As he rode, he checked the branches, especially those that could be sealed with brush, and in time was rewarded: in one spring-fed box canyon naturally hemmed by limestone, Blue found what he was looking for. Two of Steve Cooper’s horses were cropping meadow grass, the two stolen from Blue. Good.
Blue paused in deep shadow in an aspen grove and waited. He remarked the lazy passage of crows, watched a marmot sun himself on a yellow rock, discovered a cow elk cropping grass at the upper end of the enclosure. He studied the rimrock above, looking for a telltale glint, or a color not quite natural. Nothing. He noted that some red willow brush had been casually heaped across a narrow neck, pinning the horses in. Blue tied his strawberry roan deep in the aspens, and edged through sunny open turf to the barrier and found it was actually two strands of newfangled barbed wire stretched between trees and concealed by red willow brush. He found no gate, but the wire could be easily untwisted at either end. He dropped the two wires and edged onto the meadow, keeping a sharp eye on the rocky heights above. The horses stopped grazing and watched him. He thought about keeping one, but he liked the green-broke roan better. He circled behind, and then gently drove them out of the branch canyon and started them trotting downslope. They would drift downhill. Maybe in two or three days they would arrive at the road. Then he twisted the barbed wire back in place, just to keep Castle guessing, and continued up the chasm that sliced into the high country. He wasn’t quite sure where he was but eventually he would see some peaks, and maybe then he would orient himself.
He doubted that Castle would keep that plodder Blue had bought from the Centerville hostler, so maybe Castle was down to his original horse and the stranger’s copper-colored bay. It was a start.
That evening he reached an alpine lake at the foot of a cirque, a hidden turquoise jewel fed by a glacier far above. He found a mossy glen beside the waters, and settled there for the night. He had the lightest of outfits; his bedroll was a single blanket and his slicker. He had a hatchet, bowie knife, a small tin skillet, a roll of thong, some lucifers in a watertight, some fish hooks and line, some parched corn. That was all he could carry behind his cantle. That afternoon he had dismounted at a strawberry patch and collected a quart of the tiny sweet berries. Later he plucked up a dozen wild onion. He eyed the boiling clouds hanging on the peaks and knew it would probably rain, maybe even hail or snow. At that altitude, anything was possible, any time of the year. He hiked the perimeter of the lake, stumbling over mossy deadfall, until he reached the foot of the cirque, and found the rocky overhang he was looking for. He moved his horse over there, though it would have less to eat, and settled in under that overhang. He fashioned a fishing pole from an aspen branch and flipped a fly onto the dark waters. The dry earth under the overhang showed animal tracks, too blurred to identify. He found deadfall everywhere, and stacked a generous supply within his shelter, and added tinder. He moved the roan to another patch of grass and picketed it. Then he fished, working around the mysterious waters as the sky darkened and the sun failed. No fish rose. It was as if all of nature was waiting for the mayhem that would soon explode over this mountain paradise. When it got too dark to fish, he stumbled back to his overhang and started a tiny fire well under the ledge. The kindling was damp and the fire offered no heat, so Blue sat back against the inner wall and waited. An occasional freshet stirred the air, and he knew that before this high-country night was over, he would see nature’s violence. He was lucky. Many was the time that he had wrapped himself in a slicker with no shelter at all, and was half frozen by dawn. Once he had suffered through three days of brutal cold and snow, with no shelter anywhere nearby.
He boiled the parched corn in the little skillet, and while it cooked he whittled a spatula to serve as a spoon. Nothing but mush to eat, but he would add some wild onions, and enjoy the sweet tart wild strawberries, and be content. A man needed very little to sustain him. Olivia’s love had always sufficed. He moved the horse to another patch, and then downed his meal quickly, scrubbed the skillet, and settled against the back wall, in peace. This place, and others like it in these silent mountains, wrought that in him. What was it that Jack Castle had said a few days ago at the foot of the coulee? Maybe there was a clue in it. A hint of what the killer planned next.
A violent flash and a crack announced the storm. Blue had been in these on mountain tops, seen lighting arc below him, seen wet gales pound the naked slopes. The air, so still moments, before, came alive, whipping moisture under the overhang. Blue unrolled his blanket and donned his slicker. He wished he had cut some brush to stay the whipping rain, but it was too late for that. He did plunge out into the flashing darkness, found his roan and tugged the quivering animal into shelter. No sooner had he reached the safe dark than the heavens opened, sheeting water that fell so loudly he couldn’t hear anything else, or even think. He wrapped his blanket around himself, and the slicker over that, and settled against the rock, knowing he would sleep little that howling night.
The storm rolled out of the peaks, lighting chattering and flickering and blinding, the cracks forming a continuous ear-splitting roar that echoed from one granitic wall to another. The smell of ozone laced the air. Blue huddled deeper, wiped mist off his face, watched balls of light roll down slopes and alight on the tips of pine trees. The very earth quaked. His strawberry roan whinnied. For some unfathomable reason, Blue felt a need: he rose, withdrew his shotgun from the saddle sheath, and settled back with a barrel loaded with buckshot across his lap. That felt better.
Something was tugging at his mind, pressing and pushing to burst into his awareness. The storm stopped all thought. He huddled within his slicker, knowing only awareness, the train of his thoughts silent. Then, suddenly, it was over. The great blasts swept to other corners of the mountains. The distant lightning flashed upward, reflected off the black lake. The roar of tumbling water lessened. Tammy and Absalom would be back at her ranch. Blue’s cottage, with its lilacs and roses, would stand empty now and the weeds would start in the gardens that Olivia kept going, just by touch. Absalom would be engaged in his business, the mysterious thing that had brought him to the Territory.
The boy never had a chance to see his mother. And Olivia never had the chance to see Absalom. The boy had come back on some kind of business, outfitted in the best gear that money could buy, just when Castle was released. Maybe it was simply to look after Tammy. The boy had always been protective of his sister. After all, what did Steve Cooper know about guns? He didn’t even own a sidearm. That had to be it. An older brother looking out for his sister. Blue wondered if Absalom had a sweetheart in Denver. There had been a few, but his son had not married. All Blue knew was what Tammy told him from time to time. She and her brother had stayed in touch.
Way back when Jack Castle was sparking Tammy, and welcome in the Smith home, Absalom hovered around the pair of them, keeping a sharp eye out, as if he knew something about Jack Castle’s designs and meant to thwart them.
Maybe it had been a good thing. Jack Castle had been pretty fast company for Tamara.
Blue remembered the sentencing, when Jack Castle was put away by Judge Byers for eleven years. That’s when Castle, in manacles, turned to Blue and began a diatribe, his voice so low that hardly anyone five feet away heard a word. Blue was sitting in the first row of seats along with his whole family. And there was Castle, the whisper so low it didn’t even carry to the judge’s ears, Castle saying, “Blue, when I get out, and I will get out, you’ll see what I can do to you. You’ll see what’s in store for every one in your family.”
Castle lifted his manacled hands and pointed. “Her,” he said, the finger straight at Tammy. “Him,” he said, pointing at Absalom. “Her,” he said, pointing at Olivia, who was not yet blind. “And you.” Castle had cocked his trigger finger and pulled it slowly, then grinned wolfishly.
The bailiff stopped him then with a sharp rap and a shove, but Castle was not done. “You’ll see! I’m counting the days, and then you’ll see.”
> They had hauled the prisoner off, but all of Blue’s family sat paralyzed. That moment had burned in the minds of his children, in Olivia’s thoughts, and in his own mind all these years. They had all taken Jack Castle seriously, but that was long ago. There was that deadly quality in Castle’s voice, a man committing himself at any price. But Blue had mostly put it behind him. Convicted men sometimes talked like that. Obviously Absalom hadn’t forgotten. Now there was only Absalom between Tammy and anything Castle was intending to do, and Absalom offered no protection at all. Not against Jack.
Still, in some strange way, Blue was glad to see his long-lost son. Absalom had come home. He had come to help. Long before Blue was aware that Castle would get out of prison, Absalom was preparing for this time, making things more secure for Steve and Tamara and the children.
Maybe they would shake hands soon, a father and a son again.
Chapter 23
In the gray dawn, with thick mist hanging over the alpine lake, Blue threw off his blanket and stretched his stiff body. A perfect quiet lowered over that mountain basin. The uppermost peaks were starting to glow. He studied the misty shores, the blurred escarpments, and concluded he was alone. He led the horse away from the overhang and staked it on wet grass. He kindled a little cook fire, knowing the smoke would blend into the mist and vanish. It would be more parched corn for a meal, but corn had always energized him, and he would find berries. Daylight now, and insight. He knew what he had been groping toward and he was mad.
Damned Absalom, heading out here to look after his family just as soon as he knew Castle had been released. Damned boy, afraid that old Blue, worn by the years, would be no match for a killer sworn to kill the sheriff as soon as he got out of jail. Bought himself an outfit and left Denver within hours after he got the news from the warden.
It peeved Blue to think of it. Absalom would just get himself killed, and there would be another Smith family funeral. What did the boy, know, anyway? He’d show that boy a thing or two. Maybe that was the big secret; maybe it wasn’t. Maybe Absalom and Tammy had thought their father was in danger; maybe it was something else. Whatever brought him here, that Denver City son of his wouldn’t help any. Hell, now he had one more Smith to look after, and the softest of the lot. Well, he’d show his children a thing or two. Blue fumed his way through a miserable meal, scoured the skillet with sand, rolled up his bed, tied everything down, and threw the saddle onto the strawberry roan. He ascended a game trail that led over the ridge and into the next drainage. He would look for more horses, and with luck, he might find Castle exchanging his animals. One thing about that posse; it might force Castle to move, and Blue intended to be in the path when Castle came by.
Blue rode cautiously up a steep grade that tested the roan’s balance, topped a ridge and stared down into a blank green forest that could hide anything. He edged the horse forward until it stood before a great slab of mossy rock that had fallen from above, and there, no longer skylined, he studied the vast panorama below him. A moving man sometimes wrought changes in nature, such as an explosion of birds. But the anonymous green conifer forest stretched silently for as far as he could see and vanished into blue haze far to the west. Blue could see from here to tomorrow. A park in a forest like that would make a fine hideout. Grass for horses hidden behind dozens of miles of impenetrable forest, whose game trails were known only to Castle. Yes, it would do for an outlaw. Blue studied the sweeping plateau looking for the slight break, the growth of an aspen grove, the hint of grass and sunlight that would reveal a park, and was rewarded at last. On a flat maybe seven or eight miles distant he saw the slight alteration of green he was looking for. He took his bearings. Once inside that hooded forest, working around deadfall, with no landmarks in sight, he would have little to go on and could easily veer miles away from the park. Still, there were southward drainages running through that vast plateau, easily traced with the eye, and the hidden park that attracted his eye lay on the third of them. That was all. Once he rode into that forest, he would have only one thing to go on: it drained to the south.
Blue loved meadowland and hated forest, where few animals lived and passage was choked. But that park would be the sort of hole where Castle would hide, feeling safe because nothing could ever penetrate to it. And that’s where Jack Castle was mistaken.
The sheriff touched heel to his strawberry roan, and the horse worked gently down a grassy grade and into the cold and shadowy forest, rich with firs and spruce as well as lodgepole pines. Almost at once he was lost in a world without sunlight, without direction, without relief. Its canopy hid the sky. He could not ride a straight line, not with downed timber and thickets blocking his way. A man could get lost and starve to death in a place like this. But Blue knew a thing or two, and what he knew was that all game trails led somewhere, to water, to openings, to grass. And that was all he needed. He worked the green-broke horse gently around mossy trunks, through spindly lodgepoles, and then he did strike a notable game trail that showed signs of use. He found the cloven hooves of both deer and elk upon it, and blurred padded prints he couldn’t identify. It was cutting across the drainages, which was more or less the direction he hoped to go.
He hit a place where limbs blocked passage, dismounted, and led the roan through the tangle, fighting whipping branches that threatened to scrape the saddle off the horse. Now he was in a featureless world. He could scarcely see blue sky, much less the mountains. He did not know how to walk silently. Every step cracked dry debris, so he snapped and clattered through the forest, not knowing whether he was going straight or in a circle.
He struck a mysterious gray rock escarpment carved by an ancient watercourse, and found no way up it. Even the game trail vanished. He was lost, had no idea what direction he headed, could find no way to get his bearings, and began at last to wonder. He could not even find his way back. He studied the old watercourse with its walls of schist, and decided that it, too, ran south, draining the south-tilted plateau. He would have to abandon his westward penetration and follow the drainage south, hoping for a place to turn west again. The horse didn’t like it and peered wild-eyed at the branches, expecting to see a big cat in the limbs. Blue didn’t like it either, but a man could go ahead or not, and he would go ahead. He could ride in that old watercourse, so he mounted the quivering roan and worked south. He needed to keep a sharp eye on the sun, and find a place to camp before dusk, because once blackness hit a woods like this, he could do nothing but halt in his tracks and wait until dawn. The drainage turned out to be another game trail, so he followed it for the better part of a mile before he came to an opening to the west, and then he urged the roan up a steep bank of crumbling rock and found himself in a winding park hemmed by dense stands of lodgepole. Fire had cut this swath long ago. It was time to be careful. He halted the horse in the shadow of a noble blue spruce and waited. He could see mountains poking through the crown of the forest here and there. It was time for some serious tracking, so he dismounted and began a quiet, systematic search for hoofprints. Nothing came to eye, but that didn’t mean much. The grasses were so thick and springy that he could walk right over a well-used horse trail without seeing it. But he found nothing.
He studied the wandering west-trending park ahead, chose to stick to its northern edge where the shade was deepest, and then headed slowly into the heart of the great forest. He knew roughly where he was, for the moment. But passage would be hard because this entire plateau was knifed with schist ridges eight or ten or fifteen feet high that were invisible to him when he studied the terrain from above. Each was a barrier.
Night caught him two or three miles further in, and he settled on a site where a spring bubbled out of a fissure of schist and into a weed-choked pool. He would no doubt fight mosquitoes, but he had no choice. There would be no fire, not here, not within a dozen miles of that secluded pasture in the heart of the anonymous forest. Drifting smoke told tales.
There wouldn’t be much to eat. He could not boil the parched c
orn. He found no berries in this impenetrable evergreen forest. But Blue Smith was not born to complain, and in any case if he soaked some parched corn in water for a few hours, he could soften it enough to get some into his belly. No sooner did he get the roan picketed that mosquitoes whined in, a cloud of them surrounding him and plunging at every inch of exposed flesh. Black flies found him too, whirling toward his neck and hands. They fell upon the horse, which lashed them with its tail and snapped at his flanks and withers. It would be a hell of a night. He headed for the spring, found soft mud and plastered his neck and face with it, and then his arms. He loaded his skillet with it plastered his horse’s face, and returned for more mud. By dusk he had coated much of his horse and himself against the relentless horde. But no defense could stop that onslaught and he slapped at the mosquitoes as he wrapped his blanket around him and then encased it with his slicker. He hunkered against a mighty pine and waited for dawn, which would come only after an endless night. He thought of Olivia lying cold, a blind woman murdered by a man without scruple. He thought of Steve Cooper, murdered. He thought of Tammy and Absalom, and worried about them. The mosquitoes quit their whining sometime after full dark, and he could relax a little and enjoy a half moon shedding yellow light onto the little park. He heard an owl, and the answer of another. And he swore he could smell smoke, but that was his imagination working too hard. Jack Castle was not far away.
Chapter 24
All the next day Blue pierced deeper into that vast forest, scarcely knowing where he was headed. Then, late in the afternoon, he encountered a hummock, dark with firs rising abruptly toward the top. He tied the strawberry roan and clambered up the steep gray talus-strewn slopes until he reached its summit, and discovered that he was standing just above the crown of the forest and had a panoramic view of the surrounding country. The park he was looking for was scarcely a mile away, due north, fifty or seventy acres of lush meadow embraced by walls of evergreen trees. He had drifted too far south. He studied the country for a while, looking for smoke, for the disorder of birds, but he could see nothing amiss. Maybe it had all been a wild goose chase. He memorized the terrain at every point on the compass from that aerie, a sea of green treetops stretching for fifty miles in some directions. There were game trails leading up here; animals used the rocky knoll. And men. There, on a trail leading north from the hummock, were the prints of shod hoofs heading both directions. Someone had recently been using this very place. It was possible to ride a horse right up to the rocky crest, look around, and ride down.
Cutthroat Gulch Page 13
