the Rustlers Of West Fork (1951)

by L'amour, Louis - Hopalong 03

  The black nine-thousand-foot bulk of Lily Mountain loomed on their left and the shoulder of Jackson Mesa to the right. Not far ahead was the trail to the West Fork crossing. Hopalong moved the buckskin ahead and deliberately led the way into the trail. He knew that every instant on this trail was thick with danger. At any time the hard-riding pursuit might close in upon them, but he also knew that a false trail must be set, and this was the best way to do it.

  His buckskin's hoofs clicked stone after they had been riding for several minutes, and off to the left stretched a white, clean ,expanse of sand rock.

  This would be the logical place to leave the trail, so Hopalong did not leave. The men behind him were old hands at this game, too, having many times lost posses in close pursuit. From now on he would need every faculty, every fragment of experience, every bit of lore he had ever learned or heard of. He pushed on, and then they dipped into a sandy place and here he turned left. When they had gone a mile, he stopped them.

  "Catch a breath," he said. "I'm going back to cover the trail."

  He slid away into the darkness, knowing exactly what he would do. As they turned off the trail he had observed several head of cattle taking their midnight stretch near the wash where they turned off the trail. Now he rode around those cattle and started them into the wash, walking them over the sand for a hundred yards or more to destroy as much sign as he could. He had just left them when he heard a clatter of racing horses on the trail and then heard them slow up near the sandstone ledge.

  "Here?" The voice was unfamiliar.

  "No!" That was Mowry, furious at his second failure with Hopalong. "We'll ride on to the crossing. No chance to follow him by trail sign now. The chances are he'll run for the crossing.

  Remember, he's got to get out of this stretch by crossing a river."

  "He might go west," somebody hazarded a guess.

  "He ain't crazy," Mowry replied sharply.

  "If he went west he'd be trapped. There's only a lot of blind canyons back there and no way through that wall of mountains. No, it's got to be north or south."

  "Wish Sparr was here!"

  "What could he do that we ain't doin'?" Mowry was irritated by the comment. "Don't worry! We'll find that silver-haired devil!" Hoppy sat quietly, whispering to the buckskin. The riders went on by, walking their horses now. Then, when they were well past, he turned and started back up the wash, only now he rode with extreme care. The deepest sand was tiring for his horse, but also it was sure to leave no definite tracks that could be read easily. There would be evidence of something passing, but in the soft sand, where grains would fall into the hoofprmt and destroy the outline, there was small chance of any sign being left that could be identified either as to nature or time.

  "Let's go," he whispered, as he rode by Dick and Pamela. d'DoWt talk$2?

  Ahead and to the left loomed the raw backbone of the Jerky Mountains. Ahead of him, and upon which they soon came, lay a branch of Clear Creek that flowed north from the steep flanks of Lfiy Mountain. They reached this stream a little above its junction with the main creek and crossed there, pushing on west and a little north. The land was heavily timbered and rugged in the extreme. For a time they wound their way, with frequent changes of direction because of natural obstructions, through thick pine forest. With the ridge of the Jerkys on their left and slightly ahead and the stars above, keeping direction was no great problem. From time to time Hopalong stopped and listened, but there was no sound except the occasional hoot of an owl and the distant howl of a coyote. Before daybreak, in a hollow behind an enormous slab of rock, Hopalong drew up and swung down. Pamela slid from the saddle and went at once to her father, and between the two of them they got him from the saddle. His face was drawn but his eyes were bright and hard. They seated him on Hoppy's bedroll against tie wall of rock.

  "Don't be frettin' about me, Hoppy." His voice was firm. "I'll stick it. Think only about gettin' us away. This here fresh air is what I need, although," he admitted with a wry grin, "I ain't been ridin' much lately." Working with swift and deft hands, Hoppy broke small dead branches from the lower trunks of the pines, and with these he built a quick, carefully shielded fire.

  Once it was going and he had water on, he went away from it and looked back. The great slabs of rock around the camp and the pines concealed it very well.

  Back at camp he found Pamela hastily slicing some bacon from a slab put into the bag by the old Mexican cook.

  The earth was slightly damp and it was chill.

  Walking about, Hoppy gathered more sticks, watching Dick Jordan without seeming to do so. Without doubt the man was very tired. The months of lying in bed or sitting in the chair had taken their toll, and the ride had been a hard one. Mentally, Cassidy calculated the time. There was small chance of any successfully organized pursuit until daylight. Yet it would not do to depend on that trail being concealed. Somewhere even the best of woodsmen must fail in that attempt. All he could hope to do was to gain time. And there was little of that. At a guess they were but ten miles from the ranch by a direct line. They had ridden at least five miles farther than that, but by day the followers might come much faster. Eating now, they would rest only a few minutes and then push on.

  There was both water and grass here and the horses were making the most of both. With luck, if Dick could hold out, they need not stop again for three or four hours, and then but briefly.

  Already they were in very rough country that offered many avenues of possible retreat, and these might confuse the men sent out by Avery Sparr, but starting with their coming move, they must use every stratagem to confuse the pursuit.

  Already the sky was faintly gray, and the spires of the pines etched a dark fringe along the sky all about them. The small fire blazed cheerfully, and the wood crackled. Hopalong leaned back on an elbow, watching the girl, smelling the faint, aromatic pine smoke and the stronger, richer smell of bacon frying.

  Firelight danced shadows on the fiat face of the rock, and Dick Jordan leaned back, his strong-boned face relaxed and at rest, with the firelight glistening on cheekbones and brow, leaving a deep shadow on one cheek and temple. The light caught tiny gleams from the shells in his gunbelt and found highlights in the worn black of the polished leather holsters. Tired now, and half asleep, Jordan showed his age, and Hopalong stirred restlessly, worried about the old man. Pamela was suddenly up and taking coffee and a plate to her father.

  Dick awakened, and- he smiled quickly, but Hoppy knew the smile did not fool Pamela, who realized only too well how tired her father must be. Hopalong watched her with curious eyes.

  Not too many women had entered his life, for it had been a life of hoof and horns, of guns, saddles, and the hard ways of the frontier. Pamela was somehow strange even while familiar. There was only the ghost of the girl he remembered and to whom he had told stories. Now she was self-possessed and sure. Young she might be, but at eighteen on the frontier a girl was a woman, and many a girl was married at siccteea.

  " She was slender and tall, but beautifully shaped, and her rough, sun-faded wool shirt showed the ripe roundness of her bosom and the beauty of her arms and shoulders. Her face was brown from sun and wind, and the sun had picked a few freckles from her skin.

  She seemed to become aware of his study and turned suddenly to smile at him, and Hopalong was strangely embarrassed. She arose at once and handed him coffee, then a plate with bacon and a few beans. "We'd better eat them all," she said;

  "no use carrying that jar." "Yeah, the lighter the better. Know anything about this country west of here?"

  "No." Her voice was low and the tone rounded "I've heard a few things from friendly Indians.

  There's a mesa beyond Iron Creek, and the pass you mentioned is this side of there. But we'll be safe nowhere until Avery Sparr is dead."

  "1ft about Soper?"

  "He's worse. I don't know why I say that, either. It's an 123 impression you get after a while. At first I liked him. I believed he would help u
s, but sometimes I would surprise him looking at me, or at my father, and something in the way he looked gave me the shudders."

  "Outside they like him. Thatcher thought he was all right."

  "They don't know him." She considered what she had said, then added, frowning: "I shouldn't say that, for I don't know him either, not the least bit. I think that's what frightens me."

  "Where did Sparr find him? They don't fit together, somehow. Span's western. Soper is not."

  "I don't know. But Soper knows a lot. I think he is a college man. He talks very well when he wishes to, and he can be very much the gentleman." Hopalong got to his feet and went after the horses. When he came back Pamela had already put out the fire, and gathering those sticks only partly burned she arried them off a short distance and scraped sand over them, hiding them from sight. With care, Hopalong worked over the site of the ampfire, spending precious time in concealing its remains as well as possible.

  Jordan grinned at him when Hopalong came to get him. "Don't worry about me," he said stubbornly. "I'm good for fifty miles, easy.

  Just keep movin'. Feels good," he added honestly, "to be in the saddle again. I'm no man to be cooped up. If time comes when I have to die, this would be the way I'd choose. Only I'd like to trigger a gun at Avery Sparr first."

  "You stay in that saddle," Hopalong said seriously. "Leave the scrappin' to me."

  Deliberately Hopalong turned south. Now he selected the roughest possible country. Great cliffs lifted about them, and they turned into a canyon so deep that it seemed night had come again. The somber columns of the pines ranged along the sides of the narrow trail to which they held and then fell away as they rode across a small park, belly high on the horses. The wall of the forest seemed solid, but Hopalong found a narrow space and pushed the buckskin into it, and they wound around among the trees, turning and twisting, but keeping steadily west of south.

  Suddenly emerging from the forest, they found themselves on the edge of a wide shelf of flat rock, wind-scoured and lonely. It stretched away ahead of them to the very rim of a vast crack in the earth. Riding out on the rock, Hoppy led the way across to the rim. The buckskin paused and peered over, ears forward, stretching its nose toward the sheer va/s of the space before them.

  Then, turning the horse, Hopalong skirted the lip of the canyon until a path showed. Well down the path he saw hoofprints of unshod horses.

  For a full minute he stared down. A hundred yards from where he sat the trail vanished around a bulging shoulder of rock, yet those wild horses, or perhaps Indian horses, had gone that way.

  Abruptly he started the buckskin, and without hesitation the horse headed down the trail.

  Cassidy knew that if one horse started, the others would come, and come they did. Far below them in a vast blue gulf he could make out the tops of the pines. Across from them lifted the sheer mass of a mountain. And then he was giving all his time to the problem at hand.

  The trail was steep and the buckskin braced his feet and walked gingerly. At the turn in the trail it narrowed still more. Now there would be no turning back, for there would be no room to turn. Hopalong sat easy in the saddle and let the buckskin trust his own judgment, which Hopalong had come to respect most heartily. The buckskin was not hesitant.

  Steadily they went down, deeper and deeper into the vast gulf whose jaws closed slowly above them and around them.

  After almost an hour they role out suddenly into a wide, halfopen valley dotted and fringed with clumps of trees. At a lope, to add distance, Hopalong led the way across. His blue eyes studied 125 the terrain before them, and then, turning, he glanced back. He could see little of the trail down which they had come, for it merged into the wall of the canyon and was lost to sight. Slowing his horse, he dropped back beside the others.

  Dick Jordan grinned at him. "That trail Hoppy, if you told anybody about that trail they'd figger you lied! I wouldn't have bet a squirrel could tackle it."

  Pamela glanced at the buckskin. "Your horse?"

  "Sim Thatcher's. I'd like to buy him, though.

  He's the best horse in the mountains I ever sat."

  Dick Jordan asked, "You think that Mesquite they talked about back yonder was your friend?"

  "Yeah. He an' Johnny headed out this way sometime back. They went to Tombstone, but I didn't know they had come north. once they start somewhere you can't tell where they'll end up. Anyway, I hope it was him, an' whether it is or not, this hombre got Bizco."

  "One more an' one less."

  "Right. An' they tell me he was one o' those who killed Kitchen." Dick Jordan's face hardened to bitterness. "Can't figure how I got to be so trustin'!" His voice was angry. "I should have knowed Avery Sparr was up to somethin', but he seemed like he only wanted to help, an' when Kitchen got killed, I needed help. First time we smelled a rat was when Johnny Rebb an' Bizco showed up at the ranch."

  A thought occurred to Hopalong. "Say, what do you know about Elk Mountain? I saw a rider-figgered it was Soper-who headed right at the wall of the mountain.

  I couldn't figger where he was goin'. He was ridin' at an angle, sort of southwest from the main trail to Horse Springs."

  "Sure. There's a canyon in there. Mighty narrow, but she's there. Turkey Spring Canyon. Can't figger what he'd be goin' there for." "Ranch in there?"

  Hopalong wanted to know. He had found an opening in the trees ahead and veered right, away from it.

  "No. There's a stone tower there, though. Cliff dwellers built it. Mostly fallen down now. I did hear there was some prospector usin' it, though."

  Hopalong went steadily right, circled out into the grass, and then doubled back on their own tracks and went around a boulder and into the tree's. If he could get Dick Jordan and his daughter to the comparative safety of Alma, secure from either the abuse or bullying of Avery Sparr, then he could come back.

  After that-his weather-beaten face was grim-after that would come the reckoning.

  Ahead of them the country slanted down toward a valley floor visible through the scattered bunches of trees and the boulders. The grass was high here, and green, for it was irrigated by the runoff from the mountains. Ahead of them was a small stream, and Hopalong reined in to let the horses drink.

  Pamela heard his low exclamation and looked around quickly. Hopalong was on the ground staring at the tracks of some unshod ponies. "Wild horses?" she asked.

  "No."

  His answer told her all she needed to know.

  Dick Jordan slid the Winchester from his saddle scabbard. "How many of "em?"

  "Maybe six, eight Can't rightly make out"

  Hopalong shoved his hat back on his head and swore softly. Outlaws behind them and Apaches ahead. The question was: which was the worse? The stream ahead of them was the West Fork, and it could not be very far to Turkeyfeather Creek. He studied the situation.

  As he had it, the tracks were not more than an hour old, at most were the Indians moving on? Or did they have a camp near? And how close behind him was Sparr?

  At a rough guess, by the route they must take, they were not less than thirty miles from Alma, but the worst of their trip, even excepting the presence of Apaches, was still before them.

  "We'll gamble," he said suddenly. "We'll push on to the Turkeyfeather an" make camp there.

  We all need rest, an' so do the horses.

  We'll take a chance on Sparr comin' up with us."

  "What about the Injuns?" Dick demanded.

  Hopalong grinned. "They'll have to look out for themselves." He took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair, then replaced the hat, pulling it down firmly in front. "Maybe," he said innocently, "they might run into grief. Never can tell what will happen when you go perambulatin' around in the mountains like this!"

  He mounted, and they moved forward cautiously. The tracks were apparent, and the Apaches had probably been following the same route. This might not be, but probably was, a war party, their destination the settlements and travelers in the vicinity
of Alma and the mining camps clustered around Cooney.

  Below them the green expanse of the valley looked inviting, small though it must be, but Hopalong left the trail and started off at right angles toward a sandstone cliff. It was pink with a white streak of quartz angling across the face and at the base some cottonwoods and sycamores promised water. Between the trees and the cliff face there was just room for riding single file, and Hopalong led off, every sense alert. From time to time he stopped again, listening. His mouth was dry and he was worried, more so than he would have cared to admit. Not far ahead, while still on the trail, he had seen a buzzard fly up as if disturbed by something moving nearby. Rounding a projecting shoulder of cliff, Hopalong saw before him a long, narrow valley, or canyon. It headed up among some high bluffs that squeezed that end into a narrow space. On what seemed to be a small plateau were a number of trees and some huge rocks rolled down from the cliffs above. Moving off at a fast lope, Hopalong led the way. The last hundred yards was steep grade and in the open, but they made it to the shelter of the trees.

  Hopalong reined in and they looked around quickly.

  The plateau, if such it might be called, was scarcely more than an acre in extent, the edge of it fringed with a growth of mixed trees-pine, cedar, sycamore, and cottonwood and much manzanita.

  Behind that was a space, wide-open and grass-covered.

  Against the cliffs were other boulders, and a small fall cascaded from a crack in the rock higher up. To the left the canyon narrowed into a mere crack that looked dark and gloomy. "We'll spend the night here, Dick," Hopalong said, "an' maybe a day or so, dependin' on how things look.

  I don't aim to get you into any mess-up with Injuns if I can help it."

  At a protected spot near the foot of the cliff, with several large boulders and trees nearby, they made camp. Taking his rifle, Hopalong walked back across the open area and went into the trees. He had just reached the edge of the trees when he saw a brown movement in the forest from which they had come, and then several Indians rode into view.