"Yeah, I remember," he said. "That coffee should be about ready."
I poured myself some and another cup to cool for Mandy. "We covered a lot of ground today," I said.
"Yes, we did," Clete answered. "Gained almost a day on him. I was hoping to see his fire along the river here."
"Maybe tomorrow, if he's still goin' like he was today. Last time I could see his tracks clear, I'd guess he's about six hours ahead of us now. You know, if he spots us, we're in for it, because there's no chance to check out every place he could be layin' in wait. Along the river here it ain't so bad, but if we get into rough country-"
You could see from his face he knew what I was thinking. "Yeah, well, I'll look out for him. Can't slow down now, can we?"
"No, I guess not," I answered. "I suppose you saw he's been mostly walking that girl's paint, since he's got no spare now, I guess." Mandy joined us at the fire about then, spread her quilt and flopped down like a sack of turnips. I handed her a cup of coffee and got a pretty smile for my trouble. She looked awful sweet in the firelight, but you could see she was played out.
"Willie, where'd you ever learn to track like that?" Clete ask. "I never knew you could do that. Reminds me of an Indian down in Kansas who used to track for me, old Heavy Nose."
"It was an Indian who taught me," I told him. "A full-blooded Jicarilla Apache I spent some time with."
Clete laughed. "How in the hell did you ever come to throw in with an Apach?"
"You could say we was thrown together by fate, I suppose. More accurate, you could say we was linked together at the ankles for two years, two months and eleven days. Being a deputy in Abilene and all, I suppose you know what I'm talkin' about." I fired up my old corncob.
He looked at me square then. "Where'd you do time?"
"In Texas-the land of the free and the chained."
"You were chained to an Indian?" Mandy ask.
I nodded. "Good man. One of the most truthful men I ever knowed, too. He'd do exactly what he said he'd do, give you his food or break your arm, either way. But that old Coyotero was smart, too. He knowed it would be the white man's country before long, unlike most of his people. He wanted to learn to read the white man's language, and to pay me back for showing him how, he taught me what he knowed best, how to read sign-fair trade. All of what I know of following men and animals I learned from Stalking Bear." I yawned and finished my coffee.
"Did he learn to read English?" Mandy ask.
I tossed two of the branches Clete'd gathered into the fire and sent a passel of sparks up into the night. "He did. But he changed his mind about the worth of it after he could do it good. He learned real quick, and the only thing I had for him to read, once he knowed how, was that old Bible of mine. The first winter, after the work got slow, he read that book straight through, cover to cover, and it had a good many more pages in it then than it does now. Asking me questions the whole way, not that I could explain much of it to him. He liked the stories best. He 'specially liked the part about Noah, I remember. But the way he saw it, if white men said they believed what was in that book and still acted like they did, he wouldn't live among 'em. Either they was crazy or untruthful at heart. After that he never wanted to read nothing more. By the time he died, I don't think he could even remember the alphabet. Not the whole thing, anyway." I stood and brushed off the seat of my pants after I stretched good.
They was both quiet then.
"Shall I prepare some food?" Mandy ask after a time.
"Not for me," I said, gathering up my canvas and the blanket Clete brought me. "I'll eat in the morning. I'm going down by the river there and make a bed in the sand."
"I thought we were going to ask Mandy about-"
"Go ahead, if you want," I said, ambling toward the bank. "I'm done in. Need sleep bad. If you want me in on it, it'll have to wait 'til tomorrow. Suit yourself."
I planned on finding the softest spot I could, roll and wiggle around 'til the sand took my shape, and spend a comfortable night. Truth is, I settled for the first level place I hit and barely got my canvas spread and my blanket around me before I was out. Only thing I saw before leaving this weary world was the clouds rolling in from the northwest.
Come morning, the sky was threatening rain about as much as it can without dripping water, and Clete was in a like mood, anxious to get going. The temperature'd dropped like a stone down a well and the fire felt welcome. Spring in Dakota will do that. One minute it's warm as summer and the next you'll see snow flakes drifting down. I finished all the beans Mandy saved me from the night before, fixed with a big hunk of salt pork. And I ate what was left of the biscuits, though they wasn't what you'd call fresh no more, nearly a dozen, with my coffee.
"Come on, let's go," Clete yelled while I was washing my face in the river. "It's going to rain soon." He'd saddled his horse and mine and'd loaded just about all our gear on the pack animal by then. Lord, I was dragging my tail that morning.
They started without me, but I didn't care, stiff and sore as I was. When I caught up, they was stopped about a half mile from where we'd camped, beside the river, letting their horses drink where his had. Beyond, his tracks led south along a little creek. This boy knew the country by its water, that was clear.
"I'd a never found his fire last night if I'd gone more upriver," Clete said. "I'd a been lost this morning, too. Would have had to come back to here."
"He's a fox, all right," I said. A fox against a wolf, I said to myself, but Clete'd never of understood that. "A real careful one. Even when he thinks no one's following him. Probly just his nature by now. How old you guess this fellow is, Mandy?" I ask.
"As old as you, perhaps. Younger than my father." She looked off across the prairie, sulky about something, but damned if I knowed what.
"You talk to her about our man last night?" I ask Clete.
"Not much," he said. "Let's get on him and get done with this."
A few miles up the creek we run into the twin of the butte where he'd shot them bucks. Thick gray clouds draped the sky.
"Careful," I told Clete, who was getting up even with me, off to the side. "Good spot for an ambush." But instead of leading close into the butte, like his tracks done before, they angled west around it, beyond where the stream petered out. Another mile further, another butte, this one wider and higher than the last.
"We can't keep slowing down, Willie," Clete said. "It's going to rain and then we've lost him. Let me go first. I'll take the risk of going faster. You and the girl stay up if you can and follow his trail if I go the wrong way. He's still walking his horse, ain't he?"
"My horse," Mandy said.
"Yes, he is," I told him. "We'll keep you in sight if we can. If it rains and we lose your sign, we'll look for a day and then head back to the river. Think you can find it?"
He took off at a gallop without answering. We loped after him, but in less than half an hour, he was just a speck far out in the grass. And what grass there was was getting thinner all the time. Clay mounds and hills was everywhere before long. Some was sliced into peaks by the wind and rain and others looked like the chopped-off feet of dragons and lizards, complete with toes and claws. A few tables of sod stood between the washed-out gullies, but three miles further on, even these give way. In spots there was nothing green at all, only the bare ground-gray and red and pink and sometimes a little thin yeller layer. Humped up and twisted and hillocky and I don't know what-all. Of course we lost sight of Clete in that crazy country.
If Clete hadn't of went first, I doubt if I would of gone through there after the man we was chasing. He could've been hid anywhere. I wondered if Clete knew the chance he was taking. Probly he did, but he'd bull it through anyway.
Mandy rode in closer to me than she'd been doing. "I do not like these badlands, Mr. Goodwin. It is not safe here. I know now what my father meant. Nothing grows here, and I have not seen any animals for miles, not even a prairie dog."
We went through a flat place, a hundred acre
s or more, where broken up rocks of all sizes lay on top of the clay or were buried in it a little ways and others loose and in small piles. Some stones the size of your head or more, but most big as your fist. Tough going for the horses. But it was easy following Clete, rough as it was, for he'd traveled through here fast enough to move plenty of rock. Going a lot faster than we was, I can tell you. Ahead, peaks of striped clay lifted higher than those we already passed by-some like rows of fangs and others rounded like molars on top. Evil-looking country. I liked it no better than Mandy did, but I tried not to let her see that.
"The devil must have his ranch around here somewheres," I said to her. The words was no more out of my mouth than we heard shots.
Chapter Eleven
In them hard clay ravines and canyons, the blasts rolled like thunder. Two different rifles, it sounded like.
Mandy squirmed around on that horse's back, and what with the shots, she scared the hell out of it, so I grabbed her reins. "Follow me across. Go the way I go. Head toward them two pointy peaks, but don't go no farther! I'm riding on up ahead to help Clete, but I'll come back. Only stay there, 'cause that's where I'll come to when this is over." I let go the reins of her horse and handed her the lead rope of the pack animal.
"All right," she said, looking awful scared.
"Don't risk your horse hurrying through these rocks. This trouble may take some time."
"All right," she said again, taking off her broad-brimmed black hat. She looked me square in the eye then. "You will come back for me, won't you Willie?"
"I'll be back," I said. "Just wait somewhere between them peaks. Take some shelter. I won't forget about you, girl."
But I risked my horse some through them stones. That long-legged bay was as sure footed as he was easy ridin', and I was glad for it that day. I looked back when I got to the far edge of that rocky place, and Mandy was making her way across it slow like I told her to.
I heard more rifle shots then, but I couldn't tell where they was coming from.
It was a regular sort of trail once you got into the mouth of the bigger canyon, though it rose some. The clay was firm and smooth, so I pushed that bay as hard as he would go.
Where it widened out into a little valley, there lay Clete's black horse with his guts blowed out. Saddle still on him, but he was dead. Clete's hat was there, though his rifle was gone from the scabbard. My bay reared and we danced a few circles 'til I calmed him down. I could find nothing to tie him to but Buckshot's reins, and he didn't like that at all.
A rifle exploded above me, up on the peak in front. I hit the dirt. Nothing happened for a minute, and when I looked, there was Clete up there sighting down his rifle-but not in my direction.
After he lowered it, I hollered, "Clete!" He looked and waved and after a while he started down toward me.
"I saw him," he called.
I set and waited 'til he got down.
He was out of breath, and his clothes was in shreds at the knees and elbows. "Mandy's horse, the one that bastard's riding, it's a paint, isn't it?"
"Yep, a paint. That's what she told me," I said.
"He's a tall man, real lean." It was then that Clete seen Buckshot. He stood and stared for a minute, then picked up his hat and smacked it against his leg. "I knew he was hit bad, but not like that. Look at the damage that damn bullet did."
"What happened?" I ask.
Clete brushed at his cut-up elbows. "He jumped me. Waiting up there, where you saw me. Only he hit Bucky instead of me. I took a spill, ate some gravel, and came up shooting. He fired back, almost hit me once, but when I started working my way up there, he took off."
"Did you hit him, when you fired that last?"
"No. That was just pissin' in the wind."
"You all right?" I ask. He was bleeding through the busted-out knees of his pants pretty good.
"Yeah, but I'm stove up."
"You're welcome to the bay if you want to go after him," I offered. "Good horse."
"No, the trail goes up from here and he's got too much of a start on me now, goddamnit." I expected him to say that he could have chased him if I'd a been there with him, where I ought to of been, but he didn't. His eyes showed it for a minute, though. But maybe that was just in my head, I don't know. Then he hunkered down by his dead horse. "Sorry to lose this old fellow," he said, patting Buckshot's jaw.
We got Clete's McClellan loose after a time and the rest of his gear we piled beside it. Of course we could do nothing about Buckshot, not even put stones over him, since there was no stones there. Only thing in this place was dried clay, formed into knuckles and lumps the size of eyeballs where it was steep and washed smooth where it was a little flat. I asked him if he wanted to ride back with me or stay there 'til I brought the pack horse, which he would have to ride now–that, or the buckskin. He decided on staying.
I gave him my canteen, since his was nearly empty, so's he could wash out his cuts. He was sitting on the ground beside his gear tending to his knees when I left.
The bay loped easy going back for Mandy. I didn't push him, but I didn't poke, either. All in all, I guess it'd been a little more than an hour from when I'd left her 'til I got to them two peaks where I told her to wait.
The pack horse was tied to a stone that looked like a big old turtle, but both Mandy and my old horse was nowheres to be seen. I took the bay up into the clay draws on both sides, up high as I could get him, thinking maybe she had done like I said and took shelter up there with the horse. I called her name loud as I could, several times, but there was no answer, only the echo of my voice calling back tome.
Gullies and ravines led off in all directions. I searched some of the big ones I could get my horse in, but saw no tracks, though sometimes I wasn't sure. I lost myself for a spell in there too, and though I followed the bay's tracks backwards, I went in a circle for some time. Just by luck I stumbled onto where the pack horse was still tied. If I hadn't, I might still be wandering around in there, so cut up and twisted it was. I had followed sign over all kinds of country, but nothing like that. I tried to think of what Stalking Bear would of done and just did that.
I don't know how long I wandered around looking for that girl, but I knowed I would have to go back to Clete before long. I suspected he had camped without fire or food many a time, but I couldn't just leave him there for the night in this country, not without a horse.
I got the pack animal and headed back to him.
"Where the hell have you been?" he yelled before I even got to where he was sitting on his wrapped-up bedroll.
"I couldn't find her," I told him. "Looked all over, but she's not around."
"Now maybe we can catch that sonofabitch!" he said, standing up. You could see how hard moving around was for him. A good bone-rattling fall will make you remember all your old hurts.
I dismounted and unloaded the pack horse. Clete threw his blanket and saddle up on it. After we stuffed our saddle bags and put some things in our bedrolls, we just left the rest of it there on the ground, including the tent. "I can't just leave her there," I said. "Just like I couldn't leave you here. I'm going back."
"Damned if I am," Clete said. "Come along up the trail a piece with me. It climbs a big ridge and it looks like you can see for quite a ways. Maybe you can spot her."
"All right. But if I can't, I'm going back."
Took us a while to get to where he had in mind, following our man's tracks the whole way. Where the trail cut through a notch in a red clay spine, you could see miles and miles of this broken-up, washed away country spread out before you.
"Good God," Clete said. "I never saw anything the equal of this before." I knowed what he meant. The sky was gray and dark, spoiling for rain. Beneath us laid a broad, flat valley, grassy in many spots, but those was all a good ways off. Jumbles of clay mountains stuck up in places. Far across, you could see the tree line of a river and beyond that, another jagged ridge like the one we was standing on. Down to our left, maybe fifteen miles, was
a large tableland and up to our right, a farrago of spiky peaks and roof-slanted things that looked more like a big storybook castle than anything else. The wind come through with a cold edge on it.
I got Clete's glass and scanned the ridges to both sides and back the way we come. We sat there a long time and Clete looked too.
"Well, I don't see her," he said. "You'd be smart to come with me, Willie-be dark soon."
"I'm going to find Mandy," I told him.
He didn't give me no argument, just nodded his head. "His tracks lead down to where the trees are and that's where I'm going. If he's there, Til kill him. Or else he'll kill me. If he's not, Til camp and wait for you 'til morning. But I'll wait no longer."
It was easy to see where he meant to go. Looked like a big part of the ridge we were on had broke off and slid halfway to the valley floor, leaving a mostly level place down there a hundred yards deep and maybe a quarter mile wide. Appeared to be water there, too, for it was covered with juniper and a few patches of high grass.
I turned my horse and offered him my hand. "Good luck, Clete."
He took it and shook it good. "Good luck yourself, you dumb sonofabitch."
The light was starting to go by the time I got back to between them two peaks. As leathery as the clay was there, baked almost like gray bricks, her sign were hard as hell to see. She had been nervous waiting there. Tracks going all different ways, back and forth. I went back to the edge of the rocky place, got off and led my horse so I could get down close to the ground every few yards to unravel the trail. I was about to go back toward them two peaks again when it started to pour rain.
Chapter Twelve
Damn that girl, anyway. There was nothing chased her off. I'd a seen the sign if there was. Indians or wolves or whatever beasts of hell lived in these hills-I knowed I would have. No, she'd just run off scared of the gunfire and of this place, but mostly afraid of being left alone. Showed how much she trusted me. And it couldn't of been our man after her either, for he was well out in front.
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