I was getting impatient. 'Mister, if you figure on eatin' breakfast, you'd better drop that gun belt.'
He reached for the buckle, protesting. 'Now look, Sackett. I'm Steve Hooker. We met one time over in the Nation, an' you got no call to stand me up.'
'Maybe, maybe not.'
When he'd unbuckled his gun belt and dropped it, I had him back off while I moved in and took up the belt and slung it over my shoulder.
Gathering the dun's reins, I followed my prisoner back down into the hollow. The horses were there, a fine team of six head, and two saddle horses. Down among the willows he had a fire going that had not been visible from the cap rock. I could smell coffee, and realized I'd not had a mouthful of food all day.
Once we got into the firelight I had him face around, and I knew him all right.
He had been a teamster for a freight outfit, fired for selling stock feed that belonged to the company. He had killed a tame Indian over at Fort Griffin one time. Nobody did anything about it, but nobody had any use for him after that.
I turned him around and lashed his hands together behind his back, then tied his ankles and his knees. After setting him where I could keep an eye on him, I stripped the rig from my dun and let him roll, then rubbed him down carefully with a few handfuls of dried grass. Then I put him on a picket line where he could graze, and let him go to water as he wished.
Getting a slab of bacon from my pack, I shaved slices into a pan and broke out a half a loaf of bakery bread, brought from town. Whilst I was frying it, I poured myself a cup of coffee and made idle talk about the Indian Territory.
'Where'd you get the team?' I asked suddenly.
'They're mine. Drivin' 'em west to sell in New Mexico.'
I just looked at him, disgusted. 'That's a mighty pretty story to tell a pilgrim,' I said, 'but nobody in his right mind comes alone into this country, especially with horses.' And then I added, 'I rode in from the south.'
He made no comment about that, although he was doing some thinking, wondering whether I'd seen the wagon or not. 'How did you find me?' he said, after a bit.
'You left tracks, and I followed them.' And then I added, 'You also left a woman back there, where she could be taken by Indians.'
'That ain't no woman! She's a blasted devil! She's a witch right out of hell.'
'Looked young an' pretty to me. Didn't seem any place to leave a couple of tenderfeet.' I paused, turned the bacon over with a fork, and then added, 'You could get lynched for that.'
'They'd of killed me. They were fixing to. I heard 'em talk of it.'
'Where did you pick them up?'
He hesitated. 'I seen 'em first in Fort Worth. They were dressed elegant and seemed to have money. I sort of listened around and heard him making inquiries about the country west of Griffin.'
'So?'
He peered at me. 'Now look, Sackett. You ain't no fool. Why would a couple of well-dressed tenderfeet like them be interested in this country? This is buffalo country, Indian country. It's also cattle country, or so some think; but there's no fancy hotels and nothing to attract folks of that kind.'
'What's your idea?'
'Gold, that's what. Gold, and lots of it. You think they'd come looking for range land, them folks? Not on your bottom dollar. Whatever they're huntin' is something they can carry away, and I think the answer to it is in that wagon.'
'What's in it?'
'Now that's an odd thing. They never did let me see, and I tried. Maybe that's why they figured to kill me.'
'Where were they headed?'
Steve Hooker was silent, probably deciding how much he should tell and how much he should hold back. Meanwhile, I started eating the bacon and fried bread right out of the frying pan. I was hungry enough to eat pan and all, but had to settle for about a dozen slices of thick bacon and the half-loaf of bread fried in bacon grease. And I drank most of Hooker's coffee.
'You better tell me,' I went on, refilling my cup for the last time, 'I ain't made up my mind whether to take you back to them, or let you waste away right here. You talk fast an' right and maybe you'll get a chance.'
'What kind of talk is that? There's a good thing in this ... for both of us.'
Well, now. I felt a sight better. I set back against the bank and watched my horse pulling at the green grass, feeling almighty pleased with the world.
Still, I had this man tied up and I was of no mind to trust him untied, especially as I was sleepy.
'What questions did they ask you?'
'Oh, they knew something, all right. I think they had read something or heard something, but they had special knowledge too. I mean they knew where they wanted to go.'
He gave it to me, a little at a time. He had followed them when they went from Fort Worth to Fort Griffin by stage. Actually, he had ridden the stage with them, keeping his mouth shut and listening to the questions they asked. The girl had been very good at getting a couple of western men to talking; above all, she seemed interested in place names ... thought they were so colorful, she said.
'Like what?' I asked.
'Cross Timbers ... the Llano Estacado ... Boggy Depot... the Rabbit Ears.'
Hooker hitched himself around a little, but I paid him no mind. He was hinting that I should loosen him up a little, which I wasn't about to do. 'She got them to talk about those places.'
'Ask any questions?'
'Full of 'em. She asked questions half the night. Her brother finally went to sleep, but not her. She kept prying away at what those men knew, but what she kept coming back to was the Rabbit Ears.'
I went to the edge of the willows and broke up some sticks and twisted some dead limbs off a fallen cottonwood. When I came back I started feeding the fire again and made another pot of coffee. I knew a thing or two about the Rabbit Ears country, and I'd heard some stories. More than likely, bunkhouse talk being what it was, Steve Hooker had heard the same tales. And like he said, there was no good reason for anybody like those folks to want to go into such country.
'You sure took them far off the route,' I commented dryly, 'where they'd meet nobody who could tell them different.'
'When we got to Griffin,' Hooker said, 'I approached her, told her as how I'd heard she wanted a wagon man, and I was a man who knew the country to the west.
Upshot of it was, she bought the horses and wagon, outfitted us complete.'
He looked around at me. 'She had me spooked, that girl did. And he was almost as bad. I don't know what it was, nothing they did or said, but she kept a-watching me and it kind of got me.
'Then one night I heard them talking. They thought I'd taken the stock off to water, and so I had, but I snuck back to listen. First thing I heard her say was 'Of course. Why waste our money on him? When we get to the Rabbit Ears we'll know our way back, so we'll kill him.' Thing that got me was she was so matter of fact about it, like she'd ask the time of day.
'Next morning I began to pull off south. I figured to get them lost so they'd never find their way back by themselves, and would need me. Then I got to thinkin'.'
'I know,' I said, 'you got to thinking about that outfit. You got to figuring what it would bring you at Cherry Creek, or even Santa Fe. Six head of fine horses, a brand new wagon, and whatever they had inside.'
'Well, what of it? They were fixin' to kill me.'
'How'd you manage? Weren't they suspicious?'
'You're darn tootin' they were! They watched me all the time. On'y I told them we would make camp half a mile from water ... too many mosquitoes.'
'Then you came on to this place?'
'Sure. Them tenderfeet would never find it. I on'y had to wait. Just set still an' wait.'
'What about Rabbit Ears?'
'Who knows anything? She worried around that subject, but nobody had anything to offer except me, and I
