Well up the side of a rough and ragged mountain on the other side of a gulch, Cormac Lynch could see a secluded out-of-the-way shelf upon which appeared to be a good spot for a camp. It would be about a twenty-minute ride away from one of the overlooks he could see in the distance above the L-Bar, as it was being called according to a helpful traveler, that was remote enough to reduce the possibility of being accidentally discovered, yet close enough to the L-Bar to be handy. He could see a small cave offering protection from the rain, and a large flat rock-shelf with a small clearing supplying a stream and plenty of deadfall wood for fires about ten or twelve feet below.
The sky was clouding up and mountain storms were to be taken seriously. He had heard that the air surrounding the lightning strikes at this elevation could fairly sizzle with enough electricity to make a person’s hair stand on end. The surrounding area was thick with pine trees that would disseminate the smoke of a small campfire.
“Looks perfect. What more could we want?” Cormac asked the grulla and Lop Ear. Horse snorted.
“Okay, that settles it,” Cormac told her. “We’ll go there.”
Although the campsite was only a few hundred feet away as the crow flies, it looked to be about a mile around the gulch to get to it. On the way, he was forced to duck behind some huge boulders to avoid a group of riders. He dismounted and held the muzzles of both horses to keep them quiet as the riders went by. There were two boxes he recognized tied on a packhorse. They were boxes of a new explosive called dynamite that he had seen used in the mine.
Shaky, unstable, and extremely dangerous, Nitro-Glycerin had been the only choice of an explosive available until just recently when somebody invented the much more controllable dynamite that could be lit with a fuse, but it still packed one heck of a punch. Cormac wouldn’t have cared to have any of it tied behind his saddle. One of the riders was telling the others that stopping up the Sweet River would take care of most of the water for the L-Bar.
“We’ll just see about that,” Cormac said.
In the direction they were riding, he had seen a pass from which a river flowed that figured to be their destination. When the riders had passed, he selected a course that would get him there first. Riding Horse, they slid down some slopes the other riders couldn’t with a packhorse full of dynamite. Once on flat ground, he turned her and Lop Ear loose and let them run. When the riders rode into the pass, he had been looking down at them over GERT’s sights from across the river. When they had reached a clearing providing him a straight shot, GERT reached out and said hello to the dynamite.
CHAPTER 17
On the way to the bunkhouse, Shank slid to a stop as an explosion echoed across the ranch, loud even at a distance.
“Damn! That son of a . . .”
“Bitch!” Lainey finished for him. “He is deliberately stopping up the Sweet!”
“Anyone who would cut off range water is lower than a snake’s belly,” complained Candy.
Shank started again for the bunkhouse. “Let’s go see how bad it is. Maybe we can open it up again.”
There was no need to roust the men. The explosion had taken care of that. They were already streaming out the door, asking each other what the hell that was.
As Shank, Candy, and the four others Shank had chosen approached the pass, Shank could see the jagged formations still intact. They had expected to see a large, gaping hole from the explosion, but it wasn’t there. There was no visible change. Following the still-flowing Sweet River, they advanced slowly, guns in hand.
Cautiously rounding some boulders into a clearing, they pulled up in surprise, taking in the signs of the explosion. A small but recent slide filled one corner, and a few large boulders appeared to have been recently relocated from a higher elevation. The center of the clearing was a gruesome scene with various pieces and leftovers of men and horses strewn around.
The six looked around in silence. Even the horses sensed something and stood quietly. The only sound was of flies already beginning to gather on the bits of flesh. With a few hours of hot sunshine, the stench would be unbearable.
“What do you suppose happened, Shank?” Candy finally got out.
“Something must have set off the dynamite before they were ready, and I’m rightly curious about what. The rest of you stay put,” Shank told the others. “Candy and me’ll have a look around and see if we can piece out what went wrong.”
Taking different directions, Candy Johnson and Shank Williams slowly outlined the clearing, meeting on the other side, and then without speaking, rode back through the center.
Shank was the first to speak.
“The horse tracks lead right to the center of the clearing where the explosion happened. There are no boot prints, so something set it off while they were still mounted.”
Candy nodded his agreement, and then added, “From what I’ve heard, dynamite doesn’t just go off. Something had to of fired it, and the only thing that makes sense from what little I know is a bullet, but from where, and from who? None of us were up here.”
“I come to the same conclusion and been studyin’ on that. It couldn’t have been from close up without the shooter getting caught in the blast. The rocks around here are too steep to climb, and that only leaves above the trees on the other side of the Sweet with a straight-line shot. What do you make of it, Candy?”
“My thoughts exactly. Wanna go look?”
“I’d give a pretty penny to know who fired that shot. Maybe we can find something that will tell us.”
The nearest crossing was outside the pass, where the current was still fast, but passable. One of the horses was reluctant about crossing and needed a few slaps from Candy’s reins for encouragement.
Coming up to the thick stand of trees across the river from where the explosion had shaken the mountains, Shank told the riders, “Spread out and look for tracks. The shooter would have had to come through here to get to a place with a straight shot into the clearing. Go slow and don’t miss anything.”
It was Candy who found an old Indian footpath with fresh boot prints leading up into the rocks behind the trees. Too steep for a horse, Shank and Candy followed the recent tracks up the mountain on foot, stopping many times to catch their breaths.
“Man!” exclaimed a breathless Shank. “This guy must be part mountain goat. Look how far up we are, and there still isn’t a shot to the clearing.”
Another ten minutes’ climb brought them out on a small rock shelf. Candy was the first up and stopped before going onto it.
“There it is.” He pointed to a footprint. “And there is a perfect boulder to rest a rifle on, but that would be one hell of a shot. Look how far it is down there. This angle would make for a lot of drop, and drop shoots are tricky. This boy can shoot.”
“Well, this says we’re right, there was a shooter. And, going by the size of these tracks we been followin’, he’s a big man. And he has to be in good condition to have climbed up that path. I was watching and seen no tracks where he stopped to rest like we did; but who in the world would it be? All of our men are accounted for.”
“I don’t know, Shank. Someone with a score to settle, I’d guess; but if he’s working against Lambert, I’d like to shake his hand and buy him a drink or ten.”
Shank nodded. “Now, let’s see if we can get down from here without breaking our fool necks.”
Lainey was worried. It had been on her first supply run to town when she had met Lambert at the general store. She remembered him to be one of the Circle T riders that she had fired. He was a wide man with wide shoulders over a massive chest. His arms were thick muscled and long, hanging lower than most. Cruel and wide-set eyes had glared out at her from an unshaven round, monkey-looking face.
When there was no one else within hearing distance, he had made a crude suggestion to her. She had responded the way she always did whenever something like that happened—she ignored it and walked away with no reaction, response, or acknowledgment that it had even taken p
lace. In anger, Lambert had thrown down the items he had been carrying and stomped out of the store.
That Lambert was prepared to kill, he had already proven: three times. Two of her riders had been shot and killed trying to get to Denver. A third had been lassoed and drug to death when he was caught while searching for strays. A fourth had been severely beaten and released with a message that if she didn’t want all of her men to end up the same way, she should pack up and leave.
The men wouldn’t hear of it. When Farley had been so badly beaten, Lainey had only just barely managed to keep Shank from going after Lambert. She briefly regretted that decision, but had she allowed it, she felt certain that he could not have gotten through Lambert’s men without getting himself killed.
“Ma’am, you don’t strike me as one to cut and run when times get tough,” Shank told her emphatically when she had called a meeting on the porch with all of the men to tell them she would rather leave than get anymore of them killed. “Well, we ain’t either.” The men all strongly agreed. Looking around at the other riders for their approval, he said, “We ride for you, ma’am. There’s not a man amongst us that will stand for you being harmed or your spread taken from you, and we’ll listen to no more such foolishness.”
To a man, they each voiced their agreement. She had nodded and mumbled thank you and gone inside, not wanting them to see the emotion running down her cheeks.
Now she was afraid Lambert might win. Her men were doing the best they could, but they were outnumbered. They needed to get help desperately, but there was no way to leave the ranch other than the front or back range or the Southern pass, and all were being watched. The ranch buildings had been centrally built for convenience of operation, not for defense. Being out in the open made it impossible to approach without being seen, however defending it against a straight-out attack from a large group of invaders would be difficult, if not impossible.
She remembered a cabin she had seen in a mountain alcove while on one of her rides. Lainey loved to ride early in the morning when the sun was just climbing the horizon. On one such ride, she had rounded a rocky corner and found a long-abandoned cabin tucked back behind a small stand of trees. It would have gone unnoticed by a casual passerby. Maybe it would be better to abandon the ranch buildings and move the men there; it would be more easily defended.
Her men were all either on patrol or with Shank but for the two who had been instructed to remain with her. She called to them to bring the big wagon up to the porch and help her load it. They would leave immediately upon Shank’s return.
While Lainey Nayle was loading the wagon, Burnell Lambert was nearing the pass to survey the damage done by his men. He turned his horse quickly behind a boulder pile in time to watch the group of L-Bar riders coming out of the trees. He was puzzled as to what they might have been doing on that side of the river; he was also puzzled as to why there was still a river. The explosion should have stopped it up. Obviously, something had gone wrong, but what could have possibly happened? Blowing up the side of a mountain was not complicated, just stack a bunch of dynamite against it, light the fuse, and run like the devil.
He watched Shank and his riders go by. His horse sent a whinnied hello at the other horses, but the sound was masked by the noise of the river. The rapids were less than in the pass, but still substantial.
Lambert was embittered over most everything since being thrown off the L-Bar. He hated Lainey Nayle for doing it to him and making him look bad, and he hated Shank for not joining him.
“He thinks he is so righteous,” he thought, “but I’ll take care of him before this is over.”
Shank had a fast gun, but so did he. It was just that he didn’t advertise it and few knew about it. When someone needed killing, he did it away from the eyes of others, preferably from ambush; but just as easily face to face. He practiced drawing regularly in private and had become surprisingly quick.
After Shank had turned him down, Burnell Lambert had brought in J.B. Sanderson when his efforts to locate Mackle had failed. Mackle had been his first choice, but nobody had known how to reach him, and rumors placed him somewhere in Texas. Sanderson was said to have shot seventeen people. Lambert had seen one of the shootings and knew himself to be faster. Sanderson would never learn Lambert hadn’t the money to pay him; Lambert would kill him after he had gained control of the L-Bar. Lambert couldn’t help smiling—when he took the L-Bar, he would also take the woman. She wouldn’t ignore him again.
After the men had passed, Lambert rode up to the clearing but stopped at the edge; the stench was horrible. This is where the explosion had taken place, but why? What had set it off? He wet his bandana with water from his canteen and tied it over his nose and mouth. Stopping frequently to re-wet it, Lambert searched the clearing for clues as to what had happened, coming to the same conclusion as Shank Williams and Candy Johnson. Someone had shot into the dynamite, and the only place from where a shot like that could have been made was high above the trees on the other side of the river.
That must have been what Shank and his men had been doing. Somehow, they must have realized what was about to happen and placed a man on the mountain where he could get a clean shot at the clearing. He stared up at the peak. It must have been Shank, or maybe Candy Johnson, up there with the rifle. Lambert doubted anyone else could have made that shot.
With the help of the two hands, Lainey was just finishing loading the wagon when Shank and the other men rode up to the house. Shank Williams agreed that it was a good plan and told the men to make themselves bedrolls. He knew of the cabin. The only other building up there was a small stable. He and the men rolled their bedrolls out onto the ground as soon as they arrived.
The next day was uneventful, and Lainey breathed a little easier. It was tempting to think that something had happened to Lambert and that it was all over. Maybe he had been killed in the explosion, but in her heart she knew better. She wondered, too, about who had fired the shot that had set off the explosion. She would like to thank him, whatever his reason had been.
The small kitchen area of the cabin was too constricting, and Lainey had taken to cooking outside over a campfire using Dutch ovens. After breakfast, Shank had gone with the men to check on the stock and returned to tell Lainey what he had been thinking about. He and Lainey sat down on a blanket for another cup of coffee under a tree handy to the site.
Shank opened the conversation. “I still can’t get a handle on who fired the dynamite. I would sure like the chance to tell him thank you. But I wonder if somehow we have a friend working for Lambert. How else would he have known about it in time to be just at the right place to make that shot when they got there?”
“I have thought and thought about that and couldn’t come up with anything,” answered Lainey. “Your idea is the only one that makes sense. We haven’t had the chance to get word out to anybody, but I would sure like to meet him, too. I’d cook him a dinner that would make his eyes bug out.”
“You know,” Shank said thoughtfully, “I doubt that Lambert was caught in the explosion. We just ain’t that lucky. I don’t think he would have gone along to do it himself; he would have sent his flunkies to do the dirty work.” He paused while Lainey refilled his coffee cup. Having her do for him was pleasurable. He had fantasized about her being his wife, but he was just a hand on her ranch, and he knew it was just a fantasy, nice to think about, but a fantasy, nonetheless. A man had a right to dream, and Lainey Nayle was certainly a dream worth having.
“We can’t just let him continue to do whatever he wants to do, whenever he wants to do it,” Shank went on. “I think we should take it to him, this sitting and waiting goes against the grain. It gives him time to plan.”
Lainey brushed away a fly that was pestering her. “I was thinking along the same lines. What do you have in mind?”
“I believe we should start searching and see can we locate his base of operations. He has no ranch to work from; it’s got to be someplace in the hills, and n
ot too far away at that. My guess is somewhere to the Southeast, not more than a half-day’s ride: probably closer. I think we should find where he is and take it to him.”
“You can do that? After losing Ray and the others, we only have fourteen men plus yourself. We’re spread pretty thin.”
“That’s why we have to do something now, before we lose more. Lambert has the advantage because he has us outnumbered and can pick and choose when and where to hit us. I think his plan is to cut us down one or two at a time until we don’t have enough men left to protect the ranch, then he’ll just move in and take over. Yesterday, I ran into a fella I used to be kind of friendly with who works for Lambert. He warned me that Lambert was going to bring in the Mackle gun.”
“What’s a Mackle gun?”
Shank smiled. “It’s not a what, it’s a who: a gun fighter named Mackle. He’s said to be fast as hell, pardon me, ma’am. He’s really quick, and they say whoever he points his gun at, dies.”
“Oh, Lord,” Lainey responded. “That’s not good. Now that you mention it, I have heard of him once or twice. And I understand he has killed a lot of people.”
“Well, to be fair, I’ve never heard of him killin’ anyone who didn’t need killin’. I think all he does is push back.”
Lainey was sitting on a blanket on the ground and leaning back against a fallen tree with her legs extended. She slid one foot back, with a piece of rolled packing paper in her hand held in readiness above her knee. She had set a trap for the pesky fly. If he fell for it and landed on her knee, he was a goner. Raising her knee had exposed a nicely turned ankle that had Shank failing in his attempt to ignore it.
“What do you mean, push back?” she asked, glancing at him. Shank averted his eyes quickly, hoping she hadn’t noticed.
“Civilization is gradually comin’. It’s the trend of things for everyone to live peaceful, non-violent lives. Everyone is supposed to follow the rules of society, be kind to your neighbor, and turn the other cheek, as the preachers are fond of saying. Even now, to city folk, fighting and violence are terrible things, to be avoided at all costs; that’s the idea of civilization.” Lainey smiled slightly when Shank paused to pour himself another cup of coffee, always the storyteller. With a motion of the coffee pot, Shank offered to refill her cup, but she declined with a shake of her head.
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