Red Sun rode his mare up to where Aurand and Philo had stopped for the morning. They sat in front of flickering flames watching a sage hen cook over coals. Red stepped down from his pony at the edge of the camp and walked the rest of the way. “You want to find Tucker Ashley?”
Aurand prodded the meat with his knife. “Damned fool thing to say. If I didn’t want him, I wouldn’t have started this little outing a week ago.”
“Then I’d put out that fire. Tucker’s just savvy enough to see it. And he might find you first.”
“But the meat’s not done yet.” Philo squatted in front of the fire and dug a knife out of his pocket. His swollen lip had blackened, and his eye remained matted shut from the mob’s beating in Cowtown. “What do you want us to eat—raw meat?”
“Suit yourself,” Red said. “Not me who wants to find Ashley.”
Aurand tossed a cup of coffee onto the fire. It crackled and hissed in protest and went dead a moment later.
“What the—”
“Red’s right,” Aurand said. “We don’t want Tucker spotting it.”
“You believing that old man?” Philo reached over and gathered fresh firewood from a pile.
“Red’s been right all the other times.” Aurand kicked the pile of branches on the ground beside Philo. “I said we can eat the meat raw if we need to. Anything to catch that bastard.” He turned to Red. “What did you figure out?”
Red tipped his canteen over his head before taking a deep drink. Philo reached over, but Red jerked the canteen back. “Where’d you get fresh water?” Philo asked.
“Where did you get fresh water?” Aurand repeated.
Red chin-pointed down into a long valley a mile away. “There is a spring down thataway. I got to cutting sign for Tucker, when I ran into Indian tracks . . .”
“How many?”
“Three ponies,” Red answered. “Or I should say two unshod ponies and one white man’s horse. They got the woman with them riding along with a brave. They are looking for Tucker, too, I figure, but I do not believe they have picked up his scent yet.”
“And you have?”
Red bit off a plug of tobacco. He ignored Philo’s outstretched hand and pocketed the plug. “It will not be long before they find his tracks. Tucker is making no effort to hide them.” He laughed. “Even Philo could follow his sign.”
“So you picked up Tucker’s tracks?”
“I did.”
“Then why the hell didn’t you follow him?” Aurand said. “Wing him or cripple him long enough and come get us?”
Red’s eyes narrowed, ringed by deep lines. “You know our arrangement—I find them for you. I do not fire a shot. That is your job.”
Aurand nodded. Since hiring Red to track army deserters from Ft. Sully, and the occasional robber dumb enough to get caught, Red had proved just what he claimed: that he was the best tracker—Indian or white man—in the territory. “I’m no fighter,” he told Aurand that first day when he’d hired Red. “I am a lover,” Red had announced through a grin that spanned few teeth. Sadie at the Cowtown saloon could attest to that.
“How far?” Aurand asked as he watched Philo brush coffee and dirt off the half-cooked bird.
Red looked in the direction he had ridden from. “We might be able to catch him by tonight, the morning at the latest. That is, if Blue Boy does not find him first.”
Philo stuffed his mouth with a chunk of half-raw meat. “At least there’s only three Indians after Tucker.”
“And the woman’s bound to slow them down,” Aurand added.
“You are forgetting,” Red said, spitting a string of juice five feet over that just missed a lizard scurrying to the safety of a rock crevice, “that one of those Lakota is Blue Boy.”
Philo shrugged. “So we kill him if we get the chance.”
Red shook his head. “Has nothing I said this past week penetrated your thick skull? Blue Boy is credited with a hundred enemy killed. And that is just other Indians. Hard telling how many settlers and soldiers he has murdered.” Red looked to his back trail once again. “That is the last man I want to meet on a moonless night.”