His cold camp was a half mile down the backside of the mountain. He had nothing to his name but what he’d managed to steal after he’d been released, so it didn’t take long to pack it all up. There was an old man working a small mine about a quarter a mile further down the mountain. He had a horse. George needed a horse. It would be a simple enough matter to take it.
To The Death
If it hadn’t been for T-Bone, Letty might have ridden right past the place where the killer had staked them out. But when the dog suddenly stopped and began to run in small circles behind a thicket of undergrowth, she dismounted and knelt.
There was a torn piece of a shirt caught in some thorns. She grabbed it and shoved it in her pocket. The soil behind the trees had been disturbed, where it appeared someone had been standing, as well as a large amount of footprints around the area. From the depth of the tracks behind the trees, it appeared the killer had been watching them for some time.
She stood abruptly and looked toward the house. The skin crawled on the back of her neck when she realized there was a clear view of the back porch. That’s when she saw Eulis’ body. The killer hadn’t given him a chance.
“Oh, Eulis.”
She clutched her belly as a fresh wave of pain threatened to send her to her knees. It was the thought of catching the man responsible for this tragedy that kept her going. She gritted her teeth, rubbed the tears from her eyes, and began scanning the floor of the forest until she finally found his trail. As she looked up at the wall of trees before her, she couldn’t help wondering if he was somewhere nearby, watching her struggling with shock and with grief.
T-Bone whined.
She took the piece of shirt from her pocket that she’d found on the bush and held it under T-Bone’s nose.
“Find him, boy! Find him!”
T-Bone seemed to sense the urgency in her voice and took off with his nose to ground. What she didn’t know was the pup was following a well-traveled path that he’d taken every day into George Mellin’s camp.
Letty mounted, following with an eye to the trail. There was no way to tell how long the killer had been gone, but she didn’t want to waste any daylight.
Within fifteen minutes, she rode into someone’s cold camp, but it was empty. A shelter of sorts had been built from limbs and pine boughs, although no fires had been made. She found a rabbit snare, but no sign of fur or bones. There was also a long indentation in the earth beneath some trees, with pine boughs and leaves as a cushion. She kicked it in anger, sending pine needles and leaves flying. The bastard had slept here. When she found him, she promised herself that his next sleep would be permanent.
After a thorough search of the area, it didn’t appear he had plans of coming back. When she found a new set of footprints leading farther down the mountain, she went back to her horse, mounted up, and whistled for T-Bone.
The pup fell into step behind the horse. The density of trees lessened as they descended, and she soon began seeing signs of old, long-abandoned campsites, as well as a few abandoned mine shafts. She knew them as places where men had searched long ago, then given up on their dreams.
The signs of habitation were a signal to her that she must be close to the base of the mountain. This intensified her eye to the underbrush, making sure she wasn’t riding into an ambush. T-Bone was running ahead of her now with his nose in the air, on the trail of something new.
When she rode out of a stand of trees into a small clearing and saw an old man lying on the ground beside a small lean-to, she pulled her horse to a halt.
Grabbing her rifle as she dismounted, she ran to where the old man was lying. There was a spilled bucket of grain near his right leg, and what appeared to be a half-eaten biscuit clutched in his left hand.
Just for a second, she saw Eulis again, and as she did, her vision blurred. Swallowing back a sob, she felt for his pulse. There was none. Then she saw the crack in the back of his skull and the pool of blood beneath