Getting to the river, of course, was the problem.
The rifle shot slapped out across the slope and echoed around the peaks, beginning to die away before the bullet zipped into the snow a yard to Cato’s left. With snow to his waist, he twisted his upper body, Manstopper in hand, holding to the sagging senator with his left hand, looking back and up the slope.
“Hell!” he spat out. “Duane’s bunch!”
Jonas Locke lifted his weary head and had a blurred impression of the riders coming down through the trees, the tall man out in front obviously Wolf Duane. He had a rifle in his hands and he threw it to his shoulder, took his time about sighting and squeezed off a second shot. It was no closer than the first and Cato figured it was the movement of the horse and the steepness of the descent that had thrown out his aim. But it wouldn’t be like that always: a few minutes more, when his mount reached the narrow, level ledge, and Duane would be able to concentrate more on his shooting. The other riders sent a scattered volley at them and the lead plunked and zipped into the snow at varying distances from them.
“We’re in trouble, Senator, no use sayin’ different!” Cato grated, lunging forward against the weight of the snow.
“Leave me, John,” Locke said, pulling back against Cato’s urging grip.
The Enforcer merely tightened his grip and heaved. “Don’t gimme any argument! Longer we stay here, better targets we’re gonna make!”
The senator could see the wisdom of that and also knew it was dangerous to put up any kind of a struggle or argument out here with the whiteness all around them. He moved his aching, numbed legs, struggling as well as he could through the drift, giving Cato as much help as he was able. Cato leaned into the loose snow, baring his teeth as he heaved, watching Duane and his men sliding and zigzagging down the slope to the level grade of the ledge. They paused there to throw their guns up and this time the bullets were close enough to splash them with snow.
Cato held his fire: he didn’t have the bullets to spare, trying for a lucky shot at this distance. He strained and heaved and dug in with his boots, feeling himself sinking down even deeper at one stage so that the snow level crept up his chest. He knew if he went much deeper he would never be able to struggle out and Duane could pick him off at his leisure, using his head as a target until it burst apart like an exploding melon.
But Duane was too impatient for snap-shooting from the ledge. He mounted up and yelled at his men to follow him as he spurred his horse forward into the drift. For the first few yards it was fine, the animals plunging through snow that only came halfway up their forelegs. But abruptly the drift deepened and in an instant the riders were fighting wild-eyed, whinnying horses as the snow came up to their chests and they floundered and reared, trying to get hoofs free enough to move forward. The snow churned up and flew in all directions and the riders were too busy fighting their mounts to keep shooting at the fugitives.
But they were slowly making progress, lunging forward by degrees, covering more ground than the two struggling men on foot. The distance began to close and Duane held his fire. There was no need to shoot now. Soon he and his men would overtake Cato and the senator and they could ride them under or shoot them at their leisure.
Cato made a mighty effort, heaved and struggled on, Locke helping where he could, trying to let his body slide across the surface rather than trying to walk in the deep holes made by Cato’s passage. It was slightly easier that way, though he presented a bigger target to Duane’s men. But they were still using all their efforts to force their mounts across the drift, confident that they would overtake the fugitives before they were clear.
Abruptly, the drift began to shelve and Cato felt solid rock beneath his boots. He slipped at first and plowed his face under, but then he got a grip and his legs strained as he heaved the senator after him and he came up out of the snow to midway between knees and thighs. He hoped it wasn’t just an isolated rock, but his next step took him even higher and he figured they might have a chance yet.
Duane saw him and his face sobered as he threw up his rifle and fired, but it was a wild, wide shot and the bullet went well clear of its mark. Cato checked, panting, fighting to control his breathing, and laid his gun barrel across his raised left forearm. Now it was the riders who made the big, easy targets out there in the drift, floundering. Cato’s gun bucked and roared and the man beside Duane spun out of the saddle, sobbing as he clawed at his shoulder. Cato fired again and Duane’s mount reared, pawing the air frantically as it threw its rider, blood spurting from its head. It crashed down with a great fountain of snow and Duane only just managed to roll aside, losing his grip on his rifle as he did so. He floundered around, trying to get to his feet and, at the same time, catch the flying reins of the wounded man’s horse. The others tried to turn and scatter but the snow held them back and Cato picked off another man, putting his lead through the man’s spine. Guns crashed from the other riders but they were wild shots, fired as they fought to get their horses around and out of the line of fire. Cato picked off another mount and then ceased fire. There was chaos and confusion out there and Duane was floundering around, yelling and cussing, trying to get a mount, weaponless, for his Colt was under the flap of his heavy fur jacket and he was unable to reach it with snow almost up to his armpits.
While the confusion reigned in the drift, Cato got Locke to his feet and they staggered towards the edge of the drop off, hoping it would not be too steep. The snow was only to mid-calf here and, though they fell a couple of times, they made pretty good time. Then they reached the edge and Cato’s heart sank.
It was a sheer drop down into the river valley, all of five hundred feet to the first slope and then it angled down another five hundred before reaching the line of dark green tall timber that hid the river. Panting, freezing, shivering, he closed his eyes momentarily as they stood knee deep in snow. Below, about fifty feet down a steeply-angled slope, almost vertical, was a narrow ledge. It was the only break in the sheer drop. Behind them, Duane and his men were getting organized again.
“Looks like this is it, Senator,” Cato said grimly. “I’ll take as many of them with us as I can, but don’t fool yourself that I’ll make every bullet count. My hand just ain’t that steady.”
Locke nodded, and sagged to his knees, too spent to speak.
Cato looked behind. Duane was mounted again and his face was savage as he led the remainder of his men across the drift. They would be out of it and well within shooting range in a few minutes.
Cato turned to face them fully, moving his boots around in the snow to find solid footing, helping the senator crawl behind him. There was no rock or deadfall he could use as shelter. He would just have to go down fighting here on the edge of eternity and try to take as many of Duane’s men with him as possible. If he wasn’t hit by the time he ran out of cartridges.
Suddenly the world fell out from beneath him as his boots broke clear through the snow and into thin air. It was so abrupt and unexpected that Cato had no time to get his balance. His arms flew upwards and he yelled as he felt the senator claw at him and then they were both falling through the icy Sierra air into the ravine, snow cascading over the edge after them.
Eight – Lumber Camp
The river was jammed with a tangle of logs. Water had backed up for half a mile and was rising, had broken the banks in some parts and was snaking across the flats and around the roots of the tall timber either side of the Lavaca.
The mill had been built just around a wide, sweeping bend where the water slowed its pace and the banks were flat and there were sandy gravel spits jutting out. Above this point, the river’s current was strong as it flowed down out of the Sierras, passed over several small waterfalls, one large set of rapids and two smaller ones. Then the water deepened as the river flowed through the ravine and the current raced between the thick timber lining the banks. It was a simple matter for lumberjacks to fell the trees here, lop the branches, saw the most useable sections out and then roll
them down to splash into the river. A little effort with poles to get out into the main current and the timber was soon snatched away by the racing water and borne downstream to where the mill waited beyond the wide bend, several miles away.
As the timber was worked back away from the banks and up the slopes of the mountain, a log race would need to be built, but, at this point in time, it was unnecessary as the lumberjacks were still working the immediate banks of the river. But something had gone wrong, as it occasionally did with waterways. The current was stronger than normal or silt had come down and made part of the river shallower than it should have been. In any case, vagaries of current had started throwing logs out of the main stream and catching them in the shallows. It was unnoticed at first and then they jutted out far enough to catch other logs until there was a jam built up. And word reached the felling site too late to prevent a hundred trimmed trees from being rolled down the bank into the main stream.
When they came rocketing downstream and around the bend they cannoned into the logs already jammed there and, for a while, the foreman had hoped their sheer weight might break it loose and enable the journey to the mill to be completed. Instead, the logs rammed in harder and harder, jamming tighter, piling up like a handful of giant matchsticks spilled from a vesta box. It was dangerous work freeing a log jam, even for these expert lumbermen who could walk spinning logs while they rolled cigarettes, without losing a grain of tobacco.
Likely there were only a half-dozen key logs holding the jam. If these could be prised free, it would release the others and allow them to complete their journey to the mill. The trouble was, the key jammers were usually underneath and a man risked his neck crawling in between those piled-up trees, trying to prise them loose with a crowbar. Once he had found them, he could lead a rope in and it was sometimes possible to yank them free and get the jam going again. Horses were used, or, if the mill was close enough, the steam-driven donkey engine that drove the saws and milling machinery.
If they couldn’t be freed in this manner, the only way left was to plant dynamite and blast the jam loose.
No self-respecting lumberman took this procedure lightly, and used it only as a last resort. Blasting destroyed timber, shattering many of the logs in the jam, sometimes all of them if a man was heavy-handed with the dynamite. A lumberman’s job was to fell and mill timber, not spread it all over the countryside in heaps of useless splinters, so blowing the jam was something he didn’t like to do.
But Morgan Cole, foreman of the newly-formed Colorado Sierra Lumber Company on the Lavaca River could see no other way with the present jam. It was one of the worst tangles he had seen since coming down from Canada and up there he had seen logs piled seventy feet high and stretching back upstream for nigh on a quarter-mile. This was a bad one for the size of the river and the location of the mill. If it could be freed by yanking the key jam-logs, there would be no problem. But, if he had to resort to blasting, he was worried about the buildings and machinery. The way these logs were interlocked and stacked by the surging current, jamming tighter every minute as they piled up against the barrier, they would take a large charge of dynamite to blow them. And no man could say with certainty where several tons of wood were going to land.
This was the problem that was bothering Cole when he saw the two riders coming up from the direction of the mill, and he cursed. The last thing he wanted now was trouble with the Diamond-D men! But, hold up ... There was a woman there. And, what’s more, she looked like an Indian girl.
He straightened, moving his half boots expertly on the slippery log out in midstream, shading his eyes, as he watched Yancey and Cindy ride out along the riverbank to where some of his men waited for him to make a decision.
Cole stood on the moving log, instinctively shifting his boots to keep steady balance, hands on hips, watching the riders talk with his men. Ripping out a curse, the foreman started back across the logs, motioning to the men on the jam with him to hold up while he saw what was going on on the bank. Expertly, Cole jumped from log to log until he was on the sandy spit and he strode swiftly towards Yancey and the Indian girl.
“What’s goin’ on?” he demanded tersely.
Yancey hipped in saddle and put his hard eyes on the big lumberjack. “Looking for sign of Wolf Duane and his crew,” Yancey told him.
Cole frowned. “Not around here. Who are you, anyway?”
“It’s a long story, but this ought to calm you down.” Yancey fumbled at the secret pocket behind his belt and took out his Commission papers signed by the Governor of Texas. He handed them to Cole and the big foreman squinted at them, lips moving as he slowly spelled out the words. He gave Yancey a sharp look as he handed them back then turned his gaze to the Indian girl.
“Ain’t you from the hotel?”
“She’s helping me right now,” Yancey told him. “Deane’s crew are chasin’ a couple of friends of mine, one of ’em’s wounded, maybe both by now. They were up on the Sierra and seems they might’ve had notions of getting to your lumber camp for protection.”
Cole’s jaw hardened. “Look, mister, I got me enough trouble of my own with Wolf Duane as it is without buyin’ into any more on behalf of some ranny he’s huntin’ down.”
“What’s that mean? You turned ’em away or you wouldn’t help ’em even if they did show?”
Cole flushed. “They ain’t been here. Now, I’m too goddamn busy to stand here fannin’ the breeze.” He gestured out to the river. “I’ve got a log jam to clear.”
Yancey looked at him hard. “Right. But if someone named Cato shows and I hear you threw him to the wolves, I’ll be back for you.”
Cole’s face flushed even deeper. “Never said I’d do that,” he muttered. “Just said I got enough troubles of my own. I hope your pard don’t show here, mister. But if he does, and Duane’s on his tail …” He shrugged. “I guess I’ll do what I can for him.”
“You better,” Yancey told him shortly. He gestured to the long base of the piled-up logs. “Gonna blow it?”
“Have to, looks like,” Cole sighed. “Knotted tighter’n an old maid’s knittin’ after the cat’s been at it. Gonna take a hell of a charge.”
“Why not several small ones?” Yancey asked.
Cole frowned, studying the logs. “Packed too tight.”
Yancey seemed dubious. “Saw one worse than that up in Canada. Foreman wanted one big charge, some old Frenchy quietly went out while he was gettin’ it ready, planted six small ones along the outside edge and blew it loose with hardly any timber destroyed.”
“Sure, it works. Sometimes. But not this time. Too much of a tangle underwater. Have to plant the charges too deep.”
“There’s an old British Navy trick for underwater charges. They set the dynamite or gunpowder in a keg, tack the fuse around the sides, light it, put on the lid and pour pitch or tar over it. Usually enough air in the keg for the fuse to burn all the way down.”
“Say, that sounds clever!” Cole said abruptly. “If I could get my dynamite planted deep enough, a couple small charges would jar ’em loose.”
“Have to anchor the kegs so they don’t bob up,” Yancey cautioned. “And it takes a bit of experimenting to get the right length of fuse. Too short and ...” He raised his eyes skywards, having no need for further description.
Cole nodded tightly. “Mister, you just might've given me the answer I want. You got no worries if your pard shows up here. Duane won’t get his hands on him.”
Yancey nodded and began to turn his mount aside but checked when he saw two men riding fast out of the timber, coming towards the mill. They waved and Cole waved back, frowning puzzledly as the men rode up and dismounted. One of them, big, bearded, slab-shouldered, came across, glancing curiously at Yancey and the Indian girl.
“What’s up, Jed?” Cole asked.
“Up-river, spottin’ the next stand of timber like you wanted, when we heard gunfire,” the man said. “Back in the ravine it sounded like, but turns out it was on
top of the cliffs. Two rannies fightin’ off a bunch that looked like Duane and his men. They fell over into the ravine.”
Yancey stiffened and Cole whistled, looking sideways at the big Enforcer. “Sorry, Bannerman. Sounds like your pard’s finished. It’s a thousand foot drop up there.”
“Aw, they didn’t come down all the way, Morg,” Jed continued. “Caught up on a ridge, fifty feet or so from the top. But looks like a ton of snow on ’em.”
“What about Duane and his bunch?” Yancey snapped.
Jed looked at him and shrugged. “They was just standin’ around the top lookin’ over. We vamoosed before they spotted us. We were in territory Duane claims is his range and Cole don’t want us to make any more trouble than we have to.”
“You figure they’re still alive on that ridge?”
Jed shrugged. “Lots of snow to cushion their fall, I reckon. But it'll be mighty cold.”
“Any way of getting up to it from the ravine?”
Cole and Jed both shook their heads slowly. “Dunno. That’s Duane’s neck of the woods. If there’s a way to get down there from the top or up from the bottom, he’ll know about it. But we don’t, Bannerman. Sorry.”
Yancey’s mouth tightened. “How do I get there from here?”
Cole pointed up-river. “Just follow the river for seven-eight miles. Jed, you show ’em. Get ’em started on the right trail, then get back here. We’re gonna blow this jam.”
Yancey nodded his thanks as Jed mounted again and he and the girl turned their horses and followed the big lumberjack back along the spit to the riverbank.
~*~
“I want to know if they’re still alive!” snapped Wolf Duane, the wind whipping his words away from his purple lips, squeezing tears that turned to ice almost immediately from his eyes.
Bannerman the Enforcer 11 Page 9