The Savage Trail (19 page)

“I agree,” Ben said.

“We can do two things, the way I see it. We can keep followingthat shod horse and the two Indians with it. I'm pretty sure those two other sets of tracks are carrying Indians, not rifles. The hoof marks are not deep enough. So those three men are more dangerous. They're not protecting their stolen goods. They can ride away from us if we catch up to them. Or they can swarm over us and shoot us dead if each one comes at us from a different direction.”

“You're scarin' the hell out of me, Johnny.”

“I know. I'm scared, too. Just working all this out in my mind.”

“Well, go on then. What are we goin' to do?”

“The Indians and the man on the shod horse, who might be a soldier, are about two hours ahead of us. So we can track them for nearly two hours, if they don't ride on solid rock. Gives us time to maybe find out who's behind us.”

“How do you expect to do that?” Ben asked.

“I don't know if those boys behind us are trackers, but I expectthey are.”

“So?”

“My idea is to ride for another hour and a half, then drop off my horse at a good spot and lie in wait. You'd take Gent and go on, leaving our two sets of tracks.”

“I don't much like that idea. You don't know how many men are maybe following us and they might shoot you dead.”

“If they wanted to kill us, they would already have jumped us, Ben.”

Ben sighed.

“You got a point, John. So you wait for them. You see them. Then what?”

“If they're soldiers, sent after us just to see where we go, I'll make them an offer.”

“Yeah? What offer?”

“I'll ask them to join us.”

“What?”

“Why not? Colonel Ward wants his rifles back. And he wants Hobart. We both have the same aim, don't you think?”

“I think you're speculatin' a mite too much, Johnny.”

“I might be at that.”

“But your daddy used to say, ‘a plan is better'n no plan at all.' ”

“He did say that. So what do you think? You like my idea?”

“Not much,” Ben said.

“Good, that's what we'll do then.”

John grinned. Ben gave him a sour look.

The moon bathed their faces in an eerie light. Their eyes were hollow pits. Shadows took weight and years from Ben's face, hollowed John's visage to a gaunt and ghostly image. They stood there in the silence for several seconds.

“Mount up, Ben. Let's follow these tracks.”

Both men climbed back into their saddles.

John led the way, following three sets of horse tracks. One set was shod, the others, smaller and unshod. Indian ponies. The horses were walking, not running, and when John looked off in the distance, the mountains were closer, dark hulks that loomed under snowcapped peaks that stood like dim beacons in the sky, nearly as bright as the moon.

They rode for an hour. John kept his bearings, wondering if the tracks would veer, start making a circle to join up with the others. But in that hour the tracks headed straight for the mountains. And the mountains grew larger and darker. Clouds drifted over the moon, floated above them, shifting the light, making his task more difficult each time it happened.

Ben and John chewed on jerky and hardtack and drank waterfrom their canteens. Not at the same time, but at alternate intervals. This was John's idea and Ben agreed. One of them had to be ready to shoot or sound an alarm. They were not gaining ground on their quarry, but holding their own, staying two hours behind.

A few minutes later, John drew in hard on his reins. Gent stopped. Ben pulled up alongside him and stopped his horse. He had been nodding in the saddle, trying to stay awake.

“Yeah? How come you're stopping?” Ben asked.

John pointed to the ground.

Ben leaned over, looked where John was pointing.

“I don't see nothin',” Ben said.

“No. Neither do I.”

“What do you mean, Johnny?”

“I mean, no more tracks.”

Both men stared down at bare, unmarked ground. The horse tracks had vanished, suddenly, it seemed. They both straightenedup and looked all around. The moon stood high overhead, shining bright as polished marble. The land lay in shadow, not a tall silhouette to be seen.

It seemed to John as if the world had gone dead. There wasn't a sound. There was no movement. The earth stood still, empty, barren of all life save their own. Ben shivered involuntarily.

John closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them, to make sure he wasn't dreaming.

He knew, then, they had been tricked. They were not standingon bare rock. But there were no more tracks.

Where had the riders gone? Turned into phantoms? Plucked from the earth by some mysterious force or being?

For a moment, he wondered if he had been addled by the moonlight. He had heard of such things as a boy. Lunacy, wasn't that what they called it? He looked up at the moon and wondered. Its half face seemed as enigmatic as the earth had become. Not a trace of life above or below.

Only the two of them, he and Ben, lost, alone, and probablyin danger the longer they stayed there. He lowered his head and stared back down at the ground.

He wasn't crazy, he knew. There had to be an explanation for the vanishing tracks.

And, for sure, the change was ominous. Ominous as hell.

24

JOHN HANDED THE REINS OF HIS HORSE TO BEN.

“Hold these. Wait here. I'll be back.”

John walked over their backtrail, hunching over to study the ground. When he came upon the place where the tracks appeared again, he began walking in circles, still backtracking.It was difficult to see and he was careful not to step in any of the horse tracks.

Finally, he stopped, knelt down and saw what he had been looking for.

Moccasin tracks.

He followed these, again avoiding any obliteration of these with his own boots.

Ben lost sight of John in the darkness after he walked away. He felt very alone out there. Gent pawed the ground, blew air through his nostrils. His own horse stood hipshot, head drooping. There was no grass there for either horse.

He could hear John's footsteps, and then even those faded away into the deepening silence.

He listened to his own breathing, became aware of the beating of his heart. Like most men, Ben was not used to beingalone in a strange place. It felt almost unnatural to him. With the faint throb of his heart, he felt mortal, exposed. He thought of all the people Hobart had killed and of all the men he and John had killed, and realized how brief life could be. He could go in the next second. A rifle shot out of nowhere, an Indian leaping onto his back, squeezing his neck, shutting off the breath. It could be that quick. His life could be that short.

He began to sweat and his palms turned clammy in the chill that seeped down from the mountains. His throat constrictedwith a sudden dryness and his breathing became more audible, so loud he was sure the sound would carry for miles and . . .

“You awake, Ben?” John said.

Ben's backbone creaked as his head snapped up. A rush of fear shot through his veins.

“John, you nigh scared me to death. You oughtn't to sneak up on a man like that.”

“I didn't sneak up. I think you were dozing, Ben.”

“I warn't dozin'. I just didn't hear you.”

“I found out what the Indians did. One Indian, anyway.”

John took the reins from Ben and climbed back into the saddle.

“You gonna tell me, or just keep it to yourself?” Ben asked.

“Pretty smart what they did,” John said. “Gathered a bunch of sage, pulled them up out of the ground, wove them all togetherand made a big old broom.”

“A broom?”

“Kind of like a broom. They've been brushing away their tracks, sweeping them clean.”

Ben tilted his hat back on his head and scratched along his hairline.

“Yeah. Pretty damned smart,” he said.

“That two hours lead they had on us has shrunk some. Hell, they could be waiting for us most anywhere.”

“And we can't foller 'em no more.”

“Not in this dark. Even I can't see those sagebrush marks sitting on top of Gent here. I'd have to crawl along on my hands and knees. It's not worth it.”

“No,” Ben said. “So now what?”

“So now, we ride off a ways and wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“I put my ear to the ground back there and heard hoofbeats.Pretty faint. But whoever's following us is moving right along. I listened for quite a while, seems like. Soldiers, I figure.Walk a ways, trot some, then a gallop, and back to a walk.”

“How close?” Ben asked.

John turned his horse, beckoned to Ben.

“Close enough that I can feel soldiers breathing down my neck.”

Ben clapped spurs to his horse's flanks and followed John.

“We gonna hide, John?” Ben asked as he caught up to Savage.

“No place to hide. We'll just wait and see if we can't get the drop on them. Better shake out your rifle. But don't shoot. I just want them to see we mean business.”

John pulled his rifle from its scabbard. He reined in Gent a few moments later and slid out of the saddle. Ben did the same. They stood there in the darkness, listening, waiting, watching their backtrail for as far as they could see.

“I ain't got a cartridge in the chamber,” Ben said.

“Leave it be, Ben. We're not going to shoot anybody.”

“We ain't? Then, why the rifles?”

“We'll use them as persuaders. Now keep quiet.”

Ben opened his mouth to say something else, but closed it again. He laid the barrel of his rifle across his pommel and looked up at the stars, the frozen moon half in shadow. The distant cry of a timber wolf floated down from the foothills, hung in the air like a solitary scream from hell, then vanished into silence.

The scent of sage, musty and cloying, flared in John's nostrils as he sat his horse, listening, sparing his eyes from light by keeping his gaze on the darkest shadows sprawling across the landscape. He knew that when he needed to see those soldiers who were following them, he could make them out long before they saw him.

It was not a long wait.

John heard the scuffle of shod hooves, the swishing rustle of sagebrush and sand a few moments before the three riders came into view. All three of them were gazing at the ground, leaning out of their saddles like gawkers staring into a tide-poolin some dark, dismal swamp. He repressed the urge to chuckle.

Three blind men following a cold trail, he thought.

“Now, Ben,” John whispered. “Follow me.”

John kicked Gent into action. The horse's muscles bunched up and flowed into rippling energy, propelling its large body forward toward the three uniformed soldiers.

“Hold up there,” John said, his voice deep with authority. He held his rifle straight up, pointing at the sky, the butt anchoredto his calf.

“Whoa,” Herzog said to his horse. “Hold up,” he said to his men.

The three horses stopped as Ben and John rode up.

“Savage? That you?”

“We mean you no harm, Lieutenant,” John said. “Hear me out.”

He looked at the two men riding with Herzog, saw their sergeant's stripes, their rugged faces blank with surprise.

“You throwing down on me. Two against three.”

“You're following me, aren't you, Herzog?”

“That's Lieutenant Herzog. Maybe I am. Maybe I'm not.”

“Well, why strain your eyes, Lieutenant? Ben and I are followinga shod horse and two Indian ponies. Only their tracks petered out. I thought you and your sergeants might want to ride along with us. Save you trying to track us. You can be stubborn about it, or you can take me up on my offer.”

Herzog did not answer right away. John could see that he was mulling the offer over in his military mind.

“Why are you tracking these men?” Herzog asked. “This is army business.”

“You mean stolen rifles,” John said.

“That's right.”

“Well, the rifles are headed northwest. The main body of Indians broke off a ways back and headed that way. Reason I'm following these particular tracks is one of the horses is shod. The others aren't. I figure there's a white man behind this, and he's going to lead me to Ollie Hobart.”

“That what you figure?” Herzog asked.

“That's what I said. If you want your rifles back, you're on the wrong trail, Lieutenant.”

“We can't take on fifteen or twenty Indians.”

“Then, why not go with us? There'd be five of us against three. The tracks have been brushed out, but I reckon the white man and the two redskins with him are heading straight for those mountains yonder.”

John cocked a thumb toward the black humps behind him.

“I don't know. It would be highly irregular,” Herzog said.

John looked at the two sergeants. Their expressions were noncommittal. They stared back, impassive as store-window dummies.

“What's irregular is you and your men following Ben and me. We had nothing to do with the theft of those rifles. We're not the enemy. But if my hunch is right, Hobart's behind this. He wants to use the Cheyenne to rob those miners somewhere up in those mountains.”

“I know where the prospectors are,” Herzog said. “But there's probably a camp of renegade Indians not far from there. If your hunch is right, Cresswell could be headed that way.”

“Cresswell?”