“Why, no,” he said dryly. “If you want to go after those outlaws after you help Gar get the cattle out of the quicksand, go ahead.”
Sundown was an hour past when Gar Mullins rode up to the corral at the Slash Seven. He stripped the saddle from his bronc, and after a quick splash and a wipe, he went in and dropped on a bench at the table. Old Tom West, the owner, looked up.
“Where’s the kid?” he asked. “Where’s my nephew? Didn’t he come in?”
* * *
GAR WAS SURPRISED. He glanced around the table.
“Shucks, ain’t he here? He left me about three o’clock or so. Said Bert told him he could get Hook Lacey if he finished in time.”
“What!” Tom West’s voice was a bull bellow. His under jaw shot out. “Bert, did you tell him that?”
Ramsey’s face grew red, then pale. “Now, look, boss,” he protested, “I figured he was talking to hear hisself make a big noise. I told him when he helped Gar get all them cows out, he could go after Lacey. I never thought he’d be fool enough to do it.”
“Aw!” Chuck Allen grinned. “He’s probably just rode into town! Where would he look for that outfit? And how could he find ’em when we ain’t been able to?”
“We ain’t looked any too hard,” Mullins said. “I know I ain’t.”
Tom West was silent. At last he spoke. “Nope, could never find ’em. But if anything happens to that boy, I’d never dare look my sister in the face again.” He glared at Bert Ramsey. “If anything does happen to him you’d better be halfway to the border before I hear it.”
Johnny Lyle was a cheerful, easygoing, free-talking youngster. He was pushing eighteen, almost a man by Western standards, and as old Billy the Kid when Billy was leading one of the forces in the Lincoln County War.
But Johnny was more than a brash, devil-may-care youngster. He had been born and raised on the Nueces, and had cut his riding teeth in the black chaparral between the Nueces and the Rio Grande. When his father died he had been fourteen, and his mother had moved east. Johnny had continued to hunt and wander in the woods of the Virginia mountains, but he had gone to New York several times each month.
In New York he had spent a lot of time in shooting galleries. In the woods he had hunted, tracked, and enjoyed fistic battles with rugged mountaineers. He had practiced drawing in front of a mirror until he was greased lightning with a gun. The shooting galleries gave him the marksmanship, and in the woods he had learned to become even more of a tracker than he had learned to be in the brush country of his father, to which he returned for his summer vacations.
Moreover, he had been listening as well as talking. Since he had been here on the Slash Seven, Gar Mullins had several times mentioned the rough country of Tierra Blanca Canyon as a likely hangout for the rustlers. It was believed they disposed of many stolen cattle in the mining camps to the north, having a steady market for beef at Victorio and in the vicinity.
Tom West loved his sister and had a deep affection for his friendly, likable nephew, but Johnny was well aware that Tom also considered him a guest, and not a hand. Mullins could have told him the kid was both a roper and a rider, and had a lot of cow savvy, but Mullins rarely talked and never volunteered anything.
Johnny naturally liked to be accepted as an equal of the others, and it irritated him that his uncle treated him like a visiting tenderfoot. And because he was irked, Johnny decided to show them, once and for all.
Bert Ramsey’s irritable toleration of him angered him.
Once he left Mullins, when the cattle were out of the quicksand, he headed across the country through Sibley Gap. He passed through the gap at sundown and made camp at a spring a few miles beyond. It could be no more than seven or eight miles farther to the canyon of which Mullins had talked, for he was already on the Tierra Blanca.
At daybreak he was riding. On a sudden inspiration, he swung north and cut over into the trail for Victorio.
The mining town had the reputation of being a rugged spot, and intended to keep it. The town was named after the Apache chieftain who had several times taken a bad whipping trying to capture the place. Several thousand miners, gamblers, gunmen, and outlaws made the place a good one to steer clear of. But Johnny Lyle had not forgotten the talk about Slash Seven beefs being sold there by rustlers.
* * *
JOHNNY SWUNG DOWN from his horse in front of the Gold Pan Restaurant and walked back to a corral where he saw several beef hides hanging. The brand was Seven Seventy-seven, but when he turned the hide over he could see it had been changed from a Slash Seven.
“Hey!” A bellow from the door brought his head up. “Git away from those hides!”
The man was big. He had shoulders like the top of an upright piano and a seamed and battered face.
Johnny walked to the next hide and the next while the man watched. Of the five fresh hides, three of them were Slash Sevens. He turned just in time to meet the rushing butcher.
Butch Jensen was big, but he was no mean rough-and-tumble scrapper. This cowhand was going to learn a thing or two.
“I told you to get away!” he shouted angrily, and drew back his fist.
That was his first mistake, for Johnny had learned a little about fighting while in New York. One thing was to hit from where your fist was. Johnny’s fist was rubbing his chin when Jensen drew his fist back, and Johnny punched straight and hard, stepping in with the left.
The punch was short, wicked, and explosive. Jensen’s lips mashed under hard knuckles and his hands came up. As they lifted, Johnny turned on the ball of his left foot and the toe of his right, and whipped a wicked right uppercut into Jensen’s huge stomach.
Butch gasped, and then Johnny hit him with both hands and he went down. Coolly, Johnny waited for him to get up. And he got up, which made his second mistake. He got up and lunged, head down. A straight left took him over the eyebrow, ripping a gash, and a right uppercut broke his nose. And then Johnny Lyle went to work. What followed was short, interesting, and bloody. When it was over Johnny stood back.
“Now,” he said, “get up and pay me sixty dollars for three Slash Seven steers.”
“Sixty!” Butch Jensen spluttered. “Steers are going for twelve—fifteen dollars!”
“The steers you butchered are going at twenty dollars,” Johnny replied calmly. “If I ever find another hide around here, the price will be thirty dollars.”
He turned away, but when he had taken three steps, he stopped. There was a good crowd around, and Johnny was young. This chance was too good to miss.
“You tell Hook Lacey,” he said, “that if he ever rustles another head of Slash Seven stock I’ll personally come after him!”
Johnny Lyle swaggered just a little as he walked into the Gold Pan and ordered a meal.
Yet as he was eating he began to get red around the ears. It had been a foolish thing to do, talking like that. Folks would think he was full of hot air.
Then he looked up into a pair of wide blue eyes. “Your order, sir?”
Two days later Chuck Allen rode up to the ranch house and swung down. Bert Ramsey got up hastily from his chair.
“Chuck,” he asked eagerly, “you see him?”
Chuck shook his head. “No,” he said, “I ain’t seen him, but I seen his trail. You better grab yourself a bronc, Bert, and start fogging it for the border. That kid’s really started something.”
The door opened and Tom West came out. “What’s up?” he demanded. His face was gray with worry. “Confound it, what’s the matter with these hands? Two days now I’ve had you all ridin’ to find that kid, and you can’t turn up a clue! Can’t you blind bats even find a tender-foot kid?”
Chuck grew a little red around the ears, but his eyes twinkled as he looked at Bert out of the corner of his eyes. “I crossed his trail, boss, and she’s some trail, believe you me!”
West shoved Bert aside. “Don’t stand there like a slab-sided jackass! What happened? Where is he?”
* * *
CHUCK WAS TAKING his time, “Well,” he said, “he was in Victorio. He rode in there the morning after he left the ranch. He found a couple of Slash Seven hides hanging on Butch Jensen’s fence. They’d been burned over into Seven Seventy-sevens, but he found ’em, and then Butch Jensen found him.”
“Oh, Lord!” West paled. “If that big brute hurt that kid, I’ll kill him!”
“You won’t need no war paint,” Chuck said, aggravatingly slow, “because the kid took Butch to a swell three-sided whipping. Folks say Johnny just lit all over him, swinging in every direction. He whipped Butch to a frazzle!”
“Chuck,” Bert burst out, “you’re crazy! Why, that kid couldn’t whip one side of—”
“But he did,” Chuck interrupted. “He not only beat Butch up, but he made him pay for three head at twenty dollars a head. He further told him that the next hide he found on Butch’s fence would cost him thirty dollars.”
West swallowed. “And Butch took it?”
“Boss, if you’d seen Butch you’d not ask that question. Butch took everything the kid could throw, which was plenty. Butch looks like he’d crawled facefirst into a den of wildcats. But that ain’t all.”
They waited, staring at Chuck. He rolled a smoke, taking his time.
“He told everybody who was listening,” he finally said, “and probably three or four of ’em was friends of Lacey, that if Hook rustled one more head of our stock, he was going to attend to him personal.”
West groaned and Bert Ramsey swallowed. But Chuck was not through.
“Then the kid goes into the Gold Pan. He ain’t there more’n thirty minutes before he has that little blond peacherino crazy about him. Mary, she’s so crazy about that kid she can’t even get her orders straight.”
“Chuck,” West demanded, “where’s Johnny now? If you know, tell me!”
Chuck Allen grew sober. “That’s the trouble, boss. I don’t know. But when he left Victorio he headed back into the mountains. And that was yesterday afternoon.”
Bert Ramsey’s face was pale. He liked his job on the Slash Seven and knew West was quite capable of firing him as he had promised. Moreover, he was genuinely worried. That he had considered the boss’s nephew a nuisance was true, but anybody who could whip Butch Jensen, and who could collect for stolen cattle, was no tenderfoot, but a man to ride the river with. But to ride into the hills after Hook Lacey, after whipping Jensen, threatening Hook, and then walking off with the girl Hook wanted—that was insanity.
Whipping Jensen was something, but Hook Lacey wouldn’t use his fists. He would use a gun, and he had killed seven men, at least. And he would have plenty of help.
West straightened. “Bert,” he said harshly, “you get Gar Mullins, Monty Reagan, and Bucky McCann and ride after that kid. And don’t come back without him!”
Ramsey nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I sure will get him.”
“How about me?” Chuck asked. “Can I go, too?”
At the very hour the little cavalcade was leaving the ranch, Johnny Lyle was lying on a ridge looking down into the upper part of the Tierra Blanca Canyon. A thin trail of smoke was lifting from the canyon, and he could see approximately where the camp was. He lay high on the rugged side of Seven Brothers Mountain, with the camp almost fifteen hundred feet below.
“All right, boy,” he told himself, “you’ve made your brags. Now what are you going to do?”
North of the camp the canyon ran due north and south, but just below it took a sharp bend to the west, although a minor canyon trailed off south for a short distance in less rugged country. Their hideout, Johnny could see, was well chosen. There was obviously a spring, judging from the way their camp was located and the looks of the trees and brush, and there was a way out up the canyon to the north.
On the south, they could swing west around the bend. Johnny could see that this trail branched, and the branch beyond also branched. In taking any route they were well covered, with plenty of chance of a getaway unseen, or for defense if they so desired.
* * *
YET IF THEY had to ride north up the canyon there was no way out for several miles. With a posse closing in from the south, one man could stop their escape to the north. Their camp at the spring, however, was so situated that it was nearly impossible for them to be stopped from going south by anything less than a large posse. It was fairly obvious, though, that if they were attacked they would ride south.
The idea that came to him was the wildest kind of a gamble, but he decided to take the chance, for there was a possibility that it might work. To plan ahead was impossible. All he could do was start the ball rolling and take advantage of what opportunity offered.
Mounting his horse, he rode along a bench of Seven Brothers and descended the mountain on the southwest. In the canyon to the west he hastily gathered sticks and built a fire, laying a foundation of crossed dry sticks of some size, gathered from canyon driftwood and arranged in such a way as to burn for some time. The fire was built among rocks and on dry sand so there was no way for it to spread, and no way for it to be seen, though the rising smoke would be visible.
Circling farther south and east, he built three more fires. His hope was that the smoke from all of them would be seen by the outlaws, who would deduce that a posse, having approached during the night, now was preparing breakfast, with every way out blocked. If they decided this, and without a careful scouting expedition, which would consume time, the outlaws would surely retreat up the canyon to the north.
Johnny Lyle worked fast and he worked hard, adding a few sticks of green wood to increase the smoke. When his last fire had been built, he mounted again and rode north on the east side of Stoner Mountain. Now the mountain was between him and the outlaws and he had no idea of what they would do. His gamble was that by riding north, he could hit the canyon of the Tierra Blanca after it swung east, and intercept the escaping outlaws.
He rode swiftly, aware that he could travel faster than they, but with no idea whether or not they had seen his fires and were moving. His first idea was to ride into the bottom of the canyon and meet them face-to-face, but Hook Lacey was a rugged character, as were his men, and the chances were they would elect to fight. He chose the safer way and crawled down among some rocks.
An hour had passed before they appeared. He knew none of them, but rightly guessed the swarthy man with the hook nose was Lacey. He let them get within thirty yards, then yelled:
“All right, boys! Drop your guns and get your hands up! We’ve got you bottled!”
There was an instant of frozen silence, then Lacey’s gun leaped to his hand. He let out a wild yell and the riders charged right up the slope and at Johnny Lyle.
Suddenly panic-stricken, Johnny got off a quick shot that burned the hindquarters of Lacey’s plunging horse and hit the pommel of the rider following him. Glancing off, it ripped the following man’s arm. Then the riders were right at him.
Johnny sprang aside, working the lever of his Winchester, but they were too close. Wildly he grabbed iron, and then took a wicked blow on the skull from a clubbed six-shooter. He went down, stunned but not out, and managed a quick shot with his six-gun that dropped a man. And then he was up and running. He had only time to grab his Winchester and dive into the rocks.
Cut off from his horse, he was in desperate straits. It would be a matter of minutes, or even seconds, before they would realize only one man had been shooting. Then they would come back.
Scrambling into the rocks, he worked himself higher, striving for a vantage point. They had seen him, though, and a rifle bullet ricocheted off the rocks and whined nastily past his ear. He levered three fast shots from his rifle at the scattering riders. Then the area before him was deserted, the morning warm and still, and the air was empty.
* * *
HIS HEAD THROBBED, and when he put a hand to his skull he found that despite his protecting hat, his scalp had been split. Only the fact that the rider had been going away when he fired, and that the fe
lt hat he was wearing was heavy, had saved him from a broken skull.
A sudden move brought a twinge. Looking down, he saw blood on the side of his shirt. Opening it, he saw that a bullet—from where he had no idea—had broken the skin along his side.
Hunkered down behind some rocks, he looked around. His position was fairly secure, though they could approach him from in front and on the right. His field of fire to the front was good, but if they ever got on the cliff across the canyon, he was finished.
What lay behind him he did not know, but the path he had taken along a ledge seemed to dwindle out on the cliff face. He had ammunition, but no water, and no food.
Tentatively he edged along, as if to move forward. A rifle shot splashed splinters in his face and he jerked back, stung.
“Boy,” he said to himself, “you’ve played hob!”
Suddenly he saw a man race across the open in front of him and he fired a belated shot that did nothing but hurry the man. Obviously that man was heading for the cliff across the canyon. Johnny Lyle reloaded his Winchester and checked his pistol. With both loaded he was all set, and he looked behind him at the path. Then he crawled back. As he had suspected, the path dwindled out and there was no escape.
The only way out was among the boulders to his right, from where without doubt the outlaws were also approaching. His rifle ready, he crouched, waiting. Then he came up with a lunge and darted for the nearest boulders. A bullet whipped by his ear, another ricocheted from a rock behind him. Then he hit the sand sliding and scrambled at once to a second boulder.
Someone moved ahead of him, and raising himself to his knees, Johnny shucked his pistol and snapped a quick shot.
There was a brief silence, then a sudden yell and a sound of horses. Instantly there was another shout and a sound of running. Warily Johnny looked out. A stream of riders was rushing up the canyon and the outlaws were riding back down the canyon at breakneck speed.
Collection 1995 - Valley Of The Sun (v5.0) Page 14