Dog trotted out in front of them as they crested a ridge above Ghost Valley. Early rays of sunlight cast eerie shadows on the snowy forest floor, while a curious silence surrounded both horsemen.
"Some of 'em will be comin', lookin' for the two I shot," Buck said.
"Let them come," Frank snarled, fighting back the pain racing through his shoulder and chest. He wanted to end things between himself and the gunslicks, but he had to remember that Conrad's safety was the most important thing and he couldn't let personal grudges get in the way.
Buck shrugged. "I'll get as many of 'em as I can, Morgan, only it's gonna be a helluva fight if they all come at us at once."
"I've never been in a fight that wasn't hell," Frank told him. "Never had an easy one in my life. But you don't have to take a hand in this. I can handle it myself."
"In the shape you're in? You'd have a hard time swattin' a fly."
"I've never had an easy road through life."
"Don't reckon I have either," Buck recalled, guiding his pinto around a snowdrift." Gettysburg was the worst. Never saw so many dead men in my life. I coulda been one of them. Took a ball in my leg. Ain't been able to walk quite right ever since, but I was always thankful I didn't wind up dead like so many of 'em did."
"No such thing as an easy war," Frank said, keeping his eyes on the trees below as they rode over the lip of the valley to begin a steep descent.
"Hold up, Morgan," Buck said quietly, jerking his pinto to a halt.
"What is it?" Frank asked, unable to see any movement in the trees.
"Way down yonder, maybe half a mile or so. I just saw a man on a horse."
Frank reined his bay to a stop, trying to find the movement Buck had seen. "I don't see a damn thing," he said a moment later.
"He's gone now. Coulda been one of them Injuns, I suppose, or it might be one of Pine's boys."
"Will the Indians bother us?" Frank asked.
Buck shook his head. "They stay to themselves. A year can go by when me an' Karen don't see hide nor hair of 'em. Once in a while they'll show themselves, but it's only when they take a mind to."
"Are they the Old Ones, the Anasazi?"
"Can't say for sure. Main thing is, they don't bother nobody."
"I hope they stay that way until this business between me and Pine and Vanbergen and his damned hired guns is over. I don't need any Indian enemies now."
"Most likely they will stay out of it. All these years I been up here, we ain't had no trouble out of 'em. Hardly ever see 'em, matter of fact."
" Let's keep moving," Frank said, heeling his horse forward. "I don't see anything down there."
Buck merely nodded and urged his horse alongside Frank's to continue their slow trek toward the snow-laden floor of Ghost Valley.
Suddenly, Frank saw the outline of a man on a horse, he was wearing a bowler hat. Frank swung his horse into the trees and said, "I see one of them."
"I seen him too," Buck said softly. "Looks like an Easterner wearin' that derby."
"He's real careful," Frank observed. "He's no Easterner by the way he uses cover to hide himself."
"I'll flank him," Buck suggested, easing his pinto away to the east. "Remember, there could damn sure be a bunch more of 'em somewheres."
"I don't need a reminder," Frank said, pulling his Winchester from its saddle boot.
He jacked a shell into the firing chamber and sent his bay down the slope at a slow walk. The pain in his shoulder seemed less.
* * * *
Cletus knelt over the bodies of Bud and Coy, examining the blood and footprints in the snow. What puzzled him most was the pair of moccasin prints near one of the bodies.
He glanced around him. Maybe Frank Morgan wore moccasins when he was out in the wild.
"Don't make no damn difference to me what's on his feet," Cletus muttered.
A moment earlier he'd thought he'd saw a pair of riders on one of the high ridges, but now they were gone. In the light of early morning, it was hard to tell. He supposed it could have been a couple of those Indians he saw when he found this hideout of Pine's and Vanbergen's.
"A man's eyes can play tricks," he said, moving back to his horse to climb in the saddle. "But if it is Morgan, I'll kill the son of a bitch an' take that money. He'd damn sure better have that money with him."
Cletus mounted, collecting his reins, listening to the silence around him, watching everything.
"It's damn sure quiet," he said to himself. "Downright unusual for it to be so quiet."
He urged his horse up the snowy slope, resting the butt of his ten-gauge shotgun on his right knee. If anyone showed up in front of him, he'd cut them to shreds with his Greener shotgun and take off for Texas with the money.
Two hundred yards higher up the incline, a voice from the forest stopped him cold.
"Hold it right there, pardner. Drop that damn goose gun or you're a dead man!"
Cletus thumbed back both hammers, aimed, and fired in the direction of the voice. One barrel bellowed, spitting out its deadly load of flame and buckshot. His horse shied and almost lunged out from under him, until he finally got the animal under control.
"That was a mistake, pardner," the same voice said.
Half a second later, a rifle barked from the pines east of him, he saw the yellow muzzle flash just as something popped in his right hip, sending tiny tufts of lint from the hem of his coat flying into the air.
"Shit!" Cletus cried, flung from his saddle by the force of impact from a ball of lead.
He landed on his side in the snow, wincing, and his fall caused the second barrel of his shotgun to go off harmlessly toward the treetops.
His horse galloped away trailing its reins, and Cletus understood the danger he was in almost at once. He was wounded, lying in a small clearing, with a gunman taking good aim at him from a spot Cletus couldn't see clearly.
"Bushwhackin' bastard," he croaked, beginning a slow crawl toward a ponderosa trunk with blood running down his pants leg to his right boot.
The rifle thundered again, its slug missing him by mere inches, plowing up a furrow in the snow behind his head before he could make the tree.
Cletus made the ponderosa and looked down at his leg. He was bleeding badly.
Taking stock of his situation, he quickly realized how desperate his circumstances were. He was wounded in the hip, without a horse, trapped in a cluster of pines.
"How the hell could I have missed seein' the bastard," he asked himself. Years of manhunting had given him good instincts for this sort of thing.
He knew he had to stop the bleeding from his wound. He took a faded blue bandanna from around his neck and gingerly tied it around the top of his thigh.
"I've gotta move ... he knows where I am."
Painfully, yet carefully, Cletus began to crawl between the tree trunks, hoping he could find his horse. As he inched across the snow, he reloaded his shotgun.
* * * *
Buck heard the twin shotgun blasts and the rifle shot, and he jumped off his horse in a clump of small blue spruce trees not far from the spot.
"Morgan found him," he whispered, leaving his pinto ground-hitched.
He crept forward with his buffalo gun cocked and ready, unable to see who Morgan was shooting at.