Agnes said dispiritedly, “There’s not much light left, is there?”
“Another half hour or so,” Ace said.
“I really hoped we would find them.”
“So did I, but their lead was too big and we’re running out of time.”
Chance pointed to a mesa that loomed several miles ahead of them. “We ought to be able to make it that far before it’s too dark to go on. Might be a good place to camp. We can pick up the trail again first thing in the morning.”
“It may be too late for my friends by then,” Agnes said.
Gently, Ace said, “We don’t have any choice. If we tried to track them at night and lost the trail, it would just delay things in the morning until we could find it again . . . if we were even able to.”
“You tracked those men who kidnapped Molly,” Agnes objected.
“There was more of a moon that night,” Ace explained. “And honestly, I was really lucky, too.”
Agnes didn’t argue anymore, but her downcast expression spoke volumes.
Chance scraped a thumbnail along his jawline as he stared at the distant mesa and frowned in thought. After a while, he said, “You know, if I could get on top of that mesa and have a look around, I’ll bet I could see for a long way. Miles, in fact.”
“More than likely,” Ace agreed. “But what good would that do us?”
“If those renegades built a fire, I might be able to spot it. That would tell us for sure how far ahead of us they are.”
Ace thought about that for a moment and then nodded. “That’s not a bad idea,” he agreed. “Most of those mesas are rough enough on the sides that they can be climbed. Some even have game trails leading to the top.”
“It’ll be just about dark when we get there. By the time I can climb to the top, I ought to be able to see a fire if the Comanches have one.”
They pushed on, the light turning gold and then orange and then beginning to fade. A darker blue, the hue of oncoming night, stole across the sky from the east. Ace looked in that direction, saw stars seemingly popping into existence here and there. The heat of the day still hung heavy over the land, but at least there was a hint of coolness in the breeze that stirred.
They came up to the base of the mesa and began circling it, searching in the last of the light for a way up. The trail they found was steep but surprisingly wide. A man could lead a horse up it, if he was careful.
“Maybe we should make camp up there ourselves,” Ace suggested when they had dismounted.
“Let me check it out first,” Chance said.
“Be careful. That ledge might not go all the way to the top. It could end without any warning.”
“I’ll make sure of my footing with every step,” Chance promised. He left his rifle on the saddle. He didn’t expect to need it, since he was just having a look-see to the south.
Both of the Jensen brothers were naturally light on their feet and just as a matter of habit moved around without making much noise. As Chance climbed the trail, he kicked a rock loose every now and then and it rattled down behind him, but that was the only sound other than the sighing of the wind. From time to time he put out his left hand and rested it on the rock wall beside him, steadying himself as he climbed.
He was near the top, close to a hundred feet above the ground, when he heard something that made him stop in his tracks and listen intently. He couldn’t be certain, but he thought it was the stamp of a horse’s hoof.
For an instant, Chance believed the noise came from below him, but the more he thought about it, the more he believed that it had originated on top of the mesa. There was only one good explanation for horses being up there.
The renegades had made their camp on the mesa. The Jensen brothers and Agnes not only had caught up, they had almost blundered right into the camp of their enemies.
No matter how intently Chance listened, the sound didn’t come again. A part of his brain tried to tell him he had imagined it, but he knew that wasn’t true. He had to turn around and slip back down to the ground as quietly as possible so he and Ace could figure out what to do next.
The trail appeared to be the only way on or off the mesa. They could bottle up the renegades and keep them from fleeing any farther south, but as long as the Indians had the four young women as their prisoners, they still held the upper hand. They could bluff their way out by threatening to kill the hostages.
Considering their bloodthirsty recent history, they might go ahead and kill the prisoners anyway.
With that bleak thought in his mind, Chance backed away several steps and then turned around to head back down to where he had left Ace and Agnes.
As he turned, from the corner of his eye he saw a dark shape suddenly appear out of the gloom higher on the trail and leap at him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Chance twisted and threw up his left arm as the attacker plunged at him. Acting by instinct alone, Chance struck the other man’s arm and blocked it, and he knew he had just kept the renegade from planting a knife in him.
Figuring the man had been posted to guard the trail to the top of the mesa, Chance expected that any second now his attacker would open his mouth to yell a warning to the others.
Chance’s right hand shot out, groping blindly for the renegade’s throat. His fingers slid across sweat-slick skin and he clutched at it. The man rammed into him and knocked him back a step. The knife drew a fiery line across his shoulder as it slashed through his shirt but barely broke the skin.
Chance got a better grip on the man’s throat and tried to swing him against the rock wall, but he didn’t have his feet planted well enough, and they just staggered back and forth. A part of Chance’s brain warned him that they had to be close to the edge of the trail, with a deadly drop beyond the brink.
Chance’s boots scrabbled on the ground as he fought to maintain his balance. He blocked another thrust of the knife and caught hold of the Indian’s wrist. Then a rock rolled under his foot and he felt himself falling. The renegade stumbled and fell, too.
They hit the trail hard. Gravity made them roll down the slanting surface. Chance went over twice, stopping as the back of his shoulders slammed against the ground for the second time. He sensed that his head was hanging out over a hundred feet of empty air. He writhed and threw the renegade to the side before the man could force him the rest of the way over the edge.
The renegade had hold of Chance’s shirtfront with his left hand and dragged him along as they continued their wild tumble down the trail.
Chance recalled that it turned not far below them, where it followed the curving side of the mesa. If they kept going, both of them might fall off and plummet to their deaths.
Calling on all his strength, Chance timed his move and suddenly shoved downward with the hand clamped around the Indian’s throat, causing the back of the renegade’s head to slam with stunning force against the trail’s rocky surface. The man went limp, but momentum sent the two of them rolling over one more time.
And just as abruptly, there was nothing underneath Chance. The trail was gone.
He let go of the renegade and flailed desperately in front of him with both hands as the man fell away. Chance’s palms slapped the trail and slid for a couple inches before he clawed his fingers and clung to the rough ground for dear life. His weight hit his arms and he gasped at the pain that exploded in his shoulder joints, but for the moment, at least, he had stopped his fall.
The question was how long he could hang on. The toes of his boots pawed at the side of the mesa as he tried to find a foothold.
His right foot caught on something and took a little of the strain off his arms and hands. He pushed up, continued searching with his left foot, and found a place where the rock stuck out just enough to support some of his weight. With those two footholds, he hung there with his chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath.
He was far from safe. He had to find other footholds if he was going to climb off the almost sheer rock wall.
By the sheer strength of his arms, he might be able to pull himself up far enough to throw a leg up onto the trail . . . but the odds were just as good that if he tried, he would fall off.
Because his pulse was pounding so furiously inside his head, he didn’t hear the swift footsteps approaching on the trail. He didn’t know anyone else was close by until a strong hand closed around his right wrist. Chance’s head jerked back as he looked up. Another of the renegades . . . ?
“Hang on,” Ace whispered as he knelt at the edge. “I’ll pull you up.”
“You . . . can’t . . .” Chance grated.
“Sure I can.”
Ace grunted with effort as he leaned back and hauled as hard as he could on his brother’s wrist. At the same time, Chance tried to help lift himself. His body rose high enough for Ace to reach out and grab hold of Chance’s shirt with his other hand and power himself backwards toward the wall.
Chance came with him, getting a knee over the edge and lunging forward. Both young man sprawled on the trail with their feet hanging over the edge.
When he was able to talk again, Chance said in a shaky voice, “Damn, that was close!”
“Too close,” Ace agreed.
They sat up and scooted away from the brink.
After a moment, a still breathless Chance said, “Agnes?”
“She’s down below. She’s all right. She’s the one who found the body of that Indian who fell from the top. I reckon you had something to do with that?”
“Yeah. You heard him land?”
“We did,” Ace said. “It was a pretty ugly sound. But as soon as she found him, we knew the renegades had to be camped up on the mesa and that you’d likely run into trouble. I got up here as fast as I could.”
“Fast enough,” Chance said. “Barely. I’m obliged to you, big brother.”
“Don’t worry about that. We need to figure out what we’re going to do next.” Ace paused. “I’m surprised that fella didn’t let out a yell on the way down.”
“I had already knocked him out, just before we both went over the edge. He never had a chance to save himself. I did.”
“Thank goodness for that.” Ace got to his feet and held out a hand to his brother. “Let’s get back down there.”
Chance clasped Ace’s wrist and let him help him up.
“Yeah, we don’t have a lot of time. I figure that man was posted on guard duty at the head of the trail. He didn’t get to raise the alarm, but there’s no telling how long it’ll be before the rest of them realize he’s not there anymore.”
They moved as quietly as possible back down the trail. When they reached the spot where they had left Agnes and the horses, she handed her rifle to Ace and threw her arms around Chance, hugging him tightly.
“When I heard that man land after falling off the mesa, I thought it was you,” she said. “Then when I saw it was one of the Indians, I was afraid the rest of them had captured you. Thank God you’re all right.”
Chance didn’t try to pull away from her or disengage her arms. Instead he returned the hug. “It was a pretty close call. I’ve got a little cut on my shoulder, but it’s nothing to worry about. I’m still alive and kicking, and now we know the rest of the bunch is up there with our friends.”
“Actually, we don’t know that,” Ace said. “Maybe they just left one man behind to watch their back trail.”
Chance stepped away from Agnes and said, “Blast it! You’re right. I never made it to the top. But I heard at least one horse up there. I think that’s where they holed up for the night. With just that one trail, it would be easy to defend. Of course, the opposite is true, too. There’s only one way out.”
“We have to proceed as if they’re there. That means we need to take them by surprise and maybe catch them in a crossfire so we can cut down the odds against us.”
“How are we going to do that?” Chance asked. “I just said, there’s only one way up there.”
“But we don’t know that, do we?”
Chance frowned in the darkness toward his brother. “What in blazes are you thinking about, Ace?”
“If I could find another way up, I could get on one side of them while you take a position at the head of that trail. Then while you draw them toward you, I could hit them from the other side.”
“How do you plan on getting up there?”
“Well . . . I reckon I’d have to climb.”
Chance didn’t respond for a moment. Then he said, “And folks seem to think I’m the reckless, loco Jensen brother! Do you have any idea how hard it’s going to be to climb up there, Ace? Especially in the dark?”
“I’ve got a pretty good idea. I didn’t say it would be easy. But I think we should at least take a look around on the other side to see if we can find a place I might be able to climb it.”
Chance didn’t argue. He knew Ace was right. There were at least ten of the renegades left alive, maybe one or two more than that. Taking them by surprise was the only way to rescue the prisoners.
“I’m coming with you,” Agnes said.
“That’s a good idea,” Ace said, “but only as far as the place where I climb. If I can make it to the top, I’ll signal you. Then you can signal Chance and let him know to start the ball. Better give me a few minutes to look around first, though, so I’ll have an idea where the other ladies are.”
As they were walking around the mesa, they worked out the details of the plan. When Ace was at the top, he would strike one of the several matches he had in his pocket, holding it below the rim where it wouldn’t be seen, and drop it toward Agnes.
That would be her signal to hurry back around to the other side, where she, in turn, would strike a match so that Chance could see it where he lay in wait at the head of the trail. He would then start shooting and hollering to draw the renegades toward him while Ace moved in behind them.
It was a pretty desperate plan, and even if everything went off perfectly, the odds would still be against them. They might not survive—and if they didn’t, the five women were doomed, too.
“They’re not going to take me alive,” Agnes said. “I’ll put up such a fight that they’ll have to kill me.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t ever come to that.” Chance put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed reassuringly.
When they judged they were on the opposite side of the mesa from where the trail came out, Ace began closely examining the rock face. As Chance had commented earlier when they first spotted it, the sides of the mesa were pretty rugged. There were a lot of cracks and crevices and places where the rock jutted out to form knobs.
In the dark, they had no way to know what Ace might run into farther up, but he was confident he could climb part of the way to the top. He would have to trust to luck that he could find a route to take him all the way.
“All right. Head back around and go up the trail,” he told Chance. “Be careful. They could have discovered that their guard is gone.”
“I think they would have raised a howl if they had,” Chance said. “They’re probably all asleep.”
Agnes said, “I don’t see how they can sleep after all the atrocities they’ve committed.”
“They’ll pay for what they’ve done,” Ace promised. He had rigged a sling for his rifle and draped it around his neck and shoulder, so the weapon rode across his back. He reached up, closed his hand around one of the rocks, and added, “Good luck, Chance.”
“You, too, brother.” Chance stole away, heading for the trail on the other side of the mesa.
Ace found a foothold, pulled himself up, and felt around for more places he could grasp with his hands or cracks where he could wedge a toe.
Since they had been raised by a gambler, the Jensen brothers hadn’t spent as much time outside while they were growing up as most boys, but they had climbed rocks now and then. Ace had at least some experience doing that.
Not under such desperate circumstances, however.
Since he had to work by feel, he couldn’
t get in any hurry. The urgency of knowing what the captives might be going through prodded him, but he quickly suppressed that feeling and concentrated on what he was doing. Slowly but surely, he rose up the side of the mesa, detouring slightly from side to side when he reached smoother stretches and had to find a new way.
His pulse pounded. The muscles in his arms and legs began to quiver slightly from supporting his weight. But his grip never slipped, and he remained calm.
Finally, after what seemed like an hour but surely was much less than that, he could tell that the rim was right above him. He made sure both feet had secure holds, tightened his grip with his right hand, and fished in his shirt pocket with his left hand.
Finding one of the lucifers he had made sure was there before he started to climb, he took it out and held it a little to the side, so his body wouldn’t block Agnes’s view of it. He used his thumbnail to snap it to life. Flame shot up from the match head. It was small, but in the thick darkness, Agnes would be able to see it, especially after Ace let go of the match and it fell, still burning, toward the ground.
The flame winked out before it got there, but its brief flight had been enough. Ace knew Agnes would be hurrying around the mesa to pass along the signal to Chance.
He found a hold with his left hand, pulled himself up again, and less than a minute later rolled over the edge onto the top of the mesa. He lay there on some short grass, catching his breath and listening intently.
The night was quiet for the most part, but after a few moments, Ace heard sounds he identified as horses shifting around.
Then a faint murmur came to his ears. Someone was talking quietly. He couldn’t make out any of the words, but he was sure what he heard was human voices.
The mesa top was approximately a quarter of a mile in diameter. The renegades were probably camped somewhere near its center, so they would be less likely to be spotted from the ground.
Ace rolled onto his belly, pushed himself to hands and knees, and then got to his feet. He pulled the rifle around in front of him and lifted its sling over his head. With the weapon held ready, he moved warily toward the middle of the mesa.
Ride the Savage Land Page 27