39
I couldn’t stop smiling. I’d been dreading the moment when I would come across the body of Black Ben hanging in some tree, but instead, here was Frank with Ben next to him, alive and relatively well save for his banged-up face and a dried-up river of neck blood.
“We tracked the fella was following you,” I said to Frank. “We figure it was that Indian.”
“You figured right,” Frank said.
“And?” I asked.
“And what? You want a pat on the back or something?”
“Where is he?”
“Back up yonder floating in a creek. I reckon some of the blood on this boy is his, the way his head burst apart.”
“You’re a good man, Frank Kilhoe,” I said.
“Aw, hell. You keep that nonsense up, and it’ll be you floating in a creek!”
Frank spat off the side of his horse and didn’t say another word until we got bac
