the Ferguson Rifle (1973)

by L'amour, Louis - Talon-Chantry

  "I've a thought it was the Little P." Cusbe Ebitt snorted. "There's an Irishman for you! Something he can't explain and it had to be banshees or the like! I'd say we should move out." We saddled up, and saddling Kemble told of the distant shots we'd heard, and of something moving in the night. Nobody had any comment, but when I rode out to take the point, Buffalo Dog was with me, and he had heard the shots.

  The land was vastly broken now, with jagged upthrusts of rock here and there, a difficult land to guard against, for at every step there were places where an enemy might hide, and a man must ride always ready, and no dozing in the saddle or depending upon the other fellow.

  We were a hundred yards ahead of the others, entering a gap between low, grassy hills, when Buffalo Dog pointed with his rifle.

  For a moment I did not see it, then I did.

  Blood upon the grass, blood still wet.

  Isaac Heath was closest of them and he came riding to see what it was. He looked at it.

  "You heard shots, all right, and whoever was hit was hard hit. That's a sight of blood." Buffalo Dog was looking up the slope, studying the brush and rocks at the top. Leaving Heath to point the column, the Cheyenne and I went up the slope, our rifles carried ready for a quick shot if need be, yet even as I rode I was agreeing with Heath. Whoever had lost that much blood was not going far.

  Nor was he.

  We found him among the first rocks. He was a slender man, well made, wearing buckskin leggings but a uniform coat, badly torn now and stained with blood.

  We looked slowly around, but he was alone, and no horse was with him, nor any tracks of a horse. Kneeling, I turned him over, and he was dead, his sightless eyes turned wide to the sky.

  He was a white man, and he clutched a worn skinning knife... nothing else.

  Buffalo Dog scouted about, but I looked at the man. Here was a strange thing, a mystery, if you like. Who was he? How had he come here? At whom had he been shooting? Or who had shot him?

  The man's features were well cut... he looked the aristocrat, yet when I saw his hands, I could not believe that. The nails were broken, the fingers scarred, the hands calloused from hard work.

  Davy Shanagan came up the slope.

  "Ah, the poor man! But where did he come from, then? There's no chance he was alone." "There was at least one other," Talley said dryly. "The man who shot him." "Aye," Cusbe agreed. "That's a bullet wound. And in the night." He glanced over at me. "And no Indian, or he'd have lost his hair. There's something a bit strange in all of this." "Captain Fernandez," I suggested, "was farther north than he should have been. Farther north than he had a right to be. Could he have been chasing this man?" "That's a Spanish uniform," Talley agreed. "He may be a deserter." Carefully, I turned back the coat. There were pockets on the inside, and in the right side pocket there was flint and steel and a stub of pencil. There was blood on the pencil, blood on the edge of the pocket. I glanced at the outflung right hand, and there was blood on it, too.

  The column of our people had halted in the gap below, and Solomon Talley turned toward them.

  "We'd best move on," he said. "This is no place to be come upon by Indians." He went off, moving swiftly, and Cusbe followed. Shanagan moved after them. "Leave him," he said. "What difference does it make whether it's wolves or ants? It'll be one or the other." Buffalo Dog was prowling about. I opened the man's shirt, feeling something beneath it. A gold medal, hung from a gold chain. A fine thing it was, of fine workmanship, and not the thing any casual man would have.

  I took it from him, and then noticed the ring with its crest, and took that. In a small pouch under his belt there was a square of paper with a crudely drawn map upon it, three gold coins, and two small silver buttons each bearing a Maltese Cross. I didn't recognize any landmark on the map.

  I pocketed the pouch after placing the ring and the medal within it. If there was any way of discovering who the man was, these small clues might help.

  Buffalo Dog rode back to me, and dragging the man's body into a crevice in the rocks, I piled brush over it. There was no time for anything else. Yet the puzzle would not leave me.

  In the saddle, I indicated the man's body.

  "Could you trail the killer?" I suggested.

  He shrugged and we rode back to the others. The last of the Indians was just coming through the gap and Walks-By-night was with them.

  Buffalo Dog went off toward the head of the column and I began scouting around, cutting for sign, as they say.

  Walks-By-night joined me, and I told him what we had found.

  "Who killed him?" I wondered, "And why?"

  CHAPTER 8

  Walks-By-night let his eyes scan the slope of the grassy hill. "He walks there, I think, where the grass is bent.

  He had better eyes than I, for at the distance no bent grass was visible to me, but riding closer we found a trail. And there were drops of blood upon the grass.

  It was then I told him of the missing bacon, meal, and powder. He listened, saying nothing, obviously puzzled by a thief with opportunity who took but one slab of bacon, and only powder but no lead.

  "Either we have a thief who took only what was desperately needed or one who did not wish to carry more than that." "It was not this man," Walks-By-night said.

  A thought occurred to me. "The shots had to come a few minutes before four o'clock, and something was bothering our horses about that time. Whatever or whoever stole our bacon and meal evidently was outside of camp when the shots were fired." He stared off into the distance, and after a moment held up two fingers, then made the sign for together.

  The bacon thief and the dead man together? "If they had been together," I suggested, "they must have had a camp last night." Warily, we backtracked the wounded man.

  He had fallen several times, but each time had struggled to his feet.

  His back trail led us to a saddle in the low hills where we approached with some care. The Cheyenne motioned me to wait and hold the horses while he crept up to the crest of the nearest hill.

  After a moment, he motioned me forward. Coming down from the hill, he slipped to the back of his horse and we crossed the saddle into a shallow, grassy valley. At the head of the valley, not two hundred yards off was a small clump of cottonwood and willow, and the greener grass of a seep or spring.

  Two antelope were near the spring. They moved off as we drew near, evidence enough that no one else was close by.

  Yet among the trees we found the remains of a fire, a faint tendril of smoke rising, and when we stirred the coals, a tiny gleam of red still existed.

  Carefully, I looked about. Day-by-day my small skills in the wilderness were returning, and I was gathering more by watching and listening.

  Walks-By-night held up three fingers, and swiftly made the signs for man, woman and boy.

  "A woman? Here?" It was incredible. He showed me the print of a riding boot, too small to belong to anyone but a woman.

  There had been four horses, but the horses were gone, and there were no packs. We knew the whereabouts of the man, but what of the others?

  Five men had come here searching. Walks-By- Night studied the ground with care, and then as we rode away, he explained. Much of it I had seen myself, but I could not read sign with his infinite skill.

  "Five men come in the night... they find nothing." "Then there's a woman and a boy out here alone?

  We must find them, my friend." "You know her?" He was puzzled by my anxiety. "She is of your people?" "She is a woman alone, with a boy. She will need help." He asked many questions, and I tried to explain.

  No, I did not want the woman as a woman.

  I did not know her tribe.

  Obviously the idea was foreign to him, for to most Indians any stranger was a potential enemy, and chivalry, by our standards, was alien to their thinking.

  Yet the Indian had his own chivalry, and that was the way in which I explained.

  "It is like counting coup," I said. "To strike a living armed enemy is to cou
nt coup. To take a scalp is to count coup. According to the code of chivalry, to help the helpless is to count coup." He was immediately interested, but he was growing restless. There were enemies about, both Indian and white, and our companions were drawing farther and farther away. We took time for a quick swing around to see if we could pick up the trail, and we could not.

  As for the five men who had come to the camp, without doubt they were those who had killed the man whose body we found, but whom they had not found. Why?

  The question was a good one. The trail had been easy to follow, the body lying at the end of it, but there had been no tracks to indicate discovery, nor had the body been searched except by me.

  Had they been so sure he was dead? Or didn't they care? Then why shoot him at all?

  Obviously they wanted something he had, yet nothing had been taken from him. Hence it was something he had that he did not carry on his person.

  or somebody.

  Perhaps it was not he whom they wanted, but those he accompanied?

  That would explain why once he had been shot and put out of the game they had not followed. They had followed the others.

  Yet someone had slipped into our camp, stolen bacon, meal, and a little powder and escaped... not a girl, surely. But a lad now, a healthy, ambitious lad? There was a likely thing.

  We rode swiftly to overtake the others, but the problem nagged at my attention. If the lad had come to rob our camp, and the now dead man had gone off in another direction, where was the woman?

  Or girl or whatever she was?

  And what were they doing out here in the wilderness, and why were they pursued?

  We rode down into the bed of the North Fork.

  There was much sand, little wood except driftwood, most of it half buried in sand, although growing on the bluffs in the distance appeared a few low trees that I took to be cedar.

  When we came up to our party, they were encamped in a little valley where a fresh spring sent a small stream meandering down through a meadow. Near the spring there was a scattered grove of pines and cedars, gooseberries and currants growing in great profusion. We camped near them, their thorny wall offering protection from intruders on two sides.

  There was wood, fresh water, and grass for our animals.

  All heads turned as we rode in. As I was stripping the gear from my horse, I explained what I had found and what we suspected.

  Solomon Talley squatted on his heels, chewing on a long stem of grass. "Peculiar," he said, "mighty peculiar." "I don't like to think of no woman out yonder alone," Ebitt commented. "Still, it ain't our affair." "I've decided it's mine," I replied.

  "Do you go on and set up winter quarters. I'll follow when I've discovered what's happening here." "You'll be killed," Kemble warned. "A man alone has small chance." "Somewhat more than a woman," I said. "Still, if one of us is to be a damned fool, let it be me. I'm better fitted to play Don Quixote than the rest of you." "Don who?" Sandy demanded.

  "Don Quixote," Heath explained, "was a Spanish knight who mistook a windmill for a giant." Bob Sandy stared at him. "Why, that's crazy! How could a--to " He looked from one to the other of us, sure we were making a joke of him.

  "There ain't no such thing as a giant," he scoffed. "Those are tales for children." "I don't know," Kemble replied. "If you've never seen either a windmill or a giant, one is as easy to believe in as the other." He glanced at me. "If you want company, I'll ride along." "Thanks," I said, "but this is a concern of mine. Do you ride on to winter quarters. If I find a woman out there, she'll be in need of shelter, and the lad as well." "Are you sure they're together?" I shrugged. "I think it unlikely there'd be several people out here alone. I think for some reason the man we found dead, a woman, and a lad started out upon the prairie. I think their reason was drastic indeed, to attempt to cross the prairies alone, and I think the five men pursuing them plan to recapture or kill the boy and the woman as they killed the man." "You reckon that was what the Spanish captain was after?" Shanagan looked up at me. "His eyes were all over the place, lookin' at everything we had, like he expected more." To tell the truth, I wished to go alone and I think they understood. Companionship is often to be desired, and to go alone into the mountains or the wilderness is seldom a wise course. Only a little help is sometimes needed to escape from some difficulty, but on this occasion I wished to be alone.

  For one thing, a man alone does not depend.

  When a responsibility is shared, it grows less, and two men alert are rarely as alert as one man who knows he cannot depend on anyone but himself. It is all too easy to tell oneself, If I do not see it, he will, and so a little alertness is lost.

  "Davy," I told Shanagan, "I think we're watched. Once the caravan marches, keep them changing places for a while. I'd prefer they don't get an accurate count and realize I'm not among you." "I'll do it." He looked at me doubtfully. "You're takin' a long chance, Scholar." He was right, of course, yet the more I considered the situation the more I decided I was right. The lot of us, if we turned from our route, would immediately excite curiosity from those who sought the woman and the boy, and if two dropped out, that would not be missed, yet one would arouse doubt that they had seen correctly. Moreover, I liked being alone, and was sure that I could find them... or what was just as likely... they would find me, if alone.

  Some distance from our camp there was a rugged sandstone ridge, broken and shattered like a massive, uneven wall, with fragments fallen out from it and mingled with outcroppings. There was some cedar scattered among these ruins, and it was there, under cover of night, I took shelter with my horse.

  With me I carried a good supply of dried meat, and so lay quietly. As the sun arose and our party prepared to move out, I lay motionless in the shadows of the rocks and watched and waited.

  Finally, they took the trail. Gnawing on a piece of jerky, I watched them trail away and disappear, and still I lay quiet.

  When the strangers appeared, it was suddenly and without warning. They topped a low ridge and rode down to our camp, looking all about, examining tracks. Alt they spent the better part of a half hour, just looking about. None of them were men who had ridden into our camp with Captain Fernandez.

  During the night I had done a good deal of thinking. Our previous day's journey had been but twelve miles, very short for travel on horseback, but we had taken time in backtrailing the dead man and otherwise.

  Now squatting in the shadow of the sandstone ridge, I drew a circle in the sand that was in my mind twelve miles in diameter. At the previous camp, food had been stolen from us by a lad, and a few miles into the circle a man had been killed, on that same night. Near one edge of that circle we had found their camp, and near the western edge was our own camp of the night. Somewhere in that circle or very close to it would be a woman and a boy, perhaps together again, perhaps waiting or searching. And somewhere here also were five desperate men, who also looked for them.

  Seated where I was, I considered the terrain before me. The wounded man, I felt sure, had been attempting to draw the pursuers away from their quarry.

  If the two were wise, they would remain where they were, wherever that was, because to find tracks someone must leave tracks, and if they remained still, their pursuers must eventually decide they had moved out of the area. Yet I doubted if two escaping people would have the patience.

  Tightening the girth on my saddle, I mounted and rode down off the ridge, returning toward where the dead man's body had been left.

  I was well armed. Aside from the Ferguson rifle, I carried two pistols in scabbards on my saddle, and my fighting knife, an admirable weapon in which I was thoroughly schooled.

  CHAPTER 9

  The air was clear and cool. The thin grass of the country about was broken at intervals with outcroppings of limestone or sandstone, and there were occasional pines and cedars. Now, suddenly, the land about me looked strange.

  Passing through a country is vastly different than searching it, and a land that had seemed
simple indeed to me as a passerby was now complex, and filled with possible hiding places. I became increasingly both amazed and irritated with myself that I could have been so stupid as to believe the land unrelieved.

  Now I realized that a thousand Indians might have been hidden where I would not have dreamed a dozen could find concealment. Secret folds of the land revealed themselves, and where there had been a long grass hill, suddenly I found that the crest of one hill merged at a distance with the crest of the hill beyond and in between lay a valley where a fair-sized town could have been hidden.

  At first I found no tracks except the occasional ones of antelop

  and buffalo. Then twice I came upon the tracks of the grizzly, easily recognized from those of other bears by the long claws on the forepaws. The five riders had been scouting here also, and twice I crossed their trail.

  The morning drew on, and methodically I searched every draw, every hollow, every clump of trees, and found nothing. Nor did I see any tracks that might have been left by Indian ponies.

  If the lad had acted as I supposed, he had returned to some previously appointed meeting place with the woman. By now they had eaten, and probably were aware they were searched for by the five mysterious riders. Whatever hiding they had chosen must have been done on the spur of the moment.

  From various vantage points I studied all the land about. One place seemed too obvious, another offered too little, yet more and more my attention returned to an outcropping of rocks on the southwest facing slope of a long hill.

  From that point, our camp on the night we were robbed would have been visible. The lad would not have gone out on the mere chance of finding something at night in this remote region. He must have seen our camp and made his plans before dark. The route of the wounded man who had died near our trail trended away from that spot.

  Allowing my horse to graze for a few minutes concealed by a clump of cedar, I studied the outcropping. It might be larger than it appeared from here; it also might offer a place of concealment.