He reached the rocks above the valley and could see nothing of Harrison. He was about to ride down onto the flat when caution struck him. He remembered what he had learned and turned left along the ridges so that he could not be seen from below and yet could keep the valley under his eye.
Blue had had no more rest than Jody, but the little horse was going well. Jody didn’t know how long he could keep it up, but he reckoned he would know before the day was out.
He reached the rocks above the saddle and saw the men below him. They were rounding up the loose horses. He could hear their shrill cries as they drove them up onto the saddle. He could see no sign of Harrison. Under the circumstances, he hadn’t expected to. He knew that this wasn’t the time to make a move. A better spot than this would have to be chosen. Within a couple of hours, Rolf would have all his men mounted and the chase would be on. They would easily overtake the slow-moving bulls.
He watched the dust of the retreating riders and the remuda disappearing into the valley to the north and kept his station for a while, watching. Then a lone horseman rode down from the hills on the opposite side of the valley. He knew it was Harrison and rode down to meet him.
Harrison halted him and waited for him to come up.
“So you couldn’t keep your nose out of it,” he said dryly.
“So far you done it all,” Jody said. “You’re a hog for punishment. One of them bulls is mine, remember?”
Harrison nodded. He looked grave.
“Son,” he said, “this is goin’ to be a bloody business.”
“It ain’t the first time I smelled powder burn,” Jody said.
“I reckon. But I hate to kill men who don’t have no say in this. Dyin’ for wages is a poor return.”
Jody was surprised. He didn’t know the man had this kind of a conscience.
“You reckon it’s Rolf that needs killin’?” he said.
“Maybe he’s a puffed-up bull-frog,” Harrison said. “But I don’t aim to kill a man for jest bein’ that. Howsomever, we’ll see what we see. I took his woman, he has some rights.”
“He treated her like she was nothin.’.”
“That’s what I keep a-tellin’ myself.”
They turned up the valley and rode to the far end. Here they rode into high rocks, stepped down from the saddle and loosened chinches. Harrison found some food. They ate sparingly and washed the food down with water from Harrison’s canteen. Then Harrison told Jody to get some sleep. He didn’t need much himself and was used to going without, but Jody was young and the young needed it. Jody protested, but as soon as he put his head back against the rocks and tipped his hat over his eyes, sleep swept over him.
He awoke with a start and could not remember where he was.
Harrison was shaking him by the shoulder. Memory came tumbling back to him — Honoria, Wilder and Rolf.
The sun was high overhead; its heat struck at him.
“Here they come, boy,” Harrison said.
Jody stood up and looked down into the valley. He saw them at once, a dozen or more of them, coming ahead at a steady hammering trot.
“Tighten cinches,” Harrison said.
Jody rammed his hat down onto his head and ran for Blue. Cinches tightened, they swung into the saddle. Harrison seemed to have planned what he meant to do. They rode along a northing ridge, keeping below the summit so they were not spotted below. They rode for some thirty minutes and then Harrison halted. The valley here was reduced to little more than a gully hedged in by long gradually sloping sides. From the tops of the slopes riflemen would have a long safe fire. There would be time here to beat a retreat if the attacked force tried to outflank you. You couldn’t hold this place forever, but if you caught the enemy in a crossfire you could surely make it uncomfortable for him.
“Stay here,” Harrison said. “I’m goin’ over to the far side. When you see me ‘light out, you come a-runnin’. Don’t leave ‘em git around behind you.”
He rode down across the gully and went as fast as his horse could take him up the far slope. Jody found cover for Blue, dismounted and tied him. He found rocky cover and checked his rifle. He lay there with the tension mounting. There never would be a time when a man lay in wait for fire on other men without feeling the tension. It is the worst part of the fight. Jody wondered if Harrison felt the same way he did.
They didn’t have to wait too long. He saw the dust of Rolf s men long before he saw them and heard the beat of hoofs. They came on at the same steady pace.
He wondered if Harrison had anything else in mind but to open fire on the men below and kill as many of them as he could. Harrison’s words back there had shaken him a little. The man was reluctant to draw blood. Jody reckoned he’d take his cue from the older man.
The riders beat up into the gully and Jody could see a man out in the lead, twenty or so lengths in front of the next man. This first man looked like an Indian. The second man was Rolf. Some of the others were bunched, others were strung out. Rifles were away in their boots. Harrison had chosen a good spot. There was little cover down there. Jody almost felt sorry for them. Almost.
It looked to him as if Harrison were going to allow them to go on past. The leading man was fifty yards beyond Jody and the bulk of the riders about opposite him when the shot came.
Rolf reined in his horse so that the animal went back on its haunches. The leading man spun his horse and started racing back to Rolf. Men were turning their heads this way and that.
“Rolf.”
Harrison was calling.
Rolf steadied his horse and stared up the slope.
“Rolf — you’re covered. Head on back before somebody gets killed.”
Rolf turned in the saddle, shouting orders. The riders milled this way and that as if they were undecided. A man reached down and wrenched his rifle from its boot. Another man jumped from the saddle and raced for the few rocks that lay strewn near.
A second shot came.
A horse reared, screaming. As it went down, the rider was thrown from the saddle. Jody thought he heard him hit dirt.
Men were starting back the way they had come now. Rolf turned his horse and went with them. The pace was hurried. Men spurred and quirted their mounts to get out of rifle-range. Harrison didn’t waste another shot.
Jody stood up and watched them, saw them reach the open part of the valley and halt. He knew that this had decided nothing. This was only the start.
They palavered for some ten minutes. Then they surprised him. He half-expected them to turn east and ride to outflank Harrison. Instead, they turned west, crossed the valley and at once began to climb. As he watched, they turned south.
My God, he thought, They’ re heading straight for me.
Harrison had told him not to allow them to outflank him and they were going to do just that. His first thought was to get on Blue and head south faster than they were coming. But that, he realized, would accomplish nothing. They had to be stopped. And it was him who had to do the stopping.
He found that he was sweating profusely.
He ran for Blue, untied and vaulted into the saddle. He headed west, keeping his eyes to the north for the sight of them. He hit some timber and drew rein. He reckoned he’d fight this one from the saddle. He was alone in this and he had to keep moving. He had used a rifle from Blue’s back many a time and the little horse knew what was what.
Within minutes it seemed they came streaming up the rocky way. They were riding recklessly over the broken dangerous ground, no doubt urged on by Rolf.
He fired at the leading rider, levered and fired again. He fired his gun empty and then turned and ran. He didn’t know how many he had hit, but he knew that he had left chaos behind him. Strange as it might seem, not a single shot had been sent in his direction. His surprise must have been complete.
He ran a mile south, angled left and came out above a valley. Here he became aware of a horseman riding parallel to him through the scattered timber. He reloaded the rifle as
he rode and now he prepared to fight again. Only just in time, he saw that the man was Harrison. He turned toward him, they met and rode on side by side.
“Thought you was a goner,” Harrison shouted.
“I left ‘em in a mess back there,” Jody bawled back. He thought that Harrison looked sick.
Five minutes later, they slowed the horses to a walk.
Harrison said: “I’ve ‘most run outa ideas. I thought of spoiling the sign Manuela and Hijinio left, but it’s too late for that. Rolf’s too close.”
“Maybe I hit Rolf back there,” Jody said. “Maybe it’s finished.”
“We can’t work on maybes,” Harrison said. “Only thing we can do is leave the bulls and ride. They ain’t worth our lives.”
Jody was shaken. He never thought to see the man defeated.
Stubbornly, he said: “I ain’t leavin’ my bull.”
Harrison regarded him wryly.
“There’s Manuela to think on,” he said. “And Hijinio isn’t no more’n a hired man. Like I said: I don’t like the idee of a man dyin’ for wages.”
Jody had an idea.
“Leave the bulls to me,” he said. “You go ahead with the others. Hell, you done it all till now. It’s my turn.”
“Nicely spoke, Jode,” said Harrison.
“You sound like a goddam daddy,” Jody yelled. “You do like I say. Us Storms’ve been in tighter tights’n this. Just leave me on my lonesome an’ I’ll come through with them bulls. Please, Mr. Harrison. Do me a favor.”
Harrison cocked his head on one side.
“All right,” he said. “If n a man claims to be a man, why he should ought to be treated like a man. I’ll take you up on it. Let’s go.”
Jody was astonished and shaken for the second time. His first thought was that he had bitten off more than he could chew, but his second was: Hell, I’m a Storm. If I can’t do it, nobody can.
They caught up with Manuela, Hijinio, the bulls and the horses a couple of hours later and during that time, they saw nothing of the pursuit.
Manuela showed such relief that Harrison was still alive that it was downright embarrassing. When Harrison told her what Jody had proposed and what he, Harrison, had agreed to, her mood changed in a flash. At once she was berating Harrison for being a heartless animal. She raged so magnificently that the three men were transfixed.
Jody said: “It does you real credit, Manuela, but you have to remember I’m a man too an’ I have a right to make up my mind. One of them bulls is mine an’ I want to git home with it.”
“But the other one is Prescott’s,” she screamed. “It is not right that a boy like you —”
“I ain’t a boy. I’m a man. My mind’s made up.”
“Very well,” she said. “I wash my hands of you. Be the big fool that you were born, Jody Storm. Stay so that man puts a rope around your neck.” With that she burst into tears and rode off down the trail.
Hijinio shrugged magnificently and said: “She is all heart, that one.”
Harrison looked at Jody and said: “Get a-goin’ boy. We’re leavin’ the hosses. They’ll only slow us down.”
“Take old Sox,” Jody said.
“All right.”
“I’m goin’ to cut off west,” Jody said. His heart was sinking a little now.
“Luck.”
Hijinio said: “Vaya con Dios, amigo.”
Jody gathered up his two bulls and drove them west. When he looked back, Harrison and Hijinio were riding after Manuela. They didn’t look back. Jody threw a curse after them. He reckoned Harrison didn’t give a damn for him after all. He rode into the hills feeling very young and very lonesome. Maybe Manuela was right after all — he was nothing more than a fool kid.
Chapter Fifteen
When Harrison caught up with Manuela, he said: “Honey.”
“Don’t you even dare talk to me,” she cried. “So this is the kind of man I was foolish enough to say that I would marry.”
Harrison said: “Manuela —”
“Do not even use my name. I despise you utterly. I cannot think -”
“Manuela —”
“Please ride far away from me. You are abhorrent to me. I look upon you with the utmost disgust. I —”
Harrison roared like a rampaging bull —
“Woman, hold your fool tongue an’ listen to me.”
White-faced she stared at him. She went to speak, but the words wouldn’t come.
He said in a quiet voice: “All is not as it seems, my little one. I have a plan.”
Slightly mollified, she said: “What kind of a plan would risk the life of a young boy?”
“He’s risking his life any road. This way we all have a chance. Now you an’ Hijinio go on ahead. Fast. You hear me, Hijinio, fast.”
Hijinio nodded.
Manuela started to protest. Harrison laid his quirt across the rump of her horse and it jumped away. Hijinio put spurs to his mount and went after her.
Harrison turned east and started to circle.
Chapter Fifteen
They caught Jody about two miles west of the spot where he had left Harrison. The main trouble from his point of view was that he didn’t have enough time. He did his best to wipe out his tracks for short distances to delay them, he even tried travelling a short distance along a creek bed, but the bulls played up and he had to abandon this ploy. He didn’t succeed in delaying Rolf’s Indian tracker more than a few minutes. The man was a Delaware who anticipated the boy’s every move.
When they came up with him, none of them were in a mood for fooling. He had shot them up badly. A horse had been so badly wounded that they had been forced to shoot it and there is nothing to make a man sicker at heart or more ready for vengeance than to be forced to kill his own horse. He had also hit a man in the arm and broken it. Another man had received a glancing shot along his jaw-bone. It hadn’t done any serious damage, but the man was in acute pain and he wanted to take it out on the man who had done it to him. Rolf himself had been thrown by his panic-stricken horse. The result was that he had been badly shaken in body and pride. And heaven knew that his pride had been hurt by Harrison and Jody enough without that.
As for Jody, he knew when he was beaten. They came at him from all sides and they didn’t give him a chance. If he had fired, they would have cut him to ribbons. He knew that there was a good chance that he now faced a rope, but at least for the moment he had preserved his life and the will to live was strong in him.
Sick at heart, seeing himself finally and utterly defeated, he was hauled from the saddle and dumped on the ground at Rolf’s feet. Some dozen men stood around, murder in their eyes and looked at this mere boy who had led them such a dance and had inflicted such indignities on them.
Rolf, angry as he was, still had his brain working clearly. He didn’t forget in his victory the purpose for his being on the trail.
“Tie his hands,” he said. “Harrow, Merchant, you stay here with me. The rest of you — get after Harrison and the woman. I want them both back here — alive. Harrison thought to divert me with this boy, but he has failed. Chavez you may kill if you wish.”
The Mexicans among them looked troubled. Some of them were cousins to the Mexican and blood will tell. They walked to their horses and saddle-leather creaked as they stepped aboard. They rode away and Jody was left with his three captors.
The leader of the riders was one Renny Avar, a man of pride and violence. He had three teeth missing from the front of his mouth and he owed their absence to Prescott Harrison. He had a vested interest in his capture and his death. Henry Dogood, the Delaware, a man of experience who had scouted successfully for the army for many years, rode back into the valley and picked up the trail of the other fugitives. He led the way some half-mile along the valley floor and then halted.
With his mashed mouth, Avar said: “What’s the hold up?”
“One of them turned east from here.”
“Which one?”
“I canno
t be sure.”
Avar told off two men to head after this rider. They rode away, angling east. Dogood led the way south. Avar now had seven men with him. He reckoned that was enough even for Harrison. The way he saw it, Hijinio Chavez was showing the Mexican yellow and had run for it into the east. Harrison had gone on with the woman. A man did not abandon a woman like Manuela Salazar once he had her.
From the next ridge, the Indian spotted the pursued. Avar decided only a fool would try to ride them down on the comparatively open floor of the valley. He himself with one man went straight on ahead. The others he ordered to east and west so that the fugitives could be approached from three sides. He was banking on the fact that the horses ahead would now be tiring.
He rode down into the valley, the legs of his horse pumping, the distance being ripped away under the horse’s hoofs. He felt himself being carried toward the woman, the woman he had looked at so often and never been allowed to touch. That sonovabitch Rolf ... He prayed that the man down yonder was Harrison, he just prayed. He’d pay him for this mashed mouth, the missing teeth. A hell of a note — a man like him without front teeth. Enough to make a cat laugh. Harrison wouldn’t be laughing when he met up with him.
He could see the other men working their way along the ridges above him. If Harrison made a stand, he’d ride over him. He’d tread the bastard into the dirt.
The horses ahead had reached broken ground. Their pace was slowed. Avar swept nearer. He reached down for his carbine and cleared it from the scabbard.
The man had turned in the saddle and was firing. That wouldn’t gain him much. He could see the woman more clearly now and saw that she was riding astride. He’d haul her back to Rolf by her hair and throw her at his feet. That would heal some of the hurt in him. But that would never overcome the fact that Harrison had drawn and smashed his mouth with a gun-barrel. And only that day he had boasted on the speed of his right hand.
The woman’s horse stumbled. Two riders were working their way in from the west, jumping their horses recklessly through the rocks. Avar saw that the man with the woman wasn’t Harrison but the Mexican, Hijinio. He’d have the greaser’s tripes out of him.
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