Mustang Man (1966) (14 page)

Most of all I wanted to get shut of Loomis and Sylvie and Ralph, and I got to thinking about what kind of people they were. With western folks a body knew where he stood. I mean, things were mostly out in the open, for the very good reason that there was no place to hide anything. People were scarce, the towns were small, and whatever a man did it had to be pretty well known.

Things were beginning to change, though, because with the railroads a new kind of folks were coming west. The cheats and the weaklings that hard times had weeded out in the earlier years could now ride west on the cushions.

Jacob Loomis was a man who might have come at any time, though he wouldn't have been any great addition to the country. Sylvie and Ralph would not have come west at all but for the gold they thought they'd come by in an easy way.

Bishop might try to shoot me, I knew. Fryer might try dry-gulching me, but that was to be expected, more or less; anyway, this was Indian country where a man had to be on guard. Poison was another matter, and Sylvie and Ralph ... well, there was something wrong about them, something evil, something twisted in their minds.

Finally I went to sleep, though I knew when I closed my eyes that I would wake up to a day of guns and gunsmoke. There would be blood on the rocks of the Rabbit Ears before another sundown.

The last stars hung lonely in the sky, and a low wind trembled the cottonwood leaves when my eyes opened and my ears reached out for sound. One by one I heard the sounds--the rustling leaves, the low murmur of the creek water, the pleasant sound of horses cropping grass. Out in the creek a fish jumped.

Picking up my boots, I shook them out--centipedes or scorpions have a way of crawling into boots at night; and then I tugged them on, stood up, and stamped them into place. My hat was already on, of course. First thing any cowhand does of a morning is put on his hat. I slung my gunbelt and settled the holster into place, then tied the thong about my leg.

It was not yet full daylight. A single red coal showed in the fire. I stretched the stiffness out of me, wiped the night sweat from my Winchester, and went down to the creek to wash and to brush my teeth with a frayed willow stick.

Moving quietly, I went to the dun and rubbed his ears a mite, talking to him in a low, friendly tone. Then I saddled up, rolled my bed, and made ready to move out. The old man was sleeping, breathing evenly. That tough old man, all bone and rawhide, would pull though all right. As for that girl Penelope--

She was gone. Her bed was there, but she had slipped away. Her horse was gone too.

My mustang hadn't made any fuss because she came from within the camp, she was one of us, and she had a right to go. And for once I'd slept so sound I'd missed her going.

She had no business slipping off that way, but I had no business sleeping so sound that she could do it. The truth was, it made me mad to think anybody could slip out of camp without me knowing--but it worried me, too. My life depended on never sleeping that sound.

Kneeling down, I touched Mims on the shoulder. He opened his eyes right off, sharp and clear as if he had never slept.

"That girl kin of yours slipped off. No telling what's happened to her."

He sat up and reached for his hat. "She'll have gone to that misbegotten canyon.

We'd better get over there."

Whilst he got himself up, I slapped a saddle on his horse, and only minutes after he opened his eyes we had all gear packed and ready, and rode out of camp.

We walked our horses out of the creek and started up through the trees. The Rabbit Ears bulked large and dark against the sky. A quail called somewhere out in the brush. I knew we weere riding to a showdown, and for once I wished it was over.

We kept to low ground, seeking all the cover we could find, and riding out in the open only when we reached the canyon mouth. There seemed to be plenty of tracks, but we could make nothing of them. As before, the dun wanted no part of the box canyon, but at my urging he went ahead hesitantly. I could see that several horses had entered the canyon since we had come out of it.

The first thing we saw was Steve Hooker, and he was dead. He lay crumpled on the ground, one knee drawn up, his six-gun still in its holster, the thong in place.

"Look!" Mims said hoarsely. He was pointing at Hooker's tracks.

He had been walking along, taking slightly shorter strides than a man of his height might have been expected to take, which made me sure he had come in here after dark. Walking on uneven ground, unfamiliar to him, a man will usually take shorter steps.

He had fallen after a few staggering steps and had gone to his hands and his knees. He had gotten up and gone on, and then had fallen again. This time when he had risen he took not more than two or three steps before he collapsed.

"Something last night," Mims spoke in a low, awed tone. "Sackett, I'm riding the hell out of here."

"You wait just a minute," I said. "No use goin' off half-cocked."

Nothing seemed any different from yesterday except for the body of Hooker. I stepped down from the saddle and turned him over. There was no sign of a wound, no blood. His face looked puffy and had a kind of bluish color to it, but that might have been the effect of the early light, or it might have been my imagination.

The low clouds that had come with daybreak hung over the Rabbit Ears, and tails of mist drifted past them. The canyon was a gloomy place at any time with its dark, basaltic rock and the uncanny stillness. I heard no sound at all, and saw no birds, no small animals.

What was it the Mexican had told me that night on the Neuces?

The gold had been pushed into a hole under a boulder, and rocks had been caved in over it. A cross had been scratched on the rock. Forty years or more had passed since the day that happened--I didn't have a sure idea when it was that Nathan Hume had been caught in this trap and massacred.

"Look for a white cross, Mims," I said, keeping my voice low, not knowing who there might be listening. "The sort of thing a man would scratch on a rock if he was in a hurry."

We both saw it at the same moment and started our horses toward it.

The gray clouds seemed darker and lower still, and there was a hint of dampness in the air. I did not like the feel of it; I did not like anything about this strange, haunted place.

Dropping my Winchester into the boot, I swung down from the saddle, and tied the dun to some stiff brush nearby. I loosened the thong from my six-shooter, then walked into the hollow where the boulder stood. At the base of it, below the scratched cross, was a jumble of rumbled rock.

I looked all around. "Keep a sharp lookout, Mims," I said. "Don't watch me--watch for them."

"I wonder where that girl is?" Mims said in a worried tone. "She'd no call to go traipsing off like that."

"Let's get the gold. Then we'll hunt for her. I've got a hunch she can take care of herself."

The hiding place was logical enough. Men defending themselves from Indians would probably retreat to just such a place as this. It would have seemed a good place to make a stand, although Indians up on the rim could have covered them with rifle fire.

One by one I started moving the rocks, most of them slabs, or boxilders from head-size on up. I worked as fast as a body could, but I was trying to make as little noise as possible. It was not so much that I suspected anybody was close by, but there was something about that canyon that made a man want to walk softly and speak in a low tone.

My head, which had only stopped aching the day before, started in again now, and my breathing was bad. After a bit I left the hollow and scrambled up beside my horse, to lean against him. It was a surprising thing to know how much a wallop on the head could take out of a man.

Mims looked worried. "You feel all right? You sure don't look so good."

"Headache," I told him, "from that knock on the head from Andrew's bullet."

He looked at me thoughtfully. "Now, you never did tell me how come your head was like that. Andrew, hey? What become of him?"

"Come to think of it, it wasn't Andrew who shot me, it was Ralph. It was Andrew who came in to finish the job."

The air was better up there beside my horse--only a few feet difference, too.

After a few minutes I slid back down and went to work again, but I had moved only a few boulders when my head began to buzz and I felt very peculiar. I was going to have to quit.

"If there was a swamp around here," Mims said, "I'd figure you were getting a dose of marsh gas. It'll sometimes do that to a man. Cuts his wind."

Crawling up again, I staggered to my horse, took my canteen and rinsed my mouth with water, and then emptied some of the water over my head. After a moment or two I felt better and went down into the hollow once more. Almost at once I found the gold.

It had been dumped into a natural hollow in the rock underneath. Wasting no time, I began to get it out. Mims, despite his weakness, got down and started to help. Our excitement carried us on, with me passing the ingots up to Mims, who put them in the prepared packs on his two lead horses.

There was no question of silence any more. I was coughing and choking, and couldn't seem to stop. But I knew that at any moment the others might come.

When the last of the gold was loaded, I climbed up to where the horses stood, not more than six or eight feet above where the gold had been hidden. I fell down, pulled myself up, and then untying my horse, I got a leg over the saddle.

The dun wasted no time, but started for the steep trail up the mountain. It was that which saved us. I was coughing so hard I could scarcely do more than stay in the saddle. Harry Mims was right behind me with the gold. We had started up the trail when far back behind us we heard a clatter of hoofs and saw several riders come into the canyon. The first thing they saw was Hooker, and then the marks of our horses' hoofs where they had waited while we loaded the gold. They saw the hollow among the rocks, where I'd climbed down to get at the gold, and they saw the empty hole. While they were flocked around it our horses were still scrambling up the steep trail.

We were still within rifle range when they saw us. The gold had been there ... and now they were seeing it slip away from them.

Which one of them fired the shot, I will never know, nor how many of them there were. I know Tex Parker was there, or somebody riding his horse, and a man wearing a Mexican sombrero, who might have been Charlie Hurst. There was no sign of Bishop, nor of Penelope. All that I saw at that one quick glance, for I never got another.

One man whipped his rifle to his shoulder and fired, I saw the leap of flame from the muzzle, and then the whole world seemed to blow up in our faces. There was a tremendous explosion and an enormous flame shot up out of the canyon.

I hit the ground with a jarring thud, and I never knew whether I was blown from my saddle or thrown by my startled horse. Only I lit on my hands and knees, looking down into the canyon but well back from the edge.

Flame was streaking out in rushing streams from the point of the explosion, seeming to seek out every hollow, every low place among the rocks, and then it hit a three-foot-wide hole in the rocks. We'd seen that hole, but we hadn't gone near it. Now the mouth of the hole was a great jet of flame, and the air was filled with a terrible, continuing roar.

Pulling myself to my feet, I staggered away, filled with horror, and trying to get away from the sound of the roaring.

There was no sign of my horse, and none of Harry Mims or the pack horses, but for several minutes the only thing I could think of was that I wanted to get away.

I climbed up, and had gone almost half a mile before I saw Mims. He was still in the saddle, and he had the pack horses with him. He was trying to round up the lineback dun, but the mustang was frightened and would have none of him.

Slowly, I limped along the mountainside toward them. The dun shied several times, but finally he stood still and let me get into the saddle.

We rode straight away toward the west, with no thought in our minds but to get away from that dreadful sight and that terrible sound. I'd seen men die before, but never like that.

And where ... where was Penelope?

Chapter
12

Neither of us felt like talking. We rode straight ahead, but we had no destination in mind. It was simply that we wanted to get away from the box canyon, away from that awful scene.

It was Mims who finally spoke. "Must be some kind of gas ... or oil. You hear about that feller back in Pennsylvania who drilled him an oil well? Supposing something like that caught fire?"

I didn't know the answer, but it seemed as if it must have been something of the sort. Even the fact that we had the gold, three hundred pounds of it, was forgotten in the shock of what had happened in the canyon.

What brought me back to myself was the thought of Penelope. ... Where was she?

Loomis, I was sure, had not been among these in the canyon. There had been at least four or five men down there, and Fryer and Ferrara might have been among them, or perhaps some other friends of Parker and Hurst.

"We've got to get under cover," I said, "and we've got to stash this gold somewhere."

I was still coughing from whatever it was I'd gotten into my lungs dawn there--the same thing probably that had killed Steve Hooker. It might have been worse for him at nighttime, or maybe his heart was bad. We'd never know about that, and I wasn't giving it much thought. It was the living I was concerned with.