"Purely shines." Bloodgood got up and walked to the door. "Don't you fret, boy. That breed's hide is as good as nailed up. See you in the morning."
He went out, softly closing the door behind him.
Will-Joe usually woke the way an animal did, all his senses bristling to focus at once. This morning he opened his eyes and ran his gaze up and around through the trees, touching everything in its range before he moved a muscle.
He had made his camp in the bottom of a steep canyon. It did not box off, for he had gotten in the habit of choosing his bivouacs with an eye to more than mere seclusion. The canyon ran for a half mile before its walls tapered down, but a man could slip out at either end. The west wall soared almost vertically for a couple hundred feet: a sheer lift of crumbling discolored sandstone painted to fiery hues by morning sunrays that had not yet penetrated to the canyon depths. The other wall was more of a deep slant, overgrown by scrub cedar that had taken tenacious root among the strewings of giant boulders.
Will-Joe threw off his single blanket and rose in one movement, stretching. He had gotten a good night's sleep burrowed in a heap of dry soft sand. He shook the grains out of his hair and clothes, and glanced at the pinto that Rainbow Girl had given him. He had tethered the animal on a skimpy patch of galleta grass and now, roused from sleep, it began to eat.
There was little forage available for Will-Joe himself, a fact that did not cause him immediate concern. He had spent yesterday fashioning a rawhide-strung bow and some arrows, hardening the tips in a small fire. He was tired of living off wild truck. Maybe today he could bag a rabbit The brush downcanyon was threaded with runways. He would set some snares too. He was still leery of firing off his pistol and he wanted to conserve shells, but he had now spent two days in the canyon and he felt an undeniable security.
The canyon bottom was laced with heavy cover; cottonwoods and willows flourished in the damp sand along most of its length. His camp was well hidden from any direction, including from above, and he had taken considerable pains to hide his trail coming here. The canyon was remote from any sort of human habitation, for it had to be approached over the roughest kind of country. He had remembered it from years ago, when he and Adakhai had camped here on a hunting trip.
It was nice here. A man could think; he could weigh his moves, sift his plans, and wonder what to do next.
He still hadn't arrived at anything definite. His determination to hang on somehow, to try to prove his innocence, had waned. He still hated the idea of running, but after two nights ago and the stroke of bad luck that had brought Claude Warhoon blundering out to his death, the whole picture had been clouded. His bullet had killed Claude; he was sure of it.
Claude had never been his enemy. Occasionally, when he'd lived in town and eked out a living while attending Miss Bethany's school, he and Claude had chummed together. Claude was happy-go-lucky, unshackled by color pride or by much of anything except his lazy devotion to Sheriff Ulring, whom he regarded as a great man. Intelligence was not one of Claude's strong points either, but there had been no malice in him, not a shred of resentment even at those times when Will-Joe had beaten him in getting one or other of the odd jobs on which both had depended.
Claude. The killing hollowed Will-Joe's belly with a sick regret. He had not wanted to shoot at Claude who—knowing how furiously his idol Ulring had pursued this particular fugitive—had simply acted in blind innocence. But there'd been no choice, no time for anything but to cut down fast on Claude's blurred form.
Nobody had seen it, of course. Nobody could be sure who had done it… unless Claude had lived long enough to give his name. That was a possibility. But even if not, he would be a natural suspect. Lacking a shred of real evidence, the good people of Spurlock would be happy, as they hasseled over the pros and cons of how it might have happened, to stretch their imaginations enough to accommodate a breed fugitive. Miss Bethany would easily guess at how and why Claude had been killed, and she would understand. And, he was sure, she would say nothing.
All this was guessing, but he was pretty sure it would go something like that. As for the little matter of his having shot in self-defense, the law would not care: it made no allowance for any fugitive from its implacable code.
Perhaps it really made little difference, so long as he could not prove himself guiltless of McAllister's death. He had hung on here partly out of a desire to convince Miss Bethany of his innocence. That much he had accomplished—but it was small satisfaction now that he knew of Ulring's real design. The wolf and the rabbit She was forewarned—what more could he do?
Unless.
Unless he turned the hunt back on Ulring, matching his brain and skills against the sheriff's. One bullet would end the threat to Miss Bethany. And he'd be no worse off than he had been; they could only hang him once. They had to catch him first, and once he had a good start out of the country…
The infuriating hitch was, he wanted to stay. For reasons that had grown increasingly confusing even to his own mind. But reasons he couldn't ignore.
Picking up a stone, he pegged it furiously into the dead fire. "Damn!" His frustration and impatience shaped a white man's epithet… but it was Indian fatalism that made him shrug his shoulders then. He needed to do some more thinking, that was all.
At a point a hundred feet below his camp, the groundwater pooled on the surface and formed a little spring. He might as well fill his belly with water and call it breakfast; he wasn't particularly hungry anyway. A man's gut shrank below need when it subsisted on the sort of inadequate fare he had been supplying it. He needed meat, chunky pieces of spit-broiled meat, and plenty of it. He could afford the time and care necessary to stalk it.
He walked a short distance downcanyon through the trees, halting when the cover began to thin away. The spring was cupped in a rocky trough another two hundred feet out. He would have to cross the open to reach it, and he made a habit of checking his surroundings before leaving the trees. The morning was serene. Weak sunlight touched his face; a hawk pivoted on the pale bowl of sky. Nothing else moved. Birds were twittering the morning to life, rustling unseen through the low growth of weeds and bushes on the canyon bottom and higher up on the sloping east wall.
Will-Joe crossed to the spring, knelt beside it, cupped his hands and drank. The water had a brittle iron flavor that was not exactly displeasing. It was so cold it made his teeth ache. He ducked his head and raised it, throwing back his wet hair. Then grew tight-muscled, though for an instant only.
Some birds on the slope had ceased their rustling and chirpings. A minor-key but specific break in the gentle blend of diurnal sounds. Something or someone up there, maybe someone in hiding, had moved enough to alarm the birds. It might mean nothing; it could mean anything.
Again he was the hunted: nerve-poised, ready.
His pause of realization was imperceptible. He continued the easy normalcy of his movements, even ducked his head again, letting the water sluice down inside his shirt. Rising then, he tramped back toward the trees. He made himself walk slowly. Once in the trees, he could not be seen. And his pistol was there, stowed in his gear.
He was fifty feet from the trees when a voice called: "Freeze right there, boy. I got a bead square on your head."
He came to a dead stop, not even turning his head. No need to. He knew Bloodgood's voice and knew too that he was so close, he could plunk a squirrel's eye at this distance without half-trying.
Bloodgood rose, a lean shadow among the rocks halfway up the slope, and came down easy as a goat. He tramped up to Will-Joe, looking a little red-eyed. His rifle was cradled under one bent arm, held in a casual aim, hand ready to the trigger.
"Boy, you are a smart 'un. You don't gotta die just yet."
He reached out and lifted Will-Joe's knife from its sheath, then motioned with a lazy sweep of the rifle barrel. Will-Joe walked ahead of him to the camp in the trees. Bloodgood made him stretch out on the ground face down and then, muttering to himself, poked through Will
-Joe's few belongings.
"If you ain't a piddling pack rat. Little o' this, little o' that. Boy, ain't you a hair curious how I found you?"
"I am surprised you had a reason to."
"Thousand dollar hain't a bad reason." Bloodgood's chuckle grated like a rusty saw. "Hell, ain't nothing here worth a man's time picking up. 'Cep'n this." He hefted Will-Joe's pistol, and glanced at the pinto. "Maybe him too. Good-looking hoss. That the one your little klootch give you? Heerd about that. Roll over and stick your hands up front of you."
Bloodgood had a rope coiled over his arm. He shook it out, then moved over to Will-Joe, slipped the noose over his wrists and yanked it tight, took a few quick turns and tightened them, then made a knot. Afterward he cut off a couple lengths of the other end, put a hackamore on the pinto, unhobbled him, fastened on a leadrope and then boosted Will-Joe to the animal's back.
Leading the pinto, Bloodgood walked the quarter mile to the north outlet of the canyon. He had a big rawboned jughead of a paint horse tethered in some brush there. He tied the leadrope to the horn of the paint's scarred and shiny-worn saddle, then swung astride.
"Well, boy, we got a passel of rough riding to do. Best clamp that pinto's barrel with your knees and hang tight."
Will-Joe was puzzled. "Mr. Bloodgood… did the sheriff pay you to find me?"
"Sonny, didn't you cinch onto that right off?"
"It does not make sense that he would want me brought in for trial… where I can tell my story."
"Why, bless you, boy, course he don't. Not on your tintype."
"Then why take the trouble to take me anywhere else?" Will-Joe said it with an atonal flatness. "I can die as easy right here."
"Shuckins, ain't no argufying that," Bloodgood said genially. He kicked his horse into motion, talking across his shoulder as they rode: "But I got to show him your carcass afore I get paid. Sight easier to herd you back near town afore I dust you off. Otherwise I got to fetch the sheriff clear back here and that is a tol'able piece of distance."
"Yes. But you tracked me so far."
"Yep, for all you did hide your sign like an ole scout. You just fetched up agin the wrong bearcat, sonny. I 'uz tracking red coon for the Army when your pappy was a pup. Hell, I was squatting right off the road when you cut out't'other night after dusting that Claude feller. Was you done that, wa'n't it? Could of tetched you, I was that close."
"But the sheriff had to make it worth your while."
"Don't take a pile of figgering, do it? So I cut your track from there. Give me a blamed hard time, I got to own. You kiver trail smart. Stuck on ground rougher'n a razorback's bristles. Doubled back and looped around more'n an ole fox running hounds. Blame near threw me. Took me two day at that. Come on that canyon sunset yestiday. Seen a thread o' smoke. Just a thread, but you shoulda knowed better'n to build any kind o' fire."
"No. That was a mistake."
"I spotted things pret' well, but being I couldn't make you out in them trees, I didn't aim to sneak in and maybe have you throw down on me. So I hunkered up on the slope above the spring and waited for you come get a drink. Lot o' trouble, but I figgered I best see you afore you seen me." Bloodgood scraped another chuckle. "Knowed you wouldn't be leaving out no latchstring for ole Caspar."
"Not after Sheriff Ulring came with others to the Navajo camp," Will-Joe said thinly. "He did that like he knew. Like someone told him."
"Some 'un did, sonny…"
They crossed a short stony valley and began climbing a hogback ridge, following roughly the route by which Will-Joe had come to the canyon. It was parched and broken country. Scrub timber clung in desolate patches to the slopes and crowns of almost barren ridges. There was little flat terrain; the valleys between ridges veed into cramped pockets that formed a cross-hatching of brief canyons and washes. It made for slow hard going even if a man were not systematically covering his own trail or uncovering another's.
Will-Joe guessed that with no delays, it would take at least a full day to reach Spurlock. And Bloodgood did not intend to take him quite that far… which meant that he still had perhaps nine or ten hours of life. Long cruel hours. It was hard to keep a seat on the bareback pinto, straining for balance and nothing but his dug-in heels and his hands gripping the mane to hold him upright. Already his hands were going numb from the bite of ropes that Bloodgood had yanked savagely tight. Long before they got to wherever the mountain man was taking him, he would be senseless with pain and fatigue.
They climbed steadily through the ridges. The country would get progressively rougher until the ridges dwindled away into the deep smooth valleys of the foothill country above Spurlock. The old game and Indian trails which most white men would not even recognize twisted in grotesque hairpins around spired rocks and along canyon rims; they switchbacked up and down a corduroy of rugged ridges.
Will-Joe flexed his hands and rolled his wrists against the ropes; the fibers drew blood and rasped the flesh raw, but he worked some feeling back into his fingers. A nerve of desperation threaded his belly like hot wire. Soon, very soon, if there was any chance at all…
They began the descent of a long height that dropped almost sheer into a narrow gorge. The trail down clung like an irregular ribbon to the wall, but it was a fairly wide trail, formed by a natural fault which Indians of a bygone age had widened by patient chipping with flint tools. Still it was treacherous going, for the shale was rotted by ancient weathering, scaling away in sizable chunks. The wall above was scarred and pitted, the trail littered with pieces of fallaway rock, and the lip of the ledge that formed the trail was either crumbling away or hanging in brittle stubs that it would take very little to dislodge. The gorge below was strewn with chunks fallen from above.
Giving the pinto a slow pressure of the knee, Will-Joe edged him closer to the brink. He peered over. Mountain-bred, he had no fear of height; he judged that the wall dropped fifty feet to the gorge floor. The pinto side-shuffled nervously, his hoofs skittering fragments of rock. They rolled off the brink and clattered downward.
Bloodgood, picking his way carefully just ahead, turned in his saddle. "Gawdammit, boy, keep that nag up next the wall."
Will-Joe lightly drummed the pinto's flank with his right heel, nudging him back to the inner trail. The wall was laced with shallow crevices and sharp-angled shelves. His eye fastened on a loose shard of rock on a shelf eye-level to him a few yards ahead. As he pulled abreast of it, he thudded the pinto's barrel on the right side, making him press so close to the wall that Will-Joe's left knee rasped painfully against it. He swept his bound hands up and sideways, closed them around the rock fragment and brought it down.
He kept his eyes on Bloodgood's back, waiting, hugging the hunk of jagged shale between his crotch and the horse's neck. His heart slugged fiercely at his ribs as he waited for the mountain man to acknowledge that he had detected something amiss. But Bloodgood didn't look back.
He rode slowly on. The trail plunged at a deep slant now; the horses picked their way haltingly across the rubble. Will-Joe flexed and unflexed his sweating hands around the rock. About six inches long, it fit his grip like a tool, smooth as glass and just as sharp where the rough corners gouged his palm, and it tapered down to a chisel edge.
Just ahead, Will-Joe knew, the ledge narrowed somewhat and made a sharp twist; then it was clear going to the bottom. His muscles corded with tension.
Now?
The littered steepness of the trail was making Bloodgood's jughead skittish. He flattened his ears and fiddlefooted, quartering partly around. The old man swore, leaned across the animal's neck and chopped a bony fist against his muzzle.
"Settle down, you wall-eyed bastard, or I'll bust your nose like a ripe tomater—"
Now.
Will-Joe drove both heels into the pinto's sides. He gigged forward with a stiff-legged fright, almost barreling into Bloodgood's mount before he swung aside, then pulled up hard. The horses were a couple feet apart, flank to flank.
Bloodgo
od fought to control his quaking animal. His red-eyed glance whipped Will-Joe's face. "Don't crowd me, gawdam you, boy!"
His eyes dropped. He saw the heavy sliver of stone clenched between Will-Joe's hands. His mouth opened. His hands were occupied with the reins and he could not even begin to grab at the Winchester jutting up under his knee as Will-Joe's bound hands lifted.
Instead he grabbed at Will-Joe's arm as if to deflect an intended blow at his head. It was a mistake. For Will-Joe arced the rock down with all his strength at the opposite shoulder of his own horse.
The chisel edge cut low and deep into the muscle swell just below the pinto's wither. The animal leaped sidelong as if hit by hot iron, away from the source of pain. He slammed full force into the jughead, shoulder point catching him above the girth: a pivotal smash of weight against weight that drove the jughead helplessly sideways.
The jughead's legs crumpled, he was going down, and as he fell, his flailing hoofs hit the slick rimrock. Will-Joe saw the shocked blur of Bloodgood's face an instant before they went over, horse and rider together, and heard a hoarse dwindling shriek as they vanished.
He had time for that one clear impression. Then he was clinging like a burr to the pinto's back as he spun and reared in panic. His back hoofs skidded on the rim. Rock crumbled. He scrambled wildly as he began to slip, forehoofs striking for solid footing, shuddering with convulsive effort. His hindquarters went over the brink, then his whole body.
Will-Joe pushed out with his legs away from the falling animal. But he was falling too.
He plunged helplessly down the slanting drop, his body battered like a bouncing cork, till he hit a rounded knob of rock that shelved out from the wall. Hit it with his doubled left leg. Heard the bone crack like dry wood. Screamed with the scarlet pain that mushroomed through his body.
Eye of the Wolf Page 13