did, they would make themselves known, and they’d have a chance to get
acquainted with me, too.
Seems to me folks waste a sight of time crossing bridges before they get to
them. They clutter their minds with odds and ends that interfere with clear
thinking.
Those folks were certainly following me, and it was equally certain they were
none of my people. When they caught up there’d likely be trouble, but I wasn’t
going out hunting it. I was looking for signs of pa.
Far and away on my right lay a vast and tumbled mass of distant peaks and
forest, bare rock shoved up here and there, high mountain parks and meadows …
magnificent country. Overhead, the sky was impossibly blue and dotted with those
white fluffs of cloud that seemed always to float over the La Platas and the San
Juans. Trouble coming or not, this was great country, a man’s country.
The trail took a turn and I lost sight of them below. Alongside the trail there
was a beautiful little patch of blue, like a chunk of the sky had floated down
to rest on that frost-shattered rock and gravel beside the trail—it was some
alpine forget-me-not. Down the steep slope where a fallen man or horse would
roll and tumble for seven or eight hundred feet, I could see the bright gold of
avalanche lilies here and there.
The last few yards was a scramble, but Ap was a mountain horse and the buckskin
seemed content to follow any place Ap would go. When we topped out on the rim
there was a view you wouldn’t believe. Down below us was a huge basin, one side
opening and spilling down into La Plata Canyon. There was another vast glacial
gouge on my left, and ahead of me I could see the thread of that high, indent
trail winding its way—across the country, a thin thread through the green of the
high grass that was flecked with wild flowers of every description.
All around were vast and tumbled mountains. I was twelve thousand feet above sea
level. Far off to the north I could see the great shaft of the Lizard Head and
get a glimpse of Engineer Mountain, and off to the east were the Needles, White
Dome, Storm King, and what might be the Rio Grande Pyramid, near which the Rio
Grande rises. It was the kind of view that leaves a man with a feeling of
magnificence, but there just ain’t words to cover it.
Old Ap, he seemed happy on that high place, too, but he snorted a little when I
started him down the thread of trail that led through the gravel and the
frost-shattered rocks on the inside of the cirque.
It was like going down the inside of a volcanic crater, only there was a meadow
at the bottom and no fires.
The man lying under the spruce had been there since shortly after daylight. He
had a Sharps rifle, one of the best long-range weapons there is, and he had a
natural rest across the top of a fallen tree. His view of the trail down the
inside of the rim was clear and perfect, and when he saw Tell Sackett top the
rim he was pleased. This was going to be the easiest hundred dollars he had ever
earned—and it surely beat punching cows.
He was a dead shot, a painstaking man with a natural affinity for weapons and a
particular ease with rifles. He let Sackett come on, shortening the distance for
him.
He picked his spot, a place where the steepness of the trail seemed to level off
for a few feet. When Sackett reached there, he would take him. The range was
roughly four hundred yards—possibly a bit over. He had killed elk at that
distance, and kills had been scored with a Sharps at upwards of a thousand
yards.
He sighted, waited a little, then sighted again. About twenty yards now … he
settled himself into the dirt, firmed his position. Sackett was a salty
customer, it was said. Well, soon he’d be a salted customer.
He looked again, sighted on a spot below the shoulder and in a mite toward the
chest, took a long breath, eased it out, and squeezed off his shot.
The best laid plans of mice and men often seem to be the toys of fate. The
marksman had figured on everything that could be figured. His distance, the
timing, the fact that the rider was at least a hundred and fifty feet higher
than himself. He was a good shot and he had thought of it all.
He had the rider dead in his sights, and a moment after the squeeze of the
trigger William Tell Sackett should have been bloody and dead on the trail.
The trouble was in the trail itself.
At some time in the not too distant past, nature had taken a hand in the game,
and in a playful moment had trickled a small avalanche off the rim, down the
slope, and across the trail. In so doing it left a gouge in the trail that was
about a foot deep.
As the marksman squeezed off his shot, the appaloosa stepped down into that
gully. The drop—as well as the lurch in the saddle that followed—was just
enough. The bullet intended for Tell’s chest nicked the top of his ear.
The sting on my ear, the flash of the rifle, and the boom that followed seemed
to come all at once, and whatever else pa taught us boys he taught us not to set
up there and make a target of yourself.
Now it was a good hundred and fifty yards to the foot of the trail and every
yard of it was bare slope where I’d stand out like a whiskey nose at a
teetotalers’ picnic. So I just never gave it a thought, there wasn’t time for
it. I just flung myself out of that saddle, latching onto my Winchester as I
kicked loose and let go. I hit that slope on my shoulder, like I’d planned,
rolled over and over, and came up at the base of the slope with my rifle still
in my hands and a mad coming up in me.
Nobody needed to tell me that anybody shooting at me now had been posted and
waiting for me. This was some sure-thing killer out scalp hunting, and I have a
kind of feeling against being shot at by strangers. Least a man can do is
introduce himself.
When I reached the bottom of that slope I had a second boom ringing in my ears,
but that shot—it sounded like a Sharps buffalo gun so he must have reloaded
fast—had missed complete. Nonetheless the thing to do at such a time is be
someplace else, so I rolled over in the grass, hit a low spot, and scrambled on
knees and elbows, rifle across my forearms, to put some distance from where I
fell.
Chances were nine out of ten he figured he’d got me with the first shot, because
I fell right then. Chances also were he’d wait a bit and if I didn’t get up he’d
come scouting for the body, and I meant to be damned sure he found one … his.
Ap had stopped only a moment. That was a right sensible horse and he knew he had
no business up there on that bare slope, so he trotted along to the bottom. The
buckskin stayed right with him, the lead rope still snubbed to the saddle horn.
I was going to need those horses so I kept an eye on them. Pretty soon they
began to feed on the meadow.
When I’d scrambled fifty yards or so, I was behind a kind of low dome, maybe
some dirt pushed up by the last small glacier when it slid off the walls and
pushed along the bottom of the cirque.
My ear was bleeding and it stung like crazy, and that kind of riled me, too.
That man over yonder sure had a lot to answer for.
Careful to keep my rifle down so the sun wouldn’t gleam on it, I edged along
that earth dome until I was on the far shoulder of it. Then I chanced a look
toward those spruce trees where the shot had come from.
Nothing.
Minutes passed. About that time a thought occurred to me that had me sweating.
Those folks coming up the trail back of the mountain would be topping out on the
crest and looking down into that basin. Now while that sport over yonder with
the Sharps couldn’t see me—at least I hoped he couldn’t—I’d be wide open and in
the clear for those people when they topped out on the rim.
They’d have me from both sides and I’d be a dead coon.
I’ve been shot at now and again, and I’ve taken some lead here and there, but I