That had to be the explanation.
What other explanation could there be?
As Lonnie lay back down on his cot and got himself slowly settled down enough that he thought he might still squeeze a couple more hours of shut-eye out of the night, he decided he’d just have to return to Skull Canyon and see about the situation himself.
Lonnie was up at the first blush of dawn the next morning.
He packed his gear, saddled the General, and rode away from the line shack.
It took him well over an hour of hard riding to reach the entrance to Skull Canyon. When he did, he sat there at the gap in the ridge wall, staring up the brushy ravine that rose steadily and twisted around behind a bulging belly of bald granite and sandstone.
Very faintly, Lonnie could hear that tooth-gnashing whine of the wind funneling through the skull-like formation on the canyon’s far end and which gave the canyon its name.
Was the canyon really cursed?
Was that why Bohannon and Walleye hadn’t been able to find McLory’s body? Was Lonnie now cursed because he’d spent a night in the canyon, and was that why his luck had suddenly gone south? Maybe the reason McLory had met a premature end was because of the canyon’s curse . . .
If so, did Lonnie really want to ride into the canyon again?
No, he sure as hell did not. But the way he figured it, he could probably only be cursed once. So what more harm would another half hour in the canyon do? He wouldn’t linger around till sundown again—that was for sure.
Still, the hair under his shirt collar pricked as he gigged the General ahead through the natural gate. He rode up the curving, rocky floor of the ravine and then swung the General west. The buckskin splashed across Ingrid Creek, and five minutes later Lonnie dismounted at the base of the western ridge wall.
He climbed the steep slope that led up to the boulders and wound his way behind the rocks until he found the long, egg-shaped opening in the ridge. Lonnie paused. His neck hairs were standing up even straighter. He wasn’t sure what he was more afraid of—finding McLory here or not finding McLory here.
Lonnie crouched to peer into the cave. His lower jaw dropped.
McLory wasn’t here. In fact, nothing was here. The cave was as empty as it had been when Lonnie had first come upon it the day before.
“Well . . . I’ll be a monkey’s uncle,” Lonnie heard himself mutter as he dropped to his knees and stared at the place on the cave floor where he’d left McLory, near the fire he’d built and of which no evidence remained!
Lonnie moved on into the cave and looked around in awe.
There were no ashes on the cave floor. Not even a handful. No unburned wood. No charred dirt. No blood from McLory. Not a scrap of anything remaining from last night.
It was as though Lonnie and McLory had never been here.
Which must be exactly what someone wanted someone else to believe.
On both counts—who?
Who would have taken such pains to scour the area of all sign of the dead man?
Why?
Where was McLory?
Below the cave, the General whickered warningly. Lonnie whipped around to stare out of the brightly sunlit cave opening, his blood whining in his ears. Faintly, he heard men’s voices.
Lonnie dashed out of the cave and scrambled down to where he’d left the General. The horse stood between two boulders, making him visible from the canyon floor.
Placing a hand over the buckskin’s snout to keep him quiet, Lonnie backed the horse behind the larger of the two boulders, so he wouldn’t be seen. Keeping a hand over the General’s snout, Lonnie turned to peer through the gap between the boulders, toward the canyon floor beyond the slender, meandering creek.
Men’s voices grew louder.
A horse snorted. The clacking of hooves on rock rose to Lonnie’s pricked ears.
The young man drew a slow, shallow breath as he watched four horseback riders enter the canyon. He drew back behind the boulder with a startled grunt when he saw that they were the same four men who’d try to run him down and kill him the day before.
CHAPTER 18
Lonnie edged another look around the boulder.
The horses the men were riding told him that these four men now moving up the canyon were the same men who’d tried to kill him. He recognized the brown-and-white pinto of the man who’d scrambled up the outcropping after him, as well as a broad-chested cinnamon dun.
He also recognized the man who’d chased him on foot. He was riding third in the pack, behind two who rode abreast and ahead of the fourth rider, who wore a cream slicker and had long, almost white hair hanging straight down to his shoulders. In profile, Lonnie could see he was a fair-skinned man, and his face was badly sunburned, his long nose almost glowing red. The flaps of his duster were drawn back so that Lonnie could see a big, pearl-gripped, silver-chased pistol jutting from a holster on his left hip.
Lonnie had remembered catching a glimpse of that rider, too, during a brief look behind when the four were bearing down on him.
The first two riders were conversing in low tones as the group rode on past Lonnie, walking their horses up the canyon.
When they’d passed, Lonnie stepped up into the gap between the two boulders, and watched them ride away from him, gradually tracing a curve in the west wall of the canyon and disappearing from sight.
Still, Lonnie stared after them, wondering who they were and why they’d been so determined to kill him.
Had they been the ones who’d removed McLory from the cave?
Why?
More questions reeled through the young man’s head to the accompaniment of a low hum of dread in his ears. Obviously, something strange and out of sorts was happening in Skull Canyon. Lonnie’s curiosity somehow pushed through his fear. He wanted to ride out of the canyon and forget everything that he’d seen here. He even wanted to forget about the men who’d almost killed him.
But the strong pull of his curiosity wouldn’t let him.
He dropped the General’s reins, said, “Stay here, boy,” then shucked his Winchester from the saddle boot and stole down the steep slope to the canyon floor. He crossed the creek, only dampening his boots, and then jogged along the rocky floor of the canyon littered with apples from one of the passing horses.
He felt a pressing need to find out where the four men were heading and what was in the canyon that had compelled them to kill McLory and to try killing him, Lonnie. They must be holding stolen cattle somewhere in the canyon. What else would compel them to commit murder? If so, some of those cows might be Lonnie’s.
Lonnie jogged until he reached a bend in the canyon wall, then cat footed around it, not wanting to run up on the group in case they’d stopped. Once around the bend, he saw the backs of the four riders as they continued riding in the opposite direction—sixty yards away and gradually broadening the gap between themselves and Lonnie.
Just ahead, the canyon narrowed to not more than maybe a hundred feet, with the creek running along the base of the left side wall, with a spring-fed freshet running across the floor from the opposite wall, forming a boggy area. Lonnie tramped on through the soft, muddy ground, and began jogging again, not wanting to get so close to the four that their horses might wind him, but not wanting to lose them, either.
Skull Canyon was a large, deep chasm with several branches. Because of its dark legend, Lonnie had spent as little time in the canyon as possible, but he’d heard from other cowboys who’d grazed cattle in the canyon that it covered a vast, rugged area. Lonnie had also heard that many prospectors had once worked the canyon for gold and silver. Some still might, though he didn’t know of any. He thought the legend, widely known throughout the area, probably kept most people out.
Lonnie continued to make his way along the canyon floor, which widened dramatically beyond the bottleneck. As he moved, wishing he’d thought to leave his spurs with the General, it occurred to Lonnie that the four men ahead of him might not be rustlers, after
all. They might have discovered gold or silver somewhere in the canyon, and were shooting those they thought might be trying to jump their claim.
McLory didn’t seem like the claim-jumping type to Lonnie, but he had hardly known the man.
Whatever they were doing was obviously illegal. And whatever they were doing, Lonnie had no idea what he was going to do about it. He wasn’t exactly chomping at the bit to pay another visit to Sheriff Halliday. In fact, Halliday might be paying Lonnie a visit soon to talk about the deputy Lonnie had shot.
Lonnie jogged ahead now, trying to gain some ground on the four riders, who had disappeared around another right bend in the canyon floor. The canyon widened even more just ahead, and aspens and birches grew to both sides of the rocky center of the canyon down which a rushing, snowmelt river flowed every spring. Large, clay-colored boulders that had fallen from the steep ridge wall shone among the trees.
As the four riders appeared before Lonnie again, still riding away from him, he jerked with a start at what sounded like a large tree branch snapping. One of the four riders jerked back in his saddle.
The man’s horse turned sharply to one side, giving a shrill whinny.
One of the other riders shouted, “What in the—?”
The shouted question was cut abruptly off as the rider who’d been shot fell backward down the side of his saddle to hit the canyon floor in a twisted pile.
Another gun popped among the trees and boulders so that now two rifles were cracking wildly. Lonnie jerked with each shot, as though the bullets were tearing into his own body.
Smoke puffed and gun flames shone in the trees and rocks to each side of the trail. The four riders screamed and bellowed curses as they were blown out of their saddles. They hit the ground and rolled as the rifles continued to crack and belch, gun smoke wafting in the tree branches.
Lonnie stood staring in wide-eyed, hang-jawed shock at the four men rolling on the ground, writhing in pain only to be shot again by the two ambushers. Amidst the belching of the gunfire, Lonnie could hear the quick rasping of the rifles’ cocking levers. The four riderless horses galloped, whinnying shrilly, on up the canyon, the last one buck-kicking and stomping on its reins as it fled.
Lonnie stood frozen, as though his boots were stuck to the canyon floor. His eyes were riveted on the four men, all of whom now lay twisted and unmoving on the floor of the canyon, under a large, drifting gunsmoke haze.
When he saw two men moving down out of the trees and boulders to each side of the trail, Lonnie swung around and took off running back the way he’d come, breathless fear overpowering his curiosity.
CHAPTER 19
Lonnie scrambled up the steep slope to where the General waited, staring at Lonnie through the gap between the boulders. Breathing hard, casting cautious glances back in the direction of the slaughter of the four riders, Lonnie slid his Winchester back into its sheath and swung up onto the buckskin’s back.
“Let’s split the wind, General!” Lonnie said, whipping his rein ends against the General’s hip.
The stallion had heard the shooting. He did not hesitate to oblige his rider. The sure-footed buckskin dropped down the steep incline in two long strides then galloped the rest of the way to the canyon floor. He leaped the creek, bulled through some berry bramble, and swung toward the canyon’s yawning mouth.
Lonnie cast another anxious glance behind him and was relieved to see that no one had followed him. He put his head down as the General galloped on through the gate and down the gradual slope through the pines, following the old horse trail along Ingrid Creek.
Lonnie gave the General his head. The horse knew where home was, and that was where Lonnie wanted to get as quickly as possible. He didn’t care if he never saw the entrance to Skull Canyon again in this life. In fact, he didn’t even want to think about the possibility of his cows straying into the canyon so that he’d have to track them down.
The way he felt about it now, if any of his beef-on-the-hoof strayed into Skull Canyon, they could find their own damn way out!
As the General galloped along the creek that wended its way down the gradual mountain slope, Lonnie kept seeing and hearing the killing of the four riders in his mind’s eye. The shooting had sounded like firecrackers popping at a Fourth of July celebration, like the one they had with horse races every year in Arapaho Creek. Only, what Lonnie had just heard and seen had been no celebration.
It had been a slaughter.
Not that he really cared about the four men who’d almost done the same thing to him, but watching their violent demise had Lonnie feeling so shaken that his entire body quivered. He felt so sick to his stomach he thought he might throw up what little he had in his stomach.
Fortunately, it wasn’t much.
He was too shaken to think about Skull Canyon right now, or about who might have gunned down the four riders or about who might have taken Cade McLory’s body out of the cave.
Lonnie just wanted to get home to the peace, quiet, and safety of his and his mother’s ranch headquarters. He just wanted to sit down to a good meal with his mother and then tend his barn chores and then hit the sack for a long, badly needed night’s rest in his own bed.
He hoped little Jeremiah would let him sleep and not spend half the night crying for May Gentry’s attention. If the latter, Lonnie would go out and sleep in the side shed off the barn, which Lonnie had outfitted with a cot and wool blankets. That’s where he slept when Shannon Dupree spent the night with Lonnie’s mother in the cabin.
A little over an hour after leaving the canyon, Lonnie rode northeast along the floor of the broad valley in which his ranch lay, at the base of a rise of forested, spruce-green peeks. Lonnie trotted the General through the wooden portal straddling the trail.
The Circle G brand had been proudly burned into the high, wooden crossbar by his father when Calvin Gentry had finished building the barn and cabin from the timber growing along the slopes and mountains flanking the ranch, back when Lonnie had been only two years old and they were all living in a small, temporary shack, waiting for the main cabin to be finished.
Lonnie rode into the finely churned dust of the yard fronting the large, low-slung, shake-roofed log cabin, heading for the stock trough below the windmill whose wooden blades churned lazily in the late-afternoon breeze. As he did, he frowned at the two strange horses standing in the corral attached to the barn’s side shed.
One horse was a blue roan, the other a steeldust with a black mane and black head except for a long, crooked white stripe running down its snout. The mounts stood forward of the four horses from Lonnie’s rough string, which he used mostly to give the General a break during busy spring and autumn roundups.
The two unfamiliar horses stood staring toward the cabin. Their tack straddled the top rail of the corral, to the left of the gate. Two Winchester carbines leaned against a corral post.
Deep lines cut across Lonnie’s forehead in a frustrated scowl.
Visitors.
He hadn’t figured on that. They rarely had visitors way out here. At least, not since Dupree had bit the dust. Why did they have to have visitors tonight of all nights?
As Lonnie dismounted the General by the windmill and slipped the horse’s bit, so he could drink freely, Lonnie surveyed the cabin. The west-angling light reflected off the sashed windows. Smoke from a supper fire plumed from the stovepipe.
As Lonnie hauled his gear over to the corral, his mother’s muffled laughter rose from inside the cabin. A man’s laughter followed. Lonnie glanced over his shoulder at the lodge, and grimaced.
“Oh, no,” he said under his breath. “Please, no . . . not again.”
May Gentry was understandably lonely, living way out here without a husband. But that loneliness had led to trouble in the past. Lonnie hoped that kind of trouble hadn’t come calling again . . .
When Lonnie had rubbed the General down, grained, and stabled him, Lonnie crossed the yard to the cabin, slapping his hat against his thighs, c
ausing trail dust to billow. He could hear two men talking with his mother inside the cabin.
He didn’t care for the lighthearted tone, but, then again, he was glad there was no trouble.
Lonnie climbed the front porch and saw a pitcher of fresh water sitting on the second shelf of the washstand, beneath the top shelf that held the tin washbasin. A fresh towel hung from the nail beside the mirror hanging slightly askew from the cabin’s front wall. Using the cake of lye soap provided, Lonnie scrubbed his face, neck and ears, and used a small bristle brush to scrub the dirt and grime out from beneath his fingernails.
As he washed he could hear his mother chatting amiably with the men inside the cabin. Hearing the buoyant happiness and faint coquettishness in his mother’s voice rubbed him the wrong way though he supposed it shouldn’t. She had the right to enjoy the company of men.
The problem was, May Gentry was a nice-looking woman, but she wasn’t very discriminating. She’d drawn more than a few rogue male eyes her way, including the eyes of the roguish outlaw, Shannon Dupree.
Lonnie toweled himself dry, combed his damp, close-cropped, light-brown hair in the mirror, ignoring the cowlick, and then flipped the latch of the front door. As the hinges squawked—he had to oil them one of these days—the conversation inside the cabin stopped. Two men sat at the halved-log dining table in the kitchen part of the cabin, straight out from the front door. One man sat at the table’s far end, the other adjacent to him, his back to the front wall.
Lonnie’s mother stood with her back to the range, rocking the tightly wrapped blanket of Lonnie’s little half brother, Jeremiah, in her arms. The baby was fussing, and May was flushed from the effort of trying to calm him.
“Oh, there you are, honey!” May Gentry intoned. “I’ve been worried about you, Lonnie. Won’t you come in and meet our two supper guests—Bill Brocius and George Madsen? I’ve offered to let them stay in the bunkhouse out back for a few nights . . . if they don’t mind a few spiders, that is, as the bunkhouse hasn’t been used in a month of Sundays!” Beaming, Mrs. Gentry glanced at the two visitors, and said, “Bill, George—this is my son, Lonnie, Jeremiah’s big brother.”
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