“Fine,” the deputy panted. “Just a little winded.” Owen squatted down with his back against a giant fish-shaped boulder and accused himself of stupidity for letting Arch come with them in the first place. The deputy grinned wearily, knowing what Owen was thinking.
“I'll get my second wind in a minute, Owen. I'll try not to cause any more trouble.”
Owen felt his face go warm, and he did not know what to say. He nodded. “Sure, Arch.”
But he knew that it had been a mistake. Arch's great experience and proven courage could have been a tremendous asset; but now that they were afoot in this wild country, it was a different story. This was work for strong, young men like Dunc Lester, and Owen felt the muscles of his own legs quiver with the unaccustomed strain of the climb. He smiled wryly to himself. I too am an old man, he thought. Oh, not so old as Arch Deland, but too old for the job I've cut out for myself.
And he looked beyond the tall green timber to the boulder-strewn peaks that lay before them, and once again he felt that nervous little ripple go up his back.
They rested there on the hillside for several minutes and then shouldered their packs once more, casting humpbacked shadows on the ground, and started down toward the umbrella of forest in the valley.
When they had covered about half the distance to the timber, Owen came suddenly alert as the mournful, chopped howl of a coyote rose up beyond a distant hill. Owen shot an uneasy glance at Deland, and the deputy understood. It was not a common thing to hear a coyote in this country. Wolves, yes, but the coyote usually preferred the plains below, the sloughs and washes of the prairies.
Then Owen noticed that Dunc Lester's hard young face seemed even harder than usual. “That's a sentry from one of Ike's outposts,” he said quickly. They listened again and the sound seemed to come from the north and a bit to the east, where a rock-strewn chain of peaks rose up slightly above the surrounding hills.
“Do you know that country, Dunc?”
The boy shrugged. “Killer Ridge, it's called, but I've never been there. Nothing up there but boulders and rocks and maybe a little scrub oak and spruce.”
“How about caves?”
Dunc raked the entire chain with a glance. “There's caves and tunnels all over these hills, and I guess Killer's got them too.”
Arch Deland said, “Could that coyote call have been Gabe Tanis giving the signal to one of Ike's sentries?”
Dunc nodded. “I'd bet on it. It won't be long before Ike has the gang out lookin' for us.”
Once more they started their dangerous descent, and this time Dunc carried Deland's rifle as well as his own shotgun. Owen saw that they were going to enter the timber several hundred yards below the trace that Gabe Tanis had taken, which made him breathe a bit easier. If that was the trail the gang used, he'd just as soon wait a while before exploring it further.
Once in the green, clean-smelling stand of pine, the three felt more at ease. They found a green mossy clearing deeper in the woods, and from this place they could see most of the valley and the rocky slope they had descended. Here they dropped their packs and sprawled in the dark shade, gasping for breath.
Owen was struck by the sorry sight they made. But this was the game as it had to be played, as the wolf played it, as he had played it himself many times. Three men could not possibly meet the Brunners head on in battle, and more men would scatter the gang and the game would be lost. There was just one way to take Ike Brunner, and that was to isolate him from his men and take him alone. It was not a good system, for it eliminated plans, and too often the hunter became the hunted, as they were now. But it was the only system possible when the hunters were few and the hunted many. And by this system a small handful of government marshals had managed to keep control of the entire Indian Territory for almost eighty years, and men like Owen Toller and Arch Deland knew its strength as well as its weakness.
So now they waited. And they watched the valley below and after a while they heard the clatter of hoofs and the clang of iron shoes against the rocks, and soon a cluster of horsemen broke into the open where Gabe Tanis had entered the woods.
They did not look like much, these horsemen. Most of them were kids near Dunc Lester's age, with a scattering of bitter-faced old-timers almost as old as Arch Deland. Some of them wore homespun, which was becoming more and more rare in this new state, but most of them wore bib overalls and hickory shirts and heavy sodbuster shoes. They were dirty and patched and ragged and did not look like much of an army, despite a formidable array of shotguns and rifles and pistols..
But you could not judge an army by its dress. Lee's Virginians had fought in bare feet and rags. The Quahada Comanches wore breechclouts and feathers, but Custer had called them the finest light cavalry in the world.
So Owen did not judge these horsemen by their clothing, but by their faces and what he saw written in their eyes. He did not like what he saw there. Anger and hopelessness and violence. Owen had seen that look before, but at first he could not remember where.
Then his memory took him back all the way to his childhood, and he knew where he had seen that look before. His father had been a trader at Camp Supply and Owen had been very young. But he still remembered those times oftrouble, when the Plains Indians began to feel the white man's civilization closing tighter and tighter around them, and they rebelled.
Of course, Owen hadn't understood it at the time, but he could still see that helpless anger in the eyes of Comanches and Kiowas and Cheyennes who came to the post to trade. It was the same look he saw now in the faces of these hillpeople, and the look that he had seen more than once in Dunc Lester's eyes.
He felt that he understood these people better. For perhaps these people were the last of the rugged individualists, outlasting the Indians even, but now they saw that they could not hold back the outsiders forever. Perhaps they knew they could not win, which would explain the hopelessness of their anger. But that would not stop them from fighting.
Owen continued to search the distant faces of the horsemen as more of them came out of the timber, and now he recognized the gangly figure of Gabe Tanis, who was talking excitedly to a tall, big-boned man astride a gawdy paint. Dunc Lester made an abrupt, animal-like sound.
“There he is!”
“Ike Brunner?”
“The one talkin' to Gabe.”
Arch Deland had watched quietly, saying nothing. Now he turned to Owen. “He's got quite an army with him. Eighteen men, by my count.”
“Eighteen good men,” Dunc said tightly, to no one in particular. Then, to Owen, “Ike must of sent out the call. Usually he doesn't keep more'n six or eight men at the hideout.” He wiped his hand across his mouth. “So I guess they knew all about us, even before Gabe flushed us.”
Now Tanis was pointing up at the slope where they had been a short time ago, and Ike Brunner kneed his paint to the head of the column. Arch Deland was squinting thoughtfully over the sights of his carbine. “The range is too much,” he said regretfully. “If I had a long barrel it would be easy.”
“It's just as well,” Owen grunted. “We couldn't handle all of them.”
Soon the horsemen had disappeared on the other side of the slope and Owen knew that they would soon find the dead saddle animal and pack horse and figure out what had happened. He stood up wearily and lifted his pack. “We'd better move back into the timber. I doubt if they'll think to look in this direction for a while.”