“Yes, sir,” Mike said. “I saw ’em when they first rode across the clearing in front of the old barn. There was five of ’em and three packhorses.” He paused, waiting for Joe to reply. When he didn’t, Mike asked, “You reckon they’re after the cattle?”
Gault sighed in frustration. “I can’t think of any other reason for them to show up here.” He looked back up the valley, where the herd was quietly huddled. It was unlikely that the five riders could hear the cows from where they had made their camp. “I guess we’ll find out what they’re up to when the sun comes up.”
“Maybe they’re just on their way up to that big ranch in Deer Park,” Mike said hopefully.
“I reckon we’ll see in the mornin’,” Joe said, knowing that it was one helluva coincidence that the five happened to camp at Pryor’s old place—if they were just passing through. And they had ridden an awful long time after dark before making camp. No, there was little doubt what their intentions were, and Joe had until sunup to decide what he was going to do about it.
They spent the rest of the night on the knob to keep an eye on the camp below. There was thought about trying to move the cattle farther up the valley in hopes the strangers would be unaware of the herd. The idea was quickly discarded, as it would be impossible to get the cows moving without difficulty and a great deal of noise. “We’ll just have to wait and see what kind of hand we’re dealt in the mornin’,” Joe said.
The camp seemed to be in no hurry to get started. The five men took their time around their breakfast fire until well after sunup. From the knob on the ridge, Joe and Mike watched and waited. Behind them, farther up the canyon, the cattle were stirring, slowly starting to drift toward the pass at the east end. “At least the damn cows are headin’ away from them,” Joe said.
“Uh-oh,” Mike blurted a moment later when the strangers broke camp and mounted up. “They’re headin’ straight up the canyon after the cattle!”
It was decision time for Joe Gault. He couldn’t just turn tail and run and let the rustlers have the town’s cattle herd. “I’m gonna ride down and head ’em off,” he said. “It could be that they ain’t thought about takin’ our cattle, maybe just heard the cattle and are riding up the canyon ’cause they’re curious. You stay about halfway down the ridge where they can see you, but if anything goes wrong, you hightail it for Paradise. These cows ain’t worth gettin’ killed for.”
They split up then and Joe rode down to the canyon floor to get in a position to intercept the riders already leaving the valley. Pulling up on a slight rise at a turn in the canyon, he waited, and in a few minutes’ time the five riders appeared. One man rode out in front of the others and pulled up short, surprised by the sudden discovery of the lone rider.
“Whoa!” Booker exclaimed softly to himself when he encountered Joe Gault calmly sitting his horse. He took a moment to glance all around him, looking for others. When he saw no one else, he nudged his horse forward, stopping again about a dozen yards from Gault while his four companions caught up to him. Fashioning a wide smile, he said, “Good mornin’.”
“Mornin’,” Joe returned. “Where you fellers headed?”
“Where are we headed?” Booker echoed, his smile still in place. “We’re just comin’ to get our cattle. Me and the boys appreciate you keepin’ an eye on ’em for us, but we can take care of ’em now.”
Joe backed his horse a few paces when the four men with Booker fanned out to confront him in a semicircle. “You fellers have made a mistake. These cows belong to the town of Paradise.” He nodded toward Mike, who was watching them from halfway up the ridge. “The rest of the drovers are on the other side of the ridge.”
Booker glanced up at Mike, then returned his gaze to the man confronting him. “Is that a fact?” he said. Then pointing beyond Joe, he commented, “I’d say ain’t nobody herdin’ them cows—the way they’re millin’ about. Like I said, them cows belong to us.” He was about to say more, but Cantrell spoke up.
“Ain’t you the blacksmith?” he said, his hand moving down to rest on the handle of his pistol.
Until that moment Joe had been focusing his attention upon Booker. When Cantrell spoke, Joe recognized him as the murderer who had assaulted the town before. His thoughts then turned immediately to saving his neck. “Maybe,” he replied cautiously.
“Why, you’re the son of a bitch that shot my brother,” Mace exclaimed and pulled his pistol.
With no time to turn and run, Joe kicked his horse hard and in a desperate move, charged straight toward the five men, bursting between One Eye and Stump, causing their horses to start and spring sideways. Racing down the canyon at a full gallop, he left the outlaws trying to control their mounts and their packhorses. By the time they were able to start shooting, he was too far for accuracy. Riding low on his horse’s neck, he couldn’t look back to see what happened to Mike, but he hoped the boy had sense enough to run.
“Watch where you’re aimin’ that thing!” Stump yelled at Mace as Cantrell emptied his .44 at the fleeing blacksmith. “That last shot was a little too close to my head!”
“Why in the hell didn’t you stop him?” Mace shot back in anger. “He went right by you!”
The only one still calm about the incident, Booker looked toward the ridge where Mike had been but was now gone. He was certain now. “There ain’t no more of ’em, just the two. Jimmy, you and One Eye go after him. Run him down and kill him. We don’t need no witnesses. The rest of us will head over that ridge and find his partner. We don’t want either one of ’em to get away and go for help.”
Immediately chafing over Booker’s assumption that he was running the show, Mace stated in a tone that could not be misinterpreted, “Jimmy and I’ll go after the blacksmith. I’m gonna be the one that finishes that son of a bitch.”
Catching the tone of Cantrell’s comment, Booker smiled patiently. “All right, you and Jimmy go after him, but you’d best start sometime today if you’re plannin’ to catch him.”
“You just worry about that one up on the hill,” Mace replied. “I’ll take care of the blacksmith.”
Pushing for all the speed he could coax from his rapidly tiring horse, Joe Gault glanced back to see if he was being pursued. Two riders were coming on hard—he had to consider finding a place to take cover and defend himself. Looking ahead of him now, he could see the scorched timbers of Raymond Pryor’s ranch. As good a place as any, he thought and steered his horse toward the ruins of the barn. When little more than a hundred yards from the barn, he suddenly pulled his horse up short when another man appeared seemingly out of nowhere, standing next to a scorched corner post, his rifle raised and aimed in his direction. In a panic, Joe started to veer off into the pines where the outlaws had camped before he recognized the solid form of Jason Storm.
“Jason, don’t shoot!” Joe yelled. “It’s me, Joe Gault!” By stopping, he had allowed the two men chasing him to gain on him. He kicked his horse again and started toward the barn, but Jason appeared not to hear him and continued to aim his rifle. “Jason!” Gault yelled, in a panic anew. “Don’t shoot!” Still the stalwart figure with rifle raised to his shoulder gave no indication that he heard his pleas. “Jesus!” Gault cried when he heard the zip of a .44 slug whip close by his ear, followed immediately by the report of the rifle, and he wheeled his horse violently to the side. In his attempt to escape, he looked back to see one of the men chasing him slump in the saddle before falling to the ground. The other one abruptly turned and whipped his horse mercilessly as he retreated back up the canyon.
With frayed nerves, but realizing that he had not been Jason’s target, Joe Gault pulled his horse to a stop and sat there while he tried to gain control of his emotions. Knowing it to be a waste of ammunition to fire at the fleeing figure on horseback, Jason lowered his rifle and led his horse to meet Joe. “I swear,” Joe said, “I thought you were gonna shoot me.”
“Sorry,” Jason said, “but that fellow was gettin’ ready to shoot at you. I wo
ulda liked to wait till they got a little closer—mighta had a shot at both of ’em.”
“I’m mighty glad to see you, even though you liked to scared me to death,” Joe said. “They’ve got the cattle. That Cantrell bastard is back with four other men—three other men now.”
“I know,” Jason said. He had ridden all the previous day and straight through the night in an effort to reach Paradise Valley in time. Both he and his horse were near exhaustion, but at least he had managed to get there before Cantrell was gone.
“Whaddaya reckon we oughta do?” Joe asked anxiously.
“Nothin’ we can do but try to trail ’em. It ain’t gonna be too fast because my horse is worn out. I’m gonna have to rest him.” He looked a couple hundred yards up the valley where Jimmy Peterson’s horse stood grazing after following Cantrell for about fifty yards. “I might swap horses for a bit till Biscuit gets rested up.” He climbed up in the saddle and guided Biscuit toward the outlaw’s horse.
They had not gone twenty yards when the sound of distant gunfire echoed back from the canyon. “Mike!” Joe blurted. “Dr. Taylor’s boy, Mike—he’s been helpin’ me with the cattle. I told him to hightail it if I had trouble with them outlaws. They must have caught him, or the damfool kid mighta took a notion to shoot it out with ’em.”
With this new urgency, Jason wasted little time in catching up to the stray horse. As he reached down to pick up the reins, he was suddenly slammed with a solid blow to his chest, causing him to slide from the saddle and land on the ground. He didn’t even hear the sound of the rifle that shot him. At first, he couldn’t believe he had been shot. He felt pain from the impact caused by his body landing hard on the ground, but only an instant numbness in his chest. The condition lasted for only a matter of seconds, however, before a fiery pain ripped through his ribs and he looked down to see his shirt staining red with blood. His initial reaction was anger that he had ridden blindly into an ambush. The fleeing outlaw had doubled back and waited to bushwhack them. Now the rapid fire of Joe Gault’s Henry rifle was the next sound that registered in his mind. The blacksmith was on the ground, using his horse for cover.
“Jason!” Joe Gault exclaimed. “Are you all right?”
“ ’Fraid not,” Jason replied painfully. “I think I’m hurt pretty bad.” As the pain increased, he became more and more disgusted with himself for getting shot. He had been careless, something he was not usually guilty of, and he refused to blame it on his exhaustion and lack of sleep.
Two hundred yards distant, behind a knee-high rock formation, Mace Cantrell gleefully congratulated himself for a fine shot. He had recognized the man who killed Jimmy Peterson at once. It would have been hard to mistake the formidable figure of Jason Storm. His first impulse had been to turn and run, as he had the last time he confronted him. As he had galloped away, knowing they would be coming after him, he became more and more angry that he was running away from this personal devil again. Spotting the rocks, he told himself it was a perfect spot to ambush his pursuers.
Now, when he saw the fearsome avenger fall to the ground, his mind leaped to a near euphoria. He watched anxiously, smiling to himself when Jason failed to get up. The blacksmith had taken cover behind the horses, but Cantrell took another shot at him, hoping to get lucky. The bullet hit Peterson’s horse, causing it to crumple to the ground only to provide more protection for the two men. Cantrell didn’t care, he pumped two more shots into the dying horse just for the pleasure of it. Then, satisfied that he had finally freed his mind of the shadow of the one man who had caused him fear, he climbed in the saddle again and galloped away to rejoin Booker and the others. Feeling invincible once more, he was confident that the blacksmith would not follow. In fact, he realized that without Jason Storm, the pathetic community of Paradise was incapable of protecting itself. There may be a change of plans, he told himself, before we drive that herd away from here. He still harbored a desire to own a whole town.
“What was the shootin’ I heard?” Cantrell asked when he caught up to Booker near the pass at the far end of the canyon.
“That jasper on the hill took a couple of shots at us,” Booker replied. “Stump and One Eye went after him, and he ran like a scared rabbit.” He looked over Cantrell’s shoulder. “I heard the shootin’ back your way. Where’s Jimmy?”
“Jimmy’s luck ran out,” Mace answered. “That son of a bitch Storm shot him.” He grinned and continued. “But you don’t have to worry about Jason Storm no more. I killed him.”
Booker was plainly irritated by the loss of one of his men. “You killed him,” he repeated. “You’re sure he’s dead?”
“Well, I hit him square in the chest and he went down, and he didn’t get up again. I reckon that’s dead, all right.”
“What about Jimmy?” Booker wanted to know. “You sure he was dead? Why didn’t you bring him back with you?”
“Hell, I couldn’t. There was that other feller, the blacksmith. He was in a spot behind the horses where he could shoot at me all he wanted. I did the only thing I could do, and that was to get my ass outta there before I joined Jimmy in hell.” When Booker still continued to frown, Cantrell fumed. “The devil take Jimmy. He didn’t look like he was worth a handful of horse turds, anyway. We got a damn good trade—Jimmy for Jason Storm. These cows and the whole damn town are ours for the takin’ now, with him outta the way.”
“Maybe so,” Booker conceded reluctantly. Like Cantrell, he had never had a great deal of confidence in Jimmy Peterson, but it still irritated him that Mace held no regard for the loss of one of his men. The sudden appearance of Stump and One Eye at the crest of the ridge caused him to turn his attention to them. He waited until they descended the ridge and pulled up beside him. “So?” he asked.
“We lost him,” Stump said.
“We chased him down the side of the ridge and he cut through a notch between them two mountains over yonder.” He turned in the saddle to point toward the north. “We followed him through the notch, but he wasn’t there no more. I guess he sprouted wings and flew.”
Booker gave it a long moment’s thought. He would have preferred to leave no witnesses. “Well, I reckon we’d better see if we can move these damn cows somewhere where we can keep an eye on ’em.” He gave the two men the news about Jimmy Peterson when Stump asked where he was. The young man’s death caused no more than a shrug and a half shake of the head.
Behind them, near the ruins of the Pryor ranch, Joe Gault was faced with indecision. The shooting had stopped and he felt sure Cantrell had gone. Jason was bleeding pretty badly and seemed to be fading in consciousness. Young Mike Taylor was ahead somewhere—in trouble or not—Joe couldn’t be sure. Knowing he couldn’t let Jason lie there and die without making some effort to help him, he made his decision. “I got to get you on your horse,” he told Jason. “If I help you, can you get up?”
“I reckon I’ll have to.” Jason groaned. “I’ve got no intention of dyin’ here on my back. I’d better get on my horse while I still can.” He knew that he was rapidly losing strength.
With Joe’s strong support, he was just able to get in the saddle, but not without excruciating pain. Feeling dizzy, he fell forward on Biscuit’s neck. And when Joe suggested that he should try to get him to Dr. Taylor’s house, Jason confessed that he didn’t think he could make it. “My cabin ain’t too far from here,” he said. “I’ll try to make it there. Maybe after I can rest up a little, I’ll be stronger.”
It proved to be a long and painful ride for Jason to reach Blind Woman Creek and his cabin hidden up in the firs. Once there, Joe Gault helped him inside, where he took a look at the hole in Jason’s chest. It didn’t look good. He got some water from the creek and cleaned it as best he could, then used some cloth Jason kept to fashion a bandage. “I don’t know what else I can do for it,” Joe said when the bleeding seemed to have stopped for the moment. He was at a loss as to whether to go or stay with the wounded man, but Jason insisted that he had to help the people of
Paradise in case they were slated for another visit from the outlaws.
“I’ve got plenty of dried venison,” he said. “Just get me some where I can get to it, and leave me some water. Turn Biscuit out of the corral so he can graze. He won’t wander far from me, and I’ll be all right.” He said it, not really sure if he would be or not.
Joe was not sure if it wouldn’t be best for him to stay with Jason till he showed some improvement. He was pretty certain that the bullet had not struck Jason’s heart. If it had, he told himself, Jason would already be dead, most likely. He was reluctant to admit that he was glad that Jason insisted that he leave, for he didn’t know what else to do for the wounded man, and he suspected it was only a question of how long it would be before he died. So after making Jason as comfortable as he could, he said, “So long. I’ll be back as soon as I can,” and left to warn the people of Paradise.
Joe was relieved to find that Mike Taylor had reached Paradise ahead of him. By the time the blacksmith pulled his horse up to the stable, Mike and Tom Austin were already warning the people about the possibility of another raid by the outlaws. A group had gathered in Fred Hatfield’s store to discuss the threat. That was where Joe found them.
“There’s Joe Gault!” Mike exclaimed when he entered the store. He rushed to meet him. “I didn’t know what happened to you. I was afraid they’d kilt you for sure.”
“If it hadn’t been for Jason Storm, they mighta,” Gault said. His statement caused a ripple of excitement in the group, everyone looking toward the door in hopes the rugged man would appear. The sense of anticipation turned rapidly to one of despair when Joe told them that Jason had been shot.
“Dead?” Wilson James, the barber, asked.
“No,” Joe replied with a concerned shake of his head, “but he’s hurt pretty bad, too bad to ride back here to Paradise—lost a lot of blood.”
Storm in Paradise Valley Page 15
