Gather My Horses (24 page)

He could think about the practical considerations because he had to, because he was in business and had obligations. But as soon as he let in the additional circumstance of Pence's body being down there, the whole prospect became even less feasible. He did not want to be picking through dead horses, mangled gear, and ruptured flour sacks with a dead man nearby drawing flies. Furthermore, he would make a good target down there, while his saddle horse and pack animals were up here. Putting all these things together, he decided to call it a complete loss and leave things as they were, for someone else to figure out. Meanwhile, he still had goods to deliver.

The men at the Half Moon cow camp did not ask questions, and Fielding did not elaborate. He said he lost two horses with full loads in a canyon the day before, and they said they could get by for a while on what he had come through with. He ate dinner of fried venison with them as his horses rested, and in the early afternoon he started back. That night he camped in the same place as the night before, in a stand of timber about a mile off the trail. He was getting used to not having a fire, and he didn't need to camp near water if he was going to keep the horses tied up all night.

In the morning he got a good start on the day, as he was traveling light and had fewer horses than he did a couple of days earlier. He watered the
stock when he came to a stream, and then he moved on.

At midmorning he came to the spot where he had rested with the horses after the fight with Pence. He stopped this time as well, letting the animals take a breather before he took them on the narrow trail down the mountainside. After a short while, he got them moving again.

His practical tendencies had not let go. For the last two days he had been nagged by a sense that he should try to go down and recover some of his equipment after all. But when he came around a bend in the trail and saw buzzards floating above the chasm, not much more than a stone's throw straight out from the ledge, he chose to ride past without even looking over.

Going down a grade such as this one was slow and tiring, even with light packs. Fielding came out at the bottom in early afternoon, and half a mile farther he found a place where he could take the horses to the creek. The water was backed up with a pool here, as a result of debris from the gorge piling up against the rocks and a fallen log. Waterside bushes grew up out of the damp sand, and green scum lay along the edge of the water. Insects skimmed across the surface, and greenish yellow bee flies buzzed a foot above the slime. The horses drank. Fielding listened for noises out of place but heard none, only the flow of water and the shifting of horses.

He envied the animals for their ability to ignore everything but the moment. He could remember a time, not so long ago, when he, too, could take things a step at a time and not be burdened with
thoughts of what he had come through and what lay ahead. Maybe he could do that again. He did not know. At present he had all too clear a sense that two horses and a man lay bloating in a sunbaked canyon upstream from here, and a boss down in the valley would want to know how things had gone.

Fielding listened again. It was quiet here, sometimes too quiet. He recalled stories of men who stayed too long in the mountains and heard trains. It was something to laugh at in this far country of mules, horses, and shank's ponies. Fielding had been content to haul merchandise he could lift onto a horse's back, and he had been happy to leave the railroad far behind. Trains, as he had heard a few days earlier, brought machinery and pianos so that men could crush rocks and sing in whorehouses. Now here he was in the mountains, where he was supposed to be able to get away from the weight of civilization, and it seemed as if he was packing it right along with him.

Most of the horses had their muzzles up, so he lined them out and got them going again. The travel was easier now, still downhill but not steep. If he made good time, he would have to spend only one night more in the mountains. After that, he would decide what to do with himself and his work.

He pushed on through the afternoon and early evening. Shadows were deepening as he came out of the rock-wall canyon. When the country opened up again, he watered the horses and took them off the trail as before. One more dry camp without fire, one more night sitting up and catching sleep
as it came, did not figure as a great hardship. As a way of life, though, it did not promise much.

The sunlight warmed his face as he started the climb the next morning. The trail was wider here, with timber, rocks, and grass on either side. He knew he would be traveling up and along the ridge of a line of mountains, with plenty of dips and rises. When he came to the last promontory looking out over the plains, he would still have the switchbacks to go down.

The horses moved at a fast walk, and each time he looked back, he saw the dust rising from their passage and floating in their wake. Looking forward, he recognized some places and not others. The trail always looked different going one way than it did on the return, even though he had the habit of looking back at the country as he traveled.

The farther he went along the ridge, the less hospitable the north side of the trail became, as it fell away in rock slides and steep timbered slopes. Water was harder to find up here, as it did not often cross the trail in the form of a stream, but there were places on the mountainsides where water collected in tarns and ponds. He kept an eye out for such watering places, riding from time to time to the edge of the wide back of the mountain and looking down the slope to the south. At midday he found a pool and took the horses there to drink.

Most of the horses had finished drinking, and the sorrel was sloshing water backward with its chin, when Fielding heard a voice in back of him. He turned to see a dark-haired rider who was not
wearing a hat. As the person waved, Fielding realized it was Isabel. He waved for her to come down the hill.

“What a surprise,” he called out as she came near.

“Lucky that I found you.” Her teeth showed as she smiled. “I just happened to look down this way, and I thought it was you with all these packhorses.”

He saw that she was wearing a work shirt and a pair of trousers, and she had a small bag tied onto the back of her saddle. “This is a long ways from home for you,” he said. “More than a day's ride.”

As she climbed down from her horse, she said, “I stayed overnight in Wheatland.”

He gave her a closer look. “What does your father think of that?”

“I don't know. I left him a letter saying I had to get a message to you.”

“Really? What is it?”

The smile faded from her face. “Tom, Leonora told me that she heard Cronin's men were going out to look for you.”

“Well, they found me. At least, two of them did. One of them ought to have made it back by now. Even if he wanted to keep on riding, he would have to turn in his horse.”

She frowned. “Who was that?”

“The sometimes cowpuncher Ray Foote.”

An expression of distaste came over her face. “I heard he went to work for them. What was he doing out here?”

“I think he had an idea of thrashing me.”

“Did he get very far?”

“Not very. After a scuffle, I told him he was in the wrong game. I took his gun from him, to keep us both safe.”

“That's good. And you think he went home?”

“I hope so. He'll do better in his own element. Big man among the punkin rollers. These others play a hard game.”

Her eyebrows tightened. “You said two men came out. Was the other one with him?”

“No, he showed up the next day. He spooked two of my horses over the side of a cliff, I think by throwin' rocks. I lost both of them. Then I believe he wanted to send me over the same way.”

“But he didn't.”

“It was either him or me.” Fielding looked to either side. “I'd think they would have sent someone to look for him by now. That's why I'd like to get out of these mountains today if I can.”

“I haven't seen anyone.”

“Neither have I, until you came along, but it's easy enough for someone to hide out in the timber.” He looked at her horse, which he recognized as one of her father's, and then brought his eyes to meet hers. “How about you? Are you tired, or are you ready to turn around and go right back?”

“It's all right with me,” she said.

“Good. I'll get these fellows lined up. But first, let me give you this extra gun. Don't pull it out unless you're sure you can use it. Do you know how to shoot one?”

She nodded, then watched him as he took the .45 from his saddlebag and put it in hers.

“You can hold this lead rope if you'd like,” he
said. He smiled and added, “First step to makin' you a wrangler.”

Her eyes sparkled as she smiled and took the rope.

He brought the dun horse around and began tying it to the back of the gray horse's packsaddle. “I don't know what to expect,” he said. “Maybe nothing will happen. If something does, you get out of here as fast as you can. One shot, and you light out on a run.”

“Even if you're hurt?”

“Don't stick around and gawk. If someone shoots at me, whether he hits me or not, he's not going to want witnesses.”

“How about your horses?”

He brought the white horse into line and tied it. “I'll worry about them. I've got fewer than I started with anyway.”

“You lost one earlier as well, didn't you?”

“That's right. I'm not doin' well in profit and loss this year, but that doesn't mean as much at the present as getting you and me out of these mountains.” He led the bay horse around.

She winced as she said, “Then I'm just in the way.”

“That's all right. You did what you thought you should. The main thing is, look out for yourself if anything happens.” He turned to fetch the sorrel, but her voice stopped him.

“Tom, I came here because I love you.”

He went to her, took her in his arms, and kissed her. “I love you, too, darling. We just need to get out of here all right.” He kissed her again, then released her and went for the sorrel, which was near
at hand. “I'm going to lead all five of these,” he said as he tied the last horse into place. “If you don't mind, you can ride in back. If the dust gets too thick, you can either sag back or come around up front, but I think the safest place is where you don't have anything behind you.”

“Tom.”

“Yes?”

“When you said it was either him or you—”

He moved his head side to side. “It was their bully, George Pence. He died when he hit the bottom.”

She let out a sigh of relief. “That's good to know. I just wanted to make sure I understood.”

Back on the trail, Fielding moved the string along at a good pace. By now he was used to counting only five horses when he turned in the saddle, but he still saw the empty spaces at the end where the other two horses should be. Isabel rode a ways back, reining her horse from time to time to avoid the thickest dust.

The trail continued going up and down and curving around, according to the lay of the land here on top. Fielding was thinking ahead about the switchbacks, when the trail went around a rock formation on the right and a man stepped forward with a rifle.

At first glance, Fielding thought the man might be a road agent from his method of presenting himself and keeping his face in shadow, but after a couple of seconds Fielding realized that the man was Al Adler, wearing a dark gray shirt instead of his customary white. The brown gloves looked
like part of his body, and the man's whole bearing was sinister.

In the time that it took Fielding to make the recognition, he had stopped his horse and the pack string. He raised his right hand, hoping that Isabel would heed it and not ride around to catch up with him. From the instant he had seen the rifle, he knew there was no good prospect in making a run for it, and now he hoped Isabel would stay out of sight.

Still in the first few seconds, he took in the immediate scene. Adler had stepped out of an enclosure of gray rocks that rose from the trailside and sloped up to a height of about eight feet, leveled off, and rose again to a dome of fifteen to twenty feet. From there it sloped gradually to the ground on the left. The twisted remains of a tree long ago uprooted lay in the foreground, also on Fielding's left, while a ways past it, standing by itself, a dead snag rose about ten feet in the air with one dead branch sticking out like a withered claw. Coming back to Adler, he saw the tops of dark green cedar trees between the first layer of rocks and the dome, which led him to believe there might be a passageway where Adler had been peeping out on the other side.

The packhorses were snuffling and exhaling, and dust was still drifting, when Adler spoke.

“Good afternoon, Fielding.”

“The same to you.” Fielding went to lower his hand.

“Keep your arm up there for a minute.”

“What's the trouble?”

“You are, as if you didn't know.”

“Did your man Foote make it back all right?”

“Don't worry about him.”

“If you're lookin' for Pence, he's farther back in, waitin' for you.”

“I know where he is.”

Fielding doubted what the man said. He wouldn't have had time to go that far and back unless he had left the ranch shortly after Pence did, in which case he would not have come all the way back here to stage this meeting. “If you go there,” said Fielding, “you might want to keep an eye out for his horse. Probably wandering around with a set of broken reins.”

“You don't know everything you think you do,” said Adler. “But it doesn't matter much.”

“You're probably right, on the last point at least. Anything I know, someone else does.”

The tip of the rifle came up a couple of inches. “Like what?”

“Like you say, it doesn't matter much.”