by Paul Lederer
The firing down the trail had abated except for an occasional seeking bullet. The Peebles men would be in no hurry to storm the mountain yet. They would wonder what had caused the snipers above them to quit firing, but not many of them would be willing to be the first man blindly to charge the slope. They would be discussing the situation, most of them urging caution since their own lives were at stake.
I heard the horses before I saw them and then my three companions on three tired-looking horses emerged from the forest to join me. Toby Trammel was smiling, but it was a uneasy expression.
‘You’d better light those fuses, Tom,’ he told me with more than a little nervousness. I nodded toward the gorge. Looking down I could no longer see the slender fuses, determine whether they were making their inexorable way toward the explosives, whether they had fizzled out or hit damp ground. Toby’s expression changed and he said, ‘Oh.’
His eyes reflected a memory of the last time we had set off a charge in these mountains, of the deafening explosion, the column of fire and smoke, the hailstorm of stones.
‘Then I guess we’d better get out of here,’ he said knowledgeably.
Perhaps Julia and George had believed we would remain where we were and watch for the result, but Toby had been through this before and he knew what was to come – what I hoped was to come. I nodded to Tony, swung into the saddle of the gray and said:
‘Higher up, then west, away from the blast. We’re better off among the trees.’
‘What if it doesn’t work?’ George asked with understandable unease.
‘We keep riding,’ was all I could tell him. Truthfully I had no secondary plan, and now the realization seemed to come over all of them that if the dam did not go, we were lost.
I nudged my gray forward, further up along the old Indian trail. I did not know where it led; I had never ridden this high along it before. It led away, however, and away was what we needed just now.
I kept checking my mental clock as we wound through the tall pines, hardly disturbing the chattering gray squirrels who bounced along from bough to bough. Toby and George looked frankly frightened. I couldn’t blame them. I felt as if we were riding along the rim of a volcano, waiting to see what would happen next.
We came upon an overlook about an acre wide where I could see back across the lake toward the dam. There I reined in, wiped my brow and told the others, ‘You three go on ahead now. I want to see what happens. If worse comes to worst I’ll remain here to hold Peebles’s crew off as long as I can.’
George was hesitant. ‘Tom, we can’t abandon you. Besides, I’d like to see what happens too.’
‘No you wouldn’t,’ Toby Trammel, who had seen one of my efforts before, said quietly.
‘It’s no good that way, George,’ I told him. ‘If it works, it does; if not I’ll buy as much time for you three as I can.’
‘I’m not going,’ Julia said defiantly, and she swung down from her pony to look up at me, hands on hips.
‘Yes you are!’ I said, swearing under my breath.
‘You are a bossy man, Tom Quinn!’ she said with patient strength, ‘I hope you’re not going to be like this down the years.’
I had no answer for her. I spoke angrily to Toby and George although I had no reason to be angry with them. ‘Hit the trail, boys. You’ll find out soon enough what’s happened.’
Toby nodded, tightened his mouth and turned his hammerhead roan forward to follow the trail. After a doubtful moment, George followed, looking back at his sister. I was down from my gray’s back, my rifle in my hand. I walked near to the rim of the gorge where the wind lifted, flattened my shirt against my chest and tugged at my hair. I only glanced at Julia. I was angry with her, too. Again I was not sure exactly why. I only knew I did not want any harm to come to the little redheaded girl.
She eased up beside me, not touching me although it seemed as if she was. High clouds, so sheer as to be nearly invisible slipped past and traveled across the lake’s expanse, barely shadowing it. The sun struck sparks on the water.
‘Tom,’ Julia said hesitantly. Now she did touch my arm with her hand. I had been listening intently and now I heard the familiar crumping sound I had been hoping for, fearing. I grabbed Julia roughly and half-dragged her behind the shelter of a small group of granite boulders. With astonishment she looked up at me as I threw her down onto the cold earth. ‘What …?’
I didn’t have to answer. The first small rumble was a familiar sound to me. The detonators had caught spark. I didn’t have the time to explain matters to Julia, for the second, vastly more violent explosion followed upon its heels and, nearly simultaneously, third. Both of my charges had caught.
The explosions were ear-shattering. The dark earth beneath us trembled. We were far from the blast site, but still small stones carried our way on a plume of red-streaked gray smoke and rained down, pelting us like spent musket-balls. Julia’s courage had not flagged, but she wore an expression of incredulity.
‘I didn’t know,’ she gasped. ‘I’ve never heard anything like that.’
I listened, understood, but didn’t take the time to respond. The explosion was all very fine, but had it served its purpose? I rose, leaving Julia behind and strode to the canyon rim. I could see the lake waters quivering slightly, like an uncertain beast. Still the fallen Sentinels held. I felt crushed and impotent. That had been my best shot, and it had failed.
‘Tom,’ Julia said, pointing below us. ‘Look at the far side of the dam!’
I did and saw what she had indicated. A trickle of water, a freshet, had begun to flow over that end of the dam, like a living creature trying to find its way. Then, almost with warning, the ancient stone of the fallen Sentinels broke free, crumbled and crashed into the canyon and the lake waters broke free.
The waters surged, coursed and gathered momentum and the entire top of the dam broke open. The water frothed, turning white in its fall, changing in a few moments from a waterfall to deep rapids to a flood of Biblical proportions, a churning, boiling wall of water thirty feet high or more, funneling through the Cleft toward the wide valley below like a vengeful uncaged beast.
Julia had slipped her arms around my waist as I stood watching the havoc I had unleashed, rifle still dangling in my hand, the wind coldly calm, the lake slowly diminishing as the water below us flooded southward.
‘Well, Tom,’ she said, ‘you did it.’ Her eyes were thoughtful as she watched the raging river in the gorge. ‘Still,’ she told me, ‘I can’t help thinking about those men down there. All dead now.’
‘I think about them, too, Julia. But there was no other way to stop them, and,’ I pointed out, ‘the only reason they had for being in the path of the flood was that they had taken gold from a criminal to ride us down and do away with us. If they had done their job, I do not think that any of them would be sitting around a camp-fire, regretting the taking of our lives. They would consider it a job well done and continue with their next murder.’
‘And you, Tom?’ Julia asked, looking up at me, holding me closer.
‘I’ll continue to think of them for a long time, but it won’t be with regret.’
‘Tom,’ she said, leaning her cheek against my chest, ‘can we go home now?’
Home. The word had a strange, comforting sound to it. I hadn’t ever had a real home, even when I had returned to Stratton Valley I hadn’t felt as if I was coming home. But with Julia.…
With Julia.
I heard the horsemen approaching and spun that way, Julia still clinging to me. It was George and Toby Trammel riding in. Toby was grinning, even the morose George Holt had a smile on his face.
‘I knew you could do it, Tom!’ Toby said with wild exuberance. ‘We were about a mile up the trail when it went up, and …’ He looked at me, at Julia who was at my side, her arms tightly around me, her head on my shoulder and he shrugged. ‘Well, I guess we can talk about that later. George and I probably should ride along now to check up on the house.’
/> I nodded agreement.
‘I’d appreciate it, boys.’
I placed my rifle on the ground, watched as the two men started down the trail again, then turned Julia to face me. ‘It seems we have some things to talk about later, too.’
‘It seems,’ she agreed, turning her face up to mine. The man behind me said in a slow drawl.
‘I want to talk, too, Quinn. But I mean to do my talking now.’
The gunfighter, Kit Stacy, stepped from the forest verge, his hand on the butt of his holstered Colt.
TEN
Gently, but firmly, I nudged Julia away. The gunfighter advanced, his smile thin and set. He wore his buckskin shirt and pants and, incongruously, the ruffled white shirt he had sported at the fancy ball at Peebles’s mansion. His face was streaked with dirt, savagely scratched on one cheek. His long blond hair, so carefully brushed the last time I had seen him, fell in lank disarray across his head and shoulders. There was no anger in his eyes, only cool determination.
‘Caught up with me, did you?’ I asked.
‘Nothing to it,’ Kit Stacy said, his eyes flickering from point to point, assuring himself that there was no one else around. ‘You weren’t trying to hide. I left the main body of men dithering and balking. I work alone, you see. It took a while, but I came up the far side of the ridge away from all the rifle fire.’
‘It’s all over now, Stacy. What’s it to you what happens from here out?’
‘I got paid for a job,’ the gunman said as the wind twisted his straggly hair and the river roared through the gorge below us. ‘It’s bad for my reputation if I don’t follow through on a contract.’
‘Is that all there is to it?’ I asked, watching from the corner of my eye as Julia edged away. The gunman nodded.
‘That’s all there is to it. If I don’t complete my contracts, I don’t get hired again. People want to know that I can be counted on to finish what I start.’
There was no sense in talking further with the man; I could see it in his eyes. He wanted to gun me down – one more small chore – and be on his way to his next job. He shifted just slightly, repositioning himself. I knew what he was doing. Turning sideways in a duelist’s stance to offer a slimmer silhouette. I saw that, recognized it for what it was and also knew that it meant he was ready to draw down on me. There was slight movement of his hand, the tiniest of twitches and it happened.
‘I’ve got you in my sights!’ Julia cried out although she had no gun. I saw Kit Stacy hesitate slightly, glance toward Julia and draw at the same time.
It was enough a distraction, enough of an edge. I could never have matched the hired killer in speed, but the hesitation had broken his focus and when he brought his gun up I, although a split second slower, was able to fire first. At that distance, gunfighter or not, I could not miss and my .44 drilled Kit Stacy through the center of his body, sending him staggering, sprawling backward, his revolver discharging twice into the ground.
Panting, I approached his still form, my own Colt cocked and ready, but he did not move. His eyes were open to the long skies. Kit Stacy would not make it to his next job.
Julia came to me and hugged me tightly. She was shivering and so was I. It might have been the cold, the residual excitement or something far deeper, indefinable. I heard horses pounding up the trail and raised my revolver again, but it was George and Toby Trammel who burst from the woods, their ponies at a dead run.
‘Tom! We heard …’ Toby began. Then he saw the still, dead form of Kit Stacy against the cold dark earth and simply added. ‘Oh.’
‘Now, Tom?’ Julia asked. ‘Now can we please go home?’
A week later a sad-eyed deputy US marshal with a long, drooping mustache named Connor showed up at the ranch. He told us that he had three other men gathering up the rowdies and giving them a chance to drift or go to jail. Most chose to drift. With Peebles now gone there was no way for them to make a dishonest living in Stratton.
A new election was to be held within three weeks. The mayor had slipped away into the distances. An old warrant had been found for Judge Manx who in fact was not a judge at all, but a veteran con-man. He was being transported to Denver to stand trial for a variety of misdemeanors.
I had signed over a hundred acres of land to George Holt and Toby Trammel as I’d promised them, and they were busy trying to throw up a log cabin before winter set in. After a long discussion, they had invited Barney Weber to join them on their spread. The three intended to run cattle and had purchased a starter herd from Peebles’s estate.
The bulk of the steers had been inherited by Shelley Peebles’s widow, Mary Ford Peebles, along with the mansion in town.
Our own plan was to raise horses in the long meadow. Julia had suggested it first and I had agreed. With the town growing again, with new settlers arriving almost daily, there would be a market for horses as well as beef.
We stood now at dusk on the broad porch of the stone house, our arms around each other’s waists, watching the fiery play of sunset against the snowy mountains and gathering storm clouds. It was going to rain this time; probably it would snow. We heard the distant boom of rolling thunder in the high passes and went inside where the fire glowed brightly in the hearth.
We had nothing to fear from the coming storm.
About the Author
Paul Lederer spent much of his childhood and young adult life in Texas. He worked for years in Asia and the Middle East for a military intelligence arm. Under his own name, he is best known for Tecumseh and the Indian Heritage Series, which focuses on American Indian life. He believes that the finest Westerns reflect ordinary people caught in unusual and dangerous circumstances, trying their best to act with honor.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2007 by Owen G. Irons
Cover design by Michel Vrana
ISBN: 978-1-4804-8788-8
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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