The Blackfoot Trail

by Charles G. West

  While Blackburn was trying to get his priorities in order, Joe had already seen all he needed to know. There could be little doubt that the man who had robbed the bank and killed the owner was Starbeau. While more spectators showed up as word spread about the brazen daylight robbery, Joe led his horses in front of the bank building and looked around him to get the lay of the land. Drawn to the crime at the bank, few of the spectators cast more than a curious glance in his direction as he stood looking across the road at the grove of trees and what appeared to be a creek beyond. It seemed to be the logical place to start scouting, so leading his horses, he walked slowly across the road, holding to a line between the front door of the bank and a small opening in the trees.

  As he walked, he searched the ground around him. Soon he found what he had anticipated. On the other side of the road, he saw the clear boot prints of a very large man, telling him that Starbeau had left his horses and gone to the bank on foot. For Joe’s natural eye, it was not difficult to piece the picture together. There were many tracks on the bank of the creek, some older than others, but all recent. Starbeau had evidently spent some time there before this day. It was just a matter of finding the tracks that led away from the creek, and he thought he had found them until he stopped to consider. The trail led back toward town, which didn’t make sense. But the hoofprints looked fresh, and that was what almost led him on the wrong trail. They had to have been made earlier that morning. He told himself that he wasn’t giving Starbeau much credit for being more careful than that.

  Back on the creek bank, he searched more closely until he found a print in a rocky slide next to the water, and he knew that Starbeau had ridden into the creek, hoping not to leave tracks. He hadn’t bothered to hide his footprints when he ran from the bank, but from this point on, he was intent upon leaving no trail at all. He was almost successful. Joe searched the banks of the creek carefully, upstream and down, on both sides, with no sign of exit from the water. After spending the biggest part of what was left of the afternoon scouring the bank, he had a stroke of luck. There were several places along the creek where rocks protruded down to the water. He had considered them all as possible points of exit, but found no tracks beyond them. As the afternoon light started to fade away, something caught his eye. It was not a hoofprint, merely a slash in the dirt at the edge of a flat rock some sixty yards upstream from the point where Starbeau had entered the water. On closer inspection, he decided it was possibly made when a hoof missed solid footing on the rock and slipped off the edge, scraping a small scar in the bank. It wasn’t much to go on, but there wasn’t anything else, so he paused to take a look at the possible lines of escape. There were only two that seemed reasonable choices to Joe. Starbeau could have continued on down the narrow valley, following the creek, or he could have ridden down a heavily wooded draw that would eventually lead to a line of low mountains covered with pines and spruce. He looked toward the hills and the tall forest of lodgepole pines on the lower slopes and thought, That’s where I’d head if I was trying to lose someone following me.

  The decision made, he went at once to verify his hunch while there was still enough light to look for sign. A small game trail led up the center of the draw where a dense stand of fir trees was already turning the scant daylight still filtering through the branches into night. This would be the obvious path to take if one was in a hurry, so he led his horses along the trail while he carefully searched for a hoofprint that would tell him he was on the right track.

  In the rapidly fading light, he could not come up with a single print. He was reluctant to blame it on the lack of light, for he felt he should have been able to see some prints left by two horses even if it was almost dark. Had he guessed wrong? Maybe Starbeau chose to follow the creek south, after all, with the intention of taking the least obvious escape route. Joe pondered the possibility for a moment. It didn’t make sense. If Starbeau followed the creek, it would lead him back to the south end of town. And that sure as hell doesn’t make sense, he thought. He wondered then if he had been mistaken about the slash in the creek bank by the rock. Maybe it wasn’t made by a horse’s hoof at all, but misinterpreted because of a lack of solid sign. Now he was frustrated with himself. Starbeau wasn’t smart enough to ride off leaving no trail to follow. Already hours behind Starbeau, Joe decided he had no choice but to make camp for the night and pick up the trail in the morning. He had to find some sign that told him he was on the right track, knowing that if he continued on hunches and intuition alone, there was a very good possibility that he would end up wandering aimlessly through the Montana mountains.

  He went back to the creek to make his camp where there was water for the horses and a little grass for grazing. After building a fire, he settled in with some coffee and deer jerky for his supper. Thoughts turned from the man he hunted to the last night he had camped in the cottonwoods near the Clark’s Fork River. He could still feel the touch of her body close to his, and her arms locked tightly around his neck. Usually when thoughts of Callie came to him, he tried to quickly dispense with them, fearful of letting his mind wander impossible trails. But on this night he permitted the thoughts to linger as he openly considered the possibility that the slender young girl had a deeper feeling for him beyond that of her rescuer. He had nothing to offer a woman that one would consider a promising future. He was at home in the forest, as deep in the mountains as he could get. He knew nothing of tilling the soil or raising farm animals. His ways were the way of the bow and rifle. He grunted in disgust. “Why do I care, anyway? She is gone now, gone to Oregon, and I’ve got a job to do here.” He decided to put thoughts of Callie out of his mind, but it was a long time before she actually released his mind and let him sleep.

  Under the same full moon, Callie lay awake, her mind filled with a plethora of thoughts and questions that lacked satisfactory answers. Since she had been returned to her friends and family, her days had been restless and uncertain. Although her parents and their friends told her that she was not to blame for what had happened to her, still she could not escape the curious glances from the other members of the congregation. Most of them found it extremely hard to look directly into her face when talking to her, as if her disfigured cheeks and jaw displayed the mark of the devil. There was only one person who looked into her eyes, seeing past the scars to her soul, and he was gone from her life forever. She wished now that she had told him she loved him. It may have reviled him, but she knew he would have been kind enough not to show it. She had waited all her young life to tell some special someone that she loved him, and she knew now that the opportunity would never come.

  Tomorrow the congregation would bid farewell to the Missoula Valley, and begin the long journey to the Oregon country and the Willamette Valley, God willing. It was to be an arduous journey with many mountains to cross, and when they reached the Willamette, she would be a world apart from the one person she trusted above all others. She sighed and pulled her blanket up over her shoulders. Tomorrow was going to be a difficult day, but even in her young years, she knew that life didn’t give a person many choices.

  Chapter 15

  As soon as it was light enough to see, he was saddled up and back on the game trail that led up the wooded draw. The only sign he could discover were tracks he had left the night before, but he was still not ready to abandon the trail. Leaving his horses to wait for him on the game trail, he climbed up through the fir trees on the side of the draw, knowing the tracks were there—he just had to find them. About seventy-five feet up the steep slope, he came upon them. Due to the steepness of the side of the draw, Starbeau had been unsuccessful in hiding his tracks and might have found it useless to even try. For they were distinct in the soft topsoil of the fir forest floor, leaving long slashes in the steepest places as the horses slipped and stumbled. He couldn’t make any progress up here, Joe thought. He’s bound to have come back to the trail at the bottom. Without wasting any more time on the side of the draw, Joe scrambled back to the bottom
to retrieve his horses. Stepping up on the paint, he followed the game trail up the draw, and eventually he came to a point where two shod horses came down from the side and struck the trail where it fanned out at the base of a mountain.

  It was easy to picture the hulking fugitive as he had woven his way up through the forest of firs and lodgepole pines, riding around large outcroppings of rock, as he climbed higher and higher. The careless trail of hoofprints and broken branches testified to the reckless pace he set for his horses in an attempt to put as much distance as possible between himself and anyone following him. Once Joe reached the shoulder of the mountain, he found the trail had leveled out and led around it toward the east slope. From there, it started descending toward a narrow valley to the north. It was Joe’s guess that Starbeau had no specific direction in mind, but was simply running, hoping to disappear in the wilderness. Reaching the bottom of the mountain, Joe came upon a wide stream that had been hidden from the mountaintop by a thick canopy of trees.

  Taking advantage of the opportunity to once again disguise his trail, Starbeau had ridden into the stream, causing Joe to slow down and carefully walk the paint up the stream, searching for tracks leaving the water. Already losing time due to the necessity to quit the trail the night before, he could only grumble over further delay in running Starbeau to ground. He followed the stream for over a quarter mile, scanning both banks intensely with no sign of tracks. With reluctance, and a generous portion of impatience, he turned his horse around and retraced his steps, grudgingly admitting that the belligerent bully had outsmarted him and reversed his direction in the stream. Sure enough, he had ridden no more than two hundred yards past the point where Starbeau had first entered the stream when he saw the tracks leaving the water. Starbeau had made no attempt to hide them—two sets of prints clearly led across a soft bank and across the valley toward the neighboring mountain.

  Joe nudged the paint with his heels and the horse immediately reared up on his hind legs and screamed at almost the same time a shot rang out. Taken completely by surprise, Joe almost came out of the saddle. In rapid succession, two more shots ripped into the wounded horse, one in the withers, and one in the neck—both shots intended for his master. Joe just managed to pull his rifle and tumble from the saddle as the paint went down. He rolled over behind a tree, cocked his rifle and scanned the slope above him, trying to pinpoint the source of the rifle fire. There was nothing to be seen but the dense forest that covered the side of the mountain. Every sound in the valley went silent with the exception of the pitiful whimpering of the paint, causing Joe to feel sick in his gut to have ridden blindly into an ambush that took the life of his horse.

  The dying horse made an attempt to get on its feet, but failed. Feeling as though he had caused the death of a close friend, Joe sadly rolled over on his side and aimed his rifle at the paint’s head. Pulling the trigger, he instantly ended the horse’s suffering. As soon as he fired, his shot was answered by a series of shots from the ridge above him, the bullets snapping through the branches of the pines and ricocheting off the rocky streambed. Dammit, he thought, still furious with himself for his carelessness, for he had assumed that Starbeau was at least a half day ahead of him. He knows where I am, but I still don’t know where he is.

  He looked for his packhorse and saw the black Indian pony about twenty yards away, standing in a small opening in the trees. “Come here, boy,” he called and whistled. But the horse stood there and pawed the ground with its hoof, apparently confused. Joe tried calling it several times more with the same result. Damn hard head, he thought. I’m going to have to go to him. I wonder just how good Starbeau has me pinpointed. To test it, he slid over toward the opposite side of the tree and started to peer around the trunk. Another shot immediately rang out from above, causing him to duck back behind the tree trunk. He tried once more to call the horse and was met with the same result. His concern was that the horse was an easy target, standing in the open, and if he didn’t get it to move, he was going to be on foot. There was a lull in the shooting so he figured Starbeau was reloading. Knowing he could not afford to remain pinned down behind the tree, he didn’t take time to think about it. Leaping to his feet, he made a run for the stream behind him. Running as hard as he could go, he almost reached the edge of the stream before Starbeau peppered the ground at his heels with rifle fire. Diving the final few feet, he landed beneath the bank as .44 slugs zipped over his head. Intent upon working his way up around the deadly ambush, he crawled a dozen yards down the stream until he gained enough solid cover to make another try for the packhorse.

  “Damn the stinkin’ luck,” Starbeau fumed, “Joe Fox.” How, he wondered, had the relentless tracker gotten on his trail? “Well, don’t make no difference now. This is as far as he’s goin’.” He crawled over to the other side of the boulder he had used as a shield in hopes of getting a clear shot. “The son of a bitch,” he complained, cursing Joe for his success in finding cover. He was gripped by a moment of panic when he could no longer see where he was. The son of a bitch is like a damn snake in the bushes, he thought, and he was furious for having missed his opportunity to kill him. He should have been more patient, he told himself, and waited until the relentless hunter had ridden out into the center of the clearing. But as soon as he had seen the head of the paint horse emerge from the bushes by the stream, he had pulled the trigger. And now the dangerous half-breed had escaped into the tall pines.

  He strained to scan the trees below the ridge. As yet, there had been no return fire from Joe Fox, just that one shot to finish the paint, which meant he had not spotted Starbeau behind the boulder. Or did it? Starbeau had to consider the possibility that he had been spotted, and Joe Fox was stalking him, maybe making his way up the ridge even now. Let the damn half-breed come, Starbeau thought. It’ll be his day to go to hell. The thought, designed to bolster his courage, had a hollow ring, however, as he was anxiously aware of the nervous sweating in the palms of his hands. “Damn him!” he muttered, remembering the cold merciless eyes that had gazed down at him after he had shot him in the shoulder. And the thought entered his mind that running might be the wiser of his alternatives. At that moment, Joe’s black packhorse walked slowly across the clearing below, and Starbeau saw his best option. He brought his rifle up to his shoulder, took careful aim, and pumped three shots into the unfortunate horse, dropping it in the middle of the clearing.

  He wasted no time after firing the shots, and ran up the ridge to where his horses were tied. Stumbling drunkenly, as if the devil himself were on his heels, he got a foot in the stirrup and swung his leg over while still fumbling to put his rifle in the saddle scabbard. Kicking the horse repeatedly, he left the ridge at a gallop, crashing through the sparse underbrush, oblivious to the pine limbs that slapped at his face and arms. Down the other side of the ridge he plunged, his horses struggling at breakneck speed to maintain their footing on the uneven slope. His rational mind tried to reason that it was impossible for the relentless hunter to have climbed the other side of the slope in the time he had taken to flee. Even so, he could feel a tingle in the center of his shoulder blades where a bullet might find him at any second.

  Starbeau did not let up on his weary horses until reaching the bottom of the mountain, where he was sure he had put enough distance behind him to rest them. With his confidence partially restored, he convinced himself that he had taken the sensible route. If it was a fight in the open, he told himself, it would be a different thing. But that bastard is as much at home in the woods as a wolf. He consoled himself on his decision to run, saying it was the smart thing to do. And Max Starbeau ain’t never been no damn dummy. Another thought caused him to chuckle. He’ll play hell catching up to me on foot. His mind completely at ease now with the sure feeling that he had seen the last of Joe Fox, he climbed up in the saddle again and walked his horses toward a narrow canyon between the two mountains facing him.

  Separated from his prey by a mountain, Joe was of another thought. The hun
t was not over, merely delayed. He recognized the difficulty of catching a man on horseback while he traveled on foot, but there was no doubt in his mind that he would eventually track Starbeau down.

  Joe had never located Starbeau’s position on the ridge until after his packhorse was shot, but he managed to get a glimpse of two horses as they crashed through the pines, heading for the shoulder of the mountain. By that time, the range was too far to waste a cartridge, hoping for a lucky shot. He was certain that he was no longer in danger of getting shot himself, and to prove it, he walked out into the opening to fetch the few things from his saddlebags he would need to take with him. With a mind to travel as light as possible, he made a backpack with his blanket, and filled it with cartridges, jerky, flint and steel, and after some deliberation, his coffeepot. Pausing then to take one last sorrowful look at the faithful paint pony, he strapped his bow and quiver on his shoulder, picked up his rifle, and started up the slope of the ridge toward the spot where he had last glimpsed Starbeau.

  Reaching the boulder that had been Starbeau’s shield, he paused only for a second to notice the empty .44 shells lying on the ground before proceeding on toward the spot in the trees where he thought he had seen the fleeing man’s horses. He reached the place where the bushwhacker had tied his two horses, and from that point on there was little trouble to follow the trail up toward the shoulder of the mountain.

  There were no more sorrowful thoughts over the loss of his horse. His life had been in kinship with the wild creatures of the mountains, where death was but a part of living, and something to be expected, often in random acts of fate. So he was not prone to waste time regretting bad luck. He was on foot, his enemy was on horseback, and it would take a little more time to track him. But track him he would. He pulled his bow off his shoulder, and with it in one hand and his rifle in the other, he set out at a steady jog.