by Bart Paul
“Is it locked?”
“Should be,” she said. “Why?”
“One less place for somebody to hide. You have the key?”
“Yeap.”
“And the key to that old Ford?”
“That too,” she said.
I started fiddling with a Coleman, fueling it from a red can, pumping it up and lighting the mantles and adjusting the flame. When I got the lantern set up I shut it down till dusk. I saw a couple of regular kerosene lamps on the shelf and took those down too, filled them and trimmed the wicks. Most guys would have a generator for electric lights, but not Dave. I hoped the familiar routine took Sarah’s mind off things.
At sunset I went out to feed the horses while Sarah packed a stuffsack with a couple days worth of food. When I came back she’d lit the lamps and the stove and started dinner, frying up a mess of sirloin and potatoes, the smell of the kerosene mixing with the good smell of onion and garlic in the hot beef fat. I asked her if I could help and she shook her head. She watched me pull Becky’s old gun rig out and set it on the table, then fill the belt loops with the .45s from the green and yellow box.
Dinner was spicy and good. We ate and drank red wine like Basco sheepherders and didn’t say much. When we did, we talked about the country we would be riding in the morning and all the old stuff that had happened on this range—mostly mining and boomer camps, but railroads and the Pony Express and Piute wars too. After I cleared the plates and put a bucket on the stove for the dishes, we took our guns and went outside. She held my hand like we were an old couple. The air was cooling and the sky was clear. It was a good while since the sun slipped behind the ridge, but a last bit of its light skimmed the peaks to the east. We walked the perimeter and went inside.
Later, with the lanterns blown out, the woodstove put an orange light inside the cabin. I slipped out of the bedroll and jammed more stove wood into the firebox, but for now we both were hot and not sleepy. When Sarah pulled away the sheet to let me back into the bedroll, her hair was tangled and her skin glistened in the orange light and I covered her with the sheet and she wrapped her arms around my neck.
“Will he come for us tonight, you think?” she said.
“No. He’s probably just found out we’re here, and he won’t have a plan yet or the means even if he did.”
She squeezed my neck and started to cry, then stopped herself just as quick.
“Tell me again how we’ll find him,” she said.
“We get out alone in these empty hills tomorrow like we’re gathering that stock, he’ll find us. Or think he has. He’ll chase us till we catch him.”
We would ride that country hard from dark to dark. Each night we would tend our horses and cook our food with not many words, but each one simple and kind and well chosen, like it was our own language. Then we would get into that big bedroll and be as close as the first two humans on earth. She was so sweet I hated every man she had ever been with and shared that sweetness with, and hated myself for any time of ours I might have wasted. I knew that time was always short. Then she would look at me in the dark, or the orange glow of the fire, just tangled gypsy hair and the shape of her face and those eyes reflecting the dying coals, and then she would wrap her arms around my neck and draw me in and that was all there was and all that mattered, except for the man out there in the dark we’d come to kill.
Chapter Eighteen
At quarter to four I stoked the fire and lit the lamp. I singed my fingers getting the coffee started and jumped back into the bedroll to wait for it to boil. I’d left one window open when we went to bed. I’d remembered a lot of things while I was away, but I forgot how sweet the cool air is in the spring and summer at night in the mountains as you lay under the blankets. Not at all like the sticky, stale nights in Georgia when sleep would never come and a knife fight was a diversion.
When the cabin warmed up, I watched Sarah pull on her clothes and loved her so much I didn’t think it could ever last. She bundled up and kissed me and went out to feed and saddle while I started breakfast. She wanted to keep as busy as she could and not talk so I left her to it. I tried to catch a look at her out the front window, but the sky was still moonless and black and she’d vanished into the cold starlight. I got ham and eggs and fried toast ready with the coffee, and sandwiches made for lunch, and had rolled up the bedroll by the time she came back into the cabin. We ate fast and hardly spoke, but she looked positive and strong and ready to tear into the morning. That was just how it was with her.
We dropped our dishes into the water bucket on the stove, buckled on our chinks, strapped on our pistols, and pulled on our coats. I unlatched the second window so I could open them both from the outside when we came back. At the door, she came up to me and grabbed the front of my coat and put her forehead against my chin, pressing into me. Her body felt warm but her coat was cold to the touch. Then she gave me a look. We squared our hats and went outside into the black morning.
It was cold like it always is in that country in the predawn, the stars still out and the morning star bright now in the east. The horses she saddled were tied to the side of the gooseneck eating grain from nosebags. I leaned against the front of the truck with my rifle, scanning the shadows while Sarah fetched the food she’d gathered and stowed it next to the pack equipment in the truckbed. I went back to the cabin and hugged the big bedroll and walked outside with that and tossed it in the truck with the rest. We took off the nosebags and loaded the stock. Sarah got behind the wheel. We headed on the right-hand dirt road going north. I was hoping by the time Kip or his boys got to the cowcamp we’d be long gone and have a chance to scout the country before hell got let off the leash.
Sarah knew the road from riding this ground for years with her father. She pointed to the meadows on the left and told me how the road past them led up to Washoe Pass, and I could see it steepen and climb before it disappeared into rocks and piñon. She said the meadows would be a good place to hold cattle if we ever got the chance. We hit two forks in the road a mile apart, keeping to the right both times. Before long we were following a rocky wash. Sarah said we could leave the gooseneck off the road well above the cabin and ride further north to see if Kip would take the bait and follow. We would push any cow-calf pairs we ran across down toward the meadows. Usually the stock had been moved below the upper drift fence earlier in the year, but Dave’s heart attack had left his cows as scattered and untended as his daughter.
It was sunup when Sarah parked the rig off the road under a cut in a hill facing back the way we’d come. It wouldn’t be quite hidden, but a person might miss it from a distance. We unloaded the horses, packed our saddle pockets with lunch and ammo, and hit a long trot north. She was riding the dun I’d shod two days before and I was on the sorrel. They were the younger pair of the four horses, and Sarah said they would do well for a long day’s circle. What she didn’t say was the two more broke horses might do better when the shooting started. The dun hadn’t been ridden much recently except by the big ironpumper and had picked up some willful habits. She bogged her head as soon as we broke out of a walk. Sarah grabbed the stock of her shotgun in the scabbard so it wouldn’t jostle out, hollered, and brought that horse’s head up sharp, in no mood for foolishness. A mile further on we stopped and scanned the ridges. I saw a patch of ground up against the hills that was covered with pale green and asked Sarah why no cattle were out on it. She said if I got close I could see it was only wild mustard and among the springtime stalks there wasn’t a blade of grass. She said I’d have known that if I wasn’t such a High Sierra, green meadow, and mountain stream sort of cowboy. She said I had a lot to learn about this desert country, but she said it more hopeful than mean. We saw some pairs down in a draw but kept on riding. We could pick them up later if we didn’t get any nibbles from Kip.
With the sun up, the day began to warm and we took our coats off by eight. By nine we were seeing more small groups of cows and calves. By ten we came to a drift fence and a galvani
zed stock tank. Sarah said we’d split up then, and each circle on a different side of a long ridge, meeting down at the tank in a couple of hours with whatever cattle we’d gathered.
“We’ll only be a half-mile from each other most of the time,” she said.
I studied the hills and saw white mining scars on the slopes from years before, and reddish tailings spreading below the scars. I didn’t see a trace of movement.
“If you hear gunfire, hunt a place to hide.”
“Like hell,” she said.
I bent toward her in the saddle and kissed her.
“You be careful.”
She nodded, looking like we were saying good-bye forever. “You be careful, too,” she said.
We split up, still riding north. We stayed within sight of each other for ten minutes, then the country changed and we were each alone with nothing to do but keep our eyes open and ride. I hit a climbing gravel road and could see the first clouds rising white above the Sierra crest. I could pretty much estimate where Carson City and Dayton would be behind the near ridges, but this was mostly new country to me. The road swung right in treeless hills with the dry and rocky riverbed off to the left. Ahead were scattered piñon between the road and the watercourse. I climbed along the base of a burned-over slope where the sage was scorched off and the cheatgrass grew. The riverbed on my left was close now with dry boulders and sand ridges out in the sun, then tangles of willow and wild rose under the cottonwoods right to the edge of the road. I saw fresh sign among the brush in the cattle wallows, and there was shallow water now about five feet wide running along the rocks. On the other side of the creek I saw buildings and corrals left from an old stagecoach relay station that a Piute Meadows Basque had used as a winter lambing camp about twenty years back, and I saw cuts in the bare hills from miners’ wagons. The stony road turned dirt with muddy patches. I circled wide with my hand just touching the butt of the .45, keeping my eyes on the nearest shack. There was no sign of horses or vehicles, just cowtracks. Ahead I saw four pair brushed up along the creek. I rode on another mile then stopped where a gully spilled into the canyon from the south. Twenty minutes further on, the feed and the cattle sign were both gone and no human sign had replaced them. I turned around.
Wispy clouds had settled into rows of thunderheads above the crest. I rousted the four pair out of the brush at the stage stop and pushed them on ahead. If I’d been the one hunting me that morning, I would’ve made myself a little den across the creek bed in the rocks and hid in plain sight until a rider was right on me with his eyes focused on the old shack. One shot should do it. But that was me.
In another half hour the terrain widened back out and the road separated from the creek. It was good to be horseback in open country. I took down my rope and swung a loop over a clump of sage, dallied, and pulled it out by the roots. Then I reminded myself why I was there and how I best keep my hands and eyes free and not dawdle. I coiled my rope and brushed my hand across the walnut grips of the revolver again, looking past the cows and calves to the country ahead.
At first it was only hints and traces—the far-off sound of a motor, maybe from a four-wheeler. The clack of rock-on-rock from someone taking a careless step. Maybe a glint of light hitting reflector shades or glancing off a windshield. Even behind a ridge, the signs were easy enough to read. I got off my horse and was quiet, listening for the sounds I knew were coming.
The sound I didn’t expect was a shout from Sarah with a gunshot following right behind. I saw movement on the rim, then Sarah burst into plain sight on the dun, fighting that sow all the way. She saw me downslope, and it looked like she was pointing her pistol at me before she spun that horse. The dun danced on the ridge and I heard a shot ping off a rock about twenty feet behind me as I swung back on the sorrel. I was too surprised to holler before the dun flew sideways, spooked from the gunshot. I could see Sarah keeping that knothead moving forward down the slope and not fighting her anymore.
I shouted Sarah’s name and busted the sorrel out, lunging over rocks and brush. When I hit the rim, I saw Sarah spin back to face my direction, her pistol still in her fist. I got close and she looked at me half-crazed, then spun the mare again to look in the other direction. She was watching downslope at a rider on a sorrel horse who was dressed just like me—black Nevada hat, red wild rag, white shirt, and gray vest. It was Kip, and he’d shaved his goatee and mustache. He shook a rifle over his head and yipped like a coyote.
“There were two of you,” she said. She looked haunted. “I thought I was crazy.” The dun fired out at my horse with both hind feet. Sarah spurred that mare hard, bringing her around.
We could hear Kip whoop-whoop again as he sheathed the rifle, goosed his horse and galloped away from us out of that canyon, leaning back in the saddle half out of control and laughing like hell. He yelled something I couldn’t quite make out, but it sounded too much like, “I’ve got you now.”
Sarah looked over at me as wild-eyed as the dun, like she still wasn’t sure which of us was which.
“From a distance I really did think it was you. When I rode closer, he laughed at me and I just lost it.”
“You’re okay now.”
“I should’ve known,” she said. “Nobody sits a horse like you. I could’ve killed you.”
The few pairs we’d pushed were scattering from the gunfire, moving down along the riverbed. New cattle followed, all drifting in one direction. We left them as we rode toward the parked gooseneck, then headed up onto a high ridge above a talus slope where we could see country all around. We ate our lunch horseback—outlined against the sky—so anyone could see us but not be able to come at us without grief. More thunderheads gathered in the west.
“What’s he waiting for?” Sarah said.
“He thinks he’s the hound and we’re the hare. Just like we wanted.”
“Where do you think he is now?”
“Probably waiting for us between here and the cabin.”
The sun was almost down as we followed the drifting cattle toward the corrals, but the air was still warm like rain coming. Dust stirred up by scuffing hooves rose and fell over the ground. The white thunderheads had dropped down until they dissolved into a gray-black sky in the west, and we could see the first sliver of a new moon through that sky. We held back, watching the whole camp for any sign of Kip or his crew.
We left our horses saddled and turned them into the round corral with the other two, scattering hay for them. Some of the cattle had gone past the cabin toward the meadows, and some had stayed behind trying to get to the hay I’d just fed or the bales stacked the empty pen. I opened the gate to the second pen and scattered more hay on the ground. The cows and calves moved in fast. If we were being watched, we would look like a couple of pretty sloppy stockmen, not that those gunsels could tell the difference.
I had Sarah wait by the pens to cover me with her 12 gauge while I checked the cabin. Kip or his boys had made their first reconnoiter. I could see four-wheeler tracks circling in the dirt outside the cabin door. The tread was real similar to tracks on the one I’d unloaded for Hoyt. I didn’t see any boot tracks, though, so it was a quick visit. Inside, in the semi-dark, things seemed just as we’d left them. I grabbed two beers, then went out to fire up the flatbed Ford. Sarah got in the passenger door and let me drive. It was an automatic, and I remembered what Harvey had said about Kip ripping off the steering wheel in a rage, and noticed the mismatched junkyard wheel in my hands. It was near dark by the time we got back to the gooseneck. A wind had picked up and the temperature started dropping fast. We stood outside the trucks, watching the road as darkness settled and we went over our plan for the next twenty minutes.
“He doesn’t seem in any hurry to kill us,” Sarah said.
“Once he thinks he’s got the last word in and bloodied our nose, he’ll try. When he does, that’s our best chance.”
We drove both trucks back toward the cowcamp, and I parked the Ford behind the cabin. I left it there with th
e lights hitting the back wall and the diesel running. Sarah turned the gooseneck around between the cabin and the stock pens, leaving it parked and idling on the road. She killed the lights and led the two horses we’d left saddled out to the trailer, loading them just as relaxed as could be. I haltered the other two and tied them outside the pole corral. We were taking our time, knowing that someone was watching. When we finished, we stood on the road cradling our long guns and eyeing the cabin for any sign of life. The crescent moon was settling horizontal just above the ridge.
“So what do we do if he’s inside?” she said.
“Make it uncomfortable as hell for him.”
She almost laughed. “Then what do we do once we’re inside?”
“Either way this goes down, we won’t be inside for long.”
She stared up at the moon slipping behind the ridge so fast you could almost see it move. “Look,” she said, “the points of the moon are sticking up like horn tips above the crest. And the reflection between them looks like a face.”
I had been staring at the cabin, but there wasn’t a hint of movement. I looked up at the reflection of the earth laying pale on the nightside of the moon between the points of the crescent.
“Don’t go giving yourself the fantods, now.”
I circled the cabin and pushed open one window with my rifle barrel, then the other. It was mostly black shapes inside with spots of glare from the headlights, but I got no response. I wasn’t sure if Kip was cold-blooded enough to sit still in the dark like that. I was circling back when I heard Sarah yelp.
She was standing by the open door back-lit by truck lights. There was something hanging from the lintel at face level. It was a dead magpie. It swung back and forth on a bit of baling twine after Sarah had walked into it with her face. Its blue wing feathers stood out like neon from its black and white body in the headlight glare. It hadn’t been there an hour before.