The Tracker by Max Brand

Author:Max Brand
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Published: 2014-09-24T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Three

From the high bank of the river, the trio looked back, but the mouth of the valley still was empty. Far away they could hear a murmur like that of thunder below the horizon, and they knew that the herd was yet in full stampede, brushing before its horns all the courage, all the strength and the cleverness of Henry Plank and his men. They could not help glancing at one another with a smile as they listened and thought their own thoughts. Then they started zigzagging down the bank.

As they reached the level of the stream, the horse of Franchard stumbled and threw him against the pommel of the saddle. Tom heard him stifle a groan, but he thought little of that until afterward.

They turned up the stream, keeping their horses in shallow water so that all signs of the trail should disappear. Rankin arranged this, and in all their march he was the guiding genius and more full of resource than the other two put together. It seemed as though his fear of Henry Plank had filled him with a new intelligence.

For half an hour they continued in the bed of the stream, until Tom began to fear that Plank’s men might appear at any moment upon the bank and open fire upon them. But only at the end of a half hour did Rankin suggest climbing the farther bank. That they did, taking the horses up a rocky place where the hoof marks would not tell. It was so steep that they dismounted and the mustangs were led, and it was as they mounted again at the top of the bank that they discovered the further handicap under which they must ride. For as he reached for the pommel and tried to draw himself up to the saddle, Franchard suddenly groaned and fell almost exhausted in against the side of his horse.

Rankin took him by the shoulder and shook him. “Franchard, are you sick?” he shouted. Franchard rolled at the big man very sick eyes. “By grab, you were hit!” yelled Rankin.

“I was only scratched,” Franchard said.

It was along his right side. A bullet had raked his ribs, and his clothes and his side were dark with congealing blood. It was such a thing as would have been hardly more than a spurgall to a young and powerful man, but Franchard was neither young nor strong, and the drain on his strength and his nerves was more than he could bear. In the shelter of a grove of willows, they dressed the wound as well as they could, Franchard making light of it and trying to jest about the shallowness of the scratch, but all the while with his face yellowish-white.

Afterward they rode on once more, Franchard with his shoulders squared with unusual precision, and his back unnaturally straight. Tom found a chance to talk to black-faced Rankin during the ride that afternoon.

“He can’t be badly off,” said Tom. “It ain’t much of a hurt.”

“Ain’t it?” Rankin said.

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