His mood was so docile he refused to allow the intrusion of any thoughts about the sharpness of the woman’s tongue.
Dutch leaned back in the saddle to ease the horse’s downhill passage and tipped his tattered hat back to expose his face to the warm sun. A taste of early spring; it would be a fine afternoon on the prairie. With luck he might shoot a brace of grouse or partridge to bring to the house as a peace offering to the woman.
At the bottom of the river gorge was a wide stretch of tree-shaded flats. He threaded through the groves, enjoying the shade, listening to the birds. Sound and scent of the rippling river quickened the horses’ gaits. Dutch gave them their heads. They trotted to the bank; Dutch stepped down and let them drink their fill from an eddying pool that looped out to one side from the main flow of the Little Missouri. He washed his face and drank. It was fresh and cold the way he liked it—melted snow off the Black Hills, warmed by the spring sun in its shallow journey across the plains; in another week or two, unless there was a new cold spell, the melt would fill the river with a torrent. But not yet. Just now the level was only middle-high.
Dutch filled his canteens and walked out on the rocks as far as he could in order to squint at the ford a hundred meters downriver.
It looked all right; the splashes of white foam were there to indicate that the bottom lay close to the surface. It was always sensible to examine such places before plunging into them because you never knew when a floating log might come along and smash a deep cut through what once had been a pleasant stirrup-high walk across.
He was leading the horses toward the crossing when he spied a strange phenomenon coming toward him from the trees at the base of a rainbow-striped butte to his left: a man afoot.
After a moment it became clear the pedestrian was Pierce Bolan. Dutch stopped and waited with a knowing grin while the Texan trudged forward.
Pierce Bolan was sweaty and limping, and empty-handed; he had his hat, clothes, boots and holstered revolver but that was all.
“Listen, you old Dutchman, you don’t need to look so pleased at a man’s misfortune.”
As always, Dutch had to filter the words through the dictionary of his mind, converting them one at a time into German before he could make sense of them. One time the stoutfrau, in exasperation, had wailed about how he had been in North America for damn near half his life and he still couldn’t speak or understand English worth a damn. Why, she demanded, did she have to go and pick the only man, red or white, on the plains who had absolutely no calling for languages?
“Horse you throw?”
“Naw. I didn’t get pitched off. Stopped to take a squat, forgot I was riding a half-broke Indian mare, left her hitched to a twig, and the next thing I know she’s spooked by a butterfly and half way to the next county. I don’t mind the horse and I don’t even mind the walk home but that was my good Winchester rifle and my second-best double-rig saddle. You come across a spotted blue mare with my rig and rifle on a Mandan saddle blanket, I’ll be obliged for the return of same. Spread the word for me, will you?”
“Yah. That I do,” Dutch agreed, knowing as well as Pierce did what the chances were of having the goods returned in this sort of country. “But come on, Pierce, we can double ride. How long ago horse spook? We catch.”
“Last I saw she was on the dead run for Montana and that was three hours ago. No chance of catching up now, but I’m obliged for the thought.”
It was a few miles from here up a draw to Pierce’s ranch. It would make a pleasant ride in the unusually warm sun. Dutch said, “Come on, then, get up—I you home take.”
Pierce smiled. “Much obliged.” Then something caught his attention past Dutch’s shoulder. The way Pierce froze made Dutch turn and look that way.
They were coming downriver, visible at intervals between clumps of intervening trees; they were half a thousand meters away, riding bunched up in a solid-packed column of threes, about two dozen horsemen cantering forward at a businesslike clip. There wasn’t much dust right along the river where they were riding and even from here Dutch had no trouble seeing the hoods they wore over their heads.
In a calm voice Pierce Bolan said, “Dutch, get the hell out of here.”
“Both of us. Come on—you up climb.”
“I’m respectable, Dutch. They don’t want me. It’s you they’re after. They still think you shot up the Markee’s house—they’ve put the word out on you. Listen, get out of here. I’ll flag them down and palaver, give you a little jump on ’em. Maybe I can talk sense to them. Go on—on the run now.”
The riders had seen them now; they were lifting their horses to a menacing gallop and Dutch didn’t have to do much translating in his head in order to appreciate the wisdom in Pierce’s judgment. Dutch flashed a grin of gratitude at the young Texan, grabbed up the pack horse’s reins, leaped aboard the saddle animal and spurred urgently toward the ford.
He skewed among trees, splashed across, came heaving up out of the river and as he went up into the cottonwoods on the east bank he hipped around in the saddle to look back.
Half the crowd flowed around Pierce Bolan in a closing circle. The rest were coming straight for the ford on the dead run. They had guns up and there was no more time for contemplation: Dutch rammed his horses into the trees, ducked to keep from being decapitated by a low branch and galloped recklessly ahead, bent low over the saddle, dragging the pack animal at full gallop.
He had a good lead when he came out of the trees and ran up the dry creekbed of a tributary coulee; it curled around an acute bend to the northeast and he knew he would be out of sight of the pursuit for at least a little while; the knowledge steadied him enough to allow him to reason ahead. When he had climbed six or seven hundred meters into the coulee with a cresting rib of sloping ground on either side he took the risk of slowing the pace long enough to take a good look down the backtrail.
Gott im Himmel.
They were coming—at least ten of them, thundering up the creekbed.
One of them lifted a rifle one-handed and Dutch saw smoke puff from its muzzle; a moment later he heard the faint crack of the gunshot.
He had no idea where the bullet went but it left no doubt of the hooded horsemen’s intention.
Dutch hauled his two steeds to the right, spurred frantically and yanked on the tow-reins, urging them up over the hump of land that separated this canyon from its neighbor. They went halfsliding over the sloping rim, hoofs scrabbling for purchase against clay and shrubs. He lost his hat and heard more gunfire before he was over the crest; two or three bullets ricochetted off objects close enough to make him flinch from the noise.
Out of their sight-line he fled down into a tangle of shallow gullies where artesian pressure had encouraged the growth of scrubby trees that stood twice as high as a man—a considerable stretch of forest for these parts, and a Godsend to Dutch. The pursuers would expect him to continue eastward for the high ground and try to out-run them across the flats of the high plateau; so he whipped the pack horse savagely away uphill, fired two shots in the air that helped propel the frightened beast on its way toward the crest and turned his own mount sharply downslope—west: back down toward the river.
He trotted through the trees; it was cool in here away from the sun. He chose a meandering aimless-seeming path that would leave tracks like those of a riderless horse that was following its natural inclination to wander toward the smell of fresh water.