Novel 1968 - Down The Long Hills (v5.0) Page 7

  The boy told it now. “One time a bunch of men came through our part of the country and stole a cow of pa’s, and some stock belonging to some neighbors. They figured the stock was lost for good, but pa, he wouldn’t say quit. He just set out and followed those men. It was four months before he came back, and he had all that stock and the horses the four men had been riding. He had followed their sign clear down into Missouri.

  “Somebody asked pa what would he do if those men came back hunting their horses, and pa just grinned and said he never was afraid of ghosts.”

  Jud looked thoughtful and glanced at Cal, who shrugged and said, “He’s just one man. What he don’t know won’t start any wars.”

  “I don’t like it, Cal.”

  Cal snorted, but Jud was persistent. He looked over at Hardy. “Yours must’ve been the last wagon train west,” he said. “This here’s late in the season.”

  “That’s what Bill Squires said.”

  “Squires?”

  “He stopped by to do some yarnin’, as he said. He was with us the night before the Indians came, but he rode off by himself, going west. He promised Mr. Andy he’d tell pa we were on our way.”

  “Cal, we better have another think.”

  “Like hell!”

  Jud sliced bacon into the pan, and did not speak for a moment. Betty Sue huddled close to Hardy and sipped a little weak coffee.

  “If you’re figurin’ to keep that horse,” Jud said quietly, evidently fearing Cal’s irritation, “you’d best forget about ridin’ him now. We’d best saddle up an’ light out.”

  Cal made no reply to this. He finished his coffee, got up, and went to his saddle.

  “That’s my pa’s horse!” Hardy protested. “You just leave him alone!”

  “Set down, boy,” Jud said harshly. “You get Cal mad an’ you’ll sure enough find out what meanness is.”

  Cal threw the blanket on Reds’ back and the big stallion side-stepped, but Cal picked up his saddle, threw it on the big horse, and cinched it tight. Then he put the bridle on, and Red stood still for it, chomping and tasting the bit a little.

  Cal gathered the reins, put his toe in the stirrup, and threw his leg over. The instant he hit the saddle, Big Red reared straight up, slammed his forefeet down, with his head between his knees, and Cal left the saddle in an arc. He hit the ground in a heap, and Red started for him.

  Jud swore and grabbed for his pistol, but Hardy threw himself against Jud’s legs, staggering him into losing balance, and he fell.

  Jud lunged to his feet, took a swipe at Hardy that knocked him rolling, and reached again for his gun. Cal had rolled over, and he dove for the stream when the stallion came at him. Jud, grabbing for his gun, found only an empty holster.

  Looking around quickly, he saw the gun on the ground, and Hardy scrambling to reach it. He kicked the boy, caught up the gun, and wheeled around.

  Big Red was gone!

  Cal limped from the water, swearing. The side of his face was raw where the skin had been scraped when he landed, and he was soaked to the hide.

  “Where’d he go? Where did that—” He stopped, looking around, then turned on Jud. “You damn near let me get killed! Why didn’t you shoot him?”

  “The kid here bumped me,” Jud answered. “Anyway, you’re all right.”

  Hardy was humped over, still gasping for breath. Blood was dripping slowly from his nose, and Betty Sue stared at him in a kind of wide-eyed horror, unable to believe Hardy was hurt, Hardy who had seemed to her strong and invulnerable.

  Hardy wanted to cry, but he fought back the tears. What was it pa said? “You’ve got to think, son. Think!” As he hugged his arms to his aching body his eyes searched the brush around. He was bent over so they could not see his face, and they were talking now, seeming almost to forget him.

  Big Red would not go far, Hardy told himself. He was out there, somewhere. If they could only—

  “Give me your horse,” Cal was saying. “I’ll go find that red devil, an’ when I do I’ll throw and hog-tie him. Before he gets up he’ll know who’s boss!”

  “Go ahead,” Jud replied, with a meaning glance. “I’ll take care of things here.”

  Cal saddled up and rode out, but Jud sat down and drank coffee. Occasionally he looked over at Betty Sue. Hardy crawled back near her and sat up, holding himself tight.

  “Busted a rib, mebbe,” Jud commented maliciously. “Serves you right.”

  He picked up the coffeepot, sloshed the coffee around, and drank from the side of the pot, then he put the pot down and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. He picked up the bacon and wrapped it up, then ran his hunting knife into the ground a couple of times to clean it off.

  Hardy bumped against Betty Sue. “Run!” he whispered. “Run hard!”

  Betty Sue got to her feet. She was frightened, and she was not too good a runner, for she was scarcely more than a baby. Hardy was worried about her getting away, but he knew he couldn’t carry her and run too.

  Jud turned around, knife in hand, a cold, ugly look in his eyes.

  “Now!” Hardy yelled shrilly, and Betty Sue started to run for the bushes.

  Jud swore and started to turn to go after her, and Hardy threw himself against his legs. Again the man fell, but Hardy was up first, and was running too. He crashed into the bushes an instant before Betty Sue, and turned and dragged her into some kind of game tunnel. Jud was coming after them, swearing and shouting.

  Hardy crawled through the tunnel, which was scarcely large enough for him, and reached the bank of the stream. He picked up Betty Sue and ran stumbling along the river bank where it was partly clear.

  Jud, unable to follow through the tunnel, was coming around the bushes, coming fast. But Hardy had played too many games in the woods with the boys not to know every ruse.

  “Betty Sue!” he yelled. “This way!” Then he turned and started back the way they had come, remembering a place in the stream where he had seen a sandy bottom and some stepping stones.

  They got across the stream and into the trees without being seen and gasping for breath, he put Betty Sue down. Pain was stabbing at his side, but he didn’t think anything was broken—it was just a bad bruise. He had been bruised like that before, the time he had tried to ride old Brindle’s calf, and the calf threw him. Only this hurt more.

  They walked away from the stream, and dodged from bush to bush on the slope until they came to a grove of aspen. They crawled in among the trees, needing little space in which to hide.

  After a bit, they peered out. Jud was walking along the river bank, studying it for tracks. Soon he found them and crossed the stream, hunting along the near bank for some sign of the children.

  It was very still. Hardy could hear Betty Sue’s breathing as she lay beside him in their hiding place. The air was clear, and he could hear small twigs cracking under Jud’s feet as he searched. Hardy lay there, his heart pounding, and tried to think what to do. Was it better to lie still and hope that Jud could not find them, or to try and get further up the hill and risk being seen? A moving object attracts the eye; pa had taught him that.

  The hill behind them was steep, and Hardy had an idea he could outrun Jud going uphill, but he knew that Betty Sue could not. And she was too heavy for him to carry more than a few feet.

  Jud had rushed at first; now he was settling down to work out their trail. But there was a chance that he was not as good a tracker as pa or Bill Squires.…

  And where was Big Red?

  Hardy could smell the dark earth beneath them, and the leaves. Above them the aspen trembled unceasingly. There was a legend about that…what was it?

  Now it seemed that Jud had lost the trail, and had gone back to try to work it out.

  “Watch him,” Hardy whispered, then eased back in the aspens and found a place where he could look up the slope. He needed to locate a place they could get to without being seen. After a moment, he found it.

  As was often the case in such places,
the slope of the mountain was dotted with small clusters of aspen, growing so compactly that in many places only a child or small animal could crawl in among them with any ease.

  Not over fifty yards up and further along the slope was another aspen grove, and there were clumps of brush here and there, all with the bright colors of autumn. And rocks were scattered about. With luck, they could make it unseen.

  He started to hiss to Betty Sue, but then remembered how easily sound carried. He slipped back, touched her and they started up.

  It was only about twenty feet to the nearest rock and they made it easily, concealed from below by the aspens they had just left. Squirming along the ground, they got to a clump of brush, and then they waited until Jud’s back was turned and sprinted for the next clump. They reached it just as he swung his head around, perhaps drawn by some faint sound.

  Hardy studied the valley below with care, but there was still no sign of Big Red.

  On the slightly hollowed surface of a rock they found some water from the recent rains, and scooped it up with their hands to get a drink. Watching from the rock, they could see Jud was almost up to their first hiding place, so they moved on, going higher and higher.

  They were cold, and it was clouding up again. But most of all, Hardy was worried about Big Red. He was afraid of what Cal might do if he managed to rope and tie the horse; but he also knew that without the horse he and Betty Sue were not going very far.

  He had never felt so tired, and more than anything he wanted to curl up in some warm place and just sleep. But first they had to get safely away from Cal and Jud, and they had to find Red. Pa loved that horse as much as Hardy did, and Red was Hardy’s responsibility.

  Jud wasn’t much of a tracker. Apparently he had given up in disgust, and was just looking around at random. Hardy and Betty Sue did not weigh much, and their feet were small, so that they made little impression on the ground or the grass. An Indian would have had no trouble following them, but Jud was no Indian, and he was lazy. He knew the children could not have gone far, so if he just went from one possible hiding place to another along the slope, he felt that he could find them.

  Hardy could see just what Jud was beginning to do: and the worst of it was, it would work. And if they started out to run, Jud could catch them—at least, he could catch Betty Sue.

  Keeping a grove of aspens between them and Jud, they climbed higher. Up there, in the shadow of a rock, Hardy saw a little snow. He had seen it up on the mountains, but here, so close to them, it was different, and it frightened him. They were much higher up now than they had been before, and tonight it would be cold, and they would have no blanket.

  That was when the idea came to him. Instead of just running away from them, why not give Jud and Cal something to worry about? Suppose, while Cal was following the stallion and Jud was hunting for them, they slipped back and robbed Jud’s camp?

  Stealing was wrong; but this was war, and if Jud caught them now they would be killed, Hardy knew that. He had known that was what the men intended to do from that conversation he had overheard that first night.

  If he could worry them enough, he could make them afraid to leave their camp to look for either Big Red or for Betty Sue and himself.

  As if in answer to his thinking, he saw a deep groove cut by a runlet of snow water coming off the mountain. It was not deep enough to hide the movements of a man, but it was perfect for them. Hardy took Betty Sue by the hand and they crept toward it.

  Chapter 8

  IT WAS SCOTT Collins who found the first sign of the grizzly. He indicated it to the others without comment. They all knew what it might mean. It was a little over an hour later that they came upon the scene of the titanic battle.

  The ground was torn by the marks of the stallion’s hoofs and the paw marks of the grizzly. Here and there they also found the footprints of the children, most of them Hardy’s. The carcass of the bear, torn somewhat by scavenging coyotes, lay in the deepest brush.

  “Those youngsters are shot with luck,” Darrow said grimly. “Wonder that bear didn’t do ’em in.”

  “Look here.” Collins tugged the boy’s arrow from the bear’s throat. “That’s no Indian arrow. Hardy got in one shot, anyway.”

  Slowly, methodically, as was their way, they put the story together. They could see the tracks, they could see the wounds in the bear’s body, and they could imagine what had happened. These were men of the mountains and the prairie, who read trail sign as an educated man reads print.

  The torn earth, the swirling, twisting hoof marks of the stallion were plain enough; so were the gashes in the bear’s hide. But the gashes were only superficial wounds, nothing that could have seriously hampered the bear. There was no obvious evidence of the kick in the ribs that the bear had received, but even that proved little. The grizzly bear, the largest of flesh-eating creatures, is, when cornered, the fiercest.

  The one thing they looked at, and at first avoided thinking about, was the deep slash in the bear’s breast. Somebody with a knife had cut open the dead bear and ripped out its heart.

  Finally Bill Squires pointed to it. “That’s an Injun trick,” he said. “He eats the bear’s heart to get his strength and fierceness. On’y there’s somethin’ else here…somethin’ must’ve made that Injun figure this bear was strong medicine.”

  “This isn’t finding Hardy,” Scott Collins said after a moment. “We’d best be getting on.”

  “They’re ridin’ again,” Darrow said from across the clearing. “The stallion took out of here like he was rode.”

  The evidence of the trail proved him correct. The steady, even gait of the stallion showed that he was ridden by someone.

  They followed the trail. It was vague here and there, almost gone in some places, and unraveling it was a problem. But there were three men to scatter out to pick up leads, and they kept on, traveling slower than Hardy had, but pushing on all the time.

  Scott was far off to one side when Squires hailed him. “Hey, look at this!” he called.

  Darrow and Scott rode over and studied the fresh sign—two mounted horses and a pack outfit.

  Squires took out his tobacco and bit off a chew, then squinted his eyes at Scott. “You see what I see?”

  “I see.” Collins studies the tracks closely. “Those tracks were made by that piebald gelding of Ben Starr’s.”

  “Uh-huh…and what d’you know about that piebald?”

  “Hell,” Darrow said, remembering, “he was stolen.”

  “I ought to know those tracks,” Squires said. “It was me swapped him that horse.”

  Those two riders were making no effort to conceal their trail, and they evidently did not fear pursuit. It was late in the season for them to be traveling in the area, and pursuit was unlikely here, even if they were suspected.

  “If we ride behind ’em long enough,” Squires said, “we’ll sure enough know who they be. It ain’t as if this country was full of folks, an’ I been here long enough to know most of ’em. Why, I come into this country so early Jim Bridger was considered a tenderfoot. Weren’t many ahead of me…’cept John Coulter an’ them.”

  The valley in which they now rode was wide, cut by many small streams and crossed by at least one river; and another river flowed down from the north. There were towering mountains off to the east, and high mountains closer by, to the west. Even now, in late September, it was a green and lovely land, with trout leaping in the rivers and wild game everywhere.

  The three men had found the markers left by Hardy, so they knew he had taken this way. “He’s tryin’ to git away,” Darrow said. “I reckon he knew that Injun was behind him.”

  “He’s got more trouble,” Scott Collins commented. He had been worrying about this for some time. “If those men who are trailing him would steal the piebald, they’d steal my stallion too—if they don’t get killed trying. That stallion doesn’t take to strangers. He never did.”

  Twice they lost the trail, and twice they found it again
. The track of the stallion was easy enough to follow when Hardy made no effort to conceal it.

  It was dusk when they found the ashes of a campfire.

  “No use trying to see anything tonight,” said Squires. “Walk back the way we came so’s we won’t mess up the ground.”

  About fifty yards away, they made camp, and Scott could not restrain himself—he was sure they were close, so very sure. He went out a ways from the camp and called…a dozen times he called into the night, but there was no answer.

  “He’s goin’ to take it hard,” Darrow commented to Bill Squires, “if we don’t find that boy.”

  “We got to find him,” Squires said. “That there’s a good man…and, come to think of it, that’s quite a youngster, too.”

  “Scott sure enough put the run on those claim-jumpers back at Hangtown. Sent the lot of ’em packin’.” Darrow grinned. “All but Dub Holloway.”

  “Holloway convinced ’em,” Squires said. “Holloway was goin’ to take his measure. And he sure did…trouble was he didn’t live to see it.”

  Scott Collins finally came back to camp. “The way I see it,” he said, “those horse stealers came upon the stallion’s tracks. If they followed very far they’d soon know there was only a couple of young ones riding him. What happened then depends on what kind of men they are.”

  “Ain’t many would do harm to a youngster,” Darrow said. “There wouldn’t be a place they’d dare show their face.”

  “If it was found out,” Squires responded. “Look at it. The kids are out here alone. They’d have no idea we were huntin’ ’em. There’s on’y that Injun to know.”

  It was a quiet camp. Squires smoked a pipe, and after that he turned in. Frank Darrow tried to make talk of the trail and the country around, but finally he gave up. Only Scott Collins remained awake and stayed up. He could not have slept anyway, and there was always the chance he might hear something.