Free The Ferguson Rifle by Louis L’Amour Page A

within it. If there was any way of discovering who the man was, these small clues might help.
    Buffalo Dog rode back to me, and dragging the man’s body into a crevice in the rocks, I piled brush over it. There was no time for anything else. Yet the puzzle would not leave me.
    In the saddle, I indicated the man’s body. “Could you trail the killer?” I suggested.
    He shrugged and we rode back to the others. The last of the Indians was just coming through the gap and Walks-By-Night was with them.
    Buffalo Dog went off toward the head of the column and I began scouting around, cutting for sign, as they say.
    Walks-By-Night joined me, and I told him what we had found.
    â€œWho killed him?” I wondered, “And why?”

CHAPTER 8
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    W ALKS-BY-NIGHT LET HIS eyes scan the slope of the grassy hill. “He walks there, I think, where the grass is bent.”
    He had better eyes than I, for at the distance no bent grass was visible to me, but riding closer we found a trail. And there were drops of blood upon the grass.
    It was then I told him of the missing bacon, meal, and powder. He listened, saying nothing, obviously puzzled by a thief with opportunity who took but one slab of bacon, and only powder but no lead.
    â€œEither we have a thief who took only what was desperately needed or one who did not wish to carry more than that.”
    â€œIt was not this man,” Walks-By-Night said.
    A thought occurred to me. “The shots had to come a few minutes before four o’clock, and something was bothering our horses about that time. Whatever or whoever stole our bacon and meal evidently was outside of camp when the shots were fired.”
    He stared off into the distance, and after a moment held up two fingers, then made the sign for together.
    The bacon thief and the dead man together? “If they had been together,” I suggested, “they must have had a camp last night.”
    Warily, we backtracked the wounded man. He had fallen several times, but each time had struggled to his feet.
    His back trail led us to a saddle in the low hills where we approached with some care. The Cheyenne motioned me to wait and hold the horses while he crept up to the crest of the nearest hill.
    After a moment, he motioned me forward. Coming down from the hill, he slipped to the back of his horse and we crossed the saddle into a shallow, grassy valley. At the head of the valley, not two hundred yards off was a small clump of cottonwood and willow, and the greener grass of a seep or spring.
    Two antelope were near the spring. They moved off as we drew near, evidence enough that no one else was close by.
    Yet among the trees we found the remains of a fire, a faint tendril of smoke rising, and when we stirred the coals, a tiny gleam of red still existed.
    Carefully, I looked about. Day-by-day my small skills in the wilderness were returning, and I was gathering more by watching and listening.
    Walks-By-Night held up three fingers, and swiftly made the signs for man, woman, and boy.
    â€œA woman?
Here?
”
    It was incredible. He showed me the print of a riding boot, too small to belong to anyone but a woman.
    There had been four horses, but the horses were gone, and there were no packs. We knew the whereabouts of the man, but what of the others?
    Five men had come here searching. Walks-By-Night studied the ground with care, and then as we rode away, he explained. Much of it I had seen myself, but I could not read sign with his infinite skill.
    â€œFive men come in the night … they find nothing.”
    â€œThen there’s a woman and a boy out here alone? We must find them, my friend.”
    â€œYou know her?” He was puzzled by my anxiety. “She is of your people?”
    â€œShe is a woman alone, with a boy. She will need help.”
    He asked many questions, and I tried to explain. No, I did not want the woman as a woman. I did not know her tribe.
    Obviously the idea