Owen Family Saga Box Set: Books 1-3
Page 22
“I should have had more sense,” Rod muttered, seemingly getting his thoughts straight at last. “Them eyes always had something in them I didn’t like.” Drying blood covered one side of his face.
Rulon brought Rod’s horse over to him and helped him to mount. James had Chico in the saddle and handed the reins to Rod, then patted the neck of Chico’s horse. Carl tied the reins of Bob’s horse onto Chico’s saddle while Sourdough and Bill secured the blanket-wrapped burden of Bob’s body across his horse.
“Don’t stop until you get home, Pa,” said Rulon, slapping Rod’s horse on the rump. The animal started down the trail.
“I hope Chico can stay on that horse,” James said. “He’s lost a passel of blood.”
“He’ll do,” said Bill. “He’s got sand in his craw.”
Sourdough was up on his horse. “That cabin’s still a good piece distant,” he reminded them. “We need to ride to catch them fellers before nightfall.”
Carl’s blood boiled him up into his saddle as he remembered that Ellen was in the hands of men like Dawes and Tilden. “I reckon the odds are getting well nigh even now,” he shouted. “They got four, and we got five.”
“We know about four,” Rulon corrected. “The way Dawes and Tilden chewed up the trail, I can’t tell if anybody else has been along this way.”
Sourdough led off again, Rulon beside him to check the trail, and the other three came in a bunch behind. The horses were rested, and they made good time, climbing the gentle slope of the mountain through the pines and firs that girdled its higher reaches.
Three hours before nightfall, Sourdough called a halt.
“That cabin ain’t but a half mile or less through them trees,” he said. “It’s partly a dugout into the side of the mountain. We’ll surround it easy, for there ain’t but one way in, but they’ve got them girls, so they have a fair hand of cards, too. What you might call a Mexican standoff. When dark falls, we can get in real close, but if we go to shooting, we might hit them girls.”
“Best we sneak on up there and have a good look,” Bill said. “Can’t harm nothing to know how the ground lies.”
Dismounting, they picketed their horses in a protected hollow where they could graze, took their rifles, and set out on foot.
Rulon saw the cabin first, its log front protruding from the side of the mountain, and reached out to tap Carl on the shoulder.
“Yep,” whispered Carl, crouching behind a pine trunk.
James came silently behind them, and whispered, “Where do you think they put their horses? I went a piece to the right, and there’s no cover close in big enough to hide four horses. They ain’t in the woods, or we would have heard them.”
“I reckon if I was them, I’d want my horse close by,” Rulon reasoned. “We’ll circle to the left and check. The mountain ain’t swallowed them up.”
Sourdough appeared behind a neighboring pine. He glided over to join the three brothers.
“That cabin’s weathered some since I was last here. The roof’s in bad shape. Another storm will knock it down, and then the front wall will fall in.” He looked back toward the cabin and spotted a rifle barrel poking through the front window. “I reckon they know we arrived.”
A bullet whanged into a tree behind them, and the four men ducked into the brush, spreading out to cover the entire front of the cabin.
“Ah ha!” rang out a cry. “We have meet again. And this time you will not have the good luck.”
Carl’s stomach churned. “It’s Acosta,” he exclaimed. “I should have finished him off back in Kansas City.”
“We should have ground his bones on the prairie,” James responded, gritting his teeth.
“I must thank you for the gift of these lovely young muchachas, but where is the other one, the diosa blanca? I have been yearning to pay my respects to her.”
“Yearn away. She couldn’t make the trip,” Carl yelled, and moved back from his position.
Another slug whipped through the air, barking the tree where Carl had stood. “He can shoot,” Carl whispered from his new bush.
A twig snapped off to the left, and Carl swung his rifle to cover whoever was approaching. After a moment, Bill’s head moved into view, and he hissed, “Stand easy. It’s me.”
He motioned for the men to join him, and they all moved out of rifle range to confer. “I been scouting on the left, and there’s no sign of their horses.” He paused a moment, puzzlement twisting his face. “I heard a whinny once, but I’ll be switched if I could locate them.” He glanced around at the other men. “Any luck on the right?”
“Nothing,” James answered. “But we know who’s in there now. Feller by the name of Berto Acosta. We tussled with him back in Kansas City on our way out here.”
“Berto Acosta? He’s got a black name in Texas,” said Bill. “Cattle thief, stage robber, murderer: he’s done it all. I wondered where Dawes and Tilden blew in from. It pains me to find I hired a pair of spies and murderers.” Bill scowled and looked fiercely at the old trapper and the brothers. “I got a bullet with Tilden’s name on it. Don’t you forget that. When the time comes, he’s all mine.”
Rulon rubbed his cheek with his left hand. “Sourdough, you stay in that cabin long? When you was trapping?”
“Two winters I holed up there. But I didn’t just trap. When I had nothing to do, I’d take a pick and do some hacking against the back wall. I’d heard tell there was a vein somewheres, but I never found it. I must have moved three ton of rock out of there for my trouble, but nary an ounce of gold did I find.”
“And folks stayed in there since then?”
“Before and since. Folks have been moving up and down through these hills for centuries: Indians, Spanish, trappers, and prospectors. I don’t know how old the cabin is, but over the years, many a body’s bound to have stumbled onto it and put it to use.”
Rulon could barely contain his excitement. “You reckon one of those bodies could have dug clear through the hill? Made a back door?”
“There was a bear’s den over yonder. I left the old she and her cubs alone.” He ran his fingers through his white thatch of hair. “If some feller with more brawn than brain camped in here long enough, he could have tunneled through to the den. They could keep horses in such a tunnel.”
“It’s coming on dark in an hour or so. Now’s the time to find that den, or cave, or tunnel.” Rulon turned to Bill. “Take me over to where you heard the whinny. If there’s an opening, we’ll find it and see if it connects with the house. Carl, you and James go to shooting from different positions, to make them think we’re all out here. Sourdough, you go to the right and give them a cross fire. If Bill and me find a back way in, you’ll know it by the commotion. Give them a rush when you hear us blast our way in.”
“I thought this was my fight,” Carl growled.
Rulon thumbed his nose with his knuckle, and put his other hand on James’s arm to keep him still. “I figure we three got equal shares in it, seeing as how it’s our sister over yonder. And Bill has a stake because of Bob. Sourdough knows this place.” Rulon looked around at all the men, then addressed Carl again. “Your job is to get in there with these two and fetch the girls out when Bill and me stir up a ruckus.”
~~~
Waiting was pure agony. Carl bellied down in the pine needles and crawled to a fresh position from time to time before he sent a bullet singing into the hill above the cabin roof, but the time he spent waiting for return fire and for Rulon’s diversion was time spent chewing his cheeks in frustration.
James scooted around in the woods to his left, shooting above the roof each time he moved. Carl wasn’t sure where Sourdough was, but he knew the old man was somewhere on the right, shooting occasionally, and waiting for the ruckus Rulon had promised.
After his third shot at a dead branch overhanging the roof, Carl noticed that the debris knocked off by his bullets wasn’t collecting on the shingles. It disappeared each time, dropping into the cabin.
“Yup, and wind up looking like a piece of Irish lace. That’s a sure way to an early grave. You keep down here and do what Rulon told you.”
“But if I’m up there, I can see down into the house, and find the girls. Then we won’t go in blind. It’s a good plan, James, and I aim to try it.”
“Where am I supposed to shoot if you’re in my sights?”
Carl pursed his lips for a moment. “Sometimes I get the idea you would favor putting lead into me,” he said, and compressed his jaw. “We don’t see eye to eye anymore.”
“I don’t stoop to murder,” his brother growled.
Carl nodded. “I’m mighty thankful for that,” he said, then slipped into the forest to circle around.
Moving warily, in case there was a guard in the forest, Carl crept through the pines, avoiding the sticks that littered the brown pine-needle carpet beneath his feet. Turning south, he walked toward James’s left, edging toward an arc of brush that might afford cover to his scramble up the slope.
He stopped at the edge of the clearing and glanced back at the cabin. The window on this side would show a fine view of him when he dashed into the open. He hesitated, and then James fired a volley of shots above the roofline.
“Thanks, little brother,” Carl muttered, and ran, doubled over, into the clearing as answering shots thudded around James’s position.
Carl hit the rise of the mountain going full blast, and his momentum carried him up the first ten feet. Then he flattened out on his belly, scooting the Spencer ahead of him, aware that his movements could be sensed through the thin brush between him and the cabin window. Being careful not to scrape the barrel and action along the rocks, Carl moved first the rifle, then himself, up the steep, rocky hill.
To get above the cabin, Carl saw that he would have to swing out onto a crumbling ledge above a sharp drop. The ledge gradually rose about fifteen feet before it angled down toward the roofline. There was one spot where he could probably be seen from the window, before he got high enough to be out of view, but there he would be on his own. James could not risk shooting then, for fear of hitting him.
Holding his breath, the young man eased out onto the ledge, praying that it would hold his weight. He clung to the rock face, slowly letting the air out of his lungs. One shard of rock tumbled off the ledge, but the rest held, and he moved, inch by inch, along the rising shelf of rotten rock.
Then he was at the spot where anybody looking through the window and glancing upward could see him plain as the wattles on a tom turkey. He stopped, feeling the skin of his exposed back crawling with raw nerves. One pebble, bounding down the face of the hill, might alert the inhabitants of the cabin and send a bullet into his back. One misstep, and he’d plunge down the sheer cliff face to his death.
There was no sound from the cabin, no gunfire and no voices, and the stillness made Carl’s palms clammy. He could feel drops of sweat trickling along the valley of his spine. Rulon had had plenty of time to find the mouth of the bear’s den and make his way with Bill through the tunnel.
The silence below was worrisome. Maybe there is no tunnel after all, he thought. I’m up here, set for disaster, with no remedy close at hand.
Carl scrunched up his face, tight as he could, then let it go slack, hoping to slow his breathing. His left arm ached from the effort of keeping the rifle free of the rocks, safe from striking with the telltale clang of metal against stone. He elected to move now in short, deliberate progressions, and it seemed to him that eternity could not be as long as this trip across the field of fire from the cabin.
Slowly, Carl inched his way up the ledge. He thought his heart must be beating loud enough to alarm the ruffians below him. Then, slowly he turned his head and looked over his shoulder toward the cabin. He could no longer see the window, and knew that he was safe from view.
Now was the time for speed, and his bunched muscles cried out in agony as he took hurried steps down the ledge to the place where he had aimed his rifle so many times. He fingered the dead branch where the bullets had stripped off the back, then looked down, into the dark interior of the cabin.
There was not just a single breach spreading between two roof beams, but a large hole that gaped open to the sky where several of the beams had rotted away. Carl looked up and signaled to James the size of the hole, framing a circle in the air, then he peered down again, hoping to locate the girls.
The ruckus began with a mighty concussion beneath him, and Carl felt himself slipping into space, caught off guard as he tumbled into the void. He fell heavily on his left leg and collapsed. Debris from the rotted roof struck his head and shoulders, and when he tried to get up and back himself into the corner of the room, he knew by the way his leg folded up under him that it was broken.
Using his Spencer as a crutch, he crouched in the dim room and pulled the Smith and Wesson from his waistband, aware of the terrific din coming from the rear of the cabin. Rulon and Bill must have got through, for bullets were whanging and spattering behind a hanging blanket. A man yelled in pain, and the sound filled the hollow with echoes.
Then he saw the girls, tied together behind the overturned table by the front door, and heard them shrieking a warning to him. He half-turned, his pistol feeling like a living part of his hand, and heard Pete Dawes exclaim, “How’d that tenderfoot get in here?”
Carl shot across his body, and heard the thunk of his bullet entering Dawes’ chest. He recognized his own voice saying, “That’s for Chico, and this here’s for my pa,” as he fired again, his slug going into the bridge of Dawes’ nose.
Carl felt the jolt of the lead from Dawes’ last shot as it hit his left hipbone, and thought, That leg’s gone, as he spun around with the blow.
He landed up against the window that had worried him, while he was out there on the mountain. His rifle was gone from his hand, laying several feet from him on the floor. Knowing he couldn’t reach it, he shifted the Smith and Wesson to his left hand and drew the Colt from his holster.
Willy thrust away the blanket and threw himself across the room, trying to get behind the girls, but Carl’s shots stopped him, and Willy fell, sprawling on the dirt floor.
Now he had to find Acosta, but Carl couldn’t see him in the gloom of the fading light. Powder smoke hung heavy in the room, choking off the oxygen and blurring his vision. Shots still rang out from time to time in the tunnel, and the pounding of boots on the hardpan outside let him know James and Sourdough were on the way in.
Where was Berto Acosta? All the revulsion he had ever felt for the man rose in his chest, squeezing the breath out of him. He inhaled the putrid air of the cabin, shuddering as the numbness from his leg wounds wore off. His head felt like it was floating, and each time he moved, the bullet hole opened, gushing blood. He knew he had to find Acosta now, before he passed out.
The door splintered under the butt of James’s rifle, and fresh air moved into the room as he enlarged the hole. James wiggled through, lifted the bar, and swung open the shattered door. “Where are they?” he hissed, then grunted as he located the girls.
“Get them out!” Carl yelled, and heard his brother hustle the girls through the doorway. Now he had to find Acosta and make an end to the man’s corruption.
Carl holstered his Colt and, dragging his leg, using the rough furniture as props, he crossed the room and stumbled over Willy’s body. He avoided Dawes, whose surprised eyes would never take the measure of another man, and hesitated before the blanket that marked the entrance to the tunnel. The hair rose on the back of his neck. He drew his Colt again, then swept the blanket aside with the pistol in his left hand, and froze.
Berto Acosta stood beyond the blanket, the fingers of his left hand caressing the scar where Carl had split his cheekbone. His gun was level
ed at Carl’s heart.
“You!” the man hissed. “You are just a muchacho, but you have spoiled the face of Berto Acosta, and kept from him the delights of the yellow-haired girl. No one, no one keeps me from having my way. Now you die.”
Carl saw the furious black eyes narrow and he brought down his left arm just before Berto fired, turning it to knock aside the barrel of the gun, and the bullet whizzed by under Carl’s arm.
Grunting, “I don’t die so easy as that,” Carl half tackled, half fell on the big Mexican, and felt the concussion of Berto’s second shot going off next to his head. Carl landed with the barrel of his right-hand gun tucked into the soft flesh of Berto’s throat, just where it jutted out to form the floor of his mouth, but he didn’t hear the shot. He knew he fired by the jump of the Colt in his hand, and by the sudden slackness of the Mexican’s body.
Rulon’s legs came into sight as Carl brushed the back of his left hand alongside his head. His hand came away from his head warm and sticky with his own blood. Then the gloom of the tunnel gathered around him, and he slumped into the darkness over the body.
Chapter 20
Carl opened his eyes to a blinding light and a fuzzy, isolated feeling. The side of his head throbbed with pain, and when he shifted his weight to get out of bed, his left hip and thigh answered the motion with a jolt and ache of agony that threatened to send him back into blackness. Catching his breath, resting a moment, he recognized his father’s house, and knew he was in his father’s bed. No one seemed to be in the room, and Carl lay back and drifted into the welcoming darkness.
When next he woke, it was night, and he was in his own bed, in his own cabin, with the same pain and fuzzy, cottony feeling inside his head. He became aware of a restraint on his left leg, and looked down over his beard to investigate. Someone had bound a set of narrow, thinly split cedar shakes to his thigh, from hip to knee, and his pants and shirt were gone.
The ache in his thigh told him that he had not been mistaken about breaking his leg. He tried not to shift his weight as he reached down to probe the sorest part. The leg was swollen and tender, and hot to the touch.