A moment later he turned his hand up and drew the sleeve back a little, and managed to hold three fingers alone as he did so.
Child, sitting across the fire, appeared half-asleep. Radigan glanced at Gretchen who was watching him, and as she caught his eye she nodded slightly, indicating she understood. He had not expected her to know sign language but it was the sort of thing John Child would be apt to teach a youngster, and which a youngster would want to know.
Suddenly Ross Wall got up and walked to the mouth of the overhang. “This ain’t going to ease up,” he said, “and there’s not enough grub to last out a bad storm.”
He turned to Radigan. “How far is it to the ranch from here?”
“Might be eight miles, almost due south.”
“It’s colder, and we’ve not grub enough to last out the day. We could all die here.”
“That’s right. And you wait much longer and that snow will be so deep you can’t get out. Fact is, you may not make it now.”
“Eight miles ain’t far,” Coker scoffed. “I could walk it on my hands.”
Radigan ignored him and addressed his remarks to Wall. “In places this snow will be drifted up to the lower limbs of the trees, sometimes eight feet deep. Believe me, it doesn’t take long in this country with no wind to sweep much of it clear.”
Not long, he told himself, but still there are places. He was thinking of them now, and knew that if the right break came they would take one of them for the first brief distance, then right into the deep woods and make some snowshoes.
“I’ll go,” Wall said suddenly. “Mine’s the best horse, and I’ve got a chance to get through.”
Coker was staring at Gretchen, a hard satisfaction in his eyes. He would be left in charge. Or he could take charge. After that he would kill Child and Radigan. Radigan could almost see his mind working, and he could tell from the way Wall averted his eyes from them that he was thinking the same thing.
“Something else you boys didn’t know about this country that you’re going to find out mighty fast,” Radigan commented. “Those light cow ponies you use in Texas are no good in heavy snow. It takes a horse with muscle and bone to handle it, the Montana kind of horses.”
“We’ll make out.” Wall gathered his gear, then plunged out into the snow.
When he came back he was leading his horse, and he stood it inside the overhang while he brushed off the snow and put a blanket on, then he saddled up. Radigan watched him critically. Wall did not think of warming the bit, and the horse fought it until Wall finally bridled the horse with the help of Coker.
“You should have warmed that bit,” Radigan told them, and Wall turned angrily.
“You talk too damn’ much!” he flared. “There’s other men handled stock besides you.”
“Some people never learn,” Radigan replied, grinning.
For a moment he thought Wall would strike him. The big foreman took an angry step forward, and Radigan merely looked up at him, smiling. Wall stared at him for a moment, then turned sharply away.
“You know, Ross,” Radigan said, “if we’d worked for the same outfit we’d have gotten along all right.”
Wall said nothing nor did he face around, and Radigan said quietly, “I wonder how you’ll face yourself after this? I wonder how you’ll sleep at night?”
For an instant Wall stopped gathering his gear, standing absolutely still. When Radigan next saw his face it was white, but he did not look at any of them. Merely stepping into the saddle, and then he said, “Coker, you and Gorman stay here. I’ll send some grub back up right away, and some of the boys will break trail for you to come out. You take care of the prisoners.”
“Sure,” Coker was grinning. “I’ll take care of them. Harvey told me just how to take care of them.”
Without a word Ross Wall rode out into the snow. There was a narrow ledge along the wall that he could ride downcanyon for a short distance, and below the canyon there was some flat ground where the snow would not be so deep. Yet he had gone no more than a hundred yards before he knew he was in trouble.
The horse stepped off the ledge and went belly-deep in the snow, then deeper. Floundering desperately, the gelding fought his way down the canyon to the open ground, jumping and plunging. Ross Wall reined in and looked south, scowling at the rough, broken country, much of it heavily forested, and for the first time he was afraid.
It was cold. In the cave he had not realized how cold. It was very still, yet there was already frost on the horse, and he realized anew that Radigan had been right. His horse was light and fast, an excellent cow horse, but lacked the sheer power for bucking heavy drifts. It was bitterly cold, and the snow still fell. A man could die in this country.
He was not going back. He had no desire to face what was to happen in that cave. Thorpe wanted it to happen, and maybe even Angelina Foley wanted it, but he was no killer, no murderer. As for Coker, he would be in no hurry to send men back. Let the man live with himself a little. It would do him good, and there was food enough for another couple of days for two men, if they were careful.
Suddenly, from behind him he heard a shot. It was faint. It was far away, but it was a gunshot. Coker had wasted no time.
Chapter 5
*
COKER SIMPLY TURNED and fired. But he turned too fast and shot too quick, and his bullet went where Radigan had just been.
For Radigan had been completely fooled. He expected Coker to talk because Coker was that sort of man. It was his pattern to play the big man for a few minutes before he killed, but Coker simply spun around and fired, throwing his bullet fast and considering the turn, with amazing accuracy.
Only the fire was sinking and Radigan had dropped to a squatting position to add fuel, and the bullet cut the air right over his head.
Yet as he spun and fired, Radigan threw himself forward and grabbing the gun that Gretchen thrust at him he rolled completely over and fired.
And missed.
It was pointblank range but he was moving and made the same mistake Coker had made by firing too quickly. But his second shot was faster, and it ripped upward into Coker’s throat, ranging upward and outward to emerge just above the gunman’s ear.
Coker had been so sure—and he was eager to make Gretchen suffer for his swollen and burned lips—he had turned and fired and then he was dying on his feet with blood gushing from his mouth and a puzzled expression as if he could not comprehend what had happened.
He had automatically fired a second time and the bullet had smashed into the fire, scattering sparks, but then the gun slid from his fingers and he tried to speak, staring at Radigan with dawning horror in his eyes, realizing in that last awful moment that he was dying.
His knees sagged then and he fell face forward with his feet in the snow at the entrance and his head toward the fire, and Radigan turned with his gun ready and saw Gorman stretched out on the floor with blood trickling from a split scalp where Child had clubbed him with a chunk of firewood.
Gretchen was a sickly pale, and she turned quickly from the dead man at the cave mouth and said, “We’ll need a hot meal.” She paused then and seemed to stiffen herself. “I’ve got to—”
Radigan caught her as she started to faint and she clung to him an instant, fighting it off. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll be all right.”
Child had picked up a Winchester. “D’ you suppose Wall heard those shots?”
“He heard them. But he won’t be back.”
Child walked to the opening and caught Coker by the foot, dragging him out into the snow where he lay face down. Then he walked back and began methodically to sort the gear in the cave and pack for a leave-taking.
Radigan indicated Gorman. “Leave him some grub. We’ll soon be at the cache, and he’s done us no harm.”
Radigan went to Coker’s body and pulled off the cartridge belt and shucked the shells from the loops. The gun Gretchen had tossed him had been his own, and now he retrieved his belt and holstered the gun
after reloading. He found his Winchester, checked the barrel and the loads, and then took his bowie knife and went to the trees to cut some branches.
He cut four of them, then went to another tree for two more. Each of these was about seven feet long and slender, whiplike. Over the fire he warmed them after stripping away the shorter branches that held the needles. When he had warmed them carefully he took one and working with it carefully he bent the whiplike end around and lashed it to its own base in a rough oval.
With strips of rawhide he made a web back and forth across the oval, and John Child began working on a second shoe. When Gretchen had their food ready, they ate in silence, then returned to their work. It was at this point that Gorman came to.
He opened his eyes and stared up at the hanging roof, then sat up abruptly, catching his head in both hands from a sudden throb of pain. Stupidly, he looked around.
His eyes found the body of Coker, then looked quickly around for Wall, who had left when he was half-asleep. Finally they came to rest on Radigan.
“You start anything and you join your friend out there. Sit tight and we’ll leave you grub enough to last a couple of days. There’s fuel enough for weeks, and if you leave here, you’re crazy.”
Gorman nodded to indicate Coker. “I had no use for the man.”
“All right.” Radigan was brusque. “You stay out of this and we’ve no quarrel with you, get into it and you can follow Coker.”
Gorman made no reply, but lay down and turned his face to the wall.
It was afternoon before they got away. Radigan took the lead and headed south at a good clip. All he asked the snowshoes was that they see them through to the food cache on the mesa near the ranch.
He set an easy pace. There are things a man learns about the cold, and the first one is never to work up a sweat, for when a sweating man slows down or stops the sweat freezes inside his clothing, forming a thin coating of ice near the skin. After that, unless one finds shelter quickly, it is only a matter of time.
He had also learned not to dress too heavily, but to wear the garments loose so they form a cushion of warm air next to the body. The Eskimos knew these things long ago, and so did the nothern Indians, and a man can live long in any kind of country if he will use his common sense and learn what he can.
It was very cold but the air was clear. They were above eight thousand feet, and at this low temperature and in the clear air sounds could be heard for miles. But Radigan knew the time had now come to push the fight if ever they were to push it. The cold was their greatest asset for they understood cold and he doubted if any of the Foley-Thorpe outfit did.
Somewhere below them and to the east Ross Wall would be working his way through the deep snow to the ranch, and by this time he would begin to realize some of the things Radigan had told him. That light horse would not be able to carry a heavy man far in this deep snow, and Wall would be lucky if he was not afoot by another hour, or even by now.
In good weather he could have covered that eight to ten miles in a couple of hours, but now he would have to seek out places where the earth had blown clear of snow, and he might be miles out of his way. If he made it by dark he would be lucky. Radigan said as much.
“If he makes it at all, he’ll be lucky,” Child said grimly.
They walked on. The going was slow, but after their muscles warmed up they moved more easily, and Radigan paused often to conserve their strength. He knew the country well and kept to high ridges where the travel was easier, always pointing toward the mesa back of the ranch.
The wind picked up and blew cold, whining among the tall pines like lost banshees, or moaning low among the icy brush and around the strange rock formations. The sky became a flat gray, unbroken expanse that told them nothing, and they came down off the ridge into the lower country, into the thick forest, and the wind began to blow harder.
How far had they come? Five, six miles? The days were short and darkness was not far off, and they had been traveling at least three hours.
“We’re in for trouble, Tom.” John Child was breaking trail and he had stopped abruptly and turned. “She’s picking up to blow.”
“No use to wear ourselves out,” Radigan said. “We’ll find a place to dig in.”
They started on.
The wind was raw against their faces which grew stiff from cold, so numb it was difficult to speak, and the wind prevented hearing.
Suddenly John Child turned into the woods again and he stopped at the base of a huge deadfall. Here some great wind or other cause had uprooted a giant spruce and thrown it down with a mass of earth clinging to the root pattern. The roots and earth stood up in a solid wall seven or eight feet in diameter.
Without words, Radigan and Child moved into the forest and were busy with their knives, building a lean-to with the open face toward the root mass. The lean-to was covered with a thick thatching of spruce boughs, and inside a bed was made thick with other boughs. On the snow close to the root mass Radigan laid several heavy chunks of wood side by side on the snow to make a bed for the fire, then built a fire whose heat could be reflected by the root mass into the lean-to.
“Couldn’t we have gone on?” Gretchen asked. “I mean, it’s only a few miles farther.”
“We’d still be sleeping in the cold, and by then we’d be more tired. When you travel in the cold, never exhaust yourself. Only exhausted people need freeze, believe me. If all travelers in the snow and cold would think of that, few of them would freeze. Just find some shelter or build some and curl up and sleep it out.”
“But if you sleep, won’t you freeze?”
“Not unless you’re already exhausted. If all the heat inside your body is gone, used up in struggling, then you’ll freeze, so just stop in plenty of time. I’ve slept out many a time when it was forty, fifty below.”
The shelter was in a little hollow, and the still-falling snow added to the warmth by covering the spruce boughs with a thick cushion of snow. Wind whipped around the corner of the shelter into the space, so they built an added windbreak of spruce boughs.
They huddled over the fire and drank scalding coffee and chewed on jerked meat. Nobody felt like talking. Outside their shelter the wind whipped snow into the air and by the time they had finished their coffee it was blowing a gale. They had gone into camp none too soon.
*
ANGELINA FOLEY STOOD by the window of Radigan’s ranch house and looked down the trail. She was frightened, and she was cold. But the cold was inside, not outside, for the room was warm and comfortable. The cold inside was the cold of fear, and of a kind of hatred such as she had never dreamed possible of herself.
Harvey Thorpe was at the table behind her, and across from him was Ross Wall. The big foreman had come in only minutes ago, and was sagging over the table, his face drawn with exhaustion. He had been lost most of the night, and his horse was dead—it had collapsed from exhaustion after bucking the deep snow for hours—and it was pure luck that Wall had found a cluster of trees and brush that offered partial shelter where he could build a fire. He had come into the ranch, staggering and falling. How he had lived through the blizzard of the night before he would never know, nor how he had gotten here. Fortunately, he could have been scarcely two miles from the ranch when he found his shelter, but he must have traveled twice the distance from the cave to the ranch to get here.
“He’s dead then.” Gelina heard the satisfaction in Harvey’s voice and for some reason it angered her.
She turned on them. “I’ll believe him dead when I see him dead.”
“Don’t be foolish.” Harvey looked up at her, his pale blue eyes almost white in the reflection from the window. “Coker wanted to kill him, and he had his chance.”
He got to his feet and crossed to the window. “All you have to do, Ross, is ranch—run the cattle and do the best you can. You’ll have four men.”
He looked up.
“And the rest?”
“I’ll take care of them. You don’t
see anything. You don’t know anything.”
Ross turned the idea over in his mind, studying it reluctantly. He needed no blueprints, and he should have guessed, knowing Thorpe as he did, and the crew he had around him.
“It’s the wrong time,” he said patiently. “It won’t work, Harvey.”
Thorpe smiled. He was feeling expansive. He tucked his thumbs in his vest pockets. “Ross, you’ve no imagination. This is one of the most remote ranches in the country, but a ranch where dozens of trails come down from the north, old Indian trails, no longer traveled, trails that can take a man quickly to Denver, Leadville, or a dozen other places.
“I tell you it’s perfect! A quick move into one of those towns, or to a mining camp where they’re shipping gold, then back here by a roundabout route, using the trails we know. I knew when I saw it this was the place, a legitimate ranch with no close neighbors, easy access to the places where gold is, and easy escape.”
“It won’t work,” Ross insisted. “If what Miss Foley says is true, there’s liable to be an investigation, anyway.”
Thorpe shrugged. “Believe me, it’s a fait accompli now, and nobody will be anxious to cause trouble for us. Radigan will have disappeared, and we are quiet, honest ranchers who pay our bills and preserve the peace. We’ll keep ourselves clean around here, you see, and nobody will ever be the wiser.”
“No.”
They both turned at the sound of Angelina’s voice, and Thorpe started to speak, but she interrupted.
“No, Harvey, we won’t do it.”
“You want to go to work in a saloon?” he asked mildly. “Or start a restaurant? That’s all that’s left.”
She was silent. During the days of snow the herd had scattered and drifted, and without doubt many of them were dead, just as Radigan had warned her—he had been so right, and she hated him for it.
She hated him and now she hated Harvey, for now she saw how she had been duped, not that she hadn’t agreed to much that had been done, including the theft of cattle and the arrangements for the killing of the supposed squatter on the ranch they believed belonged to them, but it was obvious now that from the first Harvey had had his own plans and had acquiesced in hers only to forward his own, and he had maneuvered her into a position from which no escape seemed possible.
Novel 1958 - Radigan (v5.0) Page 11