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"You got any idea watcher a'doin'?" demanded Morisson.
They were stopped beside a down-running stream. Robinson was applying a poultice of wild mountain herbs and moss to the big man's bleeding ankle and wrist. He reached out and ripped a strip of cloth fee of the back of Morisson's shredded shirt. Robinson used it as a bandage to hold the poultice in place. "This will help you."
"Feels good," Morisson muttered grudgingly. "How'd you know about this stuff?"
"I listened to...." Robinson said and then stopped. How could he explain to Morisson what it'd been like, landing as a fugitive in a strange country whose inhabitants mistrusted foreigners and were in general unfamiliar with the properties of their own country's plants? He was forced to find out for himself, mostly, looking for plants similar to those that grow in his native province, extending his ki, listening as it were to what the plants themselves had told him. But there had been a few people---a very old Indian, near death, whose knowledge had appeared encyclopedic, a young widow, a true frontier woman, whose mother had taught her about some forest plants as well as the garden seeds brought in from the east; a freckle-faced boy whose own curiosity had led him to empirical investigation of every available nut and berry---who had helped Robinson greatly. Thinking of the boy, Robinson found himself smiling slightly, and hoping he had succeeded in tempering the lad's scientific spirit with enough caution to let him survive the experiments.
"We gotta get shet of these irons," Morisson was saying.
"There's a place I know....some old geezer....trapper, I think," said Morrison."He's got all kinds of tools we could use, like a chisel and such like."
"He would permit this?"
After a second Morisson said, "Sure, he wouldn't mind. He's probably not even around. Just an old guy who lives alone all by himself." He stood up. "My wrist does feel a mite better. Funny thing, I know these parts pretty good but I never thought about using junk like this on myself. Or eatin' the stuff you're eatin'." He frowned into Robinson's calm face. "You....sometimes you seem like you're about one step from bein' an Injun."
They continued upstream through the early-afternoon forest.
Some fifteen minutes later Morisson slowed, saying in a low voice, "We're gettin' pretty near. All we gotta do is sneak into the little ragtag barn he's got. There's an anvil in there, chisels, all we'll....."
"You know this man, then?"
"Kennedy? Naw, but I done heard 'bout him. He ain't nothin' but a harmless ol' trapper."
"Yet you know his name, and where he keeps all his things," said Robinson.
Morisson shrugged his broad shoulders. "I heard about him is all."
Robinson thought, He hates the man. Why?
The cabin showed now. A forlorn place, unpainted and swaybacked. The barn stood a few yards to the rear of the cabin, a small lopsided structure with a rusty horseshoe nailed up over its gaping doorway. Tiny mud-colored birds were pecking their way across the lumpy ground in front of the barn. They suddenly fluttered up and away.
An ancient buckboard wagon stood to the barn's right. The two men were able to slip from the woods, duck behind the wagon, and then dodge inside the shadowy barn.
"See, like I told ya. There's th' anvil." Morisson, in the lead, got three steps closer to the anvil before a voice barked out.
"Morisson!"
"Oh, dang it," the big man groaned, slumping in defeat.
Standing on the threshold, the sunlight glowing round his wiry body, was a man in his late fifties. His hair was close-cropped, home-done, and his 3-day beard was an equal mix of white and black. He held a Sharps rifle aimed dead at the giant's chest.
"How come ya ain't hanged yet?" the man inquired.
Morisson spat at the dirt floor.
Noticing the chains that linked the two men, Kennedy said, "Broke out, huh? Well sir, I guess that means there'll be a reward on ya. Yeah, they'll pay ol' Kennedy somethin' for yer hide, almost certain." His left eye narrowed as he made a fast study of Robinson. "S'pose they'll want you, too. Looks like ol' Kennedy gonna get himself two rewards."
Kennedy swung the rifle two inches to the right and fired.
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Sergeant Crawford dipped his canteen down into the stream and scanned the pine forest while he waited for it to fill. He lifted the canteen free of the cool rushing water and recapped it.
"Robinson leaves hardly any track at all," he said to himself. "If he wasn't chained to that splayfooted giant I wouldn't have a chance of catching up with both of them. As it is..."
Crawford continued doing what he was doing. He left the side of the stream and walked casually back in the direction of his horse, and his rifle.
"Wonder how long he's been watching me?" he asked himself, his shoulder blades developing an odd itch.
Far up the hill, almost completely masked by leaves and branches, stood a single Ute brave. Naked to the waist, wearing buckskin trousers, a single string of beads around his neck.
The sergeant kept moving nearer the horse. He attached the canteen to the saddle and put his hand on the horn. Then he allowed himself to turn again towards the watching brave. The man was gone.
Not coming this way, Crawford decided after a moment. Climbing into the saddle, he returned to the trail of Robinson and Morisson.
ns 15.158.61.20da2
