Читать книгу On the Trail of Four - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 5

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It was not strange that I wakened after a short sleep, an hour before sunrise. The fog had cleared. First I took Truck’s burro. It was hobbled, which was fair proof that it had a hankering to move toward some other place than “home.” Perhaps it was bought from some one in the village in the valley below. At any rate, I had to take a chance. If I hoped to get on the trail of the murderer, I could not wait to bury the body of Janvers. I merely saddled the burro and pinned a great piece of paper on the side of the saddle:

TRUCK JANVERS LIES MURDERED

IN HIS CABIN

Then I turned the burro loose and clipped it along the side. It made an honest effort to plant its hard little hoofs in the middle of my brow, but my boxing training helped me to sidestep, and the heels darted over my shoulder. Then I was glad to see the little beast jog down the trail toward the village. That contrary-minded burro would not hurry even toward liberty!

After that was done, I cut for the sign of the murderer. I found my own sign—oceans of it. I had tied up my trail in a delightfully foolish tangle the night before, as I could see. But I had to work for a long time, and the morning light was bright before I found what I wanted. At a considerable distance from the shack, and over the brow of the ridge, I found a great pool of horse tracks. And from this pool a trail led away, covered by the prints of no fewer than four horses.

It was very interesting! For one thing, it gave me no fear that the trail would be any too difficult to follow, or that the speed of that retiring party would be any too great. I don’t think that I ever saw a body of four horsemen who could escape from me if I had even an ordinary horse for the pursuit. Four always ride slower than the slowest horse in the party. For there is only one reason for getting ahead in every mind in a party, but there are four reasons for lingering at whatever comes in the trail. There are four heads to be consulted in the solution of every problem.

Well, being contented with what I had seen, I went back and cooked a breakfast. You will think that it was a rather gruesome thing to sit quietly by and cook a meal while a dead man lay stretched in the cabin beside me. But I hardly saw him. I only saw the mystery before me, and all the deepening wonders which were attached to it. For, you see, the fact that four riders had come to strike down poor Truck Janvers, was enough to raise the killing above a normal murder.

They had ridden up through the night, deliberately. In the first place, they had reconnoitered the situation with the greatest care. They were so sure of themselves and the direction in which they were traveling, that a fog which had baffled me and a good mount that I was on did not bother them at all. They had proceeded through the mist as straight as though they were following a guiding light. In spite of the sheltering fog—or for fear lest it might suddenly thin or lift in a puff of wind—they had halted their horses beyond the ridge. Then they had stolen ahead to the cabin—one or more.

I could not find any traces of their feet. To be sure, the soil around the cabin was extremely rocky, but even so, their ability to move up to the cabin in the night without leaving a single sign rather bewildered me. Although, for that matter, I have never been an Indian when it comes to trailing. Some people are endowed with an extra sense in that matter; but no white man has ever attained the perfection of good Indians.

At any rate, I decided that the trail proved one thing at least: Which was that these people had ridden straight toward Truck Janvers with the agreed purpose of destroying the miner. There was nothing haphazard about the matter. They had not ridden past the cabin, but only up to it, and then they had doubled straight back. Truck Janvers had been a dead man, in their minds, a long time before the two bullets and the knife ended him.

Furthermore, I felt that the four had acted with such caution, that I had to deal not with impulsive brutality under the influence of whisky, but with a very cold, steady murderousness which it was hard to conceive. How could such a simple fellow as Janvers have offended four men enough to make them ride by night to do away with him without a fighting chance?

You will see why it was that I forgot the body of Truck himself. I ate my breakfast in a brown study, and then I saddled and mounted Spike and started. It was easy trailing, for a time. Then the trail hit a stretch of rocks and there were difficulties. I hit straight across the rocks to the soft dirt on the farther side, but I cut for sign in vain there. I had to work far to the left before I found what I wanted.

This was more interesting still. The four were determined to make their trail as difficult as possible. Even as early as this, they were making little problems which would break the heart of any hasty pursuit.

I labored down that trail all day, and I assure you that my hands were full. Every instant I had to be using my wits. Sometimes the four sets of signs were unwoven—first one strand going apart and then another, and then another, until the straight course of the riders was marked out by one horseman only. This fellow would lead me into a nest of rocks, or into a stream, create a trail problem that made my head ache for an hour, and then away would go his sign at a sharp angle, to rejoin the others who, meeting again, had gone off at high speed!

Indeed, they galloped so much that I began to suspect these fellows must be Mexicans, for few Americans, even cowpunchers, push horses as hard as Mexicans do.

All that day I worked, and far into the dusk. Then I camped, exhausted. It was a dry camp and a miserable one on bleak highlands, combed by a biting wind. I was glad to be up again, shivering and cramped with cold. Off went Spike and I, as soon I could make out the sign again, and on into the morning we struggled.

A good deal of my enthusiasm for this work had left me, I confess, even so early in the game. For, in spite of my assurance as to riding faster with a poor mount than four men can ride with good ones, I had never had in mind four riders who were so skillful in concealing their tracks. I saw that the signs were much less fresh the farther I went. Every moment they were gaining! And trails dim quickly to the eyes of white men.

The morning grew hotter and hotter, and my discontent grew greater and greater. But I kept to the faint trail. They had obviously turned onto the road here, and followed it as it wound down into the green heart of the valley beneath. Yes, and perhaps they had followed it where it wound across the valley and struggled up the farther mountainside.

At any rate, it was worth the trial, and I decided that I would make the short cut. My heart was in my mouth when I rode Spike slowly toward the edge of the cliff and looked down to the mountainside, all jagged and toothed with rocks and boulders. But Spike had no such doubts. He strained against the bit until he had stretched out his long neck. Then down he pitched for the bottom of the valley, caroming from one precarious footing to another.

I waved my hat and shouted like a madman. Indeed, it was as though I were sitting on the back of an eagle for that wild descent. Suddenly, we were sloping smoothly out on the floor of the valley beneath.

I had been right in this guess, at least. Where the road wound up the side of the opposite mountain I found their trail as big as life. I felt victory in my grip. Even by this one maneuver I must have gained a full half hour upon them, and if the trail were only long enough I knew that I should be able to overtake them. For no animal that ever carried man could live with my cat-footed mule when it came to a long-distance race over the highlands. I tried him on the mountain grade. Away he drove at that famous, long-swinging trot of his, and plowed steadily up to the top of the grade.

He was breathing a little; but it would have killed most horses to carry a two-hundred-pound man through such difficulties. I leaned and slapped the shoulder of Spike, and he tossed his head and pretended with flattened ears to be furious with me.

Then we struck away across the level on the trail. By the middle of the next day I promised myself that I should be on the heels of the four riders; and then let them protect themselves. For the murdered body of poor Truck Janvers lay heavily upon my mind’s eye.

But I did not come up with them upon the middle of the next day. Neither did I come up with them upon the day following, or even on the day that still succeeded that. As I watched Spike swinging forward, I wondered what sort of winged creatures these could be that were flying before me and keeping him at a distance!

It was not until the fourth day thereafter that I had my first glimpse of them. But, when I saw them, I very well understood!