Pike headed up a slope. Gravel rattled and flew under the mule’s hoofs. They came to a jutting shoulder underneath a giant, oblong rock with dozens of holes bored through it by water, wind, and time. It bore a slight resemblance to a hornpipe, and Bo imagined that when the wind blew through those holes, it produced a musical note.
At the base of the rock was a cavelike overhang partially shielded by a cluster of boulders. As soon as Bo saw them, he knew that was where Pike intended for them to make their stand against the rustlers.
“Head for the rocks!” he called to the others as he reined in. He holstered his Colt and pulled the Winchester from its saddle sheath.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Scratch said as he brought his mount to a halt and drew his own rifle. “You ain’t gonna stay here by yourself to slow down those varmints.”
“I don’t have time to argue with you,” Bo said while North and the cowboys from the Star Ranch rode past him. He had spotted movement at the bottom of the slope, and brought the Winchester to his shoulder and squeezed off a shot in one smooth motion. The bullet sent the sombrero flying from the head of the Mexican hardcase who had been the first to start up the hill after them. The man jerked his horse around so quickly that its legs almost went out from under it.
Bo and Scratch sent several more shots whistling down the slope to discourage anybody else from trying it right away, then whirled their horses and galloped toward the boulders at the base of Hornpipe Rock. Pike, North, and the others had reached them by now and were dismounting and pulling their rifles. They covered Bo and Scratch as the Texans galloped toward the shelter of the boulders, but since none of them fired, Bo figured the rustlers were hanging back now, trying to decide what to do next.
They hauled back on the reins as they reached the boulders and dropped from the saddles almost before the horses had stopped moving. Carrying their rifles, the Texans ran back to kneel behind a couple of rocks and peer toward the spot where the trail reached the top of the slope.
“I found us a good place, didn’t I?” Pike called over from his position behind one of the other boulders. “You can pick ’em off when they get to the top o’ the trail. They can’t get to us without goin’ through a bunch o’ lead, and they can’t go around because o’ the malpais on both sides o’ the trail. We’re safe here.”
“Yeah, safe as can be,” Scratch said, and the bitter edge to his voice told Bo that his trail partner had realized the same thing he had.
The rustlers couldn’t get to them…but they couldn’t get out either.
They were trapped here just as surely as if iron bars stood in their way.
It was amazing how much hotter the sun was when you knew you couldn’t get out of the place you were in, Bo thought as he knelt behind the boulder and peered over the barrel of his Winchester at the top of the trail.
He and Scratch and the others had been holed up at the base of Hornpipe Rock for about an hour, and during that time the gang of rustlers had tried twice to rush them, only to be turned back both times by heavy fire from the defenders. Bo didn’t think any of the rustlers had been killed, but a couple of them had been wounded before they withdrew.
In the long run, that didn’t matter. If the rustlers settled in for a siege, only one outcome was possible. The defenders didn’t have much food or water, and their supply of ammunition wasn’t unlimited. Eventually, hunger and thirst would force them to make a break for it, and then the rustlers would be waiting to gun them down.
Scratch had removed his buckskin jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt over his forearms. He grinned over at Bo from behind another boulder and said, “Gettin’ a mite warm, ain’t it?”
“You can say that again.” Bo laid down his rifle and shucked his long black coat. He left his vest and his string tie on, though. Some habits were hard to break.
North spoke up. “I say we charge the sons o’ bitches. They can’t get all of us.”
“I think you might be wrong there, Mr. North,” Bo said. “They outnumber us quite a bit, and I’m sure that by now they’ve found some pretty good cover, too. I think there’s a good chance they’d kill us all before we got to the bottom of the trail.”
“Well, hell, we can’t just squat here and fry!”
Bo turned his head to look over his shoulder at the massive rock looming above them. “The sun will get around behind Hornpipe Rock eventually,” he said. “That’ll give us some shade…” His voice trailed off as he frowned in thought.
“I know that look,” Scratch said. “You got some idea percolatin’ in that brain o’yours, don’t you, Bo?”
“Maybe,” Bo said slowly. “Those holes go all the way through the rock, don’t they, Chesterfield?”
Pike squinted up at the rock and nodded. “Most of ’em do, I reckon. You can tell that by the way the sun’s shinin’ through ’em, see?”
“So if a man could get up there, he might be able to crawl through one of the holes and get out the other side.”
“If a fella could sprout wings and fly up there, you mean!” Steve North put in. “He sure as hell couldn’t climb up that rock.”
Bo pointed. “No, but see that little knob of rock. A man could dab a loop on that, and I think it would hold his weight while he climbed up.”
“Hell, nobody could rope that,” North said with a frown. “Anyway, I reckon a lariat would slip right off once a fella put his weight on it.”
“Only one way to find out,” Bo said.
Scratch stood up. “One o’ you punchers loan me your lasso,” he said. “This is a job for a Texan.”
“The hell you say!” North exclaimed. “Jack Brodie there is the best roper in the whole blamed New Mexico Territory! Ain’t that right, Jack?”
“I swing a lasso pretty good,” the cowboy said with the modesty typical of his breed.
“Think you could catch that rock?” Bo asked, turning his head so that he could wink at Scratch without any of the others seeing him. Scratch’s comment about it being a job for a Texan had had the desired effect.
“I reckon I could sure give it a try,” Brodie said. He went to his horse and got his rope from the saddle. He paid it out and formed a loop, then moved over so that he stood under the little knob that Bo had pointed out. Brodie backed up a couple of steps to give himself a better angle, then lazily twirled the loop a couple of times before he cast it upward with a flick of his wrist.
The rope landed on the knob, but slid off without catching. Brodie brought in the slack, grinned, and said, “Could be a mite challengin’.” Then he twirled it and cast again.
It took four throws before the loop landed exactly right. Brodie pulled it tight around the rock and hauled hard on it. “Looks like it’s gonna hold,” he said.
North shook his head, not in disagreement but in amazement. “I didn’t think it could be done. A fella would still have to climb up there, though, and there ain’t no place to brace his feet until he’s a good fifteen feet in the air. That part of it’d have to be hand over hand, and that won’t be easy.”
“I can do it,” Pike said.
They all turned to look at him. “Chesterfield, no offense,” Bo said, “but you’re a mighty big hombre. I don’t know if that rope will hold you.”
“It’ll hold a steer, won’t it?”
Jack Brodie said, “Dang right it will. It’s a good rope.”
“Then it’ll hold me,” Pike declared confidently.
“What about them holes?” Scratch asked. “I ain’t sure your shoulders’ll go through any of ’em.”
“I reckon they will,” Pike said. “Might have to scrape a little skin off, but I can make it. And once I’m through, that rope’s plenty long enough for me to haul you fellas up one by one.”
Bo hadn’t gotten that far in his thinking, but he saw that Pike’s suggestion might work. It was a way out for all of them. They would have to leave their horses behind, and they would still be stuck here in these badlands with a gang of vicious rustle
rs on their trail, but they would be able to move around again and put up a fight.
“Let’s give it a try,” Bo said. “If we can get out of here, maybe we can circle around and get the drop on those fellas.”
Pike took hold of the rope. If any of them was strong enough to pull himself up with only his arms, it was Chesterfield Pike.
“Let’s give him a hand, boys,” Scratch said as he stepped forward and made a stirrup with his hands. “Somebody pitch in here.”
The men crowded around and lifted Pike as he hauled himself up hand over hand. Pretty soon he was too high for them to help anymore, though, so all the burden was on him. The muscles in his arms and shoulders bulged dramatically as he strained to lift his own great weight. A groan of effort came from him.
Then he was high enough so that one of his flailing feet found the overhanging rock face. That eased the load on his arms somewhat. He got his other foot braced against the rock, and from there on it would be much easier. He could just walk up the face of Hornpipe Rock until he reached the lowest of the holes, which was only a couple of feet above the knob where the lasso was caught.
It should have been simple enough. It would have been…
If guns hadn’t begun to crack at that moment and bullets hadn’t started slamming into the rock around him, stinging him with rock splinters and startling him so that his feet slipped. He began to fall, roaring in pain as the rope burned through his clutching hands.
CHAPTER 25
Bo whirled around to see where the shots were coming from, and spotted powder smoke spurting from a flat-topped rock spire that thrust up out of the malpais about a hundred and fifty yards away. Some of the rustlers must have climbed up there, he realized, so that they could take potshots at the men forted up at the base of Hornpipe Rock. They had spotted Pike climbing the rope and targeted their shots at him.
Pike didn’t fall all the way to the ground. He stopped himself after he had dropped about five feet. Bullets still pelted the rock around him, but so far none of them had hit him.
“Give him some cover!” Bo shouted as he lifted his Winchester. “We’ve got to keep those varmints off Chesterfield’s back!”
He drew a bead on the pinnacle the rustlers were shooting from and squeezed off a round, then cranked the rifle’s lever and fired again. Scratch, Steve North, Jack Brodie, and the other Star cowboys joined in, pouring lead at the distant upthrust. Their shots must have come close enough to make the rustlers duck, because slugs stopped smacking into the rock face.
“Climb, Chesterfield, climb!” Bo called.
Pike started hauling himself up the rope again as the men below continued their covering fire. He quickly regained the five feet he had lost and got his feet braced on the rock again. From there, he practically lunged upward and reached the knob where the lasso was caught. One of his arms swung higher, and his huge hand gripped the edge of the nearest natural tunnel in the rock.
Scratch glanced up and said worriedly, “It ain’t gonna be big enough for him to get through.”
“It’s got to be,” Bo said as he squeezed off another round.
Pike lowered his head and began to wriggle into the hole. As Scratch had predicted, his shoulders were a little too wide for it. But he twisted and pushed his arms out in front of him and narrowed the span of his shoulders as much as he could. His fingers dug against the rock and pulled…
When Bo and Scratch glanced up again, the upper half of Pike’s body had disappeared into the hole. “Son of a gun!” Scratch said. “He might just make it after all!”
The rustlers had started shooting again. Ricochets whined wickedly around the rocks. The Texans kept up their own deadly accurate fire, along with North and his punchers.
Suddenly, a man plummeted off the spire the rustlers had climbed, and North let out a triumphant yell. “Got one of the bastards!”
“What do you mean, you got him?” Scratch demanded. “That was my shot knocked him off there!”
“The hell it was!”
“Keep shooting,” Bo reminded them. “Chesterfield’s still a sitting duck up there.”
A moment later, though, he glanced up to see that Pike had vanished completely into the narrow tunnel, pulling up the rope after him. Several more minutes of fierce firing went by. Then suddenly the rope slithered back down, this time from the top of Hornpipe Rock.
“Somebody grab hold!” Pike bellowed. “I’ll pull you up!”
Bo didn’t doubt that Pike had the sheer strength to lift the other men right up the rock. Unfortunately, they would be prime targets while he was doing so.
North gestured toward the dangling rope and called to Bo, “Go ahead! Get outta here while the gettin’s good!”
Bo wasn’t sure how good the getting would be, but once he was on top of Hornpipe Rock, he would have an even better vantage point to shoot at the rustlers. If Pike could lift him up there, he could help cover the ascent of the others…
He looked at Scratch, who gave him a curt nod. “Go on,” the silver-haired Texan said. “I’ll see you up top.”
“All right,” Bo said. “You come next, though.”
“Right behind you, pard.”
Bo ran over to the rope and grabbed it. He wound it around his waist once and then got a good grip on it with his right hand. His left still held the Winchester, which he figured he would need once he was on top of the rock. He gave the rope a tug and shouted over the gunfire, “Haul away, Chesterfield!”
The sensation was a little disorienting and not very pleasant as Bo rose into the air and the ground fell away under his feet. Pike’s enormous strength allowed him to lift Bo fairly quickly. A bullet whipped past the Texan’s head. He almost banged into the overhang because he reached it faster than he thought he would. He got a foot up and fended it off, then used both feet to practically run up the rock face as Pike continued to lift him.
Rustler lead came close enough for him to hear another couple of times, but then he was at the top and Pike reached out to haul him to safety. Bo fell forward and rolled a short distance down the sloping formation before he caught himself. Then he scrambled back up, stretched out on his belly, and thrust the Winchester’s barrel over the crest. Just as he had hoped, from there he had a good vantage point from which to fire down at the distant rustlers.
Judging wind and elevation with an expert sense developed over the long years of danger and adventure, Bo opened up, cranking off four fast shots. He saw the rustlers diving for cover behind the boulders that dotted the flat top of the spire.
“Toss that rope back down there, Chesterfield!” he told Pike. “I’ll cover you while you’re hauling Scratch up here!”
Pike nodded and threw the end of the rope down to the waiting men. “Grab hold, Deputy Morton!” he shouted. A moment later, he began to haul away.
Bo edged forward so he could see down the rock face as he continued to fire. He glanced along the rope and saw Scratch rising toward him as Pike pulled it in hand over hand, grunting and straining.
Scratch was about halfway up the rock face when pure bad luck took a hand in the game. One of the bullets fired from the distant spire found the taut rope, slicing it cleanly about a foot above Scratch’s head. Shocked, Bo yelled his friend’s name as Scratch started to fall.
Despite his age, Scratch had the reflexes of a much younger man. Pike had lifted him high enough so that some of the tunnels that gave the rock its name were within reach. Scratch dropped his Winchester and lunged for the nearest one, catching the edge with both hands and stopping his fall. He yelled in pain as his weight hit his arms and shoulders, but he hung on for dear life. The rope that was around his waist slithered loose and fell the rest of the way to the ground.
“Hang on!” Pike shouted. “I’ll lower this part of the rope to you, Deputy!”
That was Scratch’s only chance, Bo knew. He thumbed fresh cartridges into the Winchester and opened fire again, covering Pike as the big man slid as far forward on the rock as he could
without sliding right off it. He found a handhold with his left hand, and clung to it tightly as he extended his right arm and dangled the part of the lariat he still held toward Scratch.
“Grab on!” Pike called.
Down below, Scratch gritted his teeth as he tried to pull himself up far enough to grasp the end of the rope. Then he hesitated and shouted, “Damn it, Chesterfield, if I do I’m liable to pull you off! No use in both of us gettin’ killed!”
“No, I can do it!” Pike insisted. “Grab the rope!”
“Go ahead, Scratch!” Bo urged. “If Chesterfield starts to slip, I’ll grab hold of him!”
The idea that Bo could hold up both Scratch’s weight and Pike’s massive bulk was so ridiculous that Scratch had to laugh. But he gathered his strength, pulled himself up as much as he could, and let go with his right hand to make a grab for the rope.
He got it, twisting it around his wrist a couple of times. Then he let go of the rock with his other hand and used it to grab the rope, too, as quickly as he could so that his entire weight wouldn’t be on his wrist any longer than it had to be.
Up above, Bo watched anxiously as the fingers on Pike’s hand that was clinging to the rock slipped a little. Then Pike’s hold strengthened, and he groaned as he heaved upward. He shifted, braced his feet, and was able to use both arms to lift Scratch. Bo wanted desperately to go to his aid, but he knew that the best way he could help right now was to continue peppering the rustlers with lead so they couldn’t concentrate their fire on the drama playing out on the rock face.
Somehow, Scratch’s cream-colored Stetson had stayed on his head despite all the banging around. It rose into view, then his head and shoulders, and then Pike reached out, got hold of Scratch’s arm, and pulled the Texan to safety. Both of them rolled down the slope where the rustlers’ bullets couldn’t reach them.
Bo slid down to join them. “You all right?” he asked Scratch.
“Yeah.” Scratch rotated his right wrist, testing it. “Still works good enough to shoot a gun anyway. I banged against the rock pretty hard, but I ain’t worried about a few bruises.”
Sidewinders#2 Massacre At Whiskey Flats Page 21