to.'
For a moment there was silence, a cold, dead, heavy silence. Elmer involuntarily took a step back, but Horst ignored him.
'You're the best tracker,' he said to Sardust. 'Can you find them?'
'As long as she stays with him, we've got a chance. Those boots of his leave tracks, and he's no woodsman. She's easy on her feet and she's light anyway, so she leaves mighty little to see. Also, she's canny where she puts her feet.'
Oats had been quiet until now. 'Suppose Elmer's right and she's cached the money? Maybe we're chasin' her for nothing.'
'I want her,' Horst said. 'She needs to be taught a lesson.'
'Who does that pay off?' Oats objected. 'I want the money.'
'So do we all,' Horst replied. He turned to Elmer. 'Where was she when you saw her without the carpetbag?'
'It was just before Baker got shot. I saw her clear, but she was gone before I could get my rifle up. She did not have the carpetbag.'
'Then she's cached it,' Sardust said. 'We can backtrack her right to where it is.'
Horst did not like it, but he kept his mouth shut. He wanted her and he wanted the money and he wanted it all for himself, yet if she had cached it ...
Well, when it came to that, he thought he was as good at reading sign as Sardust. In his years along the Trace, he had learned a lot. He had no intention of sharing what he found with any of them, and that included James White.
'Elmer,' Horst said, 'those wounded men need care. You stay in camp and do whatever you can. Patch up that knee and put a splint on it. We can get him down to the river and float him down to a town.
'Meanwhile, we'll scout around. They haven't gone far.'
Oats avoided Elmer's eyes. Elmer did not like it, but he knew better than to cross Felix Horst. He had already said too much. Yet he did not like it out here in the woods and he did not know a thing about wounds or wounded men. He had an idea all three were worse off than anybody admitted; Elmer also had a good idea that Horst intended to abandon them, and maybe him. He should have kept still about her not having the carpetbag. Then he could have looked for it himself.
'I scouted around some,' Sardust said, 'and I think I know where they're at. Let's go get 'em.'
When they were gone, Elmer added grounds to the coffee on the fire and dug around in his pack for some cold biscuits.
Baker looked over at him. 'You goin' to patch up my knee?'
'I'll try. I'm not much good at such things.'
'Get a splint on it and some kind of bandage. If you can get me down to the creek, we can float down and I won't have to walk, which I can't do anyway.'
Gingerly Elmer went to work. He cut away the pants leg a little more and removed the crude bandage. The sight of the smashed knee made him sick and he started to retch. Baker swore at him. 'Shut up, damn you! You only got to look at it, I got to live with it.'
With a spare shirt from Baker's small pack he bandaged the wound, then rigged splints to keep it stiff. Baker was suffering considerable pain, but it showed only in his eyes or an occasional catch of the breath.
'You get me out of this, young feller, an' my kinfolk will make it up to you. Just get me down to the river.'
He filled a cup for Baker and then went to where Harry lay stretched out. Harry had been stabbed, a thrust from low down, driven sharply up. The knife had just cleared his belt and had gone in under the ribs.
Harry stared at him as Elmer checked the wound. He knew nothing about such things, and although the slit was inflamed, there wasn't much blood this time. There had been quite a bit when they first got to him.
'She was such a little thing,' Harry muttered, 'I didn't figure...' His voice trailed off into nothing, and he closed his eyes.
Joe lay on his back, both eyes blacked and swollen shut, a great lump where his brows should be and his nose broken. She or somebody had hit him with a rifle butt, and he looked awful. There was nothing Elmer could do, and he went back to the fire and filled his cup.
He had to get out of here. If he stayed, Horst would kill him. Horst didn't care about these men, either. They were thieves or river roughs hired on for the job.
Suppose, just suppose he could find the carpetbag? Then he could get out of here and leave them all. He could go back to Philadelphia ...
Maybe not. White would be after him for explanations. Maybe Pittsburgh, or even New York. New York? With money in his pocket ...
He closed his eyes and tried to think of where they had been and how she must have moved. From time to time there had been glimpses of her. She'd still had the bag when she clobbered Joe, so she must have hidden it close by.
Elmer thought it all out, trying to remember how Harry had gone out to catch her and where that fight had taken place. She must have been close by, perhaps within a few hundred yards.
He sipped his coffee and thought it through, trying to remember the various places he had seen out there. In among the trees there wasn't much brush, although there were fallen logs, branches, occasional clumps of some brush he did not recognize. Some places under the trees were bare and could be eliminated. After all, the area was not that large, and he should be able to find it.
He got to his feet. Baker had dropped off to sleep, and only Harry was aware. When he started to move away, Harry said, 'You comin' back?'
Elmer pointed. 'There's my pack. I'm just scoutin' around.'
Harry closed his eyes, and Elmer stepped out beyond their sight. Although he was not aware of it, he had changed a lot in these past two weeks. For the first time in his life he had become aware of his own vulnerability. Injury and death happened to others, not to him, but suddenly he realized it could happen to him. He also realized that Felix Horst had no intention of sharing that money with anybody, and anybody who got in the way would be eliminated. So why not find it for himself and get away scot-free?
He wouldn't mind sharing with Tim Oats, but Tim was with Horst and would have to make out as best he could.
Elmer had learned from James White. He had learned to think before he acted, and now he carefully eliminated various areas beyond the camp, where he would not have to look. It would have to be somewhere she could have hidden, somewhere not easily seen from camp.
Elmer studied the woods before him. There were many large trees, a number of fallen, rotting tree trunks, a few clumps of brush in the more open areas. At one place a huge old giant of the forest had started to topple, but its branches had caught in the branches of other trees and left the tree hanging, its great root mass partly ripped from the earth.
Elmer moved out, searching the ground for tracks. He had never spent time in the woods or wilds, knew nothing about tracking, yet the tracks of the men who had gone out to capture Echo Sackett were plain enough.
She had stabbed Harry. It would have to be her. Who would ever expect a pretty little thing like that to have a knife? Or that she would use it?
That time he had suggested walking her home. He had thought that maybe, on one of those dark streets ...
His brow broke into a cold sweat. Why, she probably had that knife then. It would have been him who got stabbed. The thought gave him a queasy feeling in the stomach. Cold steel had that effect on some people.
Elmer paused, looking all about him; then slowly he began to walk. He counted his steps, stopping every few yards to look all about him. When he had walked two hundred steps, he walked several yards to the east and then turned about on a route parallel with his first and walked slowly back, searching the ground with his eyes as he moved.
This was no time to be careless. He was going to work this out bit by bit. When they came back, if they did come back, he could be just scouting, but he hoped he would find the bag and be long gone by the time they
