Seems to me folks waste a sight of time crossing bridges before they get to them. They clutter their minds with odds and ends that interfere with clear thinking.
Those folks were certainly following me, and it was equally certain they were none of my people. When they caught up there'd likely be trouble, but I wasn't going out hunting it. I was looking for signs of pa.
Far and away on my right lay a vast and tumbled mass of distant peaks and forest, bare rock shoved up here and there, high mountain parks and meadows ... magnificent country. Overhead, the sky was impossibly blue and dotted with those white fluffs of cloud that seemed always to float over the La Platas and the San Juans. Trouble coming or not, this was great country, a man's country.
The trail took a turn and I lost sight of them below. Alongside the trail there was a beautiful little patch of blue, like a chunk of the sky had floated down to rest on that frost-shattered rock and gravel beside the trail--it was some alpine forget-me-not. Down the steep slope where a fallen man or horse would roll and tumble for seven or eight hundred feet, I could see the bright gold of avalanche lilies here and there.
The last few yards was a scramble, but Ap was a mountain horse and the buckskin seemed content to follow any place Ap would go. When we topped out on the rim there was a view you wouldn't believe. Down below us was a huge basin, one side opening and spilling down into La Plata Canyon. There was another vast glacial gouge on my left, and ahead of me I could see the thread of that high, indent trail winding its way--across the country, a thin thread through the green of the high grass that was flecked with wild flowers of every description.
All around were vast and tumbled mountains. I was twelve thousand feet above sea level. Far off to the north I could see the great shaft of the Lizard Head and get a glimpse of Engineer Mountain, and off to the east were the Needles, White Dome, Storm King, and what might be the Rio Grande Pyramid, near which the Rio Grande rises. It was the kind of view that leaves a man with a feeling of magnificence, but there just ain't words to cover it.
Old Ap, he seemed happy on that high place, too, but he snorted a little when I started him down the thread of trail that led through the gravel and the frost-shattered rocks on the inside of the cirque.
It was like going down the inside of a volcanic crater, only there was a meadow at the bottom and no fires.
The man lying under the spruce had been there since shortly after daylight. He had a Sharps rifle, one of the best long-range weapons there is, and he had a natural rest across the top of a fallen tree. His view of the trail down the inside of the rim was clear and perfect, and when he saw Tell Sackett top the rim he was pleased. This was going to be the easiest hundred dollars he had ever earned--and it surely beat punching cows.
He was a dead shot, a painstaking man with a natural affinity for weapons and a particular ease with rifles. He let Sackett come on, shortening the distance for him.
He picked his spot, a place where the steepness of the trail seemed to level off for a few feet. When Sackett reached there, he would take him. The range was roughly four hundred yards--possibly a bit over. He had killed elk at that distance, and kills had been scored with a Sharps at upwards of a thousand yards.
He sighted, waited a little, then sighted again. About twenty yards now ... he settled himself into the dirt, firmed his position. Sackett was a salty customer, it was said. Well, soon he'd be a salted customer.
He looked again, sighted on a spot below the shoulder and in a mite toward the chest, took a long breath, eased it out, and squeezed off his shot.
The best laid plans of mice and men often seem to be the toys of fate. The marksman had figured on everything that could be figured. His distance, the timing, the fact that the rider was at least a hundred and fifty feet higher than himself. He was a good shot and he had thought of it all.
He had the rider dead in his sights, and a moment after the squeeze of the trigger William Tell Sackett should have been bloody and dead on the trail.
The trouble was in the trail itself.
At some time in the not too distant past, nature had taken a hand in the game, and in a playful moment had trickled a small avalanche off the rim, down the slope, and across the trail. In so doing it left a gouge in the trail that was about a foot deep.
As the marksman squeezed off his shot, the appaloosa stepped down into that gully. The drop--as well as the lurch in the saddle that followed--was just enough. The bullet intended for Tell's chest nicked the top of his ear.
The sting on my ear, the flash of the rifle, and the boom that followed seemed to come all at once, and whatever else pa taught us boys he taught us not to set up there and make a target of yourself.
Now it was a good hundred and fifty yards to the foot of the trail and every yard of it was bare slope where I'd stand out like a whiskey nose at a teetotalers' picnic. So I just never gave it a thought, there wasn't time for it. I just flung myself out of that saddle, latching onto my Winchester as I kicked loose and let go. I hit that slope on my shoulder, like I'd planned, rolled over and over, and came up at the base of the slope with my rifle still in my hands and a mad coming up in me.
Nobody needed to tell me that anybody shooting at me now had been posted and waiting for me. This was some sure-thing killer out scalp hunting, and I have a kind of feeling against being shot at by strangers. Least a man can do is introduce himself.
When I reached the bottom of that slope I had a second boom ringing in my ears, but that shot--it sounded like a Sharps buffalo gun so he must have reloaded fast--had missed complete. Nonetheless the thing to do at such a time is be someplace else, so I rolled over in the grass, hit a low spot, and scrambled on knees and elbows, rifle across my forearms, to put some distance from where I fell.
Chances were nine out of ten he figured he'd got me with the first shot, because I fell right then. Chances also were he'd wait a bit and if I didn't get up he'd come scouting for the body, and I meant to be damned sure he found one ... his.
Ap had stopped only a moment. That was a right sensible horse and he knew he had no business up there on that bare slope, so he trotted along to the bottom. The buckskin stayed right with him, the lead rope still snubbed to the saddle horn.
I was going to need those horses so I kept an eye on them. Pretty soon they began to feed on the meadow.
When I'd scrambled fifty yards or so, I was behind a kind of low dome, maybe some dirt pushed up by the last small glacier when it slid off the walls and pushed along the bottom of the cirque.
My ear was bleeding and it stung like crazy, and that kind of riled me, too.
That man over yonder sure had a lot to answer for.
Careful to keep my rifle down so the sun wouldn't gleam on it, I edged along that earth dome until I was on the far shoulder of it. Then I chanced a look toward those spruce trees where the shot had come from.
Nothing.
Minutes passed. About that time a thought occurred to me that had me sweating.
Those folks coming up the trail back of the mountain would be topping out on the crest and looking down into that basin. Now while that sport over yonder with the Sharps couldn't see me--at least I hoped he couldn't--I'd be wide open and in the clear for those people when they topped out on the rim.
They'd have me from both sides and I'd be a dead coon.
I've been shot at now and again, and I've taken some lead here and there, but I never cared for it much. To tell you the truth, I'd as leave let it lay. There's something mighty disconcerting about a bullet in the brisket ... lead sets heavy on the stomach.
The trouble was I'd about run out of places to go. From here on, I was in the open unless I could squeeze right into the ground. Nowhere could I see more than two or three inches of cover, and I was going to want more--a whole lot more.
One thing I did know. If those people topped out on that rise and raised a gun at me, they were going to find it was an uncomfortable place to be. Because I was going to start shooting, and their horses would come down off that rim one way or the other, probably running and buck-jumping.
Of a sudden I heard a faint stir, and I turned very carefully.
A man, rifle held in his hands ready for use, was standing just in front of the spruce trees. He was standing stockstill and he was listening.
I eased my rifle forward and waited. The man stood there, took a couple of steps forward, and stopped again. From where I'd fallen when he fired he would be merged against that spruce background and not easily seen; from where I now lay he was outlined stark and clear. He took another step forward, and then one of the riders
