And likely the outlaws, their ears to the ground, heard the stories, too.
The Owens River valley where I now rode was all of a hundred miles long and five to twelve miles wide. On the west were the Sierras, a rugged range that seemed to rise abruptly from the valley floor. On the other side the Inyo-White-ranges rose in places to over 11,000 feet.
Both ranges were alive with game, and in some areas were alive with Indians. Neither was a place to spend money or enjoy the fleshpots of Egypt, so I had no idea the outlaws would stay in that area.
The valley looked to me like a great fault-block that had sunk.
I’d picked up a smattering of geology from Con Judy during our rides, and had been looking at deserts and mountains from fresh viewpoints, and it showed me that the more a man knew, the more interestin everything became. As Con had said, if you didnt have books to read, you could always read the face of nature.
All around me were signs of change in the earth.
Decomposing rock trickled down from notches in the hills, spreading wider and wieler as they reached the valley floor, like great fans spread out. And in some areas heat and cold, thawing and freezing were helping the roots of trees to break up the soil, even to break up rocks.
Going ahead rapidly was out of the question here, for there were too many possibilities of ambush. Carefully not following any pattern, I varied my route from time to time, leaving the trail to the right or left, following the slope of one mountain or the other, suddenly changing direction, and using every bit of cover that I could. I knew they were somewhere ahead of me, and judging by an occasional track, they were only hours ahead.
And I watched my back trail. How badly Pony Zole had been wounded I did not know, but I had a feeling that tough old man would want some of his own back. He would be hunting me as I hunted them.
Con Judy’s talk of rocks and rock formations, as well as the possibility that some plants indicated minerals in the earth beneath them, kept my eyes on the country even as much as fear of ambush.
I was well up the mountainside, riding through a scattering of trees and stopping from time to time to study the terrain ahead and in the valley, when my eyes were drawn to a smooth surface of rock, which must have been polished by a glacier. Here and there were places where weathering had broken the surface into pits, or wider areas that looked like great sores eating at the smooth face. Suddenly my eye caught a place where the surface had been broken … and recently.
Drawing rein in the shelter of some pines, I studied the spot. A horse’s hoof had broken that edge, and left in the place where it had broken off, a clear irint of half a shoe.
Somebody had gone up that slope not long ago, just ahead of me.
That somebody was up there now. Had they seen me coming? Had they seen me draw up?
My mouth was dry, and all at once I was wary. I slid from the saddle, Winchester in hand.
Moving quickly, I tied my horse to a clump of brush, then crouching low, I moved up among the roiks.
Beyond this area were scattered, stunted pines and a few cedars.
Among the trees, and beyond them, the surface was broken.
The sun was behind the wall of the Sierras, but it still held a golden rim on top of the mite Mountains opposite. Shadows were growing where I waited, and the silence of evening was over the land.
Somewhere a dove called, another answered.
Easing my crouching position, I continued to wait.
My spot was fairly good, hidden from the higher slope by rocks and trees, exposed to the valley below, but a valley that lay empty, so far as I could see. What I-must be wary of was before or behind me.
Suddenly, somewhere on the slope ahead I heard two rocketing shots, and then the slowly dying echo of them fading away among the canyons and along the mountainside. Those shots must have been fired a good four or five hundred yards off, and no bullet came close to me. I waited, listening.
For a long time there was no sound, and then a faint rattle of rocks came from somewhere up ahead, and a flicker of movement, followed by silence. The shadows grew longer as I waited. Returning to my horse, I untied it and stepped into the saddle.
I rode ahead warily, keeping to the shadows and trying for areas of grass or leaf mold where the hoofs of my horse would make no sound.
Who had fired? And at whom?
All at once, just as we started between two closegrowing pines, the dun shied violently. Gun in hand, I held him still, listening.
No sound … only the wind in the pines.
Peering ahead iia the gathering gloom, my eyes caught the shape of something lying on the ground. I stepped down from my horse, waited a moment, then moved forward on cat feet.
It was a man, lying on his face, and he was dead.
I cud not need an examination to know that. He had been shot twice in the back, at close range.
Even before I turned the body over, I knew who it was. Doc Sites should never have followed Reese and Heseltine to California. He had come up here with them or had been followed, and then been executed .
murdered.
He was never much of a man, I thought, although at one time he had seemed smart and almost glamorous to me.
He had always been a tin-horn, riving from stealing cattle or horses, and given to too much talk.
But now I felt sorry for the man. Nobody showd die like that, murdered by those he had believed to be his friends, left unburied on the lonely mountain for the buzzards and the coyotes.
There was nothing I could do but roll him into a hollow among the rocks, and pile rocks and brush over the body. His pockets had been emptied. His horse and guns were gone.
Angling down the slope, I found a vague trail along the mountainside and followed it.
When I had gone no more than two miles the trail turned suddenly up the slope, and I went along it. From time to time I dismounted to crouch low and study the trail. There were no tracks.
Those who had murdered Sites had gone on down to the main trail on the valley floor. The one I followed was an Tndian trail, and it suddenly reached a smati hollow under a rocky overhang where there was a pool of water fed by a trickle from out of the rocks. It was a sheltered, hidden spot, with grass for the dun, and a good quiet place for me.
Over a tiny fire I made coffee and soup from dried peas and jerked I greater-than eel. I was tired, and it tasted good.
For a long time I lay awake, looking up through the leaves of a pin oak at the stars above. I listened to the stirrings of the night, and heard nothing that warned of danger. But I thought of Vashti, and found myself wanting again to be back in Colorado.
In came over me suddenly that I must end the chase.
I must quit and find a place for myself, something beyond this endless pursuit, or I wouldggi someday end as Doc Sites had, shot in the back … murdered.
I went to sleep then, sure that I had arranged my future. And taking no thought for what destiny might have in store. A man may plan, but there are movements beyond his plannings, there are events born of powers that lie beyond him.
As always, unless very tired, I woke up just before daylight. For a few minutes I lay still, getting the feel of the morning. It was clear but Slim dark, only a few bright stars remaining in the sky.
A cool wind was just barely stirring the leaves.
The dun was munching contentedly at some brush he had found near the camp.
After a moment I threw off my blankets, decided on what I would do.
I tugged on my boots, rolled my blankets, and saddled up, warming the bit for a few minutes inside my shirt, for the morning was chilly.
Once saddled and ready, I tied the dun to a shrub and, taking my Winchester, went up through the trees to an outcropping I’d seen the night before.
Beside it, where my body would not be outlined. I studied the terrain below.
There were the usual stirrings of birds and animals. A few doves talked in the brush. From a tree some distance off a mocking bird sang.