and a surrey. He could see the tarpaulin-covered forms of sleepers in two of the wagon beds, and on one of the surrey’s seats, a blanket-wrapped figure wriggled restlessly as Longarm’s booted heels thudded on the board sidewalk on his way to the restaurant.
With breakfast behind him, Longarm headed for the livery stable. The attendant recognized him from the day before, and hurried out to the still-dark corral to get the hammerhead bay that Longarm had picked out the day before. The cavalry mount, with its giveaway brand, would be waiting when he got back from Younger’s Bend. Having put his saddlebags, bedroll, and rifle in their places, Longarm set his hat a bit more firmly on his head and started west along the riverbank. The first line of dawn brightened the sky just enough to show the well-beaten trail as he set out.
Steadily the light grew brighter as the sky behind Longarm went from gray to baby-pink to sunrise scarlet, and then, in one swift burst, became molten gold. The sunrise warmed his back as the hammerhead bay, fresh from the corral, high-stepped briskly through the dew-wet grasses, not yet turned brown by the first winds of autumn, that bordered the rutted trace. Summer had apparently returned, if only for a brief visit, after the day of gray skies and cold warning winds that he’d ridden through on his way from Fort Gibson. The air warmed steadily as the sun crept up the sky, and when the trail parted from the river an hour after sunrise Longarm reined in to shed his coat and roll it up in his bedroll.
He took advantage of the stop to study the Ordnance map again. It was easy to see where he was at the moment. The dotted line that marked the trace went almost due east, while the Arkansas swept in an arc to the south a few miles from the mouth Of the Canadian. There, river and road came together again. The road stayed with the Arkansas for a short distance, then it forked at a ford. The north road followed the Arkansas, and the eastern fork crossed the river and ran on a course roughly parallel to the snake-like bed of the Canadian. Longarm wondered which of the loops in the snake’s belly was Younger’s Bend.
Shortly before noon he came to the juncture of the rivers. He reined in, wondering if he’d save time by swimming the bay across the river here and picking up the eastern road where it curved along the Canadian, but a long, calculating look at the roiled green surface of the stream convinced him that the risk wasn’t worth the little time he’d save.
Besides which, he thought, there ain’t all that much need to hurry. I’ll get there when I get there, and Belle Starr sure ain’t going to wait supper for me. He poked the bay with his boot toe, and the animal moved ahead to the ford.
A mile or so above the river fork he came to the ford. It was marked only by the wheel ruts which showed where wagons had pulled off the trace and turned toward the river. When he got to the stream, he saw pairs of stakes driven into the shore on both sides to mark the location of the submerged crossing. Between the stakes, on both sides, the ocher earth was cut up by grooves and packed with the half-moons of hooves everywhere he looked between the markers. The hammerhead bay took to the water easily, feeling its way with surprising daintiness through the murky green water along an invisible bottom.
Beyond the ford, the trace bore the signs of fewer wagons and more horses, but was still easy to follow. It meandered through the groves of towering cottonwood and broad-trunked sweet gum, through patches of scrub Oak that came barely to Longarm’s waist as he sat in the saddle. Here and there, the bright green clumping of crackwillows marked a spring, a brooklet, or a patch of moist ground. A few of the brooks trickled across the road; none of them was wider than a man could step across, or deeper than a few inches, but the soft tinkle of running water making its way to the Canadian River broke the silence of the early afternoon.
Longarm ate in the saddle, chewing bits of jerky shaved off as he rode, moistened with a mouthful of water. He alternated the jerky with a few kernels of parched corn, and topped off his snack with a few dried prunes before lighting a cheroot and settling down for the long afternoon that lay ahead.
On two occasions, he turned off the trace where hooves had beaten a fainter trace toward the Canadian. He had no idea where Younger’s Bend was located, except that it bordered the riverbank. The two trails he followed led to fords, not houses. He stopped at each of the crossings to breathe his horse and get the stiffness out of his own thigh muscles by dismounting and walking along the riverbank. He walked with a purpose other than exercise, though. There were so many bends in the Canadian that the high bluffs predominating along its northern bank could be seen far upstream—a series of humps diminishing in size with distance, but visible enough to show signs of settlement where any such signs existed.
He wasn’t sure he’d come far enough east to reach Younger’s Bend yet, but so far he’d passed no towns or settlements, or even a farm or ranch house where he could stop and ask. There had been a few threads of smoke visible on the south side of the Canadian at each of the two places where he’d ridden from the trace down to the river, but even on the more level, gently rolling land south of the stream, he hadn’t gotten a clear view of any houses close enough to justify a visit. Each time, he’d ridden back to the main trace and continued east.
When he reached the third trail that forked south toward the river, Longarm reined in and sat in the saddle, studying the trail for several minutes. This one seemed a bit more distinct than the two he’d explored earlier. The forking was clearer, the ground around it beaten almost bare by hoofprints, the grass beside the trace shorter, as though more horses had grazed on it. Absently, moving his hands by habit rather than consciously, Longarm lighted a cheroot while he studied the trail. It led to a thick stand of scrub oak, and he could not see past the thicket. Still not committed in his mind to following the new trail to the river, Longarm twitched the reins to the left and the hammerhead bay walked slowly along the narrow path.
Beyond the stand of oaks, the trail remained clearly marked. Longarm’s interest increased. He rode on, following the hoof-trodden line as it wound between cottonwood and sweet gum, skirted a rock outcrop, crossed an old burn almost bare of vegetation, and plunged again into a thicket of oaks dotted with still more gum trees and cottonwood. He was on rising ground now. The undergrowth thinned to isolated trees as the upward pitch of the slope grew sharper. The trail zigzagged up the rise and dipped on the other side into a narrow valley where it turned to follow its floor.
Here there was barely room for two riders to go abreast and the trail thinned and became more sharply defined. Longarm reined in at a wide spot and dismounted. To his experienced eyes, the trail had the marks of the kind of approach he’d been looking for, one that was both easy and difficult, a trail that passed through cover for defenders, if the need arose to stand off intruders. Above all, in its passage through the narrow valley, the trail seemed planned to string out any group of men and horses in a way that would allow a relatively small group to bar their passage.
Old son, he told himself, this is the likeliest spot you’ve hit. Somebody planned this trail, it didn’t just grow up accidental. And even if there ain’t no guarantee you’re going to hit pay dirt at the end of it, You better strip down and be ready, just in case you do.
When he’d shed his coat, Longarm had transferred his wallet, with his marshal’s badge Pinned inside, to his hip pocket. He fished the wallet out now, and dropped his trousers. By letting them down almost to the tops of his closely fitting cavalry boots, he managed to slip the wallet down inside a trouser leg and below the level of the boot top. Pulling UP his Pants, he inspected the leg. There was no bulge, and the edge Of the wallet wouldn’t be felt by anybody searching him for a sheath knife or a small-caliber concealed pistol.
