Sidewinder (12 page)

“You better not look cute to those Indian squaws,” she said, pulling away from him to look up into his eyes.

“Don’t call them squaws. They’re women.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she said.

“Aw, darlin’, you don’t have to worry about that. I’m as faithful as Curly when it comes to you.”

“Curly is faithful to whoever gives him food.”

“See?” he said, and she crinkled her nose and cocked her head, gave him a teasing look.

“You be careful, Brad, you hear?”

“I’ll be back before you know it. Before you even miss me.”

“I miss you already,” she said, and broke away to show him what she had packed. The saddlebags lay on the divan. They were bulging. Two wooden canteens lay against them.

“There’s food for three days, coffee, a pot, two tin cups, dried beef, cooked pinto beans, bread, some apples, and other stuff you might like.”

“Thanks, honey. I appreciate it.”

“I wish I were going with you,” she said.

“Don’t make it any worse than it is, Felicity. It’s hard leaving you like this. But I’ll bring back gold, and we’ll go to town and throw a foofaraw.”

“Promise?”

“Cross my heart,” he said.

They kissed, and he slung the saddlebags over his shoulder and grabbed the leather straps of the canteens. She walked out the door with him, blocked Curly from leaving, and stood on the porch looking down at him as he put the saddlebags in back of the pommel of his saddle and slung the canteens from his saddle horn, draping one on each side of Ginger. He mounted and raised a hand in farewell, turned his horse toward the corral.

“Keep an eye peeled,” he said as he rode off, and wanted to bite his lip. The woman was worried enough, he thought, without him making it worse.

Julio met Brad at the corral. His saddlebags were bulging, too.

“Ready?” Brad said.

“
Listo
,” Julio replied.

“Let’s take ’em out.”

Carlos was there at the pole gate, and Brad motioned for him to pull the gate open to let the cows out. Then he went inside on foot and shooed them all out to the waiting horsemen.

After a few attempts by the cattle to break ranks and return to the main herd, the two men got the cows moving up to the timber and out of sight of the herd.

Brad knew where to find the first canyon and the trail that Wading Crow had drawn for him. The canyon curved from east to west, then opened to the trail to the north. He had the map vividly in his mind. He would go over it again and again on the drive, seeing Wading Crow with his stick, marking the trails and the landmarks.

They made a good ten miles that day through rugged country. Brad enjoyed the open sky and the mountains, the clean fresh air, the scent of pines, and an occasional jet of bear scat that spooked the horses and the cattle. He thought he saw a cougar on the rimrock but could not tell if it was shadow or substance. It was great country, and he loved every mile of it.

The cattle were trailwise at the end of the first day, and they stopped by a marked spring before sunset. The spring was right where Wading Crow had said it would be, and there was a small niche in the limestone bluff where the cattle could bed down. They stretched rope between two scrub pines that flanked the depression and laid out their bedrolls right in front of the ropes.

Julio built a fire. There were already stones in a circle and burned ground, plenty of squaw wood and downed limbs nearby.

“It’s a fine camp, Julio,” Brad said as they were munching on hardtack, dried beef, and wizened apples.

“Will the others be this good?”

“Shouldn’t have but one or two more.”

“We are heading north?”

“North and a little westerly, maybe.”

“You do not know?”

“I know enough to get us there.”

There was a silence between them for a time. But Brad could see that Julio had something on his mind. The Mexican brought out a plug of tobacco and cut off a piece. He offered the plug and his knife to Brad.

“Don’t mind if I do,” Brad said. He cut off a chew and stuck it in a corner of his mouth. “That coffee boiled yet?”

“It takes long to boil,” Julio said. “It is high here.”

“It’s high everywhere up here in the Rockies.”

“Yes,” Julio agreed.

“Good chaw,” Brad said, and sent a flume of tobacco juice flying toward a rock.

“Do you not have worry about leaving the women and Carlos to watch the ranch?” Julio asked.

“Worry never gets you nowhere.”

“But I have worry.”

“Does it help to worry, Julio?”

“It helps the guilt, I think.”

Brad smiled.

“It grows gray hair, too.”

“Or pulls it out, maybe.”

They both laughed.

“Look, Julio, let’s not talk about what we left back there anymore. The trip is long enough without keeping our minds in two places at once. Let’s just tend to our business, enjoy the ride, and we can break out the whiskey when we get back home. Okay?”

“Okay, if you say so, Brad. Still, I have the worry.”

“Big or small?”

Julio grinned.

“It is a small worry,” he admitted.

“Good. Keep it small. Maybe it will go away.”

Later, Brad said he would take the first watch. Julio went to sleep, and Brad sat there alone, his rifle close at hand. He heard the chorus of wolves far in the distance and marveled at how big the moon was when it rose. He’d had a beautiful sunset to cap the day, and the coffee hadn’t been too bitter.

He tried not to think of Felicity, but that was impossible.

He thought of her. He thought of her until he woke Julio and long before he finally went to sleep.

He missed her, her loving touch, her soft hair, and her dazzling smile. After only one day, he thought.

And he, too, had a small worry.

Early the next morning, shortly after breaking camp, Brad picked up the tracks of the Arapaho. The trail was marred with travois furrows, unshod hoof marks, blurred but discernible since there had been no rain for more than a week.

“We must be on the right trail,” Julio said.

“You doubted me?”

“You said you had no map.”

“Oh, I have a map, Julio.” He touched a finger to his forehead. “It’s right up here.”

“I hope your memory is long enough to take us back home.”

“It’s supposed to last that long. We’ll see.”

The cattle moved well, with little prodding, and the brindle cow did not try to run off. They left the trail at times to let the cattle graze as they walked, but always kept the trail in sight and close. The cows were a mix of Herefords and other breeds; one or two had longhorn ancestors far back in the family tree. These were shorthorns, of sturdy stock, and Brad knew they would not lose much weight on the short drive.

They made about fifteen miles the second day, which surprised Brad because they were following a circuitous route. From the looks of the trail, he knew it must have been used for centuries by migrating herds of buffalo, mountain men, and native hunters. A surveyor could not have found a better place to build a road through the mountains, and he wondered if it might not have been carved by an ancient river and, for some reason, left to turn dry and barren. He could picture a river running its course down through the mountains, but as he had learned, rivers changed courses, dried up, or went underground.

They crossed small creeks and grassy meadows, surprisingly lush, and Brad lost the travois tracks for a time when they passed through a small moraine strewn with boulders, more evidence that a vigorous river had once flowed through that part of the country. There were mule deer feeding in one of the glens and plenty of animal sign along the way, and once, when he looked at a towering mountain just above the timberline, he saw a Rocky Mountain sheep, a ram with a massive set of horns curled like a war helmet around his head. But always, he found the travvy tracks and knew he was on the right path.

They spent the second night in a grassy sward where the Arapahos had camped. The cattle grazed most of the night, drank at a small spring, and none strayed. That was the thing about a herd, Brad thought, it clung together in fair weather or foul, and as long as it was peaceable, they were content to travel or graze. He was very pleased that such a small bunch would get along so well.

On the third day, Brad and Julio started out early, just before dawn. It was light enough to see the tracks of those who had gone before, but by noon, the tracks faded out. Completely.

“Where do we go now?” Julio asked.

“I still have Wading Crow’s map in my head,” he said.

“But there are no more tracks.”

“Yeah, Julio. It’s as if they all vanished into thin air. But we know better, don’t we?”

They were surrounded by low hills and high mountains just beyond. There was a semblance of a trail there, but it petered out a few yards from where the tracks just disappeared.

Brad rode a wide circle while Julio held the herd, and some distance away from the trail, he saw a fairly fresh stump of a limb high up on a spruce tree. Hard to see. He rode around some more and spotted other slashes where a long branch had been cut from a juniper and another spruce.

He sat there, pondering what it all meant, then finally returned to where Julio was waiting with the ten head of cattle.

“You see that spruce over yonder, Julio?” Brad pointed to a nearby tree, a fully limbed and handsome spruce tree.

“I see it,” Julio said.

“If you were to cut off one of those long branches, what would you have?”

“I do not know, Brad. Just a branch, I think.”

“Or maybe a broom.”

“You mean a broom to sweep the floor with?”

“Or to sweep away tracks in sand and dirt.”

Brad pretended he was sweeping with a broom.

Julio’s face lit up and his eyes widened in their sockets until they looked like oversized marbles.

“That is why the tracks go?”

“I think so. They cut branches and swept away all traces of the travvy and their horses. The ground is as smooth as a hen’s egg, bald as a billiard ball.”

Julio stared at the ground all around him.

“You do not even see the sweeps.”

“No, they did a good job in erasing everything, just somehow left no needle marks on the ground.”

“
Indios
,” Julio said, and crossed himself. “
Diablos, por seguro
.”

“No, just
muy sabio
. Very smart. They don’t want anyone to follow their tracks to their village.”

“Secrets,” Julio said.

“Well, let’s honor their need for secrecy and cut us some spruce bows, tie them to our saddle horns, and sweep away our tracks.”

“That is much work and will delay us.”

“You know what the boy rabbit said to the girl rabbit, Julio?”

“No.”

“He said, ‘This won’t take long, did it?’ And, so, let’s get to it.”

The two men took turns cutting spruce and juniper boughs in another place. Julio cursed as he tried to climb an unclimbable tree, crying out each time a bough struck him in the eye or slapped him on the face. His hands were sticky from sap, and he got the sap on his trousers and his face, his shirt and on his saddle horn. Brad did not fare much better. He thought the Arapahos must have had small, thin boys along to do the cutting, or small trained monkeys.

But they cut six boughs and lashed them together and rode crisscross behind the cattle to remove their tracks. When Brad looked back he could see the marks the limbs made, but he knew the wind would take care of those in time.

Late in the afternoon, they entered a big valley ringed by mountains on one side and tall bluffs on the other. There were game trails through it and a lively creek running its entire length. The cattle wanted to stop and graze, but Brad looked up beyond a grassy promontory and saw a huge granite mountain. At least it looked monolithic. A butte, he thought. Just like Wading Crow had described it.

They drove the cattle up the valley, then up to a wide shelf, then turned toward the massive butte. They rode through timber and avoided the deadfalls. Some of the rocks resembled ancient ruins, moss-covered as they were and clustered with climbing plants that might have been wild vines. He could not tell. But it was an eerie place to be with night coming on and only thin game trails crossing their path. The butte loomed even larger the closer they got to it. Below them, the valley looked serene and uninhabited by game or folk, and then, beyond the trees, a wide, flat plain, rocky and forbidding, stretched all the way to the butte and beyond. There were other limestone bluffs to the right of the lone butte.

As they emerged from the trees, there was a rustling sound, followed by a number of other sounds.

A man appeared before them, on foot, his right hand raised high. He carried a bow with an arrow nocked to his string. He was naked except for a beaded loincloth and beaded moccasins.