The Threepersons Hunt

Porvo said, “You don’t try to stop a man got a rifle pointed at you.”

Watchman swiveled on both heels. “What rifle?”

Porvo turned to Eddie. “You get a look at it Eddie?”

It was an effort for Eddie to speak; he had to conquer a reluctance, a resistance to the uniform and the stranger. “Guess I did.”

“Well?”

“Saddle gun,” Eddie said. “Lever. I think maybe thirty-thirty.”

“Where the hell did he get it?” Watchman felt a little anger. “That’s all we need, him batting around up there with a rifle.”

“Prob’ly figured he needed one,” Porvo said with oblivious logic.

“You know where that puts him legally?”

“I’m just a country cop. Where’s it put him?”

“Dead or alive,” Watchman said. “He’s a fugitive on a capital-crime conviction. He’s armed—anybody can shoot him on sight. They were right after all. He’s stupid.”

“Man,” Porvo said softly, “ain’t nobody around here going to shoot Joe Threepersons. These are his people.”

“He steals some more horses, his people are likely to start losing patience with him.”

“Oh I don’t imagine he’ll steal any more horses,” Porvo drawled with an odd little smile. “Prob’ly next time he’ll just ask for a horse and the man’ll give it to him. You kind of wasting your time, you know. You ain’t going to get Joe.”

“Whose side are you on, Porvo?”

“Come right down to it, I guess I’m on Joe’s side.” Porvo met his eyes guilelessly.

“He’s a convicted murderer.”

“It was a white man he killed. You know, hell, you’re an I

“I’m a cop,” Watchman answered. “So are you, if you ever get around to remembering it.”

“I ain’t no Uncle Tomahawk.”

Watchman got the topographical map of the Reservation out of his car. He spread it out on the hood. Water had beaded on the wax finish and made dark discs through the back of the map. He leaned on his hands, studying it.

Porvo laughed quietly in his throat. “Man if you need a map of this country you ain’t never going to find him.”

2.

A county sheriff’s car made a roadblock across the highway. A deputy sat on the front fender in the blaze of early afternoon sun. There were dark sweat patches all over his khaki shirt.

Watchman drew his car up by the county car’s bumper. The deputy squinted through weather-whacked blue eyes. “How do.”

Watchman nodded. He didn’t get out of the car.

The deputy said, “You got traffic duty?”

“Detective division.”

“Looking for that killer?”

“He’s on horseback. You may as well call this off.”

“I’d have to check with my dispatcher.”

“You do that.”

“Anyhow,” the deputy said, “he ain’t going to show himself around here. Even a lizard knows enough to stay out of this sun.”

“You could have been down on the desert. Fifteen degrees hotter down there.”

“Yeah. Ain’t I lucky now.” The deputy bestirred himself, slid down to his feet and walked toward the door of his car. When Watchman drove off the deputy was reaching inside for his radio microphone. In the mirror Watchman saw the deputy’s hat brim turn, indicating his interest in Watchman: What’s that Indian doing in a state trooper’s uniform?

The sun made the world brittle and blinding. Ahead of him U.S. 60 ran straight up the plateau. Perspective narrowed it to nothing and beyond that in a lavender haze stood the summits. The rain had gone on. Tufts of cloud hung here and there in its afterwash.

Tiny in the distance a truck came toward him from the east, appearing and disappearing at intervals with the rises and dips in the road. It skimmed forward on top of the heat mirage, which made ponds of the paving. The sun beat hot reflections off its windshield. Presently it loomed, tossing a mane of oil smoke. Watchman gripped the wheel when the truck went by: its passage shook his car and the wind of its wake made his wheels shimmy on the damp road. When its diesel stink was out of his nostrils he began to breathe again.

The road two-laned up through piñon and juniper hills that looked like orchards because of the size and separation of the small trees. A barbwire cattle fence ran along beside the road on the right. There wasn’t all that much decent graze up here; it took fifty acres to support one steer in this kind of country but the Apache tribes had plenty of acres. Not as many as the Navajos but then there were five thousand Apaches on this Reservation and there were maybe a hundred and fifty thousand Navajos up on the Window Rock. It made you wonder.

He found the turnoff. A pair of ruts forked away from the highway, went through the fence across a rail cattle guard and disappeared into the hills. He went that way, bouncing in the ruts.

The dirt track bisected the route Joe Threepersons had probably followed on his stolen horses. Ahead of him the foothills started to crumple and heave toward the dark forested high country; the land wasn’t as harsh and arid as his own Navajo country but it had its own kind of drama.

He drove slowly across three or four miles of wagon track. The undercarriage of the Plymouth was taking a beating from the rocks. In the damp earth he saw tracks of cattle, deer, javelina, bobcat, coyote, jackrabbit, lizard and snake. Evidently no human foot had trod this ground since the invention of the beer can. A hawk drifted above the trees some distance to the south. Two Herefords browsed in the brush near the track; they watched him drive by, chewing, swishing their tails at flies.

The noise of his approach startled a little gather of whitetail deer that bounded away in alarm. He kept watching the earth for signs of the recent passage of a herd of horses. He didn’t expect to track on foot but at least he might get an indication of the fugitive’s direction of travel.

By the odometer it was six and three-tenths miles from the highway to the point where he found the spoor of the stolen horse herd. Too many of them to make an accurate count possible. Now of course the question was whether Joe Threepersons was with the herd. He might have split off on his own in some other direction, riding one horse.

But he hadn’t. If you knew horses you knew that. These horses were still traveling east in something like a straight line. If the man had turned them loose they’d have begun to wander, they’d have milled around and browsed a while and then they’d have headed home.

Watchman left the car and took a little walk to see what he could learn from the tracks. The earth had dried to a crumbly, cakey texture except where the trees shaded it; here it was still moist in places and some of the hoof-prints were quite clear, He was able to single out a set of prints that represented one horse zigzagging back and forth behind the rest of the herd: its prints were imposed on top of the others and it was the only animal that made so many switchbacks and turns.

This was the track of the fugitive Indian’s mount: Joe Threepersons was riding behind the other horses, driving them, zigzagging to chouse strays back into the herd and keep them all moving. All except one horse which he had let go on purpose. In fact he’d probably driven it away; otherwise it would have stayed near the herd.

Undoubtedly he pla

Watchman had known all that before he’d decided to come over here for a look. He had come anyway because at least it narrowed the district where Joe Threepersons would probably end up. Ahead were the foothills, the timber country that fed the tribe’s sawmill, and the main Reservation settlements at Fort Apache and Whiteriver.