Down From the Mountain

By Louis Charbonneau

Every step can be life-or-death.

With only a year’s experience under his belt, wagon train scout Gage Pardee knows he still has a lot to learn from seasoned men like his mentor, Culley. But Pardee has no interest in sharing Culley’s tolerance of the Native American tribes that plague their trail West. Indians murdered Pardee’s father years ago—as far as he’s concerned, they’ll always be the enemy.

Tragedy strikes when the wagon train’s legendary wagonmaster is killed in a terrible accident, leaving the fate of the entire party up in the air. The group splits, half of them retreating to the East. But a dozen wagons will continue the push West, despite sightings of Indian scouts nearby. In a landslide victory, Pardee is voted to be their captain.

But not everyone is happy about the new leadership. Pardee will face as many threats from within his group of emigrants, as he does leading them through the dangerous wilderness of the Great Plains.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781936535804

Louis Charbonneau

Louis Charbonneau, a native of Detroit, Michigan, served in the U.S. Army Air Corps in World War II. While producing a variety of fiction over more than a quarter of a century, he has also been a teacher, copywriter, journalist, newspaper columnist and book editor. Under his own name and pseudonyms, he has written more than twenty novels in the fields of suspense, science fiction, and Western adventure.

Book preview

Down From the Mountain

Copyright © 1969 by Louis Charbonneau

All rights reserved.

Published as an ebook in 2014 by Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.

Cover design by John Fisk

ISBN 978-1-936535-80-4

THE COVERED WAGON ROLLS AGAIN!*

Here are the prairie schooners, the harsh, cruel grandeur of the untamed west, the treacherous rivers and quicksands, the majestic mountains and hairbreadth passes … The writing is skillful

—Cincinnati Enquirer*

Exciting … The life of each emigrant … is poignantly accentuated by the journey West. The author shows what it must have been like … more than just interesting

—Buffalo News

An unusual Western … excellent … fast-moving. It is very readable

—Van Nuys California News

Tortuous … the action is fast and brutal"

—Western Roundup

DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAIN is more than just a good tale of the West … the reader finds he is deeply involved. The sights, sounds, smells of the wagon train are cunningly explicit so that the reader ‘feels’ the atmosphere. Fine reading

—San Bernadino Sun

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Praise for Down From the Mountain

Author's Note

Part 1: Choices

Part 2: The Hard Way

Part 3: Standoff

Part 4: Down From the Mountain

Also by Louis Charbonneau

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Historical truth is of two kinds: of fact, and of fidelity to the spirit. In DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAIN I have attempted, wherever possible, to be true to the facts of time and place. All characters and events, however, are of my own creation. So is the terrain, the general and specific setting of the story—the pass in which the climactic confrontation occurs, though its contours are familiar enough, exists on no map. But if each of these is an invention, each has, I hope, its internal truth and spiritual fidelity to American history and life. Such passes did exist. Such conflicts and challenges did occur. Such men and women climbed their mountains and met their fate.

Louis Charbonneau

Part One:

Choices

1

The pronghorn lay on his side, the pale down of his belly showing. High on his neck a small patch of brown blood revealed where Gage Pardee’s bullet had struck, dropping the buck to his knees as if both front legs had suddenly broken. Nearby, momentarily relieved of his burden, Gage’s black stallion stood at the edge of the water hole, planted in mud and water while he drank. Culley’s stubby-legged pinto, already glutted, was nibbling grass.

Culley walked away from the spring-fed pool toward Gage, his beard wet and shining in the sunlight. He wore a pleased expression behind the dripping beard to match Gage’s own feeling of waterlogged ease. They had been lucky with water this trip. The big mid-August rains had meant a few days of extra hardship and slower going for the wagons, but they had left the occasional streams swollen and the water holes high. Gage had even heard it said that the climate was changing to accommodate civilization, that the coming of more men to the West brought increasing rain as a natural consequence.

Everything had its good and bad side, of course. The river to the west would also be running strong and wide and deep when the wagons came to cross it.

Culley squeezed his beard like a woman wringing out cloth. We’re bein’ followed, he said.

Gage Pardee felt an instant prickling, like a wool shirt itching his back. He did not say anything stupid, like You sure? or How do you know?—questions he might have blurted out another summer, that long-ago first summer he was with the train, long ago just one year to be exact. Culley would never have made his quiet judgment, much less told it out loud, if it weren’t so.

Injun? Gage murmured.

Uh-huh.

Gage refrained from examining the nearby terrain in any obvious way. Instead he stretched and glanced up at the clouds scattered across the blue plain of the sky and then ambled toward the water, where he retrieved the stallion’s wet reins and pulled the reluctant horse’s head up. These movements made cover for Gage’s thoughts about the Indian and for the nudge he felt in his belly, a tight little jolt of excitement. They also allowed him to survey much of his surroundings without seeming to.

Two flat-topped ridges, lumpy with rocks, swung north and south of the water hole like the blades of giant, rough-edged twin scythes. The blades parted for a narrow opening to the west and a much wider one eastward, through which Culley and Gage Pardee had approached the water. In addition to the rocks and humps of land, and scrubby trees growing near the underground spring, there were numberless places of concealment for an Indian. They can melt right into the ground, Culley had once observed.

Gage raised his eyes toward the distant purple bar to the northwest, as if the Indian might be standing there in plain view. It was a big mesa, one of a series of steps leading to the high grassy plateau at the foot of the mountains. The mountains themselves were blue and faded now in the afternoon haze. The wagon train was going to have to climb those steps one way or another to reach the mountains, mostly by moving north or south in order to go west, the way it so often was with a train.

There was too much to take in, Gage thought, squinting narrow against the bright August sun. He had a sudden sense of the vastness all around him and of the great silence, and of how small he and Culley were, standing there with their horses in a little hole in the undulating plain. He found himself listening, as if the tiny scratchings the Indian was making with his pony would fill that emptiness and pour into his ear like thunder.

Impatiently Gage shook off the impression. The land was big, and the sun washed out the bones of the great plain with its brightness and turned the other parts, the holes and hollows, into deceptive shadows. But it could be handled, its mysteries ferreted out and exposed. The sun could hide, but it also shrank things down to size.

The Indian—or Indians—had not been able to hide from Culley’s quick blue eyes. Gage felt chagrin. He still had things to learn. Culley still saw much that he missed. And a scout not noticing Indians on his trail was about as safe as an antelope standing in a hunter’s sights, flicking flies. And less useful.

Moving without haste, Gage rejoined Culley, leading his black horse. A hunting party, you think? he asked.

We outnumber him, Culley said. He was a laconic man generally, but sometimes he had a way of saying a thing by a roundabout route, coming at it from the flank or from behind instead of directly.

When did you catch him out?

You recollect that spiny hump of rocks back a ways, near the buffalo waller?

Gage nodded, picturing the hogback of rocks. He had seen no movement there, sensed none. Damned if Culley couldn’t smell an Injun a mile off!

That’s where I seen him.

Was he doin’ a dance for you?

Culley grinned. Near enough. He paused, meditating over a long blade of sweet grass between his teeth. He’s been doggin’ us since.

Gage sifted the information for glints of meaning. He and Culley had left the granite spine, on lower ground to the south, not long before they picked up the tracks of the pronghorn. The Indian had stayed with them for the best part of an hour, which was showing more than a casual curiosity. He could be a lone prowler, tempted to mischief, following the white hunters back to their wagons. More likely he was a scout, his presence signaling the existence nearby of a sizable Indian party.

You think he’s lookin’ for the train?

They know where the wagon trail is. Culley shrugged. I’m thinkin’ he’s just curious, way a feller gits. Or might be he’s hungry.

Gage Pardee felt the nudge again. We could give him a smell, he said slowly, and sucker him into sniffin’ after it.

He ain’t doin’ us no harm.

He’s followin’, ain’t he? You can bet he’s up to no good. The young man’s voice was eager. We can get him, Culley!

Culley eyed Gage thoughtfully. Culley’s eyes were a clear sky blue, prettier than a man’s eyes ought to be, set in a face like a leather glove that has been used for working the range and worn too long, seeing too many thorns and too much dust and sweat and heat and cold. It was a long face, the nose long and slightly hooked. The damp, scraggly beard which covered cheeks and chin ranged from rust to gray to white in color, with a little yellowy-brown thrown in around the mouth from coffee stains. Culley was of average size and wire-thin; when you spent most of your life on horseback the fat tended to get worked off to the point where all that was left was stringy muscle and bone. His hands were brown and gnarled and hard, like the handle of a walking stick.

Seldom did Culley have very much to say about himself, but in two summers and a winter Gage Pardee had managed to piece together something of his sidekick’s history from chance threads, from a joke or a memory or a moment’s musing overheard. Twenty years earlier Culley had come west on the scent of gold. He had stayed because there was nothing to go back to, and because the West suited him, even though he never found enough gold or silver to pay for his time. He had trapped and hunted and got caught in the crossfire between the big fur companies. He had mined with little luck. But when the army came looking for men who knew the mountains and the Great Plains Culley was on hand and ready, as if he had spent all those years in training for the job. He served as an Indian scout during the years of the war. When it ended he hooked on as a scout and hunter with John Bollinger’s wagon trains, taking settlers from St. Louis and Independence to the great Northwest. Aside from his tour with the cavalry, it was the nearest thing to a regular job Culley had ever had.

We might get him, Culley said mildly, if he ain’t a very smart Injun. But what in blazes are we gonna have then?

What more do we need? He’s Injun, ain’t he?

Culley said nothing, but his very silence seemed a rebuke, stinging the younger man into a thrust of stubborn rebelliousness. They didn’t give my pap no seconds! I’m for smokin’ him out!

Let him be, Gage.

And let him think he’s run us off?

Ain’t nothin’ wrong with mindin’ your own business. Culley removed the stem of grass from between his teeth and eyed it without pleasure, as if it had turned bitter. Even if it looks like you’re runnin’. Looks ain’t so much account.

Gage’s jaws were stubborn. I’m not askin’ you to back me.

Culley stayed patient. It ain’t a thing you got to ask. He paused. Abruptly he threw away his chewed blade of grass and gave a hitch to his leftover army twills. Have it your way then, he growled, if you wanta smell an Injun up close so much. After you’ve smelled as many as I have, you won’t be so all-fired nosy. He started toward his pinto, then wheeled abruptly. His blue eyes struck Gage like a prod, as if searching out a weakness. You give him a chance to run, or leastwise talk.

Gage scowled, and Culley answered the scowl. An Injun’s like any other man. Or most any animal, come to that. You make him think he’s in a corner and there’s nothin’ for him to do but turn around and fight you. So don’t let him think it. You got to give him a way out, so’s he can still look at himself in a river bottom.

Why should I give a damn about him?

The old hate rose sharply in Gage, the old memory of spent bullets and powder burns on the scarred earth, and of blackened ruins smoldering in the morning damp.

Softly Culley said, We’re in the scoutin’ business, and in the huntin’ business. Ain’t neither of them the same as bein’ in the killin’ business.

Gage felt warmth in his face and neck, a thickness in his blood. You settin’ up the same kind of rules for that savage?

Culley would not be goaded. I reckon he knows ’em anyways, without my say-so.

Gage Pardee glared at his partner. Twenty years younger than Culley at nineteen, a head taller and a good twenty-five pounds heavier, besides being a sight more aggressive by nature, Gage nevertheless deferred to Culley in matters of reading sign or sniffing weather or knowing Indian ways. The knowledge that he was going against Culley now did not sit easily with him.

The thing that Gage liked most about the bearded scout, if he stopped to spell it out, was the instant acceptance Culley had shown toward him, a greenhorn kid. It didn’t matter that Gage knew next to nothing about shepherding wagons or scouting for a train, that he had no more to recommend him than an ability to stay on a horse and an instinctive hunter’s eye. Culley did not laugh or grumble to John Bollinger about having to mother a calf, or say any of the things another man might have found excuse for, words meant to cut down a youngster and make him feel fiddle-footed and useless. Quietly Culley pointed out things that had to be seen, like the animal tracks that could lead you not only to game but also to water, or the way you had to be alert to unnatural things, like a brooding silence in a canyon or a stand of trees, warning of potential danger to the silent birds and animals—or incautious men. Whenever Gage made a mistake or said something foolish, often it was a day or a week or a month later before he found it out through some mild comment Culley might happen to make, spoken as if it was a thing both men had known all along. Culley gave a man a long rope, Gage knew, not to trip him up but to let him find his way.

But in spite of all this Gage could not ignore the Indian Culley had spotted. He could not pretend the redskin wasn’t there or that he was of no account. He could not tuck his tail between his legs and explain it away as Culley did. That might be all right for Culley. Gage wasn’t saying anything against the little scout, who had courage enough to pass out leftovers. But it wasn’t right for Eban Pardee’s son.

The reminder stiffened Gage’s determination. Jaw jutting forward, he said, I’m leavin’ this prongbuck lyin’ where he is, like we mean to come back for him. But the way it’ll look, we won’t be back in any hurry. Then I’m headin’ out of here through them gates. He nodded toward the opening to the west between the encircling ridges. That Injun of yours can have a good look-see.

Gage hauled the black stallion’s head from between his legs. The horse’s big head came up with a jawful of grass and a little white edging the dark eyes. The black, whose name was Midnight, had a natural resistance to orders that was almost as strong as Gage’s. Every once in a while they had to have it out all over again, as if the stallion had to make sure that Gage was still boss. Ignoring the rolling eye, Gage mounted. He looked down at Culley. You ridin’ with me?

Culley gave his still damp beard a flip forward, so that it stuck out in a cocky, belligerent way. But there was a thin smile hiding behind his beard. Ain’t about to let you make a danged fool of yourself all by your lonesome. You figure on doublin’ back to catch him?

Gage nodded curtly.

It might work, Culley said. He scanned a tumble of rocks along the southern rim overlooking the water hole. Gage wondered if Culley had seen the Indian there or if he was just thinking. Culley had a way of looking off into the distance when he was making up his mind about something, as if he wanted to measure his thoughts against the immensity of the land or the hard clarity of the sky. On’y thing is, if he takes your bait, it’d just make certain that Injun’s more interested in puttin’ meat in his belly than he is in takin’ trophies.

With that Culley made his bowlegged way over to his pinto. Without a word or glance he wheeled the sturdy horse toward the western gates. Gage headed after him. They went single file through the opening, Gage automatically measuring it as he went through, thinking about the trap he was setting. Would the Indian walk into it? And would that simply prove that Culley was right—that the redskin offered no threat to them at all?

Past the narrow exit from the water hole Gage spurred Midnight until he drew level with Culley. For a moment they rode abreast before Gage said, You sayin’ we got no reason to find out what he’s after?

Didn’t say that. But if he’s gonna tell us, we gotta take him alive. That what you had in mind?

The question brought Gage up short. Truth to tell, he hadn’t worked it all out; he didn’t know exactly what he intended to do with the Indian. All he was sure of was that he had to make a move. For a moment Gage wrestled with an uncomfortable feeling, a sense of being pushed, of sliding into something like a man skidding downhill on snow.

I reckon that’s up to him, Gage said finally. Then he added with conviction, I wasn’t meanin’ to gun him down from ambush, if that’s what you’re thinkin’.

Culley nodded. Didn’t think you would. But you still ain’t said what you got in your head.

Suddenly Gage grinned, feeling better about things now that Culley seemed to be going along with him. I’m gettin’ more like you ever’ day. What’s in my head, I only let a little piece of it out.

Culley nodded again, not cracking a smile. Man sounds a heap smarter that way. I knowed a feller once was taken for a philosopher, way he’d just set and nod when folks was talkin’. Got so everybody would look to him for his nod, to make sure they was right. Wasn’t till he was took sick one time, and a sawbones looked him over close, they found out he couldn’t talk at all. Bit off half his tongue in an accident when he was a young’un. Culley paused in his tale, casting what seemed an idle glance toward the sun. Some folks figured it only proved how smart he really was, not lettin’ on about how he couldn’t talk. I wouldn’t suggest lookin’ back, he added without a pause, but your redskin is sniffin’ that bait you put out.

Once again Gage felt a tightening in his gut like a belly cramp. While they had been talking, their easy jog had carried them due west of the water hole for the long side of a quarter mile. A short distance ahead a shallow arroyo slashed across the plain in a southeasterly direction. A slight swelling of the land on the near side shut off the gully completely from view of the water hole.

Gage waved a hand toward the arroyo. You could take that bottom a ways, and swing around east of the water when you’re far enough along. That way the Injun won’t see you.

Don’t never count on an Injun not seein’ what you don’t want him to see, Culley said, but he didn’t make the comment sound like a strong objection. You want me to come at him from over thataway? He’ll take notice then for sure.

That’s what I want! Eagerness roughened Gage’s tone. He’ll see you long ‘fore you get close!

You can count on that.

The bearded scout pulled up at the edge of the gully. It appeared to be ten feet wide or more, widening further here and there where it was especially shallow. Fast water had scoured the flat bottom clean of any growth. In some places the ground rippled where the passing water had shaped the earth to its image.

He won’t run at you, Gage said. Hell come outen the other end, only I’ll head him off.

Culley’s blue gaze was steady, cool. It told Gage nothing. You’re boxin’ him in. That way you ain’t givin’ him a choice.

It’s choice enough if he’s friendly like you think! Gage retorted. He don’t have to fight less’n he wants to. He’ll have a chance to palaver. It’ll be his choosin’.

You ain’t thinkin’ like an Injun, the older scout said. You wanta know what a man’s gonna do when you jump him, you gotta learn to think like he does.

He’ll do the choosin’, Gage repeated. He felt that he couldn’t back down now. For a moment the notion teased him that he had boxed himself in, no less than the Indian, while Culley left himself freer to act, but anger made him shake off the thought.

Culley gave a sigh, like a parent tired of explaining a thing too often or too long. A gnarled hand pawed at his beard. An Injun’s a savage, way we look at him, he said finally. But that don’t mean he can’t see right and wrong in his own way. What you’re fixin’ to do is have him get caught stealin’ your meat, which is gonna make him in the wrong. It ain’t much of a choice you’re givin’.

Maybe he won’t stop for meat! Gage shot back. Maybe he’ll be too busy sneakin’ after us to take time for stealin’, which is where I’m puttin’ my chips!

In which case, Culley drawled, your trap don’t make much sense, and you’re bettin’ against your own self.

Gage opened his mouth to reply but nothing came out. His own hot words burned holes in his brain, exposing the hostility and anger and aggressiveness behind them. He groped for a quick, sure answer but all he could seem to think of at the moment was that the trick to catch the Indian out was worth a try—that it was better than doing nothing at all.

You’re so danged fired up about Injuns you ain’t thinkin’ straight, said Culley. Anyways, he’ll stop. Most any Injun’s been hungry enough, it’d go against his nature to pass up good fresh meat. He shook his head in a sad way, but apparently he had already made up his mind to let Gage have his run, for he went on, I reckon it’s somethin’ you gotta wash out of your system, so we better git at it. Clucking at his pinto, Culley started down into the arroyo. Over his shoulder he called back, Give me ten minutes. That redskin won’t take much longer cuttin’ up your meat.

Gage could not miss the quiet certainty in Culley’s parting words, their calm conviction that the Indian was up to no mischief—or that at any rate he should be left alone as long as he presented no direct threat. The tall young rider shifted restlessly in the saddle, uneasy with the memory of Culley’s implied rebuke—somethin’ you gotta wash out of your system came back to him. Once again Gage had a feeling close to envy for the way Culley could shrug off a challenge without concern.

Frowning, Gage urged the black stallion down the shallow incline into the gully. He waited there on the bottom until Culley turned a bend down the line and was mostly lost to sight, only his hat bobbing up now and then. Finally it too disappeared.

Ten minutes. Gage fetched the ancient gold watch which had belonged to Eban Pardee from his vest pocket and flipped open the lid. Eban had shoved it into Gage’s hand during that last moment, in the darkness of memory that seemed like a dream, just before he disappeared. Hang onto that good, Eban had said. And the child had gripped it tightly, reassured by its steady ticking during the terror of that night.

The watch had stopped again. Gage wound it and held it to his ear, relieved when the sharp, familiar ticking resumed. Too much dust got into the watch on the trail, but he was reluctant to leave it behind or even in his saddlebags. It was astounding how much dust the wagons and the animals kicked up. That was one reason why Gage had always felt that he and Culley had by far the best of it when it came to working a train. They rode on ahead to hunt or to scout the trail, ahead of the dust, often going a whole day without having to breathe any of it.

When five of the ten minutes Culley had asked for had ticked away on the gold watch, Gage Pardee rode along the shallow depression—in the opposite direction from Culley—until he was well north of the water hole. Even without looking Gage held in his mind’s eye a picture of the scythelike sweep of the ridge that framed the water hole on its northern side. That flank was higher than the southern one, its contours more broken. If a man was down by the water—where that dead antelope was lying—he would be at the bottom of a pan, unable to see the prairie immediately beyond the raised sides. Moreover, there was a coulee winding from the arroyo in the general direction of the water hole, a natural runoff in which grass grew lush and tall, offering effective cover—if not for a man on horseback, then certainly for a man alone.

That was the precise moment Gage knew he was going to leave Midnight where he wouldn’t be seen and sneak up on the Indian on foot He could not have explained the decision with any certainty, and he would not have cared to argue it with Culley. But the moment the thought popped into his head the decision was made, as if he had intended nothing else all along. There was enough grass around to keep the black horse busy—he was trying to get his head down to it every time Gage halted.

Dismounting, Gage slipped his rifle from its sling. He also carried an undersize Dragoon Colt, which bore the inscription California 1850 on its polished wood grip, and which, like the watch, had belonged to his father. Gage seldom wore the six-shooter while riding, but he dug it now from the worn leather bag on the right side of his saddle and buckled on the gun belt, seating it firmly with a quick tug. It gave him an extra six shots, but he hardly expected to need them. In the open he preferred his rifle—and its magazine carried fifteen metal cartridges, of which he had used only one on the antelope.

The rifle was a lever-action .44-caliber Henry. It had cost him fifty dollars, almost half of his first summer’s wages from John Bollinger. Gage had seen one of the repeating rifles when he volunteered in the last year of the war, against his ma’s wishes. He was called home when she became ill, and he never got to shoot at a Reb, but he didn’t lose the yearning to own one of those rifles that could fire sixteen times without reloading, if you had one cartridge in the chamber to start with. Culley, who owned an old flintlock rifle which had been converted to percussion, sniffed at the repeater. It was his idea that if you couldn’t hit what you aimed at with the first shot you weren’t likely to get another. All the same, Gage’s luck with the Henry—and the failure of the rifle to become fouled or to misfire—had quieted Culley’s dubious comments, to the extent that Gage suspected him of sneaking extra looks at the rifle on occasion.

Carrying the Henry, Gage worked his way along the zigzag course of the coulee, crouching low to keep down into the grass. He was able to approach within twenty yards of the water hole without any real risk of exposure. There the coulee petered out, the grass thinning until it died away on a stretch of hardpan. Gage lay still. There was no sign of the Indian, no sound but the wind and the grasshoppers and the whispery conversation of the tall grass, brown and dried out from the late summer’s heat Only the depth of water in the hole suggested that there had been recent rain. Elsewhere the earth sucked it all in, and the grass stayed thirsty this time of year.

Gage wondered where Culley was. A quick glance told him that the allotted ten minutes were almost up. He could hear the last seconds ticking away so loudly that he closed the lid and shoved the watch deep into his pocket, lest its racket betray him.

Raising his eyes to the fringe of his grassy cover, Gage peered toward the rim just ahead. Culley ought to be approaching now from the east. Any moment the redskin—if he was there at the water hole, stealing meat—would glance over his shoulder and see behind him one of the white men he had been following.

But what if he had shied away from the antelope, suspicious of so easy a prize? What if he had followed the tracks out to the shallow gully where Gage and Culley had split up? The possibility caused a few hairs on the back of Gage’s neck to stir. The savage would have had to choose one set of tracks to run down. Which ones?

The impulse to look back over his shoulder was irresistible. Bleached grasses stirred restlessly, for all the world as if a man crept low among them. Gage Pardee had to force himself to turn his back on this deceptive motion. Nothing was there to fear. No one stalked him. Anyway, it was too late now for assaying guesses. That was done. He and Culley had agreed what they would do. Gage was committed as surely as Culley was. He had to go ahead.

There was a temptation to think too much about himself—to pause and listen to the slamming of his heart inside his chest, to remember that he had never faced an Indian alone—or nearly alone—like this before. He had only looked on at a distance when the train stopped while John Bollinger bartered with representatives of a tribe, or once when Gage and Culley had chanced on a small band of friendly Cheyenne braves and Culley traded words with them. Those times Gage had hung back and watched, and measured his hatred of the red man against the reality of a few squat, dirty, sun-darkened men with rags and skins for cover and with flat, sullen faces. He had been hard put to find the Enemy.

He judged that his point of cover was on a line near the center of the water hole. He would have to slant to his right as he broke cover in order to cut off the redskin’s escape to the west. Then if the savage still tried to get away he would have to climb one of the encircling ridges, placing himself against the skyline as a target.

Prodded by an awareness of those ticking seconds smothered inside the pocket of his jeans, Gage hesitated only a moment longer. Then he ran forward, keeping to a crouch, wincing every time his boots scuffed the hard earth. He reached some rocks and dropped behind them. His breathing was quick—more labored than his short run justified. With an effort he held his heaving breath and listened.

Nothing. Had they guessed wrong? Had the Indian smelled the trap?

Gage had to know, and the impatience made him disregard caution. He angled up the short slope toward the nearest point of the rim. Broken rocks along the edge provided good cover. Easing up the last few feet, Gage found an open triangle close to the ground formed by the bulk of two huge boulders leaning against each other. The triangle framed a view of the water hole like a window.

His ears told him the redskin was below even before his eyes confirmed the fact. There was a quick succession of soft, hacking sounds. The flash of a knife blade gave them meaning. Gage shifted position. The Indian was framed in his triangle of a window.

He was a lean man, thinner than many of the Indians Gage had seen before, his arms and shoulders a series of stringy muscles under skin as dark and red as polished mahogany. He wore a belt tied in front to hold a wedge of animal skin in place over his loins. And moccasins. Otherwise the muscular body was naked. His hair was a black mane falling to his shoulders, bound by a headband to keep it from his eyes and face.

He was the first Indian Gage had seen up close who looked like a warrior. Like the savage killer Gage had been waiting fifteen years to meet.

In the moment Gage saw him through the natural window the Indian froze in position like a hunting dog on point, his knife arrested in mid-air. He stared eastward. Slowly he rose from his knees into a half crouch.

Gage Pardee’s gaze jerked from the Indian to the animal at his feet. He saw the raw flesh of the dead buck, sliced into strips, and a section of hide peeled forward, and the bloody upraised knife. An unreasoning hatred boiled through Gage like sickness erupting from a queasy stomach. As the redskin pushed to his feet, Gage knew for certain that Culley was in sight.

In one swift motion Gage rose and jumped away from his rocky cover and butted his rifle hard against his shoulder. If it’s meat you’re after—! he yelled.

He never finished. The Indian reacted quicker than Gage would have believed possible. He whirled, his eyes flashing toward Gage. There was no break in motion, no fatal hesitation, no gesture of appeal. In the instant he was racing on light feet like a sandpiper along a wet shoreline toward his spotted pony. Without thinking Gage fired, but even as his finger squeezed off the shot he knew that he was shooting at feathers and letting the bird get off clean. The naked brave vaulted onto his pony in one swift leap. His heels flapped hard. At the same time Gage was running down the slope to cut off the escape route to the west, knowing that his shot would have Culley spurring his pinto forward. On the run down the steep incline Gage tried to lever in another shell, but his hands were shaking and his steps jarred on the high-heeled boots, jolting him enough to make the rifle’s action balk. Damn! Gage fumed. He’ll get away!

By then he was down onto the flat bottom of the little pan by the spring-fed pool, and he was there ahead of the redskin on his pony, cutting him off. For an instant Gage thought the Indian would bolt up one of the sides of the pan, risking another shot. But the pony reared wildly, jumped once with a twisting motion, and plunged straight at Gage.

He could hardly make out the Indian leaning low over the pony’s neck, becoming one with him. The pony’s black mane and the Indian’s black hair fused into one bobbing mass. There was a blur of hide and skin melting together, and a flash of white teeth—the pony’s or the redskin’s, Gage could not sort them out. His hunter’s deep-rooted revulsion against a blind shot that might as easily hit horse as rider made him hesitate for a split second after he succeeded finally in levering a shell into the chamber. Then it was too late.

Gage jumped as the charging pony ran him down. He felt the wind and heat of the charge. As he fell to the side his rifle came up instinctively, held out in front of him like a bar to blunt or parry a blow. Reeling, Gage had a blurred image of the Indian separating from the neck and shoulder of his plunging horse, the naked torso leaning far out while the brave somehow clung by his heels and one precarious handhold in the pony’s mane. His right arm swung free, and the hand still gripped the knife red with the prongbuck’s blood. The knife slashed toward Gage as the redskin raced by. Only Gage’s reflex lifting of the rifle saved him. Instead of stabbing toward his throat the knife blade glanced off the rifle barrel and sliced across the knuckles of his right hand.

Tumbling along the ground inside a barrel of dust, Gage lost his rifle. He felt a coolness on the back of his hand but he did not yet grasp the fact that he had been cut. He knew only that he had been outmaneuvered and—face up to it!—outfought. Beaten by a savage with a knife, though he carried rifle and six-gun!

The drumming of hoofbeats broke through Gage’s confusion as he rolled. He came to his hands and knees and scrambled into a crouch, ready to jump. His hand clawed downward toward the Baby Dragoon Colt in its holster. He was facing in the direction the Indian had taken, but all he could see was dust clouding the gates of the western opening. Whirling toward approaching hoofs, Gage was in time to see Culley’s pinto skid to a halt. Culley lit on the ground running