Bertrand W. Sinclair

“ The cabin was roomy, built of heavy logs, roofed with split cedar shakes, tight, dry, and warm, with a rough fireplace at one end in lieu of a stove. The door was heavy, hand-hewed planks, oddly fitted with a heavy bar to be set in place from within. It stood on a narrow bench with a small spring bubbling out of a cliff that rose sheer behind. The front view commanded every possible approach. And it was very hard to find. To Bill Goodrich it seemed made to order for security. One man could hold that place against a dozen, if occasion arose. ”

“ Goodrich was very glad when he passed over the bar into Toba River at the Inlet’s head, stole by an Indian village, and made his solitary camp five miles upstream. For he was now beyond the last settler’s clearing, fairly into the wilderness. He need no longer move furtively in the dark. He could bare his face to the sun, travel openly and unafraid. Pursuit could come from only one direction; from behind. It must come as he himself had come, by paddle and pike pole. ”

“ But when the man and loaded burro should have passed from the thicket on the slope into the open grass under the big pines, the faint sounds ceased altogether, and they did not appear. For five minutes Goodrich watched and listened impatiently. Then as he began to think his ears might have deceived him, a man, leading a burro, came slowly into the circle of firelight. Goodrich stifled a grunt of disappointment. The wayfarer was not his expected partner.
Goodrich, however, was an outdoor man, habituated to camps and the easy hospitality of lonely places. ”

“ When five years had passed over his head since the autumn night he spent in the Salinas jail, instead of being on the highroad to a pioneer’s modest fortune Bill Goodrich had to acknowledge two rather significant items on the debit side of his ledger. One was a recurrence of his old lung trouble, a touch—just a touch—of tuberculosis.
“Get off the coast. Get away from this damp air. Go as high as you can get in the mountains, preferably where it’s warm. Do that and you’ll soon shake it off. The bugs can’t stand dry air and sunshine.” ”

“ A gray mule, a black Stetson, and a .30-.30! He paralleled that with a red canoe, a 303 Savage, a black and green Mackinaw coat. On the beach lay a black Siwash dugout of cedar. The other man’s rifle stood within reaching distance. The man’s clothing lay beside his bed. The man himself slept soundly.
Bill Goodrich lay debating with himself. It seemed a rotten thing to do. Yet the man would suffer nothing beyond inconvenience. The officers would take him out. By the time he had established his identity Goodrich would be far in the depths of those grim mountains, his trail lost for good. ”

“ Here Bill Goodrich tarried a while, long enough to take root in a certain locality. He worked in logging camps, made a hand on cannery tenders, prospected a little, trapped, fished salmon, tried his hand at various things, using a cabin and a plot of cleared land on Cortez Island as a pivotal point for his ventures. He liked the country. It was covered with noble forests, in which game abounded. Bill Goodrich was a lineal descendant of men who had crowded frontiers off the map, men handy with either a rifle or a plow. ”

“ Goodrich dropped his hands.
“I’m tired pawing the sky,” he said bluntly. “You got the wrong man. My name’s not Baker. It’s Bill Goodrich. I’m from Monterey. I’ve been up here camping for two months, nursing a bad lung. I’ve been hunting deer off and on for two weeks with an old fellow called Sam Hayes.”
The man, with the rifle still pointed unwaveringly at Goodrich’s middle, smiled.
“About five foot ten,” said he. “Fair. Grayish eyes. Pretty husky about the shoulders. Twenty-five or so. Thirty-thirty Winchester carbine. Black Stetson hat, nearly new. Red sweater. Brown laced boots. Gray mule. ”

“ But you’re just as welcome, especially if you happen to have any tobacco that isn’t working.”
The man was a young fellow about Goodrich’s age. He carried a carbine in his hand. A stout gray burro, heavily packed, trailed at his heels.
“I’ve got some pipe tobacco,” he replied.
“Like manna from heaven, that sounds,” Goodrich returned. “I haven’t had a smoke all day. My partner hiked out to the stage road yesterday to try and rustle some tobacco and grub. Well, the coffee will boil in a minute. Stake your mule over there by mine. There’s good feed.”
The stranger passed Goodrich a sack of tobacco. ”

“ There were men to bespeak him as Bill Goodrich, and other men to prove that he was not the much-wanted Baker—who had shot and killed a rancher in the Salinas valley.
Bill Goodrich learned that even in Salinas there were people who believed Baker had ample justification for the shooting. Personally, after his experience with those two deputies and the county jail, Bill Goodrich spitefully hoped that Baker got away. He kept a close mouth on how he came by the gray mule and the black hat. He sneered at officers who questioned him. And he left Salinas as soon as he could. ”

“ I guess you’d find half a dozen men in the Monterey Forest Reserve heeled like that. I tell you I’m not this guy Baker. I’m Bill Goodrich. You take me out to Monterey and you’ll see.”
“No chance for an argument,” one officer said shortly. “We’ll have a bite to eat and get on.”
They took the precaution of shackling his wrists while they cooked. Goodrich burned with resentment at the handcuffing. Then they gathered up his stuff, packed it on the gray burro, brought two saddle horses out of concealment in the brush, and set off down the mountain trail.
They rode. Goodrich had to walk. ”

“ When you pass the last blaze you’ll come out on an open fern sidehill. On the opposite side of the creek you’ll spot another big slide. You cross the creek, go up on the north side of the slide till you strike a narrow bench about five hundred feet above the stream. When you get on the bench face north and you’ll see a big bald mountain away off. There’s two sharp knobs on this mountain and a glacier between. Head straight halfway between the two knobs and keep going along the bench. You’ll come on a cabin inside of half a mile if you hold a straight line. There’s plenty of grub there. ”

“ Goodrich felt like giving him a chance. He decided to stand pat. The officers wouldn’t believe him, anyway.
“It’ll be a joke on you,” he said pleasantly. He had settled himself to say nothing of how he came by the things which identified him. “There’s no law against a man having a .30-.30, a black hat, and a gray mule. ”

“ He did not sit about his camp puzzling about what had happened in the night, but took the .30-.30 and pursued his business along a ridge to the west. But luck was against him as it had been for a week. He failed to catch the wise old buck deer in the open, and he failed also to get a shot at any of those he stirred up in the heavy brush. ”

“ According to your own account you’ve killed a man. You were going to put me in a nasty position. I might have got gay with these constables not knowing what I was up against, and got shot all to pieces myself. ”

“ No use you bothering about grub outa your own pack.”
“Thanks,” Goodrich accepted. “I feel sort of all in, all at once. Tough going.”
The other man talked a little. Goodrich learned that he was a trapper, going into a region he had trapped before. Goodrich knew that he ought to account for his own presence. No man bore so far up those lonely valleys without definite object. ”