Suddenly Slade jumped a foot as a raucous bray burst from the thicket above. He whirled about, gun in hand, but the thicket produced nothing more. With a last look around he scrambled up the slope, pushed the growth aside and found himself in a small grass grown clearing that was hidden from the trail below. A tiny spring bubbled from under a rock and beside the spring were the ashes of a fire, some tumbled blankets, a bucket and a skillet and a store of staple provisions. Nearby a haltered mule surveyed him amiably.
Slade stared at the mule and abruptly recalled Bob Kent’s remark that Blaine Richardson and his two drillers had a pack mule with them when they headed for the desert the day before and that Richardson returned minus the drillers and the mule. He wondered could this possibly be the same mule, and were the dead men farther down the slope the drillers in question. He hadn’t forgotten that it was one of Richardson’s hands, Nate Persinger, who had endeavored to kill him in the Black Gold saloon. Began to look like an interesting bit of coincidence, to say the least.
The significance of the mule and the provisions was now plainly apparent. The drygulchers had made a camp here in the thicket and preparations to hole up for quite a while if necessary. Doubtless they had reasoned that sooner or later he would be riding to town and had planned their campaign of murder accordingly.
“And if I’d happened to have ridden the Chihuahua this morning instead of over to the east, I’d have very likely gotten it,” he muttered. “Patient and persevering sidewinders! But maybe somebody slipped a little this time; we’ll try and find out.”
He loosed the mule and led the docile creature down to the trail. He had no trouble catching the two well-trained horses that were cropping grass nearby. Before securing the bodies to the saddles he examined the dead men’s pockets with care and was rather surprised to find no trace of oily grit in the linings. Doubtless, however, the pair had changed clothes before starting on their drygulching expedition. Mounting Shadow and leading the burdened horses and the mule he headed back to town.
A crowd quickly gathered, following at a discreet distance, as the grisly procession clicked down the main street of Weirton. Just as Slade reached Deputy Hawkins’ office, Bob Kent came running up, volleying questions. The deputy, aroused by the tumult, stepped from the office to add his queries to the oilman’s.
“Tell you about it later,” Slade returned briefly. He unloaded the bodies and placed them on the ground.
“Ever see these jiggers before, Bob?” he asked expectantly.
Kent looked blank and shook his head. “Never did, so far as I can recall,” he replied.
Slade’s eyes narrowed a little; his lips tightened. It appeared his nicely built up theory was neatly scrambled.
Deputy Hawkins was peering at the dead faces. “I’ve seen this short one before,” he exclaimed. “He used to ride in from somewhere every now and then and loaf around the saloons. Never seemed to have anything to do but always had plenty of money to spend. I didn’t like his looks and kept an eye on him, but he always behaved himself. Don’t think I ever talked with him.”
Slade nodded but did not otherwise comment.
“Won’t you please tell us what this is all about?” the deputy begged.
Slade told them, in terse sentences. Hawkins swore with feeling as the tale progressed.
“The snake-blooded hellions!” he stormed. “They were out to even for that widelooping chore you busted up for them, eh? You did a good chore, Slade, a dang good chore. Wish you’d done for a dozen like them. We’ll hold an inquest tomorrow. Drop around if you’re a mind to, but don’t go to any extra trouble. The law can stretch a point where such scum is being set on; there won’t be any trouble about a verdict.”
Slade had one more card to play. “Bob,” he said to the oilman, “you should know where the livery stables are located. I’d like to try and get the lowdown on this mule. The horses don’t mean anything, but the mule might.”
“Sure I know where they are, there are only three,” Kent replied. “Come along, I’ll show you.”
The first stable they visited was barren of results, the keeper hadn’t stalled a mule in a month, but at the second the owner wrinkled his brows as he inspected the long-eared animal.
“Mules all look alike,” he said, “but I’ve a notion I’ve had that critter here. I think it is the one brought in by a couple of fellers day before yesterday, a tall feller and a short one. They put it up with their horses and yesterday they took it out again. Nope, I don’t know where they went with it; I didn’t pay any attention to them after they left.”
“Well, put it up again and keep it till Deputy Hawkins calls for it,” Slade told him.
“And that’s that,” he remarked to Kent as they left the stable. “Let’s go get something to eat.”
From force of habit, Kent led the way to the Black Gold. The news of the drygulching had evidently gotten around and Slade was the target for many stares when they entered the saloon. Wade Ballard came over to the table, smiling as usual.
“Well, Slade, you seem to have been seeing plenty of action since you coiled your twine here,” he observed. “And now it would appear you are the recipient of attention from the outlaw fraternity. I’d say you’re able to hold your own, but don’t underestimate ‘em; those hellions are bad, plumb cultus. You’ll do well to keep your eyes skun. I’ll send over drinks.”
“Wade is quite a feller,” Bob Kent remarked.
“An unusual character,” Slade replied as his eyes followed the saloonkeeper across the room.
After eating, Slade resumed his interrupted ride to the Walking M ranchhouse in no very affable frame of mind. What had appeared to be a promising lead had petered out. Either his conclusions had been erroneous or he had been nicely outsmarted; he wasn’t sure which. If Richardson or someone of his outfit had engineered the deal, they had covered up beautifully. Doubtless right now the two drillers were down by the well Richardson was sinking in the desert. Perhaps the mule was the same Bob Kent saw the drillers leading out of town, but then again perhaps it wasn’t. And if it was, the drillers could have later delivered the provision laden animal to the drygulchers. He wished that he had thought to ask Kent to describe the two drillers. One of them might have been tall, the other short. All conjecture, of course, but it appeared that at the moment conjecture was about all he had to go on.
Of course Deputy Hawkins might be right in his surmise that the drygulching was in retaliation for his frustration of the widelooping. But Slade didn’t think so. It had displayed the same careful planning that characterized the attempt on his life in the Black Gold. The similarity of pattern was a bit too striking to write off as just coincidence.
What puzzled Slade most was the apparent anomaly that was Blaine Richardson. Unless his estimate of the man was surprisingly inaccurate, Richardson was just not the type to originate and put into practice such subtle and devious schemes. Slade felt that his methods would be much more likely to parallel those he attributed to old Tom Mawson: they would be direct and in line with the man’s undoubted impulsiveness. He began to wonder if Richardson might be much more crafty than showed on the surface.
Wade Ballard also puzzled Slade more than a little. Ballard appeared to make a studied effort to pass as a rough, almost uncouth westerner of little education or culture. But in moments of abstraction his use of words was a bit surprising. Slade hadn’t forgotten his comment at the burning well: “… and the corollary is that the fire could be extinguished with an arrow.”
The use of the words corollary and extinguished appeared definitely at variance with the character the man assumed. Slade was developing an uneasy feeling that Ballard might well be mixed up in the baffling affair in one way or another. But how, where or why he had not the slightest notion.
He had also not forgotten that it was Ballard, according to Bob Kent’s version of the matter, who had relayed to the oilman the agreement of the engineer from the Spindletop oil field with Richardson’s theory that
the desert had once been the real bed of the inland sea. Either the engineer, if he was an engineer as he claimed to be, had deliberately lied, or Ballard had passed on to Kent a perverted version of what he had said. Slade swore wearily and settled himself in the saddle for the long ride home.
TWELVE
THE SHIPPING HERD got underway on schedule. “The Turkey Track leads the way,” Tom Mawson told Slade. “Then comes Tol Releford’s Bradded R, and we bring up the rear. We figure to hold them about a quarter mile apart and we use separate bedding grounds to keep the danged critters from mixing up. Plenty of good spots and always water. Horse Creek runs close to the trail almost the whole way.”
No one rode immediately in front of the marching cattle, but off to the side and near the head rode the point men whose duty it was to veer the herd when a change of direction was desired. To this chore Slade assigned four men, two on each side. This was double the usual number assigned to the chore, but Slade was taking no chances. They paced their horses about a third of the way back from the head of the column. Another third of the way back rode the swing men, where the column would begin to bend in case of a change of direction. These were also doubled. Still another third of the way back were flank riders. These assisted the swing riders in blocking any tendency on the part of the cows to sideways wandering, and in driving off any foreign cattle that might seek to join the herd. A triple force of drag riders brought up the rear, swearing at the dust, the heat and the stragglers. Next came the remuda of spare horses in charge of a wrangler and the lumbering chuck wagon driven by the cook. As an added precaution against a possible raid, Slade had outriders fanning out from the herd and inspecting the country ahead.
Usually the trail boss rides far ahead to survey the ground and search out watering-places and good grazing grounds for the bedding down at night, but under the circumstances with the bedding grounds decided on in advance, this was not necessary and Slade mostly rode drag with the main body of his men. At times, however, he rode along the herd or even detoured to get in front of the column and study the terrain over which they had to pass.
The first day Slade shoved the herd along fast to get them off their home range where they evinced greater tendency to stray and covered a full twenty-five miles of distance. After the first day he reduced the speed to half, for to push the cattle too fast would mean to run valuable fat and weight off them. He figured on three days to cover the remaining slightly more than forty miles to McCarney.
Until the trail entered the hills north of the valley the going was good. Then the drive became slow and hard with steep slopes to breast and narrow stretches where the herd was strung out in almost single file with rugged slopes flinging up to the right and left.
Late afternoon of the third day they reached a point where the trail forked. Before starting the drive the owners had decided to take the left fork through Hanging Rock Canyon instead of the longer route by way of Horsehead Canyon.
“We’ll cut off nearly ten miles of driving that way,” Mawson explained to Slade. “We can’t use the short cut in wet weather or during the spring thaws. Hanging Rock is too danged dangerous then. Boulders come tumbling down, sometimes whole bunches of them, but this time of the year she’s safe enough even though she don’t look it.”
Early morning of the fourth day out the herd got underway with the expectancy of reaching McCarney before sunset. At the moment the trail wound through thick brush growing on either side at no great distance from the track and curtailing the view ahead. They had covered less than a mile when a tumult broke loose up front. The point men were shouting, the swing riders yelling questions. Slade and Mawson raced their horses along the moving column of cattle to find out what was going on. They reached a point near the head of the column where the brush fell away to form a clearing of some acres in extent, across which meandered a small stream.
The clearing was dotted with cattle charging back and forth in every direction, with cursing riders working like blazes to round them up and get them into herd. Near the trail stood a well blistered and still smoking chuck wagon, around which stamped a squat and corpulent gentleman who raised both clenched fists to the heavens and spouted appalling profanity. Slade recognized him as Tol Releford, the Bradded R owner.
“Tol, what in blazes happened?” shouted old Tom as they pulled up beside him.
Releford shook his fist at a lanky, elderly individual with a limp who was industriously dousing stray sparks with water.
“He did it!” he bellowed. “All cooks are crazy, but that frazzled end of a misspent life is the prime specimen of the lot!”
“Shut up, you hammered down hunk of tallow!” the limper squalled reply. “How the devil did I know the dang thing would do it? When I get back to Proctor I’m goin’ to shoot Bige Bixley for selling it to me!”
“Tol,” Mawson pleaded, “won’t you tell us what the devil’s the meaning of all this?”
Releford again shook his fist at the cook. “That spavined old pelican!” he sputtered. “He goes and buys one of those infernal new-fangled oil stoves to keep in the chuck wagon and warm up his rheumatism. This morning right after breakfast the dang thing blew up. Sounded like the sky was falling. It set fire to the chuck wagon and the canvas top shot flames into the air a couple of hundred feet. Scared the tails off the cows and they stampeded in every direction. They couldn’t run far, thank Pete, but they sure scattered to the devil and gone. Go ahead with your herd, Tom, we’ll be right on your heels soon as we Straighten out this mess.”
Shaking with laughter, Slade and Mawson rode on after their cows, leaving the irate Releford and the equally irate cook to settle their differences as best they could.
“Things like that have been going on between those two for the past forty years,” chuckled Mawson. “Tol’s a bachelor and so is Stiffy Cole, the cook. They love each other like brothers and they’re all the time fighting. Tol’s quite a hombre. His spread is one of the smallest in this section, but I’ve a notion he’s about as well heeled as anybody hereabouts. Reckon it wouldn’t make much difference to him if he never sold another cow, but he likes to keep moving.”
It was shortly before noon of the fourth day that the herd reached Hanging Rock Canyon.
“There she is,” said Mawson, gesturing to the mouth of the narrow gorge ahead. A few minutes later Slade let out a whistle.
“Good Lord! what a hole!” he exclaimed.
The trail, which was not very wide, necessitating the cattle stringing out in a long line, followed a bench that clung to the west wall of the canyon. From the bench a steep slope tumbled down to the floor of the canyon proper, through which ran a thread of water. On the east it was walled by beetling cliffs.
To the west the vista was appallingly different. It was a mighty slope absolutely destitute of growth, a gray, drab, million-faceted ascent of rocks, a mountain-side wearing down, weathering away, cracked into a myriad of pieces, every one of which had both smooth and sharp surfaces. It had the criss-cross appearance of a net of rock, numberless stones of numberless shapes pieced together by some colossal hand and now split and broken and ready to fall. Frost and heat and the beat of wind and rain had disintegrated the mountain-side till it hung in almost perpendicular splintered ruin, the heaps of broken stone clinging there as if by magic, every one of the endless heaps leaning ready to roll. From the innumerable facets the sun flashed back as from countless mirrors.
Slade glanced down at the canyon floor below. It was littered with talus, studded with boulders and fragments, some of them weighing tons. And above the slope towered dark and terrible and forbidding.
“See why it ain’t safe to go through here during wet weather or the thaws?” remarked old Tom as with the cowboys all bunched behind the drag they entered the canyon. “Them rocks are all the time tumbling down.”
“And some day the whole dang mess will slide down,” Slade predicted. “It’s a wonder it hasn’t done it before now.”
“Maybe,” conced
ed Mawson, “but it’s been like this ever since I can remember, and that goes back to close onto fifty years.”
The trail had a gentle upward slope to a crest at the north mouth of the gorge which was not very long, hardly more than a mile. The lead cows dipped over, the others followed. The drag reached the crest and the cowboys raced down the opposite sag where the country opened up to take their places along the marching column. Slade paused on the summit and gazed back at the frightful slope hanging poised over the trail. A few minutes later he saw the van of the Bradded R herd enter the canyon, then the hands riding bunched behind the moving cattle that trudged along stolidly under the upward sweeping wave of shattered stone. Slade’s eyes travelled up the flashing, concave surface.
From the rimrock, more than a thousand feet above, suddenly mushroomed a cloud of yellowish smoke. An instant later to Slade’s ears came a muffled boom. A huge section of the rimrock cliff leaned forward, slowly at first, then with swiftly accelerated speed. The mountain trembled to the crash of its fall.
Instantly the whole slope seemed to be in motion. Slade was deafened by a thundering roar that rolled and spread, a lifting and throwing of measureless sound punctuated by rattling crashes that boomed and echoed from battlement to battlement. A mighty cloud of dust boiled upward, thinning the sunlight, casting eerie shadows.
Under the billowing pall, Slade saw the Bradded R cowboys wheel their horses and flee madly with death bellowing at their heels. Rushing boulders struck the trail around, behind and in front of them and bounded off into the canyon depths, lending wings to the hoofs of the terrified horses. His palms sweating, his face rigid with strain, Slade saw them reach the distant canyon mouth and vanish.
So absorbed had he been in the cowhands’ race with death he had hardly noticed what happened to the doomed cattle, now buried beneath countless tons of stone.
The canyon was a seething caldron of dust through which the falling rocks boomed and screamed and rumbled. It billowed upward in fantastic shapes that seemed to toss and writhe in torment, shuddering to the loudening concussion of the avalanche, hiding the horror of the depths.
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