by Ralph Cotton
She didn’t know. But she did notice that the scorching heat immediately lessened the moment they had left the trail and put the hillside between themselves and the raging fire closing down on them.
As the roar of the fire grew distant above them, Gilley calmed herself and picked her footing, using the spare horse walking in front of her as a guide. All right, this was going to work, she keep repeating to herself, hearing the click of iron-lined hoof make its way over and around the narrow, treacherous path.
But when they had climbed down far enough that she could make out the black, glittering outline of water winding though the valley floor beneath them, the Ranger and the two horses in front of her stopped suddenly.
“Stay where you are,” the Ranger called back to her with urgency. Then he whispered quietly to the restless horses to calm them, “Whoa, now, easy, now. . . .”
Gilley heard the barb chuff and nicker under its breath. She listened to the sound of both horses’ hooves as they back-stepped under the Ranger’s command. She had to back up herself and force her horse to follow suit to make room for the two animals.
“What’s wrong, Ranger?” she asked.
“The path breaks off right here,” Sam said to her over his shoulder.
Gilley looked behind her, along the path they had walked down. At the upper edge, she could see the orange flickering glow where the fire had crept down closer to the trail. In the short time since they’d left, the heat had turned the trail into a scorching furnace. Neither they nor the animals could survive on it for the two-mile run they would have had to take to get them out of danger—and that was provided no more of the trail ahead was covered with fallen, burning timber, she reminded herself.
“What do we do now?” she asked.
“It’ll be tough going,” Sam said, “but with a little luck we can climb down.”
A silence followed. Above them the roar of fire had grown in volume and intensity as it moved farther down toward the trail.
“What about the horses?” Gilley asked.
“We have to leave them,” Sam said in a tight voice. “They’ll either stand it out here or find themselves a way down.” He paused, then said, “Drop your saddle, get yourself ready.”
Even as the Ranger spoke, Gilley heard him loosen his saddle from the barb’s back. Without hesitation, she turned and loosened the saddle from her horse’s back and set it on the ground at her feet. Then she dropped the bridle from the horse’s mouth.
“What else should I do?” she asked.
Another slight pause.
“If you’re religious, you might say a prayer,” Sam said.
“Jesus . . . ,” Gilley said.
“That’s a good place to start,” Sam said, holding the saddle next to his thigh.
“What if I’m not religious?” Gilley said, summoning up her courage.
“It’s a good time to take it up,” Sam said.
Gilley eyed the Ranger’s saddle, Winchester, rifle boot and canteen all bundled in his hands. But she was paying closer attention to the saddlebags full of money that he had taken loose and draped over his shoulder.
She watched him swing the saddle back with both hands and hurl it out over a bottomless, black hole. They listened intently for what seemed like a long time before hearing the saddle strike one boulder, then another, then come to a loud, sudden stop.
“How—how far, Ranger?” Gilley asked, watching him drop the bit from the barb’s mouth and pitch the bridle away.
“I don’t know,” Sam said, keeping his voice calm, “a hundred feet, maybe two.”
Gilley shook her head, knowing he was only guessing, only playing it down to keep from spooking her. Well, she had news for him, she thought. She was past the spooking stage. The fire had scared her once she’d come to realize the danger of it. But she hadn’t fallen apart. Besides, she had stood face-to-face with dan-
gerous men—men with their knifes, their guns, their callous, cold-blooded killing. She could do this, she told herself. After all she’d been through, no downhill climb was going to weaken her knees.
“However far it is, I’m ready, Ranger,” she said with determination. “It won’t get any shorter, us waiting here.”
“That’s what I say,” the Ranger replied. He took her hand and led her around the horses. He put her in front of him for a moment while he turned to the barb and slapped its rump, not hard enough to put it into a run, yet with enough force to give it permission to turn the other two horses and free them up to leave.
“See you at the water,” he said to the freed horses, knowing his words were only wishful thinking. Then he turned, stepped around Gilley and reached a hand back to her as he stepped over the edge of the trail. “How’s your climbing?” he asked, guiding her along behind him.
“It’ll do,” she said, as if it mattered now.
* * *
Nearly a full hour later, having picked their way step by step trough the gray hour of morning, the Ranger and Gilley stood on a narrow rock shelf and looked up toward the trail. Billowing smoke rolled out over the rocky edge. From within the smoke, tongues of flame streaked out as if peeping down, searching for them.
“My God, it crossed the trail?” Gilley said in disbelief, catching her breath after the last few yards spent climbing downward across a stretch of almost sheer rock wall.
“It looks like it,” Sam replied.
“Then we would never have made it had we not climbed down here?” she asked.
“Hard to say,” Sam replied. “It depends on how much burning timber started falling down the hillside—how much of the trail it would have blocked on us. That caught me by surprise.”
“You did good,” she said, leaning back against the rock wall beside him. She had turned loose of his hand when they’d stepped over on the ledge, but now she took it again. She held it to her bosom with both hands for a moment. “Real good, Sam, getting us down out from there.”
Not Ranger, but “Sam” now, he noted to himself.
“We’re not out of there yet,” Sam replied. “We’re about halfway down, I make it.”
He gave the slightest tug of his hand, just enough so that she let go of it, allowing him to adjust the saddlebags on his shoulder.
“Yes,” she said, gazing down with him, “but it looks like it’s getting a little easier.”
Below them the water showed more clearly now that the day’s early sunlight had begun spilling into the lower valleys. In spite of the smoke shrouding much of the morning sky, daylight had given them a better view of the steep and treacherous path they’d made for themselves as they’d moved along, a foot at a time, often inch by inch in the preceding darkness.
As they leaned forward a little and examined the path ahead, they heard the distant crash of brush and rocks tumbling down the hillside, amid it the sound of horses screaming out in terror.
“Oh no, the horses!” Gilley grabbed the Ranger and buried her face against his chest.
Sam winced at the sound and held her tightly to him until a silence moved in beneath the roar of the fire. When he turned her loose, he gazed into her tear-filled eyes and brushed a strand of hair from her cheek.
“We did what we had to,” he said, as if he was still trying to convince himself it was the truth. “There was no other way.”
“I know we did,” she said, sharing the guilt of responsibility with him. She took a deep breath, collected herself and stepped back from him, wiping her face on her shirtsleeve. “I’m ready when you are.”
They moved on.
An hour later at the bottom of the hillside, the Ranger left Gilley standing on a shoulder of a high-
cut bank of rock and dirt, above the shallow-running stream. Scooting down, he turned and reached up to her.
“Thank goodness that’s over wit
h,” she said, reaching for his forearms, letting him lower her, both of his hands on her waist, standing her on the edge of the stream.
“It’s not over yet,” Sam said, looking all around for his saddle and gear, estimating it could be lying anywhere within a twenty-five-yard stretch of the streambed, or even somewhere in the stream itself.
“I know we’ve got a ways to go,” Gilley said, stepping out into the stream, “but for right now I want to pretend I’m at home somewhere.” She turned and let herself fall backward into the stream. She dished water into her hat and poured it down onto her face, drinking some of it.
“Rest yourself,” Sam said over his shoulder to her as he searched the stream bank along both sides. “I’ll be right back. We’ll get going downstream. I’ve got a feeling this isn’t going to be the end of the wildfires.”
She sat up as she saw the Ranger walking off along the streambed, searching for his gear among the rocks and boulders on the hillside.
“You’re looking for your saddle?” she called out. Without hearing an answer from him, she stood up in the water. “Wait up, I’ll help.”
But Sam had already spotted the butt of his Winchester sticking up among some dry, wild grass amid a clump of rock.
He made his way toward it, but stopped suddenly when he heard the sound of hooves racing in his direction along the edge of the water. No sooner had he heard the hoofs than Gilley stopped in her tracks and shouted, “Sam, look out!”
The Ranger spun toward the racing sound of hooves, his Colt streaking up from his holster, cocked and aimed. But then he relaxed and lowered the barrel of his gun, seeing the rust-colored barb splashing along midstream, winding down almost to a halt at the sight of the Ranger standing facing him.
“Well, look who’s here,” the Ranger said aloud to himself as the barb settled into a walk the last few feet and stopped. Gilley stood watching as the Ranger stepped closer and rubbed the horse’s muzzle. Then she moved along through the rocks to where the Winchester stood in the silvery morning light.
Sam let the hammer down on his big Colt and shoved it into his holster. He looked the barb over good, seeing cuts and scratches on the big horse’s sides, rump and all four legs. The horse blew out a breath, shook itself and stuck its muzzle down into the stream. Sam rubbed its withers as it drew water. While the animal drank, he gazed up along the steep hillside. The fire still raged, the sound of it still audible from over two hundred feet below.
He gazed back along the hillside and saw a distant stretch where its steepness lessened by a large body of boulders and earth. The horses could have made it down there, he told himself. They would have slipped and scooted and maybe even tumbled, as it appeared the barb had done. But it hadn’t been hopeless.
“I think the others made it down too,” he called out over his shoulder. “Let’s hope so anyway.”
“Yes, let’s hope so,” he heard Gilley reply, her voice sounding closer than she’d been before.
He turned and saw her facing him on the water’s edge, the Winchester in both her hands, cocked, the barrel pointed in his direction. His first instinct was to grab the Colt. But something told him not to—not yet anyway.
“I see you brought my rifle to me,” he said quietly. As he spoke he saw that the rifle’s butt stock had broken off in its long fall.
“Yes, I did,” Gilley said. She reached down, and when she did Sam spotted his saddle lying in wild grass at her feet. “I brought your saddle too,” she said.
Sam only nodded and stared in silence as she bent and stood back up holding the butt stock to the Winchester in her right hand, letting the rifle barrel slump in her left hand, pointing down away from him.
“The stock is broke,” she said, holding it out for him to see.
“Too bad,” Sam said, turning from the drinking horse and walking over to her. “But I suppose it had to break, a hard fall like that.” He reached out, first taking the broken stock, then the rifle itself. He uncocked it, eyeing her closely as he did so.
She saw a questioning look in his eyes.
“I know,” she said, as if reading his thoughts, “but I didn’t, did I?”
The Ranger let out a breath and nodded. The look in his eyes changed slightly.
“Obliged,” he said, lowering the rifle hammer. “I can replace the stock.”
“The saddle is pretty battered up too,” she said. “The horn’s gone—feels like the cantle’s broken.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Sam. “I’m not saddling him. We’re not riding him unless we get in a spot and have to.”
“Do you think we’ll run into more fire between here and the trading post?” she asked, eyeing the saddlebags on his shoulder almost with regret, then looking away, as if knowing she’d had her chance and didn’t take it.
“I don’t know,” said Sam. “Let’s push on, see what the day has in store for us.” He offered her his hand. She took it and stepped off the bank into the cool, running stream.
PART 2
Chapter 8
Having seen the woman on the wagon seat next to the young man, Bagley spit in the palms of both hands and ran them back along the unruly gray wings of hair mantling his otherwise bald head. As soon as Cheyenne, his men and the wagon had stopped out in front of the trading post, Bagley stood on the edge of the weathered-plank porch and smiled down at them, the wagon having pulled in parallel to the long hitch rail.
“Welcome, one and all,” he’d called out, ready to descend the porch steps and assist the woman down from the wagon seat. But a look from Cheyenne had stopped him in his tracks.
Bagley fell silent for a moment. He wiped his palms on his trousers and watched as Cheyenne swung down from his saddle, pitched his saddlebags over his shoulder and walked around to the woman’s side.
Bagley eyed Cheyenne’s saddlebags.
“I’ve got roasted goat, red beans and hoe cake ready and waiting for yas,” he continued. “All the whiskey you can hold—tea for the lady too.” He continued to stare at the woman, waiting for an introduction from Cheyenne.
“Obliged,” said Cheyenne as the other three horsemen stepped down from their horses and spun their reins on a long, wooden hitch rail. “These are the Udalls, Segan and Caroline,” he added, gesturing toward the couple on the wagon seat.
“Mister . . . ma’am,” Bagley said, giving the two a nod. Then he looked back at Cheyenne and shot him a curious look, regarding the couple and their wagon traveling with the gang.
“I’ll explain later,” Cheyenne said. He extended a hand up and helped Caroline to the ground.
Segan stared, seething at the sight of his wife’s hand in Cheyenne’s. He started to turn and step down from the wagon, but Cheyenne stopped him with a raised hand.
“Not so fast, Segan,” he said. He sniffed toward the front wagon wheels. “You’ve got a dry axle somewhere. I can smell it. You better drive this rig around back, give your hubs a good greasing.”
Segan looked suspiciously at his wife and Cheyenne standing side by side. He tried to speak, saying, “They don’t need greasing. I greased them all four less than a week—”
“It’s all right, Segan,” Caroline said, cutting her husband off. She noted Cheyenne’s hand resting on the butt of his holstered Colt.
But Segan disregarded Cheyenne’s gun hand; he stared at Caroline for reassurance.
“Please, Segan, I’ll be fine,” she said. “Go grease your hubs. I thought I smelled them getting hot earlier.”
“Yeah, Segan,” Gantry put in, “go grease your wheels.” He gave a dark chuckle and stared at Segan, seeing the young man struggle to keep his rage under control. Segan turned and snatched up the wagon reins.
As the wagon rolled away from the hitch rail, Lou Elkins and Tanner Riggs stepped out of the trading post and looked down at Cheyenne and his
men.
“Howdy, Cheyenne,” said Elkins. Tanner Riggs touched his hat brim and gave a nod.
“Howdy, Lou . . . howdy, Tanner,” Cheyenne said. “Glad you both showed up.” He turned a cold stare to Bagley.
“Oh, I meant to tell you,” Bagley said, “they showed up earlier. I told them you’d be coming.”
“I’m glad you decided to tell me,” Cheyenne said in a dry tone. He turned to Elkins and Riggs and gestured a hand back and forth between them and his three men. “I expect everybody here knows one another?”
The men exchanged nods and greetings.
“All of you go inside and pull some cork,” Cheyenne said. “Bottles are all on me. Hell, rooms, food, everything’s on me.” He patted the saddlebags hanging over his shoulder. “I’ll be right back.”
“All right!” said Dock Latin. He and Gantry Tarpis bounded up the steps, following Riggs and Elkins back inside, all of them drawn there by the powerful lure of whiskey.
“Gantry,” Cheyenne called out, stopping Red Gantry before he made his way through the open door, “get your bottle and come see me. I’ve got something that needs doing. Bring a rope,” he added in afterthought.
“Bring a rope . . . ?” said Gantry curiously.
“Yep, you heard me,” said Cheyenne.
Gantry just stared at him for a moment, then said, “Yeah, sure, I’ll be right along—and I’ll bring a rope.”
“Red don’t like taking orders, does he?” Bagley whispered as Gantry walked inside.
Cheyenne didn’t reply. He turned back to Bagley and said, “We’ll need some tents for the night, one for the Udalls, two for all the men and one for myself.”
Bagley scratched the stubble on his chin and squinted in contemplation.
