Wherever I looked, there was no sign of a fire, and on the trail below, which I could make out as a dim gray streak, nothing moved.
My chase was over-that was the decision I’d come to the night before, and the one my morning lights agreed with.
It was no way for a man to spend his life.
Now, not seeing me would worry Hesettine and his friends more than seeing me. They would not believe that I had dropped the pursuit, and would feel they must grow increasingly wary, not knowing when I might again appear.
Over a small fire I made coffee, fried bacon, and ate the last of the sourdough bread I’d been saving. Once more I checked the trail .
nothin there.
Mounting up, I went down the trail on an angle, deliberately crossed it, and rode into the White Mountains with my mind made up.
I’d cross over into Nevada, strike the stage route that led through Eureka, and on to Salt Lake, and then I’d ride back to Colorado.
These were barren, lonely mountains … at least along the trail I was riding, and after a few miles the silence began to wear on my nerves.
For there was no sound except what my horse made, my spurs jingling, or the creak of my saddle. Several times I drew up, listening, feeling suspicious of the morning.
The sun was bright, the day unbelievably clear.
The sky was a calm blue, with only thin, very high cloud, so flimsy as scarcely to be seen.
The dim trail wound higher and higher, but allowed me no view of itself for more than a few hundred yards at any time. The dun was nervous, his ears twitching at every sound, but finally we topped out on a bald knob of the mountain, with a tremendots view to the east of a wide, barren land, sometimes showing the bared teeth of outcroppings, or scattered juniper, and here and there the white splotches of dried alkali lakes. Nowhere did I see any indication of water.
At noon, in the shade of a juniper larger than usual, I stopped to rest my horse. The area was wide open and empty, as free of cover as a bald head. Having picketed the dun, I stretched out in the shade of the tree.
Overhead the sky was wide and empty. Before I closed my eyes, I looked around carefully, and there was nothing, simply nothing at all.
My eyes closed, and I slept.
The warmth of the sun, the clearness of the air, and my own weariness were enough, and my sleep was sound. After all I was alone in this empty land.
Through the haze of sleep, something grated, there was a faint sound, something tugged at my waist, and I opened my eyes looking into the muzzle of my own six-shooter.
Pony Zole was seated on his haunches not ten feet away. His g lips showed broken teeth, but there was no smile in his cold eyes.
“Got you this time,” he said.
SlowIy, I sat up. “Figured you were dead,” I lied. “I got lead into you, didn’t I?” “You surely did.” He spat a brown stream close to my boot. “I’m still packin” some of it, but it takes a lot to put me down. Bullet was never made to kill me. Old fortune-telling woman, a gypsy woman, she told me that, so I never worry.” His horse was nearby, right alongside my dim.
My saddlebags were on his horse now, only his horse was no longer the crow-bait.
“You’ve got you a new horse,” I commented.
“Yes, ” sir. I got me a good one.
Bettern your dun, I’m . The man wouldn’t have been wishful to give it UP, so I taken no chances. I surely do hate to be refused.” He spat again. “You know what you got comin, don’t you?” I grinned at hiirn. “Why, sure! You and me are going to ride down to Carson City and have us a drink at one of those fancy drinldn” places where the politicians go. I’ll even stand treat that is, I will if you’ve left me any money.” “Well, now, that there’s a thought. I might even take you up on it ifn you hadn’t put lead into me.
I don’t take to that at all.” He was on his feet in one easy, fluid movement, unexpected in a man of his years.
“No, sir. I don’t take to getting’ shot at, nor hit.
I’m a-going’ to kill you. I ain’t a-going’ to kill you outright-just put lead into you and ride off an let you die.
“This here trail you’ve chose ain’t been used in a couple hundred years or more. The Pah-Minutes say it’s a medicine trail, and they won’t ride it. No white man knows of it. .
. except me.
“There ain’t no water in fifty mile, and I don’t figure you’re going to make that much with a bullet in you.
Not with you losin’ blood, and no water.” “You’d better kill me, Pony,” I said casually, “because I’ll track you down and have your hide for this.” He chuckled. “You’re game.
Game as hell, but it won’t do you no good.” There wasn’t one chance in a mimon, but I came off the ground in a long dive. I heard the bellow of his gun, felt a brutal slam alongside my skull, and went down into the gravel.
The gun bellowed again, and I felt my body twitch as it took the second bullet.
“Well, now,” I heard him say. ‘Reckon thatll hold you. Ifn you catch up to me now, you’ll surely earn what you get.” There was a sound of a horse’s hoofs retreating, and then a vast emptiness. And then, for the first time, I felt the pain. The pain, and the hot, hot sun.
It was dark … dark and cold. My head throbbed horribly, and my mouth was dry. I lay very still against the earth, only I was no longer up on the mountain.
Somehow, some way, I had gotten myself into a ravine.
The canyon walls sloped back steeply on either side, but I had no idea where I was, or how I had got there.
Yet under me was the trail. I could feel it with my hands.
Covered with dirt as I found myself to be, I thought, I must have rolled down the side of the canyon and landed in the trail.
I grasped rocks at the side and ptflled myself along.
There was no conscious thought of trying to survive, only that terrible drive to keep moving, not to stop. It was in my mind that I must get somewhere, and I must be there soon.
Somewhere along the line I must have ceased to be conscious, or at least, to have any sense of awareness.
For when I realized anything at all, it was the warmth of the sun, and I was no longer in a ravine, but in a sandy wash in an open area-a playa, as the Spanish call a dry lake.
A shadow passed over me, momentary, fleeting.
After a moment, it passed again … or perhaps it was another shadow.
I turned my head, looking up and around. It was a buzzard. It was several buzzards.
Somebody had told me they went for the eyes first.
It was a man I had met who had fought in China.
He said the vultures always tried for the eyes, not always waiting until a man was dead. If you went down, he said, always pull something over your eyes, some protection.
My holster was empty, but he had not taken my knife-maybe because I was waking up. In aDo the crawling and rolling it had stayed in its scabbard, with the rawhide thong to hold it there. Slipping the thong, I got it out.
‘Come on!” I yelled. “Come on down here!” They did not come.
They were old at this game. Buzzards have patience built into them, a patience born of the knowledge that all things die, and they have only to wait.
Knife back in the scabbard again, thong in place, I crawled on because there was nothing else to do. My body was sore, my head was a huge hollow drum in which something pounded. My mouth was full of cotton and I could not feel my tongue. All through the endless heat, I crawled and crawled.
My hands grew bloody, the flesh was raw, and the blood left traces on the trail, but still I crawled.
How far I went each time I had no idea.
Ahead of me I would see a stone and woudd drag myself as far as that stone. When I reached it after a long time, I chose another stone, and dragged myself to that one.
I was realizing now that the second bullet had hit me in the side, and the place was awfully sore.