by Zane Grey
Keeping well out of sight, Pecos made his way toward the old camp. He had traveled more than two miles when his sharp eye detected movement and color at the mouth of a ravine on the eastern bank. A band of mounted Indians, that he made sure were Comanches, rode out of the ravine and into the river. A lone string of half naked savages! He counted eighteen. The river was shallow there and could be forded at this stage of the water. Pecos watched them with hard eyes. More than once he had nearly lost his scalp to these painted devils. They crossed without difficulty and disappeared.
Half a mile up the river opened the canyon in which lay the camp Pecos was approaching. He knew that horses could not be ridden up that far. There was a brake, however, between the impassable bank and where the Indians had crossed. Perhaps they would pass up that. At any rate, they were bent upon mischief.
Pecos retraced his steps to a brake where he could get up out of the river bottom. Once out of the ravine, he took to the rocks and brush, making fast time until he got into the vicinity of the gorge he expected the Comanches to work up, when he proceeded very warily. But they had not passed that way. This meant that their procedure must almost certainly be directed against the old camp.
This point was not now far distant, and it appeared certain that Pecos could arrive there ahead of the Comanches, if he chose to risk traversing rather open ground. His first impulse was to risk anything to warn his comrades, provided they had arrived. Sober reason, however, gave him pause. He could warn them as well from the rim of the canyon wall, and be in a much more advantageous position to help them ward off the impending attack.
Nevertheless the moments became fraught with uncertainty. Pecos hoped his comrades had not returned, but he had a queer intuitive conviction that they had. Adams would be sleeping off the effects of liquor and a long ride; Williams was certainly not a wary man around camp, at least this camp in the brakes of the Pecos.
Something not only held Pecos from hurried action, but forced him to make slow detours under cover. Once near the south wall of the canyon he would be secure, as it was exceedingly broken.
As he neared its vicinity he thought he heard a distant neigh of a horse. He waited in suspense. The morning was quite advanced, clear and bright, not a cloud in the sky, with the sun burning the herald of summer near at hand. Buzzards sailed high above the camp. These uncanny birds always annoyed Pecos. A sarcastic enemy had once told Pecos that he would be food for buzzards some day. The enemy had verified that presagement for himself, but Pecos had never forgotten. Buzzards had a strange prescience of death and carrion soon to be visited upon a certain locality. Bees hummed by Pecos as he crouched among the rocks, listening. Presently he went on, eyes and ears strained.
But it was his nose that gave first and sure proof of his sagacity. Smoke! “I shore smell smoke,” he whispered.
That meant Williams and Adams were back. The fact shot a cold sense of tragedy through Pecos, which he could not explain on the score of imminent peril. He could not understand it, but it felt so. No more could he have explained his feeling about the buzzards. Three men under cover could stand off a larger force of Indians than this one Pecos had seen crossing the river.
At last Pecos gained the canyon, but some distance above camp, and round a bend. He had to work down along the broken rim among thick thorned bushes and gray sage, the treacherous dagger-spiked lechuguilla and the maze of broken rocks.
He soon got out of breath, not being accustomed to long climbs out of his saddle, and this going was very rough. Panting and sweating, he thought it best to rest a little. He imagined he might need the clearest of faculties and all his breath before so very long.
Still back and down from the ragged rim-wall he made his way, not at all sure of where he should peep over in to the canyon. Presently he espied a column of blue smoke lazily rising. He had passed the camp. That was all right, for it placed him between his comrades and the sneaking Comanches.
Pecos got down on his knees and one hand, to crawl toward the rim. He had not proceeded far when he was brought stockstill by a horrid scream abruptly cut off. Cold sweat now broke out over the hot sweat.
“What’n hell? Was thet a hoss or a man?” he whispered low. Then his sensitive ear caught loud angry voices. Whatever was going on down below, the Comanches had not yet made their presence known. Wherefore Pecos made short work of the remaining distance to the rim, coming out in a niche of the wall, covered by brush. He could not be seen; he could get away swiftly; and pursuit was impossible within a reasonable time.
Pecos raised himself to peep down, the voices guiding him. His eyes nearly popped out at sight of four men holding Adams on a horse. He was cursing, bellowing, entreating. They had a lasso round his neck, with an end thrown up over the branch of a tree.
This led Pecos’ startled gaze to something dark and moving. It jerked. A man hung by his neck. Williams! He was kicking in a horribly grotesque manner. His distorted face, eyes distended, mouth wide, tongue out, was in plain sight across the canyon.
An instant of paralyzed staring was long enough for Pecos, Adams and Williams had been surprised by cattlemen, who were meting out the law to rustlers. They were hanging them. Pecos had heard of that summary justice coming to the Texas range. His blood froze, only to gush again in a bursting fire. No cattlemen would ever put a noose over his head.
All five men were shouting, but Adams’ voice could be heard above the others. Pecos grasped that the coward was trying to beg off or buy his freedom. What a fool! He did not know Texans!
Suddenly Pecos had a lightning-swift realization of his complicity in this tragedy. He was an ally of Adams, though he had never liked or trusted the man. But he had thrown in with them, he had helped them brand mavericks; he had shared their ill-gotten spoils. He did not consider himself a rustler. But it was monstrously evident that these cowmen regarded Adams and Williams as rustlers.
This, then, was the inevitable climax Pecos had dreaded. He had killed Sawtell because he had been unjustly accused. But if he killed here, in defense of the comrades who had been outlawed by the range, he would be an outlaw himself.
Pecos made his choice instantly. His code left him no alternative. He cocked and raised his rifle, deadly sure of saving Adams’ life.
“Stretch hemp!” yelled the leader, in a stentorian voice. And he heaved on the rope, while two of his men wheeled from the victim to assist.
Even as Pecos swerved the rifle to align its sights with this leader, Adams was jerked half out of the saddle.
Then from below Pecos, and to his right, boomed a buffalo gun. The leader of that hanging squad uttered a hoarse cry. Dropping the rope, he staggered, arms spread wide to fall into the grass.
Before Adams had sunk back into the saddle a roar of heavy rifles followed the first report, accompanied by the hideous war cry of Comanches.
Pecos went stiff in every muscle. He lowered his rifle, his gaze riveted on the terrible scene opposite. Another cattleman fell. The horse leaped up, throwing Adams off. It plunged down, to kick with all four hoofs in the air, suddenly to sag quiet. Adams had been crippled. Still with the noose around his neck he tried to crawl. The rope, which had been over a branch, caught up in the tree. While Adams frantically pulled to free it he received more bullets and slid face forward. The third cattleman leaped behind the tree. And the fourth was brought down before he could reach shelter behind the rocks. But he was not killed. With a broken leg at least, he flopped behind the fallen horse.
Puffs of blue smoke rose from behind the tree. Pecos saw the man behind the horse slide a rifle out of its saddle-sheath to level it and fire.
Pecos crawled out of the niche to a point where he could see below. Fortune favored him, as it ruled disaster to the Comanches. Pecos watched them slipping, sliding, gliding, down among the rocks, into the thicket that fringed that side of the canyon. They filled the air with their wild cries of hate and exultance. Emboldened by the success of their surprise attack, they were charging. Still they
kept shooting as fast as they could reload, and the din of the heavy rifles was so loud that Pecos could scarcely hear the rapid fire from the two cattlemen.
At this juncture Pecos grimly entered the engagement. He could not be seen and his lighter calibre rifle scarcely heard. The last line of the gliding Comanches appeared scarcely fifty feet below him. When Pecos drew a quick bead on a naked red back he pulled the trigger, then looked for another Indian. He fired seven shots in less than two minutes.
While he reloaded he saw the front line of savages spread to left and right. At least six of these, in their thirst for blood charged out of the thicket. Pecos discerned arrows flying like glints of light through the air, some to stick in the carcass of the horse, others in the tree.
Suddenly the cattleman who had been firing from behind the tree lunged into sight with an arrow through his middle. Evidently a cunning redskin far to the right had been able to hit him. One after another, he killed the three foremost charging Comanches. The others turned tail to flee.
Here Pecos got into action again, killing the Indian nearest him. But it was a blunder, for the other two, out in the open, discovered him, and fled along the edge of the thicket, screeching like demons. The remaining four or five flashed here and there among the rocks, in open patches in the brush. Pecos connected with another, but he was sure not fatally.
Suddenly the yelling ceased. Pecos saw that the attack had been turned into a rout. No doubt the Comanches supposed reinforcements had arrived. No sign, no sound! The canyon had become appallingly silent. Looking across, Pecos was in time to see the cattleman who had come out from behind the tree sink to his knees. His smoking gun dropped, and his hands pressed round the arrowshaft in his abdomen. He fell forward, which action could only have driven the arrow deeper. Pecos veered his searching gaze to the crippled man behind the horse. He could not be seen. But the rifle had slid over on this side of the horse—a significant and ominous sign. Then on the instant, proving the brevity of that fatal fight, Williams kicked his last in the hanging noose.
Chapter VII
THERE was no fear that the remaining few Comanches would return. Nevertheless, Pecos got back up on the level rim and ran down to the wall that dropped off into the river. Several hundred yards below he espied them in great haste driving their ponies into the water. Presently Pecos made out five riders, one of whom was holding a sixth Indian, badly crippled, on his mount.
The range was too far for accurate shooting, nevertheless Pecos thought that while hurrying their retreat he might hit one. So from behind his covert he fired seven more shots. The bullets all fell short of a few feet, sending up white splashes, but they were almost as effective as if they had found their mark. The Comanches raced madly across the river, to disappear in a brake in the bank.
Reloading, Pecos retraced his steps to a point above camp where he could get down over the wall. He had satisfied himself fully that there were no crippled Indians, so he hurried to the scene of the hanging.
It was ghastlier than any Pecos had ever heard of, tragic and common as were fights in Texas. The swinging Williams, black in the face; the dead horse full of arrows; the cattleman lying on his face, with a bloody barb protruding far from his back—these were the details which lent most sinister and grisly aspect.
“All daid!” muttered Pecos. Then the choking rattle of blood in a man’s throat informed Pecos that he was wrong. Not Adams, not the brained man behind the horse—it was the fellow with the arrow through his middle.
Pecos made haste to turn him over on his side. He was a stranger to Pecos, a man of middle age, apparently not a Texan, and he was alive, conscious, but dying. He called incoherently for water. Pecos rushed to the packs that he had stowed away under the wall, and seizing a vessel he dashed to fill it at the spring.
A moment later while Pecos held the man’s head so he could drink it became more pitifully evident that he was mortally hurt.
“They’re gone,” he said, huskily.
“Shore. I saw the last of them crossin’ the river.”
“Comanche hell-hounds. … How many’d we do fer?”
“Eleven, I reckon, an’ one crippled.”
“You all alone?”
“Yes. I had the drop on them, as I was back up on the rocks.”
“Wal, they spoiled our necktie party—an’ you spoiled their game. … Reckon it—was fair. … Air my outfit all daid?”
“Yes, an’ I’m afraid yore a gonner, too.”
“Thet’s a safe bet. … Gimme another drink?”
“Any message you want sent?” queried Pecos, presently.
“None, onless you happen to—meet this Pecos Smith,” replied the other, his pale blue eyes steady on Pecos.
“Wal, thet’s likely, as I happen to be Smith.”
“I reckoned so. … But was you burnin’ brands with Williams an Adams?”
“No! … So thet’s what you was hangin’ them fer. … They double-crossed me. The deal I made with them was maverick-brandin’.”
“Wal, they shore been cheatin’ you. The Heald boys spoke well of you, Smith. It’s Breen Sawtell, brother of Beckman’s foreman who you shot at Healds’—he’s the fellar who’s got it in fer you.”
“Breen Sawtell? … Shore don’t know him. What’s he look like?”
“Daid ringer fer his brother. … An’ see hyar, Pecos Smith, as I’m aboot to cash, it won’t hurt me none to tell you somethin’. As I got it Breen Sawtell was stealin’ his own brother’s stock. Thet’s why he put him on your trail, as he has—of others. … Want another—drink.”
“Ahuh. An’ why’d he pick on me?” returned Pecos, after he had given the failing man the last of the water.
“Wal, they do say Breen had a look in at Healds’—fer the gurl, you know—until you rode along.”
“Bill never told me thet,” exclaimed Pecos, aghast.
“Wal, it’s true. … Smith, things air—gettin’ sort of dark—an’ I’m cold.”
“It’s kinda tough—to croak hyar, with an Indian arrow in yore gizzard,” declared Pecos, feelingly.
“All in—the day’s—ride,” panted the dying man. “Gawd—I’m glad—thet burnin’s over.”
“Yeah, it’s aboot all over.”
“Smith, you strike me—as bein’ too—good a fellar—fer rustlers like them—X Bar cowhands.”
“If I’m a rustler, they made me one,” declared Pecos, with passion.
“Wal, they’re daid—an’ nobody can hyar aboot this. … Chuck the game—Smith,” gasped the other.
Pecos had a poignant cry on his lips, but it never left them. The cattleman’s last conscious look was unforgettable, in that it changed from one of kindness to the stranger he had pursued, to a somber divination of his own lonely end. Then his senses failed, and a moment later he quivered with a cough and lay still. He had ceased to breathe.
Pecos got up to contemplate the scene. And his mind worked fast. These four cattlemen would eventually be trailed. The thing for Pecos to do was to leave everything precisely as he saw it then. Shrewd trackers might suspect the presence of an outside hand in this massacre, especially if they were keen enough to figure on the Comanches shot from the canyon wall; nevertheless Pecos considered it wisest to leave all the bodies as they lay.
There was nothing on them that he wanted, except the money he knew he would find on Adams and Williams. This he secured, in the latter’s case by untying the rope and letting him down. On second thought, however, Pecos took Adams’ gun, a box of ammunition, and a sack of fresh food supplies, all of which, with his rifle, made a pretty heavy burden to carry down to his own camp.
By resting frequently he made the three miles in somewhat less than two hours, which time brought the day to about noon.
Pecos decided to pack at once and strike south. A hundred miles down the Pecos would put him in another world, so far as Breen Sawtell and his ilk were concerned. He thought of Don Felipe, of McKeever, both of whom he wished to avoid, for very di
fferent reasons. Still, if he happened to encounter the trail driver it would be of no great moment, except that Pecos preferred to be unseen by anyone who knew him for a long time.
There was not a single settlement until Eagle’s Nest, just above where the Pecos River joined the Rio Grande. That probably would have grown, in the years since Pecos had ridden north.
Saddling Cinco and packing the other horse were soon accomplished. What to do with all the money he had Pecos was at a loss to decide. He could not carry it all on his person, as it made too much bulk and would certainly be observed if he encountered any riders. Finally he selected out of the dozen rolls of bills all those of large denomination, and these he stowed away in deep pockets. The rest he secreted in the lining of his heavy coat, which he tied back of his saddle. Handling this money made Pecos sweat from sheer excitement. He could not persuade himself that he came by it in strict honesty, though he certainly had not stolen it. The facts narrowed down to this—some Texas ranchers had collectively lost a good many head of stock and he had amassed a small fortune.
Never had Pecos set out on a long ride with faculties more keenly alert. As soon as he had placed a score of miles between him and the camp of dead men he would breathe freer and look only ahead.
That night he camped across from Alkali Lake, a place on the east bank which he knew less well than the west side of the Pecos.
Adobe Wells, to which another day’s travel brought him, was also on the opposite side of the river. Likewise Frazier’s Crossing, which he was careful to pass at night, and Dapper’s Bend and Red Bluffs, were to be feared more from the eastern shore. Another ten-hour ride gained Castle Gap Canyon, within striking distance of the most notable, dangerous, yet solitary point on the Rio Pecos, no less than the old ford of the Spaniards—Horsehead Crossing.