Free Ghost Warrior by Jory Sherman Page A

from left to right. He listened for sounds made by the horse, the click of an iron hoof on stone, the crunch of a bush or tree limb, the clatter of dislodged pebbles. All was quiet. All was unnerving in that silence.
    â€œHmmm.” Zak turned his horse and rode back up to the hilltop. Bullard followed. As he rode, Zak stuffed two fresh cartridges into his rifle’s magazine. He heard Bullard reloading the Spencer behind him.
    â€œNow what?” Bullard asked when they reached the place where the sniper had fired upon them.
    â€œLet’s see if I can pick up tracks of the Navajos who ate those sheep. See if they split up or rode somewhere in a bunch.”
    â€œYou’re the tracker, Zak. All I see is ground we tore up ourselves.”
    Zak’s jaw tightened for just a second. He thought of a phrase he had heard while serving in the army, scouting for General Crook, fighting Indians in the north and the far west. When the pupil is ready, the teacher appears. He didn’t remember who said it, but the phrase had stuck with him. He thoughtRandy Bullard might be ready to learn something about tracking, and there was no better time than the present.
    â€œWe’ll ride through the moil of that bushwhacker’s tracks and our own, Randy. We’ll look for unshod hoof marks.”
    â€œYou goin’ to teach me a thing or two?”
    â€œMaybe. You ride alongside me as much as you can and I’ll try and show you how to read the ground.”
    â€œFair enough, Zak. Where’d you learn all this?”
    â€œFrom the Sioux, the Cheyenne, the Blackfeet, the Pawnee.”
    â€œYou been over the road, ain’t you?”
    Zak rode on into the brush, his leg brushing against the scrub pines, limbs from a small juniper scraping Nox’s leg.
    â€œYou look at unmarked ground. Keep that picture in your mind. Then you look for a scuff mark, some little mark that seems out of place. Like there.”
    Zak pointed to the ground.
    â€œYeah, looks like…well, I don’t know what it looks like. It ain’t got no clear…what do you call it?”
    â€œDefinition.”
    â€œYeah, it ain’t got that.”
    â€œThe dirt has filled in something that was there. A hoof mark, a gouge. Wind may have pushed dirt into the track. But it’s a track. Now, you follow that and look for more signs. Every so often you’ll see a clear track. It might be blurred by falling dirt that built up along the sides, but it’ll be clear enough.”
    â€œI see one,” Bullard said. “And another’n right close to it.”
    â€œNow, let your eyes roam over on both sides of it. A few feet each way. You might see more marks or tracks, disturbed soil.”
    Zak smiled as Bullard passed him, his gaze locked to the ground. He was like a bloodhound on the scent. There were more tracks and Bullard was finding them, eager as a kid following the blood trail of his first deer.
    Zak showed him how to look for bent branches, bruised blades of grass, a slightly dislodged pebble. All were signs of some walking creature having disturbed the natural order of the terrain. Bullard was an eager student and he began to notice things he would usually overlook.
    â€œSo, the Injuns taught you to track. But how did they do it? Like we’re a-doin’?” Bullard was curious. A good sign, Zak thought.
    â€œWe walked game trails, followed buffalo herds, looked at places where quail had dusted their feathers. They showed me tracks in snow and on sand. Sometimes they had me just sit in one spot and watch a small patch of ground for half a day or more. I watched ants, grasshoppers, doodlebugs, ticks on trees and leaves. I looked at small creatures until I could track an ant across a rock.”
    â€œReally?”
    â€œAlmost,” Zak said, with a wry smile.
    They came to a game trail less than a foot wide. There were deer tracks and horse tracks, bird tracks and rabbit droppings.