by Lauran Paine
Boots was about to say more but Perc cut him off hard. “Where is this arroyo and what were they doing out there?”
“How the hell do I know what they were doing out there? By the time I got the cobwebs cleared out of my skull, they were riding off.”
“In what direction?”
“Northward.”
“Did you go look down in the arroyo?”
“Yes. They’d cooked their morning chow down there.”
Perc eyed the wrangler’s twisted, wrathful countenance. “Did Johnny tell you boys yesterday to report any strangers you met on the range?” he asked.
Old Boots sharply nodded. “He did. And I just now reported ’em, too. Now take me up behind your saddle and let’s get back to the ranch.”
Perc gazed off across the golden distance northward. He had no intention of wasting several hours taking Boots back to Snowshoe. It was a long walk, perhaps not less than five miles, but Boots would make it all right. He’d turn the air blue every inch of the way, but he’d make it.
Perc turned, got astride, hooked his horse into a lope, and sped away. Behind him Boots howled like a wounded eagle and shook his fists.
Chapter Thirteen
It was comparatively easy to backtrack the Snowshoe cocinero. He had a crabbed, little, hitch-a-long walk nothing else that walked or crawled could have successfully emulated. But when Perc came to that arroyo where Boots had been bucked off those tracks ended. He found the exact spot where the men had stood upon the edge of the arroyo as well as the place where Boots’s Snowshoe horse had bucked him off.
Down in the arroyo was more sign than Boots had mentioned. Two men had tied their horses down there in the grass, had rolled out their bedrolls, and slept there. Evidently the two were Ringo and Howard, and if this were so, then they were now riding Ab Fuller’s blazed-faced bay and his chestnut.
He’d originally anticipated that those two might have come up this way after stealing the horses, but what puzzled him as he went back and got astride was where Sam Logan and John Reed were. There was one possibility. Ringo and Howard meant to meet Logan and Reed, but not until after they were better mounted than when they’d arrived in the territory.
That made sense, Perc thought, reining off northwestward toward the distant hills following freshly shod horse tracks, it made sense for the basic reason that the prime element of any law of self-preservation west of the Missouri River was—always keep a fast, fresh horse under you. Life insurance was a good horse. There was no other kind of life insurance.
He rode for a solid hour with the sun striking hard down across his side and back, got well up into Rainbow’s range, and finally halted to blow his horse in the pungent shade of a juniper tree. He made a smoke and surveyed the onward country. Those tracks he’d been following never deviated, never slackened. It was as though Ringo and Howard knew exactly where they were going. He speculated that they probably did, just because a band of renegades did not normally operate in a specific district meant nothing. In fact, clever and experienced outlaws usually held their meetings in places where people neither expected to see them, nor recognized them when they did see them. But Perc couldn’t recall ever hearing anyone comment even in the most casual way about strangers being in the foothills of Rainbow range.
He killed his smoke and pushed on, struck the first slight rises in the land, and lost the tracks where a little narrow clear-water creek ran at the base of a swale. He puzzled over this. Not so much because the horsemen had obviously taken to the creek to hide their tracks, but that they’d bother doing this at all because, with the long start they’d had on him, they wouldn’t have seen him following—unless, of course, they’d sat somewhere for a while, watching.
That, he decided, was entirely possible. Men like Jim Howard and Charley Ringo stayed alive only because they could out-wolf a lobo and out-Indian a bronco buck. He turned, let his horse pace along the northward flow of the creek, and watched the round-about countryside because this was ideal ambush country.
They’d gone north, he was confident of that. They’d been holding steadily to a northward course ever since he’d picked up their trail at the arroyo. The sun got hotter, the land drier except along his little gravelly creek, and up ahead were the middle-distance higher thrusts of the Ballester Mountains that weren’t actually mountains, just heavy hills, but with nothing higher to compare them with for a good many miles they were called mountains.
He spotted two cowboys loping easily along, heading southeastward in the general direction of Rainbow’s home place, but he sat still in the curve of a slope until they were past. He wouldn’t have taken them along, and if he hadn’t done that, and they’d gone home, the whole Rainbow outfit would have come boiling out to see just what a lawman evidently on the hot trail was doing on their foothill range.
Later, rounding a curving hillside where a number of trees grew spottily, shielding him with their dense shade, he saw something else. It was a loose horse wearing both a saddle and a hackamore. Boots’s colt.
He halted, sat for a long time watching as the colt grazed along as unconcernedly as though being this far north for a Snowshoe animal was the most natural thing under the sun. It wasn’t. Snowshoe animals, whether they were cattle or horses, were rarely allowed to trespass on Rainbow grass. This, of course, worked both ways, that was how neighboring cattlemen in open-range country maintained their friendships.
The colt had evidently been either led this far or driven up here, and since Perc had been following only two side-by-side sets of shod horse marks, the colt hadn’t been led.
The reasoning behind bringing Boots’s colt this far was elementary enough. If the colt didn’t amble toward home where his rider could perhaps catch him, no one down at Snowshoe—or anywhere else for that matter—would know a thing about two strangers in the land until all possibility of running them down was long past.
Perc dismounted, stepped over beside a tree, and leaned there. His horse paid no attention at all to the distant colt but dropped its head and began to browse.
This foothill country had never been used for anything but spring and early summer grazing. The earth was very shallow, full of gravel, and it dried out quickly after the heat came because four inches down was a layer of solid hardpan dynamite couldn’t crack. For this reason no one used the foothills after summer came. In fact, since cattle didn’t come up this far after full summer arrived, neither did any Rainbow cowboys. It was an ideal place for outlaws to rendezvous and Perc was satisfied that a rendezvous was somewhere in progress around here, or, if not right then in progress, was surely supposed to commence as soon as all the converging outlaws got in here.
Another factor inclining him toward his present conviction was the fact that neither Reed nor Logan had been able to get back to town, for a full day after initially riding out. They had obviously been at least this far away, and conceivably even farther, because so far, as near as Perc could make out, there was nothing to indicate the outlaws were congregating close by.
He started to turn, to reach back for the dragging reins of his horse, when a slow, steady movement snagged his attention upcountry about a mile where heat waves danced and got smoky. He straightened up and waited, watching that distant spot.
It was a rider, a cowboy, coming down through the twisting bends of those upcountry swales and slopes. He was riding a raw-boned bay horse and neither man nor animal appeared the least concerned with arriving any particular place at any particular time. They shuffled along through the midday heat like both were mechanically obeying some strong instinct.
Perc stepped back deeper into the shade of several bunched-up black oaks and caught his horse, tugged the beast closer, and kept a hand lightly atop the animal’s nostrils to prevent a sound from breaking the heavy, hot stillness.
When the oncoming rider spotted the Snowshoe colt out there grazing, he stopped very abruptly and sat f
or a long time like stone. Perc knew exactly what the man was doing. He hadn’t expected to see that loose horse out there and was now making a very meticulous examination of the round-about land. Perc did not fear detection, he was too securely safe in his gloomy shade, but it struck him that this rider, whoever he was, did not act like a Rainbow man would have acted. He was acting too wary, too cautious, to be someone with a legitimate reason for being where he was.
It crossed Perc’s mind that this might be one of the rendezvousing outlaws. But if it was, the stranger obviously hadn’t met those other two—the ones who had brought Boots’s horse this far north—or else he’d have expected to see the colt.
Finally, evidently satisfied no one was around, the stranger eased out, heading closer to the Snowshoe colt. Not until he passed from the yonder swale out into the full bright sunlight did Perc notice that the shuffling-footed bay horse he was riding wasn’t just poking along, he was ridden-down and tucked-up, and that, at least, explained most of the stranger’s quick, hard interest in the Snowshoe colt. He needed a replacement for the beast he was riding.
Perc watched the cowboy take down his rope, shake out a good loop, and hook it casually over his right shoulder as his horse walked steadily down toward the colt.
For some time, although he couldn’t have failed to be aware of the oncoming rider, the colt went on grazing. But when he thought the rider was close enough, he raised his head and stared, both little ears up, his tail arched for a quick whirl and a swift run. He made a common mistake; he waited too long and underestimated the ability of the man, as well as the sixty-foot length of the man’s lariat.
When the colt set back to whirl, the man was ready, for this is exactly what he’d been intently watching for. The minute the colt snorted, the man hooked his big bay hard, lunged ahead, made two big rising whirls with his lariat, and released it. The colt was still reversing when that big loop came high overhead and dropped with perfect precision. The colt was caught.
He fought. He plunged and bowed his head. He bawled and struck and bucked, but the cowboy had already taken his overlapping dallies. It was a losing fight. The big bay threw his weight backward and low, keeping his nose straight down the singing rope. Nothing that colt could have done would have saved him; he was caught and eventually he decided since this was emphatically so, there was little point in continuing the battle. That was when the man laughed. Perc heard it and almost smiled for the man; it was always a pleasant triumph to make a good throw and a better catch.
The man piled off and started down the rope hand over hand, but it wasn’t necessary to be so cautious. Boots’s colt was green-broken but he was broken, knew men, knew when it was useless to fight, and stood there, blowing, rolling his eyes a little, and softly snorting, doing all the customary things of a green-broke three-year-old, but only doing them because they were expected of him; he no more feared that oncoming man than he feared the sun or the moon.
But the man was cautious. He didn’t know the colt, had reason to be careful and wary since the colt was wearing a hackamore, symbol of a green horse, and took his time. He knew what he was doing, Perc could see that easily enough. He could also see something else. Once that cowboy got astraddle, that colt, if he decided to try and pitch, was going to have a hard time unloading the stranger.
But the man talked his way on up and loosened his loop, freed the colt, tested the cinch of Boots’s saddle, checked the colt, and swung up with all the sure grace and confidence of an old rough-string rider. The colt knew instinctively, as most green colts do, that he’d met his master. He made no attempt to buck or even drop his head. The man reined him out right and left, figure-eighted him, and swung him over by the bay. There, he dismounted, removed Boots’s rig, and re-saddled the colt with his own outfit. After setting his tucked-up bay loose and waving him off, the stranger got back astride the colt and turned back the way he’d come.
Perc’s understanding stare hardened a little at that. Evidently the stranger had been coming downcountry for the express reason of locating a fresh horse. Now he had one, there would be no point in continuing his search. As the stranger headed back into the onward hills, Perc turned also to get astride. He had good, fresh tracks to follow. He was confident they would lead him to wherever that secret meeting was to be held. As he waited for the stranger to get far enough ahead so that it might be safe for Perc also to cross that stretch of open country, he reflected a little grimly that now all the outlaws were freshly mounted.
He got astride and sat a while without moving, speculating on the distant stranger and turning grimmer with each moment that passed. Since that man hadn’t been either Charley Ringo or Jim Howard, and since just as obviously he hadn’t been either Sam Logan or John Reed, he was the surviving member of that other pair—Frank Rawlings and the man who had killed Rawlings with a bullet in the back!
He ultimately drifted on down out of the shadows, struck the hotly lit open country, and walked his horse steadily out toward where the tucked-up bay was grazing. The bay saw him and raised his head, but he was neither a colt nor a frisky horse and stood watching with his head only a foot off the ground. Perc did not ride close; he wanted the bay to stand perfectly still until he was parallel with him, which the older horse obligingly did. Perc saw what he was seeking—a Cross-Quarter-Circle brand on the bay’s left shoulder.
He passed on by and picked up the colt tracks. Whoever owned that Cross-Quarter-Circle outfit must be mad enough by now to chew cannon balls and spit bullets. All these converging Arizona bad men had raided his remuda for their mounts.
The colt’s tracks were easy to follow because they were so fresh that dust was still settling around them. But otherwise it might not have been so simple because the colt was unshod and this was a country where all loose horses were unshod, with footprints that looked identical.
He got across into the yonder swale where the other man had disappeared, left his horse tied in some chaparral, climbed a low hill, and looked around from the top out. The rider was a mile farther along, riding toward a big bosque of cottonwood trees where, evidently, there was a spring or a water hole. The colt was behaving perfectly. He returned to his horse, got astride, and pushed onward. It was a little beyond high noon now, the heat was nearing its zenith, gelatin layers of sun smash danced ahead, the sky was a very faded, brassy blue, and what little shade lay along his route was confined around the base of trees and brush clumps.
There was one consolation to enduring this fierce heat. No one else, he thought, would be voluntarily riding out in it, so at least until he got closer to that bosque of cottonwoods he had little to worry about.
He began to speculate that John Reed and Sam Logan did not actually know where this rendezvous site was, otherwise by now he’d have seen them or would have at least cut their tracks. That puzzled him because it didn’t fit in with his earlier notion that they were hand-in-glove with the outlaws. It also gave him fresh reason to hope he’d been wrong about them. If they were part of this outlaw crew, they’d surely know where the meeting was to take place.
Chapter Fourteen
He was plodding through a bare stretch of walled-in, heat-ridden smokiness when the unmistakable clop-clop-clop of a shod horse sounded ahead and off to his right where a small intersecting arroyo debouched upon the higher ground where he was. Each time one of those shod hoofs struck stone, the ringing sound was unmistakable. He looked frantically for a hiding place. There was none. He was completely exposed. Not a bush or a tree grew anywhere around. He thought this might be the outlaw riding that Snowshoe colt coming back for some reason, whisked out his carbine, stepped down, swung his horse across his own body, and laid the Winchester across his saddle seat.Sweat ran into his eyes, making them sting. His horse raised its head in curiosity and gazed over to where that little arroyo ended. It was a long, tense wait, then a loose horse ambled out of the arroyo, saw Perc’s horse, and stopped to stare.
There were old saddle marks on that beast, and although it now seemed to have a comfortable gait, there were all the signs of much earlier hard riding about it. It bore that identical Cross-Quarter-Circle brand on the left shoulder and at one time had been a powerful, durable animal. Now though, like the bay back there and also like the pair of run-out horses back at Ab’s barn in town, it was making a slow and painful recovery from much hard use and abuse.
Perc straightened up, stared a moment, pushed his saddle gun back into its boot, and stepped up over his own animal. He thought he knew whose horse that had been—Frank Rawlings’s. He eased out and rode on up closer, did not slow as he went past but studied the horse minutely so he’d be able to remember it, then lost it when his mount took him on around into the next bisecting break in the onward trail.
A little way farther along his horse pricked up its ears. Even Perc caught the faint lift of coolness in the otherwise hot and arid atmosphere. There was water up ahead. They were nearing the cottonwoods and the water hole that usually was close by where such thirsty old trees grew.
But he tied his horse and scouted the onward trees afoot. Rawlings’s killer had been heading for them, too. No one was around up there when Perc got far enough ahead to see the trees. The spot was as deserted and serene as though no one had ever been there. He went back for his horse. Farther back, that Cross-Quarter-Circle animal came ambling along as though also thirsty and bound for the spring, or else curious about Perc and wishing to have company.