Orrin raised up from bed. 'What is it?'
'Kind of a daybook. Pa's. Juana Pettigrew brought it to us. I ain't read it all yet.'
'Better get some sleep. I think we're riding up to trouble. Whatever's there won't have changed by tomorrow.'
'You're right.' I was dead tired. We'd covered a lot of country and tomorrow there'd be more. Pa wasn't tellin' much, but a body could see how touchy things had become. Swan an' Andre sore, Pettigrew kind of bidin' his time, and Pierre still unwillin' to believe he'd lost the pot. Only maybe they hadn't. Pettigrew come out of it with enough to buy a ranch and stock it. Now that mightn't take so much, but it surely cost something.
Stretched out in bed I pondered the daybook. Pa wasn't much hand to write. He'd had some schoolin' and he'd read a lot, although his grammar was only a mite better'n mine.
Why would he write that stuff? Was there more to it than met the eye? Was he tryin' to leave us a message, feelin' he might not get back? But pa wasn't apt to think that way. He was a tough, capable man--but careful, too. Maybe the daybook was in case--just in case something went wrong.
Why had Juana brought it to me? Because it was pa's? Because it was intended for us? Or because she didn't want Pettigrew going off to the mountains again?
Now why had I thought that? Did the book have a clue to where pa was? Or where the gold might be?
Pettigrew came back with something, but Andre did not know it or he'd have robbed him. Or Swan would have.
Yet Andre may have come back with something, too. Suppose they had found some of the gold and not all of it?
Chapter XIV
Since reaching San Luis we had used Esteban's horses, but now we saddled our own mounts and were gone with the sun's rising. Clear and cool the morning was, and I breathed deeply of the fresh air from off the mountains Westward we rode, seeing the peaks loom up before us, the twin peaks of Blanca and Baldy looking from some angles like one gigantic mountain The old Indian traditions speak of them as one long, long ago.
We rode and we camped and rode again. At night I read to them from pa's daybook, and passed it at times to Orrin.
There had been growing animosity in the camp on the mountain Nat Pettigrew is a prying man, forever peering, listening, and poking about. He is able, does his share and more. He's a good man on a horse and handy with a rifle, but I do not trust him. Yet he is all for himself, and not for them.
May 20: This morning there was trouble. Swan struck Angus, knocking him down.
Pierre was on his feet at once and for a moment I was sure they would come to blows. I noticed also that Andre stood to one side making no effort to stop Swan, who is his man. Andre just stood there with a little smile on his face. I believe Andre hates his brother-in-law, and I wish I was free of them, and far away.
Angus, the black slave, is a powerful man, loyal to Pierre, and a fair woodsman.
I believe he'd do even better in the swamps of Louisiana than here, yet I doubt if he has long to live.
There was a gap here, looked like a couple of lost pages, then some words were smeared.
... suddenly there was an outburst of firing. Somebody yelled 'Indians!' and we all fell into defensive positions. For awhile there was no sound, then a single shot. For some time there was no sound and when we took stock, Angus was dead--shot in the back of the head. When I talked with Pettigrew later, he admitted to having seen no Indians, nor had Pierre. Swan had seen one, Andre thought he had seen them. Andre showed a scar on the bark of a tree made by a bullet, and of course, Angus was dead.
Well, now Judas knew what happened to his brother. I looked at him in the firelight and thought I saw tears in his eyes. There seemed nothing to say to him. He stood and walked away from the fire.
'What do you think?' I asked Orrin. We were on the banks of the Rio Grande with Del Norte Peak looming to the soutwest. Orrin shook his head.
The Rio Grande headed up in those mountains in the direction we were riding, and it gave me an odd feeling to think this water. I looked at was headed down toward El Paso and then Laredo, and finally to enter the Gulf below Brownsville.
It was a far, far stretch.
'Orrin,' I said, 'I wished pa had just up and rode off. He guided them there, and he owed them nothing.'
'He was in for a piece of it,' said Orrin. 'He wanted it for ma, and for an education for us boys.'
'I wished he'd pulled out.'
'You know what I think?' Orrin held up the papers and the book to me. 'I think somebody in that outfit's found gold.'
'You mean somebody knows where the stuff is and is holding it for himself?'
'Look at it, Tell. It needn't have been the big caches. There were supposed to be three, weren't there? All right. You know what soldiers are. Some individual soldiers may have had their own pokes stuffed with gold, and they may have hid them. I think somebody found some gold, and I think Angus was killed to take help from Pierre. I think he's next.'
'Or pa,' I said.
Setting late by the fire, I pondered it. Pa was up there in May. Unless it was unusually warm for the year, there'd still be snow up there where he was, and it would be almighty cold. But there couldn't have been too much snow left, or they'd have found no landmarks at all.
Of course, there were some slopes where the wind could sweep away the snow, but there was risk of a bad storm at any time.
Judas suddenly came in out of the darkness. 'Suh? We are followed, suh.'
'You're surely right. How far back are they?'
'They are gaining, suh And there are more than we believed.'
'More?' the Tinker said.
'They have two fires,' Judas said. 'I would imagine there are at least ten men, perhaps twice that many.'
At daybreak our camp was an hour behind us, and we were climbing steadily.
There'd been no chance to get back to pa's daybook. Me an' Orrin ... well, it had felt almost like we were talkin' to pa, yet he was shorter of word than usual in this writin' of his. Mostly pa was a man with a dry humor, a quick man to see things, and he always had a comment. He knew most tricks a body could play, was slick with cards when he needed to be, and had seen a lot of the world, time to time.
We came up to the forks of the Rio Grande and it was the South Fork pointed the way up Wolf Creek Pass. Pa had come this way, and the fact that he was keepin' a daybook showed he had something to tell us--who else but us? Pa was a considering man, and I'd no doubt he figured somehow to get that daybook to us. Maybe he'd trusted Nativity Pettigrew to bring it to us, or mail it. If so, his gamble failed.
If he had planned to get it to us, he must have been wishful to get some particular word to us. We'd likely have to read careful so we'd miss nothing.
Orrin dropped back from the point. 'Tell, is there any other way to that mountain? I mean other than right up the pass?'
'Well, I reckon.' I pointed. 'That there's Cattle Mountain, with Demijohn right behind it. I never followed that trail, but Cap Rountree told me of it one time.'
'Let's worry them a little,' Orrin suggested, so I went up to ride point.
Watching carefully, I turned off and took a dim trail leading up the east side of Grouse Mountain. We followed that up a switchback trail and over the saddle on Cattle Mountain then down the trail west of the Demijohn and onto the Ribbon Mesa trail.
It was narrow, twisty, and rough. Several times we heard the warning whistles of marmots looking like balls of brown fur as they scattered into the rocks. We skirted a meadow where mountain lupine, Indian paintbrush, and heartleaf arnica added their blue, red, and gold to the scene. It was very quiet except for the murmur of the waters of the creek. We twisted, doubled, rode back over our tracks, and did everything possible to confuse our trail. The way was rocky, torn by slides. Leaving Park Creek, I cut over the pass back of Fox Mountain down Middle Creek about a mile and then took a dimmer trail that led us right over the mountain.
