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feed him the broth the nightmare had passed, but he could feel that the boy was weaker as he lifted him into the saddle. Once more he lashed Jamie’s feet to the stirrups. He figured sixty miles to the border of the Nations, and he knew that troops and posses were gathering in growing numbers to block his reckless ride.
    “Reckin they figger me fer plumb loco,” Josey muttered as he rode, “fer not takin’ to the hills.” But the hills meant sure death for Jamie. There was a narrow chance with the Cherokee.
    His simple code of loyalty disallowed any thought of his own safety at the sacrifice of a friend. He could have turned into the mountains on the off chance that help could be found for the boy… and he himself would have been safe in the wildness. For men of a lesser code it would have been sufficient. The question never entered the outlaw’s mind. For all their craft and guerrilla cunning, tacticians would consider this code as such men’s greatest weakness… but on the other side of the coin the code accounted for their fierceness as warriors, their willingness to “charge hell with a bucket of water,” as they were once described in Union Army reports.
    The tactical weakness in Josey’s case was apparent. The Union Army and posses knew his partner was desperately wounded. They knew he could get medical help only in the Nations. His mastery of the pistols, his cunning born of a hundred running fights, his guerrilla boldness and audacity, had carried him and Jamie through a roused countryside, but they also knew the code of these hardened pistol fighters. Where they could not divine the mind and tricks of the wolf, they knew his instinct. And so horsemen were pounding toward the border of the Nations to converge and meet him. They knew Josey Wales.

Chapter 7
    The cold dawn found them riding across an open space of prairie ground, the mountains to their left. Before noon they forded Horse Creek and continued southwest, staying close to the timbered ridges, but Josey keeping the horses on dangerous open ground. Time was the enemy of Jamie Burns. Shortly after noon Josey rested the horses in thick timber. Placing strips of jerky beef in Jamie’s mouth, he gruffly instructed, “Chaw on it, but don’t swaller nothin’ but juice.”
    The boy nodded but didn’t speak. His face was beginning to take on a puffiness, and swelling enlarged his neck. Once, far to their right, they saw dust rising of many horses, but the riders never came into view.
    By late afternoon they had forded Dry Fork and were crossing, at an easy canter, a long roll of prairie. Josey pulled to a halt and pointed behind them. It appeared to be a full squad of cavalry. Although they were several miles away, the soldiers had apparently spotted the fugitives, for as Josey and Jamie watched, they spurred their horses into a gallop. Josey could easily have sought shelter in the wild mountains not a half mile on their left, but that would mean hard… slow traveling, rather than the five miles of prairie they had before them. In the distance a tall spur of mountain extended before them over the prairie.
    “We’ll make fer that mountain straight ahead,” Josey said. He brought his horse close to Jamie. “Now listen. Them fellers ain’t shore yet who we are. I’m goin’ to make ’em shore. When I shoot at ’em… you let that little mare canter… but ye hold ’er down. When ye hear me shoot agin… ye turn ’er loose. Ye understand?” Jamie nodded. “I want them soldier boys to run them horses into the ground,” he added grimly as he slid the big Sharps from the saddle boot.
    Without aiming, he fired. The echoes boomed back from the mountain. The effect was almost instantaneous on the loping cavalrymen. They lifted their arms, and their horses stretched out in a dead run. The mare set off in an easy canter that rapidly left Josey behind. The big roan sensed the excitement and wanted to run, but Josey held him down to a bone-jarring,