Outcasts of Picture Rocks

by Cherry Wilson

  “You see,” Zion was saying, “you needn’t be afraid for me. I can ride away from anything.”

  Away from anything? Little he realized that there were honest men who would band against a Jore, run him down, kill him, for his misconceived ideas of life out there. A stillness crept into the day like the stillness of death. And through it there pierced a girl’s voice, sharp with dread: I’m afraid … there’s things in his blood!

  “No!” René cried harshly. “You can’t go! I won’t let you! I won’t be responsible for you!”

  His words seemed to hang in the stillness, to ring in his ears as he looked down the valley, because he dared not look at Zion. Expecting some outburst, argument, or reproach, and, hearing nothing, he feared he had hurt Zion too deeply for speech. But, forcing his eyes to look at him, he saw to his intense amazement and relief that the young fellow was unaffected by this ultimatum. Other thoughts seemed to engross him. Accustomed now to his changing moods, René believed he had changed his mind about going.

  In terror lest he revert to it, he leaped up. “We’d best be getting back,” he said gently. “They’ll be wonderin’ about me.” René had to repeat it. “We’d best be gettin’ back.”

  It was as if Zion had gone a long, long way from him and was reluctant to return. Even when René’s voice reached him, he stood a moment, eyes full of dreams, fingers twisting the stallion’s golden mane. Then: “You go on,” he pleaded, his gaze dropping. “I’m goin’ to run … on Black Wing. I’ve held it in all I can.”

  In a flash he was on the stallion and gone—down the slope before him and over the slope beyond; gone like an avenging demon; gone from sight before René, enthralled by Black Wing’s running, realized that he wouldn’t be seeing him again; that he had let Zion go without saying good-bye to him. Then he called: “Zion! Zion!”

  But Zion didn’t hear him. With a new ache in his heart, René went down to where his cayuse waited beside the black, that must often have waited for Zion like this. Mounting with ominous weariness, he rode back to face the Jores and be cast out of the Picture Rocks.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  OUT OF THE WALLS

  All the rough miles back, René rode hard, pursued by the fear that Zion would change his mind and follow. A hundred times he looked behind, half-expecting to see Zion and Black Wing racing after him. He resolved to leave the basin the instant he got back, whether the Jores were ready to send him or not.

  But, loping through the trees on the lake trail, he saw that they were. A horse was tied to the railing before his cabin, the packhorse Race had supplied him with. His pack was in place, loaded just as heavily as when he’d left Big Sandy, not one article removed. As he got down, too disturbed by the meaning of this to take any notice of Capitán, joyfully springing upon him, Abel Jore rose from the step. He was no more hostile than he had been, but the iron rims were not more rigid.

  “Rand …” he began. With a smile that cost him more than any smile in his whole life before, René anticipated him, suggesting: “Here’s my hat and what’s my hurry? Is that what you mean?”

  The outlaw nodded curtly. But something in the young fellow’s face, as white and hopeless, as full of pain and strain as when he’d first seen him upheld in Zion’s arms, must have touched him. For he yielded a bit.

  “At that,” he said gruffly, “you’re lucky. There was votes cast to keep you here permanent. Savvy? But we decided you’d done no damage yet.” After a pause, with still more gruffness, he went on: “Us Jores can’t do as we’d like always. It’s dog eat dog with us. And some things go ag’in’ the grain, so … adios!”

  “Thanks!” Somehow there was a painful thickness in René’s throat. And the little cabin that had been home for three weeks—more nearly home than any place on earth had been—blurred in his sight. So did the painted figures on the old bluff across the lake, although smiling yet, as if they knew he was a Jore at heart. But when he looked toward the big house, praying for one last glimpse of Eden, for a chance to say one word of thanks to the sad-eyed woman who had been a mother to him, everything ran together.

  “There’ll be no good-byes,” said Abel Jore.

  Nevertheless, René bent to say good-bye to the big hound that had been so faithful to him. Then, groping for the lead rope, he swung up on his cayuse and rode off, spared, in his total blindness, the sight of Shang Haman, posted at the corral to gloat over his departure.

  When he rode through the soaring corridor of Sentry Crags, his vision had cleared. High in the spires, he made out the lone figure of the sentinel. It was Yance. René waved to him, but got no response.

  So he rode again under the frowning rims, under the murmuring pines that locked green arms above him, and down the Picture Rocks trail, up which he had toiled a few short weeks before; down over the golden foothills, over the flat sage wastes—gray now as ash, their purple glory gone—wondering how this had ever seemed beautiful to him. It was drab, desolate, after the basin, as he thought any place must be, compared to heaven. He thought of the shape he had been in then, and by contrast felt strong—strong enough to turn about and fight back to Eden. But he couldn’t do that yet. Not until he was a man—his own man—again. And far, far off that day seemed.

  Black depression sat heavy on him when, late that afternoon, he wound between the straggling valley ranches, with Big Sandy looming beyond. For Race was there, under that red-tiled roof of Trail’s End; Race, who would raise the roof at his failure to stay in the Picture Rocks, to hold the confidence of the Jores. Race wouldn’t be discouraged by this. He’d figure out some new scheme to get the horse. And René would have to do just what Race asked.

  “But,” he vowed through set lips, “it will be in the open. I’m done coyotin’ around. After all is said and done, a man owes himself something.”

  Having vowed this, he felt better, and dared to dream of Eden, to hope that whatever he had to do for Race would be forgiven.

  “Because”—he clung fast to this—“I done what she asked. I kept Zion in the basin.”

  He didn’t ride straight into town but stopped a mile short of it, where the road bridged. Placer Creek. There, where the willows were dense on the creek bank, he made camp. Never, until he was finally well, would he confine himself within walls again. Stripping the burden from his packhorse, he staked him out and spread his blanket roll in a secluded spot. It would be dark when he got back. Already the sun had set. Shadows filled the low places.

  When he rode out on the highway and pulled up to look back at the great cup against the sky, he saw it, red in the sunset’s afterglow, the bright red of life’s own tide. Red that seemed to well up from within, clear to the rims, and splash over them, gleaming up there in the whole world’s sight as if the very heavens had turned a searchlight on the Picture Rocks.

  Sick with a presage of he knew not what, René rode on to seek Race at Trail’s End.

  He was far too weary, too absorbed in his own problem, to note the unwonted activity in Big Sandy, but, getting down before Trail’s End, it did occur to him that the hotel was doing a rushing business. The street before it was filled with saddled horses. The wide veranda was jammed with men—a rough-looking lot who broke off in their low-toned talk to stare hard as he milled among them, seeking Race. Failing to find him out there, he went inside to inquire of the grizzled old-timer who was standing behind the desk.

  “Race Coulter?” Dad Peppin repeated the name with frank disfavor. “He’s out. Nope, can’t say when he’ll get back. He’s onsartin in his movements. Here today and gone tomorrow. Oh sure, he’s still stoppin’ here. You can leave a message. I’ll see he gets it, when he does come in.”

  René hesitated. He might write a note. Let Race know the worst and cool off before they met. But no. What he had to say wasn’t safely written.

  “If you’ll just tell him I’m down at the bridge camp.”

  “Who’l
l I say?”

  “René Rand.”

  “Stranger here?” Dad’s old eyes took frank appraisal.

  “In town, yeah,” smiled René.

  “Thought so.” Dad warmed to him strangely. “Though faces slip me. But”—with a black glance toward the veranda, from whence came a low-pitched hum, sinister as the rasp of hemp through a hangman’s knot—“there’s a heap of faces I won’t fergit. I’m makin’ it my business to …” Suddenly breaking off, he seized René’s arm, peering close into his face. “Didn’t come with them, did you?”

  Wild to get away, René replied: “No.”

  Dad nodded sagely. “Thought that, too. You wouldn’t have no truck with them, a fine, clean young man like you.” He glanced back at the veranda, his eyes lit with a fierce glare. “Buzzards! That’s what they are. Buzzards that’s flew in from all parts to feast here. Let ’em flock on my porch so the boys could look ’em over. Plague take ’em! We don’t aim to fergit none of them!”

  Swiftly, his passion subsided, and, as if the mere harboring of it had wearied him, he dropped René’s arm, sighing. “Waal, drop in ag’in, son. If I can find anything fer you, just holler. Allus glad to help a stranger.”

  Little dreaming how soon, how desperately, he would need Dad Peppin’s help, René thanked him and rode back to camp through the gathering twilight. There, after a meal of canned beans, bacon, and coffee, he sat by the fire, waiting for Race in growing uneasiness, as if the tension in town was being communicated to him at last. Nervously, he jerked up as every horse crossed the bridge, and scores of them did. But they all went by. Finally, giving up hope of Race’s coming that night, he turned in.

  * * * * *

  So exhausted that he slept long after daylight, he slowly opened his eyes to find the sun high in the willows, a bird chorus going strong to the creek’s sweet accompaniment, and someone sitting beside him.

  Zion had followed him, and there he was, cross-legged in the grass, a big rifle on his knees, laughing at René’s consternation, forestalling his objections. “You didn’t bring me. I come myself, see?”

  As he lay there, speechless with horror to see Zion here, the young fellow sprang up. “Gee!” he cried rapturously, throwing out his arms as if to embrace the earth, but in despair of it hugging himself. “Gee, it’s like I just been born. It’s like I been dead all along and just come alive this mornin’. We run and run, and there wasn’t a thing to stop us. We’d be goin’ yet, but we seen your cayuses. Nothin’s goin’ to stop us again.”

  We? Us? In twice his first horror, René gasped: “You brought Black Wing?”

  “Sure thing.”

  All excitement, Zion lifted the green boughs behind, revealing the stallion, glistening in the morning sunshine, as vibrant with the zest of life as Zion. “You didn’t think I’d leave him behind?”

  René had no thought yet beyond the terrible fact that Zion Jore and Black Wing were here.

  “You think I’d let you get away without sayin’ good-bye, if I didn’t know I’d be seein’ you again?” Zion came back to him, chuckling. “I was laughin’ up my sleeve all the time. I had it all made up in my mind. You know where me and Black Wing run? Straight to the crags! I hid him up there. I knowed I’d be on watch last night. And when Shang came up to take my place at daylight, I slipped out. They won’t miss me till night, anyway. They’re workin’ in the hills … Uncle Abel an’ Yance, I mean.”

  “What at, Zion?” René could think of no work that would take the Jores in those wild hills.

  “I don’t know. But they’ll be gone all day. I heard ’em tell Shang. Shang don’t know what they’re doin’, either … for he asked me.” Swiftly, then, his face changed, its joy consumed by the fires of old wrongs, and he stated passionately: “They don’t trust me. They’ll wish they had someday. They don’t think I know much. Someday they’ll see!”

  Whipped to his feet by that, René said: “Zion, you can’t stay here. You must go back.”

  “I’d die first!” He was wholly mutinous.

  “But your mother … and Eden.”

  This had some effect on Zion. His expression softened. “Oh, I’ll go to see them. Not soon, though. Not for a long time. Someday when …”

  Planks drummed to a wild gallop. Whirling about, René saw a rider on the bridge, saw with horror that it was Race Coulter. Race was coming here, and Black Wing so near.

  Quick as thought, he seized Zion by the arms. “It’s that man,” he panted. “That man you let in. Hide! Get Black Wing out of sight. And keep him quiet … as you’re my partner.”

  In a flash Zion snatched up the big gun and slipped into the brush where the stallion was hidden. As the screening green dropped into place, René stepped out to meet Race.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “I’M ZION JORE!”

  René had expected Race would be furious at his leaving the Picture Rocks, and was prepared for it, in fact, but not for the frenzy in which Race was pulling up. Yet the terror that filled the young man’s heart was not of Race’s wrath, but lest Race see Black Wing; lest Race sense his nearness and some instinct tell him he could almost reach out his hand and touch the horse he had coveted so long; lest Race hear the rustle of leaves, the snap of twigs, that broke on his ears like cannon shots.

  But Race’s ears, trained to catch the vaguest sounds, were filled with his own raving. “What are you doin’ here?” he foamed at the white-faced young man he had brought West. “I sent you up there to watch that stallion! Why ain’t you on the job?”

  Striving to keep his gaze on that heated face, René said steadily: “They run me out. They learned that you staked me.”

  So that was it. Sulfurously, Race cursed his luck. It was, he informed the green grove and its environs, a pretty kettle of fish. “I hang around here for weeks, and nothin’ happens. But I drift over to solitaire one night to break the monotony and ride home to find you back and a posse pullin’ out to raid the basin!”

  “A posse?” René almost forgot Black Wing.

  “Thirty of the toughest hombres I ever laid eyes on. Outsiders. Dolan couldn’t rustle men in Big Sandy. The town’s sidin’ with the Jores. So he called in all the ragtag and bobtail of the country, picked out thirty-some, and is holdin’ ’em.”

  The buzzards I saw at Trail’s End, thought René.

  “They’re fixin’ to start this minute!” Race fumed. “Luke Chartres is on deck with a raft of his Val Verde cowboys. All set to round up that horse, when the posse breaks into the Picture Rocks. Say something! Don’t stand there stargazin’!”

  It wasn’t stars René was seeing, but those mighty rims, the two small rifts in them, and the intrepid sentries with their fast guns. He said, with a conviction that cut through Race’s jealous passion: “They won’t get in.”

  “Are you sure?” Greedily, Race snatched at that. “You ought to know. You’ve been up there. Are you sure?”

  “As I’m standin’ here,” vowed René.

  “Do you know who sold the Jores out? Who Chartres was workin’ with?”

  “Who, Race?”

  “Shang Haman.”

  René had no sense of shock. It seemed as if he had always known it. He recalled Shang’s alarm when he told the Jores someone was telling the sheriff about the pass, his hurried trip that night.

  Oh, Race had been busy. “Shang rode down night before last and told Chartres to have men ready.”

  Then Shang hadn’t made that trip just to get something on him, but to hurry things up.

  “And this mornin’ he rides back to lead the posse to the Picture Rocks.”

  Shang had been in Big Sandy when he was supposed to be on watch, when he knew the Jores were in the hills and would be all day. Then—and René’s brain reeled with this—there was no guard at Sentry Crags! Instantly, the whole devilish scheme flashed to him. Shang had sold out to
Chartres, intending, first, to lead the posse through the secret pass. Now he was seizing this unexpected opportunity, when there wasn’t a Jore within miles, to take the posse straight through Sentry Crags.

  “René,” cried Race again, seeing his agitation, “are you sure, now you know it’s Shang? Would he be takin’ a posse up, if he knew it couldn’t get in?”

  Fired by a plan to defeat Shang Haman, thrilling to the memory of a horse’s running, of a rider like an avenging demon, René assured: “They won’t get in.”

  Race seemed to slip a mighty weight. “Kid”—he was hoarse in his relief—“it’s worth a million to hear you say that. I’ve been scared stiff Luke Chartres had me beat to that stallion. But now … well, let ’em go, if you’re sure the Jores can handle ’em. Mebbe they’ll kill each other off someday and leave a free path to …”

  Down the road from town thundered many horsemen!

  “The posse!” Race yanked his horse around. “Reckon I’ll trail along and see the fun.”

  He started off. René’s eyes sought the brush. But Race pulled up.

  “See you here after the battle, old son, and we’ll figure out something. Rest up all you can. You don’t look like it’s done you much good to come West. You look like a ghost. Save your strength. I’m goin’ to need it.”

  With this characteristic charge, he spurred out to join the posse, now thundering over the bridge. At its head, glittery-eyed as the snake he was, galloped Shang Haman. On his left, a stern, determined man, with a gray forelock and black mustache—Pat Dolan, the sheriff whose ambitions rose above the star on his breast, who was out to take the Jores, dead or alive, that he might use them as stepping stones to higher office. On Shang’s right there rode a noticeably fine-looking man in a white Stetson, Luke Chartres, bent on retrieving a horse at the cost of life and freedom to the Jores.