Ride the Dark Trail (1972) (8 page)

That old woman was alone except for a slip of a girl, and you could bet Jake Flanner was studying ways to get her away from the ranch. Chances were he thought I was still around, but if he did know I was gone he'd figure I was gone for good. Well, if I could find Milo Talon, I would be. Right now I wanted Milo more'n anybody, but I hadn't any fancy ideas about being safe in Brown's Hole. So far most of the folks in the Hole, if they weren't outlaws themselves at least tolerated them. The Hoys, however, tolerated them least of all, as they'd lost some stock from time to time.

From time to time I rode off the trail and waited in the cedars to study my back trail, and I kept my eyes on the tracks. I wanted to see Dart, but there were others around I'd no desire to see at all.

Suddenly I heard hoofs a-coming and I pulled off the trail. It was Dart, and he was riding a sorrel gelding. They called Isom Dart a black man and he'd been a slave, but he surely wasn't very black.

He seen me as quick as I did him. "H'lo, Logan. What you all a-doin' up thisaways?"

"Huntin' you. I want to pass word to Milo Talon. He's needed on the Empty. His ma's still alive and she's in trouble. He's to come in careful ... and anybody in town is likely an enemy."

Dart nodded. "You know how 'tis, Logan. He's a fast-ridin' man, and he may be a thousand mile from here. I'll get word to him."

I gathered my reins. "You'd better hole up for a while your ownself. Brannenburg is huntin' rustlers."

"I never been in his neck o' the woods."

"Don't make no dif' rence. Dutch thinks he's godaw-mighty these days. If you ain't a banker or a big cattleman you're a cow thief."

No man in his right mind rides the same trail going back, not if he has enemies or it's Injun country. After leaving Dart I taken to the water, swam the Green and edged along through the brush, weaving a fancy trail for anybody wishful of hunting me. I backtracked several times, rode over my own trail, swam the Green again, and stayed in the water close to the bank for a ways.

When I did come out of the water I was in a thick stand of cedar and I worked my way east toward the Limestone Ridge. Turning, I walked my horse toward the gap that led to Irish Canyon, then turned east again and crossed Vermilion Creek and proceeded on east to West Boone Draw.

Most of the time I was riding in cedar or brush or following draws so that I could keep out of sight. I saw nobody, heard nothing, yet I had a spooky feeling.

There are times riding in the hills when you know you are alone and yet you are sure you are watched. Sometimes I think the ghosts of the old ones, the ones who came before the Indians, sometimes I think they still follow the old trails, sit under the ancient trees, or listen to the wind in the high places, for surely not even paradise could be more lonely, more beautiful, more grand than the high peaks of the San Juans or the Tetons or this land through which I rode.

There's more of me in the granite shoulders of the mountain or in the trunks of the gnarled cedars than there is in other men. Ma always said I was made to be a loner, and Nolan like me. We were twins, him and me, but once we moved we rode our separate ways and never seemed to come together again, nor want to. There'd been no bad feeling between us, it was as if we sensed that one of us was enough at one time in one place.

Riding out of the brush I looked across the country toward East Boone Draw. I just sat there for a while, feeling the country and not liking what I felt.

There was something spooky about Brown's Hole. Maybe it was that I couldn't get Brannenburg out of my mind. The Dutchman was hard ... he was stone. His brain was eroded granite where the few ideas he had carved deep their ruts of opinion. There was no way for another idea to seep in, no place for imagination, no place for dreams, none for compassion or mercy or even fear.

He knew no shadings of emotion, he knew no half-rights or half-wrongs or pity or excuse, nor had he any sense of pardon. The more I thought of him the more I knew he was not evil in himself, and he would have been shocked that anybody thought of him as evil. Shocked for a moment only, then he'd have shut the idea from his mind as nonsense. For the deepest groove worn into that granite brain was the one of his own rightness.

And that scared me.

A man like that can be dangerous, and it made me uneasy to be riding in the same country with him. Maybe it was that I'd a sense of guilt around him and he smelled it.

Here and there I'd run off a few cattle from the big outfits. They branded anything they found running free without a brand, but let a nester or cowhand do the same and he was a rustler.

I'd never blotted any brands. I'd never used a cinch ring or a coiled wire or anything to rewrite a brand. Here and there I'd slapped my brand on mavericks I'd come across on the plains. By now there must be several thousand head of stock running loose on the plains that I'd branded.

Suddenly I'd had enough of Brown's Hole. I was going to get out and get out fast.

And that was when I realized somebody was coming down my back trail, somebody hunting me.

Chapter
7

When I was a small boy I often went to the woods to lie on the grass in the shade. Somehow I had come to believe the earth could give me wisdom, but it did not. Yet I learned a little about animals and learned it is not always brave to make a stand. It is often foolish. There is a time for courage and a time for flight.

There is no man more dangerous than one who does not doubt his own rightness. Long ago I heard a man in the country store near my home say that a just man always had doubts. Dutch Brannenburg had no doubts. And he had gathered about him men who had no doubts. They were not outlaws, they were just hard, cold men who rode for the brand and believed every nester or drifting cowhand if not a thief was at least a potential thief.

They had decided, when they lost the trail of the men they followed, that I must have aided them, and so intended to hang me in their place.

Had I remained on the trail they would have had me now, and as it was they were coming.

Nine hard men with a noose ready for hanging, and me alone with womenfolks over the mountain who waited for my coming.

A draw opened through brush head-high to a horseman, and I turned into it, praying to God that it was not a dead end. My horse was a fast walker, and I walked him now, saving what he had for a time of need.

No more than a quarter of a mile behind, they were working out my trail, and they'd do it, too. I hadn't an idea they would not. I was a good man at hiding a trail, but these were man hunters, cow trackers, Injun fighters. Every man-jack of them was good at reading sign.

Suddenly the canyon branched; I went up the smaller canyon, followed it a couple of hundred yards, and then went to the bank and off through the cedars.

The ridge lay a half mile beyond, and I took off for it, angling up and using all the cover I could find, holding myself on a low angle to keep from their eyes as long as possible. My horse was in fine shape, and it would need to be, for I'm a big man and the trail would be long.

This was no time to lead trouble to Em Talon, so I headed off into broken country. A man who has been riding the wild trails as long as me gets a feel for them and for mountain country. Beyond that ridge up ahead were other ridges, canyons, buttes - a maze of rough country. The last fifty yards lay ahead of me and I glanced back. They were topping out at the canyon's edge, and a far-off shout told me I'd been seen.

They done a foolish thing. They started to run at me.

Being too anxious sometimes can deal a man a hard blow. They rode fast up that slope and there's not much that can take more out of a horse than that. I'd purposely walked my horse, taking it easy. I kept on walking, wanting both to save my mount and give them the idea I did not realize I was being pursued.

Then I topped out on the ridge and went over, onto a long shelf of above-timber line rock. I followed it for fifty yards, then doubled back and rode back on the far side of a V where the ridge had been the point. As they came up one side of the V, I was riding along the other side just over the ridge from them.

Then I trotted my horse. I taken our time, but I pushed just enough to get out of sight in the spruce trees before they topped the ridge. Once in the spruce trees I followed along as I was going, weaving among the trees for a quarter of a mile or so, turning downhill a few yards, then up, riding between trees so close together I had to pull one leg out of a stirrup to get through, crossing bare rock and changing direction as I crossed, or doubling back.

If those boys fitted my neck into their noose they were going to have some riding to do first.

The roan I was riding had been showing me something more than I'd expected. Talon was a horse breeder as well as a builder, and if this horse was any example he was a man with talent. Judging by what Em had said during one of our sort of rambling talks, Talon had bred Morgan stallions to the best of the mustang mares he could find, and the roan seemed to have the brains of the Morgan and the all-around wild animal savvy of the mustang. Since Talon died, most of his stock had been running wild in the mountains, and this roan took to high country like it had known nothing else.

What was important now was that that horse would go just about anywhere I asked it to, and it had been teaching me that most of the horses I'd known up to now were something not to be considered in the same rank with this one.

Riding up through a bunch of cedars, I turned in my saddle and glanced back. They were maybe a thousand feet lower down, and by the way they'd have to ride, a half mile behind. Suddenly I saw a huge boulder - it must've weighed half a ton - balanced beside the game trail I'd come out on as I topped the ridge.

The boulder had tumbled down from a shoulder of higher rock and was held in place by a couple of rocks no bigger than my fist. It had probably been there no longer than since the last windstorm and maybe less. If it started to roll it was going to roll right down on them as they came out of the woods.

Stepping down from the saddle I taken a long pole, the broken trunk of a young spruce, and I jammed the end of it against one of those small rocks. It came loose and the boulder teetered. I smacked it again and that boulder crunched down on what lay ahead and beneath it.

It turned over slowly, majestically, then rolled over again, a bit faster. Right below it was a drop of about six feet and then the steep hillside. It rolled over that drop, hit hard, and then started down the slope followed by an army of smaller stuff, rocks from the size of a man's head to fist-size.

Down below Brannenburg and his men, bunched pretty well, came out of the woods. For a moment there I didn't think they'd see it, then Dutch looked up. As he looked that huge boulder hit a jump off place and must have bounded thirty feet out into the air.

Dutch cut loose with a yell that I heard faintly, and then the bunch scattered ... only just in time.

One horse hit on a side slope and went rolling, rider and all, another went to pitching as the boulder lit with the shower of rocks coming with it, then rolled off down the slope to lodge in the trees.

I hadn't wanted to kill nobody. I just wanted to slow them up, make them cautious, but they were some shook up, I could see that.

One man had been bucked off and he was getting up, limping. A horse was running away, stirrups slopping. The others were fighting their horses, trying to get them calmed down, and they were having troubles. I just rode off around the knoll and cantered across a long green meadow toward the lip of a basin.

Before reaching it I rode across a great shelving ledge of tilted rock, knowing my horse might leave some hoof scars, but they would be few and the trackers would have to ride slow to read the sign.

There was a steep, winding trail down from the shelf into a basin that lay partly below timberline. A scattering of spruce and foxtail pine had crept up the south-facing slope, and I let the roan pick its way down through the trees.

High on a slope opposite I saw a half dozen bighorn sheep watching me. Their eyes are sharp, and they miss mighty little. A camp-robber jay picked up my trail and followed me along, hoping for some food I might drop, but he was backing the wrong card. I'd no time to stop and dig something out of my outfit.

There are folks who can't abide camp-robber jays, but I take to them. Often enough they've been my only company for days at a time, and they surely do get friendly. They'll steal your grub right from under your nose, but who am I to criticize the life style of a bird? He has his ways, I have mine. Like I say, I take to them.

This was my kind of country. I'm a high-line man. I like the country up yonder where the trees are flagged by the wind, where there's sedge and wild flowers under foot and where the mountains gnaw the sky with gray hard teeth, flecked with a foam of snow gathered in their hollows.

All the time I was working my way east, trying to wear them out or lose them, but drawing closer and closer to the MT ranch and Em Talon.

That night I made no fire. I chewed on some jerky and some rose hips I'd picked from time to time, finished the last small chunk of bread I'd brought, and ate a half dozen wild onions.

Once I'd stripped the gear from the roan I scouted the country around, rifle in hand. There was no way a body could see my camp until they were right up close, and no way anybody could approach without making some noise. I was backed up against the edge of a grove of aspen and I'd picked about the only level spot on a steep hillside.