Sight or no, running into one in the dark would surely mean trouble.
Jim stopped long enough to tear a bit of hair from a sharp branch. He rolled it in his fingers and examined it.
Elk. He let out a breath. Elk were much better than a grizzly.
He laid out his bedroll in the empty space between a pair of trees. Maybe he’d buy a sheet of canvas when he got back to Onionville. A dry night’s sleep sure sounded good.
The trees had been dead for a long time and he found lots of dried branches to get the fire going. He had little to eat, hardtack and a bit of jerky. He hadn’t wanted to resupply in town. Once he’d seen Bidwell’s Bar, he’d wanted no part of it. Filth everywhere. A great mass of people all churning the ground to mud. Mud covered everything and everyone.
“That’s what they’ll do to our valley,” he said. “If they find it.”
If?
Who was he kidding? The story of their discovery would get out. It had to. Nothing that big ever stayed secret. What if it didn’t, though? What if he and David could keep it all to themselves? Not out of greed, but to preserve the land for ranching. Other than the high, wet winters, the place was perfect for raising cattle. Those and the wolves.
The Appaloosa suddenly lifted his head to stare into the dark. Jim cocked one ear and listened. A branch popped. His rifle lay beside him. He took it up and cycled a round into the chamber.
What if he’d been wrong about it being an elk trail?
Nothing stirred. This deep in the trees, there wasn’t even a breath of wind. The crackling of the fire was the only sound. His horse continued to stare, then after a few minutes went back to cropping grass.
Jim eased the hammer down on the rifle.
Best to keep one in the chamber tonight.
He laid back against his saddle and, minutes later, was fast asleep.
* * * *
Jim came awake with a start.
For a time he lay still, listening. Pinprick stars shone through the treetops. The fire had long since gone out, its embers black and cold. He squeezed the rifle, half surprised he’d kept his grip on it all night. He heard nothing. He woke for a reason, though…a sound…a feeling…something. Something out beneath the trees.
Whatever it was, the Appaloosa sensed it too. He stared off in the dark, ears fully upright and alert, nostrils flaring. It could have been anything, but Jim didn’t think the horse would be so calm if it were a bear, wolf, or mountain lion. He’d seen the way the horse acted when they’d come across wolves. This was nothing like that.
That left only one thing; a man. And a man out here in the wilderness could be after only one thing.
The gold.
Jim eased upright, rifle lifting to his shoulder. He could see nothing. The forest was a mass of bottomless shadow and pale starlight. Waiting here would gain him nothing, but he hesitated to move. Movement would make noise and making noise might mean catching a bullet.
He waited until the sky took on a steel-gray color. A thin mist wafted in, covering the ground in a wispy veil.
Suddenly, Jim wanted to be away. He moved quickly. Keeping one eye on his surroundings, he threw his saddle over the Appaloosa, then the saddlebags, and swung up. He kept the rifle out of its scabbard and set off through the pines.
The trees went on for a solid mile, thinning as the mountain rose ahead. Jim pressed on. Soon the sun was well up, burning the mist away to a memory.
They reached barren ground above the tree line, and Jim coaxed his horse into a quick trot. They skirted around the mountain, slowing to cross a stretch of loose shale. A growth of tall aspens lay on the other side. Jim tied his horse beneath them. Then he took the rifle and went back to watch.
He knelt down beside a granite boulder at the edge of the shale and waited. He didn’t have to wait long.
A quarter-mile beyond the shale, a rider on a lineback dun came around the mountain into view. He was a spare man of good height, dressed in well-worn clothes and a gray hat. He studied the ground as he rode, pausing occasionally to look at the trail ahead.
Jim brought the rifle to his shoulder.
He didn’t want to kill the man. He didn’t want to kill anyone. But the only reason anyone might have to be out here was to follow him, and that’s exactly what the man on the dun was doing.
Jim took aim. The fellow was beyond decent rifle range, maybe three hundred yards now. Jim knew his rifle well, though. He’d easily killed deer and other game from this far. But he didn’t believe he would have to kill this man.
He squeezed the trigger and his bullet splattered a rock twenty paces ahead of the lineback. The dun reared and bucked and the rider fought for control. Jim fired twice more, putting each shot into the jumbled rocks near the startled horse’s feet. The lineback continued to buck until the rider gained control and they bolted back the way they’d come.
Jim watched until they were out of sight, then stood and went to his horse. In another minute, he too was hurrying along, in the opposite direction. He didn’t think the warning shots would deter the man, not when he had the smell of gold, but it would gain him distance and time.
He came to a creek, shallow but running fast and carrying enough silt and debris to hide the bottom. He cut left, followed it along for a quarter mile, then came out on a flat rock.
Farther east, he stopped where a lightning strike had burned a few acres the year before. He let the Appaloosa pick at the tender undergrowth, then found a straight section of a half-burned pine. Jim chuckled and used his knife to shape the blackened wood into a stick, straight and long enough to be mistaken for a rifle barrel. He propped it upright between a pair of boulders with one end pointing to where he’d ridden in from.
Noon was past, and he turned almost due south. Onionville lay off to the east, the ranch farther east yet, but he didn’t want to ride directly for them. Instead, he pressed south until he got caught in an afternoon squall. Only then, when he was sure the rain had washed out his tracks, did he turn for home.
Chapter 11
“You lost him?” Cord said.
“It wasn’t my fault,” Van said. His voice trembled as he spoke.
Cord forced himself to remain calm. “How exactly did you lose him?”
“The fellow was right smart. He laid in wait for me up on the mountain, then when I was good and close, he opened up on me with a rifle. I fell back a ways, waiting. When I was sure he was gone, I followed him on. I tracked him for half a day. He tried every trick to shake me loose, cost me some time, but I sorted him out.”
