Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
Once Zeke and Everett and Preacher started back toward Elkhorn with the bodies of the two ambushed men, it didn’t take long for Caleb to break camp.
He took the time to pile stones on the corpses of the bushwhackers.
He wanted to have a closer look at where they’d kept their horses.
That hadn’t turned up any sign of the hoofprint he was looking for.
The one that he’d seen at the miner Smith’s cabin.
The one with the gash on the right side of the front shoe.
Preacher told him that the Wells Fargo gang had five men, not including their leader.
There had been five gunmen here, and none of the hoofprints had that distinctive mark.
Zeke didn’t think these fellas were the gang he was looking for, and the evidence seemed to back that. But then, who were they?
As he saddled Pirate and mounted up, Caleb decided to put that question aside. There was no way to find the answer right now, and he had a more important job to do, finding Doc.
And somewhere beneath that hard, practical purpose lay another nagging thought he refused to examine too closely. Sheila Burnett was alone in Elkhorn. For some reason, that situation made him uneasy.
Zeke and his men had limited their search to the area where Caleb found them. They hadn’t gone through the pass. Caleb had begun his quest knowing he needed to go beyond Devil’s Claw.
Preacher told him he’d visited the road agents’ camp a number of times.
That meant the place had to be on a trail the minister followed.
Caleb couldn’t simply backtrack along Preacher’s route, though.
If he did, he could follow the trail for weeks before he happened upon the outlaws’ camp.
But at least it meant they could be found.
Throughout the morning, his faithful and tireless buckskin carried him toward the narrowest part of the pass beneath Devil’s Claw. The entire time, Caleb concentrated on the trail they followed.
It was midday by the time he rode through the shadowed constriction of the pass itself.
He remembered it well from his days of riding with Old Jake.
With the river to his left, he studied the trail closely.
There were tracks, plenty of them; he even spotted the track of Preacher’s mule at one point.
But there was no sign of the horse ridden by the man Imala had seen taking her husband. The same man who took Doc.
After going through the pass, Caleb rode to the top of a knoll and stopped. There, he sat on his horse and studied the vistas spreading northward before his eyes. In the distance beyond, snowcapped peaks rose above endless ranges and forests and fields and meadows.
This was the wilderness as it had been since the dawn of time. Unmarred. Maybe as it was meant to be. It was a land where a man could hide himself forever.
Or lose himself forever, if he wasn’t careful. Caleb had known men who preferred the silence of mountains to the company of people. Some because they loved freedom. Others because they no longer believed they belonged anywhere else.
Almost immediately, the trail took him into a great amphitheater formed by Devil’s Claw and another towering peak.
Millions upon millions of spruce trees covered the rising land, the unbroken smoothness marred only by scattered groves of budding aspen.
Soon the round aspen leaves would open, but now the stands of trees looked like so many moth holes in an evergreen blanket.
Sometime later, he nudged Pirate off the trail and down to the river. As the horse drank, Caleb looked thoughtfully across the flowing water. There were surely more trails there leading from the west. It was worth looking.
A few miles upriver, he found a place where the valley widened and the river flowed around a long bend. The current wasn’t as fast here, and he decided this was the place to ford. After wrapping his rifle and gun belt in the bearskin, he urged his horse down the bank and into the water.
The shock of the cold water wasn’t unexpected.
Caleb gripped the bridle and the saddle with one hand and held the bearskin high with the other.
Pirate was a strong swimmer, but halfway across, the remains of a tree a hundred feet long passed close to them, turning and dipping below the surface, only to come up again.
The buckskin shied away from it, but the sound of Caleb’s voice steadied his nerves and the tree raced by them.
“Easy now, boy,” he murmured. “Ain’t nothing out here getting the better of us today.”
When they reached the far shore, Caleb found a trail that followed the river north.
He rode through grassy meadows covered by the pale-blue, star-shaped flowers with the yellow centers that made a fine dye.
Entire fields of deep-purple flowers sloped to the river.
The trail took him beneath overhanging walls of rock.
Caleb and Pirate forded streams of various sizes that flowed through smaller valleys into the river.
Often, Caleb reined the buckskin to a halt.
He would listen and put his nose in the light breeze, and then continue on, his eyes everywhere, alert and cautious.
Since yesterday, he’d faced an ambush, a rattlesnake, and a cougar attack.
He knew from experience that these mountains held many surprises, and a man needed to be ready for them.
Still, for all the dangers, there were moments out here when the land seemed almost peaceful enough to heal a man. Caleb understood why Doc Burnett had stayed. Why Sheila, raised among polished stone and crowded streets, might someday come to love this country too.
Then at the peak of a hill, he spotted the hint of a trail. It snaked along the opposite side of a valley that ran to the south and west, in the general direction of Elkhorn. He nudged his buckskin and made his way across the basin.
As Pirate carried him up the rise on the far side, he found the trail. It was more of a rocky ledge than a trail here, but he turned north, following it. And then he saw it, the first sign.
Any tenderfoot, green as a slip of barley in spring, would have seen it.
Caleb dismounted and walked toward it. A broken branch, no thicker than a man’s little finger.
It hung loose, the inside nearly white, fresh and damp to the touch.
It was not the work of a bear or any other animal.
It was cut with a knife. There was no doubt it was done intentionally by someone passing by.
Caleb searched the ground. Not far ahead, the trail moved onto softer ground.
Hoofprints. And not just two or three. He counted seven riders.
Crouching low, he searched among the marks for the one he knew.
He studied the prints and sorted them in his mind.
Four riders had passed quite recently, perhaps within a couple of hours.
And then he found what he’d hoped for.
Today, earlier than the others, three riders had come through here, as well. And one of them was riding a horse with a shoe bearing the gash he’d been looking for.
Caleb hurried to where he had left Pirate, climbed back up the saddle, and followed the trail. Not far along, he spotted another cut branch. Beneath it, the prints showed the distinctive mark.
The man he wanted had passed this way, and he’d left signs for others to follow.
But why?
Caleb’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. Men hiding from the law did not usually leave trails a blind mule could follow. Unless they wanted somebody to find them. Or unless someone among them was trying to send a message.