Too far for them to reach. Too far for them to see. Clearly, at any rate. But not far enough to miss that whoever he might be, he was no longer intact.
“A dead man,” Yester said.
Nat swallowed. “Yes.” He swallowed again. “You think it was the Chinaman?”
“No.” Yester was positive. “The body is wearing a red shirt. And he’s white. Did you see how white his . . . that part of his face is?” He stared across to where the body bobbed in the current as though impatient for rescue.
“Do you think the Chinaman killed him?” Appearing as though his hand moved of its own accord, Nat patted his pony’s neck.
“God, I hope not. I hope Ketta didn’t have to see that. She’d . . . she’d . . . well, she couldn’t bear it.”
“Yeah,” Nat agreed. “She’s pretty tough for a girl, but she isn’t that tough.”
“Not sure I am,” Yester said.
“Me, neither,” Nat said.
KETTA
In the morning, Kuo rousted Ketta out early. Along with a brisk wind, there’d been a spot of rain last night. What was left of it wet the sparse grass as they regained the trail, staining the horse’s hooves and turning them dark. They followed the trail into a narrow valley, crossed that, then headed into another valley, this one rising higher in the mountains. The day heated under the blistering sun, humidity making it hard to breathe. They passed into spotty timber, the canopy sometimes dense enough to block the rays, and Ketta, still mindful of her sore back, shivered in relief. Yet, then, cold made the pain revive.
By then the trail had tapered down to a vague path.
“Are we lost?” she dared to ask, the susurrant voice of the trees damping her soft question almost down to nothing.
A small chuckle broke through Kuo’s sober expression. “No.” Evidently, he felt her shake because he asked, “Are you cold?”
Cold, hot, scared, tired, hungry. All of that and more, not that she’d ever in this world admit as much to her kidnapper. To her father.
But, “Yes,” she said, because she figured it was better to be cold than scared.
“Not much farther,” Kuo said gruffly. “You can last another quarter hour.”
“Yes,” she whispered, but, really, it didn’t take that long for her to smell smoke and hear a horse’s whinny off in the direction they were moving toward.
“Do you have a wife?” she thought to ask. “Or someone who takes care of your home when you’re gone?”
He sniffed the air and pulled the horse to a stop. “No wife. But—” He sat motionless for what must’ve been a full minute before twisting in the saddle until he faced her. “When we get there, you keep your mouth shut, hear me? Don’t talk to anybody. If they ask you something, you say yes or no. Only yes or no. Stay close to me.”
“They?” Her voice quavered.
He sighed and turned away.
“This was a bad idea,” she heard him say, but she believed he said it to himself.
One more bend around a particularly thick clump of bushes shaded by pine trees brought them within sight of a rough log cabin butted right up against the mountain. Ketta imagined that if you opened the back door—provided it had a back door—you’d bump your nose on the hillside. Smoke rose from the plain stone chimney in a thin, gray mist.
Off to the side, a peeled pole corral held a half-dozen horses. A lean-to stood nearby. A hundred yards farther on, a rough shelter put a roof over what she thought must be a spring. And, of course, an outhouse stood beyond that.
Most discomfiting, however, was the man seated in a rickety looking rocker on the cabin’s narrow porch.
Scar. Milt, the murderer. A shotgun lay across his lap, and he appeared to believe he owned this place.
Ketta, unaware of pinching Kuo’s sides until he said, “ouch,” recoiled as he slapped her hand away. Then he swore, although she didn’t think he meant the swearing for her.
“Remember, no talking,” he said softly. His lips didn’t move.
She nodded, her head brushing his back. He tensed as one man stepped out of the cabin, and another appeared over by the corral. This one carried a pitchfork, but it didn’t look like he intended on chucking hay. There was none to chuck. He held the tool like a weapon.
Ketta felt when Kuo sucked in a deep breath. “Don’t touch my arms,” he said to her, reaching down and loosening the loop holding his revolver securely in the holster. “If I get knocked off the horse, you get in the saddle and get out of here. Go fast. As fast as this horse can run.”
She hiccuped and emitted something that sounded like a silent scream.
“Do you hear me?” he said.
“Yes.”
But, in the end, it didn’t come to that, and she didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry.
“There you are.” Milt rose to his feet, a smile distorting his mouth between straggles of facial hair. “What the hell took you so long? I was beginning to think you’d got yourself caught.” He peered around Kuo to where Ketta made herself small. “Still got the girl, I see. Well, that’s fine.”
Kuo sounded surprised. “Of course. She’s my daughter. You have your sons, don’t you?” He kept his attention on Milt, although Ketta had the impression he knew exactly where the other two men were standing as well. “When did you arrive?”
“Yesterday.”
“And I see you’re still riding a Rocking Box P horse. You think that’s wise?”
Milt’s chin thrust forward. “Anybody got an argument about it, I guess I know what to do.”
Sliding from the horse, Kuo laughed as though he hadn’t a care in the world. “You’re looking for a noose around your neck, Milt. You realize that, don’t you?”
“Yeah? And who’s gonna put it there?”
“Might be Patton himself if you don’t have a care. And I,” here Ketta sensed menace in the way he talked to the man, “ain’t exactly eager to have either Patton or the law coming around. Understand?”
“Yeah, yeah.” More sullen than Yester sometimes got when Big Joe was ranting at him for some thing or another, Milt lost his smarmy grin. “I’ll take the nag down to Ross’s place and turn him loose. Satisfy you?”
“Better than nothing.”
“Maybe I’ll go tomorrow.”
“Sooner is better than later.”
By this time, the man over by the corral had poked the pitchfork into the barren ground near the lean-to and labored at rolling a smoke. Kind of awkward about it, too. He didn’t look so dangerous to Ketta’s eyes. With his smooth face and slicked back, brown hair, she figured he was only a couple years older than her brother. Not nearly so handsome, of course, as he’d inherited his father’s prominent nose, though his bore no frightening, ridged scars.
The man standing in the cabin doorway was different. Slack-mouthed, bug-eyed, stoop shouldered, and scary-looking. It was hard to tell how old he was. Could’ve been either older or younger than the other one. And his nose was even worse, surely as large and flat as a bull’s. She decided to avoid him altogether. In fact, Kuo gave her that exact advice as he helped her down, keeping the horse between them and the men.
“Stay away from them, child,” he said, low enough she barely heard. “Don’t talk to them. Don’t get near them. Don’t let them get near you. I don’t think either one is right in the head. You got a problem, you call for me. Call me quick. Got that?”
He’d warned her already. Had he thought she didn’t hear? Or did the double warning indicate he meant to frighten her into obedience?
Ketta’s eyes opened wide and grew as round as her mother’s, instead of tilting at the corners. “I want to go home,” she whispered fiercely.
“You are home,” Kuo said and turned on his heel. “Just mind me. Come along.”
She followed, nearly treading on his heels going up the steps and passing Milt and the bug-eyed man. The young one’s whole head seemed skewed, and she was sure there must be something awfully wrong with him. Wary, she kept an eye o
n him until she got inside.
The cabin didn’t amount to much. A single room with a door shutting off what she supposed to be a bedroom at one end. A small stove to provide both heat, when necessary, and a place to cook. A low bench stood along one wall, with two shelves above it. Two chairs, a stool, and a table completed the furnishings.
A window looked out toward the trail into the valley. Weak light shone through the dust-streaked pane.
Dark, Ketta decided, looking around, her nose wrinkling, would’ve been better.
“Phew.” Kuo dropped his saddlebags on the table positioned in the center of the room. He had to clear a space first, the whole table being cluttered with filthy dishes and the remains of food. A mouse jumped and ran as the saddlebags landed almost on top of him.
Ketta wished she could do the same. Jump and run, that is. As it was, she only jumped. And squeaked.
She didn’t even try to suppress the “Ugh” that slipped from her mouth. “Disgusting!”
Kuo’s eyes, normally showing at least part of his half-white heritage, narrowed to dangerous slits.
“Milt,” he roared, “get your ass in here.”
A tremble started somewhere in Ketta’s innards. Trouble coming. She knew it.
The doorway darkened. “What’re you yelling about?” Milt asked. “Can’t say as I appreciate being bellered at by a . . .”
Ketta knew what he meant to say. So did Kuo. Chinaman.
“This is my home,” Kuo said, his voice very quiet. Ominously so, Ketta thought.
“Yeah. So?”
Kuo gestured. “What is this mess?”
He might’ve meant only the table’s squalor, but his waving hand took in a pile of blankets dumped in the middle of the floor. Ketta caught the rankness of them from where she stood. A pair of grimy socks hung over the back of one of the chairs. Dirt and horse manure shaken from clumping boots made a path between door and table and, to a lesser degree, the stove.
Milt stared around, face blank. “What mess?”
Kuo stomped over to the inner door and flung it open. A bed was there. An empty whiskey bottle lay on its side beside it, while a pistol in a holster hung from a corner post. A mussed single blanket showed where the person who last occupied the bed hadn’t bothered to remove his boots. A puddle of tobacco juice, complete with wad, dampened the floor.
Ketta gagged. Say what you will, at least Big Joe didn’t chew tobacco. And neither, thank goodness, did Kuo.
“I don’t sleep in a pigsty.” Her father spoke quietly, calmly, and all the while she felt the anger seething below the surface of his words. “I don’t eat in one, either. Get this garbage cleared out of here.”
Milt seemed quite bewildered, as if he didn’t understand plain English. “Clear it out? You mean . . .”
“I mean clean up your garbage.”
The moon face of the bug-eyed man hung over Milt’s shoulder. Maybe it gave Milt courage, because, shifting his feet, he stared right at Ketta.
“You need housekeeping, tell the girl to do it,” he said. “My boys don’t do woman’s work.”
Kuo’s hand hovered close to the pistol on his hip. “In my house, people, men or women—or children—follow my rules. That one,” he glanced quickly at the vacuous face of the man standing behind Milt and back again, “he can start by bringing a couple buckets of clean water and washing up these dishes.”
Milt’s lip curled in a sneer. His gaze traveled slowly around, ending up on Ketta. “Ain’t much of a house.”
“But it’s mine. You can leave any time, you know.” Kuo’s chin lifted. “After you clean up after yourselves.”
“Pa?” the bug-eyed man said. “What’s he mean?”
Kuo answered. “I mean, fetch water, heat it up, and wash all the things you’ve dirtied. Which,” he added, “seems to be everything in the house.”
“Pa?” This time, the man whined.
Milt, watching Kuo, evidently came to some sort of conclusion. One that said it was in his best interests to follow Kuo’s demand. “Do what he says, Dunce. You go on and get the water. Guess we did make ourselves to home a leetle more free than we ought.”
“Good choice,” Kuo said.
Milt’s grin at Kuo didn’t come easy, Ketta could tell that. He hated Kuo for making him back down. What surprised her was that her father seemed to take it all at face value. And she knew she’d been proven right when she heard Milt muttering to himself as he and his addled son left.
“Might not be his house much longer,” is what he said, low enough Ketta figured even the one he called Dunce didn’t hear. But she did. And she was going to tell her father, too, just as soon as they were alone. She knew a threat when she heard one. But would Kuo believe her?
“After this, clean off your shoes before you come in,” her father told them as they passed outside. No. He hadn’t heard.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: YESTER
“Gol-dang it, Nat, where’d they get to?” Yester, red-eyed and grumpy from lack of sleep, spoke quietly, although he wanted to shout. Last night they’d been right behind his little sister and her kidnapper. Well, maybe a few hours behind, but now it appeared the pair had disappeared from the planet.
Nat, riding a couple horse lengths in front of Yester, turned, bracing himself with one hand on his cayuse’s rump. “Dunno,” he said. He sounded every bit as impatient as Yester.
“Thought your pa taught you to track a feather floating on the breeze,” Yester said, rubbing it in a little more. This tracking business was all on Nat, and Yester had to admit he hadn’t let him forget it for even a minute.
A flush turning Nat’s brown face an odd rust color, he faced forward again. “Guess he didn’t include windstorms in the program.”
“I guess not.”
Last night’s wind had kept them both awake as treetops creaked and moaned, bushes whipped, and the horses stomped and shook their heads. The ponies hadn’t liked the weather any better than the humans. To top it all off, they’d had to douse their small fire for fear of a blown ember setting the whole countryside aflame. At the time, they’d been glad to see the rain come down.
Anyway, this present setback wasn’t Nat’s fault, and Yester knew it, so he added, a bit too long after his first comment, “I don’t imagine anybody could track anything after that. Maybe not even Fontaine himself.”
Going by Nat’s rigid back, straight and stiff as a poker, he wasn’t exactly mollified. “I’ll find them. Soon as they’re on the move they’ll be leaving traces again,” he said.
Unless, Yester thought, keeping the idea to himself, they’d gotten where they were going and weren’t leaving any traces for Nat to find. There’d been the campfire they’d seen in the distance, though, last night. If they could find that, maybe they’d pick up the trail again. Unless the fire had belonged to someone else.
“We should head for the campfire we saw,” he started, only to have Nat turn again and glare at him.
“What do you think I’m doing, trying to find a cow to milk?” Nat huffed. “I ain’t stupid, Yester.”
“I know you ain’t,” Yester said, “I just—”
Nat cut him off again. Holding up a hand, he stopped and peered around. “Looks like somebody might’ve gone right through this opening here. It’s worth checking.”
“Here?” Yester gazed around. The “opening” Nat mentioned didn’t look like much to him. Hardly enough room for a horse to pass, but when he examined the surrounding bushes closely, he did see where some small branches had been broken and leaves knocked off. “Could’ve been the wind. I don’t see any traces of a horse.”
Nat merely grunted and urged his pony through the bushes. Yester followed.
After a bit, they found a pile of horse manure, scattered, and covered with dust and leaves and twigs and such. “Looks old,” Yester said.
“Yeah, but it isn’t. It’s from yesterday. See the way the bugs are crawling in it?”
Yester squinted down. Nat had good eyes.
Better than his, at any rate. Yester could barely see the bugs, or only when they moved as they went about their business. He finally felt a little excitement. Even this much put them a hair closer to finding Ketta. He was sure of it. Well, wanted to believe so, anyway.
Pushing on, they followed a winding path, coming upon a tiny clear space surrounded by a few trees. The grass, thoroughly chewed down, was green at the nub, indicating ground water. A few charred remains of sticks showed where somebody had poured water on the fire. The soil beneath the fire was dry, that a few inches further from the center, was not. It seemed clear that, just as he and Nat had done, whoever had camped here had been cautious about their fire spreading.
Yester followed the sound of water and finally struck pay dirt. “Hey, Nat. It was them. We . . .” He stopped. Better give credit to the one who’d earned it. “You found them.”
Nat pushed through the bushes to join him where Yester stared down at the small footprint in the waterlogged dirt surrounding the spring.
“Ketta,” Nat breathed, his relief plain.
“Yep. You did it.”
Modestly, Nat hung his head. “Got us this far, but we ain’t found them yet.”
“We will.” Yester grinned. “You will.”
Sure enough, it didn’t take long before Nat found the fresh sign Kuo’s horse had laid down. They mounted up and presently came back out onto the main trail. Only one set of tracks sullied the windswept path.
“I’m not a scout, but even I can see this,” Yester said, excitement rising in him. “Look. This is the same horse we picked up earlier. The Chinaman’s for sure.”
“Yep,” Nat said. Only moments later, he reined his cayuse to a stop. “Look here. See this?” He pointed down to where, as if out of nowhere, a second set of tracks joined their quarry’s. Or not joined, because, as he told Yester, “Somebody besides us is following Kuo and Ketta.”
Jaw dropping, Yester remarked it, too. “Where’d he come from?”
Nat shook his head. “Dunno. Made his way up from the river, I reckon.”
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