We rode through aspens, skirted groves of them, and then we rode across high mountain meadows, leaving as little sign as we could. If Andre Baston had a dozen men with him he probably had some mountain-riding men, but if he caught up with us I was figuring to make him earn it.
Of course, they might have taken the easy way right up Wolf Creek Pass. Indians and mountain-men had used it for years, along with occasional prospectors. More than likely the French soldiers who'd buried that gold had come down Wolf Creek.
We had come down the slope into the canyon of Silver Creek with the San Juan just ahead and below. On our west was the mountain of the treasure, and a whole lot of mountain it was, too.
Orrin pointed out a cove in the mountainside, and we skirted a tight grove of aspen and moved into a small meadow with a plunging stream alongside it. We pulled up under the trees and stepped down, and, believe me, I was tired.
We stripped the gear from our horses, and, after I'd rubbed my horse and one of the packhorses a mite, I wandered off down to the stream, hunting wood. I picked up some good dead branches, heavy stuff, and then tasted the water. It was fresh, cold, and clear. As I started to rise I heard a faint chink of metal. It sounded from upstream. Well, I shucked my gun and kind of eased back under the bank.
After finding the wood, I'd kind of explored along the riverbank, so camp was a good hundred yards back of me now. Crouching near some cottonwood roots that ran down into the earth under the water, I waited, listening. The stream chuckled along over the stones, and upstream I could hear a bird singing. After that I heard only the stream.
Ahead of me, the stream took a little bend, curving around some rocks and thick brush--dogwood, willow, and the like. Searching the ground between me and that brush, I saw nothing to worry me, so I started forward, walking mighty easy to make no sound.
Reaching the little bend, I eased up on the bank to look through the brush. From behind the brush and rocks I had a clear view of fifty yards or more of the stream.
Up yonder about as far as my eyes could take me was a woman. It looked to be a girl--a chancy judgment at that distance--and she was panning gravel, handling that pan like she'd done it before, a lot of times before.
I looked up the bank as far as I could, but there was no camp, nor was there anything like it that I could see. Seemed to me the situation called for study, and if a body aims to study women it's better done at close range, so I came down from my perch and started around that bend. When I cleared it and had a view of the stream again, she was gone!
Yes, sir. She was vanished out of there. Now I was a puzzled man. Surely my eyes hadn't played games with me. Of course, when a man is long enough without a woman he begins to see them, or imagine them, everywhere.
I walked across that creek, which was shallow at that point, and I went upstream, stepping careful. I'd kept my gun in my hand without really thinking, except it seemed logical that where there'd be a pretty woman there'd likely be a man.
When I got up to where she'd been, sure enough there were tracks in the sand. I started to look around when a voice spoke from right behind me. I'd knowed I should have looked into that tangle right up the slope, but I hadn't done it.
'You stand where you be, mister,' a girl's voice said, 'and if you're wishful of savoring your supper, don't fool around. Now you stick that piece back in the leather, and you do it right quick or I'll run a lead tunnel through your brisket!'
'I'm a peaceful man, ma'am, plumb peaceful. I seen what looked like a woman up here, an'--'
Her tone was scornful. 'Looked like a woman? Why, you two-by-twice foreigner, I'm more woman than you ever did see! Turn around, damn you, and take a good look!'
Well, I turned, and from what I seen I was in no position to argue. She was about three inches over five feet, I'd guess, and must have weighed what it needed to fill that space out proper, with maybe a mite extry here an' yonder.
'Yes, ma'am.' She had a cute nose, freckles, and rusty hair, and taking all in all, the way a woman should be taken, she was pretty as a button.
She was also holding a Spencer .56 that wasn't no way cute at all, and from the way she held it a body could see she was no stranger to its use.
She was kind of staring at me like she couldn't believe it, and, knowing my ownself, I knew it wasn't good looks she was staring at.
'Well!' she said, gesturing with the gun muzzle a mite. 'You jest back up an' set on that log, yonder. And don't you go to stretching for that gun because by tomorrow mornin' your body would have drawn so many flies I'd have to find a new place to pan.'
'I'm peaceful, ma'am, but if I have to be shot it couldn't be by a prettier girl.'
'Don't give me that, Sackett! Sweet talk will get you no place with me!'
Sackett? Now, how in--
'Oh, don't look so surprised! Up where I come from ever'body knows the Sackett boys. How could they help it with the country overrun with them? Best thing ever happened to Tennessee was when they opened up the west and found some way to shuck some of you Sacketts.'
'You're from the Cumberland?'
Her disgust was plain. 'Where else? Do you conceited mountain boys think you're known everywhere? Who would know you were a Sackett but somebody from yonder?
You all have those same weather-beaten, homely faces and those big hands!'
'Wasn't for your hair I'd say you was a Trelawney girl,' I said, 'but the only ones of them I ever met up with had black hair. Fact is, I run into one of them down on the Colorado one time, and she gave me no end of trouble.'
'Served you right. Which Sackett are you, anyway?'
'William Tell. And you?'
'I'm Nell--Jack Ben's daughter.'
Well, now. That made me back up for another look. The Sacketts ran long on boys, the Trelawneys on girls, but when the Trelawneys number a boy in their get, he was usually quite somebody. Ol' Jack Ben was no exception. He was saltier than that creek which runs into Coon Hollow an' meaner than a tied-up wolf.
We Sacketts carried on a fightin'-shootin' feud with the Higgins outfit for many a year, but ol' Jack Ben, he handled his own fightin'. I also recall that he was most tender about what boys come a-courtin' his girls.
You could always tell a boy who'd been tryin' to court one of Jack Ben's girls because he walked kind of straight up an' bent back, and he never set down nowhere. That was because of the rock salt ol' Jack Ben kep' in his shotgun.
'You ain't alone up here, are you?'
'S'posin' I am? I can take care of myself.'
'Now, you see here, Nell Trelawney, there's some folks a-comin' along behind us that are meaner than all get-out an' no respecters of womanfolk, so--'
'You runnin' scared?' she scoffed. 'First time I ever heard of a Sackett runnin'
... unless pa was a-shootin' at him.'
Darkness had kind of shut down on us. 'You better get back to your camp,' I said. 'They'll be expectin' me back yonder.'
'You mean you ain't goin' to see me home? If you're scared, I'll tell you now.
Ol' Jack Ben ain't there. I am surely alone. And I ain't scared--much of the time.'
Chapter XV
'Where's your pa?'
'He's down to Shalako. That new town over west. He's down there a-waitin' for me to come bail him out.'
'He's in jail?'
'No such thing! He's--he's laid up, that's all. We come west without--well, we didn't have much to do with, an' pa figured he could mine for gold.
