The Guns of Hanging Lake

by Short, Luke;

  Accordingly, Traf said, he himself would swing south, avoiding Bar B until he reached the southern boundary of Bar B holdings. He would then work north through these foothills and Benjy would work south. They would meet in three days’ time at Schultz’s abandoned sawmill, where the big timber of the Gabriels began.

  When Traf had finished talking, dawn had come. Benjy, without much enthusiasm, said, “I get it. When do we split?”

  “Right now,” Traf said. “Good hunting.”

  23

  It had been a busy week for Jim Fears at Reverse B’s canyon spread. Herd after herd of the Bar B cattle were driven through the notch in the canyon wall, their brands altered to Reverse B’s, and then they were turned loose to graze up the walled valley, to be picked up later. Not even one man could be spared now, but the cattle wouldn’t leave water.

  On the afternoon of the seventh day a new herd arrived and lined the banks of the Concho Creek to get their fill after the mountain drive. Fears was at the branding corral waiting to get to work on the new bunch when one of the riders who had brought the cattle in rode up to him and took a folded sheet of paper out of his pocket. “From the boss,” the rider said, and rode on.

  Fears unfolded the note and read:

  “Jim, stay where you are. You were right at Hanging Lake. Caskie isn’t buried there, he’s here. We got a crack at him last night but missed. Don’t come out till you hear we got him. Tom.”

  Fears swore, went over to his horse and mounted, and overtook the man who had given him the note.

  “Hold up, Harvey.” When the rider halted, Fears said, “What happened over there?”

  Harvey said, “A couple of jokers tried to rob the big house. Dickey had heard they would try and he told the boss. So the boss planted four of us in the house to wait for ’em. They come in and we thought we had ’em, but they fought their way out.”

  “What’s there except a lot of furniture?”

  “You tell me,” Harvey said.

  Fears pulled his horse around, and this time he headed back for the cabin beyond the bunkhouse, a quiet fury rising in him. Gore couldn’t do anything right. He’d missed Caskie at the mine, he had wrong-guessed about his being dead in the tunnel, and now he’d missed his try at him.

  For the last week Fears had felt safe and confident, but now he realized that it had only been a foolish dream, planted by Gore.

  Dismounting at the cabin, Fears tied his horse and went into the big room. He wanted to be alone, to calculate what Gore’s note meant to his future. He circled the big table slowly, remembering his last conversation with Gore, when he’d had to knuckle down to the Texan. That was a sorry enough thing, but this was even sorrier. Gore had had the chance to set him free and had muffed it.

  Had he muffed it on purpose, Fears wondered. With Caskie alive, Gore could use Caskie as an ever present threat to Fears. He could even by a whim cut down his percentage of the rustling take. Come to think of it, Gore could even decide Fears should work for nothing. As long as Gore was around, he thought bitterly, he’d be only a top hand working for him, and not a partner.

  Abruptly then, he stopped his pacing. Why keep Gore around, he thought. Since the death of the Bartholomew brothers, he, Jim Fears, in effect had bossed the crew. They would work for him to a man. He calculated the possibilities that lay before him. At least two-thirds of the stuff they could steal was here in the canyon. In another ten days the light snows that had already begun to fall would turn into heavy ones sealing off this side of the mountains. The beef they had already crossed over could be pushed down into the lower country to winter there. He had bossed this operation before while Gore took care of Braden.

  Now that Braden didn’t need taking care of, Gore was unnecessary to carrying out their scheme. So why not kill him, bury him anywhere, beat the snows back over the mountains, winter the beef, pay off the crew in beef, sell the herd, and leave the country with most of the money? It can be done, and I’ll do it, he thought.

  His mind made up, he went into the next room and made up his blanket roll. He led his horse over to the cook shack and filled his saddlebags with grub; then he mounted and rode back to the flats, where the watered cattle were being pushed toward the branding corral. Hunting out Harvey, he said simply, “Gore wants me. Don’t know when I’ll be back. You take over.” Without waiting for any comment, he put his horse in motion and started for the notch.

  In the day and a half’s ride, part of it through snow that still hung on from the last storm, he had plenty of time to plan. It was possible that a couple of hands would be at the Bar B, so he would have to toll Gore away from the bunkhouse and office. That wouldn’t be easy. He thought of several excuses to get him away, none of them good. For one thing, Gore would be mad as hell when he saw him. He’d probably order him to get back over the Gabriels right away.

  He was almost out of the timber on the eastern slope when the solution came to him. Harvey had said that Dickey had tipped Gore off that a couple of jokers were going to break in the big house, and that they had, but that they had shot their way out. What more natural than that these jokers should return later and shoot Gore in retaliation? He’d tried to get them killed, hadn’t he? Dickey would accept that.

  Fears loafed the rest of that day and arrived at Bar B not long after dark. Approaching from the north, but not coming in on the road, he saw the lamps were lit in both the bunkhouse and Gore’s office. He tied his horse securely in a piñon thicket, took his rifle from the scabbard, and made a half-circle, coming up on the other side of the office. Gore’s desk was between two windows, but from the south window Fears could look into the room and see the desk and all the chairs.

  He approached the office quietly, keeping out of the light cast from the bunkhouse window and the office window. He could hear men talking in the bunkhouse, but he could not hear what was being said. Edging toward the office window, he saw that the room was empty. Still, he was sure Gore was here, else why were the lamps lighted?

  Putting his back to the wall, he waited patiently. It was some minutes before he heard the bunkhouse door close, and then heard footsteps on the gravel. He waited another few seconds and then looked cautiously around the window frame into the room. There was Gore peeling off his jacket, standing by the chair beside his cot.

  Fears had never shot through a window before, but he reasoned that if he shot from an angle the glass might deflect the bullet. The thing to do was to shoot through the window so the bullet would hit the glass at right angles. He circled away from the window and halted just outside the oblong of light cast on the ground by the lamps inside. Now he was directly in front of Gore and the window.

  His carbine cocked and half raised, he waited to see what Gore would do. Obligingly, Gore stripped off his shirt, and then, facing the desk corner, he stretched his arms and yawned.

  Fears took sure aim, squeezed gently, and the gun exploded into the night. Gore fell backwards, both hands coming to his chest. By the great grunt of sound coming through the broken window on the heels of the hit, Fears knew that Gore was dead or dying.

  He backed out into the night and calmly made the same wide half-circle, looking over his shoulder as he walked. He saw two men lunge out of the office, silhoutted against the light from within. Each had a gun drawn, but they paused for a moment, as if not sure which way to turn.

  Fears untied his horse and led him for some yards, then he mounted and put him to a walk, heading for the Gabriels. Gore was dead, the herd was his.

  24

  On the evening of the third day of his scout, Traf came to the edge of the timber that looked down on Schultz’s abandoned sawmill where he was to meet Benjy. He had scarcely put his gray out into the open when he heard a whistle coming from the timber beyond the shack. It was getting dark when he had circled on the edge of the timber and found Benjy waiting. When Benjy saw him, he mounted, and rode up to him.

  “Let’s head for camp while we’ve still got some light, Traf,” Benjy
said.

  Traf nodded, and Benjy led off through the timber, Traf following. They were perhaps a mile above the old mill when Benjy turned into a narrow canyon and finally reined in. It was full dark now.

  “Well, another cold camp,” Traf observed.

  “No such thing,” Benjy said. “I quit a trail this morning and cut down for Schultz’s. I come to this canyon, and there’s kind of a cave here where the run-off cut into this soft rock. I threw some wood down—it ought to be close. Let me find it and start a fire.”

  “Dry camp?”

  “Nope. There’s pot holes ahead that’s still full from that last storm. As soon as we fill our canteens we’ll take the horses up.”

  Benjy dismounted and then in a minute his match flared. Traf could see the firewood strewn on the canyon floor. He unsaddled his gray and was unsaddling Benjy’s bay when the first faint light from the fire came from the canyon floor off to the left. Presently there was enough light for him to see the camp. The fire had been built in the sandy bay deep under an overhang of rock—as safe a place as a man could find, unless a cloudburst brought water down the canyon.

  Traf lugged the saddles and their blanket rolls up to the fire, then went back to the horses. He picked up the canteens and led the horses up the wash until he came to the pot holes Benjy had mentioned. After filling the canteens, he let the horses drink, and then led them back, tied, and grained them.

  When he came up to the fire, Benjy had their supper of bacon, pan bread, and coffee ready, and the two of them ate hungrily what he had prepared. Afterwards, they sprawled out, backs against the wall, feet to the fire.

  “Well, what sign did you pick up?” Traf asked.

  “Plenty of it. All the Bar B stuff is being pushed into the Gabriels, it looks like.” He paused. “What did you turn up?”

  Traf said, “This is one big hell of a steal, Benjy. From the tracks, little herds and big ones, it’s like a roundup for a trail drive.”

  “I know, and who’s to stop it? Who’s to see it, for that matter?”

  “What beats me is, where’s it all goin’?”

  “It’s headed for the Gabriels, at just the wrong time of year,” Benjy said.

  “You know that country across the Gabriels?”

  “No. I’ve hunted this slope. From what I hear, it’s tough to cross, and what’s on the other side ain’t worth it. Nothin’ but break after break. You know the country over there?”

  “Only what you know, but I’ve got a feelin’ we’ll be havin’ a look at it.”

  Benjy frowned as he looked at Traf. “Ain’t that something Vance or the sheriff in the other two counties should be doin’? Hell, you get a ways over there and it’s even out of state.”

  Traf tried to keep the impatience out of his voice as he said, “You think I give a damn, Benjy, where those cows wind up?”

  “If you do, you shouldn’t,” Benjy said dryly. “Braden’s family invented money, didn’t they? What’s a few thousand cows to them? They could blow it out their nose.”

  “You sound like Dickey.”

  “I feel like Dickey, like almost everybody in this country. So who’s Braden? And who’ll miss him—besides you?”

  The two men looked at each other, the old dislike plain in both their faces.

  “Why are you along, Benjy?”

  “You know damn well why I am,” Benjy said shortly. “Sophie told me to come.”

  “But you don’t think much of what we’re trying to do?”

  “No, and I don’t think we’ll do it.”

  “Want to drop out?”

  “No to that, too. I got my orders.”

  “Not from me.”

  “No, not from you,” Benjy said almost angrily.

  Traf said mildly, “If that’s the way you feel about it, Benjy, you can hold the horses.”

  “Damn you,” Benjy said quietly. “I’ll side you and fight with you, and it won’t be the first time I’ve done something I didn’t like.”

  “Good enough,” Traf said. He rose and went over to his saddle and got his blanket roll. Benjy went to his own blankets.

  Traf pulled off his boots, fixed the saddle for a pillow, and pulled his blankets over him. The dying fire cast flickering shadows on the slanting rock above it, and he thought then of this night’s conversation with Benjy.

  Benjy would side him, and he’d be a good man, Traf reflected. Still, the old wounds hadn’t healed. Benjy had hated him when he first started to court Sophie, a natural enough reaction for a rejected suitor. He had hated him even more when Traf broke up with Sophie. The only reason they hadn’t quarreled openly a dozen times these past couple of years was because of Sophie, Traf knew. Benjy would hate him always, because now again Traf was going to get the girl Benjy could never have.

  When they wakened the next morning, it was snowing; one of those late October, early November snows that seemingly come out of nowhere. The breakfast was a gloomy one, for both men were remembering last night’s near quarrel.

  When they had saddled up, Traf asked, “Think you can pick up that trail you were following yesterday?”

  “Sure, but it was just a small bunch. You found bigger sign, you said.”

  “If we take the main trails there’s a chance we might meet someone. Besides, little or big, they’ll all wind up in the same place, won’t they?”

  “If you say so,” Benjy said stiffly.

  “Then lead off,” Traf said.

  A twenty-minute climb with Benjy in the lead and they came to the trail. Benjy reined in, and when Traf came alongside him Benjy said, “It’s all yours.”

  In the thick timber the snow was hardly noticeable, but in the open spots it was beginning to build up. When the trail Traf was following joined another and then another, he came to a decision. He would leave the trail, because it was too dangerous. They could parallel the trail half a mile away from it in the screening timber, returning occasionally to check the course of the main trail.

  Traf knew what he was looking for, but he did not know where it was likely to be. Somewhere this side of the Gabriels’ peaks there had to be a holding and grazing area for the cattle. When, in late afternoon, he saw a wide expanse of snow ahead of him, he signaled Benjy to halt, then dismounted and moved afoot to the edge of the timber. Ahead of him was a vast grassy park and he could make out through the falling snow clusters of cattle. Some of them were pawing the snow to get to the grass, while others lined the banks of a stream meandering through the park. Somewhere on the edge of the park there was bound to be a line shack, but the falling snow obscured it.

  It was beginning to get dark now, and when Traf returned to Benjy they agreed they would ride straight north away from the park until they found a suitable place to make a camp whose fire would be hidden.

  Their camp that night was far away from the park. When they wakened before daylight, the snow held on, but today there was a wind with it. They had decided last night before rolling in their blankets that the herd Traf had seen would probably be pushed across the mountains before heavy snows trapped it. It would be risky following the herd, and if they preceded it the tracks of their horses would give them away. Thus they had no choice but to find their own way across the Gabriels and pick up the trail of the cattle on the western slope.

  They spent the better part of that day above the timberline searching in a bitter, wind-driven snowstorm for a passage through the jumbled peaks. Time and again they were dead-ended in canyons whose walls were too steep to climb. It became a senseless game of trial and error, and yet there was no other way to find a crossing.

  At last, when it was late afternoon, Traf led the way into a narrow, snow-choked canyon which promised to pinch out, but didn’t, and they climbed out onto a gale-scoured boulder field that gradually tilted down. It was dark when they reached timberline and made camp, their horses exhausted and themselves so weary it was an effort even to make a fire, to eat, and then roll into their blankets.

  It stoppe
d snowing sometime in the night, and as they set out in the clear sun-bright morning, heading southwest, Traf guessed that in the open spaces there was about ten inches of snow.

  It was mid-morning when Traf came to a thicket of piñons that seemed too big to skirt. He put his horse into the thicket and, as he expected, got some snow from the branches down his neck. When he broke through the other side, he reined in, lifting a hand to brush the snow from the collar of his sheepskin. And then the movement of his arm was arrested by what he saw before him. He had come out on the very edge of a sheer, vertical cliff that overlooked a valley floor some five hundred feet below. The snow down there was only patchy, and Traf could see cattle grazing among the piñons in the snow-free spots.

  He and Benjy had their look, and then Traf lifted his arm and pointed to the east. “Looks as if it curves around up there, Benjy. We must’ve hit the head of a big valley.”

  “I’d sure like a look at the brand on them cows.”

  “You’ve got to get down there first.”

  “There’s got to be a way into it or them cattle wouldn’t be there. Their trail must be on the other side of the valley, because there’s no sign here that anything’s been drove through.”

  “And the way in will have to be at the lower end where these walls peter out.”

  They headed west in the timber along the rim, riding steadily. A lack of game trails and tracks heading for the rim told Traf the drop to the valley floor continued so sheer that animals wouldn’t attempt the descent.