Fielding’s left thumb and first two fingers found the head of the needle in his hatband. His right hand stayed free as a decoy. As Pence raised his arms and moved in for the bear hug, Fielding pulled out the four-inch needle and plunged the blade into the center of Pence’s abdomen, right below the spot where the ribs met. After a second, he pulled the needle back.
The eyes widened in the beefy face as Pence straightened up and drew back, his arms widening and falling away. Fielding hit him with everything he could put into a right punch. Dropping the needle, he followed with a left. Pence seemed to be dazed but stayed on his feet, moving back a few inches with each heel. Then he gasped a breath and lunged forward, mauling with his big fists until he caught Fielding on the left side of the head and knocked his hat off.
Fielding pulled back to avoid another punch. He ducked, moved, and came up. Pence seemed to be fighting on instinct, coming after his opponent with sheer power. Fielding went low, came in under the taller man’s grasp, and drove his shoulder into Pence’s midsection. The man let out a groan of pain and slammed a fist into Fielding’s kidney area. Fielding lifted with his shoulder, pushed back, and sent the big man sprawling on the ground. The tall hat rolled aside, and Pence struggled onto his left elbow.
Fielding saw a small dark spot forming on the man’s shirt, but he knew he couldn’t wait and see whether Pence was bleeding inside. He piled on as the man’s right hand moved toward his pistol butt.
Pence reached up and grabbed Fielding’s chin between his thumb and fingers. With his left hand he reached for Fielding’s hair and closed his fingers.
Fielding smashed at the heavy face and pulled back, getting his head free. Then he pushed up and away, ready for Pence to rise.
He did not think Pence knew how close he was to the edge, for the man got his legs under him and took half a step back as he came up. He had nothing but a backdrop of empty air as Fielding planted a foot and feinted.
Pence raised his fists and stepped back, then clawed the air as he fell out of view.
Fielding stood away from the edge, pulling in deep breaths and trying to steady his hands by leaning over and placing them on his knees. In a couple of minutes he felt calmed down enough to look over.
Pence lay a ways uphill from the rest of the wreck. He was sprawled out facedown with his head turned to the side.
Fielding stepped back again, found Pence’s high-crowned hat, and sailed it over the edge. After picking up his own hat, he looked for the needle until he found the shiny blade in the dirt. As he poked the instrument back into his hatband, he thought, it was just a little hole, and it didn’t go all the way through.
Chapter Thirteen
Up on top again with his remaining horses, Fielding sat on a log to collect himself. He drank from his canteen and wished he could find a place to wash up. The horses nearest to him, the buckskin and the gray, showed no curiosity, but he knew he was dirty, bruised, scraped, and disheveled. When he had rested awhile, he stood up and brushed himself off with the flat of his hand. He tucked in his shirt and straightened his trouser legs, then rubbed his face downward with his hands. He had to get going again.
Of the many thoughts that crossed his mind as he rode along, one was that Pence had picked a good place for his sabotage. The drop-off was as steep as anywhere along the trail, and the rocks at the bottom would do what the initial fall didn’t. If Fielding had wanted to go down in there, he would have had to descend from farther up or down the trail and then pick his way through a boulder field. From there he would have had to carry anything he wanted to salvage. He supposed at least one of the two crossbuck packsaddles had been smashed, and even if he were able to haul out some of his gear, he would have to leave it somewhere near the trail until he came back this way. As for the cow camp supplies, he was sorry for that loss, and he did not know how much of it he could recover or would be willing to carry up out of the canyon.
He could think about the practical considerations because he had to, because he was in business and had obligations. But as soon as he let in the additional circumstance of Pence’s body being down there, the whole prospect became even less feasible. He did not want to be picking through dead horses, mangled gear, and ruptured flour sacks with a dead man nearby drawing flies. Furthermore, he would make a good target down there, while his saddle horse and pack animals were up here. Putting all these things together, he decided to call it a complete loss and leave things as they were, for someone else to figure out. Meanwhile, he still had goods to deliver.
The men at the Half Moon cow camp did not ask questions, and Fielding did not elaborate. He said he lost two horses with full loads in a canyon the day before, and they said they could get by for a while on what he had come through with. He ate dinner of fried venison with them as his horses rested, and in the early afternoon he started back. That night he camped in the same place as the night before, in a stand of timber about a mile off the trail. He was getting used to not having a fire, and he didn’t need to camp near water if he was going to keep the horses tied up all night.
In the morning he got a good start on the day, as he was traveling light and had fewer horses than he did a couple of days earlier. He watered the stock when he came to a stream, and then he moved on.
At midmorning he came to the spot where he had rested with the horses after the fight with Pence. He stopped this time as well, letting the animals take a breather before he took them on the narrow trail down the mountainside. After a short while, he got them moving again.
His practical tendencies had not let go. For the last two days he had been nagged by a sense that he should try to go down and recover some of his equipment after all. But when he came around a bend in the trail and saw buzzards floating above the chasm, not much more than a stone’s throw straight out from the ledge, he chose to ride past without even looking over.
Going down a grade such as this one was slow and tiring, even with light packs. Fielding came out at the bottom in early afternoon, and half a mile farther he found a place where he could take the horses to the creek. The water was backed up with a pool here, as a result of debris from the gorge piling up against the rocks and a fallen log. Waterside bushes grew up out of the damp sand, and green scum lay along the edge of the water. Insects skimmed across the surface, and greenish yellow bee flies buzzed a foot above the slime. The horses drank. Fielding listened for noises out of place but heard none, only the flow of water and the shifting of horses.
He envied the animals for their ability to ignore everything but the moment. He could remember a time, not so long ago, when he, too, could take things a step at a time and not be burdened with thoughts of what he had come through and what lay ahead. Maybe he could do that again. He did not know. At present he had all too clear a sense that two horses and a man lay bloating in a sunbaked canyon upstream from here, and a boss down in the valley would want to know how things had gone.
Fielding listened again. It was quiet here, sometimes too quiet. He recalled stories of men who stayed too long in the mountains and heard trains. It was something to laugh at in this far country of mules, horses, and shank’s ponies. Fielding had been content to haul merchandise he could lift onto a horse’s back, and he had been happy to leave the railroad far behind. Trains, as he had heard a few days earlier, brought machinery and pianos so that men could crush rocks and sing in whorehouses. Now here he was in the mountains, where he was supposed to be able to get away from the weight of civilization, and it seemed as if he was packing it right along with him.