the Sky-Liners (1967)

by L'amour, Louis - Sackett's 13

  They looked around, seeing nobody. "You sure?"

  "We'd better get off the ridge," Galloway advised. "Here we're sitting ducks."

  "We didn't see anybody," Reardon said doubtfully.

  "Try going back," Cap told him. "They're out there, all right."

  So now Dobie, foreman of the Slash B, and an outspoken enemy of the Fetchens, was dead. Whatever had brought the Fetchens into this country, it was an all-out war now.

  Pushing my horse to the lead, I rode over the rim and started down the steep trail toward the dunes. As I rode, I was trying to figure some way out of this corner without a fight. Not that I was dodging a fight with the Fetchens. That had to come, but right now the odds were all against us and nobody wants to begin a fight he stands to lose. What I wanted was to find a place we could fight from that would come close to evening things up.

  "Keep your eyes skinned," I said over my shoulder. "Unless I've got it wrong, there'll be more Fetchens coming in from the south."

  Galloway looked back up the mountain. "They're up there, Flagan," he said, "right on the rim."

  Sure enough, we could count eight or nine, and knew there were twice that many close by.

  "Flagan," Cap said, "look yonder!"

  He pointed to a dust cloud a couple of miles off to the south, a dust cloud made by hard-ridden horses.

  It looked to me as if we were up the creek without a paddle, because not far below us the trees scattered out and the country was bare all around, with no kind of shelter. We'd have to stand and fight, or run for the dunes. Well, I just pulled up, stopping so short they all bunched in around me.

  "I'll be damned if we do!" I said.

  "Do what? What d'you mean?"

  "Look at it. He's heading us right into those dunes. We could get boxed in there and die of thirst, or maybe he's got a couple of boys perched on top of one of those dunes with rifles. Just as we get close to them, they'd open fire."

  Riders were now on the trail behind us, but some distance back.

  "What do you figure to do?"

  "We've got to get off this trail. We've got to make our own way, not ride right down the trail he's got set for us."

  We walked our horses on through the trees, searching for some kind of way we could take to get off the trail. Knowing the ways of wild game, we figured there might be some trail along the mountainside. Of course, a man on horseback can't follow a deer trail very far unless he's lucky, the way we had been earlier. A deer will go under tree limbs, over rocks, or between boulders where no horse could go. We scattered about as much as the trail and the terrain would allow, and we hunted for tracks.

  We were under cover now, out of view from both above and below, but that would not last long.

  Ladder Walker came back up the trail from where he had scouted. "They're closin' in, Flagan. They'll be under cover an' waitin' when we show up."

  The forest and the mountains have their own secret ways, and in the changing of days the seemingly changeless hills do also changed. Fallen snow settles into crevices in the rock, and expands in freezing, and so cracks the rock still further. Wind, rain, and blown sand hone the edges of the jagged upthrusts of rock, and find the weak places to hollow them away.

  In the passing of years the great cliffs crumble into battlements with lower flanks of talus, scattered slopes of rock, and debris fallen from the crumbling escarpment above.

  There upon the north side of the trail I saw a fallen pine, its roots torn from the earth and leaning far over, exposing a narrow opening through the thick timber and the rocks into a glade beyond. It might be no more than a dead end, but it was our only chance, and we took it.

  Swiftly, I turned my horse up into the opening, scrambling around the roots, and down through the narrow gap beyond into the glade.

  "Cap, you and Moss fix up that trail, will you? We're going to need time."

  Maybe we had run into an even worse trap, but at least it was a trap of our own making, not one set and waiting for us. A blind man could sense that Black Fetchen was out for a kill. He did not want just Galloway and me, although no doubt we topped his list: he wanted us all.

  While we held up, waiting for Cap and Moss to blot out our trail, I scouted around.

  There was a narrow aisle among the pines that followed along the slope toward the north. A body could see along it for fifty or sixty yards. When Cap and Moss came up, we pushed on.

  We rode on no trail except one we made, and we found our way with difficulty, weaving among trees and rocks, scrambling on steep slopes, easing down declivities where our horses almost slid on their hind quarters. Suddenly we came upon a great slash on the mountain, came upon it just where it ended.

  A huge boulder had torn loose hundreds of feet up the mountain and had come rumbling down, crushing all before it, leaving a steep but natural way toward the higher slopes.

  Costello glanced up the mountain. "We'll never make it," he said, seeing my look. "It's too steep."

  "We'll get down and walk," I said. "We'll lead our horses. It's going to be a scramble, but it'll be no easier for those who follow, and we'll have the advantage of being above them."

  Swinging down, I led off. Mostly it was a matter of finding a way around the fallen trees and rocks, scrambling up slopes, pushing brush or fallen trees out of the way. In no time at all we were sweating, fighting for breath from the work and the altitude.

  We were topping out at the head of our long corridor when Ladder kind of jerked in the saddle and gave an odd grunt. Almost at the same instant, we heard the shots.

  We saw them at once. They were below us, in the open beyond some trees. They had lost our trail until we came into sight on the slope, and they had fired ... from a good four hundred yards off.

  Scrambling into the trees, I swung around on Ladder. "You hurt?"

  "I caught one. You boys keep going. I can handle this."

  "Like hell." I got down.

  Cap and Galloway had already moved to the edge of the trees and were returning the searching fire the Fetchens were sending into the trees. We had bullets all around us, but most of them were hitting short ... shooting up or down hill is always a chancy thing.

  Ladder Walker had caught a .44 slug on the hip bone - a glancing shot that hit the bone and turned off, tearing a nasty gash in the flesh. It was not much more than a flesh wound, but he was losing blood.

  We made a sort of pad with a patch of moss ripped from a tree trunk, binding it in place with his torn shirt.

  We were under cover now, and our return fire had made them wary, so with Walker sitting his saddle, we worked our way along the slope and across Buck Creek Canyon.

  There was nothing about this that a man could like. We had broken the trap, but we were far from free. They were wasting no shots, moving in carefully, determined to make an end of us. We had them above and below us, others closing in, and no doubt some trying to head us off.

  Pulling up suddenly, I stood in my stirrups and looked off down through the trees toward the sand dunes. If they tried to follow along the side of the mountain below us, we might be able to drive them into the dunes.

  Cap rode up beside me. "Flagan, there's a creek somewhere up ahead that cuts through the mountain, or nearly so. I figure if we could get up there we could ride up the creek and cross the mountain; then we could come down behind the Buzzard Roost ranch."

  We moved along, taking our time, hunting out a trail as we rode. There was a good smell of pines in the air, and overhead a fine blue sky with white clouds that were darkening into gray, sort of bunching up as if the Good Lord was getting them corralled for a storm.

  The traveling was easier now. We wound in and out amongst the fallen trees, most of them long dead, and the boulders that had tumbled down from the mountain higher up. The ground was thick with pine needles or moss, and there were some damp places where water was oozing out.

  For about half a mile we had cover of a sort. We couldn't see any of the Fetchen gang, nor could they
shoot at us, but there was no chance to make time. Had we slipped from their trap, maybe only to get into a worse one, I wondered. We all rode with our Winchesters in our hands, ready for the trouble we knew was shaping up.

  On our right the mountains rose steeply for more than two thousand feet, their peaks hidden in the dark clouds. The air grew still, and the few birds we saw were flying low, hunting cover. A few scattering drops of rain fell.

  There came a puff of wind, and then a scattering shower, and we drew up to get into our slickers. The grass on the mountain slope seemed suddenly greener, the pines darker.

  Glancing at Ladder Walker, I saw he looked almighty drawn and pale. He caught my eyes and said, "Don't you worry your head, Sackett. I'm riding strong."

  It was no easy place to travel. Because the mountainside was so steep we had to pick our way carefully, stopping from time to time to give the horses a breathing spell. We were angling up again now, hunting for the cover of scattered trees that showed higher up.

  Thunder rumbled back in the peaks, sounding like great boulders tumbling down a rocky corridor. Lightning flashed, giving a weird light.

  Galloway, who was riding point at the moment, caught the movement of a man as he was lifting his rifle, and Galloway was not one to waste time. He shot right off his saddle, his rifle held waist-high ... and nobody ever lived who was better at off-hand shooting than Galloway.

  We heard a yelp of pain, then the clatter of a rifle falling among rocks; and then there was a burst of firing and we left our saddles as if we'd been shot from them. We hit ground running and firing, changing position as we hit grass, and all shooting as soon as we caught sight of something to shoot.

  They'd caught us in the open, on the slope of a rock-crested knoll crowned with trees. We were short a hundred yards or so of the trees, but Cap and Galloway made the knoll and opened a covering fire. Costello helped Walker to a protected spot, whilst Moss and me gathered the horses and hustled them behind the knoll.

  We stood there a moment, feeling the scattering big drops before an onrush of rain. The back of that knoll fell away where a watercourse made by mountain runoff had cut its way. There was shelter here for the horses, but there was a covered route down to the next canyon.

  "They aren't about to rush us," I told Moss. "You stay here with the horses. I'm going down this gully to see if we can get out of here."

  "You step careful, boy," Reardon said. "Them Fetchens have no idea of anybody getting home alive."

  The Fetchens were going to be wary, and all the more so because they probably figured they'd either killed or wounded some of us when we left our saddles like that. Now they were getting return fire from only two rifles, with occasional shots from Costello, so they would be sure they were winning and had us nailed down.

  Rifle in hand, I crept down that gully, sliding over wet boulders and through thick clumps of brush. All the time I was scouting a route down which we could bring our horses as well as ourselves.

  Suddenly, from up above, a stick cracked. Instantly I froze into position, my eyes moving up slope. A man was easing along through the brush up there, his eyes looking back the way I had come. It seemed as if the Fetchens were closing in around my friends, and there wasn't much I could do about it.

  Going back now was out of the question, so I waited, knowing a rifle shot would alert them to trouble up here. When that man up there moved again ... He moved.

  He was a mite careless because he didn't figure there was anybody so far in this direction, and when he moved I put my sights on him and held my aim, took a long breath, let it out, and squeezed off my shot. He was moving when I fired, but I had taken that into account, and my bullet took him right through the ribs.

  He straightened up, held still for a moment, and then fell, head over heels down the slope, ending up within twenty feet of me.

  Snaking through the brush, I got up to him and took his gun belt off him and slung it across my shoulders. Also taking up his rifle, I aimed it on the woods up above, where there were likely some others, and opened fire.

  It was wild shooting, but I wanted to flush them out if I could, and also wanted to warn my folks back there that it was time to get out.

  There were nine shots left in the Winchester, and I dusted those woods with them; then I threw down the rifle and slipped back the way I had come. A few shots were fired from somewhere up yonder, fired at the place from which I'd been shooting but I was fifty yards off by that time and well down in the watercourse where I'd been traveling.

  Waiting and listening, it was only minutes until I heard movement behind me and, rifle up, I held ready for trouble.

  First thing I saw was Moss Reardon. "Hold your fire, boy," he said. "It's us a-comin'."

  Me, I went off down the line and brought up on the edge of a small canyon; it was no trouble to get down at that point. When the others bunched around, I pointed down canyon. "Yonder's the dunes. And there seems to be a creek running along there. I take it we'd better reach for the creek and sort of take account of things."

  "Might be Medano Creek," Cap said.

  "What's that amount to?"

  "If it's Medano, we can foller it up and over the divide. I figure it will bring us out back in the hills from Buzzard Roost."

  Once more in the saddle, I led off down the canyon, and soon enough we were under the cottonwoods and willows, with a trickle of water at our feet. There was a little rain falling by then, and lightning playing tag amongst the peaks.

  Ladder seemed to be in bad shape. He was looking mighty peaked. He'd lost a sight of blood, and that crawling and sliding hadn't done him any good.

  The place we'd come to had six-foot banks, and there was a kind of S bend in the stream that gave us the shelter of banks on all sides. Just beyond were the dunes. From a high point on the bank we could see where the creek came down out of the Sangre de Cris-tos.

  "We might as well face up to it," Galloway said. "We're backed up against death. Those boys are downstream of us and they're up on the mountain, and they surely count us to be dead before nightfall."

  "One of them doesn't. I left him stretched out up yonder. This here's his gun belt."

  "One less to carry a rifle against us," Moss said. He leaned back against the bank. "Gol durn it. I ain't as young as I used to be. This scramblin' around over mountains ain't what I'm trimmed for. I'm a horse-and-saddle man myself."

  "I'd walk if I could get out of here," Galloway said.

  Costello was saying nothing. He was just lying yonder looking all played out. He was no youngster, and he'd been mistreated by the Fetchens. So we had a wounded man and one in no shape to go through much of this traveling, and we were a whole mountain away from home.

  That Medano Creek might be the way, but I didn't like the look of it. It opened up too wide by far for safety.

  "Make some coffee, somebody," I suggested. "They know already where we are."

  Moss dug into his war-bag for the coffee and I poked around, picking up brush and bark to build us a fire. It took no time at all to have water boiling and the smell of coffee in the air. We had a snug enough place for the moment, with some shelter from gunfire, and water as we needed it.

  Galloway and Cap had gone to work to rig a lean-to shelter for Ladder Walker.

  There were willow branches leaning out from the bank and they wove other branches among them until they had the willows leaning down and making a kind of roof for those who would lie down. Where the creek curved around there were two or three big old cotton-woods and we bunched the horses there.

  We sat around, shoulders bent against the rain, gulping hot coffee and trying to figure what we were going to do.

  The Fetchens had us bunched for the kill. They were good mountain fighters, and they had herded us right into a corner. Maybe we could ride up Medano Creek and get clean away, but it looked too inviting to me. It would be a death trap if they waited for us up there where the cliffs grew high.

  If we got out of this aliv
e we'd have to be lucky. We'd have to be hung with four-leaf clovers - and I couldn't see any clover around here.

  Chapter 15

  The worst of it was, we weren't getting much of a look at those boys. They were playing it safe, slipping about in the trees and brush as slick as Comanches.

  "Galloway," I said, "I'm getting sort of peevish. Seems to me we've let those boys have at us about long enough. A time comes when a man just can't side-step a fight no longer. We've waited for them to bring it to us, and they've done no such thing, so I figure it's up to you and me to take it to them."

  "You give me time for another cup of coffee," Galloway said, "and I'll come along with you."

  Cap Rountree looked at us thoughtfully. "What you expect us to do ... mildew?"

  Me, I just grinned at him. "Cap, I know you're an old he coon from the high-up hills, but the fewer we have out there the better. You boys can stay right here. They'll be expecting us to move on pretty quick, and they'll be settled down waiting for it. Well, me and Galloway figure to stir them up a mite.

  "Anyway," I went on, "Ladder's in no shape to travel more'n he's going to have to, getting out of here. Costello's in pretty bad shape, too. I figure you and Moss can hold this place if they try to attack you, which I doubt they will."

  Galloway and me, we picked up our rifles and just sort of filtered back into the brush. "You thinking the same thing I am?" I said.

  "Their horses?"

  "Uh-huh. If we set them afoot we've got a free ride ... after we get through that valley yonder."

  We'd been timber-raised, like most Tennessee mountain boys, so when we left our horses we swapped our boots for moccasins, which we always carried in our saddlebags.

  The weather was clouded up again and it was likely to rain at any moment. We found no sign of the Fetchens until I came upon a corn-shuck cigarette lying on the moss near the butt end of a fallen tree. It was dry, so it must have been dropped since the last shower. After scouting around we found tracks, and then we worked our way up the mountain, moving all the quieter because of the rain-soaked ground.