“What happened? Didn’t they used to run cattle there?”
Dyer filled Calou’s glass. “Friend,” he said quietly, “you’d best learn what you’re up against. Twenty-five years ago Art Horan started the Rafter H. Folks warned him about Black Mesa but he laughed. His cattle went loco, his crops died, an’ then his well dried up. Finally, he sold out an’ left.
“Feller name of Litman took over. Nobody saw him for a few days, an’ then a passin’ rider found him dead in the yard. Not a mark on him.”
“Heart failure, maybe.”
“Nobody knows. Litman’s nephew came west, but he never liked to stay there at night. Used to spend all his time here, and sometimes he’d camp on the range rather than go near Black Mesa at night.
“Finally, he rounded up a few head of stock, sold ’em, an’ drifted. That’s one funny part, stranger. Over two thousand head of stock driven to the place, an’ never more than five hundred came of it.” Dyer nodded his head. “Never seen hide nor hair of ’em.”
“Tell him about Horan,” Karr suggested. “Tell him that.”
“Nobody ever figured that out. After Horan sold out an’ then Litman died an’ the nephew left, nobody went near the place. One night Wente here, he rode past Black Mesa—”
“I’ll never do it again!” Wente stated emphatically. “Never again!”
“He was close to the cliff when he heard a scream, fair make a man’s blood run cold, then a crash. He was takin’ off when he heard a faint cry, then moanin’. He rode back, an’ there on the rocks a man was layin’. He looked up at Wente an’ said, ‘It got me, too!’ an’ then he died. The man was Art Horan. Now you figure that out.”
“Nobody has lived there since?”
“An’ nobody will.”
Calou chuckled. “I’ll live there. I’ve got to. Every dime I could beg, borrow, or steal went into that place. I’m movin’ in tomorrow.”
* * *
THERE WAS ANIMOSITY in their eyes. The animosity of men who hear their cherished superstitions derided by a stranger. “You think again,” Karr replied. “We folks won’t allow it. It’ll bring bad luck to all of us.”
“That’s drivel!” Calou replied shortly. “Let me worry about it.”
Karr’s old face was ugly. “I lost two boys who tried to climb that mesa, an’ many a crop lost, an’ many a steer because of it. You stay away from there. There’s Injun ha’nts atop it, where there was a village once, long ago. They don’t like it.”
Knauf looked around. “That goes for the Pitchfork, too, mister. Move onto that place an’ we’ll take steps.”
“Such as what?” Calou asked deliberately.
Knauf placed his glass carefully on the bar. “I don’t like the way you talk, stranger, an’ I reckon it’s time you started learnin’.”
He was stocky, with thick hands, but when he turned toward Matt Calou there was surprising swiftness in his movements. As he stepped forward he threw a roundhouse right. Matt Calou was an old hand at this. Catching the swing on his left forearm, he chopped his iron-hand left fist down to Knauf’s chin, then followed it with a looping right. Knauf hit the floor and rolled over, gagging.
“Sorry,” Calou said. “I wasn’t huntin’ trouble.”
Russell merely stared, then as Calou turned he said, “You’ll have the Pitchfork on you now.”
“He’ll have the whole country on him!” Old Man Karr spat. “Nobody’ll sell to you, nobody’ll talk to you. If you ain’t off this range in one week, you get a coat o’ tar an’ feathers.”
The rain had slackened when Matt Calou rode down into a shallow wash. Water was running knee-high to his horse, but it was not running fast. He crossed and rode through the greasewood of the flat toward the buildings glimpsed in occasional flashes of lightning. Beyond them, dwarfing the country, loomed the towering mass of Black Mesa. When he was still a mile from the house he found the first whitened bones. He counted a dozen skeletons.
Rain pattered on his slicker as he rode into the yard and up to the old stone house. There was a stable, smokehouse, and rock corrals, all built from the talus of the mesa.
Leaving his horse in the stable where it was warm and dry, Matt spilled a bit of grain from a sack behind the saddle into a feed box. “You’ll make out on that,” he said. “See you in the mornin’.”
Rifle under his slicker, he walked to the house. The backdoor lock was rusted, and he braced his foot against the jamb and ripped the lock loose. Once inside, there was a musty smell, but the house floors were solid and the place was in good shape. Opening a window for air, he spread his soogan on the floor and was soon asleep.
It was still raining when he awakened, but washing off the dusty pots and pans, he prepared a hasty breakfast, then saddled up and rode toward the mesa. As he skirted the talus slope he heard water trickling, but when he reached the place where it should have been, there was none. Dismounting, he climbed the slope.
At once he found the stream of runoff. Following it, he found a place where the little stream doubled back and poured into a dark hole at the base of the tower. Listening, he could hear it falling with a roar that seemed to indicate a big, stone-enclosed space. He walked thoughtfully back to his horse.
“Well, what did you find?”
Startled at the voice, Matt looked around to see a girl in a rain-darkened gray hat and slicker. Moreover, she had amazingly blue eyes and lovely black hair.
She laughed at his surprise. “I haunt the place,” she said, “haven’t you heard?”
“They said there were ghosts, but if I’d known they looked like you I’d have been here twice as fast.”
She smiled at him. “Oh, I’m not an official ghost! In fact, nobody is even supposed to know I come here, although I suspect a few people do know.”
“They’ve been trying to make the place as unattractive as possible,” he said, grinning. “So if they did know, they said nothing.”
“I’m Susan Reid. My father has a cabin about five miles from here. He’s gathering information on the Indians—their customs, religious beliefs, and folklore.”
“And this morning?”
“We saw somebody moving, and Dad’s always hoping somebody will climb it so he can get any artifacts there may be up there.”
“Any what?”
“Artifacts. Pieces of old pottery, stone tools, or weapons. Anything the Indians might have used.”
Together, they rode toward the ranch, talking of the country and of rain. In a few minutes Matt Calou learned more about old Indian pottery than he had imagined anybody could know.
* * *
AT THE CROSSROADS before the Rafter H, they drew up. The rain had ceased, and the sun was struggling to get through. “Matt,” she said seriously, “you’ve started something, so don’t underrate the superstition around here. The people who settled here are mostly people from the eastern mountains and they have grown up on such stories. Moreover, some strange things have happened here, and they have some reason for their beliefs. When they talk of running you out, they are serious.”
“Then”—he chuckled—“I reckon they’ll have to learn the hard way, because I intend to stay right where I am.”
When she had gone he went to work. He fixed the lock on the back door, built a door for the stable, and repaired the water trough. He was dead tired when he turned in.
At daybreak he was in the saddle checking the boundaries of his land. There was wild land to the north, but he could check on that later. Loco weed had practically taken over some sections of his land, but he knew that animals will rarely touch it if there is ample forage of other grasses and brush. Several of the loco-weed varieties were habit-forming. Scarcity of good forage around water holes or salt grounds was another reason. Most of the poisonous species were early growing and if stock was turned on the range before the grass was sufficiently matured, the cattle would often turn to loco weed.
It was early spring now, but grass was showing in quantity. There was loc
o weed, but it seemed restricted to a few areas. He had learned in Texas that overgrazing causes the inroad of the weed, but when land is ungrazed the grasses and other growths tend to push the loco back. That had happened here.
The following days found him working dawn until dark. He found some old wire and fenced off the worst sections of weed. Then he borrowed a team from Susan’s father and hitched it to a heavy drag made of logs laden with heavy slabs of rock. This drag ripped the weed out by the roots, and once it was loose he raked it into piles for burning.
During all of this time he had seen nobody around. Yet one morning he saddled up, determined to do no work that day. His time was short, as the week they had given him was almost up, and if trouble was coming it might start the following day. He rode north but was turned back by a wall of chaparral growing ten to fifteen feet high, as dense a tangle as he had ever seen in the brush country on the Nueces.
For two miles he skirted the jungle of prickly pear, cat claw, mesquite, and greasewood until he was almost directly behind Black Mesa.
Looking up, he was aware that he was seeing the mesa from an unusual angle. The area was a jumble of upthrust ledges and huge rock slabs and practically impenetrable, yet from where he sat he could see a sort of shadow along the wall of the mesa. Working his way closer, he could see that it was actually an undercut along the face of the cliff. It was visible only because the torrential rains had left the rock damp in the shadow of the cliff. It might be that it had never been seen under these circumstances and from this angle before.
* * *
Forcing his horse through a particularly dense mass of brush, he worked a precarious way through the boulders until he was within a few feet of the wall, and near it, of a gigantic earth crack. In the bottom of this crack was a trickle of water, but it was running toward the mesa!
Leaving his horse, he descended to the bottom of the crack. At the point where he had left his horse it was all of thirty feet wide, but at the bottom, a man could touch both walls with outstretched arms.
All was deathly still. Only the faint trickle of the water and the crunch of gravel under his boots broke the stillness. Yet he was aware of a distant and subdued roar that seemed to issue from the base of Black Mesa itself!
He came suddenly to a halt. Before him was a vast black hole! Into this trickled the stream he had been following, and far below he could hear the sound of the water falling into a pool. Recalling the small hole on the opposite side, he realized that under Black Mesa lay a huge underground pool or lake. By all reason the water should have been flowing away from the mesa, but due to the cracks and convulsions of the earth, the water flowed downward into some subterranean basin of volcanic formation.
But if it did not escape? Then there would be a vast reservoir of water, constantly supplied and wholly untapped!
When he emerged, he looked again at the shadow on the wall, revealing a wind- and rain-hollowed undercut that slanted up the side of the mesa. And while he looked he had an idea.
The following day he rode north again, seeking a way through the chaparral. Beyond the belt of brush Sue had told him the green petered out into desert. Although she had not seen it herself, she also told him that only one ranch lay that way, actually to the northwest of Black Mesa, and that was the Pitchfork.
Suddenly he came upon the tracks of two horses. They were shod horses, walking west, and side by side. The tracks ended abruptly as they had begun, at an uptilted slab of sandstone, but seeing scratches on the sandstone, he rode up himself. It was quite a scramble, but the ledge broke sharply off and a crack, bottomed with blown sand, showed horse tracks.
When he reached the bottom he was in a small meadow and the belt of chaparral was behind him except for scattered clumps. The riders had worked here—he puzzled out the tracks—rounding up a few head of cattle and starting them northwest up the edge of the watery meadow.
Realization flooded over Matt Calou like a cold shower. Wheeling his horse, he started back up the meadow and had gone only a short distance when he came upon a Slash D steer! That was the brand of Dyer, the saloon keeper. Farther along he found another Slash D and three KRs. Grinning with satisfaction, he retraced his steps and rode back to his own ranch.
* * *
SUE WAS IN the kitchen and a frying pan was sizzling with bacon and eggs when he returned.
“Eggs!” He grinned at her. “Those are the first eggs I’ve seen in months!”
“We keep a few chickens,” she replied, “and I thought I’d surprise you.” She dished up a plate of the eggs and bacon, then poured coffee. “You’d better get ready to leave, young man. Foster, of the Pitchfork, is coming over here with his crowd and the crowd from Wagonstop. They say they’ll run you out of the country!”
Calou chuckled. “Let ’em come! I’m ready for ’em now!”
“You look like the cat that swallowed the canary,” she said, studying him curiously. “What’s happened?”
“Wait an’ see!” he teased. “Just wait!”
“You’ve been working,” she said. “What are you going to do with that pasture you dragged?”
“Plant it to crops. After a few years of that I’ll let it go back to grass. That will take care of the loco weed.”
“Crops take water.”
“We’ll have lots of water! Plenty of it! Enough for the crops, all the stock, an’ baths every night for ourselves and the kids.”
She was startled. “Ourselves?”
“My wife and myself.”
“You didn’t tell me you had a wife!” She stared at him.
“I haven’t one, but I sure aim to get one now. I’ve got one in mind. One that will be the mother of fifteen or twenty kids.”
“Fifteen or twenty? You’re crazy!”
“I like big families. I’m the youngest of twelve boys. Anyway, I got a theory about raisin’ ’em. It’s like this—”
“It will have to wait.” Sue put her hand on his arm. “Here they are.”
Matt Calou got to his feet. He was, she realized suddenly, wearing a tied-down gun. His rifle was beside the front door and standing alongside it was a shotgun.
Outside she could see the tall, lean figure of Foster of the Pitchfork and beside him were Russell, Knauf, and a half dozen others. Then, coming up behind them, she saw Old Man Karr, Dyer, and Wente. With them were a dozen riders.
Matt stepped into the door. “Howdy, folks! Glad to have visitors! I was afraid my neighbors thought I had hydrophobia!”
There were no answering smiles. “We’ve come to give you a start out of the country, Calou!” Foster said. “We want nobody livin’ here!”
Calou smiled, but his eyes were cold as they measured the tall man on the bay horse. “Thoughtful of you, Foster, but I’m stayin’, an’ if you try to run me off, you’ll have some empty saddles, one of which will be a big bay.
“Fact is, I like this place. Once I get a well down, I’ll make an easier livin’ than you do, Foster.”
Something in his tone stiffened Foster and he looked sharply at Matt Calou. Russell moved up beside him and Knauf faded to the left, for a flanking shot.
* * *
FOR A MOMENT there was silence, and Matt Calou laughed, his voice harsh. “Didn’t like the sound of that, did you, Foster? I don’t reckon your neck feels good inside of hemp, does it? I wonder just what did kill Art Horan, Foster? Was it you? Or did he just get suddenly curious an’ come back to find out what happened to all the lost cattle?”
Dyer stared from Calou to Foster, obviously puzzled. “This I don’t get,” he said. “What’s all this talk?”
“Tell him, Foster. You know what I mean.”
Foster was trapped. He glanced to right and left, then back to the author of his sudden misery. This was what he had feared if Matt Calou or anyone lived on the Rafter H. His fingers spread on his thigh.
Sue spoke suddenly from a window to the right of the door. “Knauf,” she said, “I know why you moved, an’ I’ve got a do
uble-barreled shotgun that will blow you out of your saddle if you lay a hand on your gun!”
“What’s goin’ on here?” Old Man Karr demanded irritably. “What’s he talkin’ about, Foss?”
“If he won’t tell you”—Matt Calou suddenly stepped out of the door—“I will. While you folks have been tellin’ yourselves ghost stories about Black Mesa, Foster has been bleedin’ the range of your cattle.”
“You lie!” Foster roared. “You lie like—!” He grabbed for his gun and Matt Calou fired twice. The first shot knocked the gun from Foster’s suddenly bloody hand, and the second notched his ear. It was a bullet that would have killed Foster had he not flinched from the hand wound.
Russell’s face was pale as death and he gripped the pommel hard with both hands.
Dyer’s face was stern. “All right, Calou! You clear this up an’ fast or there’ll be a necktie party right here, gun or no gun.”
“Your cattle,” Matt explained coolly, “hunted water an’ found it where nobody knew there was any. Then Foster found your cattle. Ever since then he’s been sweepin’ that draw ever’ few days, takin’ up all the cattle he found there, regardless of brand. You lost cattle, but you saw no marks of rustlin’, no tracks, no reason to suspect anybody. An’ you were all too busy blamin’ Black Mesa for all your troubles. Your cattle drifted that way an’ never came back, an’ Foster was gettin’ rich. All he had to do was ride down that draw back of Black Mesa, just beyond the chaparral.
“As for Black Mesa, the reason you thought you saw something movin’ up there was because you did see something. The cows that they originally had on the Rafter H are up there, I imagine.”
“That ain’t possible!” Old Man Karr objected. “Not even a man could climb that tower!”
“There’s a crack on the other side, an undercut that makes a fairly easy trail up. Cattle have been grazin’ up there for years, an’ there’s several square miles of good graze up there.”
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