Logan remained unaware of his danger. The roar of the falls was such that my cry was drowned out almost before it had cleared my lips. Thus unalerted, the Indian continued to inch his way along the wall long seconds after his pursuer appeared at his back. George Crook was prolonging the moment. Even from this distance, I could imagine his twisted grin as he sighted down the barrel of the Winchester and prepared to fire.
But he wasn’t the only one who was getting set to kill. Jack released my arm and brought the heavy Sharps up to his shoulder, bringing the muzzle into line with the figure to the right of the waterfall. He set the trigger with a click. I braced myself for the report.
“Drop it!”
I guess I knew right away that the voice belonged to Bud Fowler. It didn’t make much difference, though, because in the next instant George Crook’s rifle went off and Logan was as dead as the rock wall he was climbing.
Chapter Fourteen
So maybe he wasn’t dead. Maybe all that happened was that Logan turned to see who was behind him just as George Crook fired, and the bullet struck him in the shoulder and sent his Henry spinning into the lake. But it all happened so fast that it looked as if Logan had been killed. The shrill scream that escaped Ilse’s lips at the moment of impact didn’t make things seem any less confusing either.
I don’t know if Bud Fowler knew about the scene that was taking place across the lake when he arrived on foot with Sweeney behind him. At any rate, when the shot rang out he went into a crouch and wheeled in that direction, shotgun clapped to his hip. Everyone froze. For a full ten seconds the water spilling down from the top of the wall was the only thing moving. Logan, his left hand clutching his right arm where the blood was beginning to spread, stared at the man who had shot him. George Crook faced him in silence, grinning, I suppose, like a hyena. Ilse wobbled precariously on the narrow ledge. Jack, Fowler, and Sweeney kept their guns trained on the Indian policeman, who was unaware of their presence. And I just watched and waited for all hell to break loose.
But it didn’t. At least, not right away. Logan remembered the revolver in his holster and went for it, but pulled up short when the other Indian swung the Winchester one-handed by its lever, jacked a fresh shell into the chamber, and pulled down on him again in the time it took him to get his hand from his injured arm to the butt of the Colt. “Go ahead!” George Crook shouted over the roar of the falls. “It’ll look good on my record!”
Logan said nothing. He stood with his hand poised halfway to the belt gun and didn’t move another inch.
“You disappoint me, Logan!” said the other. “I thought you had more guts than that!” He was trying to goad him into going for the gun. It didn’t work. “All right!” The policeman’s grin vanished. “If you won’t use it, get rid of it. Drop it in the lake.”
Logan said, “Why should I? You’ll kill me anyway.”
“Drop it. goddamnit!” George Crook tightened the arm-lock he had across the girl’s throat and dangled her feet over the edge. She squealed in terror. “It’s a long way down, Logan! You’ll have plenty of time to think about your mistake before she hits them rocks!”
I clenched my fists. If I’d had the chance right then, I would have finished the job on the Indian lawman’s face.
Logan hesitated a beat. His pursuer let Ilse slip six inches. Finally he reached for the gun and lifted it gingerly out of its holster. The tiny splash it made when it hit the lake sent ripples all the way across the surface.
“That’s better,” said the other. He set the girl back on her feet.
“Now’s your chance!” I told Jack. “Shoot him!”
“I wouldn’t do that.” Fowler had turned away from the drama on the cliff and now he and his deputy had their firearms trained once again on Jack.
I stared at him, scarcely believing what was happening. “Constable, that man on the cliff is a murderer! He killed a man in Idaho and he’s about to do it again!”
Fowler was unconcerned. “If he’s George Crook, he’s a lawman. Anyhow, it ain’t none of my business.”
I swung back to Jack. He had the rifle braced against his shoulder and his cheek pressed against the stock. I said, “What are you waiting for? Why don’t you shoot?”
“I reckon I can’t.” He lowered the rifle.
“Now you’re getting smart,” said the constable.
“Why can’t you!” I was beginning to wonder if I were the only sane man on this side of the lake.
“He’s too far away and too close to the girl. I might hit her.”
George Crook’s taunting voice floated down from the high ledge. “I was beginning to think you weren’t coming,” he shouted to Logan. His finger was on the trigger of his rifle and he was in complete control of the situation. “I got bored. Thought I might have to pass the time by reading.” He looked at Ilse. “Or something.”
“I didn’t have much choice after you issued that challenge,” said the other Indian.
“You’re a fool, Logan! A fool for coming here and a fool for climbing up there when you thought I was hiding in that cave. And now you’re a dead fool.” He leveled the carbine along the rock and took aim at Logan’s chest.
“Don’t do it, injun!”
The shout, gruff, threatening, echoed around the lake. George Crook snapped his head to his left. The rest of us followed his gaze. On the south shore of the lake, seated solidly astride a huge Appaloosa, fat old Otis Ledbetter held a rifle pointed upward at the Indian policeman. I only caught a glimpse of him, however, because out of the corner of my eye I spotted a movement high above the old deputy’s head and looked up to see none other than Rufus Brinker scuttling along the top of the rock wall. He swayed a little from the loss of blood he had suffered since leaving the Morgenmuellers’, but it didn’t seem to slow him down any as he made for the summit. I remembered Jack’s words: Mad or sane, all animals head for higher ground. He must have been hiding there all this time, and been flushed out by the loud voices. I seemed to be the only one who had noticed him.
“Otis, get away from there!” Fowler shouted to his deputy. “He’s law!” This time the Indian policeman’s face turned quickly in our direction. It was his first intimation that he had not been alone with Ilse and Logan from the start.
Otis didn’t budge. “Law or no law, he ain’t got no right to commit murder. Drop the gun, mister!”
It looked as if George Crook were going to obey. Slowly he lowered the Winchester from its position atop the rock. Then he wheeled and fired. The deputy’s rifle went off at almost the same instant, but the bullet went wide as Otis arched his back and tumbled out of the saddle. His horse screamed, reared, and took off through the trees at a gallop, leaving its master lying in a heap on the shore of the lake with one arm in the water.
Fowler let out a bellow of grief and rage and fired at George Crook, but his shotgun’s range was far too short. I heard the shot falling through the trees. Sweeney’s rifle spoke at the same time; Mauser or not, though, it had no accuracy at that great distance. His bullet spanged against the rock a good twenty feet below the ledge upon which the Indian lawman stood.
The only hope was Jack’s Sharps. He raised it again but stopped short of squeezing the trigger. George Crook was holding Ilse in front of him now, and there was no way he could shoot the Indian without hitting the girl. Jack waited for his chance.
The chief of the Nez Percé police was determined not to give it to him. Still holding the girl, he returned his rifle to its former position and sighted once again on Logan, who in the confusion had managed to advance ten feet or so closer to his pursuer. He had obviously been hoping to get close enough to wrestle the gun away from him, but had been unable to do so fast enough because of his useless right arm. Now there was no way George Crook could miss. I could hear him laughing over the rumble of the falls.
Suddenly he looked up. Rufus Brinker, crouching directly above him at the top of the rock wall, had accidentally kicked some rubble loose onto the ledge and aler
ted the Indian to his presence. The madman was a sight to see, squatting atop that granite promontory. All those shots had whipped him into such a frenzy that he was ready to attack anything from any height, and now, sitting on his heels, arms outstretched, chains dangling from his wrists, there was little doubt that he was about to pounce two hundred feet straight down to where George Crook stood. Scarcely had this thought occurred to me when Rufus leaped.
George Crook was already moving. He let go of Ilse to free his other hand and swung the barrel of his carbine upward to meet the threat. The girl flattened out against the wall. In that instant, Jack fired his Sharps. At the same time Rufus Brinker came down on the Indian with a kiyoodling bellow, and together he and George Crook went plummeting down into the rock-studded grotto at the base of the six-hundred-foot falls.
To this day I swear that an instant before the madman took him in his deadly embrace, George Crook lost grip on his Winchester and fell back against the wall as if struck by a battering ram. It can only be that from a distance of over five hundred yards Jack had hit what he was aiming at. Never again would I laugh at those old-timers’ boasts about the capabilities of the Big Fifty.
For a long moment after the two men disappeared from view beneath the boiling waters at the foot of the cliff, we stood watching the busy inlet. Then I remembered Ilse. She was standing where George Crook had left her, hugging the side of the cliff and afraid to move for fear of stumbling on her bonds and sharing her abductor’s fate. Logan was inching toward her from the other side of the falls, but he was growing weak from loss of blood and was beginning to teeter himself. Once his foot slipped and he was forced to use both hands to catch himself. I could picture his grimace of pain as he hoisted himself back up. I left the others and hurried over to where I had left my horse.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Fowler challenged. He was all lawman again, although now there was a hollowness in his curt tone that had not been there while Otis Ledbetter was alive.
“Straight up.” I mounted the mustang and took off in the direction of the cliff. Fowler’ s shotgun remained silent.
There wasn’t much use in getting down to take a closer look at Otis. As I rode by his great hulk of a body, I could see a hole the size of a twenty-dollar gold piece where George Crook’s bullet had come out his back. He had been dead before he hit the ground. Fowler was right. There wasn’t another officer in Reuben who could hold a candle to Otis Ledbetter when it came down to real law enforcement. Including the constable himself.
I found Logan’s dun tethered to a stunted yellow pine growing out of a crevice in the rock wall. George Crook’s paint was grazing nearby, much as it probably had been when the other Indian had come through, leading him to believe that Sam. Dailey’s killer was up on the cliff. I left my horse there and headed on up the steep slope. Before long it narrowed into the ledge that had led Logan into a trap and the Indian policeman to his fate. This was a shelf of rounded rock some eighteen inches wide at its broadest point, but which grew so narrow in some places that it was hard to tell it from the numerous other crags in the weather-worn cliff. I wondered how the Indian had ever managed to get himself and Ilse to the spot where he had called Logan out. What was more important, I wondered how I was going to get both of us back.
I looked down just once while I was making my way toward the splash of color that was the Morgenmuellers’ only daughter—and immediately resolved not to do so again. What I saw was a dizzying view of the two-hundred-foot tall pines that crowded against the gray wall from the top, and, beyond them, of the water tossing and swirling angrily over the jagged rocks in the grotto at the bottom of the falls. Below me the cliff fell away for nearly one hundred and fifty yards until it disappeared into the thick growth of trees. The waterfall was a roaring in my ears as I inched along the scantiest portion of the ledge, chest pressed against the stone, hands grasping the wall’s gnarled surface. My nostrils filled with the sharp smell of granite dust. Twice I had to fight back a sneeze for fear that it might make me lose my footing.
Ilse stood with her back to the wall on one of the more roomy sections of the uneven shell. Even so, her inability to stretch out her arms because of the bonds that held them behind her back made her position extremely dangerous; it had the effect of pulling her forward toward the edge so that she swayed back and forth, her heels teetering on the slippery stone. Her skirt was dusty and ragged at the hem, her blouse wilted. One of her blonde braids had come unpinned and now dangled loose over her left shoulder. Her face glistened with perspiration. Beyond her, Logan had passed beneath the arch of the falls and was dragging himself toward her at a painful pace. His right sleeve, hanging useless at his side, was drenched with blood. It was obvious that George Crook’s bullet had shattered the bone. He used his left hand to grasp the crags in the fluted rock and pull himself forward. Because of his weakness, he was forced to stop and rest after each effort, and it was for this reason that I got to the girl first, even though he had been working toward her for the past forty-five minutes. No sooner had I reached Ilse than she fell against me in a kind of swoon. From then on I was supporting both of us.
“Give me your knife!” I shouted to Logan over the din of the falls when at last he had joined us. He shook his head weakly and motioned for me to turn her around. All this time he was smiling that funny half-smile that had infuriated me on so many occasions.
I did as he directed, and in the space of a few seconds he had sawed through the stout ropes on Ilse’ s wrists and ankles. He nearly lost his balance straightening back up, but caught himself just short of pitching headlong over the side. In so doing he lost his knife.
“Damn!” I heard him say, as he watched the glittering shard of steel tumble into the white water. “There goes my last defense!”
I won’t bore you with the details of how we got back. It’s enough to say that, inching our way along that treacherous ledge with Ilse Morgenmueller spread-eagled between us, we found the going twice as hard as it had been on the way in. At one point Ilse’s foot slipped on the eroded rock and Logan lost his grip on her arm. For several seconds she dangled, afraid to breathe, while I dug my fingers into the rock and held on to her wrist for dear life. Then I pressed my shoulder against the cliff and freed my other arm to haul her back up onto the shelf. My hands were sweating. She started to slip and I felt rather than heard her breath catch in her throat. I tightened my grip. I wondered fearfully if her weight might pull her arm out of its socket.
That danger was prevented when she managed to get hold of my left wrist with her other hand. I dug in my heels and tugged until Logan was able to curl his good arm around her waist and, fighting to hold on to his own precarious balance, set her back onto her feet. Her breath came out in a gasp of relief. Fifteen minutes later we were back on solid ground and walking single-file down the slope that led to the shore of the lake.
Logan fought me when I tried to help him into his saddle. “Go help an old lady across the street,” he growled. Grasping the saddle horn in his left hand, he went to swing himself up onto the dun’s back, fell back, and tried again. That time he made it. I pretended not to notice how pale he had become as I helped Ilse onto the front of my own saddle and mounted behind her.
Jack and the two lawmen were waiting for us when we got to where Otis Ledbetter had fallen. They had turned the dead deputy onto his back and now Fowler and Sweeney were looking down at him sadly, hats in hand. Jack alone looked up as we approached. His nod when he saw me was almost imperceptible.
“I can’t figure why he done it,” the constable was saying. “Weren’t none of his business nohow.”
Jack eyed Fowler with the air of a doctor observing the symptoms of his patient’s illness. Constable,” he said flatly, “if you ain’t got it figured out by now, you ain’t going to.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Fowler challenged, fixing the other with his lawman’s glare.
Jack didn’t bother to answer. He slipped his Sharps
into his saddle scabbard and mounted his mule, which until now had been grazing with the officers’ horses among the pine needles that covered the ground.
“Hold it, mister.” The constable raised his shotgun to cover the hider. “You ain’t going nowhere. You’re under arrest. You, the boy, and the injun.”
“What for?” Jack’s tone was bored.
“What you think? For murder.”
“Who’d we kill?”
Fowler smirked beneath his handlebar moustache. “You ain’t so dumb, mister,” he said approvingly. “But save that stuff for the jury. There’s a dead injun down by Quartz Mountain that might not believe you’re so ignorant.”
“Who says we killed this here injun?” asked Jack. He placed his hands on his saddle horn and looked as if he really wanted to hear the answer.
“Why,” began the lawman, then stopped. He glanced involuntarily in the direction of the raging falls. “George Crook,” he said at last.
Jack waited for him to go on.
“I know what you’re thinking. But I got it in writing. You forgot about that little telegram the injun sent from Oakland, didn’t you? The one where he says you killed his partner.” There was a gloating expression on the constable’s face.
“I reckon you got us then,” shrugged Jack. Fowler grinned. “That a heavy piece of evidence, a wire that names us as killers.”
The grin faded. “Well your names ain’t exactly in it,” he said slowly.
“They ain’t?” The man seated astride the mule looked surprised. “Then how’d you know we was the ones done it?
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