Double Mountain Crossing (13 page)

He kept to a direct line north so if a man took the notion to track him it would be a simple matter. He had no idea what kind of a plainsman Alison was and he wanted to make it easy. Trouble was if Alison was a fair hand at reading sign it might look too easy, but that was a chance Morgan had to take. If Alison
was
following, and the odds were more than good, then Morgan wanted to take him out of the game fast. Better sooner than later. He'd seen how men went crazy at the sight of gold. The last thing he wanted was Alison to catch up when he hit the mountains. Gunshots carried a mighty long way in those canyons and could invite unwelcome strangers.

Morgan remembered his father telling him if you ever needed to fight a skunk, then always make sure you fought the skunk on your terms, not his. The more he recalled it, the truer it was. Alison was a
pistolero
, and they were town fighting men, and he looked far too handy with his six-gun to have taken him on in the saloon. That didn't mean to say Morgan thought Alison couldn't fight in the open. Morgan had heard the accent in the man's voice, probably from the
Carolinas
somewhere, and if he was a mountain boy he'd be a fair hand at barking squirrels. Morgan'd seen that trick a time or two back during the war. A hillbilly boy had shown him. He'd said there wasn't too much meat on a squirrel so the best way to get them for the pot was to aim at the tree bark right next to them or the branch they were sitting on so they fell out of the tree stunned. That way you didn't get lead in the stew. And you had to be a pretty fair hand with a gun to manage it.

Also, if Alison was a hillbilly boy, then he'd be hell to fight in the mountains. They fought real
good
, those boys. Look at the way their family feuds ran from generation to generation. They might not know what the word persistent meant, but they sure were as persistent as a bighorn stag in the rutting season. Get their teeth in something and they hung on till a man broke their jaw shaking them off.

So the prairie it was.

Morgan gave it two hours then headed north east for another two before he swung back south to ride parallel with his own tracks. He had been watching his back trail carefully but saw nothing, so Alison must have given him a couple of hours start. He continued south for an hour until he found a good place, then pulled the ten
gauge
out of the saddle boot and swung down from the dun's back.

Leaving the reins trailing he ascended the ridge, taking off his hat so he wouldn't be skylined. From the top he could see two or three miles in each direction. Sprawled in the greening grass was like resting in the centre of a basin, the land eerily rolling to the horizon on every side. His original trail passed close to the foot of the ridge fifty yards below him. He had ridden that close intentionally. If Alison was intently tracking him, then he would come within good range of the shotgun. Any more than fifty yards and it wasn't a sure thing any more. With his bum eye, Morgan didn't want to risk it with a rifle. If he shot and missed, well Alison looked like he knew what he was doing and Morgan had no desire to become crow bait.

There was nobody in sight, no telltale dust or even a hint of any movement. He turned his eyes away from the trail to see if he could catch anything in the corners of his vision.

Nothing.

So Alison was farther behind than he figured. Only thing to do was
wait
. Didn't pay a man to be too hasty or too sure of
himself
. He glanced back to where he had left the horses but they were resting, taking a mouthful of grass now and then. It wasn't much to their liking after the grain the old man had pampered them with. Morgan sighed. He had supplies and he had time. He rested the weight of the scattergun on the grass and rolled a smoke, occasionally gazing out over the prairie.

He waited.
Nothing.

When the grass by his side was littered with cigarette butts, he considered the sky. It would be dark soon and still no sign of Alison. He couldn't understand it. If the
pistolero
hoped to keep on his trail he should not be this far behind. This time of the year there was still rain in the air, and if his tracks washed out, Alison wouldn't have a hope of finding him.

He scanned the prairie.
Nothing.

Maybe he wasn't after him. After all, the gunman didn't know for sure he was going out for more gold. He might have figured to ride out anyway when spring came. God knows, he was too well known in Redrock for the citizens to allow him to continue fleecing them. But then why did he only buy one horse? Anne Marie was his partner, wasn't she?

The only answer Morgan could come up with was that she was either taking the stagecoach to the next town to meet him there, or that he was leaving her.
Cutting out without telling her.
From the bruises she often carried, it looked as though Alison thought little of her anyway, so why shouldn't he quit her?

The thoughts still plagued him as he made camp and hobbled the horses. He ate and waited until dark before he climbed the ridge again. He scoured the prairie, searching for the flicker of a fire but there was nothing. Disgruntled, he returned to his own fire and sat until the buffalo chips burned low. By the time he rolled into his blanket and
lay
his head on his saddle he had decided his course. He would watch for Alison in the first hours after sunup, and if there was no sign then he would start making tracks.

Back to the
Double
Mountains
.

***

Shuck Alison kicked the big black horse into a canter up the main street, riding north as he'd seen Morgan Clay ride earlier that morning. Anne Marie waved him off from the boardwalk outside the hotel, a nagging fear in her stomach this would be the last time she saw him, but her parting smile was full of confidence. She had no idea how long he would need to be away even if he found what he sought. As long as it took, she supposed. Morose, she fixed her working smile in place and walked down towards the saloon. There was nowhere else to go. Her hotel room would be lonesome and forbidding, and it was bad enough being alone without the confinement of four shabby walls. She began to wonder what this thing was that bothered her about people leaving her behind. Perhaps she wanted to be needed. She sighed. Shuck never seemed to really need
her,
he was almost the perfect solitary man, sufficient to himself. She was sure he only looked on her as he regarded his guns or a horse; when he needed them they were there.

That was the way he treated her anyway, and now he had denied her even that by going out after Morgan to steal his gold. As much as she too craved the luxury the gold would bring, she hoped he wouldn't kill the prospector. Of the three of them, perhaps Morgan was the only one with any good in him at all. He had the habit of making her feel unclean and inadequate when she was with him. Yes, he was good. In fact, she thought wryly, he was the only one who had ever induced the feeling in her of being needed. Not just in bed, but he always seemed to respect her too. It was absurd, she knew, being a whore and wanting a man to feel that way about her, but wasn't she a woman too? Wasn't being a woman more important?

She realized, now that Morgan's life was threatened by Shuck, if he had only asked her, she would have left Shuck in a minute and gone anywhere with him. To be with him would have been sufficient. Why, she thought angrily, do you only realize what things mean to you when they are taken away? She paused on the boardwalk and gripped the rail, her knuckles white. She felt faint, nauseous. God! What kind of a woman was she that she could want a man more than anything, yet still plot with another man to kill him. What kind of an animal does that? Maybe there was nothing left of the woman in her. Had it all seeped away silently every night she had allowed men to abuse her body for the sake of earning enough to keep a leaking roof over her head and feed a man who beat her up when the notion took him? What kind of an animal does that?

Me, she thought, and swallowed hard.

But it was all done now, and what was going to happen would happen regardless. There was no way to put the wrong right.

No way at all.

***

Alison accustomed himself to the black's leggy gait as he followed the trail north. If he'd had a choice he would never have bought the black horse. It had not been bred to tackle the job ahead. But there had been no others for sale so had adjusted
himself
to it. $60 too, the thieving old
negro
. He gave the black its head and let it stretch out, hooves pounding the trail. One thing in the animal's favor, he could run second to none. Alison could make out Morgan's tracks easily from the wagon ruts, but he kept an eye out, watching for the unexpected. When he reached the point where Morgan had cut away from the main trail he picked up on it without even putting the black off its stride.

It looked too simple. It was the last place Alison himself would have chosen to split off. He would have picked difficult ground where a tracker would have hesitated. By now he had no illusions about Morgan's brains, the man had plenty, and he figured Morgan had a good idea he would be trailed, if not to his destination at least far enough to be unloaded of what was left of his gold.
So why this easy?
Unless Morgan wanted him to follow.
Why else would he ride north, then north-east, when if the map was right he should have been making for the west where the mountains lay?
For a set up?
That was the way it looked, and Alison certainly wasn't going to humor the old man.

He reined in and sat the black, letting him blow after the run. He tugged the folded scrap of paper from his vest pocket and examined it for the tenth time that day. The hell with Morgan's games, he would cut west directly for the mountains. When Morgan finished riding in circles and went where he was going to go, well then he would be already there to watch Morgan approach the high country. His only doubt was the map's credence. If the buffalo hunter had foxed him and the
twin mountains
weren't where they should be, well when he rode back to Redrock there would be one less hunter to tote hides back east.

***

The
Double
Mountains
were there. Shuck Alison smiled for the first time in nine days. He had easily picked up Morgan's false trail, and not wanting to ride into an ambush had decided to strike out
north west
, then camp and wait for the prospector. Then he could take it from there. Now he was sure. He could see the dark peaks wreathed in mist. His eyes rarely left the range as he rode and late in the day he could distinguish the twin peaks standing together, both capped with snow. Although he seemed close the distance was deceptive and as the light began to fail he knew he would not reach the skirt of timbers at the foot of the range until the next day.

He made camp in an old buffalo wallow, watching the black horse when, free of the encumbering saddle, it rolled exuberantly in the grass. Perhaps he had misjudged the horse for it was standing up well to the hard travel, although he would know better when they began to ride the high trails. The big animal came up off its back, shaking out its mane and Alison walked over to hobble him. There was something in the black that reminded him of another horse he'd had, also a big black, but where this horse was skittish the other had been savage and half mustang. Alison had bought him in
Cheyenne
from a broke cowboy who had named the horse
Cloud Dancer
, and the name had fitted him well. You only had to stroke his flanks with your heels and he would be off and running, hooves barely brushing the earth.

He stooped to fasten the hobble strap,
then
turned back to the fire, squatting on his heels to warm his hands. Yes,
Cloud Dancer
had been a good horse until he had been shot out from under him by a Sioux. That day he had nearly lost his hair. He shivered at the memory and fed another chip onto the flames. There had been closer calls in his life and no doubt there would be again. This was a wild land peopled by wild men, and he understood enough to know the excitement of danger catered to a need in him. He liked to fight and had done since he was a boy, and the actions came as second nature to him. Although Alison loved the towns, especially their comforts, he also loved the wildness of the open country. In the city he was merely a man who was quick to voice his anger with a gun, but out here he was merely a man. No combination of men, guns, and fast horses could ever rival the adversity of nature. No matter what a man built there was always the wind and the storms to tear it down and the relentless passing of time to render the land back to its original state, eroding all traces of man's passing.

He was no builder. He was just trespassing through. He loved to ride the untamed province of nature but he would never build more than the crudest shelter. In essence he was a destroyer, a taker, and that was the way he liked it.

He huddled into his blanket against the night's chill and when the fire began to die he moved the embers a few feet away before he tossed on some more fuel, watching as the breeze fanned them into flames. Where the fire had originally been he carefully put out the remains and brushed dust over
them,
then spread his blanket on the warm ground and bedded down.