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The dawn brought rain. Slow-falling, warm, coming down easy through the high trees.
Milton Hare sat up and untangled himself from his blanket. Katherine was already awake and saddling her horse. "You ought to put on your slicker," her husband suggested.
"This kind of rain doesn't bother me," she answered. "And it probably won't last."
"No breakfast this morning?" He rolled up his bedroll and ambled over to his mount.
"We should be no more than an hour or so from Ollie's camp," the blond girl said. "We can wait until then."
Hare reached into his saddle bag and tugged out his yellow slicker. After getting into it, he reached again into the bag and located a tin of biscuits. He shook a half dozen into his hand before returning the tin. "I don't suppose a few of these will spoil my appetite." He hefted his saddle up onto his horse's back. "You weren't planning on a meal of several courses when we arrive up there? Or do you think Ollie might take time out from...."
"I'll see you get enough to eat, Milton." She tightened the cinch, tested the stirrup, and climbed up into the saddle. "Ready?"
His mouth being full of dry biscuit, Hare just nodded.
The rain kept on, drifting down slow and gentle.
Hare folded his hands over his saddle horn after he'd finished the final biscuit.
The rain made dark splotches on the back of Katherine's buckskin jacket, made her long hair cling to her neck.
"Suppose," called out Hare, "he's not here?"
Katherine, not turning to him, said, "Then I'll look somewhere else."
"What?"
"I said then we'll look somewhere else."
"Where else?"
"I don't know right now. If Ollie's not here, we'll likely get some hint as to where he's gone."
But Ollie Potts was there.
They came upon the two-room shack roughly an hour and a half later.
It stood in a clearing, with a rocky hillside behind it. The rain hit the tarpaper roof with a slow steady thumping.
"I'll look around first." Hare tethered his horse to the last tree before the clearing, then walked slowly to the shack.
Flies, fat and black, were sitting thick on the floor of the main room. They made no sound.
Ollie Potts was tied by the wrists to one of the raw roof beams. Three arrows had gone into him and nailed him to the far wall. Three arrows had gone into him and nailed him to the far wall.
"Is he here?" asked Katherine, approaching the shack.
"He's here." Hare moved to cut off her view inside, for a moment anyway.320Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡn90AehM9qS
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"Now let's get out of here," said Hare. He patted the mound of dirt with the flat back of his shovel.
Standing beside the newly filled grave, Katherine said, "You didn't even want to bury him." Her hand rested on the handle of a pick. "You wanted to leave him...."
"Look, Katherine," said her husband, "It wasn't anybody named Morisson that killed Ollie. It was Indians. Those Utes we were warned about. I'm thinking of you. We have to leave this place."
"You're thinking of yourself." She turned and walked across the clearing towards the shack.
It was noon. The rain still fell.
"All right. I'm thinking of both of us. We've got to get down out of these mountains, back down to the fort. You know he wasn't killed more than....."
"I don't want to talk about Ollie anymore." She went inside the shack.
He followed. "Good, then let's just move on out."
"I want to look around here first, Milton," she said. "Gather Ollie's things together."
"All right, I'll help you. But then we're going to leave."
Katherine said nothing. She knelt beside a cheap suitcase that sat on the dirt floor next to one of the room's cots.
Hare moved into the other room. It was smaller, windowless.
There were two cots side by side. A lump of frayed dirty blankets resting on one. the rain was getting in through several holes in the roof. Muddy puddles dotted the floor.
On one wall were two lopsided shelves. Hare crossed over to see what they held. A nearly empty tobacco sack and a broken spur on the lower one. A small oval cardboard-framed photo of a plump woman on the other shelf. Something was sitting behind the picture. Hare reached it out. A leather pouch, heavy.
Loosening the drawstrings, he opened the pouch. It was filled with gold nuggets. "My God," he exclaimed. "My God, Katherine."
She didn't respond.
Hare ran into the next room. "They did find gold, Katherine. They...."
Three men stood there. Each with a gun.
The smallest of the trio pushed his spectacles into place, saying, "That's a mite interestin'."
Hopalong was standing close beside the blond girl, a revolver casually pointed at her ribs. "He say somethin' 'bout gold?" he asked the room in general.
Smokes said, "Looks like m' hunch was one hunnert percent correct this time."
After running his tongue over his dry lips, Hare said, "Who in the hell are you?"
"Jus' three tucker'd out pilgrims," said Craig as he expelled smoke, "wanderin' through life."
"Katherine? Do you know...."
"I've never seen any of them before," answered his wife.
Craig said, "Folks ought ta notice more o' what's goin' on 'round 'em."
Smokes sidled closer to Katherine. "We seen ya before, mam," he said.
"I don't....."
"Oh, you weren't payin' no mind t' a bunch o' no-account drifters." He readjusted his spectacles. "It was down t' Tightbutte, in the handsome eatin' and drinkin' establishment next 't yer 'otel.."
"Smokes, he got a good ear fer hearin' stuff," explained fat Hopalong. "So he couldn't a' missed ya talkin' 'bout gold."
"This belongs to my wife," said Hare. "This was her broth---"
"As o' right now it belongs t' me," Smokes told him. "Ya kin hand over or I kin pick it off yer dead body."
Hare tossed him the pouch.
After bouncing it on his palm, Smokes took a quick peek inside. "Yup, no doubt 'bout it. That's gold."
"Lemme see that," requested Hopalong.
Stuffing the sack into a floppy pocket of his beadless vest, Smokes said, "We'll have plenty a' time t' study it later on, Hopalong. Right now I wanna find out 'bout this here situation." He approached Katherine and suddenly reached out to catch hold of her long blond hair. "One thing I admire a whole lot is yeller 'air."
"Let her go!" Hare moved for him.
Craig stepped out. He hit Hare twice in the stomach, then gave him a knee in the jaw as he doubled up.
"Let her go!" repeated Hare. He got to his feet.
Craig knocked him down again.
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