Novel 1968 - Down The Long Hills (v5.0) Read Free

shot with vivid streaks of widening crimson, he wanted a fire, but he feared it might bring Indians upon them. So he lay still, looking up at the sky, and thinking. They had been going west, and there was nothing for it but to keep on. With every step they were coming closer to pa.
    He was used to walking on the farm and in the woods, and with the wagon train all of them had walked up the long hills to make it easier on the wagon stock. Of course, the wagons had always been there to crawl into when he was tired, but now there were no wagons, and he couldn’t even get up on old Red.
    Sooner or later he would find a big rock or a bank of earth from which he could scramble to Red’s back, and after that he would always try to find places to stop where he could get up on the stallion’s back again. Too bad pa had always insisted on roaching the stallion’s mane, or he might have laid hold on it to help himself up.
    Betty Sue slept without moving. Hardy knew they should be traveling on with the first light, but she needed the rest, so he got up quietly and took the stallion to water, within sight of camp. The horse drank while Hardy drank at the spring, and he refilled his canteen. When they walked back, Betty Sue was awake, but she didn’t ask for her mama, or for anything else.
    He opened another can and they ate, and drank cold water again from the spring. The sun was already high when they moved out. He looked around for something to use to climb on the horse’s back, but there was nothing—not an old tree trunk, the side of a buffalo wallow, or anything.
    The country was less flat now, stretching away in a series of long, graceful rolls of gentle hills. He knew he should keep to low ground because of Indians, but he wanted to keep a lookout for another wagon train, or something.
    He had not stayed with the wagon trail. He had a feeling Indians might be watching it, so he stayed over the slope when he could, but whenever he topped out on a rise to scan the trail he could see the ruts left by the wagons rolling west. As they went along, a couple of times he found wild onions, but Betty Sue refused to try them.
    The day grew hot, and the brown hills were dusty. Betty Sue whimpered a little, and he was afraid she might cry, but she did not. He plodded on, putting one foot ahead of the other at an even pace, trying to forget how far he must go, and how short a distance they had come.
    As he walked he tried to remember all that pa had taught him about getting along by himself, and he tried to recall everything he had heard Bill Squires say. There had been others, too, whom he had heard talking of traveling west, of Indians, and of hunting.
    Once, far off, he glimpsed a herd of antelope, but they disappeared among the dancing heat waves. Again, and not so far away, he saw three buffalo moving; they paused when they saw the big red horse and the two children.
    They were stragglers from the great herds that had moved south weeks before. Men on the wagons had talked of the wide track they made in passing. The big wolves had gone with them, following the herd to pull down those too weak to keep up. It was the way, Mr. Bill Squires said, that nature had of weeding out the weak to keep the breed strong, for the wolves could only kill the weak or the old.
    Hardy took to watching Big Red, for he remembered something else Bill Squires had said: that a man riding in western country should watch his horse, for it was likely to see or smell trouble before a man could. But in all directions the vast plain was empty.
    He studied the country, watched the movements of animals and the flight of birds. These could maybe tell you if somebody was near, or if there was danger of other kinds.
    The sun slid toward the horizon and Hardy saw no place to stop. He plodded on, desperate in his weariness and the sense of responsibility that hung over him. When the last red was fading from the sky, Big Red began to tug at the lead rope, pulling off toward