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.The light spilled color over the green pine and yellowing oaks and grasses and warmed his back.He poked along the creek banks, allowing Stick to feed and drink.He stumbled on occasional signs of Elijah—horse droppings, his firepit, a feather pile from a grouse he’d snared.All along well-defined game trails, trod regularly by deer herds and horses and riders.A magpie cussed Stick, and the gathered crows scattered through a birch’s branches watched them pass.Stick dropped a nugget of shit and they cawed and swooped to it.Farther, a line of quail bent and quickened before him and farther yet, in the rock, a sage hen and handful of chukar drummed.As the afternoon progressed, sparrows and chickadees flitted from one tree to another hunting flying insects.Stick spooked a badger that hissed then dove for its den.Deer pellets and tracks dotted the path, but game of any size were bedded down in the heat.Strawl halted finally on the lee side of a basalt chimney.His entire body seemed to ache, though the pains initiated in four or five distinct places.He rolled a smoke with shaky hands and another hour passed.He reclined against the stone and chewed on a piece of the jerked beef.Half an hour later, a man on foot halted at the skyline and bent to catch his breath.Recovering his wind, the figure scanned the Okanogan Valley.Two rifles were slung upon his back along with an ancient military pack.Strawl recognized his frame but not until he began to descend in a lanky, stumbling gait did he make him for Rutherford Hayes.Two of his dogs followed, panting and staring at Hayes like he might part a sea if he were so inclined.Strawl whistled and Hayes halted until Strawl whistled a second time.Hayes and the dogs covered the distance between them.Strawl offered him a cigarette, which Hayes lit this time with trembling hands.His clean-shaven face and stunned eyes made him appear simpler than he probably was.“You are a long way from home, my friend,” Strawl said.Hayes didn’t reply.Strawl watched him pull from the cigarette and drag the smoke into his lungs.Strawl fed the dogs a bit of sausage left from his breakfast.“Where’s the others?”“Amos and Ahab are killed.Esther lit out and I couldn’t wait without losing my hair.”“Indian cops?”“And a couple white.”“I’m sorry they came upon you, Rutherford,” Strawl said.“They’re looking for me.”“You’re one of them, ain’t you?”Strawl nodded.“Guess us skunks can’t stand our own company.”“You running or just hunting good ground for a fight?”“I’m not certain, Root.”“That don’t seem anything like you,” Hayes said.They were quiet awhile.Strawl scratched one of the dogs’ ears and felt its head loll against his hand, pressing him to continue.“Excuse me being presumptuous,” Hayes said.“I guess I have no manners.”Strawl chuckled.“I got a scad of people who want my scalp, some kin.I have no quarrel with you making an observation that is as true as the North is cold.To answer you, I guess running and fighting don’t seem that far apart anymore.You run then fight, then fight then run.”“You can add hiding to that hoop,” Hayes said.“Fighting nor hiding nor running, they don’t do no good.I’m bound for Canada.Nobody pays much attention there.”“Sounds like a straight line to me.”Hayes spat.“It’s quiet, I heard once.I ain’t much with company, but I might learn.You could join me.”Strawl had never considered a simple exit, transplanted, and in another country to boot.It would require effort and paperwork and time if the authorities intended to uproot him, and he’d make it clear enough that if the law insisted on pursuit, his absence would be less trouble than his return.“How’d you get to be the genius of us all?” Strawl asked.Hayes stared at the horizon and didn’t answer.“Where you going over?”“Chesaw.”“The Chink Road?”“Bootleggers using it now.Got the Mounties spooked and the State Guard bought.”“Damned if you haven’t thought it out.”He had considered calling an end to this ordeal and heading home.An angry collection of police would likely harass him, but on the ranch the BIA would have no jurisdiction, and as for Dice, angry as he may be, butting heads with Strawl had proven impractical and Dice was a practical man.The silverspoon would be bent but without recourse.It would baffle his pursuers.There was Elijah to consider, but if he had sense enough to keep Strawl in the dark, no doubt he could outwit his poor substitutes, and his crimes were his own business.Hayes said, “You got family keeping you here, I suppose.”He wondered what he would return to: poverty and a dotage supervised by a child who saw fit to conspire with his wife to counterfeit her death and make him worse than a widower.And not without reason—he now knew she recalled her own mother’s end.Arlen and his grandchildren would have no use for him.Canada would be a blank piece of paper, and he could write what he wanted on it and leave out what he wanted, too.Still, Elijah would haunt him, he knew.He had no intention of turning him over for trial, and he doubted he had the stomach to shoot him.The boy was the only person he’d found entertaining enough to tolerate steady.Perhaps Strawl wanted nothing more than a conversation.Still it was a scratch that would need his attention, and sooner seemed more likely than later, considering the number of lawmen tracking them.“ I’m in, Root,” Strawl said.“I have to close the books on a matter.Leave your name at every post office you hear of on that road or any tavern worth stopping,” he said.“I’ll come soon enough after you.We’ll do it goddamnit.”Strawl loosed the rawhide straps on his saddlebags and withdrew the expense money he hadn’t squandered and wadded it into Hayes’s shirt pocket.“Here’s our road stake,” Strawl told him.“You get us a start.”Hayes took a breath.“I’ll shoot you if you argue,” Strawl told him.Strawl rolled a cigarette and then another and they smoked in silence.Hayes nodded at one of the mastiffs.“That one’s got a mean streak,” he said.“She isn’t the biggest, but she don’t bark ever, just goes for the throat.” He patted her head.“She’s yours if you’re inclined.”“When we meet up north I’ll collect her.”Hayes said nothing more.Strawl watched him as he hiked toward the foot of the ridge.He filled his canteens in Harrison Creek and let the dogs drink, then threaded a path through the thickets and low brush beneath until he was out of view.Strawl traveled two more days, remaining clear of the meadows and bald ridgelines, crossing country quickly and closing on Elijah, now only a mile or two in front of him.From the granite cliffs and basalt knobs he heard automobile tires hum over the paved San Poil highway and, later, axles rattle and gears whine while they fought the rutted logging grades that were their only other option.The third evening a hound bayed.Strawl guessed the animal resided in Wauconda or Republic, twenty miles from him as the crow flies.The next morning over breakfast, he heard them once more, this time a chorus, on a scent
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