“I see you.” It was Coker. He stepped down into the trail, a wide grin on his face. “Come on up. You got comp’ny.”
For an instant he felt like reining around and running for it, but there wasn’t a chance. He was fairly caught between the walls of the canyon, plain to see against the new-fallen snow, and he knew that Coker would like nothing better than an excuse to kill him.
His hands were numb with cold or he might have tried for a gun. He put his right hand under his armpit to warm the fingers. There was yet time. And there was a chance. As long as he had a gun, there was a chance.
They were at the cave. He recognized the bulky body of Ross Wall, and a squat puncher named Jones who had been in the saloon at San Ysidro when Flynn had backed them down. He was fairly caught.
John Child was there, seated against a wall, his hands tied behind him. And Gretchen was there, but her hands were untied and she was cooking.
“I was hopin’ you wouldn’t come back,” Child commented.
“Cold out there.” He swung down stiffly. “We’ve had a snow.”
“Radigan,” Ross Wall was brusque. “You’ve got feed stacked somewhere. We want to know where.”
“Sorry.”
Coker grinned at him. “Ross, let me have him. I can get it from him.”
Radigan merely glanced at him. “You couldn’t get anything from me,” he said. “I wouldn’t give you the time of day.”
Wall interrupted Coker’s reply with an impatient gesture. “You’ve had it, Radigan. I can’t do a thing for you. Maybe if you talk I can get these others off, but I’ll tell you right now that we have orders to lose your body in one of those canyons north of here where nobody will find it.”
“We had a visitor,” Child commented.
“Shut up!” Coker turned sharply around.
Gretchen sensed it was something Radigan should know. She looked up from the fire. “He said he’d be back,” she said.
Coker turned on her angrily. “You, too! Shut your mouth!”
Ross Wall glanced at Coker. “That’ll do,” he said. “You’ll not talk to a lady that way.”
“She’s no lady,” Coker retorted. “She’s—!”
Gretchen grabbed a stick from the fire and swung the burning end at Coker’s face. He sprang back, but not fast enough and the stick caught him across the mouth. He staggered off balance and fell, crying out with pain and grasping his burned lips.
Gretchen stood up. “I’ll cook for you,” she said to Wall, “because you’re hungry men, but I won’t take any slander from such as he is.”
Coker was moaning and holding his mouth. Wall merely glanced at him. “Go back to your cooking,” he said.
She went back to the fire, and moved a pot more firmly into position on some stones in the fire. Then she said, “The man was Loren Pike. He said he and Charlie Cade were at Loma Coyote.”
Wall’s eyes showed his sudden attention. “Did you say Loren Pike? The Ranger?”
“He was a Ranger,” Radigan explained. “About the time I was. He left the outfit to settle a personal quarrel.”
“What are they doing here?”
“Friends of mine. I told you I was a Ranger, too. Fact is, I wrote to the Rangers in Tascosa just the other day.”
Radigan could see the idea did not please Ross Wall. The foreman walked to the mouth of the cave where Radigan’s horse still stood. For several minutes he stood there, staring down the darkening canyon, and Radigan watched him while Coker moaned and swore in a corner of the cave, holding his mouth with both hands.
Wall knew very well that many of the Rangers stuck together through thick and thin, and often after they had left the service they returned to help one another, and the thought gave him no pleasure. More than that, Loren Pike was a known man, a good man with a gun who had been active in running down cattle thieves. Moreover, he had been cousin to the Bannings with whom the Foley outfit had been feuding. Had he followed them?
“Who’s Cade?” he asked.
“Friend of mine. We rode together, a year or two. If he don’t find me here he’s going to be mighty unhappy.”
“What are two men?” It was the stocky puncher who spoke.
“Either one of them would take your pelt and tack it on the barn door without raising a sweat,” Radigan told him.
The more Ross Wall considered the situation the less he liked it. Handling Angelina Foley was bad enough, but after that slick-talking Harvey Thorpe came home there was no holding her, and the outfit had gone from one trouble to another. He knew little about her claim to the present land except that her father had always talked of a ranch he owned in New Mexico.
The snow would make feed a real problem, and unless they found the feed that Radigan had stacked against the bad months they were going to lose a lot of cattle. Matter of fact, they were going to lose some anyway. Now this.
If those men were coming back they would have to be killed too, for they would ask questions that must not be asked. And they would know too much. Maybe they already knew.
“They know about this fight?” he asked Child.
“What d’ you suppose we talked about?”
He might have guessed it. Still, it might be some time before they came back, and he had heard of Loma Coyote. Suppose he detached four or five men to ride up there and ambush the two? But where would it end? When a man tried to solve his problems with a killing it always led to still another. He swore softly, looking out at the gathering night, knowing there would have to be a showdown with Thorpe, and not relishing the thought.
Wall had his orders. Find Tom Radigan and get rid of him. Get rid of him so he could never be found again. And that was all very well, but with such men as Pike and Cade involved, the disappearance of Radigan might easily begin another blood feud. How could a man make a ranch pay under such circumstances? He stared downcanyon gloomily. For that matter, how could anyone make a ranch pay in this country? Radigan said he knew how, but Ross Wall had heard men talk big before.
Gretchen took the first plate of food to Radigan, and the second to John Child, placing it on the ground and then coolly untying his hands.
Child chafed his hands and wrists, glancing over at Radigan who sat quietly. The squat puncher was watching them with a rifle across his knees. Ross Wall turned and walked back into the cave, accepting his food with a quiet thanks, and staring at it somberly before he started to eat.
Radigan had been disarmed, but his weapons lay across from him within easy reach, almost as if he were being tempted to try for them. From Coker’s earlier attitude and the manner of the others now, Radigan was sure he was marked for death and, in fact, could see no other alternative for the Foley outfit. He moved with great care, always keeping his hands in view, and while he ate he was thinking, working around the herd of his thoughts trying to get a rope on the one he needed…a way out.
So far they had come off second best in the fighting, but that was pure unadulterated luck, as he would have been the first to admit. He had thrown his shots at the horses with only hope that they would land and that they had done what he hoped had been the purest chance.
Flynn had kept him out of a bad spot in San Ysidro, and his flight into the mountains and the subsequent snow had helped to get him away from the fight scotfree. He was under no illusions as to the outcome of such a fight if everything else went as it usually did.
A cold wind was blowing from the north. “This wind holds, you’ll have a drift, your cattle will drift clean out of the country.”
Wall shot him a sullen glance and made no reply. Trust a cattleman to be thinking of that.
Radigan finished his meal, accepted more coffee, and began to roll a smoke. He wanted to keep his hands free, and wanted Child’s free, so he tried to keep Wall thinking, worrying. “Look, Ross,” he said conversationally, “why not let the herd drift? Why don’t you boys follow it out of the country? This is a fight you can’t win, and if you kill us, how will you find the feed? Believe me, you
can look for a long time, and unless you’re mighty lucky, you’d not find it, and you know as well as I do that you’re working on a mighty slim margin.”
He paused and, lifting the cigarette to his lips, shot a glance at the nearest gun, and knew it was too far. But the cowhand named Coker was close. He was not eating, but had rubbed some grease on his burned and swollen lips. If he could drop on his side and grab Coker, reaching around him for his gun, he might manage it. But the chance was too great.
“Take it from me, Loren Pike and Charlie Cade will be back, and Cade owes a lot to me. So does Pike. They won’t come riding into a trap, either. They’ll come riding down here expecting a full-scale war, and they’ll be loaded for bear.
“Why, Ross, up there at Loma Coyote there’s eight or ten of the toughest fighting men in the country, and all they need to know is there’s some cattle down here they can have for the taking, and they’ll trail along with Loren Pike.
“You ever hear of Adam Stark? He’s the best rifle shot in this part of the country. Out of Tennessee by way of Texas, and a good man anywhere. Well, Adam is up there at Loma Coyote, and he’s been itching to get into this fight. Ask John Child there—he’s a close friend of John’s—and he’s been wanting to come down. Figure it out for yourself. These boys know the terrain, they know cattle, and you can just bet that whatever cattle get through the winter will be driven off.
“You know something, Ross? All those brands don’t look so good, and I’ve been wondering how they’d look if a man skinned one of those steers and checked that brand from the back of the hide. I’m wondering what brand would show up.”
“Shut up!” Ross Wall turned angrily. “You talk too damn’ much!”
“I’ll shut him up,” Coker said. “You just give me the word, and I’ll shut him up!” He mumbled the words through puffed lips. “I’ll kill him!”
The fire crackled, and outside the snow fell steadily. No use trying a break now, for a man could be tracked easily unless he had a good enough start for the snow to fill his tracks. There was nothing to do but to wait, and Radigan settled back. He was good at waiting, better than any Indian, as John Child had often said. Well, this was a time to see just how good he was. Moreover, he was beginning to get an idea of how he could handle the situation, just a glimmer of an idea.
Firelight flickered on their faces, gleamed on gun barrels and buckles, and outside the snow fell softly into the cushiony silence. The opening of the overhang was a black wall streaked with the slow fall of snow. Ross Wall stared gloomily into the fire and Radigan had noted the habit before and filed it for future reference. A man who stares into a fire is blind when he looks into the darkness, for a moment at least. And who needed more?
If they hadn’t found his feed by now there was small chance they would find it with this snow in the passes. He knew where the snow drifted, and the few routes there were that might be used. During the four years of residence on the ranch he had learned to plan his campaigns against the elements as a good general plans his strategy during a war. It was the price of survival.
Yet sometimes these first falls of snow did not last, but were swept away by the first change in the weather, and such might be the case with this one, and even a brief thaw might open up the passes, even if not for long.
The squat cowpuncher had leaned back against the wall, partly pillowed on his own saddle, and was snoring gently. Coker stared sullenly at Gretchen, and said nothing at all, and there was no light anywhere but the light from the flickering fire. Radigan poked a stick into the coals and watched it ignite, and he had a hunch that Wall had been told to find him and finish him off, and that Wall had no stomach for it. The big foreman was a cattleman, and in fighting he might kill a man, but he was no murderer.
Under the circumstances to attempt an escape could result only in death, and in the close quarters of the cave, a wild bullet might kill anyone. So could a ricochet. Gretchen would be in as great danger as any of them, perhaps more so, considering the cold hatred obvious in Coker.
The snow fell steadily, and Radigan knew if it continued through the night it would be extremely difficult if not impossible to get out of the canyon. And three additional mouths would make great inroads on their food supply.
A flurry of wind blew into the cave mouth and danced the flames. A spark flew near the sack of corn for the horses, and Child reached over and put it out. It was very late.
Ross Wall got up and walked to the cave mouth and looked out, and when he came back his face was lined with worry. “How deep can it get in these canyons?”
“Here?” Radigan shrugged. “In a snow like this, counting for snow drifted by the wind, it might get eight to ten feet deep, and probably much less. But it often gets twenty feet deep in these canyons in the winter. Always danger of slides off the peaks, too.”
His body was tired and he leaned back against the wall, yet the fatigue had not spread to his mind and he knew, whatever happened, he must remain alert. Yet if John Child was awake…He glanced over at the Indian and indicated by sign language that he must rest. Child nodded and Radigan settled himself more carefully, and as he did so he marked in his mind the position of the guns.
Despite the fire it was cold in the cave for there was no great depth to the overhang, and although the space was partly shielded by trees and undergrowth these were scant protection from the wind. Huddled under his blanket, Radigan slept fitfully, awakening at times to listen to the rising wind, the crackle of the fire, or the breaking of sticks as John Child replenished the flames. Without the necessity for conversation they had accepted the task of keeping the fire going, and nobody had offered any argument against their doing it, yet each understood the reason was not one of being helpful, but merely to offer them a little freedom of movement that might, in time, be utilized.
Ross Wall did not sleep. He sat staring at the flames or got to his feet and paced back and forth. Radigan could appreciate his concern, for downcountry there were nearly three thousand cattle, poorly fed these last few days, and only too ready to drift. Moreover, nobody was with those cattle, who felt sufficient responsibility. They might, if sheltered from the wind, remain close against the canyon walls throughout the storm, and they might again begin to drift.
Radigan glanced nearby at the huddled, sleeping form of Gretchen. Only she was not sleeping. She was looking at him from wide blue eyes and, as she looked, she moved something under the covers and he saw the butt of a pistol, momentarily revealed, then hidden away beneath the blanket.
A pistol.
He considered it with care. How Gretchen had managed to secure it, he could not guess, but it was further evidence that she was thinking all the time. He had to have that gun, but he had to have it only at the right time and the right place. For the time being it was safer with Gretchen, who was less likely to be searched.
Attempting to return to sleep he found it impossible, for now that he was fully awake the cold of the rock floor of the cave was such as to permit no sleep. He threw off the blanket and shrugged into his sheepskin coat. “Get some sleep, John,” he advised. “I’ll tend the fire.”
Coker watched him from under heavy lids. The gunman’s lips were in frightful condition, swollen and inflamed with great blisters where the burn had left its mark. He dared not change expression, and occasionally when some involuntary movement caused his face to twitch he gasped with pain.
The fuel supply was growing small, so drawing on his gloves, Radigan walked to the edge of the overhang and stepped out into the snow. He heard sharp movement behind him, and the click of a back-drawn gun hammer but he coolly began breaking branches from one of the deadfalls he had brought near for fuel.
This, he reflected, was one way it might be done. If one man was asleep and he could get the other to turn his back on the cave—it was a chance. Also, he thought, he might make a break for it in the snow, even without a gun. There was a rifle and three pistols at the cache on the mesa back of the ranch, and there was ano
ther rifle and a shotgun in the cache near San Antonio Valley. There was food in both places.
That was one way it could be done, but he could not go alone. He trusted Wall to prevent any attack upon Gretchen, but suppose Ross Wall had to leave her alone with Coker and the other man? Coker was filled with a hatred only held in check by Wall’s presence.
For the first time he began to think seriously of the problem of escape. Until now he had needed rest, until now he had wanted to learn more of their position, but now he knew the time was drawing near when they must escape. Wall, he was sure, had been told to kill them, and while he might delay, he might just ride off and leave them to Coker. He brought an armful of wood close to the fire, but he did not bring in too much.
It would soon be day, and the snow was still falling. There would be no chance to get the horses, no chance to get food. They must rely upon their chance of getting to the nearest cache, but in this snow a man on snowshoes could move faster than a horse.
Snowshoes.
A man could contrive snowshoes. Long ago, he had been shown how to do it by an Indian. Not snowshoes for fast going, but shoes that would at least keep a man on the surface.
At first they would have to move fast, and that meant they must get out of the canyon they were in. Glancing downcanyon he studied the walls and the trees. The snow here must be at least four feet deep, and in places deeper. Wind flurries whipped snow into the canyon that drifted there and remained. When the time came to move, it would have to be a quick move. Quick and decisive.
Radigan walked in and seated himself close to the fire. He held his hands out to the fire, but as he moved them out he moved his left hand, palm down, in a slight downward movement, then did the same, only farther out, with his right and repeated with his left. To a casual observer he might only be stretching his arms in a way to draw his sleeves back, but Radigan knew that John Child had caught the Indian sign language for “walk.”
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