toward the sagebrush hills. The shiny bulge was sliding methodically up and down his cheek and he was studying the ground as he went, following the trail left by the drifting Morgan.
Gordon leaned against the wall. He felt weak. He felt foolish. He wondered if he really could have hit Union.
He allowed Union wasn’t such a prime tracker after all. It was logical for the man to assume that Gordon had ridden away. But any tracker who really knew his business would realize the prints weren’t deep enough for a ridden horse.
Gordon put the gun in its holster. He knew he couldn’t stay in South Pass City any longer. Union might find the horse and return. Or there might be other Crazy Moon riders with him. All Gordon could do was head northward. There was bound to be a way station within fifteen or twenty miles.
He moved across a sagebrush land white with salt deposits that had a blinding glare in the sun. The wind blew a chalky sand against him all afternoon till he was powdered from head to foot. On the blinding glare of salt flats he saw a rider. He hid for an hour in the grease-wood. When nobody came he thought it must have been a mirage.
The road led him into the Wind Rivers by nightfall. He was stumbling, exhausted, dizzy with hunger. He got the idea again that somebody was following. He stopped and tried to sight them and couldn’t. He jumped a foot when an owl hooted at him. It sounded like the wheezing scrape of a distant bucksaw. He moved off the road into the cover of timber. He began to shiver uncontrollably. He had heard of the glaciers up here that never melted. He could see them through the timber, high above, where nothing grew, white and shimmering under a rising moon. Finally he could go no farther and he sank down against an aspen. He felt drugged. He must have slept. Then he was being shaken. Somebody’s hand on his shoulder, shaking him awake. He opened his eyes to see a seamed, bearded face. Beyond the face was a horse. There was a Crazy Moon brand on its hip.
“Git up, sonny,” the man said. “I been afollerin’ you a long time.”
There seemed to be a weight against Gordon’s chest, a suffocating weight. His legs had gone to sleep, doubled under him, and he could hardly stand up. He held himself rigidly against the tree, speaking thickly.
“Which one are you?” he asked. “I never seen you with MacLane before.”
“I’m Blackhorn,” the man said.
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