cashed in my checks. Maybe it is easier for a man to be alone than a woman. I
wouldn’t know much about such things.
They are gettin’ busy over yonder. Voices are closer. I reckon the fussin’ and
the feudin’ are shapin’ up to start. I reckon this is how some of those old
Trojans felt when they put on their armor for the last fight, when the Greeks
were closing in and they knew they weren’t going to make it.
But I am going to make it. No man should go down the long way without leaving
something behind him, and all I’ve got to leave will disappear when the dust
settles.
A man can carve from stone, he can write fine words, or he can do something to
hold himself in the hearts of people. I hadn’t done any of those things, not
yet.
Maybe I never would.
The wind was dying. Leaves hanging still. There was the coolness of the
mountains around me. This here place must be close onto twelve thousand feet up.
A shade less, because there were trees around me. But the trees stopped not
fifty yards off, and even here there weren’t very many.
Looked like something moved atop that knoll. I’d like to burn him a mite, like
to singe his scalp so’s he’ll know it ain’t all going to be fun.
They were comin’ now. Some movement down the ledge. I ate the last strip of
bacon and refilled my cup with coffee. A bullet nudged at the rock over my head,
spilling fragments into my coffee. I swore. Now they shouldn’t ought to have
done that. A body can take just so much, and I set store by a good cup of
coffee.
If I stayed back close to the rocks nobody was going to get a real good shot at
me, so I just set there. When shootin’ time come, I’d do my share. No use to
take the fun away from those anxious folks down there. A couple of more shots
from down the ledge, but they done nobody any harm. I took another gulp of
coffee and looked out yonder at the mountain peaks. Some of them were fifty,
sixty miles off.
I wished I could see the one called the Sleeping Ute, but that mountain was
hidden behind the rim yonder. When I leaned forward to take up the pot, that
gent atop the knoll shot right into my fire. I slapped around, putting out
sparks. He was going to get almighty annoying if he kept that up.
There were several more shots, but I finished my coffee before I took up my
rifle.
Thing about fightin’ with folks unused to fightin’ is that a body should give
them time. They get eager to get on with it and haven’t the patience to set and
wait. Me, I was in no hurry. I wasn’t going no place.
First thing you know they were shootin’—scatterin’ lead every which way—but I
just set back in my corner enjoying my coffee and let them have at it.
They were wishful that I’d move out where I could shoot back so that gent atop
the knoll could settle my hash. I’d no mind to let him do it.
Finally, I just got tired of the racket. The horses were in the best spot of
all. They hadn’t picked no fight. I had them in a place where bullets couldn’t
reach, and they had sense enough to stand there and switch flies off one
another.
After a mite I decided that gent on the knoll might be gettin’ eager enough to
make a fool of himself, so I took my rifle and edged around to where I could
peek up yonder without showing too much. Sure enough, I saw his rifle barrel.
Then I saw something against the sky—a shoulder in a blue shirt, maybe. It
disappeared, but folks being what they are, I just waited, knowing he’d be apt
to do the same thing again, and he did.
Me, I just up with that ’73 and shot him, right in the whatever it was he was
showin’. I heard a yelp, then a rifle fell loose on the grassy slope of that
knoll, and I edged out to where I could see down the ledge.
I caught a glimpse of a plaid shirt down thataway. I triggered the ’73, and
whatever I’d shot at disappeared.
After that there was a kind of letup in the shootin’.
Those shots hadn’t stopped them, just made them a mite more cautious. They knew
now it wasn’t going to be all downhill, but I’m tellin’ the world I was a mighty
lonesome man, a-settin’ there, waitin’ for them to come.
And only a few miles off I had family tough enough to whip an army. Looked to me
like I had it to do all by myself. Well, that was the way I’d done most things
my life long.
I fed a couple of cartridges into my rifle and took a look at the horses. They
were standing, half-asleep, undisturbed by the doings of us humans. I went down
among them and talked to ’em a little and then eased myself back up to where I’d
been.
There was no easy way out of this, but one thing I knew: come nighttime I wasn’t
going to set waitin’. I was going out among ’em. And I was going shootin’.
Come hell or high water, I was going out yonder. If they wanted to land this
fish, they were going to find out they had something on the hook.
CHAPTER XXIV
It was a long day. From time to time a shot came into the hollow, but they made
no frontal attack. The failure of the shots from the top of the knoll had
apparently left them at a loss, and they hadn’t figured out what to do.
Nobody ever won a fight by setting back and waiting, at least, not in my
circumstances. In any case, my only way of fighting was to attack, and I believe
in it, anyway. Attack, always attack.
They had me bottled up where I couldn’t move by day, but night was something
else, and I intended to move out and hunt them down. No doubt they planned to
come and get me as soon as darkness fell.
Lying there I studied the possible routes out of my cul-de-sac, and getting out
was no problem for a man on foot. In my saddlebags I carried my moccasins. I’d
been a woodsman before I was ever a rider, and it come natural to me to move
quiet.
Many a time as a boy I had either to ease up on game or not get a shot. A kill
meant that I’d eat, and often it was only me and the family when pa was gone and
the other boys still too young to hunt.
Judging by what Andre had said Pa had come here. Probably he had died here. And
he must have had the gold when he reached this place.
What had become of it? Was it still hidden close by?
I set back and took a careful look around. Supposin’ I had gold to hide, quite a
bit of it. Where would I hide it where it would be unlikely to be found?
Supposin’ I was here, figured I still had a fightin’ chance, but knew I might
have to slip out and travel light, just like I was going to do when darkness
came?
Where would I hide the gold?
There was a level place of green grass, partly protected from rifle fire by a
shoulder of the rock that walled the ledge. There was a sort of cove in the
wall, scarcely more than enough to hide the two horses.
A tree that must have fallen five or six years ago lay close by, its trunk
breaking up to pay its debt to the soil it came from. Lying near to it was the
fallen tree with the brown needles still in place. It must have been broken off
this past winter. Those trees hadn’t been there when pa made his stand—if he
did.
I had another thing to go by. Pa had known all the Indian ways of marking a
trail, and he had taught them to us boys. One way was to place one rock atop
another as a trail marker and a rock alongside the marker to show the direction
of travel. Often when we were youngsters he’d lay out a trail for us to follow.
He’d gather a tuft of grass and tie it around with more grass, or he’d break a
branch and stick it in the ground to show the way he’d gone.
Often the Indians would bend a living tree to mark the way. From time to time in
wandering the woods one will wonder about a tree that grows parallel to the