Ute Peak Country

by Lauran Paine

  Miggs swung out and down, walked around his horse, examining it, found no injuries, remounted, and sat with lips pursed and forehead deeply wrinkled for a while. He said nothing and apparently did not intend to say anything, so Fred spoke up.

  “They’ll likely have heard all that shooting back at our camp. We’d better head out, Jackson, before my boys decide to come up and investigate.”

  They started out again, still with Miggs leading. The last mile ended at the clearing opposite Brian’s cow camp and Miggs’ log house. At once both of them saw that Fred had been correct in his surmise. Both Lex Murphy and Red Morton were rigging out their horses preparatory to mounting up.

  Fred called to them, rode on up, dismounted, and began offsaddling. As he did this, he explained what had happened.

  “We’ll ride over in broad daylight,” he announced, turning his animal loose. “Now, let’s get some sleep.”

  Miggs finished caring for the animal he’d ridden and afterward turned without a word, heading for his cabin. Jackson Miggs was mad clear through.

  Vagrant flickerings of Brian’s campfire lit up the interior of Miggs’ cabin. He glanced over to the partition where Beverly slept, put aside his rifle, and bent to kick off his boots.

  Again that premonition brushed against his awareness. He straightened up very slowly, looking into all the corners of his cabin. Nothing moved, nothing seemed out of place. He swung for a closer look at Frank’s bunk, walked over, and gazed upon the bulky coat lying atop McCoy’s bed that he had mistaken for the outline of a sleeping man.

  Miggs put up a hand, felt the coldness of McCoy’s bed. Frank had not slept there in a long time. He went over to peer around Beverly’s partition to see that her bed was also unoccupied.

  Now he understood this second premonition. Neither Frank nor Jed Shafter’s girl had come home from the downcountry camp. He stood a moment recalling Bev’s prolonged absence. A chill ran down his spine. Something was wrong, bad wrong, or Frank would at least have returned.

  Miggs took up his rifle, considered a moment, then put the gun aside for as long as it took him to exchange his boots for his moccasins, then he left the cabin soundlessly, skirted Fred Brian’s cow camp where lumpy shapes lay, and broke into a steady jog, southbound through this ghostly, still, and empty night.

  Chapter Eight

  Dawn was coming. Down the easterly slopes, watery light shone in faint, blurred patches, but the deeper folds still retained night’s gloominess when Miggs, cutting diagonally overland so as to approach his earlier campsite where he’d last seen Jed Shafter’s daughter and Frank McCoy, came down a timbered watershed and halted upon a stingy little treeless promontory.

  From this position he could see that precipice farther out that he and McCoy had stood upon the day before, watching Tolman’s cattle approaching the uplands. Also from this site he could see that little clearing beside the still water pool where his camp with Frank and Beverly had been.

  There was no sign of either the girl or Frank McCoy. It had been in his mind that he would find things as he now saw them to be. For that reason he had not taken the regular trail down, because then he’d have wasted an hour, perhaps more, picking up Frank’s trail, and this way, satisfied that McCoy and the girl were nowhere near their former camp, he had only to descend into the canyon, which he did, and quarter back and forth between its nearly perpendicular granite walls, until he located the trail of a man wearing boots.

  By the time the sunlight lay softly over the higher places of this tilted country, Miggs had the trail. He had determined from the idiosyncrasies of Frank McCoy that this was in fact the trail he sought.

  Evidently, Frank, wearying of waiting for Beverly to appear, had gone in search of her. That much wasn’t hard to deduce from the way McCoy’s tracks stopped often and the way he had grounded his rifle for the obvious purpose of freeing both hands so he could cup them to his mouth and call out.

  The longer Miggs followed that trail, the more concerned he became. He could also see that McCoy had been worried, too, for the tracks lengthened. McCoy, in making them, had hurried along, obviously upset now as he approached a gentle rise that leveled out, which Miggs knew led up and over the northward bulwarks of this canyon he was in.

  Climbing that easy, gradual lift from the canyon’s depths, Miggs encountered warm sunlight near the plateau beyond. He also encountered something else. This second encounter left him feeling cold, fearful.

  A mounted man had left his horse up here, tied to a straggly juniper tree. From the churned condition of the earth where that animal had stood, it had been tethered in this particular spot for at least one hour, perhaps even longer.

  McCoy’s boot tracks milled here. Miggs saw how Frank had kneeled—there was a kneepad imprint—to test the shod horse imprints with a little twig, determining how long the horse had been there. He also saw the impression of Frank’s rifle’s steel concave butt plate, and his closely paced boot marks where McCoy had arisen to stand gazing northwesterly.

  Now Miggs backtracked, a chilling notion in his mind. There had to be at least one more set of tracks where night gloom had hidden them from him before sunrise.

  There were—not one set but two. The second set of tracks was small. Beverly Shafter’s tracks! The second set, larger, high-heeled like a cowboy would make, showed also here and there little squiggles where spur rowels had raked along through deep dust and pine needles.

  Miggs knew all he had to know for the moment. He returned to where the tethered horse had stood, picked up Frank’s tracks again, hoisted his rifle, and broke over into that mile-eating Indian jogtrot. There was a cold, deadly wrath burning in him as he jogged along. From time to time, he glanced down, but he did not actually need McCoy’s tracks any more, and neither did he need the clear imprints made by that shod horse—which was now carrying not just its cowboy, but Beverly Shafter, also, upon its back.

  Time passed, heat came to loosen night-chilled muscles and sinews, spits of forest gave way to intermittent little parks, and with that big yellow disc approaching 11:00 a.m., Jack Miggs skirted a brawling creek, leaped across it into a small grassy place, and heard a wild turkey gutturally call from off in the trees to the east. He halted, dropped to one knee, brought up his rifle, and hung there, waiting.

  Frank McCoy stepped out into view.

  Miggs stood up, brushed needles and dead grass from one knee, grounded his rifle, and waited, saying nothing at all by way of greeting as Frank came up, saying only: “Where is she?”

  McCoy flagged vaguely northward. “I had a hell of a time of it. Too dark up until a couple, three hours ago, Jack. Mostly I went along following the stink of horse sweat to get this far.”

  “You haven’t seen ’em?”

  “In the dark? Of course not.”

  “It’ll be one of Holt’s men though, Frank.”

  “Yes.”

  “How long has he had her?”

  McCoy leaned upon his gun. He had evidently given this some thought, for he said: “Probably since about noon yesterday. That’s why she didn’t come back to camp. Say since noon yesterday, and all last night, and up to now.”

  “Frank, I’m going to kill him. I don’t give a damn who he is or what excuse he offers, I’m going to kill him.”

  McCoy looked quickly away from the white, wild expression of Jackson Miggs’ face. He took up his gun, gazed off northward, and said: “Late last night I thought I heard gunfire far off to the north, Jack. Maybe someone else killed him for you.”

  Miggs hefted his rifle, too. He turned, set course, and started onward, saying over his shoulder: “No. That was Holt’s crew opening up on Fred Brian and me.”

  “Huh? What’d you say?”

  “Come along. I’ll tell you while we’re moving.”

  They passed back into the forest again, Miggs squirting out brittle, hard sentences until he�
�d told McCoy all there was to say. Then he abruptly stopped, turned, and glared.

  “That’s it! Frank, that’s it. Fred and I couldn’t figure out why they were all on edge like that last night. They didn’t give any notice at all, just opened up like it was a war. They had her, Frank!”

  McCoy, with no knowledge of how it had been the night before at Holt’s camp, thought about what Miggs had deduced without seeming to believe or disbelieve.

  “Let’s get along,” he said quietly, and moved out once again.

  But Miggs’ mind was moving now at top speed, his thoughts coldly brittle cold and exact. “No, wait!” he called after McCoy. “Frank, you head for my place. Tell Fred and his riders what’s happened. Bring them back with you to the old Ute village meadow. Fred knows the place. Bring them back with their guns and plenty of ammunition.”

  “What can you do alone?” protested McCoy, gazing uncertainly at Miggs’ completely changed face. “Listen to me, Jack, if they was all nettled last night, think how they’ll be this morning … an’ you all alone sneaking up around their camp. They’ll kill you sure.”

  Miggs would not listen. He made an imperative arm gesture, saying: “Go on, Frank. Trot all the way. Don’t worry about me. There’s no damned cowman living who can see me if I don’t want to be seen. Go on now.”

  Frank went but not willingly. When he halted several hundred feet farther east and looked back, Jackson Miggs had disappeared.

  * * * * *

  The largest meadows below Ute Peak lay like a kind of irregular chain running roughly from southeast to northwest. In some places the strips of forest between those grassy parks were no more than three or four hundred feet wide. In other places they were nearly a mile wide. In those latter strips a kind of eternal gloom lay, rarely penetrated by sunlight because of the density of the trees. In these places Miggs made good time, trotting along Indian-like, whipping from place to place. But where the trees were thinner, the sunlight able to penetrate, he went much slower.

  He was certain that fierce old Denver Holt would be more wary by day than he’d showed he was by night.

  Twice, Miggs encountered bands of Durham cattle. Once he thought he heard a horseman passing along toward the largest of those uplands meadows, where the Holt cow camp was located, but it turned out to be several elk, cat-footing it charily westerly, and not a rider at all.

  Then, closing in upon the brilliantly sunlit meadow with its tumbling, white-water creek, Miggs heard a horse nicker beyond the trees and a second horse answer from within the forest, northward. He instantly faded out in a scrub thicket, peering upcountry. This time there was no mistake about it, a rider was moving quietly forward. He did not catch sight of that man until it was too late to intercept him.

  When the cowboy passed from forest gloom into meadow sunshine, Miggs recognized him. It was that large, fearless-looking man who had lazily grinned when the three Holt riders had been caught, flat-footed, by Miggs and Frank McCoy at their first meeting. If he’d heard that man’s name, he could not now recall it, but he did remember how that one had told the youngest cowboy to shut up. He also recalled the questions that older man had asked.

  He felt cheated now, seeing that horseman ride out into full view of his friends farther across the big meadow. If he’d been able to catch that one and disarm him the second time, he felt sure he’d have learned the facts about Beverly Shafter’s abduction.

  When it was safe to do so, Miggs glided forth to the very meadow’s edge, found another brush clump, and concealed himself in it, Indian-like.

  They were breaking camp out there. One man was packing the led horses, another was saddling and bridling. Denver Holt, recognizable as much by the arm he wore in a sling now as by his oversize great bulk, waited slightly apart for the mounted man to come up, and afterward those two spoke briefly back and forth, then Holt crossed over where a big chestnut horse stood ground-hitched, snapped up the reins, and stepped up over leather. When Holt spoke to the man still working upon the ground, Miggs heard every word as clearly as though each one had been addressed to him.

  “Curly says he found the cabin, an’ there’s some cowboys camped there. He also says he run across a lot of driftin’ white-face cross cattle. Them riders he seen must’ve just come up in here and brought those red-backs with ’em.”

  One of the dismounted men turned to gaze up. Miggs could not quite make out this man’s face, but he recognized the similarity in build between Denver Holt and that man. It was Bert, Denver Holt’s big, rough-looking son.

  Bert said: “No one movin’ down there?”

  Denver didn’t answer; the other mounted man, the cowboy Denver had called Curly, answered instead. “They were eatin’ breakfast. There was three of ’em. They was camped down-creek a little distance from a log house, which I figure must belong to that burly-built feller who got the drop on us and his string-bean pardner.”

  “Never mind all this talk,” growled old Denver Holt. “Shake a leg. The cattle’re driftin’ north and west. We want to keep even with ’em.”

  Miggs hefted his rifle, gauged the distance, and estimated that he could knock Denver Holt out of his saddle without any difficulty, reload, and perhaps get one more of them before the others either rushed him or fled off into the westerly trees. He was calculating his chances when the cowboy called Curly spoke again, this time saying something that stopped Miggs’ gun arm in mid-motion.

  “I made a sashay south and around, comin’ on back up here after I spied out those fellers, and ran across some tracks. Two fellers on foot, one of ’em, wearin’ Indian slippers, was trailin’ a mounted man. I lost the two on foot in the trees, but that other feller, the one on horseback, came right up to the very edge of this meadow, westerly there.”

  Miggs saw Holt, Holt’s son, and those other two men turn and gaze at Curly. It was the son who finally spoke, saying: “What’re you gettin’ at, Curly?”

  Curly shrugged. “I don’t know. I just told you what I saw. Maybe it was one of those riders down there with the squaw men. Maybe it was a stranger passin’ through.”

  The two dismounted riders looked away, went after their saddled horses, and paid no more attention to the Holts or to Curly.

  Miggs, too, was puzzled. If that man he and Frank had trailed up here had been a stranger, one of the renegades who occasionally showed up in the remote Ute Peak country, then those yonder men were in the clear. He squatted in his place of concealment, turning this over in his mind, at the same time watching those horsemen across the meadow mount up, mill for a moment, then strike out westerly across the meadow toward the forest ahead.

  It did not cross his mind until Denver Holt and his men were nearly lost to sight that whoever that nighttime rider had been, he did not have to be a newcomer; it could’ve been any one of those five horsemen who had gone exploring and returned while the others were in their blankets last night. Could have returned in plenty of time with Beverly—or without her, in fact—to have still participated in that savage attack upon Fred Brian and Miggs.

  Miggs stood up, leaned upon his rifle, and somberly watched the last of Denver Holt’s crew disappear. Beverly had not been with them. That bothered him, too. Ultimately, he decided the only way to ascertain whether or not one of those men had been the abductor was to talk to all of them. But more immediately important was to find Jed Shafter’s girl. He was calm enough now to think like this. Calm enough to consider first things first.

  Chapter Nine

  Frank McCoy came along astride one of Fred Brian’s packhorses, his long-barreled rifle balancing across his legs. He led the others out into the large meadow and on across to where Jackson Miggs was scouting the abandoned camp of Denver Holt’s men.

  There, they all dismounted, fanned out, and went over the ground a foot at a time. It was after midday when they came together again at the site of Holt’s stone-ringed cooking spot.
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br />   “Nothing,” grunted Frank to the others. “Jack, are you plumb certain she wasn’t with them?”

  Miggs nodded, looking withdrawn and deeply thoughtful. “She wasn’t, boys, and that leaves only one thing to do … find her. Find her before we go after those others.”

  Fred Brian said: “That’s your department, Jackson. I couldn’t track a buffalo through a snowbank.”

  Miggs nodded. “Ride on westerly,” he told Brian. “Don’t let them see that they’re being trailed, but find out where their new camp is. Then head back to the cabin. Frank and I’ll meet you there.”

  “Sure,” murmured Brian. “Good luck. Say, do you two need horses?”

  Miggs shook his head, cradled his rifle, and jerked his head at Frank. The two turned away with no additional talk, went back to the western tree fringe where they’d abandoned the shod horse tracks hours before, and quartered for them again.

  “Here,” grunted Frank, the first to pick up those tracks. Then Frank straightened up, looked out where Brian and the others still stood, and strongly scowled. “Jack, it had to be one of them. Look there. He rode on out of the trees straight as an arrow for their camp. He probably offsaddled in the dark, slipped up, and got into his sougans without the others even noticing.”

  Miggs crouched over, stepped along to where that horse had left the forest for the meadow, paused there still crouched, then retraced his steps back to McCoy but did not stop.

  “Come on,” he muttered. “We’ve got about four hours of daylight left to backtrack him. He didn’t take her into the camp with him, so he left her somewhere down his back trail, and we’ve got to find that spot before sundown.”

  They went along slowly but steadily, at times being forced to halt altogether where the mounted man had crossed patches of weathered stone or brittle lengths of bone-dry pine needles. It was an exacting chore, but for Jackson Miggs, a lifelong woodsman, it was never an impossible trail to follow, only an agonizingly slow one.