Appaloosa

31

It took the train more than a half hour to get around the far bend and stop and back up. Cole stood on the back platform of it and said nothing as he watched the riders move away south down the dry wash. He stayed where he was and said nothing for the full half hour after the riders were no longer in sight and the train had gone around the bend and stopped and backed slowly up. When we got back to the water tower, Allie wasn’t there. Virgil stepped off the train and walked toward the wash. Stringer started to walk after him.

“Stay away from him,” I said.

“The bastards said they’d leave her here.”

“They’re safer if they got her,” I said.

“You knew they were lying.”

“We both knew,” I said. “But there wasn’t nothing to be done about it. “

“We got to discuss this,” Stringer said.

“Discuss it with me,” I said. “Don’t try to talk to Virgil.”

Stringer stared after Virgil.

“We got no horses,” Stringer said. “We can’t go after them on foot.”

I nodded.

“We’ll go back to town and get some,” I said.

“Quicker Cole gets back here,” Stringer said, “quicker we’re on our way.”

“He won’t come back,” I said.

“Won’t come back?”

I shook my head.

“Wait for me,” I said and walked after Cole.

Cole was standing on the little bridge over the wash, looking south down the wash.

I said, “We got no horses, Virgil.”

A half mile or so away, the wash curved slightly west and you couldn’t see down it anymore.

“I’ll ride the train on to Yaqui and get some.”

Cole still held the Winchester exactly as he had held it when he was talking to the Sheltons. He was squinting into the sun as he looked southwest along the wash. His face, half shielded by his hat’s brim, was without expression.

“I’ll bring the horses back here,” I said, “and if you ain’t here, I’ll follow you down the wash.”

Cole turned suddenly and walked off the bridge and began to edge down the side of the dry wash.

“You leave the wash,” I said. “Leave me a sign.”

Cole didn’t answer or look at me. He started walking southwest along the flat bottom of the wash, looking at the tracks in the dirt. I went back and got aboard the train.

We didn’t get to Yaqui until after six that night. Stringer, being a deputy, could roust people around a little and, even though some of the stores were closed in Yaqui, I was on the way back to Chester by 8:15 with three horses and a pack mule carrying supplies. There was a good moon, and the stars were bright, and all I had to do was follow the tracks.

32

When I got to the water tower, the moon was nearly down, but the sky to the east was still dark. I let the horses and the mule drink from a trough near the windmill. There was nothing moving in the wash. If I started down there now, in the dark, I couldn’t read the tracks, and if Cole had left me a sign, I might not see it. This wasn’t going to be a quarter-mile horse race. This would be a long ride. Long rides went better when you didn’t hurry. I tethered the animals, gave them some feed, and ate a can of peaches. I sat down with my back against the railroad shed and slept for a while, facing east, so the sunrise would wake me up. Which it did. It was slow going down the wash, trailing three animals. I thought about driving them ahead of me, but that would have wiped out any tracks that the Sheltons, and Cole, left. Next spring the wash would be roiling with water until summer. But right now it was dry as dust, with the little rivulet patterns of the spring torrent showing on the bottom. The hoofprints from the Sheltons’ horses were clear enough, and among them I could see Cole’s boot prints. They had a twelve-hour start on me, but sooner or later I’d catch up with Cole, and then, sooner or later, we’d catch up with Allie.

I had matches wrapped up in oilcloth in my shirt pocket. I had a Winchester in a saddle scabbard under my left leg, and the eight-gauge under my right. I had two canteens slung over the saddle horn. I had a .45- caliber Colt on my belt and a bowie knife. Wrapped in a slicker and tied behind my saddle was a change of clothes. Cole would have to make do with what he was wearing. I had ammunition and food and water and whiskey and a few sundries on the mule.

The tracks were clear enough. There was nothing out here and no reason for anybody to be here. Nobody else had ridden the wash for a long time. There were some coyote tracks mixed in, and some antelope spoor. As the wash turned west, I could feel the sun hard on my back. It was getting hot. The horses weren’t tugging on the lead anymore. The mule had been on a lead all his life and the extra saddle mounts had fallen into his rhythm. I drank a little water. The sun was halfway up toward midday when the wash petered out onto a flat plain. The tracks stayed west and then got hard to follow in the scrub that covered the ground. I had to get off my horse to follow them, leading all four of the damned animals. Pretty soon they’d be riding me.

It was past midday when I came to a pile of stones about a foot high. I stopped and squatted and looked at it. Beside it, on the ground, was a smaller pattern of stones in the form of an arrow. It pointed south. I scattered the stones, remounted, and turned my animals south, and we moved on. I didn’t need to track much anymore. I knew Cole would leave me directions. And he did. Some mesquite freshly cut. Some dry sticks pointing south, bigger growth with a prominent slash. In the late afternoon, I found him, near a shale outcropping, sitting on a rock, beside a marshy-looking water hole, with the Winchester in his lap, his boots off, and his feet in the water. He watched me ride up, trailing the animals.

“Everett,” he said.

“Virgil.”

“Might as well get down,” Cole said. “We can camp here. Water’s good, and”-he nodded at the outcropping-“we can shelter a fire if we stay by the stone.”

I unloaded the mule and unsaddled the horses and put them on a loose tether so they could drink and forage for food among the scrub. Then I built a fire against the outcropping and put out food for supper, and squatted on my heels and started to cook. Cole never moved from where he sat with his feet in the water, until the thick slices of salt pork began to hiss in the frying pan. Then he put his boots on and came to the fire with a limp that barely showed. He poured himself some coffee.

“Whiskey in that saddlebag,” I said.

He got the bottle and poured some in his coffee.

“You?” he said.

I held out my coffee cup, and he poured some whiskey into it. Each of us took a sip, first blowing on the surface of the coffee so we wouldn’t burn our lips.

“Stringer getting a posse up?” Cole said.

“Talking about it when I left Yaqui,” I said.

“You found my stones.”

“Yep.”

“Scatter the arrow?” Cole said.

“Yep.”

Cole sipped more of his coffee.

“Good,” he said after he swallowed. “Don’t want no goddamn herd of cowboys and hardware clerks stampedin’ around out here. Getting in our way.”

When the salt pork had cooked nearly through, I dropped some biscuit dough into the grease and let it fry, and turned it once, and took the fried biscuits and the salt pork and put them into tin plates.

“They ahead of us?” I said.

“Yep. Probably widened the gap today. Me walking and all.”

“Twelve,” I said, “fifteen hours.”

Cole nodded.

“They know we’re behind them?” I said.

“Sheltons know me,” Cole said. “They know I’ll be coming.”

“We pla

“Got to sleep,” Cole said. “We ain’t going to catch them today.”