Novel 1966 - The Broken Gun (v5.0) (7 page)

About half of this was true, but he wasn’t buying it. “Won’t do you no good,” he said. “You’ll be dead.”

“Look at it this way,” I said, and I dove for him.

He fired.

Something plucked at my shoulder, but I had lunged forward, throwing myself against the slant of the cliff as I grabbed for him. He hadn’t time to depress his aim enough, and my fingers caught at his pants leg.

Ever since learning judo in the army I had worked at it, and always kept in shape. When my fingers gripped the leg of his blue jeans, I jerked hard.

He slid off the rock and cannonaded into me and we both rolled a dozen feet before bringing up hard on a ledge that was about a dozen feet across. He gripped his rifle and swung it at me, with a kind of half swing that caught me on the shoulder, and then I smashed into him. He was lean, tough, and mean.

Had he let go of the rifle he might have whipped me, but he tried to bring it up and I clipped him with a short left on the chin, then a right into the body, and stamped my foot down along his shin and drove my heel hard into his instep. He let out a grunt of pain and stepped back and I kicked him in the groin.

He fell and let go of the rifle. It flew a short arc through the air and went clattering among the rocks ten or twelve feet below.

Desperately, I wanted that rifle, but when I made a start for it, a bullet clipped rocks near me. Jimbo was down there, his rifle ready for another shot, and out in the open where I had to go he could scarcely miss.

My chest heaving from the exertion of the fight, I stepped back against the cliff. Reese gathered himself and came off the rocks. He was sick from that boot in the groin, but he was going to try. So I hit him again, and he went down to a sitting position. I took a swing at his face. He tried to duck, and my blow glanced off his cheekbone, but he went down. His pistol was gone from the holster and there was no time to look for it, so I ripped the hunting knife and scabbard from his belt and shoved them behind my waistband.

Whipping around, I scrambled back up the cliff. As I went over the edge of the mesa I looked back. Reese was on his hands and knees, looking for his gun.

There might be a horse trail here on the mesa, so I wasted no time. Taking a route that led southwest which should eventually take me to the trail along New River, I started to run. Running fifty steps and walking fifty, I had covered half a mile and was running out of wind when glancing back, I saw a rider. A strange rider on a mouse-colored horse.

He was some distance off, but coming toward me. I looked around the other way, and saw another. This one was Dad Styles, who had come up behind me. Sunlight gleamed on a rifle barrel, and I started to run again.

There was no shot.

They were closing in on me, gaining a little. As I ran I dipped into a hollow where there was a dry watercourse going off to the left, and I took it.

In spite of the bad footing I ran even harder. Once I fell. For a moment I lay there gasping. Then, slowly, I pulled myself up, and when I started on again it was at a walk. No horse was going to follow me from now on.

The dry watercourse ended abruptly in a fifty-foot drop, which was a waterfall after a rain. At one side I thought I saw a possible way down, though most of the rock was water-worn and smooth. Every step down would be a risk.

Somewhere I heard a hoof click on stone. It was unlikely they could get to me here, but I could not chance it.

Dropping to my knees, I lowered myself over the edge. I clung with my fingers and felt with an exploring toe for the tiny ledge I had seen from above. If I should fall now, it was unlikely anyone would ever find me in this remote, narrow canyon, scarcely more than a crack in the rocky edge of the mesa. Not even a coyote could get to me, and I would be left to the buzzards.

My toe found the ledge, tested it, and then balancing on the delicate edge, I moved one hand down a crack until the crack became narrow enough. Closing my fist to hold me there, I went down the face a little farther, finally swinging only by that closed fist. If I opened my hand, I would fall.

The fingers of my right hand found a grip, and then my toes found a hold, and bit by bit I eased on down the rocky face, and dropped when only a few feet above the bottom.

Here I was on a ledge of water-worn rock that was no more than twenty feet across and about that deep. Near the base of the cliff down which I had come there was a deep pool hollowed out by falling water, and the pool contained water now. There were a couple of feet of overhang near the pool, but no other shelter. There was no way they could come upon me except from the direction I had come, so now I went to the edge to look down. I drew back hurriedly.

The cliff fell away sheer for at least a hundred feet, and on that face there were no handholds. Unless I could go back up again the way I had come down, there was no escape for me. I had trapped myself far better than they could have managed it, and it was probable that they knew it.

There was water, of course, but there was no food; and as for the way I had come, in that direction were the men who hunted me.

I made haste to get under the overhang, where I turned a rock on its side to get a comfortable flat surface, and sat down. From above I would be invisible.

There was no need to worry about the sun, for it would shine into this narrow canyon for not over an hour a day. What troubled me, besides my own plight, was that there was nothing I could do to help Belle. Though she had gotten away into the hills, she might need help.

Something moved on the rock above me, and I held myself back, careful to make no sound. Dust and a few pebbles fell over the lip.

“Sheridan?” It was Colin’s voice. “You might as well answer. We know you’re down there.”

They suspected, with evidence enough, but they did not
know
, and what they did not know could hurt them. I held my silence, and waited.

Then suddenly, up there above me, I heard a hacking and pounding on the rock. Were they cutting footholds to come down? For a moment I was on the verge of looking out. The advantage was with me if anyone tried to come down that face, for while climbing down he would be helpless unless protected from above. Even in that case I might rush him as he reached the bottom and knock him over the edge. But even as I started to get up, I realized what they were doing.

They were chipping away at the footholds I had used in getting down. And they had only to knock off one or two and I was a prisoner right here, and could be left to starve to death. There would be no marks of violence on my body, and this was vastly preferable to a bullet wound that must be explained away.

“We aren’t going to worry about you anymore,” Colin said after a while. “And if there are any tapes of yours that are a danger to us, we will have them.”

My secretary, a trusting girl, would be alone. She would protect my property if she could—but against Floyd Reese or Jimbo Wells?

I could not wait. Somehow, some way, I had to get away from here.

Then above me I heard the grate of boots on rock, retreating footsteps…and then I was alone.

Chapter 6

T
HE SUN WAS high, but it was cool within the walls of my prison. Above me was a narrow ribbon of blue, and straight before me the canyon, so narrow that in places one might almost have reached from side to side. Where I sat it was wider, but as it narrowed it took a slight bend, so that the curve of the wall closed off any glimpse of the outer world. That world, I knew, lay bright in the midday sun only a few hundred yards away.

For a long time I sat perfectly still. When one has lived in the wilderness one acquires a quality of stillness, and one learns to listen.

The sounds of the lonely places are subdued sounds. Once one becomes accustomed to those that prevail, such as the wind in the trees or in the grass, he soon begins to recognize those other, smaller sounds. He learns to know the sound of a bird rustling after food among the leaves, or the sounds made by small animals. He learns to distinguish between the sound of pebbles falling by some natural cause, and those disturbed by a step.

There is never complete silence. The wilderness is quiet, but there is always a faint, low rustle or murmur. Listening is an art to be cultivated; and the symphonies of the desert or the forest demand a finer ear than do the symphonies of the composers.

I knew that all that I possessed, all that I had tried to become, my very life, was at stake. This was no story I was writing, but reality itself, stark and terrible. Within the next few hours I must fight a battle to survive, a battle that would determine not only whether I would live or die, but also whether Belle would. And if we did die, an evil thing would remain in the world, destructive and unchecked.

Man has within himself the most powerful weapon ever developed—the human brain. If I were to survive now, it would be because what strength I possessed would be directed by the mind.

So I sat quietly, listening. The taint and turmoil of cities were gone from me. Minute by minute I had been reverting to the life of the mountains and the wilderness—back, if you will, to savagery. I was here in a savage land, and to survive I must be savage, even more so than they who hunted me.

Again my thoughts returned to the Alvarez brothers. They were part Apache, and undoubtedly their forebears were somewhere about when the Toomeys drove their cattle into the valley of the Verde. Little could have happened at that time without their knowledge.

I moved to the lip of the precipice and looked down. Even with rope and pitons descent would be next to impossible. And the way I had come was now even more impossible.

Upon the ledge where I stood there was a little sand trapped by the unevenness of the rock, and I examined this. There are few places in the mountains that are not visited by wild animals, and often their tracks can lead a man to water, to shelter, or even, as in such a case as mine, to escape.

But I was not to be so lucky. Nowhere on the ledge could I find any tracks, or any droppings that would indicate an animal had been here.

There was a little driftwood, which I gathered. It was enough, if used with care, for a small fire for one or perhaps two nights, and I knew these mountains well enough to know that when darkness came it would be cold. The place where I was caught was about a mile above sea level, and when the sun goes down it is not warm in that altitude, even in the middle of summer. I would build my fire near the rock, which would act as a reflector.

All this time there had been no shots. I had kept my thoughts away from Belle Dawson, who had gotten off at a dead run. She knew this country, and I told myself she must have found a hiding place. She had grown up here, and children often know the odd corners and hiding places better than adults do. There would be places where she had gone to be alone, places she had found when following animals, places she had come upon quite by chance. One of these places might be a hiding place for her. Yet even as I told myself this, I worried.

And then I thought of something else. Floyd Reese would not rest, simply knowing I was trapped. I had hurt him, hurt him physically and in his ego, and he would not be one to forgive. He had taken a beating from me, and he would want to inflict pain on me, to see me suffer, to gloat. He was that sort of man.

Floyd Reese would be coming here.

Shadows gathered in the canyon below, while gold rimmed the ridges above me. Carefully I put my fire together, and was about to sit down beside it when I had a new thought. It was impossible to go down, impossible to go back up, but what about going
out?

I got up from the ground quickly. In three steps I was at the rim of the cliff and looking at the smooth walls that stretched away before me.

The idea of working along those cliffs that walled the canyon on both sides had not occurred to me before. Now as I looked I could see nothing to give me hope—no crevice, no place where I could grasp a hold with hands or feet. Yet I would not accept the idea that I was finished. There had to be a way; if there was not, I would make one.

If I could find a way to work along the face of the rock, out from the ledge on which I stood, I might in time find some way either up or down.

Nobody needed to tell me how foolish it was to try such a thing alone. From time to time I had done a bit of rock climbing and knew the way of it, but here I had neither helpers nor equipment. I stood there until darkness came to the cleft in the rock, trying with every bit of my mind and memory to work out a way to do it.

It didn’t matter that it was impossible—there was no other way. I might have tried to wait until a search party came, but I knew my hunch about Reese was right. He would leave me here, all right, but with a bullet in me—not one to kill, just one to cripple or injure.

There would be a search party. I knew that, which Colin could not know. During the past ten years I had been too much in the public eye, I had too many friends. I knew they would come looking, and that Colin would have no choice but to let them come. They would scour the country with helicopters in the air and search parties on the ground, and some of them, some of my old climbing friends, would be experts. They would know where to look.

And a lot of good it would do me, for if I stayed here I would be dead.

Under the overhang I struck a match, shielded it from the rising wind, and had a fire going. There was fuel enough, and more than enough, now that I proposed to make the attempt to escape. And after a while, with a gnarled old cedar root to hold the fire, I slept.

It was a cold, shivering dawn that awakened me—not quite dawn, but a paling sky. I drank water and teased the fire into a blaze. There was still a bright star hanging low in the sky. It would be gone in a moment, behind the cliffs along which I meant to climb.

There was no hopeful thought in me as I waited, for I knew that no man but a fool, or one in such a desperate plight as my own, would make such an attempt. There seemed not even a chance to begin it. A sheer face is never easy, even with ropes and pitons and help, and the way I must try was courting suicide. Suicide it would be, for I could not say I was ignorant of what I was attempting. And there was the uncomfortable realization that Reese might choose just that moment to return. With me out on the face of the cliff, and Reese with a rifle in his hands, he would have things just the way he wanted them, and it would be a pleasurable time for him.