“Go back, Frank. If she returns, she’ll need you.”
“I could do nothing for her. Among us it is my father who decides.”
“Even over the will of Strawn?”
Frank Mowatt stared at him. “Can you doubt it? If you can, you know nothing of Mac Mowatt. Wherever he is, he is in charge.”
“I came out today to find her, Frank. I may have to come your way.”
“They’ll kill you, as they did your brother.”
“If they kill me, Frank, I promise you this, you’ll have some dogs to bury at my feet. Don’t judge me by what happened to Clive. He was more trusting than me…and not nearly so good with a gun.”
“Strawn said you were good. Very, very good.”
“I’m not proud of it. I do what has to be done when the moment comes. And no more than has to be done. I’ll find her, Frank.”
“Are you in love with her?”
“I would like to find out. And so, perhaps, would she. It is not an easy thing to know.”
Frank nodded. “Yes. I do know.…”
“There is compassion, sympathy, companionship. All are important,” said Chantry.
“They are,” said Frank.
“Frank?”
He turned to look at Chantry.
“Can’t you talk some reason into them? I don’t think there’s any treasure here. Nothing they could possibly want. They don’t even understand anything but gold or treasure or money of some kind.”
“You don’t think there’s treasure buried here?”
“Why the hell would Clive bury it? If there was treasure—and if he was a man who valued such things—he wouldn’t bury it. He’d take it to where he could spend it.”
“But if he didn’t have time to get away?”
“Think, man. He had time to build this place, and believe me, for a man working alone that took time. You’ve worked with tools. He had to have time; he had to have patience.”
“What could it be besides gold?”
“What I’ve said. We Chantrys have a love of history, of knowledge. What I think was left here is some odd fragment to an unfinished piece of history, something in the way of a clue.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No…I don’t. But I do know my family. And although we’ve sometimes had money we’ve never placed much store on it.”
Frank chuckled, suddenly. “Be a joke on Pa…and them.” He smiled a rare smile, then shook his head. “They’d never believe it.”
“Do you?”
Frank hesitated. “I don’t know…maybe.” He looked embarrassed. “I never had no education to speak of. Most of two years of schooling and some newspaper reading here and there. I read a whole book. Never did own one though.”
Owen Chantry felt the man’s half-understood longing for something beyond what he knew.
“There’s no end to what a man can learn if he’s of a curious mind,” Chantry said quietly. “And we Chantrys have been blessed, or cursed, with such minds.”
“You better light out,” Frank said, suddenly. “They don’t aim to wait around. You’re here, and they figure you know something. They’ll be out to either kill you or make you talk.”
“I’ll be around,” Owen replied coolly, “but I like you, Frank. I think you’re a good man, too good for that lot. Do me a favor…don’t stay with them.”
Frank looked around at Chantry, as he turned his horse. “They’re my family,” he said. “I’ll ride with them.”
And he rode off, walking his horse, then lifting it to a trot. Owen Chantry watched him go, then turned back to the cabin.
Once more he looked quickly and carefully around. Nothing…not a clue. If there was anything left here it wouldn’t matter. If he couldn’t find it with his knowledge of Clive’s thinking, they would not either.
He went outside and crossed to the trees where his horse was waiting. It was time to go.
First, before anything else, he must find Marny.
Fear mounted inside him, fear and helplessness. Where, in all this empty land, would he find her?
Chapter 10
*
OWEN CHANTRY RODE his black horse north. Too much time would be lost in returning to the Kernohans to tell them of his intentions. It was better that he didn’t. It would be just like Doby to try to follow, and Owen wanted no interference. Big country it was, a vast and empty country.
He rode due east as the country would allow until he struck a north-south trail, the one he had first followed to the cabin on the rampart. Now he turned north. Frank’s tracks were in the trail dust, and Owen rode swiftly, noting by the tracks that Frank had also traveled fast.
Chantry was riding into enemy country, so he carried his rifle in his hand, ready for action—or, if need be, to leave the horse and take to the timber.
The tracks of another horse came off the mesa north of the box canyon and cut into the trail. This rider, whoever he was, had been just ahead of Frank.
The air was cool and very clear. During a pause to study the trail ahead, Chantry took a deep, long breath of the fresh mountain air. Judging by the growth about him, he must be almost ten thousand feet up.
High overhead, an eagle circled against the blue. In the distance thunder rumbled…the usual afternoon rain shower would be coming. Lightning hurled its flashing lance against the darker clouds. His black moved on, of its own volition, and Chantry let the gelding go, ears pricked, aware of its rider’s alertness.
He shifted the rifle in his hands. The trail he now rode was fresh.
The trail forked suddenly, and Chantry drew up. The trail dipped down and crossed a shallow river. The water was clear and cold, running swiftly over and among the rocks. He crossed over and went up the far bank. He rode up the trail, studying the tracks.
Five horses…and one that held to the outside of the trail, the prints clearly visible in the grass and wild flowers. He had seen the tracks of Marny’s horse before, and he believed he was looking at them again.
He moved swiftly, deeply worried now. He was in the bottom of the canyon, which at this point was close to a half mile wide. He forded another creek coming down from the high country and went up the canyon wall through a gap where the wall had fallen back from its usual line and was somewhat lower.
Suddenly the tracks changed. For an hour, Chantry examined them. All the horses had started to run. How long ago? An hour? Two hours? Longer, surely, than that. Apparently the rider of the first horse, the outside one, which he believed had been Marny, had sighted her pursuers and broken into a run. At a dead run, she had ridden a twisted, winding trail down through the trees toward a large clearing, and here and there her horse had actually leaped over deadfalls. Then, suddenly, at the crossing of another trail that skirted the large clearing, the tracks of her horse just vanished!
The pursuers had apparently reined in, too, studying the ground. The trail that Marny had come to led east and west, but which way had she taken?
Where had she gone?
Her pursuers had turned to the west, riding hard. Owen Chantry took his time considering, for he did not wish to make the mistake they had made. Marny’s life might depend upon it.
They had made a mistake, for their own returning tracks were here and there imprinted upon their outgoing tracks.
Still Chantry had not moved. Slowly he began to cast about. She was an uncommonly shrewd girl, who knew the wild country, and she had here decided, he thought, having gained a little time, to lose them.
He had to guess.…He had to surmise what he could not know.
He turned north, climbed over the end of a comblike ridge that pointed west from the mountain ahead of him—a peak that looked to be thirteen thousand feet high or more. He crossed another meadow at a fast trot, watching the grass for any signs of passage, and skirted another lake.
Suddenly he was on a trail, a dim trail, long unused. It led north past some beaver ponds and some standing but stark dead trees, and into the deepening s
hadows of the forest.
Here it was damp and cool. He could smell the forest itself, the pine smell, the spruce smell, the smell of crushed greenery and the faint perfume of flowers.
He drew up sharply. A sound…something moving. His gelding snorted and tried to turn, and then he saw it.
A huge grizzly on all fours, almost as tall as his horse and weighing half again as much. The bear was in the trail before them and showed no inclination to move.
Owen spoke softly, calmly, to his horse and kept the rifle in his right hand. The horse stirred its hoofs, eager to be off.
The bear stood up, staring at them through the vague half-light. “It’s all right, boy,” Chantry said calmly, speaking both to his horse and the bear. Then he added, and he spoke only to the bear, and a littler louder, “We’re not hunting trouble. You go your way and we’ll go ours.”
A bear does not charge when standing on two feet, and the big grizzly was probably more curious than anything else. A bear prefers ants, grubs, berries, nuts, and roots, and only a few become consistent meat eaters.
The black gelding reared, snorting. The bear looked a moment longer as the gelding’s hoofs came down to the trail. Owen Chantry steadied the horse, talking quietly, but keeping his rifle ready.
At that distance, if the bear should elect to charge, they were in plenty of trouble. A bear can move fast for a short distance, and this one looked to be a monster, although in the dim light he probably looked larger than he was. The gelding was fast and could turn on a dime. It might be best to chance a shot and run, but the path beyond the bear was where Chantry wanted to go.
Finally, after what seemed a very long inspection and when Chantry could hear the bear sniffing to study their scent, the big bear turned calmly and walked into the woods.
Chantry waited, holding the horse steady until he heard the sounds of movement die away. Then he rode on down the trail. “No use to get spooked,” he said, speaking aloud to the horse. “He was just curious.”
Now it was too dark to see tracks, and Chantry trusted to the gelding. The horse would hold to the trail, and by its ears and actions Chantry would know if anything was close by that needed his attention.
He rode on, walking his horse along the uncertain trail. Night when it came was cold. A small wind crept down from the icy peaks above. Timberline was only a thousand feet above him, more or less, and a vestige of last light clung there.
He made his camp by moonlight, gathering his wood from the broken bones of fallen trees. He could hear running water from some small stream of melting snow, and where the shelter was best he built a small fire and made coffee. He chewed on a strip of jerky and looked out across the vast blackness toward the stars in that grayer blackness overhead.
How many lonely campfires? How much incense offered the gods of desolation from his nightly resting places? And how many more to come?
He smiled wryly and got out his frying pan.
He pushed a couple of pine cones into the flames to make the fire flare up. He was in a reckless mood, irritated at not finding Marny Fox and afraid he might never find her.
He shaved bacon into the pan and put it up on a couple of rocks and watched it bubble and spit.
“Hello, the fire!” A voice called from out of the night and the cold.
“Come in, if you’re of a mind to. And come any way as suits you.”
A horse walked up to the fire, a gray horse bearing a gray man in the saddle. A gray old man in buckskins, with young gray eyes a-twinkle in an old gray face.
“Seen your fire,” the old man said. “Figured you was wishful of company.”
“I was, but I wasn’t expecting you. I was expecting trouble.”
“Seen a mite of it myself, time to time. I don’t know’s I care for no trouble, but the smell of bacon an’ coffee is durned near worth whatever comes.”
“Get down then, and sit up to the fire.” Chantry watched the old man with a careful eye. He carried a Sharps .50 and a bowie knife, at least. If he had a handgun, it was not in sight.
“These are lonely hills,” said Chantry.
“They was,” the old man said, fussing with his saddle. “They was almighty empty for many a year. A man could live out his time ’thout bother from other folks. I seen more folks t’day than I seen all year.”
“There was sign along the trail,” Chantry commented.
“You betchy,” the old man muttered. “They’ll be blood on the rocks afore we see the last of that outfit. Blood on the rocks for sure.”
“Four men?” Chantry suggested.
“Aye. Four of ’em. Mean an’ miserable, too. I seen ’em an’ got off into the rocks and hunkered down with old Mary here. If they’d a come at me I’d a shot ’em, I would. I never took nothin’ from their likes and ain’t about to. I’d of hung their hair to dry on a tall pole or a tree somewheres.”
“Where are they now?”
“Four, five mile down the mountain and west. I come up the mountain to be rid of them or their breeze. Then I fetched a sight of your fire, and I looked about to see who else was up.”
“Did you see anyone else?”
“Ain’t that enough for one day? Mister, I been years up and down these mountains, ain’t seen nobody. Didn’t want to see nobody. I seen a man two year back over on the Animas, an’ I reckoned that was enough. Now all to oncet they’re a-comin’ out of the rocks, all around. Gettin’ so a man can’t find no peace.”
“You better ride high and camp high from now on. That’s a bad outfit down yonder.”
“You’re a-tellin’ me? I seen ’em.”
“You didn’t see anyone else? A lone rider, maybe?”
The old man walked up to the fire and speared a rasher of bacon from the pan with his bowie knife. He peered at Chantry from under gray brows. “Was you lookin’ for somebody?” he asked.
“I am,” Chantry replied. “I’m looking for a girl. And I’d better find her before those down below do. She’s who they’re hunting for.”
“Are they now? Well, why don’t you an’ me just slip down there ’fore daylight and shoot the four of ’em? Save trouble.”
“Shoot them? In cold blood?”
“Cold blood? I don’t know if their blood is hot or cold or lukewarm. They’re varmints. Varmints. I could read their sign and smell their smell. Shoot ’em, says I. Shoot ’em down an’ leave ’em for the buzzards. I’d a done it m’self, only one man can’t noways get off four shots fast enough. You got you one o’ them six-shootin’ pistols an’ a repeater. Hell, if I had a repeater they be dead by now.”
“That’s a lovely lady they’re chasing,” Chantry said. “I’d not want her in their hands.”
“Shoot ’em. Stretch their hide. They ain’t no good. Not one mother’s son of ’em. Shoot ’em, I say.”
He ate his bacon and speared another slice. Chantry took up the slab he had and sliced off half a dozen more.
“Seen you huntin’ ’em,” the old man said, past a mouthful of bacon. “Watched you from up yonder.” He gestured toward the high peaks. “Had m’ glass on you.”
“Glass? You’ve got a pair of field glasses?”
“Nope. I got me a telyscope. A ginuwine telyscope.” He went to his pack and from a roll of blanket extracted a four-foot seaman’s telescope of a type Owen Chantry had not seen since he was a boy, and it was an antique then. “With this thing I can see from here to yonder. I was a-watchin’ you a-follerin’ them. I watched them, too. I seen ’em huntin’ that girl. Seen her give ’em the slip.”
He demolished the rest of the bacon and wiped the blade of his bowie on his sleeve, then sheathed it. “Come daylight, you an’ me an’ that girl can meet up. I know a way off this mountain that’ll bring us to her before they get there.”
“We’d better,” Owen said quietly. “That’s a bad outfit.”
The old man studied him. “You kin to that Chantry feller had the ranch?”
“I am. Did you know him?”
&n
bsp; “Know him? I should smile. I knowed him. Why, I rode right up to these mountains with him and helped lay the timbers of his cabin on the rampart. I knew him. Good man.”
Owen Chantry stared. This gray old man had known Clive Chantry.
Chapter 11
*
OWEN CHANTRY HAD seen too much to doubt too much. He was intelligent. He had a healthy vein of skepticism, but he had traveled too widely and read too much not to understand that the seemingly impossible could happen.
As the old man ate and talked, Chantry watched him thoughtfully. The old man was quick and active, also very thin, wiry, and strong.
The oldest people Chantry had known all lived at relatively high altitudes, where many illnesses simply do not exist because the germs that spread them are not active in that cold, clear air. Or perhaps there were simply fewer people to harbor the germs.
“If you know a way to head them off, we’d better get going early,” said Chantry.
The old man looked over his shoulder. “Worried about her, ain’t you? Well, I’d be too. Them as follers her are a mighty poor lot, a sorry lot.”
Chantry pushed a few heavier sticks into the fire, then stretched out. He was tired…he hadn’t realized how tired.
Yet he slept, and well. It was still dark when he heard the old man breaking sticks. When Owen raised up, the old fellow glanced over. “Seen you had coffee,” he said. “Ain’t had much lately. Git some chicory in the woods, time to time, but it ain’t the same.”
Chantry sat up, shook out his boots carefully to be sure no wanderers had taken shelter there during the night, and tugged them on. He didn’t know this old man and preferred to make the coffee himself.
The fire blazed up brightly. Chantry glanced around. It was a perfect camp, sheltered from the wind, partly sheltered from rain, with wood and water.
When he had made coffee and started some bacon, he rolled his bed. The old man went about his business as if alone, taking his horse to water and returning to pack up. Owen did the same, and when they had eaten he kicked earth over the fire. When Owen would have dumped out the coffee, the old man insisted on keeping the grounds, wrapping them carefully in a piece of well-tanned hide.
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