by Peter Dawson
Someone in the crowd there spotted him and came up to take a tight hold on his arm, saying: “Look, Mike! God Amighty, look!”
The saloon man was looking. Several men with lanterns were standing down by the creek, two of them beyond it, and what the pale glow of the lanterns showed him made Clears swear softly in awe. A mass of boulders and rubble half choked the stream. Beyond, a torn heap of rubble slanted up sharply. Mike Clears’s imagining of what this was to look like hadn’t prepared him in any degree for the reality of it. There had been a narrow stretch of level ground across there, footing the road climbing to the cave. Now a steep mass of rock rubble slanted down from the rim face all the way to the creek. There was no trace of road, of bench, or cave mouth. A huge section of the lower rim had settled into the cañon bottom.
“Wasn’t your whiskey kept up there, Mike?” asked the man alongside now. “What do we do for drinks?”
“You drink up what’s inside here and then go dry.” As Clears spoke, he remembered the part he had to play and asked: “Anyone know how it happened?”
“No. But one of the boys says he heard a shotgun up there right before she cut loose.”
“A shotgun? Doesn’t make sense.”
“None of it does,” came the man’s answer.
Clears turned back up the steps to his office, suddenly worried with this added proof of something he hadn’t dared quite believe. There really had been a shotgun up there; his hearing hadn’t played tricks on him after all. And now the mystery of that gun was added to his misgivings over Gentry having survived the falling in of the rim.
Mike Clears went on through the office and into the nearly empty saloon, at once calling for whiskey. He downed one glass quickly, then another. And the apron who served him, observing this rarity, commented solemnly: “A close call, eh, boss?”
“Too close, Fred.”
Clears was standing with his back to the street, scarcely noticing the banging of the doors as the crowd began filling the place again. His thoughts were somber, indrawn. Suddenly they were rudely jarred by a voice close behind him saying: “I’ll have a word with you, Mike.”
Clears knew that voice. He turned with a studied slowness that nicely hid his surprise. He had to tilt his head to meet Caleb Ash’s cold glance. It made him say casually: “Sure, Caleb. Where’ll it be, here or in the office?”
“Back there.”
Ash’s words grated with suppressed fury and, with this added warning of something quite unexpected in prospect, Clears led the way on back along the bar. When he reached his office door he let Ash enter the room first.
He had barely closed the door when Ash was saying: “I saw him up there! Looked at him right over the barrels of my Greener. I think I got him.”
A sickening feeling of acute dread settled through Clears. And along with the unmistakable meaning behind Ash’s words came the sudden realization that Faith Tipton must be hearing them. His glance quickly lifted to the flue hole. Yet he was utterly poker-faced an instant later as he looked around at the scout to drawl: “You’ll have to speak plainer, Caleb. Should I know what you’re talking about?”
“You damned well should!” Ash blazed. “They say you’ve taken that girl in. You and Gentry did it for her!”
“Did what?” Clears asked the question only to cover his move to the desk. He eased down into the chair behind it.
“Tolled me up to the fort on that snipe hunt. Hauled my wagons out of the yard and up to your cave! All that rock didn’t bust loose on its own!”
Mike Clears sighed softly, knowing now that there was no possible way to keep Faith from hearing the whole story. “You’re right about the rock, Caleb. Those weak ledges were bound to fall someday. Should have blasted ’em down myself long ago. But what’s this other?”
Ash’s coarse face darkened in fury at the blandness of the question. “All right, damn you, play it dumb! But from now on watch yourself. Beginnin’ now, tonight, I’m hirin’ a crew to muck out that rock and get those wagons back. Just don’t get in my way!”
Mike Clears shook his head in a baffled way. Then, feeling of his vest pockets as though in search of a cigar, he looked down and lazily reached over to pull open the top drawer of his desk. He let his hand rest on the drawer’s edge.
His glance had been meek until now. But as it lifted to meet Ash’s once more his expression was startlingly cold and hard.
“Caleb,” he said tonelessly, “here’s some free advice. Never accuse a man of anything you can’t prove against him. Even if you can prove it, never toss it at him unless you’re set to back your play!”
His fingers lifted from the drawer’s edge. “There’s a gun here. You’re wearing one. Either go for yours or get out! Now!”
Ash’s massive frame drew straighter under the sting of those words. He stood stockstill, his eyes coming wider open. They shuttled down to the drawer, then back to Clears’s face. His right hand clawed slightly. For a long moment it looked as though that hand would slash up to the holster higher along his thigh.
But all at once his fingers relaxed. “We’ll save it for another day,” he said. “Anyway, I know now where you stand in this.”
“Get out, Caleb.”
The scout slowly turned to the door, arrogantly taking his time. Before he opened it, he glanced back to say: “We’ll keep an eye out for your friend while we dig that rock away.”
Clears said nothing, though the words cut him sharply. He watched Ash throw the door wide and step on out, leaving it open. He had leaned forward in the chair, about to get up and go across there, when a slighter, smaller figure came through the door.
Ben Qualls was the last person Mike Clears expected to see just now. The swamper evidently noticed his nervous manner, for, as he came on in, he said dryly: “Got you jumpy, too, has it? I was half a mile above when she cut loose. Must’ve sounded like the whole mountain comin’ in on you down here.”
“It did, Ben.” Clears slumped down in the chair again. Then, remembering, he added: “You’re back too soon. I told you to get everything you could.”
“Which is what I did. Could’ve been back sooner. But I waited to make sure of what they’re sayin’ about Gonah-Dokoh.”
Mike Clears was again remembering the chimney hole. But now he reasoned that Faith, having heard what Ash had said of Gentry, might just as well know what Ben Qualls was to say about him; this might even help ease the shock of the news Ash had brought.
So he asked: “What are they saying?”
“That Sour Eye’s dead. That a column from Fort Starke wiped out his band way south of here. They been smoke-talkin’ about it all afternoon.”
Clears’s worried expression eased a trifle. “Well, at least that’s a help. Do you believe it?”
Ben Qualls shrugged his bony shoulders. “They usually know things before we do. Sure I believe it.”
“What about the other, Ben? What I sent you down there for?”
The old swamper gave a spare smile, shaking his head in a wondering way. “Mike, you won’t believe it. Get yourself set for a jolt,” he began. And then he told the rest.
* * * * *
The slam of the office door below seemed to snap the tension holding Faith, and, a sudden weakness engulfing her, she reached out and steadied herself against the window’s sill. She had heard every word that passed between Qualls and Clears. Earlier, trying at first not to listen, then having to listen, she had heard enough of Ash’s booming talk to grasp the enormity of the news he was bringing Clears. Earlier still, lying in bed and nearly asleep, the rumbling roar of the rockslide had left her terrified and feeling very alone.
And now the dread certainty that Dan Gentry had died tonight, died while trying to help her, was insistently threatening to beat aside her stubborn hope that he had somehow survived. An overwhelming grief and fear engulfed her, and she buried her f
ace in her fisted hands, fighting to strengthen the conviction that in the beginning Ash hadn’t seemed too sure of himself. She was frantically groping for remembrance of something he had said shortly after entering the office, something she had laid there trying not to overhear.
In this moment there came the stark realization of how much Dan Gentry meant to her. Unaccountably, yet surely, he had somehow managed to buoy up her spirits today and make her look beyond the tragedy of yesterday and into the future with a new sense of wanting to face it. His calm, sure way of accepting his own misfortune had shown her how to face hers. Never in such a short space of time — in any length of time, for that matter — had she come to admire and respect a man so unreservedly as she did this one.
And now Dan Gentry was gone.
She had reached that low point in her jumbled thinking when the rebellion in her won out over the doubt. And now an abrupt impulse turned her from the window to the bed. She began hurriedly dressing, thinking back upon the afternoon, upon as much as Gentry and Clears had told her of their plans. They had been purposely vague, probably because they didn’t want her to worry. But one thing she did remember. Clears had said he was bringing a horse down to a shed along the alley after dark. “The last one down on the creek side,” was how he had put it. The animal would be saddled and carrying a bedroll and rifle.
Gentry was leaving, leaving for good, or so she had concluded. All the late afternoon and evening that fact had depressed her. She had supposed she would never see him again. Perhaps she never would, but she must know one way or the other if he still lived.
This morning, when he had come to get her at the fort, Clears had given her his rough wool overcoat to wear. She pulled that on over her dress now, softly opened the door at the head of the stairway, and looked down into the office. The lamp was on down there, but the room was quiet, certainly empty. As she started quickly down the stairway she dismissed any thought of sharing with Clears her slender hope that Gentry still lived; he would think it nothing but a womanly intuition, would probably forbid her going out into the night.
She stopped there on the steps as soon as she could look down into the room, wanting to make sure she was alone. A lazy ribbon of smoke from a cigar curled up across the desk lamp’s cone of light. The air was stale, smelling strongly of the cigar, and for a moment Faith experienced an overpowering feeling of physical and mental confinement. As she hurried down the stairway and then out the alley door, she had a sense of each step bringing her closer to a welcome release, closer to Dan Gentry.
Hesitating outside at the foot of the platform, she drew the coat more tightly about her, then turned down the alley. The air had a chill bite to it, and before she had gone ten steps through the alley’s mire she was feeling the dampness through her shoes and an icy grip about her ankles. But she was glad to be out there and alone with her thoughts. Had it not been for that disheartening doubt as to what the next few minutes were to bring, she would have been almost happy.
She was abreast a building some distance below the saloon when suddenly the opening of a door close by brought her to a startled stop. A rectangle of light abruptly lay across the alley directly ahead, and the sound of voices and the tinny beat of a piano coming from the building intruded upon the night’s peaceful stillness. A man wearing a flour-sacking apron stepped out the door to empty a bucket into the impenetrable shadows. He stood there, scanning the darkness, for a moment looking squarely at Faith. But then he turned and stepped back out of sight, and the door closed. And Faith hurried on, her momentary uneasiness quickly leaving her.
Now that her eyes were accustomed to the darkness, she could make out the vague shapes of buildings. Those to her left, streetward, presently became more widely spaced and then gave way to tents and a scattering of slab shacks. On the side of the creek she passed a barn, two smaller sheds. Beyond them she stopped, thinking that the last shed she had passed must be the one Clears had meant.
Then, far ahead, she made out the indistinct shape of another small building. She walked on to it. Approaching it, she experienced a heady anticipation as she plainly heard the muffled stomp of a horse inside. She hurried on to the shed and found the door on the far side. The hinges squealed loudly as she opened the door.
The pitch-blackness of the shed’s interior was so complete that it gave her a sense of walking into nothingness. She took two halting steps and stopped, wishing now that she had thought to bring along some sulphur matches. Suddenly she heard the horse moving close by; she spoke gently, and then stretched out a hand and moved in the direction of the animal. Her hand abruptly touched him, and he moved quickly away, and she spoke again, feeling of his shoulder, then his neck.
When the animal had quieted, she worked her hand slowly back from his neck until it touched the smooth and rounded swell of a saddle. Her heart quickened its beat as her hand groped to the saddle’s far side, her fingers brushing the stock of a rifle. She reached back and felt the shape of a bedroll and knew that this must be the roan.
But then her strong excitement over having found the animal at once subsided before a feeling of desperation and hopelessness. Gentry had had ample time to come back down and ride away. He hadn’t come. And now she was almost convinced that he would never be here.
Still, she wouldn’t give in to that conviction. Moving carefully away from the roan she shortly discovered beyond the stall several sacks of grain stacked in a corner. She kneeled there and took off her damp shoes. The welcome warmth of the floor’s thick cushion of dust soon took the iciness from her feet. And as a growing lassitude settled through her, she leaned back against the grain sacks. She was drowsy and for a time tried to keep from falling asleep. But all her senses seemed dulled by the suspense of this prolonged uncertainty, and presently her will to fight the tiredness weakened and she slept.
Much later she abruptly came wide-awake. For a moment she was bewildered, not knowing where she was. But then her searching glance picked out the door’s rectangle, the blackness there a shade paler than the absolute darkness about her, and she remembered. In that instant a man’s tall figure moved soundlessly in through the doorway.
Suddenly she knew who it must be, and a near ecstasy forced one thankful word from her in an involuntary, hushed outcry. “Dan.”
There was a moment’s weighty silence, an awesome one in which Faith was held rigid by a doubt that told her the high shape she had glimpsed might well be Caleb Ash’s, not Gentry’s. Then suddenly a slow-spoken drawl answered her out of the blackness.
“It’s past midnight, Faith. What are you doing here?” She quickly slipped on her shoes and stood up, a blissful happiness making her want to cry out. And as she started toward him, she softly said: “It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters but that you’re here, alive.”
“Shouldn’t I be alive?”
“Yes, yes! But Ash said you weren’t.”
Her voice trembled as she spoke and groped her way blindly toward him. The next moment she could see him again silhouetted against the door’s faint rectangle. She came in on him quickly and reached out to touch his arm, hungering for the physical proof of his really being there.
“So it was Ash after all?” Gentry drawled, laying a hand on hers. He laughed softly and with a genuine amusement, the sound of his merriment making her want to laugh with him in gladness and relief. “He thought he’d cashed me in?”
“Yes, killed you. And it was....” She hesitated, thinking she was betraying too much of her emotion. But then she added unashamedly, not caring that he should read her feelings: “It was horrible, thinking you were buried somewhere up there.”
His hand tightened reassuringly on hers. “Well, now you know how wrong he was. You’d better tell Mike, in case he’s wondering.”
“He must be. He quarreled with Ash, threatened him.”
“So?” There was an edge of cool, quick interest in Gentry’s tone. “And did Ash
back down?”
“I don’t know exactly what happened. I was up there in the room and only heard part of their talk. But Clears finally mentioned a gun and told Ash to get out.”
“And I’ll bet he got!”
Once again Gentry’s low laugh sounded across the shed’s dead silence, and Faith, intrigued by this carefree facet of his nature, experienced a moment of sharp regret at the realization that only minutes separated them from a parting that was probably to be forever.
He spoke again now, asking: “Ash knows where the wagons are?”
“Yes. And he’s hiring men to dig them out.”
“Let him. It’s going to cost a big handful of change. Let it be him instead of you.”
He took his hand from hers as she told him: “You did what you said you would, gave me the time I need. But if I’d known what was to happen, I wouldn’t have let you do it.”
“If we’d known maybe we wouldn’t have gone at it so fast ourselves,” he drawled with a dry amusement. “But no one could have bargained on half the rim falling in. It was a close thing. Ran away with us.”
“I don’t begin to understand what you did, Dan. You were up there, up above?”
“High up. Working loose a chunk of rock to start things when Ash made his try with the shotgun.”
“You’re not hurt!”
“No. There was this ledge between us and it caught most of his buckshot. When it finally fell, I got out to one side and listened to all the fun going on below. Then right afterward Ash came on up and walked right past me. Ever see a horned toad make himself scarce? I could’ve reached out and touched him.”
“Then everything’s all right,” she murmured in a voice that trembled with relief. “Waiting for you here so long, thinking that Ash might have been right was like...like last night when I finally understood all that had happened yesterday.”
“There wasn’t any way down without making a racket,” Gentry explained. “Had to climb the rim and then wait up there for things to quiet down. If I’d know you were waiting, I’d have come sooner.”