Sidewinders

by William W. Johnstone

  Chloride glared at him. “Are you tellin’ this story, or am I?”

  “Go ahead, Chloride,” Bo told him.

  The old-timer snorted and said, “Well, anyway . . . There’s a pass on the south side of the mountain that’s the easiest way to get through to the other side, especially now with this snow. The other passes are narrow enough they’re gonna be drifted up so’s it’d be hard to make it through ’em, even though this wasn’t that bad of a storm. Thing of it is, Wolf Head Rock sorta sits there overlookin’ the trail to the pass, so you can’t get up there without ridin’ by it. Once you go past there’s a trail that loops back around to the top.”

  “And some riflemen hidden up there could pick off anybody who rode past,” Bo said.

  Chloride nodded. “If I was on the run and tryin’ to get shut of a posse, that’s the way I’d go, sure enough.”

  “The Devils ride past the rock and leave plenty of tracks so the posse has to follow ’em,” Scratch mused, “then they circle around, get above the trail, and wait to bushwhack whoever’s followin’ ’em.”

  “Yep,” Chloride said. “It’s just a guess, mind you, but if the trail we’re followin’ goes past Wolf Head Rock, I’d bet my last dime those varmints’ll be up there layin’ for us.”

  Bo thought about it for a moment and then asked, “Is there any way to get up to the rock without going past it and then doubling back?”

  “Yeah,” Chloride said. “If you’re a—”

  “Don’t say mountain goat,” Bo interrupted. “Please.”

  Chloride frowned at him. “How’d you know that’s what I was gonna say?”

  Bo sighed. “Because I keep having to climb, and I don’t like it much.”

  “But you could climb down to Wolf Head Rock from the back side of it?” Scratch persisted.

  “Maybe,” Chloride said. “With this cold and snow and the fact it’ll be gettin’ dark soon . . . I don’t know. Sounds to me like a good way to get killed.”

  “There are a lot of good ways to get killed out here,” Bo said. “Do you know a shortcut that might get us there before the gang, so we can be waiting for them?”

  “I can get you there, but not before the Devils. They’ve got too big a start on us.”

  Scratch looked across the old-timer at Bo. “It’s gonna be dark soon. If the posse makes camp, the Devils’ll have to wait for ’em to come along in the mornin’. That’d give us time to slip in the back and maybe get those gals outta there.”

  “You mean to take the women back up that rock wall you’d have to climb down?” Chloride shook his head. “You can’t do it. They’d never have a chance.”

  “Then we could take the Devils by surprise while they’re waiting for the others,” Bo suggested. “We’ll hit them from behind and distract them while the rest of you gallop past, circle around on that trail, and come at them from that direction. We can cut down the odds, grab the hostages, and get them out of harm’s way while the rest of you charge up there and finish off the outlaws.”

  “Yeah, that’s a mighty fine plan . . . if it works,” Chloride said.

  “All plans are fine when they work,” Scratch said. “You got any better ideas, old-timer?”

  Chloride squinted at him. “I ain’t gonna sink to your level and dignify that with an answer.” He looked over at Bo. “I reckon if you want to give it a try, I can show you where to go.”

  Bo nodded. “Let’s talk to Manning and the others.”

  He rode forward and asked the sheriff to call a halt while they discussed the plan. Manning did so, and Bo laid out the idea.

  “You’ll just get Marty and Mrs. Pendleton killed,” Bardwell protested.

  “That’s if you even get there,” Ramsey said. “You’ll probably fall and break your necks.”

  Manning asked Chloride, “Have you ever been to the top of this Wolf Head Rock, Coleman?”

  “Yeah, I been up there,” Chloride said. “The rock sticks out in front and narrows down so it looks like a wolf’s snout. There are a couple of spires, one on each side, that form the ears. Back of that is the open ground that’s at the top of the trail from down below, and back of that is an even bigger rock that forms a cliff.” He looked at Bo and Scratch. “I been thinkin’ about it. That rock sorta pooches out. You can’t climb down it. Not even a mountain goat could. You’d have to be a fly to make it.”

  “How about lowering us on ropes?” Bo asked.

  Chloride thought about it. “Maybe. You can’t get horses up there. You’d have to make it on foot and find places to tie the ropes. I reckon it could be done. But one slip and you’re a dead man.”

  “We’re willing to take that chance.” Bo looked at Manning. “What do you think, Sheriff?”

  “We don’t even know for sure they’ll be up there to try to ambush us,” Manning said.

  “The Devils love to bushwhack folks,” Chloride pointed out. “They’ve done it over and over again.”

  Manning thought it over and slowly nodded. “If you’re wrong, though, we’ve lost some time and let them get even farther ahead of us. That could turn out to be fatal for those women.”

  “It’s a chance we have to take,” Bo said. “If the Devils wipe us out, Sue Beth and Marty are done for.”

  “We can’t let that happen,” Bardwell said.

  “I agree,” Ramsey added. “We have to try it, Sheriff.”

  “All right,” Manning said. “The rest of us will find a place to camp, and the three of you—” He looked at Bo, Scratch, and Chloride.

  “We’d better get goin’,” the old-timer said. “There ain’t no time to waste.”

  Manning gave them a curt nod. “Just remember that more than the safety of the women depends on you. We’ll be riding past Wolf Head Rock in the morning, and if you’re not up there to hit the Devils from behind, we’ll be right in their sights. It’ll be like they’re taking target practice on us.”

  “Then you’d better wish us luck,” Bo said with a faint smile.

  “And a happy day after Thanksgivin’,” Scratch added, “because otherwise it’s liable to be a black Friday for all of us.”

  CHAPTER 25

  As the posse took up the trail again, Bo, Scratch, and Chloride veered away from the rest of the group. Since the decision had been made to head for Wolf Head Rock, they didn’t have to worry anymore about following the tracks left by the Devils. They could reach the place by the shortest, quickest route possible. Chloride knew some shortcuts through the rugged landscape, but he warned the Texans that they wouldn’t be easy.

  That certainly turned out to be true. Chloride led them through brush-choked gullies, along knife-edge ridges, through gaps between giant rocks that were barely wide enough for a man on horseback to get through them, and down slopes that would have been steep and slippery under good conditions. The coating of snow just made them worse. More than once, Bo thought he and his mount were about to tumble to their deaths.

  Somehow, though, they always made it where they were going. As dusk began to close in around them, Chloride paused and pointed across a valley that cut into the side of the mountain now looming close and menacing above them.

  “Look over yonder,” the old-timer said. “That place stickin’ out is Wolf Head Rock.”

  The light was bad enough that Bo and Scratch had trouble making out the landmark. Finally they saw it, and Scratch said, “How in the world are we gonna get there once it’s dark?”

  “Oh, don’t worry, I know the way,” Chloride said.

  “If it’s like the way we’ve come so far, we’ll never make it without being able to see,” Bo said.

  Chloride snorted. “There’s seein’, and then there’s seein’. I know where I’m goin’, dadgum it. The trail won’t be too bad from here as long as you fellas just follow me and don’t stray off.”

  Scratch looked over at Bo and shrugged. “We don’t have much choice in the matter, do we?”

  “Nope,” Bo said. “Go ahead, Chloride. We
’ll be right behind you.”

  “Dang well better be.”

  The men set off again, Chloride in the lead, Scratch following him, and Bo bringing up the rear. The warmth of the cabin at the Devils’ hideout seemed like something experienced in another life. Bo was chilled through and through, right down to the bone, and he wondered if he would ever be anything but cold again.

  Chloride led them down into the valley. When they reached the bottom, they found a good-size creek rushing through it. Chloride reined in and said, “All right, take a look.”

  “Take a look at what?” Scratch asked. “I can’t see a dang thing, it’s so dark. I can hear the stream, but I can’t really see it.”

  “Right there,” Chloride insisted.

  Bo and Scratch had moved up alongside the old-timer. Bo’s eyes made out a snow-covered shape arching up and out, but he couldn’t discern any details. “What is it?” he asked.

  “It’s a rock bridge, a natural bridge over that creek,” Chloride explained. “You don’t want to slip off of it, neither. As cold as it is, if you go in the water you’re liable to freeze to death ’fore we could build a fire to thaw you out.”

  “Are you sure that’s a bridge?” Scratch asked. “It looks more like a rock that just sticks up a ways and ends in nothin’.”

  “It goes all the way across,” Chloride insisted. “Leastways, it did the last time I was in these parts.”

  “How long has that been?” Bo wanted to know.

  “Oh, a couple o’ years, I expect.”

  “So the other side could have collapsed since then?”

  “Could have, I suppose,” Chloride said. “But I don’t believe it did.”

  “You don’t believe it did,” Scratch repeated. “I’d feel a whole heap better about this if you knew for sure.”

  Chloride snorted. “How much do folks ever really know for sure in this life? How do you know the sun’s even gonna come up in the mornin’? You don’t, that’s how!”

  “All right, you made your point,” Bo said as he lifted his reins. “I’ll go first—”

  “No, you won’t,” Chloride said. “I been leadin’ the way so far. I’ll go. That way, if I fall off you’ll know you better turn around and go back.”

  Before either of the Texans could argue with him, the old-timer nudged his mule forward. The animal seemed reluctant to start out on the stone bridge, but Chloride banged his heels against the mule’s flanks and kept it moving. The mule picked its way up the arching bridge, and after only a moment, the Texans lost sight of Chloride in the gloom.

  Bo and Scratch heard the iron shoes on the mule’s hooves striking the rock with each step, so they could follow Chloride’s progress that way. The hoofbeats were slow and steady, but after a moment they came to a halt. The Texans couldn’t hear anything except the rushing of the icy water in the creek.

  “Chloride?” Bo called. “Chloride, are you all right?”

  “Yeah,” the old-timer’s voice came back. “Looks like the bridge is all still here. You’d best dismount and come across on foot, leadin’ your horses. The snow’s made the rock mighty slick. This ol’ mule o’ mine almost slipped.”

  “Why don’t you dismount where you are and go ahead on foot?” Scratch asked.

  “No room to do that. Just got to hope the jughead can make it, that’s all.”

  “Be careful, Chloride,” Bo called. He and Scratch listened tensely as the hoofbeats resumed.

  After a minute or so that seemed more like an hour, Chloride shouted, “Made it! I’m on the other side. Come ahead, boys, slow and easy and mighty careful-like.”

  The Texans dismounted. Scratch didn’t wait to discuss who was going to go first. He just gripped his horse’s reins and started across the natural bridge. Bo’s nerves grew taut as he waited to see if his friend was going to make it.

  Again the crossing seemed interminable, but just when Bo was about to call out and ask Scratch if he was all right, the silver-haired Texan raised his voice and said, “Come ahead, Bo! It’s no worse’n that time down Sonora way when we had to cross that big ol’ canyon on a rope bridge.”

  “As I recollect, we almost wound up dead that day,” Bo called back.

  “Yeah, but we didn’t!”

  Bo couldn’t argue with that logic. He gave a grim chuckle, grasped his horse’s reins a little tighter, and started up the slope of the bridge, leading the animal behind him. The soles of his boots slipped a little on the snow that coated the rock, and he cautioned himself not to get impatient and rush things.

  You would think that somebody who had lived as long and done as many things as he had wouldn’t be all that upset about the prospect of dying, he mused. But every time his feet slid a little on the snow and his hand tightened on the horse’s reins, his heart pounded a little harder and he knew that more than anything else he wanted to see the sun come up in the morning, guaranteed or not. Life had never been perfect for him, far from it, in fact, but he wasn’t through with it yet.

  He reached the top of the bridge’s arch and started down the far side, being even more careful now. He began to be able to make out Scratch and Chloride at the other end. A moment later he was beside them, his pulse hammering in his head and his breath seemingly frozen in his throat. He forced himself to start breathing again and calm down.

  “This was the hard part, right?” Scratch asked the old-timer.

  “Actually, yeah, it was,” Chloride replied. “Until we get to Wolf Head Rock, that is. That’s liable to be even worse.”

  The three of them started making their way out of the valley, and as Chloride had said, the going wasn’t too difficult. A few minutes later, snow began to fall again. It wasn’t coming down very hard, but Bo was glad it waited until they had crossed that stone bridge, anyway.

  Chloride followed a narrow game trail that zigzagged up the mountainside and then curled around it. The snow-covered ground had a certain luminosity to it that allowed the three men to see where they were going despite the pitch-black skies. After what seemed like half the night, Chloride called a halt and said quietly, “We can’t take the horses no higher. We’ll have to leave ’em here. You’ll want a rope.”

  “Got one,” Scratch said as he unfastened his lasso from the saddle.

  They tied the reins to the trunk of a stubby pine beside the trail. Then Chloride started climbing a rock-studded and brush-littered slope that was steep enough to have all three men breathing hard after only a few minutes.

  “How’d you find this place?” Bo asked when they finally paused to rest.

  “I was followin’ a big horn sheep,” Chloride explained. “Got me the idea I wanted a set o’ them curly horns as a trophy. Don’t know why. It was a durned fool notion. And I never did get a good shot at the blasted thing, but after a while I come out on a ledge where the trail ended and realized I was up above Wolf Head Rock. Don’t know if anybody ever set foot up there besides the Injuns. Probably ain’t anywhere in these hills they ain’t been at one time or another.” Chloride bent over, rested his hands on his knees, and took several deep breaths. When he straightened, he went on. “You ready to go some more?”

  “Yeah,” Scratch said. “Let’s go.”

  They resumed their climb. In places it was so steep they had to reach out and give each other a hand. But in time they came to the ledge Chloride had mentioned. It was narrow, maybe ten feet deep and twice that long. The Texans pressed their backs against the cold rock wall and rested there, catching their breath again.

  “We’re gettin’ . . . a mite too old for this,” Scratch said in a whisper.

  “Yeah,” Bo agreed, “but I reckon it’s better than not living this long.”

  “Amen.”

  They took their hats off, stretched out on the snow-covered ledge, and bellied up to the edge so they could look over. Bo had already smelled smoke, so he wasn’t surprised when he saw a small fire built in a ring of rocks that had been stacked up to hide the flames. No one would be able to
see the fire from the main trail below. Bo and his companions had a bird’s-eye view from up here, though.

  The orange glow from the flames filtered out over the big, level area that formed the top of the so-called wolf’s head. Men moved around down there, talking quietly and drinking coffee from the pot sitting at the edge of the fire. The horses were off to the left, tied to a rope that was strung between two trees. Half a dozen pines bordered the open space on that side.

  Sue Beth Pendleton and Martha Sutton were sitting with their backs to two of those trees, huddled in their coats. Bo couldn’t tell if they were tied to the pines or if the outlaws had left them loose because there was no place for them to go if they tried to escape. The Devils were between the women and the narrow path that led down to the main trail.

  Scratch leaned his head close to Bo’s and whispered, “If we can get down there without them seein’ us, we can grab the gals, hustle ’em behind those trees, and throw down on the varmints. Maybe ventilate a couple of ’em before they even know what’s goin’ on.”

  “That’s the way I figure it, too,” Bo replied, his voice so quiet that only Scratch and Chloride could hear him. “That was a good guess you made about them being here, old-timer.”

  “Now don’t you start—” Chloride began. “Ah, never mind. You gonna shoot without givin’ ’em a chance to surrender?”

  “After all the things they’ve done, you really reckon we ought to worry about that?” Scratch asked.

  “I ain’t goin’ to. I was just askin’ if you were.”

  “We’re not officially deputized,” Bo pointed out, “so Sheriff Manning doesn’t need to know every little detail about what happens up here.”

  “That sounds good to me,” Chloride said. “I ain’t forgot how that big varmint carved those pitchforks on my friends. Don’t know if I ever will forget it.” The old-timer gave a little shake of his head, as if to get that image out of his thoughts. He pointed and went on. “You can see what I mean about the rock bulgin’ out a little. Ain’t no way to climb down.”

  “And even using the lasso, it’s going to be hard to get down there quietly,” Bo said. “We’re going to have to rig a loop under the arms of one of us, dally the rope around a rock, and let him down slow and easy.”