The dun and me, we stayed off to one side, either in front of the buckboard or behind it, always keeping it within sight; but I was careful to offer no target for my back.
Where, I wondered, was Sylvie Karnes and her brothers? And what had become of Steve Hooker?
Topping out on a low rise I saw the Rabbit Ears off to the north, showing just above the horizon and a good ways off. They were two nubbins of mountain, scarcely big enough to be called a mountain in this country. But even from this distance you could see why it got its name of Rabbit Ears.
It was near noontime, and we were a mile or so short of the ford. Down off the rise you couldn't see the Rabbit Ears, and I said nothing about them to the others.
The thought in my mind was that we were now within a few miles of more gold than most people had ever seen, and unless I missed my guess half a dozen people were ready to kill for it.
A moment there I thought, why not just light out? Why walk into someting that was none of my business? Let the murdering Karnes outfit and the rest of them fight it out ... was any amount of gold worth that much risk? I doubted it.
It would be mighty easy to turn my horse and ride away. A few days' ride to the west was Mora, where I had kinfolk. To the north there were the hell-for-leather mining towns where a man could make do one way or another. A twitch of the bridle and I would be off and free-riding with nothing to worry about but Comanches.
The trouble was, there was a girl back there; and mean though I might be, I couldn't leave that girl to a pack of wolves. It just wasn't in me. Every ounce of horse sense I had told me to cut and run, but I swung my horse and rode on toward the ford on the Perico.
And right into a bellyful of trouble.
Chapter 7
Steve Hooker, Tex Parker, and Charlie Hurst were sitting their horses just across the ford, blocking the trail. They all had rifles, and they were just sitting there, and Hooker was grinning. The thing was, they expected me to stop.
'You boys want something?' I called out.
'You turn around and git out'n here!' Hurst yelled. By that time I was at the water's edge. That water was no more than eight inches deep and there was good hard bottom, so I let the dun have the spurs and went through the water and up the bank and into them before they realized I wasn't going to stop and parley.
They sure enough expected me to pull up and talk about it, but when trouble faces me I never was much on the talk. So I rode right into them and then I dropped the reins and slammed right and left with the rifle.
Hurst tried to duck, but the rifle barrel caught him behind the ear and knocked him from the saddle. Parker was reaching for me when I swung the rifle across and drove the barrel into the side of his head.
It struck with a thunk like the butt of an axe against a log, and he went out.
Grabbing the reins as my horse turned, I put the muzzle of the gun on Steve Hooker. His own rifle was coming up and I shot him, holding high a-purpose so he'd take it through the shoulder. He jerked, but stayed in the saddle, losing his grip on his rifle.
He started to swear, and I said, 'You still got a left hand. You want to try for none?'
'You played hell!' he shouted at me. 'Do you know who those boys are?'
'Sure. They ride with Bill Coe. I know all that outfit, and you can tell Coe he knows where I am if he ever wants to come hunting.'
'You think he won't?'
'That's right. I know Coe, and he knows me. You'd have to weigh a lot of gold in the other side of the scales before he'd make a move toward me.'
The buckboard came down to the water and drew up sharply. 'What's going on here?' Loomis called.
'No trouble,' I said, and swinging down I caught Parker by the scruff of the neck and dragged him clear of the trail. Both of their horses had been frightened into running off a ways. 'Drive right on through. These boys figured to stop us, but they had a change of mind.'
Penelope's face was white and shocked. 'Are ... are those men dead?'
'No, ma'am. They'll both have headaches tomorrow, that's all.'
'Was this necessary?' Loomis demanded.
'If you want to cross the ford it was necessary. You wanted me to take you where you're going and I'm doing it.'
Wheeling the dun, I rode off up the trail, and the buckboard rattled on after me. It didn't make a mite of difference what Loomis thought, but the expression on Penelope's face bothered me. A lot of people hear about violence but never come face to face with it, and they've no experience with men of violence. One thing I'd learned a long time back: you just can't waste time talking. If there's talking to do, do it afterwards.
All the time we'd been traveling I'd been looking for wagon tracks. I didn't see how the Karnes outfit--Sylvie, Ralph, and Andrew--could make it faster than we had, but it never pays to weigh an opponent too light.
It was a far-stretching open land through which we rode. It was a country with lava outcroppings here and there, with the yellow-brown grass and the green showing through. It was the bright green of mesquite, and the oddly jointed clumps of prickly pear. A man could hear the cicadas singing endlessly in the brush, and from time to time he'd see a rattler curled in the shade of a bush.
It was bunch-grass country where the buffalo ran, and it was mustang country, wild and free. Maybe I would never have very much in the way of money, but I'd have the memories of this land when it was fresh and open, the memories of one of the grandest pieces of country a man could ever see.
The dun liked it, too. Whenever we topped out on a rise his nostrils would widen to test the wind, and he'd toss his head a little, ears pricked, looking straight away into the far distance.
Well, we were a part of this country, that dun mustang and me. Our natures bred us for it, and our way of living was the way the country demanded.
Back there I'd mentioned William Coe. Now, I would never hold him as a small-calibered man. Coe had a gang of men and a stone fortress not far north of here on the Cimarron, a regular Robbers Roost. His men were tough and wild and uncurried. He was a steady man, if an outlaw, not one to be stampeded into doing anything foolish. I wasn't hunting trouble with Coe, and he wouldn't be hunting any with me ... unless the price was right.
But if we got that gold out of the ground--three hundred pounds of it--the price would be right and all bets off. But Coe wasn't going to come hunting my kind of trouble because I'd rough-handled some of his men. He'd figure they were big boys now, big enough to saddle their own broncs.
Coe knew me maybe as well as I knew myself, for we'd been acquainted back yonder. He knew that trouble had become blood-kin to me, and that something in me wouldn't let me back up or back down, no matter what happened. When trouble showed, when I was faced with it, I just naturally stiffened my neck and went ahead. There was a streak of wildness in me, a streak of recklessness that I disliked. The cool way was the best way, that I knew, but at times I just naturally went hog-wild and started throwing lead or punches at whatever was in the way. It was going to get me killed some day.
The Rabbit Ears were standing up there plain now. I could see them clear, and so could Loomis and the others, so I dropped back alongside the buckboard.
'There they are, Loomis,' I said, 'and whatever happens will happen soon now. If we can get in there first and get that gold out, and hightail it out of here, we may get away without a fight. But we won't have much time.'
'How much time do we have?'
'Maybe a day ... maybe a day and a night. No longer.'
'Do you think Hooker rounded up those men himself? Or were they acting for somebody else?'
'I think it was his show, but from here on it may not be. Those other men were outlaws of the Coe gang ... their Roost isn't far from here. If Coe gets wind of that gold, and we get it out of the ground, we'll have us a running fight.'
'Does he have many men?'
'Anywhere from three to thirty, depending on who is hanging out up there. He will have enough.'
Now I dropped behind them and stayed off to one side. As we rode I studied the country, cutting for sign. There had been some movement around, and it worried me. Rabbit Ears Mountain wasn't far off the Santa Fe Trail, but as a usual thing there wasn't too much movement off the trail. But now there had been.
I was a fool to go riding over there for a treasure of which I'd been offered no part, guiding them there, and
