“Not an’ stay alive.” Ezra spoke with complete assurance. “Ain’t a hawse alive that could keep his feet half a minut in that.”
The remuda of driven horses was nearing them from behind. Pat shouted at Ezra, “We’ll make a night camp right here. Keep the hawses far enough back to give you room to smell out where they went. But if you do get it figured, don’t let on you have while there’s still daylight. May be a lookout up above watchin’ us right now. We’ll make camp like we’re stuck an’ going to stay the night no matter what you find out.”
Ezra nodded and turned back to the end of the trail. Pat went back to tell Dock and Lily briskly, “We’ll make camp right here while Ezra’s snoopin’ around. Soon’s we get the packs off an’ the hawses hobbled, Dock, get out yore trout rod an’ catch us some rainbows for supper.”
Dock’s eyes bugged at the thundering, white-frothed stream beside them. “In there?” he gasped.
“That’s where you’ll find the big ones,” Pat assured him. “That’s a real he-man Rocky Mountain trout stream. If you don’t pull some three-pounders out of there I’ll heat the back-side of yore pants for you.”
Lily slid out of the saddle eagerly. She swayed forward and moaned when her feet touched the ground, but straightened up and made a brave attempt to smile. “First time I’ve been on a horse in years,” she admitted. “What can I do to help make camp that doesn’t require sitting down?”
“You can start gatherin’ dry wood for a fire. That’ll take some of the kinks out of you.”
With Sam’s help, he and Dock quickly got the gear off the horses and hobbles on their front legs. Lily was moving about painfully getting together a supply of dead pinon wood. While Dock dug into one of the packs to get out his jointed fly-rod, the two men went back to where Ezra was nosing around at the point where the trail ended.
“There’s only one way tuh figger this,” he told them. “It’s the ol’ Injun blanket trick of hidin’ trail. Spread blankets out for thuh hawses tuh walk on,” he explained, “but you kin most gen’rally find some traces even on rocky ground. I cain’t find none a-tall between here an’ the snowslide.”
Pat glanced up at the blocked canyon with a frown. “Where would they go if they did use blankets between here and the slide? It looks mighty solid to me.”
Ezra grunted, “Le’s have a look-see,” and led the way forward, examining the ground minutely as he went.
The three of them spread out to search the entire base of the slide from wall to wall to find a possible crevice or rift that might afford a passageway for horse or man, and when they met back at the center again each man shook his head and said with certainty, “They didn’t go under this, nor over it, nor through it.”
“Unless,” groaned Sam, “they swam their hawses under it where that creek has cut out a channel.”
Ezra dismissed that suggestion with a snort. He led the way back to the point where the hoofprints inexplicably ended, and got down on hands and knees to make a complete circle of that point, starting on the side near the creek and swinging around laboriously through two hundred and seventy degrees.
Pat tilted his hat back and watched him with narrowed eyes. With his face close to the ground, covering every inch of it, it appeared that Ezra was sniffing out the trail instead of using his human senses. He’d watched Ezra at work like this before, and it always gave him an eerie feeling. It wasn’t quite natural. It sort of frightened a man to watch him.
He tensed when Ezra suddenly rocked back on his heels with a grunt of satisfaction. “This here’s what I’ve been lookin’ fer.” He pointed to some tiny mark on the ground invisible to Sam and Pat. “Here’s where they spread their blankets … headin’ off to thuh side an’ bach the way they come. Now, why in Sam Hill would they ride up this far an’ then start back, usin’ blankets to hide a trail?”
Pat stood beside him and carefully scrutinized the forbidding rock wall of the canyon behind them. He said slowly, “There’s a bunch of scrub oak growing right up against the base of the canyon wall back there about three hundred feet. If there’s a crevice there … or an old mine tunnel …”
“Why wouldn’t they stop back there opposite it when they were right close if there’s a passage back of them oaks?” Sam demanded. “Why ride up here an’ then head back? Must be mighty slow goin’ laying blankets down in front of the hawses.”
“Not so danged slow,” Ezra corrected him. “Not if they’ve got an extra blanket fer each hawse. You kin move right along thataway. You’d be s’prised how fast it goes. I’ve knowed Injuns tuh hide half a mile of trail like that.”
“That’s the answer,” Pat said excitedly. “They’re smart enough to ride past the place where they’re goin’ to turn off to fool the posse. Everybody naturally looks ahead from here. Nobody thinks of lookin’ back behind. I’ll bet plenty there’s a way out of this canyon behind those oaks.”
“Le’s go see.” Sam started to stride toward them, but Pat stopped him sharply.
“Not yet, Sam. Not till after dark. We don’t even want to look toward those oaks as if we suspected anything. If there’s a lookout watchin’ us, let him see us makin’ camp an’ actin’ plumb flabbergasted just like the posse. After dark will be time enough to go over there an’ see what’s what.”
Sam and Ezra agreed that this made a lot of sense. They turned back toward the hobbled horses and heard an exultant shout jerk out of Dock’s mouth. The lad was braced on the very edge of the rushing stream, leaning back with arced rod and taut cord fighting against the furious rush of a hooked rainbow.
The magnificent fish broke water in a tremendous arching plunge as the men walked forward grinning at Dock’s excitement. The boy backed away hastily, keeping his cord taut, and then had to trot along the bank of the stream as the two-foot rainbow lunged viciously toward a swirling whirlpool between two boulders.
“Hold him, Son!” Pat shouted anxiously. “If he ever reaches them rocks you’ll lose him sure. That’s right, slow him down.” He had started to run forward to help Dock, but now he stopped, shaking his head with a sheepish grin at his own enthusiasm. “Go ahead an’ land him by yoreself,” he shouted. “That’s the only way you’ll make a fisherman. If he drags you in, choke him an’ bring him out.”
Dock finally stopped that rush short of the rough-breaking water, and carefully played his victim back toward the edge of the stream. When the men reached his side he was panting exultantly and the biggest rainbow trout he had ever seen was gasping at his feet.
“Lookit, Dad! Ain’t he a whopper?”
Pat nodded indulgently. “Go five or six pounds, I reckon. They grow big an’ plenty tough here where they fight fast water twelve months out of the year.” He knelt and slipped his fingers into the fish’s gills, deftly loosened the hook and tossed it back in the stream. “What’d you use on him, Son?”
“One of those flies you made for me last month. Remember? With the bit of rabbit fur and some long hairs from a moose’s tail.”
Pat grinned and nodded. “Catch us two more like this for supper an’ then knock off.” He turned back to Lily who was warming herself by a small fire she had built against the shelter of a huge boulder, and told her, “Get about three pounds of lard red-hot in Ezra’s biggest biscuit pan. We got a fisherman in the crowd.”
12
Dusk lingered a long time there in the forbidding shadows of the narrow deep canyon, beginning long before the last traces of sunlight vanished from the tops of the high cliffs above.
While Dock excitedly whipped the tumbling stream for more big trout, Ezra got busy inducting Lily into the mysteries of outdoor camp cookery.
Using a butcher knife and long-handled spoon to cut out the frozen earth, he scooped a shallow hole beside the big fire she had built and raked it full of glowing coals. He then set the big Dutch oven on the coals, heaped dry wood over the top of it and built a new fire there.
He melted a handful of lard in a frying pan, poured a quantity of ye
llow cornmeal into a pot and mixed in salt and baking powder with his fingers, wet it down with cold water from the creek and poured in his, melted lard. It was the consistency of nice thick mud when he finished with it. He raked the fire off the lid of his Dutch oven and poured the batter inside the hot receptacle, replaced the lid and built up his fire on top of it again.
“All we gotta do now is keep a fire goin’ on top of her an’ leave her set an’ cook,” he explained to Lily who was watching him carefully and trying to stay out of his way. “Nothin’ like a hunk of hot cornbread tuh go with fresh-caught rainbows.”
He got out an iron pot of left-over beans and set them to heat on the edge of the big fire, filled the coffee pot with cold creek water and dumped in two big handfuls of coffee. With that set beside the iron pot to come to a slow boil, he spread the rest of the coals out evenly and placed a big rectangular biscuit pan on top of them, dumped in the three pounds of lard that Pat had mentioned for frying the fish, and settled back on his heels to roll a cigarette.
“An’ there we are,” he announced proudly. “Soon’s the grease is smokin’ hot we drop in thuh trout whole … after Dock’s gutted ’em, o’ course. The heat’ll be dyin’ down under the pan by that time, an’ the cold fish’ll cool down the smokin’ hot grease so they’ll cook slow an’ even without burnin’. Time they’re done, the beans’ll be hot an’ the cawfee boilin’ an’ the cornbread baked. Then we’ll eat.”
“It hasn’t taken you more than fifteen minutes,” Lily marveled. “Most women would spend hours in a kitchen getting a meal like that ready.”
“Women!” Ezra snorted. “Never saw one yet that’d make a good camp cook. Too doggoned persnickety.”
By that time Dock had his three big trout out of the stream. He cut off their heads and slit them up the belly as his father had taught him, cleaned them thoroughly on the bank of the stream, scraping the slime from their backs with a dull-bladed knife and dipping them frequently in the icy water.
He brought his catch up to the fire proudly and laid them before Ezra, exulting, “Did you ever see any purtier ones?”
“Lotsa times,” Ezra told him equably. “If we chance on a lake up near timberline I’ll show you some real trout, Son. Some that’ll make these here look like minnies.” He deftly salted the big fish inside and out, and dropped them one by one into the big pan of smoking-hot grease.
Lily laughed softly at the stricken expression on Dock’s face when his catch was thus belittled. “I never saw any bigger or prettier fish,” she comforted him. “And I don’t think Ezra’s such-a-much as he makes out to be.”
“Oh, yes’m, he sure is,” Dock defended his old friend stoutly. “I reckon he’s the plumb best fisherman an’ finest hunter in Colorado. An’ the best tracker too.”
“Then why doesn’t he start tracking?” Lily asked sweetly. “I haven’t seen him solving the mystery of those disappearing hoofprints yet.”
Up to this time none of the men had mentioned Ezra’s theory about a blanketed trail leading backward and over to the edge of the canyon toward the group of scrub oak trees.
Now, stretched out comfortably on his bedroll near the fire, Pat chuckled and told her, “Didn’t take Ezra long to figure out that one, Miss Lily.”
“What’s that?” She looked around in confusion. “Do you mean he already knows where the outlaws went?”
“I’ll bet money he’s right,” Pat told her easily.
“Why aren’t we doing something then? Why are we just sitting around the fire cooking supper? It’ll be dark soon. Too late to follow them.”
“That’s why we’re waitin’,” Pat told her calmly. He nodded to Dock who was listening with bulging eyes. “You listen in on this too, Son. Like I say, that lost trail didn’t fool Ezra very long. He figured right away it was the old Injun trick of spreadin’ blankets out in front of the hawses to hide their tracks. An’ he figures they turned back this way.” He gestured toward the clump of scrub oak. “We’re guessin’ them trees hide some sort of way out of this canyon. Maybe a natural crevice or maybe an old mine tunnel.”
“But you haven’t even looked?” Lily exclaimed. “Why don’t we go see?”
“Yeh, Dad,” Dock put in. “Gosh A’Mighty! You want me to …?”
“I want you to stay right where you are. We’ll wait till it’s dark an’ act like we don’t even suspect what’s maybe hidden behind them trees. You see, it’s a good bet the Runyons were warned last night that we’d be trailin’ them today. Could be they’ve got a lookout posted on the rim above watchin’ us right now. If so, we want him to see us bedded down for the night like we was stumped. Come dark, we’ll take a look-see.”
“Then what? Will you try to follow the trail tonight?”
“I dunno. If it’s just a mine tunnel leadin’ in to the mountains, maybe we won’t have to follow them. If they’re cooped up at the other end of a tunnel, all you got to do is walk in an’ tell ’em who you are. How’re the fish comin’, Ezra?”
“’Bout done,” Ezra reported, testing them with a long fork. He inspected his bean-pot and found it bubbling, sent Dock to the creek for cold water to settle the coffee grounds, and raked the embers off his Dutch oven. Lifting the lid, he disclosed a beautifully browned, round fluffy cake of cornbread nested inside the heavy cooker. He cut it into big wedges, and then forked the crisp fish out onto tin plates, split them down the back with a sharp knife and peeled each half away from the bone structure, making six delicious portions of solid pink meat without a single bone to get in anyone’s way.
There were only five of them to eat the six portions, so Ezra and Dock split the remaining half after the others refused to share it with them.
It was quite dark inside the canyon by the time the hungry quintet had finished supper.
Lily struggled to her feet determinedly and said, “I’ll heat some water and wash the dishes, Ezra. You can go on with your tracking.”
“You stay here and help her,” Pat directed Dock, “an’ sorta keep guard on her an’ on camp,” he added quickly when he saw disappointment on the boy’s face. “Load up yore carbine an’ use it if anybody tries to get close.”
The three men got up and strolled away from the campfire across the rough floor of the canyon toward the clump of oak. None of them were in the least surprised when they stepped around the screen of trees to see the round gaping mouth of a tunnel in the solid rock wall of the canyon. Their logical minds had told them this was the only possible answer to the puzzle of the disappearing hoofprints.
The tunnel was hewed from the solid rock to a little more than the height of a man’s head. “Too low to ride a hawse in,” Ezra pointed out, “but plenty high to lead ’em. You want me tuh go in an’ strike a match tuh make shore thuh tracks are here, Pat?”
“No. They have to be here. A match at this end of the tunnel would flare up like a beacon to anybody watching from the other end. Let’s squat an’ figure this thing out.”
“It don’t make good sense to me,” Sam Sloan muttered. “Even if there’s a big mine workin’ at the other end of this tunnel, it makes a hell of a hideout tuh stay in very long at uh time. They’d have tuh have a heap of chuck an’ hawse-feed stored up inside.”
“An’ what about water?” Ezra put in. He was on his hands and knees at the mouth of the tunnel, feeling around carefully. “There ain’t no moisture seepin’ out this end,” he reported. “But I tell you what there is in place of it,” he went on excitedly. “There’s a draft of cold air blowin’ out.”
Sam and Pat moved forward beside him to incredulously check his words. He was right. There was a distinct draft of cold air blowing out of the tunnel. It was clean, untainted air.
Pat rocked back on his heels to think about this discovery, shaking his head in puzzlement. “Could be there’s an air-shaft at the end, I reckon. But goshdang it, it’d take a shaft half a mile long from the surface down to this tunnel.”
“Stands to reason the tunnel cain’t go
right on through the Divide,” Sam argued. “That’d be twenty or thutty miles long.”
Pat got to his feet. “Only way to find out,” he said grimly, “is for a couple of us to follow her out. You an’ me’ll take it, Ezra. You stay here with the gal and Dock,” he went on to Sam. “If we ain’t back by midnight, you better send Dock ridin’ to Fairplay after the sheriff and a posse.”
“Gonna take yore hawses?”
“What for? We’d have to lead ’em. Nope. We just want to see where this thing goes. We’ll be back for the hawses an’ the rest of you after we see what’s what. Let’s get goin’, Ezra.”
Ezra led the way forward into the tunnel. It was pitch-black inside, but the floor and walls had been drilled out smoothly so it was easy going without any light. Ezra moved along sure-footedly and rapidly, and Pat stayed right on his heels. The tunnel was bored into the mountain on a slight upgrade, but it wasn’t steep and walking wasn’t difficult.
After they had gone perhaps a quarter of a mile, Pat turned to look back over his shoulder and was surprised to see a circle of dim light behind them. It had seemed quite dark in the canyon before they entered the tunnel, but in contrast to the absolute absence of even faint starlight in the interior, the darkness of the canyon now appeared quite bright.
They went another two hundred yards before Ezra stopped with an abrupt exclamation. He turned and muttered to Pat, “The sidewalls widen out right here, Musta hit a cross-vein.”
“You take the right-hand wall an’ I’ll follow the left,” Pat muttered. “It’s a cinch there ain’t no men or hawses been cooped up here lately.”
He began circling about a large chamber under the mountain, keeping contact with the rough rock wall with the tips of his fingers, and suddenly he came to a dead stop. Directly ahead, though it seemed a long way off, he could see a round circle of dim light marking a tunnel outlet. For a moment he was confused and thought he must have circled all the way to the tunnel they had just left, but he realized he hadn’t passed Ezra on the way.
The End of the Trail Page 11
