“You Shoshone?” said Jack, eyeing the other through narrowed lids.
“Nez Percé.”
Jack slapped the table with the flat of his hand. I jumped at the noise. “I might of knowed,” he said, laughing. “I seen a lot of your red brothers when I was with the U.S. Army fighting Chief Joseph in ’77.”
“You were in that?” The Indian looked at him quickly. I didn’t like the tone of his voice.
“Chief of scouts, with the rank of lieutenant colonel,” nodded Jack. “Was you in it, too?”
The Indian shook his head. “Too young. But my father was. He died three years later in the territorial prison.”
“Meanest bunch I ever fought,” said the other in a tone of admiration. “Fought like wildcats, they did, and by the time it was over, you couldn’t walk your horse across the field without stumbling over a dead injun.”
“What do you plan to do with me?” asked Logan, if that was really his name. The switch in subjects was an abrupt one, and it took Jack a second to catch his drift.
“I reckon we’ll tie you up for tonight, seeing as how we can’t trust you out there with them horses,” he said at last. “Boy, fetch me the rope from my saddle.”
I brought him the rope. Bending over the Indian, Jack said, “Since you ain’t done us no harm, we’re going to turn you loose tomorrow. This is just to make sure we keep our scalps tonight.”
Five minutes later our visitor was tied into the chair about as tight as he was likely to get, so Jack gathered up his rifle and unrolled his bedding on the floor next to the stove. Since I was the better rested, I volunteered for the first watch. Jack didn’t argue. He crawled under his blanket, laid his rifle across his lap, and in less than two minutes he was asleep. That left me sitting across from Logan with my Winchester close at hand and the captured knife lying on the table in front of me. By this time he was asleep too, and snoring quietly. Jack slept until two o’clock, at which time he got up without having to be awakened and took my place while I got some extra sleep.
The rain had stopped by the next morning. Jack untied Logan’s hands long enough for him to eat breakfast with us, then replaced the bonds and directed me to bring our mounts around to the front of the shack. Outside, everything seemed fresh and newly washed. Quartz Mountain rose big and white and dazzling against a pure blue sky, and the birds were singing and using their beaks to clear the drops of water from between their feathers. When I returned to the shack, I found Jack standing in the middle of the floor with his saddlebags over his shoulder, his rifle in one hand and Logan’s long-bladed hunting knife in the other.
“Them knots ain’t so tight you won’t be able to work your way out of them with a little sweat,” he told the Indian. “But just in case you get impatient, I’ll leave this here.” So saying, he bent down and jammed the knife almost up to its hilt in the hard earthen floor at his feet. Then he picked up his saddle and headed out the door. Logan said nothing. He hadn’t spoken a word since last night.
“Where to now?” I asked Jack as he was saddling his mule. The burro was already loaded up and ready to go.
“I reckon we’ll get back on the old trail and follow it till we spot some fresh signs,” he said, and gave the cinch a mighty yank. The mule grunted. “We’ll have to scramble to make up for lost time, though. That means no stopping till dark.”
“Suits me,” I said. “I’m tired of sitting still anyway.”
“You’re a born hider, boy.”
That made me feel proud. I swung into my saddle with a flourish, but my conscience got the better of me and I cast an uneasy glance back toward the shack. “Do you think he’ll be all right in there?”
“He’ll be fine. Them Nez Percés thrive on hard times.” Jack placed his boot in the mule’s left stirrup and started to mount.
Then a shot rang out of nowhere and smashed the last pane in the shack’s front window into a hundred pieces.
Chapter Five
I was too busy trying to control my horse to react to the report and the almost simultaneous crash of the window, but Jack was off his mule and moving before the glass hit the ground.
“Get inside!” He yanked his Sharps from his saddle scabbard, and, in the same movement, slapped his mule sharply on the rump. It brayed indignantly and took off at a lope, half-dragging the little burro behind it at the end of the stout halter. My bay didn’t need any such encouragement; as soon as I was off its back, it broke into a gallop and within thirty seconds was running neck-and-neck with the big mule. By this time I was halfway to the door of the shack. Behind me, I heard Jack’s Sharps whamming away as he backed toward the building. Two more shots rang out from the surrounding hills, but by that time we were both inside and sitting on the floor on either side of the empty doorway.
“Who in hell is that?” wheezed Jack. He was out of breath from the sudden activity. Well, so was I. He reloaded his rifle with a cartridge he had taken from his jacket pocket.
“I forgot to tell you about him,” said the Indian, who had thrown himself to the floor, chair and all, and was struggling to free himself from his bonds. “He’s after me.”
“I thought you said nobody in particular was chasing you.”
“I lied.”
“Who is he?” Jack repeated. He kept his right cheek pinned to the wall, watching what he could see of the hilly countryside. If he saw anything, it was from an angle that was closed to me. All I could see were trees and bushes.
“His name is George Crook. He’s an Indian policeman from the reservation.” Logan grunted and strained, but the ropes didn’t appear to be loosening. “How about throwing me that knife?” he said. “I’m a sitting duck here.”
“Then waddle out of the way.”
The Indian cursed and renewed his struggles.
I said, “Why didn’t we make a break for it when we had the chance? We don’t owe him anything.”
“No good,” said Jack. “Too much open territory. He would of picked us off afore we got within a hundred yards of the woods.”
“Now we’re pinned down good,” I grumbled. “We don’t even have our mounts.”
“They’ll be back.”
There was another shot, and a bullet splintered the doorjamb within an inch of Jack’s face. He jerked back.
“He seems awful determined to take you back dead,” he said to the Indian. “That must of been a mighty important horse.”
“I sort of lied about that, too.” Logan had made some headway with the ropes and was working his hands free behind his back. “He’s got a special reason to want me dead,” he said. “I married his woman.”
“I can see how that might rile a man, especially a injun,” said Jack. “Anybody with him?”
“Just one. Another policeman by the name of Clyde Pacing Dog.”
“Fine.”
I wet my lips, which suddenly had gotten very dry. “What’s stopping us from turning the Indian over to them? Then they’d have no reason to hold us here.”
The Indian ceased struggling.
“Don’t count on it,” said Jack. “Three dead’s a lot neater than just one.”
Logan resumed his efforts. In a moment he had his hands free and was working on the knots that bound his legs to the chair. That done, he kicked the chair away and began crawling the long way toward us around the table. His shirt and jeans rustled against the hard earth of the floor. He was almost up to the knife which Jack had thrust into the floor when the hider closed his hand over the hilt. Their eyes met.
Logan said, “You can shoot me if you want, but I’m not going to die unarmed.”
There was a moment of silence while Jack took his measure. Then he nodded and let go of the knife. Logan pulled it free, wiped the dirt off on his right sleeve, and returned it to the sheath at his belt.
“Well, what are we going to do now?” I asked.
“Only thing we can do,” said Jack. “Wait.”
“For what?”
Jack shifted into a sitt
ing position with his back against the wall and laid his Sharps across his lap. “Long as we stay in here, they can’t get at us,” he explained. “They’re going to have to make a move of some kind.”
He was right, of course. No other shots came down from the hills, and while it wasn’t exactly like sitting in your parlor and reading Silas Marner, I admit that I felt pretty secure with the two of us guarding the door and Logan keeping watch through the side window, ready to sing out should either of our visitors try to sneak up on our blind side. We only had one problem, and that was that we couldn’t move.
It wasn’t a comfortable wait, either. The sun had barely cleared the peak of Quartz Mountain when it began to get hot. By midmorning the grass outside the shack was dry and the birds had stopped singing in order to conserve their energy. The cabin was little enough protection against the stifling heat, but for the two Indians out in the open it must have been unbearable. Beads of sweat formed on my face and bled down into my collar; after a while I gave up wiping them away as a useless effort. Jack, too, was sweating, but the heat didn’t seem to tell on him the way it did on me. I suppose he was used to sitting still for hours at a time. The Indian seemed no less content to be sitting there with his knife safely in its sheath and his attention on the scene beyond the window. I guess I was the odd one. “You in the shack!”
The shout was so unexpected that I nearly jumped to my feet. As it was, I had my legs gathered up under me to do just that when my rifle slid off my lap and I had to catch it before it clattered on the floor. I pressed my head against the wall the way I had seen Jack doing and looked out.
I saw him at the top of the hill, a rider with a rifle braced against his knee so that its barrel stuck straight up into the air above his head. And I saw something else. I saw a white flag fluttering from its muzzle.
Jack had evidently been watching him for some seconds before he had shouted. Anyway, my partner had changed position, and now he was lying on the floor propped up on his elbows and he was drawing a bead on the rider with his Sharps. Logan watched him in silence from his station at the window.
“He’s carrying a white flag!” I exclaimed.
“Yeah,” said Jack. “Makes a nice target, don’t it?” He set the action by pulling the rear trigger and prepared to squeeze the lethal one in front of it.
“You can’t do that!” I said. “At least give him a chance to say what he wants to say!”
“Don’t listen to him.” Logan’s voice was hardly more than a whisper. “George Crook’s full of tricks.”
I don’t know if it was me telling him not to or the Indian telling him to go ahead that made Jack change his mind, but after a couple of seconds he raised his cheek from the walnut stock. “What do you want?” he called out to the motionless rider.
The rider shouted down from the hill. “I would like to talk!”
After the echo of his words had died out, Jack replied. “Talk!”
“Not from up here,” said the other. “Let me come down.”
“Don’t let him,” warned Logan behind us.
Jack thought for a moment. “All right,” he shouted finally. “Come ahead!”
Logan cursed. “You fool! It’s just a trick to get us out into the open so the other one can pick us off.”
“You can crawl under the table if you want,” commented Jack dryly. That quieted him.
We remained where we were as the rider picked his way down toward the shack. He was a tall Indian on a dun-colored horse with a white blaze, and he was wearing buckskin pants and a blue shirt. The shirt, which by federal order had ceased to be the official uniform of the U.S. Cavalry, was worn and faded and patched in several places. He wore a bright red headband, but that was only for decoration because his hair was cut short. His face was dark brown and covered with tiny pits. I figured he must have had smallpox pretty badly at one time. Unlike the somber Indians you read about in dime novels, this one grinned a lot.
“It’s Clyde Pacing Dog,” said Logan.
Jack waited until he was at the bottom of the hill before he called out to him to stop. Then he rose and stepped cautiously out the door, his Sharps at the ready. Logan and I followed him out. The fugitive’s knife was drawn.
Clyde Pacing Dog looked down at us from atop his horse. He kept his free hand on the butt of the revolver he wore low on his right hip. It was a long gun with an ornate grip. “Howdy, Logan,” he said to our Indian companion. His voice was cheerful.
The response was grave. “Hello, Clyde. Where’s George?”
“He’s up there, waiting.” The mounted redskin turned in his saddle and pointed back up the hill. I looked up and saw another rider at the top, this one with long hair and a high-crowned hat. That’s all I could see of him against the cloudless blue of the sky.
“What you want to talk about?” demanded Jack. He had his rifle trained on Clyde’s chest.
“I think that’s obvious,” said Clyde, grinning. “Turn Logan over to us and you and the boy can go.”
“What happens to the injun once you got him?”
The grin widened. “I think that, too, is obvious.”
“I don’t know,” drawled Jack, as if he were having trouble making up his mind. “Somehow it don’t seem Christian. I’m a churchgoing man, and it just wouldn’t set right if I was to let someone get killed who was in my charge.”
“Would you rather be killed along with him?”
“That sounds mighty like a threat.”
The grin faded. Now there was only coldness in the Indian’s pockmarked features. “Take it or leave it, mister,” he said.
Jack started to turn toward Logan. It looked like he was considering the offer. Then, suddenly, and before the Indian could draw his gun, the hider pulled the trigger of his Sharps and it exploded right into Clyde’s midsection, catapulting him from his horse and spraying blood and bone and bits of red meat all over. The horse screamed, but Logan grabbed its reins and held it. The sound of the report echoed in the distance long seconds after the Indian was dead.
An animal scream sounded from the top of the hill.
I looked up to see George Crook rear his horse and disappear over the bulge.
“I got an idea he’ll be back,” said Jack.
“I’ll let you know when my ears stop ringing,” said Logan.
I looked down at the dead Indian, and had to turn to keep from being sick. He wouldn’t be grinning any more.
Logan, who had succeeded in bringing the badly frightened horse under control, came over to observe the body. He whistled. “Wouldn’t a nice, safe little cannon have done just as well?” he asked.
“What did you do that for?” I raged at Jack. My breakfast was still doing flip-flops in my stomach, but the big danger was past. “He didn’t even have a chance to draw.”
“That was the idea.” Jack placed a fresh cartridge in his rifle and swung the trigger guard back to its original position, slamming shut the breech. Without pausing, he raised the weapon and pointed it at Logan. “Stop right there, injun,” he said. There was no anger in his voice; only warning.
The Indian had bent over Clyde Pacing Dog’s body and was in the act of reaching for the gun in the dead man’s belt. He froze with his hand on the fancy grip and looked at Jack. I braced myself for the roar of the Sharps. You might say I was a little gun-shy by this time.
“You’d leave me unarmed?” Logan remained in his bent-forward position, one hand on the gun, the other still holding on to the reins of the captured horse.
“I let you have the knife,” said Jack. “That’s as far as I go. How do I know you ain’t wanted for murder?”
Logan eyed him flatly. “You realize what this means.”
“I reckon I do.”
“Without weapons, I can’t afford to go off on my own after what’s happened.” The Indian straightened. “From here on in, we’re partners.”
“I reckon so,” said Jack. He lowered the rifle.
“Just a darn second,” I
put in, turning on Jack. I was still mad and half sick over what had happened to the Indian policeman. “As far as I’m concerned, we’d be a lot better off if Logan got on that horse and rode just as far away from here as it will take him. We don’t have time to play hide-and-go-seek with the law. Have you forgotten what we’re here for in the first place?”
“You’re in it too, son.” Logan stroked the horse’s white-streaked nose. It had calmed down quite a bit, but it shied from the body of its dead master. “Your friend just did for George Crook’s partner. Among the Indian police, that’s the same as killing his brother. He won’t forget it.”
I looked to Jack to see if this were true. He nodded.
“It ain’t a case of ‘us’ and ‘him’ any more,” he said. “Like it or not, we’re partners, and that there’s what seals the bargain.” He nodded toward the grisly thing lying on the ground at our feet. I guess it jogged his memory, because he bent down and unbuckled the gun belt from around the dead man’s waist. The leather and cartridges were spattered with blood and bits of flesh, but the gun in the holster had escaped unstained. “Well, will you look at this here,” he said, sliding the weapon from its leather sheath.
It was a big revolver, right around thirteen inches long. I mentioned that it had a fancy grip; the brass fittings were bright and shiny and the wooden part was carved all over with intertwining leaves, a pattern that was repeated on the frame of the gun itself. The forward sight had been filed right down to the barrel. I suppose that this was so the gun could be drawn quickly, but it seemed silly because the barrel was so long and unwieldy that it didn’t make any difference if part of it caught on the inside of the holster, because you’d be dead before you could lift it into firing position anyway. “Dude’s weapons,” Pa used to call firearms of this type, reliable enough when you had plenty of time to cock, aim, and fire, but when it came to a real gunfight they were better left in their holsters.
“Colt Transition Model,” said Jack, examining it. “Ain’t seen one of these in fifteen years. This what they’re issuing the Nez Percé law these days?” The question was directed to Logan, who shook his head in reply.
The Hider Page 6
