The Ferguson Rifle

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 Cheye

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 ski

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.

He had fallen several times, but each time had struggled to his feet.

His back trail led us to a saddle in the low hills where we approached with some care. The Cheye

After a moment, he motioned me forward. Coming down from the hill, he slipped to the back of his horse and we crossed the saddle into a shallow, grassy valley. At the head of the valley, not two hundred yards off was a small clump of cottonwood and willow, and the greener grass of a seep or spring.

Two antelope were near the spring. They moved off as we drew near, evidence enough that no one else was close by.

Yet among the trees we found the remains of a fire, a faint tendril of smoke rising, and when we stirred the coals, a tiny gleam of red still existed.

Carefully, I looked about. Day-by-day my small skills in the wilderness were returning, and I was gathering more by watching and listening.

Walks-By-night held up three fingers, and swiftly made the signs for man, woman and boy.

"A woman? Here?" It was incredible. He showed me the print of a riding boot, too small to belong to anyone but a woman.

There had been four horses, but the horses were gone, and there were no packs. We knew the whereabouts of the man, but what of the others?

Five men had come here searching. Walks-By- Night studied the ground with care, and then as we rode away, he explained. Much of it I had seen myself, but I could not read sign with his infinite skill.

"Five men come in the night... they find nothing." "Then there's a woman and a boy out here alone?

We must find them, my friend." "You know her?" He was puzzled by my anxiety. "She is of your people?" "She is a woman alone, with a boy. She will need help." He asked many questions, and I tried to explain.

No, I did not want the woman as a woman.

I did not know her tribe.

Obviously the idea was foreign to him, for to most Indians any stranger was a potential enemy, and chivalry, by our standards, was alien to their thinking.