“I know you will,” Frank said. “You don’t get to be as old as you are without being mighty stubborn.”
“Speak for yourself,” Salty muttered.
“I was.”
After a while they started out again on their trek. Frank had been alert for droppings or any other sign of the horses. He hadn’t completely given up on the chance of finding some of their mounts, even now.
Around the middle of the afternoon, he spotted some hoofprints and called a halt. He pointed them out, and Reb sounded a little excited as he asked, “Are those our horses?”
“Not unless they found some friends,” Frank said with a slight frown. “At least a dozen horses left those prints.”
It was true. A large group of riders had come through here sometime in the past couple of days, moving south to north through the foothills and cutting across the path of Frank and his companions, who were headed east.
“Who do you reckon they were?” Salty asked. “Them Metties, or however you say it?”
“Could be, but why would they be going north?” Frank mused. He tried to remember maps of Canada he had seen. “From here, there’s not much in that direction except a big empty, all the way to Edmondton. We figured they were headed for Calgary.”
“We figured, but we don’t know that for sure,” Reb pointed out. “Do you think we should follow these tracks?”
Frank pondered the question for a long moment before finally shaking his head. “I saw the hoofprints that the Metis’s horses left back there where they bushwhacked Lundy’s gang. I don’t think these were made by the same animals.”
Salty snatched his hat off and looked as if he was going to slam it to the ground in disgust, but he must have decided not to because picking it up would be difficult with those bandages wrapped so tightly around him.
“You mean there’s
Frank had to smile. “Yeah, it’s pretty crowded for the middle of nowhere,” he agreed. “But these folks may not have anything to do with the ones we’re after.”
“Wish they’d left a few o’ them horses behind,” Salty muttered. “My feet ain’t never gonna be the same. It’s plumb unnatural for a man to have to walk so dang much, that’s what it is!”
Reb said, “I can’t argue with you there, old-timer.”
“Come on,” Frank said. “Whoever these fellas were, they’re long gone.”
By late afternoon they had covered several more miles. The hills around them were smaller now. The plains weren’t too far off, and once they reached the plains Calgary would be relatively close.
But even so, that meant several more days of walking, and Frank wasn’t sure any of them were up to that, especially Salty. The old-timer looked particularly haggard when Frank called a halt and said they would camp at the base of a wooded knoll.
Despite his obvious exhaustion, Salty said, “There’s still some daylight left. Let me just catch my breath, and then I’ll be able to keep goin’ a while longer.”
Frank shook his head. “No, we’re staying here. I want to check that dressing and make sure the wound hasn’t started bleeding again, and we all need some rest.”
“Wish there was a nice icy stream somewhere close by, so I could soak these feet of mine,” Reb said.
“That sounds good, but remember, keep your boots on.”
Reb nodded. “Sure, Frank, I know.”
Salty took his shirt off. Frank unwrapped the bandages. A little blood had oozed from the crease in the old- timer’s side during the day, which made the dressing stick. Frank eased it off and studied the wound. It still looked raw and ugly, but the flesh around it wasn’t red or swollen. That was his main concern.
“It looks like it’s healing all right,” he told Salty. “I’ll just bind it up again.”
“I reckon my feet probably look a lot worse. Dang, if the good Lord meant for man to walk, he wouldn’t have given us critters to ride!”
They kept their fire small and put it out before darkness settled down. The food and coffee made them feel better, but utter exhaustion was stealing over them quickly.
“I’ll stand first watch,” Frank said. “Then you, Reb, and you, Salty. That sound all right?”
The other two men nodded their agreement. Salty stretched out in his blankets while the western sky over the mountains still held a tinge of red from the sun. Within minutes, he was snoring.
Reb didn’t doze off that quickly. He spread his blankets, then looked up at Frank, who sat nearby on a slab of rock holding his Winchester.
“You reckon Meg’s all right tonight?” Reb asked quietly.
“I’m sure she is. Like Salty said earlier, if there’s one thing she’s good at, it’s taking care of herself.”
“This frontier is no place for a woman like her.”
“That just shows that you don’t know her very well,” Frank said. “A woman like Meg, with the spirit she has, isn’t going to be happy sitting in a parlor and knitting booties. She’s got to be out and around, doing things and seeing whatever there is to see.”
“Yeah, well, one of these days she’s gonna want that parlor and those booties, I’ll bet.”
“Maybe, maybe not.”
