ROBERT PARKER - Appaloosa

The tracks were clear enough. There was nothing out here and no reason for anybody to be here. Nobody else had ridden the wash for a long time. There were some coyote tracks mixed in, and some antelope spoor. As the wash turned west, I could feel the sun hard on my back. It was getting hot. The horses weren’t tugging on the lead anymore. The mule had been on a lead all his life and the extra saddle mounts had fallen into his rhythm. I drank a little water. The sun was halfway up toward midday when the wash petered out onto a flat plain. The tracks stayed west and then got hard to follow in the scrub that covered the ground. I had to get off my horse to follow them, leading all four of the damned animals. Pretty soon they’d be riding me.

It was past midday when I came to a pile of stones about a foot high. I stopped and squatted and looked at it. Beside it, on the ground, was a smaller pattern of stones in the form of an arrow. It pointed south. I scattered the stones, remounted, and turned my animals south, and we moved on. I didn’t need to track much anymore. I knew Cole would leave me directions. And he did. Some mesquite freshly cut. Some dry sticks pointing south, bigger growth with a prominent slash. In the late afternoon, I found him, near a shale outcropping, sitting on a rock, beside a marshy-looking water hole, with the Winchester in his lap, his boots off, and his feet in the water. He watched me ride up, trailing the animals.

“Everett,” he said.

“Virgil.”

“Might as well get down,” Cole said. “We can camp here. Water’s good, and”-he nodded at the outcropping-“we can shelter a fire if we stay by the stone.”

I unloaded the mule and unsaddled the horses and put them on a loose tether so they could drink and forage for food among the scrub. Then I built a fire against the outcropping and put out food for supper, and squatted on my heels and started to cook. Cole never moved from where he sat with his feet in the water, until the thick slices of salt pork began to hiss in the frying pan. Then he put his boots on and came to the fire with a limp that barely showed. He poured himself some coffee.

“Whiskey in that saddlebag,” I said.

He got the bottle and poured some in his coffee.

“You?” he said.

I held out my coffee cup, and he poured some whiskey into it. Each of us took a sip, first blowing on the surface of the coffee so we wouldn’t burn our lips.

“Stringer getting a posse up?” Cole said.

“Talking about it when I left Yaqui,” I said.

“You found my stones.”

“Yep.”

“Scatter the arrow?” Cole said.

“Yep.”

Cole sipped more of his coffee.

“Good,” he said after he swallowed. “Don’t want no goddamn herd of cowboys and hardware clerks stampedin’ around out here. Getting in our way.”

When the salt pork had cooked nearly through, I dropped some biscuit dough into the grease and let it fry, and turned it once, and took the fried biscuits and the salt pork and put them into tin plates.

“They ahead of us?” I said.

“Yep. Probably widened the gap today. Me walking and all.”

“Twelve,” I said, “fifteen hours.”

Cole nodded.

“They know we’re behind them?” I said.

“Sheltons know me,” Cole said. “They know I’ll be coming.”

“We plannin’ on stayin’ the night here?” I said.

“Got to sleep,” Cole said. “We ain’t going to catch them today.”

I leaned back a little and stretched out my legs and drank some more coffee. Cole looked at the mule and the horses.

“Must have been tiresome,” Cole said, “draggin’ them three animals on a lead.”

“Some,” I said. “Mule caught on pretty quick, and the horses got the idea in time.”

“Be easier now. I’ll lead her horse, you lead the mule.”

I nodded. We ate our meal and drank coffee with whiskey and didn’t say much. When it was dark, we let the fire die and settled to sleep between it and the rock, wrapped in strong-smelling saddle blankets.

“Got any thoughts where they might be headed?” I said to Cole.

“South,” Cole said.

It was just after dawn on our third day, and the trail had turned straight west. Now and then, Cole would see a hoofprint in among the ground cover. But mostly, we were able to follow them through horse droppings and the signs of campfires.

“I been thinking,” I said to Cole.

“Un-huh.”

He rode with his eyes on the ground, leading the saddle horse, with me trailing the mule.

“We’re all the law there was in Appaloosa,” I said.

“Yep.”

“And now we ain’t there.”

“Yep.”

“So,” I said. “Now there ain’t no law there.”

“Yep.”

“And that don’ bother you?” I said.

Cole looked up from the tracking for a moment.

“No,” he said. “It don’t.”

We rode on: Cole, head down, looking at the ground; me riding beside him, looking at the landscape. The saddle horse trailing placidly behind him, the mule behind me. Neither of us said anything. When we kicked up a jackrabbit, my hand went to my handgun, before I caught it. Cole never flinched. I’m not even sure he saw the rabbit. We kept on. We didn’t hurry, but we didn’t stop. Ahead, past the horizon above where our present direction would take us, there was a circular movement in the sky.

“Buzzards,” I said.

Cole looked up. His face showed nothing. We kept on. In maybe an hour, we came to where the buzzards were feeding. It was the carcass of a young buffalo, mostly bones now, and hooves. Most of what could be eaten had been. The buzzards flew up as we rode up, and landed again a few feet away. Cole ignored them. He got off his horse and went and squatted on his heels and looked at the remnants. The buzzards hopped restlessly just out of his reach. He paid no attention.

“Hide’s gone,” he said.

I sat my horse and waited, looking at the landscape. Cole didn’t need my help with the buffalo.

“Scapula’s broke,” he said.

I looked down and could see that it was. Cole rummaged a little among the bones and the blood-soaked grass where the buffalo had fallen.

“Shot,” he said.

Cole opened his hand and showed me two big lead slugs, misshapen from shattering the scapula.

“Bigger’n a forty-five,” Cole said.

“Fifty, maybe.”

“Maybe one of them old Sharps buffalo guns,” Cole said.

The vultures edged closer. There were still a few scraps on the bones.

“I didn’t see no sign of one,” I said, “with the Sheltons.”

“Nope. Wouldn’t take the hide, either.”

He was looking at the ground.

“See the horse tracks?” he said.

I rode nearer and wheeled around the dead animal, scattering the buzzards as I went.

“Not shod,” I said.

“And they bothered to skin it and take the hide,” Cole said.

“Indians.”

“Yep.”

I rode out a little way from the carcass, and in a slow wider circle, which infuriated the buzzards who had just lit there, after I’d scattered them in closer. On foot, Cole walked out toward where I was. I leaned forward in my saddle.

“Here’s the shod hoofprints,” I said. “And the unshod, mingled.”

Cole squatted, looking at the smudges in the dirt. Then he got down on his belly and put his face barely an inch away from the prints and looked, and slithered along like that, looking.

“Shod prints are older,” he said. “Sides have begun to crumble a little. Unshod prints are over them. Fresher.”

I looked at the landscape again. Nothing moved but the unhappy buzzards.

“Kiowa?” I said.

“No way to say. There’s some out here.”