by Alan Lemay
Through the hillside brush a figure moved, crouching so low that his dark shape resembled a bear. After a moment Bill Roper was able to make out that the approaching man carried a light carbine; and instead of cowboy boots he wore the heavy shoe packs of some of the northern Indian tribes. A beaked cap was tied down on his head by a heavy muffler; Roper could not see his face.
The man with the carbine moved swiftly down the hillside, sliding on the hard crust of the snow, but surprisingly silent in the brush.
"Indian, or half breed," Roper thought; "a scout for whoever holds the cabin. Maybe getting in a little meat hunting as he goes."
The watched man dropped into the ravine, angling toward the bend where Roper stood. Bill Roper pulled himself out of the gully. He was crouched in dense brush, gun in hand, as the scout appeared below him.
Roper stood up. "Steady," he said.
The man in the draw jumped as if he had been struck; but as he raised his hands he straightened so that Roper saw his face.
"Damn my soul!"
His captive was Shoshone Wilce.
"By God," said Shoshone, "I was never so glad to see anybody in my life!"
Roper's voice bit like frosty ice. "You know where she is?"
"Yeah," said Shoshone. "Yeah, I know where she is."
Roper dropped into the gully to snarl close into Shoshone's face. "Is she alive? Is she all right?"
"Oh, yeah, sure," Wilce assured him. "She's alive, all right. Don't seem like she's hurt any. I-"
"Don't seem like?" Roper repeated. "Damn your hide, where is she?"
"Bill, seems like them bastards have her down there at that cabin, and won't leave her loose."
"Who won't?"
"Bill, I don't know who."
"Well, how the devil did she get there?"
"Me," Shoshone said. He met Roper's eye bleakly. Obviously, he knew that he was in trouble here. "I brought her."
"What in all hell"
"She would have come anyway, Bill. She was dead set on locating you. She didn't have nobody else to ride with her. I figured you'd sooner I'd try to bring her direct to you, so somebody would be with her, than have her wandering loose around the country by herself. A bartender in Miles told me you were here, and we rode here. And then and then-"
"Well, then what?"
"As I come into the valley," Shoshone said, "seemed to me like something was wrong. But I couldn't make out what. We come up to the cabin careful and slow, in the dark. But they seen us coming and they laid for us, I guess. Before we knew what had busted, they gunned her pony down, and they drilled mine twice so bad that I had to turn him loose. Most likely he's dead by now. I-" Shoshone hesitated.
"And you ran out and left her," Bill filled in for him.
"Bill, I swear, I wouldn't have done nothing like that, not for no amount. Thing was, they was all around me; I couldn't see where to shoot or who they was. I figured first it was your own boys, making a mistake, and after I seen it wasn't, I just figured to keep in a fighting position, you might say, and close in first chance. Only-"
"Only you never saw any chance," Roper said with contempt.
"Well, no; there's seven of 'em down there, Bill, and they keep an awful steady watch. After I seen my horse was through I tried to catch me another, but couldn't make out. So I cut up my saddle blanket and chaps and made these here shoe packs, like the tribes do, so I could get around without leaving so much trail. And I been scouting 'em steady ever since. Sometimes I get in a long shot at one or another of 'em. This carbine don't carry so very good, but I plugged two of 'em; don't know how bad. And-"
"How the hell do you know she wasn't shot or hurt when her horse went down?" Roper demanded. "By God, Shoshone, if you let anything happen to that girl-"
"They let her walk outside sometimes during the day," Shoshone said. "That's how I seen she's all right."
"Can you make out who the bunch down there is?"
"I figure they're some Thorpe gun squad, out after your scalp. I figure they was laying to gun you. And now that they got the girl, I figure that they aim to hold her for bait, kind of."
"You figure! But you don't know?"
"Fact is, Bill, I don't know; not for sure."
Shoshone fell silent, and Roper, deep in thought, let him rest.
"You're most likely right," Roper said morosely at last. "There's four or five of these Thorpe war parties out after me; and this could easy be one. But of all the infernal luck I ever saw - What did Jody want with me? Did she tell you?"
"Thorpe has made up his mind to kill her old man," Shoshone said. "I went and told her, because I thought you'd want her to know, so she could maybe look out for him some. But the old man wouldn't listen to her and they had a row. So then the only thing she could think of was to come to you. She's got some notion of trying to get you and her old man together again."
"Hell of a fine chance!"
"That's what I told her. But she-"
"Why in God's name," Roper flared at him again, "didn't you go after help?"
"I figured I'd get strung up for sure," Shoshone said flatly, "if I went and told Gordon what I'd done. I wanted to come for you, but naturally I didn't know where you'd went. The only thing I could figure out, I better try to ghost around these hills and maybe whittle 'em down to my size."
Roper snorted.
"How many boys you got with you?" Shoshone asked.
"Not one," Roper answered. "I was clear over on the Little Dry when Hat Crick Tommy brought word the girl had disappeared. I didn't figure, then, it was a fighting job. After I got to Miles I went and talked to Gordon"
"You talked to Gordon? How in hell-"
"I just walked in and talked to him," Roper said with irritation. "After Gordon convinced me that Jody had left Miles with you, I had a good idea where to come. I'd already talked to the bartender that sent you here. But then it was too late to go back after any of my riders, scattered out like they were."
"If only some of the Gordon cowboys would show up-"
"No chance of that. Gordon knows that the girl was looking for me. This made a good camp for me because it's a Lasham line camp-right in the heart of his northern range. Lasham never suspected I'd have the guts to use it, until now; and it sure would never come into Gordon's mind."
"Couldn't you have told Gordon-"
"I tell you, I never thought there'd be any fighting in this, until I found your dead pony."
"Bill," said Shoshone slowly, "this is terrible bad."
Just how bad it was and what it meant, Bill Roper could not decide. He was remembering now what Lew Gordon had said: "You've started things no mortal man can stop..."
"You say there are seven men in the cabin," Roper asked at last; "two wounded?"
Shoshone nodded. "They ain't all in the cabin all of the time. Seems like they must have had the girl tell 'em that she come here to meet you. Naturally they'd think you knew she was coming. Most likely they figure that if I ain't dead I'm carrying you word that will bring you here a-kiting. So they're holding her there now until they see if they can't get you. I ain't watched those fellers for fifteen years without knowing how they work."
"They're taking an awful chance," Roper said, iron death in his eye. "If I rode in here, warned, with my wild bunch"
"It ain't such a bad chance they're taking," Shoshone contradicted. "Night and day their outposts are out. Two men can check the whole country daytimes, so they can see you coming twenty miles. You only got here because you come up through the timber to the south, on the trail from Miles the last way they'd figure you'd come. Nights there are more men on lookout than that, near as I can make out, and their lookout is strongest just before dawn - I suppose Iron Dog taught 'em that trick in the old days, always striking just before daylight, and now they can't get it out of their heads. Night and day they got ponies saddled. If ever they spotted your wild bunch riding in, they'd be almighty hard to catch."
"If only," Roper said, "the wild bunch was going to ride in! But it i
sn't."
"Maybe there's some way we could fake it, so they'd give up and clear out. I figure they'd leave the girl behind if ever they set out to run."
Roper shook his head. "No way to do that, Shoshone. By God, if those coyotes don't hang for this-"
"How can they ever hang? If they're Thorpe men they got the law back of 'em. The girl rides in of her own accord, and something happens to her horse. They don't give her a new horse for fear she'll lose herself. There's nothing in that that calls for an hour in jail for one of 'em, Bill."
"Some of 'em aren't going to live to see a jail," Roper promised himself.
"What you going to do?"
"I'm going down and smoke 'em out. I'm going to smoke 'em out before the sun ever comes up again, and you're going to help me."
Shoshone nodded. "If we tackled 'em just before daylight, when the outpost is strong and the cabin is weak-"
They talked it over for a long time. In the hidden gulch where Shoshone had been holing up they made coffee and cooked meat, and completed their plans.
"We can get in," was Shoshone's verdict at last. "We can get in, and we can take the cabin. But God knows how we're ever going to get out."
"I've got a plan for that," Roper said.
He wouldn't tell Shoshone what it was.
HERE were no stars when Roper roused himself in his blankets, and he had no mechanical means of telling the time. Yet he knew very definitely that dawn was just two hours away. Raised on the Trail, he had learned by the changing of a thousand night guards to estimate the hour of the night with an accuracy which he no longer questioned.
He shook Shoshone Wilce. The little man groaned once, then came full awake with the sudden response of an animal.
"Time to go, Shoshone."
"I'm ready, Bill."
Without the snow the rock-like impenetrability of the overcast sky would have made the night utterly black, but the ghostly pallor of the snow had the effect of faintly modifying the darkness. The eye might possibly have made out a moving dark shape at ten yards; beyond that there was nothing but a muffling blackness.
"You lead out," Roper said. His voice was instinctively hushed, even at this distance from the enemy. "You've had more chance to study the lay than me."
Shoshone Wilce delayed. "Bill," he said, "I lay thinking about this time for a long time, after you was asleep." A dogged stubbornness came into his tone. "I figure we can probably take the cabin. And if we take the cabin without fighting we've got a chance to get away. But if so much as one shot is fired Bill, the outposts will close like a b'ar trap. I don't see no way we can ever get clear."
By the sudden frozen silence, Shoshone Wilce was able to sense Bill Roper's anger.
"I wish to God," Bill Roper said at last, "I had Hat Crick Tommy here, or Tex Long; or even the very greenest kid cowboy that's riding the range with them, somewhere tonight. I need one other man for this job. It wouldn't take an especially brave man, or smart man, nor a real good gunfighter. I just need one fairly good man. But I haven't even got that!"
"Bill, I only claim-look, Bill: I ain't afraid of em. I only-"
"You ain't afraid," Bill Roper repeated; "nonot much. But when the guns spoke, you left a girl down under her horse in the snow maybe hurt, maybe dead and you ran for your life."
When Bill Roper had said that, both were utterly still, while a man might have counted a hundred.
Shoshone's voice was flat and dead. "Is that the way it looks to you?"
"Look at it yourself"
"Then," Shoshone said, "I guess there ain't anything more to say." He stood up.
"There's this to say," Bill Roper said. "You're going to work with me tonight because I haven't got anybody else. You're going to do exactly what I say, and when I say, without any back talk or question. You make one slip tonight and the West won't hold you, nor the world won't hold you, and you'll answer to me in the end. You hear me?"
"Okay," Shoshone said in the same flat, dead voice.
"One thing more," Roper said. "If we make a quiet job, we'll try to go out slow and quiet, the three of us together. Otherwise, you take Jody's lead rope and ride like hell. Six miles below here, near the creek, there's a kind of a brush corral. You and the girl will wait for me there. Wait for me until daylight begins to come; then go on."
"Okay."
"Lead out."
They moved down into the valley of the Fork, walking fast. Shoshone carried his carbine in the crook of his arm, but Roper's rifle was behind in his saddle boot; he had relied principally upon his sixgun for a long time. Roper had cut up a blanket and bound his boots with the strips, to avoid the creak and crunch of heels upon the frozen snow. The two men made little sound.
When they had dropped into the bed of Fork Creek itself they moved northward, following its windings, for what seemed a long way; but no sign of approaching dawn yet showed, and Roper felt that they had plenty of time. As they at last passed the point where the cabin stood, invisible in the dark, Shoshone indicated its location with raised arm; but they moved on fifty yards farther, so that they might approach the cabin from the north.
Cautiously now, Shoshone climbed the bank, silent as the Indians with whom he had spent his youth. Turning, he gripped Bill Roper's arm. His words were whispered close to Roper's ear.
"One of the night guards is out that-a-way, about five hundred yards," he whispered; "about in line with where you see that big dead pine."
Roper could see no dead pine, good as his eyes were. It annoyed him that Shoshone's eyes were better than his own as good as the eyes of an Indian, or a lynx.
"I'll leave my carbine standing just outside the door," Shoshone said. "I only want it for later, after we've took to the horses."
"That's all right," Roper said. "But you remember this: If there's any trouble in the cabin, by God, you stand and fight! Because if you don't, I'll turn and plug you myself, if it takes my last shot to do it."
"Okay."
Roper went ahead now, walking boldly across the snow. Better, he thought, to simulate the casual approach of friends than to depend upon a hope of complete surprise.
As he raised his hand to the door a strange thrill of dread momentarily stirred him at the thought that Jody Gordon was inside-with whom? He glanced at Shoshone to make sure that the man was at his elbow; then, his gun out, he flung wide the door. The slab door resisted, wedged in the ice of the sill; then shuddered open with a noisy violence.
Roper stepped in with a sidewise step that at once made room for Shoshone and brought Roper within the wall, clear of a possible shot from behind him in the dark.
"Don't anybody move!"
The uncertain and flickering light of the little fire seemed to fill the room with ample light, compared to the heavy darkness without. A man who sat upon a keg by the fire sprang up, his clawed hand reaching out to a gunbelt that lay upon the crude table; but the reaching hand rose empty in a continuous motion as the man put up his hand. Three crude bunks ranged along the rear wall. From the first of these, the one nearest the fire, a man came out with his hands up; one of his arms was heavily bandaged, and its upward motion carried its sling with it.
Now Shoshone, whose heel had kicked the door shut behind him as he came in, made a headlong dive into the second of the three bunks. In that instant the thing happened that Roper most dreaded, so that in a single split fraction of a second their chances were irrevocably hurt.
As Shoshone Wilce sprang, a gun smashed out from within the shadowy bunk. The blast of its explosion was magnified in the close quarters, leaving the ears ringing in the instant of stunned silence that followed.
The barrel of Shoshone's .45 had crashed upon the skull of the man in the bunk almost in the same instant that the shot was fired. A lean hand, gripping a six-gun, dropped out over the side of the bunk, relaxed slowly, and the six-gun slid to the floor from long, dangling fingers. Shoshone Wilce held absolutely motionless for a moment, half crouched, then straightened slowly.
&nb
sp; "Shoshone you hit?"
"It's only-" Shoshone began. His face was ghastly and his voice quavered; but when he had fully straightened it steadied again into the same dead flatness as before. "It's only - a kind of scratch along the ribs. I'm all right."
"Jody! Jody, is it you?"
Jody Gordon had been curled up in the corner of deepest shadows. She stood up now, white-faced, her movements uncertain. Then suddenly the firelight caught the glint of the instant tears which overbrimmed her eyes.
"Bill! I thought they'd kill you!" She flung her arms about his neck with the swift impulse of a child, and kissed his mouth.
The man nearest the table made a sidelong movement toward the holstered gun that lay there; Bill Roper smashed a shot into the wall beside him, and the man jerked backward.
"Shoshone, can you ride?"
There was a curious strain in the flatness of Shoshone's voice. "I'm okay, I tell you."
Bill Roper caught up a sheepskin coat with his free hand, and flung it over Jody's shoulders. "Get gone!" he snapped. "Shoot free the ponies' tie-ropes, and ride like hell! Here-take this!" He thrust the gunbelt from the table into Jody's unready hands. "I'll see you where I said."
"Bill, said Shoshone, "if it's the same to you, I'd rather hold them here while you ride with her."
"Get gone, I said! You-"
"Bill, I tell you, I"
Bill Roper bellowed at him, "You want to die?"
"Okay," Shoshone said, in that same strained, lifeless tone. He seized Jody's wrist, tore open the door with the hand that still held his gun, and was gone into the dark.
When they were gone Bill Roper stood listening. Outside two shots rang, a moment apart, as Shoshane shot the tied ponies free; then sounded a swift crackle of the ice crust under their hoofs as two horses gal loped down-valley, and Roper knew that Shoshone and Jody Gordon were on their way.
Bill Roper estimated that he had a few seconds left. Unhurriedly, almost leisurely, he picked up the gun dropped by the man in the bunk, and thrust it in his own belt. After that he collected three or fourother weapons in a brief search that seemed perfunctory, yet was effective because of his own practiced knowledge of where a range rider is apt to put his gun. These he kicked into a little heap beside the door, so that he would know where they were.
