When he had finished, Smoke smashed Brewer’s guns, threw him on his saddle, and when the young man had stopped screaming after the jolting pain in his arm from the toss had lessened, Smoke gave him some advice. “If I ever see you again and you’re wearing a gun, I’ll kill you.” He slapped the horse on the rump and the pony took off at a fast canter. Brewer was still screaming when Smoke mounted up.
Smoke backtracked and once more picked up the trail. He found where they had nooned and discovered Sally had taken stones and spelled out: O K. With a smile that would have backed up the devil, Smoke swung into the saddle and rode on.
He left the obvious trail and rode up into the high lonesome, Into the east slopes of the Rockies. He dismounted and took his binoculars, carefully scanning the area below him. He scanned it once, then twice, and then a third time. He picked up the thin tentacle of smoke on the third try. He studied the area below him until he felt he had found a way in. He mounted up and headed down into the valley.
Nelson Barrett was enjoying a cup of hot coffee. His pleasure abruptly lessened when he felt the cold steel of a big Bowie knife against his throat. What made it even worse was the dark stain that suddenly appeared in the crotch of his dirty jeans.
“Talk to me, pee-pants,” Smoke whispered. “And I’d better like what you have to say. ‘Cause if I don’t, I’ll stake you out and skin you alive.”
“Your woman’s awright!” Nelson blurted. “There ain’t nobody touched her. I swear it, man!”
“You were left here to do what?”
“Kill you!”
“Well, now. Is that a fact? What do you think I ought to do with you?”
“You let me ride, you’ll never see me again, Smoke. As God is my witness, I promise you that.”
Smoke took the knife from the man’s throat and Nelson made a grab for his gun. Smoke jammed the big blade into the man’s back and ripped upward with it. Nelson Barrett fell face-first into the small fire.
Smoke wiped the blade clean on Nelson’s shirttail and poured himself a cup of coffee. He drank it slowly, then carefully put out the fire. He left Nelson where he lay and mounted up.
He crossed the Middle Fork of the Flathead River and rode into the area that would someday become the Glacier National Park. Smoke slipped into a jacket, for it had turned cold.
He plunged into a wild, beautiful wilderness. His thoughts turned to Preacher and how much the old man would have enjoyed the beauty of this rugged, lonesome country.
Then his thoughts lost all trace of beauty and turned savage and ugly as he followed the trail of Max Huggins and his dwindling gang of thugs and punks and human crap. He thought he heard a voice from out of the dark tangle of vegetation and pulled up, dismounting. He picketed Star and moved forward, both guns in his hands.
Al Martin, Dave Poe, and Ben Webster squatted around a campfire, boiling coffee and frying bacon.
“I cain’t understand why Big Max don’t go ahead and take the woman,” Al said. “I would have.”
“ ’Cause he’d have to knock her out cold to do it,” Ben replied. “And that ain’t no fun.”
“He ought to just go ’head and shoot her,” Dave opined. “She ain’t never gonna be what Max wants her to be.”
“I say we go on and kill Jensen, if that is him behind us, then kill Max, take his money, and have our pleasures with the woman,” Al said. “There ain’t nobody ever gonna find her body in this place.”
Smoke stepped out and ruined the men’s appetites. Both .44’s belched flame and death, destroying the tranquility of the lovely forest in the high-up country.
Smoke dragged their bodies away from the fire and dumped them down a ravine. He pulled the picket pins of their horses and set them free. Smoke got Star and unsaddled him, rubbing the animal down and allowing him to graze for a time.
By that time, the bacon was done and the coffee was ready. Smoke drank and ate, sopping out the grease in the frying pan with a hunk of stale bread.
Smoke rolled him a cigarette and leaned back, enjoying the warmth of the fire. He poured another cup of coffee. If his calculations were corret, all that remained were Max, Val Singer, and Alex Bell. He moved away from the fire, laid his head on his saddle, and went to sleep.
He slept for a couple of hours, then rose and began circling the camp. He found another stick message from Sally. Three sticks laid out side by side, with four sticks next to them, in the shape of a crude D. Triple Divide Peak. Had to be.
Ol’ Preacher had told him about this country, as had other old mountain men, and like most outdoorsmen, Smoke retained that knowledge in his head, a mental map.
He saddled up and took a chance, cutting straight east for a time, then turning north just west of what he felt was the Continental Divide. If he was right, and Max and what was left of his gang were not too far ahead of him —and he didn’t think they were—he would make Triple Divide Peak ahead of Max.
Smoke pushed Star that day, but it was nothing the big horse couldn’t take and still have more to give. Man and horse traveled through country that seemed as unchanged now as it was when God created the earth.
And Smoke could not understand why Max, with his love of cities and towns, hurdy-gurdy girls and parties, had chosen to come here, into this cold and vast wilderness.
He concluded that Max, like his brother Robert, had a streak of insanity running through him.
Smoke made camp that evening between Mt. Thompson and Triple Divide Peak. He loved this country, this high lonesome, where bighorn sheep played their perilous games on the face of seemingly untraversable mountains. Where cedars grew so tall they seemed to touch the sky. Where far below where he camped, heating his coffee over a hat-sized fire, he could see herds of buffalo roaming.
It all seemed just too peaceful a place for what Smoke had in mind.
