Dunc got tired sitting in one place, and he got up to stretch his legs, walking around in a tight little circle. He looked down at the wooded crags below and shook his head. That dude sheriff in Reunion could scour this country till doomsday and never find the Brunner hideout. Just the same, Ike said the gang was to lay low a while after Bellefront. Except for eight or ten men to guard the cave, everybody was to go home and tend his fields as if nothing had happened.
That's where you had to admit that Ike was smart, whether you liked him or not. He knew when to stop.
But Cal—now there was a different story. Cal was a wild one, Dunc thought. Cal didn't take to these hills the way his brother did; he liked to be among people, especially women.
Dunc shook his head in wonder. If the younger brother ever took hold of this outfit, it wouldn't last a week. And Dunc was getting to the point where he didn't care much, one way or the other. He was thinking that the next time Ike sent out the call, he might get himself laid up with the fever. Taking from the rich and giving to the poor was all right, but there were limits.
He stood for a while, looking down on that dark sea of pine. He glanced at the sun and judged that he still had four hours of watch before Wes Longstreet would relieve him and he could go back to the cave. He began to get impatient and irritable. It seemed a sin and a crime that a man should do nothing in the spring of the year but sit on a hilltop holding a shotgun.
At last he tramped over to the far end of the ridge, and in the distance he could see a thin ribbon of wood smoke rising up from Mort Stringer's chimney. Preacher Stringer, some called him. They said that Mort had been the head of a Baptist mission for the Cherokees once. They also said that Mort had given up preaching to the Indians because he figured the whites needed it more, and maybe he had something there. What Cherokees Dunc had seen were as smart as any white man you'd likely run up against. One of them had figured out an alphabet and started a whole new language, so the story went, and Dunc guessed it was true.
So Mort figured the Cherokees were capable of looking after their own salvation, and he had moved up here to this cabin, where the hills were the wildest, where the woods were the darkest and the crudest, and started up to save the hillfolks. Him and his daughter.
Leah, the girl's name was, but Dunc had never seen her, not being much of a Bible-pounder himself.
Dunc gazed down at that lonely little clearing surrounded by darkness, the bleak little cabin with a mud chimney, and thought to himself that it was a mighty poor place to bring up a girl. Mort's woman had died a few months back, and they said the girl took it hard, not having any womenfolks at all to talk to. Now if I was Mort, Dunc thought idly, I'd stop bothering so much about these hill-folks and get that girl down among some women.
At last he turned and tramped back to his position, sat on a rock, and set himself to wait out the hours for Wes Longstreet.
Almost an hour had passed when Dunc spotted the gray stallion picking its way daintily through the rocks at the bottom of the long slope. He came instantly alert, his shotgun at the ready. Then he thought, Why the hell didn't I bring a rifle? A shotgun's no good at this range!
But then the rider cupped his hands to his mouth and the mournful bark of the coyote hung on the still air. Dunc returned the call and thought, That's Cal Brunner. What does he think he's doin' this far from the cave?
He watched with vague interest as the big gray picked its way to the far side of the slope and disappeared among the trees. Dunc shrugged. Well, he guessed Cal Brunner could do as he pleased... so long as Ike didn't have any objections.
He sat on the rock again and waited, idle thoughts drifting in and out of his mind. He was bored.
Perhaps another hour had passed when the muffled sound of a rifle mushroomed gently in the still of the afternoon. Instantly Dunc was on his feet again, running in the direction of the sound. Then he thought, That shot was too far away. I can't do any good without a horse. He turned and ran back to where his little bay grazed in the sparse grass among the rocks.
He had to take a tortuous, twisting trail down the west side of the hill; plunging headlong down that incline would have been suicide. The shot probably meant nothing, he told himself. Probably it was Cal shooting game. Dunc swore as the little bay stumbled over the rocky trail. Goddamn it, why hadn't Cal warned the outpost if he was going hunting?
When he reached the shelf at, the bottom of the trail, he brought the bay up for a moment, scowling. Here, he thought, was just about where he had seen Cal. Dunc called out the barking signal. The hills were silent.
Dunc kneed the bay to the south, toward a heavy stand of trees, and called out again. There was no answer. He considered the possibility mat a posse might have penetrated this deep into the hills and Cal had run into it, but he dismissed that idea immediately. No posse could have got past the forward outposts without raising a commotion.
Dunc worried this in his mind for a moment. Maybe it was another kind of trouble; maybe Cal had had an accident of some kind. This idea worried him more than the possibility of a posse. Ike would sure be hell to live with if anything happened to that hotheaded brother of his.
After another short pause to orient himself, Dunc put the bay into the woods, beating a slow arc around the base of the hill, keeping in mind the direction from which the shot had come. He was about to call out again when he heard the scamper and clash of steel-shod hoofs on the rocks behind him, and through the woods Dunc glimpsed Ike Brunner's paint mare crashing through the trees toward the sound, and the gang leader's face was twisted and red with rage.
Instinctively Dunc held back, glad that Ike hadn't seen him. When the elder Brunner got that kind of look on his face, he was nobody to fool with. Maybe Ike has taken this as a personal thing, Dunc thought carefully. Maybe I'd better let him take care of it to suit himself.
As Dunc gentled the bay, he could still hear Ike's paint snorting and blowing, pushing through that stand of heavy timber as though it were so much underbrush. There's something queer about this, Dunc thought slowly. Where did Ike come from, anyway? He must have been up there on the hill at the time of the shot, and he sure didn't waste any time getting down there. And from the way he's riding, he must know exactly where he's heading.
Pondering on this, Dunc shook his head. If this was a personal matter, he wanted no part of it. But if it concerned the gang...
He decided that he had better take the chance and move along a little farther. Putting the bay over to the left, he picked up Ike's trail and followed it. It was a steady, treacherous downgrade now, and only after several minutes of riding did Dunc realize that Ike's trail was leading him straight for Mort Stringer's cabin.
Wait a minute, he thought. If Ike and Cal have a fuss with Stringer, that's none of my business.
Dunc was beginning to guess what the trouble might be. He knew Cal, and he had heard that Leah Stringer was a long way from being ugly. Dunc Lester, he told himself, the smartest thing you can do is turn right around and head back for the ridge.
But he didn't turn around. The more he thought about it, the less he liked it, and the more he hoped that he had figured it out all wrong. Getting Mort Stringer turned against them would be the worst thing that could happen. That old man could rile up the hills all the way to the Verdigris, if he ever got his dander up at them.