When we were maybe a mile back from the river, I caught movement in the willows ahead and below us, and two riders came in sight from the direction of the river. At that distance I couldn't make them out, but they never so much as glimpsed us, but rode on ahead.
It took only a few minutes for me to ride down the hill and pick up their sign.
They had been bedded down under a rough shelter on the bank of the river overlooking the trail, and they had been waiting there for some time. Crouching, I looked back the way we had come. They must have seen us leave the river bed.
Who were these two who had been tricked out of their ambush by sheer luck? If there had not been those heavy clouds in the distance and that rain to worry me about the river bed, we would have walked into the ambush and they would have had us cold turkey.
Where they had waited they had a thick screen of boughs for concealment, and yet a perfect field of fire through neatly prepared openings in the brush where they had broken away leaves and twigs. They could have taken me and one of the others with the first two shots, and the ones who were left would never have gotten away.
Those two men were western men; I knew that by the way they rode, and they were experienced at their work. Right then I began casting around in my memory for some clue as to who they might be.
Men hired for the job, surely. I could bet on that. So who was there around Griffin or Fort Phantom Hill who might be hired?
The names I came up with weren't happy ones to think about. I knew of several around this part of the country, and any one of them would be a package of trouble. The two who had laid for us were good at their job, too good for comfort.
I walked the dun up out of the brush and across the green slope through the rain, and was thinking about what would happen when all of these treasure-seekers reached the Rabbit Ears at the same time ... Or could we get there first?
"Who were those men?" Loomis asked as I came back to the buckboard.
He had had his eyes open then. "Hunters ... big-game hunters, Mr. Loomis, and we're the game."
"They were waiting for us?" He was incredulous. "Who could they be?"
"Somebody hired for cash to do a job. Good at the work, too. We were lucky this time, but we can't count on luck next time. Mr. Loomis, I didn't figure on this when I signed up with you, but it looks like I've got to go hunting for them.
Either I take those men, or they'll take us."
He didn't come up with any objection, and from his remarks he seemed more worried about who was doing the hiring than about the killers themselves. There was nothing I could tell him about that, but I knew we were in trouble a-plenty.
The best way I knew to keep those two from doing their job was to find them first.
Chapter 6
The rain continued to fall--a light, gentle rain. Although there was no flash flood in the river, the water widened and deepened, and we went on, keeping some distance back from the bank.
It was close to noontime before we turned off up Punta de Agua Creek. We had to pick our way along, avoiding obvious places of ambush and trying to keep in the open without becoming too good a target. It wasn't easy.
My dun covered twice the distance of that buckboard, just checking back and forth. We held north on the right of the creek and when we made camp on Los Redos Creek we were about half a mile back of its junction with Punta de Agua.
Nobody had much to say. All of us were beat from the rough country we'd crossed, and Loomis was glum and mean looking. We watered the horses, then picketed them in close. I put together a bed for Penelope, and then went out a ways from camp and bedded down near a rock wall where nobody could come up on me sudden, and where I had a lookout over the camp.
The trend of Punta de Agua was a little westward, then north, but when we started out again we held due north. About four miles out the creek turned westward, but I kept the buckboard headed north. I had a hunch that would worry those men who were racking guns for us, for if we were headed for the Rabbit Ears and Romero it would seem more than likely that we would follow the creek.
However, Punta de Agua Creek took another bend north, and I figured to cut west and pick up the creek at that bend.
I rode ahead and scouted the country and we made good time. The rain had stopped, but the slopes were wet and slippery. Meanwhile, I was doing some contemplating. Those ambushers would be somewhere ahead ... but where? If I could figure that out, I might sort of roust around and get the best of them.
We turned suddenly and headed due west for Rita Blanca Creek, and when we reached it we stopped to eat. Loomis was giving me angry looks and he stalked off to the crest of a rise.
"He'll get himself killed if he isn't careful," I said to Penelope, who was standing near me. But I wasn't watching Loomis, I was watching Flinch. The breed had me puzzled. He was a canny man, and a quiet one who did no talking at all, but he didn't seem to miss much. A couple of times I'd seen him casting about for sign. Now he was gathering sticks for a fire.
There was a good bit of broken brush and dead stuff lying near the creek. Flinch moved like a wild animal. A wild creature will move through the forest and never step on a fallen twig or branch. A horse might, or a cow, but never a deer or other wild animal, and Flinch was like that. You just never heard him as he moved, and scarcely saw him.
Was it entirely coincidence that he had been around when Loomis was looking for somebody to join them? He had not said he was familiar with this country, but I was sure he knew it as well if not better than I did myself.
As Penelope and I were talking, Loomis came back, and he looked at her sharply.
"Penelope! You come here!"
She turned, her chin up. "Mr. Loomis, I will not have you speaking to me like that! You're not my father, and you're not my guardian!"
A moment there he was mad enough to strike her had she been close enough. He glared at her, then said stiffly, "I gave up my business to come and help you.
Is this the thanks I get?"
Well, I had to hand it to her, the way she stood up to him. "Mr. Loomis, I am very greateful for your coming, and I thank you for it, but that gives you no right to direct my life. If we find the gold, you will be paid."
At that, his face flushed. "You talk too much!" he flared.
"If you mean she talks too much about Nathan Hume's gold," I said casually, "you're wrong. She's never mentioned it until now, and as far as that goes, nearly everybody in this here country knows that story. I'd bet a pretty penny Flinch knows it, too." I looked at Flinch.
He looked back at me and said nothing, but he knew all right.
"Her name was enough, even if it hadn't been for other things."
Now, I'd lied a little bit there, saying she'd said nothing about the gold, but she was in trouble enough and I wanted to leave Loomis without a leg to stand on. And I was beginning to be suspicious of his motives. He didn't strike me as the sort to pull up stakes and take a young girl west on a wild gold chase.
"This ain't exactly a traveled country," I added, "and the route you're takin' ain't the one I'd have picked for you. But I'll take you through to Romero if that's where you want to go. Or if it suits you better, I'll take you right to the Rabbit Ears."
Penelope looked thoughtful. "Which is the shortest?"
"Right up Rita Blanca Creek, I'd say. The difference is slight, but it is a difference, and the travel is a whole lot easier."
"We have to go to Romero," Loomis said stubbornly. "I planned on buying supplies there."
"If you know where the gold is," I suggested, "you'd be better off to get there as fast as you can and get it before the whole country moves in on you.
"Somebody paid those gents who were laying out for you. Maybe it was that Karnes outfit, maybe somebody else. I'd suggest you move fast and get there first ... if you can."
Well, that slowed him down. He wanted that gold, and he wanted it almighty bad.
After a moment he said, "All right, you take us the quickest way."
We headed off the way we'd been traveling. This was a wide-open and barren country, but there were long swells you'd scarcely call hills that would offer some concealment. I knew how to cross country unseen, for I was a man who'd lived that way.
Riding warily, I studied the country around, and suddenly came upon a stretch of rock swept clean by the wind. It was a place where there was a little firewood from dead brush on the creek banks, so we pulled up and made camp. It was early, but I had an idea of what I wanted to do.
We made a small fire and boiled some coffee and ate supper. I cleared a space around the fire so it wouldn't spread. Then I added some sticks that would burn slowly and would add more fuel to the fire kind of gradual. I even built a small rack of sticks above the fire, with the stick ends right in the flames. This would in time drop down, and help to keep the fire going.
When it was full dark I pulled my people back into the darkness. I wrapped the trace chains so they wouldn't jangle, and then we took off into the night, leaving the fire burning behind us. I knew that fire, rigged the way it was, would keep burning or smoking until well after daylight, and by that time I figured to be well away. We pulled out across the rock, and then into the scattered dunes. Those dunes by day were always feathered with a little windblown sand, and whatever tracks we made wouldn't last long.
This was bunch-grass country with ridges or dunes or sand breaking through from time to time. We headed north, keeping away from the creek but riding parallel to it. We traveled well into the night, and it was after nidnight when we came to the place I was hunting, a sort of slough with cattails around it, in a hollow among the low hills. We pulled up there, to spend the rest of the night there without a fire.
I slipped on my moccasins, and went out and dusted over our last tracks a mite.
Then I taken my own horse and went down into the cattails to a place I knew where there was a piece of solid ground among them, and there I staked out my horse and bedded down, maybe a hundred feet or so off from the others. Nobody could get to me without splashing into water, and the dun would let me know anyway. Then I slept, not worrying about a knife in the ribs or a knock on the skull.
There was a time there before I slept when I lay thinking back over the past few days, but thinking ahead. It was in my mind to try to foresee what might happen, and so be prepared for it. There's no way I know of that a body can foresee the future, but sometimes he can read it pretty well if he knows the way folks think.
Now, there's something about gold and the finding of it that changes a man's viewpoint. When it came to gold, I trusted nobody, not even myself. I'd never had much, and the sight of all that gold might turn me into a worse man than I figured to be.
Moreover, it might affect the others, and I'd no amount of respect for any of them, unless it was the girl. A young girl alone in the world without money is in for a hard time. She's prey to all sorts of advances and misfortunes, and hers can be a hard-bought life. Whatever happened, I wanted to see that the girl got her share of it.
I was thinking of myself too. Where there was gold I figured to get my share of it; but I have an idea that when that gold was found it would be every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost.
Morning came too soon and I was scarce awake, it being something short of daylight, when I heard a faint rustle in the water. I opened my eyes and looked up at the dun and his ears were pricked, so I just naturally reached down beside me and laid hand to my old Tinker.
Now, a Tinker-made knife was a handsome thing with a cutting edge like a razor--I often shaved with mine--but a strong blade that would cut through bone as well as flesh. They were made by a traveling peddler and tinker from back in the mountains, a gypsy man who traveled through, selling other things too, but from time to time with a Tinker-made knife to sell.
The water rustled, just faintly, and I thought of how a body approached this island in the reeds, and how much could be seen before he got right on it.
Suddenly I heard the squish of a wet boot and looked up to see Loomis standing there with an axe in his hand.
He was within reach of me, and he had that axe ready, but when our eyes met he stopped. His eyes were as mean-looking as I've ever seen. Now, I've lived a good part of my life in difficulties, and my mind thinks in terms of fighting. The way he was holding that axe told me he was going to cut down and to the left with it. A man swinging an axe from the right-shoulder side can't cut much to the right. Not with accuracy.
Loomis, if he tried to hit me, would cut down and left, so I was all braced to roll right and come up. His knuckles were white with gripping the axe, and I could see the hate in his face. Of a sudden it came to me that, old as he was, Loomis didn't only want that gold, he wanted the girl.
A moment there I thought he was stopped, then he suddenly took a deep, rasping breath and swung. The breath warned me, but he swung faster than I'd thought and I just skinned by, the axe missing by inches.
But then I was on my feet, like a cat, and had my Tinker pointed tight against his wishbone. He didn't have a chance to lift that axe again; my knife was right where I could open him up, and he knew it. I looked right down into his eyes and said, "Loomis, you're a murdering skunk. I got me a notion to kill you."
All the same I was in a fix, and I knew it. If he killed me, nobody would question it much. Penelope might, but she would have nobody to argue with, and I was a known outlaw. Flinch would say nothing of it, or think nothing of it. On the other hand, if I killed him, nobody would believe me at all.
So I just looked into his eyes ... we stood chest to chest, not eighteen inches between us, and I reached up with my knife and flicked a button from his coat ... and then another, and another, until I was right under his chin. Then I touched the point under his chin and just pricked him a mite.
"Mr. Loomis," I said, "you hadn't ought to done that. You make a body right mistrustful of folks. Now you just turn your tail around and hike back to camp ... And, Mr. Loomis, don't you ever try that again or I'll part your brisket with this blade."
Well, he was sweating like nothing you ever saw, he was that scared. He backed off, and then turned and ran back through the water.
I saddled up and loaded up and, taking my Winchester, walked the dun along the edge of the slough for a ways, then came out and skirted the camp. I wanted to scout the country anyway, but I also wanted to come into camp so's I could see everybody. It wasn't in my mind to ride up and have somebody a-laying for me.
When I rode in Penelope gave me an odd look, but nothing was said. I had an idea Flinch knew what was going on, for that breed missed very little. He was the sort that remains on the side lines and then picks up the pieces after the fighting is over.
We took out across the prairie. They would be hunting us by now, and no doubt would be following along streams where there was water. But from now on there were a good many scattered sloughs or pools, and water would not be so hard to come by.
That night we made camp in a depression north of Carrizo Creek, a place unlikely to be seen until a man was within a few yards of it.
Looms was restless and on edge. He avoided me, and I was just as glad. Squatting near the fire, I drank hot black coffee and talked to Penelope. It had been a while since I'd had a chance to talk to any girl.
"You be careful," I warned her there at the last; "you trust nobody. You're a mighty pretty girl, and where gold and women are concerned not many can be trusted."
"How about you, Nolan?" This was the first time she had called me my by given name.
"Me neither. I'm as hungry for gold as the next man."
"And women?"
"Well, up to a point. My ma raised me to respect womenfolks."
She was quiet for a minute or two and then she spoke very quietly. "I don't trust people altogether, Nolan."
"You must trust Loomis, to come clear out here with him."
"He's old enough to be my father. Or my grandfather, almost. Besides, how else could I get out h
ere? Would you tell someone how to find a buried treasure and just let them go, hoping you'd get a share?"
"Nope."
"Neither would I."
We moved out from camp before the first light. There were clumps of mesquite about, and more prickly pear than we had been seeing before. I shucked my Winchester and rode with it to hand. We angled northwest across the country, headed for a crossing of Perico Creek almost due south of the Rabbit Ears.
The dun and me, we stayed off to one side, either in front of the buckboard or behind it, always keeping it within sight; but I was careful to offer no target for my back.
Where, I wondered, was Sylvie Karnes and her brothers? And what had become of Steve Hooker?
Topping out on a low rise I saw the Rabbit Ears off to the north, showing just above the horizon and a good ways off. They were two nubbins of mountain, scarcely big enough to be called a mountain in this country. But even from this distance you could see why it got its name of Rabbit Ears.
It was near noontime, and we were a mile or so short of the ford. Down off the rise you couldn't see the Rabbit Ears, and I said nothing about them to the others.
The thought in my mind was that we were now within a few miles of more gold than most people had ever seen, and unless I missed my guess half a dozen people were ready to kill for it.
A moment there I thought, why not just light out? Why walk into someting that was none of my business? Let the murdering Karnes outfit and the rest of them fight it out ... was any amount of gold worth that much risk? I doubted it.
It would be mighty easy to turn my horse and ride away. A few days' ride to the west was Mora, where I had kinfolk. To the north there were the hell-for-leather mining towns where a man could make do one way or another. A twitch of the bridle and I would be off and free-riding with nothing to worry about but Comanches.
The trouble was, there was a girl back there; and mean though I might be, I couldn't leave that girl to a pack of wolves. It just wasn't in me. Every ounce of horse sense I had told me to cut and run, but I swung my horse and rode on toward the ford on the Perico.
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