“So, are we off?” Trent asked.
Sunset was still two or three hours off, but Scott had given in to the lines of pain Granville could see bracketing his mouth. It was just he and Trent standing watching the dancers weave in and out of the smoke that now completely filled the longhouse. Detective Moore had vanished somewhere, which was a relief.
Granville didn’t plan on taking the boy with him. Too dangerous. “Not until Scott’s ready to travel with us.”
“I know that. I meant are we off to get Cole’s body and the gold?” Trent said, lowering his voice.
Granville eyed Trent’s enthusiastic face and raised a brow. He appreciated the boy’s discretion in lowering his voice.
It was unlikely they could be overheard against the drumming and the chanting, but at least the boy had thought about it. “I suppose I’ve no chance of convincing you to stay and look out for Scott?”
“Then who would watch your back? Besides, with all the people here, and especially Mr. Moore, no one has a chance to get anywhere near Mr. Scott. Which is how I know you’re about to go after the gold without him.”
The boy didn’t miss much, and he was a quick thinker. And a good shot. “Then I suppose you’d better come along.”
“I’ll harness the mules,” Trent said, beaming. “Don’t go anywhere.”
Shaking his head, Granville went to collect their knapsacks and leave a message with Arbuthnot for Scott. He planned to be back in a day, two at the most, but he’d brought provisions for a week, just in case.
He hoped Moore wouldn’t decide to come after them, though the storm that had been predicted should deter him. If he and Trent had any sense, it would deter them too, but he was hoping to throw off any pursuers. He didn’t need company, whether it was Moore or whoever had sent the ambushers.
“Why’d you borrow these coats, anyway?” Trent asked as they began to climb.
Granville chuckled at the look of distaste on the boy’s face as he plucked at the sleeve of the grimy stained mackinaw borrowed from Arbuthnot. He wore its twin, and he pulled it closer around him as the wind picked up, sighing through the cedars as they rode.
“This thing reeks,” Trent said.
Granville drew in a breath. The air was clear and cold, but not cold enough to mask the smell of stale smoke, rotting mulch and old bones that clung to the jacket. “Yes, but it’s preferable to being shot. And the hat is a particularly nice touch, don’t you think?”
Trent grunted something under his breath that was probably extremely rude. He grinned. The air was exhilarating, and it felt good to be away from the heat and noise of the longhouse. Fascinating though it was to glimpse a culture so different from his own, the lack of action had grated on him. And with their gold cache to be re-hidden, having Moore accompany them was too much of a risk, despite any protection from ambush he might have provided.
Trent led the mules up an increasingly narrow path, following a winding route he said would lead them back to where he and Scott had stashed the gold without signaling to anyone who might be watching where they were headed. Granville hoped he was right.
“What are we going to do with the old guy’s body?” Trent suddenly asked. ‘When the police are through with him, I mean.”
“I rather thought Cole would like to be buried near the mine, though we can’t do that until spring.
“Yeah, I think he’d like that. Unless Mary wants to have him buried near her?”
Granville smiled at the concern in Trent’s voice. He really was smitten by that photo. “I think our client killed someone important to Mary. She isn’t going to care where he’s buried.”
“But won’t she mind if it’s at the mine?”
“I don’t think she needs to know about it.”
“Oh.”
As the trail grew steeper, they climbed on in snow-cushioned silence. The only motion was the whiskey jacks, gliding from snowy branch to snowy branch in their wake.
It was hard going, but the pull and burn in his muscles and the harshly cold air made Granville feel alive. As the trail wound higher, the snow fell faster, thick and heavy. The birds vanished. Their footsteps and even the occasional jingle of the mules’ bridle were muffled.
The crack of a rifle broke the stillness.
He pushed a hand between Trent’s shoulder blades, propelling both of them to the ground.
“I thought they wanted us alive,” Trent said, spitting out a mouthful of snow.
“So did I. Maybe they’re shooting only to wound.”
“Shot is shot.”
The boy had that right. And they were too exposed here, their clothing dark against the snow. “Deeper into the trees. Hurry.”
Trent had grabbed the mule’s bridles and was in motion almost before he’d finished speaking.
Granville followed him, diving behind a large cedar trunk just as another bullet whined over his head. “I think there’s only one shooter.”
“Yeah,” Trent said. “I can’t get a bead on him, though. Can you see him?”
“No, the angle’s wrong.”
Two bullets whined in quick succession, just to their left.
“He’s trying to herd us,” Trent said in his ear. “Like we’re wild pigs or something.”
Another bullet whined by, this one slightly above them. The boy was right.
“So where does he want us to go?” he said as they returned fire, then eased their way into deeper cover.
“Does it matter?”
“It might. Scott’s told me he tries to think like whatever animal he’s hunting. Do you do the same?” Granville said in an undertone.
“Yeah. You’re thinking he wants us to run for the cave where we stashed the gold?” Trent whispered.
“I’d say it’s a good guess,” he said, ducking lower as another bullet whined overhead.
He returned fire. “We need to do something he won’t be expecting.”
Trent’s eyes darted from their flimsy cover to the shooter’s well-concealed spot and he smiled broadly.
“I have an idea,” he said. “Cover me,” and he began wriggling his way through the underbrush, pulling the reluctant mules after him.
Granville’s instinctive protest died unvoiced.
The boy was gone.
He aimed, shot, aimed again.
Trent knew these mountains better than he did. He just hoped the boy wasn’t being foolhardy. And that he could keep the shooter focused on him.
He fired again, waited.
The shooter returned fire.
He missed him, but not by much.
Granville dug a little deeper into the brush, then fired back.
Again his shot was returned.
Good.
Then a loud bray a short distance uphill from where he lay had him flinching.
Cursed mule. Would it be enough to give Trent’s location away?
He fired again, hoping to distract the shooter.
His fire was returned, then—nothing.
He lay listening hard. Fired several more times.
No response.
Where was Trent?
The wind shushed through the trees. Granville’s belly was freezing where he lay pressed against the snow. He couldn’t hear Trent or the shooter, not even the mules.
No shots, no crashing of brush, no braying, not even a snapping twig.
Easing himself up to his knees, he absently brushed off the snow, still listening hard, and reloaded the Winchester.
Forty-seven very tense minutes later, Trent crawled back to where Granville crouched behind an outcropping of granite.
“It’s done.”
“I hope the man tracking us looks worse than you do,” he said, eyeing Trent’s scraped and grimy face. “You look as if you were breaking trail with your face.”
“I slipped,” Trent said, looking remarkably pleased with himself despite the scratches.
“And the mules?”
“I set the gray mule loose, hid the other. I think our shooter’s following John the Mule.”
“How do you hide a mule?”
“It ain’t easy. Let’s get out of here before he figures out he’s been fooled.”
“As long as you don’t expect to get out of explaining how you lost him.”
Trent’s grin and look of pride nearly had Granville grinning back.
With an effort he maintained the irritated expression he’d adopted. It didn’t seem to worry Trent, who just smiled more broadly. “Follow me,” he said, as he slithered under the snow-covered branches of a cedar and was gone.
He didn’t know how the boy had done it, but Trent seemed to have lost their pursuer, at least for the moment.
Listening hard, all he could hear was the soft rustle of the wind in the upper branches of the pines and the occasional plop as a tree released its load of snow. He could hear nothing of the shooter, nor of the mules.
What had Trent done with the ornery creatures, anyway?
As they climbed steadily uphill, keeping Trent in sight didn’t get any easier. The boy seemed to disdain anything resembling a path, slipping between close growing trees and through thick underbrush without sound. Granville found himself hard pressed to keep up.
Scott would roar with laughter if he could see him now, he thought ruefully as he ducked the back swing of yet another pliant branch. It was all too reminiscent of their Klondike days, and the long slog of trekking the creeks, looking for any sign of color. In their early days, Scott had called him The London Swell, and mocked his ineptitude in the reality of the Alaskan wilderness, so different from anything he’d seen before.
That had changed when he’d saved Scott from drowning when their badly built boat had failed to navigate the rapids at Five Fingers. Still, he had been a London swell, like so many others completely unprepared for the realities of the Yukon wilderness.
His lips quirked at the likely reaction of some of his London friends, if they could see him now. They’d simply not believe their eyes. Even the hunting-mad ones would never stoop to crawling through actual bush; that was for the hounds in pursuit of the fox; the huntsmen were well mounted and stayed that way, thank you very much.
“We’ll get the mule now,” Trent said, appearing at his elbow.
“After you tell me how you lost our pursuers.”
Trent grinned at him. “Nope,” he said, and vanished between two trees.
The brown mule was tied in the lee of a cliff, strips of cloth snugged around his jaw. His were flattened back and his eyes were wild.
Granville eyed the mule. “You do know he’ll make us pay the moment you release him?”
Trent dug into his pack. “It’s why I brought these,” he said, pulling out two scrawny carrots and a wrinkled apple.
Fresh produce. Granville’s mouth watered. “Where’d you get those?”
“I’ve dealt with mules before. I brought them with me from the markets in town.”
“They’re wasted on the mule.”
“Not if it keeps him from braying and giving us away.”
The boy made sense.
He watched with interest as Trent held the carrot where the mule could smell it, then dangled it just out of his reach. The mule’s ears came forward and he focused intently on the proffered treat. Trent slowly released the cloth binding his mouth, and the mule flicked his tail, then without a sound reached for the apple.
“See?”
Granville kept a wary eye on the mule, which seemed to know his good behavior was being held hostage for the sake of a carrot. Only the movement of ears and tail expressed feelings that the day before had been accompanied by repeated, carrying braying.
He shook his head in amazement. “I can’t believe it’s working, but it is. Will it hold while we move the gold?”
“Should do,” Trent said.
“Good enough. Though I’d still like to know how they had someone behind us so quickly.”
“They must’ve seen us leave Katzie.”
“Or we may have been followed from town.”
Trent let out a very low whistle. “He’d have to be good. I didn’t spot anyone the whole way.”
“Nor did I. Which could also mean that someone in town wired this fellow to watch for us. Which is the more worrying possibility.”
“It is?”
Granville nodded. “Means they’re very organized, which we’d already suspected, but also they’re predicting where we’ll go next. And that worries me. The mind that can anticipate what we’re likely to do next is a very dangerous one.”
“Oh. Like Mr. Benton?”
“It’s a possibility. I still can’t see Benton giving that much of his attention to a potential gold mine.”
“Mr. Gipson?”
“Is underhanded and sneaky but doesn’t work this efficiently.”
“Then who?”
“Who, indeed?” Granville said.