Читать книгу Points West - B.M. Bower - Страница 5

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COLE heard one of his horses snort and looked up from turning bacon in the frying pan to see two men seated upon quiet horses in the shadow of the broken ledge of lava beside which he had made camp for the night. Cole lifted the frying pan off the fire to a flat rock close by and stood up, his thumbs hooked inside his belt in the fashion he had learned from certain of the C Bar L riders whom he especially admired for a certain quality of potential deadliness which appealed to him. The men eyed him, eyed the horses with a curious interest, muttered to each other and then started toward him slowly, with an air of caution which might be flattering or menacing, as one chose to interpret their manner.

"I guess there ain't anything much over this way you want," Cole said, when they had ridden ten feet nearer.

The two stopped, and the older of the two ostentatiously clasped his hands over the saddle horn; though that would not have slowed his reach for the gun stuck inside his chap belt on the left of the lacing, should he feel the need of his gun. He had a long upper lip, and when he smiled his mouth drew down into a pucker which might give one the impression of a dry humor, half reluctant to betray itself just then.

"Don't want to intrude on any one's privacy," he said gently. "We was just ridin' by and seen your smoke. No harm in swingin' this way on the chance of bein' invited to supper—in case it was some friend of ours camped here." He paused to clear his throat with a slight rasping sound, and then added apologetically, "Folks that are shy of meetin' anybody generally pick drier wood for their fire. Got any coffee to spare?"

Cole was on the point of snapping out "No!" But these two looked friendly, and it had been overlong since he had held any friendly conversation with men; talking to your horses will do for a while, but the time comes when one wants to hear new thoughts put into speech. Cole relaxed, stooped and replaced the frying pan on the fire.

"Guess I can split the grub three ways," he said gruffly, and lifted the coffeepot to see how heavy it was. "You live around here?" He looked up from adding more water and more coffee, and his cool glance went flicking over the two, by no means off his guard because of one humorously suppressed smile.

"Wel-l, hereabouts," the tall man drawled, swinging down from his horse. "You're a stranger in these parts, I guess. Where from?"

"Points west," Cole said briefly. "You'll have to eat with your fingers; I'm travelin' light."

"Fingers was made before forks," the stranger tritely replied, and seated himself with his back to the ledge. His companion got down and eased into place beside him. "We're travelin' kinda light ourselves."

Cole looked at the two, aware of a certain significance in the remark; but the other met his eyes with that same humorous smile drawn into a pucker of the lips. The younger man was staring furtively at Cole's horses, turning his eyes while his face did not move.

"Out huntin' stock, and we didn't expect to get up this far," the man further explained. "These draws and canyons are sure a fright for huntin' strayed stock in."

It was the old excuse, time-honored and always good because it could seldom be refuted. Stock did stray, and men did ride out to find them. Hunting stray horses was a plausible reason for appearing anywhere on the range at any time of the day or night. Cole knew that well enough and he wondered if it happened to be the truth this time; but there was nothing he could say to it, except to agree that the country sure was a fright. He had three cups—or more particularly he had two tin cups and a can—and he filled these with coffee, speared bacon from the frying pan and laid it across thick pieces of pan-baked bread, and told the two that supper was ready. They moved up and sat on their boot heels, eating and drinking with appetite.

"You don't happen to need another man, do you?" Cole asked at last, speaking to the older man with a carefully indifferent manner and tone.

"Well, I could use one—the right kind. Ever hear of John Roper?" He eyed Cole over his cup.

"No. Don't know anybody around here. Just travelin' through; but I wouldn't mind working for a while—right kind of a job."

The other chewed his bannock meditatively, watching the bay horse Johnnie, as he came nosing up for attention from his master. Cole had baked plenty of bannock because it was his habit to feed bits to his horses while he ate; now the horses all came poking along toward the camp fire, snatching at tufts of grass as they walked. Their freshly blotted brands would have caught the attention of the most ignorant tenderfoot. John Roper studied them, turned his eyes speculatively upon Cole.

"Them your horses, the hull four?"

"They're supposed to be," Cole snubbed his inquisitiveness.

Both men grinned involuntarily and sobered again, save that the humorous pucker remained in John Roper's lips.

"Well, I could use a man with a string of saddle horses like them. Seem to be gentle enough; fast too, by the looks of them legs. You can rope, I s'pose—how about shootin'? They's a pretty tough bunch rangin' in these canyons; we all go heeled and ready for a scrap. No use hirin' anybody that's gun-shy or that can't ride."

"I'll chance coming out all right," Cole said grimly and looked over his shoulder at the horses. "I'll guarantee these four to go anywhere a goat can, and finish at the head of the parade. That," he added for good measure, "is why I've got 'em."

Roper studied him again, peering squint-eyed through the firelight. Perhaps he saw the settled look of misery in the boy's face and mistook it for something less innocent; perhaps he read the moody set of the lips as something evil and hard. At any rate, he glanced sidelong at his companion, who gave a slight nod of approval, and cleared his throat with that dry, rasping sound which was not much more than a whisper of a cough and seemed to be a little mannerism of which he was unconscious; an habitual preliminary to speaking his decision.

"Well, I'll give yuh a job. For a while, anyway, till we finish up a kinda ticklish job we got on hand." He shot a keen glance at Cole who was staring moodily into the fire while he smoked. "Ticklish, because we're dealin' with a tough bunch and we want to handle it quiet as we kin. Got away with a bunch of horses I own, and I got reason to believe the brands has been worked and they're keepin' the horses right in this country. Me an' Pete has been scoutin' around to see what we could find out about it. What I want is to get 'em back on the quiet, without them knowin' just where they went to. Sabe?"

"I guess so. You're leaving the sheriff out of the deal?"

"Got to, when the sheriff's in cahoots with the gang. No, I want my horses back. May have to steal 'em, but I'll get 'em, if they're still in the country. You game for a little hard ridin' and mebby a little gun play? I don't look for no great trouble; still—standin' in with the sheriff and all, they're purty damn' bold and they might have the gall to fight it out with us; if they git wise to what we're up to, that is. If we work it right, though, we can run off the hull herd right under their noses and not a grain of powder burned. What d'yuh say, Kid?"

Cole got up and gave Johnnie the last piece of bannock before he shooed the horse back to tell the others there was nothing doing in the way of hand-outs to-night. He wanted a little time to think over this matter of the "ticklish" job, and he was too boyishly proud of his courage to let it be seen that he hesitated to accept. There was something about it which did not sound right—and it was not the element of risk, either. Perhaps it was the bald assertion that the sheriff of this county was conniving with the horse thieves; that did not jibe with all Cole knew of sheriffs, but then he had never known any save the big, bluff, kindly soul who had tried to comfort him when all the world was black. Of course, there were not many like big Ed Yates; dishonest sheriffs did exist, and he had always heard this section spoken of as a black spot on the range. He had ridden this way because it seemed the farthest removed in point of contact—farther than twice the number of miles in any other direction—and because the very toughness of Burroback men held them aloof from the rest of the world and so from gossip. His reasoning had been logical enough, but he had not taken into consideration the fact that the character of these people would be reflected in the work he hoped to find. Still, there was no use in being finicky, and getting stock away from horse thieves promised diversion, at least. And surely it was honest to get your own stock back.

"I'll try it out," he said, turning back to the fire. "It ain't just what I had in mind, but it's all right till I can pick up a steady job of riding—if I decide to stay in this part of the country. But if I use my own horses, I'll want extra pay, and a six-gun job is worth a lot more than straight riding." He turned upon Roper a steady, impersonal stare which made him seem older and more experienced than he was. "So you may as well understand right now that if I take this job it'll be for the money there is in it, and that I don't give a darn for the risk."

"Suits me," Roper told him dryly. "Money's what we're all after, I guess. Any p'ticular name you want us to call yuh?"

"Yes. It's Colman, and you can call me Cole if you want to. How much do I get extra for furnishing my own mounts? They're dandies, and I'll guarantee them to do all any four horses can do."

"Anything but show a clean brand," the silent Pete spoke up, with an abrupt laugh that carried more meaning than Cole quite realized.

"Say, that brand suits me all right."

"You're the one to be suited," Roper pacified, giving Pete a warning glance. "Well, how'd a hundred dollars suit yuh, for this one job? May last a week, maybe longer; won't be more 'n a month at the outside. We've got to lay our lines careful and watch our chance; no use gettin' in too big a hurry and ballin' it up. Call it a month."

Stifling any surprise he may have felt, Cole said he would take it. The two got up and went to their horses, hovered there talking together in low tones, then Roper turned back for a last word.

"Better break camp and come along with us now," he said, glancing around him. "Might as well git yourself organized with us before anybody else runs across yuh. This is once when it don't pay to advertise. We're goin' on home and you might as well go along."

A reasonable request, thought Cole, and began getting his meager outfit together. He had taken his time that day and the horses were not tired, nor were they especially hungry, since he had camped early and they had been feeding industriously ever since. No, there was no reason why he should not go with Roper; yet reluctance nagged at him, made him potter over the packing. It was as if he were trying to remember something important which had slipped treacherously from his mental grasp; as if there were some very good reason why he should not go with Roper and Pete, if only he could think what it was.

At the last Pete came up to help him with the pack lashing, his attitude one of impatience. Roper himself seemed uneasy, in a hurry to start.

"We got a long way to go, young feller," he explained his haste. "They's a late moon and we oughta catch it just right fer a bad stretch of trail. These horses of yours—they sure-footed, you say?"

"That's what I said," Cole retorted, disliking the other's persistent way of returning always to the subject of the horses.

"Well, they need to be; we got rough goin', gettin' in from this side the Sinks. Ever been through the Sinks?"

"No. I told you I'm a stranger here."

"Yeah, so you did. Well, it's goin' to be hard work drivin' your loose horses over the trail we'll take. I dunno——"

"I don't drive them anywhere. They'll follow where I ride." Cole mounted, and the horses came up and stood grouped around him, waiting for the signal.

Roper eyed the bunch, grunted something under his breath and swung in beside Pete. They started down along the ledge to where a broken crevice gave precarious foothold to the top, turned into the fissure and went scrambling up. Loose stones rattled down among the bowlders so that Cole was kept busy dodging them, and Johnnie snorted and would have turned back had there been room enough. But somehow he gained the top and saw where Roper and Pete had swung off sharply to the right and were picking their way single file along the brow of the cliff, their vague forms sometimes lost to sight among the stunted junipers which grew courageously among the rocks, their roots thrust deep within the narrow cracks in the ledge.

All day Cole had kept to the floor of the valley, these broken cliffs and ledges hemming him in and shutting him off from a view of the country beyond. Now the starlight dimly revealed to him a vast broken area that seemed a madman's conception of hell frozen over. Stark black peaks thrust up against the sky to the eastward, but before them lay a tortured land that told of the world's age-long travail of creation, when fire and flood, slow-creeping fields of glacial ice and sudden blasts of subterranean fires gouged and twisted and thrust forth strange conformations of rock and soil. He wondered if the trail led down into that nightmare country, and while he was speculating upon it his guides turned into a tilted crevasse and went slipping and sliding to the bottom.

Cole spoke encouragingly to Johnnie, glanced back at the three loose horses, mentally measured the width of the pack on Mick's capable back, and followed down that fearful incline. With some secret relief he reached the bottom without mishap, listened a moment for the click of hoofs to the front and went on, for the most part letting Johnnie choose his own path. Once he heard the mumble of voices ahead; again, he caught sight of a man's head and shoulders silhouetted against the sky line as he rode up over a billowy ridge of sandstone. A moment later he heard Roper's voice calling back to ask if he were making it.

"Fine and dandy," Cole replied, and heard Roper's slight laugh much closer than he had expected. Another minute and he saw that the trail doubled sharply back upon itself and that Roper had ridden almost abreast of him and a little above. Cole pulled up sharply and waited. He did not want any rocks rolling down and crippling Johnnie.

"What yuh stoppin' for?" Roper taunted. "Thought you could ride where a goat can go!"

"Quit kicking rocks down here, then. What you riding, anyway? A snowplow? That skate of yours must be digging his way through this hill!"

Roper did not say anything to that. Evidently he had gone on, for the small avalanche of sand and small rocks ceased. Cole went on, made the turn and went up cautiously, one eye on the loose horses coming along the lower trail. A dangerous place, he decided, and halted the loose horses with a word, making them stand still and wait until he had completed the switchback. Then he waited until they made the turn safely, and went on angling down the ridge after Roper.

After that Cole lost all sense of direction and all sound of his guides, trusting mainly to the keen instinct of his horse to keep him on the trail—if trail there was. The foot of the ridge stood in deep, muffling sand; other ridges closed in like the crooked fingers of some Gargantuan image of stone, and there was no sign of Roper or Pete to tell which way they had gone. He could have shouted for them, but he would not give them that satisfaction after Roper's taunt. If they wanted him to follow them, they could do the shouting themselves, he thought perversely, and waited in a triangular niche where Johnnie had stopped for the simple reason that he could go no farther forward and had received from his master no hint that he should turn back.

Cole dismounted and felt along the sheer wall with his hands, making sure that there was no outlet save the way he had come. It was dark as a pocket in here among the ledges. Surely Roper must know that a stranger would be utterly confused in such a place. He would come back, of course, when he discovered that Cole was not following him. There was nothing to do but wait, and Cole felt his way past the three trustful animals that had crowded in after Johnnie, reached the sharp turn of the cliff and leaned against it, waiting for some signal from Roper.