Chapter 9

Jake woke the following morning just as the sky was starting to lighten. A warm body was pressed against him and a head was resting on his shoulder. It took him a moment to realise that this must be Grey Cloud, taking up the position which Sue normally occupied.

He lay back for a moment, thinking over the events of the last few days. Grey Cloud had indeed joined them under a cloud, but she had seemed to fit in with them and was obviously willing to learn - all she had to do was to become more confident.

After a short while, he eased the sleeping girl aside so he could get up. As he sat and reached for his moccasins, she stirred.

Like Jake, Grey Cloud also took a moment to work out where she was. She had slept well, and safely. It had been a long time since she had felt so safe and protected, even though she knew they were camped in some rocks only a few miles from a group of possibly dangerous men. Still, with Djaik and Sue looking out for her, she had nothing to fear.

By the time that Jake had returned from his early morning visit to the bushes - or in this case, rocks - Sue had re-joined the others. Together they packed up the camp while Jake told them what he wanted to do.

"If we reach camp before they leave," he explained, "then we follow them and find out what they do. But we need be quiet and not get too close."

As they left, Jake went first with Sue behind him. Grey Cloud followed, with one pack horse behind her and the other bringing up the rear. She had been told to stay well back and avoid being seen, and to keep her pace down so that none of the horses raised any noticeable dust.

As they neared the site of the other men's camp, Jake called a halt. He didn't want to come upon them as they were preparing to leave. So he handed Blaze's reins to Grey Cloud to hold, and made sure that Sue had her rifle ready before he moved slowly forward, crouched down a little and looking carefully ahead of him.

However, as he neared the site he could see that his precautions were unnecessary. The camp was deserted so he went back and called the two girls forward.

Reaching the site of the fire which he had seen last night, Jake bent down and felt the stones and the embers. "They are still warm," he said, "So we can't be far behind them."

Sue walked away from the fireplace in an arc, looking down at the ground. "They wen' this way," she called out, pointing down at some marks in the dirt. Jake went over to her and examined the sign.

"Five horses," Sue continued, "All white man's horses." Indeed, Jake could see the outlines of the horseshoes that they had worn. They both looked up in the direction which the sign was taking, but the path soon disappeared around another bend in the rocky terrain.

Grey Cloud was starting to feel a bit out of it at this point. She was now holding the reins of all their horses. Blaze came up to her and she patted his nose absently while she watched what her companions were doing. She had seen hunters do much the same back at her village that she had left - was it only three days ago?

Jake and Sue came back to the younger girl, reclaimed their mounts, and they all rode off, once again with Jake leading and Grey Cloud at the rear, following the tracks in the dry earth.

For the next couple of hours they continued in much the same fashion. Sometimes riding, sometimes walking if Jake wanted to check around a bend, they made slow progress. However, Jake couldn't risk bumping into the five men by mistake.

Then, as Jake peered around a rock on the inside of yet another bend in the faint trail, the two girls saw him suddenly crouch right down, waving his arm behind him. They stopped dead and Jake crept back towards them.

"They are here," he whispered.

Jake pointed to a slightly more open space to the side of the track a few yards back and turned to Grey Cloud. "Take horses wait for us," he said.

"Yes Djaik," the young Shoshone girl replied, gathering Sue's reins (she already had Blaze's).

Before she could lead the horses off, Jake reached into the pack on Blaze's back. He pulled out the two single-shot pistols which Grey Cloud had used the Day before. He checked that they were still loaded, put fresh caps on the nipples, and passed them to her. "Be careful," he urged her.

Grey Cloud looked at him. "You be careful too, both of you," then she thrust the two pistols into her belt and, laden with that burden and followed by all of the horses, she made her way back off the track and behind a few boulders. It wasn't great cover, especially for so many horses, but it would allow her to duck behind one of the larger rocks if she needed to.

Jake had taken his Hawken rifle from the boot on his saddle and he made sure it was in good order. Drawing his Paterson revolver, he loaded the fifth cylinder so he had as much firepower as possible.

"Make sure it is fully loaded, lass," he told Sue, softly. She saw what he was doing and started to do the same. Although the Paterson revolvers each had five chambers, they routinely only loaded four so as to keep the hammer over an empty chamber while travelling, to prevent accidental discharges. It was one of the things that Jake had drummed into Sue while he was teaching her to shoot.

Once Jake was ready, and was satisfied that Sue was too, he looked over to where Grey Cloud had positioned herself. She had tied all of the horses to Blaze and had weighed his reins down with a rock placed on top of a larger boulder. It wasn't terribly secure, but she obviously trusted the large bay stallion not to wander off and had used the rock just to show him where she wanted him. Jake was impressed, she had obviously picked up on the faith that he had in his mount.

With the horses as secure as she could make them, Grey Cloud herself was partly hidden by one of the larger rocks, one pistol in her right hand and the other still in her belt alongside her knife. Jake gave her a small wave and, after she did the same, he turned and began to edge his way back around the bend. Sue followed, clutching her big plains rifle.

Crouching down to avoid showing up on the skyline, the couple looked down the slope in front of them. At the bottom, a couple of hundred feet away, was the trail which they had been shadowing since Ennistown. Closer to them, with their backs turned as they faced the trail, three men could be seen, all armed with rifles or some other long guns. Jake looked around to try to locate the other two, but Sue touched his arm and pointed to the other side of the trail. Sure enough, he could just make the men out and, because they were facing him and Sue, Jake couched down even further. However, the men's concentration was fully on the trail itself and they hadn't been spotted.

Jake leaned over and whispered directly into Sue's ear. "They are obviously waiting for the wagon. We can't take all five of them now, we shall have to wait as well until the wagon arrives."

With that, he crept a few feet away and settled down to wait. All five men were within range of his big Hawken but he kept the rifle down out of sight - he didn't want one of the men to look up and see the barrel, tipping the watchers off that they were being watched themselves.