Relentless

7

He felt the potbelly stove-still warm. They hadn’t been gone very long.

He made a quick search. The explosion had littered the front of the room with wooden debris and it had knocked a few shrapnel holes in the walls. But the fugitives didn’t seem to have left anything behind except for a few discarded empty tin cans. Well, they’d had an extra horse-the one Walker had left behind; they had plenty of space to pack everything they wanted.

He went back to the jagged-edged doorway and stepped across the remains of the door. Vickers was coming out behind him and Buck Stevens brought up the horses. Watchman could see vaguely the shapes of lower summits down the north slope.

Vickers said, “They can’t have got far. Look at those tracks. What would you say, half an hour ahead of us?”

“Something like that.”

“Let’s go, then.”

“Take it easy a minute,” Watchman said.

“What for? Four men, seven horses-they can’t travel in this snow without leaving tracks. We’ve got them now.”

“Or maybe they’ve got us.”

“What are you talking about?”

“They may have heard the racket up here. They know we’re close behind them. They can’t count on wiping all of us out with one grenade so they’ve got to figure they’ve still got some of us on their trail. And like you said, they know they can’t hide their tracks.”

“So?”

“So put yourself in their shoes. They’re going to do two things. First they’re going to set themselves up in a place where they get a good long view down their own backtrail so they can count us on their fingers when we come in sight. Then when they know how many we are they’ll go on down the mountain a little way, lay some nice tracks for us to follow, and they’ll double back around their own tracks and set up a fine little crossfire for us to walk into.”

A crimson flush suffused Vickers’ cheeks. He got busy lighting a cigarette.

Buck Stevens said in his matter-of-fact voice, “How do you want to work it, Sam?”

“No point in playing the game by their rules. I think we’ll cut over east a little way. Go down behind that ridge line and ride north.”

“You mean try to get around in front of them.”

“It’s worth a try,” Watchman said, squinting across the mountains.

Vickers said, “You’re talking as if you can anticipate which way they’re going. It’s all very well for us to go on ahead of them and try to ambush them, but what if they don’t walk into it? What if they go another way entirely?”

“Then we’ll just have to send them an invitation, won’t we?” Watchman walked past him and mounted his horse. “Of course you can go right on after them if you want. I don’t much recommend it but you can please yourself.” He nodded to Buck Stevens and led the way down off the summit, splitting wide away from the dimpled tracks the fugitives had left in the snow.

Behind them Vickers climbed onto his horse and gigged it nervously. When Watchman looked back Vickers was coming right along after him. Watchman smiled a little and turned to face front.