During the walk back to the camp, Vaza never spoke a word. She kept away from Dusty and he did not offer to touch her again. At the camp, the two men made no comment on the girl’s return apart from asking if she had seen anything of interest.
“The wild life is easily frightened,” she replied. “Coming close enough to make a study will not be easy.”
“Why do you think the animals are afraid, Dusty?” asked the old man.
“Instinct, I reckon. And up this way they’re enough people for the critters to have been hard hunted.”
“We hope to make a permanent camp somewhere,” Adek commented. “Stay for a good period of time and make an exhaustive study. Where would you suggest?”
“That depends,” Dusty replied. “How far are you willing to go to make your camp?”
“I don’t understand,” Adek said.
“Well, the best place I could think of would be down on the OD Connected ranch, my Uncle Devil’s spread. But that’s in Rio Hondo country, Texas. You’d be safe there—”
“From what?” Jarrel inquired.
“This’s a rough country, like I said. Down there, Vaza can find most of the animals she’ll see up here and a few more. Uncle Devil’s got a mighty fine library that ought to interest Adek and we’ll maybe even find something for you, Jarrel.”
“The idea has possibilities,” remarked Adek. “No matter where we go, we will attract attention.”
“Down home, you’ll be free to do as you want,” Dusty promised. “And nobody’s likely to bother you.”
“It is an important decision, Adek,” the girl remarked.
“One which cannot be answered immediately or without thought,” agreed the old man. “We will think on it for a day or so, then give you our reply, Dusty.”
Shortly after, the party retired to their beds. Dawn found them on the move and travelling south at a fair speed. With four powerful horses drawing the wagon, they covered a steady thirty miles a day, seeing no other human beings all that day, although Dusty watched their back-trail. While he did not expect to have further trouble from Gartree, he believed that precautions cost nothing.
They made camp out on the open range that night, ate well and sat about the fire for a time discussing the Civil War. A strange drowsiness came over Dusty and after he went to bed, he knew nothing until Vaza woke him the following morning. A disturbed expression played on her face, worry mingled with delight in a way he found hard to understand.
“You are well, Dusty?” she asked.
“Never felt better,” he replied. “Lordy lord, though, I must have slept real heavy last night. I can’t remember hearing anybody keep the fire going.”
“This surprises you?”
“I reckon to be a light sleeper when I’m on the trail. It must be all this good food I’m getting.”
“Then come and have some more,” she smiled. “Also come to listen to Adek’s news. I think you will like it.”
On rising, Dusty gave a grunt as a momentary dizziness struck him. Almost as if expecting the attack, Vaza shot out a hand, caught his arm and steadied him before he could stagger.
“Whooee!” Dusty exclaimed. “I must have slept a whole heap too hard.”
“Yes,” agreed the girl. “Are you all right?”
“Sure. The last time I felt that way was after spending four nights without sleep during the War. When I got back to our camp, I hit the hay and slept for twenty-four hours. Felt even worse than just now when I woke.”
“It is over now?”
“Will you let go if I say yes?”
“Of course.”
“Then I’ve a good mind to say no.”
“I see you have recovered,” smiled Vaza and removed her hand.
At the table, Adek and Jarrel directed appraising glances in Dusty’s direction, inquired how he slept and, unless he made a mistake, showed relief when he gave them the same answer passed to the girl.
“We have consulted, Dusty,” Adek said. “And it has been decided that we may accept your kind offer.”
“Bueno, sir,” Dusty said. “I’ll do my best to see that you don’t regret it. ”
“Hello the camp,” called a voice from a rim overlooking the camp. “Can I come in?”
“Come right ahead,” Dusty answered, looking up at a lone rider who appeared.
Watching the rider approach, Dusty formed certain conclusions. First the man was a cowhand, not a hired killer. Second, unless Dusty misjudged, the newcomer had followed a cowhand habit recently. Sloughing in his saddle, head drooping and clothing disheveled, all seemed to indicate the approaching man suffered from the effects of a recent celebration.
“Good morning,” Adek greeted as the cowhand dismounted slowly and carefully. “You are just in time for breakfast.”
A look of nausea and anguish crossed the cowhand’s unshaven face. “No food, thank you most to death. I’d sure admire a cup of coffee though, ma’am.”
“Are you ill?” gasped Vaza.
“I’m a dying cowboy, ma’am,” said the newcomer. “And I’m scared that I’m going to live and suffer.”
“That must have been some whing-ding you had last night, amigo—” Dusty grinned. “Don’t worry, Vaza, he’ll be all right with a cup of coffee inside him.”
“Spoken like a medical man, friend, or a man who knows what it is to suffer this ways,” the cowhand replied. “Which same, you’re also a right smart guesser. That sure was a whing-ding last night. Never again though, that’s for sure.”
“How many times’ve you said that?” asked Dusty.
“This’s the first time I’ve ever meant it,” answered the cowhand. “When I start seeing things that aren’t there—”
“What sort of things?” asked Adek.
“There you’ve got me. See, last night I was in at Cassidy’s bar in Linton. Ole Cassidy’s celebrating having a son and tossing free drinks around. Coming back to home this way, I saw a damned great—asking your pardon, ma’am—I saw this damned great black thing come down out of the sky.”
“A bird?” asked Dusty, wondering at the startled glances his companions exchanged.
“Not unless it was a mighty tough one. Flames shot down from under it as it come down. Man oh man! I don’t know where Cassidy gets his free-giving liquor, or what goes into it. But happen it makes a man see things like that, I’m starting to buy my own.”
“You did not go closer to this thing?” Jarrel inquired.
“Not me, friend,” stated the cowhand. “My old pappy never gave me anything but advice that was mostly wrong. Only wise thing he ever told me was that when a man’s likker made him start seeing things, he should lay down and take him a good, long sleep. Which’s what I done.”
“Then you do not believe you saw anything?” said Adek, sounding relieved.
“I know I didn’t,” the cowhand answered firmly. “Religious folks like you wouldn’t know anything about these things—or maybe you do, way you keep preaching against the evils of strong drink.”
“Where did you see that thing?” Dusty drawled.
“You meant where did I didn’t see it,” corrected the cowhand. “This’s one time I wouldn’t be pleasured to see something that come from a whisky bottle. Anyways, if I’d seen it, it’d’ve come down Hey, it’d’ve come down not far from here. Right where—where that burned-out circle up there is.”
Following the direction of the cowhand’s pointing finger and startled gaze, Dusty saw a large blackened circle burned in the green grass some hundred or so yards from the spot on which they camped.
“That was there yesterday,” Jarrel commented, just a shade too quickly, Dusty thought.
“I remember seeing it and meant to ask you what you thought caused it,” Adek went on.
“Funny,” the cowhand put in. “I’ve rid this range plenty and I can’t remember seeing it.”
“Have this cup of coffee,” Vaza interrupted, placing it before the young man.
“Thank you kindly, ma’am,” answered the cowhand. “I ought to have expected to see things once them lights started flashing.”
“How’d you mean, cowboy?” Dusty inquired.
Taking a long sip at the coffee, the young man shuddered. “You know. Real bright white flashes, like when somebody smacks you on the nose unexpected. Saw them in what looked like this direction just before that thing came down—or didn’t come down. Ooh! Never again, that’s for sure.”
“Shall we prepare to move out, Dusty?” asked Adek. “If we are to go to Texas with you, we have a long journey ahead.”
“Sure,” agreed Dusty.
“I’ll be riding soon’s I’ve done this coffee,” the cowhand commented. “Don’t mention what I told you, friend. I wouldn’t want folks to think I can’t hold my likker.”
“Do you believe he saw anything, Dusty?” asked Jarrel as they hitched the wagon team.
“What could he have seen?” Dusty countered. “Have you ever been drunk?”
“Drunk? No. I can’t say I have.”
“A man’d have to be real drunk to see things like that.”
“But it is possible?”
“I suppose it is,” Dusty grunted and went to saddle his paint.
While preparing his horse for travel, Dusty flicked glances at the burned circle and felt sure that it had not been there on the previous night. Yet he could not see how it might have been formed. To burn the green grass in such a manner would take considerable heat and he knew how little fuel they carried.
“Damn it,” he growled, tightening the girths. “What else but likker could have caused that jasper to see what he says he saw? If there’d been anything like he said, the horses would be spooked loco.”
By the time he finished saddling the horse, Dusty found the others ready to roll. Something about the wagon looked different. Only a small thing, but one Dusty noticed. In some way, the wagon seemed to ride lower than on the previous night. It almost seemed that a heavier load rode inside, but that was impossible unless something had been put aboard while he slept. There was nowhere within several miles from the wagon at which fresh supplies could be bought. Dusty tried to tell himself imagination caused the sagging. Certainly the horses did not appear to be putting any more effort in starting the wheels turning as they dug in their calked shoes—calked! Dusty had examined the shoes of the team as part of his nightly ritual. While the shoe Morley put on the paint showed signs of wear, Dusty could see none on the shoes of the team horses.
“Are you ready, Dusty?” called Adek.
“All ready,” Dusty replied, watching the cowhand mount. “It must have been the whisky,” he told himself. “What in hell else could it have been?”
The party moved on again and Dusty tried to shake off the nagging feeling that something beyond his comprehension happened while he slept the previous night. None of the trio referred to the cowhand’s story again and Dusty let the matter drop even if he could not forget it.
For three days the party continued their journey, putting a steady thirty miles behind them during the travelling time. Things went smoothly. At night Dusty remained in the camp and saw no recurrence of the brilliant flashing lights. To all intents and purposes, he might have been travelling with a normal party. Cheerful discussion went on, with Adek showing a remarkable knowledge of many subjects—and just as remarkable an ignorance on others.
Naturally Vaza’s reactions interested Dusty most. The girl still rode on the outside of the wagon box, showing interest in everything she saw and bombarding Dusty with her questions. Yet at night she tried to avoid close contact with him. Instinctively Dusty knew that the girl wanted to be close to him, yet some fear held her back. Try as he would, Dusty could not pierce the barrier between them. All she would say, when he tried, was that too many things stood between them for it to ever work.
So matters stood towards evening of the fourth day after their meeting with the cowhand. Having crossed the Oklahoma line, Dusty took them from the trail followed since leaving Bainesville and headed directly across country in the direction of Bent’s Ford. Doing so swung them away from the better populated areas of the Indian Nations and, apart from the cowhand, they had seen no sign of human life.
Seeing a fairly wide stream ahead, Dusty told the others that he would ride ahead and ensure that they could cross at the points towards which they headed. As Dusty rode closer, he saw that the place ahead offered a convenient crossing, the banks sloping down to an area of firm gravel that appeared to continue clear across and up the other side. Further proof of the possibility of an easy ford showed in the multitude of animal tracks left in the gravel.
While Dusty had not the Ysabel Kid’s skill as a tracker, he knew something of reading sign. Looking like a long-nailed oil man’s hand print, a coon’s feet left their marks on the edge of the stream before disappearing into the water. The dog-like pads of a wolf mingled with the dainty, sharp-pointed liver-shaped hooves of white-tailed deer.
All that and more he saw, but ignored the signs of passing wild life. His main interest directed itself on some marks made after the rest of the sign, comparatively recently or Dusty missed his guess. Roughly oval marks with a heart-shaped piece forcing in at the rear. That particular type of track had no duplicate. One might mistake deer and elk tracks, confuse the line left by a dog with that of a wolf—but there was no mistaking the marks caused by a horse’s hooves.
Merely finding horses’ hoof prints would have caused Dusty no concern, but the four sets before him told a significant story. One point of identification normally set aside and showed the horse’s tracks plainly. The shoe left an unmistakable addition to the rest of the mark—only the tracks before Dusty lacked that addition.
Numbers of wild horses roamed the plains country and never felt the touch of an iron shoe; but not in the Indian Nations. Every wild horse had long since been captured by the Indians living on the reservations. The Indian never shod his horse, never gave its feet any protection.
Dusty knew that the riders who crossed the stream earlier that day had been riding unshod horses. Which meant they were most likely Indians.