There were few travelers on the trail. They passed scattered freight teams, all headed for the camp at Bidwell’s.
Ellen grew excited as they passed each one. She looked the men up and down, hoping to see her brother. Colton had never been away from home so long, and Jim thought it would do the young man a world of good. By the time he’d been Colton’s age, his mother had passed and he’d been farming out a living on his own.
More like trying to farm. Place was never good for growing anything but rocks and weeds.
Though the years in South Texas had stripped away any desire for him to turn a plow again, he’d admired the rich black loam of Kansas and Missouri. If the rains were right, a man could grow anything there. True, there were hardships no matter where you sunk a spade: not enough rain, too much or at the wrong time, hail, locusts, someone driving a herd of cattle across your ground. These were the farmer’s constant enemies.
The number of travelers slowly increased as they neared home. On the third day, they met or passed at least one group every hour until the roads grew slow and congested in the narrow stretches. Having Ellen along proved beneficial here. More than one salty old freighter stopped swearing at his team or the men around him and gave ground so that she and Jim could pass through. Often they’d doff their hats and bow their heads to her like she was the queen of England.
“Why do they do that?” she asked.
“Some of these men haven’t seen a proper woman in months. Some longer than that, I’d bet,” Jim said.
“Surely that can’t be true.” Ellen twisted in her saddle to face him. “There are women out here.”
“A few…in the towns. Most of these men go only from camp to camp.”
“But there are women in the camps. There has to be some.”
Jim gave her a low laugh. “There are women in the camps, but not like you.”
“Not like me?”
“Not proper ladies.”
Ellen frowned at him. “I don’t know that I’m a proper lady. I’m not like that.”
“Sure you are,” Jim smiled. “You’re a sight closer to a proper lady than the women in the camps. They’re of an entirely different sort.”
Ellen reddened as she took his meaning; she seemed at a loss for words.
Most of the people they met traveled in groups for protection. Only a scarce few seemed to be alone. They were less than a dozen miles from Onionville when one of these drew Jim’s eye. He didn’t recognize the man himself, not right away, but he’d seen the horse before, a handsome horse, a sorrel with a white star in the center of its face.
Now, where did I see that horse before?
Horse and rider were coming toward him, slowly, as if they’d nowhere else in the world to be. The rider was pausing often, carefully eyeing everyone who passed through. They were a hundred yards apart when he spotted Jim, and immediately the rider jerked to a complete halt.
Jim remembered him then. One of Cord Bannen’s men. Jim slipped the thong off his pistol and kicked the Appaloosa into a trot to put himself between the approaching rider and Ellen.
The rider gave Jim a long look, smiled, then spun his horse back up the trail in a gallop.
“Who was that?” Ellen asked.
“Trouble. One of the men who tried to rob me.”
“What should we do? He won’t harm us here with so many men around.”
“Most of these men won’t want trouble. They won’t like seeing a lady bothered, but they might not act to help us, either. Especially against a gang of outlaws,” Jim said. “Best to expect we’ll be on our own.”
“I have my pistol,” Ellen said.
Jim smiled at her. His wife might look and act like the proper lady she was, but she also knew how to take care of herself. “Good. Keep it handy. We need to get off the main trail and see if we can lose them. There’s a cutoff up ahead.”
“He went to get the others, didn’t he? There might be more of them ahead.”
“Might be. There’s a chance they just want to talk to us, though. It’s the gold they’re after. They could be perfectly happy to just follow us right to it.”
“Should we just let them?”
“No…because it’s equally likely that once they find the stream and cabin, they’d try to kill all of us to keep the secret to themselves.”
Ellen paled a little at this, but she did not panic. Jim knew she’d shoot more than one man if he laid a hand on her family.
They reached the cutoff without seeing any more of Bannen’s men. Jim led Ellen off the main road onto an overgrown trail. He dismounted and waited until any other travelers were out of sight before spending a few minutes removing signs of their passage. It was another quick job. It wouldn’t hold up against a close inspection, but it might gain them a half hour or more.
He and Ellen set off down the trail at a slow trot. Despite the danger, running their horses would only tire them. Better to keep them fresh in case trouble came.
At least one of Bannen’s men had proved he could track, and Jim suspected he had more than one capable of following them. They’d kept up with him easily enough north of Bidwell’s.
The trail ran mostly north before curving in a long arc toward the east. Jim had heard talk of it in Onionville, but he’d never ridden this way himself. Once, this had been the main road from Onionville to the coast. In wintertime, it often blew shut and cut off the town completely from the outside world. A few years back, someone had found a route to wind lower through the mountains. It took felling dozens of trees to clear it, but the lower road was far less prone to drifting snow and was five miles shorter.
Jim and Ellen slowly climbed the shoulder of a squat mountain, and the trees thinned.
“We’ll stop soon to rest the horses,” Jim said. “The pass shouldn’t be far ahead.”
Ellen nodded grimly, and they pressed on.
The pass lay above the tree line, completely exposed for at least a quarter mile on all sides, and rather than stopping, Jim kept on until they were again hidden in the trees. Snowmelt fed the trickle of a stream and Jim watered the two horses. He filled his canteen and passed it to Ellen.
