Mustang Man (1966) (17 page)

There were no other bodies, no horses, no gold, no Penelope.

Penelope? ... A little chill caught me in the chest. Suppose she had killed him?

Suppose it was she who'd shot him in the back, then followed him up and shot him in the chest to make sure of his death?

Who else could get that close? ... And where was Penelope?

Chapter
14

I left the place and rode to the west, cutting back and forth for sign. Almost a mile out I found where several horses, two of them heavily loaded, had crossed a wash, their heels sliding in the mud.

At intervals then I. found sign; but I'd been following for scarcely another mile when in, glancing around to study my back trail, I thought I saw another trail off to the right. Riding over, I did find another trail--a lone rider keeping well off to one side, and often stopping beside a mesquite bush.

Obviously, somebody had been scouting along the trail of the bunch of horses. I had no idea who the lone rider might be, but I knew Penelope had the horses, and I was sure there were no strange tracks among that lot.

Of the original group against us, I did not know which ones had survived, and were able to ride. Perhaps all of them.

It was just shy of noon when I found the other trail.

The new trail showed four riders coming in from the south, and a couple of the tracks were familiar ones. They belonged to some of the Bishop crowd. Who, then, was the lone rider following Penelope?

The trail held steadily west, then suddenly it ended in a maze of tracks.

Drawing up, I stood in the stirrups and gave study to the ground.

The pursuers had lost Penelope's trail, and in trying to find it again had chopped up all the ground with hoof marks. Circling, I tried to pick up the trail of the lone rider again. From the way he had been acting I had an idea that he was a good tracker, and as he had been ahead of them, he was most likely to discover where Penelope had gone.

She had ridden into a belt of soft sand where tracks leave no clear impressions.

Then she had evidently seen some herders coming with a flock of sheep and had simply ridden on ahead of them, keeping track of the direction they were taking and staying ahead so their tracks would wipe hers out.

The herd had been headed west, which was her direction, but I wasn't satisfied.

She would not want to go north, for in that direction it was too far to any town where she could be sure of protection from the law. West was all right for her, but it was almost too obvious. Cimarron was over west, and she might head for there ... but she might not. I found myself wishing I knew what she and Mims had talked about before he was killed. That old man knew this country and he had probably told her a good deal.

Those sheep were a good cover for her tracks, but it was likely Loomis, Bishop, and the rest of them would follow right along until they caught up with the sheep, and then they'd find her tracks. Yet I could not be sure of that. Suppose she turned off?

This girl was showing herself uncommonly smart. She was all alone now with three hundred pounds of gold, two pack horses, and a spare saddle horse, for she must have Mims's mount with her. She would outfigure everybody if she could, and I had a hunch she would leave that sheep herd at the first chance. She was, without doubt, riding a good way ahead of it. With that much gold she would be suspicious of everybody and taking no chance even with the herders.

So I held to the south edge of the herd, keeping an eye out for tracks. The herd was heading for a patch of junipers and pifion that lay ahead. There was good grass and. A lot of good grazing on the slopes around those trees. A mile or more this side were twin peaks, with a low hill standing north of them.

When I got to that low hill I drew up and studied the ground. The sheep had passed north of it, but there were scattered tracks out from the flock, as there always are, and dog tracks among them. There was no sign of a horse track, but somehow I was not convinced.

Skirting the hill, I rode up between the two buttes that lay south of it. I'd been on the dodge too many times myself to ignore such a place. If she turned off between those buttes the sheepherders would have their view of her cut off until they passed the buttes, and by that time she could be under cover. They would not know which way she had gone.

On the far side of the buttes I suddenly came on several horse tracks, one of which I recognized. Yet I had gone on half a mile farther before I found more.

She was using every bit of soft sand or hard rock she could find, and she left practically no signs.

Now the thing to figure was where she would be going. Cimarron was closest; if she bypassed that she could go through the mountains and turn north to Elizabethtown, or ride on to Taos. Each mile of this would be dangerous, but she had nerve, and evidently she had a plan. It was my hunch she would skip Cimarron.

Well now, here was a girl out of the East who was making fools out of the lot of us. One young girl, all alone, with four horses and three hundred pounds in gold, cutting across wild country toward ... where?

Her trail was plain enough, so I lifted the dun into a canter and followed as rapidly as possible. She was hours ahead of me when she crossed the Canadian, but she was moving her pack horses too fast. Carrying a dead weight such as gold was harder than carrying a rider.

We were riding in cattle country now, and sooner or later she was sure to come up with some cowhands. Sure enough, she had, and did the smart thing. She swapped her horses for three fresh and better ones. But before she did the swapping she left her gold cached out in the hills.

She'd been gone less than an hour when I came into their camp. Right off, I noticed her horses in the remuda. They were beat, for they'd been ridden hard, and she had been smart to trade them off.

Me, I asked no questions at all. Like always, they invited me to set and eat, and whilst eating I made a swap for my dun. I was in no mind to let the dun go, and told them so, and they let me have a fresh horse that I could swap back for the dun at any time, they said. And that I meant to do.

"Ridin' far?" one of them asked, I shrugged. "Yeah. Headin' to Mora to visit kinfolk. Name of Sackett."

"Heard of them." They looked at me with interest, for Tyrel and Orrin were known men in New Mexico.

The last thing I wanted those cowhands to know was that I was following Penelope Hume. They'd never tell me anything if they knew, for they'd all be on the side of a pretty girl, for which I'd not blame them.

"Seen a party of men north of here," I volunteered. "Look to be huntin' somebody."

The horse they traded me was a short-coupled black with some Morgan blood, and a good horse by any man's standards. Riding out of their camp, I came upon the place where she had left the gold hidden while making her horse trade. She had loaded up, pack saddles and gold, and lit out as if the heel-flies were after her. Likely knowing she'd lost time, she wanted to get on with it.

Now I thought of Fort Union ... she was headed for Fort Union. There were soldiers there, and she would be safe. The difficulty was that there would be a lot of questions asked about a young girl traveling across the country with all that gold.

But her tracks led right by the Fort, and by then I was actually within sight of her from time to time. I had no idea whether she had seen me, but if she had she knew she was headed for a showdown. I still wanted to know who had killed Harry Mims--shot in the back, at close range. Of the lone rider I had seen nothing in all this time. Nor had I seen anything of the others.

Suddenly I knew exactly where she was going. She was headed for Loma Parda.

The little town on the Mora Biver was rough and bloody, a resort for the soldiers at Fort Union, and for any number of drifters, male and female. They knew me at Loma Parda, but for her to ride into Loma with gold was like a lamb going to visit a lot of hungry wolves.

Chapter
15

When she reached the town I was no more than four or five miles behind her, but there was simply nothing I could do. By the time I got to the town her horses were turned into a corral and Penelope had disappeared. It seemed the last person she wanted to see was me.

Avoiding the saloon, where I knew Penelope would not be, I went to a Mexican eating place down the street from Baca's. It was an off hour, and they were glad to see me. They knew me there, and the woman who came to wait on table shook her head when she saw me and said, "Senor Nolan, what do you do to yourself? You are tired!"

Glancing around, I saw myself in the mirror, a big, rough, bearded man who needed a shave, a bath, a haircut, and new clothes. He also needed about three nights of sleep.

"Senora," I said, "have you seen a girl--a girl with several horses?"

"Ah? It is a girl now? Si, I see her. She rode in today, only a little while ago."

"Where is she? Where did she go?"

"Go? Where did she go?"

"Go? Where can you go in Loma Parda? She did not go, she is here."

"Where?"

The senora shrugged. "Here ... somewhere. How should I know?"

From where I sat I could look down the street and see anyone who moved, so I ordered a meal and stayed there, eating and drinking coffee and trying to stay awake.

There was not much out there in the street at this hour. In a little while the town would wake up, the soldiers would come in in one of the rigs that carried them over from the Fort, or they would hike, as many preferred to do. The town would be wide open. It was a town where killing was the order of the day, where the idea of gold would set the place afire. And somewhere in the town was Penelope, and three hundred pounds of gold.

Where did I fit in, anyway? I had given her a chance to get away, given Mims the same chance; but he was dead, murdered. And Penelope had not wasted any time looking for me, nor left any sign for me. And she had come here, to the least likely place. I couldn't even imagine her knowing of this place.

Rightfully, a piece of that gold was mine. I was the one who'd found it, I got it out of there, and now here I sat with about four dollars in my pocket and a nasty scar on my scalp to show for all I'd been through.

And then for the first time I remembered the money I'd been paid for guiding Loomis and Penelope. Fifty dollars ...

I wasn't broke, then. Fifty dollars was nigh onto two months' pay for a cowhand, and I'd known a few who had worked for less. While I sat there thinking about it, I saw Noble Bishop ride into the street. Jacob Loomis was with him, and Ralph and Sylvie Karnes. They come riding up the street, looking right and left, dusty and beat-looking, their eyes hot with the fire that only gold can light.

They did not see me sitting there, and if they went to the corral the big black horse would not be familiar to them.

But where was Penelope, and where was that gold?

And then I started to get really mad.

I'd been riding my fool head off, a good man had been killed and a couple of others less than good, and all for what? So one big-eyed girl could walk off with the lot, a girl with no more claim to it than any one of us. What if Nathan Hume was a relative? The gold had been buried for years, and without me she would never have had it.

I got up from the table so fast I almost upset it, dropped a half-dollar beside my plate, and started for the door.

The senora ran after me. "Wait a minute, senor! Your change!"

"Keep it. Feed me sometime when I come in here broke."

It was hot outside in the late afternoon sun, but I did not care. I strode up the street and pushed open the batwing doors of Baca's saloon. Baca himself was standing at the bar, and I saw his eyes turn to me, narrowing slightly.

"Baca," I said abruptly, "there's a girl in town who came in this afternoon, and she's hiding out somewhere. You know everything that happens in this town--I want that girl, and I want her quick!"

"I am sorry. I--"

"Baca, I'm Nolan Sackett. You know me."

He hesitated. Within call he might have fifteen, twenty tough men. If he called them I was in for one hell of a fight. But right then I didn't care, and I think he realized it.

"She's down at Slanting Annie's. Not her crib--her cabin. You take your own chances. She's got a gun, and I hear she's ready to use it."

"She won't use it on me." But even as I said it, I wasn't sure.

I walked outside. The sun's glare hit my eyes like a fist, and I stood blinking.

The anger was still in me, and I wanted only to see Penelope and know the truth.

I had fought for her, helped her escape, found the gold for her--and then she had gone off on her own.

Mims was dead. Had she killed him? How else could anyone have come up on him?

These thoughts went through my head, but in the back of my mind I didn't want to believe it.

Slanting Annie's cabin was under the cottonwoods on the edge of town. I walked down the dusty street, wishing I had a horse. No cowhand worthy of the name ever walked far on a street if he could avoid it, but there was no time to get a horse and the distance was short. All the time I knew that Bishop and the others were in town and would be hunting the girl, and me as well.