“You follow Medicine Trail.”
The Indian who spoke was weirdly gotten up. A medicine man?
“Yes. The Sky Chief tells me to follow the Medicine Road and the Pah-ute will help me.”
They stared at me, muttering among themselves. It was different from the tongue I knew, but it was similar. Sometimes only a word or two seemed right; sometimes a whole sentence fell into place for me.
They led several spare horses, and suddenly a slim warrior rode over to me with a horse, and catching hold on the mane, I swung to its back.
They led off swiftly, and clinging to the mane, I rode with them.
Their village was miles away, but somehow I clung to the horse and kept on with them. When we came to the village at last, I saw that it was made up of perhaps two dozen lodges huddled in a cluster on a bench above a ravine. The position was good—it was sheltered, and there was water and fuel.
For four days I lay in their village and they fed and cared for me. An old woman came into the lodge where I was and took care of my wounds.
On the fifth day I walked out of the lodge. I was weak, but felt I was able to go.
“What you do now?” the chief asked.
“I will go to the white man’s town and find the man who shot me.”
“You have no gun.”
“I will find a gun.”
“You have no horse.”
“I ask my red brother to lend me one. I will return it if I am able, or I will pay you.”
“My people are at war with your people.”
“I did not know this. I have been where the Great Water lies, under the setting sun. I go back where my squaw is, in Colorado.”
He smoked and thought. Then he said, “You brave man. We follow your blood…many miles. You find your enemy, you kill.” He looked up at me. “I have no gun to give, but I will give pony.”
He pointed with his pipe. “You take that one.”
It was a mouse-colored horse, about fourteen hands, a good horse.
“Thank you.” I walked over to the horse, which was fitted with a hackamore.
Swinging astride, I rode up to his fire. “You are a great chief,” I said, “and you are my friend. If any man asks you, say you are a friend of Shell Tucker.”
Turning, I rode away, and they stood together, watching me go.
I looked back once. They were a war party, and I had seen fresh scalps.
Chapter 19
*
WITHIN THE HOUR I had picked up the trail. Two horses, one led. And I knew the tracks of that line-back dun as I knew the cracks in my own hands.
The grulla I rode was a good horse. The Pah-ute had given me a good one because he knew I had a long chase ahead of me, and he knew what sort of horse a man needed when the trail stretched on for uncounted miles. Its gait was smooth. That horse was no showboat, but he’d get in there and stay until the sun was gone and the moon was up.
When I came down out of those bleak, bitter mountains with the taste of alkali on my lips and my skin white from the dust of it, I had no idea where I was, only that I was riding east.
First it had been Bob Heseltine and Kid Reese. Now it was Zale. I’d find him somewhere up ahead, or he’d find me, and that would be an end to all of it, or part of it, depending on who saw who first.
A rugged, rawboned range lay before me, and across the flat of a vanished lake the jagged peaks lifted up. Not high…not many of those desert ranges are high, but they are dry, and they are all jagged edge, broken rock, and plants with thorns ready to tear the flesh.
A trail showed…a trail that had seen some use, though not lately—except for that lone-riding man with two horses.
The trail pointed into the saw-toothed ridges, and I pointed the grulla that way and said, “Their way is our way, boy. Let’s be a-goin’.”
I thought of Con Judy, who was my friend, and I thought of Vashti, who might be waiting or might not, and I thought of all the brutal, battered, and savage land that lay between us, and me without even a gun.
If he waited for me somewhere up in those rocks, he’d have me. If he waited I was dead meat…buzzard and coyote meat. But I had an idea he was running hard, and I stayed on the trail.
We climbed…higher and higher.
Suddenly a rider showed. A lone man riding a mule, leading another with a pack. A prospector.
He drew up when he saw me, not liking it. And there was a reason why, for my face was blistered and broken, my hands were only half-healed, my clothes were torn, and a sight.
“Howdy,” he said. “Mister, wherever you been I don’t wanna go.”
“I’m comin’ out,” I said. “I made it. There’s Indians back yonder though, and they’re wearing their paint.”
“I seen ’em before,” he said. “I cut my teeth on Injuns.”
“You got a gun to spare? I need a gun.”
“Boy, by the look of you you need a bed for two weeks, and a bath every day of it. You’re riding death, boy. You should look at you from this side of your eyes.”
“I need a gun. You passed a man up yonder with two horses, and my guns as well as his own. At least, I believe he’s got them. You loan me a gun and I’ll send you twice the cost of it, wherever you are.”
“I seen that man, boy, and you stay shut of him. That’s a mean man, too much for a boy like you. I seen him this time because I seen him a-comin’, and I knew who he was by the way he sets his horse. I cut out of the trail and when he seen my tracks he looked up to where I was, bedded down in the rocks, and I told him, ‘Pony, you keep right on a-ridin’. I got you dead in my sights.’ He kept on, and you know something? That wasn’t like him. It wasn’t like him a-tall.”
“He’s riding scared,” I said.
“I ain’t got a gun to spare, and if I had it I wouldn’t lend it to a man who’s going to get himself killed. What’s your name, boy?”
“Shell Tucker,” I said, “and I’ve followed some trails before this.…Be seeing you.”
The grulla clung to the trail like a hound dog. He was all I’d figured he was. He clung to that trail as if it was him Pony had tried to kill. We made our night camp at Cave Springs.
The Pah-utes had given me a double handful of jerky and I chewed a piece for supper, and drank at the spring. I’d moved back from the spring among some rocks when I heard a horse coming.
It was a long, lean cowhand riding a sorrel gelding, and he drew up at the spring and started to get down, and then he saw my tracks. He started to swing his horse, and I said, “Don’t be in such an all-fired hurry. I don’t even have a gun.”
“Then stand quiet,” he said, “because I do have. You just stand easy until I look you over.” He sidled his horse around until he could get a good look at me. “You don’t look fit to do no harm,” he said. “What happened to you?”
“You’d better ask that of a man you sighted down yonder with a led horse. Have you got a spare gun you could lend me? Anything that can shoot.”
“No. I got only this sixshooter and my Winchester, and where I’m going I’m likely to need them both. What happened?” he asked again.
“Have you got some coffee? I have nothing but beef jerky some Indians gave me.”
“I’ve got it, and I was just fixin’ to make it up,” he said.
He got down very careful, and kept his horse between us until he could see I really was unarmed. Then he holstered his gun and stripped his gear from the horse.
“Good water?” he asked.
“Any water is good. If you don’t think it is, try going where I’ve been without it.”
We got us a fire going and he put coffee on and broke open a can of beans, giving me half and keeping the other half for himself. And while the coffee boiled I told him what had happened since I’d seen that mean old man on the trail.
“He’s down there in Silver Peak,” he said. “These here are the Silver Peak Mountains, and the town is down yonder on the edge of Clayton Valley.”
�
��Is it much of a town?”
“Not so’s you could notice. She was fetching up to be and then the color ran out, and the folks just left. There’s a store or two, there’s a place where you can sleep inside out of the rain, and there’s a corral for your horse.
“And there’s a stamp mill that ain’t running no more, and a lot of folks setting around saying how there’s millions just under the ground. There may be, but I don’t know of what. It surely ain’t cash money. You ride in there and flash a five-dollar bill and they’re likely to give you the place and run.”
“I couldn’t flash a five-cent piece,” I said. “That man cleaned me.”
“Well, I got two bucks, mister, and I’ll split her right down the middle with you. I ain’t going to see any pilgrim ride into that town broke.”
“How about a gun?”
“Uh-uh. You get killed on your own time, with your own gun.”
“If I can’t find a gun I’ll cut myself a stick,” I told him. “I want some hide off that man.”
The beans were good, the coffee better, and he divided a chunk of sourdough betwixt us. He was a good man, and he never told me his name, even. At the end, I did give him mine.
“If you ever come to Colorado,” I said, “look me up. I’m Shell Tucker.”
“Heard of you,” he said. “They’re beginning to make up songs about you.”
Silver Peak was a town not much more than ten, twelve years old and it was dead already…but nobody believed it, and when you’ve got that kind of faith, who’s to say?
At the saloon three men were sitting on the porch under the overhang, and they watched me ride in. I kept a sharp lookout, but saw no sign of Pony or his horses. I rode up to the saloon and stepped down.
“I’m looking for a man with two horses,” I said, “and the right to own only one of them.”
“He’s gone. And if you take my advice you’ll forget him. He didn’t look to me like he wanted to be found.”
“I need a little grub and a gun,” I told them.
“Mister, this here town is broke. Nobody has anything but what he needs. You ride right along.”
“I got a dollar,” I said.
“That’ll buy you a mite of something. You ride on, boy. We got us a marshal here who don’t cotton to man-hunting.”
“Where is he?”
They pointed out a shack to me and I got back on my horse and rode over there. I got down in front of the shanty and went up the walk.
The man who opened the door was tall, lean, and hard-featured, and he wore a gun as if he knew what it was for. Behind him a woman was putting grub on the table.
“I’m Shell Tucker,” I said, “and I’m hunting a man. I need a gun and a grubstake.”
“Come in.” He turned his head. “Ma, set up another place. This feller looks like he could use it.”
When I sat down at the table the man tipped back in his chair, lit his pipe, and looked me over. “I’m Dean Blaisdell, and I am not long in Silver Peak. This here’s a thankless job that pays enough to keep body and soul together. Now tell me about it.”
So I told the story again, and by this time I’d streamlined it some. He needed only to look at me to see what I’d been through.
“Can’t figure them redskins. Lucky they didn’t take your hair.”
“They’d followed me quite a spell. I guess they thought the country had made me suffer enough.”
“Give you a horse, too? That’s prime. I never knew that to happen, although they always cotton to a man who can take it.
“Tell you what I’ll do. I taken a sixshooter off a man here a couple of months ago. It’s a fine weapon. I’ll let you have it, and ma and me will fix you a bait of grub.
“You’ll need a saddle for that grulla, and there’s one over to the livery stable. The owner pulled out and he just left it…where he was going he said he hoped never to see another.”
We talked of places and people. He was an Arkansawyer, who had lived three years in Texas, had come on west and married the widow of a man killed by the Apaches in Arizona. They had followed one boom after another. “We made a little, but only to tide us over. I was a marshal in Ehrenburg for a few weeks, so they gave me this job.”
His wife poured more coffee. “Heard about you an’ Heseltine,” Blaisdell said. “I seen him once…a dangerous man, I’d say, but he was quiet when he was around my neck of the woods and gave no trouble to anybody.
“Lucky,” he added, “I’d never want to tangle horns with a man like him. I pack a gun and I do my job, but I’ve never drawn a gun on a man in my life, and never saw a gunfight.”
“I have,” his wife said, “and I’d as soon never see another.”
“Ma growed up in Injun country,” Blaisdell explained.
“Never found no good in them,” she said brusquely, “although I’ve known folks who lived among ’em. Their ways simply ain’t Christian.”
“I guess they were reared without any of that teaching,” I suggested. “You’ve got to think of that. Their beliefs are different from ours.”
“They surely are. But the gunfight I saw wasn’t between white men and Indians. It was just some drunken cowboys in the street…at least folks said they was drunk. One of them was a gun-fanner and he done scattered lead all over the neighborhood. I say if men are going to shoot at each other they should shoot straight.”
“That’s the general idea, ma’am,” I said.
“Are you going to kill that Bob Heseltine when you find him? Like the stories say?”
“I don’t want to kill anybody. I just want my money back.”
“He’s likely spent it,” she said. “Money burns a hole in a man’s pocket.”
My dollar was still in my pocket when I rode through Paymaster Canyon into Big Smoky Valley. I’d pulled my stakes from Silver Peak before the sun was in the sky, and by the time I was well out into Big Smoky the sun was setting beyond the Monte Cristo Mountains, so red with their own color as well as the sun that they looked like flames against the sky.
Time and again I turned in my saddle to look back at them. They had a rare beauty, and when the shadows began to creep out from them their ridges were still crested with fire.
Nighttime found me at Montezuma’s Well, with the stars bright overhead. There was a patch of grass there, and a few head of somebody’s cows, and I settled down for the night. The tracks of the two horses were pointing north toward the mountains that loomed up, miles away.
My hands worried me. They were healing, but not fast enough, and I had no rifle. Crossing this bald plain I could be seen for miles, and Pony was too wise an old mountain and desert man not to check his back trail. “Boy,” I said to myself, “when you reach those mountains you better ride loose in the saddle. He’ll surely be staked out and waiting.”
Next morning I was well started before the sun chinned itself on the San Antonios. When I was nooning in the sandy wash where the Peavine seemed to peter out I was at a place where the trails divided. One went northwest toward the Toiyabe Mountains, and it was unmarked by man or beast. The other followed the Big Smoky Valley, and it was covered with tracks. Somebody—four or five or more men—had herded a bunch of cattle up that trail, and only their tracks remained.
Logically, as there were no tracks on the northwest trail, Zale must have taken the northeast branch up the valley, but I didn’t believe it.
If I was running and a tracker was following, what would I do? I’d loose my tracks with that herd of cattle coming along behind, and when I was well along I’d find some hard surface and cut over where I’d leave no tracks to the other trail.
How long would I stay with that northeast trail? Not long. Where he would make his decision, as I was making mine, was at the base of a V, and the two sides spread out rapidly. If he stayed long with the right-hand trail he would lose time getting back to the other.
Or would he think it out the way I was thinking, and figure I’d really aim to make it on the left-hand tr
ail?
I took a chance and started up the left-hand trail toward the mountains. And I found no tracks. I scouted right and left, but I still found none. I’d been fairly outguessed, outsmarted, and left miles behind. Nevertheless, I had to think of a night camp, and for some time I’d been seeing the tracks of antelope or wild burros or horses heading toward a blunt brow that thrust out from the main body of the mountains. There was no trail that I could see leading that way, but the chances of water were good, so I followed the next set of tracks.
The late afternoon was still. High overhead a buzzard circled, but he had no interest in me today.
The shadows were long when I found where the tracks converged at Barrel Spring in a corner of the mountain where there was quiet. I heard a few doves…nothing else.
The water was cold and good. I filled my canteen first…a man never knew when he might have to run, and I wanted a full canteen. Then I drank, and allowed the grulla to drink. He put his nose deep into the water, pulled it out, shook his head with pleasure, and then he drank.
A dim trail came down along the small stream back of the spring. Not liking the look of it, I walked up a short distance, until I found a cove shielded by some brush. I went back and got my horse and picketed it on the grass there, hidden from sight of anything but the buzzard.
Chewing on some jerky, I returned to the spring for another drink, brushed out my tracks in the sand, trying to leave no sign that anyone had been there. Then I went back behind the brush with my horse and bedded down in the soft sand.
Lying there with my pistol at hand, I considered the situation. About a day’s ride to the north—perhaps a day and a half—was the stage route to Salt Lake and points east. There was a town up there, and further along the stage route was Eureka, a booming town of mines, mills, theatres, and saloons.
If Pony had gone up the valley he would be heading for Eureka, or cutting back to Austin…which I thought was the name of the town to the north. If the latter, I had a good chance to cut him off there and get my horse back, and my guns. To say nothing of the money in my saddlebags.
Novel 1971 - Tucker (v5.0) Page 16