Leather creaked, hoofs clicked on stone, and occasionally a man sighed or grunted, but there was no other sound. Taggart put a hand to his brow and found himself sweating despite the night’s clear coolness. He was prepared to hear the sudden blasting of rifles at any moment, but there was nothing.
Suddenly the trail grew steeper, and they mounted ever higher until they appeared about to come out at the rim of the canyon. Then they turned downward again into the abysmal blackness of the gorge.
When at last they started up once more, they mounted to the canyon rim, with the mountain looming ahead to their right. They halted there in the starlight and Stark walked his mount back along the train to be sure all were present.
“It’s southeast from here,” he said, “for about a half mile, and then south along the foot of the cliff. We’re up high now, only a few hundred feet lower than the peak of Rockinstraw, and further along we’ll have to go up the cliff to hit the trail that will take us into the Basin. If we’re all right at that point we’ve got a chance.”
There was no question of making speed. To keep moving and keep together was all they could expect. They all sat their horses with care, prepared for the unexpected.
Taggart kept looking back, although he could see nothing but the blackness. His rifle was across the saddle in front of him.
Miriam dropped back beside him. “Do we have a chance?”
“Sure.”
“Adam isn’t sure about this trail, and he might stray. He’s worried himself, but he’s good at such things, and the man who told us of it gave us a pretty good description. Adam was up this way once, and followed it along for some distance.”
“Things shape up mighty different at night. Landmarks don’t look the same…nothing does.”
Drawn together by the companionship of night travel they rode in silence, each feeling the comfort of the other’s presence. But Swante Taggart was worried too. Her presence was pleasant but it was disturbing, and this was a time when he dare not be disturbed. He listened, and once he thought he heard a faint sound off in the night, but he did not hear it again.
After a long time they halted again. Several minutes passed and there was no movement, and just when Taggart had decided to go forward to see what had happened, Shoyer came back.
“Stark went on ahead to scout the trail. He’s afraid we missed a turn back there somewhere.”
“Better to be sure.”
Taggart sat silent, wondering what the other man was thinking. Each of them needed the other now, so each felt safe from the other, unworried about a sudden shot from the darkness. Or was it that way?
“If we should be separated,” Shoyer said suddenly, “you go your way. You leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone,” and he went ahead again.
Taggart sat still, staring after Shoyer. “Now what did he mean by that?” he demanded.
“Maybe he has decided to relent and let you go.”
“No.” Taggart felt positive about that. “It isn’t like him. He wouldn’t let me go. Not unless he found something better.”
The mules started and they followed after, moving slowly through the darkness. Several times they halted briefly, and twice they changed direction in the darkness. Taggart looked at the stars and swore, and then he glanced at the bulk of the cliff on their right.
He drew up sharply as the idea hit him, but at first it seemed impossible. Then he said to Miriam, “Wait here!” and rode swiftly forward.
The mules were strung out far too much, and when he reached the head of the train, the mule there was calmly chewing at a clump of sage and there was no one anywhere near.
“Stark?” he called softly into the night, but the night gave back no answer. He tried it again, just a little louder, and still there was no reply.
He called Shoyer’s name then, and Consuelo’s, but no answer came. Turning swiftly, suddenly frightened for Miriam, he rode back.
She sat her saddle waiting. “What is it, Swante?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”
It was the first time she had used his first name. He realized that on a level of consciousness somewhere above and beyond the immediate problem.
“We’re alone,” he said, “they’re gone.”
“Gone?”
The word had no meaning to her in that moment. They could not be gone. It was impossible.
“I don’t understand. Who is gone?”
“All of them…we’re alone.”
She was silent for a moment. “I heard you call…but where could they go? Why would they go?”
He was not listening, he was thinking. There was no sound in the night except the crunch of a mule’s jaws as it munched on some of the brush along the trail.
It was completely dark, the trail was strange to them all, and that Apaches were around was unlikely, yet the three other riders had dropped from sight as if they had fallen off the edge of the world.
To look for tracks in this darkness was beyond reason, and to make a light would be foolhardy.
“Miriam,” he said quietly, “we’re in trouble.”
CHAPTER 11
At best they had come no more than eight or nine miles from the Apache rancheria at Mud Springs. Their route had been difficult, a trail strange to them, with many brief halts. To wander about now searching for tracks would be to destroy whatever trail might have been left. On the other hand, the three might have gone on ahead for some reason and would soon return…in fact, they might believe Taggart and the mules were following.
Yet following where? Before them all lay in darkness, and no clearly defined trail could be seen.
“What will we do?” Miriam asked. “Adam would not just go off and leave us.”
“We’ll wait,” Taggart replied.
Every minute of travel was a minute added to their lives, but in the darkness they might get into a cul-de-sac from which no escape was possible.
Bunching the mules together took only a few minutes, but even in the darkness he detected something was wrong. Working around among the mules he discovered one was missing. It was one of the mules carrying gold.
“I don’t like it,” he said in a low tone. “It isn’t just them now…there must be around twenty thousand dollars on that mule.”
Miriam dismounted and stood close to him in the silence as they strained their ears for some sound, some evidence that the others were not far off.
Here among the high peaks it was cool. Now a late moon rose, and the bare rocks took on a weird effect in the pale light. Below and all around them there were pines, and a wind moved among them, where the sound of its humming seemed like faint music.
Leaving Miriam on watch with the mules, Taggart went ahead, keeping to one side of the direct line they had followed, and searching ahead, but there was nothing.
To go or to stay? Taggart paused on the mountainside, pondering. To remain here long was to ask for death. He made his decision suddenly. They must go on. They must find some place where the mules could be hidden. They had food, and with luck they could remain in hiding for days.
He walked back to Miriam. “Mount up,” he said, “we’re going on.”
She was not the sort to protest, to demand explanations, or to waste time in needless discussion or suggested alternatives. It was enough that Taggart had decided, and she trusted that decision.
They moved out with Taggart in the lead and Miriam close behind, only this time the mules were on a lead rope.
The moonlight gave them some visibility. Taggart led cautiously, searching for some sign of the others, and at the same time watching for a place where they could hole up for a few hours, and give themselves time to make a quick survey of the area, in the hope of finding out what had happened to Adam Stark and the others.
The trail suddenly started up the cliff. It went twenty yards ahead, switche
d back for twice that distance, and then went forward again. Although the cliff was no more than five hundred feet up, it took them nearly an hour to negotiate the climb. From the condition of the trail Taggart was sure nobody had been over it before them. Twice he was forced to dismount and shift slabs of rock from the trail, fallen there long ago.
At the summit they drew up to catch their wind. Around them stretched a vast and unbelievable moonscape of peaks and shoulders and serrated ridges, bathed in pale moonlight cut by canyons of darkness, and vast gulfs that were only black. It was an eerie place, and the wind hummed weirdly among the scattered pines.
A few hundred yards farther on Taggart saw a flat-topped mesa, low and broad, rising above the plateau they had reached. They were no higher than Rockinstraw, which he could see off to the northwest. Pushing on, he looked toward the low mesa and turned off toward it. He left Miriam, and went on ahead and searched until he found a way to the top.
The mesa was fifteen or twenty acres in extent, and at one side of it was a low place, deep enough to allow concealment for the pack train. There a pool of water had gathered from the recent rain, covering perhaps half an acre, but from what he could see, only a few inches deep.
Leading the pack train to the top, Taggart concealed them in the small basin. Then he sat with Miriam at the edge of the mesa, overlooking the country. The air was very cool, the sky held only a few scattered clouds, and below them all was darkness except for the peaks and ridges which stood out of the blackness like islands in a dark sea. Above them, all was sky. They were lost here, as if on another world.
Miriam spoke suddenly. “Pete Shoyer has killed men for a few hundred dollars of reward money. Wouldn’t such a man kill for what gold was on one of those mules?”
Swante Taggart drew a long breath. It was this he had been considering. There were men he knew who would not kill except in the name of the law…but there were others who would. The distinction between the peace officers of the time and the outlaw was either sharply drawn or it was scarcely drawn at all.
“Consuelo spoke to me,” he said, “so maybe she spoke to Shoyer next. She’s a mighty scared girl, Miriam. She has no faith whatever in Adam’s ability to protect her. She wanted me to take her away.”
“What about Adam?”
“That’s what worries me.”
He got to his feet. “I’ve got to leave you here alone, and whatever you hear, whatever you see, whatever you may think, you’ve got to stay right here. I’ve got to be sure you’re here…and I don’t think you’ll ever be found here. But stay below the rim, stay out of sight.”
“How long is it until daybreak?”
He glanced at the stars. “We’ve an hour at least, maybe close to two hours. At this altitude, being on top of everything around, it will come sooner for us than down below, but I’ve got to go down there and take a look. If anything’s happened to Adam, I’ll find him.”
“All right,” she said quietly.
He tightened the cinch on his saddle and stepped into the leather. “And Miriam, keep your eyes open and keep your rifle close. It isn’t only the Apaches you have to worry about now. There’s Shoyer.”
“You think he will come back?”
“Maybe.”
“A man who would kill for one mule-load of gold might not hesitate to kill for half a dozen…is that what you mean?”
“Adam isn’t dead. I’m sure of that. No shot was fired, and there was no sound of fighting up ahead, no action at all that we could hear. I’m sure he is not dead.”
Although he said that, he was thinking that a knife could be silent, a blade would make no sound.
Would Consuelo want Adam killed? He doubted it, but in her panic of fear…No, he would not believe it. Shoyer might kill, but not Consuelo. She would not kill Adam herself, nor want him killed.
But the question about Pete Shoyer worried Taggart. He had known such men before, and most of them were utterly ruthless in killing anyone suspected of crime, yet were often curiously reluctant to kill for any other reason. Pete Shoyer had the name of being a driving and relentless man, but so far as Taggart had heard there were no killings against him except those involved in the capture of criminals or wanted men. But now…?
Miriam came and stood beside his horse, clinging to his hand. “Swante…come back.”
“I will.”
He pressed her hand, and then rode away, taking his horse down the steep trail to the plateau and along it to the trail up which they had come. He was more cautious now. Instinctively he was wary of a trail over which he had once come, and it was not his way to return by the same route, where an enemy might be lying in wait. At the moment, though, there was no alternative…he knew of no other trail, nor had he time to search for one in the darkness.
But he was aware that he rode into a double danger. In his own mind he was sure that Pete Shoyer had in some way put Adam Stark out of the running. And if Pete Shoyer had gone off the rails for a woman and a mule-load of gold, it would be like him to come back for the rest. Yet what had he said?
“If we should be separated you go your way. You leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone.”
His statement to Taggart had sounded like a declaration of peace between them…which meant that Taggart was free of pursuit, that he could go his own way. All he had to do was leave Shoyer alone.
Looked at from the present situation, it appeared that Pete Shoyer had already made his plans, had reached some agreement with Consuelo, and that even now they were moving somewhere down the dark canyons.
Dawn came slowly. At first it was only a suggestion of gray, then an infiltration of pale yellow, and a fading of stars. Swante Taggart sat hunched in the saddle for the air was chill, and he watched the eastern light catch the first distant peaks. Concealed among some trees, he waited and listened. There was little he could do until the light grew, but he might hear something.
He felt edgy and strange, not liking the situation, knowing they should be running for Globe and not waiting here. He was not concerned with Shoyer…the man could handle his own problems. Adam Stark was something else, for he was a man too good to waste. Even now he might be a prisoner of the Apaches, or lying dead in a canyon. When the light grew he would make a search.
Taggart’s eyes kept turning toward Rockinstraw, now miles away, looking for the first faint hint of smoke. There was nothing. But by this time, he was sure, something was happening over there.
Apaches were cautious, and they had been trapped the day before and would be even more wary now, so they would enter the canyon with great care. And care meant time, and it was time Taggart needed now.
Leaving Miriam alone worried him, although her position was as safe as could be found. She was not only concealed from sight, but was in an unlikely place for any searcher to look. She was much better off than he was himself, for even at this moment he might be under the eyes of an Apache. Or of Shoyer.
But if Shoyer decided to take the rest of the gold, he might well track them down and find Miriam alone, and such a man if he went lawless would be dangerous far beyond most outlaws.
Red now tinged the sawtoothed edges of the far hills and bled down the sides of peaks like glowing lava. Taggart warmed his hands by chafing them and then, rifle in hand, he walked his horse out on the trail.
It was a confusion of tracks, mule and horse tracks left from the night before. Working ahead, he found the place where their own tracks and those of the pack train vanished on the rocky surface of the shelf, but he could find no others. Going back along the trail with infinite caution, he searched for any tracks that deviated from the group, and from time to time he paused to search the country around him.
He was jumpy. Time was growing shorter, and he knew the Apaches would soon be on their trail. He rode keyed for action and the horse sensed it. Presently he was back where they had waited t
he night before, where the fact that the others were missing had been discovered.
He turned in his saddle and looked toward the mesa where Miriam waited. It was high against the sky, stark and bare in its treeless outline, and there was no movement there, no sign of trouble or even of life. It stood black against the early morning sky, catching a little of the first light before the sun’s rising.
He rode on, and suddenly saw a place where there was boot-torn ground at the trail’s edge. There had been a struggle here, or perhaps a body had been dragged. It was difficult to tell, and nothing could be seen over the edge, for the cliff bulged out to form an overhang.
Taggart stood still, taking time to look around, feeling nervous as a cat. It had been a long time since he had been so edgy, so aware of danger. He touched his dry lips with his tongue and longed for a smoke, but even that was a danger.
Now he must find a way down that declivity. Unless he was very wrong, Adam Stark, alive or dead, lay at the bottom of it. From the height of the cliff—eighty feet or more—Taggart had few hopes, for no man could have fallen down there onto the jagged rocks below and lived.
He turned his horse and began the search for a trail.
* * *
—
On top of the mesa, Miriam moved among the mules, talking to them, touching them. It was too cold to sit still, and it would be some time before the sun warmed this chill basin. The flat top of the mesa was mostly covered by a thin soil, but around the pool it was only rock, a blue-black basaltic rock as cold as iron.
The mules and horses, after their march of the previous night, were content to drowse. Leaving them, rifle in hand, Miriam climbed to the rim of the little basin until she could see over the edge of the mesa.
Nothing.
Far off, the eastern sky was a pale lemon touched with scarlet.
Looking off into the morning, she knew she was in love and that she had never loved until now. So little had passed between them, so few words had been said, so little had been done. For such a bold man, Taggart seemed almost shy, and hesitated to so much as touch her, yet she knew what there was in him, and what was within herself. And now he was down there, away from her and in danger, searching the canyons.
Taggart (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures) Page 11