the Trail to Seven Pines (1972)

by L'amour, Louis - Hopalong 02

  Hopalong had reached the back of the hollow and was now near the corrals. The paint horse he had seen in the holdup was still there, and with it now were six other horses.

  There were no saddled horses in sight. If Clarry Jacks had intended to return to the outfit at Poker Gap, he had changed his mind or left his horse in the outer corral.

  The stone building was rectangular and two-storied, although the upper story had not been entirely repaired. Its back was close to the wall of the cliff itself, and the corrals were a short distance away.

  Scattered pines and firs completed the picture, and several of these were close around the house, three or four between it and the corral. The cliff wall, a part of the fault, was of sandstone, and projecting layers of it formed a partial roof over the house itself. Sliding carefully around the corral, Hopalong worked his way through the debris that lay between it and the wall. Here there were several niches, which his mind noted and filed away for future reference.

  The easiest way into the building appeared to be through a ruined corner on the second floor, but it left open the possibility that they would hear his footsteps below.

  Yet if this house was like many others, the intervening floor would be of stone, and he might be able to cross it without noise to warn those below.

  Clouds were rolling over the canyon now, and someone inside struck a light. He was about to move forward to the wall of the house when he saw the ears of the horses go up sharply. All of them were looking inquisitively toward the entrance, and Hopalong crouched quickly, his right hand on his gun, waiting.

  Movement showed suddenly, then vanished, and he knew someone from the outer canyon had slipped in. Someone who moved warily. He had no friends around of whom he knew, unless Ben Lock had found this place, which was improbable. The only alternative was an enemy, and one who knew he was here.

  The man before him was Duck Bale, gun in hand, coming around the wall, still some distance away but on Hopalong's very trail.

  Crouched at the corner of the corral, Hopalong considered his position anew. There was a chance he might be able to shoot his way out of the corner he was in and get away safely, yet it was not his nature to turn from a course once planned. At the same time, he did not wish to commit suicide.

  Long experienced in affairs of the gun, he knew full well that the best way is often straight ahead, and that was the course he chose now. He had planned to face the killer of Jesse Lock, and the man was inside this house. He was going in after him; then he would face things as they came.

  Leaving the corral in a quick dive, he reached the corner of the stone house. The space here between the house wall and the sandstone of the canyon was narrow, and the light was not in the back of the house. Pausing only an instant, he gathered himself, then jumped straight up and caught the roof edge in his fingers. He chinned himself, got an arm over the parapet, and then a leg. A moment later he lay flat on his back on the roof.

  Laramie had not seen this movement. Neither had Bale. Both men were looking around the corral. Behind Laramie a boot crunched and he whirled, gun in hand. Already it was nearly dark and he could just make out the face of Bale.

  "So where'd he go?"

  "Durned if I know! I sure saw him here, honest! Where could he go?"

  Hopalong had already answered that question by two quick steps into the upper room of the house. Here he paused, listening. Outside he could hear whispers of more than one man.

  Feeling his way along the wall of the windowless room, he came to a pile of rubble, evidently the remains of an earlier roof. Working around this, he heard a low mutter of voices and then saw a vague light from the floor.

  He moved nearer and found himself standing over a trap door, but no ladder descended into the darkness. Yet not far from the opening of the trap was a crack in the ceiling of another room below, and through this opening there now came both light and the sound of voices.

  Clarry Jacks was speaking. "Not out there?"

  "Duck must be nervous . . . seem' things."

  "Well, he knows of this place. He'll come eventually. He'll be looking for me."

  "Suppose Lock told him anything?" It was Laramie talking.

  "I doubt it. From where I was hid I could see them plain. Lock talked some, all right.

  I could hear his voice. After Hopalong had the fire goin' I could see them both, and then when light came, Hopalong took off and I knew I had to get down there fast."

  "Maybe Lock never saw anything?"

  "He saw something, all right. He got a good look at me when the lightning flashed, and he'd know me, mask or no mask."

  "You were lucky to run into Harper like you did."

  'Yeah. When I spotted them I swung around a hill so I could ride down on them from behind. They were hurryin' to catch Harrington then, and I told 'em I'd chased 'em all the way from town, which accounted for my horse being hard-ridden. Harper knew the tally all right, but Doc never suspected."

  Hopalong put his feet through the trap door and lowered himself full length. Then he dropped.

  "What was that?" Clarry demanded.

  "What?"

  "I thought I heard somethin'."

  Laramie rose. "Any way into this place but the door?"

  "None I can think of. There's a hole in the wall of that upper room. If a feller got on the roof-"

  Both men turned like cats. Hopalong Cassidy stood in the dark doorway to the inner room, elbows crooked, his big hands poised above the guns that had ended the career of many an outlaw or professed gunman.

  Jacks stared at the hard-boned face, the weather-beaten countenance and blazing eyes, and something turned over within him, something happened that he had never believed could happen to him. His courage seemed to ooze from him. Yet at the height of his terror a thought raft through him, cold and chilling.

  He had no choice.

  This man had come here hunting him. Despite their elaborate plans, he had come without warning. Jacks uttered a low cry and grabbed for his gun.

  Hopalong's crooked, waiting hands flickered, and then the blur ended with stabbing flame. Clarry Jacks, his gun lifting, felt a blow alongside the head and went down.

  Something else struck him in the side, knocking him to the floor. He hit hard, and his bullet buried itself in the ceiling.

  Laramie's gun leaped to his hand, and his first shot grooved the doorjamb where Hopalong stood, and again Cassidy's guns began to flame.

  Then suddenly the floor heaved, a wall rippled, and the ceiling caved. From outside there was a wild yell of fear, and wheeling, Hopalong leaped for the door. He lunged into the outer darkness, saw a weird flare of lightning, and beheld the serrated edge of the fault moving against the sky. Stone ground against jagged stone, with an awful sound that turned his bowels to weakness. Hopalong sprang for his remembered escape route.

  The next instant a rider charged through the rocking darkness and swung broadside to Hopalong, a gun lifted. Lightning flashed, and Hopalong saw the man was Lock.

  "Ben!" he yelled. "It's Cassidy! Get out of here! This fault may close up!"

  Lock urged his horse nearer. "Up!" he yelled. "Behind me!"

  Laramie charged into the open from the ruins and, seeing Hopalong springing to the horse behind Lock, skidded to a halt and swung up his gun. Ben Lock's long-barreled six-shooter dropped down, and the two guns blasted at almost the same instant. Laramie stepped back, turned half around, and fell full length to the hard-packed earth.

  Hopalong felt the powerful muscles of the mustang hunch beneath him, and then they were racing for the outlet of the fault. Another horseman loomed before them. "Hoppy?"

  The yell was from Shorty Montana.

  "Get out!" Cassidy yelled. "Ride, you souwegian!"

  The rain was coming down now in torrents, but the earthquake was not over, for after a brief respite it trembled again, and behind them stones cascaded into the fault, roaring long after they were beyond the mouth of the fault. Lightning crackled and rumbled among
the distant peaks, and looking for the finger of the granitic upthrust, Hopalong saw nothing. The horizon at that point was empty!

  "Swing around," he advised. "My horse is tied back up in the junipers."

  "Get Jacks?" Lock asked suddenly.

  "Think so. That quake busted things up. He was hit bad and went down just as Laramie opened on me."

  "I got that one-dead center."

  "It was Jacks who killed your brother."

  "I figured that. He or Pony Harper."

  "Harper was involved somehow-Jacks said something about it while I was hidin' out there in the house."

  "I got the feeling," Ben Lock replied, "that he was the one spotting the gold shipments, but I'm not sure."

  Hopalong found Topper dragging a picket rope and a branch of the manzanita to which he had been tied. Mounted, he turned toward the ranch. The others fell in beside him.

  "Never would have found that place if it hadn't been for you," Lock said suddenly.

  "I trailed Jacks away from Poker Gap, then lost him. I spotted your tracks, then lost them, but kept the general direction and picked up Jacks's trail again."

  Behind them, on the rubble-littered floor of the ruined house, a bloody man groaned, then tried to move. Only the fact that he had partly rolled under the table had saved him from the falling adobe blocks. A bloody furrow lay along his scalp above the ear, and he sat there, blood trickling down his face, staring, shocked and half blind, at the ruin about him, unknowing, uncaring. Lightning showed him the crumpled body of Laramie, and slow curses bubbled at his lips as he remembered the image of that crouched, black-clad man with guns that flamed their death into the room-a man he was going to kill.

  Sobbing, Jacks was trying to crawl when Duck Bale felt his way over the ruins. "Take it easy," Bale said. "We Bald Knobbers stick together. I'll get you out of this."

  Chapter 11

  Vengeful Outlaw.

  It was Tex Milligan who first saw John Gore. He saw him when he was several miles off and kept watch on the lone rider, suspecting at first that it might be Cassidy or Shorty Montana. When he did see who it was, he almost broke a leg getting down the mountain to where Frenchy and Kid Newton were loafing outside the bunkhouse.

  Bob Ronson had come from the house at first sign of his descent, and with him were Dr. Marsh and the Ronson sisters.

  Before Milligan could burst out with his story, Ronson was alongside him. "Who is it, Tex? What's happened?"

  "Gore!" Tex gasped, when he could catch a breath. "John Gore headin' this way. Be here in a couple of minutes. He's ridin' a spent cayuse, and with my glass he looks sore as a boiled owl!"

  "He may want peace talk," Ronson said. "If he does, we'll dicker with him." He glanced around the circle of his riders and added quietly, "I'll do the talking."

  "Boss," Newton objected, "he may be huntin' trouble. Maybe huntin' me. Let me have him."

  "Or me," Ruyters said quietly. "The Kid's had his share of the Gore outfit. I want mine."

  "No." Bob Ronson's voice was clear with authority. "I'll handle this, and handle it my way."

  The rage of John Gore had now become a cold fire that blazed through every muscle of him. What had happened he had no idea, and strangely, he did not care. Later, when he had calmed down and with time to think, he would have cared, but now he was too filled with a burning lust to vent his fury on someone, something. He had been woefully outgeneraled, and by circumstances, not by men. His trip to Corn Patch had isolated him from the fight when he was most needed; he had been set afoot, trapped in an isolated mountain village with only two dead men for company.

  What had happened to his men, he did not know. The deserted ranch, empty of supplies, ammunition, and horses, portended the worst. Certainly, from the look of things, Rocking R men had been on his ranch. Where his men now were, or if any were alive, he did not know. Had he seen them at that moment his fury would have driven him insane, for they were walking, plodding wearily on blistered feet, in boots never made for walking, across the seemingly endless miles of an alkali flat. For all their use to the fight now under way, they might have been on another planet.

  John Gore's eyes were red-rimmed from the blazing sun, his face grim under the film of dust, his lips tight with the tenseness of his rage as he rode down the trail and into the yard of the Rocking R.

  He had expected to find a deserted ranch and only the horses and perhaps the Ronsons.

  For Bob Ronson he had only contempt, and for the women only irritation and the hope they would keep out of his way. What he found instead was a small circle of men waiting for him. Frenchy, Tex, Kid Newton-and in the door of the bunkhouse now, Joe Hartley.

  A few feet away stood another group, the two girls and Doc Marsh. Straight before him was Bob Ronson, who now took a step forward.

  "How are you, John?" Ronson spoke clearly. "Get down. I suppose you've come to talk peace."

  The word was a red rag to a bull. "Peace!" The fury within him turned his voice hoarse.

  "I'll peace you, you idiot!"

  Ronson was unmoved. He stood quietly, his face white but composed. Frenchy, the oldest hand here, touched his tongue to his lips. Bob Ronson had never faced a situation like this before. Secretly, Frenchy had always been afraid that he would not measure up. More than anything in the world he wanted now to step forward and take this fight off the hands of his boss, but he knew the fierce pride of the young man, knew how much he would resent it. Knowing the others had a like feeling, he whispered, "Stay back. It's his fight."

  Ronson said calmly, "Gore, don't be a fool. As we've said before, there is range enough for both of us here. All you have to do is stay on your side of the Blues and not figure because Dad is dead that you can ride roughshod over this range.

  "You have no alternative to peace. Your men are out in the desert afoot and pretty badly off from hunger and thirst by now. You have no horses at your ranch nor at any of your stations. Cassidy has seen to that. Harris, with whom you apparently tried to do business, is dead. Within a matter of hours we'll burn Corn Patch to the ground.

  "This is an ultimatum. You can make peace now and sign an agreement to remain on your side of the mountains, or we'll ride on the 3 G and burn it to the ground. Then we'll herd your riders, still afoot, out of the country, and you with them!"

  Frenchy could scarcely restrain his elation. Cattle Bob in his palmiest days could not have laid it on the line so simply and directly. Frenchy was grinning despite himself, and despite the tightness of the situation.

  Gore slid from his horse, so hurried that he staggered when he reached the ground, and then he turned. "I'll see you in hell first!" he roared.

  "Sorry, John." Ronson was still cool. "If that's the way you want it."

  John Gore was beyond reason. He had never known defeat, and there was nothing in his makeup that would accept it. He knew now only one thing, a red rage and lust to kill. He growled and his hand whipped down for his gun.

  To Frenchy that scene moved with the slow pace of a death march. He saw John Gore's flashing draw, not a fast draw as such things go, but much faster than that of Bob Ronson. He saw the rancher's gun come up, heard the hard sharpness of the report, and incredibly Bob Ronson still stood there!

  Ronson was lifting his pistol and taking aim at shoulder height, standing sideways as though on a target range. Gore shot again and again. And then Bob Ronson fired.

  John Gore's knees buckled and slowly he sank to the ground. From his knees he went over on his face, stretching out on the ground, and there was not a man there but knew he was dead. Slowly, white as death itself, Ronson lowered his pistol.

  "Frenchy," he said quietly, "you and the boys put his body in the barn for now. If he is not claimed by some of his own crowd by nightfall, we'll bury him in the morning." He turned then. "Doc, you'd better get your kit. I think I've been shot."

  It was pouring rain when Hopalong Cassidy and Shorty Montana rode into the street of Seven Pines. Both men were hungry and bad
ly whipped by the hours of riding. Leaving their horses in the livery stable, they pushed on up the street, their heads buried in their slicker collars, hat brims pulled low. Be hind them rode Ben Lock. He had fallen slightly behind the others, and his face was grim.(

  "This durned country!" Montana said bitterly. "If she ain't burnin' up with heat, she's drownin' in rain!"

  "Let it rain!" Hopalong said. "I'm for a bunk and some blankets. Another few miles and that horse's backbone would have wore clean through to my shirt pockets!"

  "What do we do about Harper?" Shorty asked, Hopalong having informed him as to the contents of Thacker's wallet.

  "That will wait. We get the Rockin' R trouble off our hands first."

  They shook off their dusters and hats on the hotel porch. Inside the dimly lit lobby they paused a moment. A sleepy clerk stuck his head out of his door and glared at them. "Number ten. Pick up the key in the pigeonhole and don't bother me!"

  He drew back inside his door but did not return to bed. Instead, he stood thinking for a minute, and then quickly drew on his pants and hurried down the hall to Pony Harper's room.

  Harper had been in bed for an hour and was still not asleep. Too many things were happening and there was too little news. He heard the gentle tap on his door and reared up in bed. He reached first for the pistol under his pillow and then listened.

  The tap came again. "Who is it?" He spoke in a low tone to be heard only just beyond the door.

  "Me-Jerry! Got news for you!"

  Harper rolled from bed in his flannel nightshirt and opened the door. Jerry came in and closed it quickly behind him. "Figured you'd want to know. Hopalong Cassidy's in town! He and Shorty Montana! Blew in about five minutes ago, and I put 'em in number ten."

  "Cassidy? He say anythin? Any news?"

  "Not a word. Both of 'em looked plumb beat, but they sure aren't hurt."

  "All right, go to bed. Circulate around in the morning and let me know if you can find out what's been happening."

  By morning news had drifted in, as news will. John Gore was dead, killed by, of all people, Bob Ronson! The Gore riders had been trapped, their horses driven off, and they were wandering afoot somewhere in the alkali basin between Willow Springs and the 3 G Ranch. And then, almost an hour later, two men rode into town.