His riding boots weren’t waterproof, and the high heels made walking difficult along the slippery, wet rocks. Twice he fell to his knees, throwing his hands forward to break his fall and splashing himself quite thoroughly. He cut his left knee on a sharp rock the second time he fell, and a sharp pain stabbed through the limb as he lurched onward, bent almost double.
He lost all track of distance and time, was afraid to lift his head and look over the bank to get his bearings for fear Sam and Ezra had guessed what he was up to and would send a bullet through his brain before he could shout to them.
He was afraid, also, to start shouting too soon. If he warned them of his coming before he was close enough for them to recognize his voice, they might take fright and slip away from the cabin.
So he went floundering on through the icy water, aware that he must look completely idiotic, but grimly determined to save his two friends from themselves if it was humanly possible to do so.
He was beginning to wonder if he had somehow managed to pass beyond the cabin without knowing it when his eyes saw the welcome sight of the spring just above the arroyo. He knew the cabin must be directly below him, but he had no breath left to shout with, and he had to sink down on a rock and rest a minute before he trusted his voice to carry even that short distance.
When he was through gasping, he shouted, “Sam an’ Ezra! It’s Pat! I’m right here behind the cabin an’ I’m comin’ out. Do you hear me? It’s Pat!”
He waited, straining his ears for a reply. He couldn’t hear anything except the rustle of a mountain breeze in the pines and the irritating trickle of water between his feet.
Still not daring to expose himself to a bullet, he shouted again, loudly and angrily this time.
When he got no answer to this, he began to wonder if he’d made a mistake in the location of the cabin, and he cautiously poked his head over the bank to see. The cabin was right there. Not more than twenty feet down the slope, and that same trickle of thin smoke spiraled upward from the chimney.
Infuriated at his friends for their stubbornness in not answering, Pat dragged his wet and aching body out of the arroyo and stalked down to the cabin.
He flung the door open and stepped inside, demanding angrily, “What the hell kinda game—?”
Emptiness flung his words back at him. He stared around the bare cabin in perplexity and then limped to the door and around the corner.
More than two miles away, he dimly saw the figures of two riders disappearing around the side of the mountain. He stood there and frothed at the mouth in futile anger.
While he’d been Injuning up the creek, falling on his face and cutting himself on rocks to get close enough to talk to them, his two friends had calmly seized the opportunity to saddle their horses and ride away.
And his own horses were more than a mile distant. And him with a cut leg and aching in every joint. It was enough, by golly, to make a man swear off friendship forever.
Pat drew in a long breath and clamped his teeth over the cuss-words that kept on oozing out. He bent forward and began limping as rapidly as possible toward his horses.
12
Pat Stevens was completely winded and thoroughly angry when he reached the grove where he had left his two horses. The roan snorted and bent his ears forward inquiringly as Pat panted up.
Pat caught the dragging reins and led the roan back toward the pack-saddled bay, explaining over his shoulder, “Take it easy, hawse. You’ve had your ridin’ for today.”
He swiftly stripped the saddle from the roan. Unfastened the cumbersome pack-saddle and shifted it from the bay to the roan. He threw his saddle on the bay mare and slid the bridle off the roan’s head, gave him a slap on the haunches and said, “You can take out for home any time you want.”
The roan snorted and trotted away, shaking himself uneasily under the lightly burdened pack-saddle. Pat knew he would make his way back to the Lazy Mare ranch in a day or so, and for the job ahead of him he needed the bay mare. She was fresher than the roan, for one reason, having carried only the light pack-saddle this far, and she was older and more trail-wise than the roan; a sure-footed mountain horse who knew her way around in rough going.
And there was plenty of rough going ahead. Pat had figured it all out as he ran from the cabin to his horses. It was wholly useless to try and catch up with Sam and Ezra in time for Sam to make his first Pony Express ride. Their horses had had a good feed and rest at the Windrow cabin, and they had at least a four-mile head-start on him. And even if he did succeed in coming up behind them, he’d be in the same difficulty he had met while trying to make a frontal approach on the cabin. They’d never let him get close enough to recognize him. If he persisted in following them, Pat knew they’d start shooting in earnest next time.
His only chance was to head them off; and that was a wild and dangerous chance, but he was determined to take it. He knew the route the two men would follow, knew just about the speed they would ride at.
They were circling the base of the mountain westward through a rugged terrain cut up by deep gulches and sharp hogbacks. Long ago, a trail had led directly over the top of the mountain and down the other side, cutting off at least half the distance Sam and Ezra would have to cover in their circuitous route. On this side of the mountain, the trail was steep and rocky, but passable. The other end of it was blocked off by a rockslide that had left a sheer expanse of broken shale with a small mountain of piled-up and jagged rocks at the bottom waiting to receive any horse and rider foolhardy enough to attempt to negotiate the expanse of slippery shale.
Pat knew the danger of that route perfectly well. He and Sam and Ezra had discovered the rockslide the preceding fall while hunting in this region. They had discussed the danger of it at the time, had searched for an alternate route to get down off the mountain, and had finally reluctantly turned back rather than attempt the descent.
Yet, Pat knew that was his only possible chance to head off his two friends. If he could cross the mountain while they were circling the base of it, he could reach a point ahead of them on the safer trail they were following.
He adjusted the bridle to fit the bay’s head, and stepped up into the saddle. She ambled forward as soon as his weight was solidly in the saddle. He turned her sharply to the left, put her down into the arroyo and across the spring-fed stream of water, then lifted her into an easy gallop, circling slightly up the mountain to hit the trail leading almost straight up.
Sam and Ezra were well out of sight now, though they might see him later from below as he neared the top. He wasn’t worried about that. He knew what their reaction would be if they saw him spurring up that steep trail. They would grin and tell each other it was some fool who didn’t know about the rockslide blocking the other end of the trail. They would ride on at their own good speed, serenely sure the rider would have to turn back on reaching the slide area.
Pat knew he wasn’t going to turn back. He had to try it. The bay mare would make it, if any horse in Colorado could do it. If she didn’t: if she lost her footing on the treacherous shale and she and her rider went hurtling down on the jagged rocks below—well, that was the kind of chance a man had to take.
He pulled her down gently to a walk when they reached the trail leading directly up. He turned her into it and gave her a loose rein, leaning far forward in the saddle to throw as much of his weight as possible on her withers.
She scrambled up nimbly at a half-trot and a half-walk, her head stretched far out at the end of her neck to give her added balance, her hind legs working like pistons and doing the lifting while her forefeet sought out the solid places in the trail just beneath her distended nostrils.
There’s a trick in horseback mountain climbing. There must be complete understanding and co-ordination between horse and rider, absolute trust between them. The rider must be willing to give the animal a free rein and complete freedom of decision, he must be able to trust himself unreservedly to the judgment of his mount, swaying to this side or that with the
movement beneath him, encouraging the animal by his own lack of fear.
Pat and the mare were like that together. They knew and trusted each other. Pat had never asked the mare to do anything she couldn’t do, and thus she was eager to try anything he put her to. This upward trail was one that would have frightened many horses and men, would have taxed the agility of ninety-eight horses out of a hundred, even among those bred in that mountainous country. But the mare went up without faltering, and as they neared the top Pat began scanning the lower mountainside for sight of the two men he hoped to intercept.
He spied them after a time. Far below and just about where he had expected them to be. Two moving dots against a background of green foliage. They were traveling easily, as though in no fear of pursuit, and Pat wondered if they’d seen him yet.
If they did, they reacted just as he had expected them to. Trusting the rockslide to stop him, they didn’t increase their pace, were still going along at a slow trot when he topped over the mountain and they were cut off from his view.
Pat pulled the mare to a stop as soon as they were out of Sam and Ezra’s sight. She was heaving from the terrific exertion of the climb, drawing in great laboring breaths of the thin mountain air, and her red coat was dark with sweat, spotted here and there with white froth blown back from her mouth.
Pat got off and stood by her, patting her neck and fondling her ears while his grim gaze followed the narrow path downward to the point where there was no more trail.
The upper edge of the slide area was almost half a mile below, a couple of miles in width and extending downward several hundred yards to the bottom. Bright sunlight was reflected upward from the smooth shale surface, and from this distance it appeared there was not a single foothold in the entire slide area for man or animal. Pat knew it was not quite as bad as that. Shale is formed in uneven layers that lie practically parallel to the slope of the hill which they form. In a slide, the layers break off unevenly, leaving small crevices and ridges which look strong enough to hold considerable weight. The great danger is always that these broken layers will again give way, starting another slide that will break away an increasing portion before it, and something that no human being can stop once it gets started.
“Take your time to get plumb rested,” Pat told the bay mare grimly. “You’re goin’ to be needin’ all your stren’th when you start down yonder.”
The mare pricked her ears forward and seemed to be gravely considering the dangers of the slope below. Then she turned and rubbed her wet muzzle against Pat’s arm. Her upper lip was drawn away from her teeth as though she smiled reassuringly at Pat’s doubts.
He felt some of the tension go out of him, and he rubbed his hand down across her forehead, tweaked her nose playfully.
“All right, so it’s funny,” he agreed cheerfully. “You an’ me are goin’ to take a chance at killin’ ourselves to do a favor to a couple of ornery coyotes that was just shootin’ at me. A couple that ain’t worth the powder to blow ’em to hell. You got more sense than that, I betcha. But you’re not arguin’ about it. If I say so, that’s good enough for you.”
The mare tossed her head and whinnied lightly.
Pat said, “All right, you’re like another lady I know. She thinks what I do is all right, too. Makes me plumb ashamed sometimes.” He put his foot in the stirrup and swung up into the saddle. “Down we go. An’ there won’t be no stoppin’ when we hit that shale neither.”
The mare dropped her head low, almost between her forefeet, and began to pick her way down daintily.
Pat leaned far back in the saddle, bracing his weight against his feet in the stirrups. He kept the reins just tight enough to tell the mare they remained in his hands, loose enough to give her complete freedom in choosing her own path.
It was breath-taking work. Small stones were dislodged by the mare’s hooves and clattered on down the steep incline to the smooth shale where they shot on down at accelerated speed. The mare’s breathing was loud, but never once did she hesitate. She seemed to smell out the solid places for her forefeet and she kept her haunches well under her so that she almost crouched on the sharp declivity.
As they neared the slide area Pat began talking to her in a calm, conversational tone.
“There it is right ahead. Don’t try to stop when you get to it. You got to keep goin’. You can make it. Thing is, don’t get scared. If you start slippin’, just hold on tight. Don’t fight it. You can’t fight shale, an’ you can’t go any way but down. Here it is now. Right straight down.”
He pressed his legs against the mare’s ribs as she hesitated for an instant on the edge of the shale. She braced herself and slid her forefeet out on the smooth surface. They found a small indentation and stopped there. She gathered herself like a bucking horse with all four feet close together, then took a long step forward to another rough spot. Her nose brushed against the rock surface and it was as though she gingerly felt her way with her lips.
Pat didn’t let himself look down. He was braced in the saddle, giving every bit of his concentrated attention to helping the mare by shifting his weight with her every movement. Sweat dripped from his face as they inched their way down. They were half-way down. Almost to a point of safety. If a slide started now, the distance was not so great that they would hit the jagged rocks in the bottom with deadly impetus.
Still, the mare went on. Sliding two feet here. Setting herself and rocking back on a perch so precarious that it looked as though it would not hold a coyote.
Now they were down, and there were only the broken and tumbled boulders of the rockslide to negotiate across the bottom of a choked draw.
Pat stopped sweating and began to breathe evenly again. The mare climbed surefootedly over rounded boulders, avoiding the jagged pieces with an intelligence that was more than human, and finally heaved herself up the other side of the draw.
Pat laughed and bent forward to pat her sweat-streaked neck. “You’re one hawse in a million,” he told her throatily. “If there’s any reward money from the bank, you’re gettin’ it in oats.”
He reined her sharply to the right and lifted her into a gallop. The trail Sam and Ezra were following was about a quarter of a mile ahead. If they had continued at the same pace they were traveling when last he saw them, they would still be a couple of miles back.
He pulled up at the edge of the old trail and leaped off. One glance told him he was in time. He led the mare back to a thick clump of juniper and left her where she couldn’t be seen from the trail, then trotted back and looked about for a safe spot from which he could accost the two riders.
He selected a gnarled oak that leaned over the trail, climbed the trunk quickly and inched his way out on a thick limb to a point directly over the trail.
He straddled the limb and relaxed, smiling a little now that the strain was over. He got out the makings and rolled a cigarette while he listened alertly for his friends’ approach.
He heard the ring of steel horseshoes on the rocky trail as he lit his cigarette. They were still coming at a leisurely trot, evidently feeling wholly secure in the belief that they had outdistanced him.
Pat puffed on his cigarette with satisfaction, and grinned widely when he saw their heads bobbing along above low trees in the distance. There was the huge, heavy-shouldered body of Ezra, towering a foot above his smaller companion. Ezra wore a black Stetson and dusty blue shirt, but Sam Sloan was more gaily attired in a bright red silk shirt and a fresh pair of blue jeans. They were talking and laughing together as they approached him. He could hear Ezra’s booming laughter, and could see a grin wreathing the dark, ugly face of Sam Sloan.
Pat’s belly muscles tightened uncomfortably as he suddenly remembered why he was here. In the excitement of heading them off, he’d forgotten that he wanted them for robbing the Dutch Springs bank and a couple of murders. It made him angry to see them joking and laughing so gaily. He had risked disgrace for their sake last night, and today he had risked his neck to get clo
se enough to talk to them.
He was a damned fool, he told himself morosely. They hadn’t thought of him last night when they’d done those things that sent them riding the owl-hoot trail. Now they were as happy as a couple of kids at an ice cream festival. As if murder was something to laugh about! And robbing their own bank. Stealing their friends’ money!
He got all choked up with a curious blend of anger and of fear as he waited for them to ride beneath the tree. This was the showdown. What happened in the next few minutes would determine whether he could go on living as a respected citizen of Powder Valley or whether he took out for the Border with them. He thought of Sally and of his son, Dock—and of Kitty Lane.
Then they were directly beneath the limb, and he spoke down to them quietly without raising his voice:
“Where you two hombres headed for?”
13
Sam Sloan and Ezra stopped their horses in the trail a few feet beyond the oak tree in which Pat was perched. Neither of them looked up. Sam frowned and said gravely to Ezra, “Damn if I didn’t think I heerd a voice. Sounded like ’twas comin’ down from the sky.”
Ezra looked relieved. He said, “By Gawd, Sam, I’m glad you heard it too. Me, I thought mebby I’d slipped a cog.”
“Couldn’t be no angel,” Sam argued. “Sort of a he-voice, sounded like to me. You ever hear of a he-angel, Ezra?”
“Shore never did.” Ezra lowered his voice to a doubtful bellow. “’Ceptin’ Gabriel, mebby. Do you ’low, Sam, that it could be him a-talkin’ to us?”
Pat said loudly, “All right. You’ve had your say-so even if ’twasn’t very funny.”
Sam cocked his head sideways and beamed up at Pat Stevens sitting above them on the oak-tree limb. He drawled, “My lan’ sakes, Ezra. Take a squint up yonder an’ tell me if you see what I do. Looks like ol’ Pat Stevens scrooched up there on a limb like he’d turned into a danged buzzard. An’ he’s talkin’, by Gawd. Almost human. Buzzards cain’t talk.”
Sheriff on the Spot Page 10
