Читать книгу Points West - B.M. Bower - Страница 6

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"HE never come this far, I tell yuh. He was over on the switchback when I dropped him, and he musta kep' on round the ridge."

In the act of licking a cigarette into shape Cole stopped and listened, instinctively wary as a hunted animal. Coming stealthily out of the deep silence as they did, the words carried a certain sinister quality, though of themselves they seemed innocent enough; Roper and Pete, coming back to look for him, just as he had been expecting for the last ten minutes.

"Hell of a note if we miss 'im," Pete's voice growled in a guarded undertone. "Yuh sure he climbed the switchback? You coulda popped 'im then."

"On that cattle trail? Might as well'v done it back there at the camp fire. No, the deeper we git 'im in the Sinks, the better. Hell, I thought you was keepin' cases back there! Didn't I motion yuh to wait till he passed an' then foller 'im? Git 'im between us, that way. Now, you come moggin' along and yuh don't know where he is!"

"You was closer to 'im than I was, John. You had every chance in the world."

"That's all you know. Better go back and holler for 'im, I guess. This is no place to do it."

Flattened against the rock, Cole held his breath while he listened. The two voices sounded close behind him, but that could not be, since he had been riding along a rock wall for some little distance until Johnnie, still keeping alongside the cliff, had turned into the niche and stopped. Yet he plainly heard the clink of an iron-bound stirrup striking against the rock, and the sigh of a horse as he moved away. Not a dozen feet away it seemed, and Cole slid his hand along the ledge, half expecting to find another corner around which the two might ride in a few seconds.

Instead, his fingers dropped into a narrow crevice through which a cool breeze came drifting. Cole felt farther, found the solid rock again, and saw at once what had happened. Through some freak of chance—or perhaps it was destiny that guided Johnnie's steps that night—he had come down along one side of a narrow upthrust of rock while the two he had tried to follow rode down the other side. How they had happened to stop and talk beside that crack in the rock, only God could explain. But they did stand at that point to discuss with bloodcurdling matter-of-factness the details of their plan, and Cole was there to hear. Things happen that way sometimes, when there is no other human means of protecting a man.

Cole at that moment did not feel the protection. All his mind could grasp was the fact that Roper and Pete had tricked him into coming down into the Sinks with them so they could kill him without fear of interruption or discovery. Moreover, it was much easier to get him down in here with the promise of a job than it would have been to carry his dead body away without leaving a clue. He had camped too close to the road, and he had been too much on his guard. He remembered now that he had kept the fire between himself and them. They would have been obliged to shoot him, and they evidently feared that some one might be riding that way who would investigate. Down here—if they got him far enough into this ungodly country—no one would hear a shot; or perhaps they hoped to kill him quietly; Pete had mentioned a rock, Cole remembered.

It was the horses they were after, of course. They had been very much interested in the horses. Probably his clothes and his camp outfit appealed to them also, and the hope of finding money. Cole trembled a little with the excitement of it, but he did not feel afraid now that he knew just what to expect from them. He would be prepared, and he would shoot first.

But there his nerves rebelled. Too lately had he seen just how a dead man looked. No, he could not bring himself to face the thought of killing, however much they deserved it; yet it might come to that, if he wanted to go on living.

"And they had the gall to talk about a tough gang in this valley!" Cole's anger grew apace as he recalled the specious talk of Roper at the camp fire. He had heard the C Bar L riders tell of such human wolves as these, but he had never quite believed that men would kill for the sake of a horse or two, or perhaps a few dollars in money they could carry away and spend. That had always sounded unreal and overdrawn, as if the boys were just yarning for the effect upon him. Now he was prepared to believe anything he heard about cold-blooded killers.

Standing there beside the crack in the rock wall, Cole considered what he must do to outwit them. In the darkness he could not do much of anything; but then, in the darkness they would not be likely to discover him, either. The trail, he decided, must run along the other side of this outcropping; how far he could not even guess. By daybreak they would probably be able to track him in this loose sand, so whatever he did must be done as soon as possible. And that, he was forced to admit, was nothing at all, save watching and listening for their approach. At least the horses were safe for the present, penned in that niche as they were, and the thought brought Cole some comfort.

How long he stood there Cole could not tell, for he dared not strike a match to look at his watch. He dared not smoke or move about, since sounds carried plainly through that crack and the two might come on up the trail at any moment. Fervently he hoped that the moon would forget to rise that night; and after a long while, when the east began to lighten a bit, he saw that the sky was becoming overcast with clouds that scudded obliquely across the whitened patch just over a peak. Wind came, but no moon; a slow, sweeping wind that blew strongly and steadily without any violent gusts; such a wind as would have delighted a sailor aboard an old windjammer on the homeward voyage. It delighted Cole no less, for he felt the sand creeping past his legs and knew that it was drifting and would blur his tracks even if it did not obliterate them entirely; so that would give him a fighting chance of escape.

Twice he thought he heard a faint halloo back in the direction from which he had come, but with the wind whistling among the interstices in the ledge he could not be sure. When his legs wearied of standing, he withdrew around the corner of the niche and sat down with his back against the rock. Hawk, the two-year-old, came up and nosed him wistfully, and Cole drew the sleek head down where he could rub the satiny nose and smooth the long forelock, running his fingers absently through the hair to smooth out each tangle. But though the colt's companionship was gratefully received, he did not forget to listen with strained attention for the approach of Roper and Pete.

Dawn came gray and cloudy, with a high wind which whipped up the sand into stinging swirls that piled small drifts here and there against the rocks. In the open it gouged deep furrows in fantastic patterns and the whooping of the gale made an eerie song among the thin sharp ridges that went twisting this way and that in labyrinthine windings through this particular portion of that strange, forbidding waste land locally called the Sinks.

When daylight was full upon him, Cole saw that the niche into which Johnnie had led him might more properly be called a triangular cleft in the rocks. The horses stood huddled at the far end of it, where the narrowing walls sheltered them from the wind; a circumstance which pleased him so much that he got his rope off the saddle and stretched it across the twenty-foot space, penning them there well out of sight except from the opening itself. Had he been searching for a hiding place this spot would have appealed to him as almost ideal, he thought, as he surveyed the horses contentedly standing in their little corral, Mick with his chin resting on Johnnie's neck, Hawk crowded in between Eagle and Johnnie, his big dark eyes fixed inquiringly upon Cole. Get those horses? Roper and Pete would have to take them over his dead body, Cole thought rather melodramatically, and took out his six-shooter to examine it and make sure that it was in perfect working condition.

With the horses safe for the present, Cole turned his attention to the wall itself. It struck him that Roper and Pete would be looking for the horses and would never think of watching the top of the ledges, so he pulled off his boots and began climbing the wall on the side next the crack which had proven so useful last night. The rough, splintered face of the rock gave many handholds and as he neared the top the other side of the cleft tilted inward and offered its solid surface as a brace, so that presently he found it very much like climbing up inside an ill-shaped chimney. If it came to a fight, this would be a splendid point from which to defend himself and his horses, he thought, as he stopped to breathe and look down at them. There was one danger to be guarded against, he remembered. If he got out of sight they would probably whinny after him; certainly Johnnie would lift up his anxious voice, and probably set them all neighing. Eagle in particular had a terrifically high, shrill call. He must bear that in mind and not go too far, lest their very love for him should betray them all.

As it happened, Cole discovered that the ledge narrowed like the peak of a wind-chopped wave and that he could stand waist-deep on a broken splinter of rock within the cleft and look down to the blowing sand on either side.

Eyes watering in the wind, he gazed out over an intricate jumble of narrow winding lanes hemmed in with barren broken hills which seemed to extend in an uneven line to the black peaks in the distance. There must be open stretches, wide spaces here and there, but Cole could see nothing of the sort close by; nothing save the thin ledges thrusting up from the sand, with here and there piles of loose bowlders where some portion of wall had fallen in a heap—shaken down in an earthquake, perhaps.

To find him in that maze would be almost impossible, he decided. Roper and Pete would have no clue to his whereabouts, now that the wind had come and swept out his tracks. They must hunt for him at random, and from where he stood he would see them coming long before they could possibly discover him.

So far was luck on his side. But if they could not discover his hiding place, neither did he know the way back out of the Sinks. Without water, he could stay hidden only so long before his sanctuary became a trap. He had food, but there was nothing for the horses to eat and he would be obliged to chew his bacon raw or do without; a thirst-provoking repast which did not tempt him at all.

He shifted his position to where he could sit on a narrow shelf which projected on the lip of the crack, his legs dangling into the cleft and his back against a slanting slab of stone. There he perched bareheaded in the wind and smoked while he watched the desolate terrain spread raggedly before him. Black rock and yellow, drifting sand with here and there a deformed juniper bush—not an enlivening scene under happier conditions than these; certainly holding no cheer for him now.

Toward noon ragged rifts tore through the mottled gray blanket of clouds and let a dazzling shaft of sunlight through. The gale still whistled around the rocks it could not shake; the sand still drifted before it and built little furrows and ridges that perhaps would be scooped up bodily and tossed into the air in a cloud with the next erratic gust.

Up on the perch he had chosen above the cleft Cole nodded in spite of himself. Nothing had moved within his range of visions save a flock of buffeted cedar birds that flew over his head, making for the farther hills. Insensibly his vigilance relaxed and he dozed fitfully, his shoulders sagged into a depression of the rock at his back. The whoo-oo of the wind merged into a droning chant, faded to silence as his mind dropped deeper into the velvet darkness of sleep; swelled up again to sound that took the form of words, at first mumbled and meaningless, then clearer and carrying a meaning that tugged at Cole's consciousness until he opened his eyes and blinked guiltily as if he would deny even to himself that he had been asleep.

Roper and Pete were riding down along the wall toward him, side by side with stirrups almost touching, as they swung to the plodding of the tired horses through the sand. Pete was talking, and it was his growling voice that had seemed a part of the wind's monotonous drone.

"You'd oughta got 'im on the switchback. That was a cinch an' you let it slip by," he was saying crabbedly but without any greater animus than the impulse to pass the blame along to the other fellow. "Now we got t' hunt 'im outa here like a rabbit in a rock pile. This damn' wind——"

"Jim's picked him up with the glasses, maybe. Once we git 'im located, the rest 'll be easy. Quit yer bellyachin', or I'll send yuh on home."

A mirthless grin twisted Cole's lips as he listened. Had these two been quarreling over his disappearance ever since last night? They weren't getting anywhere with the argument, that was certain. Pete must be a privileged character, he thought. As the two rode nearer, and passed so close he could have flipped a pebble on to their hat brims, Cole thought what an easy shot it would be to drop them both off their horses. An Indian or some harder natured man might have done just that; certainly they would have considered this a heaven-sent opportunity to shoot him down, had their positions been reversed, and Cole scowled at his own softness because he could not kill them for the human wolves their own mouths proclaimed them to be.

Instead he stiffened to the immobility of the rock behind him, just as old Billy Parrish, his father's foreman, had long ago taught him to do on the hunting trails when game stepped out in plain sight. Not even the horses, walking with drooped heads swinging to each stride they took, flipped an ear his way to show that they suspected his presence. Cole was thankful now that he had taught his own horses to be quiet on hunting trips. They probably believed he was watching for deer; at least, they made no sound, even though they must have heard the voices of the men.

For the matter of that, he wondered at their apparent carelessness in talking when they did not know how close he might be to them. But when they had passed and he ventured to examine that rock lane more closely, he saw that no hiding place presented itself, as far as he could look in either direction. His guess that they would never dream he would climb to the top of the rock was evidently correct. They were searching for some sign of him with the horses, and they knew they were alone in that particular passageway.

The thought of Jim perched on some height with field glasses watching for him was to say the least disquieting. It must mean that in the night either Pete or Roper himself had ridden to headquarters, wherever that was, and had brought out the rest of the gang. How many that would be, Cole of course could not know, but from all he had heard of outlaw gangs, he believed there would be several riders poking through this area of primal eruptions. Or was it a great rock field shattered long ago and worn down with water in past ages? He was not geologist enough to know, and mentally he dubbed this "badlands" and let it go that way. Surely it was bad enough from any point of view; bad enough to make him almost despair of ever escaping from the trap.

The only thing he could do was stay where he was on the lip of the niche's end and watch, motionless, for some further sign of his hunters. It was what a wild animal would do in covert as safe as his, and for the time being he was little better off than a hunted animal; their cunning must be his cunning, their caution his best defense.