“Have we lost them?” she asked.
“I don’t think so,” Jim answered. “He’s got men who know how to track. Our leaving the main trail won’t fool them for long.”
“Will we have to fight?”
“Sooner or later. He’ll either be content to follow us and hope we lead him to the mine or he’ll decide to jump us.” Jim didn’t continue the thought. If Bannen decided on the latter, the odds weren’t good. Two of them against how many of Bannen’s? At least eight men had chased him from Bidwell’s Bar. And there was no way of knowing if that was all of them. He and Ellen couldn’t hope to beat so many.
Jim looked at Ellen then. He tried to smile reassuringly. “We’ll make it. They can’t stop us if they can’t catch us.”
It went unspoken what would happen if Bannen caught them. Torture. Likely for both of them. Men hungry for gold would hurt a woman quick as a man. Even if they gave up the gold’s location, neither Jim nor Ellen would be alive at the end.
After resting for a few minutes, they set off once again. The trail wound down lower now, curving along the base of a second, taller mountain. A steep drop-off fell away on one side while the other clung to the mountain’s stony flank. At an opening between the trees, Jim stopped to look over their back trail. He could see the pass in the distance. Two miles of chasm lay between them. There was movement there, four men all on horseback. They dismounted and approached the pass on foot. One man held their horses while the other three slipped up behind boulders or bits of scrubby brush.
Cautious of them. That’ll slow them down a good bit.
Only four men behind. Were they ahead of the others or had Bannen moved some of his men to seal off the trail ahead? Jim couldn’t be sure. Despite the trail’s overgrowth and their slow pace, he didn’t think anyone could overtake them, but he needed to allow for the possibility. He and Ellen would have to slow down and watch for men ahead.
That’ll give this group time to close the distance.
“We’re going to need to make better time,” Jim said.
“You saw them?” Ellen said.
“Four of them, and that isn’t enough. The others may move to cut us off.”
There were other possibilities, of course. Bannen might only have four men out looking for them or the others might have been too far away to reach. He couldn’t count on that, though.
“Best to plan on them having more men close by,” Jim said. “This comes out on the main road between Onionville and Red Bluff. All the wagons headed to the gold camps use that trail. They won’t find our tracks once we reach it.”
“What if they see us once we head toward home?”
“We won’t go directly home. We can head north a few miles, then leave the trail and go cross-country. We’ll circle east, then south to reach home.”
In Jim’s mind, he covered the trail ahead. It could be done. But he had to make sure he didn’t have to cross that ridge. He and the Appaloosa might make it, but Ellen’s horse wasn’t up to the task. They needed to stay farther west, closer to Onionville.
“How long should we stay on the road?” Ellen asked.
As usual, his wife hit directly on the problem. If they left the road immediately, Bannen’s tracker might be able to follow them. If they stayed on it too long, they might cross paths with one of his men.
“A mile or two,” Jim said. “No more than that.”
They passed the rest of the ride in silence. When they were near the main road, Jim crept ahead on foot. He slipped from tree to tree, pausing often to watch the trail ahead. He could almost imagine the men behind closing in.
Who’ll get us first? Those behind or the men on the road racing down to cut us off?
Finally, Jim chanced it. He waved Ellen up, and they ran their horses through the trees before hitting the empty road.
Rainy as the coast might be, here the trail was either hard-packed or covered in several inches of powdery dust. Wagon ruts and horse prints covered the full width of it.
“They won’t be able to follow us in this,” Jim said. They’d caught some luck.
He turned and started toward Red Bluff, Ellen riding beside him. A rise came up ahead of them and just as they topped it, Jim looked back. Two men were riding hard toward the trail he and Ellen just emerged from. One of them stood up in his stirrups and pointed.
“We’ve got to ride now,” Jim said. He let Ellen take the lead, then spurred his horse into a run. Ellen’s mount was smaller and not conditioned to the trail, not like the big Appaloosa. It would have to set their pace.
They ran on for a full mile, not seeing their pursuers. Their speed earned them angry shouts from several freighters as they raced by.
Ellen’s horse began to flag, and Jim pulled up alongside her. “We’ve got to get off the trail,” he said.
“Where?”
“Follow me.”
The road passed through a hilly section. Jim looked for an opening to their right and found a gap in the trees large enough for a horse. He got down and examined his horse’s hooves while waiting for a long pause between the wagons. It wouldn’t do them any good to get off the road if a freighter spotted them and told their pursuers about it.
When the road cleared, he pulled the horses into the trees. The juniper grew thick here and he wound between the trunks like a snake. When they were a hundred yards off the road, he stopped and helped Ellen down.
She trembled, and he held her up until she steadied enough to stand.
“Will they find us?”
“Not yet. They’ll likely race on by trying to catch up.” Jim slipped his rifle from its scabbard, just in case.
Noise came from the trail, the beat of many hooves. Two men raced by. Jim looked far enough around a juniper to see them. Moments later, four more thundered through, the men that had been following on the bypass. Several wagons passed, and Jim waited.
“Stay here and I’ll see about our trail. When they realize we left the road, they’ll circle back and look for where we stepped off.”
They hadn’t left too many tracks. The ground was hard and covered in a layer of brown pine needles. There were a few branches the horses had shouldered aside, and Jim straightened these as best he could. Removing them entirely would have been like leaving a signpost. Then he scattered more pine needles all around and made his way back to his wife.
