the Rider Of Ruby Hills (1986) (6 page)

After he had eaten he strolled back to the open ground where the house was taking shape. Part of the ancient rock floor he was keeping for a terrace from which the whole valley could be seen.

For a long time he stood there, looking off into the darkness and enjoying the cool night air. Then he turned and walked back into the deep shadows of the house. He was standing there, trying to see it as it would appear when complete when he heard a low, distant rumble.

Suddenly anxious, he listened intently. It seemed to come from within the very rock on which he stood. He waited, listening for the sound to grow. But after a moment it died away to a vague rumble and then disappeared altogether. Puzzled, he walked around for several minutes, waiting and listening, but there was no further sound.

It was a strange thing, and it disturbed him and left him uneasy as he walked back to his camp. Long after he had rolled in his blankets he lay there puzzling over it. He noted with an odd sense of disquiet that Rio stayed close to him, closer than usual. Of course, there could be another reason for that. There were cougars on the mesa and in the breaks behind it. He had seen their tracks. There were also elk and deer, and twice he had seen bear.

The country he had chosen was wildly beautiful, a strange lost corner of the land, somehow cut off from the valley by the rampart of Thousand Springs Mesa.

He awakened suddenly as the sky was growing gray and found himself sitting bolt upright. And then he heard it again, that low, mounting rumble, far down in the rock beneath him, as though the very spirit of the mountain were rolling over in his sleep. Only now the sound was not so plain, it was fainter, farther away.

Chapter
VI

Hidden Range

At daybreak Ross rolled out of his blankets, built a fire, and made coffee. While eating, he puzzled over the strange sound he had heard the night before. The only solution that seemed logical was that it came somehow from the springs. It was obvious that forces of some sort were at work deep in the rock of the mesa.

Obviously, these forces had made no recent change in the contour of the rock itself and so must be insufficient for the purpose. Haney continued with his building, working the morning through.

Unlike many cowhands, he had always enjoyed working with his hands. Now he had the pleasure of doing something for himself, with the feeling that he was building to last. By noon he had another wall of heavy stone constructed and the house was beginning to take shape.

He stopped briefly to eat and slipped on his shirt before sitting down. As he buttoned it up, he saw a faint movement far down the Soledad trail. Going to his saddlebags he dug out his glass and took his position in a lookout post among the rocks on the rim. First making sure the sunlight would not reflect from the glass and give him away, he dropped flat among the rocks and pointed the glass down trail.

The rider's face was still indistinct, but there was something vaguely familiar about him. And then as he drew nearer, Ross saw it was Sydney Berdue.

What was the Reynolds foreman doing here? Of course, as this was considered RR range, he might be checking the grass or the stock. He rode swiftly, however, and paid no attention to anything around him. When he reached the pool below, he swung down, seated himself on a rock, and lighted a cigarette.

Waiting for someone.

The sun felt warm and comfortable on his back after the hard work of the morning, and Ross settled himself comfortably into the warm sand behind the rocks. Thoughtfully, he turned his glass down the trail, but saw no one else. Then he began scanning the country and after a few minutes, picked up another rider. The man rode a sorrel horse with three white stockings and must have approached through the timber as he was not in sight until the last minute. He rode swiftly up to the pool and swung down. The two men shook hands. Puzzled, Ross shifted his glass to the brand.

The sorrel carried a VV on his shoulder! A Vernon rider at what was apparently a secret meeting with the foreman of the RR! The two seated themselves, and Haney waited, studying them and then the trail. And now he saw two more horsemen, and these were riding up the trail together. One was a big, slope-shouldered man whom he had seen in Soledad, and he rode a Box N horse. The last man rode a gray mustang with the Three Diamonds of Star Levitt on his hip.

Here was something of real interest. The four brands, two of them outwardly at war, the others on the verge of it, meeting in secret. Haney cursed his luck that he could not hear what was said, but so far as he could see, Berdue seemed to be laying down the law.

Then he saw something else.

At first it was a vague suggestion of disturbance in the grass and brush near the foot of the cliff, and then he saw a slight figure. His heart leaped as he saw Sherry Vernon, crawling nearer!

Sherry Vernon!

Whatever the meeting of the four men meant, it was at least plain that they intended no one to overhear what they had to say. If the girl was seen, she would be in great danger. Sliding back from his lookout point, he ran in a crouching run toward the house and got his Winchester.

By the time he was back, the brief meeting was breaking up. The girl lay still below him, and the men mounted one by one and rode away. The last to go was Sydney Berdue.

After several minutes had passed, Sherry got to her feet and walked out in the open. She went to the spring and drank and then stood looking around, obviously in profound thought.

Ross debated the possibility of getting his horse, but dismissed his idea as impossible. It would require a couple of hours at least to ride from here to the spring, although he was within a few hundred feet of it.

The girl walked away toward the woods finally, evidently for her horse. After some minutes she rode out of the trees on Flame and started down the trail toward the VV Ranch, distant against the far hills.

There had been a meeting of the four brands, but not of the leaders. Sherry Vernon had probably overheard what was said. He scowled thoughtfully. The girl had moved with care and skill, and her actions showed she was no mean woodsman when it came to playing the Indian. None of the four below had been a tenderfoot, yet she had approached them and listened without giving herself away. Sherry Vernon, he decided, would bear some watching herself.

Saddling Rio, Ross rode back through the aspens and down the lonely and dangerous trail to the rim of the badlands. He still had found no way to enter the lava beds, and if he was to take the next step in his program of conquest, he must find the cattle that he was sure still roamed among those remote and lost waterholes in the lava.

The afternoon was well along before he found himself skirting the rim of the canyon that opened near the lava beds, and when he reached them it was already late. There would be little time for a search, but despite that, he turned north, planning to cut back around the mesa and return to Soledad by way of the springs.

A slight movement among the trees ahead caused him to halt, and then he saw several elk drifting slowly down a narrow glade toward the lava. His eyes narrowed suddenly. There was no water of which he knew closer than the Thousand Springs pool, and these elk were drifting away from it rather than toward it. As they usually watered at sundown or before daybreak, they must be headed for water elsewhere, and that could be in the lava.

Dismounting, he ground hitched his horse and watched the elk as they drifted along until they had almost vanished in the trees; then he mounted and followed them down. When the trail he was following turned down and joined theirs, he continued along it. In a few minutes he grunted with satisfaction, for the hoof marks led him right up to the lava and into a narrow cleft between two great folds of the black rocks.

Riding carefully, for the trail was very narrow and the lava on both sides black and rough, he kept on, following the elk. It was easy to see how such a trail might exist for years and never be found, for at times he was forced to draw one leg up and lift the stirrup out of the way, as it was too narrow otherwise.

The trail wound around and around, covering much distance without penetrating very far, and then it dipped down suddenly through a jagged and dangerous-looking cleft. Ross hesitated, studying the loosely hanging crags above with misgiving. They looked too shaky and insecure for comfort. He well knew that if a man was ever trapped or hurt in this lava bed, he might as well give up. There would be no help for him.

Yet, with many an upward glance at the great, poorly balanced chunks of rock, many of them weighing many tons, he rode down into the cleft on the trail of the elk.

For over a half mile the cleft led him steadily downward, much of the going very steep, and he realized that he was soon going to be well below the level of the surrounding country. He rode on, however, despite the growing darkness, already great in the dark bottom of the cleft. Then the trail opened out, and he stopped with a gasp of amazement.

Before him lay a great circular valley, an enormous valley surrounded by gigantic black cliffs that in many places shelved out over the edge, but the bottom was almost level and was covered with rich green grass. There were a few scattered clumps of trees, and from somewhere he heard the sound of water.

Drifting on, he looked up and around him, overcome with astonishment. The depth of the valley, at least a thousand feet lower than the surrounding country, and the unending sameness of the view of the beds from above safely concealed its existence. It was without doubt an ancient volcanic crater, long extinct, and probably the source of the miles of lava beds that had been spewed forth in some bygone age.

The green fields below were dotted with cattle, most of them seemingly in excellent shape. Here and there among them he noticed small groups of horses. Without doubt, these were the cattle and horses, or their descendants, left Jim Burge.

Despite the lateness of the hour, he pushed on, marveling at the mighty walls around him, at the green grass and the white-trunked aspens. Twice he found springs of water, in both cases bubbling from the ground. Later, he found a spring that ran from a cleft in the rock and trickled down over the worn face of the cliff for some thirty feet to sink into the ground below.

None of the cattle seemed in the least frightened of him, although they moved back as he approached, and several lifted their noses at him curiously.

When he had ridden for well over two miles he drew up in a small glade near a spring, and stripping the saddle from his horse, he made camp. This would end his rations, and tomorrow he must start back. Obviously, this would be a good place to start such a cache of supplies as Scott had advised.

Night brought a strange coolness to the valley. He built a fire and fixed his coffee, talking to Rio meanwhile. After a moment he became conscious of movement. He looked up and saw that a dozen or more cows and a bull had moved up. They were staring at the fire and at him with their amazed bovine eyes. Apparently they had never seen a man before.

From all apearances, the crater was a large one, several miles across and carpeted with this rich grass. The cattle were all in good shape.

Twice during the night he heard the cry of a cougar and once the howl of a wolf.

With daylight he was in saddle once more, but by day the crater proved to be smaller than he had at first believed; there were probably some two thousand acres in the bottom. But it was all level ground with rich grass and a good bit of timber.

Twice, when skirting the edges of the crater, he found ice caves. These he knew were caused by the lava mass's cooling so unevenly that when the surface had become cold and hard the material below was still molten. As the fluid drained away, caves were formed under the solid crust. Because lava is a poor heat conductor, the cold air of the caves was protected. Ice formed there, and no matter how warm it might be on the surface, there was always snow in the caves. At places, pools of clear, cold water had formed. He could see that some of these had been used as watering places by the deer, elk, and wild horses.

When at last he started back toward the cleft through which he had gained entrance to the crater, he was sure there were several hundred, perhaps as many as six hundred head of wild cattle in the bottom of the crater.

He rode out, but not with any feeling of comfort. Some day he would scale those cliffs and have a look at the craggy boulders on the rim. If they ever fell into the cleft, whoever or whatever was in the bottom would never come out.

It was dusk of another evening before the palouse cantered down the one street of Soledad and drew up at the livery stable. A Mexican came to the door, glanced at him, and then accepted his horse. He looked doubtfully at the strange brand.

"You ride for Senor Pogue or Senor Reynolds?" he asked hesitantly.

"For myself," Ross said. "What's the matter? The town seems quiet."

"St, Senor. There has been a killing. Roily Burt of the RR was in a shooting with two hands from the Box N. One of them was killed and the other wounded, and Senor Burt has disappeared."

"Left the country?"

"Who knows? He was wounded, they say, and I am sorry for that. He was a good man, Senor Burt." The Mexican lighted a smoke, glancing at Haney. "Perhaps he was no longer wanted on the RR, either."

"Why do you say that?" Ross asked quickly. "Have you any reason for it?"