For a long time nothing happened. Yet I was wary. Perhaps they were talking over their next move, yet perhaps one of them had already gone to the ground and was now trying to encircle me. If so, he had several bare or almost bare patches of ground to cover, of which I had already taken note.
The sun was warm and comfortable. On the trail below nothing moved, but I was not deceived. They were somewhere along that slope, edging toward me no doubt, watching for a shot. Carefully I eased myself further down behind the logs for better protection.
Another man gone. Was anything worth the death of so many strong men? They could draw off…I could not. I had only myself on whom to depend, and it was I they were trying to kill, so I had no choice but to fight. If they were to pull off now, it would be the end of it as far as I was concerned, but beyond this point I was not going to run. No longer could I stand to live with death hanging over me and about me.
Suddenly a flicker of movement caught my eye, and a man darted from behind some rocks and ran for cover. Briefly he was in full view, but it would have been a scratch shot and I did not fire.
Then there was a time of waiting. Soon that man would have to move, and when he went for the next cover, he would be in the open for a good thirty steps, time enough and more.
Uneasily, I looked all around. It was too quiet. A glance at my horses, and they were cropping placidly at the grass. Suddenly I had an urge to get out, to get on my horse and get out, as fast as I could.
Moving along deeper into the grove, I took another careful look around. Of one thing I could be sure. They were neither the kind of men to quit nor the kind to sit waiting, so I knew that somewhere, somehow they were moving, trying to get to me or get around me.
Worried now, I swept the slopes of West Spanish Peak but saw nothing.
Turning swiftly, I went back through the trees overlooking the meadow where the horses were. I started to step out and go to them, but hesitated. Softly I called. The roan looked up and took a couple of steps toward me, and I called again. He took a bite of grass and drifted my way, the other horse following. When they were near, I spoke softly again. “Come on, boy, right over here.”
He came, taking his time, ears pricked, yet playing a game with me. He was not going to make it easy. He would have to be coaxed a little. Again I spoke, more softly, and he took a step toward me, then another.
Glancing back along the trail, I saw nothing. Carefully I scanned the slope that rose on the east. Nothing. Westward the ground fell away toward Sawtooth and the canyon of Chaparral Creek. There was a trail a mile or two west that dropped off toward the Cucharas River. The other trail, along which I had come and which led past my temporary base, led northward and then dropped off into Echo Canyon. To the eastward, which was on my left, there were patches of slide rock in among the trees. Timberline here was about eleven thousand feet, I figured. Judging by the plant growth, I was a mite below ten thousand feet.
Nothing stirred.
Worried, I moved up a little, keeping low to the ground. They weren’t just setting there waiting for me. They were the hunters and I the hunted, and they were coming at me from somewhere. Higher up on my left those patches of slide rock left them open spaces to cross, and that slide rock could sound like a lot of bottles rattling against each other when you crossed it. From my right they had to come up slope through the trees to get at me.
My position was good, but I didn’t like it. I never liked being stalked. A cool wind came down off the West Spanish Peak, and overhead a lone buzzard swung lazily down the sky, then hovered over the trail to the south. That man I’d shot…well, that was three of them gone.
I wondered if Yant was out there. Elias surely was. And suddenly I realized they were in no hurry. They had me. No doubt even now they were moving to get behind me, to hold me here until I was dead.
They knew I could shoot. They knew now that I wasn’t going to be easy, and they also knew that they could not afford to lose more men.
Again I looked around, trying to imagine how they planned to come at me, but I could see no way. My position, such as it was, was good.
To hell with them! I wanted some coffee and I was going to have it. Snuggling close under a spruce with low-hanging boughs, I built a small fire, never taking my eyes from my surroundings for more than an instant and always ready to catch any movement from the corners of my eyes. The rising smoke would dissipate itself upon the spruce boughs. They would smell smoke and wonder.
For the first time the thought came to me that I might not get out of this alive. In the rush of action there is small time for thought. Now there was. These people wanted me dead, and they had killed before this. They were out there, how many I did not know. There might be four, and there could be a dozen. I put the coffeepot on the fire. Then I smiled to myself. They would smell the coffee and they would wonder.
Felix Yant would like that touch. He had enough of a sense of irony to appreciate it, and it would make them think I was not afraid.
Was I afraid? Yes, I guess I was. I was scared to death.
“Kearney?” The call was low, a woman’s voice. “Kearney, come here, I want to talk to you…alone.”
I’ll just bet she did.
“Kearney? We haven’t had any trouble, you and I, and we mustn’t have any. Why don’t we just ride out of here? Just you and me?”
Reminded me of that story pa used to tell me about Ulysses putting wax in the ears of his crew whilst he had himself tied to the mast so’s he could hear the song of the sirens. Only I didn’t need any wax. I recalled that brad loaded with sticky poison and left in my boot.
So I sat right still and said nothing at all. Yant, I knew, was an impatient man. I hoped the others were, too. What was the name of the one I’d been warned was most dangerous? Vrydag, Joseph Vrydag. I wondered if he was out there.
That was the trouble. I was alone and there were several of them, all of them shrewd, conniving people.
Were they waiting for dark? Hoping I’d try to get away? The little knoll on which I’d taken refuge was only a few feet higher than the country close around me and covered not over a third of an acre, if so much. There was a tight grove of trees, mostly spruce, and some boulders, several of them waist-high. There was considerable brush. The chance that they could hit me by just shooting into the area was a hundred to one or better.
Going out of here, my only way was north, but I’d heard much talk of this area and knew from that and my own experience that there were three ways I could take. Due west past Sawtooth there was a trail into Chaparral Canyon and down to the Cucharas. Right behind me was the trail down Wade Canyon and another that branched off it and led to Echo Canyon.
Trouble was, I was sore. I was tired of running and ready for a showdown. Or so I told myself. Probably I was a damned fool, seeking a showdown when there were so many against me. So far I’d been lucky, too lucky for it to last.
Suddenly they began shooting, searching fire aimed at driving me into the open. Hugging the ground, I let them shoot. Only a ricochet could get me where I lay, but there were a couple that came too close for comfort.
Right then I was wishing pa was with me. Then I was glad he wasn’t, only I was a mighty lonesome boy with all those men shooting to kill me and me here alone without a soul to help.
The fire was still showing coals and the coffee was hot. I poured and drank a cup, hunkering down under that ol’ spruce. A couple of hard biscuits in my saddlebag provided all the meal I was likely to get, but they tasted good.
It was clouding up, clouds gathering real heavy around the Spanish Peaks. Unless I missed a guess, it was going to be one of those thunderstorms that scare the living daylights out of a man. Up this high, every bit of lightning in miles would be drawn to those towering peaks above me like to a lightning rod. I’d heard folks say that aside from the Lone Cone out in western Colorado, there was no place like the Spanish Peaks for lightning. A magpie who had been fretting and scolding around evidently figured the
same way, because he flew off and left me there alone. I finished the last of my biscuit and brushed off the crumbs. A bullet clipped a bit from the spruce and dropped it to my shoulder.
Those folks out there now, those Yants and L’Ollonaises or whatever their names were, had they ever been through a thunder and lightning storm up this high? If they hadn’t, they were going to get a surprise, I could tell them that.
When the lightning starts striking around within a few yards and the thunder starts rolling and banging down those rock-walled canyons, it’s enough to make the hair stand on end…but the electricity in the air takes care of that.
How many of them were out there? Four? Or a dozen? And that woman…she was out there.
Where was that Joseph Vrydag, said to be the worst of them?
Emptying the grounds from my coffeepot, I packed it up. Suddenly I was thinking that when darkness came, or in the midst of the storm, I was taking out of there. I was going to run like a scared chicken. Right then I just didn’t want anybody shooting at me again.
The storm came with a rush of wind and a crash of thunder. Lightning struck that peak above me, and the air was filled with the smell of brimstone. The rain was a solid wall advancing toward me on the breast of the wind. I made a run for my horses. To hell with it! I was—
And there they were, three tall Yants, or whatever they called themselves. They stood facing me and they had guns and the next thing I was shooting.
Chapter 23
*
THE SUN WAS gone but its bloody light lay splashed upon the Sawtooth Rocks, and upon my left enormous masses of black and ugly cloud thrust like Hercules between the pillars of the twin peaks, cloud shot through with lightning that lit up the bare pink slopes of Huajatolla.
And facing me, three tall dark men, their faces reflecting the red light of the dying sun like light from the fires of hell.
No word was spoken, nor could one have been heard. The sky in that moment was weirdly lit, and then the rain swept on us and our pygmy guns made tiny sounds against the crash and roll of thunder.
Their eyes were on my rifle in my left hand, and the surprise for them had been as great as for me. Only I dropped the rifle and opened fire with my six-shooter and I saw a man spin and drop, and firing again I saw a blood-red face turn to blood itself as my bullet smashed him back.
Desperate, alone, fighting for life and for the death of my father, I triggered the gun empty, then grabbed the second from my waistband. Then another gun was firing on my right. I saw them fall, and a man at whom I had not fired spun and dropped with the rain driving down upon him, and then it was that all three were gone, and for a moment I stood in the driving rain staring at their crumpled bodies, and a hand fell on my shoulders and a voice said, “That was for pa, Kearney,” and turning around I saw it was Pistol.
His battered hat was rain-soaked now, but he was smiling and his teeth showed white. He grabbed my hand and put an arm around my shoulder. “Let’s get out of here, boy,” he said, “there’s a better place close by.”
It proved not to be so close by, but it was a better place. It was a long cabin at a place called the Gap on the Cucharas River. We followed the Peaks Trail down along the slopes and then cut across a saddle to come down to the cabin. It was warm and pleasant inside and there was a good smell of frying meat.
A bald-headed man turned around from the fire. He had a fringe of red hair around his ears and a wide red mustache, waxed at the ends that stuck out beyond the sides of his face.
“Set up, boys!” he said. “The steaks are fried and the beans are on the way!”
We’d been soaked through before we got our slickers on, so we were wet now. We backed up to the fire, and steam began to rise from our clothes, but the smell of the food was too much for us and we sat down on the homemade benches and ate, and while we ate we did not talk.
When we had eaten and the coffee was poured, Mustache put more wood upon the fire. Outside the wind whipped the house with lashes of icy rain, but we sat snug within, and Pistol and me, we looked at each other. At that moment I was proud of my broad shoulders and the strength I had, for Pistol had been a boyhood idol for me.
“Ah, lad,” he said smiling, “you’re a man now!” He turned on the others. “Would you believe it? He had two of them down and was working on the third before I could get a shot in. This kid is hell on wheels!”
“You taught me,” I said.
“Not me.” His face was sober. “It was your pa taught us both, and a better man never lived.” He looked at me. “It was them killed him, wasn’t it?”
“One of them,” I said, “shot him in the back of the head.”
By the firelight in the old log cabin, I told them of the judge and how I recovered my money and of the fight in the snowbound cabin. The words I used were stark and simple words, for these men had lived such things and they needed no dressing up. What was not said they could supply, for they knew how such things went. They were lonely men, hard men, men who had lived by the gun. One of them was Red.
“I wanted to tell you, McRaven,” he said, “but the name I’d have used wasn’t one you’d have known. He told me to tell you to wait, and if the sheriff there had known Pistol was close by, he’d have killed horses trying to get him.”
Our eyes met, and surprisingly he was embarrassed. “Yeah,” he said, throwing the dregs of his coffee into the fire, “your pa tried to steer me clear, but somehow I was just headed down the outlaw trail. He was a good man, your pa.”
“When this is over, I’m going to ranching, Pistol. I’m going to need good men who can handle cattle.” I told them about Ben Blocker and the deal we made, and Mustache said, “I rode with Ben. I rode up the trail to Kansas with him, and on to Ogallala, and a squarer man I never knew, nor one more loyal.”
“You can ride for him again,” I said, “and for me.”
“You settling down?” Pistol looked at me, and I nodded.
“I’ve got a girl in Silverton, and when this is over I’m riding back that way.”
“When it’s over?” Pistol looked up at me from where he sat by the fire. “It’s over now. That was the end of it.”
“No,” I said, “I saw their faces there in the last sunlight. Felix Yant was not one of them. So he’s left, and so is the woman.”
Red shifted his feet, and his boots grated on the sandy floor. “There’s another, too. He did not come with them. He told them they were fools, that they must wait for you to light somewhere, but they wouldn’t listen.”
“Felix stayed?”
“He didn’t say why. He just stayed.” Red paused. “It was the woman got it out of him. I’d followed them and I listened outside the wall, pulled mud from the chinks and listened. She told him he’d gone soft.
“Felix, he looked at her and said, ‘He’s one of us, after all. He’s kin.’
“‘Wasn’t his father kin? You killed him.’ That was what she said.
“‘This is different,’ he said. ‘Why, he could be my own son! If I had a son—
“Then she laughed, she just laughed at him and said, ‘Felix, you’ll never have a son! You couldn’t have one if you wanted one!’
“Well, he just looked at her. He said, ‘Delphine, if somebody else doesn’t kill you, I may.’
“‘Stop it,’ this Vrydag interrupted, ‘just stop it. We’ve troubles enough. Our strength has always been because we worked together, and we must work together now. We must destroy him.’
“Felix Yant smiled. ‘And suppose he has established a legal claim to the estate? What then?’”
Red waved a hand “That was the way it sounded. Anyway, it isn’t over. There’s three of them left.” He paused. “That’s a mean lot of folks, believe me. In all my born days, and I’ve ridden the trail for years, I never seen such a poisonous lot.”
“I’m going to Silverton,” I said, “and they can follow if they like. I want no more killing.”
“Sounds like this Felix Yant likes you
,” Pistol suggested.
For a minute I considered that, then shook my head. “It’s just a notion. It won’t stop him, believe me. That’s a hard man yonder.”
Outside the rain came down in a drenching downpour, and I knew the canyons would be running neck-deep with flood-water. It was no time to travel.
Pistol had aged and seasoned, but there were laugh wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and his face was leaner and harder.
“When you ride, boy,” he said, “I’m riding with you.”
“It’s been a long time,” I agreed. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover, talking about pa and all.” I glanced around at him. “You knew more about pa than I did.”
He nodded. “He helped me when it was needful, and I was a good listener. You were young, Kearney, and he didn’t like to burden you with all of it. Me, I could listen and keep my mouth shut, and much of his talking was just sort of thinking out loud.”
“Wherever you go,” Red advised, “watch your back trail.”
We ate the steak and beans, and we ate doughnuts that Mustache made, and we talked of cattle, horses, and mines as such men will. Each had a tale to tell of a horse or a place or a time, and the cabin was warm and pleasant, with the storm outside.
Often I just listened, and sometimes my thoughts would wander back to the Spanish Peaks and the three dead men who lay together there, their bodies washed by rain and the hate they carried dissipated by the bullets that took their lives. They were strange men, born to hatred and motivated by little else. Even the desire for the estate, which was strongest in Felix and Delphine, seemed less a motivation than that blazing fire of hatred and the lust to kill.
These men were riding the outlaw trail, but all of them had punched cows in their time, and no doubt would again.
Novel 1978 - The Proving Trail (v5.0) Page 21