Louis L'Amour - Treasure Mountain

"But you said Andre was afraid of him. Is Philip such a fighter?"

"He is a superb swordsman and a dead shot, but Philip would not have done it himself unless forced into the position. He would have made other arrangements."

It was interesting, but nothing that meant much to us now. Philip Baston was in New Orleans. What interested me more was the identity of the unknown man who left the footprints on the trail.

If he had a horse, where had it been?

Orrin got up. "You better get some rest. I am going to ride over and see Flagan."

The Swede had a back room with a spare bunk in it, and he showed me to the place. I shucked my boots, hat, and gun belt and stretched out on that bunk with a deep sigh. I'd no recollection of ever feeling so tired before.

I'd been on the trail for a long while, and a man tires faster when his nerves are on edge. When you're hunting and being hunted, every fiber of your being is poised and ready.

I felt the tenseness go out of me slow, and I dozed off. I woke briefly and watched the aspens beyond the window. It was fifty or sixty feet to the edge of the woods. The curtain stirred in the breeze, and I watched it lazily, then drifted off into a sound sleep.

Under the aspens the man waited. He had a shotgun in his hands, and he knew what he wanted to do. Inside the room near the opposite wall was a chair. Over the back of the chair hung a gun belt.

He heard the boots hit the floor and thought he heard a creak of a bed when the man lay down. Just a few minutes now ... a few minutes.

The big, good-looking brother had ridden off on his horse. The Negro was in the barn, working on some of their saddlegear. The Tinker had taken a pole and headed for the La Plata, and Swede Berglund was tending that garden he was trying. So William Tell Sackett was there alone, and soon he would be asleep.

The hunter had patience. He had seen the young Sackett with another daybook in his hands, but the daybook could not have been with the body. He had gone over it thoroughly those twenty years ago.

Was it with the gold? No ... for gold hadn't been brought off the mountain today.

The book would certainly tell where old man Sackett had hidden the gold. They had all been so sure Sackett was dead, and Pierre, too. Well, Pierre was dead now, that was sure, and so was Sackett.

The trouble was Sackett had gone back and gotten the gold after they were all gone. Not all the gold on Treasure Mountain, but a good lot of it, anyway.

This William Tell Sackett worried him. The man was a tracker, and a good one. He could read sign like an Apache, and there was no safety with him about. Sackett had killed Andre. The man had not seen it but he heard the girl and the others talking of it. That must have taken some doing, for Andre was dangerous, good with a gun, and ready to use it.

So much the better. With Andre gone, the rest of them were nothing. Paul was a weakling. That girl was murderous enough, but she was a woman, and she was too impulsive.

Well inside the curtain of aspens, crouched low among the tall grass, wild flowers, and oak brush, he was well hidden. He would give Sackett plenty of time to get to sleep, really to sleep.

Crouched in the bushes, the man waited. The shotgun had two barrels, and he wore a long-barreled six-shooter for insurance and had a rifle on his horse. As he waited he once more studied the ground. He knew just where each foot would touch ground, where he would go into the trees, where he would turn after entering the woods. He had chosen two alternative routes. He was a careful man.

Ten to fifteen seconds to the window, lean in, fire his shot. Then, instead of running directly away, he would run along the wall of the saloon, go around the outhouse, and crouch along the corral into the scrub oaks.

On the other side of the oak brush a trail dipped into the river bottom where his horse waited. He would ride south, away from the canyon, where there was more room to lose himself.

He waited a moment longer, got to his feet, glanced left and right, and stepped out of the brush, walking swiftly to the window. Glancing left and right, he saw no one. The shotgun came up in his hands, and he was almost running when he reached the window. He started to thrust the shotgun into the open window when suddenly a voice on his left said, "You lookin' for something, mister?"

It was that Trelawney girl, and she had a rifle in her hands, not aimed at him, but in a position where only an instant would be needed to aim it.

He hesitated, kept his head tilted downward. He muttered under his breath, then turned sharply away and walked toward the outhouse.

"Mister? Mister!"

He ducked around the small building and ran along the corral into the woods.

Another ten seconds! He swore, bitterly. Another ten seconds and he would have killed Tell Sackett and be on the run ... well away to his horse.

Nell walked to the window, glancing in. Taking one more quick look after the fleeing man, gone now, she went around to the front. The Tinker was standing in front of the store. She explained quickly.

The Tinker glanced toward the woods beyond the corral. "He's gone. You scared him off."

"But who was he? I never saw him before!"

The Tinker shrugged. "It will not happen again." He walked around the building, glanced toward the woods, then sat down. "I'll stay right here until he wakes up. Don't you worry now."

Morning light was laying across the windowsill before my eyes opened, and for a time I just lay still, letting myself get wide awake. That there was the soundest sleep I'd had in a long, long time. Finally, I swung my feet to the floor and reached for my boots.

Something stirred outside the window, and Tinker said, "Tell? Better come out and have a look."

When I was dressed and out there beside him, he showed me the tracks. There were only parts of two foot tracks, the rest were on grass and left no mark that remained to show size.

It was the same track I'd seen on the trail.

"He was out to get you, Tell. There's a place where he waited in the aspens over there. He must've waited an hour or more."

In the earth back of the outhouse we found another track, smudged and shapeless because he had been running. We found where his horse had stood, tied and waiting.

I studied the tracks, knowing I had seen them before, but without remembering where. To a tracker a track is like a signature, and as easy to identify, but this was not one I had remembered, hence it was no one I had ever followed. It was simply a track I had noted casually without paying it any mind, but one thing I knew. If I saw that track again, I would remember it.

Orrin came in from the ranch. "Good place," he said, "and I've found a spot for us."

When I told him what had happened, he looked grim. "I should have come back. I knew I should have come back."

"Nothing gets by that girl," Tinker commented. "She had that man dead to rights."

We drank coffee, ate breakfast, and watched the cloud shadows change on Baldy.

"I'm going up there again," I said. "I've got to settle it in my mind. I've got find what remains of him."

"He's lost," Berglund said. "Coyotes or bears carried off the bones ... or the buzzards dropped them. Nothing lasts long up there that isn't stone."

"There's evidence of that," the Tinker said quietly, "coming down the trail."

Four horses, four riders--a rain-wet, beat-up looking crew--and one of them was Fanny Baston. Paul was there, one hand all tied up with a bandage, and those two riders they'd picked up from somewhere.

They came down the trail, and we stepped outside to see them pass, but they looked neither to the right nor the left, they just rode on through. They carried nothing, nor did they stop for grub.

"She's a beautiful woman," Orrin said. "You should have seen her the night we met."