the Rider Of Ruby Hills (1986) (28 page)

There were lights from the saloon. They would all be down there now, playing cards, drinking. It was a pity he had none of the boys here. They could go in and wipe them out in one final, desperate battle. Lightning flashed and revealed the stark wet outlines of the buildings, the green of the grass, worn down now, between him and the Crockett cabin.

He stepped out from the tree and started across the open, hearing the far-off thunder muttering among the peaks of the mountains beyond the valley, muttering among the cliffs and boulders like a disgruntled man in his sleep.

He did not fasten his slicker, but held it together with his left hand and kept his right in his pocket, slopping across the wet ground with the rain battering the brim of his hat, beating with angry, skeleton fingers against the slicker.

Under the trees, he hesitated, watching the house. There was no horse around. Suddenly, a column of sparks went up from the chimney, as if someone had thrown some sticks on the fire. He started to move, and another cluster of sparks went up. He hesitated. A signal? But who would know he was near?

A third time. Three times was a warning, three smokes, three rifle shots-what could it be? Who could know he was here? It was nonsense, of course, but the sparks made him feel uneasy.

Then again, three times, once very weakly, sparks mounted from the chimney. Somebody was playing with the fire, tapping with a stick on the burning wood or stirring the fire.

No matter. He was going in. He felt cold, and the warmth of the room would be good again before he began his long ride to the line cabin. A long ride, because it would be foolhardy to go down the canyon toward the valley.

He stepped out from under the tree and walked up to the house. His boots made sucking noises in the mud before the door. Lightning flashed and water glistened on the smooth boards of the door. He should knock, but he stepped up and, keeping to the left of the door, reached across with his left hand and drew the door wide.

A gun blasted, and he saw the sudden dart of fire from the darkness by the fireplace. The bullet smashed into the door, and then he went in with a rush.

He caught a glimpse of Sharon, her eyes wide with fright, scrambling away from the fire. Zapata lunged from the shadows, his face set in a snarl of bared teeth and gleaming eyes. His gun blasted again, and a bullet snatched at Rock's jacket. Bannon thumbed his gun.

Zapata staggered, as though struck by a blow in the stomach. As Rock started for him, he leaped for an inner door. Rock lunged after him, firing again. There was a crash as Zapata went through a sack-covered window.

Wheeling, Rock leaped for the door and went out. Zapata's gun barked, and something laid a white hot iron across his leg. Rock brought his gun up, turned his right side to the crouching man, and fired again, fired as though on a target range.

Zapata coughed, and his pistol dropped into the mud. He clawed with agonized fingers at his other gun, and Rock Bannon could see the front of his shirt darkening with the pounding rain and with blood. Then Bannon fired again, and Zapata went down, clawing at the mud.

A door slammed, and there was a yell. Rock wheeled and saw Sharon in the doorway. "I can't stop," he said. "Talk to Pagones." And even as he spoke, he was running across the worn grass toward the trees.

A rifle barked and then another; then there were intermittent shots. Crying with fear for him, Sharon Crockett stood in the door, staring into the darkness. Lightning flared, and through the slanting rain she caught a brief glimpse of him. A rifle flared, and then he was gone into the trees. A moment later, they heard the pounding of hoofs.

"They'll never catch him on that horse," Tom Crockett said. "He got away!"

Sharon turned, and her father was smiling. "Yes, Daughter, I'm glad he got away. I'm glad he killed that murderer."

"Oh, Father!" Then his arms were around her, and as running feet slapped in the mud outside, he pushed the door shut. "He'll get away," she cried. "He must get away."

The door slammed open, and Mort Harper shoved into the room. Behind him were four men, their faces hard, their guns ready.

"What was he doing here?" Harper demanded. "That man's a killer! He's our enemy. Why should he come here?"

"I don't know why he came!" Crockett said coldly. "He never had a chance to say. Zapata had been waiting for him all evening. He seemed to believe he would be here. When Bannon came in, he fired and missed. He won't miss again."

Harper stared at him, his face livid and angry under the glistening dampness of the rain.

"You seem glad!" he cried.

"I am!" Crockett said. "Yes, I'm glad! That Zapata was a killer, and he deserved killing."

"And I'm glad," Sharon said, her chin lifted.

"I'm glad Bannon killed him, glad that Bannon got away."

There was an angry mutter from the men behind Harper, but Mort put up a restraining hand. "So? This sounds like rebellion. Well, we'll have none of that in this camp. I've been patient with you people, and especially patient with you, Sharon, but my patience is wearing thin."

"Who cares about your patience?" Anger rose in Sharon's eyes. "Your soft talk and lies won't convince us any longer. We want our oxen back tomorrow! We've had enough of this. We'll get out of here tomorrow if we have to walk."

"No, you won't," Harper said. "Come on boys. We'll go now."

"Let's teach 'em a lesson, Boss," one man said angrily. "To blazes with this palaver!"

"Not now," Harper said. His nostrils were flared with anger, and his face was hard. "Later!"

When the door closed after them, Tom Crockett's face was white. "Well, Sharon," he said quietly, "for better or worse, there it is. Tomorrow we may have to fight. Your mother helped me fight Indians once, long ago. Could you?"

Sharon turned, and suddenly she smiled. "Do you need to ask?"

"No." He smiled back, and she could see a new light in his eyes, almost as if the killing of Zapata and the statement to Harper had made him younger, stronger. "No, I don't," he repeated. "You'd better get some sleep. I'm going to clean my rifle."

Rock Bannon's steel dust took the trail up the canyon at a rapid clip. They might follow him, Bannon knew, and he needed all the lead he could get. Some of those men had been in these hills for quite some time, yet if he could get away into the wilderness around Day's River, they would never find him.

Shooting it out with six or seven desperate killers was no part of his plan, and he knew the teamsters who had come to Poplar were just that, a band of renegades recruited from the scourings of the wagon trains passing through the fort. After the immediate dash, however, he slowed down to give the steel dust better footing.

He turned northeast when he came out of Poplar Canyon and rode down into a deep draw that ended in a meadow. The bottom of the draw was roaring with water that had run off the mountains, but as yet it was no more than a foot deep. Far below, he could hear the thunder of Day's River, roaring at full flood now.

The canyon through the narrows would be a ghastly sight with its weight of thundering white water. Always a turmoil, now it would be doubled and tripled by the cloudburst. Rain slanted down, pouring unceasingly on the hills.

The trail by which he had come would be useless on his return. By now the water would be too deep in the narrow canyon up which he had ridden. He must find a new trail, a way to cut back from the primitive wilderness into which he was riding and down through the valley where Freeman had been killed, and then through the mountains.

Briefly, he halted the big stallion in the lee of a jutting shoulder of granite where wind and rain were cast off into the flat of the valley. Knowing his horse would need every ounce of its strength, he swung down. His shoulder against the rock, he studied the situation in his mind's eye.

His first desperate flight had taken him northeast into the wild country. Had he headed south he must soon have come out on the plains beyond the entrance to Bishop's Valley, where he would have nothing but the speed of his own horse to assist his escape.

He was needed here, now. Any flight was temporary, so in turning north he had kept himself within striking distance of the enemy. His problem now was to find a way through the rugged mountain barrier, towering thousands of feet above him, into Bishop's Valley, and across the valley to home.

No man knew these mountains well, but Hardy Bishop best of all. Next to him, Rock himself knew them best, but with all his knowledge they presented a weird tangle of ridges, canyons, jagged crests, peaks, and chasms. At the upper end of the valley, the stream roared down a gorge often three thousand feet deep and with only the thinnest of trails along the cliffs of the narrows.

The isolated valley might have been walled for the express purpose of keeping him out, for as he ran over the possible routes into the valley, one by one he had to reject them. Bailey's Creek would be a thundering torrent now, water roaring eight to ten feet deep in the narrow canyon. Trapper's Gulch would be no better, and the only other two routes would be equally impassable.

Rock stared at the dark bulk of the mountain through the slanting rain. He stared at it, but could see nothing but Stygian darkness. Every branch, every rivulet, and every stream would be a roaring cataract now. If there was a route into the valley now it must be over the ridge. The very thought made him swallow and turn chill. He knew what those ridges and peaks were in quiet hours. They could be traveled, and he had traveled them, but only when he could see and feel his way along. Now, with lightning crashing, with thunder butting against the cliffs, and with clouds gathered around them, it would be an awful inferno of lightning and granite, a place for no living thing.

Yet, the thought in the back of his mind kept returning. Hardy Bishop was alone, or practically so. He had sent Red to the line cabin nearest Harper with most of the fighting men. Others were in a cabin near the narrows, miles away. Only two men would be at home aside from the cook.

Rock Bannon did not make the mistake of underestimating his enemy. Mort Harper had planned this foray with care. He would not have begun without a careful study of the forces to be arrayed against him. He would know how many men were at the line cabin, and the result of his figuring must certainly be to convince him that the ranch house was unprotected, and Hardy Bishop, the heart, soul, and brain of the Bishop empire, was there.

There was a route over the mountain. Once, by day, Bannon had traveled it. He must skirt a canyon hundreds of feet deep along a path that clung like an eyebrow to the sheer face of the cliff. He must ride across the long swelling slope of the mountain among the trees and boulders, and then between two peaks, and angle through the forest down the opposite side.

At best, it was a twelve-mile ride, and might stretch that a bit. Even by day it was dangerous and slow going. And he needed only his own eyes to convince him that lightning was making a playground of the hillside now.

"All right, boy," he said gently to the horse. "You aren't going to like this, but neither am I." He swung into the saddle and moved out into the wind.

As he breasted the shoulder of granite, the wind struck him like a solid wall, and the rain lashed at his garments, plucking at the fastenings of his oilskin. He turned the horse down the canyon that would take them to the cliff face across which he must ride. He preferred not to think of that.

As he drew near, the canyon walls began to close in upon him, until it became a giant chute down which the water thundered in a mighty Niagara of sound. Great masses of water churned in an enormous maelstrom below and the steel dust snorted and shied from its roaring.

Rock spoke to the horse and touched it on the shoulder. Reassured, it felt gingerly for the path and moved out. A spout of water gushing from some crack in the rock struck him like a blow, drenching him anew and making the stallion jump. He steadied the horse with a tight rein and then relaxed and let the horse have his head. He could see absolutely nothing ahead of him.

Thunder and the rolling of gigantic boulders reverberated down the rock-walled canyon, and occasional lightning lit flares showed him glimpses of a weird nightmare of glistening rock and tumbling white water that caught the flame and hurled it in millions of tiny shafts on down the canyon.

The steel dust walked steadily, facing the wind but with bowed head, hesitating only occasionally to feel its way around some great rock or sudden, unexpected heap of debris.

The hoarse wind howled down the channel of rock, turning its shouting to a weird scream on corners where the pines feathered down into the passage of the wind. Battered by rain and wind, Rock Bannon bent his head and rode on, beaten, soaked, bedraggled, with no eyes to see, only trusting to the surefooted mountain horse and its blind instinct.

Once when the lightning lifted the whole scene into stark relief, he glimpsed a sight that would not leave him if he lived to be a hundred. For one brief, all-encompassing moment he saw the canyon as he never wanted to see it again.

The stallion had reached a bend and for a moment, hesitated to relax its straining, careful muscles. In that instant, the lightning flared.

Before them, the canyon dropped steeply away, like the walls of a gigantic stairway, black, glistening walls slanted by the steel of driving rain, cut by volleys of hail, and accompanied by the roar of the cataract below.