They had ridden for four days. The horses were thinning down from lack of bait, but the men were in pretty good shape. McAllister’s great fear was that Sam would catch pneumonia, but the Negro trail-boss seemed to be bearing up under the rigors of the rough travel. He stayed snug and warm in his buffalo robes and seemed to be picking up fast. In fact, as he told McAllister, “This air sure is bracin’, Rem boy.” For McAllister traveling horse-back it was a little too bracing and he rode most of the time like Coyote huddled in the saddle in a buffalo robe.
In all the four days, they did not meet a living soul except for a handful of Kiowa bucks who were out hunting game. So they said. McAllister was convinced that they were hunting white scalps. They seemed to gaze longingly at McAllister’s, but did not think much of Sam’s woolly locks for prestige purposes. Coyote spoke with them lengthily and with some heat and after a long pow-wow they rode reluctantly on their way. Sam and McAllister, both ‘o’ whom had prepared themselves to shoot their way out of the situation, sighed with relief.
On the fifth day they entered broken country and reached the cabin.
It stood in a sheltered rincon with water and timber handy. At a glance, McAllister saw that it was an ideal place to winter. On inspection, it looked as tight as a fort, though it had not been lived in for some years and looked it. It was composed of stout logs, squared off roughly to fit tight and where they didn’t fit, the gaps were chinked with mud. The door hung drunkenly on one rawhide hinge – something that would have to be put right at once. There was an ingenious stove made of stone and mud, and a fine stone chimney made by a man who knew how to make chimneys. There were two bunks, one on either side of the single room. Rat-chewed blankets were on them, trash lay about the floor and on a shelf near the stove McAllister found some tins of food. McAllister cleaned one of the bunks out and he and Coyote carried Sam inside and put him in it still wrapped in the buffalo robes.
There was a wood pile right near the stove with kindling ready. McAllister built a fire right off and the warm glow of the thing at once made the place more cheerful. Sam grinned over the side of the bunk.
“Man, I never saw a finer sight,” he said happily.
Coyote hobbled the horses and let them go, knowing that they would rustle for themselves either by pawing away the snow to the grass or by chewing on the twigs and bark of trees. They’d be gaunted down comespring, but they’d be alive if they were worth their salt. The young Indian brought their gear and supplies inside and dumped them on the hard-packed earth floor. McAllister found some pots and pans in a corner, cleaned them in the snow and prepared a meal of pemmican. There was a rough table in the place, but no chairs, so he and the Indian squatted on the floor and ate. After that, they all felt better. Sam rolled a smoke, McAllister fired his pipe and gave Coyote a puff at it. Then McAllister fixed the door with an end of his rawhide lariat and it looked like the cabin was tight against the world.
“Boy,” Sam said, “we’m in paradise, sure ‘nough.”
They slept snug and warm that night, McAllister and Sam in the bunks and Coyote stretched out in front of the stove. McAllister lay awake for some time, his hands behind his head, thinking. He thought a little about Millie, Nellie Stein’s attractive maid and regretted the opportunity lost. He thought about Boss back there on the trail dead, he thought about Forster and the herd and about Colonel Struthers down there in Texas waiting for news of the sale. Sam and he had been trusted. They were still trusted and he knew that both of them would live up to the trust. Ideally, they must take the price of the herd back home. If they couldn’t do that, they would take the price out of the hide of the man who had taken it from them. That might take some doing, because Forster and his men would take some finding. This was a big country. But as sure as God made little apples McAllister and Sam would find them.
* * *
Coyote departed the following morning, taking with him his bow and arrows, a pouchful of food and his paint pony. He shook hands solemnly with Sam and McAllister. All they could find to give him was a mirror that had been left in the cabin, but with this he was highly delighted. He rode away and before he went from sight into the timber he turned and lifted a hand in farewell.
It had stopped snowing for the moment, but a look at the sky told McAllister there was plenty more to come. He turned back into the cabin and started to prepare for the winter. If Sam and he were to survive, he must get busy.
First, there was warmth to be assured. He found an old blunt axe head without a haft. He went into the trees and cut himself a suitable branch with his belt-knife and carved it to the right shape for the haft. It was green, but it would have to do. He spliced the head on with rawhide thongs, then he spent a couple of days cutting wood. When he had a goodly pile stacked outside the cabin, he set about making himself a pair of snowshoes. Sam had never seen such things before and took a great interest. To occupy himself he repaired his own worn bridle with thongs of rawhide from the end of his lariat. He was looking something like his old self and was declaring that it wouldn’t be long before he was on his feet and pulling his weight again. McAllister tried out his snowshoes, found they would do and set about setting a couple of dozen simple noose traps, so that at least they would have rabbit meat to keep them going for a short while. The pemmican would not last long and, in any case, he was sick of it. His next aim was to get deer meat. His one great worry was ammunition. He had sufficient for the Remington, but he was low on shells for the Henry and for Sam’s Spencer carbine. He thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea if he made himself a bow and some arrows. As a boy he had been pretty proficient with the weapon and he didn’t see why he still shouldn’t be. Sam greeted this news with a great shout of laughter. He reckoned McAllister was all Indian at heart.
One thing that interested both men was the question of whether they had any near neighbours, either red or white. Knowing this was largely an unsettled area, McAllister thought that, if there were any men near, they would be Indians. If there were Indians, they could be Cheyenne or Arapaho and either could be a potential danger to them. If they were Kiowas, they would more certainly mean trouble. McAllister made two bars for the door.
When they had been there a week, one morning McAllister checked first on the horses and found that, while not putting on any fat, they were surviving and then started on his first hunt. He left food within reach of Sam, his pistol beside him and told him that he might be gone a day or two. He found nothing the first day, but on the second found a pronghorn scratching for food and killed it with his first shot. He had taken the canelo with him and he packed the whole of the buck onto the animal in spite of the horse’s vigorous protests. He returned safely to Sam to find the Negro well, but relieved at his return. There were three rabbits in the traps and they ate well that night. McAllister butchered the deer and hung the joints safely high in a tree.
Sam said: “We’re goin’ to make out, boy.”
“I reckon,” McAllister agreed. When he inspected Sam’s wounds, he found them healing nicely. The Negro’s strength was picking up and after the first week in the cabin they tried out his strength. He was pretty weak, but he managed to walk across the cabin. He rested against McAllister’s bunk, grinning weakly. McAllister said: “You’re doin’ fine, Sam,” and helped him back to his own bunk. Once back wrapped in the buffalo robes, Sam said: “How long’s it goin’ to be before we get after that Forster, Rem?”
“Spring.”
“Maybe I can’t wait that long.”
“Sam, it’s snowing outside, we could be inside here for weeks.”
It was true. It was snowing and it snowed for weeks. McAllister went no further than the tree in which he had hung the deer for as long as he could. Then with a vest made of rabbit skins and a kind of parka he had made from a buffalo robe, he ventured out on the hunt again. He took his rifle and bow along, was gone two days and managed to get them a couple of half-starved mule-deer. The snow was by now so deep that he had not brought the canelo with him. Instead he packed them home on a small sled he had made of wood and rawhide. Sam was up and about by the time he reached the cabin, sitting up and smoking, not quite his old self, but remarkably recovered.
“Man,” he said, when he saw McAllister, “am I glad to see you. My belly thinks my throat is cut.”
That night they ate well on deer meat, but McAllister knew that he couldn’t afford to rest on his laurels and that if they were to stay alive through the winter, he would have to keep hunting. He hung the deer in the same tree and the following night they had a visit from a mountain lion, hungry and on the rampage. At once both men were alarmed for the horses. They would all look good eating to a hungry lion.
“You’ll have to get that lion, boy,” Sam told McAllister. So McAllister went out into the clear snow-strewn moonlight and killed them a lion. It took two shots and it gained them a starving lion and a good skin. They continued to reap rewards from their rabbit traps, though a wolverine was robbing them regularly. The wolves came down from the hills each night and howled around the cabin, so McAllister constructed a rough corral and brought the horses close each night. He didn’t have the ammunition to kill wolves, but he tried out his bow and arrows and had one or two successes. One night the canelo had a fight with a wolf and apparently came off best. After that they didn’t worry too much about the horses. But McAllister wished, not for the first time, that they had some dogs with them.
The weeks passed, the two of them lived snug in the cabin while the snow piled up to the windows outside, McAllister hunted when he could and somehow they made out. Slowly but surely Sam got his strength, slowly McAllister’s ribs, in spite of his great lack of rest, knitted. It was a waiting time, with both men living for the coming spring, but it was one of contentment for them both. They were men who knew when to talk and when to stay silent. They did what any two men would have done under the circumstances. By the light of the stove at night, they told the stories of their lives, spun yarns about men they had known, talked horses, cattle; talked of adventures south of the Border, talked of what they would do in the future. Sam reckoned he would go back to the colonel, if the old gentleman would have him after this trouble.
“When I tell him what happened,” McAllister said, “an’ what’s goin’ to happen, he’ll promote you corporal for life. Don’t you fret none, Sam – if’n we don’t git them cows, we’ll get their worth in gold. An’ if we don’t get that, by God, we’ll get their value in scalps. On top of that, we’ll pay for the outfit.”
They stayed silent, thinking about the dead men.
“But, hell, Rem,” Sam said, “where do we start?”
Puffing at his pipe, McAllister said, “The trail’s cold, sure. But there’s a dozen men.”
“We don’t know but two-three of ’em.”
“I remember the men that beat me. Every damn one of ’em.”
“But we can’t prove anythin’.”
“I don’t aim to prove anythin’. You don’t have to prove nothin’ when you’re killin’ snakes.”
Sam pursed his lips. He was getting to know this big man. With anybody else that could have been an empty boast. With McAllister it was the plain truth. He knew too that McAllister had been through considerable mental anguish over the ambush in the valley. Men, good men, had died and McAllister had been able to do little about it, injured as he was. But Sam wasn’t forgetting that that same McAllister had saved his, Sam’s, life.
“Roll on spring,” Sam said simply.