The Hider

by Loren D. Estleman

  “Who?” shot Logan, when Jack didn’t continue. “The army?”

  “The injuns,” said Jack.

  Logan reined in with an abruptness that startled his horse, but Jack kept moving. I followed along. I didn’t want to miss any of this.

  “The buffalo was on its way out long afore the white man come west,” Jack continued. “I reckon we just speeded it up. You hear stories about how the injuns used every bit of what they killed, how they used the hides for warmth, the hoofs for glue, the bones for tools and weapons, and ate the meat. Don’t believe it. You know how they hunted buffalo?” The question was directed to no one in particular. Logan and I kept silent. The Indian was moving again, but slowly, hanging onto the hider’s every word. “As soon as they spotted a good-size herd,” Jack went on, “they’d stampede it over a cliff. Two, maybe three thousand head would come pouring down to bust their necks on the rocks at the bottom. The injuns would cut out a dozen or so for their own use and leave the rest to rot. Ask any old brave. They don’t lie.”

  Logan had no reply for that. I didn’t think much of him because of his smart mouth, but I will say that he knew the best times to keep it shut.

  It was two hours past noon when I heard the sound of running water beyond a wooded hill. This had to be the North Umpqua. After the way Jack had described it, I hadn’t exactly been expecting to hear the gentle gurgle of a river winding its lazy way downstream, but I wasn’t prepared for this angry roar either. It sounded ominous.

  We rode to the top of the hill, where my suspicions were confirmed. Below us, the north branch of the Umpqua River churned its way across the hilly countryside, tumbling down the cataract, tearing away at the twisting banks, exploding toward its destination at the eastern edge of the county. The water smashed against the flat rocks imbedded in the banks and shattered into thousands of tiny droplets, flashing in the sunlight that slanted between the tall evergreens that flanked the river. Branches and grass, torn away in the flood that had accompanied yesterday’s rain, were swept along in the powerful current until they disappeared beneath the boiling water at the beginning of the cataract. It was a savage sight.

  “This ain’t what I expected,” said Jack, after we had descended to the water’s edge and dismounted to let the animals drink. He had to shout to be heard above the snarling torrent. “Didn’t figure the rain to come this far.”

  “We’ll never be able to ford this,” said Logan.

  “Buffalo must of crossed just afore the rain. He’s got the Lord’s good will on his side, and that’s a fact.” Jack took off his hat and bent to bathe his face with a double handful of the fresh clear water. He didn’t appear to be frustrated by the setback. I got the impression he would have been disappointed if things had turned out differently. “We’ll have to follow her downstream till she settles down.” He put his hat back on and mounted, then swung his mule to the right.

  Logan appeared agitated. “I don’t like it,” he said. “It’ll slow us down.”

  Jack stopped and looked down at him. “Think the injun law’s still on our tail?”

  “You never know with George Crook,” said the other, swinging onto the dun’s broad back. “He can track an ant across a flat rock, and it won’t realize he’s there until he steps on it. I’d rather not find out until we’re on the other side of the river.”

  “What does he look like?” I asked. I was the last to step into leather. “I only saw him from a distance.”

  “He walked into a trap once when he was trailing a killer outside Boise. Four sticks of dynamite went off within six yards of him. The doctors put him back together, but they didn’t do a very good job.” Logan’s voice was grim. “You’ll know him by his twisted face.”

  Jack said, “Well, we’re making mighty poor time sitting here jawing,” and led the way downstream.

  We were in the big pine country now, and much of our journey was in the cooling shade of towering stands of Douglas fir and yellow pine. Wildlife was plentiful; sparrows and chickadees called unmusically to one another and made a lot of noise as they hopped from one branch to the next, and once my bay almost stepped on a porcupine. It snorted and shied as the fat little beast waddled out of the way, its spiny back gleaming. Fish splashed in the river.

  Along about five o’clock we began looking for a place to make camp. It was mid-spring, and there was enough daylight for a good two more hours of riding, but Jack said it would be a good idea to stop while we were still in the high country and able to command a good view of the scenery south of the river. We settled on a spot at the top of a hill that was covered with pines and maples on all sides, but from which we could look out and see open country for ten miles in any direction. Jack was especially satisfied with the site, he said, because the thick layer of last year’s fallen maple leaves that carpeted the hill made it impossible for anyone to sneak up on us without making noise. “Of course,” he added, “you can’t never be sure where injuns is concerned.”

  We ate bacon and fried bread for supper. The latter was a product of the sourdough Jack had made with the flour he had bought at Slauson’s Mercantile. Since water was so plentiful, we had coffee to drink as well. I enjoyed it tremendously, because every swallow reminded me of the look on Old Man Slauson’s face when Jack thrust the muzzle of his Sharps beneath his flabby chin and asked him for another sack of coffee. Once I even chuckled out loud. Logan looked at me strangely, but I didn’t bother to explain myself. It gave me satisfaction to know something he didn’t, especially after he’d kept so many secrets from us. Anyway, no one felt much like talking, so when the food was gone and the dishes washed, Jack banked the fire and we climbed into our bedrolls. I was barely settled in when my partners’ even breathing told me they were already asleep.

  I lay awake for quite a spell, sorting out the events of the past few days in my mind. Just a short while before, I had been biding my time at home, waiting for someone to buy the land so that I could move on to I didn’t know where. My plans had been vague. If anybody had told me then that within a week I’d be going on a buffalo hunt, and, what’s more, that my companions would include an old drifter and an Indian wanted for murder, I’d have called him a liar. That I’d be hunted as an accessory to a murder was of course inconceivable. Life is strange. In the last three days I had looked down the twin barrels of a farmer’s shotgun, seen a man literally blasted into eternity, and been shot at by a crooked Indian policeman with murder in his heart. For an eighteen-year-old kid who had thought he had missed the thrill of the Wild West, that was reason enough to stay awake nights. But a long day of hard riding and crippling heat had taken its toll and I soon joined Jack and Logan in a deep blissful sleep.

  I awoke hours later with a slight chill in my bones. I thought groggily about closing the window, then remembered where I was, and turned over onto my right side. It was a good thing I did. In the gray starlight, I saw the black outline of a figure stealing toward me. Something glinted in its left hand.

  I found my voice. “Jack!” I shouted. “Wake up!” Then the figure was upon me and I was fighting for my life.

  He was much stronger than I was. Twice I had hold of his wrists and twice he pulled them free with little effort, struggling to get a grip on my own limbs. Each time I expected to feel the burning pain of his knife slicing across my throat. I suddenly realized that he had no intention of stabbing me; if he had, I’d have been dead at least three times by now. Then I remembered the Winchester. Somehow he knew I had it underneath my blanket, and as he held me down with one hand he was fumbling with the other to get a grip on Pa’s rifle. There was a grunt of triumph, and then I knew he had it. In a rush I was reminded of Logan’s words: Sooner or later George will track you down, and then you’re as good as dead.

  Thump! It was a dull noise, something like when you give a green melon a hearty kick with the side of your foot, and then a loose sack of something sagged across me and lay still. I looked up to see Jack standing over me, hatless, with his feet s
pread apart and his Sharps gripped in both hands like a balancing rod.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  I nodded uncertainly. “I think so.”

  Then he slipped his hand beneath the arm of the unconscious man, and it wasn’t until he turned him over onto his back that I realized it was Logan.

  My Winchester was lying a couple of feet away where he’d dropped it. I climbed to my feet and picked it up. By this time the Indian was beginning to stir.

  The first thing he did upon opening his eyes was turn his head and retch. “Isn’t this getting to be sort of a habit?” he gasped after a moment.

  “Suppose you tell me what you think you was doing?” demanded Jack. He stood working his rifle in his hands as if he wanted to hit him again.

  Logan groaned and put a hand to his head. I reckon Jack had come pretty close to busting his skull with the buttplate of the big Sharps. At last he said, “You’ve got Clyde Pacing Dog’s revolver under your bedroll.”

  “So?”

  “I wasn’t planning to leave the boy unarmed. I just wanted to borrow his gun long enough to make you give up the Colt. That seems to be the only way I can get you to listen to reason.”

  Jack didn’t say anything to that. He thrust his rifle under his arm and drew one of the knives from his belt. It was the conventional one, the one I had seen him use before.

  “See that?” he said. “That’s the knife I would of used to stop you.” He slipped it back into its sheath and drew the other one. This was the odd-shaped one that had no point. “See that? That’s the one I would of used to take your hide off. One’s for ripping, the other’s for skinning. Cross me again and I’ll demonstrate how they work on you.”

  It was the closest I had ever seen him come to getting angry. His eyes were hard and his voice had an edge that wasn’t there normally. I realized then that he was angry for my sake; that while there was nothing you could do to Jack that would disturb his calm, you were taking your life in your hands when you threatened his partner. I’m not ashamed to admit that in that moment I loved him more than I’ve ever loved any other man in my life.

  Logan must have seen it too, because he didn’t challenge him. There was a long silence, and then he said, “Do you still have that candle stub in your saddlebag?”

  “I reckon I do,” Jack said cautiously. “Why?”

  “I’d like to show you something.”

  Jack nodded to me, and I went over and fetched the item from among his things. I used the still-glowing coals at the bottom of the banked fire to light the wick. Jack stepped back and Logan got up carefully, holding on to his aching head with one hand as if it were going to fall apart. “It’s at the bottom of the hill,” he said, pointing into the thick growth of pines to the south.

  “Lead the way,” said Jack. He had his rifle in both hands again and leveled at the Indian.

  Logan led us down the slope. It was dark among the pines, and cold; I could feel the dampness of the dew on the fallen leaves as we shushed through them, soaking my pants legs. “Awhile ago I thought I heard something,” the Indian was saying, “and I got up to investigate. I didn’t see anything. Maybe I was dreaming. We’ll know soon enough.” At last he stopped in the clearing at the bottom of the hill and knelt down on one knee. We caught up with him a few seconds later.

  “There! See it?”

  I squatted beside him and tilted the candle flame to within an inch of his pointing finger. In the yellow glow, the hoofprints of an unshod horse showed clearly on the rain-softened patch of bare ground. The nature of the prints, which overlapped and obliterated each other, testified that the rider had stood in the spot for several seconds.

  “Those ain’t from our mounts,” observed Jack.

  “You’re right there,” agreed the Indian. “These belong to George Crook’s paint.”

  Chapter Seven

  We stared in silence at the tracks for a long time. Then a breath of wind stirred and extinguished the candle flame, leaving us in darkness. A chill danced across my shoulders.

  “He must of thought we was farther ahead,” Jack said quietly. “Rode too close. All the better for us.”

  “Better?” I echoed. “How?”

  “Least we know he’s around. We didn’t know that before. When do you reckon he’ll make his move?” This last was directed at Logan.

  The Indian rose, his clothes rustling. “George likes to sneak up on his victims,” he answered. “Night’s the best time for that.”

  Jack led the way back up the hill. “We’ll set up a lookout from here on in. I’ll take the first watch.”

  The rest of the night was long. Jack took a sitting position against a tree on the south side of the hill, his back to camp and his Sharps across his lap, while Logan and I returned to our bedrolls. It might as well have been sitting out there for all the sleep I got. George Crook wasn’t the only Indian I was worried about; I’d never completely trusted Logan since the first minute I saw him sneaking in through the door of that old line shack with a knife in his hand, and the events of a little while ago had only confirmed my suspicions. After all, we had no proof that the Indian was innocent of murder, or even that he was who he said he was. I lay with my hand curled around the lever of my Winchester just in case he decided to try for it again, but still I didn’t sleep.

  I was still awake two hours later when Jack came to get me. “Your watch, boy,” he said. “Two hours.”

  I climbed out of my bedroll, bringing my rifle with me. “You know how to fire that thing, boy?”

  “Sure,” I said. “You think I’ve never gone hunting?” He grunted.

  “We’re the ones being hunted now, boy. Get to it. The injun’ll relieve you in two hours.”

  “Him!” I exclaimed. “You’re not going to give him a gun!”

  “Just get out there.”

  I left him reluctantly and sat down where Jack had been. I was wide awake. In front of me, the ground dropped off at a forty-five-degree angle for about two hundred yards, where, in the blackness of the night, it leveled out into fields carpeted with tall grass. It was silent in the woods. Every now and then a breeze would hiss through the tops of the tall pines and set the leaves on the maples to rattling, but these sounds were of short duration and served only to make the long stillnesses in between seem more acute. I peopled the area around me with a thousand nameless terrors. When an owl began hooting a few trees from where I sat, I shot bolt upright, my rifle in hand, and from then on every little sound was enough to start my heart pounding as if it were trying to beat a hole in my chest. Those two hours out in the woods were the most nerve-racking I have ever spent anywhere.

  They passed, however, and I was just thinking about heading back to camp when I heard a leaf crunch behind me. My blood froze. I swung my Winchester around, but a hand shot out and closed around the barrel.

  “If I were George Crook,” whispered a voice, “you’d be dead.”

  It was Logan, standing beside the tree. He was wearing Clyde Pacing Dog’s gun belt, and in his hands he held the Henry that Jack had given him. Something about the way he handled it told me it was loaded. So Jack had decided to arm him, after all. I got to my feet, eyeing him warily.

  “Don’t worry,” he said in that same low whisper. “I’m saving my ammunition for George Crook.”

  I struck off for camp without replying and left him there. The morning chill was already burned off when I rolled out from under my blanket. Jack was loading the burro and Logan was tending the fire. He was still wearing the Colt, only now he had the butt turned forward to accommodate his left-handed draw. Dark stains showed on the leather where he had been unable to cleanse it completely of blood. “Why didn’t somebody wake me?” I asked, blinking. I had finally gotten to sleep just before dawn and had not opened my eyes since.

  “No need,” said Jack. “We wanted plenty of light afore we left. No sense making it easy for our friend to bushwhack us.”

  I nodded. “See anything last night?�
�� I asked Logan.

  “Not a thing.” The Indian blew the dust from Jack’s skillet and placed it atop the fire. “He’s playing a waiting game to make us nervous. He only does that when he’s sure he can’t lose.”

  I shook the cobwebs out of my head and gathered up my bedroll, making sure the Winchester was wrapped up tightly. Jack watched me.

  “What you keep that Winchester gift-wrapped for, boy?” he asked.

  “I don’t have a scabbard,” I said. “No place else to carry it.”

  “Ain’t too handy. What if we get jumped?”

  “I never thought of that,” I admitted.

  “What makes you think you can drop a man with that thing anyway? You any kind of shot?”

  “I’ve killed my share of rabbits with it. My pa used to say it was the best gun ever made.”

  “Maybe so,” said Jack. He finished securing the bundles on the burro’s back and slipped his own rifle from his saddle scabbard. “A Sharps, now; there’s a weapon for a man.”

  “What are you going to do?” I asked.

  “About time you learned to fire this gun, boy. You never know when you might need it.” He tossed the rifle its last two feet into my hands. I nearly dropped it. It was even heavier than it appeared, fully twice the weight of my shorter carbine, and it had a curious kind of balance I was unfamiliar with. I turned it over respectfully and admired its trim lines.

  Jack stepped to the edge of the clearing. He scanned the dense woods for a moment, then pointed down the hill. “See that pine? The one with the busted branch?” I squinted at a twisted yellow pine standing fifty yards away. It was dead at the top and it had a splintered branch about halfway up its trunk. I nodded and hoisted the rifle to my shoulder.

  “Just a minute,” Jack said. He curled a long arm around my shoulders and pulled the rear trigger. It responded with a sharp click. “Go to it, boy,” he said, withdrawing his hand.

  I rested my cheek on the battered stock and took aim. It wasn’t easy, with the heavy barrel pulling forward and down all the time, but at last I was able to draw a steady bead. I rested my finger on the front trigger.