Zachary's Gold by Stan Krumm Page A

the country became almost totally impassable within only a few miles.
    If my suspicions were correct, he was hiding his criminal activities behind the facade of a simple mountain man, and his cabin might be just around the next bend. He was certainly not being secretive about his path. Almost at the spot where I had spied him a few days previously, I found a whopping stack of mule dung—a blatant, malodorous road marker.
    As I walked, I toyed with the idea of walking up to him quite openly and in a friendly manner when I found his abode, then quietly checking out the place for anything suspicious, but the memory of Greencoat’s threat when I innocently crossed his claim made me review the plan with caution. What, after all, did I know about this man? I could not be sure that he was indeed a highwayman, but neither had I any reason to think that he would have reservations about blasting anyone who crossed his path unexpectedly.
    I decided to follow the rules I had been given when working for the Pinkerton Agency in Illinois, the first of which was always to assume that the suspect was armed and dangerous. (This is a redundancy that never ceased to amuse me, for anyone who is armed is also dangerous. The bishop’s grandmother is dangerous if she has a revolver.)
    Examine at leisure, I was always told, and approach with caution. Be quick to get your firearms at the ready, but slow to shoot.
    In three years at that job, I had hunted down a dozen men, alone or with partners, but I had never been fired upon. This new errand was more exciting for me because I was embarking on it for my own benefit and of my own volition, but there was no reason to believe that I was in any greater danger. If I couldn’t find this fellow, or if he turned out to be nothing more than he appeared, then I could return to my work at Binder Creek with nothing to regret but a day or two of pleasant travel.
    Man and mule were following the little creek bed in an easterly direction, and their tracks were easily spotted in any of the sandy stretches, so I was able to make good time and enjoy the sunshine for several hours. As if their footprints were not obvious enough, the pack animal continued to drop memorials at regular intervals. I marvelled at the digestive capacity of that brave animal!
    By noon I had covered about eight or ten miles, and I was thinking about stopping to have something to eat, when I found myself at a dead end—a sort of cul de sac — where the stream widened into a shallow lake, with tangled dead spruce all around its border. I could see where the valley would continue farther ahead, but not how I could get there, let alone how I might lead a mule through the bog and brush. After looking the area over carefully, I decided that I must have lost the track earlier on and needed to backtrack.
    About a half mile back I found the spot where the trapper had given me the slip. It was a simple manoeuvre, but nicely done in a well-chosen spot. If the way had not been so fully blocked farther downstream, I might have ambled on for hours. Here, only a single reversed hoofprint by the water’s edge told me that the deception had taken place.
    They had cut across along the top of a sandbar, leaving a trail a blind man could have found with his cane; then, when the ground was rocky again, they had walked into the creek and stayed in the shallow water as they returned westward.
    This is the point in the hunt where a tracker must use his logic, as well as a quality some would claim as intuition and others call luck. I had no way of knowing where man and beast had emerged from the stream—whether upstream or down, north side or south—and there were plenty of places all along where the signs could be easily hidden. These signs were now four days old as well. Far from discouraging me, however, this new development gave me extra enthusiasm and confidence in my assumptions. What reason to disguise his trail did my man