"We ride into Indian country," Isaac Heath said, "and they'll be many, we'll be few.
Bob, I'll hope you rest easy on the trigger and invite no trouble. I know how you feel about Indians." "I'm no fool, Isaac. I'll invite nothing, but if some Indian should cross my path on the way to the Happy Hunting Ground, I might give him an assist." "We are all on the way," I commented gently. "A man is born beside the road to death.
To die is not so much, it is inevitable. The journey is what matters, and what one does along the way. And it's not that he succeeds or fails, only that he has lived proudly, with honor and respect, then he can die proudly." "It's no wonder we call him Scholar," Kemble said dryly.
Jorge Ulibarri had been standing beyond the fire, and now he spoke. "I think they wait for us." Kemble looked around at him. "Ambush?" "No. Not yet. I think they know a little where the gold is, but not enough. I think they hang back, waiting for us to find it, and when we do, they'll come to take it from us." "He makes a lot of sense," Bob Sandy said. "Boy, when this is all over if you want to ride with me, you can." "Thank you. I must see the se@norita to safety. It is a trust." He glanced at the ground. "Not many men have trusted me. Se@nor Falvey did." He looked around at us, puzzled. "I do not know if I am a man of honor, but he considered me so, and in this case at least, I must be." "Like I said," Bob Sandy said, "anytime you want to ride with me. The offer stands." A brief spatter of rain fell. Wind whipped the leaves and the grass. "We're going to get wet. We might as well get wet movin' as settin'." Ebitt got to his feet, tearing at the last bit of buffalo meat on his stick.
We put out our fire, and left the last of the coals to the rain. I went to my horse and swept the saddle free of water with my palm. Then I put a foot in the stirrup and swung to the saddle.
The others mounted, but we lingered briefly, wanting Talley and Shanagan to be with us.
"They'll foller," Sandy said. "We'd best move." The way led up a draw between low, grassy hills. Before us the land grew rough, off to our right lay a vast sweep of plains, rolling gently away to an horizon lost in cloud. Huge thunderheads bulked high, a tortured dark blue mass that seemed to stir and move, but flat beneath where lightning leaped earthward.
More spattering drops fell, but we rode along, feeling the hard smack of the big drops on our slickers, keeping our guns under cover, fearful of dampened powder. As we moved, all were aware of those who followed, and each in his own mind was assessing the risk to himself and the party.
The draw narrowed, the walls were now steep, tufted with brush and occasional cedars, but craggy with outcroppings of rock. A trickle of water ran down the draw past us, a widening trickle that increased. Heavy rain was falling somewhere ahead of us and the draw became a canyon that narrowed considerably.
Degory Kemble drew rein. "We'd best hunt ourselves a way out of this. If we get caught in a rush of water, we'd be swept away, drowned without a chance." My horse walked forward. "I think I see something ahead," I suggested. "There... back of that boulder." It appeared to be a trail of sorts, mounting the bank, then angling on toward the lip of the canyon.
"We'll be out in the open," Kemble said dubiously.
"Better in the open than drowned," Ebitt said grimly. "Let's try it." The horse I had from Walks-By-night was a good one, so I turned him at once to the bank. He started up, scrambled on the shelving surface, then dug in and got to a place where he could walk. Soon the footing was better, and in a few minutes I had topped out on the lip of the canyon.
The world I faced was wild and strange. Before me was a fairly flat area some hundred yards in width that stretched on ahead for some distance. On the left of it was a steeply rising mountainside covered with pines, and the area before me had scattered pines and a few cedars with a forest of huge, weirdly shaped boulders tumbled from the mountain in some bygone age. From under my hat brim, I studied the terrain as best I could.
Low clouds hung threateningly over the mountains, far down the sides and seeming only yards above my head. Thunder rumbled, and as the riders behind me scrambled up the bank, the rain came down in sheets. Starting my horse, I walked forward, my hand on my pistol butt, expecting anything.
Tufts of grayish cloud hung ghostlike into the space before me; thunder rumbled again. No trail led where we rode and there was no evidence that any living creature had gone before us. We wove single file among the tumbled boulders, isolated trees, or clumps of brush or cedar. What tracks we made would not last long in this downpour, nor was the land over which we rode liable to leave good tracks even without the rain. Yet we had no doubt we would be followed. Without adequate reason, with only an instinctive sense of danger, we had come to realize that he who pursued us was something beyond ordinary, although we had no inkling of who he might be.
Was it Falvey himself? Was it not a man who resembled Lucinda's father, but the father? Had he somehow survived? But if so, why not make himself known to his daughter? Or was there some other thing here? Some hatred, some evil, some ugly thing of which we knew nothing? Did Lucinda know more than she told us?
I think these ideas were reaching all of us. I believe a certain doubt crept into our minds along with apprehension. An unknown enemy is always more of a threat than one known, and this was an enemy whose motives we did not know. Nor could we gauge his strength or his intent.
Bowed under the pounding rain, we moved steadily on, riding not one directly behind another, but a little scattered to leave less of a trail.
Davy Shanagan and Solomon Talley lingered behind, bringing up the rear at a distance of more than a mile. When they joined us at the nooning, they had seen nothing.
Our nooning was where a slide had thrown some logs and brush over a few rocks, making a partial shelter from the rain. Under part of it, we gathered our stock, and under the most solid corner, we ourselves. To anyone less exposed than we, it would not have appeared as shelter, for the great up-ended slabs of rock had simply caught the debris of a minor earthslide, including the trunks and branches of several trees. Yet it was shelter enough to hunch our shoulders against the few drops of rain and to put together a small fire where we made coffee.
One thing I had already learned was that exposure to the elements is a relative thing. The shelter a man demands who lives forever out-of-doors is considerably less than he who is used to four walls and a roof. And this I must say for Lucinda Falvey, she made no complaints, nor did she appear to be less comfortable than any one of us.
We talked less now, chatting a little of the commonplaces of travel, but not going beyond that. I will not say it was only apprehension that sat upon us, although it was there. Each knew we had entered upon a trail whose end must be trouble, serious trouble.
The nooning past, we wasted no time. Warmed by the coffee and still chewing on the jerky we had lunched upon, we moved out once again. This time it was Bob Sandy who fell back, acting as rear guard. The rest of us moved out, more swiftly for the first hour.
The scattered boulders had grown less, the trees thicker. We wove through the slender black columns of the pines, climbing higher as we went forward. Once for several miles we rode across a barren place of exposed sheets of rock, dark with rain, and in places running with a thin film of water. Then we dipped down into thicker forest where at times we rode in relative dryness.