The room was still as the fall of snow outside the window. The fire in the box stove crackled slightly. Lydon shifted on the stool where he sat and the wood creaked. The bunks were rumpled, and several old, shabby-looking boots lay around on the floor. In the corner by the potbellied stove there was a stack of stovewood. A few slivers were scattered around and some spilled ashes where the stove had been hastily cleaned out by someone who had not brushed up afterward.
On the wall there was an old Sharps buffalo gun, and both men wore pistols. Hank Lydon stared up at Mesquite, his big head deep sunken between his massive shoulders, the muscles of his thighs stretching tight the heavy material of his jeans. Cuyas, stocky and alert, stood at the head of the bunk, his body curiously poised.
It was that poised alertness which warned Mesquite. He did not shift his eyes but kept the two of them in his view. “What’s Soper aroun’ here?” he asked casually. “Is he boss or is Sparr?”
“Sparr.” Lydon dropped the word flatly. “Soper figgers he’s purty big hisself, but he ain’t so big as Sparr. Although,” he added, with penetration beyond his usual scope, “if I was Sparr I’d keep an eye on him. That Soper,” he added, “ain’t a healthy hombre. Sparr, he’d shoot a man down as soon as look at him. Soper, he’d pull the legs off a fly in private—or mebbe a man, for that matter. He’s cold-blooded.”
“Well, we’ll drift.” Mesquite let his eyes shift from one to the other of the two. “Remember what we told you. Get out! Don’t try nothin’ fancy, because it will only get you hurt. Get out while the gettin’ is good, because the cleanup has started. This deal is finished. You got an hour,” he said, “so get movin’!”
There was, he remembered, a shaving mirror alongside the door. It was right where he could see Cuyas reflected in it as he turned. So with a jerk of his head to Johnny, Mesquite spun on his heel. Instantly Cuyas grabbed the gun under the pillow.
Mesquite had been facing the door when he saw the flash of movement in the mirror. He drew as he turned his body at the hips and fired with the gun flat against his waist. Cuyas took the bullet in the chest with his gun almost level and, sagging at the knees, slowly spilled over on his face. Hank Lydon, his face gray, was frozen in position with his hand on his gun butt, covered by two guns that had sprung seemingly from nowhere.
“Want to finish that draw?” Johnny asked pleasantly. “If you do, I’ll holster my gun an’ we can start from scratch.”
“I had trouble enough.” Lydon touched his lips with his tongue. “I’m gettin’ out of here. All I want’s a chance.”
“You’ve got it.”
Lydon got to his feet, glancing at Cuyas. Hollow-eyed, he looked back at Mesquite. “That’s shootin’, mister. That boy, he always did set store by sneak guns. Proctor used t’ tell him one would get him killed someday, an’ it shore did.”
He got his bedroll and started to the door. Outside in the snow he turned to them again. “Which way shall I ride?”
“Suit yoreself,” Johnny said; “anyway you like, only if you get in our way again, by purpose or accident, fill your hand an’ come shootin’ because we don’t aim to bother with you again. If you like,” he added, “ride to Horse Springs. Tell that outfit that anybody there who cottons to Avery Sparr had better head for a warmer climate before we start ’em.”
As Lydon rode off, the two started for the house once more, and then they stopped. The snow was crushed by the hoof-marks of a half-dozen or more horses, horses that had walked by the bunkhouse in the snow and off up the trail. Unknown to them, these were the riders bound for Alma to head off Hopalong. Soper had started them as soon as they appeared. And he himself had mounted and headed north. It was time, he decided, to get his own men on the job. The hideout in Turkey Springs Canyon had served its purpose.
“Shall we foller them?” Johnny asked doubtfully.
“Let’s find Soper. I want to talk to him some more.”
They started for the house, walking warily, their eyes alert and their hands ready.
* * *
Snow was falling steadily in the mountains, and already Hoppy was having a hard time staying on the trail. Only in places did the growth of brush to left and right show its borders, and often that was misleading when some avenue of trees gave off to right or left that could easily have been a trail. They had crossed Willow Creek and were heading through the trees toward a trail that Hopalong believed he could see ahead of them, a switchback trail that climbed through the mountains. The flakes fell steadily, blotting out all the usual landmarks and shrouding everything in a thick mantle of white. In actual distance they had not come far, but the trail was rough, and of necessity they must come slowly, for at times it was possible to lose the trail entirely, and obstructions were hidden beneath the snow.
The gray of Dick Jordan’s beard made him seem even older. He moved his horse alongside Hoppy’s. “Sparr won’t foller in this,” he said. “He’ll turn back.”
“What I figger.” Hopalong studied the old man’s face keenly. The man looked beat, there was no question about that. He was dead tired and in bad shape, yet to stop now meant certain death, not for one alone, but for all. “I also figger he won’t let it lay like that. He’ll try to head us off.”
Jordan frowned. “You think so? O’ course he could get a bunch of riders around to Alma if he had the horses—an’ he’s got ’em.”
“Could he get fresh mounts along the way?”
“He sure could. Half-dozen hangouts for horse thieves an’ rustlers along that route. He could get all the horses he would need. Yeah,” Dick Jordan agreed, “I think you’ve figgered it right. I think he’ll be waitin’ for us, or somebody will, when we come out of the mountains. If we get out.”
“We’ll get out.” Hopalong considered. “How about Alma? I suppose he has friends there?”
“Uh-huh. That Eagle Saloon is a tough place. Hangout for outlaws an’ every kind of rapscallion in this neck o’ the woods. I figger we should have burnt that place over their heads long ago.”
This was high country, for the trail they rode was now nearing nine thousand feet and the horses were laboring heavily, slowed by the ankle-deep snow. Hopalong kept his buckskin moving, and now as never before he appreciated the true worth of the horse. Breaking trail was a tough job, but there was a heart in the buckskin, and it walked steadily on, twitching its ears to Hopalong’s occasional comments.
Now the trees were coming down closer to the trail, and at times it was difficult to be sure where it lay. All three were cold. Hoppy could judge the cold of the others by his own, for he was tough and used to exposure to the elements in all sorts of weather. Nor did the snow give any indication of stopping. This was it, he knew. From now on all trails would be blocked, and if they stopped now they would be snowed in for sure. Yet, short of a brief rest, he had no intention of stopping, for he knew better than the others the gravity of their situation.
His mind, however, was already leaping ahead, trying to foresee what would happen if and when they reached Alma or its vicinity. When he glanced around, he saw behind him two snow-covered figures, and he drew up. For some time he had been hearing running water, and he knew there must be a still unfrozen stream close by. Glancing around, he found a nest of rocks not far away that appeared to be the source of the sound, and turning off the trail he led the way down to them.
Dismounting, he helped Pamela break branches from the trees to make a place for her father to sit, then helped him from the saddle. Dick looked at Hopalong grimly. “Hard to be helpless,” he said; “been a fighter all my life, an’ now when the chips are down I got to be carried like a baby!”
“Aw, shut up!” Hopalong said roughly, grinning at him. “You like it, an’ you know you do! What would you do if you ran into Sparr right now? He’s too much for any Circle J man! Now a Bar 20 puncher, or ’most any hand from the Double Y, that would be different!”
“Different? Blazes, Hoppy!” Dick Jordan reacted as Hopalong had believed he would,
and was all fire and vinegar in an instant. “You know durned well that outfit o’ yours never could stack up with any o’ mine! Remember that time we tangled with the Comanches on the Staked Plains? Who pulled Bar 20 out of the soup then?”
“One time!” Hopalong protested. “Just one time! An’ after three Bar 20 men had stood off seventy Comanches for two days! You come ridin’ up with your whole outfit, an’ then you come durned near gettin’ yoreselves killed!”
“That scalp o’ yours would have been hanging in some Comanche lodge right now if we hadn’t come along!” Jordan said. Then he simmered down. “O’ course you did make a fight of it. I’ll admit that!”
As he talked, Hopalong was working swiftly. Breaking lower branches from the trees, he got a fire started and then scouted some good-sized chunks from under a fallen log and some huge slabs of bark. When the fire was blazing brightly, Pamela got some water from the creek and started coffee. There was little left, but enough for twice more. Once more, after this.
Meanwhile, Hopalong got their blankets from their bedrolls and with some rawhide piggin’ strings made three capes that could be thrown over their shoulders and drawn around their bodies, being laced through a half-dozen holes with the piggin’ strings, and tied. Working around through the thick dead grass on the banks of the stream, he found some on the bottom that was dry and untouched by snow. This he brought to the fire, and slipping off Dick Jordan’s boots, he put some of the dry grass inside. “Help keep ’em warm,” he said. “That’s an Injun trick.”
“Sometimes I wonder where you picked up all you know, Hoppy,” Jordan said. “You always come up with some kind o’ trick.”
“Keep my eyes open,” Hopalong said, straight-faced. “We on the Bar 20 learned how to do that mighty young. That outfit o’ yours never could see much further’n their noses. Not unless it was whisky,” he added. “They could smell a barrel o’ Injun whisky right far!”
Hopalong glanced at Pamela. Her lips were red and her cheeks flushed by bending over the fire. He grinned at her. “You get prettier all the time,” he said. “I think this cold weather is good for you.”
She smiled. “I’ve been cooped up too long, Hoppy. I needed to get out. Although not like this.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He shrugged off her obvious doubts. “We’ll get through.”
“What would we have done without you?” she wondered. “I have been thinking of that as we rode along. It seems so strange, somehow, because I knew you when I was just a child, I thought you’d be older than you are. Older-looking, anyway.”
“In this country a man doesn’t change much. He goes on for years; then all of a sudden he cashes in his checks and that’s it.”
He nodded toward the peaks. “You know, in spite of the fact that I wish we were somewhere else, I never saw anything much more beautiful than old Whitewater Baldy there.”
She followed his eyes toward the huge mass of granite that shouldered brutally against the dull gray sky, its mantle of white blazing like a lighted beacon. “It is beautiful,” she agreed. “I wish we were seeing it together, Hoppy, and there was no trouble. That Dad wasn’t crippled and we weren’t having to go so fast. We could enjoy it then.”
They started again within a matter of minutes, but Hopalong had uncovered more of the grass for the horses and they ate a little, and all three drank from the stream. Once mounted, each put on the blanket cape that Hopalong had made for them, drew the laces tight, and tied them. Moving on, they were warmer, but even in that short stop the snow had grown appreciably deeper.
All talking ceased. The horses were laboring heavily now, for they were on the switchback trail. Here the first fall of snow in the higher peaks had frozen over and there was ice beneath the snow. Several times the horses slipped, and Hopalong stopped more often. They continued to climb, and as though inspired by the buckskin, the other horses plodded on gamely enough. Several times Hopalong stopped and walked for a short distance, as did Pamela, resting the horses. Before they could mount again they had to wipe the snow from the saddle. Yet now the snow was dry and not damp, as it had been on the lower levels of the mountains.
A long wind sighed through the trees, and the snow picked up in a little flurry whose particles stung like grains of sand. The sky seemed lower now, and the peaks seemed huge. The wind stirred again, and this time it was followed by another gust. Hopalong dug his chin behind the edge of the blanket and swore bitterly. The trail was bad enough, but if the wind started to blow, up here where the trees were sparse, they might wander away from it and tumble off a precipice without ever realizing they had gone astray.
The air thickened, and he could not tell how much was cloud and how much was snow. But the wind had an edge like a knife, and his fingers felt like stubs over which he had no control. Now they began to feel the cold in earnest. Before it had been nothing compared with this, for with the knifing wind there was the penetrating chill of the higher altitudes. Head bowed into the wind, the buckskin plodded wearily on. Several times the horse faltered, and finally Hopalong slid from the saddle into almost knee-deep snow. Keeping his arm through the bridle, he led the way, slogging wearily ahead, and under his feet the trail still climbed.
Actually, they were probably only a few hundred feet higher. Yet the distance seemed enormous. Step by step he fought on, knowing that to stop could mean death. Once he slipped and went to his knees in the snow, and the buckskin stopped patiently while he got up. In a fog of cold and mental haze he realized they could not go on. If Dick Jordan was not almost frozen in his saddle it would be a wonder. And this last time Pamela had not dismounted.
But he did not stop. Bending his head forward, his eyes on the white snow beneath, he plodded on, his strides catching a strange rhythm of their own so that he became lost in a dull monotony of successive footsteps. The wind howled and he stumbled again, falling on his face in the snow. This time he got up more slowly, and his hands felt like clubs when he tried to brush the snow from them. He turned there, white with snow, and looked back. Through the falling and blown snow he could scarcely see Pamela or her horse, only the darker blob in the dense white around them. Old Dick Jordan still sat his saddle, a grim mound of snow.
Turning, Hopalong started on now. Never before had he called on all his strength so much as now; never before had each step seemed an effort, each stride accomplished a victory. Whether his horse could have carried him he did not know, but he forgot to remount, slogging endlessly on and on. Then he fell again and struggled to get up. Something was wrong when he tried to rise, and his numbed brain fumbled with the problem. Then it came to him. His feet were higher than his head when he fell flat, and that meant they had started downhill!
He scrambled to his feet, feeling a surge of victory within him, and started off swiftly, fighting his way down. Now it was an advantage to be moving: Every step took them farther downhill; every step took them closer to food, closer to shelter, and closer—his face was grim under the mask of cold—to the guns of Avery Sparr.
Suddenly the clouds parted and he saw a star. With a shock he realized it must already be well into the early part of the night, and darkness had come on so gradually through the gray of the clouds that he had not realized. He walked on, only now his eyes were alert for some sort of shelter, not only for them, but for the horses as well.
Finally he gave up. Sounding the snow with a branch broken from a tree, he led the way through the snow toward the root mass of an uptorn giant of the forest. The root mass made a wall ten feet high and almost fifteen feet broad, and at the base of this he pushed away some of the snow. He had no ax, but the fallen tree itself offered what he needed. It was long dead, and in the passage of time several of the limbs had been shattered. Gathering several pieces of a large limb, he brought them back. Ranging them side by side, he used them as a base for his fire. Then he built it with bark and leaves from the under side of the huge tree. Not until the fire was blazing did he go back to Pamela.
Care
fully he lifted her from the saddle, feeling her heart beat and her breath warm against his cheek. She struggled to speak, and her eyes opened, and he carried her to the fire. Then he hurriedly stripped evergreen boughs and made a bed for the old man, and returned for him. As Hopalong carried him to the bed, the old man spoke. “Guess the Double Y has it this time, boy. I’m all in.”
“So’m I,” Hopalong admitted, “but we’re over the hump. We’re goin’ downhill.”
Pamela sat up stiffly, but her eyes caught fire at the realization, and she struggled to rise and help him. But Hopalong knew his job and he worked swiftly. The fire was built larger than necessary, but partly because he knew what its psychological effect would be on the two people. Then he went a little way into the woods and cut two poles, which he brought back and thrust into the snow.
He placed a third across the top in the crotches at the ends, and with other limbs hurriedly built an evergreen lean-to that proved not only a windbreak but a fire reflector. Then he led the horses in behind this protection and carefully wiped them free of the snow and rubbed each horse down in turn. By the time he had finished with this he was thoroughly warmed up.
Pamela was on her feet and melting snow for coffee. She smiled bravely at him, looking like nothing so much as a woebegone little girl, and he grinned, then laughed, and walked across to Dick. “Better sit up, old-timer,” he said. “You’ll enjoy the fire more.”
“She feels mighty good, boy.” Jordan extended his trembling hands toward the flames, then glanced up. “If I live through this I’ll be good for twenty years more!”
“That goes for me too!” Hopalong said. “You better count that twenty years now. We’ve got the worst of it behind us.”
“What if they’re waitin’ for us?”
“They will be. But maybe they won’t be watchin’ so good. They won’t expect us to make it, an’ if I know that kind of hombre, he’s lazy an’ don’t like watchin’ no trail in this weather. No, I think I’ll have to hunt them up.”
The Hopalong Cassidy Novels 4-Book Bundle Page 15
