by Jack Ballas
He went to his bedroll, took his cup from it, and poured a cup of coffee for her. The handle of the tin cup burned his hand. He wrapped his bandana around the handle and handed the coffee to her. “Drink this, it’ll warm you from the inside.” She took the cup from him.
Barnes stared at her a moment. “Ma’am, I’m gonna have to know your father’s name, and your name. Right now I don’t think it’ll be safe for you to go into town. Those men who stole you can’t afford to let you tell your story and identify any of them. They’d be hung from the nearest tree without a trial. Let’s talk. You tell me your story and we’ll decide what to do from there.”
She stared into the fire a few moments, then raised her eyes, the bluest he’d ever seen, to meet his. “Of course. I’m Emily Lou Colter; my father is Miles Colter. He has a mine somewhere outside of Durango. I’ve not seen him in two years.
“About six months ago, my brother, Rush, left to come out here after father wrote that he’d struck a rich vein of gold. I stayed in Baltimore waiting for them to send for me. Word didn’t come. The longer I waited, the more I worried—so I packed and came west. I wrote my father and mailed the letter the same day I left.” She shrugged. “That’s about it, except, as far as I know, Papa is the only one who knows of my coming, and my brother, if he ever got here.”
Lingo dug in his pocket for his pipe, looked questioningly toward the girl. She nodded, so before answering, he lighted the tobacco he’d packed into it back alongside the trail. “Well, Miss Colter, I’m Lingo Barnes. Call me Lingo. I’ve a cabin and a few head of Texas longhorns in my hanging valley a few miles from here.” He took a drag on his pipe, blew out the smoke, and glanced at the fire. “If you trust me, ma’am, I want to take you to the cabin, then I’ll go to town and see what I can find out.” Then, in case she misjudged his meaning, he hurriedly explained, “Ma’am, there’s another girl stayin’ there, a girl my partner, Wesley Higgins, pulled outta a mess over in Taos, New Mexico Territory. She has her own room. You can stay in there with her.” He took the cup from her hands, filled it, and handed it back. “I want you to understand: I figure you won’t be safe in town until I corner those men who took you off the stage—an’ I think I’d better try to find your father, tell ’im what happened, and that you’re well and safe. Apparently he’s not the only one who knew of your coming.”
“You make it sound so ominous, sir. Why would anyone want to harm me?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know the answer to that question, ma’am, but we know for sure someone wants to do you harm.”
She nodded, then handed him the cup. “You’d best drink some of that devil’s brew to warm your insides. I know you must be cold.”
“Tell you somethin’, ma’am, I been a lot colder.” He pinned her with a gaze. “Well, what do you think, young lady? Is it my hangin’ valley, or try to get into town unseen?”
She studied him a moment. He couldn’t be much older than herself, yet he seemed so confident he could take care of her troubles. He was handsome in a rugged sort of way, tall, maybe six feet, and well built: wide shoulders, slim waist. But most of all, he was willing to go along with her decision. Too, she felt that something must be terribly wrong with her father, or those men would not have known she would be on that stage. “Let’s go to your valley, Mr. Barnes. There must be something wrong in town, and I think we’d best know what we’re getting into before we expose our hand.” Her face turned warm. “That’s a poker term my father used to use. He taught me to play the game from the time I could hold a deck of cards. Of course, I only played at home. Father, my brother, and I whiled away evenings playing for pennies.”
“I recognize the term, young lady. Wes, the girl he brought home, and I often do the same thing.” He stood, unsaddled his horse, rubbed him down with dried brush, and spread his ground sheet, then his blankets. “You’ll sleep there, ma’am. I’ll curl up in some of this pine straw.”
She opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off. “Don’t want any argument. You’ll use my bedding, an’ we’ll get going before daylight in the morning.” His face warmed. “Uh, ma’am, my bedding’s clean. I scrub it every time I use it on the trail.” He tossed the remains of the coffee on the fire, walked to a tree, and raked straw into a pile.
Before going to sleep, she asked what a “hanging” valley was. “Well, ma’am, it’s a valley, much higher than what you’d expect, an’ mostly surrounded by mountains higher than those at lower elevations.” His explanation seemed to satisfy her. They curled up and went to sleep.
True to his word, Barnes roused her long before daylight and set them on the trail after a hurriedly prepared breakfast of beans, bacon, and coffee.
They wound around the side of a mountain, crossed several meadows, then climbed again to cross a saddlelike pass between two peaks. Every so often he glanced behind. Although he thought it might take a while for the bandits to get horses, he didn’t let down his guard.
Emily Lou glanced at him several times, then her curiosity got the better of her. “You know your way around these mountains like you’ve been born and raised in this country.”
Lingo shook his head. “No, ma’am. I grew up on a ranch, Pa’s ranch, west of Fort Worth. I don’t profess to know these mountains at all, but when you’ve spent most of your life outdoors you develop a sense of direction.” He grinned. “That’s what I’m usin’ now, but I’ll bet you a nickle we’ll be in my valley before sundown.”
His grin had sent a ray of sunshine across his face, made him look boyish. Emily Lou took that look, as well as the disappearance of the stern businesslike look he had carried since rescuing her as comforting, that she’d done the right thing in putting her trust in him. “Mr. Barnes, I’ll not call that bet. If you think we’ll be there, so be it.”
“Ma’am, I’d surely be pleased if you’d call me Lingo. Every time someone says ‘Mr. Barnes’ I want to look around to see if Pa’s anywhere around.”
“All right, Lingo, but if we do that, you must call me Emily Lou, or Emily.”
He flashed her that grin again. “How ’bout ‘Em’?”
She smiled. “I’d like that. Papa used to call me ‘Em.’ ”
They rode another hour before Barnes reined the horses in alongside a steep granite bluff; the trail upon which they rode spread only wide enough for a wagon before the offside fell away a thousand feet or so. Lingo nodded in the direction they were riding. “My valley’s just beyond where this pass opens out. I’ll signal Wes we’re comin’ in.” He pulled his 1873 Winchester from the saddle scabbard, fired into the air, jacked another shell into the chamber, fired again, and then did the same thing again. He worried that the shots might be heard if the bandits had managed to get horses—but Wes had to be warned to expect him. There were too many out here who took what they could get away with. Wes was much like him in protecting what was theirs. Neither of them figured to give up any of what was Lingo’s without a fight.
The echo of his last shot had not died away before he urged the horse ahead to a small depression in the cliff. At one time or other he and Wes had spent many hours standing or sitting in the rocky alcove guarding it so that no one came into their valley. He dismounted and held his arms up for Em.
They waited there several minutes while Barnes looked in the direction from which they’d come. Then, from the valley direction, the ring of shod hooves sounded on the rocky trail. In only a moment the rider rode into sight. He was young, but only four or five years younger than she judged Lingo to be, and good-looking. Em thought she’d never seen so handsome a man; then she compared the rider with Lingo. Smiled to herself. Two handsome men. The women back home would be flat-out jealous. Then Barnes broke into her thoughts with introductions.
Wes glanced at both of them, and returned his look to Emily. “Ma’am, you sure picked a cantankerous old mossy horn to go ridin’ with—or, I figger they’s a bunch of trouble ridin’ your backtrail.”
Lingo nodded. “Your secon
d guess is right. We have at least four men who’ll sooner or later be comin’ this way.”
Wes grinned. “An’ I reckon you picked me to sit here an’ give ’em a good old Texas welcome.”
Barnes stared at his partner a moment, his face hard. “Wes, I’m tellin’ you right now, don’t just shoot to scare ’em away. Empty their saddles. They stole this little lady off the stage, so they aren’t worth wasting ‘scare shots’ on. I hear you firin’, I’ll be up here in a hurry. I want to get Em settled in, an’ for her to meet Kelly. I reckon they’re gonna like each other.”
Wes glanced down the trail. “Knowed it had to be somethin’ bad for you to give up a couple nights in town. Go on down to the cabin. Ain’t nobody gonna get by me.” He nodded, and tipped his hat to Emily. “Mighty proud to have met you, Miss Emily. Now y’all git on down there.”
Lingo again lifted Emily to the saddle and climbed up behind her. After a few minutes of riding, they passed through a narrow defile, bluffs on both sides, then the trail widened and opened out into a small valley, its floor lush with tender mountain grass. Occasional clumps of spruce and fir dotted the land, and farther up the slopes the trees thickened to give the slopes a dark, almost black look in the clear air. Em gasped. “Why it’s beautiful, and so peaceful.” She pulled a deep breath into her lungs. “And the air is so pure and clean, one can almost taste its sweetness.”
Lingo nodded. “That it is, ma’am, my valley, that is. An’ for some reason, it’s sheltered such that winter snows are light. Those longhorns I brought in have no trouble pawing their way to food in the winter.” He smiled. “As for bein’ peaceful? Well let’s say that’s the way it is most o’ the time. Don’t want to scare you, ma’am, but once in a while we have visitors from the outlaw trail. They’re usually right peaceful, so don’t you worry your pretty head about them.”
She frowned. “The Outlaw Trail? I’ve heard about it back East, but I thought it was only a figment of one of our writer’s, Ned Buntline’s, imagination. There really is an Outlaw Trail?”
“Yes’m, but most of those boys are right nice. For the most part they took the wrong fork in the trail back along their past. There aren’t many like the four men who stole you—an’ if they’re of that stripe, I figure I can take care of them.”
At that moment they rounded a bend in the trail, circled a copse of trees, and the cabin came into sight. Em gasped. “Why an artist couldn’t have painted a picture more like heaven on Earth.” She twisted to look at him. “You must have studied every inch of your valley before selecting that spot for sheer beauty.”
He grinned. “I’d like to take credit for that, but I picked that spot because it was sheltered from wind and snow, and gave us a good field of fire if anyone tried to approach with intent to harm us.”
They rode to the front of the cabin. A woman stood in the doorway, a young woman, about twenty years old by Emily’s guess. She was pretty: blonde, fair-skinned, green-eyed, and with a figure to make a man drool. Em felt a twinge of jealousy, although she couldn’t imagine why.
Lingo was in the middle of introducing the two when rifle shots sounded from the pass. He handed the reins to Kelly, said to make Emily at home, handed her from the saddle, and headed back in the direction from which he’d come. Every muscle in his body tight, he worried about Wes.
He reined in his horse short of the alcove, dropped from the saddle and sprinted to Wes. “How many?”
“All four, an’ I got a hunch they’s more behind ’em.”
“You get any with those two shots?”
Wes only nodded toward the backtrail. About a hundred yards down the rocky surface two bodies lay stretched out; one lying still, the other trying to crawl to some rocks at the side of the trail.
Lingo jacked a shell into the chamber, eased around the raw, rocky edge of the depression in which he and Wes stood, and squeezed off a shot toward the crawling man. At the same time the whine of a bullet chipped splinters from the side of the cliff. He ducked back behind cover, then looked at his partner. “They might be the scum of the earth, my friend, but at least one of them can handle a rifle.”
“We gotta figure all o’ them can.” Wes shrugged and grinned. “You can bet your prize pony I’m gonna treat ’em all like they got a bead on me all the time.” He ran his cupped hand down the barrel of his rifle, then cradled the Winchester in the crook of his arm. “Tell you what, Lingo, you mighta taught me too good ’bout cows, guns, knives, but mostly ’bout bein’ careful if they’s any chance my hide’s in danger.” He nodded. “Danged tootin’ I ain’t gonna sell any o’ that bunch short on nothin’ ’cept bein’ decent folks.”
While Wes talked, Barnes squinted down the trail. There was only a few feet he had to keep his eyes on, due to the narrowness of the road he and Wes had picked and shoveled out of the mountainside.
A hat brim edged around the side of the cliff. Lingo waited. He’d seen men use that trick before, and most of the time the hat didn’t have a head inside it. This time, though, the hat had an ugly face under it. Barnes squeezed off a shot. “Damn! Missed.”
Another shot from downtrail and more rock splinters showered the rocky alcove. Lingo looked Wes in the eye. “Looks like we got a Mexican standoff here. Don’t figure it’s gonna take both of us to keep ’em outta our valley. Go on back to the cabin. One o’ us is gonna have to be here around the clock ’til we convince ’em to leave.”
Higgins peeked around the edge of rock. “That’n what was crawlin’ away made it. He ain’t in sight.” He looked back at Lingo. “Tell you what. I’ll go back now, an’ when I get there I’ll set them two girls to makin’ torches outta rags an’ pine tar. We gonna need to keep that section o’ trail ’tween us and them bandits lit up like day come nightfall.” He toed the stirrup, swung into the saddle and left.
As soon as Wes left him alone, Barnes set about studying the area between him and the bandits, trying to think of some way to sneak up on them and end this standoff. Finally, he shook his head. When he and Wes built that road, they’d done much of it with the idea of one man being able to keep an army out if he had to. They’d done a good job. Lingo let a grim smile crack his lips. Emily called his valley beautiful. He now thought of it as a trap; attackers couldn’t get in, but those inside couldn’t get out. There were many times he thought of it as Trap Valley.
After roaming every inch of the bowl in which they’d built, he’d found one other way out—but if he used it, he’d be on the opposite side of the mountains than the one he wished to be on to get to Durango. He nodded to himself. “Yep, it’s a neat little trap.” His muttered words did nothing to make him feel better, and now he and Wes had two women to worry about.
He kept his eyes and ears peeled for sight or sound from down the trail, and after about an hour the smell of food cooking assailed his nostrils from two directions. Kelly was cooking supper, and so were the bandits. His stomach growled.
All afternoon he waited, watched, and once in a while fired a shot at the bluff around which the trail curved.
The sun dropped below the high peaks although only midafternoon. Lingo shivered, and thanked God Emily had not taken his coat to the cabin with her. It was going to be a cold night.
He squirmed, shuffled his feet, and wondered if he could set out running and get to the bandits hiding place before they saw him. He put that thought to rest almost as soon as the idea came to him. He’d learned patience growing up as a boy. Raised in Comanche country you developed the ability to wait.
Shadows had long since melded into a soft semidarkness folded between the snow-capped rocky peaks around him. The sound of a horse’s hooves on the trail sharpened Lingo’s senses even though coming from the direction of the ranch. He pressed his back against the rocky wall and waited. Then, Wes whispered from the semidark, “Wes here. Got the torches. Them women took to makin’ ’em like they wuz raised down Texas way.”
He came into the alcove, his arms folded around a bundle of sticks each wi
th rags tied to the ends. He dropped them at Lingo’s feet. “You know what? Them womenfolk done took to each other like sisters. Man, it wuz sure good to see Kelly so happy. Don’t reckon I been payin’ it much mind, but thinking back on it I can see that Kelly’s been in need o’ seein’ other women. Sure made me feel good to know that girl wuz feelin’ good ’bout bein’ with someone to talk woman talk to.”
“Hell, Wes, men need the same thing. We, once in a while, need to get in the middle of a bunch o’ men so we can tell lies, drink a little whisky, an’ even fight a little.”
In a sober voice, Wes chided, “That bein’ the case, Lingo, you gonna be one lonesome ranny one o’ these days. Most men done heard ’bout your fists and gun quick. Soon ain’t gonna be nobody left who’ll fight you.”
“That’s strange. I haven’t felt like anybody’s been avoidin’ me lately.”
Wes chuckled. “Buddy, that’s ’cause you ain’t been nowhere to meet people much. Course there’s me, an’ I done got to know you ain’t gonna hurt me.”
Just then Lingo heard movement in the direction of the outlaws.
2
ABRUPTLY, LINGO GRABBED Higgins’s arm. “Shhhh. Here, take my rifle.” Silence settled around them, then a soft scraping from down the trail. Barnes placed his mouth close to Wes’s ear. “Gonna light one of those torches you brought an’ toss it on the trail. Be ready to fire.” Wes nodded.
This had to be fast and fluid as a quick draw. Lingo pulled a lucifer from his hatband, raked it across the seat of his jeans, and stuck it to the pine pitch–soaked end of the torch.
The torch flared. Lingo ducked around the edge of their shelter and tossed it as far down the trail as he could. The area came into sharp, fire-golden brightness.
Before the torch landed on the rock surface, Wes stood at Barnes’s shoulder, firing and jacking shells into his rifle. The outlaw closest to him staggered, tried to catch himself, and stumbled toward the edge of the trail. Then he fell over its edge. A shrill scream trailed off as the outlaw fell into the dark void below.