Longarm landed on one hip and shoulder, rolled to his feet, and bounced a few yards on his heels, before he caught a juniper bush and came to a standing stop. He looked quickly back and saw that the bay had stopped safely with the prisoner still aboard. He yelled, "Stay put!" and started down the slope of sharp, black shale in the dusty wake of his fallen mount.
The walker was trying to struggle to its feet at the bottom of the rise, screaming in dumb terror and pain. Longarm could see it hadn"t broken any bones. It had simply gutted itself on the sharp rocks after sliding a full two hundred yards down the trail!
He drew his.44 as he approached the dreadfully injured gelding with soothing words. The animal got halfway to its feet, its forelegs out in front of it and its rump high, as its b.l.o.o.d.y intestines writhed over the cruel, sun-baked surface. Then Longarm fired, twice, when he saw the first round hadn"t completely shattered the poor brute"s brain.
Swearing blackly, he stepped over to the quivering carca.s.s and got his Winchester and other possessions free, glad it was the captain"s saddle he didn"t have to mess with cleaning. He put the rifle and supplies on a rock and walked up to where the prisoner watched with a silly grin on his face.
Longarm said, "It ain"t funny. Guess who gets to walk?"
"h.e.l.l, I don"t aim to stay up here like this with the ground under hoof greased so funny!"
Longarm helped him down and led both him and the bay to where he"d piled the other things. As he lashed everything worth carrying to the surviving mount"s saddle, the prisoner asked, "You figure we got enough of a lead on them other fellers, with one pony betwixt us?"
"No. Riding double or walking, we ain"t got till sunset before they make rifle range on us."
"You don"t mean to leave me, do you?"
"Not hardly. Just keep walking."
"Listen, Longarm, if you was to turn me loose afoot I"d be willing to take my chances. I could cover my boot prints, I reckon, if you just rode on, leaving "em a few horseshoe marks and a t.u.r.d or two on the trail.
"Didn"t carry you all this way to lose you, Younger. You see that half-bowl in the cliffs across the creek we"re headed down to?"
"Sure. It looks to be a blind alley, though. A rifleman could doubtless make a good stand in there, but the walls behind him would be sheer."
"I know. We"ll dig in there, behind such rocks as we"ll have time to fort up in front of us. "Bout the time they make it to the dead horse, I"ll spook "em with a few rifle rounds and they"ll fan out every wich way, diving for cover. By then it"ll be getting dark."
"What"s to stop "em from working around behind us, up on the rim rocks?"
"You want to climb a shale oil cliff in the dark? They won"t have us circled tight before, oh, a couple of hours after sunup."
He led the handcuffed man across the ankle-deep creek and up the talus slope beyond to the amphitheater some ancient disaster had carved from the cliff face. He sat the prisoner down beside the tired bay he"d tethered to a bush and proceeded to pile slabs of shale between them and the valley they faced. The dead walker was a chestnut blob across the way. It was just at the range Longarm was sure he could handle. Any man who said he knew where a bullet was going once it got past three-hundred yards was a liar.
The prisoner said, "If you"d take these cuffs off, I could help."
"You want to help, take the horse up-slope as far as you can and tie him to something, then come back."
"Won"t he be exposed up there?"
"Sure. Out of range, too. They"ll spot him, but so what? They"ll know we"re here. Might save me a round if they grow cautious before I have to waste good lead just funning."
"Won"t they know, once you miss a couple of times, that you don"t mean to kill n.o.body?"
"Don"t aim to miss by all that much, and if it comes down to real hard fighting I"ve been known to draw blood, in my time."
The prisoner led the bay away, and by the time he returned, Longarm had erected a breast-high wall of slabs.
He said, "look around for some sticks, dry gra.s.s and such. You can work as well with your hands together."
"There ain"t enough dry weeds and cheat-gra.s.s here for a real fire, Longarm. The thing you had in mind was a fire, wasn"t it?"
"Get moving. I got some shifting to do, here on this breastwork."
"I"m moving, I"m moving, but you are pure loco! What in thunder do we want with a fire, not saying we could build one?"
Longarm didn"t answer. He was a fair hand at drywall construction and figured his improvisation would stand up to anything but a four-pound cannon ball, and he knew they wouldn"t be bringing along heavy artillery.
He saw the prisoner was doing a shiftless job at gathering dry tinder, so he went to work himself, gathering an armful of bone-dry weeds and cheat-gra.s.s stems. He threw it in a pile a few yards back from his stone wall.
The prisoner added his own smaller offering and Longarm started putting chips of shale on the tinder, with smaller fragments first and some fair-sized slabs topping off the cairn.
The prisoner watched bemusedly, as Longarm struck a match and set the dry weeds alight. As the acrid blue smoke of burning cheat curled up through the rocks he said, "I can see you"re trying to cook them rocks. What I can"t figure out is why."
Then a thicker smoke, coiling like an oily serpent, slithered up and through the shale slabs to catch a vagrant tendril of breeze and float skyward like a blob of ink against the blue of the sky.
Longarm said, "Oil shale burns, sort of. learned it from a friendly Ute, last time I pa.s.sed this way."
"That"s for d.a.m.n sure! Look at it catch! Burns with a d.a.m.n black smoke, though. You says there"s Utes in this neck of the woods?"
"Utes, if we"re lucky, Shoshone if we ain"t."
"You figure they"ll see this smoke signal and come running?"
"They"ll more"n likely come creeping, wondering who"s here in their hunting grounds. Not many white men have ever been this way and Indians are curious cusses."
"Won"t the white boys trailing us see the smoke, too?"
"If they"ve got eyes, they"ve seen it by now. They won"t know if it"s us or some Shoshones fixing to lift their hair."
"Hot d.a.m.n! It may just turn "em back, don"t you reckon?"
"Not hardly. Men willing to chase a man with my rep and a Winchester don"t scare so easy. If they read this smoke as Indian signals, it might slow "em to a cautious move-in, though. I"m hoping they won"t be here too long before sundown. if they climb up behind us in good light, we"re in one h.e.l.l of a fix."
"What"s to stop "em doing it tomorrow just after sunup?"
"Tomorrow is another day, and like I keep saying, you eat the apple a bite at a time."
"Yeah, I figure you got maybe twelve to fifteen hours before your apple"s all et, too! Man up there on the rim above us could save ammo and likely kill us just by chucking down some rocks! You reckon you could pick a man off against that skyline up there?"
"Doubt it. It"s about a quarter-mile straight up. Things look closer than they really are in this clear air of the high country."
"But he"d have no trouble shooting down, would he?"
"Not hardly. Probably miss his first few shots, but we"ll have no cover, and like you said, a fistful of rock could do us in, thrown down from that height."
"Gawd, you"re pretty cheerful about it all, considering!"
"Well, losing that horse threw me off my feed for a few minutes back there, but we"re in pretty fair shape again."
"The h.e.l.l you say! Can"t you see the fix they got us in, Longarm?"
"Yep. They"ll likely figure it the same way and move in slow and careful, like I want "em to. Hate to have to hurt anybody who don"t deserve a hurt, this close to the end of our game."
"Longarm, I am purely missing something or you are out of your fool head! We are boxed in here with our backs to a quarter-mile-high cliff! You got a rifle and a pistol to hold off Gawd knows what-all in the way of white folks, and likely a tribe or two of Injuns!"
"Yep. Nearest Utes are about a ten-hour ride away. Boys from Crooked Lance should get here sooner."
"Then what in tarnation are you grinning about? You look like a mean old weasel some dumb farmer just put to work guarding his hen house for the night!"
"I"ll allow some chicken-thieving tricks have crossed my mind since we lost that horse back there. I was worried we might have thrown "em off our trail, too, till I spied that Canadian"s fool red coat on the far horizon. You reckon they wear them red tunics to make a good target or to impress the Cree, up Canada way?"
"Back up. What was that about not trying to throw "em off our trail? Are you saying you could have lost "em in the mountains?"
"h.e.l.l, can a jaybird suck robin"s eggs? I"ll allow that Sergeant Foster"s a fair tracker, but I"ve been tracked by Apache in my time, and lost "em good."
"In other words, you"ve been playing ring-around-the-rosie with them Crooked Lance vigilantes all the time?"
"Sure. Hadn"t you figured as much? h.e.l.l, a p.i.s.sant like you could have lost "em by now! We"ve been over some rough ground in the last few days, boy. You mind when we crossed that ten-mile stretch of bare granite yesterday? Had to drop some spent cartridges along the way, pretending we"d been shooting birds for provisions. They know I pack.44-40 ammo, so..."
"But why, Gawd d.a.m.n it? I thought your mission was to bring me in to Denver safe and sound!"
"I aim to. But I"m a peace officer, too. Can"t see my way to leave folks disturbing the peace and carrying on like wild men on federal range can I?"
"You mean you aim to arrest somebody riding with that posse of vigilantes?"
"Nope. If things go as I"ve Planned I aim to arrest the whole d.a.m.n kit and caboodle!"
CHAPTER 18.
It was getting late when Longarm spied the red tunic of Sergeant Foster on the skyline, far up the other wall of the valley. The Mountie had others with him. One rider was too tall in the saddle to be anyone but Timberline. Another distant figure had to be the midget, Cedric Hanks. Longarm looked for anyone riding sidesaddle, but the little detective had apparently left Mabel behind. He counted a good dozen-and-a-half heads up there and the sunlight flashing on gla.s.s told him Foster was sweeping the valley floor with field gla.s.ses. He"d probably seen the dead horse down on the far side of the creek. He had to have seen the big black mushroom of oil smoke still rising behind them.
Longarm turned to the prisoner at his side and said, "Lie down behind this barricade and stay put. I"ll be too busy to keep more"n a corner of my eye on you and I get testy if folks interfere when I"m working."
"Longarm, we are boxed in here like mice in a cracker barrel with the cat peering over the top!"
"Just do as you"re told and hush. They"re moving down, sort of slow. I"ll tell you what"s going on, so"s to rest your mind. Don"t you raise your fool head, though. I only aim to have my own to worry about!"
"What are they doing now, then?"
"What you"d expect. There"s only one trail down from the top, so they"re riding down in file, and slow. Likely having as much trouble with that shale as we did... yep, pony just slipped some, but its rider steadied it nicely. Looks like that redheaded Kim Stover. She sure sits a horse pretty."
"Jehosaphat! Everybody from Crooked Lance is coming to pay us a call with guns, and all you can talk about is how pretty that redhead is!"
"h.e.l.l, she is pretty, ain"t she? I"d say Pop Wade must be laying for us with some of the others in Bitter Creek. Don"t see Slim Wilson. He"d have led another bunch along the tracks west of Thayer Junction, most likely. The big hoorahs are sticking with the Mountie. All except Captain Walthers. He"s with one of the other scouting parties. That"s good. I was wondering what he"d say about me gutting his walker."
Longarm removed his Stetson and placed it on a rock atop his wall, peering through a loophole he"d left below the highest course of shale slabs. He moved the muzzle of his Winchester into position and levered a round into the chamber as the band of riders across the way reined in and began to dismount, just upslope from the dead horse. He nodded and said, "Good thinking. They see this wall in front of the smoke and have the range figured. Yep, I see some of "em"s fanning out, working the rocks for cover."
"Longarm, we don"t have a chance here!"
"Sure we do. They daren"t come much closer. They"ll stay on the other side of the creek for now."
The Mountie, Foster, approached on foot until he was well within range at the edge of the stream. He took off his hat and waved it, calling out, "I see you, Longarm! You"ve made a big mistake, Yank!"
Longarm didn"t answer.
"You can see that it"s eighteen to one! You want to parley or have you gone completely mad?"
Longarm called back, "What"s your deal, Foster?"
"Don"t be an idiot! You know I"m taking Cotton Younger back to Canada!"
"Do tell? speaking of idiots, I just saw one wearing a red coat! You really think the others will let you ride north with him, Foster?"
"Yes. We"ve made our own compromise. The people of Crooked Lance are only interested in the reward for Jesse James. They say the prisoner is mine, once we get a few facts out of him!"
"Sure he is. Why don"t you just move back out of range for a spell?"
"We"ve got you trapped in there, Longarm!"
Longarm didn"t answer. Foster wasn"t saying anything interesting and it was a far piece to holler.
A rifle suddenly squibbed from among the rocks across the way and Longarm"s hat flew off the wall as Foster spun on his heel and ran for cover, shouting, "Stop that, you d.a.m.ned fool!"
Longarm considered speeding him on his way with a round of his own, but it didn"t look like the Mountie could run much faster. The shot they"d put through the crown of his hat had sounded like a Henry deer-load, not a.30-30. Longarm marked the rock its smoke was drifting away from and intended to remember it. Timberline and the girl were behind that other big boulder to the left of it. Likely one of the hands had gotten silly. The midget, Hanks, was behind that low slab, and was almost certainly too slick to be taken in by the old hat trick.
Someone else fired from behind another rock, so Longarm bounced a slug off it to teach him some manners, moving to another loophole with his gun since the one he"d fired from proceeded to eat lead. Longarm counted and marked each of the smoke puffs as they fired at the place he"d just been. A woman"s voice was screaming at them to stop firing, but the prisoner at his side was spooked too badly to listen. He was suddenly up and running--running in a blind panic up the slope toward the sheer cliff of the amphitheater. Longarm yelled, "Hang it all! Get back here, you fool!" But it was too late. The handcuffed prisoner staggered, fell to his hands and knees, and rolled over. Then he was up again and running back to Longarm, eyes wide and mouth hanging open, in a rattle of small arms fire!
Something hit the prisoner hard enough to stagger him, but he kept coming and in another few seconds was stretched out behind the wall, sobbing and carrying on like a cat whose tail had been stomped.
Longarm snorted, "Jesus H. Christ! Of all the fool stunts! Where"d they hit you?"
"All over! I"ve been killed!"
The gunfire died away as cooler heads prevailed across the way. The big lawman crawled over to the prisoner and rolled him onto his back. He whistled thoughtfully and sighed, "d.a.m.n it, you did get hit, boy! The one in your shoulder ain"t worth mention. But the one in your side don"t look so good. You feel like throwing up?"
"I just want to be someplace else! Anyplace else! I"m too young to die!"
"You just hold on and lie still, then. You ain"t bleeding too bad. I"ll stuff some wadding in the wound and wrap it tight for you."
"Gawd, I"m so thirsty, all of a sudden! Can I have a drink of canteen water?"
Longarm had been afraid he"d say that. He shook his head and said, "You"re gut-shot, you poor, dumb son of a b.i.t.c.h! What ever made you do a fool thing like that?"