Collection 1986 - The Trail To Crazy Man (v5.0) (33 page)

W
E RODE WITH increasing care, and we were gaining. When the canyon branched we found a waterhole where the rider had filled his canteen and prepared a meal. “He’s no woodsman, Mulvaney. Much of the wood he used was not good burning wood and some of it green. Also, his fire was in a place where the slightest breeze would swirl smoke in his face.”

“He didn’t unsaddle,” Mulvaney said, “which means he was in a hurry.”

This was not one of Slade’s outlaws, for always on the dodge, nobody knew better than they how to live in the wilds. Furthermore, they knew these canyons. This might be a stranger drifting into the country looking for a hideout. But it was somewhere in this maze that we would find what it was that drew the interest of Morgan Park.

Scouting around, I suddenly looked up. “Mulvaney! He’s whipped up! There’s no trail out!”

“Sure an’ he didn’t take wings to get out of here,” Mulvaney growled. “We’ve gone blind, that’s what we’ve done.”

Returning to the spring we let the horse drink while I did some serious thinking. The rock walls offered no route of escape. The trail had been plain to this point and then vanished.

No tracks. He had watered his horse, prepared a meal—and afterward left no tracks. “It’s uncanny,” I said. “It looks like we’ve a ghost on our hands.”

Mulvaney rubbed his grizzled jaw and chuckled. “Who would be better to cope with a ghost than a couple of Irishmen?”

“Make some coffee, you bogtrotter,” I told him. “Maybe then we’ll think better.”

“It’s a cinch he didn’t fly,” I said later, over coffee, “and not even a snake could get up these cliffs. So he rode in, and if he left, he rode out.”

“But he left no tracks, Matt. He could have brushed them out, but we saw no signs of brushing. Where does that leave us?”

“Maybe”—the idea came suddenly—“he tied something on his feet?”

“Let’s look up the canyons. He’d be most careful right here, but if he is wearin’ somethin’ on his feet, the further he goes the more tired he’ll be—or his horse will be.”

“You take one canyon, and I’ll take the other. We’ll meet back here in an hour.”

Walking, leading my buckskin. I scanned the ground. At no place was the sand hard packed, and there were tracks of deer, lion, and an occasional bighorn. Then I found a place where wild horses had fed, and there something attracted me. Those horses had been frightened!

From quiet feeding they had taken off suddenly, and no bear or lion would frighten them so. They would leave, but not so swiftly. Only one thing could make wild horses fly so quickly—man!

The tracks were comparatively fresh, and instinct told me this was the right way. The wild horses had continued to run. Where their tracks covered the bottom of the canyon, and where the unknown rider must follow them, I should find a clue. And I did, almost at once.

Something foreign to the rock and manzanita caught my eye. Picking it free of a manzanita branch, I straightened up. It was sheep’s wool!

S
WEARING SOFTLY, I swung into the saddle and turned back. The rider had brought sheepskins with him, tied some over his horse’s hoofs and some over his own boots, and so left no defined tracks. Mulvaney was waiting for me. “Find anything?”

He listened with interest and then nodded. “It was a good idea he had. Well, we’ll get him now!”

The trail led northeast and finally to a high, windswept plateau unbroken by anything but a few towering rocks or low-growing sagebrush. We sat our horses squinting against the distance, looking over the plateau and then out over the vast maze of canyons, a red, corrugated distance of land almost untrod by men. “If he’s out there,” Mulvaney said, “we may never find him. You could lose an army in that.”

“We’ll find him. My hunch is that it won’t be far.” I nodded at the distance. “He had no packhorse and only a canteen to carry water, and even if he’s uncommonly shrewd, he’s not experienced in the wilds.”

Mulvaney had been studying the country. “I prospected through here, boy.” He indicated a line of low hills to the east. “Those are the Sweet Alice Hills. There are ruins ahead of us, and away yonder is beef basin.”

“We’ll go slow. My guess is we’re not far behind him.”

As if in acknowledgment of my comment, a rifle shot rang out sharply in the clear air! We heard no bullet, but only the shot, and then another, closer, sharper!

“He’s not shootin’ at us!” Mulvaney said, staring with shielded eyes. “Where is he?”

“Let’s move!” I called. “I don’t like this spot!”

Recklessly, we plunged down the steep trail into the canyon. Down, down, down! We went racing around elbow turns of the switchback trail, eager only to get off the skyline and into the shelter. If the unknown rider had not fired at us, whom had he fired at?

Who was the rider? Why was he shooting?

XI

Tired as my buckskin was, he seemed to grasp the need for getting under cover, and he rounded curves in that trail that made my hair stand on end. At the bottom we drew up in a thick cluster of trees and brush, listening. Even our horses felt the tension, for their ears were up, their eyes alert.

All was still. Some distance away a stone rattled. Sweat trickled behind my ear, and I smelt the hot aroma of dust and baked leaves. My palms grew sweaty and I dried them, but there was no sound. Careful to let my saddle creak as little as possible, I swung down, Winchester in hand. With a motion to wait, I moved away.

From the edge of the trees I could see no more than thirty yards in one direction and no more than twenty in the other. Rock walls towered above, and the canyon lay hot and still under the midday sun. From somewhere came the sound of trickling water, but there was no other sound or movement. My neck felt hot and sticky, and my shirt clung to my shoulders. Shifting the rifle in my hands, I studied the rock walls with misgiving. Drying my hands on my jeans, I took a chance and moved out of my cover, moving to a narrow, six-inch band of shade against the far wall. Easing myself to the bend of the rock. I peered around.

Sixty yards away stood a saddled horse, head hanging. My eyes searched and saw nothing, and then, just visible beyond a white, water-worn boulder, I saw a boot and part of a leg. Cautiously, I advanced, wary for any trick, ready to shoot instantly. There was no sound but an occasional chuckle of water over rocks. Then suddenly I could see the dead man.

His skull was bloody. He had been shot over the eye with a rifle and at fairly close range. He had probably never known what hit him. There was vague familiarity to him, and his skull bore a swelling. This had been one of Slade’s men, whom I had slugged on the trail to Hattan’s.

The bullet had struck over the eye and ranged downward, which meant he had been shot from ambush, from a hiding place high on the canyon wall. Lining up the position, I located a tuft of green that might be a ledge.

Mulvaney was approaching me. “He wasn’t the man we followed,” he advised. “This one was comin’ from the other way.”

“He’s one of the Slade crowd. Drygulched.”

“Whoever he is,” Mulvaney assured me, “we can’t take chances. The fellow who killed this man shot for keeps.”

W
E STARTED ON, but no longer were the tracks disguised. The man we followed was going more slowly now. Suddenly I spotted a boot print. “Mulvaney!” I whispered hoarsely. “That’s the track of the man who killed Rud Maclaren!”

“But Morgan Park is in the hoosegow!” Mulvaney protested.

“Unless he’s broken out. But I’d swear that was the track found near Maclaren’s body. The one Canaval found!”

My buckskin’s head came up and his nostrils dilated. Grabbing his nose, I stifled the neigh, and then stared up the canyon. Less than a hundred yards away a dun horse was picketed near a patch of bunchgrass. Hiding our horses in a box canyon, we scaled the wall for a look around. From the top of the badly fractured mesa we could see all the surrounding country. Under the southern edge of the mesa was a cluster of ancient ruins and beyond them some deep canyons. With my glasses shielded from sun reflection by my hat, I watched a man emerge from a crack in the earth, carrying a heavy sack. Placing it on the ground he removed his coat and with a pick and bar began working at a slab of rock.

“What’s he doin’?” Mulvaney demanded, squinting his eyes.

“Pryin’ a slab of rock,” I told him, and even as I spoke the rock slid, rumbled with other debris, and then settled in front of the crack. After a careful inspection the man concealed his tools, picked up his sack and rifle, and started back. Studying him, I could see he wore black jeans, very dusty now, and a small hat. His face was not visible. He bore no resemblance to anyone I had seen before.

He disappeared near the base of the mountain, and for a long time we heard nothing.

“He’s gone,” I said.

“We’d best be mighty careful,” Mulvaney warned uneasily. “That’s no man to be foolin’ with, I’m thinkin’!”

A shot shattered the clear, white radiance of the afternoon. One shot, and then another.

We stared at each other, amazed and puzzled. There was no other sound, no further shots. Then uneasily we began our descent of the mesa, sitting ducks if he was waiting for us. To the south and west the land shimmered with heat, looking like a vast and unbelievable city, long fallen to ruin. We slid into the canyon where we’d left the horses, and then the shots were explained.

Both horses were on the ground, sprawled in pools of their own blood. Our canteens had been emptied and smashed with stones. We were thirty miles from the nearest ranch, and the way lay through some of the most rugged country on earth.

“There’s water in the canyons,” Mulvaney said at last, “but no way to carry it. You think he knew who we were?”

“If he lives in this country he knows that buckskin of mine,” I said bitterly. “He was the best horse I ever owned.”

T
O HAVE HUNTED for us and found us, the unknown man would have had to take a chance on being killed himself, but by this means he left us small hope of getting out alive.

“We’ll have a look where he worked,” I said. “No use leaving without knowing about that.”

It took us all of an hour to get there, and night was near before we had dug enough behind the slab of rock to get at the secret. Mulvaney cut into the bank with his pick. Ripping out a chunk and grabbing it, he thrust it under my eyes, his own glowing with enthusiasm. “Silver!” he said hoarsely. “Look at it! If the vein is like that for any distance, this is the biggest strike I ever saw! Richer than Silver Reef!”

The ore glittered in his hand. There was what had killed Rud Maclaren and all the others. “It’s rich,” I agreed, “but I’d settle for the Two Bar.”

Mulvaney agreed. “But still,” he said, “the silver is a handsome sight.”

“Pocket it, then,” I said dryly, “for it’s a long walk we have.”

“But a walk we can do!” He grinned at me. “Shall we start now?”

“Tonight,” I said, “when the walking will be cool.”

We let the shadows grow long around us while we walked and watched the thick blackness choke the canyons and deepen in the shadows of trees. We walked on steadily, with little talk, up Ruin Canyon and over a saddle of the Sweet Alice Hills, and down to the spring on the far side of the hills.