The sheriff had heard the fusillade and feared the worst. But in this density of cover it would have been foolish to gallop forward for fear of meeting a bullet from the other party. They met the stretcher-carriers coming back down the trail created by so many horses.
‘What the hell happened to them?’ asked the sheriff. The Braddock soldiers explained.
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‘Did he get away?’
‘Yep. Major Max got across the creek but he was gone.’
The stretcher-bearers continued back towards civilization and the sheriff’s posse hurried forward to the creek.
‘And you guys can wipe those smiles off your faces,’ snapped the sheriff, who was fast losing patience with the young woodsman somewhere up ahead of him. ‘No-one is going to win this fight with bows and arrows. For God’s sake, it’s 1977.’
Each of the wounded men they had just seen was lying face down on his litter with a Cheyenne turkey-feathered arrow sticking vertically out of the left buttock. The sheriff and his men crossed the creek, slipping, sliding, hauling on their horses’ bridles, until they were assembled on the far bank. There would be no more picnic sites for campers up here. This was the landscape when the world was young.
But Jerry was up in his helicopter, 1,000 feet above the canopy of trees, quartering the wilderness until he found the parties of horsemen crossing the creek. This narrowed his line of search. The fugitives had to be up ahead of the followers, somewhere on or near the line from the crossing to the mountains ahead.
He was having a problem with part of his technology. Because of the density of the foliage he could not raise Sheriff Lewis on his walkie-talkie. For his part the sheriff could hear his pilot calling but could not make out what he said. The static was too loud and the words broke up.
What Jerry was saying was: ‘I’ve got him. I’ve seen him.’
He had in fact caught a glimpse of a lone horse, led by the bridle, with the blanket-shrouded figure of a girl on its back. The fugitives had been crossing a small clearing in the forest when the helo, sweeping across the sky tilted to one side to give the pilot the best downward vision, had caught them for a second in the open. But it was only a second; then they were back under the trees again.
Ben Craig stared up through the canopy at the monster chattering and clattering above him.
‘The man in it will be telling the hunters where you are,’ said Whispering Wind.
‘How can they hear, with all that noise?’ he asked.
‘Never mind, Ben. They have ways.’
So did the frontiersman. He eased the old Sharps from its sheath and slipped in one long, heavy-grain round. To get better vision, Jerry had dropped to 600 feet, just 200 yards up. He hovered, slightly nose down, gazing for another small clearing they might have to cross. The man below him sighted carefully and fired.
The heavy slug tore through the floor, went between the pilot’s spread thighs and made a starred hole in the bulbous canopy past his face. Seen from the ground the Sikorsky performed one wild, crazy circle, then hauled away to one side and upwards. It did not relent until it was a mile to one side and a mile high.
Jerry was screaming into his microphone.
‘Paul, the bastard just drilled me. Right through the canopy. I’m out of here. I have to go back to Bridger and check the damage. If he’d hit the main rotor assembly I’d be a goner. The hell with this. The gloves are off, right?’
The sheriff heard none of this. He had heard the distant boom of the old rifle and seen the helicopter giving a ballet performance up against the blue sky; he had seen it head for the horizon.
‘We have the technology,’ murmured one of the rangers.
‘Stow it,’ said Lewis. ‘The boy’s going inside for years. Just keep moving, rifles at the ready, eyes and ears alert. We have a real manhunt on here.’
Another hunter had heard the rifle shot, and he was much closer, about half a mile. Max had proposed that he scout forward of the main party.
‘He’s walking a horse, sir, which means I can move faster. He won’t hear me coming. If I get a clear shot I can bring him down with the girl several feet away.’
Braddock agreed. Max slipped away forward, dodging quietly from cover to cover, eyes ahead and to each side, covering the bush for the slightest movement. When he heard the rifle shot it gave him a clear line to follow, about half a mile ahead and slightly to the right of his trail. He began to close in.
Up ahead Ben Craig had holstered his rifle and resumed his march. He had but a half-mile left to go before the forest gave way to the rock sheet known as the Silver Run. Above the trees he could see the mountains coming slowly closer. He knew he had slowed his pursuers but not turned them back. They were still there, still following.
A bird called, high in the trees behind him. He knew the bird and he knew the call, a repeated toctoc-toc that faded as the bird flew away. Another responded, the same call. It was their warning call. He left Rosebud to graze, moved twenty feet off the trail left by her hoofs and trotted back through the pines.
Max flitted from cover to cover, following the hoof marks, until he came to the clearing; with his camouflage uniform and black-streaked face he was invisible in the gloom beneath the trees. He studied the clearing and grinned when he saw the glitter of the brass cartridge in the middle of it. Such a silly trick. He knew better than to run forward to examine it, and take the bullet from the hidden marksman. He knew the man must be there. The too-obvious bait proved it. Inch by inch he studied the foliage on the other side.
Then he saw the twig move. It was a bush, a large and dense bush across the clearing. The gentle breeze moved the foliage, but always the same way. This branch had moved the opposite way. Peering at the bush he made out the faint tawny blur six feet above the ground. From the previous day he recalled the fox fur trapper’s hat on the rider’s head.