“When’ll I be seeing you?”
“Maybe at Red Fork. Maybe somewhere else. If I knew, wouldn’t I say so?”
When, after hard riding, Barlow finally saw the dust of the emigrant train, it was, as he had feared, far off the guarded route, and making for the shortcut which he and Epstein had taken. He came down from the ridge; which ran parallel to the train’s direction, and rode so as to approach it from the rear. He overtook the caravan when halted for a rest.
Despite the dust which masked him, the men Barlow accosted recognized him, but were too astonished for speech.
“Where’s Parker?” he demanded. “Where’s Swift?”
Mounted as well as armed, Barlow carried more weight than he had as a bullwhacker; and that in a large measure he controlled the fate of all these people added something to his presence. The man he addressed lost countenance, and instead of saying, “Try looking for them!” he answered, “Up toward the head, last time I seen him.”
He wore his gun strapped low. He tested the way it sat in the holster. Whatever happened, they’d not catch him off guard again. When he recognized the captain among a group waiting their turn at a water barrel, he reined in, and deliberately eyed them until one looked up as though he had felt the impact of the stare. Barlow saw the expression of recognition, but ignored the man, and said, “Mr. Parker, I am here to pay a debt. If you can control these knuckleheads of yours, I’ll dismount and give you your horse.
“If you can not keep them in order, I’ll be riding on, while you’re busy tending to some burials you’ll be having on your hands. I’d like to hear your choice, sir.”
Parker whirled. “Pete! Where did you come from? By George, that is Alezan!” He came, forward, hand extended. “If there’s any trouble, the horse is yours for keeps. Get down, I’m glad to see you!”
Voice and handclasp made it plain that Parker spoke from the heart. At least half the others were embarrassed, rather than angry at seeing the man they had intended to flog within an inch of his life. Women were drawing nearer, but holding their distance.
Dismounting, Barlow flashed a glance that sought Sally, but he saw only Laura, whose eyes widened in the shade of her bonnet.
“Sound, and none the worse,” Barlow said, slapping the mare’s shoulder. “But what’s the idea, being so far off the track?”
Parker looked embarrassed, and fingered his beard. “Prospectors with rich ore. We voted to—”
“The hell you voted! You mean Swift’s loud mouth and a handful of hotheads hounded the rest of you into it. I bet you’ve got ore specimens they gave you.”
“Yes,” Parker answered, and sounded nettled. “Here it is.”
One of the men growled, “Gun or no gun, you can’t run—”
Barlow turned on the man. “Reach, or shut up! I remember your loud mouth at my trial.” Then, addressing all: “That gold strike is a fake. Get back on the track quick as you can. The army is patrolling it. Indians and renegades are on the prowl. You’re being baited into a trap, somewhere ahead, where you’ll be easy meat.”
Parker interposed, “Calm down, all of you! Swift is out scouting, beyond the next ridge. Barlow, I’m beholden to you for coming back with my mare, but that does not entitle you to throw the entire party into an uproar. You others, you listen to me—you are not going to bring up the difficulty Barlow had with Frazer. He’s recovered, and that business is at an end. Now go about your own business, all of you.”
Barlow, seeing their expressions as they obeyed, was sure that Parker’s leadership was not strong enough to enforce more than a temporary and partial obedience. “Where’s Sally?” he asked the captain. “If it weren’t for her, and my debt to you, I’d’ve let the whole kit and caboodle of you go to hell and the quicker, the better!”
Parker smiled indulgently. “No, Pete, you would not. Quite aside from the women and children who’d suffer, you would not let your anger keep you from warning us. Sally’s riding in Higgins’ wagon, up toward the head of the train. It’s been wearisome walking. Even the oxen are footsore.”
Unthinking, Barlow led Alezan with him, and Parker let him. It was as though both men sensed that he might need a horse at hand if gold crazed emigrants flared up against his story. Barlow found Sally nested among the household goods in the wagon.
“Oh, Pete!” she cried, as he vaulted over the tailgate and with one swoop caught her in his arms. “Darling, I knew you were all right with Saul, but I was worried—I felt terrible, not going with you, then and there.”
“You hush up, honey. Three couldn’t’ve made it.”
“I was silly, all upset about—well, it didn’t occur to me that maybe you hadn’t been able to do anything about it, the way she came out there, that night.”
He shrugged. “I wasn’t kicking and screaming.” And after that honest admission, he told her what he and Epstein had learned, and what they suspected.
When she had heard it all, Sally said, “You’re right. Kirby did all he could to start that gold rush that none of the older heads wanted. Though we’d not learned of Indians on the loose. Kirby threatened to divide the company, and pull out with all his friends. That was what made Mr. Barker give in.”
“This time,” Barlow declared, “the party does divide if it has to, even if only you and me have sense enough to keep off any shortcut to hell.” He cocked his head. “That’s Kirby they’re hailing now. He’s come back from scouting out the pass, I bet.”
Barlow moved over to clear the tail gate. Sally caught him by the arm. “There’ll be trouble for sure, Pete. Wait for things to cool down,” she pleaded. “I know you’re not afraid of him. It’s just that he may be more sensible if he doesn’t have to face you.”
“He’ll know I’m back.”
“But that’s not the same as facing you and getting riled and feeling that he has to show off, then and there.”
Barlow shrugged. “He’ll keep, all right.”
Sally tugged at the edge of the wagon cover, so that they could peep out and toward the head of the halted train. Swift and another who trailed after him rode down the line. The two dismounted to talk to Parker, who had succeeded in getting the others back to their chore of checking up on the rawhide shoes they had laced about the hoofs of the oxen.
“Good camp over the ridge,” Swift was reporting. “Plenty water and forage.”
And then Swift’s companion came into Barlow’s field of vision. With a quick move, he broke away from Sally. “There’s a man I want to talk to, and right now! What’s he doing here?”
“Oh, that’s one of a posse looking for horse thieves. He joined us about the time prospectors met us.”
“Whatever his go-by is this time,” Barlow told her, “that’s Jed Lathrop, the stinker that tried to have me jailed in Kearneyville.”
He cleared the tailgate, and taking Alezan by the curb chains, he led off for the three who discussed the road ahead.
CHAPTER VII
Epstein Does It With Mirrors
Anger and triumph made Barlow light headed and reckless, so that he spoke, instead of drawing to shoot it out on sight. Lathrop recognized the mare before he did Barlow. His first glimpse of Alezan prodded him to action. He was slapping leather before Barlow had fairly challenged him. His haste, however, made him fumble. Lathrop’s first shot went wild.
Barlow made up for lost time. He did better, though not well enough. His pistol blast came a split second after Lathrop, but instead of drilling him dead center, he raked the man’s forearm for half its length, and knocked dust from his shirt. Lathrop tried to shift the weapon to his left hand, but missed, and it dropped to the ground. Barlow, cheated of his chance to finish the fellow, closed in to pistol-whip him to shreds.
Parker, who had been blocking Swift’s sight of Barlow, leaped clear. Swift reached for his gun a
nd shouted. Barlow whirled, and before the segundo’s weapon could clear leather.
“Hold it!” Barlow warned.
From behind him came a scream. Alezan bolted. A woman flung herself against Barlow, snatching his arm. She hung her weight from him, tangling her legs with his until he staggered off balance and came near lurching to his knees. It was Laura, the red headed trouble maker. She cried; “Don’t you dare, you dirty son! You—”
Swift could not shoot. Laura blocked his line of fire. He stood there, gun in hand and nothing to do with it. But this was only for a moment.
Sally, coming up with a shotgun she had snatched from the wagon, had the muzzle trained on Swift, and without menacing anyone else. “Drop your gun, Kirby,” she said in a quiet, deadly voice. “Get your redhead away, or she can have you in two pieces.”
Swift obeyed. Sally’s voice had made him turn ash grey. He let the weapon fall, not even daring keep it long enough to holster it. He took Laura by the shoulders, and stuttered, “It’s all right, you let go of him, it’s all right.”
Barlow yelled, “Stop that—Stop him! Damn it, let go of me! Stop him!”
Laura still clawed and kicked until he broke away. Blind with fury, he blazed away at Lathrop, who had taken advantage of the fracas to mount up and ride. The fugitive, un-hit, swerved between teams of restive oxen. Barlow had to lower his gun.
He lost time catching Alezan. When he was in the saddle to make a race of it, Parker snatched the reins.
“We need you here, Pete! I can’t have you riding off and plunging into an ambush.”
“That brute he’s riding is fast,” Barlow grumbled. “Too far off already to do anything with a rifle.” He dismounted, and returned Swift’s look of surly defiance. “You’re right, Mr. Parker. I’d better stay here and make it clear what your segundo has been doing.
“You, Swift! You listen and if you let out one word till I’m through, I’ll shoot you in your tracks, no matter if you’re not heeled! You don’t deserve a white man’s chance; so I’m keeping your gun. You made it up with Lathrop to have me jailed for stealing Alezan. I ended by getting her from a crew of thieves in the hills yonder, right where you and Lathrop aimed to lead us.
“He didn’t dare ride her into camp because he knew she’d be recognized! He came here figuring he was sure he’d killed me, a long piece back. Now have you got something to say before you get a taste of what you aimed to give me?”
“I didn’t know,” Swift, began gropingly. “I didn’t believe Lathrop had bushwhacked you after you left Kearneyville.”
Somehow, the man was convincing; but Barlow tore into him, pressing the accusation: “When Lathrop and the prospectors ‘accidentally’ tangled with this company, you knew him for a coyote who’d connive to have a man jailed—have me jailed, so you could have Sally all to yourself. You took the word of a skunk like that and gulped the gold rush story.”
“I’ve got a stake in this company,” Swift protested. “Do you suppose I’d knowingly risk my own money, animals, everything?”
Parker looked at those who had gathered round. “I don’t think he would, Pete. I think he’s guilty of no more than poor judgment in dealing with a man he knew was low enough to try to jail an innocent man. We’ll vote on it tonight.”
“Vote on what?” Swift demanded, voice cracking with apprehension.
“Electing another segundo. You’re through with show off tricks, shining up to all the women folks, and making the young fellows imitate you and back your every play. We are backtracking right now. The by-laws say we organized to settle at Red Fork, and to Red Fork is where we are going.”
Parker paused. He saw that for the first time, he was actually leader, instead of captain in name only. But his justifiable satisfaction hardly outlasted the deep breath which expanded his chest. One of the sodbusters shouted, “Maybe we’re bound for Red Fork, but we’ll get to hell first! Look yonder, riding out of the pass. They knowed we’d not be crazy enough to go further, so they’re coming to get us.”
Barlow looked and saw the riders on the skyline. He wondered whether it was insensate wrath that made them strike at once, or whether it was fear that the emigrants would send for help, or in one way or another survive to tell what had happened, and who had menaced them. As he looked, he wondered also at the peculiar blinding flash which winked from the heights of a further ridge. But getting the wagons into a circle, with the animals inside, was far more important than speculating as to the enemy’s motives, or what caused the queer flickering so far away.
Most of the riders proved to be Apaches. They wore the levis issued by the Indian agent of the reservation they had quit; they had their heads bound, turbanwise, with red calico. Judging from the whine and spat of bullets they poured into the wagon train as they rode in a circle about it, they had plenty of ammunition. But there were white renegades, worse than any Indian, in the howling pack.
The sodbusters had firearms enough: shotguns and rifles; powder and ball and caps, and cartridges for the breech loaders and the few repeaters in the train, but by no means enough for a siege such as this promised to be. They had come fixed for pot hunting, and not for battle. Even though they had reckoned on the possibility of trouble, none had had any idea of how much powder could be burned in a short time.
Barlow, crouching behind a wagon wheel, picked a renegade, and leveled his Winchester. He taught that one the advantage of riding Indian style, protected by his horse. But that one effective shot set the emigrants off on a wild burst firing. Barlow quit squinting through the dust for a glimpse of Jed Lathrop and got up to find Parker.
“Make ’em quit wasting powder,” he demanded. “They’re doing nothing but keep the varmints away till we’re out of ammunition.”
A .60 caliber buffalo gun bellowed. The emigrants howled in triumph, seeing man and beast drilled with a single slug; the animal had been knocked stem winding, lifted and flung. Barlow raced over to the marksman. “Hold it a spell! You’ve got every pot-head in the crowd trying to do the same with buckshot and bird-shot. Let ’em get close, and then hose ’em!”
The emigrants’ fire tapered off. Those who lost their heads and let a good target tempt them, or those who were plainly defiant, served their purpose. Barlow said to Parker, “Might as well let them be. If we all quit shooting, those devils’d think we aimed to do the very thing we are going to do—let ’em have it from close range. Now with a dribble of shots, it looks like we’re hard up for powder.”
They busied themselves with the wounded. Women were tearing up sheets for bandages. A child went out beyond the barricade of wagons, enjoying all the fun. A man shouted, and would have gone out to get the little fellow, had not Barlow laid him out with a well planted fist.
“We need that man for fighting,” he told those who cried out against him.
A woman did run out. She was riddled by bullets. The child came back, slugs kicking up dust about him. He was unharmed.
“Pete,” the captain began, hoarsely, “you can’t—
“We’re fighting a war. She’s done for anyway.”
The circle of riders suddenly closed in. Lead spatted through wagon tops. Lead thumped into wagon beds, and zinged from bolts and hubs. Animals in the center of the barricade were hit. Horses fought their hobbles.
“Hold it!” Barlow shouted. “Hold it till buckshot will count!”
Sally, bedraggled and grimy and scratched by flying splinters, came up beside him with a cap and ball Colt and a double barreled derringer. “I’ll hand you these when you need them,” she said.
And she went with him to crouch behind sandbags he had filled. The emigrant volley was ragged, yet a dozen riders were knocked out. The charge broke. Bullets drove the enemy off until Parker made the sodbusters quit firing.
During the confusion, and with dust rising high, Barlow darted
from cover and scooped the wounded woman from the ground. He walked back with her. She lived long enough for a word with her husband, who had recovered from Barlow’s blow.
“Now you’re fit to fight,” Barlow told the man, “and you have plenty to fight about.”
Then Kirby Swift came up. “Pete,” he said, grinning painfully, as he wiped blood from his face, “you called me a grandstand player. Look at you.”
“Saved a man for when we needed him.”
“I’m beating you with a better play.” He turned to Parker, who had just come up. “Horace, if we run them off once more like we just did, there’s a chance for a man to ride out through all the dust and get away without being noticed—they’ll be too confused for a second or two to notice who’s who. A man with a fast horse could get word to the army patrols. Give me Alezan. Better than having those devils get her.”
Parker eyed Barlow questioningly.
Barlow answered, slowly, “Kirby’s entitled to this chance. Providing our folks don’t misunderstand and think he’s joining the enemy. That’d make them throw up the sponge.”
Kirby Swift’s face whitened beneath the dust. “I earned that one. They might think I was going to tell Jed Lathrop we can’t hold much longer. But if they didn’t believe I meant well, they’d’ve settled me before now, wouldn’t they?”
“Get ready to ride,” Parker told him. And when Swift left to saddle Alezan, Parker said, “Pete, did you have to pour it on him that way?”
“The dig might help him get through.” He looked at the sun, all red through dust. “Maybe he’d better wait till dusk.”
“If they know a man got through,” Parker objected, “they’ll start worrying and might pull out. Indians don’t usually close in by night.”
“That’s right, “Barlow admitted. “Though you can’t tell what they’ll do with white renegades working with them.”
Parker went to talk to Swift.
The E. Hoffmann Price Spice Adventure MEGAPACK ™ Page 34