Snake Eyes (9781101552469) (6 page)

“We lost him,” Sweeney said, panting for breath.

“Yeah, but for how long?” LouDon said. “That sonofabitch is like a burr under the saddle. We ain't never goin' to get rid of him.”

“Snake will know what to do.”

LouDon fixed Hal with a hard accusing stare.

“We ain't goin' to tell Snake how close we come to gettin' our lamps put out, Hal. You got that?”

“I got it. But we got to tell him about the gunslick, what he done to Rudy.”

“Yeah, but that's all, hear?”

“Okay, LouDon. We'll just tell him about that jasper shootin' Rudy.”

The two men rode for the high ridge that bordered another valley where the Schneck herd of cattle fed on shoots of grass an inch high. The men's stomachs were in knots, and if they hadn't had their reins and saddle horns to hold on to as they rode, their hands would have been trembling.

They were both afraid of that lone man they had seen standing less than a hundred yards away with a rifle in his hands.

They did not know his name or who he was, but they knew one thing: The gunslinger who had shot Rudy dead was a dangerous man.

Brad watched the two men run to their horses and ride away into the heavy timber. He got a good look at them. One was tall and wore a battered brown hat, a red neckerchief, a heavy duck jacket with some kind of winter lining, and brown and yellow boots. The other, six inches shorter, wore a gray hat that had all but lost its blocked shape, sporting a leather band. He wore a faded blue neckerchief. He had heavy features, a large nose, and bulbous cheeks that echoed his fat, round torso. He wore faded denim trousers and a moth-eaten leather jacket with a sheepskin collar. The taller man appeared to have light sandy hair, chiseled cheekbones, and a hooked nose that protruded over a light blond moustache as bushy as the bristles on a shaving brush.

Both men rode heavy-boned geldings with dark tan hides and big feet and black manes. Their saddles might have come from Cheyenne or Denver—not fancy, but well worn, with coiled lariats hooked to D-rings near the pommel. Easy to reach for a working cowhand, Brad thought.

“Well, boys,” he said to himself, “you sure as hell left some mighty fine tracks.”

He walked back to where he had ground-tied Ginger, shoved the Winchester back in its boot, and climbed into the saddle. As he was riding toward the spot where the two men had tethered their horses, he heard a soft whicker from another direction. He pinpointed the location when the horse snorted and heard the sound of its hooves pawing the ground.

He approached cautiously, his right hand at rest on the butt of his pistol. The horse nickered and Ginger answered. Brad held his horse to a slow walk and approached a dun horse standing next to a pine tree surrounded by small firs and spruces. He waited a few minutes, listening for any other sounds, then rode up to the horse. He assumed that it belonged to the man he had shot and killed. The brand on its hip was a wavy Slash S.

He rode up and opened a flap on the left saddlebag. There was a plug of chewing tobacco, a box of .30-caliber Sharps cartridges, a sack of smoking tobacco, a box of wooden matches, and a packet of rolling papers. He looked in the other saddlebag and saw the remnants of a beef sandwich, the meat slathered with mustard and sprinkled with black peppers. It was wrapped in thin oil paper. There was a small bottle of cheap whiskey that was half full and a box of hard candies that were all stuck together. A wooden canteen hung from the saddle horn, and the empty boot testified that the man who had owned the horse was the man waiting in the bushes with the single-shot Sharps rifle.

Sad, he thought, that a young man's life was cut so short. Even sadder to find his horse and know that the dead man had ridden it over many trails and would never ride again. In another time and place, the dead man might have been an upstanding citizen, a law-abiding cowhand who lived by the Code of the West. Instead, he had been ordered to step beyond his line of work because of another man's merciless greed. When you worked for Schneck, he surmised, you weren't just riding for the brand, you were carrying out murderous orders that had nothing to do with the cattle business.

Brad felt his anger rising as he looked at the forlorn dun, standing there hipshot, deprived of his owner and rider. He vowed, upon his return, to take the horse to Bill if he had use for it, and if not, perhaps he would add the animal to his own remuda when he returned home.

He followed the tracks of the dun horse and hoped they would join up with the other two horses ridden by the men with the binoculars. It was slow tracking through the scattered pine needles and rotting cones, but he was experienced and knew what signs to look for, signs that would mark a horse's passing over all but solid rock.

The tracks of the dun did converge with the tracks of the other two horses who had laid footprints in two directions. He was pleased to find that all three men had followed a game trail. A little farther on, he found another track and a fresh blaze on a pine tree. He was tempted to follow those tracks, since they continued on toward the valley where the sheepmen and their families were quartered. But he decided against it for the time being. He vowed to return to that blaze and follow the one-way tracks, since he had a strong hunch where they would lead.

Brad figured that Schneck had sent a lone scout to find out where the sheepherders were. Then that man had circled back and left a blazed trail for the three men who returned to rope and hang Polentzi as a warning.

The question in Brad's mind was when had the bark been chopped away to leave a blaze mark on that tree? Was it on the way to the bluff and the valley or on the way back? He circled the tracks and deciphered their meaning after a few minutes of scrutiny. He looked again at the pine tree and saw that it was standing alone in a small clearing, easily seen by anyone riding along the well-worn game trail. The scout's tracks went both ways, at a different angle from the others and from the trail. So, the scout had probably found the sheepmen either as they entered the valley or shortly after their arrival, then had returned to hack that blaze on the pine tree. Further examination of the tracks revealed that the scout had cut a low-hanging branch from another pine tree and used it as a trailing broom to erase his tracks off the trail.

So, Brad figured, the scout had returned to his cow camp by a different route, and he didn't want others following that course.

Brad wondered who the scout was. He was obviously an experienced tracker and perhaps a woodsman. He had taken some pains to wipe out his horse's hoofprints and may have spent a day or two, or longer, scouting the valley before he returned and used a small hatchet to strike that fresh scar in the pine tree.

Brad continued to follow the tracks of the two men who had been observers atop the rimrock. Along the trail, he found other blazes, close together, and tracks of the scout's horse, heading in the same direction, with no attempt to blot them out. So, he surmised that the scout had circled back to the game trail and marked the path for those who were to follow him and find the sheep camp.

So now he was following three sets of tracks heading back to the cow camp with the dun tracks going along only one way.

He rode into thick timber with several rocky outcroppings that rose up from the underbrush like ancient stone idols in ruin. He also saw elk and mule deer tracks, and, in one place, came across a shallow wallow where elk had bedded down a few days before. Their scent was thick in the air, and he saw hairs from their hides stuck to the pines and junipers. He rounded old deadfalls of huge trees that the bears had plumbed for grubs and that nature's rains and snows had penetrated to render the trunks into dust and pulp.

The land began to slope upward and soon Ginger was climbing. Brad sensed that he was nearing a dramatic change in terrain, perhaps a ridge overlooking another big valley where cattle could graze. There were more elk and deer tracks, crisscrossing the wending game trail and other such trails branching off that one.

He stopped often during the slow climb up the sloping land, to listen and to look around him. He saw another blazed tree near the top of the slope and headed toward it. Horse tracks overlaid the game tracks in the soft wet soil, and there were horse hairs clinging to the bark of pine trees where the horses had rubbed against the scaly trunks.

It was eerie in that realm of the forest with tall pines standing thick, their canopies high above the earth, the needles bristling with sunlight that dappled the ground where it leaked through and played with shadows. It was very quiet until he reached level ground atop the slope.

That's when he heard the distant sound of cattle bawling and knew that he was nearing the grazing grounds. He spoke in soft tones to Ginger, telling him to be quiet and not let out a whinny, in case there were horses nearby. He topped the slope and felt that he was atop a long wide ridge that divided the timber from the open range beyond. He saw craggy, snow-capped mountains in the distance, purple and hazy ridges in between him and the majestic peaks, standing there like frozen ocean waves, one after the other rising and falling, seemingly endless.

He rode to the center of the ridge and then stopped short at the sound of an ax ringing on a tree. He heard a horse neigh off to his left from a place he could not see. As he listened, he heard the sound of a saw cutting through wood in counterpoint to the ring of the ax biting into a pine trunk.

Wary, Brad angled toward the sounds. He caught a glimpse of a wood cart hitched to a mule and horses standing ground-tied to brush well past the cart. He edged toward the far side of the ridge and, in the concealment of a pair of blue spruces, he peered down into a huge valley already greening up with spring grass. He saw white-faced cattle grazing along a creek and the tiny shapes of men on horseback driving more cattle into the valley and herding them onto different parts of the grassland.

There was a spiral of grayish blue smoke rising through the trees at the far end of the valley, and he caught a glimpse of a log structure there, hand-hewn benches around a large fire ring. Nearby, there stood a chuck wagon and an aproned man tending to the open fire, his kettles and irons set over and around the fire.

Horses, unsaddled, stood under a large lean-to surrounded by pines with a large hay wagon parked near it, its tongue touching the ground, its racks askew around an empty bed.

Suddenly, the sounds of the ax and the saw stopped and the silence seemed deafening.

Brad turned Ginger to cross back over the wide ridge.

That's when he heard the snap-click of a lever on a rifle as a shell was jacked into the firing chamber.

He turned his head and saw three men standing less than a hundred yards away. One of them held a rifle, one an ax, and the other had a pistol in his hand.

“Mister, you drop that gun belt and step down from that horse or I'll drop you like a lump of shit down a privy,” the man with the rifle said.

To emphasize his threat, the man raised his rifle to his shoulder and lined up the front and rear sights.

Brad froze in the saddle.

There was no place to run, no place to hide.

Brad let both hands drop slowly to his belt buckle. He moved his fingers, but made no move to slip the belt out of the buckle.

The three men began to walk toward him. The man with the rifle eased the stock down from his shoulder. The man with the ax carried it as a soldier would hold a rifle, across his chest, while the man with the pistol in his hand tilted it so that the barrel pointed downward.

Brad's brain circuits ignited like streaks of lightning. Thoughts stormed through his mind with the speed of a prairie whirlwind.

Three men on foot. He on a horse. Who was the dominant figure here? He had speed and mobility. The three men had neither. They were armed, but so was he.