knelt close to the ground, and took the chance to strike a match.
Some tall spruce, boles eight to ten inches through, were close around me. I was
on level, grassy ground. I untied Fanny’s hands and lifted her down. She was
unconscious, or seemed to be. If she was shamming, she was doing an almighty
good job of it. I put her on the grass, stripped the gear from my horses, and
led them over on the grass and picketed them.
Coming back to the trees, I stood there for a moment, getting the feel of the
place. All around me was darkness, overhead a starlit sky except where the limbs
of spruce intervened. We seemed to be in a sort of pocket. One edge of it, I was
quite sure, was the lip of that dropoff over which I’d almost stepped—the outer
edge of the mountain itself.
Down here, and under the spruce, there seemed a good chance a fire would not be
seen. In the dark I surely could do nothing for that girl, and I was hungry and
wanting coffee.
Breaking a few of the dried suckers from the trees and gathering wood by the
feel, I put together enough for a fire, then lit a small blaze. Fanny Baston was
out cold, all right, and she was pale as anybody I’d seen who was also alive.
She’d had a nasty blow on the skull and her head was cut to the bone. One arm
was scraped, taking a lot of the hide off. Her leg wasn’t broken, but there was
a swelling and a bruised bone. I heated water, started coffee, and bathed some
of the blood off her face and head. I also bathed the arm a little, getting some
of the grass and gravel out of the skinned place.
I took the thong off my six-shooter. If I needed a gun I was going to need it
fast. My Winchester I kept to hand, but across the fire from that woman.
By the time I’d made coffee her breathing was less ragged and she was settling
down into what seemed to be a natural sleep. She was a beautiful woman, no
denying it, but here I was, so weary I scarce could stand, and I dasn’t sleep
for fear she’d wake up in the middle of the night and put a blade into me.
And she had one. She had it strapped to her leg under her dress, a neat little
knife, scarcely wider than her little finger but two-edged as well as pointed.
I’d come onto it whilst I was checking that bad leg, but I left it right where
it was.
After a bit I walked off into the dark and went back up on the level. There was
no sign of that place from above, and the little fire I had was well hidden. I
listened for a spell, then strolled back. Fanny Baston had not moved. At least
not so’s I could see.
Taking my blankets I moved back among those trees. Three spruces grew together,
their trunks starting almost from the same spot. I settled down amongst them
with my pistol hitched around between my legs and my Winchester handy. Wrapped
in a blanket, I settled down for the night.
The trees formed a V and I put a couple of small branches across the wide part
of it. To reach me they’d have to step one foot there, and I had a notion I’d
hear them first. And there was always the horses to warn me of folks a-coming.
There for a time I slept, dozed, slept again, and dozed. Then I was awake for a
spell. Easing out of my place I added a few small sticks to the fire, checked
Fanny, covering her better with the blanket, then went back to my corner.
It was not yet daybreak when I finally awakened, and I sat there for a bit,
thinking about pa and about this place and wondering what had become of him.
Wherever he’d come to the end could not be far from here unless he taken that
ghost trail clean out of the country. Knowing pa, he might have done just that.
I was wishing I had ol’ Powder-Face with me. That was a canny Injun, and he’d be
a help to a man in sorting out a twenty-year-old trail.
When the sky was gray I eased out of my corner and stretched to get the
stiffness out of me. I was still tired, but I knew that this day I had it to do.
First off I strolled over to the rim. There was a drop of around a thousand
feet, and, at the point where I’d almost stepped off, a sheer drop. Far oft I
could see a red cliff showing above the green, and still further the endless
mountains rolling away like the waves of the sea to the horizon.
There was no easy way into that vast hollow, but on a point some distance off
there was the thin line of a game trail, probably made by elk. It might lead
into the basin.
I started back to camp.
Nobody needed to tell me the showdown was here. It was now; it was today.
Andre Baston had followed me from New Orleans, and with him Hippo Swan. They
knew what happened here twenty years ago. That Fanny Baston had come with them
was a measure of their desperation.
They’d lived mighty easy most of their days. They’d built themselves a style of
life they preferred, and then they discovered that money did not last forever.
Ahead of them was loss of face and poverty, and all that would go with it, and
they had no courage to face what many face with dignity their life long.
They had staked everything on what would happen today. Not only to prevent the
discovery of what had gone before, but if possible to find the treasure—or a
part of it—for themselves.
When daylight came I could see that I was on a sort of ledge that sat like a
step below the rim. It was covered with grass and scattered with trees and it
seemed to curve on around until it lined out along a great barebacked ridge.
The ledge varied in width, maybe a hundred feet at its widest point, narrowing
down here and there to no more than a third of that. It was a place that no one
would suspect until they were right on it, and I couldn’t have found anything
better.
From anywhere on that ledge a body could see most of it, and I could see no
movement yonder where Fanny Baston was lying. I went to my horses and moved them
further along. This was good grass and they were having a time of it; and they
deserved it.
Nevertheless, being a man who placed no trust in any future I had not shaped
myself, I packed my saddle yonder and slapped it on the appaloosa. Then I put
together most of my gear and took it down behind a shoulder of rock near the
buckskin.
Right above the ledge was a high, rocky knoll that overlooked everything around.
From the ledge I could crawl out and climb that knoll and have a good view of
the whole basin.
First I walked back to camp. Fanny Baston was sitting up, her arms around her
knees. She looked up at me, her eyes blank.
“Where is this place?” she asked.
“On top of a mountain,” I said. I did not know what to think of her, and I was
careful. My right hand held my rifle by the action, thumb on the hammer in case
of unexpected company. “You had a fall. Your horse jumped off the trail.”
She looked at me. “Are you taking care of me? I mean … why are we here?”
She seemed genuinely puzzled, but I was of no mind to play games. I knew the
showdown was close to hand. “You followed me to kill me,” I said. “You and your
uncle and them.”
“Why should we want to kill you?” She looked mystified. “I can’t imagine wanting
to kill you, or hurt you—you’re-you’re nice.”
She said it in a little girl’s voice. “And you’re so tall, so strong looking.”
She got up. “Are you strong? Could you hold me?”
She took a step toward me. Her dress was torn and her shoulder was bare above
that scraped-up arm.
“Your brother and your uncle are right over yonder,” I said, “and if you start
walking that way, they’ll find you.”
“But-but I don’t want to go! I want to stay with you.”
“You must have taken more of a rap on the skull than I figured,” I told her.
“You’re a right fine lookin’ figure of a woman, but I wouldn’t touch you with a
hayfork, ma’am. I don’t think you’ve got an honest bone in you.”