by Lauran Paine
He knew Marianne had also heard that eerie cry and bleakly smiled to himself at his imagined view of her face about now—white as a sheet, where she stood with their nervous horses, alone except for the loaded six-gun.
Silence resettled after the panther’s scream, seeming deeper than before, as though every forest dweller was now rigid, waiting and intently listening. The big cat was the enemy of every high-country creature except the bear. He was the most dreaded killer of them all.
That scream had brought the unseen man within his log shelter to life. Duncan heard him in there. He got low behind a deadfall with Marianne’s carbine, waiting. Range men, hearing a panther cry close by in the night, went forth at once to see after their livestock, fully armed.
Duncan waited. Time ran on. The man in the old cabin did not emerge, and gradually Duncan relaxed. Perhaps young Parton’s shoulder was troubling him. It had been an arduous climb even for Duncan who had no serious injury. For a man with a shoulder wound it would have been both difficult and painful.
Duncan wished the cougar would scream again, but it never did. He speculated on the best way to cross to the cabin and concluded that the only feasible way would be to belly-crawl forward following out the tallest grassy growth. But, should young Parton be watching, he could not avoid seeing Duncan’s progress because the only moving thing in sight would be quivering grass stands.
Short of a direct charge across the starlit meadow, there was no other way. Duncan balanced this decision and held off making it, at least until he saw how approaching dawn was bringing a steely brightness to this lonely world. Then he decided to make the run, not to prolong the anxiety by stalking the cabin.
He was rising up from behind the deadfall, when from the corner of his eye he sighted blurred movement off on his right. He instantly dropped down again, whipped the Winchester around, and held his breath.
It was Marianne. She came along without making a sound. He let her get within ten feet before speaking. It took that long for the anger in him to diminish a little.
“Here,” he whispered, when she was close enough to hear. “Here, behind this deadfall. What in the hell possessed you? I explicitly told you to stay with our horses. What’re you trying to do ... let the entire world know where we are?”
She got down close to him, swung her face so that soft star shine touched down upon it, and whispered vehemently: “I doubt if the entire world is interested. If you’ll just shut up for a minute, I’ll tell you why I left the horses ... you didn’t think I’d do that because I got lonely, did you?”
“I ... ”
“Because if you did, Todd Duncan, let me tell you something ... I’d rather be friendly with that mountain lion than with you, or with anyone like you.”
“Did you slip over here to tell me that? It could’ve ... ”
“I slipped over here ... if you’ll be quiet long enough to let me get a word in ... to tell you there are riders coming up our back trail.”
Duncan stared.
“I thought I heard them about twenty minutes ago. Then, just before I came over here, I distinctly heard shod horses splash across that little white-water creek a mile or so back. Now, are you satisfied?”
Duncan pursed his lips, raised up to put a thoughtful look out over the ghostly meadow, and swung his face with a gathering frown, back to the onward cabin.
“Berryhill and Thorne,” he muttered, bringing his head back down where he could look levelly at Marianne. “Sure as the devil. How many horses?”
“At least three and perhaps six or seven. I couldn’t tell.”
“Berryhill, Thorne, and a damned posse from Leesville.”
“Probably. What do we do now? They’ll be into the meadow in another twenty minutes.” She was watching Duncan’s face intently.
“We get inside that blasted cabin, get Parton, and hand him over to the law. That’s what we do.”
“How?” she asked, swinging to look across the open intervening meadow.
“Like this,” Duncan said, fiercely pushing back upright and hefting the carbine, balancing there, making his hard decision, and putting his full attention upon the rotting old cabin. “You cover me. If he shoots, shoot back ... but be careful. I don’t cherish the notion of stopping one from behind as well as in front.”
“Todd, don’t be foolish. Wait for Sheriff Berryhill.”
“Who’s being foolish? I can’t wait. Suppose young Parton lies about me like his father did?”
“How could he? After all, you’re not ... ”
“Never mind the wherefores, Marianne,” broke in Duncan. “Just give me cover fire if he opens up.”
She parted her lips to cry out to him, then checked herself as he sprang over the deadfall and sprinted out through the final tree fringe to the meadow beyond, picked up speed as he ran on, twisting first in one direction, then in another direction.
The distance was not excessive but it seemed to Marianne to be limitless. She drew the six-gun, cocked it, and kneeled across the old deadfall, watching him cover that eerily lit broad expanse. She could even hear his footfalls, the swish of tall grass against his trouser legs, and the little tinkling sound of the carbine’s saddle ring.
Then he was against the cabin’s front wall, shoulders flat against the logs, Winchester steady in both hands, waiting.
It was an interminable wait to Marianne, but actually Duncan, pressed as he was for time, did not linger very long waiting for the shot that never came. He stepped close, lifted one booted foot, and violently kicked the sagging old door. It went inward with a grinding sound, broke off one hinge, and quivered.
From inside came a man’s sharp gasp.
“Drop it!” Duncan barked around the doorjamb. “Toss it out here, Parton ... and be damned quick about it!”
Instead of a gun sailing through the door, a man’s agitated voice said: “This ain’t Parton ... whoever he is. This here is Ace Hopkins of the Flyin’ L outfit, and whoever you are out there, I don’t have no gun, so come on in and cut these damned ropes off me.”
Duncan stood there dumbfounded. That voice had a ring of irate truthfulness to it. He pushed his Winchester around, waited, then followed the gun barrel in.
The smell of this old cabin was as rank with moldiness as that underground, abandoned room beneath Leesville’s jailhouse was. It was dark, too, not as dark as was that other place, but dark enough for Duncan not to catch sight of the bound man upon the earthen floor until he writhed and cursed.
Duncan went close, dropped down, and looked into this stranger’s face. He flicked back the man’s jacket to stare at his uninjured right shoulder. Finally, with the wrathful cowboy swearing, he cut him loose where someone had securely bound the man with his own lariat.
“Who’re you?” the cowboy asked, sitting up, making a wry face and beginning to rub his wrists. “What the hell’s goin’ on around here tonight, anyway? I been puttin’ up at this line camp for five years, and tonight I’ve run into more folks in this meadow than I ever have in all those other five years put together.”
The cowboy suddenly stopped exercising his wrists. He looked past Duncan and his mouth fell open. Duncan twisted, saw Marianne step inside, and swung back to continue casting off the sliced ropes.
“A girl,” the rider said, almost reverently. “Now, by golly, I’ve seen everythin’.”
Duncan pulled the man to his feet and steadied him. “You just think you’ve seen everything,” he muttered. “What happened to you?”
“I don’t know exactly. I was fixin’ to make a little supper, when out of nowhere comes this tall, lanky fellow with his six-gun on me. He made me finish cookin’. He ate like a horse, then he made me lie down, and he tied me with my own blamed rope.”
“Did he have a hurt shoulder?”
The cowboy looked over at Duncan. “He sure did. He’d been shot. I lay
there on the floor, watchin’ him tear up my only clean shirt, makin’ a bandage. It wasn’t a real bad wound, but it seemed to trouble him some. Looked to me, in the poor light, to be maybe three, four weeks old.”
“Is that his horse outside?”
“I reckon it is, mister. At least he told me he was goin’ to trade critters with me, because mine was fresh and his wasn’t.”
“He didn’t happen to mention his name, did he?”
“No. He took my shell belt, my six-gun, my horse, and lit out.”
“How long was he here?”
The cowboy shrugged. “Couple hours maybe. Maybe a little more. I didn’t pay much attention to the time. I was too blamed surprised at what was going on. Tell me, mister, was he some fellow on the dodge?”
“Yeah, he shot the expressman down at Leesville a few days back.”
“No,” said the cowboy, his eyes getting round. “Then I expect I was lucky.”
“Very lucky. Which way did he ride out, do you know?”
“I didn’t see him leave, but I can tell you this, mister, there’s only two ways in and two ways out. If you come up the trail by that fry-pan lake and didn’t meet him, then he had to go out over the rimrocks.”
Duncan stood there. lost in thought for a moment. He swung toward Marianne saying: “You know the rimrock trail?” When she nodded, he added: “Then let’s get moving.”
As the pair of them crossed over to the door, the Flying L rider said: “Hey, what’s the hurry? I got plenty of grub. We can eat, then I’ll go with you.”
“No time,” Duncan said, pausing upon the rotting little porch to listen to the southward run of country. “There’ll be a posse along here within the next few minutes. Cook up some breakfast for them.”
He and Marianne left, not bothering to skirt back around through the trees now, but making directly across the faintly lit meadow to their horses. As they were untying their horses, Duncan caught the quick sharp sound of a shod hoof striking stone. Marianne heard it, also. They exchanged a look, swung up, and reined off deeper into the trees, heading west now, with Marianne taking the lead.
For a while the land gently lifted toward a hanging bench where manzanita stood as thick as iron railings and just about as penetrable. They found a buck run that was scarcely wide enough for their passage, pushed their way through it to more open country beyond, and halted upon that shadowy hillside to glance back.
Horsemen were passing directly over the big meadow heading for the line-camp cabin. They looked small down there and slow-moving. Dawn was abroad elsewhere, but in this mountainous world only the steely hint of its approach lay outward and downward, drenching the world in a gunmetal color that was becoming gradually diluted to a watery, lusterless gray that tolerated no shadows. In some places a nighttime darkness still lingered, lying darkly like heavy smoke, obscuring those hard stone cañons and bleak drop-offs.
Duncan counted six horsemen in the posse. He could not see any of the men well enough to recognize them, but it occurred to him that Berryhill and Thorne probably had those same four men with them as a nucleus they’d had when they’d taken Duncan the first time. He turned his horse, thinking bitterly that they’d never get him again as easily as they had at the cottonwood spring.
“Lead out,” he said to Marianne. “Where would he go now, with extra guns, plenty of ammunition, and a fresh horse?”
“There is only one way he can go. At least for the next three miles. After that, with any kind of luck, we ought to be able to either track him or see him. We’ll stay to the rimrocks.”
“Fine,” Duncan said, taking up his reins.
But Marianne did not rein out. She said: “Give me one good reason why you won’t let Berryhill help us in this?”
“Sure,” he said tartly. “One good reason is that, if Berryhill and Thorne get me again, they’ll send me back.”
“But they’ll know the minute that Flying L cowboy tells them what happened to him, that Parton’s son is the one they want.”
“That won’t prevent them from sending me back until they get this thing ironed out.”
“What difference does that make, Todd? Sheriff Berryhill will do the chasing and we won’t have to.”
Duncan put a wry look across at Marianne. “Listen, young lady, it’s me that dang’ near got lynched down there. It’s me that’s been jailed and cussed at and worried to a frazzle. Therefore it’s going to be me who’s in at the end of this chase. If Berryhill and Thorne want to be in on it, too, that’s their affair. But by golly, I’ve had about all the roughing up a man has to take before he starts fighting back. Now either lead out or get out of the trail.”
Marianne turned, eased her mount out, and didn’t say another word. She rocketed along where the land sharply lifted, turned abruptly east, and, with Duncan following grimly, the pair of them passed beyond sight of the meadow below.
Chapter Thirteen
They were paralleling that abrupt stone precipice that faced the hidden meadow to the south, curving out around it so neither they, nor the meadow below and behind them, were visible. Their trail was another of those buck runs, but here they encountered enough bear sign to warn them they were in a primitive area where few people ventured and where the mighty black and brown bears of the uplands reigned.
Marianne rode along with the confidence and ease of a person acquainted with this country, and Duncan marveled that she would ever have been up in here. It was neither an easy place to reach nor one that would appeal to most women.
When they began bending on around behind that stony mountainside, coming upon the broader, grassier spine of it, they again encountered immense stands of first-growth pines, and the silence was cathedral-like.
Duncan alternately watched the land ahead and the trail underfoot. It was clear that a horse had been ridden along here not long before. He felt that as long as young Parton did not leave the trail, they would have no difficulty tracking him down. It did not occur to him for some time in this kind of riding that Parton might be have stopped upon some stony headland to watch his back trail. But when he did think this might be so, he put Marianne behind him and took the lead, watching each promontory ahead of them with particular care.
Riding like this, they encountered some belled cattle. The way these animals acted convinced Duncan the man he was after had also ridden through here. They did not turn tail and run as cattle ordinarily did after seeing their first humans after months of being alone in the highlands. Instead, they threw up their heads and stood watching, motionlessly.
Marianne came up to Duncan as they began descending toward a far mountainside with a waterfall silvering its bony side. There was another of those secret parks between them and the waterfall. From their descending height they could see down into that meadow.
“That’s an old Indian campground down there,” she told Duncan. “And along the base of that cliff, where the waterfall is, there are some caves. If Parton took his time, he might have found one of them.”
Duncan considered what Marianne had said. As long as young Parton had no idea that he was being this closely pursued, and with the discomfort of his wound, he might very well have decided to rest in that park. Duncan halted while they were still halfway down off the hillside, in among a ragged and gloomy stand of old trees, to survey the meadow, seeking to find a horse down there. He saw several deer and two stag elks but no horse.
He raised his gaze to include the rugged onward escarpments, and Marianne, reading his mind, said: “Those high peaks are the top out. From there he’d be descending the far side toward the plains beyond. If he didn’t stop, then within another few hours he’ll be over the top and probably out of our reach.”
Duncan turned. “Why out of our reach?”
Marianne shrugged. “If he can make the plains, he’ll walk away from us on that fresh horse. Our animals are tiring.”
/> Duncan looked at their mounts, swore under his breath, and pushed on.
They continued down the hillside to the last row of trees before entering the meadow, made another little rest halt while Duncan again studied the surrounding grassy meadow. Marianne thought he would dismount as he’d done before and scout the place afoot, but Duncan reined off at a leisurely walk, leading the way on around the meadow, staying back several hundred feet in the surrounding forest where he could see out without being seen himself.
An hour later they were within hearing distance of that waterfall’s dull roar. Here, Duncan found another of those highland lakes. He stopped to gaze a moment at the lucid water, understanding why Indians would cherish this place, then turned sharply as Marianne spoke his name in a loud whisper.
She was pointing westward along the stone face, past the waterfall. Duncan looked, saw nothing, and swung back with a gathering frown.
“What is it?”
“A horse,” she said. “There ... follow along the cliff. Watch for movement against those backdrop trees.”
Duncan did and spotted the animal. It seemed to be standing, facing into the forest as though it might be tied there. What made it difficult to discern was that its dark color blended perfectly with the shadowy growth around it.
“Has a saddle on,” breathed Duncan. He swung down, looped his reins, drew out Marianne’s carbine, and hefted it. At that moment the two stag elks they had spotted earlier flung up their great heads, clearly alarmed by something they had scented or seen, and in a flash went bounding out of the meadow into the shielding forest.
“He’s over there,” Duncan said as Marianne stepped down from her horse. She tied her animal and moved closer to him as he said: “But he’s showing caution.”
“He might be thinking that cowboy back at the line camp could have gotten loose by now,” Marianne opined.
“Maybe,” agreed Duncan. “Come on. We can’t ride back around the meadow or his horse’ll smell our animals. We’ll have to walk it.”
