“Huh?”
“Step outside and look to the northeast.”
Lonnie did as the ex-Confederate had told him to. His blood quickened in his veins as he stared at the crags, including the giant stone skull, towering above the first near ridge. The first copper rays of the rising sun were touching it. Oddly, those rays touched none of the other formations around it.
Just the skull.
As if pointing it out to Lonnie staring at it now, mouth agape.
Calhoun stepped up beside him. “Ride on down this hill here. When you come to a big spruce tree, swing left. You’ll run into an ancient horse trail. The Spanish or ancient Injuns likely carved it. Follow it out of this valley, and after a couple of hours, it will take you to a notch in the wall of Skull Canyon.”
“How do you know?” Lonnie asked the man, skeptically. “You’ve never been to Skull Canyon.”
“No, but I know what that demon sounds like when you get close. You’ll hear him, too. If you’re smart, you’ll take heed and ride right on past!”
“You’re talkin’ about the way the wind sounds when it blows around the skull. Am I right?”
“You call it what you want, you mulish little polecat. The least you can do is turn your hat around.” Calhoun grinned with cunning. “They say evil spirits have a tougher time recognizing you if you wear your hat backwards.”
“Ah, balderdash,” Lonnie grumbled, and started walking toward where the General waited, still tied to his picket line.
“Boy?” Calhoun whispered, glancing toward the sleeping Casey.
Lonnie glanced back at him.
“Don’t you tarry now. Don’t let another night catch you in that canyon, and once you’re out, you boil you up some dandelion tea then count the leaves at the bottom of your cup!”
Lonnie gave a caustic grunt. “Just keep an eye on Casey, Mister Calhoun.”
He walked away, mounted up, and quietly booted the General out of the camp. He tried to tell himself that what he’d heard was all hokum, but he couldn’t ignore that gooseflesh had now risen over nearly every inch of his body.
It only got worse when he started to hear the Skull Canyon demon blowing its infernal horn.
CHAPTER 46
Lonnie heard the tooth-gnashingly eerie bellowing as he followed the ancient horse trail east of the camp in which he’d left Casey asleep and Calhoun staring after him, shaking his head.
The moaning had started about an hour later. He looked up to see that he’d entered a narrow valley over which the skull-like formation jutted with its accompanying crags ahead on his left. The wind was blowing from the north. It was being caressed, plucked at, and ripped by the giant skull, creating those bizarre moaning sounds that changed pitch from time to time so that occasionally it sounded like a throaty wail.
The sound would die for a time and then start again, softly at first but gradually growing in volume before dying and starting all over again.
Lonnie followed the trail through a copse of aspens and across a narrow creek, heading for the red, crenelated cliff jutting ahead of him, the sun caressing it gently, burnishing it, stretching dark-purple shadows out from lumps and knobs and boulders that had likely tumbled from the crest but had gotten held up on their way to the valley floor.
The sun was as clear as a lens. Everything appeared close. Lonnie could see every dimple and piece of shale along the side of that towering cliff.
Somewhere in that cliff, a notch opened, offering a way into Skull Canyon beyond.
Lonnie followed the trail over the shoulder of a gravelly spur. On the other side of the spur, he could see the base of the sandstone cliff littered with stone rubble, twisted cedars, and pinyon pines. Another creek ran along the base of the ridge. Little wider than a freshet, the brown water glistened like copper in the intensifying sunlight as it rippled over rocks and gravel and sluiced around slab-sided boulders.
The General whinnied and shook his head so hard he almost threw his bridle.
Lonnie looked down at the horse. “What is it, General?”
As he continued riding along the trail now paralleling the ridge, Lonnie looked around cautiously. His belly had drawn itself into a tight knot. The horse had heard or smelled something that Lonnie hadn’t detected.
He rode several more yards, following a slight curve in the face of the ridge, when he drew back on the buckskin’s reins. A notch opened before him. It was like a half-open door sheathed in willows and tufts of green grass nourished by the freshet. Lonnie looked at the mud around the narrow creek, and the knot in his belly tightened.
Someone had been through here before him. The clear print of a horse’s hoof marked the mud of the spring, to the left of a leafy willow, the indentation filled with water that was very slowly wearing it away.
Apprehension throbbed like a war drum in Lonnie’s head.
He stared at the notch. He didn’t want to ride through that ominously beckoning doorway and enter the canyon. But he had to. There was a chance that whoever had ridden through here before him was merely a line rider looking for cows. Maybe a prospector. Maybe a drifter. Lord knew there were all three breeds of men in these mountains, and more.
That hoofprint didn’t necessarily have to belong to Frank Halliday.
Something, however, told Lonnie it did belong to Halliday. He’d probably been scouring the canyon for the gold for a long time, after talking to the old posse rider, and had come upon this hidden entrance, which Lonnie hadn’t known about until Calhoun had told him.
Lonnie reached forward with his right hand, and slid his rifle from its scabbard. Quietly, he racked a cartridge into the action, depressed the hammer, and set the Winchester across his saddlebow. He clucked to the General. As though sensing his rider’s apprehension, the big buckskin moved slowly, haltingly forward.
The stallion’s hooves made wet sucking sounds as it crossed the freshet. The willows brushed Lonnie’s calves as he and the General pushed through the entrance. The skull blew its whining breath down from the ridge above Lonnie as though in warning. A warning that went unheeded as the boy and his horse followed a twisting path between steep walls of pink, eroded rock before coming out onto a ridge overlooking the main canyon, which swept wide before Lonnie, a good hundred feet below.
The skull moaned shrilly, and then the wailing died with the wind.
Lonnie halted the General and looked around, trying to get his bearings. He looked at the broad skull looming whitely high above on his left. Staring straight out before him and down, he saw a stretch of flat water beyond a fringe of pines. That must be the lake near the side ravine in which Crawford Kinch had buried the payroll loot.
Lonnie gigged the General forward. The buckskin took one step then stopped. The horse blew hoarsely, twitching his ears, staring off to the right and ahead.
“What is it, Gen—?”
Lonnie let his voice trail off.
The skull’s ominous call was rising again, gradually.
Something moved among the rocks strewn along the base of the ridge wall, several yards above Lonnie on his right. A man was coming through a narrow corridor of rock that hugged the side of the steep ridge, heading toward Lonnie, whose heart was beating almost painfully now.
“Help,” the man said. “Please . . . help me!”
At first, Lonnie thought the call was a trick of the rising wind. But, no. It was a man’s voice. A familiar voice. The man’s tall, black-clad figure disappeared behind bends in the narrow corridor, but now Lonnie could hear the man’s footfalls, the ringing of his spurs as he continued moving down the crooked corridor toward Lonnie.
The moaning wind rose, kicking up dust around Lonnie and further obscuring the halting figure up the rise before him.
Lonnie aimed his Winchester toward the staggering figure, and clicked the hammer back.
The figure came out of the gap in the rocks. He stood there on a mound of slide rock, staring down at Lonnie. His shoulders sagged. His chest rose and fell heavil
y as he breathed. He wore a black frock coat. His hat was gone. A bandage shown whitely around the top of his head.
Halliday’s eyes were still swollen from Lonnie’s assault.
What looked like cherry jam stained the sheriff’s coat, high up on his right side, just below his shoulder. But Lonnie knew it wasn’t jam.
The sheriff clamped his left, gloved hand over the bloody wound. Blood oozed between the fingers of that hand. He held a pistol straight down along his right leg.
“Help me,” Halliday said, breathless. He staggered forward. “Please, you gotta . . . help me!”
He stopped. He stared at Lonnie, frowning. Then he glowered.
“Ah, hell . . . it’s you!”
He triggered his pistol into the rocks at his boots and then fell forward. Dropping the gun, Halliday rolled down the slope toward Lonnie, causing the General to fidget and sidestep, whickering nervously.
Dust rose around Halliday’s violently rolling figure. The sheriff rolled up hard against a boulder with a sharp smacking sound, just ahead and right of Lonnie. Halliday grunted, wheezed.
“Ah, Christ!” he said, miserably. “You killed me, kid!”
The voice of the canyon’s demon fairly bellowed as though in response to the sheriff’s yell.
CHAPTER 47
Lonnie looked around for the man or men who’d shot Halliday.
Seeing no one, he stepped down from his saddle and walked over to where the sheriff lay on his back beside the rock that had so unceremoniously stopped his roll. The man was writhing in pain, wincing, stretching his lips back from tobacco-stained teeth.
“What do you mean I killed you?” Lonnie stared coldly down at the man. “Not that I wouldn’t mind the honors, but I just got here.”
“You as good as done it . . . when you . . . cheated the hangman!”
Lonnie stared at the man, incredulous.
“I had to come out here . . . try to dig up the money . . . before you got to it.” Halliday grimaced and shook his head. “I swear, kid—you’re a pile o’ of unfettered trouble. Now I’m lyin’ here dyin’ on account of you!”
“You got that wrong, you bottom-feedin’ dung beetle. You’re lyin’ here dyin’ because of you. What I want to know is: who shot you?”
Lonnie looked around again, cautiously.
“Why, the Pinkertons, that’s who!” Halliday laughed without humor. “They must have figured it all out, after the other day. They must’ve followed me an’ the posse out from town. When I cut the posse loose, I rode up to where I had you rebury the money, and the sons o’ Satan shot me after I’d dug up the money. I managed to scramble away before they could finish the job.”
“Where was the posse?”
“I sent ’em back last night, when we lost your trail. Kid, help me up. I gotta get back to town. I gotta get to the sawbones.”
Lonnie took a step back. “Where are the Pinkertons?”
“Hell, I don’t know. They gave up on me and rode on out of the canyon, I reckon. They’ll probably climb up over Storm Peak Pass, head on over to the railroad line by Camp Collins. After that”—Halliday laughed in caustic frustration—“who knows? Likely, Mexico. That’d be the only place for a couple of crooked Pinkertons packin’ a mother lode of army gold!”
Halliday extended his hand to Lonnie. “Come on, kid—help me up. I gotta get back to town, see that old pill roller!”
Lonnie looked off toward where the lake shone in the distance beyond the trees, glimmering in the sunlight. His heartbeat quickened. Mostly to himself, he said, “If they’re heading over the pass, they’ll need supplies and fresh horses. The closest place to find fresh horses around here is the Circle G—my own ranch!”
His mother was there alone with little Jeremiah . . .
Lonnie swung around and started back to the General.
“Kid, you gotta help me!” Halliday begged.
Lonnie turned to look at the man. He remembered how the rope around his neck had felt. He’d likely remember that feeling on his deathbed.
Fury welled up in the boy. He spat to one side, and said, “You die slow. Right here, all alone, listening to that demon breathing over you.”
He glanced toward the pale, skull-like mass of rock looming in the north as the wind wheezed and moaned around him, lifting chalky dust.
He looked at Halliday once more. “Then you burn in hell!”
Lonnie started once more toward the General. He stopped dead in his tracks when he heard the unmistakable click of a gun hammer being cocked.
He turned around slowly. Halliday must have been packing a hideout pistol. He held the small, pearl-gripped derringer in his right hand. He grinned as he aimed the little popper at Lonnie.
Automatically, Lonnie swung his rifle up, aimed hastily, and fired.
Halliday triggered the derringer wide. The bullet plunked off a rock behind Lonnie. Halliday dropped the pistol and stared down in shock at the blood oozing from the hole in his chest.
He looked at Lonnie through the gun smoke billowing in the air between them. He frowned as though hurt that the boy would be so cold as to kill him.
Then his eyes rolled back into his head. He fell onto his back and lay still.
Lonnie looked at the rifle in his hands.
It was shaking.
Lonnie drew a deep breath, fighting the urge to be sick. He didn’t have time for that. He had to get back to the ranch. He had to get his hands on the loot. Besides, who knew what the Pinkertons might do to his mother when they tried to steal the horses from the Circle G corral?
Lonnie glanced once more at Halliday. Then he swung around and ran over to the waiting buckskin, who thrashed his tail testily. Lonnie mounted up and galloped away from the dead sheriff.
Was it just a trick of the wind, or was the canyon demon laughing at him?
As he rode, heading for the canyon’s southern entrance, where all the trouble had started, Lonnie turned his hat around backwards.
Lonnie was glad to ride out of the canyon.
But it took him another two hours to reach the outskirts of the Circle G. The pines and aspens at the edge of the yard glittered softly in the late-afternoon sunlight. Lonnie slowed the General down to a walk as he rode under the portal’s cross-beam and into the yard.
He looked around cautiously, wondering if the two Pinkertons had already been here and left, or if they were still here. He got his answer when he spied the Pinkertons’ two horses in the main corral off the barn’s side shed. Lonnie’s other four horses were there, as well.
The Pinkertons were still here. Maybe they intended to spend the night, enjoying the ministrations of Lonnie’s mother, including her cooking, before getting a fresh start in the morning.
The cabin was quiet, vaguely ominous-looking. The front door was closed. The sunlight reflected off the dark windows.
Lonnie swung the General around and rode back out through the portal and into the trees west of the yard. He dropped the General’s reins then slid his Winchester from its scabbard.
“You stay here, boy,” Lonnie said softly, patting the horse’s neck. “Hopefully, this whole nightmare will be over soon.” He racked a shell into the Winchester’s breech. “And I won’t have a bullet in my hide for my trouble.”
Lonnie removed his spurs and dropped them into a saddlebag pouch. He gave the horse another pat then strode up along a small creek to the north. He worked his way around the yard and behind the cabin then dropped to a knee to survey his surroundings.
The long, low cabin lay hunched before him, beyond the privy. The keeper shed, where meat was stored, lay to the far right of the privy. A small, roofed, open-sided woodshed sat between the privy and the cabin. More split firewood lay against the cabin’s rear wall, peppered with pine needles. A rain barrel stood back there, as well. The pine needles as well as dead leaves left over from last fall blew in the wind gusting down over the western ridges.
Lonnie thought he could hear the skull’s moaning in that wind,
but it had to be his imagination.
He was a long way from Skull Canyon.
The cabin was ominously silent but he could smell smoke from the range issuing from the chimney pipe. Lonnie licked his lips, squeezed the rifle in his hands, and then started to push off his knee. A sound stopped him. He let his knee drop back to the ground.
A man’s muffled laughter rose from the other side of the cabin.
Anxiety flared in Lonnie’s veins.
The laughter grew louder and then Bill Brocius came around the front corner of the cabin, following the well-worn path around to the back. Lonnie jerked with a start, and retreated a few feet into the trees.
Brocius’s laughter died as he moved toward Lonnie, following the path that led to the privy. The rogue Pinkerton drew on the cigarette smoldering between his lips then flipped the quirley into the brush, blowing smoke into the wind.
“Good way to cause a wildfire, fool,” Lonnie muttered under his breath, hunkered behind an aspen bole, watching Brocius follow the path to the privy. The Pinkerton walked a little unsteadily, as though he was half drunk.
The privy door opened with a squawk. Brocius’s boots thudded hollowly as he entered the privy and then closed the door and dropped the nail through the hasp, locking it.
Another wave of anxiety washed over Lonnie. He drew a deep calming breath and stared at the privy. “There you go, you snake,” Lonnie said, nodding slowly, pulling the Winchester up taut against his chest. “Now, I got you.”
He stepped out around the tree and began walking toward the privy.
CHAPTER 48
Lonnie walked up to within five yards of the privy and then dropped behind a tree stump, waiting. Inside the privy, Brocius grunted. The man’s boots thudded and scraped.
Done with business.
Lonnie lurched up off his knee and strode quickly up along the side of the privy. He stopped, pressed his left shoulder against the privy wall.
The door opened with a squawk. Lonnie glanced around the corner to see Brocius standing in front of the door, crouched slightly, buttoning the fly of his wool trousers.
Curse of Skull Canyon Page 21