Slocum awoke before cockcrow. His mouth tasted of copper and stale tobacco. His throat was raw and coarse as sandpaper. He slid the blanket from his naked body and sat up. Madge was a sleeping lump next to him, only her face visible beyond the edge of the blanket. Her tousled hair lay strung out like strands of dark wool. It was still dark outside and the stars were still out. The moon had set and Venus, the morning star, shone brighter than any others.
He dressed quickly, found his wooden canteen, uncorked it, and drank until the rawness in his throat evaporated. He found his belly gun and tucked that inside his waistband before he stepped outside with his gun belt and strapped it on. He walked away from the lean-to and fished out a cheroot from his shirt pocket. There was a brisk chill in the air, and he shivered as he struck a match to the tip of the cigar.
The sky began to pale in the east, the light wiping away the first stars as if they were specks on a blue-black mirror.
Slocum smoked and thought about Madge.
She had turned into a wildcat, as if she were trying to cram years of deprivation into a single night of lust and pleasure. The more he gave her, the more she wanted, and he was glad to give her lessons with the full force of his body.
Sweet, shy, innocent Madge, he thought. She had turned into a tigress, savage with lust. And it had been a grand experience, one that he would remember for a long, long time.
The smoke in his lungs seemed to warm him, and he exulted in those quiet moments before dawn when the whole world seemed fast asleep and he was alone in the wild country he loved.
He began to hear the chirp of birds, the squeal of a chipmunk as it emerged from its den to stand sentry duty. The sky continued to pale. One by one, and in groups, the stars vanished as soft light invaded the dark sky.
As Slocum smoked his cheroot, the sky became a pale shade of blue and the last bright star, Venus, vanished as the sun rose in the east.
It was then, as he was about to drop the butt of his cigar and grind it out with the heel of his boot, that Slocum heard a distant cry of anguish. The sound, muffled and distant though it was, sent a ripple of ice up his spine.
Someone, he surmised, was in trouble.
Then he heard the distinctive plea for “Help!” It was followed by another anguished cry that sounded like a man who was alarmed by something.
Slocum dropped the butt of his cigar and dug his heel in to mash and extinguish it. Taking long strides, he hurried toward the source of the distressed sounds.
A little over a quarter of a mile up the slope, Slocum saw a man standing in front of a lean-to. He had both hands entangled in his hair and he was muttering to himself the same phrase: “Oh my God.”
Other men came running from several different directions. The first one he recognized was Rod, who reached the lean-to first. The man in front pointed downward to a man lying just inside the shelter. Rod knelt down and touched a hand to the neck of the prostrate man. Then he stood up and saw Slocum.
“What’s going on?” Slocum asked.
The anguished man began to moan and weep.
“It’s Jessie Nolan, Slocum. He’s plumb dead. Throat’s cut.”
Slocum came up close and looked at the dead man. He recognized Jessie, whose lifeless face was turned upward, his eyes frosted over with the glaze of death. There was a clean wide slash across his throat from ear to ear.
“He was bunkin’ with Paul Welch here and . . .” Rod said.
Rod turned to Paul and grabbed him by both shoulders. He shook him, then demanded, “What happened here, Paul?”
“I dunno,” Paul said. “When I woke up, I looked over and saw blood and that cut in Jessie’s throat. Jesus, I didn’t hear a thing.”
“You mean somebody just come up here and cut Jessie’s throat while you was asleep?” Rod asked.
Other men, most still groggy from sleep, some rubbing the sandman’s dust from their eyes, approached from several different directions.
“Rod, keep everybody away from here,” Slocum said. “Don’t let anybody trample out those boot prints I see in front of the lean-to.”
“Huh?” Rod said.
“Maybe I can track whoever sneaked up here and cut Jessie’s throat. There’s dew on the grass and ground. Boots leave prints.”
“Oh, I never thought of that,” Rod said. “I’ll keep folks away for the time being.”
Rod turned and waved his arms at all the men running and walking toward Paul’s lean-to.
“Stay back,” Rod yelled. “Everybody. Don’t come over here.”
All the men stopped, their faces contorted in confusion. Some grumbled and kept coming, but others held them back.
“We got some tracking to do,” Rod said. “So just stay the hell away. All of you.”
“Who put you in charge, Rodney?” one of the men called out.
A chorus of yeah’s floated through the sparse timber and bounced off the boulders in minor echoes.
“I did,” Slocum said.
All of the men stared at him as if he had risen out of the ground in a burst of fire and brimstone.
Slocum turned his back on them and started to scan the ground in front of Paul’s shelter. He walked along a dim swath in the grass that was the trail left behind by the killer. He saw faint boot prints, as well, but could not determine any size or distinguishing features on the soles.
He was, however, already laying the groundwork in his mind about who the killer might be. From the boot prints, he knew that the man was a patient stalker. He had been in no great hurry to approach his sleeping victim.
Instead, it appeared that the man had stepped out slow and let both feet settle, side by side, before taking another.
The man was a hunter. He knew how to stalk his prey. He did not drag his feet, but picked up each one before taking another. Careful and calm, Slocum thought. Very careful. Very calm. And calculating. He knew where he was going and what he was going to do.
Jessie’s killer had known who his victim was to be. And he had waited until just the right moment to begin his careful stalk and then proceeded directly to Jessie Nolan. He had sliced Jessie’s neck with one sure and powerful stroke.
Then the man had trod back along the same path he took to arrive at his destination. Footprint upon footprint. Each step tended to blur the other, so that it was difficult to see any markings on the sole of either boot.
Rod stood guard with Paul, neither man daring to move until Slocum returned. The other men waited some distance from the murder scene as others joined them and learned that they would have to wait for a full report on whatever bad thing had happened. They could see Paul and Rod and someone lying still under the lean-to, but none knew who it was that was either injured or dead. Their mutterings remained low-keyed and unintelligible to both Rod and Paul.
Slocum followed the killer’s spoor as far as he could as the sun rose behind him, burning off the dew, forcing the shadows to retreat and change positions.
The tracks showed Slocum that the killer made good use of the tall pines for cover as he headed for Paul’s shelter. He stopped often at every tree and even out in the few open spaces he traversed.
Then the tracks led to a rocky stretch and Slocum noticed that there were no overturned stones. He went beyond it onto softer ground, but saw no more tracks. There was just no way for him to tell where the killer had come from, but he found a place where he had waited and watched before making his move.
The small knoll caught Slocum’s eye, and when he went there, he saw a faint set of tracks just outside the thick copse of trees.
Curious, Slocum pushed past a spruce and a small gnarled juniper, walking up the crown of the small hill. There, he found fresh tracks aplenty, and the ground moiled and scarred up by boot heels and sole scrapes.
He walked to the other side of the knoll and down the slope to the flat. There, he saw a clear boot print in soft loamy soil. There was another nearby, as if the stalker had paused a moment or two before entering the place he had chosen for a lookout.
Mud.
Slocum saw clear and clean boot prints embedded in a small patch of mud. This had probably been a shady spot that harbored snow until very recently. The snow melt had left behind that muddy, irregular circle, and there were the killer’s boot prints, with every detail of the soles impressed into the wet soil as if they had been cast in wax.
These, Slocum knew, were the kind of boots worn by most of the prospectors and miners. Work boots. But each boot left a distinctive print. There was wear on the left heel, and scars in the soles from sharp rocks and jagged shale.
Slocum examined the tracks very closely as the light from the rising sun increased.
When he was finished, he had made mental notes of every distinct mark in the prints. He memorized them so that if he ever saw the soles that had made those marks, he would recognize them and know who had killed Jessie Nolan.
He walked slowly back to Paul’s lean-to.
“Well, what did you find, Slocum?” Rod asked when the man in black drew near.
“Some things I keep to myself,” Slocum said.
“We want to know who killed Jessie,” Rod said.
“So do I. The man left tracks, but they’re hard to read.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Rod was on the edge of belligerence.
“It means I don’t know where the killer came from or where he went after he murdered Jessie.”
“That’s it?”
“For now,” Slocum said.
He started to walk away.
“Where you goin’?” Rod asked.
“To tell Madge her father is dead.”
“Jesus.”
“Somebody has to do it. I was with her all night. It should be me.”
“You what?” Rod demanded.
Slocum ignored him and walked down the slope back to where Madge was asleep. He did not relish being the bearer of bad news, but he knew that she deserved to know that her father was never coming back to her. Jessie was gone.
Gone forever.