In them hard clay ravines and canyons, the blasts rolled like thunder. Two different rifles, it sounded like.
Mandy squirmed around on that horse's back, and what with the shots, she scared the hell out of it, so I grabbed her reins. "Follow me across. Go the way I go. Head toward them two pointy peaks, but don't go no farther! I'm riding on up ahead to help Clete, but I'll come back. Only stay there, 'cause that's where I'll come to when this is over." I let go the reins of her horse and handed her the lead rope of the pack animal.
"All right," she said, looking awful scared.
"Don't risk your horse hurrying through these rocks. This trouble may take some time."
"All right," she said again, taking off her broad-brimmed black hat. She looked me square in the eye then. "You will come back for me, won't you Willie?"
"I'll be back," I said. "Just wait somewhere between them peaks. Take some shelter. I won't forget about you, girl."
But I risked my horse some through them stones. That long-legged bay was as sure footed as he was easy ridin', and I was glad for it that day. I looked back when I got to the far edge of that rocky place, and Mandy was making her way across it slow like I told her to.
I heard more rifle shots then, but I couldn't tell where they was coming from.
It was a regular sort of trail once you got into the mouth of the bigger canyon, though it rose some. The clay was firm and smooth, so I pushed that bay as hard as he would go.
Where it widened out into a little valley, there lay Clete's black horse with his guts blowed out. Saddle still on him, but he was dead. Clete's hat was there, though his rifle was gone from the scabbard. My bay reared and we danced a few circles 'til I calmed him down. I could find nothing to tie him to but Buckshot's reins, and he didn't like that at all.
A rifle exploded above me, up on the peak in front. I hit the dirt. Nothing happened for a minute, and when I looked, there was Clete up there sighting down his rifle-but not in my direction.
After he lowered it, I hollered, "Clete!" He looked and waved and after a while he started down toward me.
"I saw him," he called.
I set and waited 'til he got down.
He was out of breath, and his clothes was in shreds at the knees and elbows. "Mandy's horse, the one that bastard's riding, it's a paint, isn't it?"
"Yep, a paint. That's what she told me," I said.
"He's a tall man, real lean." It was then that Clete seen Buckshot. He stood and stared for a minute, then picked up his hat and smacked it against his leg. "I knew he was hit bad, but not like that. Look at the damage that damn bullet did."
"What happened?" I ask.
Clete brushed at his cut-up elbows. "He jumped me. Waiting up there, where you saw me. Only he hit Bucky instead of me. I took a spill, ate some gravel, and came up shooting. He fired back, almost hit me once, but when I started working my way up there, he took off."
"Did you hit him, when you fired that last?"
"No. That was just pissin' in the wind."
"You all right?" I ask. He was bleeding through the busted-out knees of his pants pretty good.
"Yeah, but I'm stove up."
"You're welcome to the bay if you want to go after him," I offered. "Good horse."
"No, the trail goes up from here and he's got too much of a start on me now, goddamnit." I expected him to say that he could have chased him if I'd a been there with him, where I ought to of been, but he didn't. His eyes showed it for a minute, though. But maybe that was just in my head, I don't know. Then he hunkered down by his dead horse. "Sorry to lose this old fellow," he said, patting Buckshot's jaw.
We got Clete's McClellan loose after a time and the rest of his gear we piled beside it. Of course we could do nothing about Buckshot, not even put stones over him, since there was no stones there. Only thing in this place was dried clay, formed into knuckles and lumps the size of eyeballs where it was steep and washed smooth where it was a little flat. I asked him if he wanted to ride back with me or stay there 'til I brought the pack horse, which he would have to ride now–that, or the buckskin. He decided on staying.
I gave him my canteen, since his was nearly empty, so's he could wash out his cuts. He was sitting on the ground beside his gear tending to his knees when I left.
The bay loped easy going back for Mandy. I didn't push him, but I didn't poke, either. All in all, I guess it'd been a little more than an hour from when I'd left her 'til I got to them two peaks where I told her to wait.
The pack horse was tied to a stone that looked like a big old turtle, but both Mandy and my old horse was nowheres to be seen. I took the bay up into the clay draws on both sides, up high as I could get him, thinking maybe she had done like I said and took shelter up there with the horse. I called her name loud as I could, several times, but there was no answer, only the echo of my voice calling back tome.
Gullies and ravines led off in all directions. I searched some of the big ones I could get my horse in, but saw no tracks, though sometimes I wasn't sure. I lost myself for a spell in there too, and though I followed the bay's tracks backwards, I went in a circle for some time. Just by luck I stumbled onto where the pack horse was still tied. If I hadn't, I might still be wandering around in there, so cut up and twisted it was. I had followed sign over all kinds of country, but nothing like that. I tried to think of what Stalking Bear would of done and just did that.
I don't know how long I wandered around looking for that girl, but I knowed I would have to go back to Clete before long. I suspected he had camped without fire or food many a time, but I couldn't just leave him there for the night in this country, not without a horse.
I got the pack animal and headed back to him.
"Where the hell have you been?" he yelled before I even got to where he was sitting on his wrapped-up bedroll.
"I couldn't find her," I told him. "Looked all over, but she's not around."
"Now maybe we can catch that sonofabitch!" he said, standing up. You could see how hard moving around was for him. A good bone-rattling fall will make you remember all your old hurts.
I dismounted and unloaded the pack horse. Clete threw his blanket and saddle up on it. After we stuffed our saddle bags and put some things in our bedrolls, we just left the rest of it there on the ground, including the tent. "I can't just leave her there," I said. "Just like I couldn't leave you here. I'm going back."
"Damned if I am," Clete said. "Come along up the trail a piece with me. It climbs a big ridge and it looks like you can see for quite a ways. Maybe you can spot her."
"All right. But if I can't, I'm going back."
Took us a while to get to where he had in mind, following our man's tracks the whole way. Where the trail cut through a notch in a red clay spine, you could see miles and miles of this broken-up, washed away country spread out before you.
"Good God," Clete said. "I never saw anything the equal of this before." I knowed what he meant. The sky was gray and dark, spoiling for rain. Beneath us laid a broad, flat valley, grassy in many spots, but those was all a good ways off. Jumbles of clay mountains stuck up in places. Far across, you could see the tree line of a river and beyond that, another jagged ridge like the one we was standing on. Down to our left, maybe fifteen miles, was a large tableland and up to our right, a farrago of spiky peaks and roof-slanted things that looked more like a big storybook castle than anything else. The wind come through with a cold edge on it.
I got Clete's glass and scanned the ridges to both sides and back the way we come. We sat there a long time and Clete looked too.
"Well, I don't see her," he said. "You'd be smart to come with me, Willie-be dark soon."
"I'm going to find Mandy," I told him.
He didn't give me no argument, just nodded his head. "His tracks lead down to where the trees are and that's where I'm going. If he's there, Til kill him. Or else he'll kill me. If he's not, Til camp and wait for you 'til morning. But I'll wait no longer."
It was easy to see where he meant to go. Looked like a big part of the ridge we were on had broke off and slid halfway to the valley floor, leaving a mostly level place down there a hundred yards deep and maybe a quarter mile wide. Appeared to be water there, too, for it was covered with juniper and a few patches of high grass.
I turned my horse and offered him my hand. "Good luck, Clete."
He took it and shook it good. "Good luck yourself, you dumb sonofabitch."
The light was starting to go by the time I got back to between them two peaks. As leathery as the clay was there, baked almost like gray bricks, her sign were hard as hell to see. She had been nervous waiting there. Tracks going all different ways, back and forth. I went back to the edge of the rocky place, got off and led my horse so I could get down close to the ground every few yards to unravel the trail. I was about to go back toward them two peaks again when it started to pour rain.