Free The Ferguson Rifle by Louis L’Amour

distant shots we’d heard, and of something moving in the night. Nobody had any comment, but when I rode out to take the point, Buffalo Dog was with me, and he had heard the shots.
    The land was vastly broken now, with jagged upthrusts of rock here and there, a difficult land to guard against, for at every step there were places where an enemy might hide, and a man must ride always ready, and no dozing in the saddle or depending upon the other fellow.
    We were a hundred yards ahead of the others, entering a gap between low, grassy hills, when Buffalo Dog pointed with his rifle.
    For a moment I did not see it, then I did. Blood upon the grass, blood still wet.
    Isaac Heath was closest of them and he came riding to see what it was. He looked at it. “You heard shots, all right, and whoever was hit was hard hit. That’s a sight of blood.”
    Buffalo Dog was looking up the slope, studying the brush and rocks at the top. Leaving Heath to point the column, the Cheyenne and I went up the slope, our rifles carried ready for a quick shot if need be, yet even as I rode I was agreeing with Heath. Whoever had lost that much blood was not going far.
    Nor was he.
    We found him among the first rocks. He was a slender man, well made, wearing buckskin leggings but a uniform coat, badly torn now and stained with blood.
    We looked slowly around, but he was alone, and no horse was with him, nor any tracks of a horse. Kneeling, I turned him over, and he was dead, his sightless eyes turned wide to the sky.
    He was a white man, and he clutched a worn skinning knife … nothing else.
    Buffalo Dog scouted about, but I looked at the man. Here was a strange thing, a mystery, if you like. Who was he? How had he come here? At whom had he been shooting? Or who had shot
him
?
    The man’s features were well cut … he looked the aristocrat, yet when I saw his hands, I could not believe that. The nails were broken, the fingers scarred, the hands calloused from hard work.
    Davy Shanagan came up the slope. “Ah, the poor man! But where did he come from, then? There’s no chance he was alone.”
    â€œThere was at least one other,” Talley said dryly. “The man who shot him.”
    â€œAye,” Cusbe agreed. “That’s a bullet wound. And in the night.” He glanced over at me. “And no Indian, or he’d have lost his hair. There’s something a bit strange in all of this.”
    â€œCaptain Fernandez,” I suggested, “was farther north than he should have been. Farther north than he had a right to be. Could he have been chasing this man?”
    â€œThat’s a Spanish uniform,” Talley agreed. “He may be a deserter.”
    Carefully, I turned back the coat. There were pockets on the inside, and in the right side pocket there was flint and steel and a stub of pencil. There was blood on the pencil, blood on the edge of the pocket. I glanced at the outflung right hand, and there was blood on it, too.
    The column of our people had halted in the gap below, and Solomon Talley turned toward them. “We’d best move on,” he said. “This is no place to be come upon by Indians.”
    He went off, moving swiftly, and Cusbe followed. Shanagan moved after them. “Leave him,” he said. “What difference does it make whether it’s wolves or ants? It’ll be one or the other.”
    Buffalo Dog was prowling about. I opened the man’s shirt, feeling something beneath it. A gold medal, hung from a gold chain. A fine thing it was, of fine workmanship, and not the thing any casual man would have.
    I took it from him, and then noticed the ring with its crest, and took that. In a small pouch under his belt there was a square of paper with a crudely drawn map upon it, three gold coins, and two small silver buttons each bearing a Maltese Cross. I didn’t recognize any landmark on the map.
    I pocketed the pouch after placing the ring and the medal