Catching up to the horses didn’t take much more that a quarter of an hour, though to Matthew, traipsing after the horses was fraught with an ocean of emotion. He was humiliated for being such an bungling fool, he was awash with anger at the thieves for stealing his Alice, and he was anxious to be making progress towards his wife, but alas the horses had decided to make their escape in the exact opposite direction. Cresting a knoll they came within sight of the horses standing at the bottom of the sloping hill about a hundred feet or so away. Chet put his fingers to his mouth and produced a high-pitched whistle. The paints’ head perked up and gave a resounding whinny and came trotting up the hill to Chet. He patted his horse on the neck and gave it a few words of encouragement, climbed into the saddle, and headed down the hill to fetch Matthew’s horse that had neglected to follow. Without a word between the two men when Chet returned, Matthew took the reins that Chet had held out to him, and climbed back into the saddle on his horse.
Within a few short moments they had arrived back at the spot of dirt that had nearly held two deaths upon it. Chet once again reined his horse to a stop. Without looking to Matthew, Chet broke the silence, “I shouldn’t a yelled at you like I did. I am sorely ashamed to have talked to a preacher the way I did… My momma would die a thousand deaths if she’d ever know I did that.” Looking over to Matthew the two men gained eye contact, “I am sorry, Son for doin’ as I did.”
Matthew nodded his head in acceptance. “I sure gave you plenty of reason.”
With a chuckle, Chet agreed, “That you did. Nearly shot my feet out from under me.
“Look,” continued Chet after a pause, “you are goin’ to need that gun before the days out. Let me say just this to you- point like I said, and don’t let go after you pull the trigger. Even if you miss what you’re pointin’ at, the noise lets em know that you mean business, and it’ll make em run or hide or duck. All of which means that you have a few more seconds to get another shot off or to get into a hidin’ place of your own. But please remember that I’m on your side. Don’t shoot me.” This last line was said with a smile and Matthew knew that all was forgiven on Chet’s side also.
Looking forward again, Chet pointed with his chin while questioning Matthew. “They shot you from down that way, right?”
“From that line of trees. They had stopped before going into them, two of them dismounted and the next thing I knew a bullet had whipped past my head. I think it was the second shot that got me.”
“There is a creek that runs through that line of trees. Lets go take a look and see if we can get an idea of their next move.” Chet spurred his horse into motion, and, without any prompting from its rider, Matthew’s horse started out also.
In a few short moments the two had come upon the location of the shooters. Chet looked around for moment and saw the evidence of the two thieves dismounting. He also saw a good few drops of blood that had fallen to the ground near the tracks of the outside horse.
“Looks like your friend that did the chaser shootin’ may have made a better hit than I suspected. There’s a good bit of a man’s sap here on the ground.”
Matthew edged his horse over to see what Chet was pointing out. Sure enough the blood was very distinct on the leaves that litter the ground.
“I don’t know how long they stopped to do their popping at you,” Chet continued in his suspicions, “but I’d say from the size of a couple of these drops that this feller is leakin’ pretty good.”
Looking at the ground Chet put his horse into an easy walk. “Plain as day these guys all headed this way into the trees.” The two riders followed the trail down to the stream that ran through the center of the trees. “Looks like they decided to travel the stream for a bit,” Chet said.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if you take a gander at the other bank, you don’t see no more tracks comin’ out. The horses get in the water, but they don’t come out of the water. So what they decided to do was travel in the water, hopin’ to throw off anyone trying to follow ‘em.”
Matthew grew concerned at the new revelation. “Does that mean that we’ve lost them?”
“Well, water, especially movin’ water as this is, washes away the mark left by horse pretty quickly. So they get in the stream and travel a yarn, or maybe even a mile, one way or t’other. Then they hop out of the stream and make for their final destination. It’s awful hard to track through water that’s been moving for a day or so.”
Chet’s words did nothing to comfort Matthew. “So we’ve lost them?”
“I didn’t say that. You see, they weren’t plannin’ on you gettin’ up and comin’ after ‘em so quick like. Give this stream another ten hours or so, and sure as shootin’, you’d have no idea which way they went cause the stream would slowly wash away every sign of their passin’. You could spend a good day goin’ this way and that hopin’ to find their trail again. But we have the advantage.”
Chet sat quietly on his horse while looking into the water. Matthew grew impatient waiting for further explanation. After a long moment, Matthew finally inquired of Chet what his thoughts were now.
“See how this place they went in is all soft bottom sand. The water here don’t move quit as fast as other places up and down the stream, as you can see. Well, the sand down stream is still unstirred- you can even see some green slime just sittin’ there all undisturbed. But if you look upstream that away, you see that there ain’t no slime left untouched there. Higgs is travelin’ the stream up that away.
“And I’ll tell you somethin’ else- travelin’ the stream is mighty slow goin’. You can’t run your horse, or you’ll break its leg. You gotta go real slow like, and give your horse the pace it wants to go in. To do it right you gotta go a good fair piece in order to really throw someone that is tracking you- I’d say at least a mile, maybe more.”
Matthew thought he saw the problem that they were now facing pretty clearly. “We are going to have to travel just as slowly through the water in order to see where they come out. So we’ll have to travel just as slowly.”
“No. We ain’t goin’ to stay in this here stream. You would never see where they came out if you are traveling in the stream behind ‘em. They’ll pick a good rocky area to come out that won’t show no signs of passin’ once the waters all dried up that done drips off the horses. What we’re goin’ to do is cross on over this here stream and on up the other bank and out of the trees and follow the stream from up yonder. They can’t hide their tracks once they hit the grass again. Fact is, son, we’ll be gainin’ ground on ‘em.”
Taking a look at Matthew, Chet nodded his head toward the water, “Why don’t you hop on down and give that head of yours a washin’.”
“I’d rather keep moving if we could.”
“True ‘nough, I’d be likin’ that too. But the last thing we’ll be wantin’ is for that head of yours to get all infected and rot away. May even have to amputate right there at the shoulder.”
Matthew shook his head at the lame joke offered by Chet, but he knew the wisdom of Chet’s words were good. So he climbed out his saddle, took off his coat and shirt, stepped into the stream, and plunged his head below the surface. Carefully he washed away the grime from his scalp and cleaned up his face. He was amazed at how refreshed he felt being all cleaned up as he donned his shirt and coat.
“Why you look more like a boy now that you is all cleaned up than when you was a mess,” Chet teased.
Matthew didn’t take offense to the jesting, but rather smiled at the jabbing of his new friend. “Better than looking like a dried up old grape,” he poked back.
After Matthew had remounted his horse, Chet spurred his horse across the stream and Matthew’s horse followed closely behind. Once out of the tree line the two swung to the right to follow the stream’s contour. After a few minutes of riding in this direction, Matthew was starting to be worried about a nagging thought. “Hey Chet? How do we know that they won’t get out of the stream on the other side and head off the other way?”
“Well, they might just do that to.” Chet didn’t leave the thought hanging there for too long before he gave out a bit more of his reasoning. “If they got out on the other side then they would sure ‘nough come across that wagon trail you was on this mornin’. Last thing they is gonna want to do is run into anyone that might be on it and that could point the way to a posse, if any comes at all. Plus there ain’t a lot of places to hide right to close to here goin’ that way. It’d be a long ride before they could get somewheres safe for ‘em.
“No sir. They’ll come out on this side and head off to ‘em hills over that away. Sure as shootin’.”
True to his words, within a short time they had come upon a fresh set of tracks coming out of the tree line. Chet reined in his horse to get a better look at the trail left in the grass. He slowly walked his horse back and forth along the trail for a few moments while he examined the telltale signs of the tracks. Finally he stopped his horse and looked towards the hills and then back to the trees, obviously trying to puzzle out some sort of problem.
Having perceived Chet’s puzzling, Matthew interjected himself into Chet’s thoughts, “Is there something wrong?”
“Don’t rightly know. Problem is that we had four horses enter the stream and now we only have three coming out here to the grass.”
“Could it be a different set of riders?”
“That could be, but this here ain’t exactly what you’d call a populated landscape. Most times a person could spend months off the trails and not see another man- well you might be seein’ an Indian, but not white folk.” Giving a short suspension of his flow of words, Chet continued with his speech, “Makes me wonder if there ain’t more to this. Let’s head into the trees for a quick look around. We can make sure the tracks don’t enter in from the other side of the stream and then come out on this side. Then we’ll know for sure that we got the right tracks and we won’t be wastin’ time traipsin’ after some other odd party of men. But I do doubt that this is anyone else but our lot of skunks.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“We still have a horse that’s diggin’ a bit deeper than the others. That means that he’s carryin’ an extra load. But we’ll just quench my curiosity first.”
The two men turned their horses into the line of trees. Matthew noticed that Chet had kept his horse to a slow walk. He also noticed that Chet’s right hand was now resting on the handle of his gun. Chet pulled his horse to a stop and stood listening. Matthew wanted to inquire about what was happening, but decided to hold his tongue and trust that he’d find out soon enough. Chet spurred his horse forward again and moved to a new position in the trees.
Chet turned in his saddle and gave Matthew a hand single to stay where he was. Then he slipped soundlessly from his saddle and slowly stalked deeper into the trees until he was out of sight of Matthew. Matthews’s ears reached after Chet but found nothing but the sound of birds singing their songs, while off to his right a rodent of some sort snuffled through the leaves. He found himself feeling vulnerable once again, making him turn and look all around him, his eyes probing the trees for any sign of danger.
The sound of Chet’s voice calling to him relieved his senses. Matthew climbed down from his horse and led both horses by the reins in the direction of Chet. He came into a small clearing and saw that there was another horse tied to small sapling. On the ground a few feet away was the body of a man propped up against a fallen log. His shirt was stained the crimson of blood down low just above his belt. Chet was standing on the other side of the man holding a rifle and a handgun.
“Looks like we found one of the skunks.”
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