Last Train to Bannock [Clayburn 02] (13 page)

    "I decided to do my sleepin' on the trail," Blue told him nastily. "You usually got more work for me soon's I show up."

    "That's so," Clayburn admitted, and stood up dusting snow from his trousers. "Right now you can finish filling your belly and get to work riding flank over on the left."

    He assigned Roud to the right flank, Haycox to ride drag, and rode on ahead as the wagons got moving.

    The wagon train entered the pass after the midday meal. Clayburn was scouting well in advance when it began to snow again. At the same time he spotted the tracks of an unshod pony crossing his path.

    They led to the east, and unlike others he'd spotted these were fresh tracks, their imprints sharp in the frosted snow and beginning to fill up with the new snow. Clayburn's head turned quickly, his narrow eyes following them to where they vanished behind the curtain of falling snow-flakes. His strong cheekbones and the line of his jaw became more prominent. He drew the carbine from its scabbard, reined his sorrel to the right, and followed the tracks.

    He rode tensed, knowing that his prey might also be hunting him. Visibility was cut by the big soft flakes coming down steadily in the windless air, increasing the danger of being ambushed. It forced him to move slowly, though the tracks were filling up fast.

    He had followed them for half an hour, as they cut around to the south, when they finally disappeared, blanketed under the fresh snow. Clayburn pulled up and for a few moments scanned the white world around him. Then he rode on through the maze of snow-shrouded boulders and pines, circling behind the wagon train and up the other side of it. He came across no further sign of his Indian.

    Coming in sight of the wagon train from the west, Clayburn caught up to Ranse Blue riding flank.

    "I just hit the tracks of an Indian pony," he informed Blue flatly. "Nice fresh ones this time."

    Whatever the effect of this on the old buffalo hunter, he didn't show. "You were wonderin' where they were. Now you know."

    "No," Clayburn said slowly. "I only know
one
of them's too close for comfort."

    Blue looked at him sourly. "Never knew an Apache to travel alone-not for long. You're a bettin' man. I'll give you odds there's more where he came from, not more'n five hours ride from here."

    Clayburn shook his head. "I don't bet against a pat hand."

    "He'll just have himself a good look at us, make sure how many guns we got before hightailin' it off to his war party with the good news. Then they'll all be pay in' us a visit."

    "Maybe. Depends how many guns
they've
got."

    Clayburn was looking across the moving wagons to the east. Jim Roud was supposed to be over there, riding the other flank. He wasn't there. In spite of the falling snow he should have been close enough to be seen.

    "Where's Roud?" Clayburn asked tightly.

    Blue looked off in the same direction, and scowled. "Dunno… He was over there last time I looked."

    "Exactly where'd you see him last?"

    "Back there by that break in the rocks. Where the big lightnin'-blasted pine is." Blue did not point. "Maybe Roud saw somethin' in there and went for a closer look."

    "Yeah… that's what I'm afraid of. I'll go look for him."

    "Maybe I better come with you."

    "No. Stick with the wagons. If I'm not back by dark, pick a safe campsite."

    "And if you don't come back-ever?"

    "I'll be back," Clayburn told him as he turned his sorrel away. "Only the good die young."

    "You're gettin' older by the minute," Blue said, but Clayburn was already out of earshot.

    He didn't ride directly to the east. Instead he went west until Blue was swallowed up behind him by the falling snow. Then he turned south, riding a long circle behind the wagons. He cut north again when he was well east of the wagon train, beyond sight of it.

    When he came to the narrow defile through the rocks where Blue had last seen Roud, Clayburn stopped his horse and dismounted. He tethered the sorrel inside a thick stand of high juniper and continued on foot, taking his carbine with him. Moving in a crouch that gave him the protection of the rocks and bushes along the way, he came in sight of the split and charred pine trunk Blue had mentioned. He squatted behind a clump of gooseberry bushes and scanned the bottom of the defile that cut east from the pass.

    If Jim Roud had turned away from the wagon trail there, his tracks had been smothered under the falling snow.

    Clayburn remained where he was for a time, considering the possibilities; not liking any of them. Then he moved on, keeping just below a humped line of ridge, following the direction of the defile. His finger was taut against the carbine's trigger guard. Every twenty yards he paused to scrutinize all possible cover within sight. The defile widened and grew deeper, then opened into a crosscut ravine through which a shallow rock-choked stream rushed down through the mountains. Clayburn eased himself into a cluster of snow-covered rocks for a look into the ravine below.

    Jim Roud lay face down in the stream, the back of his head and body showing above the white foam of the water. His arms and legs were sprawled out from him, toes touching the near bank, hands almost reaching the other bank.

    A heavy knot formed in the pit of Clayburn's stomach. His eyes dulled. The lines of his face became slack, then slowly hardened again.

    He bellied down in the snow and stayed that way, very still. Roud was dead and nothing could be done for him. To go down to his body now would be pointless, and could be suicidal.

    Roud's horse was not in the ravine. Clayburn studied the dense thicket of pine, juniper and balsam on the other side of the stream. The Apache might have taken Roud's horse and be on his way by now. But Clayburn didn't think so. Thinking with the mind of an Apache, if he had killed Roud he would wait within sight of the body-long enough to see if anybody came looking for Roud.

    If a single man came searching, he would wait till the man got to Roud's body. Then there would be two bodies in the stream, and two horses to take away as booty-something for a warrior to boast of for the rest of his life.

    If more than one man came, an Apache could easily slip away in that thick forest on the other side.

    Clayburn stayed where he was, hidden among the rocks, not moving though the intense cold began to numb the flesh of his face and hands. He scanned the thicket opposite for any unnatural line of shadow, any snow dropping from a shaken bough. He saw nothing, but he was a very patient man on occasion. Snow began to cover him, merging his form with the general whiteness all around.

    The limit of the time the Apache would wait was reached, and passed. The wagon train was getting farther away. If anyone was going to come looking for Roud, he should have come by now. It was time for the Apache to relinquish his ambush position and take word of the wagon train to his bunch.

    Clayburn continued to wait, gambling that someone
was
there on the other side of the stream, and that he wouldn't go off by merely fading deeper into the forest. There were easier ways out of the ravine, for a mounted man.

    He was giving himself ten more minutes of waiting when a dense tangle of balsam on the other side of the stream betrayed movement within. An Apache warrior emerged astride a spotted pony, leading Roud's horse and carrying a rifle in one hand. He paused for a glance at Roud's body in the stream, and a swift survey of the surrounding area. His searching glance moved directly over the rocks among which Clayburn lay, without seeing anything that alerted him.

    Clayburn could have shot him then. He wanted to. But he wanted more to find out first the location and size of the band the Apache belonged to. He waited till the Apache turned his pony and started up the ravine along the stream bank. Then he squirmed backward out of the rocks and hurried to his horse. Mounting up, he rode into the defile. Reaching the ravine, he crossed the stream without looking at Roud's corpse.

    When he got to the other side, he found that the snowfall was already obscuring the trail left by the Indian pony and Roud's horse. Clayburn kneed the sorrel to a faster pace, squinting ahead to make sure he didn't approach within sight of his quarry. When the tracks became more distinct he slowed the sorrel a bit, but not too much.

    It was dangerous, trailing an Apache warrior that close. Apaches had a habit of watching their back trail, and they learned ambush technique from the cradle. But with it snowing like this, to drop back farther would be to risk losing the tracks entirely. Clayburn kept the distance between them what it was. But he rode with the carbine ready in his hand, his finger close to the trigger.

    The Apache's trail led out of the north end of the ravine and cut east with the stream. It entered an expanding gorge with rising walls along which stunted scrub pine sank roots among great outcroppings of rock. Clayburn followed the tracks east for over an hour. Then they turned north, still following the stream.

    The stream angled and twisted, now east, then north again. Following the tracks beside it, Clayburn caught sight of a pass farther east of him-the pass up which Adler's wagons would be coming. The stream-and the Apache's trail-cut nearer to the pass, then away from it, continuing upward through the mountains in the same general direction as the pass but never exactly parallel to it.

    The approach of dusk began to make itself known-early because of the overcast sky. About the same time the falling snowflakes diminished. It continued to snow, but less thickly. This meant that the tracks Clayburn was following filled up more slowly. He was able to see them farther ahead-and at the same time drop farther behind the Apache without losing his trail.

    But it also increased the danger of the Apache seeing that he was being followed.

    Before long Clayburn began to suspect that the Apache
had
spotted him. The tracks ahead cut away from the stream for the first time, angling up a rugged incline toward a high, long cliff. As Clayburn left the stream behind and approached the cliff he saw the farthest tracks led into a break in a massive outcropping of rock.

    He slowed his horse, studying the outcropping through the lightly falling snow. There didn't seem to be any way out of it. His hunch that the Apache was laying an ambush for him began to pluck more determinedly at his nerves.

    Of course, he could be wrong. But he'd learned long ago that it was healthier to have all your wrong hunches on the safe side. Twisting the reins, Clayburn angled the sorrel away from the direction of the Apache's trail, aiming for a place a bit to the left of where it entered the rock outcropping.

    He kept the sorrel to a walk until just within accurate rifle distance of the rocks, considering the difficulty of aiming through the falling snow. Then, abruptly, Clayburn wrenched the reins right, kicked hard with his heels, and kept kicking. The sorrel leaped to its right and broke into a flat, all-out gallop. A split second later a rifle shot cracked out-much too late. A spout of snow rose and collapsed yards behind the speeding horse.

    Hunched low over the sorrel's neck, Clayburn kept it racing for all it was worth, wrenching it now to the left, now to the right, in an utterly unpredictable zigzag course. Twice more the Apache fired at him. One shot kicked up snow under the sorrel's belly. The other winged over his back. Seconds after the last shot Clayburn and horse were under a shielding overhang at the base of the outcropping. The only thing the Apache's shots had accomplished was to let Clayburn know where he was.

    Without pausing, Clayburn slid from his horse and sprinted to the left till he reached a tight little gully leading upward. He climbed upward swiftly, hugging the bottom of the gully to conceal himself below its shallow sides. The problem was that just as he knew in general where the Apache was, so the Apache had a good idea of where Clayburn was. And the Apache was bound to be swiftly changing his position, too.

    By the time the gully came to an end under a big spur of rock, Clayburn could only be sure that his enemy was still somewhere to his right. He scanned the convoluted and haphazard formations in that direction as much as possible without showing himself. The Apache was nowhere in sight, and there were dozens of folds and crannies where he might be.

    According to the strategy of such a hide-and-seek duel, the Apache should at that moment be working his way up higher among the rocks. The man higher up always had the advantage, the better chance of spotting the man below first.

    Clayburn hesitated. Then, instead of continuing upward himself, he crawled under the spur and began working his way to the right. He moved with infinite caution, seeking the protection of overhead ledges and projections, pausing every few seconds to look behind him and through cracks and openings above. Where necessary he squeezed himself under giant fists of rock or crawled through narrow fissures-always conscious that the Apache might suddenly appear where he wasn't looking, with a clear shot at him. He was aware of an intensifying sensation of numbness in the small of his back, as though the nerves there were preparing themselves for the expected sudden impact of a fast-moving chunk of lead.

    But he also knew that his enemy would be under the very same strain. They were each both hunter and hunted.

    When he was several yards past the area from which the Apache had fired at him, Clayburn stopped and studied the rocks above. If his calculations had been right, his man was somewhere up there, and looking in the other direction for him. If so, there was a chance of coming up behind him, or at least getting close to him without being spotted. Uncomfortable
ifs
, but ones by which he would have to live or die.