Men with blood on their trail…, Sam told himself, knowing there was a younger man leading the gang these days. That man was the Cheyenne Kid, and he was known to be ruthless. But now the Kid was wounded and bleeding. He’d shot and killed two men, a bank teller and the town sheriff, in Phoebe. The sheriff had managed to put a bullet in the murdering young outlaw before falling dead in the street. Sam had picked up the men’s trail the following day, and he’d been on it ever since.
Sure, they know someone is coming…
Sam drew the barb to a halt at a break in the trail and looked to his left, across the chasm where the fire roared, smoke filling the sky. He took off his left glove and felt the barb’s withers. The horse’s coat was dry—hot to his touch. So was his own left cheek, he thought, raising his palm to his face, feeling the prickliness of his beard stubble, noticing the stiff, scorched sensation along his cheek line, the dryness in the corners of his eyes as he squinted them shut for a second, gauging the heat.
Untying the bandanna from around his neck, Sam used it to fashion a curtain beneath the brim of his sombrero, which draped his left cheek. It would help some, he thought.
“I hope I didn’t lie to you, pard,” he said to the horse, recalling his earlier words to the animal.
He picked up his canteen that hung from his saddle horn, uncapped it, swished a mouthful of water around in his mouth and spit the water out along the left side of horse’s neck. He leaned forward in his saddle and poured a thin stream of water down the horse’s muzzle and along its left side, taking in his own leg and back along its flank. The horse shuddered and chuffed and reached its tongue around to lick at its side.
“That’s all for now,” Sam said.
He capped the canteen and rehung it. All right, it was hot, but he’d expected that, he reminded himself. Three miles ahead of him, give or take, he saw the fired had waned on its push southward. In the wake of the billowing inferno stood a few bare and blackened pine skeletons.
But he and the horse were safe. He had calculated the risk before putting the horse forward onto the trail. Had the wind made a sudden shift and blown straight at them before they’d reached the trail’s halfway point, he would have turned back and raced to the top again before succumbing to the heat. Halfway down the trail, he’d realized there was an end to the fire a few miles to the north—the direction he was headed in. From that point, had the wind changed suddenly, he would have raced down the trail.
Whichever way, they’d make it.
And oddly enough, he thought, owing to the rise of heat, it had been hotter atop the trail than it was here below. Still, it had been risky, said a cautioning voice that often admonished him at times such as these.
Yes, it had, he admitted. But… He let out a breath of relief.
“Life is naught without its risks…,” he quoted to himself.
Who had said that? He shrugged as he nudged the horse forward. He didn’t know. Probably some obscure penny dreadful author who had stood—or had imagined himself to have stood—on just such a trail as this.
He started forward along the lower end of the trail, where he knew the heat would be less intense. As he rode he shook his head. Leave it to men like these to ride into a wildfire, he thought.
Why did they do that…?
But as he asked the question, he had to remind himself that he had followed without hesitation—so closely that he’d had to water both himself and his horse down to keep up his pursuit. What did that say about him? He didn’t want to think about it right now.
He rode on.
Four miles farther down along the chasm trail he felt the heat on his left begin to wane. A mile farther the temperature had subsided enough that he was able to take the bandanna down from his face. Beneath him the rusty barb rode at a stronger gallop. Along their left, beyond the buffer of boulders, dirt and shale, the woodlands lay blackened and ruined, smoke still rising. The smoke was slower now, less intense, but nevertheless engulfed them in a gray, suffocating haze.
Now he had another problem.
He stopped the horse and stepped down from his saddle. He listened to the barb wheeze and choke, its labored breath rattling deep in its lungs.
“Easy, boy,” he said, rubbing the horse’s muzzle. He stepped back to his saddlebags, rummaged a shirt, and shook it out.
He tied the sleeves up around the horse’s head and made a veil of the shirt. The horse resisted a little and whipped its head until the ranger took the canteen and poured water down the horse’s face and threw the shirt onto its parched muzzle. He held the wet shirt in place, letting the animal breath through it. When the horse felt the good of what the ranger was doing and settled, Sam took his hand off its muzzle.
“Good boy…”
He poured water onto his bandanna and tied it across the bridge of his nose. He led the horse forward by its reins, feeling the thickness of the smoke with every step.
“I make it… seven, eight miles to water,” he rasped, as if the winded horse understood his words and took comfort in them.
Three miles farther, he noted that the smoke had let up, enough that he could make out the blue of the sky. Underneath him the horse breathed easier; so did he. Stopping, he took down the warm canteen and lifted the shirt from the horse’s muzzle. He kneeled in front of the horse and took off his sombrero like a man given to a vigil of prayer.
“You need this worse than I do,” he said, pouring the water into the upturned hat.
The horse lowered its muzzle into the sombrero and Sam let the wet shirt fall around the ensemble.
When the horse finished the water and tried chewing at the hat brim for more, Sam stood and pulled his wet sombrero away and placed it atop his head. Canteen in hand, he climbed back into the saddle and gave the horse a tap of his heels. On their left, among boulder rocks and dry washes, antelope, deer, coyote, and an assortment of smaller creatures still skirted in the same direction, slower now that the threat of death inched farther into the distance.
“It’s up to you now,” Sam said to the horse as the barb galloped forward, the air, the ground, and the atmosphere already turning cooler around them.
For the next five miles he gave the barb its head, the barb keeping up a strong, steady pace, moving farther away from the raging fire. With the wind in their faces, even with the lingering odor of pine char and brimstone in the air, Sam felt the horse surge with a renewed energy when the scent of water managed to reach into its nostrils.
In the last few hundred yards he had to rein the barb down to keep it from bolting toward the rock runoff tank lying below a steep hillside to their right. The barb muttered and blew and shook its head in protest; but it followed the ranger’s command.
As the ranger scanned the rock tank from fifty yards, a young bear stood up on its hinds and looked at him and the horse, then dropped and turned away. When he was thirty yards away, Sam saw a panther and two cubs begin to slink back from the water’s edge. Grudgingly, with a large-fanged growl, the big mother cat crept backward to the shelter of boulders as the ranger stepped the horse forward. He noted the upper half of the mother cat’s left ear was missing. Dried blood caked down her neck and shoulder. Mimicking its mother, one of the cubs raised its back toward him and let out a hiss—showing its small and helpless fangs. The ranger smiled sadly, nudging his horse forward.