Shadow River

by Ralph Cotton

Burke caught the shank and gazed at it hungrily as he pulled a knife from a sheath at the back of his trouser waist and carved a thin slice.

  “Obliged,” he said up to Sam. “No matter where I’ve gone in life, there’s always goat meat waiting for me.” He chuckled and passed the shank to the Montana Kid.

  Montana cut himself a thin slice and handed the shank on to Stanley Black, whose severed hat brim dropped again, in spite of the rawhide strip holding it. Instead of dealing with tightening and retying the rawhide, Black jerked the hat from his head and slapped it to the ground. He quickly took a slice of goat and passed the shank on to Childers.

  Childers turned down the meat, looking as if even the sight of it sickened him.

  “How’s the shoulder coming?” Sam asked, noting the wounded gunman’s lack of appetite.

  “It’s pounding like a drum straight up from hell,” Childers replied. “It’s pounding inside my head as well as in my shoulder.” He leaned his head to the side and spat in the dirt. “I’d like to catch the kid who arrow-spiked me and beat him senseless with a stove poker. That would teach him.”

  Teach him what?

  Sam considered it and only nodded, knowing it was Childers’ pain talking.

  “If you can make yourself eat some, you should,” he said matter-of-factly. “You’re going to need all your strength if we’re riding all night.”

  Boyd Childers didn’t answer. The other men gave one another a guarded look. Burke finished chewing a mouthful of goat and swallowed it dry.

  “Speaking of riding all night, Jones,” he said, “do you suppose that’s the best idea?”

  “I wouldn’t have proposed it otherwise,” Sam replied. He stared flatly at Burke, anticipating more to come. The others sat chewing, watching intently. This was something the four had talked about among themselves along the trail, Sam decided. “Why do you ask?” he said.

  Burke coughed and cleared his throat. He winced a little before speaking.

  “The thing is, we was wondering why we can’t lay up here for the night. Get ourselves and our horses rested—”

  “We talked about this already, Clyde,” Sam said, cutting him off. He took the goat shank from Childers and wrapped its canvas cover back around it.

  “I know we did. We’re just wondering, is all,” Burke said. “But we’re all worn out here. Our horses are worn out. Childers is hurting like hell—”

  Sam turned and walked away, goat shank in hand.

  “Hold on, Jones,” Burke called out. “Where you going?”

  “On,” Sam said, “by myself.”

  “Wait, damn it,” Burke said, scrambling to his feet. The others followed suit, still chewing their goat meat. “Can’t we just talk about it?”

  “We did, twice,” Sam said without looking back. “I’m not talking about it again.” He stopped at the dun and the spare horse. He scooped his saddle off the ground, slung it over the dun and cinched it.

  Burke and the others looked at one another.

  “Damn it to hell!” said Burke.

  Sam swung atop his saddle, the spare horse’s lead rope coiled in his hand. He turned the dun and gave a pull on the spare horse’s rope, guiding both animals toward the trail.

  “If I start looking smaller, it’s because I’m riding away,” he said, touching his hat brim toward the staring gunmen.

  “Jones—” Burke started to call out, but a distant sound of gunfire resounded from far down the hillside, causing him to stop and stand in silence. The others did the same.

  Sam stopped the dun, but only for a second. As the gunfire increased, erupting into a full-fledged gun battle, he touched his boots to the dun’s side and rode on, leading the spare horse close alongside him.

  “Jesus!” said Burke. He let out an exasperated breath and snatched his saddle from the ground. “I’ve never seen a man so damn intolerant of others.” He hurried toward his horse, the remainder of the group right behind him.

  Sam rode on, keeping the dun at a steady but easy pace, knowing the others would be hurrying to join him. Before he’d gone two hundred yards, he heard their horses’ hooves thundering up behind him.

  “Damn it, Jones!” said Burke, riding up beside him, well ahead of the others. “You can’t just ride off and leave us. We’ve still got a deal.”

  “I’ve got no deal with dead men,” Sam said, playing it hard as stone. “If you fool around in the country, you’ll be decorating some warrior’s lodge pole.”

  “All right,” said Burke. “We were all worn out, but here we are now, ready to ride. Giving it all we’ve got.”

  “Yep, here you are,” Sam said. “But let me make sure you understand, I’m not going to waste my time keeping you alive if dying is all you’re good for. Either give it all you’ve got to begin with or go lie on a rock and blow your heads off—save yourself the trouble.” He booted the dun up a little. Burke rode alongside him.

  “You’ve got it, Jones,” he said. “What do you suppose all that shooting is about down there?”

  “I’ve got no idea,” Sam said. “But it’s coming from the trail we’re on. When they’re finished fighting, if they haven’t all killed each other, they’ll be coming up this trail.” He slowed the dun a little as the other men came galloping up in a hurry, still stretched out single file.

  Seeing the men slow their horses, Burke looked down at the sound of the battle raging below them. He looked back up at the men as Sam booted the dun forward.

  “What the hell are you all waiting for?” Burke said to the other three. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  • • •

  On the lower trail the battle raged full bore for over an hour. For the next three hours sporadic gunfire continued. From the upper ledges just short of the hillside’s crest, Sam and the four gunmen heard the straggling battle spread out, diminishing farther down along the trail and out across the sand flats. After midnight a lasting silence had set in. From the crest of the trail, the five sat their horses in the purple light of a three-quarter moon and gazed down across black shadowy darkness.

  “Well, I’m glad they worked everything out between them,” Burke joked. The three other gunmen laughed until Sam raised a hand, hushing them.

  “Did you feel that?” Sam asked almost in a whisper. He listened in every direction. The men sat in a tense silence.

  “Hear what?” Burke whispered.

  No sooner had he spoken than a small powerful tremor bored through the stony hillside beneath them, the rumble akin to that of an oncoming train.

  “Jesus, what’s that?” Black asked.

  “Get off your horses, quick,” Sam said.

  The men didn’t question his order. They slid down from their saddles just in time to feel another rumbling quake down deep under the hillside. The horses spooked and whinnied, but they didn’t attempt to bolt away, their legs feeling too wobbly and unsteady to support such an effort. They stood their ground, trembling along with the hillside, and struggled to remain upright.

  Sam grabbed the dun’s saddle horn and stood with his feet spread shoulder width apart. Burke collapsed against the side of his horse and held on as the trembling earth jarred through him. Childers jumped farther away from the wall on the inside of the trail as small stones and gravel sprayed down like heavy rain. Stanley Black and the Montana Kid pawed and grabbed at each other, and fell to the ground like impassioned lovers no longer able to resist.

  “Da-da-da-damn!” Burke stuttered. He fell the rest of the way down his horse’s side, caught on to its stirrup and hung there.

  The sound of loosened rock and dirt shuffled and rattled and slid. Brush and sparse timber rustled. Sam tried to look all around in the darkness, but his eyes would not focus just right. The night, the sky and the hill itself seemed to try to rise as if suddenly intent on relocating themselves. Sam felt his hat tremble loo
sely atop his head.

  Then, as if having changed its mind, the earth fell into place with a bone-shattering thump, the feeling of some gigantic underground ledge slipping and falling and settling onto some lower level.

  The calmness set in so fast Sam turned loose of his saddle horn and steadied himself in place, his arms out on either side as if to test his balance.

  “That was . . . an earthquake,” Burke said unsteadily.

  “I noticed,” said the Montana Kid, turning loose of Black and jumping to his feet. He brushed him off and straightened his clothes and gun belt. He drew his Colt and checked it nervously.

  Sam didn’t waste any time. He pulled the dun forward by its reins with one hand and pulled the spare horse along by its lead rope. The two horses needed little coaxing.

  “Get up over this hilltop, find us a wide spot,” Sam said, dirt and rock still raining in spite of the earth having settled back into place.

  Managing to stay single file, the men and horses moved upward the short distance to the top of the hill. Once on wider, flatter ground, with no rocks to fall from above them, they stopped and looked back in relief.

  “That was close,” Burke remarked.

  Almost before he’d finished his words, the four turned their heads toward what sounded like angry waves breaking on a rocky shoreline.

  “What the hell?” Childers said, his hand clasped to his wounded shoulder.

  A roiling brown-black cloud rose on the darkness and spread down along the sky and trail side as far as the men could see. The sound of ocean waves revealed itself to be a shifting, sliding bed of loose scree, unseated stone and boulder. The men watched as if transfixed. In slices of purple moonlight, they witnessed and felt a new rumbling beneath them as the top layer of hillside tumbled and bounced and flung its stone and sparse fauna mantling downward toward the distant desert floor.

  “Landslide . . . ,” Burke whispered, staring as if in awe. “Damnedest place I’ve ever seen.”

  “I want out of here,” Black said, with no pretense of courage. He started to jerk his horse’s reins, but Sam stopped him.

  “Stand still,” he said to the frightened gunman. “This hilltop is the best we’ve got until everything settles down.”

  “Hell, I guess I know that,” Black replied, his voice turning deeper, affecting a braver tone. He stopped and stood quietly.

  The sliding stone and scree waned on the hillside. Louder rumblings resounded farther back along the hill line behind them. In front of them miles ahead, peaks of the Blood Mountain Range stood jagged and endless against the purple sky.

  “One thing,” Burke said, turning and looking back through the roiling dust of the dislocated hillside. “Nobody’s coming up behind us now.”

  “That’s a fact,” Sam said, staring back at the roiling brown cloud of dust.

  “How much gold are we talking about here?” Childers asked, trying to sound casual.

  “Talk to Clyde about it,” Sam said to Childers. He turned and led his two horses over to a rock. He took a canteen down from his saddle horn and sat down. Clamping the rope and reins to the ground with his boot, he sipped water and sat listening to the men talk back and forth among themselves. The dun stuck its muzzle in close and stretched its lip out, probing toward the open canteen. The spare horse stuck its muzzle in right beside it. Sam rubbed their muzzles and pushed them away gently.

  “I’m saving you boys a drink,” he said to the two horses.

  In moments the men walked over and stood in front of him.

  The Montana Kid stood closer than the others.

  “What now?” he asked Sam bluntly on all their behalf. “Like Burke said, there’s nobody behind us now.”

  Sam looked up at him in the pale moonlight as he capped the half-full canteen and held it on his lap.

  “I’ve learned there’s somebody behind everybody, Montana,” he replied. He wiped a hand across his mouth.

  “Come on, Jones,” said Montana. “You know what I mean. What’s to keep us from resting the night right here? Take up toward the ruins come morning?”

  “Who said we’re going through the ruins?” Sam asked.

  “We all know there’s water around those ruins,” said Montana. He glanced around at the others, then back to Sam. “We’d be foolish not to go through there.”

  Sam only stared at him.

  “Water is all the more reason to push on tonight,” he said firmly. “We don’t know what shape the quake left this trail in ahead of us. It’ll be easier on thirsty horses traveling tonight while it’s cooled down.”

  “He’s got a point, Montana,” Childers cut in, holding his wounded shoulder. “There might not be any more trail before us than there is behind us.”

  Montana looked at the men’s faces in the moonlight. Then he looked back down at Sam and let out a breath.

  “Have you been in any of these quakes before?” he asked.

  “A few,” Sam said. “It seemed like there was one every time we turned around a month back.” He kept his voice as civil as Montana’s. “Have you been in any?”

  “Last month, like you said,” Montana replied. “I was on flatland every time, though. What about you?”

  Sam gestured a nod toward the hill line, the looming brown-black dust. “My first time seeing it this bad,” he said. “So I can’t say what to expect between here and the ruins.”

  The Montana Kid nodded, appreciating the truth.

  “All right, then,” he said. “We’re both on the same spot. None of us here knows any more than the other.”

  Sam stood and stretched and hung his canteen back on his saddle horn.

  “That about the size of it,” he said. “I’m still pushing on. Make up your minds if you’re still riding with me.”

  Montana looked at the others, then back at Sam.

  “I’m not speaking for anybody but myself,” he said. “I expect if you’re still riding on, I’m still riding with you.” He gave a thin devil-may-care grin. “If this is turning into an adventure, I can’t wait to see what’s next.”

  Chapter 4

  In the gray-silver hour of dawn, the five men stood beside their horses overlooking a trail below them that they could plainly see had been knocked out and overcoated with a layer of rock and broken pine twenty feet deep. The long slope of broken and unseated rock lay spread and reseated down the steep hillside beneath a silvery morning mist. The long slide looked as if a sound no larger than a whisper or a cough could loosen the whole hillside and send it plunging downward again.

  “There we have it,” Burke said in disgust. “Who’d ever guessed I’d someday be on a mountain and the damn thing fell out from under me?”

  “Call it the luck of the game,” said Montana, leading his horse beside Burke. He gazed down as if in deep reflection.

  Sam had noted that Montana had taken on a better attitude since the quake and the subsequent landslide.

  “I remember once when I was a young boy,” Montana said quietly. “For no reason at all, a little boat I was standing on just sank . . . no reason. . . .” He shook his head wistfully. “I mean, for no reason at all.”

  Sam just looked at him.

  On Sam’s other side, Childers stood holding a hand to his wounded shoulder.

  “It sort of makes you wonder, don’t it?” he commented quietly to Montana.

  Burke and Stanley Black sat listening until Burke could take it no more.

  “Jesus . . . ,” he said, sounding irritated with the two gunmen’s conversation. “Wonder about what?”

  Childers shrugged with his good shoulder.

  “Just, you know . . . everything, I reckon,” he said.

  Sam shook his head and backed the dun and the spare horse away on the thin trail.

  “Where are you going, Jones?” Burke asked, backing his horse up
as well.

  “I’m going to find a game path or something,” Sam said. He gestured at the hillside that had risen beside them as they’d traveled down from the higher summit.

  “What if there’s none?” Burke asked.

  Sam just looked at him.

  “I’m just asking,” Burke said.

  As the others turned and led horses in behind him, Sam spoke to them over his shoulder.

  “Spread out along this back trail, look for any kind of path not too steep to lead these horses up,” he said. “Anybody finds one that leads up and around the slide, call out . . . only not too loud,” he added. “This whole hillside looks a little like it could take off sliding again any—”

  His words stopped short beneath the long, loud bellow of a monstrous grizzly that suddenly stood up on its hind legs only twenty yards up the rocky hillside.

  “Holy Joseph, shut up, you big son of a bitch!” Burke called up to the bear, trying to keep his voice as quiet as possible.

  But the bear would have none of it. It continued to bawl out long and loud, the sound echoing like cannon fire along the shaky hill line. The horses spooked and whinnied and stamped in place as the men held them firm.

  “You won’t shut it up,” Sam said. “Look at it. It’s beaten something fierce.”

  “Whoa, it is,” Burke said. He raised his rifle in his hands and stood with it loosely pressed against his shoulder.

  Sam gave him a warning look.

  “Just in case it comes charging at us,” Burke said, regarding the rifle. “I don’t want to be caught short by a wounded griz.”

  The men stood staring at the big bawling brute, noting streaks of blood glistening down its sides, its big head, its raised paws.

  “Oh yeah, this one is hurt bad,” Montana said quietly. “I’d say it got caught up in the slide and rode it down until it could get out of it.”

  As the bear bellowed and postured and threatened, its claws spread and its big mouth open wide, showing long bloody teeth, the men backed away. Leading their terrified horses, they eased away along the trail, mindful of small streams of gravel and loose rocks starting to stream down among the freshly formed slide bed. Burke kept his rifle ready, as did Black and Montana. But in a moment the bear wore itself out and dropped onto all fours. They watched as the big animal turned and waddled away up into the rocky hills.