Tucket's Gold by Gary Paulsen

Author:Gary Paulsen [Paulsen, Gary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-54841-2
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 1999-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

“How many are there?” Lottie stared down at the tracks.

“More than five,” Francis said. “The tracks run together. And they're fresh, since the rain three days ago.”

“Maybe only a day old.” Lottie looked hard at Francis.

They had walked less than four miles before coming across the tracks. It had been a soft morning. The weather had remained clear but somewhat cooler—perfect for walking—and the moccasins were proving to be better than they looked. They had used part of the hide from the second deer to make a crude backpack for the two bars of gold. Billy had cut a strip to hold the sword at his side, though he was so short that if he didn't watch it, the tip dragged in the dirt.

Francis had moved out beside the streambed a few hundred yards, so Lottie, who was in the lead, had come upon the tracks and called for him.

“Horses?” she had said, and pointed. Billy had crouched down to look.

Francis nodded.

“With riders?”

“It's hard to tell.”

“I thought you could track.”

“I can.”

“They don't have shoes,” Lottie said now.

“Maybe they're wild horses and we could catch one or two or even three.”

Francis had been thinking along the same lines, only a bit more realistically. Unshod horses were not necessarily wild. Indians did not shoe horses, nor were most of the Comancheros' horses shod, except for those they had stolen with shoes on. And catching wild horses wasn't that easy either. There was a reason they were called wild.

But Francis had learned from Mr. Grimes, the mountain man, who in turn had learned by studying wolves and coyotes, that you always watched everything; and when something came along that was different, you investigated it.

Francis had no intention of running into Indians or Comancheros and didn't have a clue about how to catch wild horses. But it was still very interesting that suddenly, in the midst of this flat, grassless plain, the tracks of five or ten horses came in from the side and moved up the streambed ahead of them.

Francis knelt to examine the tracks more closely and found one, with a slight crack in the forward rim of the hoof, that he could identify and study without confusing it with the others.

They were not moving fast, not even trotting. More strangely still they seemed to be moving in a tight group. There was very little space between the tracks and now and then they stopped or moved off to the side a bit and he could see where they had been chewing at small clumps of bunchgrass.

That was a good sign. Ridden horses were not allowed to stop at every little bit of grass. Maybe they were wild … but that didn't explain why they stayed in such a tight group. A single horse never went off to the side to nibble—it was always the whole group.

‘‘We'll follow them,” he said after a few moments. “They're going our direction anyway. But keep it quiet in case we come up on them.”

And so they walked most of the day, moving quietly, taking turns carrying the pack with the gold.

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