by Gary Paulsen
There was no fire to see now—which was a good sign and he hoped meant both men were asleep. But it made things difficult as far as finding the camp. He didn't want to blunder into them but he was running out of time. It would begin to get light soon—within the hour—and they would awaken.
His nose finally did the trick. As he turned, looking for some glow of embers and trying to see the mare in the dark, he smelled the smoke from the nearly dead fire.
Left, to the left it was stronger and he moved that way and hadn't gone twenty yards when he found them.
It was hard to see in the darkness but he made out the shape of the mare off across the fire. She either did not see the mule or didn't care and was silent.
The men were harder to locate. He stood for a full three minutes studying the campsite and finally saw them against the dark brush around the fire clearing.
Dubs was to his left, lying on his side with no blanket over him, sleeping like a great bear, and Courtweiler was across the fire pit, on his back with Francis's saddle for a pillow and Francis's blanket and bedroll for covers.
They were both snoring, but so lowly that Francis had to concentrate to hear it and he smiled. Good. They were asleep. Now if he could locate his rifle. None of this would work without the rifle —actually both rifles. He needed his and Dubs's. Two men, two shots.
He had no real plan except to get his rifle and force them to give his equipment back.
There. His Lancaster rifle was next to Courtweiler, the muzzle across the saddle by his head. Close. Maybe too close.
How would it go? He tried to imagine it, plan it. He would get his rifle, then cover them and somehow get Dubs's rifle.
And what, shoot them if they made a try for him? Shoot them? He hesitated. He'd never shot a person, or at least didn't think he had. He had aimed at an Indian who was attacking him, but he thought Jason Grimes had done the shooting and he'd missed, or maybe wounded him.
On the other hand they had left him for dead, these two men. They could easily kill him, and would if they got a chance.
That's how it might play. He'd get his rifle, try to get Dubs's weapon, and shoot the big man if he had to. He took a breath, held it, worked his way softly and quietly around the side of the fire until he was standing over Courtweiler.
He squatted, reached forward, and gently, so gently wrapped his fingers around the stock of the rifle just ahead of the hammer and lifted it away from the saddle, stood back with it.
I missed you, he thought, holding the little Lancaster. He felt to make sure there was a cap on the nipple, then eared the hammer back slowly, holding the trigger so it wouldn't make a clicking sound when it cocked.
So far so good. He stood back and away and moved around to Dubs. The giant's rifle was next to him on the ground and Francis leaned down carefully and reached for it and happened to look at Dubs's face and nearly screamed out loud.
Dubs's eyes were wide open staring at him. Even in the pale light from the partial moon Francis could see the whites, the glare from them, and he thought, I am dead, this instant I am dead.
But Dubs didn't move and when he peered closer—something it took his whole heart to do— he saw that the eyes weren't truly on him, were just open.
Dubs slept with his eyes open.
It was enough to stop Francis. He stared at the man, moved his hands back and forth in front of his eyes, and there was no reaction. Nothing.
But the delay was nearly fatal. He had a firm grip on Dubs's rifle, was lifting it away when he heard a small sound in back of him, a rustling, and something grabbed his hair.
“Ahh, it's you, Francis. How good of you to call …”
Francis tore free but the sound had awakened Dubs and both men came at him. He somehow didn't remember that he was holding two rifles and could shoot them. And in any event it was all happening too fast.
Dubs came out of sleep instantly, animalistically, ready for battle. He rolled to his feet, towered over Francis, reached for him from the left while Court-weiler reached from the right.
They would have him. In a second or less they would have him. He fell backward over the dead fire and his fall saved him.
Dubs was nearly on top of him but overshot when he reached for Francis. The hulk went over Francis, a good two feet beyond, and ran squarely into the mule, who had been following Francis as before.
There was a sound like someone splitting a watermelon with an ax and Dubs dropped as if he'd been shot with a howitzer. The mule swung a bit to the side, aimed quickly and caught Courtweiler dead in the middle of the stomach with another well-aimed kick and Courtweiler went down wheezing for breath. Suddenly Francis was the only human able to function.
He stood quickly, aimed the rifle at the two men, but it wasn't necessary. Dubs had taken it directly in the head, and while he was still breathing it would clearly be some time before he regained consciousness. Courtweiler still couldn't breathe and was only half conscious himself.
“I guess you must have been hard on the mule,” Francis said aloud as he gathered his gear. “I hear they've got good memories …”
He moved from the fire pit to the mare, caught her and led her back by the camp to saddle, watching the two men all the while, the Lancaster still cocked and ready to fire. In the east there was a gray softness to the dark and he worked quickly. He wanted to be well away from these two before rhey could react, and he tied his bedroll in place in back of the saddle and laid his shirt across his lap as he mounted—he didn't want to lower his guard long enough to pull the shirt on over his head. He had taken what equipment there was that belonged to the two men as well and he draped it across the mare's neck.
“You're … leaving … us … like … this?” Courtweiler gasped while he spoke, still fighting for breath.
Francis nodded. “You're lucky I don't put a ball in you.” He used his legs to back the mare away from the camp. Before turning her he said softly: “Don't come at me again. I won't be so easy to catch off guard and I will shoot you.”
Courtweiler said nothing and Francis turned and rode away, smiling to himself when he saw the mule take one last bite of bunch grass and rush to follow him.
When he was half a mile from the men he stopped and pulled his shirt on, lashed the extra rifle—-which turned out to be a crude version of a Hawkens, with what appeared to be a half-inch bore—to the saddle born so it hung down the mare's side and tied his canteen and the one he'd taken from Courtwciler so they balanced one on either side.
Then he set off again, the sun coming over his back. He needed miles in case they decided to follow him as he had done with them so he heeled the mare and picked up the speed, the mule shambling along in back.
He caught himself humming in time to the mare's movement and smiled openly. Where he'd been alone he now had two friends—one of them, the mule, a definitely powerful friend. Where he'd been without anything he now had two canteens, two rifles, two possibles bags, and an extra horn almost full of powder.
He was rich.
Now all he had to do was find the wagon train and get out to Oregon.
In one sense his situation hadn't improved. He really didn't know where he was, or which direction to take to find the train.
He decided to head west and cut north when the country to the north looked like easier going. Now it seemed to be made up of bluffs, some fifteen miles distant, and he didn't want to try work the mare and mule over them.
He rode west and angled north slightly, figuring if he missed the train at least he might hit the tracks they left going by.
The riding was easy, especially after the run the day before. His legs still ached and he kept railing asleep in the saddle, particularly when the afternoon sun began cooking his back.
In midafternoon he ran into a small stream where he watered the mare. The mule drank as well—it was actually looking better all the time— and Francis decided to run in the water for a mile or two to help throw the tracks off.
He set the
mare in the middle of the stream and was surprised to see the mule mimic her, stepping into the water and putting his feet nearly exactly where the mare stepped.
He left the stream in half an hour, continuing west and slightly north, and he was just thinking he might catch the train tonight, thinking maybe they would have some fresh bread made, or stew, or maybe coffee with sugar in it … just letting himself dream of food when the rain hit.
He hadn't noticed the clouds. They had come up in patches, blown away while he rode-dozed, and somehow they had come together again without his realizing it.
At first it sprinkled and he hunched his shoulders and took it. Hut in a short time the clouds became more dense and the rain came harder and then it roared.
He would have gotten off the mare but there was nowhere to go, no shelter. He was soaked instantly, and getting cold and hoping it was a short storm and would stop, but it didn't. It rained in a wide belt of dark storm clouds for close to three hours, poured like somebody was dumping giant buckets.
At one point it came down so hard he could not see the mare's head only three feet away, and he lost sight of the mule for the entire storm. He put both powder horns inside his shirt to keep the powder dry but everything else was soaked.
When it stopped, close to evening again, he dismounted and unsaddled the mare and hobbled her. In the evening light he spread his blanket on some brush to dry and by reaching up under the side of a streambed above the water he found some dry bits of wood protected from the rain.
He used a tiny portion of powder and his striker to make a fire, fed it with more small bits of dry wood until the heat could dry out some larger pieces and settled in for the night. There was no food—not in his own possibles bag and not in the one he'd taken from Courtweiler and Dubs—but there was a small metal pot and he made hot water and sipped it, pretending it was coffee with sugar.
“At least,” he said aloud to the mule, which was standing nearby while the mare grazed off a bit on her hobble, “any tracks we've left are wiped out. If they're following us they'll never find us …”
He trailed off as what he said sank into his thinking. It was true that any tracks he'd left would be gone and he would be impossible to find.
But that held true for all tracks. His tracks would have been wiped out by the storm. But not only his tracks.
The wagon tracks would be gone as well. Even if he hit their trail he wouldn't find their tracks. He wouldn't find the wagons unless he ran into the train itself, and the chances of that happening— hitting them exactly right in the enormous area of the plains—were somewhere on the scale of finding a needle in a haystack.
He prepared for bed, rolled in a damp blanket well away from the fire—he would not make the same mistake twice—with the mule standing near him, and as he felt the exhaustion of the past two days take him, he could not stop thinking the word lost.
I am lost.
After a time, a day, a month, years—a time he could not really measure—it did not seem as if he were moving but that he was standing in one place and the prairie rolled by beneath the mare.
He arose and left camp without a fire, stretching the stiffness out of his bones while he saddled. He remembered that, getting up. And then mounting in the coolness and being hungry. But after that everything blended into a sameness that defied memory. He kept the rising sun on the back of his right shoulder and rode, and rode, and rode …
It was the prairie, the grass sea, and it was endless. He began to look for things to break the monotony. A buffalo here, a jackrabbit there, but he had left the area where the buffalo herd passed and ate the grass down, and the grass here was so high—at times even with his waist sitting up on the mare—he could see nothing smaller than a full-sized bull buffalo.
A day passed. He left in the morning and evening came and it was time to stop and there was no change. He found a spring—there were dozens of them, seeping into wallows—and refilled his canteens and let the mare drink. The mule took a sip and at once began eating, and watching him eat made Francis's hunger worse.
It was going on two days since he'd eaten from the bull, two days and many hard miles and he was so hungry his stomach seemed to be caving in.
He drank large quantities of water to swell his stomach but it didn't help.
He would have to find something, hunt something. The mare was hobbled and the mule seemed to have changed his loyalties and was content to stay with her. Francis eyed the sun. There were probably two or three hours until hard dark, and around the spring there were dozens of fresh deer tracks.
They probably came in for water in the evenings before heading back into the grass to eat and avoid the wolves.
He checked the cap on his rifle and put his possibles bag over his shoulder and headed into the grass.
It was like stepping into a different world. On the mare he had been above it, but now the grass was as tall as he was and he couldn't see more than a few feet and it was alive with sound.
He moved slowly, listening intently. There was a constant scurrying of mice and rabbits and twice he heard things move, heavy things, and he thought they were probably deer and he had decided to give it up, chat it wasn't going to work, when he came upon the trail.
It was made by deer coming in to water and the ground was churned to powder by their sharp hooves. Francis stopped, studied the trail and decided the best way to hunt in the grass was to sit next to it and wait for something to come along. He certainly wouldn't have any luck blundering around the way he had been doing.
He found a small clearing—more a dent back into the grass than a true clearing—and he settled in and down, sitting with his thumb on the hammer of Che rifle and his finger on the trigger.
He hadn't been there five minutes when a fawn came past. It was growing out of spots but still small and in back of her came her mother, a young doe, sleek and fat from the grass and leaves.
He could have shot either of them easily but something wouldn't let him fire at the fawn and the thought of killing her mother was just as bad. As it happened his hesitation was rewarded. Within minutes a young buck, three points on each side, stepped cautiously down the trail not five feet from Francis.
Francis waited until his head was past, raised the rifle, cocked it and fired, aiming just in back of the shoulder where he knew the heart lay.
The noise was deafening in the grass, seemed to fill the space around him, and he blinked. When he opened his eyes the buck was gone and he stood slowly, reloaded and listening, trying to locate it by sound, but all he could hear was a ringing in his ears from the crack of the rifle.
The buck hadn't gone far. Francis's shot had been accurate, and it had taken only three steps before settling into the grass with its head laid back on its shoulders.
He poked it with the muzzle of the rifle as he had done the buffalo, but it was gone and he set to work at once, gutting the deer and skinning it. This time he would not be so wasteful.
He took the back meat and tenderloin, then the meat from the back legs, leaving the bones for the coyotes. It took him only a few minutes to make a fire from some dead brush near the wallow, and he cooked strips of venison hung over green sticks and ate them when they were still nearly raw.
He thought there'd been a lot of meat on the buck, but he ate over fifteen pounds, ate until his stomach hurt with it, ate until he couldn't get another bite in his mouth, and by that time there were only another ten or so pounds of meat.
This he cut into strips—the way he'd seen his Indian “mother” do when he was a captive—and hung them over the fire but away from the flames to dry them out and keep the flies away while the meat hardened into a kind of quick jerky.
He built the fire up some to keep it going for a while and took his bedroll back in the grass a good twenty yards from the fire, carefully closing the grass back in place as he moved. After his bedroll was spread out, he sat quietly for fifteen minutes listening, his mouth open, holding his breath again and again
to hear anything that might mean a possible problem. But all he heard were the scurryings of small rodents, two coyotes already working at the deer carcass, and the sounds of the mule and the mare eating nearby.
Finally satisfied he put both rifles by his side, checked them to be sure they were loaded and capped correctly one more time, pulled the blanket over the top to keep the night chill out, blinked once and was sound asleep.
The next morning was different. He started right, ate some meat and drank water, made sure all his gear was finally dry, and was moving well before dawn.
Morning light revealed that the line of bluffs to the north had come to a shallow end and he swung straight north on the off chance that he would run into the wagon train.
It was a beautiful day and the mare was frisky, so he let her run for a mile to burn it out, loping easily, and was amazed to see the mule keep up handily.
“Whoa …” He held the mare down and studied the mule. It had filled out beautifully in just two days of constant eating and wasn't breathing hard though it had loped a mile. “You actually look younger,” Francis said aloud. “Maybe we can rig a pack saddle up later and use you.”
He set off again, holding the mare to a fast walk, his eyes sweeping the grass in front of them, and in two hours he found a track.
Actually, if he'd blinked he would have missed it. It wasn't a track so much as a faint line across the prairie, heading west, a blemish in the grass that could only be seen when the light was exactly right.
It was not left by a train—probably by a single wagon—but it was something, a track, which was better than he'd had before, and he turned to follow it. It must have been made before the rain, and the grass the wagon had run over had been broken enough to stay at least partially down. When Francis dismounted and felt down in the grass he could feel slight indentations in the prairie sod, barely half an inch deep.
