d known each other awhile, not that she
was thinking gentle thoughts of me. I’d gotten used to womenfolks speaking to me
and passin’ by toward handsome gents who had some flash and flare to ’em. Not
that I blamed ’em any. I’m just a big ol’ homely man who’s kind of handy with
horses, guns, and cattle, which doesn’t fit me very much for cuttin’ didoes with
the female sex.
“Now you be careful, Tell Sackett!” she said. “I wish you’d not go.”
“Somewhere my pa lies dead, unburied, perhaps, and ma’s growing on in her years
and it frets her to think of it. I’m going to ride yonder and try to find what
remains of him so ma can go her way in comfort.”
Her eyes were big and serious. “It is a fine thing,” she said, “but it will do
your ma no good to have your own bones unburied on some fool mountain! I wish I
could talk to your ma! I’d speak to her! I’d tell her what she’s doing!”
“It was not her idea that we ride out and look,” I said. “It was ours. But it is
a small thing we can do to comfort her.”
She put her hand up to me and touched me gentle on the sleeves. “Tell? Do ride
careful, now, and when you’re back, will you come calling?”
“I will,” I said. “I’ll ride by and halloo the house.”
“You’ll get down and come in!” she flared.
“Dast I? Seems to me I recall ol’ Jack Ben was some hand with the rock salt when
the boys come a-courtin’ around.”
She flushed. “He never shot at you, did he? You don’t look like you caught much
salt, the way you set that saddle! If pa’d shot you, you’d still be ridin’ high
in your stirrups!”
“I never came around,” I said simply. “I didn’t reckon there was much point in
it.” I blushed my ownself. “I never was much hand to court, Nell Trelawney, I
never quite got the feel of it. Now if it was somethin’ I could catch with a
rope, I’d—”
“Oh, go along with you!” She stepped back, looking up at me, disgusted maybe. I