He spurred the horse into motion and as it walked up the slope, he glanced behind him. Sure enough, the pine tree limbs he’d tied to the horse’s tail were dragging along, smoothing over the prints the horse was making in the snow. It wasn’t perfect, and if the men chasing him had a good tracker along, they could still follow him. But to see and follow the tracks, the tracker would have to walk—they couldn’t be seen from horseback. This would slow their chase considerably, and for every minute they delayed, the high winds of the High Lonesome were making his tracks that much harder to follow.
He moved farther and farther up the slope, wrapping his blanket around his shoulders as the temperature got colder and colder the higher he went. He glanced upward and smiled to see dense, dark clouds again forming around the distant peaks, whipped around and around by the high winds up on top of the mountain. He knew this meant more early winter storms were on the way, along with temperatures many degrees below zero.
“We’ll see how those boys like mountain weather,” he said to the back of the horse’s head as they slowly ascended toward the snow-covered peaks above them.
Several miles away, Cletus got to his feet as his men finished their noon meal. He moved over next to where the horses were tied and found Jason Biggs standing there, a pair of binoculars to his eyes.
“You see anything, Jason?” he asked as he began to build himself a cigarette.
“Couple’a elk an’ a bear, but nothin’ that looked like a rider on horseback.” He hesitated, and then he added, “I did see what looked like a thin plume of smoke, but with the winds up there it was hard to tell.”
Cletus put a match to his cigarette and nodded his head through the smoke. “Yeah, there’s just too many trees up there. A hundred men could be ridin’ around up there and if they was careful, we wouldn’t see nothin’ from down here in the flats.”
Biggs turned to him. “So, you ready to go upland an’ get us a son of a bitch?” he asked, still angry over the death of his friend Charley Blake.
Cletus nodded. “Yeah, I guess so. I was kind’a hoping Mac would’a been back from talking to Angus, but we can’t wait any longer if we want’a get up the side of that mountain ’fore dark.”
“Good, ’cause I’m itchin’ to get that sumbitch in my sights.”
Cletus put his hand on Biggs’s shoulder. “Jason, you know we’re going up there to capture Jensen, not assassinate him, don’t you?”
Biggs showed his teeth, but it was more a grimace than a real smile. “You do what you got to do, Clete, an’ I’ll do the same.”
Cletus decided to let it drop. He too was pretty pissed off about Blake, though he could understand why Jensen had done what he’d done. As he’d told Sarah, a man running for his life will do just about anything he has to in order to survive.
Cletus got his men saddled up and headed toward the steep slopes of the mountain in the distance. Like Smoke, he too noticed the clouds whipping around the peaks, and knew they were going to be in for some rough weather before too long.
When the group came to the trail leading up into the forest on the side of the slope, Cletus stopped them across the stream from a rotting one-room log cabin that looked like it hadn’t been used for years.
“Jimmy,” he said, pointing to Jimmy Corbett, “I want you to wait over there by that cabin for Mac Macklin to get here. He’ll probably have some more men from Mr. MacDougal, an’ I want you to bring ‘em on up after us when they get here.”
“Yes, sir,” Jimmy said, jerking his horse’s head to the side and riding toward the shallow, ice-encrusted stream.
“And Jimmy . . . ”
“Yeah, Boss?” the boy said, looking back over his shoulder to see what Cletus wanted.
“You’d better fire a couple of shots when you get close to let us know it’s you coming.” Cletus smiled. “I figure we got more’n a few itchy trigger fingers in this group, and you wouldn’t want to sneak up on none of ‘em.”
Jimmy grinned and touched the brim of his hat as he rode into the stream and over toward the log cabin.
“We gonna sit here all day jawin’ or we gonna go up there and git Jensen?” Jason Biggs called from the front of the group of men, where he sat impatiently in his saddle.
Cletus clenched his teeth and walked his horse over next to Biggs’s without answering.
He leaned over to put his face close to Biggs’s and said in a low voice, “You open your pie-hole like that at me one more time, Jason, an’ we’re gonna see who the best man with a gun is! You hear me boy?” he asked, his face red and his voice harsh. His flat, dangerous eyes let Biggs know he wasn’t kidding in what he said.
“Uh, I didn’t mean nothin’ by what I said, Clete, you know that,” Biggs answered, his eyes looking down and not meeting Cletus’s.
“Remember, Jason, one more time is all it’s gonna take. I won’t remind you again.”
“Yes, sir.”
As Cletus rode off, his back turned, Biggs let his hand fall to the butt of his pistol. No one could talk to him like that and get away with it.
Then he looked around at the men gathered nearby. He knew they’d blow him out of the saddle if he shot Cletus, so he relaxed and kicked his horse into following Cletus’s. There’d be plenty of time later for Clete to have an accident.
TWENTY-SIX
Sheriff Wally Tupper handed the dally rope he had attached to the two pack animals behind him to Jack Dogget, one of the men riding with Angus MacDougal.
“Here’s your dynamite and gunpowder and extra shells, Angus,” he said, trying as hard as he could to keep his anger out of his voice.
Angus MacDougal tipped his head. “Come on with us, Wally,” he said, though this time it was more in the way of an offer instead of an order. “I promise you it’s gonna be fun. After all, hunting a man is much more exciting than hunting elk or bear, and I’m offering a bonus of five hundred dollars to the man who catches that son of a bitch.”
Wally shook his head. “No, thanks, Angus. I think I’ll stay here.”
Angus stared at him, his eyes narrowing. “I get the feeling you don’t think much of what I’m doing, Wally. Am I right?”
Wally nodded. “Yep, you’re right as rain, Angus. I told you, Jensen ain’t done nothing wrong—leastways nothing against the law. Everybody there that day says he fired in self-defense—that Johnny prodded him and drew on him without any provocation.”
“Bullshit!” Angus screamed, making his horse stomp and crow hop a time or two. “He killed my boy, and he’s going to pay for it!” Angus’s face was beet red and his eyes were wide and full of madness. He looked like he was about to have a stroke.
Wally shook his head sadly. “Maybe he did kill him, Angus, but Johnny wasn’t no boy. He was a growed man who shot his mouth off and got himself killed for drawing on the wrong man at the wrong time. It was bound to happen sooner or later, and if it hadn’t have been Jensen, it would’ve been somebody else.”
“You saying my boy deserved to get killed, Wally?” Angus asked, his voice suddenly low and dangerous but the madness still in his eyes.
Wally sat up straighter in the saddle, tired of being a whipping boy for this crazy old man. “Yeah, I guess that’s what I am saying, Angus, and it’s long past time someone told you like it is.”
Angus smiled grimly. “This is a dangerous time to try and grow a backbone, Wally.”
“Maybe, Angus, but I’ll tell you this straight. If you go up in those mountains and kill Jensen, that’s your business ‘cause it’s out of my jurisdiction. But if you bring him back here and do it, then I’ll see that you hang for it.”