by Jory Sherman
How ironic, he thought. Corny would not have been able to see what Ben and Whit were doing in the dark, and unless he was smarter than he looked, he would not know of this nightly ritual. John could see the phantom wall of the bluff behind the dancing fire, and he thought he saw shadows, the shadows of men moving in front of the blaze. But he knew it was only an illusion, a ballet of shadows too far away to make out, a magic display of licking flames piercing the darkness, mere glimmers of something so far away and so shielded by the trees that only his imagination could see what might be happening.
John relaxed and turned his head away from the small flickers of firelight and looked over at the lean-to, hoping to glimpse Corny. It took him several moments to adjust his eyes to the darkness of the woods and the lean-to, and he thought he saw the silhouette of Corny, still sitting there, silent as stone.
He thought he heard Ben and Whit climbing the ladder to the mine, the faint creak of wood, the rustle of cloth, the incomprehensible grunts of two men reaching the precipice and padding toward the adit on worn boots and heavy soles. Did he hear those sounds? John did not know. But they, or what he thought he heard, faded from earshot and it was quiet again, except for the soft sigh of pine limbs brushing together in a light breeze and the crackle of dead wood contracting from the deep chill that whispered down from the high mountains, the snowy peaks bathed in darkness and chill far to the west.
John sighed and batted his eyes as he fought off drowsiness, the urge to lie down and close his eyes, sleep for just a while.
An hour of silence crept by, then another. He heard Corny rustling inside the lean-to, perhaps lying down and trying to fall asleep. He knew the man was still there. He could not have crawled away without making a lot of noise. And sounds carried far in the night in the thin mountain air. No, Corny was still there, but that black blob was now sprawled out flat beneath the spruce limbs of his shelter, and after a few minutes John heard the rattling sound of a man snoring.
Corny had fallen asleep and was not going to try to escape.
The snoring grew more regular, but not louder. Corny’s snores had a lulling effect on John and he blinked in rapid succession, stretched his face and worked his mouth to stay awake, to listen beyond the snores, to drag in any sound from far away that seemed like a man making his way through the darkness and the trees.
He heard nothing but the drone of invisible insects, the scurries of small animals, the flap of an owl’s wings as it floated like a dark scarf overhead.
The silence became acute and to John, it felt like the calm before a storm.
Someone would surely come for Corny. One man, or, perhaps, two, would walk through the trees to this spot and call out to Corny softly. One man only, perhaps, would call Corny’s name. And Corny might awaken and call back and the man would hurry then, anxious to get his task over with and return to the comfort of his bedroll a mile or two up the creek.
That was the way John pictured it as he found new strength to avoid falling asleep. His senses were sharpened to a keen edge and when he looked toward his camp, he thought he saw the feeble tongues of firelight splashing against the bluff, orange sparks rising in the night like fireflies.
Then he heard a sound that jarred his senses as if a gunshot had gone off next to his ear.
He stiffened and drew his pistol, snicked it out of his leather holster so fast he surprised himself.
Tin cans. The rattle of rocks in tin cans. The racket lasted only a few seconds, but to John it sounded like an army crashing through his ropes and makeshift signaling devices, ripping them loose from their moorings and dragging them along until they stopped clanking and were silent.
Gunshots broke the ensuing silence and he saw flashes of orange flame on the other side of the creek.
“Corny,” he whispered. “Get over here. Crawl, run. Come to the sound of my voice.”
The shots continued, volley after volley, and John heard hoofbeats. He saw shadows of men on horseback riding back and forth in front of the fire, their rifles aimed at the ground, fire spitting into the fake bedrolls, the whine of bullets caroming off rocks, the exultant yells and grunts of men bent on killing, blood in their eyes, hearts pumping like blacksmiths’ bellows. And then, the firing stopped and he heard the throbbing sound of hoofbeats, the splashings of horses crossing the creek at a gallop.
Corny appeared on his hands and knees right in front of John. He grabbed Corny by the back of his collar and dragged him up between his legs.
“Lie down flat,” he whispered, and pushed on the flat of Corny’s back, driving him into the ground. “And don’t make a sound.”
He held Corny down with his left hand as the woods exploded with the sound of charging horses. He could see their shadows as they made a beeline for Corny’s camp.
“Corny,” one of the men called.
Corny raised his head, and John shoved it back down.
“Yeah,” John said, holding a hand over his mouth. “Over here.”
He tried to imitate the sound of Corny’s voice, but knew it would not make much difference. Voices were distorted at such a distance. The charging men would hear what they wanted to hear. They would hear Corny answering them.
“Come on, boys,” Krieger said. “Corny’s right up ahead.”
Corny struggled to rise. John could feel the terror in the man’s flesh as he pressed down on his back.
“Shhh,” John whispered, and the silhouettes of horses and men drew ever closer, and the horses’ hooves made a thunder that reverberated through John’s bones. They came on and they fanned out, and he counted four men, four riders, and they were carrying rifles, rifles that looked like sticks in the dark, rifles that were black as bullwhips and stiff as iron rods.
The riders closed in on the lean-to and their rifles barked. Orange lances streamed into the fir boughs and bullets shredded limbs and gouged the ground inside the lean-to. The explosions were deafening as four rifles sprayed lead into the shelter, breaking the limbs that held up the roof until it came crashing down. The smell of exploded gun-powder filled the air, and white smoke billowed up into ghostly clouds as the riders encircled the collapsed shelter and kept firing until their rifles were empty.
“Come on, boys, foller me,” a man said, and bounded off toward the mining camp up the creek. The other three men galloped after him.
John didn’t recognize the man’s voice, but he knew it did not belong to Krieger or the other two men he had previously encountered. This was the voice of a leader, and it was cold and hard and gruff, full of confidence and hatred.
It was the voice of a man who was not afraid to kill or be killed.
It was the voice of a man who would, from that moment on, be John Savage’s enemy.
13
BEN THOUGHT, AT FIRST, THAT THE MINE WAS CAVING IN ON HIM. One minute, he was deep in sleep. The next, he heard the clink and clank of a dozen tin cans, the thunderous thump of hoofbeats, and the growling curses of men charging toward the camp below. He rose out of sleep with confused thoughts, gasping for breath.
Whit flung his blanket aside and sat up next to Ben.
“Wha . . . ?” he mumbled.
“Shut up, boy,” Ben growled, low in his throat.
“My God, it sounds like—”
Ben clamped his hand over Whit’s mouth and pushed him down on his bedroll. He grabbed his pistol up and crawled to the mine entrance, his senses full of clanging gongs as if a half dozen bell ringers were swinging on church ropes.
Horses dragged tin cans filled with stones for a dozen yards, and then he heard the cans tumble away and come to rest. But the hoofbeats still pounded on sand and rock and earth, and he saw the dark silhouettes of men on horseback galloping toward the firelight and the two lumps resembling sleepers.
Whit crawled up next to him.
“You hush, boy,” he whispered. “None of them claim jumpers know we’re here.”
He saw the golden gleam of Henry rifles as the riders swung them toward
the fake sleepers. Then the riders opened fire, blasting orange flames, white smoke, and lead into the rocks beneath the blankets. The .44-caliber bullets ricocheted from rocks and whined off into the night. The fire caught strays and boiled with sparks that flew like exploding golden stars in all directions.
Ben couldn’t see the faces of the men, nor see them fire into the blanket-covered rocks, because he was too far from the ledge, but he knew what they were doing and, with Henry rifles, they did not have to reload very often. Each of those rifles would hold sixteen rounds in their magazines.
Moments later, he saw the riders cross the creek, splashing water droplets gleaming like fireflies, and then they were in the woods, riding single file in a straight line. The very path John and Corny had taken hours before. His heart caught in his chest and he felt it squeezed from some unseen hand.
“Golly, Ben,” Whit gasped, “those men were tryin’ to kill us down there.”
“They thought that, sure as hell.”
“We got to get out of here.”
“You just stay right where you are if you want to live. This old mine saved my life once before, and I’m damned sure not gonna give it up now.”
“Where are they goin’?” Whit asked.
“Right where John and Corny are waitin’ for them,” Ben said.
“They goin’ to kill John?”
“Just shut up, will you, kid?”
Ben waited, his breath stilled in his chest, seconds ticking away in his mind. Minutes crawling by like a column of ants scratching his skin.
That old nemesis, fear, began to creep through Ben’s brain. He felt the first tightening of his stomach muscles, then the quivering signs of buck fever in his legs. He realized that those four men had ridden up on their camp with the intent to kill, to murder him and John in their sleep. No hesitation. No mercy. He gulped in air and clenched his fists. Fear did not belong here. Not now. He was still alive. John’s ruse had worked. Putting those rocks under blankets to resemble sleeping men, and those rattling cans as warning signals. All John’s ideas. And they had worked.
But, he thought then, what about John and that skinny drink of water named Corny? Did those claim jumpers go after Corny to take him back to their camp? He hadn’t seen a spare horse. What did they mean to do?
Then he spoke softly to Whit.
“They don’t know John is out there in the woods,” he said.
“They goin’ after that Corny feller?”
“Maybe,” Ben said.
And then, he stiffened as he heard the crack of Henry rifles. He listened intently, not counting the shots, but listening for the bark of John’s .45 Colt. He heard a crashing sound, but no screams. Only more gunfire from those Henrys, and then a sudden silence. After that, the thump and thunder of hoofbeats. Horses galloping away through the trees, heading up creek. Then the sounds faded and ceased as if swallowed up by the night itself.
“Ben—”
“Shut up, kid. Let me think.”
“I think John and that Corny are plumb—”
“Don’t you say it, kid. Unless I see John stretched out with my own eyes, he ain’t dead, you hear?”
“Yes, sir.”
After a while, as they lay there, both listening, Ben said, “Shit.”
“They’re both dead, ain’t they?” Whit said.
Ben got to his feet.
“I’m going out there for a look-see,” he said, walking over to his gunbelt coiled up like a snake next to his pillow. He picked it up and slid his pistol back in his holster.
“You stay here, kid,” he said, strapping on his gunbelt. “If I ain’t back in an hour, you go get your horse and ride back home.”
“I want to go with you, Ben. I can’t do no good here.”
“You can’t do no good nowhere, kid.”
Ben started climbing down the ladder, stopping at every rung to listen, to look both ways up and down the creek. He saw Whit peering down at him from the edge of the precipice.
“This is why we sleep with our boots on,” he said, descending to the next rung.
“You be careful, Ben, hear?”
“I hear you, boy.”
“I wished you’d quit callin’ me boy.”
“I wish you’d learn to keep your trap shut.”
And then he was down on the ground and he didn’t look back up.
Instead, he looked at the shredded blankets, the gleaming brass shells of expended .44 cartridges, the blasted campfire, with faggots blown out of the fire ring smoking and glowing with every fan of breeze. Hoofprints in the sand and gouged-out dirt in scattered clumps. It looked as if a storm had come through and ravished just that one spot where the blankets were in bullet-riddled tatters.
That fear was still with him as he waded across the creek, a careful step at a time. He dreaded what he would find in the woods. He didn’t want to think about it, but it was all he could think of as he stepped into the trees and into the leaden shadows of night.
He did not draw his pistol, but he kept his right hand on the butt of his Colt .45, ready to draw and shoot.
He heard something slither along the ground, through the pine needles and the brush. He heard the horses whicker softly, and they sounded as if they were in a far country. Every shadow looked ominous, every tree hid a man with a rifle, and each bush was a crouching animal or a blood-thirsty man. He was sweating and the air was chill.
It seemed he could still hear the hoofbeats of those horses galloping toward the claim jumpers’ camp. Echoes? Only in his mind, a mind that was cloudy with fear and disjointed from doubt and apprehension.
He stopped, leaned against a pine tree.
There, he became disoriented. He looked back toward the glowing campfire, and it danced around like a summer mirage.
He listened to the sound of his own breathing, and it was shallow and fearful, the way it had been when he was a boy entering a haunted house at the urging of his companions. Silly, he thought. He looked up at the sky, at the stars shining through pine branches, winking silver and cold like millions of eyes that were unfeeling and uninterested. He felt very small and alone, as if he were the only man on earth left alive after some terrible disaster.
He stopped looking up and looked down at the ground. He could hardly see it, but he knew it was there. He moved his boot and heard the scraping noise it made. That seemed to pull him back to reality, to establish where he was.
Ben wanted a cigarette or a chaw of tobacco, a pipe between his teeth, a shot of raw whiskey. Anything that would take away the grabbing claws of fear, the oncoming dread that was like some giant shadow descending on him. Dread of finding John dead. John and Corny. Shot to pieces and lying like bloody rags in the pale wash of starlight, silent and unbreathing.
He started to step away from the tree and continue on, conquer his fear and his dread. He took one step, and then froze as his veins turned to ice and something crawled down his back.
A sound like a footstep.
Elusive, but . . .
And then, there it was again. Another sound, the careful step of something heavy. Man or beast? He did not know. But he clamped his hand on the butt of his pistol and began to ease it out of its holster.
“Wh-who’s there?” he called as his pistol cleared leather.
And his voice came from somewhere else, from someone else, low and gravelly, full of fear and dread as if he was expecting the Grim Reaper to appear before him, carrying a long-handled scythe to chop his head off with one whirring sweep of a deadly blade.
14
JOHN WAITED NOT ONLY UNTIL THE HOOFBEATS FADED AWAY, BUT also until the deep silence of the mountains returned to that small spot where he sat, his left hand still plastered to Corny’s back, his right hand gripping his pistol, which was as cold and lifeless as the blanket of cold breeze that now enveloped him. He had not fired the pistol. Had he done so, he realized, he would have been outgunned. He would be lying dead now, perhaps atop a dead Corny, and none would know of their p
assing until morning.
He slipped his pistol back into its holster as he lifted his hand from Corny’s back. The danger had passed, and he still had an unwanted prisoner. Corny drew in a breath, but did not try to rise. Instead, he lay there, shivering like a vagabond child in winter, a small whimper escaping from his lips like the mewling of a wet kitten.
“Not a word, Corny,” John whispered as he stood up. He reached down and grasped the back of Corny’s collar and pulled the man to his feet. “Not one damned word, you hear?”
Corny nodded and stood there, shaking, wobbly on his feet, like a colt newly born, his spindly legs nothing more than unreliable props under a fragile and untested body.
John cupped Corny’s elbow and guided him over to the shattered lean-to. He stooped down and picked up two brass shell casings, showed them to his prisoner.
“Recognize these, Corny?”
“They got Henry Yellow Boys. Them are shells from those.”
“Those men didn’t know I was here. They thought you were catching some shut-eye under that lean-to you built.”
Corny gulped and gasped. “I know,” he whispered.
“Seems to me you’ve got some tall thinking to do, Corny.”
“Y-yessir.”
“Come on. Back to my camp for some palaver.”
He pulled Corny away from the lean-to and headed him toward the creek, walking by his side. After a few minutes, he stopped. He put a hand over Corny’s mouth.
“Don’t make a sound,” he whispered in Corny’s ear. “I’ll be right back.”
John left him there and took a few steps ahead. He stopped, listened, then took more steps, careful to make no noise.
A few minutes later he saw a familiar shape leaning against a tree. Beyond, he saw the faint glimmer of their campfire, shadows crawling over the stark bluff, the glint of starlight on the creek.