Treasure Mountain

Angus, the black slave, is a powerful man, loyal to Pierre, and a fair woodsman.

I believe he'd do even better in the swamps of Louisiana than here, yet I doubt if he has long to live.

There was a gap here, looked like a couple of lost pages, then some words were smeared.

... suddenly there was an outburst of firing. Somebody yelled "Indians!" and we all fell into defensive positions. For awhile there was no sound, then a single shot. For some time there was no sound and when we took stock, Angus was dead--shot in the back of the head. When I talked with Pettigrew later, he admitted to having seen no Indians, nor had Pierre. Swan had seen one, Andre thought he had seen them. Andre showed a scar on the bark of a tree made by a bullet, and of course, Angus was dead.

Well, now Judas knew what happened to his brother. I looked at him in the firelight and thought I saw tears in his eyes. There seemed nothing to say to him. He stood and walked away from the fire.

"What do you think?" I asked Orrin. We were on the banks of the Rio Grande with Del Norte Peak looming to the soutwest. Orrin shook his head.

The Rio Grande headed up in those mountains in the direction we were riding, and it gave me an odd feeling to think this water. I looked at was headed down toward El Paso and then Laredo, and finally to enter the Gulf below Brownsville.

It was a far, far stretch.

"Orrin," I said, "I wished pa had just up and rode off. He guided them there, and he owed them nothing."

"He was in for a piece of it," said Orrin. "He wanted it for ma, and for an education for us boys."

"I wished he'd pulled out."

"You know what I think?" Orrin held up the papers and the book to me. "I think somebody in that outfit's found gold."

"You mean somebody knows where the stuff is and is holding it for himself?"

"Look at it, Tell. It needn't have been the big caches. There were supposed to be three, weren't there? All right. You know what soldiers are. Some individual soldiers may have had their own pokes stuffed with gold, and they may have hid them. I think somebody found some gold, and I think Angus was killed to take help from Pierre. I think he's next."

"Or pa," I said.

Setting late by the fire, I pondered it. Pa was up there in May. Unless it was unusually warm for the year, there'd still be snow up there where he was, and it would be almighty cold. But there couldn't have been too much snow left, or they'd have found no landmarks at all.

Of course, there were some slopes where the wind could sweep away the snow, but there was risk of a bad storm at any time.

Judas suddenly came in out of the darkness. "Suh? We are followed, suh."

"You're surely right. How far back are they?"

"They are gaining, suh And there are more than we believed."

"More?" the Tinker said.

"They have two fires," Judas said. "I would imagine there are at least ten men, perhaps twice that many."

At daybreak our camp was an hour behind us, and we were climbing steadily.

There'd been no chance to get back to pa's daybook. Me an' Orrin ... well, it had felt almost like we were talkin' to pa, yet he was shorter of word than usual in this writin' of his. Mostly pa was a man with a dry humor, a quick man to see things, and he always had a comment. He knew most tricks a body could play, was slick with cards when he needed to be, and had seen a lot of the world, time to time.

We came up to the forks of the Rio Grande and it was the South Fork pointed the way up Wolf Creek Pass. Pa had come this way, and the fact that he was keepin' a daybook showed he had something to tell us--who else but us? Pa was a considering man, and I'd no doubt he figured somehow to get that daybook to us. Maybe he'd trusted Nativity Pettigrew to bring it to us, or mail it. If so, his gamble failed.

If he had planned to get it to us, he must have been wishful to get some particular word to us. We'd likely have to read careful so we'd miss nothing.

Orrin dropped back from the point. "Tell, is there any other way to that mountain? I mean other than right up the pass?"

"Well, I reckon." I pointed. "That there's Cattle Mountain, with Demijohn right behind it. I never followed that trail, but Cap Rountree told me of it one time."

"Let's worry them a little," Orrin suggested, so I went up to ride point.

Watching carefully, I turned off and took a dim trail leading up the east side of Grouse Mountain. We followed that up a switchback trail and over the saddle on Cattle Mountain then down the trail west of the Demijohn and onto the Ribbon Mesa trail.

It was narrow, twisty, and rough. Several times we heard the warning whistles of marmots looking like balls of brown fur as they scattered into the rocks. We skirted a meadow where mountain lupine, Indian paintbrush, and heartleaf arnica added their blue, red, and gold to the scene. It was very quiet except for the murmur of the waters of the creek. We twisted, doubled, rode back over our tracks, and did everything possible to confuse our trail. The way was rocky, torn by slides. Leaving Park Creek, I cut over the pass back of Fox Mountain down Middle Creek about a mile and then took a dimmer trail that led us right over the mountain.

We rode through aspens, skirted groves of them, and then we rode across high mountain meadows, leaving as little sign as we could. If Andre Baston had a dozen men with him he probably had some mountain-riding men, but if he caught up with us I was figuring to make him earn it.

Of course, they might have taken the easy way right up Wolf Creek Pass. Indians and mountain-men had used it for years, along with occasional prospectors. More than likely the French soldiers who'd buried that gold had come down Wolf Creek.

We had come down the slope into the canyon of Silver Creek with the San Juan just ahead and below. On our west was the mountain of the treasure, and a whole lot of mountain it was, too.

Orrin pointed out a cove in the mountainside, and we skirted a tight grove of aspen and moved into a small meadow with a plunging stream alongside it. We pulled up under the trees and stepped down, and, believe me, I was tired.

We stripped the gear from our horses, and, after I'd rubbed my horse and one of the packhorses a mite, I wandered off down to the stream, hunting wood. I picked up some good dead branches, heavy stuff, and then tasted the water. It was fresh, cold, and clear. As I started to rise I heard a faint chink of metal. It sounded from upstream. Well, I shucked my gun and kind of eased back under the bank.

After finding the wood, I'd kind of explored along the riverbank, so camp was a good hundred yards back of me now. Crouching near some cottonwood roots that ran down into the earth under the water, I waited, listening. The stream chuckled along over the stones, and upstream I could hear a bird singing. After that I heard only the stream.

Ahead of me, the stream took a little bend, curving around some rocks and thick brush--dogwood, willow, and the like. Searching the ground between me and that brush, I saw nothing to worry me, so I started forward, walking mighty easy to make no sound.

Reaching the little bend, I eased up on the bank to look through the brush. From behind the brush and rocks I had a clear view of fifty yards or more of the stream.

Up yonder about as far as my eyes could take me was a woman. It looked to be a girl--a chancy judgment at that distance--and she was panning gravel, handling that pan like she'd done it before, a lot of times before.

I looked up the bank as far as I could, but there was no camp, nor was there anything like it that I could see. Seemed to me the situation called for study, and if a body aims to study women it's better done at close range, so I came down from my perch and started around that bend. When I cleared it and had a view of the stream again, she was gone!

Yes, sir. She was vanished out of there. Now I was a puzzled man. Surely my eyes hadn't played games with me. Of course, when a man is long enough without a woman he begins to see them, or imagine them, everywhere.

I walked across that creek, which was shallow at that point, and I went upstream, stepping careful. I'd kept my gun in my hand without really thinking, except it seemed logical that where there'd be a pretty woman there'd likely be a man.

When I got up to where she'd been, sure enough there were tracks in the sand. I started to look around when a voice spoke from right behind me. I'd knowed I should have looked into that tangle right up the slope, but I hadn't done it.

"You stand where you be, mister," a girl's voice said, "and if you're wishful of savoring your supper, don't fool around. Now you stick that piece back in the leather, and you do it right quick or I'll run a lead tunnel through your brisket!"

"I'm a peaceful man, ma'am, plumb peaceful. I seen what looked like a woman up here, an'--"

Her tone was scornful. "Looked like a woman? Why, you two-by-twice foreigner, I'm more woman than you ever did see! Turn around, damn you, and take a good look!"

Well, I turned, and from what I seen I was in no position to argue. She was about three inches over five feet, I'd guess, and must have weighed what it needed to fill that space out proper, with maybe a mite extry here an' yonder.

"Yes, ma'am." She had a cute nose, freckles, and rusty hair, and taking all in all, the way a woman should be taken, she was pretty as a button.

She was also holding a Spencer .56 that wasn't no way cute at all, and from the way she held it a body could see she was no stranger to its use.

She was kind of staring at me like she couldn't believe it, and, knowing my ownself, I knew it wasn't good looks she was staring at.

"Well!" she said, gesturing with the gun muzzle a mite. "You jest back up an' set on that log, yonder. And don't you go to stretching for that gun because by tomorrow mornin' your body would have drawn so many flies I'd have to find a new place to pan."

"I'm peaceful, ma'am, but if I have to be shot it couldn't be by a prettier girl."

"Don't give me that, Sackett! Sweet talk will get you no place with me!"

Sackett? Now, how in--

"Oh, don't look so surprised! Up where I come from ever'body knows the Sackett boys. How could they help it with the country overrun with them? Best thing ever happened to Tennessee was when they opened up the west and found some way to shuck some of you Sacketts."

"You're from the Cumberland?"

Her disgust was plain. "Where else? Do you conceited mountain boys think you're known everywhere? Who would know you were a Sackett but somebody from yonder?

You all have those same weather-beaten, homely faces and those big hands!"

"Wasn't for your hair I'd say you was a Trelawney girl," I said, "but the only ones of them I ever met up with had black hair. Fact is, I run into one of them down on the Colorado one time, and she gave me no end of trouble."

"Served you right. Which Sackett are you, anyway?"

"William Tell. And you?"

"I'm Nell--Jack Ben's daughter."

Well, now. That made me back up for another look. The Sacketts ran long on boys, the Trelawneys on girls, but when the Trelawneys number a boy in their get, he was usually quite somebody. Ol' Jack Ben was no exception. He was saltier than that creek which runs into Coon Hollow an' meaner than a tied-up wolf.

We Sacketts carried on a fightin'-shootin' feud with the Higgins outfit for many a year, but ol' Jack Ben, he handled his own fightin'. I also recall that he was most tender about what boys come a-courtin' his girls.

You could always tell a boy who'd been tryin' to court one of Jack Ben's girls because he walked kind of straight up an' bent back, and he never set down nowhere. That was because of the rock salt ol' Jack Ben kep' in his shotgun.

"You ain't alone up here, are you?"

"S'posin' I am? I can take care of myself."

"Now, you see here, Nell Trelawney, there's some folks a-comin' along behind us that are meaner than all get-out an' no respecters of womanfolk, so--"

"You runnin' scared?" she scoffed. "First time I ever heard of a Sackett runnin'

... unless pa was a-shootin' at him."

Darkness had kind of shut down on us. "You better get back to your camp," I said. "They'll be expectin' me back yonder."

"You mean you ain't goin' to see me home? If you're scared, I'll tell you now.

Ol' Jack Ben ain't there. I am surely alone. And I ain't scared--much of the time."

Chapter XV

"Where's your pa?"

"He's down to Shalako. That new town over west. He's down there a-waitin' for me to come bail him out."

"He's in jail?"

"No such thing! He's--he's laid up, that's all. We come west without--well, we didn't have much to do with, an' pa figured he could mine for gold.

"Well, he tried it, and it brought on his rheumatism again and he's laid up.

On'y things about him ain't ailin' is his trigger finger and his jaw.

"A man down yonder panned gold out of this stream, and he told us of it, so I done left a note to tell pa where I'd gone, an' then I hightailed it up here."

"You came all the way by yourself?"

"No, sir. I got a mule down yonder. A fast-walkin' mule and just like me he'll take nothing from nobody I've also got a dog that's half bear."

"You're funnin'--half bear? It won't work."

"You should of told his ma that. Anyway, I reckon that ol' he-bear wasn't askin' any questions. I tell you I got a dog that's half bear."

She glanced up at me as we walked along. "You said you took up with a Trelawney girl out west. Which one was it?"

"You mean there's more than the two of you come west? How much can this country stand, all to one time? Her name was Dorinda."

"Oh-oh-oh! Maybe I got to look at you in daylight, mister. If Dorinda took up with you there must be more to you than I figured. She was a beautiful one, Dorinda was."

"Yes, ma'am, but not to be trusted. Back in the mountains we could always count on a Trelawney girl to do her best, but that one! That Dorinda usually done her worst. She nigh got me killed."

We'd come up to a shelving shore where she'd put together a lean-to under some trees Sure enough, there was a mule, a big, rawboned no-nonsense Missouri mule that must have weighed fifteen hundred pounds and every bit of it meanness.

I heard a low growl. Mister, if that dog wasn't half bear he was half of something that was big, and he was mean and ugly. He must have weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. He had a head like a bull mastiff and teeth that would give one of them dinnysouers a scare.

"It's all right, Neb," Nell said. "He's friendly."

"If I wasn't," I said, "I'd start being. That's the biggest durned dog I ever did see."

"He's big, all right."

"What do you feed him? A calf a day?"

"He rustles his own grub. Maybe he eats people. I wouldn't know. He goes off in the woods now and again, and when he comes back he's licking his chops."

"Where'd you latch onto him?"

"He took up with me. I was huntin' elk up top and this here dog came up out of the bottoms. There's a place where the run drops off about twelve hundred feet, and I had just killed me an elk, when this dog showed up.

"He stretched out with his head on his paws, like, and I figured him for a bear, so I slung him a chunk of meat. After that he sort of stayed with me."

"In Shalako, too? Why, he'd stampede every horse in the valley!"

"He don't stampede Jacob. Jacob an' him, they get along."

Jacob, I took it, was the mule.

"Well," I got up. "Those boys yonder will think I went to get a drink and the hogs et me. I'd better start back, but you come down and see us. We'll be around for a day or two ... and you keep an eye open for those men I spoke of. They ain't pleasant folks. Nobody you'd invite to a quiltin' or a box social, like."

By the time I got back to the fire everybody was settin' about. They'd eaten and we're drinking coffee and listening for trouble. I made no effort to be quiet, and, when I was within distance, I hailed the fire, as a gentleman should. The ungentlemanly often ended up with a bellyful of buckshot.

A man who shoots when you don't call out doesn't have too many friends, but his enemies are surely all dead.

"What took you so long?" Orrin asked The Tinker was looking at me kind of wise and so was Judas Priest.

"I was keepin' comp'ny," I said. "I was settin out with a gal."

"Up here?" Orrin scoffed.

"I think he's telling the truth," the Tinker said "He doesn't act like he'd been out among the bears."

So I explained to them about Nell Trelawney and about old Jack Ben Trelawney down at Shalako waiting for his daughter to pan out enough gold to get them out of hock.

Orrin shook his head. "That's hard work for a man," he grumbled, "and no woman should be doing it."

"Jack Ben's all crippled up," I said. "What would you have her do? Set still while they starve?"

"All the Treawney girls could cook," he suggested "and the food isn't all that good in these mining towns."

"That needs cash money to lay out for flour and the like. You got to have a place."

"I agree with Mr. Orrin," Judas said positively. "It is no task for a woman."

We had our own problems, and that night I got out the daybook again I gave it to Orrin to read to us.

I have been writing in secret, but it is far from easy. I think Pettigrew suspects what I am doing, but he is a secretive man and merely smiles that sly smile and says nothing.

Somebody has found gold! This morning Pierre found a small hole, dug near a tree and hastily filled in. The marks near the tree were of Pettigrew's boots.

Later, alone with Pierre, I told him the tracks were faked to implicate Pettigrew. He scoffed at me and didn't believe it. I told him they wanted to eliminate anyone who might be on his side and they would probably try to raise suspicion about me next, and if that didn't work, there would be another Indian attack. He was angry and demanded to know what I meant by that. I told him there had been no Indians, I had found no tracks. Had there been Indians, they would have returned to destroy us.

He was listening by then, and he asked who would fake such an attack and why. I told him I thought it was Andre and Swan. He was annoyed because I accused his brother-in-law. I said it seemed clear that Andre didn't mind killing and neither did he seem to mind Swan's brutality to Angus.

Pierre did not like it, but he listened. "You think gold has been found and held out?" he said. I told him that was exactly what I believed.

I took to sleeping away from the others, on a pretense of watching for Indians, and I made my bed among leaves and branches that could not be walked over without noise.

Moreover I watched my back.

We read on Pa had apparently been doing some scouting around and he had come up with a camp location--two locations, in fact. He argued with Pierre Bontemps that there had been friction within the detachment. The story was that the Utes had attacked them, killed many, and that some had died of starvation later. Only a few men were supposed to have escaped. For several reasons, the story did not make a lot of sense, for this hadn't been a patrol, but a large body of men--perhaps as many as three hundred. Pa believed there were less.

He figured there had been difficulties in the camp and they had separated. Under such primitive conditions animosities could develop, and something had obviously happened there. Pa found two camps, both with stone walls roughly put together, and he found pestholes--the posts were rotted away but the holes could be cleaned out. Rough shelters--he found a button or two, and a broken knife.

Pa was shot at twice in the woods, but merely commented it must be Indians.

Meanwhile he stopped telling anyone his conclusions. From bones he dug up and other signs, he decided one camp was doing a lot better than the other. The men in that part of the French military detachment were eating better, living better ... must be an Indian or a mountain man in that outfit.

May 24: On the run. Wounded. We found the gold, or some of it. Andre and Swan acted at once. Luckily I'd spread my bed as usual, then being uneasy I moved back into the aspen. Had a devil of a time finding a place to stretch out, so close they were. Suddenly I awakened and heard movement, then a roar of rifles.

They'd slipped up and shot into my bedding. Unable to get close, they stood back and fired. They must have poured a dozen rounds into the place where my bedding was.

I heard Andre say, "Now for Pettigrew. Move quickly, man. Tell him it's Indians and when you get close ..." Swan asked him what to do about Pierre, and Baston said, "Leave 'im to me."

I couldn't get to both of them in time, but I ran toward Pierre, moving silently as could be.

We didn't need no pictures to tell us what was happening there atop the mountain. Baston and Swan had turned to murder as soon as night came, wanting the gold for themselves. They'd tried to kill pa first, and they believed the job was done. Only it didn't work out the way they planned. When Swan got to Nativity Pettigrew's bed, the man was gone. It wasn't until later that they discovered a horse was also gone.

Getting out of the aspen was a job, and pa had to find his way back to the camp in the darkness, expecting a shot any minute, having only a single-shot rifle and a pistol.

He was coming up on them when he heard Baston.

"... no use reaching for that gun. I took the powder from it last evening, Pierre. Sackett is dead, and soon you will be." There was a shot, then Baston laughed, a mean laugh it was, too. "That was one leg, Pierre." Another shot.

"The other leg. I never liked you, you know. I knew someday I'd do this, planned it, thought about it. I just wish I could stay and watch you die."

Swan ran up, and there was talk. I guess they'd found Pettigrew was gone. I heard swearing, and I moved in for a shot.

Eager to get a shot, and unable to see in the dark I lifted my rifle, stepped forward for a better shot, and stepped into an unexpected hole. My body crashed into a bush. My rifle went off, and bullets cut leaves near my head. Another shot was fired, and I felt the shock of a bullet. I went down, falling on my pistol. If I moved they'd hear me. I drew my knife and waited.

They did not find me, and neither was of a mind to come hunting me in the dark.

I heard Baston talking to Pierre, saying, "You're dead. I will leave you here to die. You've lost blood, both knees are broken, and you'll never be found. We didn't find as much gold as I'd hoped, but we can always come back. We'll be the only ones who know where it is now."

"Pettigrew got away. He'll tell them," Pierre said.

And Andre answered, "Him? We'll catch him before he gets off the mountain. And when we do, we'll kill him."

Chapter XVI

When Orrin put down the daybook, too sleepy to read further, I was of no mind to take it up. Mayhap I was fearful of what I'd find, or just too tired, but the thought was with us all that Andre Baston, Hippo Swan, and whoever was riding with them were comin' up behind us.

No doubt, after shooting Pierre Bontemps and killing Angus and maybe pa, they had taken off, carrying gold with them. However, they had unfinished business.

If Pettigrew got away, they had to run him down and kill him, or try. And that was what they'd done.

We were lyin' in our blankets when Orrin said, "They daren't leave pa alive.

Philip Baston seemed a kindly man, but Andre fears him or fears what he can do, and Andre is his own brother and knows him better than we do."

"I'm wonderin' where Pettigrew got that daybook. Did he steal it off pa? Or did he come back and find it later?"

Tomorrow we had to go up the mountain with a lot of questions unanswered. Facing us was a showdown with Baston, and there was no low-rating the man. Some of the things we'd been reading about him in pa's daybook were clumsy, you might say, but Andre had twenty years to grow handier with his killing, and by all accounts he'd not wasted his time. All of them seemed to have low-rated. Nativity Pettigrew, including Andre, and they never guessed that Pettigrew had come by some gold.

Lying there, before I dropped off to sleep, I worried some about Nell Trelawney.

Of course, she had that dog ... if it was a dog.

Anybody going around there at night would be apt to lose a leg or an arm before he knew what he was tangling with. One time I met a man told me about the mastiffs they have in Tibet. They're as big as the mastiffs we have only they have much longer hair. This Neb dog might be one of them.

Morning found nobody wishful of using language. We set around glumlike, roasting our meat over the fire and drinking coffee.

Orrin got up and took his Winchester. "Judas, stay by the camp, if you will. We can't afford to lose the stock or whatever else we've got. And Tinker, if you'll go see to Miss Trelawney we'd be pleased. Tell and I will scout around up top."

It was no easy climb. Heavy timber, with game trails here and there, and we made it up to the top. We Injuned around, looking for sign. It was there, all right, but from down those forgotten years. Marks of axes where men had chopped wood for fires long since burned up, branches cut to make a lean-to or to hang kettles from. There was evidence enough that men had lived around about at some time far gone.

We split up and worked back and forth across the top of the mountain, comparing notes now and again. We wanted to find some sign of pa, but we kind of hoped we wouldn't. When you don't see a body laid away, that person is never quite dead for you, just sort of gone away, or not around right then.

We were playing against time. Whatever we were going to find we'd have to find now, for Andre, Swan, and them would be coming up the slope. And I wondered a little about Pettigrew. He was a sly man, maybe not as crippled up as he let on.

Orrin crouched beside me under a tree. "The story has it there were three separate caches of gold," he said. "Now, even if there was only five million, it is still a lot of gold to carry, and none of them took more away than could be carried on the horses they rode.

"It is my thought, and I believe it to be yours, that some soldiers kept some gold for themselves. Perhaps they were permitted to. Perhaps they simply high-graded it, but I believe that is what Pettigrew found, and what Andre himself found.

"I think two things are at work here. They fear what we might discover and reveal to Philip, but also they fear we may find the gold they failed to find."

Sunlight fell through the trees, and a camprobber jay hopped from branch to branch above us. I looked off through the trees, thinking of pa and what his thoughts must have been when he had played out his deadly hand, knowing the fall of any card might mean death to him.

At the end there, lying wounded in the brush with Pierre crippled and perhaps beyond help, the rest of them riding away, what would pa have been thinking?

We had to find that place, but how, after so many years? Had Pierre Bontemps died there?

My eyes wandered over the slope. The human eye has a readiness for patterns.

Much is not seen simply because the mind is blind, not the eyes. The eyes see in lines, curves, and patterns. Man himself works in patterns simple or complex, and such things are often evidence of man's previous presence.

Twenty years ago some evidence of the old camps had remained, even after half a century that had fallen between. "Orrin, there's got to be some sign of those camps. Stone walled, they said."

"Yes, there should be something of them left." He got up, and, skirmisher fashion, we moved off through the scattered trees, walking on pine needles, eyes alert for everything.

High up in the mountains you don't have to think of rattlers. They stay down lower where it is warmer, and they thin out mighty fast above sixty-five hundred feet.

As we moved along under the trees the camprobber jay followed us, never more than twenty feet off. They are the greatest companions in the high mountains, but also the worst thieves. Anything left where they can get at it is eaten or gone, and they'll do things mighty nigh unbelievable to get at what they want.

"Tell?" Orrin pointed with his rule. Under the trees up ahead we could see a dug-out hole, and when we got there we could see it was old. Somebody had dug down four feet or so, but the edges had caved in, and plants were growing into it. There was a patch of snow in the bottom where no sun reached.

It might be a hole dug by the folks we knew of, or it might have been dug by some other treasure hunter. There was nothing up here an animal would dig for.

We studied around but found no sign to identify anything. We went west along the slope. Right above us we could see the trees flagging as they do when the strong winds work on them, and here and there were brown tops on the green trees where the tops had stuck out of the snow and frozen.

My belly was asking questions of me before we spotted the first fort. It was lined-up rocks, tumbled this way and that, but it was clear to see that somebody had forted up here long ago. Not many yards west, we found the other camp, and right away I saw what pa meant.

Whoever built the second camp knew what he was about. He had shaped it for comfort and a good field of fire in all directions. A place had been found where boulders and stunted trees made a partial wall against the prevailing winds, which were indicated by the way the trees flagged. On mountain tops the branches are apt to be all or mostly on one side of a tree, streaming out the way the wind blows.

More time had been taken with this second fort, the rocks had been fitted better, so some of them still sat fixed as they'd been left. It was obvious that, although there'd been a split in the camp, each wanted to have support from the other in case of Indians.

And from all reports, the Indians had come.

We poked around inside the second circle of rocks. We found a button and a broken tinderbox and nothing else that spoke of human habitation.

"The three big caches were probably sunk deep by order of the officer in command, and my guess is they were done damned well," said Orrin. "The army expected to return for them, and they would be buried to be excavated by the army. Those little caches Baston found and the one Pettigrew probably found were buried shallow or hidden in hollows of rocks or trees, somewhere the men who hid them could grab them quick.

"Are you thinking what I am? That Indian or mountain man pa mentioned might have taken that second outfit toward the west."

"Uh-huh." I said. "Two camps like this mean there was trouble, as pa figured, and if they did go west they could have gone south from Pagosa Springs to Santa Fe, or even further west."

We sat silent, considering that. Our thoughts were strangely captured by that mysterious mountain man who was with them. Had the military chosen him as guide?

Had he come from New Orleans with them or joined them en route? Or could he have come upon them in the mountains?

There was a route from Shalako to Santa Fe, certainly traveled by Rivera in 1765, and by Escalante about 1776. There could have been others before them--perhaps a hundred or more years before them--and any man who knew the country would know of the old Spanish Trail.

We were on a sort of mesa above the San Juan River. From the timber cut down and the way things looked the French army had a permanent camp here, with quite a few horses. Another party of Frenchmen had come in afterwards, and they must have arrived and departed only a few years before pa and his party came there.

When I mentioned that, Orrin said, "Departed? Maybe."

Off to one side we found evidence of quite a battle. Old shells were lying about, and they had to be from a later crowd. When the first bunch was here there were only muzzle-loaders, and there were signs of some quick defensive positions thrown up--they might have been wiped out by the Utes.

"Pa was keepin' that daybook," I said to Orrin. "He figured somehow to get it to us, so he must've left his mark around here. Maybe some mark only a Sackett would know."

"What would that be?" Orrin asked, and he had me there. Nonetheless, I was looking. It had to be something that would last. We were mere boys then, so we'd not be hunting for him or coming west until years later. Yet pa was a man given to considering, and he'd talked about the western lands, had prepared us for what was to come. He had wandered the west, and he was wishful we would do the same.

We found nothing a man could tie to. There had been holes dug, some of them by folks who came later, but none of them looked ambitious. Whether all that gold was buried in one hole or three, it must have been well dug and well lined.

Whoever was in command had the man power and the will, I was sure of that.

Judging by what I knew of such affairs, it seemed to me they had started to break up toward the end when one crowd wanted to leave and another wanted to stay or go by another route. It takes a mighty fine discipline to hold men together when trouble is creeping up on you. Yet without discipline there is surely disaster. The best discipline comes from within a man, but you'll never get a party of men together where all have it.

This bunch had split, and most of the discipline was in the camp that had the mountain man. I don't mean one of those trappers, like pa and Kit Carson or Bridger--they came later. I mean a man who had lived in the mountains before and knew how to get along.

"Orrin," I said, "we'd better be lookin' down that trail. We're about to run out of time."

"We'll do it together," he said. "I wish Tyrel was with us."

" 'If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride,'" I quoted at him. "A body shouldn't heed what might be. He's got to do with what is.

"There's a whole lot of mountain here, and you and me packed a rifle over mountains before either of us was knee-high to a possum. Anyway, it does no good to pack up an' run. A body has to stay in there and fight. No matter how many times you get knocked down you got to keep gettin' up until the other man quits."

"Easier said," Orrin commented.

"Well, I knew of a man who was defeated by just about everything. He failed in business back in 1831. He was defeated for the legislature in 1832, failed in business again in 1833, was elected to the legislature in 1834. His sweetheart died in 1835. He had a nervous breakdown in 1836, was defeated for speaker in 1838, defeated for land officer in 1843, defeated for Congress in 1843, elected to Congress in 1846, defeated for reelection in 1848, defeated for the Senate in 1855, defeated for vice-president in 1856, and defeated for the Senate in 1858."

"I'd of quit," Orrin said.

"No you wouldn't. I know you too well. This man didn't quit either. He was elected president in 1860."

"What?"

"Sure. His name was Abraham Lincoln."

Chapter XVII

Our camp was about a mile from Nell's. She had located not far from Silver Falls, and we were down creek from her just beyond the beaver ponds.

Tinker was back at camp when Orrin and me dropped down off Treasure Mountain.

"She's all right," he told us. "Anybody who'd take after her with that animal about would be crazy. All the time I was there he watched every move I made and growled if I got too close to her."

"She pannin' today?"

"Some--showing some color, too. Not much, but if she can stay with it in that cold water she'll come out with a stake."

"It's better than huntin' that gold. Why, this here mountain must cover thirty-square miles! There's no tellin' where they hid the stuff, and a man could work his life away and come up empty."

Orrin filled his cup. "Tell? What do you think we should do? We've found no clue to pa. If you're right and that other party went west, he might have done the same, if he got out."

"He must've lived. There's still a few pages of the daybook covered with writin'. But what he was wishful of us knowing he'd guard somehow. We've got to read carefully. I say we read what he says, and then we should work that mountain one time more. You know, pa knew the country west of here. He told us about time spent on the Dolores River."

We ate, and then we brewed some fresh coffee. Just as I'd gotten out the daybook we heard an animal coming and eased back from the firelight.

A voice called out of the darkness, "Hello, the fire! I'm coming in!"

It was Nell Trelawney astride that mule Jacob, with Neb trailing alongside. "I got lonesome," she said, "seeing your fire. I decided to come along down."

"Set down. We're about to read from pa's daybook. We've got to listen sharp for a clue."

... drew my knife and waited. Nobody come. After awhile I crawled out of the brush, and then I was shamed. That bullet done me no harm. It must have hit something before me. Anyway, it hit my belt and tomahawk handle, nigh cutting the belt in two, gouging the handle, and bruising my hipbone.

Nobody was around. I crawled to Pierre and he was still alive. Working in the dark I got his wounds stopped up with moss and eased him where he lay.

Two days have passed. At daybreak I set both of Pierre's legs in splints. Doubt if he will ever walk if he lives. Made a travois with two poles, two buffalo coats. Put bottoms of coats together, ran the poles through the arms of each coat, then buttoned the coats and managed to get Pierre on it.

The horses had disappeared, whether taken or driven off I didn't know. Andre and Swan had taken all the food but the little I had in my gear, and I'd little to do with.

Taking up the ends of the two poles, I started out. It was a slow business.

Pierre was hurting and the trail narrow. By nightfall I'd reached the spring near Windy Pass. I figured to hit the valley of the West Fork of the San Juan and follow the San Juan.

I am writing this beside the spring at Windy Pass. We have had a little to eat.

Pierre says Andre fears Philip, but shot Pierre not only because of hate, but because he wished to inherit. "He will be fooled," Pierre said. "I left all to Philip."

We are somewhat sheltered here, but the wind is cold. It has the feel of snow from the high peaks.

"Is it not late for snow?" Judas asked.

"Not in these mountains. He's nigh the end of May, but he's ten thousand feet up. I've seen bad snow storms in the Rockies later than that."

"We get only a part," the Tinker said. "He does not say how bad it is. He has drawn that travois, with a heavy man and all they have, more than six miles in one day."

Pa was never one for carryin' on about his hurts, but he had him a badly bruised hipbone, and haulin' the travois must have been a trial for a man of his years, even one as bull-strong as he was.

Just why pa chose the western route I wasn't sure--the first of it was easier, and also Andre and Swan had gone the other way and pa might have thought they'd be lyin' in wait to see if they were followed.

Right below the spring where pa stopped with Pierre, only about two miles away, was the valley of the West Fork of the San Juan, and a lovely valley it was.

I could picture them, Pierre lyin' there suffering in his pain, pa tired as all get-out what with pullin' a load at a high altitude and his hip bothering him and all. I'd had a few badly bruised bones, once from a bullet, another time when a bronc pitched me into some rocks, and the last time when a steer flung his head around and hit me with a horn.

The fire would be flickerin' on their faces, drawn and tired as they were, and right behind them the shadows of rocks and trees.

Orrin took up reading again. He had a better voice than me, and he made a better thing of it.

Pierre is at last asleep, which gives him relief. I have gathered wood for the night and the morning fire. My hip is bothering me, and I'm afraid it will stiffen during the night. I have been thinking much of ma and the boys, wondering if ever they will see these words, if ever they will know what has become of me. They are good boys, and will grow strong and tall. I wish I could be there to see them, but tonight I feel no confidence. A growing thing is in me, not a fear of Andre or of Utes, not even a fear of death, only a fear I shall not see them again.

I was awakened by muttering from Pierre. The man was delirious, and I worried. I looked at him in the fire's red light, and he looked wildly at me and muttered about Philip. I made hot broth and managed to get some of it into him, but he talked wildly of poison, of the death of his father, of some thin red line that ran through the Baston line, and a lot that made no sense to me.

June 2: Camp on the West Fork. Pierre in bad shape. His legs in splints, but nothing more I can do. They are in frightful shape. Several times he has thanked me for staying by him.

June 3: Same place. No more than 15 miles from where we started. Ute tracks, some unshod horses, nothing fresh. I must have fires to heat water. Hot water on his legs seems to ease him somewhat. The coffee is almost gone.

June 4: Pierre is dead! Went to the river for water and returning found him dead, stabbed three times in the heart. It was no Indian, for nothing was taken, not the coffee or the sugar, nor powder or lead.

Andre or Swan? I dare have no fire now. I shall bury Pierre, gather my few things, and take to the woods. I have just seen three of our horses grazing a little way downstream! I believe they will come to me for I always had something for them. I shall go now, and try.

That was the end of it. No more. Pa had gone to try for those horses.

"Nativity Pettigrew," I said. "He had the daybook. How did he come by it?"

"Maybe he was the one who murdered Pierre," the Tinker suggested. "Maybe when your pa went after the horses he came back, stole the book, and took off. You recall what your pa said? Pettigrew suspected him of writing things down? That daybook must have worried him."

"We've got to find that camp. That may be the last lead we get."

We sat around the fire talking it over, drinking coffee, keeping our ears in tune with the night. I was restless, ready to move on. A lot of men had looked for gold here and not found it, and I did not wish to become another of them.

Nor did Orrin.

In the morning we would take the route to Windy Pass.

At first Nell would have none of it, but we argued there was gold closer to where her pa was. I think we all turned in figuring that tomorrow would tell us the end of the story of pa's disappearance.

None of us wanted a fight with Andre and them. Well, I'll have to back up on that. Fact was, I'd not mind so much, only that it would profit nobody. I had an itch to tangle--especially with Swan. There's something gets up in my craw when I come up against a bully, and Hippo Swan was that.

There was nothing to be gained by fighting them, and I was ready to ride off and leave them be. Just the same, I felt one of the true pleasures of life would be to plant a fist in Hippo's face. But I was prepared to deny myself that pleasure.

Some things just don't shape up the way a man hopes for.

Come morning we packed our gear, and we helped Nell get straightened around, and then we headed for Windy Pass as our first stop on the way west to Shalako.

Looking back with regret, I saw that little mountain valley disappear behind us.

It was a place we'd stopped at for only a few days, but I'd come to love it--the beaver ponds, the distant sound of Silver Falls, the cold, sparkling waters of the East Fork.

There was an easier trail down the East Fork to the main valley, but we were wishful of scouting around the pass, so we went up the mountain. It was just a mite over two miles to Windy Pass.

We found signs of several old fires up yonder, but nothing more to tell us anything about pa. He'd been there, but so had others.

Orrin pulled up quick, just as we started out. "I thought I heard a shot," he said. I'd heard nothing, but Judas believed he had, too.

We rode out on the trail to the valley and turned south. To really appreciate the valley of the West Fork of the San Juan you've got to see it from north of where we were, up yonder where the Wolf Creek Pass trail takes a big swing and starts down the mountain. There's a place there that's a thousand feet above the valley floor. You can see right down the length of the valley and there isn't a prettier sight under heaven.

We turned into the trail and started along, moving at a good pace. We had Nell with us, and, like I've said, we weren't shaping up for no fight. None of us liked Andre. We figured him for a murdering so-and-so, but we weren't elected by the good Lord to put out his light ... not so far as we knew. I surely wasn't going to hunt him, but if he happened to come up in my sights, it would be a mighty temptation.

It was a beautiful morning, a morning to ride and feel, and we all felt the same about that. None of us were much given to talk, although Orrin could sing. He sang while we rode--"Tenting Tonight on the Old Camp-Ground," "Black, Black, Black," and "Barbry Alien." I was wishful of joining him when he sang "Brennan on the Moor," but there was no use to wake the coyotes or disturb the peace of Jacob, the mule. Only time I sing is when I am alone on a sleepy horse. There's limits to everything.

Meanwhile, we rode wary for pa's camp. A lot of time had gone by, but there was a chance we could find something.

The way we figured it now, somebody had returned to murder Pierre and pa.

Andre and Swan? Or Pettigrew?

I couldn't get Nativity Pettigrew out of my mind. He was a sly man, a murderous man possibly, but he'd had the daybook, and the only way he could have gotten that daybook would have been to follow pa and Pierre.

Pettigrew had gold on his mind, and mayhap he had found it, and was wishful of keeping it. He would have to be mighty shy of how he brought it down off that mountain. A lot of people wish to find treasure, but few of them realize how hard it is to handle after you've got it.

How do you bring a million dollars in gold down off a mountain? Mules, you say?

You've got to get mules or horses, and that starts people wondering what you want them for. And you may need help, but help can be greedy, often as murderous as you.

I tell you, gold is easier found than kept.

Chapter XVIII

Neb scouted ahead for us, and that was a canny dog. He was big enough to be kin to a grizzly and had a nose like an Arkansas coonhound.

We rode scattered out, not talking, wary for traps because this was Indian country, but wary for those coming down behind us, too. Pa's travois would have made an easy trail to follow, and I wondered if he, too, had feared what was behind him. When we came up to his camp we saw why he'd chosen it. That camp was well out in the open, among just a few trees and some brush, and there was a good field of fire wherever a body looked.

Of course, at first we weren't sure it was pa's camp. It was a likely spot, and there were stones blackened by fires in a clearing among the trees. We got down from our horses and, while the Tinker kept a lookout, we stood around and sized up the situation.

Nell found the grave. She had walked to the other side of the small clearing among the trees. It was there, south of the patch of woods and a small knoll.

Only one grave. Above it was a cross and the name, Pierre Bontemps.

Pa had walked away from here when he saw the horses, and that might be any place to the south, but he saw them from here. He'd made no mention of burying Pierre, so he must have come back ... but Pierre's killer could have buried him. And suppose pa lay in the same grave?

Neither Orrin nor me figured such would be the case, but scattered out around that little nest of trees to see what we could find. Others had been here since, and there would be nothing left unless pa had left some sign intentionally, or unless there was some item time had not destroyed.

We found nothing.

"Tell," Orrin said, "you were a mite older than any of us, and you knew pa a little better. What do you think he would have done at this point?"

"Whoever killed Pierre may have killed him," the Tinker suggested. "He may have laid by those horses waiting for your father."

Judas objected. "That is a possibility, of course. But it seems to me that whoever killed Mr. Bontemps was not one to take chances. He stabbed a wounded, helpless man three times. I believe he would prefer to wait, to catch Mr.

Sackett asleep or somehow helpless."

"The way I see it, Orrin," I said, "knowin' the kind of man pa was, why he came west and all, I think, once he had the horses and no longer had to worry about Pierre, he'd go back after some of that gold."

"I think he did go back," Nell said.

"Well, maybe," I said doubtfully. "I think he would, but we don't know if he did."

"I know," Nell repeated. "I am sure he went back."

"Why?" Orrin asked.

"I think when he left the second time, having some gold and all, and remembering what happened to Mr. Bontemps, I think he would take another route," she said.

"These mountains offer very few roads," Judas objected, "and this is the best way, obviously."

"And the most dangerous. Best routes never meant much to a mountain-born Sackett, anyway," she insisted. "I want to tell you something.

"Just east of Silver Falls I found an old Indian trail. It heads off south along the shoulder above Quartz Creek. When I first settled in there to pan that creek I studied the country in case I had to run. I scouted that trail across the high-up mountains until I could see where it led.

"It goes right to Pagosa Springs, although there's a branch, looks like, that swings south. I've got a feeling it joins up with a trail I saw coming in from the south at Haystack Mountain."

It surely made sense. Pa was never one to set himself up for somebody, and if he now had some gold he would be doubly in danger. He'd keep off the main trails, use routes where he could find cover from which to study his back trail, and he'd head west.

If anybody was lying in wait it would be along the trail east. Folks at San Luis might have talked, and there were always bad men around who'd lie up for a man and try to gather in what he had.

Pa had wintered out west and he liked that country. If he had taken his gold that way he could come by an unexpected way and likely would avoid trouble.

Still, any man packing gold was sure to be an uneasy man.

Seemed to me the only thing to do now was to cut out for Shalako, scout around there and talk to some of the Utes who might know something. Mighty few people travel through Indian country without being seen, and it was likely the Utes knew all that had taken place around Treasure Mountain--if they'd talk.

We headed west, rattling our hocks down the trail for Shalako. We knew that our cousins Flagan and Galloway had settled in that neighborhood a short time back, and we figured to meet up with them, then get our bearings. Galloway was a great hand to make friends, and chances were that he had Indian friends among them.

We Sacketts have fought Indians, camped with them, hunted with them, told stories with them, slept in their tipis and wickiups, and fought with them again. Sometimes all was friendly, depending on the tribe and how they felt at the moment. Pa had lived with Indians, too, and favored their way of life, and, of course, back there in the high-up hills of Tennessee and North Carolina, we'd had many a friend among the Cherokee, Shawnee, or Chickasaws.

They had their way of life and we had ours, and when the white man moved in he did just what the Indians had done before him. He took what land he needed.

There were mighty few Indians for the size of the country, and we crowded them like they crowded others.

Life had been that way from the beginning of time, and I could see no end to it.

Over there in Europe the Celts crowded the Picts, and the Saxons crowded the Celts, and then the Normans moved in and took over the country, and it was the same story all across the world.

Five days later we rode into Animas City which they were building into quite a town. Must have been twenty or twenty-five buildings there, most of them dwellings of one sort or another.

We rode up to Schwenk and Will's saloon, which was also a store. By the look of it, this place had just been opened, but business wasn't suffering. There were half a dozen men at the bar and this was just after midday.

The Tinker and Judas took the horses down to the river for water, Nell went with them, and Orrin and me decided to listen to what was being said and try to find out what we could.

A couple of men nodded as we came in, and one of them spoke. The rest just glanced around and paid us no mind. Nobody was talking very much. There was some talk of a railroad coming in, but it looked to me like that was nothing that was going to happen very soon.

The bartender came down our way and we both ordered rye. He glanced at us real sharp, then again. "Travelin' through?"

"Maybe."

"Pretty country," Orrin commented, "right pretty country. Much going on around?"

"Mining. Cattle. You a cattleman?"

"Lawyer," Orrin said. "But I've worked with cattle. Much ranching around here?"

"West of here, and south. Some good outfits. There's a new bunch over on the La Plata. Name of Sackett."

"Heard of them," Orrin said.

"There's other Sacketts around here. One of the first men in this country was Seth Sackett. He came in with the Baker outfit."

"Good folks, no doubt," I said.

"The best," said the bartender. He was a shrewd, competent-looking man. "You boys could do worse than to settle here yourselves."

"Maybe we'll ride over and see those Sacketts. The ones over on the La Plata."

"If you go," the bartender advised, "better go friendly. They're good boys but they don't take kindly to folks pushing them.

"They've got them a ranch over just beyond that new town--Shalako, or some such name. They've brought in some cattle, but from all I hear they're still sort of camping out. Haven't started to build, yet."

We drank our rye, then ordered coffee. We could see the Tinker had come back and was loafing near the corral, honing the blade of that Tinker-made knife of his.

Perhaps the finest knife ever made.

"You been around here long?" Orrin asked.

"We just opened up. Nobody's been here very long, some folks came in in '73, but the town didn't sort of begin to settle up until '76. If you ride around much, keep your eyes open and a gun handy. The Utes haven't decided what to do about us yet."

One of the other men--a short, barrel-chested man with a broad, friendly face--was looking at me. Suddenly he said, "Speaking of Sacketts, there was one come into this country some years back. Had him a claim up on the Vallecitos. He was hell-on-wheels with a pistol."

"You don't say?" I said, innocently. "Well, I figure if you leave those folks alone they'll leave you alone.

"There's something else, though," I added. "If any of you know anybody who was around here about twenty years back, I'd like to talk to him ... or them."

"Ask Ragan or Galloway Sackett. They're new in the country but they've got an old Indian working for them who has been in this country since those mountains were holes in the ground--goes by the name of Powder-Face."

We finished our coffee and drifted outside. It was a warm, pleasant morning with a blue sky overhead and a scattering of white clouds here and there, a real picture-book sky, typical of that country.

"I've got an uneasy feelin'," I told Orrin.

He nodded. "Reason I wanted to get out of there. No use mixing innocent people in our troubles."

"That one man knew me, or figured he did."

We stood there looking up and down the street. Animas City wasn't much of a town, but it was growing, and it looked like there would be business enough with the mining, ranching, and all.

The Tinker strolled over and joined us. "Man just rode in," he said. "Tied his horse over yonder by the drugstore."

The Newman, Chestnut, and Stevens Drugstore was right along the street. We walked out and went down to the blacksmith shop run by the Naegelin Brothers, and we glanced across at the horse.

The brand was visible from there, and it was 888.

"Charley McCaire's brand," I said. "What do you make of that?"

Orrin shrugged. "Let's ride out."

We walked back to the Tinker and then the three of us went to where Nell and Judas Priest were setting on the bank by the river. We all mounted up and rode out. As we glanced back we saw a man come out of the drugstore and look after us.

A short time later we stopped near the Twin Buttes and waited, studying our back trail, but nobody showed so we rode on, walking our horses as it was mostly uphill, although the grade was not too steep.

The town of Shalako lay on a flat bench with a looming backdrop of the La Plata Mountains behind it. On past the town a trail went on up La Plata Canyon, following the La Plata River. There were very few buildings in the town--one of them was a saloon.

The man behind the bar was a big Swede. He sized me up as I came through the door. Orrin and the others were following me.

He grinned and came around the bar. "Tell! Tell Sackett! Well, I'll be damned!

The boys said you'd be coming up sooner or later, but this is great! Have a drink on the house!"

"We'd rather eat," I said. "We've just come in from Animas City." I drew back a chair and sat down.

"Orrin, this here is Swede Berglund, a good man anywhere you find him."

They shook hands, and then he greeted Judas, Nell, and the Tinker and went to the kitchen to stir up the grub. I wiped the sweat from my hatband and squinted out the open door. Across the street was a supply outfit--general store, miners' supplies, and whatever, and next to that was a livery stable.

When I looked across the street again two men were getting down in front of the store. They looked like they'd come a far piece, and one of them stayed beside the horses while the other went into the store.

The flank of one horse was turned toward me and I could read the brand.

Three Eights ...

"Orrin," I said, "looks like we've got comp'ny."

Chapter XIX

"Could be chance," he said, glancing out the window. "I doubt if Charley McCaire's mad enough to follow us here."

"Suppose he tied up with Baston an' them?"

He shrugged. "Unlikely, but it could be."

There was no use asking for trouble. We'd had a mite of difficulty with McCaire back yonder in New Mexico, and he was truly a hard, stubborn man. Of course, this was good cattle country, with water aplenty and grass. A desert or dry-plains country rancher will ride a far piece for range country like there was hereabouts.

Berglund was putting some bowls of stew on the table, and slabs of bread made from stone-ground wheat. "Eat up, the coffee's gettin' hot."

"That peak yonder," I said, indicating a smooth-domed mountain that seemed to be covered with green growth right over the top, "what peak is that?"

"Baldy," Berglund said. "That's Parrott Peak on the other side of the canyon."

"That's La Plata Canyon?"

"Sure is. The river comes right down from the top. That's rough country up yonder, rough and beautiful."

"Heard about it," I said. "The river heads up in a big glacial basin?"

"What they call a cirque. Yeah, that's right. She picks up some other little streams on the way down. I've only been part way up. Lots of elk and deer up there, and bear, too.

"Last time I was up there I stopped to pick wild strawberries and saw a grizzly doing the same thing. I just backed off and left him alone. He was a good hundred yards off, but that wasn't far enough for me. It's wonderful how cramped a country can get when it's you and a grizzly in the same neighborhood."

Pa had taken off from Treasure Mountain and come down. Chances were he came this far, for he knew the La Plata country as well as that west of here. He might have stopped in the Animas Valley, but, knowing him, I doubted it.

"Orrin, tomorrow you ought to scout around for a place, something ma would like to pass her days in, where we could raise up some cattle."

"What about you?"

"I'm going to find old Powder-Face and make talk with him. If pa came into this country you can bet those Indians knew about it."

The stew was good, and, as I ate, my mind went a-wandering into those far-up hills, seeking out the way pa might have taken. The minds of men are not so different, and the mountains do not allow for much changing of direction.

If a body takes out to follow a made trail down over the hills, he'd best hold to that trail, for there are not too many ways to go. Most of the trouble a man finds in the mountains is when he tries shortcuts or leaves a known way.

Trails are usually made by game or by Indians, then used by latecomers, but the trails are there because somebody has found--through trial and error--the best way to get somewhere. If you see an easier looking way in the mountains, don't take it. You may walk two or three miles and find yourself standing on the edge of a cliff with no way down.

When a body sets out to find another man's trail, he has to sort of ease his way into that man's thoughts and try to reason out what he might have done.

Now pa was a man knew wild country. We had to look at it two ways. He had gold or he didn't, and first off I was going to figure it the hard way: he had him some gold, and he had the problem of getting it out of there.

First off, he'd head for some place he knew, and that was here. He would have extra horses, no need to worry about that, but he would have heavy packs, and folks can be almighty curious. And a man has to sleep.

He'd be tired, and he'd want to get out of this country and back home.

Had he been followed? The chances were he had. Baston and Swan had left Pettigrew for dead ... but had they left Treasure Mountain right after that, or weeks later? We had little information on that score and what little we had came from Pettigrew himself.

Somebody had followed and killed Pierre Bontemps, and most likely that same somebody had followed pa, waiting for a chance. That somebody knew, or thought he knew, where all the gold was, and he didn't want anybody around to dig it up before he had a chance.

Suddenly, I got up. "Orrin, I got a sight of travelin' to do, and I want to do it without having to watch my back trail too much. I just think I'll walk yonder to the store and buy something. If any of those riders are wishful of talking to me they can have at it."

"Want company?" Orrin asked.

"No, sir. I surely don't. If the two of us went they might think we were hunting. I'll just mosey over and give them a chance."

I strolled out and walked across the street. I opened the door and stepped into the store. You could find its like in almost any western town. Bales of jeans, barrels of flour, a coffee grinder and the smell of fresh-ground coffee, prunes, dried apples, apricots, a barrel of crackers, and rows of canned goods.

Behind the counter there was a rack of rifles and shotguns; there were boots, hats, saddles, bridles, spurs, bandanas, vests, gloves, and just about all a man could want. It was my kind of store. In Saint Louis or New Orleans I could walk into a store full of things I just didn't want, but this was no city, and there wasn't a thing here a man wouldn't have use for.

Except maybe those two cowhands standing up by the counter. So I walked along up there, paying them no mind, and they turned to look.

There were things I truly needed, so I shuffled through the jeans, finding a pair long enough for a man six foot three and lean in the hips and waist. I stacked those jeans and a few things I needed whilst those gents dickered over some buying of their own. They were trying to decide about a .44 Smith and Wesson.

"But will it shoot straight?" one of them asked. "I used a Colt some, but this here gun--"

Reaching over I took it from his hand, picked up a box of shells, and thumbed some into the chambers, sayin' meanwhile, very pleasantlike, "May I settle the question for you gents? If you'll come to the door--"

One of them had started to get mad, but, by the time he was makin' up his mind, I already had two shells in the gun and he sort of decided against arguing.

Nonetheless, they didn't like it. I just turned and ambled off to the door, and they traipsed after me, the storekeeper following along.

When I rode into town I'd noticed somebody had left a board standing against a rock, kind of leaning there. Maybe somebody had figured on putting up a sign and then got called away, but the board, which was about three by two, still sat there. I'd also noticed there was a knot in the board, of slightly darker color.

I hefted that Smith and Wesson in my mitt, knowing they'd always made a straight-shooting gun and knowing that I could rely on it to do what I asked.

That board was a good seventy yards off and the knot was not visible.

"Now you take that board yonder? See the knothole in it?"

"I don't see no knothole," the short one said, kind of irritated-like.

Well, I let 'er drive, right from where I held it. "Now you just go look," I said. "If that's not a hole, what is it?"

"Fact is--" I let her bang a couple more times, so fast it sounded like one shot, "you go look and you'll find three holes, yonder. If you don't find one hole atop with two on each side below it, you come back and I'll buy the drinks."

Then I turned around and went back into the store. The storekeeper went behind the counter and picked up some field glasses. "Saves walking," he said, grinning. He was a young man with a nice smile. He walked outside again.

I was shoving some shells into those empty cylinders. I do hate an empty gun.

Seems almost everybody who gets shot accidentally gets it with an empty gun.

When I pull the trigger on a gun it's no accident, and I never pulled one whilst foolin' around.

That storekeeper came back. "My name's Johnny Kyme," he said, "and you surely put those bullets where you said. Was there really a knot there?"

"Uh-huh. There surely was, but you'll not find it now, unless the edges."

"You must have good eyesight."

The two gents were coming back inside, growling a little and looking sour but more respectful.

"No," I said seriously, keeping a very straight face, "I shot it from memory.

That's the way I do. I make a mental note of where the first shirt button above a man's belt is. Then I always know where to put the bullet."

"That's shootin'," the short man grumbled. "I figure we should buy the drinks."

"Thanks, gentlemen," I said, "but the day is young. One of these days, if we all live long enough, I'll belly up to the bar and collect that drink--and buy one."

I paid Kyme for the gun and the other things and turned to go. When I reached the door, I turned and said, "When you boys see Charley McCaire, tell him Tell Sackett sends his regards."

I went across the street for more coffee. Later on, Johnny Kyme told me what was said. That short one said, "Tell Sackett? Hell, that's the man--"

"I never saw him before," Kyme told them, "but he's got two cousins here that can shoot just about as good, maybe better. They just wound up a little go-around with Curly Dunn's outfit."

"Dunn? I remember them. What happened?" they asked.

Kyme said, "Oh, the few that were left dragged their tails out of here, they seemed to have the notion there were easier places to bulldoze."

When they left, Kyme said they looked mighty sober like they had aplenty to think about. I was never much for showin' off, but if a bullet through a board can prevent a shootout, why not do it? I hold nothing against any man unless he comes at me, and I usually put that down to ignorance.

Now these here Three Eight hands would never have that excuse. If they came they'd know what was waiting for them. Orrin was lounging in the door when I walked back, "Did you read them from the book?" he asked.

"Nope," I said, "I just showed 'em the pictures."

Chapter XX

That night, a couple of hundred yards from town, we bedded down about a dozen feet back from the La Plata, unrolling our blankets on the green grass near some cottonwoods. We were cut off from sight of the town by a wall of cottonwood, aspen, and pine trees. We picketed our horses on the grass and settled down to sleep. Nell had gone to stay with the family who had been caring for her pa. He was feeling better now and figuring on a place of his own.

The four of us were asleep, eased to our comfort by the rustling leaves and the water running a few yards off. I don't know what it was made me wake up, but suddenlike in the middle of the night I was wide awake.

Our fire was down to red coals glowing, and beside it sat a man.

It took me a minute to adjust my mind to it, but sure enough, there he sat, cross-legged by the fire and still as death. My fingers took hold of the butt of my gun, but he seemed peaceful enough so I just lay and watched him for a moment.

It was an Indian, and he was old. His hair hung in two braids, and even at a distance I could see it was part gray. Indians have their ways and we have ours, but a guest at my fire is always welcome to coffee, so I threw back the covers, shoved my feet into the moccasins I keep handy for nightwork or for the woods, and went over to the fire.

He didn't look up or say anything. His hands were brown and old, with large veins, and his nails were cut flat across. He wore a knife and there was a Winchester alongside of him.

Poking some sticks into the coals, I edged the coffeepot a mite closer and got some biscuits we'd bought in the store a few hours earlier.

He had his own cup and I filled it, then filled mine. The wind juttered the fire a little and I added more fuel. The wind down that canyon could be right chill on occasion.

His eyes were old, but their gaze was sharp and level when he looked at me. "I am Tell Sackett," I said. "You are Powder-Face?"

"You look for your papa?"

The word sounded strange on his lips, and I said, "It has been twenty years. He is dead, I believe."

He tasted his coffee. "Good!" he said. "Good!"

"I want to know what happened to him, and to find where he lies, if that is possible."

"He was a good man--two times. I knew him two times. The first time we shot at him ourselves."

"Did you kill him?"

He looked up. "No! He was good man--good! The first time, long ago, I did not know him, or him me, We shot--we missed.

"I thought he dead. I waited long time. I went for his hair--he was gone.

"I went back--my horse was gone. Tied where my horse had been was a tomahawk and some red cloth. This is strange man--we shoot, we miss, he goes poof! Then my horse goes poof. But if he can take my horse, it is his. If I can get it back, it is mine.

"He takes it. The tomahawk is good, sharp edge. The cloth is good for squaw--maybe he needs horse.

"Seven suns. Day comes, the sun rises on my horse, tied near my head. How? I do not know. Why is horse quiet? I do not know. It is magic? Perhaps."

"My father brought him back?"

"It is so. Many suns, and one day when the people of our village are hungry, I see an elk. I stalk. I am lifting the bow and arrow ready to fly when from close under the bush where I am, another elk leaps up--all run. I miss.

"Suddenly there is a shot, the elk falls. I wait, nobody comes. I wait--nobody comes. I go to the elk. Then he stands up, this man who is your father. He lifts his hand to me, and then he turns his back and walks away. He has given us meat.

It is a good thing he has done, and my people are no longer hungry.

"At night I tell them of this man, and we wonder about him. Who has sent him?

What does he do here?

"His tracks are near our village. I think sometimes he watches us. We are not many braves, and there are too many young ones, too many women. I must hunt always, but the bow does not shoot far--hunting is hard.

"One morning when I leave my lodge there is a rifle there, lying upon a skin.

Beside it are powder and ball. Only he could have left it. Only he could come into our village and leave without being seen. But then we see him no more."

"No more?"

"Many moons, the snows come and they go--more than two times. Three? Four? We do not know. After a long time we are in village on back side of Beaver Mountain.

"In the night the dogs bark, we see nothing. In the morning we find a haunch of elk meat hanging from a tree. Our friend is back.

"We owe him much, for when the hunting was bad the rifle he left us kept our lodges with meat. This time we do not need the meat he has left us and he knows this. He has left it to tell us he is back.

"Often we see him then, but we do not like all we see, and he faces toward us one time and makes the signs not to come near, and the sign for bad heart."

We drank our coffee slowly. The old man was tired.

"Now we have young braves. They know of the white man who gave us meat. They are like small deer--very curious. They watch. They come back to village to tell what they have seen."

The firelight played upon the seamed brown face, and the old man lifted his cup in two hands and emptied it. Once more I filled the cup. This man had known my father. This man had watched him upon his last trail, had known how he thought, at least about some things. The white man of the mountains often fought the Indian, but there was understanding between them--rarely hatred. They fought as strong men fight, for the love of battle and because fighting is a part of the life they live.

The Indian lived a life that demanded courage, demanded strength, stamina, and the will to survive; and the white men who came first to the mountains had such qualities--or they would not have come in the first place, and they could not have lasted in the second.

Most mountain men were affiliated with one tribe or another, all had respect for Indians. Some found the only life they loved among the Indians. My father was a man of two worlds. Whether he walked among savages or among the civilized he was equally at home.

"I must know where my father died. I would like to know how he died, but to know where is enough. My mother grows old. She worries that the bones of her husband lie exposed to the wind and have been picked by coyotes. They must be buried, as is our custom."

He sat a long time. "I do not know where he died. I know he went away. He went to walk upon the mountains and he did not return. I can show you the trail he took."

"He went alone?"

"Alone--but others followed."

There was a knot lying near, and I added it to the fire, for the night was cold.

Wind stirred the leaves, ruffled the flames. I gathered sticks and broke them with my hands and built more warmth for the old man, then I filled his cup with coffee and sat beside the fire again, waiting for whatever else he would say.

"A trail lies there, high upon the mountain, some call it the Ute Trail, but the trail was old before the Utes came to these mountains. I do not know where the trail leads, nor does any man, but there are harsh, cold winds and sudden, terrible storms. There are days with blue skies and tufts of cloud--but these days are few among the high peaks."

"Do you know the trail?"

"It lies there." He pointed toward the mountains. "I know where it is, not where it leads. I am an old man. I have no strength to follow such a trail, and when I was a young man, I was afraid."

"If my father went there, then I must go."

"He died there."

"We shall see." Again I added a chunk of wood to the fire. "Be warm, Old One.

There is fuel. Now I shall sleep. In the morning I will take the way you show me."

"I will go with you."

"No. I shall go alone. Rest here, Old One. My cousins have given your people a place. Stay with them, guide them."

"I think soon the Indian will walk no more upon the land. When I look into the fire, I think this."

"Some will," I said, "some will not. Civilization is a trap for some men, a place of glory for others. The mountains change with years, so must the Indian change. The old way is finished, for my father as well as for you, for the man of the wilderness whether he be Indian or white.

"I think it will come again. All things change. But if the Indian would live he must go the white man's way. There are too many white men and they will not be denied."

Powder-Face shrugged. "I know," he said simply. "We killed them and killed them and killed them, and still they came. It was not the horse soldiers that whipped us, it was not the death of the buffalo, nor the white man's cows. It was the people. It was the families.

"The rest we might conquer, but the people kept coming and they built their lodges where no Indian could live. They brought children and women, they brought the knife that cuts the earth. They built their lodges of trees, of sod cut from the earth, of boards, of whatever they could find.

"We burned them out, we killed them, we drove off their horses, and we rode away. When we came back others were there as if grown from the ground--and others, and others, and others.

"They were too many for us. We killed them, but our young men died, too, and we had not enough young men to father our children, so we must stop fighting."

"Remember this, Old One. The white man respects success. For the poor, the weak, and the inefficient, he has pity or contempt. Whatever the color of your skin, whatever country you come from, he will respect you if you do well what it is you do."

"You may be right. I am an old man, and I am confused. The trail is no longer clear."

"You brought your people to my cousins. You work for them now, so you are our people as well. You came to them when they needed you, and you will always have a home where they are."

The flames burned low, flickered, and went out. Red coals remained. The chill wind stirred the leaves again. Powder-Face sat silently, and I went to my blankets.

Nativity Pettigrew had led us to believe he had come right down the mountain and the others after him, but that had not happened. Somebody--maybe several of them--had followed pa. Somebody had come back, discovered Pierre's body gone and no sign of pa, so they'd followed, found Pierre's grave, and knew pa was alive.

Pa might return to New Orleans and tell Philip what happened in the mountains.

Or he might come back and get more gold. It must have been obvious from the tracks that pa's horses were carrying heavy. What they carried had to be gold.

Pa knew this country, and he knew old Powder-Face. He knew he could stay with him until he was rested and strong again, and he could hide the gold close by and Powder-Face would not disturb it. So he had come west, and he had been followed.

Lying there looking up at the clouds, I considered. I'd take my appaloosa, I'd take that buckskin pack-horse, and enough grub for two weeks, and I'd plan to stay in the mountains until I found what I was hunting or ran out of grub.

It began to spatter rain so I tugged my tarp over my head and just let her spatter. It was a good sound, that rain. Tyrel would be coming along from New Mexico soon and he would be bringing ma. They would bring cattle and take up land at the foot of the mountains somewhere. We were mountain folk, and we cottoned to the high-up hills.

There'd be Tyrel and me, Flagan and Galloway, and maybe Orrin would hang out his shingle down in Animas City or even in Shalako, although there was mighty little for a lawyer to do there. But just give folks time. You can't get two people together without soon or late they're lawin' at each other.

Far up there on the cold, gray rocks of the peaks where the last streaks of snow were melting off, up there would be strong, fierce winds blowing, weeping over the high plateaus, trimming the spruce to one level, driving the freezing rain into every crevice in the rock.

How could I find anything up there? If pa had died, what would be left of him now? Some scattered bones, his boot heels, maybe, and part of his holster and belt, chewed by wolves or other varmints.

It would be a lonely place to die, but maybe such a place as he'd want, for he was no stay-a-bed man. He'd always been up and doing, and when it came to that, what better way to go than on the trail somewhere, packing a gun and riding the high country?

The spattering rain made me think of Powder-Face. I raised up my head to look, but the old one was gone, vanished into the night and the rain as if he had never been.

For a moment he held in my thoughts, and I wondered how many times he or his kind had sat staring into the flames and feeling the rain fall and the wind blow?

Man had enemies, that was in the nature of things, but when it comes right down to it his battle to live is with that world out there, the cold, the rain, the wind, the heat, the drought, and the sun-parched pools where water had been.

Hunger, thirst, and cold--man's first enemies, and no doubt his last.

Chapter XXI

That appaloosa and me had reached a kind of understanding. On a chilly morning he liked to buck the frost out of his system, so whenever I put a foot in the stirrup around daybreak I knew he was going to unwind.

Naturally, I wasted no time getting into the saddle. If I put a foot in the stirrup and swung my leg over real fast, me and the saddle would come together on the rise.

Of course, I always managed to mount a little away from camp so's I wouldn't buck right through breakfast. That's the sort of thing can make a man right unpopular in any kind of outfit.

This morning that appaloosa really unwound. He was feelin' good and it done me no harm to just sit up there and let him have at it. Ridin' easy in the saddle all the time can make a man downright lazy, so when they feel like buckin', I say let 'em buck. I don't care which nor whether. When Ap had bucked himself into good nature and an appetite, I took him back to the fire and lit down from the saddle.

Judas had put together some grub and like always when he done the cookin' it tasted mighty fine. He was spoilin' me for my own cookin', and soon I'd be out yonder on the trail with nobody but myself to cook.

I told them all about the visit from Powder-Face and about my plan.

"You sure you don't want me to ride along?" Orrin asked.

"I would prefer to ride with you, suh," Judas said. "It might be that I could be of service."

The Tinker said nothing. He was ready to go if I wanted him, and well he knew it and I knew it.

"It would be pleasurable," I said. "I could do with the comp'ny and the cookin', but a man listens better when he's alone, and he hears better."

When we'd finished breakfast, and I'd lingered as long as I could afford over my coffee, I went to my horses. "You ride loose, Tell," Orrin advised. "This isn't any western outfit. They're a murderin' lot."

I stepped into the saddle. Ap had finished with bucking during our little set-to of the morning, and he made no fuss. Besides, he knew I was now in no mood for catywampusing around.

"The way I'm riding is round about," I said, "but I want to come into the mountains the way pa did. If I see the country the way he saw it maybe I can catch his frame of mind.

"By the time he started up that trail, June must have been pretty well gone, and we know the snow was light that year and had mostly gone off. He wouldn't find much snow except where the shadows gathered and in deep hollows. The trail Powder-Face speaks of might be the one he took."

"I was talking to one of the young braves," said Orrin. "Some call it the Ghost Trail. They say it was made by The People. Who Went Before ..."

"Well," I gathered the reins, "you know me, Orrin. I'm going to ride easy into the hills and sort of let it come to me."

When I rode down what you could call the street of Shalako, Nell was standing out before a new-built house. I drew up and took off my hat. "Howdy, ma'am," I said, "I'm off for a ride."

She looked at me, serious-like and tender. It kind of worried me, that look did, but then I figured it was just that we'd known each other awhile, not that she was thinking gentle thoughts of me. I'd gotten used to womenfolks speaking to me and passin' by toward handsome gents who had some flash and flare to 'em. Not that I blamed 'em any. I'm just a big ol' homely man who's kind of handy with horses, guns, and cattle, which doesn't fit me very much for cuttin' didoes with the female sex.

"Now you be careful, Tell Sackett!" she said. "I wish you'd not go."

"Somewhere my pa lies dead, unburied, perhaps, and ma's growing on in her years and it frets her to think of it. I'm going to ride yonder and try to find what remains of him so ma can go her way in comfort."

Her eyes were big and serious. "It is a fine thing," she said, "but it will do your ma no good to have your own bones unburied on some fool mountain! I wish I could talk to your ma! I'd speak to her! I'd tell her what she's doing!"

"It was not her idea that we ride out and look," I said. "It was ours. But it is a small thing we can do to comfort her."

She put her hand up to me and touched me gentle on the sleeves. "Tell? Do ride careful, now, and when you're back, will you come calling?"

"I will," I said. "I'll ride by and halloo the house."

"You'll get down and come in!" she flared.

"Dast I? Seems to me I recall ol' Jack Ben was some hand with the rock salt when the boys come a-courtin' around."

She flushed. "He never shot at you, did he? You don't look like you caught much salt, the way you set that saddle! If pa'd shot you, you'd still be ridin' high in your stirrups!"

"I never came around," I said simply. "I didn't reckon there was much point in it." I blushed my ownself. "I never was much hand to court, Nell Trelawney, I never quite got the feel of it. Now if it was somethin' I could catch with a rope, I'd--"

"Oh, go along with you!" She stepped back, looking up at me, disgusted maybe. I never was much hand at readin' the faces of womenfolks, nor understandin' their ways. I go at 'em too gentlelike, I suspect. Sometimes it's better to use the rawhide manner.

Anyway, when I turned in the saddle she lifted a hand at me, and I got to thinking maybe I should fetch up to her door when my way led down the mountain again.

The trail I wanted was best found riding out of Animas City, but I figured there was no point in showin' everybody what was on my mind, so instead of taking off up Junction Creek I went up Lightner Creek and found my way by game trails over to where Ruby Gulch opens into Junction.

It was mighty pretty country, forest and mountain and a trickle of water here and there, some of them good-sized streams. I scrambled my horses up a slope onto a point of the mountain that gave me a sight of country to see over. It was open a mite, there on the point, backed up with scattered aspen and then a thick stand that climbed up the point behind.

There was a place just back of the point where a big old spruce had been torn up by the wind. Where its roots pulled free of the soil there was a kind of hollow where the grass had begun to grow. In the grass where no trees grew, I picketed the horses, stripped the gear from them, and went about putting together a mite of fire. The wood I chose was dry, and it burned with almost no smoke, and after I'd eaten I set on the point between two trees where the branches hung low and shadowed me.

For over an hour I just set there, a-listening to the evening. There was sunlight on the mountain across from me, but it was high up, toward the crest of the ridge. There was stillness in the canyon below, and a marvelous coolness coming up.

Somewhere an owl spoke his question to the evening, and the aspen leaves hung as still as you'll ever see them, for they move most of the time.

It was a mighty fine thing setting there getting the feel of the night, a kind of stillness like you never felt anywhere else but in the far-off wilderness.

There was no vanity here, nor greed, there was only a kind of quietness, and the thought came upon me that maybe this was how pa wanted to go, out on some rocky ledge with the whole world falling away before him, a gun in his hand, or a knife--the love of the world in his guts and the going out of it like an old wolf goes, teeth bared to his enemies.

I never was much to mind where my bones would lie once the good Lord had taken my soul. I had a feeling maybe I'd like to leave myself upon the mountains, my spirit free to lean against the wind.

Death never spent time in my thoughts, for where a man is there is no death, and when death is there a man is gone, or the image of him. Sometimes I think a man walks many lives like he does trails. I recall a man in a cow camp who was a-reading to us about some old battle the Greeks had fought a time long ago, and suddenly I was all asweat and my breath was coming hard, and I could feel a knife turning in my guts.

The man looked at me and lowered the book and said, "I did not know I read so well, Sackett."

"You read mighty well," I said. "It's like I was there."

"Maybe you were, Tell, maybe you were."

Well, I don't know about that, but the shadows came down the canyon and the trees lost themselves in it, crowding all together until they were like one big darkness.

And then I heard in the darkness a faint chink of metal on stone.

So ... after all, I was not alone. Something, somebody was out there.

The butt of my gun felt cool in my fist. I did not draw my piece; I just sat there, listening. There was no further sound, and, softly as a cat walks, I went from there and back to my camp.

My fire was down to coals.

I brought the horses in closer, picketing one on either side of me, and then I went to sleep. Nothing, man or beast, would come near without a warning from them, and I was a light sleeper.

Once, in the night, awakened by some small sound, I lay for a time. Overhead I saw a great horned owl go sweeping down some mysterious channel of the night, piloted by I know not what lust, what urge, what hidden drive. Was it simply that, like me, he loved the forest night and liked to curve his velvety paths among the dark columns of the spruce?

I am one with these creatures of the night and of the high places. Like them I love the coolness, the nearness of the stars, the sudden outthrusts of rock that fall off into the unbelievable vastness below.

Like them, sometimes I think I have no sense of time, no knowledge of years, only the changing of seasons but not the counting of them.

And then I was asleep again and awake with the faint grayness of the morning.

Out of the blankets, I glanced at the dead coals. No fire this morning, no smell of smoke for them if they hadn't got the smell last night. Hat on first, like any good cowhand, then boots, and then the easy, practiced flip of the gun belt about my waist. Stamping to settle feet into boots, saddling up, loading the gear without sound, spreading the fire. It had left no coals, burning down to the softest of gray ashes.

A few minutes to smooth out the earth where my boots left tracks, a scuffing up of trampled grass. A good tracker would know there'd been a camp, but time would be needed to tell who was there or how many. In the saddle then, and riding between the trees to the north.

Where Heffernan Gulch came into Junction Creek there was a bend in the canyon of Junction that shielded me from downstream observation, so I took advantage to find my way across Junction and up the trail along Heffernan Gulch.

Almost at once I saw it. A deep cut in an aspen, a notch cut with an axe--not a blaze--pa never liked the glaring white of a new blaze. "If you want to follow my trail, boy," he used to tell me, "you've got to look sharp."

It was his notch, and to make it sure, another one fifty feet along, "All right, Ap," I said, "this is the trail. This is the one we've been looking for."

Ap's ears flickered around, then ahead, pricked, interested. We walked on.

Occasionally I glanced back. As far as I could see there was nothing. Yet what might be sheltered under those trees?

There was one more notch on that trail, and I came near to missing it. The tree was big and old, a spruce, and it was tumbled on its side at the trail's edge. A casual glance caught the old notch there ... and after that there were no more trees.

The trail showed no recent signs of use. Rocks had rumbled down from the face of the mountain, but there had been no big slides. The appaloosa picked his way delicately over the fallen rock, the buckskin following.

The trail grew steeper. Far above I could see the outer rim of the cirque that was Cumberland Basin. Above me loomed Snowstorm Peak, more than twelve thousand feet high, and before me and on my left was Cumberland Mountain, nearly as high.

Both mountains were bare and cold, towering a thousand feet above timberline, their flanks still flecked with patches of snow or long streamers of it that lay in crevices or cracks.

Turning up the collar of my jacket, I hunched my shoulders against the cold wind. The trail was narrow, a drop of hundreds of feet if a hoof should slip.

Here and there were patches of ice--dark, old ice, and old snow as well.

In places, my knee rubbed the inner wall of rocks. Further along, the mountain slanted steeply away, but here it fell sheer from the trail to a long, steep talus slope that ended finally in the tree line, a ragged rank of stiff and noble trees making a bold stand against the destruction that hung over them.

Glancing back, I caught a movement. A rider came out of the trees far below me, and then another and another.

They didn't look familiar, and neither did their horses. With my field glasses I could have recognized them, but what was the point? When they caught up, if they did, they would make themselves known, and they'd have a chance to get acquainted with me, too.

Seems to me folks waste a sight of time crossing bridges before they get to them. They clutter their minds with odds and ends that interfere with clear thinking.

Those folks were certainly following me, and it was equally certain they were none of my people. When they caught up there'd likely be trouble, but I wasn't going out hunting it. I was looking for signs of pa.

Far and away on my right lay a vast and tumbled mass of distant peaks and forest, bare rock shoved up here and there, high mountain parks and meadows ... magnificent country. Overhead, the sky was impossibly blue and dotted with those white fluffs of cloud that seemed always to float over the La Platas and the San Juans. Trouble coming or not, this was great country, a man's country.

The trail took a turn and I lost sight of them below. Alongside the trail there was a beautiful little patch of blue, like a chunk of the sky had floated down to rest on that frost-shattered rock and gravel beside the trail--it was some alpine forget-me-not. Down the steep slope where a fallen man or horse would roll and tumble for seven or eight hundred feet, I could see the bright gold of avalanche lilies here and there.

The last few yards was a scramble, but Ap was a mountain horse and the buckskin seemed content to follow any place Ap would go. When we topped out on the rim there was a view you wouldn't believe. Down below us was a huge basin, one side opening and spilling down into La Plata Canyon. There was another vast glacial gouge on my left, and ahead of me I could see the thread of that high, indent trail winding its way--across the country, a thin thread through the green of the high grass that was flecked with wild flowers of every description.

All around were vast and tumbled mountains. I was twelve thousand feet above sea level. Far off to the north I could see the great shaft of the Lizard Head and get a glimpse of Engineer Mountain, and off to the east were the Needles, White Dome, Storm King, and what might be the Rio Grande Pyramid, near which the Rio Grande rises. It was the kind of view that leaves a man with a feeling of magnificence, but there just ain't words to cover it.

Old Ap, he seemed happy on that high place, too, but he snorted a little when I started him down the thread of trail that led through the gravel and the frost-shattered rocks on the inside of the cirque.

It was like going down the inside of a volcanic crater, only there was a meadow at the bottom and no fires.

The man lying under the spruce had been there since shortly after daylight. He had a Sharps rifle, one of the best long-range weapons there is, and he had a natural rest across the top of a fallen tree. His view of the trail down the inside of the rim was clear and perfect, and when he saw Tell Sackett top the rim he was pleased. This was going to be the easiest hundred dollars he had ever earned--and it surely beat punching cows.

He was a dead shot, a painstaking man with a natural affinity for weapons and a particular ease with rifles. He let Sackett come on, shortening the distance for him.

He picked his spot, a place where the steepness of the trail seemed to level off for a few feet. When Sackett reached there, he would take him. The range was roughly four hundred yards--possibly a bit over. He had killed elk at that distance, and kills had been scored with a Sharps at upwards of a thousand yards.

He sighted, waited a little, then sighted again. About twenty yards now ... he settled himself into the dirt, firmed his position. Sackett was a salty customer, it was said. Well, soon he'd be a salted customer.

He looked again, sighted on a spot below the shoulder and in a mite toward the chest, took a long breath, eased it out, and squeezed off his shot.

The best laid plans of mice and men often seem to be the toys of fate. The marksman had figured on everything that could be figured. His distance, the timing, the fact that the rider was at least a hundred and fifty feet higher than himself. He was a good shot and he had thought of it all.

He had the rider dead in his sights, and a moment after the squeeze of the trigger William Tell Sackett should have been bloody and dead on the trail.

The trouble was in the trail itself.

At some time in the not too distant past, nature had taken a hand in the game, and in a playful moment had trickled a small avalanche off the rim, down the slope, and across the trail. In so doing it left a gouge in the trail that was about a foot deep.

As the marksman squeezed off his shot, the appaloosa stepped down into that gully. The drop--as well as the lurch in the saddle that followed--was just enough. The bullet intended for Tell's chest nicked the top of his ear.

The sting on my ear, the flash of the rifle, and the boom that followed seemed to come all at once, and whatever else pa taught us boys he taught us not to set up there and make a target of yourself.

Now it was a good hundred and fifty yards to the foot of the trail and every yard of it was bare slope where I'd stand out like a whiskey nose at a teetotalers' picnic. So I just never gave it a thought, there wasn't time for it. I just flung myself out of that saddle, latching onto my Winchester as I kicked loose and let go. I hit that slope on my shoulder, like I'd planned, rolled over and over, and came up at the base of the slope with my rifle still in my hands and a mad coming up in me.

Nobody needed to tell me that anybody shooting at me now had been posted and waiting for me. This was some sure-thing killer out scalp hunting, and I have a kind of feeling against being shot at by strangers. Least a man can do is introduce himself.

When I reached the bottom of that slope I had a second boom ringing in my ears, but that shot--it sounded like a Sharps buffalo gun so he must have reloaded fast--had missed complete. Nonetheless the thing to do at such a time is be someplace else, so I rolled over in the grass, hit a low spot, and scrambled on knees and elbows, rifle across my forearms, to put some distance from where I fell.

Chances were nine out of ten he figured he'd got me with the first shot, because I fell right then. Chances also were he'd wait a bit and if I didn't get up he'd come scouting for the body, and I meant to be damned sure he found one ... his.

Ap had stopped only a moment. That was a right sensible horse and he knew he had no business up there on that bare slope, so he trotted along to the bottom. The buckskin stayed right with him, the lead rope still snubbed to the saddle horn.

I was going to need those horses so I kept an eye on them. Pretty soon they began to feed on the meadow.

When I'd scrambled fifty yards or so, I was behind a kind of low dome, maybe some dirt pushed up by the last small glacier when it slid off the walls and pushed along the bottom of the cirque.

My ear was bleeding and it stung like crazy, and that kind of riled me, too.

That man over yonder sure had a lot to answer for.

Careful to keep my rifle down so the sun wouldn't gleam on it, I edged along that earth dome until I was on the far shoulder of it. Then I chanced a look toward those spruce trees where the shot had come from.

Nothing.

Minutes passed. About that time a thought occurred to me that had me sweating.

Those folks coming up the trail back of the mountain would be topping out on the crest and looking down into that basin. Now while that sport over yonder with the Sharps couldn't see me--at least I hoped he couldn't--I'd be wide open and in the clear for those people when they topped out on the rim.

They'd have me from both sides and I'd be a dead coon.

I've been shot at now and again, and I've taken some lead here and there, but I never cared for it much. To tell you the truth, I'd as leave let it lay. There's something mighty disconcerting about a bullet in the brisket ... lead sets heavy on the stomach.

The trouble was I'd about run out of places to go. From here on, I was in the open unless I could squeeze right into the ground. Nowhere could I see more than two or three inches of cover, and I was going to want more--a whole lot more.

One thing I did know. If those people topped out on that rise and raised a gun at me, they were going to find it was an uncomfortable place to be. Because I was going to start shooting, and their horses would come down off that rim one way or the other, probably running and buck-jumping.

Of a sudden I heard a faint stir, and I turned very carefully.

A man, rifle held in his hands ready for use, was standing just in front of the spruce trees. He was standing stockstill and he was listening.

I eased my rifle forward and waited. The man stood there, took a couple of steps forward, and stopped again. From where I'd fallen when he fired he would be merged against that spruce background and not easily seen; from where I now lay he was outlined stark and clear. He took another step forward, and then one of the riders topping the ridge evidently got a glimpse of me. He up with his rifle and let drive, and I shot at the man by the spruce trees.

I left the ground in a diving run. I had no hopes of scoring a good hit, but the bullet turned him. As I had run to his right, which meant he had to swing toward the hard side, he missed his shot at me. I went into some hummocks of grass and rubble, rolled over three times, and took another diving run into the woods.

Turning, I shot three times at the bunch on the ridge as fast as I could work the lever on the Winchester. I was shooting at a target seven or eight hundred feet higher and some distance off, but the bullets lit among them.

Like I figured, it blew things all to bloody hell. One of those horses jumped right straight out ahead of him, hit that slope on all fours, went to his knees, throwing his rider, and, still sliding, scrambled up and made it to the bottom.

Another of the horses came down the slope on that narrow path hellbent for election with the rider hanging on with both hands. The horse hit the bottom of the trail and stopped short, and the rider went right on over his head. He hit hard, got up, and fell over.

The other two who had been up there disappeared down the other side. I kept on moving. Somewhere in this same patch of woods was that killer who had come close to notching my skull a few minutes back.

If I'd put a bullet in him, I'd be lucky, but I might just have burned him or his rifle or hit near him. Any one of those things can make a man jump.

I lit out at a run along the slope, keeping into the trees. Mostly I went downhill because that was the easiest way to go. Then I slowed down and worked my way along the slope to get to where Ap was feeding.

There were dips and hollows in the land, brush and trees here and there, but mostly just grass and flowers. The rim of the cirque was just over yonder, so I went that way, doing the Injun in the grass, snaking along when necessary, running when I could.

At that altitude, even if you're used to it as I was, you just don't do much running. Finally I hunkered down between three thick-boled old spruce and waited, catching my breath and trying to see where they were located.

My horses were grazing about a hundred yards off, and one of theirs, his saddle under his belly, stood spraddle-legged about that same distance away but closer to where they must be.

Having a moment to spare, I fed some shells into my rifle and held my place. At least two of them had reached the bottom, and one was in no shape for action, judging by the tumble taken. One of them was out in front of me somewhere and so was the one who first shot at me.

Time dragged by slowly. Shadows began to gather . In the basin. On the rim there was golden sunlight, and there was a pinkish tinge to the clouds. Out over the basin, somebody called ... it sounded like a woman, but that couldn't be.

Looking toward my horses, I decided to try for them. I went forward, keeping to the deepest grass and wild flowers, some of which were almost waist-high.

No telling who they were out there. Andre Baston and Hippo Swan? Probably. But they had started one bunch of killers after me a good while back, and they'd surely not hesitate to try again. Killing was something you could buy cheap, these days. The chances of being charged with a killing out here were slight.

Many men went west, many never came back, and few questions were asked.

It took me some stretch of time before I reached my horses, even though they weren't far off. I moved along, keeping out of sight as best I could, and heard nothing. And then, just as dark was coming on the rim up yonder, I saw a rider top out there, hold fast for a minute, and start down the trail. All he could see from up there was a great black bowl of darkness.

As I edged closer, old Ap pricked his ears and took a step toward me, curious as to why I was down there on the ground. "Easy, boy!" I whispered. "Easy, now!"

He stood fast and my hand went out to gather up the reins. I drew the horse nearer to me, then, carefully, I got to my feet.

Suddenly, at my elbow, a voice spoke--a woman's voice. The shock of it sent a chill right up my spine.

"I believe I have been hurt. Can you help me?"

Chapter XXII

It was Fanny Baston.

She had a voice that was one in ten thousand--low, soft, inviting. Even in the darkness I could see there was blood on her face, her blouse and coat were torn, and she was favoring one leg.

"Your friends are close by." I wanted no part of her, just none at all. She was hurt, all right, but she had a brother and an uncle within call, and mayhap others as well.

"I think I am ..." she just let go everything and slumped to the ground, passed out.

I swore. Yes sir, I swore. The last thing I needed right now was to be saddled with a hurt woman, especially this one. She hadn't seemed to know me. Maybe that rap on the skull had done it, but there wasn't much a body could do.

If I called for them, I'd get shot. If I left her there, she might die. I'd no idea how bad off she was, and I couldn't see any way but to take her along. So I picked her up and put her in the saddle. Holding her with one hand I started forward. I hadn't gone that way more than a few minutes when Ap stopped. I tried to urge him on, but he wouldn't budge a step. Leaving Fanny Baston slumped over the saddle horn, I went forward and almost stepped off of the world.

My foot went off the edge, and it was lucky I had hold of the bridle. Pulling back, I knocked a small rock off into space, and it fell what seemed like a long time. I backed up and turned the horse, and we worked back into the scattered trees and into the grass.

What I needed now was a hideout. Wandering around in the dark at the edge of a cliff was no way to find one, yet find one I did. It was fool's luck, nothing else.

I came to another place where the horse stopped, but that time I could see trees ahead of me. I dropped a rock and it fell only a few feet and lit soft.

I worked along the edge until I found a place that sort of slanted off and I went down. I was on a lower level, maybe six or eight feet lower than where I'd been, and there was thick grass underfoot.

I had tied Fanny's hands to the pommel, and now I led the horses down and along under the trees. When I got behind a small shoulder of that ledge, I pulled up, knelt close to the ground, and took the chance to strike a match.

Some tall spruce, boles eight to ten inches through, were close around me. I was on level, grassy ground. I untied Fanny's hands and lifted her down. She was unconscious, or seemed to be. If she was shamming, she was doing an almighty good job of it. I put her on the grass, stripped the gear from my horses, and led them over on the grass and picketed them.

Coming back to the trees, I stood there for a moment, getting the feel of the place. All around me was darkness, overhead a starlit sky except where the limbs of spruce intervened. We seemed to be in a sort of pocket. One edge of it, I was quite sure, was the lip of that dropoff over which I'd almost stepped--the outer edge of the mountain itself.

Down here, and under the spruce, there seemed a good chance a fire would not be seen. In the dark I surely could do nothing for that girl, and I was hungry and wanting coffee.

Breaking a few of the dried suckers from the trees and gathering wood by the feel, I put together enough for a fire, then lit a small blaze. Fanny Baston was out cold, all right, and she was pale as anybody I'd seen who was also alive.

She'd had a nasty blow on the skull and her head was cut to the bone. One arm was scraped, taking a lot of the hide off. Her leg wasn't broken, but there was a swelling and a bruised bone. I heated water, started coffee, and bathed some of the blood off her face and head. I also bathed the arm a little, getting some of the grass and gravel out of the skinned place.

I took the thong off my six-shooter. If I needed a gun I was going to need it fast. My Winchester I kept to hand, but across the fire from that woman.

By the time I'd made coffee her breathing was less ragged and she was settling down into what seemed to be a natural sleep. She was a beautiful woman, no denying it, but here I was, so weary I scarce could stand, and I dasn't sleep for fear she'd wake up in the middle of the night and put a blade into me.

And she had one. She had it strapped to her leg under her dress, a neat little knife, scarcely wider than her little finger but two-edged as well as pointed.

I'd come onto it whilst I was checking that bad leg, but I left it right where it was.

After a bit I walked off into the dark and went back up on the level. There was no sign of that place from above, and the little fire I had was well hidden. I listened for a spell, then strolled back. Fanny Baston had not moved. At least not so's I could see.

Taking my blankets I moved back among those trees. Three spruces grew together, their trunks starting almost from the same spot. I settled down amongst them with my pistol hitched around between my legs and my Winchester handy. Wrapped in a blanket, I settled down for the night.

The trees formed a V and I put a couple of small branches across the wide part of it. To reach me they'd have to step one foot there, and I had a notion I'd hear them first. And there was always the horses to warn me of folks a-coming.

There for a time I slept, dozed, slept again, and dozed. Then I was awake for a spell. Easing out of my place I added a few small sticks to the fire, checked Fanny, covering her better with the blanket, then went back to my corner.

It was not yet daybreak when I finally awakened, and I sat there for a bit, thinking about pa and about this place and wondering what had become of him.

Wherever he'd come to the end could not be far from here unless he taken that ghost trail clean out of the country. Knowing pa, he might have done just that.

I was wishing I had ol' Powder-Face with me. That was a canny Injun, and he'd be a help to a man in sorting out a twenty-year-old trail.

When the sky was gray I eased out of my corner and stretched to get the stiffness out of me. I was still tired, but I knew that this day I had it to do.

First off I strolled over to the rim. There was a drop of around a thousand feet, and, at the point where I'd almost stepped off, a sheer drop. Far oft I could see a red cliff showing above the green, and still further the endless mountains rolling away like the waves of the sea to the horizon.

There was no easy way into that vast hollow, but on a point some distance off there was the thin line of a game trail, probably made by elk. It might lead into the basin.

I started back to camp.

Nobody needed to tell me the showdown was here. It was now; it was today.

Andre Baston had followed me from New Orleans, and with him Hippo Swan. They knew what happened here twenty years ago. That Fanny Baston had come with them was a measure of their desperation.

They'd lived mighty easy most of their days. They'd built themselves a style of life they preferred, and then they discovered that money did not last forever.

Ahead of them was loss of face and poverty, and all that would go with it, and they had no courage to face what many face with dignity their life long.

They had staked everything on what would happen today. Not only to prevent the discovery of what had gone before, but if possible to find the treasure--or a part of it--for themselves.

When daylight came I could see that I was on a sort of ledge that sat like a step below the rim. It was covered with grass and scattered with trees and it seemed to curve on around until it lined out along a great barebacked ridge.

The ledge varied in width, maybe a hundred feet at its widest point, narrowing down here and there to no more than a third of that. It was a place that no one would suspect until they were right on it, and I couldn't have found anything better.

From anywhere on that ledge a body could see most of it, and I could see no movement yonder where Fanny Baston was lying. I went to my horses and moved them further along. This was good grass and they were having a time of it; and they deserved it.

Nevertheless, being a man who placed no trust in any future I had not shaped myself, I packed my saddle yonder and slapped it on the appaloosa. Then I put together most of my gear and took it down behind a shoulder of rock near the buckskin.

Right above the ledge was a high, rocky knoll that overlooked everything around.

From the ledge I could crawl out and climb that knoll and have a good view of the whole basin.

First I walked back to camp. Fanny Baston was sitting up, her arms around her knees. She looked up at me, her eyes blank.

"Where is this place?" she asked.

"On top of a mountain," I said. I did not know what to think of her, and I was careful. My right hand held my rifle by the action, thumb on the hammer in case of unexpected company. "You had a fall. Your horse jumped off the trail."

She looked at me. "Are you taking care of me? I mean ... why are we here?"

She seemed genuinely puzzled, but I was of no mind to play games. I knew the showdown was close to hand. "You followed me to kill me," I said. "You and your uncle and them."

"Why should we want to kill you?" She looked mystified. "I can't imagine wanting to kill you, or hurt you--you're-you're nice."

She said it in a little girl's voice. "And you're so tall, so strong looking."

She got up. "Are you strong? Could you hold me?"

She took a step toward me. Her dress was torn and her shoulder was bare above that scraped-up arm.

"Your brother and your uncle are right over yonder," I said, "and if you start walking that way, they'll find you."

"But-but I don't want to go! I want to stay with you."

"You must have taken more of a rap on the skull than I figured," I told her.

"You're a right fine lookin' figure of a woman, but I wouldn't touch you with a hayfork, ma'am. I don't think you've got an honest bone in you."

She smiled. "I do like you!"

She came toward me, moving in close. "Tell, please! Let's forget all this! Let's take the horses and go back down the way we came! We could keep right on to California! Anywhere!"

"Yes, ma'am. We could, but--"

Suddenly, she jumped at me, grabbing at my rifle with both hands. She latched on to it and then she grabbed my wrist. "Now, Paul! Now!"

Scared, I threw her off me, sending her tumbling on the grass. She cried out as she hit, and I lost balance and went to one knee.

Paul was standing there, a rifle in his hands, and, even as I looked, its muzzle stabbed flame.

Chapter XXIII

Paul was no such killer as his uncle. He shot too quickly and at a moving target, and his bullet missed. Mine did not.

Yet it was an almost miss. The bullet I had intended for his body was high. It struck the action of the rifle, ripping into his hand, cutting a furrow along his cheek, and taking the lobe from his ear.

He screamed, dropped the rifle, and ran.

Fanny, crying hoarsely with anger, scrambled to her feet and ran for the rifle.

I struck her aside, knocking her into the grass once more. I picked up the rifle and threw it.

It cleared the edge and fell, disappearing from sight.

Someone shouted, "They've found him! Come on!"

I turned and ran swiftly back toward my horses, keeping trees between me and them. I heard a shot, and a bullet scattered twigs and bark over my head, so I swung behind a tree, gasping for breath, but ready to shoot.

There was no target.

Then I heard Fanny shouting, her voice hoarse and angry. "Paul had him! He shot right at him and missed! And then he ran like a rabbit!"

It was easy to cast blame. Chances were Paul had never faced gunfire before.

Like a lot of others he was ready to hurt or kill, but not to be hurt or killed.

Many men avoid battle not from cowardice but from fear of cowardice, fear that when the moment of truth comes they will not have the courage to face up to it.

Paul had no such nerve, and he had been hurt--perhaps not badly, and certainly not fatally, but he had seen his own blood flowing, a profound shock to some.

"It is no problem," I heard Andre's voice, calm and easy. "No problem. I know the place where he is, and there's no way out. It worked before and it will again."

Before?

I looked around me.

Here? Had this been where pa died? I looked toward the corner where the horses were. There?

I had seen no bones, no grave. Wild animals might have scattered the bones, or the body might have been thrown over the edge into the hollow below.

Here ... had pa come to an end here? And was I to follow him?

The situation was different, I told myself. I had a good Winchester, plenty of food, ammunition ... I could stand a siege. Unless there was something else, some unknown factor.

Some time back Judas had said that Andre Baston had ten men with him. It might be an exaggeration, but there were several. I could hear their voices.

After a moment, seeing all clear, I retreated to where the horses were. Here the cul-de-sac narrowed down, and the drop into the basin below was steep. Even had a man been able to get down there, until he could reach the trees, he would be wide open for a shot from the rim. And Andre wasn't likely to miss, as Paul had.

It looked like there might be a narrow way along the rim, a way that might be used by man or horse, but it showed no tracks, no trail, no sign of use. There was also a good chance that a rifleman would be waiting at the other end, with a certain target. There'd be no chance of missing if the target was approaching over a way not three feet wide.

Some rocks had been heaped up here, one slab on another, and some had fallen from a higher barricade. Now there was a fallen tree, the needles still clinging to the dead branches.

When I reached the horses I broke open a box of cartridges and filled my coat pockets. My Winchester '73 was fully loaded, and I was ready as a man could be.

Right over beyond that bare knoll that towered above me was the basin, and from the lower side of the basin a trail went down La Plata Canyon to Shalako.

At Shalako were at least three Sacketts and some friends, but that was six or seven miles away, maybe further, and they might as well be in China for all the good they'd do.

What happened here was up to me. And only me.

I just had a thought that worried me. It passed through my mind while I was considering other things. Something was suddenly nagging me ... what could it have been?

There was some factor in my setup here ...

I had a good field of fire down the ledge from where I'd chosen my hiding place.

There were a few dips and hollows, some fallen logs, some of them almost rotted through.

Getting the horses into as safe a spot as could be, I settled down and gave study to the situation. Over my shoulder I could see the almost bare flank of that ridge where the ghost trail led. Now if I could get over there ...

Nobody was coming. Evidently they were sure they had me and would let me worry a mite. I smelled smoke ... they were fixing some breakfast.

Well, why not me?

I gathered some sticks and put together a bit of a blaze and set some coffee to boiling. Then I got out my skillet and fried up some bacon. Meanwhile I kept an eye open for those gents who were hunting me.

If this was where they had cornered pa, where were his bones? And what became of his outfit? And the gold?

Pa was a canny man, and he'd not be wishful of them profiting by his death. If this was where it happened, then he would have made some show of hiding things ... Yet, how had it happened? True, pa only had a muzzle-loader, and, fast as he was, he'd not be able to fight off a bunch of them for long. But he had a pistol--or should have had.

Thing that disturbed me was the fact that Baston and them were so sure they had me. Now if I could just see what they were about ...

Suddenly a cold chill went through me, like they say happens when somebody steps on your grave. All of a sudden I knew why they were so sure of themselves.

They had a man atop that knoll who could shoot into this place where I was.

He was probably up there now, and, when the attack began and my attention was directed down along the ledge, he'd shoot me from the top of that hill.

Actually, it was a peak, standing higher than anything close by. Looking up at it, I could see where a man up there, if willing to expose himself a little, could fire at almost every corner of this ledge--almost every corner.

Well, cross that bridge when it came. Now for the bacon. I ate it there, liking the smell of it and the smell of the fire. What would I miss most, I wondered, if I should be killed here? The sight of those clouds gathering over the mountains yonder? The smell of woodsmoke and coffee and bacon? The feel of a good horse under me? Or the sunlight through the aspen leaves?

I hadn't a lot to remember, I guess. I'd been to none of the great places, nor walked among people of fame. I'd never eaten very fancy, nor been to many drama-shows. I'd set over many a campfire and slept out under the stars so much I knew all their shapes and formations from looking up at them time after time.

There'd been some good horses here and there, and some long trails and wide deserts I'd traveled. I had those memories, and I guess they stacked up to quite a lot when a fellow thought of it. But pa was away head of me when he settled down here to make his stand. He had a wife back home, and some boys growing, boys to carry on his name and carry on his living for him. I hadn't a son nor a daughter. If I went out now there'd be nobody to mourn me. My brothers, yes. But a man needs a woman to cry for him when he goes out.

Still, I'd want to be the last to go. I'd want to see her safely to bed before I cashed in my checks. Maybe it is easier for a man to be alone than a woman. I wouldn't know much about such things.

They are gettin' busy over yonder. Voices are closer. I reckon the fussin' and the feudin' are shapin' up to start. I reckon this is how some of those old Trojans felt when they put on their armor for the last fight, when the Greeks were closing in and they knew they weren't going to make it.

But I am going to make it. No man should go down the long way without leaving something behind him, and all I've got to leave will disappear when the dust settles.

A man can carve from stone, he can write fine words, or he can do something to hold himself in the hearts of people. I hadn't done any of those things, not yet.

Maybe I never would.

The wind was dying. Leaves hanging still. There was the coolness of the mountains around me. This here place must be close onto twelve thousand feet up.

A shade less, because there were trees around me. But the trees stopped not fifty yards off, and even here there weren't very many.

Looked like something moved atop that knoll. I'd like to burn him a mite, like to singe his scalp so's he'll know it ain't all going to be fun.

They were comin' now. Some movement down the ledge. I ate the last strip of bacon and refilled my cup with coffee. A bullet nudged at the rock over my head, spilling fragments into my coffee. I swore. Now they shouldn't ought to have done that. A body can take just so much, and I set store by a good cup of coffee.

If I stayed back close to the rocks nobody was going to get a real good shot at me, so I just set there. When shootin' time come, I'd do my share. No use to take the fun away from those anxious folks down there. A couple of more shots from down the ledge, but they done nobody any harm. I took another gulp of coffee and looked out yonder at the mountain peaks. Some of them were fifty, sixty miles off.

I wished I could see the one called the Sleeping Ute, but that mountain was hidden behind the rim yonder. When I leaned forward to take up the pot, that gent atop the knoll shot right into my fire. I slapped around, putting out sparks. He was going to get almighty annoying if he kept that up.

There were several more shots, but I finished my coffee before I took up my rifle.

Thing about fightin' with folks unused to fightin' is that a body should give them time. They get eager to get on with it and haven't the patience to set and wait. Me, I was in no hurry. I wasn't going no place.

First thing you know they were shootin'--scatterin' lead every which way--but I just set back in my corner enjoying my coffee and let them have at it.

They were wishful that I'd move out where I could shoot back so that gent atop the knoll could settle my hash. I'd no mind to let him do it.

Finally, I just got tired of the racket. The horses were in the best spot of all. They hadn't picked no fight. I had them in a place where bullets couldn't reach, and they had sense enough to stand there and switch flies off one another.

After a mite I decided that gent on the knoll might be gettin' eager enough to make a fool of himself, so I took my rifle and edged around to where I could peek up yonder without showing too much. Sure enough, I saw his rifle barrel.

Then I saw something against the sky--a shoulder in a blue shirt, maybe. It disappeared, but folks being what they are, I just waited, knowing he'd be apt to do the same thing again, and he did.

Me, I just up with that '73 and shot him, right in the whatever it was he was showin'. I heard a yelp, then a rifle fell loose on the grassy slope of that knoll, and I edged out to where I could see down the ledge.

I caught a glimpse of a plaid shirt down thataway. I triggered the '73, and whatever I'd shot at disappeared.

After that there was a kind of letup in the shootin'.

Those shots hadn't stopped them, just made them a mite more cautious. They knew now it wasn't going to be all downhill, but I'm tellin' the world I was a mighty lonesome man, a-settin' there, waitin' for them to come.

And only a few miles off I had family tough enough to whip an army. Looked to me like I had it to do all by myself. Well, that was the way I'd done most things my life long.

I fed a couple of cartridges into my rifle and took a look at the horses. They were standing, half-asleep, undisturbed by the doings of us humans. I went down among them and talked to 'em a little and then eased myself back up to where I'd been.

There was no easy way out of this, but one thing I knew: come nighttime I wasn't going to set waitin'. I was going out among 'em. And I was going shootin'.

Come hell or high water, I was going out yonder. If they wanted to land this fish, they were going to find out they had something on the hook.

Chapter XXIV

It was a long day. From time to time a shot came into the hollow, but they made no frontal attack. The failure of the shots from the top of the knoll had apparently left them at a loss, and they hadn't figured out what to do.

Nobody ever won a fight by setting back and waiting, at least, not in my circumstances. In any case, my only way of fighting was to attack, and I believe in it, anyway. Attack, always attack.

They had me bottled up where I couldn't move by day, but night was something else, and I intended to move out and hunt them down. No doubt they planned to come and get me as soon as darkness fell.

Lying there I studied the possible routes out of my cul-de-sac, and getting out was no problem for a man on foot. In my saddlebags I carried my moccasins. I'd been a woodsman before I was ever a rider, and it come natural to me to move quiet.

Many a time as a boy I had either to ease up on game or not get a shot. A kill meant that I'd eat, and often it was only me and the family when pa was gone and the other boys still too young to hunt.

Judging by what Andre had said Pa had come here. Probably he had died here. And he must have had the gold when he reached this place.

What had become of it? Was it still hidden close by?

I set back and took a careful look around. Supposin' I had gold to hide, quite a bit of it. Where would I hide it where it would be unlikely to be found?

Supposin' I was here, figured I still had a fightin' chance, but knew I might have to slip out and travel light, just like I was going to do when darkness came?

Where would I hide the gold?

There was a level place of green grass, partly protected from rifle fire by a shoulder of the rock that walled the ledge. There was a sort of cove in the wall, scarcely more than enough to hide the two horses.

A tree that must have fallen five or six years ago lay close by, its trunk breaking up to pay its debt to the soil it came from. Lying near to it was the fallen tree with the brown needles still in place. It must have been broken off this past winter. Those trees hadn't been there when pa made his stand--if he did.

I had another thing to go by. Pa had known all the Indian ways of marking a trail, and he had taught them to us boys. One way was to place one rock atop another as a trail marker and a rock alongside the marker to show the direction of travel. Often when we were youngsters he'd lay out a trail for us to follow.

He'd gather a tuft of grass and tie it around with more grass, or he'd break a branch and stick it in the ground to show the way he'd gone.

Often the Indians would bend a living tree to mark the way. From time to time in wandering the woods one will wonder about a tree that grows parallel to the ground for a ways. Chances are it was some marker used by Indians in the long ago.

Pa taught us boys as best he could. He'd find a spot in the deep woods and he'd clear the ground of all leaves, branches, stones, and whatever. Then he'd smooth out the dust, leaving some food, both meat and seeds, in the center. We'd surround it with a circle of branches or stones, and we'd come back each morning to see who'd been there.

It wasn't long until we boys could tell the track of any animal or bird or reptile that crossed the smooth dust. Pa was forever pointing at some tracks or tree or bunch of rocks and asking us what we thought. Happened there, or what was happening. It's an amazing thing how much a boy can learn in a short time.

You found where animals had fought, mated, and died. You learned which animals moved about at night, which would come for meat, and which for seeds or other food.

We got so we just saw things without having to look for them. It was natural to us to know what was happening in the mountains and in the forest. Just as people differ one from another, so do the trees, even the trees of one species.

After a while I put my fire together again and fixed a little food, made fresh coffee, and took time to study the situation. Pa had been in this spot twenty years ago, and things would have looked very different. The older of the fallen trees would have been growing then, and several others within the range of my eyes would have been fair-sized trees. Others, larger and older, might now be gone.

The high winds, snows, and ice of the alpine heights are hard on trees. The bristlecone pine, which seems to survive anything, outlasts the others. This shelf where I had taken refuge would be deep under snow much of the year, and when pa was here some snow might have still been left. To understand his situation I had to bring back the shelf the way it must have been when he saw it.

Surely there'd have been snow where I sat, snow in this pocket and along the side where the shadows stayed almost all day long. He'd have made his notch somewhere here, but the tree might have fallen. It might be this very tree that was rotting away before me, or it might have been burned in campfires or fallen clear over the rim. There were scattered carcasses of trees along the steep slope below the cliff.

Pa respected his boys, respected our knowledge of things, and if he'd had the chance he'd have left us a clue, some hint as to where the gold was, and maybe as to what had become of him.

Had the journal ended with the loss of that daybook? Or had he some other means of writing? I'd better consider that.

I needed Orrin here. He had a contemplative mind and he was a lawyer, a man accustomed to dealing with the trickiness of the human mind. Tyrel would have been a help, too, for Tyrel took nothing for granted. He was a right suspicious man. He liked folks, but never expected much of them. If his best friend betrayed him he'd not be surprised. He figured we were all human, all weak at times, and mostly selfish. And we all, he figured, had traits of nobility, self-sacrifice, and courage. In short, we were folks, people.

Tyrel never held it against any man for what he did. He trusted nobody too much, liked most people, and he was wary. But at a time like this he would have been a help. He had a reasoning, logical brain unhampered by much sentiment.

One thing was a help. We Sacketts bred true. I mean, we bred to type. Like the Morgan horse. Pa used to say he'd known a sight of Sacketts one time and another, and they varied in size, but most of them ran to dark, kind of Indian-like features and to willingness to fight. Even those Clinch Mountain Sacketts, who were a cattle-rustling, moonshining lot, would stand fast in a showdown, and they'd never go back on their word or fail a friend.

They might steal his horse, if it was a good one and chance offered, but they were just as like to stand over his wounded body and fight off the redskins or give him one of their own horses, even their only horse, to get away on.

Logan and Nolan, for example. They were Clinch Mountain Sacketts, and their pa was meaner than a rattlesnake in the blind, but they never walked away from a friend in trouble, or anybody else, for that matter.

Nolan was forted up down in the Panhandle country with some Comanches yonder a-shootin' at him. One of them got lead into him. He nailed that one right through the ears as he turned his head to speak to the other one, and then he wounded the last one. Nolan walked in on him, kicked the gun out of his hand, and stood there looking down at him, gun in his fist, and that Comanche glared right back at him, dared him to shoot, and tried to spit at him.

Nolan laughed, picked that Injun up by the hair and dragged him to his horse. He loaded that Indian on, tied him in place, then mounted his own horse and rode right to that Comanche village.

He walked his horse right in among the lodges and stopped.

The Comanches were fighters. No braver men ever lived, and they wanted Nolan's hair, but they came out and gathered around to see what he had on his mind.

Nolan sat up there in the middle of his mustang, and he told them what a brave man this warrior was, how he had fought him until he was wounded, his gun empty, and then had cussed him and tried to fight him with his hands.

"I did not kill him. He is a brave man. You should be proud to have such a warrior. I brought him back to you to get well from his wounds. Maybe some day we can fight again."

And then he dropped the lead rope and rode right out of that village, walking his horse and never looking back.

Any one of them could have shot him. He knew that. But Indians, of any persuasion, have always respected bravery, and he had given them back one of their own and had promised to fight him again when he had his strength.

So they let Nolan ride away, and to this day in Comanche villages they tell the story. And the Indian he brought back tells it best.

I didn't really have time to contemplate the past. I had mighty little time left and I wanted to find out what happened to pa.

Clouds were making up. Nearly every afternoon there was a brief thundershower high up in the mountains, and now the clouds were gathering. I guess I was feeling kind of pleased about that. I had an idea those folks were new to the high-up hills and if so they were in for a shock.

Rain can fall pretty hard, and of course you're right in the clouds. Right amongst them. Lightning gets to flashing around, and even without it flashing the electricity in the air makes your hair prickle like a scared dog's.

I didn't much relish running around atop that mountain with a rifle in my hands, but it looked like I had it to do.

The bulging dark clouds moved down and began to spatter rain, and I came off that log where I was settin' like a chipmunk headin' for a tree. I went around the tree holding my rifle in one hand, scrambled up the rocks, took a quick look, and ran on the double for that knoll.

If they broke and ran for shelter, I would make it. I started up the knoll knowing that in just about a minute it was going to be all wet grass, slippery as ice. Just as I was topping out on the rise a man raised up, rifle in hand.

He'd no idea there was anybody even close. He was getting set to run for shelter from the rain, I figure, and was taking a quick look before he left; and there I was, coming up out of that drifting cloud right at him.

Neither of us had time to think. My Winchester was in my right hand in the trail position, and when he hove up in front of me I just drove the muzzle at him. It was hanging at my side at arm's length. When that man came up off the ground I swang it forward and there was power behind it.

The muzzle caught him right under the nose, smashing up hard. It knocked him right over backwards, and he let a scream out of him like you never heard. It must've hurt real bad.

He tumbled head over heels down the side of that steep knoll and wound up at the bottom, his face all bloody. I stood there looking down at him.

The knoll was kind of like a pyramid too narrow for its height, covered with grass and scattered rocks. That cloud was drifting over, and he could see me up there, rifle in hand.

He figured I was going to kill him, and for a moment there I gave it thought.

"You get off down the mountain, boy," I told him, "and you keep goin'. You folks are about to get me upset."

Still looking at me, he began to back himself off, still lying on the grass, the rain pelting him. I looked around and there was nobody in sight. I turned and went back down the knoll to my hideout.

When I got to the horses I pulled the picket pins and coiled the ropes. I stowed them away and gathered the reins and was just about to stick a toe in a stirrup when I realized how wet my feet were going to get in those moccasins.

My boots were handy so I got into my slicker and set down to haul on my boots when my eyes leveled on that crack in the rocks.

It wasn't no kind of a place, just a layered rock where one layer had fallen or been pulled out leaving a kind of gap not over two inches wide. It was deeper than it looked at first, and there was something in there.

I slipped my hand in and found myself touching some kind of a book. I took it out and it was another daybook, almost like the first, but it was in worse shape.

When I scrambled up that rock wall I must have stepped on a piece of the rock that had been shoved in there to keep the wet off and the animals from gettin' at it.

It was a daybook, and I knew it had been pa's. I shifted it to my left hand and started to slip it into my coat pocket when a voice said, "I'll take that!"

It was Andre Baston, and he was right on the bank with a gun on me.

Chapter XXV

There's times when a man might talk himself out of trouble, but this wasn't one of those times. Andre Baston was a killing man and he had a gun on me. I've known men who would have shot me and taken the book out of my dead hand, but Baston was not only a killer, he was cruel. He liked somebody to know he was going to kill 'em.

Moreover he'd been used to those set-tos where there's a challenge, seconds meet, a duel is arranged, and two men walk out on the greensward--whatever that is--and, after a certain number of paces, they turn around and shoot at each other most politely.

Me, I'd grown up to a different manner of doing. You drew and you shot, and no fancy didoes were cut. Nobody needed to tell me what Andre had in mind. I had the same thing in mind for him only I wasn't wastin' around about it.

He'd said, "I'll take that!" And he had a gun on me.

A man who doesn't want to get shot hadn't better pack a gun in the first place.

I knew when I laid my hand on that gun that I was going to get shot, but I also had it in mind to shoot back.

I figured, All right, he's going to nail me, but if he kills me I'll take him with me, and if he doesn't kill me I'll surely get him.

He didn't expect it--I had that going for me, but it wasn't enough. My hand went to the gun and she came up fast and smooth. When she came level I was going to let drive, and I kind of braced myself for the shock of a bullet.

My .44 bucked in my hands, and, an instant before it went off, his gun stabbed flame. I just stood there and thumbed back that hammer. No matter how many times he shoots, you got to kill him, I told myself. I just eared her back and let 'er bang, and Andre Baston kind of stood up on his toes. I let her go again, and his gun went off into the grass at his feet and he fell off the ledge sidewise and lit right at my feet.

"You!" There was an ugly hatred in his eyes. "You aren't even a gentleman!"

"No, sir," I said politely, "but I'm a damned good shot."

Andre Baston, of New Orleans, died on the rim of Cumberland Basin with the rain falling into his wide-open eyes, trickling down his freshly shaved jaws.

"Well, pa," I said, "if this was the one, he's signed the bill for it. You rest easy, wherever you lie."

With a sweep of my palm I swept the water from my saddle and stepped up there on old Ap and pointed his nose down the basin, the buckskin right behind us. We just climbed out of that shelf and rounded a clump of spruce, and I looked back yonder at the knoll, hall-hidden in clouds now.

It came to me then, ridin' away, that Andre had missed me. I'd been so almighty sure I was going to get shot, I was ready to take the lead and send it back. But he missed. Maybe when he saw me reaching he hurried too much, maybe the panic came up in him like it does in a lot of men when they know they're going to be shot at--a kind of uncomfortable feeling.

But like I said, when you pick up a weapon you can expect a weapon to be used against you.

They had them a sort of camp on the slope, a mighty poor shelter, I'd say. I rode right up to them, two men I didn't know, and Paul, looking like something blown up against a fence by a wet wind. Of course, Fanny was there, startled to see me, the softness gone from her features, her mouth drawn hard.

"You better go get your uncle," I said, "He's up mere lyin' in the rain."

They did not believe me. I had my rifle across my saddlebows, its black muzzle looking one-eyed at them, so they stood quiet.

"Was I in your place," I suggested, "I'd light a shuck for Bourbon Street or places around, and when I got there I'd start burning a few candles at the altar of your Uncle Philip. There's nothing left for you here."

The trail was muddy, full of doubles and switchbacks, with little streams crossing it here and there. That was a day when it kept right on raining, and through the rain, dripping off my hat I saw the fresh green of the forest and the grass.

It was a narrow trail, no question of hurrying. All I wanted was to get to the bottom, back down to Shalako where I could wrap myself around a few steaks and some hot coffee. This was a day when I'd rather set by an inside fire and watch the raindrops fall.

Every once in a while when I'd duck under a tree, a few raindrops, always the coldest ones, would shake loose and trickle down the back of my neck.

Alongside the trail, sometimes close by, sometimes down in a rocky gorge below me, was the La Plata. Waterfalls along the trail added to the river's volume.

The trail was washed out in places.

Nobody used this trail but the Utes, or occasional hunters and prospectors.

Yet all of a sudden I saw something else. In the bank where the trail passed there was a fresh, scuffed place. My hand went under my slicker to my six-shooter.

Somebody had stepped off this trail minutes before, stepping quickly up into the trees that lined the trail. One boot had crushed the grass on the low bank that edged the trail.

Ap turned quickly around a corner of the trail and I glanced up, seeing nothing.

The man had gone into the woods, hearing me on the trail, and he hadn't the time to do more than disappear somewhere just within the edge of the trees. Who would be coming up here on a day like this? No Indian, for it had been a boat track, a wide boot, not far from new.

Nothing happened. I rode on, switching back and around on the narrow trail, and when I reached a straight stretch I stepped up the pace and let Ap trot for a while.

Safely away, I began now to look for more tracks. Occasionally I saw them, shapeless, not to be identified, but tracks nonetheless, and the tracks of somebody who did not wish to be seen. Wherever he could, he walked off the trail.

There were places when the sides were too steep, or the gorge beside the trail too deep for him to avoid the trail. The man had a good stride. He was a heavy man, too, but possibly not a tall one despite the good steps he took.

Might be a smaller man carrying a heavy pack. Had the tracks not been so sloppy I might have been able to tell if the man carried a heavy pack or was himself heavy. Of course, it might be both.

It worried me. Who was he? And why was he going up the mountain today?

Well, if he was a friend to the Bastons it did not matter, and if he was their enemy, it might be they'd shoot each other.

I was going for a hot meal, a night's rest, and a chance to put down my gun.

There's something about gold that nags at a man. I've seen it at work a time or two. I think we Sacketts have less of it than most--with us it's land. We like the ownership of land, large pieces of mountain country, that's for us.

Nonetheless, pa labored hard for that gold. He found it, brought it off down the mountain, and now it was cached up yonder ... sure as shootin' it was there. It puzzled a man to guess where.

By the time I rode up to Shalako the sun was out and sparkling on the rain-wet leaves. Orrin came out of the store and stood waiting.

He gave me a long look. "You all right?"

"I been through it." I stepped down and stood, hands resting on the saddle, and then I turned my head toward him. "I left Andre up yonder. Right where pa was cornered, I think."

"The rest of them?"

"Up there. Paul's there with Fanny and a couple of others."

"Leave your horses," Orrin said. "Judas said to tell you he'd care for them. You come in and have some grub."

Judas came out to take Ap and the buckskin, and I walked across to the saloon with Orrin.

"There was a man came into town. Had his face all torn up and couldn't talk much, or didn't want to. He went off down the road mumbling to himself."

"He ran into a rifle muzzle, I guess. Orrin, did you see anybody else? Did anybody go up the canyon?"

"Not by daylight. We've been watching. I mean we've been watching that road every minute."

I told him about the tracks in the trail, but he shook his head, having no more explanation than I did.

"Somebody followed pa to that place. Somebody cornered him up there, and he may have been hurt. Pa taught us boys so much, and we've lived about the same. I figured I'd just let myself go the likely way. He left notches here and there, the deep, gashlike blazes, you know." I took the other daybook out of my pocket.

"And I found this."

Orrin took it in his hands. "I wonder what pa was thinking, Tell. Why he took to keeping these on that last trip? Do you suppose he had a premonition?"

I'd been thinking of it, too. "Either that, or something was turning wrong with him. He never was much to complain, you know, and we always just took it for granted he was about the strongest man around. Maybe he was feeling poorly and wasn't wishful that we know."

The words were no sooner out than I was sure I'd hit on it. This trip had been pa's last chance to do something for his family. He'd cared for us, but suddenly he might have felt he wouldn't be able to, and he began to worry.

Neither of us wanted to open the book. This would be our last word from pa, and these last few weeks we'd felt close to him again, walking in his footsteps and all. After this we both felt there would be nothing left to the story, nothing but what must have happened when he stopped writing.

Berglund brought some hot soup and bread and I made a meal of it. The book lay there on the table, and from time to time I looked up to see it there.

Tired as I was, my thoughts kept returning to the mountain trail, and I wanted to go back. I wanted to walk there again, to stand on that shelf again looking out over the mountains and sky.

The feeling stayed with me that there was something I had not found.

"Where's Nell Trelawney?" I asked suddenly. "I haven't seen her."

"You will," Orrin chuckled as he said it. "She's been around every day wanting us to go up the canyon and find you. She was sure you were in trouble."

He grinned. "I told her you'd been in trouble all your born days."

"Any more of those Three Eight hands around?"

"Boley McCaire--the young one who was so itchy. He rode into town, but he's been holed up somewhere down the creek. I've a hunch that Baston made some kind of a deal with them."

Something kept worrying me at the back of my mind, and it was not only those tracks along the way. I did not like things left hanging. Nobody went up that mountain trail in the rain without reason. The folks at Shalako had seen nobody pass, and the road was right yonder. Nobody could pass along without being seen, so if somebody had gone up the creek he had taken pains not to be seen.

Who? And why? And what was he doing now?

Judas came in, and then the Tinker. The Tinker sat down near a window where he could watch the street and the trail to the mountains.

"Judas," I said suddenly, "have you known the Bastons long?"

He hesitated and seemed to be considering. "Fifty years," he said quietly.

"Possibly even longer."

"Would Andre have followed Pierre and stabbed him?"

Judas thought for a moment. "Of course. But I do not believe he did. It was someone else."

"Who?"

He shrugged, and then he said, "Andre would not have dared let Pierre live, not after attacking him. The very idea would have been frightening. Had Andre any thought that Pierre lived after he shot him, he'd have killed him or fled--to Africa or South America."

"Why, in God's name?"

"Andre was afraid. He was a brave man, although a murderer, but he feared one man. He was afraid of Philip."

"Afraid of him?"

Judas looked at me, then at the rest of us. "Yes, you see Philip was the worst of them, by far the worst."

Chapter XXVI

We looked at him, wondering if he was joking, but he was very serious.

"I knew him, you see, and he was good to us. I mean to his slaves, but we had no choice but to obey him, and, being wise, we did obey.

"He liked Pierre Bontemps. He was also amused by him. Pierre was a romantic, an adventurer. Both men had been buccaneers, and this was known of Pierre, but not of Philip.

"Philip surrounded himself with calm, dignity, and reserve. He liked me because I had some education and because he knew I did not talk of what I knew or had seen.

"He was not a vindictive man, not a hater. He was simply a man without scruple.

He had contempt for others, whom he considered less than himself. He did nothing to exhibit himself except in that quiet, dignified manner.

"He removed anyone who got in his way. Had you not killed Andre, he would have had it done, or done it himself, for Andre had become notorious.

"Each of us has in his mind an image of what he believes himself to be, and Philip Baston saw himself as a prince of the old school. He had read Machiavelli, studied the careers of Orsini, Sforza, and Sigismondo Malatesta, and in his small way he lived accordingly.

"The Bastons had money, and, from time to time, power, but not enough of either to please any of them. Philip served briefly at sea in a French ship, then became a pirate.

"Lafitte was notorious. Baston was more cunning. He slipped into New Orleans and bought property, always small pieces, nothing to attract attention. He bought land in other parts of Louisiana, and when it became no longer safe to carry on as a pirate he simply came ashore, moved into the old Baston home and carried on as if he had never been gone. It wasn't realized for several years that he was enormously wealthy.

"He aspired to be governor. He lived in the grand manner, and anyone who got in his way was removed. Now he thinks of his family, his name. At first he looked on Andre's duels with favor. They had a certain style, and it was good to be feared. There came a time however when it became obvious that Andre killed. He was not content to win. This was looked upon with distaste, and I believe that for some time Philip has intended to be rid of Andre."

"But you said Andre was afraid of him. Is Philip such a fighter?"

"He is a superb swordsman and a dead shot, but Philip would not have done it himself unless forced into the position. He would have made other arrangements."

It was interesting, but nothing that meant much to us now. Philip Baston was in New Orleans. What interested me more was the identity of the unknown man who left the footprints on the trail.

If he had a horse, where had it been?

Orrin got up. "You better get some rest. I am going to ride over and see Flagan."

The Swede had a back room with a spare bunk in it, and he showed me to the place. I shucked my boots, hat, and gun belt and stretched out on that bunk with a deep sigh. I'd no recollection of ever feeling so tired before.

I'd been on the trail for a long while, and a man tires faster when his nerves are on edge. When you're hunting and being hunted, every fiber of your being is poised and ready.

I felt the tenseness go out of me slow, and I dozed off. I woke briefly and watched the aspens beyond the window. It was fifty or sixty feet to the edge of the woods. The curtain stirred in the breeze, and I watched it lazily, then drifted off into a sound sleep.

Under the aspens the man waited. He had a shotgun in his hands, and he knew what he wanted to do. Inside the room near the opposite wall was a chair. Over the back of the chair hung a gun belt.

He heard the boots hit the floor and thought he heard a creak of a bed when the man lay down. Just a few minutes now ... a few minutes.

The big, good-looking brother had ridden off on his horse. The Negro was in the barn, working on some of their saddlegear. The Tinker had taken a pole and headed for the La Plata, and Swede Berglund was tending that garden he was trying. So William Tell Sackett was there alone, and soon he would be asleep.

The hunter had patience. He had seen the young Sackett with another daybook in his hands, but the daybook could not have been with the body. He had gone over it thoroughly those twenty years ago.

Was it with the gold? No ... for gold hadn't been brought off the mountain today.

The book would certainly tell where old man Sackett had hidden the gold. They had all been so sure Sackett was dead, and Pierre, too. Well, Pierre was dead now, that was sure, and so was Sackett.

The trouble was Sackett had gone back and gotten the gold after they were all gone. Not all the gold on Treasure Mountain, but a good lot of it, anyway.

This William Tell Sackett worried him. The man was a tracker, and a good one. He could read sign like an Apache, and there was no safety with him about. Sackett had killed Andre. The man had not seen it but he heard the girl and the others talking of it. That must have taken some doing, for Andre was dangerous, good with a gun, and ready to use it.

So much the better. With Andre gone, the rest of them were nothing. Paul was a weakling. That girl was murderous enough, but she was a woman, and she was too impulsive.

Well inside the curtain of aspens, crouched low among the tall grass, wild flowers, and oak brush, he was well hidden. He would give Sackett plenty of time to get to sleep, really to sleep.

Crouched in the bushes, the man waited. The shotgun had two barrels, and he wore a long-barreled six-shooter for insurance and had a rifle on his horse. As he waited he once more studied the ground. He knew just where each foot would touch ground, where he would go into the trees, where he would turn after entering the woods. He had chosen two alternative routes. He was a careful man.

Ten to fifteen seconds to the window, lean in, fire his shot. Then, instead of running directly away, he would run along the wall of the saloon, go around the outhouse, and crouch along the corral into the scrub oaks.

On the other side of the oak brush a trail dipped into the river bottom where his horse waited. He would ride south, away from the canyon, where there was more room to lose himself.

He waited a moment longer, got to his feet, glanced left and right, and stepped out of the brush, walking swiftly to the window. Glancing left and right, he saw no one. The shotgun came up in his hands, and he was almost running when he reached the window. He started to thrust the shotgun into the open window when suddenly a voice on his left said, "You lookin' for something, mister?"

It was that Trelawney girl, and she had a rifle in her hands, not aimed at him, but in a position where only an instant would be needed to aim it.

He hesitated, kept his head tilted downward. He muttered under his breath, then turned sharply away and walked toward the outhouse.

"Mister? Mister!"

He ducked around the small building and ran along the corral into the woods.

Another ten seconds! He swore, bitterly. Another ten seconds and he would have killed Tell Sackett and be on the run ... well away to his horse.

Nell walked to the window, glancing in. Taking one more quick look after the fleeing man, gone now, she went around to the front. The Tinker was standing in front of the store. She explained quickly.

The Tinker glanced toward the woods beyond the corral. "He's gone. You scared him off."

"But who was he? I never saw him before!"

The Tinker shrugged. "It will not happen again." He walked around the building, glanced toward the woods, then sat down. "I'll stay right here until he wakes up. Don't you worry now."

Morning light was laying across the windowsill before my eyes opened, and for a time I just lay still, letting myself get wide awake. That there was the soundest sleep I'd had in a long, long time. Finally, I swung my feet to the floor and reached for my boots.

Something stirred outside the window, and Tinker said, "Tell? Better come out and have a look."

When I was dressed and out there beside him, he showed me the tracks. There were only parts of two foot tracks, the rest were on grass and left no mark that remained to show size.

It was the same track I'd seen on the trail.

"He was out to get you, Tell. There's a place where he waited in the aspens over there. He must've waited an hour or more."

In the earth back of the outhouse we found another track, smudged and shapeless because he had been running. We found where his horse had stood, tied and waiting.

I studied the tracks, knowing I had seen them before, but without remembering where. To a tracker a track is like a signature, and as easy to identify, but this was not one I had remembered, hence it was no one I had ever followed. It was simply a track I had noted casually without paying it any mind, but one thing I knew. If I saw that track again, I would remember it.

Orrin came in from the ranch. "Good place," he said, "and I've found a spot for us."

When I told him what had happened, he looked grim. "I should have come back. I knew I should have come back."

"Nothing gets by that girl," Tinker commented. "She had that man dead to rights."

We drank coffee, ate breakfast, and watched the cloud shadows change on Baldy.

"I'm going up there again," I said. "I've got to settle it in my mind. I've got find what remains of him."

"He's lost," Berglund said. "Coyotes or bears carried off the bones ... or the buzzards dropped them. Nothing lasts long up there that isn't stone."

"There's evidence of that," the Tinker said quietly, "coming down the trail."

Four horses, four riders--a rain-wet, beat-up looking crew--and one of them was Fanny Baston. Paul was there, one hand all tied up with a bandage, and those two riders they'd picked up from somewhere.

They came down the trail, and we stepped outside to see them pass, but they looked neither to the right nor the left, they just rode on through. They carried nothing, nor did they stop for grub.

"She's a beautiful woman," Orrin said. "You should have seen her the night we met."

"Mountains are hard upon evil," I said. "They don't hold with it."

Back inside we drank coffee whilst Judas saddled up for us. He came across the road, a neat black man in a neat black coat. "I would like to ride along with you, suh," he suggested.

"Why not? You're a man to ride with, Priest. But ride ready for war. It may come upon us."

We packed the buckskin again, for we'd be gone one night, anyway.

We rode out into the street and started for the trail, and two more riders came up from the other end of town. It was Nell Trelawney and old Jack Ben.

"See here," I said, pulling rein, "this is a rough ride, and you've been ailin'."

"I ain't ailin' now," old Jack Ben said irritably, "and as for rough rides, I was ridin' rough country before your head was as high as a stirrup! You just ride along now, and pay us no mind."

"No use to argue," Orrin said. "He was always a hard-headed, unreasonable old coot."

Jack Ben snorted, but when we started off they were right behind us, and there they stayed, all the way up the mountain, and we rode with our rifles ready to hand. Yet no trouble came to us, and we rode easy in our saddles, the wind cool and pleasant in our faces, winding around and doubling back, the wild waters of the La Plata tumbling over the rocks or slowing down where the canyon widened out.

Midday was long gone when we rode into the basin. The grass was a glorious green, wild flowers were everywhere. When we went down on the shelf Andre's body was gone. I showed them where the daybook had been. We had brought it along to read on the spot.

It was getting on for sundown, so we unsaddled and staked out our horses. When the fire was lit and the coffee on, I took out the daybook.

Chapter XXVII

Judas was fixing supper. The Tinker sat a little away from us in the dark where he could listen better to the night sounds.

With firelight flickering on the faces around, I tilted the book to catch the glow and settled down to read. There was a smudge on the first page.

... wind blowing, hard to write. Played out. A man trailin' me got a bullet into me when I went to move the picket pin. Low down on my left side. Hurts like hell. Lost blood. Worst is, he's in a place where I can't get a shot at him.

Dasn't have no fire.

Later: shot twice. Missed. I shot at sound, figured to make him carefuller. Gold hid. Got to hide this book--the other one's been stolen. If the boys come a-huntin', soon or late they'll find it. I trust if somebody else does he'll call the boys and share up. I don't expect no man to find gold and give it all up. Figured that was Andre, yonder. It ain't. Andre ain't that good in the brush. This'ns like Injun.

Later: ain't et for two days. Canteen empty. Licked dew off the grass. Caught a swallow of rain in my coffeepot. Wounds in bad shape.

Writing time to time. Boys will find that gold. They'll remember when it comes right down to it. That Orrin, he should recall, him always wantin' the cream of things. No further than from the house to the old well. Ma could find it. How many times she scolded that boy!

Been backed up here five days now. Grub's gone. Coffee's gone. No water but dew and rain. Whoever it is out there won't take a chance. Got a funny walk. Hear him. Got another bullet into me. Boys, I ain't goin' to make it. Be good boys.

Be good. Take care--got to put this away.

He was cornered like an old bear driven to the wall, wounded and dying, but his last thoughts were of us. He'd have handled everything all right if he could have moved around, but he was bad hurt. That bullet in the side, now. That must have been worse than he said ... and no water. He must have caught some rain in his coffeepot, but that wouldn't have been much. He would have been slower in his movements with that bruised hipbone.

When I finished reading, we just sat there thinking of pa, remembering the way he walked, the lessons he taught us, his humor, his handiness with tools.

"That gold's somewheres about," Jack Ben said, "an' he left you clues. 'No further than from the house to the old well.' That there should mean somethin'.

I recall that old well. She always had good water. Cold water, too. On'y it was too far from the house on a winter's mornin' so your grandpa dug one closer."

"It ain't the gold, Jack Ben. It's pa. We want to find what remains of him."

"You know what I think?" The Tinker turned his head toward us, firelight glinting on the gold rings in his ears. "I think that's the same man after you.

The one who killed your pa. I think he's out there right now."

We set quiet, contemplating on that. It could be ... but who?

"A Higgins," Jack Ben said, remembering the old feud in Tennessee. "It must be a Higgins you've paid no mind to. He got your pa, now he's after the rest of the Sacketts."

That might be, but something worried me. Couldn't put a finger on it, but something about this whole setup bothered me to fits. Nell set over there kind of watching me and that upset my considering. Hard to keep a mind on business with her setting over there breathing. Every time she took a deep breath my forehead broke out with sweat.

"Go back over it," Judas suggested. "Cover every step. Possibly there is a thing that does not fit, something that will explain it all."

"It might be the McCaire outfit," Orrin said. "Charley McCaire didn't take kindly to losing those horses even if he had no hand in stealing them."

"You don't think he did?" I asked.

"I doubt it. I think it was somebody in his outfit. But once he had them he didn't want to give them up or to have it believed that anyone in his outfit was a thief. If Tyrel hadn't ridden up when he did we'd have had to shoot our way out."

"I don't think it's any of them," I said. "There's something odd about this man."

"What became of Swan?" Judas asked.

I shrugged. I'd been wondering that myself. We'd seen nothing of him, yet surely he was around. He was not with Paul and Fanny when they left ... if they had.

Finishing my coffee, I threw the grounds into the fire and rinsed out my cup. We would find the gold. I was sure of that, but I had never been a money-hungry man. We'd started out to find pa, or what remained of him, and we'd come a long way. We had to find out what happened in those last hours or minutes.

I put my cup away and went into the darkness near the trees, stood there a moment, and worked my way over to where the Tinker was.

He spoke as I neared him. "Tell? There's somebody or something out there."

His whisper was very soft, only for my ears. I squatted near him. "Nothing definite ... just something moving ... scarcely no sound."

I noticed that he held his knife in his hand. The Tinker was always a careful man.

"I'm going out there."

"No." The Tinker put his hand on my arm. "I will go."

"This here's my job. Just tell them I am out there. And be careful, there's no telling what he will do."

It was very dark. There were a few stars among scattered clouds. I made no attempt to keep to the brush. I moved through the knee-high grass and wild flowers.

When I was thirty yards out from camp, I stopped to listen. What was he doing?

Trying for a shot? Or merely listening?

I moved on among the scattered spruce, keeping low to the ground. I stopped, and a voice spoke, very low. "Have you found the gold?"

There was a chill along my back. "No," I said after a moment.

"It is mine. It is all mine. You will not find it."

That voice! There was something ... some thread of sound ...

"We can find it," I said calmly, "and no one else can. The message my father left is one only we could understand."

There was a long silence. "I do not believe it. How could that be?"

"It has to do with our home in Tennessee."

What manner of man was this who would so coolly talk to me in the darkness? And where was he? The direction was obvious, but if I leaped, and missed, I'd be dead in the next moment.

"It is my gold." He spoke softly. "Go away and I'll not kill you."

"You're through killing. If anybody does it now, it will be us."

He did not speak, and I wondered if he were gone. I listened ... the man was a ghost in the woods. I was good, but this man, I believed, was better.

"You killed my father," I said.

"He was a good man. I did not wish to do it, but he had my gold."

"The Frenchmen mined the gold. They buried it. They sold their claim to it with Louisiana. It was anybody's gold."

"You will not have it. I will kill you all."

After a moment of listening, I said, "Where is my father's body?"

If I could keep him talking, just a little longer. I shifted my position slightly, making no sound.

"It is beyond there, beyond your camp. I buried him in a crack. It is at the edge, near the roots of a tree."

The faintest sound. I moved swiftly, felt the sudden rush of a body in the darkness, saw the gleam of a knife in a short, wicked sidewise swing at my ribs.

He swung with his right arm, and I pulled back and dropped to my right. His knife went past me, and I rolled up on the small of my back and kicked out viciously with both feet, kicking where his body had to be.

The double kick caught him on the side and knocked him rolling. Coming up like a cat, knife in hand, I went for him. I saw the black bulk of him roll up and come at me, felt the edge of the knife and the point take my sleeve, and then I came up on his right side and brought my knife up from below.

His elbow caught my wrist and I almost lost my grip on the knife. He twisted away, turned, and threw his weight into me. He was heavy and bull-strong. The charge threw me back, but I caught my left forearm under his chin and brought him over with me. He landed on his back just above me and then we both came up, panting fiercely, gasping for breath at that altitude.

He circled ... I could barely see him. I could hear his breath and see the cold light gleam along his blade. Suddenly I stopped, poised, yet still. Instantly he threw himself into me and I sidestepped off to my left, leaving my extended right leg for him to trip over. As his toe hooked over my leg, I swung back and down with my blade.

It caught him too high--it ripped his coat and must have nicked his neck, for I heard a gasp of pain and then he wheeled into me again. This time his head was up and I jabbed him in the face with my fist. He did not expect it; my fist smashed him back on his heels, and I stepped in, stabbing low and hard.

At the last instant he tried to evade my thrust, throwing himself backward down a small declivity. For an instant he vanished, and then I was down and after him.

He was gone.

Stopping, poised for battle, I listened. Not a sound except a soft wind in the trees. A cloud drifted over the stars and it was darker. Every sense alert, I listened.

Nothing ... nothing at all.

A brief, utterly futile battle. A moment of desperate struggle, and then nothing.

Yet I should have known. He was a sure-thing killer, who could stab the wounded and helpless Pierre, who could shoot my father from ambush and then lurk, waiting for days for a final shot.

He had thought to kill me there in the darkness, coming at me suddenly, yet I had been ready. And I had nicked him. Of that I was sure.

After a moment I walked back. "I believe I scratched him," I said and explained.

At the edge of the cliff where he had said my father's body was hidden, I hesitated. It was the very edge, and there looked to have been some crumbling.

Probably the result of the tree roots.

There was a crack, all right, and some dirt had been filled in. Orrin came closer, holding a burning branch in his left hand. I leaned over to look closer, put my foot on the outer edge of the crack and leaned still further, astride the crack.

Suddenly there was a grating sound, the outer edge fell away under my foot and I felt myself falling. Half-turning I made a futile grab at anything, the rock crumbling from under my feet.

A hand caught mine, the branch dropped, another hand grabbed my sleeve, and I was hauled up on the ledge.

There was a moment when I said nothing. I looked over into the terrible void of blackness behind me, listening to the last particles of rock fall, strike, and rattle away on the last slope.

"Thanks," I said.

"It was a trap," Orrin said dryly. "There's more than one way to kill a man."

Chapter XXVIII

We still had no idea who the killer was. He was somebody who fancied he'd a claim on all that gold, and he was bound and determined to keep everybody else away and to have it all for himself.

At daylight we took a look at the place where I'd almost gone over. There was no evidence to show that a body had ever been there. I reckon the killer had seen the place, figured it was ready to collapse, and just used it on chance.

A woodsman is forever noticing small things like that. He'll have in his mind many possible camps that he'll never have time to use, and he'll notice tangles to avoid, things a man might trip over, and bad footing generally. After a time a man takes all these things in without really thinking about it. But if something is out of place he will see it instantly.

Judas fixed us bacon and eggs from the outfit he'd brought up the trail. It wasn't often we had eggs unless setting down at table, but Judas was a planning man, and he'd packed for good cooking. When we finished I took my Winchester, shifted into moccasins, and walked out to where we'd had our scuffle the night before.

There were tracks aplenty, but might few of them a body could read, for we'd fought mostly on crushed-down grass and flowers, and some of them were already springing back into place.

After a while I found a couple of fair prints. It was the same boot I'd seen on the trail, and I worked around, trying to pick up sign that would take me where he was going. Trailing a man like that would be like trailing an old silvertip grizzly. He'd be watching his back trail and would be apt to see me before I saw him, and that wasn't pleasant to contemplate.

Not that I had anybody to mourn much for me but brothers. Ange was dead, the other girls I'd known were scattered and gone, but I could do some mourning for myself. It seemed to me I had a lot of living to do and no particular desire to cash in my chips up here in Cumberland Basin.

Nevertheless, I poked around. He'd taken off in an almighty hurry, not scared, mind you, but lacking that extra percentage he always had to have. When he took those first steps he'd be getting away, not thinking of hiding a trail. By his third or fourth step he'd be thinking of that, if I knew my man.

Sure enough, I found a toe print, gouged deep. I followed a few bruised blades of grass, the edge of a heel print, a crushed pine cone, and a slip in a muddy place, and I came through a patch of scattered spruce and into the open beyond.

I had to pull up short. Chances were nine out of ten he'd changed direction right there. So I scouted around and after a few minutes worked out a trail down into the hollow that lay on the east side of the basin. He had gone down into it, then switched on a fallen log, walked its length, and started back up to the ridge.

By night he couldn't see what he'd done, but crushed grass or leaves had left a greenish smudge atop that log in two places. He had stepped on the log and grass from his boots had stuck it, just as a body will track dirt and the like into a house.

Four or five places in the next hundred yards or so took me along a diagonal route to the high-line trail. That Ghost Trail, as some called it. A pebble kicked from its place on the muddy path and a couple of partial tracks showed me he was following along the trail.

This here was rifle country, most of it wide open, for the trees give out in the high-up country. Trees were scattered hither and yon, singly or in bunches, among some brush. Higher up the only trees had been barbered by the wind until they looked like upturned brushes. Then there was grass and bare rock, the far-away mountains on every hand, and over all the sky, always scattered with white clouds.

If that hidin' man was in a swivet to get himself killed he'd have to bring it to me. Generally speaking I'm not a techous man, taking most things calm. When a man is about to get shot at he'd better be calm. As much as he can be, at least.

Nobody looks favorably on the idea of being shot at.

Trouble was, it was such all-fired pretty country, a man had trouble keeping his mind to it. And quiet? No sound but maybe an eagle, some distance off.

You'd think that in a bald out country like that there'd be no place to hide, but there were places, and any one of them might hide that man. He'd held to the path--a wise man holds to what trails he can find in the mountains. I picked up sign here and there. He'd slowed down, and a couple of times he'd stopped to catch breath or to ponder.

He knew come daybreak I'd be seekin' his sign. I never minced about shootin' when it had come to that. Back in the Tennessee hills nobody did. Many a girl back yonder bloused her waist to carry a pistol, and we Sackett boys had been toting shootin' irons since we were as tall as pa's belt.

A man walked wary facin' up to a man like this one, so I held my rifle in two hands and kept it right up there where I could shoot without wasting time.

The trail led past a couple of small pools of water, then took a sharp right-hand switch to go out along the ridge toward the north. Spread out before me was a sight of beautiful country that I knowed nothing about but tell of.

Folks around had talked of it. I'd heard some talk from Cap Rountree when we were up on the Vallecitos that time, and from others here and there. I was looking down Magnetic Gulch toward Bear Creek, and the bear-toothed mountains opposite were Sharkstooth Peak, Banded Mountain, and beyond it the peak of Hesperus.

From where I stood she dropped off some two thousand feet to the bottoms along Bear Creek. I was twelve thousand feet up. I hunkered down behind some rocks, sort of sizing things up before I moved out.

An eagle soared yonder toward the Sharkstooth, and as I looked, some elk came out of the trees into open country and moved across a bench toward the north of the gulch. Now something had moved those elk ... they weren't just a-playin'

"Skip to My Lou." They hied themselves across the clearin' and into the trees.

Might be a bear or a lion, they grow them big in these hills, especially the grizzlies. The grizzly was big, and, when riled, he was mean, but he wouldn't last--because he was fearless. Until the white man came along with his rifle-guns the grizzly was king of the world. He walked where he had a mind to, and nobody trifled with his temper. He couldn't get used to man, although lately he'd become cautious. Maybe too late.

The ridge trail led along the west side of the mountain along here. A man with a rifle would have to be a good shot, used to mountain country.

I stood up and went down into the trees just north of the gulch. When I got into the trees I hunkered down and listened. There was only the wind, the eternal wind, moving along the high-up peaks, liking them as much as we did.

The grass smelled good. I looked at the rough, gray bark of an old tree, peeling a mite here and there. I saw where a pika had been feeding, and I looked off down the sunlit slope and saw nothing. Then I turned toward the dark clump of spruce further down the slope. I felt suddenly hungry and I stood up and put my left hand into my pocket for some jerky.

I put my rifle down against a limb and boosted the bottom of the pocket a little to get at the jerky. And then from behind me I heard that voice. "Got you, Sackett! Turn around and die!"

Well, I didn't figure he meant to sing me no lullabies, nor the words to "Darlin' Cory," so when I turned around my hand was movin' and I hauled out that ol' .44, eared her back and let 'er bang.

He had a rifle and when I turned I was lookin' right down the barrel. I just said to myself, Tell Sackett, you'll die like your pa done, lonesomelike and hunted down. But that .44 was a pretty good gun. She knew her piece and she spoke it, clear and sharp. I felt the whiff of his bullet.

He'd missed. The best of us do it, but a body hadn't better do so when the chips are down and you've laid out your hand on the table with no way but to win or die.

My bullet took him. It took him right where he lives, and the second one done the same like it wanted company.

He couldn't believe he could miss. Maybe he was too sure of it. I stood there, a long, tall man from the Tennessee hills with my pistol in my fist, and I watched him go.

He wanted to shoot again, but that first shot had done something to him, cut his spinal cord, maybe, for his hands kind of opened up and the rifle slided into the grass.

"Nativity Pettigrew," I said, "where did you bury pa?"

His voice was hoarse. "There's a green hillside where a creek runs down at the base of Banded Mountain. You'll find him there at the foot of a rock, a finger that points at the sky, and if you look sharp you'll find his grave and the marker I carved with my hands.

"He had my gold and he had to die, but there's no gainsaying he tried ... I liked him, lad, but I shot him dead and buried him there where he fell.

"Beat as he was, and wounded bad, he crawled over the mountain to get me. It was him or me, there at the last, and I carry the lead he gave me."

He lay there dying, his eyes open wide to the sun, and I hated him not. He'd played a rough game and, when the last cards were laid down, he lost. But it might have been me.

"When we get the gold out, I'll give some to your wife. She's a good woman," I told him.

"Please," he said.

He died there, and I'd bury him where he fell.

When I came up to the campfire, they were sitting around and waiting. Flagan was there, who'd come up from Shalako, riding a mouse-colored horse.

"You'll have to forget Hippo Swan," Orrin said. "He came hunting you to Shalako, and Flagan said you weren't the only Sackett, and they fought."

"Sorry, Tell," Flagan said, "but he'd come wanting and I'd not see him go the same way. He fought well but his skin cut too easy, and now he's gone down the road feelin' bad."

"We found the gold, too," Orrin said. "Remember what pa said about me always wanting the cream of things and about the distance to the old well and how many times ma scolded me for it.

"Well, I got to thinking. That word cream did it. Remember how we used the well to keep our milk cold? When I was a youngster I used to go out and skim the cream off. Ma was always after me about it. Well, this was the same kind of place--a hole in the rocks--about the same distance away as the well.

"He'd laid rocks back into the hole, threw dirt and such at it, I guess. Anyway, we pulled out the stones and there she was. More than enough to buy us land and cattle to match Tyrel's."

I sat there, saying nothing, and they all looked at me. Then Orrin said, "What happened to you?"

"It was Nativity Pertigrew," I said. "Not so crippled up as he made out. Pa followed him--maybe a mile out there, or more. He crawled up on him and they swapped shots. Pa got lead into him but pa was killed, and Nativity buried him yonder on the slope of Banded Mountain."

"Kind of him," Orrin said, and I agreed.

"We'll do the same for him," I said. "Where he lies we'll put him down. What was it pa used to say? 'Where the chips fall, there let them lie.' "

Nell Trelawney stood up. "Are you going home now, Tell? It's time."

"I reckon," I said, and we went to our horses together.

About the Author

Louis L'Amour, born Louis Dearborn L'Amour, is of French-Irish descent. Although Mr. L'Amour claims his writing began as a "spur-of-the-moment thing" prompted by friends who relished his verbal tales of the West, he comes by his talent honestly. A frontiersman by heritage (his grandfather was scalped by the Sioux), and a universal man by experience, Louis L'Amour lives the life of his fictional heroes. Since leaving his native Jamestown, North Dakota, at the age of fifteen, he's been a longshoreman, lumberjack, elephant handler, hay shocker, flume builder, fruit picker, and an officer on tank destroyers during World War II.

And he's written four hundred short stories and over fifty books (including a volume of poetry).

Mr. L'Amour has lectured widely, traveled the West thoroughly, studied archaeology, compiled biographies of over one thousand Western gunfighters, and read prodigiously (his library holds more than two thousand volumes). And he's watched thirty-one of his westerns as movies. He's circled the world on a freighter, mined in the West, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, been shipwrecked in the West Indies, stranded in the Mojave Desert. He's won fifty-one of fifty-nine fights as a professional boxer and pinchhit for Dorothy Kilgallen when she was on vacation from her column. Since 1816, thirty-three members of his family have been writers. And, he says, "I could sit in the middle of Sunset Boulevard and write with my typewriter on my knees; temperamental I am not."

Mr. L'Amour is re-creating an 1865 Western town, christened Shalako, where the borders of Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado meet. Historically authentic from whistle to well, it will be a live, operating town, as well as a movie location and tourist attraction.

Mr. L'Amour now lives in Los Angeles with his wife Kathy, who helps with the enormous amount of research he does for his books. Soon, Mr. L'Amour hopes, the children (Beau and Angelique) will be helping too.