Susan was out there. Burgade’s eyes went wide. He saw Provo shouting, making gestures. Provo had a grip on Susan’s wrist. She was trying to run; Provo held her back. Burgade hardly spared the two other men a glance; he didn’t care who they were. He saw Provo bend down and butt his shoulder against Susans midriff and straighten up with Susan across his back in a fireman’s carry, one arm across the backs of her knees; carrying her like that, Provo turned and ran back toward the other two men. The fire rushed forward, obscuring things in smoke, but Burgade caught fragmentary images: the three men wheeling through the smoke, jogging away from him—
—Provo was running into the fire!
In that sudden split moment of time he knew. Provo had not panicked. Provo had judged the speed of the flames, the sparse grass it fed on. Provo knew the fire had been set to drive him up this way. And Provo hadn’t fallen for it. Provo was going through the fire—he would break out of it, behind it, and run across the burned earth into the trees beyond.
He had a brief glimpse of one of them leaping high, running desperately, boots plunging through the low flames. Then they were gone—through and beyond, hidden from him by the blaze.
His eyes stared without believing. The whipping flames rushed forward—smoke began to burn his throat. His eyes started to water. Got to think. Get a grip. His head jerked around to the right—three of them had gone into the trees up that way. Possibly they’d seen the muzzle-flame of his rifle, shooting Riva down. He had to move away from this spot, keep from being ambushed. He swung his feet over the deadfall and went swiftly back deeper into the forest, lugging the Springfield and the glasses. He kept moving uphill; the low white moon ran along with him, above the treetops.
Out of breath, he stopped on a slope and looked down. Through the trees he could see the fire’s tail whip around, curling toward the trees off to the left. It would hit the rain-logged ground and the damp floor of the forest, and burn itself out against that moisture; not much chance of a forest fire catching. He searched the lower woods for movement. There was a good chance of picking it up against the firelight beyond.
He saw movement in two or three places but inspection proved it was only Riva’s horses, dashing around in fear. Burgade leaned against a tree and gulped wind. His chest heaved, his leg muscles trembled. Think.
Provo had got away with Susan. Over on the far side. Instinct urged him to get over there as fast as he could and get after them. But a cooler second thought stopped him. No good to go after Provo with these three over here behind him. They might spot him, rig a crossfire. No. The thing to do was take these three out of the fight first. The fire had separated them from Provo. Fear would be working on them. They wouldn’t be thinking about Provo, or Susan, or even Provo’s gold. They’d be thinking about flight. Afraid of hidden guns in the dark forest. Get away from here—that was what they’d want.
Flight meant horses. Those three would be coming down this way, where Riva’s horses had entered the trees. They’d come not for Burgade but for the horses.
That was it, then. Get close to the horses and wait for the men to come. Burgade nodded. His breath had evened out. He began to work his way down through the timber.
The horses were easy to follow. Innate herd-habit had drawn them together and they made plenty of noise, banging around in the trees. As soon as they had got beyond smell of the smoke they had begun to calm down. When Burgade caught up with them they were moving slowly through the forest, starting to browse leaves and grass tufts. Three were saddled. In a short while they began to mill. He counted six, and that gave him pause: there had been nine to begin with—the other three had drifted off in some other direction, or Provo’s men had captured them. In the latter case, it meant no one would be coming after these six horses. Not for quite a while, at least.
The chances were diminishing: he cursed the shift, but there was no point speculating about those missing three horses. He’d picked his strategy; now he had to play it out. If nobody came looking for the horses in an hour or so, he’d have to try something else, but in the meantime—Lord Jesus!
He wheeled on his feet and stared back the way he had come. Of all the fool stupid things to do … The ground here on the hill was still dew-damp from last night’s downpour. His own tracks, superimposed over the prints of the idling horses, were clear for anybody to follow. Right out in front of God and everybody. You’re getting senile.
Well, he could hardly try to wipe them out, he’d only be obscuring the horse prints too.
He was old, he was dead tired, and it took him four or five minutes standing there in the silence to figure out what thirty years ago he’d have done instinctively. It left him profoundly depressed, more so than before, because now for the first time he felt the crawl of uncertainty in him as his self-confidence, which was the one thing that had kept him going, began to drain. He had pumped himself full of arrogance: now all of a sudden he was allowing himself to realize how poor his chances really were—of getting near Provo at all, of getting Susan away, of even staying alive through the next six hours.
He knew what to do to solve the immediate problem. The knowledge didn’t cheer him, because it had taken him such a long sluggish time to work it out in his head. Provo wasn’t going to give him that kind of time. So he did what had to be done, but he did it without heart. He kept on walking boldly ahead until he was within a few yards of the horses and they had stopped grazing to peer at him in spooky suspicion. Then, where one of the horses had stood and churned up the ground a little as if waiting for a rider to get mounted, he dug his right boot-toe deep into the earth, to leave a sharp toe-print of the kind that might have been left by a man putting his left foot into a stirrup and pushing himself up on his right tiptoe to get mounted.
Then he backtracked, carefully. Walked backward in his own tracks, careful to put his weight on his heels. He backed up until he was beside a mossy patch of rocks. Stepped to one side onto the rocks, leaving no tracks, and faded back into the woods, walking on brush and deadwood, leaving no sign that a casual eye would discern. He circled close in alongside the track again and posted himself at a crouch, hidden from the trail by heavy bushes and tree trunks but within three or four feet of the line of his own footprints. He cradled the rifle and waited for them to come.
He was counting on the three of them coming together—not in a tight-packed bunch, but spread out behind another for mutual protection. But it would work as well if fewer than three came; it would only mean he would then have to find whoever hadn’t come this way, and that would take longer. He was up against the factor of time, partly because time would fray Provo’s nerves, partly because he himself needed sleep badly and could not go much longer without.
He didn’t trust his old brain: he worked it out step by step in his mind to make sure he had not made some stupid mistake. Assume all three of them came, looking for the horses. In the moonlight they wouldn’t have counted the number of horses by the tracks; they wouldn’t know whether there had been six horses or seven. They would come along here, following the tracks, following Burgade’s bootprints. The bootprints would make them wary and they’d be spread out quite wide of each other, but at least one of them would be on this trail. Or they’d be single file, separated. In the former case he’d jump the nearest one and try to put him away silently, without alarming the others. In the latter case he’d let the first two go by and then jump the third one, then close in behind the other two while they reached the sudden end of his bootprints. They would assume Burgade had mounted one of the horses and ridden away on it; by the time they spotted the fact that there were no hoofprints leading away from the six remaining horses, Burgade hoped to be on top of them.