Two riders on shod horses. Four unshod horses. Four stolen horses. One stallion and three mares. One of the mares was in season. One was carrying a foal.
The tracks were plain to see in the Medicine Bows. All were headed toward the Snowy Range at a slow pace. That was because the stud was mounting the mare in heat every so often.
Cordwainer Wild chewed on the tail end of a rhubarb stalk as he studied the tracks, estimated their age. Less than an hour fresh, now that he had almost caught up with the two rustlers.
A six-hour drive from Jesse Barnes’s JB Ranch in Wyoming Territory. A hard ride for Cord, but one he was used to and took in stride.
There was an added urgency to his mission to catch up to the two rustlers.
A boy, barely fifteen, lay dead in the barn on the JB spread. Billy Wheeler, as innocent and defenseless as a fledgling mountain partridge chick.
Cord leaned to one side. His six foot four stature made it easier for him to study the tracks as he rode. So far, the rustlers had shown no signs of evasion. They followed a well-worn game trail that echoed the tracks they had made when they had come two years before to Wesley Gannon’s 2Bar2 Ranch in the foothills of the Medicine Bows.
The two horse thieves had made the same ride before, not just to Gannon’s ranch, but to others that lay between Cheyenne and Laramie. Those two, or two others cut from the same sorry bolt of cloth.
The tracks veered off the game trail. One or more of the horses had spooked.
Cord sat up straight in the saddle and sniffed the thin mountain air.
Bear scat.
He glanced in the direction of the scent and saw an outcropping of limestone upslope from where he rode.
The bear smell had spooked the horses, and he had to pat Windmill’s neck to keep him from bolting away from the strong scent. The dark sorrel snorted as if to spray the cloying aroma from his rubbery nostrils, and he bowed his neck in protest. But the horse held steady as they rode on until Cord saw the horse droppings where at least two of the horses had heeded a call to nature.
He smelled that pungent aroma, too, and saw tiny wisps of mist from the droppings that told him he was getting close.
He slowed Windmill as he gazed ahead. He knew that the closer he got to the two horse thieves, the more dangerous it would be for him. Beyond the outcroppings, the pines and firs were thick and he saw deadfalls scattered amid the underbrush. The trail angled downward a few yards ahead, down toward water where the deer, elk, rabbits, wolves, coyotes, and other critters drank before bedding down for the day. The game trail was littered with animal tracks. These were mixed in and struck over by iron hooves and the unshod horses, but still visible.
A highway through the timber.
The men he tracked were well-known in Cheyenne. They were men he had seen before in the saloons and in jail.
They worked for a man named Horace Weatherall, a horse breeder and cattle rancher who had done prison time for embezzlement, but kept some of the money he had stolen and bought a ranch under suspicious circumstances some three or four years ago, the 2Bar2, from a struggling cattleman named Gannon. Gannon had lost almost his entire herd of Herefords in a blizzard two years earlier.
There were those who swore that Wes’s herd had been chased into the Snowy Range by night riders whose faces were never seen. There were suspicions, but the law could not prove anything. So Horace had bought the ranch for a song. Some said he only paid Wes a small amount of money, promising him the balance within a year’s time.
Wes never lived long enough to get the money owed him. He was found out on the prairie, beaten to death.
But Horace had a bona fide bill of sale and so he took over the 2Bar2.
Cord had his own suspicions. There was a man who swore he had seen Wes thrown from his horse and stomped on by a herd of antelope.
The story sounded far-fetched to Cord, too, but again, there was no proof to counter the claim.
Except that the man who claimed to be an eyewitness worked for Horace and was surely one of the men Cord now tracked.
He thought the man’s name was Larry Dolan. And the other man likely riding with him was a well-known gunfighter from St. Louis named Lester Aikens, who had more aliases than the entire town of Guthrie, Oklahoma.
The names of the thieves and their boss ran through Cord’s mind like ripples in a stream. And he also thought of the dead boy, the senselessness of it. His anger thrashed at those ripples of thought, and he crunched down on the rhubarb and balled up a fist.
A large blue spruce blocked his view, but the game path wound around it and angled downslope toward the creek. He approached the spruce with an added wariness. A man, or two, could be just beyond it, waiting in ambush.
He looked at Windmill’s ears for any warning signs. The horse was attuned to every movement, every sound. Windmill could smell danger, too. But the horse was calm, and Cord gave him his head to continue down the game trail.
Just beyond the blue spruce with its lush, thick boughs, he saw where one man had left the trail. The other had gone on down toward the creek, the four horses in tow.
Cord stiffened in the saddle.
The horse thieves likely knew he was on their trail. He glanced down and saw the circles of dark stains where the horses had urinated. A thin scrim of steam rose from the dimples in the dirt.
The outlaws had been there scant moments before. And one of them was circling to pick up his back trail.
He knew which one, too.
Lester Aikens. He was the more skilled killer of the two. The most treacherous.
Cord stayed behind the spruce, then edged forward to look upslope to see if there was any movement, any sign of where Aikens might be.
Windmill whickered softly. His ears twitched, hardened into cones that twisted in a semicircle as he gazed in the same direction. A forefoot pawed the ground.
Where was Aikens?
Likely he was riding a large loop and would descend back on the trail some yards behind Cord. That’s what Cord would do if it were him, he thought.
Or he could be edging closer, using the pines for cover.
Cord knew he could not wait where he was. Once he left the cover of the spruce, he would be out in the open, an easy target.
He rode past the game path into a thicket of brush, with juniper and spruce trees blocking his advance, and dismounted among the trees bristling with green spines.
He ground-tied Windmill to a juniper and slipped his Winchester ’73 from its sheath. He patted his horse on the neck and walked upslope, away from the clump of trees and thick brush.
He jacked a cartridge into the firing chamber of his rifle and set the hammer to half cock.
He stopped and listened to the silence. It was a silence as deep as any ocean and it surrounded him.
The tracks of Aikens were easy to pick up. He followed them into the timber. The man was riding slow and the tracks led ever higher, away from the game trail.
There was no need to follow them now.
Cord walked straight ahead, certain that he would pick up the tracks as Aikens rode back down to the game trail. That would cut time and distance from his stalking of the man who meant to kill him.
Aikens was a backshooter, like other very cowardly gunnies Cord had run across.
Cord stepped carefully, avoiding branches that would crack or pinecones that would crunch.
Then he heard it.
A soft sound, perhaps a hundred yards ahead of him.
The unmistakable crack of a branch under a horse’s iron shoe.
Cord went into a crouch and headed toward the sound.
As he got closer to where the horse had stepped on that dry branch, Cord stiffened at the sound of metal. Upslope. Somewhere. A shell sliding into a firing chamber, a hammer cocking, a lever being seated.
Aikens had outwitted him. For just a fraction of a second.
Cord hugged a tree just as he heard the explosion some yards upslope from him. Then the whine of a bullet and the rip of bark as the projectile sheared off part of the pine tree at head height.
Splintered bark stung Cord’s face.
He heard Aikens cock the rifle again.
In the silence, the sound was like the opening of an iron tomb.
TWO
Lester Aikens kept turning in his saddle and had been looking down their back trail for the past hour or so.
“What’s eatin’ you, Les?” Larry Dolan asked when Lester’s jitters were getting on his own nerves.
“It’s that Wild Gun,” Lester said, his eyes shining with a malevolent glint.
“What in hell you talkin’ about?” Larry asked. He looked back down the trail. “I don’t see nothin’. What wild gun?”
“That’s what they call him in town. His name’s Wild and he is some kind of damned vigilante or maybe a bounty hunter. I seen him a coupla times. He looks like he eats iron for breakfast and drinks blood out of a Judson boot.”
“Aw, Lester. You talkin’ ’bout Cordwainer. He ain’t no bounty hunter. He’s just another hired gun for some of the ranchers.”
“It’s that glint in his eyes. I know ’em when I see ’em. He ain’t no ordinary hired gun.”
“You think he’s a-follerin’ us?”
“Somebody sure as hell is. Look at them horses we brung. They’re nervous as long-tailed cats in a room full of rockin’ chairs.”
“Pshaw, Lester. I don’t see nobody back there and I been lookin’ almost as much as you.”
Larry was a short, thin man with a sharp-pointed nose and eyes set too close together so that, at times, he seemed cross-eyed. He was thin as a rail, but all sinew and muscle.
Lester had a small paunch, and his upper lip dripped with a scraggly moustache. He claimed it strained his food and caught skeeters at night. He was a rawboned man, nearly six foot in his smelly socks, and wore a dirty bandanna around his thick neck. He had large eyes that he kept half-hooded when he was about to kill a man.
His eyelids were at half-mast now.
“A man gets a feelin’,” Aikens said. “Maybe it’s instinct. Second sight. But I got a feeling that Wild Gun is gettin’ real close.”
“Well, we could maybe find a hidey-hole and wait for him to show up. Then blow him out of the saddle.”
“Nope. I figger Wild’s too smart for that. I got a better idea.”
“What’s that?” Dolan asked.
“One of us could double back and . . .”
“Not me,” Larry said. “I want to get these horses to the 2Bar2 and draw my pay.”
“If Wild is on our track, we won’t neither of us get back to the 2Bar2.”
“You go, then,” Dolan said.
“I’m thinkin’ to do just that,” Aikens said.
“Go on, then. I’ll meet you down at the creek when I water the horses.”
“Trail goes down yonder,” Aikens said. “Just past that big old spruce tree.”
“Yep, it does. You goin’ to double back?”
“I’ll get up into the timber and backtrack, see if can dry-gulch that Wild Gun.”
“Good luck, Lester.”
They rode to the blue spruce and parted company without words. Dolan headed down the game path while Aikens rode up to his left, into the timber.
Lester waited until Dolan was well out of sight. Then he spurred his horse to climb the slope and rode into the heavy timber below the high ridge.
He was a man who could smell danger. He knew, deep down, that Wild was on their track, and that was that. He knew he had such instincts. They had kept him alive a good long while. He aimed to keep it that way.
He picked his way carefully through the timber, the game path below him within sight, within range of his rifle. His pistol, too, if need be. He stopped every few feet to listen. He looked up and down the trail.
Presently, he stopped again. This time he heard something. A soft sound from somewhere behind him, not in front.
Unexpected.
He dismounted and drew his rifle from his scabbard.
He waited and listened. More sounds. Furtive sounds. The trail below was empty.
Had Wild been closer than he thought?
Where was he?
He listened for hoofbeats. He heard none. Just that same soft sound. Like a man walking through the timber.
His heart began to pump faster. He took up a position behind a thick pine tree. He held on to the horse’s reins with his left hand. He looked over his back trail. He saw nothing but pine boughs and tree trunks, thick brush, a juniper, and some small spruce trees.
His pulse pounded steady and strong in his ears.
Aikens let loose of the reins and levered a shell into the firing chamber of his Winchester. Then he slapped his horse on the rump. The horse headed downward toward the vacant trail.
Wild appeared out of the timber as Aikens’s horse scampered downward. The horse made a lot of noise. And Wild looked at the horse, the empty saddle.
Then Aikens’s pursuer disappeared for a second or two as Aikens put the stock of his rifle against his shoulder and took aim.
He saw Wild head for a pine tree.
He squeezed the trigger of his rifle and the butt bucked against his shoulder. Bark flew off the tree just inches from where Wild had been.
Missed, damn it, Aikens said to himself soundlessly.
Then he heard nothing but silence. He jacked another shell into the chamber and looked for his target.
Wild was still behind the tree. But Aikens was ready for any sign of him. His rifle was in his grip, nestled against his shoulder. He lined up the front blade with the rear buckhorn sight and waited.
He was sure of himself now.
He had the advantage.
If Wild showed any part of his body, Aikens had it covered. He was a patient man.
His eyes were hooded. He could sense death a few yards away.
Wild was pinned tight against that tree.
In a sense, he was Aikens’s prisoner.
It was only a matter of time before Wild showed himself.
And when he did, he was a dead man.
Aikens waited, his pulse steady, his eyes glittering like a diamondback’s.
His finger was snug against the trigger of his rifle.
One tick was all it would take.
One little tug of his forefinger.
One tick of a clock.
THREE
Cord spit out the mashed lump of rhubarb in his mouth.
Deerflies swarmed to the shredded remains of the stalk on the ground. Their bluish gray bodies glinted in the sun and their diaphanous wings zizzed like sizzling bacon in the fry pan.
He held his rifle upright in front of his body and his back hugged the tree.
His quarry had reloaded and was waiting for him to show himself.
He knew he was in a bad spot, but as long as he stayed behind the tree he would shed no blood. His mind riffled through thoughts of possible solutions to his predicament. As each solution materialized, he rejected it.
He could not outwait Aikens. The man could sneak farther upslope, if he was careful enough, and find Cord exposed. One shot might be all it would take to put out his lamp.
Cord could not attempt a similar tactic. Once he left the safety of the tree, he would be out in the open for at least a second or two. Long enough for Aikens to squeeze the trigger and dust him off.
How long did it take a man to fire a round and reload? One or two seconds, at least. Would that be long enough for Cord to step away from the tree and catch Aikens in the open, aim, and shoot back?
Cord didn’t know.
Aikens was an experienced killer. A dead shot, with several notches on his gunstock.
It was a gamble. But what was the risk?
His life, he thought.
Still, Cord knew he had to do something. This kind of a standoff was, in itself, a gamble. And Aikens held all the aces in his hand. Four aces against a busted straight.
Cord reached up and lifted his hat from his head, careful to hold his arm close to his body. He slid the hat down to the muzzle of his rifle. It was a dusty Stetson with a wet sweatband. It lay cocked atop the barrel of his Winchester.
He was cocked and loaded. And he had a trick up his sleeve against the four aces.
Not a royal flush, but a filled straight perhaps.
He would have a second, maybe two, after Aikens fired to step out, aim, and fire himself.
One or two breaths away from death.
More of a chance than Aikens’s previous victims had had, Cord reasoned.
How trigger-happy was Aikens? Would he fall for the trick, the crude ruse? There was only one way to find out, and Cord went over his tactics. He played the game before he got to the playing field. That was the way champions did it.
That’s what Cord did.
Aikens’s horse crashed through the last fringe of brush and reached the game trail. The horse snorted and pawed the ground with its left front hoof. Then it lifted its head and looked up at its master. It whinnied and then was silent. It stood there on the trail, hipshot, one left foot cocked, the toe of its hoof braced against the ground.
When Cord was satisfied, he drew in a deep breath, held it, then shoved the rifle barrel with his hat hanging on the muzzle straight out, just past the tree trunk.
Almost instantly, he heard the crack of Aikens’s rifle.
The bullet plowed through air with a whooshing sound and ripped into Cord’s hat. It went straight through and caromed off a rock with a whistling whine.
Cord crouched, stepped away from the tree, and turned to face Aikens.
His barrel dropped and came level just below his hip. He aimed with dead reckoning as Aikens swore and took his rifle away from his shoulder. Aikens grabbed the lever and was about to pull it down when Cord’s rifle exploded. The Winchester belched smoke and sparks and the rifle cracked and echoed its whiplike report off the mountainsides.
Cord heard the bullet smack into flesh, then stepped back to the tree and cocked his rifle again just as he heard his bullet smack into flesh.
Aikens let out a grunt and his hand slipped from the lever as pain shot through his body in a rush of muscle contractions and screaming nerve endings.
He doubled over as the bullet ripped through his abdomen and smashed a cup-sized hole out his back. His brain flashed with pain signals and he expelled air from his mouth in a guttural grunt. The timber spun in a dizzying swirl of green pine and spruce needles. The ground threatened to rush up to him and topple him backward.
He staggered a half step and stood up, fighting against the pain that surged through his innards. He smelled the contents of his large intestine as it split in a blood-soaked mass of tissue and muscle.
He let the butt of his rifle strike the ground and he leaned on the barrel, using the weapon as a cane. Then his mind fuzzed over and he felt a dizziness assail his senses.
His legs turned to mush and it seemed that his knees no longer locked in place to hold him erect. He slumped down, braced by his legs, and his rifle fell from his hand. He clawed for his pistol as Cord approached.
“You might think a second or two before you draw that pistol,” Cord said.
“Damn your hide,” Aikens growled.
His fingers wrapped around the butt of his pistol, but he struggled to tighten them or draw his weapon. Blood spurted from his abdomen and he showed signs of weakening.
Cord kept his rifle aimed at Aikens as he strode ever closer to him.
“You gutshot me, Wild.”
“You were out to bushwhack me.”
“Who says?” Aikens’s voice was turning to a wheezing whisper as he tugged on the butt of his pistol.
“I do,” Cord said. “That pistol clears your holster, you won’t have time to pray before you die.”
“Go to hell,” Aikens spat. There was a trace of blood in his spittle.
Cord’s finger wrapped around the trigger of his rifle. It would take only a flick of his finger to blow off Aikens’s head. He was less than thirty feet away now, still closing the distance.
The pistol began to slide upward from Aikens’s holster. Another inch and the gun would clear it.
“I warned you, mister,” Cord said.
The pistol slid from the holster. Just barely. Aikens started to raise the barrel to point it at Cord.
Cord squeezed the trigger of his rifle from ten feet away. The barrel jumped when the powder exploded. Smoke and sparks spewed from the barrel.
The bullet slammed into Aikens’s chest and sprouted a crimson flower on his shirt. His eyes widened for a moment and his gun hand went slack. The pistol fell from Aikens’s grip as he reached up to the hole in his chest.
Blood spurted out and his eyes glazed over with a deathly frost. A gobbet of blood bubbled from his mouth as he crumpled into a heap and pitched forward, his eyes fixed.
“Too bad,” Cord said as he stood over the heap that had once been Aikens. “You might have lived another five minutes.”
He ejected the hull from his rifle and set the hammer to half cock.
Cord took no satisfaction in killing Aikens. He just felt empty inside, as if a deep hole had opened up somewhere in the region of his stomach. But he shed no tears for the man who had dry-gulched him. The man deserved to die and he had made the choice to end it quicker than he had to that day.
Cord walked away from the corpse and down the slope toward the outlaw’s horse. He spoke to the animal, then picked up both reins.
The horse whickered softly as Cord stepped out along the game trail.
“Be all right, boy,” Cord said. “I’ll find you another home by and by.”
His horse was waiting for him.
And there was still one more horse thief to catch left on his list of things to do that day.
He mounted up and led Aikens’s horse alongside as he started down the game trail toward the creek.
One man and four stolen horses.
That one could not make good time and the day was still young enough for Cord to catch up with him.
He hoped it would not take too long. He was on the verge of tiring in the thin mountain air. He saw a hawk fly over and trail its wrinkled shadow through the trees until it vanished from sight.
Like me, he thought, the hawk is still hunting.
FOUR
Larry Dolan heard the gunshots from a distance. He stiffened in the saddle and instinctively turned to look back up into the phalanxes of timber higher on the slope he had descended. He was tempted to smile, since he had faith in Lester Aikens. But he suppressed the smile because, in truth, he really did not know whether Wild was now wolf meat or if he would have to elude Wild.
There was a long period of silence and then he heard another shot, the crack of a rifle. Just one shot. It could mean anything. A steel wire tautened in his brain, and along it ran electrical charges of doubt that surged through his head.
He wondered what that last shot meant. Was it Lester putting a last bullet into Wild’s head? Or had Wild killed off Aikens?
Doubt flooded his mind and it was the not knowing that made his senses tingle. Not knowing. He spurred his horse down the trail toward the creek. Distance was now his friend, no matter what the outcome of a duel in the timber might be.
The horses could smell water and they nickered and tossed their heads as he drew closer to the creek. Once he forded it, he could ride down to the flat and have a clear look at his back trail. And he would be ready if Wild had been the victor and was coming after him.
His nerves were taut and his horse was chomping at the bit to get to the water. Those he had stolen were tugging on the lead ropes, and it took all his strength to hold them in check with the single strand that connected to all of their halters.
“Steady, boy,” he said to his horse, and gave him his head.
Below, he saw the shining waters of the creek. They shimmered in the sunlight, wavelets shot with silver, a bellowing of dark water that rippled and changed shape and color as the creek surged toward lower ground.
Dolan looked back over his shoulder. He was not overly worried. He still had a trick or two left. He was just sorry Aikens was not with him, because they had planned all this perfectly, long before they had stolen the horses from the JB Ranch.
He reached the creek and found the ford he and Aikens had previously scouted. It was on a bend where the creek widened and streamed over pebbles that he could see beneath the water. It was shallow there and fairly good footing. He let the horses drink, then urged them on to the opposite bank. He made a sharp left turn into a maze of arroyos and rode over rocky ground, the remnants of an ancient moraine. He kept looking back at his tracks. They were wet for a while, then, as the horses shook off the water from the creek, his tracks were dry and invisible.
He rode over a wide plain that was almost pure shale and flint. This had been a place where the Cheyenne and Arapaho had gathered much of their flint for their arrowheads and hatchets.
Again, he left no tracks since he moved slowly and picked a careful path across the flat.
Beyond the plain there were arroyos spreading out in several directions, like the spokes on a wagon wheel. His eyes sought out the small blazes he and Aikens had made previously to guide them through the maze. Weathering had dulled the slashes in the aspens so that they were barely noticeable. He smiled.
They had thought this out, he and Aikens, and had made several forays into the foothills to find just the right place in case they had to elude a posse or a tracker. They had worked hard to build a pole corral in a small box canyon where they could store stolen horses and hide in ambush, just in case.
He passed several arroyos with traces of water that had run to the creek after every rain and snowmelt in the spring. The Cheyenne and Arapaho had left traces of their hunting camps in many of the arroyos, and he and Aikens had found whitened bones of deer and elk, along with broken flint arrowheads and other signs of temporary habitation.
He rode over loose talus from the limestone outcroppings, through a defile bordered by rugged hills, limestone bluffs, and signs of ancient flash floods. It was a wild and baffling place for anyone not familiar with that part of the Rockies.
He listened intently for any signs of pursuit, but heard nothing but the caw of crows and the peeps of chipmunks, the rustle of leaves in the gentle breeze that blew through the small canyon. The horses’ hooves clacked on the talus. Anyone following him would make the same sound, and such a sound carried far up and down the corridor where he rode.
Finally, he turned left again, back toward the higher mountains, and crossed the creek. Then he made a right turn where he saw a blaze high on an aspen tree and continued into the small box canyon. He and Aikens had built the corral just inside it at a narrow aperture where boulders had rolled down over past centuries and created two walls. The gate was simple and it was open.
He ran the stolen horses into the small corral, then dismounted outside and picked up poles that made a crude gate across the entrance. There was grass inside and a small concave rock that was filled with rainwater. The horses could stay there for days and survive. When he took the rope off their halters, they all bowed their necks and began to nibble on the tall grasses that flourished all over that box canyon.
Satisfied, Dolan rode around the entrance to the box canyon and up one of its side slopes. There, in a copse of fir and spruce, was a place he had picked for himself. It concealed him and gave him a good view of the terrain below, the entrance to the small canyon.
He dismounted, ground-tied his horse to a scrub pine, and pulled his rifle from its scabbard, along with a box half-full of cartridges. He stuck those in his pocket and sat on a flat rock between a pair of spruce trees that joined branches just behind him.
He pulled a blade of grass from the ground and put the buried end in his mouth, rinsed away the dirt with saliva, and spit it out. Then he chewed on the sweet stalk and looked down the long canyon. He could see for a good five hundred yards.
And this was the only way in and the only way out of the canyon labyrinth. He smiled in satisfaction.
If Wild came after him, Dolan had a bullet in his rifle with Wild’s name on it.
Perfect.
FIVE
Cord noticed that Aikens’s horse was well-fed and well-behaved. He would need him later when he packed the outlaw’s body out of the timber, collected his rifle and pistol.
For now, his plan was to secure the horse near water and grass, then get on with his business. As far as he knew, there was only one horse thief left to track down, Larry Dolan. If Cord had to follow him all the way to the 2Bar2, he was determined to get those valuable horses back to their rightful owner. Come hell or high water.
The horses both smelled the creek water. Their rubbery nostrils gobbled the air and their ears stiffened as Cord descended the game trail. He patted Windmill’s neck. His horse was thirsty, too. There were streaks of sweat striping his shoulders. The sun and the high altitude took moisture out of man and horse on such a day.
He saw the shining waters of the creek and had to hold Aikens’s horse in check when it bunched up its muscles, ready to bolt toward the water. Windmill snorted and whickered, but held fast under the pressure of the bit in its mouth.
He reached the creek and let the horses drink while he scanned the ground for Dolan’s spoor. And there it was, five sets of hoofmarks on the path that led along the creek on his side.
He knew the man was looking for a ford. The water was swift where he was, since the creek was bordered by high banks and they kept the stream narrow.
When the horses had slaked their thirst, Cord rode away from the creek looking for a spot where he could use Aikens’s rope to tie up his horse on good grass and give him access to creek water. He found such a spot in a grove of aspen a few yards down the creek. There was a low point in the bank where deer and elk had left a jumble of cuneiform tracks when they had come there to drink.
Cord dismounted and took Aikens’s lariat off the saddle, looped it through the horse’s bridle, and secured the bitter end to an aspen. He left the saddle and saddlebags on the horse, patted its withers, and climbed up on Windmill. Aikens’s horse whinnied at them as they rode off, heading upstream.
Cord was tempted to dig out another stalk of rhubarb and chew on it, but he stifled the urge. Those horse tracks were still fresh and he didn’t want anything to distract him. Somewhere upstream, there was a shallow ford, and that was likely where Dolan would cross and perhaps head out of the hills and onto the prairie.
Two riders on shod horses. Four unshod horses. Four stolen horses. One stallion and three mares. One of the mares was in season. One was carrying a foal.
The tracks were plain to see in the Medicine Bows. All were headed toward the Snowy Range at a slow pace. That was because the stud was mounting the mare in heat every so often.
Cordwainer Wild chewed on the tail end of a rhubarb stalk as he studied the tracks, estimated their age. Less than an hour fresh, now that he had almost caught up with the two rustlers.
A six-hour drive from Jesse Barnes’s JB Ranch in Wyoming Territory. A hard ride for Cord, but one he was used to and took in stride.
There was an added urgency to his mission to catch up to the two rustlers.
A boy, barely fifteen, lay dead in the barn on the JB spread. Billy Wheeler, as innocent and defenseless as a fledgling mountain partridge chick.
Cord leaned to one side. His six foot four stature made it easier for him to study the tracks as he rode. So far, the rustlers had shown no signs of evasion. They followed a well-worn game trail that echoed the tracks they had made when they had come two years before to Wesley Gannon’s 2Bar2 Ranch in the foothills of the Medicine Bows.
The two horse thieves had made the same ride before, not just to Gannon’s ranch, but to others that lay between Cheyenne and Laramie. Those two, or two others cut from the same sorry bolt of cloth.
The tracks veered off the game trail. One or more of the horses had spooked.
Cord sat up straight in the saddle and sniffed the thin mountain air.
Bear scat.
He glanced in the direction of the scent and saw an outcropping of limestone upslope from where he rode.
The bear smell had spooked the horses, and he had to pat Windmill’s neck to keep him from bolting away from the strong scent. The dark sorrel snorted as if to spray the cloying aroma from his rubbery nostrils, and he bowed his neck in protest. But the horse held steady as they rode on until Cord saw the horse droppings where at least two of the horses had heeded a call to nature.
He smelled that pungent aroma, too, and saw tiny wisps of mist from the droppings that told him he was getting close.
He slowed Windmill as he gazed ahead. He knew that the closer he got to the two horse thieves, the more dangerous it would be for him. Beyond the outcroppings, the pines and firs were thick and he saw deadfalls scattered amid the underbrush. The trail angled downward a few yards ahead, down toward water where the deer, elk, rabbits, wolves, coyotes, and other critters drank before bedding down for the day. The game trail was littered with animal tracks. These were mixed in and struck over by iron hooves and the unshod horses, but still visible.
A highway through the timber.
The men he tracked were well-known in Cheyenne. They were men he had seen before in the saloons and in jail.
They worked for a man named Horace Weatherall, a horse breeder and cattle rancher who had done prison time for embezzlement, but kept some of the money he had stolen and bought a ranch under suspicious circumstances some three or four years ago, the 2Bar2, from a struggling cattleman named Gannon. Gannon had lost almost his entire herd of Herefords in a blizzard two years earlier.
There were those who swore that Wes’s herd had been chased into the Snowy Range by night riders whose faces were never seen. There were suspicions, but the law could not prove anything. So Horace had bought the ranch for a song. Some said he only paid Wes a small amount of money, promising him the balance within a year’s time.
Wes never lived long enough to get the money owed him. He was found out on the prairie, beaten to death.
But Horace had a bona fide bill of sale and so he took over the 2Bar2.
Cord had his own suspicions. There was a man who swore he had seen Wes thrown from his horse and stomped on by a herd of antelope.
The story sounded far-fetched to Cord, too, but again, there was no proof to counter the claim.
Except that the man who claimed to be an eyewitness worked for Horace and was surely one of the men Cord now tracked.
He thought the man’s name was Larry Dolan. And the other man likely riding with him was a well-known gunfighter from St. Louis named Lester Aikens, who had more aliases than the entire town of Guthrie, Oklahoma.
The names of the thieves and their boss ran through Cord’s mind like ripples in a stream. And he also thought of the dead boy, the senselessness of it. His anger thrashed at those ripples of thought, and he crunched down on the rhubarb and balled up a fist.
A large blue spruce blocked his view, but the game path wound around it and angled downslope toward the creek. He approached the spruce with an added wariness. A man, or two, could be just beyond it, waiting in ambush.
He looked at Windmill’s ears for any warning signs. The horse was attuned to every movement, every sound. Windmill could smell danger, too. But the horse was calm, and Cord gave him his head to continue down the game trail.
Just beyond the blue spruce with its lush, thick boughs, he saw where one man had left the trail. The other had gone on down toward the creek, the four horses in tow.
Cord stiffened in the saddle.
The horse thieves likely knew he was on their trail. He glanced down and saw the circles of dark stains where the horses had urinated. A thin scrim of steam rose from the dimples in the dirt.
The outlaws had been there scant moments before. And one of them was circling to pick up his back trail.
He knew which one, too.
Lester Aikens. He was the more skilled killer of the two. The most treacherous.
Cord stayed behind the spruce, then edged forward to look upslope to see if there was any movement, any sign of where Aikens might be.
Windmill whickered softly. His ears twitched, hardened into cones that twisted in a semicircle as he gazed in the same direction. A forefoot pawed the ground.
Where was Aikens?
Likely he was riding a large loop and would descend back on the trail some yards behind Cord. That’s what Cord would do if it were him, he thought.
Or he could be edging closer, using the pines for cover.
Cord knew he could not wait where he was. Once he left the cover of the spruce, he would be out in the open, an easy target.
He rode past the game path into a thicket of brush, with juniper and spruce trees blocking his advance, and dismounted among the trees bristling with green spines.
He ground-tied Windmill to a juniper and slipped his Winchester ’73 from its sheath. He patted his horse on the neck and walked upslope, away from the clump of trees and thick brush.
He jacked a cartridge into the firing chamber of his rifle and set the hammer to half cock.
He stopped and listened to the silence. It was a silence as deep as any ocean and it surrounded him.
The tracks of Aikens were easy to pick up. He followed them into the timber. The man was riding slow and the tracks led ever higher, away from the game trail.
There was no need to follow them now.
Cord walked straight ahead, certain that he would pick up the tracks as Aikens rode back down to the game trail. That would cut time and distance from his stalking of the man who meant to kill him.
Aikens was a backshooter, like other very cowardly gunnies Cord had run across.
Cord stepped carefully, avoiding branches that would crack or pinecones that would crunch.
Then he heard it.
A soft sound, perhaps a hundred yards ahead of him.
The unmistakable crack of a branch under a horse’s iron shoe.
Cord went into a crouch and headed toward the sound.
As he got closer to where the horse had stepped on that dry branch, Cord stiffened at the sound of metal. Upslope. Somewhere. A shell sliding into a firing chamber, a hammer cocking, a lever being seated.
Aikens had outwitted him. For just a fraction of a second.
Cord hugged a tree just as he heard the explosion some yards upslope from him. Then the whine of a bullet and the rip of bark as the projectile sheared off part of the pine tree at head height.
Splintered bark stung Cord’s face.
He heard Aikens cock the rifle again.
In the silence, the sound was like the opening of an iron tomb.
TWO
Lester Aikens kept turning in his saddle and had been looking down their back trail for the past hour or so.
“What’s eatin’ you, Les?” Larry Dolan asked when Lester’s jitters were getting on his own nerves.
“It’s that Wild Gun,” Lester said, his eyes shining with a malevolent glint.
“What in hell you talkin’ about?” Larry asked. He looked back down the trail. “I don’t see nothin’. What wild gun?”
“That’s what they call him in town. His name’s Wild and he is some kind of damned vigilante or maybe a bounty hunter. I seen him a coupla times. He looks like he eats iron for breakfast and drinks blood out of a Judson boot.”
“Aw, Lester. You talkin’ ’bout Cordwainer. He ain’t no bounty hunter. He’s just another hired gun for some of the ranchers.”
“It’s that glint in his eyes. I know ’em when I see ’em. He ain’t no ordinary hired gun.”
“You think he’s a-follerin’ us?”
“Somebody sure as hell is. Look at them horses we brung. They’re nervous as long-tailed cats in a room full of rockin’ chairs.”
“Pshaw, Lester. I don’t see nobody back there and I been lookin’ almost as much as you.”
Larry was a short, thin man with a sharp-pointed nose and eyes set too close together so that, at times, he seemed cross-eyed. He was thin as a rail, but all sinew and muscle.
Lester had a small paunch, and his upper lip dripped with a scraggly moustache. He claimed it strained his food and caught skeeters at night. He was a rawboned man, nearly six foot in his smelly socks, and wore a dirty bandanna around his thick neck. He had large eyes that he kept half-hooded when he was about to kill a man.
His eyelids were at half-mast now.
“A man gets a feelin’,” Aikens said. “Maybe it’s instinct. Second sight. But I got a feeling that Wild Gun is gettin’ real close.”
“Well, we could maybe find a hidey-hole and wait for him to show up. Then blow him out of the saddle.”
“Nope. I figger Wild’s too smart for that. I got a better idea.”
“What’s that?” Dolan asked.
“One of us could double back and . . .”
“Not me,” Larry said. “I want to get these horses to the 2Bar2 and draw my pay.”
“If Wild is on our track, we won’t neither of us get back to the 2Bar2.”
“You go, then,” Dolan said.
“I’m thinkin’ to do just that,” Aikens said.
“Go on, then. I’ll meet you down at the creek when I water the horses.”
“Trail goes down yonder,” Aikens said. “Just past that big old spruce tree.”
“Yep, it does. You goin’ to double back?”
“I’ll get up into the timber and backtrack, see if can dry-gulch that Wild Gun.”
“Good luck, Lester.”
They rode to the blue spruce and parted company without words. Dolan headed down the game path while Aikens rode up to his left, into the timber.
Lester waited until Dolan was well out of sight. Then he spurred his horse to climb the slope and rode into the heavy timber below the high ridge.
He was a man who could smell danger. He knew, deep down, that Wild was on their track, and that was that. He knew he had such instincts. They had kept him alive a good long while. He aimed to keep it that way.
He picked his way carefully through the timber, the game path below him within sight, within range of his rifle. His pistol, too, if need be. He stopped every few feet to listen. He looked up and down the trail.
Presently, he stopped again. This time he heard something. A soft sound from somewhere behind him, not in front.
Unexpected.
He dismounted and drew his rifle from his scabbard.
He waited and listened. More sounds. Furtive sounds. The trail below was empty.
Had Wild been closer than he thought?
Where was he?
He listened for hoofbeats. He heard none. Just that same soft sound. Like a man walking through the timber.
His heart began to pump faster. He took up a position behind a thick pine tree. He held on to the horse’s reins with his left hand. He looked over his back trail. He saw nothing but pine boughs and tree trunks, thick brush, a juniper, and some small spruce trees.
His pulse pounded steady and strong in his ears.
Aikens let loose of the reins and levered a shell into the firing chamber of his Winchester. Then he slapped his horse on the rump. The horse headed downward toward the vacant trail.
Wild appeared out of the timber as Aikens’s horse scampered downward. The horse made a lot of noise. And Wild looked at the horse, the empty saddle.
Then Aikens’s pursuer disappeared for a second or two as Aikens put the stock of his rifle against his shoulder and took aim.
He saw Wild head for a pine tree.
He squeezed the trigger of his rifle and the butt bucked against his shoulder. Bark flew off the tree just inches from where Wild had been.
Missed, damn it, Aikens said to himself soundlessly.
Then he heard nothing but silence. He jacked another shell into the chamber and looked for his target.
Wild was still behind the tree. But Aikens was ready for any sign of him. His rifle was in his grip, nestled against his shoulder. He lined up the front blade with the rear buckhorn sight and waited.
He was sure of himself now.
He had the advantage.
If Wild showed any part of his body, Aikens had it covered. He was a patient man.
His eyes were hooded. He could sense death a few yards away.
Wild was pinned tight against that tree.
In a sense, he was Aikens’s prisoner.
It was only a matter of time before Wild showed himself.
And when he did, he was a dead man.
Aikens waited, his pulse steady, his eyes glittering like a diamondback’s.
His finger was snug against the trigger of his rifle.
One tick was all it would take.
One little tug of his forefinger.
One tick of a clock.
THREE
Cord spit out the mashed lump of rhubarb in his mouth.
Deerflies swarmed to the shredded remains of the stalk on the ground. Their bluish gray bodies glinted in the sun and their diaphanous wings zizzed like sizzling bacon in the fry pan.
He held his rifle upright in front of his body and his back hugged the tree.
His quarry had reloaded and was waiting for him to show himself.
He knew he was in a bad spot, but as long as he stayed behind the tree he would shed no blood. His mind riffled through thoughts of possible solutions to his predicament. As each solution materialized, he rejected it.
He could not outwait Aikens. The man could sneak farther upslope, if he was careful enough, and find Cord exposed. One shot might be all it would take to put out his lamp.
Cord could not attempt a similar tactic. Once he left the safety of the tree, he would be out in the open for at least a second or two. Long enough for Aikens to squeeze the trigger and dust him off.
How long did it take a man to fire a round and reload? One or two seconds, at least. Would that be long enough for Cord to step away from the tree and catch Aikens in the open, aim, and shoot back?
Cord didn’t know.
Aikens was an experienced killer. A dead shot, with several notches on his gunstock.
It was a gamble. But what was the risk?
His life, he thought.
Still, Cord knew he had to do something. This kind of a standoff was, in itself, a gamble. And Aikens held all the aces in his hand. Four aces against a busted straight.
Cord reached up and lifted his hat from his head, careful to hold his arm close to his body. He slid the hat down to the muzzle of his rifle. It was a dusty Stetson with a wet sweatband. It lay cocked atop the barrel of his Winchester.
He was cocked and loaded. And he had a trick up his sleeve against the four aces.
Not a royal flush, but a filled straight perhaps.
He would have a second, maybe two, after Aikens fired to step out, aim, and fire himself.
One or two breaths away from death.
More of a chance than Aikens’s previous victims had had, Cord reasoned.
How trigger-happy was Aikens? Would he fall for the trick, the crude ruse? There was only one way to find out, and Cord went over his tactics. He played the game before he got to the playing field. That was the way champions did it.
That’s what Cord did.
Aikens’s horse crashed through the last fringe of brush and reached the game trail. The horse snorted and pawed the ground with its left front hoof. Then it lifted its head and looked up at its master. It whinnied and then was silent. It stood there on the trail, hipshot, one left foot cocked, the toe of its hoof braced against the ground.
When Cord was satisfied, he drew in a deep breath, held it, then shoved the rifle barrel with his hat hanging on the muzzle straight out, just past the tree trunk.
Almost instantly, he heard the crack of Aikens’s rifle.
The bullet plowed through air with a whooshing sound and ripped into Cord’s hat. It went straight through and caromed off a rock with a whistling whine.
Cord crouched, stepped away from the tree, and turned to face Aikens.
His barrel dropped and came level just below his hip. He aimed with dead reckoning as Aikens swore and took his rifle away from his shoulder. Aikens grabbed the lever and was about to pull it down when Cord’s rifle exploded. The Winchester belched smoke and sparks and the rifle cracked and echoed its whiplike report off the mountainsides.
Cord heard the bullet smack into flesh, then stepped back to the tree and cocked his rifle again just as he heard his bullet smack into flesh.
Aikens let out a grunt and his hand slipped from the lever as pain shot through his body in a rush of muscle contractions and screaming nerve endings.
He doubled over as the bullet ripped through his abdomen and smashed a cup-sized hole out his back. His brain flashed with pain signals and he expelled air from his mouth in a guttural grunt. The timber spun in a dizzying swirl of green pine and spruce needles. The ground threatened to rush up to him and topple him backward.
He staggered a half step and stood up, fighting against the pain that surged through his innards. He smelled the contents of his large intestine as it split in a blood-soaked mass of tissue and muscle.
He let the butt of his rifle strike the ground and he leaned on the barrel, using the weapon as a cane. Then his mind fuzzed over and he felt a dizziness assail his senses.
His legs turned to mush and it seemed that his knees no longer locked in place to hold him erect. He slumped down, braced by his legs, and his rifle fell from his hand. He clawed for his pistol as Cord approached.
“You might think a second or two before you draw that pistol,” Cord said.
“Damn your hide,” Aikens growled.
His fingers wrapped around the butt of his pistol, but he struggled to tighten them or draw his weapon. Blood spurted from his abdomen and he showed signs of weakening.
Cord kept his rifle aimed at Aikens as he strode ever closer to him.
“You gutshot me, Wild.”
“You were out to bushwhack me.”
“Who says?” Aikens’s voice was turning to a wheezing whisper as he tugged on the butt of his pistol.
“I do,” Cord said. “That pistol clears your holster, you won’t have time to pray before you die.”
“Go to hell,” Aikens spat. There was a trace of blood in his spittle.
Cord’s finger wrapped around the trigger of his rifle. It would take only a flick of his finger to blow off Aikens’s head. He was less than thirty feet away now, still closing the distance.
The pistol began to slide upward from Aikens’s holster. Another inch and the gun would clear it.
“I warned you, mister,” Cord said.
The pistol slid from the holster. Just barely. Aikens started to raise the barrel to point it at Cord.
Cord squeezed the trigger of his rifle from ten feet away. The barrel jumped when the powder exploded. Smoke and sparks spewed from the barrel.
The bullet slammed into Aikens’s chest and sprouted a crimson flower on his shirt. His eyes widened for a moment and his gun hand went slack. The pistol fell from Aikens’s grip as he reached up to the hole in his chest.
Blood spurted out and his eyes glazed over with a deathly frost. A gobbet of blood bubbled from his mouth as he crumpled into a heap and pitched forward, his eyes fixed.
“Too bad,” Cord said as he stood over the heap that had once been Aikens. “You might have lived another five minutes.”
He ejected the hull from his rifle and set the hammer to half cock.
Cord took no satisfaction in killing Aikens. He just felt empty inside, as if a deep hole had opened up somewhere in the region of his stomach. But he shed no tears for the man who had dry-gulched him. The man deserved to die and he had made the choice to end it quicker than he had to that day.
Cord walked away from the corpse and down the slope toward the outlaw’s horse. He spoke to the animal, then picked up both reins.
The horse whickered softly as Cord stepped out along the game trail.
“Be all right, boy,” Cord said. “I’ll find you another home by and by.”
His horse was waiting for him.
And there was still one more horse thief to catch left on his list of things to do that day.
He mounted up and led Aikens’s horse alongside as he started down the game trail toward the creek.
One man and four stolen horses.
That one could not make good time and the day was still young enough for Cord to catch up with him.
He hoped it would not take too long. He was on the verge of tiring in the thin mountain air. He saw a hawk fly over and trail its wrinkled shadow through the trees until it vanished from sight.
Like me, he thought, the hawk is still hunting.
FOUR
Larry Dolan heard the gunshots from a distance. He stiffened in the saddle and instinctively turned to look back up into the phalanxes of timber higher on the slope he had descended. He was tempted to smile, since he had faith in Lester Aikens. But he suppressed the smile because, in truth, he really did not know whether Wild was now wolf meat or if he would have to elude Wild.
There was a long period of silence and then he heard another shot, the crack of a rifle. Just one shot. It could mean anything. A steel wire tautened in his brain, and along it ran electrical charges of doubt that surged through his head.
He wondered what that last shot meant. Was it Lester putting a last bullet into Wild’s head? Or had Wild killed off Aikens?
Doubt flooded his mind and it was the not knowing that made his senses tingle. Not knowing. He spurred his horse down the trail toward the creek. Distance was now his friend, no matter what the outcome of a duel in the timber might be.
The horses could smell water and they nickered and tossed their heads as he drew closer to the creek. Once he forded it, he could ride down to the flat and have a clear look at his back trail. And he would be ready if Wild had been the victor and was coming after him.
His nerves were taut and his horse was chomping at the bit to get to the water. Those he had stolen were tugging on the lead ropes, and it took all his strength to hold them in check with the single strand that connected to all of their halters.
“Steady, boy,” he said to his horse, and gave him his head.
Below, he saw the shining waters of the creek. They shimmered in the sunlight, wavelets shot with silver, a bellowing of dark water that rippled and changed shape and color as the creek surged toward lower ground.
Dolan looked back over his shoulder. He was not overly worried. He still had a trick or two left. He was just sorry Aikens was not with him, because they had planned all this perfectly, long before they had stolen the horses from the JB Ranch.
He reached the creek and found the ford he and Aikens had previously scouted. It was on a bend where the creek widened and streamed over pebbles that he could see beneath the water. It was shallow there and fairly good footing. He let the horses drink, then urged them on to the opposite bank. He made a sharp left turn into a maze of arroyos and rode over rocky ground, the remnants of an ancient moraine. He kept looking back at his tracks. They were wet for a while, then, as the horses shook off the water from the creek, his tracks were dry and invisible.
He rode over a wide plain that was almost pure shale and flint. This had been a place where the Cheyenne and Arapaho had gathered much of their flint for their arrowheads and hatchets.
Again, he left no tracks since he moved slowly and picked a careful path across the flat.
Beyond the plain there were arroyos spreading out in several directions, like the spokes on a wagon wheel. His eyes sought out the small blazes he and Aikens had made previously to guide them through the maze. Weathering had dulled the slashes in the aspens so that they were barely noticeable. He smiled.
They had thought this out, he and Aikens, and had made several forays into the foothills to find just the right place in case they had to elude a posse or a tracker. They had worked hard to build a pole corral in a small box canyon where they could store stolen horses and hide in ambush, just in case.
He passed several arroyos with traces of water that had run to the creek after every rain and snowmelt in the spring. The Cheyenne and Arapaho had left traces of their hunting camps in many of the arroyos, and he and Aikens had found whitened bones of deer and elk, along with broken flint arrowheads and other signs of temporary habitation.
He rode over loose talus from the limestone outcroppings, through a defile bordered by rugged hills, limestone bluffs, and signs of ancient flash floods. It was a wild and baffling place for anyone not familiar with that part of the Rockies.
He listened intently for any signs of pursuit, but heard nothing but the caw of crows and the peeps of chipmunks, the rustle of leaves in the gentle breeze that blew through the small canyon. The horses’ hooves clacked on the talus. Anyone following him would make the same sound, and such a sound carried far up and down the corridor where he rode.
Finally, he turned left again, back toward the higher mountains, and crossed the creek. Then he made a right turn where he saw a blaze high on an aspen tree and continued into the small box canyon. He and Aikens had built the corral just inside it at a narrow aperture where boulders had rolled down over past centuries and created two walls. The gate was simple and it was open.
He ran the stolen horses into the small corral, then dismounted outside and picked up poles that made a crude gate across the entrance. There was grass inside and a small concave rock that was filled with rainwater. The horses could stay there for days and survive. When he took the rope off their halters, they all bowed their necks and began to nibble on the tall grasses that flourished all over that box canyon.
Satisfied, Dolan rode around the entrance to the box canyon and up one of its side slopes. There, in a copse of fir and spruce, was a place he had picked for himself. It concealed him and gave him a good view of the terrain below, the entrance to the small canyon.
He dismounted, ground-tied his horse to a scrub pine, and pulled his rifle from its scabbard, along with a box half-full of cartridges. He stuck those in his pocket and sat on a flat rock between a pair of spruce trees that joined branches just behind him.
He pulled a blade of grass from the ground and put the buried end in his mouth, rinsed away the dirt with saliva, and spit it out. Then he chewed on the sweet stalk and looked down the long canyon. He could see for a good five hundred yards.
And this was the only way in and the only way out of the canyon labyrinth. He smiled in satisfaction.
If Wild came after him, Dolan had a bullet in his rifle with Wild’s name on it.
Perfect.
FIVE
Cord noticed that Aikens’s horse was well-fed and well-behaved. He would need him later when he packed the outlaw’s body out of the timber, collected his rifle and pistol.
For now, his plan was to secure the horse near water and grass, then get on with his business. As far as he knew, there was only one horse thief left to track down, Larry Dolan. If Cord had to follow him all the way to the 2Bar2, he was determined to get those valuable horses back to their rightful owner. Come hell or high water.
The horses both smelled the creek water. Their rubbery nostrils gobbled the air and their ears stiffened as Cord descended the game trail. He patted Windmill’s neck. His horse was thirsty, too. There were streaks of sweat striping his shoulders. The sun and the high altitude took moisture out of man and horse on such a day.
He saw the shining waters of the creek and had to hold Aikens’s horse in check when it bunched up its muscles, ready to bolt toward the water. Windmill snorted and whickered, but held fast under the pressure of the bit in its mouth.
He reached the creek and let the horses drink while he scanned the ground for Dolan’s spoor. And there it was, five sets of hoofmarks on the path that led along the creek on his side.
He knew the man was looking for a ford. The water was swift where he was, since the creek was bordered by high banks and they kept the stream narrow.
When the horses had slaked their thirst, Cord rode away from the creek looking for a spot where he could use Aikens’s rope to tie up his horse on good grass and give him access to creek water. He found such a spot in a grove of aspen a few yards down the creek. There was a low point in the bank where deer and elk had left a jumble of cuneiform tracks when they had come there to drink.
Cord dismounted and took Aikens’s lariat off the saddle, looped it through the horse’s bridle, and secured the bitter end to an aspen. He left the saddle and saddlebags on the horse, patted its withers, and climbed up on Windmill. Aikens’s horse whinnied at them as they rode off, heading upstream.
Cord was tempted to dig out another stalk of rhubarb and chew on it, but he stifled the urge. Those horse tracks were still fresh and he didn’t want anything to distract him. Somewhere upstream, there was a shallow ford, and that was likely where Dolan would cross and perhaps head out of the hills and onto the prairie.
/
