Free Novel 1978 - The Proving Trail (v5.0) by Louis L’Amour Page A

back.”
    “Maybe,” she said. “Men always say they will come back, but they rarely do.”
    “I will.”
    She was silent a minute, and then she said, “He was talking to them, to those men who came in here that day.”
    To Wacker and Dick? Now what did that mean? What could he get from them that he did not know already? Or was he going to let them do the job for him?
    “Tomorrow,” I said, “watch for me. But don’t expect me.”
    “Watch for you?”
    “So he will think I am coming.”
    I rode out quickly at sundown, back a half hour later. He watched me from behind his curtain but did not follow. Was he so sure I’d be back?
    Immediately I went to bed. I had eaten earlier, now I wanted rest, but I put my few things together first, and at four in the morning, with a cold wind blowing along the streets, I slipped out and went to the stables. Swiftly I saddled, keeping my face toward the door. Then I walked out and took a trail out of town, around the corrals and away from the street. When I passed from sight of any window in town, I started to canter.
    It was still dark, and what warned me was a sudden catch of wood smoke on the air. Just a breath of it, then it was gone, yet instantly I was alert. The wind was wrong for the town, and there were no shacks out here that I knew of.
    Instantly, I turned the roan into the deeper shadows along the edge of the forest and drew up, touching his shoulder gently with a gloved hand. Again I caught the smoke. A camp or a cabin of which I knew nothing…somebody was there…close by.
    The roan walked at my signal, hoofs crunching a bit on the hard snow. Suddenly a man loomed up before me, rising out of a creek bed, but his rifle was not up, and I had the impression he had not meant to be seen, for when we glimpsed each other he shied as if he would try to hide, but there was no place, so he stood still. It was Wacker.
    “So that’s it? He set you to spy on me?”
    He stood silent, watching me warily. “I think,” I said, “I would be very slow about going to him with news of my ride. He won’t like it when I come back into town.”
    “If you do.”
    “If I do. But wouldn’t you like it better if I did not? Where is your bread buttered, Wacker? Would you rather have me gone where I cannot get people to asking questions, or in town where you have to worry?”
    “I think he means to kill you.”
    “I have no doubt of it, Wacker, but you found that I do not die easily, and I’m tougher now. Go if you like, but if I were you, I’d let well enough alone. Go in an hour from now and tell him you saw me leave…choose whatever time you like.” I grinned at him. “By that time I may be coming back.”
    He stood there looking at me, and I was wasting time. “What is it between you? He wants you bad, I think.”
    “Ask him.”
    “I’d ask him nothing. Not that one.”
    He stepped aside and I rode on, watching back, however, and trusting him not one whit. When there was a good two hundred yards and a bend in the road between us, I spoked the roan and we took the next mile at a good run, then slowed, steam rising from us in a cloud.
    Felix Yant would be after me now. This would be his chance to kill. I had no doubt that he was a dead shot. His kind would be. An excellent horseman, also, but his horse was a finely bred eastern gelding, not a mountain horse. I felt very sorry for that horse.
    My destination was Georgetown, but I headed west, away from it. I headed away from the high, snow-covered peaks with their passes choked with snow. I headed for the desert.
    He had told me nothing of the years he had left behind, but I doubted they were akin to mine. He had lived well, I thought, or almost well, and he wanted more of that life. Now he would find how others lived, for I knew where he was to be taken. Mine were but seventeen, almost eighteen years, but they had been lean and hungry years, with long, lonely rides. Since I was old enough to recall, I had ridden the wild