by Jory Sherman
Ollie leaned back in his chair, his forehead wrinkling in thought.
Army looked at him, his mouth agape.
Fry’s breathing was the only sound in the room for a long moment. He sat there, stiff as a board, his expression noncommittalas the homeliest desert stone.
“Army,” Ollie said, “we can’t wait no more. We get Red Eagle and his bunch and we hit them miners up in Dead Horse Canyon.”
“When?” Mandrake said.
“We’ll ride up tomorrow night. We got enough guns. Make sure them Injuns carry their war clubs. Hell, we’ll use sling-shotsif we have to. There’s gold up there aplenty and it hasn’t gone down to no assay office.”
“Tomorrow night? It’s a day’s ride,” Army said.
“We’ll hit ’em when they wake up, the day after.”
“If you say so,” Army said. “I hope Red Eagle’s still up there in his mountain camp.”
“He’d better be,” Ollie said.
“What about Cresswell?” Fry said. “He might beat you to Red Eagle.”
“You know why he’s gone Injun on us, Fry?” Ollie asked.
Fry let out a breath, looked down at his hands, then back up at Hobart.
“There’s been talk of a campaign up north to round up all the Sioux and Cheyenne and either put ’em on a reservation or kill ’em. Folks are going into the Black Hills, findin’ gold, and the Sioux are hoppin’ mad. I think Cresswell’s going to help his red brothers by takin’ rifles and cartridges up to the Dakotas and joinin’ in the fight.”
“On the wrong side,” Hobart said.
“Yeah. On the wrong side.”
Hobart stood up, a look of distaste on his face.
“You know what, Army?” he said.
“What, Ollie?”
“I think we just stepped into a deep pile of shit.”
There wasn’t a bit of humor in Ollie’s words. He walked back to where Rosa was sitting, jerked the whiskey bottle out of her hand, and slapped her hard across the mouth.
“And I’m just about to run out of patience with you, too, Rosa. Make some coffee and drink it down until you sober up.”
“Ollie,” she said in a pleading voice that trailed off with her sodden breath.
“If you don’t,” he said, “you’ll be the first blood I draw on this job. Long before we hit that mining camp.”
For the first time that evening, Fry lost his composure. He slumped in his chair, his military bearing gone like a puff of smoke.
But he never said a word.
23
John swung into the saddle, relieved to be free of colonelward’s jurisdiction. He would have been less relieved had he heard what the colonel said to Lieutenant Herzog as soon as Ben and John walked out the door.
“Rolf, get two good men and follow Savage and Russell. Don’t be obvious about it. Keep your distance. But I want to know where they go and what they do.”
“Yes, sir,” Herzog said. “Do you want me to detain them if they come across Hobart?”
“No, just send one of your men back here to report.”
Herzog saluted and left to get two troopers so that he could follow John and Ben. He wasted no time, but outside, he marked the direction the two riders were headed and ran to his horse, calling out to his men: “Crisp, Freeman, come with me. The rest of you are dismissed.”
The two sergeants, Will Crisp and Daryl Freeman, flanked him on their horses a few minutes later. Herzog gave them their orders and the three men slowly rode into the night, following in the tracks of their quarry, stopping every so often to listen, making sure they were following the two civilians.
BEN GROWLED AT JOHN.
"You mind tellin’ me where in hell we’re goin’, Johnny?”
John was leaning to one side, peering down at the ground.
“Wherever these tracks lead us.”
“What tracks?”
“See them all? You heard what happened? Some Indians broke into the armory and stole rifles and cartridges. Probably for Hobart. If we follow their tracks, we might find Ollie.”
Ben leaned over and scanned the ground. Scanned the blackness, struggling to find even the faintest trace of a hoof-print,an iron scuff mark, a broken twig, or anything besides ground as black as funeral crepe.
“I don’t see no tracks,” Ben said.
“At night, you have to compare.”
“Compare what?”
“Bare ground with torn-up ground.”
“All looks the same to me.”
“Pa taught me to track at night. Black night, when there wasn’t any moon and the stars were faint.”
Ben tilted his head back, looked up at the sky. There were stars sprinkled everywhere, tiny pieces of shattered, broken glass shot with light. A glow in the sky from a moon not yet risen. He looked back down at the ground. But he didn’t trust his eyes. At night, all shapes were suspicious, unreal. He might have seen horse tracks. He might be just imagining them. He didn’t know.
“I can’t compare shit,” Ben said.
“There’s that, too,” John said.
“Huh?”
“Smell the horse droppings? They’re faint, but they’re down there, and I can see them, too.”
“Maybe you better explain how you see anything down there on that black ground.”
“I don’t see much, but if I shift my focus, I can make out tracks. I look up and down and right and left. The faint light makes tracks appear kind of not direct, but indirect. Hard to explain.”
“Let it go, Johnny,” Ben said. “I ain’t even goin’ to try and understand you. Life is just too short.”
John laughed.
He could smell the horse droppings and the ground was roiled enough so that he knew there had been horses along their path not long before. The riders seemed to be heading for the distant mountains, mountains he could not see in the darknessof night. But with his vision, he already knew that some of the horses were carrying more weight than others. All of the hoofprints seemed deeply embedded in the sandy soil. If packhorses were carrying rifles and ammunition, their tracks would be the most visible. All of the horses were unshod, so the tracks were not as distinct had the horses been wearing shoes. However, one track stood out. And that one had been made from a shod horse.
“Something funny here, Ben,” John said, pulling on his reins to halt his horse.
“Yeah? What?”
“Can you see well enough to make out that the bunch of horses has been splitting up? Some go one way, others drift off in another direction. I’m going to follow just one set of tracks.”
“I can’t see much. Ground looks torn up some, but . . .”
“No matter. I think whoever’s ridin’ these horses will meet up later. I think they’re trying to throw off any army trackers.”
“Makes sense,” Ben said.
The moon rose above the horizon, slipped up slow, half lit, the shining half beaming with an alabaster radiance that seemed to pulse with a quiet energy that John could feel. The landscape changed under its light. Shadows formed and reformed, plants that had been nearly invisible before now blossomed on the plain, taking on grotesque shapes that made them seem alive and oddly ominous. The effect, John thought, was spectral, as if the ghosts of living things had magically appeared and what had been flat and dark before now bristled with a life born of the night, born out of nothingness.
“We gonna just wait here and gaze at the moon?” Ben asked quietly when John had not spoken for several minutes.
“Awhile, yes.”
“How come?”
“Adjust the eyes, for one thing.”
“All right. Any other reason? We can see a little better. I mean I can see some horse tracks now.”
John swung out of the saddle, walked over to a pile of horse apples. Another horse had stepped in it and dragged some of the nuggets away from the pile, cracked some of them open. John knelt down and sniffed the offal. Ben eyed him from atop his horse, feeling oddly out of place
, almost unwelcome and unwanted.
“Not so fresh,” John said. “But not real old, either. A coupleof hours ahead of us, maybe.”
“I’m thinkin’ maybe we don’t want to catch up to them thievin’ Injuns whilst it’s still dark as a mine shaft out here.”
John looked back over the way they had come, turned his head slowly, cocked it, cupped one ear with his hand. He held up another to silence Ben as he listened. He turned his head slightly to the right and to the left. He still cupped an ear, bending the flesh slightly. Gathering sound in a human seashell. Amplifying whatever he thought he had heard momentsbefore. Listening, like a deer, for anything that made a sound.
John heard something.
He drew in a breath, took his hand away from his ear. He turned to look up at Ben and put a finger to his lips.
Ben nodded.
John beckoned to him. Ben dismounted, led his horse over. He stood next to John, a puzzled expression on his face. He said nothing, knowing he was still under John’s admonition to keep silent.
“Ben, we might have a small hitch here. Just listen to me.” John’s whisper was just loud enough for Ben to hear without straining. He nodded again.
“I think somebody’s following us,” John said. “Maybe ColonelWard sicced some soldiers on our tail. Or those Indians we’re tracking might have circled around, some of them, anyway,and mean to catch us from behind.”
John paused and Ben nodded again.
“Either way, we have to take it into account. I was going to follow the tracks of that one shod horse. If that’s a stolen army horse, we can deal with that. But if there’s a soldier leading those Indians, he’d be the one who might be in cahoots with Ollie Hobart. Follow my thinking so far?”
“Yeah,” Ben said, without thinking.
“I don’t much like this bunch splitting up like they have. Those we don’t follow might circle in back of us. In fact, that’s what I would do if I was leading these Indians.”
“I follow you,” Ben whispered.
“We can’t split up. They could pick us off too easy.”
“I agree,” Ben said.
“We can do two things, the way I see it. We can keep followingthat shod horse and the two Indians with it. I’m pretty sure those two other sets of tracks are carrying Indians, not rifles. The hoof marks are not deep enough. So those three men are more dangerous. They’re not protecting their stolen goods. They can ride away from us if we catch up to them. Or they can swarm over us and shoot us dead if each one comes at us from a different direction.”
“You’re scarin’ the hell out of me, Johnny.”
“I know. I’m scared, too. Just working all this out in my mind.”
“Well, go on then. What are we goin’ to do?”
“The Indians and the man on the shod horse, who might be a soldier, are about two hours ahead of us. So we can track them for nearly two hours, if they don’t ride on solid rock. Gives us time to maybe find out who’s behind us.”
“How do you expect to do that?” Ben asked.
“I don’t know if those boys behind us are trackers, but I expectthey are.”
“So?”
“My idea is to ride for another hour and a half, then drop off my horse at a good spot and lie in wait. You’d take Gent and go on, leaving our two sets of tracks.”
“I don’t much like that idea. You don’t know how many men are maybe following us and they might shoot you dead.”
“If they wanted to kill us, they would already have jumped us, Ben.”
Ben sighed.
“You got a point, John. So you wait for them. You see them. Then what?”
“If they’re soldiers, sent after us just to see where we go, I’ll make them an offer.”
“Yeah? What offer?”
“I’ll ask them to join us.”
“What?”
“Why not? Colonel Ward wants his rifles back. And he wants Hobart. We both have the same aim, don’t you think?”
“I think you’re speculatin’ a mite too much, Johnny.”
“I might be at that.”
“But your daddy used to say, ‘a plan is better’n no plan at all.’ ”
“He did say that. So what do you think? You like my idea?”
“Not much,” Ben said.
“Good, that’s what we’ll do then.”
John grinned. Ben gave him a sour look.
The moon bathed their faces in an eerie light. Their eyes were hollow pits. Shadows took weight and years from Ben’s face, hollowed John’s visage to a gaunt and ghostly image. They stood there in the silence for several seconds.
“Mount up, Ben. Let’s follow these tracks.”
Both men climbed back into their saddles.
John led the way, following three sets of horse tracks. One set was shod, the others, smaller and unshod. Indian ponies. The horses were walking, not running, and when John looked off in the distance, the mountains were closer, dark hulks that loomed under snowcapped peaks that stood like dim beacons in the sky, nearly as bright as the moon.
They rode for an hour. John kept his bearings, wondering if the tracks would veer, start making a circle to join up with the others. But in that hour the tracks headed straight for the mountains. And the mountains grew larger and darker. Clouds drifted over the moon, floated above them, shifting the light, making his task more difficult each time it happened.
Ben and John chewed on jerky and hardtack and drank waterfrom their canteens. Not at the same time, but at alternate intervals. This was John’s idea and Ben agreed. One of them had to be ready to shoot or sound an alarm. They were not gaining ground on their quarry, but holding their own, staying two hours behind.
A few minutes later, John drew in hard on his reins. Gent stopped. Ben pulled up alongside him and stopped his horse. He had been nodding in the saddle, trying to stay awake.
“Yeah? How come you’re stopping?” Ben asked.
John pointed to the ground.
Ben leaned over, looked where John was pointing.
“I don’t see nothin’,” Ben said.
“No. Neither do I.”
“What do you mean, Johnny?”
“I mean, no more tracks.”
Both men stared down at bare, unmarked ground. The horse tracks had vanished, suddenly, it seemed. They both straightenedup and looked all around. The moon stood high overhead, shining bright as polished marble. The land lay in shadow, not a tall silhouette to be seen.
It seemed to John as if the world had gone dead. There wasn’t a sound. There was no movement. The earth stood still, empty, barren of all life save their own. Ben shivered involuntarily.
John closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them, to make sure he wasn’t dreaming.
He knew, then, they had been tricked. They were not standingon bare rock. But there were no more tracks.
Where had the riders gone? Turned into phantoms? Plucked from the earth by some mysterious force or being?
For a moment, he wondered if he had been addled by the moonlight. He had heard of such things as a boy. Lunacy, wasn’t that what they called it? He looked up at the moon and wondered. Its half face seemed as enigmatic as the earth had become. Not a trace of life above or below.
Only the two of them, he and Ben, lost, alone, and probablyin danger the longer they stayed there. He lowered his head and stared back down at the ground.
He wasn’t crazy, he knew. There had to be an explanation for the vanishing tracks.
And, for sure, the change was ominous. Ominous as hell.
24
JOHN HANDED THE REINS OF HIS HORSE TO BEN.
“Hold these. Wait here. I’ll be back.”
John walked over their backtrail, hunching over to study the ground. When he came upon the place where the tracks appeared again, he began walking in circles, still backtracking.It was difficult to see and he was careful not to step in any of the horse tracks.
Finally, he stopped, knelt down and saw what he
had been looking for.
Moccasin tracks.
He followed these, again avoiding any obliteration of these with his own boots.
Ben lost sight of John in the darkness after he walked away. He felt very alone out there. Gent pawed the ground, blew air through his nostrils. His own horse stood hipshot, head drooping. There was no grass there for either horse.
He could hear John’s footsteps, and then even those faded away into the deepening silence.
He listened to his own breathing, became aware of the beating of his heart. Like most men, Ben was not used to beingalone in a strange place. It felt almost unnatural to him. With the faint throb of his heart, he felt mortal, exposed. He thought of all the people Hobart had killed and of all the men he and John had killed, and realized how brief life could be. He could go in the next second. A rifle shot out of nowhere, an Indian leaping onto his back, squeezing his neck, shutting off the breath. It could be that quick. His life could be that short.
He began to sweat and his palms turned clammy in the chill that seeped down from the mountains. His throat constrictedwith a sudden dryness and his breathing became more audible, so loud he was sure the sound would carry for miles and . . .
“You awake, Ben?” John said.
Ben’s backbone creaked as his head snapped up. A rush of fear shot through his veins.
“John, you nigh scared me to death. You oughtn’t to sneak up on a man like that.”
“I didn’t sneak up. I think you were dozing, Ben.”
“I warn’t dozin’. I just didn’t hear you.”
“I found out what the Indians did. One Indian, anyway.”
John took the reins from Ben and climbed back into the saddle.
“You gonna tell me, or just keep it to yourself?” Ben asked.
“Pretty smart what they did,” John said. “Gathered a bunch of sage, pulled them up out of the ground, wove them all togetherand made a big old broom.”
“A broom?”
“Kind of like a broom. They’ve been brushing away their tracks, sweeping them clean.”
Ben tilted his hat back on his head and scratched along his hairline.