“You’re looking for Sun Boyne?”
“Yes, I am. I’m killin’ him when I find him.”
“You said you’d know him?”
“That’s right. He’s got a couple of bullet scars. One under his belt just over the hip bone, an’ one where a bullet went through the muscles of his neck on the right side, just where the neck joins the shoulder.”
Matt nodded. “That will help.” He swung into the saddle. “Bill, do you think Clive Massey is Sun Boyne?”
Shedd spat. “I don’t know,” he said thoughtfully, “I don’t know. He’s a smooth one, that Massey, smooth an’ hard to figure.”
“Did you know anything about their plans out here?”
“Not much. Only they had an idea of locatin’ someplace in the Big Horn country an’ raidin’ wagon trains and the minin’ towns. I can tell you something else, too. They were making a rendezvous with some other men from the bad crowd out here, somewheres. I don’t know just where.”
Morning found Matt Bardoul riding off on the flank once more. If there had been a rendezvous arranged with other bad men it might well be that within a few days they would come up with this group and the honest men of the wagon train would be outnumbered. As things stood, in a prolonged battle, all the advantage lay with the renegades due to their stealing of ammunition. In a sudden strike, the advantage of numbers might make the need for ammunition almost nil. If they waited, however, until they met this group that waited some place ahead, the doubtful advantage of numbers would be lost.
There could be little time now. Tonight they would bed down on Clear Creek, and the next day would bring them up to the ruins of Fort Kearney, destroyed by Red Cloud’s Sioux some years before. They would be entering a wilder and lonelier country where the prospects of a successful attack by the renegades would be vastly unproved.
Emerging from some trees along the river, he started back toward the wagon train and saw Jacquine Coyle riding along a ridge. He touched a spur to the dun and raced to catch up with her. She turned as he galloped up, and for an instant he was afraid she was going to ride away. “Jacquine….”
She interrupted. “Has Father talked to you? He wants to, I’m sure.”
He stopped, cut off in what he had started to say. She kept her face averted. “It’s something about the wagon train, I don’t know what. He talked with Ben Sperry last night.”
The wind played lights and shadows with the grass. Matt put a hand on the dun’s neck. He knew how imperative it was to talk to Brian Coyle, and to Herman Reutz, but he wanted nothing so much as to talk to Jacquine now, to tell her what he felt, what he really thought. There was something in him that demanded to be said, that needed to come out of him. For a fleeting moment behind the wagon on that other evening, he had felt that she was with him, that she felt as he did, that she responded to him.
Curiously, he was tied up inside. Words did not come easily to him when he felt most deeply, and somehow he always found himself saying the things that meant nothing, and leaving all the things in his heart unsaid and alone there. There was that in him that would not allow him to speak what he felt unless he was sure that this girl felt the same. There were so many words, and all of them futile. Yet women put much faith in words, and the things that were said to them.
He wanted to speak his mind now, but he found himself wordless when he rode beside her. Yet there was something fine about her, some little thing in the way she carried herself, the lift of her chin, her lips…
“Matt,” she said suddenly, incongruously, “we know so little about each other although we have talked a good deal. I don’t know what you think, what you believe, I know almost nothing about you.”
Suddenly, he felt better. He grinned. “Why, what is there to know about any man? And how can a man tell you what he is? Words usually just serve to cover up what a man thinks, or maybe they just antagonize him and make him defend ideas he never gave a thought to. I reckon it’s hard to know what to believe. A man hears so many things, and he reads so many things.
“If there is something, though, if there is … well, I believe in the things I love … the feel of a good horse under me, the blue along those mountains over yonder, the firm, confident feel of a good gunbutt in my hand, the way the red gold of your hair looks against your throat.
“The creak of a saddle in the hot sun and long riding, the way you feel when you come to the top of a ridge and look down across miles and miles of land you have never seen, or maybe no man has ever seen. I believe in the pleasant sound of running water, the way the leaves turn red in the fall. I believe in the smell of autumn leaves burning, and the crackle of a burning log. Sort of sounds like it was chuckling over the memories of a time when it was a tree.
“I like the sound of rain on a roof, and the look of a fire in a fireplace, and the embers of a campfire and coffee in the morning. I believe in the solid, hearty, healthy feel of a fist landing, the feel of a girl in my arms, warm and close. Those are the things that matter.
“Sure, I’d like to have a place of my own, and some kids. I remember one day I was walking through the streets back in Dodge and a little boy asked me if I was Howard’s father.
“Well, now. I hadn’t any idea who Howard was, but I looked down at that kid and told him, ‘Son, I’m not Howard’s father, I’m not anybody’s father!’ But you know, I felt bad about that all day! It kind of got to me. Maybe I’m too sentimental.”
“No, Matt,” Jacquine said softly, “I don’t think you are.”
They rode on, and the dry grass whispered to their horses’ hooves, and the tall peaks of the Big Horns gathered cotton blossoms of cloud. The mountains were nearer now, a bold rampart dividing the valley of the Powder from the basin of the Big Horn.
He stared down at his hands, still swollen from the hammering he had given them. He flexed and unflexed his fingers, trying to work the stiffness out of them and regain the speed and dexterity he might need at any moment. His side still bothered him, but his face felt better. Remembering Massey’s broken nose, he smiled grimly. That broken nose would be with him for awhile, and there would be a scar on his cheekbone.
They halted on the crest of a hill and glanced back along the long, winding column of the wagons. Matt studied them thoughtfully. Tomorrow Massey’s company would be taking the lead, and his own would be last. An idea was born, and he turned it over thoughtfully, planning ahead.
Whatever was to be done must be done soon. The people of the wagon train could be endangered no longer, and there was a surly aggressiveness showing itself more and more from the renegades that made up Massey’s company. He had held off this long because of Jacquine, but he could do so no longer. If there was a rendezvous ahead, as Bill Shedd believed, they might soon be seriously outnumbered.
There was a fort at the junction of the Big Horn and the Little Horn. They might strike out for there and replenish their ammunition, and then go on. It was a question of how much time they had, or how successful a break they could manage.
The difficulty now was that the fort lay due north of them, and the route of the wagon tram lay in the same direction for at least three days longer. To break away from the train now would only mean to separate themselves at a distance of a few miles, and to follow a parallel course. The fact that he was a Deputy United States Marshal was of no advantage for the moment. He was aware, however, that if Clive Massey was Sun Boyne, that the man would now be out to kill him as quickly as possible.
Tonight they would bed down on Clear Creek. The following day, with rougher travel, they should make the site of ruined Fort Phil Kearney. A day’s travel beyond was Goose Creek, and beyond that, the Tongue. If they were to make a break, the Tongue would be the logical place, for it would be about there that the wagon train would begin to trend further and further west.