He brought up short, giving me a terrific jolt. I went to my knees, slammed into the tree, and he swung to ride around to get a loop around the tree, so as to bind me there. My hand grabbed at my blankets and came up with my Colt.
Too late he saw the gun, and grabbed at his chest. I fired, holding the gun in my left hand, and scored a clean miss on him, but burned his horse across the shoulder.
The crow-bait gave a startled leap, throwing his aim off target, and I got off a second shot and missed again.
The rope had slacked briefly and I threw it off, flattening myself behind the cottonwood. I heard his gun roar and heard the bullet thud into the tree, but my pistol was in my right hand now and I jumped into the clear.
He had a big Colt in his hand. "Got you!" he yelled, and threw the gun up to chop down, as some men will do.
I shot, not looking at the gun, but only at him. My bullet caught him in the side above the hip but he managed to fire. It was too close a miss for comfort and I jumped back past the cottonwood. As my feet hit ground on the other side of the tree, I shot again He reeled in the saddle gave me a glaring look and slapping spurs to the crow-bait was away at a dead run.
For a moment I could only stand and stare after him.
He was hit twice, one of them a good one, at least, but that was a tough old man. I wanted to see no more of him ever.
The dun seemed undisturbed, by which I gathered he had been around gunfire before. Saddling up I gathered my gear and rode out of there on the far side of the hollow wary of every possible place of ambush.
Only then did I realize that my knees were badly torn from being jerked along the gravel and into the tree my arm had a rope-burn that began to sting as sweat got into it. I also was developing a stiff neck, and a rope bum on it as well.
"That was a mean old man," I said, speaking to the dun, who flicked an ear at me.
Talking to a horse was not a new thing for me, or for any man who rides miles over lonely country. But then, I always figured horses were as good as people or better and I took them into my confidence from time to time. That line-hack dun was a good listener and had to be, for I'd had the scare of my life and was talking it out of my system.
Of course that old man figured he just had a wet-eared kid but I'd gotten some lead into his system that was going to take some digesting. Nevertheless, I scouted the country carefully as I rode, and kept on riding the day through.
When I finally got to Walker's Pass, two men were camped there with some sheep.
In answer to my question one of them said. 'Three days ago Bob Heseltine and two others and a woman.
They went through the pass and I figure they're headed north from there.
"You know Hesetine" I asked. They asked me to eat with them, and I joined them.
"Seen him kill a man in a saloon down Texas way.
That was seven, eight years ago. He shot that man down with no reason at all but that he didn't like him."
He looked at me. "Are you Shell Tucker?"
"Yes."
"Heard you was huntin' him. Good luck."
"There may be a man hunting me," I told them, finishing my coffee. Then, as they were hungry for news, or for any sort of diversion, I told them about my encounter with the old man.
They listened, exchanging looks. "That old man, now he about five-seven or -eight? Weigh about a hundred and forty? With a kind of white scar near his mouth?"
"You know him?"
"Boy, you tackled an or he-coon. That there was Pony Zale. He's a claim-jumper, a hoss thief, and more than once a murderer, but nobody ain't never proved it on him.
"Down Ruidoso way he come up with some Mexicans drivin' sheep, and offered to help. Of a sudden, a couple of days later, he cut loose with his Winchester and killed two of them. The third man came runnin' back to camp, and he shot him .. on'y that man didn't die. He lived to tell of it.
"A posse set out, but he'd sold the sheep and left the country. He's a bad one."
"Well, I got lead into him," I said, "but he was still in the saddle when he left out of there, and he didn't look too happy about the way things turned out."
One of the men chuckled. "If he shows up, you went south.'
The coffee had been good, the beans better, and I hated to ride on, but time was against me and Bob Heseltine was riding away.
Down the trail a piece, I looked back. The trail was empty, but I had an uneasy feeling that the hunter had become the hunted.
Chapter 17
There's nothing like time alone to give a man a chance to check up on himself, and I expect it was high time that I stopped to look at my hole card.
A lot of miles had been left in the dust behind me, and I'd been in a few shootups and here I was no nearer to what I'd set out to do. And all the while, back there in Colorado was Vashti. And the more I thought of Vashti, the more I thought what a fool I was to go traipsing off across the country. By now she might even be married.
Married?
That pulled me up short, and the dun, too. Just the thought of it gave me a twinge, but why not? I'd staked no claim on that girl.
There was no reason at all why she should wait, but the thought of her marrying some no-account...
Of course, that was a cause for thinking, too, because a man has to be honest with himself. What did I mean . . . no-account? Mightn't folks say that of me?
I had nothing. No claim, no shack, just a two-bit layout down Texas way that by now was probably occupied by somebody else. I had no means to make a living beyond punching cows or doing day labor, and that surely wasn't enough for Vashti . . . even if she might think it was.
Somewhere along there I lost all track of Bob Heseltine and them.
From time to time there'd been tracks of a sort, and I'd been sure in my mind I was on the trail. That old dun was nobody's fool, and he knew I was trailing somebody. I think that dun even put me back on the trail a couple of times.
Where could they go but straight ahead? If I knew Ruby Shaw, she wouldn't cotton to any hide-out camp in the Sierras, which reared up on my left, nor would she take to Death Valley, which lay yonder beyond the Panamints. She would want to head for Virginia City, where they were taking silver out of the Comstock.
Come to think of it, these men must be catching billy-hell right now, Heseltine and the others. Almost ever since they got that money, months ago now, they'd been riding. She hadn't had much chance to pleasure herself with having money, and she wasn't the kind to let it lay. She would be nagging at those boys to do something about me.
Moreover, this was a pretty good place in which to do whatever they had a mind to. The mountains and the desert left few trails open for travel, and even after Death Valley was past there was still a lot of wide-open dry country to the east.
Suddenly, I found their tracks again. Four riders, and not very far ahead of me, by the look of them.
A man doesn't travel as far as I had without learning something, and I'd been trailing tough, dangerous men.
I'd had brief showdowns with both Sites and Reese, but so far I'd never actually locked horns with Heseltine. But now they were together again . . . or so it appeared.
Yet I wondered about Doc. His share of the money had probably been mentally divided among them, but now he had returned, and would be making claims.
Well, the element that makes a man a thief makes him untrustworthy, but those who associate with him often forget that. Doc Sites was neither needed or wanted, least of all by Ruby Shaw.
I'd not done much but just hang on, nagging at their heels, watching for my chance. Everywhere I went the story was there ahead of me, like at the sheep camp, where those men had known who I was.
And likely the outlaws, their ears to the ground, heard the stories, too.
The Owens River valley where I now rode was all of a hundred miles long and five to twelve miles wide. On the west were the Sierras, a rugged range that seemed to rise abruptly from the valley floor. On the other side the Inyo-
White ranges rose in places to over 11,000 feet.
Both ranges were alive with game, and in some areas were alive with Indians. Neither was a place to spend money or enjoy the fleshpots of Egypt, so I had no idea the outlaws would stay in that area.
The valley looked to me like a great fault-block that had sunk I'd picked up a smattering of geology from Con Judy during our rides, and had begun looking at deserts and mountains from fresh viewpoints, and it showed me that the more a man knew, the more interesting everything became. As Con had said, if you didn't have books to read, you could always read the face of nature.
All around me were signs of change in the earth.
Decomposing rock trickled down from notches in the hills, spreading wider and wider as they reached the valley floor like great fans spread out. And in some areas heat and cold, thawing and freezing were helping the roots of trees to break up the soil, even to break up rocks.
Going ahead rapidly was out of the question here, for there were too many possibilities of ambush. Carefully not following any pattern, I varied my route from time to time. leaving the trail to the right or left following the slope of one mountain or the other, suddenly changing direction, and using every bit of cover that I could. I knew they were somewhere ahead of me, and judging by an occasional track, they were only hours ahead.
And I watched my bac]. trail. How badly Pony Zale had been wounded I did not know, but I had a feeling that tough old man would want some of his own back. He would be hunting me as I hunted them.
Con Judy's talk of rocks and rock formations, as well as the possibility that some plants indicated minerals in the earth beneath them, kept my eyes on the country even as much as fear of ambush. I was well up the mountainside, riding through a scattering of trees and stopping from time to time to study the terrain ahead and in the valley, when my eyes were drawn to a smooth surface of rock, which must have been polished by a glacier. Here and there were places where weathering had broken the surface into pits, or wider areas that looked like great sores eating at the smooth face. Suddenly my eye caught a place where the surface had been broken . . . and recently.
Drawing rein in the shelter of some pines, I studied the spot. A horse's hoof had broken that edge, and left in the place where it had broken off, a clear print of half a shoe.
Somebody had gone up that slope not long ago, just ahead of me.
That somebody was up there now. Had they seen me coming? Had they seen me draw up?
My mouth was dry, and all at once I was wary. I slid from the saddle, Winchester in hand. Moving quickly, I tied my horse to a clump of brush, then crouching low, I moved up among the rocks.
Beyond this area . Were scattered, stunted pines and a few cedars. Among the trees, and beyond them, the surface was broken.
The sun was behind the wall of the Sierras, but it still held a golden rim on top of the White Mountains opposite. Shadows were growing where I waited, and the silence of evening was over the land. Somewhere a dove called, another answered.
Easing my crouching position, I continued to wait. My spot was fairly good, hidden from the higher slope by rocks and trees, exposed to the valley below, but a valley that lay empty, so far as I could see. What I must be wary of was before or behind me.
Suddenly, somewhere on the slope ahead I heard two racketing shots, and then the slowly dying echo of them fading away among the canyons and along the mountainside. Those shots must have been fired a good four or five hundred yards off, and no bullet came close to me. I waited, listening.
For a long time there was no sound, and then a faint rattle of rocks came from somewhere up ahead, and a flicker of movement, followed by silence. The shadows grew longer as I waited. Returning to my horse, I untied it and stepped into the saddle.
I rode ahead warily, keeping to the shadows and trying for areas of grass or leaf mold where the hoofs of my horse would make no sound.
Who had fired? And at whom?
All at once, just as we started between two close-growing pines, the dun shied violently. Gun in hand, I held him still, listening.
No sound . . . only the wind in the pines.
Peering ahead in the gathering gloom, my eyes caught the shape of something lying on the ground. I stepped down from my horse, waited a moment, then moved forward on cat feet.
It was a man, lying on his face, and he was dead. I did not need an examination to know that. He had been shot twice in the back, at close range.
Even before I turned the body over, I knew who it was. Doc Sites should never have followed Reese and Heseltine to California. He had come up here with them, or had been followed, and then been executed ... murdered.
He was never much of a man, I thought, although at one time he had seemed smart and almost glamorous to me. He had always been a tin-horn, living from stealing cattle or horses, and given to too much talk. But now I felt sorry for the man. Nobody should die like that, murdered by those he had believed to be his friends, left unburied on the lonely mountain for the buzzards and the coyotes.
There was nothing I could do but roll him into a hollow among the rocks, and pile rocks and brush over the body. His pockets had been emptied. His horse and guns were gone.
Angling down the slope, I found a vague trail along the mountainside and followed it.
When I had gone no more than two miles the trail turned suddenly up the slope, and I went along it. From time to time I dismounted to crouch low and study the trail. There were no tracks.
Those who had murdered Sites had gone on down to the main trail on the valley floor. The one I followed was an Indian trail, and it suddenly reached a small hollow under a rocky overhang where there was a pool of water fed by a trickle from out of the rocks. It was a sheltered. hidden spot, with grass for the dun, and a good quiet place for me.
Over a tiny fire I made coffee and soup from dried peas and jerked beef. I was tired, and it tasted good.
For a long time I lay awake, looking up through the leaves of a pin oak at the stars above. I listened to the stirrings of the night, and heard nothing that warned of danger. But I thought of Vashti, and found myself wanting again to be back in Colorado.
In came over me suddenly that I must end the chase.
I must quit and find a place for myself, something beyond this endless pursuit. or I would someday end as Doc Sites had shot in the back ... murdered.
I went to sleep then, sure that I had arranged my future. And taking no thought for what destiny might have in store. A man may plan, but there are movements beyond his plannings, there are events born of powers that lie beyond him.
As always, unless very tired, I woke up just before daylight. For a few minutes I lay still, getting the feel of the morning. It was clear but still dark, only a few bright stars remaining in the sky.
A cool wind was just barely stirring the leaves. The dun was munching contentedly at some brush he had found near the camp.
After a moment I threw off my blankets, decided on what I would do.
I tugged on my boots, rolled my blankets, and saddled up, warming the bit for a few minutes inside my shirt, for the morning was chilly. Once saddled and ready, I tied the dun to a shrub and, taking my Winchester, went up through the trees to an outcropping I'd seen the night before. Beside it, where my body would not be outlined I studied the terrain below.
There were the usual stirrings of birds and animals. A few doves talked in the brush. From a tree some distance off a mocking bird sang. Wherever I looked, there was no sign of a fire, and on the trail below, which I could make out as a dim gray streak, nothing moved.
My chase was over that was the decision I'd come to the night before, and the one my morning thoughts agreed with. It was no way for a man to spend his life.
Now, not seeing me would worry Heseltine and his friends more than seeing me. They would not believe that I had dropped the pursuit, and would feel they must grow increasingly wary, not knowing when I might again appear.
Over a small fire I made
coffee, fried bacon, and ate the last of the sourdough bread I'd been saving. Once more I checked the trail ... nothing there.
Mounting up, I went down the trail on an angle, deliberately crossed it, and rode into the White Mountains with my mind made up.
I'd cross over into Nevada, strike the stage route that led through Eureka, and on to Salt Lake, and then I'd ride back to Colorado.
These were barren, lonely mountains . . . at least along the trail I was riding, and after a few miles the silence began-to wear on my nerves. For there was no sound except what my horse made, my spurs jingling, or the creak of my saddle. Several times I drew up, listening, feeling suspicious of the morning.
The sun was bright, the day unbelievably clear. The sky was a calm blue, with only thin, very high cloud, so flimsy as scarcely to be seen.
The dim trail wound higher and higher, but allowed me no view of itself for more than a few hundred yards at any time. The dun was nervous, his ears twitching at every sound, but finally we topped out on a bald knob of the mountain, with a tremendous view to the east of a wide, barren land, sometimes showing the bared teeth of outcroppings, or scattered juniper, and here and there the white splotches of dried alkali lakes. Nowhere did I see any indication of water.
At noon, in the shade of a juniper larger than usual, I stopped to rest my horse. The area was wide open and empty, as free of cover as a bald head. Having picketed the dun, I stretched out in the shade of the tree.
Overhead the sky was wide and empty. Before I closed my eyes, I looked around carefully, and there was nothing, simply nothing at all. My eyes closed, and I slept.
The warmth of the sun, the clearness of the air, and my own weariness were enough, and my sleep was sound. After all, I was alone in this empty land.
Through the haze of 'sleep, something grated, there was a faint stirring, something tugged at my waist, and I opened my eyes looking into the muzzle of my own six-shooter.
Tucker (1971) Page 14