And pray to God it would fool the pursuing swine into following the wrong set of tracks.
He continued downhill, reining in his nerves and his horse, forcing himself to keep the pace to a mild haphazard trot. The trees were too thick to permit a view of anything more than a few meters away. He stopped twice to blow the horse and let it graze; he turned his head slowly in every direction in an effort to pick up any telltale sounds against the flats of his eardrums. There were various distant sounds—hoofs clattering on rock, men’s shouts, a spirited whinny—but none of it gave useful evidence whether the pursuit was proceeding east or west.
Dutch pushed his lips tight together and gigged the horse downhill at a faster clip; anyone who followed this far would not give up before catching the “riderless” horse, so there was no point continuing the deception any longer and he lifted the beast to a canter, moving as quickly as he could without raising too much sound.
He was nearly down to the river when he heard the sharp clanging chip of horseshoe on rock—behind him and not far at all. He stopped and listened.
No question those were hoof-falls, approaching steadily. Several horses—three or more.
Dutch spoke a curse in his mind. They must have split up the party to follow both sets of tracks.
He had never killed anybody that he knew of but the extreme circumstances of the moment made him think seriously about lying up by the trail with his rifle and picking them off as they approached.
A cooler second consideration made him think better of it. He might get a good shot or two but he probably wouldn’t be able to knock down all of them, and the noise of shooting would draw the rest of them. Not much future in that.
Not much future in anything right now, he thought, but there was no point quitting before you were caught.
He rode toward the river, draping the reins over the horse’s withers so they wouldn’t trail and trip the poor animal. He slipped his rifle out of the scabbard and clutched it tight in his fist, and when he came past a litter of volcanic boulders he slipped off the wrong side of the horse and teetered on the rocks, slapping the horse with the rifle’s buttstock. It continued to amble downhill toward the river.
Dutch made his way afoot across the sharp rocks, making little leaps from one to another; the important thing was not to touch any soft ground where he might leave a footprint.
Moving in that manner he came to a patch where there were no rocks. But by good fortune there was a good stout deadfall. He crawled across roots and trunk and a firm fallen tree-limb—made his way to the next string of stones and finally brought himself to the river’s edge.
The water ran several feet deep along the curve, birling against an exposed root system where it had undercut the clay bank.
It was going to be cold but it looked good enough; anyway it would have to do. Dutch slipped into the stream, sucked in his breath at the sudden frigid cold and lowered himself all the way into the water, clutching a root overhead, propping the rifle above him with his free hand; he slipped under the tangle of roots and came up beneath the cutbank.
He had to turn the rifle and swap hands to pull it lengthwise through the overhanging roots. There was no way to keep the rifle completely dry but he did his best—pressed it against the roots above his head and suspended it there with one hand until the arm got tired; then he traded hands and waited and shivered while the eddying water lapped around his throat.
He was inside a cave; his view of the world was restricted by a great many gnarled roots and he couldn’t hear a damn thing over the rush of the river but he was alive and, he hoped, invisible.
Nothing to do but figure on waiting it out here until they rode off—if he could stand the cold that long.
It was no good predicting. Either he would be lucky or he wouldn’t
It wasn’t long before he glimpsed movement on the opposite bank and moved his head forward to get a better view between roots. By shifting his face from side to side he could command a fair view of the area, a bit at a time, and it wasn’t so far away; he had a clear enough perception of what transpired then—clearer than he’d have preferred.
A dozen horsemen were gathered, all of them hooded. Several dismounted now. One dragged a man forward at the end of a lasso and Dutch saw it was Pierce Bolan. Pierce was yelling at his captors but they weren’t paying any attention. Dutch couldn’t hear what anybody said over there; all he caught was the raging high timbre of Pierce’s voice.
Dutch had to clench his teeth to keep them from chattering. It was mostly the icy cold of the water but he knew what was going to happen and he watched, because there was no point in not watching.
They tied Pierce Bolan’s hands behind him and it took four of them to boost him up on one of the saddle horses. Pierce struggled and yelled all the way but it had no effect.
Several horsemen entered the creek from this side, upstream not far from Dutch; one of them was leading Dutch’s saddle horse. So they’d found it. Presumably half a dozen others were still up on the rim chasing the pack horse.
Across the river the new bunch, leading Dutch’s horse, joined the rest. They were all wearing hoods, various colors and patterns of cloth—bandannas, bedsheets, old shirts; probably whatever makeshifts had come to hand—with big torn-out eyeholes. Dutch wondered why they continued to wear the masks when, so far as they knew, there was nobody around to recognize any of them. Maybe they were afraid someone would chance upon them; or maybe they didn’t know each other? That made a kind of gruesome sense: if you didn’t know who your fellow-murderer was, you couldn’t testify against him.
A thin man tossed a line over a tree-limb and knotted the noose around Pierce’s neck. A short man stood at the head of the horse, holding it, and a burly man, who seemed to be the leader, stood like a hunchback, hands buried in the pockets of the long coat that flapped against his ankles; that one made an indicative show of sincere regret—Dutch had to fight down the impulse to shoot the swine and to hell with consequences—and then the swine threw his head back and said something to Pierce Bolan.
Pierce shouted back at the swine, raging at him.
Dutch changed hands on the rifle, shivered in the chill water and specified to himself with dismal clear logic why there would be no good served by his interfering. They would still lynch Pierce Bolan, and they would kill Dutch himself in the bargain. It was better to live and fight again another day, Gott damn it.
The hooded swine turned away and made a sharp gesture with a swinging arm; they slapped the horse out from under Pierce Bolan and he fell slantwise and was brought up hard before he could hit the ground—brought up by a snap that whipped his head hard to one side as if it had been hit by a buffalo-gun bullet.
Dutch thought it was a wonder it didn’t rip his head clear off.
Pack broke off his labors in the office of The Bad Lands Cow Boy to go outdoors and clear his head. The words were not coming properly—he wasn’t sure what to say about the events he was reporting.
The morning sun was bright but the breeze was cool enough to make him turn his coat collar up. He saw Sewall and Dow in front of Joe’s store lashing their purchases down across their pack animals. Joe stood on the porch chewing the cud with them. Pack waved them all a hesitant good morning and was thinking about joining them when the noise of a disruption drew his attention toward the embankment.
Several men were running—in pursuit of a lone man afoot.
Pack caught Joe Ferris’s eye. It took no more than that; in a flash the two were off, racing through the side street on a course designed to intercept those men. After a moment Pack heard the drum of hoofbeats behind him and assumed it was Sewall and Dow, coming along out of curiosity.
Another foot chase; it reminded him, as he puffed along, of the pursuit of the Lunatic. The poor bewildered soul was in the asylum now.