The Searchers by Alan LeMay Read Free Book Online

for an hour after dark. They pulled saddles and packs, fed out the last of their grain, and
     rubbed down the horses with wads of dry grass. Nobody cooked. The men chewed on cold meat and lumps of hard frying-pan bread
     left from breakfast. All of them studied the shape of the hills a hundred miles beyond, taking a line on the Comanche camp.
     That fly speck, so far out upon the plain, would be easy to miss in the dark. When the marsh could no longer be seen they used
     the hill contours to take sights upon the stars they knew, as each appeared. By the time the hills, too, were swallowed by
     the night, each had star bearings by which he could find his way.
    Mose Harper mapped his course by solemnly cutting notches in the rim of the hat. His son Zack grinned as he watched his father
     do that, but no one else thought it comical that Mose was growing old. All men grew old unless violence overtook them first;
     the plains offered no third way out of the predicament a man found himself in, simply by the fact of his existence
     on the face of the earth.
    Amos was still in no hurry as he led off, sliding down the talus break by which the Comanches had descended to the plain.
     Once down on the flats, Amos held to an easy walk. He wanted to strike the Comanche horse herd before daylight, but when he
     had attacked he wanted dawn to come soon, so they could tell how they had come out, and make a finish.There must be no long muddle in the dark. Given half a chance to figure out what had happened, the war party would break up
     into singles and ambushes, becoming almost impossible to root out of the short grass.
    When the moon rose, very meager, very late, it showed them each other as black shapes, and they could make out their loose
     pack and saddle stock following along, grabbing jawfuls of the sparse feed. Not much more. A tiny dolloping whisk of
     pure movement, without color or form, was a kangaroo rat. A silently vanishing streak was a kit fox. About midnight the coyotes
     began their clamor, surprisingly near, but not in the key that bothered Mart; and a little later the hoarser, deeper howling
     of a loafer wolf sounded for a while a great way off. Brad Mathison drifted his pony alongside Mart’s.
    “That thing sound all right to you?”
    Mart was uncertain. One note had sounded a little queer to him at one point, but it did not come again. He said he guessed
     it sounded like a wolf.
    “Seems kind of far from timber for a loafer wolf. This time of year, anyway,” Brad worried. “Known ’em to be out here, though,”
     he answered his own complaint. He let his horse drop back, so that he could keep count of the loose stock.
    After the loafer wolf shut up, a dwarf owl, such as lives down prairie dog holes, began to give out with a whickering noise
     about a middle distance off. Half a furlong farther on another took it up, after they had left the first one silent behind,
     and later another as they came abreast. This went on for half an hour, and it had a spooky feel to it because the owls always
     sounded one at a time, and always nearby.When Mart couldn’t stand it any more he rode up beside Amos.
    “What you think?” he asked, as an owl sounded again.
    Amos shrugged. He was riding with his hands in his pockets again, as Mart had often seen him ride before, but there was no
     feel of deadlock or uncertainty about him now. He was leading out very straight, sure of his direction, sure of his
     pace.
    “Hard to say,” he answered.
    “You mean you don’t know if that’s a real owl?”
    “It’s a real something. A noise don’t make itself.”
    “I know, but that there is an easy noise to make. You could make it, or—”
    “Well, I ain’t.”
    “—or I could make it. Might be anything.”
    “Tell you something. Every critter you ever hear out here can sometimes sound like an awful poor mimic of itself. Don’t always
     hardly pay to listen to them things too much.”
    “Only thing,” Mart stuck to it,