The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard - Elmore Leonard [102]
From camp to camp it was the same story. Most of the hunters had not seen the Fosses; a few had, earlier in the day, but they could be anywhere now. Until finally, very late, they talked to a man who had sold to the Foss brothers that morning.
“They even took some fresh hides,” he told them.
“Still heading west?” The boy kept his voice even, though he felt the excitement inside of him.
“Part of them,” the hunter said. “Wylie went back to Caldwell with three wagons, but Clyde shoved on to meet another party up the Salt. See, Wylie’ll come back with empty wagons, and by that time the hunters’ll have caught up with Clyde. You ought to find him up a ways. We’ll all be up there soon… that’s where the big herds are heading.”
They moved on all night, spelling each other on the wagon box. Leo grumbled and said they were crazy. The boy said little because he was thinking of the big herds. And he was thinking of Clyde Foss with all those hides he had to dry …and the plan was forming in his mind.
Leo Cleary watched from the pines, seeing nothing, thinking of the boy who was out somewhere in the darkness, though most of the time he thought of whiskey, barrels of it that they had been hauling for two days and now into the second night.
The boy was a fool. The camp they had seen at sundown was probably just another hunter. They all staked hides at one time or another. Seeing him sneaking up in the dark they could take him for a Kiowa and cut him in two with a buffalo gun. And even if it did turn out to be Clyde Foss, then what?
Later, the boy walked in out of the darkness and pushed the pine branches aside and was standing next to the old man.
“It’s Clyde, Leo.”
The old man said nothing.
“He’s got two men with him.”
“So… what are you going to do now?” the old man said.
“Hunt,” the boy said. He went to his saddlebag and drew a cap-and-ball revolver and loaded it before bedding for the night.
In the morning he took his rifles and led his horse along the base of the ridge, through the pines that were dense here, but scattered higher up the slope. He would look out over the flat plain to the south and see the small squares of canvas, very white in the brilliant sunlight. Ahead, to the west, the ridge dropped off into a narrow valley with timbered hills on the other side.
The boy’s eyes searched the plain, roaming to the white squares, Clyde’s wagons, but he went on without hesitating until he reached the sloping finish of the ridge. Then he moved up the valley until the plain widened again, and then he stopped to wait. He was prepared to wait for days if necessary, until the right time.
From high up on the slope above, Leo Cleary watched him. Through the morning the old man’s eyes would drift from the boy and then off to the left, far out on the plain to the two wagons and the ribbon of river behind them. He tried to relate the boy and the wagons in some way, but he could not.
After a while he saw buffalo. A few straggling off toward the wagons, but even more on the other side of the valley where the plain widened again and the grass was higher, green-brown in the sun.
Toward noon the buffalo increased, and he remembered the hunters saying how the herds were moving west. By that time there were hundreds, perhaps a thousand, scattered over the grass, out a mile or so from the boy who seemed to be concentrating on them.
Maybe he really is going hunting, Leo Cleary thought. Maybe he’s starting all over again. But I wish I had me a drink. The boy’s downwind now, he thought, lifting his head to feel the breeze on his face. He could edge up and take a hundred of them if he did it right. What’s he waiting for! Hell, if he wants to start all over, it’s all right with me. I’ll stay out with him. At that moment he was thinking of the three barrels of whiskey.
“Go out and get ’em, Will,” he urged the boy aloud, though he would not be heard. “The wind won’t keep forever!”
Surprised, then, he