When we started up the trail, old Brindle hesitated, not liking it. His horns rattled against the wall, but as I was going on, and he was used to following, he sort of fell in behind.
'Hope I don't let you down, old boy,' I said. 'It looks bad to me, too!' We wound steadily upward, the trail narrowing, then widening, occasionally opening to a small space of an acre or more covered with stunted trees, then narrowing again. The sleet continued to fall, and the air was cold. Far below, we could see the spearlike tops of trees, and the silver ribbon of a stream.
The trail grew steeper. At times, I had to dismount and lead my mount over the icy rocks.
At one point, I came to a bank of last year's snow, a dirty gray shelf of the stuff, which I had to break off to make a way for my horse and the following cattle.
It was slow, hard work. All day long, we climbed. There was no place to stop and rest; there was not even a place to stop.
Suddenly, the trail dipped down around a steep elbow bend, and the rock of the trail slanted toward the outer edge. Walking along the wall as tightly as possible, I led the roan around the corner.
The cattle came on. Glancing back when several hundred yards farther along, I was in time to see a steer suddenly slip and, legs flailing, plunge off into space headed for the tops of the trees five hundred feet below. Even as I looked, another fell.
Swearing softly, I plodded on, feeling for footholds around the edge. Suddenly, as it had begun, the narrow trail ended and gave out into a thick forest. Ahead, there was a meadow and beyond a stream, already icing over.
There was room enough, and there was but little undergrowth.
Tying the roan, I went to a deadfall and from under it tried to gather some scraps of bark that had not been soaked by the rain. From inside my shirt, I took a little tinder that I always kept for the purpose, and breaking a tuft of it free, I lit a fire. As it blazed up, I hastily added more fuel.
Walking back into the woods, I broke off some of the small suckers that grew from the tree trunks and died. They had long been dead and were free from rain. By the time the cattle began to wander out on the meadow and the first rider appeared, I had a fine fire blazing and was rigging a lean-to between two trees that stood about ten feet apart.
The trees had lower limbs approximately the same height above the ground, and selecting from among the fallen debris, broken limbs, and dead branches one of proper length I rested it in the crotches of the limbs selected, and then I began gathering other sticks to lean slant-wise from the pole to the ground.
From time to time I stopped to add fuel to the fire, well knowing the effect the fire would have on the tired men and the two women.
Across the poles, I put whatever lay to hand.
I was not building anything but a temporary shelter, and I used slabs of bark from fallen trees, fir branches and whatever was close by.
By the time Lin and Baptiste reached the fire with the pack horses, I had a fairly comfortable shelter and was starting on another. Haney was first to reach the fire, and he began gathering fir boughs from nearby trees.
Orrin helped Nettie from her horse, and for a moment she swayed and fell against the horse. She straightened up. 'I'm sorry,' she said. 'I guess I'm tired.' One by one, the men came in, carrying their gear, which they dropped under the second shelter. Several of them went to the fire. Cap walked out and began gathering boughs, and after a minute Shorty went to help.
Highpockets Haney held his hands to the fire. He looked around at me. 'Tell Sackett I been a lot of places with you, but if you think I'm goin' back over that trail in the snow, you got another think a-comin'.' 'We lost some stock, Cap?' Rountree looked at me. Tired as he had to be, he looked no different than always. He had degrees of toughness nobody had ever scratched. 'That we did!' Shorty looked over at me. 'Fourteen, fifteen head, Tell. I'm sorry.' 'This weather's rough,' Haney added. 'We'll lose some more if we've far to go.' We huddled about the fire, and soon the smell of coffee was in the air. Tyrel went back to the edge of camp, and soon he came in with several chunks of meat. 'Big horn,' he said. 'I nailed him back on the other side of the mountain.' Soon the smell of broiling meat was added to that of coffee. Outside, the falling sleet rustled on the fir boughs and on the meadow. The cattle ceased to eat, and one by one took shelter under the trees.
'Ain't nothin' like a fire,' Cap said, 'and the smell of coffee boilin'.' 'How far you reckon it is?' Shorty asked.
Nobody answered because nobody knew. Me, I leaned my forehead on my crossed arms and hoped there would be a marker on this side of the pass we'd come over. We would surely need it because I had no idea which way to turn.
The Dease was someplace off to the northwest.
Beyond that, anybody's guess was as good as mine, and I
as ramrodding this outfit.
We had fire, and we had shelter, and we had a bit of meat, and good meat at that. Yet I was uneasy.
Where had Charlie Fleming gone?
Surely, as we drew closer and closer to our destination, we drew closer to his also, so why hadn't he waited a bit longer where he could have coffee and grub on the way?
Maybe, just maybe, because we were closer than we thought.
Certainly, even though he could not interpret the message, he would know there had been a message, and that would mean that Logan Sackett was not only alive but free--or probably free.
Had he fled to warn someone of our coming? Or was he afraid of Logan?
Orrin got up and moved over to where Nettie Molrone was. I could hear the murmur of their voices as they talked. 'I'll ask about for your brother,' he said, 'as soon as we meet anybody. There'll be a town,' he added, 'or something of the kind.' The sleet still fell, but it was changing into snow, which would be worse, for beneath the snow there would be ice on the trails. Beyond the reach of the fire shadows flitted wolves.
Now stories came to me, stories told me when I was a small boy by my father. My father had trapped these very lands; he told us much of animals and their habits and of how the wolves would work as a team to drive an animal or a group of animals into a position where they could easily be killed. To drive an elk or moose out on the ice where he would slip and fall was one trick often used. Sometimes they herded them into swamps or drove them off cliffs.
These tricks were often attempted with men, and the unwary were trapped by them.
The snow continued to fall throughout the night, and when morning came, the ground and the trees were covered with it. We got out of bed under the lean-tos, and Baptiste had a fire built up in no time.
It had burned down to coals during the last hours of the morning.
It was good to hear the crackle of the fire and to smell the wood burning. Tyrel saddled up, and him and me took a turn through the woods, bunching the cattle a little. They'd had tolerable shelter under the trees, but it was right cold that morning, and they were in no way anxious to move.
Some of the horses had pawed away the snow to get at the grass. These were mustangs, used to wild country and to surviving in all kinds of weather.
We were slow getting started because everybody rolled out a mite slower than usual.
Nettie's face looked pinched and tight, and she held her hands to the fire.
Orrin said, 'We're gettin' close. This is the kind of country you'll find your brother in.' 'How can he stand it? I mean even if there's gold.' 'Gold causes folks to do all manner of unlikely things, ma'am,' Tyrel said.
'Sometimes even folks a body has figured were right good people have turned ugly when gold's in the picture.' 'Kyle Gavin did not want me to come looking for my brother,' Nettie said. 'He offered to lend me the money to start home.' 'It's a rough country, ma'am. He knows that.
He probably didn't want you to get trapped in a place you couldn't get out of.' We came down to a deep canyon before we'd gone more than a few miles and wound down a narrow switchback trail to the water's edge. The river flowed past the road a whole lot faster than we liked, so we pointed the herd upstream and started them swimming across somewhat against the current. They held to it only a little, but by that time they were well on their way, and when they turned a bit on the downstream side, they were pointed toward the landing.
We got most of them across and started up the trail opposite. Shorty was in the lead, and as he topped out on the ridge, we heard a sharp report that went echoing down the canyon, and we saw Shorty whip around in his saddle and fall.
