Suddenly our horses snorted, stamping and tugging at their picket rope. Getting up, I went quickly among them, quieting them, but listening as I moved.
Something was out there... but what?
We did not awaken the others, waiting for what would develop. The horses were wary, apprehensive of something, yet they did not act as they would if there were wolves. As the horses quieted, I left them, listening into the wind to catch the slightest sound.
From the camp of the Cheyennes, there was no sound.
I could see the faint, reddish glow of their fire, but nothing more.
So we waited out the night. Toward morning I dozed near the fire, awakening only to stir it up for cooking our breakfast meat.
Ebitt picked up the canvas pack, hefted it, then looked inside. He glanced at me.
"Did your wolves come back? A slab of bacon's gone." Degory Kemble glanced at me, then walked over and slowly inspected the ground. Our own feet had trod so much upon the grass that no other tracks could be seen.
"It was no wolf," Cusbe said, showing us the rawhide strings. They had been untied, the bacon taken.
"It's them thievin' redskins," Bob Sandy said. "Give 'em a chance an' they'll take the camp away, and everything that's in it." "Is anything else missing?" Talley checked, as we all did. A small sack of meal was gone, and perhaps a half pound of powder that had been left in a sack.
"Odd," Talley muttered. "There was a full sack alongside, and my bullet molds and some lead. That wasn't touched." We exchanged a look, and then Solomon Talley shrugged. "A thief who takes only the small things," he said, "and not much of that." "But a thief good enough to Injun into our camp whilst it was watched," Davy Shanagan said.
"I've a thought it was the Little P." Cusbe Ebitt snorted. "There's an Irishman for you! Something he can't explain and it had to be banshees or the like! I'd say we should move out." We saddled up, and saddling Kemble told of the distant shots we'd heard, and of something moving in the night. Nobody had any comment, but when I rode out to take the point, Buffalo Dog was with me, and he had heard the shots.
The land was vastly broken now, with jagged upthrusts of rock here and there, a difficult land to guard against, for at every step there were places where an enemy might hide, and a man must ride always ready, and no dozing in the saddle or depending upon the other fellow.
We were a hundred yards ahead of the others, entering a gap between low, grassy hills, when Buffalo Dog pointed with his rifle.
For a moment I did not see it, then I did.
Blood upon the grass, blood still wet.
Isaac Heath was closest of them and he came riding to see what it was. He looked at it.
"You heard shots, all right, and whoever was hit was hard hit. That's a sight of blood." Buffalo Dog was looking up the slope, studying the brush and rocks at the top. Leaving Heath to point the column, the Cheyenne and I went up the slope, our rifles carried ready for a quick shot if need be, yet even as I rode I was agreeing with Heath. Whoever had lost that much blood was not going far.
Nor was he.
We found him among the first rocks. He was a slender man, well made, wearing buckskin leggings but a uniform coat, badly torn now and stained with blood.
We looked slowly around, but he was alone, and no horse was with him, nor any tracks of a horse. Kneeling, I turned him over, and he was dead, his sightless eyes turned wide to the sky.
He was a white man, and he clutched a worn skinning knife... nothing else.
Buffalo Dog scouted about, but I looked at the man. Here was a strange thing, a mystery, if you like. Who was he? How had he come here? At whom had he been shooting? Or who had shot him?
The man's features were well cut... he looked the aristocrat, yet when I saw his hands, I could not believe that. The nails were broken, the fingers scarred, the hands calloused from hard work.
Davy Shanagan came up the slope.
"Ah, the poor man! But where did he come from, then? There's no chance he was alone." "There was at least one other," Talley said dryly. "The man who shot him." "Aye," Cusbe agreed. "That's a bullet wound. And in the night." He glanced over at me. "And no Indian, or he'd have lost his hair. There's something a bit strange in all of this." "Captain Fernandez," I suggested, "was farther north than he should have been. Farther north than he had a right to be. Could he have been chasing this man?" "That's a Spanish uniform," Talley agreed. "He may be a deserter." Carefully, I turned back the coat. There were pockets on the inside, and in the right side pocket there was flint and steel and a stub of pencil. There was blood on the pencil, blood on the edge of the pocket. I glanced at the outflung right hand, and there was blood on it, too.
The column of our people had halted in the gap below, and Solomon Talley turned toward them.
"We'd best move on," he said. "This is no place to be come upon by Indians." He went off, moving swiftly, and Cusbe followed. Shanagan moved after them. "Leave him," he said. "What difference does it make whether it's wolves or ants? It'll be one or the other." Buffalo Dog was prowling about. I opened the man's shirt, feeling something beneath it. A gold medal, hung from a gold chain. A fine thing it was, of fine workmanship, and not the thing any casual man would have.
I took it from him, and then noticed the ring with its crest, and took that. In a small pouch under his belt there was a square of paper with a crudely drawn map upon it, three gold coins, and two small silver buttons each bearing a Maltese Cross. I didn't recognize any landmark on the map.
I pocketed the pouch after placing the ring and the medal within it. If there was any way of discovering who the man was, these small clues might help.
Buffalo Dog rode back to me, and dragging the man's body into a crevice in the rocks, I piled brush over it. There was no time for anything else. Yet the puzzle would not leave me.
In the saddle, I indicated the man's body.
"Could you trail the killer?" I suggested.
He shrugged and we rode back to the others. The last of the Indians was just coming through the gap and Walks-By-night was with them.
Buffalo Dog went off toward the head of the column and I began scouting around, cutting for sign, as they say.
Walks-By-night joined me, and I told him what we had found.
"Who killed him?" I wondered, "And why?"
CHAPTER 8
Walks-By-night let his eyes scan the slope of the grassy hill. "He walks there, I think, where the grass is bent." He had better eyes than I, for at the distance no bent grass was visible to me, but riding closer we found a trail. And there were drops of blood upon the grass.
It was then I told him of the missing bacon, meal, and powder. He listened, saying nothing, obviously puzzled by a thief with opportunity who took but one slab of bacon, and only powder but no lead.
"Either we have a thief who took only what was desperately needed or one who did not wish to carry more than that." "It was not this man," Walks-By-night said.
A thought occurred to me. "The shots had to come a few minutes before four o'clock, and something was bothering our horses about that time. Whatever or whoever stole our bacon and meal evidently was outside of camp when the shots were fired." He stared off into the distance, and after a moment held up two fingers, then made the sign for together.
The bacon thief and the dead man together? "If they had been together," I suggested, "they must have had a camp last night." Warily, we backtracked the wounded man.