Trail of Shadows

by Lauran Paine

  “Come on,” Duncan said angrily, watching Black’s horse trot out where the tall meadow grass grew. “We’ve got to get out of here before the rest of that damned posse gets down here.”

  “But ... ”

  Duncan turned. “I don’t expect him to do anything,” he growled, looking past Marianne at Tom Black. “He can walk back or fly back ... or stay right there ... for all I care. Now, are you coming with me or not?”

  Duncan swung away hiking wearily back through the encircling trees in the direction of their horses. Marianne did not immediately follow him. She stooped to listen to the ragged breathing of Tom Black as she shot an indignant look at Duncan’s disappearing broad shoulders in among the trees. She pursed her lips disapprovingly, then went hurrying after Duncan.

  They got back to their horses with one more six-gun than they had when they’d left them about a half hour before. Duncan examined Black’s gun, found it fully loaded, shoved it back into his waistband, and began rummaging a shirt pocket for his tobacco sack.

  Marianne watched him work up a cigarette with his swelling, injured hands, light it, and bend a long look back up the westerly hillside for sign of Berryhill’s posse. He still had the primeval, smoky look in his eyes of a man ready to fight. She wisely stood there watching him but saying nothing.

  After a moment of smoking, Duncan removed the cigarette, trickled smoke up his bruised face, solemnly looked down at her—and smiled.

  “Pretty brutal, wasn’t it?” he asked softly, looking at her face shaded by the trees around her. “I reckon you figure I’m cruel as all get out.” He nodded his head at her, still smiling. “Well, I am, dammit, and I’ve got reason to be. And anyway, you said down in that arroyo last night you wanted a tough man ... so if you want to shed a tear for Tom Black, go ahead and do it. But when I finish this cigarette, we’ll be moving on, so don’t waste a lot of time with your crying.”

  Marianne’s face turned granitelike. She rasped at him: “Todd Duncan, I hate you!”

  He put the cigarette back between his lips, inhaled deeply, exhaled, and nodded gravely. “I don’t blame you. Sometimes I sort of hate myself. What I should’ve done over there was put a bullet through his danged skull.” At Marianne’s swift, shocked look of incredulity, he said in the same easy, conversational voice: “Sure, he was going to kill me before you cocked that gun behind him. I could read it in his face as plain as day, woman. Now, I operate by a code that says when someone aims to kill you, you got as good a right to kill them.”

  “You’d be as bad as an Indian if you did that, and you know it.”

  Duncan took a last long drag off the cigarette. She heard the deep sweep of smoke in his chest. He dropped the stub and ground it out. He was beginning to feel better. The aches were there and the pains, but his strength was fast returning and he could afford to look out at her from beneath his curling hat brim and make a crooked little grin.

  “Maybe you’re right,” he drawled. “Maybe I should’ve just stomped his rib cage in.” He turned away from her and nodded toward her horse. “Get astride, girl. We’ve wasted enough time here.” He untied his own animal, toed in, and sprang up. Without looking back to see whether she was mounted or not, he started riding off.

  Chapter Fifteen

  They passed along the face of that southward cliff out beyond where the waterfall’s spray might reach, riding west through stirrup-high meadow grass with morning dew still on it.

  The grayness was entirely gone now. A brightness lay upon the land, bringing on the warmth of the new day and aiding visibility. For a while they seemed to be the only people abroad in this day, then Duncan saw the lazy drift of dust rising upon the northward hillside where riders were angling down into the meadow. He pointed it out to Marianne, at the same time altering course a little so as to make it into the yonder forest quicker.

  She protested, saying they were heading away from the caves at the base of the cliff. His answer to this was elemental. If there was no horse hereabouts, he said to her, then young Parton was not here, either, because he’d ridden into this place, and if he was resting in a cave somewhere, his horse would be close by, which it obviously wasn’t. He added that they’d ridden completely around the meadow, had walked back through the trees, and were now riding openly over the meadow, and still they hadn’t come across a horse.

  Marianne said no more until, back into the tree fringe, she struck the onward trail again. She made a close scrutiny for a thousand yards, found the tracks of young Parton’s animal, straightened up in the saddle, and, without a word, followed them.

  Duncan saw all this and smiled, thinking that a proud woman, like a proud man, had difficulty admitting error. But a proud woman was also a strong woman. He was satisfied, not only that he’d been right in his surmise concerning the killer they were seeking, but also in his companion in this hunt.

  They began climbing, first steeply then angling, until they emerged into a cleared place high above the park and its waterfall. Duncan signaled for a halt, twisted to look back, and saw the bunched-up band of riderless horses down below where they’d left Tom Black.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “They’ve found him.” He returned his attention to the tiers of trees marching in ranks up toward the craggy, wind-scoured top out above them. “Would he stop again before pushing on over?” he asked.

  Marianne was doubtful, but, pausing to think, she finally said: “There is one more little park up here.”

  “With water?”

  “Yes. We’ll look there. If he’s not in that place, he’ll have crossed over.”

  Duncan nodded, motioned for Marianne to ride on, and eased out behind her.

  They rode a mile through the forest shadows where sunlight occasionally came down in filtered shafts of golden hue. This was also a cathedral-like place—silent, still, timeless. If men had been here before them, they had not made this ride very often. Even the pine needles underfoot gave off a musty dust as they passed over them. It struck Duncan once more that Marianne had an unusual knowledge of this far country. He asked her about that.

  She said: “My father loved to hunt. Every autumn he’d take me with him. We’d pack two horses and stay in the mountains, sometimes a month. I doubt if there are many places we didn’t visit at one time or another.”

  “And you liked it?” he asked, wondering about her. He’d heard of precious few women in his lifetime who enjoyed roughing it.

  Marianne nodded without looking back at him. “I loved it. It was as though we were the only people in the world. We didn’t have to be adults. We picked wildflowers. We fished the ice water lakes. We laughed a lot and had no cares at all.”

  Duncan rode along after she said that, considering her. She was not the usual town girl in the least, he thought. Then she said something that clinched this opinion for him.

  “The man who killed him was worse than an animal. Worse than that bear we saw or the panther we heard. They were predators, and yet they don’t kill without reason.”

  “Young Parton thought he had a reason, Marianne. There was a fortune in the express company safe.”

  “Why didn’t he just take it? My father wasn’t armed and he offered no resistance.” She looked around awaiting his answer to this.

  He had none. At least no logical answer. “I’m not defending young Parton ... I’m only giving you his reason.” He returned her look, shrugged, and added: “It’s never necessary to condone something people do, but it’s necessary to understand why a thing was done in order to judge the man who did it.”

  She thought on this for a little distance, nodded acceptance, and asked: “And what is your judgment of my father’s murderer?”

  Duncan made a wide gesture with one hand indicating their surroundings. “I’m here with you, aren’t I? What more proof do you need of how I feel about it?” He dropped his arm, returned her steady gaze, and added some
thing to this: “But I think you want a swifter kind of justice than I want. Back there with Tom Black ... I wouldn’t have killed him. Shot him maybe, if he’d forced me to it ... but killed him ... no.”

  “You certainly let me believe you would have.”

  He grinned crookedly at her. “Yeah ... don’t ask me why I did that. All I can tell you is that when you seemed so horrified, I still was full of aches and pains, and meanness.”

  She put her skeptical gaze upon him, saying dryly: “Just the same I’m glad I wasn’t Tom Black.”

  He let this pass. “Tell me something. Just who is Black, anyway?”

  “A local cowboy. He rides for the big outfits and between jobs loafs in Leesville. He doesn’t have the best reputation in town, but I’ve never heard anything really bad about him.”

  “Was he a particular friend of yours or your father’s?”

  “No, not really. He used to visit my father in the express office occasionally. They were both hunters.”

  “Well,” Duncan wryly summarized, “I’ll tell you this much ... he’s a killer, Marianne. I know his type very well. They’ll kill when they have what to them appears to be a good reason.”

  “Don’t forget,” she retorted, “everyone in Leesville is very worked-up over my father’s murder. Tom Black included. Just because you’re safe in the mountains today doesn’t mean that any of those people who wanted to lynch you yesterday have cooled off any. I’d say that back in Leesville right now there is even more wrath than there was yesterday. You escaped them ... they’ll be angrier than ever about that.”

  “I’m wondering about Sheriff Berryhill. You heard Black say some of the men from town met him ... that he’s riding with them right now.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Marianne, those are the same men who were trying to lynch me yesterday. They’re also the same men who were trying to shoot Berryhill and Jack Thorne in the jailhouse.”

  She swung forward, rode along a little ways, then turned back toward him again. “Sheriff Berryhill is a man who takes on one problem at a time. Right now he wants you. But I wouldn’t want to be one of those men after he catches you. He’s not a pleasant man when he’s been crossed.”

  Duncan chuckled ruefully. “Most men aren’t,” he murmured. “Especially if they’ve been punched, shot at, cursed, and scared half to death.”

  Marianne understood this innuendo. She turned back to face forward and said no more until, with the trail passing over a wide, level bench, they entered one of those gaps that permitted a backward look. There she halted, knowing Duncan would wish to examine their back trail.

  He looked outward and downward for a long time waiting for telltale dust. When it didn’t show against the azure sky, he swung off, dropped the reins, and groped for his tobacco sack. He didn’t look at Marianne even after she dismounted, strolled back, and stopped beside him. He lit up, fanned excess blue smoke with his hat, popped the cigarette between his lips, and stood patiently waiting. Sooner or later Berryhill’s posse would stir up dust.

  “They will be a long way back,” opined Marianne. “Black wouldn’t be fit to ride for twenty minutes at least, after they found him.”

  “Maybe,” he commented. “And maybe some of the others did what Black did ... struck out ahead of Berryhill and Thorne. That’s what I want to see about before we go on.”

  For a while neither of them spoke. Duncan, wearying of his vigil after a time, swung to survey the onward peaks and forested shoulders. “How much farther to this next park where Parton might be?” he asked.

  “Half a mile.”

  “Any caves up there?”

  “No. We’ll be able to see the entire park without leaving the forest. If he’s there, we’ll know it as soon as the place comes into view.”

  He dropped his gaze to her face. “You look tired,” he said.

  Without any hesitation she said right back: “You look like you need a shave, a bath, and some ointment where he hit you.”

  Duncan slowly grinned. Marianne returned that grin with a slow smile of her own. He took a long drag off his smoke, exhaled, and said: “You’re the doggonedest female I ever ran across. I didn’t believe they still made ’em like you.”

  This time there was hesitation before she retorted, and her level gaze faltered a little before that strongly masculine look of candid approval.

  “How would you know what kind of females are in the world, following trail herds, passing through strange lands without even going into the towns, always on the move?”

  He considered his cigarette, turned away from her to scan the back trail, before he said quietly: “Yeah, you’re plumb right ... how would I know?” He dropped the smoke, stepped on it, shot her a grave look from beneath his tilted hat brim, and added: “Marianne, you suppose if I stayed around Leesville ... ?”

  “Dust,” she said, cutting across his words and pointing downcountry.

  He turned, studied the distant, faint spiraling of roiled air for a while, then nodded and turned back.

  “Better be pushing on,” he said gruffly, without looking at her.

  She put out a tanned hand to restrain him. “Before I interrupted ... what were you saying?”

  He shook off her hand. “Something silly,” he muttered as he stepped past and caught his horse. He swung the beast to him, raised up over leather, and gazed down at her. “Must be the altitude,” he said, and reined away, taking the lead without waiting to see if she got astride.

  She caught up with him a quarter mile from the last hidden meadow this side of the rimrocks. “It’s not the altitude,” she said to his broad back. “It’s just that you don’t know what you want out of life ... whether to accept some responsibility or be another fiddle-footed cowboy.”

  He reined up sharply, twisted, and scowled back at her. “You,” he pronounced very distinctly, very acidly, “are the cussedest female I ever saw for roiling a man. If you were ten years younger, I’d bend you over my knee and wallop you with my reins. I know what I want out of life, and don’t you think otherwise.”

  She said nothing, only motioned him to proceed along the trail as though she preferred to let this particular conversation die right where it was.

  But Todd Duncan was not a man to be herded by others. She might have known that, if she’d paused to consider how he’d acted so far on this trail they were both riding. He was a thorough man who relied entirely upon himself in bad places. He sat there, blocking the trail, looking at her with strong displeasure.

  For a long time this perplexing, troubled atmosphere remained between them, but finally she said: “All right. Have it your way. It’s not my concern anyway. Now, from here on be careful. We’ll be coming to the last park very shortly.”

  He ignored this, saying: “You know, I think a good larruping might be just what you need anyway, ten years older or not.”

  She flared out at him. “Just you try it, Mister Todd Duncan. Just you try it!”

  He abruptly straightened around and started forward, but in the second before she lost sight of his face, she’d caught sight of a very determined look and this made her begin to feel decidedly uneasy. She wondered if she’d pushed him too far, after all.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Duncan came to the final fringe of trees and halted well back to gaze ahead. It was in his mind that if young Parton was in the yonder meadow, his own position was no more enviable than the killer’s was. Berryhill’s posse was passing upcountry on this same trail, and they would have an advantage that they had not possessed until they got to the first meadow—Duncan’s horse tracks.

  Marianne came up to Duncan and stopped. He did not look around; his whole attention was fixed upon the sunlit place ahead.

  This park, as these small upland meadows were called, was about thirty acres wide and roughly the same size in width. As in the other
parks trees completely surrounded the place cutting off all bright light that did not come directly downward. The grass here was lush and tall. There were meandering, thin game trails crisscrossing the place and next to the black-cut of a stone buttress rising to the north was a tiny seepage spring. The water here appeared to come directly out of smooth granite. Along the narrow run of this little creek tules and willows grew profusely, intermingling with one another and tall stands of rip-gut grass.

  That was where Duncan spotted the rump of a big bay horse. The beast seemed to be drowsily picking at the creekbank. No more of him was visible than his heavy hindquarters. Marianne also saw him. Duncan heard her sucked-back, quick breath. Before she could speak, if that had been her intention, he solemnly nodded, telling her in this way he’d seen the animal.

  He got down, motioned for her to do likewise, handed her his reins, saying: “Take ’em off through the trees and tie ’em out of sight. Take ’em far enough so they won’t scent any horses coming up the trail and nicker.”

  Marianne nodded. She was staring hard over where that grazing horse was.

  For a second he studied her profile, then a little wicked gleam showed in his eyes. He bent close and murmured: “About that larruping ... I haven’t forgotten.”

  Her head instantly whipped around toward him. She gave him a smoky stare and whispered the same thing she’d said before: “You just try it.”

  “All right,” he assented, his wicked grin broadening. “But later ... right now there’s something more important to do.”

  He took the Winchester, jerked his head for her to lead the horses off, swung away, and started the same scouting maneuver around the forest fringe he’d used down in the first meadow. She lost sight of him almost at once.

  A scolding blue jay appeared in the overhead treetops announcing raucously Duncan’s presence to every forest creature. He stopped beside a rough-barked old fir, glowered at this sentinel of the highlands, caught up a stone, and heaved it at the bird. The blue jay fled, keeping up its loud racket until distance softened it. Afterward, Duncan glided away from the spot where this had happened, inched up the meadow, and stood for several minutes while peering out, watching and waiting. Every rider of the high-country trails knew the character of blue jays. They, as well as the wild creatures, knew that one of those scoldings meant something alien was close by.