by Paul Lederer
‘Then let’s get moving, now! There’s only an hour before sunrise, but we can slip out of the canyon before it’s light. Then we ride to the nearest town. It’s called Lewiston. We’ll be safe there, and besides, Kit will have to have his herd on the move toward Agua Fria to sell to that Mexican bandit he deals with.’
It seemed rational but dangerous. Jake knew he had only two chances: one, to try to make his escape with Sarah, the second to fall in with the gang of horse thieves. It was an easy if not a comfortable decision to make.
‘Let’s get going then,’ he answered at length. ‘You know the way out of here, don’t you?’
Sarah laughed briefly, softly. ‘I know every rabbit run in this canyon. I’ll get us out, for sure.’ She hesitated and then added uncertainly, ‘Of course, you may have to do a little fighting to get us past the sentries.’
Sentries? Well, he thought, of course there would be men watching the entrance to Smugglers Gulch with the law always on Kit Blanchard’s trail. Jake didn’t like the idea of fighting armed men in the darkness, but it was late, the guards would be tired of keeping watch, and their attention would be on the desert flats to the north, not on the road out. He had already made his decision; he meant to give it a try. He hesitated only because he knew that once he put his boot in the stirrup and swung aboard the saddle there was no turning back, and he was certain to face Kit Blanchard’s wrath.
He sucked in a deep breath and nodded. Sarah took his hand anxiously and tugged him along toward a small copse where, indeed, the buckskin stood waiting for him alongside the sleek roan horse that he had seen earlier in the horse pen. He wondered how Sarah had managed to catch up the animals, but then she was used to the place and was probably little interfered with as she wandered around. She now wore blue jeans and a yellow shirt much the same as Christiana had worn. Perhaps it was the same shirt.
The buckskin responded with resignation as he started the horse forward, following Sarah, but it was now fed, watered and rested and he showed no balkiness other than an occasional irritated toss of its head.
They rode northward, first following the silver rill, then veering away from it as the trail beside it rose higher into the rocky hills toward the distant water source. Veering slightly to the east they found another, broader trail, and even by moonlight Jake could see the recent sign of many horses passing this way. This, then, was the true road into and out of the hidden canyon. They could ride side by side now and so Jake asked in a low voice:
‘How many sentries will there be?’
‘It varies,’ Sarah answered, glancing at him, her dark eyes catching moonlight. ‘It depends on how many men Kit thinks he can spare and on how much possible danger he thinks there is.’
That was both good and bad, Jake reflected. He knew Kit Blanchard was now short on men, but he had also been told that the thieves had been pursued southward. So there was a danger that they had been followed toward the canyon.
‘I imagine only two or three men,’ Sarah guessed.
Well, it could have been worse, he supposed, but two or three men with rifles up among those rocks would be more than formidable. Sarah spoke up again.
‘It might be that they won’t even see us, Jake. A little farther along there’s an old Indian trail that circles that knoll and then drops down toward the flats. It is narrow, but it may be unguarded, because it’s unlikely that anyone approaching the canyon would have any idea that it’s there.’
Jake could only hope that the girl was right. After another half mile they left the main road, Sarah taking the lead to follow a path which was not much wider than a game trail. It wound sinuously up into the stacked boulders. She did not hesitate, but walked her pony steadily forward. Jake followed less certainly, his eyes on the rocky surrounding hills, watching for the silhouette of a man and for any movement. Meanwhile, the sky had begun paling in the east, and it seemed certain that they would not be out of the gulch before sunrise tinted the skies. He wanted to urge Sarah on to more speed, but that, too, seemed unwise. A running horse stirs up much dust and the hoofbeats reverberate louder. No, their escape lay in stealth, not in a headlong rush upward.
The trail now crested out and began to wend its way down toward the desert flats. The skies were paling, the stars fading one by one. Jake, glancing eastward, saw the first flash of dawn. A long crimson pennant of thin cloud illuminated the land.
And the rifleman above them opened up.
Even in the poor light the sentries seemed to be able to identify Sarah as a woman, for the shots were not aimed at her. Nevertheless, her roan horse reared up in fright and she was thrown from the saddle to scurry for cover on hands and knees. Jake unsheathed his Henry rifle and kicked free of his stirrups, rushing to Sarah to draw her to the shelter of a dozen man-sized rocks.
The whine of ricocheting bullets was furious, the lead whipping past, singing off stone. Jake wondered if the men above had a real bead on them or were just firing at random. Three rapidly spaced shots ringing off rock not three feet from his head answered that. They knew where they were, all right, and they had them pinned down good and proper.
What would they do now? Logic said that one of the sentries would remain where he was to keep their heads down while the others – how many others? – worked their way down toward where Jake and Sarah were huddled.
Jake glanced around, trying to find an escape route. His buckskin horse, annoyed but loyal, stood its ground nearby, reins trailing. Sarah’s frightened roan had raced off down the trail, and now could not be seen.
This meant that even if he had the heart to attempt running, there was no way to escape on horseback.
‘What are you going to do?’ Sarah asked, her face distraught.
‘I don’t know. Can you handle a gun?’ he asked.
‘I don’t want to do any shooting,’ the woman answered firmly, ‘that’s why I brought you along.’
‘It might be our only way out,’ Jake said, as four more bullets peppered the boulders around them, sending rock chips flying.
‘Well,’ she said calmly, ‘if we don’t make it, I’ll just try again another day.’
‘You’ve tried this before!’ he said, stunned by her apparent indifference to their fate.
‘Several times.’
And what had happened to her escorts on previous attempts? Maybe she always coaxed the newest man into helping her, the most naive among the crew. He was forced to rethink again what he knew of Sarah and what he believed he knew, or had convinced himself of. Perhaps she was a little mad, or more than a little. He should have listened more closely to Worthy, and to the longtime Blanchard rider, Will Sizemore, when he confided, ‘Anything she tells you, you can disbelieve.’
Had he only been duped into playing a role in Sarah’s fantasy?
As more bullets flew from upslope, ricocheting off the stones, Jake ducked low and shook his head in wonder. The simple truth now was that it did not matter what Sarah was up to or what she had done before. It was his life as well that he was thinking about, and he had to find a way to get out of the gorge.
‘I need you to do some shooting,’ Jake said, gripping her shoulder roughly, but Sarah shook her head defiantly
‘I don’t want to do any shooting. I told you that! They won’t dare hurt me – my cousin, Christi is married to Kit Blanchard.’
‘Listen,’ Jake Staggs said savagely, leaning near to Sarah. ‘It’s my life I’m concerned with now! I need you to help me out.’
Her dark eyes had widened and her lower lip trembled as she studied the grim face of Jake Staggs. His hand continued to grip her thin shoulder tightly.
‘What do I have to do?’ she asked in a strangled voice.
He handed her the Henry repeater and told her, ‘Just start firing – not all of the rounds at once, but a few in their general direction. Scoot over a little - you should be able to fire through that notch safely enough.’
‘Are you going to …?’ she glanced at Jake’s patient bucksk
in horse.
‘No, I’m not going to leave you.’ Although, he thought, maybe he should do just that. ‘I’m going to try to find a better position, with luck somewhere where they can’t see me. Because someone will be coming down after us sooner or later. They can’t waste all day just sniping at us.’ He again squeezed her shoulder, hard.
‘Will you do what I’m asking?’ he demanded. She nodded weakly.
‘I think so.’
‘Then that’s what we’re going to try. I wish we knew how many men we’re up against. Here,’ he said, shoving the rifle into her small hands. ‘Scoot over to the notch and fire a couple of shots in their general direction, just to keep their heads down. I’m going to slip away toward that little rabbit run over there. See where I mean? When I make it, if I make it, you can quit shooting at them unless you see someone coming this way. But now and then fire off a shot or two just to let them think that we’re both still pinned down here.’
‘What if it doesn’t work?’ Sarah asked with apparent concern, though it was getting difficult to read her moods or believe her words. He answered with a touch of cruelty:
‘Then you can just go back to the ranch and wait for the next fool crazy enough to try helping you.’
As he watched, Sarah levered a cartridge into the Henry’s breech and settled in on her knees. She took aim and fired once, twice. Jake was off in a running crouch before the echoes had died away.
No bullets followed him as he rolled over a low slab of stone and wriggled up between two closely spaced boulders to shelter beside a towering split rock. At the base of the monument was a rabbit run, a trail they used to go from burrow to water or to grass. No wider than a boot, it nevertheless indicated a way up the knoll, for certainly the rabbits knew the hills.
Jake’s idea was to work his way higher, and without being seen, to find a place where he could observe any sentry creeping down through the boulders toward Sarah. With luck he would be able to surprise anyone easing his way downslope. Now, still moving in a crouch to keep his own head down, he followed the winding narrow path upward. It was not easy going – where the rabbits could squeeze through narrow splits, Jake had to crawl over the rocks or sometimes detour around the stacked boulders.
The sun rose higher, breaking the plane of the horizon and lifting itself into the dawn sky, erasing the colors of sunrise with its heat and paling the sky as it obliterated the moon’s pale glow. A flight of doves winged their way past, presumably toward the rill beyond, and high above a red-tailed hawk circled, searching for its breakfast. Presumably one of the doves. It was all cat and mouse, live or die, out on the desert, and Jake Staggs himself was now one of the players in the eternal game of survival.
Easing up onto a flat boulder, he peered across the rock-strewn slope, searching for movement, his Colt clenched tightly in his hand. He saw nothing and heard only the wind which was rising with the dawn. Squinting into the sunlight he tried to find a trail the sentries might use to work their way down to Sarah’s position. At that moment she chose to loose off another rifle shot which whined off of a rock face and sang off into the distance. He knew that she was shooting at nothing, but nevertheless he glanced that way.
And saw the new sun glinting on gun metal not so far from where her bullet had struck. Bare metal winked brightly in the sunlight – one reason most men preferred weapons of blued steel. As the rifleman eased his way downslope, Jake could see him clearly, scuttling from rock to rock, keeping low, his weapon in his hand. That was one of them then, and as Jake continued to watch, the man crept nearer to his own position. Possibly the guard knew of the rabbit run himself. Jake settled in, his palm sweaty as he clenched the pistol grips in his hand with unnecessary pressure.
When the stealthily moving sentry came nearer, within pistol range now, Jake slowly drew the curved hammer of the Colt back. Were there others around? He had to know, for if he took a shot at the approaching man, he would give his own position away and could expect a barrage of answering fire. But he saw no other men and heard no sounds of movement. His decision was made for him as the stalking man rushed from behind the shelter of one of the yellow boulders, running directly toward Jake’s position. He took aim.…
The second man leaped from a still higher boulder directly onto the rock where Jake lay. Jake Staggs never saw the man’s face. Instinctively, however, he rolled onto his back and fired up as the sentry launched himself at Jake, and the guard folded up like an unstrung marionette and tumbled from the rock as the rifleman below fired once, twice, at Jake. Face down against the rock, Jake made a poor target, but the man below, standing erect with his rifle at his shoulder, offered a good target silhouette and Jake fired three times, slamming the gunman back against a rock, the rifle clattering free from his hands. He ended up in a seated position, but he was quite dead, as was the man who had fallen from the rock.
As the gun smoke cleared, Jake frantically thumbed fresh loads into the cylinder of his revolver, searching the slope for a third, or a fourth, or a fifth man, but the day returned to silence. There was no movement, no sound for nearly an hour as the sun rose higher and the desert beyond turned mirror-white. Perspiration trickled into Jake’s eyes. He cuffed it away, recovered his hat, and, at length, slipped from the rock. If there had been any other men, they had either made a run for the ranch or withdrawn to some safe bunker. At any rate, there were no more of them near at hand.
Reaching the ground, he paused to look at the man who had fallen there, and as he crouched over him, he heard footsteps and saw Sarah rushing toward him, his rifle in her hand.
‘You don’t need to see this,’ Jake warned her, taking his Henry repeater from her.
‘Yes I do!’ she said wildly, almost gleefully. ‘I need to see both of them.’ She crouched down, looked intently at the man’s face and nodded with satisfaction. Then, working her way around the boulder she went to where the second man sat, dead eyes staring at eternity. ‘Good,’ she said with satisfaction.
‘Sarah … why?’ Jake asked weakly. Her face was flushed with excitement when she wheeled to face him.
‘Because I know them!’ she said wildly. ‘I know every man in the gang who has a price on his head – and that’s most of them. There’s bounty money due us, Jake, and I mean to have it!’
She argued to take the men’s bodies along with them, but Jake refused. Sarah had been certain that her roan would return, it knowing only one place on the desert where it could find hay and water - back on the ranch – and she was proved right. By the time they had again reached the buckskin horse, the roan, looking as if it had run itself out, had returned to stand next to Jake’s horse.
The girl’s spirits were much higher than Jake’s as they finally emerged from the rocky hills onto the long desert flats.
‘That’s two of them,’ she said. ‘River Tremaine and Lemon Jack. A thousand dollars bounty for the two of them!’
Jake looked at her curiously, and she went on, her eyes fixed on the desert landscape. ‘I thought and thought about how I could make my way in this world if ever I left the ranch, and then it came to me – it was so simple. Every one of those men is worth money … dead.’
Jake’s buckskin was weary again. The land here was high desert, scattered sage and much grease-wood with a few clumps of nopal cactus here and there. Long and dark gray and endless. They followed the tracks of the stolen horses in the opposite direction, northward.
‘And when I get the rest of them!’ Sarah exulted. ‘I’ll be a rich woman, won’t I, Jake?’
‘How are you planning to do that, Sarah?’ Jake asked. ‘Get the rest of them?’
‘I’ll get some men to help me. You, of course.’
‘Of course not me,’ Jake snapped. ‘I’m getting the hell out of here and just as fast as I can ride.’
‘Are you?’ she asked, smiling gently. Ahead now they could make out the low, scattered buildings of Lewiston.
Her question was nonsensical. Of course he was leaving the terri
tory. He had no wish to encounter Kit Blanchard and his gang again. After the buckskin was again rested enough to travel on, he meant to strike out for Nevada or New Mexico Territory. He did not know what he might find there, but he knew one thing: he wanted no part of the madwoman and her schemes, whatever they might be.
FOUR
‘Are you sure that coffee is all you want?’ the waitress asked with some concern showing on her young, pretty face.
‘It’s about all I can afford,’ Jake Staggs answered.
‘Well, it can be a tough world,’ she said, not unkindly. Her hair was light brown, almost curly and a little tangled after what must have been a hard day spent on her feet. Jake leaned back, waiting for his coffee, idly studying the other customers, mostly townsmen in their best suits with their ladies in their finery dining and exchanging amusing stories. There was quite a crowd, and it gave Jake pause to wonder whether it might be Sunday or some kind of holiday; he couldn’t remember the last time he had seen a calendar.
It can be a tough world, he thought, and it was not going to get easier any time soon.
Arriving in Lewiston, Sarah had insisted on going directly to the town marshal’s office. The low yellow-brick building with barred windows sat on the edge of town. In an attached jail, also of brick, they could see men with their hands cramped around the bars, staring out hopelessly for assistance.
‘Is the marshal here?’ Sarah asked, breezing in as if she owned the place. Startled, a young deputy laboring to read the town’s one-sheet newspaper, swung his feet from the desk and rose, wiping his hands on his trousers.
‘He’s here, Miss, but he’s not seeing anybody much these days. My name’s Bostwick, deputy marshal. Can I help you?’
‘Can you authorize payments of a bounty on some men?’
‘No,’ the thin young deputy said, wagging his head. ‘Only the marshal is authorized to pay rewards and bounties.’
‘Then, I wish to see him – you did say that he was here,’ Sarah went on eagerly. Jake Staggs watched her, wondering at himself. He had once imagined her to be a sheltered, shy girl. It was a revelation to watch her bull her way in and make her demands. Bostwick, the deputy, nodded and said uncertainly: