It began to get rocky and the power wagon pitched and skidded on the stones. They had covered eight or nine miles in an hour and that had cut the fugitives’ lead but they were going to have to abandon the truck soon. The hills were beginning to buckle and heave.
He swung the grinding power wagon up a steep grade, all four wheels scrabbling at the pebbled surface. At the top the hoof tracks turned across the sand shelf into a wide thicket of scrub oak and pinon that twisted up the spine of a razorback fin toward the pine-wooded heights. Watchman set the hand brake and switched everything off. “Unload the horses and get everything packed on them.”
When he pushed the door open against the wind a blade of cold stabbed into the truck. He turned his collar up and climbed down; got the ax from the truck bed and went out into the scrub with it. Without much discrimination he hacked down a succession of three-foot bushes and dragged them into a pile on the hardpan fifty feet from the truck and downwind. He wasn’t satisfied until he had a good big stack. He whacked half a dozen thick hard scrub trees apart and scattered the logs judiciously on and inside the brushpile and when it looked satisfactory he brought both five-gallon gasoline cans from their fender-runningboard brackets and drenched the woodpile with fuel.
Gasoline stink was raw in the wind. He was sweating from his exertions; he lifted his hat and dragged a coatsleeve across his forehead. The wind roughed up his hair. Stevens was standing by the horses, packed and ready, watching him with a long face. After a moment Watchman put his hat on and walked over to him, slipped the leather scabbard over the head of the ax, and strapped it to the saddle. “I hate a noisy silence, Buck. Say what’s on your mind.”
Deep breath in and out: Stevens put his head down, thinking. In the end he said, “The truth is I don’t like the odds all that much.”
“You can stay here. You can go back.”
“No. But it would help to know what we’re trying to do, kemo sabe.”
“Trying to keep Mrs. Lansford alive, mostly.”
“How?”
“Keep pressure on them.”
“You said something like that before. I don’t follow.”
“If they thought they had a long lead and a good chance to get out clean then they’d have no reason to keep her alive. They took her for a hostage but you only need a hostage when somebody’s pushing you.”
“I see. You want them to know we’re pushing them. But I still don’t see where that gets us.”
“Maybe with a little luck it gets us in close enough to get her away from them.”
“That’ll take a lot more than luck, kemo sabe.”
“Now that depends on the weather, doesn’t it.”
“I see that. But it’s still two against five. I don’t see why you figure it’s up to you and me to tackle it by ourselves. Like the FBI man said it’s not our responsibility, it’s his.”
“Well you need to have some reason to get up in the morning, Buck.”
“I’ll put that in your obituary.”
“I’ll tell you the way I was thinking. I was thinking suppose I was that poor son of a bitch Ben Lansford and the woman they took was Lisa.”
Stevens’ head lifted and Watchman caught the swift cut of his eyes. “You don’t really think you’re going to get her back from them alive.”
“I think I’d like to try.”
Stevens’ head nodded up and down slowly. “I may not be much good except to hold your coat but I’d like to watch you try. If I don’t get killed I might learn a thing or two.”