Standing Rock shook his head.
“No. My thought proved to be wrong.”
Two Bears’s silence in response was as meaningful and damning as anything he could have said. Standing Rock angrily jerked his pony into motion and trotted away, following the same path as the antelope had earlier.
Preacher, Two Bears, and the rest of the search party went the same way at a slower pace. Quietly, Two Bears said, “If anything happened to Blue Bull, Standing Rock will believe that it was his fault for not going with his friend.”
“He wants to impress you, don’t he?” Preacher said. “Must not be easy, bein’ married to the chief’s daughter.”
“He is a good warrior, but he does not always know that.”
Preacher nodded in understanding. He had always possessed confidence in himself and his abilities, and he had learned not to second-guess the decisions he made. But he had seen doubts consume other men from the inside until there was nothing left of them but empty shells.
Eventually Standing Rock settled down a little and slowed enough for the rest of the search party to catch up to him. The antelope herd had followed a twisting path into the hills, and so had Blue Bull as he trailed them. Preacher had no trouble picking out the unshod hoofprints of the warrior’s pony.
The slopes became steeper, the landscape more rugged. In the distance, the snow-capped peaks of the Rocky Mountains loomed, starkly beautiful in the light from the lowering sun. They were dozens of miles away, even though they looked almost close enough to reach out and touch. Preacher knew that Blue Bull’s trail wouldn’t lead that far.
The tracks brought them to a long, jagged ridge that was split by a canyon cutting through it. Standing Rock reined his pony to a halt and pointed to the opening.
“That is where Blue Bull went,” he said. “The tracks vanished on the rocks inside the canyon.”
“Did you follow it to the other end?” Two Bears asked.
“I did. But the tracks of Blue Bull’s pony did not come out.”
“A man cannot go into a place and not come out of it, one way or another.”
Standing Rock looked a little offended at Two Bears for pointing that out, thought Preacher, but he wasn’t going to say anything. For one thing, Two Bears was the chief, and for another, he was Standing Rock’s father-in-law.
“Let’s have a look,” Preacher suggested. “We can give Dog a whiff of Blue Bull’s shirt. He ought to be able to tell us where the fella went.”
The big cur had bounded along happily beside Preacher and Horse during the search. He still had the exuberance of youth, dashing off several times to chase after small animals.
They rode on to the canyon entrance, where they stopped to peer at the ground. The surface had already gotten quite rocky, so the tracks weren’t as easy to see as they had been. But Preacher noticed something immediately.
“Some of those antelope tracks are headed back out of the canyon,” he said to Two Bears. “The critters went in there, then turned around and came out. They were in a hurry, too. Something must’ve spooked ’em.”
Standing Rock said, “There are many antelope in these hills. Perhaps the tracks going the other direction were made at another time.”
Preacher swung down from the saddle and knelt to take a closer look at the hoofprints. After a moment of study, he shook his head.
“They look the same to me,” he said. “I think they were all made today, comin’ and goin’.”
He knew that wasn’t going to make Standing Rock like him any better, but he was going to tell things the way he saw them to Two Bears. He had always been honest with his old friend and saw no need to change that policy now.
“What about the tracks of Blue Bull’s pony?” Two Bears asked.
“He went on into the canyon,” Preacher said. “Can’t see that he came back out, so I agree with Standin’ Rock on that. The way it looks to me, Blue Bull followed those antelope here and rode up in time to see ’em come boltin’ back out. He was curious and wanted to see what stampeded ’em like that. So he rode in to find out.”
“It must have been a bear,” Standing Rock said. “Blue Bull would not have been so foolish.”
“Blue Bull has always been curious,” Two Bears said. “I can imagine him doing as Preacher has said.” He looked at the mountain man. “As you would say, old friend, there is one way to find out.”
“Yep,” Preacher agreed. “Let Dog have Blue Bull’s scent. If there’s anybody who can lead us right to him, it’s that big, shaggy varmint.”
Chapter 3
Two Bears took out the shirt Blue Bull’s wife had given him from the pouch where he had put it and handed it to Preacher. Preacher called Dog to him, knelt beside the big cur, and let Dog get a good whiff of the shirt.
“Find the fella who wore this,” Preacher said. “Find him!”
Dog ran into the canyon, pausing about fifty yards in to look back at Preacher, and then resuming the hunt.
Preacher swung up onto Horse’s back and nodded to Two Bears.
“He’s got the scent. All we have to do is follow him.”
They rode into the canyon, moving fairly rapidly to keep up with Dog. Now that they were relying on Dog’s sense of smell rather than trying to follow tracks, they could set a slightly faster pace.
The canyon was about fifty yards wide, with rocky walls that were too steep for a horse to climb, although a man might be able to. Although there were places, Preacher noted, where the walls had collapsed partially and horses might be able to pick their way up and down as long as they were careful.
Preacher frowned slightly as he spotted a shiny place on a flat rock. The mark was small, barely noticeable. Preacher knew that the most likely explanation for it was that a shod hoof had nicked the rock in the fairly recent past. Blue Bull, like the rest of the Assiniboine, would have been riding an unshod pony when he came through here.
So another rider, most likely a white man, had been in the canyon recently. Preacher couldn’t be sure it was today, but the evidence pointed in that direction. The antelope herd had started through the canyon, only to encounter a man on horseback. That had startled the animals into bolting back the way they had come from.
Then, Blue Bull’s curiosity aroused by the behavior of the antelope, the Assiniboine warrior had ridden into the canyon as well, and . . .
Preacher couldn’t finish that thought. He had no way of knowing what had happened then. Blue Bull could have run into the same hombre. There might have even been more than one man riding through the canyon.
This was Indian land, maybe not by treaty but by tradition, and the ranchers in the area had always respected that because of the long history of peace between the whites and the Assiniboine. They had never stopped white men from crossing their hunting grounds, as long as everyone treated each other with respect. It was possible some cattle had strayed up here from one of the ranches, and cowboys from that spread had come to look for the missing stock.
However, that bad feeling still lurked in Preacher’s gut. It grew even stronger when he saw Dog veer toward a cluster of rocks at the base of one of those caved-in places along the canyon’s left-hand wall. There was no hesitation about the big cur’s movements. He went straight to the rocks and started nosing around and pawing at them.
“Your animal has lost the scent,” Standing Rock said. “There is nothing there.”
“We better take a closer look,” Preacher said. He glanced over at Two Bears, who nodded. The chief’s face was set in grim lines, and Preacher knew that his old friend had a bad feeling about this situation, too.
The search party rode over to the side of the canyon. Nothing was visible except a pile of loose, broken rocks, some of them pretty big, but the way Dog continued to paw at the stones told Preacher most of what he needed to know.
“Move those rocks,” Two Bears ordered.
“But—” Standing Rock began. He fell silent when Two Bears gave him a hard look. Scowling, Standin
g Rock dismounted. He went to the rocks and started lifting them and tossing them aside. Several other warriors got down from their ponies and moved to help him.
They hadn’t been working for very long before Standing Rock suddenly let out a startled exclamation and stepped back sharply as if he had just uncovered a rattlesnake.
Preacher leaned forward in the saddle to peer into the jumble of stone. He had a pretty good idea it wasn’t a snake that Standing Rock had come across.
It was a foot.
Visible from the ankle down, the foot had a moccasin on it. The rest of the leg to which it was attached was hidden under the rocks.
The other warriors had recoiled from the grim discovery as well. Curtly, Two Bears ordered them to get back to moving the rocks. They did so with obvious reluctance.
Everybody knew what they were going to find. It didn’t take long to uncover the rest of the body. It belonged to a young Assiniboine warrior. The rock slide that had covered him up had done quite a bit of damage to his features, but he was still recognizable. Standing Rock said in a voice choked with emotion, “It is Blue Bull.”
“He must have been standing here when those rocks fell on him and killed him,” one of the other men said.
“Why did he not get out of the way?” another man wanted to know.
“There must not have been time,” Standing Rock said. “My . . . my friend . . .”
Deep creases appeared in Preacher’s forehead as the mountain man frowned. He said to Two Bears, “Somethin’ ain’t right here. You mind if I take a closer look?”
“Go ahead,” the chief said with a nod.
Preacher dismounted and approached the dead man. Standing Rock turned to face him. The warrior’s stubborn expression made it clear he didn’t want Preacher disturbing his friend’s body. Like all the other tribes, the Assiniboine had their own rituals and customs for dealing with death.
“Standing Rock,” Two Bears said. “Step aside.”
“I won’t do anything to dishonor Blue Bull,” Preacher said to Standing Rock. “It’s just that I don’t think this is what it seems to be. Look at how he’s layin’ on his back with his head toward the wall and his feet toward the middle of the canyon.”
“That means nothing,” Standing Rock snapped.
“I think it does,” Preacher said. “Let’s say he came over here and was standin’ facin’ the wall for some reason. When those rocks came down on top of him, likely they would’ve knocked him facedown. If he heard the rocks start to fall and turned to try to run, not only would he be facedown, his head would be pointed toward the middle of the canyon.”
“You cannot be sure about these things,” Standing Rock insisted.
“Maybe not, but I think there’s a pretty good chance I’m right. What it really looks like is that somebody dragged Blue Bull over here, then climbed up the canyon wall to start the rock slide that covered up his body.”
Two Bears said, “He would have had to be unconscious or dead for that to happen.”
Preacher nodded.
“Yep, more than likely. Maybe we can tell, if you let me take a good look at the body.”
“He was my friend,” Standing Rock said. “Stand back. I will do it.”
“Sure,” Preacher said. He moved one step back, but that was as far as he went. He wanted to be able to see whatever Standing Rock found.
Standing Rock knelt beside his dead friend and looked him over from head to toe.
“There are no injuries except the ones the rocks made when they fell on him,” Standing Rock announced.
“Turn him over,” Preacher suggested.
Standing Rock sent a hostile glance at the mountain man, but he did as Preacher said and gently took hold of Blue Bull’s shoulders. Carefully, he rolled the body onto its left side.
A sharp breath hissed between Standing Rock’s clenched teeth. Preacher saw what had prompted the young warrior’s reaction.
A bloodstain had spread on the back of Blue Bull’s shirt, just to the left of the middle of his back. In the middle of that bloodstain was a small tear in the buckskin.
“A knife did that,” Preacher said. “Somebody stabbed him in the back, probably out in the middle of the canyon, and then tried to hide the body.”
Two Bears said, “That would mean . . .”
“Yep,” Preacher said. “This was no accident. Blue Bull was murdered.”
The big man paced back and forth angrily. Despite his size, his movements had a certain dangerous, catlike quality to them. His hat was thumbed back over his blocky, rough-hewn face.
“Let me get this straight,” he said. “You didn’t have any choice but to kill the Indian.”
“That’s right, Randall,” replied one of the men facing him. “He seen us. He might’ve gone back to his village and warned the rest of those redskins that we’re up here in the hills.”
The eyes of the man called Randall narrowed as he stared coldly at the two men he had sent out as scouts.
“There are several big spreads bordering the Indian land,” he said. “And Two Bears doesn’t mind if the punchers who ride for those ranches cut across the Assiniboine hunting grounds. You know that, damn it! We all do. So what in hell made you think that running into a lone warrior was going to cause a problem?”
The two men, whose names were Page and Dwyer, shuffled their feet uncomfortably. They didn’t like being in dutch with the hardbitten ramrod of this gun-hung bunch that waited in the hills for nightfall.
Thirty men, along with their horses, stood around in whatever shade they could find, watching as Randall confronted the scouts. The others were every bit as rough and menacing looking as their leader.
Page had spoken up earlier. Now Dwyer said, “You weren’t there, Randall. You didn’t see how spooked that redskin acted. He knew somethin’ was up, I tell you. Page and me did the only thing we could.”
“And we covered his body up good and proper,” Page added. “Nobody’ll ever find him.”
Randall said, “You seem mighty sure about that. You know that as soon as the rest of his people miss him, they’ll come looking for him.”
“They won’t find him,” Page insisted.
Randall wanted to say something else. He wanted to cuss the two fools up one way and down the other. Instead, he just jerked his head in a curt nod and said, “You’d better hope they don’t. Finding one of their own warriors stabbed in the back is likely to spook them a lot more than running across a couple of riders would have.”
Earlier, when the two men had come back from scouting the approaches to the Assiniboine village, they had brought an Indian pony with them, trailing from a rope lead held by Dwyer. When Randall had demanded to know where the animal came from, they had hemmed and hawed around for a minute and tried to say they found it, but it hadn’t taken long for his cold stare to get the truth out of them.
They had run into a warrior in a canyon that cut through a ridge several miles from the Assiniboine village. The Indian kept asking questions, the scouts claimed, so Dwyer had distracted him while Page got behind him and put a knife in his back. Then they had dragged him over to the side of the canyon and caved in part of the wall on him. Chances were they were right about nobody finding the body, at least not in time to have any effect on the mission that had brought Randall and his men to this part of the territory.
With the matter settled for the time being, unsatisfactory though it might be, Randall turned and stalked away to give himself a chance to control his anger. He looked up at the sky.
In a couple of more hours, it would be dark.
And once night had fallen, he and his men could ride down out of these hills and do what they had been sent here to do. That thought put a faint smile on Randall’s rugged face.
The prospect of killing always did.
Chapter 4
Standing Rock and several of his friends carefully wrapped Blue Bull’s body in a blanket and tied it onto one of the horses. It was a solemn group that
left the canyon and started back toward the Assiniboine village.
“Do you have any idea who might have done this terrible thing, Preacher?” Two Bears asked as they rode at the head of the search party.
“I thought I spotted some sign from a horse wearin’ shoes in the canyon,” Preacher replied. “The ground’s too rocky to be sure of anything, though. But I’d say there’s a good chance Blue Bull ran into a white man. Probably more than one.”
“Why more than one?”
“It ain’t that easy for most folks to get behind somebody and stab ’em, unless the fella on the receivin’ end of that knife is distracted somehow. If Blue Bull came upon two white men in that canyon, would he have stopped and talked to them?”
Two Bears looked over at Standing Rock, who was riding on his other side close enough to have heard Preacher’s question.
“He would have talked to them,” Standing Rock replied. “He would have asked them who they were and what they were doing on Assiniboine land.”
“Would he have challenged ’em enough that they thought he might attack them?” Preacher asked.
“Blue Bull would never attack anyone without good reason!” Standing Rock responded.
Two Bears said, “Blue Bull’s blood ran hot at times, like that of all young men. The white men might have believed they were in danger.” The chief’s voice hardened. “But that was no reason to murder one of my young men.”
“No, it sure wasn’t,” Preacher agreed. “I think we’re on the right track about what happened, though, regardless of the reason for it.”
“Do you think you could track the men who did this, old friend?”
Preacher shrugged and said, “I could give it a try. There ain’t all that much daylight left, but I can go up on that ridge and take a look around. If there really were some other riders in that canyon, they didn’t come out either side of it. We would have seen the tracks at this end, and Standin’ Rock probably would’ve noticed ’em at the other end when he went all the way through lookin’ for Blue Bull.”
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