The Sky-Liners (1967) s-13

by Louis L'Amour

  "We've done some scoutin' around," Reardon told us. "The Fetchen riders have been huntin' around the Spanish Peaks. We found tracks up that way. Sharp figures they're huntin' the Reynolds treasure."

  Ladder Walker was glum. "Briggs was a good man. Never done harm to nobody. I'm fixin' to hunt me some Fetchens."

  "Take it easy," Reardon warned. "Those boys are mean, and they ain't about to give you no chance. No fair chance, that is."

  Judith was standing on the porch when I rode up. "Flagan, I'm worried about Pa. All this time, and no word. Nobody has seen him, and the Fetchens won't let anyone come near the place."

  I'd been giving it considerable thought, and riding back from Denver, Galloway and me had made up our minds to do something about it. The trouble was, we didn't know exactly what.

  Nobody in his right mind goes riding into a bottle-necked valley where there's fifteen to twenty men waiting for him, all fixing to notch their guns for his scalp. And the sides of that valley allowed for no other approach we knew of. Yet there had to be a way, and one way might be to cause some kind of diversion.

  "Suppose," I suggested, "we give it out that we've found some sign of that Reynolds gold? We could pick some lonely place over close to Spanish Peaks, let out the rumor that we had it located and were going in to pick it up."

  "With a big enough party to draw them all away from the ranch?"

  "That's right. It wouldn't do any harm, and it might pull them all away so we could ride in and look around."

  We finally picked on a place not so far off as the Spanish Peaks. We rode over to Badito - Galloway, Ladder Walker, and me - and we had a couple of drinks and talked about how we'd located the Reynolds treasure.

  Everybody for miles around had heard that story, so, like we figured, there were questions put to us. "Is it near the Spanish Peaks?" one man asked.

  "That's just it," Galloway said. "Everybody took it for granted that when Reynolds talked about twin peaks he meant the Spanish Peaks. Well, that was where everybody went wrong. The peaks Reynolds and them talked about were right up at the top of the Sangre de Cristos. I mean what's called Blanca Peak."

  "There's three peaks up there," somebody objected.

  "Depends on where you stand to look at them. I figure that after they buried the loot they took them for landmarks - just looked back and saw only two peaks, close together."

  "So you think you've found the place?" The questioner was skeptical. "So have a lot of others."

  "We found a knife stuck into a tree for a marker, and we found a stone slab with markings on it."

  Oh, we had them now. Everybody knew that Reynolds had told of thrusting a knife into a tree to mark the place, so we knew our story would be all around the country in a matter of hours. Somebody would be sure to tell the Fetchens, just go get their reaction.

  "We're going up there in the morning," Walker said, making out to be drunker than he was. "We'll camp in Bronco Dan Gulch, and we'll be within a mile of the treasure. You just wait. Come daylight, we'll come down the pass loaded with gold."

  Now, Bronco Dan was a narrow little gulch that headed up near the base of Lone Rock Hill, only three or four miles from the top of the rim. It was wild country, and just such a place as outlaws might choose to hide out or cache some loot. And it wasn't but a little way above La Veta Pass.

  Anyway a body looked at it, the place made a lot of sense. La Veta Pass was the natural escape route for anybody trying to get over the mountains from Walsenburg to Alamosa, and vice versa.

  Of course, they knew about the knife. That was the common feature of the stories about the Reynolds treasure - that he had marked the place by driving a knife into a tree. The stone marker was pure invention, but they found it easy to accept the idea that Reynolds might have scratched a map on a stab of rock.

  That night Cap Rountree went up the mountain and hid in the brush where he could watch the Costello place, and when we arrived shortly after daybreak he told us the Fetchens had taken out in a pack just before daylight

  "They took the bait, all right Oh, yes, I could see just enough to see them ride out"

  "How many stayed behind?"

  "Two, three maybe. I don't know for sure."

  Galloway went to his horse, and I did the same. You can lay a couple of bets I wasn't anxious to go down there, but we had set this up and this was the chance we'd been playing for.

  Cap started to follow along, but I waved him back. "You stay here. No use all of us getting boxed in down there. If you see them coming back, give a shout."

  Ladder Walker was along with us - there was no leaving him out of it. So the three of us went down the mountain, following the trail where cattle had crossed a saddle, and we came into the valley within two hundred yards of the ranch, just beyond the corral.

  "Stay with the horses, Ladder," I said. "And keep an eye on the opening. I don't like this place, not a bit"

  "You figure it for a trap?"

  "Could be. Black Fetchen is a wily one, and we've had it too easy so far. We've had almost too much luck."

  Galloway and me, spread apart a little, walked toward the house.

  We played it in luck this time too. Nobody seemed to be around until we stepped up on the porch. Then we could hear voices coming from the back of the house.

  "Don't get any ideas, old man. You just set tight until the boys come back. Then maybe Black will let you go. If'n he can find that gold and them Sacketts all to once, he might come back plumb satisfied."

  "He won't find the Sacketts," I said, stepping from the hallway into the room where they sat. It was the kitchen, and on my sudden entrance one of the men stood up so quick he almost turned over the table.

  "Get your hat, Mr. Costello," I said. "We've come to take you to Judith."

  I hadn't drawn my gun, being of no mind to shoot anybody unless they asked for it. There were two of Fetchen's men in the room and our arriving that way had taken the wind out of them. They just looked at us, even the one who had stood up so quick.

  Costello, who was a slim, oldish man with a shock of graying hair, got up and put on his hat.

  "Here, now!" The Fetchen man standing up had gotten his senses back, and he was mad. "Costello, you come back and set down! The same goes for you Sacketts, unless you want to get killed. Black Fetchen is ridin' up to this ranch right now."

  "We needn't have any trouble," I said calmly.

  "I'll get a horse," Galloway said, and ducked out of the door, Costello following him.

  "Black will kill you, Sackett. He'll fill your hide with lead."

  "I doubt if he's got the guts to try. You tell him I said that."

  "I hear tell you're a fast man with a shootin' iron." I could just see the gambler stirring around inside him, and it looked as if it was gettin' the better of his common sense. "I don't think we need to wait for Black. I'd sort of like to try you on myself."

  "Your choice."

  Meanwhile I walked on into the room, and right up to him. Now, no man likes to start a shooting match at point-blank range, because skill plays mighty little part in it then, and the odds are that both men will get blasted. And anyhow, nobody in his right mind starts shooting at all unless there's no other way, and I wasn't planning on shooting now, if I could help it.

  So I just walked in on him and he backed off a step, and when he started to take another step back, I hit him. It was the last thing he was expecting, and the blow knocked him down. It was one quick move for me to slip his gun from its holster and straighten up, but the other man hadn't moved.

  "You shuck your guns," I told him. "You just unbuckle and step back, and be careful how you move your hands. I'm a man mighty subject to impressions, and you give me the wrong one and I'm likely to open you up like a gutted sheep."

  "I ain't figurin' on it. You just watch it, now." He moved his hands with great care to his belt buckle, unhitched, and let the gun belt fall.

  The man on the floor was sitting up. "What's the matter, you yella?"
he said to his companion.

  "I'm figurin' on livin' a mighty long time, that's all. I ain't seen a gray hair yet, and I got my teeth. Anyway, I didn't see you cuttin' much ice."

  "I should've killed him."

  "You done the right thing, to my thinkin'. Maybe I ain't so gun-slick as some, and maybe I ain't so smart, but I sure enough know when to back off from a fire so's not to get burned. Don't you get no fancy notions now, Ed. You'd get us both killed."

  Well, I gathered up those guns and a rifle I saw in the corner by the door, then I just backed off.

  Galloway and Costello were up in their saddles, holding my horse ready.

  There wasn't any move from the house until we were cutting around the corral toward the trail down which we had come, and then one man ran from the house toward the barn. Glancing back, I was just in time to see him come out with a rifle, but he took no aim at us; he just lifted the rifle in one hand and fired two quick shots, a space, and then a third shot ... and he was firing into the air.

  "Trouble!" I yelled. "That was a signal!"

  Ladder Walker, who had hung back, wanting a shot at anyone who had helped to kill Briggs, now came rushing up behind us. The trail to the saddle over which he had come into the valley was steep, and a hard scramble for the horses, but much of it was among the trees and partly concealed from below.

  We heard a wild yell from below and, looking back, I saw Black Fetchen, plainly recognizable because of the horse he rode, charging into the valley, followed by half a dozen riders.

  Even as I looked, a man ran toward him, pointing up the mountain. Instantly there was firing, but shooting uphill is apt to be a tricky thing even for a skilled marksman, and their bullets struck well behind us. Before they had the range we were too far away for them, and they wasted no more shots.

  But they were coming after us. We could hear their horses far below, and saw the men we had caught in the house catching up horses at the corral, ready to follow.

  Deliberately, Galloway slowed his pace. "Easiest way to kill a horse," he said, "running it uphill. We'll leave that to them."

  Riding close to Costello, I handed him the gun belt and rifle I'd taken from the cabin. When I'd first run out I had slung the belt over the pommel and hung onto the rifle.

  Up ahead of us we heard the sudden boom of a heavy rifle ... Cap Rountree and his buffalo gun. A moment later came a second shot. He was firing a .56 Spencer that carried a wicked wallop. Personally, I favored the Winchester .44, but that big Spencer made a boom that was a frightening thing to hear, and it could tear a hole in a man it hit so that it was unlikely a doctor would do him much good.

  Cap was in the saddle when we reached him, but he made us pull up. "Flagan," he said, "I don't like the look of it. Where's the rest of them?"

  There were six or seven behind us, that we knew, but what of the rest?

  "You figure we're trapped?" I asked.

  "You just look at it. They must know how we got up here, and they can ride out their gap and block our way down the mountain before we can get there."

  I was not one to underrate Black Fetchen. Back at the Costello place that man had said Fetchen was due to come riding in at any moment, and at the time I gave it no credit, figuring he was trying a bluff, but then some of the outfit had showed up.

  Ladder Walker turned his mount and galloped to a spot where he could look over part of the trail up which we had come in first arriving at our lookout point. He was back in an instant. "Dust down there. Somebody is movin' on the trail."

  "Is there a trail south, toward Bronco Dan?"

  Cap Rountree chewed his mustache. "There's a shadow of a trail down Placer Creek to La Veta Pass, but that's where you sent some of this outfit. Likely the Fetchens know that trail. If you try it, and they're waitin,' it's a death trap."

  I gave a glance up toward those peaks that shut us off from the west, and felt something like fear. It was almighty icy and cold up there against the sky, up there where the timber ran out and the raw-backed ridges gnawed the sky. My eyes went along the east face of those ridges.

  "What about west?" I asked.

  "Well," Cap said reluctantly, "there's a pass off north called Mosca Pass. It's high up and cold, and when you come down the other side you're in the sand dunes."

  "We got a choice?" Galloway asked.

  "Either run or fight," Walker said, "and if we fight we'll be outnumbered three or four to one."

  "I like the odds," Galloway said, "but somebody among us will die."

  I looked over at Costello. "Do you know that pass?"

  "I know it. If there's any trail there from here, it's nothing but a sheep trail."

  "Let's go," I said. Below us we could hear them coming - in fact, we could hear them on both trails.

  Costello led off, knowing the country best. Cap knew it by hearsay, but Costello had been up to the pass once, coming on it from the ancient Indian trail that led down Aspen Creek.

  We started up the steep mountainside covered with trees, and followed a sort of trail made by deer or mountain sheep.

  Mosca Pass had been the old Indian route across the mountains. Later it had been used by freighters, but now it was used only by occasional horsemen who knew the country, and sheepherders bringing their flocks to summer grazing.

  Beyond the pass, on the western side, lay the great sand dunes, eighty square miles of shifting, piled-up sand, a place haunted by mystery, avoided by Indians, and a place I'd heard talk of ever since entering Colorado, because of the mysterious disappearances of at least one train of freight wagons and a flock of a thousand sheep, along with the herder.

  We didn't have any choice. Black Fetchen undoubtedly had gone himself or had sent riders to look into the story of the Reynolds gold, but at the same time he'd kept riders close to Costello's place to move in if we tried to rescue him. I thought the only thing they hadn't guessed was the trail down the mountain from the saddle. Their missing that one was enough to get us a chance to free Costello; but now they were pushing us back into the mountains, leaving us mighty little room in which to maneuver.

  The ridge along which we now rode was a wall that would shut us in. We had to try for one of the passes, and if we succeeded in getting across the mountain we would be on the edge of the sand dunes.

  Suppose Black could send those riders who had gone to Bronco Dan Gulch on through La Veta Pass? They could close in from the south, and our only way of escape would be into the dunes. It began to look as if we were fairly trapped, cornered by our own trick, trying to get rid of the gang for a few hours.

  From time to time we had to shift our trail. Sometimes it simply gave out, or the ground fell away too steep for any horse to travel. There was no question of speed. Our horses sometimes slid down hill as much as ten to twenty feet, and at times the only thing that saved us were outcroppings of rock or the stands of pine growing on the slope.

  But most of the way was under cover and there was no chance of dust, so anybody trying to track us could not be sure exactly where we were.

  "We could hole up and make a stand," Walker suggested.

  "They'd get above us," Galloway said. "They'd have us trapped on a steep slope so we couldn't go up or down."

  Once, breaking out of the timber, we glimpsed the smoke rising from the trading post near the Buzzard Roost Ranch. It was miles away, and there was no chance of us getting down there without breaking through a line of guns. We could make out riders below us, traveling on the lower slopes, cutting us off.

  Suddenly there was a bare slope before us, a slope of shale. It was several hundred yards across and extended down the mountain for what must be a quarter of a mile.

  Galloway, who was in the lead at the moment, pulled up and we gathered near him. "I don't like it, Flagan," he said. "If that shale started to slide, a man wouldn't have a chance. It would take a horse right off its feet."

  We looked up, but the slope above was steep and rocky. A man afoot could have made it with some strugg
ling here and there, but there was no place a horse could go. And downhill was as bad ... or worse.

  "Ain't much of a choice," Cap said.

  "I'll try it," I said. Even as I spoke I was thinking what a fool a man could be. If we tried going back we'd surely run into a shooting match and somebody would get killed - maybe all of us - but if my horse started to slide on that shale I'd surely go all the way; and it was so steep further down that the edge almost seemed to break off sharply.

  Stepping down from the saddle, I started toward the edge of the slope, but my horse wanted no part of it. He pulled back, and I had to tug hard to get him out on that shale.

  At my first step I sank in over my ankle, but I didn't slide. Bit by bit, taking it as easy as I could, I started out over the slide area. I was not halfway across when I suddenly went in almost to my knees. I struggled to get my feet out of the shale, and felt myself starting to slide. Holding still, I waited a moment, and then I could ease a foot from the shale and managed a step forward. It was harder for my horse, but a good hold on the reins gave him confidence and he came on across the stretch. It took me half an hour to get to the other side, but I made it, though twice my horse went in almost to his belly.

  It was easier for the next man, who was Cap Roun-tree. Cap had been watching me, and I had found a few almost solid places I could point out to him. Before he was across, Walker started, then Costello. All told, that slide held us up a good two hours, but once across we found ourselves on a long, narrow bench that carried us on for over a mile, moving at a good gait.

  The top of the pass was open, wind-swept and cold. The western side of it fell steeply away before us. Hesitating, we looked back and glimpsed a bunch of riders, still some miles off, but riding up the pass toward us.

  Black Fetchen had planned every move with care. Now we could see just how he must have thought it out, and it mattered not at all whether he went to Bronco Dan or not, he could have trapped us in any case. I was sure they had sent up a smoke or signaled in some manner, and that when we reached the foot of the pass he would have men waiting for us.