Galloway (1970) (4 page)

Most of what I'd done to make myself comfortable must be left behind, and it worried me that I had no better weapons. My feet were better, but the skin was tender and I daren't walk very far at any one time. I'd been sparing of the hazelnuts for they were the best of my food, but at last they gave out, too. On the ninth day I gathered my few possessions and started out.

Back up at the forks of the creek in Tennessee they don't raise many foolish children, and the foolish ones don't live long enough to get knee-high to a short sheep. This was Indian country, so I taken it easy. My weapons weren't fit for fighting and my feet were too sore for running.

When I'd traveled about a half mile I sat down to study out the land. The canyon was widening out, and there was plenty of deer sign. Twice I saw tracks of a mountain lion, a big one.

By nightfall I'd covered four miles, resting often. The canyon had widened to a valley and the stream joined a larger river that flowed south. I could see the place where they flowed together, right up ahead. North of me the country seemed to flatten out, with towering snow-covered peaks just beyond. Those peaks must be the San Juans Tell Sackett had spoken of. I knew this country only by hear-tell, and when I'd been running ahead of those Jicarillas I'd not been paying much mind to landmarks.

Working my way over to the brush and trees that followed the canyon wall, I hunkered down to study out the land. And that was how I saw those Utes before they saw me.

They were coming up from the south and they had about twenty riderless horses with them, and a few of those horses looked almighty familiar. They passed nigh me, close enough to see they were a war party returning from some raid. They had bloody scalps, and it looked like they had run into those Jicarillas. Ambushing an Apache isn't an easy thing to do but it surely looked like they'd done it.

Trying to steal a horse ran through my mind, but I made myself forget it. My feet were in no shape for travel and I couldn't stand another chase. My best bet was to head east toward the Animas where I'd heard there were some prospectors.

Fact is, I was hungry most of the time. What I'd been finding was scarcely enough to keep soul and body together, and down on the flat it was harder to find what I needed. I found some Jimson weed and cut a few leaves to put in my moccasins. I'd used it for saddle sores and knew it eased the pain and seemed to help them to heal, but it was dangerous stuff to fool around with, and many Indians won't touch it.

Studying out the ground I saw a field of blue flowers, a kind of phlox the Navajo used to make a tea that helped them sing loudly at the Squaw Dance, and was also a "medicine" used for the Navajo Wind Chant. But I found nothing to eat until night when I caught a fine big trout in an angle of the stream, spearing it with more luck than skill, and then as I was making camp I found some Indian potatoes. So I ate well, considering.

When the fish was eaten I huddled by my capful of fire and wished for a cabin, a girl, and a meal waiting, for I was a lonesome man with little enough before me and nothing behind but troubles. Soon a cricket began to sing near my fire, so I made care to leave him be. There's a saying in the mountains that if you harm a cricket his friends will come and eat your socks. A hard time they would have with me, not having socks or anything else.

Galloway was no doubt eating his belly full in some fine restaurant or house, fining up on beef and frijoles whilst I starved in the woods. It is rare enough that I feel sorry for myself but that night I did, but what is the old saying the Irish have? The beginning of a ship is a board; of a kiln, a stone; and the beginning of health is sleep.

I slept.

Cold it was, and the dew heavy upon the grass and upon me as well, but I slept and the wind whispered in the aspen leaves, and in the darkness the taste of smoke came to my tongue, and the smell of it to my nose. Cold and dark it was when the smell of it awakened me, and I sat up, shivering with a chill that chattered my teeth. Listening into the night I heard nothing, but then my eye caught a faint gleam and I looked again and it was a dying fire, not fifty yards off.

Slowly and carefully I got to my feet. Indians. At least a dozen, and one of them awake and on guard. They must have made camp after I fell asleep, although it was late for Indians to be about, but come daylight they would surely find me. Easing my feet into my moccasins, I gathered what I had to carry and slipped away. When I was well away from their camp and in the bottom, I started to run.

The earth was soft underfoot, and the one thing I needed now was distance. They would find my camp in the morning and come after me. I ran and walked for what must have been a couple of hours, and then I went into the stream.

The moon was up and the whole country was bathed in such a white beauty a man could not believe, the aspens silvery bright, the pines dark and still. The cold water felt good to my feet but because the current was swift and the footing uncertain, I took my time. After awhile I came out on the bank and sat down, my muscles aching and weary, my feet sore. Carefully I dried them with handfuls of grass and clumps of soft sage.

Light was breaking when I started again. Within the hour they would be on my trail, and they would move much faster than I could. I did not know the Utes, but the stories I'd heard were mixed, and this was their country.

Now I moved from rock to rock, carrying a small flat rock in my hand to put down wherever I might leave a footprint. The rock left a mark but it was indefinite and might have been caused by any number of things. The Utes might find me, but I did not intend it should be easy, and I could drop the rock I carried and step from it to some other surface that would leave no mark.

Something rustled in the brush. Turning sharply I was only in time to see leaves moving where something had passed by. Crouching near a rock, I waited, but nothing came. Moving toward the brush, spear poised, I found only the faintest of tracks ... the wolf.

He was with me still, a rare thing for a lone wolf to stalk a man for so long a time. Yet he was out there now, in the brush, stalking me for a kill. Still, there must be easier game.

Twice I made my way through thick groves of aspen, trying to leave no sign of my passing, yet always alert for a place to hide. By now they had found my fire, and were on my trail.

My feet were beginning to bleed again. I heard the cry of an eagle that was no eagle, and the cry came from where no eagle would be. One of them had found some sign I'd left and was calling the others.

They would find me now, for they could scatter out and pick up what sign I'd left. I was too slow, too tired, and the going was too rough for me not to make mistakes.

Suddenly, there was no place to go. There'd been no trail. I'd just been following the lines of least resistance, and now the mountainside broke sharply off and I stood on the brink of a cliff with a deep pool of water lying thirty feet below. I could hear water falling somewhere near, but the surface below was unruffled and clear. There was no hesitation in me.

This far I had come, and there could be no thought of turning back. So I dropped my gear into the water, and feet first, I jumped.

A moment of falling, then my body struck the water and knifed into it. There was intense cold. I went down, down, and then as I was coming up my head bumped something and it was the quiver of arrows I'd made. A few yards away was the bow. Gathering them up, I swam for the only shore there was, a narrow white-sand beach back under the overhang of the cliff from which I'd jumped.

No more than four feet long and three wide, it was still a place where I could crawl up and rest. As I neared it I found my spear and the hide with my few belongings in it floating near. After I'd beached the bow and arrows, I recovered them and returned to the beach.

Stretching out on that beach meant putting my feet in the water, and that was just what I did. That sandy strip was completely invisible from anyone not on the surface of the water, for the pool was rimmed around with smooth rock edges, and none of them seemed to be less than six feet above the water. Even if the Indians circled and got on the rocks opposite they could not see into my hiding place. Their eyes could touch only the water or the rock above me.

Nobody was likely to find me here, but the question was, and it was an almighty big question, how was I going to to get out? I'd no food left and not much strength, but for the moment I was safe. So I curled up on the sand, pulled the remnants of my hides over me and went to sleep.

And in my sleep I dreamed that I heard a sound of horses, the whimper of a dog or wolf, and the sound of falling water.

When I awakened it was a long time later. I was cold, shivering cold, and the water was gray with late evening. There was a waterfall near ... not that it mattered. This was one I wasn't going to get out of.

Galloway, where are you?

Chapter
V

"There's a town," Shadow said, "or what passes for a town."

"Flagan don't know nothing about a town. When he taken out he was stark naked an' running his heart out, but if I know Flagan he'll take to the hills. There's places to hide and a better chance of rustling some grub."

"Nevertheless, he's apt to come upon some tracks, and if he follows them he'll find some prospector's camp or a ranch."

"Ranch?"

"They're coming in. The Dunn outfit have laid claim to a wide stretch of range and they're bringing in cattle." Shadow rode around a tree, pulling up to let Galloway ride abreast. "There's some others, too."

"There's room for all."

"Not if you listen to the Dunns. They're a tough lot. From Kansas."

There was the shadow of a trail, long unused. It wound among the rocks and boulders, following the contour of the land. Under the trees it was shadowed and still. Occasionally they drew up to give their horses a breather, for the altitude was high.

"I was talking with an old Ute," Shadow commented, "and showed him a picture of the castle where I was born. He said there were bigger castles back in the mountains."

"Castles?"

"Big houses," he said, "bigger than any dozen houses he had ever seen, bigger than twice that many, he claimed."

"You'd never guess it. Not in this country. He was probably tellin' you a tall tale."

"Maybe."

Hours later they came down off the mesa into a wide, grassy valley. Almost at once they saw tracks. A dozen riders on shod horses had passed, and not too long before.

Nick Shadow drew up and studied the tracks. Then he looked north in the direction they had gone. "Some of that Dunn outfit," he said. "Stay away from them, Sackett. They're trouble."

"Isn't likely I'll run into them." They mounted a ridge as Galloway spoke and he pointed off to the west. "River over there?"

"The Mancos. Mesa Verde is just beyond. That's where the old Indian told me the castles could be found. Someday I'm going to ride over and have a look."

After a moment Shadow added, "You'd best not hope too much. Your brother didn't have much chance."

"He's a tough man. He's had his tail in a crack before this. If I know him he's a comin', and somehow or other he'll keep himself alive. Up to us to find him, no matter how long. No Sackett ever left another in a bind. Leastways, none from my part of the country."

They had turned eastward, and high upon the right, but back from where they rode, the mountains lifted, bold peaks, their rugged flanks streamered with snow, forested almogt to the top. They rode cautiously, knowing it was Ute country but also that the Dunns were here.

"I've met none of them," Shadow said, "but they've a name for being a quarrelsome lot. Rocker Dunn killed a man over near Pagosa Springs a year back, and they say he'd killed a couple in Kansas before they came west. There's talk that several of them rode with Quantrill."

"Where's that town?"

"South of us. East and south. It lies over close to the La Plata. They've called it Shalako after one of the Kachinas."

Galloway was thinking of Flagan. Back in those mountains somewhere he was fighting to keep alive ... if he was alive. Without weapons, in a rugged country where the only humans he found were apt to be enemies, his chances of survival depended upon himself and his own energies.

They had grown up together, fighting each other's battles, working together, struggling together, and no man could know another so well as Galloway knew Flagan. He knew what Flagan must do to survive because he knew what he would do.

And there was no easy way.

Flagan would be struggling for every mouthful of food, thinking, conniving, planning. And he would be working his way north, staying with the kind of country where he could find a living, and slowly moving toward the destination for which they had set out.

Shalako lay on the flat with a backdrop of trees and towering mountains. The flat was green, dotted with clumps of oak brush, and the metropolis itself was composed of three buildings, two short stretches of boardwalk, one log cabin, a dugout, and several outbuildings of obvious intent.

"Now look at that," Nick Shadow commented. "It shows you how fast this country is growing. This town has increased one-third since I saw it only a few months ago. Somebody built a barn."

"Livery stable, looks like."