Old Doc plodded up out of the river’s channel behind his daughter, his salt-gray beard fluttering in the constant wind currents down there. Redding thought fervently, You two won’t be prisoners here much longer.
Tondro was barking orders which did not carry up the cliff to Redding’s ears. His Mexican henchmen scattered; some ducked into the shaft house, others trooped over to a low log-walled shed and emerged carrying saddles and bridles, some of them sparkling with silver work.
Watching the Mexicans saddle horses from the remuda corral, Redding realized that Tondro was wasting no time in carrying out Teague Darkin’s orders. O’Connor had turned his horse over to Doc Stiles and had vanished inside the shaft house. Men were running to and fro between barn and shaft house now, most of them carrying bedrolls and saddle guns, as if in preparation for a trip which would take them away from this camp for several days.
Despite the anthill-like confusion which Redding was witnessing from his hundred-foot elevation over their heads, Tondro’s men were performing like well-disciplined soldiery. This camp was poised for action at a moment’s notice. Within five minutes of O’Connor’s arrival at the camp, Redding counted fifteen vaqueros, equipped for several days’ absence, grouped in front of the shaft house to get Tondro’s final instructions before hitting the trail.
Redding saw Zedra return to her washing down by the river, carrying a maguey-fiber canasta such as peon women used. Her aging father was out by the cavvy corral now, currying down O’Connor’s exhausted pony.
A wave of indignation swept Redding as he realized that the old medico was forced to do this gang’s menial jobs, in addition to ministering to their gunshot wounds and their illnesses.
Tondro reappeared from the shaft house and mounted a snowy blanco stallion which a mozo had saddled for him. The outlaw chief had his riders’ complete attention as he addressed them, apparently outlining the job they were about to embark upon.
Then Redding saw Tondro lift a hand like a field officer signaling a cavalry charge, and the riders fell into a quick column of twos as they followed the half-breed away from the shaft house.
Redding’s eyes narrowed with puzzlement as he saw that Tondro was leading his cavalcade toward the base of the waterfall, instead of toward the down-canyon trail. Then, shifting his gaze to the base of the cliff, Redding discerned the black maw of a mine drift cut into the rock, a spill of rubble fanning out from its mouth like the upcast dirt of an earthworm.
Knowing what the penalty would be if an up-glancing eye happened to spot him on his lofty perch, Redding inched back a way, exposing only the top of his head as he watched Blaze Tondro spur his blanco into the mouth of the tunnel, his riders going into a single-file formation as they followed him, like ants crawling into a burrow.
Within a minute’s time the riders had been swallowed up in that subterranean cavity. A lone Mexican came back out of the mine tunnel, swinging a metallic object on the end of a thong, which Redding surmised was a key to some sort of door.
“The escape tunnel Doc told me about,” Redding muttered aloud. “The questions, where does the other end of that tunnel see daylight?” On Mexican soil, Doc had told him. But how far away?
The solitary Mexican made his way to the shaft house. Out by the barn, Doc Stiles finished rubbing down O’Connor’s horse and plodded back down to the river where Zedra was washing clothes, out of Redding’s view.
A brooding somnolence returned to this outlaw citadel. With it came a feeling of frustration to Doug Redding. It would be impossible for him to circle around and travel the canyon as O’Connor had done; even if he could, the chances of breaching Tondro’s exit tunnel were next to impossible.
The only thing left to do, then, was to guess Tondro’s destination and try to reach it by another route. Darkin’s message had mentioned Reservation beef and Wagonwheel Ranch. If Crowfoot cattle were involved, then Darkin must have them waiting on some bed ground on or near Joyce’s leased graze in the Axblade country west of Trailfork.
In that event, Tondro’s rustlers must be bound for the west side of Lavarim Basin, by some secret route which they would reach through the Thunder Rock’ mine tunnel.
Figuring the geography of this country, Redding believed it would take Tondro’s crew a day and a half at the outside to reach the Axblade range where Darkin’s fall roundup was in progress.
“Reckon I can’t lead a posse back to Thunder Rock as long as the kingpin and half of his men are away,” Redding mused, mapping his future course. “It wouldn’t hurt to take a little pasear to the Axblades myself and see about this herd Darkin is so anxious to turn over to Duke Harrington’s outfit.”
Heading back across the rugged slope with his horse showing its need for water, Redding felt in good spirits. This trek into the Navajadas, trailing Clark O’Connor, had paid off with priceless information.
Tondro was no longer safe behind the shield of secrecy concerning the location of his hideout. Thunder Rock was incredibly close to Trailfork. All that remained now was to give Sheriff Lennon time to assemble a posse of riders with guts enough to clean out this rattler’s nest.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Blotted Brands
Shortly before sundown, a Paloverde freighter drove his tandem-hitched Conestoga caravan into Trailfork and sent a kid posthaste to the jailhouse to report that he had picked up a dead man at Willow Springs, midway from Cloudcap Pass.
Val Lennon knew whose corpse it was before he climbed the bull bar of the caboose wagon and peered through the puckered oval opening of the covered wagon’s hood. It was Jace Blackwine. A day’s exposure to the burning sun had bloated the mustanger’s face beyond all recognition, but having had Doug Redding’s report of the shoot-out at the water hole, Lennon had no difficulty identifying the buckskin-clad body.
The old lawman made a pretense of jotting down what facts the mule whacker could give him—“There was a pinto nag lyin’ dead in the water hole, Sheriff, that carried your brand on its rump”—and stood by until the local coroner arrived to transfer Blackwine’s remains to his morgue.
It was dark when Lennon returned to the jail, carrying a tray of food from a nearby Chinese restaurant for his lone prisoner, Indian Agent Joe Curtwright.
Pausing at the jailhouse door, Lennon cast an uneasy eye toward the Navajadas, glowing a rich gold rose in the aftermath of sunset. Doug Redding was not yet back from his trailing job on Clark O’Connor. Neither was O’Connor; Lennon had kept a sharp eye on the incoming roads all afternoon.
A vague worry stirred Lennon as he unlocked the bull pen and carried the supper tray over to Curtwright’s cell.
“Brought your grub, Joe. How’s the ankle?”
Curtwright did not answer. Struck by a sudden prescience of disaster, Lennon set his tray on the floor and struck a match.
Joe Curtwright had cheated justice. The Pedregosa Agent had fashioned a noose out of his gallus straps. His body hung from a crossbeam of the cell, porcine face congested black, tongue protruding, feet dangling below the edge of the cot from which he had jumped to eternity. The man’s death hadn’t been instantaneous, from a snapped spine. An autopsy would probably indicate that Joe Curtwright had died of slow strangulation.
The match burned out in Lennon’s fingers. The old lawman waggled his head, clucked his tongue thoughtfully. Two of Tondro’s henchmen, Blackwine and Curtwright, would occupy adjoining slabs in the county morgue tonight.
Even if Doug Redding failed to return from the Navajadas tonight, the man had left his mark on the ranks of Tondro’s bunch.
Lennon picked up the tray of food, feeling a strange revulsion as he did so. These victuals intended for a man now dead wouldn’t sit right in his belly. Shame to waste good grub, but—He heard a horse blow its lips alongside the jail. A rider was dismounting at the rack alongside Lennon’s lean-to shanty. Hurrying over to a barred window, the sheriff looked ou
t. A stray beam of light spilling through a knothole in the saddle shop across the alley revealed who the rider was.
Doug Redding was back safe.
Lennon let himself into his living-quarters through an adjoining door from the bull pen and was putting the tray on his table when the SPA operative stepped inside.
“Grub waiting for me.” Redding grinned. “Sheriff, you missed your calling. You ought to be a headwaiter in some high-toned feedbag in New York.”
Lennon snapped waspishly, “This chow was for Curtwright. He won’t be needing it.”
“Confinement spoiled his appetite?”
“Curtwright hung hisself. Body ain’t cold yet, but he’s toasting in hell just the same.”
The shock of this news kept Redding silent a long moment.
“He have anything to say during the day?”
“Nary a word, except that he was being framed.”
Doug Redding went over to the corner basin, pumped himself some water, and started washing up. “No matter. Sheriff, I spotted Tondro’s hideout. Know every inch of the trail. How long will it take you to round up a posse for the showdown?”
Lennon chewed his mustache. “I’d need two-three days. Already got my boys picked, but some of ’em are busy with roundup.”
Redding toweled his face and hands and, without waiting to be invited, sat down at the deal table and launched into the food intended for Joe Curtwright. As he ate, he gave Lennon a succinct review of his day’s doings.
“So, I aim to take a jaunt over to Joyce’s Axblade range tomorrow,” Redding wound up, “to be on hand to see where Tondro picks up the Wagonwheel beef Darkin aims to sell to the Reservation. With Curtwright a suicide, it’s anybody’s guess when those ’Paches will get their next beefsteaks.”
Lennon grumbled, “Always on the go, ain’t you?” and went on to report the news of Jace Blackwine’s final visit to town.
“I’ll be away several days,” Redding said. “You have a fifty-man posse ready to ride when I get back, eh?”
Before turning in, Redding took the time to pen his first case report to Colonel Regis at Protective Association headquarters at Sage City. Lennon’s alarm clock roused him in the bleak hour between the false and the true dawn; he had eaten breakfast at the sheriff’s table and was heading westward toward the Axblades by the time the sun rose.
* * * *
Noon found Redding in the timbered foothills of the western range overlooking Lavarim Basin, within sight of Teague Darkin’s roundup camp. Most of the Crowfoot beef had been choused out of the mountain brush by now; a herd numbering close to a thousand head was being hazed across the Basin today, a slow-moving russet column against the shimmering sage flats. Melrose cattle on their way to Cloudcap Pass and the railroad yards at Fort Paloverde, east of the Navajadas.
That herd would be joined with the jag of cattle Shorty Hadley’s crew had flushed out of the east range. The combined herd would eventually wind up at the slaughterhouses in Omaha or Kansas City.
But Redding was not interested in this orthodox routine of Crowfoot’s roundup. He was remembering what Joyce had told him at the ranch house only last night—how Darkin had reported a fifty percent loss here on the Ax-blade graze.
That missing half of Melrose’s cattle, Darkin had intimated, must have been rustled during the past spring and summer. If Redding’s hunch was right, he believed those Crowfoot steers were still north of the border, being held in one of the innumerable back canyons on the Axblade edge of the Basin. It was this herd that Blaze Tondro’s rustler crew would be hazing by some secret route over the Axblades, to throw onto Wagonwheel.
Taking care to avoid being seen by any Crowfoot cow-punchers who might be combing the range for strays, Redding made his dry camp that night on the lofty lava rim which gave the Basin its name. From this elevation a man had a clear view of the Basin where it tapered across the Mexican boundary.
It was around midnight when Redding was roused from a catlike sleep by the noise of mounted men entering the Axblade foothills below the lava rim. He broke camp at once, took his steeldust off picket, and, saddling with haste, moved down off the rim by way of a side canyon, making in the direction of those night-riding horsemen.
The moon was on the wane, but its light was sufficient for him to pick up, a few minutes later, the long column of riders threading their way across the grassy, rolling valley which pointed into the heart of Joyce Melrose’s leased range.
Keeping to the thin edge of the timber, Melrose flanked the route of the night riders until he saw them turn due west into the rock-ribbed fissure of a pass which opened on the Pedregosa Indian Reservation west of the Axblades.
He had little doubt but that he was scouting Blaze Tondro and his vaqueros from south of the border. They had planned to cross the line after dark, after their roundabout way from Thunder Rock.
From the top of a cactus-spined ridge, Redding saw the riders making camp. Soon the smudge of three campfires burned their orange holes against the blackness of the cliff walls.
Redding selected a high point of rocks a mile north of the camp, to await the coming of daylight.
The following sunrise confirmed his hunch. With the aid of Val Lennon’s powerful glasses, Redding watched Tondro and his dusky-hued rustler crew break camp and continue their push up this nameless mountain gap.
Working his way along the north shoulder of the pass an hour later, Doug Redding’s attention was diverted from the riders he was following by a sound of cattle bawling somewhere in the recesses of a side canyon on the south.
This was just beyond the Axblade summit, judging from the way the silvery thread of a creek ran, down in the pit of the pass. It was, therefore, outside the legal limits of the Melrose government lease, probably on Curtwright’s Apache Reserve.
Redding settled himself down to play a waiting and watching game. Tondro’s riders disappeared into the throat of the side canyon where the cattle were being held; they would show up presently with a herd.
Redding took advantage of the delay to wolf down a cold breakfast. It was shortly after midmorning when a herd of shorthorns swung out of the holding canyon, with Tondro’s point riders in the lead.
Yipping Mexican vaqueros shoved the bawling steers westward toward the outer desert and the Indian Reservation. Redding, waiting until the drags had left the canyon, estimated the herd at roughly a thousand head—equaling the herd which Darkin had on its way to rail for Crowfoot.
The air held a din of clacking horns and creaking joints, bawling of thirsty critters and the deafening clatter of cloven hoofs on the flinty trail. When the flank riders began moving down the west grade of the pass and the stragglers had been bunched with knotted rope ends and much shouting of Mexican riders, Redding saddled the steeldust and continued along the high north shoulder of the pass, keeping Tondro’s herd in constant view. When the herd was out of the Axblades, there was nothing to prevent Tondro from shoving the steers south into Mexican territory. If he carried out the instructions in Teague Darkin’s message, this herd must move north, toward Wagonwheel.
The field glasses told Redding that this herd carried Wagonwheel’s brand. Furthermore, the ranks of Tondro’s crew were augmented at noon by a half-dozen other riders, strangers to Redding. These punchers, all of them yanquis, were not Crowfoot riders; but in all probability Darkin had sent them here, perhaps from Wagonwheel itself.
This pass was difficult terrain for a cattle drive, and as a result the herd would show up with a short tally before Tondro could turn it onto Wagonwheel graze. Redding drew on his cow savvy now to pull up and wait until the slow-moving herd was out of sight beyond a twisting of the pass.
Cutting down to the herd’s trail, Redding had little difficulty in locating a straggler, overlooked by the drag riders. He dared not risk a shot, this close to the herd; instead, Redding hazed the steer into a pocket of rock
s and dabbed his rope on the animal, quickly snubbing it to a piñon.
The animal was a two year old. Dismounting, Redding took a stock knife from his saddle pouch and, moving in on the ory-eyed brute with a range-wise caution, drove his blade expertly in the steer’s throat.
This wanton butchery was repugnant to Redding, but it was his only sure way of checking on the authenticity of a brand. The killing and skinning out of a beef was a legal prerogative of the star he wore, practiced by brand inspectors or stock detectives throughout the western cow country.
When the steer had bled itself out, Redding made no attempt to butcher it. This carcass would be a feast for the zopilotes, already beginning to spiral on motionless pinions high in the blue.
Redding’s keen-whetted blade made four slices of the hide to box off the Wagonwheel brand on its ribs. The brand, even to his expert eye, looked original, untampered with.
This critter, he thought, could have a Wagonwheel run on its hide while it was sucking a Crowfoot cow, and a pressing curiosity made him hurry the job of peeling off the segment of hide to have a look at the flesh side of the brand.
It was a blotched job. The original brand stood out distinctly on the underside of the hide—Melrose’s Crowfoot brand, a letter Y with the vertical bar extended up through the fork of the Y to make a triple-pronged crow’s foot design.
But some artist with a wet blanket and a running iron had extended downward the two original prongs of the fork of the Y, to make a six-pointed asterisk, which had then been enclosed in a circle to form a wagon wheel.
These alterations, not visible on the hair side, were indistinct even when studied from the fleshy underside. Whatever brand blotter had altered Crowfoot into the Wagonwheel had done this job eighteen months or so ago when this animal was a calf.
“No wonder Teague Darkin didn’t cotton to having strangers help with the Axblade roundup,” Redding muttered, carefully rolling the rectangle of hide and stowing it in his saddle pouches against the day when he would submit it to a federal court as evidence of brand blotting. “Wouldn’t do for it to leak out that fifty percent of Major Melrose’s cattle carried the brand registered to Duke Harrington’s syndicate.”
The Sixth Western Novel Page 38