“I don’t know, but it had to be something pretty bad, probably illegal.”
“Madness,” Juan Pablo muttered.
Sam turned his horse.
“I want to take a closer look at the place where those wagon tracks stop.”
He rode back to the spot and dismounted, being careful not to disturb any marks he might find on the ground. As he walked slowly back and forth, his keen eyes searched for anything out of the ordinary.
After a few moments, he hunkered on his heels to get an even closer look at an area a short distance off to the side of the wagon tracks.
“Did you find something?” Juan Pablo asked.
“Maybe.” Sam pointed a finger. “Right here, the corner of something has gouged a little place in the dirt. There’s a line leading away from it.” His finger traced the faint mark on the ground. “There’s another corner mark, about eight feet away.” Sam moved around. “And another line in the dirt where the sharp edge of something was sitting. It goes to a third corner ... and back along there to a fourth one ...”
Sam looked up at Juan Pablo, who hadn’t dismounted.
“Somebody brought a crate of some sort out here on that wagon, unloaded it, and set it on the ground here. The crate, or what was inside it, was heavy enough to leave those marks.”
“A crate,” Juan Pablo repeated. He sounded skeptical. “What sort of crate?”
“Well, there’s no way of knowing how deep it was, but we can tell that it was about two feet wide and eight feet long.”
Juan Pablo shook his head.
“Is that supposed to mean something?”
“Not to you, maybe,” Sam said. “But to me that sounds an awful lot like a coffin.”
Chapter 11
“The box you white men bury your dead in?” Juan Pablo asked. He sounded slightly disgusted. The Navajo did not enclose the bodies of their dead in boxes.
“That’s right.”
“There is no grave here.” Juan Pablo pointed at the ground. “No one has dug in this dirt. We would be able to tell.”
“You’re right. Maybe it wasn’t a coffin. But it was sure shaped like one.”
“None of this makes sense,” the warrior said.
“It will, sooner or later. Once I find the men who tried to kill me and Matt.”
“You thought that some enemy might have sent them after you. Now, according to what we have found, that is not what happened. You and your friend were shot at simply because you rode along here at the wrong time.”
“That’s the way it looks,” Sam admitted.
“Then why seek them out?” Juan Pablo wanted to know. “It had nothing to do with you. You and the one called Matt still live. Why not return to the canyon, wait until he is fit to travel, and ride on? Why search for the men who shot at you?”
“Because I don’t like it when somebody tries to kill me,” Sam said. “Besides, if they were that worried about somebody seeing them, they were up to no good. They need to be stopped.”
“Why?” Juan Pablo sounded genuinely puzzled.
“Because they might hurt somebody else.”
From the warrior’s expression, it was obvious he thought Sam was completely loco.
“Look, you can go back,” Sam went on. “I never expected you to come this far with me. I’ll handle things from here on out.”
“You are being foolish.”
“Maybe, but it’s my choice to make, isn’t it?”
Juan Pablo scowled.
“If you die, what will happen to the man in my hogan?”
“If I don’t come back, as soon as Matt has recovered he’ll come looking for me. And if they’ve put me under, he’ll avenge my death. You don’t have to worry about being stuck with Matt.”
“Do what you want,” Juan Pablo snapped. “I am going back.”
He stalked over to his pony, leaped on the animal’s back, and galloped off, soon vanishing except for a thin pillar of dust that rose in the west.
Sam was glad to see him go. He was glad for Juan
Pablo’s help, but the warrior wasn’t the best company in the world.
Several hours of daylight were left. That was enough time for Sam to cover some of the ground between here and Flat Rock.
He rode back to the arroyo and picked up the trail there. He could have followed the wagon tracks, but there was still a slim possibility that the wagon and its escort weren’t the same bunch that had jumped him and Matt.
He hadn’t gone more than half a mile, though, when the two trails merged. The men who had fled from the battle at the arroyo had rejoined the wagon, and all of them had headed southeast toward the settlement called Flat Rock.
Sam’s eyes constantly searched the barren landscape around him as he followed the tracks. He didn’t expect to run into an ambush ... but he and Matt hadn’t been expecting the one several days earlier, either. Out here on the frontier, it was always a good idea to be alert.
From time to time, Sam even checked behind him to make sure Juan Pablo hadn’t changed his mind and started following him. He didn’t know of any reason the Navajo warrior would do that, other than sheer contrariness, which Juan Pablo seemed to have in abundance.
The trail didn’t deviate much from its southeastward course, just enough now and then to avoid natural obstacles, like the scattered red rock mesas and stone chimneys that thrust up from the plains around them.
From time to time Sam came to narrow creeks that were little more than trickles, but in this dry, dusty land, that was enough water to cause lines of green where mesquites and stunted cottonwoods grew on the banks. The countryside wasn’t what anybody would call pretty, but Sam had been in worse places.
When the sun was touching the western horizon behind him, he began looking for a place to make camp. He settled for a place beside one of those narrow streams, so he and his horse would have water and he could refill his canteens.
Quickly, he picketed and unsaddled his horse, then gathered buffalo chips and used them to fuel a small fire just big enough to boil some coffee.
As soon as he’d done that, he scooped sand on the flames to extinguish them and sat back to make a meager supper on the venison and dried corn he’d brought from the Navajo canyon.
When Sam had finished eating, he stood up and plucked a large handful of bean pods from the mesquites. He scattered them around the area where he intended to spread his blankets.
If anyone approached those blankets in the darkness, they would either step on the pods, causing them to crunch under the skulker’s boots, or kick them and set the beans to rattling. Either way, the noise would serve as a warning.
He spread the blankets and set his saddle where he could use it as a pillow, then placed his hat on the saddle. Then he took his Winchester and stepped across the creek. It was narrow enough that he didn’t even get his boots wet.
He walked along the stream for about fifty yards to a place where the bank had caved in some and formed a little hollow. After poking in that space with the rifle barrel to make sure no rattlers were lurking in it, Sam settled down with his back in the hollow. He could sleep sitting up when he had to, and tonight his gut told him that might be a good idea.
The heat of the day lingered as night fell, although it would cool off some before morning. Sam’s eyelids grew heavy as he sat there with the Winchester across his lap. He let himself doze off. He knew there was probably no need for so much caution, but better to be careful than dead.
When he woke up, sometime far in the night, at first he didn’t hear anything and wondered what had roused him from slumber. A couple of seconds later, mesquite pods rattled. There was no wind, so he knew they weren’t swaying on the trees.
That was confirmed an instant later when a man’s voice ripped out a curse and ordered, “Ventilate him!”
Six-guns began to roar. Sam leaned forward as he saw orange flashes stab from the muzzles of two revolvers. He knew they were pouring lead into his blankets, saddle, and hat, and he wasn’t happy about the damage they’d be doing to those items.