Collection 1986 - The Trail To Crazy Man (v5.0) (54 page)

Frederic Ransome came into the room again and walked to their table. “Cummings is going to stir up trouble,” he said, dropping into a chair. “He’s out to get you, Kedrick, and if he can, to pin the killing of Keith on you, or that of Burwick. He claims your story is an elaborate buildup to cover the murder of all three of the company partners. He can make so much trouble that none of the squatters will get anything out of the land and nothing for all their work. We’ve got to find Burwick.”

Laredo lit a cigarette. “That’s a tough one,” he said, “but maybe I’ve got a hunch.”

“What?” Kedrick looked up.

“Ever hear Burwick talk about the grulla?”

“No, I can’t say that I did. It was mentioned before him once that I recall, and he didn’t seem interested.”

“Maybe he wasn’t interested because he knowed all about it,” Shad suggested. “That Burwick has me puzzled.”

Connie looked up at him. “You may be right, Laredo, but Pit and Sue Laine were Burwick’s stepchildren, and they knew nothing about the horse. The only one who seemed to know anything was Dornie Shaw.”

Tom Kedrick got up. “Well, there’s one thing we can do,” he said. “Laredo, we can scout out the tracks of that horse and trail it down. Pick up an old trail, anything. Then just see where it takes us.”

_______

O
N THE THIRD day it began to rain. All week the wind had been chill and cold, and clouds had hung low and flat across the sky from horizon to horizon. Hunched in his slicker, Laredo slapped his gloved hands together and swore. “This finishes it!” he said with disgust. “It will wipe out all the trails for us!”

“All old anyway,” Kedrick agreed. “We’ve followed a dozen here lately, and none of them took us anywhere. All disappeared on rock or were swept away by wind.”

“Escavada’s cabin isn’t far up this canyon,” Shad suggested. “Let’s hit him up for chow. It will be a chance to get warm, anyway.”

“Know him?”

“Stopped in there once. He’s half Spanish, half Ute. Tough old blister, an’ been in this country since before the grass came. He might be able to tell us something.”

The trail into the canyon was slippery, and the dull red of the rocks had turned black under the rain. It slanted across the sky in a drenching downpour, and when they reached the stone cabin in the corner of the hills, both men and horses were cold, wet, and hungry.

Escavada opened the door for them and waved them in. He grinned at them. “Glad to have company,” he said. “Ain’t seen a man for three weeks.”

When they had stripped off their slickers and peeled down to shirts, pants, and boots, he put coffee before them and laced it with a strong shot of whiskey. “Warm you up,” he said. “Trust you ain’t goin’ out again soon. Whiskey’s mighty fine when a body comes in from the cold, but not if he’s goin’ out again. It flushes the skin up, fetches all the heat to the surface, and then gives it off into the air. Man freezes mighty quick, drinkin’ whiskey.”

“You ever see a grulla mustang around, Escavada?” Laredo asked suddenly, looking up at the old man.

He turned on them, his eyes bright with malicious humor. “You ain’t some of them superstitious kind, be you? Scared of the dark like? An’ ghosts?”

“No,” Kedrick said, “but what’s the tie-up?”

“That grulla. Old story in this here county. Dates back thirty, forty years. Maybe further than that. Sign of death or misfortune, folks say.”

Laredo looked inquiringly at Kedrick, and Kedrick asked, “You know anything about it? That horse is real enough. We’ve both seen the grulla.”

“So’ve I,” the old man said. He dropped into a chair and grinned at them. His gray hair was sparse, but his eyes were alive and young. “I seen it many times, an’ no misfortune come my way. Not unless you call losin’ my shovel a misfortune.”

He hitched his chair nearer the woodpile and tossed a couple of sticks on the fire. “First I heard of it was long ago. Old folks used to tell of a Spanish man in armor, ridin’ a mouse-colored horse. He used to come an’ go about the hills, but the story back of it seems to be that a long time back some such fellow was mighty cruel to the Injuns. That story sort of hung around an’ a body heard it every now and again until about fifteen, sixteen years back. Since then, she’s been mighty lively.”

“You mean, you heard the story more since then?” Kedrick asked.

“Uh-huh. Started with a wagon train wiped out by Injuns up on the Salt. Every man jack of them killed dead—womenfolks, too, the story was. There was a youngster come off scot-free, boy about five or six years old. He crawled off into the brush, an’ after, he swore them Injuns was led by a white man on a grulla horse, a white man in armor!”

“Wild yarn,” Shad said, “but you can’t blame the kid, imaginin’ things after what he must’ve seen.”

“He said that hombre in the armor went around with a long knife, an’ he skewered every one of the bodies to make sure they was real dead. He said once that hombre looked right square at him, layin’ in the brush, an’ he was scared like all get-out, but must’ve been he wasn’t seen,’cause he wasn’t bothered.”

“An’ this grulla has been seen since?” Shad asked. “Regular?”

“Uh-huh, but never no rider close enough to say who or what. Sometimes off at a distance, sometimes just the horse, standin’. Most folks get clear off when they see that horse.”

He got up and brought back the coffeepot. “Right odd you should ask me about him now,” he commented. “Right odd.”

_______

B
OTH MEN LOOKED at him, and sensing their acute interest, he continued. “Been huntin’ here lately. Caught me a few bees off the cactus an’ mesquite, figurin’ to start a bees line. Well, I got her started, all right, an’ I trailed them bees to a place far south of here.

“South an’ west, actually. Most of this country hereabouts is worked out of bees. I been at it too long, so I was workin’ a good ways off. Well, my bee line took me over toward the Hogback. You know that place?

“She’s a high curvin’ ridge maybe five or six hundred feet at the crest, but she rises mighty close to straight up for four hundred feet. Crawlin’ up there to locate the cave them bees was workin’ out of, I come on a cave like a cliff dwellin’, only it wasn’t. She was manmade, an’ most likely in the past twenty years or so.

“What started me really lookin’ was my shovel—the one I lost. She was right there on that ledge, so I knowed it hadn’t been lost, but stole off me, so I began huntin’ around. I found back inside this place it was all fixed up for livin’. Some grub there, blankets, a couple of guns, an’ under some duffle in the corner, an old-time breast-plate an’ helmet.”

“You’re serious?” Kedrick demanded incredulously.

“Sure as I’m alive! But,” Escavada chuckled, “that ain’t the best of it. Lyin’ there on the floor, deader than last years hopes, was a young fellow. He had a knife, old-time Spanish knife that a fellow in armor might have carried, an’ it was skewered right through him!”

“A young man—dead?” Kedrick suddenly leaned forward. “Anything odd about him? I mean, was he missing a thumb?”

Escavada stared. “Well, now, if that don’t beat all! He was missin’ a thumb, an’ he was crippled up mighty bad in the other arm. Carried her in a sling.”

“Dornie Shaw!” Laredo leaped to his feet. “Dornie Shaw, by all that’s holy!”

“Shaw?” Escavada puckered his brows, his old eyes gleaming. “Now that’s most odd, most odd! Shaw was the name of that boy, the one who didn’t get killed with the wagon train!”

Kedrick’s face was a study. Dornie Shaw—dead! But if Dornie had been the boy from the wagon train, that would account for his superstitious fear of the grulla mustang. But to suppose that after all these years Dornie had been killed by the same man, or ghost if you believed in ghosts, that killed the rest of them so many years before was too ridiculous. It was, he thought suddenly, unless you looked at it just one way.

“Man can’t escape his fate,” Escavada said gloomily. “That boy hid out from that knife, but in the end it got him.”

Kedrick got up. “Could you take us to that place, Escavada? Down there on the Hogback?”

“I reckon.” He glanced outside. “But not in this rain. Rheumatiz gets me.”

“Then tell me where it is,” Kedrick said, “because I’m going now!”

_______

T
HEY WERE CROSSING the head of Coal Mine Creek when Laredo saw the tracks. He drew up suddenly, pointing at the tracks of a horse, well shod. “The grulla!” Kedrick said grimly. “I’d know those tracks anywhere!”

They pushed on. It was very late, and the pelting rain still poured down upon their heads and shoulders. The trails were slippery, and dusk was near. “We’d better find us a hole to crawl into,” Shad suggested. “We’ll never find that horse in this weather!”

“By morning the tracks will be gone, and I’ve a hunch we’ll find our man right in that cliff dwelling where Escavada saw Dornie’s body!”

“Wonder how Dornie found the place?”

“If what I think is right,” Kedrick replied, wiping the rain from his face, “he must have run into an old friend and been taken there to hide out. That old friend was the same rider of the grulla that killed his family and friends with the wagon train, and when he saw that armor, he knew it.”

“But what’s it all about?” Shad grumbled. “It don’t make sense! An’ no horse lives that long.”

“Sure not. There may have been a half dozen grullas in that length of time. This man probably tried to capitalize on the fears of the Indians and Mexicans who live up that way to keep them off his trail. We’ll probably find the answer when we reach the end of our ride!”

The Hogback loomed black and ominous before them. The trail, partly switchback and partly sheer climb, led over the sharp, knifelike ridge. They mounted, their horses laboring heavily at the steep and slippery climb. Twice, Tom Kedrick saw the tracks of the grulla on the trail, and in neither case could those tracks have been more than an hour old.

Kedrick glanced down when they saw the opposite side and then dismounted. “This one is tricky,” he said grimly. “We’d better walk it.”

Halfway down, lightning flashed, and in the momentary brightness, Laredo called out, “Watch it, Tom! High, right!”

Kedrick’s head jerked around just as the rifle boomed. The bullet smacked viciously against the rock beside him, spattering his face with splinters. He grabbed for his gun, but it was under his slicker. The gun boomed again, five fast shots, as fast as the marksman could work the lever of his rifle.

Behind Tom Kedrick, the anguished scream of a wounded horse cut the night, and Shad’s warning yell was drowned in the boom of the gun again. Then he flattened against the rock barely in time to avoid the plunging, screaming horse!

His own Appaloosa, frightened, darted down the trail with the agility of a mountain goat. The rifle boomed again, and he dropped flat.

“Shad? You all right?”

There was a moment before the reply, and then it was hoarse, but calm. “Winged me, but not bad.”

“I’m going after him. You all right?”

“Yeah. You might help me wrap this leg up.”

Sheltered by the glistening, rain-wet rock, with gray mist swirling past them on the high ridge of the Hogback, Kedrick knelt in the rain. Shielding the bandage from the rain with a slicker, he bound the leg. The bullet had torn through the flesh, but the bone was not broken.

XVII

When the wound was bandaged, Kedrick drew back into the shelter of the slight overhang and stared about. Ahead and below them was a sea of inky blackness. Somewhere down that mountain would be their horses, one probably dead or dying, the other possibly crippled.

Around them all was night and the high, windy, rain-wet rocks. And out there in the darkness a killer stalked them, a killer who could at all of three hundred yards spot his shots so well as to score two hits on a target seen only by a brief flash of lightning. Next time, those shots could kill. And there was no doubt about it. Now the situation was clear. It was kill or be killed.

“Sure,” Laredo said dryly, “you got to get him, man. But you watch it. He’s no slouch with that Spencer!”

“You’ve got to get off this ridge,” Kedrick insisted. “The cold and rain up here will kill you!”

“You leave that to me,” Shad replied shortly. “I’ll drag myself down the trail an’ find a hole to crawl into down on the flat below this Hogback. Might even find your palouse down there. You got grub an’ coffee in those saddlebags?”

“Yeah, but you’d better not try a fire until I come back.”

Shad chuckled. “Make sure you come back. I never did like to eat alone!”

Slipping his hands under his slicker through the pockets, Tom gripped his guns. His rifle, of course, was in his saddle scabbard. He was going to have to stalk a skilled killer, a fine marksman, on his own ground in absolute darkness with a handgun! And the killer had a Spencer .56!

Lightning flashed, but there was no more shooting. Somewhere out there the killer was stalking them. He would not give up now or retreat. This, for him, was a last stand unless he killed them both. His hideout now was known, and if they escaped he would no longer be safe. That he did not intend to be driven from the country was already obvious by the fact that he had stayed this long.

Kedrick crawled out, using a bush to cover his movement, and then worked along the windy top of the ridge toward a nest of boulders he had seen ahead of him by the lightning flash. The wind whipped at his hat and flapped the skirt of his slicker. His right-hand gun was drawn, but under the slicker.

He crawled on. Lightning flashed and he flattened out on the rocks, but the Spencer bellowed, the bullet smashing his eyes and mouth full of gravel. Rolling over, he held his fire, spitting and pawing desperately at his blinded eyes.

There was no sound but the wind and rain. Then, in the distance, thunder roared and rumbled off among the peaks, and when the lightning flashed again he looked out along the high ridge of the Hogback. Lashed by the driving rain, its rocks glistened like steel under clouds that seemed a scarce arm’s length above Kedrick’s head. Mist drifted by him, touching his wet face with a ghostly hand, and the weird white skeletons of long-dead pines pointed their sharp and bony fingers toward the sky.