Treasure Mountain (1972) (20 page)

Naturally, I wasted no time getting into the saddle. If I put a foot in the stirrup and swung my leg over real fast, me and the saddle would come together on the rise.

Of course, I always managed to mount a little away from camp so's I wouldn't buck right through breakfast. That's the sort of thing can make a man right unpopular in any kind of outfit.

This morning that appaloosa really unwound. He was feelin' good and it done me no harm to just sit up there and let him have at it. Ridin' easy in the saddle all the time can make a man downright lazy, so when they feel like buckin', I say let 'em buck. I don't care which nor whether. When Ap had bucked himself into good nature and an appetite, I took him back to the fire and lit down from the saddle.

Judas had put together some grub and like always when he done the cookin' it tasted mighty fine. He was spoilin' me for my own cookin', and soon I'd be out yonder on the trail with nobody but myself to cook.

I told them all about the visit from Powder-Face and about my plan.

"You sure you don't want me to ride along?" Orrin asked.

"I would prefer to ride with you, suh," Judas said. "It might be that I could be of service."

The Tinker said nothing. He was ready to go if I wanted him, and well he knew it and I knew it.

"It would be pleasurable," I said. "I could do with the comp'ny and the cookin', but a man listens better when he's alone, and he hears better."

When we'd finished breakfast, and I'd lingered as long as I could afford over my coffee, I went to my horses. "You ride loose, Tell," Orrin advised. "This isn't any western outfit. They're a murderin' lot."

I stepped into the saddle. Ap had finished with bucking during our little set-to of the morning, and he made no fuss. Besides, he knew I was now in no mood for catywampusing around.

"The way I'm riding is round about," I said, "but I want to come into the mountains the way pa did. If I see the country the way he saw it maybe I can catch his frame of mind.

"By the time he started up that trail, June must have been pretty well gone, and we know the snow was light that year and had mostly gone off. He wouldn't find much snow except where the shadows gathered and in deep hollows. The trail Powder-Face speaks of might be the one he took."

"I was talking to one of the young braves," said Orrin. "Some call it the Ghost Trail. They say it was made by The People. Who Went Before ..."

"Well," I gathered the reins, "you know me, Orrin. I'm going to ride easy into the hills and sort of let it come to me."

When I rode down what you could call the street of Shalako, Nell was standing out before a new-built house. I drew up and took off my hat. "Howdy, ma'am," I said, "I'm off for a ride."

She looked at me, serious-like and tender. It kind of worried me, that look did, but then I figured it was just that we'd known each other awhile, not that she was thinking gentle thoughts of me. I'd gotten used to womenfolks speaking to me and passin' by toward handsome gents who had some flash and flare to 'em. Not that I blamed 'em any. I'm just a big ol' homely man who's kind of handy with horses, guns, and cattle, which doesn't fit me very much for cuttin' didoes with the female sex.

"Now you be careful, Tell Sackett!" she said. "I wish you'd not go."

"Somewhere my pa lies dead, unburied, perhaps, and ma's growing on in her years and it frets her to think of it. I'm going to ride yonder and try to find what remains of him so ma can go her way in comfort."

Her eyes were big and serious. "It is a fine thing," she said, "but it will do your ma no good to have your own bones unburied on some fool mountain! I wish I could talk to your ma! I'd speak to her! I'd tell her what she's doing!"

"It was not her idea that we ride out and look," I said. "It was ours. But it is a small thing we can do to comfort her."

She put her hand up to me and touched me gentle on the sleeves. "Tell? Do ride careful, now, and when you're back, will you come calling?"

"I will," I said. "I'll ride by and halloo the house."

"You'll get down and come in!" she flared.

"Dast I? Seems to me I recall ol' Jack Ben was some hand with the rock salt when the boys come a-courtin' around."

She flushed. "He never shot at you, did he? You don't look like you caught much salt, the way you set that saddle! If pa'd shot you, you'd still be ridin' high in your stirrups!"

"I never came around," I said simply. "I didn't reckon there was much point in it." I blushed my ownself. "I never was much hand to court, Nell Trelawney, I never quite got the feel of it. Now if it was somethin' I could catch with a rope, I'd--"

"Oh, go along with you!" She stepped back, looking up at me, disgusted maybe. I never was much hand at readin' the faces of womenfolks, nor understandin' their ways. I go at 'em too gentlelike, I suspect. Sometimes it's better to use the rawhide manner.

Anyway, when I turned in the saddle she lifted a hand at me, and I got to thinking maybe I should fetch up to her door when my way led down the mountain again.

The trail I wanted was best found riding out of Animas City, but I figured there was no point in showin' everybody what was on my mind, so instead of taking off up Junction Creek I went up Lightner Creek and found my way by game trails over to where Ruby Gulch opens into Junction.

It was mighty pretty country, forest and mountain and a trickle of water here and there, some of them good-sized streams. I scrambled my horses up a slope onto a point of the mountain that gave me a sight of country to see over. It was open a mite, there on the point, backed up with scattered aspen and then a thick stand that climbed up the point behind.

There was a place just back of the point where a big old spruce had been torn up by the wind. Where its roots pulled free of the soil there was a kind of hollow where the grass had begun to grow. In the grass where no trees grew, I picketed the horses, stripped the gear from them, and went about putting together a mite of fire. The wood I chose was dry, and it burned with almost no smoke, and after I'd eaten I set on the point between two trees where the branches hung low and shadowed me.

For over an hour I just set there, a-listening to the evening. There was sunlight on the mountain across from me, but it was high up, toward the crest of the ridge. There was stillness in the canyon below, and a marvelous coolness coming up.

Somewhere an owl spoke his question to the evening, and the aspen leaves hung as still as you'll ever see them, for they move most of the time.

It was a mighty fine thing setting there getting the feel of the night, a kind of stillness like you never felt anywhere else but in the far-off wilderness.

There was no vanity here, nor greed, there was only a kind of quietness, and the thought came upon me that maybe this was how pa wanted to go, out on some rocky ledge with the whole world falling away before him, a gun in his hand, or a knife--the love of the world in his guts and the going out of it like an old wolf goes, teeth bared to his enemies.

I never was much to mind where my bones would lie once the good Lord had taken my soul. I had a feeling maybe I'd like to leave myself upon the mountains, my spirit free to lean against the wind.

Death never spent time in my thoughts, for where a man is there is no death, and when death is there a man is gone, or the image of him. Sometimes I think a man walks many lives like he does trails. I recall a man in a cow camp who was a-reading to us about some old battle the Greeks had fought a time long ago, and suddenly I was all asweat and my breath was coming hard, and I could feel a knife turning in my guts.

The man looked at me and lowered the book and said, "I did not know I read so well, Sackett."

"You read mighty well," I said. "It's like I was there."

"Maybe you were, Tell, maybe you were."

Well, I don't know about that, but the shadows came down the canyon and the trees lost themselves in it, crowding all together until they were like one big darkness.

And then I heard in the darkness a faint chink of metal on stone.

So ... after all, I was not alone. Something, somebody was out there.

The butt of my gun felt cool in my fist. I did not draw my piece; I just sat there, listening. There was no further sound, and, softly as a cat walks, I went from there and back to my camp.

My fire was down to coals.

I brought the horses in closer, picketing one on either side of me, and then I went to sleep. Nothing, man or beast, would come near without a warning from them, and I was a light sleeper.

Once, in the night, awakened by some small sound, I lay for a time. Overhead I saw a great horned owl go sweeping down some mysterious channel of the night, piloted by I know not what lust, what urge, what hidden drive. Was it simply that, like me, he loved the forest night and liked to curve his velvety paths among the dark columns of the spruce?

I am one with these creatures of the night and of the high places. Like them I love the coolness, the nearness of the stars, the sudden outthrusts of rock that fall off into the unbelievable vastness below.

Like them, sometimes I think I have no sense of time, no knowledge of years, only the changing of seasons but not the counting of them.

And then I was asleep again and awake with the faint grayness of the morning.

Out of the blankets, I glanced at the dead coals. No fire this morning, no smell of smoke for them if they hadn't got the smell last night. Hat on first, like any good cowhand, then boots, and then the easy, practiced flip of the gun belt about my waist. Stamping to settle feet into boots, saddling up, loading the gear without sound, spreading the fire. It had left no coals, burning down to the softest of gray ashes.

A few minutes to smooth out the earth where my boots left tracks, a scuffing up of trampled grass. A good tracker would know there'd been a camp, but time would be needed to tell who was there or how many. In the saddle then, and riding between the trees to the north.

Where Heffernan Gulch came into Junction Creek there was a bend in the canyon of Junction that shielded me from downstream observation, so I took advantage to find my way across Junction and up the trail along Heffernan Gulch.

Almost at once I saw it. A deep cut in an aspen, a notch cut with an axe--not a blaze--pa never liked the glaring white of a new blaze. "If you want to follow my trail, boy," he used to tell me, "you've got to look sharp."

It was his notch, and to make it sure, another one fifty feet along, "All right, Ap," I said, "this is the trail. This is the one we've been looking for."

Ap's ears flickered around, then ahead, pricked, interested. We walked on.

Occasionally I glanced back. As far as I could see there was nothing. Yet what might be sheltered under those trees?

There was one more notch on that trail, and I came near to missing it. The tree was big and old, a spruce, and it was tumbled on its side at the trail's edge. A casual glance caught the old notch there ... and after that there were no more trees.

The trail showed no recent signs of use. Rocks had rumbled down from the face of the mountain, but there had been no big slides. The appaloosa picked his way delicately over the fallen rock, the buckskin following.

The trail grew steeper. Far above I could see the outer rim of the cirque that was Cumberland Basin. Above me loomed Snowstorm Peak, more than twelve thousand feet high, and before me and on my left was Cumberland Mountain, nearly as high.

Both mountains were bare and cold, towering a thousand feet above timberline, their flanks still flecked with patches of snow or long streamers of it that lay in crevices or cracks.

Turning up the collar of my jacket, I hunched my shoulders against the cold wind. The trail was narrow, a drop of hundreds of feet if a hoof should slip.

Here and there were patches of ice--dark, old ice, and old snow as well.

In places, my knee rubbed the inner wall of rocks. Further along, the mountain slanted steeply away, but here it fell sheer from the trail to a long, steep talus slope that ended finally in the tree line, a ragged rank of stiff and noble trees making a bold stand against the destruction that hung over them.

Glancing back, I caught a movement. A rider came out of the trees far below me, and then another and another.

They didn't look familiar, and neither did their horses. With my field glasses I could have recognized them, but what was the point? When they caught up, if they did, they would make themselves known, and they'd have a chance to get acquainted with me, too.

Seems to me folks waste a sight of time crossing bridges before they get to them. They clutter their minds with odds and ends that interfere with clear thinking.

Those folks were certainly following me, and it was equally certain they were none of my people. When they caught up there'd likely be trouble, but I wasn't going out hunting it. I was looking for signs of pa.

Far and away on my right lay a vast and tumbled mass of distant peaks and forest, bare rock shoved up here and there, high mountain parks and meadows ... magnificent country. Overhead, the sky was impossibly blue and dotted with those white fluffs of cloud that seemed always to float over the La Platas and the San Juans. Trouble coming or not, this was great country, a man's country.