Outside of the hollow where I stood, I could make out the trail, still slanting away from me. I found a stick nearby, and took it for a staff. Then I started to walk, hobbling a little because my side was painful.
I was going to live. I was going back to Vashti. I was going back to her, but first I was going to find Pony.
Most of the night I walked, with occasional rests, and toward dawn I hunted for shelter. With the first rays of the sun I found three junipers bunched together and I crawled into their partial shade. By hunching myself up and moving a bit as the sun moved, I stayed in shade the long day through.
Then I started on, walking, falling sometimes, but moving along. Far ahead of me I saw a star, a star low down—too low.
A campfire…I broke into a stumbling run, but fell after only a few steps, exhausted.
After a while I got to my feet. The fire was still there, but dimmer now. I struggled on, walking, falling, crawling, then getting up to walk again.
After a long time the fire was nearer. Day was coming. When day came the man whose camp that was would mount and ride away, and then I would be lost. There could be no town within miles, or even a ranch or a settlement. I had to make it.
I tried to break into a run again, but I couldn’t manage it. But I was getting closer, and now I could see a thin blue trail of smoke rising.
It was there. There was a fire, and there was somebody at the fire!
I tried to yell, but no sound came. I went ahead…and then I was at the fire.
Two horses…
Pony
.
He got up, staring in horror at me. Then he let out a hoarse scream and grabbed at his rifle. I lunged at him, but I fell, and heard the bellow of his gun.
I heard it again, felt the sting of sand kicked into my face, and then I got up, and I swung my stick. He lifted a hand to catch it, and as he did I dived at him.
He tried to step back, but tripped and went down. He got up, but I swung at his face, my fist smashing his nose. He fell back into the fire, but rolled clear, grabbing for a gun. I swung a burning stick at his face and when his hand came up to ward it off, the flame enveloped his hand. He gave a scream and staggered back, then swung at my head with a stick. The blow caught me across the forehead and I went down, twisting as I went, to fall clear of the fire.
A
GAIN I WAS struggling back to consciousness, again it was night.
The fire was still smoking a little, but no flame showed. Pony was gone, the horses were gone. His frying pan was there, and his coffeepot. He must have jumped into the saddle and fled.
I got to my knees, reached the coffeepot. Coffee sloshed in it and I drank. It was very hot, but I hardly noticed. After a moment I put the coffeepot down and poked at the fire, found some unburned ends and added them to it. I tried to blow, but my lips were broken and bloody, and I almost cried out with the pain as they cracked open again.
But a flame sprang up. I looked in the frying pan. Shriveled pieces of bacon lay there, and I ate them. Turning my neck stiffly, I looked around. Evidently Pony had been packed to go when I appeared, and had simply leaped into the saddle after he struck me down.
I drank more of the coffee, and felt better, but I hated the look of my hands. The cracks had opened and they were bleeding again.
My knife was still there, and my stick was there, too.
Nothing seemed right. How had I come up to him when he was riding horseback and I was afoot? Why was he not far out of the country?
Again I drank coffee, but when there was still some left I put it back close to the fire. I added fuel, and lay down on the cold ground.
Vashti
…
Dawn came cold and gloomy. Shivering, I drank the last of the coffee, scraped the fire apart so it would die quickly on the bare ground, and then I started.
My legs were stiff, and I hobbled, but I moved.
When I had gone only a short distance I fell, and this time I did not get up. One leg drew up, but it slipped back, and I lay still.
I was not unconscious, nor was I quite conscious. I was vaguely aware that it had started to sprinkle.
Rain
.
Feebly, I struggled to turn over, trying to get on my back.
Somebody was watching me. The thought slowly seeped into my dulled brain.
Somebody was watching me!
It could not be. I was going crazy. I managed to roll on my back and opened my mouth. Slowly the rain fell over me, some water trickled down my throat, and my face felt good. My body was chilled and stiff, but somehow refreshed.
My head lifted, I looked around, fell back.
Somebody was watching me
.
They were Indians. There were forty or fifty of them and there were no women or children among them. They were painted for war, and every man was armed.
I rolled over slowly, got my hands under me, and stood up. Some Utes, traveling back from a fight with the Comanches had once stayed at our ranch, recovering from their wounds. Pa had let them have three horses, although we were hard-up. But while they were there I had learned a little of their language. These would be Pah-utes. I spoke to them.
They looked at me. I tried English. “Much hurt,” I said. “Bad man shoot me. I have no gun. I follow. He run.”
“You follow Medicine Trail.”
The Indian who spoke was weirdly gotten up. A medicine man?
“Yes. The Sky Chief tells me to follow the Medicine Road and the Pah-ute will help me.”
They stared at me, muttering among themselves. It was different from the tongue I knew, but it was similar. Sometimes only a word or two seemed right; sometimes a whole sentence fell into place for me.
They led several spare horses, and suddenly a slim warrior rode over to me with a horse, and catching hold on the mane, I swung to its back.
They led off swiftly, and clinging to the mane, I rode with them.
Their village was miles away, but somehow I clung to the horse and kept on with them. When we came to the village at last, I saw that it was made up of perhaps two dozen lodges huddled in a cluster on a bench above a ravine. The position was good—it was sheltered, and there was water and fuel.
For four days I lay in their village and they fed and cared for me. An old woman came into the lodge where I was and took care of my wounds.
On the fifth day I walked out of the lodge. I was weak, but felt I was able to go.
“What you do now?” the chief asked.
“I will go to the white man’s town and find the man who shot me.”
“You have no gun.”
“I will find a gun.”
“You have no horse.”
“I ask my red brother to lend me one. I will return it if I am able, or I will pay you.”
“My people are at war with your people.”
“I did not know this. I have been where the Great Water lies, under the setting sun. I go back where my squaw is, in Colorado.”
He smoked and thought. Then he said, “You brave man. We follow your blood…many miles. You find your enemy, you kill.” He looked up at me. “I have no gun to give, but I will give pony.”
He pointed with his pipe. “You take that one.”
It was a mouse-colored horse, about fourteen hands, a good horse.
“Thank you.” I walked over to the horse, which was fitted with a hackamore.
Swinging astride, I rode up to his fire. “You are a great chief,” I said, “and you are my friend. If any man asks you, say you are a friend of Shell Tucker.”
Turning, I rode away, and they stood together, watching me go.
I looked back once. They were a war party, and I had seen fresh scalps.
Chapter 19
W
ITHIN THE HOUR I had picked up the trail. Two horses, one led. And I knew the tracks of that line-back dun as I knew the cracks in my own hands.
The grulla I rode was a good horse. The Pah-ute had given me a good one because he knew I had a long chase ahead of me, and he knew what sort of horse a man needed when the trail stretched on for uncounted miles. Its gait was smooth. That horse was no showboat, but he’d get in there and stay until the sun was gone and the moon was up.
When I came down out of those bleak, bitter mountains with the taste of alkali on my lips and my skin white from the dust of it, I had no idea where I was, only that I was riding east.
First it had been Bob Heseltine and Kid Reese. Now it was Zale. I’d find him somewhere up ahead, or he’d find me, and that would be an end to all of it, or part of it, depending on who saw who first.
A rugged, rawboned range lay before me, and across the flat of a vanished lake the jagged peaks lifted up. Not high…not many of those desert ranges are high, but they are dry, and they are all jagged edge, broken rock, and plants with thorns ready to tear the flesh.
A trail showed…a trail that had seen some use, though not lately—except for that lone-riding man with two horses.
The trail pointed into the saw-toothed ridges, and I pointed the grulla that way and said, “Their way is our way, boy. Let’s be a-goin’.”
I thought of Con Judy, who was my friend, and I thought of Vashti, who might be waiting or might not, and I thought of all the brutal, battered, and savage land that lay between us, and me without even a gun.
If he waited for me somewhere up in those rocks, he’d have me. If he waited I was dead meat…buzzard and coyote meat. But I had an idea he was running hard, and I stayed on the trail.
We climbed…higher and higher.
Suddenly a rider showed. A lone man riding a mule, leading another with a pack. A prospector.
He drew up when he saw me, not liking it. And there was a reason why, for my face was blistered and broken, my hands were only half-healed, my clothes were torn, and a sight.
“Howdy,” he said. “Mister, wherever you been I don’t wanna go.”
“I’m comin’ out,” I said. “I made it. There’s Indians back yonder though, and they’re wearing their paint.”
“I seen ’em before,” he said. “I cut my teeth on Injuns.”
“You got a gun to spare? I need a gun.”
“Boy, by the look of you you need a bed for two weeks, and a bath every day of it. You’re riding death, boy. You should look at you from this side of your eyes.”
“I need a gun. You passed a man up yonder with two horses, and my guns as well as his own. At least, I believe he’s got them. You loan me a gun and I’ll send you twice the cost of it, wherever you are.”
“I seen that man, boy, and you stay shut of him. That’s a mean man, too much for a boy like you. I seen him this time because I seen him a-comin’, and I knew who he was by the way he sets his horse. I cut out of the trail and when he seen my tracks he looked up to where I was, bedded down in the rocks, and I told him, ‘Pony, you keep right on a-ridin’. I got you dead in my sights.’ He kept on, and you know something? That wasn’t like him. It wasn’t like him a-tall.”
“He’s riding scared,” I said.
“I ain’t got a gun to spare, and if I had it I wouldn’t lend it to a man who’s going to get himself killed. What’s your name, boy?”
“Shell Tucker,” I said, “and I’ve followed some trails before this.…Be seeing you.”
The grulla clung to the trail like a hound dog. He was all I’d figured he was. He clung to that trail as if it was him Pony had tried to kill. We made our night camp at Cave Springs.
The Pah-utes had given me a double handful of jerky and I chewed a piece for supper, and drank at the spring. I’d moved back from the spring among some rocks when I heard a horse coming.
It was a long, lean cowhand riding a sorrel gelding, and he drew up at the spring and started to get down, and then he saw my tracks. He started to swing his horse, and I said, “Don’t be in such an all-fired hurry. I don’t even have a gun.”
“Then stand quiet,” he said, “because I do have. You just stand easy until I look you over.” He sidled his horse around until he could get a good look at me. “You don’t look fit to do no harm,” he said. “What happened to you?”
“You’d better ask that of a man you sighted down yonder with a led horse. Have you got a spare gun you could lend me? Anything that can shoot.”
“No. I got only this six-shooter and my Winchester, and where I’m going I’m likely to need them both. What happened?” he asked again.
“Have you got some coffee? I have nothing but beef jerky some Indians gave me.”
“I’ve got it, and I was just fixin’ to make it up,” he said.
He got down very careful, and kept his horse between us until he could see I really was unarmed. Then he holstered his gun and stripped his gear from the horse.
“Good water?” he asked.
“Any water is good. If you don’t think it is, try going where I’ve been without it.”
We got us a fire going and he put coffee on and broke open a can of beans, giving me half and keeping the other half for himself. And while the coffee boiled I told him what had happened since I’d seen that mean old man on the trail.
“He’s down there in Silver Peak,” he said. “These here are the Silver Peak Mountains, and the town is down yonder on the edge of Clayton Valley.”
“Is it much of a town?”
“Not so’s you could notice. She was fetching up to be and then the color ran out, and the folks just left. There’s a store or two, there’s a place where you can sleep inside out of the rain, and there’s a corral for your horse.
“And there’s a stamp mill that ain’t running no more, and a lot of folks setting around saying how there’s millions just under the ground. There may be, but I don’t know of what. It surely ain’t cash money. You ride in there and flash a five-dollar bill and they’re likely to give you the place and run.”
“I couldn’t flash a five-cent piece,” I said. “That man cleaned me.”
“Well, I got two bucks, mister, and I’ll split her right down the middle with you. I ain’t going to see any pilgrim ride into that town broke.”
“How about a gun?”
“Uh-uh. You get killed on your own time, with your own gun.”
“If I can’t find a gun I’ll cut myself a stick,” I told him. “I want some hide off that man.”
The beans were good, the coffee better, and he divided a chunk of sourdough betwixt us. He was a good man, and he never told me his name, even. At the end, I did give him mine.