Von Hausen looked at Hans. The spirit seemed to have gone out of the man. He cut his eyes to Andrea. She was staring at Hans with a decidedly disgusted look in her eyes. “Round up the horses. We’re riding until dusk.”
Walt pushed his group as hard as he figured they could stand it. But by dusk, when he broke it off to make camp, he had a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach that they were not going to make the park headquarters.
“They are worn out,” Angel whispered to him, out of earshot of the others.
“I know. We’re not going to make it, Angel.”
“I could ride for the headquarters.”
“And do what? Bring back six soldier boys who are engineers first and soldiers last. I ain’t puttin’ them down— they got a job to do like everybody else—but they ain’t cavalry. We’ll push on tomorrow and get as close to the park entrance as we can before we have to stand and fight.”
“And then?”
“We’ll just pick us the best spot we can find and show von Hausen and his boys and girls that we ain’t gonna go down without one hell of a fight.”
Gilbert walked up. “The ladies are exhausted, gentlemen,” he said. He looked very tired. “And for that matter, so are the men in my party. The young surveyors seem to be holding up well.”
“Yeah,” Walt said. “We was just talkin’ about that. The horses are tired, too. We’ll push on at first light. When we find us a good spot to fort up—with water and graze and shelter—we’ll make a stand of it.”
“Might I make a suggestion?”
“Shore.”
“We ride only a brief time tomorrow. There is a spot not too far from here that I know of—I’ve been in this park several times. It’s almost a natural fort. We spend the rest of the day digging in. And I mean that literally.”
Walt nodded his head. “That’s fine with me, Gilbert. Angel?”
“Suits me. With us in front of them and Smoke coming up behind them, we could put them in a bad spot.”
“Yes,” Gilbert said, obviously pleased that the two gunfighters approved of his plan. “That was my thinking.”
“Let’s have some coffee and get some rest,” Walt said. “We’ll see what the others have to say about this.”
Walt and his group were about four miles north of Smoke. Smoke was camped only about five miles ahead of von Hausen’s party. Neither had any way of knowing what the other was planning.
Smoke boiled his coffee in a small and beat-up coffee pot and chewed on jerky and hardtack for his supper. He was just about out of coffee. He’d have enough for in the morning, and then that was it. And when Smoke couldn’t have his coffee, he turned short-tempered.
Smoke drank his coffee and then carefully cleaned and wiped down his guns in the dying light of the small fire. He tried not to think about Walt and his group and their desperate race for the park headquarters and the tiny garrison of army engineers stationed there. He tried not to think about Sergeant Major Murphy and his patrol, lying stiffened and ravaged by animals and carrion birds in the timber by the creek, shot down in the coldest of blood by von Hausen and those who followed him.
“You’re scum, von Hausen,” Smoke muttered. “Nothing but scum.”
“I hate that damn Jensen,” von Hausen said to Marlene. “The man has ruined a perfectly good hunt.”
“He’s a savage,” Marlene said. “No class or breeding.”
John T. was walking by the tent and heard that. He shook his head and walked on, wondering how in the hell he ever let himself get tied up with such a pack of fools. He walked over to the cook tent and poured a cup of coffee, carrying it over to his bedroll, close to the fire. He sat down, his back against his saddle, and looked at Montana Jess, sitting drinking coffee next to him. The man had a strange expression on his face.
“Time’s runnin’ out for us, John T.,” Montana spoke the words softly.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, them champagne-suckin’, hoity-toity folks over yonder is takin’ us to our deaths. That’s what I mean. And you know it, John T.”
“Spit it all out, Montana.”
“We ain’t got no choice left in the matter, John T. We can’t come out of this unless’n we kill everybody in this park. Everybody.”
“We’ve talked about that, Montana. What’s left to talk about?”
“That ain’t what I mean.” He paused as others moved closer in. “We’re not gonna get Jensen. You know it, I know it, and so do the rest of the boys. It’s only them fools over yonder eatin’ high off the hog that thinks we will. And if we do manage to kill them folks we’re followin’, and we don’t kill Jensen—which we ain’t gonna do—he’ll spend the rest of his life trackin’ us down. We’ll have to change our names and get the hell gone to Ver-mont or Massesschewits or some damn other foreign place, and hope to God he don’t find us.”
John T. realized then that Montana, and the rest of the men, too, he supposed, were not talking about quitting and pulling out, but just letting off steam, with Montana being the spokesman.
That thought was dashed when Mike Hunt said, “Why don’t we kill them princes and barons and what not over yonder, have some fun with them cold-actin’ women, take their money and jewels and just get gone from this place?”
“That thought entered my mind too,” Gil Webb said. “But that’d just make it worser.”
Mike looked at him. “I don’t see how.”
