It had to be the place. The army detachment would have had approximately ten miles of alertness while coming through the pass. With the chance of fresh water ahead and a stop, they would be relaxing, already thinking of the cool water that lay just ahead.
The air was clear, so clear there seemed to be no distance, but only space in which nothing moved but the gentle wind. And there was no sound but the walking of his horse, the creak of his saddle, the occasional jingle of his spurs.
On his left the Santa Rosas rose steeply, four thousand feet to the peaks. On his right the Quinn River Valley lay flat and empty, only the distant line of trees along the river showing green and lovely. Where he rode there was no real cover.
However, the horse he rode was gray. His own clothing was nondescript, with no color that would not blend into the surrounding terrain, just as his horse did. He would move a little further to the south.
He traveled more slowly now to keep down the dust, and kept off the trail as much as possible, staying among the occasional clumps of juniper and the thickest of the sagebrush. Anyone looking for someone to approach would be watching along the trail; the further he was from it the more likely he would be to go unseen. The watchers would be paying little attention to the northern trail, for the payroll detail under Lieutenant Gus Rybolt was approaching from the south. But with every yard he advanced, the greater his risk of being seen…and if seen, killed.
Barney Kilrone drew rein in the small shade of a cluster of junipers, removed his hat and wiped the sweatband. Somewhere ahead, if he was figuring correctly, would be anywhere from twenty to two hundred Indians. But the more he thought of it the more he believed the figure might be not much more than twenty.
Most of the Bannock braves would want to be present at the taking of the post, and here they would have the advantage of surprise. With luck, having only seven or eight men to shoot at, they could concentrate their fire, two or three men aiming at each soldier. After the first volley they would close in. It need take only minutes.
Standing in his stirrups, Kilrone looked along the slope of the mountains toward where the gap should be. The promontory of the Bloody Run Range was obvious; at the base of it, not yet visible, was the old stage station, unless it had been burned. To the left of it, where the Santa Rosas ended, was the gap where the pass opened into the valley.
Suppose the Indians decided to attack just as the wagon was entering the pass, rather than as it was leaving? If that was the case he would be too late. By this time no doubt the guard would have been massacred. What he had to do was to find a way to get into the pass and warn the payroll detail before they could be attacked.
He edged on along the mountain, using each bit of cover he could, yet knowing the time would come when he must be discovered, or must emerge into the open.
Suppose, though, he started now, rode out into the open, and cut across toward the stage station? Would the Indians risk revealing their ambush by firing on him or pursuing him? He dismounted and led his horse on up to Andorno Creek. There was a trickle of water in the bottom, and they both drank.
He looked across the gap. The plain was flat. No trees or brush, nothing but low-growing sagebrush, a few sparse desert plants. He would ride out in the open, and he would have to take his time, for to make a run for it would be to reveal his purpose. He must ride slowly, tiredly, looking for all the world like a drifting cowhand, riding south out of the country.
Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he looked across the heat-drenched, dusty flat. White and still it lay, a place of glaring sun, without shadow, without shelter. If they came after him out there he would be a gone gosling. Yet the more he thought about it, the better plan it seemed to be.
If he rode boldly but casually out on the flat they would think of him only as a rider headed for the old stage station at Cane Springs. If he tried going under cover along the mountain and was discovered, they would know he was trying to slip by them and warn the detail.
Yet what if he did get across the flat? He seemed to remember the rocks behind the stage station were broken up, and there might be a route through them or over the mountain into the pass.
“All right, horse,” he said, cheerfully; “we take the chance.” He pointed. “We’re going right out across that.”
The gray started willingly enough, but Kilrone held him back until the horse had decided to mope along as his new master seemed to wish.
He followed along the mountain for a little way, then swung out on the flat. He rode steadily, taking care not to look back or to seem in any way to be expecting trouble. A hundred yards…two hundred…his scalp prickled with the expectation of a bullet.
They might try an arrow, but they would have to come after him now, and would expect him to fire upon them; the sound of a shot would go echoing down that canyon, and that would warn the soldiers.
In the dust he saw a horse’s tracks…fresh tracks. Out here where the wind blew, how long could tracks hold their shape?
Somebody had ridden across this flat within the last few hours, somebody riding in the same direction in which he was heading.…Who?
It was a shod horse, a horse with a good long stride…a big horse, too. Dave Sproul? But he drove a buckboard. Would he drive one, though, on such an occasion as this, when he would not want his presence known?
Of course, the rider might be a complete stranger, somebody drifting down out of the Oregon-Idaho country to get away from the Indian trouble.
Kilrone was a good mile out on the flat now, and if there were Indians waiting at the mouth of the pass, they must have seen him by now. Occasionally he glanced toward the pass. He was angling that way, ever so little. Where were the Bannocks, he wondered. His best guess put them somewhere in the breaks along Chimney or Porcupine creeks.
Suddenly he saw the wagon. At first it was just a flash of sunlight on a rifle barrel, then a wagon-top. Instantly, he slapped the spurs to the gray and swung right into the mouth of the pass. The horse must have made about four fast jumps before Kilrone saw half a dozen Indians break from the bed of Tony Creek, dead ahead of him.
Barney Kilrone, gentleman adventurer, soldier, and cowhand, he was thinking, here’s where you buy it. Here’s where you wash it out, every last bit of it, so make it pay.
He went down the canyon toward the Indians at a dead run, and lifting his Colt, he slammed a shot. He did not expect to hit anything, but he did expect to alert the oncoming wagon.
At that moment he topped out on a rise and saw a rider approaching the wagon, and the wagon slowing to meet him, but two of the soldiers were up in their stirrups, staring toward Kilrone.
The Indians were on him. There was one riding far out, to cut off any attempted escape, and four coming right down the center at him. He suddenly slowed his horse and leaped to the ground. He stood there, wide-legged and braced, looked down the barrel of his gun, and, lifting it as the Indians swept in upon him, he fired right into the chest of the nearest one. A lance ripped through his shirt, something burned along his shoulder, and a horse knocked him sprawling. He came up shooting, and suddenly the afternoon was filled with the thunder of rifles.
The Indians came around on him, and he saw his gray horse off to one side. He fired again, saw an Indian jerk in the saddle, and he put another bullet where the first had gone. The Indians were on him again, and he threw himself down a grassy slope into a small gully, rolled over and came up, diving into the brush as a rider came down on him. He felt the lance tear through his pants leg and plunged through the brush, fighting his way out.
As he came up, he saw an Indian rounding the clump of brush with bow lifted, arrow pointed at him. He dropped an instant before the arrow left the bow, fired, missed, and fired again. He slid down a steep bank into the creek, where he stood knee-deep in the water and ejected a cartridge, fed another in, and scrambled into the brush just as a Bannock came downstream, hunting him.
He pulled back, a branch cracked, and the Indian turned and fir
ed. He felt the bullet smash through the brush within inches of his skull, but he dared not fire. He had to make each shot count. He had managed to reload one chamber—were there two shots left—or only one?
The Indian was trying to force his horse up the bank, but it was unable to get a foothold. The Indian fired again, but although he was closer now, his horse’s movement spoiled the shot. A gap showed in the bushes and Kilrone fired, saw the bullet smash blood from the warrior’s cheek, and then he scrambled back as bullets came from other directions, stabbing into the brush after him. Lying flat, he ejected another cartridge and loaded, loaded another and another.
As he made his way through the brush, he saw a game trail wide enough for him and eased down it.
He paused again to eject a cartridge and load another chamber. Crawling on, he saw his gray horse thirty yards off, and left his cover on a run. The gray wheeled as if to run, and he called out to it. The big horse hesitated, and in that instant he reached it, grabbed the pommel, and left the ground in a leap, almost losing his grip on the gun as he swung astride.
A shot smashed behind him and he rode into the brush, turned at right angles, then went up the slope and out of the creek bed.
Before him, not fifty yards away, a horse was down, struggling in its harness; one soldier lay sprawled, and the others were firing, coolly and carefully.
With a yell he started toward them and saw a soldier lift his rifle to fire, saw Rybolt’s hand drop to the man’s shoulder, and then he drew up and slid to the ground. “Come to warn you!” he called. “The post is under attack, Paddock’s gone north after Mellett!”
Dropping down, he scrambled to the dead or wounded soldier, grabbed his rifle, and stripped his cartridge pouch. He fired immediately, and then again. The Indians wheeled away, and for a time there was silence.
“Kilrone, isn’t it?” Rybolt said. “I heard you were up here. What’s happened?”
Crouching low, while the others dug with bayonets to throw up a wall of turf, he explained what had happened at the fort, and what he believed was happening here. “What happened to the white man who came to stop you?” he asked.
Rybolt pointed. “Out there.” He saw the body, with the rusty hair, lying among the Indians who had been shot down on the first attack.
Kilrone sliced into the sod with his bowie knife and cut out a long rectangle of it. Quickly he cut others, hollowing out the ground beneath him, and piling them in place. Their position was not at all bad; the Indians had tried to catch them in the open, but they had also provided them with an excellent field of fire.
He continued to work until he had a protecting wall of sod; and now he lay quiet. He smelled gunpowder and blood, the stale sweat of his own body, and the cool earth where he lay. What would they do now? The initial attack had failed, at least a third of the attacking force seemed to be down—either dead or injured. Scattered shots struck near the soldiers, but they did not return the fire. Their rifles reloaded and ready.
“How many do you think there are?” Kilrone asked.
“Thirty…no more than that.” Rybolt answered, and looked around at him. “That shot of yours saved our bacon. Somebody saw the dust in the distance, and then that other rider showed up. That bothered me some, because your dust was back a little way, and I couldn’t figure where this one came from. Then you shot, and we were all set for trouble when the Indians opened up on us.”
After a moment he asked, “You saw Mrs. Rybolt?”
“Yes, I did, Lieutenant. When I left there she was in fine shape and doing the work of two people.” He explained about the move to the warehouse.
“It’s a good, solid building,” Rybolt said. “I think it will hold.”
It was very hot on the little knoll. They could hear the water in Porcupine Creek, directly before them. There had been no attempt to kill the horses; the one lying out there might have been hit by accident. It could be that Sproul planned to use them to haul away the gold, if he got it.
Where was Sproul? Was he still somewhere close by? Was he waiting at the stage station even now?
Chapter 15
*
SHADOWS GATHERED IN the notches of the Bloody Run Hills. The horses were clustered together now under the bank of a small ravine near the wagon. Working with their knives and bayonets the troopers had dug out a trench leading to the ravine, and had snaked up some dead-falls and piled them into a parapet.
Gus Rybolt was a soldier, a veteran, a careful man. He allowed no resting time until their shelter was improved. The ravine was scarcely more than a notch in the earth leading down to the bank of the creek. It provided shelter for the horses and for three of the men, the others remaining in proximity to the wagon and the gold they protected.
Rybolt had been cool, efficient, aware of every possibility. Kilrone found a corner in the ravine where there was shade and shelter from the ricocheting bullets, and stretched out to rest.
Surprisingly, he slept. When he woke he listened to the silence a moment, then crawled over to where Rybolt was sipping coffee, unperturbed by the occasional bullet that whistled by overhead or smacked into the wall opposite.
“Coffee?” Rybolt said, and gestured toward the pot. “Spare cup yonder.”
When Kilrone was seated beside him, Rybolt said, “Nobody is going to get this payroll without more of a fight than this. My idea is they’ll quit.”
It was Kilrone’s idea too. Sproul had planned on a sudden surprise attack, a quick victory, the Indians then returning to their people at the post, and he himself driving the wagon away with its gold.
Only Kilrone’s warning and Rybolt’s alertness had wrecked the plan. Rybolt had lost a man; but here he was, dug in securely, showing no disposition to be stampeded into any foolish action, and apparently ready to stand a siege.
“After dark,” Kilrone said suddenly, “I’m going to try to get out of here. I want to check that stage station up at Cane Springs.”
“Wait…play it safe. They’ll be gone by tomorrow.”
“Tonight,” Kilrone said. “There’s too much at stake.”
*
THE SILENCE AND the waiting brought on a brooding feeling. Suddenly he wanted to get away from it all. He wanted to get away from the fighting, away from northern Nevada, clear away from Denise and Frank Paddock, and everything connected with them. Frank was the lucky one, having Denise. What good did it do a man to keep moving from place to place, and never a place of his own? Being around them had only intensified the feeling.
Of course he could not leave now. He owed it to too many soldiers he had known, and to too many Indians. And he had to get Dave Sproul. Whatever else happened, Sproul must be exposed, defeated, driven from the western frontier. Too many men had died because of him, both Indian and white.
After that he would ride out again, yet even as he told himself this was what he would do, he knew it meant only more riding. Somewhere, somehow he had missed the boat. He had traveled, and he had seen much of Europe and the United States, and he knew that here in this far-western land was all he wanted of home.
Well, not quite. It was all right to talk of riding free, of having a home wherever he hung his hat, but it did not work out that way. With all that far horizons had to offer, there was something that was missing. A man needed a woman…he needed someone to turn to in the night, someone to share things with, someone to whom he could say, “Look at that now!” So many times he had seen the beautiful when there were no other eyes to share it with; too many times he had wished to speak and to listen, and there had been only a horse and a lonely campfire.
He was no longer worried about Rybolt. The man was a good soldier, stern, but considerate of his men, alert for trouble—a man careful when care was needed. Rybolt was in a secure position, and it would take many more Indians than these to trouble him. And when the attack broke in the north, if it did, it was unlikely those Indians would come south. They would ride east and north toward the Bitterroots or the Beaverhead Mountains,
and lose themselves there. A few might scatter into the Steen Mountain country.
Kilrone went to the gray horse, stripped off his gear and let him roll, then rubbed him down with handfuls of coarse grass. He let him drink from the trickle in the bottom of the ravine, then saddled him again.
There was only sporadic fire now. The Indians had lost their taste for it. They might make an attempt during the night, but more likely toward dawn…if they were still around. This was not an easy position to attack. To approach from the ravine side was impossible, and on the other sides the charge must be uphill and in the open.
Kilrone drank coffee, chewed on some jerky, and waited for darkness.
Gus Rybolt came from the breastwork and dropped to his haunches beside him. “You riding out?”
“I’ll have a look over at Cane Springs. If Sproul is around he’ll be there.”
“You’re sure about him? I always knew he was a crook, but I never figured he’d be dealing with the Indians.”
Before midnight, Kilrone led his horse from the ravine, shook hands with Rybolt, and then led the horse away, keeping to the side of the knoll to leave no outline against the sky. Every few steps he paused to listen, but the night sounds were normal ones, and when he was out at least fifty yards and had found no trouble, he turned at right angles and mounted the gray, riding toward Tony Creek.
He crossed the creek and paused again to listen. He heard only the sounds of small animals stirring, and the wind. Far off a coyote yapped irritably at the sky. Following the sandy bed of the stream, where water flowed only along one side, he rode on until he could smell the water at the springs and feel its coolness. He knew there were several good-size pools there much of the time, and the stage station lay just north of them.
Leaving the gray in a clump of brush, he went on up to the buildings. There was a long, low-roofed structure, a shed, and a couple of pole corrals.
Novel 1966 - Kilrone (v5.0) Page 13