by Tim Champlin
“I want to thank you for what you did for us back there,” Jay said after a few minutes. “That took a lot of courage to face up to those men.”
“I didn’t like the look of them,” Gorraiz replied. “I just played dumb. I’m good at that. But I don’t think they believed me. They’ll likely be back, especially if they find your balloon. They know you’ll have to be on foot around here somewhere, without food. You could have gone in any direction. They may be on the other side of the Sierra Madre by now, or searching these parallel valleys that drop down from there. But when they don’t find you, they’ll be back, sooner or later. There’s plenty of water around here, but nothing to eat this time of year, unless you can survive on grass like my sheep. But we can fool ’em again. We just need to look sharp to make sure we see them before they see us. Any chance your people or friends will come looking for you?”
“Oh, there will be a posse or some Wells Fargo men out combing these hills when they find out what happened, and determine that we didn’t get across this mountain range. It might take a few days before they catch up with us, though.” Jay spoke with a confidence he didn’t really feel. He still had that premonition of disaster gnawing at the pit of his stomach.
Less than an hour later they went into camp in a grassy area, near a thick stand of young pines on a nearby slope. They built a small cooking fire only a few yards from the trees and picketed the two mules close at hand. Gorraiz placed the flock between them and the stream, which still flowed along about fifty yards away. It ran silently, or gurgled over and around some large rocks, but it had lost the force of its current here on the flatter valley floor. The stream was bordered with willows and a few low trees, but their view was relatively unobscured to the southwest for a couple of miles where the valley lost its identity and merged with the drier, upland desert floor, studded with sage. Not much was said about the selection of the campsite, but it was obvious Gorraiz was aiming to provide them with the best and quickest cover available should it be needed.
As soon as the homemade aparejo was off the pack mule and the rider and saddle off the other, Jay approached Marvin Cutter who had limped over and eased himself to the ground in the soft grass out of the way.
“Lemme see that knee.”
Cutter looked up, surprised at the abrupt command. Without a word, he began sliding up his trouser leg. Jay gingerly probed and squeezed the ligaments on either side of the joint. Cutter caught his breath in sudden pain two or three times.
“Stand up.”
Cutter struggled to his feet.
“Stand up straight on it.”
Cutter stood.
Jay slid up the other trouser leg and compared the size of the two knees. As near as Jay could tell, they were as skinny and symmetrical as a pair of knees can be. He could not detect the slightest swelling. There was a purple bruise about the size of a half-dollar high on the calf of the right leg—the one Cutter claimed was injured.
“Okay.” Jay walked off.
There might have been a very slight stretching of the ligament, Jay guessed, but he suspected it was more like the thief had sustained a bruised calf, saw a chance for some sympathy, and faked a more serious knee injury from the heavy metal hydrogen tanks falling on him. A desire for more sympathetic treatment, or simple laziness so he wouldn’t have to share in the work, and could ride the mule—it had to be one or more of these motives. Well, the man had not survived in San Francisco for several years as a thief, burglar and pickpocket because he was forthright and honest. Jay often had to fight his tendency to treat everyone at face value. If a man was friendly and sociable on the surface, he found himself, more often than not, trusting him and distrusting someone like Fletcher Hall, who was arrogant and overbearing, but, in reality, was probably honest and totally reliable. But he had found, since coming west more than two years before, that there were all kinds of men here, and it was the general practice to take men at their word unless they proved themselves to be other than they seemed. But one had to be wary. By the time a scoundrel showed his true colors, a trusting individual could well be fleeced of his money, wounded, or dead. There were slick card sharps, and confidence men and criminals of all types, from cutpurses like Marvin Cutter, to the gangs who robbed banks, stages, and trains. It seemed, on this trip, that Jay was having to deal with outlaws at both extremes.
But his growling stomach told him it was time to put that kind of thinking aside for the time and get on to something more immediate and practical—like supper.
Gorraiz had a pot of stew simmering over the fire in no time. This time its main ingredient, he told them, was venison jerky from a deer he had shot a few weeks earlier in the mountains. It was not his practice, he said, to eat any of his sheep unless no other food was available. These sheep were to sell, not to consume.
“Besides, I really get attached to them after a while,” he said, leaning back against his saddle on the grass and spooning up a mouthful of stew. “They’re almost like my own children.”
Jay could see his point as he watched the docile creatures being herded here and there by a single dog on verbal and hand-signalled commands. The soulful eyes and the bleating in his ears all day had left him feeling as if he were in a children’s nursery.
“I’ll help you stand watch tonight,” Gorraiz said, as they finished up, cleaned and put away the tin utensils. The coffeepot still steamed on a flat rock by the fire.
“Good enough,” Hall said. The aeronaut’s appearance had weathered to the hue of his surroundings. His celluloid collar was missing, and the front of his white shirt, showing through the tan corduroy coat, was dingy with dust and sweat. It all blended in with his rust-colored hair, ruddy complexion, and red beard stubble.
“Might be a good idea if you three slept back in the trees a ways, out of sight,” Gorraiz said. “Just in case we have a surprise visit by that bunch that came through today.”
The night promised to be clear and calm, Jay noted as he carried a blanket back into the evergreens. And the night air had not begun to chill as rapidly with the disappearance of the sun as it had the night before. They were a few hundred feet lower than previously. That, and the absence of wind and the protection of the stand of pines, would make for a somewhat warmer night, even this far above sea level at the beginning of October.
Gorraiz had opted for the first watch, Hall would take the midwatch, and Jay had the deadest, darkest hours just before dawn. Marvin Cutter again had all night in.
Later, Jay would question his own judgment in allowing the sheepherder to take the first watch. He might have guessed if anything was going to happen, it would happen in the hours before midnight. But he, himself, could not resist the chance of getting several hours of uninterrupted sleep. He reasoned that when he was awakened for the early morning watch, the chill would probably have already driven him out of his blanket.
But his well-thought-out plan was not to be.
He was in an unusually deep sleep when yells and the crashing of gunfire brought him straight up. He threw off the blanket and snatched at the gun-belt that lay by his head. By the time his hand closed on the butt of the Colt Lightning a few seconds later, the fog was gone from his brain and his alert eyes were probing the inky blackness. He could hear someone scrambling around a few feet from him. The frantic bleating of the sheep was punctuated by the snarling and barking of the dog. Jay crouched, gun in hand, trying to focus on what was happening. Everything was in turmoil. He could just make out mounted figures riding past what was left of a very low fire. He staggered blindly down the slight incline through the snatching limbs of the small evergreens toward the open campsite. He heard more yelling and cursing. Jay threw himself on his belly just at the edge of the trees as the shooting started again. Muzzle flashes showed they were firing into the panicked flock. Where the hell was Gorraiz? Or Hall, or whoever was on watch?
“Shepherd, this is your last warning!” a voice yelled. “Next time it’ll be you instead of these stinkin’
woolies! You understand?”
“Hell, he probably don’t even understand plain English, Jim. He’s one o’ them greasy Basque bastards.”
Jay could hear their voices moving around as their horses shied and danced around at the sound of gunfire. But there was no moon and the glowing coals of the dying fire gave almost no light, at least not enough light to shoot by.
“Where the hell is he?” a third voice asked.
“Damned if I know. But he’s gotta be around here somewheres.”
“Let’s plug a few more of these sheep and get the hell outta here. He may be drawing a bead on us right now.”
“More likely hidin’ somewhere or hightailin’ it as fast as his legs will carry him,” came a guffaw.
“I still don’t like it. Let’s get going.”
Jay cocked his Colt and strained his eyes in the direction of the voices. But they kept shifting and he couldn’t make out a thing.
“Get off this range, shepherd!” the first voice yelled. “This is Wright land and you’re poisoning it with these stinkin’ sheep!”
A pistol roared twice. This was what Jay had been waiting for. He fired at a spot just above and to the left of the flash. An instant later another shot cracked from the trees to his left.
“Ah! Gil, I’m shot!”
“Hang on!”
“Let’s ride!”
Hoofbeats drummed on the grassy earth and suddenly the horsemen were gone.
“Hall?”
“Yeah. I’m over here. Where’s Gorraiz? And Cutter?”
“I don’t know, but we got one of them.”
“I heard him yell, but he must have stayed in the saddle.”
“Be careful until we’re sure they’re gone,” Jay cautioned as Hall went to the campfire and started throwing on some dead brush and wood that lay nearby. The fire blazed up as the brush caught. Hall stepped back away from the heat and light as Jay came up.
“They’re gone all right. It took the fight out of them when we drilled that one.”
“Gorraiz! Where are you?”
They ignored the bleating, milling sheep and the white lumps of wool that lay still here and there as they moved out in a widening circle, yelling for the sheepherder and Marvin Cutter.
“Hey, McGraw, I only see one of the mules. Weren’t they both hobbled?”
“Yes. I don’t think he could have broken loose. I put on those hobbles myself. And surely Gorraiz wouldn’t have ridden off on him.”
“Hell, they both seem to be gone,” Hall said, walking back out of the trees after a quick inspection in the near-darkness.
The black-and-white border collie came trotting up, whining.
“Where are they, Chuck?” Jay said, uttering the question aloud. The dog pricked his ears forward and looked at them with intelligent eyes, as if he understood the words. He whined again.
“How many did they kill?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a dozen or more,” Hall replied, squinting past the glare of the fire at the prostrate piles of wool. From where he stood, Jay could see red stains on several of them.
“Oohhh!”
Jay’s heart jumped at the sound and he spun around, reaching for his holstered Colt.
Chapter Seventeen
Jay jumped away from the firelight, aiming his Colt at the bearish figure lumbering toward them from the trees.
Then he let out his breath in a rush and holstered his gun as he saw Vincent Gorraiz staggering toward them, holding his head.
“Are you shot?” Hall asked as both of them rushed up to aid the sheepherder whose knees were beginning to buckle. They caught and eased him to the ground. By the wavering firelight, they could see that one side of his face was bloody. Jay’s stomach was in knots.
“Where’d they get you?”
The brown eyes flickered open. “I wasn’t shot. Someone hit me. What happened? Were we attacked?”
“Yes. Didn’t you hear them or see them?”
“No.” Gorraiz struggled to sit up.
“Just lie back and take it easy.”
“I’m all right. Just dizzy. Oh, my head!”
“Get him a drink of water,” Jay said.
Hall grabbed the bucket and jogged off toward the stream.
“You may have a concussion. You hurt anywhere else?”
Gorraiz attempted to shake his head, but grimaced at the pain of the motion.
“Just stay still and see if you can remember what happened,” Jay said.
“I let the fire die down and I was on guard at the edge of the trees back there where I could see the flock and the valley. Couldn’t see much of anything, though.” He paused, and took a deep breath, as if talking were a great effort. “Don’t remember much after that. Something hit me from behind. I went down and out. Next thing I know, I woke up just now. Feels like somebody cracked my skull.”
“Your flock was attacked by at least three mounted men,” Jay said. “They shot some of your sheep, and they were yelling at you the whole time. So I guess it couldn’t have been one of them who hit you.”
“Oh, no!” Gorraiz raised himself to one elbow and looked toward the flock. “Oohhh! They got my Merino ram.”
“I couldn’t see who they were,” Jay said, apologetically.
“Doesn’t matter. They probably had masks on. Cowards always wear masks,” the Basque muttered with a groan.
Hall arrived with the bucket of water and, using the shepherd’s own bandanna, began washing the blood off his face and cleaning the matted hair.
“Have you seen Marvin Cutter?” Jay asked.
“No,” Gorraiz replied, his eyes closed.
Jay left them and walked away toward the trees where they had been sleeping. He rubbed a hand across his eyes and his stubbled cheeks. He had been tired before, and now was doubly so since the adrenalin was ebbing after the excitement of the attack. Everything seemed to be going against them. And yet he felt powerless to do anything about it. He relally didn’t understand what was happening, or why.
When his eyes had again adjusted to the dark, he found one mule, still hobbled and grazing peacefully. The other mule was nowhere to be found. Jay briefly considered fashioning a torch from the fire to inspect a little more carefully, but rejected the idea. The small pines were so thick, he would run too great a risk of starting a forest fire. He realized he didn’t need a torch to tell him that Marvin Cutter was gone, and was riding the missing mule. He had been the one who had hit Vincent Gorraiz, even before the attack. It was the only logical explanation.
With a start, he remembered the sacks with the Wells Fargo treasure. He fumbled to the place he had been sleeping and found them where he had flung them when he jumped out of his blanket. He thrust his hands into each bag. As near as he could tell, nothing was missing. After a more thorough inspection, he discovered the rifle was gone, along with a blanket, most of the remaining venison jerky, and a canteen. Cutter had taken just enough to survive and had made his break. Except for the stolen mule and rifle, it was good riddance as far as Jay was concerned. He returned to the fire where Gorraiz was sitting on his sheepskin sleeping robe and holding his wet bandanna to his forehead. He was feeling nauseated, he told Jay in reply to his query. Jay relayed what he had found.
“Glad to be rid of the man,” Hall remarked, echoing Jay’s thoughts.
Gorraiz lay back on the robe, the wet cloth pressed to his forehead and eyes.
Hall drew Jay aside. “I got the bleeding stopped, but he has a nasty cut on the crown of his head. Big knot. Except for his hat and the thick hair, he might have been killed or hurt a lot worse.”
“Wish I had my hands around the throat of that little weasel,” Jay gritted through clenched teeth. “But I didn’t figure him to be the violent type.”
“Desperate to get away, I guess,” Hall said. “He knew he was going to jail when we got him back to civilization.”
“Well, where do we go from here?” Jay felt unutterably weary.
“First
thing we need to do is keep him awake the rest of the night. If he’s got a severe concussion, we don’t want him to go to sleep. He might never wake up.”
Jay nodded. That meant no sleep, but they needed to stay alert for any further trouble, anyway. He really did not think there would be any more nocturnal visitors, but his hunches had been wrong before.
They put the coffeepot on and prepared to take turns walking Gorraiz around and talking to him. During the long hours that followed, they drank innumerable cups of black coffee and poured several down the injured sheepherder as well. The stimulating effects were probably nil, since it was only the parched bran coffee they were drinking.
By the gray light of a cold mountain dawn, they broke a skim of ice on the water bucket, poured it over the fire, packed up the remaining mule, and helped Gorraiz aboard to ride bareback just forward of the pack.
Fortunately, Chuck was so well trained he needed no directions to start the sheep moving once more. Gorraiz indicated the direction they were to take to the abandoned mountain man’s cabin. They left the carcasses of the dead sheep lying where they had fallen, food for the coyotes, wolves and buzzards. Jay was secretly glad that none of the poor animals had just been severely wounded so that none of them had to be put down with a bullet from his own gun. Men who would shoot dumb animals just to get at their owner were the lowest of the low. They would stop at nothing. Well, at least one of these hired guns paid the price by stopping one or two slugs. This whole business of fighting over the open range was ridiculous, Jay thought. But greed knew no bounds.