the Rider Of Ruby Hills (1986)

by L'amour, Louis

  He turned the buckskin then and rode back over the trail. He took his time, and it was the middle of the afternoon before he reached the ledge where he could look down into the awful haze that hung over the Smoky Desert. Once, in his first trip up over this route, it had been clearer below, and he had thought he saw a ruined wagon far below.

  Kilkenny found the place where he had stood that other day, for long since he had marked the spot with a cairn of stones. Then slowly and with great pains he began to seek. Time and again he was turned back by sheer drops of hundreds of feet, and nowhere could he find even the suggestion of a trail.

  Four hours later, with long fingers of darkness reaching out from the tall pines, he mounted the buckskin and started down toward the cup. Jackson Hight could be correct. Possibly he was mistaken and the Indians were wrong, and there was no trail down to the valley below and across that wasteland. In his long search he had found nothing.

  Parson met him as he rode through the notch. Ma Hatfield had come to the door and was shading her eyes toward him.

  "They got through to the trail,' Kilkenny said. "Maybe they'll make it."

  Sally was working over the fireplace when he walked inside. Young Bartram was sitting close by, watching her. Kilkenny glanced at them and smiled grimly. Sally caught his eye and flushed painfully, so he walked outside again and sat down against the house.

  Quince had gone after deer into the high meadows, and Saul was on guard. Runyon was sleeping on the grass under the trees, and Jesse Hatfield was up on the cliffs somewhere. Kilkenny sat for a long time against the house, and then he took his blankets over to the grass, rolled up, and went to sleep.

  Shortly after daybreak he roped a black horse from his string, saddled up, and with a couple of sandwiches, headed back toward the Smoky Desert. There must be a route. There had to be one.

  When he reached the rim of the cliff again, he dismounted and studied the terrain thoughtfully. He stood on a wide ledge that thrust itself out into space. The desert below was partially obscured, as always, by clouds of dust or smoke, yet the rim itself was visible for some distance.

  Actually, studying the rim, he could see that it bore less resemblance to the crater he had previously imagined than to a great sink. In fact, it looked as though some internal upheaval had caused the earth to subside at this point, breaking off the rock of the ledge and sinking the plateau several hundred feet.

  For the most part the cliffs below the rim were jagged but almost sheer, yet at places the rim had caved away into steep rock slides that led, or seemed to lead, to the bottom. This great rift in the plateau led for miles, causing the trail to Blazer to swing in a wide semicircle to get around it. Actually, as best he could figure, Blazer was almost straight across from the ledge where he now stood.

  Again he began to work with painstaking care along the rim. The Indians had said it could be crossed, that there was a way down, and Lance Kilkenny had lived in the West long enough to know that what the Indians said was usually right.

  It was almost noon before he found the path. It was scarcely three feet wide, so he left his horse standing under the cedars and started walking. The path dipped through some gigantic slabs of ragged-edged rock and then ran out to the very edge of the cliff itself. When it seemed he was about to step right off into space, the path turned sharply to the right and ran along the face of the cliff.

  He hesitated, taking off his hat and mopping his brow. The path led right along the face of the cliff, and at times it seemed almost broken away, but then it continued on. One thing he knew-this was useless for his purpose, for no man could take a horse, not even such a surefooted mountain horse as the buckskin, along this path. Yet he walked on.

  The end was abrupt. He started to work his way around a thread of path that clung to the precipice, but when he could see around the corner, he saw the trail had ended. An hour of walking had brought him to a dead end.

  Clinging to the rock, he looked slowly around. Then his eyes riveted. There, over three hundred feet below, on what even at this distance was obviously a trail, he could see a wagon wheel!

  Leaning out with a precarious handhold on a root, he could distinguish the half-buried wagon from which the wheel had been broken. Of the rest of the trail, he could see nothing. It vanished from sight under the bulge of the cliff. He drew back, sweating.

  The trail was there. The wagon was there. Obviously, someone, at some time, had taken a wagon or wagons over that trail. But where was the beginning? Had the shelf upon which it ran broken off and ruined the trail for use?

  Taking a point of gray rock for a landmark he retraced his steps along the path. By the time he reached the buckskin again his feet hurt from walking over the rough rock in his riding boots, and he was tired, dead tired. He had walked about six miles, and that was an impossible distance to a horseman.

  Chapter IX

  On Short Rations

  When he rode into the cup that night, Parson looked up from the rifle that he was cleaning. "Howdy, son! You look done up!"

  Kilkenny nodded and stopped beside the older man. He was tired, and his shirt stuck to his back with sweat. For the first time he wondered if they would win. For the first time, he doubted. Without food they were helpless. They could neither escape nor resist. He doubted now if Hale would ever let them go, if he would ever give them any chance of escape.

  They ate short rations that night. He knew there was still a good deal of food, yet fourteen men, if he included those who were gone, and six women had to eat there. And there were nine children. Yet there was no word of complaint, and only on the faces of those women who had men with the food wagon could he distinguish the thin gray lines of worry.

  "Any sign from Hale?" he asked O'Hara.

  The Irishman shook his head. "Not any. He's got men out in the rocks. They ain't tryin' to shoot nobody. Just a-watchin'. But they're there."

  "I don't think he'll try anything now until after the celebration," Bartram said. "He's plan- nin' on makin' a lot of friends with that celebration. It means a lot to him, anyway."

  Jesse Hatfield pushed back his torn felt hat. "I took me a ride today," he said. "Done slipped out through the brush. I got clean to Cedar without bein' seen. I edged up close to town, an' I could see a lot of workin' around.

  "They got 'em a ring set up out in front of the livery stable near the horse corral. Ropes an' everythin'. Lots of talk around, an' the big wonder is who's goin' to fight Tombull Turner."

  Kilkenny listened absently, not caring. His thoughts were back on that ragged rim, working along each notch and crevice, wondering where that road reached the top of the plateau.

  "This here Dan Cooper was there, an' he done some talkin'. He looked powerful wise, an' he says Turner ain't been brought here by accident. He's been brought to whip one man- Kilkenny!"

  "Did he say 'Kilkenny'?" Kilkenny looked around to ask. "Do they know who I am?"

  "He said Trent," Jesse drawled. "I don't reckon they know."

  Tombull Turner to beat him? Kilkenny remembered the bullet head, the knotted cauliflower ears, the flat nose and hard, battered face of the big bare-knuckle fighter. Tombull was a fighter. He was more; he was a brute. He was an American who had fought much in England, and against the best on both continents. He had even met Joe Goss and Paddy Ryan. While he, Kilkenny, was no prizefighter.

  An idle rumor. It could be no more, for he was not in Cedar Bluff, nor was he likely to be. Studying the faces of the men around him, he could see what was on their minds. Despite their avoidance of the subject, he knew they were all thinking of the wagon on the road to Blazer.

  The food was necessary, but four men were out there, four men they all knew, men who had shared their work, their trails, and even the long trip west from their lands in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Missouri. Lije Hatfield was gone, and knowing the family, Kilkenny knew that if he were killed no Hatfield would stop until all the Hales were dead or the Hatfields wiped out.

  Knowing the
route, he could picture the wagon rolling slowly along over the rocky road, horsemen to the front and rear, watching, hoping, fearing. They, too, if still alive and free, would have their worries. They would know that back here men and women were getting close to the end of their food supply, that those men and women were depending on them.

  On the morning of the third day, Kilkenny mounted again and started for the rim. He saw Parson Hatfield staring after him, but the old man said nothing.

  This time Kilkenny had a plan. He was going back where he had been the day before, and by some means, he was going down the face of the cliff to the wagon. Then he would backtrack. If there was no trail back, he would have to come up the cliff. Well, that was a bridge to be crossed later. Somewhere in that jumble of broken cliffs, great slabs of jagged rock, and towering shoulders of stone, there must be a trail down which that wagon had gone.

  It was almost seven o'clock in the morning before he found himself, two ropes in his hands, at the tapering edge of the trail along the face of the cliff.

  Lying flat, he peered over the edge. The rock on which he lay was a bulge that thrust out over the face of the cliff, and if he dropped over here he must use the rope purely as a safety precaution and work down with his hands. There were cracks and knobs that could be used. The depth below was sickening, but partially obscured by the strange thickness of the air.

  A gnarled cedar grew from the face of the rock, and he tested it for strength. The thing seemed as immovable as the rocks themselves. Making his first rope fast to the cedar, Kilkenny knotted the other end in a bowline around himself. Then he turned himself around and backed over the edge, feeling with his feet for a toehold.

  For a time, he knew, he would be almost upside down like a fly on a ceiling. Unless he could find handholds where he could get a good grip and if necessary, hang by them, there was small chance of making it. But there were, he had noticed, a number of roots, probably of rock cedar, thrusting out through the rock below.

  Forcing himself to think of nothing but the task at hand, he lowered himself over the edge, and when he got the merest toehold, he swung one hand down and felt around until he could grasp one of the roots. Then he let go with his left hand and let himself down until he was half upside down, clinging by a precarious toehold and his grip on the root.

  Finding another hold for his left hand, he took a firm grasp and then pulled out his left toe and felt downward. He found a crack, tested it with his toe, and then set the foot solidly. Carefully, he released a handhold and lowered his hand to another root, lower down. Then, sweating profusely, he lowered his weight to the lowest foot.

  He resolutely kept his thoughts away from the awful depths below. He had a chance, but a very slim one. Slowly and with great care, he shifted himself down the bulging overhang. Every time he moved a foot or hand his life seemed to end. He was, he knew, wringing with perspiration, his breath was coming painfully, and he swung himself precariously toward the sheer cliff below. Even that great height of straight up and down cliff seemed a haven to this bulge of the overhang.

  Clinging to a huge root and pressing himself as tightly to the face as he could, he turned his head right and then left, searching the face of the bulge. There were handholds enough here. The roots of the cedars that had grown on the ledge above thrust through the bulge. Yet that very fact seemed to indicate that at some time in the past huge chunks of rock had given way, leaving these roots exposed. It had happened once, and it could happen again.

  Far out in the blue sky a buzzard whirled in great, slow circles. His fingers ached with gripping, and he lowered himself away from the face of the cliff and looked down between his legs. A notch showed in the rock, and he worked his toe loose and then lowered it with care until he could test the notch. He tried it.

  Solid. Slowly, carefully, he began to settle weight on the ball of his foot. There was a sudden sag beneath his foot and then a rattle of stones, and the notch gave way under him, forcing him to grip hard with his hands to catch the additional weight.

  His right foot hung free. Carefully, he began to feel with his toe for another foothold. He found it, tried, and rested his weight again, and the stone took it. Slowly, he shifted hands again and then lowered himself down a little more.

  Glancing down again, he found himself looking at a stretch of rock at least fifteen feet across that was absolutely smooth. No single crack or crevice showed, no projection of stone, no root. His muscles desperate with weariness, he stared, unbelieving-to come this far and fail.

  Forcing himself to think, he studied the face of the cliff. There was, some twenty feet below and almost that far to the left, a gnarled and twisted rock cedar growing out of the mountainside. It was too far to the left, and there was no way of reaching it. Yet, as he stared, he could see that a crevice, deep enough for a good foothold, ran off at an angle from the cedar. If he could reach it--

  But how?

  There was a way. It hit him almost at once. If he released his grip on the roots, he would instantly swing free. As he had worked himself far to the right of the cedar to which his lariat was tied, his release would swing him far out from the cliff, and then as he swung back, for an instant he would be above the clump of cedar. On each succeeding swing he would fall shorter and shorter, until finally he was suspended in midair, hanging like a great pendulum from the cedar above.

  Then all his efforts would be vain, for he would have to catch the rope over his head and go up it, hand over hand to the cedar above, and he would have failed. On the other hand, if he could release himself above the cedar, he would fall into it, and unless some sharp branch injured him, the chances were the limbs would cushion his fall.

  He had his knife, and it was razor sharp. Even as these thoughts flitted through his mind, he was drawing the knife. Luckily, before leaving his horse he had tied a rawhide thong over each sixshooter, so his guns were secure. Yet the rope was rawhide and tough. Could he slash through at one blow?

  The answer to that was simple. He had to. If he swung out over the void below on half or less of the strength of the lariat, there was small chance it would not break at the extreme end of the swing, and he would go shooting out over the deadly waste of the Smoky Desert to fall, and fall-over and over into that murky cloud that obscured the depths.

  He let go and shoved hard with both feet and hands. His body swept out in a long swing over the breathtaking depths below. Then, hesitating but an instant as the rope tore at his sides, he swept back like a giant pendulum, rushing through the air toward the cliff! It shot toward him, and he raised his arm, and seeing the cedar below and ahead, he cut down with a mighty slash.

  He felt himself come loose and then he was hurled forward at the cedar. He hit it, all doubled into a ball, heard a splintering crash, slipped through, and felt the branches tearing at his clothes like angry fingers. Then he brought up with a jolt and lay, trembling in every limb, clinging to the cedar.

  How long he lay there, he did not know. Finally, he pulled himself together and crawled out of the tree and got his feet on the narrow foothold. He worked his way along until the ledge grew wide enough for him to walk. His breath was coming with more regularity now. He felt gingerly of his arms and body where the rawhide rope had burned him.

  The path, if such it might be called, slanted steeply away from him, ending in some broken slabs. He stopped when he reached them. He was, at last, on the Smoky Desert.

  Chapter X

  Land of Legendary Men

  Lance Kilkenny stood on a dusty desert floor littered with jagged slabs of rock, obviously fallen from the cliff above. There was no grass here, no cedar, nothing growing at all, not even a cactus.

  Above him the dark, basalt cliff lifted toward the sky, towering and ugly. Looking off over the desert he could see only a few hundred yards, and then all became indistinct. The reason was obvious enough. The floor of the desert was dust, fine as flour, and even the lightest breeze lifted it into the air, where it hung for hours on end.
A strong wind would fill the air so full of these particles as to make the air thick as a cloud, and the particles were largely silicate.

  One thing he knew now. Crossing the Smoky Desert, even if there was a trail, would be a frightful job. Unfastening the thongs that had held his guns in place, he walked on slowly. It was still, only a little murmur from the wind among the rocks, and nothing else.

  The cliff lifted on his right, and off to the left stretched the awful expanse of the desert, concealed behind that curtain of dust. He stepped over the dead and bleached bones of an ancient cedar, fallen from above, and rounded a short bend in the cliff.

  As he walked, little puffs of dust lifted from his boot soles, and his mouth grew dry. Once, he stopped and carefully wiped his guns free of dust and then lowered them once more into the holsters.

  Then he saw the white scar of the road, tracks of vehicles filled with fine white dust, and the rough, barely visible marks of what had been a fairly good road, dwindling away into the gray, dusty vagueness that was the desert. He looked up and saw the trail winding steeply up the cliff's face through a narrow draw.

  Turning, he began to climb the trail. Several times he paused to roll boulders from the path. He was already thinking in terms of a wagon and a team. It could be done. That is, it could be done if there was still a way of getting a team onto this trail. That might be the catch. What lay at the end?

  Sweat rolled down his face, making thin rivulets through the white dust. White dust clung to the hairs on the backs of his hands, and once when he stopped to remove his sombrero and wipe the sweat from his brow, he saw his hat was covered with a thin gray coat of it.

  He looked ahead. He could see the road for no more than a hundred yards, but the cliff to his right was now growing more steep, and glancing down, he could see the trail was already far above the valley floor. He walked, making heavy work of it in his riding boots, sweat soaking his shirt under the film of gray dust, and the draw was narrowing.