If he could worry them enough, he could make them afraid to leave their camp to look for either Big Red or for Betty Sue and himself.
As if in answer to his thinking, he saw a deep groove cut by a runlet of snow water coming off the mountain. It was not deep enough to hide the movements of a man, but it was perfect for them. Hardy took Betty Sue by the hand and they crept toward it.
Chapter 8
I
T WAS SCOTT Collins who found the first sign of the grizzly. He indicated it to the others without comment. They all knew what it might mean. It was a little over an hour later that they came upon the scene of the titanic battle.
The ground was torn by the marks of the stallion’s hoofs and the paw marks of the grizzly. Here and there they also found the footprints of the children, most of them Hardy’s. The carcass of the bear, torn somewhat by scavenging coyotes, lay in the deepest brush.
“Those youngsters are shot with luck,” Darrow said grimly. “Wonder that bear didn’t do ’em in.”
“Look here.” Collins tugged the boy’s arrow from the bear’s throat. “That’s no Indian arrow. Hardy got in one shot, anyway.”
Slowly, methodically, as was their way, they put the story together. They could see the tracks, they could see the wounds in the bear’s body, and they could imagine what had happened. These were men of the mountains and the prairie, who read trail sign as an educated man reads print.
The torn earth, the swirling, twisting hoof marks of the stallion were plain enough; so were the gashes in the bear’s hide. But the gashes were only superficial wounds, nothing that could have seriously hampered the bear. There was no obvious evidence of the kick in the ribs that the bear had received, but even that proved little. The grizzly bear, the largest of flesh-eating creatures, is, when cornered, the fiercest.
The one thing they looked at, and at first avoided thinking about, was the deep slash in the bear’s breast. Somebody with a knife had cut open the dead bear and ripped out its heart.
Finally Bill Squires pointed to it. “That’s an Injun trick,” he said. “He eats the bear’s heart to get his strength and fierceness. On’y there’s somethin’ else here…somethin’ must’ve made that Injun figure this bear was strong medicine.”
“This isn’t finding Hardy,” Scott Collins said after a moment. “We’d best be getting on.”
“They’re ridin’ again,” Darrow said from across the clearing. “The stallion took out of here like he was rode.”
The evidence of the trail proved him correct. The steady, even gait of the stallion showed that he was ridden by someone.
They followed the trail. It was vague here and there, almost gone in some places, and unraveling it was a problem. But there were three men to scatter out to pick up leads, and they kept on, traveling slower than Hardy had, but pushing on all the time.
Scott was far off to one side when Squires hailed him. “Hey, look at this!” he called.
Darrow and Scott rode over and studied the fresh sign—two mounted horses and a pack outfit.
Squires took out his tobacco and bit off a chew, then squinted his eyes at Scott. “You see what I see?”
“I see.” Collins studies the tracks closely. “Those tracks were made by that piebald gelding of Ben Starr’s.”
“Uh-huh…and what d’you know about that pie-bald?”
“Hell,” Darrow said, remembering, “he was stolen.”
“I ought to know those tracks,” Squires said. “It was me swapped him that horse.”
Those two riders were making no effort to conceal their trail, and they evidently did not fear pursuit. It was late in the season for them to be traveling in the area, and pursuit was unlikely here, even if they were suspected.
“If we ride behind ’em long enough,” Squires said, “we’ll sure enough know who they be. It ain’t as if this country was full of folks, an’ I been here long enough to know most of ’em. Why, I come into this country so early Jim Bridger was considered a tenderfoot. Weren’t many ahead of me…’cept John Coulter an’ them.”
The valley in which they now rode was wide, cut by many small streams and crossed by at least one river; and another river flowed down from the north. There were towering mountains off to the east, and high mountains closer by, to the west. Even now, in late September, it was a green and lovely land, with trout leaping in the rivers and wild game everywhere.
The three men had found the markers left by Hardy, so they knew he had taken this way. “He’s tryin’ to git away,” Darrow said. “I reckon he knew that Injun was behind him.”
“He’s got more trouble,” Scott Collins commented. He had been worrying about this for some time. “If those men who are trailing him would steal the piebald, they’d steal my stallion too—if they don’t get killed trying. That stallion doesn’t take to strangers. He never did.”
Twice they lost the trail, and twice they found it again. The track of the stallion was easy enough to follow when Hardy made no effort to conceal it.
It was dusk when they found the ashes of a campfire.
“No use trying to see anything tonight,” said Squires. “Walk back the way we came so’s we won’t mess up the ground.”
About fifty yards away, they made camp, and Scott could not restrain himself—he was sure they were close, so very sure. He went out a ways from the camp and called…a dozen times he called into the night, but there was no answer.
“He’s goin’ to take it hard,” Darrow commented to Bill Squires, “if we don’t find that boy.”
“We
got
to find him,” Squires said. “That there’s a good man…and, come to think of it, that’s quite a youngster, too.”
“Scott sure enough put the run on those claim-jumpers back at Hangtown. Sent the lot of ’em packin’.” Darrow grinned. “All but Dub Holloway.”
“Holloway convinced ’em,” Squires said. “Holloway was goin’ to take his measure. And he sure did…trouble was he didn’t live to see it.”
Scott Collins finally came back to camp. “The way I see it,” he said, “those horse stealers came upon the stallion’s tracks. If they followed very far they’d soon know there was only a couple of young ones riding him. What happened then depends on what kind of men they are.”
“Ain’t many would do harm to a youngster,” Darrow said. “There wouldn’t be a place they’d dare show their face.”
“If it was found out,” Squires responded. “Look at it. The kids are out here alone. They’d have no idea we were huntin’ ’em. There’s on’y that Injun to know.”
It was a quiet camp. Squires smoked a pipe, and after that he turned in. Frank Darrow tried to make talk of the trail and the country around, but finally he gave up. Only Scott Collins remained awake and stayed up. He could not have slept anyway, and there was always the chance he might hear something.
After a little while he moved out from camp and sat down in the darkness to listen.
This was Indian country, although not very many Indians were wandering now. At any time snow could close the country in, and any Indian in his right mind preferred the warmth of his lodge and a squaw to feed him and keep his fire going. The Utes, the Bannocks, the Cheyennes and the Blackfeet all rode through here. The Shoshone too, for that matter; and occasionally, in good weather, the Crows.
The air was clear, and the night was cold. On such nights, and in such air, sound carried a long distance, so Scott sat out there alone and listened. What he feared was that if the children were alive they might be carried off by some wandering party of Indians. The Utes might take them far down into Colorado or Utah; the Cheyennes might go back north to the mountains.
The stars were very bright. Once he heard a beaver tail slap the still waters of his pond, and a wolf howled. It was not a coyote…that was a wolf, a big one, a timber wolf.
There was that to worry about, too. Many a wild animal that would not dare attack a man might attack a child.
At daybreak he was back at camp; Darrow was putting together some breakfast. Around the campfire they worked out the events that had taken place.
“Horse throwed him an’ got away,” Squires said. After a while he added, “Those youngsters got away, too. Seems like.”
Scott looked at Squires. “You read it the way I do?” he asked.
“Looks like your boy got some rough treatment, near’s a body can see. Thing is, they all got away. Now, if that horse was a mustang he’d trace that boy. I see a mustang foller a trail like a bloodhound.”
“Red does all right. I’ve seen him follow the boy when he went hunting. Did you ever see a horse like to go hunting?”
“Uh-huh. Had a pony one time who’d come up behind me an’ hang his head right over my shoulder when I was about to shoot.”
“How long ago?” Scott queried, indicating the sign. “Two days?”
“Looks like. No longer’n three. We gained on ’em some, I figure.”
On the slope above the camp they lost all trace of the two children. Leaving one of the clumps of aspen, they had come out on a wide shelf of native rock swept free of soil by a long-ago landslide. The two children had gone across that rock like ghosts, and left no trail behind.
“What do we do now?” Darrow asked.
“Try to find the stallion. He’s pretty sure to be with the children.”
“I’d like to come up to those men,” Collins said grimly.
“I know one of ’em,” Darrow admitted suddenly. “I can’t place ’im, but I know ’im.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I don’t know myself, except that I was in a camp with one of those men sometime or other. I recognized the way things were around camp…you know, a man gets into habits.”
“You can’t recall his name? It might help.”
“I’ll think of it. It’ll come to me.”
They rode on. Now the trail was more difficult to follow, for the two riders had spread out, trying to find the stallion’s hoofprints.
“It’s familiar country,” Bill Squires commented. “We made rendezvous one time just south of Horse Creek near the Green. Near as I can recall it was July, 1837. That’s eleven years ago now, but it don’t seem so long a time.”
He squinted his eyes at the mountains. “We better find those youngsters quick. She’s comin’ on to cold.”
“We’ll find them. I can feel it now,” Collins said.
It was a lovely land in the crisp autumn air, the sunlight dancing on the creek waters, and the golden aspen twinkling in its rustling movement. Here and there the red of other leaves was like a splash of blood across the flank of the mountain.
Now the land grew rougher. Deep gorges opening out from the mountain sides were like raw wounds in the earth. Often they saw deer, and once a small herd of elk. There were wolf tracks and cougar tracks, and the marks of beaver teeth.
“We nearly trapped ’em out in the spring of ’37 and the fall of ’36,” Squires said. “We had to keep an eye out for Blackfeet too. They were cruising this country, and there was no friendship amongst us in those days.
“I was with Joe Meek, Osborne Russell, and them when we had the big fight. They nearly licked us, too. And nearly everybody in those times had ’im a brush with grizzlies. Russell and me come up a stream up Yellowstone way…I forget the year…and saw eight or nine grizzlies standin’ up on their hind legs jest a-eatin’ berries for all they was worth. They paid us no mind, just went on eatin’.”
Scott Collins drew up. He could see the tracks of the children clearly enough, and superimposed on them the tracks of the stallion.
“Red’s trailing them!” he called to Squires, who had ridden off a few feet to check the earth around a flat stone.
“They rested a while here,” Squires said. “I figured when I saw that rock, ‘Now, if I was a boy, an’ tired, where would I set?’ An’ sure enough, there they’d been.”
Scott leaned over and looked at the tracks when he drew alongside. He was a man very easy in his movements, but quick to move when the occasion demanded. He studied the ground while Squires offered a running commentary.
“The little one, she’s tried. Draggin’ her feet more’n we’ve been seein’ her do. But look there now. The boy’s got himself some sort of pack. See where he put it down?”
Squires chuckled. “You know what I’m thinkin’? That boy snuck back into their camp whilst they hunted ’im, an’ he made off with some of their grub. Leastways, that’s what I hope he done.”
They followed along. Scott Collins took the lead now. He fought back the worry that rode him relentlessly, trying to keep an objective view so he would not be persuaded one way or the other. A man could read both too much and too little into a trail, and until now the children had been both fortunate in finding a little something to eat, and unfortunate in those they met, animal or man.
He could hope, yet he dared not let himself hope too much. “I’ll find them,” he told himself. “I’ve got to find them.” He remembered to be proud of his son. The boy had learned his lessons well, and was recalling now things he needed to know.
In midafternoon they lost the trail at a small stream. It was gone completely where a herd of elk had wandered across it and, perhaps frightened by something, had milled about a good deal. Then they had wandered on, leaving no sign behind that helped.
The men searched across the grass of the meadow, cropped over and trodden by deer and elk, and apparently even by a few buffalo, rare in that region. They found nothing they could identify as a track of horse or man. Once, near a bush, they thought they found what might have been a moccasin print, one vague side of a footprint which they could not decide upon as human. Children, horse, and their pursuers had vanished as if caught up by the wind.
Scattered out, the three men rode on. They had seen trails peter out before, and had found them again, so they were not too discouraged. There was still good grass, and the streams running off the mountain were clear and bright, but they found no place where a horse had fed, and no horse tracks along the streams where they searched.
“I got to be pullin’ out soon.” Frank Darrow spoke reluctantly. A gruff, hard-bitten man, he held few illusions and only one loyalty…that was to his friends. “I got to think of my stock, with winter comin’ on.” He glanced at Scott. “Ain’t like I want to leave you in the lurch.”
“I know it, Frank. You go along when you’re ready.”
Their camp was somber that night, and there was no talk around the fire. All three were now feeling depressed by losing the trail and not finding it again as they had expected.
“They turned off,” Darrow said. “I figure they turned off somewheres, the whole kit an’ kaboodle of ’em.”
They discussed the possibilities, weighing each one. They had to put themselves in the minds of the children, had to imagine what they would do.