Читать книгу The Complete Novels of Ernest Haycox - Ernest Haycox - Страница 90

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"Done any exploring down there?" Denver asked.

"I got boys posted along the ridge here, but nobody's scouted that bowl. I was afraid of losin' 'em, and I didn't want to bring on no premature fightin'. They prob'ly got the brush speckled with gents."

"Good enough. Munn, where are you? Drift along and collect the bunch right here. I'm going down. Need another man."

"Right beside yuh," announced Bonnet.

Denver paused long enough to issue his orders. "If you fellows hear one shot, come along. If you hear more than one shot, also come along, but don't waste any time. Otherwise wait for us."

He turned from the ridge. Bonnet muttered. "A little to yore left—there's a good way of gettin' below." Accordingly, Denver slipped away from the main party, let himself down what appeared to be a convenient alley, and immediately was plunged into a black and solitary world. The avenue of approach shot one way and another, drifting from high levels to water holes and back again. Perceptibly the outlaw camp fire brightened and the fog thinned. Bonnet breathed in his ear. "This is one of the two- three entries to the bowl. They'd be apt to have it guarded." Denver accepted the warning and abandoned the easy travel. Curling around the trees, he circled the beacon fire until he judged he had completed an approximate quarter turn. Bonnet's wind rose and fell asthmatically; then Denver plunged forward in long and staggered spurts. A thick rampart of trees shut out the gleam of the fire. He halted once more, waiting for Bonnet to catch up. Bonnet murmured, "Not far now," and Denver cut straight through the trees to find himself on the smooth rim of the bowl. Fifty yards off the camp blaze shot up with a brilliant cascade of sparks. A man threw an armful of wood on it and quickly retreated to outer darkness.

That move evoked a sudden suspicion in Denver's head. Where were the horses and the men of Redmain's outfit? Certainly not anywhere along this particular angle of the bowl. He touched Bonnet's arm and began a swift march around the rim. He saw a man crouching beside a horse. By degrees he came nearer. The man's cigarette tip made a fitful glow; the horse stirred. For a long time Denver kept his place, trying to penetrate the gloom behind that man. But he saw nothing. To all intents and purposes that fellow was a solitary watcher. And as the dragging minutes passed Denver definitely accepted the belief. Redmain had posted a decoy and fled.

There was but one conclusion to draw. Redmain somehow had caught wind of the forces moving against him and was now playing his own particular game under the black cloak of the night. Denver stared at the fire guard. He touched Bonnet on the knee and whispered, "Stay here." Curving with the tree line, he arrived in the rear of the outlaw. A hundred feet intervened. Stepping ahead in long, springing strides he reached the horse at the moment it jerked up. The man sprang to his feet and grunted. "Who's that?" Denver's gun leveled against him.

"Snap your elbows."

The outlaw swayed as if calling on his nerve. But the fighting moment went winging by. He was lost, and he knew it. His hands rose.

"Step this way," grunted Denver. "Turn around. Stand fast." His free hand shot out and ripped the man's gun from its holster. He tucked it behind his own belt. The outlaw jeered him with a sudden revival of spirit.

"A hell of a lot of good this'll do yuh."

"You're lucky to be out of what's comin'. Anybody else around here?"

"Think I'd tell if they was?" growled the outlaw.

"Just a catamount of wheels, ain't you," reflected Denver. "Walk over to the fire where I can see you."

The outlaw obeyed. He had a strange face, and Denver commented on it. "Another slick-eared gun fanner from other parts. Redmain must have a young army."

"Big enough to whip the tar outa you, once ever yuh tackle it," stated the outlaw coolly.

"We'll have a chance to find out soon enough," said Denver. "But you'll have no part in the fun."

"The Sundown jail won't hold me," challenged the outlaw.

"Your ticket don't read that far," was Denver's laconic answer. This stopped the outlaw dead. His teeth clicked together, and the bones of his face sprang against the tightening skin.

"So that's yore style, uh?" he muttered.

"You seem to like the life. So don't bellyache over your pay. Come on, Lyle. He's alone."

Bonnet came swiftly around the fire. "We better get organized, Dave. How about shakin' this specimen down?"

"Where'd Redmain go?" demanded Denver, shooting the question at the outlaw.

"I ain't sayin'."

"You've got a bare chance of escapin' the rope," Denver warned him. "Talk up. Where'd he go?"

"I'll take my funeral and be damned to you! I don't squawk in the first place, and in the second place I'd never expect no mercy from Black Dave Denver even if I did tell. You take a long run and jump for yoreself."

"My-my," said Bonnet. "How would you like a belt in the mug? It might loosen your thoughts some."

The outlaw stood sullenly defiant. Denver brooded over him. "Who told Redmain that Leverage came across the Henry trail tonight lookin' for him?"

The outlaw flung up his head and laughed ironically. "Mebbe you'd like to know what Redmain knows. I'll say—" Out of the south came a sputter of shots. Denver cursed and raised his gun to the sky, letting go a single bullet. Again the night wind bore down echoes of trouble. This time the firing rose strongly sustained. The outlaw wrenched himself backward, yelling.

"There's yore answer, damn yuh! We'll do what we please in this country afore we're through!"

"What the devil!" snapped Bonnet, staring at Denver.

"Leverage," said the latter with an electric bitterness, "has run into a trap." He fired again, threw out the weapon's cylinder, and replaced the spent cartridges. Going to the outlaw's horse, he untied the rope, and shook the loop over the man. The outlaw protested. "Good God, don't tear me apart with that string!"

Denver's men swarmed over the clearing. Hank Munn charged up to the fire, leading the horses of Bonnet and Denver. Denver beckoned the man. "You—take this buzzard we've caught and herd him back to my ranch. Tell the boys to keep him."

"Why bother—"

"You've got your walkin' papers," said Denver, stepping into his saddle. Without warning he spurred into the timber. He fell upon a trail and righted himself; the horse labored mightily. He came to the summit and for a moment groped his way clumsily through brushy underfooting. The horse saved him the necessity of search, kicked clear, and reached a broader pathway. So he lined out to the southward with his men strung behind; Bonnet's urgent call to close up was echoed still farther back by Hominy Hogg.

This was not the side of Yellow Hill with which he was very familiar. He knew the terrain only in the sense that every rider of cattleland has a rough contour map in his head of whatever lies within fifty or a hundred miles of home range. His sense of direction told him he traveled in a parallel line with the Henry trail, which ran somewhere off in the eastern blackness; his ears told him he was headed into the drawn-out fight yonder to the south.

The firing came clearer, swelling to a pitched volume and dying off to scattered volleys. From the changing tempo Denver almost was able to see the fight—the sudden locking of forces, the milling and the swirling, the abrupt buckling into shelter, and the stealthy groping for advantage in the pitch- black night. Redmain had timed his maneuvers perfectly. He could only have done so through clear information as to the parties moving against him. The fact that he had left a fire burning and rode away to begin a pitched engagement was proof of it. Plainly Leverage had moved into a trap and was now fighting for his life. Leverage was an honest man, a plugger. But never for a minute could he match the tricky touch-and-go brilliance of Lou Redmain. It wasn't in the cards.

He was coursing down a long and straight grade. Lyle Bonnet drew up, neck and tail, and shouted, "It ain't far now! I think they're scrappin' near Peachey's Burn! If we keep on like this we'll smack right into a crossfire! How about drawin' up just before we hit it?"

Denver stiffened in his seat. All the while his straining ears had been fastened to the sharp echoes; it came to him with a shock that he was listening into a queer lull. The firing had ceased. The gloom of the trail widened into a gray circle. Bonnet called again. "This is that old hermit's clearin'. We're only a half mile—"

The little clearing spilled over with sound. Horsemen smashed out from yonder side. Denver cried, "Pull up!" and was surrounded by his own men as they drove out of the trail. A gun's shattering blast beat into his group. Denver shouted. "Leverage—stop shootin'!" And from the growing mass of riders emerged a challenge. "To hell with Leverage!" Followed by a pour of lead.

"Redmain!" yelled Denver and spurred his horse. "Spread out—let 'em have it!"

"Come and get it, Denver!"

It was mad, riotous confusion. He was jammed elbow and elbow with his own men; Redmain's riders plunged on. He saw them shifting rapidly across the cleared area; he opened a point-blank fire, crying a warning. "Spread out—spread out!" Outlaw and posse raced around the fringes of the meadow. Every man was on his own, and in the center a dozen of them had met in a wicked hand-to-hand encounter. He thought he heard Redmain, but wasn't sure. Dann's bellow was too barbaric to be missed. He hauled his pony out of the whirl and cut across.

"Come on, D Slash! Follow me!"

Right on the heels of the challenge a rider shot from the massed and weaving figures and drove into him. The belch of powder covered his face. He veered aside, firing at the bobbing target. There was a yell, a terrible guttering of breath; rider and horseman alike disappeared into the mêlée. Denver plunged on, feeling his men behind. But the target he aimed for had shifted. Shifted and given ground. Dann bellowed again, deeper in the woods; and like phantoms Redmain's men slipped away through the trees. Hominy Hogg spurred past Denver.

"I know this trail!" he bawled. "Come on!"

Denver heard Dann again, a few yards to the left; he galloped between the clustered pine trunks and rammed a turning rider. An arm reached out, slashed down, missed his head by an inch and struck into his thigh with the barrel of a gun. He clamped the gun in his left hand, beat back with his own weapon, and heard a bone snap. His antagonist gasped and tried to fight clear. Both horses pitched. Denver crooked his right elbow about a sagging head and dragged the man bodily from the saddle; his left hand ripped the fellow's weapon clear, and at that point he let the man fall and spurred away.

The encounter had taken no more than two or three minutes, but in that space of time both the pursued and the pursuers were far ahead. Denver fought through the brush, ran into a fresh deadfall whose branches would not let him pass over, and swung to skirt it. Still he found no trail. An occasional shot drummed back. Riders were drifting all over the country. Presently the horse seemed to find a clear pathway and went along it. Denver considered himself being pulled too far northward and attempted to angle in the other direction. Each attempt brought him sooner or later to some sort of a barrier. Back on the trail he decided to return to the clearing and make a fresh start. He hauled about and heard a rustling dead ahead. Another rider darkly barred his path.

"Who's that?" said the man huskily.

Denver had the feeling a gun was trained on him. "You tell me and I'll tell you," was his grim retort.

"I don't make yore voice."

"Maybe I've got a cold," muttered Denver, feeling his way along. Any D Slash man would know his voice, though some of the Steele outfit might not. The reverse was also true. It was possible that this might be a Steele hand.

"Well, well," grunted the man, "we can't stay here all night. Let's get it over with. You sing out and so will I. We done spent enough time in these god-forsaken trees."

"Sounds to me," observed Denver, "that you don't like this part of the country."

"Mebbe so—mebbe not. Depends. It's good for some people and not so good for others."

"Come far?" asked Denver.

"In one way, yes. In another way, no."

"Had a square meal, lately?"

The man thought that one over carefully. "Brother, you got a ketch in that. I eat now and then."

"Just what part of the country are we in?" pressed Denver.

"You want to know, or do you want to know if I know?" parried the other.

"Let it ride. Your turn now, fella. If you got any ideas how to break the ice let's hear 'em."

"How about you and me lightin' matches at the same time?"

"A good item," agreed Denver. "We'll count to ten and strike."

"I'm damned if we will," said the man, suddenly changing his mind. "You fell too quick. Must have somethin' up yore sleeve. No, it's out. I tell you—supposin' we just natcherlly turn about and ride in opposite directions?"

"You sure we want to go in them directions?"

"What directions?" said the man cautiously.

"What directions have you got?" drawled Denver.

"Good God, am I goin' nuts?"

"I'd have to know you better to tell." Denver shifted in his saddle. He heard a creaking of leather, and finally an irritable mumble. "What you doin' over there?"

"Nothing, brother, nothing at all."

"That's what I'm doin', and I don't like it."

"Got your gun leveled on me?"

"No."

"You lie like a horse," said Denver.

"Let it ride, then," said the other and began to swear. "Supposin' I have? If I thought you was what I got an idea yuh are, I'd knock yuh outa the saddle and no regrets. Yellow Clay County—"

Denver let his arm drift down. It touched, gripped, and drew the gun clear. He broke in softly. "You're one of Redmain's imported gun slingers, mister."

"How do you know? Who are you?"

"The name of this county's Yellow Hill!"

The explanation all but cost him his life. A bullet bit at the brim of his hat before his first shot blasted into the eddying echo of the other. The shadow in front became but half a shadow, the upper part melting down. He heard a stifled moan; the man's horse bucked away and stopped. Denver advanced five yards, swung down, and lit a match. The first flare of light was enough. And there was a cropped sweat on his own face.

"High stakes for that gamble," he muttered, pinching out the match. That was all. He turned his pony and started along the trail. Every vestige of pursuit had died in the distance. Somewhere Redmain's men were slipping through the trees, collecting again, and somewhere his own riders were groping as blindly as he was. At the end of five minutes he detected a fork of the trail, and he took the one going south. It was a bad guess; after some three hundred yards it stopped and jumped aside like a jackrabbit. He accepted the offshoot wearily. So he drifted, feeling himself sliding more to the north-west. After a time he ceased to keep count with the changing trails; and when he did that he automatically lost himself. Somewhere around one or two in the morning he cast up his accounts mentally, drew into the secretive brush, tied his horse short, and unsaddled. He wrapped himself in the saddle blanket, gouged a channel to fit his hips, and was soundly asleep.

The training of the range man will not let him sleep beyond dawn; and his vitality springs freshly up after a few short hours of rest, no matter how much physical punishment has gone before. This is his birthright, and never does he lose it until the day he forsakes the queer combination of sweaty drudgery and wild freedom of cattleland and tries another trade. The regularity, the comforts, and the pleasures of the city man may come to him. But never again will he wake as Dave Denver did on this morning, alive, buoyant, energy driving through him; and never will he see through the same vision the first bright shafts of dawn transfix the gray mists. For a thousand such mornings the outcast range man may have cursed himself from his blankets; but looking back upon that time he will wistfully know the best of himself was left there.

Saddling, Denver took the trail again. To the south it was still dark. But ahead and northward the country lightened up rapidly. The trail widened, climbed considerably, and at last left the trees altogether; and he found himself standing on the rim of one of the innumerable small holes framed within the hills. The trail dropped down without much ceremony to the floor of the hole. A half mile onward the hole narrowed to a rocky throat. He thought he saw a trail shooting up the ridge to the right of this throat, but the fog, though diminishing, was still thick enough to blur his view.

"Tom's Hole," he grunted. "Great guns, I've dragged my picket halfway to the Moguls. Now, what to do? Straight back, or across the hole?"

To retreat meant bucking a lot of rugged terrain that he knew little enough about. But he was clear enough in his geography to reflect that beyond the north end of the hole was an east-west road which would carry him into Sundown Valley. His men also knew the road, and it stood to reason that those who had lost contact with the main party would probably drift that way as soon as they oriented themselves. It was no use considering a scout through the timber for them.

He knew some of his party had been hit, and it worried him. Those who had been knocked out in the meadow would be taken care of by now, for he remembered that, in the heat of the chase, he had told somebody to stay behind. And Leverage would be coming up. But he wanted to assemble the outfit and count noses. Possibly he would have to scout the timber for a few missing men.

Where Redmain was he had not the slightest idea. All his work in establishing isolated pickets to check the trails had been swept away and would have to be done over again. The first thing was to get organized; and with that in mind he dipped down into the hole as the tendrils of mist began to steam up from the earth like smoke from volcanic fumaroles.

"The first trick belongs to Redmain," he reflected dourly. "He juggled Leverage and me neat as you please, struck twice and got away. There's a leak a mile wide somewhere on our side of the fence. He knew all about Leverage's moves; and apparently he knew about mine, or guessed well. None of my riders would go bad; some of the Steele men might. I'll have to do some weeding. And I'll have to play fox better."

He cantered across the bottom of the hole, aiming for the now distinct trail at the far end. High on one rim he saw a doe emerge from the trees; and the next minute he halted, correcting his mistake. It was a small pony. From another angle a man stepped out and lifted a rifle. The peace of the morning was shattered by a rolling report. A jet of earth kicked up five yards short of him.

He reached for his own rifle in the boot and jumped from the saddle. The man lowered his gun. Another gun crack broke over the hole. Flat on his belly Denver swept the circling rim, unable to locate the second ambusher. Methodically he laid a line on the first man and fired; but his target had dropped from view. Another shot landed directly beneath his horse. Denver jumped into the saddle and whirled to run back up the grade. Immediately he saw it was blocked by three or four riders. He swung again and sank his spurs, racing for the northern mouth of the hole. He was a fair target, and the high rim seemed suddenly to sprout marksmen. They opened at will, wasting lead all around him. Lying flat in the saddle he flung his pony on toward protection of the rocks and was within a hundred yards of them when he saw this exit to be blocked as well.

A hat and gun popped into sight. Denver swerved, accepting the only other course open, which was the trail that climbed steeply beside the rocks. He let the horse have its head and pumped a brace of bullets at the fellow. Twenty feet on up he commanded the man's shelter and fired again. The gelding trembled with the effort he put into the climb; Denver quit worrying about the other guns trained on him from the rear. The man below, having no means of security from the overhead Denver, began to scurry blindly. The trail clung to the very edge of the cliff as it ascended. A matter of fifty rods higher it leveled into the ridge's summit. Denver grunted, "Go along, my boy, this is another thing we just squeezed through," and looked behind him. A small body of men were galloping in pursuit, sliding down the trail he had shortly before taken. "How in the devil did I pass through that mess of—"

The gelding faltered. Denver squared himself and found the game lost. The top of the trail was blocked by waiting outlaws. Distinctly he saw Dann's sullen, savage face glaring at him. In such a place, with neither safe retreat nor safe advance possible, Denver reverted to the elemental instincts that ruled him. He raked the gelding cruelly, threw up his rifle and pumped his remaining shells at them. Their horses pitched, a man capsized—and that was all he ever saw of the scene. A bullet struck the gelding; it stumbled, and Denver went vaulting over the rim. He struck first on his shoulder and felt the cold stream of pain shudder through his veins. Then, still conscious, he went careening down the stiff slope, loose rock rattling beside him. He heard one more shot. Then sound and light and feeling departed altogether. He was at the bottom of the slope, blood gouting from his head.