The End of the Trail

by Brett Halliday

  Pat grinned but muttered, “The danged fool. Shootin’ at a four-point buck with his twenty-two. What’d he want to do that for?”

  “I reckon it’s my fault,” Ezra confessed. “I was tellin’ him las’ night ’bout one time I killed a black bear with a twenty-two. I told him how all yuh had tuh do was hit a deer or bear in the right place tuh bring him down same as with a big rifle.”

  “When did you kill a bear that-away?”

  “I reckon I sorta made it up,” Ezra admitted sheepishly. “But a man could do it if he hit him right, you know that.”

  By that time Sam had loped up to join them. The remuda scattered off the road and began eagerly cropping at the long grass of the Flat.

  “Jest like a crazy kid,” Sam laughed. “He was carryin’ his popgun rifle crost his saddle-horn tuh shoot jackrabbits if he saw one, an’ he pulled down on that buck ’fore I could stop him. Hit him too, by golly. Front leg, I reckon. I saw him give a jump an’ go off the ridge limpin’.”

  “Lord knows how far Dock’ll trail him,” Pat groaned with a glance at the sun sinking in the west. “If we waste much time here we won’t reach the TB ranch tonight.”

  “What of it?” asked Sam indifferently. “We could make camp here jest as good as not.”

  “I hate to have him do a fool thing like that,” growled Pat. “Next thing you know he’ll be tryin’ that twenty-two out on a bear or mountain lion.”

  “I’ll ride after him,” offered Ezra, “an’ bring him back.” He swung off the road and went up the arroyo at a gallop.

  Pat said, “We might’s well take it easy,” and dismounted.

  Sam followed suit and they both squatted by the side of the road and rolled cigarettes.

  They had them half-smoked when they heard a horse being ridden toward them furiously. It was Dock. His face was white and frightened.

  “Crazy men have got Ezra,” he reported shakily. “I chased that danged buck down an’ finished him off with my huntin’ knife an’ Ezra rode up an’ was gonna help me skin out a hind quarter for supper tonight an’ all at once these crazy men slipped up an’ jumped us. Ezra fought back an’ I come for you.”

  Pat and Sam were already running for their horses. “What kind of crazy men?” Pat demanded.

  “Part animal, I reckon. Look like it anyhow. They just grunt an’ growl an’ don’t say nothin’. Back this way.”

  Dock was off again at a gallop, followed by his father and Sam. He rode up the arroyo and over a low ridge at a breakneck pace, down into a grove of tall pines beside a small stream.

  He pulled up to let the others come abreast him, pointed ahead and gasped, “Right yonder. See them! Looks like they’ve killed Ezra.”

  Sam and Pat drew their guns as they galloped up on an amazing scene. The carcass of the buck lay beneath a tree, and Ezra lay on his back beside him. Grouped together beyond were three men who regarded them with mild curiosity as they rode up.

  Two of them were heavily bearded, as big as Ezra, dressed in shaggy wolfskin coats that came below their knees, with round, coonskin caps on their heads. They both appeared to be unarmed.

  The third man was as tall as they, but much thinner. He was clean-shaven and bareheaded, with long black hair tied in a knot at the back of his neck. He wore a goatskin jacket and tight breeches of tanned calfskin, and had a cartridge belt slung over his right shoulder and under his left arm. A gun was holstered under his arm but he made no move to reach for it as Pat and Sam rode up with drawn guns.

  The three of them stood their ground without uttering a word as Sam covered them and Pat leaped off to kneel beside Ezra.

  The big man’s one eye was closed, but he was breathing evenly.

  He had a big lump on his forehead, and he stirred as Pat examined it. He opened his eye and tried to sit up, muttering weakly, “How-come that house fell on me?”

  Pat helped him sit up. Ezra’s eye fell on the three men and he started violently. “Comes back tuh me now. They come outta nowhere an’ jumped me when my back was turned an’ I was dressin’ out Dock’s buck. What in hell’s the matter with ’em, Pat? Who are they?”

  Pat said, “I aim to find out.” He got up and faced the three. “Why’d you jump my pardner?”

  None of them answered him. They eyed him with cold hostility and evident disdain. They didn’t seem to be afraid, but neither were they in any mood to press the fight.

  “I reckon I know you now,” Pat muttered disgustedly, holstering his gun. “Yo’re Hey, You, an’ Slim, ain’t you?”

  They all nodded their heads politely as he spoke the names given to them by the baffled riders of the TB who had never been able to get them to state their real names.

  One of the bearded men nodded and pointed to his chest and said solemnly, “Me Hey.”

  The other one said, “Me You.”

  Pat looked at the beardless one and guessed, “You must be Slim.”

  Slim didn’t reply. He folded his arms and regarded Pat coldly.

  “What’s this here crazy stuff all about?” Sam demanded heatedly. “Who are these guys dressed up like cave-men, an’ why’d they jump on Ezra?”

  “They’re the original inhabitants of Sanctuary Flat, near as anybody knows,” Pat told him drily. “I reckon they jumped Ezra ’cause they think all the game hereabouts b’longs to ’em an’ they don’t like the idea of strangers hornin’ in. That right?” he demanded of the strange trio.

  Hey said, “Him kill,” pointing to Ezra. He pronounced the two syllables slowly and awkwardly.

  Ezra was getting to his feet. There was a comical look of dismay on his scarred face. “They’re all three strong as mules. I didn’t have no chance tuh pull my gun.”

  Pat turned his back on the three and said swiftly, running his words together to make it difficult for those behind him to understand, “Le’s try to make friends with ’em. They may be the ones we’re after but we dunno yet.”

  He turned back and pointed to the carcass of the buck, asked slowly and distinctly, “Can we eat?”

  Slim said, “We cook. All eat.” He muttered something to his bearded companions in a guttural voice.

  They nodded and produced long keen-bladed hunting knives from under their coats, fell on the buck and started rapidly skinning him.

  “Where you live?” Pat asked Slim.

  He pointed over his shoulder to the base of the cliffs a short distance away. “You come from mountain?” He looked up toward Timberline Pass.

  “That’s right. Come long way. Tired. Hungry.” Pat rubbed his belly. “Sleepy.”

  Slim smiled and suddenly appeared anxious to please these strangers who had come from the other side of the mountain. He stepped forward and took Pat’s arm in a friendly grip. “You stay. All stay.” He waved to the others who were grouped behind Pat waiting to see what happened.

  Pat said, “Good. We stay.” A strong animal smell came from the man who stood close to him. It offended his nostrils, but Pat stood his ground. He didn’t want to offend these three curious hermits who lived alone and spoke to no one on the Flat. If they were the killers he sought, right now seemed to him the time to find out.

  He told Sam and Dock, “Round up the pack hawses an’ drive ’em over here where he pointed. How about you, Ezra? Feel like walkin’ along with us?”

  “Shore. I feel awright.” Ezra grinned and held out his hand to Slim. “No hard feelin’s, huh?”

  Slim returned his grin but didn’t seem to know what to do about Ezra’s extended hand. He said, “We go,” and then muttered something unintelligible to his two bearded companions who were busy dressing out the buck. They looked up and nodded and went on busily about their task.

  Slim turned and glided away on his moccasined feet, moving as silently as a lynx over the pine needles. Pat and Ezra followed him, leading their horses.

  “Plumb crazy, ain’t they?” Ezra said in a hoarse whisper. “You reckon they’re all human, Pat?”

  Pat quickly told him
what little he had learned about the three men in Denver. “Chances are they’re the ones we’re after,” he warned Ezra. “Only thing is, I can’t quite figure how fellows like them would know about the Burns detective an’ Nate Morris that got killed. An’ nobody ever saw these three have a rifle.”

  “What makes ’em talk so funny?”

  “Out of practice mostly,” Pat explained. “Folks say they have a sort of language all their own for each other.”

  “Shore. We heard it back yonder when he tol’ them others something. I couldn’t understand a word he said.”

  “We got to treat ’em nice,” Pat warned him. “Find out all we can. Don’t blame ’em for jumpin’ on you about that buck. I reckon they sort of think everything in the Flat b’longs to ’em.”

  Slim was a hundred feet ahead of them, gliding along under the trees in a half-trot. He looked back over his shoulder and slowed to wait for them, then turned into a well-worn footpath leading up a small coulee that had a tiny stream trickling down it.

  Choke-cherry bushes lined the coulee thickly, and there was a tangled growth of them at the head of it. As they progressed upward, the heavy smell of decaying meat and rotting bones tainted the still air, and when they were fifty feet from the head of the coulee, the cause of the odor became apparent.

  The side of the trail was lined with the discarded bones and carcasses of animals. There were piles of them on both sides of the path, and green flies rose in swarms as they went by.

  Slim went straight on to the matted tangle of underbrush at the head of the coulee, and suddenly ducked out of sight through a small opening in the tangle that might have gone unnoticed otherwise.

  Pat stopped and parted the bushes to peer through the opening. A huge overhanging rock formed a natural shelter at the base of the limestone cliff beyond. In the semi-darkness, he could see a big cave with a fire in the center of it and with bundles of furs and hides piled around the smokestained walls. The odor from inside the cave was overpowering.

  Ezra stopped and muttered, “I reckon that bang on thuh head did somethin’ to my stomach. Do I hafta go in there, Pat?”

  Pat said, “You’d better go back to the head of the coulee an’ help Sam an’ Dock hobble out the hawses there. Make camp far enough away so’s we can sleep tonight without this stink in our noses. I’ll try to get them to eat supper with us, ’stead of the other way around.” He took a last deep breath of fresh air and stooped to go through the opening in the brush to the cave where Slim awaited him.

  There was a queer expression on Pat’s face when he came hurrying down the path by himself half an hour later. He looked like a man who’d been conversing with ghosts, or who’d just awakened from a nightmare.

  He found the other three making camp on the grassy flat beyond the coulee, and before he could say anything, Dock ran toward him crying excitedly, “Guess what we saw, Dad. I bet you can’t guess what Sam an’ me found.”

  Pat shook his head with that dazed look still on his face. “I reckon I can’t.”

  “It’s a stage-coach, Dad. That’s what. A reg’lar old stage-coach, Sam says. Turned over back yonder near the road an’ it’s been there for years an’ years an’ years. Sam says he bets it’s the last one that made the trip out of Fairplay thirty years ago. The one that was s’posed to be caught in the snowslide. But Sam thinks …”

  “Sam’s right,” Pat said gruffly. He walked on up to the others, slamming one fist into the palm of his hand. “That stage-coach is the answer to this whole thing. I found the craziest kind of stuff back yonder in the cave. An old hair trunk full of women’s clothes like my mother usta wear. A lady’s parasol, all rotted and rusted.” He paused to catch his breath.

  “There was only one passenger in that last stage,” Sam reminded him hoarsely. “A lady with a baby.”

  “That’s right. But you remember they said she was going to have another baby right soon. That coach must of wrecked right here … there was a bad blizzard, you know, an’ that other baby must of been twins.” Pat grinned crookedly, shaking his head in incredulous bewilderment. “I reckon nobody’ll ever know the whole of it. How that lady found the cave with her baby an’ all. And how she brought ’em through. Something must of happened to her later. But the three children didn’t die. Nobody’ll ever know how come. I don’t reckon they know. I got Slim to talk some back in the cave. Seems like he don’t know nothing except the three of ’em livin’ here in that cave.”

  “An’ that’s why they don’t talk much,” Ezra put in. “When they was little, they must of made up a language of their own. Well, I’ll be dog-blasted if I ever heerd thuh like.”

  “I got Slim to say they’d come down here to eat with us,” Pat told them. “’Stead of us goin’ up to that cave. Don’t push ’em none with questions. I reckon they like this way of livin’ and aim to keep right on with it.”

  15

  It was near-daylight when Pat Stevens was awakened by a hand on his shoulder. He lunged erect and reached for his gun under the folded sheepskin coat he was using for a pillow, but Ezra’s voice close to his ear reassured him, “It’s me, Pat. Take it easy.”

  “What the hell you wakin’ me for?” Pat growled with a glance up at the bright stars overhead. “Still an hour till day.”

  “Two riders headin’ this way,” Ezra told him quietly. “Comin’ at a fast lope from thuh south.”

  Pat sank back and pulled the blankets over his shoulders and listened intently. He could hear nothing. “How far away?”

  “’Bout a mile.” Ezra spoke with complete certitude. They had their bedrolls laid out on the flat near the head of the arroyo, a short distance off the old stage road. A short distance away Pat could see the sleeping outlines of Sam and Dock, and in the stillness he heard Sam snoring easily.

  “Somebody ridin’ up the old road from the railroad station or from the TB ranch,” he guessed. “They’ll pass without even knowin’ we’re here.”

  “Mebby,” Ezra agreed pessimistically. “Less’n they’re ridin’ this way ’cause of us.”

  “How could anybody know we’re here? Or if they do know, who would care? Far as anybody knows we’re just riding out a new Pony Express route.”

  Ezra didn’t say anything. He lay flat on his side and pressed his ear to the ground. Pat wriggled to the side to get his head off the coat and do likewise. Still, he could hear nothing.

  “They’ve stopped ’bout a half a mile away,” Ezra reported after a moment. “Gettin’ off their hawses. By Gawd, Pat, they’re leavin’ the hawses an’ startin’ on afoot.”

  Pat sat up suddenly. He was fully dressed except for his boots and coat. He reached down for his boots and muttered to Ezra, “Better wake up the others. Tell ’em to get their boots on quick.”

  Ezra moved away from him to awaken Sam and the sleeping boy. Pat was beside the other two bedrolls a moment later. “No use takin’ any chances,” he told the three grimly. “Whoever them fellows are slippin’ up on foot, they sure ain’t a delegation to welcome us to Sanctuary Flat with handshakes an’ band music.

  “We’ll leave our bedrolls right here an’ scatter,” he went on swiftly. “Take Dock with you over to that little ridge, Ezra. Sam an’ me’ll spread out t’other way. If they are after us, they’ll see our bedrolls spread out an’ think we’re still sleepin’ in ’em. You an’ Dock stay back an’ hold yore fire, Ezra. Sam an’ me’ll start proceedin’s.”

  The others had their boots and coats on now. Pat moved away silently to the right with Sam right behind him, while Ezra led Dock off in the other direction to get behind a small ridge out of range of flying lead.

  Pat stopped a hundred feet from the deserted camp. He lay flat on his belly, and Sam dropped to the ground beside him. They both put their ears down and listened, and Pat muttered, “Seems like I hear ’em all right. Comin’ this way on foot like Ezra said. Headin’ right straight for our camp.”

  “How-come anybody knows we’re camped here?” Sam protested
. “Even if they knowed we made a fast ride over the Divide without stoppin’ to sleep. How do they know we’re camped here?”

  Pat said, “We’ll ask ’em presently. Keep quiet now, they’re gettin’ close. Have yore gun ready an’ start shootin’ when I do. But shoot to cripple ’em, Sam. We won’t get any answers from dead men. We got to keep ’em alive so’s they’ll talk.”

  Both men drew their guns and lay on their bellies waiting. The early morning silence was intense. It was that brief hour before dawn when the whole world seems to slumber.

  Then the silence was broken by small scuffing sounds from the south. The grating of a bit of frozen ground beneath a man’s heel and the faint crackle of dead grass beneath the weight of a man’s body.

  Two figures loomed up suddenly and distinctly in the faint starlight less than a hundred yards away. They moved forward stealthily, seemingly directed by some inhuman instinct toward the dead campfire with the four empty bedrolls ranged about it.

  Pat had his .45 cocked, and he lay full-length with the butt of it resting solidly on the frozen ground in front of him, his finger firm on the trigger. There was enough light from the bright stars overhead to see his gunsights and train the muzzle steadily on the slowly advancing figures.

  Beside him, Sam maintained the same position of tense readiness to open fire. They had fought together so often in the past that there was complete wordless understanding between them that each would concentrate on the enemy on his own side.

  The two figures halted fifty feet from the empty bedrolls. Starlight glittered on the barrel of a rifle in the hands of the one nearest Pat.

  They must have whispered together for a moment, though not a sound reached the ears of the listening men.

  Then they separated, swinging in two diverging arcs to take them to either side of the deserted camp.

  Pat kept a steady bead on the rifleman, swinging the muzzle of his six-gun slowly and evenly, putting an even pressure on the trigger so there would be no jerk when the important moment arrived.