Ute Peak Country

by Lauran Paine

  He did find something, though, which he appropriated and which brought up that earlier antagonism in him again for Denver Holt and his men. This object was a small, bloodstained handkerchief, the kind women and girls carried. He pocketed it, got back astride, listened a while to all that oncoming bawling, drifted southeasterly out of Holt’s meadow and back into the forest, heading downcountry on the trail of his friends.

  He could not at once imagine what had become of Fred Brian. But neither could he imagine any reason for Holt to be gathering his cattle. He had made it very plain that he would not move unless he felt like it.

  Jack found McCoy, Murphy, and Morton down in a little skiff of second-growth firs, sitting their saddles, looking straight out where the first of a big bunch of Durham cattle were pushing on out into the open from a southerly stretch of gloomy forest. There was no rider leading these animals, but farther back, on both sides of the cattle, he and the others heard men hooting and catcalling, urging still more cattle northward.

  Jack and Frank exchanged a bewildered look. Jack reached out, brushed Red Morton’s rein hand, and said: “What would the reason be for gathering now?”

  “No reason that I can see,” retorted the younger man, and swung back to watching the increasing numbers of those big brown cattle break out of the southward forest.

  Chapter Twelve

  Denver Holt’s cattle were streaming past on both sides of Jackson Miggs and his companions before a single rider appeared across the southern meadow.

  The first cowboy was that fiery younger man Miggs recognized from his first meeting with Holt’s crew. The second one was Denver Holt himself, his broad-brimmed hat pulled low, his bearded face dusty and grim-looking. The final rider was that dark-eyed and curly-headed large man who’d grinned and kept on ironically grinning when Miggs and Frank McCoy had gotten the drop on him and the other two.

  “Well,” snub-nosed Red Morton said, drawing back to sit beside Miggs, “that’s that. Now we’d better get out of here before they get up this far.”

  Morton was reining around, so was Lex Murphy, but sly Frank McCoy did not move except to swivel his head and put a wondering glance upon Miggs.

  “One missing!” he exclaimed.

  Miggs nodded, still watching those oncoming men. “So I noticed. And I think I’ve got this figured out, boys.”

  Miggs spun his horse without another word, led out back northward again, and, when the four of them were ahead of Holt’s cattle, Jackson peeled off westerly, leading the others straight as an arrow for that exposed, sunlit cow camp.

  Murphy and Morton exchanged an uncomfortable look about this. Although neither of them voiced it, both thought it was extremely rash to ride out into the exposed meadow when Holt and his crew were no more than twenty minutes behind them.

  But Miggs was gambling that his suspicions were correct. As soon as he and Frank McCoy were close to the camp, Miggs made an encircling motion with one hand, Indian fashion, swept that same hand up toward his face with the first two fingers pointing at his eyes, then dropped the hand, pointing earthward and beyond. Frank, who understood wibluta, nodded and rode on around the camp to do as Miggs had told him in sign language: go back and forth, watch the ground, pick up fresh horse tracks.

  Frank hadn’t ridden twenty feet westward before he raised an arm, whistled, and pointed downward. The others hurried over, saw the sign where two ridden horses had gone due west from Holt’s cow camp, and began following that definite sign.

  The foremost of those horse tracks had been made hours before, had in fact been made while there was yet dew on the grass. But the second set of tracks had been made much later, after the dew was gone, and they were therefore less indelibly printed and harder to follow.

  When Frank complained about this, Jack Miggs shrugged. “We only need one set. Brian’s after him. Where one set goes, the other will also go.” Miggs lifted his head, looked up into the forest that they were now approaching, and said: “I don’t understand; if Brian was taken prisoner, over there, when he rode up last night, how he got loose to follow young Holt.”

  McCoy had a different notion. “I read it to be young Holt following Fred Brian. I’d guess Brian got loose before sunup … that’d account for the dew tracks … got a horse and slipped out, then young Holt went after him come sunup after they discovered Fred was gone.”

  Miggs ran this through his mind and ultimately accepted it, saying of his earlier idea: “I guess when a man’s got just one thing on his mind, he bends the facts to fit his notions. You’re right of course, Frank. Bert Holt is trailing Fred Brian.”

  “And if that’s so,” said McCoy, “then my guess is that Brian’s unarmed and young Holt’s got plenty of firepower. It might help if we sort of dusted it along.”

  As they entered the forest where it was not possible to make great speed, they nevertheless hastened as much as this business of reading tracks would permit. Once, when the four of them halted to water their animals, Jack Miggs explained an idea he’d been perfecting since they’d first picked up the tracks they were following.

  “Holt’s moving those cattle for a good reason. He figures that if Brian gets back to us with whatever he’s learned about Beverly’s abduction, we’ll come a-gunning.”

  “That’s likely enough,” Red Morton agreed.

  “So,” went on Miggs, “he sent his boy to run Fred down and kill him if he can, while he and the balance of his crew rounded up the Durhams and headed them on out of the country.”

  “Makes sense,” agreed McCoy.

  They resumed their tracking, sometimes making good time when they crossed a meadow, sometimes being forced to go very slowly in among the trees. It was not yet midday when somewhere off in the distance to the left, each of them heard the faint pop of a gunshot. They halted, awaiting a repetition, but no other shots came.

  Now Lex Murphy said, with his face perplexedly twisted: “The danged tracks are heading west still. That shot came from south and east, below us and somewhere behind us.”

  “Maybe it was the old man or one of his riders,” suggested Red Morton. “Maybe one of ’em was signalin’ to the others … somethin’ to do with the cattle.”

  “Yeah,” growled Frank McCoy, his narrow face twisted in the direction of that gunshot. “And maybe it’s young Holt and maybe he’s run Fred Brian to earth and is trying to finish him.”

  Miggs said nothing until each of the others had his say. Miggs was more worried by that shot than perplexed by it. “We’ve got to split up,” he announced. “I hate to do it this way, but if Frank’s right, then Fred needs help.” He bobbed his head at Lex Murphy. “You go with Frank … the pair of you find out where that shot came from and why it was fired. Red, you stay with me. We’ll go on tracking Holt and Brian, and if the tracks bend around and start down in the direction of that gunshot, we’ll meet Lex and Frank. If not, we’ll keep going until we find … something.”

  None of them appeared enthusiastic about this plan, but, as they briefly sat there considering it, none of them could come up with a better alternative, so in the end they reluctantly split up and rode their separate ways.

  Miggs and Red Morton sat still until Lex and Frank McCoy were lost to sight, southward bound through forest gloom and the depthless hush, then they returned to tracking. Because Miggs was anxious now, he sometimes made detours and shortcuts, in this fashion attempting to shorten both the job he’d saddled himself with and the time involved in following out the sign of those two hurrying riders somewhere ahead.

  An hour later, as he and Red were crossing another grassy glade, the tracks abruptly swung southward. Miggs thought, and told Red, that Brian had discovered that he was being pursued now. He pointed to a place where a rider had halted out in the meadow, turned his horse, and had sat a long moment, looking back.

  “He heard something,” Miggs conjectured. “He’s coming to the c
onclusion that he’s being chased.”

  Miggs reined his animal dutifully southward and began trailing on this new tangent. At his side Red Morton said: “Now we’re headin’ about right. If the tracks cut back eastward, we’ll know Brian’s ridin’ for either our camp or your cabin.”

  Miggs muttered a comment on this without looking up from his study of the ground. “And we’ll also know something else, Red. We’ll know that gunshot wasn’t anyone signaling someone else … unless it was young Holt trying to catch the attention of his friends so they’ll head Fred off.”

  Red frowned, lifted his head, and swung it eastward. “Yeah,” he growled, “Holt will likely have been close enough to maybe shoot Fred’s horse, or something.”

  Miggs said no more.

  They left the meadow, following the tracks down through the trees again, but, instead of bearing south, the tracks began now to veer more easterly. Miggs was convinced that shot had been young Holt firing at Brian. He also became convinced that unless Divine Providence interceded, Lex Murphy and Frank McCoy were going to ride straight into a hornet’s nest, because, aside from Bert Holt, the rest of Denver Holt’s crew and the old cowman himself were somewhere southeastward, pushing their Durham cattle along.

  But Miggs did not hurry. When Red spoke about this, Jack said: “Maybe an hour back, if we’d known which way to go, speed might have helped. But do a little figuring now, Red, and you’ll realize we’re getting almighty close to the place where someone fired that shot, and, also, we’re not too far south or west of either Holt’s camp or his cattle drive.”

  Morton subsided, but he still acted anxious. He rode along, paralleling Miggs for a while, then gradually increased the distance between them, staying well above the tracks Miggs was following so as not to impede Miggs’ progress. In this way Morton got a long three hundred feet ahead. He was visible to Miggs only now and then as he passed from one shadowed, forested place to another.

  In this manner the pair of them traveled a mile farther east before both were halted stock-still by a sudden outburst of furious gunfire seemingly not more than a thousand yards ahead.

  Morton at once dropped back where Miggs was dismounting. “Bring your Winchester,” said Miggs as he hid his horse in a pine thicket. “Hurry up!”

  Morton moved fast, but Miggs darted off among the trees, leaving the cowboy to catch up as best he could. They came together again, heading north by east, and if Red Morton had no very clear idea of distances or directions in the forest, moccasined old Jackson Miggs had enough woodland savvy for them both. He also knew this uplands country beneath Ute Peak better than anyone alive.

  “About like I figured,” he whispered to Morton as they glided along. “Frank and Lex ran into Holt’s riders with the cattle. That shooting came from south of Holt’s camp.”

  But except for that one fierce volley of gunfire, the forest was utterly still again. There was not another sound until Miggs and Morton angled across the white-water creek that bisected Holt’s meadow and ran southward down through the forest where they were sneaking along.

  This second rash of shots, though, seemed uncertain. First, someone fired a six-gun. This blast came from off eastward. Next, someone cut loose with a rifle. This brought on another ragged volley, but when these shots dwindled, silence returned.

  “Frank,” said Miggs succinctly to Red Morton. “That was a rifle, not a carbine, or a six-gun. It’s Frank, and he’s west of us. Come on … we’ll find him.”

  They switched course, recrossed the brawling white-water creek, went silently trotting in and out of rough-barked stands of giant trees, until a sunlit broad expanse of grassland shone on ahead, then Miggs halted, looped both his massive arms about his rifle, and stood entirely still and watchful.

  “That’s Holt’s meadow,” he told Red Morton. “We rode in one hell of a big circle this morning.”

  “All right,” assented the anxious range rider. “But where is McCoy? Where is Fred?”

  “Easy,” remonstrated the older man. “We’ll find Frank. I can’t even guess about your range boss, but we’ll find Frank and Lex. Just be patient.”

  For a long time, that savage silence ran on. Morton fidgeted, but Jackson Miggs, except for keeping a hawklike lookout all around, remained motionless and passive.

  Someone eastward let out a bellow and fired a gun. At once that rifle made its sharp, biting sound again.

  Miggs smiled frostily, took up his gun, and jerked his head. “I’ve got the direction again,” he said. “Come on.”

  Again they slipped through the forest shadows, but this time Miggs did not stop until, at the very fringe of the meadow, he paused to gobble like a wild turkey. An answering gobble came back. Miggs headed straight for this sound. Red followed, and gave a tremendous jump when old Frank McCoy rose up from the ground almost directly under Morton’s feet. Frank’s grease-stained buckskin clothing matched the ground perfectly. He grinned at the startled cowboy, screwed up his face, and spat aside as Morton and Miggs dropped down beside him.

  “I figured you’d pull a bonehead stunt like blundering right into them,” said Miggs, sounding not at all disgusted, sounding instead as though this situation amused him.

  “Blundered into ’em, hell!” exclaimed McCoy. “I did this on purpose.”

  “Sure you did,” growled Miggs, straining ahead for sight of the hidden cowmen on around the meadow, also in among the trees.

  “That’s a fact,” spoke up a new voice as Lex Murphy came up. “They got Fred. The old man’s boy shot the horse plumb from under him, and the others came up. We saw them get Fred when we got down here, too. Two of ’em wanted to kill Fred and hide the body. They argued about that for a long time, then Frank and me, we figured we’d better give ’em something else to worry about before the holdouts got tired of arguin’ and salted Fred down, so we opened up on ’em.”

  Miggs turned, put a wry glance upon Murphy, drifted this same gaze back down to Frank McCoy beside him, and said: “All right … you’ve had your say. Now get your belly down on the ground before one of ’em blows your liver out.”

  Murphy dropped down. Red Morton went over beside him, also got down, ran a careful look ahead where a little skiff of dirty white smoke hung among the trees where Holt’s crew was forted up, then swung to say to Lex: “I’ll be damned if those two old devils aren’t gettin’ a big kick out of this. Look at ’em grin.”

  Murphy looked, saw Frank and Jackson Miggs kneeling side by side, both of them looking careful and interested and raffishly amused, and said to his pardner: “Red, the devil himself couldn’t scare those two. By God, I’m glad they’re on our side.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  For a long time, there was no movement and no sound over where Denver Holt and his men lay prone in the shadows. Frank tried the old trick of hurling a stone to draw gunfire. It didn’t work, and Jack Miggs hadn’t thought that it would.

  “They’re not greenhorns,” he growled at McCoy. “But if you really want to draw some fire and get ’em moving, jump up where they can see you and holler.”

  “You,” replied McCoy quietly, “can go plumb to hell.”

  “Be pretty lonesome down there with you up here,” said Miggs, and inched forward where he could see better.

  “That’s right,” McCoy said sarcastically, “play the hero and get a hole through your skull for the effort.”

  “I was getting sleepy back there,” retorted Miggs in the same vein. “Tell you what, Frank, they’ve got Brian, so in the end, it’ll occur to them to call out for us to quit or they’ll kill him, so I figure I’ll slip around behind them if I can and catch us a hostage, too.”

  McCoy brushed pine needles from one arm and nodded. “All right,” he agreed. “It might work, but watch out, Jack, that’s a blamed rough crew over there.”

  Miggs was crawling off when Red Morton pushed frantically forwa
rd and hissed at him: “Jack, don’t be a fool! They’ll get you sure.”

  Miggs looked back, said nothing, looked ahead, and continued on his way.

  “Stop him,” Red ranted at Frank. “They’re all fired up over there. They’ll see him sure.”

  “Might smell him,” opined Frank, lying relaxed, “but they’ll never see him, boy. Just you get back down now and quit sweating.”

  Something moved within McCoy’s yonder sight. In a twinkling he had his rifle snugged back. He fired, ducked down, and hastily wiggled clear of the place he’d fired from. At once a blast of gunfire came back, cutting low limbs and striking tree trunks with solid, ripping sounds.

  Red Morton and Lex Murphy hugged the ground until this gun thunder subsided, then cautiously looked up.

  Frank McCoy was no longer in sight.

  “Damn it,” breathed Red Morton, agitated, “those two fools have went and left us alone out here.”

  Murphy considered, rose up, and began crawling along after McCoy. Once he turned to jerk his head at Red, and Morton began scuttling southward deeper into the trees, also.

  They came upon Frank, standing like stone beside a tree. McCoy wagged his head at them. “If you’re coming with me,” he grunted, “take off those damned spurs.”

  The three of them went along again when both riders had shed their spurs. Frank led, and he was not only silent and wraithlike in his movements, he was also difficult to emulate, because he moved in fits and starts, with long, listening, watching pauses in between.

  After a while, though, McCoy jutted with his chin, saying only one very quiet word: “Yonder.”

  It took a while for the cowboys to see anything ahead at all, but they ultimately sighted blurred movement where Jack Miggs was closing in upon the place Holt’s men were firing from. Their attention, though, was abruptly diverted by a sharp, alarmed curse from Frank McCoy.

  The older man flicked his head, meaning for both riders to duck out of sight. They both obeyed instantly, although neither of them saw any reason to do so, not at once anyway. Not until Frank faded out, too, crept up, and put his lips close to whisper: “Someone’s coming this way behind Jack. Didn’t either of ’em see the other.”