That was the way it set when our buckboard came a hellin' down the street from Doc Halloran's place. We saw a man lyin' bloody on the boardwalk and another kneelin' by him.
The Tinker and me unlimbered from that buckboard and the kneeling man looked up.
"Don't go in there, fellers. That lawyer in there's hell on wheels."
"It'll be all right," I said. "I'm his brother."
"Who put you up to it?" the Tinker asked.
"A couple of dudes. We was to get fifty dollars a piece for you two. That's a sight of money, mister."
Orrin came through the door. "How much is it to your dead friend inside?" he asked.
The man stared from him to me.
"What about those dudes who hired you?" I said. "Two young men?"
"No, sir. A young man and a woman. Looked to be brother and sister."
"In New Orleans?"
"No, sir. In Natchez-under-the-Hill."
Orrin looked at me. "They are following us, then."
The man looked up. "Mister, would you help me get this man to a doctor?"
A bystander said, "We've no doctor here. The storekeeper usually fixes folks up when they're hurt."
"Him?" The man on his knees looked bleak. "He already done fixed him once."
Orrin spoke more quietly. "My friend, I am sorry for you. You were just in the wrong line of work, but if you'll take a closer look, your friend has just run out of time."
And it was so. The man on the ground was dead.
Slowly, the man got up. He wiped his palms on his pants. He was young, not more than twenty-two, but at the moment he was drawn and old. "What happens now? Does the law want me?"
Someone standing there said, "You just leave town, mister. We don't have any law here. Just a graveyard."
Judas came along when the shooting was all over, and we stayed the night at Halloran's. In the morning, once more in the saddle, we started west.
Four of us riding west, two from Tennessee, a gypsy, and a black man, under the same sun, feeling the same wind. We rode through Indian territory, avoiding villages, avoiding the occasional cattle herds, wanting only to move west toward the mountains.
We cut over the Rabbit Ear Creek country toward Fort Arbuckle. This was Creek Indian country. The land was mostly grass with some patches of timber here and there, mostly blackjack of white oak with redbud growing in thick clumps along the creeks.
We had grub enough, so we fought shy of folks, watched our back trail, and moved along about thirty miles or so each day. Arbuckle had been deserted by the army, but there were a few Indians camped there, trading horses and such. They were a mixed lot, Seminoles, Choctaws, and Creeks mostly, with a few Pottawattomies. We bought some coffee from them, and I traded for a beaded hunting shirt tanned almost white, a beautiful job.
"Be careful," a Creek warned us, "the Comanches have been raiding south and west of here. They ran off some horses only a few miles west."
Glancing around at Judas, I asked, "Can you shoot?"
"I can, suh."
Well, that, was enough for me. He was no spring chicken but the first time I seen him top off a bronc I knew he'd been there before. He told me he could ride and he could, so when he told me he could shoot, I believed him.
As we rode out of Arbuckle and headed west up the Washita, I dropped back beside him. "Do you know any more about what happened than we do?"
"I doubt it, suh. Angus was slave to Mr. Pierre. Angus liked him, and Mr. Pierre was both a gentleman and a kind man. Angus was of an adventurous spirit, suh. He was a fine hunter and a man who liked the wilderness."
"Did you talk to him after plans were made to go west?"
"Once, only. He had met Mr. Sackett, your father, and liked him. Your father had very kindly advised him as to what he might encounter, the best clothing, and as to caution in all things.
"May I also say, suh, that he did not like Mr. Swan, and none of us cared for Andre Baston. Do not mistake it, suh, Mr. Baston is a very dangerous man."
We saw occasional antelope, and twice we encountered small herds of buffalo, but we did not hunt. This was Indian country and for the moment we did not need meat. We neither wanted to shoot their game, for this was on land allotted to them, nor to attract attention to us from wild Indians.
Several times we cut their sign. Comanches ... at least a dozen riding together.
"Raiders," Orrin said, and I agreed. Only warriors, no women, no travois.
This was all Indian country, about half wild and half friendly, and the friendly Indians suffered as much from the wild ones as the white men would. It was the old story of nomadic peoples raiding the settlements, and it has happened the world over.
Our camps at night were hidden, meals hastily prepared, and the fires kept to coals or to nothing at all. Judas proved an excellent camp cook, which pleased me. I could cook but didn't favor it much, and Orrin was no better than me. As for the Tinker, he kept silent on the subject.
We were coming up to the site of old Fort Cobb when Orrin, who was riding point, suddenly pulled up. A horse nickered, and then a dozen Indians rode over the crest of the hill.
Sighting us they pulled up sharp, but I held my hand up, palm out, as a signal we were peaceful, and they rode up. They were Cheyennes, and they had been hunting along Cache Creek. By the look of things they had been successful, for they were loaded down with meat.
They warned us of a war party of Kiowas over west and south and swapped some meat with us for some sugar. We sat our horses and watched them go, and I suggested we swing north.
For the next few days we switched directions four or five times, riding north to Pond Creek, following it for a day or so, then a little south to confuse anybody following us, and finally north toward the Antelope Hills and the Texas Panhandle.
This was open grass country with a few trees along the water courses, but little enough timber even there. We picked up fuel where we could find it during the day, and at night gathered buffalo chips. We were heading into empty country where there would be almost no water.
We came suddenly upon a group of some twenty horses, all unshod, traveling northwest by north. I pulled rein.
"Indians," I said.
The Tinker glanced at me. "Might they not be wild horses?"
"Uh-uh. If they were wild horses, you'd find a pile of dung, but you see it's scattered along and that means the Indians kept their horses in motion.
"The tracks are two days old," I added, "and were made early in the morning."
The Tinker was amused, but curious, too. "How do you figure that?"
"Look," I said, "there's sand stuck to those blades of grass that were packed down by the horses' hooves--over there, too. See? There hasn't been any dew for the past two mornings, but three days ago there was a heavy dew. That's when they passed by here."
"Then we don't have to worry," he suggested.
I chuckled. "Suppose we meet them coming back?"
We rode on, holding to shallow ground when we could find it. We were now coming into an area that undoubtedly has some of the flattest land on earth--land cut by several major canyons. However, those canyons were, I believed, much to the south of us.
I was pretty sure we were following much the same route pa would have taken in coming west. We'd switched around here and there, but nonetheless I believed our general route to be the one he would have followed twenty years before.
Their needs for water and fuel would have been the same as ours, and their fears of Indians even greater since this had been entirely Indian country in their time. The times when I'd traveled wilderness country with pa had been few, mostly in the mountains, when I was a very young boy. Yet I knew how his thinking went, for he had given us much of our early education, either by the fireside or out in the hills. He was a thinking man, and he had little enough to leave us aside from the almost uncanny knowledge of wilderness living that he had picked up over the years.
No man likes to think of all he has learne
d going up like the smoke of a fire, to be lost in the vastness of sky and cloud. Pa wanted to share it with us, to give us what he learned, and I listened well, them days, and I learned a sight more than I guessed.
So when we saw that knoll with the flat rocks atop it and the creek with trees growing along it, I said to Orrin, "About there, Orrin. I'd say about there."
"I'll bet," he agreed.
"What is it?" Judas inquired.
"That's the sort of place pa would camp, an' if I ain't mistaken, that there's McClellan Creek."
Chapter X
We spurred our horses and loped on up to the edge of a valley maybe a mile wide.
There were large cottonwoods along the banks of a mighty pretty stream that was about twenty feet wide but no more than six inches deep.
The water was clear and pure, coming down from the Staked Plain that loomed above and to the west of us. None of us relished that ride, but we had it to do.
"Marcy named this stream after McClellan," Orrin said. "He believed McClellan was the first white man to see it. Marcy was exploring the headwaters of the Red and the Canadian rivers on that trip."
"We'll camp," I said.
We scouted the stream for the best location for a camp and found it at a place where a huge old cottonwood had toppled to the ground. The upper branches and some leaves that still clung to them were in the water, but the trunk of the tree made a good break from the wind, and the other cottonwoods shaded the place. There was a kind of natural corral where we could bunch the horses.
First we staked them out to graze. The Tinker set watch over them whilst Judas whipped up the grub. Orrin and me, we nosed around.
The way we figured, we were right on pa's old trail, and we were wishful of looking about to see if he left sign. Now all men have their patterns of using tools, making camp, and the like. Time had swept away most things a man might leave behind, and this was a country of cold and heat with hard winds and strong rains coming along all too often.
This was likely a camp where they'd spend time. A long trek was behind them, the Staked Plain before them, and they knew what that meant.
It was a snug camp. When the horses had grazed enough on the bottom grass, the Tinker brought them in and we settled them down in the corral.
A man riding wild country keeps his eyes open for camping places. He may not need one at that spot on the way out, but it might be just what the doctor ordered on the way back. Camps, fuel, defensive positions, water, landmarks, travel-sign ... a man never stops looking.
We'd traveled steady, if not fast, and we'd lost time here and there trying to leave nothing an Indian would care to follow, yet I was uneasy. Too many attempts had been made to do away with us, and it wasn't likely we'd gotten off scot-free.
Leaving camp, I wandered off upstream toward where the creek came down from under the cap rock. It was good sweet water and there wasn't much of that hereabouts, for most of the streams were carrying gypsum, or salts, or something of the kind.
Andre Baston had evidently been with the parry when it reached here, so he would know of this water and would come to it. How many he would have with him I wouldn't be able to guess, but he would pick up some hard cases along the way and he'd be prepared for trouble.
The feel of the country isn't right, and something inside tells me, warns me.
What is it? Instinct? But what is instinct? Is it the accumulation of everything I've ever seen or smelled tickling a little place in my memory?
This is the kind of place I like. It is one of those lonely, lovely places you have to go through hell to reach. Many a man's home is just that, I expect.
Thin water running over sand-water so clear the whole bottom is revealed to you, and even a track left an hour ago may still be there ... like that one.
The track of a horse, and beyond it another. I waded the stream, following them.
A slight smudge of a hoof on the grassy bank, tracks going away toward the cliffs. I was careful not to let my eyes look that way, but turned and strolled casually along the stream bank for thirty or forty yards, and then I walked back to camp.
I stopped twice on the way back. Once to pick up some sticks for fuel, another time to look at a place where a rabbit had been sleeping. At camp I dropped the fuel.
Orrin had gone off downstream, and I had to get him back.
"Tracks," I told them. "Get your rifles and keep a careful eye open all around.
That was a shod horse, so they're here--or somebody is."
"How old was that track?" the Tinker wondered.
"Hour--maybe more. That water's not running so fast. It isn't carrying much silt, so it's hard to say. A track like that will lose its shape pretty fast, so I'd surmise not over an hour, and we've been here about half that time--maybe more.
"My guess would be they've seen us coming and they figured we wouldn't pass up a good camp spot like this. I think they are out there now ... waiting."
I took my Winchester, and I shoved two handfuls of shells into my pockets. I was already wearing a cartridge belt, every loop loaded.
"Take nothing for granted. They may wait until night and they may come just any time." Thinking about it, I said, "Make out to be collecting fuel, but sort of pick up around. Get everything packed except grub and the frying pan. We may move suddenlike."
The brush was thicker downstream, and there were more cottonwoods and willows. A few paths ran away through the brush--deer, buffalo, and whatnot. Moving out, I hung my Winchester over my shoulder by its sling, just hanging muzzle down from my left shoulder, my left hand holding the barrel. A lift of the left hand, the muzzle goes up, the butt comes down, and the right hand grabs the trigger guard.
With practice, a man can get a rifle into action as quickly as a six-gun.
Thick blackberry brush, some willows, and some really big cottonwoods. Orrin's tracks were there, and then Orrin.
He turned when he saw me coming. "Whatever happened, must have happened there--in the mountains, I mean, or on the way back."
"You think they found the gold?"
"Found it, or sign of it," he said. "Maybe it was late in the season before they located anything, and all of a sudden Andre or Pierre or somebody suddenly got the idea they should have it all."
"Andre got back, and Hippo Swan. They must have been the youngsters of the group."
Quietly then, I told him of the horse tracks and my feeling about them. We started back toward camp, taking our time and returning by a somewhat different route. We were only a few hundred yards downstream, but I'd caught no pattern to Andre's thinking, so I'd no way of knowing how he might choose to attack.
He was a fighting man, that much I knew, and I gathered that he'd not step back from murder. He didn't strike me as a man of honor, and from what I'd heard of his dueling and of his approach to LaCroix, I figured him to be a man to take any advantage.
"Orrin, there's no use in setting by an' lettin' him choose his time. Besides, we're lookin' to find what happened to pa, not to have a shootout with Andre Baston."
"What are you suggesting?"
"That come nightfall we Injun out of here, back south for the Red, follow it right up the canyon as far as we can go, then take off across the Staked Plains for Tucumcari or somewhere yonder."
We left our fire burning where the grass wouldn't catch, and we Injuned out of there, holding to the brush until it was fairly dark, then heading off to the south. For four mounted men with packhorses we moved fast and light and made mighty little sound.
By sunup we were twenty miles off, following along the route McClellan had taken in 1852. We camped, rested an hour or two, then turned west across the plains toward the canyon of the Red.
Finally the sandy bottom of the stream played out and the water was sweet where it ran over rock. The last tributaries must have been bringing the gypsum into the water.
We found a trail where a steep climb and a scramble would get us out of the canyon and we took off across country. I kn
ew about where Tucumcari Mountain lay, a good landmark for old Fort Bascom. Twice we made dry camp, and once we found a spring. We stopped again when we met a sheepman who provided us with tortillas and frijoles. Our horses were taking a beating, so when we spotted a herd of horses and some smoke, we came down off the mesa and cut across the desert toward them.
Orrin eased his horse closer to mine. "I don't like the look of it," he said.
"That's no ordinary bunch of stock."
We slowed down to come up to the herd at a walk. We saw four men: three hard-looking white men and a Mexican with twin bandolier loaded with rifle cartridges. They were set up as if for a fight.
"Howdy!" I said affably. "You got any water?"
The sandy-haired white man jerked his head toward some brush. "There's a seep."
He was looking at our horses. Hard-ridden as they were, they still showed their quality. "Want to swap horses?"
"No," Orrin said, "just a drink and we'll drift." As we rode by I glanced at the brands, something any stockman will do as naturally as clearing his throat. At the seep I swung my horse, facing them. "Orrin, you an' the Tinker drink. I don't like this outfit."
"See those brands?" he said. "That's all full-grown stock, but there isn't a healed brand in the lot."
"They've just worked them over," I agreed. "They'll hold them here until they're healed, then drift them out of the country."
"There's some good stock there," the Tinker said. "Some of the best."
When Orrin and the Tinker were in the saddle, I stepped down with Judas Priest.
He drank, and then me, and as I got up from the water, Orrin said, "Watch it, boy," to me.
They were coming toward us.
I waited for them. They didn't know who we were, but they had an eye for our horses, all fine stock although ganted down from hard riding over rough country.
"Where you from?" asked the sandy-haired man.
"Passin' through," I replied mildly, "just passin' through."
"We'd like to swap horses," he said. "You've good stock. We'll swap two for one."
"With a bill of sale?" I suggested.
Treasure Mountain (1972) Page 7
